[WikiEN-l] Re: troubled

Wed May 12 16:22:32 UTC 2004

The difficult thing for me is that I agree with all of
you to some extent -- with Erik and Anthere's desire
for openness and with Mark (and at least one other
person whose name I've forgotten) who wants to make
the encyclopedia more friendly and available to people
who may be offended.  I think we need to respect both
viewpoints.

And for this reason, I think the choice is actually
relatively clear.  Linking someone to a photograph
allows them to choose to see it -- yes, we can argue
(with reason) that it is a form of censorship, but
surely it's a mild one.  Of course, we can argue that
if we listen to all cultures' taboos we'll have to
link even to pictures of Queen Elizabeth II because
she's not veiled, but I think we all can agree that
we're raising that here more as a debating point than
an actual suggestion.  There are obvious borderline
cases.    The human penis and clitoris are definitely
among them -- I agree wholeheartedly that any solution
for one should be applied equally to the other.  I
don't think there's any great public sentiment in any
culture that warmly embraces public photos of the
penis while rejecting those of the clitoris.  So we
link to them both.

Images of torture, etc., again, I think it's clear. 
We link to them.  We carefully choose images that are
least likely to alarm the reader and allow them to be
displayed.  We use the best judgment we can.

Editors do this, and that's what we are.  I don't
think we need to appeal to sweeping principles (though
we should keep them in mind).  We need to use reason
and good sense.  There isn't any answer that will
always fit every occasion well.  We will always have a
tension between showing and not showing pictures,
unless we choose to show them all (which, I think,
will radically limit Wikipedia's audience) or to show
none (which would be a horrid shame and lose us a
bunch of editors).  So we need to find a good middle
ground that makes everyone slightly uncomfortable
without truly upsetting more than a few.  I feel we're
all being pretty reasonable about this (for which I'm
very glad), and I think we can settle this.  I don't
sense any real objection to hiding pictures of both
clitoris and penis behind links, or to showing one or
two pictures from Abu Ghraib while putting the rest in
a gallery behind a link.  If we can all live with
that, let's do it -- I think it serves our readers and
the cause of free speech equally well.  And let's
continue to address these issues as fairly as we can,
always seeking compromises that try to meet the needs
of everyone involved as fully as possible.

That's my two cents,

Jwrosenzweig

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