Sascha Noyes wrote:
In your opinion this is a legitimate question. I don't consider it legitimate because I don't consider nudity offensive. (I have previously given the example that if puritans consider exposure to nudity a bad thing for children, they have to in the same vein consider a child looking at their own unclothed body as harmful. That position is patently ridiculous. (And a sad reflection on the influence of religious fundamentalists on societies the world over.)
Ah, but should we add some graphic photographs to [[anus]], [[feces]], and a variety of other subjects people perhaps wouldn't want to see images of? After all, unless you're offended by your own bowel movements, you can't possibly find images of feces offensive, right?
And even if you think that's alright, I'm sure I can find *some* image you'd prefer not to look at. We have to draw the line somewhere unless Wikipedia is just going to become rotten.com and offend absolutely everyone. Where we draw it is a subjective judgment.
In any case, I'm less worried about offending people per se than in simply forcing people to see these images. What's wrong with making them a link? Many people, myself included, do not want to see a picture of [[penis]] inline in the article, and are quite capable of clicking on the link if we did at some point wish to see the picture. This is not because I am offended by penises or pictures thereof, but simply because I consider it a private matter and don't generally wish to be accosted by them for no good reason. And I think adding them inline adds very little vs. "click here", so don't consider it a good reason.
Same goes for other photographs, such as [[feces]], [[car accident]], and etc. We should have all these photographs (up to some very high level--perhaps we shouldn't have goatse.cx photographs), but we shouldn't have them all inline. So those who choose to see them can see them. I don't see how this is censorship, since we are not removing the information, or even making it hard to get.
It seems, on the contrary, that there is a small segment of people here trying to push a POV that nudity (or at least pictures of nudity) ought to be acceptable in public, and are resisting any efforts to compromise in a manner that would prevent their own personal moral agenda from being advanced.
-Mark