Talk:2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content/Archive 1

G'day

Just echoing what I said here - welcome and G'day :-) I look forward to following along as you (both) progress :-) cheers, Privatemusings 00:01, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Starter pack

As a starter, you might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Advice_for_parents, which attempts what it says on the tin, and Wikipedia:Child_protection which was intended as a discussion / development page, but never really established itself.

You might also want to have a look at Wikipedia:Sexual_content (which contains a link to a rejected policy proposal which I advocated) and Commons:Sexual_content which is currently very active, and about to be formally considered by the community (don't hold your breath, mind - this process is open ended ;-). On a personal level too, I wrote a 'user essay' at User:Privatemusings/Let%27s_talk_about_sex (which contains some explicit images) as a bit of an introduction to the issues as I see them, and I'm working on a voiceover for a mini video presentation which you can view here (also not safe for work / contains explicit images).

Do you have a clear understanding of the relationship between commons, and other wmf projects, by the way? - please do feel free to ask questions, however basic, if you'd like to get that clear in your mind - I think that's vital too..... cheers, Privatemusings 00:09, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

If I may, I would like to recommend an examination of all articles on politics, all articles on philosophy, and most articles on science and history. I believe that you will find in almost every case that the article became a battleground for conflicting attempts at propaganda, and the team that had senior, better-connected status at Wikipedia won and made the article its bitch. --Cuchulin 14:05, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

If by "senior, better connected status" you mean greater support in the secondary peer reviewed reliable sources, then I should certainly hope so. Do you have specific examples in mind? 71.198.176.22 21:52, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

just you folks to edit the content page?

Here's a (final for now! - promise!) follow up question - would you prefer that only you and your daughter edit the content page this discussion page is associated with? - It might be worth creating a 'submissions' subsection, or subpages, where folk like me could write up, and follow up our thoughts etc. - generally we're all encouraged to 'be bold' in wiki editing, but in this case, I think it's probably best to see what you think is best... whaddya reckon? Privatemusings 00:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Here's a preliminary idea -- I'd like to hear from a few more people before we decide. I don't see any reason why only my daughter and I should edit the content page, but I would like to suggest a methodology. I was hoping the content page could be used, by all of us, as a place where we could post research, articles, more neutral "outside" sources of information that might be brought to bear on the discussion. Our discussions around points of view, values, policies, etc -- those would be put on the discussion page. That way, at least at the outset, we could separate research we all could use from points of view which are inevitably individual. Robertmharris 9:21, 30 June 2010 (EST)

Usability & controversial content

Hi there. Thanks for taking up the gauntlet, and welcome from a fellow Canadian.

I am on the Multimedia Usability team at the WMF. One of our goals is to make it dramatically easier to upload content to Wikimedia Commons. My colleague Guillaume Paumier will be presenting at Wikimania.

Some in the community are afraid that making Wikimedia Commons as easy to use as say, YouTube, will lead to a host of problems, including more frequent uploading of inappropriate content. While this is a technical and social problem for the community to solve, it would be great if your work resulted in some clearer principles for programmers to design around, and for volunteers to follow when reviewing content, and even for uploaders who are trying to do the right thing.

(previous message was from User:NeilK) - can you link to somewhere these concerns have been raised, neil? I'd be curious to read the threads :-) best, Privatemusings 04:35, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

End result

You will know you have succeeded, if at the end of this study:

• Sue and the Foundation trustees have adequate PR ammunition
• fourteen year old administrators are provided with clear instructions concerning controversial content (since blindly following the rules substitutes for editorial judgement in too many cases; BLP is an example - admins were literally claiming they had to treat people no different than buildings in order to follow NPOV policy - so I started the BLP proposal so the kiddies could blindly follow that; SlimVirgin then wrote most of it; Jimbo pushed it from guideline to policy; the community was behind it due to the press raking us over the coals about the Seigenthaler incident)
• librarians agree with your conclusions
• Wikipedia Review is upset with your conclusions

- - - WAS 4.250 10:41, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

This is what passes for thoughtful discussion about editorial judgements. WAS 4.250 12:09, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Measuring harm

"A vocal segment of the population has serious concerns about the effect of pornography in society and challenges its public use and acceptance.... [A]s pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased.... The only consistent finding is that adults prefer to have the material restricted from children’s production or use."

