User:Lysander/Two deleted essays

Two essays, "What is a child?" and "What is an inappropriate relationship?" were deleted from Wikipedia recently, along with a slew of articles about paraphilias and sex offender programs, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Sex_Offender_Program">one about the Minnesota Sex Offender Program</a>, which was <a href="http://www.twincities.com/crime/ci_28873687/state-defies-judge-minnesota-sex-offender-program">recently in the news</a> because the state is defying a federal judge's orders to make the program comply with the U.S. Constitution.

I am reminded of Mises' comments, "It is only slowly and with difficulty that the idea of Law triumphs. Only slowly and with difficulty does it rebut the principle of violence. Again and again there are reactions; again and again the history of Law has to start once more from the beginning." It's the same way with Wikipedia; you can feel like you're making progress creating and improving articles, and then a sysop comes through and deletes it all. In the field of sexuality-related articles, Flyer22 is ever-vigilant against pedophile sympathizers. ---

This is an essay. The views expressed are not necessarily those of BoyWiki.

What is a child, within the meaning of Wikipedia:Child protection? Is it a person under 13 (see Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and the DSM criteria for pedophilia)? Is it a person under the age of consent (17 in New York, for example)? Is it a minor, e.g. a person under 18, as described by U.S. federal law?

Is the term purposefully left vague? Or does its meaning vary from one part of the policy to another?

In all likelihood, what is going on is that those who crafted the policy wanted to maintain flexibility by leaving its interpretation in individual cases up to the ArbCom (or the WMF). So, for example, a 19-year-old making a comment to a 17-year-old that "we should hang out sometime" might be treated differently than a 40-year-old making the same comment to a 17-year-old. The same principle would apply with regard to edits to articles; an edit to an article that seemed to condone sex between 19-year-olds and 17-year-olds might result in a more lenient response than an edit to an article that seemed to condone sex between 40-year-olds and 17-year-olds.

The flexibility was needed because it is hard to predict what kinds of incidents will cause a firestorm of controversy, and Wikipedia needed to maintain the ability to respond to situations by blocking users at the demand of the community, the media, donors, or other interested parties. The primary goal of the policy was to put to rest concerns that Wikipedia was becoming a place where pedophiles could operate freely and openly, influencing the encyclopedia with their views and attempting to start relationships with children. But the boundaries of who is considered a "pedophile" (socially, rather than medically) are blurry and subject to change over time, and vary from culture to culture.

Therefore, keeping the policy vague would minimize requests to revise the policy and shift the debate to how the policy should be interpreted. Most of this debate would occur within the ArbCom or WMF, since those bodies reserve child protection cases for their own adjudication in venues that are not open to the public. Therefore, the potential for controversy that would be cited in the media in a way damaging to Wikipedia's reputation would be minimized. ---

What is an inappropriate relationship as described by Wikipedia:Child protection? Is this a topic that should be discussed, or is it better to leave it vague in order to avoid unpleasant imagery coming to mind? Is it like obscenity, in that we can't intelligibly describe it, but we know it when we see it?

Attempt to describe

We might argue that an "inappropriate relationship" is any relationship that is harmful to children, so that the policy is interpreted as meaning that it is against the rules to deny the harmfulness to children of any kind of relationship that is in fact harmful to children. The category of "inappropriate" behavior involving children is broader than the category of "criminal" behavior involving children. The question then is, what kinds of relationships are harmful to children? It could include any sort of abusive relationship.

Should adult Wikipedians be considered essentially similar to teachers, who should not initiate any in-person interactions with children outside the bounds of their professional working environment? We might take some guidance from newspaper articles and court cases that have described inappropriate behavior involving children as including, for example, blindfolding children and feeding them cookies with a “whitish” liquid on them; placing cockroaches on children's desks and photographing them; hugging children when the person doing the hugging is the children's teacher; touching children's necks or backs, when the person doing this touching is the children's teacher; putting one's hand up or under a child's shirt while hugging him; sitting at the front of the classroom with one's hands moving under one's shorts and making strange faces; locking the classroom and showing old movies while making strange noises at the back of the classroom; and coming to child's home on a few occasions after school or on weekends, to drive him and his siblings or friends around the neighborhood, when the person doing the driving is their teacher.

To be continued.