The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to maintaining a neutral point of view.
I find it a bit strange to talk of Wikimedia Commons as having a NPOV policy.
Should commons allow images which are biased?
More concretely, in terms of photography, should photographs adhere to the standards of ethics adopted by photojournalists?
++++ There are few suggestions more destructive than good ideas misapplied. Let's look at a few featured pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Racistcampaignposter1.jpg Blatantly racist and disrespectful of basic human dignity. Also historic and very encyclopedic. It illustrates the en:wiki article 'Racism', also the article on 'Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era (United States)' and the individual biographies of two politicians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:J_accuse.jpg Certainly not neutral: it accuses the president of France of gross misconduct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trumpetcallsa.jpg Again, not neutral. It's a war recruitment poster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Napoleon%27s_exile_to_Elba3.jpg Blatant trolling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iowa_and_Nebraska_lands10.jpg Try viewing this from the perspective of the indigenous peoples whose ancestral lands were being sold.
Those aren't photographs, you might say? Apply the principle only to photography? Okay, neutralize this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Woody_Guthrie_2.jpg
And although this last one is not hosted on Commons and may never be (due to German law), think of the historic value here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vote_number_1b.jpg
(shakes head) -Durova
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 10:18 AM, foundation-l-request@lists.wikimedia.orgwrote:
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Today's Topics:
- Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people (Gregory Kohs)
- Re: NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) (David Gerard)
- Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people (Thomas Dalton)
- Re: NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) (Milos Rancic)
- Re: NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) (David Gerard)
- Re: NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) (Milos Rancic)
- Re: NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) (Anthony)
- Re: Anarchopedia changed its license (Jussi-Ville Heiskanen)
- Re: NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) (Anthony)
- Re: NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) (David Gerard)
Message: 1 Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:23:16 -0400 From: Gregory Kohs thekohser@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 14b1e7be0904220623k556519dai7e02fce4aaab41c1@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Says Michael Snow:
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality, accurate information
++++++
So, the "community" is urged to do this work at the request of the Board, but the Board itself is going to do virtually nothing (other than this collection of words that urges the community to work harder) to strengthen the commitment to high-quality, accurate information.
How many Board members were in attendance in Berlin, and what was the mean travel distance of the Board attendees for this excursion?
-- Gregory Kohs
Message: 2 Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:32:00 +0100 From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: fbad4e140904220632x64ebbcd0v952ebf9e12a0559e@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
2009/4/22 Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de:
NPOV is mainly a principle of Wikipedia, later also used by Wikibooks and Wikinews. There is at least one project (Wikiversity) which explicitely allow participants not to follow NPOV, but the Disclosure of Point of Views in Wikiversity follow in principle the ideal of NPOV: It tells the reader and participants that the content has a point of view and thus gives the reader and participants to be aware of this and accordingly to adjust their judgement in reading and writing the content.
I think the point is to have whatever would be the locally relevant version of neutrality. On Wikipedia it's NPOV. On Commons or Wikisource, I expect it would be neutrality of subject matter. Etc. The key point would be (something like) that Wikimedia projects are not for pushing views.
- d.
Message: 3 Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:34:26 +0100 From: Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: a4359dff0904220634k4eced895s746959d26b1c1f7a@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
2009/4/22 Gregory Kohs thekohser@gmail.com:
Says Michael Snow:
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality, accurate information
++++++
So, the "community" is urged to do this work at the request of the Board, but the Board itself is going to do virtually nothing (other than this collection
of
words that urges the community to work harder) to strengthen the commitment to high-quality, accurate information.
Basically, yes. Content has always been the responsibility of the community.
How many Board members were in attendance in Berlin, and what was the
mean
travel distance of the Board attendees for this excursion?
This was far from the only thing they did while in Berlin. Their schedule was even more crowded than that of the Chapters' representatives, and I found the chapters meeting the most exhausting thing I've ever done.
Message: 4 Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:04:25 +0200 From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 846221520904220804q1efb6fadl3cb5fefcfb4e75ba@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:32 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I think the point is to have whatever would be the locally relevant version of neutrality. On Wikipedia it's NPOV. On Commons or Wikisource, I expect it would be neutrality of subject matter. Etc. The key point would be (something like) that Wikimedia projects are not for pushing views.
NPOV transformation to general neutrality will work in the most of the cases. A clear example for such transformation is Wikinews. Even called as "NPOV", Wikinews neutrality is a different kind of approach because it is a journalistic one.
