[WikiEN-l] On cultural sensitivity

Sun Apr 17 22:39:34 UTC 2005

Hi!

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 11:21:54 -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>The question has arisen here: what positive arguments can be given for 
>the inclusion of nudity in Wikipedia articles?  

Actually, although being decidedly liberal on the issue itself, I would like
to raise another aspect. Wikipedia strives not just to inform the Western
world, but also the rest of it. And a lot of this rest of the world has not
only rather conservative views, but also laws regulating the display of nudity
- not to mention conventions; the USA (or rather parts of it) hardly have a
monopoly on that; and other areas have much stricter laws, too.

So I don't think we should worry too much over people who might get shocked,
we should more worry about people who don't get to see anything of Wikipedia,
because some authority deems WP to be to "moraly loose" or whatever. 

The problem therefore is, in my opinion, how we can find a way between the
need to inform (which does IMO include pictures) and a need to remain
accessible to as many people as possible. 

We should therefore consider which laws (and sensitivities) we want to
consider regarding content at all; the example of birds as a symbol of death
shows IMO one case where we would go too far if we excluded those.
Sensitivities are one thing, but the nuditiy issue is a triffle heavier than
sensitivities. The pic of Bahá'u'lláh on the other hand is one example where
we might consider doing the same thing as with nudity pics - linking them.

Which brings me to the solution I support, namely, linking them. Should we
consider to link some images instead of showing them directly, we should
consider that there is more than one way of offending people; particularly
religious images could probably be a similar problems. If a person decides
that they won't be offended by any images, they could switch on the direct
showing of these images in their preferences, or, if at all practical, people
could switch on different levels of potentially offending images. Since that
would require different tags, censoring bodies could choose to ban just the
display of those images, and not the whole WP.

And now don't get me wrong - I'd be much happier if there was no censorship
around the word, and if we could display all kinds of images without risking
not only complaints, but censorship of the whole Wikipedia at the recieving
end of the line. Unfortunately, the world is not quite as I would like it to
be, and given those circumstances, I consider my proposal to be the best
compromise. It does not take anything away from those readers who want and can
see everything, but it may keep open access to the rest of the Wikipedia to
those who otherwise might not see anything of it at all. And it would keep
those who are themselfes offended quiet, too, which I however only consider a
side-effect.

Greetings from Cologne
Alex
-- 
If you don't go over the top, 
you can't see what's on the other side. 
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de