In a message dated 12/22/2008 5:59:46 PM Pacific Standard Time, larsen.thomas.h@gmail.com writes:
What's relevant is whether or not such an image is appropriate for an encyclopedia such as Wikipedia claims to be, and whether or not including it is in accordance with established standards of content scholarship.>>
---------------------------------------------- A) Yes it's appropriate, because we claim to be not censored. We already do tons of things that Brittanica doesn't do, so it's not fair to try to compare us to any other encyclopedia. We are a new item.
B) Yes it's in accordance with the standards we have established.
Will Johnson
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A) Yes it's appropriate, because we claim to be not censored. We already do tons of things that Brittanica doesn't do, so it's not fair to try to compare us to any other encyclopedia. We are a new item.
We claim to be an encyclopedia.
B) Yes it's in accordance with the standards we have established.
No, because one of our standards is "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", and that means "Wikipedia provides the summary of all knowledge in accordance with good scholarly practices". The English language may be changing, but I think that the word "encyclopedia" still has this meaning and association.
—Thomas Larsen
2008/12/23 Thomas Larsen larsen.thomas.h@gmail.com:
A) Yes it's appropriate, because we claim to be not censored. We already do tons of things that Brittanica doesn't do, so it's not fair to try to compare us to any other encyclopedia. We are a new item.
We claim to be an encyclopedia.
B) Yes it's in accordance with the standards we have established.
No, because one of our standards is "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", and that means "Wikipedia provides the summary of all knowledge in accordance with good scholarly practices". The English language may be changing, but I think that the word "encyclopedia" still has this meaning and association.
—Thomas Larsen
Scholarly practices such as they exist in the field of popular music have long established that if you are going to talk about an album cover you show the thing.
On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Thomas Larsen larsen.thomas.h@gmail.comwrote:
A) Yes it's appropriate, because we claim to be not censored. We
already
do tons of things that Brittanica doesn't do, so it's not fair to try to compare us to any other encyclopedia. We are a new item.
We claim to be an encyclopedia.
B) Yes it's in accordance with the standards we have established.
No, because one of our standards is "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", and that means "Wikipedia provides the summary of all knowledge in accordance with good scholarly practices". The English language may be changing, but I think that the word "encyclopedia" still has this meaning and association.
There has never been a single encyclopedia which even vaguely attempted the scope and depth that Wikipedia's driving towards.
We are nearly everything to nearly everybody, other than bleeding edge researchers.
What we are trying to consistently do is include everything that is more than negligibly of general interest, and do so in a consistent (encyclopedic) style and depth.
In those terms... yes, the article on the image is clearly relevant, and yes, the image is relevant to the article, both by our own internal standards, and by standards of both industry/social commentary on albums (reviews, commentary typically and routinely include the album cover) and academic commentary on them (same).
It sounds like you want to cut this little topic out of Wikipedia, as an exception, to justify your unease over the photo.
While I agree with and am sympathetic to your unease, what you are trying to do is in fact antithetical to what we want to accomplish as a project. You *are* targeting our core values with this line of argument. Your assertion that you aren't doing so is being clearly seen though by a number of respondents.
The stuff we're uncomfortable about is unfortunately some of the stuff which NOTCENSORED was intended to strongly urge us to keep. We're not the encylopedia of topics which we're comfortable talking about - we put forth deep discussions on homosexuality for devout christians to find, articles on pornography for prudes to read, articles on God which might offend the atheist.
We draw the line at illegal (obscene or otherwise), and offensive without encyclopedic content. But this image is by all evidence not illegal, and has encyclopedic value both illustrating the album and in discussions of its own controversy.