[Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 8:16 PM, David Levy <lifeisunfair at gmail.com> wrote:

>  > I find it strange that you consider this an objection to a filter.
> Surely,
> > giving someone an imperfect choice of what they consider objectionable is
> > _less_ making a decision for them than judging in advance that nothing is
> > objectionable?
>
> You're mischaracterizing the status quo.  We haven't determined that
> "nothing is objectionable" to anyone;  we rightly assume that
> _everything_ is potentially objectionable to someone (and refrain from
> favoring certain objections over others).
>

Thereby giving those who have objections nothing just because there are
others who we can't give what they want. If we had the same attitude towards
article creation, we would not have published Wikipedia until we had
articles on all subjects we could think of.


> > What is POV about labelling something as being an image containing a nude
> > human or an illustration supposed to represent a religious figure?
>
> Tobias Oelgarte described one key problem.  Another lies in the
> labeling of some things and not others.  Unless we were to create and
> apply a label for literally everything that someone finds
> objectionable, we'd be taking the non-neutral position that only
> certain objections (the ones for which filters exist) are reasonable.
>

We don't say they're unreasonable, we say that we don't cater to it, or at
least not yet. That may be non-neutral, but no more non-neutral than that
one subject has an article and the other not, or one picture is used to
describe an article and the other not, or one category is deemed important
enough to be used to categorize our articles, books, words and images and
another not.

Or even clearer: that one language has a Wikipedia and another not. Wid we
make a non-neutral choice that only certain languages (the ones for which
Wikipedias exist) are valid languages to use for spreading knowledge?


> You mentioned a hypothetical "unveiled women" category.  Do you
> honestly believe that the idea of tagging images in this manner is
> remotely realistic?
>

I'd say it is, provided there are people wanting to use the filter, and not
minding the fact that in the beginning it will be far from perfect.


> What about images depicting miscegenation (another concept to which
> many people strongly object)?  Are we to have such a category?
>

I'd say if there are people actually wanting to use such a filter, then yes,
I would think we might well get one.

-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com