From: David Friedland <david(a)nohat.net>
>How would you feel if the linked images had a disclaimer saying
>something to this effect:
>The following images have been placed on a separate page because they
>MAY be consiered disturbing and/or offensive. It is Wikipedia policy not
>to take a position on whether the following images are in fact
>disturbing or offensive or not (See [[Wikipedia:Neutral Point of
>View]]). However, to avoid disturbing or offending those users to whom
>the images are disturbing or offensive, they have been placed on a
>separate page.
It would be nice to find a much shorter way of expressing this, but I think
this is a very accurate and nicely put expression of what I, personally, feel
needs to be expressed. And I think it's a good policy, while recognizing that
no disclaimer can change the fact that placing the link does amount to
catering to somebody's point of view.
I've been brooding about this issue of "making it a link caters to a point of
view." I've asked myself how I would feel if I went to an article about
someone I admire--say, Margaret Sanger--and found that the text had been
completely replaced with a link and a disclaimer, saying "It is Wikipedia
policy not to take an position on whether the life and opinions of Margaret
Sanger are, in fact, offensive. However, to avoid disturbing or offending
those users to whom this material is offensive, we have placed it on a
separate page." My conclusion is that I _would_ find this irritating but I
would find it tolerable. (Just barely).
Linking to photographs which ought to be seen _does_ affect the _balance_ of
point of view on the page, but does not amount to _censorship_ or
_suppression_ of any point of view.
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
This all reminds me of Aria Giovanni and THAT link.
My own position: it seems OK to me to have 'soft'
photos such as the terrorists standing behind Mr Berg,
but no 'hard' ones showing him beheading Berg. That
is simply too graphic and is even playing into the
terrorists hands (you're circulating the horror that
they want to have circulated).
As for any photo that can be reasonably be regarded
as offensive or pornographic, a link if really
necessary, otherwise not at all.
Remember that juveniles and persons from conservative
environments (eg Islamic countries with strict codes about nudity) are likely to consult this wikipedia.
It should be kept suitable for such persons through
some use of common sense.
"Erik Moeller wrote:
> Exactly. If you take a look at Talk:Clitoris/Image discussion, you will
> see that all options were offered, and the option of *showing the photo
> inline* (instead of just a link) got the most votes of all.
This shows me that you are right that majority vote is not the right
way to determine the correct result. Majority vote is very frequently
not helpful in finding or determining NPOV.
(Some advanced voting algorithms probably do a much better job of
helping to find or determine a consensus, of course.)
> So your belief that people will readily accept hiding "offensive"
> images behind links is clearly wrong; many people (including myself)
> perceive this as an endorsement of a pro-censorship POV and are
> therefore against it. Even if these people were in the minority,
> there would hardly be any consensus on the matter.
I doubt very much that in most cases, the people who would like to
show the photo inline are so unreasonable as to absolutely insist that
only their own viewpoint is the correct one, and that no compromise is
possible.
> So it appears that you believe that there will be consensus in cases
> where there clearly won't; that's fine, as long as we agree that
> consensus is a requirement for hiding an image behind a link.
Well, of course I can agree to that, since consensus is the
requirement for everything that we do. "Showing the image" can hold
no privileged position, "hiding the image behind a link" can hold no
privileged position, "delete the image" can hold no privileged
position.
I think I see where we disagree now. Your position is that we should
show the image in all cases unless 95% of the people think it should
not be shown, and that this should be a policy which overrides
consensus and compromise. That's a perfectly acceptable position to
hold, but will you agree that it would amount to abandoning NPOV for
pictures and substituting instead a policy that most matches your own
(and my own, I should add!) views about what should be shown?
With text, I feel that any form of voting is almost always inferior to
creatively solving the problem with repeated revision of the text.
If there are cases where voting is absolutely necessary, and if I'm
forced to say exactly what it means to have NPOV consensus, the answer
surely can't be "NPOV is my own preferred position unless 95% of the
people disagree with me."
Instead, the exact meaning of consensus in a voting situation has to
be something like Condorcet, Approval voting, Instant Runoff or the
like.
I think if we re-ran the vote on clitoris, with the same voters
participating, but did it as a Condorcet, then "linking to the image"
would be the clear winner by a longshot. Do you disagree? Or, if you
do disagree, then let me suppose that I'm wrong, and ask another
question: do you agree with me that going with the Condorcet winner
would be the best available option?
--Jimbo"
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The proceedings are still technically open I believe, but there's
majority votes on enough issues---particularly the issue of
banning---for something to be implemented. The findings of fact were a
bit more controversial, so basically everyone agrees Paul Vogel needs to
be banned, but we don't completely agree on why. But given that we
agree on the action part, sitting on our hands arguing about the
legalistic justifications doesn't seem all that useful.
The gory details are all on [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Paul
Vogel]] (where they've been for a while, actually), including links to
examples and evidence and whatnot. The summary version follows.
All votes reported as (Yes-No-Abstain). There are 10 arbitrators, so 6
'yes' votes are needed to pass any issue.
Findings of fact
---
Passed (7-0-0): Paul Vogel has engaged in a few instances of vandalism.
Examples include: [...]. ... The arbitration committee notes that many
accusations of "vandalism" levelled against Paul Vogel would more
accurately be described as "NPOV violations".
Passed (6-0-0): [Read the page for the text... Summary is that the
committee found Paul Vogel's counter-accusations to be unpersuasive, and
generally found rather the opposite was true for most of them.]
Almost but not yet passed (5-0-1): Paul Vogel has engaged in a number of
personal attacks in violation of the widely accepted no personal attacks
policy. ... The arbitration committee notes a handful of personal
attacks made against Paul Vogel. ... However, the committee was unable
to uncover any evidence (and none was provided) supporting the
accusations of slander or repeated attacks alleged by Paul. ...
