On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:04 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

Looking at the contributors so far, I'm not sure that discussion is recoverable to any form of usefulness.

1. Checked and agreed. 2. I am not going to discuss with well known censorship trolls. 3. If this would be the main path of discussion, fork of Commons will be the option.

May I just reply to thank Excirial for the excellent suggestions re:formatting contained in his thoughtful reply (I'll look them over carefully) and just to note a couple of things. I'm well aware of the long-standing debates on these issues in the past, and I respect the fatigue with which many might approach yet another discussion of the question. As well, my point in raising the question of Controversial issues in English Wikipedia was not to misrepresent its status, but just to note that this form of categorization of content has been contemplated to be useful in some parts of the Wikimedia universe, a universe, which, while varied, does share certain common principles. And thanks for reminding me of the varied complexity of semi-autonomous principalities with the Wikimedia family.

Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:28:23 +0200 From: wp.excirial@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content

*Thoughts on this so far*

1. I have to admit that my first thought upon reading this is "Oh no, not

AGAIN", mainly due to the fact that this topic seems to be a never-ending debate which keeps flaring up at times. This debate is not only present on community-wide discussions, but also on deletion discussions of specific images, the mailing list, other wiki's and so on and on. Be aware that it may be difficult to motivate people for another debate. 2) This topic has been discussed so often on so many places that the arguments are virtually always recycled from previous discussions. A lot of information can be gleaned from past discussions. Its a data-goldmine :). 3) I got to agree with the previous two posters - The current discussion seems hard to boil down to anything sensible. I would equally warn that the page is currently just 52k long - if it is already hard to follow now it will be even harder later on. For example, the deletion discussionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2010_March_29&action=historyon the English Wiki regarding the image on the Goatse article ended up being nearly 200k - and that discussion was just about a single image on a single Wiki. If your going to tackle "Commons + controversial" the amount of information may easily be several factors higher because of the larger amount of images and the fact that it is cross-wiki.

*Possible error* Besides this i noticed a possible errors in the questions , which i would point out along with a few words of advice. *1) "Q1:Wikipedia has put certain policies and procedures in place to deal with special contentious categories of articles <Snip> see Wikipedia: Controversial articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AGFCA%22.*

There are two (possible) errors in this statement. First off, the article linked is an essay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Essay, which is not the same as a policy or guidelinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies. An policy is a rule that everyone must follow, a guideline is a commonly accepted best practice (Thus in practice it should be followed), but an essay is the opinion of several editors. Some essays are widely followed, but others are almost 1 person writeups. Hence, have a look at WP:TTRhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DESiegel/Template_the_regularsand WP:DTTR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DTTR. Those are both marked as essays, but yet they are each others polar opposites.

The second thing i would point out is that this is an essay from the English Wiki. Keep in mind that every Wiki may have its own, distinct set of rules. For example, the Arabic Wiki forbids images of Muhammad while the English Wiki allows them. Keep in mind that Commons is a cross-wiki project, which means that it has to serve different projects with different rules. This is not exactly an error, but rather a word of caution when considering commons.

*Some tips* *Rethink the structuring of the page. I few pointers could be:*

• Create a statement on top summarizing the context, boundries and reason

for the page itself. This will keep people on topic, and allows for late joining of the discussion (People rarely join into a long discussion)

• Create a summary section which summarizes what has been discussed so far.

(See the History section on this discussionhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/ace.wikipedia_and_Prophet_Muhammad_imagesfor an example as to what i means). Long discussions are often only partly read, which means that the same thing is often discussed multiple times. As for another example: The "Goatse" discussion i linked above contains several duplicate statements as to rule thisandthat with argument moreandmore, which has already been discussed days ago resulting in a lot of duplicate work. Besides, it is convenient to have a summary if your involved in a discussion which you didn't read in a few days.

• Cluster the questions and move them up. Currently they are on the 17th

header of the talk page, which will scare off people (Do i have to read all of that above?) or cause them to miss them. Also, clustering where possible will reduce the amount of questions, and thus the area's of discussion (Thus easier to overview - though some people would argue that a lot of questions scares people off). For example, question two is simply a continuation of question 1, so it might be better to create a subsection on question 1. (As in: Question 1 <Question> A: <Subsequestion> B: <Subquestion>.

• Use subheaders! In the current situation everything is present under a

level two header, which makes things hard to read. A better structure would be, for example:

== Introduction ==

<Short introduction of the page> === Goals, context and content === <As mentioned above - why do we have this page, and what do we intend to do with it?> === Summary === <What we discussed so far>

== Questions ==

<Short introduction if required> === Question 1 === ==== Reactions ====

=== Question 2 === ==== Reactions ====

=== Question 3 === ==== Reactions ====

==== Subquestion A==== ==== Reactions ====

==== Subquestion B==== ==== Reactions ====

== Discussion == <Free discussion area - Off topic statements, or statements that don't fit in the above sections can be added here. Header 1 to 16 can also be added here as level 3 headers.>

Note that this schematic is a rather basic and quickly-made example. There are certainly means to improve or alter it so that it fits better. For example, you might consider a "background" page that summarizes the events before this discussion (Such as the controversies since 2006 which are already listed). Some editors might be new, and therefor they might lack some background information. Hence, some of the Wikipedia communities Commons serves are less then a year old, so there may be editors who aren't even aware that this is a long-standing issue.

*And finally* Best of luck with this project! You will certainly have a field day working on this one, since i'd say that this is the most discussed subject on Wikipedia - Once the floodgates break open you will see a tsunami of responses coming your way so be ready for a lot of reading. I hope the suggestions above will prove to be helpfull,

Kind regards, ~Excirial

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:22 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

...

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:04 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

...

Looking at the contributors so far, I'm not sure that discussion is recoverable to any form of usefulness.

1. Checked and agreed.
2. I am not going to discuss with well known censorship trolls.
3. If this would be the main path of discussion, fork of Commons will

be the option.

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

You have my sympathy to - no matter what the outcome is, some if not many people will label it censorship, directly or indirectly. "We dont censor" has been an standard argument so far in any attempt to regulate upload of images or discussion of features that some people obviously want.

kind regards Teun Spaans

On 22 July 2010 20:10, Excirial wp.excirial@gmail.com wrote:

I would, however, strongly support a system that gives users a choice to censor if they wish. It should be possible to categorize commons in such a way that certain images can be blocked. For example, a user might choose to block "images of Muhammad", while allowing surgery related images (Others might swap there if they wish).

This is a perennial proposal. It's an idea I like, as it puts control in the hands of the viewer rather than third parties. All it requires is someone to code something that passes muster as being unlikely to melt the servers.

cc to wikitech-l - how feasible is something that allows users to stop display of arbitrary image categories and/or subcategories?

- d.

On 22 July 2010 21:01, teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:

I think I am completely factual. After I wrote this, I went to the questionlist and found the cry "we dont censor" in one of the reactions. Which proves my point, I think. You yourself use that term in your email.

Well, we don't. You appear to be claiming that making this factually obvious statement somehow negates an argument. It doesn't.

Our mission - Wikimedia's bias - is that more information is better than less information.

And "filtering" when applied by a third party is what censorship is.

Claiming that factual statements are logical fallacies is unconvincing and will do you no good.

- d.

*If I were to make an account with the user name CumInYourCornflakes or HitlerMyHero there'd be someone all over the account within minutes, blocking banning, and deleting.*

Hem, is that "information"? I would have trouble calling that "Raw data", let alone information. Keep in mind that there are other rules as well - wp:notcensored is not the only reason why certain actions are taken :).

*No it is NOT. It is not censorship if I choose not to see X, that is my choice. So long as YOU have the choice to see X if you want to then we can both live in harmony. The conflict arises when you say that I must see X, or if I say you must not see X. Where X is some broadly recognized category of offensive material.*

Agreed. As our own "Censorship" article states "*Censorship* is the suppression of speech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.". if someone simply doesn't wish to see content it is not censorship, since it affects only them. The difficulty doesn't arise unless ones actions make content available, or remove the availability of content, for other people. The entire issue we have is "What takes precedence? The right to view, or the right to not view content".

~Excirial

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 12:01 AM, wiki-list@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:

David Gerard wrote:

...

On 22 July 2010 21:01, teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:

...

I think I am completely factual. After I wrote this, I went to the questionlist and found the cry "we dont censor" in one of the reactions. Which proves my point, I think. You yourself use that term in your email.

Well, we don't.

But you do.

...

Our mission - Wikimedia's bias - is that more information is better than less information.

If I were to make an account with the user name CumInYourCornflakes or HitlerMyHero there'd be someone all over the account within minutes, blocking banning, and deleting.

...

And "filtering" when applied by a third party is what censorship is.

No it is NOT. It is not censorship if I choose not to see X, that is my choice. So long as YOU have the choice to see X if you want to then we can both live in harmony. The conflict arises when you say that I must see X, or if I say you must not see X. Where X is some broadly recognized category of offensive material.

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hello,

(all below are my private opinion.)

I'm strongly supporting the "No censorship" camp, and as of such i am against any wiki-wide measures that would make content unavailable, with the argument that people can choose whether or not to look at offensive content, but people cannot choose to look at content that others deem offensive if it isn't included. I would, however, strongly support a system that gives users a choice to censor if they wish. It should be possible to categorize commons in such a way that certain images can be blocked. For example, a user might choose to block "images of Muhammad", while allowing surgery related images (Others might swap there if they wish).

