Talk:Male lactation/Discussion About Talk Page Content

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Personal experience - not good content

I am sorry to moan, but I dont think that personal experiences are relevant content for the talk pages on wikipedia, on any subject. Perhaps in rare cases they can be, or if the contributor wishes to give a brief explanation for their edits to justify them. Admittedly, personal experiences can give insight into a subject for an individual, but they may not apply for everyone. Also, talk pages should be more-or-less strictly related to edits to the main article, according to consensus. See Wikipedia:Talk pages. I am in no way prudish, but more prudish or conservative people (or parents) may disapprove of wikipedia if they become aware of content such as some of the above content. We should present truth in a way that avoids offending people of various convictions. The article as it stands is quite good and NPOV, no issues there. Perhaps a reference should be added that male lactation is, to some extent, a subject of sexual fetish and pornography.--ChrisJMoor 04:01, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

If you feel that something is inappropriate the only recourse for you and I would be to archive the materials you find offensive. People may object to your functioning as a censor, but that will fall in the category of "neither stick nor stones." The offensive material will continue to exist in the archive and if you are not convinced that it is safe enough from youngsters with prurient interests then your only recourse will probably be to get the administration to delete those materials from the archive.

People frequently write to the discussion page on spiders saying that there is a frightening spider of such-and-such description somewhere in the same environment as their infant, wondering whether it is dangerous, wondering what can be done about it, etc. One might delete these questions or archive that part of the discussion, but it seems more reasonable to me to give them, at minimum, some information on how to contact a local university or agricultural extension agent or other person who can give them a correct identification. Frequently, as when the writer expresses fear of a huge orb-web spider, it is possible to give them direct reassurance. Wikipedia is not paper, and the cost of storing a paragraph or two of data on disk is probably justified on the basis of the social benefit of the communication.

There is no way I know of to scare off people who want to write messages pertinent to their personal concerns, so the question becomes one of how to deal with the instances that do occur. Usually these writers do not add more. If they did, then it would be appropriate to suggest discussing the matter by e-mail. P0M 19:36, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. The 'personal experience' I refer to is not simply material that could be construed as textually pornographic, although my motivation to suggest it should be deleted or archived is empirically censorship to a limited extent. Note that I did not delete or archive anything until you replied, and I havent called any form of arbitration because I wanted an explanation first. The last thing anyone wants to do is scare off anyone. Also the last thing we want is for people to feel that wikipedia is unsuitable for educating children and to block it. The best way to do that is to present material in a factual way and avoid anything 'controversial'. Nipple play and even the whole subject of male lactation might be considered controversial in itself by some, but you can still write an authoritive and NPOV article and associated talk page on it. If anyone objects to this they are probably beyond help in the realms of freedom of personal activity and information.

The spider arguement you give is a different case because spiders are not generally a taboo subject that could cause moral offense, unless one happens to have extreme arachnophobia, perhaps. I agree with you that it is acceptable and beneficial to answer peoples questions on such subjects in the talk page. It gives the encyclopedia a more interactive function and will never land the domain in the browser-banned list of some sexually-conservative religious group.

A subject doesn't have to be "generally" taboo to offend any given group. And it is slightly presumptuous to assume that anything can be declared as "never" offending some conservative group, be it sexual or otherwise. How exactly did "tossing salad" become a sexual act? Without knowing that, could you have ever guessed that "salad tosser" could be an offensive term? Is it difficult to imagine a circumstance which could cause this phrase to scandalize a conservative group, and subsequently ban the term? I would be more surprised to find that there isn't a sexual euphemism involving spider that doesn't already offend somebody, or a new brand of conservatism which deems a previously mundane thing offensive.

To filter everything that could possibly offend some group of people would remove most of the value of Wikipedia. Ideally everything would be allowed, but appropriate disclaimers would be posted before sensitive material if it judged as necessary. If a group finds Wikipedia content valuable, but is offended by some portion to a degree that they are unwilling to use the service, then they have enough Copyright Permissions to host their own versions of sensitive topics. Any group is free to host their own version of MediaWiki or perhaps Wikinfo, and copy the unfiltered content to be subject to their own standards of decency, just as the physical world and all of its possibly offensive exhibits are available to be censored by those who would do so. However if these groups are able to remove content that offends them, how are the libertines to find the unrestricted information? More personally, I would be offended by the censorship imposed on the shared resource, and how am I to remove the damages this censorship imposes?

