Delirium-
I think the primary difference is that photos can be
shocking, while
text generally isn't.
That very much depends on your definition of shocking. Blasphemy laws are
still on the books even in liberal European countries, including Germany.
I have a copy here of an anti-clerical book called the "Pfaffenspiegel" by
Otto von Corvin. My edition was published in 1996. It is in fact a
censored edition according to Article 166 of the German criminal code,
based on a verdict from 1927 which apparently remains in effect. I have
through a friend acquired an uncensored (19th century) copy of the same
book and the censored passages in question are fairly harmless in
comparison with the rest of the book.
The point is that offense is in the eye of the beholder. Of course an
openly held anti-blasphemy point of view would be quickly ridiculed and
rejected. However, the hypothetical question of whether to split away the
criticisms of Mother Teresa is not so hypothetical at all; there was even
an edit war and a poll about it. Some made arguments, others just split
away the criticisms without discussion or removed it entirely (and edit
warred about it).
If a simple majority (for example) would be sufficient to get "offensive"
material moved away, it would be fairly easy for a group of people -- even
within Wikipedia -- to organize and win a vote on the matter (well, at
least when I'm not watching). Supported by policy, these people would
argue that even if the text is not offensive to non-believers, those non-
believers will have to admit that it is clearly offensive to any devout
Catholic or admirer of Mother Teresa, and surely linking to it is no big
loss. Given that this almost happened even *without* an offensive content
policy, it is not hard to imagine that it would have quickly happened with
such a policy in place.
While it is true that text is generally considered less offensive than
images, I can think of many other articles where such a policy would have
an effect, specifically those dealing with violence and religion. Now you
can say that this effect is in fact desirable and necessary, on text as
well as on images. But it is the effective end of the NPOV idea.
If the [[Mother Theresa]] article *did* include
truly shocking text, like referring to her with epithets of some sort,
Christopher Hitchens called his movie about her "Hell's Angel" and
originally wanted to call it "Sacred Cow". Would mentioning this, in
attributed form, be offensive to some? You bet.
Photos, however, are pretty easy to make shocking. I
might wish to read
an article about [[clitoris]], for example, but find it rather difficult
to do so when there is a photograph of a woman spreading open her
genitalia with her fingers in the sidebar.
I still fail to see a plausible situation where you want to read an
article about genitalia but are unprepared to see a small thumbnail image.
Nevertheless, I would support a "hide images" button which would make all
images on a page invisible. That would be fairly easy to implement.
Regards,
Erik