[Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

Wed Mar 7 22:41:31 UTC 2012

Juliana,

You simply don't understand where I am coming from.

I have nothing against Wikimedia websites hosting adult content, just like
I have nothing against the far greater amounts of explicit adult material
on Flickr for example. What saddens me though is that Wikimedia is unable
to grow up, and simply can't get it together to host such material
responsibly, like Flickr and YouTube do, behind an age-related filter.
Because that is far and away the mainstream position in society about adult
material.

And I am saddened that at least some members of the Wikimedia Foundation
Board lack the balls and vision to make Wikimedia a mainstream operator,
and instead want to whimp out and give in to extremists.

Now, I am aware of your work in German Wikipedia, and I think that German
Wikipedia generally curates controversial content well. German Wikipedia
would never have an illustration like the Donkey punch animation in
mainspace:

http://www.junkland.net/2011/11/donkey-punch-or-how-i-tried-to-fight.html

So to an extent I can understand German editors saying, "There is no
problem." But only to an extent. Commons and parts of English Wikipedia are
a joke. Even some people in German Wikipedia have understood this. In my
view, the editors who cluster around these topic areas in Commons and
English Wikipedia simply lack the ability to curate such material
responsibly. The internal culture is completely inappropriate.

The other day e.g. I noticed that Wikimedia Commons administrators
prominently involved in the curation of adult materials were giving or
being given something called the "Hot Sex Barnstar" (NSFW) for their
efforts:

http://www.webcitation.org/65yLm9XpJ
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hot_sex_barnstar.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Cirt&oldid=67901160#Hot_sex_barnstar

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Saibo&oldid=67973190#The_Hot_Sex_Barnstar

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AMattbuck&diff=67910238&oldid=67910067
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Stefan4&oldid=67980777#The_Hot_Sex_Barnstar

The editor who designed this barnstar has just been blocked on Commons and
English Wikipedia by Geni, who (because of the Wikipedia Review discussion
thread, I guess) believes him to be the person reported to have been jailed
for possessing and distributing child pornography in the United States in
this article:

http://sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=13283

The editor has since been unblocked in Commons, while his unblock request
in English Wikipedia has been denied by the arbitration committee.

Now, this chap has contributed to Wikimedia projects for almost eight
years. He has been one of the most active contributors to Wikimedia Commons
in the adult media area, part of a small group of self-selected editors who
decide what kind of adult educational media Wikimedia Commons should host
to support its tax-exempt educational brief. In the real world, he
represents a fringe political position and a worldview that is aggressively
opposed to mainstream society. In Wikimedia Commons, he is mainstream. That
is a problem.

WMF is looking to work together with lots of mainstream organisations, from
the British Museum to the Smithsonian. But this kind of curation of adult
content is an embarrassment for the Wikimedia Foundation, and a potential
embarrassment for all the institutions collaborating with Wikimedia. And
the German community, happy with its largely well curated content in German
Wikipedia, is hurting the Wikimedia Foundation as a whole by preventing it
from moving towards the mainstream of society.

