G'day all,
This is a sort of 'essay spam' I guess, so for those aspects of this post, I apologise! I've also been criticised on some Wikimedia projects for proposing policy http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content, flooding and generally getting a bit boring about this issue, so I hope you'll forgive me one post to this list, on this issue.
I believe Wikimedia is currently behaving rather irresponsibly in this area, and believe that, for various reasons, a calm examination of the issues is difficult. I have written a rather light-hearted, though serious minded and 'not safe for work' essay about this on the english wikipedia herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Privatemusings/Let%27s_talk_about_sex- but would like to specifically raise the following points which represent my perspective;
- Wikimedia should not be censored at all - Legal images and media of all types should be freely available to use, and re-use. - In some contexts, such as sexual content, it is desirable to be rigourous in confirming factors such as the subject's age, and 'release' or permission - it is this area which is lacking a bit at the moment.
I'd like to illustrate by drawing your attention to two images currently being discussed on the 'Commons' project;
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Topless_Barcelona.jpg and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:That%27s_why_my_mom_always_told_me_to...
It's my belief that hosting these images without the subject's permission shifts the balance of utility vs. potential for harm towards recommending the images be deleted. I'd love to hear your thoughts :-)
cheers,
Peter PM.