Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

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Bikini example

Kelly Wearstler

Sarah

2 Sep 2011 2 Sep '11

10:45 p.m.

Several women, including on WikiProject Feminism on the English Wikipedia, have recently expressed concern about the number of photographs of women's body parts that Wikimedia hosts, particularly regarding the issue of permission. It's far from clear in many cases that the women have given consent. It's also sometimes unclear that the subjects are above the age of consent. Another concern is what a woman is meant to do if someone uploads an image of her without her knowledge. Is she supposed to write to an anonymous person at OTRS? Does she have to give her real name? How does it work? Any information from the Foundation about the legal situation, and what Foundation policy is, would be very helpful. Sarah

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Fred Bauder

3 Sep 3 Sep

3 a.m.

...

The matter is discussed at Commons:Photographs of identifiable people https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_… Fred

Sarah Stierch

3:33 a.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

Sarah, (and a rant, of course) I contacted WMF legal counsel about this, and they responded with the legal stance and related content to at least "child pornography" and Henrietta has put together this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Child_pornography_policy_and_laws- based on that content. The "see also" also provides further links, including the one Fred shared. While I'm not as worried about "child porn" on Commons, I'm more disgusted with the fact that bad amateur photos and nude photos have to be used to depict pregnant women, on the [[pregnancy]] page. Not only is it NSFW, the photos are amateur quality at best. And it always comes down to "oh, it offends a few of you, well, deal with it." But, this is just one of many articles where arguments like this take place... I also think (after working in the fashion and photography private sector for almost 10 years before non-profits) that model releases are as important as OTRS copyright releases when it comes to "sexual" content on Wikipedia. Whether nude photos, cock shots, or booty shorts. I'm sure most of the people who have nude photos or sexual photos of themselves on Commons have no clue. But...what do I know...I'm a "prude" :P -Sarah On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 11:00 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:

...

The matter is discussed at Commons:Photographs of identifiable people https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_… Fred _______________________________________________ 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/

Sarah

3:39 a.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 21:33, Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

I also think (after working in the fashion and photography private sector for almost 10 years before non-profits) that model releases are as important as OTRS copyright releases when it comes to "sexual" content on Wikipedia. Whether nude photos, cock shots, or booty shorts. I'm sure most of the people who have nude photos or sexual photos of themselves on Commons have no clue.

And if they do know, do we have a reasonable system in place for them to complain? As things stand, it seems they're expected to write to an anonymous OTRS volunteer. Are they expected to give their real name, and how do they prove the image is of them? It would be good to hear from someone how this works in practice. Sarah

John Vandenberg

4:22 a.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

If someone sees an image of themself which they want removed, they can 1. email OTRS. whether the request is received by a volunteer and/or anonymous person shouldn't matter. The OTRS policies do matter, esp. the privacy policy. For added privacy, they should email oversight-en-wp or the commons oversight email address (?). If the complaint includes unresolved legalities, the OTRS ticket (i.e. email thread) will be sent to the legal team, who are not (afaik) anonymous. 2. create a wiki account and nominate the image for deletion. 3. use the laws available to them.

...

Are they expected to give their real name,

It depends on the option they take

...

and how do they prove the image is of them?

If their complaint reaches someone sane, it is unlikely they will be asked to prove anything. A simple assertion should be sufficient to cause the OTRS volunteer to investigate the upload. Often the photo was uploaded by an account with very few edits, and the image would be deleted without much fuss. I would like to throw this back in a positive direction. The task of deleting poor quality photographs (and metadata/provenance/paperwork is part of quality) is made much easier if we have good quality photographs of the same topic. Nobody cares about deletions of bad photographs when those photographs are no longer used. They do care when it is the only photo of its kind, because it is a precious resource. As Sarah Stierch points out, our images of sexuality and reproduction are crap, broadly speaking, and our paperwork/processes are self-evidently not good for attracting high quality photographs. What processes should we put in place to encourage good quality photographs of this kind. e.g. should we set up a separate OTRS queue to process the paperwork for these photographs? Should it be managed by verified non-anonymous women only? -- John Vandenberg

Sarah

5:06 a.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 22:22, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

As Sarah Stierch points out, our images of sexuality and reproduction are crap, broadly speaking, and our paperwork/processes are self-evidently not good for attracting high quality photographs. What processes should we put in place to encourage good quality photographs of this kind. e.g. should we set up a separate OTRS queue to process the paperwork for these photographs? Should it be managed by verified non-anonymous women only?

