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

[Alec Conroy]

Hi all.  Thanks so much for all the encouragement my last email received.
Replying to Ting's:

****Point 1--  NOTCENSORED isn't what you think it is:****

So, the first thing to realize is that our NOTCENSORED policies are
far more narrow than you seem to suspect:

• In the case of traditional fishing techniques or  traditional
medicine, no one claims those subjects are too offensive to cover. So
our NOTCENSORED policy can offer absolutely no guidance one way or the
other.

• Our "No pedophilia advocacy" doesn't apply to our content. Indeed,
we do cover pedophilia advocacy when it's encyclopedic (e.g.
[[NAMBLA]]).

• The debate over at Acehnese Wikipedia over Muhammad IS partially
about censorship.  But it's also about whether local-projects have
self-determination via CONSENSUS.    I feel Acehnese Wikipedia should
be allowed to run their project as they think best, including revising
or even outright rejecting their own version of NOTCENSORED if their
true consensus supports doing so.  (Ideally they could used some name
other than  "Wikipedia",  so that the "Wikipedia"  brand would be
preserved for NPOV/NOTCENSORED projects-- but in truth, even that
doesn’t really disturb me.

So, we're substantially less fundamentalist and fanatical than I think
you believe we are.  NOTCENSORED isn't a universal call to total
inclusionism, it's just a reminder to not let  potential-offensive
make decisions for us.

Look at the following dialogue:

Question:  Should we host content X?
Answer:    No, because I find it offensive.
Reply:       Offensiveness isn't a valid reason, per NOTCENSORED.
Instead, ask-- is this content useful?

That's it!  That's all NOTCENSORED is.  The  NOTCENSORED policy just
means we don't let cultural taboos dictate our editorial decisions.
It's a core value that is really not as radical as you seem to think
it is.

****Part 2:   What a NOTCENSORED debate looks like:

So, let's consider the EnWiki article [[Muhammad]] and the debate over
its use of potentially-offensive images.

Arguing that we should "delete all images because they're offensive"
is automatically rebutted by citing "Wikipedia isn't censored".

But that's not the end of the discussion, it's only the very
beginning.  Once we agree that offensiveness isn't a valid criteria,
we still have to tackle the actual work of making the best possible
article.

 So, just a few of the current compromises that have been reached on
[[Muhammad]]:

* We all agreed that the top image should be Muhammad's name written
in beautiful calligraphy, since that's a traditionally depicted in
Islam and reflects its anti-depiction stance.
* We agreed to be careful that our images weren't unnecessarily large
or unreasonably numerous.
* We decided, throughout the main article, to rely primarily upon
images from Islamic cultures-- they seemed to best illustrate Muhammad
himself, rather than using him as a just a symbol of Islam.
* We agreed that Western images tell us more about
"Muhammad-as-viewed-from-the-West", and thus we only used them when in
the "Western Views of Muhammad" section.
* We all agreed that controversial cartoons of Muhammad had very very
little to tell us about Muhammad himself, and thus had no place in the
Muhammad article.
* We made a Frequently-asked-questions list to try to sincerely
explain that we truly we weren't trying to cause offense or be
anti-Muslim.  We also explained about image filtering and how a reader
can decide for themselves what to view.
* We recognized the need for on-going communication created a special
talk page just to engage in respectful dialogue with people concerned
about the use of Muhammad images.
* Most of us tried very very hard to be as empathic and caring as
possible in those discussions.  Indeed, we routinely pointed to the
Christian taboos like pornography and piss-christ, using our coverage
of those taboos in order to prove that we weren't singling out
Muslims.

So, in practice, NOTCENSORED doesn't make things black and white at
all.  There are lots of shades of gray. There's respectful debate and
civil discussion.   There's an evolving mutual understanding between
groups.  We came together and hammered out a well-thought-out
consensus that struck a balance between our sincere desire not to
offend and our essential mission to inform.

You may not think it's the perfect solution, and neither do I.  I'm a
free-speecher, so I'm not happy that we made agreed to make the images
as smal as we did   Of course, others feel the images are too big.
The consensus there will continue to evolve over time-- but the
process basically worked.

Except for new users,  our Muslim editors don't expect that their own
offense can justify deleting legitimately educational images.
Similarly, our free-speech editors don't expect that  NOTCENSORED
would justify inserting the anti-Muslim cartoons into the article.
Everyone can see there's a consensus in place, and just about everyone
understands that their individual opinions shouldn't be able to
overrule that consensus.

