QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Wed 23rd January 2008, 7:02am)
OK enough is enough. I have just found this
http://spankingart.wikia.com/wiki/Category:CC-BY-SA_imageswhich contains (among other things) these
[...]
Whoa...pretty disturbing stuff. There seem to be a lot of pictures which I would characterize as sexulization of children. Seems to be a lot of that on this particular wiki. Whether that is true or not doesn't really matter, that is the appearance. Wikia is a business and appearance means a lot. Which makes me wonder if all of our time exposing the ills of Wikipedia as a whole is misdirected, since as a non-profit, "revolutionary" exercise it is more of an abstract thing, which compromises the practice of making criticisms that resonate with those outside of "internet culture".
However, this "spankingart" deal is very easy to understand. A lot of tech reporters have Jimbo's page watchlisted, but this is a story that would practically write itself and be very accessible to readers of mainstream media.
My thinking in directing criticism at Wikia content is "as Wikia goes, so goes Wikipedia".
QUOTE(UserB @ Wed 23rd January 2008, 11:37am)
I'm hopeful that Wikia is going to do the right thing and get rid of this trash of a page. Part of the problem is that so many people in the "free content" movement don't live in the real world. They're willing to justify any abhorrent behavior under the title of "freedom".
Welcome, B! Very good comments. I do not think the problem is just this article, though. The entire wiki seems to be infected.
But on to your point about "free culture": I was going to post this on Wikipedia, but did not want to hear the same type of hair brained arguments that you currently are receiving: Is "free culture" essentially at odds with certain moral principles, such as
not sexualizing children? WAS is stating that doing anything about this is somehow a detriment to free culture...and in effect he is alienating those who find this abhorent.
Which would inevitably bring about the argument that one man's "moral depravity" (
to quote Fred Bauder in an unrelated arbcom) is another man's good time--at which point the conversation is over, since this boils down to abuse of children, not something like promoting drug use, which may be unsavory, but it is in a different category. In fact, I think that promoting abuse of children (and appearance thereof) is in its own category--right along side promoting the murder of innocent people. I do not want to believe that this is what "free culture" supports. There has to be a line somewhere, however fine.
I'm waiting for a famous Jimbo quote. I think things will go something like this:
- Jimbo Wales states: "I find it GFDL compliant and don't really have a problem with it."
- Jimbo issues an apology, stating that he "really didn't look into the issue at hand"
- Jimbo deletes the "spankingart" wiki, himself
- In an unrelated issue, Jimbo finally hires Mr. T to finish the WMF audit come hell-or-high-water.