[Foundation-l] inadequate frame Re: Statement on appropriate educational content

[Samuel Klein]

Wow, I go offline for half a day and all commons breaks loose...

Why have in-use artworks been deleted?  Even the strongest versions of
the proposed policy that Jimbo started at Commons:Sexual_content
explicitly supports art and illustrations.


On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:31 PM, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 12:30:18PM -0700, Michael Snow wrote:
>> Having said that, the Wikimedia projects are intended to be educational
>> in nature, and there is no place in the projects for material that has
>> no educational or informational value. In saying this, we don't intend
>> to create new policy, but rather to reaffirm and support policy that
>> already exists. We encourage Wikimedia editors to scrutinize potentially
>> offensive materials with the goal of assessing their educational or
>> informational value, and to remove them from the projects if there is no
>> such value.
>
> I'm reading this fairly carefully. Is this the entirety of the board position?

Yes.

I am sure that more discussion, largely public, is forthcoming; this
conversation has ramped up pretty quickly over the past two days from
a few talk pages on Commons.

> This statement by itself is not sufficient to create the frame
> that Jimmy Wales would require to be able to operate the
> way he is doing on wikimedia commons at this moment in time.
>
> Jimmy Wales is a very public figure.
>
> I would recommend that we either redefine the existing frame , so
> that it is more in line with  Jimmy Wales' actions, or Jimmy Wales
> needs to bring his actions in line with the existing frame.
>
> Somewhere in-between those two options: If Jimmy Wales were to switch to
> promoting a PROD-like approach for commons, this would make a lot
> of people a lot happier. (commons rules get changed, jwale's behaviour
> changes, a reasonable compromise is reached, and people can get to work)

+1.  Jmabel has also posted a sensible summary and suggestion of how
to proceed on Commons.  More help is needed to revise policy there and
work out new processes.

As you say, images in use on other projects should not be deleted
speedily, if at all.  Images that are in wide use on various Projects
are clearly valuable for an educational purpose, and should be
respected accordingly.

SJ