Wikipedia talk:Images of children

Proposal

The debate over the image on the page Virgin Killer has brought to mind a broader issue, and that is the question of images of children. Let me stress, upfront, that I have no problem with these, most of which enhance the project. However, children, depending on their age, may not in a position to give informed consent. Therefore, permission would be given by the parent or guardian. There is a further issue in that some images, even if taken with the requisite permission may be regarded as exploiting the child, or may subsequently have effects on their future life. The child, even if able to give informed consent, may well not be mature enough to appreciate the future implications of the image. I am open to the upper age being lowered from 18 to 16.

This is not a question of censorship; rather one of responsibility, and could be taken to be an extension of the principles of responsibility set by WP:BLP. Wikipedia is rapidly growing in both size and influence and with such status comes wider social responsibility, which we need to address. TerriersFan (talk) 20:25, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I think we should use the age of majority in their nation. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 20:31, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Agreed and amended. TerriersFan (talk) 20:38, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

If the image is already in wide spread use such as virgin killer , not using it on wiki is like bolting the barn door after the horse is gone. Gnevin (talk) 20:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I understand that point. However, it is not intended to control the circulation of images. Rather it is about trying to define the standards that we adopt. TerriersFan (talk) 20:55, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Looks like an attempt at an endaround to get the infamous Virgin Killer pic removed, so I cannot honestly accept this proposal in good faith. Tarc (talk) 20:48, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Though that image brought the issue to mind, I would ask you to WP:AGF. Please note that I have expressed no opinion on the Virgin Killer image. I simply consider that we should have a policy on the wider issue. If concerned then perhaps phrase a distinction between widely circulated fair-use images and original images, though I am doubtful whether this is a good way forward. TerriersFan (talk) 20:55, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

The girl and her parents consented to the taking of the image at the time, so that image will not be affected. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 21:03, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

That's fine by me. TerriersFan (talk) 21:08, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

No.

Guess I'll just put my name here. Protonk (talk) 21:04, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I also disagree with this proposal. If the image is of a notable subject it is fair game to use their image. Pretzels^Talk! 21:12, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Why not just import Photographs of Identifiable People from Commons? ViperSnake151 21:13, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

That seems sensible to me Viper. If a person is in a public setting, then we have no issues at all. Private may be different, but we tend to just stick {{personalityrights}} on it and go on. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:18, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Wow, this is far too restrictive. Reactionary policies tend to be bad policies. Since we don't have releases for any images, unless the uploader is the parent, we'd have to remove and delete every image of or containing a minor or person that could be a minor on the site. And what does "potentially harmful" mean? Swimming pools have all sorts of warnings about the various ways you can drown and/or break your neck, is swimming or being near a swimming pool a "potentially harmful" activity? Mr.Z-man 21:31, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

NO, HELL NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT. This is a knee-jerk reaction to recent events in a country that has a history of getting bent out of shape over such things (Viz magazine has been lampooning the UK Paedo-hysteria for years.) The last clause in particular is very troubling "...nor to display the child undertaking, nor being subject to, a potentially harmful activity." What activities that kids commonly participate in are not potentially harmful? This would proscribe any images of sports, athletics, swimming, walking, riding in an automobile, eating (baby might choke). We must be extremely cautious when trying to define such intangibles as "...likely to reflect adversely on the child in their future." Setting aside the obvious WP:CRYSTAL issues, what is acceptable by the mores of some is verboten elsewhere. I immediately think of the dichotomy between say Tokyo, where one can purchase whiskey and used, school-girl's underwear from a vending machine and Riyadh, where one's wife is forbidden from driving a car and can be executed for adultery. Our only concern should be the suitability of an image to illustrate the subject of the article. That is all, nothing more. L0b0t (talk) 21:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

No. I understand the motivation for this policy, but simply too restrictive, especially the parent or guardian clause. I doubt many newspapers have such a standard. Joshdboz (talk) 21:59, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:NOTCENSORED. Stifle (talk) 22:41, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry but....

I simply can't. This is just censoring wikipedia, perhaps partially in response to this Virgin Killer issue. However, I feel that we should only include pictures if they are very useful to the article, but this one is... _David^WS _(contribs) 21:04, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

See above; looks like the Virgin Killer image won't be affected which is fine by me. The proposed guideline purposelessly doesn't ban images of naked children, for example. IMHO it is no more censoring Wikipedia than BLP is when articles on marginally notable people are removed. TerriersFan (talk) 21:08, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Nope

NO! WP:NOTCENSORED. I recommend the community do NOT step down to this censorship. Censorship is all over the world. You don't see us actively removing articles because they do not meet the Chinese governments standards, UK + IWF should not be treated any differently. Message from XENU^{complaints? leave me a message!} 21:11, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Policy as drafted fails on all three counts for Image:TrangBang.jpg and is likely to cause more problems than it's intended to solve. Sorry, but no. --Rodhullandemu 21:13, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, dear; I thought this might be a reaction but hoped it wouldn't be. This is nothing to do with IWF and, as stated above, it looks like the Vurgin Killer image will not be affected. It is nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with acting responsibly. TerriersFan (talk)

Yup, that's why it's been drafted today of all times... Message from XENU^{complaints? leave me a message!} 21:17, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Acting responsibly != acting paranoid. Mr.Z-man 21:33, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

"Images"?

The first two guidelines seem to refer to photographs specifically, not just an image. Icy // ♫ 21:26, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Total oppose

(since everyone else seems to be creating new section headers, too). There are plenty of legitimate reasons to use pictures of children without consent. Quite aside from everything else, you'd be wiping out every crowd scene. – iridescent 21:29, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

What Iridescent said. ➨ ❝ЯEDVERS❞ a sweet and tender hooligan 21:52, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Bad timing, bad approach

There are very good moral reasons to be careful with our use of photos of children, as with all photos of identifiable people. This should be considered similar to our moral obligations under BLP. Commons has some sensible guidelines on this - I don't know if en.wp itself has anything similar. However trying to set out strict rules like this is probably a bad idea - these are best judged case by case. And at the moment, with the current situation ongoing and feelings running high, it is a very bad idea. the wub "?!" 21:29, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Question

I'm leaning towards opposing this regardless, since I feel that our current guidelines do an adequate job, but the wording seems unclear to me. Do all 3 standards need to met, or just one? Is parental approval rendered moot if the pose is "sexually provocative"? I appreciate that you tried to be short and to the point, but some clarification is needed. Random89 21:31, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

This looks like a knee-jerk reaction to the Virgin Killer brouhaha. A common sense approach is needed, and this set of rules looks bureaucratic and hard to enforce.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 22:05, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Yet another oppose

This seems both unworkable and unnecessary. Unworkable because it assumes that we are able to know the circumstances surrounding the model and photo session, and unneccesary because it is the responsibility of the original publisher to obtain these releases/permissions. If they publish, it is reasonable for us to assume that it is above board, unless proven otherwise. Kevin (talk) 22:12, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Snowball

Oppose. Time to close this dreadful suggestion under WP:Snow? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:15, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Seconded L0b0t (talk) 22:17, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I have changed the {{proposed}} template to {{failed}}, as it seems from the discussion here that this is highly unlikely to gain consensus. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:29, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Harmful activity

What would be defined as potentially harmful activity? A swing where they are not tied down? Playing on a mudbank with no railing? It seems very wide. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) 22:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. It is extremely subjective. _David^WS _(contribs) 22:24, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

A picture of a child being subjected to an objectively "potentially harmful activity" can be appropriate. 92.39.200.36 (talk) 22:55, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Clairvoyants required?

How on earth are we supposed to determine that "The image is not likely to reflect adversely on the child in their future life"? By definition we can't know what's going to happen in a person's future life. When Jodie Foster was depicted as a 12-year-old prostitute in Taxi Driver (see Image:Taxi Driver still 2.jpg), did she know that would inspire John Hinckley, Jr. to shoot Ronald Reagan? -- ChrisO (talk) 22:31, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

A really, really, bad idea

This proposal is restrictive to the point of absurdity, removing vast swaths of even the most innocuous photographs in which children are included due to a failure to meet bureaucratic paperwork requirements. But let's consider instead a far more narrowly drawn proposal, which relates to underlying controversy: that we delete all of our images of naked children, to stop the British ISPs from proxying all traffic to us so that they can block the offending images [1]. It seems superficially attractive: we delete a very small number of photographs, then the problem goes away. But I claim that capitulation to the ISP's censorship demands would be a serious mistake: it's the thin end of the wedge, setting us up for more deletions of images and other content found objectionable in other jurisdictions. Also, it violates WP:NOT#CENSORED, by deleting relevant and informative images which are legal in the United States, where our servers are located. US courts have consistently rejected the argument that any photograph of a nude child constitutes child pornography, thus writing puritanical shame over the human body out of First Amendment jurisprudence. There's nothing morally objectionable about an image such as Image:BlindFaithBlindFaith.jpg -- my parents took similar photographs of me near that age, though, in the current climate of hysteria, they had sense enough to use a digital camera to avoid submitting them to a photo lab. Difficult though it may seem to justify a major dispute with British ISPs over a few images, an uncensored encyclopedia is ultimately more informative and useful than the bowdlerized alternative. Kristen Eriksen (talk) 22:38, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Terrible idea...

This would ban perfectly valid extremely encyclopaedic images like Image:TrangBang.jpg. Any proposal which would ban such an iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph is clearly extremely flawed -81.148.48.152 (talk) 23:44, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

There is a naked child, runing in fear, in a humanitarian disaster situation. Extremely far and totaly diferent from a picture showing a young child naked made without any clear message other than an attempt to shock and atract more attention. A policy can have certain exception rules - for images like that. Ark25 (talk) 01:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sexual content

There's a tangentially related proposal here which could feature a section on images and model's ages etc.? - I'll try and get something started to show what I mean, and maybe a more generalised discussion would be a good idea? Privatemusings (talk) 00:11, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

That proposal has also failed. Honestly, this prudish crusade is growing tiresome. L0b0t (talk) 00:15, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

hey - no rush, lobot! I'm sure you understand that there's space between censorship and a free-for-all - you wouldn't advocate the hosting of child pornography, for example, I'm guessing...... slow down a bit, and we can make some progress :-) Privatemusings (talk) 00:17, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

That would depend entirely upon who is defining "pornography" and in what way they are defining it. For example in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, consensual sex between minors as young as 12 is not a crime. While in Mazar-I-Sharif, Afghanistan a woman of any age can be beaten to death for exposing her socks in public. In our own United States if you go back a generation or two (to the time of my great-grandparents) a girl who was not married off by 14 or 15 was an old maid. What I'm trying to say is that cultural mores and values (and yes statute and case law) vary dramatically from location to location, culture to culture, and era to era. We must therefore be very careful when we try to decide what is appropriate for other people to see. The SCOTUS recognized this when they addressed obscenity, I believe the phrase was "I can't define it but I know it when I see it." Just as I would not want any stranger in a foreign land telling me what I can and can't show my children (or look at myself), I do not have the standing to tell someone in a foreign land the same, that decision is best left to that individual. We could also get into the specious reasoning that bans pr0n in the first place (Lenny Bruce used to do a great about this) We ban the dirty book and dirty show because we don't want some rube from the country schlepping into town, get stimulated by the book or show and then go off and rape someone who didn't see the show or read the book. Even the Meese Commission could find no evidence whatsoever that viewing prurient material leads to criminal acts, and they tried pretty hard to find some (what with the Attorney General trying to deflect the fact that he couldn't even take a bribe without getting caught.) The fact is the only law we have to follow here is the law of The United States of America and the great state of Florida. If other people don't want to see the Scorpion's album they don't have to look at it. Me, I like the Scorpions, they are a very underrated group. The standing policies we have on the subject are fine. Cheers. L0b0t (talk) 00:50, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Alternate proposal

I agree that there are issues with the draft posted on the project page, but I also believe that there is an underlying issue here that needs to be addressed, and that simply marking the proposal as "rejected" and dropping the subject would not fulfull our responsibilities. I propose the following as a working discussion draft:

Images (particularly photographs) of actual minors should not be included in Wikipedia where there is reason to believe that dissemination of the image risks causing any form of significant harm, including psychological or reputational harm, to the minor. Relevant factors may include but are not limited to whether the image depicts the minor engaged in an activity for which the minor and the minor's family intentionally placed the minor into the public eye (e.g., musicians or athletes), whether the image is sexually provocative in any fashion, whether the image is the product of exploitation of the minor, whether the image has already been widely disseminated through legitimate means, and whether the image enhances Wikipedia's encyclopedic content in a way that other images could not. A strong presumption in favor of deleting the image is created if the minor or the minor's family requests deletion.

I am sure that substantial improvement to the proposed wording is possible, but I think it would be worthwhile to create some sort of policy or guideline in this area. Comments welcome. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Bring it up in three months or so when the current furor has died down. --Carnildo (talk) 00:48, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

or take the usual wiki path ;-) (I've copied this sensible proposal to the project page, for further discussion.....) Privatemusings (talk) 00:56, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, PM, but I don't think your edit worked, because it put my brand-new proposal right under the "rejected" banner, which I don't think is what we are looking for. :) Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

ah - so is the problem the banner, or the proposal? hmmmmm...... Privatemusings (talk) 01:02, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that if you bring it up right now, it will be seen as caving in to the IWF, and will be rejected out of hand. --Carnildo (talk) 01:07, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Frankly even this version seems like a solution looking for a problem. I'm not aware of any image that would trigger this or any past complaints about this sort of problem that would be handled by this. The Virgin Killer image obviously isn't going to be included and there don't seem to be any similar issues that would be. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:08, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

The proposal addresses the problem that when issues like this arise, we have no editorial standards against which to measure the disputed content. It is fine to intone "Wikipedia is not censored," which means that we do not allow outside authorities to tell us what our content should or should not include (unless legally compelled), but that does not mean that we do not have the ability (either at the community level or the Foundation level) to make our own judgments about what types of material should or should not be included. I have a thorough familiarity with not just US First Amendment law, but also equivalent concepts in other countries and the philosophical foundations underlying them; but these precepts do not substitute for our maintaining basic standards of our own—founded not upon shibboleths ("bad words" or even specific body parts), but upon our responsibility to mitigate our unique ability as the world's leading participatory website to do massive harm to living human beings.

I am not focused right now on any specific case, and it may be that we could continue handling these issues on a case-by-case basis. But in reading the discussion on this page, I see some comments that could be paraphrased as "we can and will include anything we damn well please, no matter how harmful it might be to an actual living child, unless its inclusion would literally cause armed federal marshals to invade the Wikipedia Foundation offices, confiscate the servers, and arrest the staff." If that is not our policy, it is worth considering whether we should say what is. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:18, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with Joshua|, and also with Carnildo - let it rest for now, and try again in a couple of months, after the current fuss has died down. -mattbuck (Talk) 01:13, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Why would we treat images of a minor differently from images of any living person particularly if we are to define a minor as someone under the age of majority for their nation? If an image "risks causing any form of significant harm, including psychological or reputational harm" to, for example, an 17 year old Welshman (age of majority 18) how is that different when the image is of a 17 year old Scotsman (age of majority 16) or a 20 year old Namibian (age of majority 21) and a 20 year old Samoan (age of majority 14)? I have to concur with JoshuaZ this is a solution looking for a problem and a beautiful illustration of WP:CREEP. L0b0t (talk) 01:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Child pornography allowed on Wikipedia?

Maybe this is not the best place to ask, but I would like to ask a few questions:

• Are images depicting child pornography allowed on Wikipedia?
• If not, what what minimum age should have a person, for an image with that person naked to be allowed on Wikipedia?
• If someone submits an image to Wikipedia, depicting a young person naked, and the age of that person (at the time when the picture was taken) can not be determined, that image will still be allowed on Wikipedia, even than the person looks like a child?
• Does the rules about child pornography (if any) not apply in certain cases? (for example an image of a famous album cover, of a famous band).

thanks Ark25 (talk) 00:52, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Your questions are difficult to answer, as they are stated in a way that seems to assume that nudity and pornography are the same thing. They are not. Images of naked children that serve an encyclopedic purpose such as Image:TrangBang.jpg are clearly allowed here. Child pornography of a type that would be illegal under U.S. law is clearly not permitted. Anything in between is not set by policy but by community consensus. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:09, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Child porn =/= nudity. There are pictures of when I was a little kid and was naked. Parents take those all the time. The rest of your comment fails because it assumes a ridiculous premise. The little bit worth answering has already been answered by David. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:10, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree, child porn =/= nudity. However: -- baby child (i.e. under 3 years) nudity is a diferent thing than child nudity. -- Family pictures with nude children (above 3 years) are suposed to stay inside family, at least in normal circumstances. -- Child nudity should only be acceptable, where it depicts respective child's tragedy (war, exploitation, humanitarian disaster etc). Like for example Image:The_White_Slave_statue.jpg - there is a girl obviously exploited. However any normal person can tell you that Image:Virgin Killer.jpg is an image showing no human tragedy, but instead it was made to shock, to attract atention, to feed the apetite of fans to see something more daring and aggresive, also has an aggresive message (virgin killer sounds quite aggresive to me - and offending also ). There were times when breaking birds necks at concerts and excesive zombie/skeleton art was the something that was helping to sell rock music. At least at this moment, I have the feeling that there can be made a very clear distinction between nude children images that can indeed serve encyclopedic purposes and those that are ofending. Ark25 (talk) 02:23, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

WTF...."Child nudity should only be acceptable, where it depicts respective child's tragedy" So by your logic a picture of a naked child playing at the beach is offensive but a picture of naked child being tortured is acceptable. I have to strongly disagree. L0b0t (talk) 02:28, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I know someone who has a severely retarded child. That child frequently decides to go clotheless(sp?) especially on beaches and such. I wouldn't be surprised if they have some picture of the kid when he was around this age without any clothing on. Would any such image then be child porn? And what about other cultures where the standards of what constitutes acceptable dress are simply different? Moreover, "shock" and "attract attention" don't make something pornography. Nor is something being offensive enough to remove an image. See for example Depictions of Muhammad where we get regular death threats to take off the images. There's no question this image is in poor taste. However, we don't censor based on poor taste. If we did I'd want the ISPs to block anything remotely related to Scorpion. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:36, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

A family picture with a naked child should stay into a family album, not in an encyclopedia. If the picture shows an incident (UFO, Plane crash or w/e), there are one or more nude children into the picture, the sexual content can be blurred. And yes, a nude child being tortured (without porn) is a disaster and a tragedy, and can be a picture to win a Pulitzer prize and also can fit a encyclopedia. A serverely retard child - sounds like a tragedy to me. No, an image with that child naked is not porn, is just nudity, but anyways Wikipedia is not a family album. I see this categories for child nudity to be acceptable: tragedy, medical disorders, and tribal life (but even there, they have underwear). It's not just "shock" and "attract attention" in that case. But in fact it's "nudity to shock" and "nudity attract attention"; and it's aggresive nudity also (album name) + offensive nudity. And closer to pornography than to any inteligible art. While I can use a TV to take a s*it instead of using a WC — and call that a form of art — it's not very likely that I'll be able to convince too many people that can be called art. Ark25 (talk) 03:40, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Someone should examine this phenomenon

Someone should examine this phenomenon of reacting to every incident or event by attempting to make a new policy. Really, this absurd 'think of the children'-esque nonsense really needs to stop. As does the constant bureaucracy-driven urge to put everything into policy form. Please go find something productive to do, even if that means a visit to Special:UserLogout. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:36, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

It's simple: "OMG. Something must be done! … This is something, so it must be done!" --Gmaxwell (talk) 01:38, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

yeah - it's kinda human nature - and often a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Personally, I hope we can slow down enough at the 'something must be done' stage to really consider if that's true, or not. (hint: the answer isn't clearly 'yes' or 'no' often.....) cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 01:42, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Here here. Thanks for the voice of reason McBride. This reminds me of something my shitheel of a mayor said on Meet The Press, 21 September. Mayor Bloomberg said of the Wall St. bailout "Nobody knows exactly what they should do, but anything is better than nothing." L0b0t (talk) 01:44, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Huh. It never occurred to me that you could directly link to UserLogout like that. That could lead to a mildly annoying prank. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:47, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Until recently you could also redirect to it. Very interesting prank when done to a heavily-viewed page. Now there is a hard-coded check in the software to not make that work (With a sarcastic comment, if I recall). Matt/TheFearow (Talk) 03:47, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I tried and I don't see any sarcastic comment. User:JoshuaZ/Logout simply won't let the redirect resolve. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:53, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

QFT. Knee-jerk solutions aren't the answer. Fortunately, this is a solution looking for a problem, since, from an encyclopedia standpoint, the correct response is to do what we've been doing, and if a group of people decide that they can't handle the content here for whatever reason, they can use proxies like the rest of us. The answer certainly isn't to bow down to one particular overzealous "oh noes i found teh cp on wikipedia!!!11eleven" group and amend our policies to become "Wikipedia, the free (family-friendly) encyclopedia that anyone can edit (provided you don't share any images of nude humans under the age of consent in nation X, regardless of encyclopedic quality"). Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 01:52, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

