[Foundation-l] An image filter proposal from German Wikipedia

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 1:40 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> What I like about this proposal is its simplicity and elegance. It has the
> great benefit of leaving the communities and content writers in charge of
> where and to what extent they use the filter, and it also includes
> non-logged-in users.
>

The simplicity is definitely a plus, but I also see a number of import
minuses:
* There is no possibility of using different subjects to filter, or
different strictness of filtering. An image is either filtered or
non-filtered. Anyone who wants to have any image filtered, will have to
click a 'show me' any time they come across a filtered image
* The default mode for people who are not logged in will be filtered. The
principle of least astonishment would then say that the same holds for
people who are logged in, but in that case it means we would be forcing
action onto the (presumable) majority who does not want their Wikipedia
filtered, rather than the (presumable) minority who does
* No chance of using just factual criteria to decide which images are to be
filtered

I also don't see how this resolves the objections brought forward in the
discussion - if people consider "giving people a way to not look at certain
images" too close to censorship, then  why would they accept "not show
certain images but give people a way to see them"? If people are of the
opinion that "sexual images can be objectionable but we do not cater to
those who find images about X objectionable" is insufficiently neutral, then
why would they consider "this-and-that image are objectionable, but these
and those are not" okay?

-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com