the WikiVoices podcast is fresh online, with a discussion about minors and wikipedia.

I also felt it might be useful to make sure Jimbo was aware of the scale and nature of sexually explicit images being viewed and worked on by kids.

In my view, the podcast is a good listen overall - it's not particularly tight, and rambles and meanders in places, but I find it enlightening. The participants in the podcast are all reasonable, nice, and occasionally smart people* (durova, awadewit, newyorkbrad, and julian colton are some of the main voices here) - but in my view the episode reflects accurately wiki's inability to actually make substantial progress on this (or any) issue - there simply doesn't seem to be available oxygen for even a slightly focused and detailed examination of the issues - this almost seems to create something like cognitive dissonance, where people can genuinely feel that they've considered and resolved something, but not actually suggested, supported, or done anything....

more anon.......

* I should point out that whilst I was 'in' the call, I'm not necessarily reasonable, or nice - and sadly rarely blessed with occasional bouts of smartness ;-)

Do they make transcripts of these things? The thought of listening to this is painful to me. I could get through text though. Besides, any useful discussion would probably require excerpting parts of what was said.

Transcripts?! That would be hard work. We're lucky that some guy with a headache didn't refuse to release the audio at all!




Sounds like the key takeaway from this is: "Minors online, let people assume you're an adult."

I stopped shortly after that bit of insight.

I think there's probably quite a few quotable quotes in there - so started an attempt at a transcript.

Two things I learnt - I'm not quite as fast a typist as I p'raps I thought I was, and for some reason brad is much much harder to transcribe than anyone else!

Please do either lend a hand, or sit patiently and wait for me to do it - I'm hopeful that some of this material is actually pretty useful......

Imagine if you went to the Chairman of the Education Board or, say, multi-national educational publisher (which are commensurates), and said ...

"Are you aware that a lot of your employees have plastered the place with hard core pornography, sexual perversion and their own aroused genitals in clear public view and where it is accessible by children ...

In fact, it is one of the children's jobs to check and maintain it".

And he answered ...

What would people say, or the public think think?

An interesting quote from the Los Angeles Times article, Wikipedia's tin-cup approach wears thin ...

So, is what a typical squealer like Lx 121 (T-C-L-K-R-D) , coming back with the worn out mantra, "Wikimedia is NOT censored!", are really saying is ...

"... the deal was we will work for nothing for you but only IF we are allowed to put up and look at hard core pornography, sexual perversion and our own aroused genitals and any other shit we feel like and not have to question the morality of it ... ever."?

If this was politics, a response like that would be gold to any opposition. That is an invitation to character assassination.

To remain silent is to consent. Top marks privatemusing.

Of course, it is ridiculous garbage ... like any other "wiki-rule". Question the local cabal's status quo is and you will soon find out what censorship is. The difference is none of the other wiki-rules pervert society's conception that charitable foundations, "encyclopedias" and educational 501 ©s ARE places where it is acceptable to stick up pictures of your own, or boyfriend's erection (if you are gay), or a spunky coochie.

The funniest quote from that article is Sue gardner saying "Gardner said that a board game might by OK [to raise money] but that a game show would be problematic, because game shows are competitive and Wikipedia is collaborative."

oh nice... i'd love to help... you know... wikify things... and... sort of... umm... but i'm banned. oh well.

I think that is a very insightful comment, and reflects the typical conversation.

We typically see a couple of things:

- real world insights are not applicable to the brave new WikiWorld (aka not invented here). That is just a given so not up for debate.

- any discussion of children is bound to be a deliberate clouding of the issues with unnecessary emotion, therefore is not worthy of proper debate.

Now, what did you want to talk about - how nobody would be allowed to behave this way towards children outside of Wikipedia? Sorry, does not compute.

Moderator's note: Several posts on the subject of MP3 licensing were split to this thread. As indicated below, these were deemed to be somewhat off-topic.


Just to keep things back on topic, the gist I picked up was ... libertarians (if that is truly what they are ... discuss) rule, if someone else wants to make a child-safe copy they are free to. Painful sidesteps were taken by the hosts of difficult subject when they arose and any critique was portrayed by NewYorkBrad as "people who don't like wikipedia" and, very specifically, the main "problem [was] with off wiki discussion forums" exposing children ... especially those who were an admins.

I guess that means us, folks. Confused!?!

Lawyer Brad also erected the bogey man of "law suits gaining traction" if child-safe filtering was to go wrong implying that it was therefore better NOT to filter at all and do nothing.

Needless to say, the kid admin they interview came across the best and made most, honest, sense. He raised the issue of child admins being given access to the worst of deleted images and it was admitted that parents probably would not like children having access to the material he had to deal with as an admin.

When it got down to the gritty, issues raised by the kid, the commentator very clearly took a "let's not discuss that" route out and moved along quickly. Privatemusing's pieces came across as very poignant.

Expect an "it has been discussed, so there is nothing more to do" response now.

Okay, I downloaded Odd...uh, Egg...uh, Ogg to listen to this stuff.

Egad, what an atrocious waste of time! And what's with all of those weird noises? At times, it sounds like someone is eating carrots, another time it sounds like aerosol is being sprayed --there are doors opening and closing, tools dropping, and other Godard-worthy sound effects.

Brad (who sounds like Walter Matthau) hogs the conversation -- badly. Julian, contrary to Lara's insistence, does not sound 15 years old. The other kids sound like...kids. That is okay if you are hanging out at the mall -- but for anyone seeking an interesting radio talk, forget it.

Really? Was he trying to imply that the underage admins should be treated with kid gloves (oy, sorry, poor word-choice) to a greater degree than "ordinary" users? Or did he just mean that they were more likely to be targets?

Maybe I should listen to this thingy after all.

Was someone trying to suggest that Wikipedia do the actual filtering itself? That's the last thing anyone should want - their job should be to tag content as potentially inappropriate for children, not actually filter it. I can't imagine tagging alone would put them in any legal jeopardy whatsoever... would it?


Goes without saying!

This is not what I said at all.


I don't think this is a fair paraphrase either.

haven't gotten to that bit yet, but I seem to recall it was Durova who raised the prospect of trying and failing (to facilitate filtering in any way, I think?) could put the project in legal jeopardy - I think brad's response was a bit of a throw away comment along the lines of 'yeah, lawyers due sue each other' or something........

btw. this is another reason getting an accurate transcript on this one will, I hope, be useful...

If you want accuracy, stay away with everything with "Wikipedia" in its name!

ps. was just trying to find the exact quote - I failed - but here's the Durova quote I landed on by chance discussing whether or not Wikipedia is attractive to children; 'I haven't seen any advertisements for Wikipedia on Saturday morning cartoon shows, I'm not sure what makes Wikipedia attractive to one age group audience versus another.....' ... I think I said in the text log at that point that that was nonsense - it certainly is close, in my view, to undermining the ability to make any progress by making a rather silly (misses the) point.

pps. "

DUROVA : ....if you attempted to go down that path, if you tried it and you didn't do it completely, it could actually open up the door to lawsuits that might gain some traction, and you [brad] would know better than I would how valid that kind of thing is......[durova continues a bit more]

BRAD : Look, lawyers, there are a lot of lawyers in the country right now, many of whom are underemployed, and I'm not going to guarantee that somebody won't bring any lawsuit on any topic at any time - it's what we do......" [39th minute]

So Brad thinks that a reserve army of unemployed lawyers somehow figures into the calculus of risk management on Wikipedia? As if lawyers weren't governed by professional responsibility in accepting work, only an empty calendar? Maybe Godwin needs to take him to the woodshed again.

This would be a fairly cogent criticism of my comments ... except that in the very next sentence on the podcast, I stated that I didn't believe there would be greater liability for trying to make changes even if they weren't complete than if one didn't try at all. So in other words, I said pretty much exactly the opposite of what is implied here.

Is this really the best we can do toward discussion here?

(By the way, 76th minute, not 39th.)

heh.. I feel partly responsible for the misunderstanding, my partial quoting above was intended to illustrate my feeling that brad was actually making a friendly sort of throw away banter-type (can't quite bring myself to say 'witty' ;-) comment, and not imply anything else....



It certainly is frustrating to feel that a serious discussion is being derailed by people either willfully undermining the debate for 'shits 'n giggles' or just not being competent and interested enough to actually read / listen / understand any points being made ;-)



are you sure? I checked again on the file I downloaded from commons, and it does say 39th min - on the other hand, my 'VLC Media Player' claims the file is 41'07'' long, and then happily plays away for 54 mins... (not 76 though).

I'll try to listen to the podcast tomorrow, but my guess is that people are just so used to all-talk-no-action on this issue, making fun of it is the only sane response.

Regardless, the idea that someone is going to sue Wikipedia for trying to do something to help parents who wish to use content filtering for their kids, and then somehow not going quite far enough or letting something "slip through," is really a bit silly. I can see how Durova might say such a thing, but I didn't think Mr. Brad would (which is why I asked about it above). So, all is well with the world...

IMO, if someone ever successfully sues Wikipedia, it definitely won't be for that (assuming they ever actually do implement content-tagging to assist with parental-control filtering). I suppose there's a slight chance they could be sued one of these days for not doing anything at all, but until the laws are changed, the chances are probably on the low side of 1 percent. So the real question is, will the laws be changed, and when?

Anyway folks, I know it's tempting, but let's please try not to be needlessly silly about this podcast discussion - it's a serious subject, and it's not like there's a shortage of other things on WP to make fun of!

Although I do remember learning in my torts class that if it snows and you shovel your front walk in a half-hearted manner that leaves snow on the ground that turns to ice, you are liable for people slipping, but if you don't shovel it at all and it turns to ice, you are not liable. Basically an encouragement not to do anything since you can't fail to fulfill a duty you never took up.

What Brad says is, "everything is about cost benefit ... ". He talks of the Wikipedia as "we".

So, from that, the greatest cost benefit at present is to encouraging and defend voluntary workers rights to post images of their sexually aroused genitals, actually sexual activity and hard core pornography on a site that is accessible and administrated by children ... sponsored by the charitable trusts that sponsor Wikipedia.

I pick up on the scene when the comment from 'eyeshadow' is raise regarding a search in 'Commons' of images of oral sex and masturbation ...

Durova and Brad laugh off and squirm away from the subject and it is dropped.

But that is the nature of issue we are talking about, and worse ... like cock and ball torture, the young Asian girl, exposed, pissing in the street that we dealt with from here ... etc etc etc.

What's more interesting is Brad's following comment, "within his expertise", that he "knows of no technology" to filter according to age.

Here is an easy one ... require all editors to register in their own name and be verified by a simple credit card transaction. Just like Paypal et al can manage.

Bingo. Problem solved (... and a whole heap of other problems).

Any kid editing or administrating on their parent's credit card can either be assumed to be editing with the parents' permission ... and the bucked passed back to them in the user agreement.

Look Brad neither I, nor anyone here I suspect, am holding you responsible but you have a voice, intelligence and skills ... take a position on it. Or be honest that you already have ... you are in bed with them.

The programme is a study in avoiding the issue, a genteel chew around the edges of 'The David Shankbone Erection Collection' and the subversive pornocopia that thrives amongst the 501 ( c ) volunteer workforce and which finds itself ejaculating, literally, into society corrupting the mean of "encyclopediac".

There are a lot of could and ifs and but and a bit of poo-pooing but no one taking a position.

The lasting impression I have is that kid admin was making more sense and being more genuinely concerned but that he was being put on his back foot all the time, patronized even. And we know that he in no way faced the more rabid echelons of the "no censorship" Wikipedophiles ... the "boy lovers", the bestiality, the stoners and so on.

