[Foundation-l] Image filter

[Marcus Buck]

Zitat von Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl>:

> On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 02:03:00PM +0200, me at marcusbuck.org wrote:

>> I think the same is happening here. The majority of people probably
>> think that an optional opt-in filter is a thing that does no harm to
>> non-users and has advantages for those who choose to use it. (Ask your
>> gramma whether "You can hide pictures if you don't want to see them"
>> sounds like a threatening thing to her.) But the scepticists voice
>> their opinions loudly and point out every single imaginable problem.
>
> However, poll data suggests otherwise (taking the de.wikipedia
> sample). AFAIK it's a minority that want filters, with a majority
> that doesn't.

I don't want to engage in long arguments, because I know you have your  
opinion made and I have too and none of us is probable to change them.  
But one more comment: I think there's a heavy bias at work. When I  
spoke of "majority" I meant people in general (like if you were going  
to a mall, pedestrian area, market or similar and asking for people's  
opinions there). The 300 participants of the Meinungsbild are a small,  
heavily self-selected group. People participating in Wikipedia are  
usually well-educated, liberty-loving, censorship-hating, altruistic  
etc. Even among Wikipedians only a small group is committed enough to  
participate in such polls. And the whole poll was an action dedicated  
to stop the filter. So the result is just another form of expression  
of the phenomenon I sketched in my original post of this thread.  
People who self-selected themselves to fight for the cause of the  
minority of scepticists.

Of course you'll have a good argument with saying that the opinion of  
people who spent much reflection on the topic is more relevant than  
the gut opinion of random people. But there are also good arguments  
for it and people who have reflected about them and liked them.

Oliver Koslowski said something I found interesting: "Are we really  
likely to get more readers, more donations and - much more importantly  
- more authors?"

These are all community-focussed goals. But the image filter is not  
for the benefit of the community. The image filter is for the readers.  
So they can avoid looking at images that repel them. That's just a  
nice thing to do. Or to use a word more serious word than "nice": an  
ethical thing to do. Not shoving down things people's throats when  
people have chosen not to get them shoved down their throat.

The arguments that the filter could aid in censorship for evil  
governments or organizations seems a bit overinflated looking at the  
advanced methods of censorship they've already developed. And the  
selection process the community has to do feels not to be much  
different than what the community already does now.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox