On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 9:46 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with your more sophisticated concerns about what is going on. However, I think it's really important to put them in context. If Wikimedia Commons had existed in 1985, this would be a very compelling line of criticism. But in 2014, the same kind of issues -- occasionally encountering shockingly inappropriate images on occasion -- happens whether you are using Wikimedia Commons, Google search, Flickr, Instagram, or any number of other sites -- not to mention spam that arrives unbidden in your email box. If there are studies that quantify how often this happens in different contexts, I'm not aware of them (and would be very happy to learn about them). Until we can look at that kind of study, I refuse to accept as a premise that Commons is categorically worse than other broad collections of media on the Internet.
Commons is fundamentally different from Google, Flickr and other image repositories in that it doesn't have safe search, neither as default nor as an option.
If you enter "human male", "forefinger", "Asian", "Caucasian", or "Black" as search terms in –
1.
Google Images
2.
Flickr
3.
Wikipedia Multimedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=&fu...
– the results are strikingly different, with the Wikimedia image repository the only one returning NSFW results (this applies even if you switch Google Safe Search off).
You can philosophically debate, applaud or excoriate that fact, as many have done, but it remains a fact.