So, specific debates involving NOTCENSORED do come up all the time.
Through civility, mutual respect, and consensus, those disputes are
routinely resolved without much strife.   Been happening for nine
years, and it works.

**** Part 3:  So where'd all that anger come from?  ****

If NOTCENSORED doesn't usually result in incivility, what was it about
the NOPORN proposal that made things so intensely heated and so
'fanatical'???


Earlier I something like:

>>Many of us thought that, via projects like Wikimedia, we were helping
>>to eliminate censorship from the rest of the world.
>> …
>> Some of us are here because we want to help STOP censorship around the world,
>>not help perpetuate it,  and certainly not become subjected to it ourselves.
(my original words have been revised for clarity)

I think you read my original words as something far more radical than I meant.

Basically, I was just asserting that:  "Everyone has the right to
freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers."  (language from Universal Declaration of
Human Rights)

I just meant that I do hope that the existence of WMF will, to some
extent, help promote this most fundamental of human rights.

Since the word 'censorship' appears to have a much broader meaning to
you than to me, it may have seemed that I was suggesting something
very controversial.   In truth, I don't think I meant anything
particularly controversial though (unless of course the Universal
Declaration of human rights is itself controversial).

> I am not comparing any Wikimedian with the Red Guards.
> But read the lines above make me flinch.
> A stigma from my childhood.

I'll try to talk about this more in a private, but speaking only for
myself, I think this was a very helpful statement, in that it sort of
jolted me into seeing things from your point of view.  I know it's
sometimes bad manners to compare anyone to nazis or their analogs, but
in this case, it furthered the discussion and promoted empathy.

Having read your words, I can certainly see why the recent debates
might have provoked that kind of emotion.   In particular, there's
been a lot of talk about removing people from leadership for having
beliefs that differ from the community's beliefs.  From your vantage
point, I'm sure have looked a little fanatical purge to root out
leaders who differed from the community.

But--  I don't think the 'fanaticism' is over NOTCENSORED itself.   We
do welcome a diversity of beliefs on NOTCENSORED.   Lots and lots of
people have expressed the belief that Muhammad images shouldn't be on
the Muhammad article, and we've never asked anyone to give up any of
their user rights over that.   People question the reasonable limits
of NOTCENSORED all the time, and those discussions are usually  quite
civil.

The reason things go so heated wasn't because of NOTCENSORED, it was
because of CONSENSUS.

At several points, we were told that Jimmy's new NOPORN policy would
be enforced as policy even though consensus had firmly rejected it.

THAT is where the really really fanatical emotions come from. So long
as consensus is in place, all ideas on changing NOTCENSORED are
totally open to discussion, include the idea to remove NOTCENSORED
entirely.

But CONSENSUS is different.  Consensus IS the project.  People have
donated their time, energy, and money-- and as a result, they do feel
a certain very-limited 'ownership'.  The idea that this is _our_ site,
rather than any one individual's site, is the fuel Wikipedia runs on.
That idea is why people people participate and why people donate.

When Jimmy acted as if his own opinions should trump a strong
community consensus-- THAT's when things got fanatical and uncivil.
He made it clear that his new NOPORN policy wasn't, in his eyes, up
for debate-- so people stopped bothering to debate it with him.
Instead, we started requesting resignations and contacting other
organizations that would be interested in becoming the new host for
Wikipedia-as-it-is.

NOTCENSORED isn't what made things so black-and-white--  CONSENSUS is
the black and white issue.    NOPORN was on one side of the debate and
community consensus was on the other.  By trying to enforce NOPORN,
people essentially tried to ignore and subvert CONSENSUS.

Only when it looked like CONSENSUS was going out the window did the
poo really hit the fan.

--

And I don't think there's anything specific to this particular issue.
It's not as if the fanatical objections all came from a Porn-centered
wikiproject or from editors who upload porn.   The objects came from
all over the community, from people like me who had never even
uploaded a single potentially-pornographic image.

If the board tried to forcibly overrule ANY sufficiently-cherished
consensus, you'd see similar behavior from the community--  the
petitions being circulated, with people constructing guillotines and
dunce caps, and arguing that heads need to roll to restore community
consensus to its rightful place.

The 'fanaticism' wasn't because a few people had an opinion that
differed from the community's established consensus-- the fanaticism
came out when they tried to actually ENFORCE a new policy by ignoring
a very strong and long-standing consensus.

Alec