[Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats

[Milos Rancic]

Not long ago I had a gaffe on internal-l, by publicly expressing
opinion what do I really think about Wiki Loves Monuments, although my
intention was to send a private email. However, WLM has a number of
good sides: Commons will be filled with photos, people will spend time
together, it makes at least some parts of the movement more coherent.
Besides the fact that making depictions of depictions is a classical
European type of decadency. Anyway, if that's the worst thing in our
movement, I could live with that.

But, it is not.

If Board doesn't intervene *now*, it could be easily concluded that
the worst thing ever happened to our movement has started these days.

Up to the end of the so called "referendum", everything was as usual:
Because of <I promised to myself that won't use at this point phrase
"Jimmy's sexually impaired rich friends"> Board articulated something
in opposition of majority of editors (yes, majority of editors; I
really don't care what one sexually impaired member of Concerned Women
for America with 17 edits thinks about Wikipedia [1][2]); then it
wanted to implement it anyway, including bizarre questionnaire called
"referendum"; then heated discussion sparked; then results came; then
results from German Wikipedia came, as well.

Logically, we have the solution: If Board really cares what Concerned
Women for America think, let it, please, implement that filter on
English Wikipedia and leave the rest of the projects alone -- if they
don't ask for the filter explicitly. As members of that organization
probably don't know any other language except English, everybody will
be happy. Except the core editors of English Wikipedia, of course. But
Board doesn't care about them, anyway; which means that English
Wikipedia is reasonable scapegoat for Wikimedia movement to please
sexually impaired Americans and others.

But, we have one much more serious problem in front of us. Instead of
going toward the solution, we are going in opposite direction. Instead
of concluding this three years long drama, Censorship Committee and
Board want to "analyze" the numbers and prolong agony for another
three years. And if that agony has something useful, important at the
end, I could even say that we need to make reasonable sacrifice (in my
area it would be solved by slaughtering pig or goat or whatever, which
is more reasonable than wasting three more years, by the way).

But, it doesn't have.

The most important reason for this bizarre expression of mismanagement
is to please, as mentioned before, sexually impaired Americans. If
that's the main reason, please, please them *now* or forget
everything.

Like WLM, this Board's pet project is expression of decadency. This
time American. However, unlike WLM, this project won't fill Commons
with photos. Quite opposite, this project will make significant
problems to the Commons community. People will spend time together
indeed, but in arguing who is right and who's not. It already divides
the movement on a couple of lines.

I realized that I started to participate in this madness when I asked
for some data from the results. And now, community is asked to
participate into the "Next steps" [3]! Holy Thing! That will produce
much more sexual content than any "porn" photo on Commons. In Serbian
we say for that "fucking in healthy brain". If not exterminated at the
beginning, that brainfuck (unfortunately, not programming language
[4]) will produce much more problems than any image filter or any Fox
News scam.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer#Internet_censorship
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerned_Women_for_America.
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/Next_steps/en
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck