from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
How can we ever know if the majority of the world finds something
offensive? All we ever get to hear about are the vocal minority. I think
it's pretty easy to make a pronouncement on body parts, saying that male
and female parts should be treated in the same way on wikipedia. If you
are worried about it we could just take a vote. All those in favor of
treating the penis and clit photos the same say eye.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Delirium [mailto:delirium at hackish.org]
Sent: 12 May 2004 11:58
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

Anthere wrote:

> I expect that female genitals have the same right of display than male

> genitals.
>
> Either hidden, or visible.
>
> But that equal standards are respected between women and men.

I personally agree they're approximately equal, and think both should be

a link.  But I don't see how we can make that pronouncement.  If the
majority of the world happens to be more offended by one than the other
(which seems to be the case), we're not really moral arbiters that are
here to say they're wrong.  Principles such as "the offensiveness of
female and male genitalia should be equal" might make for an interesting

discussion for a philosophy of media class, or a journal of feminist
theory, but I don't think we should really be in the business of putting

forth new standards for what people should find offensive and what they
shouldn't find offensive.  If it's easy to keep them consistent then
fine, but if people find one much more offensive than the other, then
that's a matter to debate using some other tool than Wikipedia.

-Mark

_______________________________________________
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Delirium-
> In that case, I think "public depiction of close-up explicit images of
> genitalia" meets the standard pretty handily in most of the world, with
> a few minor exceptions of portions of the world that are highly
> over-represented amongst Wikipedians.

Do not confuse the legal situation with people's beliefs. Even in the most
fundamentalist countries there are strong minorities opposed to the
madness they are subjected to. For example, during the high point of
Taliban rule, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan still
advocated a secular, open society.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: fabiform

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nick Berg

body:
> I can't believe this article has the picture of his severed head
> -- this is  rather horrific. I'm respecting the article
> protection, but I think this is  way over the line.

The protected version doesn't have the picture, you were looking at an oldid.
But there's been a revert war over having the picture inline or linking to it.

Fabi (solidly in the "link to it, don't show it" camp).

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
>Here we'd be proposing the principle that offensiveness of
a photograph ought to be gender-neutral, which is a rather non-trivial
stance that would need to be argued for if one is to apply it across the

board, and in any case isn't the sort of principle we have any business
proposing.

Sure it is. This is a policy decision not an article.

Theresa


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nathan Hamblen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: extension .mp4 not served with proper mime type

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Nathan Hamblen wrote:
>
>> I tried uploading a movie in MPEG 4 format with the extension .mp4,
>> but when I linked to it with [[media:movie_name.mp4]] it just came up
>> as gibberish, which usually would mean that the mime time was wrong.
>> I'm pretty sure that giving it a .mov extension would work fine so
>> long as the user has Quicktime 6, but that's not really as correct as
>> mp4. (And  there are probably players out there that can handle MPEG 4
>> but not quicktime movies in general.)
>
> Why not using the mpg or mpeg extensions ? ;)

I'm a little leary of that too, as MPEG 4 is a fairly new format
encapsulated by something resembling Quicktime. Since there are
undoubtedly many players that can play older MPEG by not newer MPEG, I
think the version-specific suffix is appropriate.

thanks,
Nathan


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial pictures: when in doubt, link?

body:
You know, I really don't see much objection to the idea that controversial pictures should be linked to (within the Wiki, of course), and that the general policy should be that anyone who finds a picture offensive should replace it with a link to the picture, and that people who do NOT find it offense should not revert such a change.

The real problem with censorship occurs when something is suppressed. But using a link doesn't suppress anything. (And it doesn't create the problems involved in the real world where something is behind the counter or your have to ask a pharmacist for it...)

Let's take it to an absurd extreme. Suppose that everyone agreed to "when in doubt, link," but nobody agreed on what was offensive, and an all-out battle resulted. Group A finds pictures of X offensive, so the replace them with link. Group B dislikes A's actions and retaliates by replacing pictures of Y, which group A likes, with links.  Soon you have hordes of contentious trolls insisting that a Microsoft logo, or a picture of the Statue of Liberty, or a diagram of lightwave interference in a soap bubble, are deeply, deeply offensive to them... and a hundred thousand edits later, no image in Wikipedia is directly visible any more, they've ALL been replaced by links...

...would that be _so very_ terrible?

Sure, I see the objection that replacing an image link, thereby identifying it as potentially offensive, asserts a point of view, but that can be dealt with by balancing text on the page.


body:
I was the one who unblocked him. I think I'll leave a note on his talk
page.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Matthews [mailto:charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]
Sent: 12 May 2004 11:59
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] I just blocked someone for 9999 hours

Danny, yesterday, wrote:

>I have just blocked Yammy Yamathorne for 9999 hours. I did not go
through
Quickpolls. I have no regrets.

Possible connection with Yammy Yamathorn, posting right now?

Think I'll delete the page about the school, anyway.

Charles

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http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
There is no issue of censorship involved in having the good sense and
good taste to not automatically display graphic photos that are likely
to be offensive or upsetting to large numbers of people.

There will always be difficult questions of where to draw the line, I
suppose, but we solve that issue in other cases by "going meta",
i.e. avoiding the controversy.

With most issues, the wiki process works perfectly fine.  It is almost
never "either/or" with the text of an article -- creative people can
almost always find a way to compromise on a text that is different
from either of two extreme positions.

With photos, the "show" versus "don't show" really is an "either/or",
though.  The only possible compromise, and one which I think will
almost always work just fine, is to *link* to the picture, with
suitable warnings, and leave it at that.

That is the proposal that Anthere has proposed in this case, and that
is what I support.

I do think that there are cases of photos that we ought to not even
have on our site at all.  Were it not for the extreme newsworthiness
of this particular photo, and it's likely longterm political
importance, I would argue for deleting it.  This is not rotten.com.

I think that there is great validity to the concern for the family and
for human dignity in general, with respect to photos of this nature.

--Jimbo


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
> I think if you were to take a poll and ask people if they found the
> image that's been wrangled over on [[Clitoris]] acceptable for public
> display, you'd find a large majority of the world's population would say no.
>
> -Mark

Incidently, I noticed that the masking is back on clitoris.
Consequently, it is now obvious that Wikipedia currently hold a strong
bias toward feminine body display, while male body is all right to display.

I would like that the equality of human genital display is discussed,
and discussed seriously, and that at the end of the discussion, we
happen to reach a consensus over what is correct to display in terms of
genitals.

I expect that female genitals have the same right of display than male
genitals.

Either hidden, or visible.

But that equal standards are respected between women and men.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] any ja: Wikipedians?

body:
 --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Do they know about the Wikimedia
> Foundation and have any
> interest in it or requests or concerns or whatnot?

The [[m:Elections for the Board of Trustees of the
Wikimedia Foundation]] page has been translated into
Japanese and is linked to from their recent changes.
They have a contact page for non-Japanese-speakers at
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us_for_non-japanese-speakers
if you want to ask them directly about it. If you do
speak Japanese, they use a bulletin board at
http://taurus.kake.info.waseda.ac.jp/wikip/joyful/joyful.u.cgi
rather than a village pump. You might get more of a
response at either of those places than on this
mailing list.

Angela.

____________________________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Delirium-

> I think if you were to take a poll and ask people if they found the
> image that's been wrangled over on [[Clitoris]] acceptable for public
> display, you'd find a large majority of the world's population would say no.

Maybe, maybe not. My argument is that majorities are irrelevant in this
context. There should not be a tyranny of the moral majority.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Arne Klempert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Webby Awards - ... and the winner is WIKIPEDIA

body:
Congratulations to the best community in the world:

http://www.webbyawards.com/main/webby_awards/nominees.html#community

Oh, what a day :-)

Arne
[[de:Benutzer:Akl]]


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: Severed head (wasRe: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy)

body:
I am unconvinced that a photo of this nature adds
anything to the article, or will remain that
newsworthy. The incident is tragic, and documenting it
is important, but a graphic picture of a severed head?
Why?
Mark

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> There is no issue of censorship involved in having
> the good sense and
> good taste to not automatically display graphic
> photos that are likely
> to be offensive or upsetting to large numbers of
> people.
>
> There will always be difficult questions of where to
> draw the line, I
> suppose, but we solve that issue in other cases by
> "going meta",
> i.e. avoiding the controversy.
>
> With most issues, the wiki process works perfectly
> fine.  It is almost
> never "either/or" with the text of an article --
> creative people can
> almost always find a way to compromise on a text
> that is different
> from either of two extreme positions.
>
> With photos, the "show" versus "don't show" really
> is an "either/or",
> though.  The only possible compromise, and one which
> I think will
> almost always work just fine, is to *link* to the
> picture, with
> suitable warnings, and leave it at that.
>
> That is the proposal that Anthere has proposed in
> this case, and that
> is what I support.
>
> I do think that there are cases of photos that we
> ought to not even
> have on our site at all.  Were it not for the
> extreme newsworthiness
> of this particular photo, and it's likely longterm
> political
> importance, I would argue for deleting it.  This is
> not rotten.com.
>
> I think that there is great validity to the concern
> for the family and
> for human dignity in general, with respect to photos
> of this nature.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Delirium a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> I expect that female genitals have the same right of display than male
>> genitals.
>>
>> Either hidden, or visible.
>>
>> But that equal standards are respected between women and men.
>
>
> I personally agree they're approximately equal, and think both should be
> a link.  But I don't see how we can make that pronouncement.  If the
> majority of the world happens to be more offended by one than the other
> (which seems to be the case), we're not really moral arbiters that are
> here to say they're wrong.  Principles such as "the offensiveness of
> female and male genitalia should be equal" might make for an interesting
> discussion for a philosophy of media class, or a journal of feminist
> theory, but I don't think we should really be in the business of putting
> forth new standards for what people should find offensive and what they
> shouldn't find offensive.  If it's easy to keep them consistent then
> fine, but if people find one much more offensive than the other, then
> that's a matter to debate using some other tool than Wikipedia.
>
> -Mark

So, are you saying that we should mask female genitalia because the
world is generally offended by watching it, while we should display male
genitalia because the world is generally not offended by watching it ?

