On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 10:16:10 -0600, Richard Holton
I don't think the issue is really about "right" or "wrong". I think that most people in most cultures would agree that "murder" is wrong (though they may define murder in differing ways). However, it would take a _very_ extreme position to suggest that we not have an article about murder in Wikipedia. Its wrongness does not at all suggest that is should not be covered.
I think of it as more of a meta issue. By deleting such images based on that type of right or wrong you are stating that pornography (nudity, sex, .. whichever applies) is right or wrong, that is, we delete it because it's wrong.
Can we write a neutral article on pornography when we make the claim that images showing nudity are wrong (by having a policy which excludes such images)?
I don't think that we can rationally. It would be a very hippo critical position which would be difficult to support with an internally consistent policy. If we can't write an internally consistent policy on the matter, we invite everyone with a possible objection to remove whatever content they dislike.
However, I suspect you'd find much less agreement about including in that article a photo or a movie showing an actual murder. Again, this is not about right or wrong. It's about appropriateness. In this case, you might find substantial cultural variation, as well as differences of opinion within some cultures.
Well the matter is a little more complex, in that I don't think there would be all that much objection to a murder clip cut down to the bare minimum required to be informative beyond the lack of a murder clip. ... Also, I can't even think of a situation where a murder clip would even be as informative as the autofelletiao image.
Making a decision to include or exclude such an image/movie from an article is not a question of censorship. It's a question of what is appropriate, which is subjective and will vary between cultures.
I don't agree, You can just as easily make the same claim about text "making the decision to include or exclude such text from an article is not a question of censorship. It's a question of what is appropriate". Images are not all that different from text.
To, for example, insist that an article on murder _must_ include an image/movie showing murder if a free, informational one is available, is to become enslaved to the concept of censorship as much as insisting that the article must not have such an image/movie. Either way, we are sacrificing our ability to apply editorial judgment.
This is a silly argument because it's addressing a point I have never made and will never make. I've never argued that an article must contain anything, what it contains is a matter of concern for it's editors. My complaint is that we are talking about what articles may not contain.