If the talk pages are allowed to contain relevant personal experiences and inquiries, then it can inspire others to do further research, possibly find undiscovered publications, and link them to the originating sources, leading to further improvement of the Wikipedia. Even if the only answers to be posted are personal and unpublished, just knowing those answers may inspire an interested researcher to discover published, newly relevant information. While the article should only contain information from published research, there should be a place to inquire about information relevant to ones personal situation. What it the value of a NPOV compendium of information relevant to nobody?

I would propose that a personal question relevant to the article topic, or a fair attempt at a NPOV answer that doesn't (yet) have published references, belongs in the article's talk page. A genuine questine seems likely to contain a POV that might nothave been adequately addressed in the NPOV article, and should spur further research which can then be referenced and incorporated into the article. As long as it doesn't detract from unique discussion relevant to the article topic (like this conversation might potentially be doing), I don't (yet) see any reason to remove it. Castlan 03:12, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Personally I don't regard the references as offensive or lewd and I'm as glad that someone with pers. exp. and interest is contributing, as I would be if a geneticist is writing an article on evolution . Unfortunately we live in a world of many closed minds whose motivation to or desire for censorship is to limit other people's expression of ideas and activities. My POV is that this is a bad thing and that such people need to be exposed to authoritive, NPOV material. I'm breaking a wikipedia rule here in an attempt to make this point.

There are many forums and the like where pers. exp. in personal matters can be posted and discussed. They aren't encloclopedic in any sense but are often handled in a very sensible manner and offer an exchange of information and ideas that is very helpful and insightful to other people. Conversely, I would not normally use those sources of informationto write an encyclopia on the article. --ChrisJMoor 02:19, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

My reason for bringing in the spider article is that it happens to be one where people fairly regularly go with requests for information. They are not supposed to do so according to the rules. The trouble is that they don't know the rules before they post the question. Once the question is up there, the question becomes what to do about it.

We could be like the Chinese language Wikipedia and post a notice at the top of the page saying: "This material is not suited for people under the age of 18. If you read the information on this page and you are under 18 you will be breaking the law." Such a notice might stop some people in China, but I am not sure that stopping a 17 year old kid from reading an article on STDs and condoms is a rational move.

We could do as you suggest and censor ourselves. But I once had a conversation with a young man, at a church social function if you must know, who had apparently convinced himself that there was something drastically wrong with him because of a scar on his penis. I explained to him that the "scar" that most people get at least curious about is actually the biological zipper that closes up the urinary tract on its way to the tip of the penis, and that since sometimes the job doesn't get finished before the boy is born there might be some scarring due to a surgeon's having sewn things up so that they would seal right. A year or two later I learned that he had gotten married. I think it would have been lots better for him to have been able to pick up a book or read an on-line encyclopedia in the sixth or seventh grade.

People who attempt to control their children by withholding information from them do a great deal of damage. I hope I am not unusual in this respect, but I have to report that I've never gotten myself into trouble on account of what I know. It's the things that I haven't known that have been the source of trouble.

And here's a hypothetical: Suppose that some young guy had discovered that rubbing the area around his nipples produced a pleasurable sensation, started to produce milk, became convinced that he had caused a drastic change in himself, looked at this talk page and saw the personal reports one night, and the next night the personal reports were gone. What message would that suppression of information have sent to this young person?

I think the best we can hope for is to head-off extended discussions that may involve personal details by continuing the discussion by e-mail. Anybody can archive an article, and even if someone blanks "questionable thoughts," the content will be there for the long term in the history unless senior administrators order the data to be expunged. P0M 04:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I have discussed the matter with a non-wikipedian friend of mine, whose opinions I consider to be fair and objective. He aggrees with most of both our arguements but suggests that your arguement regarding providing personal experience about subjects likely to be censored outweighs mine regarding putting conservative/sensitive people off wikipedia. According to him, people with a concern about male lactation, nipple play or scars in personal areas are most likely to have them unanswered by family and friends in the first place if they come from a background of strong information censorship.

I agree with the latter arguement but maintain that the material in question will prompt certain people to cease use of wikipedia, as per my example of a 'conservative religious group' My friend agrees but believes that more people will benefit from the information being present than those that will disbenefit from it not being present (or being disallowed by others or refusing to use the site). I am neutral on this arguement at the moment.

In short, lets keep the information for now. By which I mean let it remain until the consensus of more than three people has been provided. Our move now should be to actively seek the opinions of other wikipedians (not sure how, I hoped more people would get involved just by my starting this section). I think this is a very interesting debate. In that sense, our dialogue has served a good purpose.

