[Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions

[Ting Chen]

Hello Milos,

At first to the two points you pointed out:
* No, I didn't mention that sexually explicit content should be deleted 
and I still think the criteria should not be if something is sexually 
explicit. The criteria should be if it has educational value. This is 
what I said in my statement and this is what I think is correct. This is 
also what is in the statement of the board. And as far as I can say, 
this is what Jimmy's intention when he started the action. It is 
certainly possible that Jimmy in doing his work had made some false 
decisions. We all know that he do make failures. Maybe he didn't 
researched the context of a particular image, maybe in some cases his 
criteria was too narrow. One can discuss those on the case basis. But 
just because as we all know that Jimmy make failures it does not prevent 
me to give him my full support in doing things.
* Yes, I still think that this feature is correct. There are discussions 
inside of the board and different opinions about what such a feature 
should look like and if it is appropriate. The statement I made during 
the elections is my opinion, it does not necessarily reflect the opinion 
of all board members.

To answer your question: We had scheduled for our April meeting the 
topic about project scope and community health / movement role. 
Unfortunately because of troubles caused by Eyjafjallajökull most of the 
trustees didn't managed to the meeting location. We had to held our 
meeting via phone and Skype and we had to reduce our schedule due to the 
inconvinience of the communication channel. We had dropped this topic 
because all trustees think that this is a topic that should be talked 
about at best face to face because all of us thought that we should give 
this topic the most possible attention we need.

As far as I can say, especially the event pushed into movement by Larry 
Sanger [2] created the impression at least by some of the trustees that 
the matter is urgent and we need to take action as soon as possible. 
This is as said above from my perspective the reason for the action.

Now the reason why I support this quick action: I personally would have 
preferred to have more time to work out a real guidance from the board 
to the community as to take such a quick action. As you know, I never 
think I am better than anyone else and I am always aware that my 
personal view is just a very narrow view. In this special case I cannot 
judge how urgent or serious the Larry Sanger accusation really is and 
what a threat it poses against the Foundation. I must trust my member 
trustees in the US that they can make that judgement. There are at least 
two trustees, one of them Jimmy, whom I know that they are normally more 
for a steady and consistant development, and whom I know that they have 
a very good sense for the community, who had put the issue as urgent. 
This is the reason why I think it is urgent.

The rest I have already informed you. Jimmy informed the board that he 
want to do something and asked the board for support. I gave him my 
support because of what I said above.

Greetings
Ting

Milos Rancic wrote:
> Ting, this is your statement about sexually explicit content from the
> last elections [1]:
>
> "First of all I my position to this point had not changed since last
> year. I think content in Wikimedia projects should be educational,
> nothing more and nothing less. I think the communities of our major
> projects are meanwhile good enough to decide what is in scope and what
> not. This as overall principle.
>
> In most part of the world even pure educational content has some
> restriction of age, sometimes even per law. I think the Foundation
> should take this into account and give the community the possibility
> to act in accordance with the local laws if they decide to. From this
> point of view my suggestion is the following:
>
> The foundation should develop the MediaWiki software so that some
> content that are tagged with an age restriction would not be shown
> immediately if one comes to such an article. Only if the user confirms
> that he is above the age limit the content would be revealed. I
> believe this suggestion was already made by Erik a few years ago and I
> think we should do it.
> The board of trustees should issue a resolution in the form like the
> BPL resolution that announces the feature and call for the
> responsibility of the community to use this feature in accordance with
> the community consensus."
>
> I see here two things:
> * You didn't mention that sexually explicit content should be deleted.
> * You said that it is Board's responsibility to create a feature, not
> any kind of community's responsibility [out of the scope of particular
> legal systems].
>
> In that sense, I want to ask you what did Board do except supporting
> Jimmy to delete many images of educational value?
>
> [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates/Questions/1#Sexual_content_on_WMF
>
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[2] - http://www.larrysanger.org/ReplyToSlashdot.html

-- 
Ting

Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/