[WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

Wed Apr 13 16:11:02 UTC 2005

On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 09:18:50AM -0500, Kevin Rector wrote:
> Wikipedia is a community and an encyclopedia. We should be about the
> business of making a community and an encyclopedia (probably in that
> order since a good community will make a good encyclopedia but a good
> encyclopedia will not make a good community -- although it does help to
> draw people to the community).
> 
> When something disrupts the building of community and when that
> disruption provides less benefit than the potential harm to the
> community (and the encyclopedia) then that something should be removed.

I see a real problem with that argument:  it can be applied to, well,
just about anything.  There are people who are offended by explicit
religious content.  There are people who are offended by claims that the
Nanjing massacre or the Armenian genocide took place.

(By the way -- don't view the [[Nanjing massacre]] article with image
display turned on unless you are willing to see highly disturbing images
of massacre victims.  And do not *read* that article at all unless you
are willing to read disturbing descriptions of war crimes.)

There are people who are apparently offended by frank discussions of the
beliefs of the inner circles of the Church of Scientology.  Some of
these people have made it their modus operandi to disrupt "communities"
where those beliefs are discussed.  Would it be preferable to exclude
this content and thereby avoid provoking such people to do things that
"harm the community"?  Jimbo apparently didn't think so when he approved
the use of [[Xenu]] as a feature article of the day.

Once you make the argument that material that offends someone can be
considered "disrupting Wikipedia" because it provokes that person to
make an unpleasant fuss that "harms the community", where do you stop?

I suggest that it is a much better rule that people who are easily
offended should instead take responsibility for their own exposure to
the kinds of material that they know offend them.  They should be
expected to know themselves -- [[Gnothi seauton]] -- and conduct
themselves in a manner that does not lead to them disrupting the
encyclopedia project.

It seems to me that if anyone here is in the habit of "disrupting
Wikipedia to make a point" it is those who persist in calling for the
deletion of images on no other grounds but their own personal dislike.

-- 
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>