[Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions

Mon May 10 06:27:44 UTC 2010

Hello Elias,

Welcome to the mailing list.

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva
<tolkiendili at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/5/9 Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com>:
> (..)
>>> board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this
>>> topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of
>>> foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions.
>>> If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my
>>> believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the
>>> problem.
>>
>> Ting
>>
>> I see no indication so far that the community *is* able to solve the problem.
>
> Sorry, I have never posted here, but I feel so sad reading such
> words... and other words spoken here at foundation-l.. the projects
> under the umbrella of WMF are so beautiful, so precious, to be treated
> this way... =~~~~

Thank you for your kind words for the projects.

> But well, so that's the reason Jimmy Wales must be so authoritarian?
> Because the Community of Commons can't solve this issue through
> consensus?
>
> Is solving this particular issue really more important than reaching
> consensus? Why?

It seems to me the only way a project can work through this sort of
complex issue is through careful consensus and decision-making.

I do not think solving it somehow is more important than reaching
consensus, or a decision that everyone can live with.  Questions of
how to deal with highly controversial content -- from images of
Muhammad to private personal information to explicit images of sex --
are often difficult to solve.

This may be the sort of complex decision that would benefit from a
community-run advisory or policy group, with representatives from many
projects.  Such decision making can take many months, and needs slow
but persistent attention and progress towards a balanced resolution.
[often our current practices of wiki-based decision making simply lose
steam after an initial burst of interest, and future iterations on the
theme have to start over from scratch.]

> Are you a member of the Board of Trustees or something?
> Could you inform me if the whole board has this kind of position?

No, the whole Board does not have this position.  (not to speak for
others -- I am on it, and I am opposed to the idea.)

This is out of scope for the Board, which like the Foundation itself
generally stays out of content creation, policy-making, and governance
of the individual Projects.

> BTW, I also have a broader question. Who entrusted power to the Board
> of Trustees? They are serving the interests of who? And who can revoke
> the trust upon a specific trustee, or the entire board, in the event
> it was misused?

The Board governs the Foundation to support the interests of the
mission and the needs of the Projects.

In an emergency, the Board itself could remove a Trustee; in practice
there are elections and appointments each year.  Of our ten trustees,
there are six 'community trustees': three elected by the editing
community every two years, two selected by the national Chapters every
[other] two years, and Jimmy as founding trustee, reappointed each
year.  The other four trustees are appointed each year by the
community trustees.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_board_manual
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_member

> PS: I may look inquisitive, but I see this anti-porn campaign
> contrasting to the complete lack of action when it was found that
> wiki-en was grossly offending Islam for no better reason.

I agree that the issue of images of Muhammad is similar to that of
explicit sexual content -- both are highly controversial, considered
by some to be educational or important; and by others to be useless
and offensive.  We must find a way to deal evenly with all
controversial material, and to understand the perspectives of
different audiences.

SJ