User:Wnt/Personal image blocking

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Currently proposed at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Requests#Personal image blocking script.

Several proposals have been made for "image filter" on Wikipedia (See Meta:Image filter referendum/en). Problems with these proposals are that the categories of content to be rated are arbitrary and not culturally neutral, and the process of rating means altering content pages, over which editors will disagree, leading to politically charged administrative decisions. (e.g. is a particular photo of a breastfeeding mother "sexual content") This page describes an alternative method to allow those offended to collaborate together to block the images they dislike, without affecting the rest of us or needing to decide on universally shared criteria. (previously proposed)

Basic functionality

  • The core of the personal image blocking function would be a program feature that checks the filename of any image to be displayed while you are logged in against a list of image names obtained from a file in your userspace at "/image-blacklist". For example, for User:Wnt the file would be User:Wnt/image-blacklist. (As a short term workaround, possibly User:Wnt/image-blacklist.js instead, to maintain personal control - see below) I think this could be achieved with a typical .js "skin", but I don't know for sure.
  • Of course, the content is free-licensed, and any user at any time is free to take the others' lists, pick through them and decide on things they don't want to blacklist, remove duplicate entries and so forth, then make that list their own. This may lead to even more specialized pages for "updates" and so forth. None of this matters to the end user if he simply transcludes someone's main list.

Features and policies

  • The key feature is a function to search the image name you're currently about to load against a list of names on your page; a match means it doesn't load normally.
  • A valuable augmentation, but one which would potentially require more WMF resources, is to have some Mediawiki extension which allows you to search your blacklist for the filename without actually having to load it into memory. This may be crucial when dealing with small memory and very large blacklists. (Remember, every image on Commons is potentially a blacklist target, so the size could become substantial, though those looking for images to blacklist might stick only to those already appearing on Wikipedia somewhere, since the others can only be found if typed in or when browsing Commons) On the other hand, depending on resource use, policy or software might limit the size of blacklist files to encourage more careful editing of transcluded duplicates.
  • To help with generating these lists, it would be handy to have a new parser function, {{#sort|duplicates=no}}, which can be applied to such a page to spit out every single entry in an alphabetized list minus duplicates.
  • It might be nice to have a way to use wildcards in names. Though normally I'd expect someone would simply use a shorter search term, and the processing potentially required might be troublesome.
  • Only the user himself should be able to edit his own blacklists. So User:Wnt/image-blacklist should only be editable by User:Wnt. If a group of people want to share blacklist creation without each transcluding from the next, they should name such an informal blacklist "/shared-blacklist" or the like to distinguish it from the personal files. This could be implemented in software. Otherwise some policy against editing other users' blacklists would need to be enforced (though at least, there is no subjectivity to this - whether you're adding a space or deleting 100 items from the list, you shouldn't be editing it)
  • Blacklists should only contain a flat list of filenames, one per line, plus transclusions. As it would be uncomfortable for some people to find images transcluded into their lists from some puckish upstream user, it might be useful if the software disabled image display within the /image-blacklist folders.
  • Some users may prefer to keep blacklists (even their existence) private. Software might disable display of blacklists for other users than their authors. Otherwise commenting on another user's blacklist to dismiss their contributions might need to be addressed in policy.
  • The nature of the replacement for an image - error, graphic icon, or even a tiny thumbnail with an option to expand - might be upgraded, or made customizable.
  • Editors should have some forum where it is appropriate for them to discuss what lists they prefer to use, and distinguish their opinions about what to block and keep. This will need to be handled gingerly, to avoid pointless political debates between them, and for that reason it might be better suited to an off-site forum, but the question needs to be addressed.
  • To facilitate the making of lists by individual users, someone (Wikipedia or other tool server) should create a way to type in the name of a Commons category and get back a plain list of names of all the files in that category or any subcategory of it. I'm thinking this should exist already, somewhere.
  • It might be nice to come up with a way to deal with circular template errors more gracefully, so that users can more readily form "rings" to collaborate on these things, though I'm not sure such error messages would prevent the scheme from working now.
  • To accommodate users without accounts, it would be conceivable to establish some kind of "View Wikipedia as..." feature which makes use of an account's image preferences, and perhaps other preferences, without logging into it. That would allow the non logged in users who know a username to select filters they want, without setting up one single community approved standard for all non logged in users. It might be permissible in this case for people to set up alias usernames selected solely for this purpose (e.g. "porn-free"), which redirect to or transclude the image blacklists of other users. Such usernames should be open to usurpation if the file they point to is not regularly updated, and/or by a strong majority vote (as per featured articles - call them "featured blacklists".... ugh).

Potential abuses

A controversial aspect, which I would not support, involves the possibility of protecting the /image-blacklist file against the user's wishes, for example, a parent controlling a child's account. I strongly oppose such extensions, which were not proposed in the 2011 image referendum, because (for among other reasons) a logged out user should be able to see everything, and shouldn't suffer some "default" personal blacklist, which would be contrary to the whole idea here. And a logged out user should remain able to sign up for an account and start editing Wikipedia without showing them a national ID card - in which case, you have no way to know that it isn't someone's child evading such a blacklist. The logical inference from this is that blacklists should not be subject to page protection, except the new feature suggested above where only the user can edit his own blacklist page. Wnt (talk) 17:32, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

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