In May 2011, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees unanimously passed a resolution regarding controversial content.[1] The resolution included a request to the Executive Director to implement a "personal image hiding feature" for the Wikimedia projects.

Following a community poll organized by the Foundation, and extensive discussion in various venues, it has become clear that this issue can be highly divisive and distracting to the Wikimedia community. We trust our community, and we respect the arguments that have been made opposing the feature as well as those in support of it. We affirm our support for better user choice and user preferences, but do not want to prescribe a specific mechanism for offering that choice. Therefore we rescind the request to develop this feature. The remainder of the May 2011 resolution remains in effect.

Reference:
↑ Resolution:Controversial content

Yes
Phoebe Ayers, Ting Chen, Bishakha Datta, Matt Halprin, Samuel Klein, Arne Klempert, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Kat Walsh, Stu West

No
Jimmy Wales

Now that's an own goal if ever there was one.

Sorry you got unanimously outvoted.[6] Would submitting a patch to mw:Extension:Bad Image List adding a user preference to add one or more URLs with arbitrary media files to block instead of using only the centralized list require the approval of the community or just the developers? Line 17 here performs image censorship in the centralized, top-down way that the community and board rejected, so a patch to add a distributed filter list should be in line with community decisions, right? 71.212.249.178 (talk) 03:29, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

That page is wrong. I voted yes. I've written to the board to try to figure out how to get that updated quickly.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:19, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

You said only a few weeks ago on Twitter that you would write it yourself and turn it on tomorrow if you could. What made you change your mind? JN466 12:32, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Maybe he voted both ways.

Larry Sanger ‏@lsanger
I think it's time for the media to ask @jimmy_wales if he supports a filter for Wikipedia's vast porn offerings http://larrysanger.org/2012/05/what-s …
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Jimmy Wales
‏@jimmy_wales

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@lsanger I strongly support it. The board has directed that it be built. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutio …
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1:29 AM - 30 May 12 via web · Embed this Tweet

Larry Sanger ‏@lsanger
Re a porn filter for Wikipedia, grand that you @jimmy_wales "strongly support it." Question is, what are you going to do about it now?

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Jimmy Wales
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@lsanger if I could write it myself and turn it on tomorrow I would.
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7:17 AM - 30 May 12 via Twitter for Android · Embed this Tweet

I strongly support the creation of an industry-standard, unremarkable, low-community-impact (possibly even staff-managed if necessary) setting so that end users can easily toggle on and off NSFW images. I continue to push this matter with the board and would appreciate community help in making sure that it is implemented as soon as possible.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] ([[User talk:Jimbo Wales#top|talk]]) 09:14, 1 July 2012 (UTC
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =500157373

Two possibilities. One is that Jimbo pressed the issue, as he assured us he would, and the Board pushed back. The other is that the Board wanted to send a clear (albeit ridiculous) message to certain people that they will not be told what to do. And on that score, oh, message received loud and clear. Now let's see what manner of plan Jimbo manages to produce, and whether it will stay only in the talk stage.

Anyone willing to bet a tenner against it?

FAQ

Q - What does it mean to "affirm our support for user choice"?
A: It is important for readers to be able to customize their experience on the projects, and to make their browsing and searching useful and comfortable.
Q - If there is a simple feature like this that is designed by community members and supported by the vast majority of people in a community (say, in a long-running RfC), would it be implemented?
A: For features that are not controversial and supported by a vast majority of community members: yes. Gathering feedback on a feature request, and gauging community interest in it, is a bottleneck for implementation.
Q - What does this mean for suggestions proposed so far, by community members and others, to provide users with a choice in what images they see?
A: A variety of useful suggestions have been proposed to help customize image display; from solutions for individual pages where the curation and selection of images is controversial (e.g., Muhammad), to options for customizing search results, to options for all images. Those that gain widespread support may be developed and implemented; however there is no specific feature that has been singled out for development.
Q - Could different communities choose to implement different solutions to this set of feature requests?
A: Yes. Currently most communities implement their own solutions and editorial guidelines for issues that divide readers. Any tools or features developed could be implemented by communities that want them.

