[Foundation-l] Minors and sexual explicit stuff

[Nathan]

The Foundation, Commons and the English Wikipedia typically address
problems associated with minors by refusing to engage as a group. Some
individuals advise children not to put personally identifying
information on their userpage, but that is advice haphazardly given
and no effort is made to systematically identify situations where it
would be useful. That one problem is a microcosm for the whole
spectrum of "children" issues throughout Wikimedia - we encourage
individual editors to advise other editors when they might be
endangering themselves, but we don't allow (and often refuse even to
discuss) more proactive solutions.

Outstanding problems that have been identified in the past:

* Access of minor readers to sexually explicit material
* Involvement of minor participants / administrators in the
administration of sexually explicit content
* Sexually explicit imagery that features or may feature models under
the age of 18

Our responses to these problems have never been more sophisticated
than "Wikimedia is not censored." Perhaps its assumed that by refusing
to budge from this absolute position, we avoid a war by inches where
we will ultimately be forced to cave to all cultural sensitivities.
Instead of evaluating what our responsibilities should be, what action
we ought to take, we limit ourselves only to what we *must* do by law.
I think that's a mistake.

I'm not sure we can do much about minor readers and participants,
except perhaps putting certain types of content behind a warning wall
that can be easily bypassed. The types of verification and consent
models used in the web industry are formatted on limiting liability,
they don't need to be (and consequently are not) very effective.
Adopting one of these models may not make sense for Wikimedia, but it
certainly makes sense to have a discussion about it. Geni and Andrew's
comments strike me as an attempt to foreclose any discussion.

On the other hand, we certainly can do more on policing the sexually
explicit imagery on Commons against possible violations of child
pornography and privacy laws. We may not *have* to do this, but we
ought to. There is at least one large category of images, from a
specific photographer, where it has long been suspected that some
models are underage. The only verification effort we make now is on
licensing, but I think we ought to require actual model releases on
sexually explicit photographs. We will gain far more by protecting the
safety and privacy of image subjects than we stand to lose in the
volume of explicit photos.

Nathan