Tony Sidaway writes:
The sale of the very successful sexually explicit educational video, The Lovers' Guide, through mainstream high street bookstores in 1991 under an 18 certificate showed that the general public is receptive to well presented informational movies on sexual topics. Obviously Wikipedia isn't a "How to" guide of that type, but where a movie would be useful and one is available under GFDL it should be considered.
Sure - it might be a good idea to have a GFDL, open-source website on sex. I just don't think that the full, explicit content of such a site should be in a general encyclopedia like ours. Wikipedia should discuss human sexuality (even the "gross" aspects, which apprently vary from reader to reader) while at the same time not being a sex instruction site.
I wouldn't have any problem with someone making a Wiki sex instruction site, a Wiki-cooking and baking site, or a Wiki-anything-else kind of site. I just wish to diffentiate between the role of an encyclopedia, and the role of, well, other things that are not encyclopedias.
Skyring writes:
And the end result would be that thousands of schools would ban Wikipedia, which would be a shame. Is there some way that we can find a technological solution? Have a "splash screen" that warns of explicit images? A cookie that prevents download of "adult content"? Something that will pop up when the casual user navigates to Autofellatio? All we really need is some sort of hurdle that must be leapt, some button that must be pressed, some door that must be opened.
This is an excellent idea (and is in no way censorship.) This is not only a good idea for sex-related articles, it also would be a good idea for any surgery-related articles, or articles on forensics. I don't want to see one of my students loosing their lunch...again.
I have taught many high school students about fertilization, fetal development and birth. (It is shocking how little so many of our 16 year olds actually know about their own bodies.) Most students were alright with all of it, even the videos, but some students screamed with genuine horror at seeing a woman actually give birth. One of them threw up! Granted, this wouldn't happen in some other cultures where birth is treated as just another fact of life, but where I live most people don't see such things, and some do not want to!
If I read an article where something "really gross" might be explained in a photo, I'd want an option to see it, and not have it forced on me. Given my student's reactions, I am not alone!
Finally, professional line-drawings (as opposed to photos) are apparently less of a problem. They are nearly universally considered less offensive (and/or gross) and are more often perceived as academic and professional (when drawn and labeled well.)
Robert (RK)
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free! http://my.yahoo.com
Robert said:
Tony Sidaway writes:
The sale of the very successful sexually explicit educational video, The Lovers' Guide, through mainstream high street bookstores in 1991 under an 18 certificate showed that the general public is receptive to well presented informational movies on sexual topics. Obviously Wikipedia isn't a "How to" guide of that type, but where a movie would be useful and one is available under GFDL it should be considered.
Sure - it might be a good idea to have a GFDL, open-source website on sex. I just don't think that the full, explicit content of such a site should be in a general encyclopedia like ours. Wikipedia should discuss human sexuality (even the "gross" aspects, which apprently vary from reader to reader) while at the same time not being a sex instruction site.
Yes. I think that we should consider illustrations where appropriate while not competing with sex instruction manuals. Where we draw the line on illustration is probably going to take a while to work out, and will likely change over time as people become less prudish with each successive generation. Improvements in technology will also tend to make streaming video more common on sites like Wikipedia. I certainly hope that the prospect of some of it being labeled "porn" will not stop this useful medium being used.
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 14:57:14 -0800 (PST), Robert rkscience100@yahoo.com wrote:
Finally, professional line-drawings (as opposed to photos) are apparently less of a problem. They are nearly universally considered less offensive (and/or gross) and are more often perceived as academic and professional (when drawn and labeled well.)
I agree wholeheartedly on this. They are often used in textbooks and encyclopaedias. Some books on massage and sexual instruction have some really well-done and tasteful illustrations. Those from The Joy of Sex (for an example see http://www.theconnection.org/photogallery/sex/default.asp?counter=1) are beautifully done.
Skyring said:
Some books on massage and sexual instruction have some really well-done and tasteful illustrations. Those from The Joy of Sex (for an example see http://www.theconnection.org/photogallery/sex/default.asp?counter=1) are beautifully done.
Man, why didn't you warn me about those potentially offensive beards? :)
Robert wrote:
Skyring writes:
And the end result would be that thousands of schools would ban Wikipedia, which would be a shame. Is there some way that we can find a technological solution? Have a "splash screen" that warns of explicit images? A cookie that prevents download of "adult content"? Something that will pop up when the casual user navigates to Autofellatio? All we really need is some sort of hurdle that must be leapt, some button that must be pressed, some door that must be opened.
This is an excellent idea (and is in no way censorship.) This is not only a good idea for sex-related articles, it also would be a good idea for any surgery-related articles, or articles on forensics. I don't want to see one of my students loosing their lunch...again.
I have taught many high school students about fertilization, fetal development and birth. (It is shocking how little so many of our 16 year olds actually know about their own bodies.) Most students were alright with all of it, even the videos, but some students screamed with genuine horror at seeing a woman actually give birth. One of them threw up! Granted, this wouldn't happen in some other cultures where birth is treated as just another fact of life, but where I live most people don't see such things, and some do not want to!
If I read an article where something "really gross" might be explained in a photo, I'd want an option to see it, and not have it forced on me. Given my student's reactions, I am not alone!
Finally, professional line-drawings (as opposed to photos) are apparently less of a problem. They are nearly universally considered less offensive (and/or gross) and are more often perceived as academic and professional (when drawn and labeled well.)
Speaking merely as a fairly independent individual, I am not interested in seeing explicit video or photographic stills of the birth process. I have seen such video before, and I have no interest at this juncture to repeat the experience. I'm also not interested in watching it in person.
That aside, however, I would like the ability to watch such things if I were to change my mind. It might be viewed as "horrifying", but it might also be viewed as "informative" or "educational".
As such, any solution that does not bar explicit content (as long as it's not gratuitous), but does allow for opting into a blocking mechanism (reversible on a case-by-case basis) if that is desired, sounds like a great idea for me. My question is this:
Is there anyone that finds that sort of "fix" to the issue inappropriate, inapplicable, incomplete, or otherwise objectionable? Is there any reason to force either visible presence or complete absence of such content on people?
-- Chad
Chad Perrin said:
That aside, however, I would like the ability to watch such things if I were to change my mind. It might be viewed as "horrifying", but it might also be viewed as "informative" or "educational".
As such, any solution that does not bar explicit content (as long as it's not gratuitous), but does allow for opting into a blocking mechanism (reversible on a case-by-case basis) if that is desired, sounds like a great idea for me. My question is this:
Is there anyone that finds that sort of "fix" to the issue inappropriate, inapplicable, incomplete, or otherwise objectionable? Is there any reason to force either visible presence or complete absence of such content on people?
We already have this capability built into our browsers. For those who can't or are simply unwilling to learn how to use their browsers, however, it would be easy enough to adapt MediaWiki to suppress or display all image content by default per user, reversible on a case-by-case basis. I downloaded a copy of MediaWiki the other day and if I find the time I'll write a patch for that.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Chad Perrin said:
Is there anyone that finds that sort of "fix" to the issue inappropriate, inapplicable, incomplete, or otherwise objectionable? Is there any reason to force either visible presence or complete absence of such content on people?
We already have this capability built into our browsers. For those who can't or are simply unwilling to learn how to use their browsers, however, it would be easy enough to adapt MediaWiki to suppress or display all image content by default per user, reversible on a case-by-case basis. I downloaded a copy of MediaWiki the other day and if I find the time I'll write a patch for that.
The statement that "we" already have this capability built into "our" browsers assumes some things about visitors to the site that are not necessarily true. For instance, w3mmee (if I recall correctly) is capable of rendering images and does not include any means of blocking images based on the likelihood of being offensive, even indirectly. Besides, anything less than a one-click method of blocking all images is unlikely to make blocking all images palatable to anyone using a graphical browser. As such, I think that addressing the matter from the server side is rather important, in the long run.
-- Chad
Chad Perrin said:
The statement that "we" already have this capability built into "our" browsers assumes some things about visitors to the site that are not necessarily true.
Well you had to dig pretty deep for a not-very-convincing example. :)
Besides, anything less than a one-click method of blocking all images is unlikely to make blocking all images palatable to anyone using a graphical browser. As such, I think that addressing the matter from the server side is rather important, in the long run.
I agree that, at most, it's a nice-to-have. But really the users should be taking this issue up with the designers of their browsers, not the producers of content. http is not a push medium.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I agree that, at most, it's a nice-to-have. But really the users should be taking this issue up with the designers of their browsers, not the producers of content. http is not a push medium.
And yet I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be able to browse an encyclopedia with images on and not run across disgusting crap that adds no value to the article whatsoever.
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I agree that, at most, it's a nice-to-have. But really the users should be taking this issue up with the designers of their browsers, not the producers of content. http is not a push medium.
And yet I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be able to browse an encyclopedia with images on and not run across disgusting crap that adds no value to the article whatsoever.
You should never encounter disgusting crap that adds no value to an article. If you find any, remove it.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I agree that, at most, it's a nice-to-have. But really the users should be taking this issue up with the designers of their browsers, not the producers of content. http is not a push medium.
And yet I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be able to browse an encyclopedia with images on and not run across disgusting crap that adds no value to the article whatsoever.
You should never encounter disgusting crap that adds no value to an article. If you find any, remove it.
*points at [[Autofellatio]]*
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I agree that, at most, it's a nice-to-have. But really the users should be taking this issue up with the designers of their browsers, not the producers of content. http is not a push medium.
And yet I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be able to browse an encyclopedia with images on and not run across disgusting crap that adds no value to the article whatsoever.
You should never encounter disgusting crap that adds no value to an article. If you find any, remove it.
*points at [[Autofellatio]]*
Now we've returned to the very subjective realm of trying to define "disgusting crap". I don't know whether the image in question added value to the article. I am largely neutral on the subject. I am, however, extremely concerned with matters such as how we deal with the problem of potentially "disgusting crap" images because whatever mechanisms are put in place will also run the risk of getting false positives.
Some people clearly believe your pointing constitutes a false positive. Others do not. A reasonable mechanism (whether technical or a matter of policy) for sorting the issue out would be desirable, here.
-- Chad
Chad Perrin wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I agree that, at most, it's a nice-to-have. But really the users should be taking this issue up with the designers of their browsers, not the producers of content. http is not a push medium.
And yet I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be able to browse an encyclopedia with images on and not run across disgusting crap that adds no value to the article whatsoever.
You should never encounter disgusting crap that adds no value to an article. If you find any, remove it.
*points at [[Autofellatio]]*
Now we've returned to the very subjective realm of trying to define "disgusting crap". I don't know whether the image in question added value to the article. I am largely neutral on the subject. I am, however, extremely concerned with matters such as how we deal with the problem of potentially "disgusting crap" images because whatever mechanisms are put in place will also run the risk of getting false positives.
Some people clearly believe your pointing constitutes a false positive. Others do not. A reasonable mechanism (whether technical or a matter of policy) for sorting the issue out would be desirable, here.
I see nothing wrong with an encyclopedia having a blanket policy that sexually explicit photographs not be displayed in articles. You can argue relativism, subjectiveness, and "censorship" all you want, we both know it's crap. We're here to provide an educational resource. Inlined explicit photographs of sex acts as a whole do little to educate that a line drawing wouldn't do, and only turn people off to Wikipedia as an educational resource. Crap like the autofellatio image is even worse.
Nicholas Knight:
I don't see anything wrong with "an encyclopedia" having such a blanket policy, either. On the other hand, I do have a problem with the idea that my favorite encyclopedia might suddenly become less informative due to strict implementation of a policy enforcing cultural taboos that interfere with the ability to provide useful, factual, relevant information. As such, I don't think I can in good conscience support such a policy for Wikipedia. One of the problems with "blanket" policies like that is that they tend to cover good things as well as bad.
If it's pertinent and not gratuitous, I don't tend to have a problem with it. In cases where a substantial demographic does, it might be reasonable to move it off-page without removing it entirely, if some simpler visitor-controlled mechanism for "censoring" the visible content is not available.
Don't fool yourself, though -- claiming that something is "indecent" just because it's graphic is a matter of personal perspective, not of absolutist principles.
-- Chad
(PS: I'm breaking with my usual standard of bottom-posting for clarity, here. The reason is simply that I don't want to cut out context, but also don't want to force anyone to scroll a page and a half down to find my response. My apologies for top-posting.)
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I agree that, at most, it's a nice-to-have. But really the users should be taking this issue up with the designers of their browsers, not the producers of content. http is not a push medium.
And yet I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be able to browse an encyclopedia with images on and not run across disgusting crap that adds no value to the article whatsoever.
You should never encounter disgusting crap that adds no value to an article. If you find any, remove it.
*points at [[Autofellatio]]*
Now we've returned to the very subjective realm of trying to define "disgusting crap". I don't know whether the image in question added value to the article. I am largely neutral on the subject. I am, however, extremely concerned with matters such as how we deal with the problem of potentially "disgusting crap" images because whatever mechanisms are put in place will also run the risk of getting false positives.
Some people clearly believe your pointing constitutes a false positive. Others do not. A reasonable mechanism (whether technical or a matter of policy) for sorting the issue out would be desirable, here.
I see nothing wrong with an encyclopedia having a blanket policy that sexually explicit photographs not be displayed in articles. You can argue relativism, subjectiveness, and "censorship" all you want, we both know it's crap. We're here to provide an educational resource. Inlined explicit photographs of sex acts as a whole do little to educate that a line drawing wouldn't do, and only turn people off to Wikipedia as an educational resource. Crap like the autofellatio image is even worse.
Chad Perrin wrote:
Nicholas Knight:
I don't see anything wrong with "an encyclopedia" having such a blanket policy, either. On the other hand, I do have a problem with the idea that my favorite encyclopedia might suddenly become less informative due to strict implementation of a policy enforcing cultural taboos that
I'm the last person to be substantially influenced by cultural taboos. I just don't want to see a picture of a guy sucking himself off.
interfere with the ability to provide useful, factual, relevant
_*How is the image useful*_?
information. As such, I don't think I can in good conscience support such a policy for Wikipedia. One of the problems with "blanket" policies like that is that they tend to cover good things as well as bad.
Can you give me a single example of a case where a PHOTOGRAPH of a sexual act is meaningfully more useful than a line drawing?
If it's pertinent and not gratuitous, I don't tend to have a problem
It IS gratuitious.
with it. In cases where a substantial demographic does, it might be reasonable to move it off-page without removing it entirely, if some simpler visitor-controlled mechanism for "censoring" the visible content is not available.
Don't fool yourself, though -- claiming that something is "indecent"
I never said anything was indecent. I said it was crap.
just because it's graphic is a matter of personal perspective, not of absolutist principles.
Most people do not want to see photographs of explicit sex acts when browsing an encyclopedia. Given the lack of educational value such images have, I see no reason to drive those people, including me, off with such images.
Nicholas Knight said:
Can you give me a single example of a case where a PHOTOGRAPH of a sexual act is meaningfully more useful than a line drawing?
I can. A photograph of autofellatio convincingly demonstrates that this extraordinary act is achievable by some men. A line drawing can only give an artist's impress of how perhaps it *might* be done, should it be possible.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Can you give me a single example of a case where a PHOTOGRAPH of a sexual act is meaningfully more useful than a line drawing?
I can. A photograph of autofellatio convincingly demonstrates that this extraordinary act is achievable by some men. A line drawing can only give an artist's impress of how perhaps it *might* be done, should it be possible.
If Wikipedia has to rely on photographs to say something is possible, a critical credibility problem exists.
And even IF you're correct, that does not in any way require an inlined image.
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Can you give me a single example of a case where a PHOTOGRAPH of a sexual act is meaningfully more useful than a line drawing?
I can. A photograph of autofellatio convincingly demonstrates that this extraordinary act is achievable by some men. A line drawing can only give an artist's impress of how perhaps it *might* be done, should it be possible.
If Wikipedia has to rely on photographs to say something is possible, a critical credibility problem exists.
It doesn't have to rely on them, but they're very effective for this purpose. I've got blind colleagues who manage very well without being able to see a thing, but this doesn't mean that sight isn't also useful.
And even IF you're correct, that does not in any way require an inlined image.
I agree. It does not. But if it's a useful illustration, why not?
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Can you give me a single example of a case where a PHOTOGRAPH of a sexual act is meaningfully more useful than a line drawing?
I can. A photograph of autofellatio convincingly demonstrates that this extraordinary act is achievable by some men. A line drawing can only give an artist's impress of how perhaps it *might* be done, should it be possible.
If Wikipedia has to rely on photographs to say something is possible, a critical credibility problem exists.
It doesn't have to rely on them, but they're very effective for this purpose. I've got blind colleagues who manage very well without being able to see a thing, but this doesn't mean that sight isn't also useful.
And even IF you're correct, that does not in any way require an inlined image.
I agree. It does not. But if it's a useful illustration, why not?
I continue to see no usefulness in it, and the "why not" is because people _will not use wikipedia_, and quite likely, existing editors would leave. I certainly would if this became an accepted part of Wikipedia. It would be a final demonstration that the people here are not the least bit interested in constructing a useful educational resource, but seek only to shove a social agenda down other's throats.
Nicholas Knight said:
and the "why not" is because people _will not use wikipedia_, and quite likely, existing editors would leave. I certainly would if this became an accepted part of Wikipedia.
You must do what you think is best. However the hypothesis that the rest of Wikipedia, or even significant numbers of editors, would follow you, is wishful thinking.
Nicholas Knight wrote:
I continue to see no usefulness in it, and the "why not" is because people _will not use wikipedia_, and quite likely, existing editors would leave. I certainly would if this became an accepted part of Wikipedia. It would be a final demonstration that the people here are not the least bit interested in constructing a useful educational resource, but seek only to shove a social agenda down other's throats.
Now you've really lost me. Who seeks "only to shove a social agenda down other's [sic] throats"? What social agenda do you mean? This isn't some kind of moral objection to the act of autofellatio, is it?
-- Chad
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Chad Perrin said:
What social agenda do you mean?
It's one of those conjugating nouns that turn up to often in these discussions. I have principles You have bias He has a social agenda
While that was my first (and immediate) reaction, I decided to assume good faith and ask the question as I did.
-- Chad
Chad Perrin wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
I continue to see no usefulness in it, and the "why not" is because people _will not use wikipedia_, and quite likely, existing editors would leave. I certainly would if this became an accepted part of Wikipedia. It would be a final demonstration that the people here are not the least bit interested in constructing a useful educational resource, but seek only to shove a social agenda down other's throats.
Now you've really lost me. Who seeks "only to shove a social agenda down other's [sic] throats"? What social agenda do you mean? This isn't some kind of moral objection to the act of autofellatio, is it?
No, it's an objection to shoving explicit and disgusting images in what is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the purpose of trying to force the world to somehow "de-prudify" itself.
Nicholas Knight said:
No, it's an objection to shoving explicit and disgusting images in what is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the purpose of trying to force the world to somehow "de-prudify" itself.
Who has advanced this argument for including the picture?
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
No, it's an objection to shoving explicit and disgusting images in what is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the purpose of trying to force the world to somehow "de-prudify" itself.
Who has advanced this argument for including the picture?
No one. If you'll look back at the exact sequence of the conversation, you'll understand where this came from. It's predicated on images like the autofelleto one becoming accepted parts of Wikipedia, and is not specific to the photograph in question.
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
No, it's an objection to shoving explicit and disgusting images in what is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the purpose of trying to force the world to somehow "de-prudify" itself.
Who has advanced this argument for including the picture?
No one. If you'll look back at the exact sequence of the conversation, you'll understand where this came from. It's predicated on images like the autofelleto one becoming accepted parts of Wikipedia, and is not specific to the photograph in question.
The autofellatio picture has survived one IfD round already and was showing every sign of surviving a second when someone overwrote it with a line drawing. In addition there is at least one other (fair use) autofellatio picture, uploaded by me, and this also has survived IfD. So images like the autofellatio one are already an accepted part of wikipedia.
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
I continue to see no usefulness in it, and the "why not" is because people _will not use wikipedia_, and quite likely, existing editors would leave. I certainly would if this became an accepted part of Wikipedia. It would be a final demonstration that the people here are not the least bit interested in constructing a useful educational resource, but seek only to shove a social agenda down other's throats.
Now you've really lost me. Who seeks "only to shove a social agenda down other's [sic] throats"? What social agenda do you mean? This isn't some kind of moral objection to the act of autofellatio, is it?
No, it's an objection to shoving explicit and disgusting images in what is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the purpose of trying to force the world to somehow "de-prudify" itself.
Who exactly is trying to push that agenda? Do you mean to suggest that everyone that opposes your interpretation is pushing that agenda?
Personally, I am not trying to "de-prudify" the world in any way. I'm merely interested in an informative encyclopedia whose effectiveness is not limited by prudishness. Making the encyclopedia effective by "de-prudifying" its policies and trying to "de-prudify" the world aren't even marginally equivalent. If you aren't referring to me some class of people including me, though, I'd like to know what you mean.
-- Chad
Nicholas Knight wrote:
No, it's an objection to shoving explicit and disgusting images in what is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the purpose of trying to force the world to somehow "de-prudify" itself.
The problem with your argument is that the opposite is also true.
Christiaan
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 22:10:11 -0500, Chad Perrin perrin@apotheon.com wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
I continue to see no usefulness in it, and the "why not" is because people _will not use wikipedia_, and quite likely, existing editors would leave. I certainly would if this became an accepted part of Wikipedia. It would be a final demonstration that the people here are not the least bit interested in constructing a useful educational resource, but seek only to shove a social agenda down other's throats.
Now you've really lost me. Who seeks "only to shove a social agenda down other's [sic] throats"?
We can hardly shove a social agenda down our own throats, now can we?
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
Nicholas Knight:
I don't see anything wrong with "an encyclopedia" having such a blanket policy, either. On the other hand, I do have a problem with the idea that my favorite encyclopedia might suddenly become less informative due to strict implementation of a policy enforcing cultural taboos that
I'm the last person to be substantially influenced by cultural taboos. I just don't want to see a picture of a guy sucking himself off.
In that case, then, it seems you're just trying to enforce a personal preference. That's far worse, in my estimation.
In any case, I have to wonder why you don't want to see it, but do want to read about it.
interfere with the ability to provide useful, factual, relevant
_*How is the image useful*_?
I didn't say it was. I don't really know whether it's useful. I haven't made any particular judgment. Applying blanket policies like you seem to advocate, however, would certainly end up disqualifying a great many images that WOULD be "useful".
information. As such, I don't think I can in good conscience support such a policy for Wikipedia. One of the problems with "blanket" policies like that is that they tend to cover good things as well as bad.
Can you give me a single example of a case where a PHOTOGRAPH of a sexual act is meaningfully more useful than a line drawing?
Sure. What about a case where something graphically illustrative is needed, no line drawing is available to the person posting the article, and he or she either hasn't the skill to draw one or access to the technology to make it available online?
Besides . . . I don't understand how a photograph is necessarily more offensive than a drawing. For one thing, it's often more difficult to accurately render informative or otherwise useful detail with a pencil than with a camera, and for another, a line drawing can be far clearer (and thus more evocative) than a photograph at times.
If it's pertinent and not gratuitous, I don't tend to have a problem
It IS gratuitious.
I was speaking in the generic. Whether or not this particular image is gratuitous isn't something I'm going to argue right now. You made references to making policy, and that is what I addressed.
with it. In cases where a substantial demographic does, it might be reasonable to move it off-page without removing it entirely, if some simpler visitor-controlled mechanism for "censoring" the visible content is not available.
Don't fool yourself, though -- claiming that something is "indecent"
I never said anything was indecent. I said it was crap.
Sheer, unadulterated opinion, then. That's not even a reasonable facsimile of the same possible usefulness of a philosophical statement about indecency.
just because it's graphic is a matter of personal perspective, not of absolutist principles.
Most people do not want to see photographs of explicit sex acts when browsing an encyclopedia. Given the lack of educational value such images have, I see no reason to drive those people, including me, off with such images.
Most people don't want to have to exercise to stay in shape, either. That's hardly a relevant argument, unless you also think that "most people agree that redheads are better in bed" is justification for making statements to that effect in an encyclopedia.
Your statements to the effect that there's nothing wrong with a blanket policy of blocking any and all sexually explicit photos indicate that by "such images" you mean "sexually explicit" images. Based on that, I can only assume you believe that there's no credible possibility of educational value in any "sexually explicit" image. That being the case, I have to disagree, but if you can't figure out why for yourself I don't think there's any point in trying to explain it to you.
-- Chad
Nicholas Knight wrote:
_*How is the image useful*_?
Um, it describes the act of autofellatio. That's about as useful as it gets. Personally I'd rather we had a photo of a guy getting much of his penis in his mouth.
Can you give me a single example of a case where a PHOTOGRAPH of a sexual act is meaningfully more useful than a line drawing?
All cases I would have said. A photo shows actuality, a sketch can be inaccurate.
If it's pertinent and not gratuitous, I don't tend to have a problem
It IS gratuitious.
Heh, well many people probably think the act itself is gratuitous. It's actually a pretty good picture, which says to me many people complaining about this picture aren't complaining so much about the picture but about the act.
Most people do not want to see photographs of explicit sex acts when browsing an encyclopedia. Given the lack of educational value such images have, I see no reason to drive those people, including me, off with such images.
Where does this "most people" come from? You have some data I assume.
Christiaan
At 05:26 PM 2/13/2005 -0800, Nicholas Knight wrote:
I see nothing wrong with an encyclopedia having a blanket policy that sexually explicit photographs not be displayed in articles. You can argue relativism, subjectiveness, and "censorship" all you want, we both know it's crap.
You _think_ it's crap. Others obviously think otherwise, or there'd be no ongoing debate.
We're here to provide an educational resource. Inlined explicit photographs of sex acts as a whole do little to educate that a line drawing wouldn't do, and only turn people off to Wikipedia as an educational resource.
Perhaps you could provide a line drawing to substitute for it? Back when I first notice the poll on this thing before it had erupted onto the mailing list, someone suggested that the photograph was unacceptable but that we should find a piece of "artwork" to substitute, and I jokingly suggested running the photograph through Photoshop's brushstroke filter. Maybe an edge filter could turn it into a line drawing and actually be a way to resolve this.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
At 05:26 PM 2/13/2005 -0800, Nicholas Knight wrote:
I see nothing wrong with an encyclopedia having a blanket policy that sexually explicit photographs not be displayed in articles. You can argue relativism, subjectiveness, and "censorship" all you want, we both know it's crap.
You _think_ it's crap. Others obviously think otherwise, or there'd be no ongoing debate.
Guess what? They're wrong. I'm right.
There, I said it.
It's CRAP. Everyone here KNOWS it. Stop pretending this is a grey area, it's not.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
It's CRAP. Everyone here KNOWS it. Stop pretending this is a grey area, it's not.
This attitude isn't going to impress people who disagree with you.
I think he's of the impression that nobody actually disagrees with him on whether or not it's "crap", for some mostly unspecified reason (aside from the fact that he doesn't want to see it). He seems to think that, rather than disagreeing, others are lying.
-- Chad
Chad Perrin wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
It's CRAP. Everyone here KNOWS it. Stop pretending this is a grey area, it's not.
This attitude isn't going to impress people who disagree with you.
I think he's of the impression that nobody actually disagrees with him on whether or not it's "crap", for some mostly unspecified reason (aside
On this list I've seen exactly one argument, and that rather half-hearted, as to why it's not crap. I'm of the impression, due to their own statements, that nobody here is thrilled with the image, and are simply labouring under some sort of impression that Wikipedia has some bizarre obligation to provide it.
from the fact that he doesn't want to see it). He seems to think that, rather than disagreeing, others are lying.
Nicholas Knight said:
I'm of the impression, due to their own statements, that nobody here is thrilled with the image,
Actually I've said here and on Wikipedia that I think it's a lovely picture.
and are simply labouring under some sort of impression that Wikipedia has some bizarre obligation to provide it.
Or maybe, just maybe, some of them are just of the opinion that, being a picture of a man licking the head of his penis, it illustrates the autofellatio article quite well.
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
I think he's of the impression that nobody actually disagrees with him on whether or not it's "crap", for some mostly unspecified reason (aside
On this list I've seen exactly one argument, and that rather half-hearted, as to why it's not crap. I'm of the impression, due to their own statements, that nobody here is thrilled with the image, and are simply labouring under some sort of impression that Wikipedia has some bizarre obligation to provide it.
Ah. That makes a little more sense.
I think you're laboring under some sort of impression that many statements made here regarding the principle of the matter, and not applying some "blanket policy" (your words) because of this one photo, are in fact references to this particular incident specifically. In truth, I think many people here are referring to the principles behind the issue, and not the specific incident. I try to be clear about the point of division between the two, though I suppose I might have been misunderstood at times in that regard.
-- Chad
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 19:26:22 -0800, Nicholas Knight nknight@runawaynet.com wrote:
On this list I've seen exactly one argument, and that rather half-hearted, as to why it's not crap. I'm of the impression, due to their own statements, that nobody here is thrilled with the image, and are simply labouring under some sort of impression that Wikipedia has some bizarre obligation to provide it.
The photograph is limited in that it is cropped so that it is not explicitly an act of autofellatio. I think it probably is, but I would have preferred an image that made it quite clear.
However, my beef is not with the image per se. I reckon if you go looking for the Autofellatio article, you shouldn't be surprised or shocked if you find material relating to the subject.
My problem is the argument that could be raised that Wikipedia is a repository for explicit images that are inappropriate for children and therefore the site should be blocked by educational institutions and concerned parents. I think we should take steps to address this before it suddenly takes top billing on talkback shows.
Skyring said:
My problem is the argument that could be raised that Wikipedia is a repository for explicit images that are inappropriate for children and therefore the site should be blocked by educational institutions and concerned parents. I think we should take steps to address this before it suddenly takes top billing on talkback shows.
Something of this kind cannot be avoided except by banning *all* sexually explicit images--something I've seen seriously advanced. We have to make up our minds what we want to do, build an encyclopedia or sit around on talk shows being patted on the back for producing something "safe".
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 06:58:26 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Skyring said:
My problem is the argument that could be raised that Wikipedia is a repository for explicit images that are inappropriate for children and therefore the site should be blocked by educational institutions and concerned parents. I think we should take steps to address this before it suddenly takes top billing on talkback shows.
Something of this kind cannot be avoided except by banning *all* sexually explicit images--something I've seen seriously advanced.
Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.
Skyring wrote:
Something of this kind cannot be avoided except by banning *all* sexually explicit images--something I've seen seriously advanced.
Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.
Nail on the head.
Christiaan
We've had this discussion on several pages. Nobody can agree on what "explicit images" means. Do we slap that tag on the pictures from Abu Graib? From Auschwitz? From Dresden? How about images of Adolf Hitler and George Bush?
RickK
Christiaan Briggs christiaan@last-straw.net wrote: Skyring wrote:
Something of this kind cannot be avoided except by banning *all* sexually explicit images--something I've seen seriously advanced.
Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.
Nail on the head.
Christiaan
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On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 12:20:45 -0800 (PST), Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
We've had this discussion on several pages. Nobody can agree on what "explicit images" means. Do we slap that tag on the pictures from Abu Graib? From Auschwitz? From Dresden? How about images of Adolf Hitler and George Bush?
I would say that images which would not normally be found in school encyclopaedias or museums such as the Smithsonian would be a good rule of thumb, and I'm not just talking about sexual images.
I was in the Holocaust Museum in Washington a few weeks back and although schoolchildren are welcomed and encouraged to attend, certain exhibitions had warnings posted at the entrance. And rightly so.
I don't think there is any hard and fast guide as to what exactly makes an image offensive, disturbing or explicit, but I think that the Wikipedia community could be trusted to find a consensus on a case by case basis. My feeling is that the Autofellatio photograph would be generally agreed as being one that should not be generally accessible to schoolchildren.
I use schoolchildren as an example, not because I want to emasculate or prudify Wikipedia to the level that it offends nobody, but because schoolchildren are prime users of information resources such as Wikipedia, and the last thing we should do is to make it difficult for them to use Wikipedia. I know that some people here think that individula users should accept all responsibility, but many teachers and parents don't see it that way.
I was engaged in discussion in another forum, and someone brought up an example of the Wikipedia article on the Nile River. An innocuous article, one might imagine, but it so happened that at the time my correspondent was opening it up for the benefit of a schoolchild it had recently been vandalised and consisted of nothing but obscenities.
I can't see any way of getting around this sort of thing in the current state of Wikipedia, because inappropriate text or images could be inserted without warning - possibly by mischevious schoolchildren - and it might take some time before the situation is noticed and corrected.
Maybe we should be thinking about having default material that is known to be in a useful and "safe" state and that the "live" material can only be accessed by specifically setting some flag or clicking on an accept button or some similar mechanism.
Skyring said:
I would say that images which would not normally be found in school encyclopaedias or museums such as the Smithsonian would be a good rule of thumb, and I'm not just talking about sexual images.
Encyclopedias rely on per-volume sales to people who, quite often, have issues with all kinds of material. They are very much the lowest common denominator. I think we can set our sights somewhat higher.
On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 09:45:29AM +1100, Skyring wrote:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 12:20:45 -0800 (PST), Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
We've had this discussion on several pages. Nobody can agree on what "explicit images" means. Do we slap that tag on the pictures from Abu Graib? From Auschwitz? From Dresden? How about images of Adolf Hitler and George Bush?
I would say that images which would not normally be found in school encyclopaedias or museums such as the Smithsonian would be a good rule of thumb, and I'm not just talking about sexual images.
The Smithsonian, of course, is the work of the U.S. government, which has all manner of politically-driven standards it must follow. This is not a problem we have.
I was in the Holocaust Museum in Washington a few weeks back and although schoolchildren are welcomed and encouraged to attend, certain exhibitions had warnings posted at the entrance. And rightly so.
I was in the National Museum of the American Indian a few months ago. I was surprised by how -little- there was about the bloodier and more unpleasant parts of the history. I don't know if that's because the museum operators chose to exhibit mostly "friendly" or "politically correct" bits, or because people with a well-deserved grudge didn't care to participate in creating the museum. Or maybe I somehow missed the wing with the smallpox blankets and the Trail of Tears.
I don't think there is any hard and fast guide as to what exactly makes an image offensive, disturbing or explicit, but I think that the Wikipedia community could be trusted to find a consensus on a case by case basis. My feeling is that the Autofellatio photograph would be generally agreed as being one that should not be generally accessible to schoolchildren.
My opinion is that the Autofellatio photograph is not a very good image for an encyclopedia ... *not* because it depicts a man licking his penis, but because it is stylistically poor and unfitting.
Likewise, my opinion is that the Goatse.cx image is not fitting for Wikipedia because displaying it is far too close to *participating* in the trolling-behavior with which that image is so closely linked.
Schoolchildren don't much enter into it.
I use schoolchildren as an example, not because I want to emasculate or prudify Wikipedia to the level that it offends nobody, but because schoolchildren are prime users of information resources such as Wikipedia, and the last thing we should do is to make it difficult for them to use Wikipedia. I know that some people here think that individula users should accept all responsibility, but many teachers and parents don't see it that way.
I'm guessing that by saying that we would "make it difficult for school- children to use Wikipedia" you mean that by depicting sexuality frankly we would tickle the sensors of [[censorware]] programs, causing Wikipedia to be blocked.
Sadly, there are many fools in the world, and fools appear to be the chief market for censorware. Both the flaws and the deliberate biases of popular censorware products have been more than adequately demonstrated. We are talking about software which already regularly blocks educational material on breast cancer and HIV/AIDS; which has been found to selectively block pro-choice (abortion-rights) sites but not pro-life (anti-abortion) sites; and which in one case has blocked TIME Magazine's Web site when TIME criticized censorware.
(See http://www.peacefire.org/info/blocking-software-faq.html.)
I don't see any way Wikipedia can benefit from kowtowing to that kind of nonsense. If Wikipedia is blocked by censorware, so much the worse for censorware; it will be one more illustration of its uselessness and one more charge to be brought against its use.
I was engaged in discussion in another forum, and someone brought up an example of the Wikipedia article on the Nile River. An innocuous article, one might imagine, but it so happened that at the time my correspondent was opening it up for the benefit of a schoolchild it had recently been vandalised and consisted of nothing but obscenities.
This sounds to me like you're comparing people who upload controversial images with people who vandalize Wikipedia. That doesn't seem to me like a very productive comparison to make.
Maybe we should be thinking about having default material that is known to be in a useful and "safe" state and that the "live" material can only be accessed by specifically setting some flag or clicking on an accept button or some similar mechanism.
Wikipedia's job is to describe the world, and the world is "live" and not "safe", too.
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:08:31 -0500, Karl A. Krueger kkrueger@whoi.edu wrote:
On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 09:45:29AM +1100, Skyring wrote:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 12:20:45 -0800 (PST), Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
We've had this discussion on several pages. Nobody can agree on what "explicit images" means. Do we slap that tag on the pictures from Abu Graib? From Auschwitz? From Dresden? How about images of Adolf Hitler and George Bush?
I would say that images which would not normally be found in school encyclopaedias or museums such as the Smithsonian would be a good rule of thumb, and I'm not just talking about sexual images.
The Smithsonian, of course, is the work of the U.S. government, which has all manner of politically-driven standards it must follow. This is not a problem we have.
Indeed not. Nevertheless, the standards are there and doubtless drive the public perception of what is proper to display to the public in general and schoolchildren in particular.
I was in the Holocaust Museum in Washington a few weeks back and although schoolchildren are welcomed and encouraged to attend, certain exhibitions had warnings posted at the entrance. And rightly so.
I was in the National Museum of the American Indian a few months ago. I was surprised by how -little- there was about the bloodier and more unpleasant parts of the history. I don't know if that's because the museum operators chose to exhibit mostly "friendly" or "politically correct" bits, or because people with a well-deserved grudge didn't care to participate in creating the museum. Or maybe I somehow missed the wing with the smallpox blankets and the Trail of Tears.
You are correct, but I think you are reading more into my example than was ever put into it. Certainly Wikipedia does not seem to suffer from any such coyness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Trail_of_Tears
I don't think there is any hard and fast guide as to what exactly makes an image offensive, disturbing or explicit, but I think that the Wikipedia community could be trusted to find a consensus on a case by case basis. My feeling is that the Autofellatio photograph would be generally agreed as being one that should not be generally accessible to schoolchildren.
My opinion is that the Autofellatio photograph is not a very good image for an encyclopedia ... *not* because it depicts a man licking his penis, but because it is stylistically poor and unfitting.
Likewise, my opinion is that the Goatse.cx image is not fitting for Wikipedia because displaying it is far too close to *participating* in the trolling-behavior with which that image is so closely linked.
Schoolchildren don't much enter into it.
Perhaps we are beating different drums. I don't particularly care about such images. In the grand scheme of Wikipedia they are trivia. What I do care about is the spectre of some hardliner with a huge television following deciding that such images make Wikipedia unsuitable for children, demonstrating how easily such images may be accessed, and mounting a crusade against Wikipedia with the objective of forcing schools and parents to boycott this thing of ours.
I use schoolchildren as an example, not because I want to emasculate or prudify Wikipedia to the level that it offends nobody, but because schoolchildren are prime users of information resources such as Wikipedia, and the last thing we should do is to make it difficult for them to use Wikipedia. I know that some people here think that individula users should accept all responsibility, but many teachers and parents don't see it that way.
I'm guessing that by saying that we would "make it difficult for school- children to use Wikipedia" you mean that by depicting sexuality frankly we would tickle the sensors of [[censorware]] programs, causing Wikipedia to be blocked.
No.
Sadly, there are many fools in the world, and fools appear to be the chief market for censorware. Both the flaws and the deliberate biases of popular censorware products have been more than adequately demonstrated. We are talking about software which already regularly blocks educational material on breast cancer and HIV/AIDS; which has been found to selectively block pro-choice (abortion-rights) sites but not pro-life (anti-abortion) sites; and which in one case has blocked TIME Magazine's Web site when TIME criticized censorware.
(See http://www.peacefire.org/info/blocking-software-faq.html.)
I don't see any way Wikipedia can benefit from kowtowing to that kind of nonsense. If Wikipedia is blocked by censorware, so much the worse for censorware; it will be one more illustration of its uselessness and one more charge to be brought against its use.
I agree, but the inevitable result of allowing offensive images, especially sexually explicit images, to be freely available to anyone who looks up Wikipedia is that there will be strong and vocal opposition, and millions of US schoolchildren will be denied access. The more well-known Wikipedia becomes, the sooner this will happen. I really cannot blame parents, school boards and other community leaders if they act to prevent children from accessing graphic images such as a bloke sucking himself off, but such action would also deny children access to thousands of well-researched articles which are not in themselves offensive.
I was engaged in discussion in another forum, and someone brought up an example of the Wikipedia article on the Nile River. An innocuous article, one might imagine, but it so happened that at the time my correspondent was opening it up for the benefit of a schoolchild it had recently been vandalised and consisted of nothing but obscenities.
This sounds to me like you're comparing people who upload controversial images with people who vandalize Wikipedia.
No. I've moved on to another topic now.
That doesn't seem to me like a very productive comparison to make.
Maybe we should be thinking about having default material that is known to be in a useful and "safe" state and that the "live" material can only be accessed by specifically setting some flag or clicking on an accept button or some similar mechanism.
Wikipedia's job is to describe the world, and the world is "live" and not "safe", too.
The world also includes bigots and religious crusaders with huge followings, and I make no doubt that they do not share your opinions.
Skyring said:
I agree, but the inevitable result of allowing offensive images, especially sexually explicit images, to be freely available to anyone who looks up Wikipedia is that there will be strong and vocal opposition, and millions of US schoolchildren will be denied access. The more well-known Wikipedia becomes, the sooner this will happen. I really cannot blame parents, school boards and other community leaders if they act to prevent children from accessing graphic images such as a bloke sucking himself off, but such action would also deny children access to thousands of well-researched articles which are not in themselves offensive.
This is going to happen anyway. We have an article on Donkey Punch and one on Dirty Sanchez, and those alone, unillustrated, are enough to take Wikipedia well out of the realm of the child-safe. If we can agree that there will be a demand for a child-safe fork of Wikipedia, let us start formulate the policies and mechanisms that will enable us build it in tandem with the main one. There's no need for us to bowdlerize our main fork if all we need do is produce a child-safe website containing filtered content on those subject that would be of interest to K12.
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 03:09:56 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Skyring said:
I agree, but the inevitable result of allowing offensive images, especially sexually explicit images, to be freely available to anyone who looks up Wikipedia is that there will be strong and vocal opposition, and millions of US schoolchildren will be denied access. The more well-known Wikipedia becomes, the sooner this will happen. I really cannot blame parents, school boards and other community leaders if they act to prevent children from accessing graphic images such as a bloke sucking himself off, but such action would also deny children access to thousands of well-researched articles which are not in themselves offensive.
This is going to happen anyway. We have an article on Donkey Punch and one on Dirty Sanchez, and those alone, unillustrated, are enough to take Wikipedia well out of the realm of the child-safe. If we can agree that there will be a demand for a child-safe fork of Wikipedia, let us start formulate the policies and mechanisms that will enable us build it in tandem with the main one. There's no need for us to bowdlerize our main fork if all we need do is produce a child-safe website containing filtered content on those subject that would be of interest to K12.
You're right. It's not just images.
A thought occurred to me that it would be reasonably easy for any zealot to show that Wikipedia is the devil's tool. Just as we get vandals who think it is fun to replace a well-presented informative article on the River Nile with a few obscenities - and this is literally child's play - so too we might get zealots who can arrange for an article to contain objectionable material just in time for them to "discover" it at a press conference.
"Here is Wikipedia's article on Our Lord, Jesus Christ," the Reverend Hardmind might say, opening up the article and showing that the Messiah is bending over to receive the divine blessing of twelve disciples, their robes around their ankles and their smiles around their ears.
Never mind that the image was inserted only minutes previously. The damage has been done.
Skyring said:
"Here is Wikipedia's article on Our Lord, Jesus Christ," the Reverend Hardmind might say, opening up the article and showing that the Messiah is bending over to receive the divine blessing of twelve disciples, their robes around their ankles and their smiles around their ears.
Never mind that the image was inserted only minutes previously. The damage has been done.
That will happen and it's only a matter of time. Okay, I know this sounds like Chicken Licken, but I think it's inevitable. If schools and parents like Wikipedia's content we should provide it, but not in raw Wiki form. Then when the good reverend fulminates against Wikipedia's editing engine we can just turn around and say that's just the workfloor, not the version schoolkids see. We come clean, we admit that a full-blown Wiki is not a suitable environment for teaching and it's no place to leave your kids unattended. It should be possible to scan Wikipedia for about 5000 articles that would be useful to K12, choose a reasonably stable version and check it for suitability. Remove sections if necessary. Then store that in a MediaWiki running with editing turned off and you have the start of a school Wikipedia. We could rely on the pride of individual editors to perform the task of reviewing and copy-editing their own copies of candidate articles in userspace and submitting for the school wiki. Use an appointed standards committee of trusted editors to vet the content.
