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

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Let me know if I'm missing anything important.

Actually, yes. In spite of multicultural nature of Wikimedia, this
process shouldn't be formulated as purely related to sexual content,
but as related to cultural taboos or to "offensive imagery" if we want
to use euphemism.

Under the same category are:
* sexual content;
* images Muhammad;
* images of sacral places of many tribes;
* etc.

Although it is not the same medium, under the same category are all
texts which some culture may treat as offensive. So, censorship
categorization below assumes categorization of media *and texts*.

Important note is that we have to put some principles before going
into the process:
1) We don't want to censor ourselves (out of illegal material under
the US and Florida laws).
2) We want to allow voluntary auto-censorship on personal basis.
(Anyone can decide which categories he or she doesn't want to see.)
3) We should allow voluntary/default censorship on cultural basis, as
the most of our readers are not registered. (Based on IP address of
reader. Thus, pictures of Muhammad should be shown by default for
someone from Germany, but shouldn't be shown by default to someone
from Saudi Arabia. In all cases there has to be possibility to
overrule such censorship by simple click or by preferences.)
4) We shouldn't help any kind of organized censorship by any
organization. For example, if looking at the naked body is prohibited
in some [Western] school even for educational purposes of teaching
anatomy, it is not our responsibility to censor it. Contrary, as naked
body is much deeper taboo in Muslim world, it should be censored on
"cultural basis" (3).

Speaking about "default censorship on cultural basis" and in the
context of the Western cultural standards, this should be contextual.
Commons gallery of penises should be censored by default, but that
exemplary image shouldn't be censored inside of the Wikipedia article
about penis.

We should have a voting system for registered users at site like
"censor.wikimedia.org" can be. At that site *registered* users would
be able to vote [anonymously] should they or not have censored images
of any category in their region (again, this is about Google-like
cultural based censorship which can be overruled by personal wish).
Users from Germany will definitely put different categories for
censorship than users from Texas. And it should be respected. Rights
of more permissive cultures shouldn't be endangered because of rights
of less permissive cultures.

That kind of voting system would remove the most of responsibility
from WMF. If majority of users in one culture expressed their wish, it
is not about us to argue with anyone why is it so.