Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedians for encyclopedic merit

Wikiproject Wikipedians for Decency was started on August 15th, 2005 to coordinate and promote standards of decency on Wikipedia. This project is intended to coordinate efforts to bring articles to appropriate standards of decency, and to help find alternatives for inappropriate content as defined by Wikipedia policy, and Wikipedia guidelines.

Additionally since relevant sections of Florida Law have been located, standards of decency should be based on existing law in addition to Wikipedia policy and guidelines as the Wikipedia servers are hosted in Florida, and Florida law is applicable.

Anyone who is interested in contributing, please sign up below and post any ideas and suggestions on the Talk page. Also, feel free to edit this page and add any articles that need serious work or that you feel require attention below in the Open Tasks sections. The notice board below is to inform members of the project of votes or other current Wikipedia events which warrant their attention with regards to this project.

Parentage

This Wikiproject has no parents.

Descendant WikiProjects

No descendant WikiProjects have been defined as of yet.

Members

• Noitall 05:15, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
• MONGO 06:54, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
• Banes 12:00, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
• Visorstuff 18:31, 16 August 2005 (UTC) (watching and helping as appropriate/available)
• Johntex 22:51, 17 August 2005 (UTC). I'm interested in helping us stay within the law. I'm also interested in making this the best encyclopedia possible for the largest possible number of people. That will require compromises and consensus-building about what is appropriate for an individual situation, and not a blind knee-jerk reaction like "all nudity is bad" or "don't ever let the prudes remove any nudity".
• Coqsportif 11:41, 18 August 2005 (UTC)Can never have enough decency.
• SWD316 (talk to me) Why not I'll join.

It should be noted that this WikiProject is likely to change significantly and those that register above in an attempt to mock or insult the purpose of the project do so at risk to their reputation and in violation of WP:POINT.--MONGO 04:49, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Notice Board

This notice board is intended to inform members of the project of votes or other current Wikipedia events which warrant their attention with regards to this project. Please do not list articles in need of attention here, but rather votes for deletion, votes for policy change or other current and ongoing events which warrant the immediate attention of the member base of this WikiProject.

Please characterize each notice as either:SEVERE, MODERATE, or MINOR to help aid your fellow WikiProject members to determine the state of the notice.

• SEVERE - A critical vote over possibly objectionable content. Often these should be cases where it looks like the vote may be towards keeping an image which clearly violates Wikipedia Policy or the State Law of Florida.
• MODERATE - Votes which while not critical involve material that is possibly objectionable and appears to violate Wikipedia Policy or the State Law of Florida.
• MINOR - Questionable whether the content is a violation of Wikipedia policy, or for votes where the current consensus seems to be for maintaining Wikipedia standards for Images and articles.

Please remove notices when votes are closed, or the event is no longer current. Each Sunday, all notices for the week should be consolidated into a single subcategory labeled: Week of:<DAY> <MONTH> - <DAY> <MONTH>, listing the date of the Monday and Sunday of the week as the range.

16 August 2005

• SEVERE Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion -> August 15th -> Image:autofellatio 2.jpg

  link - The image in question is highly unencyclopedic and overtly depicts a sexual act. It is made obsolete by the illustration in the article.

  Suggested action - vote your conscience as to whether the image should be deleted or kept.

  Status of the vote as of 07:22, 16 August 2005 (UTC): Delete: 7, Keep: 15.

• MODERATE Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion -> August 10th -> Image:Vibe.jpg

  link - The image in question is highly unencyclopedic and overtly depicts a sexual act. It is made obsolete by this illustration.

  Suggested action - vote your conscience as to whether the image should be deleted or kept.

  Status: No votes, but votes may be forth coming as it is cited in the the above mentioned SEVERE notice's discussion.

• MODERATE Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion -> August 10th -> Image:Handj.jpg

  link - The image in question is highly unencyclopedic and overtly depicts a sexual act. It is made obsolete by this illustration.

  Suggested action - vote your conscience as to whether the image should be deleted or kept.

  Status: No votes, but votes may be forth coming as it is cited in the the above mentioned SEVERE notice's discussion.

• MINOR Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion -> August 10th -> Image:Groupshower.jpg

  link - The image in question is highly unencyclopedic and is needlessly sexual.

  Suggested action - vote your conscience as to whether the image should be deleted or kept.

  Status: No votes, orphaned image, was deleted.

Open Tasks

Working Standard for Obscenity and Decency in Images

• Working Standard for Obscenity and Decency in Images - a place in the WikiProject namespace for a working standard on decency.

