[Foundation-l] Censorship: Speedy deletion of porn articles

[Erik Moeller]

On 3/8/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It has recently (about two months ago) come to my attention that articles on
> the Hebrew Wikipedia are speedy deleted. I translated the Jenna Jameson
> article from the English Wikipedia and it was very quickly speedy deleted
> and I was indefinitely blocked due to being a sockpuppet of some guy (of
> course no checkuser request was done). By the way, I don't particularly like
> porn articles or anything of the sort; in fact, I don't believe I've ever
> edited a porn article on the enwp which I'm very active on.

I'm personally one of the most committed anti-censorship advocates you
will find. As an English Wikipedia community member, I have repeatedly
argued for inclusion of controversial materials, from Abu Ghraib
photos to quality illustrations of genitals and sexual practices.

That said, getting too involved in the content practices of a
particular Wikipedia is also dangerous -- beyond some basic principle,
it can disrupt a community, and lead to forks and tension. I do
believe one of these principles should be: "Wikipedia is not censored
for the protection of minors." That will not change the fact that some
will simply use "notability" as an excuse to eliminate content they
find prurient.

I think we should enshrine principles such as "NPOV" and "not
censored" - which are generally agreed upon - and leave it up to
community members to defend these principles. It is possible that it
could make sense to have a third instance, a sort of Wikimedia-wide
elected Arbitration Committee, to deal with long standing conflicts
that cannot be resolved locally.

-- 
Peace & Love,
Erik

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