Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Tim Starling wrote: They are serving the interests of who? And who can revoke the trust upon a specific trustee, or the entire board, in the event it was misused? As a non-membership non-profit corporation, federal law dictates that it must have a Board and that the Board has final responsibility. The Articles of Incorporation could have specified means for oversight of the Board, say by the community, but this was not done. They simply say that the Board will make its own rules for how its members are replaced. Yes, this is how it is organizationally. The white elephant in the room though is that this is all pretty academic because of the fact that Wikimedia projects operate under a Free Licence. What ever the legal situation is organizationally, it is very near suicidal for the foundation to have any larger disconnect with the community than which happened just recently. It would only be an act of self-preservation for the Board of Trustees to seek to find ways to decisively prevent a recurrence. As per Jimbos instruction to look to the future than the past, I would suggest that the Board look post-haste into instituting some form of institution that can offer (perhaps under a similar confidentiality agreement that the board itself operates under) constructive advice in a timely manner (rather than after the fact), when it deliberates which direction the Board of Trustees wants to take things. My suggestion would be that as a first, rudimentary step, such a Community Advisory Group consist of one person of known communicative ability and insight (as determined by the Board of Trustees themselves) from each Project, when feasible representing more than one language in the overall distribution. That is to say, one person each, from Wikipedias, Commons, Wikinews projects, Wikiquote projects, Wikibooks projects, Wiktionaries, Wikiversities, the Wikispecies, Wikisource. Assuming I haven't forgotten any projects, that would make a nine member group. The law gives us some protection, in that it prevents Board members from running the Foundation for their own personal gain (aside from reasonable salaries and expenses). However, it's still very important that we pick Board members carefully when we have community elections, and that we encourage the existing Board to make good choices for appointments. This is of course indisputable. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
That about sums it up. On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org wrote: I try to understand what happened, but I'm not sure whether the pieces that I found so far add up. * Larry Sanger is mad about Wikimedia. [apparent] * Larry Sanger notifies the FBI and tells them Wikimedia hosts child porn. [affirmed] * The FBI is rather unimpressed and does not take swift action. [apparent] * Larry Sanger informs media about us alleging Wikimedia of hosting porn. [unaffirmed] * The (conservative) TV station FOX reports about Wikimedia and contacts many important companies that have donated money for Wikimedia in the past whether they want to comment on the allegations. [affirmed] * The companies are contacting Wikimedia to ask what's going on. [unaffirmed] * The board worries about losses in donations and either sends Jimbo to Commons or Jimbo unilaterally decides to handle the case. [unaffirmed] * Without mentioning the previous developments Jimbo starts to delete all files that are porn (in his opinion, not sparing PD-old artworks etc.). Even engaging in edit-warring and ignoring input from the Commons community and ignoring community policies. [affirmed] * The Commons community condemns Jimbo's actions but has no power at all to stop the Founder-flagged berserk. [affirmed] Is this the story? Or are there any story arcs that I missed? Please correct me, wherever I am wrong. Marcus Buck User:Slomox ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hello Elias, Welcome to the mailing list. On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/5/9 Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com: (..) board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions. If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the problem. Ting I see no indication so far that the community *is* able to solve the problem. Sorry, I have never posted here, but I feel so sad reading such words... and other words spoken here at foundation-l.. the projects under the umbrella of WMF are so beautiful, so precious, to be treated this way... = Thank you for your kind words for the projects. But well, so that's the reason Jimmy Wales must be so authoritarian? Because the Community of Commons can't solve this issue through consensus? Is solving this particular issue really more important than reaching consensus? Why? It seems to me the only way a project can work through this sort of complex issue is through careful consensus and decision-making. I do not think solving it somehow is more important than reaching consensus, or a decision that everyone can live with. Questions of how to deal with highly controversial content -- from images of Muhammad to private personal information to explicit images of sex -- are often difficult to solve. This may be the sort of complex decision that would benefit from a community-run advisory or policy group, with representatives from many projects. Such decision making can take many months, and needs slow but persistent attention and progress towards a balanced resolution. [often our current practices of wiki-based decision making simply lose steam after an initial burst of interest, and future iterations on the theme have to start over from scratch.] Are you a member of the Board of Trustees or something? Could you inform me if the whole board has this kind of position? No, the whole Board does not have this position. (not to speak for others -- I am on it, and I am opposed to the idea.) This is out of scope for the Board, which like the Foundation itself generally stays out of content creation, policy-making, and governance of the individual Projects. BTW, I also have a broader question. Who entrusted power to the Board of Trustees? They are serving the interests of who? And who can revoke the trust upon a specific trustee, or the entire board, in the event it was misused? The Board governs the Foundation to support the interests of the mission and the needs of the Projects. In an emergency, the Board itself could remove a Trustee; in practice there are elections and appointments each year. Of our ten trustees, there are six 'community trustees': three elected by the editing community every two years, two selected by the national Chapters every [other] two years, and Jimmy as founding trustee, reappointed each year. The other four trustees are appointed each year by the community trustees. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_board_manual http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_member PS: I may look inquisitive, but I see this anti-porn campaign contrasting to the complete lack of action when it was found that wiki-en was grossly offending Islam for no better reason. I agree that the issue of images of Muhammad is similar to that of explicit sexual content -- both are highly controversial, considered by some to be educational or important; and by others to be useless and offensive. We must find a way to deal evenly with all controversial material, and to understand the perspectives of different audiences. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 10/05/10 15:25, Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva wrote: BTW, I also have a broader question. Who entrusted power to the Board of Trustees? Jimmy Wales determined the structure of the Wikimedia Foundation when he created it. He and Bomis donated the relevant assets, such as the domain names, to the Foundation at the time it was formed. We should remember, when we criticise his use of whatever remnant of power that he has left, that he could have easily structured Wikimedia as a for-profit entity, with him retaining majority control. We have Jimmy to thank for Wikimedia's non-profit status, its open-source software stack and its free content license. They are serving the interests of who? And who can revoke the trust upon a specific trustee, or the entire board, in the event it was misused? As a non-membership non-profit corporation, federal law dictates that it must have a Board and that the Board has final responsibility. The Articles of Incorporation could have specified means for oversight of the Board, say by the community, but this was not done. They simply say that the Board will make its own rules for how its members are replaced. The law gives us some protection, in that it prevents Board members from running the Foundation for their own personal gain (aside from reasonable salaries and expenses). However, it's still very important that we pick Board members carefully when we have community elections, and that we encourage the existing Board to make good choices for appointments. -- Tim Starling ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Tim Starling hett schreven: On 10/05/10 15:25, Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva wrote: BTW, I also have a broader question. Who entrusted power to the Board of Trustees? Jimmy Wales determined the structure of the Wikimedia Foundation when he created it. He and Bomis donated the relevant assets, such as the domain names, to the Foundation at the time it was formed. We should remember, when we criticise his use of whatever remnant of power that he has left, that he could have easily structured Wikimedia as a for-profit entity, with him retaining majority control. We have Jimmy to thank for Wikimedia's non-profit status, its open-source software stack and its free content license. If Wikipedia wouldn't have been so free today it would stand where Citizendium stands and another free encyclopedia project would have evolved in place. Wikipedia wasn't the only community-driven encyclopedia project. But it made the race and beat all its competitors cause no other project was as free and easily accessible as Wikipedia. Marcus Buck User:Slomox ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 05/10/2010 03:11 AM, Tim Starling wrote: On 10/05/10 15:25, Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva wrote: BTW, I also have a broader question. Who entrusted power to the Board of Trustees? Jimmy Wales determined the structure of the Wikimedia Foundation when he created it. He and Bomis donated the relevant assets, such as the domain names, to the Foundation at the time it was formed. We should remember, when we criticise his use of whatever remnant of power that he has left, that he could have easily structured Wikimedia as a for-profit entity, with him retaining majority control. We have Jimmy to thank for Wikimedia's non-profit status, its open-source software stack and its free content license. That isn't really true, though. He recruited volunteers with the promise of the free-content license for sure, and with a sort of implicit promise of a generally free-culture / volunteer-run encyclopedia. If he had *not* promised anything, he would have had many more troubles recruiting volunteers. You do remember that GNUpedia was gearing up to serve as a competitor, and only backed down because Jimmy gave them enough assurances that Wikipedia was such a free-culture encyclopedia that their efforts would be redundant? In short, Jimmy could not have gone the for-profit or non-free-culture route, because he would have been left more pitiful than Citizendium: a project with no contributors. -Mark ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
2010/5/10 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com: Hello Elias, Welcome to the mailing list. Hi! ^^ Are you a member of the Board of Trustees or something? Could you inform me if the whole board has this kind of position? No, the whole Board does not have this position. (not to speak for others -- I am on it, and I am opposed to the idea.) Yours response, as well as Florence's, was refreshing. I am actually embarrassed, since most of my comment wasn't very constructive. (My comments on commons were even less balanced, but I was really upset) PS: I may look inquisitive, but I see this anti-porn campaign contrasting to the complete lack of action when it was found that wiki-en was grossly offending Islam for no better reason. I agree that the issue of images of Muhammad is similar to that of explicit sexual content -- both are highly controversial, considered by some to be educational or important; and by others to be useless and offensive. We must find a way to deal evenly with all controversial material, and to understand the perspectives of different audiences. I have no idea on how to deal with so many different expectations. I myself always praised the position of some WMF projects regarding showing human body, nudity in general and even and pornography. I don't know much encyclopedias that show specific parts of human body as they are, and as well as Wikipedia. (I remember a single biology book of my high school with photos of nude people - but it was mostly drawings. Plus, hmm, a really nice History book with a nude painting on the cover, and that's it) Looking at http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Logoffset=20100507131846type=deleteuser=Jimbo+Walesmonth=5year=2010 I see that Jimmy deleted this image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amy_with_dildo.jpg With the rationale 'Out of project scope' But it was restored, because it was being actually used on dutch Wikipedia, on the article Amateur porn http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateurpornografie So my conclusion is: amateur porn might be on topic on commons. And currently unused amateur porn might find some use later.z This state of affairs makes me feel really well. Wikipedia is a unique encyclopedia in many ways. One of them is that it has illustrated articles on amateur porn. No, people don't care, that's fine - but this really means a lot for me. In my country, 100 years ago, there were a revolt, called vaccine revolt, where people rebelled against compulsory vaccination. It was the greatest urban revolt of the old republic[1]. A particular argument used by the rebels was that doctors was entering to woman's houses, and had to see the naked arm of them, even the naked arm of girls, so that they could handle vaccination. I don't support compulsory vaccination, but this kind of reasoning really shocks me. It is now a distant past. Brazil is not like that anymore, and fortunately we now have schoolbooks with naked people on the cover (as I remembered). I sincerely don't personally care much about Muhammad pictures, for example. If people decided to delete them, I would simply think they are too afraid of offending, but I wouldn't care that much. (I know that being very notable and encyclopedic, the pictures themselves might have their own article, so it's not like they are going to be deleted anyway) But some people (Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali) would be harshly offended by deletion of those pictures. It might sound funny, but not accepting Islam rules on non-muslim contexts is very important to her (being a vocal ex-muslim, she received multiple death threats, and the director of a short documentary her wrote was killed). I would show opposition to this kind of deletion, but just because I'm a lot influenced by her (and dislike deletionism in general) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Revolt -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
