Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Hi all. Thanks so much for all the encouragement my last email received. Replying to Ting's: Point 1-- NOTCENSORED isn't what you think it is: So, the first thing to realize is that our NOTCENSORED policies are far more narrow than you seem to suspect: • In the case of traditional fishing techniques or traditional medicine, no one claims those subjects are too offensive to cover. So our NOTCENSORED policy can offer absolutely no guidance one way or the other. • Our No pedophilia advocacy doesn't apply to our content. Indeed, we do cover pedophilia advocacy when it's encyclopedic (e.g. [[NAMBLA]]). • The debate over at Acehnese Wikipedia over Muhammad IS partially about censorship. But it's also about whether local-projects have self-determination via CONSENSUS.I feel Acehnese Wikipedia should be allowed to run their project as they think best, including revising or even outright rejecting their own version of NOTCENSORED if their true consensus supports doing so. (Ideally they could used some name other than Wikipedia, so that the Wikipedia brand would be preserved for NPOV/NOTCENSORED projects-- but in truth, even that doesn’t really disturb me. So, we're substantially less fundamentalist and fanatical than I think you believe we are. NOTCENSORED isn't a universal call to total inclusionism, it's just a reminder to not let potential-offensive make decisions for us. Look at the following dialogue: Question: Should we host content X? Answer:No, because I find it offensive. Reply: Offensiveness isn't a valid reason, per NOTCENSORED. Instead, ask-- is this content useful? That's it! That's all NOTCENSORED is. The NOTCENSORED policy just means we don't let cultural taboos dictate our editorial decisions. It's a core value that is really not as radical as you seem to think it is. Part 2: What a NOTCENSORED debate looks like: So, let's consider the EnWiki article [[Muhammad]] and the debate over its use of potentially-offensive images. Arguing that we should delete all images because they're offensive is automatically rebutted by citing Wikipedia isn't censored. But that's not the end of the discussion, it's only the very beginning. Once we agree that offensiveness isn't a valid criteria, we still have to tackle the actual work of making the best possible article. So, just a few of the current compromises that have been reached on [[Muhammad]]: * We all agreed that the top image should be Muhammad's name written in beautiful calligraphy, since that's a traditionally depicted in Islam and reflects its anti-depiction stance. * We agreed to be careful that our images weren't unnecessarily large or unreasonably numerous. * We decided, throughout the main article, to rely primarily upon images from Islamic cultures-- they seemed to best illustrate Muhammad himself, rather than using him as a just a symbol of Islam. * We agreed that Western images tell us more about Muhammad-as-viewed-from-the-West, and thus we only used them when in the Western Views of Muhammad section. * We all agreed that controversial cartoons of Muhammad had very very little to tell us about Muhammad himself, and thus had no place in the Muhammad article. * We made a Frequently-asked-questions list to try to sincerely explain that we truly we weren't trying to cause offense or be anti-Muslim. We also explained about image filtering and how a reader can decide for themselves what to view. * We recognized the need for on-going communication created a special talk page just to engage in respectful dialogue with people concerned about the use of Muhammad images. * Most of us tried very very hard to be as empathic and caring as possible in those discussions. Indeed, we routinely pointed to the Christian taboos like pornography and piss-christ, using our coverage of those taboos in order to prove that we weren't singling out Muslims. So, in practice, NOTCENSORED doesn't make things black and white at all. There are lots of shades of gray. There's respectful debate and civil discussion. There's an evolving mutual understanding between groups. We came together and hammered out a well-thought-out consensus that struck a balance between our sincere desire not to offend and our essential mission to inform. You may not think it's the perfect solution, and neither do I. I'm a free-speecher, so I'm not happy that we made agreed to make the images as smal as we did Of course, others feel the images are too big. The consensus there will continue to evolve over time-- but the process basically worked. Except for new users, our Muslim editors don't expect that their own offense can justify deleting legitimately educational images. Similarly, our free-speech editors don't expect that NOTCENSORED would justify inserting the anti-Muslim cartoons into the article. Everyone can see there's a consensus in place, and just about everyone understands that their individual opinions shouldn't be able
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Ting Chen wrote: Hello Alec, I don't oppose people 'censoring' themselves if that's truly their choice-- what I oppose is someone censoring US against our consent. What I oppose is WMF trying take a NONCENSORED project swap out NPOV/NOTCENSORED in favor of a fiat-imposed potential-offensiveness standard. This is the passage from your mail that confuses me at most. Whom do you mean with US? You wrote that Wikipedia is notcensored, but ar-wp is also Wikipedia, as well as the other 270 some language versions of Wikipedia, including the ace-wp, or not? Is it censored or is it notcensored? And as I mentioned, even en-wp is not notcensored. Also en-wp has rules and policies that imposes biases. Exactly here we have a page that has been heavily censored: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nick_Bergdiff=prevoldid=4110750 there were once a number of images on that page but now they are gone and the current page has no images at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Berg The original images have been deleted from the site too. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:NickBergDead.pngaction=editredlink=1 So we can clearly say that en:wp is most definitely not notcensored: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Nick_Bergoldid=3571270 purged, and made safe for Western sensibilities. On the more mundane and that all the worst here we have a typical example of a group on en:wp queuing up to be offended and punish the offender: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/User_namesoldid=375628346#Wolfpussy for a user name that almost 100% of users wouldn't give a second glance. There is also another bit of nonsense on that page to do with Niabot started by Robofish: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Usernames_for_administrator_attentiondiff=prevoldid=370243683 who seems oblivious that his own username 'Robo' is a prefix of Robot of which Bot is the suffix. en:wp is crawling with so many censorious little narcs creating trouble it is unreal. Later you say that I am not comparing any Wikimedian with the Red Guards but that is exactly what it appears to be at times. See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:VAwebteam#File_copyright_problem_with_File:Cunliffeowen.jpg it is completely ridiculous that every few months or so some impudent little so and so feels it necessary to harass that account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:VAwebteam#Speedy_deletion_nomination_of_File:Favrile.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:VAwebteam/COIN_archive one is amazed at the forbearance and patience of that account. Be wary the current incumbent does leave, someone new might not be prepared to deal with the Cadres at all. This is the reason why I said notcensored is a bad argument, because it doesn't describe the reality. We have consensus on a lot of points, for example I think every language version agrees that we want to use neutral languages to describe the facts, we don't want an article to use to emotional or enthusiastic words. We want to include as much opinions about an issue as possible and we don't want to omit any opinion that is important enough to be included in an encyclopedia. And so on and so on. That is the point that the NOTCENSORED brigands miss. That they only have room for one opinion - their own - and cannot conceive of a world which isn't black and white. Where consuming content is situational and where the user has a choice of what and when they read or view something. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Hello Alec, at first thank you for the long mail. It would take me some time to write my own answer but I don't want to make a hasty and unconsidered reply. So if the answer comes a little late, please accept my honest apolozies. My reaction to your mail is very complicated. There are a lot of things that I agree and I support. But there are also other things that I disagree or that confuse me. But the nature of a discussion, I will elaborate more on points that I disagree than where I agree with you. This may induce an impression as if the disagreement is far larger. Since the mail is very large, I will not cite everyline of your mail and make a comment on it. If you think that I have ommitted something important, please ask, it is not my intention to cite you partially. Also it seems that Thunderbird has some problem in cite your mail so maybe I will make some copy-and-past, if the format looks bad, please also bear with me. Last not least, although I hate to repeat this disclaimer again and again: It is all my personal opinion. When I wrote my last mail, one of the main motive is that I think the way how Robert's initial mail was treated is not ok. Robert, let's say comes from outside, has a task from the board, and asks the community to give its comments and what he got was more or less go away, we don't want to talk about it and whatever you do, sorry you are doomed as a Nazi. I know the topic is emotional, and it had repeated again and again. But because it repeats again and again it shows that it is important. And it is important for Robert's work to get a good response, like that from you and the one from Milos later in the thread. Your mail had changed the character of this thread, from a very rejective to a very engaged, and this alone is for me the reason for a big thank you. Am 24.07.2010 16:47, wrote Alec Conroy: To begin with, please consider that NOTCENSORED has been the law of the land for many years and Wikipedia has prospered under it. It's not a new idea. I think this is the idea state for us. And as you said there are a lot of values in this idea. And most of us had discussed endless times to uphold this idea. For example for me on my home wiki (which is the zh-wp). Everytime in the past when zh-wp was blocked on mainland China we had one (or many times) discussion about if we should change our policy so that more people can access many many information that are totally inpolitical and valuable. But like in the physics, the idealized state is not the real life. I mentioned in my last mail three examples where our projects already do filtering today by its current policies. I can give you two more: - When on Wikimania this year in Gdansk I had a talk in one evening with a long time wiki-friend of mine, zh:user:Mountain, who is the first Chinese Wikipedian at all. So he told me about his childhood in a village in the coast of Shandong province. And told that in that part of China there were a lot of old traditions that are now dying out. For example the locals earlier had special technik to fish ensis [[:en:Ensis]]. Nowaday no one is practicing that technique anymore because the coastal line is now used for salt production. He told me that he would like to write some article about these old traditions but he is aware that these articles would be deleted because he cannot find any sources and citations for them. So unless some Chinese ethmologist come to this (unimportant) part of China and write some scientific articles about them, they would go lost for ever. - In June I attended a german community conference called Skillshare. And one of the sessions was about quality. One user complained on that session that our quality rules make our articles bias because for example in medicine only the knowledge of well sourced western medicine get their full length and detail, while the poorly researched and sourced traditional medicine of other cultures only get very poorly written articles. So the result is that our rules itself work like a filter, or a censorship. In these both cases it censors in favour of those knowledges that are in focus of scientific research and against those that are poorly documented. If a scientifc magazine only accept articles about western medicine we would clearly call it censored. And if our rules oblige us to do the same? Notcensored is an idea. It is a good idea, but in the real life it is not possible. There are a lot of reasons why it is not possible, it must not be religious or political. It could be scientific, which sounds weird. It could be, that we try to improve our quality and reliability and thus put up rules that work as a censorship, which also sounds weird. You say the notcensored Wikipedia had worked in the history. The fact is, the notcensored Wikipedia had never worked. Everytime we want to put up a new rule on editorial content, the question is, what do we win through
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
A child seeing such a page will ordinarily go instead to something they understand. Unless we're talking about teen-agers. I see this as an excellent example of the slippery slope we would be in if we did anything targeted at facilitating censorship, especially considering the author of the book is a major writer. There are some elements of these themes in some of his other work also. Do we label them as well? The only sustainable position is that readers can do what they want with our content. If they can derive a filter for what hey want . (I don't see how they can for a novel except by putting it specifically on a blacklist) On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:54 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 25 July 2010 18:17, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: You're right, it is not just about images. If I set up a censored account for a small child, I should be able to set it up in such a way that they won't be able to see articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_(novel) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice) So, if the child clicks on a wikilink leading there, they would get a screen saying, Sorry, this page is only available to adult accounts. Child responds by logging out. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Wikipedia images and pages normally have descriptive titles. If you want to prevent children seeing bad stuff on the internet, set up a web blocker. Mind you, if you want to prevent children seeing bad stuff on the internet, best to raise them in an Amish village. On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 5:05 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: A child seeing such a page will ordinarily go instead to something they understand. Unless we're talking about teen-agers. I see this as an excellent example of the slippery slope we would be in if we did anything targeted at facilitating censorship, especially considering the author of the book is a major writer. There are some elements of these themes in some of his other work also. Do we label them as well? The only sustainable position is that readers can do what they want with our content. If they can derive a filter for what hey want . (I don't see how they can for a novel except by putting it specifically on a blacklist) On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:54 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 25 July 2010 18:17, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: You're right, it is not just about images. If I set up a censored account for a small child, I should be able to set it up in such a way that they won't be able to see articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_(novel)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_%28novel%29or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_%28sexual_practice%29 So, if the child clicks on a wikilink leading there, they would get a screen saying, Sorry, this page is only available to adult accounts. Child responds by logging out. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Hoi, Children in Romania know what to expect of a pizdăhttp://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pizd%C4%83#Romanian, children in Indonesia know it for the tempikhttp://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=tempikaction=editredlink=1.. They are both descriptive and you do not know at all that you want to look for them Truly the notion that the description will tell you that something is not safe for wok is naive. It is also naive to use it for setting up a web blocker. Trust me, kids are quite capable to find their way around such silly toys because they have more incentive to do so then you have to set up something like a web blocker. Thanks, GerardM On 26 July 2010 19:17, Oliver Keyes scire.fac...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia images and pages normally have descriptive titles. If you want to prevent children seeing bad stuff on the internet, set up a web blocker. Mind you, if you want to prevent children seeing bad stuff on the internet, best to raise them in an Amish village. On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 5:05 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: A child seeing such a page will ordinarily go instead to something they understand. Unless we're talking about teen-agers. I see this as an excellent example of the slippery slope we would be in if we did anything targeted at facilitating censorship, especially considering the author of the book is a major writer. There are some elements of these themes in some of his other work also. Do we label them as well? The only sustainable position is that readers can do what they want with our content. If they can derive a filter for what hey want . (I don't see how they can for a novel except by putting it specifically on a blacklist) On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:54 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 25 July 2010 18:17, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: You're right, it is not just about images. If I set up a censored account for a small child, I should be able to set it up in such a way that they won't be able to see articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_(novel)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_%28novel%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_%28novel%29or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_%28sexual_practice%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_%28sexual_practice%29 So, if the child clicks on a wikilink leading there, they would get a screen saying, Sorry, this page is only available to adult accounts. Child responds by logging out. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
David Goodman wrote: A child seeing such a page will ordinarily go instead to something they understand. Unless we're talking about teen-agers. I see this as an excellent example of the slippery slope Would that be the slippery slope to the thin end of the wedge perchance? we would be in if we did anything targeted at facilitating censorship, especially considering the author of the book is a major writer. There are some elements of these themes in some of his other work also. Do we label them as well? It is not censorship to allow people the choice of what they read or see. Are you totally incapable of understanding that someone might well be flipping through works of Delany: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_R._Delany#Novels and not want to suddenly, without warning, to have descriptions of kids cocksucking on their work or school computer? Take flickr which will delete the accounts of people that insist on linking to Adult material, and their reasoning for doing so here: http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/115953/#reply737787 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 7/24/10 9:45 PM, Milos Rancic wrote: In other words cultural context is usually just an excuse for POV pushing of various kinds. Actually, I think the opposite is true. Right now we impose our arbitrary Western moral standards on the rest of the world, and because those standards are our own, they are transparent to us. For example, we are very sensitive to issues of privacy and child pornography, but not to issues of religious sensitivity or violence for example. I'm definitely a supporter of no censorship (I founded WikiProject Wikipedians Against Censorship), but I'm under no illusions that we don't have our own cultural context. I also don't think offering users and/or projects the ability to implement filtering equals censorship. No one complains about Flickr or Google being censored just because they offer filtering. Frankly, we're already filtering content, even on en.wiki, but only according to a default Western/American POV. We use line drawings instead of photos in articles on sex positions. We toned down the explicitness of the image we used to illustrate Lolicon. We tend to avoid putting porn, swastikas, and photos of dead bodies on the Main Page. In our view, this is simple editorial judgement. But other cultures could view this as POV-pushing just as much as we view efforts to filter religiously-offensive imagery as POV-pushing. So let's not kid ourselves. We have our own cultural biases and standards (which is not necessarily a bad thing). We don't have to argue that the sky is falling just because people are asking that their own cultural standards be accommodated in some way. IMO, filtering technology (if implemented correctly) is actually a good thing for those of us who want to keep Wikipedia uncensored. By letting people adapt Wikipedia to their own particular uses, they don't have to impose their POV on the rest of us. Ryan Kaldari ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 26 July 2010 20:08, Ryan Kaldari rkald...@wikimedia.org wrote: failure offer filtering. Frankly, we're already filtering content, even on en.wiki, but only according to a default Western/American POV. We use line drawings instead of photos in articles on sex positions. And this was a defective compromise with pushers of the censored POV at the time, so using it as a reason for more is the begging the question fallacy. Wikimedia's bias is to NPOV and the sum of the world's knowledge. Deliberately restricting that by default is a violation, on the face of it. Apart from using past failures as justification for future failures, do you have a proposal to address the problem of prior default filtering as a failure of neutrality in a manner that shows understanding of why this is a problem? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:08 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkald...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 7/24/10 9:45 PM, Milos Rancic wrote: In other words cultural context is usually just an excuse for POV pushing of various kinds. Actually, I think the opposite is true. Right now we impose our arbitrary Western moral standards on the rest of the world, and because those standards are our own, they are transparent to us. For example, we are very sensitive to issues of privacy and child pornography, but not to issues of religious sensitivity or violence for example. I'm definitely a supporter of no censorship (I founded WikiProject Wikipedians Against Censorship), but I'm under no illusions that we don't have our own cultural context. I also don't think offering users and/or projects the ability to implement filtering equals censorship. No one complains about Flickr or Google being censored just because they offer filtering. Frankly, we're already filtering content, even on en.wiki, but only according to a default Western/American POV. We use line drawings instead of photos in articles on sex positions. We toned down the explicitness of the image we used to illustrate Lolicon. We tend to avoid putting porn, swastikas, and photos of dead bodies on the Main Page. In our view, this is simple editorial judgement. But other cultures could view this as POV-pushing just as much as we view efforts to filter religiously-offensive imagery as POV-pushing. So let's not kid ourselves. We have our own cultural biases and standards (which is not necessarily a bad thing). We don't have to argue that the sky is falling just because people are asking that their own cultural standards be accommodated in some way. IMO, filtering technology (if implemented correctly) is actually a good thing for those of us who want to keep Wikipedia uncensored. By letting people adapt Wikipedia to their own particular uses, they don't have to impose their POV on the rest of us. I absolutely agree with you, except with the point that censorship problem of one cultural context should be solved by the censorship according to other cultural contexts. We should work on fixing our problem; we shouldn't create more problems. The only line which is reasonable are local laws. If pornography is not forbidden in Chile, we shouldn't do anything in relation to pornographic content in Chile. If photos of Tienanmen protests are forbidden in China, we should remove them for population from China. Anything else is pushing particular POV or to be nice cultural context. (BTW, whenever I hear the phrase cultural context in this sense, I am closer to the position from the quote misattributed to Goering: When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.) And thanks to pointing out to the editorial judgment. There is no excuse for any kind of editorial judgment which promotes censorship on one encyclopedia which main goal is to be neutral. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 26 July 2010 20:40, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: If photos of Tienanmen protests are forbidden in China, we should remove them for population from China. I certainly hope you're saying this as an attempt at reductio ad absurdum. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:43 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 26 July 2010 20:40, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: If photos of Tienanmen protests are forbidden in China, we should remove them for population from China. I certainly hope you're saying this as an attempt at reductio ad absurdum. No, but I haven't given the context. Here is the quote from my email to Robert Harris: My position toward this issue has ideological background. Thus, I don't pretend that it is the universal truth :) I am not contributing to Wikimedia projects to enlighten anyone. I don't want to force anyone to do something. If the will of the majority of population is not to see documentation about birth control, then it is not my problem. And, usually, it *is* the view of majority of population wherever this problem exists. I am willing to help to the minority and I completely support activists who are doing that. But, Wikimedia projects are not activist projects in the narrow sense. They are about gathering knowledge and giving it to the rest of the world. And if majority view of some population is not to see some part or all Wikimedia projects, I am fine with it. And to give an example from my country: I am living in a deeply corrupted country. OK, it is not likely that someone will go to the jail because someone else accused that person falsely. But, it is very hard to do anything in Serbia if a person is not well connected and if they don't want to be corrupted. (The main reason of keeping Wikimedia Serbia at low profile is, actually, this one. We don't want to be corrupted and we are passing harder way.) But, it is not a matter of Wikimedia Foundation to do anti-corruption activism in Serbia. It is a matter of inhabitants of Serbia. Doing information activism is sometimes stronger than doing legal activism. Ignoring majority opinion in Texas [if it makes a law which forbids educational material about sexuality] and showing to them educational materials in sexuality is the same kind activism as marking the roots of corruption in Serbia. While I am fully for that, I don't think that it is a Wikimedia job. But, as I said before, it is my ideological opinion and I am not saying that it is a universal truth. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
