I count 30 different people who have invoked WP:CENSORED or WP:NOTCENSORED. None of them has explained the reasoning behind applying a policy that reads "Wikipedia will not remove content..." to a situation where Wikipedia is not removing any content. Censorship says "Censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient...". Again, what is the logic behind calling something that does not suppress anything "censorship"? Which part of WP:CENSORED applies? Can anyone give a direct quote from that or any other policy that says we can not or should not give people a choice as to whether to view images? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:43, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
:People always have the choice to not view images; they can choose to simply not read the article in the first place. The project is not obligated to provide a mechanism of choice for them. I view a hatnote in the same way I viewed the Tipper Gore-instigated parental advisory stickers on my Blackie Lawless cassettes in the 80's. If people don't want to hear music with naughty words, they can listen to something else. If you don't want to see images that offend you, go somewhere else. Who are you (a general you, not you specifically) to categorize my music as offensive? Who are you to put cautionary note on the top of an article I am interested in reading? Let the listener and the reader, respectively, judge for themselves without your preconception of "it offends". Tarc (talk) 22:52, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
::The above appears to be an argument against the hatnote, not an explanation of how WP:NOTCENSORED applies. I am looking for an explanation for how so many people appear to be seeing something in WP:NOTCENSORED which isn't there. There is a difference between putting a parental advisory sticker on a cassette and making that cassette unavailable because of its content. Both are undesirable, but the latter is censorship, the former is not. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:11, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
:::If a work of art is not presented in its original form, then by definition it has been censored. Clear enough? Tarc (talk) 11:56, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
::::No. Not clear at all. Please describe, in detail, exactly how an instructional hatnote changes the form of any work of art. What does the work of art look like before and after this alleged change? What mechanism does the instructional hatnote use to make the change? It appears to me that the only actual censorship being discussed here is an attempt to censor the instructional hatnote itself. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
:::::It seems to me that censorship generally involves more than simply declining to provide technical instructions. It usually involves blocking certain manifestations of thought or expression from a target audience for cultural or political reasons. Having a page in project space showing users how to block images—and even linking to that page from every article—wouldn't be a problem because it would be across the board, neither topic- nor user-specific. Having such instructions at one particular article is something else again. While it wouldn't constitute censorship per se in and of itself, it would promote and could even help enable actual censorship. The cassette analogy is flawed. To extend it, however, let's be clear that the work of art in question isn't one or more images within the article but rather the article itself. The proposed hatnote isn't so much instructional as anti-instructional in that it facilitates the willful, continued ignorance of a certain subset of Wikipedia readers. (Note: I didn't make or support the censorship claim in my !vote because I don't think it's the main argument against the hatnote. I do think it's a valid argument, though.) Rivertorch (talk) 05:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
::::::Could you explain why it is that you think the invoking WP:NOTCENSORED is a valid argument? How does giving someone a tool that allows them to freely choose to view or not view images fit any reasonable definition of "censorship"?
::::::I just counted again, and by my count 42 people have WP:NOTCENSORED as their primary or only argument, 40 have made all other arguments combined, and 5 did things like writing "oppose" with no explanation. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:46, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
:::::::Mitch Ames explains the policy relevance below better than I could. My comment above was really speaking to the spirit of non-censorship—the principle which gave rise to the policy. As I said, the hatnote would promote and could help enable censorship; i.e., it would conflict with the principle. That's why I think it's a valid argument (in the broadest sense). Rivertorch (talk) 18:00, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
::The essence of WP:NOTCENSORED is that the definition of objectionable content is inherently personal and can not be used as an argument for including or removing content. Hatnotes are part of the content of an article in the same way style is, it forms the article, thus WP:NOTCENSORED do bring valued guidelines in how we should behave when when editors want to change an article to address concerns off objectionable content. Belorn (talk) 08:04, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
:I'd just like to chime to to say that No Disclaimers is a very weak stance for an issue of this magnitude. NODISCLAIMERS is not a Wikipedia policy, there are numerous exceptions to it already.
:Muhammad images are the most notable case of image offense on planet Earth, and we all know that as an objective fact-- our readers are routinely reporting negative emotions because of unexpectedly viewing images.
:Removing the images themselves is off the table. NOTCENSORED is what makes Wikipedia Great. But is this "NoDisclaimers" guideline really more important than the feelings of so many of our fellow human beings?
:A quarter of the world is Muslim-- there are more Muslims than there are residents of China. That's a LOT of Wikipedia readers. Is it really so bad if we offer these readers a brief description of our article's contents?
:I totally understand that NOTCENSORED is the core of Wikipedia. When we remove content for being controversial, we are no longer Wikipedia.
:Bbut NODISCLAIMERS is not a policy, there are many exceptions to it already. Given the gravity of this issue, I'd be tempted to cite Ignore All Rules, but in truth, NODISCLAIMERS doesn't rise to the level of a rule.
:The open problem is certainly preserving NPOV/neutrality as we consider the generic case-- in future, precisely when is it appropriate to inform readers that some of their peers are distressed by a page. I have great understanding of that particular concern, and we don't have a firm answer yet.
:But I just want to push back against the NODISCLAIMERS citation. A very narrow problem exists-- it is real: sometimes our readers experience unwanted, unexpected negative emotions because of our articles. There can be a complex religious or cultural cause, or it can also be as simple a gross medical image or scary image of spiders. This problem is real, and it remains unsolved.
:We are smart people. We can solve this problem. NODISCLAIMERS alone is not adequate justification for inflicting emotional harm on a scale of billions of people. It's bad strategy for Wikipedia, it's bad strategy for world peace, it's bad strategy for education. It's focusing on half-accepted dogma rather than what really matters. --HectorMoffet (talk) 13:25, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
::Hector, I'm not saying there is no issue here, but I think "inflicting emotional harm on a scale of billions of people" lacks any sense of proportion. FormerIP (talk) 13:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
:::Hehe-- well, I'm decidedly taking the "long view" here. Once the planet was once defined by the World Wars or the Cold War. Much of the actual violence during this period is an extended conflict between "Western/Global/Capitalist World" and the "Muslim World".
:::I doubt very seriously that a billion people will visit this page and experience direct upsetness. But Wikipedia is a unique place where the citizens of both worlds can interact directly, without governmental interference. How the two populations interact will affect the future of geopolitics in very real ways. Silly as it seems, readers in the Muslim world really will look to this page in forming an opinion about how the rest of the world treats them.
:::Hyperbole has it's place, but you're not wrong to point it out. :)
:::Essentially, I'm trying to knock people out of a conventional mindset of "business as usual" and remind them that this issue is one people are dying over. We can't abandon our core values, but we need to look very very hard for solutions that are consistent with our core values. Just citing a guideline about business as usual-- that's not giving the issue the weight it deserves. This isn't a case to ignore our values (NOTCENSORED, NPOV), but it is very very clearly a case to Ignore All Rules. --HectorMoffet (talk) 14:30, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
:I'm one of those who cited WP:NOTCENSORED. In response to Guy Macon's quite reasonable question "Which part of WP:CENSORED applies?" - the part that I consider applies is
{{quotation|
Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive, even exceedingly so ... Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images will always be acceptable to all readers, ...
... some articles may include ... images, ... which some people may find objectionable, when these materials are relevant to the content.
... Any rules that forbid members of a given ... religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations.
}}
:I acknowledge that "hiding" images is not literally the same as "removing" images, but to me the spirit of the policy is clear: Wikipedia will include the information, and the onus is on the reader not to look at, rather than on Wikipedia not to show it.
:More specifically:
{{quotation|Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images will always be acceptable to all readers ...}}
:Yet by providing a hatnote telling people how to hide the images we are in effect trying to guarantee that the article will be acceptable - a direct contravention of WP:NOTCENSORED.
{{quotation|Any rules that forbid members of a given ... religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations.}}
:I don't believe it is our business to tell people how to follow their rules (not looking at certain images) when they are not our rules. Mitch Ames (talk) 14:04, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
::We still may contain upsetting images with a hatnote, we still cannot guarantee our articles will be acceptable to all readers. And no one is saying that we are 'bound' by religious law.