As you say Brad, yes, the Wikipedia does draw lines ... my question to you is, "why are you in bed with the freaks and not protecting children?"

We know who else is over your side of the line.

Oh, please -- that podcast wasn't exactly "Mercury Theatre On The Air."

I am surprised that no one from WR was invited to participate, since about one-third of the show was related to issues raised here.

Mostly what you hear in this episode is the same old crap we have always heard from the Wikipedia Amen Corner concerning minors and porn on WP. Still, there were a few interesting bits. I recall when at one point Durova raised the issue of "censorship", Brad entered into a long-winded, but accurate, distinction between censorship and the exercise of editorial discretion. Durova seemed to not appreciate the distinction, or pretended that she didn't.

I also give kudos to Awadewit for her questioning why WP should have ANY sexually explicit images at all. She also appeared to correctly identify source of much of the trouble: the ultra-libertarian philosophy that pervades WP. Other than Privatemusings, it didn't seem to me that anyone else was giving serious consideration to her points.

Final thought: if you don't know how to pronounce "sexual fetishes", maybe you shouldn't be administering sexually explicit material, either.

Coincidentally, I see both Durova and Juliancolton (... he was what 14 at the time?) voted on Man masturbating by Richiex in 2008, and yet it still remains.

Richiex's user pages, which have a live masturbation animation on it, are certainly an education.

Elsewhere, Wikipedia admin chet b long get all hot at Daniel Brandt over discussing the ethics of home educated minor Julian's serfing on the Pee-dia calling us "fucktards" to do so. Good to know Jimmy Wales' organ is in such good hands.

The page even mentions Daniel's alleged outing of Brad, so all the parts seem to be coming together. Personally, I am all for hanging this stinking albatross on whoever steps forward to defend them.

It is called "talking out" in politics, isn't it? ... God forbid we actually have to confront the issue and take a position.

Needless to say what you find on top if you do a search for "wikipedia" and "position", or "wikimedia commons position" is, you guessed it ... something just for all your "not legal" Wikipedia admins spending hours with the "boy lovers" they also have on board. Alternatively, Brad, would you like to comment specifically on, say, Wiki-fisting.png. Orgasmic muscle contractions.ogg, male_sperm etc?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...tration.svg.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...rottage.svg.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...px-Fellatio.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm..._colour.svg.png

Let us juxtapose that with, one on hand ...

And the like of this, taken at random with no more than a few minutes effort ...




Moderator's note: This post was edited to change inline pornographic illustration images (hosted on Wikimedia Commons, natch) to links.

If the Julian biography is correct, he would have been 14 when he gave his two cents/pence/euros on that highly non-academic topic. Strangely, there is no mention of this particular vote in the Wikivoices show -- it appears that Durova (and, for that matter, Brad) had no concern about a 14 year old boy debating the encyclopedic value of masturbation photographs.

Oh, boy. Do you have a time-stamp on where that happened? I'd love to hear, but I can't risk listening to much more than five minutes of this stuff.

Durova is just getting off on it all.

From User: Kayau who at some point gets into discussion with User:Lx 121 above.

Let's juxtapose that with:

File:Nena Semen en Ano.jpg
File:Nena Lubricacion Vagina.jpg ‎
File:Nena Masturbacion Dildo.jpg
File:Nena_Eyaculacion.jpg

... and all the other contributions from Vanessajas.

Actually, with User: Kayau, there is apparently some gender confusion because they also state, here ... it is in the buttocks category which is webcited, here along with a "Please read: A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales."

So, what is going on ... are they taking picture of their sister/girlfriend etc ... or is the chest not male?

Why are children as young as 10 being encouraged to upload photos of their body on a site alongside a community of fanatic hard core and auto pornographic adherents?

OK, what I am doing here is just amassing enough, indicative material to raise this to the level of 'public interest'. If anyone else cares chip in, please do.

I've mailed the LA Times editor mentioned recently, I'll get to work on other as time allows ... What should I do? Should I give Greg or Brad's details as contacts ... one on behalf of the concerned individuals at the 'Wikipedia Review' and the other on behalf of the Wikipedia?

You know how the media enjoys a "balanced view".

I thought WR was generally in favour of expert input? Who knows more about masturbation than a 14 year-old boy? (Don't answer that....)


I have serious doubts that Kayou is a 10 year old Hong Kong boy/girl based on these postings:



Anyone with more experience in the written word choices of 10 year olds is encouraged to weigh in and allay my concerns...

It was mispronounced as "feetishes" at 26:13...

I got to through almost 34 minutes before the stream-player crashed in Firefox, which I suppose means I should have downloaded the OGG file instead (or used a Linux box). Anyway, there's a certain lack of realism evident in the discussion, but nothing we haven't seen before.

More importantly, I don't believe anyone even mentioned content-tagging during those first 34 minutes. Did they talk about it after that point? And if not, is that just too practical or realistic a solution for WP'ers to support, or even grasp? Or too minimal, in that it isn't a perfect we-control-everything solution, and therefore they can't implement it due to there being too many people pointing out its flaws? Or have they just given up on anything that involves altering or improving the Mediawiki platform?

Another, perhaps more practical solution that's been mentioned would be to offload adult content to a subdomain, i.e., "adultsonly.wikipedia.org," so that parental filterers (or "nannyware," if you prefer) can just use that - they wouldn't even have to be altered in that case. But politically speaking, that's far less likely to be implemented because it would mean WP openly operating a porn site, rather than surreptitiously.

Yes, but maybe if you suggested siphoning all this off to a Wikia Wiki, it would fly as a proposal. Sort of a Memory Alpha for porn and adult topics and photos. Like Bomis, but bigger, longer, and uncut.

That might negatively affect Wikipedia's Alexa ranking, so forget that.

Still, you're right - the Wikia management team has the necessary experience...

No, I think that "feetishes" is the plural of "footishes".

I'm guessing that someone has a lot of ishes …

Jon

\ˈfe-tish also ˈfē-\
Function: noun
Etymology: French & Portuguese

There is another aspect to all this. By raising what are very reasonable questions or objections to such values being carried on in the public sphere, anyone doing so is risking turning themselves into a target for the aggression and malevolence of these people, e.g. as we see with Daniel above, secret mailing lists, and countless other examples.

A lot of the milieu control and social pressures around the Wikipedia are based on the reality of such threats ... so people don't and the status quo rules. The management, consumed with their firefighting, interpret this as "there is no problem".

I noted the male-female inconsistencies and also considered this one ...

so what adult is uploading photos of 10 year old Asian boys in "American Eagle" underpants to the Wikipedia (only a checkuser could have determined location was true) and listing them in the "Buttocks" category.

Why wasn't it picked up?

There was talk of tagging in the radio show, I think from the kid admin again, but it got brushed aside short shift as too problematic from what NewYorkBrad called the "cost benefit" side. That is, such contentious discussion would cause so much trouble that it was sap the unpaid volunteers resources from other cares and so it was unlikely ever to happen.

The simple equation is that the management feel they have to tolerate the volunteers posting autobiographic hardcore pornography, in what is after all a workplace where children have free an unlimited access and are encouraged to take positions of responsibility, in order to keep enough of them working for free and keep the project running.

That is no explanation of why they need, say, Richiex's photo of a copious ejaculation on a floor tile or what encyclopediac value it has.

Speak of the Devil,

It turns out from elsewhere, i.e. wikipedia-watch.org's hivemind that Chet "Fucktardness" B. Long only just scrapes in as an adult having been born in 1991, and starting to edit in April 2007.

This is another example of why it is not a good idea to have children running around such an emotive workplace as unpaid serfs. One has to ask the question, for how long will Chet B. Long's "Fucktardness" haunt him when his prospective employers start Googling his name?

