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

Tue May 17 11:54:53 UTC 2011

I'm going to add my voice to the "yeah, that wasn't cool".  To give a bit of
an anecdote, John Vandenberg and I were doing a demonstration of Commons to
some librarians and cultural curators yesterday, and it was a bit of a rude
shock seeing that particular image on the frontpage.  One of the more
elderly contributors remarked on it to me privately in a negative sense
afterwards, all I could do was look embarassed and say "Yes, it's a bit of a
racy image, isn't it.  Can't imagine how anyone thought that would be a good
idea".  That's probably one contributor who won't be beating a path to our
door in the future.

And, at the risk of editorialising here, those who are responding to this
criticism by claiming that we're asking for "censorship" or that the freedom
to plaster graphic images over the Commons frontpage is a battle for liberty
along the lines of the fight against slavery or for universal suffrage...
need to take an aspirin and have a good lie down.  Nobody is claiming that
such images are not within Commons' scope; they quite clearly are, just like
pictures of penises, medical procedures, and other images that people might
find unpleasant are.  Should they be in scope for the main page though?  I
don't think so, the same as a picture of a genital piercing, Osama bin
Laden's bloodied corpse, or other pictures that could possibly cause
innocent people to get in trouble should be out of main page scope.  As a
community, I think most of us are mature enough to apply a common sense test
to these things, and common sense would indicate that that image was likely
to be one that would cause needless offense to people and hurt the project.

Cheers,
Craig

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Tobias Oelgarte <
tobias.oelgarte at googlemail.com> wrote:

>  If we buy this contributions with a loss of liberty. Then yes. Nothing is
> as worthy as liberty.
>
> Am 17.05.2011 10:22, schrieb Gnangarra:
>
> Is this picture worth more than 137,000 news images,
> Is this picture worth the loss of xontributions from GLAM organisations
> Is this picture worth the cost of denying other contributors the
> opportunity to participate.
>
> On 17 May 2011 16:16, Tobias Oelgarte <tobias.oelgarte at googlemail.com>wrote:
>
>> Am 17.05.2011 02:34, schrieb 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.
>> >
>> >
>>  Another board for decisions? Just leave the communities alone. They can
>> handle it very well on their own. Any board i know failed in so many
>> points. An good example from the German Wikipedia is the
>> "Schiedsgericht". This is the last call if some users can't be stopped
>> from offending each other. But this board isn't trusted at all and
>> constantly breaks down. Just because it is seen as needless.
>>
>> What im seeing here is the construction of an government which isn't
>> even democratic, getting very close to a dictatorship. Or as we said in
>> the GDR: One party, elected by itself.
>>
>> Tobias
>>
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>> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>>
>
>
>
> --
> GN.
> Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com
> Gn. Blogg: http://gnangarra.wordpress.com
>
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