Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Muhammad images/Workshop

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Case clerk: TBD Drafting arbitrator: TBD

This is a page for working on Arbitration decisions. The Arbitrators, parties to the case, and other editors may draft proposals and post them to this page for review and comments. Proposals may include proposed general principles, findings of fact, remedies, and enforcement provisions—the same format as is used in Arbitration Committee decisions. The bottom of the page may be used for overall analysis of the /Evidence and for general discussion of the case.

Any user may edit this workshop page. Please sign all suggestions and comments. Arbitrators will place proposed items they believe should be part of the final decision on the /Proposed decision page, which only Arbitrators and clerks may edit, for voting, clarification as well as implementation purposes.

Motions and requests by the parties

Avoid rehashing the actual debate

1) We've already seen one section hatted because it degenerated into a tussle. So, I request that all of us involved try to avoid repeating the arguments of the past month or two in this Arbcom case. Some back-and-forth is expected and healthy in our various evidences and workshop entries, but when making a response, if a thought comes to your mind like "damn, I've already told him this before, why do I have to do it again?", chances are you probably don't. Tarc (talk) 18:07, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Seems reasonable enough. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 13:35, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not sure what that actually means, but I'm amenable to it. What precisely constitutes 'rehashing', just so we all know what we're supposed to be avoiding? --Ludwigs2 13:48, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• Well, that, perhaps. It really ain't going anywhere productive. Tarc (talk) 14:46, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• lol - that pretty much covers our entire discussion to date, so unless you're suggesting we sit in silence a somewhat more useful definition might be in order. To be frank, I don't want to badger anyone, but I do want the distinction between valid disagreement and mere wp:IDHT to be clear, and I don't know how to point that out except by what might be considered 'rehashing' to the IDHT side. --Ludwigs2 15:29, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• Exactly. Merry XMas. Tarc (talk) 15:48, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• Wonderfully bad faith response; I ask for for some insight and all I get is tripe. Go grinch someone else, please. --Ludwigs2 16:05, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oy vey. I'm just saying try to recognize when you're going to far on you own, i.e. self-restraint. Like right now, this back-and-forth has IMO come to a point where nothing else good will come of it, so this should be my last point. Tarc (talk) 16:35, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• Ok, that's clear at least. thanks. --Ludwigs2 16:48, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• That would be very helpful. AGK [•] 09:33, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Add Kww as a party

2) Given evidence has been presented against him and he's been extremely active I think he should be added as a party.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Mostly irrelevant; if proposals are made with respect to a non-party, time is given to permit the editor who was not one of the original parties to respond to evidence and make alternate proposals. Risker (talk) 04:28, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Possibly Elonka as well? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:48, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Nothing like a good ol dose of the ol' chilling effect, eh? Tarc (talk) 00:29, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Personally, I prefer being able to comment without substantial risk of repercussion. Your mileage may vary.—Kww(talk) 00:05, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I have to admit a bit of confusion as to why I should be listed as a party. I haven't been involved in this specific dispute, and am still working on figuring out who is who and what all their various positions are. I see myself more as a (relatively) uninvolved individual who is familiar with the topic area, offering subject expertise. I also have some experience as an administrator dealing with disputes, so I am trying to look at things from that perspective as well. Of course, since I am involved in this topic area, I would not use my admin tools in any way, but I figure it can't hurt to offer my thoughts as to what kinds of actions that the arbitrators might wish to take in order to help stabilize the topic area. Arbitrators are not going to make rulings on article content -- they are going to be focusing on user conduct. So (usually) their goal is to identify which editors are operating in good faith and seem to be working together constructively to try and craft a consensus version of the articles involved, and which editors seem to be either disrupting or blocking the consensus process. My own goal is to try and help the arbitrators make sense of the debate here, so they can make well-informed decisions. --Elonka 16:31, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

You've made quite a few comments, and I thought people might make statements against you as has already happened to Kww - thus this suggestion. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Request for procedural change: a 2-3 day Rebuttal period, with associated page

3) I request that a rebuttal page (modeled after the evidence page) be created, and a short period be assigned for rebutting evidence others have presented. Rebuttals would have the same 500 word/50 diff limits as evidence. I'm asking this because there has been such an intense onslaught of attacks on my character (all based on squirrelly evidence, but presented in huge quantities) that there was never any hope that I could respond to it all effectively on the workshop page. I want my behavior to be evaluated fairly, not on the basis of a coordinated program of ad hominem attacks (and obviously I want everyone else to have the same right to fair treatment). --Ludwigs2 05:29, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

P.s. I should add that (typical of rebuttal periods in formal debate), this page should not be used for presenting new evidence or for commenting on the editors who presented the evidence; it should be purely refutation of points entered into evidence.--Ludwigs2 05:31, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Arbitrators:

• The evidence phase already provides for such a rebuttals process. We expect disputants to make all refutations in their own section on the evidence subpage, subject to the word count and diff restrictions. There already exists a general expectation that the only rebuttals will be of serious factual errors or gross misrepresentations; above that, the arbitrators will reach their own conclusions on case evidence. AGK [•] 20:42, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Ok, I accept that. should I remove this request, or leave it? --Ludwigs2 21:55, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. I wish I'd thought of this at the beginning of the process, because it would have saved a lot of useless hostility, but live and learn… --Ludwigs2 05:29, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Delay close of this phase by 24 hours because of SOPA blackout

3) The closure of the workshop phase to be delayed by [24] hours until [?] to allow for the ~24hr Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Action

Comment by Arbitrators:

I don't think we will be extending the closure of this case by 24 hours, because it has already been open for an additional 1 week in light of the transition from the 2011 to the 2012 ArbCom, and the primary activity on this case is now internal committee workshopping (which takes place on our internal wiki, not on this site, and isn't affected by the blackout). However, if my colleagues are monitoring the situation, and believe an extension is necessary, then I am happy to comply. AGK [•] 08:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed, and please clarify the exact time of closure. I have 2 WMUK events tomorrow & was planning to add stuff that I now won't be able to do by the original deadline. Johnbod (talk) 02:51, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Aren't we rapidly reaching WP:DEADHORSE territory with the Workshop anyway? And is the blackout really total? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The blackout is going to be total as far as I know. I am currently going through the tedious work of collecting evidence from the case pages, putting it into an easily consumable form, and then likely turning some of it into proposed findings and maybe proposed decisions. I will now try to finish this today. I understand and sympathise with AGK's concerns, but for anyone else who tends to delay tedious work to the last minute, I think an extension by 24 hours is necessary in the interest of fairness. (Whether it is enough depends on editors' schedules.) Hans Adler 09:39, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Hans, could you please make your submissions as soon as possible? The proposed decision will be posted on Thursday (originally Wednesday, but that's impossible with the blackout) and we will be honouring this schedule. The evidence phase has closed, but I am happy to take anything you publish today into account (evidence and workshop proposals). If you need more time, you can also have tomorrow as an extension (because we can't do anything then, anyway) by e-mailing any additional material you don't post today. (If you can, please also acknowledge you have read this message.) AGK [•] 14:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see this earlier. I guess I'm about half finished now. I will put everything on this page right now rather than continue to polish it while working on the remainder. That way other editors also get at least some chance to respond. Hans Adler 17:52, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

PS: I have given up adding more stuff now. It seems to be controversial on timing grounds and I can't blame anyone for that, especially with the tightened schedule. Signing off now. If there is anything urgent I can be reached by email (even during the blackout; my email is easy to find on my homepage at Vienna University). Hans Adler 21:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

As posted on the talk page, the SOPA Initiative explicitly suspends all time-sensitive processes for the duration of the action and extends deadlines by 24 hours. The planned end of the workshop phase is explicitly stated on all case pages to be 18 January, so it will now become the 19 January. Time is not specified, but I would think that at least in this specific circumstance a deadline of 23:59 UTC on 19 January would be within the spirit of the timeline. Thryduulf (talk) 08:44, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Protective objection and motion to exclude or strike irregular late evidence by Hans Adler and argument, or in the alternative to extend time.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Submitted. A party (in response to the SOPA motion, above) has indicated he intends to produce late evidence, a week after the close of evidence. While such maybe welcome, we, the other parties and the rest of the community have no way of knowing what this irregular evidence is; it maybe a 'dead horse' or a 'whole new can of worms', to mix metaphors. Thus, this protective objection/motion, given the impending blackout. To save arbitrators' and parties' time, it is requested that arbitrators let parties and others: 1) ask of the submitting party why such delay is necessary; 2) let us see the evidence and arguments, submitted, 3) let us know if the evidence or arguments to be produced changes anything; and 4) allow parties or others time to gather counter-evidence or otherwise respond, before 'the train leaves the station.' Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Please could you put a title in place of "Template"? Which party are you referring to? Mathsci (talk) 18:40, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry. Hans Adler. See SOPA Motion comments immediately above. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:08, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think links and pointers to the behaviour of parties and non-parties on the case pages must be formally introduced as evidence to become part of the case. They are automatically part of the case due to their placement. The purpose of such formal rules on evidence is to ensure that editors have the time to collect counter-evidence that corrects incorrect impressions created by cherry-picked or otherwise problematic evidence, or to provide other exonerating evidence. If all evidence had to be formally introduced in the way you seem to suggest, then problematic conduct on the Workshop page from after the Evidence page was closed would never be usable without jumping through special hoops.

On these case pages I have argued robustly, in basically the same style that I am arguing elsewhere, but it was always with the understanding that anyone can use every misstep I am making here against me at any time. Sorry if you were not aware of this. Or maybe I just confused you by using the word "evidence" in its normal sense? In that case I apologise for the unfortunate choice of words. I didn't want to stress you.

Of course I may be completely wrong, in which case I hope AGK will tell me so that I can stop wasting my time. Hans Adler 20:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

PS: Now I have read your post on AGK's talk page, which is more concrete. Yes, I agree that's a problem. I am currently mentioning you (quoting, in one case with a two-word comment on your response to Roger Davies) only under #Weakly supported claims of usefulness. I would be very concerned if I botched this and misrepresented you somehow. Or is it about someone/something else? Hans Adler 20:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed temporary injunctions

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Questions to the parties

(1) Current article and image use

Thank you for your responses. AGK [•] 21:35, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

It was said during the debate at Talk:Muhammad/images that the images are being included in the article either for the sake of including images or as a knee-jerk response to ostensible censorship. In your view, are the images presently in the article useful to the reader and do they add to the quality of the article? If we removed the images or used very few (as reportedly is the case in the sources, most of which use few images of Muhammad), would the article be better or worse off? Please explain briefly why in both cases. AGK [•] 04:04, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Jayen466 No one asserts that our images, created 600 or more years after Muhammad's death, by artists from different cultures than Muhammad's own, bear any naturalistic resemblance to what Muhammad looked like. Where a face is shown, the features are those of a generic male, indistinguishable from those of other male figures in the relevant work. So while they're of central importance in an art history article like Depictions of Muhammad, they have very limited encyclopedic relevance in Muhammad. For those interested in what Muhammad looked like, there are extant and much beloved descriptions of his appearance by his contemporaries; I added a couple of them to the article a few weeks ago. Images of course make an article less dry to read, and are useful in illustrating a figure's artistic reception. In Muhammad's case, figurative images have played a very limited (and non-public) role in that reception, whose main focus has been on calligraphy of his name(s) and words, present in almost any mosque in the world. In Turkey and parts of the Ottoman Empire, calligraphic renderings of the eyewitness accounts of his appearance have also been popular, and an art form in their own right. If we are using Islamic art to decorate the article, then we should use mainstream Islamic imagery that is culturally relevant. That's also the approach taken by many reliable sources. This is where the preponderance of figurative images actually becomes a net negative. By including so many of them, we are implying they are the mainstream. If casual readers come away from the article with the impression that Muslims paint and worship images of Muhammad just as happily and enthusiastically as Christians or Buddhists worship images and statues of Jesus or Buddha, we have failed them. So I believe what we had here, per Resolute's proposal, was about right; and we should add a photograph of the Kaaba and Quranic inscriptions from a couple of mosques. That would make the article better, and more in line with reliable sources. --JN466 07:07, 23 December 2011 (UTC) @ASCIIn2Bme: To be clear, I am not advocating that we illustrate the article solely from the perspective of mainstream Islam, which would imply no figurative images at all. While I have every sympathy for any Muslims who are genuinely offended, I cannot in all honesty see how doing so would be in line with Wikipedia's NPOV policy. Hence my support for Resolute's excellent proposal, which includes such images both among its examples of Islamic art, and in the Western reception section. Figurative Muhammad images should have some weight – we do explain their existence, limited distribution and historical development in the text. However, they should not predominate within the selection of Islamic images we feature at the expense of mainstream Islamic art. They do so neither in real life, nor across the entirety of reliable sources. --JN466 17:30, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Tarc The article as it is right now is a product of consensus, as Resolute has noted below. There is also, as Coren notes the question of why editors insist on a standard for this article that applies to no other article about a person living or deceased, e.g. Albert Einstein. The only difference is some Muslim's prohibitions on imagery within their own culture. That has no bearing on the Wikipedia or how we make editorial decisions, though, any more than the Church of Scientology would be allowed to remove material from Xenu that they do not wish the public to see, or creationists from timeline of human evolution. It cannot be stated enough that Jayen's insistence on "doing it like the sources do" is simply not applicable here. The Wikipedia is not beholden to religious conservatism when making decisions about the usage of images, in this or any other article. We have several historical images of Muhammad, they are free of restriction or copyright to use, and they are used to depict several important historical points in Muhammad's timeline. Could you write about George Washington's sneak attack across an icy river and still educate the reader? Certainly. Would the material be benefited by the inclusion of Washington Crossing the Delaware? Immeasurably. Despite the historical inaccuracy (they went on foot), it shows the historical impact of the event and how artists chose to render it. No different with the case of this article and these images; the reader would be deprived...for no other reason than offense to Muslims...of Muhammad and his affect on artistry and history in general. We'd be shoehorning the reader into viewing the subject solely through the lens of Islamic prohibition, elevating that point-of-view disproportionately over those of the rest of the world (and even many Muslims. the notion that "this offends all Muslims" is a misconception) that does not follow that faith. To do this would be about the clearest violation of WP:NPOV that one can find. Tarc (talk) 14:21, 23 December 2011 (UTC) ASCIIn2Bme The huge mistake made by JNN466, Ludwidgs2, and their followers is the assumption that the article on Muhammand should solely recount his life and eschew any discussion on the ulterior perception thereof through the centuries, even though the latter had far more of an impact on history than the few battles between the dunes during Muhammad's life. You cannot draw a line in the sand in that article and keep it confined to a dry, sketchy account of his life. It's the ulterior interpretation of those events that is of far greater significance. And that interpretation has varied and diverged quite a bit over time and space. Asking for the article to be written solely from the viewpoint of current mainstream Islamic faith (if you can even pin it down) is definitely not NPOV. It's like asking the article on Jesus to be written only considering the current dogmatic view of the Vatican. And this includes the selection of imagery. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:29, 23 December 2011 (UTC) The demand that an image needs to be included in the majority of reliable sources, never mind "across the entirety" thereof, as a precondition for its inclusion in Wikipedia is ludicrous for the reasons I detailed in the collapsed section on CENSORED vs. NPOV. I'm not going to repeat myself again on that. I think none of the images in the article meet that putative standard, be they anthropomorphic or calligraphic. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 17:38, 23 December 2011 (UTC) As for "trivial value" and "whimsical depictions created generations after Muhammad's death" arguments by Ludwig2 below, the exact same expressions can be said about the calligraphic depictions. Even more so in fact, because this is the English Wikipedia, and few readers can fathom what the Arabic calligraphy means. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:00, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Since Eraserhead not picked up the banner of applying "WP:DUE balance of pictures" to image types, here's an apocryphal story that should be enlightening. The article on the Siege of Rhodes (1522) has only one source that is full of imagery, the recent book by Nossov. The older books have very little if any visual material. Now lo and behold! Nossov's book in doesn't have ANY pictures of guns! It's all architecture: dozens of pictures though. Should we delete or drastically prune the images of guns from the article unless someone can produce a reliable source having lots images of guns from the battle? After all, some people, pacifists especially, may be offended by images of guns! The WPDUE [wikibeancounter] score is: walls 25 (or thereabout), guns 0! So, unless someone can find another source about this topic with tons of guns depicted, the putative principle of "balance of the image types in sources" requires we soonish delete most if not all the guns from that article! Let there be WP:DUE balance of image types?! Or not? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:41, 23 December 2011 (UTC) r to L2: Thanks for the snotty lecture on VNT. If you actually had a look at the article, you'd see that the images of guns there are from authentic pieces from Musée de l'Armée. I think the plaques next to the guns there, as well as their inscriptions on the guns themselves are sufficient WP:V-wise to document those pieces were at least part of the besieged's equipment, if not actually fired in anger at that time. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:11, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Ludwigs2 The images have a certain trivial value. They are decorative illustrations, and one or two of them might be desirable to exemplify a notable but relatively minor art-historical movement in Islamic history. Beyond that, none of them have any clear and demonstrable use in the article. While they are not unrelated to the topic at hand, at best they constitute religious iconography - whimsical depictions created generations after Muhammad's death (not accurate depictions of Muhammad or the events of his life) with little to no informational value in their own right. They even misinform the reader to a certain extent, since they are not clearly labeled as religious iconography and may lead people to believe they are accurate depictions. This image is clearly useful (though not on the Muhammad article) Note that I do not deny the usefulness of images for solidifying knowledge, even when somewhat whimsically drawn. I'm simply stating that the given images of Muhammad are not even close to being useful and informative in the same sense as the picture at right. I don't think anyone has ever argued that the images have zero value. My argument all along is that the images do not add sufficient quality to the article to merit invocation of NOTCENSORED. NOTCENSORED is intended to protect the encyclopedia from losing valuable information, not to protect Wikipedia editors' rights to 'free speech.' There has to be some lower limit where we acknowledge that the negligible cost to the encyclopedia of losing images like this is outweighed by the significant cost to the encyclopedia of offending the religious beliefs of a sizable segment of our readership. In my view, paring down the number of images and constraining them to particular sections where they have clear and unambiguous use (e.g. a section on the art-historical tradition or a section on the image controversy) would not change the informativeness of the article at all. It would be just as good an article without these pictures, but the conflicts that plague the page would disappear. The mere fact of having a clear and unambiguous use to point to would resolve most the page problems; as it stands, Wikipedia appears to be showing these controversial images for no particular reason, and that does not reflect well on the encyclopedia. --Ludwigs2 17:51, 23 December 2011 (UTC) r to ASCIIn2Bme Yes, you're right that the same can be said about the calligraphic images. However, the calligraphic images have two advantages over full-faced images: They are far more common and representative. They do not run counter to any established social mores or norms - in fact they are the norm for depictions of Muhammad. The calligraphic images can be used because there is no countervailing issue offsetting their marginal value to the article; for figurative images there is a countervailing issue, so the standard for including such images ought to be higher. With respect to your 'Siege of Rhodes' comment: you are confusing Verifiability with Truth. The fact that you know in you own head that they must have used weapons at the siege of Rhodes (though I doubt they used guns in 305 BCE), we would still follow what sources say. If no sources covering the siege ever mention weapons, then we couldn't talk about weapons in the article, could we? So why would we have a separate standard for images? You might have a case on that page that the one source with images is not representative of the subject (in which case you could argue that we shouldn't use images from it), but that hardly compares to this case where we have a plethora of sources to establish a standard. Further, if we added an image to that article of (say) a typical greek siege engine or catapult, it would have a clear use and purpose (displaying the kinds of weapons that were likely used in the battle), as opposed to the Muhammad images which are not useful depictions of anything. Apples and Oranges… --Ludwigs2 19:26, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Eraserhead1 I think pictures should be present in the article to some extent. I think the balance of pictures and calligraphy in the article should reflect their usage by our reliable sources as per WP:DUE. We should be following this balance so this WP:VITAL article is kept in line with the WP:NPOV policy. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:43, 23 December 2011 (UTC) @ASCIIn2Bme, possibly we should include more images of walls if our sources primarily show that rather than holiday snaps of cannon which our article appears to currently contain. I doubt anyone cares particularly, and the article is only a Start class article, let alone a good/featured article so isn't a good one to compare to. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 11:33, 24 December 2011 (UTC) @Resolute, I would have thought the maximum would be the number typical for historical biographies, and that's somewhere between 30 and 60% of the images in the article. Currently this article looks to be within the normal range for a historical biography, albeit at the lower end. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 13:18, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Elonka I am not a party to this particular dispute, though I edit in several other closely related articles about Islamic topics such as Black Stone, Kaaba, and Hajj. After reviewing the Muhammad article as it exists today,[1] in my opinion the article is giving undue weight to figurative images of Muhammad. Based on my knowledge of dozens of Islam-related sources (even mainstream movies), the representations of Muhammad are predominantly in words, verbal descriptions by contemporaries, and extremely elaborate calligraphy -- not in visual depictions. Most of the images of Muhammad in the Wikipedia article do nothing to add to its quality, portray the subject in a different way than is normally presented in sources, and could be easily moved to other locations, such as to Depictions of Muhammad, where they would be more appropriate. Some images could reasonably stay, such as those which show how Muhammad tends to be represented in Islamic art (veiled, or as a flame), but more images than that would be excessive. --Elonka 23:04, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Johnbod I think the pictures are certainly useful and, as the selection has evolved, well-balanced. As far as I am concerned we are already using "few" images by our usual standards. If there were no religious concerns we would certainly have more, and they would be differently placed, not kept off the first four screens down (on my machine). We always use more images than "other sources" who have to pay for picture rights. The obvious comparator, Jesus, has 46 images, 37 including a depiction of Jesus and 9 not. Muhammad has 25 images, 6 depictions of him, 10 calligraphy (already too many in my view) and 9 other - and also long sections with no illustration at all. Buddha, which is a good deal shorter than either, has 14 images, 12 including him and 2 that don't. So percentages of total images showing the subject are: Muhammad 15%; Jesus 81%; Buddha 86%. Comparisons to Jesus and Buddha are also relevant to the "not historical portraits" and "not typical" arguments advanced above by Ludwigs2, Jayen and Elonka above, and others in the original talk page discussions. The conventional images of Jesus and Buddha are also not based on any historically authentic depiction, though there are verbal ones for Buddha and Muhammad but not Jesus. The plethora of images of Jesus we show are nearly all drawn from the narrow period of Renaissance/Baroque Roman Catholicism, and are far from representative of the broad history of Christianity across time and place, and in particular obviously do not reflect the objection many Protestant churches still have to such images, and all of them once had. Probably some Protestants are still offended by such imagery, though not in such violent terms as their 16th century forbears, though I suppose they realize it would be pointless to object. Johnbod (talk) 22:46, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Resolute Many of the "opponents" (for wont of a better word) of the depictions are applying an inaccurate scale to this debate. They seem to be arguing that zero is the minimum and six (the current total) is the maximum, therefore any compromise position must be a number between the two This is incorrect. The maximum number of depictions is "as many as we can fit into this article". Commons:Category:Muhammad has over 100 Muslim drawn depictions, and over 40 western (half of which belong in "Everybody draw Mohammad day"). With respect to Jayen's arguments on due weight, picked up on by others, I would point out that there are 25 images total on the article as of right now. Only five of them are Islamic depictions, two of which are defaced. I would argue that the article already reflects Jayen's arguments. This is also why I argue below that the use of images in this article is already in a compromise state. Johnbod is dead on in his assessment that there would certainly be far more such depictions if not for some level of deference to Islamic belief. I consider this a fair arrangement: We have shown a nod toward Islamic religious belief by limiting the number and placement of images. To do more, however, would violate WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:NPOV. Consequently, I categorically reject the claim that these images are included only as a "knee-jerk response". In my view, the depictions most certainly aids the article. And the truth is, this should be so self-evident that such a question should not even need to be asked. They are direct representations of the article subject, in most cases showing the subject during a notable moment of their life. Their very nature is educational: they reveal how Muhhamad has been viewed throughout history, even by Muslims. The very fact that we have 100 Islamic depictions and nearly 150 total should make it self-evident people throughout history have found value in such imagery. I believe we do too, exactly as we do on any other article subject. Resolute 23:48, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Alanscottwalker The images are educationally useful. If they need to be further contextualized by the text, to avoid unwanted implication, than that can be readily done. The Muhammad article is the biography of a man -- this is not an article whose purpose is art, art history, religion, or architecture. It is apparent by looking at them that the images in the article bear some kind of naturalistic representation of the man, Muhammad, although they are certainly not photographic. (Indeed, it is the fact that they do so, that gives rise to any religious objection that they could be idolotrous). They are images of a man, that all have said is the man Muhammad, doing things that are important in the story of his life. Although it is far from relevant for this article and our purposes, for further information, if one were inclined to look at the history of the art, two of the (unveiled) images (those seem to be the most objected to), in the article, were created for what has been called the "first history of the world," Jami' al-tawarikh, by the extraordinary scholar Rashid-al-Din Hamadani. [2] This work was planned to be published in Arabic and Persian, and distributed to schools in cities throughout the middle east. (Id.) Extensive research went into writing this history that covered civilizations from China to Europe. (Id.) Hamadani also published 4 volumns of the Hadith and many other books. According to our article on the Jami, the images of Muhammad were painted under the direction of Hamadani and the artist named, Lohrasp, who painted in the "Arab, Syrian and Mesopotamian" tradition. The one other unveiled image is from a book created for the Ottoman emperor. We are also using them for secular purposes and presenting them in a respectful, secular way. From the forgoing, and the number of images in our Wikimedia galleries, as well as, their extensive use on our sister projects, about Muhammed, in many languages, it is evident that we are far from the first people who have thought of illustrating the life of Muhammad, with pictures of him, for educational purpose. With respect to the most recent discussion of the current images, and the proposal that was being discussed, when it was interrupted: The central nub is there were three very small camps of editors: status quo, uncommitted to particular images or numbers but think the present images serve their purpose; and those who don't want any figurative, especially, unveiled, images of Muhammad in the biography sections of the article. This biography article, like many other such articles contains, at its core, a large section on the person's life: the biography sections. We assume the good faith of those who placed the images in the biography sections. They have stayed there and are presumed to have consensus, especially when they have been discussed. With respect to the unveiled images, they do illustrate important things about him and his life: including, but not limited to, the clashing, polytheistic, tribal society he came from; the claimed revelations; and the rule of a newly united people he established, while proclaiming the revelations. There are multiple other images in the article, including prominently, calligraphy. Others have spoken to the view that the way the article is now is already a concession to the demands of the subject matter, unlike any other biography. The proposal under discussion was a radical departure from the status quo. It will take time and perhaps a more structured process, and specification of rules, to move through that. Whatever the outcome, the rules should not be based on, imo, art history (widely tangential to the subject of a biography), or, certainly not, with limiting use because of the religion or culture of the artist (widely tangential and discriminatory), or the religion of the particular reader/editor (not allowed by policy). We should prefer that they be based on whether they illustrate something important Muhammad was personally claimed to be involved with, and properly contextualized. The rules and results should also have wide consensus, generally applicable to every article presentation. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:15, 24 December 2011 (UTC) FormerIP Including images for the sake of including images is good enough. That's what we normally do. Including images as a knee-jerk response to ostensible censorship would be a violation of WP:POINT. If there is any serious claim that this has happened, then this should be explored. But I don't think it is something that is seriously in issue (at least, I have not seen it raised in those terms). It is not the case that the sources use "very few" images of Mohammed. The sources simply present the dilemma: should we use images of the subject of the article, or should we use pictures of sunsets, sand dunes and random mosques as placeholders? I think the answer to this is that we should reject as a model any source that does not appear to follow WP's guidelines for selecting images (we are not censored, and images should have direct relevance to the accompanying text).--FormerIP (talk) 02:09, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Tivanir2

Most of the major points have been included already to why the images would be considered useful. My personal opinion is that (and I have pointed this out) that if this article was about any other person in similar instances (i.e. almost any other religious figure, political figure etc.) there would be no issue, or barring that the individuals in opposition to these images are using the argument based on the numbers within a current community. I find all the pictures useful; both caligraphy and images since they show different things about muhammad. Calligraphy gives us information about how he is currently portrayed in the Islamic world, while the images give us an idea of how his followers perceived him to be. Both give us insights into what he has molded (i.e. legacy) the religious followers into today. I do need to point out that the article already follows WP:offensive material since we aren't using anything designed to deliberately cause offense. Editors removed the dante's inferno picture due to it being irrelevant and offensive, the other pictures do not fall into the same category.

(2) Basing Wikipedia coverage on secondary sources

Thank you for your responses. AGK [•] 21:35, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you to the parties who have responded to my first question. Anybody who has not responded is still welcome to do so, and I will continue to read all submissions to this section. Also, other members of the committee may want to pose further questions - I'm not sure if they will. At this point, I have two further sections to add. To avoid blurring the lines between answers, if an editor wants to respond to both questions, please do so separately. I was heartened to see the parties get behind a proposal to base the use of multimedia within Muhammad on that of the main secondary sources. As editors, it is important that we explore different approaches and develop new rules for articles that are the subject of unusual debates. However, I have some concern about that proposal. Wikipedia uses reliable sources to verify the content of our articles. Primary and secondary sources may provide useful guidance in how to treat specific questions of the coverage of subjects, but even if a source is unquestionably reliable it cannot be used to dictate a Wikipedia article on the associated subject, because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and most reliable sources are not. The purpose of Wikipedia is often different from the purpose of textbooks, academic texts, journals, or other sources. Therefore, Wikipedia does not merely collate reliable sources, but instead amalgamates the material on a subject into a neutral, verified article. Where the specifics of such an amalgamation are disputed, editorial consensus (and dispute resolution if consensus cannot be reached) must be used; it follows that we would not deliberately reflect the use of images within secondary sources in the use of images in our own article. Do you agree or disagree, and why? AGK [•] 22:23, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Agree entirely. In particular our use of images is different from that of print sources as they have to pay for the picture rights, the pre-press repro & then the paper. Johnbod (talk) 22:58, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Agree. In many cases the actual images from reliable sources are still under copyright and with all rights reserved, so they can't be used in Wikipedia at all. You can't "rephrase" a picture in way that would pass the derivative work test, so you have to look for a free substitute instead, which already entails some editorial judgement. (Is the same item being depicted? Etc.) I think that anyone who has struggled to find suitable pictures for a Wikipedia article knows this, but I can give some examples if requested. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:35, 23 December 2011 (UTC) I don't think anyone would argue that wikipedia is rigidly bound to what happens in reliable sources, and I'm quite certain that neither Jayen, Hans nor I would argue that this should be some kind of thoughtless automatic procedure. The problem here is specific to controversial images: if Wikipedia is going to be using controversial images (as it sometimes must) then it puts itself in the position of taking sides in real-world controversies, and as a consequence ought to be judicious in the manner and extent to which it does so. The quantity and nature of images in secondary sources and tertiary sources is a reasonable metric of what others consider to be judicious usage. If our editors could always be trusted to use common sense on controversial topics we wouldn't need such a metric, but ample evidence (here and elsewhere) demonstrates that controversial topics attract editors with strong opinions and determined attitudes, and that puts our articles at risk of becoming overtly opinionated. (Note in this regard that the primary motivation of the image supporters on Muhammad is NOTCENSORED - it's an ideological position, not an encyclopedic one). Until the project develops a level of maturity that allows it to handle conflicts between ideologically-driven editors, we need to have some way of ensuring that our articles do not get staked out by one side or the other as their ideological 'turf'. It's unfortunate, but (currently) Wikipedia cannot be trusted to handle controversial topics even-handedly, and using secondary sources (via NPOV) are the only tools we have for keeping ardent editors and their opponents in check. --Ludwigs2 00:13, 24 December 2011 (UTC) As I explained to Coren the other day, the problem arises where images take a side in a preexisting debate. We are all aware that there is such a debate about depictions of Muhammad. The committee quite recently dealt with the abortion case, where one of the most hotly contested and intractable points of discussion concerned the inclusion of an image of an aborted foetus. You may be aware that there is a plethora of such – often gruesome and disturbing – images in circulation (for examples, see [3]), and that they play a significant role in pro-life advocacy. Now, if anti-abortion activists have uploaded 60 such images in Commons, each quite clearly illustrating what the article is about, we could arguably have sixty of them in the abortion article, with several representative images of embryos removed from the womb at every possible age at which abortions are performed, and in every possible state of dismemberment. However, AGK, it seems to me we would quite clearly be favouring a point of view by doing so. We cannot solve such disputes through editorial consensus, because any such consensus will favour the prevalent view in our community, whose demographics are, as we all know, neither representative of our global readership, nor necessarily of views expressed in reliable sources. As Jimbo quite rightly pointed out, policy requires us to place the neutral point of view, derived from the prevalence of viewpoints in our sources, above our own viewpoints. The proper function of community consensus here is to establish the prevalence of these viewpoints in reputable sources, and to ensure that our presentation is neutral with respect to that pool of sources. So in the abortion case, if such images are prevalent in reliable sources, we are bound to include them in proportion to their prevalence. If we find that reliable sources do not include them, but they are in fact restricted to self-published activists' websites, we don't. WP:NOTCENSORED cannot help us make this decision in a way that satisfies WP:NPOV, which is and remains non-negotiable. Whenever we deal with emotionally loaded questions of this type, we have to take recourse to sources, and come to an agreement on how best to reflect them, in order to ensure the project's neutrality. --JN466 03:09, 24 December 2011 (UTC) For any matter that is controversial the only sane and future proof way to me to resolve the issue is to follow our sources more explicitly than you are suggesting here. That means in this case we should be using images in balance with our sources. I would say Jayen's comment about 60 feutuses is more than a little much, but would including 6 such images be considered appropriate? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 11:00, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Agree - This is what many of us have been saying all along. The "our use of images must follow how the sources use images" has always been a rather weak argument. We do not apply the censorship found by some in this subject area, nor are we bound by the traditional limitations of paper media. Tarc (talk) 16:14, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Agree, but I would be more emphatic in saying that a process based on the idea that reliable sources should dictate our stylistic choices, as well as wrong, would simply give rise to a fool's errand in the present case. Giving consideration to the sources in a very general sense tells us little that we didn't already know. Some use images of Mohammed, some do not. I have not seen any that attempt a fudge by including images but placing them bottom-left-below-the-fold-subject-of-article-not-clearly-identifiable. So the sources really give us a two-way choice, which is exactly what we started out with. In reality, consideration of source material is just one of various factors that might go to decisions about imagery in the article, and it is not even of comparatively high importance, IMO, when sat next to consideration of the guidance in our MoS and our general asprirations of being politically neutral and uncensored.--FormerIP (talk) 00:00, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I realise you collapsed this section AGK, and if I am out of line in making an addition here, please feel free move this to the talk page (this could also be the basis of a finding of fact). I had a thought tonight that is not new, but perhaps needs to be stated in this case: I was taking pictures at the 2012 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships tonight for the purpose of adding to several of our national team and player articles. It occurred to me that under Jayen's logic, not a single picture I have taken is valid for Wikipedia's use. In fact, of the nearly 400 images I have uploaded to Commons, about 98% of them would be invalid, because virtually all of them are self-published, and they did not appear in any other publications prior to being added to their respective articles. The argument that our editorial decisions on image use must rely heavily on what published sources use runs completely counter to how Wikipedia treats images and multimedia at present. I would say that the only real requirement for images is that they be what they say they are. In the case of my images, you really have naught but my word that each photo is of the individual I claim them to be. In the case of the Muhammad images, the historical ones are already published and known to be of or about Muhammad. As such, the only question on their use is editorial balance. How other publications treat the topic, based on their own editorial limitations, is quite irrelevant. With that in mind, I am growing more of the mindset that Jayen's arguments, while well intentioned, are not germane to this debate and actually serves as an unnecessary distration. To treat it seriously is to ask for special case treatment on this article that is not present elsewhere. Resolute 06:27, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments - I'll take them into consideration. I collapsed the previous discussion because I had finished reading the responses, but if there are other belated comments I'm happy for them to be added underneath the box. AGK [•] 13:35, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Resolute, that is of course a misunderstanding. We require our texts to be verifiable, and reflect viewpoints in proportion to their published prevalence, but of course that doesn't mean that we use the exact words our sources use. Similarly, NPOV policy, as it applies to images, does not imply that we should only use images that have been previously published, merely that our illustration style should be neutral, i.e. consistent with practice in the best and most reputable authoritative sources, rather than markedly and intentionally different. --JN466 14:53, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I could consider supporting this if you would exclude all sources edited or published by people that had their editorial judgment driven by religious considerations. Those sources would not be comparable to a secular project, and should not be used as a measurement point.—Kww(talk) 17:09, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

That's a false dichotomy, Kww. Annemarie Schimmel (not a Muslim) for example focuses on traditional imagery in her books (examples: [4][5]), while Omid Safi, as a Muslim, discusses Muhammad images at length in Memories of Muhammad, and shows examples. It's pointless to pick and choose our authors according to their religion. They are either mainstream sources by significant authors or not. --JN466 17:50, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

It would only be a dichotomy if I asserted that all non-Muslim sources were reliable, which I have not and would not. I would have a hard time using sources by Tea Party members as being reliable on Islam-related topics either, regardless of academic credentials. We always need to evaluate the bias of sources. The articles by Schimmel you keep pointing out cover Islamic imagery: a narrow focus, not at all comparable to an encyclopedia article about the historical figure. The article is focused on factual history, not the mythology that has grown around the man.—Kww(talk) 18:04, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, Britannica's online Muhammad article has four images: one of the Kaaba, two of the Prophet's Mosque, and one of the Shahada. That's it. No figurative images in the hardcopy version either. And WP:NPOV does not say that we need to "evaluate bias". It says that we have to represent viewpoints in proportion to their prevalence in the most reputable, authoritative sources. Why is that so difficult to follow here? --JN466 18:09, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

That actually goes to my point. We are not limited to the same editorial constraints as other publications. We can use as many or as few as we deem proper for our needs. For the sake of NPOV, we need only state that such images are rare in modern Muslim art. In fact, that every image we will use is centuries old will indicate this as well. The problem with this debate is that we are bogged down in circular arguments. This being one, and Ludwigs' consistant forum shopping trying to force his personal opinions on the value and use of said images down everyone's throat being the other. Ludwigs' arguments have been rejected by the community, while yours have likewise failed to gain overall support. So lets move on to trying to resolve the issue. I am not suggesting that we dramatically change the number of depictions in the article, merely that we focus on what serves the needs of our readers best. Keeping in mind that the overwhelming majority of English Language readers will be coming from cultures that have no probihitions against such image use and that we exist to serve our readers' needs. Basically, before the discusison at /Images was trainwrecked, we stood at a point where there might have been support for my overall framework, but also that many did not wish to see the Black Stone image removed, or to have all images pushed down to the bottom of the article. So, using the existing number of six depictions as a framework, the question I would put is: Would people accept the orginial idea of one or two Muslim images (one unveiled, one defaced) in the Depictions section, two western images in the Western Views section, and two or three in the Life section? It is not a significant change, but it does spread the images out a little more. Resolute 17:25, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, this case is unusual as there are strongly opposed POVs attached to the images. WP:NPOV / WP:DUE applies to images. Editors may argue that it doesn't, but that doesn't change policy. --JN466 18:06, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

To state that an image is that of Muhammad doing x is NPOV, and to state that such images are rare (or forbidden) in the modern Sunni Muslim world is DUE. That we choose to use them to enhance our article is editorial. But, again, we're going back in circles. We both know that depictions will be retained. So lets focus on which images and where. Resolute 18:36, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I was happy with the number of figurative images in your compromise proposal. That is still what I am aiming for now – your proposal showed perhaps one or two more Muhammad images than I would have liked, and one or two less than you might have liked, but the number, placement and selection of those images broadly met WP:Due. It had majority talk page support then, and still has now. --JN466 19:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I had hoped so too, but there is validity in the claim that the discussion was done "in the dark". While that is how things often go on Wikipedia, given the multiple forums this has been shopped to, the objection to the change on that basis was not completely out of line. Also, it was noted that other discussion had found at least one image I proposed to remove useful, so we may have ended up with two apparent consensuses acting at cross purposes. At this point, we are better off seeking to blend the two together than to hold to one and wait the other side out. That is what I was hoping to do before this case interrupted that process. Resolute 21:09, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Given how scattered this process is (how the hell do you arbs make sense of it all?), I just realized Eraserhead proposed a compromise on the talk page here. Perhaps it would help if everyone who is party to this case were to look at it, and discuss what works and what doesn't. We could ultimately settle this "out of court", as it were, and leave it to ArbCom to deal with those who act to subvert any resolution going forward. Resolute 21:12, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Agree with the statement because similar to information there are things that people don't necessarily want to have the public see image wise (Xenu comes to mind) but that doesn't change the idea that the information is false or misleading. I think the most important aspect overall is the ability for a group to form consensus about which things to include or remove from an article, and as long as valid justification can be given for either side it should be weighed against what it provides to the reader. Tivanir2 (talk) 20:37, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

(3) Policy holds that Muhammad must contain images

Thank you for your responses. AGK [•] 21:36, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

As an online project, Wikipedia has the advantage of making use of online images and other multimedia to improve the reader's understanding of the subject of our articles. However, decisions to include or exclude an image in an article must focus only on whether the image is appropriate to include in a given article. The community has decided that an image may be included if it improves the reader's understanding of the associated content and if the image looks like what it means to illustrate. Images that are not provably authentic may still be included if it improves the reader's understanding of the article subject, especially if authentic images (like photographs or contemporary drawings) are unavailable. Policy holds that Muhammad should contain images of Muhammad himself, even if those images are not contemporary or not direct images of him. Do you agree or disagree, and why? Do you think that, within reason, the argument that including many images of Muhammad implies he was widely covered by contemporary artists is therefore secondary to the need to show the readers images of the subject - as is the case in almost every other article? Why or why not? AGK [•] 22:23, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Agree. The captions are careful to date all the "depiction" images - the other captions of images of buildings etc could do with more dates. Johnbod (talk) 23:02, 23 December 2011 (UTC) To Elonka below: In fact there are only two images from the Jami' al-tawarikh, there because they are simple compositions with large figures that work well at small size. I hope you not implying, as many in these debates unfortunately have, that Persians or Shias are not "mainstream Islamic culture". There are large numbers of manuscripts with images of Muhammad, especially of the Mi'raj, a point that has been heavily discussed at the original talk page. Johnbod (talk) 05:28, 24 December 2011 (UTC) I agree. An important reason for the policy is because we are in the project to make knowledge as concrete and accessible as we can to a pluralistic audience. Thus, in the biography of a man, we at a minimum say: this is a man's life, this is what is important about him, these are illustrations of that. All topically related images used in an article (thus having consensus) are contextualized and explained in words, not misrepresented, and not deleted. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:38, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Ironically, Jayen's argument on reliable sources supports this argument. We have over 100 viable Islamic depictions in Commons that have been published in reliable sources, ergo, the use of any of them is supported. Consequently, since we currently use only five, I disagree with the argument that we are "including many images of Muhammad", which also defeats the implication that we are misrepresenting how widely he was covered by contemporary artists. Beyond that, however, I believe we have a consensus that the article will include these depictions. Given that I believe the only viable argument for removal of all such images is "they offend some adherents of a religion", I also believe that removing all could only be classified as censorship, which would negatively impact the neutrality of our article. As such, WP:CONSENSUS, WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:NPOV, all policies, mandate that depictions be included. Resolute 00:03, 24 December 2011 (UTC) As I said in my reply to your first question: the art-type depictions included are reception-type images: they illustrate how Muhammad was depicted in various cultures across time. There was a time and place where anthropomorphic, non-veiled depictions of him were common. And it was an important Islamic culture. These images were defaced by later generations. I can back this up with references if requested. The attempt to move every anthropomorphic image to a sub-article (Depictions of Muhammad) is not appropriate first because of WP:SUMMARY, second because we have art-type depictions of historical figures (not actual images of them) in many, many other articles, and third because some of these images illustrate important events in Muhammad's life as seen by later followers, so they fit quite well with the prose flow. The placement of the anthropomorphic images in the Muhammad article is already a significant departure from Wikipedia's editorial standards in articles about historical figures, bowing to certain religious standards. In his argument below Ludwigs2 is failing to comprehend WP:NPOV and insisting on imposing a tyranny of contemporary Islamic majority. NPOV does not require that only mainstream and contemporary religious depictions be used. Minority or historical depictions are okay as long as they have some relevance and are found in reliable sources. And both these conditions are met in the Muhammad article. It would be quite difficult to replace all anthropomorphic manuscript images in that article with Arabic calligraphy and convey the same message to most of our audience, which by and large is not a reader of Arabic. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 01:03, 24 December 2011 (UTC) I don't believe policy actually does hold this position (if that's what you meant to suggest); There is a disconnect between "may be included" and "must be included" that cannot be glossed over. We are not thoughtlessly obliged to include any image just because we have it available; we choose (or at least should choose) on the basis of appropriateness. That aside, the remainder of the argument rests on the terribly unsophisticated assertion that we need to show a person-like image simply because it's an article about a person. Why would that be the case? There are many articles about people that would be better served by images of the person's accomplishments than of the person him/herself, and in a case like Muhammad - where we know that the person-like depictions are not remotely accurate, and where the most commonly used depictions of the person in the real worlds are (by far) obscured or non-person-like - then the logic "It must be person-like because it's about a person" is incredibly strained. There was a period in Christian history where Christ was always depicted by the image of a fish; had that tradition continued to this day then our article on Jesus would correctly be predominated by images of symbolic fish. There would be little value to presenting a person-like image if that were not the way Christ was conventionally represented in the real world, and there is little value in presenting Muhammad that way, since that is not the way he is generally construed. --Ludwigs2 00:49, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Let's have a look at the article William Shakespeare (permalink), a featured article on another giant of world literature. It contains: 1 picture of Shakespeare, 2 statues of Shakespeare, 1 picture of his signature, 1 photograph of his birthplace, 1 photograph of his grave, 5 paintings of scenes from his plays, 2 pictures of early editions of his works (one also including an image of him), and 1 image of the rebuilt Globe Theatre. It also includes 3 call-out boxes (2 featuring Shakespeare quotes, and 1 with a quote about Shakespeare). The article as a whole is clearly an apt reflection of Shakespeare and his reception, yet only 4 of its 14 images are figurative depictions of Shakespeare, because Shakespeare's reception, just like Muhammad's, has primarily been through his words and oeuvre, and not through figurative images. Our task is to educate the reader. 10 additional fanciful images of Shakespeare would contribute less to that end than the images the article presently contains. To address Resolute's point, the reason we have so many images of Muhammad in Commons is that in the wake of the Jyllands-Posten affair, many people felt motivated to make Muhammad images available online through websites such as http://zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/ which many of our Commons uploads list as their source. There has not been a similar effort in uploading notable calligraphic art, Quranic inscriptions etc.; the hilya images I uploaded to Commons, for example, were the first ever to be added there. It is well known that the media content in Commons is frequently not representative of the wider world, but instead reflects the preoccupations of a Western and white demographic – readily apparent from such anomalies as for example the fact that we have about 1,000 images of white Caucasian penises in Commons (and could have had several thousand more), but no images of black or Asian ones, and so forth. To address the point made by ASCIIn2Bme, his assertion that "it [figurative images] was an important Islamic culture" is flatly contradicted by scholarship. Book miniatures were never a mainstream part of Islamic culture. They were the preserve of privileged rulers and wealthy patrons (some of them recent converts to Islam) who had artists illustrate manuscripts for them privately. Such images did not have wide currency in their own day, and played no significant role in the reception of Muhammad among the general populace. (For sources for these assertions please see the works cited in Muhammad#Islamic_depictions_of_Muhammad.) I would also urge you, AGK, to take note of User:Elonka's recent and welcome comments in this regard. As an encyclopedia, we do and must aspire to scholarship. --JN466 03:56, 24 December 2011 (UTC) In my experience, historical images of Muhammad are extremely rare, and come from very few sources. Indeed, on the Muhammad article as it exists right now, three of the images can be traced to one source, the Jami' al-tawarikh, a historical work commissioned for the Mongol Ilkhanate. Its context must be understood: The Ilkhanate was Mongol-conquered Persia, one section of the much larger Mongol Empire. The Mongols were very tolerant of multiple faiths, and in 1300 many in the Ilkhanate were converting to Islam. The Jami was created in this time of change, in the early 1300s. It does not represent mainstream Islamic culture -- it was an important historical work, but it was focused on the Mongols and their history, with information about the history of other peoples that the Mongols had interacted with. It was not a treatise focused on Muhammad and Islamic culture. It is incorrect to try and take images from the Jami and claim that they represent widespread Islamic practice, because they don't. As for how this connects with the current debate about the Muhammad article, I would say that one image from the Jami is sufficient, rather than three. --Elonka 05:08, 24 December 2011 (UTC) It should be taken into account that historical images of anything within the Muslim world are rare compared to European culture, if you consider the period from the time of Mohammed to the birth of photography. I would offer the following challenge to deletionists: are you able to identify any historical figure whose depiction in surviving antique Islamic art is more common than that of Mohammed? --FormerIP (talk) 00:55, 25 December 2011 (UTC) Elonka, I very much appreciate your contribution. See my entry on the Jami and irrelevance arguments, above in answer to the first question. I would question one or two of your points but we should avoid making much of any of this, because 1) we are not, in the article, representing it as widespread Islamic practice or culture; 2) We should hope "tolerance of multiple faiths" would not determine how we use their pictures; 3) We should hope that his religion (recent conversion or not), or culture, or ethnicity, would not exclude using an artist's pictures -- the pictures should be judged on the work (composition, subject matter, etc) for a biography. Out of curiosity, which one of the pictures you discuss would you choose and why? Or would any one of them suit you? Thanks. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:31, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Thanks Alan. In answer to your question: Of the three Ilkhanid images (Muhammad and the Black Stone, Muhammad and Gabriel, and the Ottoman/Ilkhanid image), I have no strong preference on which to include, as I don't think any of them are particularly necessary to advancing the reader's understanding of Muhammad. As a compromise though, I could see it as reasonable to include one of them as a sample of the figurative art from the 14th century Ilkhanate. I slightly favor the image of Muhammad and the Black Stone (which I routinely restore to the Black Stone article when other editors try to delete it). In terms of the other figurative images, I would probably also thin them by removing one of the "Muhammad's entry into Mecca" images (there are currently two). And I would question the need for the Gagarin image, since I didn't notice any mention of Gagarin in the article text, nor even any discussion of Western visual depictions in that section, so it is not clear (to me) what purpose the image serves. A better image, if it could be worked into the text and a proper fair use rationale constructed, might be one of the movie posters from List of films about Muhammad, or a still if one could be obtained. For example, an image of Muhammad's son-in-law's sword from The Message might be interesting, and would serve a useful purpose to illustrate how even in mainstream films, great care has been taken to avoid showing Muhammad directly. --Elonka 06:33, 25 December 2011 (UTC) I am glad to agree on some of your image ideas. Perhaps, we will meet again. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:28, 25 December 2011 (UTC) My concern has always been that we are implicitly presenting it as a widespread Islamic practice by the amount of weight we give the images, especially if we don't show the reader the mainstream public art that takes the place of figurative images in Islam (a couple of months ago, the situation was even worse, and we still lack a photograph of the Kaaba, or a single Quranic inscription). Hence the idea of Showing three Islamic figurative images, one of each major type (unveiled/veiled/flame), so the reader learns about these types, Using Mi'raj images to reflect their popularity in history, as well as their popularity in RS today (the right-hand one of the two Mi'raj images in this article version alone is used on at least three book covers), Adding mainstream imagery like the Kaaba and Quranic inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock (both the Kaaba and the Dome of the Rock are initimately linked to Muhammad's biography, and are the two most holy shrines in Islam today), etc. --JN466 07:29, 25 December 2011 (UTC) Without transforming this into a content debate, there are several books dealing with the art during the Ilkhanate, e.g. [6]. The nutshell version is: there was a trend towards visual representations in that part of the Islamic world before the Mongols arrived; this trend was accelerated by the arrival of Mongols who had no iconoclastic inhibitions. At the same time there was a more practical reason why visual representations of Muhammad in depictions of key events in the Islamic faith surfaced: competing Sunni and Shi'a groups tried to influence the conquering Mongols' faith through the visual means that the Mongols were accustomed to from their contact with Buddhism. [7] Amusingly, because the Ilkhanate-period art is replete with visual depictions of key events in Muhammad's life is what makes them useful for illustration purposes in Wikipedia as well. Another problem with Elonka & JN466's statements is that "mainstream Islam"—an expression both of them use above—is hard to actually find in serious scholarship dealing with that period. The Mongols even conquered and destroyed Baghdad, thus the traditional center of Islamic (Golden Age) power was no more. But the Mongols in that region themselves converted to Islam thereafter. So, if by "mainstream Islam" Elonka and JN466 mean the Mamluks and other Muslims to the west of Egypt, then it is true that visual representations did not surface in their lands. But I've not seen scholarly sources referring to these as "mainstream Islam" as opposed to the "non-mainstream" (or "fringe") Ilkhanate. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:28, 24 December 2011 (UTC) I am repeating myself here slightly, but I presume you have a source showing that this form of art has been widely practiced in Central Asia, China, Iran, South Asia and South East Asia? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:32, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Yes you are repeating yourself, so I'm going to say it for the last time: NPOV does not require that all images in the article come from some "majority" or "mainstream" Islamic art. And you'll have a hard time even defining that "mainstream"; there's an interesting WP:RS quote on my talk page in that respect, which I won't repeat here. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:29, 24 December 2011 (UTC) That isn't the question I have asked. You have stated that JN466 is only referring to Islam to the west of Egypt, I have asked you for evidence that the situation is different to the east of Egypt in the muslim countries there, I think that if your claim is correct I would be keen to change my mind on this position, so I'd like to see the evidence behind your post. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:39, 24 December 2011 (UTC) I'm not sure exactly what is that you're asking, but it's this simple: the images are part of one significant Islamic culture, the Ilkhanate and their Timurid successors, which were located East of Egypt. The images don't have to be part of all Islamic cultures across all time to be relevant in the article. We should probably continue this conversation elsewhere. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:11, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Thanks for the clarification. I understand your point and agree with it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:56, 25 December 2011 (UTC) I am not aware of any policy that requires us to use any images at all. The only relevant policy I know is WP:Image use policy. This policy just takes it for granted that editors will want to use images, and describes some restrictions. In one place it comes close to giving a reason for inclusion of an image: "Articles may get ugly and difficult to read if there are too many images crammed onto a page with relatively little text. They may even overlap. // For this reason, it is often a good idea to temporarily remove the least-important image from an article and queue it up on the article's talk page. Once there is enough text to support the image, any contributor is free to shift the image back into the article. // If a contributor believes such a queued image to be essential to the article, despite the lack of text, he or she may decide to put it back in. However, he or she should not simply revert the article to its previous state, but make an attempt to re-size the images or create some sort of gallery section in order to deal with the original problem." The reason we use images is that they improve an article. If they improve the article. If not, we remove the images. As the excerpt from the image use policy shows, this requires weighting between the benefit provided by the image and any drawbacks such as the relatively trivial one of layout problems. This weighting is a normal editorial process, and it can take into account such arguments as "If there aren't enough pictures all the kids will stop reading half-way through" and "If there are too many sexually explicit photos, a lot of readers will either surf away from the article or focus too much on the photos and not read the text". Wikipedia does not have good processes for dealing with disputes about such editorial decisions. I think I am observing a recent trend to deny that editorial decisions are even legitimate and to replace them by more objective processes. You can often read words such as "Follow the sources, Luke" in this context, and the fundamentalist idea is basically that we should be no more than "transcription monkeys" (Jimbo's expression). Of course this goes too far. Even when there are a lot of reliable sources on a topic, we can still treat it in an essentially unique way. However, where we depart from the sources, we should know why. The application here is as follows. There are no images of Muhammad with any claim to accuracy of facial features. Therefore the main benefit of such illustrations is the demonstration of how posterity has seen Muhammad. This is the same situation as with Holy Spirit (Christianity), which shows many paintings that depict the Holy Spirit as a white pigeon, but only one each presenting it as a human or flame. (Should an occultist try to shift this balance and upload many images of the Holy Spirit as a humanoid ghost, we should resist this.) Hans Adler 07:50, 24 December 2011 (UTC) I agree that the article should contain images, and I agree that it should contain some depictions as they are useful. However the featured article William Garrow seems to manage with only a single depiction of him, so there doesn't seem like any policy based reason as to why we have to contain significant numbers of depictions. WP:CONSENSUS and WP:NPOV do dictate that for this article we should include a small number of images. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:44, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Near as I can tell, we only have one image of Garrow available. You don't honestly think that we would have included more if the material was available? Resolute 19:48, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Looks like we have 3 on commons alone, additionally its gone through the FA process so if it was an issue you'd have thought people would have found more. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:47, 24 December 2011 (UTC) If we have images of a subject and they satisfy WP:NFCC] or are otherwise free to use, yes, usage should be automatic. How many to use and their placement therein should be a matter of editorial decision. Second,I do not feel that image usage implies implies wide usage in contemporary sources. It all has to do with what exactly we are here doing on this project, and what the purpose is of this article. Are we writing an article on Muhammad for a Muslim audience, and thus must take care to be deferential to their beliefs and how they treat their prophet? Or are we writing an article on a historical religious figure for the English Wikipedia, a diverse and broad audience that does not share any one religion, creed, or nationality? Tarc (talk) 16:25, 24 December 2011 (UTC) If we have images of the subject of an article then it would seem obvious that we use them. The question of whether they are authentic as to the likeness of the subject is not really relevant. In no other article would the question of whether we should use such images arise. Robert has objected to the absence of an image of Mohammed in his infobox. Purely for the sake of appearing pragmatic, I will not push this point. But is there any other biography of a human being where an image of the subject exists but something else is included in the infobox? We are already bending quite far enough. --FormerIP (talk) 01:34, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Well does the article need to have images? In honesty no article requires images as someone can explain something if they are willing to write 1000+ words to describe it in sufficient detail. Also I would like to point out that the push for a smaller number of images includes all images on the article not just the figurative images by the majority of editors last time I counted. As long as images are relevant and serve a purpose than I am of the opinion they should be included to help the readers understand the subject they are looking up. Tivanir2 (talk) 20:37, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

(4) Question to and about Hans Adler

In Kww's submissions, his evidence included this comment by Hans Adler in which Hans said,

There is nothing wrong about "implicitly paint[ing] you as unethical". In fact, I hereby say explicitly that unless your brain is functioning in a seriously unusual way (such as autism, to give a concrete example) or you come from a weird culture with seriously twisted ethics, the fact that your perspective is thoroughly unethical simply cannot be argued away.

Such behaviour is grossly unacceptable, but unless there is a wider issue with Hans' contributions to the discussions surrounding this dispute I would be inclined to overlook an isolated case of unprofessionalism in the final decision. Hans, please explain why you made such a comment. Other parties, please comment whether this was an isolated instance, or whether there is a wider problem to be considered; if you answer there is a wider problem, I would look for a substantiating evidence submission. Thank you, AGK [•] 00:55, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• It doesn't seem an isolated incident. His ability to assume good faith in this dispute seems low [8] [9] [10] [11]. He basically wants zero anthropomorphic images in the article, veiled or not, because they cause offense: [12] In a couple of those diffs he prophetizes that there's going to be showdown RfC in which he is going to be vindicated, but he never initiated one on this issue in the past year. There's also his enabling of other disruptive editors to consider. Please read the comment [13]. We can only hope that Hans Adler intends to presents /Evidence on the behavior of those he says behaved worse than Ludwigs2. Amusingly [or hypocritically], he later impeached factionalism and the lack of policy rationale in the !votes [14]. At that point in time, the ANI thread already contained a sizable portion of the diffs on Ludwigs2 now found on the /Evidence page. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 08:11, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
• Hans and I assert that, because this project defends the placement of offensive images that add little or nothing of importance to the reader's understanding of a topic, it is behaving just like a person who is incapable of sensing the social impact of their offensive behaviour, or like someone who sees the offense but doesn't care. This project shares its perspective on offensiveness with unsocialised autistics, and psychopaths: an unethical perspective. What Hans said about this perspective is highly pertinent to this discussion; it addresses, in my opinion, the very root of the problem. I don't mean this to reflect in any way on Kww's character, I'm addressing the ethics of a particular perspective he is defending, one that is presently embraced by the project as a whole, in WP:NOTCENSORED. Hans could have chosen his words more carefully. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Anthony, it seems like you're trying to say "If I call someone an asshole, it isn't a personal attack if I truly believe that person to be acting assholishly". What I see in those diffs above is Adler denigrating his Wiki-opponents for supporting "ornamental images" and for insisting that the inclusionists are doing so with the willful intent to offend. He is also pretty much the lone voice calling for ZERO images. Tarc (talk) 13:00, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I'm saying I agree with Hans; the project's attitude toward offending its readers is autistic/psychopathic. This is no doubt due to the fact that we're online and welcome all-comers, an ideal refuge for people with poor social intelligence. Hans should not indulge in assigning traits and motives to individual editors, though, and should be counseled to refrain from that. Please don't refer to people by their surname; it is patronising and insulting. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:23, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

First off, I will acknowledge people in a manner that I see fit, within the bounds of WP:NPA. We're not buddies, and certainly not on a first-name basis. Second, in trying to address this concern of Adler's conduct, did you seriously just agree with him and call us a bunch of psychopathic autistics? Do you wish to rethink that? Tarc (talk) 18:41, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Can I suggest "Mr Adler," then? No, I did not call us a bunch of psychopathic autistics. I pointed out that "offensiveness is irrelevant," the sixth pillar, is an autistic (they don't notice) / psychopathic (they don't care) trait. This contempt for our readers is bad for the project.

(It probably survives here because of the likely higher incidence of low social intelligence in internet communities, but I can't imagine a study design that could disprove that.) It is time for us to start treating our readers and fellow editors with respect. Respect is not deference. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:35, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

This is the problem I've been discussing in talk: it's a peculiar Wikipedia phenomena where editors feel free to behave in ways that would never fly in the real world. As I've mentioned before, I sometimes amuse myself by imagining editors here approaching their bosses in real life saying "It's irrelevant whether our product offends Muslims, so let's just go ahead and offend them." (or worse: "Our product must offend Muslims because if it doesn't we'll look like we're 'soft' on Islam") Real organizations do not tolerate people who create prejudicial work environments, and using the self-righteous assertion that a coworker is being uncivil for pointing out the hostile work environment would probably get security called in double-time. But, Welcome to Wikipedia! --Ludwigs2 15:35, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I can't speak for anyone else involved in this dispute, but I freely acknowledge I stand guilty as charged of having PDD-NOS, so let me take you through my thought process. My indifference to offense is not subject specific; I don't empathize with people because I can't. Over my 21+ years of living, I've learned to notice when this indifference is entering into what I'm doing, and it's not here. I want the images in the article for reasons that Tivanir2 elucidated in Section 1 above far more eloquently than I can right now, not because I'm evilly cackling as Muslims write about how offended they are. Again, I'm not speaking for anyone else here, but my PDD-NOS isn't the driving force behind my pushing for inclusion of these images (and though I won't speculate on whether anyone else here is on the spectrum, I suspect if someone is their thought process closely approximates mine). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:42, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

There are plausible arguments in favour of : "Offensiveness is irrelevant." Kww makes the slippery slope argument - "If we take into account the offensiveness of images of Muhammad, then we'll have to take account of images of dead Australian Aborigines ... where will it end?" There are others that deserve to be addressed, too, and I'll try to do that in my proposal. But, ultimately, you have to ask, what kind of project adopts this as policy?

I take your point, Blade; there are persuasive (though I'm not persuaded) arguments in favour of ignoring any offense or hurt we may cause, and every editor I've opposed on this question is convinced by those arguments. I counsel editors not to speculate about the ethics or motives of their opponents, it derails discussion, compounds ill-feeling and is, in itself, offensive behaviour. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:59, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Reasonable people can come to different conclusions, and so can a reasonable person and I ;). Seriously, though, I think that this, along with many other debates, is something which has a great deal of high-level scholarly work to support both sides, and it ultimately comes down to which side an individual person is more convinced by (one parallel that comes to my mind is the Battle of Kadesh, which has both sides claiming victory; since obviously no one alive was there, do we ascribe victory, moral victory, or defeat to the Egyptian army, and on what basis?). That people have debated this issue since Islam's earliest days is indicative of how murky this question is, and in my mind justifies showing at least a few pictures of visual representations of Muhammad both veiled and unveiled, but I also understand the position you take. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Blade, literally everybody in these proceedings, including Anthony, is happy to show at least a few depictions. There is not a single editor here demanding zero depictions, and Anthony was one of those supporting Resolute's earlier compromise proposal which did just that -- show a few depictions. [15][16][17] --JN466 06:35, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Jayen, both Adler and Elonka have expressed a desire for a final finding of zero-to-two/three depictions of Muhammad in the article. Is that technically demanding total removal? No, but IMO that is a distinction without a difference. Tarc (talk) 14:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Tarc, at no point have I demanded total removal of images. For you to try and claim that that is what I am saying, concerns me a great deal. I was asked what I would expect to see (0-2 images), and then I explained, quite clearly I thought, what I would do with the article if it were entirely up to me (which would be to include some images).[18] --Elonka 18:07, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• • Given that Anthonyhcole refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing by Ludwigs2 [19], his statement above is no surprise. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 17:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I regularly criticise Ludwigs for bickering on talk pages and running off with threads. I would like the committee to admonish him for that behaviour, and threaten him with sanctions if it doesn't stop (on all pages), and admins to act on the threats if his behaviour doesn't improve. If that were sorted, if he could just not bite the bait and stay on topic he'd be fine. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:23, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Anthony's assessment. --JN466 15:37, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm… well, it's interesting that you acknowledge the baiting but think the solution is for me not to bite it. That's a bit perverse, isn't it? --Ludwigs2 16:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

No. I, and I think Jayen, do that all the time. (At least we try to.) If you bite, they keep baiting, and you both look like twelve-year-olds while ruining the discussion for the rest of us. If you don't, they look like the dicks they are. If you sign up to this mode of behaviour, I think you'll escape serious sanctions here. If you don't, I for one won't be defending you. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:59, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• • This is one reason why we are stuck where we are: The assertion that the images add "little or nothing of importance" has been rejected. Consensus exists that the images belong in the article, ergo they add value. By constantly looping the discussion back to a defeated argument, you are preventing anyone from moving forward to a resolution. Resolute 17:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Some I describe as of little or no importance, others, as you know, I believe are essential. It's only the former that I object to. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 19:22, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I feel the need to point out he also accusses people of being incompetant as well [[20]]. Tivanir2 (talk) 20:58, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for the lack of diff on this one for some reason in the page history it doesn't seem to exist. Direct quote is "<sarcasm>And of course Tarc's IDHT behaviour and insistence that NOTCENSORED takes precedence over NPOV has nothing at all to do with it.</sarcasm> Hans Adler 19:16, 29 November 2011 (UTC)" found at [[21]]. The find option putting in Hans will bring up the reference for anyone that wants to see it. Again apologies it isn't a diff but I can't figure out what I am doing wrong with it right now. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:06, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

You probably mean this.—Kww(talk) 23:34, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Thats the one. Good show. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Neither diff supports the accusations. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:23, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Agree he has been very prone to assume and assert that the images were deliberately added with the intention to offend and provoke Muslims, and therefore that defenders of their place in the article are acting from all sorts of bad motives, and do not display good faith in their arguments. He first appeared on the images talk page on October 22nd this year and I think most of his 19 edits there are in this vein, and will be found above, or elsewhere on the page. This one can be added to those above. Johnbod (talk) 04:58, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for taking so long to respond here – sometimes I find it hard to make up my mind about someone, in this case myself. I often write things in the heat of a discussion that I am not proud of. When there is a brawl, you basically have a choice between walking away, taking part in it, or calling the police. To understand why the last was not an option here, let me quote from Outlawries Bill#Background: "In the common law of England, a judgment of (criminal) outlawry was one of the harshest penalties in the legal system, since the outlaw could not use the legal system to protect them if needed, e.g. from mob justice. To be declared an outlaw was to suffer a form of civil death. No one was allowed to give him food, shelter, or any other sort of support – to do so was to commit the crime of aiding and abetting, and to be in danger of the ban oneself." Wikipedia has a slightly weaker form of outlawry which is applied informally by the community. Not to the most disruptive editors but to the most divisive. Ludwigs2 is in this class along with Giano and Malleus, though for different reasons. A lot of admins are keen on blocking these editors, but it's hard to find reasons that will stick. As should be clear from the events leading to the recent Arbitration Enforcement sanction handling case, it makes no sense to report any situation to ANI that substantially involves Ludwigs2. Ludwigs2 is the perfect mobbing victim, and the mobbing just continues there.

Anthony's reaction to personal attacks has shown where walking away leads: You lose by default, and those who are practising the wiki equivalent of violence win. This is not an acceptable option, either.

Ludwigs2 regularly finds himself in this situation. It is probably not wise of him to make it explicit, as he often does. It is probably not wise of myself to make it explicit here, either, but I am honest: When I see a mob I will sometimes decide to counter it. Reacting to unfair debating techniques with strong words is unlikely to sway the immediate opponents, but a display of moral courage has a good chance to stop a bandwagon that is rolling in the wrong direction, and to encourage new participants in a dispute to evaluate the available information independently. This requires breaking rules, similarly to how the mob is breaking rules. And it requires breaking the rules less blatantly than the mob is doing, although it may require rule breaking along a different dimension so it's not completely comparable.

Now let's look at the context of my comment. Kww's first contribution to the section, and the second reaction to Ludwigs2, was as follows: "Common practice in the Muslim community shouldn't create any expectations on the contents of an encyclopedia". This is simply wrong for a key article about Islam. (Muhammad isn't just some random commander. He is a commander who we know basically nothing about except through the filter of the religion which he founded, and this makes his biography very much a religion article.) We don't do POV forks, so the Muhammad article must work for Muslim and non-Muslim readers alike. Tough luck if the sensitivies of some Muslim readers are incompatible with serious encyclopedic concerns such as the necessity of illustrations at Depictions of Muhammad. However, the article did not even discuss the image prohibition at the time, and nothing even close to serious encyclopedic concerns had been offered in favour of the illustrations.

I don't count treating a religious biography precisely as if it was a secular one as a serious concern. I found this kind of apparently mindless rule-following, which is rampant in today's Wikipedia, totally puzzling until "The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism" by Temple Grandin and Sean Barron opened my eyes. To some, mindless rule-following is convincing because they don't understand how rules work and what they are good for. Others were raised with an 'authoritarian follower' mindset, as described by Bob Altemeyer in The Authoritarians. No doubt again others do it in bad faith to achieve a specific goal. Hans Adler 14:55, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Hans: Amen, and well said. Let me add that while it may not be wise for me to make these situations explicit when I find myself in them, it is (I think) necessary. If someone like me (or Hans, or Jayen, or Anthony, or others I could name) doesn't stand up and confront these endemic problems, who will? I have been accused of being tendentious, and I understand why I might look that way, but on pages like Muhammad the consensus process is dead; Editors use policy to bludgeon all dissenting viewpoints into silence. No one can try to edit a page like Muhammad without looking tendentious because anyone who tries to improve it runs smack into a wall of aggressive, uncommunicative, unreasoning opposition. I'd even go so far as to assert that this is part of the strategy: editors who can't be made to run away are set up for sanctions; win/win for the home team. But that's no way to build an encyclopedia.

Editors on the other side of this debate are gambling on reputation - they keep insisting on their own virtue and on the assertion that everyone who disagrees with them is some sort of troublemaker, even while they avoid, obscure, and conflate reasonable discussion. It's time to put a stop to that kind of ad hominem bullying. --Ludwigs2 17:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Padding aside, you pretty much just confirmed mine and others version of the events: we expressed a policy interpretation and a moral interpretation that you didn't like so you felt justified in using personal attacks. Sorry but that is not an excuse. If you were responding to someone else personally attacking you then it would at least somewhat mitigate your response, but the fact of the matter is that you crossed the line for no other reason than the fact that people see things differently than you. N^oformation ^Talk 20:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense. --Ludwigs2 22:01, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

You misunderstood. There are two important reasons why personal attacks are bad: Because they escalate conflict and hurt constructive discussion, and because they hurt individuals. I have explained why IMO the first reason did not apply here. As to the question whether Kww needed protection against personal attacks: He was part of the discussion from the very beginning, so he must have been aware of Tarc's numerous explicit claims that Ludwigs2 was arguing in bad faith. These were clear personal attacks. Ludwigs2 warned Tarc on his talk page (and got reverted with comment "BAWWW"), then brought it up in the discussion itself. Tarc responded by denying it was a personal attack, bringing up offensive comparisons to 'Climategate' and birthers, and making incorrect off-topic insinuations about Ludwigs2's behaviour at the pregnancy article (where Jimbo later implemented what Ludwigs2 wanted, although the RfC had come out with a compromise). An admin (Rklawton) even supported Tarc in that ("Well said"). Resolution also used an ad hominem against Ludwigs2, who immediately pointed this out. Even Kww himself made a borderline personal attack against Ludwigs2 ("Neither motivation is worthy of consideration. [...] Or repetition, for that matter. That's why people keep using that "tendentious" word with respect to your arguments." – The repetition was of course justified due to IDHT problems.) This was in no way an exhaustive list, but of course personal attacks against an outlaw don't count, according to some. Of course, if the outlaw doesn't simply fold in, some of the bullies turn out to be extremely touchy and accuse him of their own behaviour (RobertMFromLI: "attacking or labeling other editors, as you have done to myself, Tarc and various others does not win an argument". Tarc: "You can either stop yourself from attacking other editors in this fashion, or we can go somewhere where a stoppage will be forced upon you.") The prize for best effort goes to RobertMFromLI: "None of us have retaliated in kind, so you may wish to cease such implications, since only you are guilty of such actions."

After all this, Kww made what I considered an extremely hypocritical post. It's just not OK to complain about some minor offence from the victim of a big, unfair mob supported by admins, especially when you are doing this in the context of protecting Wikipedia's right to offend a large part of the world population for no good reason, based on wikilawyering rather than rational arguments. However, this came after several otherwise constructive posts by Kww, so it's a pity I overreacted in the way I did, and I am not proud of it. Hans Adler 12:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed final decision

Proposals by User:Jayen466

Proposed principles

Wikipedia is not censored

1) Wikipedia is not censored. Wikipedia includes educational content that may cause offence if inclusion is due according to the neutral point of view – representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources.

Comment by Arbitrators:

While true, I am not convinced this is sufficiently applicable to images. Jclemens (talk) 19:07, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Needs to be said for future reference.--JN466 11:39, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. --Ludwigs2 13:07, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:50, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed as stated, although Jayen has made it clear he interprets "... representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias..." in a way I certainly would not agree with, so Disagree with the intent of this proposition. Johnbod (talk) 18:02, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. --Elonka 00:49, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

True, but not in the sense that Jayen466 attempts to use it. While we must apply NPOV, we must also use some common sense in evaluating these sources. A source that defers to Muslim sensitivities about depicting Mohammed must be considered to be a biased source when making that evaluation.—Kww(talk) 16:19, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

So books by the foremost scholars of Islam in the Western world, like those of Annemarie Schimmel (e.g. [22][23]), university press-published, with hundreds of citations in the scholarly literature, that have been required reading in innumerable university courses – in other words, sources that are as mainstream and establishment as you can get in the real world, beyond the world of South Park – should be deemed "biased" in Wikipedia because they are openly celebratory of mainstream Islamic imagery? --JN466 19:59, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Annemarie Schimmel "had defended the outrage of the Islamic world against Salman Rushdie" (or more precisely "thinks that the Iranian death sentence against Salman Rushdie was understandable. And she has said so." [24]). Hmm. How about someone less controversial like William Montgomery Watt? His book Muhammad: prophet and statesman [25] does not have any miniatures, but has no calligraphy either! In only has MAPS. Ergo, by the JN466 logic, every other type of picture is UNDUE in the Muhammad article. Brilliant, isn't it? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:14, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

So what? She is probably the most cited Muhammad scholar of the last fifty years, winner of dozens of international awards, taught at Harvard for 25 years, as well as in Bonn, Ankara, Teheran, London and Edinburgh ... would you like us to prefer your judgment to that of the academic mainstream? And instead go by "Mr Hankey" and South Park? And it's not about going by any single book. Maps certainly occur in books on Muhammad, and we have some: that's good. But so does mainstream Islamic imagery, and lots of it, in the most reputable sources available to us. --JN466 21:49, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that quote is quite right "When she was asked in a television interview about the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, the novelist whose 1988 book, Satanic Verses, unleashed a torrent of Islamic fury, she said Rushdie had injured the feelings of Muslims and while she did not support the death sentence on Rushdie, she had seen "grown men weep" when they learnt of the contents of Rushdie's novel. She appealed for an understanding of the Muslims' point of view." (source). -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:52, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

So, JN466 asserts without any citation that she is ""probably the most cited Muhammad scholar of the last fifty years", but Watt who is said to be "the foremost non-Muslim interpreter of Islam in the West" and "an enormously influential scholar in the field of Islamic studies and a much-revered name for many Muslims all over the world" [26] is like "Mr Hankey" to JN466. Only whatever scholar happens to support JN's precise POV is worthy of any consideration. Nice... ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:02, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I beg your pardon? I did not denigrate Watt. I denigrated the implied relevance of Mr Hankey to writing an encyclopedic article about Muhammad. --JN466 22:20, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, one simple question for you: what's on the cover Clinton Bennett's In Search of Muhammad? (Please, no Mr Hanky replies.) ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:57, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

[27] (point 2). --JN466 00:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Watt certainly isn't an impartial scholar: "Unlike certain Orientalist scholars of previous generations, Watt was indeed convinced that the Koran was divinely inspired and that Muhammad received true religious experiences directly from God".—Kww(talk) 15:55, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, what do you think of Watt's writing? Are you aware he's presently cited over 50 times in the article, and do you think it's undue for Wikipedia to rely on him to that extent? --JN466 11:16, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes.—Kww(talk) 01:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:NPOV

2) WP:NOTCENSORED does not override WP:NPOV, including WP:DUE.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Closed discussion. AGK [•] 04:06, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Comment by parties: Proposed. This is stated in WP:NOTCENSORED itself ("Content that is judged to violate Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy, or that violates other Wikipedia policies (especially neutral point of view) or the laws of the U.S. state of Florida where Wikipedia's main servers are hosted, will also be removed."), but it seems worth restating. --JN466 16:04, 21 December 2011 (UTC) I don't believe any editor has suggested that NOTCENSORED overrides NPOV, DUE or any other policy or guideline. --FormerIP (talk) 16:19, 21 December 2011 (UTC) See diffs 5 and 6 in my evidence. The ideas expressed there appeared to suggest that following WP:NPOV / WP:DUE (i.e. following reliable sources) could breach WP:NOTCENSORED, thus assigning a higher priority to the latter than the former. --JN466 17:04, 21 December 2011 (UTC) No, you are working from the viewpoint that your interpretations of NPOV and DUE, acknowledged on both sides to be, at the very least, novel, cannot be overridden by counter-argument. This is not the same thing. --FormerIP (talk) 17:12, 21 December 2011 (UTC) I don't really understand where the notion comes from that it should be a novel idea for images to be subject to WP:NPOV / WP:DUE, or that it should be a novel idea for WP:NOTCENSORED to be secondary to WP:NPOV. WP:NPOV / WP:DUE has applied to images for the past five-and-a-half years, without interruption, and WP:NOTCENSORED has similarly for nearly seven years now stated expressly that it does not protect objectionable content that is in violation of WP:NPOV. Throughout this entire time, WP:NPOV has been non-negotiable, and has defined the neutral point of view as (1) representing views in proportion to their prevalence in the most reputable sources, and (2) as being impartial, i.e. not endorsing any one point of view in a debate as correct. Policy has always been clear on these points. --JN466 22:11, 21 December 2011 (UTC) By definition, censorship is a violation of NPOV. So yes, NOTCENSORED does stand above NPOV as the latter is not sustainable without the former. Also, this statement implies that NPOV has a higher priority than NOTCENSORED. I respect your viewpoint on how to determine "due weight" (thus my own efforts to integrate into my proposals), but it is a fair assessment that your views on the matter have not generated consensus support. Resolute 18:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC) The point, though, being that censorship is not a proper application of NPOV. An argument that goes "I have identified some sources on the topic of abortion/pornography/coprophilia/George Osborne and their use of images is quite different from ours..." is likely to not be an argument based in NPOV. In fact, it may well be the reverse, particularly if it fails to examine or care about the reasons for the differences identified. Claiming that your argument is an application of NPOV and therefore impervious to critique does not make it so. On the other hand, NOTCENSORED does not override NPOV, because no genuine application of policy can constitute censorship. --FormerIP (talk) 19:10, 21 December 2011 (UTC) Applying due weight in an article is not censorship. It may feel like that to someone who is entirely caught up in a particular subaspect of the article topic, and wants it to be more prominent than it is in reliable sources, but that does not make it so. We have an easy and standard way of dealing with this: if the subtopic is notable in its own right, we use WP:Summary style and create a subarticle. --JN466 22:40, 21 December 2011 (UTC) Once in a while, an editor comes along and says that all sources are censored, and therefore we must allow him to present in Wikipedia the truth that is missing in the sources. We may even, in rare cases, sympathise with such an editor, if they make a compelling case. But at the end of the day, we tell them to get reliable sources to include that which they want us to include in Wikipedia, and to come back when they have done so. There is no neutral point of view in Wikipedia that differs from the view of reliable sources. Even if we feel that all or most of the reliable sources are "non-neutral", or "censored", NPOV requires us to present points of view in due proportion to their prevalence in these same sources. That's how neutrality is defined in Wikipedia. --JN466 22:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC) Firstly, NPOV is only operates where there exist conflicting statements (to be construed broadly - I am not suggesting that images are per se excluded) of fact and opinion about the subject of an article. What we have here are conflicting opinions of editors about how to make stylistic choices in the presentation of an article. NPOV has no direct role in deciding that. It is something we decide by reference to our policies (so far as they are applicable), our MoS and, in the final analysis, our collective judgement. You are failing to draw this important distinction. The New York Times may be a reliable source for information about Mohammed. But it is not a reliable model for the editorial approach to be taken in Wikipedia. Secondly, we routinely deny weight to sources if we believe them to be censored. Were it the case, for example, that we were able to determine that 80% of all sources concerning human rights in China were produced by Chinese state media, we would not take the view that our writing on the topic should lean 80% towards what those sources say about the topic. Of course, we would scoff at someone wanting to include unsourced information on the grounds that all sources are censored. But you know very well that this is not analogous to the present case. --FormerIP (talk) 01:55, 22 December 2011 (UTC) It's a matter of degree. If I understand you correctly, you appear to argue that all sources that do not show images of Muhammad (including Encyclopaedia Britannica, University Press publications by leading scholars like this one by Carl W. Ernst, and many other highly reputable sources, are censored, leaving only the minority that have numerous Muhammad images as acceptable models to follow. This of course is a handy rationalisation, as it means that all the sources that disagree with you are ipso facto disqualified from the pool of references. You yourself, rather than the literature, then become the arbiter of due weight. But how is that different from an editor arguing that all sources that do not give pride of place to their favoured theory are censored, and that therefore said theory should rightly take pride of place in Wikipedia? I simply cannot take seriously the idea that Britannica's Muhammad article (or for that matter, every sexologist or sex-education website that chooses not to show an image like this in otherwise amply illustrated works discussing fisting) is "censored" the way the Chinese state media are censored – in the Muhammad case, not least because there are plenty of sources attesting to the rarity and generally unrepresentative character of figurative images of Muhammad in Islamic art. My whole point is that to the extent that we do present Islamic Muhammad imagery, we should represent it in correct proportions, giving most weight to mainstream rather than fringe art. To summarise, what your line of thinking appears to me to lead to is that we follow your POV, rather than a neutral point of view derived from and reflecting reputable sources. I appreciate that you believe sincerely and passionately in what you are saying, and that it reflects your idea of what Wikipedia should be, but I don't think it's philosophically neutral in either the general or the Wikipedia sense. Cheers. --JN466 02:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC) I'm not suggesting in the slightest that we should be dictated to by sources that reflect my POV. I'm suggesting that, in our stylistic choices, we should not be dictated to by sources at all. They can be useful points of reference in discussion, however. --FormerIP (talk) 03:04, 22 December 2011 (UTC) FormerIP: if we do not follow sources at all in such things, then how do we make such choices? 4+ years of near continuous dispute makes it clear that this is not some innocuous issue of style, but rather an area of fairly deep social and political controversy. NPOV and sources are what the project uses for content decisions about controversial issues; if you don't want them to apply on this controversial issue, how do you suggest we make these decisions? --Ludwigs2 04:58, 22 December 2011 (UTC) It is a gross mischaracterization to claim that we have had "4+ years of near continuous dispute". The truth is that we have had 4+ years of occasional arguments by Muslims who do not understand that Wikipedia is not bound by their religion's dogma. We all know that those complaints are going to continue so long as the count of such images is greater than zero, and we all know that the count of such images will never equal zero. Consequently, those occasional complaints are not prima facie evidence of dispute, but rather evidence of the need to continually try to educate people to the purpose of Wikipedia. Resolute 01:07, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Resolute: you are making a lot of bad faith assumptions and still agreeing with me that there is an intractable ongoing political and social controversy. So if we're not going to use NPOV and sources to solve that controversy, what are we going to use? --Ludwigs2 01:56, 23 December 2011 (UTC) It is not part of Wikipedia's mission to resolve intractable political and social controversies. Some of our content may be controversial to some people, but that is not in itself a reason to remove it. --FormerIP (talk) 02:16, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Nor is it part of Wikipeida's mission to choose sides in intractable political and social controversies. You are insisting that Wikipedia display images in a way that reliable secondary and tertiary sources do not: that is choosing a side and advocating for it. Again, the question that you keep not answering is this: If we do not follow NPOV and reliable sources, by what criteria do we choose images in controversial cases like this? You keep saying that we can't let other people dictate what the project does, but you do it in a way that seems to imply that you yourself should be the one who dictates what the project does. That obviously can't be what you mean, so what is the decision criteria you are reaching for? --Ludwigs2 02:35, 23 December 2011 (UTC) As far as I can see, WPs content processes have been more than exhausted and a decision has been reached. Nothing is set in stone, and I'm not opposed to discussions continuing. But I am opposed to the view that there is a problem which needs to be urgently addressed by some policy innovation. There is no such problem. --FormerIP (talk) 02:49, 23 December 2011 (UTC) That is your fourth refusal (on this page alone) to answer this simple and direct question. You have asserted that reliable sources (at least those which you consider to be censored) should not be used, and you are using that argument to justify your claim that we should not rely on the image balance in reliable sources as a guideline for our own image use (because you somehow consider all such sources to be censored). If you are unwilling to indicate what decision-making process we should use instead of referring to sources and NPOV, then how can we take your opinion as remotely credible? As far as I can tell from your argument, you are arguing against NPOV not because you have a better proposal in mind, but simply because you don't like the outcome we get if we do follow NPOV. --Ludwigs2 03:12, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Again, should be obvious. Any specific application may not be obvious, but this principle should be obvious in itself. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:02, 21 December 2011 (UTC) Comment by others: With hundreds of thousands of words having already been expended on this issue to date, the editors in discussion about these two workshop proposals should consider whether we must again rehash the "How to interpret NOTCENSORED etc" debate. AGK [•] 23:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC) AGK: The only debates we have in this arbitration are the "How to interpret NOTCENSORED" debate and the "Why we should all hate Ludwigs2" debate (check the evidence page if you haven't yet caught onto that aspect of this discussion). The latter debate - while arguably more entertaining for everyone - is a whole lot less useful than the former. So unless you want us all to present our perspectives and then sit in appreciative silence… which come to think of it would be kind of nice, yah? Just sayin'… --Ludwigs2 01:17, 22 December 2011 (UTC) Ludwigs I suggest you take a look at my evidence which does neither of those things. With regards to this, I think AGK has a point, there is little point in discussing this over and over. That said if the committee feels certain "interpretations" of policy are obvious constraining the debate to exclude disputing those points further would be helpful as per the abortion case. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:05, 22 December 2011 (UTC) Ludwigs, the issues of interpretation of policy are of course central to this arbitration case, but my point is that nothing is being achieved here except to paraphrase the debate. We can already understand the dispute about NOTCENSORED and all its intricacies from the existing volumes of discussion. AGK [•] 13:07, 22 December 2011 (UTC) AGK: Actually, I disagree - I think a clear summary of each position (without all the cross-argumentation) would be very useful, but if the choice is between not saying anything and rehashing the dispute once again, then rehashing is better. Eraser: Yes, of course you're right - there's a third argument to make about the general refusal to communicate on all sides. I'm just disgusted by the preference for personal attacks over reasoned discussion that some editors are prone to, and it's bringing out my bitter, sarcastic side. --Ludwigs2 14:07, 22 December 2011 (UTC) Ludwig's - its clear from the evidence that you are guilty of poor behaviour as well. Take the moral high ground. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:13, 22 December 2011 (UTC) Well, Eraser, what can I say: anyone who wants to buy into the soap-opera material that's being entered as evidence is entitled to do so, and there's not much I can do about it except smile/sneer. As is the norm on wikipedia debates of this sort, a significant portion of the discussion is never going to rise above pure emotional whinging; I'm just marking time while that plays out so that I can ignore it as much as possible when I enter my own evidence. What you fail to realize (and what I hope the arbs are sensible enough to see) is that at this point I'm more-or-less irrelevant to the discussion. Not that I don't have a useful perspective to offer, and not that I won't offer it regardless, but for the most part I'm consigned to the role of absorbing the pent up emotional energy of an entrenched conflict that started years before I entered it. All I've done is lay out reasonable and commonsensical perspectives and stand firm on them, and by that act of standing firm force the conflict into a limelight where reasonable editors (like you and Jayen and Hans) have a chance to weigh in on it. Possibly I should just walk away without entering evidence and leave it entirely to you guys; I'm of two minds about that. But either way, I'm more of an archetype here than an actual participant. --Ludwigs2 00:42, 23 December 2011 (UTC) I don't think this is the right place to go in depth on this issue. As I have explained on the talk page of WP:CENSORED, lack of images from any given reliable source is not proof that those images are wp:undue. Images in printed works are subject to quite a few editorial constraints, like space/cost/licensing, which aren't as prevalent for printed text. Because of WP:NOTPAPER (but also WP:FAIRUSE), Wikipedia can usually include visual material, including videos, that aren't easily included in printed works. The argument that lack of a visual element in a majority of printed works makes it undue in Wikipedia's articles is fraught with difficulties that don't apply to textual ideative material. I can give you quite a few examples of good (text-wise) MILHIST books that have very few and totally crappy maps. Does that make good maps undue in Wikipedia for those topics? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 13:58, 22 December 2011 (UTC) I believe Jayen466's point is that the balance of imagery is different in our sources from our article - e.g. they will include significantly more images of calligraphy rather than pictures. While the imagery as a whole may be constrained by WP:NOTPAPER that doesn't apply to the balance of different kinds of imagery in our sources. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:13, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

• The discussion associated with this workshop proposal has surpassed its usefulness. AGK [•] 04:06, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Images are subject to WP:NPOV

3) Images, like other article content, are subject to the WP:NPOV policy, specifically WP:DUE. In contentious cases, editors should make a good-faith attempt to base their selection and inclusion of images available for article illustration on the prevalence of the same or equivalent types of imagery in reliable sources on the article topic.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Not convinced this applies to this case. NPOV is quite far down the list of considerations WRT images, and then only in cases of gross bias. Jclemens (talk) 18:39, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Editors are generally given wide leeway in selecting article illustrations. But while the use of images for article illustration is often uncontroversial, and constrained by the pool of image files available, in contentious cases reliable sources should be used as a reference point to decide what types of images to include, and how prominently to include them. --JN466 15:48, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

This proposal is wrongheaded. Whilst reference to sources may be of use in choosing imagery for an article, it is not keeping with either NPOV or general WP practice to suggest that choice of imagery should duplicate what is found in a (hypothetical and elusive) average or typical source. NPOV is not a quest for an average. Our article on Justin Bieber, for example, does not have an abnormally high picture-to-text ratio and does not have washed-out love hearts in the background, even though these are things that may well characterise an "average" source on the subject. NPOV only applies to images insofar as they represent a "view" (ideological, rather than pictorial). What we are dealing with here, though, are views about religious preferences and about editorial decision-making, rather than views about the subject of the article. I would say this makes NPOV moot.

However, even in the case that the images are held to represent a "view" for the purposes of NPOV, applying it would not give the result intended, because an honest examination of sources would not justify the removal of any images of Mohammed from the article (of course, "honest" here is in the eye of the beholder and it is likely that anyone examining sources will end up concluding whatever it was they set out to). --FormerIP (talk) 17:08, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I see no evidence that images of Bieber in reliable sources customarily feature hearts (notwithstanding the presence of a few such images on fan sites). But if, for argument's sake, 20% of images in reliable sources were of that type, it would be entirely appropriate for us to feature one too, to reflect a significant aspect of his popular reception. --JN466 17:25, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Your google must be censoring hearts, because there are quite a few images there with hearts depicted. In triplicate on some. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 00:25, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

What this seems like is that Jayen has already decided that there should be less images of Muhammad in the article, then goes out to try and shape existing policy to support that conclusion. To me, that is a backwards approach to editing. Tarc (talk) 20:38, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Given NPOV is non-negotiable I would have thought this was obvious... -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:02, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

NPOV is indeed non-negotiable, but the heart of this dispute is conflicting interpretations of what it means to meet NPOV in this subject area. Tarc (talk) 21:06, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. It reflects policy and is an elegant dispute-breaker. Following NPOV wrt image selection would have obviated the talkfests at Muhammad, Pregnancy and Suicide and countless others. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:53, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• This seems clearly to be an attempt to craft Wikipedia policy around this one specific case. Actually, we've got well established, time-tested doctrine which is clear even here; what we have are a small handful of POV warriors trying to rewrite the rules or filibuster their opposition into submission, whichever comes first. It's ludicrous saying that "reliable sources" should determine image selection; our pool of possible images ultimately determines which images are used in a given article, and editorial consensus determines that. There is a majority view and a minority view on this matter in this specific case. The minority refuses to go away on the matter and has engaged in disruptive behavior in an effort to win the day. Seven-eighths of this problem can be resolved with three well placed topic bans, and the other one-eighth can be resolved by agreement among the remaining editors. That's the truth. Carrite (talk) 19:32, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
• This seems like a reasonable principle which is in line with Wikipedia policy. --Elonka 23:06, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
• Sounds good in theory, but in practice you can either include or not include an image. If sources disagree, you don't have the flexibility to escape to the metalanguage of attribution as you have for text. Furthermore, an image may lack from a source for a variety of reasons, which have nothing to do with wp:undue (printing costs, etc.) And determining the balance of images in practice still comes down to editorial judgement. Mechanical bean counting can have absurd results, as I showed in my reply to AGK's questions above. Practical test: should the article on Xenu include those cartoon pictures based on the NPOV test as JN466 conceives it? Do they appear in the majority of sources on Xenu? I doubt it. Is South Park a reliable source about Xenu? JN466 actually contested the inclusion of that image as UNDUE (Talk:Xenu#In popular culture) and the discussion got very, very long. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:33, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I seem to recall that the upshot was that one or two of the cartoon images were deleted, and that whole section got shortened quite a bit. ;) The thing with Xenu is, there is not very much scholarly literature about it at all, so popular press sources – which have indeed referred to South Park etc. – actually deserve some weight, because there isn't much else to write an article with. But do you propose that our article on a topic like Muhammad, with a scholarly tradition stretching back hundreds of years, should be constructed on the mental level of South Park? --JN466 20:08, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
    • Are you seriously comparing the Persian miniatures with South Park? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:09, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
• Once again, true, but not in the sense that Jayen466 attempts to use it. While we must apply NPOV, we must also use some common sense in evaluating these sources. A source that defers to Muslim sensitivities about depicting Mohammed must be considered to be a biased source when making that evaluation. In general, a book by someone that considers Muhammad to be a prophet must be treated very suspiciously when searching for material about Muhammad the historical figure. Otherwise, we risk having further travesty articles like Jesus myth theory, which presents the astonishing notion that most Christians believe the evidence supports the existence of Jesus Christ.—Kww(talk) 16:26, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

  Once more, with feeling – so books by the foremost scholars of Islam in the Western world, like those of Annemarie Schimmel (e.g. [28][29]), university press-published, with hundreds of citations in the scholarly literature, that have been required reading in innumerable university courses – in other words, sources that are as mainstream and establishment as you can get in the real world, beyond the world of South Park – should be deemed "biased" in Wikipedia because they are openly celebratory of mainstream Islamic imagery? --JN466 20:08, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Without considering the specific source, yes absolutely. If a source carries an identifiable bias, we should treat it as a source that carries a bias. Surely that's uncontroversial? --FormerIP (talk) 21:47, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me you are simply calling POVs you don't like "bias". And, frankly, your opinion is irrelevant against that of the academic mainstream. --JN466 22:02, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

No. As I indicated, I haven't even looked at the source and I don't know what its POV is, other than that it is "openly celebratory of mainstream Islamic imagery". I also don't know exactly what that means, but I'm assuming it to indicate a bias. Assuming the source has a POV, that needs - always - to be taken into account in evaluating it as a source. --FormerIP (talk) 22:07, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

So in other words, you are simply calling POVs you don't like 'biased'. Two points:

• Even if a source has a bias, all that means is that we need to balance it correctly with other sources.
• Bias is something that needs to be demonstrated. No doubt a source that identifies itself as Islamic (in the sense that they directly advocate for Muslim beliefs) could be considered biased, but it's a hell of a stretch to assume that normal academic (university press) sources are biased in any sense of the term. That would fly against normal academic standards and require fairly convincing proof. Assuming a scholarly source is biased because of your interpretation of a single quip about it is… well, let's leave it at 'bad logic'. --Ludwigs2 00:51, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs, it doesn't matter if a source shares my POV, your POV or Desmond Tutu's POV. If we aspire to achieve NPOV, we are obliged always to consider the issue of bias in sources and what we should do about it. This applies to academic sources as much as any other. Since the whole basis of your thesis regarding the article is that NPOV needs to be applied, I would have expected you to have thought through the implications of that already. --FormerIP (talk) 20:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

FIP: Scholarly sources are the sine qua non of Wikipedia standards. You want to assert that sources which establish their reputations by being neutral, independent examples of scholarship are biased solely because they don't conform to your (peculiar) standards of censorship. You effecively destroy NPOV and Wikipedia in the process, because you uproot the only standard the project has for neutrality. is that what you mean to do? --Ludwigs2 19:16, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Good research: NPOV and sourcing

4) Good and unbiased research, based upon the best and most reputable authoritative sources available, helps prevent NPOV disagreements.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Seemingly fine principle, but not applicable in this case. Jclemens (talk) 18:40, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Verbatim policy quote from Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Good_research. --JN466 20:32, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with this. The sooner the good and unbiased research can begin, the better. --FormerIP (talk) 20:39, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Good research wins arguments and is far less tedious in the long run. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:52, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

It does not, however, prevent misapplication of NPOV itself. Resolute 18:38, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Quality of sources

5) Wikipedia articles rely mainly on reliable mainstream secondary sources. Academic and peer-reviewed publications are the most highly valued sources and are usually the most reliable.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Not sure how this applies to this case. Really, the whole "peer-reviewed" bit is only applicable to areas covered by peer-reviewed literature. Note also that "mainstream" is used in a substantially different sense in WP:IRS than in this principle. Jclemens (talk) 19:15, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Standard, part of a wording used in many prior cases (e.g. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Lapsed_Pacifist_2#Sourcing_of_articles. In light of the fact that some editors here champion South Park and Everybody Draw Mohammed Day in assessing NPOV, while at the same time asserting that the academic mainstream is biased, it seems unfortunately necessary to say this. We are aspiring to be an encyclopedia, not a cartoon show. --JN466 22:13, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Noble, but not applicable. Reliable sources verify and support the content of the article, but sources do not dictate or guide image usage and placement. Those are a matter of editorial judgement. Tarc (talk) 22:27, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:31, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, but noting that there is in general a considerable naivety here about the processes governing the selection of illustrations in commercial publishing, which often is not controlled by the authors of the text, may well be subject to general diktats from corporate management, and not subscribe to policies comparable to WP:NOTCENSORED. Illustrations obviously do not need to be referenced in the same way as text on Wikipedia, and attempting to use commercial illustrations as "sources" in the same way as the text they illustrate is often a mistake. Johnbod (talk) 04:52, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

This is a variety of the "our sources are all censored and incompetent, and we're not/know better" argument. One big drawback of this argument is that, looking at Wikipedia as a whole, it is clear that the average Wikipedian does not know better. If they did, we wouldn't have WP:V, WP:OR and WP:NPOV. --JN466 16:17, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Support. This one is pretty standard. --Elonka 16:41, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality, verifiability and appropriate weight

6) The neutrality policy requires that articles reflect the content of reliable sources accurately and in an unbiased manner, giving prominence to viewpoints and related content in proportion to their representation in reliable sources. The verifiability policy requires the use of the best and most reputable sources available, with prevalence in these sources determining the proper weight to be placed upon any particular type of content. Apparently significant content that has not received proportionally significant attention in the topic's literature should be treated with caution and included only to the extent that it is supported by reliable sources. In deciding the appropriate weight to place upon a particular type of content, it is its prevalence within reliable published sources that is important, not the prominence given to it by Wikipedians or the general public.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Not applicable to images--at least, not within the scope of this discussion, as far as I can see. Jclemens (talk) 19:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Modelled on last year's Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Transcendental_Meditation_movement#Neutrality, verifiability and appropriate weight. --JN466 19:06, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Not applicable to images - see my comment in the section above, which applies here too. Johnbod (talk) 04:58, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Due weight of controversial content

7) The Wikimedia Foundation’s Resolution on Contoversial Content urges editors to pay particular attention to the curation and placement of all kinds of potentially controversial content. Potentially controversial content should be included in Wikipedia articles in due proportion to its prevalence in the best and most reputable sources. The use of potentially offensive imagery in Wikipedia articles should reflect the prevalence of equivalent imagery in authoritative sources on the article topic. Such imagery should not be noticeably more common or prominent in Wikipedia articles than it is in reliable sources.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Again, this would be inventing policy regarding images that does not exist. Jclemens (talk) 19:20, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Incorporates wording from the Board Resolution. One might add that available media that have not been used for article illustration can be made accessible via a Commons link. --JN466 19:06, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose per Thryduulf below. Johnbod (talk) 17:58, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Oppose as putting words into the Foundation's mouth. The first sentence comes from the board resolution, the second sentence onwards is entirely your own words, repeating a position that has not attracted a consensus in the couple of months (at least) you've been presenting it here and at WT:NOT. Thryduulf (talk) 22:56, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed findings of fact

Depictions of Muhammad are controversial

1) Depictions of Muhammad are controversial both on-wiki and off-wiki, as highlighted in recent years by the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, and extensive edit-warring about images in the article Muhammad in the years since then.

Comment by Arbitrators:

So it's controversial... but so what? So is Virgin Killer's artwork. Jclemens (talk) 19:21, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I concur with Jclemens. I don't see why the contested nature of depictions of Muhammad is very important. Controversial subjects have been dealt with very well on Wikipedia, and uncontroversial topics have been the subject of ridiculously protracted dispute; controversy isn't a constant in Wikipedia disputes, and for that reason I don't think it's a factor we need to go so far as to acknowledge in the final decision. AGK [•] 14:24, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed, for context. --JN466 10:49, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

agreed, but as with Kww, irrelevant to Wikipedia's purpose. Resolute 06:01, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

By any measure. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:34, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

@AGK, the concept of "controversial" is extremely pertinent to this case, if the Foundation controversial content resolution is pertinent to this case. In order to severely limit the instances when modifications to intellectual openness should be considered by editors, the Harris report uses "controversial" rather than simply "objectionable", which could apply to any picture, anywhere.

“Controversial,” on the other hand, to us, implies a social process, an acknowledgment that certain types of content (say, images of explicit sexuality) generally create a reaction among broad groups of individuals, each acting independently, and without ulterior motive, that gives us more confidence that we might consider these reactions legitimate and worthy of consideration. There are objective tests for the concept “controversial,” we believe, whose use can ensure the legitimacy of consideration by an open Wikimedia culture of potential modifications to that openness.

If figurative depictions of Muhammad are controversial, then the guidance contained in the Foundation resolution applies to our curation of them. I suppose Jayen is establishing that with this proposal. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:09, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

• support it clearly is controversial. Whether or not we should pay attention to it is a separate question, but trying to deny that a controversy exists would just be dumb. --Ludwigs2 01:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Support. I think there is no doubt that they are controversial. As to relevance: If they were not controversial we would not be here. There was even an outside attack on Wikipedia related to them, years ago, which led to strong reactance that some editors are still showing rather openly today. The foundation resolution [30] with which Ludwigs2 started the discussion and whose relevance has been denied by some editors is explicitly about controversial content and defines it in a way that clearly covers these images. I am just not sure we need a separate finding on this. It could be integrated into a finding on the applicability of the Foundation resolution. Hans Adler 14:35, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Support generally, though would recommend including the timeframe of the controversy (2005), that the edit-warring occurs in multiple Muhammad-related articles, and that the controversy is much older, not just Jyllands- and wiki-related.[31] --Elonka 00:39, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. The nature of the controversy is one which is irrelevant to the project, and must be ignored while making all policy and editorial decisions.—Kww(talk) 16:28, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. While trivially true this is also misleading; the controversy is not simply between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Contra Kww, the nature of the controversy is relevant to the project in that this isn't even about one religion's beliefs, but those of one sect of one religion. We're not in the business of adjudicating between different sects' beliefs, nor should we be. Prioryman (talk) 19:03, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Question: How does framing the question as "Muslims vs everyone" vs "Shia vs everyone" or even "Predestinarian Baptists vs everyone else" in any way invalidate the statement that since the controversy is based in a religious belief it becomes irrelevant to a secular project?—Kww(talk) 21:44, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

WMF Resolution on controversial content

2) In 2010, the Wikimedia Foundation commissioned a study on controversial content, and in May 2011 passed a Resolution concerning controversial content. The Resolution specifically mentioned religious content that may be offensive to some viewers, and Muhammad images were highlighted in the Wikimedia study, linked to in the Resolution. The WMF resolution urges the community to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining whether it has a realistic educational use and applying the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement

Comment by Arbitrators:

I just re-read the resolution, and I note that it applies primarily to Wikimedia Commons, which has an entirely different set of problems. Jclemens (talk) 19:23, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Per Elonka, with some details added. --JN466 10:49, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to see the committee endorse this. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:57, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

@Jclemens, It's been fairly clearly established that the board was addressing all projects in that resolution. One sentence addressed Commons specifically. [32][33] --Anthonyhcole (talk) 22:37, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

As worded this is not applicable to the present situation, particularly the "least astonishment" bit, and I think the proposer is glossing over some of what the study actually said. "We start with a bias towards openness but agree to limit that openness, based on respect for our users, as little as possible", for starters. As noted by myself and by others, the current state of the article is a product of such a give-and-take discussion awhile back. Tarc (talk) 13:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Per Franamax, below, this proposal isn't suitable to be taken forward in its current form, simply because what it says is either not true or does not give the full picture. --FormerIP (talk) 18:00, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Two board members have clarified the ambiguity; Franamax was mistaken. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:45, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

It's pretty obvious just from reading the resolution that: (1) It is motivated by the situation at Commons. (2) They nevertheless tried to come up with general wording that works for all of Wikimedia. It's in the first half of the resolution (first sentence and first four items). (3) The addressed Commons specifically in the second half of the resolution (next sentence and last three items).

Part of the text proposed here is taken from the second part. That is not appropriate, as it is tailored to the specific situation at Commons and would require significant interpretation and rephrasing before it is applicable to Wikipedia. Even the word curating indicates that. It would be an odd choice for what we are doing here. Unlike Commons, Wikipedia is a book, not a museum. Hans Adler 14:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the issue at Commons triggered the investigation. The resolution does rather invite speculation along the lines of your second point. Others have made similar comments. It is necessary to read the Harris report and the working group's recommendations to see the careful deliberation that went into its final form. The other projects were far from an afterthought. They were central to the process from its outset. On the question of whether the entire resolution applies to all projects, (3) please see Jimmy Wales and Ting Chen, who, as chairman, is speaking for the board. They explain precisely how they're using "curate" in one of those documents, and that explanation makes it clear they're addressing all projects. (I'll have a look for it later.) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:42, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Anthony, what they have to say in the end is really not as important as how we as the en.wiki community ultimately decides to interpret the resolution and gauge its applicability to our project. Resolutions are not mandates. The outcome of an RfC on this matter could very likely wind up with a "that's nice, the Commons sure does have a lot of work to do, don't they?" finding that what the board suggests is incompatible with current en.wiki policy. Tarc (talk) 15:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I think we owe it to the Foundation to at least make sure we have grasped its intended meaning. Hans was under the impression there is some ambiguity about the entire resolution applying to this project. I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts on that question.

I hope the RfC concludes that we must pay attention to any offense we may cause our readers, and that we must minimise that, wherever it is possible to do so without harming the real educational value of the encyclopedia, and that we should consider our readers' expectations when curating controversial content. However, if we repudiate the Foundation resolution and choose to ignore it, I expect the Foundation will mandate that behaviour. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I did in fact miss that Jimbo has affirmed that that particular sentence holds for us. I don't think it makes a real difference, as you will seem if you wade through the following TL;DR explanation.

The resolution clearly consists of two parts. Let's call them Part I ("The WMF board affirms that: [4 items]") and Part II ("In light of the recommendations [...] and the above principles: [3 items]"). It's important to distinguish between them.

Part I contains the principles. They are clearly meant to be so general that they apply to all Wikimedia projects. It is not clear how well this has succeeded (and someone from the Foundation cautioned not to practise too much tea-leaf reading), but essentially these principles are meant to be directly meaningful for all projects including the English Wikipedia.

Part II is the urging and asking. It is primarily directed at Commons, because the problems were so bad there (especially pornographic images in categories where no reasonable person would expect them) that immediate action was required. But some of it is directed to the executive director (Sue Gardner), presumably not because that's a more effective way of informing her than email but to make it clear to everyone that she would be working on the image hiding feature because the board wants it, not on a whim. And some of it is directed, oddly, to "the community" with no further explanation. I can think of several likely scenarios that lead to such an ambiguous wording, but all of them lead to the same result: The sentence is applicable to Wikipedia but requires careful interpretation because it has, essentially, not been written with this application in mind.

In Part I we find the principle of least astonishment, among others. Part II urges us all to apply it. It explains what it means, implicitly with Commons in mind. To arrive at a reasonable interpretation for our case, we must start with the principle as described in Part I and find an overall understanding of its meaning that is compatible the intended application to Commons. This will then give us a reasonable interpretation for our case.

Btw, I still maintain that any reading of "curate" that applies to what we normally do (i.e. putting words together) must be an afterthought, probably added when they had spent a lot of effort and realised that if they don't generalise it they may have to spend it again as soon as similar problems arise in one of the bigger national Wikipedias.Hans Adler 18:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but I must insist that you support this statement "The sentence is applicable to Wikipedia but requires careful interpretation because it has, essentially, not been written with this application in mind." I think it's clear from the Harris report and the working group recommendations that, though the first sentence singles out Commons, the entire paragraph applies to the whole Wikimedia community. You are in no position to declare how they are using "curate" when you haven't read their explanation of how they're using it. I don't have time to search for that now, but will once the blackout is over. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 21:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agree with adjusted wording. It's definitely worth mentioning that the Wikimedia study specifically referred to this exact topic, images of Muhammad, as an example of controversial content. --Elonka 23:47, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Some thoughts added at Elonka's submission, but I agree that the WMF resolution and study has come to guide the community - and this committee's - thinking about controversial content, and that it must therefore be mentioned in the final decision. AGK [•] 16:36, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Except that "sacred" images (incl. Muhammad's) were highlighted in the study to show how they are fundamentally different from sexual/violent material, and different recommendation were made for "sacred" stuff. [34]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:52, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Hang on a sec though: the WMF resolution is urging the Commons community to do these things. The wording here is misleading, as the Board had the choice whether or not to urge more than just Commons, and chose not to. So this should be restated accordingly. Franamax (talk) 17:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Please read the resolution in its entirety. There are some parts of the resolution which refer to the Commons, but other sections are referring to all Wikimedia projects, not just Commons. --Elonka 17:57, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I have already read the resolution in its entirety (thanks for the advice though ;), and that is what I am urging others to do as well. The specific text being used here comes from a paragraph addressing the Commons community. The scope is narrowed in the first sentence, with no indication that the subsequent "the community" is intended to be of broader scope. The second sentence urges the community to pay "particular" attention to one aspect, i.e. expands on the first sentence, but still within the same scope. This is distinct from the Foundation's use of "the Projects", which does indeed apply universally. Franamax (talk) 21:32, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Two board members have clarified this somewhat ambiguous language and confirmed "We urge the community ..." is addressing all projects. [35][36] --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:45, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

The working group that studied Harris & Harris expressly included sacred controversial images in its recommendation concerning curation of controversial content and expressly included all projects in that recommendation:

We suggest urging the community to continue actively reviewing and curating (especially controversial) content; this is a re-wording of [Harris & Harris] recommendations 4,5 & 6 (reviewing sexual images) that is more inclusive to all kinds of controversial content, and that recognizes that content curation is a part of ongoing work on all projects.

(Emphasis mine)

The board's resolution addresses the Wikimedia community and addresses all controversial content which it defines as violent, sexual or sacred when it says

We urge the community to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining whether it has a realistic educational use and applying the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement.

This is the third time I've had to post this correction on this page. I would appreciate it if ASCIIn2Bme, if he agrees he's mistaken, would strike his misleading statements (that the advice concerning curation of controversial images does not apply to sacred images.) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:06, 27 December 2011 (UTC) Added clarification in parenthesis 02:42, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Anthony, I don't think it's at all clear that "the community" means "the Wikimedia community". The normal thing would be that it refers to the same community as mentioned in the sentence immediately prior. In fact, you asked Jimbo for clarification on this yourself, and he said that "the plain text of one paragraph does "urge" the Commons community in particular". That can only be a reference to the paragraph we are talking about. --FormerIP (talk) 18:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The whole response from Jimbo is here:

I'm unaware of any discussion at the board level that would suggest that the resolution applies only to commons. However, it is worth noting that the plain text of one paragraph does "urge" the Commons community in particular. I speak only for myself here: my view of that line is that the Commons community has had the biggest difficulties in coming to grips with our responsibilities in this area (for some good reasons, I should hasten to add), and therefore good people there needed extra support to get things done. It isn't that the resolution doesn't apply to all Wikimedia projects, it is that the other projects already generally do a very good job of dealing with these issues.-- Jimbo Wales talk 13:51, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

The paragraph Jimbo refers to is

We urge the Commons community to continue to practice rigorous active curation of content, including applying appropriate categorization, removing media that does not meet existing policies and guidelines for inclusion, and actively commissioning media that is deemed needed but missing. We urge the community to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining whether it has a realistic educational use and applying the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement.

Does the second sentence address the community as a whole (all projects) or, like the first sentence, only Commons?

I have asked for clarification. [37] --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:20, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

It applies to all projects. [38] --JN466 08:37, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

And [39] --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:48, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Concur that the clarification is pretty, well, clear. I would recommend that someone suggest a new FoF that includes links to the studies, the resolution, the section of the study that refers specifically to Images of Muhammad, and the clarification links, all in one place. --Elonka 16:46, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Discussion continues on the talk page [40]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:59, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Battleground editing

3) The Muhammad article has been subject to battleground editing by editors with strongly held views on religion, free speech and censorship. A number of past and present contributors appear solely interested in the issue regarding the inclusion or exclusion of Muhammad images, and are not participating in any other part of editing or expansion of the article.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Finally--something that I can endorse! Jclemens (talk) 19:24, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --JN466 10:49, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

@ASCIIn2Bme: No. While the discussions have been extensive, my interest and editing in the article is certainly not limited to the Muhammad image issue. --JN466 01:25, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I will admit that my interest in this topic is mainly the preservation of Wikipedia's neutrality against religious censorship. I helped form the original consensus following the petition nonsense, I helped explain it to those who ventured by in the time since, and I attempted to broker another consensus here. With that in mind, I challenge the implication that your second statement constitutes evidence of your first. An interest in one aspect of an article does not diminish the value of an editor's contributions. Resolute 06:05, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• I am not sure I do agree with this, though clearly there has been lots and lots of argument, much far too long and too sharp. Back in the summer some changes were made, and others have nearly been agreed. Some minor points find consensus relatively successfully. The images talk page is specifically for discussion of the images issue, so it seems pointless to complain that this is what editors there are interested in! The page does tend to collect "talk-page only" editors who drift from argument to argument without doing much else on the project. Johnbod (talk) 05:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I basically agree with this. However, I am sensing an implied message that people who stumble into a battleground should stay well away from the fighting and till the field. That's an unrealistic expectation. Content work is very hard to do when other people keep being wrong on the Internet, and when a group of editors is keeping an article hostage the reason we want the wider community to get involved is not so that they improve unrelated aspects of the article. Of course, in the rare cases that a newcomer does that, it generally gives more credibility to them.

I think we should focus on whether editors are trying to bring the dispute itself forward towards consensus, or whether they are just obstructing or disrupting. Hans Adler 14:59, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• Are you including yourself in that category? Because the ratio of your substantial, non-image edits to the article relative to number of edits you have made to the images talk sub-page surely points in that direction. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 11:24, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

• Better clarify who this is adressed to (then remove this). Johnbod (talk) 01:37, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

• Agree with the Battleground finding, though it might be worth expanding it from just the Muhammad article, to say "The Muhammad article and other Islam- or Muhammad-related articles". For example, images that have anything to do with Muhammad are routinely deleted and restored in a battleground fashion at Black Stone, Isra and Mi'raj, and other locations. --Elonka 23:55, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

• They are routinely deleted in a battlefield fashion but I take issue with your claim that they are restored in the same spirit. If people are deleting them without discussion and while ignoring clear warnings in the page, then that's essentially vandalism. It gets reverted routinely and usually without drama, like 99.99% of vandalism elsewhere in Wikipedia. Reverting vandalism is never "battlefield conduct". Prioryman (talk) 19:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
  • The article has been semi-protected since 2008, I think. That stopped the drive-by image vandalism dead, along with the need for routine reverts. --JN466 22:40, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• That may be true for the main Muhammad article but it certainly isn't the case for all the others that include pictures of him. Prioryman (talk) 22:34, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Increase in number of images since the cartoon controversy

4) The number of images of Muhammad, and especially unveiled images of Muhammad, increased sharply in the wake of the Jyllands-Posten cartoon controversy, and increased further after the article gained GA status in 2008.

Comment by Arbitrators:

I understood that the 2008 controversy was not a factor in this dispute, and I would be rather disappointed to find that it was. AGK [•] 14:31, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --JN466 10:57, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

@Elonka: There is circumstantial evidence. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Muhammad_images/Evidence#Article_history. About half the Muhammad images in Commons were uploaded from http://zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/, a site set up in response to the Jyllands-Posten controversy. --JN466 00:58, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• Per Elonka below, the linkage remains to be demonstrated. In any case the choice, number and placement of images has been very heavily "curated" in recent years (yes, that is what we have been doing on the images talk page), just as Harris and Harris suggest, and the images we now have are the result of that process (which nobody thinks is complete) Johnbod (talk) 14:50, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Jayen is suggesting a cause and effect that I do not believe is supported by any actual evidence, and I find it a bit insulting that this is being implied. My involvement with the article has been sporadic over the years, but IIRC I have never personally added an image to the article, or encouraged others to do so. I reverted image deletions by SPAs and random IPs back in the day when the article was unprotected. To my knowledge I have never edited at or participated in discussions regarding the Jyllands-Posten article, either. Tarc (talk) 14:51, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Not sure about the first part. That was before my time.

@AGK: The 2008 dispute affected this article directly, as the New York Times reported. [41] There is a lot of evidence of that on ANI as well. Presumably many of the current guardians of the Muhammad images got the article on their watchlists at the time. Tarc has been quite open about the fact that he is seeing things exclusively from this angle [42], and in fact his first edits to the article and its talk page were in February 2008. I think his persistent extreme accusations of bad faith against Ludwigs2 and others can only be understood before this background. Note that I am only picking out Tarc because he is exceptionally open about this. I am pretty sure that several others are also seeing things from this angle, as their actions and behaviour would not make sense otherwise. Hans Adler 15:16, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Is there evidence to support this? The controversy was in 2005, so it might be difficult to state whether the number of images increased because of the controversy, or whether it was just a natural part of Wikipedia's growth at the time. --Elonka 00:41, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

The sad fact of life is that most Wikipedians (or Commonipedians??) only upload what's already on the Internet, regardless of the field. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 08:52, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

FormerIP

5) User:FormerIP has sought to block the development and implementation of a compromise proposal to reduce the number of figurative images (1) by performing reverts [43][44] against talk page consensus at a time when he had never contributed to either the article or any of its talk pages before, (2) by disrupting content discussions at Talk:Muhammad/images [45][46][47][48], and (3) by misrepresenting WP:NPOV policy about reflecting viewpoints in proportion to their prevalence in the best and most reputable authoritative sources [49][50][51][52][53].

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --JN466 01:52, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm happy for these diffs to be reviewed because I don't think they evidence any sanctionable conduct. I think it would be hard to find a dispute that had got all the way to ArbCom without anyone performing any reverts. The reverts I performed were certainly not against consensus (otherwise, do you imagine that we would still be here now?) and Jayen neglects to mention that they were made in the context of the RfC proposal at WP:NOT which had, at that time, not closed but had certainly collapsed. I think it is obvious why - being involved at NOT but unaware that a discussion had started on the muh/images subpage (it was kinda done on the quiet - this is acknowledged above [54] by Resolute, who started that discussion) - I might see the wholesale removal of "offensive" images to be out of order.

The alterations to image captions were previously dealt with at ANI, where I agreed not to change them any further. Actually, "agreed" is not the right word, because the only admin to comment didn't feel there had been a breach of anything and so I wasn't actually asked (please note also that the admin is also wrong to state that I carried on with the edits "after objection" - although it might be fair to say that I could not have expected Jayen or Luwigs to be delighted with them, no-one objected prior to launching the ANI complaint). In defence of the edits, it is sometimes irritating when editors appear to be adding images to a discussion not to further it but simply to take up real estate. I would also ask for this edit to be taken into consideration and the question asked: why was it never reverted if it is such a horrible thing to do?

The diff where I use the header "margarine" was not intended as disruptive but as a way of expressing objection to what I saw as an unhelpful poll. No-one complained at the time, editors appeared to take it in good humour ([55][56]) and I think it helped to nudge the discussion in a more productive direction (I guess that can be judged by reviewing the discussion that followed on the talkpage).

The other diffs presented I am more than happy for anyone to look at because I think they make reasonable and valid points. --FormerIP (talk) 02:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Mostly disagree. The reversions of Jayen's premature changes - 1) above - were I think perfectly justified and have remained. Some of the December 10th caption changes at 2) were not serious, or intended to remain in place (the 2 Elonka cites below), but other edits in that group seem ok. Nothing wrong with group 3) that I can see. Johnbod (talk) 14:58, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

I have not been following the discussions in detail, but I would concur that some of those diffs are pretty damning. It is difficult to see actions like these[57][58] as being made in good faith or being helpful to the discussion. --Elonka 02:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I found them mildly amusing, if a bit WP:POINTy. For reference, here's the rather underwhelming ANI thread on that. He already promised not to repeat that behavior. Perhaps an official ArbCom warning might be justified though. After all, Ludwigs2 got away with that level of sanction the first time around. By the way, do you have any opinion on the evidence against Ludwigs2 or Hans Adler presented in this case? How do all those personal attacks look relative to this? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 09:00, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I definitely want to offer an opinion on that, but am still wading through the large amounts of discussion and diffs. Even keeping up with the flow of this Workshop page is somewhat of a fulltime job, despite my familiarity with the topic area. Since I haven't been directly involved with the dispute, I'm still trying to sort out who's who, and what everyone's positions are. I pity the arbs trying to make sense of it all! --Elonka 18:15, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Tarc

6) User:Tarc has misrepresented WP:NPOV policy [59][60][61] and engaged in battleground behaviour [62][63][64][65][66][67].

Comment by Arbitrators:

Actually, while I disagree with Tarc on a number of matters, I find the three "misrepresentations" you cite above entirely in line with my understanding of our NPOV policy. That's going to be a pretty good barometer that policy disagreement is within the realm of allowable disagreement between editors. Jclemens (talk) 19:30, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --JN466 01:52, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh dear, these are the stops we're trying to pull now; "I don't agree with tarc on a policy matter" now equates to "tarc is misrepresenting policy" ? After all the nice things I sad about you? Yeesh. As I've said before, the heart of this matter is a disagreement over the fundamental application of policy to Muhammad and images, namely NPOV. You and a handful of others feel it violates NPOV to use images in the article when such images aren't prevalent in Islamic culture. The rest of us feel that it would violate NPOV to remove images for that very reason. Tarc (talk) 02:15, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

That summary is incorrect, Tarc. I have expressly said, many times over, that in order to comply with WP:NPOV, we should have some figurative Muhammad images among our Islamic images, especially a mi'raj image. This was the last straw for me. --JN466 04:24, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

And as I have expressly said, your take on what it means to meet NPOV in regards to Muhammad and images is not an opinion I share. You wish to take into consideration the fact that such images are not widely used in Islamic culture, and as such, or article provides an imbalanced, NPOV-violating point of view on Muhammad. Let me say this clearly; I fundamentally oppose you on that position. You are undercutting your own credibility in this case by trying to get my opinions on this matter declared disruptive. Tarc (talk) 04:30, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I understand this to say that RS don't matter for NPOV balance, and this that views reflecting present editor demographics, rather than prevalence in reliable sources, should be decisive. You may want to revisit or elucidate those statements; especially in light of the Foundation opening a second office in India, which is home to about 175 million Muslims. --JN466 05:30, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Your responses do not have the slightest bit of relevance to what we're talking about. Let's try again. I have an opinion. You have an opposing opinion. That is all there is to it. If I were acting like a Ludwigs....screaming my opinion at the top of my lungs, month after month after month, declaring my opinion to be superior and my opponents' inferior, calling the lot of you bigots, forum-shopping when I didn't get my way...well then Jayen, you'd have a point. You would also do well to recall that, when Roger Davies asked about acceptance of any RfC finding I answered "An RfC is the proverbial will of the people, I would accept any finding." Again, I have an opinion of how to interpret NPOV that you oppose. Even Kww thinks I am wrong on one point. He's entitled to that. I have been strident in arguing that opinion, but IMO not disruptive in the slightest. Tarc (talk) 06:50, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Not really. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 14:17, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

@Jclemens: Wow.

Tarc in first diff: "We're not engaging in 'philosophical combat' here; what we are doing is ensuring that 'Islam's philosophical position' as you put it is not a possible or potential consideration when making editorial decision here. Their views are irrelevant."

Tarc in third diff: "This is the Western world's encyclopedia [...] We have no obligation or expectation to make our content cozy for those who are, for all intents and purposes, outside of the project's purview."

You: "entirely in line with my understanding of our NPOV policy. That's going to be a pretty good barometer that policy disagreement is within the realm of allowable disagreement between editors."

I must say this comment is entirely in line with my opinion on your good sense and your suitability as an arbitrator. Hans Adler 15:43, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

As a general note, I don't think it's fair to say that Tarc has misrepresented NPOV. It seems clear that he simply doesn't agree with it or doesn't agree with its application in this case. Hans Adler 15:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

On this point, I would say he's wrong, but primarily, I'd say he's mainly guilty of disagreeing with you.—Kww(talk) 02:11, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Kww

7) Kww has misrepresented sourcing policy. [68]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Contra my reactions to Tarc, above, I think that Kww's position is incorrect. Not sure that amounts to an actionable finding, however. I go to sleep every night when someone, somewhere, is wrong on teh Internetz. Jclemens (talk) 19:31, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. This statement ("No, Muslim scholars are not reliable sources about Muhammad, no more than they or Christian scholars are reliable sources about Jesus Christ as a historical figure. Anyone that believes someone to be a prophet, divine, or blessed by supernatural beings is capable of being disinterested or objective about the factual nature of the person's life or historical impact. It's an insurmountable obstacle."), from a sysop and recent arbcom candidate, is extraordinary enough to be worth noting. It boldly implies that someone like Omid Safi e.g., co-chair of the steering committee for the Study of Islam at the American Academy of Religion, who is a member of the advisory board of the Pluralism Project at Harvard and is published by top presses including Oxford University Press, and is presently cited in the Muhammad article, should not be a reliable source in Wikipedia because he's Muslim. --JN466 14:15, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Seems pretty poor and is counter to our sourcing policy. We don't exclude the CIA world factbook on grounds that it is going to be pro-American. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 14:19, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Do you find everything you disagree with to be a misrepresentation of policy? No, he is not a reliable source related to Muhammad the historical person. He is reliable only in terms of Islamic beliefs about Muhammad.—Kww(talk) 14:21, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I think a distinction needs to be made here between reliable sources (as we understand it in terms of WP:V) and impartial sources. Kww seems to be conflating the two. Prioryman (talk) 20:06, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Are any sources impartial? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:29, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

No, but some biases are irreparable. Imagine, for example, a source that considered George Bush to be a prophet of God, but, at the same time, devoted substantial effort to documenting the history of his life. Could you use such a source in Wikipedia? Probably, with caution, if other sources were doing so. Should you use such a site without qualification? Rarely. Would you think that patterning our editorial policy about coverage of George Bush after that source would even approach being a good idea? Definitely not.—Kww(talk) 18:46, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

If we are going to remove the ability for religious sources to source religious figures then we better promptly delete Jesus on verifiability grounds, or only refer to him as a fictional character as I don't believe there is any independent historical record of his existence. On the same lines we better describe the Bible as a work of fiction.

I don't think we can seriously say that doing that would be healthy for the projects future, or that it is really a tenable position for us to hold. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:39, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Muhammad was indisputably a real person: a real military leader, a real ruler, etc. Christ probably was not. They should be treated differently. Many statements about Muhammad can be presented as factual, but people that view him as divine can't be objective about his history. No statements about Jesus Christ can be presented as factual, but only as beliefs. Christians and Muslims alike can be reliable sources about beliefs about Christ (a holy figure in both religions). Muslims can be reliable sources about beliefs about Muhammad. Were you under the misapprehension that this article was not about the historic figure Muhammad, but was instead about Islamic religious beliefs?—Kww(talk) 19:03, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Muhammad having independent historical evidence for his existence makes the issue of treating Jesus differently likely to cause worse problems. Do you not think that causing an enormous amount of controversy by referring to Jesus as a fictional figure would be counter-productive? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:01, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

PS It also looks like there is third party evidence for the existence of Jesus after all which satisfies most scholars. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:06, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not aware of anyplace that Jesus is treated as existing in fact outside of the miserable Jesus myth theory and Historicity of Jesus articles. Generally, the contradictions between the different Gospels mean that statements about him are usually couched as "According to the Gospel of Luke, ....". Jesus myth theory and Historicity of Jesus are seriously flawed articles. It isn't much of a surprise that most Christians believe Christ existed, and are unable to objectively view the evidence about the topic. I don't fight that fight: too many believers on the site to ever win the battle.—Kww(talk) 20:11, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Tivanir2

8) Tivanir2 has demonstrated poor understanding of sourcing policy in these arbitration proceedings. [69]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. I am dismayed that an editor has to ask, in an arbitration proceeding on Muhammad, why porn sites should not be among those "best and most reputable authoritative sources" that policy tells us to research for arriving at a neutral point of view. It seems to indicate either a lack of basic competence, or a delight in being vexatious. Whichever it is is unlikely to be helpful in resolving a talk page dispute in which far too many words have been wasted already, and which hinges on a good understanding of NPOV and good source-based research. It's an invidious task for contributors to have to explain the ABC of encyclopedic sourcing to argumentative editors, over and over again. We are all aware that editor retention is in free-fall. The fundamental health of this project is at risk. Which subject matter expert will feel attracted to an encyclopedia project where they are asked to debate whether porn sites should be classed among the most reputable and authoritative sources in discussions about Islam? Is this what our donors give us money for? We have to uphold a certain basic standard of competence if we don't want to be mired in chaos. --JN466 15:25, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Stricken. On reflection in light of Elonka's comment, and another look back at Tivanir2's contributions history in the topic, it is clearly an isolated comment, and making it a finding would not be a fair reflection of Tivanir2's participation. --JN466 19:38, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• Actually it was suppose to be completely hypothetical and insisting I have a competence problem because I point something out that actions in mainstream articles might be ridiculous is absurd. I didn't say we should include it and I surely didn't start lobbying for the effort but more pornography is produced in a year than normal media. Taking that into account the mainstream images and available materials falls to that side of the track. I on the other hand trust good judgement by fellow editors to realize that including such images is inappropriate for this sort of project. Unless all sides of an argument can be looked at (regardless of patent absurdness) in a rational manner then there is no reason to continue. Other than a hypothetical there is nothing in the history of this account or the previous (tivanir) account that would qualify as problematic when dealing with sources so the claim I can't do things correctly is moot. Tivanir2 (talk) 18:27, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Just because an editor says one odd thing, does not mean we should immediately turn that into a Finding. Jayen466, please be a little more judicious with these? If you've got a dozen (blatant!) diffs in evidence, sure, a Finding might be appropriate. But not for one comment. --Elonka 18:12, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

FormerIP topic-banned

1) User:FormerIP is topic-banned from Muhammad image discussions in Wikipedia for one year.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --JN466 02:01, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Support, though might expand to wording like, "banned from making any edits related to images on Muhammad-related articles, broadly interpreted. This ban is project-wide, to include talkpages, userspace and Wikipedia policy discussions, though FormerIP is still allowed to engage in other non-image-related edits and discussions in the topic area." --Elonka 02:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Way to discredit yourself. --FormerIP (talk) 03:16, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Jayen466 has so far only proposed topic bans on his perceived opponents. Mathsci (talk) 03:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Seems reasonable as per my evidence. Additionally while he may only have added his "opponents" what's the point in adding Ludwigs again? His behaviour is discussed in multiple sections on this page already. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 13:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. FormerIP has been a sounding rock and not engaging in disruptive behavior. He already apologized for the infraction early and has not been disruptive since. I believe his error was on the side of vandalism protection and he didn't notice the section in question which quite frankly can be a mistake anyone is able to make. Tivanir2 (talk) 21:21, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• He's engaged in more than just reverting the addition, which I agree wouldn't be sanctionable. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:31, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

The only part I saw was the revert so I will keep reading and see if there is anything I would consider excessive. I will revise my comment if I find anything. Tivanir2 (talk) 13:52, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Reading through the diffs I personally hold that a project ban for a year would be a bit excessive. Granted he has a few area's that are controversial and I would propose instead of a long ban a short break (like a month or 3) before considering further action. Again I will be looking past the diffs but at least the arguments are calm and somewhat rational so it would be probable for reasoning, not him standing there beating his chest demanding we do things his way. Tivanir2 (talk) 14:03, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Tarc topic-banned

2) User:Tarc is topic-banned from Muhammad image discussions in Wikipedia for six months.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --JN466 02:01, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Jayen466 has so far only proposed topic bans on his perceived opponents. Mathsci (talk) 03:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Everyone else among the parties, including Ludwigs2, has been willing to work towards compromise on the content issue and to look at sources, without coming from an a-priori ideological position where certain POVs, even if well represented in reputable sources, are excluded. --JN466 04:36, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
    • The compromise was worked out in one of the periods when Ludwigs2 absented himself from WP following an ANI report on his poor conduct on Talk:Muhammad/Images. Mathsci (talk) 06:20, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Given you have not provided any evidence of wrongdoing by Tarc (that I can see, apologies if I missed somethig), then this proposal does seem to be based on his opposition to your viewpoint rather than a behavioural issue. Resolute 06:31, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

See my evidence then for large amounts of poor behaviour from Tarc. Additionally while he may only have added his "opponents" what's the point in adding Ludwigs again? His behaviour is discussed in multiple sections on this page already. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 13:47, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The behavior isn't model granted though I would like to point out he only takes that tone with one individual. He is extremely caustic even to people that share his viewpoint but some people are like that. However that being said I wouldn't be amazed at similar punishment to what Ludwigs receives, since the two individuals seem to feed off one another quite efficiently. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:10, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Really. I realize that sometimes at Arbcoms we see people take a CYA approach and hope that they can skate by unscathed, but I think if we dig up a few diffs of interactions of Ludwigs and you, Ludwigs and Robert, and so on, we'll see that all of these situations have a quite obvious connection; Ludwigs. I will grant that some of my historic causticness from other parts of the project is playing a part here...notoriety has a price and all...but mine wasn't the only hat to be thrown down in the hoedown here. Tarc (talk) 14:07, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Neither Robert or Tivanir has had a single diff presented against them because they have both generally managed to behave reasonably regardless of Ludwigs behaviour. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 14:28, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

As have I, eraser. The "evidence" presented by you an Jayen show sometimes sharp and pointed commentary on my part, but nothing more. As I have noted elsewhere, there is sometimes an almost reflexive need by some to find a 2nd party and satisfy the "takes two to tango" truism. You in particular are pretty high in the horse trying to paint me as a scapegoat for Ludwigs atrocious behavior. At most, I will say I should have stopped telling Ludwigs he was wrong the 6th time I did so rather than keep going til hitting the full dozen. But I will pick apart, with ease, your attempts to tar me as an equal partner to his hate-filled rants, all of which are found on the Evidence page. Tarc (talk) 15:03, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I suggest we agree to disagree, this discussion is unproductive. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:03, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I just finished running through all comments at the main talk page and while there may be a few in the gray area I saw no outright personal attacks. I have not reviewed the WP:NOT or other forums that these posts kept being moved around to yet but I will tomorrow. For now it is time for sleep, good evening to all. Tivanir2 (talk) 22:29, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Ludwigs2 and Tarc: interaction restriction

3) User:Ludwigs2 and User:Tarc shall neither communicate with each other nor comment upon each other's actions or edits either directly or indirectly on any page in the English Wikipedia. Both parties may, within reason, comment within the same pages providing their comments do not relate directly or indirectly to the other party. Neither party may respond directly to perceived violations of this interaction restriction nor seek arbitration enforcement but shall instead report the perceived violation to the Arbitration Committee by email.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. This still needs a related FoF with diffs, but both editors would benefit from ignoring each other. --JN466 02:01, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely not. I have always been fundamentally opposed to the very concept of the absurd WP:IBAN horseshit. Pardon my French. All these Wiki-restraining orders do is add a needless layer of red tape to already messy situations. Besides, we're interacting just fine here in the Arbcom pages. There were brief blips of vitriol that have long passed, and seriously, if they didn't give me and ChildofMidnight one in the Obama case a few years ago, there's certainly no call for one here. Sorry Jayen, but this is starting to come across as a little petty. Tarc (talk) 02:23, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I am likewise sorry. But the repeated extended dialogues between the two of you ranging from Muhammad to Pregnancy to policy have at times been quite personal, and have not actually helped bring the discussion forward. Would it really be so bad not to go hammer and tongs at each other any more? If you can disengage from each other by yourselves, there is no need for this. --JN466 03:24, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you're confused, as I have never had a thing to do with the pregnancy article. My overall point is that the concept of an "interaction ban" is retarded. If editors are doing something inappropriate then there are already dispute resolutions to follow to address that, there's no need to slap a layer of dumb bureaucracy onto the matter. I will also note that MANY editors have been up to their eyeballs in these discussions with Ludwigs, much of it just as heated on occasion. When one user's relationship with many is foul, you don't close your eyes and single out one person from the many and call it even; you sanction the lone troublemaker. Tarc (talk) 04:23, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The other disputes seemed to have subsided by themselves, whereas this one showed no sign of abating. You commented on Ludwigs2's involvement in the pregnancy dispute a couple of times [70][71], but if you say it hasn't been a major talking point between the two of you I take your word for it. (Refactored.) --JN466 05:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Either way on this for me. I've only rarely seen Tarc prior to this dispute, and as I expect this case to resolve the substantive matters here, it will be unlikely that he and I run into each other too much elsewhere on project.

That being said, however, Tarc and I represent diametrically opposed archetypes of the encyclopedia: he on a deeply Western, pro-individual, pro-freedom model, and I on a socially conscious, egalitarian, universalistic model. It would be very helpful to the project as a whole (if unpleasant for one of us personally), to firmly establish what the relationship between editors and readers is, so that the kind of entrenched ideological dispute that he and I have been having is obviated in future discussions. What responsibilities do we have to our readers? what aspects of our readership are we obliged to ignore? Questions like this really tangle up a talk page something fierce. I can draw this out in more detail if anyone would like. --Ludwigs2 02:53, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• The evidence page indicates that Ludwigs2's conduct towards multiple users on Talk:Muhammad/Images has been problematic. None of Jayen466's proposed remedies addresses that problem. Mathsci (talk) 03:53, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Seems reasonable above and beyond other steps taken. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 13:54, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• I would prefer that parties to the case not submit proposals for other parties to be sanctioned. While we allow parties to suggest possible interpretations of the dispute (in proposed principles) and less so to suggest findings of facts about other parties, remedy proposals of this nature look petty to me. If you think there has been misconduct by a party, then propose a finding to that effect, but going further to post a remedy is too far - and frankly, the arbitrators probably won't take it into account, if we even read it. Members of the committee come to their own decisions about how to deal with disruptive individuals. If you doubt that your approach is unhelpful, simply consider how useful the discussions attached to such proposals have been... AGK [•] 21:29, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• AGK, that is not in line with standard practice. Why should parties be prevented from suggesting remedies? They are usually the best placed to identify issues that need resolving. Sure, some remedies may be suggested for petty revenge, but that can backfire on the proposer. If someone suggests a remedy that no one else agrees with, then that can help (possibly) identify an individual who seems out of step with the rest of the discussion. Right now the Guide to arbitration says, "The Workshop subpage allows the parties, the community and the Arbitrators to analyze the evidence, offer suggestions about possible final decision proposals, and receive feedback." If parties are not supposed to be suggesting remedies, then the Guide to Arbitration should be changed, and a note to that effect ("Parties should not suggest remedies") placed in the template. But I'm not sure there would be support for that kind of change. --Elonka 22:00, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• I think Elonka is right. Often in the past remedies have been suggested by participants. That happened recently in the Abortion case, where one of the parties, MastCell, suggested topic bans on four other parties. Mathsci (talk) 22:11, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• I think it'd depend on the case and the participants. Here, all of our hands are at the very least smudged, and AGK is just saying "I'd prefer you not do it" rather than "don't do it". I deleted the empty templates from my section as I had no intention of suggesting sanctions on others. Tarc (talk) 22:26, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• I don't think my meaning was unclear in the first place, but Tarc has correctly interpreted my meaning. To be clear, my comment represented my own preference about such remedy proposals, not that of the committee; and when I said the arbitrators don't consider such proposed remedies, I mean they usually don't - and of course, I speak only for my own observations. I suppose the thing to learn is that arbitration isn't for splenetic barbs at other parties, and some of the proposals I have seen are poisoning the well. AGK [•] 13:44, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed enforcement

Template

1) {text of proposed enforcement}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Template

2) {text of proposed enforcement}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposals by User:Eraserhead1

Proposed principles (Eraserhead1)

Images in the Manual of Style

From the manual of style: "We should choose images that respect the conventional expectations of readers for a given topic as much as is possible without sacrificing the quality of the article."

Comment by Arbitrators:

Which readers? A reasonable man, or someone else? A reasonable man has every right to expect a picture of Muhammad in the article of the same name, prominently displayed in the infobox. Jclemens (talk) 19:47, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

I think it depends whether or not your reasonable man is a non-Turkish Sunni muslim or not.

Given Muhammad is the islamic prophet I suspect a fairly large percentage of the readership of the article will be in that category.

Even if they aren't a non-Turkish Sunni muslim given your reasonable man has to be "appropriately informed" and therefore must be aware that many muslims are offended by such imagery I think it is significantly less clear as to what they'd expect. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:35, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

A MoS is several orders of magnitude less important than a policy of WP:NOTCENSORED, though. Regardless of that, it has been pointed out several times by several editors that a reader of the Muhammad page on en.wiki should expect to see images. Not deference. Tarc (talk) 01:00, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

NOTCENSORED only applies to images in cases of gross bias

As per table 2 of my evidence how images are used varies widely even in featured articles, therefore WP:NOTCENSORED only applies to images in cases of gross bias, and anything else is up to editorial judgment.

Comment by Arbitrators:

The evidence seems to show a diversity of image densities in a few articles. I'm not sure that's enough to support any principle, let alone one as general as this. Not saying the principle is necessarily incorrect, just that it doesn't follow, at all, from the presented evidence as far as I can see. Jclemens (talk) 06:20, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties

Treating this as primarily a purely editorial issue seems like the most sensible way to come to a conclusion in a less heated fashion. This fits with table two of my evidence which shows a large variation in the number of depictions included of a subject even in featured historical biographies as well as Jclemens comment about NPOV which is a more important policy. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:00, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

"Gross bias?" What are you getting at, here? Where does the phrase come from? What do you mean? Thanks. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:28, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

That phrase comes from Jclemens comment on NPOV with regards to images. I've linked above. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:57, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

• The evidence provided by Eraserhead1 was pre-selected and the numbers too small to have any "statistical significance" in proving any hypothesis, one way or the other. Mathsci (talk) 08:59, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

• We can expand the data set if required quite easily. I've already asked AGK about this and he didn't seem bothered. And I certainly didn't "pre-select" the data - I have better things to do, and you should assume good faith. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:07, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

@Jclemens, given that NPOV is a pillar and WP:NOTCENSORED is not then we can't say that NPOV only applies in cases of gross bias and WP:NOTCENSORED does not without contradicting that policy. If you want to avoid mentioning either at all then the committee can't really make any analysis of policy at all (given the NPOV point made by Jayen466 is mentioned in the policy itself and it is a pillar) for this case which is going to make solving the content part of this dispute much harder.

Given the usage of depictions is so varied I think the best way forward is to just ignore WP:NOTCENSORED except in cases of gross bias and let us work out exactly how many depictions to use on editorial grounds which seems much more likely to end well.

While personally I would generally err on the side of more policy, in the case of images it seems like the result is usually pretty sensible, with only a tiny handful of cases causing issues - which would have to be worked out individually anyway. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:14, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

But if NOTCENSORED is aimed at a specific objection to images, whereas NPOV, is aimed at gross bias in image selection, then you follow the specific rule for the specific objection and the general rule for the general selection. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

NOTCENSORED is a subsidiary policy to NPOV. If we "ignore" NPOV we must "ignore" NOTCENSORED to at least the same degree. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:23, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, as Table 2 is selective and misleading in many ways, for example completely failing to distinguish between portrait and narrative images, and the different types of life led by the various subjects, which generated completely different forms of artistic records, and call for very different types of illustration. Naturally Leonardo da Vinci is mainly filled by images of his work, though the infobox does include the single image generally accepted as an authentic portrait of him, and we also have a wholly inauthentic Victorian history painting of Francis I visiting his deathbed, because it is useful as a narrative image. In any case there is no logical connection between the two parts of the proposition. Johnbod (talk) 18:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

• Do you have some better evidence that shows something different? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:45, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Even ignoring the weird non sequitur, this proposal just leaves me scratching my head in wonderment. Hans Adler 15:56, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments by others

NOTCENSORED requires an infobox depiction for Muhammad

As per table 2 of my evidence every featured historical biography contains an infobox depiction unless no images are available.

Comment by Arbitrators:

I think the proper comparison would be something more along the lines of Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu, Plato, Ptolemy and other figures more ancient than Muhammad, with religious or philosophical significance, who all have some sort of depiction of the person himself: statue, stained glass, drawing... it's all of the person, not the person's name, even though none of these are--or even claim to be--contemporary images. These are the first six that came to my mind--specifically including half non-Western and only one Christian reference. Feel free to expand the thought experiment, but Muhammad stands alone without a depiction. Jclemens (talk) 06:40, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

@Jayen, just because the people most invested in the dispute think that an issue is settled, doesn't mean it is. The hypothetical average Wikipedia user has been given an impression that pictures or statues or other depictions of human beings are associated with Wikipedia articles on people, even historic figures. The proposition that Muhammad is unique among people and best represented on Wikipedia by a non-picture seems specious and without merit. Placed in context of the particular religious tenets in play here, one must wonder whether, absent those tenets in play, anyone would ever have come up with a caligraphic reference. Jclemens (talk) 07:37, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker, I see plenty of infobox depictions in that category. If anything, that category appears to reinforce my point about the unique way the article on Muhammad differs from our normal presentation of historic individuals. Jclemens (talk) 18:03, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker, no, ArbCom won't ever say "there must be a picture in the infobox". At most, we'll have a FoF that notes that one is absent here when our standard practice for biographical articles of similar figures is to include one. Jclemens (talk) 22:33, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties

IMO this seems like a pretty blatant violation of WP:NOTCENSORED. This is also backed up by Jclemens comment here. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:42, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

It's interesting, because I clicked through that list the other day and the anomaly is really striking. At the same time, I feel some deference to the good faith work of editors who came before. So, I'm conflicted and need to ponder this one. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:39, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

NOTCENSORED is a very good argument in defence of the idea that there should be a depiction in the infobox. I'm not sure, though, whether it actually requires one. The absence of an image can be defended, I think, on the grounds that no authentic or iconic (in the modern sense) image exists. There are other articles in a similar situation that do include depictions in the infobox, but there may be a reasonable case for saying that those articles have it wrong. --FormerIP (talk) 23:43, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

@Jclemens, have you read any of the discussions preceding this case? Because the question why it would be historically misleading, and a significant departure from sources, to treat Muhammad the same as Buddha or Jesus was discussed at some length. [72][73][74]. I'm surprised to see you holding up Jesus and Buddha as models to follow here; the discussions passed that point several months ago. --JN466 08:01, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

On the proposal per se: No. We use the most iconic image, and in Muhammad's case that's the calligraphic representation of his name. That's what you'll find inside a mosque (and on the outside of many mosques as well, embedded in the tilework). Besides, it's a content ruling, and a poorly informed one. Honestly, sometimes I think this entire case could be summed up by WP:BEANS. --JN466 08:40, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

• The proposal here appears to be a personal interpretation of wikipedia policy which goes beyond the remit of the Arbitration Committee. I would not be surprised if the final community decision on images for this particular article, to be decided after the case is closed, included a resolution to have no figurative image in the information box at all. Mathsci (talk) 09:38, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

• Possibly this isn't appropriate <shrug> - it is possibly over the line and is too content focused. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:16, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

@Jclemens, @Jayen466. AFAIK there are currently 2 calligraphical representations of Muhammad in the article and 6 depictions. As currently used we are showing lots of depictions on the grounds that our readers have a traditionalist view on art (ie only literal depictions are important). Therefore there seems little reason to avoid having a depiction of Muhammad in the Infobox. This also applies to the compromises suggested so far by Resolute and myself on this talk page. If we want to change our editorial stance towards showing Muhammad how he is actually depicted we need to reduce the number of depictions in the article to 1-2 at which point not including an Infobox image would be more justified. But that would make having an Infobox image desirable to satisfy our readers who do prefer more traditionalist art as a compromise.

I don't feel the current Infobox approach is right as a compromise as you aren't going to know how much more weight you should give that depiction to infer anything. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:39, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

The disputes about how many of the calligraphy represent Muhammad, or his name, or really count, typifies the back and forth to the uninvolved. If one steps back and realizes that this dispute is about whether images should be in the bottom 1/3 of the article, or in the bottom 2/3, or at the top, one gets a sense of where we are, similarly with numbers between some and some more, in the single digits. At any rate, what one might call "traditionalist" is our image policy, which many support for encyclopedic reasons, it prefers images that are less abstracted to represent what is suppose to be represented. But although I think Arbcom can observe and note these practices in their findings, I agree that the final outcome should be left to the editorial process, with these observations in hand, so people will have reference to them. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:58, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Here, is another list of related biography articles to click through and consider with respect to presentation, categorization, and the related issues concerning policy and practice on images: Template:Prophets in the Qur'an. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:40, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

@Jclemens. True. The question, I take it is what to do with that observation: note it, and leave it to editors to hash out how we illustrate the project's articles, or ... . I am new to this arbitration forum and I don't know nearly as much as what you and all your colleagues know about it, or your powers, or about Wikipedia. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:24, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Actually many biographies of artists contain a work by them rather than a portrait in the lead or (less often) the infobox, which is something I usually support, and WP:VAMOS allows for. I support having a calligraphic image in the infobox here, and no figurative depictions high up, both as the most typical form of representation, but also as a matter of tact. The distinction between portrait-type and narrative images is also important here. Very few biographies have a narrative image in the lead (and they tend not to work at small infobox size), though some will use a detail from a narrative image. But since we all agree there are no authentic likenesses, I don't think there is a strong case for a figurative depiction at the start; they are more use illustrating specific incidents from the life. Johnbod (talk) 15:06, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I think, I would tend to agree with those arguments or that result, during the editorial phase, if and when we get back to it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:00, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

@John, @Elonka, I would love to see an example biography which doesn't have a depiction in the infobox, where such an image is available. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Eraser: there's a difference between a 'convention' and a 'requirement'. Conventionally, bios have images of the people they are about; I don't think anyone disputes that. But people here are trying to elevate that convention to an obligation, because they are aware that a convention is not strong enough to override common sense. conventions can be ignored where there's a good reason to ignore them, requirements can't. In truth, this is a microcosm of the entire dispute: people arguing against the images are relying on reason, common sense, and other factors of consideration, while those supporting the images keep trying to find elements of policy that they can apply rigidly and dogmatically enough to preclude any rational consideration. there's a very strong strain of BUREAUCRACY running through the other side of this debate. --Ludwigs2 23:47, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

From WP:VAMOS: "It will often be better to place a work by the artist at the top of a biography; this is especially the case for imaginary portraits of early artists, or photographs of more recent ones." Johnbod (talk) 18:09, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Unhelpful. NW (Talk) 17:02, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Ludwigs: "Resist the urge to turn Wikipedia into a battleground between factions." That's also a policy to follow and a good one too. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:02, 7 January 2012 (UTC) Alan, that article was a battleground years before I arrived on it. The only thing I added to the equation was persistence. If you want to take me to task because I don't run away from hostility as quickly as other people do, well… I don't know what to say about that. --Ludwigs2 03:10, 7 January 2012 (UTC) Hey. I flounce away, I don't run away. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC) Ludwigs: It won't be me; that's in others' hands but your view is prejudicial to this case. Alanscottwalker (talk) 04:46, 7 January 2012 (UTC) Prejudicial? nonsense. And that's bordering on a personal attack, mind you. You'd best either explain it or retract it. --Ludwigs2 05:00, 7 January 2012 (UTC) Prejudicial to your arbitration case; that's where we are. Your views that a talk page is a battleground are not helpful to that, it hurts it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:48, 7 January 2012 (UTC) So it is prejudicial when I suggest that a battleground existed long before I arrived there, but not prejudicial for you to suggest I created the battleground myself? Seriously? Dude… You know, I really dislike this emotional shell game. This discussion ought to be about creating a dispassionate objective viewpoint from which to view the problem we are having. But everyone is obsessed with framing the issue emotionally: exposing anything that might make others look bad while covering up anything that might make them look bad. frankly it's disgusting to watch, and irritating because you all force me to do some reframing of my own myself just to maintain something like an objective viewpoint (and then you all have the nerve accuse me of misconduct because I won't allow you to frame the issue in a one-sidely slanderous way). Just quit it already. --Ludwigs2 16:43, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

@John. I took a look at some very famous artists and while many artists do seem to have self portraits (e.g. da Vinci) in the infobox. I didn't see any without a depiction in the lead. Do you have any examples? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:16, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

NOTCENSORED does not require anything. That's a fundamentalist misreading of NOTCENSORED which is not backed by consensus. A lot of people come to Wikipedia with the expectation that they only need to point out material which other sites would immediately take down as offensive, and we will immediately take it down. That's not how Wikipedia works, and NOTCENSORED explains this. However, a number of editors have radicalised over the years (a natural thing to happen when you have to point to NOTCENSORED all the time to protect legitimate, or sometimes borderline legitimate 'offensive' content), and they now believe that NOTCENSORED forbids even the discussions, or forbids that the offence factors into the discussions in a meaningful way. This interpretation is compatible with the current state of NOTCENSORED, but it is in significant tension with NPOV, general practice and the Foundation resolution. The less radical interpretation of NOTCENSORED, according to which it merely points out that offence does not automatically lead to removal, does not have these problems. So far nobody has been able to point at any policy discussion that would have supported the contention that the intent of NOTCENSORED is the radical interpretation. Hans Adler 08:51, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't think the community as a whole would support the radical interpretation. However, that doesn't prevent it from prevailing on article talk pages that are of little interest to most content contributors. The idea occurred to me that we could have a community RfC on NPOV policy, polling the community on whether Wikipedia should depart from NPOV in one important respect, namely in making considerably more liberal use of controversial illustrations and media than reliable sources do. I doubt there would be community support for this, if it were stated as a positive ("Wikipedia as a project departs from NPOV ..."), rather than as a rejection of the idea that image curation standards in reliable sources should be driving our editorial standards. Of course, holding such an RfC would also be against policy, because you'd have to delete "This policy is non-negotiable and all editors and articles must follow it." from the lead of WP:NPOV first. --JN466 20:34, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

And again back to offense. The fact that the entire argument hinges on offense is why people use NOTCENSORED as their response. Jayen at least brings up NPOV which gets a discussion going but the only reason to remove all figurative images from the section would be because of offense is the point (which you have stated you would like to see zero pictures.) At least with Jayen he wants to approach the table and discuss if it is being relevant and proportional which makes sense and actually has a chance of going somewhere. The interpretation is not fundamental since anyone looking at the article and spending 20 seconds on the offensive material section that doesn't take offense just because it exists would realize that none of the images are provocative for any reason besides the fact they are of muhammad. Tivanir2 (talk) 14:23, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

It is simply not true that the entire argument hinges on offence. Offence is a factor in support of reducing the number of images, but not the only one and maybe not even the most important one. Per NOTCENSORED we are not supposed to focus on offence when discussing this. Stop playing out your 'per NOTCENSORED, offence is not a valid argument' trump card. As I keep pointing out with no response other than IDHT, it's a counterfeit card and not part of the official rules in the first place. Once this silly argument is off the table, the focus on offence will be greatly reduced.

The table is not particularly useful. Create a table comparing biographies of founders of religions that have a problem with depictions of their founders (are there any besides Muhammad and Bahá'u'lláh?), and then it will be a valid comparison. The point is that there are unique circumstances for this article, and pretending that one size fits all and all superficially similar articles must be treated as if they were totally equivalent is not a reasonable interpretation of NPOV. (And could you please read your last sentence and fix the errors until it becomes comprehensible. It would be a pity if you thought you made a valid point there just because I can't respond to it because I can't understand it. Clearly "fundamental" is supposed to be "fundamentalist", but I have no idea what to do with the sentence structure or with the link.) Hans Adler 17:28, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Except that we have no obligation with regards to "religions that have a problem with depictions of their founders" except to neutrally report that they have a problem with depictions of their founders. We aren't obligated to do or not do anything as a result of their problem, and we certainly aren't expected to place them in special categories while we do our analysis. Neutral examinations of topics aren't served by performing actions based on the preferences of outside parties.—Kww(talk) 17:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Muslims are not an "outside party" in an article on Muhammad, they are very much in the article's scope because the subject has created them. A Muhammad article with lots of figurative images of Muhammad misinforms in the same way that the Rembrandt article would misinform if it had lots of watercolours of the stations of his life, painted by impressionists. Therefore it's not "their problem", it's our problem. Neutral examinations of topics aren't served by adding many atypical illustrations that don't provide significant insight. Hans Adler 19:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The misrepresentation argument may be able to be reasonably made in any subsequent RFC. I think you have to admit that hearing that argument made by anyone that has a history of arguing on the grounds of "offense" is of necessarily lower impact. The credibility of any editor that has loudly proclaimed that anyone that doesn't consider religious offense to be relevant is unethical and suffering from mental illness is reduced when he makes a subsequent argument that achieves precisely the same goal. It's a natural presumption that "offensiveness" is still the actual argument, and the new argument is a smokescreen. As for Muslims having any special influence over the article, I think not. If a sect arose that declared George Bush to be anointed by God, would you grant them any special influence over the biography of George Bush?—Kww(talk) 21:34, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Certainly. Simply put these pictures are not offensive if you say they represent anyone other than muhammad since by the offensive materials link they obviously pass the test if we claim they are of anyone else and not muhammad. Does that clear up the confussion? Also NOTCENSORED is the perfect response to the idea that simply because they are offensive that they shouldn't be removed. The pictures are relavent (they are of the subject) help visual learners and depict important parts of the subjects life (muhammad.) I hear your arguments just fine, however the only reason to remove the majority of them would be due to the images being offensive. At a bare minimum there should be 3 one not veiled one veiled and one as a flame since this shows classical depictions of muhammad based on time frame. The fact that you continuously ignore my own counterpoints and say the same thing over and over doesn't stop them from being true. And quite frankly trying to say that the other religion doesn't have the same considerations due to size doesn't score points with me since I believe the only way to treat things equally is application to all not all that fit my current argument. On my final note we don't remove pictures for Bahi we don't remove them for scientology and we don't remove them here for offense. That being said I have sat back saying do we need 6 pictures, and quite frankly the answer is possibly but not likely. However I don't come to the table set out a blatent requirement and refuse to move from it. Tivanir2 (talk) 18:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

No it doesn't clear up the confusion, at least not much. What I assume you mean by "offensive materials link" [75] is a link to an 8-paragraph content guideline, but I can't see any explicit "test" there. Presumably you are referring to the guideline's fourth lead sentence, which implicitly defines "offensive material" as "Material that would be considered vulgar or obscene by typical Wikipedia readers", with a footnote that clarifies that "a 'typical Wikipedia reader' is defined by the cultural beliefs of the majority of the website readers (not active editors) that are literate in an article's language." But for that we don't need the 'suppose it were someone else' gymnastics because none of the images is vulgar or obscene. The images are simply not in the scope of this guideline except perhaps by analogy, so I simply don't understand why you are bringing up this guideline in the first place.

Could you please clarify what it is that I am ignoring and what it is that I am repeating over and over.

"And quite frankly trying to say that the other religion doesn't have the same considerations due to size doesn't score points with me since I believe the only way to treat things equally is application to all not all that fit my current argument." How you are reading this into what I wrote is beyond me. There are much stronger reasons for using photos of the Bahai founder than there are for using fictional depictions of Muhammad, yet we are using only two photos, and they are both 'below the fold'. I don't think I ever said anything about the size of that religion or what I think about the treatment of these photos, but I certainly didn't say any such thing in this conversation.

"However I don't come to the table set out a blatent requirement [on the number of pictures?] and refuse to move from it." Same problem. You accuse me of things that are simply unconnected to my position. I am actually extremely flexible concerning the number of pictures. I am just not flexible in the sense of accepting wikilawyering as a substitute for rational arguments, or of accepting an equilibrium between opposing factions as a sacrosanct 'consensus'. Hans Adler 19:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I've skimmed this section a few times in the past weeks but have never really been sure what to make of it, given that Eraser has generally taken a "less depictions" point-of-view of the Muhammad article. If someone wished to propose that a depiction of Muhammad be placed in the infobox, I wouldn't be too hacked up about it, and not opposed to the absence of one, either. Just seems like a strange thing to tag with the term "required". Tarc (talk) 01:56, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Oppose. There is nothing in Wikipedia policy that requires an article to have an infobox. In cases where there are serious disputes about how to fill in the fields of an infobox (such as listing birth city, nationality, etc.), an acceptable alternative is just to leave off an infobox entirely. --Elonka 17:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

@Hans Adler: Regarding Bahá'u'lláh, the text makes it clear that there are only two known photographs of him, which explains why only two are used. As for other non-photographic depictions of him, it appears that there aren't many at all (a Google search found only one other that was definitely of him (not his son, etc) and not based on one of the two photos). I know all-but nothing about the Baha'i faith, but if there has never been a tradition of making depictions of him then more images simply will not exist (remember also that he's about 1200 years younger than Muhammad) and their relevance to the article might be less than images of Muhammad. Thryduulf (talk) 20:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

• NOTCENSORED requires no such thing. It doesn't require that Wikipedia have any information at all for that matter. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:15, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

NOTCENSORED doesn't apply to content which there is no editorial justification for including

Should be fairly self explanatory but I think its worth clarifying that NOTCENSORED only applies to content that there is an editorial justification for including.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by Parties:

I'm not clear on the editorial justification of including more than a small number of images, and for NOTCENSORED to apply we need to find an editorial justification for the depicitions that we wish to include. This should be fairly self explanatory and non-controversial. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:47, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I believe this is far too vague to be useful. Perhaps a rewrite would be beneficial? Tivanir2 (talk) 23:30, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with this in principle, but in practice it's going to open up a whole lot of wiki-lawyering what 'editorial justification' means (as we've already seen). Someone who really wants to POV-push with a controversial image will dream up a justification of some sort. The statement needs to be more specific than it is. --Ludwigs2 21:51, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think Arbcom will do what you want. But this is certainly better than nothing - and pretty clear from the policy. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:06, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd prefer not to dignify NOTCENSORED even with this degree of recognition. Since it blatantly contradicts our foundation principle of service to and respect for our readers, some kind of statement acknowledging its utter inadequacy as a policy would be more constructive. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:28, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Thryduulf has it right. NOTCENSORED simply eliminates a kind of argument for removal, it doesn't somehow override other valid reasons for removal. It removes censorship arguments from the discussion of essential and non-essential images alike.—Kww(talk) 04:35, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

This may surprise some, but I disagree. There is nothing in WP:NOTCENSORED to suggest that it does not apply to all content regardless of relevancy. Relevancy is only mentioned once, and in passing.

NOTCENSORED even applies to illegal content, although it has special rules for that which say the opposite of what the shortcut suggests. NOTCENSORED says explicitly that the following categories of content will be removed:

• content 'judged to' violate BLP
• content that violates NPOV
• content that violates applicable laws.

The way NOTCENSORED deals with irrelevant content is through the following formulations:

• "Content which is obviously inappropriate [...] is usually removed quickly."
• "However, some articles may include [...] when [...] relevant to the content."
• "Discussion [...] should not focus on [...] offensiveness but on whether it is appropriate [...] in a given article."
• "'being objectionable' is generally[!] not sufficient[!] grounds for removal or inclusion of content." ("or inclusion" really doesn't make much sense here; had to be added to combat the fundamentalist misinterpretations in the worst cases)

It is a fundamentalist misunderstanding of NOTCENSORED that it intends to prevent, rather than prescribe, editorial evaluation of offensiveness in fair relation to other considerations. This fundamentalist misunderstanding creates an urge to restrict its applicability in a way that is not supported by a plain reading of NOTCENSORED. Hans Adler 09:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Others:

Notcensored applies regardless of editorial justification. By this I mean that we add or remove content only for editorial reasons (e.g. WP:DUE), we don't remove stuff because its offensive and has no editorial reason to be there, we remove it solely because of the latter. This may sound like a trivial distinction to make, but it is important as it makes clear that offensiveness is not a valid editorial reason to add or remove anything (as has been suggested elsewhere on this workshop page). I'm explicitly not making a comment here about whether there is or is not editorial justification for the inclusion or exclusion of any image or (number of) images at Muhammad. Thryduulf (talk) 19:10, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Why on earth wouldn't we remove content that there is no editorial justification for including? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Precisely. I can't see any reason why we would want to retain such content. Thryduulf is pointing out, though, that there is no reason for NOTCENSORED to enter into our heads in such cases. If there's no editorial justification then there is none. But I think many editors have a hard time seeing how this can apply in the case of images of the subject of a biographical article.--FormerIP (talk) 19:40, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Then they've done a very weak job of explaining what that editorial justification is. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:01, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

If there is no editorial justification for an image, then it is removed regardless of whether it is offensive or not. If there is editorial justification, then it is retained regardless of whether it is offensive or not. Whether something is offensive or not is not part of the editorial justification for inclusion or exclusion of that content. Thus when material is removed for having no editorial justification it's irrelevant that Wikipedia is not censored, but it doesn't stop being not censored. Whether something has editorial justification or not is judged by consensus. FormerIP is saying that "many editors" believe that images of Muhammad at the Muhammad article do have editorial justification. The implication is that there is no consensus that the images lack justification, and so there is no consensus to remove them. Thryduulf (talk) 21:01, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Many editors believing something seems to be a WP:VOTE not a WP:CONSENSUS unless they can back their beliefs up with some evidence or a reasonable argument. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:14, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

So would it be fair to say that this proposal boils down to: If consensus is against including something in an article, then it should not be included in the article? --FormerIP (talk) 23:13, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There is currently no consensus either way, because most people on both sides believe their arguments are reasonable. I think at it's simplest it can be boiled down to one group of people who think that taking into account that some people find the images offensive is the only reasonable course of action; and another group who think that the only reasonable course of action is to treat the offensiveness to some people as irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 23:16, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I would like to point out that over the course of the discussions points have been raised that seem to be accepted as valid at every other article. I myself argued for an image by image review of the entire article because I think it has gone a bit overboard but that never seemed to get much traction. The problem as I see it is that some people believe these images need to do more to be worthy of being in the article that they are directly related to simply because of offense, which is why we see NOTCENSORED get tossed around like a cheap party favor. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:26, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: Can you please link me to where this principle you quote as contradicting NOTCENSORED is. I can't see anything at WP:5P, User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles or m:Founding principles. I do though see many references to NPOV and, on the meta page, "Wikimedia's educational content is managed by the community; it is not otherwise [than as is required by Florida law] censored due to objectionability or pressure from external groups or individuals, whether related to a category of content as a whole or to specific matters.". I have explained previously how NPOV requires NOTCENSORED so I shalln't repeat myself here.I must get around to writing it up as an essay at some point. Thryduulf (talk) 03:01, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I just noticed this. I'm quoting this page of the Harris report. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:33, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, the point is that I have spent a large amount of time asking people for the rationale for including depiction's beyond a couple, and have got very little reply for that. - This principle simply means that people have to put in enough effort to actually justify the depictions for inclusion in the article - which is an important principle.

If people actually do manage to produce some level of justification for including images, as Johnbod has done, then this principle will become redundant, but I think its still worth making.

@Tivanir2, good point. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:37, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Mentoring for Ludwigs2

1) As per ASCIIn2Bme's evidence Ludwigs2 takes it too far on many occasions, mentoring to give him a better idea of acceptable behaviour would in my view be useful.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

This is in addition to any other remedies that are considered appropriate by the committee. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:34, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Mentoring is for relatively new but over-aggressive/eager editors that others feel can be a valued contributor if given a bit of guidance. Ludwigs has been around the block much to long for that; this length of time spent in the Wikipedia community has given him more than enough familiarity with norms and practices here. If Ludwigs runs afoul of those, that is his choice; he knows better. Tarc (talk) 22:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

I don't think mentoring can work for someone who is being disruptive with a self-declared expectation of being "martyred". See Resolute's evidence. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:37, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with above. Ludwigs2 has passed the point where mentoring would make a difference --Guerillero | My Talk 21:42, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Personally I disagree and mentoring has been considered a reasonable option for editors with much longer block logs than Ludwigs in the past. That said of course the arbitration committee should be the ones to decide whether to take this point forward. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:39, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree in principle, but Ludwigs' own comments make it clear that he doesn't care about consensus or Wikipedia's policies. He's only interested in getting his way, or getting banned in the process. A mentor cannot help someone who refuses to accept that consensus can, and does, go against his viewpoint. Resolute 23:15, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Er, of course the arbs will be the ones to decide, eraser; why did you even feel the need to tell us that? Workshop entries have commentary sections for parties to the case, arbs, and others. We're just here weighing in in our respective sections, not passing judgement. Tarc (talk) 00:34, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Could links be provided to the evidence please? --Elonka 00:42, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

sure. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:55, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Eraserhead1, I don't think that was what Elonka meant. You need to link to the specific evidence submissions that show tenacious editing by Ludwigs, or post the diffs from the evidence submission directly to this section. On the proposal here, as a general matter I will not support mentoring: if we find a user is unable to contribute constructively, then remedial action must remove that editor from the problematic topic areas (or, as necessary, from Wikipedia entirely). I do not speak for the entire committee, but my own view (and I have mentored a couple of users in the past) is that mentoring is an unjustifiable drain on the time of those users who can contribute constructively. In short: we are an encyclopedia, not a nursery. AGK [•] 02:02, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 14:10, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I know this is unlikely to pass anyway but I just want to say that I think the proposal is condescending to Ludwigs (though I'm sure unintentionally). He's a smart cat and he knows policy, he just disagrees with it. Having someone hold his hand is like those cases when a judge makes a shoplifter wear a big sign that mares them in the eyes of the community - even if it works it builds a lot of embarrasment and animosity and is unlikely to have a longterm positive effect. N^oformation ^Talk 23:24, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposals by User:Tarc

Proposed principles

NPOV and external advocacy

1) Adherence to a neutral point of view when crafting an article in the Wikipedia is of the utmost importance, it is what sets an encyclopedia apart from a newspaper, a blog, a think tank's publications, or any similar source where "X is right, !X is wrong" is the aim/goal of the report, rather than the reporting itself. As such, the project cannot allow its coverage of a topic to be affected by external advocacy groups. These groups may believe information should be presented in a certain manner, that some things must be withheld or treated with discretion. To allow their influence into the project and to affect editorial decision-making would compromise our drive to present the neutral point of view.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Too wordy, but at the core an appropriate principle. We probably should include something like this. Jclemens (talk) 18:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Assumes facts not in evidence. As far as I am aware, external advocacy groups have played no role in recent discussions. I am happy to be corrected if my assumptions are mistaken, but I see the present discussion to a large extent as one dominated by editors who are primarily motivated to contribute to the article because of free-speech concerns, and/or because they feel that Wikipedia should be, for want of a better expression, "less censored" than its sources (a stance that strikes me as inherently incompatible with NPOV). --JN466 15:49, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

There's no evidence I can see of external advocacy. While some IP editors may possibly have been co-ordinated there is no obvious evidence that this is the case, and its irrelevant with regards to this case as no IP editors have contributed or are named parties. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

The "external advocacy" is represented by some editors here who argue on a basis of "it is offensive". If it is offensive to somebody, then an editor making this argument is in effect proxying for the external advocates of image removal. Ludwigs himself has explicitly pointed to the large number of archived requests and discussions at Talk:Muhammad/images as proof that a lot of people have voiced opposition to the images, and therefore must be heard. Tarc (talk) 18:12, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

You can make that same "external advocacy" argument about any action or statement made by any user. Generally "external advocacy" is taken to mean that someone has violated WP:CANVASS. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:26, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Now that I have explained what was actually meant, there should be no more confusion, then. Tarc (talk) 16:27, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I am significantly more confused. What violations of WP:CANVASS have there been? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:16, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Facepalm I was never talking about canvassing; you did, and I corrected your mistaken assertion. Many SPA's and IP editors have come to Muhammad/images to argue that they are offended by the images and demand their removal. You, Ludwigs, and Hans Adler have argued that them being offended is a reason to restrict images. A connects to B, you are arguing on their behalf. Tarc (talk) 20:19, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I see kinda you are coming from as some of the points raised have mentioned previous contributors. But I don't think that's a particularly large part of the argument as quite a bit of it resolves around WP:NPOV.

With regards to WP:CANVASS I bought it up as that's the relevant guideline. Do you have any evidence that a significant percentage of the editors previously involved in asking for the images to be removed had violated WP:CANVASS or is there another guideline/policy which you can point to which invalidates their contributions? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:40, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Point of clarity: I have never argued that we should restrict images because "a lot of people have voiced opposition". I've argued that there is a well-known and long-established cultural more against images of Muhammad that out to be considered when we make images choices on this article. I've only mentioned the excessive volume of complaints when you or Resolute or some editor has tried to assert that there is no controversy.

We've had this discussion before, Tarc. You refuse to acknowledge there's any distinction between "Something some fanatic is offended by" and "Something that offends the practices and standards of an entire culture". Opposing the first is tough-but-reasonable; opposing the second is fanaticism in its own right. Ah, hell, never mind; I'm going to add this as a proposal and let the arbs decide. --Ludwigs2

Comment by others:

Islamic prohibitions against images

2) Specific to this topic area, the religious precepts of the Islamic faith that call for depictions of the prophet Muhammad to be veiled or removed altogether cannot be allowed to affect, influence, or color the article Muhammad (or any sub-articles or others within this topic area).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Per Jayen, this should be generalized. I'd go farther than "religious"--I'd say any viewpoint or belief system that aims to restrict knowledge cannot be allowed to unduly influence Wikipedia. We rejected repeated attempts to remove the Rorschach test images, for example. Jclemens (talk) 22:43, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

It strikes me as prejudicial towards Islam to treat that POV as one that is a priori less valid than others, rather than according it its due weight according to its prevalence in reliable sources. It goes with the territory that Islamic cultural and religious norms have affected the sources we are required to reflect, and have done so for centuries. So if we follow NPOV policy, our article will in turn be affected by these religious precepts, to the extent they are reflected in sources. Many reputable English-language sources on Muhammad are written by Muslims; even non-Muslim authors often see no need to include images of Muhammad, because they are culturally meaningless in the majority of the Islamic world. We cannot retroactively change history. Instead of figurative images, Islamic art has developed its own, word-based iconography surrounding Muhammad and the Quran that is the predominant type of illustration in reliable sources. We should reflect Muhammad's reception accurately. There is no good reason for us to prioritise Islamic art that is both atypical in the Islamic world, and less prevalent in reliable sources. --JN466 15:48, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

@Kww: I am not arguing that we should remove any of the existing images because someone has forbidden them for religious reasons. I am arguing for their reduction because, looking at reliable sources, the number we currently feature is WP:UNDUE, while at the same time we lack images that clearly are WP:DUE. WP:NOT does not protect article content that is in violation of WP:DUE. There are dozens of Muhammad images in Commons. If I added 60 of them in a gallery, would you argue that not a single one must be removed, because someone, somewhere, has prohibited the display of such images? That's the WP:NOTCENSORED tail wagging the WP:NPOV dog, and it's contradicted by the longstanding wording of WP:NOTCENSORED itself. We do not need to feature a surfeit of anything anyone has forbidden, just to prove to the world that we are not cowed, and no such prohibition should cause us to react in a way that makes us depart from WP:NPOV. --JN466 18:04, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

We should be prejudiced against Islam, or indeed any other stone age mythology. Of course it is less valid than other points of view. Egg Centric 16:22, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

You can be as prejudiced against Islam as you like, but we do not select the authors we cite by their religion, or their POV. --JN466 17:07, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• Not a well-drafted point. So called "veiling" or blanking the face of images is not a "precept" (whatever that is) you will find written down anywhere I think, but an artistic convention that emerged gradually. I don't agree with the proposition as put. We already treat the article very differently from other biographies in the quantity, choice and placement of such images, and I am happy with this, and oppose the suggestions of some editors, such as Resolute, whose proposal included adding a "hostile" Western image, which I think would certainly be needlessly provocative here. After that you come to the very specific wording of WP:NOT, quoted by Kww below. Johnbod (talk) 23:34, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

This is specifically covered by WP:NOT:"Wikipedia will not remove content because of the internal bylaws of some organizations that forbid information about the organization to be displayed online. Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations." Jayen466's argument is, unfortunately, wrong in its precepts, wrong in its reasoning, and wrong in its ultimate application. Religious POVs are a priori irrelevant to the editorial policies of a secular encyclopedia.They are certainly equal in weight to all other religious POVs, but those POVs are, as a group, not suitable as an influence on our editorial policy.—Kww(talk) 17:30, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll add that there was a sustained, months-long effort by JN466, Ludwigs2 and a handful of other editors to change the part of the policy you are citing. It failed. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 00:35, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful if you could provide a link to that discussion archive. NW (Talk) 03:21, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you are a masochist, you can read the final section of Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 37, where it begins. The argument encompasses ALL of archives 38 and 39, the first half of 40 and two thirds of WT:NOT as it stands right now. Resolute 03:44, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, one thing that did change as a result of these discussions is that policy now states that being objectionable is not a reason for inclusion, either. --JN466 22:04, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed findings of fact

TL;DR

1) Several editors have generated an enormous and dense amount of argumentation in their drive to acquiesce to outside religious beliefs, in opposition to Principles #1 and #2. Some have been simply misguided, albeit civil. Others have been belligerent and vitriolic towards those who disagree with them. Some fall in between.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Agree with Resolute; the argumentation has certainly not been one-sided. Risker (talk) 19:00, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

I might strike "in their drive to acquiesce to outside religious beliefs". While I agree that is what motivated the start of this mess, it takes two (or many) sides to drive an argument to this length. Resolute 01:13, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

This is true, but so what? No-one denies that there is more than one faction of editors involved in the current dispute. --FormerIP (talk) 02:53, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

• Agreed. It might be useful if a table by volume of bytes or whatever of the main contributors over recent months could be produced, but I don't think anyone involved would doubt that Ludwigs would be at or near the top. Johnbod (talk) 04:39, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Obviously, I might be considered biased, but I agree. While it takes two to tango, the lengthy defense would not have been necessary were it not for a sustained attack on encylopedic principles by Ludwigs2, Hans Adler, and Jayen466.—Kww(talk) 16:39, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I am surprised to see the battlefield conduct continued here with such personal attacks. I must ask you for diffs supporting your contention that Ludwigs2, Jayen466 or I are attacking "encyclopedic principles", and a clarification of what these principles are. Hans Adler 01:26, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

To judge from Kww's response on their talk page, these "encyclopedic principles" are in my case just "religious neutrality", and they are unwilling to explain or defend this personal attack further than that. [76] There are still no diffs and I am pretty sure that all three of us have been working in good faith for religious neutrality. (Speaking just for me, I have no more sympathy for Islam than for any other major religion, and have a generally poor opinion of religion in general and monotheism in particular.) Hans Adler 08:37, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

All WP:AGF requires of me is that I give the three of you the benefit of the doubt, and act as though you believe your actions to be to the benefit of the product. I actually do believe that: I think all of you believe that your efforts are to the benefit of the product. That doesn't mean that the actual effect isn't to create an editorial process that is biased in favor of religions that are both popular and aggressively loud in voicing objections and away from religions that are either small or quiet. It also doesn't mean that I have to believe that your efforts don't constitute an attack on fundamental encyclopedic principles. I haven't attacked: I've stated clearly that you are wrong, and that I believe it would be to the benefit of the project if you would stop campaigning to remove images based on religious offense. There's nothing wrong about me saying that: nothing in any policy requires me to agree with things that are fundamentally wrong—Kww(talk) 15:00, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Well if that's all AGF requires of us, then I don't see how I've violated it any more than you have. Sure people keep claiming I violate it, but what actually happens is that they personalize factual observations. Thus, I frequently run into the following type of conversation:

• Editor X suggests that Muslim editors are poised to swoop down on the project removing all images of Muhammad as soon as they get an opening
• I suggest that that statement sounds prejudiced, in the hopes that Editor X will:
  1. rephrase in a way that doesn't make Muslim editors sound like ululating fanatics
  2. acknowledge the error and back off from the point
• Instead, Editor X accuses me of calling him/her a bigot.

Now, Randy in Boise may find this characterization of Islam self-evident, and so he might think I am attacking him when I point out how bad that characterization of Islam sounds. Unfortunately, this characterization of Islam is problematic, and it needs to be raised and considered and redressed. I always give people the benefit of the doubt that they have just made an error in speech, but AGF is strained when that same error is made dozens upon dozens of times. There is a very serious question, Kww, about which side in this dispute is attacking the fundamental principles of the project; I say it's yours, trying to uproot NPOV in order to advocate for a particular anti-religious POV. In fact, I can clearly identify the POV you're pushing (you say it yourself, each time you hammer the 'secularism' point); do you disagree? --Ludwigs2 17:02, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

This is on point. This is an attempt to disrupt any possibility of consensus being reached. This issue will not be successfully resolved until the arch disruptionist, at a minimum, is topic banned off the subject for engaging in this tactic. There are actually about three that need to go, as anybody suffering through that talk page will readily recognize. Carrite (talk) 09:52, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Just pointing out that this is another blatant, unverifiable personal attack. I will ask NeutralWarfare to remove it. Hans Adler 08:37, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I forgot about it and it seems a bit late now. But it's still not OK at all. (Of course proposing a principle claiming a "drive to acquiesce to outside religious beliefs" was even worse, but given the obvious boomerang nature of such a proposal I can't say I am particularly unhappy about it.) Hans Adler 12:05, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Offense isn't enough

2) Wikipedia editors can never be allowed to purposefully add text or images or other media to an article with an express purpose to offend a race, religion, creed or sexual orientation. However, such material should not be removed from an article for the sole reason that it offends someone. When in doubt, assume that an editor who supports an inclusion or opposes a removal is doing so with the goal of bettering the project.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Yes, although there are also WP:Competence issues involved here. Editors may be responding in good faith to defend the project against what they perceive as an attack on free speech, while being quite unfamiliar with the subject matter. --JN466 15:48, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Tentative oppose: While I don't necessarily object to this as an ideal, this phrasing implies a disturbing amount of mind-reading. How do we know what 'express purpose' an editor has in mind? How do we determine that offense is the 'sole reason' another editor wants it removed? On the Muhammad page there are numerous accusations about what other editors are thinking tossed around (you'll find several examples in evidence of editors asserting that I am solely motivated by offense, for instance, despite the fact I disagree), and they got in the way more than anything else.

Let's take a (hopefully) credible example: Someone decides to add an image of a Jim Crow era lynching to the Martin Luther King, Jr. article; someone else objects, saying that image is inappropriate for that article. Editor 1 asserts that Editor 2 is solely worried about offense; Editor 2 asserts that Editor 1 is (consciously or unconsciously) motivated by racism; grumbling ensues. How will this principle help us resolve that quandary? I don't see any way that it can. --Ludwigs2 04:50, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Not sure how lynching would apply since MLK was not lynched. Lynching in and of itself was not related to MLK Jr., and most likely could be argued on half a dozen grounds without bringing offense into the equation. Even if he spoke out against lynching specifically I am fairly sure it wasn't one of his major contributions or ideological platforms. Tivanir2 (talk) 16:25, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

It would be easy enough to argue: lynching as an example of the kinds of abuses blacks suffered, that MLK wanted to put an end to. but that kind of misses the point. --Ludwigs2 19:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• No. If an offensive image is related to the topic but of little or no educational value, it should be removed. If an offensive image can be replaced by an inoffensive image without harming the educational value of the article, it should be replaced. This proposal is opposed to our principle of service to our readers. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:38, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• Support, and also agree with Jayen466's caveat. --Elonka 23:08, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support, and have to respond to Jayen466's caveat as being a complete and absolute red herring. None of the images that he is objecting to were created or inserted with the sole reason of causing offense.—Kww(talk) 03:32, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Anonymous complaints about these images are disregarded

3) The 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content says the following; "...potential decisions on the restrictions of these types of images must be decided by individual users and why we have recommended that registration be necessary to affect these images." The bulk of the Talk:Muhammad/images archives consist of anonymous IP editors demanding 100% image removal, but these are essentially merit-less complaints.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Yes, people who aren't aligned with Wikipedia's goals really aren't welcome to try and influence content, are they? I'm thinking that's as it should be: you have to buy into the pillars--all of them--to have a voice in the project. Jclemens (talk) 22:47, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

I am entering this here because during the course of these debates, some have argued on behalf of these anonymous persons, that the vast talk page archives proves that we must do something about the image "problem". As the study recommends that only registered editors be allowed to affect the image debate, then this undercuts a large part of the argument. I'd go further and suggest that single-purpose accounts, while technically meeting the threshold, run counter to the spirit of what the study calls for; namely, that people who are actually here to contribute to an encyclopedia be the ones to discuss these sensitive matters, and not those who come here laser-focused on Muhammad and image removal alone. Tarc (talk) 15:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The implication of this, in the absence of any more specialised technology, would be to permanently semi-protect the article. Which I would not necessarily oppose. However, I think, as a matter of principle, that IP and SPA editors should not be restricted from editing the talkpage. I think it is fundamental to WP's ethic that any article be open to the comments and suggestions of newcomers. --FormerIP (talk) 20:13, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I think that is a good point and would support it. Also semi protection isn't hard to fulfill requirements for so people who truly wish to contribute can still do so in a relatively short period of time. Tivanir2 (talk) 21:32, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Guys, the article has been semi-protected for years. --JN466 22:05, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes, and it will likely remain so since whenever the semi has been lifted in the past, the article gets hit with vandalism. What we're talking about though is input to the image discussion itself being limited to identifiable, i.e. registered, users. I don't think the study was intending to have Wiki projects block access to talk pages though, my interpretation is that it suggests limits on things such as RfCs. Tarc (talk) 22:35, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

And by a coincidence almost too amazing to believe, moments ago there was a post made which was exactly what I was talking about; this, which was reverted. IPs have no place filing Arbcoms. Tarc (talk) 22:39, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposals by Resolute

Proposed principles

Wikipedia contains material that some may consider offensive

1) Wikipedia covers a wide array of topics, some of which will be sensitive topics to readers on the basis of religion, cultural belief, age-appropriateness or nationalism (among others). Such material is provided for informative purposes and is necessary to maintain a neutral point of view.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Why is everyone fighting over NPOV WRT controversial images? I don't think it's actually appropriate to inclusion or exclusion of material at all. Jclemens (talk) 19:25, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

NOTE: Jclemens' comment above appears to have a verb missing? Johnbod (talk) 14:41, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Jclemens: The problem in this (and many other) disputes is that many editors are unaware (or at least don't acknowledge) that images can be used to promote particular POVs. Images contain lot of non-verbal information and can be extremely influential. This is why, for instance, the Bush administration kept the news media from having access to pictures of caskets returning from the wars in the middle east, but provided many pictures of other sorts: They wanted to spin the wars one way, and did not want the cost in human lives solidified in visual imagery. In the case here, there are editors who are insisting on using rare and unconventional figurative images of Muhammad primarily because they are opposed to a tenet of Muslim faith that discourages such. They are quite frank about trying to impose a western/secular POV on the article and exclude the Islamic POV, and that makes it an issue of NPOV.

On any controversial issue, imagery has a grave risk of advocating one perspective or another: a flag being raised by soldiers is just as good an image of war as a flag draped over a casket, but they push entirelydifferent POVs on the war itself. NPOV is what we use to handle advocacy in textual material (and it does a good job, generally); NPOV should be what we use to to handle advocacy in imagery. --Ludwigs2 17:05, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree, actually, Jclemens, but it is unfortunately one of the central pillars of this issue. This entire debate began as a result of an offensiveness argument, but which has been rejected by many. My primary argument has been that removing these images on the basis of offensiveness is without merit, and is actually counter to policy. In this case, it is a bid to censor the article, and consequently, favour a religious POV. Ludwigs complains above that we are trying to impose a secular POV in our image use. I don't disagree with that, because as a secular encyclopedia, I consider that to be the NPOV position. Resolute 17:37, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree. It would be a useful if arbs are able to identify what are, IMO, attempts to redraw policy, such as the whole NPOV business and the argument that there is an obligation to end long-running disputes by compromise. Progress will be a lot easier to achieve if that is done. --FormerIP (talk) 01:22, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what to say to this this overt attempt the claim that a particular POV is the true NPOV, except to roll my eyes in exasperation and quote NPOV directly:

Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as "neutrality" means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them clearly and accurately. Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information, and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view should not be interpreted as the exclusion of certain points of view.

Where in that passage do you find grounding for the claim that we promote a secular POV as truth? Where does it suggest that religious (or particularly Muslim) POVs must be disdained? I'm asking in all good faith how you get from this passage to your claims, because I can't see any way to do it. --Ludwigs2 02:31, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps editors are talking past each other here. Resolute is correct: we are a secular encyclopedia, in the sense that we are not governed by any religion's precepts, but by NPOV, a pluralistic ideal. Ludwigs2 is also quite correct: the fact that we are governed by NPOV, rather than religious precepts, does not mean that NPOV excludes all POVs that are in some way representative of religious thought. Such POVs are included in NPOV – our pluralist ideal – in proportion to their published prevalence in the best and most reputable sources. Do we all agree on those points? --JN466 13:52, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Probably not, because I believe that we have to examine sources to determine the extent to which they have been influenced by religious thought and treat that as inherent bias, not something to be preserved.—Kww(talk) 14:52, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, Ludwigs is trying to dig himself out of his hole by arguing against a claim I did not make. I never said "true POV", I said NPOV. Unfortunately for him, there is really only two possible positions here: This article uses depictions of Muhammad, or it does not. One of those options is in line with how we treat all biographies on Wikipedia, the other pushes religious sensibilities as a top concern. It should be obvious which is considered NPOV. Resolute 03:03, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Wikipedia is not censored [Resolute]

2) (Lets address the elephant in the room) I'll simply quote the policy: "Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive, even exceedingly so (see Wikipedia:Content disclaimer). Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images will always be acceptable to all readers, or that they will adhere to general social or religious norms."

Comment by Arbitrators:

Agreed. Jclemens (talk) 19:26, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

• Bluntly, the central argument to the desire to remove images is that some Muslims find their existence objectionable. Related to Tarc's suggested principle: That something is offensive to someone is not by itself a valid argument in for removal. Resolute 01:04, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
• Agreed. Johnbod (talk) 14:35, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• Correct, but this must be tempered by the fact that WP:NOTCENSORED does not protect material that violates WP:DUE. To quote from the same policy:

  "Content that is judged to violate Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy, or that violates other Wikipedia policies (especially neutral point of view) or the laws of the U.S. state of Florida where Wikipedia's main servers are hosted, will also be removed."

• Images are subject to WP:DUE in this project. They have been for more than five years. What we have here is a situation where a WP:DUE argument is continually being reframed as an offensiveness argument, in order to avoid having to demonstrate that the images are, in fact, due, based on prevalence in reliable sources. That is an all-too common tactic in this project and by no means limited to this article. It's equally common in discussions related to nudity or sexual content. The board resolution on controversial content would not have been necessary at all if the projects had been capable of mature decision-making to begin with, just like the board's BLP resolution would have been unnecessary if the project had been able to get its act together by itself. And in my experience, the offensiveness counter is most commonly advanced by editors who have not contributed encyclopedic content to the articles in question, and who have made no effort to research the subject matter and its literature. Those who are familiar with the general literature on Muhammad, at least to a basic degree, have spoken here, and are in agreement
• To be sure, no one here objects to the presence of offensive images in Wikipedia articles whose display is demonstrably justified by the presence of similar imagery in reputable and authoritative sources. A limited number of figurative Muhammad images in this article, appropriately placed, is due in my opinion. But there is no good reason why Wikipedia articles should contain more offensive imagery than reliable sources do. What is wrong with a Commons link? While "being objectionable" is generally not sufficient grounds for removal of content, it is definitely not a good or sufficient reason for inclusion either. --JN466 17:15, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• I really do not wish to re-argue the same argument that has been had 30 times over the last couple months. I would, however, like to point out that you have not yet established that the current usage represents undue weight. In fact, given you were supportive of my proposal to use five images (out of roughly 21/22) suggests that the balance (currently at six out of 25) is fairly appropriate. Resolute 19:52, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I liked the image placement in your proposal, i.e. predominantly (though not exclusively) in the depiction section, and in the Western views section. That felt right, and still does. --JN466 00:05, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed findings of fact

Consensus exists that Muhammad should include depictions

1) An overwhelming majority of editors involved in the debates have agreed that images depictions belong on the article, even if they disagree on the number, placement and specific image use.

Comment by Arbitrators:

How is this not a content ruling? Jclemens (talk) 18:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Jclemens, It is not a content ruling in any way! ArbCom avoids "content rulings" in the sense that it does not rule on what the content of an article shall be, but it regularly makes findings such as this. Noting that a consensus exists about a given aspect of content is perfectly valid, and in many cases essential. AGK [•] 15:21, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

• Agreed. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:27, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
• Agreed, if you mean the current regulars. But an overwhelming majority of one-off editors on the page don't agree at all, nor do many regulars in the past. Johnbod (talk) 23:40, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
• Agreed. (I assume you're referring to figurative depictions of Muhammad.) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Yes. I am trying to consistently use "depictions" to refer to such images, and "images" for the overall balance. Not perfectly, mind you, but that is always a safe assumption with my commentary. Resolute 18:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• I believe the problem is that it says "depictions" in the heading but "images" in the body. Hans Adler 01:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Ahh, true enough. fixed. Resolute 17:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

@Jclemens, It's not content ruling; it is clarifying the nature of the dispute. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 22:56, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• Agreed. Although my own position is that 0 depictions is as reasonable a number as 2 and more than 2 is too much. Hans Adler 01:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

@Jclemens - I'm not asking for a ruling here, so much as an establishment of fact. This argument began with "we need to remove all depictions because they are offensive". I simply wish to highlight that that proposal was soundly rejected (yet again). ergo, the "it offends" angle is also rejected. I suppose it does not need to go into any final decision if you feel it is too close to a statement by ArbCom on content. I guess I added it mostly for the parties, some of whom were threatening to restart this debate from scratch when this case opened. Resolute 17:43, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• Agreed. --Elonka 23:09, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

The number and placement of depictions at Muhammad already reflects a compromise position

2) The article has, over time and organically, achieved a state that sets it apart from the typical historical biography by: (1) Limiting depictions to a small minority percentage of the overall total images. (2) Using artistic calligraphy as the infobox lead image rather than a depiction (3) placing the majority of such depictions in the bottom half of the article, "below the fold". (4) Allowing for logged in editors to remove the images for their own account (Answer 3 of FAQ)

Comment by Arbitrators:

I'm not sure that compromise 2 reflects an appropriate encyclopedic reaction. That is, if the article is already being treated specially due to religious concerns, then maybe what we need to do to "break the back of the dispute" is to forbid that, as well. Jclemens (talk) 22:51, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• While it may be a 'compromise', the status quo is not built on a consensus, which is what we aim for (within reason). Consensus is not compromise, and is not determined by plotting each faction's ideal version of the articles and determining the median. If we made such a finding, our decision would be markedly misleading. The reason why this dispute is at arbitration is not because one faction is ignoring consensus - consensus has not been attained. AGK [•] 15:25, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

As per my evidence this simply isn't true.

Additionally while there isn't anything else we can really do, asking users to customise their CSS is hardly an acceptable workaround thats worthy of praise. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:27, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Never mind that some don't even want to include the link to how to do that in the offensive images guideline. Nor a link to the wmf proposed filter stuff. [77] ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 17:32, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I've reverted that. That's not good. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:37, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, your evidence only shows that the number and type of depictions has undergone small adjustments over time. Your evidence does not refute a single one of my claims here. Resolute 18:00, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

If there has been no significant change in the number of images, or the number of images has increased in ratio to the amount of text as the data shows, then there has been no compromise with regards to the number and placement of images. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:11, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

You are not paying attention to what I am writing. I said that the article is in a state that sets it apart from the typical historical biography. Not that it is in a compromise state from how the article looked at some arbitrary point in history. Which, of course, leads me to your second error: You (Jayen, Ludwigs, etc.) seem to be of the opinion that the extremes of this debate are zero depictions and the current number. That is completely incorrect. The extremes are zero depictions and every image being a depiction. The current arrangement falls closer to the minimum extreme than it does the maximum. Resolute 23:05, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Taking a look at some historical biographies that are a featured articles. On William Shakespeare there are 13 images, 4 of which are depictions. On Joan of Arc there are 18 images of which 10 are depictions. On Guy Fawkes there are 3 depictions out of 6 images. Muhammad does have 6 depictions out of 21 images - which is roughly in line with Shakespeare, but I admit at the lower end of the three featured articles I listed. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:47, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

How about Leonardo da Vinci (a GA)? If I've counted correctly, 2 out of 28 images are figurative representations of da Vinci himself; 26 are not. It's normal and appropriate for people who lived centuries ago, but left an influential legacy that has changed the world, and is remembered by millions (or billions) to this day. --JN466 11:28, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Further such examples are here. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 11:45, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

There are actually 25 images presently on Muhammad. You can't just pretend the images attached to the templates placed throughout the article don't exist. Consequently, the number of depictions is actually below what you assess to be a typical range. I think you have actually reinforced my point. Especially given the other compromises that obviously exist at present. Resolute 20:04, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Which makes it 24% rather than 29%, its not enough to make the number of depictions statistically significantly lower than the featured articles. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:58, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, of your eight presented comparibles, it shows that the percentage of depections to total images on Muhammad is less than half that of five of them. And of the remaining three, it can definitely be said in one case that the issue is simply a case of our having only a single depiction. And the more random examples I add from FA-class biographies, the more obvious it becomes: John A. Macdonald, 10 of 16 are of the subject, 12 are depcitions of any individual. Jerry Voorhis, 2 of 7 are of the subject, 3 are depictions of any individual. George F. Kennan, 2 of 2. Yasser Arafat 16 of 21 of the subject, 18 overall depicting an individual. Robert de Chesney, 0 of 2. Paulinus of York, 1 of 2. George Hirst, 5 of 6 (all six depict some individual). Bob Windle, 0 of 0 (there were three irrelevant images at the time it was promoted to FA, none depicting Windle or anyone else). Fairfax Harrison, 1 of 3. Hastings Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay, 4 of 7 (plus two more depicting other individuals). James Newland, 4 of 4. That's 11 more examples, of which two have less than Muhammad, likely due to lack of available images only, one is comparabile by percentage, and eight have significantly more such images. And of all those articles, every one uses a depiction or photograph of the individual when we have one available. Any which way you slice it, the Muhammad article has a very low proportion of depictions to total images, and of depictions used relative to what is available when compared to other high-end biographies. Resolute 19:10, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately all but two of those figures have articles with photographs and/or have been alive recently enough for their images to be still in copyright which distorts the percentage of depictions compared to figures who were alive before that. The two who are relevant I have added to an extended table on the evidence talk page.

Of course I accept that the number of images of Muhammad is lower than the mean number of depictions for featured articles of historical figures, the issue is that it isn't that far away from the mean - especially as the number of depictions used varies so widely. If an attempt at compromise had been made then the number of images in Muhammad would be significantly lower than for other historical biographies and your image count includes a bunch of decorative images that aren't really directly comparable to the other articles listed. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:10, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, I can't stop you from moving the goalposts in your own evidence. However, I never limited my statements to the pre-photographic era (in fact, including the photographic era is less likely to support my viewpoint, as the number of photographs in copyright limits our avilable pool. This limitation does not exist for pre-20th century drawings, paintings, etc.) I would note again that you are attempting (unsuccessfully) to argue against but one aspect of my claim. I suspect that you choose to ignore the remainder because you have no rebuttal. Resolute 21:02, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you can compare depictions of someone in the 7th century with someone in the photographic era, as photographs change how people are depicted significantly. With regards to your other point. Significantly lower != 0, from my original evidence I would guess that using 3 images out of 21/25 would count as significantly lower - though expanding the data pool before giving an exact figure would be ideal.

I have done some maths to make this point (crudely I have assumed the data follows a normal distribution [this isn't perfect as a normal distribution assumes the data is unbounded which is clearly false, but it should be a reasonable guess] and then worked out what 2 standard deviations less than the mean is [~95% of results are within two standard deviations, and this is the standard measure of error] - which if it was that would make it significantly lower - the figure for Muhammad is ~1 standard deviation less than the mean, or maybe a little less) , and I accept that I haven't given my workings or answers as a specific number once we have the full data pool, including a sensible correction for the fact that the normal distribution requires the data set to be unbounded which is clearly not the case here as you can't have negative depictions. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:05, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Eraser, your evidence isn't really evidence, it is just you applying your own interpretation to your own data. There has no compromise to simply "reduce the number of images", that would be a flawed and ass-backwards way to approach the matter. What the past compromise was about was identifying what images were relevant and helpful to the article and what we not, without preconceived notions of "more is better" or "less is better", in addition to the points made about moving some images to the end of the article. Tarc (talk) 17:58, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Not really. Resolute is stating that the "number and placement" of images already reflects a compromise position. Unless you dispute my statistical data and basic analysis the data shows that that claim is demonstrably false. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:02, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

See, this is the heart of the problem; you are presupposing that a "compromise" MUST end in a reduction of images. That is not the case at all. There were solutions agreed to OTHER than deletion, such as relocation or making clear what the process was for readers to turn image displays off for themselves. Tarc (talk) 18:18, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

If you look at the diffs there is no evidence that serious quantities of relocation have occurred.

It is true that a serious alternative to reducing the number of images would be to include a disclaimer and/or a button to hide the images, but neither of those have been enacted. I don't think you can argue in good faith that hacking the css is an acceptable user action as a compromise. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:25, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

• Agree with the proposition - my analysis at AGD's 1st question clearly shows this, and Eraserhead's figures are beside the point as there was already an abnormally low proportion of images showing the subject of the biography at the date he starts. In addition he ignores the placement of the images. For a long time one of the "portrait" images was the first image seen from the top of the article, immediately below the templates; now all are well "below the fold" (the first comes at the bottom of screen 5 on my machine) and most very low down a pretty lengthy article. Johnbod (talk) 23:10, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

• Care to present a diff for that? Currently it looks like the first unveiled depiction is much higher up the article than they were when it got GA status (see my evidence for diffs). -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 13:45, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• Absolutely not! The diff you evidence gives for the "GA version" is this one, July 5 2008, where the first image is much higher up than present, on the 3rd screen, just below the TOC & the huge templates, as opposed to the 5th screen now. It remained in this position until some point in 2011 - see your December 31 2010 diff, where it is in the same position. I'm not going to hunt through for the exact stop & start diffs. Johnbod (talk) 02:47, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

• The first unveiled depiction is over half way down the article in the GA version. The first depiction may have been higher in the GA version, but I don't think anyone has an objections to those beyond including too many of them being WP:UNDUE. EDIT: Re-reading again and we're both right. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:27, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

In reply to Jclemens comment I think he's right. Our reasonable person will expect to see a depiction in the infobox as that's consistent with every other article on the project where there is a depiction and given that it probably is a violation of WP:NOTCENSORED. I think this applies even if we take that policy significantly less seriously for images, in line with Jclemens comment here about NPOV. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:47, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. In Islam, something like the present lead image is the "iconic" representation of Muhammad. This is what you'll find in a mosque, not an image of a beardy guy with a halo. Besides, this would be a clear content ruling. --JN466 08:32, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

• It is definitely the result of lengthy discussion, involving concessions on all sides. But clearer, better guidance from policy and the Foundation with regard to curation of controversial content would eliminate the need for compromise. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:54, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

That a compromise has been made is evident relative to similar articles on the English Wikipedia. Now if you take the Arabic Wikipedia as a standard of compromise, then indeed you can dispute this claim. But they don't have images of people in the articles for man or woman, and I can only hope the English Wikipedia is not aspiring to that kind of compromise. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:23, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

As per table 2 of my evidence there is no statistically significant difference between the number of depictions in Muhammad and the number of depictions in the featured articles of historical figures. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:58, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Editors have engaged in battleground behaviour

3) Editors have attempted to polarize the debate into an ideological and religious battle, resorted to incivility and personal attacks and have shown a disinclination to acting in a collaborative nature, frustrating the community's ability to resolve this debate.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Agreed. Jclemens (talk) 19:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

• Agreed, as per my evidence. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:28, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
• I don't especially agree with this. There are strongly defined views, so some friction has been inevitable. Some drive-by editors over the years have been very incivil and POV on both sides, but the filibstering of recent months has pretty much drowned them out. It's a pity Eraserhead's "evidence" doesn't include some of his own edits, like this one. The debate has also been hampered by a number of editors who feel the need to respond to everything everybody else says, even when they have nothing to say. Johnbod (talk) 23:17, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

• Sorry, I don't think that's anywhere near as bad as most of the edits in my evidence. That said if you wish to present that edit to the committee in your evidence by all means. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:48, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Ludwigs2 has resorted to tendentious editing

4) Ludwigs2 has violated WP:NPA, WP:IDHT, WP:BATTLE, even in this very ArbCom case request.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

As per my evidence he's not the only guilty party. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:28, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, but in my view, he is the source of the issue. Ludwigs is not the only editor I expect to be admonished out of this. Resolute 18:07, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:18, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Nope. I don't recall him deploying anything I'd consider a personal attack. He can be blunt, but that's another thing. "I don't agree" is not the same as IDHT; I've never seen him not get what his interlocutor is saying or not respond intelligently and logically. He is not a POV-pusher; he has a view on NPOV that many of us share. No element of BATTLE applies to his behaviour. The only element of WP:TEND that might superficially appear to apply is "One who repeats the same argument without convincing people" but both Tarc's and Resolute's evidence belie this. He is tenacious, which I admire. BUT he is incapable of resisting bait, which is his downfall. Work on that would you, Ludwigs? I don't want to collaborate with you when you, Tarc and others are constantly (really, constantly) hijacking threads with your tangental bickering. It makes measured negotiation impossible among the rest of us. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Er, no. None of us have compared our opponents to [Jim Crow-era racists. There's a false dichotomy going on here, an attempt to pair up Ludwigs' behavior with someone else's to mitigate or explain his vitriol, but given the bulk of links provided my myself and others on the Evidence page I believe it is becoming quite clear what the source of all this is. Again I will draw a parallel to the Obama arbcom; there were many voices, including mine, which got rather testy. But once the onion layers were peeled back, we saw CoM and Steve at the core. Once they were removed from the topic area, the flood slowed to a trickle. Tarc (talk) 14:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I've read all those links, and the interactions that preceded them. The more I read, the more appalled I was by the goading, baiting and pure disrespect meted out to him by you and others. I'm pretty confident that any impartial reader will draw the same conclusions as me. We'll see. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 19:34, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

That is true. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:39, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• @ Elonka: I just looked over Ludwigs2's 250 odd edits to Talk:Muhammad/Images. I have very rapidly prepared a summary of edits on a userspace subpage User:Mathsci/ArbCom2011 which, if AGK thinks fit, can be adapted for the evidence page. The diffs do appear to support the finding of fact here, although many of the personal attacks on multiple users are borderline. Mathsci (talk) 22:21, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for that. I would add that we could do the same at User talk:Jimbo Wales, WT:NOT and anywhere else this dispute has been forum shopped and come up with more examples. There is also my own addition below, in proposed remedy 1. Resolute 22:25, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I was accussed multiple times (diffs on the evidence page) of being prejudiced and when I told him that I wasn't and he shouldn't make comments about others instead of apologizing for the remarks tried to justify them. I would consider those personal attacks at a minimum since it was done to try to paint me in a unfavorable view simply because I was able to come up with multiple points to why images should be kept within the article. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:15, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Your behaviour has been perfectly reasonable as far as I'm concerned. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:19, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I try to make a good run at being reasonable. It does get difficult at times and I try to make sure I sit and reread anything I will post since sometimes I either can be confusing or a little heated but I find trying to have a level head is more useful in the long run than trying to play battering ram with my head. Also thank you for the compliment. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

I've reviewed Eraserhead's evidence, but I'm not seeing the diffs to backup the claims of personal attacks and battleground behavior by Ludwigs2. Is there a section I'm missing? --Elonka 01:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think my evidence is particularly damning, but this is fairly bad from Ludwigs. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 14:40, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe at that point the disruption caused by Ludwigs2's opponents had reached a dimension that made it necessary to pass to a meta level. I am going to present evidence on Tarc's epic failure to engage in actual dialogue and continued pointing to some imaginary consensus as the only reason not to revisit the lingering problem on the occasion of the WMF resolution. It appears to me that Ludwigs2's description of Tarc's behaviour was essentially accurate. Hans Adler 13:37, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. There has been an overwhelming consensus for YEARS that images of Muhammad are appropriate for the article. If you can't see where the consensus lies, then avail yourself to the talk page and image archives. The only difference between the present-day vendetta of Ludwigs' and past attempts to remove images from the article is that Ludwigs simply would not drop the stick when it was clear to everyone else that his proposals were not going to be adopted. We're not responsible for Ludwigs argument devolving to insults and accusations of racism. Tarc (talk) 13:47, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I will reserve any further comments on this until I have presented my evidence regarding your behaviour. Hans Adler 22:24, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• I had problems with being accused of "making up cheap lies".—Kww(talk) 15:24, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. I agree that Eraserhead1's diff shows Ludwigs2 making a personal attack, and Kww's diff shows Ludwigs2 being, at the very least, uncivil and commenting on contributors, rather than content. I'm not sure that this is enough to warrant the claim that is in the FoF though. For example, is there evidence of personal attacks here in the ArbCom case? And to claim that Ludwigs2 is editing tendentiously, there needs to be evidence showing actual disruptive edits. Simply commenting on a talkpage (even if in an inappropriate manner) does not necessarily count as editing. To support a Finding, there really need to be diffs that are clear and egregious enough that even uninvolved parties can see the truth of the matter. --Elonka 18:50, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Ludwigs2 rarely actually edits, so it's even rarer that he edits tendentiously. If you look through my evidence on Ludwigs2, it shows the pattern: enormous amounts of talk-page discussion, with relatively minor amounts of actual editing. The talk page editing is generally in favor of some magical point of view that he believes has been under represented or maligned: some form of religion or pseudoscience.—Kww(talk) 19:00, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• So? There is value to the project in trying to solve some of these intractable issues. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
• Yes. I don't care for the smell of that comment. I hate religion and pseudoscience as much as the next man, but I love a neutral article more. If I see a biased article that misrepresents the RSs on such a topic I'll happily spend weeks arguing on the talk page if that's what it takes to improve the encyclopedia. I know how that makes me look, and it makes me an easy target for those who think the only good fringe theory or religion article is one that says "this is crap" in the lead, infobox and every second section. If that's what he's been up to, well good. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:57, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• This takes us well of course (and if continued should probably move to a talk page), but your comment highlights one significant divide in this debate: Is this a religious article, or a historical biography? I treat it as the latter, myself. Resolute 17:44, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• It's an article about the historical figure. The religion he founded is certainly a major topic, but the article is not about Islam, nor do Islamic editors have any special claim to influence over its contents.—Kww(talk) 17:56, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Solution of this case starts with a very heavy topic ban here. Carrite (talk) 05:07, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Ludwigs2 is topic banned

1) Ludwigs2 is topic banned from the area of Muhammad images, broadly construed, for a period of one year.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I don't think this has a realistic chance of passing, though my opinion of the current Arbcom may be too good. In the unlikely event that it does pass and is not accompanied by similar measures against those who engaged in much worse behaviour on the other side, I am personally not going to care whether it's to make an explicit point that wikilawyering, preventing constructive discussions and mobbing unpopular users are prosocial activities and should be encouraged, or whether it is for purely formal reasons. Hans Adler 09:51, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and I just realised this proposal comes from Resolute, the admin who attacked Ludwigs2 for being open to rational arguments by others in general and daring to support his (Resolute's!) compromise proposal in particular. [78] Hans Adler 10:20, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Insufficient to prevent further wiki-wide disruption from him. Ludwigs2 makes uniformed comments just about everything and stumbles into countless disputes, especially involving images. Talk:Pregnancy and Talk:Cat are further examples of this. He was already banned for his behavior from Astrology, but only because WP:AE doesn't allow those involved on his side to vote in his defense. Is he going to be serially topic banned from every article he disrupts? I think he had enough chances. Site-wide ban seem the most appropriate outcome for him. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:04, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

If we mention the pregnancy case, then I think it's worth bearing in mind that Ludwigs2's view was the one the community eventually, after a long and painful process, came round to adopting. --JN466 04:45, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

You can mention it if you like, but just as good content contribution doesn't negate disruptive behavior (e.g. Betacommand, ScienceApologist), being agreed with in the end doesn't excuse the rocky road of how Ludwigs arrived there. One could argue that the "long and painful process" would have likely been shorter and less painful if he hadn't been a party. Just as productive discussions on the Muhammad images occurred during his absences. Tarc (talk) 16:02, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Agree with ASCIIn2Bme. Ludwigs2's battleground approach is not limited to this topic. The fact that out of a number of editors that share his view he is singled out as disruptive speaks volumes. - BorisG (talk) 00:38, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• It's very early days, but I don't think Ludwigs' contributions to this dispute have been as disruptive as this proposal implies. However, Ludwigs was topic-banned from an unrelated subject in October, so if a topic-ban was required, I would take the previous ban into account and instead propose a site-ban. If an editor is disruptive enough to be banned from two unrelated topics, they are too disruptive to contribute to Wikipedia at all. AGK [•] 02:08, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Fair enough. This viewpoint would moot both of my suggested remedies in favour of Kww's site ban proposal. But, for a short look of how the issue, lets look at how many locations this has been forum shopped, where Ludwigs is a major player: RfC at VPP, attempt this past March to change NOTCENSORED specificially citing Muhammad images, failed. Begun the current mess on October 20 here, attempted to use the Foundation resolution as a basis to censor the article, failed. He initiates an arbitration request on October 24, basically asking ArbCom to change policy against the wishes of the community, case rejected. Jayen moved the discussion to Jimbo's talk page on November 3, where Ludwigs again re-argued the same points that were previously rejected, failed. He tries again on November 9, failed. On November 4, he started anothe RfC, this time at WT:NOT, which will likewise fail. Most recently, his own proposals in this very case are another attempt to have the arbitration committee change policy to suit his own beliefs where the community will not. And in all cases, the arguments are the same: "They are offensive, therefore they are trivial." In call cases, his arguments have been rejected. Yet here we are, on at least the sixth or seventh forum, with him arguing the same points that have never succeeded in gaining traction.
  • Also, from my evidence, he has stated on at least two occasions that he anticipates he will ultimately be banned for his actions. He was even chastized by SirFozzie in this very aritration request because his answers regarding a binding RfC indicated his level of acceptance was tied directly to whether he supported the outcome. Despite all of these failures to turn the community as noted above, he notes in his proposed principle #1 that he intends to try yet again with yet another RfC question. Ironically, he was complaining about how multiple RfCs on the same thing were a waste of time at Talk:Pregnancy: [79], [80]. The difference between the two cases is that he supported the outcome of the original RfC at Pregnancy, but opposes the outcomes at Muhammad and NOTCENSORED. We are stuck at a point with Ludwigs where he has given every indication that this will not step away from the issue until he gets what he wants. He has shown this behaviour at Muhammad and Pregnancy, was topic banned from Astrology, and someone else mentioned he even had issues at Talk:Cat (which I have not verified for myself). If anything, the evidence that he is not capable of editing in a collaborative environment is mighty strong.
  • And that does not even touch on the personal attacks. Myself, I have been accused of trying to destroy Muslim tradition, of being unethical and unconscionable, of having no conscience, had my competence questioned, was lumped into a group for whom the entire purpose of this debate is anti-Islamic bigotry, and of being a sociopath. There is probably more I forgot about, and if I hadn't simply worked to tune him out at some point, I am certain the attacks would have continued. All of this is entirely, and exclusively, because I disagree with his viewpoint on the matter. He's done the same with other editors. Resolute 20:55, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
    • Though some might perceive Ludwigs2 as simply "forcefully presenting his case", the diffs do appear to be showing that he is frequently commenting on the contributors and their perceived motivations, rather than strictly on the content of the dispute. --Elonka 22:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

      If you look a bit closer you will realise that Ludwigs2 is a clear case of a mobbing victim. He is continuously targeted by unfounded personal attacks, even from moderate editors who distance themselves from him to score a quick point. In this situation it is perfectly normal for him to retaliate occasionally. He cannot report the offenders to ANI because experience has shown that that's where the mobbing gets worst. I guess he was the only editor ever who was blocked for appropriately reporting QuackGuru, a world class IDHT artist with a long ANI career. Hans Adler 13:49, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

      If you believe that, Elonka, you are not reading the diffs. As a rule, what I generally am suggesting is that editors sound as if they are making racist, anti-Islamic, or deeply unethical statements. It's unfortunate, but after an editor makes a certain number of assertions that (e.g.) fanatical Muslims are lined up waiting for a chance to pillage the project of images, and that all Muslims should be denied a voice on project as a consequence, racism becomes a credible concern that must be raised. Remember, not all racism is overt, and people are sometimes unaware how racist their expressed attitudes are. If you want to bust me for expressing concerns that there's racism in this debate, you'd best make damned sure that there isn't any first. Otherwise you'll find yourself on a side of the debate that I do not think will appeal to you. --Ludwigs2 19:40, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

      • I would tend to think that the person making the accusation in the first place is the one with the "damned sure" obligation. This is skirting a bit close to the kind of stuff found in many Israel-Palestine debates here on the Wikipedia, a "I'm not saying Person X is an antisemite, but..." type of thing. Tarc (talk) 20:20, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

        Sorry, Tarc, but it doesn't work that way. You regularly make statements which could reasonably be construed as racist; it is up to you to justify them so that we can all see that they are not. I don't know (and I don't really care) what your actual attitude towards Muslims is; all I know is that you typically cast them as a fanatical minority that must be suppressed. If there is a way to interpret that attitude which is not racist I'm open to hearing it, but as it stands you have merely continued to assert it as a truth without bothering to justify it. AGF extends far enough to give you a chance to explain, but not so far that you can make such claims with impunity. --Ludwigs2 22:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

        Can diffs be provided that show what you think would constitute a reasonable construction of racism? I don't recall ever seeing a remark that I would contribute to racism so I would like to see what exactly you are referring to. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:28, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

        He's digging his own grave with these sorts of remarks, just let em go. I've never in my life encountered something so ludicrous as requiring someone to prove that he isn't racist. Tarc (talk) 23:48, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

        No Tarc, I'm not. Diffs can and have been presented, and I can present more as time permits. But the general issue is clear to see for anyone who looks at the discussion. Tarc, ASCII, Resolute, Robert, Kww, and etc.: you all rest your arguments on the assertion that anyone who tries to remove these images is guilty of the promotion of Islamic viewpoints; you frequently make claims that if we remove even one of these images, images will be excised from all over the project; you consistently try to cast anyone who asks to remove the images as a fanatical Muslim extremist (or if you can't, as in my case, then you go for Muslim apologist). Most of you have done it here, on these case pages; diffs are not difficult to find. You collectively paint a picture of Islamic editors (or in Kww's case, religious editors more generally put) that is loaded with negative presumptions about their behavior and intentions, and you keep trying to pass it off as though it were an established and unquestionable truth about Islam/religion. Even AGFing that you all have the best intentions, you are collectively doing one heck of a good job of mimicking prejudice. I've cut you a lot of slack from the beginning - I've always asked you to justify these questionable statements in non-prejudicial terms, and never outright condemned you for your attitudes - and I've gotten nothing but grief for it. You still have that slack here; this time I suggest you use it. --Ludwigs2 00:17, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

        One more with feeling, Ludwigs2: that's not what I'm saying. That's not what I've ever said. I've said that if we consider the sensitivities of the Sunni, we must consider the sensitivities of all. I don't expect, for example, aborigines to begin a campaign for us to remove all images of dead people. It's unlikely that they would start doing that, and it's unlikely that they would choose Wikipedia as their starting point. Thus, we wouldn't censor our imagery in their favor in the same way that we had towards the Sunnis. That would leave Wikipedia in a biased position, which is unacceptable. I don't expect yielding on this issue to begin a campaign of massive censorship, I expect it to set a precedent for small-scale, targeted censorhship, which I consider to be highly detrimental to the neutrality of the encyclopedia. You, on the other hand, have stated that your motivation is to remove images that Sunnis find offensive, for the reason that they find it offensive, and you don't think the value of these particular images justifies offending them. I, on the other hand, don't think offending them matters, and certainly isn't worth introducing editorial bias. Please stop misrepresenting my position, and don't misrepresent your own, either.—Kww(talk) 00:32, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

        So the statement that as policy stands is wikipedia does not remove things based upon offense then telling you it is pandering to that group to do so is racism? Even when I go to the point (and I stand by this) that if someone can prove to me that a burning flag should go on the main page for the US I would support this (assuming good reasoning of course), taking into account I am of the opinion that yes it offends me? In short you just said because we don't count offense as a reasonable objection per WP:NOTCENSORED we are in fact being racist is not a viable argument because as it clearly states for the umpteenth time that objections grounded within a religious order are not sufficient for removal. Once that policy changes (if it ever changes) I will count in people's feelings, and until that time the only yardstick you are holding it up is the pictures are offensive so they have the responsibility of doing more than any other picture on this site, which is not grounded in policy. Tivanir2 (talk) 01:41, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

        Kww: You have yet to explain why considering the sensitivities of all is a bad thing. but leaving that aside, your argument about "small-scale, targeted censorship" is a new one - first time I've heard it from you or anyone, at any rate - and I'm curious about it. can you give an example? I'm having a hard time seeing how "small-scale, targeted censorship" is different than normal editorial discretion.

        Oh, and I expect you to provide a diff of me saying that my motivation is to remove images that Sunnis find offensive, or else strike your statement. no nonsense, please.

        Tivanir: I really don't understand what you just said, except that I get the very strong impression that you're trying to say that we must follow the literal text of currently written policy in the idiosyncratic way in which you personally interpret it, without thought or deviation, until such a time as said policy changes. To which I can only say nonsense, and that I'll take a pass on the kool-aid, too. --Ludwigs2 02:18, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

        Plain as day, Ludwigs2: "I'm not worried that your stance will result in massive censorship, I'm worried that your stance will result in highly selective censorship favoring some large groups, which is a more damaging result by far." As for the statement about Sunnis, are you objecting on the basis that you usually say "cultural groups"?—Kww(talk) 03:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

        I am not trying to say I am following a literal interpretation, I am actually attempting to do so. There is a huge difference between thoughts and actions. Likewise I would like to see an argument that actually says we should have zero figurative images that isn't grounded in offense. I don't drink any kool aid and trying to imply I am a card carrying cult member (other than foamy the squirrel -- but that is different he wants cream cheese not mass suicide) is offensive to say the least. Tivanir2 (talk) 03:43, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

        The reason people try to follow policy is it sets the guidelines for what they do. There are policies everywhere in the real world to ensure standards are met and maintained. Most jobs from aircraft mechanics to the guys who flip burgers at fast food places have checklists and requirements. Insisting that the editors actually following how the rules work are a problem because they won't bend over something that is clearly grounded in policy as something they need not bend for is ridiculous. And other than a religious proscription against figurative images there is no reason to remove all pictures which you are lobbying for. Tivanir2 (talk) 04:07, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

        Kww: oh, you did make that argument before. The problem, of course, is that your argument doesn't really hold up under examination. You've posited (if I understand your argument correctly) an aboriginal tribe that has a proscription of some sort against depicting dead people. Assuming such a tribe exists, then it probably would be respectful not to use unnecessary images of dead people on its article, and I would certainly start wondering about the ethics of any editor who insisted that we must add barely relevant images of dead people to the article, just because. There's nothing selective here at all: where there is a long-standing cultural more that can be respected without violating the integrity of the encyclopedia, it ought to be respected. Obviously there needs to be a sourcing to demonstrate the more; obviously mistakes might be made (e.g. it may take some time before the issue about the tribe gets raised, since few people would be aware of it); obviously the informational integrity of the encyclopedia comes first. But if we can satisfy those without violating the culture's rules, why shouldn't we?

        Or it's possible that you're suggesting the 'selective censorship' issue is between major cultures: e.g. we decide images relevant to Islam in a way different than we decide images relevant to Christianity… but if so, that's very odd logic - something like "It's unfair that we don't use images that Muslims object to because we do use images that Christians don't care about." Is it unfair to Christians when a restaurant doesn't insist that Jews get served pork chops like everyone else? Perhaps Jews can all just push the pork chops off their plate if they don't want to eat them?

        Per your last point, no. I'm objecting because I NEVER have suggested that we remove anything because of offense. I have ALWAYS claimed that cultural mores should be one factor weighted into our image choice decision. When I first started this discussion I held the belief that not one of the full-faced images should be used because the value of each was significantly outweighed by its potential for offense. My attitude has changed with respect to some of the (given some very good argumentation I've seen people like Jayen and Mathsci use), and I now think that some of them are valuable enough to outweigh their potential for offense (particularly if they are used in a proper context). I'm objecting because you've made a caricature of my actual argument and presented it as truth, and that's a nono. Now please strike your comment as I asked.

        @ Tivanir: if you are actually following a blindly literal reading of NOTCENSORED, then you should take some time and review the philosophy of policy on project. Policy is not meant to be iron-clad rules or quasi-religious proscriptions. Wikipedia has one purpose - to write a good, reliable, unbiased encyclopedia - and policy which get in the way of doing that should be summarily ignored. We do not write articles to conform to policy; we write articles to cover a topic in an encyclopedia, and policy is merely a tool we use when and where it helps. --Ludwigs2 04:22, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

        Funny i always thought that using rules was a guideline to ensure we write an encyclopedic description so that we didn't need to quibble over every single point. And again I am not blindly following I am willfully following because if someone can make a good case for something I tend to agree with it. Hell I even agree with an overall reduction of images, and have even nominated some for deletion (both figurative and non, both rejected but at least I am attempting to do something constructive.) If there was a lack of rules ever single issue would have to come to arbitration over and over again to rehash the same issues. IAR exists so that if a consensus exists to remove something that is problematic or doesn't work people can do that. However trying to say we can IAR when the status quo is against what you want when there is no clear consensus shows grasping for straws because the other arguments don't work. Tivanir2 (talk) 06:53, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

        Well, your first line is more or less correct, but the rest of the paragraph is nonsense. The part of policy you are 'willfully' following (the last line of NOTCENSORED) was actually added by one of the partisans in this dispute (ASCII) several months ago - had I noticed it then I would have opposed it then, because it is deeply problematic. but I didn't, so now you are using wording thrust into policy by a partisan in order to blindly enforce your preferences as though they were the will of the community, and in essence running a wild end-run around the process of consensus and reason in order to get your way. I'm not suggesting you conspired or anything like that, but our system of developing policy is so bad here that it encourages monomaniacal gamesmanship and suppresses intelligent discussion. Policy is useful for guiding us through minor problems, but in any contentious area it's almost guaranteed that one side or another has gamed policy in petty ways to give themselves an advantage in talk page dog-fights, and such gamed policy cannot be used in a rigid, thoughtless manner. sorry. --Ludwigs2 03:29, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• This is the absolute minimum that should be considered. An indefinite topic ban of not less than one year would be a preferred phrasing. Carrite (talk) 05:09, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2 is placed on probation

2) Once his topic ban expires, he is placed on indefinite probation, during which he may be blocked without warning by an uninvolved administrator if he resumes a battleground mentality on the topic of Muhammad images, broadly construed.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I include this because Ludwigs has a history of "testing the waters" periodically and has shown he will not drop the stick: [81]. In my view, a one-year topic ban will only mean he comes back in 366 days to resume his crusade. That would not be problematic in and of itself, but there is no reason why anyone should have to deal with the monstrous waste of time his battleground mentality has resulted in yet another time. Resolute 00:33, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Not necessary. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:27, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Well, if the ArbCom adopts the board resolution without paying any attention to the distinction on "sacred" material made in the Harris report, you can assume that religious crusaders of all kinds will have free reign on Wikipedia to remove whatever bothers them not just images. So it won't matter much if Ludwigs2 is in or out. Might as well ban everyone else and hand him the keys to the project. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 17:02, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposals by Elonka

Proposed principles

Purpose of Wikipedia

1) The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Agreed. Jclemens (talk) 19:48, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, of course, but I do not intend to include general statements of policy that do not help to explain our decision in any of my drafts. The "principles" section of our decisions are too often bloated with self-evident statements like this. (I recognise that this is a 'standard' principle, and I am criticising this committee's general practices - not Elonka's proposal in particular.) AGK [•] 15:51, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Totally. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:38, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:30, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. Hans Adler 22:49, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Johnbod (talk) 02:43, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed. Hopefully this is one that everyone can agree on? --Elonka 19:25, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a collaborative project

2) Wikipedia is a collaborative project, and it is essential that all editors work towards compromise and a neutral point of view in a good-faith fashion.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Compromise? Where is that in our pillars? Jclemens (talk) 18:46, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Can't agree with the "compromise" bit. There are occasions where compromise is appropriate and others where it is not. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:40, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Even in cases like Ireland's title where compromise might not be appropriate the winning side could give some ground in another way and that would probably be a positive step. -- Eraserhead1 <talk>

Some form of compromise is almost always appropriate and necessary. The present dispute is ultimately about a choice between two compromises, although one side tends to use the rhetoric of uncompromising authority. (Example from 21 October [82].) This principle is correct, and it may or may not be helpful. Hans Adler 22:58, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

@Jclemens, without compromise how can we resolve any serious dispute? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:50, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Compromise is not always appropriate, such as when one side demands something unreasonable or consists of a vanishingly small minority. Sometimes editors just have to be told that they are wrong. @Elonka, if anything, that case you cite reinforces the point that when a minority pushes against a majority over and over and over, it can be considered disruptive. Reaching a consensus does not always mean that it comes via compromise. Tarc (talk) 21:10, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

If it is being done in bad faith that should be covered under WP:GAMING or WP:DISRUPT. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:45, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed. Hopefully this is another that all can agree on? --Elonka 19:25, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Jclemens: This wording has been used in another case. --Elonka 19:18, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes, compromise is a bad thing. I, for one, find it hard to compromise with people that won't concede that worshiping something creates a bias about that thing, and then worry about others' failure to compromise.—Kww(talk) 22:24, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I have conceded that. Maybe not as much as you would like but I have conceded it up to a point. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:31, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I noticed. Unfortunately, you stand pretty much alone among those that would like to see the image count reduced.—Kww(talk) 22:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed findings of fact

WMF Resolution on controversial content (2)

1) The Arbitration Committee acknowledges that the Wikimedia Foundation in 2010 commissioned a study on controversial content, and in May 2011 passed a Resolution concerning controversial content.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Noted. In addition to the sections highlighted below, please also note "We support the principle of least astonishment: content on Wikimedia projects should be presented to readers in such a way as to respect their expectations of what any page or feature might contain. " Risker (talk) 03:26, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes, it's there. It also looks towards a media filter to solve problems with users self-selecting to not see religious imagery they dislike. Jclemens (talk) 18:56, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Agreed. --JN466 04:39, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• Agreed, and the current position reflects this, and would reflect it better if image preferences were available. The key part of the resolution otherwise is:"We urge the community to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining whether it has a realistic educational use and applying the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement." Categorization is not relevant here, but, as mentioned above, the placement of images depicting Muhammad has changed, and you now have to go down five screens (on my machine) before encountering one. The "educational" issue has been opened above, and will be divisive, and no doubt discussed much more. Johnbod (talk) 05:47, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• Image preferences would be nice as something beyond WP:NPOV. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 13:31, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

The connection between the WMF resolution and the Muhammad images is tenuous at best. IMO it was aimed at addressing some public black eyes of the project's past, such as the Commons being little more than a free porn (kiddie and otherwise) repository, or some articles where nudity was truly not needed to enhance the subject matter (e.g. the sub-section that public urination redirects to used to contain an image of a naked woman relieving herself on a beach). Invoking the WMF's findings to try to strip images from the Muhammad article is like performing a heart operation with a club rather than a scalpel. Tarc (talk) 22:13, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I support the committee acknowledging the existence of this resolution. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

This acknowledgement should be included as a part of any case, and the arbitrators should be mindful of the WMF's studies and statements on this topic. --Elonka 03:38, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

The resolution mandates that a personal image filter be developed. ArbCom can't do anything about that since they have no control over what software runs on this site. That's entirely within WMF's powers. And we all know how well that the development of that image filter went. [83] So, if you're going to have a FoF on this, it better be up-to-date. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:41, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

ASCII, I don't think the issue is as simple as that. If you read the WMF's report, it is clear the purpose of the study is to inform the communities how Wikimedia should treat controversial content (including images). The recommendations of the report was to develop software that made it easier for a reader to opt out of controversial content, but I don't think the software is being forced upon us or any other project - and the English Wikipedia could conceivably 'opt out' of the image hiding filter.

Elonka, I agree that the final decision should acknowledge the WMF report and resolution, which was an important development, and concede that work in this area is ongoing. However, the image filter has relatively little to do with this dispute. If we had the filter at our disposal today, we would still be required to make an editorial judgement about the use of controversial images at Muhammad. The purpose of the filter is not to make it easier to include images that some readers may find offensive (with the thinking that they could simply hide the images if that is their preference), but to improve the reader's ability to cope with articles where our judgement about image balance did not accord with the reader's own views. AGK [•] 16:33, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

AGK, I said nothing about the filter. I believe your response is intended for ASCII, not me. --Elonka 18:06, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

AGK, the Harris & Harris report said that the personal image filter is the only realistic solution for dealing with offense caused by "sacred" stuff like the images of Muhammad. [84] The report did not recommend any editorial changes in that respect. The WMF board then made a broad and vague statement about "pay[ing] particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content", which turned into mana for the tendentious editors in the religious imagery area. It would be helpful if ArbCom were more discerning in their reading the Harris & Harris report than the WMF board was. See also my proposal for distinguishing between two broad classed of controversial content, which is similar to what the Harris & Harris report proposed in that respect. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:34, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

(Moved my response to ASCIIn2Bme here from above, where it was out of place.)

ASCIIn2Bme, The report of the Controversial Content Working Group to the WMF Board said:

We suggest urging the community to continue actively reviewing and curating (especially controversial) content; this is a re-wording of [Harris & Harris'] recommendations 4,5 & 6 (reviewing sexual images) that is more inclusive to all kinds of controversial content, and that recognizes that content curation is a part of ongoing work on all projects. We frame this as a continued call to action.

Harris & Harris 4, 5 & 6 (pointed to by ASCIIn2Bme, above) excluded controversial "sacred" content. The working group, in its report to the board, expressly included controversial sacred content and expressly applied their recommendation to all projects. The subsequent board resolution was broad but not vague:

We urge the community to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining whether it has a realistic educational use and applying the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement.

--Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:19, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Elonka, yes, most of my response was about the resolution itself, rather than your proposal. I included my remarks in my response to you because the image filter is a critical component of the resolution and the preceding study. ASCII, I agree. AGK [•] 02:11, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Discussion continues on the talk page [85]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:00, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed remedies (Elonka)

Standard discretionary sanctions (Elonka's proposal)

1) All Muhammad-related articles, broadly interpreted, are placed under discretionary sanctions. Any uninvolved administrator may levy restrictions as an arbitration enforcement action on users editing in this topic area, after an initial warning.

Comment by Arbitrators:

• On the button! I think discretionary sanctions is already going to be a component of the final decision. AGK [•] 01:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Jclemens (talk) 19:49, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

• Oppose: "All Muhammad-related articles, broadly interpreted.." will involve thousands of articles on Islamic subjects, large numbers of which may get caught up in other disputes that are nothing to do with this one, and potentially represents a discriminatory approach to editing on one particular religion. There's a huge potential for unintended trouble here. Restricted to "controversial images" (but certainly not all such, as Elonka suggests below), or better to "figurative images representing the person of Muhammad" it might make sense. Johnbod (talk) 17:40, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed, though the arbitrators may wish to consider whether or not to expand the topic area to "controversial images", to save trouble later. --Elonka 02:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Quite necessary. I doubt however that an arbitrary extension to "controversial images" is wise. AE would be flooded with all sorts of image disputes suddenly "controversial". However an extension to all "controversial 'sacred'" images (as defined by Harris & Harris) might work. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 12:00, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Whatever we do we should avoid Harris and Harris's clownish use of "sacred". The whole point of Islamic objections to images is to avoid the possibility of them being sacred. Johnbod (talk) 17:40, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Ludwigs2 (Elonka's proposal)

2) User:Ludwigs2 is topic-banned from all image-related discussions for any Muhammad-related article, broadly defined. This topic ban includes talk pages, wikipedia space and userspace, but only covers image-related discussions.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Seems reasonable. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed, based loosely on the wording at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Tree_shaping#Remedies. I agree with some of Ludwigs2's points, but his repeated tendency to comment on contributors and their perceived motivations, as opposed to keeping his comments focused on article content, is not helpful to the discussion. --Elonka 16:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

While I think this would be a good step, I don't think it will be the end of problems with Ludwigs2. He has already been topic banned from Astrology and previously cautioned by arbcom "to discuss matters more circumspectly and to avoid drama-creating rhetoric". He has behaved similarly regarding pregnancy and at WT:NOT and user talk:Jimbo Wales. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Muhammad images/Evidence#In a facsimile of his behavior in other topic areas, Ludwigs2 has been uncivil and inflammatory and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Muhammad images/Evidence#Ludwigs2 and tendentious editing. Short of a site ban, a topic ban from all image-related discussions is probably the only thing that will help. Thryduulf (talk) 16:54, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww (Elonka's proposal)

3) User:Kww is topic-banned from all image-related discussions for any Muhammad-related article, broadly defined. This topic ban includes talk pages, wikipedia space and userspace, but only covers image-related discussions.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Seems reasonable. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Obviously I disagree. I've considered other people's points throughout this discussion. There are a few that I have wholeheartedly rejected, though, and the one Elonka explicitly mentions is one of them. It seems inexplicable that we normally and routinely consider a business relationship with the topic to be a source of potential bias, but worshiping the topic would not create an equivalent bias. I have not objected to people of faith as being biased on all things, only that they should be treated as potentially biased about the things that they worship.—Kww(talk) 19:01, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed, based on Tree shaping case. Kww makes some good points, but is clearly not able to review sources in an appropriate manner, and seems unable to acknowledge that his opponents may have valid points. Also, his continued insistence that Muslim authors (or indeed any author who has a personal faith) are likely biased and incapable of writing neutrally, is not in line with our policies on how to determine the reliability of a source. --Elonka 16:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Tarc (Elonka's proposal)

4) User:Tarc is topic-banned from all image-related discussions for any Muhammad-related article, broadly defined. This topic ban includes talk pages, wikipedia space and userspace, but only covers image-related discussions.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Well, other than to defend myself against repeated accusations of racism and anti-Islamism by Ludwigs, and to a somewhat lesser extent Hans Adler (e.g. the "autistic and unethical" jibe, I believe I am rather focused on the matter at hand. That focus is not always warm and fuzzy, esp when dealing with tendentious behavior in others, but that just is what it is. I do regret alluding to Ludwigs' philosophy on the subject matter as "treehugging", made somewhere on Jimbo's talk page, but IIRC those frustration ventings have been few and far between in this case. Tarc (talk) 18:48, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed, based on Tree shaping case. As with Ludwigs2, Tarc too seems to too quickly resort to comments about other editors, rather than keeping comments focused on the article at hand. --Elonka 16:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Article and subject scope

5) Parties that are otherwise topic-banned are allowed to outlay proposals and background rationale at the commencement of any new discussion, and to answer specific queries addressed to them or their proposals.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Elonka, please could you explain how you think this would work in practice in these particular circumstances and why it might not be open to wikilawyering? Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 16:52, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

(reply to Elonka) I agree that if this remedy been tried and tested, then it could well work in this case. Mathsci (talk) 11:34, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Here, I express no opinion on who, if anyone, this should apply to but E, how does this prevent the restricted parties form endlessly asking questions and commenting on each other's statements? Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd suggest that we establish this as a convention not just for restricted parties, but for involved parties in a dispute: e.g. when a formal discussion is begun, involved parties make one concise statement of their position, and then back off unless asked specific questions. it would make dispute resolution processes much more streamlined and congenial not to have invested participants arguing against every new comment made. --Ludwigs2 18:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed, based on Tree shaping case. The purpose of the topic ban is not to silence differing opinions, but to try and keep certain editors from dominating or derailing the discussions, especially when it is clear that their arguments are not well-grounded in policy. --Elonka 16:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

(reply to Mathsci) This kind of remedy was used in the Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Tree shaping case, to good effect. That was a similar dispute, where certain editors had been arguing for years about the title of the article. With the remedy, some of the more persistent editors were still allowed to state their opinion, but only once. So if there was an RM, straw poll, or RfC, the restricted editors could participate (once each), but it avoided the problems of the endless back and forth discussions. Other non-restricted editors could then engage in discussion in a more measured fashion, without getting their comments lost in a wall of text. If anyone wanted more information from the restricted editors, they were allowed to ask, and the restricted editors could reply. I thought it worked well there, and could possibly work well here, too. --Elonka 03:29, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

(reply to Alanscottwalker) Actually, the restricted parties wouldn't be allowed to ask questions. They could state their opinion once, and that's it. If it was deemed appropriate, a non-restricted editor could potentially ask, "Editor X, do you have any questions that you think we should ask of the other restricted parties?" Then the restricted editor could state them, but it would be up to the other non-restricted parties as to whether or not they wished to actually ask those questions and continue the chain. If any non-restricted editor went overboard with this, and was clearly acting as an enabler to allow the restricted editors to dominate the conversation again, it would probably be pretty obvious after a few back and forths. The matter could then be taken to AE, and, assuming that the arbs are going to authorize discretionary sanctions in the topic area, then any uninvolved administrator could place further editors under restrictions, as necessary. --Elonka 17:56, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposals by User:ASCIIn2Bme

Proposed principles

Limitations of NPOV with respect to images

1) By their very nature, images are always presented "in Wikipedia's voice" (even if their captions might not be). The method of creating a NPOV article by wrapping attribution around conflicting POV statements is not applicable to images. Therefore, when sources disagree about the suitability of an image in a given context, it's impossible for Wikipedia not take sides (if it has an article on that topic). There is no visual construction equivalent to saying "source A says this image is suitable here, but source B says it's not." The image is either included in the article or it isn't. The placement and sizing of an image may mitigate this fundamental limitation to a certain extent, but cannot overcome it completely.

Comment by Arbitrators:

No. Multiple images can be presented depicting different takes on things, commentary can be used to explain images... this is a non-starter. Jclemens (talk) 18:45, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

• Partly agree. There are some images that relate to particular factual "viewpoints" of the sort NPOV deals with, but not these. For example an image of a Creationist diorama showing humans and dinosaurs living at the same time, like this, is effectively making a controversial factual statement. There is no equivalent issue here, not even as to the widespread use of images of Muhammad. Also, the many factors affecting the choice of images by commercial picture editors cannot really be construed as "when sources disagree about the suitability of an image in a given context" - to use one image or type of image is not to "disagree" with the use of others. Johnbod (talk) 04:09, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
• Mostly agree. NPOV was probably not written with images in mind, but it is the best fit for disputes such as this one. For obvious reasons, people's emotional reactions to images are often much stronger than their reactions to text. That's why we need to get controversial images right.

However, I don't agree that placement and sizing of images is less effective than attribution of statements. I believe that proper contextualisation such as moving the nude image from the lead of the pregnancy article to the 2nd trimester physiology section, or moving many depictions of Muhammad to the dedicated Depictions of Muhammad article, is just as effective as attribution – if not more so.

I also don't agree with ASCIIn2Bme's rationale. "True NPOV if we only followed sources" is problematic when seen as (close to) a mechanism for automatic writing, but it is no more problematic here than it is elsewhere. NPOV is not a small spot that we need to hit with an article. Rather, it is a large, fuzzy field in which we can place the article. This field is so big that it doesn't matter if our methods for determining its boundaries carry some uncertainty. Methods such as examining Muhammad biographies for illustrations are good enough to decide whether our approach is clearly inside reasonable bounds, clearly outside, or near the border. Hans Adler 23:27, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• NPOV is never an exact science, neither for text nor for images. In practice, there is always a range of possible article versions which we will accept as a fair stab at neutrality. Placement of images can certainly make a difference – using a picture of an aborted foetus as the lead image in abortion, or a picture of flag-draped coffins as the lead image of an article on the US army, will be undue. Now it is true that there will be many sources that use neither type of image at all, and we can't reflect their POV of not having such images at all if we also want to reflect the significant minority viewpoint that may rely on such images to make its point. But that's just the same as with text – there will be sources that don't contain any criticism, while others will focus mainly on criticism and contain no praise. We solve such problems every day, by having both praise and criticism in due proportions. The resulting article is like neither source – because it differs from both of them in featuring material each has excluded – but it is still neutral, because it assigns due weight. The same can be done with images. If one type of image is rare or absent in authoritative sources, but present in a significant minority of them, we will use images of that type, but will reduce the weight we assign them accordingly. Tools we have to do that include positioning and the actual number of such images we include. --JN466 00:14, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• Proposed as self-evident, but I have the impression that some participants here believe this myth that "true NPOV if we only followed sources" is somehow possible with respect to images. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:35, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Sources do not dictate every aspect of Wikipedia articles

2) Customs, mores and conventions used by an article's sources may not override all Wikipedia presentation standards. Attempting to follow all customs or requirements that sources explicitly or implicitly follow (in the name of NPOV) can have absurd effects, including overriding NPOV itself or violating other fundamental pillars like the purpose of Wikipedia, as illustrated in the following (amusing) example:

FSG is something very cool, and so it has a lot of fans/worshipers. All materials produced by these sources are only audio or audio-visual recording. Listening to one of these recording reveals why that is so. There is an explicitly stated rule followed by all fans of FSG that you're not allowed to write anything about FSG, you may only speak of it and record yourself if you want. There are very few outside sources that wrote about FSG. (But it's still wp:notable, for instance FSG has been covered on TV.) May Wikipedia have a typical, text-centric article about FSG without violating NPOV? Not if you think that NPOV implies that the majority of sources decides the Wikipedia document structure/format.

Some more serious examples:

• Most math sources have proofs. Wikipedia math articles usually don't have any. Does that make them fail NPOV?
• Most non-science works don't have an abstract. Does that make LEADs, by their very existence, fail NPOV in many Wikipedia articles?
• Most science papers do have a conclusion section, and many science books have end-of-chapter summaries. Does lack of conclusion sections in Wikipedia's science articles make them fail NPOV?
• While certain type of material like ship or gun data can be found in tabular form in sources, please show me some biographical dictionary that has the elaborate infoboxes we have for persons. E.g., pick the article of some U.S. president. (And even if you manage one such source, it's the majority of them that matter at the NPOV count.) If Wikipedia's biographies fail NPOV that way, those for living persons automatically fail BLP too, don't they?
• All the little rules at WP:MOS may or may not be followed by the majority of sources for any given Wikipedia article. Per-article MOS is needed (with a rigorous survey) or NPOV is being ignored? One very applicable issue here is that most sources about Islam have phraseology like those enumerated in WP:PBUH, while Wikipedia explicitly disallows that. WP:PBUH = NPOV fail because it gives the reader the overwhelming impression that [most] texts about Islam don't have any of that?

Comment by Arbitrators:

The first sentence reads well and sensibly. The rest... gets too wordy to use as-is. Jclemens (talk) 22:54, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

I think most of your examples (except the maths proofs) refer primarily to structure rather than content and structure is covered by the extensive WP:MOS. Even proofs are covered by the manual of style however. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:41, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

This principle would be a lot more convincing without the (hypothetical??? -- I could not even find out what "FSG" is supposed to be an abbreviation for) main example. I agree with the general point and can add the example that low-quality American sources tend to drop all diacritics in foreign names but Wikipedia correctly follows other English reference sources and doesn't, even when a topic is only covered in such low-quality sources otherwise.

However, the application to the present dispute is not accurate. While we don't and shouldn't follow the practice of sources automatically, whenever we do things very differently in a specific case, we must have a good reason. The main strictly good faith argument that I have seen for putting so many depictions on the Muhammad article, and putting them into the strictly biographical sections, is that it seems natural to use such depictions in any biography where they are available, regardless of accuracy. That's an extremely weak argument and not sufficient reason to depart from the overwhelming practice of sources. Hans Adler 23:43, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Agree with first bit (er, what is FSG?). In particular the factors and processes governing the choice of images in sources are often very different from those governing the text. Budgets for picture rights and expensive picture printing are often highly limited, selection may be made mainly by non-specialist picture editors, and be subject to corporate interference to a much greater extent than text. Johnbod (talk) 05:16, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• Fun exercise, isn't it? Just follow the structure/conventions/mandates of the sources?! ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 06:43, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
• Okay, added more serious examples. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:39, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

• In the first 4 examples, the first question to ask is what possible POV could be present in those choices. In the 5th, there is no requirement that any article follow "all the little rules" at MOS anyway (too many people forget that), but in your specific case, MOS:PBUH explicitly enforces NPOV in text, since use of any honorifics at all necessarily adopts the POV of the group bestowing the honour, and repeated or constant use reinforces the POV. As a grounding to oppose relying on source usage to determine WP use of images, this doesn't get there for me. Franamax (talk) 22:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• No, by the JN466 version of NPOV, if the majority of sources have PBUH in them, so should Wikipedia! We should simply do what the majority of sources do. Any deviation is a violation of NPOV. PBUH is WP:DUE according to that logic. Wikipedia articles lacking PBUH give the false impression that majority of sources don't use PBUH! Heresy. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 14:35, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
  • ASCIIn2Bme, we already allow flexibility in MOS matters, where mainstream usage differs from our MOS default. And we have to, as the results would otherwise be insane. See for instance the exceptions listed in WP:NCPEER. You needn't worry about PBUH; I can assure you that among English-language sources, those that use some version of PBUH are in a distinct minority. --JN466 00:37, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Censorship vs. gratuitous offense

3) Wikipedia has a default policy that its articles are not WP:NOTCENSORED. Wikipedia also has a guideline for dealing with material that some people may find offensive. In particular, since October 2011, this guideline recommends avoiding WP:GRATUITOUS offense. ("Wikipedia is not censored, but Wikipedia also does not seek to needlessly offend its readers.")

