Re: [Gendergap] High-heeled shoes as a case study (and what makes me mad about Commons)

Hi Toby - Sorry to be a n00b but, can you explain what you mean by "refactoring this category according to the principle of least surprise?" For anyone else - if you find an image that has been uploaded by a Flickr bot, and the Flickr account has been deleted what do you do? I notice a large portion of images like this are often snapshot uneducational photos (here is an example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Labace_%2824%29.jpg) I was going to nominate it for just being out of scope because Commons is not a repository for snapshots. ;) Asking questions like this on Commons-L isn't very pleasant, so thanks for helping! Thanks, Sarah On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 6:48 AM, Toby Hudson &lt;tobyyy(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > I've made a start on refactoring this category according to the > principle of least surprise. Feel free to do this whenever you notice a > "surprising" image in a mundane category. > > Regarding consent, if any of the identifiable women are in private > locations, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:PEOPLE<http://commons.wikimedia.or…pplies, and the uploader should state that permission was obtained to take > & publish the image. If this has not been done, please either contact the > uploader or propose deletion. > > Toby Hudson / 99of9 > > > On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 8:05 AM, Sydney Poore &lt;sydney.poore(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: > >> Category:High-heeled shoes is an excellent example of the current >> problem WMF projects are having with creating and disseminating content that >> is unbiased. >> >> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:High-heeled_shoes >> >> This category is different that most all the other categories about >> footwear because it contains many images that are not primarily examples of >> high-heeled shoes. Most other categories about footwear contain mostly >> images of shoes or the lower leg(s) with a shoe or shoes. >> >> The number of images in Category:High-heeled shoes is higher than most >> categories about footwear. Approximately one- third of the images are of >> full body shots of attractive females who are wearing high heeled shoes, and >> a significant number of them are nude or posed in sexually provocative >> positions. >> >> There are random women who are wearing shoes and are mixed in with the >> porn-stars and strip-tease dancers. These women are being objectified and >> sexualized without their consent because of the way the the images are >> displayed in the category. See Wikipedia article on Sexualization >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexualization for a description of the >> term. >> >> In each language that has Wikipedia articles about high-heeled shoes, >> the content is about a type of footwear, so the links in the articles that >> lead to commons are directing people to nudity or sexual content that they >> would not anticipate. There are other problems with some of the images, >> including unclear consent for the image to be uploaded by the subject of the >> image. >> >> I see this category as a concrete example of systemic bias coming from >> having a male dominated editing community. >> >> Leather boots is only other category that I found that also has a >> large number of images of people. It also contain a disproportionate number >> of images of women who are nude or in sexually provocative poses. >> >> I think that it is important to continue to talk about these issues in >> the hope that more people with became educated about the problems with with >> our current methods to collect, categorize, and disseminate content. >> >> Sydney Poore >> User:FloNight >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Gendergap mailing list >> Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Gendergap mailing list > Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap > > -- GLAMWIKI Partnership Ambassador for the Wikimedia Foundation<http://www.glamwiki.org> Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American Art<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch> and Sarah Stierch Consulting *Historical, cultural & artistic research & advising.* ------------------------------------------------------ http://www.sarahstierch.com/ _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap