Florence writes:
Besides the fact Mike is using a language far too convoluted for many
> speakers on this list,
Ouch! If I do say something too convolutedly here, please send me a note,
and I'll rephrase accordingly.
> I would argue that one of the implications of the
> abusive deletions is that Jimbo is perceived as having "lost touch with
> base". I do not think letting someone speak on his behalf will help
> restore trust.
>
Just to be clear about this: Jimmy didn't ask me to speak for him, and I
haven't represented here that I'm speaking for him. I'm only offering my
personal (convoluted!) point of view, trying to be helpful.
--Mike
--- On Sat, 8/5/10, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Then another idea is to keep on Commons only those pictures which are
> non-controversial and suggest local project to keep their controversial
> pictures local? For example en Wikipedia keeps fair use pictures locally
> and it is OK. If for example nudity pictures is not a problem for Danish or > French or Svedish Wikipedias - they can keep them locally... and the> en-Wikipedia which is driven by anglo-saxon taboo of nudity can get rid of them...
This is an elegant idea that might be worth pursuing, at least as an interim solution.Projects could be given ample warning that certain media files will be deleted atsuch and such a date, and that if any project is interested in them, they should transfer them to their own project space.
Andreas
Stu wrote: '"Due to the failure of the community process, something
extraordinary had to be done"
There's been many statements claiming that Commons cannot police
itself, however, the deletions have been counted: a mere 400 files
were deleted, after which Jimbo said the cleanup was done. A lot of
those are getting undeleted, because it's agreed they never should've
been deleted in the first place. There are 6,609,202 files on
commons. That means that less than one hundredth of one percent of all
files were of a type that could be considered pornographic by Jimbo's
definitions, and that's such an extremely low number that it would
imply Commons was doing a pretty good job of monitoring itself.
Further, Jimbo only proposed the new policy May 6th.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3ASexual_content&act…
By May 7th, 89 edits had been made, and a workable policy was
beginning to emerge:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3ASexual_content&act…
While there were doubts on the talk page about the record keeping act,
provisional to the Foundation making a statement, most people were
willing to wait and accept Jimbo's judgement - and he was pushing very
hard for it. It had very quickly become clear that art was
considered a protected case, but Commons was more than willing to look
into photographs and film, and deal with the legal issues that were
implied to be the reason for the policy change.
The process was working - and then Jimbo went on a rampage, deleting
art and diagrams, and wheel-warring. to keep art deleted.
This was NOT about Commons refusing to cooperate. This was Jimbo
seeking approval of a pre-defined action, which he misled the
community into thinking was for legal reasons, then when consensus
went the slightest bit differently to what he wanted, protecting
artworks and such, he went ahead and deleting art and diagrams anyway.
And for what? Is "We've deleted the pornographic photographs" really
so much worse PR than "We've deleted pornographic photographs, and
also artworks widely agreed to have strong artistic merit by art
scholars?"
I'd have said the latter was the far worse choice.
[Addendum: Right, let's see if this threading works]
Anthere said:
> However, the lost perception that the community is in charge of its own
future
> (eg, the way it operates, the power structure), is not a detail.
> It will impact our entire future.
The problem is that the community isn't "in charge" of anything. Time and
again we've seen that without precipitious action, the consensus process
stalls out. The community is leaderless. That's supposed to be a feature of
the wiki model but sometimes it's not.
Resolving BLP on en:wp had stalled out until a handful of admins (including,
I note, MZMcBride, among others) took some action. That got discussion going
and maybe some progress will be made. Or maybe things will stall out again.
Commons has too much problematic content. The [[Commons:Sexual Content]]
discussion and other policy discussions was completely stalled, with some
very vocal folks blocking progress. I'm not going to say that Jimbo handled
the best way possible but maybe now some progress in deciding what policy
will be will be made. Or maybe things will stall out again. One can hope,
though.
Larry Pieniazek
Hobby mail: Lar at Miltontrainworks dot com
Tomek writes:
So... are we now going to start writting "USfamilyfriendlypedia(tm)" ?
> There is plenty of stuff to be delete then... not only penis and
> vagina pictures... For example delete all biographies of porn-stars,
> articles about addictive violent computer games, and there is tons of
> things to be deleted in order to make our projects more "family
> friendy".
