On 5/16/11 10:56 AM, Chris McKenna wrote:
Am I alaone in completely failing to understand what the fuss is about? The image is not pornographic, exploitative, illegal or otherwise inapropriate for featured picture status.
Well, those are all judgment calls.
For what it's worth, I'm not offended by toplessness or manga or even art that is far more transgressive. I think the image has an erotic-fantasy context when you consider it against all the images one might feature on Commons, but in the genre of manga I agree this is pretty tame.
And just FYI, I can't speak for one "side" of the issue, but at least for me, this isn't an American versus rest-of-world thing. I would describe my values as being more San Francisco than middle America, and just yesterday they had a naked marathon through the city,
But, that's not the point. I'll try speaking in shorter sentences, in case I wasn't clear before.
If you want to any keep images off the main page that are "sexy", "pornographic", "offensive" or any other arbitrary label
Nope, speaking only for myself, that was not my intention. Set aside the whole pornography issue.
This isn't a notable artwork, nor is it by a notable artist.
Nor is it particularly well executed.
It is not educational by any reasonable standard. If this image is educational, just by virtue of the fact that it depicts *something*, or was produced with *some tool*, then pretty much *any* image is educational. The people who are arguing that it is educational are stretching the word far too much.
Now, given all that, it already probably shouldn't be on Commons in my opinion. If you want a forum for badly executed anime art, you want DeviantArt, not Wikimedia Commons.
And it definitely shouldn't be featured on the front page.
The sexual aspect of this image is really just the last nail in the coffin. I might not be interested in intervening if the image was just substandard, but this sort of image actively hurts Commons' perception in many communities, without any benefits whatsoever.
I understand and appreciate that many people are very fierce about the fact that Commons isn't censored. However, I would ask these people to take a broader view. Commons can and does contain almost any kind of image, but it will be entirely shut out of certain places (like libraries) if we don't have some minimum standards about what we show to people on the front page. Please ask yourselves what your ultimate goal is. If you want to expose the broadest section of people to the broadest range of imagery, maybe you shouldn't be fighting for an image that could be titled "What if Thomas Kinkade did manga?"
Now, if you wanted to fight for an image that had real educational merit, that's another thing, and I would back you all the way.
Secondly, please explain how this is compatible with Commons being not censored.
Not censored != anything goes in any area. Stuff on the front page shouldn't bring Commons into disrepute unless there's a strong educational justification. In this case there isn't.
As for the rest of your requests, I am not making a proposal that the standards change. I think this image doesn't meet existing standards. You are mistaken in thinking that your attempt to get me define pornography or offensiveness is going to cause my brain to short circuit like some Star Trek computer. After all, whoever nominated this image for the front page had their own private reasons, and we aren't asking them for objective proof that this image is good enough for Commons. The wiki process implicitly recognizes that a lot of what is right and wrong will be decided by people muddling through.