[Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 10:54 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you search for "devoirs" (= homework) or "vacances" (= holiday) on
> French Wikipedia, you're presented with a porn video in which a man and a
> woman engage in sex acts (cunnilingus and fellatio) with a dog.
>
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sp%C3%A9cial%3ARecherche&profile=images&search=devoirs&fulltext=Search&searchengineselect=mediawiki
>
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sp%C3%A9cial%3ARecherche&profile=images&search=vacances&fulltext=Search&searchengineselect=mediawiki
>
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Devoirs_de_vacances.ogv
>
> I respectfully request an official statement from the individual Board
> members and the Executive Director on this situation. What is your view:
> Should Wikimedia projects continue to offer users unfiltered and
> unfilterable search hits, up to and including bestiality porn, in response
> to innocuous search terms like "homework", "toothbrush" and "holiday"?


Hi Andrea

I feel you conflate a bunch of moral and technical issues when you raise
your points about this issue. I agree with Tobias on some of his
observations about your posts.

At the risk of MZ pointing out that I am repeating someone, I have felt
that the category based search system and infrastructure for images is
sorely broken. I don't think a lot of list members would disagree on that
point, it needs some technical development, maybe a move to a tag-based
system while we figure out a better system.

The other issue is morality and responsibility. I don't think any
executives or board members should make a statement about that video. It's
a stated policy that they are not responsible for the content on the
project. To hold them legally or morally responsible, for what 100,000
contributors might do at any given point, is unrealistic and unreasonable.
They can not be held liable for actions of vandals, as much as of community
members who upload media in good faith. Depending on how you perceive this,
who does have some responsibility is the community itself. It governs
itself, has its own rules about content, WMF regularly points to it in
cases of content dispute.

Now, when dealing with a particular community, the subject of relativity
comes in. What you deem offensive might not be to others. There is no
universal controversial content - there is graphic content, sexual content,
disturbing content, but it is just content, the effect it has on the viewer
is always relative. There are people who might deem any image of a woman
not covered in a veil as offensive, there are a lot of people who have no
problem at the sight of nudity, whether its breast or someone's bottom, it
won't raise any eyebrows. Someone commented about graphic, medical images,
how they can do without having them in articles, they also added that they
should be there in case they do want to look. There is no universal, one
filter fits-all approach as several others have pointed out.

The subject of your previous post comes from this[1]. According to Imdb,
appears to be a 5 minute french adult short from 1920. As Thomas pointed
out, its content is probably illegal and possibly carries a prison term.
While neither of us know about french laws on the subject, it is suffice to
say it is a content issue and should definitely be marked and brought to
the attention of a French admin to verify. There is no filter that can
automatically detect if an uploaded images has nudity, graphic or even
illegal content, it can only be viewed by someone, tagged and deleted, as I
see it, that is the system we've always had, one that Youtube and others
you mention also apply. If you can put aside the issue of graphic depiction
and morality, do you think its existence needs to be acknowledged or wiped
from the history of the world?

My personal opinion on this subject aside, I do think there is a lot of
development needed to just fix the image search system we have. As I said
above, there is no universal controversial content. it is all content, the
effect is has on a viewer is always relative.

Regards
Theo

[1]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419683/