Tim Starling writes:
It's a proposal which only really makes sense when analysed from the
> libertarian end of this debate. It's not a compromise with the rest of
> the spectrum.
>
That's correct. That was intentional. A libertarian proposal that attempts
to adhere to NPOV and reduces general noise about censorship, allowing us to
focus on images that are actually used, won't please organizations like Fox
News or people like Larry Sanger who are determined to censor or destroy
Wikipedia. But my suggestion wasn't derived from ideology so much as
practicality. (I'm not an ideological libertarian.)
"So to return to Mike's proposal: it's only the libertarians who value
educational value above moral hazard, and they're not the ones you've
got to compromise with. To a conservative, a claim of educational
value does not negate a risk of moral turpitude. By optionally hiding
images which have a claim of educational value, however dubious the
claim, you please nobody."
That's a feature, not a bug. If there is a compromise that "pleases" some
factions but not others, it's not exactly a compromise, is it?
My point is that is nice to be able to say, with regard to a disputed image,
that it is used in an article, or 10 articles, or 100 articles across
projects. Being able to say such a thing is a useful answer to a precise
subset of criticisms, but it does not purport to be an answer to all
criticisms. So while I appreciate your general taxonomy of political views,
I think it is grounded in a mistaken assumption about the purpose of what I
posted.
--Mike
Despite Content Purge, Pornographic Images Remain on Wikimedia
By Jana Winter
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/10/porn-wikipedia-illegal-content-re…
Any attempt to "filter" ourselves is not addressing the fact that the
images exist at all on Commons.
Any attempted appeasement of these vicious morons was and is
counterproductive at best. Fox News is best aggressively ignored from
now on and given similar cooperation to the Register.
- d.
Yann Forget writes:
2010/5/10 Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)gmail.com>:
>
> > Can you point me to major media entities that have accepted the notion
> that
> > "Fox News was correct"?
> >
> > This statement strikes me as identifying a theoretical hazard rather than
> an
> > actual outcome.
> >
> > --Mike
>
> Reading this
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:News_regarding_the_sexual_content…
> I think that you are wrong, and that David and others are right.
>
I will stipulate that if you consider the Register or blogs a "major media
entity," I'm wrong. I'm sure you don't mean to suggest that the BBC article
asserted that Fox News was correct.
--Mike
As some of you may know, Jimbo has recently used his standing in the
community to dictate that Commons should not host porn. [1][2][3] He
has interpreted this to include a wide swath of images both
photographic and illustrative, and both contemporary and historical.
In principle, I agree that having a stricter policy on sexual images
is a good thing, but fundamentally we need to have a clear policy on
what should be allowed and what shouldn't. Attempts to write one [4]
have become a moving target that leaves us without a functional policy
or community consensus. Initially, this was based on the
characteristics of the USC 2257 record keeping laws, but Jimbo has
gone beyond this by deleting non-photographic and historical works
that would not be covered by 2257.
In essence, right now Jimbo is deleting things based on his singular
judgment about what should be allowed. [5]
These deletions have continued with little apparent concern for
whether or not an image is currently in use by any of the projects.
This is a large change and lack of a clear policy creates a very
confusing and frustrating environment for editors. (Multiple Commons
admins have already stated their intention to resign and/or retire
over this.)
Again, I agree that tighter controls on sexual images are generally a
good thing, but I believe the abruptness, lack of clear policy, and
lack of a consensus based approach is creating an unnecessarily
disruptive environment. Much of the content has been hosted by
Wikimedia for years, so do we really have to delete it all, right now?
Can we not take a week or two to articulate to boundaries of what
should be deleted and what should be kept?
In general, I would ask that things slow down until some sort of a
clear policy can be created (either by the community or the WMF /
Board). This is especially true when it comes to deleting images that
are in use on the various Wikipedias. (Such deletions have already
been widespread).
I would also like to ask whether either the WMF or the Board plans to
intervene? Because of Jimbo's historical standing and technical
access, the Commons community is largely impotent to stop him.
Multiple requests by the community that things slow down or a clear
policy be crafted prior to mass deletions have thus far been
ineffective.
At the very least it would be helpful if the WMF and/or Board would
express a position on the appropriate use of sexual content?
-Robert Rohde
[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales
[2] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Cleanup_policy
(and following sections)
[3] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content
[4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content
[5] http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&us…
Okay, I've complained a lot, time to give something back.
I think I've managed to create a sexual content policy that's
consistent with the core values of commons and previous decisions,
such as the artworks of Muhammed, while dealing with the problems and
assuring that any sexual content that remains is, at the least,
defensible as serving our educational purpose.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content
It'll probably need a bit more work, but a policy based on forwarding
our goals, rather than censorship... Well! Think we might have summat
here.
David Levy writes:
>
> Agreed. As some predicted, Fox News has cited Jimbo's actions as
> validation that its earlier claims were correct. And because any
> "graphic images" remain, this means that we're aware of an egregious
> problem and have made only a token effort to address it.
>
> Essentially, we've gone from alleged smut peddlers pleading our
> innocence to self-acknowledged smut peddlers flaunting our guilt.
>
> It was an enormous mistake to respond to this "news" organization as
> though it possessed a shred of credibility or integrity.