For me the merit of such a system is that we treat the user as somebody who takes responsibility for himself, who makes decision for himself.

What I find not convincing is the slogan "No censorship". I think this is a bad argument.

First of all it is not true. In every language version of every Wikimedia project, there are rules that can be considered as "censorship". The definition of censorship itself is difficult. Reading through all language versions in Wikipedia that I can understand, I found no definition of censorship that is really satisfying. Let me take some example. Ar-wp decides per community concensus not to use Mohammed images. Seen in the light of en-wp rules, this is a censorship. If we maintain "no censorship" then ar-wp must remove that concensus. If not, we cannot maintain the "no censorship" slogan. En-wp has the "null tolerance to pedophilia" policy. For centain activist this is certainly a censorship. If I draw a detailed educational sketch about how to build a mail bomb, put it under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and upload it on Commons, it would certainly quite quickly be "censored" away.

Beside of this, there is a second reason why this is not a good argument. "No censorship" is an overkill argument. Either you are "for" censorship, or you are "not for" censorship. It is quite digital, black or white. Searching for a community concensus cannot work in such black and white manner. The result of a community discussion and concensus searching is mostly something between black and white. The "no censorship" argument put every discussion to an end. It ignores every nuance that is possible between the arguments. Maybe a user is against every political censorship but is uncomfortable about having religious insulting images. Is he "for" or "not for" censorship?

I think everyone of us has a different opinion about what is educational, or appropriate and what is no more educational or no more appropriate. Let us don't talk about if someone is "for" or "not for" censoring, let us talk about what we can find together guidelines for what we think should be ok for our projects and what not.

What also made me very sad in this thread is to see that some community members obviously had taken a very foundamentalistic position. Either you agree with me, otherwise I will quit and fork. What difference is this agree-with-me-or-I-will-boykott-you position to the ace-wp template of boykotting Wikipedia because it contains Mohammed image? Refusing every discussion, no compromise at all, I find this a very strange stance for a Wikimedian.

Greetings

I have no idea whether anything in here is productive or just reiteration of the same old themes. I doubt it will be coherent or persuasive, but this discussion is too important not to try to say something. Opinions were solicited, so here's such an opinion.

I don't really know if a discussion at this point is wise, particularly from me and my verbosity. :). So skip if skeptical, and abort if you start finding my words, well, unproductive. :) -Alec ----

What I find not convincing is the slogan "No censorship". I think this is a bad argument.

Okay, I think that's my cue. I'm definitely in "No Censorship" camp, so let my try to explain why that argument has such pull for some of us.

-

To begin with, please consider that NOTCENSORED has been the law of the land for many years and Wikipedia has prospered under it. It's not a new idea.

What's new is this idea that "potential offensiveness" is a threat to us, and thus, a valid criterion for making editorial decision. That would be a huge deviation from our very successful status quo.

Maybe you think it would be a good change, maybe you think would be a bad change, but I think we can all agree it would be a very CONTROVERSIAL change among Wikimedians.

And when you stop and think about it, of course any such proposal is _bound_ to be very very controversial among those very individuals who are already deeply invested in a NPOV/NON-CENSORED project.

After all, we've spent years explaining NPOV / NOTCENSORED to Muslims over Muhammad images, for example, and to Christians over Piss-Christ. We've defended racist imagery, we've defended neo-nazi hate-sites. We've committed to not-censored, we've worked for NOTCENSORED, we've offended totally innocent people so wikipedia could be NOTCENSORED, and it was even theoretically possible somebody might have died over NOTCENSORED.

We did this because Wikipedia successfully convinced us that an uncensored encyclopedia was a wonderful thing. And we've grown very attached to it and the principles it espoused.

Maybe we do need a "potentially non-offensive" project in addition. But if there is to be a "Brave New Encyclopedia" that promises freedom from potential offense, shouldn't it be started as a NEW project with a NEW userbase and a NEW editing community that's committed to these NEW principles?

I'm skeptical that that a "potential offfense" can actually work, even as its own project. But, no harm in trying. Meanwhile, our Wikipedia, the "NPOV/NOTCENSORED" Wikipedia, does work! And It continues to work!

Wikipedia ain't broke-- don't fracture the community into bits by trying to impose a "fix". --

Some say: "What's the difference between deleting offensive material and deleting anything else? REALLY, isn't ANY deletion, on some level, censorship?"

Well, no. :)

Normal run-of-the-mill deletions (e.g. of nonsense, etc) HELP our mission by preserving our limited computing resources. Censorship HURTS our mission by intentionally making it harder for our readers to find legal, legitimate information they themselves are actively trying to access.

Normal decisions are justified using terms like "usefulness" and "notable." Censorship is justified using terms like "potential-offensiveness", "pornographic", "a threat to children", or "immoral".

Normal decisions are democratic, culture-neutral, and are based on verifiable facts. Censorship is beyond debate, it's not culture-neutral, it's imposed rather than accepted, and it's based on unstated emotional biases and prejudices.

(And if those distinctions don't help determine which is which-- Censorship is the one that's really, really controversial around here. :) )

Hi Sue-- Thank you so so much for that reply, it was really really appreciated.

I also wanted to say -- you know in your post where you speculate about why this is happening now, is it because of the fundraising, has someone offered board members jobs, etc.  (I know you were mostly non-serious about the jobs.)  That is a totally legitimate set of questions.

Well, I think you're being way too charitable with me-- I'm not sure even I consider those questions legitimate. Thus, I did try to inject a lot of silliness (e.g. Extraterrestrials and fundamentalist financiers) into those sorts of scenarios because I didn't want to convey any genuine-conspiracy-theory of ulterior motives-- I just kinda wanted to express a vague sense of exasperation and confusion and not-knowing-what-to-think-or-who-to-trust. Because, ya know, when you care about an movement and things get rough, your mind does go through all kinds of scenarios to try to make sense of it, and maybe sharing those crazy thoughts will help you recognize and intercept them when they occur in others. :)

If my concerns seemed legitimate, then I probably owe you and anyone else involved a big apology for accidentally making it seem even remotely legitimate. A far better description would be "an illegitimate, unfounded concern that crossed my mind cause I couldn't make sense of what was going on."

I passed it on because in the hope it might be a little helpful just to see where some of our thoughts are going. The downside in even expressing stuff like that is it sort of involves distrusting a group of total strangers, most of whose names I don't even know without looking them up, all because they agreed to do work for my all-time favorite non-profit. Raw deal for ya'll.

It doesn't get said enough, but thank you to all who have done such a wonderful job running things all these years. I never could have done your jobs one-tenth as well as you all have. In particular, last year's fundraising work was just phenomenal, and I really do apologize for even suggesting, in passing, and in theory, that that work might somehow really be tied to anything negative. I had no basis for such a statement, I didn't sincerely believe it then, I still don't.

Thanks again for reply :) Alec

This comment is intended to supplement Alec's, in the matter of labeling.

Those who are interested in restricting information are free to censor Wikipedia content to meet their requirements, but there is no reason why Wikipedia should do the job for them in any version of the project, or by any functionality within the project. What we can and should do is give all images accurate factual descriptors , which benefits everyone, and promotes intellectual freedom by letting people select the material they wish to see. Like all of our content, it can also be used for what many of us think less desirable purposes, such as some people selecting what others will be allowed to see. We can't prevent it in practice, and by our license we permit derivatives, including derivative POV labeling. This is as it should be: our job is to provide information, not tell people how to use it.

But labeling ourselves is directly opposed by NPOV, which applied to all foundation projects: we do not draw conclusions. We can describe all pictures of humans by what the people are wearing, by their sex, their apparent age, the activities they are engaged in. But we shouldn't do this with sexual concerns primarily in view: If we have a descriptor to indicate that someone in an image is engaged in fornication, we should also have one for someone who is engaged in running or reading. If we say a person in an image has a bare breast, we should also have a descriptor for having a bare head, and apply both to all images, male or female. It is reasonable to have descriptors for humans in far more detail than other animals, because we have far more pictures and articles about them than any other species. We can have descriptors giving legal status--if we know for a fact that a particular image has been banned in a certain jurisdiction, we should say so, but we should not predict whether a particular image is likely to be banned.

Even if we did want to facilitate censorship, we are not qualified to do so--the censors set their own rules and apply them in their own manner, which is rarely fully public. But how can we consider ourselves able to say that some particular content is pornography? We can not make decisions about whether anything is good or bad, or beneficial or detrimental--we do report what others say about them. We can do so here also, with attention to all viewpoints.

If we want a child-safe version, or labeling as child-safe, the question arises who is to censor? I do not think it useful to add to our current discussions the need to dispute each image proposed to be in a restricted category. How can I tell someone else what will be safe for their children? If a parent wants to censor, they are free to do so. If there is sufficient demand for someone or some group to on their own establish some sort of browser add-on that translates our neutral descriptors into a set that will limit the result as they want it, they are free to do so, even if 99% of us were to disapprove. But even if 99% of us were to approve, we still should not incorporate this into our projects.

