I don't think we're going to do anything like this. I want to avoid
politics at SE, and these days sensibilities are politics. Judging what
is or isn't considered a problem is difficult, and we're going to get
crap from all sides no matter what we pick - or what we miss - and
values and offenses change over time so the job is never over.
Better to understand that as critical thinkers, a book written a hundred
years ago (or even 20 years ago!) is going to be a reflection of society
at that time, which had different values than we do today - just as the
values of the future will differ from our values now. Some of those old
concepts and words may be offensive today. Some might not be. The robust
reader understands that and deals with it maturely as it occurs, and
does not rely on someone else's opinion on the matter in order to engage
in avoidance.
On 6/20/22 11:36 AM, Asher Smith wrote:
> I think this is a really interesting idea, and actually addresses a
> number of SE's stated goals. It certainly would go a long way towards
> bridging the gap between historical attitudes and "the sensibilities of
> modern readers," and I think that if you trust that a source will
> provide content notes if needed, it might make you more comfortable with
> reading works of literature you might otherwise not. It also does a good
> job of striking a balance of neither whitewashing nor endorsing
> historical attitudes we now find troubling.
>
> Cambridge suggests 14 categories
> <
https://www.cctl.cam.ac.uk/content-notes/how-use/when-use> for content
> notes, and I can imagine that the simplest way to implement this would
> be to just have a simple yes/no for if each of them exists. That means
> we're not in the position of trying to make subjective decisions about
> how severe something is - we just report, for instance, that the book
> contains intimate partner violence.
>
> As an unrelated note, if this conversation is one that interests you,
> you should check out the novel /Too Like The Lightning/, which contains
> > <
http://archive.org <
http://archive.org>> transcription are
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