Ray Saintonge wrote:
Text can also be edited to change nuances. Where in a longer text some would call a national leader a "dictator" it is easy to change that term to "president". We can't make that sort of change in a photograph.
In hopes of reaching towards common ground here, I think that all sides to this discussion can agree that this is really the essence of the problem with images, as opposed to text. With text, we generally have a wide range of options. It's almost never really "either/or".
Take for example the [[Mother Theresa]] article. That's one which was hard fought for a long time, but which has since stabilized in a form acceptable to all sides, as evidenced by the fact that it has seen only minor changes for a couple of months.
With photos, our range of creative options to resolve conflict is more limited. In some cases, we can change the photograph itself. This will be true mostly for photos of generic concepts, and a lot less true for newsworthy photos, and virtually impossible for photos that are themselves of historical importance.
And so, this is what poses the problem. As our range of options is limited, it is harder to find one which is acceptable to almost everyone.
I do think, though, that in most cases, the option that is going to be most widely acceptable to all sides is to show the potentially offensive image, but behind a link with appropriate warnings.
I am trying hard to understand why Erik thinks it is neutral to have a policy that we always force people to show potentially offensive images within the article, except in the extraordinary case where 95% are opposed. I do not understand how he thinks that showing an image is neutral to both sides of the dispute, when for example 70% are opposed to it.
--Jimbo