[Gendergap] High-heeled shoes as a case study

Sun Sep 4 16:23:35 UTC 2011

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.
>

Sarah,

If you look through my contributions on Commons, you see the way that I
usually handle changing categories on images with nudity or sexually
provocative images. I use a descriptive edit summary, and if I get reverted
I remove it again, and leave a talk page message.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=250&target=FloNight

I don't re-add a different category back unless I think that someone would
truly want to look for an image in the category. Often you would need to
create a new category because one that specific does not exist.

The problem with adding back categories with titles that make it obvious
that the category contains sexual content  is that these categories will
show up in searches for the the non-controversial term. The same is true of
file names that combine sexual terms with household objects. For example, a
search for toothbrush brings up a women masturbating with an electric
toothbrush toward the top of the search results even though it long appears
in category toothbrush.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=toothbrush&fulltext=Search&ns0=1&ns6=1&ns12=1&ns14=1&ns100=1&ns106=1&redirs=0

(At least the Commons link on  Wikipedia no longer will take you to the
image since the image was taken out of Category:Toothbrushes).

The categories have been changed a half a dozen times on this since then
because there are differences of opinion about how to categorize this type
of image.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Masturbating_with_a_toothbrush.jpg&diff=prev&oldid=55049406

In my view the over categorization of sexual content makes Commons look like
it has more sexual content than it really has. Some of the categories that
people have created border on being ridiculous. Many of them eventually get
removed into a more general category. For example eventually,  now
File:Masturbating_with_a_toothbrush.jpg only has 2 categories, and both seem
appropriate.

This is getting off topic from the core mission of the email list, so if you
want more detailed help drop me an email.

Sydney

User:FloNight

> 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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>>>>
>>>
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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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