I've been trying to stay out of this today, following yesterday's clear demonstration that some people are prepared to sacrifice the neutrality and uncensored nature of Commons in favour of not offending some people.
However, I see yet again calls for the application of "common sense" and adherhance to cultural norms without recognition that these are not universal standards.
What a "common sense" judgement tells me about the suitability of an image for any particular audience is entirely based on my knowledge and, posisbly more importantly, lack of knowledge about that audience. Few people on this list who are not Danish would have predicted that cartoons published in a national newspaper would lead to rioting on the streets of Copenhagen. It is surely common sense that satirical cartoons are going to be uncontroversial in a liberal western democracy?
How many people here can be confident that we can identify every image that will be inapropriate to view in every school or office around the world?
Is http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parliament_Yerevan_building.jpg safe for work? In the United Kingdom almost certianly so. In Azerbijan, possibly not (in 2009 people were arrested on the accusation of voting for Armenia in that year's Eurovision Song Contest [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest_2009#Armenia_and_Azerba...]).
In the absence of this required knowledge, we will have to choose one of the following options: 1. Choose not to censor or filter anything 2. Choose to censor and filter for the sensibilities of some people and not for others.
It will not surprise those of you who read this list yesterday to learn that I firmly hold one the belief that only one of these is acceptable for a project that claims to be neutral and uncensored.
---- Chris McKenna
cmckenna@sucs.org www.sucs.org/~cmckenna
The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes, but with the heart
Antoine de Saint Exupery