Andreas

2012/3/7 Juliana da Costa José <julianadacostajose at googlemail.com>

> Andreas, you seem really maniac fixed to this theme. I am since 7 years in
> Wikipedia and never saw this pictures.
> For me are pictures from tortured persons, from war and weapons torn bodies
> and shot heads a much more terrifying that sex-pics (I spare posting
> "spectacular" links, just for attending the voyeurism), but for some
> mysterious reasons, this is no "controversial content".
>
> Juliana
>
>
> 2012/3/6 Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at gmail.com>
>
> > On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 12:33 AM, Tobias Oelgarte <
> > tobias.oelgarte at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > You also stated in another discussion that the sexuality related
> > > categories and images are also very popular among our readers and that
> > the
> > > current practices would make it a porn site. Not that we are such a
> great
> > > porn site, we aren't, but we know where all this people come from.
> Take a
> > > look at the popular search terms at Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. One thing
> > to
> > > notice: Sexuality related search requests are very popular. Since
> > Wikipedia
> > > is high ranked and Commons as well, it is no wonder that so many people
> > > visit this galleries, even if they are disappointed in a very short
> time
> > > browsing through our content. But using this as an argument that we
> are a
> > > porn website is a fraud conclusion, as well as using this as an
> argument.
> >
> >
> >
> > The earlier discussion you refer to, about Commons neither being nor
> > becoming a porn site, was in the context of how to rank search results in
> > the cluster search you proposed. Given that the
> > masturbating-with-a-toothbrush image is viewed 1,000 times more often
> than
> > other toothbrush images, an editor suggested that it was perhaps
> > appropriate that the masturbation image came near the top of Commons and
> > Wikipedia toothbrush search results. If people want porn, we should give
> > them porn, was the sentiment he expressed. I argued that following that
> > approach would indeed turn Commons into a porn site, and that doing so
> > might be incompatible with Wikimedia's tax-exempt status. (For those
> > interested, the actual discussion snippet is below.)
> >
> > By the way, I would not say that Commons is entirely unsuitable as a porn
> > site. It may well fulfill that purpose for some users. One of the most
> > active Commons contributors in this area for example runs a free porn
> wiki
> > of his own, where he says about himself,
> >
> > *"Many people keep telling me that pornography is a horrible thing, and
> > that i cannot be a radical, anarchist, ethical, buddhist... etc. Well, i
> am
> > all those things (sort of) and i like smut. I like porn. I like wanking
> > looking at other people wank, and i like knowing that other people enjoy
> > seeing me do that. Therefore i am setting up this site. This will be a
> > porno portal for the people who believe that we need to take smut away
> from
> > capitalist fuckers."*
> >
> > There is certainly quite a strong collection of masturbation videos on
> > Commons. Now, all power to this contributor, if he enjoys his solitary
> sex
> > life – but would the public approve, if we told them that this sort of
> > mindset is representative of the people who define the curatorial effort
> > for adult materials in the Commons project funded by their donations? I
> am
> > not just talking about the Fox News public here. Do you think the New
> York
> > Times readership would approve?
> >
> > Andreas
> >
> >
> >
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3ARequests_for_comment%2Fimproving_search&diff=67902786&oldid=67859335
> >
> > Agree with Niabot that page views aren't an ideal metric, especially if a
> > nice-to-have aspect of implementation would be that we are trying to
> reduce
> > the prominence of adult media files displayed for innocuous searches like
> > "toothbrush". Anything based on page views is likely to have the opposite
> > effect:
> >
> >   - When ranked by pageviews or clicks, almost all the top Commons
> content
> >   pages <http://stats.grok.se/commons.m/top> are adult media files.
> >   - The most-viewed category is Category:Shaved genitalia
> > (female)<
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Shaved_genitalia_(female)>,
> >   followed by Category:Vulva<
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vulva>
> >    and Category:Female
> > genitalia<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_genitalia>
> >   .
> >   - The masturbating-with-a-toothbrush image is viewed more than 1,000
> >   times a day<
> >
> http://stats.grok.se/commons.m/latest60/File:Masturbating%20with%20a%20toothbrush.jpg
> > >,
> >   compared to roughly 1 view a
> > day<http://stats.grok.se/commons.m/latest60/File:Toothbrush-20060209.JPG
> >
> >    or less than one view a
> > day<
> > http://stats.grok.se/commons.m/latest60/File:Motorized%20toothbrush.jpg>
> > for
> >   actual images of toothbrushes.
> >   - Its popularity is not due to the fact that it is our best image of a
> >   toothbrush (it isn't), or that the image is included in a subcategory
> of
> >   Category:Toothbrushes<
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Toothbrushes>,
> >   the term the user searches for. It is due to the fact that it is
> > primarily
> >   an image of masturbation displaying female genitalia: it is
> > included in Category:Shaved
> >   genitalia (female)<
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Shaved_genitalia_(female)>,
> >   which, as mentioned above, is the most popular category in all of
> > Commons,
> >   and it is also part of Category:Female
> > masturbation<
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_masturbation>,
> >   the 10th most popular of all Commons categories.
> >   - The same thing applies to the cucumber images: their viewing figures
> >   will far outstrip viewing figures for any images just showing
> cucumbers,
> >   but these high viewing figures will not be because of people who have
> >   browsed to these images via the cucumber search term, or the cucumber
> >   category tree, but because of people interested in sexual media, where
> > the
> >   presence of a cucumber is merely incidental.
> >
> > More generally speaking, page views aren't everything; if we were after
> > maximising page views, we'd have a w:page 3
> > girl<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/page_3_girl> on
> > the main page. --*JN
> > <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jayen466>466<
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jayen466>
> > * 15:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC) I have to say, this comment makes me think
> that
> > maybe we don't have so much of a problem in the first place. If people
> are
> > actually looking for masturbation with a toothbrush 1000 times more often
> > than an actual toothbrush, then delivering that result for "toothbrush"
> > might just get people what they're looking for more often. The "principle
> > of least astonishment", if one believes in it, should dictate that if our
> > horny little audience is really hunting for porn most of the time, it
> would
> > be astonishing not to serve it up to them.
> > Wnt<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wnt>
> >  (talk <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Wnt>) 22:34, 4 March
> > 2012 (UTC) The point I was trying to make is that those 1,000 daily page
> > views don't come from people who are searching for an image of a
> > toothbrush. They're from the quarter million people who look at
> > Category:Shaved
> > genitalia (female)<
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Shaved_genitalia_(female)>
> >  and Category:Female
> > masturbation<
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_masturbation>
> > every
> > month, where this image is contained ... The other point is, regardless
> of
> > how educational it is to look at other people's genitalia, and at images
> of
> > other people having sex, would a free porn site meet the definition of a
> > tax-exempt educational site? If YouPorn, say, proposed a business model
> > whereby they were funded by donations, would they qualify for tax
> exemption
> > and 501(c)(3) status? Probably not. And would Wikimedia donors be happy
> to
> > see their money spent on providing the public with a free porn service?
> > Probably neither. --*JN
> > <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jayen466>466<
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jayen466>
> > * 00:06, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
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