*But*, even neutrality is not always possible. Wikiversity is the case because, for example, you are not able to teach/learn about impressionist critics of art by applying any kind of neutrality. While this is an extreme example, a lot of scientific fields are more or less there.
And if you want to force any kind of neutrality there, you would get the same kind of scientific production which existed in East European countries during 50s and 60s: A (very good) book about ancient Greek literature starts with 20-30 pages of Preface in which author explains relations between ancient Greek literature and Marxism. But, there were a lot of not so good books which had a lot of grotesque connections between Marxism and its content not just inside of their prefaces.
There should be a way how to protect projects' integrity, but it is not insisting on NPOV or neutrality if it is not possible.
Message: 5 Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:20:44 +0100 From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: fbad4e140904220820w47c05490t50145f4cd3bac21d@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
2009/4/22 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
NPOV transformation to general neutrality will work in the most of the cases. A clear example for such transformation is Wikinews. Even called as "NPOV", Wikinews neutrality is a different kind of approach because it is a journalistic one.
And even then, some of the most interesting original content is interviews, which are all about the subjective POV of the interviewee.
And if you want to force any kind of neutrality there, you would get the same kind of scientific production which existed in East European countries during 50s and 60s: A (very good) book about ancient Greek literature starts with 20-30 pages of Preface in which author explains relations between ancient Greek literature and Marxism. But, there were a lot of not so good books which had a lot of grotesque connections between Marxism and its content not just inside of their prefaces.
I'm not clear on the connection between neutrality and Marxism ... could you explain the logical steps between the two clauses of your first sentence?
- d.
Message: 6 Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:37:04 +0200 From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 846221520904220937wcb0380bn7fd369bd5354861a@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 5:20 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
And if you want to force any kind of neutrality there, you would get the same kind of scientific production which existed in East European countries during 50s and 60s: A (very good) book about ancient Greek literature starts with 20-30 pages of Preface in which author explains relations between ancient Greek literature and Marxism. But, there were a lot of not so good books which had a lot of grotesque connections between Marxism and its content not just inside of their prefaces.>
I'm not clear on the connection between neutrality and Marxism ... could you explain the logical steps between the two clauses of your first sentence?
I wanted to say that if neutrality is forced in a field which is not possible to present neutrally, you'll get bizarre explanations why some course or book is neutral. (As young revolutionary authorities demanded connection between any field of knowledge and Marxism.)
Even further... Book in elementary algebra may be written well according to the NPOV (but, not by following neutrality!) because NPOV has clause which is related to the "common knowledge". But, if you try to make a book with a specific approach to a number of micro and macro dimensions in the Universe, by using NPOV or neutrality, you would get a book which is not useful:
If A, B, C and D are some logical structures, statement "A x B = C" is not a neutral statement. If there is some other approach which has statement that "A x B = D", the author of the book will have to mention and explain that as well. And this is a kind of a recursive process.
We may rationally say that we won't demand from contributors to do that. But, then, the approach is not according to NPOV or neutrality.
There are other important principles, too, like verifiability and NOR. Both of them may be applied fully to Wikibooks if we say that we really don't want OR in books. At Wikiversity, NOR may be applied for sources. It is not reasonable to apply those principles for didactic methods because didactics of teaching and learning on Internet is not well developed. And it is not possible to implement those principles for the process of teaching and learning: course in any applied science must have OR during the process (and OR is not verifiable).
Message: 7 Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:46:13 -0400 From: Anthony wikimail@inbox.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 71cd4dd90904220946n7d544ee9ld3417e0281c15a15@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:21 PM, Brianna Laugher < brianna.laugher@gmail.com
wrote:
2009/4/21 Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net:
The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to maintaining a neutral point of view.
I find it a bit strange to talk of Wikimedia Commons as having a NPOV policy.
Should commons allow images which are biased?
More concretely, in terms of photography, should photographs adhere to the standards of ethics adopted by photojournalists?
Message: 8 Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:57:10 +0300 From: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Anarchopedia changed its license To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 49EF4C66.1060806@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Crazy Lover wrote:
Just by the way, completely inconsequentially to anarchopedia; the foundational proponent of Agorism was a genuinely awesome dude, and whoever got to know him in real life, was blessed.
I somehow think Konkin would have grokked wikipedia, if he'd lived to see it flourish.
