[Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[Thomas Morton]

>
> First, I actually don't oppose to the filter per se. There is
> significant difference between what Jimmy did in May 2010 and this
> filter. From the point of freedom of information, that's not an issue.
> I was even thinking to support image filter inclusion; just to finish
> with that; but grotesque mismanagement repelled me of that idea.
>
>
Concur; this survey has not instilled in me the idea that this will work out
well in the end :S


> The unsolved issue is the fact that it's not our job to censor
> content, it's the job of those who want to censor. And it's pretty
> easy to implement it (see Appendix A for algorithm).


Yes, but guaranteed you're going to end up with readers asking why on earth
they have to go through and manually implement these filters; they'll want
some defaults they can "just use". I posit that the majority of people
wanting to use this thing will likely want to simply click "Do not show me
images of X" and leave it there. This is not a scientific study of what the
reader wants - we do need to do one of those - just my RL experience of how
web users interact.

I recall a message in an previous thread that went into ideas of how to do
this in a less centralised way (to avoid the idea of it not being our job to
censor).

The first problem in front of us is the fact that the majority of core
> editors disagree with the filter. While I don't think that the filter
> is a big deal, disagreement of the core editors is. Forcing the issue
> above the will of the core community means that Board has the plan how
> to create new core community (probably consisted of Concerned Women
> for America and similar organizations).
>

The problem I see here is that editors are a biased group to poll in
relation to this - this is a tool for readers, and it should be up to the
readers to comment on what they would like to see. The editorship has an
anti-censorship view, and largely will not approve of using this tool
themselves (Not Censored etc.). However I suspect a large number of readers
do feel differently... if only we knew the figures...

I'm not sure why we would necessarily let editors stall that feature request
- or  why we are primarily polling editors and not readers about this
situation.

I'd like to see some user studies done to see what the wider response to
this idea might be...

As an encyclopaedia we consistently forget that for *all* of us the readers
are our customers, and represent the vast majority of people using Wikipedia
- and we should be improving the software for them as much as for the editor
community.

Tom