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

[Neil Kandalgaonkar]

On 5/16/11 8:21 PM, Cary Bass wrote:
> We need an active group of contributors who represent at the very least
> some cross-section of not only Commons contributors but of interested
> re-users of Commons content to actively monitor and maintain the POTD.
> This is not the first time that something inappropriate for Main Page
> content has appeared and I doubt it will be the last.

That is definitely a practical solution. POTD are scheduled long in 
advance, so that could solve the problems here pretty quickly. The image 
in question is, IMO, unambiguously inappropriate for Commons, and this 
shouldn't have been a difficult debate.

On the other hand it feels a bit wrong to me. In that case we're asking 
groups that are relatively underrepresented in Wiki culture to take on 
the role of policing. I feel like they ought to have some rights to a 
welcoming environment as a baseline. That said, in a wiki context, it 
seems to be impossible to achieve such baseline freedoms, as long as the 
offenders have large amounts of free time.

So some people are going to have to make the sacrifices to change the 
culture.

Another worry: if there's a "quality control board", officially or 
unofficially, they can start to take that role too seriously or become 
captured by various radical factions. But I guess we have to take that 
chance.


-- 
Neil Kandalgaonkar ( ) <neilk at wikimedia.org>