Wikinews:Story preparation/Wikimedia founder Jimbo Wales moves to purge pornography from Commons

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!
Jump to: navigation, search

Friday, May 7, 2010

Internet
Related stories
Graphical map of the Internet
More information at Wikipedia:
Wikimedia-logo.svg This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Following a statement by Wikipedia's co-founder Jimbo Wales, administrators on Wikimedia Foundation's daughter project, Wikimedia Commons have started deleting pornographic images.

The statement "Wikimedia Commons admins who wish to remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests have my full support," follows an accusation by Wikipedia's co-founder Larry Sanger that Wikimedia was knowingly hosting and distributing child pornography, and his raising of the issue with law enforcement authorities in the United States including the FBI.

The Wikimedia Foundation responded with a statement which in part read "The Wikimedia Foundation obeys the law...the Wikimedia Foundation has not been contacted by the FBI or any other law-enforcement agency with regard to allegedly illegal content on any Wikimedia projects...", however also stating that "Our community of volunteer editors takes action to remove illegal material when such material is brought to its attention. The Wikimedia Foundation is proud of the Wikimedia editors who zealously work to keep the projects free of illegal material." Jimbo Wales decided on Thursday that the removal of "pornographic" content prior to a statement by the Foundation board had become imperative, making his comment on his talk page and linking to it on the community talk page.

The issue of pornographic images hosted by Commons have in the past been dealt with on a case by case basis, with individual images being judged on its merits through a process of deletion reviews. Previous attempts by various editors to turn a restrictive sexual content proposal into policy have in the past been rejected by community consensus. Wales' statement, however, was immediately incorporated into that proposal's page and, by virtue of his being the founder of the project, was taken to be the de facto new policy.

A minority of administrators, Wales included, then began implementing the policy of "many things should just be speedy deleted and argued about later". Images that in the past had survived deletion reviews were speedily deleted, including many which were being used to illustrate articles on sexuality across the Foundation's projects.

[edit] Sources

Wikinews
 This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews:Story_preparation/Wikimedia_founder_Jimbo_Wales_moves_to_purge_pornography_from_Commons&oldid=1019919"
Personal tools
Variants
Actions
Navigation
Wikinews
Regions
Toolbox