Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Pictures in WiktionaryZ

One of the more famous quotes is "a pictures paints a thousand words". As the interwiki bot is running again, I do check every now and again its work. When I look at the entry [[ラッコ]], you will forgive me that it is Japanese to me. However, the picture that can be seen allows me to translate it to "zeeotter".

Pictures are great. We do need them with the WiktionaryZ content. Having said this, the fun starts. We can decide to allow only for pictures that can be found in Commons. There are precedents for it. It solves the problem of what upload rules would be allowed; they would be the strict rules of Commons.

The other thing you would get into are the illustrations that are problematic for some cultures. In my country, people have as many genitalia as in any other, they look more or less the same as in any other, they are as rare as in any other and a picture would not be problematic. In many countries this cannot be done. One great example of this can be found here. Now when you read this in some 10 days time this picture may not be there anymore. It does however show you the sensitivities that need to be considered with pictures.

Thanks,
GerardM

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Probably it's pretty much impossible to make things right for everyone. One solution could be to flag the pictures with questionable or controversial content and make it possible to hide them in the user preferences.

Anonymous said...

No censorship. Because what is "offensive" (which includes "immoral") varies between people in areas such as sex, religion, politics, and violence; WiktionaryZ disregards "offensive" as valid grounds for the removal of information (which includes images). Information will only be removed for editorial reasons or to comply with applicable laws.

From Wikipedia:Censorship.

GerardM said...

When you are talking about WiktionaryZ, the people who will be using it, they will be from all parts of the world, speaking all languages. I do not know what laws would be applicable but the Florida laws.

When you are talking about editorial reasons, what community will decide what editorial reasons will be used. We will have communities for all languages but they will all work on the same data.

How would you reconcile your reasons for equally valid other reasons? To what extend are you willing to accept cultural values that are not your own.. To what extend will I?

Thanks,
GerardM

Anonymous said...

Wikipedia:Censorship explains this better then I can and has more people to answer your questions.

GerardM said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
GerardM said...

The English Wikipedia has one community. People work on the same content. They all speak the same language. WiktionaryZ will be different. This discussion is not about what some people think is right but more about to what extend people are willing to listen to others.

So there is indeed a proposal for a policy on the English Wikipedia.. How does that help us, how does it help WiktionaryZ to listen to others ?

Thanks,
GerardM

MovGP0 said...

I don't think it is needed to provide explicit blocking facilities. If a type of picture is not allowed in a specific country, the users should simply not use that kind of picture in the localized Articles.

But what we should be aware, is that pictures should not appear in automatic translations.

It is not only a problem of the wikipedia that such content is freely available - it's a problem of the whole Internet. There are many other sides presenting such, and much "harder stuff", all over the world. In Wikipedia the most offensive content are anatomic pictures.

The Wikipedia community is very sensible in that part. I've never seen any illegal content in localized versions of articles. Also the community respects the meanings of others. Only some individuals don't think so - but you can't make it right for everyone.