About 15 years ago, I heard about an incident when a young girl came home from a rock concert and killed her parents. Unfortunately I can't find links about that event. Also I was told that in Germany the rock concerts were banned in a while (also can't find any link - hopefully I was told the truth). However can remember lots of rock music of the the '90 years where the "lyrics" were like: "Die! Die! Die! Kill! Kill! Kill!" - quite agressive messages I would say. So there was some opinions that certain rock music encouraged violence. Now, an image made just to express the same ideas - violence, offence, aggresivity, and contempt for morality (and therefore help make some extra $$) - should not be part of a decent encyclopedia. That image shows no human tragedy at all, instead it was made as an offence to human moral and decency, because at those times being violent and anti-moral was considered by many "the way to be cool" Ark25 (talk) 02:44, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I would say that those particular extreme (and notable) aspects would make them even more worthy of an entry in a decent encyclopedia than they already were before. In fact, if those things were/are true, then I would expect any decent encyclopedia to contain at least that information, if not more. Considering that the place for that information would be in an academic repository, I can't think of anything more suited to the task than a multimedia-capable encyclopedia.

I mean, this particular incident with the Virgin Killer image would make it worthy of inclusion under the IWF page even if we didn't normally have pages for albums. I really don't understand what you're getting at. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 07:52, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Please see my comments above. "We have the right to do anything we want to!" is no more a useful content guideline than "we will omit anything that anyone objects to." Could we please have reasoned discussion here rather than tangentially relevant analogies. This goes for both, or all, sides please. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:48, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

We already have a very clear, coherent, concise policy on this at WP:NOTCENSORED. There is no consensus for change as has been made abundantly clear here, and at Wikipedia_talk:Sexual_content. This is rapidly degenerating into a big box of Borax. If you don't want to see something, don't look at it. L0b0t (talk) 03:11, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:NOTCENSORED is based on the principle that we don't omit anything from the encyclopedia to protect the readers. This or similar proposals are based on the idea that we might voluntarily choose to omit something to protect outside parties who might be harmed by it. We are dealing with serious issues here and they cannot be adequately addressed via your apparent agenda of petulance, platitudes, and patronization. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:15, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

And one can just as easily say that your idea is based upon the specious reasoning that bits and pixels can cause someone harm. There has been absolutely zero evidence presented that having an image (of any kind, or even an article for that matter) can actually hurt someone in the real world. If you would care to look into the history of censorship (at least in the US) you will find that it is based upon on the flawed premise that viewing a prurient image can be so overwhelming that it would cause an otherwise upstanding individual to engage in sexual predation and abuse. Where is the harm that you are referring to? If there is demonstrable harm, how do the mechanisms/policies/guidelines that we do have in place fail to mitigate said harm? L0b0t (talk) 03:29, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Some sense...and not from NYBrad, which is one of the rare cases where I would say that. Articles are to be written from a neutral viewpoint. This means we do not exclude material based on our own subjective judgments of whether or not someone may be harmed. It's far past time to rein in this BLP moral panic. Our job is to write a reference work that is as complete and thorough as possible on subjects it covers, not to deliberately exclude material which passes our policies for inclusion on someone's cry of "SOMEBODY'S FEEWINGS MIGHT BE HURTED!!!!" Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:41, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Seraphim, I don't think you are being reasonably fair to Brad here. I agree that there's no need at this point to discuss this proposal but I think you would agree that there are images we would not include. For example we obviously are not going to put a picture of actual child pornography on child pornography. Even if our servers were in a country where distribution of child porn was legal I suspect that we would still not do so. These concerns are not so groundless as to be dismissed outright. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:45, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

The concerns are only being dismissed because nobody has put forward any evidence whatsoever that our current schema, that is our collection of policies/guidelines/dispute resolution mechanisms et al. is unable to deal with this. L0b0t (talk) 03:50, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

