Thanks, Greg. This is very useful perspective and great background for those of us without Commons experience.
-stu On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 1:17 AM, Gregory Maxwell <[email protected]> wrote: > I thought it might be useful to here if I shared some of my > experiences with commons. > > > Like many people I've had the experience of bumping into a human > sexuality related commons category or gallery and thinking "Holy crap! > Thats a lot of [gallery name]. Freeking teenage pornofreaks!". > > But unlike many other people, I am in a position to do something about > it: I'm a commons administrator and checkuser reasonably well > respected in the commons community (when I'm not inactive, at least), > well connected to the commons star-chamber, and I've played a role in > many of the internal 'governance by fiat' events. I think it's likely > that a majority of my deletions have been technically "out of > process", but by keeping a good working relationship with the rest of > the commons community this hasn't been a problem at all. > > To take action you have to understand a few things: "The problem", > "The lay of the land", and "The goal". > > Why might a super-abundance of explicit images be a problem? > (1) They potentially bring the Wikimedia sites into ill repute (it's > just a big porn site!) > (2) They encourage the blocking of Wikimedia sites from schools and > libraries > (3) Explicit photographs are a hot-bed of privacy issues and can even > risk bumping into the law (underage models) > > I'm sure others can be listed but these are sufficient for now. > > > "The lay of the land" > > > Commons has a hard rule that for images to be in scope they must > potentially serve an educational purpose. The rule is followed pretty > strictly, but the definition of educational purpose is taken very > broadly. In particular the commons community expects the public to > also use commons as a form of "visual education", so having a great > big bucket of distinct pictures of the same subject generally furthers > the educational mission. > > There are two major factors complicating every policy decision on commons: > > Commons is also a service project. When commons policy changes over > 700 wikis feel the results. Often, language barriers inhibit effective > communication with these customers. Some Wikimedia projects rely on > commons exclusively for their images, so a prohibition on commons > means (for example) a prohibition on Es wiki, even though most > Eswikipedians are not active in the commons community. This > relationship works because of trust which the commons community has > built over the years. Part of that trust is that commons avoids making > major changes with great haste and works with projects to fix issues > when hasty acts do cause issues. > > Commons itself is highly multi-cultural. While commons does have a > strong organizing principle (which is part of why it has been a > fantastic success on its own terms where all other non-wikipedia WMF > projects are at best weakly successful), that principle is strongly > inclusive and mostly directs us to collect and curate while only > excluding on legal grounds and a few common areas of basic human > decency— it's harder to create any kind of cross cultural agreement on > matters of taste. Avoiding issues of taste also makes us more > reliable as an image source for customer projects. > > > I think that a near majority of commons users think that we could do > with some reductions in the quantity of redundant / low quality human > sexuality content, due to having the same experience I started this > message with. Of that group I think there is roughly an even split > between people who believe the existing "educational purposes" policy > is sufficient and people who think we could probably strengthen the > policy somehow. > > There are also people who are honestly offended that some people are > offended by human sexuality content— and some of them view efforts to > curtail this content to be a threat to their own cultural values. If > this isn't your culture, please take a moment to ponder it. If your > personal culture believes in the open expression of sexuality an > effort to remove "redundant / low quality" sexuality images while we > not removing low quality pictures of clay pots, for example, is > effectively an attack on your beliefs. These people would tell you: If > you don't like it, don't look. _Understanding_ differences in opinion > is part of the commons way, so even if you do not embrace this view > you should at least stop to understand that it is not without merit. > In any case, while sometimes vocal, people from this end of the > spectrum don't appear to be all that much of the community. > > Of course, there are a few trolls here and there from time to time, > but I don't think anyone really pays them much attention. There are > lots of horny twenty somethings, but while it might bias the > discussions towards permissiveness I don't think that it really has a > big effect beyond the basic youthful liberalism which exists > everywhere in our projects. > > There are also a couple of occasional agitators calling for things > like a complete removal of sexuality content. Most of them fail to > sound reasonable at all— demanding the removal of old works of art, > basic anatomy photos... I think these complaints are mostly ignored. > > ... and a majority of people who either don't care or don't speak the > languages the discussions are held in. > > "The goal" > > Considering the landscape, how do we solve the problems? > > Lets take a category of Penis images as an example. Load it up. > Hundreds of penii. Pretty shocking. We can obviously cut back on this, > right? How many penis images do we really need to meet the mission of > the Wikipedias? (and then we need to consider the more expansive > mission of commons in educating through media). > > Well, we ought to have circumcised, and uncircumcised. Flaccid and > erect. An example of each kind of penis jewellery that has a WP > article in some language. An example of every disease with > penis-visible symptoms.... We're easily at 50-100 images already. > People