Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats
2011/9/9 Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com: If you don't like the feature, then don't use it. You talk like the filter existence is fait accompli, a matter already decided, and there is nothing people can do about it. The referendum also gave this impression, by asking things about its details and overall importance, but not asking if it should be implemented (like normal referenda). Do I understand it right? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
2010/6/2 Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: Who cares if people click them a lot? The space they formally occupied is filled with nothing now. Interface clutter is not psychologically free. Empty space is better than space filled with mostly-useless controls. Whether these particular controls are worth it I don't know, but the general principle of hiding seldom-used things is sound. (Taking English as example) Problem is, for most readers with a first language other than English, English Wikipedia is now annoying and slightly less useful. someone coming from Google might find English Wikipedia (due to enormous pagerank) but really want to read in her own language; the collapsing may make them to simply close the window, and try the next result. Might seem too dramatic, but this happens in practice. If one wants to talk about usability, it's important to keep track the most impaired users, because they have more urgent needs. (Yeah, people with little English skills are actually in a disadvantageous position on wiki-en: there are few multilingual clues at the first spot, and then the see in the language I prefer section is now behind an unnecessary Languages) [ BTW, I liked that universal signs idea of some poster I lost track here. I just think it doesn't really apply to the language list (that should be fully expanded), but rather to Discussion, Edit, etc Some universal symbols: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_symbol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_symbol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_symbol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Symbol_of_Access http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_common_standards If those (and others) were properly used on Wikipedia menus, it would be more accessible to people with poor English skills. ] -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Visual impairment
2010/5/15 Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com: On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 5:27 PM, emijrp emi...@gmail.com wrote: Solving captcha during registration is mandatory. Can this be replaced with a sound captcha for visual impairment people? In theory, yes. Someone needs to provide the code, though. For now, people who want to sign up and can't solve a captcha can request that an admin make an account for them, like people whose IP addresses are blocked. I think enwiki has a toolserver project dedicated to that. there is a google-owned public captcha service called recaptcha, that serves for useful purpose (digitalizing books) and is accessible to visually impaired people. http://recaptcha.net/ i think the best effect of recaptcha is psychological, since this meaningless task may be perceived as useful for some noble task. and it's good that we manage to be able to fool ourselves that way, captchas are so annoying.. [ but yeah, not open source, also not everyone trusts google ] -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Spectrum of views (was Re: Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening)
2010/5/13 Delirium delir...@hackish.org: On 05/11/2010 09:45 AM, Aryeh Gregor wrote: The obvious solution is not to display images by default that a large number of viewers would prefer not to view. Instead, provide links, or maybe have them blurred out and allow a click to unblur them. You don't hide any information from people who actually want it (you require an extra click at most), and you don't force people to view images that they don't want to view. This allows as many people as possible to get what they want: people who want to see the images can see them, and those who don't can choose not to. The status quo forces people to view the images whether or not they want to. And a lot of people don't want to look at naked people without warning, for whatever reason. I don't actually mind this proposal, and would like it myself for a lot of pages. But I'm not sure naked people are actually at the top of the list (perhaps someone should try to determine it empirically via some sort of research on our readers?). If I personally were to list two kinds of images I would want hidden by default, it'd be: 1. spiders; and 2. gory medical conditions. Do I get that option? Do I get that option if more than x% of readers agree? (At a first read, I thought your response as a statement you found this proposal amusing) I might risk restating some points I already mentioned on other emails (and, worse, being a complete stranger, to not 'fit' on the discussions here), but I'm not disturbed by sexual content at all. I feel torture images disturbing, however. In fact, I remember not sleeping well after reading some random Wikipedia articles on the subject. To paraphrase Sharon Stone, blocking/blurring porn by default and failing to do this with torture images is an indecency. [ Actually I would find ok if a parent didn't liked his or her small children to view this (not just images, but text included - the richness of some wikipedians' prose is frightening..). But I find misguided any attempts by WMF sites to cooperate with any kind of parental control. That is, I think that building a place where everyone has access to the sum of human knowledge does not include or permit provisions for parental control. ] Other than that, I find that browsing the web at random might be embarrassing, if there are strangers at the room - like at an university lab or cybercafe (it's not a Wikipedia-specific problem actually). It's only a matter of chance if the next clicked link will have this kind of stuff or not. (Random example, many sites have porn ads, many forum links contains embedded pictures, etc). So I might disable image loading with a browser feature (I wouldn't trust the site to do this filtering - or, worse, IM friend links, with a lot of 4chan-like stuff: those memes will often spread porn to blogs and forums that wouldn't otherwise have it). This makes loading faster, plus if I the content I want to see require image loading, I may just click