-- Diamond, M. (2009) "Pornography, public acceptance and sex related crime: a review." Int J Law Psychiatry 32(5):304-14. See also "Porn: Good for us? Scientific examination of the subject has found that as the use of porn increases, the rate of sex crimes go down" The Scientist, in press.

The realities of publicity rights law in the U.S. suggest that we should deduplicate pictures of naked people. However, I think a lot of people have been too willing to delete pictures of naked people who have died, including historical erotica, or drawings, cartoons, or similar forms of non-pictographic erotica. The difficult boundary is photo-realism, retouched images, etc. I have no problem erring on the side of caution on that boundary. 71.198.176.22 16:26, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Anonymity and these discussions

heh... you know you're in the wiki world when comments are removed simply because of who wrote them, rather than the context! - Gregory Kohs, who is a long term wiki watcher, sometime 'banned' user, and someone for whom a mutual degree of antipathy is evident with Jimbo, had left a comment here which has been removed, presumably because the user who did so feels that GK should not be allowed to post here. I note that the comment, left anonymously above, which I find unhelpful and rude was allowed to remain. These are indeed, I'm afraid, the sort of odd decisions that to a degree represent the wiki dynamic.

Anyways - Greg wished to raise the point, which I agree with (to a degree) that anonymity - making posts on wmf projects under (sometimes rather silly) usernames, rather than under one's real name, goes to the heart of many of the issues wmf projects face. I think he has a point, in that it may be easier to tend towards extreme points of view, or to slip into 'trolling' if you post under a pseudonym rather than a real name. (I can't believe I'm the first to mention 'trolling' here! - It's a rather unhelpful term which generally does little to promote discussion in my view) - see discussions like this one where 'the community' discusses the utility of a 'creampie' photo as an example. Greg made his point by noting that only he and you are actually accountable in terms of using their real name thus far in these discussions.

I totally agree that issues of accountability, and anonymity are central to how the wmf projects have moved, in some areas, to extreme situations which I hope the foundation will, through this process, be willing to examine, and as necessary mandate change. Privatemusings 22:01, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

further - given that this page (and future subpages / other areas) are a little bit special in wiki terms, being intended to help with an externally prepared report, I think it'd be great to explicitly allow all contributors, including 'banned' users, to post here, as long as they remain civil and on topic - a note to that effect from RH (who is in a way the page 'owner') would be great from my perspective, and I'm sure admin.s here would be up for respecting that. cheers, Privatemusings 00:37, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Not to disappoint, but as a guest in the Wikimedia world, I think it inappropriate for me to ask for special privileges to be accorded these pages. People can always use my email to share any comments they might have. But thanks for the suggestion.Robertmharris

I think it is a little disappointing nonetheless. Many users (such as myself) have been banned for raising the issue of dubious content. If you were looking for the representative views of the 'whole community', including the heretics who have been cast out, you should not have to be asking for 'special privileges'. Anyway, you have a sense now of the odd contradiction between the extreme anti-censorship views of the community when it comes to sexual content, and the extremely pro-censorship attitude to users who do not share these views. Users who are banned not only have their talk pages blocked, as though what they said might be dangerous, they also have their email access blocked. Regards Peter Damian 05:59, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

The internet wants information to be free. (Smile, Greg) (Show us your stuff, Jon; count the layers of meaning and Cognitive dissonance.) - WAS 4.250 11:13, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Pardon me, but in what particular contexts is anonymity (or equally, pseudonymity: there's a strong distinction there) particularly damaging; what problems would be absent to situations without anonymity/pseudonymity? More specifically, what problems with regard to controversial content specifically concern anonymity/pseudonymity? I'm open to the idea that there are such problems, but I don't exactly have a list of them, and I might miss some that are relevant. Yes, I strongly support pseudonymity (and weakly anonymity), so I'm biased. In either case I'd prefer a frank discussion of the issues to the implications that I've seen so far. A general predisposition to inappropriate behaviour in anonymous (or pseudonymous) individuals—as mentioned above—might be a good example. That example does, however, beg the question of whether such a problem is serious enough to warrant stricter preventative measures—particularly given the drawbacks that might be associated with such. Nihiltres^(t.u) 04:26, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

