[Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
What I am missing is that Iran has blocked the whole Wikimedia domain as
Commons is included in that domain. I understand that the reason is there
being too much sexual explicit content.  As a consequence this important
free resource is no longer available to the students of Iran as a resource
for illustrations for their project work.

What I would like to know is if we have been talking to Iranian politicians
and / or if we have an understanding of what it takes to ensure that Commons
becomes available again.
Thanks,
      GerardM

On 9 May 2010 23:28, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I'm aiming to stay on top of this whole conversation -- which is not
> easy: there is an awful lot of text being generated :-)
>
> So for myself and others --including new board members who may not be
> super-fluent in terms of following where and how we discuss things--,
> I'm going to recap here where I think the main strands of conversation
> are happening.  Please let me know if I'm missing anything important.
>
> 1) There has been a very active strand about Jimmy's actions over the
> past week and his scope of authority, which I think is now resolving.
> That's mostly happened here and on meta.
>
> 2) There is a strand about a proposed new Commons policy covering
> sexual content: what is in scope, how to categorize and describe, etc.
>  This policy has been discussed over time, and is being actively
> discussed right now.  It is not yet agreed to, nor enforced.  I gather
> it (the policy) reaffirms that sexual imagery needs to have some
> educational/informational value to warrant inclusion in Commons,
> attempts to articulate more clearly than in the past what is out of
> scope for the project and why, and overall, represents a tightening-up
> of existing standards rather than a radical change to them. It's here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content
>
> 3) There is a strand about content filtering (and, I suppose, other
> initiatives we might undertake, in addition to new/tighter policy at
> Commons).  This discussion is happening mostly here on foundation-l,
> where it was started by Derk-Jan Hartman with the thread title
> [Foundation-l] Potential ICRA labels for Wikipedia.  AFAIK it's not
> taking place on-wiki anywhere.
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/195663
>
> I also think that if people skipped over Greg Maxwell's thread
> [Foundation-l] Appropriate surprise (Commons stuff) -- it might be
> worth them going back and taking a look at it.  I'm not expressing an
> opinion on Greg's views as laid out in that note, and I think the
> focus of the conversation has moved on a little in the 12 hours or so
> since he wrote it.  But it's still IMO a very useful recap/summary of
> where we're at, and as such I think definitely worth reading.  Few of
> us seem to gravitate towards recapping/summarizing/synthesizing, which
> is probably too bad: it's a very useful skill in conversations like
> this one, and a service to everyone involved :-)
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/195598.
>
> Let me know if I'm missing anything important.
>
> Thanks,
> Sue
>
>
>
> --
> Sue Gardner
> Executive Director
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> 415 839 6885 office
>
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