Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Wikipedia Media The Media

Wales Supports Purging Porn From Wikipedia 263

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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Wales Supports Purging Porn From Wikipedia

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:14AM (#32124722)

    At least it's not sheep.

  • 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.

    • by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:28AM (#32124838)

      I personally think he should be forced to read this [theonion.com] 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.

      • by the phantom ( 107624 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @09:02AM (#32125950) Homepage
        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.
        • by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @09:12AM (#32126086)

          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?

          • by ArsonSmith ( 13997 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @10:00AM (#32127010) Journal

            No.

          • 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.

            • by Wog ( 58146 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @11:38AM (#32128772)

              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.

              • 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

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by DesScorp ( 410532 )

            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: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Belial6 ( 794905 )
              Well, one could say that a corporation, being a fabrication of the government is a part of the government.
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Chowderbags ( 847952 )

            When corporations near governments in their power

            Well there's your problem.

          • by rilian4 ( 591569 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @11:59AM (#32129110) Journal
            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.
            • by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @01:47PM (#32131122) Homepage Journal

              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.

          • by Arthur Grumbine ( 1086397 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @12:35PM (#32129740) Journal

            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: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by eln ( 21727 )
        That Onion article is absurd. Clarence Thomas ruling differently than Antonin Scalia? As if that would ever happen...
    • by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:41AM (#32124946) Homepage

      Oh, thanks, I'd forgotten about the Sex for Edits [gawker.com] 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.

      • by Luyseyal ( 3154 )

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

        -l

        • by Moryath ( 553296 )

          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: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by HeckRuler ( 1369601 )
      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 hav
  • Redundancy (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

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

  • Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:15AM (#32124742) Journal
    If Wikipedia has porn, it competes with Wales' other web site, he wouldn't want that...
  • Free Porn? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:17AM (#32124748)

    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.

    • by celibate for life ( 1639541 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:21AM (#32124792)
      Hey, some of us like the professional stuff. Amateur porn has too many pimples and zits.
      • Re:Free Porn? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:54AM (#32125066)

        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.

  • 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.

    • by Spazztastic ( 814296 ) <spazztastic AT gmail DOT com> on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:19AM (#32124776)

      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?

      • by celibate for life ( 1639541 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:24AM (#32124818)
        "Necessary" is a concept that varies according to each person. To me, my 47 porn DVDs are the necessary amount.
      • by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:29AM (#32124840) Homepage

        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: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Spazztastic ( 814296 )

          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!.

        • by Ephemeriis ( 315124 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @08:03AM (#32125148)

          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?

          • 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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org]. Each image's description page should declare for what articles it is intended, much like non-free images on Wikipedia already do.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Trepidity ( 597 )

        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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] need some images? If so, are they porn?

      • by L4t3r4lu5 ( 1216702 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @08:12AM (#32125260)
        Would you like the answer expressed in Libraries of Congress, or Pallets of Kleenex?
      • Enough to satisfy rule 35, or the limits of digital storage technology at the time.
        Whichever is larger.

  • by Capt James McCarthy ( 860294 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:20AM (#32124778) Journal

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

    Censorship is a slippery slop.

    • by tehcyder ( 746570 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:42AM (#32124958) Journal
      So what have you got against amputee porn in particular?
    • by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:43AM (#32124968) Homepage Journal

      Amputee porn... yuck! Must be removed!

    • And this... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AnonymousClown ( 1788472 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:59AM (#32125114)
      This book [wikipedia.org] 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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kthejoker ( 931838 )

      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: (Score:3, Insightful)

        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.

  • by Airdorn ( 1094879 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:20AM (#32124780)
    ...but I know it when I see it.
  • 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. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hellop2 ( 1271166 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:20AM (#32124788)
    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.
    • 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: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jayhawk88 ( 160512 )

      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.

    • by Explodicle ( 818405 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @08:57AM (#32125860) Homepage
      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 [wikimedia.org]. This isn't about what should or should not be included - porn with no informative purpose is already subject to deletion [wikimedia.org]. What Wales is calling for is a greater effort to reduce them.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      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. [wikia.com] Hop on over there and see how useful it is for even basic research purposes.

  • by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohnNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:23AM (#32124802) Journal

    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 [slashdot.org] of them [slashdot.org] 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 [slashdot.org] for it to be used as such. What about when someone draws or makes computer simulations [slashdot.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] 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.

  • So... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by papabob ( 1211684 )
    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...
    • 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.

    • by MRe_nl ( 306212 )

      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".

    • 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.

  • WP:CENSOR? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:30AM (#32124854) Homepage

    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.

  • Oh noes porn! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MostAwesomeDude ( 980382 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:32AM (#32124876) Homepage

    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.)

    • 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: (Score:2, Informative)

        by thedj_sd ( 679390 )
        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: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bugi ( 8479 )

      Much S&M is consensual, consequently not abuse.

  • Who's Sue? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by c0lo ( 1497653 )

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

    So, who is this Sue?

  • Surprised!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by methano ( 519830 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @07:48AM (#32125012)
    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?
    • 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 [wikimedia.org] (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?
  • For example Reproductive System [wikipedia.org] 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?

    • by Penguin ( 4919 )

      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".

      • by Penguin ( 4919 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @08:21AM (#32125396) Homepage

        .. 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.

  • 0.0001%? (Score:5, Informative)

    by jurgen ( 14843 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @08:33AM (#32125556)

    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%? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ChienAndalu ( 1293930 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @09:57AM (#32126940)

      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.

  • Oxymoron? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mikkeles ( 698461 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @08:39AM (#32125632)

    ... unnecessary porn ...

  • May 2010 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Explodicle ( 818405 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @09:11AM (#32126062) Homepage

    Nopenis.svg [wikimedia.org]

    Thank you for your interest in contributing to Wikimedia Commons, a non-profit media repository with the primary scope of providing educational and informative [wikimedia.org] images and media. Submissions that are low quality or do not fall into Commons' scope [wikimedia.org] may be subject to deletion [wikimedia.org]. 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 [wikimedia.org], as a result of already having a large number of photos of genitalia, specifically the male reproductive system [wikimedia.org] and the penis [wikimedia.org]. 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 [wikimedia.org] people get for uploading too much cock onto Commons.

    • Re:May 2010 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by discord5 ( 798235 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @10:08AM (#32127176)

      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.

  • by Kensai7 ( 1005287 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @09:50AM (#32126800)

    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.

  • Wrong Wales (Score:4, Funny)

    by harlows_monkeys ( 106428 ) on Friday May 07, 2010 @11:11AM (#32128254) Homepage

    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".

Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.

Working...