[Foundation-l] Another board member statement

[Noein]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello Kat, I'm not used to the level of finesse of your thoughts and
this time I chose to think aloud to help me. The result is this long
mail that other may find useful. Maybe. Please let me know if they're
not, or if I misunderstood you. As for the verbose mode, it is due to
your inspiring words! Be warned: random thoughts ahead. Don't read if
evolving, long chain of thoughts bother you.

On 11/05/2010 01:43, Kat Walsh wrote:

> I absolutely sign on to the board statement[1]. Commons should not be
> a host for media that has very little informational or educational
> value; works that are primarily intended to shock, arouse, or offend
> generally fall under this category. 

So you think that we can judge the intention itself through this common
sense that many pretend to be rare? You think that a qualitative,
subjective, honest, consensual, fair, libertarian, dialogable judgment
is possible? Well, I do too, though I'm not sure if general consensus
can be easily achieved on this basis.
We can detect persons that are trespassing their rights to act as they
wish: when they're playing with our feelings and disturb us without
respect, without waiting for our invitation. We should avoid that and I
think any admin and user can police that. In fact a rule can easily be
stated, published and understood, then applied, until it becomes a
common netiquette. The admins are probably already acting this way, I
suppose.

But are you saying that "works that are primarily intended to shock,
arouse, or offend" lose "informational or educational value" because we
judge they have this bad intent or are you saying that because of this
bad intent, "informational or educational values" are neglected?

Should we judge by the encyclopedic value and/or by the negative
emotions produced and/or intended?

In the later case, I'm not sure that arousal is a negative emotion. I'm
surprised that the common sense position "protect sensitive persons"
(ie, children) has been several time exposed here and no one gave a
voice to the common sense position "sex is good". Are we ashamed to
express it? Is it too delicate to say and should we talk with some
implicit values, never to be mentioned?

I think arousal is good, actually. (if chosen and wanted by the person).
And well, we should inform about all positive emotions by allowing them
to be felt, so that everybody can choose the kind of life he/she wants
to experience. Sexual pleasure, free libido, acceptation of the body,
free of guilt, they're important states of mind to be reached. I'm not
saying that we should impose them, but we shouldn't censor them, so that
everybody can realize itself in the ways of sex. Sorry for the prude
ears here. I hope we're adult enough to talk freely about pornography
(or more generally, what is obscene to someone because it is a forbidden
thing that is pleasant to experiment). Yes, pornography is good.
Pornography industry? Dubious, because there is too much prostitution
and lack of respect. But there is a sane erotic art and culture. Sane
because it respects humanity, not because it is legal or not, showing
hair or not, 2cm of skin or 5, etc. I'm not inciting anyone to do
anything illegal here, legal considerations must be considered, but they
should not determine our principles which must come from ourselves.
If we're going to judge intentions, then we'll recognize that what's
transmitting positive emotions like joy or arousal is not necessarily
bad or good. It depends on the presence of intentions and the effects
channeled to private interests - generally dominating ones. (ie, you can
idiotize a population with propaganda using positive emotions). If
that's the point of an image, to manipulate emotionally, I have serious
doubts about categorizing it as an unbiased, neutral, potential
illustration.
The problem is that finding intention where there's none is what humans
do best. Judging the intention is a heavy, usually subjective
responsibility to give to admins. Unless we find a very simple question
to ask in order to judge the intention of a image, we won't reach
unanimous consensus, which should be an ideal of the mission. We're far
from this ideal, I guess a century behind, but it's good to know where
to aim.
Judging not by the intent, but the actual emotional impact (ie,
empowering each user to be able to warn others, like a Stumbleupon
system), may lead to manipulation too. I could expand.


Back to the short term considerations: even a pornographic picture
deserves at least a trial. They have rights, you know :)
The model of discussing for deletion or undeletion seems to be an
excellent model, though we need to refine our communication (not
manipulation) techniques to reach greater consensus.
One of the current, apparent problems was that Mr. Wales didn't respect
this discursive-consensual approach. Now that this issue is past, or at
least independent of the censorship issue, we should ask ourselves if
this discussion system is satisfying. The board said it was not. That
the community was not able to sort the pornography problem (if there is
one).
We should start a real dialogue between the community, the Board and Mr.
Wales to understand why this issue seems so urgent and important (or
not) to each and why the current solutions are not satisfying to
everyone. Some arguments were proposed, but were swallowed in the heat
of the Founder flag discussion.


But as a compendium of knowledge
> about, well, everything, we cover topics that some people will find
> unsuitable or offensive. If a topic is covered at all, it should be
> done well and honestly, explained in the as thorough and neutral a
> fashion as other topics--including illustrations.
That is, we must be true, fair and bold (even when criticized. No. Above
all when criticized). The honest man cannot be shy: the shame, the fear
of critics and hostility must have no effect on him. And that's the
attitude one should have towards unfair censoring forces: ignore them
and keep informing with respectful attitude towards everybody,
complainers included. If I understand correctly your underlying thoughts.
Difficulties: some minds have difficulties to know how to treat a topic
without external criteria. Some don't. If you propose subjective
judgments based on feelings, some Thinkers [1] may be at loss, for example.


> 
> The Commons community and the individual project communities have
> already largely recognized this, developing policies that strike
> compromises between being excessive and being incomplete, but of
> course there are still some areas that slip through the cracks.
> 
> Jimmy's actions are not the Board's; I don't agree with the extent of
> what he was doing and I wish he had gone about it differently. Not
> least because I think it's been unclear what he believes personally
> and what the Foundation's position is and it's caused a great deal of
> unrest and distrust. Some of this is unavoidable: it's difficult for
> any of us to speak our minds, knowing that whatever we say is likely
> to be attributed to WMF, or at least to be unclear. He's acknowledged
> that his own actions went too far and resigned his rights, and I
> respect him for doing so.
I agree this is respectable. However I don't understand why he doesn't
take a few hours to discuss (that is, answer our questions and genuinely
ask our opinion). Showing respect for people you don't want to talk too
is strange, though still respectable. But I wish I knew why.

> 
> I don't think we can say with a straight face that sexual topics
> should be treated no differently than, say, tea pots or cute cats. I
> think we benefit from trying to be no more shocking than
> necessary--where things have comparable informative value, we should
> prefer the ones that will be most broadly accepted and useful. A line
> drawing instead of a photograph, or a medical study image instead of
> an amateur porn model.
Unless it is an illustration of a topic that is supposed to be about
arousal, of course, which would have a significant informative value. I
agree with this common sense.


The context is also important: if the intention is justified, - ie:
moving the user when illustrating an emotion would be an encyclopedic
act -, but if it wasn't solicited - most of the wikipedia articles being
emotionally neutral, this should be the case -, it must be removed or
directed. We can see by this that a repository without context is harder
to judge. That's why used images must be supposed well used, and if not,
it's a problem of local moderation by the corresponding chapter using
the image.
So no removing should be done on used image by the Commons admins.
As for external sites using the images, since we can't enforce our
policies, we must judge the meaning in the context of the sites and
decide, or, if it's too much work, we can choose to ignore what they do.

So, the admins of Commons should only be able to remove unused
resources: now what policy to apply?
I explore an idea to answer: to apply quotas and use the following
criteria to trim the rest when there is to much "noise" in the signal:
How potentially useful is the illustration? (that is, how universal or
how specific to a topic versus how random)
Can we judge its quality? (resolution, composition, artistic value,
cultural interest)
How "pure" is the image? Does it illustrate clearly only one concept or
is it ambiguous or even multiple?
I guess Commons admin are already doing that...

A way to test if an image should be deleted in Commons: during the
discussion of the delete proposal, try to name the concept it should be
kept under because it represents it so well that it must be considered a
good illustration. Then vote yes or no for each concept-candidate. If a
candidate obtains a majority of yes, it is kept.
Of course what it illustrates must be worth to be the encylopedia: that
is, penis images must be haven in the database because it is something
that exist, in different states and shapes, and humanity has a right to
be informed about it. But then no need to have 100 images of the exact
same or an image of the penis of a random guy whose sole interest is to
pertain to him.
That is, "it's his" should not be an valid argument to keep a penis
image, because the encyclopedia tries to be universalist, to understand
the world outside us, not to focus on navels.

But I digress.
So yeah, "no more than necessary". Wise words.


> 
> However, I think it is because Commons is a project that must serve
> every Wikimedia project in every language that it must be broadly
> inclusive. Media only a few projects might wish to use still belongs
> on Commons for their benefit. (I also think that it's not only images
> included in articles that are support for projects--a page of text can
> only have so many images before they begin to overwhelm the text or
> frustrate users with slow internet connections. Having a gallery of
> additional media illustrating different aspects of a subject adds
> value: roses of every color, boats of every variety, and yes, images
> of every sexually-transmitted disease.)
> 
> I can think of few better places to go than Wikipedia for complete and
> informative coverage of topics that may be shocking or explicit. Most
> other sites which are uncensored are also intended to have
> entertainment or shock value, or to present a culturally or
> politically biased viewpoint. (I do remember being a young geek, going
> to the library with a small cluster of other middle-school girls,
> looking at books which had depictions of sex and sexual topics and
> giggling over them, trying not to admit that we really *didn't* know
> what certain things were or what they looked like, but wanted to. If
> the librarians ever figured out what we were doing, they never even
> cast a disapproving glance, for which I am grateful. It was a
> non-threatening context for satisfying curiosity. Wikipedia would
> serve the same purpose for me, now.)
That's a sane memory and I wonder how many among us are really shocked
by your words and would prefer not reading you: I'm having the
impression there are very few conservator minds in this foundation-1
list. It would be interesting to talk to someone who is offended to
understand better why and how. So we can find a suitable compromise (if
any).


