[Foundation-l] 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content

[Andreas Kolbe]

> People don't read they react.

Here is a real-life example. I asked a German mate of mine why he had 
opposed the policy, with the following oppose rationale: 

"Oppose No need to go beyond existing legal obligations, just follow the 
laws that apply." (Oppose 114)

When I asked him in which way he thought the policy went beyond obscenity
and privacy law, his reply was that he hadn't bothered to read it: 

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benutzer_Diskussion:Fossa&action=historysubmit&diff=82528083&oldid=82526835

"I have no idea what's in the policy, but the most liberal policy 
feasible is a policy that adheres to the laws that apply. If, say, the 
servers are located in Guinea, they should adhere to Guniean law, if they 
are located in Tulsa, US/Oklahoma law applies. No need for redundancies 
here."

What the policy tried to do was make editors aware of existing laws, incl.
privacy, because at the moment, if you nominate a blow-job or similar
picture imported a few weeks ago from a "no longer active" Flickr account, 
it is as likely as not that three people will turn up for the deletion 
discussion.

One says, "You can't see all of her face." Another says, "It's in use in
a project, so we can't delete it". Another says the nominator is a prude,
and a fourth says, "It has educational value."

As Scott said, it's a chat-show phone-in.

Andreas



--- On Sat, 11/12/10, ???? <wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> From: ???? <wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Saturday, 11 December, 2010, 8:57
> On 10/12/2010 20:37, WJhonson at aol.com
> wrote:
> > In a message dated 12/10/2010 12:08:37 PM Pacific
> Standard Time,
> > jayen466 at yahoo.com
> writes:
> >
> >
> >> Suggest you read the draft policy, rather than the
> votes.
> >>
> >
> > You're suggesting that all the no votes are simply
> trolls then?
> > That's a lot of no votes to just cast them off as
> people who didn't read
> > the draft, isn't it?
> 
> 
> People don't read they react. In the UK a couple of years
> ago there was 
> a petition that gathered 50,000 signatures against a
> proposal to ban all 
> photography in public spaces. As a point of fact there was
> no such 
> proposal.
> 
> This received over 10,000 responses and a huge number of
> point ny point 
> rebuttals despite the fact that it is obviously a joke
> based around the 
> Brady Bunch.
> http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html
> 
> As the respondents to the above were pretty much the same
> constituents 
> as wikipedians (young, male, technically savvy) why would
> any one think 
> that exactly the same thing isn't going on with those
> currently voting?