[WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

Wed May 12 12:40:13 UTC 2004

Erik Moeller wrote:

>There shouldn't be any tyranny at all. Instead we should treat all  
>material in the same way: link or remove if it is almost universally  
>offensive, show if it isn't. Everything else is POV.
>
>See, if you "masked" nudity, for example, you would be trampling on my POV  
>that nudity is perfectly normal and should be shown. You will respond:  
>Yes, but if you show nudity, you trample on the *majority* POV that it  
>should not be shown. That assertion is incorrect. By treating all images  
>equally, on the basis of community consensus, we do not endorse any single  
>point of view. Selectivity is the issue here.
>  
>
I don't disagree with your principle in general, but perhaps we disagree 
on what exactly the threshold should be, and what factually people 
actually do find offensive.  You seem to agree that including a 
photograph of the recent beheading in Iraq inline would be above the 
threshold, but that a close-up photograph of a clitoris would not be.  I 
tend to think that both should be considered above the threshold for 
reasonable offensiveness.  I'm not even sure offensiveness is the right 
word, but more like visceral discomfort or shock---a great many people 
would find it difficult to read an article that had either of those 
images embedded (for completely different reasons, of course).  There's 
even some stuff I'd personally like to see and wouldn't find offensive 
at all, but would not necessarily want to see inline, such as 
photographs of [[open-heart surgery]].  As far as information goes, I 
don't think we lose much in the way of information by having a detailed 
diagram on [[clitoris]] with a caption that says to click here for a 
photographic version, or something of that sort.  I'm less sure how to 
nicely handle images of the beheading, which are clearly relevant (it's 
the entire reason to have an article on [[Nick Berg]] to begin with) but 
not easily presented in a way that won't shock people.

I think if we only remove things that absolutely *everyone* finds 
offensive, we'd have a lot of odd things in our articles that'd alienate 
a lot of people.  A large number of people have no particular problem 
with images of [[defecation]] for example (lots of kids even like the 
subject!), but I don't think we should really have them inline.

-Mark