I don't think using an illustration of Bukake rather than a photo is a failure of neutrality, but perhaps we'll have to agree to disagree on that. Regardless, as a global project, we need to seriously consider what steps we can take to accommodate cultures very different from our own, while still retaining the openness and comprehensiveness that make our project so successful as an educational resource and collaborative project. If that means we let some people filter what they see on Wikipedia, so be it. And if it means banning Goatse from the Main Page, I'm not going to complain. Obviously we must defend Wikipedia against real censorship threats (deleting religious imagery, whitewashing political scandals, DMCA abuses, etc.), but I don't see anything threatening about Mr. Harris evaluating the issues, or people discussing ideas for filtering technology. I think we're pretty far away from the edge of the slippery slope, but if that changes, I'll be right there with you defending the integrity of the project. Ryan Kaldari On 7/26/10 12:39 PM, David Gerard wrote: On 26 July 2010 20:08, Ryan Kaldarirkald...@wikimedia.org wrote: failure offer filtering. Frankly, we're already filtering content, even on en.wiki, but only according to a default Western/American POV. We use line drawings instead of photos in articles on sex positions. And this was a defective compromise with pushers of the censored POV at the time, so using it as a reason for more is the begging the question fallacy. Wikimedia's bias is to NPOV and the sum of the world's knowledge. Deliberately restricting that by default is a violation, on the face of it. Apart from using past failures as justification for future failures, do you have a proposal to address the problem of prior default filtering as a failure of neutrality in a manner that shows understanding of why this is a problem? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
I should make the disclaimer that all of my opinions expressed on this list are as a community member rather than a WMF employee. I have no official involvement in the current study or any decision making power thereof. I just code donation banners :) Ryan Kaldari On 7/26/10 2:14 PM, Ryan Kaldari wrote: I don't think using an illustration of Bukake rather than a photo is a failure of neutrality, but perhaps we'll have to agree to disagree on that. Regardless, as a global project, we need to seriously consider what steps we can take to accommodate cultures very different from our own, while still retaining the openness and comprehensiveness that make our project so successful as an educational resource and collaborative project. If that means we let some people filter what they see on Wikipedia, so be it. And if it means banning Goatse from the Main Page, I'm not going to complain. Obviously we must defend Wikipedia against real censorship threats (deleting religious imagery, whitewashing political scandals, DMCA abuses, etc.), but I don't see anything threatening about Mr. Harris evaluating the issues, or people discussing ideas for filtering technology. I think we're pretty far away from the edge of the slippery slope, but if that changes, I'll be right there with you defending the integrity of the project. Ryan Kaldari On 7/26/10 12:39 PM, David Gerard wrote: On 26 July 2010 20:08, Ryan Kaldarirkald...@wikimedia.org wrote: failure offer filtering. Frankly, we're already filtering content, even on en.wiki, but only according to a default Western/American POV. We use line drawings instead of photos in articles on sex positions. And this was a defective compromise with pushers of the censored POV at the time, so using it as a reason for more is the begging the question fallacy. Wikimedia's bias is to NPOV and the sum of the world's knowledge. Deliberately restricting that by default is a violation, on the face of it. Apart from using past failures as justification for future failures, do you have a proposal to address the problem of prior default filtering as a failure of neutrality in a manner that shows understanding of why this is a problem? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 26 July 2010 22:14, Ryan Kaldari rkald...@wikimedia.org wrote: I don't see anything threatening about Mr. Harris evaluating the issues, As has been pointed out several times already, the presumption that there is a case to answer. (#5 on the original board resolution.) I note also that several board members initially voiced their support for Jimbo's unilateral deletion of content from Commons, and only backtracked when asked what on Earth they were basing their support upon. That I have to bring this up again now is because asking board members what they knew when - what they based their statements upon - was answered with the issue's over now, Jimbo quit, don't worry, be happy. Unfortunately, the issue is not over with, because those same board members, who are unwilling to state the basis on which they shot their mouths off before, have commissioned this study and will be deciding what to do with it. If you're seeking issues of cultural sensitivity and cultural imposition, the previous top-down action - which can reasonably be termed a Foundation action because the board backed Jimbo on his actions - led to a pile of Commons admins resigning at the imposition. After internal-l discussion, I got emails from lurkers (Chapter people) worried about what the hell the Foundation thought it was doing, and that they weren't comfortable to speak out about it on internal-l. And I realise I just said the lurkers support me in email, but they actually did ... so when you have chapters people talking about the possibility of a fork, and the thing precipitating it being a top-down restriction imposed by the Foundation, there's a reason this is a matter for serious concern, not something to be dismissed and ignored. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:50 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:43 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 26 July 2010 20:40, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: If photos of Tienanmen protests are forbidden in China, we should remove them for population from China. I certainly hope you're saying this as an attempt at reductio ad absurdum. Maybe my sentence was ambiguous: remove them for population from China means filter them for Chinese IPs. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Andreas Kolbe wrote: to see its content. Yes, the devil is in the details, and in working out the correct parameters for default IP access. Each language version of any project could make its own determination in this regard. Arabic, no Mohammed images; India, no sex and kissing; Dutch and German, the full Monty with no censorship at all. Whatever. From what I recall Germany is a problem because certain imagery (porn, violence) is NOT allowed unless you age verify. You cannot have bukkake images unless you have age verified. That was the problem that flickr had when they internationalized the site. The German law requires that if such images are accessible by minors then the site MUST remove access upon notification. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/BGH-eBay-kann-zur-Sperrung-jugendgefaehrdender-Angebote-verpflichtet-werden-150320.html That probably means that for de.wikipedia all porn images need to be deleted, and that might even stretch into commons too. That was flickr's interpretation of the law which is why they made yahoo.de accounts restricted to viewing moderate images only. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
2010/7/25 Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com: From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com Yes, the devil is in the details, and in working out the correct parameters for default IP access. Each language version of any project could make its own determination in this regard. Arabic, no Mohammed images; India, no sex and kissing; Dutch and German, the full Monty with no censorship at all. Whatever. The sum of all human knowledge! Filtered by default to what we think local prejudices are! And never mind that pesky Neutral Point Of View. No, not filtered according to what *we* think, but filtered according to what the local editor community in that project think is appropriate to their cultural context. I guess in most local editor communities the consensus about this is simply not achievable, as long as the entire project is POV and this is our real problem with implementing any kind of soft-semi but still cenzorship. It simply touches your personal cultural contex, which is different for devoted catholic or devoted musilm or the non-religous person. Moreover if it comes to pictures we are saying about Wikimedia Commons which is by default global. In fact English Wikipedia is quite global project as well... Each such person thinks the the general cenzorship rules should follow his/her cultural context. But the NPOV idea is that Wikipedia content should not be affected by POV coming form this or another cultural context, which let contribute to it no matter of your cultural contex, as long as you are able to accept having in Wikipedia all other's people POV mixed together in NPOV style. -- Tomek Polimerek Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Tomasz Ganicz wrote: 2010/7/25 Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com: From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com Yes, the devil is in the details, and in working out the correct parameters for default IP access. Each language version of any project could make its own determination in this regard. Arabic, no Mohammed images; India, no sex and kissing; Dutch and German, the full Monty with no censorship at all. Whatever. The sum of all human knowledge! Filtered by default to what we think local prejudices are! And never mind that pesky Neutral Point Of View. No, not filtered according to what *we* think, but filtered according to what the local editor community in that project think is appropriate to their cultural context. I guess in most local editor communities the consensus about this is simply not achievable, as long as the entire project is POV and this is our real problem with implementing any kind of soft-semi but still cenzorship. It simply touches your personal cultural contex, which is different for devoted catholic or devoted musilm or the non-religous person. Moreover if it comes to pictures we are saying about Wikimedia Commons which is by default global. In fact English Wikipedia is quite global project as well... Each such person thinks the the general cenzorship rules should follow his/her cultural context. But the NPOV idea is that Wikipedia content should not be affected by POV coming form this or another cultural context, which let contribute to it no matter of your cultural contex, as long as you are able to accept having in Wikipedia all other's people POV mixed together in NPOV style. I think you are confused. It is not a POV not to display images by default if those images can be accessed by a simple mouse click, it is simple good manners. For example I may want to read about 'Tribute pictures': http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cum%20tribute it doesn't mean to say that I want to look at some guy's spooge over a picture of the woman next door. And as I said earlier just because I'm reading about the Rawandan geonicide doesn't mean that I want to see images of mutilated bodies. And were I a Muslim I ought to be able to read about images of Mohammed without seeing images of him burning in hell. Of course I may wish to see all such images and so long as I can should I so desire then it is not censorship nor it a violation of NPOV. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
I was not aware of the Flickr situation in Germany. Are some of their servers based in Germany? As far as I am aware, the German Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien[1] and the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (KJM) are limited in what they can do about internet offerings registered abroad. This is information which I received from them upon request. They told me all they can do is contact their counterparts in the respective country, express their concern, and ask for their support. A. [1] http://www.bundespruefstelle.de/bpjm/information-in-english.html --- On Sun, 25/7/10, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: From: wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Sunday, 25 July, 2010, 10:54 Andreas Kolbe wrote: to see its content. Yes, the devil is in the details, and in working out the correct parameters for default IP access. Each language version of any project could make its own determination in this regard. Arabic, no Mohammed images; India, no sex and kissing; Dutch and German, the full Monty with no censorship at all. Whatever. From what I recall Germany is a problem because certain imagery (porn, violence) is NOT allowed unless you age verify. You cannot have bukkake images unless you have age verified. That was the problem that flickr had when they internationalized the site. The German law requires that if such images are accessible by minors then the site MUST remove access upon notification. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/BGH-eBay-kann-zur-Sperrung-jugendgefaehrdender-Angebote-verpflichtet-werden-150320.html That probably means that for de.wikipedia all porn images need to be deleted, and that might even stretch into commons too. That was flickr's interpretation of the law which is why they made yahoo.de accounts restricted to viewing moderate images only. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 1:12 PM, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: I think you are confused. It is not a POV not to display images by default if those images can be accessed by a simple mouse click, it is simple good manners. For example I may want to read about 'Tribute pictures': http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cum%20tribute it doesn't mean to say that I want to look at some guy's spooge over a picture of the woman next door. And as I said earlier just because I'm reading about the Rawandan geonicide doesn't mean that I want to see images of mutilated bodies. And were I a Muslim I ought to be able to read about images of Mohammed without seeing images of him burning in hell. Of course I may wish to see all such images and so long as I can should I so desire then it is not censorship nor it a violation of NPOV. And what about words? Do you think that one devoted homophobic Christian would be willing to see [relevant] citation inside of some general article that Jesus was gay? If it is not acceptable to someone to see pornographic content, it is highly possible that to that person is not acceptable to have possibility to read educational materials about sexuality. Should we put all of those content out of moderate Wikipedia? I am not saying that we shouldn't deal with it, but talking about moderate Wikipedia and censoring just images is oversimplification of the matter. There are tons of more controversial material all over Wikimedia projects, than just images of humans having sex. (Is depiction of mosquitoes having sex also pornography? And what about apes? Zoophilia?) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Milos, when I am talking about the possibility of a censored default for IP access, I am talking about the types of censorship Flickr and YouTube are using. They categorise their content on the basis of whether it is moderate or explicit adult content. This has not resulted in Serbian YouTube users having to register an adult account to view videos critical of the Serbian Orthodox Church. ;) But you're right in drawing attention to the potential problem of very small projects' decision-making process being subject to gaming. Which categories to offer the projects for configuring IP access should remain the decision of the Foundation, in consultation with the wider Wikipedia community, rather than any small local project. For example, I think most people in the wider community would be okay with the idea of Arabic Wikipedia being configured in such a way that its users will not be confronted with images of Mohammed unless they register an account and explicitly opt in to seeing them. You also mention totalitarian countries. This is a whole other topic. What is being proposed here is that any user would *always* be able to override the censored IP default mode, by registering an account and reconfiguring their preferences. The content *would always be there*, but people surfing to it would be told, as they are in YouTube and Flickr, that they need to register an account to view it. A totalitarian regime would not be satisfied with that. A. --- On Sun, 25/7/10, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: I am completely unsure how to react after this sentence: to laugh or to cry. I am serious. OK, it is not so strong emotion to loudly laugh or cry, but the emotion is in that range. POV pushers at, let's say, Serbian Wikipedia that nothing bad could be said against Serbian Orthodox clergy just because Serbia has 90% of Orthodox Christians formally (including myself, although I've never expressed that and although if I have to choose some religion, I would prefer Taoism). In other words cultural context is usually just an excuse for POV pushing of various kinds. I can understand the aim that we should adapt content to totalitarian regimes which filter Internet access, like those in North Korea, Australia and Apple are, for example. I don't have anything against creating a censored edition of Wikipedia for all of poor people who are forced to have internet access via iPad. It is the question of being accessible there or not. But, in all other cases it is about allowing POV because of some reason or being overcautious toward local laws. Strictly following, let's say, Swiss law on Romansh Wikipedia is not so rational according to the Wikimedia goals. Any sane lawyer would understand that it has to sue WMF before US court after a couple of sentences with a representative of WM CH. But I understand that it is more than rational decision for many other places. Like for iPad. And if we are really really really willing to go into censorship, it would eat significant part of our resources. I can imagine that I'll be overloaded with various complaints about POV pushing and cultural contexts as a steward all over Wikimedia projects. Imagine any political conflict. We would have to analyze carefully is it according to the cultural context A to present facts about cultural context B. For example, I am really willing to know what is and what is not according to the Afghanistan and Pashto Wikipedia cultural contexts, not counting regular issues related to Islam. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
From: Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com And what about words? Do you think that one devoted homophobic Christian would be willing to see [relevant] citation inside of some general article that Jesus was gay? If it is not acceptable to someone to see pornographic content, it is highly possible that to that person is not acceptable to have possibility to read educational materials about sexuality. Should we put all of those content out of moderate Wikipedia? You're right, it is not just about images. If I set up a censored account for a small child, I should be able to set it up in such a way that they won't be able to see articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_(novel) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice) So, if the child clicks on a wikilink leading there, they would get a screen saying, Sorry, this page is only available to adult accounts. A. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Andreas Kolbe wrote: I was not aware of the Flickr situation in Germany. Are some of their servers based in Germany? As far as I am aware, the German Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien[1] and the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (KJM) are limited in what they can do about internet offerings registered abroad. This is information which I received from them upon request. They told me all they can do is contact their counterparts in the respective country, express their concern, and ask for their support. A. [1] http://www.bundespruefstelle.de/bpjm/information-in-english.html Yahoo have a physical presence in Germany. The issue was as that soon as flickr provided a German language interface, then the lawyers took the view that such an internationalization could be taken as providing content targeted at German users. The servers as such are mainly in the US. In any case I'd be very surprised if German porn websites could get around the law simply by hosting the content in the US. In any case its been 3 years and flickr/yahoo have not seen fit to relax the rules. The head of the KJM said that flickr simply had to *delete* any content that they were informed about. They chose to ban German Y! ids from accessing the restricted content. A number decamped to ipernity but found the rules on what was allowed there even tougher. Most are back on flickr with non German Y! ids. One might want to check out what one's liability is if one happens to be in Germany and are editing or Admining porn page in German. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 25 July 2010 18:17, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: You're right, it is not just about images. If I set up a censored account for a small child, I should be able to set it up in such a way that they won't be able to see articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_(novel) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice) So, if the child clicks on a wikilink leading there, they would get a screen saying, Sorry, this page is only available to adult accounts. Child responds by logging out. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
George Herbert wrote: Is there in fact sufficient evidence that this is a topic that the Foundation must, or should, engage in actively at this time? I know why the Foundation has an inclination to get involved - people ask about it, and some very uncomfortable stuff finds its way into Commons and the Encyclopedias at times and in places, and it's inconvenient to have Fox News making a big deal about false claims of pedophiles or child porn on Wikipedia when we're trying to be taken seriously as a responsible charitable organization, and so forth. But that does not mean that it's necessarily something the Foundation should involve itself in at this point. Good point. The key characteristic that legally distinguishes an Internet Service Provider from a publisher is editorial control. If the Foundation goes too far in deciding about content it risks being treated as a publisher, and jeopardizes its safe harbour as an ISP. An ISP must still respond to properly presented claims, but as a non-sentient corporation it is by itself incapable of distinguishing the moral qualities of submitted material. I have no problem identifying myself in the no-censorship end of the spectrum, but even there I can see the value of modest controls that would give the user the option of not seeing certain images. The irony is that we accept in some measure the wisdom of crowds by allowing everyone to edit, but we avoid that wisdom for rating content. I have long believed in having one or more numerical ratings for articles. The criterion for one of those ratings could be objectionability. The synthesized rating could be a basis for a filter where the user could for example choose to hide only the most objectionable ten percent of material; a relatively conservative percentage could be applied as a default figure. Rating images in this way could be easier than rating text since posted images tend to remain fairly stable, and less subject to editorial variation. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
