[Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit

Sat May 8 13:00:32 UTC 2010

I, of course, agree that the Félicien Rops image is offensive, and we
have no reason to needlessly offend by putting it in articles where
less-offensive images are equally encyclopedic. However, it's also by
a notable artist, and, as such, can be used to illustrate his work,
the subjects you mention, and other similar cases and thus shouldn't
be permanently deleted. without discussion, as part of an effort to
make Commons entirely child friendly which has little support outside
of Jimbo himself.

The point is not whether images should or shouldn't be used to
illustrate specific articles, the point is that Wales has decided, on
his own, that all images that are at all pornographic should be
deleted, and has gone about deleting images by notable artists, and
when challenged, stonewalled completely by saying that no discussion
of his actions would be heard until he had finished his disruption,
and all the images were already gone.

I'm not one of Wikipeda's porn editors. I didn't know these images
existed in advance. But I worried that the new policy would be used to
censor art, and, it turns out, was completely and totally correct.

-Adam.

>Well, do you need a picture to explain a dildo? File:Franz von Bayros
>016.jpg is more or less art, but File:Félicien Rops - Sainte-Thérèse.png
>which is used on three Wikipedias to illustrate the use of a dildo has
>some real problems with being offensive to Catholics (Of course Japanese
>or Chinese Catholics don't matter, but they do). Much better to use a
>photo of the woman using a dildo or at least an eye-witness report
>published in a reliable source. The image could, of course, be used
>appropriately to illustrate an article on caricatures or something about
>anti-catholicism.

>Fred Bauder