[Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

[Andreas Kolbe]

From: Fae <fae at wikimedia.org.uk>
> We could also just delete them, unless someone actually uses them in a sensible way in an article. :-)
>
> sincerely,
>        Kim Bruning

Not on Commons; being "objectionable" to some viewers and not being
currently in use does not make a potentially educational image out of
scope. I have seen many poorly worded deletion requests on Commons on
the basis of a potentially useable image being "orphaned" rather than
it being unrealistic to expect it to ever be used for an educational
purpose.

Fae




Agree with Fae; Commons is a general image repository in its own right, serving a bigger audience than just the other Wikimedia projects.

So the fact is that Commons will contain controversial images – and that we have to curate them responsibly.

Someone on Meta has pointed out that Commons seems to list sexual image results for search terms like cucumber, electric toothbrushes or pearl necklace way higher than a corresponding Google search. See http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2011-October/006290.html

Andreas