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

[Soilworker]

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

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

Re:Not a problem

[chicago_scott]

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

Re:Not a problem

[YodasEvilTwin]

The higher rate implies the extra views are not due to accidents, but it says absolutely nothing about the actual number of accidental views. I'm sure kids stumble across stuff there. (And it's not like purposeful access is particularly good for kids either.) Part of the problem is that it is actually illegal in some areas for schools to allow access to Wikipedia. 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.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

The craziest thing about that is how long they had to hold the pose for the painter.

Re:Not a problem

[YodasEvilTwin]

Sorry, that should be illegal to allow access to sites that don't filter porn, which currently includes Wikipedia.

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

[cheekyjohnson]

Porn turns children into rapists. Much like video games turn them into murderers.

Re:Not a problem

[ThatsMyNick]

Search for forefinger (obviously NSFW) and find porn.

Re:Not a problem

[Githaron]

Good or bad. If people are spamming the site with it, it is still a nuisance.

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

[neoshroom]

Don't blame me. You asked for it!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dede_Cucumber_0433.jpg

It's less on Wikipedia itself and more in the images that people upload to Wikipedia that can be accessed through certain searches. The problem is some of the searches, like "cucumber" in this case, are innocuous at face value.

Re:Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it was just my area as a kid, but porn was the holy grail from 1st grade to 6th. Almost nobody knew what sex was, those that did primarily used euphemisms and the number of people who had sloppy parents/uncles/siblings leaving porn around were few and far between.

Plus porn totally saved me from hooking up with some girl and making a mistake or two, so I'd say overall it's been a net plus for society! :D

Seriously the shit people get bent out of shape over is slowly making me think we should reinvigorate american industry the old fashioned way: Pharmaceuticals for mental health problems.

Not that anybody could afford them at current prices :D

Eww, captcha was 'monogamy'.

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

[thesameguy]

Are you kidding me? When I was a kid my porn didn't require electricity, was reasonably water resistant and completely shock proof because it was on paper. There was *always* a guy at the convenience store who would sell to minors and there was 'always* some kid with a father or brother who wouldn't miss a Hustler or two so it's not like it was tough to get. And yet, somehow, despite being completely portable and usable anywhere my parents managed to do a reasonably good job of keeping it out of my hands. Are you telling me that in 2012 where porn requires electricity to power the screen and some sort of subscription (like an ISP) to get to it, the job is now somehow more difficult? We used to have to run out to the farthest reaches of the baseball field to crowd around Sexual Fantasy and they still found us. You're saying sitting in the library at school is somehow stealthier? The reason why Wikipedia is a problem is because modern parents think the internet is like TV and a perfectly good baby sitter as long as you don't subscribe to the premium channels. Turns out that just because both technologies show up on a screen, they aren't actually the same. Just like the library was 30 years ago when kids could look up foul words in the Oxford Dictionary or sex in romance novels or violence in World Book, the internet requires guidance and oversight by parents and other authority figures. I gained an amazing vocabulary of dirty words and depraved acts from printed material when I was a kid, but I didn't know how to properly apply them til my dad taught me.

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

[doston]

Good or bad. If people are spamming the site with it, it is still a nuisance.

A nuisance for whom? I'm on wiki several times per day and have never run across it. I wasn't on Wikipedia searching for interracial gang bang with double penetration. I guess if the kids decide to search for "massive black cock". they might find it. Well, let me see. I'll do a wiki search for that and see what comes up. OK here's the result. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahma_(chicken) What a scandal.

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

[tqk]

Good or bad. If people are spamming the site with it, it is still a nuisance.

From what I've seen so far, a fair number of Wikipedians don't consider it spam.

Re:Not a problem

[ToastedRhino]

While that might be true, most MPAA-rated movies are made for profit and therefore need to reach as wide an audience as possible. And, wouldn't you know it, most theaters wont play films mot rated by the MPAA. Wikipedia doesn't have that problem.

Also, are you unaware of these things called "pornographic films?" I hear they're rather popular.

If this proposed filter was opt-out or mandatory I'd agree with the sentiment you seem to be trying to defend, but it's not. It's a tool adults can use at their discretion to help keep kids from seeing sexually explicit material. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Not a problem

[tqk]

Listen to you, same old "durr, porn's not bad for kids!" nonsense.

Listen to you, in the same camp as those horrified about a bit of female nipple shown on network TV. Ever noticed that pretty much all humans have a couple? Wanna outlaw mirrors now?

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

[JonySuede]

at started looking at porn at 10, I am rightfully employed and technically married with regard to the law based on how long we have resided together*1, I am happier than the average as long as my generalized anxiety*2 is under medical control, I do not plan to have kids but it is unrelated to my porn watching habits, I have friends and I am generally a well adjusted adult*3 .

So unless you have peer reviewed data on the effect of porn on kids mental development, it is as preposterous to suppose that porn harm child than it is to suppose that it does not. If you have please reply with a link.

On a tangentially related subject, here is my definition of common sense:
A set of culturally dependent heuristics that enable one to make a quick socially acceptable decision that is usually sub-optimal or completely wrong when you evaluate it using statistics and formal logic...

1- 6 years and 8 month and we both do not give a fuck about marriage , neither do I have to hide when I watch porn.
2- That started way before I started looking at porn, as I remember starting stealing antihistamine in my father medicine cabinet for the calm it brought me at about 5.
3- Except when I post to slashdot ;)

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

[wattersa]

It's called the Puritan Heritage. Sad but true: check this brief summary out.

Europe will never get it; it's too ingrained in American culture that violence is OK but sex is not.

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.

I especially don't like the "whores in windows" in Amsterdam, although prostitution is legal in a small part of the U.S. so I can't really complain about it being legal over there. Sex toys in windows, more of a gray area. I'd rather not see them but that's just my opinion.

Re:Not a problem

[couchslug]

Your post was all insults, perfectly representing the thought processes of censorship advocates.

Thank you for representing your base so very, very, very well.

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

[cheekyjohnson]

There are some studies you just can't do.

Then perhaps people shouldn't go around spouting such things as facts, and possibly trying to get laws passed? If they have no evidence, then I believe what they think is worthless. Seeing nudity and sex as a child never hurt me. So, anecdotally, I've seen no evidence of any such thing being true.

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

[quax]

Do you have children?

I won't explain to you why I am a better judge of what you should see than yourself, because I am not.

You, I assume, are an adult but not a parent.

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

He can spell and he can surf the web. I would like him to be able to access Wikipedia unsupervised, but at this time I don't see any reason why he should be allowed to stumble on pictures of sexual practices like fisting or ball torture.

I couldn't care less about what you get to see, but I would like a filter flag that allows me to ensure my kids are not exposed to gratuitous violence and/or pornography until they are mature enough to deal with it.

To me it seems almost intentionally obtuse to not understand the use case for this.

Re:Not a problem

[lightknight]

Yes, with the 'War on Porn' achieving results comparable to that of both the 'War on Drugs' and our legislature's ability to stay within a set budget. ;-)

Re:Not a problem

[lightknight]

"My definition of childhood includes a period of innocence, or a freedom from some knowledge that's usually difficult for people to make sense of." -> And as when I was younger, I fail understand what could possibly be so difficult about sex. It requires, at best, 30-60 minutes to explain that we are a species with two genders, and that it's the matching of one gender with the other, under the appropriate circumstances, that results in more of the species being made. Now, I concede, that teaching people how to actually have really enjoyable sex requires more instruction, but I digress, it's hard to know when there is too much here or too little.

"Why burden a child with something that many adults can't bear?" -> Umm, hello? 99% of all human males have masturbated by age 20. For the male gender, sex is like getting your driver's permit; not having any would be considered an 'alternate' lifestyle.' While the number of human females have masturbated by age 20 is lower, it is still an appreciable majority of them. As such, any adult that cannot bear to discuss sex, let alone have some, would find themselves in the 1% of humanity, which depending on your system of beliefs, would be a badge of honor or shame.

If you went to a standard high-school right now, or even a middle-school, the quality of information that the kids possess about sex, if questioned, would radically change your world view. Perhaps it's best to give kids the choice to decide whether or not they are 'mature' enough to learn about sex?

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

[Teancum]

I think that is sort of the point: There are some people within the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community who simply don't even want the bit to be added to the MediaWiki software database structure in the first place, particularly as it applies to adult content. It doesn't matter that this is turned off by default or that it is even optional to put on a page or image and can be removed with a simple edit by an ordinary editor.... there are people in the community who simply don't even want the feature at all and will go out of their way to thwart any effort to censor the project.