Are you also gonna remove pictures of women who show their hair because
in most of the world women hide their hair ?

And how exactly do you measure the level of offensiveness of female
genitalia in the world compare to level of offensiveness of these
humiliation pictures in the prison article ?

Mind you, I think most of the world think these are VERY offensive, so
by your standards, they should be immediately put into a separate page.


from_name: Antonio PS

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ido Wikipedia

body:
Hi.

I would like to add new Wikipedia in Ido, a constructed language with a
great history. The ISO 639-2 code for Ido is "ido" and you can find a
language description in the official homepage:

    http://www.idolinguo.com

Thanks and congratulations for this great work.

    Antonio

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


subject: [WikiEN-l] Someone in New York, June 23

body:
Who is
(a) located in or near New York City
(b) willing to speak publicly
(c) close to the project
(d) willing to attend on our behalf the ceremony there.

I don't think there's any major requirement for a big speech, just a
"thank you" type of thing at the ceremony, I think.

If there are multiple volunteers, I will pick someone.  But by
volunteering, you *promise* not to have your feelings hurt if I pick
someone else, o.k.?  I have to pick someone.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Delirium a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> So, are you saying that we should mask female genitalia because the
>> world is generally offended by watching it, while we should display
>> male genitalia because the world is generally not offended by watching
>> it ?
>>
>> Are you also gonna remove pictures of women who show their hair
>> because in most of the world women hide their hair ?
>>
>> And how exactly do you measure the level of offensiveness of female
>> genitalia in the world compare to level of offensiveness of these
>> humiliation pictures in the prison article ?
>>
>> Mind you, I think most of the world think these are VERY offensive, so
>> by your standards, they should be immediately put into a separate page.
>
>
> For what it's worth, I think they should both be put on a separate page,
> prominently linked, but not displayed inline.
>
> I don't like the idea of us telling people that they are wrong to be
> more offended by one than by the other though.  Changing that, if you
> believe it needs to be changed, is a debate for somewhere
> else---Wikipedia shouldn't be a tool to promote particular ideologies
> about media, apart from the very basic one that we support GFDL'd material.
>
> I don't think most of the world has women hide their hair, though I
> could be wrong.  A sizable minority does though.  I would not think we
> should put pictures of women's hair in a particular language's Wikipedia
> if a large majority of that language's speakers found it offensive (I
> don't know if this is the case for any actual languages, so that's
> hypothetical).  Our goal should be to produce a free encyclopedia, not
> to force people to look at images they find offensive simply because we,
> as the moral arbiters of the world in a somewhat western-imperialist
> fashion, have deemed that people who are offended by them are wrong and
> should adopt our (much better, of course) political and ethical beliefs
> instead.
>
> -Mark

Okay. So, I would prefer the prison pictures to be placed in a separate
gallery, because I think they are offensive for most people. Can I do
that ? Or am I gonna be immediately reverted ? What is people opinion
about that ? I won't do it if people are widely against it.

What should we do with the clitoris picture ? As soon as we choose
*voluntarily* to display male genitalia, while hiding female genitalia,
we choose *delibaretly* to *convey* the fact *WE* consider one offensive
and the other not. In short, we *force* people to think in a particular
way. We are not neutral any more. Does that not bother you Mark ?

Honestly ?

Anthere


from_name: Constans, Camille (C.C.)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] japanese around

body:
And Suisui is japanese IIRC, we see her(him?) often on IRC

>
>Tomos is japanese, and he is frequently around Mark.
>He has been there for a while...perhaps a year at
>least ?
>
>Anthere
>
>Delirium a ?crit:
>> According to the wikistats page
>> (http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm
>in English), Japanese
>> (ja:) is the 3rd-largest Wikipedia, after English
>and German, both in
>> terms of articles and in terms of active
>contributors.  I haven't really
>> heard any discussion from there though---there's
>plenty of people from
>> the de:, fr:, and even lots of smaller Wikipedias
>here, but not many at
>> all from ja: that I've heard of.  Anyone know how
>things are going on
>> over there?  Do they know about the Wikimedia
>Foundation and have any
>> interest in it or requests or concerns or whatnot?
>>
>> -Mark
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________
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>Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
>http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861
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>


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: any ja: Wikipedians?

body:
Delirium wrote:
> According to the wikistats page
> (http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm in English), Japanese
> (ja:) is the 3rd-largest Wikipedia, after English and German, both in
> terms of articles and in terms of active contributors.  I haven't really
> heard any discussion from there though---there's plenty of people from
> the de:, fr:, and even lots of smaller Wikipedias here, but not many at
> all from ja: that I've heard of.  Anyone know how things are going on
> over there?  Do they know about the Wikimedia Foundation and have any
> interest in it or requests or concerns or whatnot?
>
> -Mark

Hello,

Maybe you can have chat with them on irc ( server: irc.FreeNode.net,
channel: #ja.wikipedia ) ? :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Hashar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Anthere wrote:
> There are no articles on potty training, and that is more the reality of
> life of many people than many articles on ... oh well...

It would be excellent if we did have some, I think.  It's an
interesting topic, and there are a variety of theories about it, and
most of the information that you can find is POV advocacy in favor of
one method or style or another.

--Jimbo


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>> A sizable minority does though.
>>
>>
>
>300 million americans, 300 million europeans, minus 200 million
>europeas who really do not, and 50 million americans who do not
>(italian neighborhoods etc), and that leaves you with 5%, at best.
>
>Besides, America and Europe do not _have_ women hide their hair as a
>matter of fact. It is fashion, and women generally do it by
>themselves, to be more beautiful, attractive, etc, and there's really
>very little pressure. It's not like an american woman will be flogged
>at the post if she did not shave her legs.
>
>
I'm not sure what you're talking about here.  Most women in the world do
not cover their hair from public view.  It is common pretty much only in
the Islamic world and a few relatively small traditionalist Christian
groups.  1.1 billion Chinese generally do not; Russians do not; etc.
Far from 5%, I think it's more like 80%.

>Tell that to the 3000+ chinese editors. They would really enjoy
>telling you how little regard they have for western-imperialism.
>
>Besides, don't you think your behavior is somewhat condescending?
>Moral-arbiters? Yeah, that's us. The Britney Generation. Moral
>arbiters of the world. I laugh! Ahahahah!!! I choke!!! Arrgghhh!!!
>Thump.
>
But there's a certain set of westerners who feel they have the proper
morality they need to share with the world.  If only everyone else would
agree with them, the world would be a better place, eh?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Delirium-

>> Maybe, maybe not. My argument is that majorities are irrelevant in this
>> context. There should not be a tyranny of the moral majority.

> But what *should* there be a tyrrany of?  The majority of people who
> happen to edit Wikipedia, who are generally well-off and concentrated in
> North America and Europe?

There shouldn't be any tyranny at all. Instead we should treat all
material in the same way: link or remove if it is almost universally
offensive, show if it isn't. Everything else is POV.

See, if you "masked" nudity, for example, you would be trampling on my POV
that nudity is perfectly normal and should be shown. You will respond:
Yes, but if you show nudity, you trample on the *majority* POV that it
should not be shown. That assertion is incorrect. By treating all images
equally, on the basis of community consensus, we do not endorse any single
point of view. Selectivity is the issue here.

It's a lot like the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. You can
either tolerate all religions equally, or none at all. Tolerating none, in
our case, would mean "masking" every image that could be potentially
considered offensive by someone somewhere - in effect we would have to
mask all of them.