SEK3 was the kind of guy wikipedia articles talk pages could sorely need more of. Defending courteus disagreement in discourse, even when odious in the subject matter to many.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Message: 9 Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:57:53 -0400 From: Anthony wikimail@inbox.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 71cd4dd90904220957k5e6a5b5vc2bb12df8ce04f5b@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:21 PM, Brianna Laugher < brianna.laugher@gmail.com> wrote:
2009/4/21 Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net:
The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to maintaining a neutral point of view.
I find it a bit strange to talk of Wikimedia Commons as having a NPOV policy.
Should commons allow images which are biased?
More concretely, in terms of photography, should photographs adhere to
the
standards of ethics adopted by photojournalists?
Here's the NPPA Code of ethics:
- Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects.
- Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.
- Be complete and provide context when photographing or recording
subjects. Avoid stereotyping individuals and groups. Recognize and work to avoid presenting one's own biases in the work. 4. Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see. 5. While photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events. 6. Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects. 7. Do not pay sources or subjects or reward them materially for information or participation. 8. Do not accept gifts, favors, or compensation from those who might seek to influence coverage. 9. Do not intentionally sabotage the efforts of other journalists.
1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8 all deal with neutrality. Should they apply to photos made for commons?
Message: 10 Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:18:35 +0100 From: David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: fbad4e140904221018xb7dd0fan9e4a80a9f2c5886b@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
2009/4/22 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 5:20 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
And if you want to force any kind of neutrality there, you would get the same kind of scientific production which existed in East European countries during 50s and 60s: A (very good) book about ancient Greek literature starts with 20-30 pages of Preface in which author explains relations between ancient Greek literature and Marxism. But, there were a lot of not so good books which had a lot of grotesque connections between Marxism and its content not just inside of their prefaces.>
I'm not clear on the connection between neutrality and Marxism ... could you explain the logical steps between the two clauses of your first sentence?
I wanted to say that if neutrality is forced in a field which is not possible to present neutrally, you'll get bizarre explanations why some course or book is neutral. (As young revolutionary authorities demanded connection between any field of knowledge and Marxism.)
Yes, that makes sense :-)
Even further... Book in elementary algebra may be written well according to the NPOV (but, not by following neutrality!) because NPOV has clause which is related to the "common knowledge". But, if you try to make a book with a specific approach to a number of micro and macro dimensions in the Universe, by using NPOV or neutrality, you would get a book which is not useful:
en:wp has experienced this - the arbcom finally had to say "no, peer-reviewed journals are more reliable sources on global warming than Rush Limbaugh radio transcripts or Michael Crichton novels, and fifty faith-based science advocates don't get to vote the UK's top climate scientist off the island. Don't be bloody stupid." In a few more words than that.
- d.
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End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 61, Issue 44
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:58 PM, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to maintaining a neutral point of view.
I find it a bit strange to talk of Wikimedia Commons as having a NPOV policy.
Should commons allow images which are biased?
More concretely, in terms of photography, should photographs adhere to the standards of ethics adopted by photojournalists?
++++ There are few suggestions more destructive than good ideas misapplied. Let's look at a few featured pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Racistcampaignposter1.jpg Blatantly racist and disrespectful of basic human dignity. Also historic and very encyclopedic. It illustrates the en:wiki article 'Racism', also the article on 'Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era (United States)' and the individual biographies of two politicians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:J_accuse.jpg Certainly not neutral: it accuses the president of France of gross misconduct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trumpetcallsa.jpg Again, not neutral. It's a war recruitment poster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Napoleon%27s_exile_to_Elba3.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Napoleon%27s_exile_to_Elba3.jpg Blatant trolling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iowa_and_Nebraska_lands10.jpg Try viewing this from the perspective of the indigenous peoples whose ancestral lands were being sold.
Those aren't photographs, you might say? Apply the principle only to photography? Okay, neutralize this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Woody_Guthrie_2.jpg
And although this last one is not hosted on Commons and may never be (due to German law), think of the historic value here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vote_number_1b.jpg
I'd say they all (at least at a glance) neutrally depict their subjects. Just as it's fine in Wikipedia to, for instance, quote a racist person, presenting a racist poster is perfectly fine in Commons. Creating a racist poster for commons, on the other hand, wouldn't be, in my opinion.
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:58 PM, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to maintaining a neutral point of view.
I find it a bit strange to talk of Wikimedia Commons as having a NPOV policy.
Should commons allow images which are biased?
More concretely, in terms of photography, should photographs adhere to the standards of ethics adopted by photojournalists?
++++ There are few suggestions more destructive than good ideas misapplied. Let's look at a few featured pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Racistcampaignposter1.jpg Blatantly racist and disrespectful of basic human dignity. Also historic and very encyclopedic. It illustrates the en:wiki article 'Racism', also the article on 'Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era (United States)' and the individual biographies of two politicians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:J_accuse.jpg Certainly not neutral: it accuses the president of France of gross misconduct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trumpetcallsa.jpg Again, not neutral. It's a war recruitment poster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Napoleon%27s_exile_to_Elba3.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Napoleon%27s_exile_to_Elba3.jpg Blatant trolling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iowa_and_Nebraska_lands10.jpg Try viewing this from the perspective of the indigenous peoples whose ancestral lands were being sold.
Those aren't photographs, you might say? Apply the principle only to photography? Okay, neutralize this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Woody_Guthrie_2.jpg
And although this last one is not hosted on Commons and may never be (due to German law), think of the historic value here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vote_number_1b.jpg
I'd say they all (at least at a glance) neutrally depict their subjects. Just as it's fine in Wikipedia to, for instance, quote a racist person, presenting a racist poster is perfectly fine in Commons. Creating a racist poster for commons, on the other hand, wouldn't be, in my opinion.
For a more questionable image, I'd point to this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palestinian_boy_with_toy_guy_in_Nazar...
Was this staged? What was the context? I'm not sure I could say without a doubt it is biased (and maybe that's a practical problem with a policy against bias), but it does raise questions of bias in my opinion.
2009/4/22 Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com:
The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to maintaining a neutral point of view.
I find it a bit strange to talk of Wikimedia Commons as having a NPOV policy.
Should commons allow images which are biased?
Can an image be biased out of context? It is the usage of the images that may or may not be biased, the images themselves are inherently neutral. A recruitment poster used for recruitment is biased, a recruitment poster used to illustrate that recruitment in an historical context is not.
PS Please don't quote the whole digest!
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 4:03 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
Should commons allow images which are biased?
Can an image be biased out of context?
Can text?
It is the usage of the images that may or may not be biased, the images themselves are inherently neutral.
It's not clear to me what that is supposed to mean, but from my understanding of what you're saying I think I have to disagree. I would say that http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Racistcampaignposter1.jpg, the image in itself, is biased, but that the context at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Racistcampaignposter1.jpg renders it neutral.
But this is probably shorthand for a more precise meaning. Would commons accept a racist caricature of Obama with no context, which someone uploaded as File:Picture834.jpg? Maybe so. Or maybe that would fall under some other rule. I really don't know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Racistcampaignposter1.jpg
2009/4/30 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 4:03 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
Should commons allow images which are biased?
Can an image be biased out of context?
Can text?
I suppose not - the same principles apply to Wikisource as apply to Commons.
It is the usage of the images that may or may not be biased, the images themselves are inherently neutral.
It's not clear to me what that is supposed to mean, but from my understanding of what you're saying I think I have to disagree. I would say that http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Racistcampaignposter1.jpg, the image in itself, is biased, but that the context at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Racistcampaignposter1.jpg renders it neutral.
There isn't really any context there, though. Just a few details about the source and the licensing.
But this is probably shorthand for a more precise meaning. Would commons accept a racist caricature of Obama with no context, which someone uploaded as File:Picture834.jpg? Maybe so. Or maybe that would fall under some other rule. I really don't know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Racistcampaignposter1.jpg
I would expect so. I'm not that familiar with commons policy, so there might be a rule I don't know of that would ban it, but I'd be surprised. (Well, there might be a rule about using descriptive filenames...)
On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 2:16 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/4/30 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 4:03 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Should commons allow images which are biased?
Can an image be biased out of context?
Can text?
I suppose not - the same principles apply to Wikisource as apply to Commons.
Commons allows original works. Wikisource does not. The same principle ought to apply, but the same application of that principle cannot.
It is the usage of the images
that may or may not be biased, the images themselves are inherently neutral.
It's not clear to me what that is supposed to mean, but from my understanding of what you're saying I think I have to disagree. I would
say
that
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Racistcampaignposter1.jpg ,
the image in itself, is biased, but that the context at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Racistcampaignposter1.jpg renders it neutral.
There isn't really any context there, though. Just a few details about the source and the licensing.
The very title of the page is enough of a context, in my opinion. I'm not sure what you mean by "really any" context, but there clearly is some context.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org