What Should We Do About Wikipedia's Porn Problem? 544
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.)
What porn (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
"Extremely gross porn"? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Wikipornia (Score:4, Interesting)
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/ [vrx.net]
(post additions here if you feel like it, I'll check)