2010/5/10 Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com: I sincerely don't personally care much about Muhammad pictures, for example. If people decided to delete them, I would simply think they are too afraid of offending, but I wouldn't care that much. (I know that being very notable and encyclopedic, the pictures themselves might have their own article, so it's not like they are going to be deleted anyway) But some people (Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali) would be harshly offended by deletion of those pictures. It might sound funny, but not accepting Islam rules on non-muslim contexts is very important to her (being a vocal ex-muslim, she received multiple death threats, and the director of a short documentary her wrote was killed). I would show opposition to this kind of deletion, but just because I'm a lot influenced by her (and dislike deletionism in general) This was maybe confuse. The message I was trying to convey is: a) For some people including nudity (in especial en masse) is offensive b) For some people including depictions of Muhammad is offensive c) For some people removing nudity (in especial en masse) is offensive (eg. me :) d) For some people removing depictions of Muhammad is offensive (eg. for Ayaan) -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 18:20, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: Given that several Commons admins had dropped out, and bearing in mind the clean-up campaign called for by the board and Jimbo, I put in an RFA at Commons, saying I would help clean up pornographic images *that are not in use by any project*. The result so far: 14 Opposes, 1 Support. You get the same result if you nominate a pornographic image for deletion. Andreas I can't say I'm surprised. The ham-handed way that Jimbo started the cleanup, and the resulting backlash, has effectively scuttled any real progress on reducing the amount of non-educational sexual material on Commons. If similar incidents elsewhere are anything to go by, it'll be two to three years before serious discussion of the subject will be possible. -- Mark [[User:Carnildo]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Marcus wrote: Creating a technical solution like that is the task of the foundation. The _real_ task of the foundation. Cimon wrote: Lot of momentum around the idea, is currently most persistently promoted by the same precise individual who began the ethical breaching experiment project I wasn't thinking of privatemusings, but of Marcus's comment and the recent comments on this bugzilla bug (about supporting ICRA): https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=982 Again, I'm generally opposed to this particular idea. But Marcus is right about the foundation's role in supporting technical solutions where needed. Community groups that need a well-defined technical solution should ask boldly for it. Wedrna, later: The *ONLY* rating and classification system that I can support is a descriptive one. That is, it describes the nature of the content, and allows humans or computers to filter it accordingly. The infrastructure would be technically simple. Yes. Our categorization system already exists and should suffice. David Levy writes: Deletions are easily reversible. Multi-wiki image transclusion removals, distrust in the Wikimedia Commons and resignations from Wikimedia projects? Less so. True. The resignations are deeply unfortunate, and I hope those who have left will still contribute to the ensuing discussions - their opinions are among those badly needed to find the right way forward. SJ Anthony writes: (BTW, shouldn't Larry Sanger have a founder flag too?) No, he gets an Instigator flag, enabling him to chiefly instigate an argument with the Cunctator on any page. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Wedrna, later: The *ONLY* rating and classification system that I can support is a descriptive one. That is, it describes the nature of the content, and allows humans or computers to filter it accordingly. The infrastructure would be technically simple. Yes. Our categorization system already exists and should suffice. Our categorisation system is mentioned in any W3C Recommendation. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 5:14 PM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Wedrna, later: The *ONLY* rating and classification system that I can support is a descriptive one. That is, it describes the nature of the content, and allows humans or computers to filter it accordingly. The infrastructure would be technically simple. Yes. Our categorization system already exists and should suffice. Our categorisation system is mentioned in any W3C Recommendation. is = isn't sorry. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Wedrna, later: The *ONLY* rating and classification system that I can support is a descriptive one. That is, it describes the nature of the content, and allows humans or computers to filter it accordingly. The infrastructure would be technically simple. Yes. Our categorization system already exists and should suffice. To be specific, the technical infrastructure would involve parser functions which can apply ICRA tags to images, and can pass them through to the articles in question. It could be implemented with parser functions and the page_props table in an afternoon, taking no more than a week to tweak and review. If you want this functionality, you should look at implementing it, or you should lobby the Foundation to support it with staff developer time. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 3:14 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 5:14 PM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Wedrna, later: The *ONLY* rating and classification system that I can support is a descriptive one. That is, it describes the nature of the content, and allows humans or computers to filter it accordingly. The infrastructure would be technically simple. Yes. Our categorization system already exists and should suffice. Our categorisation system is mentioned in any W3C Recommendation. is = isn't I see what you mean. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 9 May 2010 02:20, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: Given that several Commons admins had dropped out, and bearing in mind the clean-up campaign called for by the board and Jimbo, I put in an RFA at Commons, saying I would help clean up pornographic images *that are not in use by any project*. The result so far: 14 Opposes, 1 Support. You get the same result if you nominate a pornographic image for deletion. At this point it is because the issue of pornography has been completely overshadowed by the issue of the actions taken and Board support for them. The pornography issue *cannot* be resolved until these other issues are resoved. Cannot. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 9 May 2010 07:45, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: True. The resignations are deeply unfortunate, and I hope those who have left will still contribute to the ensuing discussions - their opinions are among those badly needed to find the right way forward. deeply unfortunate is, far too often, a codeword meaning too bad, but we'll ignore them. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 12:29 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 9 May 2010 07:45, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: True. The resignations are deeply unfortunate, and I hope those who have left will still contribute to the ensuing discussions - their opinions are among those badly needed to find the right way forward. deeply unfortunate is, far too often, a codeword meaning too bad, but we'll ignore them. I think that Jimmy should ask them to back. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 09:46:02PM -0400, Aryeh Gregor wrote: On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 4:22 PM, The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com wrote: Hooray for letting American prurience and Larry Sanger's oddities shape the project. The tolerance of sexual imagery on Wikimedia is a byproduct of Western liberal provincialism. Putting sensitivity to the cultural attitudes of others above (thoroughly hypocritical) ideals of non-censorship is essential to Wikimedia's long-term success, and I'm glad to see that people are finally being forced to deal with this. I would prefer those ideals to be applied non-hypocritically. Isn't the whole concept of peacefully sharing knowledge (wikis) a byproduct of western liberal provincialism? sincerely, Kim Bruning -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 00:15, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: What I can say to your questions is that Jimmy informed the board about his intention and asked the board for support. Don't speaking for other board members, just speak for myself. I answered his mail with that I fully support his engagement. Personally, I think that the board is responsible for defining the scope and basic rules of the projects. While for projects like Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wiktionary the scope is more or less easier to define. On Wikipedia we have the five pillars as our basic rules. But we have also some projects that have a scope that is not quite so clear and no such basic rules. Commons is one of these projects, and the most important one. Fact is, there is no consensus in the community as what is educational or potentially educational for Commons. And as far as I see there would probably never be a concensus. And I think this is where the board should weigh in. To define scopes and basic rules. This is why the board made this statement. For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. Both Jimmy as well as me believe that the best way for the board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions. If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the problem. i might be wrong, but wasn't it _very_ important to have a clear separation of concerns? say, if the foundation or a chapter or one of its officers would be able to change the contents of wikipedia by bypassing the established community processes, even more so if it is done with an official board voting: would this not put _all_ the organisations and its officers in the wiki*sphere at risk beeing sued by anybody not happy about the contents of wikipedia - because jimbo proved that one can change the contents via board resolution or just like that? on the other hand, i consider jimbo trying it and proving that it finally fails a brilliant idea and a very good case to prevent future legal actions against the wmf and the chapters :) rupert. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 6:43 PM, THURNER rupert rupert.thur...@wikimedia.ch wrote: i might be wrong, but wasn't it _very_ important to have a clear separation of concerns? Whether or not this is legally important, it is socially essential. on the other hand, i consider jimbo trying it and proving that it finally fails a brilliant idea and a very good case to prevent future legal actions against the wmf and the chapters :) Now there's a thought... SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
2010/5/9 Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com: (..) For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. Both Jimmy as well as me believe that the best way for the board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions. If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the problem. Ting I see no indication so far that the community *is* able to solve the problem. Sorry, I have never posted here, but I feel so sad reading such words... and other words spoken here at foundation-l.. the projects under the umbrella of WMF are so beautiful, so precious, to be treated this way... = But well, so that's the reason Jimmy Wales must be so authoritarian? Because the Community of Commons can't solve this issue through consensus? Is solving this particular issue really more important than reaching consensus? Why? Are you a member of the Board of Trustees or something? Could you inform me if the whole board has this kind of position? BTW, I also have a broader question. Who entrusted power to the Board of Trustees? They are serving the interests of who? And who can revoke the trust upon a specific trustee, or the entire board, in the event it was misused? Please don't say the community. PS: I may look inquisitive, but I see this anti-porn campaign contrasting to the complete lack of action when it was found that wiki-en was grossly offending Islam for no better reason. I must cite this post: 2010/5/7 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: (..) Did you see what Jimmy deleted? For example, Franz von Bayros painting [1]. That guy is not so famous, but I don't see anymore any sane rule, except: What Jimmy's sexually impaired super rich friend wish, Jimmy do and then Board transform into the rule or a statement. Besides the fact that he was dealing just with Western taboos of naked body and sexual act, not with Mohamed cartoons [2] at English Wikipedia, where he is the God King. If the Board stays behind such action, this is a very clear signal that Wikimedia projects are becoming censored. And if Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons won't be deleted, then Wikimedia projects are a tool of Western cultural imperialism. I want to hear other Board members before making my decision about staying here. Since Jimmy is special, for some reason, and his actions will not face the consequences that is expected for common editors, admins, bureaucrats, etc. I must say that images of Muhammad is not being deleted *just because Jimmy is not Muslim*. -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
2010/5/8 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 12:02 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com [...] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png [...] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_La_tentation_de_Saint_Antoine.jpg [...] And what would that be? I expect someone will be adding article content explaining the historical significance of each of these works. If it's so horrible that they be deleted, it shouldn't be tough to add a paragraph or two which make it obvious why. The paragraph is already there. It's called File usage on other wikis. greetings, elian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hello Milos, At first to the two points you pointed out: * No, I didn't mention that sexually explicit content should be deleted and I still think the criteria should not be if something is sexually explicit. The criteria should be if it has educational value. This is what I said in my statement and this is what I think is correct. This is also what is in the statement of the board. And as far as I can say, this is what Jimmy's intention when he started the action. It is certainly possible that Jimmy in doing his work had made some false decisions. We all know that he do make failures. Maybe he didn't researched the context of a particular image, maybe in some cases his criteria was too narrow. One can discuss those on the case basis. But just because as we all know that Jimmy make failures it does not prevent me to give him my full support in doing things. * Yes, I still think that this feature is correct. There are discussions inside of the board and different opinions about what such a feature should look like and if it is appropriate. The statement I made during the elections is my opinion, it does not necessarily reflect the opinion of all board members. To answer your question: We had scheduled for our April meeting the topic about project scope and community health / movement role. Unfortunately because of troubles caused by Eyjafjallajökull most of the trustees didn't managed to the meeting location. We had to held our meeting via phone and Skype and we had to reduce our schedule due to the inconvinience of the communication channel. We had dropped this topic because all trustees think that this is a topic that should be talked about at best face to face because all of us thought that we should give this topic the most possible attention we need. As far as I can say, especially the event pushed into movement by Larry Sanger [2] created the impression at least by some of the trustees that the matter is urgent and we need to take action as soon as possible. This is as said above from my perspective the reason for the action. Now the reason why I support this quick action: I personally would have preferred to have more time to work out a real guidance from the board to the community as to take such a quick action. As you know, I never think I am better than