http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_(prison)
Sorry, this may sound just as censorship, but frankly, I am shocked at these pictures. And I do not think they belong to Wikipedia. At least, not now. That is too soon. Just my opinion.
They belong. If they allowed picture taking at the Colorado State Penitentiary or in a prison in France they would belong too. Their importance is that most torture in prisons happens without pictures being taken. These pictures have to stand in place of the hundreds or even thousands of similar situations that don't get recorded. Or is that too creative?
Fred
From: Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com Reply-To: anthere9@yahoo.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 23:15:54 +0200 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] troubled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_(prison)
Sorry, this may sound just as censorship, but frankly, I am shocked at these pictures. And I do not think they belong to Wikipedia. At least, not now. That is too soon. Just my opinion.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia. We censor clitoris pictures, while billion of humans on Earth have a clitoris, and that is something perfectly normal to have.
We censor clitoris for the motive that people could be shocked.
However, we do not censor pictures of torture and humiliation. Forgive me, but I am troubled.
No, I do not think everything should be shown, especially soon after they happen. Just as some criminal trials of WWII horors were recorded, but the records preserved for several years before being shown publicly. This in memory of the deads. Even though we know what happened.
So, explain to me why we show shocking images of human humiliation, while we cant display clitoris, because chaste eyes would be shocked ?
Fred Bauder a écrit:
They belong. If they allowed picture taking at the Colorado State Penitentiary or in a prison in France they would belong too. Their importance is that most torture in prisons happens without pictures being taken. These pictures have to stand in place of the hundreds or even thousands of similar situations that don't get recorded. Or is that too creative?
Fred
Anthere wrote:
We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia.
I don't agree that our handling of 'clitoris' can reasonably be called 'censorship'. The picture(s) are right there for anyone to click on and see.
On the other hand, I'm inclined to agree that the current handling is perhaps not optimal.
Could we perhaps handle these pictures in the same way? That is, make them accessible in the same way, but not randomly plastered all over the article?
Part of the issue here is that these pictures are of _extreme_ current importance. Many people visiting that page will be interested in seeing the pictures, and rightfully so.
The article in its present state needs a lot of work, of course. As an example, there is a series of quotes from George W. Bush about war crimes *committed by the Iraqis* with the droll suggestion that "These statements may or may not represent the positions that his administration will take regarding the Abu Ghraib prison situation."
That statement seems designed to be a swipe against the Bush administration rather than a neutral assessment of the probabilities. The reader is invited to imagine Bush plausibly saying "These are war crimes, but we should excuse them." It's just editorial.
--Jimbo
Exactly. I have tried several times to get those quotes out of there, they're completely POV, but they keep getting inserted. They're nonsense, and have no place in this article.
RickK
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
The article in its present state needs a lot of work, of course. As an example, there is a series of quotes from George W. Bush about war crimes *committed by the Iraqis* with the droll suggestion that "These statements may or may not represent the positions that his administration will take regarding the Abu Ghraib prison situation."
That statement seems designed to be a swipe against the Bush administration rather than a neutral assessment of the probabilities. The reader is invited to imagine Bush plausibly saying "These are war crimes, but we should excuse them." It's just editorial.
--Jimbo
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Pictures of the clitoris are not displayed to avoid pandering to purient interests which apparently (I have not followed this debate) outweighs the information value.
While there may be a few readers who might enjoy pictures of torture and putting many of them on Wikipedia would be wrong there is such a strong history of people lying about torture that we would not want to part of suppression of evidence. Thus there is a very high information value. (We finally caught a few of these sonsabitches). There is a point of view problem as 99.9% of torture is not photographed thus displaying pictures of American torture only (as pictures of Saudi Arabian or Israeli or Turkish or Tibetan or [put in your own despotic regime] torture are not available) gives a somewhat false impression. It takes a pretty dumb criminal to take pictures (or let others take pictures) of themselves while they are committing a crime.
Fred
From: Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com Reply-To: anthere9@yahoo.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 02:51:44 +0200 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.
We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia. We censor clitoris pictures, while billion of humans on Earth have a clitoris, and that is something perfectly normal to have.
We censor clitoris for the motive that people could be shocked.
However, we do not censor pictures of torture and humiliation. Forgive me, but I am troubled.
No, I do not think everything should be shown, especially soon after they happen. Just as some criminal trials of WWII horors were recorded, but the records preserved for several years before being shown publicly. This in memory of the deads. Even though we know what happened.
So, explain to me why we show shocking images of human humiliation, while we cant display clitoris, because chaste eyes would be shocked ?
Fred Bauder a écrit:
They belong. If they allowed picture taking at the Colorado State Penitentiary or in a prison in France they would belong too. Their importance is that most torture in prisons happens without pictures being taken. These pictures have to stand in place of the hundreds or even thousands of similar situations that don't get recorded. Or is that too creative?
Fred
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Fred Bauder wrote:
...there is such a strong history of people lying about torture that we would not want to part of suppression of evidence.
While I strongly support the importance of our having the pictures on the site in some form, I just wanted to say that this particular argument didn't seem persuasive to me. The chances of evidence being suppressed here are close to zero, these pictures have been broadcast worldwide in all sorts of media.
I do agree completely that the photos have high information value, of course.
Just to make my position clear:
1. I agree with Anthere that it is problematic for the photos to be right there in the article, as they are quite disturbing.
2. I think that they absolutely have to be accessible with ease, beause they are highly informative.
3. I'm not making any sort of proclamation about this. If we have to do so, we should have a vote or poll of some sort, and go with that. Hopefully that won't be necessary, since perhaps some compromise could be reached in which we directly show some of the photos, and put some of the others behind a single-click with warning.
--Jimbo
Weighing in on this issue, I think the pictures are on the borderline of what we should put inline, but should probably stay. The sexually explicit parts have been blurred out anyway, so they're not problematic on that account.
I like the way [[clitoris]] has been handled generally (no pun intended), though perhaps there's a better way of doing it. Having it a simple link makes it so that anyone can easily find it (an on-site link, so it doesn't depend on an external server), but so that people who are reading the article don't have to have it in their peripheral vision the whole time if they find it uncomfortable for whatever reason.
Conceptually disturbing images are somewhat different than graphic ones. People might be disturbed by pictures of concetration camps, but these are more conceptually disturbing than graphic, and are fairly integral to an article on, say, the [[Holocaust]]. On the other hand, if there were gruesome pictures of medical experiments being performed, we might want to put those on as linked instead of inline.
The main reason I'd favor that approach is that otherwise there'll be whole sections of Wikipedia that people are somewhat afraid to visit, especially in public areas. Someone should be able to read [[torture]] without seeing graphic images of torture; they should be able to read [[automobile accident]] without seeing bloody corpses plastered on the roadway, and so on. If the picture might be useful, they ought to be able to see it, but that should be up to them.
But back to the point, I think the [[Abu Graith]] images in particular are okay, though perhaps some better placement is possible. Although I've wrangled on that page a bit myself, I do think they currently come across in a moderately documentary tone, rather than a pursuasive tone intended to shock the reader into a particular action.
-Mark
I wonder whether you could have a sub-page with exactly the same text but with the pictures, so that you would have a link at the top to 'switch on the pictures'. It would be kind of tricky to maintain I suppose. Mark
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Weighing in on this issue, I think the pictures are on the borderline of what we should put inline, but should probably stay. The sexually explicit parts have been blurred out anyway, so they're not problematic on that account.
