Tony Sidaway wrote:
Jimmy Wales said:
First, whenever possible I think people should try to see if a "link" solution is helpful. It does not reduce the educational value of an article by much if a potentially disturbing image is put behind a link instead of being shown by default inline.
I think this is a good idea where a photograph is of subsidiary importance. I think it would have be a poor choice for illustrating topics where the image and the text are best seen together Nobody has to download the inline image, but if the Wikipedia editors link the image instead of inlining there is no easy way for the reader can see both the image and the text it is supposed to illustrate. Inlining is *always* more flexible. If you link an image, you are *taking choice away from the reader.*
Agreed, although I think that an ideal solution would be a content-filtering system where users could choose which images they wanted to see. Displaying images as links by default would, detract from my experience as a user who isn't offended by those images.
While I think that we should be aware of people's sensitivity in regards to these images, we should do so without detracting from the educational value of other readers. Not offending people should always be secondary to educating them.
Also, we can't promise to avoid offending *everybody* if we get into displaying images as links. Example: birds are considered a symbol of death in japanese culture. Should we then display all images of birds as links? Since Wikipedia aims to be an international project, censoring something that I percieve as offensive may ultimately lead to that being used as rationale to censor something else. It can get out of hand very quickly. But even if it doesn't, I think that linking to images by default can detract from other readers overall experience, and (as Tony said) takes away choice from the reader.
Blog: http://frazzydee.ca
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