[Gendergap] High-heeled shoes as a case study

[Sarah Stierch]

Hi Toby -

Sorry to be a n00b but, can you explain what you mean by "refactoring this
category according to the principle of least surprise?"

For anyone else - if you find an image that has been uploaded by a Flickr
bot, and the Flickr account has been deleted what do you do? I notice a
large portion of images like this are often snapshot uneducational photos
(here is an example:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Labace_%2824%29.jpg) I was going to
nominate it for just being out of scope because Commons is not a repository
for snapshots.

;)

Asking questions like this on Commons-L isn't very pleasant, so thanks for
helping!

Thanks,

Sarah

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 6:48 AM, Toby Hudson <tobyyy at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've made a start on refactoring this category according to the principle
> of least surprise.  Feel free to do this whenever you notice a "surprising"
> image in a mundane category.
>
> Regarding consent, if any of the identifiable women are in private
> locations, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:PEOPLE<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:High-heeled_shoes>applies, and the uploader should state that permission was obtained to take
> & publish the image.  If this has not been done, please either contact the
> uploader or propose deletion.
>
> Toby Hudson  /  99of9
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 8:05 AM, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Category:High-heeled shoes is an excellent example of the current problem
>> WMF projects are having with creating and disseminating content that is
>> unbiased.
>>
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:High-heeled_shoes
>>
>> This category is different that most all the other categories about
>> footwear because it contains many images that are not primarily examples of
>> high-heeled shoes. Most other categories about footwear contain mostly
>> images of shoes or the lower leg(s) with a shoe or shoes.
>>
>> The number of images in Category:High-heeled shoes is higher than most
>> categories about footwear. Approximately one- third of the images are of
>> full body shots of attractive females who are wearing high heeled shoes, and
>> a significant number of them are nude or posed in sexually provocative
>> positions.
>>
>> There are random women who are wearing shoes and are mixed in with the
>> porn-stars and strip-tease dancers. These women are being objectified and
>> sexualized without their consent because of the way the the images are
>> displayed in  the category. See Wikipedia article on Sexualization
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexualization for a description of the term.
>>
>>
>> In each language that has Wikipedia articles about high-heeled shoes, the
>> content is about a type of footwear, so the links in the articles that lead
>> to commons are directing people to nudity or sexual content that they would
>> not anticipate. There are other problems with some of the images, including
>> unclear consent for the image to be uploaded by the subject of the image.
>>
>> I see this category as a concrete example of systemic bias coming from
>> having a male dominated editing community.
>>
>> Leather boots is only other category that I found that also has a large
>> number of images of people. It also contain a disproportionate number of
>> images of women who are nude or in sexually provocative poses.
>>
>> I think that it is important to continue to talk about these issues in the
>> hope that more people with became educated about the problems with with our
>> current methods to collect, categorize, and disseminate content.
>>
>> Sydney Poore
>> User:FloNight
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
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Art<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch>
and
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