What Should We Do About Wikipedia's Porn Problem?

Larry Sanger writes "In 2011, the Wikimedia Board committed to installing a 'controversial content' filter even weaker than Google's SafeSearch, as proposed by the '2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content.' Since then, after growing opposition by some Wikipedians, some board members have made it clear that they do not expect this filter to be finished and installed. Nevertheless, Wikipedia continues to host an enormous amount of extremely gross porn and other material most parents don't want their kids stumbling across. And this content is some of the website's most-accessed. Nevertheless, children remain some of Wikipedia's heaviest users. Jimmy Wales has recently reiterated his support for such a filter, but no work is being done on it, and the Foundation has not yet issued any statement about whether they intend to continue work on it." (In case it isn't obvious from the headline and summary, these articles discuss subject matter that may not be appropriate for workplace reading.)

Comments

Not a problem

[Hatta]

I've never seen porn on Wikipedia, because I've never looked for it. The fact that the porn is more highly accessed than other types of content indicates that we're not talking about accidental encounters. I don't see what the problem is.

Re:Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying if I go to wikipedia and search for anal intercourse artwork i might find some? what a disgrace!

Re:Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

How many mass graves, lynchings, executions, etc., have you seen on Wikipedia? Porn has never hurt a single person, while the violent images on Wikipedia could actually cause psychological damage (and make you realize that humanity really fucking sucks).

But we have to filter the pr0n! Think of the children!

Re:Not a problem

[Hatta]

And it's not like purposeful access is particularly good for kids either.

What evidence is there that porn is bad for children?

Part of the problem is that it is actually illegal in some areas for schools to allow access to Wikipedia.

That's not Wikipedia's fault. Let the ignorant savages remain ignorant savages if that's what they want.

some Wikipedians don't understand the difference between censorship and a filtering setting that can be changed.

I don't understand the difference either. The mere existence of a filter has a chilling effect on certain kinds of content. That's censorship.

Re:Not a problem

[LateArthurDent]

Part of the problem is that it is actually illegal in some areas for schools to allow access to Wikipedia.

That is indeed a problem. A problem we need to fix with our puritanical society.

I'm sure kids stumble across stuff there.

From what I've been able to tell, it's not exactly about "stumbling" as it is, "this is relevant to the topic of the page." If you're searching for topics on anatomy, for example, pictures are appropriate. The fact that a picture of say, an eye, is appropriate and pictures of genitals are not is a problem with our culture, not wikipedia. It's all just normal human anatomy.

Same goes for other topics that are not considered appropriate. If you're old enough to know to search for it, you're old enough to find out about it. If your parents didn't prepare you for it by the time that you're curious about it, they've fucked up. Talk to your kids early and often, or they're going to find the information before you've had a chance to give them your moral views on the topic at hand.

Re:Not a problem

[Hatta]

The mere existence of a filter has a chilling effect on certain kinds of content. Let's use your line: What evidence is there for that?

Observe the MPAA ratings system. Voluntary ratings system, nothing is censored, only categorized. Still, this affects the kind of content we see, and movies regularly self-censor to get a lower rating.

Re:Not a problem

[doston]

Um, what? A lot of porn involves violence, in case you didn't know.

"A lot". Got statistics on that? What part is violent? The multiple interracial gang bangs, or hard nipple tweaking? Is that violence? Is a huge cock stuffed into a small Asian woman too violent? Should legislate a ban on double anal? After all, it looks terribly uncomfortable...violent even. I guess we'd also have to define what "violent" in porn actually is. Is it all just violent because it's not on the wedding night and missionary position? Maybe we should ban sex outside marriage. This should definitely be legislated and there should be a massive witch hunt on Wiki, too.

Re:Not a problem

[arth1]

It's a useful educational resource and it would be sad to see it banned just because some Wikipedians don't understand the difference between censorship and a filtering setting that can be changed.

I don't understand the difference either. If someone wants filtering, let them add it on their end, else it is censorship and bigotry too -- applying your own mores to change other people's experience. Flip the switch on your side of the connection.