Letting the *majority* view win on this matter would be the first step
toward abandoning NPOV. And when this issue was brought up in the past,
people started arguing: Well, maybe we *should* abandon NPOV on this, just
to avoid losing readers. If you accept that argument, you might as well
take all the criticisms out of the [[Mother Teresa]] article because they
might drive readers away, or "mask them" by moving them to a separate
page, as was initially proposed.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Pedro Fortuny wrote:

>So in this case the policy ought to be: personal human rights are above
>collective rights.
>
>
Here again we have Wikipedians trying to turn this into an ideological
tool.  What makes you say the above?  A great many philosophers disagree
with that statement.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>With photos, the "show" versus "don't show" really is an "either/or",
>>though.  The only possible compromise, and one which I think will
>>almost always work just fine, is to *link* to the picture, with
>>suitable warnings, and leave it at that.
>>
>>
>
>If we make this official policy, we abandon NPOV for photos, for the
>reasons I have cited. Please refute my arguments or state clearly that you
>do want to abandon NPOV for photos.
>
>
I disagree, and think you wish to abandon NPOV for photos.

You wish to adopt the principle that we should err on the side of
showing photos, based on your personal point of view that people should
not find things offensive that you do not find offensive.  When there is
disagreement, we should side with the "not offensive" camp.

For what it's worth, I think the majority of articles you have worked on
on Wikipedia are similarly flawed, as your idea of NPOV, couched in
rather pretentious language, is to promote your political ideology.
This can be seen on things like [[Roman Catholicism]], which turn into
long rants about birth control, with disingenuous edit summaries about
"NPOV" (I don't like the Roman Catholic Church either, but that article
is ridiculous).

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>You have not offered a single plausible counter-argument on why, for
>example, this would be any different from moving criticisms of Mother
>Teresa to a separate page if the majority does not like to read about
>them.
>
>
I think the primary difference is that photos can be shocking, while
text generally isn't.  If the [[Mother Theresa]] article *did* include
truly shocking text, like referring to her with epithets of some sort,
that would be a problem, but there are very few cases where an article
can be both highly shocking and even close to neutral.  Perhaps the
closest would be quoting someone else who used an epithet, if the quote
happened to be relevant (perhaps quoting someone who said disparaging
things about [[Jesus]] or [[Mohammad]] or something), but I haven't run
across a case where anyone tried to insert such quotes.

Photos, however, are pretty easy to make shocking.  I might wish to read
an article about [[clitoris]], for example, but find it rather difficult
to do so when there is a photograph of a woman spreading open her
genitalia with her fingers in the sidebar.

None of this is "shocking" meant in a conceptual sense, but in a
visceral sense---the photos of the prisoner standing on a box with wires
on his hands are conceptually shocking, but should obviously stay, and I
think the criticisms of Mother Theresa are more analogous to that sort
of shocking, if they're analogous to any sort of shocking photos.

For what it's worth, I usually find myself on the opposite side of this
debate, as most people in the US at least take a more restrictive view
of what should be permitted on things like TV and radio than I do.  If
anyone were arguing we *remove* these photographs entirely, I would find
that problematic; it's just being in-your-face about them that I find
unnecessary.

-Mark


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> By masking those images which are nearly universally
> considered offensive,
> we are providing a service to our community in
> hiding images that they
> will not want to see unless they explicitly request
> them. If we set this
> threshold low - at 70%, for example - then we are
> trampling on the POV of
> 30% of our readers. But if we set it very high -
> 95-100% - then we are in
> NPOV territory.
>
No, we're still in POV territory, as we always will
be. Your POV is that it is far better to have the
image with the article, and anything different is a
compromise. If we set the threshold very near either
end, we are allowing a very small minority to
determine where the image will be. Again, there is no
way to avoid POV here. Any choice we make will be POV.

> In the NPOV policy we can only treat something as a
> fact if it is
> universally considered as one by informed persons.
> Similarly, if a photo
> is accepted as offensive by all, then we can treat
> its offensiveness as
> *fact*, and act on the basis of this fact. If it is
> considered offensive
> by some, when we act on this *opinion*, we are
> endorsing a specific POV.

Again, I disagree with your analysis. We do not "treat
something as a fact." Anything that almost anyone
would consider fact can be challenged by a single user
citing a single verifiable source that disagrees. The
result is an accommodation to the minority view so
that the minority view is at least mentioned.

As others have pointed out, such accommodation is
substantially different for text than for images. Text
is much more flexible than a static image. For
instance, we often (usually?) place criticisms is a
separate, clearly identified section of the article.
Those who prefer not to read the criticism are free to
do so. Even if the criticism is not well labeled, the
reader can stop reading at any point and skip beyond
the criticism.

Reading text is always an chosen act, (excepting some
words or short phrases which take on some of the
attributes of an image). But place an image in front
of any normal person and they will see the image,
whether they choose to or not. If there is text and
graphics on a page, it is normal, if not automatic, to
look at the image first.

So, I see it to be unhelpful to compare text to images
in this way. They are very different in the way that
they are perceived, and in the options available in
presentation.

> ...<snip>...
> This doesn't mean that we have to tolerate all
> images everywhere, of
> course. It merely answers the first question,
> offensiveness. Other key
> questions are usefulness and redundancy. And we may
> even make the
> compromise of saying that if a photo's offensiveness
> to a large number of
> readers clearly outweighs its usefulness, the photo
> should be removed or
> linked to. Again, such a determination can only be
> made in consensus.
>
We can also, by consensus, agree not to let consensus
rule in specific cases. Or even majority rule. That is
not un-wiki. You yourself are suggesting it by
requiring only 10% to determine the placement of the
image (or, to state it the other way around, by
requiring that 90% must object before the image is
masked).

This is not a choice between POV and NPOV. It is a
choice between different POV's. You want all images
left on the article page unless the group that wants a
particular image left there is so small as to be
almost noise level. I would have all images left on
the article page unless the group that wants a
particular image left there falls below 70%.

Either way the image is placed -- on the article page
or masked -- is still POV. In your case it reflects
the POV of as little as 10% of those who vote. Would
we really want the image of the militants holding Nick
Berg's severed head to be plainly on the article if
only 10% want it to be there?

__________________________________
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from_name: Mr Paul Vogel

subject: [WikiEN-l] FYI: JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS AND CENSORSHIP OF THE INTERNET

body:
JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS AND CENSORSHIP OF THE INTERNET

    In CofC (Ch. 8) I wrote, ?one may expect that as
ethnic conflict continues to escalate in the United
States, increasingly desperate attempts will be made
to prop up the ideology of multiculturalism . . . with
the erection of police state controls on nonconforming
thought and behavior.? As noted above, there has been
a shift from ?the culture of critique? to what one
might term ?the culture of the Holocaust? as Jews have
moved from outsiders to the consummate insiders in
American life. Coinciding with their status as an
established elite, Jewish organizations are now in the
forefront of movements to censor thought crimes.40

    The Internet is a major gap in control of the
major media, but Jewish organizations have taken the
lead in attempting to censor the Internet. The Simon
Wiesenthal Center (SWC) distributes a compact disc
titled ?Digital Hate 2001? that lists over 3000 ?hate
sites on the Internet.? Both the Simon Wiesenthal
Center and the ADL have attempted to pressure Internet
service providers (ISP?s) like AOL and popular
websites like Yahoo into restricting subscriber access
to disapproved websites. Recently Yahoo removed 39
Internet clubs originally identified as ?hate sites?
by the SWC.41  Internet auction sites have been
subjected to protests for selling Nazi memorabilia.42
Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com have come under fire
for selling Hitler?s Mein Kampf. The ADL also
published a report, Poisoning the Web: Hatred Online,
and has urged the U.S. Congress to initiate a
?comprehensive study of the magnitude and impact of
hate on the Internet.?43

    Online services in the U.S. are also under
pressure from foreign governments, including France,
Germany, Austria, and Canada, where there are no
constitutional guarantees of free speech. For example,
a judge in France ruled that Yahoo was violating
French law by delivering Nazi memorabilia to people in
France via the company?s online auctions, even though
the service is based in the United States. Yahoo was
acting illegally, the judge said, even though the
company has created a separate French site that,
unlike the broader Yahoo service, follows French law.
The company was ordered to use filtering technology to
block politically sensitive material from appearing on
computers in France or face fines equivalent to
$13,000 a day. In Germany, a court found that German
law applies even to foreigners who post content on the
Web in other countries?so long as that content can be
accessed by people inside Germany. In this case, the
court ruled that an Australian citizen who posted
Holocaust revisionist material on his Australian
website could be jailed in Germany. Theoretically it
would be possible for Germany to demand that this
person be extradited from Australia so that he could
stand trial for his crime.44

    Jewish organizations have been strong advocates of
laws in European countries that criminalize the
distribution of anti-Jewish material. For example, the
ADL pressured the German government to arrest a U.S.
citizen who distributed anti-Jewish materials. Gary
Lauck was arrested in Denmark and extradited to
Germany on the warrant of a Hamburg prosecutor. He was
sentenced to four years in jail, served his sentence,
and was deported.45

    This sort of government-imposed censorship is
effective in countries like France and Germany, but is
not likely to succeed in the United States with its
strong tradition of constitutionally protected free
speech. As a result, the major focus of the Jewish
effort to censor the Internet in the United States has
been to pressure private companies like AOL and Yahoo
to use software that blocks access to sites that are
disapproved by Jewish organizations. The ADL developed
voluntary filter software (ADL HateFilter) that allows
users to screen out certain websites. However, while
AOL?the largest ISP by far?has proved to be compliant
in setting standards in line with ADL guidelines, the
ADL notes that other ISP?s, such as Earthlink, have
not cooperated with the ADL, and independent web
hosting sites have sprung up to serve websites
rejected by AOL.46