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Sue Gardner susanpgardner@gmail.com wrote:

I've been posting quite a bit today, so I think I'll stop for a while. (I'd hate to trigger the limits ;-)

But Alec, thanks for _your_ note, and don't worry about expressing skepticism (even if it was mostly hyperbole to make a point).  Vigilance is healthy :-)

Thanks, Sue

-----Original Message----- From: Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:19:01 To: susanpgardner@gmail.com; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions forPotentially-Objectionable        Content

Hi Sue-- Thank you so so much for that reply, it was really really appreciated.

...

I also wanted to say -- you know in your post where you speculate about why this is happening now, is it because of the fundraising, has someone offered board members jobs, etc.  (I know you were mostly non-serious about the jobs.)  That is a totally legitimate set of questions.

Well, I think you're being way too charitable with me-- I'm not sure even I consider those questions legitimate.   Thus, I did try to inject a lot of silliness  (e.g. Extraterrestrials and fundamentalist financiers) into those sorts of scenarios because I didn't want to convey any genuine-conspiracy-theory of ulterior motives-- I just kinda wanted to express a vague sense of exasperation and confusion and not-knowing-what-to-think-or-who-to-trust.  Because, ya know, when you care about an movement and things get rough, your mind does go through all kinds of scenarios to try to make sense of it, and maybe sharing those crazy thoughts will help you recognize and intercept them when they occur in others. :)

If my concerns seemed legitimate, then I probably owe you and anyone else involved a big apology for accidentally making it seem even remotely legitimate.  A far better description would be "an illegitimate, unfounded concern that crossed my mind cause I couldn't make sense of what was going on."

I passed it on because in the hope it might be a little helpful just to see where some of our thoughts are going.   The downside in even expressing stuff like that is it sort of involves distrusting a group of total strangers, most of whose names I don't even know without looking them up, all because they agreed to do work for my all-time favorite non-profit.   Raw deal for ya'll.

It doesn't get said enough, but thank you to all who have done such a wonderful job running things all these years.   I never could have done your jobs one-tenth as well as you all have.   In particular, last year's fundraising work was just phenomenal, and I really do apologize for even suggesting, in passing, and in theory, that that work might somehow really be tied to anything negative.   I had no basis for such a statement, I didn't sincerely believe it then, I still don't.

Thanks again for reply :) Alec _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 24 July 2010 18:28, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:

• That IPs are shown a mildly "censored" version, and that seeing the uncensored version of Wikipedia requires registering an account and setting the preferences up accordingly.

And this is where it all breaks down. Once you start to offer a partially censored version as standard you are basically going to have to fight an eternal war until you give up and reacht he bottom of the slippery slope.

--- On Sat, 24/7/10, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

...

...

• That IPs are shown a mildly "censored" version,

and that seeing the uncensored version of Wikipedia requires registering an account and setting the preferences up accordingly.

...

And this is where it all breaks down. Once you start

to offer a

...

partially censored version as standard you are

basically going to have

...

to fight an eternal war until you give up and reacht

he bottom of the

...

slippery slope.

Yes. Unless it is actually agreed by consensus of the project communities themselves, it will not fly. If it is imposed by the Foundation, the community will, as has been discussed, get up and *leave*. Saying "a fork will happen" is not a threat of forking, it's a statement of what it's *utterly obvious* will happen in the case of a top down imposition. I might be wrong in saying that, but I don't think I am.

I am not against making every effort to bring about community consensus.

But note that people have not left YouTube in droves, people have not left Flickr in droves, just because unregistered IPs don't get to see YouTube's gynaecological examination videos, or Flickr's porn. People have not stopped using google just because they have to change a preference if they want to look for porn images.

And Flickr still *has* its porn, and its porn is now better safeguarded than if it were unfiltered. There is no slippery slope that ends with all controversial material deleted.

We should learn from popular sites like YouTube and Flickr. We're the only site operating in this order of magnitude that does not have any system at all set up in this area.

Let's remember that, just as with YouTube, the amount of material affected is a *tiny* proportion of the overall content available. You could surf Wikipedia and Commons for months as an IP before you come onto a page that requires you to register and change your preferences to see its content.

Yes, the devil is in the details, and in working out the correct parameters for default IP access. Each language version of any project could make its own determination in this regard. Arabic, no Mohammed images; India, no sex and kissing; Dutch and German, the full Monty with no censorship at all. Whatever.

You *could* have a self-censorship option for registered users and always leave IP access unfiltered by default, but if that means minors can evade whatever account settings their parents or teachers have set up by the simple expedient of logging out, this would rob the system of a good part of its effectiveness. So yes, I see the problem, but that is how it is, unless someone can think of a better solution.

And as far as I and my family are concerned, I'd be happy to surf "all-in". It is a "set-up once and forget" thing, and then I have the same Wikipedia I've always had.

A.

On 25 July 2010 01:07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

This didn't save Encarta. They did this as a marketing move. They threw neutrality out the window as a marketing move [1]. That this is a blatant distortion was problematic enough that Britannica took them up on it [2]. I recall a discussion (I think it was on wikien-l) where Microsoft's blatant warping of knowledge for marketing reasons was discussed and laughed at, as aspiring to neutrality was obviously a better way to sum up the world's knowledge, without favour. Microsoft wanted to sell CDs, so had a strong motivation to slant away from uncomfortable facts; we aren't in that business.

Found it! It was wikipedia-l, March 2005:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020575.html

Gates' argument was that "readers will get upset about content that may fly in the face of their reality."

Note that the word "reality" here seems to mean "personal POV."

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020576.html - Delirium points out the practical upshot of the horrific damage done to NPOV by merely having multiple Wikipedias in the same language with national bias. "I'd think we'd want people to be able to get globally neutral information in their local language, not just the locally-biased version."

(And I see I note in a followup a concurrent [2005] discussion on wikien-l - where people are insisting Wikipedia cannot possibly succeed unless it censors itself, for marketing reasons. The reasons to censor seem to change with the seasons; the reasons not to censor keep pointing to NPOV, which was there before Wikipedia existed, and the mission.)

- d.

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 3:36 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:

No, not filtered according to what *we* think, but filtered according to what the local editor community in that project think is appropriate to their cultural context.

I am completely unsure how to react after this sentence: to laugh or to cry. I am serious. OK, it is not so strong emotion to loudly laugh or cry, but the emotion is in that range.

You know that you are living in a very nice country when one of the worst things which foreigners remember about your country is food. UK is such good country. Or at least England without London. Many of people from my country were in England because of various reasons. One of the most important reason is cultural exchange of some kind. (Yes, paradoxically, England is not usually a place for finding a job. Austria, Germany and nowdays Slovenia and UAE are, while Canada is for emigration. But, England is usually for those who prefer to keep in their English schwa instead of 'r' and think that monarchy is a cool form of government. OK, many of us like England because of The Clash, Only Fools and Horses and Rowan Atkinson, but British Council and other British cultural and quasi-cultural institutions usually don't promote that part of English culture.)

So, groups from previously described population usually face with horrible English food in some city which is not London. Some of them try to convince themselves that chips with mustard are very delicious, some of them are trying to find some systemic solution, like searching for the nearest McDonald's and hoping that there are big macs without mustard.

But, I've heard for one very creative solution. One person was probably not for the first time in England or she'd previously known all necessary things about English food. And she wrote inside of the questionnaire that she is a religious Serbian Orthodox Christian and that her faith forbids her to eat anything else than pork and beef. And she got it.

When you are inside of large language area or inside of well developed society, it is hard for you to imagine that some irrational personal frustrations could affect one project very hardly. As smaller community is, as it is more affected by personal worldview of some contributors. And frustrations are various: from benign to very serious. All smaller than top ten projects passed heavy struggle in imposing NPOV. Many of the projects are still inside of that struggle. Sanctioning that content should be "appropriate to their cultural context" would mean instantly give a strong argument to the POV pushers at, let's say, Serbian Wikipedia that nothing bad could be said against Serbian Orthodox clergy just because Serbia has 90% of Orthodox Christians formally (including myself, although I've never expressed that and although if I have to choose some religion, I would prefer Taoism). In other words "cultural context" is usually just an excuse for POV pushing of various kinds.

I can understand the aim that we should adapt content to totalitarian regimes which filter Internet access, like those in North Korea, Australia and Apple are, for example. I don't have anything against creating a censored edition of Wikipedia for all of poor people who are forced to have internet access via iPad. It is the question of being accessible there or not. But, in all other cases it is about allowing POV because of some reason or being overcautious toward local laws. Strictly following, let's say, Swiss law on Romansh Wikipedia is not so rational according to the Wikimedia goals. Any sane lawyer would understand that it has to sue WMF before US court after a couple of sentences with a representative of WM CH. But I understand that it is more than rational decision for many other places. Like for iPad.

And if we are really really really willing to go into censorship, it would eat significant part of our resources. I can imagine that I'll be overloaded with various complaints about POV pushing and "cultural contexts" as a steward all over Wikimedia projects. Imagine any political conflict. We would have to analyze carefully is it according to the "cultural context A" to present facts about "cultural context B". For example, I am really willing to know what is and what is not according to the Afghanistan and Pashto Wikipedia "cultural contexts", not counting regular issues related to Islam.

On 7/24/10 9:45 PM, Milos Rancic wrote:

In other words "cultural context" is usually just an excuse for POV pushing of various kinds.

