That comes down to the two layers of judgment involved in this proposal. At first we give them the option to view anything and we give them the option to view not anything. The problem is that we have to define what "not anything" is. This imposes our judgment to the reader. That means, that even if the reader decides to hide some content, then it was our (and not his) decision what is hidden.
No; because the core functionality of a filter should always present the choice "do you want to see this image or not". Which is specifically not imposing our judgement on the reader :) Whether we then place some optional preset filters for the readers to use is certainly a matter of discussion - but nothing I have seen argues against this core ideas.
If we treat nothing as objectionable (no filter), then we don't need to
play the judge. We say: "We accept anything, it's up to you to judge". If we start to add a "category based" filter, then we play the judge over our own content. We say: "We accept anything, but this might not be good to look at. Now it is up to you to trust our opinion or not".
By implementing a graded filter; one which lets you set grades of visibility rather than off/on addresses this concern - because once again it gives the reader ultimate control over the question of what they want to see. If they are seeing "too much" for their preference they can tweak up, and vice versa.
The later imposes our judgment to the reader, while the first makes no judgment at all and leaves anything to free mind of the reader. ("free mind" means, that the reader has to find his own answer to this question. He might have objections or could agree.)
And if he objects, we are then just ignoring him?
I disagree with your argument; both points are imposing our judgement on the reader.
A filter that only knows a "yes" or "no" to questions that are
influenced by different cultural views, seams to fail right away. It draws a sharp line through anything, ignoring the fact that even in one culture there are lot of border cases. I did not want to use examples, but i will still give one. If we have a photography of a young woman at the beach.
How would we handle the case that her swimsuit shows a lot of "naked flesh"? I'm sure more then 90% of western country citizens would have no objection against this image, if it is inside a corresponding article. But as soon we go to other cultures, lets say Turkey, then we might find very different viewpoints if this should be hidden by the filter or not.
Agreed; which is why we allow people to filter based on a sliding scale, rather than a discrete yes or no. So someone who has no objection to such an image, but wants to hide people having sex can do so. And someone who wants to hide that image can have a stricter grade on the filter.
If nothing else the latter case is the more important one to address; because sexual images are largely tied to sexual subjects, and any reasonably person should expect those images to appear. But if culturally you object to seeing people in swimwear then this could be found in almost any article.
We shouldn't judge those cultural objections as invalid. Equally we shouldn't endorse them as valid. There is a balance somewhere between those two extremes.
I remember the question in the referendum, if the filter should be cultural neutral. Many agreed on this point. But how in gods name should this be done? Especially: How can this be done right?
I suggested a way in which we could cover a broad spectrum of views on one key subject without setting discrete categories of visibility.
I belive that the idea dies at the moment as we assume that we can achieve neutrality through filtering. Speaking theoretically there are only three types of neutral filters. The first leaves anything through, the second blocks all and the third is totally random, resulting in an equal 50:50 chance for large numbers. Currently we would ideally have the first filter. Your examples show that this isn't always true. But at least this is the goal. Filter two would equal to don't show anything, or shut down Wikipedia. Not an real option. I know. The third option is a construct out of theory that would not work, since it contains an infinite amount of information, but also nothing at all.
What about the fourth type; that gives you extensive options to filter out (or better description; to collapse) content from initial viewing per your specific preferences.
This is a technical challenge, but in no way unachievable.
I made an analogy before that some people might prefer to surf Wikipedia with plot summaries collapsed (I would be one of them!). In a perfect world we would have the option to collapse *any* section in a Wikipedia article and have that option stored. Over time the software would notice I was collapsing plot summaries and, so, intelligently collapse summaries on newly visited pages for me. Plus there might even be an option in preferences saying "collapse plot summaries" because it's recognised as a common desire.
In this scenario we keep all of the knowledge present, but optionally hide some aspects of it until the reader pro-actively accesses it. Good stuff.
Considering this cases, we can assume that Wikipedia isn't neutral, but that it aims for option 1.
That's a somewhat rudimentary way of putting it.. it's not so much about showing/hiding information - but again about grades of how information is presented. You can take a fact and present it in many different ways in prose; depending on the bias being exhibited. This is demonstrated across the language Wikipedias.
But we can also see that there is not any other solution that could be neutral. It is an impossible task to begin with. No filter could fix such a problem.
Well, there could be... merge language/subject Wiki content together intelligently to represent all biases and filter against each other.
Again, a technical challenge.
No it isn't an argument against this. Accommodating as many people as possible was never the goal of the project. The goal was to create and represent free knowledge to everyone.
Agreed; and if we are inhibiting that by showing images that put people off reading the content.... That is against our goals surely :)
Of course - this has not been examined... so while I make this argument I can't support it (and it can't really be discarded either). Hence we need to ask.
The whole problems starts with the intention to spread our knowledge to more people that we currently reach, faster then necessary.
That we might not be reaching certain people due to a potentially fixable problem is certainly something we can/should address :)
We have a mission, but it is not the mission to entertain as many people as possible. It is not to gain as much money trough donors as possible.
Is this a language barrier? do you mean entertain in the context of having them visit us, or in the context of them having a fun & enjoyable time.
Because in the latter case - of course you are right. I don't see the relevance though because this isn't about entertaining people, just making material accessible.
It isn't our purpose to please the readers by only representing
knowledge they would like to hear of.
Yeh, this is a finicky area to think about... because although we ostensibly report facts, we also record opinions on those facts. Conceivably a conservative reading a topic would prefer to see more conservative opinion on that topic and a liberal more liberal opinion.
Ok, so we have forks that cover this situation - but often they are of poor quality, and present the facts in a biased way. In an ideal future world I see us maintaining a core, netural and broad article that could be extended per reader preference with more commentary from their political/religious/career/interest spectrum.
The point is to inform, after all.
Tom