[Gendergap] Upskirt/downblouse categories (was: Re: So this is how Commons works?)

[Sarah Stierch]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 1:59 PM, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> the images are scraped off the CC-BY and CC-BY-SA Flickr
> > streams.
> >
> That was something I noticed the other day. An anon replaced the
> infobox image on Veganism with a close-up shot of a woman's genitals
> and a vibrator. I looked to see who had uploaded it and it said Flickr
> upload bot. So is there a bot that uploads all cc images from Flickr
> indiscriminately?
>
>
People can set up bots to scrape. I do use a tool (Bryan's
tool<http://toolserver.org/%7Ebryan/flickr/upload>)
when I upload images I chose from Flickr that are CC appropriate. I guess
there are bots that do scrape things if you chose a topic, theme, or search?
I know Aude (Katie) runs a bot that scrapes cultural institution content
sometimes. Perhaps someone else can elaborate.

While I support the use of technology, I also fear that people put so much
trust into this technology they aren't aware of the lame content being
uploaded. They love to reiterate that if the "bot approves it" it's okay and
fine to be on Commons, but so much content that is pornographic in nature is
often uploaded, bot approved, then the Flickr account is deleted. This is a
rather broken approval process or system, IMHO.

I have said this before, and I'll say it again: Automation is good to a
point. It's destructive to the community in many ways though: it removes
personality and human touch, it removes human connection, empathy and
awareness from work, and it has this surreal ability to have people fully
trust it. That's something that really disturbs me, and I think it's one
reason why we have a hard time retaining editors. Everything is automated.

And Bladerunner is my favorite movie and sometimes I wish I was a replicant.
But, I didn't know what Twinkle or Huggle was until Wikimania, because I
rely on my own mind to produce what I need out of Wikimedia. Not all bots
are bad, but, it's a problem.

-Sarah




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