    The ADL and the SWC have an uphill road because
the Internet has long been touted as a haven for free
speech by the high-tech community. One senses a
certain frustration in the conclusion of a recent ADL
report on the Internet:

Combating online extremism presents enormous
technological and legal difficulties . . . . Even if
it were electronically feasible to keep sites off the
Internet, the international nature of the medium makes
legal regulation virtually impossible. And in the
United States, the First Amendment guarantees the
right of freedom of speech regardless of what form
that speech takes. As a result, governments,
corporations and people of goodwill continue to look
for alternative ways to address the problem.47
    Clearly Jewish organizations are making every
effort to censor anti-Jewish writing on the Internet.
They are far from reaching their goal of removing
anti-Jewish material from the Internet, but in the
long run the very high political stakes involved
ensure that great effort will be expended. I suspect
that in the U.S., if pressuring existing ISP?s by
organizations like the ADL and the SWC fails, these
companies may become targets of buyouts by
Jewish-owned media companies who will then quietly
remove access to anti-Jewish websites. AOL has just
recently merged with Time Warner, a Jewish-controlled
media company, and it had already merged with
Compuserve, a large, nationwide ISP. As indicated
above, AOL-Time Warner has complied with pressures
exerted by Jewish activist organizations to restrict
expressions of political opinion on the Internet.
    I suppose that the only option for prohibited
websites will be to develop their own Internet service
providers. These providers?perhaps subsidized or
relatively expensive?would then fill the niche of
serving people who are already committed to ethnic
activism among non-Jewish Europeans and other forms of
politically incorrect expression. The situation would
be similar to the current situation in the broadcast
and print media. All of the mainstream media are
effectively censored, but small publications that
essentially preach to the converted can exist if not
flourish.

    But such publications reach a miniscule percentage
of the population. They are basically ignored by the
mainstream media, and they mainly preach to the choir.
The same will likely happen to the Internet: The sites
will still be there, but they will be out of sight and
out of mind for the vast majority of Internet users.
The effective censorship of the Internet by large
corporations does not violate the First Amendment
because the government is not involved and any policy
can be justified as a business decision not to offend
existing or potential customers.

THE QUESTION OF BIAS
    I have several times been called an ?anti-Semite?
for the tone of some of my writings, both in CofC and
my comments on various Internet discussion lists. To
be perfectly frank, I did not have a general animus
for organized Jewry when I got into this project. I
was a sort of ex-radical turned moderate Republican
fan of George Will. Before even looking at Judaism I
applied the same evolutionary perspective to the
ancient Spartans and then to the imposition of
monogamy by the Catholic Church during the middle ages
(see MacDonald 1988a, 1995b). There are quite a few
statements in my books that attempt to soften the tone
and deflect charges of anti-Jewish bias. The first
page of my first book on Judaism, A People that Shall
Dwell Alone  (MacDonald 1994), clearly states that the
traits I ascribe to Judaism (self-interest,
ethnocentrism, and competition for resources and
reproductive success) are by no means restricted to
Jews. I also write about the extraordinary Jewish IQ
and about Jewish accomplishments (e.g., Nobel prizes)
in that book. In the second book, Separation and Its
Discontents (MacDonald 1998a), I discuss the tendency
for anti-Semites to exaggerate their complaints, to
develop fantastic and unverifiable theories of Jewish
behavior, to exaggerate the extent of Jewish cohesion
and unanimity, to claim that all Jews share
stereotypically Jewish traits or attitudes, especially
in cases where in fact Jews are over-represented among
people having certain attitudes (e.g., political
radicalism during most of the 20th century). And I
describe the tendency of some anti-Semites to develop
grand conspiracy theories in which all historical
events of major or imagined importance, from the
French Revolution to the Tri-lateral Commission are
linked together in one grand plot and blamed on the
Jews. All of this is hardly surprising on the basis of
what we know about the psychology of ethnic conflict.
But that doesn?t detract in the least from supposing
that real conflicts of interest are at the heart of
all of the important historical examples of
anti-Semitism. Most of this is in the first chapter of
Separation and Its Discontents?front and center as it
were, just as my other disclaimers are in the first
chapter of A People that Shall Dwell Alone.

    It must be kept in mind that group evolutionary
strategies are not benign, at least in general and
especially in the case of Judaism, which has often
been very powerful and has had such extraordinary
effects on the history of the West. I think there is a
noticeable shift in my tone from the first book to the
third simply because (I?d like to think) I knew a lot
more and had read a lot more. People often say after
reading the first book that they think I really admire
Jews, but they are unlikely to say that about the last
two and especially about CofC. That is because by the
time I wrote CofC I had changed greatly from the
person who wrote the first book. The first book is
really only a documentation of theoretically
interesting aspects of group evolutionary strategies
using Judaism as a case study (how Jews solved the
free-rider problem, how they managed to erect and
enforce barriers between themselves and other peoples,
the genetic cohesion of Judaism, how some groups of
Jews came to have such high IQ?s, how Judaism
developed in antiquity). Resource competition and
other conflicts of interest with other groups are more
or less an afterthought, but these issues move to the
foreground in Separation and Its Discontents, and in
CofC I look exclusively at the 20th century in the
West. Jews have indeed made positive contributions to
Western culture in the last 200 years. But whatever
one might think are the unique and irreplaceable
Jewish contributions to the post-Enlightenment world,
it is na?ve to suppose they were intended for the
purpose of benefiting humanity solely or even
primarily. In any case I am hard pressed to think of
any area of modern Western government and social
organization (certainly) and business, science, and
technology (very probably) that would not have
developed without Jewish input, although in some cases
perhaps not quite as quickly. In general, positive
impacts of Jews have been quantitative rather than
qualitative. They have accelerated some developments,
for example in finance and some areas of science,
rather than made them possible.

    On the other hand, I am persuaded that Jews have
also had some important negative influences. I am
morally certain that Jewish involvement in the radical
left in the early to middle part of the last century
was a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for
many of the horrific events in the Soviet Union and
elsewhere. (About this, of course, one can disagree. I
am simply saying that I find the evidence compelling.)
But the main point is that I came to see Jewish groups
as competitors with the European majority of the U.S.,
as powerful facilitators of the enormous changes that
have been unleashed in this country, particularly via
the successful advocacy of massive non-European
immigration into the U.S. I found that I was being
transformed in this process from a semi-conservative
academic who had little or no identification with  his
own people into an ethnically conscious person?exactly
as predicted by the theory of social identity
processes that forms the basis of my theory of
anti-Semitism (see MacDonald 1998a). In fact, if one
wants to date when I dared cross the line into what
some see as proof that I am an ?anti-Semite,? the best
guess would probably be when I started reading on the
involvement of all the powerful Jewish organizations
in advocating massive non-European immigration. My
awareness began with my reading a short section in a
standard history of American Jews well after the first
book was published. The other influences that I
attributed to Jewish activities were either benign
(psychoanalysis?) or reversible?even radical leftism,
so they didn?t much bother me. I could perhaps even
ignore the towering hypocrisy of  Jewish ethnocentrism
coinciding as it does with Jewish activism against the
ethnocentrism of non-Jewish Europeans. But the
long-term effects of immigration will be essentially
irreversible barring some enormous cataclysm.

    I started to realize that my interests are quite
different from prototypical Jewish interests. There
need to be legitimate ways of talking about people who
oppose policies recommended by the various Jewish
establishments without simply being tarred as
?anti-Semites?. Immigration is only one example where
there are legitimate conflicts of interest. As I write
this (November, 2001), we are bogged down in a war
with no realizable endgame largely because of
influence of the Jewish community over one area of our
foreign policy and because of how effectively any
mention of the role of Israel in creating friction
between the U.S. and the Arab world?indeed the entire
Muslim world?is muzzled simply by the cry of
anti-Semitism. And at home we have entered into an
incalculably dangerous experiment in creating a
multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society in which the
intellectual elite has developed the idea that the
formerly dominant European majority has a moral
obligation to allow itself to be eclipsed
demographically and culturally?the result, at least at
its inception and to a considerable degree thereafter,
of the influence of Jewish interest groups on
immigration policy and the influence of Jewish
intellectual movements on our intellectual and
cultural life generally. As noted above, the rise of
Jewish power and the disestablishment of the
specifically European nature of the U.S. are the real
topics of CofC.

    I agree that there is bias in the social sciences
and I certainly don?t exempt myself from this
tendency. It is perhaps true that by the time I
finished CofC I should have stated my attitudes in the
first chapter. Instead, they are placed in the last
chapter of CofC?rather forthrightly I think. In a
sense putting them at the end was appropriate because
my attitudes about Jewish issues marked a cumulative,
gradual change from a very different world view.