I like the way [[clitoris]] has been handled generally (no pun intended), though perhaps there's a better way of doing it. Having it a simple link makes it so that anyone can easily find it (an on-site link, so it doesn't depend on an external server), but so that people who are reading the article don't have to have it in their peripheral vision the whole time if they find it uncomfortable for whatever reason.
Conceptually disturbing images are somewhat different than graphic ones. People might be disturbed by pictures of concetration camps, but these are more conceptually disturbing than graphic, and are fairly integral to an article on, say, the [[Holocaust]]. On the other hand, if there were gruesome pictures of medical experiments being performed, we might want to put those on as linked instead of inline.
The main reason I'd favor that approach is that otherwise there'll be whole sections of Wikipedia that people are somewhat afraid to visit, especially in public areas. Someone should be able to read [[torture]] without seeing graphic images of torture; they should be able to read [[automobile accident]] without seeing bloody corpses plastered on the roadway, and so on. If the picture might be useful, they ought to be able to see it, but that should be up to them.
But back to the point, I think the [[Abu Graith]] images in particular are okay, though perhaps some better placement is possible. Although I've wrangled on that page a bit myself, I do think they currently come across in a moderately documentary tone, rather than a pursuasive tone intended to shock the reader into a particular action.
-Mark
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On Tuesday 11 May 2004 18:25, Mark Richards wrote:
I wonder whether you could have a sub-page with exactly the same text but with the pictures, so that you would have a link at the top to 'switch on the pictures'. It would be kind of tricky to maintain I suppose.
Not at all: text could be in the MediaWiki namespace (articles should then probably contain a comment telling newbies how to edit the text).
I hope everyone will agree that the pictures on the following articles are potentially offensive for some readers
* penis on penis article * clitoris on clitoris article * Torture and humiliation pictures on the prison article
Among the three cited above, penis pictures, torture and humiliation are said informative enough, so that we display the pictures directly. However, a clitoris is not something informative enough, so, it should be hidden.
I would like that we stop applying double standards on the encyclopedia.
If a picture is informative, we keep it. If not, we trash it.
If a picture is extremely offensive, we trash it. If a picture is generally considered offensive, we apply similar standard to all pictures generally considered offensive. If a picture is not offensive, we show it.
All offensive pictures should be treated the same way and displayed the same way. Either we decide we do not care about hurting some sensibilities, we display them, and we do this for ALL offensive pictures. Or we decide we could care a bit, and we put a link to it, instead of full display in the page.
The argument that the clitoris image is not informative enough, as an argument for it to be hidden is a NON-ARGUMENT. Either it is informative and we apply it the same standard than to all offensive pictures. Or it is not informative, and we trash it.
Now, if a clitoris picture is something not interesting, I also would like that same standards are applied to all human genitals. If we remove the clitoris, we remove the penises as well.
Fred Bauder a écrit:
Pictures of the clitoris are not displayed to avoid pandering to purient interests which apparently (I have not followed this debate) outweighs the information value.
While there may be a few readers who might enjoy pictures of torture and putting many of them on Wikipedia would be wrong there is such a strong history of people lying about torture that we would not want to part of suppression of evidence. Thus there is a very high information value. (We finally caught a few of these sonsabitches). There is a point of view problem as 99.9% of torture is not photographed thus displaying pictures of American torture only (as pictures of Saudi Arabian or Israeli or Turkish or Tibetan or [put in your own despotic regime] torture are not available) gives a somewhat false impression. It takes a pretty dumb criminal to take pictures (or let others take pictures) of themselves while they are committing a crime.
Fred
From: Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com Reply-To: anthere9@yahoo.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l-g2DCOkC13y2GglJvpFV4uA@public.gmane.org Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 02:51:44 +0200 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.
We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia. We censor clitoris pictures, while billion of humans on Earth have a clitoris, and that is something perfectly normal to have.
We censor clitoris for the motive that people could be shocked.
However, we do not censor pictures of torture and humiliation. Forgive me, but I am troubled.
No, I do not think everything should be shown, especially soon after they happen. Just as some criminal trials of WWII horors were recorded, but the records preserved for several years before being shown publicly. This in memory of the deads. Even though we know what happened.
So, explain to me why we show shocking images of human humiliation, while we cant display clitoris, because chaste eyes would be shocked ?
Fred Bauder a écrit:
They belong. If they allowed picture taking at the Colorado State Penitentiary or in a prison in France they would belong too. Their importance is that most torture in prisons happens without pictures being taken. These pictures have to stand in place of the hundreds or even thousands of similar situations that don't get recorded. Or is that too creative?
Fred
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-
l
Anthere wrote:
Among the three cited above, penis pictures, torture and humiliation are said informative enough, so that we display the pictures directly. However, a clitoris is not something informative enough, so, it should be hidden.
I think this is inconsistent.
If a picture is informative, we keep it. If not, we trash it.
If a picture is extremely offensive, we trash it. If a picture is generally considered offensive, we apply similar standard to all pictures generally considered offensive. If a picture is not offensive, we show it.
I think this is exactly correct. The problem, of course, is that it is not possible to come up with detailed standards for what is and is not offensive.
But clearly, I think, the treatment of 'penis' and 'clitoris' should be the same.
The argument that the clitoris image is not informative enough, as an argument for it to be hidden is a NON-ARGUMENT. Either it is informative and we apply it the same standard than to all offensive pictures. Or it is not informative, and we trash it.
It could even be argued that a clitoris image is significantly more informative than a penis image, since (it is said) many men with poor sexual education do not know how to find it.
--Jimbo
I am baffled as to why a clitoris would be considered comparable in any way to torture. I guess I am baffled as to why 'sex and violence' so frequently appear in the same sentence. Mark
--- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I hope everyone will agree that the pictures on the following articles are potentially offensive for some readers
- penis on penis article
- clitoris on clitoris article
- Torture and humiliation pictures on the prison
article
Among the three cited above, penis pictures, torture and humiliation are said informative enough, so that we display the pictures directly. However, a clitoris is not something informative enough, so, it should be hidden.
I would like that we stop applying double standards on the encyclopedia.
If a picture is informative, we keep it. If not, we trash it.
If a picture is extremely offensive, we trash it. If a picture is generally considered offensive, we apply similar standard to all pictures generally considered offensive. If a picture is not offensive, we show it.
All offensive pictures should be treated the same way and displayed the same way. Either we decide we do not care about hurting some sensibilities, we display them, and we do this for ALL offensive pictures. Or we decide we could care a bit, and we put a link to it, instead of full display in the page.
The argument that the clitoris image is not informative enough, as an argument for it to be hidden is a NON-ARGUMENT. Either it is informative and we apply it the same standard than to all offensive pictures. Or it is not informative, and we trash it.
Now, if a clitoris picture is something not interesting, I also would like that same standards are applied to all human genitals. If we remove the clitoris, we remove the penises as well.
Fred Bauder a �crit:
Pictures of the clitoris are not displayed to
avoid pandering to purient
interests which apparently (I have not followed
this debate) outweighs the
information value.
While there may be a few readers who might enjoy
pictures of torture and
putting many of them on Wikipedia would be wrong
there is such a strong
history of people lying about torture that we
would not want to part of
suppression of evidence. Thus there is a very high
information value. (We
finally caught a few of these sonsabitches). There
is a point of view
problem as 99.9% of torture is not photographed
thus displaying pictures of
American torture only (as pictures of Saudi
Arabian or Israeli or Turkish or
Tibetan or [put in your own despotic regime]
torture are not available)
gives a somewhat false impression. It takes a
pretty dumb criminal to take
pictures (or let others take pictures) of
themselves while they are
committing a crime.
