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

Fri Dec 2 14:36:17 UTC 2011

Message: 6

> Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 14:55:29 +0200
> From: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal
>        filter lists
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <CAJ9-EKLOfhu5jycOt6i4fMm-CRM=0wrtT=e4=Orhmg--_RTROQ at mail.gmail.com
> >
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>
> On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 1:00 PM, WereSpielChequers
> <werespielchequers at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm pretty sure that the community is against a filter system based on
> our
> > commons categories.
>
> .
> > Thankfully the Foundation seems to have taken that message on board and
> > though we can expect to continue to have pro-filter people joining the
> > debate and trying to revive that type of proposal, I'm pretty sure it is
> > dead in the water.
>
> Not according to their meeting minutes. It does seem there are people still
> flailing around with a horse-whip, thinking that if they just whip the dead
> horse hard enough, it will rise up and be a useful steed.
>

The bit I was referring to was:

"that the Board send a letter to the community acknowledging opposition to
the filter idea; that the idea of a category-based system be dropped, as it
is problematic and highly controversial, but that staff continue
discussions with the community about how to build a system that would meet
the Board's objectives; and that the staff also continue to focus on their
work to recruit a more diverse editor body, including women and people from
the global south. Sue noted that we do not currently have technical work
scheduled on the filter, so there is time to develop ideas that acknowledge
community objections. This course of action was agreed to. "
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-10-07

My reading of that is that the board has agreed to drop the idea of a
filter based on our category system, but unfortunately they haven't yet
agreed to drop the idea that someone controlling an IP could censor what
other viewers using that IP can see.

> >
> > I'm not sure that we have a consensus for or against the principle of
> > censorship, or whether the community as a whole regards a private
> personal
> > filter as censorship.
>
> This is one of those canards that just keep popping up, despite having been
> comprehensively debunked time and again. We have always had a consensus
> against censorship, and Jimbo even used to enforce it through bans and
> blocks.
>

We already have a no censorship policy that makes various exceptions. For
Example Paedophilia advocates get blocked on site on EN wikipedia. There
may in the past have been a consensus against any change to that policy,
but there hasn't been a recent site wide reconsideration of that consensus.
DE Wikipedia had an overwhelming vote, but they may not reflect views on
the rest of the site, and not being a German speaker I'm not sure to what
extent their vote was a decisive rejection of the proposal that was then on
the table or a rejection of filtering in principle.

> > On the one hand at least one Wikimedian is asserting that the
> > community is opposed to censorship in principle, and that even a private
> > personal filter would be censorship. On the other hand the board still
> > wants the image filter to be usable for IPs and not just logged in users
> -
> > despite the fact that we have no way to implement an IP level system
> > without allowing some people to censor other people's Wikimedia viewing.
>
> If you mean me, I am not asserting, I am reminding that this issue has been
> visited and revisited more times than anybody can be bothered to count. And
> the consensus has always been the same. The definition of insanity is
> trying
> the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
>
>
>
Change on wiki is sometimes slow as consensus makes for a very
conservative(cautious) policy making process. But that doesn't entitle the
opponents of change to oppose simply because an idea is similar to ones
that have been rejected before. If the proponents of change are making an
effort to meet the objections raised to similar proposals, then to operate
in a spirit of consensus the defenders of the status quo should at the very
least explain how the latest proposal doesn't meet or all or some of their
objections. Otherwise the supporters of change may reasonably assume that
they've won the argument and only have inertia to overcome. That said there
is an argument for having a minimum interval between reviews of a policy -
and if this current debate were to conclude with the consensus against
those of us who are trying to formulate a filter proposal that would be
acceptable to the community then I would hope we could agree not to reopen
the debate for at least a year - or two if the  majority is significant.

WSC

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