Now might be an interesting time to mention the usual excuse when religious fanatics are blowing up a market, an embassy or a subway train: Islam means peace.
Did I say excuse? I am sorry, I meant refutation. The excuse is usually a variation of "You offended me".
Next time, one out 1 billion muslims forgets his/her good manners, the ones responsible are: You, Wikipedians, thanks to our policy to spread knowledge (which we all know is the greatest enemy any kind of religion).
A nice place to observe peacefulness under the label of a religion can be found at a petition http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?mjk123&1 to the "Wikepedia Authorities" to apply sharia to wikipedia.org content, as interpreted by the undersigned. The petition can be found at http://www.petitiononline.com/mjk123/petition.html
Mathias
On 01/02/2008, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
Now might be an interesting time to mention the usual excuse when religious fanatics are blowing up a market, an embassy or a subway train: Islam means peace.
Did I say excuse? I am sorry, I meant refutation. The excuse is usually a variation of "You offended me".
Next time, one out 1 billion muslims forgets his/her good manners, the ones responsible are: You, Wikipedians, thanks to our policy to spread knowledge (which we all know is the greatest enemy any kind of religion).
A nice place to observe peacefulness under the label of a religion can be found at a petition http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?mjk123&1 to the "Wikepedia Authorities" to apply sharia to wikipedia.org content, as interpreted by the undersigned. The petition can be found at http://www.petitiononline.com/mjk123/petition.html
Mathias
They've got 50 sigs big deal. Yes having the images of Mohamed in the Mohamed article is upsetting Muslims but so far ~<1% of responses to the larger online petition (now up to 62K sigs) have suggested violence. Compares well to things like animal rights or flag buring or other silly things westerners get upset about.
If you truly have an issue with the image, my suggestion is to email OTRS at info-en@wikimedia.org, bringing up this issue.
On Feb 1, 2008 2:42 PM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
Now might be an interesting time to mention the usual excuse when religious fanatics are blowing up a market, an embassy or a subway train: Islam means peace.
Did I say excuse? I am sorry, I meant refutation. The excuse is usually a variation of "You offended me".
Next time, one out 1 billion muslims forgets his/her good manners, the ones responsible are: You, Wikipedians, thanks to our policy to spread knowledge (which we all know is the greatest enemy any kind of religion).
A nice place to observe peacefulness under the label of a religion can be found at a petition http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?mjk123&1 to the "Wikepedia Authorities" to apply sharia to wikipedia.org content, as interpreted by the undersigned. The petition can be found at http://www.petitiononline.com/mjk123/petition.html
Mathias
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On Feb 1, 2008 9:40 PM, Leia Yeung glacierwolf3@gmail.com wrote:
If you truly have an issue with the image, my suggestion is to email OTRS at info-en@wikimedia.org, bringing up this issue.
OTRS and some of the info queues there do regularily get emails asking/demanding the takedown of these images. We usually reply with explaining the NPOV and the editorial decision to keep the picture, while at the same time mentioning the iconophobic tendencies of such believes.
Mathias
On 01/02/2008, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008 9:40 PM, Leia Yeung glacierwolf3@gmail.com wrote:
If you truly have an issue with the image, my suggestion is to email
OTRS at
info-en@wikimedia.org, bringing up this issue.
OTRS and some of the info queues there do regularily get emails asking/demanding the takedown of these images. We usually reply with explaining the NPOV and the editorial decision to keep the picture, while at the same time mentioning the iconophobic tendencies of such believes.
Mathias
Funnily enough somebody has posted the nreply to there wikiticket on their blog http://thelandofpure.blogspot.com/2008/02/wikipedia-reply-on-prophet-muhamma... - As for the talk page on the Mohammed article, I think that the editors there must have the patience of Job.
If anybody is interested in early art history and depictions of the prophet theres a short article here http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/islamic_mo_full/
I wish these things didn't blow up into full war - on that note http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controve..., details how to edit your monbook.js so that images aren't shown.
Mike33
On Feb 1, 2008 8:40 PM, michael west michawest@gmail.com wrote:
On 01/02/2008, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008 9:40 PM, Leia Yeung glacierwolf3@gmail.com wrote:
If you truly have an issue with the image, my suggestion is to email
OTRS at
info-en@wikimedia.org, bringing up this issue.
OTRS and some of the info queues there do regularily get emails asking/demanding the takedown of these images. We usually reply with explaining the NPOV and the editorial decision to keep the picture, while at the same time mentioning the iconophobic tendencies of such believes.
Mathias
Funnily enough somebody has posted the nreply to there wikiticket on their blog http://thelandofpure.blogspot.com/2008/02/wikipedia-reply-on-prophet-muhamma...
As for the talk page on the Mohammed article, I think that the editors there must have the patience of Job.
If anybody is interested in early art history and depictions of the prophet theres a short article here http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/islamic_mo_full/
I wish these things didn't blow up into full war - on that note http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controve..., details how to edit your monbook.js so that images aren't shown.
Mike33
Indeed, Talk:Muhammad now also has an FAQ, that includes instructions on how to disable images on [[Muhammad]].
It's probably also worth mentioning "online petitions" have circulated at least once before on the issue, and some combination of bots & humans got the tally up to ~50K.
Cheers WilyD
On 02/02/2008, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed, Talk:Muhammad now also has an FAQ, that includes instructions on how to disable images on [[Muhammad]].
It's probably also worth mentioning "online petitions" have circulated at least once before on the issue, and some combination of bots & humans got the tally up to ~50K.
Cheers WilyD
Still going. 68K now:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/removal-of-the-pics-of-muhammad-from-wikipe...
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Still going. 68K now:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/removal-of-the-pics-of-muhammad-from-wikipe...
I request they at least proof-read their petition. "holly figures"??? :)
On Feb 3, 2008 12:38 PM, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Still going. 68K now:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/removal-of-the-pics-of-muhammad-from-wikipe...
I request they at least proof-read their petition. "holly figures"??? :)
Did you expect academic excellence from a group that advocated censorship? :)
Angela
We should provide an alternate "Mohammad" page without any images on it. Telling people to edit their javascript is silly; most people aren't nearly tech savvy enough to understand what that even means (for example, they have to first understand that a web page can be displayed differently for different users).
On Feb 3, 2008 2:33 PM, Angela Anuszewski psu256@member.fsf.org wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 12:38 PM, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Still going. 68K now:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/removal-of-the-pics-of-muhammad-from-wikipe...
I request they at least proof-read their petition. "holly figures"??? :)
Did you expect academic excellence from a group that advocated censorship? :)
Angela
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
And of course, the article should warn people at the beginning that it contains images of mohammad and direct them to the alternate page if they don't want to see them. Sure, some people are insane fanatics, but others aren't; I think those are simple steps that would diffuse a lot of this.
On Feb 4, 2008 4:53 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We should provide an alternate "Mohammad" page without any images on it. Telling people to edit their javascript is silly; most people aren't nearly tech savvy enough to understand what that even means (for example, they have to first understand that a web page can be displayed differently for different users).
On Feb 3, 2008 2:33 PM, Angela Anuszewski psu256@member.fsf.org wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 12:38 PM, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Still going. 68K now:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/removal-of-the-pics-of-muhammad-from-wikipe...
I request they at least proof-read their petition. "holly figures"??? :)
Did you expect academic excellence from a group that advocated censorship? :)
Angela
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On Feb 4, 2008 10:53 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We should provide an alternate "Mohammad" page without any images on it. Telling people to edit their javascript is silly; most people aren't nearly tech savvy enough to understand what that even means (for example, they have to first understand that a web page can be displayed differently for different users).
There is a rather fundamental flaw in this proposal (actually, in both): They don't want a page where they can look at without having to see an image that is said to be that of its founder, they want the picture removed completely. The javascript/css-option is only meant as an alibi, without any chance to actually appease those who prefer censorship over content they don't agree with. The more complicated the option is, the longer it might serve as a diversion. A better choice would be a patch the firefox sources that disables rendering of images that contain "muhammad" (in different spellings) that needs recompilation of firefox.
Mathias
On 04/02/2008, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 4, 2008 10:53 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We should provide an alternate "Mohammad" page without any images on it. Telling people to edit their javascript is silly; most people aren't nearly tech savvy enough to understand what that even means (for example, they have to first understand that a web page can be displayed differently for different users).
There is a rather fundamental flaw in this proposal (actually, in both): They don't want a page where they can look at without having to see an image that is said to be that of its founder, they want the picture removed completely. The javascript/css-option is only meant as an alibi, without any chance to actually appease those who prefer censorship over content they don't agree with. The more complicated the option is, the longer it might serve as a diversion. A better choice would be a patch the firefox sources that disables rendering of images that contain "muhammad" (in different spellings) that needs recompilation of firefox.
Unfortunately, Muhammad is a very common name, so there would be a large number of false positives with that approach.
On Feb 4, 2008 12:32 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Unfortunately, Muhammad is a very common name, so there would be a large number of false positives with that approach.
That would be perfectly consistent with the usual effects of such a (self-)censorship tool. On the other hand, since naming a teddy bear Muhammad can bring you into trouble, looking at one with that name is already dangerously close. Thanks to the power of ASCII art, switching to links/lynx text based browsers won't work either.
Mathias
On Feb 4, 2008 10:05 AM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 4, 2008 10:53 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We should provide an alternate "Mohammad" page without any images on it. Telling people to edit their javascript is silly; most people aren't nearly tech savvy enough to understand what that even means (for example, they have to first understand that a web page can be displayed differently for different users).
There is a rather fundamental flaw in this proposal (actually, in both): They don't want a page where they can look at without having to see an image that is said to be that of its founder, they want the picture removed completely. The javascript/css-option is only meant as an alibi, without any chance to actually appease those who prefer censorship over content they don't agree with. The more complicated the option is, the longer it might serve as a diversion. A better choice would be a patch the firefox sources that disables rendering of images that contain "muhammad" (in different spellings) that needs recompilation of firefox.
I read a few of the comments, and one of them actually has a point: There are apparently no "real" images of Mohammad, only phantasy drawings of what he might have looked like.
I have little sympathy for /any/ religion which claims to be offended by the truth (that is, all religions;-) but in this case, we already have [[Depictions of Muhammad]]
So, IMHO a compromise could be to move all the depictions there. I realize that's not what the petitioners want, which is to ban /all/ these images from wikipedia, but, well, tough luck. Don't want to see depictions of Muhammad? Don't go to [[Depictions of Muhammad]]!
I think this is as far as we can go, but no further.
Cheers, Magnus
On Feb 4, 2008 2:40 PM, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
I read a few of the comments, and one of them actually has a point: There are apparently no "real" images of Mohammad, only phantasy drawings of what he might have looked like.
No difference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer (even at *gasp* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God)
Mathias
I grew up jewish, so I was exposed early to the concept of a *totally forbidden depiction* -- in judaism's case, it's the name of god, not the figure. I'm not religious, but seeing the concept at age seven lets you understand it sort of intuitively. I remember reading a study showing that insulting language activates the same neural paths as when someone is physically harmed; for a religious muslim, seeing an image of muhammad probably feels something like that.
I think we have to take at face value a lot of the plaintive comments in the petition -- "we are people too", etc. Whoever *started* the petition was probably trying to rouse a crowd, but the *signatories* seem mostly to think that the depiction of mohammad is a deliberate insult aimed at them. The least we can do, really, is to make sure that nobody sees a muhammad picture who doesn't want to; if we do that properly, the interface will make it self-evident that we actually care what religious muslims think (at least in terms of not trying to offend them any more than we'd try to offend anyone else), which is partly what this seems to be about.
On Feb 4, 2008 5:05 AM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 4, 2008 10:53 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We should provide an alternate "Mohammad" page without any images on it. Telling people to edit their javascript is silly; most people aren't nearly tech savvy enough to understand what that even means (for example, they have to first understand that a web page can be displayed differently for different users).
There is a rather fundamental flaw in this proposal (actually, in both): They don't want a page where they can look at without having to see an image that is said to be that of its founder, they want the picture removed completely. The javascript/css-option is only meant as an alibi, without any chance to actually appease those who prefer censorship over content they don't agree with. The more complicated the option is, the longer it might serve as a diversion. A better choice would be a patch the firefox sources that disables rendering of images that contain "muhammad" (in different spellings) that needs recompilation of firefox.
Mathias
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The least we can do, really, is to make sure that nobody sees a muhammad picture who doesn't want to;
If we do that then we also have to do it for anything else that someone could plausibly be offended by - it's just no feasible. Wikipedia is not censored, and that's the way it has to stay.
On 04/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The least we can do, really, is to make sure that nobody sees a muhammad picture who doesn't want to;
If we do that then we also have to do it for anything else that someone could plausibly be offended by - it's just no feasible. Wikipedia is not censored, and that's the way it has to stay.
No, sorry, this is completely and utterly wrong. We don't "have" to do anything, and we get to make our own editorial decisions on a case-by-case basis. This is *our encyclopedia*. It is not a game of nomic. It is not a judicial system. We are not slaves to precedent. We make the rules.
"Wikipedia is not censored" is one thing. "Wikipedia is compelled to be in-your-face" is another, and whilst the latter requires the former, the former certainly does not require the latter. And we certainly do draw lines on the acceptability of material - were someone to start demanding we include actual hardcore pornography in the article [[Pornography]] (or anywhere else), of course editorial common sense would lead us to say - no, don't be silly.
This is a topic we can discuss without any illustrations without materially harming the content of the article - it's a person of whom no contemporary depiction exists, after all - and insomuch as the *existence* of such illustrations is a valid encyclopedic topic, we can easily have a seperate article discussing that.
This way also has the advantage - shocking, I know - that it doesn't grievously upset a staggeringly large number of people. Apparently, this fact makes it somehow morally dubious, which I have a hard time comprehending.
On 04/02/2008, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
And we certainly do draw lines on the acceptability of material - were someone to start demanding we include actual hardcore pornography in the article [[Pornography]] (or anywhere else), of course editorial common sense would lead us to say - no, don't be silly.
You really want to bet on that? We have a softcore video. Long term it wouldn't be to sure that it will stop there.
If you possess a technical solution or are aware of how to construct one, please feel free to suggest it. If it's viable and doesn't present a significant problem to our attempts to be a quality, neutral encyclopaedia, maybe we can <s>railroad the discussion to push it through</s> develop a solid consensus so we can deal with the actual article, which is lousy.
Cheers WilyD
On Feb 4, 2008 2:06 PM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
I grew up jewish, so I was exposed early to the concept of a *totally forbidden depiction* -- in judaism's case, it's the name of god, not the figure. I'm not religious, but seeing the concept at age seven lets you understand it sort of intuitively. I remember reading a study showing that insulting language activates the same neural paths as when someone is physically harmed; for a religious muslim, seeing an image of muhammad probably feels something like that.
I think we have to take at face value a lot of the plaintive comments in the petition -- "we are people too", etc. Whoever *started* the petition was probably trying to rouse a crowd, but the *signatories* seem mostly to think that the depiction of mohammad is a deliberate insult aimed at them. The least we can do, really, is to make sure that nobody sees a muhammad picture who doesn't want to; if we do that properly, the interface will make it self-evident that we actually care what religious muslims think (at least in terms of not trying to offend them any more than we'd try to offend anyone else), which is partly what this seems to be about.
On Feb 4, 2008 5:05 AM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 4, 2008 10:53 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We should provide an alternate "Mohammad" page without any images on it. Telling people to edit their javascript is silly; most people aren't nearly tech savvy enough to understand what that even means (for example, they have to first understand that a web page can be displayed differently for different users).
There is a rather fundamental flaw in this proposal (actually, in both): They don't want a page where they can look at without having to see an image that is said to be that of its founder, they want the picture removed completely. The javascript/css-option is only meant as an alibi, without any chance to actually appease those who prefer censorship over content they don't agree with. The more complicated the option is, the longer it might serve as a diversion. A better choice would be a patch the firefox sources that disables rendering of images that contain "muhammad" (in different spellings) that needs recompilation of firefox.
Mathias
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
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On 2/4/08, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
If you possess a technical solution or are aware of how to construct one, please feel free to suggest it. If it's viable and doesn't present a significant problem to our attempts to be a quality, neutral encyclopaedia, maybe we can <s>railroad the discussion to push it through</s> develop a solid consensus so we can deal with the actual article, which is lousy.
I'm guessing a "religion" drop-down menu in Special:Preferences is right out. :p
Seriously I doubt most of us can fathom how anybody can take so much offense to any particular image, regardless of its content. I know I can't.
—C.W.
On Feb 4, 2008 4:36 PM, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/4/08, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
If you possess a technical solution or are aware of how to construct one, please feel free to suggest it. If it's viable and doesn't present a significant problem to our attempts to be a quality, neutral encyclopaedia, maybe we can <s>railroad the discussion to push it through</s> develop a solid consensus so we can deal with the actual article, which is lousy.
