On 3/9/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
There is no reason at all why all subjects that are permitted on the English Wikipedia should be permitted on another project. The notions of the English Wikipedia are not universal. Individual Pokemon articles et al are denied on the German Wikipedia and when individual people and or movies notable in the porn industry are not permitted on a particular project, I have no problem with it at all.
I never said that every other Wikipedia needs to go by the same standards as the English Wikipedia just that you can't censor a certain topic just because you don't like it, especially when there's nowhere near community consensus on the issue.
There are much more important issues to do with censorship on Wikipedia
projects. On some projects articles on the holocaust are severely censored because "it is not an accepted fact that it happened the way you have it portrayed". This means that articles, even featured articles of the English Wikipedia associated with the second world war, cannot be literally translated into these particular language versions of Wikipedia.
Then that's an even bigger problem that should be dealt with as well.
In many cultures the porn industry is not noted nor is porn permitted.
Insistence on having it included in Wikipedia is against the laws and morals of such countries. I stand by my position that a comparison with the Pokemon characters is valid; a Wikipedia article does not have to allow the inclusion of all of them.
Luckily for us, we have someone who is well aware of Israeli and Hebrew culture and who knows that in this aspect (to be specific, me). Israeli society is very similar to American or European society in that there are the conservatives, but they are not the majority (and of course there are no "porn laws"). Your argument might be valid for the Arabic Wikipedia (since in that case, a ban may reflect Arabic society and morals), however a country that has the playboy channel, et cetera, is obviously not the country that you imagine. You seem to have a strong misconception of the Hebrew culture.
The porn industry *is* notable in Israeli\Hebrew culture. Again, even the ones arguing against the inclusion of pornographic articles in the Hebrew Wikipedia ARE NOT saying that it isn't notable. I didn't say the Hebrew Wikipedia needs to allow writing about Angel Cutexxx (fictional name) or any other esoteric actor/actress just that articles on subjects that are clearly notable cannot be speedy deleted. I'd have much less of a problem if someone nominated the article for deletion as non-notable but this is not what is happening, an article about a subject that has something to do with porn is deleted... for no reason other than the fact that it has something to do with porn (and nobody is claiming otherwise, or using non-notability as an excuse).
Fine, you don't trust my judgment as obviously I have a POV here but someone like Danny (and I know who Danny is and how busy he is) is someone who can judge the situation in a better way since he is familiar with the culture, speaks the language and is a trusted person.
PS I am not outraged, I think your premise is wrong.
If you look over your initial response, you may see why I perceived it that way.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 3/8/07, Yonatan Horan yonatanh@gmail.com wrote:
I strongly resent your reply. It seems like you have some similar issues with Pokemon articles and that's the reason you lashed out the way you did. The reason I raised this issue on this mailing list is not because of
some
misplaced sense of outrage. The incident I was talking about took place two months ago and the only reason I mentioned it was to fully disclose any relevant information so other people don't come on here later on and say that the only reason I'm bringing this issue to the attention of others
is
due to a vendetta against the Hebrew Wikipedia or something of the sort. This isn't about me trying to provoke anything. It's about a certain
group
of admins ignoring the fact that speedy deletion of porn articles was never passed as a policy on hewp (and there is more than one sysop who can attest to this). As I said previously, I don't have any particular interest in porn and the fact that I've never edited an article that has anything to do with this topic on the english wikipedia supports that. Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson are both notable enough to have their own article on any wikipedia, whether it be English, Hebrew or Malaysian. Attempts have been made to resolve this issue "in-house" have failed, otherwise I wouldn't have posted it to this mailing list. I can't find the specific meta page at the
moment
but it isn't English Wikipedia only policy that wikipedia isn't
censored.
If the german wikipedia decided to delete all articles regarding Nazi Germany, etc. would you have reacted the same way? Or maybe if the Chinese Wikipedia decided to ban all articles on the issue of democracy? I hope you
rethink
your response and maybe try not to treat me as a troll when I really am not one.
-Yonatan
On 3/8/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When you think that people are interested in what can be perceived as
a
provocation, you are wrong. What makes you think that details about
porn
is of sufficient relevance to warrant an article? You have to appreciate
that
some Wikipedias are quite happy to even disallow articles about
Pokomon
characters. Now Pokomon creatures are much more educational. They are
the
staple diet of our youth.
Danny is a WMF employee, I believe he has more important things to do
than
to indulge your misplaced sense of outrage.
Thanks, GerardM
On 3/8/07, Yonatan Horan yonatanh@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
It has recently (about two months ago) come to my attention that
articles
on the Hebrew Wikipedia are speedy deleted. I translated the Jenna
Jameson
article from the English Wikipedia and it was very quickly speedy
deleted
and I was indefinitely blocked due to being a sockpuppet of some guy
(of
course no checkuser request was done). By the way, I don't
particularly
like porn articles or anything of the sort; in fact, I don't believe I've
ever
edited a porn article on the enwp which I'm very active on. After a
few
days (during which I complained on Danny's enwp talk page and thus got
the
attention of a Hebrew Wikipedia admin and later spoke on the phone
with
another admin from hewp) I was unblocked. I'm guessing there have
probably
been other people who just gave up after they were banned and didn't return.
The situation is basically that if a user who isn't well-known on
the
hewp
(someone outside of a group of about 100 users) creates such an
article
he
will probably be perm-banned and if anyone else does so, the article
will
probably just be speedy deleted. No rule has been passed on the
Hebrew
Wikipedia regarding this and even if it had been passed, it would be
in
violation of WMF (?) guidelines as Wikipedia is not censored. Some
claim
that a rule has been passed but many admins disagree with this. The
"vote"
was passed about two years ago and had 10-20 participants. In
addition
to
this, the vote came at a time when the Hebrew Wikipedia was
repeatedly
vandalized by a certain user and many of the voters supposedly for
the
banning of porn articles referred only to this specific case (this
is
supported by their comments on the page).
By the way, just so nobody corrects me, on the Hebrew Wikipedia
*there
are
votes* since consensus is hardly ever reached and the total needed
to
pass
a vote is a ridiculous 55%. Anyway, despite all the above, a few
admins
have
said that they will speedy delete any porn articles created on the
Hebrew
Wikipedia. Currently there are a few porn articles which are about
the
movie Deep Throat and two other articles that I don't recall at the
moment.
This
is a foundation issue because the situation right now is effectively censorship of articles that some people feel do not have a place on
the
wikipedia. I know I will probably have those who disagree with me be notified of this discussion at some point at which point the
slandering
will begin and I will be called a "snitch" and possibly other more
colorful
terms so I ask ahead of time for this discussion to remain civil. Although
I
hate to burden Danny, who probably has a lot of more important things to
do,
he
is the only one who speaks both Hebrew and English and could take
care
of
this issue since he is obviously a person trusted by most. Anyway I
think
I've written more than enough on an issue that should be pretty straightforward, that is, that wikipedia is not censored.
Thanks, Yonatan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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