Censorship is currently being discussed and debated on Wikipedia and I feel that I should give my opinions on censorship on Wikipedia.
What is censorship?
editIn my opinion, censorship is the removal or obscurity of information of data which may or may not be useful otherwise. This could be deleting an image which could be considered pornographic in nature, obscuring parts of an image which displays human or animal reproductive/sexual anatomy, or removing images which may offend people of some demographics. (EG: race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc.)
Why do I feel censorship is wrong in Wikipedia?
editWikipedia is a factual resource. It is used by millions of people as a reference tool for many different subjects, ranging anywhere from a mundane and uncontroversial subject such as floppy disks, all the way up to more controversial subjects such as autofellatio, homosexuality, and caricatures of the Muslim prophet Muhammed. For this reason, I feel that as a factual resource it would be wrong to censor images and/or text which provides factual information on the basis that it may offend some people.
The intention of most Wikipedia editors is to help provide this factual resource, not to offend. Therefore most images on Wikipedia which may offend some people are there for a benign reason. I find it ludicrous that a Muslim would criticise Wikipedia for having an image of the caricatures of Muhammed, simply because the intent of Wikipedia is to provide facts, and the existance of the caricatures on Wikipedia is intended to inform, not to promote the caricatures themselves.
However, as we all know there are sometimes people who wish to vandalise Wikipedia. These people will often add images and/or text deliberately to offend. Of course, it goes without saying this should be removed from Wikipedia and the vandal banned.
What should we do?
edit- Stop removing text and images from Wikipedia because they may offend people. Unless;
- The text/image is deliberately intended to offend and violates Wikipedia's NPOV policy.
- DO NOT add warnings which say that content may offend some people, as common sense would say that a person looking at an article on autofellatio can expect to see graphic images of the process, and a Muslim looking up the Muhammed caricatures (see Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy) can expect to see content which may offend. However the person should take the information within its context as a factual resource and not as offensive. Afterall, we do not ommit details from history textbooks because some quotes from Hitler may offend Jews. It is clear that the information provided in these books is from a NPOV. (Neutral point of view)