> 
> What shouldn't happen is people being surprised by media they didn't
> want to see. (And yes, Greg Maxwell and I do in fact talk about
> Wikimedia at the dinner table. Occasionally we even reach consensus.)
> 
> I don't think filtering is effective, useful, or desirable; the
> reasons are pretty adequately covered elsewhere on the list and on the
> web. (The American Library Association--my employer--agrees with this
> anti-filtering stance: providers of information should provide access
> to the best of their abilities, and allow adult users to choose what
> they see.)
So honest labeling with responsible user. But isn't a search engine with
filter a tool using that? What kind of filter are you talking about that
you reject so definitely? A "prefilter", before the choice of categories
is made? What do you object to negative key words like in Google search,
for example? Oh, I know, what you're rejecting is the fact that it's not
a keyword, but a preestablished list of what is good to see and bad to
see, the word "safe" being a screen to hide what they don't want us to
know. Is it your meaning with filter?

> 
> And I am firmly against reducing the content on Wikimedia to only that
> which is acceptable for children. The world's knowledge contains a lot
> of things that are shocking, divisive, offensive, or horrific, and
> people should be able to learn about them, and to educate others. Not
> including these things doesn't make them go away--it only makes it
> more difficult for interested people to learn from a source that tries
> to be neutral and educational. I don't think Wikipedia will ever be
> (or should ever be) "safe", for the same reason your public library
> will never be, either.
But... this would lead to self-responsible people! How would they be led
if they're accustomed to govern themselves and cope with emotional
situation resting on their own choices?


> 
> (One of the benefits of being free content is that anyone with
> sufficient motivation can produce an edited version that aligns with
> their values and goals; there are several existing edited Wikipedia
> mirrors intended for children, though none have been very successful.)
An idea to make one of them more successful: a direct link - similar to
simple.english.wikipedia - to childpedia were things are explained with
an adapted pedagogy: less frightening, less abstract words, more
pictures and animations, with voices explaining, etc.
Since it's part of wikipedia, even the child can choose to access the
"adult" version, possibly more hardcore. So no imposed censorship, but
two possible tones of wikipedia, easily switched.


> 
> What I do support are tools and procedures that make it simpler for
> users to choose what they see: I don't think anyone should have to
> avoid Wikimedia projects because they fear that they (or their
> children) will inadvertently see something they didn't intend to. Most
> people never do; links are generally not surprising, and
> sexually-themed media is generally only present in sexually-themed
> articles. (As are depictions of violence, for that matter.) But a user
> clicking on an unfamiliar term, or who is not aware that certain
> categories of content are allowed on the projects, may be in for a
> shock.
So you think that the current system is good, that it can be helped with
tools, but there is not need to lock completely the possibility of
seeing unwanted things. Empowering the user is enough, even if rare
accidents may still happen, since the advantages outweigh the small
risk. That's what I call a courageous, sane position. Everybody who
prefer to overprotect himself or someone is driven by fear and will
oppress his community to "secure" his medium and media. A few hundreds
of protective laws later, you have no right to risk and no joy to live
and just an adventure-less life.

> 
> I'm sorry if I am repeating others' points--I've been following
> discussions on Commons and the lists but have not yet caught up with
> everything![2] However, I thought as a community-elected member I
> should share my viewpoint, the sort of things the board is debating as
> we speak.
I found your words full of wisdom. I hope mine are helpful to somebody.
I know my mental thoughts may sound obvious and uninteresting to some,
and obscure and tortuous to others: there are good reasons for that, and
I can't avoid them currently, but I have some ideas to explore to reach
a clearer way to express myself. Thank you for the people that read me
this far. It's hard to share unsollicited opinions: one has to assume
that maybe his or her own thoughts have a value to others, which feels
quite arrogant and egocentric.


[1] the more I think about the issues of this censorship/judging issues,
the more I find the MBTI dichotomies useful to understand the
compromises that must be achieved:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Four_dichotomies
(I'm not a jungian fan, mostly because I don't know much of his theories
and I'm skeptic about mystical explanations)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJL6aIpAAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LJJoIAMaYgQocGaNXpIofFmQYVM8A
/FljewZEGtEXKnpkBE680EPmp0bRJshS/4jkg6br3bZb6kkv+/ThjZ8Ze7ysacHj
oCE0WiLiW2YYtn8nrKGmC9YzdVo0PSt4t5yoYPOhk7ECnVC7sRfQFyOB8WHq1JNn
6DXNYl8ZzxwAnIT0QYCpEWFjcNPp8NEskQcJmqL/JT+XdSmA5RG0P81nkXWA8Qjx
oxsMmdVjl5HxkqfLKdYrA+QfhunyjiFA53Ejo1+LWtNT80m7OjpkYYaOCTkZW3zY
SWCVgz7BCXcMoWplVlhIz4sqRAKexi/Zy/RSPT60rmDjkqEd8IYQdLBPHtVutmo=
=YOBY
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----