Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement
stevertigo wrote: Kat Walsh k...@wikimedia.org wrote: Commons should not be a host for media that has very little informational or educational value This is too broad. Confine the scope toward dealing with what does not belong, rather than trying to suggest that everything be purposed as stated above. Prurient and exhibitionist are terms which seem to adequately define what doesn't belong. I tend to agree. Informational or educational value is at first sight a noble goal, but is as subjective in its definition as notable.This is not to say that your proferred terms will always be clear, but the grey areas will likely be narrower. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 7:05 AM, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: Kat Walsh k...@wikimedia.org wrote: Commons should not be a host for media that has very little informational or educational value This is too broad. Confine the scope toward dealing with what does not belong, rather than trying to suggest that everything be purposed as stated above. Prurient and exhibitionist are terms which seem to adequately define what doesn't belong. I disagree. Pictures should be judged on their value for Commons, not on something else. And that value is decided by what the picture _is_ (as Kat says, informational and/or educational) not by what it _is not_. If the best (from an informational perspective) picture we have of a subject is prurient or exhibitionist, then I want to keep it. If on the other hand a picture has been done very tasty, but nobody can find a reason to call it informational, then I won't shed a tear about it being deleted. -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement
Stephen Bain wrote: It is not too broad; Commons has always distinguished itself in this way from general purpose photo/media hosting services like Flickr or YouTube. Andre Engels wrote: I disagree. Pictures should be judged on their value for Commons, not on something else. And that value is decided by what the picture _is_ (as Kat says, informational and/or educational) not by what it _is not_. If the best (from an informational perspective) picture we have of a subject is prurient or exhibitionist, then I want to keep it. If on the other hand a picture has been done very tasty, but nobody can find a reason to call it informational, then I won't shed a tear about it being deleted. I had thought Sam said it nicely when he noted that Commons won its independence years ago. Not all 6 million and growing media items on Commons are going to be used on encyclopedia, news, and book articles. 'Twas not long after Commons went live that people started understanding the wisdom in the proposer/founder's design. Normal Commons usage was vastly exceeding objective media requirements, and an crafting an exclusive policy for a free culture (Wikimedia) project just didn't make sense. There are whole entire art and curated art projects on Commons which have little connection to other Wikimedia projects other than that they advance free culture by being freely licensed. -SC ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 7:04 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Thank you, as ever, for being the one voice of sanity on the board of trustees. I hope one day you will find the time to be its chairperson. +1 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement
Kat Walsh k...@wikimedia.org wrote: Commons should not be a host for media that has very little informational or educational value This is too broad. Confine the scope toward dealing with what does not belong, rather than trying to suggest that everything be purposed as stated above. Prurient and exhibitionist are terms which seem to adequately define what doesn't belong. -S ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 3:05 PM, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: Kat Walsh k...@wikimedia.org wrote: Commons should not be a host for media that has very little informational or educational value This is too broad. Confine the scope toward dealing with what does not belong, rather than trying to suggest that everything be purposed as stated above. Prurient and exhibitionist are terms which seem to adequately define what doesn't belong. It is not too broad; Commons has always distinguished itself in this way from general purpose photo/media hosting services like Flickr or YouTube. -- Stephen Bain stephen.b...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement
stevertigo wrote: Kat Walsh k...@wikimedia.org wrote: Commons should not be a host for media that has very little informational or educational value This is too broad. Confine the scope toward dealing with what does not belong, rather than trying to suggest that everything be purposed as stated above. Prurient and exhibitionist are terms which seem to adequately define what doesn't belong. Sadly, no. Apparently Jimbo had a difficulty with discerning Prurient from state of the art, which during the era of the Decadent Movement, was pretty racy. Similarly, currently there is a suggestion that contemporary art that is mildly transgressive in nature, such as the Femina Potens organisation in San Francisco is just beyond the pale (which has always in art been the definition of transgressive), and thus BDSM, not art, by the standards of the most puritan influences on Commons. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hello Kat, I'm not used to the level of finesse of your thoughts and this time I chose to think aloud to help me. The result is this long mail that other may find useful. Maybe. Please let me know if they're not, or if I misunderstood you. As for the verbose mode, it is due to your inspiring words! Be warned: random thoughts ahead. Don't read if evolving, long chain of thoughts bother you. On 11/05/2010 01:43, Kat Walsh wrote: 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. So you think that we can judge the intention itself through this common sense that many pretend to be rare? You think that a qualitative, subjective, honest, consensual, fair, libertarian, dialogable judgment is possible? Well, I do too, though I'm not sure if general consensus can be easily achieved on this basis. We can detect persons that are trespassing their rights to act as they wish: when they're playing with our feelings and disturb us without respect, without waiting for our invitation. We should avoid that and I think any admin and user can police that. In fact a rule can easily be stated, published and understood, then applied, until it becomes a common netiquette. The admins are probably already acting this way, I suppose. But are you saying that works that are primarily intended to shock, arouse, or offend lose informational or educational value because we judge they have this bad intent or are you saying that because of this bad intent, informational or educational values are neglected? Should we judge by the encyclopedic value and/or by the negative emotions produced and/or intended? In the later case, I'm not sure that arousal is a negative emotion. I'm surprised that the common sense position protect sensitive persons (ie, children) has been several time exposed here and no one gave a voice to the common sense position sex is good. Are we ashamed to express it? Is it too delicate to say and should we talk with some implicit values, never to be mentioned? I think arousal is good, actually. (if chosen and wanted by the person). And well, we should inform about all positive emotions by allowing them to be felt, so that everybody can choose the kind of life he/she wants to experience. Sexual pleasure, free libido, acceptation of the body, free of guilt, they're important states of mind to be reached. I'm not saying that we should impose them, but we shouldn't censor them, so that everybody can realize itself in the ways of sex. Sorry for the prude ears here. I hope we're adult enough to talk freely about pornography (or more generally, what is obscene to someone because it is a forbidden thing that is pleasant to experiment). Yes, pornography is good. Pornography industry? Dubious, because there is too much prostitution and lack of respect. But there is a sane erotic art and culture. Sane because it respects humanity, not because it is legal or not, showing hair or not, 2cm of skin or 5, etc. I'm not inciting anyone to do anything illegal here, legal considerations must be considered, but they should not determine our principles which must come from ourselves. If we're going to judge intentions, then we'll recognize that what's transmitting positive emotions like joy or arousal is not necessarily bad or good. It depends on the presence of intentions and the effects channeled to private interests - generally dominating ones. (ie, you can idiotize a population with propaganda using positive emotions). If that's the point of an image, to manipulate emotionally, I have serious doubts about categorizing it as an unbiased, neutral, potential illustration. The problem is that finding intention where there's none is what humans do best. Judging the intention is a heavy, usually subjective responsibility to give to admins. Unless we find a very simple question to ask in order to judge the intention of a image, we won't reach unanimous consensus, which should be an ideal of the mission. We're far from this ideal, I guess a century behind, but it's good to know where to aim. Judging not by the intent, but the actual emotional impact (ie, empowering each user to be able to warn others, like a Stumbleupon system), may lead to manipulation too. I could expand. Back to the short term considerations: even a pornographic picture deserves at least a trial. They have rights, you know :) The model of discussing for deletion or undeletion seems to be an excellent model, though we need to refine our communication (not manipulation) techniques to reach greater consensus. One of the current, apparent problems was that Mr. Wales didn't respect this discursive-consensual approach. Now that this issue is past, or at least independent of the censorship issue, we should ask ourselves if this
Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement
Kat Walsh wrote: 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.) I think this point is well worth re-inforcing. What you describe is the innocent curiosity of youth. We all know that; I think. The one really strong argument we should remember when asked by educators as to why they should feel comfortable in directing their students to wikipedia, is the counterargument: Do you have problems directing your students to a library? Libraries have stuff in them that are infact likely more shocking than wikipedia carries. I have told this story likely a few times that some folks on this mailing list might remember, but it bears retelling. As a pre-pubescent young boy my maths teacher, the legendary reformer of pedagogical practise in the teaching of maths, and specifically spatial geometry, Jaakko Jaska Joki, actively encouraged me to study above the level usually offered to my age level, and specifically to go to university libraries, saying that the librarians will not turn away even young folks. Trawling through the shelves of the Helsinki University Library, one of my shocking, but also gratifying experiences was finding the brick sized (understatement if anything) work, No Laughing Matter : Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor by: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershon_Legman I hesitate to make grand sweeping claims, but I have to say that book has such depths of scatology etc., that anything wikipedia offers, very rarely exceeds. And -- here is the moral of the story -- one asks, has any educator ever had even the second thought about recommending libraries as character building, civilizing, an in general raising ones sophistication and learning? I dare say not. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen P. S. (And I have said this too before.) Gershon Legman is the man credited with coining the phrase Make Love, Not War! ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Another board member statement
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
