"Censorship" of images on the Arabic Wikipedia

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Sorted

Aude

21 Feb 2008 21 Feb '08

1:02 a.m.

I have made some edits on the Arabic language Wikipedia, and have been looking at various articles and topics through the interlanguage links. As mentioned on the list before, the article about Muhammad on the Arabic Wikipedia is illustrated only with calligraphy images. On other topics (e.g. human anatomy), I have found some examples of how they "censor" images One way is with a "viewing warning" image, which essentially says "Some people may consider this picture to be disturbing. Don't click here unless you are certain you wish to see it." If you click on it, you see the image. Another way I have seen is use of the show/hide feature, with the image by default hidden. <http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8:AnubisClick> I have tried these out over in my sandbox space on English Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aude/Sandbox7 Maybe an approach like one of these would serve as a compromise on the issue of images on the [[Muhammad]] article. I don't have lots of time to involve myself in the issue on-wiki, but want to put these ideas out there and help inform about how the Arabic Wikipedia does things in some situations. -Aude

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David Goodman

21 Feb 21 Feb

1:09 a.m.

The show/hide feature they use does not work in Safari and with text-only browsers. On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 7:02 PM, Aude <audevivere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

Aude

1:19 a.m.

In Safari, does it by default show the image? or hide it? or how does it not work? -Aude On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 7:09 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

The show/hide feature they use does not work in Safari and with text-only browsers. On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 7:02 PM, Aude <audevivere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I have made some edits on the Arabic language Wikipedia, and have been looking at various articles and topics through the interlanguage links.

mentioned on the list before, the article about Muhammad on the Arabic Wikipedia is illustrated only with calligraphy images. On other topics

(e.g.

human anatomy), I have found some examples of how they "censor" images One way is with a "viewing warning" image, which essentially says "Some people may consider this picture to be disturbing. Don't click here

unless

you are certain you wish to see it." If you click on it, you see the

image.

Another way I have seen is use of the show/hide feature, with the image

default hidden. <http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8:AnubisClick> I have tried these out over in my sandbox space on English Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aude/Sandbox7 Maybe an approach like one of these would serve as a compromise on the

issue

of images on the [[Muhammad]] article. I don't have lots of time to

involve

myself in the issue on-wiki, but want to put these ideas out there and

help

inform about how the Arabic Wikipedia does things in some situations. -Aude _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

-- Aude

Florence Devouard

1:25 a.m.

I am using Safari (3.0.4) on Mac and I have always been able to see the show/hide feature. I checked again on Aude page and it works just fine. The french wikipedia has been using such system on some sex-related articles, such as the clitoris one (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitoris) and it works quite well. I am personally very favorable to use of this system on images which might hurt some sensibilities. Ant David Goodman wrote:

...

The show/hide feature they use does not work in Safari and with text-only browsers. On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 7:02 PM, Aude <audevivere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Florence Devouard

12:43 p.m.

It works on mine. By default, it is closed. Incidently... I went on http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/جنس in the article, there is an external link, which seems to lead to a commercial website, which may not be only about sex. http://www.maktoobblog.com/ Can you check ? thanks ant Aude wrote:

...

In Safari, does it by default show the image? or hide it? or how does it not work? -Aude

Raphael Wegmann

8:01 p.m.

Florence Devouard schrieb:

...

Don't even think about adding such a show/hide feature to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad I got a Level 3 Vandalism warning template on my talk page for doing so. WP:AGF seems to be another policy admins don't have to follow. -- User:Raphael1

Thomas Dalton

8:09 p.m.

...

You did something there is quite clearly not a consensus for - that's either bad faith, or very bad judgement, your choice.

Raphael Wegmann

8:21 p.m.

Thomas Dalton schrieb:

...

You did something there is quite clearly not a consensus for - that's either bad faith, or very bad judgement, your choice.

Did you ever bother to look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Muhammad/images There are 8 pages full of complaints about the Muhammad images. I'd conclude, that there is indeed a strong disagreement to that alleged "consensus". -- Raphael

James Farrar

8:43 p.m.

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

...

Thomas Dalton schrieb:

You did something there is quite clearly not a consensus for - that's either bad faith, or very bad judgement, your choice.

"No consensus for action" != "consensus for no action".

Raphael Wegmann

9:04 p.m.

James Farrar schrieb:

...