This last point is an excellent suggestion. Lots of people would be rightly reluctant to email a completely anonymous email address, read by lots of people, about such a sensitive issue. If there were a dedicated address, where the complaint would be read and handled only by other women, that could make a huge difference. Sarah

Fred Bauder

9:14 a.m.

...

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 22:22, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

What shows up in a OTRS request is your username and your email address. However, the nature of most objectionable material usually reveals identity. My thought is that there should be a women's OTRS address which handles any request, including matters which do not relate to images, which women want to address only to women. If that makes it easier to approach us regarding delicate issues it should be available. I suppose there would have to also be women only review. However, I'm not real sure how material is assigned to queues within OTRS, so the possibility exists of a request being viewed by a man on its way to the women's queue. Fred

Sarah

8:16 p.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 03:14, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:

...

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 22:22, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Fred, if it were an entirely separate address it would work, an email address that is only ever read by women volunteers. Sarah

Fred Bauder

8:33 p.m.

...

On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 03:14, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 22:22, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Fred, if it were an entirely separate address it would work, an email address that is only ever read by women volunteers. Sarah

That is the way we need to go with perhaps a panel of specialized OTRS volunteers, for this group, and any other which has a significant problem in communicating with us in the usual way. With respect to women with trust issues, it is inappropriate to expect resolution of those issues prior to offering accessible and effective oversight services. Fred

John Vandenberg

10:09 p.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 6:33 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:

...

.. Hi Fred, if it were an entirely separate address it would work, an email address that is only ever read by women volunteers. Sarah

We've identified the low percentage of women participating as a significant problem. It is our problem. It is not their problem. We have language specific queues on OTRS; we have country/chapter specific queues; we have queues with higher privacy bars for suppression and legal problems. I think we should try a gender queue. Whether or not delicacy is required to handle a specific issue, I believe that directing the issue to a group of trusted women will increase the chance that they walk away happy, and possibly even come back. Where a ticket doesn't benefit from female-female communication, it can be pushed into the usual queues to be handled by the regular pool of OTRS volunteers. However there will be occasions when prompt resolution is less important, and waiting until a female oversighter is available won't hurt the outcome. As this is a key strategic focus of the WMF, it would be good if anonymous customer feedback surveys were used to gauge how satisfied women are with the way tickets were handled by OTRS volunteers in this queue. -- John Vandenberg

Pete Forsyth

4 Sep 4 Sep

12:17 a.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

It seems like we have strong consensus that a separate "customer support queue", run by and for women, would be a good idea. I certainly think so! Who here is active on OTRS? I'm on it, and on the email list, but I'm not active there. It might be best for somebody float the idea over there, see how it's received, and if there's agreement, figure out the steps to get it up and running. (I'm sure that having a small corps of female volunteers willing to staff it will be an essential element!) Who wants to move it forward? -Pete

John Vandenberg

12 Sep 12 Sep

9:45 p.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Sarah Stierch

9:50 p.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

I applied for Commons OTRS today... Sarah Sent via iPhone - I apologize in advance for my shortness or errors! :) On Sep 12, 2011, at 5:45 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not very active, .. :/ I've initiated a discussion thread on the private otrs wiki, copying your email text and linking to this thread. http://otrs-wiki.wikimedia.org/wiki/Café#queue_for_verified_females -- John Vandenberg _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

Pete Forsyth

18 Sep 18 Sep

6:33 p.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

Update, and a request: The discussion thread John started has been very active, with I think about 30 posts from a wide variety of customer service (OTRS) volunteers. Summary: * Many people agree that there is an important concern about readers who find personal/traumatic content about themselves, and have reservations about contacting an unknown email support team. * Philosophical questions have been raised about addressing this with a "women-only" support team * There are also practical concerns about how that could be implemented So, in consultation with several of the people on this list, I've made an alternative proposal, which would not shake the foundations of the OTRS team. Basically, that we should improve our public descriptions of Wikimedia customer service, and encourage people to *ask* for what they want -- whether it's a woman to work with them privately, or any other kind of special request. Along with a brief observation that such a request might delay action a bit due to limited volunteer resources. Please take a look at what I've written up here, and share your thoughts: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth/Customer_service -Pete On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 2:45 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> wrote:

It seems like we have strong consensus that a separate "customer support

queue", run by and for women, would be a good idea. I certainly think so!

