I agree entirely that it's the parent's responsibility to monitor what his or her child is viewing. However, the library provides access in various ways which are necessarily anonymous. Children (and teens) need anonymous access to certain kinds of information, just as adults frequently do.
There are no "book filters" attached to the library card, so why should there be internet filters? If the parent is concerned about what the child is viewing on the net, then a better system would probably be to require children to either be supervised by a parent while on the computer, or the parent to sign a consent form granting the child access.
People seem to think that the librarian is responsible for vetting what children do in the library. They're wrong. It is, and has always been, the parents' responsibility. Forcing the library to install filtering software because you have better things to do with your time that be with your child at the library is irresponsible.
Here we go. a) they don't have time to do the research, and b) filtering companies don't publish their lists/"standards"; people find the holes by probing.
As far as being restricted, you haven't looked for materials like this have you? Not only is it just there on the shelves for the browsing, some of it is probably even in the children's section, if that's the audience for which it was published.
I just surfed to the Hackley, MI public library (Holland's not on the net apparently) and found 33 titles under the subject heading "sex instruction for teenagers", including _The underground guide to teenage sexuality_, _Teen guide to safe sex_, and _All about sex_, which last is published by Planned Parenthood. Need I say more about the latter? These are all available on the open stacks.
There are 10 titles under the subject heading of "erotica" including the book "Pleasures : women write erotica", which is on the open stacks for anybody's reading pleasure.
There are two obvious problems with this, and probably a bunch of less obvious ones.
1) The filtering software does not impose a local standard. It _attempts_ to impose a standard that is set by a particular group. Even if it succeeded in properly setting that standard and was infallible, it still wouldn't be the local community standard.
2) The library already has a _lot_ of stuff in it that the people complaining about the internet would probably find objectionable, but they don't know it's there. Go into the library and find information about homosexuality, abortion, and sex in its various guises and you'll probably be successful, even in Holland. Any kid can check that stuff out (if they can get past handing it to an adult to process), and any kid can read it in a carrol in the library without having to talk to an adult at all.
Now, if the same people protested the presence of a book in the library, they'd see a lot more concerted resistance, including the entire ACLU and ALA on their backs withing seconds. And they'd lose.
It's not that explicit sexual imagery is new, it's the classification of it as "pornography" (implicitly evil and dirty) that was new with the Victorians who were, at the same time, publishing stories involving incest, rape, and serious discipline at the same time.
Of course, I and many of my friends call it "porn" and are quite happy to rent or buy it, because it's a convenient shorthand for the nudie and sexually explicit materials that are "normal" and easily accessible.
Well, I was just asked to M2, and now I'm confused (not that it takes much most days). Are we "all" (all eligible) being asked to M2 right now, or do I have the right Karma and got lucky today (next time, try to arrange for me to get lucky a little further away from the computer, eh?;-))?
So, I'm M2ing away, and I figure that most things are fair. I've got a problem with the terminology though. Is the moderation fair/unfair or good/bad? For example, I was asked to M2 a one-liner that was bumped up for being "insightful". My basic response to the comment was "well, duh". I wouldn't say that the moderation was unfair, but I might call it a waste of a point and mark it down as bad moderation (I didn't, I just left it).
Of course, this is all assuming that the moderation system is worth the implementation effort, as others have pointed out, but then, I rely on other people to filter new books, so letting people filter postings is a Good Thing, since I have enough to do already.
Hey! I just saw the new "post anonymously" button here. Coolness, if only for leaks and whistle-blowers;-)
But in high school (the Germans call it "gymnasium", or is that primary school?), you don't call yourself a CS student, and that's the environment that we're talking about In _Canada_, if you call yourself a CS student, people expect you to learn a new language without formal instruction
As in, "Assignments for this class are to be completed in FORTRAN, the first assignment is in two weeks." I had a week to learn FORTRAN and a week to do the assignment.
Java, and most other programming languages that get used for real work (not that Python's not for real work), have too much puntuation. The point of the first language is to get people practicing programming, not syntax checking.
My first reaction was "COOOOL", but the second one was, "what the heck took so long?" I mean, thirty years in space and somebody finally thought to take that picture?