    It is annoying that such disclaimers rarely appear
in writing by strongly identified Jews even when they
see their work as advancing Jewish interests. A major
theme of the CofC is that Jewish social scientists
with a strong Jewish identity have seen their work as
advancing Jewish interests. It is always amazing to me
that media figures like the Kristols and Podhoretzes
and foreign policy experts like Paul Wolfowitz and
Richard Perle do not feel an obligation to precede
their remarks on issues affected by their solicitude
for Israel by saying, ?you should be wary of what I
say because I have a vested ethnic interest in
advancing the interests of Israel.? But the same thing
goes for vast areas of anthropology (the Boasian
school and racial differences research), history
(e.g., obviously apologetic accounts of the history
and causes of anti-Semitism or the role of Jews in the
establishment of Bolshevism), psychology (the
Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis), and contemporary
issues (immigration, church-state relations). The
point of CofC that really galls people is the idea
that we should simply acknowledge this bias in (some)
Jewish researchers as we do in others. There are a
great many books on how Darwin and Galton were
influenced by the general atmosphere of Victorian
England, but writing of a Jewish bias immediately
results in charges of ?anti-Semitism.?

    But the deeper point is that, whatever my
motivations and biases, I would like to suppose that
my work on Judaism at least meets the criteria of good
social science, even if I have come to the point of
seeing my subjects in a less than flattering light. In
the end, does it really matter if my motivation at
this point is less than pristine? Isn?t the only
question whether I am right?

CONCLUSION
     CofC is really an attempt to understand the 20th
century as a Jewish century?a century in which Jews
and Jewish organizations were deeply involved in all
the pivotal events. From the Jewish viewpoint it has
been a period of great progress, though punctuated by
one of its darkest tragedies. In the late 19th century
the great bulk of the Jewish population lived in
Eastern Europe, with many Jews mired in poverty and
all surrounded by hostile populations and
unsympathetic governments. A century later, Israel is
firmly established in the Middle East, and Jews have
become the wealthiest and most powerful group in the
United States and have achieved elite status in other
Western countries. The critical Jewish role in radical
leftism has been sanitized, while Jewish victimization
by the Nazis has achieved the status of a moral
touchstone and is a prime weapon in the push for
large-scale non-European immigration,
multi-culturalism and advancing other Jewish causes.
Opponents have been relegated to the fringe of
intellectual and political discourse and there are
powerful movements afoot that would silence them
entirely.

    The profound idealization, the missionary zeal,
and the moral fervor that surround the veneration of
figures like Celan, Kafka, Adorno, and Freud
characterize all of the Jewish intellectual movements
discussed in CofC (see Ch. 6 for a summary). That
these figures are now avidly embraced by the vast
majority of non-Jewish intellectuals as well shows
that the Western intellectual world has become
Judaized?that Jewish attitudes and interests, Jewish
likes and dislikes, now constitute the culture of the
West, internalized by Jews and non-Jews alike. The
Judaization of the West is nowhere more obvious than
in the veneration of the Holocaust as the central
moral icon of the entire civilization. These
developments constitute a profound transformation from
the tradition of critical and scientific individualism
that had formed the Western tradition since the
Enlightenment. More importantly, because of the
deep-seated Jewish hostility toward traditional
Western culture, the Judaization of the West means
that the peoples who created the culture and
traditions of the West have been made to feel deeply
ashamed of their own history?surely the prelude to
their demise as a culture and as a people.

    The present Judaized cultural imperium in the West
is maintained by a pervasive thought control
propagated by the mass media and extending to
self-censorship by academics, politicians, and others
well aware of the dire personal and professional
consequences of crossing the boundaries of acceptable
thought and speech about Jews and Jewish issues. It is
maintained by zealously promulgated, self-serving, and
essentially false theories of the nature and history
of Judaism and the nature and causes of anti-Semitism.

    None of this should be surprising. Jewish
populations have always had enormous effects on the
societies where they reside because of two qualities
that are central to Judaism as a group evolutionary
strategy: High intelligence (including the usefulness
of intelligence in attaining wealth) and the ability
to cooperate in highly organized, cohesive groups
(MacDonald 1994). This has led repeatedly to Jews
becoming an elite and powerful group in societies
where they reside in sufficient numbers?as much in the
20th-century United States and the Soviet Union as in
15th-century Spain or Alexandria in the ancient world.
History often repeats itself after all. Indeed, recent
data indicate that Jewish per capita income in the
United States is almost double that of non-Jews, a
bigger difference than the black-white income gap.
Although Jews make up less than 3 percent of the
population, they constitute more than a quarter of the
people on the Forbes magazine list of the richest four
hundred Americans. A remarkable 87 percent of
college-age Jews are currently enrolled in
institutions of higher education, as compared with 40
percent for the population as a whole (Thernstrom &
Thernstrom 1997). Jews are indeed an elite group in
American society (see also Chapter 8).

    My perception is that the Jewish community in the
U.S. is moving aggressively ahead, ignoring the huge
disruptions Jewish organizations have caused in the
West (now mainly via successful advocacy of massive
non-European immigration) and in the Islamic world
(via the treatment of Palestinians by Israel).
Whatever the justification for such beliefs, U.S.
support for Israel is by all accounts an emotionally
compelling issue in the Arab world. A true test of
Jewish power in the United States will be whether
support for Israel is maintained even in the face of
the enormous costs that have already been paid by the
U.S. in terms of loss of life, economic disruption,
hatred and distrust throughout the Muslim world, and
loss of civil liberties at home. As of this writing,
while Jewish organizations are bracing for a backlash
against Jews in the U.S. and while there is
considerable concern among Jews about the Bush
Administration?s pressure on Israel to make
concessions to the Palestinians in order to placate
the Muslim world (e.g., Rosenblatt 2001), all signs
point to no basic changes in the political culture of
the United States vis-?-vis Israel as a result of the
events of 9-11-01.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I acknowledge the critical comments of James C.
Russell in the preparation of this preface.

NOTES

 1. McConnell?s comments were made on an email
discussion list, September 30, 2001.

 2. This listing is based on several sources: Editors
of Fortune (1936);  To Bigotry No Sanction. A
Documented Analysis of Anti-Semitic Propaganda.
Prepared by the Philadelphia Anti-Defamation Council
and the American Jewish Committee. Philadelphia:
Philadelphia Anti-Defamation Council (1941); Gabler
1988; Kantor 1982;

http://www.psu.edu/dept/inart10_110/inart10/radio.html.

3. Ben Hecht, who was a prominent Hollywood
screenwriter and staunch Zionist, included
pro-interventionist ideas in movies at this time
(Authors Calendar,
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bhecht.htm). For example,
in Angels over Broadway (1940), Hecht has the Douglas
Fairbanks Jr. character ask, ?What happened to the
Poles, the Finns, the Dutch? They?re little guys. They
didn?t win. . . .? Rita Hayworth replies, ?They will,
some day.? Hecht also made some uncredited additions
to Alfred Hitchcock?s Foreign Correspondent (1940).
When Hitchcock was asked about the anti-Nazi and
pro-Britain message of the film, he said that it was
all the doing of Walter Wanger and Ben Hecht. (Wanger
was also Jewish; his birth name was Walter
Feuchtwanger.) In the film a character says, ?Keep
those lights burning, cover them with steel, build
them in with guns, build a canopy of battleships and
bombing planes around them and, hello, America, hang
on to your lights, they?re the only lights in the
world.?

 4. The only exception in recent years?albeit
relatively minor?was Pat Buchanan?s 1990 column in
which he referred to Israel?s ?Amen Corner? in the
United States advocating war with Iraq. (Indeed, the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee had been
lobbying Congress behind the scenes to declare war on
Iraq [Sobran 1999]). Writing in the Wall Street
Journal, Norman Podhoretz, former editor of
Commentary, promptly labeled Buchanan an ?anti-Semite?
without feeling the need to address the question of
whether or not American Jews were indeed pressing for
war with Iraq in order to benefit Israel. As in the
case of Lindbergh?s remarks a half century earlier,
truth was irrelevant. While this incident has not
altered the taboo on discussing Jewish interests in
the same way that it is common to discuss the
interests of other ethnic groups, it has resulted in a
long-term problem for Buchanan?s political career.
When Buchanan ran for president in 2000, a hostile
columnist writing in a prominent Jewish publication
stated, ?Out of the slime of the sewers and into the
filth of the gutter a desperate Patrick J. Buchanan,
the neo-Nazi, has crawled into the political arena
using anti-Semitism as his principal device to secure
a future for himself? (Adelson 1999). The columnist
went on to claim that Buchanan ?always was a neo-Nazi?
and that he ?reveals the shallow quality of his
tortured, sick, defective mind.? Not to be outdone,
Alan Dershowitz (1999) wrote, ?Let there be no mistake
about it. Pat Buchanan is a classic anti-Semite with
fascist leanings who hates Israel and loves Nazi war
criminals.? The example illustrates that Jews continue
to exert immense pressure, including smear tactics, to
keep Jewish interests off limits in American political
discussion. As with Lindbergh in an earlier
generation, Buchanan?s experience is a grim reminder
to politicians who dare raise the issue of Jewish
interests in public debate. Buchanan became completely
marginalized within the Republican Party and
eventually left it for a spectacularly unsuccessful
run as the Reform Party presidential candidate in
2000.
 5. In a conversation with his wife on November 24,
1941, Charles Lindbergh was pessimistic about
establishing a Jewish state:

C. and I get into an argument ? propos of an article
in the paper, a speech of a rabbi at a Jewish
conference in which he said that the first thing that
would have to be done at the peace table after the war
was that a large indemnity would have to be paid to
the Jews for their sufferings. Also speaks about
having a piece of land of their own?which I am
sympathetic with. . . . [C.] says it isn?t as simple
as all that. Whose land are you going to take? . . .
He is very pessimistic of its being solved without
great suffering. (A. M. Lindbergh 1980, 239)
6. The following is based on Bendersky?s (2000, 2?46)
study of U.S. military officers but is representative
of commonly held attitudes in the early 20th century.
 7. ?Reform Judaism Nears a Guide to Conversion.? New
York Times, June 27, 2001.

