As has just been announced on the Foundation list, there will be a referendum in August on "whether members of the community support the creation and usage of an opt-in personal image filter, which would allow readers to voluntarily screen particular types of images strictly for their own account."

Will that include images of Jimbo in the fundraising flyers?

Like most stuff from WMF and Beaudette it is arse about face. Members should be able to opt-in to porn and gore if they want to.

Rather than have everyone create an account so that they can opt-out.

Second thoughts maybe WMF are keen on increasing the porn content to encourage more people to create accounts so that they can opt-out.

Every time the Foundation grants "popular sovereignty" to the community on major issues like this, I can't help but think of Bleeding Kansas (T-H-L-K-D).

The "information Must Be Free!" crowd always shouts the loudest and longest. They always win. Anything that acts as a "barrier" between information (even if it is minor or temporary) is always "censorship." The EnWP community wouldn't even entertain Pending Changes for BLP articles or semi-protection of BLP articles. What makes this referendum more promising than past ones?

Because it's voluntary?

It's a user setting instead of a server setting?

You can still see all the images of Mohammed and dicks you want?

How will users block stuff, anyway? After they've seen it and already been offended, or can other users create block lists and folks subscribe to them?

Nothing. Personally, I think they should survey the public rather than the community.

It's kind of weird that they're doing any survey at all. I'm sure this has been proposed before; has anyone actually put up a serious opposition to it?

There have been several proposals for opt-out filtering that have been soundly rejected. This, if adopted, allows them to claim that they "offer filtering" while at the same time not actually serving any real purpose. Even so, I rather doubt this will pass, since the "informationporn just wants to be free" crowd that dominates on Wikipedia will view even voluntary filtering as an intrusion on their right to force other people to see porn.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Image_filter_referendum

I feel so naive

Most people surfing through pages on the internet, don't particularly want to stumble upon gore, or porn. In particular they don't want to stumble across it when they are showing their family something. Instance if some one is considering a trip trip to Billing Aquadrome and then does a search for watersports they more than likely don't want a whole load of pissing images, even if, out of curiousity, they did click the Urolagnia link.

This proposal is fucking useless as per usual. If they were to simply impose it what would the wankers do. Piss and moan for a couple of weeks about the sky falling and then go off to watch that video of David Gerard stuffing a glass jar up his arse.

Was that a joke? Link? I wouldn't pay to see it, but I think I'd click it on youtube if I knew it was Gerard.

This all reminds me of the story of the guy who goes to the whorehouse and all they have is a sheep.

Joke yes, based on tarantino.