[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not presently classroom-safe

Sun Feb 20 12:21:08 UTC 2005

Tony Sidaway wrote:

>John Lee said:
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>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
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>[John]
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>>If you think an image will offend a substantial amount of
>>people, link  it instead of inlining, or bring up the issue on the talk
>>page.
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>Well, that's precisely what I am *not* seeing.  I'm seeing a substantial
>minority, nearly 40%, who are in favor of inlining.  This tells me that
>there is not a consensus that it's such an offensive image.>
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40% of *editors*. Not readers. Big difference. People like us who have 
so much time to spend on an online "open source" encyclopedia probably 
have far more liberal mind sets than average folk.

>>What I find difficult to accept is the argument that we should never
>>ever link to images because it would inconvenience the group of people
>>who desire to view the image with the article. I could understand this
>>once we get a technical solution in place,
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>The technical solution is in place.  Nearly all modern browsers can
>disable image downloads.  The most we could do with a site-based system
>would be to emulate the capability that already exists in modern browsers.
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On a per-server basis. Big difference. I do not want to have to block 
ordinary images from Wikipedia just not to have shock images thrown in 
my face.

>>If you start thinking like the average internet user (i.e. those
>>affluent middle class people who got so riled up about the Super Bowl
>>last year)
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>Only in one country.  The rest of the world was left scratching its heads
>and wondering what all the fuss was about.  US news programs even carried
>th images with the breast pixellated out, while non-US news programs
>showed the incident uncensored.  Please do not assume that the standards
>of one country are universal.>
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That may be true, but our readership is generally American. I'm not 
denying a substantial portion of our patronage would not be offended, 
but a substantial amount *would* be offended. If we were to link instead 
of inline an image, I doubt the "non-offended" would complain, and if 
they did, it would be hardly as much as the furore from the other side 
were we to carry the image inline.

>>I don't really buy the argument we should be forcing upon users our
>>choice of web browser and/or our choice of software either.
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>This is not part of my argument.  IE is available to 95%+ of the web-using
>population and it will download images or not at the user's option.
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I spent four or five years of my life using IE and I've never run across 
the option to block images on an individual basis. I did find the 
ability to disable all images, but I should not need to throw out the 
baby with the bathwater.

>>the idea of the web is to
>>make things  accessible to people easily.
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>A task that IE, Firefox, Opera and other browsers do very well indeed.
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Agreed.

>>It really sickens me to hear the kind of logic used to push the idea of
>> selling people on browsers other than IE via Wikipedia.
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>I have at no time mentioned IE; I mentioned Firefox solely in connection
>with a claim by a Firefox user who didn't think his browser was capable of
>being controlled in the manner that I described.  I could have said
>precisely the same thing about IE (except that the capability in question
>comes with IE, "out of the box", no additionaly downloads required).[...]
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It does? Show me then. I think I must have missed it (although I'm not 
sure how).

>>caterpillars (while there are a few people out there disgusted by them,
>> again, objecting to the picture of a caterpillar displayed for
>>educational purposes would have ridicule heaped on you. Objecting to a
>>picture of a man fellating himself? That's a different case...).
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>I don't believe the above for one second.  Sorry, that's just silly.
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I think it's just cultural. Europe and Australia have always been far 
more open to these things than America and Asia. But still, I would 
laugh if somebody were to tell me, "Hey, John, that encyclopedia's a 
bunch of rubbish. Don't you know they have pictures of caterpillars in 
the open for all to see? How disgusting!" or "Hey John, that 
encyclopedia's nothing more than a dumping ground for liberal bullshit. 
They actually carry pictures of naked statues like David!" I wouldn't 
dare chuckle were someone to say, "Hey, that site's disgusting. I can't 
believe they had the nerve to show me directly a picture of a man 
sucking his dick."

A good portion of the public that has access to web browsers would be 
terribly offended by a picture of a man sucking his penis. Another good 
portion would be annoyed they had to view the picture, even if they 
weren't particularly offended. A very small minority, on the other hand, 
would be offended by pictures of caterpillars or naked art. Few would 
probably even understand their position.

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>>text. While perhaps there would be less laughter if you objected to it
>>this time, there would still be quite a bit, simply because...? I don't
>> know. Probably a combination of the three factors I mentioned, but for
>>a  lot of people, it's just not that offensive. Perverted, yes, but not
>> shockingly offensive like the autofellatio image.
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>*I* don't see anybody laughing, John.  Also I doubt that you would find
>the average person to be more shocked by a man sucking his own penis than
>an eroticised little girl holding a teddy with a huge dildo.
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There's a big difference: The former is a full-blown photograph with 
vivid colours. The latter is an illustration. Technically, both are 
equally disgusting, but in the real world where people's emotions don't 
make sense, one is more offensive than the other.

>>Of course. However, this group would be far larger if we made it a
>>common practice of displaying shockingly offensive images _by default_.
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>Which we do.
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Which we shouldn't.

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>> By not doing so, we limit the number of our enemies; they are far more
>> likely to be right-wing wackos in a small number.
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>It's a little girl, John.  With a dildo.  And nobody has ever suggested
>inlining it, much less deleting it.
>[...]
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Because it's emotional and mental impact is far less than the vivid and 
lifelike photographic depiction of a man fellating himself.

>>>It's not my concern so much which decisions are made, so much as that
>>>the decision made should be made with open eyes.  Not by the editors,
>>>but by Jimbo and the Board, who own and ultimately take responsibility
>>>for this project.
>>>
>>>
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>>I'm not sure if I agree with you there. While I have a distaste for
>>letting people other than the community of editors make editorial
>>decisions, perhaps they could issue a "recommendation" we could elect
>>to  follow?
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>My rationale for saying it's a board decision is that clearly the
>membership is not about to vote for the removal of articles that will
>render Wikipedia beyond the pale for educational use.  I mentioned the VfD
>nomination of Donkey punch earlier; this is basically an extreme,
>near-lethal physical and sexual assault described by Wikipedia as a "sex
>move."  They were voting 2 to 1 to keep, last time I looked.
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I am not arguing for toning down our encyclopedia for educational use. I 
am arguing for doing something to at least maintain some of our 
reputation. Text has far less impact than a photograph.

>>>If Jimbo does not have an appetite for a fight with the religious right
>>>of his country, now is the time to consider toning down Wikipedia
>>>content.  Only the board could enforce such a decision.
>>>
>>>
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>>I'm not all too sure. If the sysops rebelled, the board couldn't
>>enforce  the decision without forcibly closing down the website and
>>destroying  the community.
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>I agree that it's a difficult decision.  For me, the path of least
>resistance is to permit content as extreme as Lolicon and the like, but
>use a technical fix for filtering for educational purposes and provide
>on-site cat-based filtering (because it's easy to do) and then the people
>who are really serious about filtering and who come up against how utterly
>unmanageable cat-based filtering is, well we'll tell them to do what we
>do, turn image downloads off and click "load" when we want to see a
>picture.
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I absolutely agree. But until the devs get around to that, we *must* not 
display shocking images inline. If they did not distract readers so 
much, all right, but it was very difficult for me to focus on the text 
of [[Autofellatio]] with the image inlined. I'm sure others experienced 
the same thing. As I said, in Europe and Australia, you guys are 
probably used to depictions of lifelike nudity and didn't really notice 
the image, but the same cannot be said for those of us from America and 
Asia.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])