[WikiEN-l] Fwd: email from Irismeister

[Jens Ropers]

On 29 Nov 2004, at 23:10, Robin Shannon wrote:

>> Moreover,   Wikipedia.org, a
>> product of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. promotes disinformation,
>> pornography and disgraceful displays of pornographic images under
>> cover from arcane "company policies". Perhaps the long experience of
>> its founder, Mr Jimbo Wales, a former CEO of Bomis and a leader of
>> pornographic industry, explains such disgraceful, offensive company
>> policies.
>
> pardon? wikiporn? I must be working in the wrong parts of the 'pedia.
> Or maybe its all so strange and kinky that i dont realise its a giant
> database of porn that im editing. Poor me, under the illusion that it
> was an encyclopedia.
>
> paz y amor,
> [[User:The bellman]]
> rjs

The Bellman --

Dangerously, dangerously, there's actually a ''residual'' level of 
half-truth in what he's writing there -- it's not actually true, but 
it's not entirely made up either: there are some facts which, if 
sufficiently stretched and distorted, can be presented by people as 
disgruntled as irismeister in the above way. Don't get me wrong: I 
don't agree with irismeister's words. I do however think we should be 
aware of the full facts, because ignorance of them would make us MORE 
vulnerable:

* It is true that our relatively liberal standards concerning reporting 
on controversial sex-related issues could be regarded as "promoting 
pornography" by some people.
: For example:
** The [[Gag (BSDM)]] article, complete with pictures as of this 
writing, was recently listed on "Do you know..." and as such was 
recently featured on the title page:
:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gag_%28BDSM%29
:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Recent_additions
** The [[List of sex positions]] could also be seen as "pornographic" 
by sufficiently stuffy folks.
:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sex_positions (NB: Love the 
in-jokes on the initial big versions of the pictures. Eg. Harry 
Potter... or Asimov... WHAAHAHAHA! :D )
: The definition of "porn" is rather muddied -- eye of the (perving) 
beholder, I dare say. If you're getting excited "like that" over it, 
then it's probably porn to you. Problem is, as fetishists will tell 
you, all kinds of everyday objects may be porn to some people. Not that 
I think we should censor ourselves one bit because of such things.

* It is also true that [[Bomis]], which among other things "sells 
erotic images over the Internet", hosted/supported (and still hosts and 
supports?) Wikipedia, and that Jimbo "is the majority owner of Bomis" 
(quoted from [[en:Bomis]]). I've never actually bothered finding out 
the full story, so I can't tell you lots here. If more clarification is 
desired, Jimbo himself may be the man to ask. (Yea, I ''could'' 
probably take out a Bomis subscription and check if ''I'' regard Bomis' 
content as "porn", but, ohm, err... whatever.)

I wouldn't see the merit in replying to irismeister, but again, it's 
probably better to be aware, in case such allegations were to hit us 
from other parties -- which they probably will, sooner or later.
In the meantime, maybe I, too, will get back to actual 
encyclopedia-writing...   ;-)

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com