 8. Jewish pressure for altering traditional Roman
Catholic attitudes on Jewish responsibility for
deicide are recounted in Lacouture (1995, 440?458) and
Roddy (1966). Pope John XXIII deleted the ?perfidious
Jews? reference from the Holy Week liturgy (Lacouture
1995, 448). He then solicited the opinions of the
world?s 2,594 bishops on the Church?s relations with
the Jews. Virtually all of the respondents wished to
maintain the status quo. The Pope was ?bitterly
disappointed by the response of the episcopate? (p.
449).

 9. Burton, M. L., Moore, C. C., Whiting, J. W. M., &
Romney, A. K. (1996). Regions based on social
structure. Current Anthropology, 37: 87?123.

 10. Laslett (1983) further elaborates this basic
difference to include four variants ranging from West,
West/central or middle, Mediterranean, to East.

11 . Burton, M. L., Moore, C. C., Whiting, J. W. M., &
Romney, A. K. (1996). Regions based on social
structure. Current Anthropology, 37: 87?123.

12 .  Barfield, T. J. (1993). The Nomadic Alternative.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

13. Support for this classification comes from several
places in my trilogy on Judaism and in turn depends on
the work of many scholars. Besides the sources in this
preface, special note should be made of the following:
Evolutionary history: MacDonald 1994, Ch. 8; Marriage
practices: MacDonald 1994 (Chs. 3 and 8); Marriage
psychology: CofC (Chs. 4, 8); Position of women CofC
(Ch. 4); Attitude toward outgroups and strangers:
MacDonald 1994 (Ch. 8), MacDonald 1998a (Ch. 1);
Social structure: MacDonald 1994 (Ch. 8), MacDonald
1998a (Chs. 1, 3?5), CofC (Chs. 6, 8, and passim as
feature of Jewish intellectual movements);
Socialization: MacDonald 1994 (Ch. 7), CofC (Ch. 5);
Intellectual stance: MacDonald 1994 (Ch. 7), CofC (Ch.
6 and passim); Moral stance: MacDonald 1994 (Ch. 6),
CofC (Ch. 8).

 14. Grossman et al. and Sagi et al., in I. Bretherton
& E. Waters (Eds.), Growing Points in Attachment
Theory and Research. Monographs for the Society for
Research in Child Development, 50(1?2), 233?275. Sagi
et al. suggest temperamental differences in stranger
anxiety may be important because of the unusual
intensity of the reactions of many of the Israeli
infants. The tests were often terminated because of
the intense crying of the infants. Sagi et al. find
this pattern among both Kibbutz-reared and city-reared
infants, although less strongly in the latter.
However, the city-reared infants were subjected to
somewhat different testing conditions: They were not
subjected to a pre-test socialization episode with a
stranger. Sagi et al. suggest that the socialization
pre-test may have intensified reactions to strangers
among the Kibbutz-reared babies, but they note that
such pre-tests do not have this effect in samples of
infants from Sweden and the U.S. This again highlights
the difference between Israeli and European samples.

15 . A halachic difference refers to a distinction
based on Jewish religious law.

16. The following comment illustrates well the
different mindset that many strongly identified Jews
have toward America versus Israel:

While walking through the streets of Jerusalem, I feel
Jewish identity is first and foremost about
self-determination and, by extension, the security and
power that comes with having a state. I am quite
comfortable in Israel with the sight of soldiers
standing with machine guns and the knowledge that even
a fair number of the civilians around me are probably
packing heat. The seminal event in my Zionist
consciousness, despite my being born after 1967 and
having serious misgivings about Israel?s control over
the territories, is still the dramatic victory of a
Jewish army in the Six-Day War. Put me in New York,
however, and sud-denly the National Rifle Association
symbolizes this country?s darkest side. It?s as if my
subconscious knows instinctively that the moment we
land at JFK Airport, it becomes time to stash away
those images of Israeli soldiers taking control of
Jerusalem?s Old City, of Moshe Dayan standing at the
Western Wall, and to replace them with the familiar
photograph of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching by
the side of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (A. Eden,
?Liberalism in Diaspora.? The Forward, Sept. 21, 2001)
 17. www.adl.org/presrele/dirab%5F41/3396%5F41.asp
 18. Jerusalem Post, March 5, 2001.

19. See, e.g., the ADL Policy Report on the prospects
of immigration legislation in the George W. Bush
administration and the 107th Congress:
 www.adl.org/issue%5Fgovernment/107/immigration.html.

 20. In, Boyle (2001), p. 160. As recounted by Boyle,
Sheean was hired by the Zionist publication, New
Palestine, in 1929 to write about the progress of
Zionism in that country. He went to Palestine, and
after studying the situation, returned the money the
Zionists had paid him. He then wrote a book (Personal
History; New York: Literary Guild Country Life Press,
1935)?long out of print?describing his negative
impressions of the Zionists. He noted, for example,
?how they never can or will admit that anybody who
disagrees with them is honest? (p. 160). This comment
reflects the authoritarian exclusion of dissenters
noted as a characteristic of Jewish intellectual and
political movements in CofC (Ch. 6). His book was a
commercial failure and he passed quietly into
oblivion. The subject of Boyle?s book, George
Antonius, was a Greek Orthodox Arab from what is today
Lebanon. His book, The Arab Awakening (London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1938) presented the Arab case in the
Palestinian-Zionist dispute. The appendices to his
book include the Hussein-McMahon correspondence of
October 24, 1915, between Sharif Hussein (who
authorized the Arab revolt against the Turks) and
Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt. The
correspondence shows that the Arabs were promised
independence in the whole area (including Palestine)
after the war. Also in the appendices are the Hogarth
Memorandum of January 1918 and the Declaration to the
Seven of June 16, 1918, both of which were meant to
reassure the Arabs that England would honor its
earlier promises to them when the Arabs expressed
concern after the Balfour Declaration. Britain kept
these documents classified until Antonius published
them in The Arab Awakening. Antonius was pushed out of
the Palestine Mandate Administration by British
Zionists and died broken and impoverished.

 21. Daily Pilot, Newport Beach/ Costa Mesa,
California, Feb. 28, 2000,

22 . ?Project Reminds Young Jews of Heritage.?
Washington Post, Jan. 17, 2000, p. A19.

 23. Steinlight tempers these remarks by noting the
Jewish commitment to moral universalism, including the
attraction to Marxism so characteristic of Jews during
most of the 20th century. However, as indicated in
Chapter 3, Jewish commitment to leftist universalism
was always conditioned on whether leftist universalism
conformed to perceived Jewish interests, and in fact
Jewish leftist universalism has often functioned as
little more than a weapon against the traditional
bonds of cohesiveness of Western societies.

24. In the early 1950s Stalin appears to have planned
to deport Jews to a Jewish area in Western Siberia,
but he died before this project was begun. During
their occupation of Poland in 1940, the Soviets
deported Jews who were refugees from Nazi-occupied
Western Poland. However, this action was not
anti-Jewish as such because it did not involve either
Jews from the Soviet Union or from Eastern Poland.
This deportation is more likely to have resulted from
Stalin?s fear of anyone or any group exposed to
Western influence.

25. Taylor, S. J. (1990). Stalin?s Apologist, Walter
Duranty: The New York Times?s Man in Moscow. New York:
Oxford University Press; R. Radosh (2000). From Walter
Duranty to Victor Navasky: The New York Times? Love
Affair with Communism. FrontPageMagazine.com, October
26; W. L. Anderson (2001), The New York Times Missed
the Wrong Missed Story
http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson45.html,
November 17, 2001. Radosh?s article shows that the
Times? sympathy with communism continues into the
present. The Times has never renounced the Pulitzer
Prize given to Walter Duranty for his coverage of
Stalin?s Five-Year Plan.

26 . Hamilton, D. (2000). ?Keeper of the Flame: A
Blacklist Survivor.? Los Angeles Times, October 3.

