Delirium- Many people do not want to see a picture of a woman in public without a veil, and are quite capable of clicking on the link if they did at some point wish to see the picture. "It seems that there is a small segment of people here trying to push the POV that women walking in public (or at least pictures of women walking in public) ought to be acceptable, and are resisting any efforts to compromise in a manner that would prevent their own personal moral agenda from being advanced." Exclusion of such content is fundamentally irreconcilable with our neutrality policy, and should only happen in cases where we can assume near universal offensiveness. This clearly advances an agenda - just as doing the opposite would. Neutrality is the lack of involvement -- philosophically speaking, as soon as we have decided to create an encyclopedia, we have at the very least taken the position that bringing knowledge to human beings is a good thing to do. By making our NPOV policy non-negotiable, we have also taken the position that Wikipedia does not subscribe to absolute truths, but presents all points of view instead. Combine these two "agendas" and you arrive at the inevitable outcome that we *have* to include such images. Removing them would mean that we fail in terms of providing knowledge, and hiding them as links means that we fail in terms of being free of bias. We make an exception to the latter rule in order to further the former: We link pictures that we consider almost universally offensive (sometimes with warnings) in order to avoid turning away readers, and in order to get them to actually read the article that contains the pictures. But as soon as we start pandering to local cultural biases, we inevitably fail in both regards. The inclusion itself must be allowed not because of a particular *personal* agenda. It must be allowed because it is our *collective* agenda to provide knowledge without bias, and keeping Wikipedia as free of censorship as reasonably possible is necessary to do so. Regards, Erik

Delirium- I'm willing to tolerate quite a lot of images that I find personally offensive. For example, I tolerate and defend a link to goatse.cx, even though I find that site highly offensive. I'm personally no big fan of violence, but I would defend the inclusion of such pictures where they are useful. It is simply not true that I am arguing to justify my own moral preconceptions. I am arguing for minimizing censorship. I think I have a very good track record of doing so consistently and without bias. You appear to be advocating a ban in explicit imagery, on the other hand, that purely suits your personal feelings. Before accusing me of bias, you should reflect on your own. The fact that you compare human body parts to suicide methods and excrements is somewhat disturbing, but let's not get into this. Just some basic cause and effect. Feces are prone to carry disease, that is why most human beings are taught to avoid touching or even eating them (there may also be a biological taboo that is triggered by the smell and/or taste; note that baby feces smell differently). Similarly, most human beings with a functional brain avoid pain, as such, events that are likely to cause pain or death, as well as images of pain and death, are likely to trigger the emotional associations that have been built through a lifetime to teach avoidance thereof. I challenge you to point to a single culture that had a notable absence of the feces taboo. I doubt that one exists. However, it is easy to see that many cultures have much weaker nudity taboos or none at all (the latter usually living in warm climates where clothing is not required -- hiding our bodies constantly obviously creates a mystery about them). Some societies have condoned or required suicide in certain circumstances, but the act itself has usually been a private one. Some cultures celebrate violence and sadism, but that is simply the opposite of a taboo; we need not pander to it by including as many gory pictures as we can find (nor should we endorse a violence taboo by including none). Instead, we should apply the standard of maximizing our usefulness and neutrality. When writing about suicide methods, illustrations of different methods would be entirely appropriate. (I'm fairly certain people would trot out the "how-to" argument to prevent such an article from getting too instructive, although I disagree with that logic.) Photos and blood add little to the usefulness. In articles about body parts, photos help with the identification and should not replace but complement illustrations. In how-to articles, abstract illustrations are often more useful than photos, but if someone came up with a good, not unreasonably violent "suicide methods" video, hey, why not. As for suicides in movies, they are rarely very explicit, unless the movies are made for shocking purposes, which validates the taboo rathern than refuting it. Nudity in movies on the other hand obviously varies a great degree by culture -- I've seen full erections on regular German daytime TV, not sure about clitorises. Yeah, because the latter are a subset of the former ;-). Current dominant western attitudes regarding sexuality are descendants of views that culminated in anti masturbation electric schock devices and [[bathing house]]s. There is a clear relationship between these attitudes that cannot realistically be denied. The "near universal" standard seems to pass your "feces and suicide" test. Feces is almost universally considered repulsing, and suicide is almost universally a private matter (justifying some toning down of the imagery). I therefore submit that this test is fully sufficient as our guideline for deciding whether and where we want to censor ourselves. Regards, Erik