Who here is active on OTRS? I'm on it, and on the email list, but I'm not

active there. It might be best for somebody float the idea over there, see how it's received, and if there's agreement, figure out the steps to get it up and running. (I'm sure that having a small corps of female volunteers willing to staff it will be an essential element!) I'm not very active, .. :/ I've initiated a discussion thread on the private otrs wiki, copying your email text and linking to this thread. http://otrs-wiki.wikimedia.org/wiki/Café#queue_for_verified_females -- John Vandenberg _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

Dominic

7:42 p.m.

I think we need to be clearer about who is the audience here. It seems to be directed at the customer, rather than at Wikimedians, but then some of the text is unnecessarily detailed and distracting. We have to assume that most people are not actually reading pages like this for comprehension, but just scanning it for what is relevant to them, or even just scanning through it to get to the contact address they are looking for. I think we want direct, simple sentences in the active voice, and maybe a few boldings or a bulleted to break up the text and draw out specific points. For example, "/The customer service team is a small group of volunteers who have demonstrated the ability to work on difficult and sensitive issues, and to act with appropriate discretion. This team respects requests for privacy, and as a matter of regular practice does not share personal information disclosed in email communications./" could probably boiled down to "All messages will be confidential and handled with respect by our experienced volunteers." I was going to take a stab at this myself, but my other, larger question is about where this is intended to fit in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us is already quite full, and doesn't really have space for prose text like this. Linking to a page like this one in that sea of bulleted items is unlikely to have much of an effect, though. Is this a customer service portal intended to be reached from some more specialized access point? I realize you may not have thought much about that yet, but I think the answer determines how we should write the page. Dominic On 9/18/11 2:33 PM, Pete Forsyth wrote:

...

It seems like we have strong consensus that a separate "customer

support queue", run by and for women, would be a good idea. I certainly think so!

Who here is active on OTRS? I'm on it, and on the email list,

but I'm not active there. It might be best for somebody float the idea over there, see how it's received, and if there's agreement, figure out the steps to get it up and running. (I'm sure that having a small corps of female volunteers willing to staff it will be an essential element!) I'm not very active, .. :/ I've initiated a discussion thread on the private otrs wiki, copying your email text and linking to this thread. http://otrs-wiki.wikimedia.org/wiki/Café#queue_for_verified_females <http://otrs-wiki.wikimedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9#queue_for_verified_females> -- John Vandenberg _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Gendergap@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

Pete Forsyth

3 Sep 3 Sep

5:22 a.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 9:22 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

I would like to throw this back in a positive direction. The task of deleting poor quality photographs (and metadata/provenance/paperwork is part of quality) is made much easier if we have good quality photographs of the same topic. Nobody cares about deletions of bad photographs when those photographs are no longer used. They do care when it is the only photo of its kind, because it is a precious resource.

Sarah Stierch

2:16 p.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

Idea: 1. We design a wiki page like a call for artists for selected topics that we notice need quality images. 2. People who have connections to professional photographers (like me..I'm a consultant and I one of my services is strategic plans for private sector artists and studios, including half of the photographers in the DC area!) can promote it to those individuals. 3. We work with photographers to create quality photographs in which they donate in kind to Wikimedia (is there the opportunity for photographers to get a tax-write off for in-kind donation? Have it given to the Wikimedia Foundation, and then as a volunteer we upload them to Commons) 4. We get a bunch of high quality photos, whether pregnant women, people kissing, a man wearing shorts, or whatever. This could be a "different" form of Wiki Takes. Wiki Takes Representational Equality ;-) I think it'd be easily promotable to those of us who have artist friends. If the project can be developed and form into something successful, I think we can get some positive press out of this too. -Sarah On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 1:22 AM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 9:22 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote:

An excellent point, John. I wonder if there are organizations that (1) are concerned about gender issues on Wikipedia, and (2) have the ability to generate a substantial collection of high quality images to illustrate this sort of thing to the commons. If so, there might be a great partnership/project opportunity there. -Pete _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

Sarah

3:36 a.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 21:00, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:

...

