User:Marskell/Think of the Children

Wikipedia is not censored, including for minors. This means, for example, that a page describing a violent event may have pictures depicting violence or that an article related to sexuality may have pictures of a sexual character. Wikipedians being sensible, these things are usually treated circumspectly without suppressing critical material. 'Not censored for minors' also means that "No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus; he is rather a character of religious folklore." While pausing in sadness over the case of Virginia, consider the case of Kaylin:

"thanks to u i waz able to write my essay!!! so i appreciatye it dearly!!! thanks truley from me kaylin a 7th grader who loves BOBCATS!!! okay thats all bye again thanks!!!!"

Kaylin visited our page on Bobcats and was very impressed. Bobcat is categorized in Least concern species, Felines, and Mammals of North America. More broadly, it falls under the ambit of Biology, the scientific study of life. Our pages on large mammals no doubt attract a number of seventh graders. These pages, and every tree of life subject that deals with a taxonomic grouping, should contain a taxobox. A large majority of the infoboxes in use on Wikipedia are Bad Things: they impart little that the first paragraphs don't already; they shoehorn information that should be described with nuance in the body; and often they are very ugly. But to identify what is bad you should point to what is good. In the case of infoboxes, the taxoboxes will serve: bread-and-butter encyclopedic, with information that is better mentioned outside of the body, such as higher level taxa and original naming authority.

Children, of course, will arrive here for any number of reasons. While thinking of animals, might Bigfoot be a first click-through? Let us imagine, not implausibly, that our example child does not understand the difference between Gorilla and Bigfoot—that the former is an extant genus and the latter an unconfirmed example of cryptozoology. Or perhaps he or she has a basic understanding of the idea, but just isn't quite ready to believe it. Would it serve that child if Wikipedia failed to properly demarcate science and speculation in this case? As of July 3, 2007, this stood on the Bigfoot page in an "info"box:

Classification

Grouping: Cryptid

Sub grouping: Hominid

While we don't all read on animals, every literate person should at least have a grasp of one taxon: Hominidae. It does not include Bigfoot. The Mammal Species of the World and the World Conservation Union do not recognize a Bigfoot. While scientific literature may have examined the idea, even sympathetically, the species has never been described by a zoologist or a paleontologist and even calling it a cryptid is a description of an absence. In this case, our infobox is not only redundant and silly, but irresponsible. What is worse is that it foregrounds a systemic problem: because the material was posted via an infobox template, similar irresponsibility may have occured on multiple pages.

In cases of this sort, we need to consider the impressionable minds of children, the greatest gift of nature. Thus, the next time you'd like to add a paranormal template to a page, or start a Wikiproject regarding the real truth behind Bigfoot or Area 51, you should pause and think of the children.