[Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 8:49 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> Hi.
>
> 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.)

Hi MZ and all --

Project development was put on hold over the winter in favor of more
pressing priorities, with the agreement of the Board. There is
currently an open proposal on the table for the Board to vote on
whether to continue with our original request for an image hiding
feature; and the ED will take direction from the Board on the matter.
We have put that vote off however due to the more time-sensitive and
generally all-consuming financial discussions of the past couple of
months. I haven't reported on it one way or the other because the
timeline for a revote hasn't yet been set.

So, yeah, things are on hold essentially because there are more urgent
things to do, and because given the rather extraordinary scale of the
debate and all of the controversy, serious reconsideration of our
original proposal has been requested.

It seems clear however that regardless, there is both much technical
and social work that needs to be done around controversial content
that has nothing to do with image hiding, e.g. to improve Commons
search, rigorously get model releases, etc. etc.; and also that for
any particular technical proposal around image hiding there would be
many, many (perhaps insuperable) issues and details to work out.

I'd like to point out here that the other points addressed in both of
the controversial content resolutions
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Images_of_identifiable_people
and http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content),
though much less controversial, are also quite important!

-- phoebe, as WMF secretary