[Gendergap] High-heeled shoes as a case study

Sun Sep 4 13:59:48 UTC 2011

Just a follow up...

It doesn't even matter, anymore. Some of these images have been nominated
before, and been kept. They all just keep stating I don't know the policies
and that they are in scope. Perhaps it all is and perhaps I really am an
idiot who just can't comprehend the policies, despite reading things
multiple times.

I think the policy about Flickr accounts being deleted and it doesn't matter
is one of the stupidest ideas. Two of the images I nominated have incorrect
licenses and were still uploaded from Flickr and "okayed" by a bot, despite
the Flickr account stating they are all rights reserved. I also don't get
how a deleted Flickr account can still be considered a "source."

Commons is really good at making a smart person feel stupid and like a gnat.

-Sarah

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 9:20 AM, Toby Hudson <tobyyy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Sarah,
>
> The principle of least surprise is roughly the following:
> People who go to a category/gallery/encyclopedia-article expecting
> something (shoes) should not be surprised by something they may find
> offensive (naked women wearing shoes).
>
>
> One way to ensure this is to make clearly labelled subcategories for the
> potentially offensive material.  In this case, I made a subcategory:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_wearing_high-heeled_shoes
> and within that
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nude_women_wearing_high-heeled_shoes
>
> so everyone who visits that category knows exactly what they're going to
> see in advance.
>
>
> Regarding your Flickr question: Whether the account is deleted or not
> doesn't usually change whether or not the picture is in scope.  But deleted
> accounts do make the copyright status more questionable.  At the time of
> upload, the bot would check that the license is correct, but that doesn't
> eliminate the possibility that the Flickr user is uploading copyright
> violations to their Flickr account ("Flickrwashing").  If there are other
> likely signs of copyright violation, I would nominate for deletion (as I did
> for the other image mentioned in this thread
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Young_girl_with_see-through_tops_and_shorts.jpg).
> When the account is still active, you can also check the rest of the Flickr
> user's contributions to get a good sense of whether they are really the
> author of the photos they're uploading.
>
> Snapshots aren't necessarily out of scope just because they're snapshots,
> they're sometimes realistically useful for an educational purpose.
>
> Toby
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 10:55 PM, Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> 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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>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> GLAMWIKI Partnership Ambassador for the Wikimedia Foundation<http://www.glamwiki.org>
>> Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American Art<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch>
>> and
>> Sarah Stierch Consulting
>> *Historical, cultural & artistic research & advising.*
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>> http://www.sarahstierch.com/
>>
>>
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-- 
GLAMWIKI Partnership Ambassador for the Wikimedia
Foundation<http://www.glamwiki.org>
Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American
Art<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch>
and
Sarah Stierch Consulting
*Historical, cultural & artistic research & advising.*
------------------------------------------------------
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