Wikipedia purges porn in response to Fox News
Hat/tip to akuma_river on ontd_political, who posted the story here.
The Guardian (UK): Wikipedia's porn purge, and cleaning up for the iPad
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is encouraging a purge of indecent images, while publishers targeting the iPad may be trying to avoid gratuitous nipples
Jack Schofield guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 May 2010 14.23 BST
Wikipedia has been deleting images that could be considered pornographic - including some used to illustrate articles on sexuality, which has upset some editors who felt they should have been consulted first.
On his Talk page, co-founder Jimmy Wales wrote that: "Wikimedia Commons admins who wish to remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests have my full support."
I guess Wikipedia isn't the repository of all knowledge after all, especially of sexual knowledge that isn't prurient at all.
Wikinews said Wales and some other administrators had changed policy so they would delete first and argue about it later. "Images that in the past had survived deletion reviews were speedily deleted, including many which were being used to illustrate articles on sexuality across the Foundation's projects," it reported.
So why was Libertarian Jimmy Wales deleting images that his political philosophy would say are OK and that he and his editors had allowed to remain?
Fox News said Wikimedia's actions were "in response to reporting by FoxNews.com". The US news channel said it was contacting some of the project's donors including Google, Ford Foundation, Best Buy and Craigslist Foundation. It would hurt Wikimedia financially if any foundations withdrew their support it because it was associated with pornography.
Right, good old "Fair and Balanced" Fox News making trouble in pursuit of ratings. Assholes.