--- On Mon, 7/2/11, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
From: Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net Not saying anything about what you think is a serious issue is passive aggression, saving up issues while neglecting to give notice that there is a problem.
I have given notice that I perceive there to be a problem on-Wiki many times, and the reply has always been the same: Wikipedia is not censored.
The suggestion that our editorial judgment with respect to illustration should reflect and be based on the judgment our sources exercise in that regard has not gone down well. We are all agreed that when it comes to text content, we must follow sources. When it comes to images, however, the community claims the freedom to apply its own ("OR") standards, which naturally reflect our skewed demographics.
Wikiproject? Yes, go do it, tell us where you put it. Although perhaps a bit of discussion about the exact nature of the project might be in order.
Perhaps WikiProject:Gender_neutrality. But I agree there should be extensive discussion first. I am not sure whether this should be an en:WP project, or be located somewhere else like Meta. Some of the problems in WP are imported from Commons: people will often argue that what is available in Commons should be used, and what is not available in Commons can't be used.
So if it just so happens that there are only hogtie bondage images of women, then, the reasoning goes, those images that are there should be used, because Wikipedia is not censored, but images of men just aren't available, sorry, and therefore can't be used.
A gender neutrality project could look at systemic bias in Wikimedia's coverage, be it biographies or images of nudity, and do work to ensure that the female POV is given equal weight to the male POV, males' numeric preponderance notwithstanding. This would be quite a revolutionary undertaking, because it would mean that in some way women editors' views should be given greater weight than male editors' views, to make up for the numerical imbalance. Starting a discussion on such a proposal might be quite instructive to gauge underlying community attitudes.
Has there been any further progress with the work group looking at the recommendations from the Study of Controversial Content? There is some overlap.
Andreas