Anthere wrote: I don't agree that our handling of 'clitoris' can reasonably be called 'censorship'. The picture(s) are right there for anyone to click on and see. On the other hand, I'm inclined to agree that the current handling is perhaps not optimal. Could we perhaps handle these pictures in the same way? That is, make them accessible in the same way, but not randomly plastered all over the article? Part of the issue here is that these pictures are of _extreme_ current importance. Many people visiting that page will be interested in seeing the pictures, and rightfully so. The article in its present state needs a lot of work, of course. As an example, there is a series of quotes from George W. Bush about war crimes *committed by the Iraqis* with the droll suggestion that "These statements may or may not represent the positions that his administration will take regarding the Abu Ghraib prison situation." That statement seems designed to be a swipe against the Bush administration rather than a neutral assessment of the probabilities. The reader is invited to imagine Bush plausibly saying "These are war crimes, but we should excuse them." It's just editorial. --Jimbo

Pictures of the clitoris are not displayed to avoid pandering to purient interests which apparently (I have not followed this debate) outweighs the information value. While there may be a few readers who might enjoy pictures of torture and putting many of them on Wikipedia would be wrong there is such a strong history of people lying about torture that we would not want to part of suppression of evidence. Thus there is a very high information value. (We finally caught a few of these sonsabitches). There is a point of view problem as 99.9% of torture is not photographed thus displaying pictures of American torture only (as pictures of Saudi Arabian or Israeli or Turkish or Tibetan or [put in your own despotic regime] torture are not available) gives a somewhat false impression. It takes a pretty dumb criminal to take pictures (or let others take pictures) of themselves while they are committing a crime. Fred

Weighing in on this issue, I think the pictures are on the borderline of what we should put inline, but should probably stay. The sexually explicit parts have been blurred out anyway, so they're not problematic on that account. I like the way [[clitoris]] has been handled generally (no pun intended), though perhaps there's a better way of doing it. Having it a simple link makes it so that anyone can easily find it (an on-site link, so it doesn't depend on an external server), but so that people who are reading the article don't have to have it in their peripheral vision the whole time if they find it uncomfortable for whatever reason. Conceptually disturbing images are somewhat different than graphic ones. People might be disturbed by pictures of concetration camps, but these are more conceptually disturbing than graphic, and are fairly integral to an article on, say, the [[Holocaust]]. On the other hand, if there were gruesome pictures of medical experiments being performed, we might want to put those on as linked instead of inline. The main reason I'd favor that approach is that otherwise there'll be whole sections of Wikipedia that people are somewhat afraid to visit, especially in public areas. Someone should be able to read [[torture]] without seeing graphic images of torture; they should be able to read [[automobile accident]] without seeing bloody corpses plastered on the roadway, and so on. If the picture might be useful, they ought to be able to see it, but that should be up to them. But back to the point, I think the [[Abu Graith]] images in particular are okay, though perhaps some better placement is possible. Although I've wrangled on that page a bit myself, I do think they currently come across in a moderately documentary tone, rather than a pursuasive tone intended to shock the reader into a particular action. -Mark

On Tuesday 11 May 2004 18:25, Mark Richards wrote: Not at all: text could be in the MediaWiki namespace (articles should then probably contain a comment telling newbies how to edit the text).

Anthere wrote: I think this is inconsistent. I think this is exactly correct. The problem, of course, is that it is not possible to come up with detailed standards for what is and is not offensive. But clearly, I think, the treatment of 'penis' and 'clitoris' should be the same. It could even be argued that a clitoris image is significantly more informative than a penis image, since (it is said) many men with poor sexual education do not know how to find it. --Jimbo

Mark Richards wrote: To paraphrase that great American philosopher, George Carlin, "It's OK to fuck your enemy; just don't fuck your lover." It's a question of morality. On American TV they may be showing the torture pictures from the Sadaamite jail, but any suggestion on these pictures that the prisoners might have genitals needs to be blurred to avoid offending the morals of decent religious folks. The administration strongly objected to pictures of returning dead American soldiers. These weren't pictures of mutilated bodies - just rows of flag-draped coffins. For many, the video game world has to be real; without that some would be left with the unpatriotic illusion that when you pull on the trigger real people are being killed. Perhaps the painted nails on the fingers that spread the labia to show the clitoris were a detraction from the purpose of that article, but so too would be an excess of pictures to illustrate the tortures at Abu Ghraib, as was the excess of pictures about Rachel Corrie. But we can't ignore any of these images altogether. Ec

Erik Moeller a écrit: Voting on the clitoris page was an error, because it was voting for a particular case, rather than trying to fix a general situation. Okay. So, let us set a consistent policy on this. I totally approved Fortunately, I fixed the clitoris page, otherwise, we had -> clitoris -> link -> universally considered offensive -> torture -> embedded -> considered offensive by some, not by others Which I do not think is consistent with reality.

