Violent games on the OLPC Activities page

[Bryan Berry]

I feel very strongly that violent games should not be associated with
OLPC. Albert Cahalan points out that games like Doom can teach geometry
and other skills. There are ways to teach those skills w/out involving
violence. I work in Nepal, a country recovering from an 11-year civil
war. Exposure to more violence, real or virtual, is the last thing most
Nepali communities want.

I removed the Doom activity from the Activities page yesterday and put a
note on the page asking people not to post violent activities to the
page.  Doom was added back shortly thereafter and my note was removed.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities

People can host such games on their own sites but they should not be
hosted by OLPC.

We can debate forever whether violent games cause violence. The fact is
many those people (esp. outside the US) whose support we need for OLPC,
think that violent games are damaging to kids. We need to respect that
sentiment.

Is there an existing wiki policy regarding violent activities? If there
isn't, there should be.


-- 
Bryan W. Berry
OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org