From: Christiaan Briggs christiaan@last-straw.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Censorship Lie To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Message-ID: 0b8dfe7f2fc3ef7aa72e882894ea26b8@last-straw.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
I'm intrigued by the efforts to label this an issue of editorial control. That presumes an extremely narrow definition of the word censorship and seems wholly disingenuous to me.
Still no one has attempted a rational response to my question to Jimbo... What is it about a picture of a man performing autofellatio in an article about autofellatio that makes it "pornographic"?
At the end of the day this is about censoring images for the sake of the prudish and the squeamish, whether it be that of an individual, organisation or on behalf of a sub-culture.
Editorial control is what we do everyday in deciding what stays in our out. Censoring would be to delete all mention of a specific item including systematically deleting any reference or access to the subject matter. Censorship is not continuing to provide easy access to information or images while not forcing it on everyone. Read Farenheit 451 for (albiet extreme) real censorship - or other efforts in the past to systemically burn books to remove them from the library and prevent all access. Limiting access is often called censorship but is not.
As I have recently commented on the image in questions talk page - the intransigence of some to the completely reasonable proposal to exercise some discretion by making it a link just makes me want to the take the battle up a notch and just get rid of the picture from wikipedia - make it an external link (still not censorship - just what I would consider better discretion).
Jim