Wales Supports Purging Porn From Wikipedia

Larry Sanger writes "Jimmy Wales recently took a bold position against pornography on Wikimedia Commons: 'Wikimedia Commons admins who wish to remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests have my full support.' Wales also restarted the "Commons:Sexual content" policy page. His basic complaint is that Wikimedia Commons hosts too much unnecessary porn, and he wants to get rid of it. He underscored his seriousness this way, stating that we can expect 'a strong statement' from the WMF soon: 'If the Wikimedia Foundation wants to declare that it is OK for Commons to be a porn host, they can do that, and I'll not be able to continue. That isn't going to happen, though, and in fact you should expect a strong statement from the Board and/or Sue in the next few days.'" (More, below.) Sanger continues: "This comes about a month after I originally posted my report about depictions of child sexual molestation on Wikimedia Foundation servers to the FBI, which Slashdot duly ripped to shreds (as only Slashdot can), and a little over a week after the FoxNews.com story. The latter coverage reported that one of my senators, and my representative to Congress, had forwarded the matter to the FBI's Assistant Director of Congressional Affairs. I'm happy to be able to congratulate Jimmy Wales for his good judgment on this, and I look forward to the larger Wikimedia community approaching these issues with a little more sanity."

Comments

Damn the Welsh!

[Anonymous Coward]

At least it's not sheep.

Re:Damn the Welsh!

[LinuxAndLube]

Thank god there are still plenty of naked sheep on Wikipedia.

Re:Damn the Welsh!

[PedoPope]

will they also support a ban on religion? getting pretty randy here in the ol' vatican. Our hot tight young boys have more cocks sprouting from their asses than a peacock! Huzzah, it's on Wikipedia!

does Wales still have any authority?

[Trepidity]

I would've thought after the embezzling-expenses scandal, the Canadian-right-wing-talk-show-host scandal, the conflict of interest between his for-profit business at Wikia and the non-profit charity Wikipedia, and who knows how many others, that he would've been put out to pasture by now.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Moryath]

I personally think he should be forced to read this several times in a sitting.

And then yeah. He needs to be put out to pasture. And so do most of his patsies and corrupt hangers-on that make up the majority of Wikipedia's "administrator" clique while we're at it. Wikipedia has gotten to the point where so many article spaces are completely worthless because they're controlled not by sensible people wanting to write a real encyclopedia, but by organized game-players who rig the system.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Rogerborg]

Oh, thanks, I'd forgotten about the Sex for Edits storm in a B-cup.

Presumably all you have to do to get your content the Jimbo stamp of approval is to "fuck his brains out all night". Don't all queue up at once.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Luyseyal]

A cursory search of the web shows Rachel Marsden to be "unreliable". And that's a very nice way of putting it.

-l

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Moryath]

A cursory search of the web shows Jimmy Wales/Wikipedia to be "unreliable". And that's a very nice way of putting it.

There, fixed that for ya...

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[the phantom]

Neither Wales, nor Wikia, nor Wikipedia are the US government, hence the first amendment applies to them only insofar as the government cannot limit their speech. They have no obligation to protect anyone else's speech. They can censor whatever they want, whenever they want, for any reason that they want.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[ultranova]

True, and that rises interesting questions about whether the 1st Amendment or other laws like it are still sufficient in modern day. When corporations near governments in their power, shouldn't they be subjected to the same standards of behaviour?

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[RoccamOccam]

As opposed to Nancy Pelosi??

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[kalirion]

I think the linked blog post about Wales paying for massage parlor trips with money donated to the foundation is a bit more damning than helping his girlfriend edit her wikipedia page.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[FuckingNickName]

Wales is like Peter Mandelson in the UK: a cunning, hypocritical architect of a corrupt organisation who always bounces back because he's engineered social and political relationships such that everyone interested in power would have their ambitions quashed (at best) if they were to turn against him.

Fortunately, if you disregard those with personal interest in Wikipedia's success and the loyal editors who haven't learnt never to count the sunken cost, Wikipedia is regarded as fair and balanced as Fox News on anything mildly controversial. For everything else, it's a bargain basement textbook and trivia compendium.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[ArsonSmith]

No.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[HeckRuler]

He's the guy that brought about Wikipedia. He tried several times. For that alone I can forgive him of quite a bit. Seriously, just think about it for a moment. His baby has revolutionized the way we learn about things over the internet. And not the half-cocked ego-inflated entrepreneur trying to butter up investors sort of revolutionary, but an actual shift in the trends of the internet.

Do you remember have to trawl through pages and pages of geocities looking for info on something? Yeah, we don't have to do that anymore thanks to him. He could rape sheep on the side and I'd still have to give him credit. He could hold views out of line with my ideal. As is true, apparently he is less open-minded about porn. Or maybe he just doesn't want wikipedia to suffer the cost of serving smut.

I'm just saying he deserves some leeway.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[sribe]

They have no obligation to protect anyone else's speech.

It's more than that. No one has any right to force them to help promote speech they do not want to.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[eln]

That Onion article is absurd. Clarence Thomas ruling differently than Antonin Scalia? As if that would ever happen...

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[L0rdJedi]

I love this answer and I only wish I could mod you up. Whoever rated it as flamebait is a moron.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[geekoid]

Yes.

traditional, things like 'Censorship' were defined as being done by a government because that was they large body. IN fact, they were the government because the controlled everything.

It's been different since the East Indies trading company.

Simple look at how it behaves makes it very clear that yes, they need to have the constitution applied to them as well. The point of the constitution is to limit the controlling power, i.e. the feds and states.*

In fact, the power exerted by English corporation is why several of our founders wanted the constitution to ban them outright, Along with copyright. Both are tools for creating powerful controlling entities outside the frame work of government. Yiou can talk free market all you want, but the demonstrated fact is that large corporation have controlling effects that mean no market can actually be free because the consumer doesn't get all the information they need to make a good** decision.
Since they can become more controlling then a government they need limitations and regulations.

*Yes, it's more complex, but that;s it in a very small nutshell.

**good for them, not good as in higher principles.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[geekoid]

In a world where corporations are bigger and more influence then governments, are you sure that's your answer?

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Yvanhoe]

And I may add that if you are unhappy with it, the content is opened. You are free to fork. I think the issue is that porn can take a lot of resources. It is not a "morality" issue

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[DesScorp]

True, and that rises interesting questions about whether the 1st Amendment or other laws like it are still sufficient in modern day. When corporations near governments in their power, shouldn't they be subjected to the same standards of behaviour?

No one is forcing you to use Wikipedia. If you don't like it, don't read it. If you don't like some corporation's policies, then don't use their products. What you're arguing for is a government-mandated right to tell private entitites that they WILL print your thoughts. You have no right... none... to tell Wikipedia or any other non-government organization how to do things.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Belial6]

Well, one could say that a corporation, being a fabrication of the government is a part of the government.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Your.Master]

Wikipedia does not have power even remotely similar to that of government. It has power of a sort, but it's pretty irrelevant.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Wog]

Until a company can come to my house with guns and take away my freedom for choosing to not do business with them, the Bill of Rights should continue to apply only to the government.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Chowderbags]

When corporations near governments in their power

Well there's your problem.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[rilian4]

No corporation, regardless of size, has remotely close to the power of the federal government. Go look up the money available to a given company and then look at how much the federal budget is. The difference is staggering.

The 1st amendment is sufficient as written to control the federal government in the area of free speech and freedom of religion. That was the intent of the Constitution in general...limiting the power of government over free people. The constitution was NEVER designed to limit or otherwise interfere with private business of any kind within the borders of the US. (The fed was given the power to tax imports from private businesses outside the borders...this is called a tariff. The fed was also given the ability to regulate interstate commerce...it has been abused by congress mightily).

As was said by a previous poster, the 1st amendment only guarantees that congress can't make a law that infringes on your right to free speech, your right to the "free exercise of religion", freedom of the press or preventing you from petitioning the government "for a redress of grievances". This amendment also prevents congress from passing a law "...respecting an establishment of religion".

This amendment says nothing about what a private company can or cannot tell its employees to do or say.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[makomk]

Yes, he's still the benevolent (or maybe not) dictator of Wikipedia. What he says is law, and if anyone gets in the way, he can just have them banned, with no appeal process and no second chances - and has done occasionally.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Arthur Grumbine]

Corporations are owned by people. To force certain "standards of behavior" on a corporation is to say to the owners of that corporation, "You do not have the same rights to do what you want with this particular property as you have with your other property. Instead you must accept limitations of use not according to infringements of other people's fundamental rights (as is the case for all other private property), but according to the property's value to the public." Unless of course, you believe that people have a fundamental right to use other people's private property with the same freedom that they use public property.

How valuable/powerful should a corporation be before it's controlled by the government "for the common good"? Is it the right (maybe you believe "duty") of government to punish those who have been successful enough to build a large corporation, by slowly removing the owner's property rights?

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[pjt33]

That Onion article is absurd.

But it's the Onion! That's unpossible!

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[PopeRatzo]

Oh yeah. The botox and chemical peels do create a crazy look.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[unitron]

Yeah, but Palin's the one who looks happy about it. Crazy doesn't scare me nearly as much as "crazy, and glad of it".

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[lawpoop]

Go look up the money available to a given company and then look at how much the federal budget is. The difference is staggering.

I think the figure we should look at is the amount of money that companies control in aggregate compared to the government.

Joseph Campbell said if you want to see who's in control in society, look at who has the biggest building. In ancient societies, it was a pyramid or ziggurat, controlled by a God/King/Priest. In Europe in the middle ages, the biggest buildings were cathedrals, run by the church. After the enlightenment, it was government buildings, and public buildings like railway stations. In today's world, it's office buildings run by corporations.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, aside from geocities being down now, we're in the same situation thanks to notability.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Anonymous Coward]

the difference is that a cooperation isn't a court. That means that no matter what they think of what I say, they can't punish me for it unless the govenment decides that why I said is illegal. As such the restrictions on what can be illigalised are placed on the government and not on cooperations.