::Notcensored (as a policy) applies to articles, not Wikipedia's paratext. We don't have a pornographic logo, don't have an offensive user interface. A hatnote is part of an educational user interface-- notcensored is not in play in terms of policy. (But with a nod to NOTCENSORED as a value). --HectorMoffet (talk) 14:57, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
:::Re: "by providing a hatnote telling people how to hide the images we are in effect trying to guarantee that the article will be acceptable", we also provide a link to the main page. Clicking on that link will take someone who is offended away from the objectionable images. Is that also trying to guarantee that the article will be acceptable? Perhaps we should disable the back button on their browser. Better yet, we should tape their eyes open, put their head in a clamp, and force them to view the images. Of course I am being silly, but there is an important point here: providing an link to instructions so that someone can freely choose not to view images is really no different from all the other ways we provide to not view content that you don't like.--Guy Macon (talk) 17:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
:::: The problem with the hatnote is that its existence makes a value judgement, ie that some images on this page are offensive - and I do not believe we should be making such value judgements. The Main Page link, back button etc apply equally to all articles; they do not act only on some pages that someone has decided may be offensive. An item on the Toolbox that hid images would be OK (in my opinion) if and only if it applied equally to all articles. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:54, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
- In a belated response to the question posed to me above regarding how a hatnote censors, I will answer that by drawing an analogy to [http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/01/29/statues.htm John Ashcroft and Lady Liberty]. I'm sure most here would agree that Ashcroft censored the statue by covering her nakedness with drapes, yes? But by your argument line here regarding hatonoes, it would not be censorship since people were free to walk up and look behind the drapes at any time. Tarc (talk) 14:22, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
::The better analogy is if Ashcroft had left the statue intact but put signs alerting visitors that there was a "Topless Statue ahead". --HectorMoffet (talk) 14:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
:::That's really not a relevant distinction. The point is, you want to put something in place that says "this may is objectionable" on an article where a visitor will damn well know there may be something objectionable. It is THEIR responsibility to avoid the objection here, not OURS. I am opposed to the very concept of warning users that something ahead may be objectionable to their religious beliefs. I'm actually more amenable to the notion of hatnotes on nudity where none may truly be unexpected, e.g. pregnancy. Religion? Never. Tarc (talk) 15:07, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
::::That's a completely relevant distinction. It is the distinction between warning and censorship. I see that you added an argument that warnings are bad, but that is getting away from answering the question you set out to answer, which is why you think something that removes no content is censorship. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
::::But let's think about this. We know, for a fact, as an objective fact, as a notable fact, that this page contains images objectionable to a notable faction of the planet. This isn't a subjective call-- there have been whole news stories just about this Wikipedia article and our policy on it.[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/books/05wiki.html][http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,328966,00.html][http://www.webpronews.com/wikipedia-wont-remove-muhammad-images-2008-02] We all agree, by consensus and by evidence, that page contains controversial images. The statement "Wikipedia's article on Muhammad contains images of Muhammad that upset some readers" is verifiable. It's not hearsay, it's not speculation, it's a fact.
::::Since when is providing readers with verifiable facts a problem? No one disputes that this page contains images that many people find upsetting. It is a fact. Stating this fact may raise new problems of neutrality, but I really am having a hard time understanding how a disclaimer would be a violation of the notcensored policy. --HectorMoffet (talk) 15:20, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
:::::Hector, regarding hyperbole, I don't think it does have a legitimate place in the discussion. I think some editors have a gravely distorted take on what the actual issues are, and it doesn't help. A certain proportion of Muslims, whose number we can only guess at, probably 'will not like us having images of M in the article. But the number who will need counselling as a result is likely so small that we can ignore it. FormerIP (talk) 15:37, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
::::::I agree the number of readers who would truly be helped by a disclaimer is a relatively small fraction of our readership. But when you're dealing with such a large population, it's hard to ignore even a small fraction-- a small fraction of a billion is more people than I'll ever meet in my entire lifetime.
::::::You can almost view this more as a "Wikipedia Public Relations" issue. An overwhelming number of people asked about this article. "Giving in" is off the table, but can't we at least "reply" to all these readers with explanatory link?