It's like ranting about a family restaurant listing beer and wine on their menu. You don't have to order it. The main difference is that unlike sex, alcohol has been shown to be harmful.

If a kid hits puberty without knowing anything about sex but knows everything about murder, I'd say the parents belong in jail.

Re:Not a problem

[Hatta]

Ok, then explain it to me. Explain to me why you are a better judge of what I should see than I am. Then explain to me why the same argument doesn't apply with our positions reversed.

I am absolutely unaware of any benefits censorship yields. I have never learned anything and thought, "gee, I wish they would have censored that". The only valid response to information you don't like is to counter it with your own information. Anything else and you are a tyrant.

Re:Not a problem

[Hatta]

As for being in prison, my only guess is that you think watching porn makes children rapists or something, because otherwise I don't see how that leads them to prison.

To be fair to the GP post, he was suggesting that I should show porn to my kids. That would result in me going to prison, and presumably since I'm such a terrible parent, that would result in my children being better off, ironically proving the point that porn can be beneficial to children.

It was almost clever and funny, if it weren't so wrong headed.

Note that I never claimed that porn was good for children, nor did I claim that porn was not bad for children. I've simply never seen any evidence that passive exposure to porn, or active curiosity about porn, causes any sort of problem for children of any age. If it's so obvious that porn is bad for kids, there should be plenty of evidence, right? So where is it?

For the record, I have no children, and will never have any children. But if I did, porn would be way, way down on my list of concerns. Exposure to puritanical conservativism would be a much, much bigger concern. But in either case I would not react with censorship, but providing context where needed.

My suspicion is that prohibition without evidence of harm causes far more harm than any of the things that get prohibited. But I don't have any evidence for that.

Re:Not a problem

[Dishevel]

Or maybe as with almost everything people should shut the fuck up and not look at what they do not want to see.

Re:Not a problem

[dkleinsc]

I guess you'd be OK with say your 5 or 8 or 10 year-old child looking at porn, then?

Sure, I'm OK with that.

1. S/he is going to be acting more out of curiousity than sexual interest (kids that age have sexual interest, but nowhere near as much as s/he will when their 13). When young kids see something sexual, the tendency is to get bored with it really quickly.
2. By taking the mystery away, I'm reducing the chance that s/he'll experiment unsafely when their 12 or 13.
3. It can be a "teachable moment" where I can explain the difference between the fantasy of banging Megan Fox and the reality of an actual relationship with Megan next door.
4. The average child in the world sees a boob within the first hour of their existence. Children generally will see people of the opposite sex nude at least a few times before entering first grade. And they will likely know the basics of what body part goes where by the time they're about 10.
5. Historically, most kids were conceived in 1-room homes that the parents shared with the new kid's elder siblings. Plus most kids were raised on farms, so they would have seen animals going at it quite a few times as well.
6. Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't either. (In other words, every single generation has figured it out, there's no reason to think the next one won't.)

About the only areas of most porn that are really going to cause problems long-term are that porn doesn't typically demonstrate the use of birth control.

Re:Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I am absolutely unaware of any benefits censorship yields. I have never learned anything and thought, "gee, I wish they would have censored that".

goatse?

On a more serious note, self-censorship or 'censorship' configured by the user (ie. you) can be a good thing. Similarly, self-censorship is generally good, if it chosen by the author. For example, I currently do not accuse you of being ignorant because I would consider this rude. If I write a scientific paper, I only include those things that I can make a strong case for and that I feel are important to the field; again, a very useful piece of self-censorship. If I would be a facebook user, and I'd have pictures from a party, I might choose to exclude those pictures where people are excessively drinking to protect them; another example of censorship being good.

To summarise, censorship is a good thing, as long as it is by choice; "I don't want to see this" or "I don't think this should be public".

Re:Not a problem

[lgw]

There is one benefit, however. Judging by the horribly embarrassing percentage of America that is obese or otherwise unsuitable for being seen naked, I am actually more comfortable with how we do things over here.

If public nudity were more accepted here, I bet the obesity problem would be significantly reduced! At least, it would do more to help than New York city banning soft drinks larger than 16oz will do.

Re:Not a problem

[Hatta]

I also think it can be used to establish healthy normative behaviors within a community.

No, it can't. Healthy normative behavior is well informed, censorship can only create ignorance.

What happens when the line between entertainment or health curiosity is blurred with the accepted abuse of another gender or race?

You counter it with healthy positive messages. See what's been happening with gay rights recently. You don't need to censor Baptist activists, you just need to expose the nastiness of their message and let nature take its course. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Re:Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

sustained viewing pornography tends to result in reduced desire to form monogamous relationships

So do sustained monogamous relationships.

Re:Not a problem

[citylivin]

"I have never learned anything and thought, "gee, I wish they would have censored that""

What about showing rape porn to an 8 year old?

This is why i use openDNS on my kids computer. You do realize children are not capable of making their own decisions 100% of the time right? You do realize that some things should be censored from kids so that they can have a childhood right?

I dislike your absolute that "all censorhsip is evil". You will change your mind as soon as you have kids and see how helpless they are in the face of advertising and porn. They don't know what to make of it. Sure you can sit down and explain it, sometimes over and over, but there is no guarantee they will understand. Then when they start acting out in society, who gets the blame do you think? The parents of course!! That is who let them access this filthy stuff. Is it wikipedias fault, or my fault? Either way I want to try and manage that, since its my fucking kids and i am responsible! So I will filter my childrens net access.

You should try and be a bit more open minded, not just "censorship is the bad always for ALL cases". This is reality. Not some first year philosophy class. You kinda need to have gone through it with kids to be able to understand i think.

Re:Not a problem

[JanneM]

This is why i use openDNS on my kids computer. You do realize children are not capable of making their own decisions 100% of the time right? You do realize that some things should be censored from kids so that they can have a childhood right?

I agree. And that is your responsibility as a parent. But I do not agree that the world at large should be barred from certain subject matters simply because your child should not see it.

Re:Not a problem

[tobiasly]

Wow didnt know that Jesus loved anal sex with women...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anal_Intercourse_Artwork.jpg

I wonder if this qualifies as just "regular" porn or "extremely gross" porn?

Re:Not a problem

[Pseudonym]

All of your points (with the possible exception of #3) implicitly assume that porn is sex. It isn't, as anyone who has actually had sex can tell you.

My kids (all under the age of 13) know about sex. They know that their parents have sex. They've seen pictures of childbirth. I let them watch The Big Bang Theory, where it's mentioned and even implied all the time. They've been to art galleries regularly since they were 2, where there's plenty of nudity.

I don't have a problem with sex and nudity. The problem with porn is that it's not sex. It's not that it's too explicit, it's that it's not nearly explicit enough. It invariably contains no emotion, nothing about relationships, nothing about negotiation... it leaves out everything that's good about sex beyond the purely mechanical. And that's leaving aside the the fact that it compounds existing dysfunctions in our society like body image dysmorphia.

There's a lot of emerging evidence that young adults who watched a lot of porn have problems with intimate relationships. It makes intuitive sense when you think about it, like how exclusively using Visual Basic teaches you bad programming habits, or eating a diet of junk food gives you bad dietary habits and can even permanently affect your physiology.

That there exists "good" porn is beside the point. The vast majority of it is bad for a developing brain. They would be far better off with trashy erotic romance novels than they would be with porn, because at least they contain some actual emotional content.

Anecdote: My daughter (when she was eight) and I were passing an "adult shop". She asked what it was. I thought about it for a moment and said: You know the annoying boys at your school who tell dumb, unfunny, stupid jokes? It's like that, only sex.

Re:Not a problem

[fredprado]

It exists and it can be shown and explained as the oddity it is. Children are not stupid. Age rating for any knowledge is a reflection of our misguided overprotective culture. There is nothing evil or traumatic in knowledge as long as the proper context is offered, and if you only try you will find out that children's minds are far more resilient than you think, and far less filled of prejudice than yours.

Re:Not a problem

[Austerity Empowers]

I've been using Wikipedia for years and I've never seen any porn. Can somebody help a brother out?

