[WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

Thu Apr 14 07:50:05 UTC 2005

On 4/13/05, Tom Haws <hawstom at sprintmail.com> wrote:
> 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 am not sure what consensus(es) you are thinking of, but this
statement should be qualified.

There *is* something wrong, for instance, with including the most
prurient images available of every person who has an article in
Wikipedia, even though such images do add some small bit of
information to the article.

There *is* something wrong with including the most prurient screencap
from every movie that has an article in Wikipedia, in its description.
 Whenever you have to choose a limited number of words or images to
describe something, your choice should be made carefully.

There *is* something wrong with not caring about whether readers will
be surprised or apalled by what they find when they visit an article
of interest.  We should all focus on being polite, both to one another
and to our millions of readers who we will never meet, in addition to
being advocates of free knowledge.  Whether or not to display the
naked body of a beautiful woman -- something which is both unexpected
and taboo for many, even if not for you or for me -- in the middle of
a page which is neither about nudity or about the beauty of women, is
a matter of politeness.

We should be trying to inform readers, and to answer questions that
they have, not trying to change their values, nor to offend them in
the pursuit of some higher societal norm.

> 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...

Tom, thank you for bringing that up.  I am sensitive to this point of
view, having grown up in a community where cursing or discussing
genitalia was just not done, even by adults in the privacy of their
own homes.  That may still be true in many parts of the United States,
but it seems to be false in the larger cities.  And I would venture
that most people on this list would not have imagined that such
hesitancy even exists.   ("What?  You mean there are people who
hesitate to read or write about sex or sexuality?  That's crazy.")

I know the current discussion is largely about images, but it is worth
bearing in mind that for many people, the use of certain profane or
sexual words in an apparently unrelated paragraph can be shocking and
offensive.

-- 
+sj+