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

[Milos Rancic]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 9:08 PM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 7/24/10 9:45 PM, Milos Rancic wrote:
>> In other words "cultural context" is usually just an
>> excuse for POV pushing of various kinds.
>>
>>
> Actually, I think the opposite is true. Right now we impose our
> arbitrary Western moral standards on the rest of the world, and because
> those standards are our own, they are transparent to us. For example, we
> are very sensitive to issues of privacy and child pornography, but not
> to issues of religious sensitivity or violence for example. I'm
> definitely a supporter of "no censorship" (I founded WikiProject
> Wikipedians Against Censorship), but I'm under no illusions that we
> don't have our own "cultural context". I also don't think offering users
> and/or projects the ability to implement filtering equals censorship. No
> one complains about Flickr or Google being "censored" just because they
> offer filtering. Frankly, we're already filtering content, even on
> en.wiki, but only according to a "default" Western/American POV. We use
> line drawings instead of photos in articles on sex positions. We toned
> down the explicitness of the image we used to illustrate Lolicon. We
> tend to avoid putting porn, swastikas, and photos of dead bodies on the
> Main Page. In our view, this is simple editorial judgement. But other
> cultures could view this as POV-pushing just as much as we view efforts
> to filter religiously-offensive imagery as POV-pushing. So let's not kid
> ourselves. We have our own cultural biases and standards (which is not
> necessarily a bad thing). We don't have to argue that the sky is falling
> just because people are asking that their own cultural standards be
> accommodated in some way. IMO, filtering technology (if implemented
> correctly) is actually a good thing for those of us who want to keep
> Wikipedia uncensored. By letting people adapt Wikipedia to their own
> particular uses, they don't have to impose their POV on the rest of us.

I absolutely agree with you, except with the point that censorship
problem of one "cultural context" should be solved by the censorship
according to other "cultural contexts". We should work on fixing our
problem; we shouldn't create more problems.

The only line which is reasonable are local laws. If pornography is
not forbidden in Chile, we shouldn't do anything in relation to
pornographic content in Chile. If photos of Tienanmen protests are
forbidden in China, we should remove them for population from China.
Anything else is pushing particular POV or to be nice "cultural
context". (BTW, whenever I hear the phrase "cultural context" in this
sense, I am closer to the position from the quote misattributed to
Goering: When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.)

And thanks to pointing out to the "editorial judgment". There is no
excuse for any kind of "editorial judgment" which promotes censorship
on one encyclopedia which main goal is to be neutral.