Chad Perrin wrote:
Nicholas Knight:
I don't see anything wrong with "an encyclopedia" having such a blanket policy, either. On the other hand, I do have a problem with the idea that my favorite encyclopedia might suddenly become less informative due to strict implementation of a policy enforcing cultural taboos that
I'm the last person to be substantially influenced by cultural taboos. I just don't want to see a picture of a guy sucking himself off.
interfere with the ability to provide useful, factual, relevant
_*How is the image useful*_?
information. As such, I don't think I can in good conscience support such a policy for Wikipedia. One of the problems with "blanket" policies like that is that they tend to cover good things as well as bad.
Can you give me a single example of a case where a PHOTOGRAPH of a sexual act is meaningfully more useful than a line drawing?
If it's pertinent and not gratuitous, I don't tend to have a problem
It IS gratuitious.
with it. In cases where a substantial demographic does, it might be reasonable to move it off-page without removing it entirely, if some simpler visitor-controlled mechanism for "censoring" the visible content is not available.
Don't fool yourself, though -- claiming that something is "indecent"
I never said anything was indecent. I said it was crap.
just because it's graphic is a matter of personal perspective, not of absolutist principles.
Most people do not want to see photographs of explicit sex acts when browsing an encyclopedia. Given the lack of educational value such images have, I see no reason to drive those people, including me, off with such images.