Pregnancy, NSFW image Options

[Shalom]

I was looking up the meaning of "Gravida 2, Para 1" on the internet yesterday. Wikipedia's article on Pregnancy came up, and I found the answer there almost immediately.

But to get there, I had to scroll down the first screen and view a NSFW photo of a naked pregnant woman. I was at "W". Fortunately nobody saw it, but I felt uncomfortable.

It's not as if I were searching for information about a sexually explicit subject (the classic example is "autofellatio"). We're talking about a very common, ordinary phenomenon. For crying out loud, Wikipedian nerds, can you have the decency to show a pregnant woman with her clothes on?

[everyking]

It's not that the picture is inappropriate, it's just gratuitous. Images should strike the right balance between informative value and cultural acceptability. If you decrease the acceptability of the presentation, you effectively decrease the informative value because you deter some people from reading the article. If an image is shocking, or just even causes you to raise an eyebrow, it probably shouldn't be prominently featured.

[Theanima]

If an image is shocking, or just even causes you to raise an eyebrow, it probably shouldn't be prominently featured.

All in the eye of the beholder.

[taiwopanfob]

If an image is shocking, or just even causes you to raise an eyebrow, it probably shouldn't be prominently featured.

All in the eye of the beholder.

So is NPOV, RS and other matters. All in the beholder. If you can choose to exercise those policies -- because you expect your "beholders" to demand them -- then so you can for other policies these "beholders" may desire.


This post has been edited by taiwopanfob: Tue 24th August 2010, 11:11pm

[Shalom]

This discussion is going off track. At home, when I'm alone, the image of the nude pregnant woman side-on, from the waist up, is not offensive. (My Jewish tradition states that viewing such images for pleasure is forbidden, but this is one of the few areas where I do not practice strict adherence to the written laws.)

There's a flip-side to "Wikipedia is not censored". That is: Wikipedia reaches a very wide audience. The page view statistics for the Pregnancy article show 7,000 pageviews every day, or about 5 pageviews per minute. More than two million people will see that image it stays on the site. Among that mass of humanity, there will be some people who feel not mildly uncomfortable, but really upset - and most of them won't say anything about it on the talk page. This is the kind of decision that the readership won't make. The writers on Wikipedia, and I no longer number among them, must consider what will least offend in the most-viewed pages. On less-viewed pages (another classic example: goatse.cx) a more liberal approach may be reasonable, on the grounds of "what did you expect to see?" Even there, Kelly Martin once advised that pressing the "Random article" button might be hazardous because you might land on a NSFW page.

This post has been edited by Shalom: Wed 25th August 2010, 12:40am