Stepping in to add another aspect to both questions, as I think it
might focus the discussion.
Child Protection: Are children encouraged to use commons through any
programs or outreach efforts of any kind? If so, is it morally and/or
ethically justifiable to do so without protecting children in every
way possible? Can that be done without removing graphic pics from
commons?
Harassment: Has harassment been addressed in a comprehensive way on
all sites, including all of the WP site? As an example, Wikipedia has
had a problem with low and declining female participation for years,
and the WMF has often stated that it would like to address it. Are
women actively encouraged to participate on Wikipedia by the WMF or
other organizations? If we're not doing everything to protect women
and all other Wikipedians, is it morally or ethically correct to
perform outreach to potentially vulnerable groups? I'd especially like
to hear about this from a female perspective.
Thanks.
,Wil
On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 3:38 PM, Martijn Hoekstra
<martijnhoekstra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 10:32 PM, Wil Sinclair
<wllm(a)wllm.com> wrote:
Martijn asked me which things I thought that some
people on this list
don't want anyone to discuss, so here are the two examples that I'm
most interested in:
Child Protection- I'd like to hear about ways that policy might be
changed here to better protect children, especially given some of the
content on Commons.
There is content on Wikipedia and on Commons, and probably on other
projects as well, that most probably doesn't find suitable for children.
What makes the matter worse is that some searches that one doesn't expect
to bring up sexually explicit content do in fact bring it up, i.e. the
famous toothbrush image. There are a couple of separate questions.
* Is the presence of sexually explicit material on commons a problem? Why?
* Is the abundance of sexually explicit material on commons a problem? Why?
* Is the unexpectedly turning up of the sexually explicit material on
commons a problem? Why?
Most agree that the presence of sexually explicit material on commons in
itself is not a problem in itself, and if it is, hosting some educational
material on sexually explicit subjects is more important than shielding
children from accessing the material.
The abundance of sexually explicit material on commons is odd, and probably
worthless. We frankly don't need any more low quality pictures and videos
of penises, masturbation, and other sexual acts that we already have lots
of. Does it really hurt us to have so much of it though? As long as it
doesn't get in the way, I'd say no. I'm not a commons person, and I know
that loads of low quality redundant sexually explicit images have already
been deleted - because it does get in the way. Should more be deleted?
Likely. Should all of it be deleted? No. So what should we do? On each
upload ask if it is a low quality sexually explicit image that doesn't
really add anything to the content that's already there? That makes for an
odd upload form. Ask those uploading not to upload more? I do believe we're
already doing that, to little effect. (correct me if I'm wrong, if we're
not, we probably should) But again, it's not it's presence that's a
problem, it's its in-the-wayness.
It has been argued, and I agree with that, that there are two categories of
people finding sexually explicit material in commons. Those explicitly
trying to find it, and those that come across it by accident. This goes for
all age groups. I think it's fairly reasonable to say that those looking
for it will find it no matter what, and that shouldn't be the focus of
improvement. What should be a focus, is improving the search functionality
so that the accidental doesn't happen, or at least doesn't happen so
ridiculously often as it does now: that is what I mean with it being in the
way, as demonstrated by the famous toothbrush search result. Categorization
and tagging could play a large role in this, as well as (recently
implemented) improvements in the search back-end. It's something that has
recently been brought up on this list. I'm horrible with the archives, but
I'm sure someone else will be able to point to the relevant discussion, and
what, if anything, has been undertaken on commons to act on this, or what
blockers we still have.
Now I've focused only on sexually explicit content, because that's whats
mostly what bothers people. Obviously, there is lots of other material I
wouldn't like to expose children to. There has been a recent discussion
about (valuable, suitable, and greatly disturbing) video material of WWII
concentration camps being on the front page of commons. There is also a lot
of images of medical issues that aren't the nicest to look at to put it
mildly, and there is a lot of material on the atrocities of war as well.
The first and third arguments go for this as well.
These problems are discussed frequently and have been quite recently. We
haven't found and implemented a solution though. What I can say is that the
'objectional images on commons' subject is a frequent subject for this
mailinglist. It's not that we don't want anyone to discuss it, but more
that we discuss it all the time, would love to fix it, and haven't been
able yet. Which makes many a little annoyed with someone from the outside
coming in with an 'hey, hey, what about all the dick pics on commons? Did
you know about those?'. We know, we're all annoyed with it, not only
because it makes us a just target of ridicule, but more importantly because
we've went over it again and again, quite often and quite recently, and we
haven't got an answer yet. The community has discussed the fairly obvious
option - an image filter - at great length, and didn't find that an
acceptable solution.
I'd also like to hear about specific examples
of
content on Commons that a parent might not find appropriate for their
children.
lots and lots and lots. It's not hard to find. I've already touched on some
subjects above, it should be easy to find.
Note that this is not a repeat of the discussion
to
understand what policies are in place, as I have already opened a
specific thread for that.
Harassment- I'd like to hear about existing policies around harassment
and potential changes to such policies. In particular, I'm interested
in how the community might tackle this problem to make the site a more
comfortable place for the oft-mentioned female constituent that has
long been in decline.
Since I don't have enough experience with the
community and WP yet to
discuss controversial topics myself, I will not chime in unless the
thread has very obviously gone off topic. Just to pick an arbitrary
about of time that is more than the few months that others have
mentioned here, let's say that you can only participate in this
discussion if you have at least one year of experience as an active
contributor.
Now, I'll just sit back and hear all sides of the story.
,Wil
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