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Jimbo may be one of the most powerful people in media, but his recent actions have given grave doubts as to whether he can be trusted with that power.
Jimbo Wales, out of fear of a media attack, led by Fox News, about allegations of pornography on Wikipedia, instituted a massive deletion of content from Commons, including many examples of artwork by notable artists. For example, the artwork to the right, by Franz von Bayros, was personally deleted by Jimbo, who even edit warred to keep it deleted. On being challenged about this deletion, Wales wrote:
“ | ...I think a perfectly legitimate position for us to take is that we don't have visual depictions of explicit sexual activity here. I think it's a perfectly fine thing to have people collecting classic pornography - on their own servers, separate from Wikimedia completely. | ” |
He also deleted a work by Félicien Rops, File:Félicien_Rops_-_Sainte-Thérèse.png, and numerous line art illustrations used to illustrate articles on sexual content.
Only long after these deletions were done did he state his reasons:
“ | We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Now, the correct storyline is that we are cleaning up. I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way it did, and I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen. | ” |
It wasn't even effective: [http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/10/porn-wikipedia-illegal-content-remains/ FoxNews shortly thereafter posted an article attacking Wikipedia.
However, as covered in last week's Signpost, the Acehnese Wikipedia has erupted in controversy over images of Muhammad hosted on Commons.
This is by no means a new debate. In 2006, the article on the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy was featured on the main page, and caused significant controversy for including the cartoons. In 2008, a petition to delete images of Muhammad circulated. However, as long-standing policy stated, like Wikipedia itself, our image host, Wikimedia Commons, is not censored. That it could cause offense was not sufficient to remove an image.
Amongst those advocating for this view was Jimbo Wales. cited his free speech advocacy, and stated that "we can not deviate from our goals to accommodate [those governments who would force Wikipedia to be censored]."
One has to ask: How can we refuse to delete historic images of Muhammad, which are deeply offensive to Muslims, when historic images of lesbians, deemed offensive to Fox News, are personally deleted by Jimbo?
If Wikipedia is going to sacrifice its moral high ground and neutrality - for saying that things offensive to Fox News are worth mass deletion sprees including historic artwork, but that the complaints of Muslims are not, is highly non-neutral - we should not sell ourselves cheap. We recently did, and only the effective loss of all Jimbo Wales' powers over his actions leaves us any moral high ground at all. Still, Jimbo's actions have shown that, yes, we will give into pressure - but only if it comes from our mainstream Western culture.
--Adam Cuerden (talk) 00:11, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
- I suggest you move this to a subpage of your userpage and link that here. Sort of a waste of the reply space to the article if you ask me. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:26, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
- As it happens, this is an adaptation of a completed article that got spiked because the Signpost, despite seeking editorials and having commentary on the Newsroom asking for them, has an editor who won't run anything he thinks might be controversial. In order to avoid losing the hours of work, I proposed it be published as a comment. Adam Cuerden (talk) 04:07, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
- I agree with TheDJ. This rant doesn't belong here.-- φ OnePt618Talk φ 04:13, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
- I am said Signpost editor and I consider this an abuse of this talk page. Signpost talk pages are for commenting about the corresponding stories, which this does not - the first sentence nothwithstanding, which was added a posteriori after Adam's request to run this as Signpost "editorial" was rejected (see discussion here - click "show" in the "Editorial.." row).
[THE FOLLOWING IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE DIFFS PROVIDED, AND IS AN UNJUSTIFIED GROSS PERSONAL ATTACK]
- Back in May, the user was already abusing the Signpost as a forum for his personal views in the very same matter, in the opinion of several Signpost regulars (I wasn't involved), see here and here. Around the same time, he was posting very often on Foundation-l on the same issue, such that as early as June 1 someone on that mailing list replied with a WP:STICK-like statement.
- The extreme aggressiveness of this user in pushing his views has it made impossible for me to find a solution. As the version history of this page shows, even a simple move to this Signpost talk page where this would at least be more on-topic was reverted by him.
- Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:03, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
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- At the top of both of the articles I edited, it read "Editor's note: readers are invited to expand and improve this article, which we could not adequately cover in full in time for publication this week." Ditto the other link you use to attack me. Of course, most people probably didn't read these articles in anything like a finished form, because they were published uncomplete, and the actual story was never revisited in future Signposts. Evidently, if you ask for input, and someone provides a carefully-evidence backed statement of the point, showing all his material, and demonstrating every statement is true, with no objections to your actions at the time save one or two places where someone doubted what I said - at which point I provided more evidence, you can be attacked later. I engaged in collaborative editing, which was requested, provided evidence when challenged about points, and successfully worked an article into something resembling an accurate treatment. There is no evidence whatsoever for HaeB's attack based on it, which is gross and unsubstantiated personal. He should be ashamed of himself, but my every interaction with hi,m shows he has no shame. That I engaged in collaborative editing on an article that begged readers to engage in collaborative editing on it is not evidence of the vast conspiracy he claims. Adam Cuerden (talk) 05:17, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
Customer satisfaction
I notice that the consistency of the user interface is regarded as one of the reasons for Wikipedia's popularity and wonder whether experts such as those who were responsible for the recent catastrophic skin change will ever get a clue that most users don't like interface changes? Yngvadottir (talk) 02:40, 27 July 2010 (UTC)