I never have either, I mean there were some anatomy pictures when you look up topics of certain parts of the anatomy, but I expect those pictures to be there (and they were in my old fashioned dead tree encyclopedia as a kid). But if you know enough to look up "convent pornography" then you have obviously been exposed to what pornography is, and you're just fishing for material at this point (and boy, are you fishing in a really shallow, really murky pool).

Anyway, I don't feel for Mr. Sanger's plight, and I'm a father of two. I think I can keep the kids out of the smut until they're 8 or 9, but I saw my first porno rag long before that (and long before the internet), and I lived through it, somehow.

Re:Not a problem

[Altrag]

As a parent I am rather insistent that I am a better judge than my 7 year old of what he should see.

One would hope that's the case at least.

I would like a filter flag that allows me to ensure my kids are not exposed to gratuitous violence and/or pornography

So you're shirking the responsibility you just claimed. You're essentially making the claim that Wikipedia's filter is a better judge of what your child should see than either him or yourself.

I would like him to be able to access Wikipedia unsupervised

And there's the meat of it. You want to give your kid the internet, but you don't trust him (rightfully so) to judge content.. but you also can't be bothered to do it yourself. So you want everyone else on the internet to spend their time and resources essentially babysitting your kid for you.

If you want your kid to be safe on the internet, then monitor his usage, just as you would (hopefully) monitor him in any other public setting.

Re:So?

[Sigma 7]

Kids are easily f*cked up. If your response to that is "So?", then you might be a sociopath.

Kids are already f*cked up because they are placed in environments that f*ck them up.

They aren't going to receive a lifelong emotional trauma just by looking at some genitalia. In fact, there's more serious threats to their emotional well being, including misapplication of religion, improper/incomplete education, or an unsafe physical environment.

Once those problems have been solved in a general case, you can then worry about Wikipedia.

Porn is a red herring...

[fsmunoz]

extremely gross porn

I remember voting against a filter some time ago. One of the reasons was that "extremely gross porn" is not something consensual. A picture of a naked women having a baby, is it "gross porn"? Many would actively deem it so. Which is why this whole thing sounds to much like a first step towards self-censorship in the name of cultural relativism. Who will define what is porn and what is relevant?

Mind you, this different approach is valid between Europeans and North-Americans, let alone when talking about... others. Why not also consider additional content as "extremely gross"? Once it is done for "porn", whatever that means, the door is opened for everything else.

My position is not that porn should be in wikipedia. But images that are relevant to an article should be maintained if there is an agreement that they add value to it. Porn is but a red herring used to get the foot in the door.

Slippery slope

[rhysweatherley]

Porn problem? What about Wikipedia's bomb problem? Enough information about chemistry and physics to build your own homemade bomb. Depending upon your budget, everything from firecrackers and pipe bombs to nuclear weapons. What about Wikipedia's computer security problem? Blow by blow descriptions of common computer vulnerabilities and how they can be exploited.

And so on.

We've been down this road before with the debates over the Anarchist's Cookbook and hacking manuals. Banning, or labelling, or whatever serves no purpose except to enable government censors to make up excuses to block other information. And look - you gave them a nice little filtering system to help them do exactly that!

Of course Wikipedia needs to tread softly - they are the repository of the world's knowledge and anything that reduces access to knowledge is against its charter. Make the descriptions of various porn acts more clinical and less explicit, perhaps. But that won't stop the "think of the children!" crowd.

Re:links

[aquabat]

Got any links to Wikipedia proper? Or do we consider sister sites under the Wikimedia Foundation all together for this discussion? (I read the summary as referencing only Wikipedia).

Browser filters, not site filters

[MobyDisk]

There is an easy reliable technological solution to this that has been around for 10 years, but no one uses it. There is a W3C standard for labeling pages as containing porn, violence, etc. Internet Explorer had support for blocking pages based on this as far back as IE5. But no one put the meta tags in and so the filters never worked. All Wikipedia should do is have contributors properly label the media, and allow the browsers to handle it based on the user's preferences.

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do anti-porn crusaders spend so much time searching for porn, only to be offended when they find that which they seek. I don't run into random porn very often. I don't see what the issue is.