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]
On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 9:09 PM, Delphine Ménard
<notafishz(a)gmail.com
<mailto:notafishz@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 4:57 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)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-…
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-Wiki…
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
_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap