Warning about Wikipedia

  • Thread starter Thread starter sophist
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

sophist

Guest
Just to let Catholic parents know, some entries on the Wikipedia encyclopedia have direct download links to hardcore pornographic videos. There is no age verification process. The links just say “adult” beside them. That is hardly enough to deter a curious young person. As with every other website on the internet, you should not allow your children to use Wikipedia without supervision.
 
40.png
Liberalsaved:
You should report that. It’s probably vandalism.
Click to expand...
Seconded.
 
Thanks for the information,I’ll be careful,and I also will try to report that.
 
It is not vandalism. It is a legitimate part of Wikipedia.

If I gave a link to the offending web page, it would defeat the purpose of my warning. But if people have a hard time believing me, I can point you in the general direction.

There was a film that Roger Ebert walked out of at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. If you search for it on Wikipedia, you can scroll to the bottom and you will find a direct link to a pornographic video clip.

WARNING: The video clip on that page is extremely graphic. I strongly suggest that you do not view it. Just take my word for it and make sure your children never use Wikipedia alone.
 
40.png
sophist:
It is not vandalism. It is a legitimate part of Wikipedia.

If I gave a link to the offending web page, it would defeat the purpose of my warning. But if people have a hard time believing me, I can point you in the general direction.

There was a film that Roger Ebert walked out of at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. If you search for it on Wikipedia, you can scroll to the bottom and you will find a direct link to a pornographic video clip.

WARNING: The video clip on that page is extremely graphic. I strongly suggest that you do not view it. Just take my word for it and make sure your children never use Wikipedia alone.
Click to expand...
Ah, yes, The Brown Bunny, I beleive? A movie kids would never know about, much less search for.
 
The movie was so mindnumbingly boring and excruciatingly bad and pretentious, no wonder that graphic sequence was included…nobody would have been interested! …
 
40.png
sophist:
Just to let Catholic parents know, some entries on the Wikipedia encyclopedia have direct download links to hardcore pornographic videos. There is no age verification process. The links just say “adult” beside them. That is hardly enough to deter a curious young person. As with every other website on the internet, you should not allow your children to use Wikipedia without supervision.
Click to expand...
On another level, in my classes, I don’t accept Wikipedia as a legitimate source for a paper, etc. Too many errors, too little verification, etc.

Blessings,
 
David Zampino:
On another level, in my classes, I don’t accept Wikipedia as a legitimate source for a paper, etc. Too many errors, too little verification, etc.

Blessings,
Click to expand...
Thanks, that’s good to know. Is this a common position for most professors? I graduated in '89. There was no Wikipedia then. I’ve seen a lot of people rely on it for information so I was curious as to how accurate they were.

Lisa
 
I don’t understand why any encyclopedia should be accepted as a legitimate source.
 
David Zampino:
On another level, in my classes, I don’t accept Wikipedia as a legitimate source for a paper, etc. Too many errors, too little verification, etc.

Blessings,
Click to expand...
Is that so?
The free online resource Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica, a study shows. The British journal Nature examined a range of scientific entries on both works of reference and found few differences in accuracy.
Click to expand...
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4530930.stm

Wikipedia, for any mainstream article, is well within the range of accuracy of any other 2ndary source.

Josh
 
On Wednesday, March 8th the offending material was mentioned on Barbara Walter’s show “The View.”

This surely increased web searches for the film in question.

Note that the offending Wikipedia entry is on the first page of results when you do a google search.

Again, I warn all parents, not just Catholic parents, to never let your children use Wikipedia without supervision.
 
40.png
sophist:
Again, I warn all parents, not just Catholic parents, to never let your children use Wikipedia without supervision.
Click to expand...
Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a bit? Because of one obscure link, the entire database with over 1,000,000 excellent entries is somehow invalidated? Thank you for the warning about that one page (it’s certainly appreciated)…but I’m sorry, I don’t agree with your conclusion. You almost make it sound as if every single page has links to pornographic material…and if it did, then that would be an entirely different matter. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t even come close. One page out of over one million entire has one obscure link at the bottom of the page. But you still have a long way to go to convince me how any other online encyclopedia or search engine (or the internet itself, for that matter) is any different. If you can trust your child enough to allow them to use the internet alone at all, then you can certainly trust them enough to use an online encyclopedia properly. Because unless they’re looking for that sort of video already (in which case you’ve already got a problem, and “outlawing” Wikipedia isn’t going to make a difference with all the other sorts of search engines that are out there), they’re not going to find it. :twocents:
 
You can report the link. You’re not supposed to post pornographic links on the site. Wikipedia is a solid source of information IMO.
 
It is notable that there is not merely one page of Wikipedia dealing with pornography and with links to pornography, but rather many pages. There are sections devoted to those who act in movies, sometimes with associated photos, as well as links to their web pages and other such things. I don’t say this so everyone goes and looks, but rather to say that there is a whole section of Wikipedia devoted to this stuff (unfortunately).

Remember, Wikipedia is open-source, and hence anyone can get in and create/modify entries. This can be good in some circumstances, but bad in others. When it comes to trusting these entries, most are well-maintained…however, it is not very hard to navigate into dangerous territory. I certainly recommend supervision of kids on Wikipedia, but also on the net in general.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top