I'm guessing a "religion" drop-down menu in Special:Preferences is right out. :p
Seriously I doubt most of us can fathom how anybody can take so much offense to any particular image, regardless of its content. I know I can't.
—C.W.
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Of course, plenty of Muslims are not offended by such images either - images of Muhammad appear in almost every other language version of Wikipedia, including Farsi, where the overwhelming majority of editors are likely to be practicing Muslims. But having to go to "special:preferences" is not much reduced from adding something to your monobook - and excludes IP editors, who make up a significant percentage of objectors.
WilyD
On Feb 4, 2008 9:36 PM, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/4/08, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
If you possess a technical solution or are aware of how to construct one, please feel free to suggest it. If it's viable and doesn't present a significant problem to our attempts to be a quality, neutral encyclopaedia, maybe we can <s>railroad the discussion to push it through</s> develop a solid consensus so we can deal with the actual article, which is lousy.
I'm guessing a "religion" drop-down menu in Special:Preferences is right out. :p
Which would offer the following settings/inputs: * Atheist all-viewing * Brahman boolean * Christian choice * Druid dropdown * Falun gong falsifier * Gnostic gadget * Hindu hinge * Jewish jinx (sorry, running out of Js here) * Lakota lockdown * Muslim mode * Nihilistic negation * Occultistic option * Pastafari protection * Rastafari radiobox * Shinto switch * Taoism toggle * Ute undo * Vishnu version * Yazdanic you-know-what
'nuff said.
Magnus
On Feb 4, 2008 9:40 PM, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
If you possess a technical solution or are aware of how to construct one, please feel free to suggest it.
http://62.75.219.46/shop_cfg/rotrac/F-MCF.JPG
Should also be carbon neutral.
Milos mentioned that on the serbian wikipedia they'd thought about putting images of mohammad inside tables/templates that were hidden by default -- the way you can pop open and closed the tables of contents or other-articles-in-this-series templates already.
On Feb 4, 2008 3:40 PM, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
If you possess a technical solution or are aware of how to construct one, please feel free to suggest it. If it's viable and doesn't present a significant problem to our attempts to be a quality, neutral encyclopaedia, maybe we can <s>railroad the discussion to push it through</s> develop a solid consensus so we can deal with the actual article, which is lousy.
Cheers WilyD
On Feb 4, 2008 2:06 PM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
I grew up jewish, so I was exposed early to the concept of a *totally forbidden depiction* -- in judaism's case, it's the name of god, not the figure. I'm not religious, but seeing the concept at age seven lets you understand it sort of intuitively. I remember reading a study showing that insulting language activates the same neural paths as when someone is physically harmed; for a religious muslim, seeing an image of muhammad probably feels something like that.
I think we have to take at face value a lot of the plaintive comments in the petition -- "we are people too", etc. Whoever *started* the petition was probably trying to rouse a crowd, but the *signatories* seem mostly to think that the depiction of mohammad is a deliberate insult aimed at them. The least we can do, really, is to make sure that nobody sees a muhammad picture who doesn't want to; if we do that properly, the interface will make it self-evident that we actually care what religious muslims think (at least in terms of not trying to offend them any more than we'd try to offend anyone else), which is partly what this seems to be about.
On Feb 4, 2008 5:05 AM, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 4, 2008 10:53 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We should provide an alternate "Mohammad" page without any images on it. Telling people to edit their javascript is silly; most people aren't nearly tech savvy enough to understand what that even means (for example, they have to first understand that a web page can be displayed differently for different users).
There is a rather fundamental flaw in this proposal (actually, in both): They don't want a page where they can look at without having to see an image that is said to be that of its founder, they want the picture removed completely. The javascript/css-option is only meant as an alibi, without any chance to actually appease those who prefer censorship over content they don't agree with. The more complicated the option is, the longer it might serve as a diversion. A better choice would be a patch the firefox sources that disables rendering of images that contain "muhammad" (in different spellings) that needs recompilation of firefox.
Mathias
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On Feb 5, 2008 1:32 PM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
Milos mentioned that on the serbian wikipedia they'd thought about putting images of mohammad inside tables/templates that were hidden by default -- the way you can pop open and closed the tables of contents or other-articles-in-this-series templates already.
That would certainly offend all people using alternative browsers when they need barrier-free devices (please show me a table-open-close solution that works with the systems in use right now). I don't see a point in starting to trade off the needs of biologically visually imparied people versus religiously impaired ones.
See also http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BIENE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Accessibility
On 05/02/2008, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
That would certainly offend all people using alternative browsers when they need barrier-free devices (please show me a table-open-close solution that works with the systems in use right now). I don't see a point in starting to trade off the needs of biologically visually imparied people versus religiously impaired ones.
For me the greatest concern of a censorship mechanism is that it blatantly encourages NPOV violation as common practice.
- d.
That's a reasonable fear. But I'm convinced there has to be a way to assure the less extremist among the petitioners that Wikipedia is not *deliberately* trying to piss them off. I think a little bit will go a long way.
On Feb 5, 2008 7:54 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/02/2008, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
That would certainly offend all people using alternative browsers when they need barrier-free devices (please show me a table-open-close solution that works with the systems in use right now). I don't see a point in starting to trade off the needs of biologically visually imparied people versus religiously impaired ones.
For me the greatest concern of a censorship mechanism is that it blatantly encourages NPOV violation as common practice.
- d.
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Plus, I don't think censorship is the right word if you can uncensor by clicking a button.
On Feb 5, 2008 7:57 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
That's a reasonable fear. But I'm convinced there has to be a way to assure the less extremist among the petitioners that Wikipedia is not *deliberately* trying to piss them off. I think a little bit will go a long way.
On Feb 5, 2008 7:54 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/02/2008, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
That would certainly offend all people using alternative browsers when they need barrier-free devices (please show me a table-open-close solution that works with the systems in use right now). I don't see a point in starting to trade off the needs of biologically visually imparied people versus religiously impaired ones.
For me the greatest concern of a censorship mechanism is that it blatantly encourages NPOV violation as common practice.
- d.
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--
Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com
On Feb 5, 2008 7:57 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
That's a reasonable fear. But I'm convinced there has to be a way to assure the less extremist among the petitioners that Wikipedia is not *deliberately* trying to piss them off. I think a little bit will go a long way.
Two problems with this:
1. We are not trying to pacify people, we are trying to write an encyclopedia. To that extent what people think of us is their problem.
2. We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise. There is a reason we did not go this direction for spoiler templates, specifically because it would lead to doing exactly what we are discussing right now.
There are plenty of things I'm offended by on Wikipedia. But you know what? I've learned to stay away from them. I've learned that we're trying to do something useful here and that the presence of offensive material does not mean that someone is trying to offend me. If we start giving in to demands like this then we obviously do not care about writing a neutral encyclopedia, we do not care about topic coverage, and we sure as hell do not care if people walk all over us.
WP:NPOV, WP:NOTCENSORED. I know that policy follows actions, etc, but out of curiosity: is there any policy, guideline, or essay that supports what is being suggested here?
It doesn't have to be show/hide templates; I'm saying we might try applying the same wiki-style third-way thinking as we apply to content disputes.
When you strip away all of the politics (I'm as scared of fundamentalism as anyone), you have a bunch of people with hurt feelings (and, interspersed among them, a very small number of complete lunatics, who we can ignore). There are ways to smooth things over without compromising our principles.
On Feb 5, 2008 11:14 AM, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008 7:57 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
That's a reasonable fear. But I'm convinced there has to be a way to assure the less extremist among the petitioners that Wikipedia is not *deliberately* trying to piss them off. I think a little bit will go a long way.
Two problems with this:
- We are not trying to pacify people, we are trying to write an
encyclopedia. To that extent what people think of us is their problem.
- We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms
that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise. There is a reason we did not go this direction for spoiler templates, specifically because it would lead to doing exactly what we are discussing right now.
There are plenty of things I'm offended by on Wikipedia. But you know what? I've learned to stay away from them. I've learned that we're trying to do something useful here and that the presence of offensive material does not mean that someone is trying to offend me. If we start giving in to demands like this then we obviously do not care about writing a neutral encyclopedia, we do not care about topic coverage, and we sure as hell do not care if people walk all over us.
WP:NPOV, WP:NOTCENSORED. I know that policy follows actions, etc, but out of curiosity: is there any policy, guideline, or essay that supports what is being suggested here?
-- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers
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On 05/02/2008, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
When you strip away all of the politics (I'm as scared of fundamentalism as anyone), you have a bunch of people with hurt feelings (and, interspersed among them, a very small number of complete lunatics, who we can ignore). There are ways to smooth things over without compromising our principles.
I suspect in this case the problem is people who (a) don't understand NPOV (b) don't care.
- d.
When you strip away all of the politics (I'm as scared of fundamentalism as anyone), you have a bunch of people with hurt feelings (and, interspersed among them, a very small number of complete lunatics, who we can ignore). There are ways to smooth things over without compromising our principles.
I'm not sure it's wise to completely ignore such lunatics - they can be rather dangerous. While we certainly shouldn't give in and do whatever they say, we do need to keep our eyes open.
Chris Howie wrote:
- We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms
that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise.
Can you explain how an opt-out mechanism (by which I mean, certain content can be hidden if an easily-offended reader (a) has JavaScript enabled and (b) checks a preference or clicks a "hide" button) is "censorship"? We would not be controlling what others can see; we would merely be giving them tools to allow them to tailor what they see.
To me, such an approach *would* be a reasonable compromise, and would not be censorship. I'm curious to hear the arguments the other way.
On 2/5/08, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Can you explain how an opt-out mechanism (by which I mean, certain content can be hidden if an easily-offended reader (a) has JavaScript enabled and (b) checks a preference or clicks a "hide" button) is "censorship"? We would not be controlling what others can see; we would merely be giving them tools to allow them to tailor what they see.
Define "certain content". Do we want to add this "show-hide" feature to the caption area of every every framed image, or did you have something else in mind?
—C.W.
On Feb 5, 2008 11:37 AM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Can you explain how an opt-out mechanism (by which I mean, certain content can be hidden if an easily-offended reader (a) has JavaScript enabled and (b) checks a preference or clicks a "hide" button) is "censorship"? We would not be controlling what others can see; we would merely be giving them tools to allow them to tailor what they see.
To me, such an approach *would* be a reasonable compromise, and would not be censorship. I'm curious to hear the arguments the other way.
Who decides what is hidden and what isn't? What about pictures with nudity? People in suggestive poses? Medical images that may make people sick? Spoilers?
Where does it end?
And yes, it is censorship. It provides an easy avenue for people to see an editorialized version of an article. Everyone sees something different, and that something different is a POV article.
On Feb 5, 2008, at 8:58 AM, Chris Howie wrote:
Who decides what is hidden and what isn't? What about pictures with nudity? People in suggestive poses? Medical images that may make people sick? Spoilers?
Where does it end?
And yes, it is censorship. It provides an easy avenue for people to see an editorialized version of an article. Everyone sees something different, and that something different is a POV article.
K.I.S.S.: Introduce a preference that allows users to hide images.
On or off. Simple to engineer. Removes the problem of "arguing over which images to semi-censor". Helps out the thousands of users who are afraid to use wikipeida now because, for example, they clicked the featured article that day and ran into shock-image vandalism*... or perhaps they just want to read one of the human sexuality articles without the pornographic galleries.
Leave the content alone. Give the users the power to access the content in a way that is useful for them.
* See the [[Talk:Manos the Hands of Fate]]
--Noah--
On Feb 5, 2008 1:02 PM, Noah Salzman nds@salzman.net wrote:
K.I.S.S.: Introduce a preference that allows users to hide images.
On or off. Simple to engineer. Removes the problem of "arguing over which images to semi-censor". Helps out the thousands of users who are afraid to use wikipeida now because, for example, they clicked the featured article that day and ran into shock-image vandalism*... or perhaps they just want to read one of the human sexuality articles without the pornographic galleries.
Leave the content alone. Give the users the power to access the content in a way that is useful for them.
- See the [[Talk:Manos the Hands of Fate]]
This is a little more reasonable. But then we have to ask the question "why" since every major browser has the capability to not show images. Firefox will even let you set this per-domain.
On Feb 5, 2008, at 10:17 AM, Chris Howie wrote:
This is a little more reasonable. But then we have to ask the question "why" since every major browser has the capability to not show images. Firefox will even let you set this per-domain.
That's a good point. Perhaps we can address this issue in the short term by simply having more documentation pointing people towards their browser controls. We should add a second paragraph to WP:CENSOR that suggests this approach.
--Noah--
On 05/02/2008, Noah Salzman nds@salzman.net wrote:
That's a good point. Perhaps we can address this issue in the short term by simply having more documentation pointing people towards their browser controls. We should add a second paragraph to WP:CENSOR that suggests this approach.
It seems to me that you're effectively saying that many Moslems shouldn't be able to see any of the wikipedia's images, and trying to enshrine this as policy.
If that's not what you're saying, then I'd like to know what in practice the difference is, given that there's no domain/browser way to avoid just these images.
--Noah--
It seems to me that you're effectively saying that many Moslems shouldn't be able to see any of the wikipedia's images, and trying to enshrine this as policy.
Not "shouldn't be able to", but "should be able not to". There is a big difference.
On 05/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It seems to me that you're effectively saying that many Moslems shouldn't be able to see any of the wikipedia's images, and trying to enshrine this as policy.
Not "shouldn't be able to", but "should be able not to". There is a big difference.
But taking into account their beliefs, that's not so.
I think there's a difference between censorship, where something disappears, and temporarily hiding or warning somebody about something, so if they click on it, it appears anyway. Censorship is bad, but warning somebody about something may be considered desirable; this links into the spoiler issue we had here before.
On Feb 5, 2008 2:42 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
It seems to me that you're effectively saying that many Moslems shouldn't be able to see any of the wikipedia's images, and trying to enshrine this as policy.
If that's not what you're saying, then I'd like to know what in practice the difference is, given that there's no domain/browser way to avoid just these images.
What I'm saying is that if they don't want to see those images then they have a few options:
1. Turn off images in their browser.
2. Don't go to those pages.
I would not consider us catering to their demands that we remove the images an option. Hiding the images until they are clicked is an unacceptable compromise and presents many technical issues. (For example, they would either all be shown or all be hidden when printing a page. What do we do if JavaScript is disabled, etc.)
The goal is to write an encyclopedia. To provide a free resource to the world. Babysitting and shielding our users from content they may not like is not our job.
If someone complains about these kind of images, just link them to [[Wikipedia:Content disclaimer]]. If they still complain the only sane response is "so cry me a river."
On 05/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
What I'm saying is that if they don't want to see those images then they have a few options:
- Turn off images in their browser.
My point is that in the general case, under for example, UK law, if there are types of information that are contained in the wikipedia that racial groups consider extremely obscene, which are impossible to avoid in other than this way you indicate above, then this suggestion amounts to racism. (The UK defines racism as anything that intentionally or unintentionally has a significant negative effect on a racial group; and while you may not be able to define Moslems as a racial group, I expect you could find similar issues with actual racial groups.)
I think that blocking all the images on the wikipedia meets that criteria, and hence can be defined (at least in the UK definition, which I would suppose would be notable) as racist.
- Don't go to those pages.
That would be fair enough, provided it is easy to avoid.
-- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers
On Feb 5, 2008 4:28 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
My point is that in the general case, under for example, UK law, if there are types of information that are contained in the wikipedia that racial groups consider extremely obscene, which are impossible to avoid in other than this way you indicate above, then this suggestion amounts to racism. (The UK defines racism as anything that intentionally or unintentionally has a significant negative effect on a racial group; and while you may not be able to define Moslems as a racial group, I expect you could find similar issues with actual racial groups.)
I think that blocking all the images on the wikipedia meets that criteria, and hence can be defined (at least in the UK definition, which I would suppose would be notable) as racist.
IMO that definition of racism is way too broad. This is, for example, not racism (or "religionism") at all. What we are dealing with is a fundamental incompatibility between the goals of our project and the beliefs of a particular religious group. I could form a religion that hates the word "taco" -- are we gonna cater to that too?
Political correctness is a death trap. Sanity is insanity, insanity is sanity. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...
On 05/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008 4:28 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
My point is that in the general case, under for example, UK law, if there are types of information that are contained in the wikipedia that racial groups consider extremely obscene, which are impossible to avoid in other than this way you indicate above, then this suggestion amounts to racism. (The UK defines racism as anything that intentionally or unintentionally has a significant negative effect on a racial group; and while you may not be able to define Moslems as a racial group, I expect you could find similar issues with actual racial groups.)
I think that blocking all the images on the wikipedia meets that criteria, and hence can be defined (at least in the UK definition, which I would suppose would be notable) as racist.
IMO that definition of racism is way too broad. This is, for example, not racism (or "religionism") at all. What we are dealing with is a fundamental incompatibility between the goals of our project and the beliefs of a particular religious group. I could form a religion that hates the word "taco" -- are we gonna cater to that too?
