The 'Wikipedia for Porn' launches, should parents worry?

Carnalpedia aims to be the definitive online resource for all things related to sex, including the porn industry. They also claim that innocent eyes will not be able to visit thanks to their Restricted to Adults rating.

I suppose it was just a matter of time before a site like this was created. The sex and porn industry has had an enormous influence on the development of the Internet and remains one of its most popular albeit controversial topics.

Carnalpedia will remind visitors immediately of Wikipedia, the site that has become the web's favourite destination for finding facts on just about every imaginable topic. The layout is identical, as is navigation and organization of content within article pages. It also maintains the wiki convention of being free to access and open to anyone to create and/or edit submissions.

Although the site has only been online for a few weeks, it already contains more than 120,000 articles, including a growing list of adult movie titles, which currently sits at about 76,000.

When asked about why the web needs a Wikipedia for sex, Carnalpedia creator Jeremy Haddock said "The fact that Wikipedia has a certain type of audience leaves a lot of information about sex and the adult industry either blocked or censored."

Haddock notes that all of Carnalpedia's article pages will be labeled with the Restricted To Adults (RTA) tag which will prevent them from being accessed on computers equipped with services like NetNanny which only allow age-appropriate content to be viewed.

The site is trying to avoid being a resource for people who simply want to swap adult material: only "authorized individuals from approved sources" are allowed to upload images, in order to comply with copyright laws.

Hmmmm, Well my first reaction is... Do we REALLY need a site like Carnalpedia? and although I'm not a parent, what disturbed me, is the relative ease at which I am still able to view any and all sorts of content (some of it really "kinky" lets just say to put it lightly) without any filter, password, request for age confirmation, or anything of the sort on the website... Is this be something that parents should be (if not worried) at least a little concerned about? the site is relatively new, but already has over 120,000 articles as mentioned above.. all of which can be viewed by just about anyone visiting the site... To make any changes, or additions to the articles in the database, you'd need to sign up/in, at which time you'd have to prove your age.. but is that enough? what about those not wanting to make additions? those simply wanting to "check things out"? I am sure there are a lot more people wanting to view things, then there would be wanting to add things... I feel as though there should be at least some sort of safeguard on the site to ensure inappropriate content can not be viewed by minors, software, and parental vigilance can only go so far.. I think the site also has some responsibilities in ensuring that pornography can not be viewed by persons not old enough to do so.

Thoughts?

Students today lack maturity, feel entitled : Professor

First-year university students are less prepared and have poorer research skills than students from three years ago, according to a new Ontario-wide survey of faculty and librarians.

Survey respondents reported students had lower writing and numeric skills, lower maturity, and a belief that good grades are an entitlement and a right.

Respondents also said students relied too much on Internet tools, such as Google and Wikipedia, as external research sources.

The survey asked: "Thinking about your own experience over the last three years, do you believe that first-year students are:"

- Better prepared -- 2.27 per cent
- About the same -- 26.85 per cent
- Less prepared -- 55.21 per cent
- No opinion -- 15.67 per cent

The survey, which received 2,000 responses from 22 Ontario universities, was conducted by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations.

"It is very troubling that a majority of respondents are witnessing a decline in student preparedness," professor Brian E. Brown, OCUFA's president, said in a press release.

"Study after study shows that success in university is linked to the preparedness of students for the rigours of the university curriculum."

Many respondents reported that universities were establishing remedial courses for students struggling with the demands of higher education.

Brown said the Ontario government has been applauding itself for increasing high school graduation rates but students are still not receiving the requisite skills they need for university.

"Our secondary schools are poorly resourced and require new investments to enhance the classroom experience if our kids are going to thrive," Brown said.

The survey was conducted between Feb. 16 and March 13, 2009.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree with the study?

Wikipedia meets US$6 million fundraising goal

The non-profit foundation that runs Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia of user-contributed articles, said Friday that it has met its US$6 million fundraising goal for fiscal 2008.

With about six months left in this year's campaign, the Wikimedia Foundation said it has raised US$6.2 million. A flood of donations came in after the site's founder, Jimmy Wales, posted an appeal for support in late December.

The foundation said about 50,000 contributors chipped in a total of US$2 million in the space of eight days, bringing the total number of donors to more than 125,000.

The money will go toward improving the software Wikipedia runs on as well as upgrading the servers and Internet bandwidth that accommodate the site's traffic. Wikipedia consistently ranks among the top 10 most visited Web sites in the world.

The foundation operates the site without advertising as a matter of principle, making donations critical.

Since its founding in 2001, Wikipedia's fundraising prowess has expanded quickly. The foundation hauled in US$1.3 million two years ago and US$2.2 million last year.

In March 2008, the site received a $3 million gift from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to be dispensed in US$1 million annual installments. Last month the Stanton Foundation gave US$890,000 to make Wikipedia's editing process more user-friendly.

The Wikimedia Foundation hopes the growth in big-name donors will help improve the encyclopedia's uneven reputation for accuracy, both by showing that civic-minded institutions are willing to make an investment and by funding programs that increase outreach to new contributors.

Wikimedia spokesman Jay Walsh said expanding the foundation's Wikipedia Academies will be a major goal in the coming year. The program sends Wikimedia staff to institutions around the world for discussions with experts in different fields, partly in hopes of drawing more academics and professionals to the site.

"There's work to do in getting the word out about how Wikipedia works," Walsh said.

In a thank-you note posted on the site Friday, Wales told donors, "You have proven that Wikipedia matters to you, and that you support our mission: to bring free knowledge to the planet, free of charge and free of advertising."