--- On Tue, 15/2/11, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
From: George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com But that claim has often been made by a lot of men, who also suspiciously were themselves offended by it, many of whom do themselves in fact object to any explicit imagery without regard to NOTCENSORED, beyond reasonable values of editorial judgement.
I am not offended by sexual content, or pornography. But pages illustrated like these (not safe for work)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_prac...
(complete with spoken version)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creampie_(sexual_act)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gokkun
make us look like something else than what we want to be: an authoritative educational resource for everyone.
As a community, we were not even able to delete the goatse image from the goatse article on the basis of editorial judgment, and to agree to content ourselves with presenting an external link for those readers unfamiliar with the image and wishing to view it after they had read a description. The image was, if I recall correctly, deleted on a technicality, despite the fact that no mainstream published source discussing the image would include it. If that is so, why should we? Because they are censored and we are not? Used in this way, the NOTCENSORED argument becomes one against editorial judgment per se.
I am not going to lump Jimmy or Herostratus into that category, but the vast bulk of energy expended to remove explicit content seems to be done by people for whom the retort that Wikipedia is not censored is, in fact, a completely legitimate and completely adequate response. They in fact make it harder for reasonable editorial judgement types to engage in discussion, as they're not very good at disguising their underlying moral contempt for that material and their fears that it will indelibly contaminate their precious children.
The fact is that most Wikipedians do not have children, or partners, and most people out there in the real world do.
Andreas