The matter is discussed at Commons:Photographs of identifiable people https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_… Fred

Thanks for the link, Fred. It seems that page deals only with images where the subject is unidentifiable. Even there, it's not clear what a woman is meant to do if she finds an inappropriate image of herself on a Wikimedia project. But if she's not identifiable -- if it's a body part -- it seems there's nothing at all she can do. Sarah

phoebe ayers

6:15 a.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs of women

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 8:00 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:

...

The matter is discussed at Commons:Photographs of identifiable people https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_… Fred

In addition the Board passed a resolution dealing with an aspect of this last spring: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Images_of_identifiable_people But that resolution focuses on images of identifiable living people, since it seemed to us that's where the most immediate potential for harm lay. However, one important aspect of that resolution was the notion of the right to privacy, and the fact that people in private situations in particular (such as non-professional bedroom situations) where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy should have the right to consent to having photos of themselves freely licensed on Commons, and we should obtain consent before using this kind of photo. US law is actually quite permissive on this point, unlike some national laws, but we see it as an ethical issue as well. So that's the board's position on that part of the issue. The point in that resolution that all projects should have similar policies still needs to be addressed. Practically speaking there have been a few deletion debates on Commons where the issue came up and real names were not mentioned; deletion debates for images are much like for articles on Wikipedia. Or you could write OTRS. Verification gets tricky if it isn't identifiable and wasn't uploaded by you, but as John writes often that's just a reasonable-person test, and as Sarah writes often these photos add little value or are poor quality anyway. (I am particularly concerned with bulk uploads from other services that don't have such policies in place, such as Flickr, because provenance and consent becomes very difficult to trace in that case.) Positives: I'm with John -- sexuality and related are important topics, and we should have the best possible illustrations etc. we can get; I would personally love to see us partner with a responsible education project or the like for this kind of content. -- phoebe

Daniel and Elizabeth Case

4:51 p.m.

New subject: Question for the Foundation about photographs ofwomen

...

(I am particularly concerned with bulk uploads from other services that don't have such policies in place, such as Flickr, because provenance and consent becomes very difficult to trace in that case.)

<climb on favorite hobby horse at first> This is, of course, another side effect of our overly dogmatic fair-use policy, where "it's free like speech as well as free like beer" takes precedence over "it's a good-quality, responsibly-taken image" (I bet we didn't have these problems when fair use was permitted more broadly). Yesterday after reading Sarah's comment about [[Pregnancy]] still leading off with an image of a naked woman, I not only added my voice to the talk-page consensus that such an image was not necessary (WhatamIdoing made the very relevant point that it's not necessary to depict mammary swelling since it does not always occur during pregnancy and, at that range, it's small enough that it wouldn't really be well conveyed in a picture anyway), I looked at the Commons category, not just the well-populated "Nude pregnant women" one but the broader "Pregnant women" one. There are certainly better images like the USDA one that seems to be the favored replacement, but I did notice a lot of the Flickr scrapes, and I really wonder if we should be rewarding exhibitionists just for using the CC-BY license (and Phoebe's complaint also fits in the broader issue of Flickr's apparent disdain for enforcing copyright, to the point that we have a whole page at Commons of blacklisted Flickwashers). This has come up before, with a whole bunch of homemade porn on Commons that was uploaded under PD-self so people could use them to vandalize articles. The vandals have long been blocked but the pictures are still there. </climb down> Daniel Case

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participants (8)

Daniel and Elizabeth Case
Dominic
Fred Bauder
John Vandenberg
Pete Forsyth
phoebe ayers
Sarah
Sarah Stierch