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

[Achal Prabhala]

On Friday 30 September 2011 11:19 PM, Theo10011 wrote:
> 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?

No.

I'm suggesting that:

Ratings are different from censorship.

Sometimes, ratings can be used to create censorship.

Often, ratings do just that - rate.

For film.

In several countries around the world, including India, and Germany.


>
> Theo
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