[WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

Tue May 11 04:29:42 UTC 2004

Weighing in on this issue, I think the pictures are on the borderline of 
what we should put inline, but should probably stay.  The sexually 
explicit parts have been blurred out anyway, so they're not problematic 
on that account.

I like the way [[clitoris]] has been handled generally (no pun 
intended), though perhaps there's a better way of doing it.  Having it a 
simple link makes it so that anyone can easily find it (an on-site link, 
so it doesn't depend on an external server), but so that people who are 
reading the article don't have to have it in their peripheral vision the 
whole time if they find it uncomfortable for whatever reason.

Conceptually disturbing images are somewhat different than graphic 
ones.  People might be disturbed by pictures of concetration camps, but 
these are more conceptually disturbing than graphic, and are fairly 
integral to an article on, say, the [[Holocaust]].  On the other hand, 
if there were gruesome pictures of medical experiments being performed, 
we might want to put those on as linked instead of inline.

The main reason I'd favor that approach is that otherwise there'll be 
whole sections of Wikipedia that people are somewhat afraid to visit, 
especially in public areas.  Someone should be able to read [[torture]] 
without seeing graphic images of torture; they should be able to read 
[[automobile accident]] without seeing bloody corpses plastered on the 
roadway, and so on.  If the picture might be useful, they ought to be 
able to see it, but that should be up to them.

But back to the point, I think the [[Abu Graith]] images in particular 
are okay, though perhaps some better placement is possible.  Although 
I've wrangled on that page a bit myself, I do think they currently come 
across in a moderately documentary tone, rather than a pursuasive tone 
intended to shock the reader into a particular action.

-Mark