From Mindspillage
Post made to foundation-l about the Commons images controversy.
First of all, this is entirely my own opinion, not that of the board, and anyone who quotes it as a statement of the WMF will get promptly crushed by a giant puzzle globe.
I absolutely sign on to the board statement[1]. Commons should not be a host for media that has very little informational or educational value; works that are *primarily* intended to shock, arouse, or offend generally fall under this category. But as a compendium of knowledge about, well, everything, we cover topics that some people will find unsuitable or offensive. If a topic is covered at all, it should be done well and honestly, explained in the as thorough and neutral a fashion as other topics--including illustrations.
The Commons community and the individual project communities have already largely recognized this, developing policies that strike compromises between being excessive and being incomplete, but of course there are still some areas that slip through the cracks.
Jimmy's actions are not the Board's; I don't agree with the extent of what he was doing and I wish he had gone about it differently. Not least because I think it's been unclear what he believes personally and what the Foundation's position is and it's caused a great deal of unrest and distrust. Some of this is unavoidable: it's difficult for any of us to speak our minds, knowing that whatever we say is likely to be attributed to WMF, or at least to be unclear. He's acknowledged that his own actions went too far and resigned his rights, and I respect him for doing so.
I don't think we can say with a straight face that sexual topics should be treated no differently than, say, tea pots or cute cats. I think we benefit from trying to be no more shocking than necessary--where things have comparable informative value, we should prefer the ones that will be most broadly accepted and useful. A line drawing instead of a photograph, or a medical study image instead of an amateur porn model.
However, I think it is because Commons is a project that must serve every Wikimedia project in every language that it must be broadly inclusive. Media only a few projects might wish to use still belongs on Commons for their benefit. (I also think that it's not only images included in articles that are support for projects--a page of text can only have so many images before they begin to overwhelm the text or frustrate users with slow internet connections. Having a gallery of additional media illustrating different aspects of a subject adds value: roses of every color, boats of every variety, and yes, images of every sexually-transmitted disease.)
I can think of few better places to go than Wikipedia for complete and informative coverage of topics that may be shocking or explicit. Most other sites which are uncensored are also intended to have entertainment or shock value, or to present a culturally or politically biased viewpoint. (I do remember being a young geek, going to the library with a small cluster of other middle-school girls, looking at books which had depictions of sex and sexual topics and giggling over them, trying not to admit that we really *didn't* know what certain things were or what they looked like, but wanted to. If the librarians ever figured out what we were doing, they never even cast a disapproving glance, for which I am grateful. It was a non-threatening context for satisfying curiosity. Wikipedia would serve the same purpose for me, now.)
What shouldn't happen is people being surprised by media they didn't want to see. (And yes, Greg Maxwell and I do in fact talk about Wikimedia at the dinner table. Occasionally we even reach consensus.)
I don't think filtering is effective, useful, or desirable; the reasons are pretty adequately covered elsewhere on the list and on the web. (The American Library Association--my employer--agrees with this anti-filtering stance: providers of information should provide access to the best of their abilities, and allow adult users to choose what they see.)
And I am firmly against reducing the content on Wikimedia to only that which is acceptable for children. The world's knowledge contains a lot of things that are shocking, divisive, offensive, or horrific, and people should be able to learn about them, and to educate others. Not including these things doesn't make them go away--it only makes it more difficult for interested people to learn from a source that tries to be neutral and educational. I don't think Wikipedia will ever be (or should ever be) "safe", for the same reason your public library will never be, either.
(One of the benefits of being free content is that anyone with sufficient motivation can produce an edited version that aligns with their values and goals; there are several existing edited Wikipedia mirrors intended for children, though none have been very successful.)
What I do support are tools and procedures that make it simpler for users to choose what they see: I don't think anyone should have to avoid Wikimedia projects because they fear that they (or their children) will inadvertently see something they didn't intend to. Most people never do; links are generally not surprising, and sexually-themed media is generally only present in sexually-themed articles. (As are depictions of violence, for that matter.) But a user clicking on an unfamiliar term, or who is not aware that certain categories of content are allowed on the projects, may be in for a shock.
I'm sorry if I am repeating others' points--I've been following discussions on Commons and the lists but have not yet caught up with everything![2] However, I thought as a community-elected member I should share my viewpoint, the sort of things the board is debating as we speak.
Cheers, Kat
[1] You know, this one: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057791.html [2] The list just had to catch fire while I was finishing my very last set of papers for law school...