[Foundation-l] PG rating

[M. Williamson]

 2011/9/13 John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>

> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 3:40 AM, Fae <fae at wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
> > On 13 September 2011 18:23, M. Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Are you kidding? Pictures of mummies, a cup with a depiction of two guys
> >> doing it that can only be noticed if you look really closely, and what
> is
> >> supposed to be a depiction of intercourse but actually looks more like a
> >> piece of stale bread? Wow.
> >
> > That's rather the point of putting up these examples for illustration
> > and as a test for any proposal. Where do you draw the line?
>
> Thanks Fae.  So far there are very few documented instances of
> external regulators rating/censoring Wikipedia content.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia
>
> I think it is useful to put other what-ifs on the table to discuss.
> Most of the time we'll have good reasons to disagree with an external
> regulators desire to hide an image.  However there may be instances
> where we can fix the problem by removing gratuitous images from
> articles, and leave them in a Commons category.


Which images are "gratuitous"? Doesn't this vary based on your POV (and
degree of prudishness)? I wouldn't consider any of the images in any of the
articles Fae mentioned to be gratuitous, but some people certainly might. I
would hope that we would never resort to removing such images, which
certainly serve an educational purpose and definitely belong in those
articles, just because someone feels that they're "inappropriate". An
article about "Penis" should include an image of its subject, just like the
article "Banana" includes pictures of bananas; what I consider gratuitous is
if somebody tries to include pictures of penises in the article "Photograph"
as examples of photographs "because WP:NOTCENSORED" (for example). As long
as it illustrates the article, we shouldn't remove it just because some
person somewhere (or even a lot of people in a lot of places) finds it
objectionable. So [[pregnancy]] should keep the image of the pregnant woman;
(if someone tries to add an image of a penis saying "Penises tend to be
involved in causing pregnancy", that would be "gratuitous" I think) nudity
can be educational and illustrative without being pornographic. All of the
articles Fae mentioned should keep their images intact, given that the
subjects of those articles are directly depicted in the images.