Message: 6
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 14:55:29 +0200 From: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <CAJ9-EKLOfhu5jycOt6i4fMm-CRM=0wrtT=e4=Orhmg--_RTROQ@mail.gmail.com
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On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 1:00 PM, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
I'm pretty sure that the community is against a filter system based on
our
commons categories.
.
Thankfully the Foundation seems to have taken that message on board and though we can expect to continue to have pro-filter people joining the debate and trying to revive that type of proposal, I'm pretty sure it is dead in the water.
Not according to their meeting minutes. It does seem there are people still flailing around with a horse-whip, thinking that if they just whip the dead horse hard enough, it will rise up and be a useful steed.
The bit I was referring to was:
"that the Board send a letter to the community acknowledging opposition to the filter idea; that the idea of a category-based system be dropped, as it is problematic and highly controversial, but that staff continue discussions with the community about how to build a system that would meet the Board's objectives; and that the staff also continue to focus on their work to recruit a more diverse editor body, including women and people from the global south. Sue noted that we do not currently have technical work scheduled on the filter, so there is time to develop ideas that acknowledge community objections. This course of action was agreed to. " http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-10-07
My reading of that is that the board has agreed to drop the idea of a filter based on our category system, but unfortunately they haven't yet agreed to drop the idea that someone controlling an IP could censor what other viewers using that IP can see.
I'm not sure that we have a consensus for or against the principle of censorship, or whether the community as a whole regards a private
personal
filter as censorship.
This is one of those canards that just keep popping up, despite having been comprehensively debunked time and again. We have always had a consensus against censorship, and Jimbo even used to enforce it through bans and blocks.
We already have a no censorship policy that makes various exceptions. For Example Paedophilia advocates get blocked on site on EN wikipedia. There may in the past have been a consensus against any change to that policy, but there hasn't been a recent site wide reconsideration of that consensus. DE Wikipedia had an overwhelming vote, but they may not reflect views on the rest of the site, and not being a German speaker I'm not sure to what extent their vote was a decisive rejection of the proposal that was then on the table or a rejection of filtering in principle.
On the one hand at least one Wikimedian is asserting that the community is opposed to censorship in principle, and that even a private personal filter would be censorship. On the other hand the board still wants the image filter to be usable for IPs and not just logged in users
despite the fact that we have no way to implement an IP level system without allowing some people to censor other people's Wikimedia viewing.
If you mean me, I am not asserting, I am reminding that this issue has been visited and revisited more times than anybody can be bothered to count. And the consensus has always been the same. The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Change on wiki is sometimes slow as consensus makes for a very conservative(cautious) policy making process. But that doesn't entitle the opponents of change to oppose simply because an idea is similar to ones that have been rejected before. If the proponents of change are making an effort to meet the objections raised to similar proposals, then to operate in a spirit of consensus the defenders of the status quo should at the very least explain how the latest proposal doesn't meet or all or some of their objections. Otherwise the supporters of change may reasonably assume that they've won the argument and only have inertia to overcome. That said there is an argument for having a minimum interval between reviews of a policy - and if this current debate were to conclude with the consensus against those of us who are trying to formulate a filter proposal that would be acceptable to the community then I would hope we could agree not to reopen the debate for at least a year - or two if the majority is significant.
WSC
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On 2 December 2011 14:36, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
My reading of that is that the board has agreed to drop the idea of a filter based on our category system, but unfortunately they haven't yet agreed to drop the idea that someone controlling an IP could censor what other viewers using that IP can see.
Indeed. "Wikimedia helps Qatar with fine-grained censorship of Wikipedia" is not a great potential headline.
- d.
On 2 December 2011 14:50, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 2 December 2011 14:36, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
My reading of that is that the board has agreed to drop the idea of a filter based on our category system, but unfortunately they haven't yet agreed to drop the idea that someone controlling an IP could censor what other viewers using that IP can see.
Indeed. "Wikimedia helps Qatar with fine-grained censorship of Wikipedia" is not a great potential headline.
I'm not sure that they are that interested. Wikipedia didn't feature in those leaked Syrian server logs other than some attempts to view it through google translate.
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 4:36 PM, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
We already have a no censorship policy that makes various exceptions. For Example Paedophilia advocates get blocked on site on EN wikipedia. There may in the past have been a consensus against any change to that policy, but there hasn't been a recent site wide reconsideration of that consensus. DE Wikipedia had an overwhelming vote, but they may not reflect views on the rest of the site, and not being a German speaker I'm not sure to what extent their vote was a decisive rejection of the proposal that was then on the table or a rejection of filtering in principle.
Am I being dense, or are you being silly? Blocking advocacy from a site with a NPOV policy is a bajillion miles from being censorship. What? I am wrong? How so?
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 7:03 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Am I being dense, or are you being silly? Blocking advocacy from a site with a NPOV policy is a bajillion miles from being censorship.
It may be a bajillion miles, I still think it's closer to it than giving the possibility to people to decide what they themselves see or not see is. Apart from that, pedophiles are being blocked even if they are not advocating, if I remember correctly.
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 9:50 PM, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 7:03 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Am I being dense, or are you being silly? Blocking advocacy from a site with a NPOV policy is a bajillion miles from being censorship.
It may be a bajillion miles, I still think it's closer to it than giving the possibility to people to decide what they themselves see or not see is. Apart from that, pedophiles are being blocked even if they are not advocating, if I remember correctly.
In the absolute, to follow teh rather perverse logci, No.
Pedophiles are not blocked for their views, they are blocked because their behaviour on the site is agains our principles, very much like why we block people who by their actions want to censor wikipedia.
1: "pedophiles are being blocked even if they are not advocating, if I remember correctly" 2: "they are blocked because their behaviour on the site is agains our principles"
Either they are advocating, or they are not. Either they are inappropriately trying to contact minors, or they are not. Either they are editing articles with a pedophile POV, or they are not.
In any case, nobody seems to have the wit and depth of understanding to make the distinction, and it seems Wikimedia would rather not take the risk, arguably for fear of lurid and uninformed media "exposure". As a result, some perfectly innocent editors at whom that label has been thrown, with little or no cogent evidence, have been banned without any recourse whatsoever. What pedophiles may imagine isn't acceptable to most people, but unless they follow up their desires on Wikimedia projects, there should be no reason for the Foundation or its various projects to take any action whatsoever. I'm quite sure that we have editors with criminal convictions, maybe even for homicide, and almost certainly some who have served terms of imprisonment, yet we don't seem to impose any sanctions apart from this one issue. And whereas criminals, by definition, have commited offences, it isn't also the case that pedophiles have also committed offences.
In short, the current position (whatever it is) is a pusillanimous stance to maintain and not one that should be acceptable in any environment claiming to be a defender of knowledge, free or otherwise, and consistently adopting multiple policies that together predicate an intellectual purity.
Some clarity would be welcome here.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jussi-Ville Heiskanen" cimonavaro@gmail.com To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 8:56 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 9:50 PM, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 7:03 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Am I being dense, or are you being silly? Blocking advocacy from a site with a NPOV policy is a bajillion miles from being censorship.
It may be a bajillion miles, I still think it's closer to it than giving the possibility to people to decide what they themselves see or not see is. Apart from that, pedophiles are being blocked even if they are not advocating, if I remember correctly.
In the absolute, to follow teh rather perverse logci, No.
Pedophiles are not blocked for their views, they are blocked because their behaviour on the site is agains our principles, very much like why we block people who by their actions want to censor wikipedia.
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