Fred
From: Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com Reply-To: anthere9@yahoo.com, English Wikipedia
wikien-l-g2DCOkC13y2GglJvpFV4uA@public.gmane.org
Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 02:51:44 +0200 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.
We censor pictures of clitoris on the english
wikipedia.
We censor clitoris pictures, while billion of
humans on Earth have a
clitoris, and that is something perfectly normal
to have.
We censor clitoris for the motive that people
could be shocked.
However, we do not censor pictures of torture and
humiliation. Forgive
me, but I am troubled.
No, I do not think everything should be shown,
especially soon after
they happen. Just as some criminal trials of WWII
horors were recorded,
but the records preserved for several years before
being shown publicly.
This in memory of the deads. Even though we know
what happened.
So, explain to me why we show shocking images of
human humiliation,
while we cant display clitoris, because chaste
eyes would be shocked ?
Fred Bauder a �crit:
They belong. If they allowed picture taking at
the Colorado State
Penitentiary or in a prison in France they would
belong too. Their
importance is that most torture in prisons
happens without pictures being
taken. These pictures have to stand in place of
the hundreds or even
thousands of similar situations that don't get
recorded. Or is that too
creative?
Fred
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-
l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Mark Richards wrote:
I am baffled as to why a clitoris would be considered comparable in any way to torture. I guess I am baffled as to why 'sex and violence' so frequently appear in the same sentence.
To paraphrase that great American philosopher, George Carlin, "It's OK to fuck your enemy; just don't fuck your lover." It's a question of morality. On American TV they may be showing the torture pictures from the Sadaamite jail, but any suggestion on these pictures that the prisoners might have genitals needs to be blurred to avoid offending the morals of decent religious folks. The administration strongly objected to pictures of returning dead American soldiers. These weren't pictures of mutilated bodies - just rows of flag-draped coffins. For many, the video game world has to be real; without that some would be left with the unpatriotic illusion that when you pull on the trigger real people are being killed.
Perhaps the painted nails on the fingers that spread the labia to show the clitoris were a detraction from the purpose of that article, but so too would be an excess of pictures to illustrate the tortures at Abu Ghraib, as was the excess of pictures about Rachel Corrie. But we can't ignore any of these images altogether.
Ec
Anthere-
We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia.
It was not censored, it was moved away. I had repeatedly argued against that, but the outcome of the vote was: 9 people in favor of embedding a photo in the article 8 people in favor of using a drawing in the article and linking to a photo 1 person in favor uf using neither a drawing nor a photo
Of the 9 people in favor of keeping a photo in the article, 2 didn't want to use the *particular* photo that we have, which they argued looks like retouched pornography (and indeed it does, if you look at earlier versions of the image). So that makes "embed drawing, link to photo" the strongest position.
No such vote was held on the Abu Ghraib article.
I agree with you that our policies should be consistent. My suggestion would be: * picture that is universally considered offensive -> link * picture that is considered offensive by some, not by others -> embed
One should never err on the side of censorship. I consider the acts that were committed in Abu Ghraib offensive, but not the photos of these acts.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller a écrit:
Anthere-
We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia.
It was not censored, it was moved away. I had repeatedly argued against that, but the outcome of the vote was: 9 people in favor of embedding a photo in the article 8 people in favor of using a drawing in the article and linking to a photo 1 person in favor uf using neither a drawing nor a photo
Of the 9 people in favor of keeping a photo in the article, 2 didn't want to use the *particular* photo that we have, which they argued looks like retouched pornography (and indeed it does, if you look at earlier versions of the image). So that makes "embed drawing, link to photo" the strongest position.
No such vote was held on the Abu Ghraib article.
I agree with you that our policies should be consistent. My suggestion would be:
- picture that is universally considered offensive -> link
- picture that is considered offensive by some, not by others -> embed
One should never err on the side of censorship. I consider the acts that were committed in Abu Ghraib offensive, but not the photos of these acts.
Regards,
Erik
Voting on the clitoris page was an error, because it was voting for a particular case, rather than trying to fix a general situation.
Okay. So, let us set a consistent policy on this. I totally approved
- picture that is universally considered offensive -> link
- picture that is considered offensive by some, not by others -> embed
Fortunately, I fixed the clitoris page, otherwise, we had -> clitoris -> link -> universally considered offensive -> torture -> embedded -> considered offensive by some, not by others
Which I do not think is consistent with reality.
--- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Okay. So, let us set a consistent policy on this. I totally approved
- picture that is universally considered
offensive -> link
- picture that is considered offensive by some,
not by others -> embed
I'm not sure if you meant this literally, figuratively, or sarcastically. If you really meant that a picture must be "universally considered offensive" before if is moved behind a link, I must disagree. You will never get "universal" agreement on anything. So that policy will end up the equivalent of never putting a picture behind a link.
If the consensus view is that a picture should never be "hidden" behind a link, then let's state that plainly. If we want to allow for variation based on the context, then let's eliminate the "universal" wording.
Fortunately, I fixed the clitoris page, otherwise, we had -> clitoris -> link -> universally considered offensive -> torture -> embedded -> considered offensive by some, not by others
Which I do not think is consistent with reality.
It seems to me that one of the important issues is, who is to determine what is or is not consistent with reality? I know that some cultures/subcultures have a much greater sensitivity to public nudity than do others. Which culture is consistent with reality? From which culture's point of view will the decision be made?
NPOV concerns more than just slanted writing. It includes such things as what cultural bias is revealed in the presentation. Obviously, we cannot eliminate culture bias, but we do make efforts to make reasonable accommodations.
For example, we strive to be multi-lingual. There are Wikipedias in every language on which people are willing to work. In theory, at least, there is no preferred language in the Wikipedia world.
We go to quite a bit of effort to ensure that there is not a de-facto bias against non-technical people (Hence, Wiki mark-up). We try to support as many browsers as possible, to the detriment of those with a "standard" browser (the developers time is "wasted" on supporting those other browsers).
In other words, the majority sometimes makes sacrifices to accommodate the minorities. It is a central principle of NPOV and Wikipedia.
How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a significant number of people find offensive?
I understand that some could be offended by the fact that we mask images. The penalty that those people pay is minimal, as the photo is readily available. The penalty is one mouse click per image.
If we approach it the other way, and do not mask the images, the penalty for those who are offended is that certain articles will become *unavailable* to them, unless they view what they find offensive. They have no alternative (short of using a different source for information).
I would say the cost of masking some images is minimal compared with other costs that we accept without question.
Clearly we cannot mask all images. It seems to me that masking none is also not the answer.
The question becomes, what is a "significant number of people"? At what point do we mask the image? How do we decide?
-Rich Holton
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Rich-
I'm not sure if you meant this literally, figuratively, or sarcastically. If you really meant that a picture must be "universally considered offensive" before if is moved behind a link, I must disagree.
It was meant figuratively rather than literally. I am talking about 95- 100% agreement. If I added a photo of the decapitated hostage, Nick Berg, to an article and insisted on voting on it, I'm sure that's pretty much what we would get - 95-100% in favor of removing the image or replacing it with one just showing the hostage when he was still alive.
This is the kind of case where a link (if anything) is appropriate. I hesitate to use the word "consensus" here because this is increasingly interpreted as "80%", which is really much too low for such a decision.
How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a significant number of people find offensive?
Quite a bit, in my opinion. By doing so, we emphasize this particular bias. For example, if we censor images of body parts (connected to their body *cough*), we emphasize the bias of modern US society against nudity, a bias which is by no means universal.
