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

[Theo10011]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 11:14 PM, Achal Prabhala <aprabhala at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Friday 30 September 2011 10:54 PM, Theo10011 wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:21 PM, Bishakha Datta<bishakhadatta at gmail.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 9:45 PM, Milos Rancic<millosh at gmail.com>
>  wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 16:24, Risker<risker.wp at gmail.com>  wrote:
> >>>> Milos, I believe this is exactly the kind of post that Sue was talking
> >>> about
> >>>> in her blog. It is aggressive, it is alienating, and it is
> intimidating
> >>> to
> >>>> others who may have useful and progressive ideas but are repeatedly
> >>> seeing
> >>>> the opinions of others dismissed because they're women/not women or
> >> from
> >>> the
> >>>> US/not from the US. The implication of your post is "if you're a woman
> >>> from
> >>>> the US, your opinion is invalid". Your post here did not further the
> >>>> discussion in any way, and I politely ask you to refrain from making
> >> such
> >>>> posts in the future.
> >>> As mentioned by Nathan and Oliver, I want to hear what do women think
> >>> about the filter, how does it correlate with positions of men and how
> >>> does it correlate with cultures.
> >>>
> >> I am not convinced that all women feel the same way about the filter,
> nor
> >> all men - similarly, cultures are not homogenous. It is hard to
> generalize
> >> on any of these bases (plural of 'basis'), because there is no simple
> >> correlation.
> >>
> >> Different individuals can have different responses, regardless of gender
> or
> >> culture. It doesn't tie in so neatly.
> >>
> >> Speaking for myself, no, I can't see myself using the filter. So what?
> That
> >> doesn't mean I use myself as a proxy for the rest of the world to decide
> >> that no one else should, or that anyone who does is somehow a lesser
> human.
> >> And yes, I'm against censorship, but as I've said before, I don't see
> the
> >> filter as proposed as censorship.
> >>
> >> The world is made up of different folks, whether we like it or not. And
> >> just
> >> as we provide for the person who doesn't flinch when seeing a vulva, why
> is
> >> it so wrong to even think about the person who does flinch when he or
> she
> >> sees a vulva? That's what I don't get.
> >>
> > Bishakha, call it editorial-content, call it censorship or any other
> > euphemism - at the heart of it, it is deciding what someone gets to see
> and
> > what not. It should not be our job to censor our own content. The
> strongest
> > argument I read against this has been - it is not something WMF and the
> > board should implement and develop, If there was a need to censor/cleanse
> > graphic content, there would a successful mirror or a fork of the project
> > already somewhere. Instead, we have small distributions/projects which
> use
> > 1-2 year old offline dumps to cleanse and then consider safe.
> >
> > Now, If you were to apply this argument to a government, or a regime and
> > they decide on removing things that make them flinch - how different
> would
> > we be from dictatorial regimes who limit/restrict access to Wikipedia for
> > all the people that do flinch? I can point to Indian I&B ministry issues
> or
> > Film censor board of India, but you probably know more about them than
> me.
>
>
> There is a big difference between *ratings* and *censorship*, a
> difference which the Indian government has routinely ignored or
> deliberately overlooked, as, I suspect is happening here in this
> discussion. Naturally, there are circumstances where ratings systems can
> be used to create effective censorship, but this doesn't have to be the
> case, and indeed isn't in various parts of the world - evidenced by the
> fact that virtually every country in the world has a ratings system for
> film. (Including Germany, by the way).
>

How about an encyclopedia? Anywhere?

Are you suggesting a rating system for an encyclopedia?

Theo