On Feb 17, 2008 4:32 PM, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
What is relevant is what offends people here and now. This one image in question obviously does. It's a pity we don't have any representatives of those offended here on this list to mediate a compromise -- it seems to me that both the people suggesting compromises in this thread and the people refuting them have very little understanding of what is actually necessary to answer the objections of the moderate petitioners.
I agree very much with Tim. The Wikipedia way has always been to attempt to find a common ground which is widely satisfactory to all but the most unreasonable people.
Here are two unreasonable positions:
- Anything which offends me (or offends anyone) has to be removed from
Wikipedia completely.
- Offensiveness is completely irrelevant to all editorial
decisionmaking and in fact anyone who mentions finding something offensive should be mocked, and we should try to find even more offensive things to put in Wikipedia just to show them.
Fortunately, both are straw-men positions not advocated by anyone.
So here we are in the middle trying to find a way to educate and inform in a mature, responsible way.
It is a shame that in this thread we do not have any representatives who might be able to find a compromise which would be satisfactory to the moderate petitioners, while at the same time fulfilling our general desire to not censor Wikipedia.
--Jimbo
Jimbo
I invite you to come participate at Talk:Muhammad and find how common both these positions are. If you're interested in finding a more moderate position among editors who're familiar with the goals of Wikipedia, the Muhammad article, Islam in general (which isn't as relevant as everyone thinks - Muhammad was a real guy of historical importance, not just some Islamic myth), Muhammad in particular and who takes a moderate stance on images on [[Muhammad]] recognising both their historical and educational value and the concerns of their potential offensiveness, you can try contacting User:Itaqallah on their userpage or via email if they have it enabled (not sure about that). I'm not sure anyone else meets that extended description.
On a somewhat seperate point, it's disappointing to see how underappreciated Muhammad is in these discussion, which often seem to adopt the "Muhammad belongs to Islam" paradigm that's not too often articulated but one of the pillars of the "remove all image of Muhammad" position. Even if not a single person had ever converted to Islam, Muhammad would still be a core topic on Wikipedia - he's immensely important to the encyclopaedia outside of his contributions to Islam, something which is not being recognised enough.
Cheers WilyD