Of course you can argue that by not censoring ourselves, we become biased *against* that viewpoint. But that is not true if our lack of censorship is consistent. Then we are merely biased in favor of being inclusive which, in my opinion, is a necessary bias for an encyclopedia, just like we are pro-knowledge rather than anti-knowledge and pro-neutrality rather than pro-atheism or pro-theism, etc.
Regards,
Erik
EM = Erik Moeller me = me (Rich Holton)
me> How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a me> significant number of people find offensive?
EM> Quite a bit, in my opinion. By doing so, we EM> emphasize this particular EM> bias. For example, if we censor images of body parts EM> (connected to their EM> body *cough*), we emphasize the bias of modern US EM> society against nudity, EM> a bias which is by no means universal.
In this case we may be emphasizing the bias of modern US society against nudity, but in another case we may be emphasizing the bias of another culture -- for example, one in which a woman's face is not to be seen in public.
EM> Of course you can argue that by not censoring EM> ourselves, we become biased EM> *against* that viewpoint. But that is not true if EM> our lack of censorship EM> is consistent. Then we are merely biased in favor of EM> being inclusive EM> which, in my opinion, is a necessary bias for an EM> encyclopedia, just like EM> we are pro-knowledge rather than anti-knowledge and EM> pro-neutrality rather EM> than pro-atheism or pro-theism, etc.
Well, first of all, I would not argue that we are or are not censoring ourselves. I never suggested removing images; I only suggested allowing the user the choice to view the article and not view the images.
Second, I don't follow how masking the images is *less* inclusive than not masking them. Do you mean more inclusive of images, or more inclusive of people? My argument is precisely that masking the images is more inclusive of people, without excluding any images.
The cost of catering to those who are offended by the images is a mouse-click from those who are not. The cost of catering to those who would be offended by having masked images is the non-participation of those who are offended by the images.
I agree with you that an encyclopedia, particularly Wikipedia, needs to be pro-knowledge and pro-NPOV. But another guiding principle of Wikipedia is that it is pro-user/pro-reader. We go out of our way to make it accessible to as many people as possible. Why not apply that to the display of offensive images?
Again, I am NOT suggesting the elimination of the images. Only presenting them in a way that improves the "accessibility" and usability of Wikipedia.
With respect, Rich Holton
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Rich-
The cost of catering to those who are offended by the images is a mouse-click from those who are not. The cost of catering to those who would be offended by having masked images is the non-participation of those who are offended by the images.
That is an incorrect statement. The cost of an additional mouse click (and finding out that there is an image to click to in the first place) may very well have the same effect on some readers as showing the image may have on others. To cite your own example, if we started censoring .. uh, excuse me, "masking" images of women's faces like that, I would 100% certainly leave the project, as would probably many others. And the argument for doing that is no stronger or weaker than the argument for masking the clitoris photo. In fact, I predict that if we masked *all* somewhat sexually explicit pictures (penises, buttocks, breasts ..) in this way, several people would be annoyed and/or leave the project.
If we are more forgiving of our own biases than of those of other cultures, then we effectively endorse a certain "POV" of what is and what isn't offensive, and this flies in the face of everything this project stands for. The standard of "near universal offensiveness" is the only one which avoids this problem.
Well, not the only one. Category tags on images and category filters in the user preferences might also work. Then you could have something like:
Show the following images in articles: [ ] Animals [ ] Fictional animals [ ] Rabbits [ ] Women [ ] Overweight women [ ] Overweight women wearing party hats [ ] Priests etc.
If we wanted to create a real family filter, we could add another set of options: [ ] Allow me to view filtered images on a separate page [ ] Allow logout [ ] Preferences password
Censorious parents could then force their children into viewing only images of priests and rabbits, etc. (although such a filter could be easily circumvented). Others who merely want to avoid being "surprised" by offensive images could enable the "Allow me" option and would get a "View image" link on filtered images.
I'm not saying that I support such a system - my own POV is strongly anti- censorship and I'm not fond of any system that makes it easier for parents to indoctrinate their children - but from the standpoint of Wikipedia policy, this would be acceptable. "Masking" images that are not universally offensive is not.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
If we are more forgiving of our own biases than of those of other cultures, then we effectively endorse a certain "POV" of what is and what isn't offensive, and this flies in the face of everything this project stands for. The standard of "near universal offensiveness" is the only one which avoids this problem.
In that case, I think "public depiction of close-up explicit images of genitalia" meets the standard pretty handily in most of the world, with a few minor exceptions of portions of the world that are highly over-represented amongst Wikipedians.
-Mark
Delirium-
In that case, I think "public depiction of close-up explicit images of genitalia" meets the standard pretty handily in most of the world, with a few minor exceptions of portions of the world that are highly over-represented amongst Wikipedians.
Do not confuse the legal situation with people's beliefs. Even in the most fundamentalist countries there are strong minorities opposed to the madness they are subjected to. For example, during the high point of Taliban rule, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan still advocated a secular, open society.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Do not confuse the legal situation with people's beliefs. Even in the most fundamentalist countries there are strong minorities opposed to the madness they are subjected to. For example, during the high point of Taliban rule, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan still advocated a secular, open society.
On the other hand, do not confuse people's beliefs with the legal situation. Even in the most liberal countries, there are strong minorities (even often majorities) who oppose the public display of close-up images of genitalia. For example, even in the EU (probably one of the more liberal parts of the world), I doubt you will find many people in Greece who would be willing to print such an article---this despite the fact that Greece is well-known to have many nude beaches, so has no qualms with nudity, even public nudity, in general.
I think if you were to take a poll and ask people if they found the image that's been wrangled over on [[Clitoris]] acceptable for public display, you'd find a large majority of the world's population would say no.
-Mark
I think if you were to take a poll and ask people if they found the image that's been wrangled over on [[Clitoris]] acceptable for public display, you'd find a large majority of the world's population would say no.
-Mark
Incidently, I noticed that the masking is back on clitoris. Consequently, it is now obvious that Wikipedia currently hold a strong bias toward feminine body display, while male body is all right to display.
I would like that the equality of human genital display is discussed, and discussed seriously, and that at the end of the discussion, we happen to reach a consensus over what is correct to display in terms of genitals.
I expect that female genitals have the same right of display than male genitals.
Either hidden, or visible.
But that equal standards are respected between women and men.
Anthere wrote:
I expect that female genitals have the same right of display than male genitals.
Either hidden, or visible.
But that equal standards are respected between women and men.
I personally agree they're approximately equal, and think both should be a link. But I don't see how we can make that pronouncement. If the majority of the world happens to be more offended by one than the other (which seems to be the case), we're not really moral arbiters that are here to say they're wrong. Principles such as "the offensiveness of female and male genitalia should be equal" might make for an interesting discussion for a philosophy of media class, or a journal of feminist theory, but I don't think we should really be in the business of putting forth new standards for what people should find offensive and what they shouldn't find offensive. If it's easy to keep them consistent then fine, but if people find one much more offensive than the other, then that's a matter to debate using some other tool than Wikipedia.
-Mark
Delirium a écrit:
Anthere wrote:
I expect that female genitals have the same right of display than male genitals.
Either hidden, or visible.
But that equal standards are respected between women and men.