Actually, I think the opposite is true. Right now we impose our arbitrary Western moral standards on the rest of the world, and because those standards are our own, they are transparent to us. For example, we are very sensitive to issues of privacy and child pornography, but not to issues of religious sensitivity or violence for example. I'm definitely a supporter of "no censorship" (I founded WikiProject Wikipedians Against Censorship), but I'm under no illusions that we don't have our own "cultural context". I also don't think offering users and/or projects the ability to implement filtering equals censorship. No one complains about Flickr or Google being "censored" just because they offer filtering. Frankly, we're already filtering content, even on en.wiki, but only according to a "default" Western/American POV. We use line drawings instead of photos in articles on sex positions. We toned down the explicitness of the image we used to illustrate Lolicon. We tend to avoid putting porn, swastikas, and photos of dead bodies on the Main Page. In our view, this is simple editorial judgement. But other cultures could view this as POV-pushing just as much as we view efforts to filter religiously-offensive imagery as POV-pushing. So let's not kid ourselves. We have our own cultural biases and standards (which is not necessarily a bad thing). We don't have to argue that the sky is falling just because people are asking that their own cultural standards be accommodated in some way. IMO, filtering technology (if implemented correctly) is actually a good thing for those of us who want to keep Wikipedia uncensored. By letting people adapt Wikipedia to their own particular uses, they don't have to impose their POV on the rest of us.

Ryan Kaldari

I don't think using an illustration of Bukake rather than a photo is a "failure of neutrality", but perhaps we'll have to agree to disagree on that. Regardless, as a global project, we need to seriously consider what steps we can take to accommodate cultures very different from our own, while still retaining the openness and comprehensiveness that make our project so successful as an educational resource and collaborative project. If that means we let some people filter what they see on Wikipedia, so be it. And if it means banning Goatse from the Main Page, I'm not going to complain. Obviously we must defend Wikipedia against real censorship threats (deleting religious imagery, whitewashing political scandals, DMCA abuses, etc.), but I don't see anything threatening about Mr. Harris evaluating the issues, or people discussing ideas for filtering technology. I think we're pretty far away from the edge of the "slippery slope", but if that changes, I'll be right there with you defending the integrity of the project.

Ryan Kaldari

On 7/26/10 12:39 PM, David Gerard wrote:

On 26 July 2010 20:08, Ryan Kaldarirkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote: failure

...

offer filtering. Frankly, we're already filtering content, even on en.wiki, but only according to a "default" Western/American POV. We use line drawings instead of photos in articles on sex positions.

And this was a defective compromise with pushers of the censored POV at the time, so using it as a reason for more is the begging the question fallacy.

Wikimedia's bias is to NPOV and the sum of the world's knowledge. Deliberately restricting that by default is a violation, on the face of it. Apart from using past failures as justification for future failures, do you have a proposal to address the problem of prior default filtering as a failure of neutrality in a manner that shows understanding of why this is a problem?

• d.

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On 26 July 2010 22:14, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:

I don't see anything threatening about Mr. Harris evaluating the issues,

As has been pointed out several times already, the presumption that there is a case to answer. (#5 on the original board resolution.)

I note also that several board members initially voiced their support for Jimbo's unilateral deletion of content from Commons, and only backtracked when asked what on Earth they were basing their support upon. That I have to bring this up again now is because asking board members what they knew when - what they based their statements upon - was answered with "the issue's over now, Jimbo quit, don't worry, be happy." Unfortunately, the issue is not over with, because those same board members, who are unwilling to state the basis on which they shot their mouths off before, have commissioned this study and will be deciding what to do with it.

If you're seeking issues of "cultural sensitivity" and "cultural imposition", the previous top-down action - which can reasonably be termed a Foundation action because the board backed Jimbo on his actions - led to a pile of Commons admins resigning at the imposition. After internal-l discussion, I got emails from lurkers (Chapter people) worried about what the hell the Foundation thought it was doing, and that they weren't comfortable to speak out about it on internal-l. And I realise I just said "the lurkers support me in email", but they actually did ... so when you have chapters people talking about the possibility of a fork, and the thing precipitating it being a top-down restriction imposed by the Foundation, there's a reason this is a matter for serious concern, not something to be dismissed and ignored.

- d.

On 26 July 2010 20:40, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

If photos of Tienanmen protests are forbidden in China, we should remove them for population from China.

I certainly hope you're saying this as an attempt at reductio ad absurdum.

- d.

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:50 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:43 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

...

On 26 July 2010 20:40, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:

...

If photos of Tienanmen protests are forbidden in China, we should remove them for population from China.

I certainly hope you're saying this as an attempt at reductio ad absurdum.

Maybe my sentence was ambiguous: "remove them for population from China" means "filter them for Chinese IPs".

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:

2010/7/25 Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com:

...

...

From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com

...

Yes, the devil is in the details, and in working out

the correct parameters for default IP access. Each language version of any project could make its own determination in this regard. Arabic, no Mohammed images; India, no sex and kissing; Dutch and German, the full Monty with no censorship at all. Whatever.

The sum of all human knowledge! Filtered by default to what we think local prejudices are! And never mind that pesky Neutral Point Of View.

No, not filtered according to what *we* think, but filtered according to what the local editor community in that project think is appropriate to their cultural context.

I guess in most local editor communities the consensus about this is simply not achievable, as long as the entire project is POV and this is our real problem with implementing any kind of soft-semi but still cenzorship. It simply touches your personal cultural contex, which is different for devoted catholic or devoted musilm or the non-religous person. Moreover if it comes to pictures we are saying about Wikimedia Commons which is by default global. In fact English Wikipedia is quite global project as well... Each such person thinks the the general cenzorship rules should follow his/her cultural context. But the NPOV idea is that Wikipedia content should not be affected by POV coming form this or another cultural context, which let contribute to it no matter of your cultural contex, as long as you are able to accept having in Wikipedia all other's people POV mixed together in NPOV style.

I think you are confused. It is not a POV not to display images by default if those images can be accessed by a simple mouse click, it is simple good manners. For example I may want to read about 'Tribute pictures': http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cum%20tribute

it doesn't mean to say that I want to look at some guy's spooge over a picture of the woman next door.

And as I said earlier just because I'm reading about the Rawandan geonicide doesn't mean that I want to see images of mutilated bodies. And were I a Muslim I ought to be able to read about images of Mohammed without seeing images of him burning in hell.

Of course I may wish to see all such images and so long as I can should I so desire then it is not censorship nor it a violation of NPOV.

From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com And what about words? Do you think that one devoted homophobic Christian would be willing to see [relevant] citation inside of some general article that "Jesus was gay"?

If it is not acceptable to someone to see pornographic content, it is highly possible that to that person is not acceptable to have possibility to read educational materials about sexuality. Should we put all of those content out of "moderate Wikipedia"?

You're right, it is not just about images. If I set up a censored account for a small child, I should be able to set it up in such a way that they won't be able to see articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_(novel) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice)

So, if the child clicks on a wikilink leading there, they would get a screen saying, "Sorry, this page is only available to adult accounts."

A.

A child seeing such a page will ordinarily go instead to something they understand. Unless we're talking about teen-agers. I see this as an excellent example of the slippery slope we would be in if we did anything targeted at facilitating censorship, especially considering the author of the book is a major writer. There are some elements of these themes in some of his other work also. Do we label them as well?

The only sustainable position is that readers can do what they want with our content. If they can derive a filter for what hey want . (I don't see how they can for a novel except by putting it specifically on a blacklist)

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:54 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:

On 25 July 2010 18:17, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:

...

You're right, it is not just about images. If I set up a censored account for a small child, I should be able to set it up in such a way that they won't be able to see articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_(novel) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice)

So, if the child clicks on a wikilink leading there, they would get a screen saying, "Sorry, >this page is only available to adult accounts."

Child responds by logging out.

-- geni

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Hoi, Children in Romania know what to expect of a pizdăhttp://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pizd%C4%83#Romanian, children in Indonesia know it for the tempikhttp://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=tempik&action=edit&redlink=1.. They are both descriptive and you do not know at all that you want to look for them

Truly the notion that the description will tell you that something is not safe for wok is naive. It is also naive to use it for setting up a web blocker. Trust me, kids are quite capable to find their way around such silly toys because they have more incentive to do so then you have to set up something like a web blocker. Thanks, GerardM

On 26 July 2010 19:17, Oliver Keyes scire.facias@gmail.com wrote:

Wikipedia images and pages normally have descriptive titles. If you want to prevent children seeing bad stuff on the internet, set up a web blocker. Mind you, if you want to prevent children seeing bad stuff on the internet, best to raise them in an Amish village.

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 5:05 PM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:

...

A child seeing such a page will ordinarily go instead to something they understand. Unless we're talking about teen-agers. I see this as an excellent example of the slippery slope we would be in if we did anything targeted at facilitating censorship, especially considering the author of the book is a major writer. There are some elements of these themes in some of his other work also. Do we label them as well?

The only sustainable position is that readers can do what they want with our content. If they can derive a filter for what hey want . (I don't see how they can for a novel except by putting it specifically on a blacklist)

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 2:54 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:

...

On 25 July 2010 18:17, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:

...