Political correctness is a death trap. Sanity is insanity, insanity is sanity. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...
there's afew article in wikipedia that question whether there is such a thing as "race" based on DNA - so would gladly go along with ethnicity or something. Definately a "racist" crime would have to be based on ones ethnicity.
On 05/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
IMO that definition of racism is way too broad.
When I first heard the definition, I thought it was rather strange, but after thinking through the implications, it seems that it does indeed work rather well, even for racism where people try to hide the fact that they are being racist; or for when people are being unintentionally racist.
This is, for example, not racism (or "religionism") at all. What we are dealing with is a fundamental incompatibility between the goals of our project and the beliefs of a particular religious group.
So you say, but then you suggest remedies that would disadvantage minorities.
I could form a religion that hates the word "taco" -- are we gonna cater to that too?
Since you don't even want to cater for religions that take up about 20% of the worlds population, I would assume the question is entirely moot.
OTOH you yourself are in a minority (everybody is), so it might be in your own best interests to ensure that minorities in general are not disadvantaged in the wikipedia and elsewhere.
How nice would it be for you to not have to accidentally see 'political correctness' in the wikipedia for example? ;-)
-- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers
On Feb 5, 2008 7:58 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
This is, for example, not racism (or "religionism") at all. What we are dealing with is a fundamental incompatibility between the goals of our project and the beliefs of a particular religious group.
So you say, but then you suggest remedies that would disadvantage minorities.
There is a difference between oppressing a minority by such methods as violence, social norms, etc, and refusing to be bossed around by a minority.
Racism is, IMO, treating members of another race differently than you treat members of your own race. If another race/group/whatever imposes a rule on themselves then it is not racism to bend over backwards to make sure what you do doesn't break their rule.
In short, us doing bad stuff to them is racism. Them being upset about some of the stuff we do because they don't like it is their problem.
I could form a religion that hates the word "taco" -- are we gonna cater to that too?
Since you don't even want to cater for religions that take up about 20% of the worlds population, I would assume the question is entirely moot.
Christianity is more widespread than 20%. I am a Christian. And yet you don't see me raising a fuss because there are pictures of breasts on Wikipedia. I stay away from those articles out of my own choice.
But yet my "taco point" stands. Some group making rules about what content is acceptable and what isn't doesn't mean they get to force that on the rest of us, unless it comes from within the project with the goal of improving the quality of the encyclopedia. I do not see how any sane person could argue that this will make Wikipedia higher quality. Not one bit.
OTOH you yourself are in a minority (everybody is), so it might be in your own best interests to ensure that minorities in general are not disadvantaged in the wikipedia and elsewhere.
I don't care if I'm "disadvantaged on Wikipedia" if it means the project doesn't degrade into a PC POS.
How nice would it be for you to not have to accidentally see 'political correctness' in the wikipedia for example? ;-)
It would be great, but I'm also generally not naive and irrational.
On Feb 5, 2008 8:09 PM, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
Racism is, IMO, treating members of another race differently than you treat members of your own race. If another race/group/whatever imposes a rule on themselves then it is not racism to bend over backwards to make sure what you do doesn't break their rule.
Correction:
If another race/group/whatever imposes a rule on themselves then it is not racism to *refuse to* bend over backwards to make sure what you do doesn't break their rule.
On 06/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
Correction:
If another race/group/whatever imposes a rule on themselves then it is not racism to *refuse to* bend over backwards to make sure what you do doesn't break their rule.
Um, yes it is, depending on what 'bending over backwards' means in practice (often that bar is set ridiculously low).
Consider the case where the owner of a business may pass a rule that none of his staff may wear hats (just for simple uniform reasons).
Sounds reasonable, but in the UK, this was judged racist due to the large number of Pakistan immigrants that wore turbans, since they had to wear turbans for religious/cultural reasons, and since it greatly reduced their chances of getting employment, and hence caused economic hardship. Similar deal with some jewish people.
I really don't respect this argument you're making here Chris, it's more or less inherently racist, and your argument that it's all inherently simply 'PC' is not well founded. We need to have reasonable discussions about tradeoffs, not simply declare that there is absolutely no problem and not imply that anyone that anyone that thinks differently is 'insane'.
I do not see how any sane person could argue that this will make Wikipedia higher quality. Not one bit.
Quality is a lot to do with how well you meet the users requirements, needs or wishes; something that doesn't unnecessarily annoy the users would be considered higher quality.
-- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers
On Feb 5, 2008 9:32 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
Correction:
If another race/group/whatever imposes a rule on themselves then it is not racism to *refuse to* bend over backwards to make sure what you do doesn't break their rule.
Um, yes it is, depending on what 'bending over backwards' means in practice (often that bar is set ridiculously low).
Consider the case where the owner of a business may pass a rule that none of his staff may wear hats (just for simple uniform reasons).
Sounds reasonable, but in the UK, this was judged racist due to the large number of Pakistan immigrants that wore turbans, since they had to wear turbans for religious/cultural reasons, and since it greatly reduced their chances of getting employment, and hence caused economic hardship. Similar deal with some jewish people.
Wikipedia doesn't have such rules for employment, so I don't think this analogy is valid. It doesn't require people set aside their religious beliefs. As I said, they have a choice whether they want to look at those articles. Work is different -- you need to have a job to survive.
I really don't respect this argument you're making here Chris, it's more or less inherently racist, and your argument that it's all inherently simply 'PC' is not well founded. We need to have reasonable discussions about tradeoffs, not simply declare that there is absolutely no problem and not imply that anyone that anyone that thinks differently is 'insane'.
Insane within the goals of the project. WP:NPOV, WP:NOTCENSORED, neither of these have been addressed by people supporting the removal or suppression of these images.
I don't really respect your counterargument either. You're proposing that we cave to a minority that has a bone to pick with a project to build a free encyclopedia. We are in the (non-profit) business of providing information to people, including culturally relevant images that some people may find offensive. There are many ways they can protect themselves -- turn off images for example. This seems reasonable to me and doesn't require that we bend our core policies to appease anyone.
I do not see how any sane person could argue that this will make Wikipedia higher quality. Not one bit.
Quality is a lot to do with how well you meet the users requirements, needs or wishes; something that doesn't unnecessarily annoy the users would be considered higher quality.
The word I would dispute here is "unnecessarily." As I've said, there are things on Wikipedia I find offensive. The difference is I've learned that they are there for a reason and I don't have to raise hell about it. I stay away. What's so hard about that?
It comes down to the fact that some people want us to protect them from things they may not like. We only have to do this once before we're going to do it everywhere. [[Wikipedia:Content disclaimer]].
On Feb 5, 2008 6:58 PM, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008 9:32 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
Correction:
If another race/group/whatever imposes a rule on themselves then it is not racism to *refuse to* bend over backwards to make sure what you do doesn't break their rule.
Um, yes it is, depending on what 'bending over backwards' means in practice (often that bar is set ridiculously low).
Consider the case where the owner of a business may pass a rule that none of his staff may wear hats (just for simple uniform reasons).
Sounds reasonable, but in the UK, this was judged racist due to the large number of Pakistan immigrants that wore turbans, since they had to wear turbans for religious/cultural reasons, and since it greatly reduced their chances of getting employment, and hence caused economic hardship. Similar deal with some jewish people.
Wikipedia doesn't have such rules for employment, so I don't think this analogy is valid. It doesn't require people set aside their religious beliefs. As I said, they have a choice whether they want to look at those articles. Work is different -- you need to have a job to survive.
I really don't respect this argument you're making here Chris, it's more or less inherently racist, and your argument that it's all inherently simply 'PC' is not well founded. We need to have reasonable discussions about tradeoffs, not simply declare that there is absolutely no problem and not imply that anyone that anyone that thinks differently is 'insane'.
Insane within the goals of the project. WP:NPOV, WP:NOTCENSORED, neither of these have been addressed by people supporting the removal or suppression of these images.
I don't really respect your counterargument either. You're proposing that we cave to a minority that has a bone to pick with a project to build a free encyclopedia. We are in the (non-profit) business of providing information to people, including culturally relevant images that some people may find offensive. There are many ways they can protect themselves -- turn off images for example. This seems reasonable to me and doesn't require that we bend our core policies to appease anyone.
I do not see how any sane person could argue that this will make Wikipedia higher quality. Not one bit.
Quality is a lot to do with how well you meet the users requirements, needs or wishes; something that doesn't unnecessarily annoy the users would be considered higher quality.
The word I would dispute here is "unnecessarily." As I've said, there are things on Wikipedia I find offensive. The difference is I've learned that they are there for a reason and I don't have to raise hell about it. I stay away. What's so hard about that?
It comes down to the fact that some people want us to protect them from things they may not like. We only have to do this once before we're going to do it everywhere. [[Wikipedia:Content disclaimer]].
-- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers
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Maybe we need a larger, more prominent disclaimer:
"WIKIPEDIA MAY COVER SUBJECTS OR CONTAIN MATERIAL WHICH OFFENDS YOU. IF THIS IS THE CASE, PLEASE GO READ SOMETHING ELSE. IT'S NOT GETTING CHANGED TO SUIT YOU."
On Feb 5, 2008, at 9:55 PM, Todd Allen wrote:
Maybe we need a larger, more prominent disclaimer:
"WIKIPEDIA MAY COVER SUBJECTS OR CONTAIN MATERIAL WHICH OFFENDS YOU. IF THIS IS THE CASE, PLEASE GO READ SOMETHING ELSE. IT'S NOT GETTING CHANGED TO SUIT YOU."
In the proud tradition of dead horse kicking I am pleased to note that the "Image-Show-Hide" Firefox add-on works well:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/232
It allows you to add a button to the Firefox tool bar that toggles images on and off.
--Noah--
The problem with that is that it would block _all_ images, not just wikipedia.
Here's what I propose:
For all images that might offend people, wrap them in <div id="offensive"> or something. Then, someone could write a javascript hack that if the user selects it, it hides those images. If that works, it could go into the user preferences.
-Soxred93
On Feb 7, 2008, at 1:54 PM, Noah Salzman wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008, at 9:55 PM, Todd Allen wrote:
Maybe we need a larger, more prominent disclaimer:
"WIKIPEDIA MAY COVER SUBJECTS OR CONTAIN MATERIAL WHICH OFFENDS YOU. IF THIS IS THE CASE, PLEASE GO READ SOMETHING ELSE. IT'S NOT GETTING CHANGED TO SUIT YOU."
In the proud tradition of dead horse kicking I am pleased to note that the "Image-Show-Hide" Firefox add-on works well:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/232It allows you to add a button to the Firefox tool bar that toggles images on and off.
--Noah--
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For all images that might offend people
That's your problem, right there. How do we determine which images those are? We can't. Either we block them all, or we block none of them, anything else *is* discriminatory.
On 06/02/2008, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
I don't really respect your counterargument either. You're proposing that we cave to a minority that has a bone to pick with a project to build a free encyclopedia. We are in the (non-profit) business of providing information to people, including culturally relevant images that some people may find offensive. There are many ways they can protect themselves -- turn off images for example. This seems reasonable to me and doesn't require that we bend our core policies to appease anyone.
Worse than that - how many of them even came to Wikipedia in the first place? They don't want these images to *exist*. I really don't see how a compromise is possible.
- d.
Consider the case where the owner of a business may pass a rule that none of his staff may wear hats (just for simple uniform reasons).
There is an active vs passive difference there. In that case, the owner is actively passing a rule which prejudices a minority group. In our case, we are sitting back and doing nothing and the default prejudices a minority group. I think that is an important distinction. We shouldn't have to go out of our way to cater to the needs of minorities, we just have to no actively do anything which prejudices them. (NB: While adding the images is active, that's done by an individual. Wikipedia as a whole (or the WMF, if you prefer) not having a rule against it is passive. I guess the individual could be being racist at a stretch, but Wikipedia isn't.)
- Turn off images in their browser.
My point is that in the general case, under for example, UK law, if there are types of information that are contained in the wikipedia that racial groups consider extremely obscene, which are impossible to avoid in other than this way you indicate above, then this suggestion amounts to racism. (The UK defines racism as anything that intentionally or unintentionally has a significant negative effect on a racial group; and while you may not be able to define Moslems as a racial group, I expect you could find similar issues with actual racial groups.)
I think that blocking all the images on the wikipedia meets that criteria, and hence can be defined (at least in the UK definition, which I would suppose would be notable) as racist.
UK law may be excessively politically correct, but I don't think it's that bad. I can't see how advising people to turn off something which offends them can be considered racist. If we detected IP addresses from Islamic countries and turned off all images for them, that could considered racist (under some very odd definitions), but no-one is suggesting that. I don't think racism is an issue here - the images aren't attacking Islam or Muslims in any way, they are just contrary to their beliefs. If that's racist, then so is a non-Halal butcher's shop, and plenty of those exist.
On 05/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I can't see how advising people to turn off something which offends them can be considered racist.
You're almost asking them to turn off the wikipedia entirely. I would say that that was racist to some degree.
If that's racist, then so is a non-Halal butcher's shop, and plenty of those exist.
The point is that there are Halal butchers they can go to, so they aren't significantly disadvantaged.
OTOH I suppose somebody could go through the wikipedia and clear it out for them and stick it on CD or online, so there are realistic alternatives.
On 06/02/2008, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I can't see how advising people to turn off something which offends them can be considered racist.
You're almost asking them to turn off the wikipedia entirely. I would say that that was racist to some degree.
There is no legal or moral right to use Wikipedia. If a devout Muslim can't view Wikipedia without violating the rules of their religion, then they shouldn't view Wikipedia. There are religions which ban the use of computers - their existence doesn't mean we are forced to provide a paper version of the site.
If that's racist, then so is a non-Halal butcher's shop, and plenty of those exist.
The point is that there are Halal butchers they can go to, so they aren't significantly disadvantaged.
So if all the Halal butchers closed down, the non-Halal ones would have to become Halal? I don't think so. If the Muslin community want Halal butchers, it's up to them to sort it out (it could be racist if the non-Halal ones tried to prevent them in some way, but that's not relevant).
On Feb 5, 2008, at 11:42 AM, Ian Woollard wrote:
That's a good point. Perhaps we can address this issue in the short term by simply having more documentation pointing people towards their browser controls. We should add a second paragraph to WP:CENSOR that suggests this approach.
It seems to me that you're effectively saying that many Moslems shouldn't be able to see any of the wikipedia's images, and trying to enshrine this as policy.
If that's not what you're saying, then I'd like to know what in practice the difference is, given that there's no domain/browser way to avoid just these images.
I wasn't thinking specifically about the images of Mohammed issue.
I was trying to suggest a general solution for a class of people who want to read Wikipedia but may find some images objectionable or disturbing. Given that there are daily admonitions regarding WP:CENSOR (for complaints about various images) it would be helpful to provide some guidance on how to work around the problem rather than just saying "tough luck, deal with it."
Yes, hiding all images is a rather crude tool to deal with the Mohammed issue. However, that specific issue should not prevent us from providing helpful (generic) information for alternative ways to use Wikipedia for the image averse. Perhaps just add a link to [[How to turn off images in my browser]]?
--Noah--
On 05/02/2008, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Can you explain how an opt-out mechanism (by which I mean, certain content can be hidden if an easily-offended reader (a) has JavaScript enabled and (b) checks a preference or clicks a "hide" button) is "censorship"? We would not be controlling what others can see; we would merely be giving them tools to allow them to tailor what they see.
The difficulty is how things get tagged in the first place; you would need to have a reliable source that says that it is a particular sort of content. It's not enough for an editor to say it.
Chris Howie schrieb:
On Feb 5, 2008 7:57 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
That's a reasonable fear. But I'm convinced there has to be a way to assure the less extremist among the petitioners that Wikipedia is not *deliberately* trying to piss them off. I think a little bit will go a long way.
Two problems with this:
- We are not trying to pacify people, we are trying to write an
encyclopedia. To that extent what people think of us is their problem.
I disagree, because I do care what people think of us.
- We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms
that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise. There is a reason we did not go this direction for spoiler templates, specifically because it would lead to doing exactly what we are discussing right now.
The reason we did not go for spoiler templates is because it would lead to a reasonable compromise? It seems to me, that you actually want Muslims to see an image of their prophet, which seems to be a ridiculous effort.
There are plenty of things I'm offended by on Wikipedia. But you know what? I've learned to stay away from them.
Why do you want the majority of Muslims to stay away from the Muhammad article? What is the encyclopedic value of such an image? Are there any authentic images of Muhammad?
I've learned that we're trying to do something useful here and that the presence of offensive material does not mean that someone is trying to offend me. If we start giving in to demands like this then we obviously do not care about writing a neutral encyclopedia, we do not care about topic coverage, and we sure as hell do not care if people walk all over us.
If we don't, we do indeed *deliberately* try to piss off religious readers and editors. Islam is btw not the only religion (see [[Aniconism in the Bahá'í Faith]]).