I personally agree they're approximately equal, and think both should be a link. But I don't see how we can make that pronouncement. If the majority of the world happens to be more offended by one than the other (which seems to be the case), we're not really moral arbiters that are here to say they're wrong. Principles such as "the offensiveness of female and male genitalia should be equal" might make for an interesting discussion for a philosophy of media class, or a journal of feminist theory, but I don't think we should really be in the business of putting forth new standards for what people should find offensive and what they shouldn't find offensive. If it's easy to keep them consistent then fine, but if people find one much more offensive than the other, then that's a matter to debate using some other tool than Wikipedia.
-Mark
So, are you saying that we should mask female genitalia because the world is generally offended by watching it, while we should display male genitalia because the world is generally not offended by watching it ?
Are you also gonna remove pictures of women who show their hair because in most of the world women hide their hair ?
And how exactly do you measure the level of offensiveness of female genitalia in the world compare to level of offensiveness of these humiliation pictures in the prison article ?
Mind you, I think most of the world think these are VERY offensive, so by your standards, they should be immediately put into a separate page.
Anthere wrote:
So, are you saying that we should mask female genitalia because the world is generally offended by watching it, while we should display male genitalia because the world is generally not offended by watching it ?
Are you also gonna remove pictures of women who show their hair because in most of the world women hide their hair ?
And how exactly do you measure the level of offensiveness of female genitalia in the world compare to level of offensiveness of these humiliation pictures in the prison article ?
Mind you, I think most of the world think these are VERY offensive, so by your standards, they should be immediately put into a separate page.
For what it's worth, I think they should both be put on a separate page, prominently linked, but not displayed inline.
I don't like the idea of us telling people that they are wrong to be more offended by one than by the other though. Changing that, if you believe it needs to be changed, is a debate for somewhere else---Wikipedia shouldn't be a tool to promote particular ideologies about media, apart from the very basic one that we support GFDL'd material.
I don't think most of the world has women hide their hair, though I could be wrong. A sizable minority does though. I would not think we should put pictures of women's hair in a particular language's Wikipedia if a large majority of that language's speakers found it offensive (I don't know if this is the case for any actual languages, so that's hypothetical). Our goal should be to produce a free encyclopedia, not to force people to look at images they find offensive simply because we, as the moral arbiters of the world in a somewhat western-imperialist fashion, have deemed that people who are offended by them are wrong and should adopt our (much better, of course) political and ethical beliefs instead.
-Mark
Delirium a écrit:
Anthere wrote:
So, are you saying that we should mask female genitalia because the world is generally offended by watching it, while we should display male genitalia because the world is generally not offended by watching it ?
Are you also gonna remove pictures of women who show their hair because in most of the world women hide their hair ?
And how exactly do you measure the level of offensiveness of female genitalia in the world compare to level of offensiveness of these humiliation pictures in the prison article ?
Mind you, I think most of the world think these are VERY offensive, so by your standards, they should be immediately put into a separate page.
For what it's worth, I think they should both be put on a separate page, prominently linked, but not displayed inline.
I don't like the idea of us telling people that they are wrong to be more offended by one than by the other though. Changing that, if you believe it needs to be changed, is a debate for somewhere else---Wikipedia shouldn't be a tool to promote particular ideologies about media, apart from the very basic one that we support GFDL'd material.
I don't think most of the world has women hide their hair, though I could be wrong. A sizable minority does though. I would not think we should put pictures of women's hair in a particular language's Wikipedia if a large majority of that language's speakers found it offensive (I don't know if this is the case for any actual languages, so that's hypothetical). Our goal should be to produce a free encyclopedia, not to force people to look at images they find offensive simply because we, as the moral arbiters of the world in a somewhat western-imperialist fashion, have deemed that people who are offended by them are wrong and should adopt our (much better, of course) political and ethical beliefs instead.
-Mark
Okay. So, I would prefer the prison pictures to be placed in a separate gallery, because I think they are offensive for most people. Can I do that ? Or am I gonna be immediately reverted ? What is people opinion about that ? I won't do it if people are widely against it.
What should we do with the clitoris picture ? As soon as we choose *voluntarily* to display male genitalia, while hiding female genitalia, we choose *delibaretly* to *convey* the fact *WE* consider one offensive and the other not. In short, we *force* people to think in a particular way. We are not neutral any more. Does that not bother you Mark ?
Honestly ?
Anthere
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
For what it's worth, I think they should both be put on a separate page, prominently linked, but not displayed inline.
I don't like the idea of us telling people that they are wrong to be more offended by one than by the other though. Changing that, if you believe it needs to be changed, is a debate for somewhere else---Wikipedia shouldn't be a tool to promote particular ideologies about media, apart from the very basic one that we support GFDL'd material.
No, but Wikipedia does strongly promote NPOV. This is what is at stake here.
I don't think most of the world has women hide their hair, though I
could be wrong.
You could be.
A sizable minority does though.
300 million americans, 300 million europeans, minus 200 million europeas who really do not, and 50 million americans who do not (italian neighborhoods etc), and that leaves you with 5%, at best.
Besides, America and Europe do not _have_ women hide their hair as a matter of fact. It is fashion, and women generally do it by themselves, to be more beautiful, attractive, etc, and there's really very little pressure. It's not like an american woman will be flogged at the post if she did not shave her legs.
I would not think we should put pictures of women's hair in a particular language's Wikipedia if a large majority of that language's speakers found it offensive (I don't know if this is the case for any actual languages, so that's hypothetical). Our goal should be to produce a free encyclopedia, not to force people to look at images they find offensive simply because we, as the moral arbiters of the world in a somewhat western-imperialist fashion, have deemed that people who are offended by them are wrong and should adopt our (much better, of course) political and ethical beliefs instead.
Tell that to the 3000+ chinese editors. They would really enjoy telling you how little regard they have for western-imperialism.
Besides, don't you think your behavior is somewhat condescending? Moral-arbiters? Yeah, that's us. The Britney Generation. Moral arbiters of the world. I laugh! Ahahahah!!! I choke!!! Arrgghhh!!! Thump.
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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Christopher Mahan wrote:
A sizable minority does though.
300 million americans, 300 million europeans, minus 200 million europeas who really do not, and 50 million americans who do not (italian neighborhoods etc), and that leaves you with 5%, at best.
Besides, America and Europe do not _have_ women hide their hair as a matter of fact. It is fashion, and women generally do it by themselves, to be more beautiful, attractive, etc, and there's really very little pressure. It's not like an american woman will be flogged at the post if she did not shave her legs.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Most women in the world do not cover their hair from public view. It is common pretty much only in the Islamic world and a few relatively small traditionalist Christian groups. 1.1 billion Chinese generally do not; Russians do not; etc. Far from 5%, I think it's more like 80%.
Tell that to the 3000+ chinese editors. They would really enjoy telling you how little regard they have for western-imperialism.
Besides, don't you think your behavior is somewhat condescending? Moral-arbiters? Yeah, that's us. The Britney Generation. Moral arbiters of the world. I laugh! Ahahahah!!! I choke!!! Arrgghhh!!! Thump.
But there's a certain set of westerners who feel they have the proper morality they need to share with the world. If only everyone else would agree with them, the world would be a better place, eh?
-Mark
Delirium-
I think if you were to take a poll and ask people if they found the image that's been wrangled over on [[Clitoris]] acceptable for public display, you'd find a large majority of the world's population would say no.
Maybe, maybe not. My argument is that majorities are irrelevant in this context. There should not be a tyranny of the moral majority.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
I think if you were to take a poll and ask people if they found the image that's been wrangled over on [[Clitoris]] acceptable for public display, you'd find a large majority of the world's population would say no.
Maybe, maybe not. My argument is that majorities are irrelevant in this context. There should not be a tyranny of the moral majority.
But what *should* there be a tyrrany of? The majority of people who happen to edit Wikipedia, who are generally well-off and concentrated in North America and Europe?
-Mark
Delirium-
Maybe, maybe not. My argument is that majorities are irrelevant in this context. There should not be a tyranny of the moral majority.
But what *should* there be a tyrrany of? The majority of people who happen to edit Wikipedia, who are generally well-off and concentrated in North America and Europe?
There shouldn't be any tyranny at all. Instead we should treat all material in the same way: link or remove if it is almost universally offensive, show if it isn't. Everything else is POV.
See, if you "masked" nudity, for example, you would be trampling on my POV that nudity is perfectly normal and should be shown. You will respond: Yes, but if you show nudity, you trample on the *majority* POV that it should not be shown. That assertion is incorrect. By treating all images equally, on the basis of community consensus, we do not endorse any single point of view. Selectivity is the issue here.
It's a lot like the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. You can either tolerate all religions equally, or none at all. Tolerating none, in our case, would mean "masking" every image that could be potentially considered offensive by someone somewhere - in effect we would have to mask all of them.
Letting the *majority* view win on this matter would be the first step toward abandoning NPOV. And when this issue was brought up in the past, people started arguing: Well, maybe we *should* abandon NPOV on this, just to avoid losing readers. If you accept that argument, you might as well take all the criticisms out of the [[Mother Teresa]] article because they might drive readers away, or "mask them" by moving them to a separate page, as was initially proposed.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
There shouldn't be any tyranny at all. Instead we should treat all material in the same way: link or remove if it is almost universally offensive, show if it isn't. Everything else is POV.
See, if you "masked" nudity, for example, you would be trampling on my POV that nudity is perfectly normal and should be shown. You will respond: Yes, but if you show nudity, you trample on the *majority* POV that it should not be shown. That assertion is incorrect. By treating all images equally, on the basis of community consensus, we do not endorse any single point of view. Selectivity is the issue here.
I don't disagree with your principle in general, but perhaps we disagree on what exactly the threshold should be, and what factually people actually do find offensive. You seem to agree that including a photograph of the recent beheading in Iraq inline would be above the threshold, but that a close-up photograph of a clitoris would not be. I tend to think that both should be considered above the threshold for reasonable offensiveness. I'm not even sure offensiveness is the right word, but more like visceral discomfort or shock---a great many people would find it difficult to read an article that had either of those images embedded (for completely different reasons, of course). There's even some stuff I'd personally like to see and wouldn't find offensive at all, but would not necessarily want to see inline, such as photographs of [[open-heart surgery]]. As far as information goes, I don't think we lose much in the way of information by having a detailed diagram on [[clitoris]] with a caption that says to click here for a photographic version, or something of that sort. I'm less sure how to nicely handle images of the beheading, which are clearly relevant (it's the entire reason to have an article on [[Nick Berg]] to begin with) but not easily presented in a way that won't shock people.
I think if we only remove things that absolutely *everyone* finds offensive, we'd have a lot of odd things in our articles that'd alienate a lot of people. A large number of people have no particular problem with images of [[defecation]] for example (lots of kids even like the subject!), but I don't think we should really have them inline.
-Mark
Delirium-
I'm not even sure offensiveness is the right word, but more like visceral discomfort or shock---a great many people would find it difficult to read an article that had either of those images embedded (for completely different reasons, of course).
Why are you reading an article about the clitoris if you're not prepared to look at an image of one? Is this really about what people find offensive, or what people think *other* people might find offensive ("Well, I personally don't mind, but .."), or what they think *children* should not see?
Context is important, but there needs to be no special rule here -- off- topic images can simply be removed from an article.
I think if we only remove things that absolutely *everyone* finds offensive, we'd have a lot of odd things in our articles that'd alienate a lot of people. A large number of people have no particular problem with images of [[defecation]] for example
I think we've had this discussion before. I disagree. Aversion to feces is fairly universal as not having it makes a culture prone to disease; it may even be biological (the structure and smell of feces changes over age, so the taboo may not yet be triggered in small children). Coprophilia is generally recognized as a disorder.
Try it. Add a picture of human feces to an article, hold a vote, and see what the threshold will be against inline inclusion. Animal feces, that is a different story. You couldn't make a meaningful documentary about plants without showing feces, one of their primary means of transportation.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller a écrit:
I think we've had this discussion before. I disagree. Aversion to feces is fairly universal as not having it makes a culture prone to disease; it may even be biological (the structure and smell of feces changes over age, so the taboo may not yet be triggered in small children).
If I dare... Kids feces smell just the same as adult feces, as soon as they eat the same food as their parents; And in particular meat. As long as they are on a 100% dairy diet, the feces are really smelling okay, which is possibly a natural adaptation, as mothers really have to get in the business of cleaning everything quite often. It also produces rather liquid feces, which is best, since infants do not move much (so there is fewer movements to make things get down the intestine).
The smells stays all right when you introduce veggies and fruits; especially since most kids prefer mild favored ones.
Now, as soon as the kid eat meat, things get less funny. In western society, quantities get really serious between 1 and 2, and from then on, feces are quite similar to adult ones. I suspect that is a very serious reason why mothers start potty training at a quite early age, often sooner than reasonable.
What I mean to say, is that kids are interested in their feces till a much older age (3-4), than the moment the feces really start to smell. While adults are frowning, kids are not yet. I have the personal feeling, that the taboo is not spontaneous at all, but the result of education. It is not a spontaneous taboo, triggered during natural developement of the child, or if a natural taboo is triggered, I guess the trigger time comes *after* an educational trigger.
And here I thought Wikipedia *itself* was educational. My, my... the things we learn... O_o
On Wed, 12 May 2004 15:29:17 +0200, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
What I mean to say, is that kids are interested in their feces till a much older age (3-4), than the moment the feces really start to smell. While adults are frowning, kids are not yet. I have the personal feeling, that the taboo is not spontaneous at all, but the result of education. It is not a spontaneous taboo, triggered during natural developement of the child, or if a natural taboo is triggered, I guess the trigger time comes *after* an educational trigger.
Ben, euhhhh, wellll, let's say, I *really* think this encyclopedia is sometimes losing itself in pure speculation and forgetting real day life.
There are no articles on potty training, and that is more the reality of life of many people than many articles on ... oh well...
And believe me, some commercial editors make big bucks selling books to mothers, where pedetricians, psychopedetricians explain to them how to raise a child. What is normal, and not normal, color, smell, texture, depending on which food they ate, what to do when they have it runny, when to call a doctor, when not, how to drink unCO2 coca cola, what to do when the kid plays with it, if it is healthy that he does so...and so on
Chapters and chapters and chapters
Anyway, never mind. I feel I am not in the right place. That is gross :-)
Let's go back to these prisoners pictures... I made a gallery. Feedback welcome (even if I think I will be reverted, but well...)
Ant
Fennec Foxen a écrit:
And here I thought Wikipedia *itself* was educational. My, my... the things we learn... O_o
On Wed, 12 May 2004 15:29:17 +0200, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
What I mean to say, is that kids are interested in their feces till a much older age (3-4), than the moment the feces really start to smell. While adults are frowning, kids are not yet. I have the personal feeling, that the taboo is not spontaneous at all, but the result of education. It is not a spontaneous taboo, triggered during natural developement of the child, or if a natural taboo is triggered, I guess the trigger time comes *after* an educational trigger.
Anthere wrote:
There are no articles on potty training, and that is more the reality of life of many people than many articles on ... oh well...