Slashdot Mirror
I agree entirely that it's the parent's responsibility to monitor what his or her child is viewing. However, the library provides access in various ways which are necessarily anonymous. Children (and teens) need anonymous access to certain kinds of information, just as adults frequently do.
There are no "book filters" attached to the library card, so why should there be internet filters? If the parent is concerned about what the child is viewing on the net, then a better system would probably be to require children to either be supervised by a parent while on the computer, or the parent to sign a consent form granting the child access.
People seem to think that the librarian is responsible for vetting what children do in the library. They're wrong. It is, and has always been, the parents' responsibility. Forcing the library to install filtering software because you have better things to do with your time that be with your child at the library is irresponsible.
Here we go. a) they don't have time to do the research, and b) filtering companies don't publish their lists/"standards"; people find the holes by probing.
As far as being restricted, you haven't looked for materials like this have you? Not only is it just there on the shelves for the browsing, some of it is probably even in the children's section, if that's the audience for which it was published.
I just surfed to the Hackley, MI public library (Holland's not on the net apparently) and found 33 titles under the subject heading "sex instruction for teenagers", including _The underground guide to teenage sexuality_, _Teen guide to safe sex_, and _All about sex_, which last is published by Planned Parenthood. Need I say more about the latter? These are all available on the open stacks.
There are 10 titles under the subject heading of "erotica" including the book "Pleasures : women write erotica", which is on the open stacks for anybody's reading pleasure.
There are two obvious problems with this, and probably a bunch of less obvious ones.
1) The filtering software does not impose a local standard. It _attempts_ to impose a standard that is set by a particular group. Even if it succeeded in properly setting that standard and was infallible, it still wouldn't be the local community standard.
2) The library already has a _lot_ of stuff in it that the people complaining about the internet would probably find objectionable, but they don't know it's there. Go into the library and find information about homosexuality, abortion, and sex in its various guises and you'll probably be successful, even in Holland. Any kid can check that stuff out (if they can get past handing it to an adult to process), and any kid can read it in a carrol in the library without having to talk to an adult at all.
Now, if the same people protested the presence of a book in the library, they'd see a lot more concerted resistance, including the entire ACLU and ALA on their backs withing seconds. And they'd lose.
It's not that explicit sexual imagery is new, it's the classification of it as "pornography" (implicitly evil and dirty) that was new with the Victorians who were, at the same time, publishing stories involving incest, rape, and serious discipline at the same time.
Of course, I and many of my friends call it "porn" and are quite happy to rent or buy it, because it's a convenient shorthand for the nudie and sexually explicit materials that are "normal" and easily accessible.
Well, I was just asked to M2, and now I'm confused (not that it takes much most days). Are we "all" (all eligible) being asked to M2 right now, or do I have the right Karma and got lucky today (next time, try to arrange for me to get lucky a little further away from the computer, eh? ;-))?
;-)
So, I'm M2ing away, and I figure that most things are fair. I've got a problem with the terminology though. Is the moderation fair/unfair or good/bad? For example, I was asked to M2 a one-liner that was bumped up for being "insightful". My basic response to the comment was "well, duh". I wouldn't say that the moderation was unfair, but I might call it a waste of a point and mark it down as bad moderation (I didn't, I just left it).
Of course, this is all assuming that the moderation system is worth the implementation effort, as others have pointed out, but then, I rely on other people to filter new books, so letting people filter postings is a Good Thing, since I have enough to do already.
Hey! I just saw the new "post anonymously" button here. Coolness, if only for leaks and whistle-blowers
- David
But in high school (the Germans call it "gymnasium", or is that primary school?), you don't call yourself a CS student, and that's the environment that we're talking about In _Canada_, if you call yourself a CS student, people expect you to learn a new language without formal instruction
As in, "Assignments for this class are to be completed in FORTRAN, the first assignment is in two weeks." I had a week to learn FORTRAN and a week to do the assignment.
Java, and most other programming languages that get used for real work (not that Python's not for real work), have too much puntuation. The point of the first language is to get people practicing programming, not syntax checking.
The smiley is because X10, the precursor to X11, was replaced in the early/mid-80s. I used it on a Sun dickless workstation for a while at university.
My first reaction was "COOOOL", but the second one was, "what the heck took so long?" I mean, thirty years in space and somebody finally thought to take that picture?