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 03:59:39 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Skyring said:
"Here is Wikipedia's article on Our Lord, Jesus Christ," the Reverend Hardmind might say, opening up the article and showing that the Messiah is bending over to receive the divine blessing of twelve disciples, their robes around their ankles and their smiles around their ears.
Never mind that the image was inserted only minutes previously. The damage has been done.
That will happen and it's only a matter of time. Okay, I know this sounds like Chicken Licken, but I think it's inevitable. If schools and parents like Wikipedia's content we should provide it, but not in raw Wiki form. Then when the good reverend fulminates against Wikipedia's editing engine we can just turn around and say that's just the workfloor, not the version schoolkids see. We come clean, we admit that a full-blown Wiki is not a suitable environment for teaching and it's no place to leave your kids unattended. It should be possible to scan Wikipedia for about 5000 articles that would be useful to K12, choose a reasonably stable version and check it for suitability. Remove sections if necessary. Then store that in a MediaWiki running with editing turned off and you have the start of a school Wikipedia. We could rely on the pride of individual editors to perform the task of reviewing and copy-editing their own copies of candidate articles in userspace and submitting for the school wiki. Use an appointed standards committee of trusted editors to vet the content.
Do I detect a certain amount of tongue in cheek above?
I was thinking along the lines of a "printed" Wikipedia and a "working" Wikipedia. The "printed" version could be what you describe above, perhaps under a different name of Brikipedia or Slikipedia or Chikipedia.org, and it could be printed on demand or distributed on CD or made available on the web, the selling point being that it is accurate, uptodate and free of nasty surprises such as lewd images or vandalised articles. Possibly the lewd images could be available if you jump through a few hoops, click on a warning notice and provide a credit card merely for verification purposes. <g> Meanwhile the Wikipedia we know and love keeps on churning away in all its glory producing an uptotheminute and occasionally shocking encyclopaedia with all the merriment and mayhem of edit wars, debates over clitoral images and so on.
Skyring said:
Do I detect a certain amount of tongue in cheek above?
Absolutely none. I do think the product should be separated from the process, where it comes to dealing with the sensibilities of this particular specialized audience. I don't personally think should be in the K12 business at all; we should leave all the effort to some organization with experience in educational publishing.
Skyring wrote:
I was thinking along the lines of a "printed" Wikipedia and a "working" Wikipedia. The "printed" version could be what you describe above, perhaps under a different name of Brikipedia or Slikipedia or Chikipedia.org, and it could be printed on demand or distributed on CD or made available on the web, the selling point being that it is accurate, uptodate and free of nasty surprises such as lewd images or vandalised articles. Possibly the lewd images could be available if you jump through a few hoops, click on a warning notice and provide a credit card merely for verification purposes. <g> Meanwhile the Wikipedia we know and love keeps on churning away in all its glory producing an uptotheminute and occasionally shocking encyclopaedia with all the merriment and mayhem of edit wars, debates over clitoral images and so on.
I find it quite interesting that, after all this debate, we've ended up with a suggested solution that involves pretty much realizing the dream that started all this wacky Wikipedia fun: an encyclopedia on every schoolchild's desk.
-- Chad
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Skyring said:
I agree, but the inevitable result of allowing offensive images, especially sexually explicit images, to be freely available to anyone who looks up Wikipedia is that there will be strong and vocal opposition, and millions of US schoolchildren will be denied access. The more well-known Wikipedia becomes, the sooner this will happen. I really cannot blame parents, school boards and other community leaders if they act to prevent children from accessing graphic images such as a bloke sucking himself off, but such action would also deny children access to thousands of well-researched articles which are not in themselves offensive.
This is going to happen anyway. We have an article on Donkey Punch and one on Dirty Sanchez, and those alone, unillustrated, are enough to take Wikipedia well out of the realm of the child-safe. If we can agree that there will be a demand for a child-safe fork of Wikipedia, let us start formulate the policies and mechanisms that will enable us build it in tandem with the main one. There's no need for us to bowdlerize our main fork if all we need do is produce a child-safe website containing filtered content on those subject that would be of interest to K12.
I strongly disagree. This is the web, yes, but there are quite a number of people who just want to be able to browse and read about sexual topics without being exposed to outrageous photographs "in your face". There is minimal harm done in linking or having a tiny thumbnail linking to the larger image. Appropriate encyclopedic images should be kept, but should not be thrust in our readers' faces. It's just plain common sense. It's the same reason we don't directly link to Goatse; we err on the side of caution. The same applies here.
I prefer linking, actually, because it's only one click away for those who want to view it. It's five clicks on the other hand for those who don't want to view it. Assuming the two groups are equal, the decision is common sense.
There's a dimension I feel everyone in this debate has been missing. It doesn't matter that the image is harmless or that a thumbnail hurts nobody or that censorship is wrong or that most of us aren't really offended. What matters is what our readers think. Like it or not, our readers are still squeemish about these things. It doesn't matter that four billion people won't be offended by these images if the other two billion are the only ones who have access to Wikipedia and a substantial number of them are offended. These people will not like it, even if it's just a tiny thumbnail. They have no good reason; all they know is they don't like it. And until the other four billion gain access to Wikipedia or the two billion stop being "prudes", we have to live with it.
Without editors, Wikipedia is nothing. Without readers, Wikipedia is nothing. We, editors, cannot impose our opinions on the readers. And a substantial amount of our readers are offended by inline images of a man sucking his dick. It's simple as that. It doesn't matter *why* they're offended; nothing we say can change their minds. They'll just leave, with probably a bad thing or two to say the next time they hear the word "Wikipedia".
Remember, our image is integral as well. No matter how we try to convince people, the damage has been done if we allow seriously offensive images to be displayed inline. For most people who can read Wikipedia, it's just too much to take. They don't care; they don't want the image shoved in their face or their kids' face or anyone's face. Whether they have a good reason or not, it doesn't matter. We cannot and should not persuade them to change their opinion.
I think this dispute marks a critical turning point in our history - will the readers' or editors' interests triumph? It's interesting here, because the editors are under no obligation to continue work, and there is substantial overlap between readers and editors. Our case is unique, and the only reason the editors' interests have held out so long is because until now, most readers have also been editors. That is no longer the case. Wikipedia is reaching for a broader audience everyday, and we must cater to this audience which is considerably more conservative and technology-averse than our traditional editors.
This image dispute is not the only example of readers versus editors; just look at the efforts to move editor-only templates to the talk pages.
Until recently, the interests of most editors and most readers overlapped. This is no longer the case, and we can no longer assume people will understand how or why Wikipedia works, nor can we assume they will make an effort to do so. We now have to respond to consumers' needs appropriately, and how well we do this will be a significant indicator of Wikipedia's viability.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 03:42:50PM +0800, John Lee wrote:
I strongly disagree. This is the web, yes, but there are quite a number of people who just want to be able to browse and read about sexual topics without being exposed to outrageous photographs "in your face".
There are, likewise, quite a number of people who want to read about medical topics without being exposed to photographs of internal organs "in your face".
There are probably people who want to read about [[anti-Semitism]] without being exposed to photographs of Ku Klux Klansmen and Nazi propaganda "in your face".
On the other hand, there are people who want to hit the "Random page" button and not get a biography of a porn star like [[Andrea Spinks]] or a frank and accurate description of the [[Kama Sutra]], even if it doesn't have any nekkid pixx0r. And there are others who are quite severely offended by the fact that the text of our articles [[Jesus]] or [[Mohammed]] or [[homeopathy]] doesn't parrot their precise view of these.
The idea that sexual topics, or sexually accurate images, are *uniquely* risky or likely to offend is not particularly close to being accurate. There is no bright-line distinction between "offense" and "POV", since so many people are offended by seeing or reading about things or views whose existence they object to.
If we would seek the approval of Mrs. Grundy or her pastor Rev. Bookburner, simply submitting to their views about images will not suffice. We would need to submit to their views about our text, too ... because it really isn't dirty images they want to destroy, but rather dirty thoughts and the dirty people who think them.
There is minimal harm done in linking or having a tiny thumbnail linking to the larger image. Appropriate encyclopedic images should be kept, but should not be thrust in our readers' faces. It's just plain common sense. It's the same reason we don't directly link to Goatse; we err on the side of caution. The same applies here.
Well ... actually ... we *do* link to [[Goatse.cx]], or rather, to a number of mirrors of that site, since it is no longer up. We don't have the image inline.
I, for one, am much more offended by trolling -- that is, the deliberate disruption of a worthwhile discourse -- than I am by pictures of penises or anuses. Everyone has an anus, and about half of us have penises.
There's a dimension I feel everyone in this debate has been missing. It doesn't matter that the image is harmless or that a thumbnail hurts nobody or that censorship is wrong or that most of us aren't really offended. What matters is what our readers think. Like it or not, our readers are still squeemish about these things.
I'm squeamish about anything that reeks of censorship, myself. It makes me feel all icky and dirty inside to recall that there are so very many human beings who would like to put me in jail (or worse) because I rather enjoy a great number of things that they disapprove of.
Without editors, Wikipedia is nothing. Without readers, Wikipedia is nothing. We, editors, cannot impose our opinions on the readers. And a substantial amount of our readers are offended by inline images of a man sucking his dick. It's simple as that. It doesn't matter *why* they're offended; nothing we say can change their minds. They'll just leave, with probably a bad thing or two to say the next time they hear the word "Wikipedia".
Plenty of people already have bad things to say about Wikipedia without the nekkid pixx0r, too. We're an arm of the atheist Zionist capitalist anti-American Marxist evolutionist American-centric libertarian Democrat conspiracy against the white race -- you've got to expect we'll take some heat.
Remember, our image is integral as well. No matter how we try to convince people, the damage has been done if we allow seriously offensive images to be displayed inline.
Linking to them, rather than keeping them inline, does precious little to defuse the wrath of the self-righteous. Instead of being an archive of Satan's favorite images, we then become a Web directory of Satan's favorite images.
I think this dispute marks a critical turning point in our history - will the readers' or editors' interests triumph? It's interesting here, because the editors are under no obligation to continue work, and there is substantial overlap between readers and editors. Our case is unique, and the only reason the editors' interests have held out so long is because until now, most readers have also been editors. That is no longer the case. Wikipedia is reaching for a broader audience everyday, and we must cater to this audience which is considerably more conservative and technology-averse than our traditional editors.
I disagree. In order to continue Wikipedia's success we need to keep doing what has worked so far.
Trying to reach out to the censorious by dropping the nekkid pixx0r is a waste of time. They *don't care* if we have nekkid pixx0r or not; our evil is obvious in that we don't parrot their party line about whatever hot-button issue they fuss about.
This image dispute is not the only example of readers versus editors; just look at the efforts to move editor-only templates to the talk pages.
It seems to me to be rather destructive to the discourse to pretend that your views on images or templates are the side of "the readers" and that those who disagree with you are, therefore, against "the readers".
Karl A. Krueger said:
Trying to reach out to the censorious by dropping the nekkid pixx0r is a waste of time. They *don't care* if we have nekkid pixx0r or not; our evil is obvious in that we don't parrot their party line about whatever hot-button issue they fuss about.
Hear hear! I couldn't have put it better myself.
Let's not kid ourselves that Wikipedia will ever be suitable for schools. My son says his school blocked access to *any* site whose contents could be altered in realtime by people other than the site owners--that includes forums as well as Wikis. I can see their point and I think they're being very sensible. The grundies, on the other hand, are not going to be satisfied. The best we can do is limit the damage by admitting that no public Wiki can ever be considered child-safe. The kids will still come and read Wikipedia, and learn from it, but they'll do so with the thrill of transgression. This is not a bad thing. Wikis are, or should be, powerful weapons against ignorance. It's as well that we should not appease our natural enemies.
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 15:12:32 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Karl A. Krueger said:
Trying to reach out to the censorious by dropping the nekkid pixx0r is a waste of time. They *don't care* if we have nekkid pixx0r or not; our evil is obvious in that we don't parrot their party line about whatever hot-button issue they fuss about.
Hear hear! I couldn't have put it better myself.
Let's not kid ourselves that Wikipedia will ever be suitable for schools. My son says his school blocked access to *any* site whose contents could be altered in realtime by people other than the site owners--that includes forums as well as Wikis. I can see their point and I think they're being very sensible. The grundies, on the other hand, are not going to be satisfied. The best we can do is limit the damage by admitting that no public Wiki can ever be considered child-safe. The kids will still come and read Wikipedia, and learn from it, but they'll do so with the thrill of transgression. This is not a bad thing. Wikis are, or should be, powerful weapons against ignorance. It's as well that we should not appease our natural enemies.
This problem is easily solved by producing Stikipedia.org as a static site drawn from Wikipedia but containing "sticky" articles that are the "last good state". If an article is edited, those articles need to be recertified in some fashion. Images (or potentially offensive text) could also be subject to special handling - maybe you have to register as an adult to see it or click on a warning button or something.
That way schools and parents could block Wikipedia with its graphic images, disturbing text, edit wars and vandalism, but depend upon Stikipedia. And, frankly, I'm not really sure I want millions of schoolchildren having edit access to Wikipedia, showing off by replacing an article on Constitutional History of the United States with "Billy is a poo poo head". Most kids wouldn't dream of doing this, but there's always one...
In fact, as I understand it, a third party could do this today. Register a site name, grab hold of the contents of Wikipedia, and put it all up for public consumption as a static site.
I prefer "potentially offensive". I think it would be far easier to come to a consensus when the issue is one of a tag rather than should it or should it not be deleted.
Christiaan
On 14 Feb 2005, at 8:20 pm, Rick wrote:
We've had this discussion on several pages. Nobody can agree on what "explicit images" means. Do we slap that tag on the pictures from Abu Graib? From Auschwitz? From Dresden? How about images of Adolf Hitler and George Bush?
RickK
Christiaan Briggs christiaan@last-straw.net wrote: Skyring wrote:
Something of this kind cannot be avoided except by banning *all* sexually explicit images--something I've seen seriously advanced.
Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.
Nail on the head.
Christiaan
Christiaan Briggs said:
I prefer "potentially offensive". I think it would be far easier to come to a consensus when the issue is one of a tag rather than should it or should it not be deleted.
I suspect this is just going to make for more tag wars, tag vandalism and the like. No pictures until the user actually reads, and admits he has read, the content disclaimer. Give him a cookie (and make sure it will expire after the session if he's on a public machine). Casual readers will still get the text but they don't risk coming face to face with Mr Goatsex, Mr Autofellatio, Mr Guy About To Be Shot Dead and Mr Guy Whose Head is being Hacked Off. No need to grade the pictures. They should be chosen according to the nature of the article.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I suspect this is just going to make for more tag wars, tag vandalism and the like. No pictures until the user actually reads, and admits he has read, the content disclaimer. Give him a cookie (and make sure it will expire after the session if he's on a public machine). Casual readers will still get the text but they don't risk coming face to face with Mr Goatsex, Mr Autofellatio, Mr Guy About To Be Shot Dead and Mr Guy Whose Head is being Hacked Off. No need to grade the pictures. They should be chosen according to the nature of the article.
This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater though. There are some pictures absolutely nobody objects to---diagrams in geometry articles, for example.
-Mark
Delirium said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I suspect this is just going to make for more tag wars, tag vandalism and the like. No pictures until the user actually reads, and admits he has read, the content disclaimer. Give him a cookie (and make sure it will expire after the session if he's on a public machine). Casual readers will still get the text but they don't risk coming face to face with Mr Goatsex, Mr Autofellatio, Mr Guy About To Be Shot Dead and Mr Guy Whose Head is being Hacked Off. No need to grade the pictures. They should be chosen according to the nature of the article.
This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater though. There are some pictures absolutely nobody objects to---diagrams in geometry articles, for example.
Here's a good one my girlfriend showed me the other day. Just a geometrical arrangement.
WARNING: any indecency you see here is purely in your head.
http://img32.exs.cx/img32/4306/mouse5fo.jpg
It really doesn't take long to click a "show me pictures" button, agree not to blame Wikipedia if you see something you find unpleasant, and then get on with your life. And it isn't as if our editors need to see pictures in order to edit the pages.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
It really doesn't take long to click a "show me pictures" button, agree not to blame Wikipedia if you see something you find unpleasant, and then get on with your life. And it isn't as if our editors need to see pictures in order to edit the pages.
It doesn't, but I'm not worried about people suing us or blaming us, but Wikipedia being a crappy encyclopedia. Having no images would make it a crappy encyclopedia. Having so many unpleasant images sprinkled through it that every article on medical procedures or disasters or accidents or anything else potentially related is completely unreadable also would make it a crappy encyclopedia.
If you really must see an autofellatio picture, it doesn't take very long to click on the link.
-Mark
Delirium said:
Having no images would make it a crappy encyclopedia. Having so many unpleasant images sprinkled through it that every article on medical procedures or disasters or accidents or anything else potentially related is completely unreadable also would make it a crappy encyclopedia.
Yes, we must get it right. But there are no intrinsically unpleasant images, just ones that are useful in an article and ones that are not. I've already explained why I think autofellatio is an excellent case of an article that needs a photographic illustration. We should be able to display that illustration without apologising, and it really would help if people would learn how to operate their web browsers.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Delirium said:
Having no images would make it a crappy encyclopedia. Having so many unpleasant images sprinkled through it that every article on medical procedures or disasters or accidents or anything else potentially related is completely unreadable also would make it a crappy encyclopedia.
Yes, we must get it right. But there are no intrinsically unpleasant images, just ones that are useful in an article and ones that are not. I've already explained why I think autofellatio is an excellent case of an article that needs a photographic illustration. We should be able to display that illustration without apologising, and it really would help if people would learn how to operate their web browsers.
_I KNOW HOW TO OPERATE MY WEB BROWSER!_ I shouldn't have to make five mouse clicks (or two keystrokes and three mouse clicks at most efficient) to avoid seeing this crap in a general-purpose encyclopedia.
You want to inline it in an article in a medical encyclopedia? That's fine, go ahead, but _this is not a medical encyclopedia_.
Nicholas Knight said:
_I KNOW HOW TO OPERATE MY WEB BROWSER!_ I shouldn't have to make five mouse clicks (or two keystrokes and three mouse clicks at most efficient) to avoid seeing this crap in a general-purpose encyclopedia.
Could you explain why you used the word "crap" in the above explanation of why you don't want to use your browser controls? Do you consider five mouseclicks to be more or less pleasant than viewing something you, personally, have assessed as "crap"?
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
_I KNOW HOW TO OPERATE MY WEB BROWSER!_ I shouldn't have to make five mouse clicks (or two keystrokes and three mouse clicks at most efficient) to avoid seeing this crap in a general-purpose encyclopedia.
Could you explain why you used the word "crap" in the above explanation of
Because that's what these images are.
why you don't want to use your browser controls? Do you consider five mouseclicks to be more or less pleasant than viewing something you, personally, have assessed as "crap"?
What does that have to do with _anything_?
Why should I have to jump through hoops to avoid seeing a disgusting image that could easily NOT be inlined in the article?
Nicholas Knight said:
Why should I have to jump through hoops to avoid seeing a disgusting image that could easily NOT be inlined in the article?
It's a few clicks and it gives you better control over your browsing experience than would insisting that every web page you visit should conform to your taste.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Why should I have to jump through hoops to avoid seeing a disgusting image that could easily NOT be inlined in the article?
It's a few clicks and it gives you better control over your browsing experience than would insisting that every web page you visit should conform to your taste.
We are not talking about "every web page I visit", we are talking about _Wikipedia_.
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
We are not talking about "every web page I visit", we are talking about _Wikipedia_.
You will encounter similar problem at other sites. The simple technical solution I suggest will work with all of them.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
We are not talking about "every web page I visit", we are talking about _Wikipedia_.
You will encounter similar problem at other sites. The simple technical solution I suggest will work with all of them.
My browsing experience on other sites is none of your business. The issue at hand is Wikipedia and Wikipedia alone.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
My browsing experience on other sites is none of your business. The issue at hand is Wikipedia and Wikipedia alone.
The solution I suggest will work with Wikipedia also.
The solution you suggest is inconvenient and impractical, and can be avoided simply by not inlining the image.
What's so bad about being polite to users?
Nicholas Knight wrote:
What's so bad about being polite to users?
I don't think you understand that people like me find it impolite for others to decide what I should and shouldn't be presented with.
Christiaan
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
What's so bad about being polite to users?
I don't think you understand that people like me find it impolite for others to decide what I should and shouldn't be presented with.
1) You could see the image by clicking a clearly marked link.
2) We're deciding what it is best to present people with _by default_.
On 15 Feb 2005, at 10:11 am, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
What's so bad about being polite to users?
I don't think you understand that people like me find it impolite for others to decide what I should and shouldn't be presented with.
- You could see the image by clicking a clearly marked link.
Yes and I find it impolite that someone has forced me to do that.
- We're deciding what it is best to present people with _by default_.
Which is why I'm suggesting we create a technical solution tailored to individuals/institutions rather than a blanket policy which will offend each side of this debate equally.
Christiaan
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
On 15 Feb 2005, at 10:11 am, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
What's so bad about being polite to users?
I don't think you understand that people like me find it impolite for others to decide what I should and shouldn't be presented with.
- You could see the image by clicking a clearly marked link.
Yes and I find it impolite that someone has forced me to do that.
You're not the least bit glad someone had the courtesy to consider that you might not want to see the image, and gave you a choice?
- We're deciding what it is best to present people with _by default_.
Which is why I'm suggesting we create a technical solution tailored to individuals/institutions rather than a blanket policy which will offend each side of this debate equally.
Which I have no problem with, but we have no solution implemented.
On 15 Feb 2005, at 10:18 am, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
On 15 Feb 2005, at 10:11 am, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
What's so bad about being polite to users?
I don't think you understand that people like me find it impolite for others to decide what I should and shouldn't be presented with.
- You could see the image by clicking a clearly marked link.
Yes and I find it impolite that someone has forced me to do that.
You're not the least bit glad someone had the courtesy to consider that you might not want to see the image, and gave you a choice?
I don't see how I could be glad at the same time as been offended. I understand your position, I'm just asking you to understand mine.
- We're deciding what it is best to present people with _by
default_.
Which is why I'm suggesting we create a technical solution tailored to individuals/institutions rather than a blanket policy which will offend each side of this debate equally.
Which I have no problem with, but we have no solution implemented.
Logic follows that we then create a solution, which, as far as I know, we're capable of doing.
Christiaan
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
On 15 Feb 2005, at 10:18 am, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
On 15 Feb 2005, at 10:11 am, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
What's so bad about being polite to users?
I don't think you understand that people like me find it impolite for others to decide what I should and shouldn't be presented with.
- You could see the image by clicking a clearly marked link.
Yes and I find it impolite that someone has forced me to do that.
You're not the least bit glad someone had the courtesy to consider that you might not want to see the image, and gave you a choice?
I don't see how I could be glad at the same time as been offended. I understand your position, I'm just asking you to understand mine.
I understand it, what I don't understand is why you feel sufficiently strongly about it to feel offended.
- We're deciding what it is best to present people with _by default_.
Which is why I'm suggesting we create a technical solution tailored to individuals/institutions rather than a blanket policy which will offend each side of this debate equally.
Which I have no problem with, but we have no solution implemented.
Logic follows that we then create a solution, which, as far as I know, we're capable of doing.
The solution has been "created" already. It has not been implemented, which will require someone with PHP skills. You may have them. I do not.
Nicholas Knight wrote:
I understand it, what I don't understand is why you feel sufficiently strongly about it to feel offended.
Because I'm sick and tired of corporations and other people attempting to control how I see the world and attempting to replace it with some kind of Disney World. Much the same practice is taking place on our televisions screens with regard to war. People have no idea about the realities of war because unfathomable efforts are made to ensure they get a Disneyfied version of events.
I don't want to live in Disney World, I want to live on Earth with all the pain and diversity that entails. I don't see the human body as a vessel of sin and shame. I don't have issues with the human body and what it is capable of. Treating this image differently by in-lining by default is a statement in itself along these lines. Creating a solution that caters to individuals and institutions skirts around this issue by leaving it up to the user to decide.
The solution has been "created" already. It has not been implemented, which will require someone with PHP skills. You may have them. I do not.
What solution is that?
Christiaan
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
I understand it, what I don't understand is why you feel sufficiently strongly about it to feel offended.
Because I'm sick and tired of corporations and other people attempting to control how I see the world and attempting to replace it with some kind of Disney World. Much the same practice is taking place on our televisions screens with regard to war. People have no idea about the realities of war because unfathomable efforts are made to ensure they get a Disneyfied version of events.
The situations are not even comparable. Linking to an image gives a user a clear, visible, and easily made choice. Presenting a user with a canned news broadcast with no other options does not give a user a choice.
I don't want to live in Disney World, I want to live on Earth with all the pain and diversity that entails. I don't see the human body as a vessel of sin and shame. I don't have issues with the human body and what it is capable of. Treating this image differently by in-lining by default is a statement in itself along these lines. Creating a solution that caters to individuals and institutions skirts around this issue by leaving it up to the user to decide.
Linking to the image IS a solution, it's just not the best one we can reasonably come up with.
The solution has been "created" already. It has not been implemented, which will require someone with PHP skills. You may have them. I do not.
What solution is that?
Tag controversial images, preferably into a couple categories (nudity, blood/gore, could probably think of one or two other good ones). Let the user set a preference for their defaults (maybe give them a toggle they can hit at will while browsing to turn all on/off), and then let them easily select single controversial images to display. There are several options for the last part, Javascript being the easiest, and it can be combined with a server-side mechanism for those that have disabled or lack Javascript support.
Absent strange coding in the affected areas of MediaWiki, none of this should be particularly difficult to implement for someone with the neccessary skills.
(Before someone starts complaining about determining what's controversial, I don't think we're going to have any trouble figuring it out. Just wait for the firestorm; controversial images will essentially prove themselves.)
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Tag controversial images, preferably into a couple categories (nudity, blood/gore, could probably think of one or two other good ones). Let the user set a preference for their defaults (maybe give them a toggle they can hit at will while browsing to turn all on/off), and then let them easily select single controversial images to display. There are several options for the last part, Javascript being the easiest, and it can be combined with a server-side mechanism for those that have disabled or lack Javascript support.
I agree in principle with the idea of tagging potentially controversial images, similar to the existing scheme of licence tagging, so that users of Wikipedia material can use this information for whatever downstream processing they wish. I can also see that one use of this should be to allow different user-preference-set presentations of whether controversial images should be inlined or linked. (If we are going to do this, let's have only one implementation, not two).
However, the issue of what the default presentation should be remains. If we make "controversial images off" the default for editors, they will not be able to exercise oversight over image content, and we could have a worse problem than before. Some articles actually do have a justification for having depictions of violence or nudity: do we want to remove all images of classical nude sculpture and paintings, or violent images of great journalistic importance? This is a very tricky problem, with the wowsers on one side, the porn trolls on another, and the reasonable point of view somewhere in the middle, needing to be decided on a case-by-case basis per article. A techical solution alone is not enough.
-- Neil
Neil Harris wrote:
However, the issue of what the default presentation should be remains. If we make "controversial images off" the default for editors, they will not be able to exercise oversight over image content, and we could have a worse problem than before.
I'd vote "controversial images on" as the default, for exactly that reason.
-- Chad
Nicholas Knight said:
Tag controversial images, preferably into a couple categories (nudity, blood/gore, could probably think of one or two other good ones). Let the user set a preference for their defaults (maybe give them a toggle they can hit at will while browsing to turn all on/off), and then let them easily select single controversial images to display. There are several options for the last part, Javascript being the easiest, and it can be combined with a server-side mechanism for those that have disabled or lack Javascript support.
I think this is a sensible solution, though the tagging leaves it open to some abuse. For instance the category of images containing nudity contains some images that most of us would probably agree the user would not expect to be blocked--some sacred pictures from the Sistine Chapel ceiling are in there because they happen to contain representations of naked people. This isn't an unsolvable problem, but we would get some edit wars arising and the effect of such tag wars on individual browsing experiences could be quite widespread. Perhaps the browsing categories should be protected and some kind of VfD/RfM-style process used for placing images into categories. That does look like a very workable approach.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Tag controversial images, preferably into a couple categories (nudity, blood/gore, could probably think of one or two other good ones). Let the user set a preference for their defaults (maybe give them a toggle they can hit at will while browsing to turn all on/off), and then let them easily select single controversial images to display. There are several options for the last part, Javascript being the easiest, and it can be combined with a server-side mechanism for those that have disabled or lack Javascript support.
I think this is a sensible solution, though the tagging leaves it open to some abuse. For instance the category of images containing nudity contains some images that most of us would probably agree the user would not expect to be blocked--some sacred pictures from the Sistine Chapel ceiling are in there because they happen to contain representations of naked people. This isn't an unsolvable problem, but we would get some edit wars arising and the effect of such tag wars on individual browsing experiences could be quite widespread. Perhaps the browsing categories should be protected and some kind of VfD/RfM-style process used for placing images into categories. That does look like a very workable approach.
Great! If we have both Nicholas and Tony in agreement on this, we have the beginnings of a consensus. Possibly we need different tags for {{artistic nudity}} and {{hardcore porn}}, and we can argue on the nuances that lie inbetween? Let's develop some tag classes, and then get tagging! Then we can worry about what we do with the tag information later.
-- Neil
Neil Harris said:
Great! If we have both Nicholas and Tony in agreement on this, we have the beginnings of a consensus. Possibly we need different tags for {{artistic nudity}} and {{hardcore porn}}, and we can argue on the nuances that lie inbetween? Let's develop some tag classes, and then get tagging! Then we can worry about what we do with the tag information later.
