[Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

[Tobias Oelgarte]

Am 11.10.2011 17:42, schrieb Andreas Kolbe:
> From: Fae<fae at wikimedia.org.uk>
>> We could also just delete them, unless someone actually uses them in a sensible way in an article. :-)
>>
>> sincerely,
>>         Kim Bruning
> Not on Commons; being "objectionable" to some viewers and not being
> currently in use does not make a potentially educational image out of
> scope. I have seen many poorly worded deletion requests on Commons on
> the basis of a potentially useable image being "orphaned" rather than
> it being unrealistic to expect it to ever be used for an educational
> purpose.
>
> Fae
>
>
>
>
> Agree with Fae; Commons is a general image repository in its own right, serving a bigger audience than just the other Wikimedia projects.
>
> So the fact is that Commons will contain controversial images – and that we have to curate them responsibly.
>
> Someone on Meta has pointed out that Commons seems to list sexual image results for search terms like cucumber, electric toothbrushes or pearl necklace way higher than a corresponding Google search. See http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-October/006290.html
>
> Andreas
This might just be coincidence for special cases. I'm sure if you search 
long enough you will find opposite examples as well. But wouldn't it run 
against the intention of a search engine to rate down content by 
"possibly offensive"? If you search for a cucumber you should expect to 
find one. If the description is correct, you should find the most 
suitable images first. But that should be based on the rating algorithm 
that works on the description, not on the fact that content is/might 
be/could be controversial.

Implementing such a restriction for a search engine (by default) would 
go against any principal and would be discrimination of content. We 
should not do this.

nya~