[Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Todd Allen]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 7:22 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Well, first of all, why?
>>
>> Secondly, I'm not talking just about sexually explicit photos.
>> Wikipedia has photos of people being or about to be [[behead]]ed,
>> [[torture]]d, [[kidnap]]ped, [[assassination]]ed, etc.  I checked, and
>> there's no photograph of someone being [[rape]]d, just paintings, but
>> it's probably just a matter of time.
>
>
>
> Well, Todd has certainly said on-wiki in the past that he would not see a
> problem in Wikipedia using a video of rape to illustrate an article on the
> topic, provided it were appropriately licensed and did not raise privacy
> concerns (for example if the persons shown were no longer alive). He and I
> have discussed this at length before, together with Jimbo, but I don't
> think either of us has been able to change the other's mind. :)

That was a highly theoretical scenario (and one you brought up for
that reason, as I recall.) But in practice, we do have photos of
victims at articles such as [[Rape of Nanking]] and [[Holocaust]].
Some of those photos are extremely disturbing. That's because the
articles are about extremely disturbing subjects.

> Many Wikipedians generally argue that because Wikipedia is not censored, it
> should always be appropriate to show an image or video of what the article
> is about. According to this reasoning, an ideal article about rape would
> show a video of rape.

It currently does. In this case, they're paintings rather than photos,
but they certainly and graphically show the subject matter at hand.

 An article on suicide would have embedded videos of
> people killing themselves.

For such a broad topic, I think we might want more general
illustrations. But if we really did have such an image, of appropriate
license and high quality, I could see considering it.

 An article on marriage would show a video of a
> marriage's consummation.

No, it wouldn't. The consummation of a marriage is tangentially
relevant. Photos of weddings and married couples in various cultures
would be much more relevant. The meaning of "consummation" should be
briefly touched on, but would not need anywhere near enough detail to
be an illustrated section.

 An article on fatal car accidents would show a
> video of a fatal car crash one.

[[Vehicle accident]] currently includes photos of the aftermath of
several car crashes, including a couple that look likely to have been
fatal. If we had appropriately licensed video of a vehicle accident
occurring, why on earth wouldn't we use it there?

 An article on Russian roulette would show
> someone playing it. And so forth.

Given that it's illegal in many areas, I would not hold out a high
likelihood of us seeing someone voluntarily release a video of it. But
let us presume that someone did. Isn't that exactly what the article
is about?

> This argument is not motivated by a desire to educate, or by educational
> competence for that matter.

Andreas, I realize we disagree on this in a lot of ways, but I think
anyone who works on this project has a desire to educate. I think we
can discuss this without questioning one another's motives or calling
people incompetent.


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