Damn straight.

I don't anticipate Ms. Durovas stay at WR will be long nor productive. Others might wish to call her to task for her bungled "investigations" vindictive campaigns against other Wikipedians, or her eager-beaver overachieving in the MMORPG.

But I don't care about those internal matters. What I want to ask, Ms. Durova, is how can you be so grossly irresponsible as to encourage the use of Wikipedia for school children? You do this knowing that Wikipedia has failed to implement any child protective features what-so-ever in its registration process, not age restrictions, parental consent or anything else. You do this knowing that Wikipedia does nothing to vet or screen people who self select to interact with children but permits them to operate anonymously or under pseudonyms that create an air of false intimacy. You do this knowing that Wikipedia provides no training, supervision or evaluation of people who self select to "collaborate" with children. You do this knowing that Wikipedia provides private means of communication between the adults and children, permits unsupervised "adoptions" and "mentorships," that even goes so far as to facilitate "meet-ups" that permit child and adult interaction. You do this knowing that Wikipedia hosts content that is sexually suggestive and explicit and suffers the "contributions"of editors who are obsessed with arcane sexual topics and viewpoints, including an extreme libertarian tolerance for pedophilia and bestiality. You do so knowing that the person in the second most important staff position in the WMF has publicly stated that he believes that child/adult sexual relationships are appropriate so long as the child "consents."

So, Ms. Wicked Witch of the West, you are well established as a know-it-all, how do you account for your irresponsible advocacy?

Any project that provides sustained interaction between children and adults that does not provide rigorous protective measures is inviting abuse and exploitation. This is all the more true when the project purports be providing an important social good and collaborating to achieve that end provides a context for special relationships between the child and adult. Witness the abuses to come to light from the American and Irish Catholic Churches. It may take years or even decades for the damage of this type of irresponsibility to come to light. When it does it will be a sad day indeed.

It's not easy being green.

Lovely, Moulton. Thank you. So GlassBeadGame has been counting warts.

Am a little new to the conventions here. Wouldn't it be customary to call my agent when casting roles as the star villain at a thread?

And doesn't this type of thread get tarpitted when it's directed at a fellow member? If not, I'll whistle and summon a flying monkey who will serve GBG something distinctly less pleasant than a banana daiquiri.

Cheers,
Your friendly Wiki Witch

Heaven forbid that a kid sees a pair of tits someday on the wiki. Scarred for life, he'll be.

Fortunately he won't suffer long. Just another month or two until he's nicely fattened.

Remind me to reshingle. Found a leak in the gingerbread last Monday when it rained.

You are forgetting that any criticism of Wikipedia is a personal attack on Wikipedians such as Ms Durova.

heh... well it's not only pictures of tits (taken with or without the consent of the people pictured) - don't forget the 'Cock and ball torture', 'Erotic asphyxiation', and rather messier 'Enema' articles (and pictures!) - these examples happen to be handily available here in a book created (from the wiki articles) by 'Wikipedians' - I would assert that distributing this material in an organised fashion to children is likely illegal - whadda you reckon?

ps. before I disappeared for a bit I was in correspondence with the folk at 'pedia press' - who currently feature the above book on the frontpage of their 'Catalogue' - they seem genuinely good folk to me, and are interested in the (possibly outstanding legal issue) of distributing this material to minors.....

:-)

On the contrary, Peter. I am personally responsible for all objectionable Wikipedia and Meta policies, including ones that were established years before I registered. It's part of the Evil plot we worked out in the secret crypt beneath Wall Street.

Now Glass Bead Game, have you ever inspired a featured content drive before? This one will be nominated in just a few minutes. May I link when it goes live? Or would that be canvassing?

actually I'm not sure that I have seen you (durova) advocate the use of wikipedia in schools - do you?

:-)

Only when I need cheap vandalism reverts to boost the mainspace count.

well.. um... ok - I'm afraid I can't really tell what your more serious position on this issue might be from that - this is actually quite an important issue to me - I feel that wikipedia is really breathtakingly irresponsible in this area, and really needs to be improved - would you agree?

I fully support the responsible use of parental control software. Parents should pay attention to their childrens' activities, read the disclaimers on the sites they allow the little 'uns to visit, and exercise appropriate discretion according to their own judgment and local societal standards. A wonderful thing about the digital era that parents can to do that according to their individual tastes and their children's maturity--rather than relying upon unwieldy lobbying groups to influence corporate behemoths.

yeah - I support parental software stuff too (well actually, I sort of think most of it is completely useless and the best idea is to keep the computer in a family room) - but that's not really the point, or the question in some ways.

Do you feel that said software should restrict wikipedia? Or actually, just the basic - should wikipedia be used in schools?

My answer is a resounding 'no'.

Seems clear enough to me. Have you never had to battle against a flood of vandalism from a school IP address?

Your concern for the mental welfare of the children is just clap-trap bullshit.

I actually get your caprine/passerine jokes. Should I seek help?

Only if you suspect you miss the humor. Hints are available upon request.

heh... that's one of the nicer criticisms of the way of thinking - I think Kato frames this issue best when (the way I read it) he points out the disconnect between reality ( / 'societal norms' - horrible phrase) and wikipedia practice - distributing pictures of folk having sex, or having their balls tortured is just not really very common in the name of education. I take it a step further and say that it's undesirable - you may disagree :-)

I worry that any more barnyard puns will spook Mr. Ass-With-No-Horse.

That's up to the local school board and PTA (or whatever alternate bodies hold sway).

Normally the kind of people who go into a tizzy if a twelve-year-old glimpses a booby tend to be collectively tech-savvy. I've been waiting for years to see a well financed forking project emerge from Wikipedia that's specifically family friendly. Not conservapedia--which is open edit and just as prone to abuse--but a stable non-open-edit encyclopedia that includes all the nineteenth century Vice Presidential biographies but none of the porn star bios.

By the way, Glass Bead Game, here's the featured content drive you inspired. A 1915 political cartoon from Puck. Started out looking for child labor illustrations; this one's just tangentially related (see the sleazy guy behind the solist's shoulder). A quick little restoration, but fun.

Haven't added that to articles yet. Need to finish a guest editorial for Signpost; interviewed a special collections curator from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Cheers,
Wiki Witchery

Would that you were right, GBG, but I doubt it. Durova/WikiWitch is here for the same reason as SlimVirgin/HellFreezesOver: unlike Wikipedia, we offer an open forum for discussion here, even of opinions we don't agree with. The peril of this, as we've seen so many times, is that Wikipedia apologists and apparatchiks show up here to push their agenda, deflect obvious questions about their behaviour, and then disappear again when the discussion gets hot. Lather, rinse, repeat. I sadly predict that his will be the rule with Durova. Within that general genre, we have the more thoughtful (Lar), the civil but unbending (One), the lunatic obsessive (Slim/HFO), the short-form apologist (MBisanz), and now the yet-to-be-categorized Durova/WWotW.

It's almost enough to drive me to Jon Awbrey's position, but not quite, and anyway, such are the perils of openness, something of which Wikipedia would know nothing, despite their poor delusion that the anarchy of "anyone can edit" somehow is equivalent.

Indeed. Let the anti-sleuthing begin!

Durova has, far and away, the largest ego of any of the ones you list above; she is here in part to dazzle us with her obvious (to her) knowledge, importance, and influence. Of course, we will fail to be impressed, and once it sinks in that we are not going to be impressed, she will eventually leave. That's assuming that the rest of the board trolls here can resist responding to her blatant trolling, which (sadly) is not very likely.

Her motivation for participating is to be the object of attention, nothing more and nothing less, and I say we've already given her way more than her fair share. I, at least, have no intention of engaging her until such time as she says something beyond "Look at me!", which has been the substance of every post so far, as far as I can tell.

Meh. Reminds me of the bible-thumping company that took R-rated movies, snipped the naughty bits, violence, etc...and then re-sold them under the banner of "family-friendly entertainment".

Wow, they've completely lost the plot.

Dude, dudette, or whatever you are--you have the option of discouraging people from starting threads about me. Or supporting my suggestion to tarpit the thing. That'd draw much less attention this way.

And reserve more for yourself.

kindof a low blow there, don't you think.

Durova, I think it is silly to give credit for "restoration" on the daily featured picture. And your whining on the mailing lists about people using 'restored' PD works without crediting your 'restoration' is childish.

Otherwise, welcome to WR.

Well Durova, I didn't expect you to be so shallow as to respond to criticism about substantive problems of social responsibility, specific to your "project" activities with brags about "featured articles" and stale and dismissive libertarian stand-by lines. I'm talking permitting an environment in which it can be expected that children will be sexually exploited by adults, not "viewing titties." If you don't know the difference you should stay away from children. You charge into schools in typical "cult of the amateur" fashion with your know-it-all self-importance, never even consulting anyone about with experience with child protective concerns, and then you lecture educators who can not be expected to see Wikipedia as anything but a tech novelty, unaware of the non-obvious dangers that lurk in the attractive nuisance for children that is Wikipedia. You have a lot to answer for in your vanity. I hope this thread remains searchable under "Durova", "children", "schools." It may serve to put educators on notice that there are concerns you never share with them. I would include your real name except that would only start the perpetual motion revenge engine. Maybe if you're so proud of your work you would care to add it? It really doesn't matter if respond to the substance of my questions put to you.

BTW your tasteless jab at transgender people above is not appreciated on this site.

Thanks for the welcome.

Actually the the curator's department does their own restorations of public domain material and places the restored work under Creative Commons license--an NC, unfortuantely. But call that a teaser for the editorial. Should make an interesting read.

(and now off to do stuff like finish it...)

Bash away, Kelly. The floor's yours. Just please remember that outside of Wikipedia Review memes, SlimVirgin and I rarely agree with each other more than twice a year. She's animal rights, I'm dark beer and rare steak. Maybe it sticks in the mind that one of the few things we did agree about was Poetlister. She and I were spot on, too. What was your history there?

(and that, my new friends, is trolling--never mistake straight-on humor for trolling unless you want to get trolled)

Toodles.

I looooooooooove when you're mean to me.

Bad Horsey! Bad Horsey! You're a naaaaaaaaaaaaughty pony!

Hey Durova, did you and Kohs ever make up? If not, now might be a good time to get the dialog started again.

I'd be curious to know why Durova will not release the digital audio file that recorded Episode 45 of the Wikivoices project, hosted on the English Wikipedia. She is one of three people understood to have ever possessed a copy of the file.

Namely -- is it a personal stress thing (you don't need the grief), or is it a political thing (there is actually content on the recording that is dangerous to release)?

I suspect the former more than the latter, but then... for such a champion of liberating freely-licensed content, it seems rather hypocritical to suppress some of which you're in possession.

Durova and I are far more civil to one another, by the way... a marked improvement from our battles of about December 2007.

Failing to agree with all your favorite memes and tropes regarding how we need to "Just Think of the Children!!!!!" doesn't equate with being against social responsibility.

....I'm not really up to speed on what happened here (so should probably sit on my hands, but can't be bothered....) - is the cliff notes version that after the audio wasn't published on-wiki for ages, you (greg) wanted the file released, and somehow shoemaker (and others?) was upset, then you (greg) got banned again?

It's probably stating the obvious, but surely we can get that file out somewhere somehow?

Did you see the link to the 1959 Youtube episode of Tonka that I posted? Tonka (The Brave One) is a fictional horse who is the only cavalry survivor of the Little Big Horn. Much in the manner of Comanche (horse), but in this version, captured by indians (no, not East Indians). Most particularly, the indian lad played by The Great Actor Sal Mineo.

You deserve Sal Mineo, Horsey. You really do.

Emphasis added above.

Right, I'm the one operating on the meme level.

Book-of-Mormon-thumping, actually.

It seems to me that in order to release the audio file, you need the permission of the person who recorded it and of each person who participated. Do you have that? Until you have that, you aren't going to make much progress beating up on people who have a copy.

IRL, there is a connection -- Sal Mineo came from my mother's old neighborhood in Da Bronx (dad came from Bayou country).

I've seen lots of articles lately, and an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, covering the issue that people are overly paranoid these days about "child protection". In the 1930s, kids were allowed to wander all over town and way out into the woods. In the 1950s, nobody found anything wrong with them taking public transit by themselves or walking a mile through city streets to go to school. In the 1970s, they had free rein within their residential subdivision (usually not gated in those days). Now, parents are accused of child neglect if they let kids get out of their line of sight at any time. However, actual child abuse statistics show that most of the abuse is committed by people very close to the kids such as relatives, not by strangers snatching them in public. Similarly, fears of them being abused through Internet sites are way overblown; millions are online and only a tiny handful of untoward incidents have ever been documented.

----------------
Now playing: Selena - Dreaming Of You
via FoxyTunes

And how many have gone undocumented?

Something I've been curious about for a long time now: did you agree with her about !! or was it the other way around?

Since the participants were doing so with the intention of being part of the Wikivoices series, I don't think any further permissions are needed to release it as long as the release is in fact as part of that series, and since PM is a founding participant of WV, he seems to be authorized to do so.

