[Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[Kim Bruning]

On Sun, Sep 04, 2011 at 04:51:27PM -0400, Sarah Stierch wrote:
> > Yes (maybe). It's not at all clear that this use case should not be
> > ignored to avoid the possibility of compromising the encyclopedia.
> >
> Some workplace filters don't allow for certain subjects to be searched. I
> work at a major museum institution, I cannot view subject matter about
> certain sex topics (and I'm the Wikipedian in Residence, so I'm on WP most
> of my day). (i.e. "sexual differences").

That could be inconvenient at times. My favorite example so far is
when a filter blocked me from looking up "The internet is for porn".

Which (fyi) is a song from an award-winning broadway musical
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_internet_is_for_porn

(Just in case you were thinking strange thoughts)

A much worse case is when I'm trying to download software.
You can imagine that in a multi-megabyte download, there's bound
to be a sequence of bytes 83, 69, 88, 33  (ASCII for "SEX!") in there
somewhere. Not to mention things like strong language in the linux
kernal source code. http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/

This means I get to either go home or (these days) use tethered G3 and
sneakernet to actually do my <censored>  job. ;-)

> I don't know why people are wigging out so badly about the image filter. If
> people want to use it, great, and if you don't, DON'T. But perhaps I'm
> misunderstanding something about the idea. I voted for it, and it seems the
> people who dislike the idea are the only one's speaking out on the list.
> 

* There's nothing wrong with the filter program itself
* The problem is with categorizing things to work with such a program.
* This is called prejudicial labelling
* AMA defines prejudicial labelling as "A censoring tool"
* This definition has existed for over half a century.

We also have huge discussions where it is explained in detail *why* and *how*
such categories can be used for censorship. We also have discussed how a
category system that starts out innocent and neutral can be subverted to 
serve in a censorship role. No one has found solutions how to prevent that from
happening. AMA certainly hasn't been able to do so in the last 60 years. We
might be smarter than AMA, but it's a hard problem.

Sincerely,
	Kim Bruning

I really wish people would read previous discussions.