Hi everyone,
I think we're on the "Beating a dead horse" again situation with this subject.[1] We will be going in circles about it - most of us seem to not care as much as others, and no one seems to be taking any direct action at this point. *I'm evening proposing this: someone can create a mailing list or an on-wiki space (even better!) to continue the discussion and those folks interested in examining pornography, sex related, whatnot images on Wikimedia projects can discuss it until their hearts content and think about ways to take action, etc.*
After request from a few participants off list and my own personal interest, I'm declaring that we kill this thread and move on.
Participants in this thread may now under go moderator regarding this specific thread.
And what's more interesting, is that the majority of women who are participating in this conversation seem to be the one's with the least concern about it, go figure.
Thanks everyone,
Sarah
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flogging_a_dead_horse
On 6/3/12 3:59 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 9:09 PM, Delphine Ménard <notafishz@gmail.com mailto:notafishz@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 4:57 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com <mailto:jayen466@gmail.com>> wrote: > We are not talking about filtering standard sex education images as you > might find in a school book. We are talking about images or videos... [snip to spare Sarah's eyes, and mine] Andreas, I use Wikipedia on a daily basis, not as an editor, but as a user, and the only times I've come across those things you mention were while reading your posts, emails and notes, and clicking on links *you* provided (or others having the same discourse), never "by chance". I am not saying the problem does not exist, I am the first to think that many Commons images need to be cleaned up (and not only for model release and obvious porn reasons, but for many others too), but I would be grateful if you could avoid emphasizing your point in such a crude way in every single email you write and derail otherwise important and interesting threads. Thanks.Delphine and all,
I appreciate that these things are unpalatable -- if they weren't, there'd be no problem with Wikimedia hosting them unfiltered, and this discussion would be moot. We are labouring under what Larry has called the "yuck factor" here -- some things are just so unpalatable that people prefer not to know, and not to get involved.
Saying and doing nothing about this topic would be an option if these files were as obscure as your personal experience of Wikimedia would suggest. If they got 10 or 12 views a day, say, there would hardly be much reason to make a fuss.
But that is not the case.
The most extreme of the three examples I described in my previous mail has been viewed more than 100,000 times this year. It seems to have been well advertised, because it had high viewing figures from day one, months before I ever learnt about it or posted a link about it. Here are its viewing stats for January, when it was uploaded:
http://stats.grok.se/commons.m/201201/File:Devoirs_de_vacances.ogv
This is from a film that is illegal to view or own in dozens of countries around the world, including some Western ones, or is at least restricted to showings in private sex clubs. But at the present rate, it will have had about a quarter of a million views on Wikimedia Commons by the end of this year.
Now, given the volume of this demand -- this file has been in the Commons top-100 -- we cannot simply operate a policy of "out of sight, out of mind", because, while these matters may be out of our minds, they are verifiably on the minds of tens of thousands of others. A good proportion of them, certainly, will be children and teenagers surfing in their bedrooms, whose parents have told them that Wikimedia is a reputable educational site that is good for them to view.
More such material will accumulate on Wikimedia servers as time passes. We do need to think about our responsibilities here. Are we really prepared to host everything, even the most bizarre material, unfiltered?
Wikimedia is importing thousands of private images from Flickr, where they are hosted responsibly, behind an age-18 wall, and shared among a limited and mutually consensual audience, and is putting them on public view in Commons and Wikipedia for a global audience. Helpful navigation templates at the bottom of Wikipedia articles enable enquiring minds to discover illustrated articles on sexual kinks they could not even have dreamt existed. Is that wholly and unquestionably a good thing?
There was a related article on this in the Telegraph yesterday, "Don't tell my kids about your sex life":
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/9305670/Dont-tell-my-kids-about-your-sex-l...
The writer is making some valid points in that article.
Ironically, however, she names Wikipedia as one of the sites where she believes this is NOT happening. That assumption is flatly contradicted by viewing statistics like those above.
Wikipedia is doing exactly that: it is a place where adults tell a global audience that includes children about kinky sex. And its status as an educational site, and the only major site eschewing any kind of filtering, puts it at the forefront of this effort.
Now it is absolutely true that children and adults can find a far greater amount of explicit content elsewhere (provided they have learnt in Wikipedia what to Google for ...). Kids could find the original images we host in Flickr too, if their curiosity was so great that they were prepared to lie about their age. But the fact is, they don't.
Material like this may certainly have educational value, in the right context. But we have a responsibility to follow mainstream educational standards. A sexology course in university may involve a video or live presentations of a couple demonstrating BDSM techniques to students. This sort of thing happens and is legitimate. Sex education in schools, however, does not involve such graphic presentations. And I think that is equally legitimate. One of the functions of a filter is to make that difference clear.
The second function of the filter is of course to enable adults who are really not interested in these topics to adjust their settings in such a way that Wikimedia will not show them kink or gore in response to innocuous searches -- see
http://tch995319.tch.www.quora.com/Why-is-the-second-image-returned-on-Wikim...
and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems
for an explanation of how or why this happens -- much like some of the contributors here feel this discussion itself is an unwanted intrusion.
On that point, I am sorry to have raised these matters in a manner that has seemed crude to some of you. I will take this to heart, and think of ways to express myself in less offensive ways. But we have to be clear and differentiate between the criticism of religious fundamentalists, who might object to a bikini shot and plain anatomical images, and the question whether it is right for Wikimedia to host a growing store of explicit images of the most bizarre kinds of kink unfiltered.
Nobody (at least not me, nor Larry, as far as I can see) advocates a filter that would prevent children from viewing sex-educational material on Wikipedia, and drive them to porn sites instead to learn about sex. As far as I am concerned, everything that is well and good in schools could remain entirely unfiltered here.
But material that is borderline illegal, or that is subject to strict age restrictions in the real world, or that is imported from sites where it is hosted in an age-restricted section, should be behind a filter (which, after all, can still be bypassed by anyone -- of any age -- who is curious enough).
Andreas
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