[Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
<tobias.oelgarte at googlemail.com> wrote:

> I neither agree. We decide what belongs to which preset (or who will do
> it?), and it is meant to filter out controversial content. Therefore we
> define what controversial content is, - or at least we tell the people,
> what we think, that might be controversial, while we also tell them
> (exclusion method) that other things aren't controversial.

No, we don't tell that other things aren't controversial. I consider
that a ridiculous conclusion to draw. It's just that we have not yet
found that it is under one of the categories we specified as
blockable. There are other categories that might be specified, but
alas, we don't have them yet.

>> Even more importantly, your options are not neutral at all, in my
>> opinion. "Either everything is controversial or nothing is". That's
>> not a neutral statement. "It's controversial to you if you consider it
>> controversial to you" - that's much closer to being NPOV, and that's
>> what the proposal is trying to do.
> No. This options are meant to say that "you have to define for yourself
> what is controversial". They take the extreme stances of equal judgment.
> Either anything is guilty or nothing is guilty and both stances provide
> no information at all. Both give no definition. It is not the answer to
> the question: "What is controversial?" under the assumption that not
> anything or not everything is controversial. If you agree that not
> anything or not everything is controversial than this simple rule has to
> apply, since both extremes are untrue. That is very simple logic and
> forces you to define it for yourself.

Yet you are against any means that make this choice easier. If I say
"I don't want to see pictures of XXX", why not give me the possibility
to download a list of pictures of XXX and use that? Why do I have to
specify in person each and every picture I do or do not want to see?

> Back to the statement: "It's controversial to you if you consider it
> controversial to you". Thats right. But it's not related to the initial
> problem. In this case you will only find a "you" and a "you". There is
> no "we", "them" or anything like that. You could have written: "If my
> leg hurts, then my leg hurts". Always true, but useless to be applied to
> something that involves anything not done not by you in the first part
> of the sentence.

No, not useless. If I say that I don't want to see pictures of XXX,
why not let someone else make a list of pictures of XXX? Say, I
believe that every time a chainsaw touches my leg, it is going to
hurt. Wouldn't it be good to have a rule then that anyone will have my
permission before they touch my leg with a chainsaw? What you are
saying is "only you can decide when your leg is hurting, so you have
to choose: either we let everything touch your leg unless you forbid
it, or we let nothing touch your leg unless you allow it."

>>   NPOV is not about treating every
>> _subject_ as equal, but about treating every _opinion_ as equal.
> This is a nice sentence. I hope that you will it. I also hope that you
> remember that images are subjects and not opinions.
>
>>   If I
>> have a set of images I consider controversial, and you have a
>> different, perhaps non-intersecting set that you consider
>> controversial, the NPOV method is to consider both distinctions as
>> valid, not to say that it means that everything is controversial, or
>> nothing is.
> A filter with presets considers only one opinion as valid. It shows an
> image or it does hide it. Stating different opinions inside an article
> is a very different thing. You represent both opinions but you don't
> apply them. On top of that it are the opinions of people that don't
> write the article.

But one can choose the filter oneself, or no filter at all.

>>   And -surprise- that seems to be exactly what this proposal
>> is trying to achieve. It is probably not ideal, there might even be
>> reasons to drop it completely, but NPOV is much better served by this
>> proposal than it is by yours.
>>
> Actually you misused or misunderstood the core of NPOV in combination
> with this two stances. Thats why i can't agree or follow your conclusion.
>
> NPOV is meant in the way that we don't say what is right or is wrong. We
> represent the opinions and we let the user decide what to do with them.
> Additionally NPOV implies that we don't write down our own opinions.
> Instead we cite them.

And what does this have to do with image filters at all?


-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com