It amazes me (or it used to) how often some Wikipedians bring up the matter of “no censorship” but fail to understand the difference between censoring information/images and applying common sense. I fear for many it’s just intellectual laziness or a desire to thumb the nose at traditional moralities rather than any well-considered ethical or intellectual principles that drives this stance.

So let me reiterate: there is nothing wrong with my criticizing Wikipedia or types of bad behavior on Wikipedia. I actually think that it’s important that I do so. It is wrong-headed of you to suggest that I stop, actually, because that tends to pressure people to stop speaking their minds about the necessity of a new, competing project. It’s hard to justify the existence of CZ if we cannot say that there’s something wrong with Wikipedia.

Besides, it’s annoying how much everything is overanalyzed in terms of rhetoric and PR consequences — “the horse race.” I think our society has gotten more interested in characterizing debates rather than engaging in them, as witness the recent U.S. elections. It’s alarming how much people now judge a debate not based on the substance of argument, but based on how people superficially behave in a debate and how their rhetorical style allegedly affects the “horse race.” This topic often completely drowns out any discussion of the merits of competing positions. It’s as if we would all like to become debate analysts, with no one left to discuss the issues themselves.

Now, it’s true that the drama involved in my criticizing Wikipedia will surely for some people drown out any subtlety I have in making my points, so that people will misinterpret and overgeneralize whatever I say. This can’t be helped, I’m afraid. Still, I’ll admit that I probably should have added a sentence in the post saying (as I have so often said in the past) that most Wikipedians are solid troopers. But we would probably disagree about how many debate points to deduce for this omission.

Finally, in the interest of indeed talking about the subject rather than about the debate about the subject, let me underscore my core point, which is definitely worth talking about: CZ can play an important role as a source of more reliable and, yes, family-friendly information. It is growing and deserves lots of public support and participation. I think it is virtually inevitable — only a matter of time — before CZ comes into its own and astonishes the world by demonstrating what a different, and now largely misunderstood, wiki model can accomplish.

And in writing this last, I have to say I am experiencing some deja vu, because that is what I said about Wikipedia over and over, for its first couple of years.

CZ need answer to nobody about its guidelines for inclusion or exclusion. If you think the WP model is best, we’re waiting for you to return there.
If you wish to use WikiMedia to advance a new model of your own, best wishes. That’s what it’s for.

To illustrate my point, pretend you had posted about CZ/WP differences after WP had been in the news for some completely different, even innocuous, reason. You directly equated “The two projects…” with “groups of people” and then referred to those who “hide behind pseudonyms” and “play goverance games in order to push their biases.” But now clarify in the (relative) privacy of the comments you agree that the majority of Wikipedians are solid.

Perhaps the Virgin Killer topic is overwhelming the subtlety of my topic right now, but my encouragement was simply to market CZ by leading with our strengths rather than WP’s weakness. That’s all.

The image in question certainly has no place in a family-friendly encyclopedia. Of course, Wikipedia is explicitly not an attempt to create a family-friendly encyclopedia. On the other hand, I think one can be justified in distributing the image in question if and only if they are reasonably sure that such distribution will only serve to counter and not to promote child sexual abuse. Wikipedia, with its “anyone can edit” policy, and its general adoption of moral relativism, is absolutely not capable of providing such assurance.

I’d much rather contribute to Citizendium than Wikipedia. But I don’t find either project worthy of my time at this point.

I find it very interesting indeed that there were few substantive replies to my post, and that people instead chose to attack me for “censorship” (quite laughably — I’m not impressed, Steven Walling) or for being unfair to Wikipedians. This is the standard modus operandi today of those who meet an argument they can’t answer directly: attack the speaker.

Seriously, what has happened to our allegedly enlightened Western society if we cannot morally condemn really reprehensible things without being attacked for it? According to the apothegm, all it takes for evil to thrive is for good people to do nothing; and if attacking all moralizing successfully intimidates enough people, that ultimately means the dissolving of public standards. Well, I will take a stand and won’t be intimidated. Of course, it’s a rather pathetically undaring place to take a stand — child pornography — but it’s surely the least I can do.

And shame on you — and I mean this unironically, shame on you — to the people who would try to shame me for taking this stand, and for my condemning Wikipedia for tolerating it. If you want to call yourselves decent people, at the very least you will let me have my opinion without heaping opprobrium on yourselves by attempting to intimidate me — and by extension, the many people out there who, I know very well, agree with me.