On a side note, I have a suggested improvement to your personal policy of answering additional questions by email. I think it is better to use a user talk page for such extended discussions because anyone with similar concerns could view them. You could point the person with additional questions to your talk page. Irrelavant or old material could be archived or deleted and the most recent or salient information kept. Since you are knowledgeable of spiders (or at least an arachnophile), you could turn your userpage(s) into such a forum. Perhaps you could also do the same for male lactation issues? You could become a wikicounselor, as you seem very keen to resolve people's personal concerns:D. Your thoughts?--ChrisJMoor 02:36, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I suffered a great deal as a child because of one parent who was clinically depressed, not under treatment, and whose fears became my prison. One aspect of this prison was the lack of access to any responsible information on sexuality. On the positive side my other parent was never manipulative, never got caught in a lie, admitted mistakes and misinformation. When informed of that parent's history of nicotine addiction I was immunized permanently. So I do not support the idea of helping over-controlling parents keep their children from valid information. In fact, my experience suggests that information about sex should be casually and openly mentioned before children are old enough to be much interested in it. That way when some other child tells the prepared child, "I know who sticks what where, and I'll tell you if...", the prepared child is not subject to manipulation. The reaction is going to be more like, "Well of course the sky is blue, so what's the big deal." My parents bought me hamsters. Little did they know...

As a substitute teacher in an "inner city" junior high school, I occasionally had to deal with students who had problems. I once had a student who sat at the back of the classroom and stared blissfully at the ceiling for almost all of each period. I tried to get the guidance counselors to take an interest. Nothing happened for almost the entire school year. Finally, I lost my position as a long-term substitute during the last 3 weeks of school. (The poor woman who replaced me had to walk in cold to deal with the second-worst home room in the entire school. She must have suffered 3 weeks of hell.) I came back to deal with some paperwork and encountered the school psychologist in for the day. I took the bull by the horns and insisted that he evaluate my student from the beginnning of the year. Afterwards he said, "Yes, he has a serious problem." "What are you going to do about it?" "Nothing. No resources." So I asked him what I was supposed to do when I encountered another student with problems, and he gave me a very good piece of advice. He said that I could talk with students about just about anything that was troubling them, with one restriction. I was not to make interpretations. That is to say, I could tell a student that I felt scared of things to, sometimes, and usually it turned out to be o.k. anyway, etc., etc. But I could not tell that student that s/he was paranoid.

So I think the problem with handling some questions within the pages of Wikipedia would be problematical. Matters of fact can be discussed, but personal details that would involve the individual's judgment/evaluation of himself would have to be treated with a good deal of discretion. I don't like to have that kind of exchange of information unless I am in the same room with the other person because I might miss signs of distress or misinterpretation. And as for having the exchange available to other people, I think things could far too easily get out of hand in the sense that it is difficult enough to perceive in a person that you are communicating with one-to-one where the other person may be getting off the track, misinterpreting what has been said, etc. But somebody else who reads or hears such an exchange from the sidelines can easily get some idea wrong, and, because there is no feedback, may leave the discussion with harmful misinformation.

If somebody wanted to talk about premarital intercourse I can see how by giving reassurance to somebody who had already gotten in over his/her head one might at the same time inadvertently supply a rationalization for somebody who wasn't prepared for it either, so I wouldn't want to discuss such a thing in the talk page of some article even when that was where the question got raised. I suppose that it would be better to move it to that person's talk page, but even putting it there would be too exposed. Anybody who can access Wikipedia can get a free e-mail account somewhere, and that would be a place where confidentiality would be better and other people would not be adversely affected. Even then, I personally would not want to take the responsibility for saying much more than suggesting places in that person's community where s/he could get non-judgmental advice. Fortunately, the nipple thing is the first instance of reports on "intimate" personal behavior that I've seen. Unfortunately, on many sensitive topics the people who write in to the discussion pages can be very judgmental about the behavior of other people, at least implicitly. Going back to what the high school psychologist said, when you are dealing with people who have fears about themselves even giving objective information may stir up fears or negative feelings about themselves. And anything that implies a diagnosis or a value judgment should be avoided. I don't mind telling people that if it's a big spider on an orb web it won't have deadly venom, but I don't think I would even want to say very much about what I might conclude to be a person's arachnophobia. That would be just the kind of interpretation or diagnosis that my psychologist friend advised against, and that kind of thing has to be approached very sensitively by a professional therapist in the appropriate environment. P0M 03:56, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I cited what I saw in the adult video because I was wondering outloud if there was other causes for male lactation. At that time way back when I added the comment, there was nothing in the article about stimulation and hormones. I added that comment hopefully would get someone to gather sources that would answer some of my questions and contribute that to the article. I did not intend to share my personal experience but here to raise new questions. I'm sure someone else out there had the same questions that would like to be answered. --Kvasir 06:47, 26 March 2007 (UTC)