Anyone who thinks Wikipedia isn't censored because it allows pictures of penises is fooling himself. Wikipedia is absolutely censored from images its editors find disgusting. Most of its editors find sexual images just fine, and a large percentage view their suppression as harmful, "sex-negative", based on obsolete religious practice, whatever, so they're allowed. Look at David Goodman's message earlier for a good example of this. Sexual images aren't allowed because Wikipedia isn't censored, they're allowed because the predominant view of sex among Wikipedians is that it's a recreation like any other.
If you think Wikipedia's imagery is not censored, please explain why [[Goatse.cx]] does not have an image of its subject matter. Such an image would clearly fall under our fair use criteria, wouldn't it? It's definitely essential for understanding of the material. But how long do you think the image would last if someone added it? I'd be surprised if no one tried to add it before, in fact. I'd also be surprised if anyone could even upload the image without having it speedy deleted as vandalism and getting a warning that they'd be blocked if they did it again. [[Nick Berg]] is primarily known because of the beheading video released about him, but his article chooses for some reason to depict a still from the video where he's still alive, rather than depicting the act of beheading itself. I would argue that the beheading part of the video is very educational. Most people's ideas of what beheading is like come from the movies, and are terribly inaccurate. Do you think anyone would object if I added a picture of the knife passing through his neck up at the top? Somehow I think so. Can anyone name me even *one* article where a gruesomely gory photograph is prominently displayed, in fact? There have been edit wars even on more moderately disgusting articles, like [[Human feces]], with no clear "Wikipedia is not censored!" resolution. Why? Because people don't like looking at images that are disgusting. Real surprise, huh? But Wikipedia isn't censored, right? Sexual images are not kept because Wikipedia is not censored. They're kept because the Wikipedia community thinks that people *shouldn't* find them disgusting. This does not serve our readers well and is definitely not neutral. We absolutely should accommodate readers who would be viscerally disgusted by images on the site. There are people out there, probably a billion of them or more, whose reaction to an image of autofellatio would be comparable to their reaction to an image of a beheading or Goatse. Saying "screw you" to all these people rather than attempting to improve the utility of Wikipedia for them is obnoxious, antisocial, and contrary to our mission. Anyone who claims that it's too hard to draw a line of what should be censored and what shouldn't is demonstrably wrong, because Wikipedia has done it for more than eight years, and no one seems to have even *noticed* that the line *exists*. Trying to claim we can't censor sexual images because it's a slippery slope is not only bad logic, but grossly hypocritical. There is *no* loss in educational value if explicit sexual images are not displayed inline. None. Prominent links can be provided for readers who are interested. On the other hand, there is a significant loss if parents want to stop their children from reading Wikipedia because it contains offensive imagery. The way our mission points is therefore clear. Are we going to try to be the best educational resource we can be, or impose a sexually liberal ideology on all our readers whether they like it or not? On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 5:23 PM, Birgitte SB <birgitte...@yahoo.com> wrote: > I think our efforts would be better focused making all of our content better > suited for re-usability by different tastes and then letting third-party work > out exactly which tastes need to be targeted. Rather than creating a mirror > ourselves for "No Nudity" and leaving the whatever existing stumbling blocks > are in place for general re-purposing of the content. It would definitely be a good start to create a hierarchy of categories for the use of private parties who would like to censor their own Internet access, or that of those they have responsibility for. The way to go would be neutral designations like "Category:Pictures containing genitals", "Category:Pictures containing breasts", "Category:Depictions of Muhammad", and so on. This strictly adds value to the project. Then we would pick a set of categories to be blocked by default. Blocked images wouldn't be hidden entirely, just replaced with a link explaining why they were blocked. Clicking the link would cause them to display in place, and inline options would be provided to show all images in that category in the future (using preferences for users, otherwise cookies). Users could block any categories of images they liked from their profile. To begin with, we could preserve the status quo by disabling only very gory or otherwise really disgusting images by default. More reasonably, we could follow every other major website in the developed world, and by default disable display of any image containing male or female genitalia, or sex acts. Users who wanted the images could, again, get them with a single click, so there is no loss of information -- which is, after all, what we exist to provide. Wikipedia does not aim to push ideologies of sexual liberation. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