(Reply to JoshuaZ) One really cannot say what we would do in the case of such articles were it legal, since in reality we would be subject to severe legal sanctions in allowing such pictures, so we cannot do so in any case. But child porn is a moot point—it's already against the law so we will under no circumstances allow it, case closed. What we're discussing here is far from child porn or something similarly illegal. I disagree that those who want to expand the scope of BLP are being fair to anyone at all (including subjects, who realistically are not "helped" by the exclusion of information that generally is already largely public). When a policy is being used as a sledgehammer to favor one side in content disputes on a certain class of articles, rather than (rightfully) to exclude unsourced or dubiously sourced material about the living, there is a problem. I think there certainly is a problem we need to address here—but that problem is that BLP is far too broad and even more broadly applied. The solution is to scale back, not to let the monster grow farther. When we're looking at something with the potential to do this much damage to a worthwhile project, being "fair" to a given person is to be quite honest not my primary concern. I do not want to see the work of this project undone by a moral panic, and that's a realistic risk in a community of this size. It needs to be reined in sooner rather than later. I just wish I'd seen it when BLP was initially being gone over. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:58, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

We should at least try to see if we can make a diference between acceptable nudity and offending nudity (offending common sense, not a religious group). Child pornography is not accepted on Wikipedia, and the same way, certain type of child nudity should not be accepted. Ark25 (talk) 04:09, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

The words "and the same way" seem to be doing a lot of work in that comment together with the vague "certain type". Note that "and the same way" is not a train of logical argument. JoshuaZ (talk) 04:16, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

(EC) Of course. Certain types of adult nudity shouldn't even be, if it's gratuitous and doesn't serve the purpose of adding to the project. The same should and does apply to most images, we're not a free webhost for whatever anyone would like to upload. But when an image does add to an article, and otherwise passes our content policies, including the nonfree content policies if it is not free, we should never remove it simply because it contains nudity of someone of any age. That is, simply put, censorship, and that's another thing we don't allow. In terms of "in the same way", we don't allow child pornography because it is illegal in the US, and we would disallow any other image that's illegal in the US too. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:21, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

WOW ! Only and only because it's illegal in US, only that is why child pornography is not allowed in Wikipedia? Let's suppose that starting with tomorrow child pornograhy is allowed in US. Then Wikipedia will generously host child pornography images in Child pornography and other articles like that? No internal policy about that? Anyways, in Child pornography article says "Child pornography (or "CP") refers to material depicting children being in a state of undress, engaged in erotic poses or sexual activity". When I look at the Image:Virgin Killer.jpg, I can only see a child engaged in an erotic pose. Do you see something else? You feel any ezoteric / spiritual / refined / or w/e subtle art in that image? What message you get from that image? In case of Image:TrangBang.jpg the message is clear (human tragedy). But what about Virgin Killer? The main message of that image is the erotism of that child - and then (in my view) - that image is child pornography. Ark25 (talk) 07:38, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

While that's an extremely unlikely thing to happen, from an idealistic standpoint, I wouldn't have a problem with it, provided the amount of images was kept to a small enough number to keep it from being a porn stash, and the images in question were as tasteful as possible and released into public domain as part of a court case or the like, but large enough to provide a variety for study. But, again, that's unlikely to happen, and in the meantime, we have to be bound to the law.

FWIW, the message I get is that time is the virgin killer, and that it spoils the innocence of the virgin soul, placed against a harsh sexual world as a backdrop. But, that's just me; I actually look for meanings in things rather than jump to some knee-jerk moral reactions. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 08:00, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

We already have something like that, here in the US. It's called "law"; Wikipedia operates within it. Wikipedia isn't censored for Muslims who can't bear to see their prophet depicted, and we're not censored for the benefit of the "Oh noes teh childrenz" group in America. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 08:00, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Though, apparently, we are censored for the benefit of the "Oh noes teh childrenz" group in Canada, so there is some irony there. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 09:05, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't care about "oh noez teh childrens" group. But that way, any child pornography photo can be seen as "the innocence of the virgin soul, placed against a harsh sexual world as a backdrop". I remember the years of 1993 ish in Romania when we were in full transition from comunism to democracy (trough chaos). The newspapers discovered that horrible crimes on the front page were selling very good. So, using a poor excuse like "we want to show you the reality, we do it FOR YOU", they were literally assaulting the readers with horrible articles about horrible crimes, with lots of morbide details. Instead of stopping violence, the newspapers were encouraging more violence. To me, this picture looks very similar - a poor excuse to use child pornography. That girl is in an erotic pose (and that is child pornography by it's definition), no matter how innocent soul and toxic environment the image can pretend that it sends as a message. It's disgusting (to me) to see child pornography used to send a message of "deep philosophy". It's somewhat like telling to the world how cruel it is, by comitting a crime. There should be better ways to send such a message Ark25 (talk) 09:48, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

