[WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.
Erik Moeller
erik_moeller at gmx.de
Wed May 12 04:18:00 UTC 2004
Rich-
> I'm not sure if you meant this literally,
> figuratively, or sarcastically. If you really meant
> that a picture must be "universally considered
> offensive" before if is moved behind a link, I must
> disagree.
It was meant figuratively rather than literally. I am talking about 95-
100% agreement. If I added a photo of the decapitated hostage, Nick Berg,
to an article and insisted on voting on it, I'm sure that's pretty much
what we would get - 95-100% in favor of removing the image or replacing it
with one just showing the hostage when he was still alive.
This is the kind of case where a link (if anything) is appropriate. I
hesitate to use the word "consensus" here because this is increasingly
interpreted as "80%", which is really much too low for such a decision.
> How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a
> significant number of people find offensive?
Quite a bit, in my opinion. By doing so, we emphasize this particular
bias. For example, if we censor images of body parts (connected to their
body *cough*), we emphasize the bias of modern US society against nudity,
a bias which is by no means universal.
Of course you can argue that by not censoring ourselves, we become biased
*against* that viewpoint. But that is not true if our lack of censorship
is consistent. Then we are merely biased in favor of being inclusive
which, in my opinion, is a necessary bias for an encyclopedia, just like
we are pro-knowledge rather than anti-knowledge and pro-neutrality rather
than pro-atheism or pro-theism, etc.
Regards,
Erik
More information about the WikiEN-l
mailing list