[WikiEN-l] Don't push POV into the Wikipedia software and policies

Mon Feb 21 19:46:41 UTC 2005

On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 09:00:33PM +0800, John Lee wrote:
> Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> >When you speak for "the readers", nobody can hear the readers.  One can
> >hear only you, putting on the voice of "the readers" as a phony accent,
> >like a bad American actor pretending to Cockney.
> > 
> It's things like this that tick me off, because in this case, that 
> argument flies against common sense:

Not really.  You have every business to speak for yourself, and no
business at all speaking for people who have never asked for your
representation.  You weaken your argument when you set yourself up as
the Speaker-for-the-Readers, and thereby imply that those who disagree
with you are somehow opposed to "the readers" ... which, of course,
nobody here is.  It comes across, at least to me, as a thoroughly
arrogant and indefensible tactic of argumentation on your part.

> Most middle-class Asians and Americans would be offended or at least
> shocked/distracted by a vivid photograph of a man blowjobbing himself.
> Most middle-class Europeans and Australians wouldn't.

Okay.

The issue here is not the Autofellatio photograph.  It's a crappy
photograph and the encyclopedia is better off without it.  If you want
to beat that dead horse, it has a talk page ... I think it's at 
[[Wikipedia talk:Dead horse]] or something like that.

The issue here is the proposed alteration of Wikipedia policy or
software to favor some people's standards of making Wikipedia
"inoffensive" or "safe".  That is, the making of structural changes to
Wikipedia which support some people's POV and derogate or closet others
... while not actually accomplishing the proposed (dystopian and
impossible) goals.

> At first it seems like we're at an impasse, but consider: While those
> who don't mind would be slightly inconvenienced, those who do mind
> would be very heavily inconvenienced by having to disable the image in
> their browser's settings. The latter group would also be more annoyed
> than the former. It's a clear case to me, but I can see why extreme
> liberals from Europe and Australia find this debate so puzzling.

It's really great how telepathic you are.  Not only can you read the
minds of the vast and powerful mass of "the readers", you can also tell
all sorts of things about the personal backgrounds of those who disagree
with you.  That's an amazing skill.

Or ... maybe you're just making stuff up.

> >I propose that offending people is a Virtue and not a Vice, if one does
> >so in a manner which is simultaneously informative & educational.  It is
> >of no use to offend gratuitously; that is, to rehash tiresome offenses
> >which no longer teach the offended person anything.  But to be offended
> >and to receive knowledge at the same moment, is to receive knowledge
> >twice over.
> >
> This is precisely the attitude I've been talking about: Editors imposing 
> their personal beliefs on readers.

You don't have a rebuttal, do you?  You're spending all your time
talking about my "attitude" and speculating (erroneously) about the
nationality or ethnicity of those who disagree with you.  How come?

> We don't tell people "Nazis were evil" or "Saddam was evil" because
> that would be imposing our personal beliefs (for those editors that
> believe the statements). Likewise, we should not tell people "Being
> offended is good! Really! Otherwise you'll never learn anything!"

OK.  Then we should also not tell people "Sex is dirty!  Pictures of
things John Lee thinks are icky should be hidden away!  Otherwise
Wikipedia will go out of business and we'll all die on the streets from
acute square-bracket deficiency!"

Or, more seriously, we should not build your POV about "offense" into
the Wikipedia software or policies ... especially since the recent cases
of gratuitously offensive images have already been dealt with
adequately, WITHOUT any such POV-pushing software or policy.

Because that is what your (and others') "filtering" proposals are.  They
are not really about making Wikipedia "safe" or "inoffensive", since
those goals have been demonstrated to be impossible.  (As long as
Wikipedia is an editable wiki, there is no way to provide assurances
that it is inoffensive.  As long as it is NPOV, there is no way to
decide _whose_ offense shall be considered significant.  And those who
really militate against "indecency" and the like, in law and public
policy, are offended by text just as much as by images.)

Filtering proposals are thus not about making Wikipedia "safe", but
rather about encoding someone's personal and cultural biases about
sexuality and other so-called "offensive" topics into the software and
policies.  They are about making censorship, rather than openness, the
norm on Wikipedia, by mandating that things _you_ find "offensive" be
marked up with tags and hidden away.

Once more, the issue here is not Autofellatio.jpg.  It is the grievous
wrong of placing a POV-pushing mechanism into the technical and policy
support structure of Wikipedia.

> Disagreeing with the "customer" on an issue like this would mean big
> trouble in the business world. Just because we're trying something
> different does not mean "Hahahaha, I'll shove some pictures of Goatse
> in your face because you wanted to view the shock site article!"

Gratuitous, uninformative images and trolling are already dealt with
quite well by Wikipedia policy and editing practices.  They are not, at
present, a problem for Wikipedia.  You're just trying to use them as an
excuse to push your POV into the MediaWiki software in the form of
"offensive" image censorship.  For shame!

-- 
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>