It would be excellent if we did have some, I think. It's an interesting topic, and there are a variety of theories about it, and most of the information that you can find is POV advocacy in favor of one method or style or another.
--Jimbo
Erik Moeller wrote:
Try it. Add a picture of human feces to an article, hold a vote, and see what the threshold will be against inline inclusion. Animal feces, that is a different story. You couldn't make a meaningful documentary about plants without showing feces, one of their primary means of transportation.
It could be useful in an article about how to survive in the wilderness to have such pictures that help in recognizing the difference between human, bear, wolf or moose feces. :-)
Ec
On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 05:12, Erik Moeller wrote:
Letting the *majority* view win on this matter would be the first step toward abandoning NPOV. And when this issue was brought up in the past, people started arguing: Well, maybe we *should* abandon NPOV on this, just to avoid losing readers. If you accept that argument, you might as well take all the criticisms out of the [[Mother Teresa]] article because they might drive readers away, or "mask them" by moving them to a separate page, as was initially proposed.
I don't agree that "majority rule" on this is POV. If we form a policy such as "images which 50% of our readers will find offensive should be masked behind a (clearly labeled) link", then we are retreating from the POV "this image is offensive" to the NPOV "50% of readers find this image offensive".
Other tests, such as "images of male and female genitalia should be treated the same", are definitely POV. Many people would agree with such a principle; others would disagree. If we adhere to this principle, then we are forcing our "enlightened, correct" POV on our readers.
I think that "Images which are offensive to N% of our readers are masked" is the only NPOV policy possible. There is room for debate on what N should be; Erik has proposed "universally offensive" at 90 or 95%; Rich Holton has proposed 30%. I think 30% is a much better number than 90 or 95%. (I don't remember whether it was Erik who associated "universally offensive" with 90 or 95%.)
I disagree that the issue of masking images is similar to the idea of masking information. Images are obvious and immediate, and have a very different impact than text.
Carl Witty
Delirium wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
I think if you were to take a poll and ask people if they found the image that's been wrangled over on [[Clitoris]] acceptable for public display, you'd find a large majority of the world's population would say no.
Maybe, maybe not. My argument is that majorities are irrelevant in this context. There should not be a tyranny of the moral majority.
But what *should* there be a tyrrany of? The majority of people who happen to edit Wikipedia, who are generally well-off and concentrated in North America and Europe?
There shouldn't be a tyranny of any sort. I didn't take the reference to a poll as expressing an intent to seriously have one, but as a hypothetical statement about what such a poll might produce.
NPOV demands that we find some mutually satisfactory middle way.
Ec
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Rich-
The cost of catering to those who are offended by
the
images is a mouse-click from those who are not.
The
cost of catering to those who would be offended by having masked images is the non-participation of
those
who are offended by the images.
...<large snip>...
To cite your own example, if we started censoring .. uh, excuse me, "masking" images of women's faces like that, I would 100% certainly leave the project, as would probably many others. And the argument for doing that is no stronger or weaker than the argument for masking the clitoris photo. In fact, I predict that if we masked *all* somewhat sexually explicit pictures (penises, buttocks, breasts ..) in this way, several people would be annoyed and/or leave the project.
Wow, I sure used a poor example to support my own cause, and then didn't explain myself either. What I was thinking at the time was that we should mask photos of women's faces from a culture that has a taboo about showing women's faces, ie a photo from a culture that would be offensive in that same culture. I was not thinking that the implication was that we would mask *all* photos of women's faces.
Obviously, my logic was muddled (I'll plead the usual excuse of trying to think clearly on too much coffee and too little sleep).
Just in case anyone might have the wrong idea, let me make it plain that I am not in favor of removing *any* images based on their offensiveness to anyone, or of blocking any images from anyone. I am also not suggesting that we mask all images of women's faces.
Personally, I have no interest in viewing photos of an execution by decapitation. Some might say that I should view them for my own good -- they may be right and I may view them despite my aversion. But to force me to view them in order to read about the event is certainly forcing a POV.
One might suggest that there is near universal agreement that those images should be masked (or would you say censored?). But if the goal is to achieve "near universal offensiveness", what better way to achieve it than to display such images? Why have *any* images masked?
Any restriction on content betrays a POV. Having no restriction on content betrays a POV.
The truth is that Wikipedia *does* project a strong point of view, or several of them -Information should be freely available -Wikipedia should be restricted to verifiable information, of some importance (however that's defined) -That topics should be presented evenly, with criticisms, so that the reader can decide for themselves based on the facts -That conversation should be rational and devoid of personal attacks -That disputes should be resolved democratically (if not by a popular vote, then by a vote of representatives)
I strongly agree with all these POV's in Wikipedia. But let us recognize that they are POV's that are not universally held. Wikipedia takes a stand.
At issue here is what stand Wikipedia will take on images that some find offensive. There is no way to avoid POV on this topic.
I assert that Wikipedia should take reasonable steps to remove as many barriers to accessing information as possible, even when the barrier is socially imposed. Let people access the information without forcing them to violate social taboos.
If I understand you correctly, you would want to require a very high percentage (90-95%?) of voters to agree before masking an image. In other words, it would only take 10% to prevent the masking of an image. That certainly gives a large amount of power to a small number of people. 10% can force 90% to view an offensive image if they want to access the information.
I suggest a much lower threshold -- say 30%. In other words, 30% of the voters could force 70% to use an extra mouse click to view the image. The cost to the 70% is low. The benefit is a Wikipedia that is taking steps to be culturally sensitive.
With respect, -Rich Holton
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2' http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861
Rich-
One might suggest that there is near universal agreement that those images should be masked (or would you say censored?). But if the goal is to achieve "near universal offensiveness", what better way to achieve it than to display such images? Why have *any* images masked?
By masking those images which are nearly universally considered offensive, we are providing a service to our community in hiding images that they will not want to see unless they explicitly request them. If we set this threshold low - at 70%, for example - then we are trampling on the POV of 30% of our readers. But if we set it very high - 95-100% - then we are in NPOV territory.
In the NPOV policy we can only treat something as a fact if it is universally considered as one by informed persons. Similarly, if a photo is accepted as offensive by all, then we can treat its offensiveness as *fact*, and act on the basis of this fact. If it is considered offensive by some, when we act on this *opinion*, we are endorsing a specific POV.
The argument that when we set a threshold at, for example, 50%, and enforce this threshold *consistently* we are acting in an NPOV manner is fallacious. Instead we would be abandoning NPOV - neutral point of view - in favor of MPOV - majority point of view.
Here's a test for any idea of dealing with offensive pictures: Apply the same methodology to text. Would the result be desirable and acceptable per NPOV?
Let's take the Mother Teresa article as an example. It accords a significant amount of space to criticisms of Mother Teresa, even though there is a strong majority who believes that MT was, if not a living saint, a courageous helper of the poor and who may consider these criticisms offensive. Would it be NPOV to say "If 50% (or 70%) of people find a certain text in an article offensive, it should be moved somewhere else and a link should be provided to it"? In that case, we would have to move the criticisms away to make the article more amenable to Christians and MT-admirers.
Now you can come up with lots of reasons to justify this. You're acting in the interest of *accessibility*, you say. You want to make sure that Wikipedia can be read without problems in Catholic schools. You cite an example of a kid on the Philippines who lost his Internet access after viewing the Mother Teresa article on a school computer. "This young child, only 12 years old, could still be reading Wikipedia if we would only move certain segments of pages away. It's not censorship, you see? The pages are still there for those who want to read them. And we do this consistently across all pages -- any minority point of view that is offensive to the majority will be treated in the same way. So it's perfectly neutral treatment. It could be done by a computer!"
