Talk:Computer ethics

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2020 and 14 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Wintersfire.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2020 and 17 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Alex Alcott, Gray JohnJr.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:24, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 14 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Whitecat22.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:15, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Thabang Moselane
After extensive searching, I have found not one other page referencing this person, or his 'model', as listed in the article. The cited pages certainly have no mention of him, and I have exhausted my personal searching resources, including a couple private databases. I suggest researching this further. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.224.105.207 (talk) 21:52, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Luciano Floridi
I'm concerned that Floridi's contributions to the field in the intro sound too substantial - he's not really that important to computer ethics historically, and he's only just begun to have an impact on the field. Furthermore, it seems odd to have a sentence in the intro that doesn't get referenced elsewhere in the article (this could probably be fixed by simply writing more about the subject - refer to the SEP to see a bit of what could be written). However, I haven't simply deleted the sentence about Floridi because it happens to be, in a sense, true. Thomblake (talk) 15:37, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Ten commandments
This keeps getting inserted. Unless one of the editors concerned owns the copyright, or has permisision to use the material, or can point to a waiver of copyright, or something of the sort (in which case, the evidence needs to be placed on the Talk page), including this material in Wikipedia isn't acceptable. I've removed it twice now; please don't make me remove it again. Mel Etitis ( &Mu;&epsilon;&lambda; &Epsilon;&tau;&eta;&tau;&eta;&sigmaf; ) 17:20, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

At the bottom of the article where I got the 10 commandments it reads " permission to duplicate or distribute this document is granted with the provision the document remains intact, or that the original document source be referenced" Both was done. I don't see the problem?


 * 1) Please sign comments (and it's best to sign in).
 * 2) The problem is that, whoever you are, you didn't mention any of this either in an edit summary or on the Talk page (even when the text was removed, and you were asked to supply details). Moreover, you didn't give a reference to the source, you only reproduced the copyright message.
 * 3) If you could supply the url for the source, it would probably be best to add a link in the external links section. Mel Etitis ( &Mu;&epsilon;&lambda; &Epsilon;&tau;&eta;&tau;&eta;&sigmaf; ) 18:57, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Ignoring copyright questions, the 10 commandments are an NPOV violation anyway. It's not appropriate for an encyclopedia article to make recommendations and ethical judgments. I think it would be a good external link, with a suitable neutral description. Rhobite 19:10, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)


 * The "Ten Commandments" are from the Computer Ethics Institute of the Brookings Institution. See http://www.brook.edu/its/cei/overview/Ten_Commanments_of_Computer_Ethics.htm .  It seems pretty clear from that page that they not only allow, but also encourage reproduction of them, though they retain copyright, and request attribution.  So I don't see a copyright issue.  I do not know how influential they have been -- Brookings is a reputable organization, and they claim that they've been "effective", but I don't know.  If they are in fact widely used and accepted, then it would seem to make sense to at least link to them, with some context.  It may even make sense to include them in the article, but with appropriate contextualization, e.g. "The Computer Ethics Institute, a project of the Brookings Institution, promotes the following 'Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics', which have been widely adopted <<>> in << >>".  --Macrakis 16:02, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Just wanted to provide what appears to be a more current address for the Computer Ethics Institute (http://computerethicsinstitute.org) and their "Ten Commandments" (http://computerethicsinstitute.org/publications/tencommandments.html). CMHallgren (talk) 21:21, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Since everyone (including me, sorry i didn't read the history page before i did it) keeps inserting the 10 commandments, doesn't that mean that the common conception is that they are a big part of computer ethics? These are one of the few standards out there, and they are short enough to include. As for the copyright: CEI says "If Duplicated, Please Cite the Computer Ethics Institute" which is why I used the sentence: "The CEI defines them as". If you are worried about copyright, I would prefer the link method, but I do think they are a vital addition to computer ethics. -- Maxberger 29 Jun 2005

There is a section on various organizations that have published ethical guidelines, so I added a link to the CEI 10 commandments there. It may be a bit out of place (the other are professional organizations) but the CEI's list covers users as well as programmers, and I don't see much else in this article that discusses the ethics of computer usage. Jayelston (talk) 02:36, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Two new areas
Hello. I'm the person who originally posted this article. I appreciate all the additions people have made to it, but I do call into question the recent additions to it:

A complement to ethics…

I believe the concept of social responsibility is touched on in the Issues section. If you wish to expand upon this topic, I believe the third issue in that section should be expanded. What do you thin?