>
>
The hidden assumption here -- an incorrect assumption, in my view -- is that
there is some universe of possibilities in which Fox News would not have
cited Jimbo's *inaction* as validation that it was correct. I infer from
this comment that you imagine that if Jimbo had not intervened as he did,
there would be no such story from Fox News. My response is, if you think
this, then you don't know Fox News.
Fox News (or at least this reporter and her editors) have dedicated
themselves to damaging Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects. This is a
given, and it is evident from their behavior. *Any* followup story would
have demonstrated what these days in the U.S. we are calling "epistemic
closure" -- all results will be interpreted as validation of cherished
theories.
It is perfectly appropriate, it seems to me, for the community to
second-guess Jimmy (or me, or anyone else working to protect the projects).
But I don't think we should implicitly or explicitly embrace the theory
that, had Jimmy not intervened, there would be no story, or a better story.
My personal view is that the story Fox News wanted to tell would have been
worse, but even if you disagree about that, let's not pretend there would
have been no story at all.
--Mike
This message is CC'ed to other people who might wish to comment on this potential approach
---
Dear reader at FOSI,
As a member of the Wikipedia community and the community that develops the software on which Wikipedia runs, I come to you with a few questions.
Over the past years Wikipedia has become more and more popular and omnipresent. This has led to enormous problems, because for the first time, a largely uncensored system has to work in the boundaries of a world that is largely censored. For libraries and schools this means that they want to provide Wikipedia and its related projects to their readers, but are presented with the problem of what some people might consider, information that is not "child-safe". They have several options in that case, either blocking completely or using context aware filtering software that may make mistakes, that can cost some of these institutions their funding.
Similar problems are starting to present themselves in countries around the world, differing views about sexuality between northern and southern europe for instance. Add to that the censoring of images of Muhammad, Tiananman square, the Nazi Swastika, and a host of other problems. Recently there has been concern that all this all-out-censoring of content by parties around the world is damaging the education mission of the Wikipedia related projects because so many people are not able to access large portions of our content due to a small (think 0.01% ) part of our other content.
This has led some people to infer that perhaps it is time to rate the content of Wikipedia ourselves, in order to facilitate external censoring of material, hopefully making the rest of our content more accessible. According to statements around the web ICRA ratings are probably the most widely supported rating by filtering systems. Thus we were thinking of adding autogenerated ICRA RDF tags to each individual page describing the rating of the page and the images contained within them. I have a few questions however, both general and technical.
1: If I am correctly informed, Wikipedia would be the first website of this size to label their content with ratings, is this correct?
2: How many content filters understand the RDF tags
3: How many of those understand multiple labels and path specific labeling. This means: if we rate the path of images included on the page different from the page itself, do filters block the entire content, or just the images ? (Consider the Virgin Killer album cover on the Virgin Killer article, if you are aware of that controversial image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer)
4: Do filters understand per page labeling ? Or do they cache the first RDF file they encounter on a website and use that for all other pages of the website ?
5: Is there any chance the vocabulary of ICRA can be expanded with new ratings for non-Western world sensitive issues ?
6: Is there a possibility of creating a separate "namespace" that we could potentially use for our own labels ?
I hope that you can help me answer these questions, so that we may continue our community debate with more informed viewpoints about the possibilities of content rating. If you have additional suggestions for systems or problems that this web-property should account for, I would more than welcome those suggestions as well.
Derk-Jan Hartman
Hello,
I think it would be good to have an open meeting (or a few) to discuss
the wider Wikimedia community, project governance, and recent issues
on Commons and Meta. Przykuta suggested an IRC meeting soon.
For those who are available, please join us in #wikimedia on
Wednesday, at 1900 UTC. (for those who dislike IRC, there's a link
For everyone, please add topics for discussion, and link to
discussions taking place elsewhere on the projects.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_meetings#May_12.2C_2010
SJ
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 00:15, Ting Chen <wing.philopp(a)gmx.de> wrote:
> What I can say to your questions is that Jimmy informed the board about
> his intention and asked the board for support. Don't speaking for other
> board members, just speak for myself. I answered his mail with that I
> fully support his engagement.
>
> Personally, I think that the board is responsible for defining the scope
> and basic rules of the projects. While for projects like Wikipedia,
> Wikisource, Wiktionary the scope is more or less easier to define. On
> Wikipedia we have the five pillars as our basic rules. But we have also
> some projects that have a scope that is not quite so clear and no such
> basic rules. Commons is one of these projects, and the most important one.
>
> Fact is, there is no consensus in the community as what is educational
> or potentially educational for Commons. And as far as I see there would
> probably never be a concensus. And I think this is where the board
> should weigh in. To define scopes and basic rules. This is why the board
> made this statement.
>
> For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's
> effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a
> direction. Both Jimmy as well as me believe that the best way for the
> board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this
> topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of
> foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions.
> If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my
> believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the
> problem.
>
i might be wrong, but wasn't it _very_ important to have a clear
separation of concerns?
say, if the foundation or a chapter or one of its officers would be able to
change the contents of wikipedia by bypassing the established
community processes, even more so if it is done with an official board
voting:
would this not put _all_ the organisations and its officers in the
wiki*sphere at risk beeing sued by anybody not happy about the
contents of wikipedia - because jimbo proved that one can change the
contents via board resolution or "just like that"?
on the other hand, i consider jimbo trying it and proving that it
finally fails a brilliant idea and a very good case to prevent future
legal actions against the wmf and the chapters :)
rupert.