Jimmy Wales has long since lost the ability to force a decision like this and arbitrarily put a feature like this into the project. He might have been able to do that back in 2003 or so (perhaps as late as 2005), but he can't force this in at the moment. Wikipedia has sort of frozen its policies with just minor tweaks and prods from time to time. A change in this nature is rather significant and likely isn't going to happen without widespread community support.

Then again Wikipedia changed the terms of its content license (from GFDL to CC-by-SA) and blacked out for a day with SOPA, so a determined group of people might be able to make some change like this. It just needs a widespread constituency from within the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community insisting it happen and not back down from those would would fight the change. It just can't happen with the force of will by one person any more.

Re:Not a problem

[alexander_686]

I don't think that is true. In my neck of the woods only a single "art" theater chain will run NC-17 films. On the other hand, quite a few will run the unrated type.

Films with a NC-17 rating have restrictions on how they are advertised. Since you can't advertise, most theaters wont run the film.

And it's not about porn films. Those are low quality. I would like something with a bit of class. The MPAA is a bit odd. Have a ton of blood and guns, get a R. Have a bit of male frontal nudity, NC-17. It does slant the story telling process.

For a good film, see "This Film is Not yet Rated" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated

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

[Teancum]

I would say it is a larger headache for administrators than for ordinary editors. Articles and content surrounding the sex pages and quasi-legal content (like a Wikibook about making your own bongK/a>) often draw in controversy by themselves. People like Jimmy Wales, when they wade into those controversies, often leave a big wake behind them as well and damages the community in countless ways. BTW, I don't mind Jimmy Wales voicing his opinion in these situations, my beef is when he acts unilaterally ignoring any sort of consensus building process at all.

These kind of pages are often nominated for deletion (the Prykete Bong page received three separate RfD nominations and a minor wheel war on top of that) and often become the source of edit wars as well. Furthermore, even if the content is appropriate for a certain sub-set of pages, trolls and other petty juvenile pranks often throw this kind of content onto other heavy traffic pages as a form of vandalism. Yes, those are easily reverted, but if you admin on Wikimedia projects you eventually become even numb to seeing such junk.

If all you do is edit astronomy and political articles, you will never see this kind of stuff.

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

[Chibi Merrow]

There's a lot of emerging evidence that young adults who watched a lot of porn have problems with intimate relationships.

Except that the link you gave cites no other evidence than "I said so."

If there's a lot of emerging evidence, someone would be able to point to some sort of peer reviewed studies saying as much. They shouldn't have to fall back on the words of someone who makes a living treating "porn addiction".

Re:Not a problem

[Pseudonym]

Good point. I just gave the first link I found.

Here are three peer reviewed studies. Had I spent more than 2 minutes with Google Scholar, I could have found more.

I do stress that this is emerging evidence, and a lot more work needs to be done. But even if there's no link found, the simple fact is that porn is not information about sex, it's misinformation about sex.

Re:Not a problem

[BlackPignouf]

porn doesn't typically demonstrate the use of birth control.

True.
That's why I insist on anal sex and facials when showing porn to my kids!

Re:Not a problem

[rohan972]

I would argue that porn destroys children.

My own child vaporized in front of my eyes because he glanced at my monitor and I had left an inappropriate page open. People should be warned. The level of guilt you feel when you're responsible for vaporizing your child is crushing.

My definition of childhood includes a period of innocence, or a freedom from some knowledge that's usually difficult for people to make sense of.

We don't care about your definition. Reality is that childhood is FULL TO THE BRIM of knowledge that's difficult to make sense of. Everything you haven't learned yet falls into that category. If you don't learn about it you still can't make sense of it later.

For instance, we don't confront children with knowledge of death (if we can avoid doing so), because death is difficult even for adults.

You might. Most people do things like buy pets for their children, part of the experience will be learning about death. I grew up on a farm, we bred our own stock and killed for our meat. Our daughter, when she was four, excitedly told her mom "the male duck wants to mate with the female". You don't have to be sexually active to learn about it. Our older children witnessed the birth of their youngest sister. Are they all destroyed? I don't think so, they seem happy and they're fairly well behaved.

We have watched plenty of movies with them that are outside their "classification" and they don't seem harmed and don't have nightmares. Maybe it is because we watch with them and make comments as we deem necessary. Also, they decide not to watch some things like scary parts of movies, so we hide eyes and use the mute control. Some things they like to be close to us as they watch.

I find it hard to believe that just seeing porn accidentally would harm them. I find it equally hard to believe that if they seek out porn I can stop them. When I was a kid and me and my friends saw porn we used to laugh. Now I've been married for 10 years. What is the damage that's been done to me?

It's true that kids need to learn about sex eventually, but if they learn about it from porn they're going to have some pretty screwed up ideas about sex.

Same could be said about religion. Most porn is for entertainment, not education. Is sex education only about disease and pregnancy? I'd argue that some instructional porn could be considered part of a good sex education. There are some pretty detailed and useful videos out.

Re:Not a problem

[Immostlyharmless]

Good luck trying live your life in ignorant bliss. Please let us all here at /. know how that turns out.

Ok, so now you know someone is gay. Big deal. How does that *really* affect you? I'm totally curious to know how many brain cycles you actually waste thinking about this sort of crap and how it affects you on any personal basis.

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:Not a problem

[quax]

I use the OpenDNS filter on the computers that my kids can access.

I don't believe in locking our computers up, but I also don't believe in sitting next to my kids for the entirety when they play games, draw or watch cartoons on the computer. Although, for the most part, I am in the same room when they are online.

I also installed the etoys programming environment for my seven year old and he gets quite a bit of mileage out of it. I contemplated to just have the computer be offline to force him to use the locally installed software, but I think that is too restrictive.

And no, I am not the kind of parent who hovers over his kids in any other public space as well. We have a park in front of the house and all the neighborhood's kids go and play out there. I can hear and see them from the front door but I don't feel that at this age I need to have them under parental surveillance 24/7 when they're out in the park.

What you suggest as a solution essentially means to not grant them any independence at all - neither online nor offline.

Judging what is child unsuitable content is not rocket science and it can be easily crowd sourced. Advocating that every parent is supposed to do it on their own is brain-dead.

Re:Not a problem

[dasunt]

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 remember dirty jokes from grade school. I even remember a discussion about some celebrity or athlete who was found dead with evidence of sexual activity that was unusual at the time.

So unless kids have changed in the past three decades or so, I'm going to assume that they'll still learn stuff you'd rather not know, and they'll probably learn it rather young.

As far as I remember, none of the jokes or news shocked me or scarred me for life, probably because I was a kid and dirty jokes were told because they were taboo, while the news from the TV was always happening in places far away.

The only time I recall actually being disturbed is when the 4th or 5th grade boys talked about the medical exams they underwent before playing contact football. I now realize, as an adult, it was probably a normal medical exam, but back then, it seemed rather creepy.

Re:Not a problem

[DeadDecoy]

Found an interesting quote which highlights some of the points I was thinking about:

When you dehumanize a person, you can justify any crime you carry out upon them

The internet like any other information medium can be used to help or harm someone. If we're not aware of its capacity to harm someone like encouraging someone's guilt or inciting a war, our naivete could allow gross forms of injustice to occur.

Re:Not a problem

[deroby]

Actually pretty interesting what you say there :

with evidence of sexual activity that was unusual at the time.

Probably due to the ubiquity of all-things-sex on the internet (and in media in general) we seem to have shifted our view on 'unusual'.
While at the time oral sex might have been 'outlandish' it now seems that gang-banging is getting the norm.

I can remember being curious about boobs & stuff starting at the age of 10 or so [those 3 decades ago] and yes I (and pretty much everyone around me I guess) would find a way to get that knowledge out of the 'theory only world' by the age of say 15. Nowadays I hear/read of scouts-camps that get canceled because the 10-years created a (slightly) burned situation ( random related article : http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=DMF20110716_002 ); about boys that stalk a girl in the park and all rape her just for fun ( random related article : http://www.gva.be/nieuws/buitenland/aid916673/vijf-jongeren-opgepakt-na-groepsverkrachting-7-jarig-meisje.aspx ), etc...