I don't see how respecting religious believes without censoring any content (I don't consider the need to click a link "censorship"), would be derogatory to topic coverage. To the contrary I am convinced, that policies inviting people of different faith would result in broader coverage and a more neutral encyclopedia. There is no way, that religious topics would be as throughly covered by only atheistic or agnostic editors.
WP:NPOV, WP:NOTCENSORED. I know that policy follows actions, etc, but out of curiosity: is there any policy, guideline, or essay that supports what is being suggested here?
WP:NPA "Insulting or disparaging an editor is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done."
WP:PROFANITY "Including information about offensive material is part of Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not."
On Feb 8, 2008 6:20 AM, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Chris Howie schrieb:
- We are not trying to pacify people, we are trying to write an
encyclopedia. To that extent what people think of us is their problem.
I disagree, because I do care what people think of us.
I care what people think of us to the extent that we are fulfilling our mission, to provide a neutral free content encyclopedia. If a group don't like some of that content because it goes against rules that exist only within that group, that's where I don't really care that much.
- We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms
that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise. There is a reason we did not go this direction for spoiler templates, specifically because it would lead to doing exactly what we are discussing right now.
The reason we did not go for spoiler templates is because it would lead to a reasonable compromise? It seems to me, that you actually want Muslims to see an image of their prophet, which seems to be a ridiculous effort.
We decided against spoiler templates because it is editorializing content inappropriately. It is not our job to decide what our readers don't want to see; it is theirs and theirs alone.
If Muslims do not want to see *depictions* of their prophet (that is what's forbidden to my understanding) I have nothing against that. However, I do not think it is Wikipedia's job to shield readers from content they may find inappropriate; that seems to be where we disagree.
This whole deal seems to be "I don't like something so it's your job to make sure I don't see it." No. If you don't like something then it's *your* job.
There are plenty of things I'm offended by on Wikipedia. But you know what? I've learned to stay away from them.
Why do you want the majority of Muslims to stay away from the Muhammad article? What is the encyclopedic value of such an image? Are there any authentic images of Muhammad?
Honestly I don't care if they do or if they don't stay away. But it seems to me that if they're offended by depictions of their prophet that's the simplest solution. Other solutions may be disabling images in their browser or using JavaScript hacks to hide the images.
I have no problem with them reading or editing such articles. I have a problem with them dictating what we do with those articles, which is essentially what's happening.
The value of the images is to provide additional cultural context for the subject of the article. I do not know if any authentic images exist (for some definition of the word "authentic").
I've learned that we're trying to do something useful here and that the presence of offensive material does not mean that someone is trying to offend me. If we start giving in to demands like this then we obviously do not care about writing a neutral encyclopedia, we do not care about topic coverage, and we sure as hell do not care if people walk all over us.
If we don't, we do indeed *deliberately* try to piss off religious readers and editors. Islam is btw not the only religion (see [[Aniconism in the Bahá'í Faith]]).
Not caving in the face of demands like this is not deliberatly trying to piss people off. It's simply not caving.
I don't see how respecting religious believes without censoring any content (I don't consider the need to click a link "censorship"), would be derogatory to topic coverage.
This all depends what kind of link we are referring to. Thus far the demand has been that we remove the images entirely, which is simply ridiculous.
To the contrary I am convinced, that policies inviting people of different faith would result in broader coverage and a more neutral encyclopedia. There is no way, that religious topics would be as throughly covered by only atheistic or agnostic editors.
I agree with this insofar as such policies do not compromise the goal of the project.
WP:NPOV, WP:NOTCENSORED. I know that policy follows actions, etc, but out of curiosity: is there any policy, guideline, or essay that supports what is being suggested here?
WP:NPA "Insulting or disparaging an editor is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done."
Invalid. Explain how having artistic representations of Muhammad in the Muhammad article constitutes "insulting or disparaging an editor." People choosing to be offended doesn't mean that what they are offended by is a personal attack.
WP:PROFANITY "Including information about offensive material is part of Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not."
That seems to strengthen my case, not yours. By way of example, some people may find images of the human anatomy offensive, but they illustrate a topic.
This policy would apply if there was content in the Muhammad article saying "Muhammad sucks" or similar. That is not the case here.
We decided against spoiler templates
Correction: The people who cared about spoiler templates decided against spoiler templates. The people who thought it was a nonissue didn't participate. It would be hugely dysfunctional to act as though that particular instance sets a binding precedent towards all future instances, even ones that -- like this, and decidedly unlike spoiler templates -- are important.
On Feb 8, 2008 9:35 AM, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 8, 2008 6:20 AM, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Chris Howie schrieb:
- We are not trying to pacify people, we are trying to write an
encyclopedia. To that extent what people think of us is their problem.
I disagree, because I do care what people think of us.
I care what people think of us to the extent that we are fulfilling our mission, to provide a neutral free content encyclopedia. If a group don't like some of that content because it goes against rules that exist only within that group, that's where I don't really care that much.
- We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms
that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise. There is a reason we did not go this direction for spoiler templates, specifically because it would lead to doing exactly what we are discussing right now.
The reason we did not go for spoiler templates is because it would lead to a reasonable compromise? It seems to me, that you actually want Muslims to see an image of their prophet, which seems to be a ridiculous effort.
We decided against spoiler templates because it is editorializing content inappropriately. It is not our job to decide what our readers don't want to see; it is theirs and theirs alone.
If Muslims do not want to see *depictions* of their prophet (that is what's forbidden to my understanding) I have nothing against that. However, I do not think it is Wikipedia's job to shield readers from content they may find inappropriate; that seems to be where we disagree.
This whole deal seems to be "I don't like something so it's your job to make sure I don't see it." No. If you don't like something then it's *your* job.
There are plenty of things I'm offended by on Wikipedia. But you know what? I've learned to stay away from them.
Why do you want the majority of Muslims to stay away from the Muhammad article? What is the encyclopedic value of such an image? Are there any authentic images of Muhammad?
Honestly I don't care if they do or if they don't stay away. But it seems to me that if they're offended by depictions of their prophet that's the simplest solution. Other solutions may be disabling images in their browser or using JavaScript hacks to hide the images.
I have no problem with them reading or editing such articles. I have a problem with them dictating what we do with those articles, which is essentially what's happening.
The value of the images is to provide additional cultural context for the subject of the article. I do not know if any authentic images exist (for some definition of the word "authentic").
I've learned that we're trying to do something useful here and that the presence of offensive material does not mean that someone is trying to offend me. If we start giving in to demands like this then we obviously do not care about writing a neutral encyclopedia, we do not care about topic coverage, and we sure as hell do not care if people walk all over us.
If we don't, we do indeed *deliberately* try to piss off religious readers and editors. Islam is btw not the only religion (see [[Aniconism in the Bahá'í Faith]]).
Not caving in the face of demands like this is not deliberatly trying to piss people off. It's simply not caving.
I don't see how respecting religious believes without censoring any content (I don't consider the need to click a link "censorship"), would be derogatory to topic coverage.
This all depends what kind of link we are referring to. Thus far the demand has been that we remove the images entirely, which is simply ridiculous.
To the contrary I am convinced, that policies inviting people of different faith would result in broader coverage and a more neutral encyclopedia. There is no way, that religious topics would be as throughly covered by only atheistic or agnostic editors.
I agree with this insofar as such policies do not compromise the goal of the project.
WP:NPOV, WP:NOTCENSORED. I know that policy follows actions, etc, but out of curiosity: is there any policy, guideline, or essay that supports what is being suggested here?
WP:NPA "Insulting or disparaging an editor is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done."
Invalid. Explain how having artistic representations of Muhammad in the Muhammad article constitutes "insulting or disparaging an editor." People choosing to be offended doesn't mean that what they are offended by is a personal attack.
WP:PROFANITY "Including information about offensive material is part of Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not."
That seems to strengthen my case, not yours. By way of example, some people may find images of the human anatomy offensive, but they illustrate a topic.
This policy would apply if there was content in the Muhammad article saying "Muhammad sucks" or similar. That is not the case here.
-- Chris Howie http://www.chrishowie.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers _______________________________________________
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On 08/02/2008, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We decided against spoiler templates
Correction: The people who cared about spoiler templates decided against spoiler templates. The people who thought it was a nonissue didn't participate.
That's pretty much how consensus works. The difference between consensus and unanimity is that with consensus people don't have to agree, they just have to not disagree strongly enough to want to do anything about it. (It's a rather loose definition, but I think it works pretty well.)
Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 08/02/2008, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We decided against spoiler templates
Correction: The people who cared about spoiler templates decided against spoiler templates. The people who thought it was a nonissue didn't participate.
That's pretty much how consensus works. The difference between consensus and unanimity is that with consensus people don't have to agree, they just have to not disagree strongly enough to want to do anything about it. (It's a rather loose definition, but I think it works pretty well.)
Whatever consensus you may have is still only of those present and participating. There are so many issues being debated that it's completely exhausting to keep up. Most people would prefer to be adding and contributing than debating every contentious point.
I mostly don't contribute to pop-culture articles, but I respect the people who do. I do read certain ones when it's timely for other off-wiki conversations in my life, because it has become the most useful comprehensive site about the area for non-specialist. A non-specialist who wants to become informed about a subject does not want to spend an hour just trying to figure out the best website to inform him about it. I like the idea that if I want to find out what happened in a certain episode of the original "Star Trek", I know where to go.I could probably say the same about a lot of other subject areas.
These consensus battles should not become about winning or losing, because if either side comes out of the battle feeling a loser there is no consensus. Deletion battles are about winning and losing, because if an article is completely deleted someone has indeed list.
Ec
On Feb 8, 2008 1:59 PM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We decided against spoiler templates
Correction: The people who cared about spoiler templates decided against spoiler templates. The people who thought it was a nonissue didn't participate. It would be hugely dysfunctional to act as though that particular instance sets a binding precedent towards all future instances, even ones that -- like this, and decidedly unlike spoiler templates -- are important.
My point wasn't so much "we did X there so we must do X here too," but rather "X made the most sense in that discussion because of the Y argument, and I think Y applies here too, therefore I think X makes the most sense here as well."
On Fri, 8 Feb 2008, Ben Yates wrote:
We decided against spoiler templates
Correction: The people who cared about spoiler templates decided against spoiler templates. The people who thought it was a nonissue didn't participate. It would be hugely dysfunctional to act as though that particular instance sets a binding precedent towards all future instances, even ones that -- like this, and decidedly unlike spoiler templates -- are important.
Spoiler templates were removed the same way as characters and episodes: Make edits to contested policies, and then use de-facto bots to remove tens of thousands of whatever the deletionist objects to, while avoiding meaningful discussion. Since deletion is far easier to automate than adding, and since the volume is so high that nobody could just reverse it, they won.
The result will probably be the same for characters and episodes too, of course, regardless of the outcome of the Arbcom case.
On 09/02/2008, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
Spoiler templates were removed the same way as characters and episodes: Make edits to contested policies, and then use de-facto bots to remove tens of
You keep making this false claim that bots were used. You've been corrected on this enough times that I think I can reasonably characterise the above statement as a knowing lie on your part.
- d.
On Feb 9, 2008 1:30 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/02/2008, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
Spoiler templates were removed the same way as characters and episodes: Make edits to contested policies, and then use de-facto bots to remove
tens of
You keep making this false claim that bots were used. You've been corrected on this enough times that I think I can reasonably characterise the above statement as a knowing lie on your part.
De facto bots != bots.
When you get de facto single purpose accounts doing virtually nothing else but deleting characters and episodes, often not even bothering to *read* what they're deleting, there' not much difference between human and bot.
On an abstract level I have a certain admiration for the sheer tenacity and the work involved. But only on a very abstract level. In reality it's almost maddeningly frustrating: there just is no way to stop this from happening, and it's doing far more harm than good.
Michel
On Sat, 9 Feb 2008, David Gerard wrote:
Spoiler templates were removed the same way as characters and episodes: Make edits to contested policies, and then use de-facto bots to remove tens of
You keep making this false claim that bots were used. You've been corrected on this enough times that I think I can reasonably characterise the above statement as a knowing lie on your part.
"De-facto bots" means "software which lets people perform repititious tasks much, much, easier than without it, but which pedants insist doesn't fit the definition of a 'bot'."
On 09/02/2008, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
"De-facto bots" means "software which lets people perform repititious tasks much, much, easier than without it, but which pedants insist doesn't fit the definition of a 'bot'."
In FPS games, software that points you automatically at something or somebody is called an 'aimbot', but they usually still have to push the button to fire. In the context of the wikipedia, that's basically what this is.
Arguably an aimbot isn't truly a bot, but try telling that to somebody that has just been shot.
On 09/02/2008, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Sat, 9 Feb 2008, David Gerard wrote:
Spoiler templates were removed the same way as characters and episodes: Make edits to contested policies, and then use de-facto bots to remove tens of
You keep making this false claim that bots were used. You've been corrected on this enough times that I think I can reasonably characterise the above statement as a knowing lie on your part.
"De-facto bots" means "software which lets people perform repititious tasks much, much, easier than without it, but which pedants insist doesn't fit the definition of a 'bot'."
You mean, you know you're speaking deceptively, and intend to create a particular impression that you know is false, but you have an excuse ready in case you're called on it?
Back in my day, of course, we sent our edits by pigeon and considered dialup cheating at the Wikipedia MMORPG.
- d.
"De-facto bots" means "software which lets people perform repititious tasks much, much, easier than without it, but which pedants insist doesn't fit the definition of a 'bot'."
You mean, you know you're speaking deceptively, and intend to create a particular impression that you know is false, but you have an excuse ready in case you're called on it?
The difference between AWB, say, and a bot is pretty minimal in some cases - especially with some people that just click the button repeatedly without really paying any attention (which certainly happens from time to time, I'm not sure how often, though).
Back in my day, of course, we sent our edits by pigeon and considered dialup cheating at the Wikipedia MMORPG.
Some of us still do. Now get off my lawn!
1) Wikipedia is not the sole custodian of "free speech", and indeed a bunch of computer geeks posting (allegedly) inflammatory pictures on the internet is going to do very little to establish a Utopian e-Paradise replete with such lofty ideals as "free speech, liberty and equality", the benefits of which would be apparent to anyone (Muslim or otherwise) who has passed middle school history.
2) I very serious doubt whether even the most fanatical Muslim would go through the trouble and expense of organising and executing a real-life attack on said bunch of computer geeks. Indeed the most realistic fallout of your newfound love for speech would be a beating to Wikipedia's credibility.
3) In conclusion I would very sincerely suggest that you delete the said image and encourage the press to run a story on page 19 about autofellatio.jpg, Tentacle_rape and God_Hates_Fags to enlighten the world to how sincerely you value WP:NOCENSOR, WP:NPOV and WP:ETC ETC.
On Feb 9, 2008 10:47 PM, Prasad J prasad59@gmail.com wrote:
- Wikipedia is not the sole custodian of "free speech", and indeed a
bunch of computer geeks posting (allegedly) inflammatory pictures on the internet is going to do very little to establish a Utopian e-Paradise replete with such lofty ideals as "free speech, liberty and equality", the benefits of which would be apparent to anyone (Muslim or otherwise) who has passed middle school history.
We are not the sole custodians, but our goal is to write a free content encyclopedia. Therefore we will be exercising free speech to achieve that end.
I don't think any Wikipedian involved in this dispute thinks they are the last hope for free speech. But that doesn't mean we are going to cave in to demands that we stop using free speech to do what we're trying to do. To us, free speech is a tool, not an end in itself.
- I very serious doubt whether even the most fanatical Muslim would
go through the trouble and expense of organising and executing a real-life attack on said bunch of computer geeks. Indeed the most realistic fallout of your newfound love for speech would be a beating to Wikipedia's credibility.
How would Wikipedia's credibility be called into question by refusing to remove relevant, sourced images because of the demands of a religious group? Maybe our *sensitivity* would be called into question by the more liberal media, but since when are encyclopedias supposed to be sensitive?
Also, you seem to be using "computer geeks" in a derogatory manner. May I remind you that these "computer geeks" are the only reason Wikipedia even exists in the first place?
- In conclusion I would very sincerely suggest that you delete the
said image and encourage the press to run a story on page 19 about autofellatio.jpg, Tentacle_rape and God_Hates_Fags to enlighten the world to how sincerely you value WP:NOCENSOR, WP:NPOV and WP:ETC ETC.
All of the cited images are perfectly legitimate within the context of their respective articles -- they would be deleted otherwise. If you're looking up autofellatio, don't be surprised to find an illustration.
If the popular media has a problem with explicit images on articles about explicit topics... I mean come on. The press may be foolish at times, but they're not *that* stupid.
On 10/02/2008, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/02/2008, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Sat, 9 Feb 2008, David Gerard wrote:
Spoiler templates were removed the same way as characters and episodes: Make edits to contested policies, and then use de-facto bots to remove tens of
You keep making this false claim that bots were used. You've been corrected on this enough times that I think I can reasonably characterise the above statement as a knowing lie on your part.
