On 5/16/2011 11:07 AM, Chris McKenna wrote:
> I don't know how well such a censored subset would work, given that every
> organisation's content policies I am aware of are different to each other,
> and the technical challenges associated with censorship, but I am no
> expert.
I've actually implemented a "censored subset" of Wikimedia Commons
so I've got some insight into this. One of my projects has partners
that won't work with web sites that have nudity, so I've had to remove
potentially offensive content from a sample of nearly a million images.
This site has also has a large audience in K-12 education so I'm
sensitive to people's concerns in that area.
Considering images that are used in actually Wikipedia, I'd say
that a bit less than 0.1% (about 1 in 1000) of images contain nudity
that "somebody" could find offensive. That includes pictures of ancient
pots from Persia that show couples having intercourse, pictures taken
at nude beaches that aren't conceivably lascivious as well as pictures
of body modifications that you might bot believe until you saw them.
Oddly, people tend to think of Wikipedia as a place that's good
for K-12 use despite the fact that it's not officially "family
friendly." A lot of that is because you can use Wikipedia for a very
long time and not find anything offensive, unless you go looking for it.
If the picture of the day was truly a random sample of what was in
Wikipedia, I suppose we'd get something offensive and a big argument
about it every three years or so -- so maybe this is all just par for
the course.
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