I have no idea whether anything in here is productive or just reiteration of the same old themes. I doubt it will be coherent or persuasive, but this discussion is too important not to try to say something. Opinions were solicited, so here's such an opinion. I don't really know if a discussion at this point is wise, particularly from me and my verbosity. :). So skip if skeptical, and abort if you start finding my words, well, unproductive. :) -Alec What I find not convincing is the slogan No censorship. I think this is a bad argument. Okay, I think that's my cue. I'm definitely in No Censorship camp, so let my try to explain why that argument has such pull for some of us. - To begin with, please consider that NOTCENSORED has been the law of the land for many years and Wikipedia has prospered under it. It's not a new idea. What's new is this idea that potential offensiveness is a threat to us, and thus, a valid criterion for making editorial decision. That would be a huge deviation from our very successful status quo. Maybe you think it would be a good change, maybe you think would be a bad change, but I think we can all agree it would be a very CONTROVERSIAL change among Wikimedians. And when you stop and think about it, of course any such proposal is _bound_ to be very very controversial among those very individuals who are already deeply invested in a NPOV/NON-CENSORED project. After all, we've spent years explaining NPOV / NOTCENSORED to Muslims over Muhammad images, for example, and to Christians over Piss-Christ. We've defended racist imagery, we've defended neo-nazi hate-sites. We've committed to not-censored, we've worked for NOTCENSORED, we've offended totally innocent people so wikipedia could be NOTCENSORED, and it was even theoretically possible somebody might have died over NOTCENSORED. We did this because Wikipedia successfully convinced us that an uncensored encyclopedia was a wonderful thing. And we've grown very attached to it and the principles it espoused. Maybe we do need a potentially non-offensive project in addition. But if there is to be a Brave New Encyclopedia that promises freedom from potential offense, shouldn't it be started as a NEW project with a NEW userbase and a NEW editing community that's committed to these NEW principles? I'm skeptical that that a potential offfense can actually work, even as its own project. But, no harm in trying. Meanwhile, our Wikipedia, the NPOV/NOTCENSORED Wikipedia, does work! And It continues to work! Wikipedia ain't broke-- don't fracture the community into bits by trying to impose a fix. -- Some say: What's the difference between deleting offensive material and deleting anything else? REALLY, isn't ANY deletion, on some level, censorship? Well, no. :) Normal run-of-the-mill deletions (e.g. of nonsense, etc) HELP our mission by preserving our limited computing resources. Censorship HURTS our mission by intentionally making it harder for our readers to find legal, legitimate information they themselves are actively trying to access. Normal decisions are justified using terms like usefulness and notable. Censorship is justified using terms like potential-offensiveness, pornographic, a threat to children, or immoral. Normal decisions are democratic, culture-neutral, and are based on verifiable facts. Censorship is beyond debate, it's not culture-neutral, it's imposed rather than accepted, and it's based on unstated emotional biases and prejudices. (And if those distinctions don't help determine which is which-- Censorship is the one that's really, really controversial around here. :) ) -- Let me take some example. Ar-wp decides per community concensus not to use Mohammed images. Seen in the light of en-wp rules, this is a censorship. If we maintain no censorship then ar-wp must remove that concensus. If not, we cannot maintain the no censorship slogan. Admittedly, free-information people can be very black and white-- but even I'm not quite THIS black and white. :) I, for one, am not at all troubled that WMF might host a project that, via TRUE consensus, decides to be, by my standards, censored. (I actually really wish we had a few censored english-language projects lying around, so people would be less tempted to try to co-opt EnWiki.) I don't oppose people 'censoring' themselves if that's truly their choice-- what I oppose is someone censoring US against our consent. What I oppose is WMF trying take a NONCENSORED project swap out NPOV/NOTCENSORED in favor of a fiat-imposed potential-offensiveness standard. Maybe a user is against every political censorship but is uncomfortable about having religious insulting images. Is he for or not for censorship? There's nothing wrong with wanting to avoid offending people. I have a LOT of sympathy and patience for people who think that wikipedia should be censored, ESPECIALLY with the Muhammad issue where issues of
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Thanks Alec. I wouldn't like to see Wikipedia fork either. Excirial's suggestion -- which I understand to mean enabling readers to self-censor the type of content that offends them, or that they don't want their children to see -- strikes me as the way we can have our cake and eat it. It's also in line with what people like google, YouTube and flickr are doing. If you want to see certain types of content, you are asked to set up an account, and/or change your default preference. In practice, this could mean -- - That I don't see images I don't want to see in Wikipedia articles. - That I can click on a grayed image if, in an exceptional case, I do want to see it. - That I can set up my child's Wikipedia account in such a way that my child can NOT click to display the image I don't want them to see. - That I can set up my or my child's Wikipedia account in such a way that Wikipedia will not display articles I do not want it to display. - That IPs are shown a mildly censored version, and that seeing the uncensored version of Wikipedia requires registering an account and setting the preferences up accordingly. This requires a lot of thought and work behind the scenes to categorise content. But it is surely the best approach to make Wikipedia the encyclopedia for everyone. And that's an encyclopedia that can happily host the goatse image, too, for those who want to see it. A. --- On Sat, 24/7/10, Alec Conroy alecmcon...@gmail.com wrote: From: Alec Conroy alecmcon...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Saturday, 24 July, 2010, 15:47 I have no idea whether anything in here is productive or just reiteration of the same old themes. I doubt it will be coherent or persuasive, but this discussion is too important not to try to say something. Opinions were solicited, so here's such an opinion. I don't really know if a discussion at this point is wise, particularly from me and my verbosity. :). So skip if skeptical, and abort if you start finding my words, well, unproductive. :) -Alec What I find not convincing is the slogan No censorship. I think this is a bad argument. Okay, I think that's my cue. I'm definitely in No Censorship camp, so let my try to explain why that argument has such pull for some of us. - To begin with, please consider that NOTCENSORED has been the law of the land for many years and Wikipedia has prospered under it. It's not a new idea. What's new is this idea that potential offensiveness is a threat to us, and thus, a valid criterion for making editorial decision. That would be a huge deviation from our very successful status quo. Maybe you think it would be a good change, maybe you think would be a bad change, but I think we can all agree it would be a very CONTROVERSIAL change among Wikimedians. And when you stop and think about it, of course any such proposal is _bound_ to be very very controversial among those very individuals who are already deeply invested in a NPOV/NON-CENSORED project. After all, we've spent years explaining NPOV / NOTCENSORED to Muslims over Muhammad images, for example, and to Christians over Piss-Christ. We've defended racist imagery, we've defended neo-nazi hate-sites. We've committed to not-censored, we've worked for NOTCENSORED, we've offended totally innocent people so wikipedia could be NOTCENSORED, and it was even theoretically possible somebody might have died over NOTCENSORED. We did this because Wikipedia successfully convinced us that an uncensored encyclopedia was a wonderful thing. And we've grown very attached to it and the principles it espoused. Maybe we do need a potentially non-offensive project in addition. But if there is to be a Brave New Encyclopedia that promises freedom from potential offense, shouldn't it be started as a NEW project with a NEW userbase and a NEW editing community that's committed to these NEW principles? I'm skeptical that that a potential offfense can actually work, even as its own project. But, no harm in trying. Meanwhile, our Wikipedia, the NPOV/NOTCENSORED Wikipedia, does work! And It continues to work! Wikipedia ain't broke-- don't fracture the community into bits by trying to impose a fix. -- Some say: What's the difference between deleting offensive material and deleting anything else? REALLY, isn't ANY deletion, on some level, censorship? Well, no. :) Normal run-of-the-mill deletions (e.g. of nonsense, etc) HELP our mission by preserving our limited computing resources. Censorship HURTS our mission by intentionally making it harder for our readers to find legal, legitimate information they themselves are actively trying to access. Normal decisions are justified using terms like
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 24 July 2010 18:28, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: - That IPs are shown a mildly censored version, and that seeing the uncensored version of Wikipedia requires registering an account and setting the preferences up accordingly. And this is where it all breaks down. Once you start to offer a partially censored version as standard you are basically going to have to fight an eternal war until you give up and reacht he bottom of the slippery slope. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 24 July 2010 18:39, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: On 24 July 2010 18:28, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: - That IPs are shown a mildly censored version, and that seeing the uncensored version of Wikipedia requires registering an account and setting the preferences up accordingly. And this is where it all breaks down. Once you start to offer a partially censored version as standard you are basically going to have to fight an eternal war until you give up and reacht he bottom of the slippery slope. Yes. Unless it is actually agreed by consensus of the project communities themselves, it will not fly. If it is imposed by the Foundation, the community will, as has been discussed, get up and *leave*. Saying a fork will happen is not a threat of forking, it's a statement of what it's *utterly obvious* will happen in the case of a top down imposition. I might be wrong in saying that, but I don't think I am. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
geni wrote: On 24 July 2010 18:28, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: - That IPs are shown a mildly censored version, and that seeing the uncensored version of Wikipedia requires registering an account and setting the preferences up accordingly. And this is where it all breaks down. Once you start to offer a partially censored version as standard you are basically going to have to fight an eternal war until you give up and reacht he bottom of the slippery slope. No you don't. There are some on flickr that want to publish their art nudes as 'safe' content, and others that want to post bukkake as 'moderate' or whatever. They tehn complain when flickr ban them from posting any image as 'safe'. They can still post images but they will all be made moderate, or restricted. Most of the 'Adult' content posting community have little sympathy for the complainants. And whilst the system is perfect you don't generally stumble across porn unless you go looking for it. To work the content categories need to be few and broad otherwise the system will be too complicated. Also the boundaries between one category and the next somewhat elastic otherwise people will game it. When moderating content if in doubt move it up to the next higher restriction, because people can always override it if they chose. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
--- On Sat, 24/7/10, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: - That IPs are shown a mildly censored version, and that seeing the uncensored version of Wikipedia requires registering an account and setting the preferences up accordingly. And this is where it all breaks down. Once you start to offer a partially censored version as standard you are basically going to have to fight an eternal war until you give up and reacht he bottom of the slippery slope. Yes. Unless it is actually agreed by consensus of the project communities themselves, it will not fly. If it is imposed by the Foundation, the community will, as has been discussed, get up and *leave*. Saying a fork will happen is not a threat of forking, it's a statement of what it's *utterly obvious* will happen in the case of a top down imposition. I might be wrong in saying that, but I don't think I am. I am not against making every effort to bring about community consensus. But note that people have not left YouTube in droves, people have not left Flickr in droves, just because unregistered IPs don't get to see YouTube's gynaecological examination videos, or Flickr's porn. People have not stopped using google just because they have to change a preference if they want to look for porn images. And Flickr still *has* its porn, and its porn is now better safeguarded than if it were unfiltered. There is no slippery slope that ends with all controversial material deleted. We should learn from popular sites like YouTube and Flickr. We're the only site operating in this order of magnitude that does not have any system at all set up in this area. Let's remember that, just as with YouTube, the amount of material affected is a *tiny* proportion of the overall content available. You could surf Wikipedia and Commons for months as an IP before you come onto a page that requires you to register and change your preferences to see its content. Yes, the devil is in the details, and in working out the correct parameters for default IP access. Each language version of any project could make its own determination in this regard. Arabic, no Mohammed images; India, no sex and kissing; Dutch and German, the full Monty with no censorship at all. Whatever. You *could* have a self-censorship option for registered users and always leave IP access unfiltered by default, but if that means minors can evade whatever account settings their parents or teachers have set up by the simple expedient of logging out, this would rob the system of a good part of its effectiveness. So yes, I see the problem, but that is how it is, unless someone can think of a better solution. And as far as I and my family are concerned, I'd be happy to surf all-in. It is a set-up once and forget thing, and then I have the same Wikipedia I've always had. A. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 25 July 2010 00:46, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: Yes, the devil is in the details, and in working out the correct parameters for default IP access. Each language version of any project could make its own determination in this regard. Arabic, no Mohammed images; India, no sex and kissing; Dutch and German, the full Monty with no censorship at all. Whatever. The sum of all human knowledge! Filtered by default to what we think local prejudices are! And never mind that pesky Neutral Point Of View. This didn't save Encarta. They did this as a marketing move. They threw neutrality out the window as a marketing move [1]. That this is a blatant distortion was problematic enough that Britannica took them up on it [2]. I recall a discussion (I think it was on wikien-l) where Microsoft's blatant warping of knowledge for marketing reasons was discussed and laughed at, as aspiring to neutrality was obviously a better way to sum up the world's knowledge, without favour. Microsoft wanted to sell CDs, so had a strong motivation to slant away from uncomfortable facts; we aren't in that business. I think aspiring to neutrality would be a bad thing to throw away and deeply compromise the mission. Enabling and encouraging people to do so, much more. That articles on a given subject in different language Wikipedias can display completely different POVs is a mark of the articles in question not being anywhere near good enough yet - it's not something to encourage and foster, as would be the consequence of what you advocate here. - d. [1] http://www.btimes.co.za/97/0406/tech/tech6.htm [2] http://www.howtoknow.com/contragates.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 25 July 2010 01:07, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: This didn't save Encarta. They did this as a marketing move. They threw neutrality out the window as a marketing move [1]. That this is a blatant distortion was problematic enough that Britannica took them up on it [2]. I recall a discussion (I think it was on wikien-l) where Microsoft's blatant warping of knowledge for marketing reasons was discussed and laughed at, as aspiring to neutrality was obviously a better way to sum up the world's knowledge, without favour. Microsoft wanted to sell CDs, so had a strong motivation to slant away from uncomfortable facts; we aren't in that business. Found it! It was wikipedia-l, March 2005: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020575.html Gates' argument was that readers will get upset about content that may fly in the face of their reality. Note that the word reality here seems to mean personal POV. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020576.html - Delirium points out the practical upshot of the horrific damage done to NPOV by merely having multiple Wikipedias in the same language with national bias. I'd think we'd want people to be able to get globally neutral information in their local language, not just the locally-biased version. (And I see I note in a followup a concurrent [2005] discussion on wikien-l - where people are insisting Wikipedia cannot possibly succeed unless it censors itself, for marketing reasons. The reasons to censor seem to change with the seasons; the reasons not to censor keep pointing to NPOV, which was there before Wikipedia existed, and the mission.) - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com Yes, the devil is in the details, and in working out the correct parameters for default IP access. Each language version of any project could make its own determination in this regard. Arabic, no Mohammed images; India, no sex and kissing; Dutch and German, the full Monty with no censorship at all. Whatever. The sum of all human knowledge! Filtered by default to what we think local prejudices are! And never mind that pesky Neutral Point Of View. No, not filtered according to what *we* think, but filtered according to what the local editor community in that project think is appropriate to their cultural context. A. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 3:36 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: No, not filtered according to what *we* think, but filtered according to what the local editor community in that project think is appropriate to their cultural context. I am completely unsure how to react after this sentence: to laugh or to cry. I am serious. OK, it is not so strong emotion to loudly laugh or cry, but the emotion is in that range. You know that you are living in a very nice country when one of the worst things which foreigners remember about your country is food. UK is such good country. Or at least England without London. Many of people from my country were in England because of various reasons. One of the most important reason is cultural exchange of some kind. (Yes, paradoxically, England is not usually a place for finding a job. Austria, Germany and nowdays Slovenia and UAE are, while Canada is for emigration. But, England is usually for those who prefer to keep in their English schwa instead of 'r' and think that monarchy is a cool form of government. OK, many of us like England because of The Clash, Only Fools and Horses and Rowan Atkinson, but British Council and other British cultural and quasi-cultural institutions usually don't promote that part of English culture.) So, groups from previously described population usually face with horrible English food in some city which is not London. Some of them try to convince themselves that chips with mustard are very delicious, some of them are trying to find some systemic solution, like searching for the nearest McDonald's and hoping that there are big macs without mustard. But, I've heard for one very creative solution. One person was probably not for the first time in England or she'd previously known all necessary things about English food. And she wrote inside of the questionnaire that she is a religious Serbian Orthodox Christian and that her faith forbids her to eat anything else than pork and beef. And she got it. When you are inside of large language area or inside of well developed society, it is hard for you to imagine that some irrational personal frustrations could affect one project very hardly. As smaller community is, as it is more affected by personal worldview of some contributors. And frustrations are various: from benign to very serious. All smaller than top ten projects passed heavy struggle in imposing NPOV. Many of the projects are still inside of that struggle. Sanctioning that content should be appropriate to their cultural context would mean instantly give a strong argument to the POV pushers at, let's say, Serbian Wikipedia that nothing bad could be said against Serbian Orthodox clergy just because Serbia has 90% of Orthodox Christians formally (including myself, although I've never expressed that and although if I have to choose some religion, I would prefer Taoism). In other words cultural context is usually just an excuse for POV pushing of various kinds. I can understand the aim that we should adapt content to totalitarian regimes which filter Internet access, like those in North Korea, Australia and Apple are, for example. I don't have anything against creating a censored edition of Wikipedia for all of poor people who are forced to have internet access via iPad. It is the question of being accessible there or not. But, in all other cases it is about allowing POV because of some reason or being overcautious toward local laws. Strictly following, let's say, Swiss law on Romansh Wikipedia is not so rational according to the Wikimedia goals. Any sane lawyer would understand that it has to sue WMF before US court after a couple of sentences with a representative of WM CH. But I understand that it is more than rational decision for many other places. Like for iPad. And if we are really really really willing to go into censorship, it would eat significant part of our resources. I can imagine that I'll be overloaded with various complaints about POV pushing and cultural contexts as a steward all over Wikimedia projects. Imagine any political conflict. We would have to analyze carefully is it according to the cultural context A to present facts about cultural context B. For example, I am really willing to know what is and what is not according to the Afghanistan and Pashto Wikipedia cultural contexts, not counting regular issues related to Islam. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Hello, (all below are my private opinion.) I'm strongly supporting the No censorship camp, and as of such i am against any wiki-wide measures that would make content unavailable, with the argument that people can choose whether or not to look at offensive content, but people cannot choose to look at content that others deem offensive if it isn't included. I would, however, strongly support a system that gives users a choice to censor if they wish. It should be possible to categorize commons in such a way that certain images can be blocked. For example, a user might choose to block images of Muhammad, while allowing surgery related images (Others might swap there if they wish). For me the merit of such a system is that we treat the user as somebody who takes responsibility for himself, who makes decision for himself. What I find not convincing is the slogan No censorship. I think this is a bad argument. First of all it is not true. In every language version of every Wikimedia project, there are rules that can be considered as censorship. The definition of censorship itself is difficult. Reading through all language versions in Wikipedia that I can understand, I found no definition of censorship that is really satisfying. Let me take some example. Ar-wp decides per community concensus not to use Mohammed images. Seen in the light of en-wp rules, this is a censorship. If we maintain no censorship then ar-wp must remove that concensus. If not, we cannot maintain the no censorship slogan. En-wp has the null tolerance to pedophilia policy. For centain activist this is certainly a censorship. If I draw a detailed educational sketch about how to build a mail bomb, put it under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and upload it on Commons, it would certainly quite quickly be censored away. Beside of this, there is a second reason why this is not a good argument. No censorship is an overkill argument. Either you are for censorship, or you are not for censorship. It is quite digital, black or white. Searching for a community concensus cannot work in such black and white manner. The result of a community discussion and concensus searching is mostly something between black and white. The no censorship argument put every discussion to an end. It ignores every nuance that is possible between the arguments. Maybe a user is against every political censorship but is uncomfortable about having religious insulting images. Is he for or not for censorship? I think everyone of us has a different opinion about what is educational, or appropriate and what is no more educational or no more appropriate. Let us don't talk about if someone is for or not for censoring, let us talk about what we can find together guidelines for what we think should be ok for our projects and what not. What also made me very sad in this thread is to see that some community members obviously had taken a very foundamentalistic position. Either you agree with me, otherwise I will quit and fork. What difference is this agree-with-me-or-I-will-boykott-you position to the ace-wp template of boykotting Wikipedia because it contains Mohammed image? Refusing every discussion, no compromise at all, I find this a very strange stance for a Wikimedian. Greetings -- Ting Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
