[WikiEN-l] My 5c worth

Thu May 13 03:32:29 UTC 2004

This all reminds me of Aria Giovanni and THAT link.

My own position: it seems OK to me to have 'soft'
photos such as the terrorists standing behind Mr Berg,
but no 'hard' ones showing him beheading Berg. That
is simply too graphic and is even playing into the 
terrorists hands (you're circulating the horror that
they want to have circulated). 

As for any photo that can be reasonably be regarded
as offensive or pornographic, a link if really
necessary, otherwise not at all. 

Remember that juveniles and persons from conservative
environments (eg Islamic countries with strict codes about nudity) are likely to consult this wikipedia.
It should be kept suitable for such persons through
some use of common sense. 

"Erik Moeller wrote:
> Exactly. If you take a look at Talk:Clitoris/Image discussion, you will  
> see that all options were offered, and the option of *showing the photo  
> inline* (instead of just a link) got the most votes of all.

This shows me that you are right that majority vote is not the right
way to determine the correct result.  Majority vote is very frequently
not helpful in finding or determining NPOV.

(Some advanced voting algorithms probably do a much better job of
helping to find or determine a consensus, of course.)

> So your belief that people will readily accept hiding "offensive"
> images behind links is clearly wrong; many people (including myself)
> perceive this as an endorsement of a pro-censorship POV and are
> therefore against it. Even if these people were in the minority,
> there would hardly be any consensus on the matter.

I doubt very much that in most cases, the people who would like to
show the photo inline are so unreasonable as to absolutely insist that
only their own viewpoint is the correct one, and that no compromise is
possible.

> So it appears that you believe that there will be consensus in cases
> where there clearly won't; that's fine, as long as we agree that
> consensus is a requirement for hiding an image behind a link.

Well, of course I can agree to that, since consensus is the
requirement for everything that we do.  "Showing the image" can hold
no privileged position, "hiding the image behind a link" can hold no
privileged position, "delete the image" can hold no privileged
position.

I think I see where we disagree now.  Your position is that we should
show the image in all cases unless 95% of the people think it should
not be shown, and that this should be a policy which overrides
consensus and compromise.  That's a perfectly acceptable position to
hold, but will you agree that it would amount to abandoning NPOV for
pictures and substituting instead a policy that most matches your own
(and my own, I should add!) views about what should be shown?

With text, I feel that any form of voting is almost always inferior to
creatively solving the problem with repeated revision of the text.  

If there are cases where voting is absolutely necessary, and if I'm
forced to say exactly what it means to have NPOV consensus, the answer
surely can't be "NPOV is my own preferred position unless 95% of the
people disagree with me."

Instead, the exact meaning of consensus in a voting situation has to
be something like Condorcet, Approval voting, Instant Runoff or the
like.

I think if we re-ran the vote on clitoris, with the same voters
participating, but did it as a Condorcet, then "linking to the image"
would be the clear winner by a longshot.  Do you disagree?  Or, if you
do disagree, then let me suppose that I'm wrong, and ask another
question: do you agree with me that going with the Condorcet winner
would be the best available option?

--Jimbo"

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