[WikiEN-l] Prudishness and censorship

Mon Apr 18 22:32:01 UTC 2005

Over the last few months we've had several instances where certain explicit images have been the bone of contention. The discussion starts on IfD and then rapidly fills IRC, Wiki-EN and other media. As far as I can gather there are only two real schools of thought. One is that it is a viewer's responsibility to block images, the other is that Wikipedia should employ various ways to protect its viewers from what some would could consider offensive/immoral etc.

First the numbers thing. Of all the people worldwide, the vast majority would take offense at the Kate Winslet thing. This includes about a billion of Christians, hundreds of millions of Muslims and large numbers of other people who otherwise feel that it would be inappropriate. To force a liberal image policy on them effectively excludes these people from being informed by Wikipedia.

Then the browser thing. Most people do not turn off images (that is a fact), and those who know how to do it would only do it if they expected inappropriate images. I suspect most casual surfers would not expect Wikipedia to contain explicit images.

Avoiding these images, or having a Preferences key to prevent their display, is NOT censorship. It is part of achieving the goal of Wikipedia, as I have argued above. It is also not a violation of NPOV, as an image is not a POV. It is being plain sensible, sensitive and broad-minded.

en:User:Jfdwolff

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