[Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions

[Gregory Maxwell]

When I heard that Jimmy had taken an axe to explicit images on commons,
I thought it was good news as I've been frustrated and disappointed by
my own inability to convince the commons community that some things,
like the bulk copying of erotic imagery from flickr— hundreds of
images with little to no prospect of use in an article, was
inappropriate.

By in my first few clicks on Jimmy's deletion log I instantly found
several hundred year old works of art by artists who have articles in
almost every major language Wikipedia.

... and that these deletions were not just errors. When the images
were deleted by people operating under that impression, Jimmy
wheel-warred.   As an example of their maturity, I'm not aware
of any Commons Admin that undeleted a second time.

After seeing that went and viewed Jimmy's talk page, and the commentary
there was enough to dispel all hope I had of being able to support this
initiative.

I strongly recommend you read these sections yourself:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Franz_von_Bayros.3F


The "delete everything now, regardless of how long its been there, how widely
used, the fact that it's a 100 year old line drawing, and worry about
allowing some stuff later, maybe" approach seems maximally poisonous to me.

I've been guilty of it myself in the past, but I hope that I've learned
better by now...

I think Jimmy's conduct is alarming, disproportionate, and ill-considered.
I find it shocking that the board has chosen to explicitly support this
'wild west' approach.

I feel like our community is being dragged into a petty game of personal
one-upmanship between Larry Sanger and Jimmy.


On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Ting Chen <wing.philopp at gmx.de> wrote:
> What I can say to your questions is that Jimmy informed the board about
> his intention and asked the board for support. Don't speaking for other
> board members, just speak for myself. I answered his mail with that I
> fully support his engagement.
>
> Personally, I think that the board is responsible for defining the scope
> and basic rules of the projects. While for projects like Wikipedia,
> Wikisource, Wiktionary the scope is more or less easier to define. On
> Wikipedia we have the five pillars as our basic rules. But we have also
> some projects that have a scope that is not quite so clear and no such
> basic rules. Commons is one of these projects, and the most important one.

I hope the rest of the board will step forward and disclose their level of
support for Jimmy's actions. I think such disclosure will be relevant in
the communities decision to support the members in the future.

I don't see any reason why the board discussion on this topic should be
kept confidential.

Michael, Ting. Please consider this to be a request for the board to
release its entire discussion related to this subject so that the community
may better understand the basis for this sudden action against the
commons community.


I think a lot of people who have invested considerable effort into the
structure and operation of commons will be gravely offended by your
claim that Commons has "no such basic rules", for it most certainly
does— I know that your words hurt and offend me.

The point that commons governance has not managed a single area to your
liking can not be construed as evidence that commons is lawless.


> Fact is, there is no consensus in the community as what is educational
> or potentially educational for Commons. And as far as I see there would
> probably never be a concensus. And I think this is where the board
> should weigh in. To define scopes and basic rules. This is why the board
> made this statement.

There is an enormous space of things strongly understood to be acceptable
by consensus, and at least some space understood to be unacceptable.

Then there is a area under which no clear consensus exists but under which
several carefully navigated compromises exist on Commons and the projects.

These compromises are not, in my opinion, anywhere near sufficient. But
they do exist and they are helpful.

The actions taken have disregarded both the area under clear consensus (e.g.
hundreds year old works of art by famous artists) as well as having
disregarded the area of compromise in the "no consensus" space.

For example, on many Wikipedia projects drawings (albeit rather detailed
ones) were used rather than sexually explicit photographs to illustrate
articles on specific sex acts. — The compromise being that there is a need
to use illustrations on these articles, just as we use illustrations on other
physical activities (like dancing) but that drawings could achieve the
informative purpose without being quite as likely to offend.

Unfortunately Jimmy unilateral removed the commons policy preferring the
illustrations:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Sexual_content&diff=prev&oldid=38893040

I think is incredibly unfortunate— it damages one of the things we've been
able to do, not just at commons, but at the Wikipedias— to decrease the
level of offence and shock without upsetting people who are taking a
principled stand against singling out sexually explicit material for
self-censorship.  Now I don't know where we stand.

I don't really want to support the proposals of the extremely permissive,
as I've long supported being a little more selective on commons. ...
but if my alternatives are either supporting the removal of historic
artwork and treating fictional illustrations the same as photographs, I
think I may have to side with the large faction in support of
permissiveness—  After all, I can always choose to _not look at_ the
images on commons which I don't believe belong there, but no personal
choice will protect me from hasty under-considered over-aggressive
censorship imposed at the whim of a single wikimedia board member.