Rich- It was meant figuratively rather than literally. I am talking about 95- 100% agreement. If I added a photo of the decapitated hostage, Nick Berg, to an article and insisted on voting on it, I'm sure that's pretty much what we would get - 95-100% in favor of removing the image or replacing it with one just showing the hostage when he was still alive. This is the kind of case where a link (if anything) is appropriate. I hesitate to use the word "consensus" here because this is increasingly interpreted as "80%", which is really much too low for such a decision. Quite a bit, in my opinion. By doing so, we emphasize this particular bias. For example, if we censor images of body parts (connected to their body *cough*), we emphasize the bias of modern US society against nudity, a bias which is by no means universal. Of course you can argue that by not censoring ourselves, we become biased *against* that viewpoint. But that is not true if our lack of censorship is consistent. Then we are merely biased in favor of being inclusive which, in my opinion, is a necessary bias for an encyclopedia, just like we are pro-knowledge rather than anti-knowledge and pro-neutrality rather than pro-atheism or pro-theism, etc. Regards, Erik

Rich- That is an incorrect statement. The cost of an additional mouse click (and finding out that there is an image to click to in the first place) may very well have the same effect on some readers as showing the image may have on others. To cite your own example, if we started censoring .. uh, excuse me, "masking" images of women's faces like that, I would 100% certainly leave the project, as would probably many others. And the argument for doing that is no stronger or weaker than the argument for masking the clitoris photo. In fact, I predict that if we masked *all* somewhat sexually explicit pictures (penises, buttocks, breasts ..) in this way, several people would be annoyed and/or leave the project. If we are more forgiving of our own biases than of those of other cultures, then we effectively endorse a certain "POV" of what is and what isn't offensive, and this flies in the face of everything this project stands for. The standard of "near universal offensiveness" is the only one which avoids this problem. Well, not the only one. Category tags on images and category filters in the user preferences might also work. Then you could have something like: Show the following images in articles: [ ] Animals [ ] Fictional animals [ ] Rabbits [ ] Women [ ] Overweight women [ ] Overweight women wearing party hats [ ] Priests etc. If we wanted to create a real family filter, we could add another set of options: [ ] Allow me to view filtered images on a separate page [ ] Allow logout [ ] Preferences password Censorious parents could then force their children into viewing only images of priests and rabbits, etc. (although such a filter could be easily circumvented). Others who merely want to avoid being "surprised" by offensive images could enable the "Allow me" option and would get a "View image" link on filtered images. I'm not saying that I support such a system - my own POV is strongly anti- censorship and I'm not fond of any system that makes it easier for parents to indoctrinate their children - but from the standpoint of Wikipedia policy, this would be acceptable. "Masking" images that are not universally offensive is not. Regards, Erik

Delirium- Do not confuse the legal situation with people's beliefs. Even in the most fundamentalist countries there are strong minorities opposed to the madness they are subjected to. For example, during the high point of Taliban rule, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan still advocated a secular, open society. Regards, Erik

Incidently, I noticed that the masking is back on clitoris. Consequently, it is now obvious that Wikipedia currently hold a strong bias toward feminine body display, while male body is all right to display. I would like that the equality of human genital display is discussed, and discussed seriously, and that at the end of the discussion, we happen to reach a consensus over what is correct to display in terms of genitals. I expect that female genitals have the same right of display than male genitals. Either hidden, or visible. But that equal standards are respected between women and men.

Delirium a écrit: So, are you saying that we should mask female genitalia because the world is generally offended by watching it, while we should display male genitalia because the world is generally not offended by watching it ? Are you also gonna remove pictures of women who show their hair because in most of the world women hide their hair ? And how exactly do you measure the level of offensiveness of female genitalia in the world compare to level of offensiveness of these humiliation pictures in the prison article ? Mind you, I think most of the world think these are VERY offensive, so by your standards, they should be immediately put into a separate page.

