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.)
Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
Wow didnt know that Jesus loved anal sex with women...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anal_Intercourse_Artwork.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying if I go to wikipedia and search for anal intercourse artwork i might find some? what a disgrace!
Examples from Wikipedia (Score:5, Informative)
Toothbrush: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=images&search=toothbrush&fulltext=Search [wikipedia.org]
Human female: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&limit=250&offset=100&redirs=0&profile=images&search=human+female [wikipedia.org]
Human male: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=images&search=human+male&fulltext=Search [wikipedia.org]
Jumping ball: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=images&search=jumping+ball&fulltext=Search [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Free_Ride [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-throating [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_torture [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice) [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Funny)
The craziest thing about that is how long they had to hold the pose for the painter.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if this qualifies as just "regular" porn or "extremely gross" porn?
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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 ov
Re: (Score:3)
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 fi
Re: (Score:3)
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: (Score:3)
I've been using Wikipedia for years and I've never seen any porn. Can somebody help a brother out?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Porn turns children into rapists. Much like video games turn them into murderers.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)
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: (Score:3)
Good or bad. If people are spamming the site with it, it is still a nuisance.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Funny)
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) [wikipedia.org] What a scandal.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Informative)
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. [wikiversity.org]
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: (Score:3)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe as with almost everything people should shut the fuck up and not look at what they do not want to see.
Re: (Score:3)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
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 t
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Informative)
Actually pretty interesting what you say there :
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 [nieuwsblad.be] ); 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 [www.gva.be] ), 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: (Score:3)
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 coul
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
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 lo
Re: (Score:3)
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: ev
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
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: (Score:3)
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 (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: (Score:3)
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 ha
Re: (Score:3)
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
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [psychcentral.com]. 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: (Score:3)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Good point. I just gave the first link I found.
Here [springerlink.com] are [sagepub.com] three [wiley.com] 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 [makelovenotporn.com].
Re: (Score:3)
True.
That's why I insist on anal sex and facials when showing porn to my kids!
Re: (Score:3)
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: (Score:3)
"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
Re: (Score:2)
just because some Wikipedians don't understand the difference between censorship and a filtering setting that can be changed.
No, if it was banned, it would be because of idiotic laws and policies, not Wikipedians.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Search for forefinger [wikipedia.org] (obviously NSFW) and find porn.
Re: (Score:2)
OTOH, Wikipedia has no such problem. Articles are not competing Against each other for clicks. Furthermore one thing that is superior to other ebncyclopedia is that controversial content can be hosted without c
Wikipedia was reported to the FBI (Score:3)
Until I read this headline, I didn't even know there was pornographic material on Wikipedia.
Then you must have missed these [slashdot.org] three [slashdot.org] stories [slashdot.org] 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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dede_Cucumber_0433.jpg [wikimedia.org]
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: (Score:3)
It's called the Puritan Heritage. Sad but true: check this brief summary out [apocryphum.com].
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.
Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Well, just remember this (Score:4, Informative)
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!
Was the double entendre intentional? :-) (Score:4, Funny)
I can report that I very rarely come across porn of any description.
Sensible move- that generally causes the pages to stick together.
What porn (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
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Let alone, Extremely Gross Porn (Score:3)
Really?
What would constitute really gross as compared to mostly gross or just plain "damn, doesn't that hurt?"
Links? (Score:2)
So, do we have any good links?
Re: (Score:2)
Suppose someone wrote a filter for porn; would his filter be deemed to have accessed the porn. As the alarm went off poooorn, the cops came in.
Re: (Score:3)
porn? where? (Score:2, Informative)
I've been contributing to the Wikipedia for seven years.
Not once - not ONCE - in that time have I seen porn on the Wikipedia.
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Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder why Larry Sanger could possibly have an interest [citizendium.org] in making WP look problematic.
"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.
Concept of "pornography" (Score:2)
pics or it didn't happen (Score:2)
links (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikimedia.org]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:GIF_videos_of_male_masturbation&oldid=67780152 [wikimedia.org]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sexual_intercourse_with_vaginal_lubricative_fluid.jpg [wikimedia.org]
etc etc
Re:links (Score:4, Insightful)
Excellent calibration image. (was: Re:links) (Score:4, Funny)
"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!
Not really fixable (Score:2)
What problem? (Score:2)
I have neer seen porn on Wikipedia, though truth to be told I have never searched for it. But if someone does it's reasonable to assume that they do want to see porn, isn't it?
Look, this is stupid (Score:2)
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Interns? (Score:2)
From the summary:
And this content is some of the website's most-accessed.
Because I have never run across porn there, I didn't even realize Wikipedia had a porn problem. That said, if pornographic content is really the most accessed content on Wikipedia, why not get a few paid/unpaid interns to review the top N accessed images on Wikipedia. I am sure there are people who would like to be paid to look at porn.
What Should We Do About Wikipedia's Porn Problem? (Score:3)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Browser filters, not site filters (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [fosi.org] 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 (Score:3)
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.
A better question: (Score:3)
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.
Please... (Score:3)
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...
fuck porn (Score:3)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:links? (Score:5, Funny)
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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.
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Not that thing! The other thing!
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)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.