[Foundation-l] Spectrum of views (was Re: Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening)

[Samuel Klein]

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 12:06 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> By the way, there appears to be an assumption - on the part of board
> members, the WMF and some contributors to this thread - that Commons
> has been somehow indiscriminate in what it accepts.

I don't read that.  What I see is a debate about whether Commons
discriminates in the right ways, not a belief that it is
indiscriminate.

The most frequent censorship on the Projects is done in the name of
notability -- and it is done all the time.

As an eventualist myself, I think that we are generally *too
discriminate* in what we accept -- Commons and English Wikipedia are
quite ready to delete media and articles simply because one group of
established editors disagrees with the notability standards or writing
style of a younger, less wiki-savvy group.

For instance, professional artist, animator, and free culture activist
Nina Paley had quite a difficult time contributing artwork to Commons
without having it (and her userpage!) deleted.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nina_Paley

As to whether we have the right policies for discriminating between
good and bad images of human sexuality, I think the worst  issue is
simply the lack of a standard for model releases.  When it comes to
assessing quality and appropriateness, I don't think the Commons
standards in that category are much worse than in other categories.
(Of course it may be true that the impact of standards in that
category is much greater than in other cats, because of its
disproportionate popularity).

SJ