[Foundation-l] Blog from Sue about censorship, editorial judgement, and image filters

[Tobias Oelgarte]

Am 29.09.2011 17:00, schrieb Nathan:
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 2:45 AM, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> The complete absence of mentioning the de:wp poll that was 85% against
>> any imposed filter is just *weird*. Not mentioning it, and not
>> acknowledging why someone would do that, doesn't make it go away.
>>
>> As you say, this blog post reads like someone forced to defend the
>> indefensible, hence the glaringly defective arguments. This will
>> convince no-one the post claims to be addressing.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
>
> It makes some sense. If you come to the conclusion that your
> constituency for a particularly important decision is a huge and
> diverse array of people (i.e. the readers), and then further conclude
> that opposition to your decision is coming from a very narrow and
> homogenous slice of that array (i.e. contributors)... Ignoring the
> opposition in favor of the "larger audience" could then be quite
> reasonable.
>
> Nathan
>
If it would be the case, that this is a small minority, then i could 
agree and accept that as consensus, even if reasonable arguments were 
ignored. But what the post does is very simple. It describes liberal 
thinking people as a minority - as an extremist minority - that does not 
care about the readers or the project. That isn't any better then the 
"we are not censored, we can do it" argument. It's the plain opposite, 
but not better or worse. It's the tale about others that might be offended.

What we really need is the discussion if an image is illustrative for 
the topic. We want to spread knowledge. This does not mean to:
a) to leave out illustrative material because is offensive.
b) to include offensive material if something else has the same 
illustrative value.

The image filter, as a tool, is meant to circumvent this question and 
it's answers. Instead of trying to improve the content or providing 
better alternatives it's just the same as to say: "we don't care, you 
have to choose", ignoring all possible negative side effects.