Re: [Bug-gnupedia]Censoring,

[Dries van Oosten]

On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, Tom Chance wrote:

> On censorship, I would say (maybe I'm being too
> liberal for some) that there should be no such thing
> in this encyclopedia. IF there was such a thing, who
> would be the judge as to whether or not something is
> permitted.

One problem is for instance nude pictures. Not because the people are not
wearing clothing, but because the pictures were made by someone and that
person will want money as soon as we begin putting their pictures up.
The Venus should not be a problem, but the cover of playboy is. It has
copyright on it and we don't any money to buy rights....

> A directory structure for the encyclopedia
> puttign certain articles, images etc. into "adult"
> zones might be a good idea, but other than that
> anything should be allowed. Language could be a
> problem though, as if some people write comments that
> are little more than a string of expletives it could
> really ruin the tone of the 'pedia.

I think we can take the liberty of disregarding that as being
nonfunctional. Same goes for people who only post their own homepage URLs.
I think we can safely ignore them without damaging the filosofie of the
project.

> In terms of media like gifs (fraught with copyright
> problems) and movies encrypted as say Real or MS
> Media... we coudl run into problems here, especially
> with links, as an encyclopedia with broken links is
> stupid, and it would take more than a script checking
> links to ensure links are kept. For instance, what if
> one file goes down for a while, or is moved and the
> link is subsequently removed before the host has a
> chance to relink? (if that makes sense, you're amazing
> people!).

Thanx for the compliment in that case, because I totally follow you.
The pedia is not a place where people can show of their webmanaging
skills. The articles have to be readable without the illustrations I would
say. Without the link to the rest of the web you should also be able to
read it and learn something, so that the pedia doesn't become an empty
shell when the links go dead.

Then the propraitry (or however you spell it) format problem.
This can be easily solved: don't use them. These formats are often not
viewable from alternative OSs (linux, bsd, beos, etc.) and are therefore
bound to the evil empire. We don't want that I would say.

Groeten,
Dries