Develop standards and factors for obscenity

The standards for obscenity depend on the community. In this case, it is the Wiki community. We should develop factors for consideration specific to the Wiki community in determining whether an image or an article is obscene.

• Base such standards on pre-existing Wikipedia suggestion and policy, or statements by Wikipedia founders such as Jimbo.

Some discussions on the issue:

• Discussion on Full Frontal Nudity
• Full Frontal Nudity and Encyclopedias Discussion
• Jimbo's Removal of Autofellatio Image - Jimbo removes an image commenting:

This image is completely unacceptable for wikipedia -- I don't even consider this borderline

• Why is it unacceptable? We need to get a statement from Jimbo.
  • I have asked Jimbo to clarify. I'll report more when I hear back. Agriculture 08:08, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

• Florida Law on Obscenity
  • Under Florida Title XLVI Chapter 847 Section 011, it is a third degree felony to distribute photographs of sexual acts in such a way that they are available to minors. Without an age check, such photos are a felony, and could cause Wikipedia to be shut down.

This is not correct. The material must be more than just "photographs of sexual acts", it must be "obscene". The definition of obscenity used considers the purpose of the image - if it's there for sexual gratification it's obscene, if it's to educate, explain or inform it's not. Images in the first category are removed from wikipedia anyway as superfluous; if not, they clearly have a useful role in an encyclopedia and hence fall into the latter division. PeteVerdon 16:04, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the Florida law only makes exceptions for artistic, literary, political and scientific purposes, not necessarily just because a picture is intended to "educate, explain or inform" (unless I missed that part). - Haunti 16:31, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Such exceptions must be read into the law under the U.S. Supreme Court's Miller decision. If they are not, the law is unconstitutional. DES ^(talk) 17:28, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Whoops. Excuse my ignorance, I'm Canadian. - Haunti 17:47, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

• Obscenity Regulation Under U.S. Federal Law
  • Pursuant to recent changes to 28 C.F.R. 75 governing enforcement of 18 U.S.C. 2257, the Wikipedia Foundation would, as a secondary producer of 'visual depictions of actual sexually explicit conduct' (engaging in interstate commerce) be required to keep documentation proving that the 'performer' was above 18 years of age at the time of the 'performance', including photocopies of identification card, and make them available to Federal law enforcement on request. There would also need to be a boilerplate 2257 notice telling where these records are kept on any page where the image was displayed, although that could be done with a template. I think that the documentation and ID storage and presentment requirement is a problem for Wikipedia, unless the Foundation thinks it's worth it.

I'm reposting here some edited information I placed on the latest IFD for Autofellatio.jpg. I'm no lawyer, but I think this needs to be addressed. I'm also not a prude, I just think this may place the Wikipedia Project in peril if not addressed. Someone correct me if I am wrong. -Kwh 23:53, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

A secondary producer is defined as any person who produces, assembles, manufactures, publishes, duplicates, reproduces, or reissues a book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, or other matter intended for commercial distribution that contains a visual depiction of actual sexually explicit conduct.

While Wikipedia does publish (electronically), I don't think it qualifies as a commercial distrbiution (IANAL). Also, according to the article, there are some possible exceptions. That might be worth checking out. --Barista | a/k/a マイケル | T/C 00:05, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Suggest constructive ways to modify the statement of policy

Current policies:

• Wikipedia is not censored
• Wikipedia:Image_use_policy
• Wikipedia:Profanity
• Undefined "no nudity policy" but that does not mean it must be G-rated
  • The current undefined "no nudity policy" is more on the lines of "no pornography" policy, the difference being that nudity could be found in an art museum, pornography could not.

Responses to those who want no standard or oppose deletion of obscenity

• Statement: If Wiki cannot conform to all worldwide communities (and it can't), then it should not conform to any of them

• Responses:
• You would never apply that to a person's behaviour. It would be an implicit endoresemnt of anarchy. Wikipedia is it's own community and is allowed to set its own rules. It already does so in many areas of behaviour. Why not in decency also? DJ Clayworth 17:07, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• Statement: There is no concern that Wikipedia could become a porn site; there are no plans to turn Wikipedia into anything other than an encyclopedia

• Responses:

• Statement: You believe that these images should not be shown on Wikipedia because you think they're 'obscene'. That implies a moral judgement, and is therefore directly in opposition to WP:NPOV, the founding principle of Wikipedia

• Responses:
• To state that there should be no moral judgements is itself a POV. Is it also POV to say No personal attacks? Or no vanity pages? DJ Clayworth 17:07, 18 August 2005 (UTC)