(Are those henna tattoos?) The picture is ok.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Walter Siegmund" siegmund@astro.washington.edu To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 5:53 AM Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on WikimediaCommons

I agree that this selection does not further our goals of increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects. Thanks to Sarah for speaking.

Regards, Walter

On May 15, 2011, at 7:48 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

...

On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 7:31 PM, CherianTinu Abraham <tinucherian@gmail.com

...

wrote:

Surely I'm not the only one who noticed this lovely gem of a photo of the day today. In my work environment - NFWS.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Direct link to image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:On_the_edge_-_free_world_version.jpg

I mean really? /facepalm

This is the kind of imagery I have no desire to see on the front page of Commons. I'm a very liberal person, but, this makes me not want to even allow my MOTHER to use Commons.

#wikilove,

Sarah

I feel exactly the same way. This is an insult to the people who value the educational spirit of Commons.

I attempted to argue that the image didn't meet the featured criteria of Commons, but was drowned out by voters such as the one who argued without irony, "{{Support}} I like her big tits".

Whether or not Commons should host such images is really a separate argument than whether we want to feature topless anime as the best of the content we have.

Steven _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

---

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So you're arguing that the woman is topless in order to conform to realistic portrayals of indigenous people? That's the biggest pile of bullshit I've heard in years.

Every few months one of the usual suspects nominates porn to be featured on Commons and we have to go through the same circus-show all over again. It's always porn for a male heterosexual audience, and it's always defended with cries against the evils of censorship and disingenuous arguments about the "educational value" of the image. I'm all for Commons hosting a wide array of uncensored images, but I'm tired of seeing the Main Page being used as a fap gallery for fanboys. Whether you agree with it or not, featuring such images is distasteful to a lot of people - and not necessarily because they are "prudish" or "religious". I don't see how exercising editorial judgement about our public image and being respectful of women is "compromising our core values". Driving people away from the site and eroding our reputation as a serious educational resource do nothing to improve the project. If you want to fight against censorship, help defend the "Rape", "Rape statistics", and "False accusation of rape" articles against antimisandry.com. Or better yet, file a DMCA counter-notice to restore the links in the "Texas Instruments signing key controversy" article. For some reason people don't seem as concerned about the real incidents of censorship on our projects.

Ryan Kaldari

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 4:53 AM, Aaron Adrignola aaron.adrignola@gmail.comwrote:

Commons is not censored. It's a beautiful scene and it would be expected that the an imaginary tribal member would not have the American sensitivities to toplessness. Some images may offend. Some articles may offend. We're not going to compromise our core values just to try to close a "gap" that some feel is such a big issue, if it even exists.

On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 9:31 PM, CherianTinu Abraham < tinucherian@gmail.com> wrote:

...

FYI

Regards Tinu Cherian

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sarah Stierch sarah@sarahstierch.com Date: Mon, May 16, 2011 at 7:33 AM Subject: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on Wikimedia Commons To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects < gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org>

Surely I'm not the only one who noticed this lovely gem of a photo of the day today. In my work environment - NFWS.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Direct link to image:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:On_the_edge_-_free_world_version.jpg

I mean really? /facepalm

This is the kind of imagery I have no desire to see on the front page of Commons. I'm a very liberal person, but, this makes me not want to even allow my MOTHER to use Commons.

#wikilove,

Sarah

-- Wikipedia Regional Ambassador, D.C. Region Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American Art

Sarah Stierch Consulting Historical, cultural & artistic research, advising & event planning.

---

http://www.sarahstierch.com/

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Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez@...> writes:

Many of us are annoyed by such featuring.

I also had a face-palm moment when I saw this image -- mostly because, out of all of the tens of thousands of superb illustrations and photographs we have, this is the best we can do?

This piece does not seem to be educational in nature (and I don't mean "an education in how to use Inkscape"), and it is fairly poor art in all ways except technical proficiency with the tools used to create it. I think it would be more appreciated and more appropriate on one of the many sites designed for hosting amateur art; and we would do a better job of fulfilling our own particular mission by highlighting some of the unquestionably stunning and important works of art in our collection, of which there are many (for instance, we have paintings by Dürer and Cezanne that aren't yet featured).

Or perhaps, getting more people involved on the community selection process.

This seems like a good plan. But I have a question for Commonistas: where? I was looking for the page where the "picture of the day" is discussed and chosen, and I can't find it. Can someone explain how this process works?

best, Phoebe

The place where the debates occur is http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_candidates. After an image is promoted from there, anyone can put it on the Main Page at any time (as explained by Huib). I think having more people involved in the FPC process would be great.

Ryan Kaldari

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 9:03 AM, Huib Laurens sterkebak@gmail.com wrote:

Phoebe,

Its not discussed..

The process is very simple. You add a picture for Featured pictureshttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picturesif it makes the vote and become featured picture you or anybody can just add it to be a POTD there is no process there anymore. Just add and wait.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_day/Instructions

Best,

Huib

2011/5/16 phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com

...

Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez@...> writes:

...

Many of us are annoyed by such featuring.

I also had a face-palm moment when I saw this image -- mostly because, out of all of the tens of thousands of superb illustrations and photographs we have, this is the best we can do?

This piece does not seem to be educational in nature (and I don't mean "an education in how to use Inkscape"), and it is fairly poor art in all ways except technical proficiency with the tools used to create it. I think it would be more appreciated and more appropriate on one of the many sites designed for hosting amateur art; and we would do a better job of fulfilling our own particular mission by highlighting some of the unquestionably stunning and important works of art in our collection, of which there are many (for instance, we have paintings by Dürer and Cezanne that aren't yet featured).

...

Or perhaps, getting more people involved on the community selection

process.

This seems like a good plan. But I have a question for Commonistas: where? I was looking for the page where the "picture of the day" is discussed and chosen, and I can't find it. Can someone explain how this process works?

best, Phoebe

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-- Kind regards,

Huib Laurens WickedWay.nl

Webhosting the wicked way.

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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.

If you want to any keep images off the main page that are "sexy", "pornographic", "offensive" or any other arbitrary label you wish to choose, please start by defining in a neutral, objective and culturally independent manner every such label you want to use. Secondly, please explain how this is compatible with Commons being not censored. Thirdly, please define precisely what it is you are trying to achieve and why. Please do so in an objective and culturally independent manner. Fourthly, explain why this needs to be done with reference facts and evidence. Please explain how this is a cross-cultural issue. Fifthly, please explain how your proposal would help achieve what you are trying to achieve. Please be specific and give facts and evidence. Sixthly, please demonstrate that this is compatible with Common's mission and it will not impact it's goal. If other policies need changing please repeat steps 4 and 5 for each such policy. Seventhly, gain consensus for your proposal.

So far in this debate the only thing I've seen is vauge statements that boil down to "we should not have images of female toplessness on the main page because there is a gender gap", "My grandfather wouldn't like it" and "Think of the children"

The second two of these are "I don't like it" reasons and deserve no further consideration. None of them make any attempt at points 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, or 7. The first reason "because there is a gender gap" doesn't explain why this is relevant to the image.

Commons has featured pictures that will be offensive to many different people in many different cultures. Please explain why this is any more an issue for this image than http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starved_girl.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Namibie_Himba_0720a.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sandboarding_in_Dubai.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sadko.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_%281825-19...

or any other image you care to mention.

Please explain how your comments are neutral and take into account the sensitivities of all cultures and special interest groups, not just your own.

Chris

---- 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

There seems to be a worrying tendency to treat Commons as a gallery for non-notable art. It's an educational project, not a vehicle for self-promotion. A.

--- On Mon, 16/5/11, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:

From: Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on Wikimedia Commons To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, 16 May, 2011, 14:04

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org 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.

The image is also not artistically, historically, or culturally significant, unlike all the other examples you cited. The only reason it's featured is because it's sexually arousing to anime fanboys who happen to dominate the culture of Wikimedia Commons. I don't need to crawl into a semantic rabbit-hole to defend this observation. I think its obvious to any reasonable person. If the image would be embarrassing to pull up in front of a classful of students, it shouldn't be on the Commons Main Page.

Ryan Kaldari

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

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On 16 May 2011 15:29, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

...

There seems to be a worrying tendency to treat Commons as a gallery for non-notable art. It's an educational project, not a vehicle for self-promotion. A.

This image can be used in educational encyclopaedia articles about anime/manga, (female) toplessness, contemporary art, fictional landscapes, depictions of humans in art, art produced on computers, debates surrounding any of these topics, and almost certainly many other uses too.

The image could be printed on paper and used to construct a Pykrete derivative. Are you going to try arguing that it's bulletproof as well?

It therefore seems to me to be a very good example of educational material that Commons should be hosting.

If it was actually a very good example it is to be expected that it would appear in the article name space of some of our projects. So that the fact it seems to you to be a very good example merely makes your judgment questionable.

On 16 May 2011 16:16, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

Commons does not exist solely to provide images to be used here and now on online Wikimedia projects. Or are you arguing that every image that is not currently in use is not educational?

Your argument was specifically that it was a "very good example of educational material". Do you wish to withdraw from that position?

On 16 May 2011 16:44, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011, geni wrote: No, why would I? Whether something is a very good example of educational material or not is completely independent of whether it is used in the main namespace of a Wikimedia project.

Since Wikimedia projects do tend to have an educational objective if they have chosen not to use material you think is a very good example of "very good example of educational material" you are either wrong or they are stunningly incompetent. The former seems rather more likely.

On Mon, 16 May 2011, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

Okay, my wife and I will then encourage all the unsigned garage bands we know to upload their original songs to Commons. We know a good dozen, altogether about 50 people. We will nominate our songs for featured status. We will vote for each others' songs (purely on artistic merit); so with 50 people, achieving featured status shouldn't be too difficult.

We will then nominate our sound or video files to appear as featured media of the day on the Commons main page.

I am not familar with what criteria (if any) are used to judge whether sounds are worthy of featured status on Commons, but if the aim is to showcase high quality work released under a free license, then I don't see why they should not be uploaded or gain featured status. If they gain featured status then they should be selectable for featuring on the main page, subject to consensus and any other requirements for sounds (again it's not an area I'm familiar with). I would hope that if they are featured they are spread out temporally so as to maintain a variety of featured sounds just as we do with images.

Obviously sockpuppetting and meatpuppetting are not allowed and consensus isn't a vote, but I don't see why quality free examples of garage music, home recording, etc should not be on Commons.

---- 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

This image can be used in educational encyclopaedia articles about anime/manga, (female) toplessness, contemporary art, fictional landscapes, depictions of humans in art, art produced on computers, debates surrounding any of these topics, and almost certainly many other uses too.

If this is what is being utilized as a quality image to be used as an example of /contemporary art/ then a large part of my cultural heart just died.

This coming fro a man who has a St. Ex quote as his sig!

-Sarah

2011/5/16 Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com

There seems to be a worrying tendency to treat Commons as a gallery for non-notable art.

It's an educational project, not a vehicle for self-promotion.

A.

Actually, Wikipedia is the educational project, not Commons. Commons is a repository for media of all kind. There is nowhere the restriction that a file has to be educational.

And as a girl (or more a long-grown woman) with no real interest in mangas my opinion is that the image has nice colours, is cleanly made and in general aesthetically pleasing. Only complaint: it is a bit kitschy.

lg, Cecil

--- On *Mon, 16/5/11, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org* wrote:

From: Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on Wikimedia Commons

To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, 16 May, 2011, 14:04

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Chris McKenna <cmckenna@sucs.orghttp://mc/compose?to=cmckenna@sucs.org

...

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.

The image is also not artistically, historically, or culturally significant, unlike all the other examples you cited. The only reason it's featured is because it's sexually arousing to anime fanboys who happen to dominate the culture of Wikimedia Commons. I don't need to crawl into a semantic rabbit-hole to defend this observation. I think its obvious to any reasonable person. If the image would be embarrassing to pull up in front of a classful of students, it shouldn't be on the Commons Main Page.

Ryan Kaldari

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

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On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 10:19 AM, Cecil cecilatwp@gmail.com wrote:

Actually, Wikipedia is the educational project, not Commons. Commons is a repository for media of all kind. There is nowhere the restriction that a file has to be educational.

Related to another comment posted earlier, this section [1] also notes that images in use by projects are considered automatically to be useful for an educational purpose, but those that are not and which are judged to be not educational can be deleted.

I've successfully nominated several hundred personal images of users for deletion using this criterion, as they were not in use.

The proper procedure if this image is disliked would be to see if it falls within one of the examples [2] of items that would be out of scope if unused. It can then be nominated for deletion.

However, as already seen, whether an unused image is educational is subject to quite a bit of debate.

[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope#File_in_use_in_anoth...

[2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope#Examples

--- On Mon, 16/5/11, Cecil cecilatwp@gmail.com wrote:

And as a girl (or more a long-grown woman) with no real interest in mangas my opinion is that the image has nice colours, is cleanly made and in general aesthetically pleasing. Only complaint: it is a bit kitschy.

lg, Cecil

Yeah, a but like Thomas Kincade in manga.  A.

On 5/16/2011 11:19 AM, Cecil wrote:

2011/5/16 Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@yahoo.com mailto:jayen466@yahoo.com>

There seems to be a worrying tendency to treat Commons as a
gallery for non-notable art.

It's an educational project, not a vehicle for self-promotion.

A.

Actually, Wikipedia is the educational project, not Commons. Commons is a repository for media of all kind. There is nowhere the restriction that a file has to be educational.

I guess I have misunderstood the welcome page of Commons for years now:

Wikimedia Commons is a*media file repository*making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone,in their own language http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Language_policy. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of theWikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/, but you do not need to belong to one of those projects to use media hosted here. The repository is created and maintained not by paid archivists, but by volunteers. The scope of Commons is set out on theproject scope http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scopepages.

#wikilove,

Sarah

--- On Mon, 16/5/11, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:

From: Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on Wikimedia Commons To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, 16 May, 2011, 14:46 The image is derivative, see

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/File:1672_G%C3%A9rard_de...

but its theme of editorial freedom is culturally significant, at least to the Wikimedia movement.

Fred,

I am not sure I follow you correctly here, so do tell me if I misunderstood.

You are (perhaps ironically) suggesting that Niabot's original manga-style artwork encapsulates a value that's important to the Wikimedia movement.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:On_the_edge_-_free_world_version.jpg

If so, how about featuring an undiscovered garage band's post-punk song celebrating, say, freedom from censorship, on the Commons main page? Would we do this, as an educational illustration of the post-punk/protest song/garage band cultures?

Is it the purpose of the Commons main page to inform the world at large about the musical and artistic talent within the Wikimedia community?

I thought our mission was providing educational material on such things as have *already* attracted the attention of educators.

Andreas

On Mon, 16 May 2011, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

The image is also not artistically, historically, or culturally significant, unlike all the other examples you cited.

Please cite your sources for the (lack of) artistic, historic, or cultural significance for this image and all the other examples cited.

The only reason it's featured is because it's sexually arousing to anime fanboys who happen to dominate the culture of Wikimedia Commons.

Citation needed for a /very/ offensive remark.

I don't need to crawl into a semantic rabbit-hole to defend this observation.

Why? Please be objective, preferably include references to reliable sources.

I think its obvious to any reasonable person. If the image would be embarrassing to pull up in front of a classful of students, it shouldn't be on the Commons Main Page.

Please define "reasonable person" in an objective, culturally neutral way. Please list an objective set of culturally neutral criteria that would allow any image to be safely displayed to any given group of people in a way that does not introduce censorship or cultural bias.

"Not censored" means just that. If you aren't happy that some images that offend you (or you find offensive on others' behalf) might be displayed then you should not use Wikimedia Commons.

Chris

---- 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

Tobias

Please explain how does one participate when their employment contract specifically states that viewing of sexually explicit material over the internet is a dismissable offense.

The issue isnt hosting the image its about where its displayed.

On 16 May 2011 22:32, Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.comwrote:

Just logged in, so please bear with the possible wrong entry place.

I strongly disagree with the removal. Not because that it is an image that i created. Because this is some kind of censorship, that goes strictly against the aims of the project itself. Some topics are fine and anybody can laugh about them, for some topics nobody cares and some topics causing confusion, hate and are a general nuisance. The later mostly because of misunderstanding and lack of knowledge.

But which kind of world will we describe? The world how it is - the truth? Or do we want to select some mild topics and enjoy little bunnies on a field with dozens of flowers, while one house away bombs fall and the doughters of the family begging for money? Isn't it a bit ridiculous to select topics and to show only the bright sides?

Im just wondering why illustrations of war machines are ok, while anything that is related to sexual nature is considerd as evil. Some saying that they couldn't tell there children what such images are about. But what about a picture of a gun? Can you explain to your children, why people kill each other? You should and could at least try to explain. The earilier the better. Kids have an open mind, that i miss so much in this project.

Reading the words of Sarah Stierch, someone could assume that a picture of a naked male is fine. Do we get more female contributers by treating them as some special, out of the oridinary? At the last meetings in Germany i met several women, most complaining about this rather "useless campaing", that they even found "discriminating".

Back to the topic itself. Did you even know, that half of the mangaka are females? Works like "Kodomo no Jikan" are written by female authors. Sexuality is a primary topic. No one could life without it. Depictions of sexuallity are known for thousands of years. And that is the point where i start wondering. While old works are seen as something relevant, new works aren't. Why not? They are from our time. In the time we life.

Sorry for my English. But English isn't my main language.

Tobias Oelgarte

Am 16.05.2011 16:24, schrieb Chris McKenna:

...

On Mon, 16 May 2011, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

...

The image is also not artistically, historically, or culturally

significant,

...

...

unlike all the other examples you cited.

Please cite your sources for the (lack of) artistic, historic, or

cultural

...

significance for this image and all the other examples cited.

...

The only reason it's featured is because it's sexually arousing to anime fanboys who happen to dominate

the

...

...

culture of Wikimedia Commons.

Citation needed for a /very/ offensive remark.

...

I don't need to crawl into a semantic rabbit-hole to defend this observation.

Why? Please be objective, preferably include references to reliable sources.

...

I think its obvious to any reasonable person. If the image would be embarrassing to pull up in

front of

...

...

a classful of students, it shouldn't be on the Commons Main Page.

Please define "reasonable person" in an objective, culturally neutral

way.

...

Please list an objective set of culturally neutral criteria that would allow any image to be safely displayed to any given group of people in a way that does not introduce censorship or cultural bias.

"Not censored" means just that. If you aren't happy that some images that offend you (or you find offensive on others' behalf) might be displayed then you should not use Wikimedia Commons.

Chris

---

Chris McKenna

cmckenna@sucs.org www.sucs.org/~cmckenna http://www.sucs.org/%7Ecmckenna

The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes, but with the heart

Antoine de Saint Exupery

---

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On 16 May 2011 22:46, Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.comwrote:

Do it in your freetime and not at work?

Such a simplistic and ignorant response, I just pointed out for GLAMs to

contribute the people doing it are at work its part of their work.

Am 16.05.2011 16:43, schrieb Gnangarra:

Tobias

Please explain how does one participate when their employment contract specifically states that viewing of sexually explicit material over the internet is a dismissable offense.

The issue isnt hosting the image its about where its displayed.

On 16 May 2011 22:32, Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.comwrote:

...

Just logged in, so please bear with the possible wrong entry place.

I strongly disagree with the removal. Not because that it is an image that i created. Because this is some kind of censorship, that goes strictly against the aims of the project itself. Some topics are fine and anybody can laugh about them, for some topics nobody cares and some topics causing confusion, hate and are a general nuisance. The later mostly because of misunderstanding and lack of knowledge.

But which kind of world will we describe? The world how it is - the truth? Or do we want to select some mild topics and enjoy little bunnies on a field with dozens of flowers, while one house away bombs fall and the doughters of the family begging for money? Isn't it a bit ridiculous to select topics and to show only the bright sides?

Im just wondering why illustrations of war machines are ok, while anything that is related to sexual nature is considerd as evil. Some saying that they couldn't tell there children what such images are about. But what about a picture of a gun? Can you explain to your children, why people kill each other? You should and could at least try to explain. The earilier the better. Kids have an open mind, that i miss so much in this project.

Reading the words of Sarah Stierch, someone could assume that a picture of a naked male is fine. Do we get more female contributers by treating them as some special, out of the oridinary? At the last meetings in Germany i met several women, most complaining about this rather "useless campaing", that they even found "discriminating".

Back to the topic itself. Did you even know, that half of the mangaka are females? Works like "Kodomo no Jikan" are written by female authors. Sexuality is a primary topic. No one could life without it. Depictions of sexuallity are known for thousands of years. And that is the point where i start wondering. While old works are seen as something relevant, new works aren't. Why not? They are from our time. In the time we life.

Sorry for my English. But English isn't my main language.

Tobias Oelgarte

Am 16.05.2011 16:24, schrieb Chris McKenna:

...

On Mon, 16 May 2011, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

...

The image is also not artistically, historically, or culturally

significant,

...

...

unlike all the other examples you cited.

Please cite your sources for the (lack of) artistic, historic, or

cultural

...

significance for this image and all the other examples cited.

...

The only reason it's featured is because it's sexually arousing to anime fanboys who happen to dominate

the

...

...

culture of Wikimedia Commons.

Citation needed for a /very/ offensive remark.

...

I don't need to crawl into a semantic rabbit-hole to defend this observation.

Why? Please be objective, preferably include references to reliable sources.

...

I think its obvious to any reasonable person. If the image would be embarrassing to pull up in

front of

...

...

a classful of students, it shouldn't be on the Commons Main Page.

Please define "reasonable person" in an objective, culturally neutral

way.

...

Please list an objective set of culturally neutral criteria that would allow any image to be safely displayed to any given group of people in a way that does not introduce censorship or cultural bias.

"Not censored" means just that. If you aren't happy that some images

that

...

offend you (or you find offensive on others' behalf) might be displayed then you should not use Wikimedia Commons.

Chris

---

Chris McKenna

cmckenna@sucs.org www.sucs.org/~cmckenna http://www.sucs.org/%7Ecmckenna

The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes, but with the heart

Antoine de Saint Exupery

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On 5/16/2011 10:55 AM, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:

Could you explain what you mean with GLAM? Not anyone is used to such terms.

Greatings from Tobias Oelgarte

http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM

On 05/16/2011 10:16 AM, Manuelt15 wrote:

Hopefully one day you'll understand that US standards don't and _*NEVER WILL*_ apply to other countries, so live with it.

Please don't confuse what is not "much of Western Europe and some of Latin America" sensibilities with "US standards". This image conveys a sense of sexuality that would not be featured on the prime time television time slot by most national standards; and the quality of it is certainly unexpected for the front page of a project of an educational nature.

While Commons may contain images from a broad variety of categories, including those of graphic content, one should maintain the principal of least surprise, and not place images with the tendency to shock a large portion of its audience into unexpected places. Have some reasonable amount of respect for your audience, if this project is to ever be considered with any degree of seriousness.

Cary

Cary

On 05/16/2011 11:48 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:

Did it ever occur to you that something is wrong with prime-time TV?

Fred

I don't much watch television.

- and -

It's not the mission of Commons to force a change of broadly common sensibilities.

Cary

On 5/16/11 11:56 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:

There is no good reason to conform to blue-nose standards.

This is where I strongly disagree. Rightly or wrongly, the reality is that first-time visitors will make an overall conclusion about Commons based on what they see on the front page, and that conclusion in turn affects decisions about whether to contribute the stashes of old photos to Commons, to another site not committed to freeness, or simply to forget about them and not contribute at all.

To look at it another way, we already pick and choose what goes on the front page - we don't put up the latest blurry phone camera pic of somebody making random shapes with the fingers, we only put up our better material. Why do we do that? Could it be that we are trying to make a good impression on visitors?

Stan

On 05/16/2011 11:57 AM, Chris McKenna wrote:

Nor is it the mission of Commons to pander to the sensibilitites, no matter how common (and outside the US they really aren't at all)

"Pander" is a word doesn't in the least bit describe what anyone is suggesting or in fact doing. "(and outside the US they really aren't at all)" is a factual error.

(Sensibilities are not common in Australia? Britain? Canada? Japan? China? India? Indonesia? Turkey? Egypt? ...? )

Cary

On 05/16/2011 12:17 PM, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:

In Japan it is a well known topic, in India i can't see any confusion about this image (it is on the mainpage) and Turkey decided to feature this image without any concern: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anime_Girl.svg

That is a non-argument. Firstly, the Main page on many Wikipedias defaults to the Main Page on Commons, because those Wikipedias trust Commons to make appropriate choices, which it has not, unfortunately, in this instance.

Secondly, the fact that an image is featured on a language Wikipedia does not automatically mean it's going to be widely accepted as appropriate by most of the population of that country.

Simply because Manga originates from Japan and is a wide topic, does not mean an image of such quality would be expected on the cover or main page of any piece of educational material in Japan. Manga is a well-known topic in the United States, incidentally.

Our goal is not to shock and surprise the end user, and in doing so, we have to respect the end user, which is not well-reflected by the make-up of the general Commons community.

Cary

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 5:40 AM, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

Actaully, I think it has made the absolutely right choice - to stick to it's founding principle of being not censored.

Well actually, the founding principle is giving everyone free access to the sum of human knowledge, which is not quite the same thing.

We best respect our end users by doing exactly what we say we will do - i.e. provide an uncensored repository of educational and educationally useful free media.

Putting some limits on what is on the main page doesn't affect that goal in any way. Galleries/categories/files on any topic are available to whoever wants to see them.

Freedom of speech is freedom of speech, not freedom to force everyone to listen to what you are saying. Just as my right to freely swing my fists ends at your nose, my right to freely speak ends at your ears. The necessary corollary of the right to freely speak is the right to choose not to listen.

In this context, applying some sort of 'least surprise' based approach to what goes on the main page is simply a reasonable step toward protecting a person's right to avoid speech they wish to avoid.

On Tue, 17 May 2011, Stephen Bain wrote:

In this context, applying some sort of 'least surprise' based approach to what goes on the main page is simply a reasonable step toward protecting a person's right to avoid speech they wish to avoid.

But who defines what topics are acceptable for a "least surprise" approach? By this principal we should not have on the main page images of humans, gods, maps of any territory under dispute (Armenia/Azerbijan, Israel/Paelestine, Northern Ireland, Libya, the Golan Heights, Kashmir (sp?), etc, etc), weapons, death, women, nudity (partial or otherwise), body parts, meat, laboratory animals, bodily fluids, etc, etc.

The whole world does not subscribe to the American views about what is and is not suitable for any given audience.

---- 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

On 5/16/2011 12:56 PM, Chris McKenna wrote:

On Tue, 17 May 2011, Stephen Bain wrote:

...

In this context, applying some sort of 'least surprise' based approach to what goes on the main page is simply a reasonable step toward protecting a person's right to avoid speech they wish to avoid.

But who defines what topics are acceptable for a "least surprise" approach?

It's not topics that define how a "least surprise" approach is applied, it's the setting and context. *All* topics can be put through a least surprise analysis. This relates closely to another issue in this debate, the question of what has educational value. Media have educational value according to the setting and context in which they are presented. Many pictures, including very good ones, would completely lack educational value without some kind of explanation or context of what the picture is showing.

For the purposes of this kind of analysis, the main page of Commons (or another project like a particular Wikipedia language) is not a setting that provides very much in the way of context for featuring a picture. As a result of this lack of context, it only makes sense that we would need to exercise a little more editorial judgment than usual in selecting what pictures appear there.

--Michael Snow

On 05/16/2011 12:40 PM, Chris McKenna wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011, Cary Bass wrote:

...

...

On 05/16/2011 12:17 PM, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:

...

...

In Japan it is a well known topic, in India i can't see any confusion about this image (it is on the mainpage) and Turkey decided to feature this image without any concern: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anime_Girl.svg

That is a non-argument. Firstly, the Main page on many Wikipedias defaults to the Main Page on Commons, because those Wikipedias trust Commons to make appropriate choices, which it has not, unfortunately, in this instance.

Actaully, I think it has made the absolutely right choice - to stick to it's founding principle of being not censored.

Firstly, there's no such founding principle of Commons, and secondly, "not censored" is not in Commons' mission, which is being addressed.

...

...

Our goal is not to shock and surprise the end user, and in doing so, we have to respect the end user, which is not well-reflected by the make-up of the general Commons community.

We best respect our end users by doing exactly what we say we will do - i.e. provide an uncensored repository of educational and educationally useful free media.

"Uncensored" is not in the mission of Commons, you're rather blatantly inserting it here. Creating a culture of surprise and shock is not fulfilling the mission.

And no, we absolutely do not "best respect" our end users by offending them.

Chris, I think you keep making the same argument over and over again and refusing to actually take in what anyone has said in response to you--your responses to me aren't actually responding to what I'm saying, as if I or anyone else is assaulting the right of Commons to host controversial or contentious images, which I am not doing.

Cary

--- On Mon, 16/5/11, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

Actaully, I think it has made the absolutely right choice - to stick to it's founding principle of being not censored.

We best respect our end users by doing exactly what we say we will do - i.e. provide an uncensored repository of educational and educationally useful free media.

It seems to me you are obsessed with the breasts in that image. If someone argues against an image with breasts, it is censorship.

If someone argues against hosting some Wikimedian's technically semi-competent, but undistinguished Thomas Kinkade pastiche in Commons, would you also shout censorship? Probably not, I guess, because the censorship argument requires that there be breasts in the image.

Again, if I get a garage band to upload a few tracks, does the singer have to say "fuck" in the lyrics to have your support? That would work too: "Y'all only want to delete this great track in the style of ... from Commons because the singer says 'fuck'. But that's what singers in this genre of music say all the time, and therefore it's educational. Commons is not censored!"

So ... following this line of thought, the way to prove educational usefulness in Commons seems to be to make sure that there are either breasts or "fuck" in your piece of art, or music. Because without that, it's just a so-so painting by an amateur artist, or a so-so track by an amateur band, and the censorship argument won't wash.

The whole point is that this image has neither superb artistic merit nor superb illustrative value. Artistically, the perspective and textures are poor, as was pointed out at FPC, and educationally, the fantasy setting is too specific to be illustrative of a generic style.

Andreas

--- On Mon, 16/5/11, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

From: Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on Wikimedia Commons To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, 16 May, 2011, 22:21 On Mon, 16 May 2011, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

...

It seems to me you are obsessed with the breasts in

that image. If someone argues

...

against an image with breasts, it is censorship.

If someone argues against hosting some Wikimedian's

technically semi-competent,

...

but undistinguished Thomas Kinkade pastiche in

Commons, would you also shout

...

censorship? Probably not, I guess, because the

censorship argument requires

...

that there be breasts in the image.

Censorship does not require there be breasts or "fuck" or anything else. It's just the only arguments I've seen about why this image should not be on the main page are that it contains breasts. If you want to complain that it should not be on the main page because it's a poor pastiche then that's a very different issue that is not censorship related, but not one that I've seen made and so not one I've made any comments about.

You missed a good part of the debate then:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/005964.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/005973.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/006036.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/005989.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/005981.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/006022.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/006023.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/006032.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/006038.html

Kind of proves my point ... the breasts overshadowed everything. ;)

Compare this one from the same artist:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anime_Girl.svg

Far less ambitious, totally within his artistic means, and a much better illustration of Manga drawing style. That's a FP in that area; the other one isn't.

Andreas

I can't agree with your first paragraph. This was one vote, one side comment, on the image. If you take it this seriously then you have some deep missunderstandings. I also doubt that someone would take action because of "his cock isn't big enough". You draw the devil on the wall and try it currently with polemic examples, how hurt you are. That's a very bad example for an argument. This is an example for oration.

There are many different kind of people. Some might found it good and are now participating, some don't. To get anyone in, we can't concentrate on only "absolutely safe" topics. What about photographers in sexual related genres? If we never show such pictures, even if they are done with profession, then this possible contributes will get an wrong impression of commons as well.

It might not be the cultural aspect which divides the thoughts in this case. But currently we are only hearing the two opposites exchanging blow after blow. You could say: Some to the far left, some to the far right. But whats typical is middle section, that doesn't care in either way. And no one knows how big it is. Im also disappointed that such an discussion started on the mailinglist. A place with very few people participating and with strong English bias. A backroom for insiders if you will. (This is considered one of the main problems in communication)

Tobias

Am 17.05.2011 01:23, schrieb Sarah Stierch:

Absolutely. In my opinion just one statement of "she's got big tits" is enough to make me sick - if this is what makes a featured image, ugh. And "if you don't like it leave" doesn't work for me. Sexist comments like the tits has no place here, and I'd assume if there was an image of a nude man and someone said "His cock isn't big enough" Someone would take action. And if you think this doesn't deter people from wanting to contribute or get involved, I'm disappointed, but, perhaps not shocked.

I'm so tired of these cultural blames - too., I brought this up on the Gender Gap list as a person who believes a low quality stereotyping image does nothing for what we are trying to achieve. This has nothing to do with me living in the States, let alone many colleagues of mine here who believe this should not be a showcase image on the front page.

Again, judgements of where you are from should be left out of this - most people here know little or nothing about one another's personal life. The creator of that work might go to nude beaches, and I'm sure there are plenty of "us Americans" who have lifestyles some people here would not agree with that make that drawing look tame.

But, I am happy to see this dialogue taking place, and happy that it has triggered quality conversation on the original list I shared it on.

-Sarah

Sent via iPhone - I apologize in advance for my shortness or errors! :)

On May 16, 2011, at 2:57 PM, Andreas Kolbejayen466@yahoo.com wrote:

...

--- On Mon, 16/5/11, Chris McKennacmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

...

From: Chris McKennacmckenna@sucs.org Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on Wikimedia Commons To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List"commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, 16 May, 2011, 22:21 On Mon, 16 May 2011, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

...

It seems to me you are obsessed with the breasts in

that image. If someone argues

...

against an image with breasts, it is censorship.

If someone argues against hosting some Wikimedian's

technically semi-competent,

...

but undistinguished Thomas Kinkade pastiche in

Commons, would you also shout

...

censorship? Probably not, I guess, because the

censorship argument requires

...

that there be breasts in the image.

Censorship does not require there be breasts or "fuck" or anything else. It's just the only arguments I've seen about why this image should not be on the main page are that it contains breasts. If you want to complain that it should not be on the main page because it's a poor pastiche then that's a very different issue that is not censorship related, but not one that I've seen made and so not one I've made any comments about.

You missed a good part of the debate then:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/005964.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/005973.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/006036.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/005989.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/005981.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/006022.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/006023.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/006032.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-May/006038.html

Kind of proves my point ... the breasts overshadowed everything. ;)

Compare this one from the same artist:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anime_Girl.svg

Far less ambitious, totally within his artistic means, and a much better illustration of Manga drawing style. That's a FP in that area; the other one isn't.

Andreas

---

Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

---

Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

On 05/16/2011 11:57 AM, Chris McKenna wrote:

...

Nor is it the mission of Commons to pander to the sensibilitites, no matter how common (and outside the US they really aren't at all)

"Pander" is a word doesn't in the least bit describe what anyone is suggesting or in fact doing. "(and outside the US they really aren't at all)" is a factual error.

(Sensibilities are not common in Australia? Britain? Canada? Japan? China? India? Indonesia? Turkey? Egypt? ...? )

Cary

Actually, he is using pander correctly to describe our exaggerated attention to this matter at the demand of a small group of people.

The world wide audience is another matter.

Fred

On 05/16/2011 12:17 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:

...

The world wide audience is another matter.

And this audience is not well reflected by the lackadaisical attitude toward end users that pervades our otherwise wonderful Commons community.

Cary

Yes, we have a long way to go in terms of developing global participation and leadership. And certainly don't want to throw up artificial barriers of our own contrivance.

Fred

On 05/16/2011 12:43 PM, Chris McKenna wrote:

As far as I read the arguments we have two groups of people, those who want to censor images that they do not like or that they think other people will not like; and those that want to actively stand up for the rights to an uncensored collection of free media.

Actually what you say that you are reading is a hyperbolic assessment of the argument that fictionalizes one side of the argument while heroizing the side of it you agree with. It's not actually truthful.

Commons is not censored, if you want a collection of free media that does not offend you or someone else then you are in the wrong place.

You keep making the same argument, and not actually responding to what is being said. Which leaves one to wonder why they are still responding to you.

Cary

On Mon, 16 May 2011, Cary Bass wrote:

...

...

Commons is not censored, if you want a collection of free media that does not offend you or someone else then you are in the wrong place.

You keep making the same argument, and not actually responding to what is being said. Which leaves one to wonder why they are still responding to you.

If Commons is neither censored nor uncensored then what is it? If, as it seems, you are maintaining that we can censor the main page and still be not censored - how? And who does the censoring? And how do we determine which culture's morals to adhere to and which to ignore?

---

Chris McKenna

The morals of American prime time TV are not in the running (murder and mayhem, but no explicit sexual language), but perhaps common sense notions of what is appropriate for children might be. (for the picture of the day featured on the front page, not content in general)

Fred

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 12:18 PM, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

So what is "appropriate for children"?

How about - 'not likely to get the student at a typical high school sent to offfice for sexual harrassment, inappropriate usage of school resources, or the website as a whole blocked in typical software. Would not result in the firing of a teacher if they were to distribute the image to the children. Would not have criminal or legal ramifications if you brought the image to the school and began distributing it the children.'

And whose "common sense" do we choose - it seems that in your opinion it is common sense that this image is not appropriate, yet in mine it is fine. Neither of us are alone in our opinions. Whose opinon is correct?

If by showing the image to children in a public school setting there could likely be legal ramifications (going to jail, getting placed on a sex offender list), then chances are - common sense would dictate that it is inappropriate for children and by extension inappropriate for the front page of commons.

Tom M. LetterRip

that doesn't mean I think that changing PotD to mean "Penis of the Day" is a good idea.

Stan

An interesting "straw man"

Fred

On Mon, 16 May 2011, Stan Shebs wrote:

False dichotomy - intelligent choice of front-page content is orthogonal to choice of collection content. I'm perfectly content for Commons to have 100,000+ penis photos, indeed a large number starts to make it statistically interesting, but that doesn't mean I think that changing PotD to mean "Penis of the Day" is a good idea.

Nobody is suggesting that PotD should mean penis of the day, even if we have 100,000+ featured images of them just as much as it should not be Partridge of the Day if we get that many featured images of them. This is completely irrelevant to the entire discussion.

The choice of front-page content is determined by featured pictures. If you want featured pictures that cannot go on the main page then you have to define and get consensus on a set of objective criteria that determines what is and is not acceptbale for the front page. And then explain to the authors and uploaders of content that doesn't make it why their image is of a lower value than the next person's featured image. ("Sorry, but your image cannot go on the main page because we don't want to offend some Americans. However user:Example's image is fine because that's only offensive to Muslims.")

---- 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

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

I don't know where you get the impression that anyone here is promoting any sort of lackadaiscial attitude? As far as I read the arguments we have two groups of people, those who want to censor images that they do not like or that they think other people will not like; and those that want to actively stand up for the rights to an uncensored collection of free media.

Commons is not censored, if you want a collection of free media that does not offend you or someone else then you are in the wrong place.

---

Chris McKenna

cmckenna@sucs.org www.sucs.org/~cmckenna

Someone reading this conversation might almost think that "uncensored images" is the defining core value of Commons. If that's actually the case, some rebranding is necessary. I imagine you could certainly attract an audience with a site advertised as being uncensored, but I was always under the impression that Commons and Wikimedia were out for a broader, more fully clothed audience.

What's funny is that you actually think you are arguing against attempts at censorship; what this demonstrates more than anything else is that you have deeply misunderstood censorship and what it means. Unfortunately, you are obviously not nearly open minded enough to learn from any explanation.

I will try to make one point: You are not in any sense the proprietor, gatekeeper, authority or representative of Commons the project or its community. You have no right to tell people "If you don't like it, get out" as you have done several times. They are as free to express their opinion as you are, and many (as you've no doubt noticed) disagree with you. So why not take a break from telling people to go away?

Nathan

Am 16.05.2011 22:39, schrieb Nathan:

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Chris McKennacmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

...

I don't know where you get the impression that anyone here is promoting any sort of lackadaiscial attitude? As far as I read the arguments we have two groups of people, those who want to censor images that they do not like or that they think other people will not like; and those that want to actively stand up for the rights to an uncensored collection of free media.

Commons is not censored, if you want a collection of free media that does not offend you or someone else then you are in the wrong place.

---

Chris McKenna

cmckenna@sucs.org www.sucs.org/~cmckenna

Someone reading this conversation might almost think that "uncensored images" is the defining core value of Commons. If that's actually the case, some rebranding is necessary. I imagine you could certainly attract an audience with a site advertised as being uncensored, but I was always under the impression that Commons and Wikimedia were out for a broader, more fully clothed audience.

What's funny is that you actually think you are arguing against attempts at censorship; what this demonstrates more than anything else is that you have deeply misunderstood censorship and what it means. Unfortunately, you are obviously not nearly open minded enough to learn from any explanation.

I will try to make one point: You are not in any sense the proprietor, gatekeeper, authority or representative of Commons the project or its community. You have no right to tell people "If you don't like it, get out" as you have done several times. They are as free to express their opinion as you are, and many (as you've no doubt noticed) disagree with you. So why not take a break from telling people to go away?

Nathan

---

Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

Everyone is free to express it's oppinion. But in this case the image was listed multiple moth as picture of the day. More then enough time to get the oppinion from the community and not only from one view (as in this case). No one had a problem with this image until it was removed and this discussion somehow started. Like Wikipedia, Commons is a community project. It is nothing without an running community. Any action done without consent (like Jimbo did before) is offensive against the community, making her mistrusting the WMF, that interferes with community decissions.

Tobias

Am 16.05.2011 23:20, schrieb Bryan Tong Minh:

Op 16 mei 2011 22:53 schreef "Tobias Oelgarte" <tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com mailto:tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com> het volgende:

...

Any action done without consent (like Jimbo did before) is offensive against the community, making her mistrusting the WMF, that interferes with community decissions.

Your analogy is misplaced. The controversy started because of jimbo acting with his authority. That analogy would be appropriate if neil would have threatened or had taken steps against reverting his actions, which he clearly did not. You seem to think that every action needs to be backed up by a discussion on beforehand. This is in fact not how a wiki works.

---

Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

Any action should have a valid reasoning. He exchanged the image with a rather offending comment to everyone that sees sexuality as an equal topic to anything else. The "wiki" analogy does also not work in this case. The page was cascade blocked, so that normal users had no chance to revert his action.

Tobias

Am 16.05.2011 22:39, schrieb Nathan:

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Chris McKennacmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

...

I don't know where you get the impression that anyone here is promoting any sort of lackadaiscial attitude? As far as I read the arguments we have two groups of people, those who want to censor images that they do not like or that they think other people will not like; and those that want to actively stand up for the rights to an uncensored collection of free media.

Commons is not censored, if you want a collection of free media that does not offend you or someone else then you are in the wrong place.

---

Chris McKenna

cmckenna@sucs.org www.sucs.org/~cmckenna

Someone reading this conversation might almost think that "uncensored images" is the defining core value of Commons. If that's actually the case, some rebranding is necessary. I imagine you could certainly attract an audience with a site advertised as being uncensored, but I was always under the impression that Commons and Wikimedia were out for a broader, more fully clothed audience.

What's funny is that you actually think you are arguing against attempts at censorship; what this demonstrates more than anything else is that you have deeply misunderstood censorship and what it means. Unfortunately, you are obviously not nearly open minded enough to learn from any explanation.

I will try to make one point: You are not in any sense the proprietor, gatekeeper, authority or representative of Commons the project or its community. You have no right to tell people "If you don't like it, get out" as you have done several times. They are as free to express their opinion as you are, and many (as you've no doubt noticed) disagree with you. So why not take a break from telling people to go away?

Nathan

---

Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

Additionally the German community decided with 233:13 votes against any kind of censorship of the mainpage. That means, any article or image that is considered good in previous a previous debate has it's right (to be good enough) to be shown on the mainpage, no matter what it is. That is my interpretation of not censored, preselected content by a minority.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Beschr%C3%A4nkung_der_...

Tobias

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 12:46 AM, Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com wrote:

Am 16.05.2011 16:43, schrieb Gnangarra:

...

Please explain how does one participate when their employment contract specifically states that viewing of sexually explicit material over the internet is a dismissable offense.

The issue isnt hosting the image its about where its displayed.

Do it in your freetime and not at work?

People go to commons to download media that they know is safe to reuse.

We want them to go to commons to download these media files.

We want them to do this *at work*. That is why we require that media must be released under licenses that allow commercial reuse.

Anyone should be able to use our category system to navigate from the front page to the image they seek without being offended by images that they did not want to see. Of course we cant guarantee this, however violations of this usability principle should be the exception, and we should be keen to improve the categorisation.

On 5/16/2011 10:43 AM, Gnangarra wrote:

Tobias

Please explain how does one participate when their employment contract specifically states that viewing of sexually explicit material over the internet is a dismissable offense.

The issue isnt hosting the image its about where its displayed.

As I previously wrote, and perhaps Tobias is still catching up on emails, there are plenty of places in the United States where this image would be inappropriate to display.

I give lectures, about Wikipedia. I pull up Wikipedia and Commons often in front of large groups of people - college students, museum colleagues, PhD candidates, college professors - if you think this image is the best we have to show these people "oh we're serious, oh, you should contribute" then I'm fighting the wrong fight.

And yeah, boobs, butts or whatever - I'm surprised someone hasn't pulled out the "but...National Geographic..." card yet.

#wikilove,

Sarah

Am 16.05.2011 18:03, schrieb Sarah Stierch:

On 5/16/2011 10:32 AM, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:

...

Reading the words of Sarah Stierch, someone could assume that a picture of a naked male is fine. Do we get more female contributers by treating them as some special, out of the oridinary? At the last meetings in Germany i met several women, most complaining about this rather "useless campaing", that they even found "discriminating".

Hi Tobias - I hate to break it to you, but, a nude male is not always the most tasteful and appropriate thing either. And frankly (sorry boys!) it's quite rare that the male genitalia is a beautiful thing aesthetically. No matter how much we could argue this, I'm sure there would be plenty of Wikimedia Commons contributors who'd rather not see

I'm glad that these German women felt that it wasn't offensive, I don't even think the image is "offensive" because there are breasts - I just can't believe people aren't thinking about who is looking at this image - it's not just Wikimedians and German women who think its tasteful.

It's also school teachers, grand parents, Asian women who dislike the stereotype, spiritually conservative people, etc. It's also a lot of women, who go "oh great, the geeks are putting their anime porn up on Wikimedia, ugh."

I do believe that the majority of the images, nudes or not, BDSM whatever, do have places in Commons, but, I disagree that just because a few women aren't offended, doesn't mean a greater community as a whole isn't. A global community, that we are working towards encouraging to contribute more.

Images like this set us back.

You are currently only talking about women at the first place . In my experience it lead only to more problems, if you try to enforce some kind of change in gender related topics. If we want to reach equality, then we should give it time. A good example are companies that try to reach some kind of male/female ratio. To get more women as workes you introduce special conditions. The typical reaction is a conflict between male hardworkers (some that really do) and female hardworkers. In the end both aren't treated equal, leading to even bigger problems.

What i mean is: The current actions separating women and men even further. If you really want to support equal terms, then don't do something special. It will fix itself over time.

About children, teachers, and so on: Currently we don't have an age restriction or mechanism to control the access. In my case we wouldn't need such filters, since anything, seen as dirty or not, has it's own right. But if you really intend to control the access, then you should implement it first. Otherwise you introduce some kind censorship, that is not up the decission of the viewer itself. If a girl want's to see a penis it could find an image anywhere (not our problem). But if it want's to see one on Commons and deactivates the filter, then it is done with her own intention, out of own interest.

...

Back to the topic itself. Did you even know, that half of the mangaka are females? Works like "Kodomo no Jikan" are written by female authors. Sexuality is a primary topic. No one could life without it. Depictions of sexuallity are known for thousands of years. And that is the point where i start wondering. While old works are seen as something relevant, new works aren't. Why not? They are from our time. In the time we life.

I don't even know what a mangaka is. And trust me, I don't think I could live without sexual activity /either!/ But, it does state that your image is a fictional character in a fictional environment, so, if mangaka's are a real group of people, then I'm not sure why your description states otherwise. Perhaps I'm just a bit confused due to my lack of interest and knowledge about the manga/anime world. Like I said, I've seen a few videos, and well, have had a few beers watching Hentai in my past at parties - not always the best introduction to the way women are viewed in Japanese cartoons. LOL.

Thats why i wrote earlier that knowledge is needed for a rightfull judgement. Any Japanese that draws comics and publishes them is considered a mangaka. That sounds not very interesting. But you have to know, that Japan is with distance the world leader in Comics (Manga) and Cartoons (Anime). Most of the works are directed at an adult or older youth audience. On top of that, only a very small portion is so called hentai, that you have seen at your parties. But still, there are a lot of works bound to sexual topics. Japan itself is much less restrictive about such topics and manga aren't considered as "for kids". They are aiming at any possible age, including puns on politics, history or gender. You will find any aspects inside anime and manga, which are written by males, as well by females. I would really suggest that you will watch an anime like Bakemonogatari or a manga like Kodomo no Jikan. Both contain nudity. But it plays a very much different role as you might think.

Greetings from Tobias

On 16 May 2011 22:24, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

"Not censored" means just that. If you aren't happy that some images that offend you (or you find offensive on others' behalf) might be displayed then you should not use Wikimedia Commons.

Thats the type of response that is driving people away from Commons, many

people spend a lot of time and effort trying to get GLAM organisations to donate to our collections but these places have strict contractual conditions on what employees can view and such images are outside those conditions. That doesnt mean we shouldnt host them or even consider them for FP, but value do we place on a couple of cartoon images getting to appear on the main page compared to the donation 10,000s of images.

Why is creating a barrier to peoples participation is good thing?

On 5/16/2011 11:07 AM, Chris McKenna wrote:

I don't know how well such a censored subset would work, given that every organisation's content policies I am aware of are different to each other, and the technical challenges associated with censorship, but I am no expert.

I've actually implemented a "censored subset" of Wikimedia Commons so I've got some insight into this. One of my projects has partners that won't work with web sites that have nudity, so I've had to remove potentially offensive content from a sample of nearly a million images. This site has also has a large audience in K-12 education so I'm sensitive to people's concerns in that area.

Considering images that are used in actually Wikipedia, I'd say that a bit less than 0.1% (about 1 in 1000) of images contain nudity that "somebody" could find offensive. That includes pictures of ancient pots from Persia that show couples having intercourse, pictures taken at nude beaches that aren't conceivably lascivious as well as pictures of body modifications that you might bot believe until you saw them.

Oddly, people tend to think of Wikipedia as a place that's good for K-12 use despite the fact that it's not officially "family friendly." A lot of that is because you can use Wikipedia for a very long time and not find anything offensive, unless you go looking for it.

If the picture of the day was truly a random sample of what was in Wikipedia, I suppose we'd get something offensive and a big argument about it every three years or so -- so maybe this is all just par for the course.

On 5/16/2011 1:42 PM, Jeremy Baron wrote:

Hi Paul,

How was that implemented?

