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."
didn't jimmy wales get his start in internet porn? (Score:4, Informative)
and there it is, on wikipedia:
Re:Let him go. (Score:5, Informative)
Heh, my friend and I were laughing last week when her textbook cited wikipedia...
Wikipedia can be used as a starting point for learning a subject though. If you don't want to dive into a thick textbook or several case studies on a topic, you can read Wikipedia and get a rundown on what the topic is. If you feel the need (or are doing a project), then you can investigate further and read the textbook or case study and use those as citations.
This is all what the librarians in High School would tell my class. Nothing wrong with using it as a starting point, but it can't be the only source of information.
Re:Free Porn? (Score:5, Informative)
Still better than the millionth run-of-the-mill actress with the same boob, mouth and nose job (surgery, not sexual act), dully fucking their way through a never changing script of positions, all the while moaning the same fake sounds for 15 minutes straight, which makes you think they're just running a sound loop.
Re:What a douche bag... (Score:5, Informative)
He's not talking about Wikipedia. He's talking about Wikimedia Commons, which already needs a specific warning template asking people to please refrain from adding Yet More Pictures Of Users' Cocks Because We Have Enough Already Thank You.
Re:Porn according to whom? (Score:5, Informative)
.. and to elaborate on this subject; I could upload every random picture I shoot with my camera or any picture my webcam takes every five seconds.
In that case it makes perfect sense to remove a lot of these pictures even though some randomly might happen to contain something interesting one day.
Re:Who's Sue? (Score:3, Informative)
0.0001%? (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Porn with no educational value is already verboten (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh noes porn! (Score:2, Informative)
May 2010 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Jobsization of the IT world?! (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: 0.0001%? (Score:5, Informative)
Try looking up "Vulva" or "Vagina" (I can't since I'm at work). Last time I checked (when the german wikipedia chose to use the "vulva" article with a hairy "muschi" as the article of the day) there were more than a hundred closeup vagina images. No I personally don't object to that, but I think it is unnecessary. The slashdot crowd might be very... open-minded about porn, but the question is if the majority of the people who donate to the Wikimedia foundation is as well.
Re:Let him go. (Score:3, Informative)
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.