On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 4:49 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
What happened with implementing software related to controversial content? There was quite a bit of hubbub at some point, then Wikimedia pulled back a little (and Sue visited Germany to give some assurances)... what's the current status of the project? Is it still a project? (If there's a project status page somewhere with updated info, feel free to just link that.)
MZMcBride
P.S. I'm always fascinated by cases where there's an extreme contrast between how seemingly innocuous the search term is and how explicit the search results are. I think my current favorite case is the search for "forefinger" on Wikimedia Commons. More examples always welcome at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Niabot has just come up with what I think is a great idea for addressing the search problem you mention in your postscript. He's proposed a clustered search function. (Anybody remember Vivísimo?)
This could not just solve the problem of NSFW media popping up unexpectedly in media searches in Wikipedias and Commons. It would generally make Commons' search function more user-friendly, by grouping search results according to categories. So adult media would no longer pop up in the middle of unrelated searches, monarch butterflies would be separated from other types of monarch, etc.
See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Brainstorming#Clusterin... for Niabot's own write-up of his proposal.
(If you are unfamiliar with the Commons search problem please see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems
as well as the recent Fox article: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/24/why-is-wikipedia-still-doling-out-...
And see (note that this link is NSFW)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=image...
for what the forefinger search looks like in Wikipedia.)
Beyond wanting to drop the list a note about Niabot's idea, I also just meant to ask the question that MZMcBride asked above. What is the status of the image filter? Last year, we heard that in January, developers would sift through the proposals on the Meta brainstorming pages, and select one for implementation. But now it is March, and nothing seems to be happening. Where are we on this?
Andreas