It's disgusting (to me) to see art twisted and pulled at by moral pedants with an axe to grind. Its status as pornography has yet to be determined by any court of law (US or otherwise), so please, stop referring to it as such, as borderline minor obscenities such as the one depicted here have to be judged by a jury for such things in modern legal systems (I can't comment on UK law since I don't know it, but to constitute child pornography, you need either lascivious exhibition, sadistic/masochistic abuse, masturbation, bestiality, or actual intercourse; failing that, you need an obscenity charge, which would require a jury, per my previous point; see US §2256), so that's really a moot point. We're not talking about some 58-year-old guy plowing some middle school girl. We're talking about an image of a nude young girl on an album cover from a more liberated era with no visible genitalia, much less the explicit things that would be there to meet the requirements in US §2256.

Besides, there was no one forcing you to read the newspapers. If you don't like what's on them, the market has the power to change that; vote with your dollar, don't buy it. Don't read it. Don't donate to the Foundation next time around, make sure you leave an email why. Don't read this page. If you can't appreciate it or don't like what you see, fine, don't look at it. The subject depicted, when interviewed 15 years later, didn't have any problem with it. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 10:10, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Should have known this was just a stalking horse

[2] Oh noes, wikieditors defend naked kidz. L0b0t (talk) 03:59, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

not sure what you mean, lobot - are you referring to Kato's posts (he doesn't post here, I don't think) - or maybe mine, or Newyorkbrad's? - Are you concerned that something nefarious is afoot? Not sure what, to be honest... best to speak plainly.... Privatemusings (talk) 04:19, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, and now they're discussing me specifically. This should be good, let me pop some corn here. I'm a "Wikipedo" so far, let's see what else! Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:25, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Kato's said that he's sorry for calling you that, that it was his normal way of describing wikipediansa, and that he's redacted it. hbdragon88 (talk) 04:43, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

So his defense is that his normal term for Wikipedia editors has a vague implication of pedophilia and he's sorry that in this case if he does so it comes across even worse than normal? Charming. Ah well. We should probably wrap this discussion up since at the point where we're discussing threads on WR while they are discussing the same thread it is the sign that a conversation really isn't going anywhere. It seems like all variant proposals are pretty dead right now. JoshuaZ (talk) 04:47, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Yea, for a fellow with his head firmly inserted into his forth point of contact that Kato sure has a lot free time to grind his axe. L0b0t (talk) 04:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

A more liberal idea

I said it before and I'll say it again, I think we should just take-on a tweaked version of Photographs of identifiable people as a guideline if you wanna go on a blitzkrieg over privacy rights and "omg child porn can I has deletion plz?". ViperSnake151 13:05, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

So, again, I ask does anybody have any evidence or even a hypothetical example of how our current policies fail to deal with this issue? This is a solution to a problem that does not exist, an answer to a question no one is asking. What we do have is a group of prudish, sexually repressed, busy-body, nanny-state expansionists over at another website who have a couple of accounts here at WP, a lot of free time and an axe to grind in this particular area. Riddle me this caped crusaders-

• Why should we treat images of those under the age of majority in their respective jurisdiction differently from images of any living person?

• Given that the age of majority is widely variable around the world (14-21 years old), if an image "risks causing any form of significant harm, including psychological or reputational harm" to, for example, a 17 year old Welshman (age of majority 18) how is that different when the image is of a 17 year old Scotsman (age of majority 16) or a 20 year old Namibian (age of majority 21) and a 20 year old Samoan (age of majority 14)?

• How can bits, bytes, and pixels cause "significant harm"?

• If, for the sake of argument, we grant that intangible electrons flowing through the ether can cause harm how do our current policies/guidelines/dispute resolution mechanisms fail to address the problem?

IMHO we are here to build an encyclopedia, nothing more, nothing less. We are not here to make teh internets safe for other people's children. L0b0t (talk) 16:24, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Viper: I'm not outright opposed to your idea, though I do agree to an extent that our current policies do a pretty good job of this already, but I think you should let everyone calm down, and propose this again in a few weeks. I know that right now lots of people are interested in these issues, which makes it tempting to try and take advantage of that to make policy, but the flip-side is that peoples' personal feelings are running high at the moment. I'd suggest striking this out, and if you still want to later, come back with a full policy proposal, to avoid dealing with some of the BS on this talk page. Random89 18:13, 8 December 2008 (UTC)