[Foundation-l] Minors and sexual explicit stuff

[stevertigo]

Andrew Garrett <agarrett at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure where you get the idea that it's somehow inappropriate
> for minors to be viewing or working on images depicting human nudity
> and sexuality. Cultural sensibilities on this matter are inconsistent,
> irrational and entirely lacking in substance.

Andrew, consider the way that a reasonable parent (often conservative)
would look at that statement. We don't in fact show too much in the
way of "sexuality" - and the truth is that we censor images all the
time, and quite *rightly so. I recall in particular some comments by
one of our founders when he unilaterally deleted an image of someone
stimulating (or pretending to stimulate) their own penis with their
mouth. To me, the poster of the image was thinking more about his
perceived freedom to gratuitously express his own concepts of
gratuity. The deleter, on the other hand was simply thinking about
what is or is not actually good for the project - a subjective
consideration, true, but nevertheless one which we need to make all
the time.

Consider also that the distinction you refer to as "irrational and
entirely lacking in substance" is just your own POV. I do not agree
with it, because its inaccurate: The distinction itself is *arbitrary,
and it is due to related conceptual *ambiguity that this arbitrariness
manifests itself in ways that appear "irrational and entirely lacking
in substance." Thus while the "inconsisten[cy]" (and what about
international law is not "consistent?") does create legal and moral
*ambiguity, that is not to say anything but the results are actually
irrational. The current standard is a distinction between maturity
(18+) and minority (17-), and it exists for reasons that vastly exceed
the scope of this discussion. We can agree that in reality, it is rare
that issues involving "minor" children are treated the same as those
involving "minor" teenagers. But that is not to say we can ignore
concerns regarding to former, just to give support to a concept of
greater freedom for the latter.

Just as the excessively prudish camp creates ambiguities with their
language, the excessively libertine camp does much the same thing. Any
substantive discussion requires resolving those ambiguities through
being clear. There are interesting philosophical ideas at work here as
well, and the fact of the matter is that we do delete articles all the
time for being "un-encyclopedic" - the debates around whether images
are "encyclopedic"
have largely shifted to Commons, which has a much broader purpose -
perhaps one that does not match that of the encyclopedia.

-Stevertigo