To sort of clarify my viewpoint on this: I'm not advocating that we remove any of these images, unless they're simply completely uninformative. I'm merely requesting that we not put them in-line, and instead have them as a link (an internal [[media:...]] link). Simply an accurately labeled link, not a "WARNING: Some readers might find this offensive" link or anything like that. Personally, I have no problem seeing these images, but I don't want to *always* see them. Having seen our clitoris photograph once, I don't need to see it again if I happen to check the article again for some information. If, for some reason, I do wish to see it again, I can always click on "photograph of a clitoris" and do so. Same with suicide-methods photographs: I think some could be informative (say, a wrist-slitting one), but it should be possible to read the text without seeing them every time. This still, of course, requires some standards for what is potentially bothersome enough to include as a link instead of as an inline photograph, and I agree these standards should not be overly restrictive. But I do think they should be somewhat more restrictive than what some others are proposing. I'd actually be alright with nude photographs of people inline in the [[human]] article, if done in a scientific style "standing upright with arms at their sides" way. But I'd prefer close-up photographs of genitalia be placed in a link. Basically anything a large number of people are likely to be somewhat shocked by. Since it came up, same goes actually with [[lung]]: a diagram of a lung should be fine to include of course, but an actual photograph of, say, a removed lung, or a lung in situ in a cut-open chest, or so on, is something a lot of people don't want to see every time they read that article. Similarly with photos of entrails in [[intestines]], photos of open-heart surgery in [[heart]], and so on ("click here for a photograph of open-heart surgery"). I guess I don't see why it'd really be censorship either, since we're just shuffling the information around, not actually removing it or even making it hard to get. -Mark

On Tuesday 13 January 2004 06:16 pm, Delirium wrote: legitimate own That is correct. I see my feces nearly every day, and recognise that defecation is a normal and natural act. I am not in the least bit offended by the sight of feces. People study feces of animals to infer what they ate, etc. I don't find these people to be morally reprehensible characters because they are interested in feces. Similarly for anuses. Ah, but you fail to see that even if there exist images that I would prefer not to look at, I would not seek them out. You make it sound as though I am advocating putting pictures of anuses on the cover of the encyclopedia. Another false assumption is that if (in the hypothetical) I prefer not to look at pictures of self-mutilation, I would want you to take the decision to remove an exemplary picture from the article [[self-mutilation]]. This is not the case. I would firstly not actively seek such a picture, and if I had stumbled upon it accidentally I would simply look away. "Forcing" is a very strong word. Do you consider yourself "forced" to see a penis when you, of your own volition visit [[penis]]? And when you visit [[anatomy]]? Who decides what is considered "force"? Regarding linking to images. I did not in any way state that I oppose the idea of having images that are almost universally offensive located on a page that people need to click to view the image, with a notice that there will be eg. an image of self-mutilation, or of eg. a car-crash. You are misrepresenting my view in order to be able to attack it. Now, I don't think that it is plausible that a version of wikipedia that is censored in accordance with the moral doctrine of the puritans would include images of a penis, anus, feces, etc. with the limitation that they would have to be clicked and not displayed inline. Don't tell me that you honestly think that they would settle for that. But in which encyclopedic article would you include the goatse.cx picture? Again, you are misrepresenting my position. I did not state that not having an image inline is censorship. Perhaps I should have been clearer on this point. I have made what I believe to be a well-founded argument that we should not have an officially censored version of wikipedia. If people want to have a censored version, they should (and can) go ahead and do so. But I argue against integrating any censorship into either wikipedia or wikipedia 1.0. You have not presented any argument that censorship of wikipedia or wikipedia 1.0 to remove potential and/or actual offensive material beside the one that I myself have mentioned: popularity. And this is where I find that we step onto a slippery slope. I know that some people consider the slippery slope argument a fallacy, but I shall employ it here nonetheless. If we submit to the censorship of the american puritans, why not to that of fundamental islamists? Why not to that of those who do not whish to have "God" spelled out? Why not to that of those who do not wish to see pictoral representations of deities? Then you have to start arguing that "my offense at seeing a penis is justified", whereas "your offense at seeing a depicition of a deity is not justified". As Erik said in his response to this point, our goal as an encyclopedia is to provide encyclopedic knowledge. There are probably very few people that would disagree that a picture of a penis adds encyclopedic knowledge to the article [[penis]] (otherwise why do we include pictures at all?). Note that our goal is not to provide a sanitised version of reality but, I repeat, to provide encyclopedic knowledge. The onus is therefore on the censors to justify the removal of encyclopedic knowledge from an encyclopedia. I have just latched onto the nudity issue because that seemed like a particularly relevant example of people trying to remove encyclopedic knowldge from an encyclopedia. Whether or not I find nudity offensive is not the issue - Although I will freely admit that I did not hesitate to point out the stupidity of finding nudity offensive ;-) Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc

On Wednesday 14 January 2004 11:22 am, Peter Jaros wrote: How many Lungs do *you* see per day? I don't see any, myself. Not even my own. So, one might ask oneself: "What's so great about a picture of an Lung"? "Will it help you recognize one if you see it in the wild"? :) Actually, it will. ;-) I think pictures add information. Not a great deal, mind you. But you could always attempt to argue that wikipedia should have no pictures, because the arguments you have presented against pictures of anuses applies equally to all other pictures. I doubt, however, that you will get very far. I share Erik's opinion that pictures should complement illustrations/diagrams. Again, the onus is on the part of the censors to justify the removal of encyclopedic knowledge from an encyclopedia. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc

On Wednesday 14 January 2004 12:19 pm, Peter Jaros wrote: I guess I should add "no pun intended" in hindsight. ;-) Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc

Jimmy- It's simply not true that a photo of a penis or vagina is not informative. Ironically, it is particularly informative in families where the parents would likely consider it offensive. It helps people to actually identify sexual organs and to understand the wide range in their looks and sizes (many people are anxious to find out whether they are "normal"). Every sex education book that is worth its name contains pictures of genitalia. I would also like to point out that there is near consensus for inclusion of links, and a slim majority for inclusion of photos (where the minority typically argues that not they, but mysterious "other people" might be offended). Regards, Erik

On 01/14/04 at 11:22 AM, Peter Jaros <rjaros(a)shaysnet.com> said: Better yet, a poem: Sonnet: To the Asshole Dark, puckered hole: a purple carnation That trembles, nestled among the moss [...] (Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, circa 1871) Perhaps it sounds better in French. Anthère?... V.

Sascha Noyes a écrit: Patently ridiculous ? An opinion is patently ridiculous ?

Sascha Noyes a écrit: As long as you do not write such a thing in Wikipedia without good attribution of someone whose opinion is relevant, I have no problem with that opinion of yours :) (you might have not understood I was not speaking of the opinion it was harmful or not harmful, but rather of the comment given about such a position) Am I clear there, I dunno...

Sascha Noyes a écrit: Apology, I forgot we were not chit-chatting forum, but encyclopedia building :-). Then if we are only currently talking about a policy case, to what were you refering when you said "I will freely admit that I did not hesitate to point out the stupidity of finding nudity offensive ;-)" ? Ah, never mind, I had enough of genitalia stuff these days.

On Wednesday 14 January 2004 04:58 pm, Ray Saintonge wrote: This is indeed a problem. I have begun, and plan to continue to in my edit box summaries to indicate the source of the information I add to an article (if that information is non-obvious). Which reminds me that it would be a good idea to _require_ users to fill in the edit summary box. What worries me every time is when I see an anon change numbers in wikipedia without any edit summary. Eg. changing statistics on the population of spanish speakers in California from (hypothetical) 15% to 40%. It is often impossible to tell whether this is vandalism or a correction. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc

The US locality articles were created by RamBot from the official statistics from the US Census Bureau, so the ones that are there SHOULD be the correct ones. RickK Nikos-Optim <optim81(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote: just visit a government statistics page and check. --- Sascha Noyes wrote: __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes