On Thursday, 31 May 2012 at 04:38, Kim Osman wrote: > I am a new contributor to Wikipedia and read Larry's blog post and the > subsequent discussion on this list with great interest. > > My first thought was that this indeed is a red herring in terms of addressing > the gendergap, however in my limited editing experience I do at times feel > like Wikipedia is a boys' club, and perhaps the prevalence of pornography > goes some way to an imagining of what is hanging on the clubhouse walls. > Although not apparent in the course of normal browsing and editing (I've yet > to stumble on anything particularly offensive), it may contribute to the > culture which has resulted in a such a participation skew between genders. > I think everyone recognises the problems. I'm pretty much against censorship, but I still find it icky looking at certain images on Wikipedia. When I was involved in the Wikimedia UK outreach event at Cancer Research UK, I saw some fairly grisly images. I've occasionally had to deal with the BADIMAGES list on-wiki qua my role as admin.
The problem is that Larry and others who are banging on about the sexual images is that they are conflating two things: the discussed opt-in image filter and an adult content filter. The former is what the Wikimedia community discussed (and seems to have rejected). The latter is what Larry seems to want. The latter has never been on the table. The point of the opt-in image filter is to let people choose what images they don't want to see, whereas an adult content filter would have to prevent children from accessing material their parents don't want them to see. The latter is a much, much harder job, and comes with great risk of over-filtering: if someone opts-out of seeing sexual images and we go a bit too far and hide the Venus de Milo, an opt-in image filter lets the user click the box and see it again. But a filter intended for preventing children from seeing naughty pics by definition cannot allow this. Therefore we'd have to be especially careful with false positives. I wrote something about this a while back: http://blog.tommorris.org/post/11286767288/opt-in-image-filter-enabling-censorware > I do think it is worth further exploring the idea of the > "techno-libertarians" who dominate policy-making as being young males without > children. I know that my views on any number of things has changed since I > have had children of my own - as my ability to donate time to discussing such > issues! > I find it sad that Larry uses a term like "technolibertarian". The fact that a word like that can encompass anyone who opposes censorship technologies and the Peter Thiel/singularity crowd who think that technology is going to help bring about some kind of government-free paradise (basically Somalia with iPhones) shows the term to be basically meaningless. The problem with all enforced filtering systems is that they aren't going to stop kids getting to porn (15-year-old boys have both a lot of time, technical expertise and will find creative ways to get their hands on porn), but they often will over-censor. Back in the 90s, GLAAD put out a report called "Access Denied" that described how filtering technology was restricting access to LGBT information sites. My university used to prevent students (adults!) from accessing the Wikipedia article on "Same-sex marriage" because, well, the URL contains the word "sex". Breast cancer awareness/information sites get hammered for the word "breast". What message does this send to young people? We care so much about "protecting" you from something you can probably get anyway, that we'll suggest to you that breast cancer or being LGBT is some kind of sexual or pornographic topic. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