How, if at all, do new contribs on the upstream commons propagate to your fork?

Does your site allow participation or it's read-only? If read-write how, if at all, do contribs flow back to commons?

How much manual work is required for all of that? Is this available for the general public to use?

The site is http://ookaboo.com/

Metadata frequently is available in RDFa form and will be available in a data dump format when I get around to it.

Images are indexed by "topics" which come from Dbpedia and Freebase and are almost isomorphic to Wikipedia pages. The concept is that primarily topics are censored, not images. The system will reject an image that's related to a topic like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_piercing

This works because people by-and-large don't put offensive images on non-offensive topics in Wikipedia and because I don't mind if I lose a few non-offensive images.

I had a panic a few months ago about offensive images and I spent about four hours getting the bulk of them out. At this point they're suppressed enough that I don't mind whacking an occasional mole.

Ookaboo is about to add public participation features that will let people add images from a range of CC-BY, CC-BY-SA and PD repositories around the web. The focus is on "producing better metadata for images that people find in open repositories" rather than "providing another place for people to upload files" so we can rely on the community standards that are enforced by most repositories. People who break the rules will be dealt with harshly and we've got a method of selecting users that will bias away from griefers and wreckers.

On 5/16/2011 9:04 AM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Chris McKenna <cmckenna@sucs.org mailto:cmckenna@sucs.org> 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.

The image is also not artistically, historically, or culturally significant, unlike all the other examples you cited. The only reason it's featured is because it's sexually arousing to anime fanboys who happen to dominate the culture of Wikimedia Commons. I don't need to crawl into a semantic rabbit-hole to defend this observation. I think its obvious to any reasonable person. If the image would be embarrassing to pull up in front of a classful of students, it shouldn't be on the Commons Main Page.

As with a number of us - this is a big concern. While I had originally posted this to the mailing list for gender gap discussion, this is another of the reasons.

Like I said, which I'm having a feeling wasn't even read by many - you cannot pull THAT front page of Commons up in a classroom or educational environment and have it celebrated by a middle school teacher. Some of her kids might think it's "cool" or "hot", but, if I'd be one pissed parent. All it takes is one pissed parent, who overreacts, to report to the news that "my kid was shown porn at school/museum/church/camp/after school workshops/whatever' and all hell will break lose.

#wikilove,

Sarah

Am 16.05.2011 17:38, schrieb Sarah Stierch:

On 5/16/2011 9:04 AM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

...

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Chris McKenna <cmckenna@sucs.org mailto:cmckenna@sucs.org> 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.

The image is also not artistically, historically, or culturally significant, unlike all the other examples you cited. The only reason it's featured is because it's sexually arousing to anime fanboys who happen to dominate the culture of Wikimedia Commons. I don't need to crawl into a semantic rabbit-hole to defend this observation. I think its obvious to any reasonable person. If the image would be embarrassing to pull up in front of a classful of students, it shouldn't be on the Commons Main Page.

As with a number of us - this is a big concern. While I had originally posted this to the mailing list for gender gap discussion, this is another of the reasons.

Like I said, which I'm having a feeling wasn't even read by many - you cannot pull THAT front page of Commons up in a classroom or educational environment and have it celebrated by a middle school teacher. Some of her kids might think it's "cool" or "hot", but, if I'd be one pissed parent. All it takes is one pissed parent, who overreacts, to report to the news that "my kid was shown porn at school/museum/church/camp/after school workshops/whatever' and all hell will break lose.

#wikilove,

Sarah

Is this the only reason to justify that something can be shown or not? What about weapons, war scenes or even propaganda shots by the US army? Not one seams to care about this topics. Now we have an image of a fictional figure with bare breasts and it is a problem. How do you justify to show military propaganda?

Tobias

On Mon, 16 May 2011, geni wrote:

On 16 May 2011 09:56, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

...

Am I alaone in completely failing to understand what the fuss is about?

Your statement isn't credible.

I don't understand what is not credible about my statement? I honestly do not understand why anybody finds this image objectionable.

...

The image is not pornographic,

Citation needed

Pornography is defined as: "The explicit depiction of sexual subject matter, especially with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer."

The subject matter of this image is not sexual. Therefore it is not pornographic.

...

exploitative, illegal or otherwise inapropriate for featured picture status.

Yes you may not be aware of it but there are many projects out there that are able to distinguish between "featured X" and "must appear on the main page"

Commons does not presently make this distinction and so your satement is irrelevant to it appearing on today's main page. If you wish to make this distinction, please propose it, along with a rationale and the objective criteria you propose to use. If your proposal gains consensus then images you object to will not appear on the main page.

...

If you want to any keep images off the main page that are "sexy", "pornographic", "offensive" or any other arbitrary label you wish to choose, please start by defining in a neutral, objective and culturally independent manner every such label you want to use.

Within the context of the culture it was produced in the image is clearly an attempt at low level errotica

No, within the context of the culture you are viewing it in, you are interpreting it as "low level errotica". In the context I am viewing it in, I'm seeing nothing of the sort. According to the description provided by the creator it does not appear to be anything of the sort. The creator is apparently German. I believe that current German culture is far more permissive with regards nudity than contemporary American or British culture. There is certainly much less equasion of nudity with sex than in these two cultures.

...

Secondly, please explain how this is compatible with Commons being not censored.

Main page is not equal to commons.

I'm not aware of anywhere that exempts the main page from the "Commons is not censored" policy, nor of any other policy that states it is censored. If you wish to change this please gain consensus.

...

Thirdly, please define precisely what it is you are trying to achieve and why. Please do so in an objective and culturally independent manner.

We are trying to demonstrate that commons is not a sexualised enviroment.

Okay. I don't understand how this relates to this image though.

...

Please explain how your comments are neutral and take into account the sensitivities of all cultures and special interest groups, not just your own.

You first.

I am not the one claiming this image is offensive or inapropriate. I am saying that as Commons is not censored (other than is required by the laws of Florida where it is hosted), we do not judge what is and is not offensive. All of the example images I gave were chosen because they are as likely to offend a group of people as this one seems to, just different groups of people. For instance several cultures object to the depiction of any images of human beings, others regard a woman with her head uncovered to be very offensive. The image of a woman on the sanddune is of an off-duty military officer. There are many people for whom female military officers are offensive, others will object to public money being spent on such activities and/or the official photogrpahing of such activities. That the woman is also not dressed in accordance to the local culture would also be very offensive to some.

If you would consider any of these to be accpetable for the main page, but not the original image under discussion, then I'm asking you to explain how your view is objective.

My view is that all featured pictures are suitable for the main page because Commons is not censored - it is thus neutral as it takes into account that there is no global standard in this regard and is biased towards no one group.

Now, how about answering the remaining points?

---- 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

On 5/16/11 7:55 AM, Chris McKenna wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011, geni wrote:

...

On 16 May 2011 09:56, Chris McKennacmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

...

Am I alaone in completely failing to understand what the fuss is about?

Your statement isn't credible.

I don't understand what is not credible about my statement? I honestly do not understand why anybody finds this image objectionable.

OK then, if you really do not understand, your best course of action here is to keep quiet, take what others say at face value, and spend some time to really absorb what it means. You are not going to come up with a brilliant comment that causes all readers to abandon their cherished values and switch to sharing yours.

The photo of the day, and in general the front page, is all about making good first impressions. All the people who value uncensored images have already seen Commons by now, and the choice of front page content doesn't affect them. So what we're really talking about is making a good first impression on everybody else, and to do that we should choose images that are appealing across the broadest range of people worldwide. That means G-rated, that means no advocacy in current conflicts, that means no blood, no nasty diseases, etc. Once people are "in the door" so to speak, then they can choose whether they want to go into the Hall of Fluffy Bunnies or the Dungeon of Sexual Atrocities Being Committed by People with Oozing Skin Rashes. :-)

Stan

(There are days when I'm not really being paid enough to review latest files. Yuck!!)

On 16 May 2011 16:27, Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com wrote:

Only repesenting images of the Fluffy Bunnies section would have another side effect. It would not show the diversity of topics people can contribute to. Even sexual related topics need new authors.

Go through http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nude_men at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nude_women and the categories that are listed in their see also. Then let us know which sexual related topics need more authors.

On 05/16/2011 08:19 AM, Stan Shebs wrote:

The photo of the day, and in general the front page, is all about making good first impressions. All the people who value uncensored images have already seen Commons by now, and the choice of front page content doesn't affect them.

We need an active group of contributors who represent at the very least some cross-section of not only Commons contributors but of interested re-users of Commons content to actively monitor and maintain the POTD. This is not the first time that something inappropriate for Main Page content has appeared and I doubt it will be the last.

Cary

On 5/16/11 8:21 PM, Cary Bass wrote:

We need an active group of contributors who represent at the very least some cross-section of not only Commons contributors but of interested re-users of Commons content to actively monitor and maintain the POTD. This is not the first time that something inappropriate for Main Page content has appeared and I doubt it will be the last.

That is definitely a practical solution. POTD are scheduled long in advance, so that could solve the problems here pretty quickly. The image in question is, IMO, unambiguously inappropriate for Commons, and this shouldn't have been a difficult debate.

On the other hand it feels a bit wrong to me. In that case we're asking groups that are relatively underrepresented in Wiki culture to take on the role of policing. I feel like they ought to have some rights to a welcoming environment as a baseline. That said, in a wiki context, it seems to be impossible to achieve such baseline freedoms, as long as the offenders have large amounts of free time.

So some people are going to have to make the sacrifices to change the culture.

Another worry: if there's a "quality control board", officially or unofficially, they can start to take that role too seriously or become captured by various radical factions. But I guess we have to take that chance.

Am 17.05.2011 02:34, schrieb Neil Kandalgaonkar:

On 5/16/11 8:21 PM, Cary Bass wrote:

...

We need an active group of contributors who represent at the very least some cross-section of not only Commons contributors but of interested re-users of Commons content to actively monitor and maintain the POTD. This is not the first time that something inappropriate for Main Page content has appeared and I doubt it will be the last.

That is definitely a practical solution. POTD are scheduled long in advance, so that could solve the problems here pretty quickly. The image in question is, IMO, unambiguously inappropriate for Commons, and this shouldn't have been a difficult debate.

On the other hand it feels a bit wrong to me. In that case we're asking groups that are relatively underrepresented in Wiki culture to take on the role of policing. I feel like they ought to have some rights to a welcoming environment as a baseline. That said, in a wiki context, it seems to be impossible to achieve such baseline freedoms, as long as the offenders have large amounts of free time.

So some people are going to have to make the sacrifices to change the culture.

Another worry: if there's a "quality control board", officially or unofficially, they can start to take that role too seriously or become captured by various radical factions. But I guess we have to take that chance.

Another board for decisions? Just leave the communities alone. They can handle it very well on their own. Any board i know failed in so many points. An good example from the German Wikipedia is the "Schiedsgericht". This is the last call if some users can't be stopped from offending each other. But this board isn't trusted at all and constantly breaks down. Just because it is seen as needless.

What im seeing here is the construction of an government which isn't even democratic, getting very close to a dictatorship. Or as we said in the GDR: One party, elected by itself.

Tobias

If we buy this contributions with a loss of liberty. Then yes. Nothing is as worthy as liberty.

Am 17.05.2011 10:22, schrieb Gnangarra:

Is this picture worth more than 137,000 news images, Is this picture worth the loss of xontributions from GLAM organisations Is this picture worth the cost of denying other contributors the opportunity to participate.

On 17 May 2011 16:16, Tobias Oelgarte <tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com mailto:tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com> wrote:

Am 17.05.2011 02:34, schrieb Neil Kandalgaonkar:
> On 5/16/11 8:21 PM, Cary Bass wrote:
>> We need an active group of contributors who represent at the
very least
>> some cross-section of not only Commons contributors but of
interested
>> re-users of Commons content to actively monitor and maintain
the POTD.
>> This is not the first time that something inappropriate for
Main Page
>> content has appeared and I doubt it will be the last.
> That is definitely a practical solution. POTD are scheduled long in
> advance, so that could solve the problems here pretty quickly.
The image
> in question is, IMO, unambiguously inappropriate for Commons,
and this
> shouldn't have been a difficult debate.
>
> On the other hand it feels a bit wrong to me. In that case we're
asking
> groups that are relatively underrepresented in Wiki culture to
take on
> the role of policing. I feel like they ought to have some rights
to a
> welcoming environment as a baseline. That said, in a wiki
context, it
> seems to be impossible to achieve such baseline freedoms, as
long as the
> offenders have large amounts of free time.
>
> So some people are going to have to make the sacrifices to
change the
> culture.
>
> Another worry: if there's a "quality control board", officially or
> unofficially, they can start to take that role too seriously or
become
> captured by various radical factions. But I guess we have to
take that
> chance.
>
>
Another board for decisions? Just leave the communities alone.
They can
handle it very well on their own. Any board i know failed in so many
points. An good example from the German Wikipedia is the
"Schiedsgericht". This is the last call if some users can't be stopped
from offending each other. But this board isn't trusted at all and
constantly breaks down. Just because it is seen as needless.

What im seeing here is the construction of an government which isn't
even democratic, getting very close to a dictatorship. Or as we
said in
the GDR: One party, elected by itself.

Tobias

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-- GN. Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com Gn. Blogg: http://gnangarra.wordpress.com

---

Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

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

As a separate thread of discussion from my last message, I note that despite all the outrage yesterday from some quarters that we were featuring works by non-notable Wikimedians on the front page that we are doing exactly the same today.

Before anyone claims that this is not an artistic work, you should note that it contains sufficient originality to be eligible for copyright protection and that the Wikimedia Foundation sets a much higher threshold for this than some (many?) national legislatures (including the United Kingdom). In my view the skilled works of a Wikimedian should be considered equal to the skilled works of another, regardless of field or genera, when both are awarded the same status (in this case feautued status) according to the same process.

---- 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

If you are unwilling to recognise the difference in terms of educational vs. artistic content, nothing I say is likely to make any difference. Frankly, it's not even worth discussing.

Andreas

It's not a matter of anyone being unwilling; some people don't agree with you. An image of an allegory of Liberty on the Main Page of a major repository of free images is obviously of value, as our lengthy discussion demonstrates. Snails, well snails are interesting.

As to something not being worth discussing; we make decisions by engaging in discussions.

Fred

--- On Tue, 17/5/11, Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org wrote:

From: Chris McKenna cmckenna@sucs.org Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on Wikimedia Commons To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, 17 May, 2011, 15:04 On Tue, 17 May 2011, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

...

The images from today and yesterday are:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turbo_imperialis_01.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:On_the_edge_-_free_world_version.jpg

If you are unwilling to recognise the difference in

terms of educational vs.

...

artistic content, nothing I say is likely to make any

difference. Frankly,

...

it's not even worth discussing.

"Featured pictures are images that the community has chosen to be highlighted as some of the finest on Commons." Both today's and yesterday's main page images are featured pictures.

I am not making any judgement regarding educational or illustrative content, (both images are equally usable for educational purposes, albeit different ones) other than if two images are recognised to be of the same standard ("featured status") then they should be treated as having equal value to the project. If we want to treat artistic and illustrative works differently then we need separate standards to judge them by (instead of or as well as "featured status", I can see arguments for both). If we want to say that some featured pictures are more valuable to the project than others then we need some other status for one or other of the groups.

This never was justifiable as a featured picture to begin with. As it was, it scraped through in Commons 8:2:2,

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/File:O...

with support comments that don't make a good case at all, and failed to attract support in German Wikipedia:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Kandidaten_f%C3%BCr_exzellente_Bilder...

Yesterday there were calls that we should not be featuring the work of non-notable Wikimedians full stop. Today were are featuring the work of an equally non-notable Wikimedian and there are no calls for the image not to be shown on the main page on these grounds.

There were no calls to stop featuring work of non-notable Wikimedians. If we did that, almost all photographs of buildings, plants, mountains would be disqualified. The actual point is quite different.

Commons does not host original art by non-notable Wikimedians that does not have an obvious educational use. That is Commons policy. Commons is not for fan art; DeviantArt is the right place for such images.

Even if you disagree with me and assert that the image does have educational value, featured picture criteria require notability (nope), high artistic merit (nope), high illustrative merit (nope, this is an independent work of art, rather than an illustration of anything pre-existing), or high historic merit (nope).

Andreas

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 8:38 AM, Béria Lima berialima@gmail.com wrote:

You have your opinion and this topic is 190 e-mail long (190 mails in 4 treads, in 3 mailing list). After all that attention i believe everyone knows your (and many other people) opinion.

Beria brings up a good point...

After a couple hundred replies, I think it's clear that this discussion has trailed away into irrelevance. Everyone who has replied several times has clearly made their views known, and so far we've not convinced anyone to change their position.

I'm going to mute this conversation (isn't Gmail wonderful?) and will be taking any further discussion of the image or Commons Main Page back to Commons were it belongs.

See you on the wiki,

Steven

I think that enough has been said on this subject. Clearly there are people who believe this image doesn't belong in the Commons, or doesn't belong as a Featured Picture, or doesn't belong on the Main Page. And there are people who believe the opposite.

Since the damage (if any) has already been done, let's just agree to pay more attention to the FP nomination process, or to propose a different policy for Main Page placement. If there is consensus on-wiki, then we've solved the problem.

We almost always successfully solve contentious issues on-wiki through established mechanisms, and I don't see thismas being any different.

-ilya haykinson

Yes, the way to go. Please point us to any on-wiki discussions as they occur.

Fred

Am 17.05.2011 15:26, schrieb Andreas Kolbe:

--- On *Tue, 17/5/11, Craig Franklin /craig@halo-17.net/*wrote:

From: Craig Franklin <craig@halo-17.net>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on
Wikimedia Commons
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List"
<commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Tuesday, 17 May, 2011, 12:54

I'm going to add my voice to the "yeah, that wasn't cool".  To
give a bit of an anecdote, John Vandenberg and I were doing a
demonstration of Commons to some librarians and cultural curators
yesterday, and it was a bit of a rude shock seeing that particular
image on the frontpage.  One of the more elderly contributors
remarked on it to me privately in a negative sense afterwards, all
I could do was look embarassed and say "Yes, it's a bit of a racy
image, isn't it.  Can't imagine how anyone thought that would be a
good idea".  That's probably one contributor who won't be beating
a path to our door in the future.

And, at the risk of editorialising here, those who are responding
to this criticism by claiming that we're asking for "censorship"
or that the freedom to plaster graphic images over the Commons
frontpage is a battle for liberty along the lines of the fight
against slavery or for universal suffrage... need to take an
aspirin and have a good lie down.  Nobody is claiming that such
images are not within Commons' scope; they quite clearly are, just
like pictures of penises, medical procedures, and other images
that people might find unpleasant are.  Should they be in scope
for the main page though?  I don't think so, the same as a picture
of a genital piercing, Osama bin Laden's bloodied corpse, or other
pictures that could possibly cause innocent people to get in
trouble should be out of main page scope.  As a community, I think
most of us are mature enough to apply a common sense test to these
things, and common sense would indicate that that image was likely
to be one that would cause needless offense to people and hurt the
project.

Sorry for your bad experience. In light of that, it is a bit galling to note that the contributor of the image says on his Commons user page,

Rule #1: Commons is Censored [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3APotd%2F2011-05-16&action=historysubmit&diff=54418471&oldid=48204060 Some of my works were also accepted by */Featured Pictures/* http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures. But who really cares about this subjective nonsense? I don't (anymore). It is equivalent to a private organization controlled by some divas and is not representable for the variety of images currently available on Commons. In short: /It is worth nothing and is total bullshit!/

/

/ /

/http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Niabot/

/

/ /

/The diva comment seems perceptive, though not in the way the contributor meant it. It's/

/absurd that //we let art from someone with those views hurt the efforts of those that //actually/

/believe in //this being an educational project. The tail wags the dog here; the importance/

/of manga in the overall "sum of human knowledge" is actually minute./

/The Featured status of the image itself is under review in Commons; the link is:/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/remova...

Andreas

---

Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

Nice canvassing. At least it brings topic back to the community.

I've never denied not being a Diva ;-)

-Sarah

On 5/17/2011 9:26 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

--- On *Tue, 17/5/11, Craig Franklin /craig@halo-17.net/*wrote:

From: Craig Franklin <craig@halo-17.net>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on
Wikimedia Commons
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List"
<commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Tuesday, 17 May, 2011, 12:54

I'm going to add my voice to the "yeah, that wasn't cool".  To
give a bit of an anecdote, John Vandenberg and I were doing a
demonstration of Commons to some librarians and cultural curators
yesterday, and it was a bit of a rude shock seeing that particular
image on the frontpage.  One of the more elderly contributors
remarked on it to me privately in a negative sense afterwards, all
I could do was look embarassed and say "Yes, it's a bit of a racy
image, isn't it.  Can't imagine how anyone thought that would be a
good idea".  That's probably one contributor who won't be beating
a path to our door in the future.

