[Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats

[Sydney Poore]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 9:52 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 14 September 2011 14:45, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Besides your acknowledged bias towards confronting people with their bias
> > and forcing a discussion, it is also not very practical that we be the
> host
> > for discussions on talk pages continuously with large groups of people.
> It
> > fatigues our established users when discussions are repeated continuously
> on
> > article talk pages. Sometimes it is needed to address content decisions.
> But
> > comments are frequently not responded to in a timely manner perhaps
> leaving
> > people feeling that no one cares about their views.
> > And lots of people want to look up information or edit an interesting
> topic
> > without having a consciousness raising discussion. There are many
> > opportunities for people to interact and learn from each other without us
> > placing them in a position where they feel like they need to do it or
> stay
> > away.
> > So, I don't think that pushing people to see material that they are not
> > comfortable seeing is necessarily beneficial to WMF projects or the
> person.
>
>
> You appear to be confusing editor fatigue with reader fatigue.
>
> Doing stuff because it reduces editor conflict has, so far, been an
> effective way to reduce value to the readers. This is why we don't
> have POV forked articles: they solve a problem for the editors at the
> expense of the readers.
>
> You are also putting forward pretty much the same excuse for POV forks
> that Microsoft did in pushing POV forking for Encarta editions: where
> they wanted to make something marketable that would play nice and not
> risk upsetting people, rather than because the content was actually
> neutral, accurate or authoritative. That is: something for the
> convenience of the publisher, at the expense of the reader.
>
> The real world is holistic - everything links to everything else, and
> I'd have thought it *really obvious* that carving out chunks of that,
> particularly in the cause of making your own life easier over that of
> the reader, is POV-pushing.
>

I see nothing about this image filter that hides images that is POV-pushing.


Not when all that you are doing is putting in place an image filter that
does not remove images but hides them, and still allows you to click through
and see the image.

Some people need it in place because the place they read articles prohibits
controversial images.

Other people want it because of a desire to keep controversial content out
of their home. Giving these user control over image selection may bring *
more* people to Wikipedia, and an article with controversial content.
Intellectual curiosity may entice them to click through and see the image
now or later. That is a Good Thing.

Sydney Poore