seem to think we also need many of the prior samples from > multiple races to demonstrate the (lack of) differences. Add a little > further inflation because editorial preferences on the Wikipedias will > differ. > > So on the basis of meeting the Wikipedia's need alone, we're up to > hundreds of pictures of penises. Now— commons' hundreds are not so > diverse, we need fewer of some kinds and more of others, but in terms > of the sheer count even before considering commons' own educational > remit we still need a bunch. > > Where does this place us in terms of our problem statements? Well, > With hundreds of pictures in the category it will be easy to cast > commons as a penis palace. Thus, in terms of this class of images— > problem (1) is probably unsolvable given our educational mission. If > someone wants to point to the category and inspire the "Oh my god; > it's full of cocks" response, they can... > > Virtually all libraries and schools that block internet sites employ > categorical blocking software. They block broad categories like > "Drugs, weapons, nudity, pornography, and proxy evasion". All of the > Wikimedia projects could be blocked under all of these categories. > Even a highly educational penis is still nudity— these filtering > services are often criticized for blocking information on breast > exams, for example. Because of the way the blocking happens reducing > the number of penis images to the educational minimum would not likely > reduce the incidence of blocking in any material way. So problem (2) > seems to be unsolvable given our educational mission. > > I think we could make some improvement with problem (3). The privacy > issues can also be addressed by using images without visible faces > (which are often perceived to be more prurient, unfortunately). > > Ironically— the commercial pornography industry has been pretty happy > to supply us with images which we are quite sure are legal and without > privacy problems. But accepting these images heightens the perception > that commons is promoting pornography rather than merely hosting > educational resources. > > The prevalence of commercial sex images reflects the result of prior > attempts to avoid child images and images created without the model's > consent, though I don't think the consequence was expected. As a > checkuser (with OTRS access) I can't say that I've seen evidence of > abuse by commercial porn providers: Wikimedians are going to them. > > Although, _obviously_ problematic images are regularly and easily > deleted without dispute. I've nuked a few from orbit and never hit > the slightest bit of resistance. Though the community also has no > reason to distrust my claims that an image is inappropriate, other > people may get different results. > > Now how would we draft such a policy to further improve things? > > We need a policy which can be easily understood by many languages and > cultures, which improves the situation but doesn't provide a basis for > other censorship (e.g. some would have us remove all likenesses of > Muhammad, images of women without veils, historical offensive > political cartoons and symbols, etc). Actually be enforceable in the > face of incomplete information from uploaders, without the risk of too > much 'taste' and the resulting instability for customers. I'm at a > loss. I have no suggestion beyond preferring illustrations rather than > photos (which we already do), and accepting images contributions > commercial sources, which is bad for our image. This seems really > hard. > > > Now pull in the part of the landscape that I didn't mention: Commons > has almost five million images. The deletion spree which was operated > completely without regard to the community process was described as an > "almost complete cleanup" removed fewer than 500 images— or about > 0.008% of the collection. > > At this point in my reasoning I inevitably conclude (1) The problem > was far less bad than my initial impression. (2) At _best_ we can't > solve much of the problem without accepting aggressive censorship of > our coverage, both text and images (3) The part we could improve is > pretty hard to improve. (4) There are more important things to work > on. > > None of this really depends on any difficulty coming from governance. > Even as supreme ruler for a day I couldn't solve this one > satisfactorily. > > The initial surprise is enough that I've gone through this cycle > several times now, but I keep reaching the same conclusion. I expect > the same is true for many other contributors. > > ... and outside of some agitation from people pushing for the > unachievable like "school safeness", and some popular troll-nest > message boards, troll-nest 'news' agencies, and a somewhat trollish > ex-nupedian, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that these 0.008% are > suddenly in need of a major effort. I can promise you that a far > greater proportion of our works are misleadingly labelled, outright > spam, egregious copyright violations, potentially carrying hidden > malware, etc. > > > Feedback from the board that such an effort is desired from the board > would certainly help shift the priorities— it would also give us some > excusability for disruption to our customer projects. > > But this isn't what we got at all. The clear _consensus_ among the > commons community and many of our customers is that what we what we > got was disruptive, under-informed, and damaging to our internal > governance. We now faction lines have been drawn between the couple > of commons users aligned with Jimmy and the (literally) hundreds of > users opposed the methodology used here and the specifics of some of > the deletions. There is no active discussion about making an > improvement, our customers are discussing creating chapter operated > forks of commons free from this kind of disruptive intervention which > is perceived by many to be overt values based censorship. Many other > messages have expressed the complaints in greater detail. > > > I hope this has provided some useful background and that it will > foster improved communication on the subject. > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