"De-facto bots" means "software which lets people perform repititious tasks much, much, easier than without it, but which pedants insist doesn't fit the definition of a 'bot'."
You mean, you know you're speaking deceptively, and intend to create a particular impression that you know is false, but you have an excuse ready in case you're called on it?
As a moderator (unless I am wrong... which I am almost more often than not) you would be expected to be fair. He said de-facto bots for a reason, to emphasise the repetitive and quick nature of the events where intelligence on the part of the editor to judge the applicability of each change was not needed. Why are you out to attack him?
Back in my day, of course, we sent our edits by pigeon and considered dialup cheating at the Wikipedia MMORPG.
Great use of sarcasm to attack also ;)
Peter
Chris Howie schrieb:
On Feb 8, 2008 6:20 AM, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Chris Howie schrieb:
- We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms
that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise. There is a reason we did not go this direction for spoiler templates, specifically because it would lead to doing exactly what we are discussing right now.
The reason we did not go for spoiler templates is because it would lead to a reasonable compromise? It seems to me, that you actually want Muslims to see an image of their prophet, which seems to be a ridiculous effort.
We decided against spoiler templates because it is editorializing content inappropriately. It is not our job to decide what our readers don't want to see; it is theirs and theirs alone.
Of course it is their job to decide what they want to see. The question is, whether we want to offer our readers a chance to decide (if you want to see a depiction of Muhammad, click here) or we want to "force" (no, we don't force them to visit Wikipedia or read the Muhammad article) them to see that image.
If Muslims do not want to see *depictions* of their prophet (that is what's forbidden to my understanding) I have nothing against that. However, I do not think it is Wikipedia's job to shield readers from content they may find inappropriate; that seems to be where we disagree.
No, I don't want to shield readers from any content. Clicking a link is not a security barrier of any kind. Anybody who surfs the web should be able to do so.
This whole deal seems to be "I don't like something so it's your job to make sure I don't see it." No. If you don't like something then it's *your* job.
No, the whole deal seems to be whether we show a minimum of respect to our readers who happen to have a certain religious belief.
There are plenty of things I'm offended by on Wikipedia. But you know what? I've learned to stay away from them.
Why do you want the majority of Muslims to stay away from the Muhammad article? What is the encyclopedic value of such an image? Are there any authentic images of Muhammad?
Honestly I don't care if they do or if they don't stay away. But it seems to me that if they're offended by depictions of their prophet that's the simplest solution.
Do you honestly think we can write a neutral article on Muhammad, if we offend those who consider him to be a prophet?
Other solutions may be disabling images in their browser or using JavaScript hacks to hide the images.
It doesn't seem fair to me, that people with a certain believe have to choose between seeing no image at all or hacking JavaScript code. What exactly is the problem with providing an easy way to either hide or show those images?
I have no problem with them reading or editing such articles. I have a problem with them dictating what we do with those articles, which is essentially what's happening.
Who is "them" vs "we"? Do I belong to "we" or "them"? It doesn't seem to me, that anybody is "dictating" anything or at least "they" aren't very successful.
The value of the images is to provide additional cultural context for the subject of the article. I do not know if any authentic images exist (for some definition of the word "authentic").
I don't know either, but I have my doubts.
I've learned that we're trying to do something useful here and that the presence of offensive material does not mean that someone is trying to offend me. If we start giving in to demands like this then we obviously do not care about writing a neutral encyclopedia, we do not care about topic coverage, and we sure as hell do not care if people walk all over us.
If we don't, we do indeed *deliberately* try to piss off religious readers and editors. Islam is btw not the only religion (see [[Aniconism in the Bahá'í Faith]]).
Not caving in the face of demands like this is not deliberatly trying to piss people off. It's simply not caving.
It can be both.
I don't see how respecting religious believes without censoring any content (I don't consider the need to click a link "censorship"), would be derogatory to topic coverage.
This all depends what kind of link we are referring to. Thus far the demand has been that we remove the images entirely, which is simply ridiculous.
Of course it is. But since we are open for reasonable arguments, we can accept a compromise, can't we?
________________________________________________________________________
To the contrary I am convinced, that policies inviting people of different faith would result in broader coverage and a more neutral encyclopedia. There is no way, that religious topics would be as throughly covered by only atheistic or agnostic editors.
I agree with this insofar as such policies do not compromise the goal of the project.
________________________________________________________________________
(I don't want to snip the agreement we have, so I framed it instead.)
WP:NPOV, WP:NOTCENSORED. I know that policy follows actions, etc, but out of curiosity: is there any policy, guideline, or essay that supports what is being suggested here?
WP:NPA "Insulting or disparaging an editor is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done."
Invalid. Explain how having artistic representations of Muhammad in the Muhammad article constitutes "insulting or disparaging an editor." People choosing to be offended doesn't mean that what they are offended by is a personal attack.
Well, you can use the same argument for every personal attack in WP. People *always* choose to be offended, if the "attack" is merely a few bytes they *choose* to download.
WP:PROFANITY "Including information about offensive material is part of Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not."
That seems to strengthen my case, not yours. By way of example, some people may find images of the human anatomy offensive, but they illustrate a topic.
Yes, they do. OTOH WP does not display shock images even on the article about them. I don't consider that to be *censorship*. Let's face it: True censorship is simply impossible on the Internet. No information can be "hidden" forever, because it will always be available on some other URL. We have to make editorial decisions and should always consider our readers and our fellow editors, when we make them. Pushing people of faith away from an article about that faith is simply a bad idea.
On 12/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Do you honestly think we can write a neutral article on Muhammad, if we offend those who consider him to be a prophet?
How are we supposed to write a neutral article if believers can dictate content that may not be included?
James Farrar schrieb:
On 12/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Do you honestly think we can write a neutral article on Muhammad, if we offend those who consider him to be a prophet?
How are we supposed to write a neutral article if believers can dictate content that may not be included?
We certainly cannot.
Somewhere between offense and dictate is the neutrality/compromise zone. We don't have to appease neither Islamic fanatics nor Islamophobes in order to write a neutral article. All we have to do is show respect to believers and non-believers.
Somewhere between offense and dictate is the neutrality/compromise zone. We don't have to appease neither Islamic fanatics nor Islamophobes in order to write a neutral article. All we have to do is show respect to believers and non-believers.
Don't equate neutrality and compromise - they are mutually exclusive. If you are compromising on anything, you are not being neutral.
Thomas Dalton schrieb:
Somewhere between offense and dictate is the neutrality/compromise zone. We don't have to appease neither Islamic fanatics nor Islamophobes in order to write a neutral article. All we have to do is show respect to believers and non-believers.
Don't equate neutrality and compromise - they are mutually exclusive. If you are compromising on anything, you are not being neutral.
I didn't want to equate them. (s///and/) If you are not compromising on anything, you can't be neutral either. We can only reach neutrality, if we are willing to show all POVs. And we will never achieve that goal, if we drive editors away, who want to give their views a fair share.
If you are not compromising on anything, you can't be neutral either.
I don't see why not. Compromising is doing or accepting something you don't want in order to be able to do something you do want. I don't see what that has to do with being neutral. I edit Wikipedia in order to make a good quality neutral encyclopaedia, that's what I want. I don't want to use it to spread by own opinions - I don't include things I don't agree with just so that I can include the parts I do agree with, I include them because I actually want them to be there.
Thomas Dalton schrieb:
If you are not compromising on anything, you can't be neutral either.
I don't see why not. Compromising is doing or accepting something you don't want in order to be able to do something you do want. I don't see what that has to do with being neutral. I edit Wikipedia in order to make a good quality neutral encyclopaedia, that's what I want. I don't want to use it to spread by own opinions - I don't include things I don't agree with just so that I can include the parts I do agree with, I include them because I actually want them to be there.
Sometimes it happens, that other editors desire to include things you don't agree with. In order to write a neutral encyclopaedia it can be necessary to give even those POVs a fair share. As long as you believe, that *you know* what neutrality means and don't have to compromise, you are as likely as not working against neutrality.
I don't dispute, that you want to write a neutral encyclopedia. But your believe, that you alone can know exactly what neutrality means in a particular case, is an illusion.
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
I don't dispute, that you want to write a neutral encyclopedia. But your believe, that you alone can know exactly what neutrality means in a particular case, is an illusion.
So what exactly were you asking for in this thread?
- d.
David Gerard schrieb:
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
I don't dispute, that you want to write a neutral encyclopedia. But your believe, that you alone can know exactly what neutrality means in a particular case, is an illusion.
So what exactly were you asking for in this thread?
Well, I consider Steve Summit's and WilyD's compromise a good idea:
We should establish a content-tagging mechansim and allow our readers to "Opt-out" from seeing content based upon those tags. "My preferences" seems to be a reasonable place to configure those filter preferences. Furthermore I consider it a good idea, if those who "Opt-out" a certain tag decide on what content gets that tag.
Sometimes it happens, that other editors desire to include things you don't agree with. In order to write a neutral encyclopaedia it can be necessary to give even those POVs a fair share. As long as you believe, that *you know* what neutrality means and don't have to compromise, you are as likely as not working against neutrality.
You're not understanding what I said. I *want* there to be things in Wikipedia that I don't personally agree with, so it's not a compromise.
Thomas Dalton schrieb:
Sometimes it happens, that other editors desire to include things you don't agree with. In order to write a neutral encyclopaedia it can be necessary to give even those POVs a fair share. As long as you believe, that *you know* what neutrality means and don't have to compromise, you are as likely as not working against neutrality.
You're not understanding what I said. I *want* there to be things in Wikipedia that I don't personally agree with, so it's not a compromise.
Your definition of compromise would make compromise impossible.
You *are* compromising, if you want there to be things, you don't personally agree with.
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Thomas Dalton schrieb:
Sometimes it happens, that other editors desire to include things you don't agree with. In order to write a neutral encyclopaedia it can be necessary to give even those POVs a fair share. As long as you believe, that *you know* what neutrality means and don't have to compromise, you are as likely as not working against neutrality.
You're not understanding what I said. I *want* there to be things in Wikipedia that I don't personally agree with, so it's not a compromise.
Your definition of compromise would make compromise impossible.
You *are* compromising, if you want there to be things, you don't personally agree with.
Perhaps you're meaning something different by "agree with". I mean agreeing with the statement itself, that is, thinking that it's true. Do you mean agreeing with it being in the article? There is a big difference.
On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Chris Howie schrieb:
We decided against spoiler templates because it is editorializing content inappropriately. It is not our job to decide what our readers don't want to see; it is theirs and theirs alone.
Of course it is their job to decide what they want to see. The question is, whether we want to offer our readers a chance to decide (if you want to see a depiction of Muhammad, click here) or we want to "force" (no, we don't force them to visit Wikipedia or read the Muhammad article) them to see that image.
I think we have finally uncovered the fundamental point that we disagree on. I don't think it's necessary to have any kind of special accommodation for yet another case of offense taken at an image. (Granted this instance is much more volatile and publicized, but I don't think this is something we need to concern ourselves with.)
If Muslims do not want to see *depictions* of their prophet (that is what's forbidden to my understanding) I have nothing against that. However, I do not think it is Wikipedia's job to shield readers from content they may find inappropriate; that seems to be where we disagree.
No, I don't want to shield readers from any content. Clicking a link is not a security barrier of any kind. Anybody who surfs the web should be able to do so.
As we do not do this for images containing nudity (and AFAICT we do not plan on doing so in the near future) I don't see why this should be treated differently. And images with nudity have the capacity to offend a far larger number of readers.
This whole deal seems to be "I don't like something so it's your job to make sure I don't see it." No. If you don't like something then it's *your* job.
No, the whole deal seems to be whether we show a minimum of respect to our readers who happen to have a certain religious belief.
I'm all for respect, but I'm not for allowing groups to demand content changes (or even meta-content changes as we are discussing). If we make the change this time that will set a very dangerous precedent.
Honestly I don't care if they do or if they don't stay away. But it seems to me that if they're offended by depictions of their prophet that's the simplest solution.
Do you honestly think we can write a neutral article on Muhammad, if we offend those who consider him to be a prophet?
Yes, I do. Our goal is not to offend people, but if people are offended by us achieving our goal, well, again that is their problem and not ours.
Other solutions may be disabling images in their browser or using JavaScript hacks to hide the images.
It doesn't seem fair to me, that people with a certain believe have to choose between seeing no image at all or hacking JavaScript code. What exactly is the problem with providing an easy way to either hide or show those images?
It doesn't seem fair to me that as someone who has no problem with these images I should have to deal with mechanisms that assume I don't want to see them.
I have no problem with them reading or editing such articles. I have a problem with them dictating what we do with those articles, which is essentially what's happening.
Who is "them" vs "we"? Do I belong to "we" or "them"? It doesn't seem to me, that anybody is "dictating" anything or at least "they" aren't very successful.
It is my understanding that numerous emails requesting that these images be removed entirely are what has caused this entire discussion.
"Them" being Muslims who do not want us to use these images at all and "we" being Wikipedians interested in topic coverage and neutrality above all else. The groups are mutually exclusive, but are not a dichotomy. Also understand that this grouping should be viewed as my opinion and not as truth.
Not caving in the face of demands like this is not deliberatly trying to piss people off. It's simply not caving.
It can be both.
It can, but it's not. The perception of something does not make it reality.
If we remove the images or provide some "hidden-until-you-click" mechanism then we are saying that we don't care about being encyclopedic if someone is offended enough to raise hell about it.
If we don't remove the images we are an insensitive anti-Islam group.
Damned if we do, damned if we don't. I'd rather we be considered insensitive than unecyclopedic, considering that we are an encyclopedia.
This all depends what kind of link we are referring to. Thus far the demand has been that we remove the images entirely, which is simply ridiculous.
Of course it is. But since we are open for reasonable arguments, we can accept a compromise, can't we?
The issue with compromising in this case is that since we are arguing sensitivity toward Muslims against Wikipedia policy, I don't see any room for compromise. We can hammer out a new Wikipedia policy that directly conflicts with others to take care of this specific case but then we are going to weaken the other policies in future cases like this one, or even cases completely unlike this one.
Between being neutral and encyclopedic, and being sensitive toward Muslims, the only thing that exists is a bastardized encyclopedia that is still somewhat offensive to Muslims. Nobody wins.
Invalid. Explain how having artistic representations of Muhammad in the Muhammad article constitutes "insulting or disparaging an editor." People choosing to be offended doesn't mean that what they are offended by is a personal attack.
Well, you can use the same argument for every personal attack in WP. People *always* choose to be offended, if the "attack" is merely a few bytes they *choose* to download.
No, you cannot. Personal attacks carry an intent to do harm and to disparage another editor. Intent is important.
And by your logic, we should seriously consider any case where anything we write offends someone. Again, I can decide that "taco" is an incredibly offensive word and demand we remove it or institute some system so I can prevent myself from seeing it. I don't see any difference at all, except there are more people involved.
WP:PROFANITY "Including information about offensive material is part of Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not."
That seems to strengthen my case, not yours. By way of example, some people may find images of the human anatomy offensive, but they illustrate a topic.
Yes, they do. OTOH WP does not display shock images even on the article about them. I don't consider that to be *censorship*.
Did you just compare Muhammad to a distended anus? :)
Ok, but seriously, I don't think there is much in common between these cases. Shock images are intended to shock and offend, and that is it. IMO it makes sense in this case to not include them in the article, though I would not object to them being present (perhaps a few paragraphs into the article).
Images of Muhammad, on the other hand, are not meant to shock or offend. That they do is beside the point. As I have argued many times, images containing nudity are a good example of other cases where we consider encyclopedic value more important than not offending people.
Let's face it: True censorship is simply impossible on the Internet. No information can be "hidden" forever, because it will always be available on some other URL. We have to make editorial decisions and should always consider our readers and our fellow editors, when we make them. Pushing people of faith away from an article about that faith is simply a bad idea.
IMO using JavaScript to deal with this is the best idea. It does not push editors away and it does not compromise our neutrality. It gives the readers and editors themselves the ability to control what they see without us making editorial decisions.
Chris Howie schrieb:
On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Chris Howie schrieb:
<snip/>
This whole deal seems to be "I don't like something so it's your job to make sure I don't see it." No. If you don't like something then it's *your* job.
No, the whole deal seems to be whether we show a minimum of respect to our readers who happen to have a certain religious belief.
I'm all for respect, but I'm not for allowing groups to demand content changes (or even meta-content changes as we are discussing). If we make the change this time that will set a very dangerous precedent.
Dangerous? Because it could make WP more likable for prude readers, if it helps them to avoid nudity in the future?
Honestly I don't care if they do or if they don't stay away. But it seems to me that if they're offended by depictions of their prophet that's the simplest solution.
Do you honestly think we can write a neutral article on Muhammad, if we offend those who consider him to be a prophet?
Yes, I do. Our goal is not to offend people, but if people are offended by us achieving our goal, well, again that is their problem and not ours.
Your claim, that neutrality needs offense is not convincing. I'd rather say, that offense is a clear sign, that no consensus has been reached yet.