People who feel harmed by Wikipedia often want to know who to blame and demand accountability. Daniel Brandt (who says: "Another problem is that most of the administrators at Wikipedia prefer to exercise their police functions anonymously." - google for web page; context here) and Wikipedia Review beat this drum quite often; perhaps you might ask them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy is also informative in this regard. It's an important issue, but the Wikipedia Foundation lacks the resources to verify the identities of even just the admins, must less every contributor so I believe it to be a non-starter. How do you guarantee exactly who made a specific edit while allowing anyone to contribute? - You can't. - WAS 4.250 10:40, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Examples of controversial or potentially controversial Wikimedia content

• Hi Robert. Privatemusings mentioned community discussions. For another example, see [1] -- the image has so far spent about half a year in discussion, with no decision in sight. The image is a cropped version of a Flickr image from the w:Folsom Street Fair. The original image has since been deleted on Flickr, and the original Flickr uploader asked for it to be deleted from Commons in November 2009. I think the reason was because we gave his (real-life) Flickr account name as the Author in the page description, and this cropped image came up one of the first results in google's safe image search for his real-life name.
• Examples of Wikipedia articles featuring potentially controversial illustrations: [2] [3] [4] [5]
• Example of a Wikipedia article with potentially controversial pornographic textual content involving child sexual abuse: [6]
• Example of a controversial Commons category, featuring historical drawings depicting child sexual abuse, incest, bestiality involving a minor, etc.: [7]
• These are a few examples of Wikimedia content that some editors find problematic, especially in relation to schoolchildren using Wikipedia, and others don't. --Jayen466 03:36, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I consider this a very important note - fwiw, I'd strongly recommend you seek, or the foundation provide, legal advice in terms of the legality of viewing some wmf hosted images (there are drawings of children giving adults blowjobs, for example) - my layperson reading of Child_pornography_laws_in_Canada indicates that the contents, for example, of 'Erotic activities involving children' may be illegal in Canada, as I believe they are in the UK and Australia (jurisdictions I'm often in, fwiw) Privatemusings 04:50, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

The content is not subject to Canadian/UK/AU jurisprudence, therefore I see no reason why we should care. Sure the images are disgusting, but it hardly warrants their removal because uncivilized nations have not seen fit to protect content creation in such a manner that exempts it from moral panic. I would note that much of Privatemusings advocacy is embroiled in wikipolitics, as he was originally permabanned for being a vandal and troll. In order to get back in, he changed his tune and started taking extreme views on certain subjects which some on the Wikipedia Arbcom favored. I would, therefore, advise taking what he says with a pound of salt. --Dragon695 21:41, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't believe a living person who has asked to have a photo of his genitals removed has had to wait half a year to have it deleted. There is no shortage of such images on Commons. The editors voting to keep are risking the Foundation's money and reputation.

Everyone, please take a few moments to review w:Personality rights#United States. It is far more important than copyright based on the number and type of actual lawsuits which have been filed against the Foundation in the past (to reiterate: there have been no substantial copyright suits against the Foundation, but plenty of libel and publicity rights suits.) 71.198.176.22 07:20, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I think early postings in that deletion discussion assuming that the genitals were those of the Flickr uploader were mistaken (the Flickr uploader's photo stream contains a number of images from the w:Folsom Street Fair; this seems to have been one of them, and the full, uncropped image seems to have shown a performer at that fair). However, I agree that correct action based upon that mistaken belief would have been to delete the image, as the uploader requested. --Jayen466 10:49, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Another problem we have discussed over at the Commons Sexual content talk page relates to the difficulty of verifying the age and consent of people depicted in media files with nude and/or sexual content (nude pictures, "here is my girlfriend having oral sex with me"-type pictures, etc.) – bearing in mind that Commons images are licensed for reuse by anyone. Here is a description of one of these cases from an OTRS volunteer and Wikipedia admin: [8]. Related discussion here. As a matter of fact, if you read through the Com:Sexual content talk page and its archives, Robert, and the archived deletion requests related to adult content in Commons, you will get a good idea of what the controversies at Commons have been about. --Jayen466 10:49, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