One theory of the nature of ethics

I don't believe this section is appropriate for this article - it deals with the general topic of ethics itself and not computer ethics specifically. Theories regarding the formation of ethics seem far more suited to the main ethics article.

Please give me feedback regarding these issues. Thank you. --Jtalledo (talk) 18:21, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree on both counts. I changed the title of the latter section to make it more accurate (it was presented as the theory of ethics!  I'll take it out, I think. Mel Etitis  ( &Mu;&epsilon;&lambda; &Epsilon;&tau;&eta;&tau;&eta;&sigmaf; ) 18:32, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion: Include environmental and social issues
Hi all, Is it possible to highlight environmental and social issues in an explicit way? They might already be included in some of the off-page links, but having followed a few of those links I'm none the wiser. Issues I'm thinking about are: Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.52.5.10 (talk) 14:43, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Green IT: i.e. taking steps to reduce the environmental footprint of computers and computer networks
 * Ethical sourcing of materials: eg. avoiding the use of tantalum because it is sourced in Congo and is contributing to war there.
 * Ethical disposal of materials: eg. is donating old, inefficient computers to charity to be shipped to other countries really ethical or just cheap disposal of rubbish?

Reason for not promoting
Hi all,

I have not promoted this article because I feel it does not adequately cover the major aspects of the subject. It offers little detail on any of the points it raises. It does not seem to explain how computer ethics and general ethics relate to each other. It does not offer a means to obtain further information on the Collins and Miller or Davis methods (nor does it offer any examples of how the methods work). And, finally, it lacks sufficient inline citations. Please feel free to resubmit this article when these issues are addressed.

Cedars 08:01, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Added information to definition
I added information that divided Computer Ethics into 3 primary influences that I discovered while reading the abstract to a journal written by Margaret Anne Pierce of Georgia Southern University. Unfortunately, I was only able to access the abstract because the full journal is secured to SpringerLink subscribers.

leeaaro4 14:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Added information to future concern
I added information that explains a concern of how children could be effected because of how they are put out their by parents social media leaving hackers to use their information to go after the family. I felt it was a very big concern as we enter more and more into the future.

Alex Alcott 08:21, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Hi, I propose to merge cyberethics into this article. I think this article has the better title per WP:AVOIDCYBER, but that the source article has better content. PhotographyEdits (talk) 14:50, 11 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I recommend we ignore that essay, and that if a merge occurs, it be done in the reverse direction (with Cyberethics as the main article).
 * The terms are not directly equivalent, so WP:COMMON is hard to apply straightforwardly. "Computer ethics" is still dominant on Google Ngram (though declining precipitously), but it's the original, pre-internet term, and most of its use (right up to the present) still adhere to the original definition. Most of what we would call "cyberethics" is being studied not as part of "computer ethics", but as part of "information ethics" and published in information ethics journals (Ethics and Information Technology, The Information Society: An International Journal, Journal of Information Ethics, and plenty more). However, "information ethics" cannot be the common term, since it also encompasses a bunch of things that have nothing to do with computers or cyberethics.
 * Several researchers have directly analysed the usage of these terms, far more rigorously than we could with an Ngram lookup (and they're, unlike us, subject-matter experts, and aware of these scope differences as well as the evolving usage & meaning of these terms). They generally considers "cyberethics" the more common, relevant and modern term, encompassing both computer ethics and information ethics (at least, the parts of information ethics that are relevant to computers).   . I'll note that according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "cyber" doesn't just refer to the internet, but more generally to computing as well. DFlhb (talk) 18:12, 19 December 2022 (UTC)