[Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 3:00 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:


> 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.
>

Kicking ti into the long grass, or at least over the electoral cycle.
And it sounds like twisting the economic knife over funding structure.

Do not forget though that though the economic obstacles against
forking Wikimedia are (on paper) prohibitive, the legal ones that
guarantee forkability are iron-cast. And if you lose the community,
you are just guardians of an editable, but un-edited encyclopedic
venture. A Nupedia on wheels. I want the Wikimedia to succeed.
If there is anyone who doubts that, please raise their hand. But
I know it cannot succeed by going back on its own original ideals.

> 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.

I love corporate speak. "has been requested" Er, Who requsted what?
And precisely by which means and avenues?! This screams for a
need for clarification.!!!!

> 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.

Whew. We as a community figured that it would be insuperable from
the get go, about 9 years ago. And Jimbo duely banned the first
proposers. Glat to know the board is up to date, only 9 years late.

> 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!

Very true.

-- 
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]