[Commons-l] Fwd: [Gendergap] Photo of the Day on Wikimedia Commons

[Sarah Stierch]

On 5/16/2011 9:04 AM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:
> On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Chris McKenna <cmckenna at sucs.org 
> <mailto:cmckenna at sucs.org>> wrote:
>
>     Am I alaone in completely failing to understand what the fuss is
>     about?
>     The image is not pornographic, exploitative, illegal or otherwise
>     inapropriate for featured picture status.
>
>
> The image is also not artistically, historically, or culturally 
> significant, unlike all the other examples you cited. The only reason 
> it's featured is because it's sexually arousing to anime fanboys who 
> happen to dominate the culture of Wikimedia Commons. I don't need to 
> crawl into a semantic rabbit-hole to defend this observation. I think 
> its obvious to any reasonable person. If the image would be 
> embarrassing to pull up in front of a classful of students, it 
> shouldn't be on the Commons Main Page.
>

As with a number of us - this is a big concern. While I had originally 
posted this to the mailing list for gender gap discussion, this is 
another of the reasons.

Like I said, which I'm having a feeling wasn't even read by many - you 
cannot pull THAT front page of Commons up in a classroom or educational 
environment and have it celebrated by a middle school teacher. Some of 
her kids might think it's "cool" or "hot", but, if I'd be one pissed 
parent. All it takes is one pissed parent, who overreacts, to report to 
the news that "my kid was shown porn at school/museum/church/camp/after 
school workshops/whatever' and all hell will break lose.

#wikilove,

Sarah

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