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

Thomas Dalton schrieb:

You did something there is quite clearly not a consensus for - that's either bad faith, or very bad judgement, your choice.

"No consensus for action" != "consensus for no action".

I agree. WP:CON doesn't say anything about a "consensus for no action", indeed it says that no group should "block further change on grounds that they already have made a decision". -- Raphael

Thomas Dalton

9:10 p.m.

...

WP:CON doesn't say anything about a "consensus for no action", indeed it says that no group should "block further change on grounds that they already have made a decision".

True, but I fail to see your point. If there is no consensus either way, we do nothing, that's how it works. (It's not an ideal system, but it's the best we have.)

Raphael Wegmann

9:26 p.m.

Thomas Dalton schrieb:

...

WP:CON doesn't say anything about a "consensus for no action", indeed it says that no group should "block further change on grounds that they already have made a decision".

True, but I fail to see your point. If there is no consensus either way, we do nothing, that's how it works. (It's not an ideal system, but it's the best we have.)

WP:CON doesn't say, that everybody has to stop editing the article until we have a consensus. Indeed we can (and should) try out new ways of displaying those images. If people honestly attempt to find a common ground, we might be lucky and find a solution with a broader backing. -- Raphael

Thomas Dalton

9:59 p.m.

...

You don't have to know there is a consensus before making a change, certainly, but if you know there isn't a consensus, then you shouldn't make the change. (Does that make sense?)

Raphael Wegmann

11:14 p.m.

Thomas Dalton schrieb:

...

You don't have to know there is a consensus before making a change, certainly, but if you know there isn't a consensus, then you shouldn't make the change. (Does that make sense?)

How should I know, before I try it out? -- Raphael

Thomas Dalton

11:18 p.m.

...

How should I know, before I try it out?

I assume you've seen the discussion on this mailing list and on the article's talk page?

Raphael Wegmann

11:36 p.m.

Thomas Dalton schrieb:

...

How should I know, before I try it out?

I assume you've seen the discussion on this mailing list and on the article's talk page?

Sure. There's a heated debate with strong backing on the "no-censorship" and the "remove images" sides. The "hide/show" feature could be an acceptable compromise for both sides. Now that I tried, I found out that the "no-censorship" crowd doesn't seem to care about offensiveness and shows no willingness to compromise. IMHO a very immature and narrow-minded position. -- Raphael

geni

11:46 p.m.

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

...

Sure. There's a heated debate with strong backing on the "no-censorship" and the "remove images" sides. The "hide/show" feature could be an acceptable compromise for both sides.

Why?

...

Now that I tried, I found out that the "no-censorship" crowd doesn't seem to care about offensiveness and shows no willingness to compromise. IMHO a very immature and narrow-minded position.

You expect someone holding a no censorship position to accept censorship? -- geni

Raphael Wegmann

22 Feb 22 Feb

12:03 a.m.

geni schrieb:

...

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

Sure. There's a heated debate with strong backing on the "no-censorship" and the "remove images" sides. The "hide/show" feature could be an acceptable compromise for both sides.

Why?

Because it provides a solution for both. Everybody can decide for themselves whether he wants to see those images or not.

...

Now that I tried, I found out that the "no-censorship" crowd doesn't seem to care about offensiveness and shows no willingness to compromise. IMHO a very immature and narrow-minded position.

You expect someone holding a no censorship position to accept censorship?

How is it censorship, when all you have to do is click a link? Is your computer censoring the internet, because you have to click the browser icon before you can surf the internet? Is your browser censoring Wikipedia, because you have to click on the bookmark before it shows you the Wikipedia page? br -- Raphael

Aude

1:28 a.m.

If we setup the show/hide feature for the Muhammad image, I'm sure we could make a .css hack that people could put in their monobook.css so that the image is not hidden for those that want it that way. Or you could click the link to unhide it. Currently, for people not logged in or just reading, they get the default which is to see the image. That is no compromise. I'm also not sure that makes the article NPOV. Ordinarily, I'm all for "Wikipedia is not censored". In very rare instances such as this and maybe just this topic, I would rather see the show/hide feature or some other compromise. -Aude PS - I took care of the spam link.

geni

2:20 a.m.

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

...

geni schrieb:

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

Sure. There's a heated debate with strong backing on the "no-censorship" and the "remove images" sides. The "hide/show" feature could be an acceptable compromise for both sides.

Why?

