[Foundation-l] Sexual images of questionable provenance

[Nathan]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I disagree that we should have different standards for media
> containing nudity and sexuality. Sexuality is an important educational
> subject. One of the most important, as another poster pointed out. On
> Wikipedia alone, one would expect a range of articles on different
> issues relating to sexuality and nudity which would be illustrated
> where possible. Commons isn't simply a dumping ground for Wikipedia
> articles though, and also functions as a free media repository.
>
> To treat media differently because it contains nudity or sexuality is
> to allow our own biases and tastes to influence content. To exclude
> such media because it offends our tastes is not neutral or unbiased.
> These are legitimate topics that need to be illustrated and
> demonstrated as much as any other topic.
>

I don't think what we're discussing is taste. Quite apart from the issue of
taste and values is the issue of doing harm to the subject of our content.
The potential for harm in a sexually explicit photograph is much higher than
that for most any other class of content that comes to mind. With these
images the notions of consent and age become very important, and while the
COM:PEOPLE guideline on Commons addresses this in very broad way there seems
to be room for improvement and tightening in the control of this sort of
content across Wikimedia projects.

Educational use is certainly to be allowed and encouraged - sexual manuals,
artistic manuals, etc. are valid uses of Wikimedia projects and the
accompanying images have their place on Commons. But there is no need to
have unlimited images of the sort that theoretically could be attached to
these projects, when these images present their subjects and our community
with an array of problems.

In an ideal world, all nude images on Commons would require that the age and
consent to publish of the model be verifiable. This would not be the same as
barring nude images - indeed, it would explicitly permit the upload of these
images to Commons while ensuring that we meet our responsibility to limit
the potential for harm to living people.

David Moran mentions that we should be sure there is a current problem
before working on a solution. This is a valid position, but there are
problems with that approach. The Commons project is quite obscure to the
wider world, so we simply can't rely on those who can potentially be
offended by images of themselves to contact Commons or OTRS. Commons, and
the other projects, don't appear to have systematic procedures for requiring
that consent and age of models be verifiable. The lack of these procedures
means that the extent of any current problem is unknown - we may have
explicit images now that were published without the consent of the subject
(I suspect its quite likely that we do), or with a subject beneath the age
of consent. But because we don't check, and we don't require uploaders to
provide such information, we don't know.

Nathan




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