Enabling Cultural Protocols Online

Culturally, online information repositories such as Wikipedia are certainly more of a melting pot than a fruit salad. Each group’s particular and unique cultural considerations are typically absorbed and diluted by the overall conduct of the majority who don’t share the same beliefs.

It’s nice to think that we all understand this, and things are generally OK online. This is because we believe that we all have the same general idea of what is appropriate. I keep using the term “we”, and by that I am including myself in the mass of internet users that coalesce to form on overall view of what is appropriate culturally agnostic behaviour online. I call this the mass coalesce. But can the internet be a better experience for people who fall outside of the mass coalesce.

Wikipedia is (or at least tries to be) a truly neutral, warts-and-all collection of information and media. However, in order for me to utilise this fantastic resource, I have to put aside my own cultural beliefs and join the mass coalesce in neutrality. As an adult with a specific perspective on things I am happy to do this, and am happy to take the risk of coming across things I might not like or agree with. My cultural background provides no taboos that fall outside those of the ‘mass coalesce’.

Age is one attribute that can’t be easily ignored, and through researching this article I discovered that Wikipedia is full of content that I would regard as wholly inappropriate for minors under my guardianship. Currently Wikipedia provides no access control over content (none of the content appears to be rated, nor is it be able to be filtered by criteria such as age). Now, I’m not interested in getting into a debate as to how reliable this would be for compulsory restriction of behaviour online. I know if teenagers really want to see dirty pictures Wikipedia isn’t going to stop them.

But it does get interesting when we consider the role of self-imposed or voluntary restrictions. Take for example adults who wish to adhere to voluntary cultural protocols.

Consider the story of the The Mukurtu Archive. This fascinating project is a repository for photos, digital video clips, audio files, and digital reproductions of cultural artefacts and documents for the Warumungu - an aboriginal people of Australia. Access to content in the archive is defined by parameters based on a set of Warumungu cultural protocols for the viewing and distribution of cultural knowledge. For instance men cannot view women’s rituals, and people from one community cannot view material from another without first seeking permission. Meanwhile images of the deceased cannot be viewed by their families.

Indeed one Warumungu man said “For man like me, I can’t see women’s stories or even if she is my daughter or niece I’m not allowed to see, so it won’t open up for me, because we have different passwords. That is very important to make it safe.” He actually embraces this restriction, as a manifestation of his cultural beliefs. He wants these restrictions, and he would want them on neutral repositories like Wikipedia. He doesn’t expect all other cultures to want these, but he has a need and desire for them.

This problem came to light more controversially recently, when a group known as Muslim Munity requested that pictures of Muhammad be removed from Wikipedia. Wikipedia responded clearly and consistently, keeping with it’s clear mandate that “all topics from a neutral point of view,” and claiming that “Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.” This position is fair and understandable, but it led me to consider whether it wouldn’t it be useful for neutral sites such as Wikipedia to adopt a system allowing people to customise their experience so that is it in-line with their cultural beliefs, in much the same way that users can customise their online experience to assist in any accessibility requirements they may have.

To this end, I am interested in the concept of Cultural Protocols. We have TCP/IP and HTTP as protocols for the internet and the web, so why not CP as a cultural layer for those that would like it?

Think of it as a way of making a kosher connection, halal HTML, a sin-free session. Perhaps we could begin by defining a framework of cultures and their considerations. We could start with just taboos, and define some meta-data standards. That way we can tag objects to alert cultures that the content may be inappropriate.

We are actually all already doing this. Some work on voluntary filtering has already begun, and interestingly it’s the one consideration borne out of the ‘mass coalesce’ and that I have realised applies to me. It’s those 4 powerful letters NSFW. Sometimes at work, when I am browsing, I am interacting with sites that have elements that are not appropriate to be presented on my wide-screen monitor in full view of the studio. Many of these sites warn about content or links by the use of NSFW, sometimes in-line, sometimes using the rel=”nsfw” and sometimes on alt tags for images. Now we have automated tools to assist us in the voluntary control of this experience.

On the cultural side, I add thirteenFifteen to the mix, a Greasemonkey script that attempts to hide any depictions of Muhammad on Wikipedia. It needs a lot of work, and it could be extended to include other controls, but it is a start, and should help Muslims who wish to use Wikipedia without having to turn images off completely.

I’d be interested so hear other people’s thoughts…