[WikiEN-l] Responsible handling of sexual topics

Mon Feb 14 18:17:50 UTC 2005

Bryan Derksen wrote:

> I don't see how putting a photo of someone performing autofellatio 
> onto the autofellatio article is trolling. That's just about the only 
> article I can think of where it would actually fit in.

*Somewhere* we have to draw a line, I think, but we just all disagree on 
where.  For example, many would argue that adding a rotten.com image of 
a car crash to [[car accident]] is inappropriate, despite it being 
clearly on topic and arguably informative (an image gives a much 
different understanding of what flying through a windshield really is 
like as opposed to a text description).  Or, to take everyone's favorite 
example, we don't have an image of the goatse.cx man on [[shock site]], 
despite it being eminently on topic there---and arguably this is one 
place where a picture really is worth a thousand words in terms of 
explaining "what's this goatse thing and why is it a big deal?"

My personal preference would be to keep most "squickish" images as 
links.  When I'm browsing the encyclopedia, I don't necessarily want to 
see, without purposely clicking on "show me this image", images of: an 
anus on [[anus]]; autofellatio on [[autofellatio]]; goatse on [[shock 
site]]; a clitoris on [[clitoris]]; a car crash on [[car accident]]; a 
cut-open chest on [[heart surgery]]; and so on.  None of those images 
particularly offend me (no, not even goatse... as a long-time internet 
denizen it barely even surprises me anymore), but they're eye-catching 
enough to be distracting from the text.

-Mark