by Moxie

Background

.

A couple of years ago a bored teenager took a couple of photos of himself and posted them to Wikimedia Commons. The first photo was of his bare legs, the second photo was of his nipple. Then for some reason, probably because he’d grown up a bit, he wished that those images weren’t on online any more. At the beginning of January 2012 he made a formal request asking Wikipedia commons remove the photos for him. Simply enough, you may think, but this is Wikimedia Commons, and things are never simple there.

Deletion Requests

Within a twinkling of an eye it was declared that photos of teen boy nipples are highly educational – request denied. But not before another user “VolodyA! V Anarhist”, who in 2000 was convicted of child pornography offences, had told him that:

Without any other information apart from “please delete” i hope that admins will have common sense to close the request and keep the image.

The kid tried to make the same request twice more, until some nasty mean old administrator James L. Woodward came by to threaten him:

You have nominated File:Teen_boy’s_Nipple.jpg for deletion three times without a reason acceptable to Commons. If you nominate it again, or take any similar action, you will be blocked from editing on Commons.

James L. Woodward has “more than 30 years of high technology management experience. Jim has raised over $15 million in venture capital and has been CFO of several public companies. He has been the founding CFO of a variety of successful companies” but apparently is unable to pass up an opportunity to post a threat.

Meanwhile the requests to have the photo deleted were denied, denied, and denied, “VolodyA! V Anarhist” being

…continue reading Wikimedia needs your nipples