[Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

Bod Notbod bodnotbod at gmail.com
Wed Sep 7 15:04:33 UTC 2011


On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 2:46 PM, Thomas Morton
<morton.thomas at googlemail.com> wrote:

> But another example; clowns.
>
> Some people are terrified of clowns, even their images. You wouldn't
> describe images of clowns as "potentially objectionable" but it would be
> great for Coulrophobes to go "oh hey Wikipedia, I don't like clowns so can
> you hide pics of them for me please? Thanks".

I have a phobia. I would like to overcome it. All my reading suggests
that what I need to do is expose myself to the thing I fear, more and
more, in incremental steps.

So, if Wikipedia is to be a good citizen in the online world what we
should actually do for someone afeared of clowns is to make sure that
they see a picture of a clown once every, say, ten articles or so *no
matter what the article is about*. This should be ratcheted up
gradually so that at some point all the user sees is a big picture of
Ronald Macdonald whenever they visit Wikipedia.

Once the user reports that they are cured we can return their service
back to normal and they can then educate themselves, do their homework
whatever, without trepidation.

Bodnotbod




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