[Foundation-l] Racism in Commons

Wed Mar 5 19:34:12 UTC 2008

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> I usually don't assume that one person speaks on behalf of a community
>  unless I know it to be the case in advance. In this case, the lack of a
>  reversion during a discussion does not at all indicate community consensus
>  on something as important as a project boycott.
>
>  That said, there have been many debates specifically about the Ariel Sharon
>  pictures. I don't have the links, but perhaps someone does who can post them
>  here for Yoni. The decision to keep them was not taken lightly, and if you
>  feel it necessary I'm sure you can restart the discussion on the appropriate
>  pages on Commons.

I'm sure if he.wikipedia has stopped linking to all commons images
entirely that there has been some general agreement on the issue. You
don't delete links to hundreds or even thousands of images if you are
working alone. At the very least, you would need a few people deleting
image links, and the rest of the community to acquiesce to it. I would
be interested to see if we could get some kind of statistic as to how
many images from commons actually are being linked to from that
project. If the number is zero or nearly zero, we can assume the whole
community is in general agreement here.

This is one of those issues where no matter what you do you are
walking into a snake pit. Opening or reopening a discussion probably
won't accomplish anything in the long-term, no matter how much we wish
it would. The fact is that we are truly a global organization, and if
we want to get lots of diverse people to work together, eventually we
are going to need to start making some concessions, or else some
people just aren't going to be made to feel welcome here. Damned if
you do, damned if you don't.

--Andrew Whitworth