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

[Theo10011]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:21 PM, Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 9:45 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 16:24, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Milos, I believe this is exactly the kind of post that Sue was talking
> > about
> > > in her blog. It is aggressive, it is alienating, and it is intimidating
> > to
> > > others who may have useful and progressive ideas but are repeatedly
> > seeing
> > > the opinions of others dismissed because they're women/not women or
> from
> > the
> > > US/not from the US. The implication of your post is "if you're a woman
> > from
> > > the US, your opinion is invalid". Your post here did not further the
> > > discussion in any way, and I politely ask you to refrain from making
> such
> > > posts in the future.
> >
> > As mentioned by Nathan and Oliver, I want to hear what do women think
> > about the filter, how does it correlate with positions of men and how
> > does it correlate with cultures.
> >
>
> I am not convinced that all women feel the same way about the filter, nor
> all men - similarly, cultures are not homogenous. It is hard to generalize
> on any of these bases (plural of 'basis'), because there is no simple
> correlation.
>
> Different individuals can have different responses, regardless of gender or
> culture. It doesn't tie in so neatly.
>
> Speaking for myself, no, I can't see myself using the filter. So what? That
> doesn't mean I use myself as a proxy for the rest of the world to decide
> that no one else should, or that anyone who does is somehow a lesser human.
> And yes, I'm against censorship, but as I've said before, I don't see the
> filter as proposed as censorship.
>
> The world is made up of different folks, whether we like it or not. And
> just
> as we provide for the person who doesn't flinch when seeing a vulva, why is
> it so wrong to even think about the person who does flinch when he or she
> sees a vulva? That's what I don't get.
>

Bishakha, call it editorial-content, call it censorship or any other
euphemism - at the heart of it, it is deciding what someone gets to see and
what not. It should not be our job to censor our own content. The strongest
argument I read against this has been - it is not something WMF and the
board should implement and develop, If there was a need to censor/cleanse
graphic content, there would a successful mirror or a fork of the project
already somewhere. Instead, we have small distributions/projects which use
1-2 year old offline dumps to cleanse and then consider safe.

Now, If you were to apply this argument to a government, or a regime and
they decide on removing things that make them flinch - how different would
we be from dictatorial regimes who limit/restrict access to Wikipedia for
all the people that do flinch? I can point to Indian I&B ministry issues or
Film censor board of India, but you probably know more about them than me.

Regards
Theo