Stated live on air:
"Ratzinger has repeatedly stated he would like to retire to a Bavarian
village and dedicate himself to writing books, but more recently, he told friends
he was ready to 'accept any charge God placed on him.'"
Good job, everyone!
This will always be an issue for Wikipedia because there will always be
places where cultural differences make it difficult for people to find
consensus.
This shows up most prominently with photos, I think, because with text
we have a great deal more flexibility in terms of working together to
write the text in a way that is satisfactory to a wide audience.
The question has arisen here: what positive arguments can be given for
the inclusion of nudity in Wikipedia articles? I think this is an
important question and it deserves a proper answer. Or, I should say
"it deserves proper answers" because they answers are many and vary
according to the particular case.
Consider as an example articles about human sexuality, including
articles about sexually transmitted diseases. Such articles more or
less require illustration for completeness. This does not mean that the
illustrations should be done in "porn movie" style -- the problem of
tastefully and accurately representing medical/sexual information is an
old one which is solved by textbooks on the subject. I think that the
current (well, last time I checked) illustration on [[:en:Clitoris]] is
a fine example -- it is accurate, clear, tasteful and "looks like" a
textbook illustration rather than a bad porn movie.
Consider, too, articles about great works of art from the past, works
which include nudity. I surely don't need to explain this.
As a practical matter, though, these kinds of arguments only need to be
made in order to assure us all that such arguments can be made and have
been made. In reality, I think that most of us are somewhere in the
broad middle ground -- I don't think there are more than a tiny tiny
handful of people who would say that (a) there should be a strict ban on
nudity in Wikipedia, or (b) we should place the infamous auto-fellatio
image on the homepage this coming Christmas day.
Within the broad middle ground, there is a very wide range of what seem
to me to be quite respectable and plausible positions, and a fair amount
of thoughtfulness and respect for other people who disagree with us is
going to be necessary if we are to make decisions with wide community
support.
There are a number of very useful techniques that I think can help to
reduce conflict in this area. (Though of course for those who are at
the extremes that I mentioned, these don't solve the problem. But
honesty, I think most of the people who are posturing at these extremes
are actually trolling us in the classical sense, disrupting wikipedia to
make a point.)
First, whenever possible I think people should try to see if a "link"
solution is helpful. It does not reduce the educational value of an
article by much if a potentially disturbing image is put behind a link
instead of being shown by default inline. And one of the quite
reasonable arguments against certain images is that their shock value
serves to diminish the educational value of the articles in which they
are included.
Second, partisans on both sides might want to consider working to find
more tasteful images to illustrate the same concept. If, for example,
you find a particular photo disturbing, be creative about finding a
different illustration (medical-style drawing, different photo in a
different style, etc.) which will meet the educational objectives of
those on the other side while removing the shock-value problems.
Third, in all discussions of this sort, I think it best to avoid
nationalist or culturalist sneers and arguments. This list has already
seen arguments about allegedly prudish American culture -- arguments
which (a) have a ring of truth about them and (b) are nonetheless at the
same time very mistaken. US culture is extremely complex and
multi-layered with many historical quirks and oddities but in my
opinion, the US as a whole is significantly less prudish than most
Europeans seem to think.
So, yes, in the US large fines were levied for the bizarre Janet Jackson
incident. But also, you can flip the channels any night of the week and
see people having sex on television. My local grocery store puts
discreet covers on magazines which have racy titles, and huge porn
stores are open for business just down the street. In my town, a woman
can get arrested for going topless on the beach, and yet you can go any
night of the week to a nightclub where you can see people having sex
openly. Diversity. :-)
The point I'm trying to make is that _for Wikipedia_ wide-ranging
discussions about the alleged prudishness or decadence of Americans are
not really going to help us get very far in figuring out how to handle
issues of taste.
"Assume good faith" is key, but also "Don't feed the trolls" is key.
Knowing when to do one versus the other is tricky and I can offer no
advice other than to be careful and thoughtful and kind.
