[Foundation-l] News from Germany: White Bags and thinking about a fork

[Hubert]

thank you!

h

Am 29.10.2011 13:31, schrieb FT2:
> Having checked the original blog
> post<http://suegardner.org/2011/09/28/on-editorial-judgment-and-empathy/>,
> I think it's either a rare exception of poorly chosen wording, or shows a
> judgment within WMF that I can't agree with.
> 
> I remember when the director of featured articles on enwiki scrupulously
> treated all topics equal - whether shocking, controversial, mundane, or
> taboo -- because the job of the front page of an *encyclopedia* is to
> showcase high quality knowledge, not present value judgments on it.
> 
> Value judgments on topics are the role of members of the public and end
> users, who legitimately hold views that they like math and hate politics,
> love politics but hate pornography, love porn but oppose images of religious
> figures, as they individually choose.  The job of *encyclopedists* however
> is to treat these all as knowledge and not to color or pre-filter them by
> considering some topics more "worthy" than others or less "suitable" to be
> included as knowledge or showcased as high quality writing.
> 
> Does that include front page exposure? In the view of the previous en:wp
> Director of Featured Articles, definitely yes. His rationale at the time
> this came up on en:wp was that to do otherwise is to be ashamed apologists
> of content that our community has created.  He also observed that making the
> point publicly of our utter neutrality had value in itself.  If de:wiki (or
> any project) put [[vulva]] on its front page, and the article was of high
> enough quality to do so - and it would have been heavily scrutinized before
> as a controversial topic - then at that point it's a topic like any other
> and it goes there on its own merits.
> 
> *It is core to our ethos* that we are neutral in our views on topics,
> whether mundane, obscure or emotive to some people. We could not honestly
> claim neutrality if we signal via our content nomination process that some
> topics are not as "valid" as others or are more "shameful" or less
> "acceptable" to learn about, or to be made visible.
> 
> In this case, [[vulva]] is of more than academic interest to 1/2 the human
> race as a normal lifelong body part --- one that is often strikingly lacking
> in information (cultural taboos on women's education and sexual knowledge
> are still very common globally and cause untold harm!)
> 
> Should this be outweighed in the balance by the fact that the other (usually
> male!) half of humanity sees in it a source of purile humor or an "ONOES!
> THE CHILDREN"..... especially when fully half of those under-16 children
> have one of the said body parts and have as much right to it being treated
> as valid knowledge as they would treat an eyeball, an arm, a cancer or a
> method of DNA sequencing... and without us signalling it as "shameful" to
> learn about by virtue of exclusion from equal handling.
> 
> I know which of these stances I respect more.
> 
> FT2
> 
> On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 12:02 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> The Foundation considers de:wp's careful and thoughtful decision to
>> put [[:de:vulva]] on the front page of de:wp with a picture was a
>> clear failure of community judgement sufficient to justify the
>> imposition of a filter from outside.
>>
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