Gregory Maxwell wrote:
There are also people who are honestly offended that
some people are
offended by human sexuality content— and some of them view efforts to
curtail this content to be a threat to their own cultural values. If
this isn't your culture, please take a moment to ponder it. If your
personal culture believes in the open expression of sexuality an
effort to remove "redundant / low quality" sexuality images while we
not removing low quality pictures of clay pots, for example, is
effectively an attack on your beliefs. These people would tell you: If
you don't like it, don't look. _Understanding_ differences in opinion
is part of the commons way, so even if you do not embrace this view
you should at least stop to understand that it is not without merit.
In any case, while sometimes vocal, people from this end of the
spectrum don't appear to be all that much of the community.
I apologize for the late reply, but since this issue is of
a long term nature, hopefully not much harm will come
from only commenting on it now.
I fully admit I experienced a "Hey, I resemble that remark!"
moment regarding the middle part of the paragraph. My
culture is certainly near the end of the spectrum mentioned,
being as I am from Finland (if it tells you anything, we
usually consider our neighbors to the west, the Swedes,
as hopelessly repressed sexually --- and I am not even kidding)
While I am sure there are people to whom the whole paragraph
applies fully in every respect (and I would imagine as you say
they will likely be a vanishingly small percentage of the
community), my personal angle to the issue is completely
different, and I doubt I am alone.
I am not at all offended that people have the capacity to
be offended by whatever gets their goat. I too have the
capacity, but perhaps with respect to other things. I
absolutely have no problem with that.
Personally what was offensive was not people not
bowing down before my cultural values, so to speak.
What *was* offensive however was that people from on
high chose a matter of such obviously subjective import
to privilege a *specific* standard of mores. Not the fact
that it wasn't *mine*, but that it was a specific one.
This problem is compounded by the fact that such
action hugely legitimizes the argument -- while
being certainly untrue -- that Wikimedia is not
genuinely an international project. *This* is the
real issue that needs to be addressed, if any real
progress is to be made, in healing most of the wounds
the community has incurred.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen