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

[Ray Saintonge]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>   
>> Let me know if I'm missing anything important.
>>     
> Actually, yes. In spite of multicultural nature of Wikimedia, this
> process shouldn't be formulated as purely related to sexual content,
> but as related to cultural taboos or to "offensive imagery" if we want
> to use euphemism.
>
> Under the same category are:
> * sexual content;
> * images Muhammad;
> * images of sacral places of many tribes;
> * etc.
>   

I'm sure you mean "sacred" instead of "sacral" :-) .


> Although it is not the same medium, under the same category are all
> texts which some culture may treat as offensive. So, censorship
> categorization below assumes categorization of media *and texts*.
>   

Fair enough.
> Important note is that we have to put some principles before going
> into the process:
> 1) We don't want to censor ourselves (out of illegal material under
> the US and Florida laws).
> 2) We want to allow voluntary auto-censorship on personal basis.
> (Anyone can decide which categories he or she doesn't want to see.)
> 3) We should allow voluntary/default censorship on cultural basis, as
> the most of our readers are not registered. (Based on IP address of
> reader. Thus, pictures of Muhammad should be shown by default for
> someone from Germany, but shouldn't be shown by default to someone
> from Saudi Arabia. In all cases there has to be possibility to
> overrule such censorship by simple click or by preferences.)
> 4) We shouldn't help any kind of organized censorship by any
> organization. For example, if looking at the naked body is prohibited
> in some [Western] school even for educational purposes of teaching
> anatomy, it is not our responsibility to censor it. Contrary, as naked
> body is much deeper taboo in Muslim world, it should be censored on
> "cultural basis".
>   

It's also important to keep it simple.  We need to be aware of the 
various hot button issues without judging them.  We want to facilitate 
private decisions, not make them for people.
> Speaking about "default censorship on cultural basis" and in the
> context of the Western cultural standards, this should be contextual.
> Commons gallery of penises should be censored by default, but that
> exemplary image shouldn't be censored inside of the Wikipedia article
> about penis.
>   

Censoring by default puts us back in the same old conflict of having to 
decide what to censor.  Given a random 100 penis pictures we perhaps 
need to ask questions like what distinguishes penis picture #27 from 
penis picture #82.  The same could be asked about numerous photographs 
of national penises like the Washington Monument or Eiffel Tower.
> We should have a voting system for registered users at site like
> "censor.wikimedia.org" can be. At that site *registered* users would
> be able to vote [anonymously] should they or not have censored images
> of any category in their region (again, this is about Google-like
> cultural based censorship which can be overruled by personal wish).
> Users from Germany will definitely put different categories for
> censorship than users from Texas. And it should be respected. Rights
> of more permissive cultures shouldn't be endangered because of rights
> of less permissive cultures.
>
> That kind of voting system would remove the most of responsibility
> from WMF. If majority of users in one culture expressed their wish, it
> is not about us to argue with anyone why is it so.
Voting is evil, particularly when it entrenches the tyranny of the majority.

Ec