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>________________________________ >From: David Levy <[email protected]> >To: [email protected] >Sent: Friday, 14 October 2011, 3:52 >Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content > >I wrote: > >> > In an earlier reply, I cited ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspapers and magazines >> > that refuse to publish photographs of women. If this were a mainstream >> > policy, would that make it "neutral"? > >Andreas Kolbe replied: > >> NPOV policy as written would require us to do the same, yes. > >The community obviously doesn't share your interpretation of said policy. > It's not a question of interpretation; it is the very letter of the policy. Due weight and neutrality are established by reliable sources. Now, let's look at your example: if you and I lived in a society that did not produce reliable sources about women, and refused to publish pictures of them, then I guess we would be unlikely to work on a wiki that - defines neutrality as fairly representing reliable sources without bias, - derives its definition of due weight from the weight any topic (incl. women) is given in reliable sources, - requires verifiability in reliable sources for every statement made in our wiki, - and disallows original research. Instead, we would start a revolutionary wiki with a political agenda that - denounces the status quo, - criticises the inhuman and pervasive bias against women, - refuses to be bound by it, - sets out to start a new tradition of writing about, and depicting, women, - and vows to subvert the established system in order to create a new world. We would set out to be *different* from the existing sources. However, in our world, that is not how Wikipedia views reliable sources. Wikipedia is not set up to be in antagonism to its sources; it is set up to be in agreement with them. Andreas > In the same way, if no reliable sources were written about women, we would not > >> be able to have articles on them. > >The images in question depict subjects documented by reliable sources >(through which the images' accuracy and relevance are verifiable). > >Essentially, you're arguing that we're required to present information >only in the *form* published by reliable sources. > >> By following sources, and describing points of view with which you >> personally do >> not agree, you are not affirming the correctness of these views. You are >> simply >> writing neutrally. > >Agreed. And that's what we do. We describe views. We don't adopt >them as their own. > >If reliable sources deem a word objectionable and routinely censor it >(e.g. when referring to the Twitter feed "Shit My Dad Says"), we don't >follow suit. > >The same principle applies to imagery deemed objectionable. We might >cover the controversy in our articles (depending on the context), but >we won't suppress such content on the basis that others do. > >As previously discussed, this is one of many reasons why reliable >sources might decline to include images. Fortunately, we needn't read >their minds. As I noted, we *always* must evaluate our available >images (the pool of which differs substantially from those of most >publications) to gauge their illustrative value. We simply apply the >same criteria (intended to be as objective as possible) across the >board. > >> Images are content too, just like text. > >Precisely. And unless an image introduces information that isn't >verifiable via our reliable sources' text, there's no material >distinction. > >David Levy > >_______________________________________________ >foundation-l mailing list >[email protected] >Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
