[WikiEN-l] On cultural sensitivity

Sat Apr 16 18:18:55 UTC 2005

Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Jimmy Wales said:
>
>>First, whenever possible I think people should try to see if a "link"
>>solution is helpful.  It does not reduce the educational value of an
>>article by much if a potentially disturbing image is put behind a link
>>instead of being shown by default inline.
>
>
> I think this is a good idea where a photograph is of subsidiary
> importance.  I think it would have be a poor choice for illustrating
> topics where the image and the text are best seen together  Nobody has to
> download the inline image, but if the Wikipedia editors link the image
> instead of inlining there is no easy way for the reader can see both the
> image and the text it is supposed to illustrate.
> Inlining is *always* more flexible.  If you link an image, you are *taking
> choice away from the reader.*

Agreed, although I think that an ideal solution would be a
content-filtering system where users could choose which images they
wanted to see.  Displaying images as links by default would, detract
from my experience as a user who isn't offended by those images.

While I think that we should be aware of people's sensitivity in regards
to these images, we should do so without detracting from the educational
value of other readers.  Not offending people should always be secondary
to educating them.

Also, we can't promise to avoid offending *everybody* if we get into
displaying images as links.  Example: birds are considered a symbol of
death in japanese culture.  Should we then display all images of birds
as links? Since Wikipedia aims to be an international project, censoring
something that I percieve as offensive may ultimately lead to that being
used as rationale to censor something else.  It can get out of hand very
quickly.  But even if it doesn't, I think that linking to images by
default can detract from other readers overall experience, and (as Tony
said) takes away choice from the reader.

Blog: http://frazzydee.ca

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