[Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

Thu Dec 1 12:58:59 UTC 2011

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 8:33 AM, Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 03:34, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
> <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> While I don't find that line of argument to be a fully fledged
>> straw-horse argument, it
>> does appear to me to be a cherry-picked argument to *attempt* to
>> refute. There are
>> much stronger arguments, both practical and philosophical, at any
>> attempt to elide
>> controversial content. Even as such, I am not convinced by the
>> argumentation, but
>> would not prefer to rebut an argument that does not address the
>> strongest reasons
>> for opposing elision of controversial content, by choice or otherwise.
>>
>
> My point was not to provide an argument for or against any particular
> implementation. It was a response to one particularly god-awful
> argument.
>

"English Wikipedia already has the “bad image list”: a list of
shocking images that can only be included in the article it is listed
for on the list. If you want to use it elsewhere, an admin has to
update the list. It’s basically to prevent that delightful image
“Autofellatio6.jpg” from being inserted into My Little Pony articles
and other amusing bits of vandalism. Does the bad image list enable
censorware? Yes. But it has kind of an important and useful function:
preventing vandalism. Similarly, the doctrine of double effect can be
called into play here: yes, we may be building up a list of categories
that could be reused by censorware sellers, but that’s not our primary
intention."

If you had started with the last sentence, rather than concluded with
it, I doubt even the
most moronic reader would have been stringed along by the rhetoric.
Let me emphasize
the last phrase of that paragraph for rhetoric effect:

"[...]  yes, we may be building up a list of categories that could be
reused by censorware sellers, but that’s not our primary intention."

-- 
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]