On 29 Nov 2004, at 23:10, Robin Shannon wrote:
Moreover, Wikipedia.org, a product of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. promotes disinformation, pornography and disgraceful displays of pornographic images under cover from arcane "company policies". Perhaps the long experience of its founder, Mr Jimbo Wales, a former CEO of Bomis and a leader of pornographic industry, explains such disgraceful, offensive company policies.
pardon? wikiporn? I must be working in the wrong parts of the 'pedia. Or maybe its all so strange and kinky that i dont realise its a giant database of porn that im editing. Poor me, under the illusion that it was an encyclopedia.
paz y amor, [[User:The bellman]] rjs
The Bellman --
Dangerously, dangerously, there's actually a ''residual'' level of half-truth in what he's writing there -- it's not actually true, but it's not entirely made up either: there are some facts which, if sufficiently stretched and distorted, can be presented by people as disgruntled as irismeister in the above way. Don't get me wrong: I don't agree with irismeister's words. I do however think we should be aware of the full facts, because ignorance of them would make us MORE vulnerable:
* It is true that our relatively liberal standards concerning reporting on controversial sex-related issues could be regarded as "promoting pornography" by some people. : For example: ** The [[Gag (BSDM)]] article, complete with pictures as of this writing, was recently listed on "Do you know..." and as such was recently featured on the title page: :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gag_%28BDSM%29 :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Recent_additions ** The [[List of sex positions]] could also be seen as "pornographic" by sufficiently stuffy folks. :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sex_positions (NB: Love the in-jokes on the initial big versions of the pictures. Eg. Harry Potter... or Asimov... WHAAHAHAHA! :D ) : The definition of "porn" is rather muddied -- eye of the (perving) beholder, I dare say. If you're getting excited "like that" over it, then it's probably porn to you. Problem is, as fetishists will tell you, all kinds of everyday objects may be porn to some people. Not that I think we should censor ourselves one bit because of such things.
* It is also true that [[Bomis]], which among other things "sells erotic images over the Internet", hosted/supported (and still hosts and supports?) Wikipedia, and that Jimbo "is the majority owner of Bomis" (quoted from [[en:Bomis]]). I've never actually bothered finding out the full story, so I can't tell you lots here. If more clarification is desired, Jimbo himself may be the man to ask. (Yea, I ''could'' probably take out a Bomis subscription and check if ''I'' regard Bomis' content as "porn", but, ohm, err... whatever.)
I wouldn't see the merit in replying to irismeister, but again, it's probably better to be aware, in case such allegations were to hit us from other parties -- which they probably will, sooner or later. In the meantime, maybe I, too, will get back to actual encyclopedia-writing... ;-)
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com