• A very controversial deletion discussion in English Wikipedia recently was the one related to the "goatse" shock image. I doubt any reputable media company or book publisher would display this shock image to illustrate their coverage of that shock site, yet there was a strong groundswell of opinion in Wikipedia for showing the image in the Wikipedia article. Image standards applied in Wikipedia at times seem to differ from those applied in the sources that our texts are based on. It appears that some editors have not reflected upon this, others think it is a good and progressive thing, are proud that Wikipedia is w:WP:NOTCENSORED, and fiercely defend this stance against any attempt to introduce any kind of censorship whatsoever, while others think our approach to illustrating Wikipedia articles should be more closely modelled on that used in published sources. --Jayen466 11:10, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
• For your reference, a list of unused Commons images with sexual content ("images of human genitalia that do not appear in the main namespace of any Wikimedia project") has been compiled here: [9] --Jayen466 16:42, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
• Potentially controversial (anti-)religious content: [10], [11] , [12], [13]. --JN466 20:37, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Have the Aaron Saxton videos on Commons been the subject of any major controversy? It does not appear so. 71.198.176.22 22:28, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Although Saxton's soapboxing should be out of scope, it is not really problematic. The situation is worse with videos of anti-cult activists stalking and harassing cult members, where upload to commons contributes to the harassment. See commons:Category:Hollywood Guaranty Building videos for examples. /Pieter Kuiper 19:22, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you jayen466 and others who have provided me this background. I've been following the discussions on the recent development of the policy on sexual content carefully, as well as noting the discussions over the past couple of months at the Commons Village Pump, the threads on Foundation-l and Commons-l, individual deletion requests as well as the discussion on Jimmy's user page a month or so ago. I'm grateful for links to any other discussions, current or past, that you think might be relevant. Robertmharris

Pleasure. Thanks for the list of community discussions you have been following already; that makes things easier! --JN466 03:06, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

The first image an excellent example of double standards within Wikimedia projects. The photograph was kept because "subject's identity is not revealed" while in fact his name is still easily available. On the other hand, only administrators can view the cold fusion article mediation because the administrators lost, and they had to escalate to arbitration in order to ban the person requesting mediation, first for a year, and then from the topic indefinitely. Are you glad to learn that he is now behaving as a proper loyal subject should? I doubt anyone should be surprised to learn that he no longer feels welcome. At least the English Wikipedia is safe for plasma fusion researchers who feel vaguely threatened about their continued funding. Are they a more important constituency than readers seeking unbiased information summarizing the peer reviewed secondary sources? 71.198.176.22 18:25, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Further external comment

I was contacted privately by a Wikipedia Review poster (there's a thread about this process here, btw) - who I believe may be 'banned' on various wmf projects. There's a longstanding policy, as I understand it, that if an editor (me) is prepared to accept responsibility for others' words, then re-posting is fine. I repost here because I believe it's healthy for the process to accept all voices, and don't necessarily agree or disagree or anything.

Wikipedia has a more than adequate corpus of formal policies to govern controversial topics. Its fatal flaw lies in the mechanism for enforcing those policies. The power to enforce, or not to enforce, lies in the hands of pseudonymous volunteer administrators, who are granted this power as a reward for countless hours of unpaid labor, in addition to their skill at forming tactical alliances with others in the Wikipedia "community." Admins or groups of admins typically gain control, over time, of controversial articles that interest them, and through selective enforcement of policy, they shape the outcome of content disputes. As one example of the tremendous disparities that one may find in Wikipedia policy enforcement, compare w:Al Gore, where all mention of his recent sex scandal has been correctly excluded because it consists solely of unsubstantiated allegations, to w:Death of Jeremiah Duggan, an entire article comprised solely of unsubstantiated allegations. Such articles become like feudal fiefdoms. If you will examine the edit history of the latter article, you will find that the article has been authored and exclusively controlled for more than five years by one of Wikipedia's most powerful admins. These arrangements are seldom challenged, because it is a childishly simple matter to eliminate anyone so foolhardy as to attempt it (see w:WP:9STEPS.) --User:Herschelkrustofsky

cheers, Privatemusings 22:16, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Science: low energy nuclear reactions ("cold fusion")

Examples of scientific reliable sources -- including several peer reviewed secondary sources -- which have been the subject of considerable controversy on the English Wikipedia, including repeated involvement by the Arbitration Committee leading to long term blocks and bans, all of which have been imposed on one side of the issue: [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21]. If I am not mistaken, this subject has consumed more Arbitrator time than any non-religious and non-ethnic dispute other than those concerning climate change. 71.198.176.22 22:57, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Image controversies covered in the "Signpost" (2006-2010)

