[Foundation-l] Minors and sexual explicit stuff

[George Herbert]

There are a number of problems with these statements.

One - the Foundation exists to host and legally protect the
encyclopedia, not direct it in all matters.  Most policy flows up
rather than down.  Things which would grossly embarrass or endanger
the encyclopedia are an exception, but no good case has been made here
for that.

On en.wp this topic has been addressed repeatedly - there is (near)
universal support for enforcing legal requirements and restrictions to
the degree that they are felt or found to apply.  Past that, there's
at least an arguable consensus that WP:NOTCENSORED is the policy the
community supports.

Is it worse for a 15-year-old (or 17-year-old, or 13-year-old) to
participate in discussions about or administrative actions regarding
an image or article with mature content, compared to merely being able
to view the image or article?

The latter is widely felt to be a parental control issue.  Why not the former?

I believe that advocates of a change both are taking the wrong venue
here, and not explaining how the level of access currently under
debate is fundamentally different than basic access to view images or
read articles.  If there is an argument to be made that there's a
qualitative difference or legal difference then that is an appropriate
topic for policy discussions on en.wp.

The burden of proof for justifying that there's the sort of policy
issue that the Foundation must by nature intervene in is not met, nor
being specifically argued.  If you feel that it's true - you need to
argue specifically to that point.


-george


On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt at gmail.com> wrote:
> +1. Not sure what I can add to that, other than I agree completely. We have
> great nuance in our debates about copyright and take consummate care when
> concerns are raised on that front. But when concerns are raised in other
> areas (such as this one) we often tend towards extreme positions
> characterised by a refusal to engage in the issue and simplistic shutdowns.
> I have no answer or particular axe to grind in this topic but I do think it
> is worth consideration.
>
> Nathan's response has got to be the most well written thing I've seen on
> Foundatio.nl for a long time.
>
> -Liam [[witty lama]]
>
> wittylama.com/blog
> Peace, love & metadata
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 9:49 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
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-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com