And, at the risk of editorialising here, those who are responding
to this criticism by claiming that we're asking for "censorship"
or that the freedom to plaster graphic images over the Commons
frontpage is a battle for liberty along the lines of the fight
against slavery or for universal suffrage... need to take an
aspirin and have a good lie down.  Nobody is claiming that such
images are not within Commons' scope; they quite clearly are, just
like pictures of penises, medical procedures, and other images
that people might find unpleasant are.  Should they be in scope
for the main page though?  I don't think so, the same as a picture
of a genital piercing, Osama bin Laden's bloodied corpse, or other
pictures that could possibly cause innocent people to get in
trouble should be out of main page scope.  As a community, I think
most of us are mature enough to apply a common sense test to these
things, and common sense would indicate that that image was likely
to be one that would cause needless offense to people and hurt the
project.

Sorry for your bad experience. In light of that, it is a bit galling to note that the contributor of the image says on his Commons user page,

Rule #1: Commons is Censored [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3APotd%2F2011-05-16&action=historysubmit&diff=54418471&oldid=48204060 Some of my works were also accepted by */Featured Pictures/* http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures. But who really cares about this subjective nonsense? I don't (anymore). It is equivalent to a private organization controlled by some divas and is not representable for the variety of images currently available on Commons. In short: /It is worth nothing and is total bullshit!/

/

/ /

/http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Niabot/

/

/ /

/The diva comment seems perceptive, though not in the way the contributor meant it. It's/

/absurd that //we let art from someone with those views hurt the efforts of those that //actually/

/believe in //this being an educational project. The tail wags the dog here; the importance/

/of manga in the overall "sum of human knowledge" is actually minute./

/The Featured status of the image itself is under review in Commons; the link is:/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/remova...

Andreas

---

Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

I'm going to add my voice to the "yeah, that wasn't cool". To give a bit of an anecdote, John Vandenberg and I were doing a demonstration of Commons to some librarians and cultural curators yesterday, and it was a bit of a rude shock seeing that particular image on the frontpage. One of the more elderly contributors remarked on it to me privately in a negative sense afterwards, all I could do was look embarassed and say "Yes, it's a bit of a racy image, isn't it. Can't imagine how anyone thought that would be a good idea". That's probably one contributor who won't be beating a path to our door in the future.

And, at the risk of editorialising here, those who are responding to this criticism by claiming that we're asking for "censorship" or that the freedom to plaster graphic images over the Commons frontpage is a battle for liberty along the lines of the fight against slavery or for universal suffrage... need to take an aspirin and have a good lie down. Nobody is claiming that such images are not within Commons' scope; they quite clearly are, just like pictures of penises, medical procedures, and other images that people might find unpleasant are. Should they be in scope for the main page though? I don't think so, the same as a picture of a genital piercing, Osama bin Laden's bloodied corpse, or other pictures that could possibly cause innocent people to get in trouble should be out of main page scope. As a community, I think most of us are mature enough to apply a common sense test to these things, and common sense would indicate that that image was likely to be one that would cause needless offense to people and hurt the project.

Cheers, Craig

Librarians have a strong professional ethos which rejects censorship. They understand the issue. And when they are in the news, its often some High Noon confrontation over removing material such as Huck Finn from the shelves. Our anime allegory of Liberty is not nearly as objectionable, or dangerous, as Huck Finn.

Librarians understand and are strongly committed to minimizing censorship and boards of approval.

Fred

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com wrote: On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 6:22 PM, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:

...

Is this picture worth more than 137,000 news images, Is this picture worth the loss of xontributions from GLAM organisations Is this picture worth the cost of denying other contributors the opportunity to participate.

If we buy this contributions with a loss of liberty. Then yes. Nothing is as worthy as liberty.

That sounds very nice, but what liberty have you lost. The right for Commons to put an amateur image in front of millions of eyeballs? By working with GLAMs, we can obtain high resolution images of the real thing - the images which had an impact and defined their sub-genre at the time.

I don't mind if we do put a confronting image or article in front of millions of eyeballs, however we should be self-aware and ensure that we are making good use of the opportunity. If we are going to put sexual/confronting/challenging content on the front page of Commons, it should be significant, and the majority of viewers should be able to appreciate why it was selected for the front page of Wikimedia Commons.

Looking from the outside i have to assume that the projects leadership is more and more only interested in donations and salaries. Should we expect advertisements, proprietary licenses in the future? Sometimes i have the feeling that the millions are wasted, while technically Wikipedia is still in the stoneage. Do we need all this projects with doubtable results to begin with? Do we start to beg for content? Or did we start we start with the intention to create a project in that everyone can participate on his own will, in it's free time?

Im not only talking about _my_ image. Im also talking about the future of Wikipedia and Commons as a free project. What if a professional photographer would take an very well educational image of Shibari? Isn't it equal to a portrait of a president in its value?

All you care about are the donors, not the writers. That seams to be fact. So lets put some honey on the mainpages and install an leading to a fly-donor-trap at the end. Is that really all you care about?

Am 17.05.2011 17:17, schrieb Sarah Stierch:

On 5/17/2011 7:05 AM, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:

...

If we buy this contributions with a loss of liberty. Then yes. Nothing is as worthy as liberty.

We rely on donations - whether small cultural donations or monetary donations or major media contributions. There is always going to be some type of "freedom lost" when dealing with all donors of anytime. And I'm sure /anyone/ who has worked in the non-profit sector in /the majority/ of countries can attest to that.

I assume that if people wish to see those of us who believe in quality educational images (hence the Commons mission) 'go away' which has been declared multiple times, then perhaps those seeking to showcase images with little educational merit and deep creator connection (dare I say conflict of interest, it is Tobia's image anyway, so of course he wants it up there, who wouldn't in his situation) should perhaps showcase their own artwork or personal imagery on their own website.

Or flickr, which I have been using to showcase images I wish to not release into CC or images of my self, friends and stupid things, on.

I agree with Gnangarra - one tasteless work, which has been questioned by Wikipedians/medians around the world, is not worth the risk of losing major donors - whether monetary or culturally.

Sarah

...

Am 17.05.2011 10:22, schrieb Gnangarra:

...

Is this picture worth more than 137,000 news images, Is this picture worth the loss of xontributions from GLAM organisations Is this picture worth the cost of denying other contributors the opportunity to participate.

On 17 May 2011 16:16, Tobias Oelgarte <tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com mailto:tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com> wrote:

Am 17.05.2011 02:34, schrieb Neil Kandalgaonkar:
> On 5/16/11 8:21 PM, Cary Bass wrote:
>> We need an active group of contributors who represent at the
very least
>> some cross-section of not only Commons contributors but of
interested
>> re-users of Commons content to actively monitor and maintain
the POTD.
>> This is not the first time that something inappropriate for
Main Page
>> content has appeared and I doubt it will be the last.
> That is definitely a practical solution. POTD are scheduled
long in
> advance, so that could solve the problems here pretty quickly.
The image
> in question is, IMO, unambiguously inappropriate for Commons,
and this
> shouldn't have been a difficult debate.
>
> On the other hand it feels a bit wrong to me. In that case
we're asking
> groups that are relatively underrepresented in Wiki culture to
take on
> the role of policing. I feel like they ought to have some
rights to a
> welcoming environment as a baseline. That said, in a wiki
context, it
> seems to be impossible to achieve such baseline freedoms, as
long as the
> offenders have large amounts of free time.
>
> So some people are going to have to make the sacrifices to
change the
> culture.
>
> Another worry: if there's a "quality control board", officially or
> unofficially, they can start to take that role too seriously
or become
> captured by various radical factions. But I guess we have to
take that
> chance.
>
>
Another board for decisions? Just leave the communities alone.
They can
handle it very well on their own. Any board i know failed in so many
points. An good example from the German Wikipedia is the
"Schiedsgericht". This is the last call if some users can't be
stopped
from offending each other. But this board isn't trusted at all and
constantly breaks down. Just because it is seen as needless.

What im seeing here is the construction of an government which isn't
even democratic, getting very close to a dictatorship. Or as we
said in
the GDR: One party, elected by itself.

Tobias

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-- GN. Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com Gn. Blogg: http://gnangarra.wordpress.com

---

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---

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--

Wikipedia Regional Ambassador, The Nation's Capital http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Regional_Ambassadors_Current Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American Art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch

Sarah Stierch Consulting Historical, cultural & artistic research, advising & event planning.

---

http://www.sarahstierch.com/

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Any proof for this imputation?

Am 17.05.2011 17:53, schrieb Gnangarra:

On 17 May 2011 23:44, Tobias Oelgarte <tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com mailto:tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com> wrote:

Or did we start we start with the intention to create a project in
that everyone can participate on his own will, in it's free time?

We did but that image being on the main page has placed a barrier to participation

-- GN. Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com Gn. Blogg: http://gnangarra.wordpress.com

---

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Laws are the one thing, liberty without harm to others the other thing. You can't jump from a plane that is used for suicide, but you can look away if you don't like to see an image. Absolutely not appreciated, strong wording comparison.

Am 17.05.2011 17:56, schrieb Gnangarra:

On 17 May 2011 19:05, Tobias Oelgarte <tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com mailto:tobias.oelgarte@googlemail.com> wrote:

If we buy this contributions with a loss of liberty. Then yes.
Nothing is as worthy as liberty.

While we are at it do appreciate the denial of liberty for people who break the law? do you appreciate the denial of liberty at airports that prevent your plane being bombed?

-- GN. Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com Gn. Blogg: http://gnangarra.wordpress.com

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Am 17.05.2011 18:07, schrieb Cary Bass:

On 05/17/2011 09:03 AM, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:

...

Laws are the one thing, liberty without harm to others the other thing. You can't jump from a plane that is used for suicide, but you can look away if you don't like to see an image. Absolutely not appreciated, strong wording comparison.

That doesn't even make sense. You're expecting a large number of our contributors to "look away if you don't like it". The fact that this is even a solution to you tells more about your lack of consideration for the end users than anything else.

Cary

---

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Do you have any proof that a large number of our contributes is even offended? Currently i see only a minority that speaks as if it is the majority of all contributes itself.

Am 17.05.2011 18:16, schrieb Gnangarra: