Folks, you are all being trolled silly. Robert Greenwald exposed this nonsense in Fox Attacks: Decency and "Fox News Porn" in 2007.[3][4] Fox "News" is in no position to criticize Wikipedia for hosting sexual content when, according to Greenwald, Fox "News" has a long and sordid history of distributing it on their own network channel 24/7.[5]
Viriditas (T-C-L)(talk) 00:34, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Fox News has its issues, but I myself support the idea of some kind of
filter on WMF projects' adult content.
Cla68 (T-C-L) (talk) 00:41, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
That's how repressive regimes begin. First you start with the sexual content that offends people, then you move on to the religious content, and finally, the political content. Funny how it's always the people screaming "freedom" and "liberty" the loudest who are always trying to curtail it. The facts show that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that covers some topics and subjects that might concern sexual content. As good people who only want the best for this site, we hope such content is conveyed with a respectful and reasoned approach, in an educational manner and with an eye on informing readers and improving access to knowledge. Nothing about this statement says that we must cover all subjects, just that it should be relevant and informative to human knowledge. Can Fox "News" say the same? No, they cannot, and more importantly, will not, because their primary impetus is not to inform and educate but to disinform and promote ignorance. More to the point, they sexualize the content they report in a demeaning and gratuitous manner, so much so, that many people would call Fox "news porn".
Viriditas (T-C-L)(talk) 00:51, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
The cinema has had age ratings for decades. It has not affected the ability of people on any end of the political spectrum to make movies one way or the other.
Wikipedians are the only ones who see their ability to show the most bizarre types of porn to children as somehow inextricably linked with human freedom. And most of them don't even have children.
JN466 (T-C-L) 19:23, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Nonsense. The heavy hand of the censor is brutally apparent in American movies under this ostensibly "voluntary" system. Think of how many films didn't dare to show even a purely romantic same-sex kiss until just a few years ago, and the impact that this had on youth already facing significant persecution. There have been an
appalling number of suicides by teens who just couldn't take the constant wearing down. Censorship doesn't just make for bad movies, it kills people. It is palpably and deliberately evil.
Wnt (T-C-L) (talk) 21:59, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. Now, can someone explain why the people who are always trying to censor sexual content have no interest whatsoever in censoring violence? Why is it unacceptable to use a dirty word or show a breast, but perfectly acceptable to point a gun at someone, threaten to kill them, and then, using realistic special effects, show damage to the human body and dramatize emotional and physical trauma? In other words, why are we arguing about sexuality and pleasure, when threats to commit violence and the depiction of violent imagery have the greatest social harm? If someone can answer this glaring contradiction, I would be most grateful.
Viriditas (T-C-L) (talk) 22:08, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Both of youse, Wnt and Viriditas are into some heavy Goodwin's Law territory. Somehow,
unless Common is allowed to show low quality photos of people sticking toothbrushes into all sorts of places, people will kill themselves. Seriously? And
teen-suicides are all about the fact that there's a NC-17 rating? And then there's the whole red-herring of violence... how is this exactly related? Unless you're talking about stuff like the crappy misogynist Donkey Punch video which the same group of Commons admins fought to keep and insert into Wikipedia articles. What the hell does it have to do with the topic? Way to derail the subject. And
welcome to planet Insane.
VolunteerMarek (T-C-L) 23:44, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I'll say again - if you cite Godwin's law when no one else has mentioned Hitler, you're the first to mention Hitler (by reference) which makes you the loser of a Usenet argument. Besides, Mike Godwin is, alas, not the WMF counsel anymore. What I cited was not a comparison to Naziism, only an example of one of the many ways that
censorship kills people. Not a stretch, not hyperbole, but a commonplace. Censorship killed people in the 1980s when TV stations were too "moral" to run condom ads, and even the Surgeon General was being daring to mention the word. Censorship killed people when protesters were infiltrated and disrupted from stopping the war in Vietnam or the terrorist attacks on Nicaragua.
It kills people when bestgore.com is threatened with an obscenity prosecution for the crime of catching Luka Magnotta [This seems like something I don't want to Google. --KW], and people stop talking about the horrors of the world.
Wnt (T-C-L)???
Wnt,
just shut up.
If you really think that the existence of a NC-17 rating in movies "brutally kills people" or something then your opinion really has no place in intelligent discourse. And now you're going off on some crazy tangents about Vietnam and Nicaragua and comparing the obviously horrible things that happened there to ... lack of ads for condoms during the 1980's. Why do normal, reasonable, common sense, constructive Wikipedia editors have to put up with this bat shit crazy stuff and why are reasonable proposals (and ones supported by both Jimbo and WMF - just so we're clear here) held hostage to nutzoids like you? And people wonder about the dismal editor retention on this project.
VolunteerMarek (T-C-L) 02:00, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Never mind Godwin. If you want a Godwin, I'll give you something beyond a Godwin, an answer to Viriditas about why it is important to protect the right to view violence, often even more than the right to view sexual matter. I present you with a modern day Christian martyr, a man who surely shall stand beside Perpetua in the Kingdom of Heaven. I present you with that quite possibly "obscene" site, a truly terrible video, though it was freely broadcast in Egypt: [6] And I say this: what is most remarkable about this video is not the blood, or the severing of the vertebrae, but the calm and resolute faith of the man, even as his life is so brutally ended, his willingness to refuse even to make a token white lie of recantation and acceptance to Islam. Never mind the powers of rules and knives; the power of belief, see that power conquer all, in our world and the next.
Wnt (T-C-L)(talk) 01:48, 8 June 2012 (UTC)