Other solutions may be disabling images in their browser or using JavaScript hacks to hide the images.
It doesn't seem fair to me, that people with a certain believe have to choose between seeing no image at all or hacking JavaScript code. What exactly is the problem with providing an easy way to either hide or show those images?
It doesn't seem fair to me that as someone who has no problem with these images I should have to deal with mechanisms that assume I don't want to see them.
Do you consider it fairer, that someone who has problems with these images has to hack JavaScript code? By contrast the "mechanism" of clicking a link is IMHO no big deal.
I have no problem with them reading or editing such articles. I have a problem with them dictating what we do with those articles, which is essentially what's happening.
Who is "them" vs "we"? Do I belong to "we" or "them"? It doesn't seem to me, that anybody is "dictating" anything or at least "they" aren't very successful.
It is my understanding that numerous emails requesting that these images be removed entirely are what has caused this entire discussion.
"Them" being Muslims who do not want us to use these images at all and "we" being Wikipedians interested in topic coverage and neutrality above all else. The groups are mutually exclusive, but are not a dichotomy. Also understand that this grouping should be viewed as my opinion and not as truth.
The groups are mutually exclusive, but are not a dichotomy? How's that? Is your opinion untrue? It might as well be, that we all (even "them") are interested in neutrality, but differ about what that means.
Not caving in the face of demands like this is not deliberatly trying to piss people off. It's simply not caving.
It can be both.
It can, but it's not. The perception of something does not make it reality.
Sometimes it does. Consider, that I want to refer to African Americans by using the N-word. Well, the roots of that word only denotes their skin color and isn't much different from calling them "blacks". So what's the big deal?
Well, it might not be a big deal for me, but it is a big deal for African Americans, because the N-word is perceived very negative for its (historic) connotations.
If we remove the images or provide some "hidden-until-you-click" mechanism then we are saying that we don't care about being encyclopedic if someone is offended enough to raise hell about it.
How does the need to click a link reduce encyclopedic-ity?
If we don't remove the images we are an insensitive anti-Islam group.
Damned if we do, damned if we don't. I'd rather we be considered insensitive than unecyclopedic, considering that we are an encyclopedia.
Shouldn't we try to quantify those consequences as well? I don't consider an additional link to result in a collapse of our encyclopedic goal. Offending the second largest religious group on this planet is rather huge, don't you think?
This all depends what kind of link we are referring to. Thus far the demand has been that we remove the images entirely, which is simply ridiculous.
Of course it is. But since we are open for reasonable arguments, we can accept a compromise, can't we?
The issue with compromising in this case is that since we are arguing sensitivity toward Muslims against Wikipedia policy, I don't see any room for compromise.
Well, I don't see any conflict. Indeed Wikipedia policies don't advertise irrelevant content, indeed they rather suggest consensus building among editors of all religious affiliations.
<snip/>
Between being neutral and encyclopedic, and being sensitive toward Muslims, the only thing that exists is a bastardized encyclopedia that is still somewhat offensive to Muslims. Nobody wins.
Well, it takes a lot of ignorance to believe that an article on Muhammad, that offends those who consider him their prophet, is anywhere near neutral.
Invalid. Explain how having artistic representations of Muhammad in the Muhammad article constitutes "insulting or disparaging an editor." People choosing to be offended doesn't mean that what they are offended by is a personal attack.
Well, you can use the same argument for every personal attack in WP. People *always* choose to be offended, if the "attack" is merely a few bytes they *choose* to download.
No, you cannot. Personal attacks carry an intent to do harm and to disparage another editor. Intent is important.
You cannot tell me, that you don't know that there are probably thousands of people offended by those images. How can you insist on keeping those images without intending or accepting that offense?
And by your logic, we should seriously consider any case where anything we write offends someone. Again, I can decide that "taco" is an incredibly offensive word and demand we remove it or institute some system so I can prevent myself from seeing it. I don't see any difference at all, except there are more people involved.
There is another difference: I never demanded we remove them. Please stop polemic.
Yes, they do. OTOH WP does not display shock images even on the article about them. I don't consider that to be *censorship*.
<snip/>
Ok, but seriously, I don't think there is much in common between these cases. Shock images are intended to shock and offend, and that is it. IMO it makes sense in this case to not include them in the article, though I would not object to them being present (perhaps a few paragraphs into the article).
Images of Muhammad, on the other hand, are not meant to shock or offend. That they do is beside the point.
I sense some flaw in those thoughts. They are not meant to offend, but they do? So if I don't mean to offend African Americans, I can call them N*?
<snip/>
Let's face it: True censorship is simply impossible on the Internet. No information can be "hidden" forever, because it will always be available on some other URL. We have to make editorial decisions and should always consider our readers and our fellow editors, when we make them. Pushing people of faith away from an article about that faith is simply a bad idea.
IMO using JavaScript to deal with this is the best idea. It does not push editors away and it does not compromise our neutrality. It gives the readers and editors themselves the ability to control what they see without us making editorial decisions.
OK, but why make it hard for them? We can do the JavaScript coding and might as well make it easy for them to gain control.
David Gerard wrote:
For me the greatest concern of a censorship mechanism is that it blatantly encourages NPOV violation as common practice.
"Censorship" is of course a heavily loaded word, but I've never viewed content-tagging mechanisms, or "hide" mechanisms that are positively *un*hidden by default, as censorship.
(But yes, were such mechanisms in place, I suppose epic POV battles would be bound to erupt around the question of whether to use them in particular cases, immaterial though the outcome would be to the majority of readers who browse using default settings.)
On Feb 5, 2008 9:14 AM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
For me the greatest concern of a censorship mechanism is that it blatantly encourages NPOV violation as common practice.
"Censorship" is of course a heavily loaded word, but I've never viewed content-tagging mechanisms, or "hide" mechanisms that are positively *un*hidden by default, as censorship.
(But yes, were such mechanisms in place, I suppose epic POV battles would be bound to erupt around the question of whether to use them in particular cases, immaterial though the outcome would be to the majority of readers who browse using default settings.)
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Err, I'm sure we could ram any "opt-in" image hiding solution into place. "Opt-out" solutions are a different matter.
WilyD
WilyD wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008 9:14 AM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
"Censorship" is of course a heavily loaded word, but I've never viewed content-tagging mechanisms, or "hide" mechanisms that are positively *un*hidden by default, as censorship.
Err, I'm sure we could ram any "opt-in" image hiding solution into place. "Opt-out" solutions are a different matter.
By "opt-in", I assume you mean that someone can opt in to the hiding mechanism, meaning that they have to explicitly opt *out* of seeing the potentially-offending content. And vice versa.
(But although this sort of thing seems like an obvious and reasonable compromise to me, I'm not so sure we could just "ram one through", because plenty of people do seem to equate such things with unacceptable censorship. See e.g. Chris Howie's comments elsethread: "We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise.")
On 2/5/08, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
By "opt-in", I assume you mean that someone can opt in to the hiding mechanism, meaning that they have to explicitly opt *out* of seeing the potentially-offending content. And vice versa.
(But although this sort of thing seems like an obvious and reasonable compromise to me, I'm not so sure we could just "ram one through", because plenty of people do seem to equate such things with unacceptable censorship. See e.g. Chris Howie's comments elsethread: "We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise.")
Not to mention the lack of an objective way to determine whether an image (or anything else) is "potentially-offending" enough that an otherwise reasonable person somewhere might want to opt out of it. It's not our place to make that decision for this or any other content.
—C.W.
On 05/02/2008, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/5/08, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
By "opt-in", I assume you mean that someone can opt in to the hiding mechanism, meaning that they have to explicitly opt *out* of seeing the potentially-offending content. And vice versa.
(But although this sort of thing seems like an obvious and reasonable compromise to me, I'm not so sure we could just "ram one through", because plenty of people do seem to equate such things with unacceptable censorship. See e.g. Chris Howie's comments elsethread: "We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise.")
Not to mention the lack of an objective way to determine whether an image (or anything else) is "potentially-offending" enough that an otherwise reasonable person somewhere might want to opt out of it. It's not our place to make that decision for this or any other content.
That's pretty much my position. I have no real problem with making it easy for people to not see things that would offend them, but I do have a problem with doing it in some cases and not others (it's discrimination), and I don't think it's practical to do it in all cases. Therefore, we are left with no choice other than not to do it at all.
On 05/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/02/2008, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
Not to mention the lack of an objective way to determine whether an image (or anything else) is "potentially-offending" enough that an otherwise reasonable person somewhere might want to opt out of it. It's not our place to make that decision for this or any other content.
That's pretty much my position. I have no real problem with making it easy for people to not see things that would offend them, but I do have a problem with doing it in some cases and not others (it's discrimination), and I don't think it's practical to do it in all cases. Therefore, we are left with no choice other than not to do it at all.
I believe we went through this with, on [[autofellatio]], the photo of a guy sucking his own penis. There was a massive debate about possibly-offensive content, and a detailed straw-poll page which should probably be up somewhere. (Does anyone recall the link?) I think consensus that time around came to "Wikipedia is not censored, we judge content editorially on encyclopedic value and quality and NPOV." Which I suppose means that if you want to have content someone strongly objects to, it behooves you to do the best possible job on the article. Which I can't see as a bad thing.
- d.
On 05/02/2008, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
Not to mention the lack of an objective way to determine whether an image (or anything else) is "potentially-offending" enough that an otherwise reasonable person somewhere might want to opt out of it. It's not our place to make that decision for this or any other content.
Of *course* it's our place to make subjective editorial decisions on whether or not content is appropriate - where appropriate is a broadly-defined mixture of "acceptable", "useful", "well-placed", etc etc. We do it all the time, as a community and as individuals or ad-hoc groups. There's no 'Big Book of Encyclopedic Merit' we refer back to...
This just happens to be a case where it's easier to defend the status quo, and write off one side of the discussion as ideological, than it usually is!
Of *course* it's our place to make subjective editorial decisions on whether or not content is appropriate - where appropriate is a broadly-defined mixture of "acceptable", "useful", "well-placed", etc etc. We do it all the time, as a community and as individuals or ad-hoc groups. There's no 'Big Book of Encyclopedic Merit' we refer back to...
We don't use those measures to decide, though. We use verifiability (which is pretty objective) and notability (which is not, but appears to be pretty much unavoidable if we want to be realistic). Censorship is clearly subjective and avoidable, so should be avoided.
On 05/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Of *course* it's our place to make subjective editorial decisions on whether or not content is appropriate - where appropriate is a broadly-defined mixture of "acceptable", "useful", "well-placed", etc etc. We do it all the time, as a community and as individuals or ad-hoc groups. There's no 'Big Book of Encyclopedic Merit' we refer back to...
We don't use those measures to decide, though. We use verifiability (which is pretty objective) and notability (which is not, but appears to be pretty much unavoidable if we want to be realistic).
"Verifiability" and "notability" are more aspects of the same decision. The decision, in the end, is always "does this improve the article". There's no checklist, whatever nebulous policy terms we may have pulled out of thin air - we have people looking at text and making an editorial decision on "better or worse this way".
We do think about our content. We do judge our content in a myriad of ways. It's simply *wrong* to pretend we always sit there and boil everything down to some little two-step process of "is it verifiable yes is it notable yes in it goes".
On the other hand, maybe you use a very broad definition of "notability" which encompasses all my subjective balances. In which case, we're making the same arguments just calling them by different names :-)
Censorship is clearly subjective and avoidable, so should be avoided.
This is a fairly nonsensical point; its use in this argument is to assert "what they want is tantamount to censorship and censorship is a bad thing therefore we don't do what they want".
But, imagine a demand that we don't include hardcore pornography - certainly a form of "censorship", albeit one you and I (probably) agree with. It doesn't mean that we should, or that by not doing so we have somehow "given in" to the demand and are morally tainted by it.
We don't include it because *our editorial judgement* says not to, and if it happens to coincide with what some external group desire? Well, good for them.
We have a history of this same kneejerk reaction with people who complain about their biographies, and it leads to worse articles there as well. "They're complaining? Well, we're not censored! Fuck them! Dig up more dirt, that'll show them!" It's... not good.
On the other hand, maybe you use a very broad definition of "notability" which encompasses all my subjective balances. In which case, we're making the same arguments just calling them by different names :-)
That could well be the case.
Censorship is clearly subjective and avoidable, so should be avoided.
This is a fairly nonsensical point; its use in this argument is to assert "what they want is tantamount to censorship and censorship is a bad thing therefore we don't do what they want".
But, imagine a demand that we don't include hardcore pornography - certainly a form of "censorship", albeit one you and I (probably) agree with. It doesn't mean that we should, or that by not doing so we have somehow "given in" to the demand and are morally tainted by it.
We don't include it because *our editorial judgement* says not to, and if it happens to coincide with what some external group desire? Well, good for them.
I wouldn't agree with that demand. I can imagine our article on Hardcore pornography being improved by the inclusion of images of it. They would need to actually add to the encyclopaedic content and not just be decorative, which might be a difficult barrier to overcome (I think you can adequately describe most sexual acts in words, so the picture would be redundant - which probably falls under "not notable" given an appropriate definition of notability), but I certainly don't object to such images on principle.
I think it's a perfectly reasonable principle to avoid making subjective decisions where possible. It's not always possible, but in the case of this kind of censorship, it is.
On 2/5/08, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I wouldn't agree with that demand. I can imagine our article on Hardcore pornography being improved by the inclusion of images of it. They would need to actually add to the encyclopaedic content and not just be decorative, which might be a difficult barrier to overcome (I think you can adequately describe most sexual acts in words, so the picture would be redundant - which probably falls under "not notable" given an appropriate definition of notability), but I certainly don't object to such images on principle.
There would be no inherent problem with including hardcore pornography in an article about [[Hardcore pornography]]; Any reader genuinely offended by hardcore pornography would probably not choose to read an article thusly titled (cf. [[Muhammed cartoons]] or whatever the complete bloody title is), and possibly such a reader would also be offended by the text.
I'm not sure how "notability" is a meaningful consideration for pornographic images. Obviously for a mere visual example, we would prefer a free image (and the result would be amateur porn nine times out of ten, which would serve its purpose well enough). In other cases, the image itself (or the film from which it was excerpted) might, for its notoriety, be the subject of the article or section, and a fair use rationale could probably be claimed.
On any sliding scale of "notability" within the wild world of porn, these would be two polar extremes, whereas the middle 98% would be of markedly lesser value to the project (though nothing would be completely useless).
—C.W.
On Feb 5, 2008 11:28 AM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
(But although this sort of thing seems like an obvious and reasonable compromise to me, I'm not so sure we could just "ram one through", because plenty of people do seem to equate such things with unacceptable censorship. See e.g. Chris Howie's comments elsethread: "We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise.")
It would be putting into the hands of editors the power to decide what is offensive and what is not. This is an extremely subjective matter and we would wind up with "Wikipedia for Weak-stomached/easily-offended people." Not that I have any objection to such a thing, but if it's to happen it should be a fork.
It's time we stop apologizing for the good we are trying to do.
On Feb 5, 2008 11:28 AM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
WilyD wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008 9:14 AM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
"Censorship" is of course a heavily loaded word, but I've never viewed content-tagging mechanisms, or "hide" mechanisms that are positively *un*hidden by default, as censorship.
Err, I'm sure we could ram any "opt-in" image hiding solution into place. "Opt-out" solutions are a different matter.
By "opt-in", I assume you mean that someone can opt in to the hiding mechanism, meaning that they have to explicitly opt *out* of seeing the potentially-offending content. And vice versa.
(But although this sort of thing seems like an obvious and reasonable compromise to me, I'm not so sure we could just "ram one through", because plenty of people do seem to equate such things with unacceptable censorship. See e.g. Chris Howie's comments elsethread: "We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise.")
Err, yes. A little button that said "Hide images that represent Muhammad" would be a solution I'd endorse, anyhow. A little button that said "Unhide images that represent Muhammad" I wouldn't.
We already offer a monobook.js solution in the FAQ on how to do this, but something easier to use wouldn't be the end of the world.
Cheers WilyD
Wily D schrieb:
Err, yes. A little button that said "Hide images that represent Muhammad" would be a solution I'd endorse, anyhow. A little button that said "Unhide images that represent Muhammad" I wouldn't.
We already offer a monobook.js solution in the FAQ on how to do this, but something easier to use wouldn't be the end of the world.
On the contrary it would show, that we respect readers with that cultural/religious background.
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Wily D schrieb:
Err, yes. A little button that said "Hide images that represent Muhammad" would be a solution I'd endorse, anyhow. A little button that said "Unhide images that represent Muhammad" I wouldn't. We already offer a monobook.js solution in the FAQ on how to do this, but something easier to use wouldn't be the end of the world.
On the contrary it would show, that we respect readers with that cultural/religious background.
"If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission." - Flemming Rose
- d.
David Gerard schrieb:
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
Wily D schrieb:
Err, yes. A little button that said "Hide images that represent Muhammad" would be a solution I'd endorse, anyhow. A little button that said "Unhide images that represent Muhammad" I wouldn't. We already offer a monobook.js solution in the FAQ on how to do this, but something easier to use wouldn't be the end of the world.
On the contrary it would show, that we respect readers with that cultural/religious background.
"If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission." - Flemming Rose
I agree. But do you want to be disrespectful to the majority of believers, who won't demand from nonbelievers to observe his taboos? Who would demand from nonbelievers to click the button "Hide images that represent Muhammad"?
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
I agree. But do you want to be disrespectful to the majority of believers, who won't demand from nonbelievers to observe his taboos? Who would demand from nonbelievers to click the button "Hide images that represent Muhammad"?
The demand was not that the images be hideable - the demand was that the images be *removed*.
- d.
David Gerard schrieb:
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
I agree. But do you want to be disrespectful to the majority of believers, who won't demand from nonbelievers to observe his taboos? Who would demand from nonbelievers to click the button "Hide images that represent Muhammad"?
The demand was not that the images be hideable - the demand was that the images be *removed*.
"The demand" was signed by 200.000 people. What about the millions who would appreciate, if we'd give them a chance to follow their customs?
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
"The demand" was signed by 200.000 people. What about the millions who would appreciate, if we'd give them a chance to follow their customs?
Until now, Wikipedia has always been written for the general public, not for a specific subsection of them, not even if that subsection consisted of millions.
Most visibly, until now, we don't censor Wikipedia for children (and there are a lot more of them than Muslims, at least English speaking). We've always said that if you think that our product contains inappropriate content for that group, fork it!
I don't see any reason that this wouldn't be the proper response in this case as well.
Eugene
Eugene van der Pijll schrieb:
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
"The demand" was signed by 200.000 people. What about the millions who would appreciate, if we'd give them a chance to follow their customs?
Until now, Wikipedia has always been written for the general public, not for a specific subsection of them, not even if that subsection consisted of millions.
Most visibly, until now, we don't censor Wikipedia for children (and there are a lot more of them than Muslims, at least English speaking). We've always said that if you think that our product contains inappropriate content for that group, fork it!
I don't see any reason that this wouldn't be the proper response in this case as well.
Why demand a fork, if we could easily avoid it? The same mechanism could certainly be used to filter inappropriate content for children as well.
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
Most visibly, until now, we don't censor Wikipedia for children (and there are a lot more of them than Muslims, at least English speaking). We've always said that if you think that our product contains inappropriate content for that group, fork it!
I don't see any reason that this wouldn't be the proper response in this case as well.
Why demand a fork, if we could easily avoid it?
I'm not demanding a fork, I'm suggesting one.
And why not? The ability to fork our content is one of our most basic principles.
If the basic values of two groups, in this case our authors on the one hand and the 200,000 petitioners on the other, diverge too much, a fork is probably the best solution that satisfies both parties.
Just let the free market solve our disagreement: the massive response to the petition implies that there is a huge market for a cleaned up version of our content.
The same mechanism could certainly be used to filter inappropriate content for children as well.
I'd be unhappy about that as well.
Eugene
Eugene van der Pijll schrieb:
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
Most visibly, until now, we don't censor Wikipedia for children (and there are a lot more of them than Muslims, at least English speaking). We've always said that if you think that our product contains inappropriate content for that group, fork it!
I don't see any reason that this wouldn't be the proper response in this case as well.
Why demand a fork, if we could easily avoid it?
I'm not demanding a fork, I'm suggesting one.
And why not?
I asked first. Why are you suggesting a fork, if we could easily avoid it?
<snip/>
The same mechanism could certainly be used to filter inappropriate content for children as well.
I'd be unhappy about that as well.
Why don't you want to offer our children a WP suitable for kids?
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
Eugene van der Pijll schrieb:
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
Why demand a fork, if we could easily avoid it?
I'm not demanding a fork, I'm suggesting one.
And why not?
I asked first. Why are you suggesting a fork, if we could easily avoid it?
Because that would make *them* happy, as they would have an encyclopedia without those images in it, and it would make *us* happy, because we can make the best encyclopedia we can, without having to compomise the content.
Now you: why not?
The same mechanism could certainly be used to filter inappropriate content for children as well.
I'd be unhappy about that as well.
Why don't you want to offer our children a WP suitable for kids?
Because I want an encyclopedia that is as good as possible for *me*, and I am not a kid. Having to filter content will either have a detrimental effect on that ideal encyclopedia, or it will have no effect, in which case: why bother.
Oh, and by the way, the same mechanism can certainly not be used to filter WP for children... Imagine a 15-year old boy reading, let's say, [[Autofellatio]], and there's a link saying "Don't click when you are not allowed to see adult content, please"...
Eugene
Eugene van der Pijll schrieb:
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
Eugene van der Pijll schrieb:
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
Why demand a fork, if we could easily avoid it?
I'm not demanding a fork, I'm suggesting one.
And why not?
I asked first. Why are you suggesting a fork, if we could easily avoid it?
Because that would make *them* happy, as they would have an encyclopedia without those images in it, and it would make *us* happy, because we can make the best encyclopedia we can, without having to compomise the content.
Now you: why not?
Because, as with every fork, it implies a lot of wasted effort in the future and it splits the editor community.
The mechanism of content tagging and filtering based on personal preferences wouldn't prevent us from making the best encyclopedia we can.
The same mechanism could certainly be used to filter inappropriate content for children as well.
I'd be unhappy about that as well.
Why don't you want to offer our children a WP suitable for kids?
Because I want an encyclopedia that is as good as possible for *me*, and I am not a kid. Having to filter content will either have a detrimental effect on that ideal encyclopedia, or it will have no effect, in which case: why bother.
It won't have any effect on your (unfiltered) encyclopedia, but it would allow editors to tag content they deem unsuitable for children.
Oh, and by the way, the same mechanism can certainly not be used to filter WP for children... Imagine a 15-year old boy reading, let's say, [[Autofellatio]], and there's a link saying "Don't click when you are not allowed to see adult content, please"...
There's no necessity to add that link in the "children edition".
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
Because, as with every fork, it implies a lot of wasted effort in the future and it splits the editor community.
There are 200,000 potential editors out there of the islamic encyclopedia, and I'd guess approximately none of them are current WP editors. So it wouldn't waste any of our effort.
The mechanism of content tagging and filtering based on personal preferences wouldn't prevent us from making the best encyclopedia we can.
Content tagging on WP on the other hand would cost *us* resources, both time and bandwidth, with no benefit for *us*.
Not a very good alternative.
Oh, and by the way, the same mechanism can certainly not be used to filter WP for children... Imagine a 15-year old boy reading, let's say, [[Autofellatio]], and there's a link saying "Don't click when you are not allowed to see adult content, please"...
There's no necessity to add that link in the "children edition".
Oh, so you are talking about a seperate edition for children? In that case, we agree.
Eugene
Eugene van der Pijll schrieb:
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
Because, as with every fork, it implies a lot of wasted effort in the future and it splits the editor community.
There are 200,000 potential editors out there of the islamic encyclopedia, and I'd guess approximately none of them are current WP editors. So it wouldn't waste any of our effort.
I don't think so. I'd rather guess, that there are WP editors among them, who got frustrated by the non-Muslim majority.
The mechanism of content tagging and filtering based on personal preferences wouldn't prevent us from making the best encyclopedia we can.
Content tagging on WP on the other hand would cost *us* resources, both time and bandwidth, with no benefit for *us*.
It wouldn't cost "us" that much, because those who care would do the job. Any yes, there is a benefit for "us", because there would be 1 billion people more likely to help us out.
Not a very good alternative.
Oh, and by the way, the same mechanism can certainly not be used to filter WP for children... Imagine a 15-year old boy reading, let's say, [[Autofellatio]], and there's a link saying "Don't click when you are not allowed to see adult content, please"...
There's no necessity to add that link in the "children edition".
Oh, so you are talking about a seperate edition for children? In that case, we agree.
No I'm not, that's why I used quotes. It would look like a children edition, but without the need to duplicate the effort we put into the "main edition".
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
It wouldn't cost "us" that much, because those who care would do the job. Any yes, there is a benefit for "us", because there would be 1 billion people more likely to help us out.
Perhaps but then they find out about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glamor_photography
Or the other elements of Islamic law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
Obviously this is stuff would be problematical under Saudi law:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible
geni schrieb:
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
It wouldn't cost "us" that much, because those who care would do the job. Any yes, there is a benefit for "us", because there would be 1 billion people more likely to help us out.
Perhaps but then they find out about this:
They can enable the "nudity" filter for this one.
Or the other elements of Islamic law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
Obviously this is stuff would be problematical under Saudi law:
I don't know or care much about Saudi Arabia (merely 2% of Muslim population), but the Gospel shouldn't be problematic since it provides "guidance and light" according to the Qur'an (5:46).
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
geni schrieb:
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
It wouldn't cost "us" that much, because those who care would do the job. Any yes, there is a benefit for "us", because there would be 1 billion people more likely to help us out.
Perhaps but then they find out about this:
They can enable the "nudity" filter for this one.
Err the lead photo isn't nude. Clearly wearing a hand bra. But yes they are free to develop a browser plug in that blocks images to whatever standards that they like
Or the other elements of Islamic law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
Obviously this is stuff would be problematical under Saudi law:
I don't know or care much about Saudi Arabia (merely 2% of Muslim population),
Saudi Arabia however funds a significant number of Mosques and the like thus we have to consider it's ideology at least when dealing with Sunni Islam.
but the Gospel shouldn't be problematic since it provides "guidance and light" according to the Qur'an (5:46).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/19/ubible119.xm...
I suspect the problem is mostly to do with English translations.
On Feb 17, 2008 4:26 PM, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
geni schrieb:
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
It wouldn't cost "us" that much, because those who care would do the job. Any yes, there is a benefit for "us", because there would be 1 billion people more likely to help us out.
Perhaps but then they find out about this:
They can enable the "nudity" filter for this one.
Or the other elements of Islamic law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
Obviously this is stuff would be problematical under Saudi law:
I don't know or care much about Saudi Arabia (merely 2% of Muslim population), but the Gospel shouldn't be problematic since it provides "guidance and light" according to the Qur'an (5:46).
To a Muslim it is offensive to say Jesus is God. It is offensive to view images of inappropriately clothed people. Muslims in Indonesia found the images in Playboy sufficiently offensive to riot over. Muslims in Malaysia frown on the usage of Muslim terminology in a non-Muslim context; the government has actually banned Malay-language Christian publications for using Malay words meaning "Allah", "angel", etc. There are a lot of things people find offensive; there are a lot of things Muslims find offensive. We would need not only a way to censor images, but a way to censor text, a way to censor audio (spoken versions of our articles, for example) and possibly even a way to censor video.
I have always been supportive of an opt-in censorship mechanism, and I have advocated looking into it, but I don't think it's a priority - our developers only have so much time on their hands. The fact that so many things are offensive to so many people only makes it further impractical for us at the moment. We would need to start tagging everything offensive to everyone, and though I suppose you could argue it might be better in the long run, I doubt this is a big enough issue to run to the devs and say "Hey, we need a way to provide people with a choice of censoring all media."
IMO, forking and/or producing separate editions would be a better idea. Automating the production of a separate edition via opt-in censorship mechanisms would be nice, but requires way too much work to be feasible given the resources we have.
Johnleemk
To a Muslim it is offensive to say Jesus is God. It is offensive to view images of inappropriately clothed people. Muslims in Indonesia found the images in Playboy sufficiently offensive to riot over. Muslims in Malaysia frown on the usage of Muslim terminology in a non-Muslim context; the government has actually banned Malay-language Christian publications for using Malay words meaning "Allah", "angel", etc. There are a lot of things people find offensive; there are a lot of things Muslims find offensive.
I think you need to remember that not all Muslims are from the Taliban, just as not all Christians are cross-burning Ku Klux Klansmen. I studied in a Catholic school where several of our teachers were Muslim and knew more about the Gospel (and modern physics) than the average church-goer. I've known several Muslim girls who frequent night clubs (not dressed in burqas incidentally) and don't mind listening to remixes of Sufi hymns. Just because some Muslims "run riot" over alleged insults to their faith doesn't mean you can generalise against the entire Muslim community.
Moreover Saudi Arabia is an individual country whose laws do not necessarily reflect on the global Islamic diaspora. Just because Holland permits prostitution doesn't mean I can say that the entire "Christian West" condones the flesh trade. Indeed implying that Muslim = Saudi Arabian = Malaysian Muslim = Pakistani Muslim = Indian Muslim would be offensive to Muslims who value their national identity over their religious one - and I assure you there are several of them.
I feel that the Muslim community is being referred to very condescendingly in this thread and we must remember that a majority of Muslims are educated, moderate, cosmopolitan and far removed from the Fox News stereotype of unshaven fanatics with Kalashnikovs who will turn up at Wikipedia's head office with RDX and a copy of the Qu'ran. Indeed they have no more love for violence than the average American college student who decides to gun down his classmates.
On 18/02/2008, Prasad J prasad59@gmail.com wrote:
John Lee wrote:
To a Muslim it is offensive to say Jesus is God. It is offensive to view images of inappropriately clothed people. Muslims in Indonesia found the images in Playboy sufficiently offensive to riot over. Muslims in Malaysia frown on the usage of Muslim terminology in a non-Muslim context; the government has actually banned Malay-language Christian publications for using Malay words meaning "Allah", "angel", etc. There are a lot of things people find offensive; there are a lot of things Muslims find offensive.
I think you need to remember that not all Muslims are from the Taliban, just as not all Christians are cross-burning Ku Klux Klansmen. I studied in a Catholic school where several of our teachers
He's not speaking of some theoretical straw man, but of the actual laws in his country.
- d.
On Feb 18, 2008 8:15 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/02/2008, Prasad J prasad59@gmail.com wrote:
John Lee wrote:
To a Muslim it is offensive to say Jesus is God. It is offensive to view images of inappropriately clothed people. Muslims in Indonesia found the images in Playboy sufficiently offensive to riot over. Muslims in Malaysia frown on the usage of Muslim terminology in a non-Muslim context; the government has actually banned Malay-language Christian publications for using Malay words meaning "Allah", "angel", etc. There are a lot of things people find offensive; there are a lot of things Muslims find offensive.
I think you need to remember that not all Muslims are from the Taliban, just as not all Christians are cross-burning Ku Klux Klansmen. I studied in a Catholic school where several of our teachers
He's not speaking of some theoretical straw man, but of the actual laws in his country.
I think it's ironic that being from a Muslim country and having Muslim friends from many walks of life and of varying opinions, it is assumed I need to be lectured about the diversity of viewpoints in the Muslim community. I am merely pointing out that a significant and vocal minority of Muslims hold certain beliefs very strongly, and that if we are to accommodate one fringe group of Muslims, we don't seem to have a significantly good reason not to accommodate another, and so forth.
I would also doubt that "a majority of Muslims are educated, moderate, cosmopolitan," considering most Muslims (like most of the world) don't have access to a great deal of education, and live in mostly developing countries. I don't doubt that the Fox News stereotype is anything but false. What I do object to is an oversimplification of the situation we are faced with, which I think most of us are doing. I am a bit bemused that you (Prasad) compare the beliefs I have noted to extremist Talibanism, because I personally know many wonderful people far removed from the violence of the Taliban who still firmly and fervently believe these things.
Johnleemk
On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 09:14:37AM -0500, John Lee wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 8:15 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/02/2008, Prasad J prasad59@gmail.com wrote:
John Lee wrote:
To a Muslim it is offensive to say Jesus is God. It is offensive to view images of inappropriately clothed people. Muslims in Indonesia found the images in Playboy sufficiently offensive to riot over. Muslims in Malaysia frown on the usage of Muslim terminology in a non-Muslim context; the government has actually banned Malay-language Christian publications for using Malay words meaning "Allah", "angel", etc. There are a lot of things people find offensive; there are a lot of things Muslims find offensive.
I think you need to remember that not all Muslims are from the Taliban, just as not all Christians are cross-burning Ku Klux Klansmen. I studied in a Catholic school where several of our teachers
He's not speaking of some theoretical straw man, but of the actual laws in his country.
I think it's ironic that being from a Muslim country and having Muslim friends from many walks of life and of varying opinions, it is assumed I need to be lectured about the diversity of viewpoints in the Muslim community. I am merely pointing out that a significant and vocal minority of Muslims hold certain beliefs very strongly, and that if we are to accommodate one fringe group of Muslims, we don't seem to have a significantly good reason not to accommodate another, and so forth.
I don't consider the group that rejects Muhammad images belonging to a Muslim fringe. It rather seems to be a very mainstream custom (at least among Sunni Muslims).