a button. Some browsers support this by default (such as opera), and others through an extension. (I don't usually do this btw, because I'm generally ok with it) Anyway, I am not proposing here to just include torture depictions in the (maybe long) of images censored for casual, unregistered readers. I disagree with any kind of opt-out censoring, for any purpose or pretext, even if to evade the censor it just requires a sign up. (Also, I think any poll for selecting the targets of the block would be biased towards supposing the majority of the voters supports some kind of censoring - even if 'nothing at all' is an option) But, to think about this a bit, it's a lot harder to block torture images than explicit porn, because of the political component here. For example: blocking recent Iraq american explicit torture images and failing to block detailed depictions of historical torture devices is unreasonable, since the shocking component - for me, at least - is often centered on it happening to some human being. The issue here would be where to draw the line, and the exact place might be interpreted as a form of political pushing. Wouldn't it be awesome if some pro-america editor managed to clean some articles for the casual reader? :) [ You might replace pro-america to anti-pornography as well - that's how I would see it ] -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Spectrum of views (was Re: Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening)
2010/5/13 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com: Samuel Klein wrote: I agree strongly with this. You are right to point out the connection to improving BLP policies -- we should be much more careful to confirming model rights for people in any potentially exploitative or embarrassing photos. Such ideas have been around for a long time. What are the arguments against implementing stronger requirements for images of people? Not an argument as such, but I would imagine that with regard to amateur photography of all sorts, in the long term the main effect would be to educate them in the correct practices of model rights. After all I would expect that amateur photographers would not really have great difficulty in obtaining model rights, once they know that is a requirement. Why just amateur photos? Professional should respect model rights as much as amateur photos. None of these is an argument against, as such, just pointing out some of the ramifications that might follow. My guess is that after a lot of existing images were removed, the ratio of new images uploaded would infact be skewed *in* *favor* of amateur images, rather than *against*. I could be wrong of course. Interesting. Why do you think so? -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening
2010/5/12 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com: (...) Which brings to mind a question. Is there useful content on Citizendium that might be ported over to Wikipedia? their best stuff is supposed to be here, http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Category:Approved_Articles -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Filtering ourselves is pointless
2010/5/10 Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com: On 05/11/2010 12:25 AM, David Gerard wrote: Any attempt to filter ourselves is not addressing the fact that the images exist at all on Commons. +1. I suggest to ignore them. Or perhaps someone should write more nice things in the article about FOX news (maintaining NPOV, of course). May I cite that any angry editor doing this might be under conflict of interest? (Albeit I think this is the most powerful counterattack available :) Anyway, I think they should be just sued. I don't know about US law, but defamation is a criminal offense here. Also, I think their use of the label illegal content might be a violation of some other law, too. PS: They talk about nude children, link in the title they say illegal content. But, are they talking about those kind of images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturism ? There are nude children there, but I see this kind of image on diaper commercials too, and some other infant products. They are being REALLY mean. -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening
2010/5/10 Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org: J Alexandr Ledbury-Romanov hett schreven: I have a problem with basing it on IP addresses. As a non Muslim in a Muslim country, why should Wikimedia decide that *I* cannot see Muhammad pictures but that it is perfectly OK to show it to a Muslim in Germany / France wherever. I think the world has moved on a bit from the one country, one religion / set of values / morals. You are of course right. But what is the alternative? The only alternative is not basing it on location so everybody sees the same. That's like one world, one set of values. The alternative is to not censor, in any circumstance, to any kind of audience whatsoever. I must confess I find this particular alternative brilliant. It is imperfect, as any other form of freedom of thought and expression. But other options are more imperfect, not less, in my opinion. I think some projects (like the English Wikipedia) already reached consensus on this issue. -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
2010/5/10 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com: Hello Elias, Welcome to the mailing list. Hi! ^^ Are you a member of the Board of Trustees or something? Could you inform me if the whole board has this kind of position? No, the whole Board does not have this position. (not to speak for others -- I am on it, and I am opposed to the idea.) Yours response, as well as Florence's, was refreshing. I am actually embarrassed, since most of my comment wasn't very constructive. (My comments on commons were even less balanced, but I was really upset) PS: I may look inquisitive, but I see this anti-porn campaign contrasting to the complete lack of action when it was found that wiki-en was grossly offending Islam for no better reason. I agree that the issue of images of Muhammad is similar to that of explicit sexual content -- both are highly controversial, considered by some to be educational or important; and by others to be useless and offensive. We must find a way to deal evenly with all controversial material, and to understand the perspectives of different audiences. I have no idea on how to deal with so many different expectations. I myself always praised the position of some WMF projects regarding showing human body, nudity in general and even and pornography. I don't know much