You're right, it is not just about images. If I set up a censored

account for a small child, I should be able to set it up in such a way

that

...

they won't be able to see articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_(novel)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_%28novel%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogg_%28novel%29or

...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_%28sexual_practice%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_%28sexual_practice%29

...

...

...

So, if the child clicks on a wikilink leading there, they would get a

screen saying, "Sorry, >this page is only available to adult accounts."

...

Child responds by logging out.

-- geni

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Andreas Kolbe wrote:

to see its content.

Yes, the devil is in the details, and in working out the correct parameters for default IP access. Each language version of any project could make its own determination in this regard. Arabic, no Mohammed images; India, no sex and kissing; Dutch and German, the full Monty with no censorship at all. Whatever.

From what I recall Germany is a problem because certain imagery (porn, violence) is NOT allowed unless you age verify. You cannot have bukkake images unless you have age verified. That was the problem that flickr had when they internationalized the site. The German law requires that if such images are accessible by minors then the site MUST remove access upon notification.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/BGH-eBay-kann-zur-Sperrung-jugendgefa...

That probably means that for de.wikipedia all porn images need to be deleted, and that might even stretch into commons too. That was flickr's interpretation of the law which is why they made yahoo.de accounts restricted to viewing moderate images only.

Andreas Kolbe wrote:

I was not aware of the Flickr situation in Germany. Are some of their servers based in Germany?

As far as I am aware, the German Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien[1] and the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (KJM) are limited in what they can do about internet offerings registered abroad. This is information which I received from them upon request.

They told me all they can do is contact their counterparts in the respective country, express their concern, and ask for their support.

A.

[1] http://www.bundespruefstelle.de/bpjm/information-in-english.html

Yahoo have a physical presence in Germany. The issue was as that soon as flickr provided a German language interface, then the lawyers took the view that such an internationalization could be taken as providing content targeted at German users. The servers as such are mainly in the US. In any case I'd be very surprised if German porn websites could get around the law simply by hosting the content in the US.

In any case its been 3 years and flickr/yahoo have not seen fit to relax the rules. The head of the KJM said that flickr simply had to *delete* any content that they were informed about. They chose to ban German Y! ids from accessing the restricted content.

A number decamped to ipernity but found the rules on what was allowed there even tougher. Most are back on flickr with non German Y! ids.

One might want to check out what one's liability is if one happens to be in Germany and are editing or Admining porn page in German.

Sorry to top-post.

Google and Flickr actually handle this quite differently though, I think, Andreas. Going from memory -- I think that Google defaults to a "moderate" setting, but allows users to easily switch to an unfiltered setting. As long as they allow cookies, users don't need to be registered, and there's no other impediment to switching that I'm aware of.

Flickr also defaults to moderate, but in order to get unfiltered results you need to be registered, and I think you might also have to make some kind of statement about how old you are. So, you can't see unfiltered results on Flickr without jumping through some hoops. And, users in a small number of countries (going from memory I think they include Singapore, India, Korea and Germany) do not have the option to see unfiltered results.

Plus, I believe that certain types of content are disallowed entirely throughout Flickr, although I don't know what they are or how that is policed.

So the devil is very much in the details :-)

Thanks, Sue

-----Original Message----- From: Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com Sender: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:28:33 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content

Thanks Alec. I wouldn't like to see Wikipedia fork either.

Excirial's suggestion -- which I understand to mean enabling readers to self-censor the type of content that offends them, or that they don't want their children to see -- strikes me as the way we can have our cake and eat it.

It's also in line with what people like google, YouTube and flickr are doing. If you want to see certain types of content, you are asked to set up an account, and/or change your default preference.

In practice, this could mean --

- That I don't see images I don't want to see in Wikipedia articles.

- That I can click on a grayed image if, in an exceptional case, I do want to see it.

- That I can set up my child's Wikipedia account in such a way that my child can NOT click to display the image I don't want them to see.

- That I can set up my or my child's Wikipedia account in such a way that Wikipedia will not display articles I do not want it to display.

- That IPs are shown a mildly "censored" version, and that seeing the uncensored version of Wikipedia requires registering an account and setting the preferences up accordingly.

This requires a lot of thought and work behind the scenes to categorise content. But it is surely the best approach to make Wikipedia the encyclopedia for everyone.

And that's an encyclopedia that can happily host the goatse image, too, for those who want to see it.

A.

--- On Sat, 24/7/10, Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com wrote:

From: Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Saturday, 24 July, 2010, 15:47 I have no idea whether anything in here is productive or just reiteration of the same old themes.   I doubt it will be coherent or persuasive, but this discussion is too important not to try to say something.   Opinions were solicited, so here's such an opinion.

I don't really know if a discussion at this point is wise, particularly from me and my verbosity.  :).  So skip if skeptical, and abort if you start finding my words, well, unproductive. :)

-Alec

...

What I find not convincing is the slogan "No

censorship". I think this

...

is a bad argument.

Okay, I think that's my cue.   I'm definitely in "No Censorship" camp, so let my try to explain why that argument has such pull for some of us.

To begin with, please consider that  NOTCENSORED has been the law of the land for many years and Wikipedia has prospered under it.   It's not a new idea.

What's new is this idea that "potential offensiveness" is a threat to us, and thus,  a valid criterion for making editorial decision.   That would be a huge deviation from our very successful status quo.

Maybe you think it would be a good change, maybe you think would be a bad change,  but I think we can all agree it would be a very CONTROVERSIAL change among Wikimedians.

And when you stop and think about it, of course any such proposal is _bound_  to be very very controversial among those very individuals who are already deeply invested in a NPOV/NON-CENSORED project.

After all, we've spent years explaining NPOV / NOTCENSORED to Muslims over Muhammad images, for example, and to Christians over Piss-Christ.   We've defended racist imagery, we've defended neo-nazi hate-sites. We've committed to not-censored, we've worked for NOTCENSORED, we've offended totally innocent people so wikipedia could be NOTCENSORED, and it was even theoretically  possible somebody might have died over NOTCENSORED.

We did this because Wikipedia successfully convinced us that an uncensored encyclopedia was a wonderful thing. And we've grown very attached to it and the principles it espoused.

Maybe we do need a "potentially non-offensive" project in addition. But if there is to be a "Brave New Encyclopedia" that promises freedom from potential offense, shouldn't it be started as a NEW project with a NEW userbase and a NEW editing community that's committed to these NEW principles?

I'm skeptical that that a "potential offfense" can actually work, even as its own project.  But, no harm in trying.  Meanwhile, our Wikipedia, the "NPOV/NOTCENSORED" Wikipedia, does work!   And It continues to work!

Wikipedia ain't broke-- don't fracture the community into bits by trying to impose a "fix". --

Some say:  "What's the difference between deleting offensive material and deleting anything else?   REALLY, isn't ANY deletion, on some level,  censorship?"

Well, no.  :)

Normal run-of-the-mill deletions (e.g. of nonsense,  etc) HELP our mission by preserving our limited computing resources.  Censorship HURTS our mission by intentionally making it harder for our readers to find legal, legitimate information they themselves are actively trying to access.

Normal decisions are justified using terms like "usefulness" and "notable."  Censorship is justified using terms like "potential-offensiveness", "pornographic",  "a threat to children", or "immoral".

Normal decisions are democratic, culture-neutral, and are based on verifiable facts.  Censorship is beyond debate, it's not culture-neutral, it's imposed rather than accepted, and it's based on unstated emotional biases and prejudices.

(And if those distinctions don't help determine which is which-- Censorship is the one that's really, really controversial around here. :)   )

--

...

Let me take some example. Ar-wp decides per community

concensus not

...

to use Mohammed  images. Seen in the light of

en-wp rules, this is a censorship.

...

If we maintain "no censorship" then ar-wp must remove

that concensus. If not,

...

we cannot maintain the "no censorship" slogan.

Admittedly, "free-information" people can be very black and white-- but even I'm  not  quite THIS black and white.  :)

I, for one, am not at all troubled that WMF might host a project that, via TRUE consensus, decides to be, by my standards, censored.   (I actually really wish we had a few censored english-language projects lying around, so people would be less tempted to try to co-opt EnWiki.)

I don't oppose people 'censoring' themselves if that's truly their choice-- what I oppose is someone censoring US against our consent. What I oppose is WMF trying take a NONCENSORED project swap out NPOV/NOTCENSORED in favor of a fiat-imposed  "potential-offensiveness" standard.

...

Maybe a user is against every political censorship but

is uncomfortable about

...

having religious  insulting images. Is he "for"

or "not for" censorship?

There's nothing wrong with wanting to avoid offending people.   I have a LOT of sympathy and patience for people who think that wikipedia should be censored, ESPECIALLY with the Muhammad issue where issues of culture, religion, race, and violence are superimposed over issues of NPOV and NOTCENSORED.

Being uncomfortable is a understandable and laudable response. Sincerely.  Many many great minds throughout history have reached the conclusion that some sub-populations need "protection" from "potentially offensive" information, and I certainly can't prove them wrong.

So if somebody undergoes a 'conversion experience' and realizes that what we've  been doing here these many years, providing free access to potentially-offensive information, is actually morally wrong-- well that's okay with me.    Maybe they're right and I'm wrong.  A change of heart isn't a sin.