I don't think we should have a "hardcore porn" category, on the grounds that pornography usually means material with no other meaningful purpose than to sexually stimulate the viewer, and this purpose is not consistent with Wikipedia's goals. "Photographic depictions of sex acts", "Line drawings of sex acts", etc, would probably be the right category for most material that, if viewed outside the context of an encyclopedia, would tend to be pornographic. "Artistic nudity" is a bit too general--the term has been used to describe cheesecake and posed erotica that has no artistic merit. Again I'd be inclined to stick to clinical descriptions rather than risk opening the debate on artistic merit. Thus Leonardo's famous Vitruvian Man (currently one of the inmates of the "images containing nudity" category) would be in "line drawings where genitals are visible" or something.
And what default do you use for non-logged-in Users? Don't allow them to see any images with tags until they log in? That's discriminatory.
RickK
Nicholas Knight nknight@runawaynet.com wrote: Tag controversial images, preferably into a couple categories (nudity, blood/gore, could probably think of one or two other good ones). Let the user set a preference for their defaults (maybe give them a toggle they can hit at will while browsing to turn all on/off), and then let them easily select single controversial images to display. There are several options for the last part, Javascript being the easiest, and it can be combined with a server-side mechanism for those that have disabled or lack Javascript support.
Absent strange coding in the affected areas of MediaWiki, none of this should be particularly difficult to implement for someone with the neccessary skills.
(Before someone starts complaining about determining what's controversial, I don't think we're going to have any trouble figuring it out. Just wait for the firestorm; controversial images will essentially prove themselves.)
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On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 11:53:31 -0800 (PST), Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
And what default do you use for non-logged-in Users? Don't allow them to see any images with tags until they log in? That's discriminatory.
But what an incentive to log on.
"creating an account only takes a few minutes and has many advantages (Including access to nudity, violence, and other offensive/juicy images"
We'd have kids creating accounts in droves ;-)
Theresa
On 15 Feb 2005, at 11:08 am, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
I understand it, what I don't understand is why you feel sufficiently strongly about it to feel offended.
Because I'm sick and tired of corporations and other people attempting to control how I see the world and attempting to replace it with some kind of Disney World. Much the same practice is taking place on our televisions screens with regard to war. People have no idea about the realities of war because unfathomable efforts are made to ensure they get a Disneyfied version of events.
The situations are not even comparable. Linking to an image gives a user a clear, visible, and easily made choice. Presenting a user with a canned news broadcast with no other options does not give a user a choice.
Unfortunately you're talking past me. It appears you're not that interested in knowing why I feel sufficiently strongly about it but would rather attempt to invalidate my point of view.
I don't want to live in Disney World, I want to live on Earth with all the pain and diversity that entails. I don't see the human body as a vessel of sin and shame. I don't have issues with the human body and what it is capable of. Treating this image differently by in-lining by default is a statement in itself along these lines. Creating a solution that caters to individuals and institutions skirts around this issue by leaving it up to the user to decide.
Linking to the image IS a solution, it's just not the best one we can reasonably come up with.
Again, you're still talking past me. Linking to the image takes away my choice to read articles without having hidden content. It would not be a solution, it would be a problem.
The solution has been "created" already. It has not been implemented, which will require someone with PHP skills. You may have them. I do not.
What solution is that?
Tag controversial images, preferably into a couple categories (nudity, blood/gore, could probably think of one or two other good ones). Let the user set a preference for their defaults (maybe give them a toggle they can hit at will while browsing to turn all on/off), and then let them easily select single controversial images to display. There are several options for the last part, Javascript being the easiest, and it can be combined with a server-side mechanism for those that have disabled or lack Javascript support.
Absent strange coding in the affected areas of MediaWiki, none of this should be particularly difficult to implement for someone with the neccessary skills.
I thought by "created" you meant someone had already written the code. Anyway, at least we can agree to a solution. So maybe we should start a page somewhere to nut this idea out.
Christiaan
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
I understand it, what I don't understand is why you feel sufficiently strongly about it to feel offended.
Because I'm sick and tired of corporations and other people attempting to control how I see the world and attempting to replace it with some kind of Disney World. Much the same practice is taking place on our televisions screens with regard to war. People have no idea about the realities of war because unfathomable efforts are made to ensure they get a Disneyfied version of events.
I don't want to live in Disney World, I want to live on Earth with all the pain and diversity that entails. I don't see the human body as a vessel of sin and shame. I don't have issues with the human body and what it is capable of. Treating this image differently by in-lining by default is a statement in itself along these lines. Creating a solution that caters to individuals and institutions skirts around this issue by leaving it up to the user to decide.
The solution has been "created" already. It has not been implemented, which will require someone with PHP skills. You may have them. I do not.
What solution is that?
Christiaan
The majority of users don't want to have decide. It's one of the reasons why software like Firefox came about - to remove bloat and give users what they want. Interface bloat gives users extreme control over the software, but at the cost of confusing people and irritating them. You are still given a choice of clicking on the link (which should appropriately describe what you're in for and what the image is about) or not, and if my suggestion(s) in one of the other emails I sent to the list are implemented, you will have the choice of viewing the image inline as well.
I agree a technical solution is required, but until we have one, linking is better than offending a substantial number of our readers. It's the psychology of the thing - if people don't have full-blown images thrust in their face, they naturally assume it's safe. It doesn't make sense, but from my experience, the appearance of being clean is the best middle ground between having no potentially offensive images at all and shoving it in readers' faces.
Until we can have an option of viewing the same document with or without potentially offensive images, we *must* err on the side of caution and provide a link. It's the same as not directly linking to Goatse but giving users' an option to visit the site if they *really* want to. Why should this be any different? Is not directly linking to Goatse attempting to control how you see the world?
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
John Lee wrote:
I agree a technical solution is required, but until we have one, linking is better than offending a substantial number of our readers. It's the psychology of the thing - if people don't have full-blown images thrust in their face, they naturally assume it's safe. It doesn't make sense, but from my experience, the appearance of being clean is the best middle ground between having no potentially offensive images at all and shoving it in readers' faces.
It's psychological, but it's not an assumption of safety. Many people are going to be far more comfortable reading a description -- even detailed -- of a sexual act than seeing a photograph of it.
I've been looking at this as a debate on presentation, not content.
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 03:14:47 -0800, Nicholas Knight nknight@runawaynet.com wrote:
Many people are going to be far more comfortable reading a description -- even detailed -- of a sexual act than seeing a photograph of it.
True, but the porn industry targets the small number remaining who prefer things the other way around, and they seem to do OK in terms of Porsches and plasma screens.
John Lee said:
Until we can have an option of viewing the same document with or without potentially offensive images, we *must* err on the side of caution and provide a link. It's the same as not directly linking to Goatse but giving users' an option to visit the site if they *really* want to. Why should this be any different? Is not directly linking to Goatse attempting to control how you see the world?
I still think you're grossly mischaracterizing the inline option. Inlining does not force the browser to download the image, or to display it even if it does. The browser issues a HTTP GET and obtains the HTML of a page and renders that page. This may or may not involve the browser issuing more HTTP GETs in order to obtain the binary of the images referred to in IMG tags embedded in the HTML. It's entirely under the control of the browser and thus, subject to browser design and selection, under the control of the user. So users *already* have the option of downloading only those images that they want to see. In the worst case they can run lynx in a cmd window (Windows) or xterm (MacOS, BSD, Linux). In addition, users can control their stylesheets (either by the on-site override or using their browser controls) and use this to suppress image display. You may say "until", I say that what you propose is available to our users *now*. "Oh but it's too complicated", I hear you say. "Our users are Moms and Dads, not geeks." Well people will say precisely the same thing when you have your on-site image controls. Even a straightforward "reload without images" button on the top nav will be too complicated for some people; as for selecting whether they want to see objectionable images or not, it will have to be hidden away in some page in special: and it will be every bit as hideous as anything in the much maligned Internet Exploder. What's more, its behavior will change over time, probably at a fairly rapid rate as category hierarchies are changed and the feature evolves.
I still think you're grossly mischaracterizing the inline option. Inlining does not force the browser to download the image, or to display it even if it does. The browser issues a HTTP GET and obtains the HTML of a page and renders that page. This may or may not involve the browser issuing more HTTP GETs in order to obtain the binary of the images referred to in IMG tags embedded in the HTML. It's entirely under the control of the browser and thus, subject to browser design and selection, under the control of the user. So users *already* have the option of downloading only those images that they want to see. In the worst case they can run lynx in a cmd window (Windows) or xterm (MacOS, BSD, Linux). In addition, users can control their stylesheets (either by the on-site override or using their browser controls) and use this to suppress image display. You may say "until", I say that what you propose is available to our users *now*. "Oh but it's too complicated", I hear you say. "Our users are Moms and Dads, not geeks." Well people will say precisely the same thing when you have your on-site image controls. Even a straightforward "reload without images" button on the top nav will be too complicated for some people; as for selecting whether they want to see objectionable images or not, it will have to be hidden away in some page in special: and it will be every bit as hideous as anything in the much maligned Internet Exploder. What's more, its behavior will change over time, probably at a fairly rapid rate as category hierarchies are changed and the feature evolves.
But how do I know there is an image there in advance? Strangly no matter how much I mess around with my browser it does not appear to have a setting for "don't display images of sex acts, shocksites and graphic injuries". I can't block an image until I see it. Btw it's not just mums and dads who will have I problem there are bits of your post I don't understand.
geni said:
But how do I know there is an image there in advance? Strangly no matter how much I mess around with my browser it does not appear to have a setting for "don't display images of sex acts, shocksites and graphic injuries". I can't block an image until I see it. Btw it's not just mums and dads who will have I problem there are bits of your post I don't understand.
Gosh. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. You know there is objectionable material on Wikipedia because, of course, you have read the content disclaimer linked from every page. Being adverse to seeing nasty stuff, you click the button on your browser that turns images on or off whenever you think you're likely to meet something you won't like (the only internal links to [[Autofellatio]], for instance, are pretty clearly labeled as to its sexual nature). You click it again whenever you want. Meanwhile if you see the text from the alt tag of an image you can read it and then right mouse button and load that image if you want. This is precisely the procedure I use if I am browsing in an area of Wikipedia that is likely to trigger my rather virulent phobia. It works a treat.
Gosh. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. You know there is objectionable material on Wikipedia because, of course, you have read the content disclaimer linked from every page.
Nope I've never read it and I'm fairly regular user. There is a whole market based around the fact that people don't read disclaimers (psychic readings are for entertainment perposes only etc). However haveing read it it appears that the general disclaimer does not cover objectionable material for that I have to follow a further link. So if a read a disclaimer (which quite clearly not everyone does) then follow another link to yet another dissclaimer I then get a warning. Presumerbly good enough for legal cover but I prefer to deal with what really happens.
Being adverse to seeing nasty stuff, you click the button on your browser that turns images on or off whenever you think you're likely to meet something you won't like (the only internal links to [[Autofellatio]], for instance, are pretty clearly labeled as to its sexual nature).
The problem with this is that it would rather lower my effectiveness on RC patrol that is also 4 clicks.
There is also the issue of external links. While I haven't looked into the issue with regards to Autofellatio I know that one of the reasons the goatse article is so popular is that it does not contain the image. There are plenty of places where I can find out what Autofellatio is with acompyaning pictures (and proabably full colour vidios if I should want them) where can I find articles on Autofellatio without images?
geni said:
Gosh. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. You know there is objectionable material on Wikipedia because, of course, you have read the content disclaimer linked from every page.
Nope I've never read it and I'm fairly regular user.
Then your objections are not my problem. The web is not a playpen.
Nicholas Knight said:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Yes and I find it impolite that someone has forced me to do that.
You're not the least bit glad someone had the courtesy to consider that you might not want to see the image, and gave you a choice?
That is what inlining does. Linking reduces the control of the user over his browsing experience.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Yes and I find it impolite that someone has forced me to do that.
You're not the least bit glad someone had the courtesy to consider that you might not want to see the image, and gave you a choice?
That is what inlining does. Linking reduces the control of the user over his browsing experience.
Because instead of letting the user choose to see the image by clicking one link, you require them to disable ALL images, then reenable ALL images, in order to see that one image.
Yeah, that's more control. Right.
Nicholas Knight said:
Because instead of letting the user choose to see the image by clicking one link, you require them to disable ALL images, then reenable ALL images, in order to see that one image.
The precise arrangements depend on the browser design. I believe the experience you describe pertained to some of the earlier browsers, such as NCSA Mosaic. Good modern browsers allow a lot of fine control.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Because instead of letting the user choose to see the image by clicking one link, you require them to disable ALL images, then reenable ALL images, in order to see that one image.
The precise arrangements depend on the browser design. I believe the experience you describe pertained to some of the earlier browsers, such as NCSA Mosaic. Good modern browsers allow a lot of fine control.
The experience I describe pertains to Firefox, the only browser I make meaningful use of, and which had its 1.0 release late last year.
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Because instead of letting the user choose to see the image by clicking one link, you require them to disable ALL images, then reenable ALL images, in order to see that one image.
The precise arrangements depend on the browser design. I believe the experience you describe pertained to some of the earlier browsers, such as NCSA Mosaic. Good modern browsers allow a lot of fine control.
The experience I describe pertains to Firefox, the only browser I make meaningful use of, and which had its 1.0 release late last year.
I also use the current production version of Firefox, and for me switching images on and off is a single mouseclick or a single shortcut key. It may be that you are not making the best use of your browser's available controls.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Because instead of letting the user choose to see the image by clicking one link, you require them to disable ALL images, then reenable ALL images, in order to see that one image.
The precise arrangements depend on the browser design. I believe the experience you describe pertained to some of the earlier browsers, such as NCSA Mosaic. Good modern browsers allow a lot of fine control.
The experience I describe pertains to Firefox, the only browser I make meaningful use of, and which had its 1.0 release late last year.
I also use the current production version of Firefox, and for me switching images on and off is a single mouseclick or a single shortcut key. It may be that you are not making the best use of your browser's available controls.
Until you can show me support from a plain vanilla install without any add-ons, I must disagree with your assessment of Firefox. Blocking all images from the Wikimedia image server is not a good solution.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Because instead of letting the user choose to see the image by clicking one link, you require them to disable ALL images, then reenable ALL images, in order to see that one image.
The precise arrangements depend on the browser design. I believe the experience you describe pertained to some of the earlier browsers, such as NCSA Mosaic. Good modern browsers allow a lot of fine control.
This is *precisely* the kind of crap I talked about in my earlier email! We are still presuming that our reading audience overlaps a lot with our technically-inclined editors! While Firefox is used a lot more on Wikipedia than the web on average, IE is still the browser used by most. Show me where IE allows for fine tuning. "Good modern browsers allow fine control" is no fucking excuse. You guys have been talking about convenience for the user, and users should not have to switch browsers just to view our content without fear. As a matter of fact, even Firefox (I'm using the 20050212 nightly build) does not allow for fine-tuning by default. AdBlock solves the problem, but I shouldn't have to install an extension, let alone another web browser, just to view a website and be at ease.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
John Lee said:
We are still presuming that our reading audience overlaps a lot with our technically-inclined editors!
Not really. Browser operation requires no technical skills beyond the ability to use a mouse.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
John Lee said:
We are still presuming that our reading audience overlaps a lot with our technically-inclined editors!
Not really. Browser operation requires no technical skills beyond the ability to use a mouse.
I'd love to see you say that to the people who pour into Mozillazine for tech support everyday. Browser operation is simple? True in theory, but in practice....
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
John Lee said:
I'd love to see you say that to the people who pour into Mozillazine for tech support everyday. Browser operation is simple? True in theory, but in practice....
There are people who have problems programming the timer on their video recorders. This doesn't mean that the broadcasters must make arrangements on behalf of those people.
--- Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
John Lee said:
We are still presuming that our reading audience overlaps a lot with our technically-inclined editors!
Not really. Browser operation requires no technical skills beyond the ability to use a mouse.
After having spent many long hours trying to explain some very basic computing concepts to my parents, I'm going to have to disagree.
Matt
___________________________________________________________ ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
Matt R (matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk) [050216 00:51]:
--- Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
John Lee said:
We are still presuming that our reading audience overlaps a lot with our technically-inclined editors!
Not really. Browser operation requires no technical skills beyond the ability to use a mouse.
After having spent many long hours trying to explain some very basic computing concepts to my parents, I'm going to have to disagree.
I plan to get mine a Mac Mini as absolutely soon as is feasible.
"Tell him to get an iMac. It's a computer for stu-- for mommies and daddies."
- d.
Nicholas Knight said:
The solution you suggest is inconvenient and impractical,
This is untrue. I use it myself daily.
and can be avoided simply by not inlining the image.
Doing that simply removes control of part of the browsing experience from the user and gives it to the website owner, which is generally perceived to be A Bad Thing.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
The solution you suggest is inconvenient and impractical,
This is untrue. I use it myself daily.
You're not everyone.
and can be avoided simply by not inlining the image.
Doing that simply removes control of part of the browsing experience from the user and gives it to the website owner, which is generally perceived to be A Bad Thing.
Inlining the image removes no less control from the user.
Nicholas Knight said:
Inlining the image removes no less control from the user.
On the contrary, it gives the user complete control over whether the image appears with the text or not, or if the user views the image on its own separate from the text. Linking takes away that control and only gives the user the option of viewing the image separately from the text or not at all.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Inlining the image removes no less control from the user.
On the contrary, it gives the user complete control over whether the image appears with the text or not, or if the user views the image on its own separate from the text. Linking takes away that control and only gives the user the option of viewing the image separately from the text or not at all.
So that's the issue, apparently. I think I've figured this out (I think somebody else already suggested before, but I don't know who or where): The link will be a Javascript link that changes the display: CSS value of the image in the document from "none" to the value permitting it to be shown. Another option would be to provide two stylesheets for the document; one displaying images marked as potentially offensive, and another hiding them. The hiding one would be default unless otherwise set by the user. The problem is the latter choice probably won't work with IE while the former won't work with most text-only browsers, *really* old browsers and users who have intentionally disabled Javascript.
We have two choices: If the user doesn't have Javascript, the link goes directly to the image as it does now. Or... the link will link to the display.phtml page we usually see for special pages (i.e. contributions, but it's basically the script that does the job of displaying almost all pages, the short URLs being a facade) with a GET argument telling the server "display all images, regardless of their having been marked offensive or not". This will require more work on the code, but it will really solve all the problems without having to be institution or user specific. And we can still give users the choice of viewing all pages with offensive image hiding off.
All solutions will require some additions to Wikimarkup (it's either that or force people to resort to external link syntax). But still, I really prefer them to user- or group-specific censoring. I never liked that; it's too icky for me, with a lot of margin for error. I haven't seen how such a system would work.
John Lee ([[Iser:Johnleemk]])
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
_I KNOW HOW TO OPERATE MY WEB BROWSER!_ I shouldn't have to make five mouse clicks (or two keystrokes and three mouse clicks at most efficient) to avoid seeing this crap in a general-purpose encyclopedia.
Could you explain why you used the word "crap" in the above explanation of why you don't want to use your browser controls? Do you consider five mouseclicks to be more or less pleasant than viewing something you, personally, have assessed as "crap"?
It's one click for someone who desires the image. It's five clicks for someone who doesn't desire the image. If both groups are equal (and knowing Wikipedia's audience, they won't; guess which group is larger?), who should have to make the sacrifice?
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
I agree, we could deal with this far more effectively with MediaWiki.
Christiaan
On 15 Feb 2005, at 7:43 am, John Lee wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
_I KNOW HOW TO OPERATE MY WEB BROWSER!_ I shouldn't have to make five mouse clicks (or two keystrokes and three mouse clicks at most efficient) to avoid seeing this crap in a general-purpose encyclopedia.
Could you explain why you used the word "crap" in the above explanation of why you don't want to use your browser controls? Do you consider five mouseclicks to be more or less pleasant than viewing something you, personally, have assessed as "crap"?
It's one click for someone who desires the image. It's five clicks for someone who doesn't desire the image. If both groups are equal (and knowing Wikipedia's audience, they won't; guess which group is larger?), who should have to make the sacrifice?
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport@bluebottle.com) [050215 12:04]:
Yes, we must get it right. But there are no intrinsically unpleasant images, just ones that are useful in an article and ones that are not. I've already explained why I think autofellatio is an excellent case of an article that needs a photographic illustration. We should be able to display that illustration without apologising, and it really would help if people would learn how to operate their web browsers.
One reason it needs a photograph, as opposed to a line drawing, is to demonstrate at a glance that it's actually possible!
Expecting people to learn how to use their web browsers is possibly asking a bit much - almost 90% still use Internet Explorer (though less on Wikipedia). A preference to disable all images *is currently in the works*.
- d.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Delirium said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I suspect this is just going to make for more tag wars, tag vandalism and the like. No pictures until the user actually reads, and admits he has read, the content disclaimer. Give him a cookie (and make sure it will expire after the session if he's on a public machine). Casual readers will still get the text but they don't risk coming face to face with Mr Goatsex, Mr Autofellatio, Mr Guy About To Be Shot Dead and Mr Guy Whose Head is being Hacked Off. No need to grade the pictures. They should be chosen according to the nature of the article.
This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater though. There are some pictures absolutely nobody objects to---diagrams in geometry articles, for example.
Here's a good one my girlfriend showed me the other day. Just a geometrical arrangement.
WARNING: any indecency you see here is purely in your head.
I have to say, this is one of the more ridiculous things you've said in this thread.
It really doesn't take long to click a "show me pictures" button, agree not to blame Wikipedia if you see something you find unpleasant, and then get on with your life. And it isn't as if our editors need to see pictures in order to edit the pages.
Why do you want so badly to make people accept a picture of a guy sucking his own penis right along with a picture of Earth?
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Why do you want so badly to make people accept a picture of a guy sucking his own penis right along with a picture of Earth?
Because the damn article is about a guy sucking his penis and when I read an article about someone sucking their own penis I want some proof and I don't want people forcing me to read an inferior encyclopedia that doesn't have this proof because they're squeamish or prudish, especially when there are technical ways of dealing with it.
Christiaan
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Why do you want so badly to make people accept a picture of a guy sucking his own penis right along with a picture of Earth?
Because the damn article is about a guy sucking his penis and when I read an article about someone sucking their own penis I want some proof and I don't want people forcing me to read an inferior encyclopedia that doesn't have this proof because they're squeamish or prudish, especially when there are technical ways of dealing with it.
Wow, you've completely failed to read virtually every message I've written, haven't you?
I've said repeatedly this is about *inlining*. Go ahead and link to the image, I don't care about that. I care about it being inlined in the article.
On 15 Feb 2005, at 9:46 am, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Why do you want so badly to make people accept a picture of a guy sucking his own penis right along with a picture of Earth?
Because the damn article is about a guy sucking his penis and when I read an article about someone sucking their own penis I want some proof and I don't want people forcing me to read an inferior encyclopedia that doesn't have this proof because they're squeamish or prudish, especially when there are technical ways of dealing with it.
Wow, you've completely failed to read virtually every message I've written, haven't you?
I've said repeatedly this is about *inlining*. Go ahead and link to the image, I don't care about that. I care about it being inlined in the article.
Great, however this would be a compromise for me until a technical solution is forthcoming.
Christiaan
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
On 15 Feb 2005, at 9:46 am, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Why do you want so badly to make people accept a picture of a guy sucking his own penis right along with a picture of Earth?
Because the damn article is about a guy sucking his penis and when I read an article about someone sucking their own penis I want some proof and I don't want people forcing me to read an inferior encyclopedia that doesn't have this proof because they're squeamish or prudish, especially when there are technical ways of dealing with it.
Wow, you've completely failed to read virtually every message I've written, haven't you?
I've said repeatedly this is about *inlining*. Go ahead and link to the image, I don't care about that. I care about it being inlined in the article.
Great, however this would be a compromise for me until a technical solution is forthcoming.
Unfortunately, instead of compromising, a vote was resorted to, which killed any chance at compromise.
This is an object lesson in why votes should be used rarely if ever to decide things on Wikipedia.
Nicholas Knight said:
Unfortunately, instead of compromising, a vote was resorted to, which killed any chance at compromise.
This is an object lesson in why votes should be used rarely if ever to decide things on Wikipedia.
I think this is a mischaracterization. The survey showed the (to my mind) astonishing popularity of the inlining option; it was clear before Jimbo intervened that a consensus to link would build slowly, if at all, in the face of strong (40%+) opposition. Several compromises were being actively considered at the time and in fact one of those compromises is in operation on the article now.
The thing is Nicholas, you're argument that you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to not see the image is just as valid for those who wish not to jump through hoops to see the image. And you're the one wanting to change what was the status quo, so I don't see how this is a lesson on why votes should be rarely used. In fact the situation might help direct some energy at finding a technical solution.
Christiaan
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
On 15 Feb 2005, at 9:46 am, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Why do you want so badly to make people accept a picture of a guy sucking his own penis right along with a picture of Earth?
Because the damn article is about a guy sucking his penis and when I read an article about someone sucking their own penis I want some proof and I don't want people forcing me to read an inferior encyclopedia that doesn't have this proof because they're squeamish or prudish, especially when there are technical ways of dealing with it.
Wow, you've completely failed to read virtually every message I've written, haven't you?
I've said repeatedly this is about *inlining*. Go ahead and link to the image, I don't care about that. I care about it being inlined in the article.
Great, however this would be a compromise for me until a technical solution is forthcoming.
Unfortunately, instead of compromising, a vote was resorted to, which killed any chance at compromise.
This is an object lesson in why votes should be used rarely if ever to decide things on Wikipedia.
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
The thing is Nicholas, you're argument that you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to not see the image is just as valid for those who wish not to jump through hoops to see the image. And you're the one wanting
How do you decide you _want_ to see the image before knowing what the image is about? Someone going to [[Autofellatio]] may have no idea what it's about, but once they know, may be quite sure they do _not_ want to see a photograph of it. If the image is unconditionally inlined, you've removed that choice from them.
to change what was the status quo, so I don't see how this is a lesson
The "status quo" was arrived at by Tony Sidaway inlining the image _with the full expectation_ that it would not survive. [[WP:POINT]]
on why votes should be rarely used. In fact the situation might help direct some energy at finding a technical solution.
Things are seriously broken if there has to be a massive argument over something before a technical solution is created.
Nicholas Knight said:
The "status quo" was arrived at by Tony Sidaway inlining the image _with the full expectation_ that it would not survive. [[WP:POINT]]
Incorrect. I wondered how long it would survive. I am glad that I conducted the experiment; it appears that inlining controversial images is much more viable than I had previously believed.
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
The thing is Nicholas, you're argument that you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to not see the image is just as valid for those who wish not to jump through hoops to see the image. And you're the one wanting
How do you decide you _want_ to see the image before knowing what the image is about? Someone going to [[Autofellatio]] may have no idea what it's about, but once they know, may be quite sure they do _not_ want to see a photograph of it. If the image is unconditionally inlined, you've removed that choice from them.
That argument runs both ways, I'm afraid.
-- Chad
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:04:30 -0500, Chad Perrin perrin@apotheon.com wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
The thing is Nicholas, you're argument that you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to not see the image is just as valid for those who wish not to jump through hoops to see the image. And you're the one wanting
How do you decide you _want_ to see the image before knowing what the image is about? Someone going to [[Autofellatio]] may have no idea what it's about, but once they know, may be quite sure they do _not_ want to see a photograph of it. If the image is unconditionally inlined, you've removed that choice from them.
That argument runs both ways, I'm afraid.
I don't understand. How does it run both ways?
Theresa
Theresa Knott wrote:
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:04:30 -0500, Chad Perrin perrin@apotheon.com wrote:
Nicholas Knight wrote:
How do you decide you _want_ to see the image before knowing what the image is about? Someone going to [[Autofellatio]] may have no idea what it's about, but once they know, may be quite sure they do _not_ want to see a photograph of it. If the image is unconditionally inlined, you've removed that choice from them.
That argument runs both ways, I'm afraid.
I don't understand. How does it run both ways?
Allow me to present an edited version, prepared for the purpose of supporting the opposing view:
"How do you decide you _don't want_ to see the image before knowing what the image is about? Someone going to [[Autofellatio]] may have no idea what it's about, but once they know, may be quite sure they _do_ want to see a photograph of it. If the image is removed from the page, you've removed that choice from them."
I added "ease of" for purposes of accuracy: it should have been included in the original comment by NK as well, for precision, since one can use browser preferences to block images.
-- Chad
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:35:55 -0500, Chad Perrin perrin@apotheon.com wrote:
Allow me to present an edited version, prepared for the purpose of supporting the opposing view:
"How do you decide you _don't want_ to see the image before knowing what the image is about? Someone going to [[Autofellatio]] may have no idea what it's about, but once they know, may be quite sure they _do_ want to see a photograph of it. If the image is removed from the page, you've removed that choice from them."
Autofellatio isn't that common a word. One might reasonably expect poorly-informed car lovers to wind up there, though I suspect they wouldn't be disappointed on arrival.
Chad Perrin wrote:
Allow me to present an edited version, prepared for the purpose of supporting the opposing view:
"How do you decide you _don't want_ to see the image before knowing what the image is about? Someone going to [[Autofellatio]] may have no idea what it's about, but once they know, may be quite sure they _do_ want to see a photograph of it. If the image is removed from the page, you've removed that choice from them."
What a beautifully written argument for linking the image rather than showing it inline. I agree with you completely.
--sannse
sannse wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
Allow me to present an edited version, prepared for the purpose of supporting the opposing view:
"How do you decide you _don't want_ to see the image before knowing what the image is about? Someone going to [[Autofellatio]] may have no idea what it's about, but once they know, may be quite sure they _do_ want to see a photograph of it. If the image is removed from the page, you've removed that choice from them."
What a beautifully written argument for linking the image rather than showing it inline. I agree with you completely.
Intentionally misinterpreting my point is hardly a valid argument.