Nothing decided (2-2-1): [Read the page for the text... Summary is that
there's disagreement over whether he was blocked inappropriately by
individual sysops and therefore whether he should be held liable for
circumventing some of those bans.]
Remedies (both passed 7-0-0)
---
1. Paul Vogel's editing priviledges on Wikipedia are revoked for a
period of one year.
2. Wikipedia contributors are encouraged to edit Wikipedia's talk pages
to deal with personal attacks, excessive repetition, misleading
indentation or signatures, unnecessarily offensive comments, etc,
contributed by Paul Vogel. They should delete them, edit them,
quarantine them on an appropriate user talk: page, or otherwise deal
with them as they judge appropriate.
Comments by me (not the committee)
---
A year is a rather long time for a ban, but I don't think anybody really
sees how Mr. Vogel can become a productive contributor in the forseeable
future, so there was no need to waste everyone's time with a succession
of shorter bans that would be the inevitable result. If he surprises us
and does indeed have an interest in working more amicably with us, he
can request reinstatement, and either Jimbo or the committee can
reconsider the matter in light of any new evidence.
As far as enforcement goes: In light of the decision, I've blocked
24.45.99.191, his most common IP address. Even though he's used it
consistently for some weeks, it has 'dyn' in the hostname, so I only
blocked it for a month, lest it turn out to be dynamic. Reblocking it
for an additional month after that expires is a trivial matter if he
returns anyway. He's used a number of other addresses, most of them
dynamic IPs, and relatively infrequently (and not in the past few days),
so I have not blocked those. Since he is now officially banned, any
sysop may feel free to ban any reincarnations that pop up, although I'd
recommend 24-to-48-hour bans unless you're sure it's a static IP of his.
-Mark
Part of this discussion has me a little mystified, perhaps because I
don't watch the right articles. Who is doing all this trolling?
As I understand it, a Usenet-type troll is someone who tries to stir
up controversy for its own sake. As applied to article editing, that
would be a "bad-faith edit" aka vandalism, where the troll knows that
the edit is not making the encyclopedia better but goes ahead and
makes it anyway.
Maybe there's a lot of this and I'm not seeing it, but what I do see
is a lot of good-faith edits characterized as trolling. The edits may
be poor or mistaken, and the person may be very stubborn in their
defense of a bad edit, but if they sincerely believe that the edit
is making the encyclopedia better, then it's inaccurate to call them
trolls. For instance, a rightie who hates WP's leftie-ness can
generate a huge ruckus by trying to "balance" what he/she perceives
as slanted articles, but every one of those edits is in good faith,
and the editor will think of him/herself as just as good and
dedicated an editor as anybody else here.
The cynical part of me suspects that accusation of trolling has
become a sneaky way to conduct content disputes - instead of
addressing the goodness or badness of an edit, call the person a
troll (especially if they become combative on talk pages), and try
to get others to assume that all the person's edits should be reverted
automatically. It should be pretty hard to prove bad faith without a
direct statement of intent from the purported troll, perhaps if
someone only argues on talk pages but never edits articles.
Stan
I tried sending this message before and it bounced back. I don't think it
went through and I am resending -- if it did get through, sorry for the repeat.
admit that I haven't been following this discussion in its entirety (in
part because we've been through this before), and I apologize if I am
making a point others have already made.
In some of the examples people have given, I think it is a mistake to
construe it as a POV/NPOV issue in strict terms. As Erik points out, we
end up playing a simple numbers game, concerning how many people including
or excluding a photo offends. Surely there are more substantive criteria
we can use here, ones that move us away from asking whether the photo is
offensive (begging the question, for we must then ask, "according to
whom?"). I'd like to propose two, related criteria.
First, is the photo necessary in order to convey important information. In
the case of a vagina, for example, a drawing can convey just as much if not
more information. On these grounds alone, why not go for the drawing (I
think this specific matter came up some time ago)?
Second, is the image of a prurient nature? I do not mean that if might
offend some (our NPOV policy ensures that we will always offend some), but
rather that some people cruising the web might fixate on the image for
purposes external to those of an encyclopedia. I am sure we can come close
to a consensus as to whether this is likely or not.
I believe that even if an image is prurient in nature, if it is necessary
to convey important information we should keep it. If it is not necessary
to convey important information, we should find an alternative. In short,
I am appealing not to "NPOV" but to "wikipedia is an encyclopedia."
I understand that we might still argue over whether something is prurient
or not, or whether something is essential for communicating important
information. I just think it will be easier to reach a consensus on these
questions than on the question of whether or not it is offensive.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
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Rich is exactly right in his response to Erik and explains the situation
very clearly, IMHO. So let's accept that collectively we *will* be making a
choice among POV's, and let's follow Jimbo's excellent advice about how to
do so and how to apply the decision that we make.
Thanks,
Brian (Bcorr)
--- Rich Holton <rich_holton(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>This is not a choice between POV and NPOV. It is a
>choice between different POV's. You want all images
>left on the article page unless the group that wants a
>particular image left there is so small as to be
>almost noise level. I would have all images left on
>the article page unless the group that wants a
>particular image left there falls below 70%.
>
>Either way the image is placed -- on the article page
>or masked -- is still POV. In your case it reflects
>the POV of as little as 10% of those who vote. Would
>we really want the image of the militants holding Nick
>Berg's severed head to be plainly on the article if
>only 10% want it to be there?
> I can't believe this article has the picture of his severed head
> -- this is rather horrific. I'm respecting the article
> protection, but I think this is way over the line.
The protected version doesn't have the picture, you were looking at an oldid.
But there's been a revert war over having the picture inline or linking to it.
Fabi (solidly in the "link to it, don't show it" camp).
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