Here are the Cliff Notes, though you've about summed it up perfectly.


You also need common human respect and a sense of responsibility. There's a lack of that among the Wikivoices squad.

Get with the story, NOOC. The person who recorded it was Promethean. Learn about how Promethean felt about my candidacy for the Board of Trustees.

Can you follow breadcrumbs?

I have barely followed the story at all. If Promethean recorded the conversation, and won't authorize its release to you for whatever reason, and you don't have your own copy, then you are SOL. Other people who might have a copy simply aren't in a position to give it to you, no matter how you ask, beg, or pressure. In the future, don't make deals with Promethean and do make your own copy of the conversation. (If you're a Mac person, I recommend WireTap.)

Remember that I edit images, not audio. WikiVoices has had much more of a content-generation orientation since it lost its two most reliable episode editors (we miss you, Privatemusings...we really do).

There's a scattered backlog of lost episodes. Not a whole lot but a few. The best of them was Cinco de Mayo 2008...but that's another matter. When episode 45 got proposed I was really reluctant about doing it, and only agreed to take part after efforts to make sure the editor issue was solved. And then gah it happened again. No need to point fingers; the election's ended. Bearing my name on a problem I had no power to solve while it mattered and very embarrassing. If there are whispers that we did in Greg's election chances deliberately, at least I wasn't operating with that goal. Would have pulled the plug at the outset--and in retrospect should have pulled the plug anyway.

So when that business went down a few days ago with the edit war on the WV page and his block getting reinstated, my attention was mostly elsewhere until it was too late to halt that train and then mainly I wanted to hop off the track and duck for cover. It took long enough to bury the hatchet with him. Although I wouldn't have endorsed his return to editing quite the way it got done I did hope the return would work out (y'all know about the standard offer, right?) And if that didn't work out I wanted to be far on the other side of the wiki. Really, life's too short to renew that grudge.

Sigh.

Anyway, to be fair to Shoemaker's Holiday the episode he was hosting when the monkeys threw the poo was an article building episode about a W.S. Gilbert play. Turned out pretty well and ran on the main page at DYK.

I'm confused... does advocating that children use Wikipedia for school somehow amount to putting them in a dangerous environment? I'm not seeing it.

I assumed this means encouraging children to _read_ Wikipedia, rather than getting involved in editing. We surely don't need more children trying to edit.

And sure, there might be creeps on Wikipedia who might want to exploit children. There are all kinds of people in the world. But those same creeps might be found at the library, too. So is it bad to encourage children to use the library as a learning resource?

Weak, that.

So, Durova, your response to the non-apparent problems of Wikipedia is that parents can buy, or better yet hand code, their very own software to address the undisclosed problems that Wikipedia poses? That certainly sounds likely to be effective. That you create the danger, promote the use through soliciting school participation in your presentations to educators and then let someone else deal with the mess? Thanks to Peter for at least scratching the surface of the inappropriate sexual content on Wikipedia. The assembly of those kinds of links from Wikipedia could be endless and is of course a thankless and distasteful task. You, Durova, are a menace to schools and children everywhere.

Nope, just the person who made the recording.

For copyright, yes, but I'm thinking about personality rights, or maybe contracts and implied consent. If I participate in a recorded conversation and I have an understanding with the recorder that it will only be released under certain conditions, doesn't that have some weight? Anyway, way off topic...

Well, the thing I've been hinting at here at this thread (Greg, are you listening--it's up your alley) is that there seems to be an untapped niche market--and a fairly large one.

Wikipedia cannot extend family-friendly guarantees and remain an open edit site. The two concepts are mutually exclusive. If we try then 4chan will undoubtedly make a game out of defacing Walt Disney's biography. You get the idea.

But if you were a teacher or a parent or a school board member, wouldn't you be interested in a stable (vandalism-free) version of Walt Disney's encyclopedia biography that wasn't six degrees of separation from John Holmes's biography?

The content is already there, free-as-in-beer to reuse. It's mainly a matter of culling and choosing a business model. This could either go nonprofit and rely on donations from social conservatives, or else gear toward a commercially driven model. My guess lays even money that if somebody doesn't run a successful startup during the interim, Britannica's business model is going to collapse within ten years and a conglomerate such as Disney is going to buy them at a bargain price for the residual name value. Then parents who want to feel safe leaving the kid unsupervised and cook dinner while Junior reads about colonial history will be dealing with kids who whine for DVDs of Pocahantas afterward.