Erik Moeller wrote:
Linked to they would be fine. We do link to goatse.cx.
Obviously there is a gradation of offensiveness -- a point at which we
decide that not offending readers is more important than NPOV. For
example, there may be a few felching fans who would feel that it is POV
not to show such images in the article. We would overrule these readers on
grounds of offensiveness.
However, I think we should be very careful with such taboos, and only
apply them when there is almost universal agreement to do so. In other
words, when there's *near* unanimous consensus not to have images, then we
can do without them. This is not the case for genitalia -- I think
pictures of genitalia are only offensive to a relatively small segment of
the population, whereas a relatively large segment feels that they *are*
offensive to a large segment (simply because they are never shown in the
mainstream media), but still maintains that they *themselves* are not
offended by them.
I don't see what's wrong with simply linking to them (on the Wikipedia
servers, not externally, but not inline in the article). Certainly many
people are not offended by genitals, but a great many people would be
somewhat shocked to see them up front without first clicking on a link,
and many people might be unhappy with having them come up right at the
top of the screen if reading Wikipedia from, say, work, school, or a
public library. Since forcing users to "click here for an image of a
penis" is not really forcing them to do a whole lot of extra work to get
the information, I don't think this is an unreasonable compromise. I
know I personally would not like an image of a penis to be on my
computer screen if I were in a public library.
-Mark