Severed head (wasRe: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy)

Wed May 12 20:11:06 UTC 2004

I am unconvinced that a photo of this nature adds
anything to the article, or will remain that
newsworthy. The incident is tragic, and documenting it
is important, but a graphic picture of a severed head?
Why?
Mark

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> There is no issue of censorship involved in having
> the good sense and
> good taste to not automatically display graphic
> photos that are likely
> to be offensive or upsetting to large numbers of
> people.
> 
> There will always be difficult questions of where to
> draw the line, I
> suppose, but we solve that issue in other cases by
> "going meta",
> i.e. avoiding the controversy.
> 
> With most issues, the wiki process works perfectly
> fine.  It is almost
> never "either/or" with the text of an article --
> creative people can
> almost always find a way to compromise on a text
> that is different
> from either of two extreme positions.
> 
> With photos, the "show" versus "don't show" really
> is an "either/or",
> though.  The only possible compromise, and one which
> I think will
> almost always work just fine, is to *link* to the
> picture, with
> suitable warnings, and leave it at that.
> 
> That is the proposal that Anthere has proposed in
> this case, and that
> is what I support.
> 
> I do think that there are cases of photos that we
> ought to not even
> have on our site at all.  Were it not for the
> extreme newsworthiness
> of this particular photo, and it's likely longterm
> political
> importance, I would argue for deleting it.  This is
> not rotten.com.
> 
> I think that there is great validity to the concern
> for the family and
> for human dignity in general, with respect to photos
> of this nature.
> 
> --Jimbo
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