Delirium a écrit: Okay. So, I would prefer the prison pictures to be placed in a separate gallery, because I think they are offensive for most people. Can I do that ? Or am I gonna be immediately reverted ? What is people opinion about that ? I won't do it if people are widely against it. What should we do with the clitoris picture ? As soon as we choose *voluntarily* to display male genitalia, while hiding female genitalia, we choose *delibaretly* to *convey* the fact *WE* consider one offensive and the other not. In short, we *force* people to think in a particular way. We are not neutral any more. Does that not bother you Mark ? Honestly ? Anthere

Christopher Mahan wrote: I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Most women in the world do not cover their hair from public view. It is common pretty much only in the Islamic world and a few relatively small traditionalist Christian groups. 1.1 billion Chinese generally do not; Russians do not; etc. Far from 5%, I think it's more like 80%. But there's a certain set of westerners who feel they have the proper morality they need to share with the world. If only everyone else would agree with them, the world would be a better place, eh? -Mark

Erik Moeller wrote: But what *should* there be a tyrrany of? The majority of people who happen to edit Wikipedia, who are generally well-off and concentrated in North America and Europe? -Mark

Erik Moeller wrote: I don't disagree with your principle in general, but perhaps we disagree on what exactly the threshold should be, and what factually people actually do find offensive. You seem to agree that including a photograph of the recent beheading in Iraq inline would be above the threshold, but that a close-up photograph of a clitoris would not be. I tend to think that both should be considered above the threshold for reasonable offensiveness. I'm not even sure offensiveness is the right word, but more like visceral discomfort or shock---a great many people would find it difficult to read an article that had either of those images embedded (for completely different reasons, of course). There's even some stuff I'd personally like to see and wouldn't find offensive at all, but would not necessarily want to see inline, such as photographs of [[open-heart surgery]]. As far as information goes, I don't think we lose much in the way of information by having a detailed diagram on [[clitoris]] with a caption that says to click here for a photographic version, or something of that sort. I'm less sure how to nicely handle images of the beheading, which are clearly relevant (it's the entire reason to have an article on [[Nick Berg]] to begin with) but not easily presented in a way that won't shock people. I think if we only remove things that absolutely *everyone* finds offensive, we'd have a lot of odd things in our articles that'd alienate a lot of people. A large number of people have no particular problem with images of [[defecation]] for example (lots of kids even like the subject!), but I don't think we should really have them inline. -Mark

Erik Moeller a écrit: If I dare... Kids feces smell just the same as adult feces, as soon as they eat the same food as their parents; And in particular meat. As long as they are on a 100% dairy diet, the feces are really smelling okay, which is possibly a natural adaptation, as mothers really have to get in the business of cleaning everything quite often. It also produces rather liquid feces, which is best, since infants do not move much (so there is fewer movements to make things get down the intestine). The smells stays all right when you introduce veggies and fruits; especially since most kids prefer mild favored ones. Now, as soon as the kid eat meat, things get less funny. In western society, quantities get really serious between 1 and 2, and from then on, feces are quite similar to adult ones. I suspect that is a very serious reason why mothers start potty training at a quite early age, often sooner than reasonable. What I mean to say, is that kids are interested in their feces till a much older age (3-4), than the moment the feces really start to smell. While adults are frowning, kids are not yet. I have the personal feeling, that the taboo is not spontaneous at all, but the result of education. It is not a spontaneous taboo, triggered during natural developement of the child, or if a natural taboo is triggered, I guess the trigger time comes *after* an educational trigger.

Ben, euhhhh, wellll, let's say, I *really* think this encyclopedia is sometimes losing itself in pure speculation and forgetting real day life. There are no articles on potty training, and that is more the reality of life of many people than many articles on ... oh well... And believe me, some commercial editors make big bucks selling books to mothers, where pedetricians, psychopedetricians explain to them how to raise a child. What is normal, and not normal, color, smell, texture, depending on which food they ate, what to do when they have it runny, when to call a doctor, when not, how to drink unCO2 coca cola, what to do when the kid plays with it, if it is healthy that he does so...and so on Chapters and chapters and chapters Anyway, never mind. I feel I am not in the right place. That is gross :-) Let's go back to these prisoners pictures... I made a gallery. Feedback welcome (even if I think I will be reverted, but well...) Ant Fennec Foxen a écrit:

Erik Moeller wrote: It could be useful in an article about how to survive in the wilderness to have such pictures that help in recognizing the difference between human, bear, wolf or moose feces. :-) Ec

Delirium wrote: There shouldn't be a tyranny of any sort. I didn't take the reference to a poll as expressing an intent to seriously have one, but as a hypothetical statement about what such a poll might produce. NPOV demands that we find some mutually satisfactory middle way. Ec

