Election Notice
Given the response of many respected users, we have decided to adopt a new
election system.
Each voter will be allowed to vote for as many of the candidates as they see
fit for each position. The candidate with the most votes for each position,
will be declared the winner.
In the event of a tie, a run off election will be announced.
We encourage everyone to vote only for the candidates you think would be best
suited to serve on the board.
Thank you,
Danny
Imran
a) When the WP include videos, we might as well include the beheading.
b) By adopting the "all articles must be treated the same way" we are
assuming content is less important than NPOV. This might be true for
things but if this is true for persons, I think the project is biased
towards "people have no rights and this project has rights over all
people".
c) In any case, I see there is a POV here: people have no values worth
more than a presumed right of the WP to "inform" (whatever that presumed
right might mean).
I know I have a POV. And all of you realize this is not
censorship/offensivenes. It is called dignity. I have to say I feel shame
while reading many of these posts. And you will tell me you feel
shame/pity/nothing/something/whatever at reading this
pathetic/emotive/void/interesting/uninteresting post. You know what? It is
your problem.
But, Jimbo, do not let Erik's politeness about NPOV mislead you. It is not
taste, it is not education, it is a human undeniable right. Which if
denied (and it has been here and in the talk page at N.Berg's article)
allows us to overcome Wikikette, wikilove and any other concept.
I have to say that in order to keep my peace of mind I am not reading this
mailing list any more for a while (at the very least some days). If
someone wants to contact me, I am Pfortuny and my address is accessible.
Hope we agree in some little minimalistic but certain human rights before
the project collapses,
Pedro.
--
Pedro Fortuny Ayuso: http://pfortuny.sdf-eu.org
Colegio Mayor Peñafiel, Universidad de Valladolid
C/ Estudios 6, 47005 Valladolid, Spain --> www.cmpenafiel.org
pfortuny(a)sdf-eu.org Tfn. Nr. 34 983 298277
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>An option to hide all images is still useful, but that has nothing to do
>with offensiveness. It would be welcome by people with slow internet
>connections as we keep getting away from plain vanilla text articles.
Perhaps there is a software solution. We could add a field to the
"image" table called "img_rating," which could be used to indicate
potentially offensive characteristics of the image from a fixed list
of possibilities, e.g., "sex," "violence," "profanity,"
"scatological." The same fixed list could be added to user options,
so that people could choose themselves which types of images they
prefer not to see.
--Sheldon Rampton
I'd like to draw attention to the behaviour of [[User:Toby Bartels]], in
using [[Talk:Lubos Motl]] to pursue an agenda I have no sympathy with.
Lubos Motl as [[User:Lumidek]] has been posting highly competent string
theory articles; he is a high-flying academic in the field. Toby obviously
has some beefs to do with off-WP matters that I really think are quite
irrelevant. I have been pursuing private email with Lubos and Toby, in an
attempt to make Lubos the Wikipedian feel less unwelcome, in the context
that Toby the long-established Wikipedian has written some fairly nasty
stuff about him (in ignorance, it is true, but it is hardly excusable
behaviour anyway).
Now Toby seems to want to pursue this, by reverts on [[Talk:Lubos Motl]], a
back-handed apology on [[User talk:Lumidek]], and [[User talk:Charles
Matthews]].
Ironic is not really strong enough for how I felt at spending
WP-gets-Community-Webby-Day emailing, trying to put a bandage on this
damaging stuff. I'd be very grateful if someone could talk some sense into
Toby Bartels. I'm actually incandescent, that he can so clearly put
personal gripes ahead of the needs of the project.
Charles
http://www.speakingasaparent.com/
Image is offensive to me, should be shown inline : 3
Image is not offensive to me, should be shown inline :
4
(with one person who probably did not understand the
question well)
That makes : 7/44 (perhaps 6/44)
-------
Image is offensive to me, should be linked to or
removed : 14
Image is not offensive to me, should be linked to or
removed : 16
Haven't looked at image, should be linked to or
removed : 7
That makes : 37/44 (perhaps 38/44), hence 84 %
-------
It is interesting to note that 7 people voluntarily
did NOT want to look
at it. We can suppose that these people would *really*
prefer to have the choice to click on the picture,
than being forced to see it.
I would like to note as well, that afaik, currently,
when an image is listed on votes for deletion, I think
the % required for removal is 80% (or something like
this ?)
If some people find a picture offensive, and want it
not to be displayed online, they will have two
possibilities
* campaigning for plain deletion (80%)
* campaigning for inline linking (???)
Obviously, ??? can not be a % over 80%. If a number of
95% is required to label a picture "offensive", that
means
*first that people will rather try to have it plain
deleted (not exactly the best way to achieve a
consensus, and truely potential censorship) *second
that the decision will be taken in truth by 6% of
people (the tyranny of the minority)
This seems a very strange way to manage decisions than
to have 6% of people impose their opinion, and second
to favor extrem solutions over a more consensual one.
I would think that as soon as there is a question over
a picture, we roughly decide that more than 80% for
removal lead the picture to be removed.
If less than 80% but more than 50% have a problem with
the picture being displayed online, then the image is
* kept in the db
* not directly visible in the article
* visible through a link, either in a gallery or the
image page itself
* that a warning message is displayed in the article
(general mediawiki message for example)
* that the link to the image is made "proeminent", so
as not to be missed by those interested (bold for
example)
--------
Future :
Additionnaly, I think we could go forward setting a
couple of categories of potentially offensive
pictures, such as
* sex
* violence
* nudity
* ...
When the category system is on, a picture labelled
offensive (so, between 50% and 80% of opinion) could
belong to one of these categories. People might choose
to display one or several of these categories or not
in their prefs.
If the filter is OFF for a category : the image is
displayed online
If the filter is ON for a category : the image is
available through a link
__________________________________
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There is no issue of censorship involved in having the good sense and
good taste to not automatically display graphic photos that are likely
to be offensive or upsetting to large numbers of people.
There will always be difficult questions of where to draw the line, I
suppose, but we solve that issue in other cases by "going meta",
i.e. avoiding the controversy.
With most issues, the wiki process works perfectly fine. It is almost
never "either/or" with the text of an article -- creative people can
almost always find a way to compromise on a text that is different
from either of two extreme positions.
With photos, the "show" versus "don't show" really is an "either/or",
though. The only possible compromise, and one which I think will
almost always work just fine, is to *link* to the picture, with
suitable warnings, and leave it at that.
That is the proposal that Anthere has proposed in this case, and that
is what I support.
I do think that there are cases of photos that we ought to not even
have on our site at all. Were it not for the extreme newsworthiness
of this particular photo, and it's likely longterm political
importance, I would argue for deleting it. This is not rotten.com.
I think that there is great validity to the concern for the family and
for human dignity in general, with respect to photos of this nature.
--Jimbo
I've created a mock-up of an image hiding feature which should solve the
problem of pictures which are offensive to some, but not to others:
http://scireview.de/wikipedia/ihide/
It's the Nick Berg page (for the purposes of this demo, the normal image
rather than the gory one is shown here).
There could be a special tag like
<imagecontent>
This page includes an explicit photograph of a clitoris.
</imagecontent>
The software would automatically add the "hide images" link. Obviously the
threshold for adding such a warning would be much lower than the threshold
for not showing an image for reasons of offensiveness, e.g. 50%-60%
instead of 95-100%.
I've deliberately avoided words like "warning" for reasons of NPOV. Now,
before you suggest that we switch to a full-fledged rating system, this
proposal can be implemented fairly quickly, while a rating system cannot.
Regards,
Erik
I forward this opinion that I got in the mail, not from anyone I know,
just a reader, in hopes that this perspective will be carefully taken
into account in our deliberations on these matters.
----- Forwarded message from . <.@.net> -----
From: <omitted for privacy>
Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 03:41:48 -0700
To: jwales(a)bomis.com
Subject: Nicholas Berg
Please for the family of the Berg's remove the links that show the
beheading,I know it generates great traffic. This is someone's son and
brother. Imagine the pain and grief they are going through,is that not
enough. Report on the greatness this 26 yr old sent out to do in this
world. Your site is wonderful but, think of it as if this were your own
family and this was all over the web. I am not even a family member but,
cannot endure the fathom their pain at this time. Please re-think the links
to the actual beheading.
Thanks
<name omitted for privacy>
Who is
(a) located in or near New York City
(b) willing to speak publicly
(c) close to the project
(d) willing to attend on our behalf the ceremony there.
I don't think there's any major requirement for a big speech, just a
"thank you" type of thing at the ceremony, I think.
If there are multiple volunteers, I will pick someone. But by
volunteering, you *promise* not to have your feelings hurt if I pick
someone else, o.k.? I have to pick someone.
--Jimbo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_(prison)
Sorry, this may sound just as censorship, but frankly, I am shocked at
these pictures.
And I do not think they belong to Wikipedia.
At least, not now. That is too soon.
Just my opinion.