-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello Kat, I'm not used to the level of finesse of your thoughts and this time I chose to think aloud to help me. The result is this long mail that other may find useful. Maybe. Please let me know if they're not, or if I misunderstood you. As for the verbose mode, it is due to your inspiring words! Be warned: random thoughts ahead. Don't read if evolving, long chain of thoughts bother you. On 11/05/2010 01:43, Kat Walsh wrote: So you think that we can judge the intention itself through this common sense that many pretend to be rare? You think that a qualitative, subjective, honest, consensual, fair, libertarian, dialogable judgment is possible? Well, I do too, though I'm not sure if general consensus can be easily achieved on this basis. We can detect persons that are trespassing their rights to act as they wish: when they're playing with our feelings and disturb us without respect, without waiting for our invitation. We should avoid that and I think any admin and user can police that. In fact a rule can easily be stated, published and understood, then applied, until it becomes a common netiquette. The admins are probably already acting this way, I suppose. But are you saying that "works that are primarily intended to shock, arouse, or offend" lose "informational or educational value" because we judge they have this bad intent or are you saying that because of this bad intent, "informational or educational values" are neglected? Should we judge by the encyclopedic value and/or by the negative emotions produced and/or intended? In the later case, I'm not sure that arousal is a negative emotion. I'm surprised that the common sense position "protect sensitive persons" (ie, children) has been several time exposed here and no one gave a voice to the common sense position "sex is good". Are we ashamed to express it? Is it too delicate to say and should we talk with some implicit values, never to be mentioned? I think arousal is good, actually. (if chosen and wanted by the person). And well, we should inform about all positive emotions by allowing them to be felt, so that everybody can choose the kind of life he/she wants to experience. Sexual pleasure, free libido, acceptation of the body, free of guilt, they're important states of mind to be reached. I'm not saying that we should impose them, but we shouldn't censor them, so that everybody can realize itself in the ways of sex. Sorry for the prude ears here. I hope we're adult enough to talk freely about pornography (or more generally, what is obscene to someone because it is a forbidden thing that is pleasant to experiment). Yes, pornography is good. Pornography industry? Dubious, because there is too much prostitution and lack of respect. But there is a sane erotic art and culture. Sane because it respects humanity, not because it is legal or not, showing hair or not, 2cm of skin or 5, etc. I'm not inciting anyone to do anything illegal here, legal considerations must be considered, but they should not determine our principles which must come from ourselves. If we're going to judge intentions, then we'll recognize that what's transmitting positive emotions like joy or arousal is not necessarily bad or good. It depends on the presence of intentions and the effects channeled to private interests - generally dominating ones. (ie, you can idiotize a population with propaganda using positive emotions). If that's the point of an image, to manipulate emotionally, I have serious doubts about categorizing it as an unbiased, neutral, potential illustration. The problem is that finding intention where there's none is what humans do best. Judging the intention is a heavy, usually subjective responsibility to give to admins. Unless we find a very simple question to ask in order to judge the intention of a image, we won't reach unanimous consensus, which should be an ideal of the mission. We're far from this ideal, I guess a century behind, but it's good to know where to aim. Judging not by the intent, but the actual emotional impact (ie, empowering each user to be able to warn others, like a Stumbleupon system), may lead to manipulation too. I could expand. Back to the short term considerations: even a pornographic picture deserves at least a trial. They have rights, you know :) The model of discussing for deletion or undeletion seems to be an excellent model, though we need to refine our communication (not manipulation) techniques to reach greater consensus. One of the current, apparent problems was that Mr. Wales didn't respect this discursive-consensual approach. Now that this issue is past, or at least independent of the censorship issue, we should ask ourselves if this discussion system is satisfying. The board said it was not. That the community was not able to sort the pornography problem (if there is one). We should start a real dialogue between the community, the Board and Mr. Wales to understand why this issue seems so urgent and important (or not) to each and why the current solutions are not satisfying to everyone. Some arguments were proposed, but were swallowed in the heat of the Founder flag discussion. But as a compendium of knowledge That is, we must be true, fair and bold (even when criticized. No. Above all when criticized). The honest man cannot be shy: the shame, the fear of critics and hostility must have no effect on him. And that's the attitude one should have towards unfair censoring forces: ignore them and keep informing with respectful attitude towards everybody, complainers included. If I understand correctly your underlying thoughts. Difficulties: some minds have difficulties to know how to treat a topic without external criteria. Some don't. If you propose subjective judgments based on feelings, some Thinkers [1] may be at loss, for example. I agree this is respectable. However I don't understand why he doesn't take a few hours to discuss (that is, answer our questions and genuinely ask our opinion). Showing respect for people you don't want to talk too is strange, though still respectable. But I wish I knew why. Unless it is an illustration of a topic that is supposed to be about arousal, of course, which would have a significant informative value. I agree with this common sense. The context is also important: if the intention is justified, - ie: moving the user when illustrating an emotion would be an encyclopedic act -, but if it wasn't solicited - most of the wikipedia articles being emotionally neutral, this should be the case -, it must be removed or directed. We can see by this that a repository without context is harder to judge. That's why used images must be supposed well used, and if not, it's a problem of local moderation by the corresponding chapter using the image. So no removing should be done on used image by the Commons admins. As for external sites using the images, since we can't enforce our policies, we must judge the meaning in the context of the sites and decide, or, if it's too much work, we can choose to ignore what they do. So, the admins of Commons should only be able to remove unused resources: now what policy to apply? I explore an idea to answer: to apply quotas and use the following criteria to trim the rest when there is to much "noise" in the signal: How potentially useful is the illustration? (that is, how universal or how specific to a topic versus how random) Can we judge its quality? (resolution, composition, artistic value, cultural interest) How "pure" is the image? Does it illustrate clearly only one concept or is it ambiguous or even multiple? I guess Commons admin are already doing that... A way to test if an image should be deleted in Commons: during the discussion of the delete proposal, try to name the concept it should be kept under because it represents it so well that it must be considered a good illustration. Then vote yes or no for each concept-candidate. If a candidate obtains a majority of yes, it is kept. Of course what it illustrates must be worth to be the encylopedia: that is, penis images must be haven in the database because it is something that exist, in different states and shapes, and humanity has a right to be informed about it. But then no need to have 100 images of the exact same or an image of the penis of a random guy whose sole interest is to pertain to him. That is, "it's his" should not be an valid argument to keep a penis image, because the encyclopedia tries to be universalist, to understand the world outside us, not to focus on navels. But I digress. So yeah, "no more than necessary". Wise words. That's a sane memory and I wonder how many among us are really shocked by your words and would prefer not reading you: I'm having the impression there are very few conservator minds in this foundation-1 list. It would be interesting to talk to someone who is offended to understand better why and how. So we can find a suitable compromise (if any). So honest labeling with responsible user. But isn't a search engine with filter a tool using that? What kind of filter are you talking about that you reject so definitely? A "prefilter", before the choice of categories is made? What do you object to negative key words like in Google search, for example? Oh, I know, what you're rejecting is the fact that it's not a keyword, but a preestablished list of what is good to see and bad to see, the word "safe" being a screen to hide what they don't want us to know. Is it your meaning with filter? But... this would lead to self-responsible people! How would they be led if they're accustomed to govern themselves and cope with emotional situation resting on their own choices? An idea to make one of them more successful: a direct link - similar to simple.english.wikipedia - to childpedia were things are explained with an adapted pedagogy: less frightening, less abstract words, more pictures and animations, with voices explaining, etc. Since it's part of wikipedia, even the child can choose to access the "adult" version, possibly more hardcore. So no imposed censorship, but two possible tones of wikipedia, easily switched. So you think that the current system is good, that it can be helped with tools, but there is not need to lock completely the possibility of seeing unwanted things. Empowering the user is enough, even if rare accidents may still happen, since the advantages outweigh the small risk. That's what I call a courageous, sane position. Everybody who prefer to overprotect himself or someone is driven by fear and will oppress his community to "secure" his medium and media. A few hundreds of protective laws later, you have no right to risk and no joy to live and just an adventure-less life. I found your words full of wisdom. I hope mine are helpful to somebody. I know my mental thoughts may sound obvious and uninteresting to some, and obscure and tortuous to others: there are good reasons for that, and I can't avoid them currently, but I have some ideas to explore to reach a clearer way to express myself. Thank you for the people that read me this far. It's hard to share unsollicited opinions: one has to assume that maybe his or her own thoughts have a value to others, which feels quite arrogant and egocentric. [1] the more I think about the issues of this censorship/judging issues, the more I find the MBTI dichotomies useful to understand the compromises that must be achieved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Four_dichotomies (I'm not a jungian fan, mostly because I don't know much of his theories and I'm skeptic about mystical explanations)

Kat Walsh wrote: I think this point is well worth re-inforcing. What you describe is the innocent curiosity of youth. We all know that; I think. The one really strong argument we should remember when asked by educators as to why they should feel comfortable in directing their students to wikipedia, is the counterargument: "Do you have problems directing your students to a library?" Libraries have stuff in them that are infact likely more shocking than wikipedia carries. I have told this story likely a few times that some folks on this mailing list might remember, but it bears retelling. As a pre-pubescent young boy my maths teacher, the legendary reformer of pedagogical practise in the teaching of maths, and specifically spatial geometry, Jaakko "Jaska" Joki, actively encouraged me to study above the level usually offered to my age level, and specifically to go to university libraries, saying that the librarians will not turn away even young folks. Trawling through the shelves of the Helsinki University Library, one of my shocking, but also gratifying experiences was finding the brick sized (understatement if anything) work, "No Laughing Matter : Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor" by: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershon_Legman I hesitate to make grand sweeping claims, but I have to say that book has such depths of scatology etc., that anything wikipedia offers, very rarely exceeds. And -- here is the moral of the story -- one asks, has any educator ever had even the second thought about recommending libraries as character building, civilizing, an in general raising ones sophistication and learning? I dare say not. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen P. S. (And I have said this too before.) Gershon Legman is the man credited with coining the phrase "Make Love, Not War!"