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Commons deletions

Porn madness

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By Sage Ross and Phoebe


Timeline of events
  • 7 April 2010: Larry Sanger posts that he has "reported the Wikimedia Foundation to the FBI" for hosting child pornography (see archived story)
  • 14 April 2010: In the wake of this post getting picked up by Slashdot, Sanger posts a reply elaborating on his stand and reaffirming it
  • 27 April 2010: Fox News posts a story about Sanger's accusation
  • 28 April 2010: The Wikimedia Foundation posts a statement replying to the Fox story on the WMF's blog
  • 30 April, 2010: Sanger posts another reply about his position
  • 6 May 2010: Jimmy Wales indicates on Commons his support for deletion of images of "little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests"
  • 6 May 2010: Admins on Commons start deleting such images
  • 7 May 2010: Wales begins deleting images
  • 7 May 2010: Discussion begins on the Foundation-l mailing list
  • 7 May 2010: The WMF Board of Trustees issues a statement on the situation
  • 9 May 2010: Wales reduces his global privileges
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.

Controversy erupted across the Wikimedia community this week after Jimmy Wales spearheaded a purge of sexual content on Wikimedia Commons.

Recent allegations by Larry Sanger that Wikimedia projects have been hosting child pornography (see archived story) seem to have prompted a new wave of media attention to Wikimedia's sex-related imagery. To head off anticipated negative press,[1] Wales began pushing for rapid cleanup on 6 May. He stated that:

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. This includes immediate deletion of all pornographic images.

The previously rejected guideline Commons:Sexual content became the locus for attempts to create a clearer guideline for dealing with sexual and pornographic media. The scope of Commons is limited to media with educational value, and it has long been accepted that low-quality and non-educational sexual content should be deleted; however, the line between what should be deleted and what should be kept has been a matter of common practice and individual judgment, rather than a specific guideline.

In attempting to create such a guideline, it quickly became clear that the Commons community was divided over how permissive the project should be in hosting explicit images. Wales argued that any image should be deleted if it would trigger the record-keeping requirements of the U.S. Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, which mandates producers to keep proof of age for models and actors in sexually explicit material. However, Wales then extended it to include artworks and diagrams, which the original act does not cover, and which proved highly controversial.

Wales himself deleted 71 files on 7 May, including a number of Wikimedian-made illustrations used in articles about sex acts, as well as some historical art images that featured sexual acts. Discussing the controversial deletions afterward, Wales said:

I deleted some things that I assumed would be undeleted after a discussion. I wanted us to take an approach that involved first deleting a lot of borderline things, and then bringing them back after careful case by case discussions.

He further claimed that

I had thought that a good process would be to engage in a very strong series of deletions, including of some historical images, and then to have a careful discussion about rebuilding. That proved to be very unpopular and so I regret it. It also may have had the effect of confusing people about my own position on what to keep and what to get rid of.

During the deletions themselves, Wales indicated that he did not want any discussions to happen until everything he considered pornographic had been purged from Commons. On May 7, while the controversy was reaching its peak, and his deletions were ongoing, he wrote:

We can have a long discussion and work out a new set of parameters after the cleanup project is completed. It is not acceptable to host pornography in the meantime.

and specified June 1st as a date to begin discussions on whether Commons should "ever host pornography and under what circumstances". He further wheelwarred with several administrators to keep the artworks in dispute deleted, which included works by Franz von Bayros and Félicien Rops.

Several Commons administrators followed Wales's directive, deleting hundreds of explicit images and videos. Other users, however, objected to the deletion of artistic works, and what they saw as overly aggressive deletions which were not done through the normal discussion-based Commons deletion process. A "Petition to Jimbo" asking him "to respect the processes and policies established by our community" was started late on 7 May and gathered momentum on 8 May, attracting 268 signers and 27 counter-signers by 10 May.

The deletions also activated the CommonsDelinker bot, which removes image code from articles across Wikimedia projects after they are deleted on Commons. In anticipation of the undeletion of some of the images, the bot was temporarily blocked on several projects to minimize disruption.

Reactions from Wikimedia Foundation

Following Wales's deletions, the Wikimedia Foundation issued a statement through the Foundation-l mailing list. The statement, sent by Michael Snow (chair of the Board of Trustees), emphasized that the projects are educational in nature and that illegal material is removed immediately but that material is not removed simply because it might offend. The statement concluded:

We don't intend to create new policy, but rather to reaffirm and support policy that already exists. We encourage Wikimedia editors to scrutinize potentially offensive materials with the goal of assessing their educational or informational value, and to remove them from the projects if there is no such value.