 27. See www.otal.umd.edu/~rccs/blacklist/.

 28. Discussions of Jewish ownership of the media
include: Ginsberg 1993, 1; Kotkin 1993, 61; Silberman
1985, 147.

 29. www.economictimes.com/today/31tech22.htm

 30. The Forward, April 27, 2001, pp. 1, 9.

 31. The Forward, November 14, 1997, p. 14.

 32. A partial exception is the Washington Post Co.
Until her recent death, the Washington Post was run by
Katherine Meyer Graham, daughter of Eugene Meyer, who
purchased the paper in the 1930s. Ms. Graham had a
Jewish father and a Christian mother and was raised as
an Episcopalian. Katherine?s husband, the former
publisher of the Post, Phil Graham, was not Jewish.
The Post?s publisher, since 1991, is Donald Graham,
the son of Katherine and Phil Graham. This influential
publishing group is thus less ethnically Jewish than
the others mentioned here. The Washington Post Co. has
a number of other media holdings in newspapers (The
Gazette Newspapers, including 11 military
publications), television stations, and magazines,
most notably the nation?s number-two weekly
newsmagazine, Newsweek. The Washington Post Co.?s
various television ventures reach a total of about 7
million homes, and its cable TV service, Cable One,
has 635,000 subscribers. In a joint venture with the
New York Times, the Post publishes the International
Herald Tribune, the most widely distributed English
language daily in the world.
 33. www.eonline.com/Features/Specials/Jews/

 34. Cones (1997) provides a similar analysis:

This analysis of Hollywood films with religious themes
or characters reveals that in the last four decades
Hollywood has portrayed Christians as sexually rigid,
devil worshipping cultists, talking to God, disturbed,
hypocritical, fanatical, psychotic, dishonest, murder
suspects, Bible quoting Nazis, slick hucksters, fake
spiritualists, Bible pushers, de-ranged preachers,
obsessed, Catholic schoolboys running amok, Adam & Eve
as pawns in a game between God and Satan, an
unbalanced nun accused of killing her newborn infant,
dumb, manipulative, phony, outlaws, neurotic, mentally
unbalanced, unscrupulous, destructive, foul mouthed,
fraudulent and as miracle fabricators. Few, if any,
positive portrayals of Christians were found in
Hollywood films released in the last four decades.
 35. Reprinted in the New York Times May 27, 1996.
 36. James Ron, ?Is Ariel Sharon Israel?s Milosevic??
Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2001.

 37. From the Kahan Commission Report
(www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0ign0):

We shall remark here that it is ostensibly puzzling
that the Defense Minister did not in any way make the
Prime Minister privy to the decision on having the
Phalangists enter the camps.
It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to
the Minister of Defense for having disregarded the
danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the
Phalangists against the population of the refugee
camps, and having failed to take this danger into
account when he decided to have the Phalangists enter
the camps. In addition, responsibility is to be
imputed to the Minister of Defense for not ordering
appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the
danger of massacre as a condition for the Phalangists?
entry into the camps. These blunders constitute the
non-fulfillment of a duty with which the Defense
Minister was charged.

38. Yossi Klein Halevi, ?Sharon has learned from his
mistakes.? Los Angeles Times, February 7, 2001.
 39. Washington Post, July 3, 2001; Los Angeles Times,
October 18, 2001.

 40. Jewish organizations have also been strong
advocates of ?hate crime? legislation. For example, in
1997 the ADL published Hate Crimes: ADL Blueprint for
Action, which provides recommendations on prevention
and response strategies to crimes of ethnic violence,
such as penalty enhancement laws, training for law
enforcement and the military, security for community
institutions, and community anti-bias awareness
initiatives. In June 2001 the ADL announced a program
designed to assist law enforcement in the battle
against ?extremists and hate groups.? A major
component of the Law Enforcement Initiative is the
development of specialized hate crime, extremism, and
anti-bias curricula for training programs designed for
law enforcement.

 41. SWC Press Information, July 15, 1999;
www.wiesenthal.com.

 42. E.g., SWC Press Information, November 29, 1999;
January 26, 2001; www.wiesenthal.com.

 43. ADL Press Release, September, 14, 1999;
www.adl.org.

 44. AFP Worldwide News Agency, April 4, 2001;
www.afp.com.

45 . ADL Press Release, August 22, 1996; www.adl.org.

 46. C. Wolf. Racists, Bigots and the Law on the
Internet. www.adl.org.

 47. C. Wolf. Racists, Bigots and the Law on the
Internet. www.adl.org.

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from_name: Brian Corr

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nick Berg

body:
I can't believe this article has the picture of his severed head -- this is
rather horrific. I'm respecting the article protection, but I think this is
way over the line. People who want to see the picture can certainly find it
other places, and lots of people looking for info on Nick Berg may stumble
across this page. The note at the top of the page is needed, but certainly
didn't prepare ''me'' for a picture of someone holding his severed head.
Years of grisly horror films didn't prepare me either.

Brian (Bcorr)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Delirium-

> I'm not even sure offensiveness is the right
> word, but more like visceral discomfort or shock---a great many people
> would find it difficult to read an article that had either of those
> images embedded (for completely different reasons, of course).

Why are you reading an article about the clitoris if you're not prepared
to look at an image of one? Is this really about what people find
offensive, or what people think *other* people might find offensive
("Well, I personally don't mind, but .."), or  what they think *children*
should not see?

Context is important, but there needs to be no special rule here -- off-
topic images can simply be removed from an article.

> I think if we only remove things that absolutely *everyone* finds
> offensive, we'd have a lot of odd things in our articles that'd alienate
> a lot of people.  A large number of people have no particular problem
> with images of [[defecation]] for example

I think we've had this discussion before. I disagree. Aversion to feces is
fairly universal as not having it makes a culture prone to disease; it may
even be biological (the structure and smell of feces changes over age, so
the taboo may not yet be triggered in small children). Coprophilia is
generally recognized as a disorder.

Try it. Add a picture of human feces to an article, hold a vote, and see
what the threshold will be against inline inclusion. Animal feces, that is
a different story. You couldn't make a meaningful documentary about plants
without showing feces, one of their primary means of transportation.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Mark Richards wrote:
> I am unconvinced that a photo of this nature adds
> anything to the article, or will remain that
> newsworthy. The incident is tragic, and documenting it
> is important, but a graphic picture of a severed head?
> Why?

I think this is a legitimate question, and I'm inclined to agree with
you.  But I don't think we could get a consensus to simply delete it,
I *know* we won't get a consensus to show it up front on the page, but
I *do* think we can get a consensus to have it behind a link.

It's a compromise.  There are legitimate (but perhaps mistaken)
arguments for showing it right up front.  There are legitimate (but
perhaps mistaken) arguments for deleting it.  The middle ground is
likely to be more satisfactory to all sides than either of the
endpoints.

If I were writing my own encyclopedia article on my own website, I
would not include the picture.  I think it's in poor taste.  But at
Wikipedia, I'm committed to the principle of seeking consensus, and I
think "behind a link" has the best chance at consensus.

--Jimbo


body:
The type should be "video/mp4" according to this page:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QT6WhatsNew/Chap1/chapter_1_section_13.html#144009


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Jimmy-
> > With photos, the "show" versus "don't show" really is an "either/or",
> > though.  The only possible compromise, and one which I think will
> > almost always work just fine, is to *link* to the picture, with
> > suitable warnings, and leave it at that.
>
> If we make this official policy, we abandon NPOV for photos, for the
> reasons I have cited. Please refute my arguments or state clearly that you
> do want to abandon NPOV for photos.

I do not agree that this is an abandonment of NPOV at all.  Perhaps
you have misunderstood what I am saying?  I will try to be more clear.

"The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such
a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree. Of course,
100% agreement is not possible; there are ideologues in the world who
will not concede to any presentation other than a forceful statement
of their own point of view. We can only seek a type of writing that is
agreeable to essentially rational people who may differ on particular
points."  That's the original paragraph that dates from when I coined
the term, I'm pretty sure.

With text, there are a huge number of options available to us to seek
a presentation such that "both supporters and opponents can agree".

With specfic images, our range of options is nearly always more
limited.  We can show the image on the page.  We can show the image
behind a link.  We can delete the image entirely.  In some cases, but
probably not the most interesting or controversial ones, we can modify
the image.

With such a limited range of options, the one that is most likely to
be satisfactory to both supporters and opponents is to keep the image
but place it behind a link, with appropriate warnings.

This is not a retreat from NPOV, it is the essence of NPOV.

It is true that some extreme fanatics may say that a photo of X must
be shown immediately at the top of an article, or that photos of X
must not be shown at all.  "100% agreement is not possible; there are
ideologues in the world who will not concede to any presentation other
than a forceful statement of their own point of view."

But reasonable people will, I believe, in most cases agree that the
"behind a link" is a sensible compromise.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Jimmy-
> > With photos, the "show" versus "don't show" really is an "either/or",
> > though.  The only possible compromise, and one which I think will
> > almost always work just fine, is to *link* to the picture, with
> > suitable warnings, and leave it at that.
>
> If we make this official policy, we abandon NPOV for photos, for the
> reasons I have cited. Please refute my arguments or state clearly that you
> do want to abandon NPOV for photos.