Because it provides a solution for both. Everybody can decide for themselves whether he wants to see those images or not.

Going by the amount of media coverage it would appear that a large number of people already have that choice.

...

Censorship is the action of placing barriers between people an information. You are trying to place an unnecessary barrier between people and information. -- geni

Ian Woollard

2:46 a.m.

On 22/02/2008, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Censorship is the action of placing barriers between people an information.

...

-- geni

-- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better.

geni

2:50 a.m.

On 22/02/2008, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 22/02/2008, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Censorship is the action of placing barriers between people an information.

Alex G

2:56 a.m.

When in doubt, ask a reliable source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship *Censorship* is the suppression or deletion of material, which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a *censor*. Must say I agree with geni. On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 11:50 AM, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 22/02/2008, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 22/02/2008, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Censorship is the action of placing barriers between people an information.

Censorship is the suppression or deletion of material, which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive How exactly would you suggest one do this without placing barriers between people and information? -- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Marc Riddell

3:10 a.m.

...

On 22/02/2008, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 22/02/2008, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> Censorship is the action of placing barriers between people an >> information. > > > {{fact}} >

on 2/21/08 8:50 PM, geni at geniice(a)gmail.com wrote:

...

That would be a neat trick. I'd like to know how you'd do it too. Marc

Ian Woollard

3:20 a.m.

On 22/02/2008, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

You couldn't. But conversely, merely putting barriers between people and information doesn't make it censorship. It's when you make the information largely or completely *inaccessible* by normal means that it becomes censorship (and even that's probably not sufficient condition, but it is a necessary one). To take a trivial example, if I wrap a book up to send it through the post, that's putting barriers between people and information, but it's not censorship. If I move information into a different article but leave a link to it in the original article, then that's also not censorship. We do that kind of thing *all* the time. It's putting a barrier between the information and people, but it's absolutely *not* censorship.

...

-- geni

-- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better.

Raphael Wegmann

10:49 a.m.

geni schrieb:

...

On 22/02/2008, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 22/02/2008, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Censorship is the action of placing barriers between people an information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29 -- Raphael

James Farrar

3:44 a.m.

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

...

geni schrieb:

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

Sure. There's a heated debate with strong backing on the "no-censorship" and the "remove images" sides. The "hide/show" feature could be an acceptable compromise for both sides.

Why?

Because it provides a solution for both.

Actually, it provides a solution for neither, imposing censorship without removing the images.

Thomas Dalton

12:23 p.m.

...

How should I know, before I try it out?

I assume you've seen the discussion on this mailing list and on the article's talk page?

Sure. There's a heated debate with strong backing on the "no-censorship" and the "remove images" sides. The "hide/show" feature could be an acceptable compromise for both sides.

Could be, but clearly isn't, since it's been suggested and rejected multiple times.

...

Now that I tried, I found out that the "no-censorship" crowd doesn't seem to care about offensiveness and shows no willingness to compromise. IMHO a very immature and narrow-minded position.

I prefer "pro-neutrality" to "anti-censorship", and neutrality is most certainly something I am not at all willing to compromise on.

James Farrar

21 Feb 21 Feb

9:17 p.m.

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

...

James Farrar schrieb:

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

Thomas Dalton schrieb:

> Don't even think about adding such a show/hide feature to > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad > > I got a Level 3 Vandalism warning template on my talk page for doing so. > WP:AGF seems to be another policy admins don't have to follow. You did something there is quite clearly not a consensus for - that's either bad faith, or very bad judgement, your choice.

"No consensus for action" != "consensus for no action".

I agree.

In which case, you should also appreciate that making a change on a highly-controversial subject when there is no consensus or such a change is, at best, bad judgement.

James Farrar

9:17 p.m.

On 21/02/2008, James Farrar <james.farrar(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

In which case, you should also appreciate that making a change on a highly-controversial subject when there is no consensus or such a change is, at best, bad judgement.

That should have read "for such a change".

Raphael Wegmann

9:31 p.m.

James Farrar schrieb:

...

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

James Farrar schrieb:

"No consensus for action" != "consensus for no action".

I agree.

In which case, you should also appreciate that making a change on a highly-controversial subject when there is no consensus or such a change is, at best, bad judgement.

Well, obviously there is neither a consensus for displaying the images nor is there a consensus for removing the images. Why not try out a new way and find out whether it gets supported? -- Raphael

geni

8:55 p.m.

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

...

