Rifling through the OLPC wiki can be wonderfully educating. As is the way of the wiki, content comes and goes as people review, revise and revert the facts and figures. During the the CM1 2B1 naming debacle we learned how lousy a wiki can be in announcing a product name to a watching audience.
Today we learn that using a wiki for feedback is not always such a bright idea. As we covered a while back, edited Wikipedia subsets will be used on the 2B1 as an encyclopedia. Yesterday Ivan Krstić added moved an unoffical mock up of the encyclopedia's front page to the "One Encyclopedia per Child" wiki entry. There you'll see an ant for the letter "A", "B" is a box, "C" a Cat, yadda yadda and then when we get to "G" we have... a rather large "O" for oversight.
Although some NRA members out there may beg to differ with us here, the idea of using a gun to introduce children to the letter "G" shouldn't have made it out of a thought barrel and on to the wiki.
Other letters are less offensive, but still questionable. Using a pig for "P" is debatable as it can offend Muslims and Jews and a spigot as a tap for "T" confused me for a moment.
One small caveat: We do not know who created the images and are not implying that they were created for or specifically endorsed by Ivan or OLPC.
A wiki is a wiki; any one can edit it. Even you.
Post Update:
Recently, Ivan Krstić contacted OLPC News and clarified the history of the image:
The mockup is unofficial and was created by a South African professor working with his daughter; it in no way represents thinking of the OLPC project. My only interaction with the page was part of my wiki upkeep efforts, when I removed the page that used to be called --over-generally -- "Hyperlinked_hub", and merged its contents into the OEPC article.Thank you Ivan. The clarification is duly noted and the original post will be edited for clarity. We here at OLPC News are happily relieved that it's not an official One Encyclopedia Per Child image.The actual work is neither mine nor OLPC's, and should not be construed as such.
I'm loathe to the idea of my name being associated, even if just as a possibility, with attempting to bring gun imagery to children.
Recent Comments
I cannot believe they used a gun to represent "G". How crazy are these people? A gun. What is "N"? Nuclear Bomb?
And you wonder why we have Columbine High School massacres.
"Gun" is now replaced by "Gift".
Wonderful! And about time. On a minor note, I am still confused about some of the images shown. How is a clip connected to "P"?
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Hhp.jpg
P is for PEG - clothes peg
T is for TAP - water tap
These are mostly found in UK/AUS/NZ/SA english
T for TAP is quite appropriate in Jamaica too. If you were to say "Faucet" the average Jamaican child would just give you a blank stare.