[WikiEN-l] Deleting the Lolicon picture

[Ryan Delaney]

On 4/7/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> > It's not even that the public would perceive that image to be child
> > porn. It
> > is child porn.
>
> So it's not whether the *public* would perceive it to be child porn--
> it's whether *Ryan Delaney* would perceive it to be child porn.


If that's the standard it takes to get that image deleted, I will accept it.

Smug jabs aside, here's the point; you and I might disagree about whether we
should call that image "pornography", but that's a subjective disagreement
about word meanings. I wouldn't like to have the rule be "No pornography
allowed in Wikipedia", because although I agree with the proposition, what
would happen is that people would go around calling random stuff
"pornography" and demanding that it be deleted. That's what's going on here
-- word meanings are fluid, vague, and different people interpret them
differently. When I say "That image is pornography", I express a true
proposition. When you say "That image is not pornography", you also express
a true proposition; because what we mean by "pornography" is evidentally
different.

The real issue here is whether we want that image in Wikipedia, given the
legal and moral lines we would be walking by including it. I don't think a
reasonable argument could be made in favor, either legally, morally, or in
terms of benefit to the encyclopedia. At best, we've saved the WMF
foundation and many thousands of readers from legal liability for copyright
infringement and posession of child pornography. At worst, we've lost an
image that was slightly more illustrative of the subject matter than the
free, legal one we have now. Is it really worth all this argument? Let's get
back to work on the encyclopedia.

Ryan