Rick wrote:
The community HAS resolved this non-problem. It
has
decided, by consensus, that there is nothing wrong
with having images like this.
I hope this is not so. I don't tend to be vocal in these debates, but
I will feel a strong regret if the encyclopedia becomes the bulletin
board for such a community.
I would like to suggest from my own experience a possible factor that
tends to consistently skew debates on these subjects. Some of you may
be surprised, but most of you will sympathize with the idea that I
find the mere subject line of the current thread to be embarrassing
and discouraging to my participation. I am very hesitant to visit,
even for the noblest reasons, some of the arenas where these debates
have run (autofel..., clit...). I am a father, a brother, a husband,
a church elder, an engineer, and many other roles in which I am loathe
to be associated with the subjects of these debates. I suggest that
many, many others like me who have opinions that there is something
wrong with including images like this also have various reasons to be
discouraged from participating in debates about the same images. I am
very sorry that we are absent from such debates, but it just happens
that they are framed in ways and carried on in places that discourage
our active participation.
I have no problem admitting that I am on the permissive end of this
issue. At the same time I recognize that some people find certain
images to be offensive. Thus I have no problem with a solution that
would provide opportunities for some people to be spared from having to
see these images.
What is most disturbing about some others at my end of the spectrum is
that their motivation with such images is more rooted in trying to prove
a point than in providing relevant illustrations for an article. The
movie was "Titanic", not "Tit-anic". It would be nice if the people
who put up these pictures were as mature as their content, and if they
stopped encouraging arguments between the offended and the offensive.
Ec