[WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

Wed May 12 04:18:00 UTC 2004

Rich-

> I'm not sure if you meant this literally,
> figuratively, or sarcastically. If you really meant
> that a picture must be "universally considered
> offensive" before if is moved behind a link, I must
> disagree.

It was meant figuratively rather than literally. I am talking about 95- 
100% agreement. If I added a photo of the decapitated hostage, Nick Berg,  
to an article and insisted on voting on it, I'm sure that's pretty much  
what we would get - 95-100% in favor of removing the image or replacing it  
with one just showing the hostage when he was still alive.

This is the kind of case where a link (if anything) is appropriate. I  
hesitate to use the word "consensus" here because this is increasingly  
interpreted as "80%", which is really much too low for such a decision.

> How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a
> significant number of people find offensive?

Quite a bit, in my opinion. By doing so, we emphasize this particular  
bias. For example, if we censor images of body parts (connected to their  
body *cough*), we emphasize the bias of modern US society against nudity,  
a bias which is by no means universal.

Of course you can argue that by not censoring ourselves, we become biased  
*against* that viewpoint. But that is not true if our lack of censorship  
is consistent. Then we are merely biased in favor of being inclusive  
which, in my opinion, is a necessary bias for an encyclopedia, just like  
we are pro-knowledge rather than anti-knowledge and pro-neutrality rather  
than pro-atheism or pro-theism, etc.

Regards,

Erik