[Foundation-l] Boycott in ace at wiki

[Bod Notbod]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 11:02 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>> The prohibition against illustrating Mohammed in (some?) muslim
>> culture is no more a "personal opinion" than a decision we would make
>> not to show, for example, certain sexual imagery or images of
>> violence; there's certainly imagery in those realms that wouldn't be
>> illegal to show but the community would agree that we shouldn't.
>
>
> It turns out this is actually quite historically inaccurate.

You're asserting that the prohibition against showing an image of
Mohammed can be adequately described as a "personal opinion"?

> understand there is a popular online encyclopedia

It's very well to get cute. I'll put it down to Friday night
festivities. But I'd accept it with more grace if you're able, since
you're here, to  answer my question earlier. If we are taking this
argument on as an NPOV issue; which of these is neutral and which is
not:

1. This is forbidden.

2. This is not forbidden.

As I say, I think if one is regarded as neutral then so must the
other. And if one is regarded as a POV then so must the other.

I don't say this to brow beat you. I think it's an interesting and
relevant question and I'd be interested to know what people think. .
We're all aware that Wikimedia is now a global organisation and we all
hope that it continues to expand. I would assume that issues like this
one are going to crop up more often in various forms. So, since we are
confronted with the Mohammed issue today I think it's well worth
thinking how we are to approach these things.

My personal view is that a language community should decide on its
content provided, of course, that the law is not broken.

Others will say that the 5 Pillars must be adhered to in all
languages. And I might agree with that, but haven't yet given it much
thought.

If we, primarily as en:wp people as we are on this list, tell other
language cultures what they can and can't do could we not be charged
with cultural imperialism? And, if we go that route, are we not going
to be expending way too much energy on that? Note; I'm not suggesting
that anyone would act in Bad Faith... I'm suggesting that it is the
logical result of dictating to language wikis what they should do.

It is not a WMF goal, as far as I'm aware, to spread Western - often
secular - cultural values. I think we will by accident, and that's
great, because I like Western values and have a distaste for much of
what happens within the Islamic world. But I don't think it should be
an explicit goal. Yet.

So, I repeat; treating this as a neutrality issue is fundamentally
flawed and anyone who approaches that language wiki with that as their
weapon should get pwned. I suggest we figure out a better approach.

en.User:Bodnotbod