[Foundation-l] Blog from Sue about censorship, editorial judgement, and image filters

Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelgarte at googlemail.com
Fri Sep 30 17:15:48 UTC 2011


I would prefer to read these comments in context and not in snippets. 
Can you point me to the corresponding discussion(s)?

-- Niabot

Am 30.09.2011 19:02, schrieb Andreas Kolbe:
> Tobias, you be the judge whether I misunderstood my fellow Wikipedians' comments. Here are some verbatim quotes, from different contributors:
>
> "How exactly would you propose to get an appropriately licensed video of a rape? [...] I suppose, in the unlikely even that we were to get a video that were appropriately licensed, did not raise privacy concerns, and was germane to the subject, we'd use it. Why shouldn't we? The specific role of NOTCENSORED is to say "We do not exclude things because people are squeamish about them", and replacing the word "censor" with "editorial judgment" is a simple case of euphemism, and does not change what it means. As to the beheading videos, yes, yes, and most certainly yes. We show graphic images of suffering in articles about The Holocaust, even though that may not be the most comfortable thing for some people. Why wouldn't we do so in an article about another horrific act, if the material is under a license we can use it with?"
> I would have no issues with videos of animals (including humans) defecating on appropriate articles. I'm sure you were looking for an "OMG THAT'S SO GROSS!" response, but you won't find it from me.
> [me:] The question is not whether you would be grossed out watching it. The question is, what encyclopedic value would it add? I don't think there is a single human being on the planet who needs to watch a video of a person defecating to understand how defecation works. If that is your real rationale, then why aren't you going to support removal of images from human nose? But your chat about rape and beheading (both subjects for which I'd strongly advocate a video for, if there could be a free, privacy-keeping one) makes me lose WP:AGF a bittle on this grasping at straws of yours. Let me remember that we, as a culture, had to grow up a lot to accept not being censored. Censoring is the exact opposite of "growing up as a culture".
> It sounded to me like they meant it. Doesn't it to you? They were all established users; one of them an admin. I had a long, and perfectly amicable e-mail discussion about it with him afterwards. Their position is entirely logical, but it lacks common sense and, indeed, a little empathy.
> Andreas
>
>
> --- On Fri, 30/9/11, Tobias Oelgarte<tobias.oelgarte at googlemail.com>  wrote:
>
> From: Tobias Oelgarte<tobias.oelgarte at googlemail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Blog from Sue about censorship, editorial judgement, and image filters
> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Date: Friday, 30 September, 2011, 17:06
>
> Am 30.09.2011 17:49, schrieb Andreas Kolbe:
>> --- On Fri, 30/9/11, Ryan Kaldari<rkaldari at wikimedia.org>   wrote:
>>
>> From: Ryan Kaldari<rkaldari at wikimedia.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Blog from Sue about censorship, editorial judgement, and image filters
>> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> Date: Friday, 30 September, 2011, 0:28
>>
>>
>> On 9/28/11 11:30 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>>> This post appears mostly to be the tone argument:
>>>
>>> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument
>>>
>>> - rather than address those opposed to the WMF (the body perceived to
>>> be abusing its power), Sue frames their arguments as badly-formed and
>>> that they should therefore be ignored.
>> Well, when every thoughtful comment you have on a topic is met with
>> nothing more than chants of "WP:NOTCENSORED!", the tone argument seems
>> quite valid.
>>
>> Ryan Kaldari
>> Quite.
>> I have had editors tell me that if there were a freely licensed video of a rape (perhaps a historical one, say), then we would be duty-bound to include it in the article on [[rape]], because Wikipedia is not censored.
>> That if we have a freely licensed video showing a person defecating, it should be included in the article on [[defecation]], because Wikipedia is not censored.
>> That if any of the Iraqi beheading videos are CC-licensed, NOTCENSORED requires us to embed them in the biographies of those who were recently beheaded.
>> That if we have five images of naked women in a bondage article, and none of men having the same bondage technique applied to them, still all the images of naked women have to be kept, because Wikipedia is not censored.
>> And so on.
>> Andreas
>>
> I guess you misunderstood those people. Most likely they meant, that
> there should be no rule against such content, if it is an appropriate
> Illustration for the subject. Would you say the same, if this[1] or some
> other documentary film would be put under the CC license? Wouldn't it be
> illustrative as well as educational?
>
> [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtvuLAZxgOM
>
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