Talk:Censorship
WikiSysop Comments 2017
This is a very important article that deserves to be shaped up to Blue Star status. The Ethical Issues section is weak and under documented, especially since the syllabus has readings explicitly on this issue. The Legislative issues section should be moved up into the body of the article so that the ethical issues come at the end. There is room to talk about Moor's law regarding policy gaps, especially given the strong section on legislation. The references are getting stronger, but they have formatting issues.
Comments from 2011
One of the concerns that may arise during collaborative editing relates to the presentation of content within an article. For instance, I wanted to present my ideas in the form of bullet points under the "Types of Censorship" category because I felt that it would be a better way to organize information in this category and attract the reader. However, when I logged in after a few days and looked at the article again, I noticed that another user had rearranged the information in a different format. The content was reorganized in a sub-heading format instead of a bullet point format. Thus, it may be significant to note that in an environment like this all users may not prefer the same style of presentation. In that case, every user will have a different view about the concept of improving an article in terms of how it is presented. The term "improvement", in this case, does not relate to the content, but it becomes a subjective idea that varies from person to person.
- Asad Qureshi
As the one who reformatted some of the content, I found that in some ways I made it easier to read. However, it's true that when it comes to formatting and layout, user's will always find issues on which they must "agree to disagree." But, I generally tried to limit my reformatting to formatting that would make it easier for myself (and hopefully others) to make a more meaningful contribution. Lists are great, but they can get disorganized quickly, since they are not named. With subheadings, it makes it really easy to see what users have already contributed, and where there is room for contribution with regard to both the content itself and the format of the content.
On a note more about the actual content of your article, I found that some of the censorship issues related to religion were a bit concerning. You say that it is ok to draw lines with censorship when it comes to sensitive issues like religion. I could understand this if you were maybe discussing some topic with your peers who share the same religious belief. But, if you censor the religious beliefs of others simply to promote your own in a public forum, then that violates a person's basic civil liberties, since this could be construed as religious persecution or favoritism. If this issue is that the information is inaccurate regarding a particular religion, then it is important that people know this information, understand why that the information is inaccurate, and understand what the potential effects could be should that information be misconstrued as being correct or factual. Censoring information is not as important as understand all kinds of information so that people can make informed decisions about what information is trustworthy, what information is not trustworthy, and about how people can deal with untrustworthy information and its sources.
-Ben Asher