From: Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de What I find not convincing is the slogan No censorship. I think this is a bad argument. Actually, I wish we'd rename [[WP:NOTCENSORED]] in en:WP to something more sensible, for similar reasons. It is too often used as a justification for poor editorial decisions. --What? You are saying I can't have the goatse image in the goatse article? Wikipedia is not censored, you know! This is how we ended up with that image in the goatse article, losing all sight of the fact that no reliably published newspaper, computer magazine, book or encyclopedia out there in the real world would be very likely to consider it remotely appropriate to illustrate an article on that shock site with the shock image itself. We have strong guidelines that our texts should reflect the most reliable sources, but no guideline that says that our approach to illustration should reflect the approaches used in the most reliable sources on the subject. Instead, we have [[WP:NOTCENSORED]] ... Andreas (Jayen466) --- On Fri, 23/7/10, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: From: Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, 23 July, 2010, 13:54 Hello, (all below are my private opinion.) I'm strongly supporting the No censorship camp, and as of such i am against any wiki-wide measures that would make content unavailable, with the argument that people can choose whether or not to look at offensive content, but people cannot choose to look at content that others deem offensive if it isn't included. I would, however, strongly support a system that gives users a choice to censor if they wish. It should be possible to categorize commons in such a way that certain images can be blocked. For example, a user might choose to block images of Muhammad, while allowing surgery related images (Others might swap there if they wish). For me the merit of such a system is that we treat the user as somebody who takes responsibility for himself, who makes decision for himself. What I find not convincing is the slogan No censorship. I think this is a bad argument. First of all it is not true. In every language version of every Wikimedia project, there are rules that can be considered as censorship. The definition of censorship itself is difficult. Reading through all language versions in Wikipedia that I can understand, I found no definition of censorship that is really satisfying. Let me take some example. Ar-wp decides per community concensus not to use Mohammed images. Seen in the light of en-wp rules, this is a censorship. If we maintain no censorship then ar-wp must remove that concensus. If not, we cannot maintain the no censorship slogan. En-wp has the null tolerance to pedophilia policy. For centain activist this is certainly a censorship. If I draw a detailed educational sketch about how to build a mail bomb, put it under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and upload it on Commons, it would certainly quite quickly be censored away. Beside of this, there is a second reason why this is not a good argument. No censorship is an overkill argument. Either you are for censorship, or you are not for censorship. It is quite digital, black or white. Searching for a community concensus cannot work in such black and white manner. The result of a community discussion and concensus searching is mostly something between black and white. The no censorship argument put every discussion to an end. It ignores every nuance that is possible between the arguments. Maybe a user is against every political censorship but is uncomfortable about having religious insulting images. Is he for or not for censorship? I think everyone of us has a different opinion about what is educational, or appropriate and what is no more educational or no more appropriate. Let us don't talk about if someone is for or not for censoring, let us talk about what we can find together guidelines for what we think should be ok for our projects and what not. What also made me very sad in this thread is to see that some community members obviously had taken a very foundamentalistic position. Either you agree with me, otherwise I will quit and fork. What difference is this agree-with-me-or-I-will-boykott-you position to the ace-wp template of boykotting Wikipedia because it contains Mohammed image? Refusing every discussion, no compromise at all, I find this a very strange stance for a Wikimedian. Greetings -- Ting Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Meta-question - Is there in fact sufficient evidence that this is a topic that the Foundation must, or should, engage in actively at this time? I know why the Foundation has an inclination to get involved - people ask about it, and some very uncomfortable stuff finds its way into Commons and the Encyclopedias at times and in places, and it's inconvenient to have Fox News making a big deal about false claims of pedophiles or child porn on Wikipedia when we're trying to be taken seriously as a responsible charitable organization, and so forth. But that does not mean that it's necessarily something the Foundation should involve itself in at this point. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 12:52 AM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: Is there in fact sufficient evidence that this is a topic that the Foundation must, or should, engage in actively at this time? I know why the Foundation has an inclination to get involved - people ask about it, and some very uncomfortable stuff finds its way into Commons and the Encyclopedias at times and in places, and it's inconvenient to have Fox News making a big deal about false claims of pedophiles or child porn on Wikipedia when we're trying to be taken seriously as a responsible charitable organization, and so forth. But that does not mean that it's necessarily something the Foundation should involve itself in at this point. Sorry, but I couldn't resist. Call me a troll or whatever, but this is the right question and it deserves the right answer to be repeated. At May 7th [1] I've already answered that question: What Jimmy's sexually impaired super rich friend wish, Jimmy do and then Board transform into the rule or a statement. Fortunately, Robert Harris is much more sane. (Thanks, Sue!) [1] - http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057799.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 7/23/10 3:52 PM, George Herbert wrote: Meta-question - Is there in fact sufficient evidence that this is a topic that the Foundation must, or should, engage in actively at this time? That seems to be one of the questions that Robert Harris is trying to answer. Ryan Kaldari ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Hello Robert, On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 7:59 AM, R M Harris rmhar...@sympatico.ca wrote: the time has come, I think, to actively begin a discussion within the communities about some of the questions which I've encountered, specifically around Commons and images within Commons. I'd love to see better summaries as Excirial suggests. More specifically, instead of another discussion, how about ...summarizing existing discussions into clusters of ideas that can be identified with common use cases or user preferences, and informed by better research or turned into specific proposals and recommendations ? We have hundreds of overlapping threads, hundreds of existing policies and guidelines on different projects, dozens of different use cases and concerns, and many different ideas and suggestions. a few of these have turned into specific draft proposals, but those have not been consolidated or aligned with one another or with existing policies and guidelines. Making good summaries may reuiqre finding editors to help out as clerks -- organizing and refactoring existing discussions in a central place. And you would definitely need some translation help to cover existing discussions in a variety of languages. Ideally, those who have expressed themselves clearly in previous discussions would not need to repeat themselves -- lest you end up with an unwanted contest of volume. SJ PS - The most recent problem we've had is on the Acehnese Wikipedia: [[Requests for comment/ace.wikipedia and Prophet Muhammad images]]. It is concerned with a combination of image context and the availability of certain images within Commons. Your reflections on that discussion (and mapping it onto the questoins you raise) might illuminate related issues. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Hello. It’s Robert Harris once again. It’s been just over a month since I began working on the study commissioned by the Wikimedia Board on Potentially Objectionable Content on WMF projects. During that time, I’ve spoken to many people inside and outside Wikimedia, but the time has come, I think, to actively begin a discussion within the communities about some of the questions which I've encountered, specifically around Commons and images within Commons. To that end, I’ve posted a series of questions for discussion on the Meta page that hosts the study (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content.) Please feel free to visit the page and contribute to the discussion. And please post the link, if you might, anywhere within the projects where you think it might be relevant. I look forward to the comments of any of you who wish to join the discussion. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 22 July 2010 12:59, R M Harris rmhar...@sympatico.ca wrote: I’ve posted a series of questions for discussion on the Meta page that hosts the study (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content.) Please feel free to visit the page and contribute to the discussion. Looking at the contributors so far, I'm not sure that discussion is recoverable to any form of usefulness. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:04 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Looking at the contributors so far, I'm not sure that discussion is recoverable to any form of usefulness. 1. Checked and agreed. 2. I am not going to discuss with well known censorship trolls. 3. If this would be the main path of discussion, fork of Commons will be the option. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 22 July 2010 16:32, R M Harris rmhar...@sympatico.ca wrote: May I just reply to thank Excirial for the excellent suggestions re:formatting contained in his thoughtful reply (I'll look them over carefully) and just to note a couple of things. I'm well aware of the long-standing debates on these issues in the past, and I respect the fatigue with which many might approach yet another discussion of the question. As well, my point in raising the question of Controversial issues in English Wikipedia was not to misrepresent its status, but just to note that this form of categorization of content has been contemplated to be useful in some parts of the Wikimedia universe, a universe, which, while varied, does share certain common principles. And thanks for reminding me of the varied complexity of semi-autonomous principalities with the Wikimedia family. I may also note that it will be absolutely impossible for you not to be called a Nazi or worse over this, *no matter what you say or do*. I'd be hard put to come up with a more poisoned chalice ... Furthermore, whatever you say will be taken as a justification to do whatever the person wanted to be done already. (e.g. if a report says the best thing to do is to put a Goatse in the site notice someone *will* say and that is why we must behead anyone putting up a picture of Muhammad.) I don't envy your task in any way whatsoever. You have my sympathy :-) - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
You have my sympathy to - no matter what the outcome is, some if not many people will label it censorship, directly or indirectly. We dont censor has been an standard argument so far in any attempt to regulate upload of images or discussion of features that some people obviously want. kind regards Teun Spaans ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
*You have my sympathy to - no matter what the outcome is, some if not many people will label it censorship, directly or indirectly. We dont censor has been an standard argument so far in any attempt to regulate upload of images or discussion of features that some people obviously want.* Come come, be fair here, this is a two-side issue. What you say is absolutely correct - but the other side of the coin are the editors who have screamed Intentionally offensive!, Biased! and Morality and responsibility as a response to any image kept, with equal attempts to hide the fact that they simply dislike a single image (but cannot say that). Both sides are to blame for the current situation we have, and the problem is that it is nearly impossible to compromise on this issue since there is no middle ground where each side gives in a bit (Its either everything or nothing). I'm strongly supporting the No censorship camp, and as of such i am against any wiki-wide measures that would make content unavailable, with the argument that people can choose whether or not to look at offensive content, but people cannot choose to look at content that others deem offensive if it isn't included. I would, however, strongly support a system that gives users a choice to censor if they wish. It should be possible to categorize commons in such a way that certain images can be blocked. For example, a user might choose to block images of Muhammad, while allowing surgery related images (Others might swap there if they wish). The advantage would be that each user can decide for himself if he doesn't want to see something, rather then being forced to change this wiki-wide. It may be difficult to implement such a system for IP users, but it should be possible to accomplish. It should solve the issue where people don't want to see something. Of course we still have the issue where people don't want others to see certain content, but well - save for removing everything that group can never be appeased anyway (And same for people who would argue that even offering the option to filter is inherently bad). ~Excirial On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 8:31 PM, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: You have my sympathy to - no matter what the outcome is, some if not many people will label it censorship, directly or indirectly. We dont censor has been an standard argument so far in any attempt to regulate upload of images or discussion of features that some people obviously want. kind regards Teun Spaans ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 22 July 2010 20:10, Excirial wp.excir...@gmail.com wrote: I would, however, strongly support a system that gives users a choice to censor if they wish. It should be possible to categorize commons in such a way that certain images can be blocked. For example, a user might choose to block images of Muhammad, while allowing surgery related images (Others might swap there if they wish). This is a perennial proposal. It's an idea I like, as it puts control in the hands of the viewer rather than third parties. All it requires is someone to code something that passes muster as being unlikely to melt the servers. cc to wikitech-l - how feasible is something that allows users to stop display of arbitrary image categories and/or subcategories? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Hi Excirial, I think I am completely factual. After I wrote this, I went to the questionlist and found the cry we dont censor in one of the reactions. Which proves my point, I think. You yourself use that term in your email. Personally i find labeling your opponents view as censorship a way of calling names, as one associates your opponents view as something no one wants to be associated with. Btw, you might want to read my reaction on the questions, I dont think are proposed ideas very far apart. Or did you read my remarks there already and made them part of your ideas? kind regards, Teun Spaans On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 9:10 PM, Excirial wp.excir...@gmail.com wrote: *You have my sympathy to - no matter what the outcome is, some if not many people will label it censorship, directly or indirectly. We dont censor has been an standard argument so far in any attempt to regulate upload of images or discussion of features that some people obviously want.* Come come, be fair here, this is a two-side issue. What you say is absolutely correct - but the other side of the coin are the editors who have screamed Intentionally offensive!, Biased! and Morality and responsibility as a response to any image kept, with equal attempts to hide the fact that they simply dislike a single image (but cannot say that). Both sides are to blame for the current situation we have, and the problem is that it is nearly impossible to compromise on this issue since there is no middle ground where each side gives in a bit (Its either everything or nothing). I'm strongly supporting the No censorship camp, and as of such i am against any wiki-wide measures that would make content unavailable, with the argument that people can choose whether or not to look at offensive content, but people cannot choose to look at content that others deem offensive if it isn't included. I would, however, strongly support a system that gives users a choice to censor if they wish. It should be possible to categorize commons in such a way that certain images can be blocked. For example, a user might choose to block images of Muhammad, while allowing surgery related images (Others might swap there if they wish). The advantage would be that each user can decide for himself if he doesn't want to see something, rather then being forced to change this wiki-wide. It may be difficult to implement such a system for IP users, but it should be possible to accomplish. It should solve the issue where people don't want to see something. Of course we still have the issue where people don't want others to see certain content, but well - save for removing everything that group can never be appeased anyway (And same for people who would argue that even offering the option to filter is inherently bad). ~Excirial On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 8:31 PM, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: You have my sympathy to - no matter what the outcome is, some if not many people will label it censorship, directly or indirectly. We dont censor has been an standard argument so far in any attempt to regulate upload of images or discussion of features that some people obviously want. kind regards Teun Spaans ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
On 22 July 2010 21:01, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: I think I am completely factual. After I wrote this, I went to the questionlist and found the cry we dont censor in one of the reactions. Which proves my point, I think. You yourself use that term in your email. Well, we don't. You appear to be claiming that making this factually obvious statement somehow negates an argument. It doesn't. Our mission - Wikimedia's bias - is that more information is better than less information. And filtering when applied by a third party is what censorship is. Claiming that factual statements are logical fallacies is unconvincing and will do you no good. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
R M Harris .. but the time has come, I think, to actively begin a discussion within the communities about some of the questions which I've encountered, specifically around Commons and images within Commons. ... I look forward to the comments of any of you who wish to join the discussion. [Delurking briefly] Me n'th, endorsing the idea expressed by many others, that another generic public discussion of these issues will be of dubious utility. At some point, it's all been said, and as the saying goes, it's pounding on a greasy spot on the pavement, where used to lie the carcass of a dead horse. The various factions are known. I suppose you have to do this in order to say you've consulted with the community. But for heaven's sake, can it at least be done at a level better than yet another rehash? [Relurking] -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
David Gerard wrote: On 22 July 2010 16:32, R M Harris rmhar...@sympatico.ca wrote: May I just reply to thank Excirial for the excellent suggestions re:formatting contained in his thoughtful reply (I'll look them over carefully) and just to note a couple of things. I'm well aware of the long-standing debates on these issues in the past, and I respect the fatigue with which many might approach yet another discussion of the question. As well, my point in raising the question of Controversial issues in English Wikipedia was not to misrepresent its status, but just to note that this form of categorization of content has been contemplated to be useful in some parts of the Wikimedia universe, a universe, which, while varied, does share certain common principles. And thanks for reminding me of the varied complexity of semi-autonomous principalities with the Wikimedia family. I may also note that it will be absolutely impossible for you not to be called a Nazi or worse over this, *no matter what you say or do*. I'd be hard put to come up with a more poisoned chalice ... It doesn't need to be like that. However, you cannot sort this out by compromise. The fundamental problem is that people will always want to shift the lines either towards greater laxity or more restrictions. The arguments will never end and you will continue to have rows one way or another. How you can fix this is to have very a few, and I mean a few, broad categories. If you have too many categories or you have detailed descriptions of what constitutes one category and what constitutes another category, you'll have people game the system and endless arguments. Take as an example the flickr system of categorizing nudity, they have three groupings, safe, moderate, and restricted. The official guidelines are vague and cutesy, but are something like boobs and butts moderate, genitalia or the pubic region, and sexual acts restricted. Something that you'd let your kid take to show and tell safe. Most adults can set their viewing filter to unrestricted and see more porn than you can shake a stick at. Those that set the viewing filter to restricted see almost none. The system allows the user to determine what they are prepared to see. If they turn on unrestricted and then get offended tough. Any flagging needs to be policed and you need to have a specified number of people that can make a decision on the borderline cases. The criteria should be that if in doubt make the viewing more restricted as people can always choice to see it if the want. A page that has an image outside of a viewers safety level should have a marker where the image would normally be. Users should be able to reveal an individual image or a whole page, if they so desire. You do not want to get into a classification based in educational value or worthiness just as flickr won't be drawn into a debate on whether an image is art or porn. One needs to classify based solely on what is shown. So if you have a category of 'religious figures' then its a simply yes/no. Whether it was drawn by a famous artist or caused great offense is besides the point. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
David Gerard wrote: On 22 July 2010 21:01, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: I think I am completely factual. After I wrote this, I went to the questionlist and found the cry we dont censor in one of the reactions. Which proves my point, I think. You yourself use that term in your email. Well, we don't. But you do. Our mission - Wikimedia's bias - is that more information is better than less information. If I were to make an account with the user name CumInYourCornflakes or HitlerMyHero there'd be someone all over the account within minutes, blocking banning, and deleting. And filtering when applied by a third party is what censorship is. No it is NOT. It is not censorship if I choose not to see X, that is my choice. So long as YOU have the choice to see X if you want to then we can both live in harmony. The conflict arises when you say that I must see X, or if I say you must not see X. Where X is some broadly recognized category of offensive material. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
*If I were to make an account with the user name CumInYourCornflakes or HitlerMyHero there'd be someone all over the account within minutes, blocking banning, and deleting.* Hem, is that information? I would have trouble calling that Raw data, let alone information. Keep in mind that there are other rules as well - wp:notcensored is not the only reason why certain actions are taken :). *No it is NOT. It is not censorship if I choose not to see X, that is my choice. So long as YOU have the choice to see X if you want to then we can both live in harmony. The conflict arises when you say that I must see X, or if I say you must not see X. Where X is some broadly recognized category of offensive material.* Agreed. As our own Censorship article states *Censorship* is the suppression of speech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.. if someone simply doesn't wish to see content it is not censorship, since it affects only them. The difficulty doesn't arise unless ones actions make content available, or remove the availability of content, for other people. The entire issue we have is What takes precedence? The right to view, or the right to not view content. ~Excirial On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 12:01 AM, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: David Gerard wrote: On 22 July 2010 21:01, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: I think I am completely factual. After I wrote this, I went to the questionlist and found the cry we dont censor in one of the reactions. Which proves my point, I think. You yourself use that term in your email. Well, we don't. But you do. Our mission - Wikimedia's bias - is that more information is better than less information. If I were to make an account with the user name CumInYourCornflakes or HitlerMyHero there'd be someone all over the account within minutes, blocking banning, and deleting. And filtering when applied by a third party is what censorship is. No it is NOT. It is not censorship if I choose not to see X, that is my choice. So long as YOU have the choice to see X if you want to then we can both live in harmony. The conflict arises when you say that I must see X, or if I say you must not see X. Where X is some broadly recognized category of offensive material. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
Excirial wrote: *If I were to make an account with the user name CumInYourCornflakes or HitlerMyHero there'd be someone all over the account within minutes, blocking banning, and deleting.* Hem, is that information? I would have trouble calling that Raw data, let alone information. Keep in mind that there are other rules as well - wp:notcensored is not the only reason why certain actions are taken :). Are there? The stated reason is ... that offend other contributors, making harmonious editing difficult or impossible. If one objects to images of of some prophet how can one participate in editing an article on the subject if one has to see the images in order to do so? I suspect that if I made a username TheProphetMohammed it would get kicked, if I posted a picture of myself labeled TheProphetMohammed it wouldn't. *No it is NOT. It is not censorship if I choose not to see X, that is my choice. So long as YOU have the choice to see X if you want to then we can both live in harmony. The conflict arises when you say that I must see X, or if I say you must not see X. Where X is some broadly recognized category of offensive material.* Agreed. As our own Censorship article states *Censorship* is the suppression of speech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.. if someone simply doesn't wish to see content it is not censorship, since it affects only them. The difficulty doesn't arise unless ones actions make content available, or remove the availability of content, for other people. The entire issue we have is What takes precedence? The right to view, or the right to not view content. Neither takes precedence only the right to chose what to see. I may want to read about the Rwandan genocide, it doesn't naturally follow that I also want to see images of mutilated bodies at the same time. I may be reading about BDSM doesn't mean I want to see someone's cock nailed to the table. Reading about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons doesn't imply that I also want to see the cartoons. With traditional media the decision to publish or not to publish, has to be made by someone else, but there is absolutely no reason why that has to be the case with online media. It ought to be possible to have the choice page by page, situation by situation. Forcing it to be all or nothing seems to be rather a Luddite approach. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
