[Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 4:49 AM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:

>
> What happened with implementing software related to controversial content?
> There was quite a bit of hubbub at some point, then Wikimedia pulled back a
> little (and Sue visited Germany to give some assurances)... what's the
> current status of the project? Is it still a project? (If there's a project
> status page somewhere with updated info, feel free to just link that.)
>
> MZMcBride
>
> P.S. I'm always fascinated by cases where there's an extreme contrast
> between how seemingly innocuous the search term is and how explicit the
> search results are. I think my current favorite case is the search for
> "forefinger" on Wikimedia Commons. More examples always welcome at
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems>.
>
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Niabot has just come up with what I think is a great idea for addressing
the search problem you mention in your postscript. He's proposed a
clustered search function. (Anybody remember Vivísimo?)

This could not just solve the problem of NSFW media popping up unexpectedly
in media searches in Wikipedias and Commons. It would generally make
Commons' search function more user-friendly, by grouping search results
according to categories. So adult media would no longer pop up in the
middle of unrelated searches, monarch butterflies would be separated from
other types of monarch, etc.

See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Brainstorming#Clustering_for_search_results_on_Commons
for
Niabot's own write-up of his proposal.

(If you are unfamiliar with the Commons search problem please see

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems

as well as the recent Fox article:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/24/why-is-wikipedia-still-doling-out-porn/


And see (note that this link is NSFW)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=images&search=forefinger&fulltext=Search


for what the forefinger search looks like in Wikipedia.)

Beyond wanting to drop the list a note about Niabot's idea, I also just
meant to ask the question that MZMcBride asked above. What is the status of
the image filter? Last year, we heard that in January, developers would
sift through the proposals on the Meta brainstorming pages, and select one
for implementation. But now it is March, and nothing seems to be happening.
Where are we on this?

Andreas