I would also doubt that "a majority of Muslims are educated, moderate, cosmopolitan," considering most Muslims (like most of the world) don't have access to a great deal of education, and live in mostly developing countries. I don't doubt that the Fox News stereotype is anything but false. What I do object to is an oversimplification of the situation we are faced with, which I think most of us are doing. I am a bit bemused that you (Prasad) compare the beliefs I have noted to extremist Talibanism, because I personally know many wonderful people far removed from the violence of the Taliban who still firmly and fervently believe these things.
I wonder how you can keep a good relationship, if those people feel offended whenever you mention, that you firmly believe Jesus to be the son of God.
What about "You shall have your religion and I shall have my religion." [109:6]?
And btw, we don't claim on WP that Jesus is God.
br
On Feb 18, 2008 9:58 AM, Raphael Wegmann wegmann@psi.co.at wrote:
On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 09:14:37AM -0500, John Lee wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 8:15 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/02/2008, Prasad J prasad59@gmail.com wrote:
John Lee wrote:
To a Muslim it is offensive to say Jesus is God. It is offensive to view images of inappropriately clothed people. Muslims in Indonesia found the images in Playboy sufficiently offensive to riot over. Muslims in Malaysia frown on the usage of Muslim terminology in a non-Muslim context; the government has actually banned Malay-language Christian publications for using Malay words meaning "Allah", "angel", etc. There are a lot of things people find offensive; there are a lot of things Muslims find offensive.
I think you need to remember that not all Muslims are from the Taliban, just as not all Christians are cross-burning Ku Klux Klansmen. I studied in a Catholic school where several of our teachers
He's not speaking of some theoretical straw man, but of the actual laws in his country.
I think it's ironic that being from a Muslim country and having Muslim friends from many walks of life and of varying opinions, it is assumed I need to be lectured about the diversity of viewpoints in the Muslim community. I am merely pointing out that a significant and vocal minority of Muslims hold certain beliefs very strongly, and that if we are to accommodate one fringe group of Muslims, we don't seem to have a significantly good reason not to accommodate another, and so forth.
I don't consider the group that rejects Muhammad images belonging to a Muslim fringe. It rather seems to be a very mainstream custom (at least among Sunni Muslims).
I was referring to the degree to which they are offended; only a small but very vocal fringe is sufficiently offended to take to the streets. I of course personally know many people offended by images of Muhammad, and yes, an insinuation that their beliefs, such as that Jesus is only a prophet, are wrong, but not sufficiently so to riot over the situation.
I would also doubt that "a majority of Muslims are educated, moderate, cosmopolitan," considering most Muslims (like most of the world) don't have access to a great deal of education, and live in mostly developing countries. I don't doubt that the Fox News stereotype is anything but false. What I do object to is an oversimplification of the situation we are faced with, which I think most of us are doing. I am a bit bemused that you (Prasad) compare the beliefs I have noted to extremist Talibanism, because I personally know many wonderful people far removed from the violence of the Taliban who still firmly and fervently believe these things.
I wonder how you can keep a good relationship, if those people feel offended whenever you mention, that you firmly believe Jesus to be the son of God.
Refer to the above.
What about "You shall have your religion and I shall have my religion." [109:6]?
And btw, we don't claim on WP that Jesus is God.
And we don't explicitly endorse publication of images of Muhammad; we just publish them as a positive, not normative statement, just as we positively state that some people believe Jesus is God, rather than normatively stating he is or isn't God. That doesn't really help things.
You've also ignored the more substantive example, I think, of Indonesian Muslims rioting over the publication of Playboy in Indonesia.
Johnleemk
On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 01:15:22PM +0000, David Gerard wrote:
On 18/02/2008, Prasad J prasad59@gmail.com wrote:
John Lee wrote:
To a Muslim it is offensive to say Jesus is God. It is offensive to view images of inappropriately clothed people. Muslims in Indonesia found the images in Playboy sufficiently offensive to riot over. Muslims in Malaysia frown on the usage of Muslim terminology in a non-Muslim context; the government has actually banned Malay-language Christian publications for using Malay words meaning "Allah", "angel", etc. There are a lot of things people find offensive; there are a lot of things Muslims find offensive.
I think you need to remember that not all Muslims are from the Taliban, just as not all Christians are cross-burning Ku Klux Klansmen. I studied in a Catholic school where several of our teachers
He's not speaking of some theoretical straw man, but of the actual laws in his country.
What exactly is the connection between Malaysian censorship laws and our editorial decision on how to display the Muhammad images?
Is this another straw-man?
On Sun, Feb 17, 2008 at 11:47:34PM -0500, John Lee wrote:
On Feb 17, 2008 4:26 PM, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
geni schrieb:
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
It wouldn't cost "us" that much, because those who care would do the job. Any yes, there is a benefit for "us", because there would be 1 billion people more likely to help us out.
Perhaps but then they find out about this:
They can enable the "nudity" filter for this one.
Or the other elements of Islamic law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
Obviously this is stuff would be problematical under Saudi law:
I don't know or care much about Saudi Arabia (merely 2% of Muslim population), but the Gospel shouldn't be problematic since it provides "guidance and light" according to the Qur'an (5:46).
To a Muslim it is offensive to say Jesus is God.
Yeah sure. Muslims usually freak out whenever they talk to a Christian!?! Is it offensive to Christians to say Mohammad is a prophet? You seem to live in a radicalized neighborhood.
br
On 2008.02.17 21:02:00 +0100, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at scribbled 0.8K characters:
Eugene van der Pijll schrieb:
Raphael Wegmann schreef:
Most visibly, until now, we don't censor Wikipedia for children (and there are a lot more of them than Muslims, at least English speaking). We've always said that if you think that our product contains inappropriate content for that group, fork it!
I don't see any reason that this wouldn't be the proper response in this case as well.
Why demand a fork, if we could easily avoid it?
I'm not demanding a fork, I'm suggesting one.
And why not?
I asked first. Why are you suggesting a fork, if we could easily avoid it?
<snip/> >> The same mechanism could certainly be used to filter inappropriate >> content for children as well. > > I'd be unhappy about that as well.
Why don't you want to offer our children a WP suitable for kids?
-- Raphael
Won't somebody please think of the children?
-- gwern [[For The Children (politics)]]
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
"The demand" was signed by 200.000 people. What about the millions who would appreciate, if we'd give them a chance to follow their customs?
How to assess this in such a way as not to violate NPOV? So far you're speaking speculation.
- d.
Raphael Wegmann wrote:
David Gerard schrieb:
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
I agree. But do you want to be disrespectful to the majority of believers, who won't demand from nonbelievers to observe his taboos? Who would demand from nonbelievers to click the button "Hide images that represent Muhammad"?
The demand was not that the images be hideable - the demand was that the images be *removed*.
"The demand" was signed by 200.000 people. What about the millions who would appreciate, if we'd give them a chance to follow their customs?
Nobody's taking away their chances to follow their customs. Nobody is requiring them to post such pictures. You seem to be advocating for a tyranny of the minority.
Ec
Ray Saintonge schrieb:
Raphael Wegmann wrote:
David Gerard schrieb:
On 17/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann raphael@psi.co.at wrote:
I agree. But do you want to be disrespectful to the majority of believers, who won't demand from nonbelievers to observe his taboos? Who would demand from nonbelievers to click the button "Hide images that represent Muhammad"?
The demand was not that the images be hideable - the demand was that the images be *removed*.
"The demand" was signed by 200.000 people. What about the millions who would appreciate, if we'd give them a chance to follow their customs?
Nobody's taking away their chances to follow their customs. Nobody is requiring them to post such pictures. You seem to be advocating for a tyranny of the minority.
Tyranny?!? Come on, that's ridiculous. There is no absolute ruler who dictates us to show respect. We can offer that service voluntarily without harming anybody.
On 04/02/2008, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
I think we have to take at face value a lot of the plaintive comments in the petition -- "we are people too", etc. Whoever *started* the petition was probably trying to rouse a crowd, but the *signatories* seem mostly to think that the depiction of mohammad is a deliberate insult aimed at them.
If they're going to be that irrational, why should we pander to them?
Appeasement is never good, it almost invariably leads to further demands.
On Feb 4, 2008 4:53 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We should provide an alternate "Mohammad" page without any images on it. Telling people to edit their javascript is silly; most people aren't nearly tech savvy enough to understand what that even means (for example, they have to first understand that a web page can be displayed differently for different users).
While we're at it, let's do that for
* Spoilers * Images containing nudity * Images containing intense violence * ...
In fact, I would argue that the above list contains things *more* important than censoring Mohammad images. Nudity, for example, is likely to offend a far larger number of people than images containing Mohammad. Why should we bend over backwards to appease one religious group when we have the potential to appease far more editors across all races and religions?
[[WP:NOTCENSORED]], that's why.
On Feb 4, 2008 10:02 PM, Chris Howie cdhowie@gmail.com wrote:
group when we have the potential to appease far more editors across
Meant readers, not editors.
The lack of proof-reading hurts their case way more when you see different posters from different continents posting identical comments with identical typos ...
WilyD
On Feb 3, 2008 12:38 PM, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Still going. 68K now:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/removal-of-the-pics-of-muhammad-from-wikipe...
I request they at least proof-read their petition. "holly figures"??? :)
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If this thread is going to continue, maybe we can fork it into something with a different title?
On Feb 4, 2008 10:36 AM, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
The lack of proof-reading hurts their case way more when you see different posters from different continents posting identical comments with identical typos ...
WilyD
On Feb 3, 2008 12:38 PM, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Still going. 68K now:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/removal-of-the-pics-of-muhammad-from-wikipe...
I request they at least proof-read their petition. "holly figures"??? :)
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On Feb 4, 2008 4:39 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
If this thread is going to continue, maybe we can fork it into something with a different title?
Maybe into "I want to at lest kill the responsible person who changed the subject line".
Mathias
On 04/02/2008, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
If this thread is going to continue, maybe we can fork it into something with a different title?
It's a direct quote from a signatory, considering they are campaigning to censor Wikipedia, it would be rather ironic for us to censor their comments. Yes, the subject line is disgusting, but that is what the signatory said.
On 04/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
If this thread is going to continue, maybe we can fork it into something with a different title?
It's a direct quote from a signatory, considering they are campaigning to censor Wikipedia, it would be rather ironic for us to censor their comments. Yes, the subject line is disgusting, but that is what the signatory said.
Eh not to worry the standards on the other side are so much higher:
"Really. I keep saying this: give me 15 minutes with damn near any moslem, and I can get him bounced into 72-hour psychiatric detention; and the judge will back me. They are that crazy."
"Leave the pictures.
Pictures are proof that not all Arabs are animals."
Littlegreenfootballs comment section
On Feb 4, 2008 11:26 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Eh not to worry the standards on the other side are so much higher:
Speaking of the other site. I just got the first ticket in OTRS that praised Wikipedia for keeping the images. I politely answered that we do not take part or side in an inner-islamic debate about the creation or display of images of people someone considers to be prophets. However, if a religion is showing iconophobic or iconoclastic tendencies, we try to describe those as accurate as possible in the corresponding article. Readers are encouraged to participate in improving the articles according to the neutral point of view policy (and the other ones).
On 04/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
If this thread is going to continue, maybe we can fork it into something with a different title?
It's a direct quote from a signatory, considering they are campaigning to censor Wikipedia, it would be rather ironic for us to censor their comments. Yes, the subject line is disgusting, but that is what the signatory said.
Eh not to worry the standards on the other side are so much higher:
"Really. I keep saying this: give me 15 minutes with damn near any moslem, and I can get him bounced into 72-hour psychiatric detention; and the judge will back me. They are that crazy."
"Leave the pictures.
Pictures are proof that not all Arabs are animals."
Littlegreenfootballs comment section
Those are some way from being death threats... still not particularly friendly, though...
On Feb 4, 2008 5:51 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
If this thread is going to continue, maybe we can fork it into something with a different title?
It's a direct quote from a signatory, considering they are campaigning to censor Wikipedia, it would be rather ironic for us to censor their comments. Yes, the subject line is disgusting, but that is what the signatory said.
Eh not to worry the standards on the other side are so much higher:
"Really. I keep saying this: give me 15 minutes with damn near any moslem, and I can get him bounced into 72-hour psychiatric detention; and the judge will back me. They are that crazy."
"Leave the pictures.
Pictures are proof that not all Arabs are animals."
Littlegreenfootballs comment section
Those are some way from being death threats... still not particularly friendly, though...
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Nevertheless, the logic is sound. Don't censor the images. Wikipedia is not censored. The top of [[Wikipedia:Content disclaimer]] makes my point. If we respond to this at all, we should just add another bullet point to that page discussing religious images and G*d vs God.
On 04/02/2008, Thinboy00 thinboy00@gmail.com wrote:
Nevertheless, the logic is sound. Don't censor the images. Wikipedia is not censored.
Oh yes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_inkblot_test
All question of censorship aside, does it really make sense to have any image of historical persons that is not based on the actual likeness of that person on any page except [[depictions of...]] pages?
Maybe there are a few exceptions, where a particular depiction has become universally identified with the subject. But that's not the case with most historical figures, Jesus and Muhammad included.
Many, many depictions of Jesus look very European, which doesn't seem to be encyclopedic to me. But there's also a trend lately to have other depictions of Jesus that are targeted to a particular audience, without any concern for historical accuracy. This may be fine in liturgical settings, but not in an encyclopedia. But this is only more obviously wrong than a more "historically accurate" depiction. They're both still wrong.
-Rich Holton
On Feb 4, 2008 4:51 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/02/2008, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
If this thread is going to continue, maybe we can fork it into something with a different title?
It's a direct quote from a signatory, considering they are campaigning to censor Wikipedia, it would be rather ironic for us to censor their comments. Yes, the subject line is disgusting, but that is what the signatory said.
Eh not to worry the standards on the other side are so much higher:
"Really. I keep saying this: give me 15 minutes with damn near any moslem, and I can get him bounced into 72-hour psychiatric detention; and the judge will back me. They are that crazy."
"Leave the pictures.
Pictures are proof that not all Arabs are animals."
Littlegreenfootballs comment section
Those are some way from being death threats... still not particularly friendly, though...
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It's encyclopedic in view of the historical context on how people from the past perceived Jesus. Who knows what Jesus actually looked like? However given the subject's significance in art, particularly Renaissance Art, I see no valid reason to preclude such images.
On 05/02/2008, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
All question of censorship aside, does it really make sense to have any image of historical persons that is not based on the actual likeness of that person on any page except [[depictions of...]] pages?
Maybe there are a few exceptions, where a particular depiction has become universally identified with the subject. But that's not the case with most historical figures, Jesus and Muhammad included.
Many, many depictions of Jesus look very European, which doesn't seem to be encyclopedic to me. But there's also a trend lately to have other depictions of Jesus that are targeted to a particular audience, without any concern for historical accuracy. This may be fine in liturgical settings, but not in an encyclopedia. But this is only more obviously wrong than a more "historically accurate" depiction. They're both still wrong.
-Rich Holton
Meg
I was too sweeping in my post. Depictions, for example, of Jesus in an article on Renaissance Art would be fine. A photo of Michelangelo's David would be appropriate on [[Michelangelo]], on [[Depictions of David]] (or similar), and of course on [[David (Michelangelo)]], but not on [[David]].
I don't see how any depiction of someone that is not based on that someone's likeness can possibly be encyclopedic in the article on that someone.
On Feb 4, 2008 8:21 PM, Meg Ireland megireland99@gmail.com wrote:
It's encyclopedic in view of the historical context on how people from the past perceived Jesus. Who knows what Jesus actually looked like? However given the subject's significance in art, particularly Renaissance Art, I see no valid reason to preclude such images.
On 05/02/2008, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
All question of censorship aside, does it really make sense to have any image of historical persons that is not based on the actual likeness of
that
person on any page except [[depictions of...]] pages?
Maybe there are a few exceptions, where a particular depiction has
become
universally identified with the subject. But that's not the case with
most
historical figures, Jesus and Muhammad included.
Many, many depictions of Jesus look very European, which doesn't seem to
be
encyclopedic to me. But there's also a trend lately to have other
depictions
of Jesus that are targeted to a particular audience, without any concern
for
historical accuracy. This may be fine in liturgical settings, but not in
an
encyclopedia. But this is only more obviously wrong than a more "historically accurate" depiction. They're both still wrong.
-Rich Holton
Meg
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On Feb 4, 2008 10:31 PM, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
I was too sweeping in my post. Depictions, for example, of Jesus in an article on Renaissance Art would be fine. A photo of Michelangelo's David would be appropriate on [[Michelangelo]], on [[Depictions of David]] (or similar), and of course on [[David (Michelangelo)]], but not on [[David]].
I don't see how any depiction of someone that is not based on that someone's likeness can possibly be encyclopedic in the article on that someone.
Ideas of what someone looks like are sometimes just as important as his or her actual looks. We include pictures of Greek mythology in articles about Greek mythology even though Renaissance painters probably had a very different conception of how things looked than those who first told those myths. As long as we attribute our sources for these depictions I don't think it is a huge problem at all.
Johnleemk