anyone else and I am always aware that my personal view is just a very narrow view. In this special case I cannot judge how urgent or serious the Larry Sanger accusation really is and what a threat it poses against the Foundation. I must trust my member trustees in the US that they can make that judgement. There are at least two trustees, one of them Jimmy, whom I know that they are normally more for a steady and consistant development, and whom I know that they have a very good sense for the community, who had put the issue as urgent. This is the reason why I think it is urgent. The rest I have already informed you. Jimmy informed the board that he want to do something and asked the board for support. I gave him my support because of what I said above. Greetings Ting Milos Rancic wrote: Ting, this is your statement about sexually explicit content from the last elections [1]: First of all I my position to this point had not changed since last year. I think content in Wikimedia projects should be educational, nothing more and nothing less. I think the communities of our major projects are meanwhile good enough to decide what is in scope and what not. This as overall principle. In most part of the world even pure educational content has some restriction of age, sometimes even per law. I think the Foundation should take this into account and give the community the possibility to act in accordance with the local laws if they decide to. From this point of view my suggestion is the following: The foundation should develop the MediaWiki software so that some content that are tagged with an age restriction would not be shown immediately if one comes to such an article. Only if the user confirms that he is above the age limit the content would be revealed. I believe this suggestion was already made by Erik a few years ago and I think we should do it. The board of trustees should issue a resolution in the form like the BPL resolution that announces the feature and call for the responsibility of the community to use this feature in accordance with the community consensus. I see here two things: * You didn't mention that sexually explicit content should be deleted. * You said that it is Board's responsibility to create a feature, not any kind of community's responsibility [out of the scope of particular legal systems]. In that sense, I want to ask you what did Board do except supporting Jimmy to delete many images of educational value? [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates/Questions/1#Sexual_content_on_WMF
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Marcus Buck wrote: Ting Chen hett schreven: For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. Not my definition of a soft push. In my opinion it's not the task of board or foundation to push the community in any direction. It's the other way round, the community forms board and foundation. The task of board and foundation is to operate the servers, to develop the software needed to operate our projects, and to stop members of the community or of the outside world from doing things harmful to the community, e.g. by violating the law. But they should not decide on the actual content, that's the task of the community. I disagree with this. The Foundation has a mission, and the board has the duty to keep the Foundation, and the community on the rail for this mission. The board had always pushed the community, sometimes more soft, sometimes more harsh. In 2005 on the first Wikimania in Frankfurt the board called the community to take measure to improve the quality and reliability of Wikipedia. This is not the start of our quality offensive but it had trimendously strengthend the effort of the community. The resolution of BLP is another example for the board to give guidance to the community in handling certain topics. In many of our major projects we are facing declining new comer, the community is often regarded as harsh or even unfriendly to new comers. The board is trying to broaden our outreach and make our community and projects more welcome and more diverse. These are all examples where the board push the community into certain directions. We do not need 10,000 close-ups of penises. But we need some penises. Small, medium, big, from different ethnicities, crooked, shaved and unshaved, with jewelry, with diseases etc. pp. We will never reach a state where the number of our penis images is low enough to make conservative agenda makers happy without leaving medical articles or articles on sexuality unillustrated (which would lower their informativeness and thus their educational value). What you wrote here is totally right, and this is also not the reason for the whole action. I wrote in my answer to Milos more detailed about the reason. 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Ting Chen wrote: It is certainly possible that Jimmy in doing his work had made some false decisions. We all know that he do make failures. Maybe he didn't researched the context of a particular image, maybe in some cases his criteria was too narrow. One can discuss those on the case basis. Errors are understandable, but Jimmy deliberately cast aside the reasoned views of the community's most trusted users by continually wheel-warring with a generic deletion summary (an extraordinarily disrespectful method). Does this have your full support as well? David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hello David, it depends. Please point to me what you mean so that I can give you my opinion on the cases. I personally disagree with some of the decisions the Commons community made in the past, and I do think that in some cases Commons has a too broad definition for educational, and sometimes in my opinion Commons community has an interpretation of board resolutions that is not the same as I approved it [1]. I also think that Commons is not a free media repository like every other in the web. It has a mission, and this mission is the same as the mission of the Foundation. It was created to support other WMF projects so that not every free image used by the projects must be uploaded in every project, and this is its role inside of the WMF projects. If it do come to a clarification of the scope of Commons by the board my personal opinion is quite clear from my statements above. Greetings Ting [1] - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Alan_dershowitz_by_Latuff.jpg_reopen David Levy wrote: Ting Chen wrote: It is certainly possible that Jimmy in doing his work had made some false decisions. We all know that he do make failures. Maybe he didn't researched the context of a particular image, maybe in some cases his criteria was too narrow. One can discuss those on the case basis. Errors are understandable, but Jimmy deliberately cast aside the reasoned views of the community's most trusted users by continually wheel-warring with a generic deletion summary (an extraordinarily disrespectful method). Does this have your full support as well? David Levy ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 8 May 2010 11:17, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: it depends. Please point to me what you mean so that I can give you my opinion on the cases. They've been named in this thread repeatedly. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hello Milos, Milos Rancic wrote: By my opinion, the only urgency which WMF should do is to support Erik to fill a lawsuit against Larry Sanger ASAP. Also, if it is not possible to sue Fox and Larry Sanger on the basis of spreading lies about WMF in United States, I am sure that it is fully possible to sue them in Germany or France. Without being a lawyer I am very sure that any German court will reject such a sue because the court is not responsible (german: nicht zuständig). The accusation is not conducted in Germany and neither party is a legal person registered in Germany or German citizen. John Vandenberg proposed a good solution, involving Internet Content Rating Association [1] methods. It is in relation to your proposal. Please, consider it. Yes, considerations and discussions are in this or similar direction. Thank you very much for point it out to me / us. BTW, as mentioned before, Jimmy didn't make some false decisions, but he made a small amount of right decisions and destroyed work of many volunteers. (There are complex problems related to recovering categorizations.) I am quite sure that there will be post mortems on the event, both in the community as well as in the board. My hope is that the most important thing is we endly move forward, and if there were damages done they get corrected again. Greetings Ting ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Milos Rancic wrote: By my opinion, the only urgency which WMF should do is to support Erik to fill a lawsuit against Larry Sanger ASAP. Also, if it is not possible to sue Fox and Larry Sanger on the basis of spreading lies about WMF in United States, I am sure that it is fully possible to sue them in Germany or France. Without being a lawyer I am very sure that any German court will reject such a sue because the court is not responsible (german: nicht zuständig). The accusation is not conducted in Germany and neither party is a legal person registered in Germany or German citizen. Without being a lawyer, my point was: Find a way where and how to sue Fox and Larry for making public lies about WMF, which in turn affects its funds (and reputation) :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Ting Chen wrote: it depends. Please point to me what you mean so that I can give you my opinion on the cases. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALogtype=deletepage=File:F%E9licien%20Rops%20-%20Sainte-Th%E9r%E8se.png http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALogtype=deletepage=File%3AFranz+von+Bayros+016.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALogtype=deletepage=File%3AWiki-fisting.png David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
David, This is an excellent list of principles, which I strongly support. Projects generally have standards of notability, which is equivalent to significant informative or educational value, otherwise they fill up with cruft. A lack of sufficient notability standards for media not in use on any Project seems to be one of the issues in question on Commons. SJ On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 5:18 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: Is there anyone who disagrees that we need to hold to the policies: 1. that the WMF projects as a whole contains only material --of any sort , on any topic-- with informative or educational value, and judges that by community decision in the relevant project 2. that no WMF project contain material that it can not legally contain. 3. that if there is legal material that is objectionable to some people but that does have informative or educational value, the guiding principle is that we do not censor, and that the specific interpretation of that is guided by community decision in the relevant project. 4. That no individual whomsoever possesses ownership authority over any part of any WMF project. 5. That Commons acts as a common repository of free material for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. The opinions of particular projects about what content there to use does not control the content, nor does the opinion of the commons community control other projects. How recent actions ca be judged in this light is to me obvious, but it is clear that some responsible opinions differ. I have expressed my own personal opinion elsewhere. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 4:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, There is a board message about this that is completely in line with what Jimmy mentioned. When you consider that because of many of those images that should have remained private the whole Wikmedia domain has been blogged, we really have to consider how we deal with this issue. The first priority is what our aim is for our WMF projects, the brinkmanship with a shit load of inappropriate content is hurting what we stand for. Is preventing us from furthering our aims. This is what is at issue. Thanks, GerardM http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html On 7 May 2010 22:42, Amory Meltzer amorymelt...@gmail.com wrote: This is nuts. Literally, nothing has changed. Stuff on Wikimedia sites needs to be either educational or aimed at furthering the goals of the project and the foundation. We don't host articles about my her breasts or his penis, and we don't need to host images of them either. Arguing otherwise is just looking for a webhost. ~A ___ 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Marcus writes: I try to understand what happened... * Larry Sanger informs media about us alleging Wikimedia of hosting porn. [unaffirmed] He just made a lot of noise, and some media picked it up. * The (conservative) TV station FOX reports about Wikimedia and contacts many important companies that have donated money for Wikimedia in the past whether they want to comment on the allegations. [affirmed] * The companies are contacting Wikimedia to ask what's going on. [unaffirmed] Mainly they contacted us to say fyi, Fox wants to cause trouble. It was clear what was going on. * The board worries about losses in donations and either sends Jimbo to Commons or Jimbo unilaterally decides to handle the case. [unaffirmed] We're doing well with donations, the vast majority of which come from specific grants or small donors -- not likely to be affected by Fox. (considering our supporter base, a major campaign by them might simply raise more money.) We're not worried about that. The drama on Commons is related to people honestly being worried about the negative impact of hosting uneducational but controversial media -- can a scare campaign drive away good contributors? are we already driving away contributors, as Sydney Poore suggests, by creating an uncomfortable atmosphere? * Without mentioning the previous developments Jimbo starts to delete all files that are porn (in his opinion, not sparing PD-old artworks etc.). Even engaging in edit-warring and ignoring input from the Commons community and ignoring community policies. [affirmed] * The Commons community condemns Jimbo's actions but has no power at all to stop the Founder-flagged berserk. [affirmed] How can you call this 'affirmed'? Jimbo has made strong suggestions, but it is the Commons community that must create and enforce its own policies. The founder flag is an indication of respect, and provides 'crat rights on all projects, but doesn't provide any more 'power' over the project than any bureaucrat has. The real power on wikis is social, not technical -- and where there is a vacuum without local consensus, Jimbo is often persuasive and effective at providing guidance. However once the community decides how to proceed, it should do so with confidence. On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org wrote: We do not need 10,000 close-ups of penises. But we need some penises. Small, medium, big, from different ethnicities, crooked, shaved and unshaved, with jewelry, with diseases etc. pp. We will never reach a state where the number of our penis images is low enough to make conservative agenda makers happy without leaving medical articles or articles on sexuality unillustrated (which would lower their informativeness and thus their educational value). Right. We had discussions on sexual content before. I proposed to use a technical solution in which images are tagged with tags that give detailed information about the form of explicit content present... Creating a technical solution like that is the task of the foundation. The _real_ task of the foundation. Let's have a meaningful discussion about this over the coming weeks. I'm not sure how I feel about this -- my reflex is to be opposed to the idea of internal tagging beyond Categories -- but there's a lot of momentum around the idea, and if the community decides it is the right thing the do, the Foundation would certainly support creating such a solution. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: How can you call this 'affirmed'? Jimbo has made strong suggestions, but it is the Commons community that must create and enforce its own policies. The founder flag is an indication of respect, and provides 'crat rights on all projects, but doesn't provide any more 'power' over the project than any bureaucrat has. The real power on wikis is social, not technical -- and where there is a vacuum without local consensus, Jimbo is often persuasive and effective at providing guidance. However once the community decides how to proceed, it should do so with confidence. Let's talk about Jimmy's role, then. What happens now is that he has unlimited technical power over all projects, and everybody is of the impression that they are not permitted to remove or limit it, lest it be restored and their access similarly or more harshly curtailed. Community efforts to reverse actions taken by Jimmy with the assistance of his technical power have been immediately reversed by him without any further explanation, and occasionally threats or actual retaliation made against those reversing his actions. This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: How can you call this 'affirmed'? Jimbo has made strong suggestions, but it is the Commons community that must create and enforce its own policies. The founder flag is an indication of respect, and provides 'crat rights on all projects, but doesn't provide any more 'power' over the project than any bureaucrat has. The real power on wikis is social, not technical -- and where there is a vacuum without local consensus, Jimbo is often persuasive and effective at providing guidance. However once the community decides how to proceed, it should do so with confidence. Let's talk about Jimmy's role, then. What happens now is that he has unlimited technical power over all projects, and everybody is of the impression that they are not permitted to remove or limit it, lest it be restored and their access similarly or more harshly curtailed. Community efforts to reverse actions taken by Jimmy with the assistance of his technical power have been immediately reversed by him without any further explanation, and occasionally threats or actual retaliation made against those reversing his actions. You have a point, and threats and retaliation aren't helpful or needful in such circumstances. But where local communities persist, reversions are often let stand, in my experience (and looking at some of the recent image deletions on Commons). This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. English Wikipedia has addressed this fluidly over the years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Role_of_Jimmy_Wales I'm not sure anyone has tried to address the role of developers through policy ;-) SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Samuel Klein wrote: Marcus writes: I try to understand what happened... * Larry Sanger informs media about us alleging Wikimedia of hosting porn. [unaffirmed] He just made a lot of noise, and some media picked it up. If you consider a false report to the FBI reasonably characterised as just made a lot of noise, sure. * The (conservative) TV station FOX reports about Wikimedia and contacts many important companies that have donated money for Wikimedia in the past whether they want to comment on the allegations. [affirmed] * The companies are contacting Wikimedia to ask what's going on. [unaffirmed] Mainly they contacted us to say fyi, Fox wants to cause trouble. It was clear what was going on. This is an important clarification, and I commend you for it. On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org wrote: We had discussions on sexual content before. I proposed to use a technical solution in which images are tagged with tags that give detailed information about the form of explicit content present... Creating a technical solution like that is the task of the foundation. The _real_ task of the foundation. Let's have a meaningful discussion about this over the coming weeks. I'm not sure how I feel about this -- my reflex is to be opposed to the idea of internal tagging beyond Categories -- but there's a lot of momentum around the idea, and if the community decides it is the right thing the do, the Foundation would certainly support creating such a solution. Not to disagree with your personal inclinations at all, I just want to clarify a point of fact. Lot of momentum around the idea, is currently most persistently promoted by the same precise individual who began the ethical breaching experiment project on the English Wikiversity, and created the previous to last wiki-fracas. The suggestion has certainly been a perennial one, Uwe Kils and his Wiki-Vikings may have been the first one to down in flames. [[WP:TOBY]] (might still survive as a historical page, and as a warning to passersby. These kind of schemes no matter how they are flavored have always been soundly rejected by the community. I am like Buridans ass stuck between whether to refer to them as the third rail, or a lead balloon. If you however imply there is impetus to have anything of this sort implemented on the foundation side, my personal prediction would be that it would be a train wreck to make this current commons fracas look like a leisurely picnic by the Seine. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 08:33:49AM -0400, Samuel Klein wrote: I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. 3 points: * Commons: ** Image deletion on commons is less flexible and reversible, while the commons delinker bot is running (the normal state of affairs) ** Shutting down the commons delinker bot just to accomodate Jwales disrupts a lot of other commons activity * I am worried about the [[Founder Effect]], in the negative sense. sincerely, Kim Bruning -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:33 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org wrote: This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. For what purpose? The purpose for which the developers have this technical power is obvious - they can't possibly do their work without it. With Wales, it's a power with no explicit purpose other than anachronistic deference. English Wikipedia has addressed this fluidly over the years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Role_of_Jimmy_Wales So long as the power of the founder flag includes control over that very page, anything written on that page can't possibly be taken seriously. (BTW, shouldn't Larry Sanger have a founder flag too?) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:33 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org wrote: This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. Perhaps I should have written Exercised unlimited technical power. I'm referring to the general idea that Jimmy does what he feels like, and communities have no recourse except to the Foundation and to the Board. As you rightly point out, developers and staff have the same powers, but none of us make a habit of using them deliberately for large-scale content deletion. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 37-01--10 03:59 PM, Samuel Klein wrote: This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. The difference is that they don't use their access in ways that affect the editor communities so directly. Sure, a software update might get botched for a few minutes, or maybe some people don't like Vector so much. But system administrators aren't deleting content en masse in cases that are really *really* unclear. That's where the difference lies. If Jimbo's going to be a figurehead, I think we can live with him having essentially unlimited technical access on the wikis. If he's going to actually use it, he needs a community mandate. Recall, he *didn't* found all the wikis, and he *doesn't* edit most of them regularly. Recall that English Wikipedia is in a special position (whether you think that is good or bad) in that he actually did start that wiki, and he hangs around the wiki sometimes. Not so for most of the Wikimedia universe. It shouldn't be surprising that those other wikis are less tolerant of his derisive attitude towards disagreements they may have with this actions - - either the means or the ends. - -Mike -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkvlgkwACgkQst0AR/DaKHsGmgCfd6apPpIOOMO1cm8+NFzH7Bso y8AAn2aPD1mtzIGN6eEGwO4v6FkdDSEd =/uxv -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Samuel Klein wrote: I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. Deletions are easily reversible. Multi-wiki image transclusion removals, distrust in the Wikimedia Commons and resignations from Wikimedia projects? Less so. I'm not sure anyone has tried to address the role of developers through policy ;-) If a developer were to engage in the type of behavior exhibited by Mr. Wales, the resultant action would be swift and severe. I've defended Jimbo in the past and even turned to him for guidance. Unlike those are are merely angry at him (and in some cases, lashing out in a nonconstructive manner), I'm truly disheartened. David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
I wrote: Unlike those are are merely angry at him (and in some cases, lashing out in a nonconstructive manner), I'm truly disheartened. are are = who are David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 1:07 PM, David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com wrote: Samuel Klein wrote: I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. Deletions are easily reversible. Multi-wiki image transclusion removals, distrust in the Wikimedia Commons and resignations from Wikimedia projects? Less so. Seconding this. The deletion of images which are actively in use is _NOT_ easily reversible. It can require editing dozens or even hundreds of pages in languages which you don't speak to completely undo the results of a commons deletion. This, combined with maintaining good relationships with the projects, is why all commons admins are very careful about deleting images which are actively in use. Experienced commons admins all know this. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
2010/5/8 David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com: Samuel Klein wrote: I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. Deletions are easily reversible. Multi-wiki image transclusion removals, distrust in the Wikimedia Commons and resignations from Wikimedia projects? Less so. Well.. maybe... but bear in mind that it is really hard to discuss the pictures you can't see, and commons-delinker bot actions are really difficuilt to revert. On any other project if you delete something it is just a local issue. But deleting a picture on Commons which was used on many other project for years is really hiting all those projects, not only Commons. The side effect of Jimbo action might be a general move toward keeping pictures on local projects instead of using Commons... Maybe we should have common-prolinker bot to work in opposite way, after undeleting pictures? The another idea is to keep on Commons only those pictures which are non-controversial and suggest local project to keep their controversial pictures local? For example en Wikipedia keeps fair use pictures locally and it is OK. If for example nudity pictures is not a problem for Danish or French or Svedish Wikipedias - they can keep them locally... and the en-Wikipedia which is driven by anglo-saxon taboo of nudity can get rid of them... -- 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Well.. maybe... but bear in mind that it is really hard to discuss the pictures you can't see, and commons-delinker bot actions are really difficuilt to revert. So fix commons-delinker. Or shut it off altogether. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
2010/5/8 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Well.. maybe... but bear in mind that it is really hard to discuss the pictures you can't see, and commons-delinker bot actions are really difficuilt to revert. So fix commons-delinker. Or shut it off altogether. Or shut off the Commons. That would be the ultimate solution :-) Shuting down commons-delinker won't much help, as deleting the picture on Commons leave the red links on all those projects which were using the picutre. Thats the idea of Commons - to be the central repository of multimedia files - which strikes back in an effect - that if you delete something on Commons you hit not only Commons but also all those projects which are using it. -- 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/5/8 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Well.. maybe... but bear in mind that it is really hard to discuss the pictures you can't see, and commons-delinker bot actions are really difficuilt to revert. So fix commons-delinker. Or shut it off altogether. Or shut off the Commons. That would be the ultimate solution :-) Huh? What would that solve? Shuting down commons-delinker won't much help, as deleting the picture on Commons leave the red links on all those projects which were using the picutre. OMG. Red links would indicate to a human that there was a problem which needed to be solved. Then that human could go about solving the problem (which very well may involve more than just delinking the image). And deletions are easily reversible. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 9 May 2010 01:40, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Or shut off the Commons. That would be the ultimate solution :-) Huh? What would that solve? Considering this to be an ill conceived joke, not because it could appear 'controversial', but because it lacks... I dunno, humour? Comedy? But it raises a good point, however. It perceives the concept of not dealing with a situation proportionally. 'Someone is misusing A' - 'Let's make A illegal'. I would argue that this also sort of illustrates Wales' immediate behaviour. 'Bad press' - 'Do something!' Ironically, I think the solution to this problem is status quo. But no one will accept that solution. That's what got this whole thing started! ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. Both Jimmy as well as me believe that the best way for the board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions. If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the problem. Ting I see no indication so far that the community *is* able to solve the problem. Andreas ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Tomasz Ganicz wrote: Well.. maybe... but bear in mind that it is really hard to discuss the pictures you can't see, and commons-delinker bot actions are really difficuilt to revert. On any other project if you delete something it is just a local issue. But deleting a picture on Commons which was used on many other project for years is really hiting all those projects, not only Commons. We're arguing the same thing. :) Anthony wrote: So fix commons-delinker. Or shut it off altogether. 1. We don't usually have this problem, as Commons administrators seldom go on controversial deletion sprees (and when they do, other administrators aren't powerless to counter their actions). 2. Even without CommonsDelinker, editors at the various projects will remove broken image transclusions when they discover them. OMG. Red links would indicate to a human that there was a problem which needed to be solved. Then that human could go about solving the problem (which very well may involve more than just delinking the image). What, other than delinking or uploading the missing image locally (thereby bypassing Commons), do you expect a wiki to do? And how do you expect editors who cannot read English (particularly those whose native languages are among the less widespread) to even understand why in-use images are being deleted? And deletions are easily reversible. I'll quote myself from earlier in the thread. Deletions are easily reversible. Multi-wiki image transclusion removals, distrust in the Wikimedia Commons and resignations from Wikimedia projects? Less so. David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Svip wrote: On 9 May 2010 01:40, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Or shut off the Commons. That would be the ultimate solution :-) Huh? What would that solve? Considering this to be an ill conceived joke, not because it could appear 'controversial', but because it lacks... I dunno, humour? Comedy? But it raises a good point, however. It perceives the concept of not dealing with a situation proportionally. 'Someone is misusing A' - 'Let's make A illegal'. I would argue that this also sort of illustrates Wales' immediate behaviour. 'Bad press' - 'Do something!' Ironically, I think the solution to this problem is status quo[...] No, it isn't!!! It's pink floyd. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
--- On Sat, 8/5/10, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Then another idea is to keep on Commons only those pictures which are non-controversial and suggest local project to keep their controversial pictures local? For example en Wikipedia keeps fair use pictures locally and it is OK. If for example nudity pictures is not a problem for Danish or French or Svedish Wikipedias - they can keep them locally... and the en-Wikipedia which is driven by anglo-saxon taboo of nudity can get rid of them... This is an elegant idea that might be worth pursuing, at least as an interim solution.Projects could be given ample warning that certain media files will be deleted atsuch and such a date, and that if any project is interested in them, they should transfer them to their own project space. Andreas ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:19 PM, David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com wrote: Anthony wrote: OMG. Red links would indicate to a human that there was a problem which needed to be solved. Then that human could go about solving the problem (which very well may involve more than just delinking the image). What, other than delinking or uploading the missing image locally (thereby bypassing Commons), do you expect a wiki to do? Replacing it with a different image, removing the text from the article which refers to the image, contacting someone at Commons to argue for reinstatement of the image... And yeah, uploading the missing image locally (thereby bypassing Commons) would be another possibility. All depends on the situation. But fortunately, the human brain (unlike the robot brain) is very flexible in dealing with a multitude of situations. And how do you expect editors who cannot read English (particularly those whose native languages are among the less widespread) to even understand why in-use images are being deleted? Maybe by finding a translator? Alternatively, they could employ one of the possibilities listed above which don't involve speaking English at all. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Anthony wrote: OMG. Red links would indicate to a human that there was a problem which needed to be solved. Then that human could go about solving the problem (which very well may involve more than just delinking the image). What, other than delinking or uploading the missing image locally (thereby bypassing Commons), do you expect a wiki to do? Replacing it with a different image, This assumes that a suitable alternative is readily available (which likely isn't the case with many of the inappropriately deleted images, including those that Jimbo wheel-warred over) and still entails delinking the original image. removing the text from the article which refers to the image, This is a highly undesirable outcome (and example of potential damage). contacting someone at Commons to argue for reinstatement of the image... This is not always feasible (depending on one's native language) and is futile when Jimbo intends to unilaterally overrule any such decision. Additionally, one might erroneously assume that the image was deleted for a valid reason (e.g. copyright infringement). And yeah, uploading the missing image locally (thereby bypassing Commons) would be another possibility. This is another highly undesirable outcome (and example of potential damage). All depends on the situation. But fortunately, the human brain (unlike the robot brain) is very flexible in dealing with a multitude of situations. And the point is that some solutions weaken the Wikimedia Commons and/or the sister projects that rely upon it. Maybe by finding a translator? Depending on the language, that isn't always an easy task. And again, that assumes that a benefit exists and is apparent. Alternatively, they could employ one of the possibilities listed above which don't involve speaking English at all. See above. David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Given that several Commons admins had dropped out, and bearing in mind the clean-up campaign called for by the board and Jimbo, I put in an RFA at Commons, saying I would help clean up pornographic images *that are not in use by any project*. The result so far: 14 Opposes, 1 Support. You get the same result if you nominate a pornographic image for deletion. Andreas --- On Sun, 9/5/10, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: From: Anthony wikim...@inbox.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Sunday, 9 May, 2010, 1:32 On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:19 PM, David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com wrote: Anthony wrote: OMG. Red links would indicate to a human that there was a problem which needed to be solved. Then that human could go about solving the problem (which very well may involve more than just delinking the image). What, other than delinking or uploading the missing image locally (thereby bypassing Commons), do you expect a wiki to do? Replacing it with a different image, removing the text from the article which refers to the image, contacting someone at Commons to argue for reinstatement of the image... And yeah, uploading the missing image locally (thereby bypassing Commons) would be another possibility. All depends on the situation. But fortunately, the human brain (unlike the robot brain) is very flexible in dealing with a multitude of situations. And how do you expect editors who cannot read English (particularly those whose native languages are among the less widespread) to even understand why in-use images are being deleted? Maybe by finding a translator? Alternatively, they could employ one of the possibilities listed above which don't involve speaking English at all. ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:14 PM, David Levy lifeisunf...@gmail.com wrote: This assumes that... This is not always feasible... And the point is that some solutions weaken the Wikimedia Commons and/or the sister projects that rely upon it. Depending on the language, that isn't always an easy task. And again, that assumes that a benefit exists and is apparent. You seem to have missed my entire point. I hope some others got it. The point is, the proper response to a deletion is situation-dependent. Having a bot make the fix is therefore a bad solution. I'm surprised that hasn't been evident before now. Jimbo shouldn't be blamed for the actions of CommonsDelinkerBot. For those particular deletions in which he exercised poor judgment, sure. For wheel-warring over some of those instances, absolutely. But ultimately, his actions (as opposed to the actions which were caused by the maintainer of CommonsDelinkerBot), are easily undone, at least from a technical standpoint. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 4:22 PM, The Cunctator cuncta...@gmail.com wrote: Hooray for letting American prurience and Larry Sanger's oddities shape the project. Wikimedia's goal is to bring knowledge to everyone on Earth, not just Europeans. Europe is at the extreme left on the global social scale, along with a handful of other developed nations. Americans are more socially conservative than Europeans, but still more liberal than most of the world. There are 1.5 billion Muslims on Earth, for instance, which is more than America and Europe *combined* (although many of those Muslims are European or American). The large majority of Muslims would find these images grossly offensive. So would many others from *really* conservative cultures. Americans are the least of the story. The tolerance of sexual imagery on Wikimedia is a byproduct of Western liberal provincialism. Putting sensitivity to the cultural attitudes of others above (thoroughly hypocritical) ideals of non-censorship is essential to Wikimedia's long-term success, and I'm glad to see that people are finally being forced to deal with this. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Anthony wrote: Jimbo shouldn't be blamed for the actions of CommonsDelinkerBot. For those particular deletions in which he exercised poor judgment, sure. For wheel-warring over some of those instances, absolutely. But ultimately, his actions (as opposed to the actions which were caused by the maintainer of CommonsDelinkerBot), are easily undone, at least from a technical standpoint. As noted, the problem extends beyond the images delinked by the CommonsDelinker bot. In fact, I would argue that the bot actually mitigates the damage by preemptively delinking images via an identifiable account (thereby making the removals easier to detect and revert). David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Andreas Kolbe wrote: --- On Sat, 8/5/10, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote: Then another idea is to keep on Commons only those pictures which are non-controversial and suggest local project to keep their controversial pictures local? For example en Wikipedia keeps fair use pictures locally and it is OK. If for example nudity pictures is not a problem for Danish or French or Svedish Wikipedias - they can keep them locally... and the en-Wikipedia which is driven by anglo-saxon taboo of nudity can get rid of them... This is an elegant idea that might be worth pursuing, at least as an interim solution.Projects could be given ample warning that certain media files will be deleted atsuch and such a date, and that if any project is interested in them, they should transfer them to their own project space. Andreas Without even commenting the idea itself, I have to ask: What in this context would you consider ample warning? One year, two years, more, less? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hi, I would like to point you to: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html Jan-Bart de Vreede Vice Chair Wikimedia Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation On 7 mei 2010, at 21:23, Robert Rohde wrote: As some of you may know, Jimbo has recently used his standing in the community to dictate that Commons should not host porn. [1][2][3] He has interpreted this to include a wide swath of images both photographic and illustrative, and both contemporary and historical. In principle, I agree that having a stricter policy on sexual images is a good thing, but fundamentally we need to have a clear policy on what should be allowed and what shouldn't. Attempts to write one [4] have become a moving target that leaves us without a functional policy or community consensus. Initially, this was based on the characteristics of the USC 2257 record keeping laws, but Jimbo has gone beyond this by deleting non-photographic and historical works that would not be covered by 2257. In essence, right now Jimbo is deleting things based on his singular judgment about what should be allowed. [5] These deletions have continued with little apparent concern for whether or not an image is currently in use by any of the projects. This is a large change and lack of a clear policy creates a very confusing and frustrating environment for editors. (Multiple Commons admins have already stated their intention to resign and/or retire over this.) Again, I agree that tighter controls on sexual images are generally a good thing, but I believe the abruptness, lack of clear policy, and lack of a consensus based approach is creating an unnecessarily disruptive environment. Much of the content has been hosted by Wikimedia for years, so do we really have to delete it all, right now? Can we not take a week or two to articulate to boundaries of what should be deleted and what should be kept? In general, I would ask that things slow down until some sort of a clear policy can be created (either by the community or the WMF / Board). This is especially true when it comes to deleting images that are in use on the various Wikipedias. (Such deletions have already been widespread). I would also like to ask whether either the WMF or the Board plans to intervene? Because of Jimbo's historical standing and technical access, the Commons community is largely impotent to stop him. Multiple requests by the community that things slow down or a clear policy be crafted prior to mass deletions have thus far been ineffective. At the very least it would be helpful if the WMF and/or Board would express a position on the appropriate use of sexual content? -Robert Rohde [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales [2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Cleanup_policy (and following sections) [3] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content [4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content [5] http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALogtype=deleteuser=Jimbo+Wales ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
I found out about this from Larry Sanger's mailing list. Larry has reported the child pornography images on Commons to the FBI, as is the duty of any citizen, and has apparently appeared on Fox News with respect to the subject. I certainly have noticed occasional questionable images, the explicit image that used to illustrate Pearl necklace (sexuality) comes to mind. I have always objected to offensive images (such as of Muhammad) and know that somewhere there is a sane dividing line between the informative and the prurient. Fred Bauder As some of you may know, Jimbo has recently used his standing in the community to dictate that Commons should not host porn. [1][2][3] He has interpreted this to include a wide swath of images both photographic and illustrative, and both contemporary and historical. In principle, I agree that having a stricter policy on sexual images is a good thing, but fundamentally we need to have a clear policy on what should be allowed and what shouldn't. Attempts to write one [4] have become a moving target that leaves us without a functional policy or community consensus. Initially, this was based on the characteristics of the USC 2257 record keeping laws, but Jimbo has gone beyond this by deleting non-photographic and historical works that would not be covered by 2257. In essence, right now Jimbo is deleting things based on his singular judgment about what should be allowed. [5] These deletions have continued with little apparent concern for whether or not an image is currently in use by any of the projects. This is a large change and lack of a clear policy creates a very confusing and frustrating environment for editors. (Multiple Commons admins have already stated their intention to resign and/or retire over this.) Again, I agree that tighter controls on sexual images are generally a good thing, but I believe the abruptness, lack of clear policy, and lack of a consensus based approach is creating an unnecessarily disruptive environment. Much of the content has been hosted by Wikimedia for years, so do we really have to delete it all, right now? Can we not take a week or two to articulate to boundaries of what should be deleted and what should be kept? In general, I would ask that things slow down until some sort of a clear policy can be created (either by the community or the WMF / Board). This is especially true when it comes to deleting images that are in use on the various Wikipedias. (Such deletions have already been widespread). I would also like to ask whether either the WMF or the Board plans to intervene? Because of Jimbo's historical standing and technical access, the Commons community is largely impotent to stop him. Multiple requests by the community that things slow down or a clear policy be crafted prior to mass deletions have thus far been ineffective. At the very least it would be helpful if the WMF and/or Board would express a position on the appropriate use of sexual content? -Robert Rohde [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales [2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Cleanup_policy (and following sections) [3] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content [4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content [5] http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALogtype=deleteuser=Jimbo+Wales ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 7 May 2010 20:30, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, I would like to point you to: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html My interpretation of that is that Jimmy's unilateral deletions are not done with the support of the rest of the board, since the email talks about encouraging the community to deal with the problem. Is that correct? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:38 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 7 May 2010 20:30, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, I would like to point you to: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html My interpretation of that is that Jimmy's unilateral deletions are not done with the support of the rest of the board, since the email talks about encouraging the community to deal with the problem. Is that correct? Willing to know the same, as Jimmy's last action is too serious. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hi, Speaking for myself I can state that Jimmy is a part of the community and that the board statement is in support of both his and the other administrators who have taken the initiative to clean up commons. Also, I would refer you to Jimmy's talk page on commons, as there is an active discussion going on there. Jan-Bart de Vreede Vice Chair Wikimedia Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation On 7 mei 2010, at 21:38, Thomas Dalton wrote: On 7 May 2010 20:30, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, I would like to point you to: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html My interpretation of that is that Jimmy's unilateral deletions are not done with the support of the rest of the board, since the email talks about encouraging the community to deal with the problem. Is that correct? ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 7 May 2010 20:45, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, Speaking for myself I can state that Jimmy is a part of the community and that the board statement is in support of both his and the other administrators who have taken the initiative to clean up commons. Also, I would refer you to Jimmy's talk page on commons, as there is an active discussion going on there. The board statement doesn't seem to be suggesting people take unilateral action. If that is what you meant, you should have made it explicit. The default in the Wikimedia movement is to discuss things before taking action, not after, so that is what most people will have interpreted your statement as meaning. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
HI, Before calling it a night I would like to point out the final paragraph of the statement. In saying this, we don't intend to create new policy, but rather to reaffirm and support policy that already exists. We encourage Wikimedia editors to scrutinize potentially offensive materials with the goal of assessing their educational or informational value, and to remove them from the projects if there is no such value. Jan-Bart de Vreede Vice Chair Wikimedia Board of Trustees WIkimedia Foundation On 7 mei 2010, at 21:49, Thomas Dalton wrote: On 7 May 2010 20:45, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, Speaking for myself I can state that Jimmy is a part of the community and that the board statement is in support of both his and the other administrators who have taken the initiative to clean up commons. Also, I would refer you to Jimmy's talk page on commons, as there is an active discussion going on there. The board statement doesn't seem to be suggesting people take unilateral action. If that is what you meant, you should have made it explicit. The default in the Wikimedia movement is to discuss things before taking action, not after, so that is what most people will have interpreted your statement as meaning. ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 7 May 2010 20:56, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: HI, Before calling it a night I would like to point out the final paragraph of the statement. In saying this, we don't intend to create new policy, but rather to reaffirm and support policy that already exists. We encourage Wikimedia editors to scrutinize potentially offensive materials with the goal of assessing their educational or informational value, and to remove them from the projects if there is no such value. Well, there is currently no policy to allow the unilateral deletion of images like this on Commons, which is why I interpreted the statement as not supporting Jimmy's actions. I know it is human nature to be intentionally vague about controversial matters in order to leave yourself room to manoeuvre in the future, but it is really unhelpful. Can the board please explicitly say whether Jimmy's actions are done with board authorisation or not? If not, I think our policies are very clear: Jimmy should be blocked from Commons until he agrees to comply with policy and all the images should be undeleted pending consensus. That is what would happen to anyone else. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:45 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Speaking for myself I can state that Jimmy is a part of the community and that the board statement is in support of both his and the other administrators who have taken the initiative to clean up commons. Also, I would refer you to Jimmy's talk page on commons, as there is an active discussion going on there. Did you see what Jimmy deleted? For example, Franz von Bayros painting [1]. That guy is not so famous, but I don't see anymore any sane rule, except: What Jimmy's sexually impaired super rich friend wish, Jimmy do and then Board transform into the rule or a statement. Besides the fact that he was dealing just with Western taboos of naked body and sexual act, not with Mohamed cartoons [2] at English Wikipedia, where he is the God King. If the Board stays behind such action, this is a very clear signal that Wikimedia projects are becoming censored. And if Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons won't be deleted, then Wikimedia projects are a tool of Western cultural imperialism. I want to hear other Board members before making my decision about staying here. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_von_Bayros (yes, similar to that one, which is inside of the article) [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
The primary reason that several weeks back I became involved in the Common's discussions about sexually explicit content is my work with the strategic planning process for WMF. During the strategic plannings discussions, I became acutely aware of the problems with the lack of diversity among WMF readers and editors. As I considered the topic, I came to the conclusion that WMF hosting an unlimited amount of sexually explicit content could be one of the barriers for WMF being more diverse. The manner that we display nudity and sexually explicit content makes it difficult to avoid. Currently, our policies and practices do not allow for special care when displaying the content (for deletion discussion, categorizing, or links to our sister projects, ...). So, people may unexpectedly see it. In my opinion, the current approach to managing the content is insensitive to many people in the world of many nationalities and religions, and people that access WFM projects through settings where sexually explicit content is inappropriate or not allowed. So, I see a policy that better manages the content as potentially making WMF projects open to more users. I support the clean up effort by Jimmy and the administrators on Commons for the images that have no significant educational value. I also understand that to some editors who are new to thinking about the issue that this may seem abrupt. So, I encourage good communication between all the stakeholders so that we can understand each others concerns and address them. I'm also hopeful that technical solutions will be implemented and will resolve the concerns about hosting images that have an educational value.but are not appropriate for all readers in all settings. Sydney Poore (FloNight) On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 3:45 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Hi, Speaking for myself I can state that Jimmy is a part of the community and that the board statement is in support of both his and the other administrators who have taken the initiative to clean up commons. Also, I would refer you to Jimmy's talk page on commons, as there is an active discussion going on there. Jan-Bart de Vreede Vice Chair Wikimedia Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation On 7 mei 2010, at 21:38, Thomas Dalton wrote: On 7 May 2010 20:30, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, I would like to point you to: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html My interpretation of that is that Jimmy's unilateral deletions are not done with the support of the rest of the board, since the email talks about encouraging the community to deal with the problem. Is that correct? ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
I try to understand what happened, but I'm not sure whether the pieces that I found so far add up. * Larry Sanger is mad about Wikimedia. [apparent] * Larry Sanger notifies the FBI and tells them Wikimedia hosts child porn. [affirmed] * The FBI is rather unimpressed and does not take swift action. [apparent] * Larry Sanger informs media about us alleging Wikimedia of hosting porn. [unaffirmed] * The (conservative) TV station FOX reports about Wikimedia and contacts many important companies that have donated money for Wikimedia in the past whether they want to comment on the allegations. [affirmed] * The companies are contacting Wikimedia to ask what's going on. [unaffirmed] * The board worries about losses in donations and either sends Jimbo to Commons or Jimbo unilaterally decides to handle the case. [unaffirmed] * Without mentioning the previous developments Jimbo starts to delete all files that are porn (in his opinion, not sparing PD-old artworks etc.). Even engaging in edit-warring and ignoring input from the Commons community and ignoring community policies. [affirmed] * The Commons community condemns Jimbo's actions but has no power at all to stop the Founder-flagged berserk. [affirmed] Is this the story? Or are there any story arcs that I missed? Please correct me, wherever I am wrong. Marcus Buck User:Slomox ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hooray for letting American prurience and Larry Sanger's oddities shape the project. To be expected, though. On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 3:13 PM, Sydney Poore sydney.po...@gmail.com wrote: The primary reason that several weeks back I became involved in the Common's discussions about sexually explicit content is my work with the strategic planning process for WMF. During the strategic plannings discussions, I became acutely aware of the problems with the lack of diversity among WMF readers and editors. As I considered the topic, I came to the conclusion that WMF hosting an unlimited amount of sexually explicit content could be one of the barriers for WMF being more diverse. The manner that we display nudity and sexually explicit content makes it difficult to avoid. Currently, our policies and practices do not allow for special care when displaying the content (for deletion discussion, categorizing, or links to our sister projects, ...). So, people may unexpectedly see it. In my opinion, the current approach to managing the content is insensitive to many people in the world of many nationalities and religions, and people that access WFM projects through settings where sexually explicit content is inappropriate or not allowed. So, I see a policy that better manages the content as potentially making WMF projects open to more users. I support the clean up effort by Jimmy and the administrators on Commons for the images that have no significant educational value. I also understand that to some editors who are new to thinking about the issue that this may seem abrupt. So, I encourage good communication between all the stakeholders so that we can understand each others concerns and address them. I'm also hopeful that technical solutions will be implemented and will resolve the concerns about hosting images that have an educational value.but are not appropriate for all readers in all settings. Sydney Poore (FloNight) On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 3:45 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, Speaking for myself I can state that Jimmy is a part of the community and that the board statement is in support of both his and the other administrators who have taken the initiative to clean up commons. Also, I would refer you to Jimmy's talk page on commons, as there is an active discussion going on there. Jan-Bart de Vreede Vice Chair Wikimedia Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation On 7 mei 2010, at 21:38, Thomas Dalton wrote: On 7 May 2010 20:30, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, I would like to point you to: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html My interpretation of that is that Jimmy's unilateral deletions are not done with the support of the rest of the board, since the email talks about encouraging the community to deal with the problem. Is that correct? ___ 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
This is nuts. Literally, nothing has changed. Stuff on Wikimedia sites needs to be either educational or aimed at furthering the goals of the project and the foundation. We don't host articles about my her breasts or his penis, and we don't need to host images of them either. Arguing otherwise is just looking for a webhost. ~A ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 7 May 2010 21:42, Amory Meltzer amorymelt...@gmail.com wrote: This is nuts. Literally, nothing has changed. Stuff on Wikimedia sites needs to be either educational or aimed at furthering the goals of the project and the foundation. We don't host articles about my her breasts or his penis, and we don't need to host images of them either. Arguing otherwise is just looking for a webhost. 1) That argument doesn't apply to old artwork. 2) It is for the community to decide what is and isn't educational, not Jimmy. (The board acting collectively could overrule the community, but they don't seem to have done that.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hoi, There is a board message about this that is completely in line with what Jimmy mentioned. When you consider that because of many of those images that should have remained private the whole Wikmedia domain has been blogged, we really have to consider how we deal with this issue. The first priority is what our aim is for our WMF projects, the brinkmanship with a shit load of inappropriate content is hurting what we stand for. Is preventing us from furthering our aims. This is what is at issue. Thanks, GerardM http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html On 7 May 2010 22:42, Amory Meltzer amorymelt...@gmail.com wrote: This is nuts. Literally, nothing has changed. Stuff on Wikimedia sites needs to be either educational or aimed at furthering the goals of the project and the foundation. We don't host articles about my her breasts or his penis, and we don't need to host images of them either. Arguing otherwise is just looking for a webhost. ~A ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 7 May 2010 21:56, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, There is a board message about this that is completely in line with what Jimmy mentioned. When you consider that because of many of those images that should have remained private the whole Wikmedia domain has been blogged, we really have to consider how we deal with this issue. Consideration is good. Unilateral action with no authority is not. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 7 May 2010 21:56, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, There is a board message about this that is completely in line with what Jimmy mentioned. When you consider that because of many of those images that should have remained private the whole Wikmedia domain has been blogged, we really have to consider how we deal with this issue. The first priority is what our aim is for our WMF projects, the brinkmanship with a shit load of inappropriate content is hurting what we stand for. Is preventing us from furthering our aims. This is what is at issue. Thanks, GerardM http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html Given the statement would require the deletion of 99% of userpages I think it is best ignored. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
It still works, it's just harder. And I'm totally with you on the second point. Jimmy got a needed process started. Could he have started it a different, less dramatic way? Probably. Would that have been better? Probably. As effective? Probably not. If you're looking to masturbate, Commons is among the best, most available, and easiest to navigate sources of material there is - the community can fix that and decide as a whole what to do, and should, but maybe Jimmy is playing the maverick and providing a giant leap toward that discussion. ~A On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 16:52, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 1) That argument doesn't apply to old artwork. 2) It is for the community to decide what is and isn't educational, not Jimmy. (The board acting collectively could overrule the community, but they don't seem to have done that.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Amory Meltzer hett schreven: This is nuts. Literally, nothing has changed. Stuff on Wikimedia sites needs to be either educational or aimed at furthering the goals of the project and the foundation. We don't host articles about my her breasts or his penis, and we don't need to host images of them either. Arguing otherwise is just looking for a webhost. The thing that has changed is the fact that this was decided by the community, by admins who have earned their rights in a community vote, and according to policies. Take e.g. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png. That image is a 19th century artwork, a drawing, from an important artist. It was uploaded to Commons in 2006 and never questioned. But Jimbo didn't file a deletion request, he didn't even put a speedy delete. He just deleted it with a generic message given as reason. Two times the deletion was reverted by longstanding Commons admins who wanted to uphold Commons policy about deletions and two times Jimbo deleted it again, with the same generic reason. At the moment the file is again undeleted by a third Commons admin. (Jimbo is not online at the moment to overturn that decision.) I think this is a really obvious example how Jimbo breaks policies and why large parts of the Commons community are upset. Marcus Buck User:Slomox ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hoi, We apparently disagree on this. The ban of the complete Wikimedia domain from Iran happened some time ago and nothing was considered. This issue has been raised several times and the amount of content that is inappropriate because it adds nothing to what is already there is high. Let me be clear, there is a need for many explicit images. I have added many explicit images and there are sound reasons for that material. Consequently I do not expect them to be an issue. What we need is an appropriate amount of material that illustrate our more contentious subjects well and that are neither gross nor of low quality nor illegal. Thanks, GerardM On 7 May 2010 22:59, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 7 May 2010 21:56, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, There is a board message about this that is completely in line with what Jimmy mentioned. When you consider that because of many of those images that should have remained private the whole Wikmedia domain has been blogged, we really have to consider how we deal with this issue. Consideration is good. Unilateral action with no authority is not. ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Amory Meltzer amorymelt...@gmail.comwrote: This is nuts. Literally, nothing has changed. Stuff on Wikimedia sites needs to be either educational or aimed at furthering the goals of the project and the foundation. We don't host articles about my her breasts or his penis, and we don't need to host images of them either. Arguing otherwise is just looking for a webhost. ~A It's rather unfortunate that Jimbo went beyond deleting low-quality photographs of penises and deleted what are obviously works of art or educational illustrations. Had he stuck to the former, he would have had the support of a lot of people who are now upset. If he were to admit that it was a mistake to delete things that weren't clearly at the bottom of the barrel (rather than wheel-warring over them!), it would go a long way toward showing that this actually is about improving the quality of the project and not about PR or appeasing donors. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
It's another time we have a problem which would hypothetically fall into the scope of some global arbcom, but since it does not exist, I'm still not sure there's the correct way to handle such situations. I hope that Jimbo and Board will be able to make things settle down. Petition [1] seems to be a variant too, though I was told it does not work well. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petition_to_Jimbo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 11:54 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: I don't actually see what the problem is necessarily in deleting it. It's called editorial judgment, and as I have been telling people for years and years on Wikipedia, editorial judgment =/= censorship. You may write the most awesome novel to ever have been written, but that doesn't mean it's fit for Wikipedia. Similarly, you may have the most righteous CC-BY pictures of naked people or your birthday party or your neighbor's cat or whatever, but that doesn't mean any of it needs to go -- or should go -- in Commons. Phoebe, of ~10 deleted images which I opened, statistics is around: * 4 cartoons which represents different sexual acts (made for illustration of sexual acts in Wikipedia articles) * 2 naked women (porn stars) * 1 naked man * 1 Second Life sexual act * 1 Second Life commercial (I suppose so) * 1 art work Just the naked man could be from personal collection, while it was obviously that photo was made carefully, not to fully show face, but to show body for educational purposes. From this group, only Second Life sexual act is useless. Even commercial has historiographical value. Naked man and women are probably redundant, but there are a lot of redundant images all over the Wikimedia projects. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
What I can say to your questions is that Jimmy informed the board about his intention and asked the board for support. Don't speaking for other board members, just speak for myself. I answered his mail with that I fully support his engagement. Personally, I think that the board is responsible for defining the scope and basic rules of the projects. While for projects like Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wiktionary the scope is more or less easier to define. On Wikipedia we have the five pillars as our basic rules. But we have also some projects that have a scope that is not quite so clear and no such basic rules. Commons is one of these projects, and the most important one. Fact is, there is no consensus in the community as what is educational or potentially educational for Commons. And as far as I see there would probably never be a concensus. And I think this is where the board should weigh in. To define scopes and basic rules. This is why the board made this statement. For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. Both Jimmy as well as me believe that the best way for the board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions. If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the problem. Ting Thomas Dalton wrote: On 7 May 2010 20:30, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, I would like to point you to: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html My interpretation of that is that Jimmy's unilateral deletions are not done with the support of the rest of the board, since the email talks about encouraging the community to deal with the problem. Is that correct? ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Doing something good in the worst possible way. Is this not completely par for the course for Wikimedia? Few people should be surprised. MZMcBride ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 06:21:38PM -0400, MZMcBride wrote: Doing something good in the worst possible way. Is this not completely par for the course for Wikimedia? Few people should be surprised. MZMcBride: You could re-state that in a more positive way: We are happy that some initiative is being taken. We would like to contribute to ensuring that the initiative will actually be successful and bear fruit. btw, congratulations, I think I just volunteered you. ;-) Read you soon, Kim Bruning -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 12:15 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: What I can say to your questions is that Jimmy informed the board about his intention and asked the board for support. Don't speaking for other board members, just speak for myself. I answered his mail with that I fully support his engagement. Personally, I think that the board is responsible for defining the scope and basic rules of the projects. While for projects like Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wiktionary the scope is more or less easier to define. On Wikipedia we have the five pillars as our basic rules. But we have also some projects that have a scope that is not quite so clear and no such basic rules. Commons is one of these projects, and the most important one. Fact is, there is no consensus in the community as what is educational or potentially educational for Commons. And as far as I see there would probably never be a concensus. And I think this is where the board should weigh in. To define scopes and basic rules. This is why the board made this statement. For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. Both Jimmy as well as me believe that the best way for the board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions. If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the problem. Ting Thomas Dalton wrote: On 7 May 2010 20:30, Jan-Bart de Vreede janb...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi, I would like to point you to: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html My interpretation of that is that Jimmy's unilateral deletions are not done with the support of the rest of the board, since the email talks about encouraging the community to deal with the problem. Is that correct? ___ 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 Ting, this is your statement about sexually explicit content from the last elections [1]: First of all I my position to this point had not changed since last year. I think content in Wikimedia projects should be educational, nothing more and nothing less. I think the communities of our major projects are meanwhile good enough to decide what is in scope and what not. This as overall principle. In most part of the world even pure educational content has some restriction of age, sometimes even per law. I think the Foundation should take this into account and give the community the possibility to act in accordance with the local laws if they decide to. From this point of view my suggestion is the following: The foundation should develop the MediaWiki software so that some content that are tagged with an age restriction would not be shown immediately if one comes to such an article. Only if the user confirms that he is above the age limit the content would be revealed. I believe this suggestion was already made by Erik a few years ago and I think we should do it. The board of trustees should issue a resolution in the form like the BPL resolution that announces the feature and call for the responsibility of the community to use this feature in accordance with the community consensus. I see here two things: * You didn't mention that sexually explicit content should be deleted. * You said that it is Board's responsibility to create a feature, not any kind of community's responsibility [out of the scope of particular legal systems]. In that sense, I want to ask you what did Board do except supporting Jimmy to delete many images of educational value? [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates/Questions/1#Sexual_content_on_WMF ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 15:15, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. The problem is that what Jimmy is doing on Commons isn't a soft push. It's a whack across the head with a spiked club, by someone who doesn't have good aim. -- Mark [[en:User:Carnildo]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hoi, There has been a need to address these things. Let us be clear, there is no need for speedy deletions, there is time to have the ordinary deletion process. Let us be equally clear that there is no room for business as usual because not only have things gone bad and bans like the current Iranian one are not addressed but also because the board of the WMF has clearly indicated that things are out of kilter. Consequently, it does not help at all to argue about if you like or dislike the approach Jimmy has taken. He has clearly put this issue on the map and that is good. When we want to stabilise the situation by having the standard process, it has to be clear that the argument why something is to be kept has to be clear and strong. Nudity is in and of itself not an issue. The nature and the volume of many subjects is. What is needed is are criteria and they have to include the amount of images we need for the subjects under discussion. As I argued on my blog, a Maroon with a loincloth should not even feature in the category nudity. Thanks, GerardM http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com On 8 May 2010 00:33, Mark Wagner carni...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 15:15, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. The problem is that what Jimmy is doing on Commons isn't a soft push. It's a whack across the head with a spiked club, by someone who doesn't have good aim. -- Mark [[en:User:Carnildo]] ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Ting Chen hett schreven: For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. Not my definition of a soft push. In my opinion it's not the task of board or foundation to push the community in any direction. It's the other way round, the community forms board and foundation. The task of board and foundation is to operate the servers, to develop the software needed to operate our projects, and to stop members of the community or of the outside world from doing things harmful to the community, e.g. by violating the law. But they should not decide on the actual content, that's the task of the community. If e.g. USC 2257 requires us to keep records, that would be okay to me. It would decimate our explicit content, but having content with clear provenance would be a nice advantage. But at the moment I see no rational reason like a law or anything like that. Just some vague scope that is inherently undefined and used to cover cleansings on moral grounds. We do not need 10,000 close-ups of penises. But we need some penises. Small, medium, big, from different ethnicities, crooked, shaved and unshaved, with jewelry, with diseases etc. pp. We will never reach a state where the number of our penis images is low enough to make conservative agenda makers happy without leaving medical articles or articles on sexuality unillustrated (which would lower their informativeness and thus their educational value). We had discussions on sexual content before. I proposed to use a technical solution in which images are tagged with tags that give detailed information about the form of explicit content present. The images could then be filtered by anybody who wants them to be filtered. That can be done on a per-user basis, but also on a per-project basis, or a per-country basis (based on IP geolocation). So if the people of the Kerguelen Islands don't want to see boobs and vagoos (or the government disallows showing them) a filter could be set to remove those images. Creating a technical solution like that is the task of the foundation. The _real_ task of the foundation. Marcus Buck User:Slomox ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