Big Monopoly taking down bad reviews about their producs on a sight they own is not the same thing as putting people in jail for posting bad reviews. This distinction remains no matter how big the company in question actually is.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Hurricane78]

Well,
1. Shell is definitely not the only company with a private army, that does exactly that.
2. Wait until the utilities companies who have a monopoly to deliver water, electricity, Internet and in the future maybe air, stop delivering, until you comply with their rules.
3. What you call ”the government” is what I call a group of professional PR actors, being straw-men for the industry’s most powerful feudalists. Look at the popular stock indexes, to find out who those are.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Hurricane78]

No corporation, regardless of size, has remotely close to the power of the federal government. Go look up the money available to a given company and then look at how much the federal budget is. The difference is staggering.

Yes. As in: Big companies are already way above the most governments on this planet, and some are even above all governments.
Have you actually checked what you assumed to be true?

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[cojoco]

Just because they *can* does not make it *good*

Censorship by Wikipedia may not be illegal, but it is extremely disappointing.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Paradoks]

To force certain "standards of behavior" on a corporation

How about anti-trust law? How about workers' rights, such as requiring payment for certain people's overtime? Or requiring that businesses be run more safely, when they can find people willing to take the greater risk? How about the regulations that kick in once a business reaches a certain size?

I'm sure there's a reasonable argument you're almost making about how it's unreasonable to force corporations to also follow the same restrictions we put on government, but the government already restricts corporations in behavior that has nothing to do with "fundamental rights".

I also doubt your assertion that it's the case for all other private property, as, among other things, I'm not sure what fundamental right there is for the public to take money from you based on how valuable a piece of land and/or building is.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[Anonymous Coward]

have you seen the MAFIAA recently?

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[laughingcoyote]

How valuable/powerful should a corporation be before it's controlled by the government "for the common good"? Is it the right (maybe you believe "duty") of government to punish those who have been successful enough to build a large corporation, by slowly removing the owner's property rights?

The issue of "punishment" is a straw man. It is the government's job to "provide for the common defense" against harm. Of course, we most often think of that responsibility being exercised in terms of maintaining a military to defend us in case of an invasion, and of course that is its most visible and dramatic manifestation. But it's not the only manifestation of that responsibility.

Corporations, by means of the volume of property they control and the diffusion of responsibility (well this decision was made by the Board, not by me!), can end up doing significant harm to the public. If a corporation is trying to profit by making a mess and leave the costs of cleaning it up on the public, it is absolutely the government's job to stop such antisocial and unacceptable behavior, just as it is the government's job to stop someone from "profiting" by running something that pollutes your home to unlivability in the home next door to you.

Regulation is not a "punishment". People (and corporations) shouldn't behave antisocially even in the absence of laws against it. But some people (and some corporations) still will. So, we have laws against driving drunk and rape and murder. We also have laws against paying fifty cents an hour, requiring unpaid overtime, and causing excessive pollution that you can't or won't clean up. You shouldn't do those things even if they were legal, because they are harmful to the society in which ultimately you have to live. But because some people (and most corporations) are immoral, we need to stop them by telling them they will be punished if they do such things.

Making a better society isn't a "punishment" for anyone. Regulation is, however, a way of reining in those who would be greedy and shortsighted in the short term at the expense of the long term sustainability of their society. It is unfortunate that such people exist at all. But they do.

Now in terms of the particular regulation being proposed here, that Wikimedia be banned from regulating what content it accepts, I don't support it. Competition genuinely exists here, and there are plenty of places you can upload sexually graphic images without going through Wikimedia. Regulation isn't necessary and wouldn't serve the public interest, in this case. It's not necessary to ensure that the public can speak freely. On the other hand, a regulation like net neutrality is.

Regulation should focus on areas where either there is only one company supplying a given service in a given area (and therefore it can abuse its position with near impunity), or where several companies are taking a given action as a bloc to ensure that the customer cannot choose against what they are doing. However, some activities, such as polluting, are always harmful even if competitors do exist, and must be stopped regardless. Regulation should certainly remain as light as it can possibly be to ensure public welfare, but it should be not one bit lighter.

Re:does Wales still have any authority?

[ultranova]

Corporations are owned by people. To force certain "standards of behavior" on a corporation is to say to the owners of that corporation, "You do not have the same rights to do what you want with this particular property as you have with your other property. Instead you must accept limitations of use not according to infringements of other people's fundamental rights (as is the case for all other private property), but according to the property's value to the public." Unless of course, you believe that people have a fundamental right to use other people's private property with the same freedom that they use public property.

The problem is that we are nearing a situation where everything is owned by a small set of plutocrats. This is turning into another Soviet Russia, only this time rather than the Party owning everything, it's a corporation that does.

It is true that Wikipedia is private property. On the other hand, it's also true that it has a huge influence on our society, that only grows daily. Jimbo Wales wields more power than I do; do we allow him to wield potentially unlimited power?

That's the problem with free-market capitalism: it isn't stable. When you have people competing, then sooner or later one of them will win, and each victory makes it easier to achieve the next, resulting in the victor growing in wealth and thus power without a limit. Either we put limits to how much a single person can own, or we put limits to what someone owning a lot can do with that property (and thus how he can wield the power inherent in it), or we declare that property rights are more important than freedom and let them become dictators. Those are the logical alternatives; which one is it going to be?

How valuable/powerful should a corporation be before it's controlled by the government "for the common good"? Is it the right (maybe you believe "duty") of government to punish those who have been successful enough to build a large corporation, by slowly removing the owner's property rights?

This is a strawman. It's not a question of punishment, it's the question of protecting the rest of us from unrestricted use of power. As for what limits should apply at what size, that's a question for experts to answer.

Redundancy

[Anonymous Coward]

Mention Slashdot in an article. Get your article published on Slashdot. Success.

Re:Redundancy

[St.Anne]

<quote><p>Mention Slashdot in an article. Get your article published on Slashdot. Success.</p></quote>

Recursion!

Of course...

[TheRaven64]

If Wikipedia has porn, it competes with Wales' other web site, he wouldn't want that...

Re:Of course...

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Is there a comprehensive list of the disputed site? It's raining today and I can evaluate each page to see if it's truely pornographic. Thanx in advance. //gets lotion

Re:Of course...

[makomk]

He'd do that, you know. One of Jimmy Wales' more interesting actions is removing video game guides from Wikibooks and driving them onto the commercial site Wikia, which he owns and makes money from selling advertising on.

Free Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the currently hosted porn Creative Commons Licensed? Under what conditions has it been produced? Is it commercial trailers, or home made?
I support destroying the porn industry, by spreading the habit making porn at home and spreading it under a CC license.

Re:Free Porn?

[celibate for life]

Hey, some of us like the professional stuff. Amateur porn has too many pimples and zits.

Re:Free Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still better than the millionth run-of-the-mill actress with the same boob, mouth and nose job (surgery, not sexual act), dully fucking their way through a never changing script of positions, all the while moaning the same fake sounds for 15 minutes straight, which makes you think they're just running a sound loop.

Re:Free Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's lots of variety out there. I for one welcome our new East European pr0n starlet overlords.

Re:Free Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

nose job..... good idea.

Re:Free Porn?

[Spatial]

Tried it, doesn't work

Re:Free Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked the pro stuff till I started noticing how much the girls parts resemble a deep dank dark cave. When your parts get tore up into looking like some alien's strange screaming mouth its time to get out of the biz.

Re:Free Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't we have both? I can't be the only person who enjoys both the real actual people and the professional starlets.

Re:Free Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

It does. Once when I was a teenager I was eating my girlfriend out in the woods. It was kind of a face-sitting thing. Because of the positioning, my nose kind of went in her pussy as I sucked on her clit. So there's a nosejob for ya.

Re:Free Porn?

[DerPflanz]

Too much info ......

Re:Free Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go on...

"too much unnecessary porn"

[Gothmolly]

What does that even mean? So you host porn. And you admit some of it is unnecessary. And the ratio of unnecessary porn to necessary porn is too high? WTF?! Just stop hosting porn, or STFU.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Spazztastic]

What does that even mean? So you host porn. And you admit some of it is unnecessary. And the ratio of unnecessary porn to necessary porn is too high? WTF?! Just stop hosting porn, or STFU.

This does raise a good question: What is a necessary amount of porn?

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[celibate for life]

"Necessary" is a concept that varies according to each person. To me, my 47 porn DVDs are the necessary amount.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[jedidiah]

The necessary amount of porn is mainly related to how bogus the definition of porn is.

Of course this is a big fat social red herring with the biggest problem being the nailing down of exactly what porn is.

Porn is a scary sounding word that's easy to use to quickly defame someone.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Spazztastic]

Porn is a scary sounding word that's easy to use to quickly defame someone.

These sound like the words of a COMMUNIST or a TERRORIST or the dreaded LIBERTARIAN!.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Shakrai]

What is a necessary amount of porn?

The amount required to enable you to get off so that you can return to more productive pursuits? ;)

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Ephemeriis]

Of course this is a big fat social red herring with the biggest problem being the nailing down of exactly what porn is.

I'm honestly too lazy to look up the textbook definition right now... But the fine summary has it pretty close to right.

images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests

The problem is, somebody has to evaluate what constitutes educational value and then quantify it somehow and then measure it against some kind of quantified prurient interest.

For someone who's looking for information on how to safely practice bondage or erotic asphyxiation, the pictures might be of high educational value. Might even save a life.

For someone who's just clicking through random articles on Wikipedia and stumbles across naked people it may look like straight-up smut with with no redeeming qualities.

Traditionally, it's been up to the community to decide what constitutes porn, generally on a fairly local level. If something winds up going to court it's usually up to your peers to decide whether there's educational content or not.

But with something like Wikipedia there's really no such thing as local. Or, rather, everything is local.

I'm sure there are folks somewhere in the world who consider the simple line drawings depicting how to give yourself a breast self-exam absolute filth. But most of us here in the US probably think that's of fairly high educational value.

So what do you do? Do you take down the self-exam diagram because you've offended someone on the planet?

Do you leave up something almost universally-prurient because somebody out there might find it educational?

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Xest]

I was going to ask how you manage to resist and remain celibate for life, now I know.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Trepidity]

It depends partly on what you think an encyclopedia should contain, partly on what you think is necessary, and partly on what you think constitutes porn. Should any of the articles under Category:Human sexuality contain images? If so, what kinds of images? There are a lot of articles in that category and its subcategories, you'll note. Does, say, Clothed male, naked female need some images? If so, are they porn?