My apologies, I thought lawyer and admin defended line drawings from Wikimedia Commons were deemed suitable for children by "the community".

The community of 'what', for what, I am still trying to assess.

That's their community. This is a family website!

The occasional bit of tasteful nudity is probably OK, but even line art that depicts the ol' in-out in detail is just asking for trouble.


You know what pisses me off, actually? As an experiment, I put that photo of an almost-naked fat guy on the WR blog, and captioned it "Lee Dennison." Lower down on the same page, there's a photo of Ron Livingston and his wife, Rosemarie Dewitt, captioned "Livingston with his wife, Rosemarie Dewitt." Now that Google Images has finally come along and indexed the blog entry, after a week I might add, what do you see on Page Two of the Google Images results for the phrase "lee dennison"? That's right, they've got the photo of Livingston and Dewitt there! Is Google a bunch of total dickheads or what? I mean, the MF's won't even let you PWN a fake person, and instead they actually prefer to add to the defamation of a real one. It almost makes you wonder who's worse, Wikipedia or them. Bloody hell.

In fact, I'm going to take that photo out of there right now... it's a copyright violation anyway, most likely. Google bastards!

I agree entirely ... what most middle of the road families would consider as perverse sexual activity "in specific detail" being the issue.

I notice that on Chet's user page, he even self-identified himself and age as 15, so I think there is a bigger problem here than I realised. It still remains.

Hmm, there's another user box that says he was born on December 4, 1991, which of course would make him 459 years old, give or take. Oops, hang on, I'm using the Windows calculator program again... let's see, carry the 2... That makes him 18 years old, right? I'd be more inclined to believe the actual date of birth - the "15" userbox might be a holdover from when he was actually 15, and he never got around to updating it.

Doesn't matter, really - I don't think he likes us anymore anyway!

Of course, you are right. It just proves this issues of children swilling around with all the hard core porn and sexual activists has been going on for years.

Hah one problem there bud, I had a background check done on me (USAF), so I think I'm good.


What's not to like?

As did all the most notorious traitors, background checks are next to useless. Now where's that sodium thiopental...

Trouble...with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for Pool?





I once thought about writing a musical comedy about the Rosenbergs -- not that there was anything musical or comic about them.

Which Rosenbergs? It's a fairly common Danish name and indeed I have some relatives of that name. And of course there's Rosenberg Caastle:

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/copen...0048022144.html

http://edennoel2.blogspot.com/2008/06/day-...sen-museum.html

Two Cold War "spies" who were executed by the US for being Reds Under The Bed, or something:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg

Oh! Thanks.

I am sorry but being politically indoctrinated to give and take orders with the aim of killing and maiming people ... especially from a cowardly great height and distance ... is not a real job. Just keep remembering, that those are mostly little old women and kids that are about to be minced and flamed before you hit the button, will you Coffee?

I am so disappointed that Brad hightailed it and there was no further intelligent discussion of solving the problems of child abuse on the Wikipedia with one single small device ... verified IDs. I was wondering about you mate NuclearWarfare (T-C-L-K-R-D) too (user image below), ... were you both base brats?

I am sorry but any young man, fixated by phallic devices which explode at their intended destinations, comes up as on my radar. Honestly guys, are these really the mindsets best suited to creating an encyclopedia? For your own sakes, cant you see that if the foundation would only fix the problems at source, you would not have to waste so much of the gift of your youth whacking gophers.

I have a situation where an End of the World cult ... whose leaders attempted to cover up genuine cases of child sex abuse at their headquarters ... who have left a trail of broken families, who have sucked up millions of dollar and numerous of family homes on the false predictions of the End of the World since WWII and promises of a high status in Heaven on Earth after a Nuclear Holocaust which is going to "purify" humanity ... and all this guy keeps doing is whacking me off the Wikipedia.

It would appear that User:Kayau has left a comment on my story about Wikijunior.