[Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions

[Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva]

2010/5/10 Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>:
> Hello Elias,
>
> Welcome to the mailing list.

Hi! ^^

>> Are you a member of the Board of Trustees or something?
>> Could you inform me if the whole board has this kind of position?
>
> No, the whole Board does not have this position.  (not to speak for
> others -- I am on it, and I am opposed to the idea.)

Yours response, as well as Florence's, was refreshing.

I am actually embarrassed, since most of my comment wasn't very
constructive. (My comments on commons were even less balanced, but I
was really upset)

>
>> PS: I may look inquisitive, but I see this anti-porn campaign
>> contrasting to the complete lack of action when it was found that
>> wiki-en was grossly offending Islam for no better reason.
>
> I agree that the issue of images of Muhammad is similar to that of
> explicit sexual content -- both are highly controversial, considered
> by some to be educational or important; and by others to be useless
> and offensive.  We must find a way to deal evenly with all
> controversial material, and to understand the perspectives of
> different audiences.

I have no idea on how to deal with so many different expectations. I
myself always praised the position of some WMF projects regarding
showing human body, nudity in general and even and pornography. I
don't know much encyclopedias that show specific parts of human body
as they are, and as well as Wikipedia.

(I remember a single biology book of my high school with photos of
nude people - but it was mostly drawings. Plus, hmm, a really nice
History book with a nude painting on the cover, and that's it)

Looking at

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&offset=20100507131846&type=delete&user=Jimbo+Wales&month=5&year=2010

I see that Jimmy deleted this image:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amy_with_dildo.jpg

With the rationale 'Out of project scope'

But it was restored, because it was being actually used on dutch
Wikipedia, on the article "Amateur porn"

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateurpornografie

So my conclusion is: amateur porn might be on topic on commons. And
currently unused amateur porn might find some use later.z

This state of affairs makes me feel really well. Wikipedia is a unique
encyclopedia in many ways. One of them is that it has illustrated
articles on amateur porn. No, people don't care, that's fine - but
this really means a lot for me. In my country, 100 years ago, there
were a revolt, called "vaccine revolt", where people rebelled against
compulsory vaccination. It was the greatest urban revolt of the old
republic[1]. A particular argument used by the rebels was that doctors
was entering to woman's houses, and had to see the naked arm of them,
even the naked arm of girls, so that they could handle vaccination. I
don't support compulsory vaccination, but this kind of reasoning
really shocks me. It is now a distant past. Brazil is not like that
anymore, and fortunately we now have schoolbooks with naked people on
the cover (as I remembered).

I sincerely don't personally care much about Muhammad pictures, for
example. If people decided to delete them, I would simply think they
are too afraid of offending, but I wouldn't care that much. (I know
that being very notable and encyclopedic, the pictures themselves
might have their own article, so it's not like they are going to be
deleted anyway)

But some people (Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali) would be harshly offended by
deletion of those pictures. It might sound funny, but not accepting
Islam rules on non-muslim contexts is very important to her (being a
vocal ex-muslim, she received multiple death threats, and the director
of a short documentary her wrote was killed). I would show opposition
to this kind of deletion, but just because I'm a lot influenced by her
(and dislike deletionism in general)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Revolt

-- 
Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva <tolkiendili at gmail.com>