Erik Moeller wrote:
Linked to they would be fine. We do link to goatse.cx.
Obviously there is a gradation of offensiveness -- a point at which we decide that not offending readers is more important than NPOV. For example, there may be a few felching fans who would feel that it is POV not to show such images in the article. We would overrule these readers on grounds of offensiveness.
However, I think we should be very careful with such taboos, and only apply them when there is almost universal agreement to do so. In other words, when there's *near* unanimous consensus not to have images, then we can do without them. This is not the case for genitalia -- I think pictures of genitalia are only offensive to a relatively small segment of the population, whereas a relatively large segment feels that they *are* offensive to a large segment (simply because they are never shown in the mainstream media), but still maintains that they *themselves* are not offended by them.
I don't see what's wrong with simply linking to them (on the Wikipedia servers, not externally, but not inline in the article). Certainly many people are not offended by genitals, but a great many people would be somewhat shocked to see them up front without first clicking on a link, and many people might be unhappy with having them come up right at the top of the screen if reading Wikipedia from, say, work, school, or a public library. Since forcing users to "click here for an image of a penis" is not really forcing them to do a whole lot of extra work to get the information, I don't think this is an unreasonable compromise. I know I personally would not like an image of a penis to be on my computer screen if I were in a public library.
-Mark