-- Chad
Chad Perrin wrote:
sannse wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
Allow me to present an edited version, prepared for the purpose of supporting the opposing view:
"How do you decide you _don't want_ to see the image before knowing what the image is about? Someone going to [[Autofellatio]] may have no idea what it's about, but once they know, may be quite sure they _do_ want to see a photograph of it. If the image is removed from the page, you've removed that choice from them."
What a beautifully written argument for linking the image rather than showing it inline. I agree with you completely.
Intentionally misinterpreting my point is hardly a valid argument.
It is when your point makes mine so well - this way we allow people to make an informed choice, rather than forcing the image on them. Your rephrasing makes that point just as well as the original version
--sannse
sannse wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
sannse wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
Allow me to present an edited version, prepared for the purpose of supporting the opposing view:
"How do you decide you _don't want_ to see the image before knowing what the image is about? Someone going to [[Autofellatio]] may have no idea what it's about, but once they know, may be quite sure they _do_ want to see a photograph of it. If the image is removed from the page, you've removed that choice from them."
What a beautifully written argument for linking the image rather than showing it inline. I agree with you completely.
Intentionally misinterpreting my point is hardly a valid argument.
It is when your point makes mine so well - this way we allow people to make an informed choice, rather than forcing the image on them. Your rephrasing makes that point just as well as the original version
You don't seem to get what I was driving at: the argument runs BOTH WAYS.
-- Chad
Tony Sidaway wrote:
It really doesn't take long to click a "show me pictures" button, agree not to blame Wikipedia if you see something you find unpleasant, and then get on with your life. And it isn't as if our editors need to see pictures in order to edit the pages.
And who are you, by the way, to tell people they can just get on with their lives? Do you have some sort of proof that no one will be permanently affected by such an image?
Nicholas Knight (nknight@runawaynet.com) [050215 16:55]:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
It really doesn't take long to click a "show me pictures" button, agree not to blame Wikipedia if you see something you find unpleasant, and then get on with your life. And it isn't as if our editors need to see pictures in order to edit the pages.
And who are you, by the way, to tell people they can just get on with their lives? Do you have some sort of proof that no one will be permanently affected by such an image?
You appear not to be talking about the image that was there, but about some visual version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World rather than the actual photo. Please try to be a little less hyperbolic.
- d.
Skyring wrote:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 06:58:26 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Skyring said:
My problem is the argument that could be raised that Wikipedia is a repository for explicit images that are inappropriate for children and therefore the site should be blocked by educational institutions and concerned parents. I think we should take steps to address this before it suddenly takes top billing on talkback shows.
Something of this kind cannot be avoided except by banning *all* sexually explicit images--something I've seen seriously advanced.
Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.
This would be possible using a new flag in the image syntax, which could then be used to trigger appropriate behavior depending on user settings. Unfortunately, the problem is determining what the appropriate default behavior should be. So a technical solution to filtering does not leave us any better off, it just pushes the argument sideways into the choice of the default behaviour, as well as the classic "censorship flag" argument of just where the boundaries should be set -- should the standards of an adult encyclopedia be set by the lowest common denominator of the easily offended, not to mention [[wowser]]s who live to be offended on the behalf of others?
-- Neil
Skyring said:
Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.
There is no way to stop them doing that except to have extremely strict control of all sexual topics on Wikipedia.If you have a strong stomach look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_punch That article has been on Wikipedia since July. No illustration is necessary, the description of the act alone would tell most parents that Wikipedia is not child-safe. For this reason I think the argument for appeasement is a bust. We're making an encyclopedia and we should make decisions on an article-by-article basis. Does this article serve a useful purpose? Does this illustration improve the article's usefulness to someone who wants to know about the topic? Does this link provide relevant information at an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio?
Are we really supposed to believe that people who would object to the appearance of a photograph at [[Autofellatio]] won't also object to the text at [[Fuck]]?
RickK
Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote: Skyring said:
Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.
There is no way to stop them doing that except to have extremely strict control of all sexual topics on Wikipedia.If you have a strong stomach look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_punch That article has been on Wikipedia since July. No illustration is necessary, the description of the act alone would tell most parents that Wikipedia is not child-safe. For this reason I think the argument for appeasement is a bust. We're making an encyclopedia and we should make decisions on an article-by-article basis. Does this article serve a useful purpose? Does this illustration improve the article's usefulness to someone who wants to know about the topic? Does this link provide relevant information at an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio?
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Rick wrote:
Are we really supposed to believe that people who would object to the appearance of a photograph at [[Autofellatio]] won't also object to the text at [[Fuck]]?
I object to said image, but not the text at [[Fuck]].
Rick wrote:
Are we really supposed to believe that people who would object to the appearance of a photograph at [[Autofellatio]] won't also object to the text at [[Fuck]]?
RickK
Yes. I am personally in exactly that category.
--sannse
sannse said:
Rick wrote:
Are we really supposed to believe that people who would object to the appearance of a photograph at [[Autofellatio]] won't also object to the text at [[Fuck]]?
RickK
Yes. I am personally in exactly that category.
I don't think that's a problem. Where it becomes a problem is that users are unwilling to learn how to operate their browsers so they want Wikipedia to provide links to *all* users instead of the inlines they expect. Illustrations aren't essential, of course. But they're very useful, adding immediacy and impact, color and life to the pages of an encyclopedia. It may be that some of the pictures aren't to everybody's taste (I cannot safely look at a picture of a caterpillar, for instance, without risking waking nightmares) but it surely doesn't merit making everybody's browsing experience more clunky, when a few clicks of the mouse is all that the reader (speaking from experience) needs to do.
Rick wrote:
Are we really supposed to believe that people who would object to the appearance of a photograph at [[Autofellatio]] won't also object to the text at [[Fuck]]?
I believe there are several of us in this conversation who are objecting in exactly that manner. =]
-Mark
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
It's CRAP. Everyone here KNOWS it. Stop pretending this is a grey area, it's not.
This attitude isn't going to impress people who disagree with you.
My goal in life, believe it or not, has nothing to do with impressing people that disagree with me.
So your opinion is now law?
Wonderful. We don't need all of those nasty little polls or votes at VfD or VfU or everywhere else. All we have to do is have you make the decision for us.
I thought Jimbo was the benevolent dictator. You seem just to want to be dictator, period.
RickK
Nicholas Knight nknight@runawaynet.com wrote: Bryan Derksen wrote:
At 05:26 PM 2/13/2005 -0800, Nicholas Knight wrote:
I see nothing wrong with an encyclopedia having a blanket policy that sexually explicit photographs not be displayed in articles. You can argue relativism, subjectiveness, and "censorship" all you want, we both know it's crap.
You _think_ it's crap. Others obviously think otherwise, or there'd be no ongoing debate.
Guess what? They're wrong. I'm right.
There, I said it.
It's CRAP. Everyone here KNOWS it. Stop pretending this is a grey area, it's not. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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Bryan Derksen wrote:
Perhaps you could provide a line drawing to substitute for it? Back when I first notice the poll on this thing before it had erupted onto the mailing list, someone suggested that the photograph was unacceptable but that we should find a piece of "artwork" to substitute, and I jokingly suggested running the photograph through Photoshop's brushstroke filter. Maybe an edge filter could turn it into a line drawing and actually be a way to resolve this.
Last I checked, it had already been "resolved" by getting replaced with a line-drawing, actually. We're mostly just arguing the principle at this point, I think, though I suppose the original photo might eventually be replaced on the page.
-- Chad
At 10:08 PM 2/13/2005 -0500, Chad Perrin wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Perhaps you could provide a line drawing to substitute for it? Back when I first notice the poll on this thing before it had erupted onto the mailing list, someone suggested that the photograph was unacceptable but that we should find a piece of "artwork" to substitute, and I jokingly suggested running the photograph through Photoshop's brushstroke filter. Maybe an edge filter could turn it into a line drawing and actually be a way to resolve this.
Last I checked, it had already been "resolved" by getting replaced with a line-drawing, actually. We're mostly just arguing the principle at this point, I think, though I suppose the original photo might eventually be replaced on the page.
Ah, I see. I hadn't gone back to the debate since I cast my votes so I had assumed nothing much had changed. I think that if the image remains hidden by the "linkimage" template then there should be no reason _not_ to switch back to the original photo, or another photo if that one turns out to be a copyvio; that was one of the two options being voted over last I checked and linking the image was slightly ahead in the poll. But I'm willing to trust the process on it at this point and leave the vote to resolve as it may.
Nicholas Knight wrote:
I see nothing wrong with an encyclopedia having a blanket policy that sexually explicit photographs not be displayed in articles. You can argue relativism, subjectiveness, and "censorship" all you want, we both know it's crap. We're here to provide an educational resource. Inlined explicit photographs of sex acts as a whole do little to educate that a line drawing wouldn't do, and only turn people off to Wikipedia as an educational resource. Crap like the autofellatio image is even worse.
This is an opinion based on emotion. Other people have a different opinion.
Christiaan
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Nicholas Knight said:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
I agree that, at most, it's a nice-to-have. But really the users should be taking this issue up with the designers of their browsers, not the producers of content. http is not a push medium.
And yet I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be able to browse an encyclopedia with images on and not run across disgusting crap that adds no value to the article whatsoever.
You should never encounter disgusting crap that adds no value to an article. If you find any, remove it.
*points at [[Autofellatio]]*
When I inlined the autofellatio image on January 6th, I thought it possible that a very large number of Wikipedia editors would think as you do. I did not expect it to remain inlined for long. And yet, until Jimbo removed it, the image proved very difficult to return to its linked form (I myself never replaced it when it was removed--that would have been interfering).
From this, and the result of the Sannse's poll so far, it appears to me
that there has not been a consensus--or at least, not the kind of 2/3+ consensus we're used to on Wikipedia--that the image is so "disgusting" and without redeeming merit. Nobody was more surprised about this than I. Aware that the actions of one of the opponents of inlining may have skewed the poll by attracting the attention of people with anti-censorship views, I asked for the poll deadline to be set some considerable time in the future--in late March. I believe this was in line with the poll on [[Clitoris]]. The thinking was that the longer the poll went on the more likely it would be that a representative sample of Wikipedians would have the opportunity to consider the case and vote. A few people thought there should be no deadline, but most thought a deadline was better and, with some dissenters, most seemed to be happy with the March 20 deadline I proposed. Someone originally proposed a 70% criterion for consensus, but later changed his mind. I still think 70% is reasonably low, but the 2/3 value would probably also be acceptable to most people. I think I can say I've tried very hard to do everything I can to favor a representative survey. It was publicised on current surveys and in Villege Pump policy. But still I do not see a consensus on the proposal that the picture has no merit. Even the proposal to link is just about scraping 60% support. My opinion? It's a lovely picture that illustrates the subject matter beautifully.
Incerdently how many people saw this (the link contains the image in question)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Recentchanges&oldid=...
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 01:21:02 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Incerdently how many people saw this (the link contains the image in question)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Recentchanges&oldid=...
I saw it. The discussion here led me to it. I think it's a pretty good illustration for the article - and I note that it has been replaced by a line drawing - but it is exactly the sort of thing that wowsers would use to criticise Wikipedia, on any number of levels.
Skyring wrote:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 01:21:02 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Incerdently how many people saw this (the link contains the image in question)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Recentchanges&oldid=...
I saw it. The discussion here led me to it. I think it's a pretty good illustration for the article - and I note that it has been replaced by a line drawing - but it is exactly the sort of thing that wowsers would use to criticise Wikipedia, on any number of levels.
Uh, look at the URL a little closer. Geni is pointing out that someone put that image up on the Recentchanges page.
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 17:32:30 -0800, Nicholas Knight nknight@runawaynet.com wrote:
Skyring wrote:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 01:21:02 +0000, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Incerdently how many people saw this (the link contains the image in question)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Recentchanges&oldid=...
I saw it. The discussion here led me to it. I think it's a pretty good illustration for the article - and I note that it has been replaced by a line drawing - but it is exactly the sort of thing that wowsers would use to criticise Wikipedia, on any number of levels.
Uh, look at the URL a little closer. Geni is pointing out that someone put that image up on the Recentchanges page.
Yeah. My comments stand.
At 05:32 PM 2/13/2005 -0800, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Uh, look at the URL a little closer. Geni is pointing out that someone put that image up on the Recentchanges page.
Is there anyone (aside from the vandal that first put it there) advocating that a photograph of autofellatio adds to the value of the recentchanges page? I'm not sure what the point of mentioning this is, otherwise.
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 19:53:05 -0800, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
At 05:32 PM 2/13/2005 -0800, Nicholas Knight wrote:
Uh, look at the URL a little closer. Geni is pointing out that someone put that image up on the Recentchanges page.
Is there anyone (aside from the vandal that first put it there) advocating that a photograph of autofellatio adds to the value of the recentchanges page? I'm not sure what the point of mentioning this is, otherwise.
Just demonstraighting that the argument that only people who expect to see this image will see it is a waste of electrons. Now I know someone why try and counter this by saying we should not give into vandles like that but last I cheacked the frount page was protected and admin powers are not avaible to every user.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Chad Perrin said:
The statement that "we" already have this capability built into "our" browsers assumes some things about visitors to the site that are not necessarily true.
Well you had to dig pretty deep for a not-very-convincing example. :)
That wasn't "digging pretty deep": it was speaking from experience. I've had occasion to use w3mmee, even as my primary browser under certain circumstances (now thankfully behind me). The point still stands, though -- some people don't have the options you seemed to assume were universal.
Besides, anything less than a one-click method of blocking all images is unlikely to make blocking all images palatable to anyone using a graphical browser. As such, I think that addressing the matter from the server side is rather important, in the long run.
I agree that, at most, it's a nice-to-have. But really the users should be taking this issue up with the designers of their browsers, not the producers of content. http is not a push medium.
I both agree and disagree with that. I agree that users should be taking it up with the browser designers, rather than the content providers, but I also believe that, in absence of specific reasons to do otherwise, content providers should perhaps address the matter as well. In particular, I think it's an idea that should be addressed by Wikipedia, because of the goals pursued by the Wikipedia endeavor (both in theory and in practice). Making a universally accessible encycolpedia implies making an encyclopedia that strives to be as close to universally palatable as is practicable, as well, without betraying the needs of encyclopedic quality.
-- Chad
Chad Perrin said:
Making a universally accessible encycolpedia implies making an encyclopedia that strives to be as close to universally palatable as is practicable, as well, without betraying the needs of encyclopedic quality.
Yes. A balance must be struck. As I indicated earlier, I'm a programmer and will tinker with image suppression if I get the time.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
Chad Perrin said:
Making a universally accessible encycolpedia implies making an encyclopedia that strives to be as close to universally palatable as is practicable, as well, without betraying the needs of encyclopedic quality.
Yes. A balance must be struck. As I indicated earlier, I'm a programmer and will tinker with image suppression if I get the time.
Good deal. I'm glad to hear it (both your agreement and your intent to work on the matter). I may even someday get around to familiarizing myself enough with the Wikipedia code to do stuff like that as well, but it won't happen in the immediate, forseeable future.
Good luck with that.
-- Chad