::::::I know it's a complex question, full of slippery slopes and interlocking political interests. But people ARE being unnecessarily upset, and I'm frustrated by dogmatic argument that this doesn't merit special consideration to try to find a way to minimize negative effects. --HectorMoffet (talk) 15:56, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
:::::::::I'm actually in favour of a hatnote, so that's not really my point. I'm purely talking about ensuring that we maintain a realistic attitude if we feel it is appropriate to imagine how Muslims will feel about the images (it's been an ongoing feature of the debate that Muslim wikipedians have generally steered well clear of it). I don't think images are going to induce trauma or even anything you could properly call upset. They are merely something that some people don't like. We have a no censorship attitude when it comes to children. I'm concerned that, while they are undoubtedly well-meaning, some editors appear to consider Muslims to be less capable of coping with the Internet than children. FormerIP (talk) 21:52, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
::::::::::This dialog has been really enlightening for me, FormerIP. It's interesting that you say "Some editors consider [some] Muslims to be less capable of coping with the internet than children." This is actually something I firmly believe. The technology is old enough now that we can see children are often the most sophisticated users on the entire internet. Adults just can't compete with kids for adaptability. I never worry about kids just reading online, I don't even worry about kids in Muslim nations reading online-- the kids will adapt without missing a beat. The people I do worry about some of the older adults who are reading a NOTCENSORED publication for the very first time after an entire lifetime of exposure to only their local cultural norms.
::::::::::To go full geek, http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-WZsCJuuuthYtn/the_matrix_1999_the_prophecy/ scene from the matrix: "We never free a mind once it's reached a certain age. It's dangerous, the mind has trouble letting go. I've seen it before and I'm sorry."
::::::::::I was here when conservative Americans first got online, and though we forget it now, even conservatives Americans often had complex reactions to the radical increase in information freedom. As the unwired world comes online, their adult populations should undergo a 'culture shock' akin to the one experienced in the US in the 1990s, only worse. By and large, we can't stop that 'culture shock'-- but it's important to keep an eye out for little things we could potentially to to minimize it. --HectorMoffet (talk) 05:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
:::::::The problem is though that we're already really past the point that you wish to discuss. This is Request for Comment for the entire Wikipedia community to weigh in on, and though we have a lot of questions and sub-sections, much of it really boils down to one thing; consideration of religious offense vs. the openness of the information in the project. You may disagree, but it seems that many here do not believe that the Muslim point of view regarding Muhammad is critical enough to temper that openness. Tarc (talk) 19:00, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
::::::::I must respectfully disagree with the underlying assumption. Nobody has given me a shred of evidence establishing that 1a (hatnote) in any way compromises the the openness of the information in the project. Nothing gets removed, not one letter, much less an image. Nobody is hindered in any way from seeing exactly what they see now - in fact that is the default if they do nothing. Some of the other sections do boil down to considering religious offense vs. the openness of the information in the project, but not 1a. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:08, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
:::::::::Agree. There is nothing relating to censorship about the note. People are told what the article contains (true fact, which is the spreading of information - the very opposite of censorship), and then they can do what they want with that. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:38, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
::::::::::Well, disagreement is fine, but if the premise of "hatnote equates to censorship" is what an overwhelming number of Wikipedians believe, then at the end of the day that will be the finding of RfC 1a. Tarc (talk) 21:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
:::::::::::But my arguments are so darn persuasive (plus, of course, my overwhelming charisma) that I am sure that we will be seeing a mass swing in the voting Real Soon Now... (sound of crickets) --Guy Macon (talk) 00:10, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
I noticed a mention of spiders above, and it illustrates my view (see my !vote). Disclaimers should not be needed, because Wikipedia content should be encyclopedic: image use should be as unsurprising as spoilers in a plot summary. Purely alarming image use is not encyclopedic. We do not have images of real spiders at Arachnaphobia, nor do we have images of clowns at Coulrophobia and these are issues which have been extensively discussed: an image of spider or clown would not be expected by someone reading either article to learn more about the condition; it would add no value to the article, and would disturb readers with either condition. Notice, however, that Arachnaphobia does have a cartoon illustrating the prevalence of the fear of spiders as represented in popular culture.
