[Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates

[Excirial]

If you intend to build a house, you build some foundations first, or at the
very least you create a plan to follow. Quick solutions are not necessarily
a bad thing, but there is a difference between a solution and actions that
only cause damage. Personally i doubt that this would have generated the
same amount of controversy and debate if this was laid out or at least
communicated and planned before actions were taken. Keep in mind that a 30%
revert rate is massive, and an indication that large amounts of collateral
damage were done. To state something that has been said to many times
already: Removing works of art (Paintings) on the basis that they appeared
to be explicit is simply not well though off, especially if that same
painting was the subject (or used) in multiple article's on carious
incarnations of Wikipedia.

I would also point out that a policy was being discussed and finalized. Even
without suck a policy a simple statement explaining what was going on would
have helped tremendously. Instead most users were left in the dark with no
indication about the magnitude or reason for the removals. If anything we
are expected to operate on a consensus basis, which tends to be slower but
generally produces good results. I don't doubt Jimbo had good intentions,
but i also know that no other admin could have gotten away with a case like
this.

As a sidenote i would point out that while we are indeed accessible to
children, we always state that we are not censored and therefor not
appropriate for minors. Italy's law does not apply to Wikipedia servers -
after all we don't have to submit to China's Golden Shield Project either.
And while it is a WAX argument - if those children search for pornographic
content they can easily find a lot more explicit content then Wikipedia
offers. At least we handle it with a bit more care then most sites do.

~Excirial

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 11:24 PM, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 08.05.2010 23:02, Victor Vasiliev wrote:
> >> Think future, not past. Think project, not Jimmy.
> >>
> > We do think future: if Jimmy had already carelessly intervened twice
> > and caused controversies both time, how can we except the story will
> > not repeat.
> >
>
> Probably this is happened twice because twice the community has been too
> weak to find a "quick" solution.
>
> The legal involvement of publication of explicit sexual images
> accessible to children is something established a lot of year ago in
> different legal systems, this is nothing that is happened only one or
> two months ago.
>
> The community has had time (and a lot of time).
>
> The request of a wake up of Jimbo is not an excuse.
>
> Ilario
>
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