[Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content

[Andreas Kolbe]

> From: Ting Chen <wing.philopp at gmx.de>
> What I find not convincing is the slogan "No censorship". I
> think this is a bad argument.

Actually, I wish we'd rename [[WP:NOTCENSORED]] in en:WP to something more sensible, for similar reasons. It is too often used as a justification for poor editorial decisions. 

--"What? You are saying I can't have the goatse image in the goatse article? Wikipedia is not censored, you know!"

This is how we ended up with that image in the goatse article, losing all sight of the fact that no reliably published newspaper, computer magazine, book or encyclopedia out there in the real world would be very likely to consider it remotely appropriate to illustrate an article on that shock site with the shock image itself. 

We have strong guidelines that our texts should reflect the most reliable sources, but no guideline that says that our approach to illustration should reflect the approaches used in the most reliable sources on the subject. Instead, we have [[WP:NOTCENSORED]] ... 

Andreas
(Jayen466)

--- On Fri, 23/7/10, Ting Chen <wing.philopp at gmx.de> wrote:

> From: Ting Chen <wing.philopp at gmx.de>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Friday, 23 July, 2010, 13:54
>   Hello,
> 
> (all below are my private opinion.)
> 
> > I'm strongly supporting the "No censorship" camp, and
> as of such i am
> > against any wiki-wide measures that would make content
> unavailable, with the
> > argument that people can choose whether or not to look
> at offensive content,
> > but people cannot choose to look at content that
> others deem offensive if it
> > isn't included. I would, however, strongly support a
> system that gives users
> > a choice to censor if they wish. It should be possible
> to categorize commons
> > in such a way that certain images can be blocked. For
> example, a user might
> > choose to block "images of Muhammad", while allowing
> surgery related images
> > (Others might swap there if they wish).
> 
> For me the merit of such a system is that we treat the user
> as somebody 
> who takes responsibility for himself, who makes decision
> for himself.
> 
> What I find not convincing is the slogan "No censorship". I
> think this 
> is a bad argument.
> 
> First of all it is not true. In every language version of
> every 
> Wikimedia project, there are rules that can be considered
> as 
> "censorship". The definition of censorship itself is
> difficult. Reading 
> through all language versions in Wikipedia that I can
> understand, I 
> found no definition of censorship that is really
> satisfying. Let me take 
> some example. Ar-wp decides per community concensus not to
> use Mohammed 
> images. Seen in the light of en-wp rules, this is a
> censorship. If we 
> maintain "no censorship" then ar-wp must remove that
> concensus. If not, 
> we cannot maintain the "no censorship" slogan. En-wp has
> the "null 
> tolerance to pedophilia" policy. For centain activist this
> is certainly 
> a censorship. If I draw a detailed educational sketch about
> how to build 
> a mail bomb, put it under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and upload it on
> Commons, it 
> would certainly quite quickly be "censored" away.
> 
> Beside of this, there is a second reason why this is not a
> good 
> argument. "No censorship" is an overkill argument. Either
> you are "for" 
> censorship, or you are "not for" censorship. It is quite
> digital, black 
> or white. Searching for a community concensus cannot work
> in such black 
> and white manner. The result of a community discussion and
> concensus 
> searching is mostly something between black and white. The
> "no 
> censorship" argument put every discussion to an end. It
> ignores every 
> nuance that is possible between the arguments. Maybe a user
> is against 
> every political censorship but is uncomfortable about
> having religious 
> insulting images. Is he "for" or "not for" censorship?
> 
> I think everyone of us has a different opinion about what
> is 
> educational, or appropriate and what is no more educational
> or no more 
> appropriate. Let us don't talk about if someone is "for" or
> "not for" 
> censoring, let us talk about what we can find together
> guidelines for 
> what we think should be ok for our projects and what not.
> 
> What also made me very sad in this thread is to see that
> some community 
> members obviously had taken a very foundamentalistic
> position. Either 
> you agree with me, otherwise I will quit and fork. What
> difference is 
> this agree-with-me-or-I-will-boykott-you position to the
> ace-wp template 
> of boykotting Wikipedia because it contains Mohammed image?
> Refusing 
> every discussion, no compromise at all, I find this a very
> strange 
> stance for a Wikimedian.
> 
> Greetings
> 
> -- 
> Ting
> 
> Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/
> 
> 
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