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[L4t3r4lu5]

Would you like the answer expressed in Libraries of Congress, or Pallets of Kleenex?

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[sakdoctor]

Enough to satisfy rule 35, or the limits of digital storage technology at the time.
Whichever is larger.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[mdwh2]

It depends partly on what you think an encyclopedia

Note that this seems to be about Wikimedia Commons, not Wikipedia (the title seems to be wrong on this, too).

Which makes it all the more strange. AIUI, Wikimedia Commons is meant to be a free repository for images. I'm not sure they currently have any restrictions as to the kind of image hosted, as long as it's legal? Sure they have the right to say what they want to host on their servers, but it seems the usefulness of this project is reduced if they start going down the slippery slope of saying some things aren't okay, especially when we start off with ill-defined categories.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[PK Tech Guy]

Necessary perhaps, but is it sufficient?

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Anonymous Coward]

Or to some AMERICAN

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Mr. Slippery]

These sound like the words of a COMMUNIST or a TERRORIST or the dreaded LIBERTARIAN!.

"Dreaded" libertarian? Right-wingers like the word so much they stole it from the socialist anarchists.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Kijori]

This does raise a good question: What is a necessary amount of porn?

For Wikimedia surely it is the same as the necessary amount of anything: the amount that is required to support its mission:

Wikimedia Commons is a repository of free images, sound and other multimedia files. Uploaded files can be used as local files by other projects on the Wikimedia servers, including Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wiktionary.

I don't think the problem of unnecessary images is limited to porn - although I do think that the number of pornographic images is particularly high in comparison to the number that are used in any meaningful way by the Wikimedia sites, so it's perhaps not a bad place to start "trimming down".

I don't think this has to turn into a discussion about morality unless people want it to. Wikimedia is not a free image host and so there is no reason for it to host swathes of images with only nominal involvement in its mission.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[TerranFury]

What on earth are you talking about? Nobody is fearmongering about libertarians. Nobody.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Mark Trade]

This does raise a good question: What is a necessary amount of porn?

And what is porn? And who gets to decide this? Some Las Vegas entrepreneur or a born-again from the bible belt?

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Spazztastic]

And what is porn? And who gets to decide this? Some Las Vegas entrepreneur or a born-again from the bible belt?

I'll answer that: Whoever screams the loudest.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Anonymous Coward]

As well as "Necessary" when he also said "remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value" I think its safe to say, porn has a lot of educational value. So Porn on the wiki is useful and just tell anyone who asks, 47 DVDs are for research and preparation for the practical exams.

(It will be interesting to see if this post is marked Funny or Informative! ;)

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[computational super]

Only 47? Jeez, dude, what do you do with the other 23 1/2 hours of the day?

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Spazztastic]

What on earth are you talking about? Nobody is fearmongering about libertarians. Nobody.

It was sarcasm. I was going for a joke. If you can't see that, you shouldn't be posting. Or reading.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Larry Sanger]

What are you talking about? "Libertarian" is just about the most politically safe term out there. Both liberals and conservatives (in the U.S.) like to call themselves libertarians, at least when convenient...

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Rhacman]

Are you kidding me? Librarians are the most oppressive censors of free speech out there! Always telling me to stop talking and to stop writing on their books.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Spy der Mann]

A friend of mine has been recently interested in BDSM. Not as porn, but as a sexual lifestyle, and he's currently exploring contacts in his city. Of course, since this was a completely foreign practice to him, he had to do research.

Where do you think he researched? Wikipedia, of course!

This puts one to think: Is searching for sex articles (in an educational way) bad, even if they're considered "porn"? Let's suppose a couple engages in a wrongly-educated BDSM sexual act, and due to their lack of information, they end up harming each other, in a very bad (bad as in "OMG we need to go to the hospital") way?

This friend of mine told me all the things he learned about SSC (Sane, Safe, Consensual) in Wikipedia. Let's suppose one of these days, these articles vanish.

Poof.

Is ignorance and censorship the right way to do things? Are we going back to the dark ages?

For starters, what the fuck is this "porn in wikipedia" you speak of? So far I've never seen any!

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Degro]

Sounds like you work for the SEC

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[amplt1337]

Not only that -- the phrase "too much unnecessary porn" implies that there is an appropriate, non-zero amount of unnecessary pornography that should be hosted on Wikimedia servers.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[amplt1337]

Do you leave up something almost universally-prurient because somebody out there might find it educational?

Yes! This! You lighten up about OMG NAKED BODIES because prurience is no reason to delete it!
Obviously depictions of (actual, not artwork) child molestation, etc., should be removed as violations of law just about everywhere and specifically in the hosting countries. But for voluntarily portrayed, copyright-clean instances featuring consensual participants in legal acts, the mere fact that it's porn shouldn't be grounds for removing it from Wikimedia. If you've got a lot of stuff that's on the server but not referenced in any article, you might remove it as a trim to save space (WM is not Picasa). But imposing these sorts of uptight cultural standards is entirely contradictory to the spirit of a participatory medium dedicated to freedom of knowledge and information.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Spazztastic]

What are you talking about? "Libertarian" is just about the most politically safe term out there. Both liberals and conservatives (in the U.S.) like to call themselves libertarians, at least when convenient...

It was a joke. Don't you get sarcasm?

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[10101001 10101001]

I'm honestly too lazy to look up the textbook definition right now... But the fine summary has it pretty close to right.

images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests

Interesting. So, I'd imagine pictures of gold, money, etc would be porn, as people lust after such things. Of course, people don't lust after the image so much as what's being displayed in the image and what can be done with those people/things. One could argue that gold and money don't qualify because people don't solely lust after gold/money but towards the power that gold/money represents and could provide; ie, there's both lust and greed involved, not solely lust. Of course, given the argument that porn is general misogynistic and represents power over women, porn really isn't solely about lust either. So, really, porn isn't porn, but erotica is porn. So, Wikipedia should only ban the non-degrading images of nude people.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Ephemeriis]

Yes! This! You lighten up about OMG NAKED BODIES because prurience is no reason to delete it!

Personally, I agree with you.

Obviously depictions of (actual, not artwork) child molestation, etc., should be removed as violations of law just about everywhere and specifically in the hosting countries.

But this is where you start running into problems.

Legality varies with geography. Sure, child pornography is pretty much universally illegal... But what constitutes a child? The age of majority varies from one place to the next.

And some places deem various sex acts as outright criminal.

So, now what?

imposing these sorts of uptight cultural standards is entirely contradictory to the spirit of a participatory medium dedicated to freedom of knowledge and information.

Yes, it is. But that's never stopped someone from filing a lawsuit.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[QCompson]

Well, it didn't fit with the rest of the sentence. Communist and terrorist are terms frequently used to slander others (or at the very least terrorist-sympathizer). As others have pointed out, everyone is jumping at the chance these days to be labeled a libertarian.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[thefez]

If "Information wants to be free", then porn hosting should indeed be free! And I try to stray from all but the most necessary amount of pornography.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[djtachyon]

This is an unnecessary amount of porn: Autofellatio. NSFW!

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[makomk]

That's quite easy - if a single admin considers something too risque and deletes it, it's gone. Wales is quite clear about this: undo any of the deletions, and he'll remove your power to do so without warning. Welcome to Wikipedia.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Tetsujin]

Not only that -- the phrase "too much unnecessary porn" implies that there is an appropriate, non-zero amount of unnecessary pornography that should be hosted on Wikimedia servers.

Well, no, it implies that there is a certain level that is considered tolerable and not worth further removal efforts... Kind of like the legal limit on how much rat feces may be present in restaurant food.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm honestly too lazy to look up the textbook definition right now... But the fine summary has it pretty close to right.

images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests

Whoa, stop right there. That's a very US-centric definition of porn. Nothing wrong with that, but Commons (like all the Wikimedia projects) is not a US-centric project. Obviously the WMF has to follow US laws, but beyond that, what constitutes "porn" might well be vastly different elsewhere, and Commons / the WMF should take a value-neutral approach.

Mostly, this should mean a) follow US laws (obviously); and b) crack down (taking care to not bite contributors, especially new ones) on unnecessary images that don't add anything new to Commons, whether they're porn by any definition or not.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this picture has substantial educational value (if only because it proves that this particular activity is feasible,in addition to clarifying how it's performed) while at the same time minimizing appeal to the prurient interest.

This is a good acid test for Wales' initiative. As long as this picture and others comparable to this are preserved, it should garner the full support of most Wikipedians and Wikicommoners.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[pregister]

Usually about 5 minutes worth.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[TerranFury]

Sometimes, on Slashdot, it's hard to tell: "Crazy libertarian with a persecution complex" actually describes some posters. Sorry I pegged you for one of them.

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[hrimhari]

Easy. The necessary amount is that which illustrates what porn is without being redundant. Unless the mods got you wrong and modded Insightful instead of Funny? Maybe they missed the sig...

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[holiggan]

This does raise a good question: What is a necessary amount of porn?

All of it?

Re:"too much unnecessary porn"

[WWWWolf]

What does that even mean? So you host porn. And you admit some of it is unnecessary. And the ratio of unnecessary porn to necessary porn is too high? WTF?! Just stop hosting porn, or STFU.

Well, the situation is like this: They've had, for a good while now, a canned warning message for people who upload certain sort of pictures.

Now, imagine what the situation was if the user community would not discourage such activity. Every picture should be accurately categorised, be of sensible quality, have accurate license data, and so on and so forth. And, of course, because of the nature of the images, there should also be a reasonable expectation that the images should be coming from copyright holders and that they're under proper licenses. You know, bog-ordinary routine things that have to be done.

Your job, should you accept it, should be to tend to hundreds of pictures of dongolongos every. blessed. day.

There's got to be some point where you start asking "you know, this is a whole lot of dongolongos. I sure hope we can find proper encyclopedic usage for all this high-quality, well-documented image material."

If you can find a proper, systematic, encyclopedic use for thousands of cockpics, sure, go right ahead and apply that knowledge for best interests to further human knowledge. Folks at Wikimedia Commons, however, appear to have found enough of those pictures for proper encyclopedic use.