As for the discussion in general here, I too wouldn't mind having an OPTIONAL filter that blocks out the 'worst parts'; then again I'd be more in favor of a 'slider' where one could 'introduce'' kids to 'reality' in little steps... I don't mind them seeing nude, male or female; really can't see what's wrong with that. Given their age (4&7) I'd rather not have them see people 'doing it' yet and I'd really, really, reaaallyy not expose them to weird kinds of sex until they are well past 15 and have built up a firm scale of values.

IMHO it would be very wrong to go back to Victorian Times, but the current situation leaves me wondering too...

Re:Not a problem

[rtb61]

Most likely the most sane approach rather than trying to censor the whole of wikipedia would be to create another version of wikipedia a little behind in terms of edits but one that has been reviewed as suitable for minors. So rather than blocking anything you create another version where only content that has passed suitable for minors muster can appear.

Re:Not a problem

[ultranova]

I couldn't care less about what you get to see, but I would like a filter flag that allows me to ensure my kids are not exposed to gratuitous violence and/or pornography until they are mature enough to deal with it.

So what constitutes "gratuitous violence"? History? Descriptions of how snake venom operates? Book plot summaries? How is anyone supposed to know what you happen to consider appropriate or inappropriate for your kid? And that's not getting into the impossibility of actually implementing this: every existing article and every future edit would need to be reviewed to see what side of the divide they fall to. And of course any failures would open Wikipedia to liability lawsuits.

The code changes might be insignificant, but the effort to actually filter the data would be enormous and endless, and frankly your convenience doesn't justify it.

Re:Not a problem

[Joe Decker]

I think that is sort of the point: There are some people within the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community who simply don't even want the bit to be added to the MediaWiki software database structure in the first place, particularly as it applies to adult content. It doesn't matter that this is turned off by default or that it is even optional to put on a page or image and can be removed with a simple edit by an ordinary editor.... there are people in the community who simply don't even want the feature at all ...

With the exception of the "will go to any length", stuff that I've snipped out here, I'm pretty much one of them.

And the reason is simple. Image and web filtering outside of Wikipedia has always turned out to be a coatrack not just for "not showing sexual acts" but for the insertion of political, sexist, racist, or heterosexist bias. Moreover, not every parent shares the same definition of what it's inappropriate to see, you and I might not call "holding hands" porn, but the laws of North Carolina essentially treat it as sexual incitement, and the people behind those laws are going to want that called "adult content." Obviously the Wikipedia community will average a bit more liberal than that, but (a) there's no objective place to draw a line for an adult content image filter, and (b) those discussions are still going to eat a lot of cycles, and will inevitably erode WP:NPOV, Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy.

And, .. where's the real problem? I've spent quite a bit of time on Wikipedia, and sure there's stuff there I don't want to look at. But surprisingly little, and the vast majority of what is actually problematic doesn't stick around inappropriately in articles. Yet Wikipedia still gets a fair bit of whining where you might think there'd be none--the number of folks deeply offended that one of the pictures at kissing involves two men, or did a few years ago, is telling enough. The last thing the encyclopedia needs is an excuse for more of that bullshit.

So, what's really behind this effort?

Hard to say with Sanger, and he does have fair "concerns", but he's got a history with Wikipedia that raises questions about the motivation for this article. For the board, I'd guess there's a desire to some extent for political (or even legal) cover, a natural inclination, I've worked on a non-profit board. It happens.

But many of those of us who actually want to build an encyclopedia with a neutral point of view are against it.

I'm surprised that anyone thinks this is a surprise.

Re:Not a problem

[JonySuede]

another tangential note:

show me the data" is fine when it comes to something where the data exists. It's intellectually lazy when it comes to a discussion like this.

Not it's not, it only means that we have to produce that data as anecdotal evidence like yours and mine are not properly quantified. It would be hard to finance*1 but it would be relatively easy to randomly select about 10000 adults between [20 and 40]*2, ask them when were they exposed to porn for the first time and was it self-initiated, caused by peer-pressure or an abuser and have them pass tests on depression, sexual dependency, substances abuse and compile sociology-economics data. We should also repeat the test in other countries to account for the cultural context. After those studies we would exactly know when porn is harmful and when it's not.

1- Pro and anti porn groups are both afraid of the results. They both prefer not to know as long as we are in the dark they both have theirs existence justified.
2- Porn must have been easily available else the context is not the same; in social studies context is extremely important.

