Not long ago I had a gaffe on internal-l, by publicly expressing opinion what do I really think about Wiki Loves Monuments, although my intention was to send a private email. However, WLM has a number of good sides: Commons will be filled with photos, people will spend time together, it makes at least some parts of the movement more coherent. Besides the fact that making depictions of depictions is a classical European type of decadency. Anyway, if that's the worst thing in our movement, I could live with that.
But, it is not. If Board doesn't intervene *now*, it could be easily concluded that the worst thing ever happened to our movement has started these days. Up to the end of the so called "referendum", everything was as usual: Because of <I promised to myself that won't use at this point phrase "Jimmy's sexually impaired rich friends"> Board articulated something in opposition of majority of editors (yes, majority of editors; I really don't care what one sexually impaired member of Concerned Women for America with 17 edits thinks about Wikipedia [1][2]); then it wanted to implement it anyway, including bizarre questionnaire called "referendum"; then heated discussion sparked; then results came; then results from German Wikipedia came, as well. Logically, we have the solution: If Board really cares what Concerned Women for America think, let it, please, implement that filter on English Wikipedia and leave the rest of the projects alone -- if they don't ask for the filter explicitly. As members of that organization probably don't know any other language except English, everybody will be happy. Except the core editors of English Wikipedia, of course. But Board doesn't care about them, anyway; which means that English Wikipedia is reasonable scapegoat for Wikimedia movement to please sexually impaired Americans and others. But, we have one much more serious problem in front of us. Instead of going toward the solution, we are going in opposite direction. Instead of concluding this three years long drama, Censorship Committee and Board want to "analyze" the numbers and prolong agony for another three years. And if that agony has something useful, important at the end, I could even say that we need to make reasonable sacrifice (in my area it would be solved by slaughtering pig or goat or whatever, which is more reasonable than wasting three more years, by the way). But, it doesn't have. The most important reason for this bizarre expression of mismanagement is to please, as mentioned before, sexually impaired Americans. If that's the main reason, please, please them *now* or forget everything. Like WLM, this Board's pet project is expression of decadency. This time American. However, unlike WLM, this project won't fill Commons with photos. Quite opposite, this project will make significant problems to the Commons community. People will spend time together indeed, but in arguing who is right and who's not. It already divides the movement on a couple of lines. I realized that I started to participate in this madness when I asked for some data from the results. And now, community is asked to participate into the "Next steps" [3]! Holy Thing! That will produce much more sexual content than any "porn" photo on Commons. In Serbian we say for that "fucking in healthy brain". If not exterminated at the beginning, that brainfuck (unfortunately, not programming language [4]) will produce much more problems than any image filter or any Fox News scam. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer#Internet_censorship [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerned_Women_for_America. [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/Next_steps/en [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l