I don't mind

[celibate for life]

I know better places to find to porn.

Re:I don't mind

[LinuxAndLube]

I don't believe you.

volunteer

[Anonymous Coward]

I know whats the problem, lack of space, but I'll be glad to provide a terabyte or two of my 'cloud PC', as long as noone downloads it.. :)

Start with this then...

[Capt James McCarthy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_de_Milo

Censorship is a slippery slop.

Re:Start with this then...

[tehcyder]

So what have you got against amputee porn in particular?

Re:Start with this then...

[SharpFang]

Amputee porn... yuck! Must be removed!

Re:Start with this then...

[Capt James McCarthy]

That's not pornography (though I object to this image, of course, for many reasons).

The fact that 3 idiot mods upvoted you does not even surprise me anymore.

There are folks who view any and all nudity as pornography. Do you see the conflict now?

Should I have marked the link with NSFW? It all depends on who you ask.

Re:Start with this then...

[Spazztastic]

Should I have marked the link with NSFW? It all depends on who you ask.

For those of us who browse at work, yes: "Oh, a Wikipedia article? This can't be too bad..."

Re:Start with this then...

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding! There's much worse. There must be dozens of images! And it just gets worse the more you look. They even have pictures of dirty old men getting their jollies from looking at porn!

Re:Start with this then...

[cyp43r]

You thought the VENUS DE MILO would be clothed?

Re:Start with this then...

[Eraesr]

lol, if you're shocked by the image of an ancient greek statue, then you might be better off never accessing the internet (or your library for that matter) ever again.

Now mark me flamebait, I don't mind.

Re:Start with this then...

[Ephemeriis]

That's not pornography (though I object to this image, of course, for many reasons).

It may not be something that you would consider pornography... But that doesn't mean nobody out there does.

It's a topless woman. Sure, she's a statue... And missing arms... But she's still topless. There are plenty of websites out there displaying plenty of images awfully similar to this.

And there are plenty of people out there who's been offended by statues just like this. We've had politicians covering up topless statues before they give press conferences... And editing their state seals because it's got boobs on it...

The fact that 3 idiot mods upvoted you does not even surprise me anymore.

Why shouldn't it be upvoted? It's relevant to the discussion.

There are folks out there who've screamed about David's penis over the years... They're of the firm opinion that it constitutes porn... And they'd love to get it taken out of every art-history book out there.

So, who gets to choose? Is it porn or not? Where do we draw the line?

If we start taking out anything and everything that could be considered pornographic by somebody on the planet we aren't going to have a whole lot left.

Re:Start with this then...

[kthejoker]

Pornography is defined at least here in the states as being primarily for prurient interests and having no social or artistic value.

Heck, Wales uses the same criteria in the summary.

So Venus de Milo wouldn't count.

What else do you got?

Re:Start with this then...

[NicknamesAreStupid]

. . let's get those naked motherboards off the net! I am SICK of seeing pages filled with the sight of fully exposed motherboards, their slots wide open and connectors exposed. It is DISGUSTING! NewEgg is the worst, with close-up views of their back sides and I/O ports. However, NewEgg has more lawyers than ASUS M4A79XTD 'Extreme' has USB ports. I am ready to go in there and delete every motherboard fucking obscene picture!

Re:Start with this then...

[Capt James McCarthy]

Pornography is defined at least here in the states as being primarily for prurient interests and having no social or artistic value.

Heck, Wales uses the same criteria in the summary.

So Venus de Milo wouldn't count.

What else do you got?

The artistic value is based on who's judgment is the point here. Just because a group of people get together and state that an old sculpture of a partially clothed (or mostly nude depending on your take) woman is art vice pornography doesn't make sense. It is a social philosophical issue of what is art vice what is pornography. Better yet, why pornography has such taboo tied to it yet violence is fine. Games and movies have freedom with violence, but flash a woman's breast and folks get all wound up.

Re:Start with this then...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this wasn't your intent, but it's turning me on.

Re:Start with this then...

[mapkinase]

"There are folks who view any and all nudity as pornography. Do you see the conflict now?"

Until Jimbo not one of them, you are off-topic and should just get off your "they they came for me and no one left to stand up" attitude.

Re:Start with this then...

[mapkinase]

It's not about "me". It's about what Wikipedia considers pornography. Until Jimbo considers extremity-challgened Venus statue a pornography - bug off.

Re:Start with this then...

[mapkinase]

Here

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1644150&cid=32125754

Re:Start with this then...

[Spatial]

You honestly didn't know what the Venus do Milo was? Cripes. You can learn that from watching the Simpsons.

Re:Start with this then...

[amplt1337]

Not to mention the scandal & furor caused by one of the first topless statues in American history -- of a porn starlet & ex-President named George Washington.

Bare man-chest! Indecent!

Re:Start with this then...

[L0rdJedi]

If your boss or anybody at work freaks out at that image, they seriously need to have their head examined. That would be like calling Michelangelo's David NSFW.

Re:Start with this then...

[Spazztastic]

That would be like calling Michelangelo's David NSFW.

Have you been to the Bible Belt?

Re:Start with this then...

[Anonymous Coward]

Until Jimbo considers extremity-challgened Venus statue a pornography - bug off.

Holy shit your english sucks. Originally I was pinning you as a crazed loon from Kansas, but now I'm not sure.

Re:Start with this then...

[Sir_Lewk]

(though I object to this image, of course, for many reasons).

Excuse me for being dense, but what possible reasons would "of course" make you object to such an image? You are crazy as shit.

Re:Start with this then...

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, if you're shocked by the image of an ancient greek statue, then you might be better off never accessing the internet (or your library for that matter) ever again.

yet this is exactly the point. There are people out there (mostly Republican ex-Vice Presidents) that argue the even "Artistic" nudity is porn, and should be banned/covered.

Until they state quite clearly what is and is not porn, then they should not be making rules against it. And even then, I'm against rules for "morality". Only where informed consent cannot be given should there be laws.

Re:Start with this then...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are folks out there who've screamed about David's penis over the years...

I have a hard time believing that thing's made anyone scream...

Re:Start with this then...

[unitron]

So Venus de Milo wouldn't count.

Well, not with her fingers. Toes, maybe.

Re:Start with this then...

[mapkinase]

Well done calling people who follow a different ideology crazy.

Re:Start with this then...

[clone53421]

He didn’t call you crazy for having reasons to object to the image. He called you crazy for saying “of course”, as if everyone else should find those same reasons objectionable.

In effect, you were doing what you just accused him of doing. Ironic.

Re:Start with this then...

[Alsee]

You're right the "of course" shows just how ideologically bigoted and deluded he is. He's so blinded by his radical ideology that he completely missed the fact that most people not only don't agree with him, most people have absolutely no clue what supposedly obvious "of course" crap he was thinking.

Just for the record, I've run into him before and I can illuminate the situation. Mapkinase is not merely tightass puritanical Cristian-Taliban-wannabe (I call them Talibanabees). He is a literal Muslim Talibanabee. He wants to impose Sharia Law on the entire globe, complete with God-gave-me-a-list-of-people-to-kill. In his deluded mind everyone should "of course" have known his reasons for objecting to the image. Not only did he imagine people would "of course" know his reasons, he assumes any sane and non-evil person of course agrees with them.

I've been on Slashdot a long time, and Mapkinase one of only three people I've used the Slashdot "Foe" system on. I reserve it for people who make an explicitly admission that rational discussion with them is pointless. I think one of the three admitted to being a deliberate trolling account (not Mapkinase), but the other two (including Mapkinase) made explicit statements that they were dedicated to blind dogmatic ideology and would would simply ignore any attempt at reason and logic.

-

Re:Start with this then...

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely something must be removed to qualify for that genre ?

Re:Start with this then...

[makomk]

Which puts Wales in the role of art critic - and he's already started deleting paintings artworks by artists notable enough to have Wikipedia pages on the basis that he thinks they're really just porn, wheel-warring to keep them deleted, and threatening to remove the admin powers of anyone who challenges him. I am not joking.

Re:Start with this then...

[mapkinase]

In what twisted liberal basement universe "I, of course" means being sure that OTHER people follow the same ideology? It means just the solidity of your own beliefs.

Re:Start with this then...

[clone53421]

It implies that we should’ve already known it, which would be impossible unless we had the exact same beliefs and everyone else did.

Don’t say “of course” to indicate solidity in your belief. It indicates “this is so obvious that I shouldn’t need to say it, but I’m saying it anyway”. That’s not what you meant, of course, but it’s what you implied. (See how it works? That was obvious, but I said it anyway, and I used “of course”, because it was appropriate there.)

I can't explain what pr0n is...

[Airdorn]

...but I know it when I see it.

Re:I can't explain what pr0n is...

[tehcyder]

I think you mean "...but I know it when I come across it."

Re:I can't explain what pr0n is...

[hodet]

I think you mean "...but I know it when I come across it..and then immediately forget about it."

Re:I can't explain what pr0n is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Go f yourself! Separate the porn from the art on this blog. I dare you to find another person who agree with you in 100% in a blinded test.

didn't jimmy wales get his start in internet porn?

[circletimessquare]

and there it is, on wikipedia:

Inspired by the remarkable initial public offering of Netscape in 1995, he decided to become an internet entrepreneur,[11] and in 1996 founded the web portal Bomis with two partners.[9][16] The website featured user-generated webrings and for a time sold erotic photographs.[17] Wales described it as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a market similar to that of Maxim magazine;[1][7][18] and according to The Atlantic Monthly it "found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet".[16] Bomis did not become successful, but in March 2000 hosted and provided the initial funding for the Nupedia project.[7][9][19]

Let him go.

[hellop2]

Somebody wants information about human sexuality removed from an encyclopedia or he's going to walk? I say, let him and his puritanical beliefs walk.

I have been using wikipedia for since it's inception and never once do I recall being subjected to "pornography". However, if I needed to do a research paper for school on the subject, I would appreciate the maintained links that wikipedia provides. Censorship. Give me a break. Then you need a whole team of censors to debate over what is acceptable or not, which is unnecessary and ridiculous. IT'S AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. All information is acceptable. Because, it's informative.

Re:Let him go.

[hellop2]

Heh, my friend and I were laughing last week when her textbook cited wikipedia...