But if that individual really feels strongly about stance, then maybe they should reconsider serving in a capacity that requires them to help provide "Free Access to All The World's Information".

Cause the world's information is really very offensive.  And providing that information, offensive or not, is what we do here.

--

If  "No porn or other potential offensive material" this had been the rule all along, that'd be one thing.  But that's not what our social contract has been.

Our social contract included NPOV, its corollary NOTCENSORED, and a strong commitment to the consensus process. Now, ten years in, these rules suddenly aren't good enough anymore?   The clock has struck Midnight, the coach has turned back into a pumpkin, and wikipedians are no longer able to form  consensus on any tough issues?  Nonsense.

I thought we all agreed EnWiki/WMF wasn't going to be child-safe (or conservative-safe, or liberal-safe, or muslim-safe,  work-safe or nudity-safe or anythingelse-safe).  In fact, I thought we all agreed on that years ago.  I thought that was what we stood for.

So, in May, it felt a little "slap-in-the-face"-ish when WMF, having spent years collecting our edits and our dollars under the banners  of "NPOV",  "NOTCENSORED" and  "CONSENSUS",  suddenly surrendered at the first sign of trouble from Fox.

It seems naive now, but I think most of us had assumed that,  when inevitable US-based pressure against our content arose,  the board members would all side WITH the projects and AGAINST FoxNews.

I don't think anyone foresaw our then-leader publicly confirming Fox's allegations and insisting that not only DO we have too much porn, but that we have so much "hard code" pornography that required an emergency fiat deletion campaign.    I definitely never EVER expect to see such individuals deleting in-use images over literally scores of objections.

To put this into perspective if free-information isn't essential to you--  this was a little bit like being a volunteer at your local library for years-- helping the staff, donating your valuable time and limited funds, etc.   Then one day, you come in and see that someone from Fox News has come to your public library while you were gone  and managed to convinced half the librarians that they need to start burning through the stacks.

Yeah, it's intense experience.

--

#"A  'Thought'  Experiment"

What if we did  actually allow "potential offensiveness" as a criterion?   What does that kind of a debate look like?

Suppose, for instance that an admin showed up and demanded that a notable work of art be deleted on the ground that it was "potentially offensive".    How do you defend against that charge?

"Offensiveness" isn't really a NPOV-Verifiable fact, so it's up to personal opinion.   No matter what you say, somebody else can always say "Well, I don't care if this IS a famous work of art-- to me it's just old porn.  And old porn is still porn.  I still find this content to be offensive and I still want it deleted and I'm going to delete it myself and i'll block you if you try to stop me!"

What does kind of a deletion debate that look like??  Is it civil? Does it encourage mutual respect?  Does it promote the free exchange of information?

No no.. This approach was tried and it failed miserably: http://tinyurl.com/2fuo3eq

And it was destined to fail, because no one can fairly play the role of moral censor for a population as diverse as Wikipedia.  Not me, not you, not Jimmy, nobody.  No one can fairly decide what is "too offensive for 12 million people spread across the globe".  Can't be done.

All such a censor can do is decide what's "too offensive to me".  So if you're asked to be a censor, you do what you know-- you delete stuff that offends you but other people think is important, and you keep stuff you think is important but that other people find offensive.

And once you start down that road, it's little more than modern-day bigotry that ultimately makes the judgments.

Deleting "offensive art" may not be how you guys meant for things to go, but it is where things  ended up, and quickly too. You slid right down the slippery slope-- just than like we free-speechers always said you would only, only far faster than anyone could have predicted. Before anyone could believe it,  the art was being taken down off the walls and heaped on the fire.

Jimbo demonstrated he was utterly unable to responsibly use "potential-offensiveness" as a deletion criterion.   For us now to ask ALL of our editors to use a similar criteria would only bring far, far worse results.

The "potentially offensive" approach just plain doesn't work.   (And even if it DID work-- it's not the approach we signed up for. )

--

...

Searching for a community consensus cannot work in

such black

...

and white manner.

That's quite a bold statement.  (or at least, I've seen some bold statements on this subject)

I don't think our current projects are fundamentally flawed. I see no sign that consensus can't work here.  On the contrary, May seemed to demonstrate that not only CAN consensus form in these situations, but sometimes the consensus can be quite deafening.

I think the real issue is that that consensus HAS been reached on the NOTCENSORED / NPOV/Sexual Content policies issues--  the community consensus just match the pre-designated conclusion, and so it was thus ruled to be the outcome of a "broken and flawed" process, something the community just  can't handle on its own, not without grown-up help.

---

# Spot the Difference

...

What difference is  this

agree-with-me-or-I-will-boycott-you position

...

to the ace-wp template of boycotting Wikipedia because

it contains Mohammed image?

Great question.  Turns out there's a really really simple difference.

Wikipedia never promised anyone that  "Wikipedia Doesn't Show Muhammad Pictures"! But Wikipedia promised everyone "Wikipedia Is Not Censored" and "Wikipedia is written from a NPOV"

Allowing Muhammad images doesn't involve any breach of promise. But allowing censorship and non-neutral POV does involve a breach of trust.

So a better analogy is this:

Suppose a very conservative mosque, after years of forbidding images of Muhammad, suddenly reversed itself, and started distributing the offensive cartoons of Muhammad.   Its members would, rightly, feel betrayed.

Wikipedia isn't a mosque, but we have unique culture of our own. Seeing  19th century art deleted as "old porn"-- well that's as disrespectful of OUR traditions, just as offensive images of Muhammad might would be disrespectful in the context of a  mosque.

I think NOTCENSORED is fundamental and inseparable from Wikipedia's mission.  But-- even if we can't convince you that NOTCENSORED is fundamentally important to Wikipedia, at least recognize that it's very important to many many many Wikipedians.

...

Refusing every discussion, no compromise at all, I

find this a very strange

...

stance for a Wikimedian.

Indeed: http://tinyurl.com/2w2ayy2

Things work better via traditional consensus building.  Even I, free-speecher that I am, would very sincerely abide, in relative silence, by a TRUE consensus to repeal NOTCENSORED.

In May, it seems like some people got the idea that since the discussion wasn't producing the results they wanted, they'd just stop all discussion and start enforcing instead.

And If ever you want to kill civil discussion, just say "We can discuss later after I'm done implementing it"

Once that happened, the time for discussion was basically over and the time for revising roles had begun.   When someone is done listening but not yet done acting, the only remaining options are blocks and boycotts.   I'm not happy about that, but there was no alternative.

--

If we seem fundamentalist, perhaps we are a little.   But this sort of free-information advocacy is a part of Wikipedia's very DNA--  from our open-source platform to our free-licensed content, from our open community anyone can join  to the open protocols that our internet runs on.   It may be an annoying and pseudo-fundamentalist stance, but it is part of how we got here.   Free-information advocacy built Wikipedia.

Many of us thought that, via projects like Wikimedia, we were helping to eliminate censorship from the rest of the world.  Many of us write software, to make free laptops, for kids we'll never ever meet, just so that people all around the world can have a chance to see what free speech is really like.  Some of us are here because help STOP censorship around the world, not to help perpetuate it,  and certainly not to subjected to it ourselves.

--

In our early days, when we had nothing to lose, no big media interviews, and no way to be blackmailed, NOTCENSORED seemed to work just fine for us.  Now that we are more successful and independent than ever, now, in our finest houst, NOW suddenly this long-cherished principle has to go?

Now, some faction of our community, Jimmy first among them, has decided that after years of success, we should trade in our "Not Censored" Wikipedia for a swiss-cheesed encyclopedia in the hopes of making a "potentially non-offensive" project??

I have no idea what the purpose or cause of this is-- a personal religious conversion?  an acquired distaste for negative press?  The promise of more donations from a conservative big-money donor or a prominent university?  The influence of Russian spies?  Contact from an extraterrestrial intelligence in the form of a monolith?  A windfall for Wikia if our projects substantially narrow their scope? All of these?  Something else entirely?  Or maybe no reason at all.

I have no idea what shiny new bauble we hope to obtain, if only we'd renounce a few of our  core principles.  But I really hope we don't take the deal.

Is there something different about the world of 2010 that makes 2009's "Wikipedia is Not Censored" policy suddenly unfeasible?

Have we been spending nine years destroying the minds of the youth worldwide to such an extent that an immediate 180-degree change of course is necessary?

--

...

What also made me very sad in this thread is to see

that some community

...

members obviously had taken a very foundamentalistic

position. Either

...

you agree with me, otherwise I will quit and fork.

Well, I'm probably the biggest offender of anyone here on this one, because I think it's ESSENTIAL that we fork if WMF adopted a scope that excluded material on the grounds of  "potential-offense".

But our motivation isn't malicious.  It's not:  "You're guys are evil and we should all quit rather than associate with you."   Not in the slightest.

Instead, our motivation stems from wanting to protect Wikipedia and its current policies:  "We love Wikipedia the way it is! So if wikipedia does get deleted ,if it's replaced with an identically-named but "potentially-non-offensive" project , our first priority should be restore the uncensored Wikipedia and continue working on it."

However, I'm infinitely glad that the foundation appears to be stepping away from the brink.  The best home for a free, uncensored wiki remains the Wikimedia Foundation.