When I heard that Jimmy had taken an axe to explicit images on commons, I thought it was good news as I've been frustrated and disappointed by my own inability to convince the commons community that some things, like the bulk copying of erotic imagery from flickr— hundreds of images with little to no prospect of use in an article, was inappropriate. By in my first few clicks on Jimmy's deletion log I instantly found several hundred year old works of art by artists who have articles in almost every major language Wikipedia. ... and that these deletions were not just errors. When the images were deleted by people operating under that impression, Jimmy wheel-warred. As an example of their maturity, I'm not aware of any Commons Admin that undeleted a second time. After seeing that went and viewed Jimmy's talk page, and the commentary there was enough to dispel all hope I had of being able to support this initiative. I strongly recommend you read these sections yourself: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Franz_von_Bayros.3F The delete everything now, regardless of how long its been there, how widely used, the fact that it's a 100 year old line drawing, and worry about allowing some stuff later, maybe approach seems maximally poisonous to me. I've been guilty of it myself in the past, but I hope that I've learned better by now... I think Jimmy's conduct is alarming, disproportionate, and ill-considered. I find it shocking that the board has chosen to explicitly support this 'wild west' approach. I feel like our community is being dragged into a petty game of personal one-upmanship between Larry Sanger and Jimmy. On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: What I can say to your questions is that Jimmy informed the board about his intention and asked the board for support. Don't speaking for other board members, just speak for myself. I answered his mail with that I fully support his engagement. Personally, I think that the board is responsible for defining the scope and basic rules of the projects. While for projects like Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wiktionary the scope is more or less easier to define. On Wikipedia we have the five pillars as our basic rules. But we have also some projects that have a scope that is not quite so clear and no such basic rules. Commons is one of these projects, and the most important one. I hope the rest of the board will step forward and disclose their level of support for Jimmy's actions. I think such disclosure will be relevant in the communities decision to support the members in the future. I don't see any reason why the board discussion on this topic should be kept confidential. Michael, Ting. Please consider this to be a request for the board to release its entire discussion related to this subject so that the community may better understand the basis for this sudden action against the commons community. I think a lot of people who have invested considerable effort into the structure and operation of commons will be gravely offended by your claim that Commons has no such basic rules, for it most certainly does— I know that your words hurt and offend me. The point that commons governance has not managed a single area to your liking can not be construed as evidence that commons is lawless. Fact is, there is no consensus in the community as what is educational or potentially educational for Commons. And as far as I see there would probably never be a concensus. And I think this is where the board should weigh in. To define scopes and basic rules. This is why the board made this statement. There is an enormous space of things strongly understood to be acceptable by consensus, and at least some space understood to be unacceptable. Then there is a area under which no clear consensus exists but under which several carefully navigated compromises exist on Commons and the projects. These compromises are not, in my opinion, anywhere near sufficient. But they do exist and they are helpful. The actions taken have disregarded both the area under clear consensus (e.g. hundreds year old works of art by famous artists) as well as having disregarded the area of compromise in the no consensus space. For example, on many Wikipedia projects drawings (albeit rather detailed ones) were used rather than sexually explicit photographs to illustrate articles on specific sex acts. — The compromise being that there is a need to use illustrations on these articles, just as we use illustrations on other physical activities (like dancing) but that drawings could achieve the informative purpose without being quite as likely to offend. Unfortunately Jimmy unilateral removed the commons policy preferring the illustrations: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Sexual_contentdiff=prevoldid=38893040 I think is incredibly unfortunate— it damages one of the things we've been able to do, not just at commons,
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 This, my friends, beyond the porn debate, is an important lesson about the vulnerability of wikipedia. You just have to threaten or convince Mr. Wales to control or shutdown the entire project. The whole community is powerless. When this crisis is over, we should think about giving a stronger autonomy to wikipedia. A project of this magnitude can no longer rest on the shoulder of one man, depending on his good faith. Wikipedia is making enemies (today: the prudes). One day they'll force Mr. Wales to denature the project. Is it today? I don't know. But don't be fooled about the appearances: the real crisis is not about porn, but about who has control on the project and who has control on these critical persons. If this is an emergency situation requiring a justified, immediate, unilateral, king-like massive action, I regret Mr. Wales didn't take the time to explain the emergency to us. By rush-imposing his views and decisions on people who are not out of the debate yet, he is browbeating their inner self, ignoring their beliefs and opinions, discarding the value of the Other. This lack of respect and of equality of vote should be extremely well argumented and the reasons transparently communicated. Otherwise, trust, faith and adhesion to the WMF values dissolve. I don't think we should let this happen. Mr. Wales, I hope you enter reason and dialogue realms again. We're not idiots who can't understand strategy. And by the way, if you pretend to calm puritan donors in a first time, then try to reconquer the lost ground later, you just surrendered the whole project to them by showing that you will cede before their threat. Maybe it is time to adopt a bold secularism (morally neutral, but still respectful of humans)? Anyway, will I, for one, accept the situation if you don't explain? I would oppose any person pretending to dictate non-consensually how to handle the human knowledge: it is part of the Humanity Heritage. But you're the founder and I'm powerless. Am I? I think many of us are having these very questions now. Is it good for the WMF that we're asking them? Is it the consequence of Wales' bold actions? Is the board voluntarily ignoring our legitimate feelings ? On 07/05/2010 17:19, Marcus Buck wrote: I try to understand what happened, but I'm not sure whether the pieces that I found so far add up. * Larry Sanger is mad about Wikimedia. [apparent] * Larry Sanger notifies the FBI and tells them Wikimedia hosts child porn. [affirmed] * The FBI is rather unimpressed and does not take swift action. [apparent] * Larry Sanger informs media about us alleging Wikimedia of hosting porn. [unaffirmed] * The (conservative) TV station FOX reports about Wikimedia and contacts many important companies that have donated money for Wikimedia in the past whether they want to comment on the allegations. [affirmed] * The companies are contacting Wikimedia to ask what's going on. [unaffirmed] * The board worries about losses in donations and either sends Jimbo to Commons or Jimbo unilaterally decides to handle the case. [unaffirmed] * Without mentioning the previous developments Jimbo starts to delete all files that are porn (in his opinion, not sparing PD-old artworks etc.). Even engaging in edit-warring and ignoring input from the Commons community and ignoring community policies. [affirmed] * The Commons community condemns Jimbo's actions but has no power at all to stop the Founder-flagged berserk. [affirmed] Is this the story? Or are there any story arcs that I missed? Please correct me, wherever I am wrong. Marcus Buck User:Slomox ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJL5LdTAAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LfGEIANYli6roFaZJOqXv5j/rvE3B D/9B7VLzyEn86tkWYOACz+k+Ngj9mORGKwdVSDKYhwNdx/ek3SuW87lwp/l2ORhA e16SsFbzPTTE0dDewvMfK2aEGjgPpK15AmV02Z3X12PeQJCO76fnjH9aKedBdvns BZnk3hv53OSIq194bizkTk82GYWClc7wvXX6jnvc0dtOWEetm8PdM3D9q4Gpuzuh Bgqa+mMx3WVOuUywRVGGQQMQ3L/xF4aisMHYgDP19rtnV9mNz4m4v8r9joGP7lP8 Bq2zEO8KeoTU5Yjb3sPLA66yz8vsJ0YCixhQIvP3Y+qGwETm84x3wr4Hbt7pOzQ= =3wP0 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 5:18 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: Is there anyone who disagrees that we need to hold to the policies: 2. that no WMF project contain material that it can not legally contain. Legally contain according to what laws? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 A technical and sincerely genuine question about this list. Is somebody, some bot or some site synthesizing our emailed discussion, or is everything vanishing as soon as it is spoken? In this last case, shouldn't we keep an organized trace of the threads to allow discussion and synthesis? How will we reach fair consensus for complex and heated discussions otherwise? How do we plan on anger and fatigue to sort it out? On 07/05/2010 22:33, Anthony wrote: On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 5:18 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: Is there anyone who disagrees that we need to hold to the policies: 2. that no WMF project contain material that it can not legally contain. Legally contain according to what laws? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJL5MK9AAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LqAcH/jFyF7WcgpympPaliNi5toHV J/BsH4WeA++e/5m/63b5jH+0mT410uPn+/i2HZaMLIjc8kztzOJTrhDvPeX3vl07 MAXG0Jp6SP7TnFLJx09QFzdaE/V/ItA0VU8qdIYe4TWq8z6EIfKNqpbgY3uTrGa0 HTG7CsoXk2MXYUgtXdT3ym0xAoPPL0FcLAMlHcqrPrRvgBY4kM8AM0rJknB313dF 3sD8dhgUsD7Gn2clCv+RJQQgGPOyRLc3sKAMc7Q48/ipr51WyneSNMGaHBrdE+3P F1Ut3c+J60bIibVGZek8PEj+Ar5YZuX5cOayBesXX5VjuFJrczOQWdq2rZseBUk= =L/5V -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/thread.html Everything is archived. ~Amory ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Gregory Maxwell wrote: By in my first few clicks on Jimmy's deletion log I instantly found several hundred year old works of art by artists who have articles in almost every major language Wikipedia. I confess I found a certain poignancy in reading the article on one of the victims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Adolphe_Bouguereau Bouguereaus works were eagerly bought by American millionaires who considered him the most important French artist of that time. But after 1920, Bouguereau fell into disrepute, due in part to changing tastes and partly to his staunch opposition to the Impressionists who were finally gaining acceptance. *For decades following, his name was not even mentioned in encyclopedias.* (emphasis mine) How sad. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: Gregory Maxwell wrote: By in my first few clicks on Jimmy's deletion log I instantly found several hundred year old works of art by artists who have articles in almost every major language Wikipedia. I confess I found a certain poignancy in reading the article on one of the victims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Adolphe_Bouguereau Bouguereaus works were eagerly bought by American millionaires who considered him the most important French artist of that time. But after 1920, Bouguereau fell into disrepute, due in part to changing tastes and partly to his staunch opposition to the Impressionists who were finally gaining acceptance. *For decades following, his name was not even mentioned in encyclopedias.* (emphasis mine) How sad. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen Apologies for replying to my own message, but that was a false alarm. In this case the link was broken because a better quality image had been uploaded with a different name, apparently. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Marcus Buck wrote: Amory Meltzer hett schreven: This is nuts. Literally, nothing has changed. Stuff on Wikimedia sites needs to be either educational or aimed at furthering the goals of the project and the foundation. We don't host articles about my her breasts or his penis, and we don't need to host images of them either. Arguing otherwise is just looking for a webhost. The thing that has changed is the fact that this was decided by the community, by admins who have earned their rights in a community vote, and according to policies. Take e.g. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png. That image is a 19th century artwork, a drawing, from an important artist. It was uploaded to Commons in 2006 and never questioned. But Jimbo didn't file a deletion request, he didn't even put a speedy delete. He just deleted it with a generic message given as reason. Two times the deletion was reverted by longstanding Commons admins who wanted to uphold Commons policy about deletions and two times Jimbo deleted it again, with the same generic reason. At the moment the file is again undeleted by a third Commons admin. (Jimbo is not online at the moment to overturn that decision.) I think this is a really obvious example how Jimbo breaks policies and why large parts of the Commons community are upset. Interestingly enough, the same caricatyrist still retains on teh commons another work (for the moment at least), which possibly many would find nearly as offensive, but is likely just about the perfectest metaphor for what is currently happening on Wikimedia Commons... http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_La_tentation_de_Saint_Antoine.jpg Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Fred Bauder wrote: Yes, Category:Women facing left A caricature of a Catholic saint using a dildo but used on Wikipedias in 3 languages to illustrate the article dildo. I'm not a student of Teresa of Ávila but it seems rather unlikely she did a lot of wanton stuff with dildos. Not that there would be anything wrong if she had, but we don't illustrate the articles of any number of women who might have used a dildo at some point in their lives in this way. In a word, the image is made up and quite offensive. It does present an interesting theoretical question though; Saint Teresa did practise body mortification quite enthusiastically. Would it be okay to portray a religious person flagellating themself on commons, considering that it isn't sexualized, and apparently on the other hand, the strictest part of Jimbos new order of the day seems to relate to BDSM depictions on commons? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