Rich- By masking those images which are nearly universally considered offensive, we are providing a service to our community in hiding images that they will not want to see unless they explicitly request them. If we set this threshold low - at 70%, for example - then we are trampling on the POV of 30% of our readers. But if we set it very high - 95-100% - then we are in NPOV territory. In the NPOV policy we can only treat something as a fact if it is universally considered as one by informed persons. Similarly, if a photo is accepted as offensive by all, then we can treat its offensiveness as *fact*, and act on the basis of this fact. If it is considered offensive by some, when we act on this *opinion*, we are endorsing a specific POV. The argument that when we set a threshold at, for example, 50%, and enforce this threshold *consistently* we are acting in an NPOV manner is fallacious. Instead we would be abandoning NPOV - neutral point of view - in favor of MPOV - majority point of view. Here's a test for any idea of dealing with offensive pictures: Apply the same methodology to text. Would the result be desirable and acceptable per NPOV? Let's take the Mother Teresa article as an example. It accords a significant amount of space to criticisms of Mother Teresa, even though there is a strong majority who believes that MT was, if not a living saint, a courageous helper of the poor and who may consider these criticisms offensive. Would it be NPOV to say "If 50% (or 70%) of people find a certain text in an article offensive, it should be moved somewhere else and a link should be provided to it"? In that case, we would have to move the criticisms away to make the article more amenable to Christians and MT-admirers. Now you can come up with lots of reasons to justify this. You're acting in the interest of *accessibility*, you say. You want to make sure that Wikipedia can be read without problems in Catholic schools. You cite an example of a kid on the Philippines who lost his Internet access after viewing the Mother Teresa article on a school computer. "This young child, only 12 years old, could still be reading Wikipedia if we would only move certain segments of pages away. It's not censorship, you see? The pages are still there for those who want to read them. And we do this consistently across all pages -- any minority point of view that is offensive to the majority will be treated in the same way. So it's perfectly neutral treatment. It could be done by a computer!" And you may find these arguments persuasive. I'm sure that over time, people will make these arguments for text as they are making them for images now. But the simple fact is that this is *not* our neutral point of view policy which does not implicitly or explicitly endorse any single point of view, be it the majority point of view or one which is defined by some committee. This doesn't mean that we have to tolerate all images everywhere, of course. It merely answers the first question, offensiveness. Other key questions are usefulness and redundancy. And we may even make the compromise of saying that if a photo's offensiveness to a large number of readers clearly outweighs its usefulness, the photo should be removed or linked to. Again, such a determination can only be made in consensus. Regards, Erik

--- Rich Holton <rich_holton(a)yahoo.com> wrote: [large snip] I contend that the value of an encyclopedia comes from what it includes, not what it excludes. Imagine if you will that you have to fight a war (a well-known theme these days), and you need weapons. You can go to the arsenal to fill up, yet you can't pick just anything you want, because the more, hummm, dangerous ones are just out of reach... The same can be applied in the world of business, or recovery from the myriads of afflictions that plage humanity such as disease, drug/alcohol/etc abuse, prostitution, underage sex (whichever age) and violence, of even politics, ethics, and philosophy. If you want to know the real facts, you need the real facts, unfiltered, raw, in-your-face. The reader is the one who can form his or her own opinion, and will be able to do so with unbiased facts, since all of them will be readily available on the same footing. Some may argue: But they are available, just one click away! I respond that it's like the grocery store putting candy at kids eye level and fitness magazines up for their dads and moms. The very placement of the information is suggestive to behavior (they want the kids to want candy) and thus demonstrates a bias. We don't sell candy or magazines. If you want to make a child-friendly encyclopedia, knock yourself out. Most of us live in the real world where people struggle, suffer and die, and we need the best information available, no matter how unpalatable it may seem to some, to survive as individuals, as a specie, and advance the achievements of our civilization (especially since, cell-phones and Internet notwithstanding, we seem to have returned to the Age of Barbarians). ===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2' http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861

Rich Holton wrote: This makes me long back to good old Opera 6, where you could just press "G" and all images disappear and you can read the text without any irritating blinking ads, or offensive pornography. Why can't every browser simply have such a useful feature? :) Inspired by that, I might suggest the following two features. We could have (1) a "?disableimages=1" option that would display an article with all the images removed, and (2) a wiki syntax to link to it. Then, when people voice objection to the graphical content of a page, we could add {{msg:offensiveimages}} at the top, which would add something like :'''''Notice:''' Some people have voiced objection to the images on this page. [[[disableimages]|View this page without images]]'' Timwi

I go restore the clitoris pictures. Erik Moeller a écrit: