[WikiEN-l] A call for moderation

[Wily D]

On Feb 17, 2008 10:29 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have some observations, but first a request: please don't post
> one-line response after one line response. Make a considered point,
> and post it.
>
> Firstly, I agree with Ansell - this is a situation which should be
> decided on principle, and the principle should be agreed upon before
> technical implementation is debated. There are a number of ways to
> obscure, hide, move, remove or display images. The question isn't "How
> is it done?" but "Should we do it?"
>
> Some have suggested that the principle here should be to accommodate,
> at least in part, the religious doctrine of a group of people. I
> strongly disagree - it seems to me like many decisions have been taken
> in the past on Wikipedia directly in contravention of this proposed
> principle, and rightly so in my opinion. There are untold numbers of
> ways we can find to offend someone or many people, and this likelihood
> has never guided the insertion of encyclopedic material. The sheer
> number of offended people is a detail that is irrelevant to the
> principle - whether it is 3, 3 million, 300 million or 3 billion. The
> question is do we adhere to _our_ principles, against censorship based
> on values others would impose on us, or adhere to the principles of
> those others?
>
> The spectre of compromise is just that - it is an illusion,
> constructed by those of us who assume that compromise with religious
> fundamentalism is possible. It isn't. Where have you seen it claimed
> that obscuring the images opposed by fundamentalist Muslims behind
> hat/hab will placate them? Does the petition say "You must make it so
> that if we don't want to see it, we don't have to?" It doesn't. The
> belief that a technical compromise will solve this problem without
> creating a thousand like it is mistaken - this thread, and the others,
> is a reaction in part to the recent significant publicity this issue
> has achieved. When its reported in the New York Times that Wikipedia
> removed the images of Muhammad in reaction to petitiononline.com and
> vandalism (and it will be), you can expect that our many other similar
> nationalism related problems will worsen through the precedent.
>
> Finally, if you look through the archives of [[Talk:Muhammad]] and the
> FAQ there, you'll notice that practically every possible compromise
> has been considered and discarded. Not a single new argument has been
> made in any of the list threads about this subject - and all of these
> arguments have been considered and rejected by the editors who
> actually work on the Muhammad page. Before anyone on the mailing list
> again says "Hey, two emails in support! Be bold, go change it, and
> everyone will cheer because no one has thought of this marvelous
> solution before..." please consider that there are folks who have
> spent considerable time on the article but aren't signed up to the
> mailing list, and changes based on "We discussed it on WikiEN-l!!!!"
> probably won't go over well.
>
> Nathan
>
Err, if one has the implimentation for a "Click here to hide all
images of Muhammad in this article" hatnote or such for the article, I
think we could round up a cabal and force it through.  Opt-in
censorship is already endorsed, although not easy in implementation -
opt-out censorship seems to be generally rejected.

That said, the majority of editors who work on the article with any
seriousness recognise it's in terrible shape, and the constant
problems with images (and a few other campaigns that've been organised
to try and force the article to conform with some POV or another) have
been a major hinderance in fixing the article up.  Anything that
actually halfway resolved the issue would be welcome.

Cheers
WilyD