Re:Not a problem

[Teancum]

For crying out loud, this isn't censoring, nor is it really hard to draw a line on this stuff.

If it is flagrant porn, the flag will go on. If it isn't, the flag will be there only because of a troll and be instantly reverted. If it is in dispute, there will be about 500k of discussion about the decision to put the flag on the content and the civil libertarians will be fighting the Puritans with a nearly constant edit war lasting a couple of years and result in ArbCom decisions with a few editors banned over the controversy.

The decision to put the flag on this content is done at the editor level... or perhaps at the "autoconfirmed user" level (like what you need to edit semi-protected content). It isn't that big of a deal and you can get that kind of status by simply participating on Wikipedia for four days. If you disagree with the flag, you can add it or remove it or join into that battle royale of discussion arguing over specific content and the application of the flag. You certainly don't need to worry about some faceless censoring committee. As for genuine medical photos... that can be dealt with on a case by case basis as well.

You can also choose to add this flag or not, and you as a parent can decide if you want to use this flag or not for your kids (it is originally opt-out). If you don't want to trip across some porn when randomly going through Wikipedia, you can filter that out or you can turn the switch off and have that stuff included. It is your choice. Censorship would be removing choices from people, and this does exactly the opposite as it expands the range of choices for you to use.

Re:Not a problem

[Teancum]

My problem with Larry Sanger is that he is all high and mighty about who should be privileged to write articles for Wikipedia and who shouldn't. He was the guy who started Nupedia, and his attitude about who might be qualified for writing encyclopedia articles was very restrictive and frankly snotty (or snobby) from my own POV. Basically he expected that the free encyclopedia would only be written by folks with a PhD and stubs by those with college degrees.... and you would only write articles in your field of expertise.

Basically his view of Wikipedia is that the deletionists should rule the day completely and get everything they ever hoped for and more to the point even the most hardcore deletionist would start to question why content was being removed. The only things that could stand up for references were things from published scholarly journals... certainly nothing pedestrian like a newspaper or popular magazine. Forget about blogs or anything found on the internet, that would be completely forbidden and it wouldn't even matter who wrote any of that content on-line.

There is also some general bad blood between many in the Wikipedia community and Larry Sanger for other reasons as well that go beyond this discussion, so it suffices to say there are many problems with what he says.

From that perspective, I take almost everything I hear from Larry Sanger with a grain of salt and generally dismiss almost everything he says, but in this case I tend to side with him so far as I think the suggestion is a good one so far as it is completely voluntary in its use and application. It doesn't censor a thing, is easily implemented, takes up very little room in the MediaWiki database, is easily monitored for abuse, and it doesn't require constant oversight by admins other than to step in and moderate discussions from time to time. Having a flag like this might even be a way for people to vent about various issues and certainly could be an option to bring up instead of forcing an AfD and all of the problems that creates.

If it only impacts a small amount of content, then even fighting this flag is something that seems trivial and stupid to do. You will never need to do anything about this flag other than reverting some troll who put it on a page where it isn't deserved at all and may even do a pretty good job of identifying trolls.

As for NPOV issues, I fail to see how this violates even the spirit of WP:NPOV or the general neutral POV philosophy of page development. If it was being used to delete content simply because that content might be controversial (try to look up the Wikibooks Jokebook some time for a real tragedy in that department) I would agree that is an issue. Content is being deleted from Wikipedia because it somehow offends certain religious and political groups and that should be fought against. That said, I don't see what this idea does other than creates something akin to creating a category label for content of various kinds and filters either for that category or against it. I suppose you could filter either for or against Star Trek related content as well and do pretty much the same thing. I wonder if that decision would be controversial?

What porn

[Sperbels]

I've never seen any porn on wikipedia. I've seen some nudity before...but porn?

Re:What porn

[YodasEvilTwin]

Read the article. There's quite a bit.

Re:What porn

[SuricouRaven]

A matter of definition. To some people, all nudity is porn. I've even met one person online who was outraged at the display maniquins used in a store window because they were provocatively posed and wearing lingerie.

Links?

[s0lar]

So, do we have any good links?

Re:links?

[YodasEvilTwin]

Main link is the last one in the summary: http://larrysanger.org/2012/05/what-should-we-do-about-wikipedias-porn-problem/

porn? where?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been contributing to the Wikipedia for seven years.