Writing encyclopedic content is not easy, and Wikipedia is a work in progress, but "look away now, dear reader" is not the solution. Geometry guy 23:11, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
News sites often warn readers when graphic content that might be disturbing is about to be shown. Likewise, adult websites and blogs include similar messages to their readers before displaying contentious content. This practice seems to be respectful with no negative side effects apparent. Informing a Wikipedia reader that content, which may be alarming or objectionable to literally millions of people including themselves, is included in an article seems entirely appropriate. Those wishing to see the material may do so. Offering a mechanism, such as a hatnote, provides a simple solution and is absolutely no way akin to censorship. The material is still available to everyone; it is merely a courtesy to give a person a choice before proceeding.
Editors who are fervently against this option might want to ask themselves what their deeper motives are in denying this important choice to others. IMHO it seems petty and insensitive to do so with not one redeeming motive. When it comes to tolerance, magnanimity rather than meanness is key. Veritycheck (talk) 01:00, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
:Do not try to find deeper motives when there is none. Assume good faith, and if the arguments someone gives are too spares to make sense of, ask the commenter to explain in more details what his arguments are. Questions at users talk pages is a better method to reach an consensus than generic dismissal of peoples arguments. Belorn (talk) 08:04, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
::Actually, concerning controversial topics like this one, I don’t assume good faith. My experience on editing such articles has shown that, more often than not, personal agendas take precedence over fact and common sense. It is precisely the reason why I have commented on this. Furthermore, at this time you don't even have a User Talk Page where editors can message you; how peculiar that you recommend this method yourself. Veritycheck (talk) 11:22, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
:::Assuming good faith is a fundamental principle. Without it discussions like the one here is utterly pointless. If cynicism takes a hold and prevent you from doing it, then its prime time for WP:DOGGY :). As for user talk page, every user (and IP users) has one. Mine is User_talk:Belorn. The red link in my signature is for my user page. User pages are presentation pages (mostly), and is not the place people should message me. My talk page is the place where people can message me, which is linked next to the red text and in parentheses. Here it is again just in case the talk link is too small! Belorn (talk) 12:18, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
If we are considering per-article hatnotes on those articles that might offend people, what criteria do we use to make the decision? Should we include such a hatnote on Dinosaur, Birthday, Halloween, Dancing, Wealth, Poverty, Divorce, Disease? The [http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/out_of_the_question_YegJJGCOo33j0CQsccdZuL New York City Department of Education considers that all of these topics "could evoke unpleasant emotions" and has banned them from their tests], so perhaps we should warn our readers, just in case some of them are NY students. Seriously though, how would we decide which topics might offend enough people to put a hatnote on them? I still assert that the spirit of WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:DISC requires that we not make any such decision, which means we place a hatnote on no articles, or add a toolbox item that applies equally to all articles. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:19, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
:I have read WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:DISC several times slowly and carefully, looking for anything in either that even hints at the "spirit of" that you apparently perceive. There is absolutely nothing in the spirit or the letter of either that supports such a conclusion. I think you are reading your own POV into both documents. These sort of "the spirit of X requires" arguments are not falsifiable.
:As for your slippery slope argument, it kind of implies that we as a community cannot be trusted to arrive at a wise decision through consensus concerning those other articles. I reject that. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
::I agree with Guy that the slippery slope argumetn is invalid here. Also I cannot comprehend how either 1a or 1b could be censorship. I used to listen to music on LPs. When compact discs were introduced, I could skip the tracks I didn't like by pressing a single button. Does that mean that the record companies were engaged in censorship when they invented the tracking system on CDs? After all, the tracking system is nothing other than a button that allows me to skip tracks I don't like. How does that differ from the 1b proposal? — Lawrence King (talk) 02:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
:::Guy Macon, I acknowledge but disagree with your opinion that there is no hint of the spirit to which I refer; we may simply have to agree to differ on that matter. As you rightly point out, the spirit of the law is difficult to objectify. (I'm not sure that "Falsifiability" is a meaningful term in this context; the term is only relevant to physical laws or scientific theories of fact, rather than imperative laws.) However I notice that while WP:CENSORED doesn't prevent us from adding hatnotes to specific articles, it does not say that we sometimes do, nor does it make any other mention of editorial judgement about the offensiveness of specific articles, although I concede that WP:DISC does. WP:CENSORED's lack of mention of editorial judgement, together with the parts that I quoted (14:04, 27 March 2012 (UTC)), strongly implies to me that the intent is that such editorial judgement (and thus hatnotes) is undesirable and not the intent of the policy. If we do intend to put hatnote warnings on some "offensive" articles, perhaps we should say so explicitly in CENSORED, as we do in DISC. (I disagree with both the hatnotes and the addition to CENSORED, but if we have the former, we should consider the latter.)