>
For what it's worth, I personally don't see the issue as one of making
Commons (or Wikipedia or any other project) "family-friendly." There will
always be content that some substantial fraction of the reading population
will find offensive. This would be true even if the projects were limited to
text.
There's also no urgent legal issue driving any changes to Commons -- we
don't have reason to believe any category of content we knowingly carry on
Commons is definitionally illegal under U.S. law. (Obviously, when if people
upload content that is illegal, and we're informed about its presence, we'll
remove it -- most likely, volunteers will remove it even before it gets the
attention of the Foundation staff.)
If we judge Commons content simply on the basis of "Does this content serves
the mission of the projects?" there is no doubt that some content will
removed, some offensive content will not be removed, and Commons will no
longer be a kind of "dumping ground" for anything and everything regardless
of whether content lacks encyclopedic usefulness. As a side-effect of this,
you probably get both (a) a resource that is somewhat more "family friendly"
(because the sheer frequency of merely offensive images is reduced) and (b)
a resource that remains essentially "uncensored," consistent with its
encyclopedic mission. (I use "uncensored" here to mean "not edited merely
to avoid offense.")
--Mike
Mr. Godwin, are you aware that, before Jimbo acted unilaterally, that
a discussion of policy had been opened by him, and was proceeding
towards something that had reasonable support, based on the legal
issues that he implied were the source of his hurry to do something.
That was derailed by his actions, which also completely ignored the
evolving community decision, and has been completely derailed as it
turns out completely different motives (Public relations) were, in
fact, the real ones.
If you want policy discussions, first regain the trust of the
community Jimbo lied to in what turned out to be a sham effort to
develop a consensus policy about the reporting issues for photographic
and filmed pornography.
After actively deceiving us as to the reasons for a policy discussion,
Jimbo needs dealt with, and someone we can trust to play fair and give
us the actual reasons - and who won't pretend to be cooperating on
building policy, then ignore every single bit of community consensus -
because community consensus came down hard on the side of keeping
artworks - before we can go back to trying to restart a policy
discussion which began with active deceit of the community, first off
as to the reasons, and secondly, that it was a discussion.
We now are told this is a free speech issue.
So what policy
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Mike Godwin wrote:
>>
>> You're misunderstanding what I wrote here. The words "not individually" were
>> chosen for a reason.
>>
>> Let me put it this way -- sometimes a police officer has to use physical
>> force to stop further violence from having. If you inferred from this
>> statement that that I favor police intervention as a first resort, or that I
>> favor physical force, you would properly be criticized as misrepresenting my
>> views.
>>
>>
>>
Mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley:
"The policeman isn't there to create disorder;
the policeman is there to preserve disorder."
Sorry, couldn't resist. ;-D
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Jimbo never revealed the reasons he was doing this - the FOX News
attacks - until after he did them, and it was a fait accompli.
He actively worked to mislead the community about the reasons and
goals of his actions.
After the community had made it very clear that they felt artworks
should be protected, in their editing of [[Commons:Sexual content]],
he ignored it and deleted artworks anyway, and wheel warred to keep
them deleted.
If you want people to focus on policy, you open a thread saying "In
the opinion of the board, we need to deal with this issue. Here's a
draft proposal, we need you to quickly deal with this, as the media
may be looking into things.
You don't A. not mention the reason you're doing it and, B. ignore
anything and everything you get as feedback from the community.
Jimbo, by going off half-cocked, wheel-warring, and misleading the
community, has struck at the core of Wikipedia's principles. When
Iranian TV threatens bad publicity, will we delete all depictions of
Muhammed? If the Virgin Killer controversy happens again, is the
board's new policy to immediately capitulate?
Wikipedia has survived bad publicity in the past. It's never hurt us
one bit. Jimbo's actions have hurt us. This should be all about Jimbo.
After his initial deletion spree, there were widespread objections from
the community. In many different forums, hundreds of users registered
their objections. By the time Jimbo returned, nearly 100 users had
signed a statement calling for his "Founder Flag" powers to be
removed.
In response, Jimbo:
• Did not apologize, but expressed pride in his earlier actions
• Encouraged other admins to mimic his actions
• Deleted the entirety of his talk page, which had filled with concerns.
At this point, discussing the original issue (porn) is really besides the point.
This behavior is not acceptable.
I propose:
1. Jimbo does not have the confidence of the community.
2. The "founder" status needs to be removed to reflect that.