On vulvas and assholes, by Sue Gardner Options

[thekohser]

Sue Gardner actually talks some sense here, but I kind of choked when she (the one who refuses to say how much the WMF paid the consulting firm to handle the donors survey) noted:

we’ve become an echo chamber: we hear only voices like our own, expressing points of view we already agree with. People who believe other things fall silent or abandon the conversation or are reduced to impotent rage.

Disclose the amount paid to Q2 Consulting, Sue, and then we'll let you start taking credit for your cogent interpretations of what's going on all around you, on your watch.

[HRIP7]

Sue Gardner actually talks some sense here, but I kind of choked when she (the one who refuses to say how much the WMF paid the consulting firm to handle the donors survey) noted:

we’ve become an echo chamber: we hear only voices like our own, expressing points of view we already agree with. People who believe other things fall silent or abandon the conversation or are reduced to impotent rage.

Disclose the amount paid to Q2 Consulting, Sue, and then we'll let you start taking credit for your cogent interpretations of what's going on all around you, on your watch.

Well, a year ago we thought that the Harris study's recommendations for a personal image filter might end up buried and forgotten. That hasn't happened, and this is a courageous post by Sue. Kudos.

[carbuncle]

Well, a year ago we thought that the Harris study's recommendations for a personal image filter might end up buried and forgotten. That hasn't happened, and this is a courageous post by Sue. Kudos.

Judging by the way the reports were written (and the three stage way they were rolled out), I have no doubt that Harris wrote the report to arrive at the conclusions he knew the WMF (or possibly just Gardener) wanted. Without going back and reading those reports again, I seem to recall that Harris and Harris didn't even bother to do the research that they proposed in the first part of the report - remember how they were going to examine what other major websites did and how they handled these issues? I think someone told them that none of that applies to WP because, uh, WP is, uh, different, uh, somehow.

Although it will ruffle the feathers of some of the ideologues, having an image filter that is not enabled by default does almost nothing to address the issues that it is intended to mitigate. It will enable the WMF to say that they have done something, while not causing a major upset with their editors. Recall how Jimbo was able to sell flagged revisions to the press, yet we don't have flagged revisions. The average person thinks that we do, because they read about it online. I don't find that to be very courageous (although I do give Gardener credit for her blog post).