encyclopedias that show specific parts of human body as they are, and as well as Wikipedia. (I remember a single biology book of my high school with photos of nude people - but it was mostly drawings. Plus, hmm, a really nice History book with a nude painting on the cover, and that's it) Looking at http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Logoffset=20100507131846type=deleteuser=Jimbo+Walesmonth=5year=2010 I see that Jimmy deleted this image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amy_with_dildo.jpg With the rationale 'Out of project scope' But it was restored, because it was being actually used on dutch Wikipedia, on the article Amateur porn http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateurpornografie So my conclusion is: amateur porn might be on topic on commons. And currently unused amateur porn might find some use later.z This state of affairs makes me feel really well. Wikipedia is a unique encyclopedia in many ways. One of them is that it has illustrated articles on amateur porn. No, people don't care, that's fine - but this really means a lot for me. In my country, 100 years ago, there were a revolt, called vaccine revolt, where people rebelled against compulsory vaccination. It was the greatest urban revolt of the old republic[1]. A particular argument used by the rebels was that doctors was entering to woman's houses, and had to see the naked arm of them, even the naked arm of girls, so that they could handle vaccination. I don't support compulsory vaccination, but this kind of reasoning really shocks me. It is now a distant past. Brazil is not like that anymore, and fortunately we now have schoolbooks with naked people on the cover (as I remembered). I sincerely don't personally care much about Muhammad pictures, for example. If people decided to delete them, I would simply think they are too afraid of offending, but I wouldn't care that much. (I know that being very notable and encyclopedic, the pictures themselves might have their own article, so it's not like they are going to be deleted anyway) But some people (Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali) would be harshly offended by deletion of those pictures. It might sound funny, but not accepting Islam rules on non-muslim contexts is very important to her (being a vocal ex-muslim, she received multiple death threats, and the director of a short documentary her wrote was killed). I would show opposition to this kind of deletion, but just because I'm a lot influenced by her (and dislike deletionism in general) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Revolt -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
2010/5/10 Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com: I sincerely don't personally care much about Muhammad pictures, for example. If people decided to delete them, I would simply think they are too afraid of offending, but I wouldn't care that much. (I know that being very notable and encyclopedic, the pictures themselves might have their own article, so it's not like they are going to be deleted anyway) But some people (Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali) would be harshly offended by deletion of those pictures. It might sound funny, but not accepting Islam rules on non-muslim contexts is very important to her (being a vocal ex-muslim, she received multiple death threats, and the director of a short documentary her wrote was killed). I would show opposition to this kind of deletion, but just because I'm a lot influenced by her (and dislike deletionism in general) This was maybe confuse. The message I was trying to convey is: a) For some people including nudity (in especial en masse) is offensive b) For some people including depictions of Muhammad is offensive c) For some people removing nudity (in especial en masse) is offensive (eg. me :) d) For some people removing depictions of Muhammad is offensive (eg. for Ayaan) -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
2010/5/9 Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com: (..) For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. Both Jimmy as well as me believe that the best way for the board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions. If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the problem. Ting I see no indication so far that the community *is* able to solve the problem. Sorry, I have never posted here, but I feel so sad reading such words... and other words spoken here at foundation-l.. the projects under the umbrella of WMF are so beautiful, so precious, to be treated this way... = But well, so that's the reason Jimmy Wales must be so authoritarian? Because the Community of Commons can't solve this issue through consensus? Is solving this particular issue really more important than reaching consensus? Why? Are you a member of the Board of Trustees or something? Could you inform me if the whole board has this kind of position? BTW, I also have a broader question. Who entrusted power to the Board of Trustees? They are serving the interests of who? And who can revoke the trust upon a specific trustee, or the entire board, in the event it was misused? Please don't say the community. PS: I may look inquisitive, but I see this anti-porn campaign contrasting to the complete lack of action when it was found that wiki-en was grossly offending Islam for no better reason. I must cite this post: 2010/5/7 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: (..) Did you see what Jimmy deleted? For example, Franz von Bayros painting [1]. That guy is not so famous, but I don't see anymore any sane rule, except: What Jimmy's sexually impaired super rich friend wish, Jimmy do and then Board transform into the rule or a statement. Besides the fact that he was dealing just with Western taboos of naked body and sexual act, not with Mohamed cartoons [2] at English Wikipedia, where he is the God King. If the Board stays behind such action, this is a very clear signal that Wikimedia projects are becoming censored. And if Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons won't be deleted, then Wikimedia projects are a tool of Western cultural imperialism. I want to hear other Board members before making my decision about staying here. Since Jimmy is special, for some reason, and his actions will not face the consequences that is expected for common editors, admins, bureaucrats, etc. I must say that images of Muhammad is not being deleted *just because Jimmy is not Muslim*. -- Elias Gabriel Amaral da Silva tolkiend...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