:::Lawrence King, skipping tracks on a CD is not a good analogy - the issue is not about whether you can "skip" an article, the issue is about whether Wikipedians decide about the offensiveness of specific articles. A better might be: your CD player doesn't warn you that specific tracks might be offensive and tell you how to skip them. At most, there is a warning sticker that the CD may contain offensive material. The "skip track" button works applies equally to all tracks on all CDs. Mitch Ames (talk)
:::: Mitch, while I disagree with you on the substantial question, I completely agree with you that once this issue is resolved, the WP:CENSORED policy should be updated to clearly specify what the policy is with regard to hat notes and the other things we are discussing here! — Lawrence King (talk) 23:51, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
:::::One reason, I cannot agree that anti-censorship rules apply (to these hatnotes) is that the hatnotes proposed are functionally similar to hatnotes Wikipedia has everywhere: 'This article is about ______, if you want _____, click here.' They make no judgment on why the reader wants to 'click here.' Neither do the proposals. And readers ignore or use those all the time. Now, if a different proposed hatnote actually said to the reader, 'we know you don't want to read or see this,' that would, perhaps, be a different argument. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:15, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
:::::: I don't think that is a valid comparision. Those hatnotes ("this article is about... click here for ....") serve a different purpose; they are navigational aids, not content warnings. In particular, they don't conflict with (the spirit, as I perceive it, of) any policy, whereas hatnotes that say "this article might offend you" do. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:01, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
:::::::The proposals before the body don't say that. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:16, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
::::::::Your pedantry precision is acknowledged, but are we putting the hatnotes (as worded in the proposals) there for some other reason than "the article might offend"? If we are going to have the hatnotes, perhaps we should state explicitly why they are there, lest some ignorant reader wonder why some articles have picture toggles and others don't. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:09, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
- WP:NOTCENSORED is a very weak argument for the inclusion of offensive material. It's a great argument against the removal of such material, but to include offensive material you need a better reason than NOTCENSORED, especially if there are less-offensive alternatives that work just as well. (See WP:GRATUITOUS) ~Adjwilley (talk) 15:08, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
- WP:NOTCENSORED: Wikipedia does not recognize censorship in any articles. I think better DELETE the images. Mbak Dede (talk) 10:31, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
- There's Wikipedia is not censored, indeed, which does apply here (putting a curtain over something, even if people are free to peek behind the curtain, is censorship), but the more relevant one is no disclaimer templates and, paramount above all, neutrality. If we did this in this article, then to maintain neutrality, we'd have to do this in every article where someone could be offended by its content. That would quickly reach ridiculous extremes. So the only choice here is to refrain from doing it anywhere at all. We do not hide or censor content relevant to an article because someone may take offense to it, and we never should. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
- While the argument may seem to be generic with WP:NOTCENSORED as the question specifically relates to the hat note and not the images themselves, it should be apparent that we not specifically adopt self-censorship which comes with even optional toggling of the pictures. Some articles contain nudity and those articles are not self-censored, and some of them could be quite offensive to various cultures as well. Religion may be a hot-button topic, but it should not be given exemptions from policy because it could be offensive. No curtains, no special exceptions for offensive material. A great number of historically significant pictures have offended people with gore, sexuality, violence, or abuse. It would set a terrible precedent. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 17:11, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
