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

[Yonatan Horan]

First of all I'd like to thank you for your response.

On 3/9/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
> 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.


The problem is nobody is using the excuse of notability. They aren't
claiming the article isn't notable, they are just claiming it should be
deleted because it has something to do with porn.

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.


It's sort of hard to protect these principles when there are admins who will
speedy delete articles and while there is a group of admins that oppose
them, nobody is going to try to create an article on something to do with
porn as it will be speedy deleted and he [may] be banned as a result. Of
course, the other admins might then restore the article and start wheel
warring but I think that will disrupt stability much more than foundation
intervention will. Besides, if there weren't such admins (or those admins
will refrain from wheel warring), what would be your suggestion as to
defending these principles?

Contrary to some people on here, most of whom are only speakers of English,
I am not a huge fan of project autonomy as then each project (at least for
the smaller ones) is basically governed by the rules of the first people who
registered to it. I definitely don't see how someone can endorse de-facto
rules as the community is the one that has the power to decide policy, you
can't just have a bunch of admins deciding policy on their own... and I
thought that admins aren't special users. In a small project, if somebody
tries to change the current situation, they will, eventually (in one way or
another) probably be forced off the project until there are enough people
who manage to achieve administrator status who prevent this from happening.

Anyway, I am totally for this idea of a Wikimedia-wide elected ArbCom. The
problem with such a committee would be the language barrier (especially with
a project like the Yiddish Wikipedia which has gotten way too much attention
from stewards, etc. for its size and there really aren't many people who
speak that language, let alone trusted users).

Thanks,
Yonatan

--
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
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