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 _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
