Stepping in to add another aspect to both questions, as I think it might focus the discussion.
Child Protection: Are children encouraged to use commons through any programs or outreach efforts of any kind? If so, is it morally and/or ethically justifiable to do so without protecting children in every way possible? Can that be done without removing graphic pics from commons?
Harassment: Has harassment been addressed in a comprehensive way on all sites, including all of the WP site? As an example, Wikipedia has had a problem with low and declining female participation for years, and the WMF has often stated that it would like to address it. Are women actively encouraged to participate on Wikipedia by the WMF or other organizations? If we're not doing everything to protect women and all other Wikipedians, is it morally or ethically correct to perform outreach to potentially vulnerable groups? I'd especially like to hear about this from a female perspective.
Thanks. ,Wil
On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 3:38 PM, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 10:32 PM, Wil Sinclair wllm@wllm.com wrote:
Martijn asked me which things I thought that some people on this list don't want anyone to discuss, so here are the two examples that I'm most interested in:
Child Protection- I'd like to hear about ways that policy might be changed here to better protect children, especially given some of the content on Commons.
There is content on Wikipedia and on Commons, and probably on other projects as well, that most probably doesn't find suitable for children. What makes the matter worse is that some searches that one doesn't expect to bring up sexually explicit content do in fact bring it up, i.e. the famous toothbrush image. There are a couple of separate questions.
- Is the presence of sexually explicit material on commons a problem? Why?
- Is the abundance of sexually explicit material on commons a problem? Why?
- Is the unexpectedly turning up of the sexually explicit material on
commons a problem? Why?
Most agree that the presence of sexually explicit material on commons in itself is not a problem in itself, and if it is, hosting some educational material on sexually explicit subjects is more important than shielding children from accessing the material.
The abundance of sexually explicit material on commons is odd, and probably worthless. We frankly don't need any more low quality pictures and videos of penises, masturbation, and other sexual acts that we already have lots of. Does it really hurt us to have so much of it though? As long as it doesn't get in the way, I'd say no. I'm not a commons person, and I know that loads of low quality redundant sexually explicit images have already been deleted - because it does get in the way. Should more be deleted? Likely. Should all of it be deleted? No. So what should we do? On each upload ask if it is a low quality sexually explicit image that doesn't really add anything to the content that's already there? That makes for an odd upload form. Ask those uploading not to upload more? I do believe we're already doing that, to little effect. (correct me if I'm wrong, if we're not, we probably should) But again, it's not it's presence that's a problem, it's its in-the-wayness.
It has been argued, and I agree with that, that there are two categories of people finding sexually explicit material in commons. Those explicitly trying to find it, and those that come across it by accident. This goes for all age groups. I think it's fairly reasonable to say that those looking for it will find it no matter what, and that shouldn't be the focus of improvement. What should be a focus, is improving the search functionality so that the accidental doesn't happen, or at least doesn't happen so ridiculously often as it does now: that is what I mean with it being in the way, as demonstrated by the famous toothbrush search result. Categorization and tagging could play a large role in this, as well as (recently implemented) improvements in the search back-end. It's something that has recently been brought up on this list. I'm horrible with the archives, but I'm sure someone else will be able to point to the relevant discussion, and what, if anything, has been undertaken on commons to act on this, or what blockers we still have.
Now I've focused only on sexually explicit content, because that's whats mostly what bothers people. Obviously, there is lots of other material I wouldn't like to expose children to. There has been a recent discussion about (valuable, suitable, and greatly disturbing) video material of WWII concentration camps being on the front page of commons. There is also a lot of images of medical issues that aren't the nicest to look at to put it mildly, and there is a lot of material on the atrocities of war as well. The first and third arguments go for this as well.
These problems are discussed frequently and have been quite recently. We haven't found and implemented a solution though. What I can say is that the 'objectional images on commons' subject is a frequent subject for this mailinglist. It's not that we don't want anyone to discuss it, but more that we discuss it all the time, would love to fix it, and haven't been able yet. Which makes many a little annoyed with someone from the outside coming in with an 'hey, hey, what about all the dick pics on commons? Did you know about those?'. We know, we're all annoyed with it, not only because it makes us a just target of ridicule, but more importantly because we've went over it again and again, quite often and quite recently, and we haven't got an answer yet. The community has discussed the fairly obvious option - an image filter - at great length, and didn't find that an acceptable solution.
I'd also like to hear about specific examples of content on Commons that a parent might not find appropriate for their children.
lots and lots and lots. It's not hard to find. I've already touched on some subjects above, it should be easy to find.
Note that this is not a repeat of the discussion to understand what policies are in place, as I have already opened a specific thread for that.
Harassment- I'd like to hear about existing policies around harassment and potential changes to such policies. In particular, I'm interested in how the community might tackle this problem to make the site a more comfortable place for the oft-mentioned female constituent that has long been in decline.
Since I don't have enough experience with the community and WP yet to discuss controversial topics myself, I will not chime in unless the thread has very obviously gone off topic. Just to pick an arbitrary about of time that is more than the few months that others have mentioned here, let's say that you can only participate in this discussion if you have at least one year of experience as an active contributor.
Now, I'll just sit back and hear all sides of the story.
,Wil
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