[Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats

[Andrew Garrett]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 3:56 AM, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Well, when I ask people why they want the feature, that's what it
> comes down to. They say they want to be able to hide things that are
> offensive to their own culture. (Given that it would work) This
> method would allow them to do so, without imposing straight-out
> censorship on their fellow (wo)man.
>
> Why else would you need to hide things from yourself, if not because
> somewhere in your past, you learned that it was "wrong" or
> "uncomfortable" to look at?

I'll answer with an example.

I am very uncomfortable with medical images. It's not a cultural
thing, you can get these things by in PG movies these days. But
whenever I see an image of somebody being given an injection, or being
seriously injured, or who is seriously injured, I am physically sick
and in danger of passing out. It's called 'vasovagal syncope', if
you're curious.

When I want to look up a medical term (that I often don't understand
in the first place and have no idea what to expect of) on Wikipedia,
I have to very quickly scroll down or look away if it's illustrated
with a particularly graphic image. Obviously, I would like to view
Wikipedia in such a way that I am warned before I'm shown something
that is going to affect me in such a way. However, I realise that I am
not everyone and there is no reason to remove thousands of
high-quality, educational images from articles because I'm not
comfortable with medical imagery. That really would be "censorship".

Therefore, it would be really nice if I could choose, just for my own
sake and on my own behalf, to have these images hidden to start with,
and if I want to see them I can click on them and have them shown to
me.

Maybe you don't have any problems viewing any image whatsoever, but
there are plenty of people for whom it's more than just a 'preference'
based on some cultural norm that you don't agree with because you're
modern and you transcend cultural taboos. But I'd wager that, in
general, (if you get away from Wikipedians) you're in the minority.

—Andrew
-- 
Andrew Garrett
Wikimedia Foundation
agarrett at wikimedia.org