--Jimbo
--Jimbo
The whole Kate Winslet thread seems amazingly overwrought, because it's
such a _bad_ example of a potential problem. It's a bad example because
it combines the _maximum_ of gratuitiousness (it's not at all necessary
to select this particular scene to illustrate the movie) with the
_minimum_ of indecency. The indecency, if there is any at all, exists
only because we know, are told, or understand the context to be erotic,
not because of the actual pictorial content.
On the other hand, Wikipedia contains a nice, large, high-resolution
image which Mark Twain called
the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world
possesses--Titian's Venus. It isn't that she is naked
and stretched out on a bed--no, it is the attitude of
one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe the
attitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the
Venus lies, for anybody to gloat over that wants to--and
there she has a right to lie, for she is a work of art,
and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls stealing
furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and
absorbedly at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her
charms with a pathetic interest. How I should like to
describe her--just to see what a holy indignation I
could stir up in the world--just to hear the
unreflecting average man deliver himself about my
grossness and coarseness, and all that.
It is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Venus_of_Urbino.jpg and, of
course, linked in the Titian article. But I advise those who would fain
keep their fancy pure not to look at it, but to content themselves with
Mark Twain's description.
Nobody seems to be complaining about it.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
Over the last few months we've had several instances where certain explicit images have been the bone of contention. The discussion starts on IfD and then rapidly fills IRC, Wiki-EN and other media. As far as I can gather there are only two real schools of thought. One is that it is a viewer's responsibility to block images, the other is that Wikipedia should employ various ways to protect its viewers from what some would could consider offensive/immoral etc.
First the numbers thing. Of all the people worldwide, the vast majority would take offense at the Kate Winslet thing. This includes about a billion of Christians, hundreds of millions of Muslims and large numbers of other people who otherwise feel that it would be inappropriate. To force a liberal image policy on them effectively excludes these people from being informed by Wikipedia.
Then the browser thing. Most people do not turn off images (that is a fact), and those who know how to do it would only do it if they expected inappropriate images. I suspect most casual surfers would not expect Wikipedia to contain explicit images.
Avoiding these images, or having a Preferences key to prevent their display, is NOT censorship. It is part of achieving the goal of Wikipedia, as I have argued above. It is also not a violation of NPOV, as an image is not a POV. It is being plain sensible, sensitive and broad-minded.
en:User:Jfdwolff
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[[Japanese nationalism]] is very much in the news; anyone looking there now
will see a fairly comprehensive article, which is constantly being added to,
and would give a fair idea of why there is still an issue in East Asia.
A dozen days ago there was not much there (nothing pre-1945). A great deal
has been added by an anon, who has introduced himself ([[User
talk:Asbestos]]), and clearly has a wide background in this area. His
English is bad (he appears to be a Spanish-spaeker from Uruguay) and always
needs work.
My point is that I have had a devil of a job with this material, in the face
of some very blinkered attitudes from others:
*"It's machine translation".
No it isn't - too many typos for that.
*"It's incomprehensible".
No it isn't.
*"It's vandalism".
No it isn't. (That was from someone who has had an account for four days,
and who has already been given a barnstar. Please!)
*Reverts with no explanation.
This is bad behaviour, and likely to offend a good contributor.
I find this all reflects very badly on the culture of the English Wikipedia.
Few seem to have the time to puzzle out badly-expressed contributions. To
extend the coverage to parts others find hard to reach we are going to ned,
not Heineken beer, but help from the widest possible range of editors.
Charles
Tony said:
>>> You asked them? Anybody can play this bloody silly game. Cut it out.
>>
>>
>> He did provide evidence to support his assertion.
>No, he only gave evidence of his having made some extremely
>sweeping assumptions.
This proves my suspicion that Tony perpetuates this debate. Although I wrote nothing inflammatory, Tony responds with a haemorrhagic expletive.
I'm not a sociologist, and my "sweeping assumptions" are based on logic and not on statistics. Tony's kneejerk reaction can only be an indication that my "sweeping assumptions" are making him uncomfortable.
JFW
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Please see the discussion on [[Image:KateWinsletTitanic.jpg]] at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion#Apr
il_11.
Here's my reply to the whole deal:
Delete -- For the same reason as Nunh-huh and DreamGuy. This adds
nothing to the article except controversy. So the only reason to keep it
in the article is to reduce WikiLove, and to increase Wikistress. I hate
all these stupid debates about nudity. We exists to be an encyclopedia
not a bastion of freedom of speech. We are here to provide information
NOT to make political statements about censorship. Having nude and/or
sexually explicit pictures in our encyclopedia upsets enough people that
it detracts significantly from the task of making an encylopedia and
that is reason enough to delete this picture (and others like it). There
is a definite agenda by the nude-picture-pushers here and it has nothing
to do with creating an NPOV encyclopedia. Kevin Rector (talk) 22:04, Apr
12, 2005 (UTC)
Now to you the mailing list:
I've tried to stay out of the fray with all the nude/porn picture
debates that have gone on, but I've come to the realization that people
are searching out nude pictures to put in the 'pedia. They are looking
to stir up trouble, mostly to make a point.
The fact that the Wikipedia "community" won't resolve these problems,
and the fact that the community so proudly proclaims that "Wikipedia is
not censored" while ignoring the fact that "Wikipedia is quite
dysfunctional" has made me realize that I need to re-evaluate if this is
a project that I want to be a part of.
Plus the politics and partisanship are really annoying.
I'm going on WikiVacation - I may or may not return.
-Kevin Rector
Right if any one wants to see her more then just a Photo then lit them PAY the sites for it> No link just a photo of her.
David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:Kevin Rector (krector(a)Compco.com) [050419 02:40]:
> I would think that we should be hesitant to link to any web sites (porn
> or otherwise) whose primary commodity is selling access or "memberships"
> to the website, and more liberal with links to other types of
> industries.
Possibly. But (1) it's an editorial judgement call and (2) the page is
clearly tagged [[Category:Porn stars]].
- d.
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Prine <cprine(a)tribweb.com>
Date: Apr 18, 2005 8:58 PM
Subject: Block
To: wikien-l-owner(a)wikipedia.org
Hello. I have been trying to resolve a highly contentious issue for
some time. I have sought to complain about it, but after doing so I
was "blocked" by the person I believe is the chief offender, Gamaliel.
Here is the background:
I would like to ask for assistance.
There has been an ongoing, bitter, dispute between me and two
"administrators" who have sought to selectively edit an entry on the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Tribune-Review).
Earlier versions of the encyclopedia entry included patently
offensive, erroneous and frankly libelous contentions, including the
malicious lie that the newspaper had called the wife of a prominent
presidential candidate a "lesbian."
This aside was created by a user called Gamaliel, and supported, for a
time, by another user called Willcmw.
A review of their collaboration can be found at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gamaliel/Archive_3.
A mediator did arrive, long after I requested one, and long after I
had worn down the others, dissuading them from printing erroneous,
unlawful and unreferenced material.
While the material disappeared, thankfully, from the main entry, it
continued to appear in the Discussion section, and the incorrect info
continued to be retrieved by Internet search engines.
While I agree that it is generally important to maintain disputed
material in archive form, this likely shouldn't apply to words that
are malicious, offensive or libelous.
I would most appreciate someone taking care of this.
At 1644 EST (USA), I removed all of the disputed material at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pittsburgh_Tribune-Review, only to see
Gamaliel continue to replace it.
I feel this is vandalism.
--- Arno M <redgum46(a)lycos.com> wrote:
> Further to my last e-mail, I see that a compromise
> has been made and the offending image
> 'cut' so that we only see her face and shoulders.
>
> This is certainly better.
No, it's not.
RickK
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