On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 12:19 AM, Erik Moeller <e...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:43 PM, Sarah <slimvir...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > A similar statement from the Foundation about the need to reject racism, > > sexism and homophobia among editors -- and to remember that this is an > > educational project -- might go a long way to adjusting attitudes. > <snip> > In response to issues with the ethical management of photographs the > WMF Board did in fact pass a resolution specifically about photographs > of identifiable people: > > > https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Images_of_identifiable_people Erring on the side of conservatism, the Board used language about > "private situations / places". But it calls explicitly for > strengthening and developing the relevant policy on Commons: > > > https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people > > There _are_ thoughtful people on Commons who could be engaged > individually to help further develop and refine this policy to > elaborate on ethical issues like the one which started this thread. > And there are thoughtful people on this list who could help drive that > conversation. > I think some discussion of the outcomes of this resolution might be productive. As a frequent participant in deletion decisions on Wikimedia Commons, my very strong sense is that we do well at complying with the letter of that particular resolution resolution. In my experience, when somebody nominates an unclothed photo of a clearly identifiable subject for deletion, and there is no evidence of the person's consent, the file is generally deleted without any particular resistance. Unfortunately, this leaves two major gaps: (1) cases where reasonable people could and do disagree about whether or not somebody is identifiable, and (2) cases where those concerned about the subject find a particular photo problematic irrespective of whether or not he or she is identifiable. I believe the Board acted with very good intentions with that resolution, but there is an unintended consequence that identifiability has become the focus of many of these discussions. I think board action to address this problem would be welcome and effective; but I would hope that new language be carefully considered and vetted before passage to try to anticipate and avoid further undesirable consequences. > > It's also worth noting on the subject of Commons that WMF did _not_ > withdraw the Controversial Content resolution from May 2011, only the > personal image hiding feature component thereof. The resolution also > contained other recommendations consistent with reinforcing the > educational scope of Wikimedia Commons: > > https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content > > "We urge the Commons community to continue to practice rigorous active > curation of content, including applying appropriate categorization, > removing media that does not meet existing policies and guidelines for > inclusion, and actively commissioning media that is deemed needed but > missing. We urge the community to pay particular attention to curating > all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining > whether it has a realistic educational use and applying the principle > of least astonishment in categorization and placement." > > "We urge the Wikimedia Foundation and community to work together in > developing and implementing further new tools for using and curating > Commons, to make the tasks of reviewing, deleting, categorizing, > uploading and using images easier. In my view, this resolution missed the biggest area of opportunity, which can be done by anyone: to develop essays, guidelines, or policies on Commons that describe common scenarios, and outline effective outcomes. Those of us processing deletion nominations on Commons are drinking from a firehose; by my estimation, every day has dozens of nominations, some days well over 100. There are probably 5-10 regular participants and administrators processing these, with others dropping in more occasionally. The key lesson in that is that carefully phrased nominations that make reference to policies and guidelines tend to be more successful than those that, for instance, include words like "obviously." It is not uncommon for files that clearly violate various policies to be kept, simply because the nomination is vague or confusing, and would require more time to consider than we have resources for. Closely related to this, though, is a really good software development opportunity. It's not exciting and would not grab any headlines, but it would make a big difference: if the workflow for processing deletion requests were made smoother, those engaging in it could get more done, spending more time considering each request and less time clicking buttons, typing code, etc; and if it were made more transparent and better documented (including useful links built into wiki pages and templates), it would be easier for new people (say, those from this list) to get involved and help process the nominations. If you're interested in this topic, you might want to look through this list of notes and links I've kept on my Commons user page. Not all are relevant to this discussion, but many are: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth#Interesting_stuff Finally, in response to Sarah's message -- I will certainly try to watch for an announcement about the Privacy Policy rewrite and post to this list when it happens! -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
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