Re:Let him go.

[Spazztastic]

Heh, my friend and I were laughing last week when her textbook cited wikipedia...

Wikipedia can be used as a starting point for learning a subject though. If you don't want to dive into a thick textbook or several case studies on a topic, you can read Wikipedia and get a rundown on what the topic is. If you feel the need (or are doing a project), then you can investigate further and read the textbook or case study and use those as citations.

This is all what the librarians in High School would tell my class. Nothing wrong with using it as a starting point, but it can't be the only source of information.

Re:Let him go.

[tehcyder]

However, if I needed to do a research paper for school on the subject,

You do research on pornography at school nowadays?

Young people these days.

Re:Let him go.

[jayhawk88]

Somebody wants information about human sexuality removed from an encyclopedia or he's going to walk? I say, let him and his puritanical beliefs walk.

Actually that's not what this is about at all. Feel free to read the article next time, so you can speak intelligently with the rest of the adults.

Re:Let him go.

[hellop2]

"knwo its"

haha, funny, you got me

Re:Let him go.

[MBGMorden]

Heck, outside of academic cites it's a wonderful place to learn in general. Blatantly false edits usually get fixed pretty darned fast. On almost every page where I've found false edits - particularly vandalism, by the time I refreshed the page to fix it myself, someone else had beaten me to it.

As such it's great for just sitting around and reading for the sake of personal learning about stuff. I'm long past the time when I am writing anything where I need to cite a source anyways. It's moreso cases of little points of curiosity where I wonder "You know, just how DID New Coke come about?" or "Why did Husqvarna stop making rifles and start making lawnmowers?". For brushing up on stuff like that, Wikipedia is amazing.

Re:Let him go.

[hellop2]

Read which article? The summary has 6 links. Which one is "the article"? I'm supposed to spend an hour of research before I can post? No, I didn't RTFA. But, I did re-read the fucking summary. And I see that he wants to remove porn that has little to no educational value.

Great. But, why focus on porn? Wouldn't everyone involved in contributing to wikipedia want to remove all content that is of no educational value? Whether that be excessive pictures of Doric Greek pillars or Chinese anal beads.

My point is, wikipedia admins should be removing all unnecessary content, not focusing on unnecessary "sexual" content.

Re:Let him go.

[Spaham]

"Feel free to read the article next time, so you can speak intelligently with the rest of the adults"

read the article ??
what do you mean ??

Re:Let him go.

[ultranova]

Heh, my friend and I were laughing last week when her textbook cited wikipedia...

...because honesty is something to be mocked.

For most purposes, Wikipedia is just as (un)reliable as any other source. And on the other hand, no source is significantly more reliable, since they ultimately follow the same process of quoting and combining each other in a merry little circle where lies mix with truth and get blended to something that may or may not resemble reality somewhat.

Re:Let him go.

[mr_gorkajuice]

Most of the time I spent on Wiki has to do with exotic animals or theoretical physics, or other topics that are almost by definition "educational".
I do however remember picking up this brilliant reference from a /.'er who had forgotten what "vulva" was.
While it can be educational in context, this might be a bit borderline, and certainly NSFW.

Re:Let him go.

[computational super]

so you can speak intelligently with the rest of the adults.

Ironic that yours is the least intelligent post in this thread - and the least aware of the article.

Re:Let him go.

[Larry Sanger]

The original title of my submission mentioned Commons, but the Slashdot guys changed this to Wikipedia. It's quite true that Wikipedia is also full of porn, but Wikimedia Commons has truly stupendous amounts of it. Of course, if you're not inclined to look for it, you might not come across it. But what curious 10-year-old boy won't look for it? Armed with the knowledge of a few terms to search for, and creativity, you can find boatloads of porn instantly. Think of any sexual fetish, position, orientation, combination, piece of anatomy, alteration of piece of anatomy, part of the whole sex process, etc., it's all there in living color! What a great educational reference work!

Re:Let him go.

[BaronHethorSamedi]

Wow! You took this:

Wikimedia Commons admins who wish to remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests have my full support...If the Wikimedia Foundation wants to declare that it is OK for Commons to be a porn host, they can do that, and I'll not be able to continue. That isn't going to happen, though...

and turned it into this:

Somebody wants information about human sexuality removed from an encyclopedia or he's going to walk? I say, let him and his puritanical beliefs walk.

That's no small leap. What he's really saying is that hosting porn isn't Wikimedia's (not Wikipedia's) primary purpose, and that admins should act accordingly. Seems sensible enough to me.

As a side note, there exists a wiki-based encyclopedia where there is no debate over what's informative or acceptable. Hop on over there and see how useful it is for even basic research purposes.

Re:Let him go.

[captor.tn]

To be perfectly honest, to what end does one host porn? Are pictures of anatomy in neutral ways still porn? Are artistic renderings of the human form? Are typical childhood photos? Specifically, the best way to combat the moral outrage that is sexuality (and all subject matter therein) is to have a series of good discussions with [your] children. Truly, any interested child will find "pornography" regardless of having a relatively "safe" outlet such as the Commons even within the scope of normal life. Any child telling you they never played 'doctor' is a fucking liar.

I'm certainly not stating that children should be exposed (har har) to pornography repeatedly, only that anyone looking for it need only open their eyes. To frame pornography in a light that sheds educational value is truly the best way to supplant the horrors of sex from the would-be innocent kids out there.

The truth of the matter is that some people get off on pictures of feet. Are pictures of feet, thus, porn? To what end does the definition become a four letter word? It's all about context.

On another note, as a 'civilized' culture, [we] are migrating further and further towards the notion that sex is evil, dirty, and not to be discussed or viewed ever, just as the slippery slope will lead to other less desirable facets of moral outrage--and that's a goddamned shame. There is nothing wrong with sex; [we should] stop insinuating that there is [something wrong with sex] to everyone, whether they listen or not.

Re:Let him go.

[makomk]

Blatantly false edits usually get fixed pretty darned fast.

Yeah, it's the subtly misleading edits and politically-driven omissions that are the real problem, since those are damn near impossible to spot and very difficult to challenge even if you do.

Re:Let him go.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off Sanger. Find something better to do with your time than being bitter.

Re:Let him go.

[unitron]

"You know, just how DID New Coke come about?"

You don't expect to ever hear the real story behind that, do you?

Re:Let him go.

[unitron]

And not only that, in the headline they tried to blame an entire nation.

Re:Let him go.

[sixsixtysix]

maybe a 10-year-old shouldn't be online unsupervised?

Re:Let him go.

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of any sexual fetish, position, orientation, combination, piece of anatomy, alteration of piece of anatomy, part of the whole sex process, etc., it's all there in living color! What a great educational reference work!

Right on! You wouldn't want the boy to lose his natural innocence while actively searching for porn.

Re:Let him go.

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't want information removed. Just porn. Sexually explicit pictures that have educational value are fine. Ones that don't should be removed. It is a reasonable position and for those that want porn there's plenty of free stuff available, go elsewhere for it.

Re:Let him go.

[sourcerror]

However it's no different from any other media depicting politics.

As a Slashdotter to Mr. Sanger

[eldavojohn]

This comes about a month after I originally posted my report about depictions-of-child-sexual-molestation on Wikimedia Foundation servers to the FBI, which Slashdot duly ripped to shreds (as only Slashdot can)

Well, I read a lot of those comments and while they were for the most part overly negative toward you, I think they had some good advice.

A number of them let you know that if you want to champion this message that Wikipedia hosts child porn then you should probably drop the "and also I run a clean competing product called Citizendia." I'm not accusing you of this but on the surface it may seem that you are blowing this whole thing out of proportion in some sort of free-cyclopedia-war. I think the Slashdot comments sent you a very valuable message to keep both of these messages separate to avoid that possibility.

Another thing that comments focused on was your Libertarianism conflicting with your moralism. The comments explored possibilities in which "child porn" becomes used inadvertently without an actual production or desire for it to be used as such. What about when someone draws or makes computer simulations of said things? If it neither picks your pocket nor breaks your leg, shouldn't a Libertarian allow that? It seems your morals and ethics do come into conflict with a pure Libertarian stance. Slashdot has a large Libertarian readership so you should be prepared for this.

I was in a museum in New York City and saw an exhibit of with pictures of mentally challenged children playing outside in the grass, mostly undressed. Everyone else there was treating it as "art." I'd like to Google and find the artist for you but I'm not interested in that being saved in my Google searches. Which reveals to you that I'm not a big fan of what you speak of either (if it's any consolation) but I think the images on Wikimedia are community regulated and you're going to find an argument somewhere no matter what stance you take. For instance, I will defend [WARNING! Nudity] this image as an image of war, a reminder of Vietnam, a historical photograph and I am prepared to argue with you that that image has some merit and should remain on Wikipedia. But if I understand your stance that image needs to be removed?

You shouldn't take these comments as "ripped to shreds." Slashdot likes to avoid the obvious discussion and no one's interested in "I agree." comments as they don't add much to the conversation. When your ideas are on Slashdot, you're being flayed open for anyone to take any amount of time to poke at your soft underbelly and do what they want with it. Expect the full spectrum of responses and it seems that no matter how much I disagree with a stance, if you can form it into cogent and at least semi-logical defenses then you should be modded up.

You're a valuable member of the Slashdot community. I don't think you should take the highly rated, negative comments to heart and I hope you continue to contribute to Slashdot like NewYorkCountryLawyer.

Re:As a Slashdotter to Mr. Sanger

[Spazztastic]

You shouldn't take these comments as "ripped to shreds."

He must browse at -1.

Re:As a Slashdotter to Mr. Sanger

[mapkinase]

"It seems your morals and ethics do come into conflict with a pure Libertarian stance. "

Oh, really?

Re:As a Slashdotter to Mr. Sanger

[lessthan]

Oh, really?

Wow, that totally added to the conversation.

Re:As a Slashdotter to Mr. Sanger

[Tetsujin]

Oh, really?

Wow, that totally added to the conversation.

So did that.

And that.

And that last one, too.

So...

[papabob]

the "universal" enciclopedy, where "all the knowledge" is contributed by "anyone" is about to filter certain content based in the moral views of a purist american? Well... doubleplusgood, I assume...

Re:So...

[MRe_nl]

How is this flameblade? I think it's a very valid point.
Although whale-porn isn't my cup of tea either.
"It's wales, jimmy, but not a we know them".

Re:So...

[jeffasselin]

That was also my thought.

The falsely prude american point of view is so hypocritical, too. I could write a long tirade on it, but I find it too disgusting.

Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

As on ac to another where is that porn on commons? please link!

WP:CENSOR?

[tverbeek]

As long as it focuses on applying actual existing Wikipedia policy - removing stuff that's just plain porn, but leaving material that's sexually explicit but informative or educational - this sounds like a good thing. There's plenty of other places on the web for gratuitous beaver shots. But if it turns into an attempt to censor Wikipedia into a PG13 (or even R) "family-friendly" encyclopedia, or serves as the justification for a witch-hunt against "adult" subjects in general in the guise of a "protect the children" campaign, that'll be bad for Wikipedia and a really bad precedent.

Re:WP:CENSOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's plenty of other places on the web for gratuitous beaver shots."

I don't get it.

Oh, wait.

I love you Wikipedia!

Re:WP:CENSOR?

[Luke has no name]

I immediately checked to see if this page was up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer

I have never seen "unnecessary" porn on Wikipedia. I've seen nude diagrams in biology articles, and pictures like the one above, but I don't scroll through "Taylor Series" so I can find a threesome.

Re:WP:CENSOR?

[gringer]

I don't scroll through "Taylor Series" so I can find a threesome.

I find it interesting that the first picture on the 'threesome' page isn't on the bad list, which means that someone could modify the Taylor Series article to do just that (without administrator approval).

Oh noes porn!

[MostAwesomeDude]

I'm tempted to upload photos of S&M to the relevant articles now, since he seems to think they're always okay to speedy-delete, even when they're not sexual. From the link:

"Content which would trigger for the uploader or anyone else the record keeping requirements of USC 2257 can be speedy deleted. This refers to photographs and film - all other artistic media is excluded from this requirement, unless derivative of one of those - of actual or simulated acts of... 4. Sadistic or masochistic abuse."

I might not be a leather fan, but that doesn't make it okay to remove this kind of stuff.

(And before you say that this only applies to WMF, not WP, keep in mind that they are the same entity! It won't be long before this policy trickles over into the various language WPs.)

Re:Oh noes porn!

[MostAwesomeDude]

I hate replying to myself, but:

"Whether or not the Foundation has to adhere to [USC] 2257 is not known, this content limitation is due to the scope of the foundation's goals."

Arg! You fucking bastard! You haven't even talked to your lawyers, this is just your way of purifying content so that you don't get complaints from big donors. It's not like you couldn't comply with 2257 either, what with that office in FL that's always open since it's a FUCKING DATACENTER.

Re:Oh noes porn!

[Anonymous Coward]

What would blow his fucking mind is if someone went through and replaced ALL the live action porn with the anime equivalents, since they wouldn't trigger USC 2257, and isn't "photographs and film".

Bonus points if you track down various thousand-year-old woodblock prints like the one with the woman fucking an octopus and use those instead, public domain ;)

Re:Oh noes porn!

[thedj_sd]

Dude, no one knows, that is kinda the whole problem of 2257. In the past 6 years it has become so broad that any corner cases can only be decided in court. And that is why Google Yahoo and all those other big internet companies are ignoring those laws. So they can get sued and a judge will tell them the scope of the law.

Re:Oh noes porn!

[bugi]

Much S&M is consensual, consequently not abuse.

Re:didn't jimmy wales get his start in internet po

[Anonymous Coward]

This is hardly news.

Next you'll be telling us that Obama had an African father, and that Simon Cowell can be mean sometimes.

Funny thing is...

[denzacar]

the "universal" enciclopedy, where "all the knowledge" is contributed by "anyone" is about to filter certain content based in the moral views of a purist american? Well... doubleplusgood, I assume...

It REALLY was always that way.

What a douche bag...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have an idea what "porn" this guy is talking about? I checked out the wikipedia article on lolicon he mentions and found only a cartoon image of clothed young girls. This is just an attempt to draw attention to his lame encyclopedia [deleting link; its a website by a some douche bag].

Re:What a douche bag...

[mmkkbb]

He's not talking about Wikipedia. He's talking about Wikimedia Commons, which already needs a specific warning template asking people to please refrain from adding Yet More Pictures Of Users' Cocks Because We Have Enough Already Thank You.

Re:What a douche bag...

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't all of Wikipedia's images hosted on Wikimedia Commons? They seem to be basically the same thing.

Personally it has seemed that the whole Jimbo/Wikimedia/Wikipedia thing has been in a death spiral for a while now. It's good that they've put out a full DB dump recently, because eventually the day is going to come when someone is going to need to fork Wikipedia and basically reboot the organization.

The Wikipedia concept -- back when it was going to be an "encyclopedia of all human knowledge" and not subject to the whims of the deletionists -- was good. The initial execution was decent enough, in that it succeeded. But the organization behind it wasn't ever thought out well enough, lacks transparency, and has devolved into cliquishness and petty drama that would rival any junior high school.

This obsession over porn is just Wales et al's latest attempt at preserving "legitimacy" in the public eye. And if you ever need a way to tell when someone or something lacks legitimacy, it's because they obsess over whether or not they're perceived to have it.

Descriptive or prescriptive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that Wales never took an art history course. Many of the world's most famous works of art could have been described as "images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests" in their time.

It seems that Wales doesn't want a Wikipedia that accurately describes our contemporary world. Instead, he wants a Wikipedia that prescribes what he thinks the world SHOULD be like.

Who's Sue?

[c0lo]

[...]you should expect a strong statement from the Board and/or Sue

So, who is this Sue?

Re:Who's Sue?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the board doesn't make a statement you should sue, or sue them anyway.

Re:Who's Sue?

[Anonymous Coward]

A member of the Wikipedia Oligarchy, Sue Gardner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Gardner

(Forgive my pasting; I can't program, I'm here for the lols.)

Re:Who's Sue?

[thedj_sd]

Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Gardner

Re:Who's Sue?

[The Moof]

Obviously, she has a strong opinion about whatever it is we're talking about...

Unless it's a boy named Sue. In which case, you're in for a hell of a brawl.

Re:Who's Sue?

[PPH]

Sue

Surprised!!

[methano]

I'm surprised to hear that there is a lot of pornography on the Wikipedia Commons. I look at the "Wikipedia Commons:Quality images candidates" page daily. It's where I get my various desktop background images. I've never seen any pr0n. OK, once there was a picture of a woman real close up. I mean real close up. But that's it. Am I looking in the wrong place?

Re:Surprised!!

[LordNimon]

Mod parent up. I was about to say the same thing -- I've never seen any porn on Wiki[p|m]edia. I tried doing a search for "porn" on Wikipedia, but my corporate firewall blocked it.

Re:Surprised!!

[Spazztastic]

I tried doing a search for "porn" on Wikipedia, but my corporate firewall blocked it.

Soon LordNimon is called down to his manager's office for a meeting with HR...

Re:Surprised!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed! Where is this porn? Give me links, lots of links... keep 'em coming...

Re:Surprised!!

[Beezlebub33]

Well, of course, it all depends on what you consider 'porn', doesn't it? For example, on the People page for Quality images, it has this picture (NSFW?). Is that porn? I don't think so. However, it shows (gasp!) breasts. Therefore, some people will consider it porn and/or offensive. They might even call it child porn, since I have no idea of the woman's age. They are morons IMHO, but still, what can you do?

Re:Surprised!!

[ColdWetDog]

Soon LordNimon is called down to his manager's office for a meeting with HR...

He is led down to the basement. There are chains and leather straps on the walls.

In the middle of the room, several large objects - mostly made of pipes and leather straps, sit ominously.

The director of HR appears in a tight spandex suit.

LordNimon is nervous, but excited.....

Ok, OK, I'll stop now.

And this...

[AnonymousClown]

This book depicts incest and child sexual acts and it should be the first to go. It also promotes hate crimes against homo sexuals, slavery and violence towards women.

Re:And this...

[Ironhandx]

Just... Awesome.

I am interested in your opinions and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:And this...

[Simetrical]

This book depicts incest and child sexual acts and it should be the first to go. It also promotes hate crimes against homo sexuals, slavery and violence towards women.

It doesn't "depict" anything, because it's a book, not images. It does refer to acts such as incest, but not in a way that anyone would consider pornographic – it's stuff like "and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father" (Genesis 19:33, KJV). It speaks about sexual acts only via heavy euphemism, never explicitly.

I'd also like to know what "child sexual acts" the Bible even refers to. I can't think of any, offhand. I don't think anyone minded pedophilia in Biblical times (or, indeed, any time pre-1900) the way we do today, but I don't recall that it's mentioned anywhere.

If you want to say it promotes sexism or homophobia, of course, no argument there.

Re:And this...

[Mex]

Whoa, I've heard about the Bible promoting killing non virgins or something like that, but what's that about child sex and incest?

Porn according to whom?

[Aceticon]

For example Reproductive System contain images and pictures that will be "inspiring" for most males of a certain age (in fact, a hole in a wall is "inspiring" at that age).

Is this porn?

Re:Porn according to whom?

[Penguin]

FTFA: ".. all images that are of little or no educational value .."

These images you mention seem to have educational value.

Yeah, there might be different opinions about how much is sufficient to be educational, but the comment is not "If this is porn/'inspiring', then it should be removed" but "little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests".

Re:Porn according to whom?

[Penguin]

.. and to elaborate on this subject; I could upload every random picture I shoot with my camera or any picture my webcam takes every five seconds.

In that case it makes perfect sense to remove a lot of these pictures even though some randomly might happen to contain something interesting one day.

Re:Porn according to whom?

[Barrinmw]

Except if you go an look at the commons now and search for female anatomy parts, all you find is two drawings and one actual picture with the actual picture poorly labeled. Looks to me like a lot more then just pornography got hit with the banhammer.

Whatever, it's cool

[bsDaemon]

Me and Kenny don't give two shits about stupid-ass Wales anyway

Good thing I didn't make my annual donation yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, Wales. If you want to have a walled garden instead of a publicly editable resource, then why don't you work for Steve Jobs instead of Wikipedia? This is not just about what you call "pornography", but about everything the deletionist front has censored so far.

I've probably donated roughly $100 over the years since 2004, but I can't continue giving money to a place with a clear conservative and corporate philosophy. If you act like a for-profit, maybe instead of soliciting donations you should jump the shark and actually commercialize the project.

Re:didn't jimmy wales get his start in internet po

[TheRaven64]

Next you'll be telling us that Obama had an African father

Are you sure? I'm fairly sure I remember Fox News telling me that his father was Satan and his mother was Stalin's daughter.

0.0001%?

[jurgen]

So Wikimedia Commons is being overwhelmed by porn, the way Usenet was 10-15 years ago, right? Well, I'd love to see some of it, but I can't seem to find it. A search for "porn" turns up i.e. pictures of pornographic actresses, almost all clothed (an occasional one topless). "Pussy" turns up some pictures of pussycats, "teats" turns up nothing because people can't spell, "tits" and "penis" finds some stuff that's highly anatomical, "fucking" gives as its top result a fucking couple... of flies! In short, if there's any porn in Wikimedia, it's less than 1 in a million.

It seems to be all just Jimmy Wales trying to get some publicity and one-upping Larry Sanger. The whole thing is even more pathetic than Larry Sanger's original fantasy-rant.

Alright people, nothing to see here...

Re: 0.0001%?

[ChienAndalu]

Try looking up "Vulva" or "Vagina" (I can't since I'm at work). Last time I checked (when the german wikipedia chose to use the "vulva" article with a hairy "muschi" as the article of the day) there were more than a hundred closeup vagina images. No I personally don't object to that, but I think it is unnecessary. The slashdot crowd might be very... open-minded about porn, but the question is if the majority of the people who donate to the Wikimedia foundation is as well.

Re: 0.0001%?

[Nihiltres]

Commons has around 6.5 million media files.

Someone who did a run-through of one of the main categories for such images (and its subcategories) gave an estimate of around 67k sex-related images, or at least images categorized as such. Let's assume, for the sake of it, that we're only getting maybe two-thirds of our sex-related images through categorization, and guess that we have 100k such images. With that assumption, convert 0.1M/6.5M to percentage, and you get ~1.5%.

So with a relatively wild overestimate, we get a small quantity, but not a negligible one. We're looking at on the order of 1% of all images. Considering how much importance our society places on sex (whether to embrace it or to revile it), I'm surprised we don't see more.

I'm divided on the issue, though. It's easy to attack Wales as a censor, (and certainly he deserves some attack for the autocratic position he's taking) but there has been a lot of crap content uploaded to Wikimedia Commons that features nudity, and I agree that even if you support porn, there's plenty that ought to be deleted just because the quality is so low. For example, there's a template with boilerplate for telling people off for uploading penis pictures, because after receiving endless craptastic penis pictures (among, hopefully, some decent ones) there is no point in gathering more.

On the other hand, it's easy to attack porn. "Porn" is stigmatized because sexuality is so taboo in our culture. Calling a lot of the images here "porn" is misleading at best. Many of them may be sex-related, but aren't specifically "prurient" (e.g. anatomical images), and many more may be good examples under very particular educational domains, or particular subjects. The risk is that good images will be deleted, ones that do have redeeming value. But when attacking "porn", everything sounds all right, because suddenly one is taking a moral high road.

Sanger was trying to take a moral high road earlier, saying "OMG CHILD PORN" when there was nothing illegal about (certainly the FBI doesn't seem to care, so far). It's easy to attack something by labelling it as something widely reviled, because by labelling the problem as some such thing you change the focus of the argument. Anyone who says "well, is that actually porn/child porn/whatever?" can be labelled as supportive of porn/child porn/whatever, and the target is put on the defensive, because there is already a social acceptance of attacks on these things (whether that social acceptance is right or wrong—though certainly in the case of child porn it seems obviously right) and the attack merely consists of conflating the undesired idea with the target of the attack. It's fortunate that Sanger was so clumsy in his attempt, taking all-too-obvious pains to mention his (failing?) rival project and to publicize the letter, because through that we can recognize the obvious interest he has in making Wikipedia/Wikimedia out to be evil.

I'm inclined, for now, to let the campaign against "porn" on Commons go. Is it the best road? No, certainly not, because it's based on emotion, not particular objective criteria. But in the long run, an emphasis against poor-quality images portraying sex-related topics is probably a good thing: high-quality images should be preferred, and a strict limit lets the project take its own moral high ground against these sorts of "OMG PORN KILL IT WITH FIRE" discussions. Even if there's a huge purge today, there's always the potential to re-upload this stuff if it's worth the effort.

I don't want to take a particular stand either way on the definition of porn or whether it should be around, but what I urge is a rational consideration of the merits of either approach, without giving so much credence to purely emotive (or moralistic) arguments.

If there's any point I'd like to end with, it's that no solution will satisfy everyone. There will always be the purists who think that all porn is evil, and on the other side the purists who want to avoid all censorship, and every number of points of middle ground.

Disclosure: I'm a volunteer admin on Wikipedia (but *not* on Wikimedia Commons).

Re: 0.0001%?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is a naked vulva pornography, though?

Put another way: would it be OK to have one or two pictures of naked vulvas? If yes, then they're obviously not pornographic; and if they aren't, there's no reason why the other ones should be. One could say that Commons still doesn't NEED 100 pictures of naked vulvas, but that's a different issue entirely.

Of course, you could say no, it's not OK to have even one or two pictures of naked vulvas, but I think there's a consensus that a neutral picture illustrating human anatomy is a) not pornographic and b) encyclopedic (which might or might not be a criterion for Commons, but still).

Wales has got a point when he points to 18 USC 2257 record-keeping requirements; these are legal obligations that the WMF would have to meet in order to host certain pictures, and it's understandable that they don't want to (and, most likely, couldn't even if they did). But beyond that, if a picture has educational value of some sort (and I'd set the bar very low there!), it should be acceptable.

(There's some finer points still: for example, uploading 100 snapshots all showing the same scene and taken over the course of 5 minutes with hardly any variation would obviously be unnecessary. Similarly, as above, if you have a dozen pictures of the same thing, you might not need many more, unless the new ones bring something new to the table - higher artistic merit, for example. But there's a big difference between "none of this" and "not too much of this", and the latter would equally apply to all pictures, anyway.)

Re: 0.0001%?

[clone53421]

Put another way: would it be OK to have one or two pictures of naked vulvas? If yes, then they're obviously not pornographic; and if they aren't, there's no reason why the other ones should be. One could say that Commons still doesn't NEED 100 pictures of naked vulvas, but that's a different issue entirely.

No, it isn’t a different issue entirely. It’s precisely the same issue.

Having one picture might be educational; a second picture may or may not add educational value not already contained in the first picture. Do the other 99 pictures actually add any more educational value? If they don’t add any more educational value, then yes; they are porn: “images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests”.

Re: 0.0001%?

[ChienAndalu]

Just look at the images (highly NSFW) and count how many "neutrally illustrate the human anatomy". I mean, one file is named "Me and my chucks". Come on.

Oxymoron?

[Mikkeles]

... unnecessary porn ...

Time to brush up on your browsing skills then

[axl917]

While this user's wiki-commons userpage;

http://www.webcitation.org/5pWirbCuy

was deleted only a few days ago, much if not all of the linked images still reside in the Commons.

First the Irish, now the Welsh

[G3ckoG33k]

;)

Porn with no educational value is already verboten

[Explodicle]

It's not an encyclopedia. Wales is discussing Wikimedia Commons, a related but seperate project from Wikipedia. They've already got a whole team of people who debate over what is acceptable or not at Commons:Deletion requests. This isn't about what should or should not be included - porn with no informative purpose is already subject to deletion. What Wales is calling for is a greater effort to reduce them.

Jimbo is only motivated to act

[axl917]

via outside pressure. This is an effort to save face, not to actually clean anything up.

SLAPS rationales for risk-aware kink photos

[tepples]

For someone who's looking for information on how to safely practice bondage or erotic asphyxiation, the pictures might be of high educational value. Might even save a life.

Legal tests such as fair use and SLAPS have a strong element of weighing one value against another in court on a case-by-case basis. But fortunately, MediaWiki sites have file description pages, which are a convenient way to collect rationales to help an image pass these judgments. Say you have some images intended to document methods of risk-aware kink. Each image's description page should declare for what articles it is intended, much like non-free images on Wikipedia already do.

May 2010

[Explodicle]

Nopenis.svg

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Wikimedia Commons, a non-profit media repository with the primary scope of providing educational and informative images and media. Submissions that are low quality or do not fall into Commons' scope may be subject to deletion. One or more of your recent contributions has been identified by another Commons user as a possible image not in Commons' scope. Commons has guidelines on nudity, as a result of already having a large number of photos of genitalia, specifically the male reproductive system and the penis. If you have objections to the proposed deletion of your image(s), please see the links to the relevant deletion discussion(s) (listed above or below this message box). This message is not intended to be taken personally. Thank you for your understanding. --Explodicle


This is a real warning people get for uploading too much cock onto Commons.

Re:May 2010

[discord5]

This is a real warning people get for uploading too much cock onto Commons.

Hahaha... oh wow... For some reason, having a template letter for when people upload too much genitalia seems like a whole new level of bureaucracy. Please don't mistake this for a troll or flamebait, but as an outsider to the whole editing wikipedia thing, it's hilarious in a very immature way.

You see, for this template to exist, it must mean that on a regular basis there's gigabytes of penis.jpg being uploaded. It also means, that there's several editors constantly removing aforementioned penis.jpg, and when the uploader wishes to discuss the removal of their upload, someone is bound to discuss why it needs to be removed.

Thanks for this. For some immature and juvenile reason, this just made my day.

Re:May 2010

[Carnildo]

There are a surprising number of people who think that the best contribution they can make is to take a low-quality snapshot of their penis and upload it to Commons.

Re:May 2010

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha... oh wow... For some reason, having a template letter for when people upload too much genitalia seems like a whole new level of bureaucracy.

Templates are there to save time. Even if they only use it once a week it is still a time-saver. Do you really think the admins should waste time retyping the same thing over and over again?

Two great tastes that taste great together!

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! How could I not know there was porn on Wikipedia? My two favorite things online, together at last!!!!

Re:What a world we live in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in America can people who entered the country illegally march in the streets and make demands of actual citizens!

Psst-that's only been happening for last, oh, 230 years. Or did you think all the illegals came from Mexico and only started showing up last week?

Jobsization of the IT world?!

[Kensai7]

First Jobs doesn't want porn on the iPhone. Now Wales doesn't want it on Wikipedia. What's wrong with these guys?!

Porn makes the world go round... it's a legal business like all others. If you care about kids not seeing it, fine, there are already mechanisms such as ratings and age requirements. The same we use for violent content, blood, etc.

"as long as it's legal"

[Pinky's Brain]

How can you use a rule like that for social power games? Deletionism with byzantine rules and procedures are what makes all of Wales projects so great ... you have to look beneath the surface, they are designed to be social MMOs first and foremost.

Re:"as long as it's legal"

[mdwh2]

Does deletionism happen on Wikimedia Commons? I was, after all, asking a question - "I'm not sure they currently have any restrictions as to the kind of image hosted"?

"Wales", "wheel war" and other terms

[brindafella]

It is not COMPLETELY obvious from the title of the SlashDot entry "Wales Supports Purging Porn From Wikipedia, so....

By the way, "Wales" does not refer to the semi-independent jurisdicdiction of the United Kingdom of Wales, a country that is part of the United Kingdom, bordered by England to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west... but to "Jimmy Wales", a founder of Wikipedia.

"Wheel" refers to the term otherwhise known as "a big big wheel" (an important person). Hence, see "wheel war", a 'strong discussion' between "wheels".

Slippery Slope

[captor.tn]

'Wikimedia Commons admins who wish to remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests have my full support.'

"THEY CAME FIRST for the images,
and I didn't speak up because images of non-prurient information are of debatable public interest in an encyclopedia.

THEN THEY CAME for the risque subject matter,
and I didn't speak up because risque subject matter of non-prurient information is of debatable public interest in an encyclopedia.

THEN THEY CAME for the less debatable subject matter,
and I didn't speak up because less debatable subject matter of non-prurient information is of debatable public interest in an encyclopedia.

THEN THEY CAME for ---"

Re:Slippery Slope

[Nihiltres]

All subjects are equally debatable, but some subjects are more equally debatable than others. :)

Re:What a world we live in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, isn't it terrible that in America even the non-citizens have rights too. What a travesty of social rights.

Jimbo just wants to move this content...

[seandiggity]

...to his future website, wikipedia.xxx

Wrong Wales

[harlows_monkeys]

When I saw the headline, I thought it was about Welsh porn, and figured they just wanted to save resources. A list of Welsh porn would take up way too much space, with titles like "Goleuddydd does Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch".

Re:What a world we live in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Like many liberals, you make a category mistake in your argument. You mistakenly postulate that basic human rights and the rights of US citizens overlap 100%, when in fact they do not. You do not have the right to break the laws of the land to come here, and then demand that I support you financially. That is reality. Accept it.

The issue should be content not personality.

[slashsloth]

Okay, apparently everybody hates this Wales guy. At last we agree on something here :o) Seriously the original issue was whether porn has any place on wikipedia. I don't believe it does (& I like porn at least as much as the next guy). Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, isn't it? Do you usually find (what most sane-ish people would deem to be) porn in an encyclopedia? I shouldn't have thought so & I'd have hoped not. It's not as if we are talking about banning porn entirely; the point is to remove it from wikipedia, just like anything else that doesn't serve its objectives of bringing useful information to people should be removed from wikipedia.

Corps with guns

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I'm not going to waste most of a workday formulating a beautiful post with specific, cited examples that are exactly on point.

However, it's my impression that the whole "corps with guns" thing has been done on many occasions in the past. Pinkertons shooting union organizers. Pantex forcing a judge to review documents only under armed company guard and then taking the documents away. Those are just the first two to leap to mind.

I doubt it would take much work to research a fairly lengthy article about how, in certain times and places, corporations have acted like they were the law and used forced on the public, all without reprisal.

Pokemon

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

They've already purged Pokemon from Wikipedia, so why not porn?

Re:What a world we live in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Psst - maybe you'd care to educate yourself to the reality of life close to the US - Mexico border, instead of desperately clinging to your politically-sanctioned opinions from the safety of whatever backwards liberal enclave you inhabit:

Arizona State Senator Explains Anti-Illegal Bill

I'm Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen. I want to explain SB 1070 which I voted for and was just signed by Governor Jan Brewer.

Rancher Rob Krantz was murdered by the drug cartel on his ranch a month ago. I participated in a senate hearing two weeks ago on the border violence, here is just some of the highlights from those who testified.

The people who live within 60 to 80 miles of the Arizona/Mexico Border have for years been terrorized and have pleaded for help to stop the daily invasion of humans who cross their property . One Rancher testified that 300 to 1200 people a DAY come across his ranch vandalizing his property, stealing his vehicles and property, cutting down his fences, and leaving trash. In the last
two years he has found 17 dead bodies and two Koran bibles.

Another rancher testified that daily drugs are brought across his ranch in a military operation. A point man with a machine gun goes in front, 1/2 mile behind are the guards fully armed, 1/2 mile behind them are the drugs, behind the drugs 1/2 mile are more guards. These people are violent and they will kill anyone who gets in the way. This was not the only rancher we heard that day that talked about the drug trains.

One man told of two illegal's who came upon his property one shot in the back and the other in the arm by the drug runners who had forced them to carry the drugs and then shot them. Daily they listen to gun fire during the night it is not safe to leave his family alone on the ranch and they can't leave the ranch for fear of nothing being left when they come back.

The border patrol is not on the border. They have set up 60 miles away with check points that do nothing to stop the invasion. They are not allowed to use force in stopping anyone who is entering. They run around chasing them, if they get their hands on them then they can take them back across the border.

Federal prisons have over 35% illegal's and 20% of Arizona prisons are filled with illegals. In the last few years 80% of our law enforcement that have been killed or wounded have been by an illegal.

The majority of people coming now are people we need to be worried about. The ranchers told us that they have seen a change in the people coming they are not just those who are looking for work and a better life.

The Federal Government has refused for years to do anything to help the border states . We have been over run and once they are here we have the burden of funding state services that they use. Education cost have been over a billion dollars. The healthcare cost billions of dollars. Our State is broke, $3.5 billion deficit and we have many serious decisions to make. One is that we do not have the money to care for any who are not here legally. It has to stop.
The border can be secured. We have the technology we have the ability to stop this invasion. We must know who is coming and they must come in an organized manner legally so that we can assimilate them into our population and protect the sovereignty of our country. We are a nation of laws. We have a responsibility to protect our citizens and to protect the integrity of our country and the government which we live under.

I would give amnesty today to many, but here is the problem, we dare not do this until the Border is secure. It will do no good to forgive them because thousands will come behind them and we will be over run to the point that there will no longer be the United States of America but a North American Union of open borders.

Re:Porn with no educational value is already verbo

[makomk]

Except that Wikipedia uses images from Wikimedia Commons, including some of the pornographic images that have now been deleted. (Funnily enough, human sexuality is an interesting and worthwhile topic for articles.)

Oh No!

[Anonymous Coward]

What will I do at work?

Re:Porn with no educational value is already verbo

[Explodicle]

One can upload images directly to Wikipedia when they pass Wikipedia standards but not Commons standards. This is most frequently done with fair use images, which are not allowed on Commons. Which Wikipedia articles did you see that had lost informative images? I'll tag them for new ones that pass the no-porn requirement.

Anal masturbation on Wikipedia

[Pfhorrest]

(And before you say that this only applies to WMF, not WP, keep in mind that they are the same entity! It won't be long before this policy trickles over into the various language WPs.)

It's already happening. You can't see the image that was deleted in that edit, even in the history, because it was hosted on the Commons and was deleted from there "per discussion on Commons -- new Wales policy". It was a shot of a woman inserting a pink dildo in her ass. This article came to my attention just earlier this week, actually, when someone I was chatting with came across it and linked me (a regular wikipedian) with surprised comments about how this sort of stuff can be on Wikipedia and how long might it take for someone to remove it. I cited WP:CENSOR back at him as evidence that there was no policy reason it would be removed any time soon. Guess I was wrong...

And then it starts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, I didn't know there was any porn on Wikipedia. But if Wales is going to encourage selective deletion of articles, then the rot truly has set in. There is plenty of stuff in Wikipedia I don't like, but so long as it is accurate and balanced (in so much as that is possible) I vote it should stay in.

I want to be the judge of what I read, and what I see. I don't want Wales or any other control freak deciding on my behalf.

2 words:

[sourcerror]

Blackwater Worldwide

Re:Porn with no educational value is already verbo

[makomk]

Lost track - it keeps changing so rapidly. Besides, if Jimmy Wales hands down decrees like this it won't matter if the images are on Commons or Wikipedia proper.

Re:Porn with no educational value is already verbo

[Explodicle]

I'm absolutely certain I can get informative and relevant images to stay on Wikipedia; Wales was speaking out against porn with no value to Wikimedia projects. If you later find one of these articles, let me know.

Re:Porn with no educational value is already verbo

[makomk]

Wales was the one deleting the images in question. He's also been deleting paintings by artists with enwiki pages that he deems to be porn rather than art.

Re:Porn with no educational value is already verbo

[Explodicle]

Looks like someone fixed that one already. Please let me know if you see any other bad deletions, though.

Jimbo might lose his bits over this

[stupido]

Over 200 votes to remove his founder bit, which gives him sysop powers no all wikis, and only about a third are opposing that. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag

Faux News is pleased now

[stupido]

They have a new story in which they congratulate themselves over getting Jimbo to act on their behest. Jimbo basically admits he planned this as PR stunt to remove the pressure from him: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057896.html Mike Godwin seems to agree to that strategy: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057936.html

Re:Porn with no educational value is already verbo

[makomk]

Yeah, that one Jimbo Wales didn't wheel-war over, presumably because he didn't notice. He did with some of the paintings. It appears that some of the images have also been oversighted