--- On Tue, 17/5/11, Craig Franklin <cr...@halo-17.net> wrote:
From: Craig Franklin <cr...@halo-17.net>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on Wikimedia Commons
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Tuesday, 17 May, 2011, 12:54
I'm going to add my voice to the "yeah, that wasn't cool". To give a bit of an
anecdote, John Vandenberg and I were doing a demonstration of Commons to some
librarians and cultural curators yesterday, and it was a bit of a rude shock
seeing that particular image on the frontpage. One of the more elderly
contributors remarked on it to me privately in a negative sense afterwards, all
I could do was look embarassed and say "Yes, it's a bit of a racy image, isn't
it. Can't imagine how anyone thought that would be a good idea". That's
probably one contributor who won't be beating a path to our door in the future.
And, at the risk of editorialising here, those who are responding to this
criticism by claiming that we're asking for "censorship" or that the freedom to
plaster graphic images over the Commons frontpage is a battle for liberty along
the lines of the fight against slavery or for universal suffrage... need to
take an aspirin and have a good lie down. Nobody is claiming that such images
are not within Commons' scope; they quite clearly are, just like pictures of
penises, medical procedures, and other images that people might find unpleasant
are. Should they be in scope for the main page though? I don't think so, the
same as a picture of a genital piercing, Osama bin Laden's bloodied corpse, or
other pictures that could possibly cause innocent people to get in trouble
should be out of main page scope. As a community, I think most of us are
mature enough to apply a common sense test to these things, and common sense
would indicate that that image was
likely to be one that would cause needless offense to people and hurt the
project.
Sorry for your bad experience. In light of that, it is a bit galling to note
that the contributor ofthe image says on his Commons user page,
Rule #1: Commons
is Censored [1]
Some of my works were also accepted by Featured
Pictures.
But who really cares about this subjective
nonsense? I don't (anymore). It is equivalent to a private organization
controlled by some divas and is not representable for the variety of images
currently available on Commons.
In short: It is worth nothing and is total
bullshit!
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Niabot
The diva comment seems perceptive, though not in the way the contributor meant
it. It'sabsurd that we let art from someone with those views hurt the efforts
of those that actuallybelieve in this being an educational project. The tail
wags the dog here; the importanceof manga in the overall "sum of human
knowledge" is actually minute.
The Featured status of the image itself is under review in Commons; the link is:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/removal/File:On_the_edge_-_free_world_version.jpg#File:On_the_edge_-_free_world_version.jpg
Andreas
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