[Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

John Vandenberg jayvdb at gmail.com
Wed Sep 7 21:27:07 UTC 2011


On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 12:38 AM, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 9:29 AM, David Levy <lifeisunfair at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sydney Poore wrote:
>>
>> > The idea of offering imagine filters on WMF project is much more
>> > controversial than it is on other internet websites. So, I I think
>> > that it is fair to suggest that we examine why we are having
>> > conflicts over this topic when other website don't. One possible
>> > reason is that our base of editors is different from other websites.
>>
>> Websites like Flickr (an example commonly cited) are commercial
>> endeavors whose decisions are based on profitability, not an
>> obligation to maintain neutrality (a core element of most WMF
>> projects).  These services can cater to the revenue-driving majorities
>> (with geographic segregation, if need be) and ignore minorities whose
>> beliefs fall outside the "mainstream" for a given country.  We mustn't
>> do that.
>>
>
> Today to be successful organizations; both for-profit and not-for-profit,
> must recognize the needs of their global audience.  Offering image filters
> where people can set their own preferences and bypass the setting for
> individual settings is brilliant way for people with different values to
> share the same space. No content is removed, and people can see all images
> if they choose to.
>
> This approach is far better than the approach used by most other large
> educational institutions which currently control the viewing of
> controversial content through their acquisition process.

Wikipedia *is* successful, and an image filter was not part of its success.

I dont mind Wikimedia content being better labelled with metadata,
however the actual process of filtering should be done by the
user-agent.

--
John Vandenberg



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