And you may find these arguments persuasive. I'm sure that over time, people will make these arguments for text as they are making them for images now. But the simple fact is that this is *not* our neutral point of view policy which does not implicitly or explicitly endorse any single point of view, be it the majority point of view or one which is defined by some committee.
This doesn't mean that we have to tolerate all images everywhere, of course. It merely answers the first question, offensiveness. Other key questions are usefulness and redundancy. And we may even make the compromise of saying that if a photo's offensiveness to a large number of readers clearly outweighs its usefulness, the photo should be removed or linked to. Again, such a determination can only be made in consensus.
Regards,
Erik
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
By masking those images which are nearly universally considered offensive, we are providing a service to our community in hiding images that they will not want to see unless they explicitly request them. If we set this threshold low - at 70%, for example - then we are trampling on the POV of 30% of our readers. But if we set it very high - 95-100% - then we are in NPOV territory.
No, we're still in POV territory, as we always will be. Your POV is that it is far better to have the image with the article, and anything different is a compromise. If we set the threshold very near either end, we are allowing a very small minority to determine where the image will be. Again, there is no way to avoid POV here. Any choice we make will be POV.
In the NPOV policy we can only treat something as a fact if it is universally considered as one by informed persons. Similarly, if a photo is accepted as offensive by all, then we can treat its offensiveness as *fact*, and act on the basis of this fact. If it is considered offensive by some, when we act on this *opinion*, we are endorsing a specific POV.
Again, I disagree with your analysis. We do not "treat something as a fact." Anything that almost anyone would consider fact can be challenged by a single user citing a single verifiable source that disagrees. The result is an accommodation to the minority view so that the minority view is at least mentioned.
As others have pointed out, such accommodation is substantially different for text than for images. Text is much more flexible than a static image. For instance, we often (usually?) place criticisms is a separate, clearly identified section of the article. Those who prefer not to read the criticism are free to do so. Even if the criticism is not well labeled, the reader can stop reading at any point and skip beyond the criticism.
Reading text is always an chosen act, (excepting some words or short phrases which take on some of the attributes of an image). But place an image in front of any normal person and they will see the image, whether they choose to or not. If there is text and graphics on a page, it is normal, if not automatic, to look at the image first.
So, I see it to be unhelpful to compare text to images in this way. They are very different in the way that they are perceived, and in the options available in presentation.
...<snip>... This doesn't mean that we have to tolerate all images everywhere, of course. It merely answers the first question, offensiveness. Other key questions are usefulness and redundancy. And we may even make the compromise of saying that if a photo's offensiveness to a large number of readers clearly outweighs its usefulness, the photo should be removed or linked to. Again, such a determination can only be made in consensus.
We can also, by consensus, agree not to let consensus rule in specific cases. Or even majority rule. That is not un-wiki. You yourself are suggesting it by requiring only 10% to determine the placement of the image (or, to state it the other way around, by requiring that 90% must object before the image is masked).
This is not a choice between POV and NPOV. It is a choice between different POV's. You want all images left on the article page unless the group that wants a particular image left there is so small as to be almost noise level. I would have all images left on the article page unless the group that wants a particular image left there falls below 70%.
Either way the image is placed -- on the article page or masked -- is still POV. In your case it reflects the POV of as little as 10% of those who vote. Would we really want the image of the militants holding Nick Berg's severed head to be plainly on the article if only 10% want it to be there?
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--- Rich Holton rich_holton@yahoo.com wrote: [large snip]
Again, I am NOT suggesting the elimination of the images. Only presenting them in a way that improves the "accessibility" and usability of Wikipedia.
I contend that the value of an encyclopedia comes from what it includes, not what it excludes.
Imagine if you will that you have to fight a war (a well-known theme these days), and you need weapons. You can go to the arsenal to fill up, yet you can't pick just anything you want, because the more, hummm, dangerous ones are just out of reach...
The same can be applied in the world of business, or recovery from the myriads of afflictions that plage humanity such as disease, drug/alcohol/etc abuse, prostitution, underage sex (whichever age) and violence, of even politics, ethics, and philosophy. If you want to know the real facts, you need the real facts, unfiltered, raw, in-your-face. The reader is the one who can form his or her own opinion, and will be able to do so with unbiased facts, since all of them will be readily available on the same footing.
Some may argue: But they are available, just one click away! I respond that it's like the grocery store putting candy at kids eye level and fitness magazines up for their dads and moms. The very placement of the information is suggestive to behavior (they want the kids to want candy) and thus demonstrates a bias.
We don't sell candy or magazines. If you want to make a child-friendly encyclopedia, knock yourself out. Most of us live in the real world where people struggle, suffer and die, and we need the best information available, no matter how unpalatable it may seem to some, to survive as individuals, as a specie, and advance the achievements of our civilization (especially since, cell-phones and Internet notwithstanding, we seem to have returned to the Age of Barbarians).
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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Erik Moeller wrote:
How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a significant number of people find offensive?
Quite a bit, in my opinion. By doing so, we emphasize this particular bias. For example, if we censor images of body parts (connected to their body *cough*), we emphasize the bias of modern US society against nudity, a bias which is by no means universal.
Of course you can argue that by not censoring ourselves, we become biased *against* that viewpoint. But that is not true if our lack of censorship is consistent. Then we are merely biased in favor of being inclusive which, in my opinion, is a necessary bias for an encyclopedia, just like we are pro-knowledge rather than anti-knowledge and pro-neutrality rather than pro-atheism or pro-theism, etc.
I don't think that's being neutral, but taking a point of view. You are taking the point of view that some things---decapitated hostages, [[golden showers]], [[coprophilia]], and any number of other subjects---are too offensive to have inline images, but that some---such as nudity---are due to particular biases you disagree with.
I'd say the bias against nudity is probably pretty heavy in the world. The US is actually one of the most liberal countries in the world when it comes to permitting nudity---there are plenty of countries where merely possessing pornography will earn you a trip to jail. Several billion of the world's citizens are pretty solidly opposed to public depictions of nudity.
-Mark
Rich Holton wrote:
If we approach it the other way, and do not mask the images, the penalty for those who are offended is that certain articles will become *unavailable* to them, unless they view what they find offensive.
This makes me long back to good old Opera 6, where you could just press "G" and all images disappear and you can read the text without any irritating blinking ads, or offensive pornography.
Why can't every browser simply have such a useful feature? :)
Inspired by that, I might suggest the following two features. We could have (1) a "?disableimages=1" option that would display an article with all the images removed, and (2) a wiki syntax to link to it. Then, when people voice objection to the graphical content of a page, we could add {{msg:offensiveimages}} at the top, which would add something like
:'''''Notice:''' Some people have voiced objection to the images on this page. [[[disableimages]|View this page without images]]''
Timwi
Anthere-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_(prison) Sorry, this may sound just as censorship,
Yes.
but frankly, I am shocked at these pictures.
They are shocking.
And I do not think they belong to Wikipedia.
Why not?
At least, not now. That is too soon.
Why?
Regards,
Erik
I go restore the clitoris pictures.
Erik Moeller a écrit:
Anthere-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_(prison) Sorry, this may sound just as censorship,
Yes.
but frankly, I am shocked at these pictures.
They are shocking.
And I do not think they belong to Wikipedia.
Why not?
At least, not now. That is too soon.
Why?
Regards,
Erik