Vote change record

Dear all,
I am happy to announce that the Board of Trustees has now unanimously approved this resolution [1] rescinding our previous direction to the Executive Director to develop a personal image hiding feature.
At our in-person board meeting of 11 July 2012, the vote on this was provisionally recorded at 9-1, with Jimmy voting against. Jimmy has since changed his vote to a yes, on reviewing an FAQ accompanying this resolution which notes that the board is willing to approve a plan broadly backed by the community.
Thus the vote on this has now been changed to 10-0.
The FAQ accompanying the board resolution is on this talk page.
The resolution remains at: [1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Res ... ng_Feature

I never noticed at the time ... Jimbo deleted a post of Larry's off his talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =502481939

Notice the irrelevant, gratuitous "NewtonGeek" comment as well, which made me suspect that person is a troll after all.

I have suspected he (and his alter-ego wife, I do not consider them different people for various reasons) was/is an agent provocateur since they appeared. The back-and-forth of stated positions, the clear egging on of other people. The weird (positive/negative) obsession with Dennis Brown.... And above all, long years of experience dealing with faceless people online - going back to BBS & MU* days. Perhaps he needs his own thread now.

I particularly like how he takes positions on both sides of the argument in Ashley van HaeftEn's case.

I particularly like how he takes positions on both sides of the argument in Ashley van HaeftEn's case.

I think this person(s) could be doing some sort of study on wikipedia and poking at different characters to see what happens and is going to write a paper on it. It wouldn't surprise me.

Yes, somebody did mention that in another thread or via e-mail to me, I don't recall.

Ah, another Moulton.

Judging the progress to date of Jimbo's filter initative is a somewhat bewildering task. On the one hand, the talk page is now close to 100 kilobytes.

On the other hand, Jimbo has not posted to the page in a little over three days. The latest talk page section header reads "Expanding the Commons porn collection with effective indexing" (by Wnt).

Perhaps a more sensible solution is a Bayesian filter that allows each user to select what they want to see. Unsigned in users could have a seeded version. With sufficient categorisation there need be no need for any pre-determined "censorship" as every user gets t say what they don't want to see.

That sounds a bit like what WereSpielChequers proposed a while back.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wer ... ers/filter

Is this the sort of thing you meant?

It's been a long time since I've heard Jimmy Wales speak so clearly and correctly about a subject:

Too bad he's rather powerless now against the Board and the "community".

"It is not that difficult to do". That is correct, it may already be possible, with some javascript "gadget" in one's settings.

But that only works for logged-in users. It would not enable censorship in for example the school computer room or by parents.

Judging the progress to date of Jimbo's filter initative is a somewhat bewildering task. On the one hand, the talk page is now close to 100 kilobytes.

On the other hand, Jimbo has not posted to the page in a little over three days. The latest talk page section header reads "Expanding the Commons porn collection with effective indexing" (by Wnt).

I strongly support the creation of a personal image filter. I worked very hard to reach a compromise resolution which does not close off the possibility of real progress on this. SJ and I will be releasing an FAQ about this soon (tomorrow, I think, but time zone differences may mean a delay of a day or so). In my view, stated vigorously at the board meeting, an early version of the resolution would have been interpreted incorrectly as the board rejecting the image filter completely.
What I think we can do is convene a small group of people (design by massive wiki discussion tends to suck) to design a very lightweight solution, taking into account and resolving genuine and thoughtful objections, and hold a project-wide vote to get a clear instruction for the Foundation. I am confident that this can take place relatively quickly. [...]

I'm starting a page where I hope to see a constructive discussion of the desired characteristics of a personal image filter, with a view towards getting a very high degree of community support for the concept. User:Jimbo Wales/Personal Image Filter with discussions at User_talk:Jimbo Wales/Personal Image Filter. I'll kick the main page off in the next few minutes with some initial thoughts.

It's been a long time since I've heard Jimmy Wales speak so clearly and correctly about a subject:

youtube

Too bad he's rather powerless now against the Board and the "community".

About a month ago Jimbo created User:Jimbo Wales/Personal Image Filter as a followup to the perennial image filter issue. Discussion on that has petered out (no comments in last 4 weeks), and we don't seem any nearer to a solution that meets the criteria listed at User:Jimbo Wales/Personal Image Filter.

NB I also asked Jimbo recently at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_113#KISS_image_filter, having raised it at m:Controversial_content/Brainstorming#KISS; Jimbo didn't reply.

Rd232 started a KISS image filter RfC last week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... (proposals)#KISS_image_filter

PHPbb is screwy. Sometimes a URL like that doesn't work properly if just pasted into the text.

This is the working link