[WikiEN-l] One argument I do not find compelling

Sun Apr 17 23:51:31 UTC 2005

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I don't think this definitively settles anything one way or the other,
but I don't find Tony Sidaway's argument that linking (rather than
inlining) problematic images takes choice away from the user.  I think
there are much more compelling arguments which illustrate the opposite.

Tony suggests that users can browse with *all* images turned off and
simply click to view them.  He apparently concedes that with Firefox,
you have to download an extension to make this easy.  But even with
this, users who come to Wikipedia for the first time (and each
subsequent time) have to think: gee, I'm going to a serious encyclopedia
project, so I might see a photo of someone engaging in autofellatio so I
had better turn off all images just in case.

This is forcing the user to go through a lot of hoops, and it is
forbidding to them the very simple and obvious choice that most people
want to make, which is to just surf the web in a simple and unplanned
way and not be too astonished by the result.

On the other hand, putting such images behind a link doesn't appear to
affect anyone's choice negatively at all, except in the very very rare
case where it is somehow important to be able to read the description of
the controversial image side-by-side with viewing the image itself.  For
such cases, it seems to me quite easy for someone to open two browser
windows or... frankly, I just think it doesn't ever come up
realistically in the first place.

And linking _very conveniently_ acknowledges that for a great many
users, having the choice to simply click or not can be very very useful.

Now this is not to say that there aren't other arguments against linking
and in favor of inlining this sort of image.  But I don't think this
argument that somehow linking is taking away choices is very compelling.
 It seems clear to me that the opposite is true: linking gives people
the choice to view the image or not, in the simplest and most effective
way possible, without requiring the to know in advance that there might
be shocking images, without requiring them to change browser settings, etc.

- --Jimbo
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