Hi, I am the current editor of the Signpost, the English Wikipedia's community-edited newspaper (founded in 2005 by Michael Snow). I have tried to gather a list of past Signpost articles that covered community controversies about explicit or otherwise offensive images:

• Porn madness (Commons deletions/Fox News, May 2010)
• Larry Sanger accuses Wikimedia of hosting illegal images (April 2010)
• Explicit image featured on German Wikipedia's main page (March 2010)
• Dispute over Rorschach test images, Doctors argue about meaning of inkblots (August 2009)
• Commons debates hosting offensive cartoons (Latuff/Dershowitz, March 2009)
• Wikipedia blocked over concerns of child pornography (Virgin Killer case, January 2009)
• Explicit sexual content draws fire (May 2008, about a WorldNetDaily article)
• Petition seeks to remove images of Muhammad (February 2008)
• Wikipedia dragged into German politics over Nazi images (December 2007)
• German user acquitted for distribution of pornography (August 2007)
• Sexual images spark debate (Publicgirluk case, September 2006)
• Pakistan briefly blocks Wikipedia (Muhammad cartoons, April 2006)
• Controversial cartoon leads to fierce debate (Muhammad cartoons, February 2006)

The list might be incomplete, but I hope it can be useful in some way. Generally speaking, the Signpost covers only community debates which have achieved a certain degree of importance or outside publicity, and tries to do so with a certain amount of journalistic objectivity. The articles listed above have been written by many different authors; as far as I am aware, most of them are not known for strong views about such issues. - See also this week's Signpost coverage of this study itself: Board resolution on offensive content (June 2010).

Regards, HaeB 02:46, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Added one. Regards, HaeB 11:08, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikia controversy

On the same lines, here is a link to the Spanking Wiki campaign led by Wikipedia Review. It provoked a storm of controversy but was an important development in that it was the first time WMF acknowledged it had a responsbility for material of this sort. It also showed the importance of context in image use. Peter Damian 12:42, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Nonsense. That was just an attempt by Greg to attack Jimbo and his non-Wikimedia site called Wikia. To stop that sort of thing one would have to outlaw copy-left copyrights and public domain; privatising all images, and damaging freedom of speech. In Greg's haste to hurt Jimbo, he neglected to consider the consequences. When Greg stopped trying to hurt Jimbo long enough to consider wider implications, he asked for (and received) the deletion of an image of his daughter he had uploaded to Commons with a copy-left copyright. - WAS 4.250 13:37, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

While some of the content on the page linked to by Peter Damian above was not accurate (and it appears to have been mostly fixed recently), it is rather unfair to call it "nonsense". Whatever your opinionated interpretation of why "Greg" sought to "attack" Jimbo, what is factually clear is that after Wikia, Inc. removed the "Spanking Art" site from the Wikia servers, Jimmy Wales' chief complaint back to Greg was that Greg had not "made a complaint through the proper channels". What does that say about Wales' priorities? That if you're going to complain about something like this, you had damn well better make the complaint through the proper channels? While WAS 4.250 considers the photographic juxtaposition of butt-plugs and Boy Scouts to be a part of "freedom of speech", he apparently considers an organized protest of such misuse of minors' personality rights and privacy to not fall under the umbrella of the same "freedom of speech". That's the wacky wiki world for you. - Use stairs at either end 00:54, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Your conclusions (i.e. "apparently ...") do not follow from your evidence. Could you please present proper evidence through the proper channels? That would be wonderful. Thank you. Your contribution of the above text is copy-left copyrighted; so it may someday be juxtaposed inappropriately. Please provide in excessive detail what you consider to be an appropriate remedy for this travesty. I will forward it in triplicate though the proper channels; which involve two cabals and a star chamber. - WAS 4.250 07:38, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

The debate in this case was centred around the use of images in a context that was controversial. For example, the juxtaposition of boy scouts and butt plugs, as the man says. Another controversy (on Wikipedia Review) was the article en:Boy. This still has the picture of the boy scouts, which is entirely uncontroversial. But in the context of the article it is disturbing. Two of the editors of that article have some very strange interests. I won't go into further details. Peter Damian 11:17, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Peter, you are disturbing and have strange interests. I consider this to be a good thing. Why do you object to "disturbing" and "strange"? - WAS 4.250 07:43, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

That I am interested in cleaning up sewage does not imply any interest in the sewage. Quite the reverse. You prefer the sewage, I take it? Peter Damian 18:33, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Impersonation, bondage articles

Robert, someone has just mentioned a past case of apparent impersonation at the Sexual content policy talk page. I have no personal knowledge of that case, so this is posted without prejudice. Relevant discussions here: [22][23]. The articles the user was working on are listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Taxwoman/articles – they are mostly related to bondage practices, many of them with photographic illustrations, and may be worth having a look through. --JN466 16:33, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Deleted 7 hours after the impersonation was reported? -- looks good! Update: 2.3 years is not so hot. Was the Help Desk understaffed in 2006? Furthermore, nobody has yet publicly thanked or apologized to the reporter who still has a "Last Warning" on his talk page. Also of note is that the perp, "Rachel Brown" a/k/a w:User:Runcorn a/k/a w:User:Taxwoman had been an admin and has pathetically inadequate suspected sockpuppets pages which aren't even linked from w:User:Taxwoman. 71.198.176.22 20:40, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

The problem was that the user was suggested to try other means first which is a usual first step if user A has a problem with images uploaded by user B. That's appropriate for a first step given the stated problem. Nothing was added to indicate that anything more was needed or that the result wasn't satisfactory. Other users won't usually be aware if nobody says anything. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:19, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Librarians

You say you will be talking to "school librarians". I would hope that you will also talk to some public librarians and university librarians. - Jmabel 02:22, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I've already begun discussions with both -- I'll be sharing that research as I continue the discussions. Robertmharris 16:51, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Test cases

Given that you say you intend to focus mainly on images, it ought to be possible to come up with some representative test cases, different enough from one another that one could reasonably expect that each raises somewhat distinct issues. Without singling out individual images, I'd be thinking of something along the lines of various combinations of:

• Various levels of sexual
• Various levels of violent
• Various levels of BDSM-related
• Particular concerns such as pedophilia, zoophilia
• Photograph vs. other realistic representation vs. more schematic representation
• High technical quality vs. a less well-made image
• Contemporary vs. historic

For example, I could imagine us handling a realistic 16th century oil painting of Leda and the Swan very differently than a similarly composed present-day photograph. Similarly, I could imagine us handling differently a 19th century French erotic etching with a pedophilic theme, a 19th century photograph with a pedophilic subtext, and a present-day photograph with a pedophilic subtext.

Other issues not directly related to sex and violence that I think have cropped up are images related to Nazism, representations considered sacrilegious by one or another faith, and representations considered racist, anti-Semitic, etc. - Jmabel 03:56, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent list of the kinds of images that the projects have had to deal with, and a discussion of each kind will be worthwhile. However, what I've noticed so far is that discussion about these kinds of images in the past has either proceeded on an image by image basis (and each one is subtly different from every other one), or based on very wide-ranging philosophic and general statements (Wikimedia projects are educational, Wikipedia is not censored) which are tools quite blunt sometimes for the fine work of differentiating images. There's nothing in the middle -- general practical guidelines for assessing and evaluating these kinds of images (at least on the content side; they definitely exist on the licensing side). So, before we look at individual images, I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss whether some of those guidelines might be of use. To that end, I'll be posting a series of questions here by Friday, July 23 to begin that discussion. But thanks for your observation and suggestion -- it's an excellent one. Robertmharris 20:37, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to seeing the questions, and will probably offer some responses - I think it's worth considering whether or not the inability of conversation / discussion on the various wikis to actually progress pragmatically (somewhere 'in the middle' as you put it) is a systemic problem - I have inklings that it's connected fundamentally to the medium for discussions to either zoom way in, or pan way out - perhaps that's out of the purview of these discussions, but it's worth thinking about - if you buy this line of thought, then its conclusion would seem to me to be that any actual change (ie .leadership and direction) would have to come externally to the project 'communities' (ie. the foundation) - that of course makes this process central. Privatemusings 23:54, 21 July 2010 (UTC)