8 pages but for the most part not from wikipedians. Thus while their opinions have been taken on board then are not going to be a deciding factor. -- geni

Raphael Wegmann

9:06 p.m.

geni schrieb:

...

On 21/02/2008, Raphael Wegmann <raphael(a)psi.co.at> wrote:

8 pages but for the most part not from wikipedians. Thus while their opinions have been taken on board then are not going to be a deciding factor.

Huh? What makes you a Wikipedian apart from editing Wikipedia? -- Raphael

Thomas Dalton

9:11 p.m.

...

8 pages but for the most part not from wikipedians. Thus while their opinions have been taken on board then are not going to be a deciding factor.

Huh? What makes you a Wikipedian apart from editing Wikipedia?

Making significant contributions to Wikipedia. Complaining on a talk page doesn't really count.

Charlotte Webb

8:36 p.m.

On 2/20/08, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

...

I am personally very favorable to use of this system on images which might hurt some sensibilities.

How do we determine which images "might hurt some sensibilities"? How do distinguish "reasonable complaints" from fundamentalist dogmata or deliberate trolling? Do we use this system for any image for which somebody requests it, or do they need to establish that there is [some arbitrary level of] support for doing so? If images which "might hurt some sensibilities" are given a "show/hide" button, which is the default mode? If we are going to use a "show/hide" button for some images, why not add it to the gray caption area of of every framed ("thumb") image? Sometimes I wish I had seen something that offended me enough that I might have any interest at all in answering the above questions, but I don't, so I'll leave them for someone else. There's a fine line between open-mindedness and apathy and I really don't know which side I'm on. But I do know we should at least pretend to approach this issue in an objective manner, and it seems (to me) that most of the participants in this discussion have given up on that. —C.W.

Thomas Dalton

1:02 p.m.

On 21/02/2008, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

The show/hide feature they use does not work in Safari and with text-only browsers.

Images not working on text-only browsers isn't really a problem...

Thomas Dalton

1:03 p.m.

...

Maybe an approach like one of these would serve as a compromise on the issue of images on the [[Muhammad]] article.

It's been suggested already. My objection to it is that there's no neutral way to decide which images to "censor" and which not to.

David Gerard

1:08 p.m.

On 21/02/2008, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

> Maybe an approach like one of these would serve as a compromise on the issue > of images on the [[Muhammad]] article.

...

It's been suggested already. My objection to it is that there's no neutral way to decide which images to "censor" and which not to.

NPOV violation is where censorship (or censorship-lite) of sexually explicit imagery has also fallen down in the past. In this case it's a bit different - if you go to a page called [[clitoris]] you shouldn't be surprised to see a clitoris, if you go to a page called [[autofellatio]] you shouldn't be surprised to see an act of autofellatio. But if you go to [[Muhammad]], what would you expect to see? For what values of "you"? A calligraphic image at the top and historic artistic depictions lower down? I'm sure [[Talk:Muhammad]] has addressed this by the megabyte ... - d.

Will

3:57 p.m.

We used to have a smaller, less-used template on enwiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Linkimage, which was deleted (and I think salted) due to NOTCENSORED. On 21/02/2008, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On 21/02/2008, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe an approach like one of these would serve as a compromise on

the issue

> of images on the [[Muhammad]] article.

It's been suggested already. My objection to it is that there's no neutral way to decide which images to "censor" and which not to.

Ian Woollard

4:16 p.m.

On 21/02/2008, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

But if you go to [[Muhammad]], what would you expect to see?

<wikilawyering> There's no policy or guideline that says we should put things in any article that people expect to see. There's policy that you should follow the notable sources on that particular subject and not give undue emphasis to any point of view *from* them, but that's about it. So if you expect that then you'd be fine. There's also absolutely no policy or guideline that 'similar' articles should have 'similar' material in (OK, MOS). If you think that there should be, I would suggest you propose it, but I kinda doubt it would get traction. </wikilawyering>

...

- d.

-- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly imperfect world things would be a lot better.

The Mangoe

7:31 p.m.

Well, when I went to "labium" I was surprised as all get-out not to end up at a disambig page.

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14 participants

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participants (14)

Alex G
Aude
Charlotte Webb
David Gerard
David Goodman
Florence Devouard
geni
Ian Woollard
James Farrar
Marc Riddell
Raphael Wegmann
The Mangoe
Thomas Dalton
Will