Not once - not ONCE - in that time have I seen porn on the Wikipedia.

Re:links?

[Eponymous Hero]

no no no -- links to the porn, obviously...

Hmmm...

[SarekOfVulcan]

I wonder why Larry Sanger could possibly have an interest in making WP look problematic.

"Extremely gross porn"?

[PCM2]

I followed a bunch of the links on Sanger's site just to see what he's talking about. Having a dozen or so videos of male ejaculation seems excessive. But a lot of the rest of it is 19th century French engravings, naughty postcards, and the like. Is that stuff appropriate for Wikipedia, even out of historical interest? I don't think that's for an automated filter to decide. Given that most home Internet connections don't have comprehensive content filters installed, I also think "the children" are about four clicks away from far raunchier material than that.

links

[hldn]

everyone is asking for links, and since i know reading the article isn't in the plans....

needless to say NSFW.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Sexual_penetrative_use_of_cucumbers&oldid=66888173
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:GIF_videos_of_male_masturbation&oldid=67780152
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sexual_intercourse_with_vaginal_lubricative_fluid.jpg

etc etc

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).

Re:porn? where?

[MPolo]

I have also not seen anything in this category. Certainly there are some articles that many parents might not like their children to see, but education and supervision is probably a better solution than any filter Wikipedia could manage to install. Of course, boys of a certain age are going to find it regardless of what the parents do.

Wikipedia was reported to the FBI

[tepples]

Until I read this headline, I didn't even know there was pornographic material on Wikipedia.

Then you must have missed these three stories earlier on Slashdot.

I take exception on behalf of Jimmy Wales at the notion that anyone would concern themselves with a "problem" on his website.

When someone reports your allegedly illegal porn to the FBI, of course you take action to keep the FBI from taking down all WMF sites and arresting people.

Re:Links?

[YodasEvilTwin]

Links to sample porn aren't on-topic in articles about porn stars?

Re:links?

[Samantha Wright]

No, no, no – just use a text browser, obviously...

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.

Re:Look, this is stupid

[YodasEvilTwin]

It's obviously not perfect but it can be helpful to have SOMETHING between the kids and the pr0n. Policing your kids isn't bulletproof either, you simply can't do it all the time without chaining them in the basement. I don't see how a somewhat helpful optional filter is problematic given that it seems pretty easy to implement and there's probably people willing to donate to it if they went that route. If you had kids you would probably see the difference between "young kids seeing sex" and "young kids seeing mutilation, simulated rape," etc. etc.

What Should We Do About Wikipedia's Porn Problem?

[J'raxis]

What should we do about Wikipedia's porn problem? Recognize that there is no "problem"---that this is no more a "problem" than any other content on Wikipedia that some people don't like---and move on to something that's actually important?

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.

Let alone, Extremely Gross Porn

[Shivetya]

Really?

What would constitute really gross as compared to mostly gross or just plain "damn, doesn't that hurt?"

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.

The whole thing is a troll

[miltonw]

Got kids?
Got Internet?
Do what you should do to protect your kids online.
Don't blame Wikipedia, Google or whoever if you fail as a parent.

Re:So?

[ToastedRhino]

I'm not sure if you didn't RTFA or are just a really, really angry person. As far as I can tell this actually IS about parents wanting to "take responsibility for [their] own" by turning on a filter to limit what their kids can see. You seem, based on this and your other comment on this story, to be upset that the filter is on Wikipedia's end instead of the person's PC, but why in the world that matters is beyond me. Or maybe you didn't take the time to notice that it would be opt-in and not turned on by default, therefore having absolutely zero effect on you.

It's interesting that you quote Twain's definition of censorship in another one of your posts:
"Censorship is telling a man he can't have steak, because a baby can't chew it."

That's not what's happening here. You get to choose whether to turn ON the filter. Using Twain's analogy: The steak is all yours, but if you don't want your baby who can't chew it to choke to death, now you can let us know and request that we not serve steak to your child.

Sees reasonable to me.

Was the double entendre intentional? :-)

[Dogtanian]

I can report that I very rarely come across porn of any description.

Sensible move- that generally causes the pages to stick together.

Re:links?

[rs79]

What happened to the picture? There used to be a picture,,, it was the best page ever for throwing a link at somebody and telling them to look it up in Wikipedia.

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.

A better question:

[PyroMosh]

What should we do about Slashdot's Larry Sanger problem?

In 2012, someone submitted an article to Slashdot whining of an imagined problem on the website Wikipedia. Citing the 'controversial content', he whined about the lack of a filter even weaker than Google's SafeSearch.

Since then, after growing calls to "show us the porn" by some Slashdot users, some users have made it clear that they do not expect this to be able to filter Larry Sanger. Nevertheless, Slashdot continues to host an enormous amount of extremely gross whining and other complaining that most users don't want clogging up the front page. And this content is some of the website's most-accessed. Nevertheless, Sanger remain one of Slashdot's most self-righteous users. Slashdot founder CmdrTaco (blessings and peace be upon him) has recently reiterated his support for a Larry Sanger filter, but no work is being done on it, and the editors have not yet issued any statement about whether they intend to work on it.

Well, just remember this

[SmallFurryCreature]

Check for yourself the number of teenage pregnancies in Holland vs the US. And then consider this, Holland's score would be even better if it wasn't for immigrants from cultures just as repressed as America's heartland.

Oh and look up rape figures too. Gosh... AGAIN! The more liberal a society is on sex, the less harmful side effects sex has on its population. How odd!

Excellent calibration image. (was: Re:links)

[rs79]

"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sexual_intercourse_with_vaginal_lubricative_fluid.jpg"

is the best laptop lcd brightness calibration image I've ever seen. It's a pig working on a bunch of things and wondering "are these gonna be too bright for the mac guys or too dark for the PC guys" and most images you can't tell if they're a bit off or not if the screen is tilted wrong and god help you.

But if you can see this properly then you can adjust the brightness pretty accurately. Thanks!

Examples from Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

File searches on Wikipedia:
Toothbrush: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=images&search=toothbrush&fulltext=Search
Human female: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&limit=250&offset=100&redirs=0&profile=images&search=human+female
Human male: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=images&search=human+male&fulltext=Search
Jumping ball: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=images&search=jumping+ball&fulltext=Search

Wikipedia articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Free_Ride
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-throating
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_torture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice)

Please...

[Hamsterdan]

Last week at my local library, some kids were checking Kama Sutra books. When I was a kid, we would play with the TV fine tuning just to get a glimpse of adult encrypted channels.

Besides, if it wasn't for sex, the human race would have become extinct aeons ago...

Wikipornia

[rs79]

I put together a porn website out of material on Wikipedia. Sort of. I did stick everything I could find on one page with thumnails. NSFW, duh.

I think you'd be hard pressed to call most of this "porn". There does seem to be more male dangly bits than anything else, by far, and I suspect this is is the source of republican *cough*closeted*cough* objection in the first place.

http://rs79.vrx.net/interests/computers/net/wikiporn/

(post additions here if you feel like it, I'll check)

Re:So?

[rohan972]

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

Are kids really that easily fucked up that looking at a picture or video will ruin them? I'd say that institutionalized bullying at schools is a far greater concern than access to porn in terms of damage done. There have been mass shootings at schools in response to bullying, what damage can you demonstrate from porn?

You clearly want us all to know you're saying "fucked" yet you replace the u with an asterisk. What do you think you're achieving? Are your thoughts or words more pure because you deliberately spelled fuck incorrectly? Is your post now harmless to children, whereas another u in the wrong spot would traumatize them? Your post is a great demonstration of the mentality of people who desire censorship.

Re:links?

[tinkerton]

Wait'll you see the one with the amorous elephant chasing after his intended. "Look at the size of that thing!"

Not that thing! The other thing!

fuck porn

[Tom]

If I had kids, there would be a lot of stuff I'd be more worried about than porn. There is violence and other graphic images on the Internet that I find a lot more disgusting than all but the most extreme porn. And that will almost certainly have a much worse effect on children than watching someone naked doing strange stuff they don't understand.

But then again, that's America for you, a culture where half the population believes in creationism and shooting someone's brains out on afternoon TV is fine while a quarter-second glance at half of a breast nipple is a national scandal.

There's worse than porn on the Internet, and if you want to play the "for the chiiiiildren" card, then I'd like to see some evidence that porn actual does any damage to children first. You assumptions and gut feelings, see creationism, are not reliable and not evidence.