But ultimately, the greatest protection Wikipedia has is that there are other homes out there for a free, uncensored collection of the world's information, where everyone gets offended equally and "I find this offensive" carries no weight.  After all, Wikipedia has already shown us just how wonderful it is to have such a project!

No matter what WMF does, there will always a place for Wikipedia-as-it-currently-is. A lot of us want such a project to continue, a lot of us want to improve THAT project, and a lot of us want to protect that project.  If fact, one of the main reasons so many of us gave money last year to WMF was because, ironically enough, we were told those funds would help PROTECT that very same Wikipedia from outside pressures.  But ultimately, not even millions in donations was really able to truly "protect" a free, uncensored Wikipedia, it seems.

(Indeed,  in the back of my mind, I sometimes worry that our new-found fund-raising success might somehow be part of the problem.   Perhaps we've seen these unilateral actions precisely because funding is now so secure that whole swaths of our content and our community can now be considered "expendable".  Heck, perhaps some fanatic with very deep pockets is offering to hire the entire board, en masse, with high-paying salaries, if only they'll delete the right paintings. Those are just pulled from thin-air, of course,  but clearly, something is going on now that wasn't going on from 2001-2009-- and the amazingly successful fund raising is one of the few big differences I can think of.)

Fortunately, where $10 million fails, Creative Commons succeeds.  IT DOES protect Wikipedia, because foundations and servers can come and go, but Wikipedia will endure.

And there is no good reason for it not to endure right here.  It's done really here, these past 9 years, after all.  Let's go for 20, and in the mean time, let's give the green light to people who might like to try their hand at making a non-offensive english-language encyclopedia here at Wikimedia.

Alec "been writing this for WAY too long" Conroy

---

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Hello Alec,

at first thank you for the long mail. It would take me some time to write my own answer but I don't want to make a hasty and unconsidered reply. So if the answer comes a little late, please accept my honest apolozies. My reaction to your mail is very complicated. There are a lot of things that I agree and I support. But there are also other things that I disagree or that confuse me. But the nature of a discussion, I will elaborate more on points that I disagree than where I agree with you. This may induce an impression as if the disagreement is far larger. Since the mail is very large, I will not cite everyline of your mail and make a comment on it. If you think that I have ommitted something important, please ask, it is not my intention to cite you partially. Also it seems that Thunderbird has some problem in cite your mail so maybe I will make some copy-and-past, if the format looks bad, please also bear with me.

Last not least, although I hate to repeat this disclaimer again and again: It is all my personal opinion.

When I wrote my last mail, one of the main motive is that I think the way how Robert's initial mail was treated is not ok. Robert, let's say comes from outside, has a task from the board, and asks the community to give its comments and what he got was more or less go away, we don't want to talk about it and whatever you do, sorry you are doomed as a Nazi. I know the topic is emotional, and it had repeated again and again. But because it repeats again and again it shows that it is important. And it is important for Robert's work to get a good response, like that from you and the one from Milos later in the thread. Your mail had changed the character of this thread, from a very rejective to a very engaged, and this alone is for me the reason for a big thank you.

Am 24.07.2010 16:47, wrote Alec Conroy:

To begin with, please consider that NOTCENSORED has been the law of the land for many years and Wikipedia has prospered under it. It's not a new idea.

I think this is the idea state for us. And as you said there are a lot of values in this idea. And most of us had discussed endless times to uphold this idea. For example for me on my home wiki (which is the zh-wp). Everytime in the past when zh-wp was blocked on mainland China we had one (or many times) discussion about if we should change our policy so that more people can access many many information that are totally inpolitical and valuable.

But like in the physics, the idealized state is not the real life. I mentioned in my last mail three examples where our projects already do filtering today by its current policies. I can give you two more: - When on Wikimania this year in Gdansk I had a talk in one evening with a long time wiki-friend of mine, zh:user:Mountain, who is the first Chinese Wikipedian at all. So he told me about his childhood in a village in the coast of Shandong province. And told that in that part of China there were a lot of old traditions that are now dying out. For example the locals earlier had special technik to fish ensis [[:en:Ensis]]. Nowaday no one is practicing that technique anymore because the coastal line is now used for salt production. He told me that he would like to write some article about these old traditions but he is aware that these articles would be deleted because he cannot find any sources and citations for them. So unless some Chinese ethmologist come to this (unimportant) part of China and write some scientific articles about them, they would go lost for ever. - In June I attended a german community conference called Skillshare. And one of the sessions was about quality. One user complained on that session that our quality rules make our articles bias because for example in medicine only the knowledge of well sourced western medicine get their full length and detail, while the poorly researched and sourced traditional medicine of other cultures only get very poorly written articles.

So the result is that our rules itself work like a filter, or a censorship. In these both cases it censors in favour of those knowledges that are in focus of scientific research and against those that are poorly documented.

If a scientifc magazine only accept articles about western medicine we would clearly call it censored. And if our rules oblige us to do the same?

Notcensored is an idea. It is a good idea, but in the real life it is not possible. There are a lot of reasons why it is not possible, it must not be religious or political. It could be scientific, which sounds weird. It could be, that we try to improve our quality and reliability and thus put up rules that work as a censorship, which also sounds weird.

You say the notcensored Wikipedia had worked in the history. The fact is, the notcensored Wikipedia had never worked. Everytime we want to put up a new rule on editorial content, the question is, what do we win through such a rule (for example better reliability, or less vandals, or less conflict with privacy of living person, or what ever), and what price do we pay for it (part of our articles get bias. often unintended).

...

Let me take some example. Ar-wp decides per community concensus not to use Mohammed images. Seen in the light of en-wp rules, this is a censorship. If we maintain "no censorship" then ar-wp must remove that concensus. If not, we cannot maintain the "no censorship" slogan.

Admittedly, "free-information" people can be very black and white-- but even I'm not quite THIS black and white.:)

I, for one, am not at all troubled that WMF might host a project that, via TRUE consensus, decides to be, by my standards, censored. (I actually really wish we had a few censored english-language projects lying around, so people would be less tempted to try to co-opt EnWiki.)

I don't oppose people 'censoring' themselves if that's truly their choice-- what I oppose is someone censoring US against our consent. What I oppose is WMF trying take a NONCENSORED project swap out NPOV/NOTCENSORED in favor of a fiat-imposed "potential-offensiveness" standard.

This is the passage from your mail that confuses me at most. Whom do you mean with US? You wrote that Wikipedia is notcensored, but ar-wp is also Wikipedia, as well as the other 270 some language versions of Wikipedia, including the ace-wp, or not? Is it censored or is it notcensored?

And as I mentioned, even en-wp is not notcensored. Also en-wp has rules and policies that imposes biases.

This is the reason why I said notcensored is a bad argument, because it doesn't describe the reality. We have consensus on a lot of points, for example I think every language version agrees that we want to use neutral languages to describe the facts, we don't want an article to use to emotional or enthusiastic words. We want to include as much opinions about an issue as possible and we don't want to omit any opinion that is important enough to be included in an encyclopedia. And so on and so on.

I don't believe there is a standard for potential-offensiveness. Maybe everybody has his or her own standard. My personal standard of offensiveness is very low. There is until now on my chinese user talk page a passage where a user call me a "dirty homosexual". To be honest, I don't feel myself insulted. It is his opinion and I am ok with him express it publicly, if it is ok for him too. But I do have understanding for a lot of other users who don't have such low standard of offensiveness. I block users who say similar things to other users because I know they got insulted.

For us, living in a culture that is secular since at least 200 years (in some countries even longer), it maybe not understandable why Muhammed cariculture should be SO insulting that people call out for murders. For others it may be as insulting as for you to see Wikipedia to be censored, or even worse. But if we are not going to be just the next generation crusider who want to convert and salvate the poor in the undevelopped country and society, we must acknowledge that people get deeply, very very deeply insulted. And we must have dialogs with them, show our understanding for them, show our own understanding about our doing, and search for methods and means so that they can get involved in our movement.

For my understanding, this is why the board initiated this all.

Suppose, for instance that an admin showed up and demanded that a notable work of art be deleted on the ground that it was "potentially offensive". How do you defend against that charge?

From my personal perspective I don't believe that the board or the Foundation would issue a standard like you feared, because of the reason I mentioned above (because I don't believe there is a general standard). I think that both for Robert, as well as for the rest of the board, and certainly for me, it is important to read such arguments. This is why such discussions are important, both for Robert, as well as for me.

I think the real issue is that that consensus HAS been reached on the NOTCENSORED / NPOV/Sexual Content policies issues-- the community consensus just match the pre-designated conclusion, and so it was thus ruled to be the outcome of a "broken and flawed" process, something the community just can't handle on its own, not without grown-up help.

Both the discussion on this thread, as well as on meta, shows me that the discussion is ongoing. And as someone who was born and grown up in a country which has a quite different culture, and lived even longer in one of the most free country of the world, I don't think that the result could be a black or white.

Wikipedia never promised anyone that "Wikipedia Doesn't Show Muhammad Pictures"! But Wikipedia promised everyone "Wikipedia Is Not Censored" and "Wikipedia is written from a NPOV"

Again, I don't think this is true, not even on en-wp. And again, Wikipedia is not only en-wp.

Many of us thought that, via projects like Wikimedia, we were helping to eliminate censorship from the rest of the world. Many of us write software, to make free laptops, for kids we'll never ever meet, just so that people all around the world can have a chance to see what free speech is really like. Some of us are here because help STOP censorship around the world, not to help perpetuate it, and certainly not to subjected to it ourselves.

I don't think that this is our mission. And I don't agree that we are going to free the world. Sorry, I don't trust anybody who think he brings light to the world, who thinks he knows the best for the rest of the humanity. And I am certainly not such a person. I am born in 1968. The year when millions of Chinese youth went to the country and thought they are going to free the rest of China from the ugly feudal rest that still remains in the country that impede the country to arrive the status of heaven on the earth. I was old enough to understand when the country began to reflect what destruction, what sorrow and what waste that we-can-sae-the-humanity actually brought it. I am not comparing any Wikimedian with the Red Guards. But read the lines above make me flinch. A stigma from my childhood.

Greetings

Hi all. Thanks so much for all the encouragement my last email received. Replying to Ting's:

****Point 1-- NOTCENSORED isn't what you think it is:****

So, the first thing to realize is that our NOTCENSORED policies are far more narrow than you seem to suspect:

• In the case of traditional fishing techniques or traditional medicine, no one claims those subjects are too offensive to cover. So our NOTCENSORED policy can offer absolutely no guidance one way or the other.

• Our "No pedophilia advocacy" doesn't apply to our content. Indeed, we do cover pedophilia advocacy when it's encyclopedic (e.g. [[NAMBLA]]).

• The debate over at Acehnese Wikipedia over Muhammad IS partially about censorship. But it's also about whether local-projects have self-determination via CONSENSUS. I feel Acehnese Wikipedia should be allowed to run their project as they think best, including revising or even outright rejecting their own version of NOTCENSORED if their true consensus supports doing so. (Ideally they could used some name other than "Wikipedia", so that the "Wikipedia" brand would be preserved for NPOV/NOTCENSORED projects-- but in truth, even that doesn’t really disturb me.

So, we're substantially less fundamentalist and fanatical than I think you believe we are. NOTCENSORED isn't a universal call to total inclusionism, it's just a reminder to not let potential-offensive make decisions for us.

Look at the following dialogue:

Question: Should we host content X? Answer: No, because I find it offensive. Reply: Offensiveness isn't a valid reason, per NOTCENSORED. Instead, ask-- is this content useful?

That's it! That's all NOTCENSORED is. The NOTCENSORED policy just means we don't let cultural taboos dictate our editorial decisions. It's a core value that is really not as radical as you seem to think it is.

****Part 2: What a NOTCENSORED debate looks like:

So, let's consider the EnWiki article [[Muhammad]] and the debate over its use of potentially-offensive images.

Arguing that we should "delete all images because they're offensive" is automatically rebutted by citing "Wikipedia isn't censored".

But that's not the end of the discussion, it's only the very beginning. Once we agree that offensiveness isn't a valid criteria, we still have to tackle the actual work of making the best possible article.

So, just a few of the current compromises that have been reached on [[Muhammad]]:

* We all agreed that the top image should be Muhammad's name written in beautiful calligraphy, since that's a traditionally depicted in Islam and reflects its anti-depiction stance. * We agreed to be careful that our images weren't unnecessarily large or unreasonably numerous. * We decided, throughout the main article, to rely primarily upon images from Islamic cultures-- they seemed to best illustrate Muhammad himself, rather than using him as a just a symbol of Islam. * We agreed that Western images tell us more about "Muhammad-as-viewed-from-the-West", and thus we only used them when in the "Western Views of Muhammad" section. * We all agreed that controversial cartoons of Muhammad had very very little to tell us about Muhammad himself, and thus had no place in the Muhammad article. * We made a Frequently-asked-questions list to try to sincerely explain that we truly we weren't trying to cause offense or be anti-Muslim. We also explained about image filtering and how a reader can decide for themselves what to view. * We recognized the need for on-going communication created a special talk page just to engage in respectful dialogue with people concerned about the use of Muhammad images. * Most of us tried very very hard to be as empathic and caring as possible in those discussions. Indeed, we routinely pointed to the Christian taboos like pornography and piss-christ, using our coverage of those taboos in order to prove that we weren't singling out Muslims.

So, in practice, NOTCENSORED doesn't make things black and white at all. There are lots of shades of gray. There's respectful debate and civil discussion. There's an evolving mutual understanding between groups. We came together and hammered out a well-thought-out consensus that struck a balance between our sincere desire not to offend and our essential mission to inform.

You may not think it's the perfect solution, and neither do I. I'm a free-speecher, so I'm not happy that we made agreed to make the images as smal as we did Of course, others feel the images are too big. The consensus there will continue to evolve over time-- but the process basically worked.

Except for new users, our Muslim editors don't expect that their own offense can justify deleting legitimately educational images. Similarly, our free-speech editors don't expect that NOTCENSORED would justify inserting the anti-Muslim cartoons into the article. Everyone can see there's a consensus in place, and just about everyone understands that their individual opinions shouldn't be able to overrule that consensus.

So, specific debates involving NOTCENSORED do come up all the time. Through civility, mutual respect, and consensus, those disputes are routinely resolved without much strife. Been happening for nine years, and it works.

**** Part 3: So where'd all that anger come from? ****

If NOTCENSORED doesn't usually result in incivility, what was it about the NOPORN proposal that made things so intensely heated and so 'fanatical'???

Earlier I something like:

...

Many of us thought that, via projects like Wikimedia, we were helping to eliminate censorship from the rest of the world. … Some of us are here because we want to help STOP censorship around the world, not help perpetuate it, and certainly not become subjected to it ourselves.

(my original words have been revised for clarity)

I think you read my original words as something far more radical than I meant.

Basically, I was just asserting that: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (language from Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

I just meant that I do hope that the existence of WMF will, to some extent, help promote this most fundamental of human rights.

Since the word 'censorship' appears to have a much broader meaning to you than to me, it may have seemed that I was suggesting something very controversial. In truth, I don't think I meant anything particularly controversial though (unless of course the Universal Declaration of human rights is itself controversial).

I am not comparing any Wikimedian with the Red Guards. But read the lines above make me flinch. A stigma from my childhood.

I'll try to talk about this more in a private, but speaking only for myself, I think this was a very helpful statement, in that it sort of jolted me into seeing things from your point of view. I know it's sometimes bad manners to compare anyone to nazis or their analogs, but in this case, it furthered the discussion and promoted empathy.

Having read your words, I can certainly see why the recent debates might have provoked that kind of emotion. In particular, there's been a lot of talk about removing people from leadership for having beliefs that differ from the community's beliefs. From your vantage point, I'm sure have looked a little fanatical purge to root out leaders who differed from the community.

But-- I don't think the 'fanaticism' is over NOTCENSORED itself. We do welcome a diversity of beliefs on NOTCENSORED. Lots and lots of people have expressed the belief that Muhammad images shouldn't be on the Muhammad article, and we've never asked anyone to give up any of their user rights over that. People question the reasonable limits of NOTCENSORED all the time, and those discussions are usually quite civil.

The reason things go so heated wasn't because of NOTCENSORED, it was because of CONSENSUS.

At several points, we were told that Jimmy's new NOPORN policy would be enforced as policy even though consensus had firmly rejected it.

THAT is where the really really fanatical emotions come from. So long as consensus is in place, all ideas on changing NOTCENSORED are totally open to discussion, include the idea to remove NOTCENSORED entirely.

But CONSENSUS is different. Consensus IS the project. People have donated their time, energy, and money-- and as a result, they do feel a certain very-limited 'ownership'. The idea that this is _our_ site, rather than any one individual's site, is the fuel Wikipedia runs on. That idea is why people people participate and why people donate.

When Jimmy acted as if his own opinions should trump a strong community consensus-- THAT's when things got fanatical and uncivil. He made it clear that his new NOPORN policy wasn't, in his eyes, up for debate-- so people stopped bothering to debate it with him. Instead, we started requesting resignations and contacting other organizations that would be interested in becoming the new host for Wikipedia-as-it-is.

NOTCENSORED isn't what made things so black-and-white-- CONSENSUS is the black and white issue. NOPORN was on one side of the debate and community consensus was on the other. By trying to enforce NOPORN, people essentially tried to ignore and subvert CONSENSUS.

Only when it looked like CONSENSUS was going out the window did the poo really hit the fan.

--

And I don't think there's anything specific to this particular issue. It's not as if the fanatical objections all came from a Porn-centered wikiproject or from editors who upload porn. The objects came from all over the community, from people like me who had never even uploaded a single potentially-pornographic image.

If the board tried to forcibly overrule ANY sufficiently-cherished consensus, you'd see similar behavior from the community-- the petitions being circulated, with people constructing guillotines and dunce caps, and arguing that heads need to roll to restore community consensus to its rightful place.

The 'fanaticism' wasn't because a few people had an opinion that differed from the community's established consensus-- the fanaticism came out when they tried to actually ENFORCE a new policy by ignoring a very strong and long-standing consensus.

Alec

On 7/23/10 3:52 PM, George Herbert wrote:

Meta-question -

Is there in fact sufficient evidence that this is a topic that the Foundation must, or should, engage in actively at this time?

That seems to be one of the questions that Robert Harris is trying to answer.

Ryan Kaldari