[WikiEN-l] Re: The Censorship Lie

Thu Feb 17 15:37:41 UTC 2005

> From: Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at last-straw.net>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Censorship Lie
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <0b8dfe7f2fc3ef7aa72e882894ea26b8 at last-straw.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
> 
> I'm intrigued by the efforts to label this an issue of editorial
> control. That presumes an extremely narrow definition of the word
> censorship and seems wholly disingenuous to me.
> 
> Still no one has attempted a rational response to my question to
> Jimbo...
> What is it about a picture of a man performing autofellatio in an
> article about autofellatio that makes it "pornographic"?
> 
> At the end of the day this is about censoring images for the sake of
> the prudish and the squeamish, whether it be that of an individual,
> organisation or on behalf of a sub-culture.
> 
Editorial control is what we do everyday in deciding what stays in our
out. Censoring would be to delete all mention of a specific item
including systematically deleting any reference or access to the
subject matter. Censorship is not continuing to provide easy access to
information or images while not forcing it on everyone. Read Farenheit
451 for (albiet extreme) real censorship - or other efforts in the
past to systemically burn books to remove them from the library and
prevent all access. Limiting access is often called censorship but is
not.

As I have recently commented on the image in questions talk page - the
intransigence of some to the completely reasonable proposal to
exercise some discretion by making it a link just makes me want to the
take the battle up a notch and just get rid of the picture from
wikipedia - make it an external link (still not censorship - just what
I would consider better discretion).

Jim