QUOTE(Cyclopia @ Mon 20th September 2010, 3:19pm)
You know what drives me mad? You guys are all talking about trying to understand other people sensibilities and stuff, and how insensitive people like me is, but it seems that at least a number of you is simply incapable of thinking that someone can, simply, have disagreeing opinions on this subject without hidden psychopathological motivations. You simply can't conceive that.
Sorry about that... (IMG:
smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif)
But you see, this is the problem with the "anonymity culture" as it exists on Wikipedia. People don't even bother to look at your own user page to try and get an idea of your ideological biases, because they're so used to the fact that user pages are full of, well, shite.
In your case, you're from Italy, you've studied fascism, you
oppose it, and you know (being Italian) that fascism is a very real possibility in a country, not a "can't happen here" abstraction. And you know (as we all do) that heavy censorship and propagandizing are key features of a fascist state. To me, this is clearly the (non-psychological) basis for your adoption of an extreme
anti-censorship ideology, and I for one don't blame you for that.
Nevertheless, IMO it's easy to go too far in the other direction. There's no possible way that hiding (or even editing out completely) the ending to
The Mousetrap could assist in the establishment of a totalitarian regime of any kind. In fact, it suggests the opposite:
Another hallmark of totalitarianism is a disrespect for artists, based on the idea that "art should exist only in service to the state" and other such horrible claptrap. Usually that means censoring the art itself, but it also means making it more difficult for artists who don't conform to make a living. Just by way of example, that could conceivably include the publicly revealment of the endings of whodunits.
Wikipedians will, for the most part, say they think art is a wonderful thing. However,
Wikipedia does not respect artists and what they do. They never have; that's one of the worst things about Wikipedia, and while it could be said of the entire internet to some degree, Wikipedia sometimes takes it to extremes.