Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 196
Village pump (policy) archive
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (policy). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX, AY, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM, BN, BO · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195
Potentially distressing images on the home page
Greetings. I noticed today (September 11th) on the anniversary section of the home page, a photo of United Airlines Flight 175 hitting the WTC South Tower, representing the anniversary of 9/11. Is there a policy preventing potentially distressing images (e.g. photos of graphic violence or serious injury, porn, etc.) from appearing on the home page? I understand that some articles, such as those on wars or atrocities, will warrant the use of potentially distressing images for illustration. But a visitor to an article like that will likely understand the risk of seeing those kinds of images if they know anything about the topic of that article. I don't think the same could be said for the home page.
Of course different people have different views on what amounts to a potentially distressing image. Nevertheless, I'd imagine that memories, reminders and depictions of 9/11 have traumatic impact on a wide swathe of people—people who were personally affected by the attacks (directly or indirectly), people who were distressed by watching them play out, people who have been affected by other aviation accidents, or even people who (like me) just have a low tolerance for these things. With all of these factors in mind, I was surprised to see that the photo of Flight 175 was deemed suitable to appear on the home page. Thecolonpagesaretoocomplicated (talk) 16:47, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- It's fairly uncomplicated: Wikipedia is not censored, unfortunately. If you've perused the Main Page for any length of time, you've likely seen dozens of images that were similarly distressful to individuals from different backgrounds than yours. Like with every other content issue, we reflect sources in what visibility we give these features, and there's just no getting around that this is one of the most famous images of the 21st century, ugly as it is. Remsense ‥ 论 16:49, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- "Wikipedia is not censored" doesn't mean run whatever on the main page. I read the front page every day, I do not see dozens of images that are similarly distressful, or distasteful (can anyone point to three from the past year?). Of course that image should be in the article(s) about the attack, but there's really no reason to have an image of thousands of people being murdered on the front page every damn year. So, it bothers me, too, OP, you're not alone. I think it's callous of Wikipedia to put "violence porn" on the front page. (I also don't love that it's the lead image of the 9/11 article instead of being further down in the article, but having it in WP:OTD is much more gratuitous.) (Another example like this: the Hiroshima/Nagasaki "mushroom cloud" atomic bomb images.) Levivich (talk) 19:44, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- I'll put it like this: I personally loathe this about as much as you've expressed you do, but I am looking in my pockets for a way to make the argument you're making that's congruent with fundamental site policy and I am coming up with nothing. I am explicitly not making this about our ~~integrity as editors~~ because that would be inane and I respect my interlocutors a lot more than that, but sometimes we write and gleefully present violence porn because our reliable sources are violence porn, and there's no distinction I can honestly make there that makes any sense when taken to its logical conclusion.. Remsense ‥ 论 19:55, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- I hear ya. I would say we can choose a different image for 9/11 OTD (even a different 9/11 image, like the famous one of the rubble). That doesn't conflict with any site policies. And we don't have to take it to its logical conclusion (whatever that may be). We can choose an image for the main page for a particular item, and in making that choice, we can be sensitive to various sensitivities. I think what you're saying about us being effectively bound by policy is very true when it comes to article content--no way we can exclude that image from the 9/11 article and be in line with policy--but on the main page, we have discretion what photos to show. Just as we pick POTD based on aesthetics, we can be selective about OTD, DYK, etc. NOTCENSORED doesn't mean we can't make a good choice when we have several options, and there are many iconic 9/11 photos to choose from (firefighters running up the stairs while everyone else is running down, Bush with the megaphone, twisted steel of the tower ruins, just to name a few). Levivich (talk) 22:18, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- There's also nothing in our policies that requires us to include an image of any specific event in the list every single year. We could and perhaps should rotate them: This year it was the twin towers, and next year it can be the 30th anniversary of the space station trip, and the year after, we maybe we would choose an image for the 250th anniversary of the Staten Island Peace Conference. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- Totally not trying to undermine peoples' points, I think they're right and we don't disagree about anything really, but I got myself curious: 9/11 was not mentioned by OTD in 2008, 2010, 2014, 2015 (was TFA), 2016, 2019, 2021, and 2022. Remsense ‥ 论 22:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- (That sounded marginally more interesting while I was collating it.) Remsense ‥ 论 22:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- I did the same thing and noticed that it ran in 2020, 2023, and now 2024. The OTD images do rotate (and thank you to the volunteers who rotate them). I think this is easily fixed; this image sits in the image bin for that date. Tomorrow I'll swap it for another one. That way when we rotate in a 9/11 image next time, it'll be a different image. Or I'll get reverted and reported at ANI. One of the two. Levivich (talk) 23:02, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- (That sounded marginally more interesting while I was collating it.) Remsense ‥ 论 22:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- Totally not trying to undermine peoples' points, I think they're right and we don't disagree about anything really, but I got myself curious: 9/11 was not mentioned by OTD in 2008, 2010, 2014, 2015 (was TFA), 2016, 2019, 2021, and 2022. Remsense ‥ 论 22:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- There's also nothing in our policies that requires us to include an image of any specific event in the list every single year. We could and perhaps should rotate them: This year it was the twin towers, and next year it can be the 30th anniversary of the space station trip, and the year after, we maybe we would choose an image for the 250th anniversary of the Staten Island Peace Conference. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
I am looking in my pockets for a way to make the argument you're making that's congruent with fundamental site policy
: The WP:OM guideline states thatImages containing offensive material that is extraneous, unnecessary, irrelevant, or gratuitous are not preferred over non-offensive ones in the name of opposing censorship
and thatWhen multiple options are equally effective at portraying a concept, the most offensive options should not be used merely to "show off" possibly offensive materials.
By citing this I don't mean to say that I think the image offends a person's sensibilities on like a propriety/decorum level but rather that, as OP says, the image can cause distress—'offend' in the sense of causing pain or hurt feelings. All that to say, it's entirely consistent with guidelines and policy to deliberately refrain from showing an image on the main page on the grounds that it's gratuitous and distress part of the readership when the relevant idea can be meaningfully conveyed with a different image. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 02:47, 12 September 2024 (UTC)- But it's still ultimately the prevalence that guides choices, not whether they're offensive. It just so happens that offensive material is generally less prominent in RS, so we follow. Remsense ‥ 论 02:56, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
- I hear ya. I would say we can choose a different image for 9/11 OTD (even a different 9/11 image, like the famous one of the rubble). That doesn't conflict with any site policies. And we don't have to take it to its logical conclusion (whatever that may be). We can choose an image for the main page for a particular item, and in making that choice, we can be sensitive to various sensitivities. I think what you're saying about us being effectively bound by policy is very true when it comes to article content--no way we can exclude that image from the 9/11 article and be in line with policy--but on the main page, we have discretion what photos to show. Just as we pick POTD based on aesthetics, we can be selective about OTD, DYK, etc. NOTCENSORED doesn't mean we can't make a good choice when we have several options, and there are many iconic 9/11 photos to choose from (firefighters running up the stairs while everyone else is running down, Bush with the megaphone, twisted steel of the tower ruins, just to name a few). Levivich (talk) 22:18, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- As a New Yorker who was in downtown NYC and saw 9/11 with my own eyes… I think it is GOOD that the images of that day are distressing. They should be. They remind us that it was a horrific incident. Don’t EVER sugar coat it. Remember it. Blueboar (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- Using violence (in imagery or graphic text or whatever) for the sake of remembering violence (as opposed to, in reading an article, the purpose of education) is generally not a good idea. The selection of an image for the front page to be something rather than something else is not necessarily a "sugar coat" unless you're using you're using an image that is pretty much burying the lead -- an opaque coating around the point of the article, say.
- The 9/11 article encompassing a long series of events (the aftermath being arguably orders of magnitude more significant for the world than the events of the day itself), one has a choice of many such events from which to take a headline image. A plane crashing into something, while a dramatic image and certainly a trigger moment for the event cascade, does not necessarily have to be the only kind of image that's justified for a headline (although it is certainly necessary for the article). And that day had a number of critical images that replayed on TV for days, not just the airplanes smashing into buildings. (And also remember that certain images were self-censored by media very early on, such as video of people jumping from the towers, which thus while shocking on the day of, has perhaps a less persistent memory because it was not replayed endlessly -- but would that not perhaps be a more powerful representation of the human tragedy?)
- I don't have an alternative image to suggestion, from the day of Sept 11 itself, that isn't by some extension comparably morbid: showing both towers before the plane hits, or showing one tower in smoke is showing people about to die, and showing rubble is showing dead bodies. But those are probably have less violence-in-motion, this-is-people-being-killed-in-front-of-you, than the plane in the process of crashing. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:23, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- I'll put it like this: I personally loathe this about as much as you've expressed you do, but I am looking in my pockets for a way to make the argument you're making that's congruent with fundamental site policy and I am coming up with nothing. I am explicitly not making this about our ~~integrity as editors~~ because that would be inane and I respect my interlocutors a lot more than that, but sometimes we write and gleefully present violence porn because our reliable sources are violence porn, and there's no distinction I can honestly make there that makes any sense when taken to its logical conclusion.. Remsense ‥ 论 19:55, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- "Wikipedia is not censored" doesn't mean run whatever on the main page. I read the front page every day, I do not see dozens of images that are similarly distressful, or distasteful (can anyone point to three from the past year?). Of course that image should be in the article(s) about the attack, but there's really no reason to have an image of thousands of people being murdered on the front page every damn year. So, it bothers me, too, OP, you're not alone. I think it's callous of Wikipedia to put "violence porn" on the front page. (I also don't love that it's the lead image of the 9/11 article instead of being further down in the article, but having it in WP:OTD is much more gratuitous.) (Another example like this: the Hiroshima/Nagasaki "mushroom cloud" atomic bomb images.) Levivich (talk) 19:44, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- I don't know whether it's a good or a bad thing, but we have definitely become more squeamish about such things during my lifetime. As a child I watched TV programmes such as All Our Yesterdays which showed footage from World War Two, much of people being killed (usually off-screen, such as films of bombing raids taken from the bombers' point of view), but I don't remember any complaints, even about children watching. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:23, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- I think like most comparisons of this ilk, a large part of it is "people previously had fewer opportunities to voice the nuances of their opinions about media for you to notice". Remsense ‥ 论 21:27, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- I would assume that, in the footage, you/your parents were not the ones being bombed? SamuelRiv (talk) 21:56, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- We have had Wikipedia editors whose parents survived WWI or who lived through WWII themselves.
- The television show mentioned above started airing in 1960, so it is reasonable to assume that every adult watching it had lived through the events, and that some fraction of them were watching events that had affected them very personally (e.g., the bombing raid that destroyed the family home). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
- Phil_Bridger gave an impression of their personal recollection of the show which seems like they were not watching their civilian peers in their country or hometowns getting bombed, which fundamentally contrasts to the TV experience that Blueboar describes. Therefore, the notion that "we have definitely become more squeamish about such things" seems to be unsupported by that anecdote, which is what my point is.
- Furthermore, to give a contrasting anecdotal argument: my own experience is that older generations tend to be more reluctant to reflect on pain of their past in detail (whether theirs or of their peers) (which in my anecdotes would correlate at least somewhat to education, as those with more education seem more likely to value history for its own sake, as opposed to "letting the dead rest in peace" as one person told me; and education has improved dramatically across populations across the world.) SamuelRiv (talk) 00:58, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
- To be clear… my experience was live rather than on TV. Not only did I witness it all with my own eyes, I personally knew two people who were in the Towers that morning and didn’t make it out.
- So yes, even after 23 years, seeing graphic images of 9/11 can bring back some very strong memories (sights, sounds and smells)… but, each time I see them, each time I mentally re-live that day, there is also some catharsis. The pain heals… the sadness-mixed-with-anger fades… That’s a good thing. Blueboar (talk) 12:58, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
- IMO, any generalization to the tune of "we used to be more/less sensitive to this" that stretches back to cultural memory of WWII is going to be a major oversimplification. There's been many wars and generations since then, and attitudes toward cultural memory of each have shifted over time and place (not to mention that there is no unified historical "we" that we as Wikipedia editors can point to that covers this time period). signed, Rosguill talk 14:50, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
- The entire premise of this discussion starts with the idea that the image in question is on the same level as graphic violence or serious injury or porn, which it... very much isn't. An atomic mushroom cloud, likewise, is not graphic violence even if it is connected to extreme losses of life that lots of people today still have strong feelings about. They aren't gratuitous, they are massively important images that are part of the cultural awareness of these events. You can take complaints about the lead image of September 11 attacks to the talk page of that article, where I imagine one will find much support for changing it. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 14:36, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
- I think it's totally fine to cede all territory here, as people are fully expected to have a wide variety of emotional responses mediated by social association and context, even if the media isn't explicit. My first and imo strongest point was merely that—while avoiding being overly reductive or obtuse about it—Wikipedia has plenty to offer in terms of distress for different members of its readership. That's why I'm genuinely wary about going too far out of my way to advocate maximal tastefulness on the front page—one possible outcome are a general censorship if we try really hard to be fair to everyone while being maximally tasteful, or an ebb in the wrong direction towards presentation based on the type of people Wikipedia editors tend to be, rather than who readers are intended to be. Remsense ‥ 论 14:50, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
- We should run this image. Its informative value exceeds its potential to cause shock. Jehochman Talk 14:58, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Archived ANI CBAN/Indef proposal
I had an archived CBAN/Indef proposal that got archived without any action, but pretty much all users agreed there was a case for supporting one. What should I do? Allan Nonymous (talk) 14:03, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
- Request a close at WP:CR. (As an aside, questions like this should go to HELP:DESK, not VPP.) voorts (talk/contributions) 17:16, 13 September 2024 (UTC)