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

[Achal Prabhala]

On Friday 30 September 2011 10:54 PM, Theo10011 wrote:
> 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.


There is a big difference between *ratings* and *censorship*, a 
difference which the Indian government has routinely ignored or 
deliberately overlooked, as, I suspect is happening here in this 
discussion. Naturally, there are circumstances where ratings systems can 
be used to create effective censorship, but this doesn't have to be the 
case, and indeed isn't in various parts of the world - evidenced by the 
fact that virtually every country in the world has a ratings system for 
film. (Including Germany, by the way).


> Regards
> Theo
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