[Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 61, Issue 44

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/4/30 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 4:03 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> > Should commons allow images which are biased?
>>
>> Can an image be biased out of context?
>
>
> Can text?

I suppose not - the same principles apply to Wikisource as apply to Commons.

>> It is the usage of the images
>> that may or may not be biased, the images themselves are inherently
>> neutral.
>
>
> It's not clear to me what that is supposed to mean, but from my
> understanding of what you're saying I think I have to disagree.  I would say
> that
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Racistcampaignposter1.jpg,
> the image in itself, is biased, but that the context at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Racistcampaignposter1.jpg renders it
> neutral.

There isn't really any context there, though. Just a few details about
the source and the licensing.

> But this is probably shorthand for a more precise meaning.  Would commons
> accept a racist caricature of Obama with no context, which someone uploaded
> as File:Picture834.jpg?  Maybe so.  Or maybe that would fall under some
> other rule.  I really don't know.
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Racistcampaignposter1.jpg>

I would expect so. I'm not that familiar with commons policy, so there
might be a rule I don't know of that would ban it, but I'd be
surprised. (Well, there might be a rule about using descriptive
filenames...)