[Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats

[Milos Rancic]

On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 09:35, WereSpielChequers
<werespielchequers at gmail.com> wrote:
> Re: Demagogy of "multiculturalism" when it means "pushing POV by right-wing
> US". As long as the image filter would enable Moslems to opt out of seeing a
> certain set of cartoons, then this to me is about globalisation not about
> appeasing Conservapedia and its fans. Actually one of the most predictable
> risks of implementing this is that we will be attacked by our American
> critics "Wikipedia enables censorship, Moslems now allowed to censor images
> they dislike, but naturally no "block all porn" option for Christians" (all
> porn is bound not to be an option because definitions of porn are so
> divergent. But if it were they'd pick another unimplemented option such as
> "swimsuit" or "respectable swimsuit").

Motivation is one thing, product is another. Motivation behind image
filter wasn't to allow Muslims to filter Mohammad depiction. That was
included just because of arguments that filtering sexually explicit
images and not Mohammad depictions would be American cultural
imperialism. (Google for "cultural imperialism" on foundation-l; check
Robert Harris' suggestions, as well.)

And while I think that such tool would include other cultures as well
(there are other cultures in the world, besides Christian and Muslim
right-wingers), motivation for this filter didn't come from Muslims or
indigenous people of Australia, but from American right-wingers [1]:
moron Sanger and Fox News swill. Although we have Muslims on this
list, *no* Muslim commented this thread. Although we have many
cultures on this list, Americans are around 100% of supporters, while
a number of people from other cultures oppose (including, of course,
majority of Americans).

Note that I am not trying to convince you not to use the filter. I am
even not against the filter as idea, because the only thing which has
been done well in the whole saga is the design of the filter for user
side. (As it is opt-in filter, I would be content even with stricter
rules.) The problem is everything else: motivation, management of
every phase of the process, arrogance of Board members, demagogy,
tactical and strategic failure because of personal wishes.

[1] http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/27/wikipedia-child-porn-larry-sanger-fbi/