[Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening

[Sue Gardner]

Hi folks,

I'm aiming to stay on top of this whole conversation -- which is not
easy: there is an awful lot of text being generated :-)

So for myself and others --including new board members who may not be
super-fluent in terms of following where and how we discuss things--,
I'm going to recap here where I think the main strands of conversation
are happening.  Please let me know if I'm missing anything important.

1) There has been a very active strand about Jimmy's actions over the
past week and his scope of authority, which I think is now resolving.
That's mostly happened here and on meta.

2) There is a strand about a proposed new Commons policy covering
sexual content: what is in scope, how to categorize and describe, etc.
 This policy has been discussed over time, and is being actively
discussed right now.  It is not yet agreed to, nor enforced.  I gather
it (the policy) reaffirms that sexual imagery needs to have some
educational/informational value to warrant inclusion in Commons,
attempts to articulate more clearly than in the past what is out of
scope for the project and why, and overall, represents a tightening-up
of existing standards rather than a radical change to them. It's here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content

3) There is a strand about content filtering (and, I suppose, other
initiatives we might undertake, in addition to new/tighter policy at
Commons).  This discussion is happening mostly here on foundation-l,
where it was started by Derk-Jan Hartman with the thread title
[Foundation-l] Potential ICRA labels for Wikipedia.  AFAIK it's not
taking place on-wiki anywhere.
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/195663

I also think that if people skipped over Greg Maxwell's thread
[Foundation-l] Appropriate surprise (Commons stuff) -- it might be
worth them going back and taking a look at it.  I'm not expressing an
opinion on Greg's views as laid out in that note, and I think the
focus of the conversation has moved on a little in the 12 hours or so
since he wrote it.  But it's still IMO a very useful recap/summary of
where we're at, and as such I think definitely worth reading.  Few of
us seem to gravitate towards recapping/summarizing/synthesizing, which
is probably too bad: it's a very useful skill in conversations like
this one, and a service to everyone involved :-)
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/195598.

Let me know if I'm missing anything important.

Thanks,
Sue



-- 
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation

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