The statement did not explicitly mention sexual content or Wales's actions. The Board's intent with the statement was immediately questioned, and several people called for individual Board member comments on the issue. Several Board members did respond, spawning a new line of discussion over the proper role of the Wikimedia Foundation and its trustees in setting the scope of content on Wikimedia projects.[2]

On 9 May, Sue Gardner wrote that she is trying to follow the conversation and suggested that the Board is having real conversations about how to deal with the issue.

Wales's "Founder" privileges reduced

Wales's deletions and the ensuing pushback brought new attention to a proposal to remove the Founder flag; the 'founder' userright gave Wales the ability to perform restricted actions like deletion and checkuser across all projects, and to modify user rights. The proposal was started in March 2010, after Wales intervened on English Wikiversity and made comments that some users interpreted as a threat to close Wikiversity (see archived story); however, by early May the proposal had found only 23 users in support and 36 in opposition. In the days following the Commons controversy, the number of supporters grew to more than 300 as fewer than 100 defended Wales's privileges.

On 9 May, at his request, Wales's 'founder' privileges were reduced considerably. Once Wales's request for changes went into effect, the list of remaining rights includes the oversight ability, which removes content such that even administrators cannot view or restore it, and the ability to view deleted and oversighted content across projects.

Questionable value

Although Wales several times suggested the crisis had been averted by his actions, on 10 May, Fox News published Despite Content Purge, Pornographic Images Remain on Wikimedia, an attack article which used the purge to imply that things were substantially worse before Wales's actions than they were, and claimed thousands of images had been deleted, when, in fact, the number was nearer 400, of which many had been undeleted by then.

Further, Wales's loss of his founder powers have been taken up by the media, attached to the story of his deletion spree. For instance, the UK Daily Telegraph article Wikipedia porn row sees founder give up his editing privileges.

Ongoing discussion

Discussion of the deletions and the sexual content policy continues on Foundation-l, Commons, and other projects, with discussions focusing both on Wales's actions as a Board of Trustees member and the deleted content itself.

As of 10 May, nearly half of the files Wales deleted have been restored, and many sexual content speedy deletions performed by Commons administrators are also being re-evaluated.

It seems that the media purge has done only little to address Larry Sanger's initial concerns over images of child sexual abuse. The Commons pedophilia category, which consists largely of historical line drawings related to the subject, retains most or all of the images it contained before Sanger's complaint, although most of the explicit cartoon images from the lolicon category were deleted.

Notes

  1. ^ In a Foundation-l post on 8 May, Wales explained his rationale for initiating the purge:

    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.
  2. ^ Individual board member responses include: Florence Devouard, former chair of the Board, also commented, objecting to Ting Chen's comments and echoing the accusation from Commons users that Wales was "behaving like a vandal".
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Discuss this story

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NOTE TO ALL and DISCLAIMER: material has been added to this story since Ragesoss wrote it (see editorial note) that I haven't personally checked; this is a rather partisan issue, and I encourage everyone to both follow up with statements made here to ensure their accuracy and to try to keep the Signpost story NPOV. I know that some of the editors who have worked on this, including myself, have also been involved in Foundation-l discussions. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 23:14, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"I deleted some things that I assumed would be undeleted after a discussion. I wanted us to take an approach that involved first deleting a lot of borderline things, and then bringing them back after careful case by case discussions." seems like we have a guideline on this - Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Which makes this 9 May 2010: Wales reduces his global privileges a good choice. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:58, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Jeepday - I think it is a distortion to describe Jimbo's actions as 'disruptive'. They may have had that effect, but his intentions were good: to improve Wikipedia's reputation and get rid of some images that were causing more harm than good. He may have made the wrong call in some cases - that's for Commons to decide - but he was not wrong to do this. We should be thanking him for it. Robofish (talk) 21:45, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, it really was disruptive, and marked by incredibly bad handling which steamrollered over consensus. See below. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:42, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think Jimmy should be thanked for the results of his actions and not for his intentions. So thank you, Jimmy, for once again doing too little, too late on a festering problem. Thank you Jimmy, for once again trying to demonstrate that you are above the policies and governing processes of the projects. Thank you, Jimmy, for acting against your publicly stated beliefs on censorship. Above all, thank you Jimmy, for giving up most (but not all) of your self-granted founder rights, without an extended, bitter fight.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) (talk) 02:08, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Jimbo "assumed" those things would be undeleted? Oh Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo... have you forgotten that you are the Benevolent Dictator For Life, and people have the tendency to not question what the Dictator is doing? People assume whatever you do is the law of the land, even when you don't want it to be. Perhaps make it a tad bit clearer next time, okay? --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 09:09, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The problem was that A. Jimbo mislead people about the reason for the deleions: citing laws, when he revealed two days later that he was acting for PR reasons. Nothing in his original draft policy or comments so much as mentions the media attacks until after he went on the deletion spree. B. Had a clear statement from the community that we felt erotic artworks should not be deleted - his draft policy had been edited to make that very clear. Jimbo edited out the consensus, replaced it with a "this applies to art too" comment, then went on a deletion spree. C. Jimbo handled things incredibly poorly. For instance, above we see him saying he deleted things that he assumed would be deleted. But here we find him saying "I have redeleted the image for the duration of the cleanup project. We will have a solid discussion about whether Commons should ever host pornography and under what circumstances at a later day - June 1st will be a fine time to start.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC)" - in other words, he refused to engage in discussion until he had finished deleting everything. Further, this was in the middle of " several dozen people explaining that, with Commons Delinker Bot, it's very hard to undelete files in use, as the images will need to be put back in to all sites by hand. - You get the idea. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:39, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I thought the article made it pretty clear why people were upset... because Jimbo tried to single-handedly impose his idea of what sexual content Commons should get rid of, without waiting for discussion or following Commons process, without taking note of which images were actually in use on other projects, without respecting the judgment of Commons admins who disagreed and undeleted content, and without distinguishing among 'amateur pornography', art, and drawings created specifically to replace explicit photos. Different people were upset with different parts of that. The article certainly could go into more detail, but the main points are there.--ragesoss (talk) 00:11, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think it really downplayed a lot of the issues. It's getting better with editing, but it was heavily "what Jimbo said", even though, a lot of what Jimbo said about this has been contradictory, such as his claims he expected things to be undeleted, while, at the time, he refused to allow any discussion of it for a month. Adam Cuerden (talk) 00:27, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Those of us that volunteer here but have jobs in the "real world" should remind ourselves that for Jimbo, this is the "real world". I don't mean to suggest he have unlimited authority or anything, but as a small business owner I can say that sometimes I have to make decisions that are not popular with the rest of the staff, because somebody has to make the hard decisions, sometimes there are urgent matters that can't spend weeks in some committee being discussed, and sometimes you make the wrong choice or, as someone else suggested is the case here, make the right choice but carry it out the wrong way. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:09, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Do these unpopular decisions you make involve removing illustrations by notable 19th century artists, whose work has been displayed in museums, from encyclopedia articles because you want Fox News to write about how morally responsible your business is? - BanyanTree 01:54, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is a non profit with content in the public domain. This is why I contribute. This is not either a private business or a corporation and that is why I assume most of us are here. We donate our free time as we feel we have some ownership in the final result. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:01, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have two questions which I doubt will be answered to anyone's satisfaction. (1) Would Jimmy Wales have taken this extreme & sudden action had the criticism come from another broadcast organization than Fox? (It's not that much of a secret that he aligns his political beliefs with that "news" media.) And (2) Is it possible to recall WMF board members? The only person in this fracas who has acted worse than Wales is Ting Chen, whose comments in this matter betray an appalling lack of knowledge about how the projects actually work, & how to best support the activities of the volunteers. -- llywrch (talk) 05:26, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have suggested on occasion 'partly in jest' on the Main page Talk page when an image/topic has cauces 'wailing and gnashing of teeth' that there be forked main pages or similar - the ordinary one 'being reasonably vanilla' and the other also allowing adult themes/'very medical'/certain political topics etc which might cause annoyance (including to library blocking systems) on the first page and 'Random article' link. Could something of this nature be devised to deal with a particular group of WP critics? (And I know it will be 'much work to set up and outside my field.')

How would Nancy in Oliver Twist fit into the Fox viewpoint? Jackiespeel (talk) 13:02, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]


I just realised: Every single one of Wales' actions make sense if Jimbo was trying to completely purge Commons of anything the least bit controversial to kill the story, figuring it could be brought back in a couple months. His statements lend strong support to this theory. Consider:

...He wanted to get Commons completely purged while attention was on it, then - and then only allow the restoration of encyclopedic material when attention was off it. In other words, this was the worst-thought-out PR stunt ever. Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:44, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • How else would you deal with it? I think the response is precisely correct. In the immediate period you err on the side of deletionism to make it clear Wikipedia isn't just a vehicle for smut, but similarly make it clear to Wikipedians that this isn't just deletionism gone wild and that once things are stable we can have proper lengthy discussions where necessary. Staxringold talkcontribs 23:12, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not like there isn't enough porn on the internet anyway, and people are missing the more important fact, that all of those naked people are BLP and publicity rights time bombs under U.S. law. I'm totally okay with what Jimbo did, but I think Larry went overboard, and I'm still a huge Wikipe-tan fan. W.D.Ikon (talk) 04:03, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This possibly isn't the best place for a general discussion on this issue, but I think that a clean up of Commons sexual content was (and probably remains) long overdue. That said, I think that reducing Jimbo Wales permissions was also overdue given how mature Wikimedia now is, so this was a win-win. Nick-D (talk) 08:24, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]


I agree to this because of the attutide I got when I tried to get images of nude children removed, I got comments such as "you cant stop the revoloution", well it appears that it has been stopped. If some of you remember I asked Jimbo to get in touch with me over the matter, in which he fully understood the point I was making, so I would like to thank Jimbo for doing this. Sophie(: 08:45, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Wales indicated that he did not want any discussions to happen until everything he considered pornographic had been purged from Commons. [...] [He] specified June 1st as a date to begin discussions [...]" — wow. That's probably the most breathtaking part of this whole story yet; being bold and doing what you believe is right is one thing, but telling people that they are not allowed to even discuss matters? Maybe we should put Jimbo's picture on the "chutzpah" entry on Wiktionary. -- Schneelocke (talk) 10:48, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

note -- this text was added to the article later, not by ragesoss or I, and I have not personally verified it. I don't know where this was stated; I haven't heard of any such thing before. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 23:14, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A fox-news-inspired, modern-day variant of american comstockery, affecting an international, culturally diverse community of Wikimedia projects. Delete the founder tag! --Asthma bronchiale (talk) 13:35, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This. It is sad to see the founder of Wikipedia been made a complete fool by his own actions. It is even sadder to realize that the motivation for his actions was faux-news. I will remember this little power trip and wikidrama play when the next round of request for donation arrives.--LexCorp (talk) 02:48, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps Wikimedia should consider packing it's servers and move elsewhere.--HoneymaneHeghlu meH QaQ jajvam 21:29, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo Wales said "I deleted some things that I assumed would be undeleted after a discussion. I wanted us to take an approach that involved first deleting a lot of borderline things, and then bringing them back after careful case by case discussions". Isn't that already in violation of interrupt to illustrate a point? OhanaUnitedTalk page 14:27, 17 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's more "disrupted Wikipedia in order to make us look good to a media organization that was never going to make us look good, whatever we did." Jimbo pretty clearly wanted to purge all controversial material from Commons while media attentin was on us, so he could throw out some sounbites. He'd then let us return files that he "assumed would be undeleted after a discussion" after he allowed the discussion to happen in June. It was an incredibly stupid media gambit, which has backfired badly. Him losing his founder powers is a much bigger media story than the one he sought to prevent. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:32, 19 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

French regard

File:Origin-of-the-World.jpg Vu de France, la guerre des ex-chefs et la croisade anti Wiki de 'Fox/Faux-news' semble assez dérisoire. Certains puritains voudraient purger le net, et aussi Wp, de toute image représentant le sexe. Ils en ont tellement peur et surfent sur la peur !... Ne leur donnez pas du grain à moudre. Pas d'ambiguité sur la pédophilie. Mais sur le reste : Résistez ! Faites bien la différence entre œuvre d'art et pornographie de mauvais aloi. Certaines représentations artistiques choqueront la loi américaine ? Et alors ? Wp est-elle destinée uniquement aux écoliers américains ? Vu de France cette croisade anti-sex (parce que je crois que c'est ce qu'il y a derrière) me fais marrer. Jean de Parthenay (talk) 20:24, 19 May 2010 (UTC) Et un cadeau, pour tout ceux qui aiment l'art.[reply]

Viewed from France, the war of ex-leaders and the crusade against Wiki by 'Fox / Faux News' seems pretty ridiculous. Some puritans would purge the net, and also Wp, off any picture of sex. They are so afraid of it and surfing on these fears! ... Don't give them food. Id est : No ambiguity about pedophilia. But let's make the difference between pornography and art work. Some artistic performances will shock the U.S. kids and what ? And then ? Is Wp intended for American schoolchildren only ? Seen from France this crusade against sex (because I think that's what's behind it) make me laugh. Jean de Parthenay ( talk ) 20:24, 19 May 2010 (UTC) And a gift from Courbet.
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