Current State of Wikipedia on the Porn Issue ? Options

[Jon Awbrey]

Where would I find our best introduction or most succinct summary for interested outsiders on the current state of the Wiki-Porn issue?

There are active discussions of related matters on Facebook, and it always astounds me how often casual observers get taken in by Jimmy Sue's disinformation campaigns.

Jon

[Larry Sanger]

This is actually a good question. I wish I had time to write about it myself. The potential for so many zingers is insane, and this is the time to get them out.

The WMF and Wales were pretending, alternatively, that there was no porn, and that they were taking care of the porn problem (on Commons) by deleting it. Nobody other than Fox reported that this was a pretty much completely abortive effort, that the porn was still there.

No journalist or, heck, any high-profile or merely quite coherent blog post has made the following point systematically: the WMF and Wikipedians like Wales, on the one hand, encourage and praise the use of WP for education of children; and, on the other hand, many Wikipedians themselves and many WP pages loudly proclaim that it is not "censored for children." (You know, the way, say, the New York Times or Britannica is "censored for children.") This would be the perfect context to point out that plenty of WP editors and admins are underage, and that WP is supported as a non-profit in this activity/management stance.

Nobody has done much of a follow-up about the Harris study, or explained how and why nothing seems to be getting done about it.

The basic point is that WP is run by what someone here is pleased to call Freie Kultur Kinder, by more or less adolescent males, themselves childless and radical on the issue of how free their porn must be. This manifests itself in all sorts of ways. Not just the proliferation of porn, but also the whole infantile community culture.

I talked on the phone at great length something like 8-10 months ago with both Gardner and Harris. Gardner seemed sincere about her desire to get something started about various issues I had raised. But nothing happened--well, nothing worth getting excited about.

Wikipedia deserves to have an accurate reputation. A reputation that reflects how it is really run.

The challenge is to write about such things in a way and in a venue not associated with conservatives...

This post has been edited by Larry Sanger: Sun 20th February 2011, 5:15am