One more thing that I wanted to add is that I do not in any way agree
with the view that "majority vote" is a proper means for making
decisions about this sort of thing.  On that point, Erik and I agree
completely -- I'm actually not sure where he thinks we disagree.

I think that in almost all cases, the compromise that's possible
between the "show" and "don't show" parties to a dispute is to put the
image behind a link with suitable warnings.  That doesn't censor it,
it's available, but it's also not "in your face" for people who choose
not to click.

I don't think this rule leads to any strange consequences for ordinary
images.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:

> I think we've had this discussion before. I disagree. Aversion to feces is
> fairly universal as not having it makes a culture prone to disease; it may
> even be biological (the structure and smell of feces changes over age, so
> the taboo may not yet be triggered in small children).

If I dare...
Kids feces smell just the same as adult feces, as soon as they eat the
same food as their parents; And in particular meat. As long as they are
on a 100% dairy diet, the feces are really smelling okay, which is
possibly a natural adaptation, as mothers really have to get in the
business of cleaning everything quite often. It also produces rather
liquid feces, which is best, since infants do not move much (so there is
fewer movements to make things get down the intestine).

The smells stays all right when you introduce veggies and fruits;
especially since most kids prefer mild favored ones.

Now, as soon as the kid eat meat, things get less funny. In western
society, quantities get really serious between 1 and 2, and from then
on, feces are quite similar to adult ones. I suspect that is a very
serious reason why mothers start potty training at a quite early age,
often sooner than reasonable.

What I mean to say, is that kids are interested in their feces till a
much older age (3-4), than the moment the feces really start to smell.
While adults are frowning, kids are not yet. I have the personal
feeling, that the taboo is not spontaneous at all, but the result of
education. It is not a spontaneous taboo, triggered during natural
developement of the child, or if a natural taboo is triggered, I guess
the trigger time comes *after* an educational trigger.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page collapsing/expanding

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Actually, section *expanding* without caching is slower. You have
> benchmarked with collapse=false. That will only happen if an expansion is
> explicitly requested, which is a dynamic operation which may well be slow.
> How about benchmarking with the auto-collapsing (no URL parameters) versus
> the old behavior (set threshold to 0)? Surely the massively smaller pages
> far outweigh any benefits of caching?

With server-side collapsing, expansion will require a new request which
will include re-transferring everything that's already there. That's an
extra burden for the slow downloader, as well as requiring parsing and
rendering time on the server.

With client-side collapsing, the page need be transferred only once, and
sections may be opened and closed instantaneously. The data is sent
compressed if the browser supports it, as most browsers do, so it will
be smaller than the raw size. A large page should also compress better
as a whole than several page fragments compressed separately (each with
its own copy of header, footer, sidebar markup, toc, and other parts of
the page). Also the page need only be parsed/rendered to HTML once, and
will be served identically from the squid cache, reducing the wait
latency before the page is tranferred over the net.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page collapsing/expanding

body:
I've committed a feature which makes it possible to collapse long pages
and load individual sections from the TOC. I've also improved section
editing/viewing behavior to load subsections within a section instead of
just the mother section. Long pages are collapsed when the user explicitly
requests it ("Collapse page"), or when they are above a size threshold
which can be set in the prefs (default 30K). I coded this primarily to
address super-long pages like VfD.

The main problem I haven't been able to fix yet is that after saving a
section, when coming from a section view, we return to the full article
view (or collapsed if it is above the size threshold). I've experimented
with passing parameters to avoid that but haven't quite found the right
solution yet. If someone else wants to fix this, be my guest.

Another issue is that saving a section in a very long page still takes a
fair amount of time. I haven't checked but I suspect this is because the
entire links cache is updated. Surely some optimization would be possible
here.

In terms of code, this isn't very clean yet as we have two quite redundant
TOC generators now, one which generates from source and the other which
generates from HTML. We probably should get rid of the one which generates
from HTML and use the source generator for both types of TOC. This isn't
entirely trivial as the TOC generation in OutputPage is entangled with
other things like headline numbering and section edit links.

Obviously this feature would also benefit much from a more efficient way
to store old revisions as right now a single edit in a single section on a
90K page will lead to another 90K revision in the OLD table.

On the plus side, rendering of collapsed pages is very fast as indeed only
the intro has to be rendered (the headlines are also converted to HTML to
make stripping of wikitags easier, but this is concatenated into a single
step and thus quite unnoticeable).

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page collapsing/expanding

body:
On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 15:42 +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I've committed a feature which makes it possible to collapse long pages
> and load individual sections from the TOC. I've also improved section
> editing/viewing behavior to load subsections within a section instead of
> just the mother section. Long pages are collapsed when the user explicitly
> requests it ("Collapse page"), or when they are above a size threshold
> which can be set in the prefs (default 30K). I coded this primarily to
> address super-long pages like VfD.

Hm, how does this integrate with caching? I would also vote for
switching this feature off by default, especially for anon users (no
caching for the biggest pages otherwise).

> In terms of code, this isn't very clean yet as we have two quite redundant
> TOC generators now, one which generates from source and the other which
> generates from HTML. We probably should get rid of the one which generates
> from HTML and use the source generator for both types of TOC. This isn't
> entirely trivial as the TOC generation in OutputPage is entangled with
> other things like headline numbering and section edit links.

> On the plus side, rendering of collapsed pages is very fast as indeed only
> the intro has to be rendered (the headlines are also converted to HTML to
> make stripping of wikitags easier, but this is concatenated into a single
> step and thus quite unnoticeable).

Instead of re-rendering pages for everyone i think it would make more
sense to render the page only once and do the customizations in js/css
as far as possible. Hiding sections via js or css for the browsers that
support it similar to what we do with the toc currently shouldn't be too
hard and would save many round-trips to the server and repeated
rendering.

Cheers
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [WikiEN-l] Offensive photos policy

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Exactly. If you take a look at Talk:Clitoris/Image discussion, you will
> see that all options were offered, and the option of *showing the photo
> inline* (instead of just a link) got the most votes of all.

This shows me that you are right that majority vote is not the right
way to determine the correct result.  Majority vote is very frequently
not helpful in finding or determining NPOV.

(Some advanced voting algorithms probably do a much better job of
helping to find or determine a consensus, of course.)

> So your belief that people will readily accept hiding "offensive"
> images behind links is clearly wrong; many people (including myself)
> perceive this as an endorsement of a pro-censorship POV and are
> therefore against it. Even if these people were in the minority,
> there would hardly be any consensus on the matter.

I doubt very much that in most cases, the people who would like to
show the photo inline are so unreasonable as to absolutely insist that
only their own viewpoint is the correct one, and that no compromise is
possible.

> So it appears that you believe that there will be consensus in cases
> where there clearly won't; that's fine, as long as we agree that
> consensus is a requirement for hiding an image behind a link.

Well, of course I can agree to that, since consensus is the
requirement for everything that we do.  "Showing the image" can hold
no privileged position, "hiding the image behind a link" can hold no
privileged position, "delete the image" can hold no privileged
position.

I think I see where we disagree now.  Your position is that we should
show the image in all cases unless 95% of the people think it should
not be shown, and that this should be a policy which overrides
consensus and compromise.  That's a perfectly acceptable position to
hold, but will you agree that it would amount to abandoning NPOV for
pictures and substituting instead a policy that most matches your own
(and my own, I should add!) views about what should be shown?

With text, I feel that any form of voting is almost always inferior to
creatively solving the problem with repeated revision of the text.

If there are cases where voting is absolutely necessary, and if I'm
forced to say exactly what it means to have NPOV consensus, the answer
surely can't be "NPOV is my own preferred position unless 95% of the
people disagree with me."

Instead, the exact meaning of consensus in a voting situation has to
be something like Condorcet, Approval voting, Instant Runoff or the
like.

I think if we re-ran the vote on clitoris, with the same voters
participating, but did it as a Condorcet, then "linking to the image"
would be the clear winner by a longshot.  Do you disagree?  Or, if you
do disagree, then let me suppose that I'm wrong, and ask another
question: do you agree with me that going with the Condorcet winner
would be the best available option?

--Jimbo


body:
Mark Richards wrote:

>I am unconvinced that a photo of this nature adds
>anything to the article, or will remain that
>newsworthy. The incident is tragic, and documenting it
>is important, but a graphic picture of a severed head?
>Why?
>
>
Well, the same could be said of many pictures.  We could say "he was
beheaded", or we could illustrate it, or we could do both.  I see it as
fairly similar to the Abu Ghraib pictures, where technically speaking we
could convey the same information with words (we could describe what
exactly is going on in the pictures instead of showing them), but that
serves as a somewhat euphemistic substitute for showing the actual
images.  I do think it's okay to do that with the severed head though,
but still include a link to the image.

This isn't the only image of a dead person on Wikipedia, for what it's
worth.  There's a fairly close-up and easily-identifiable photograph of
John F. Kennedy's corpse on that page, and a photograph on Abu Ghraib of
a prisoners' corpse packed in ice, with a face only slightly obscured by
a bandage.

-Mark