Comment by Arbitrators:

Agreed. Piss Christ is gratuitously offensive, and designed to be that way. Including it in an article on Jesus Christ would be as inappropriate as putting some of the controversial cartoons in Muhammad. Still, is that really the main focus of the case? Jclemens (talk) 19:51, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

In my view, it's a core issue. AGK [•] 12:02, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

@AGK: Would you please expand on your thought? I take it you are responding to Jclemens. "Core issue," in what sense? Are the current images "offensive" on their face, ie., can any reasonable person see that they are offensive, solely by looking at them? Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:58, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

This seems reasonable to me (though of course, there is endless wikilawyering over the term 'gratuitous') --Ludwigs2 19:44, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely true and correct but a stated before the consensus removed things like the Dante's inferno picture of muhammad based upon gratuitous offense and moved it to depictions of muhammad where it is relevant and useful enough to warrant inclusion. As stated in one of the above sections the only thing that is offensive about the pictures currently in the article is the fact they are of muhammad, none of the images in and of themselves are offensive beyond that. Tivanir2 (talk) 14:35, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Might work as a FoF as well, but ArbCom may wish to reaffirm it. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:08, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Relying on WP:Offensive material which you have heavily edited since proposing this is at best unwise. --Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 22:45, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Given some of the changes came after this and this discussion I'm not sure unwise goes far enough. I've reverted the changes, if you think that is unwise feel free to revert. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:55, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Two broad classes of offensive material

4) Although some type of visual material may elicit disgust in humans in near universal fashion, other material is only offensive for those adhering to certain socially constructed rules, shared only by a subgroup of humans. (This distinction was made in the Harris & Harris report as well. [86])

Comment by Arbitrators:

technically yes, though this is one case where I think the committee getting involved in content is not needed (on preliminary glance). See, this is ubiquitous, we also don't have lead images of famous people which are clearly unflattering (e.g. drunk, falling over, without makeup or with a black eye etc.), so is a pretty universal custom. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:19, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

• This probably skirting the nature/nurture debate, but I think it's important to make this distinction. In the case at hand here, it's pretty easy to decide that offense is clearly caused by cultural/educational differences, and it's not remotely close to a biology-related response. Show the images in question to a hypothetical random person that has not heard of Islam, and you almost certainly won't cause him to puke or get sexually aroused/distracted. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:53, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Retracted because the WMF explicitly refused to make this distinction, and Jimbo Wales has decided to impose the WMF resolution as Wikipedia policy. See #General discussion, below. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:07, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia's core principles may be culturally offensive to some people

5) Not all humans share the principles on which Wikipedia is founded, for instance the implied plurality of views from NPOV. Such people may simply declare offense at the very notion of not being able to impose their perspective at the expense of all others.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Bingo. I think it fair to say that this is part of the problem in this dispute. Jclemens (talk) 19:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Absolutely correct. A number of editors have made it quite clear in this conflict that they disagree with Wikipedia's implied plurality of views and would prefer the encyclopedia to be written from a strong Western and secular POV. As this is also my POV, I would not have a problem with such an encyclopedia, but Wikipedia is not it. Hans Adler 10:30, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Is the suggestion here that these people who "do not share Wikipedia's values" are by necessity inferior and thus should be disregarded and disrespected? because that strikes me as a violation of Wikipedia's values in its own right. perhaps, then, the person who proposed this should be disregarded and disrespected. --Ludwigs2 19:34, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• As shocking as this may sound, Wikipedia is not neutral about everything. There are some values that Wikipedia itself stands for. We've seen that in the Italian censorship law proposal, when the WMF backed up the protest. See Italian Wikipedia for details and references. So, no, Wikipedia can't always be the cute, gentle, roll-over puppy that some think it should always be. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:55, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

• This is the bottom line. The attempt to cheapen what Wikipedia stands by imposing some sort of lowest-common-denominator-religious-fundamentalist-content-objection bar for content is what this entire issue is all about. It is about the principles on which Wikipedia stands. Self-censorship is censorship. Carrite (talk) 10:04, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles aim for a unified presentation style, which includes images

6) Wikipedia articles as a whole aim towards a cohesive user experience, for example by having a unified core manual of style. This style includes various considerations for use of images, which are often favored, e.g. "Because the Wikipedia project is in a position to offer multimedia learning to its audience, images are an important part of any article's presentation." and "It is very common to use an appropriate representative image for the lead of an article, often as part of an infobox."

Comment by Arbitrators:

No. I do not want to give MoS-partisans any more hammers with which to beat others into compliance. Different things can appear different ways, and the value of standardized presentation is often grossly exaggerated to justify inappropriately removing local control from articles. On the other hand, an image in an infobox is a pretty reasonable thing to expect in any article. Jclemens (talk) 19:54, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

I would agree with this as a statement of intent, but unfortunately a cohesive user experience is very hard to achieve in Wikipedia's framework. Anyway, I doubt that this is helpful. Stating it as a principle suggests that it's somehow useful, which it isn't. It certainly does not support putting a Muhammad depiction into the infobox, as Jclemens appears to believe. There is a reason for the choice of words: "it is very common to use". Unlike most of MoS, this language is descriptive, not prescriptive, because such a prescription would be problematic. There is no consensus that we should try to find 'representative' images for abstract topics. There is certainly no consensus that to illustrate a concrete topic for which no accurate depictions exist but readers might expect them to exist, we should randomly single out one artist's impression with no claim to correctness and no particular impact on reception. An image of a person at the top of a biography says effectively: "This is what the person looked like". We cannot make such a statement unless it is literally true or at least (this is arguable) morally true (i.e. the person didn't look like that, but is generally portrayed that way). Hans Adler 10:47, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

I know that multiple community-sanctioned choices exist in certain areas, e.g. WP:CITEVAR, but it's not terribly important to mention that here. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:16, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Tweaked. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 06:42, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

The typical article style of a given Wikipedia may be culturally offensive to some people

7) Because many editorial decision are taken by WP:CONSENSUS, it's impossible for a Wikipedia article to be entirely independent of the cultural values of its editors. For example, the Arabic Wikipedia articles on man [87] and woman [88] do not include any pictures of humans or even anthropomorphic drawings thereof, something that editors from other cultures may find shocking in terms of material included or excluded.

Comment by Arbitrators:

So what? Are you saying we should similarly reflect western values, or non-western values. This seems WP:WAX to me. Jclemens (talk) 19:55, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

To be fair we generally we don't consider what other wikipedia's do to be relevant. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:02, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure what this is trying to say. Maybe the implication is that we shouldn't follow NPOV because the Arabic Wikipedia doesn't? Or that we should have a strong bias for Western values because the Arabic Wikipedia has a strong bias for Arabic values? I could find no good information on POV in the Arabic Wikipedia (I guess if it existed it would have been used for the article Arabic Wikipedia), but I generally expect it to be progressive in its own context, in the same way that the English Wikipedia is progressive in its own context. Even if it wasn't (and the lack of images on stubs is hardly a convincing argument for that – of course there are photos of people elsewhere [89][90]), it would be a reason to improve the Arabic Wikipedia, not for making the English Wikipedia less international and more biased. The illustrations of the Arabic penis and vagina articles [91][92] suggest to me that they are going as far as obscenity laws in Arabic countries let them. Hans Adler 11:18, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

PS: I am reminded of the often heard argument that Turks should not be allowed to build mosques in Germany because Christians are not allowed to build churches in Turkey. Hans Adler 11:20, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

I guess pictures of people are generally of "limited value" in the ar.wiki culture. I for one find their articles of limited value in part because of that. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:30, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed findings of fact

Locus and nature of the dispute

1) A dispute exists between:

• editors who primarily desire to illustrate the article on Muhammad with images comparable to those found in any other Wikipedia article on historical figures, for example historical drawings or paintings commemorating significant events involving said figure, and
• editors who consider that one or both of the following special concerns are of greater significance than the one described above:
  • a desire to avoid upsetting readers who may choose to take offense at images contravening the customs in some parts of the Islamic world, namely the prohibition against anthropomorphic representations of Muhammad, and/or
  • a desire to use the structure of the Wikipedia article on Muhammad to covey the message that anthropomorphic depictions of Muhammad are rare in the contemporary Islamic world.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

This misses the point. As orientalists writing about Muhammad make absolutely clear, we know next to nothing about Muhammad except through the Quran and some other religious writings and traditions. In other words, our knowledge of Muhammad has been filtered by Islam (and more precisely by several competing Islamic groups) in much the same way that our knowledge of Jesus has been filtered by Christianity. The Muhammad article, like the Jesus article, must therefore be considered a hybrid between a realistic biography and the biography of a literary character. Both articles are inherently religious to a large degree, and each is the central article for a major world religion, more so than the respective article on the religion itself.

This does not imply that concerns of religious NPOV and accurate depiction of religious context overrule everything else, but they simply cannot be marginalised in the way some editors are arguing they should be. Hans Adler 23:57, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Agree. Re to Hans Adler: We face exactly the same problems of sources re any historical figure from the same period, whether an Anglo-Saxon king, Chinese painter or Christan saint. Muslims object to calling their religion "Mohammedism" as the West once did, and would find the proposition that the biography here is "the central article for a major world religion, more so than the respective article on the religion itself" entirely objectionable, and rightly so. Johnbod (talk) 15:32, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

De facto it is the most important article -- probably even for Muslims, although they may proclaim otherwise. Or maybe I am wrong and it's only the second or third most important article. So what? And what's the significance if Muslims should consider what I said here objectionable?

I agree that we face the same problem with Christian saints, but we don't with Anglo-Saxon kings or Chinese painters. In the latter cases, we have only few sources, but they are not tied to a living religion in the same way as Muhammad. There is a reason why a lot of editors believe that the Muhammad article is also a religion article, whereas nobody makes such claims for Anglo-Saxon kings or Chinese painters. Hans Adler 19:51, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

@Kww: That's an eccentric POV. I even agree to the extent that Muhammad's political and military achievements are of comparable importance to his role as the founder of a religion, but that religion clearly played a key role in his other achievements. What do you think would happen if we had a big RfC on whether religion is relevant for NPOV in articles on religion founders? Hans Adler 11:26, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

It think this sums it up. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 07:10, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

@Hans Adler: This is certainly a problem, but it's one of perception. Muhammad isn't a religious article. It isn't about a religion. It's about a ruler that unified the Arabian peninsula, and is now revered by a religious group.—Kww(talk) 20:07, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Cultural differences and WMF resolution

2) It is not inconceivable that different groups of editors, residing in different parts of the world may place different weights on the concerns above. For example, the ar.wiki article doesn't include anthropomorphic depictions of Muhammad, but the fa.wiki does include them, even though the corresponding article has FA status on both of these wikis. Mindful of issue like the above and with the stated intent of giving the readers the ultimate choice with respect to images displayed in an article, the WMF board has decided to implement a personal image filter, which is still in the design stage [according to CEO's statement from November].

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Agreed. The Farsi article has 6 images, the same as us in a shorter article, of which 2 are veiled and 4 not. Johnbod (talk) 05:23, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

This says two quite different things, and it's not clear what they have to do with each other. (1) Different Wikipedia language communities have different standards. The German Wikipedia put the Vulva article on the main page complete with a photo, which was OK there [93] but could never happen here. These differences are normal. To the extent that peculiarities of local character hurt Wikipedia's overall international reputation, the Wikimedia Foundation of course has the right to do something about it. (The vulva photo on the German main page appears incompatible with the new principle of least surprise, even in German culture. Vulva as a featured article together with an anatomical drawing would be consistent with it, though.) (2) All good encyclopledias will have content that some will consider unsuitable for certain purposes such as editing Wikipedia at work or letting a ten-year-old do research on their own. That has nothing to do with what an good encyclopedia should contain.

I don't like the implied message that we shouldn't care about offence at all because there is (or will be) an image filter. Hans Adler 11:52, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Hans. Responsible adults (and assumedly a responsible encyclopedia) do not state baldly "I can do whatever I want, when and wherever I want to, because anyone who doesn't like it can close their eyes." Civil society is built on a certain level of mutual consideration and respect; is Wikipedia a productive member of civil society or not? --Ludwigs2 19:42, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree with either since I fully intend to use the image filter when I am offended in other articles by images such as flag burning, since they do upset me a bit and I tend to frequent the articles that could include it less. Just because I (or subset x) of the population don't like the idea of an image doesn't give an inherent right for removal of said image. Also of note the FAQ already presents a way for people to avoid the images so this should be moot. The image filter is being implemented for self censorship so things that anyone might find offense can be selectively removed without changing how well the article is presented for other users. Tivanir2 (talk) 14:45, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Tiv: I have no doubt that if you saw unnecessary images of burning US flags you would remove them. It's good that you recognize that there are places where such images are needed, but don't pretend you would allow one to be placed on the United States page without any other explanation than "it's a valid picture of a US flag". and again, a responsible adult does not self-righteously force other people to go out of their way to avoid some obnoxious behavior s/he wants to engage in. What one does in one's own home is nobody's business; what one does in the town square is everyone's business. Wikipedia is public; just because you're anonymously lounging in your Sunday worst dabbling away at in your living room doesn't make it private. --Ludwigs2 21:56, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Unneccesary is subjective. Does a burning flag need to go on the united states mainpage? Probably not because if you are trying to show something related to the US you would want a flag in good condition not in the process of being destroyed. Now does the US have a section on the anti war and civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s? If that is the case argument for inclusion could occur and depending on talking points I might even support it. Again with a self censor option I wouldn't need to look at it regardless of whether it exists or not, so I wouldn't be concerned with it. I still believe at this point freedom of speech in the US or a freedom of speech article in general would be more likely candidates for this, but if someone could present me a compeling reason to include it in the US article I wouldn't bury my head in the sand and scream IDONTLIKEIT. Tivanir2 (talk) 18:52, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

The expectation that editors can just apply some NPOV-type, "just count the sources" algorithm here and they'd all agree is clearly contradicted by empirical data. And the WMF knows that the reader offense issue isn't entirely tractable at the editorial level. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 07:48, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Images in articles about persons

3) Wikipedia articles about persons commonly include anthropomorphic depictions thereof. In the case of historical figures who lived before the invention of photography, artistic representations are often used.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

• Agreed. Johnbod (talk) 18:57, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
• Agreed, see table 2 of my evidence. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:24, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
• True, but it doesn't follow that this is the right approach in all cases. Such images are often used just because they are available and articles somehow look more complete with images. Where depictions can make no claim to historical accuracy, such as for Muhammad, Jesus or King Arthur, they illustrate how the subject was seen by posterity rather than illustrating the subject himself. E.g. it would be problematic to replace the existing images in one of these articles by a consistent set of idiosyncratic paintings by a single artist illustrating the key events in the subject's life.
  The rationale is simply false. It's not a "de facto cultural/stylistic standard", it's how things are because in most articles the images have never come under the same kind of scrutiny as those in the Muhammad article. See WP:OTHERSTUFF on the community's general position on the validity of this kind of argument. Hans Adler 00:11, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Whether some people like it or not, Wikipedia has this de facto cultural/stylistic standard. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:36, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Nature of images in dispute

4) With exception of one Russian painting, the other images in the present dispute come from a past Islamic culture (Ilkhanate-Timurid). These were not created with the intent of causing offense within their culture, but are regarded as offensive in [some] other Islamic cultures.

[I will propose an alternative later. I found out that veiled images of Muhammad are offensive too in the Arabic culture. These originate in the Safavid–Qajar period, and are possibly more widespread geographically, e.g. I need to check the Turks. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 15:00, 28 December 2011 (UTC)]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I am not sure the Persian miniatures from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh are regarded as "offensive in other Islamic cultures"; "some other Islamic cultures", perhaps. I would imagine that nothing at all, even wikipedia itself, is popular with the Taleban: Herat, where many of the images were first created, is in modern day Afghanistan. As far as the use of historical images of this kind is concerned, unfortunately almost no direct information is available concerning their reception in the populous Islamic countries in the Far East, e.g. there seems to be a lack so far of any academic texts on the subject from Indonesia. We know that copies of the Shahnameh are currently actively studied by academics from multiple disciplines in universities across the globe. Copies are held in major collections (Iran, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, British Library) and the images of Muhammad have been on public display in several recent high profile exhibitions. The images themselves are part of Iranian heritage and are undoubtedly some of the finest images on wikipedia (or commons). France, where a fifteenth century illuminated manuscript of the Mir'aj has been on display, has one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe. France may have multiculturality, but it is subject to French law. These general issues, however, lie somewhat beyond what can be meaningfully discussed on wikipedia. The compromise solution takes into account the preferences of individual readers who prefer not to see images. Images are used sparingly and only where appropriate. Their educational value is undeniable. Mathsci (talk) 08:02, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

While it is true that the French may have a large muslim population they are also extremely secular. In publicly run schools you are unable to wear a cross for example. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 11:51, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

<off-topic, but seasonal>I really couldn't say. Last week my organ playing was interrupted by an unscheduled 11 o'clock pre-Christmas mass for students from the college of Sacre Coeur. I couldn't see from where I was, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the girls were wearing crucifixes. Just as I have seen burqas sported, if that is the word, on the Cours Mirabeau. C'est comme ça. (I still remember Elonka eating foie gras here: with oysters, it is de rigeur for Noël.) </off-topic, but seasonal>Mathsci (talk) 12:48, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Et joyeux Noël à tous. Mathsci (talk) 19:22, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Principle is good overall though. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:28, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• This could probably be phrased more clearly, but I think the fundamental fact here is that the images in dispute here are nothing like the goatse-designed-to-shock stuff. They are not even Everybody Draw Mohammed Day poke-your-eye-in-the-name-of-free-speech material. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 07:18, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
• "Some" inserted per Mathsci's suggestion. Thanks for the in-depth comment. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:07, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support, with the Mathsci qualifier (And Merry Christmas to you as well!). --Elonka 18:25, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• Thank you, same to you. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:09, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. They do not all come from the "(Ilkhanate-Timurid)" AT ALL. Must we go over the basics every time? Better to say: "come from a variety of islamic cultures, both Sunni and Shia." Johnbod (talk) 05:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Perhaps noting that Sunnis had these too is important (the Timurids were actually Sunni even though they occupied modern Iran!). But I'm trying to narrow down the geographic and time period of the controversial images presently included in the article. So:

1. File:Mohammed_kaaba_1315.jpg - c. 1307?-1315? Jami' al-tawarikh -- unveiled
2. File:Mohammed receiving revelation from the angel Gabriel.jpg also from Jami' al-tawarikh -- unveiled
3. File:Maome.jpg "17th century Ottoman copy of an early 14th century (Ilkhanate period) manuscript of Northwestern Iran or northern Iraq (the "Edinburgh codex")" -- unveiled
4. File:Gagarin PropovedMagometGRM.jpg Russian painting in the Western views section -- unveiled

• The rest of the anthropomorphic images in the article are veiled or flame-like. Are those controversial/offensive too? In any case, this is the list:

1. File:Siyer-i Nebi 298a.jpg veiled image from Siyer-i Nebi (1595%???), Ottoman royal commission
2. File:Muhammad destroying idols - L'Histoire Merveilleuse en Vers de Mahomet BNF.jpg flame-like image (1808), Kashmir

• If I missed anything, please propose corrections. I think the proposed FoF, including the Ilkhanate-Timurid part, does reflect the status of the article presently and also at the start of arbitration. Perhaps Johnbod is referring to when/where such images were common in general instead of just those that are in the article? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 06:01, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Well, specifically where those in the article came from; the latest is 307 years after the end of the Persian Timurids, and the total time-range is some 500 years. Two are certainly Sunni, and, oddly, none are unequivocally from a Shia context. I'm dubious that veiled/unveiled actually makes any or much difference to those who object. Certainly veiled or flame images are objected to by many. Modern Iranian images are mostly veiled, but not all. The FA on Muhammad in the Farsi wiki has 6 images, 3 the same as ours (they begin with 4 on the 4th screen down on my m/c), of which only 2 are veiled (all are Islamic, but not all Persian). The case that these are less objected to needs to be made. Johnbod (talk) 15:08, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• a) The Iranians, who speak Farsi, don't have a particular issue with unveiled images of Muhammad. b) We generally don't follow what other language wiki's do. By that argument I presume it would be appropriate to remove the images of men and women from man and woman as per the Arabic wiki? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 15:15, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

@ASCIIn2Bme, from the French on the BNF page the last (flame) image appears to be Persian/Iranian as well and was merely found in Kashmir. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 15:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

So you keep saying, without the slightest evidence. It is catalogued by the BnF as "Kashmir", which in the normal way of catalogues means that that is where they believe it was produced. Find the full catalogue entry if you don't believe me. As the date is so specific there is probably an inscription settling the matter. Johnbod (talk) 17:52, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Looking at some more stuff you seem to be right, however it is written in Persian. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:03, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Persian was the dominant literary (and diplomatic) language across large parts of the Islamic world (see Persianate), including parts of Muslim India far south of Kashmir. Johnbod (talk) 05:14, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

WMF report on the images of "sacred" (incl. those of Muhammad)

5) The WMF-sponsored Harris & Harris report proposed that personal image filter is the only reasonable solution for readers' offense when dealing with images of the "sacred", including those of Muhammad. [94] The report also recommended that such controversial "sacred" images be displayed by default to all readers, and that only registered [logged-in] users be given the means to opt out. ("we have recommended that registration be necessary to affect these images")

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Added as FoF to emphasize the distinction between the actual report and the broad/vague WMF board statement. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:09, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Retracted because the working group serving as intermediate link between the Harrises and the board explicitly said the distinction is not important. (See my /Evidence for link). Images of poo and Persian miniatures are in the same generically controversial bucked to the WMF. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Current opt-out method on English Wikipedia

6) The English Wikipedia offers a method for logged-in users to opt out from seeing images in the Muhammad article. Talk:Muhammad/FAQ Q/A #3.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Certainly that its technically clumsy should be mentioned. But otherwise, why not - as long as its not just content. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:06, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• Agree; it may be clumsy, but it's there. Johnbod (talk) 19:01, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

This point would only be relevant if the dispute were about unreasonable Sunni readers who approach Wikipedia with unreasonable expectations. But that's not what it is about. It's just a strawman set up by many who defend the current number of images. The dispute is on whether/how religious norms factor into the presentation of the article in terms of NPOV, and whether NOTCENSORED can be used to prevent such discussions. Hans Adler 12:54, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

May wanna add something that it's technically clumsy, but otherwise is in line with the Harris & Harris report. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:26, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Assumptions of bad faith

7) Some editors advocating for the removal of images assert that they are present mainly to humiliate Muslims (e.g. Hans Adler) or because of the Islamophobia of the editors wishing to retain the images (e.g. Ludwigs2). ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 07:37, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Yes indeed, I assert this. AGF is not a suicide pact. We routinely and uncontroversially censor material that is deemed inappropriate by a large majority of editors all over the project. Examples are hard to find because due to the uncontroversial nature of the censorship most are buried deep in the page histories. In the majority of cases, censorship only gets called censorship and is only treated as controversial when a sufficiently large number of editors want to keep certain content because certain groups which they hate find it offensive.

A good example of uncontroversial routine censorship can be found in the history of Yourname (talk · contribs). The user got indeffed with little fanfare after inserting into human defecation postures and some related articles a photo of human turd production taken from below and insisting that it stay there. The user got no support whatsoever from editors claiming against all likelihood that it wasn't clear that there were copyright problems with the photo, or from editors insisting that seeing a turd in the process of leaving a female human anus is educational, and more so than seeing the same in an animal, that it does not matter how little educational it is, and that the educational value, however marginal, renders the image immune from removal under an idiosyncratic reading of NOTCENSORED claimed to be the only reasonable one. Or that all other articles have detailed photos of their topics, where available, and that it is simply against policy to keep the illustrations in shit-related articles close to the bounds of what a professionally edited encyclopedia would consider appropriate. Hans Adler 21:43, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I have a distinct issue with the idea you accuse others of wanting the pictures there out of a sense of hate. The problem is somehow people have come with the distinction that these pictures have to somehow do more because they are of muhammad. The provide the same level as any other figure's biography or more similiarly to any other religious figures biography. Quite frankly if people hated muslims they would be arguing dante's inferno should be the lead image and we should use cartoons and everyone draw muhammad day sketches instead of high quality art works. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:44, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I note that you are not engaging with my argument but only with my conclusion. Would the following make any sense? "The problem is somehow people have come with the distinction [sic] that these pictures have to somehow do more because they are of defecation. They provide the same level as any other medical article or more similarly to any other article on a biological process. Quite frankly if people wanted to troll Wikipedia by breaking universal taboos, they would be arguing that the lead image of the homo sapiens article should be a penis." Editors are constrained by what they can get away with while keeping a good opinion of themselves. I am still collecting evidence on individual editors and will present it when ready.

@ASCIIn2Bme: Maybe you want to become a party?I am not sure why you are not a party. Hans Adler 01:49, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I argued with the conclusion because it is flat out incorrect. People aren't going out of their way to offend people they hate. The vast majority of editors follow WP:Offensive material because nothing is there to offend. Further people have never contested that removal of pictures is impossible (hell I myself nominated one for deletion) and saying that groups sensibilities trump information is hogwash. For biology the relation would be tenuous to have any articles of feces to begin with (unless you were in a section on digestive tracts) and again the editors of the article for defecation would have to weigh pros and cons for inclusion of such on that article. However if the consensus was for keeping it because it added something, I wouldn't fight against it just like I am not lobbying now for inclusion of such since I don't assume massive competence issues with everyone around me. And once again I will point out that with few exceptions these pictures would be considered acceptable and encouraged if it was suppose to be anyone else except muhammad, and I don't think we need a different measuring tool simply because offense is inserted into the equation. The simple fact is in each case you state above the community came to a consensus to exclude not walked in, attempted it, didn't achieve consensus and then forum shop the hell out of it trying to make a change. Tivanir2 (talk) 04:27, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

"with few exceptions these pictures would be considered acceptable and encouraged if it was suppose to be anyone else except muhammad, and I don't think we need a different measuring tool simply because offense is inserted into the equation." If it were anyone other than Muhammad, than it would not be the founder of a religion many of whose followers have a problem with these depictions. These are unique circumstances. There is a reason WP:IAR is policy. Even laws are imperfect, and Wikipedia's rules get a lot less scrutiny than laws before they are inacted. And there isn't even a Wikipedia rule saying that we should use such pictures anywhere. It's just widespread practice, because it makes sense in almost all circumstances.

It is perfectly normal to treat articles specially when there are special circumstances that don't apply to other articles. Happens all the time, throughout the encyclopedia. However, in this particular case these special circumstances led to a moronic anti-Wikipedia campaign 3 years ago. And even now, 3 years later, a significant part of our community is still suffering from reactance. There are other, good-faith, explanations for why some editors insist on following real or imagined rules to the letter even where it doesn't make sense, though making them explicit would take us into difficult terrain. (I have explained it elsewhere on this page.) But in this case these editors have reached critical mass so they could completely prevent constructive discussion, and that needs explanation. The various anti-Islam and anti-religion remarks, combined with various explicit assumptions of bad faith especially against Ludwigs2, and combined with the far-fetched claims of support for the "PBUH"-style talk page protests, provide such an explanation. I am not aware of any other. Hans Adler 12:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

It also needs pointing out that throughout most of the dispute claims of bad faith on the side of image supporters were implicit and directed generally at a group, whereas especially Ludwigs2 was the specific target of explicit accusations of bad faith behaviour throughou. This included Resolute's explicit interpretation of obviously prosocial behaviour such as showing flexibility, moderating his opinions based on what other editors say, and agreeing with a compromise as evidence of bad faith. Hans Adler 12:18, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes but pointing out bad faith isn't a personal attack. I am well aware of the fact that muhammad being a military leader and founder of a faith is somewhat unique, but in similar vein the article of the religious sect in christianity (can't remember it for the life of me right now) that forbids the founders pictures and images is parallel. We don't censor that page simply because adherents believe that we shouldn't have images or pictures of him and they take offense. The only difference between that complaint and this one is the size of the people making the complaint, and images like the ones we have in the article are not offensive to the majority of individuals on this planet. If we censor the article based on the fact that one group takes offense at the images portrayed, unless we are making this a one time exception, we would also have to censor other articles that same group has issues with such as unveiled women. Please don't try to say this doesn't make sense since this is the same population in both examples and if they are big enough to enact change on one article they don't like it stands to reason they can use it as precedence on every article they don't like. Tivanir2 (talk) 15:15, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Tiv: Bahá'u'lláh, perhaps, might be who you are thinking about? (Bahai). Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:09, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Tiv: it's astonishing how flexible the concept of 'bad faith' is on project. You seem to be suggesting that I'm making a personal attack because I point to actual behavior that looks problematic, but other editors are not making personal attacks when they make unfounded assertions about my motives, intentions, and character. How do you justify that?

I'll add that the argument: "we should do the wrong thing on page X because we do the wrong thing on lots of other pages" is not a good argument. Call your ma and ask whether you should jump off the bridge all the other kids are jumping off of; see what she says. --Ludwigs2 21:23, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

First I may say I believe this to be in bad faith but if you notice I never once accused anyone of a personal attack over that statement. When someone makes that comment I always take it as a warning for the person to step back and re-examine before continuing with their arguments. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and just attempt to get them to take a second look before they continue since everyone should step back and look at everything from time to time. Besides I don't think of bad faith as flexible there are people who genuinely edit in bad faith, however assuming anyone that disagrees with you is dealing in bad faith is in itself bad faith. Hell me and Jayen disagree on a whole slew of points but I can actually work with the guy since he is polite and keeps his cool. In turn I try to keep my cool and try to be civil (not always 100% but I at least put forth effort) so disagreements can be solved and not evolve into multiple pages/forums/etc. Besides any time that someone made a comment that I would have made a call on usually there was at least 2-3 individuals already pointing it out on either side of the argument. The few times I brought it up I was one of the first to mention it in any section that I bothered to even make a comment about bad faith. It all boils down in my not so humble opinion to are we going to appease everyone and santize the wikipedia or is this trying to be an exception for one group in particular.

Also thank you alan that was the exact group I was trying to link to. Tivanir2 (talk) 19:10, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to raise a point that I'm sure to raise a few more times before this debate is over. My exact wording in the diff provided is:"the extravagant effort I see dumped into defending these trivial images is only explainable by deep-seated anti-Islamic prejudice." It is perhaps more heated than advisable, but you will notice that it is a comment about behavior. If there were editors adding pictures of swastikas to Judaism pages, and I said their behavior was "only explainable by deep-seated anti-Judaic prejudice," would anyone bat an eye?

I'll put this bluntly: if it becomes a project standard that questioning the behavior of established editors is always viewed as a personal attack, then established editors will begin to behave very badly indeed, because they will be able to get away with it. The root of all these complaints is that some editors here are upset because I pointed out that they look bad over things they have actually done. I'm sorry they look bad, and I'm sorry they are upset, but shooting the messenger is no way to deal with their own mistakes. If they don't want to look prejudiced, they should stop doing things that are so easily interpreted as prejudice. otherwise we'll eventually end up as an encyclopedia pwned by self-righteous trolls. --Ludwigs2 20:05, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes I would actually if it were relevant, though in this case the similarity is not exact. The swastika is associated with the german nazi's not the jews and the only reason to have it on the page would be under a nazi's link and that still wouldn't be the best redirect since it would be under jews in the holocaust time frame. Also yet again you bring up prejudiced motives which I don't possess, hell I don't care if you worship the sun and are purple since these things don't affect me one bit. Asserting that someones motive is dealing with prejudice is both bad faith and a personal attack since there are individuals like myself that take statements along those lines very seriously. Tivanir2 (talk) 15:15, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Tivanir: You just don't get it. This isn't about whether you (or anyone) is actually prejudiced. No one (except you) cares whether you are or aren't. This is about whether your actions make wikipedia look prejudiced. Please get the distinction. --Ludwigs2 18:29, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

I'm glad the WMF agrees with Hans Adler that images of defecation and Persian miniatures are interchangeable topics in the realm of controversy. Jimbo already declared the images "very fringe" so I'm waiting for blocks and bans to start raining. And the press to start writing. Again. Because the topic of Muhammad's images in Wikipedia was in the news before. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:03, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with this finding of fact. Thryduulf (talk) 19:52, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

@Ludwigs2: re: actions that make Wikipedia appear prejudiced: How will catering to what one group finds offensive but not what another group finds offensive make Wikipedia appear to be anything other than prejudiced for the first group and against the second group? Thryduulf (talk) 19:52, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

people have recently started leaning on this point, but I cannot for the life of me figure out where it's coming from. My position all along has been that Wikipedia should not appear to be prejudiced at all, so what makes you think I'm 'catering to one group but not another'? As I explained in a different thread just yesterday, this is all very easy to handle within the context of individual articles, so long as we start from the perspective that it's undesirable for the project to appear to be offending people for no credible reason. I realize that you do not want to make any distinctions between contexts - you've said as much elsewhere - and from a context-free perspective this might look problematic, but I hardly think that a context-free approach is meaningful or useful in this discussion. A concrete example of how and why this might be a problem, please, so that we can dispense with the objection once and for all. --Ludwigs2 21:02, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

The beliefs of many Shia Muslims, as well as those of secularists, are in contradiction to the viewpoint you are supporting, Ludwigs. Many of those people are likely to find the removal of images offensive, either as putting a part of Islamic culture into the memory hole, or else as an act of censorship.

Many conservative Mennonites are opposed to photography. Should we allow photographs in that article? Should we allow photographs of adherents? --FormerIP (talk) 21:19, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

FormerIP: do you have any sourcing that says any cultural groups is offended by the absence of images of Muhammad? Citations please, otherwise you are just talking nonsense. If you want to argue that some secularist are offended by censorship, then I might - particularly given the comments of secularists present in this debate - be open to that, but then we are into a very different discussion We would have to balance the offense against secularist principles with the offense against Islamic principles. The outcome of that we already know (it's what I've been arguing for all along): we use depictions of Muhammad where it's necessary to do so (thus avoiding censorship), and not otherwise.

I'll add (from a forensics perspective) that it was a really bad move for you to raise the issue of 'secular offense'. I think there's a lot of truth in the idea, mind you, but bringing it out in the open like this just highlights the thought that this was always about offense - the offense of secularists over religious ideation - despite fervid claims to the contrary. You're shooting your own argument in the foot.

I was not aware that Mennonites had that particular credo. with that in mind, perhaps it would be polite to remove images of Mennonites from the article. we can bring that up on the talk page there for discussion after this case is closed. --Ludwigs2 21:44, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposals by User:Ludwigs2

Proposed principles (Ludwigs2)

Scope of NOTCENSORED clarified

1) a) NOTCENSORED is intended to protect the encyclopedia from the loss of informative content. It is not a guarantee of free speech for Wikipedia editors, nor does it protect all controversial content in a blindly mechanical or compulsory fashion.

1) b) NOTCENSORED should never be used to enforce editorial preferences. NOTCENSORED is a 'principle of last resort', invoked by the community as a whole when normal content discussion processes fail and a clear and obvious threat of censorship exists.

Comment by Arbitrators:

1a is fine. 1b is unclear to me. What is that supposed to mean in practice? Jclemens (talk) 19:05, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this is entirely true. The principle holds that the views of any external organisation or body, including a religion, will not be taken into account when making decisions about the balance of an article. NOTCENSORED applies perpetually and is not to be selectively invoked, but turning to the dispute at hand, I think it is important to mention also that it must not be fetishised. I intend to include this issue in my draft final decision, although whether my colleagues will agree with my interpretation of the guideline is a wholly different matter. Anyway, whilst admirable, I think this proposal is a non-starter. AGK [•] 21:37, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Not sure about 1b, about NOTCENSORED being "invoked by the community as a whole when normal content discussion processes fail"; what do you mean? 1a has merit. It's not enough to check whether material is offensive, and, if the answer is affirmative, thereby automatically to conclude that we must keep it. We also need to check that the material is WP:DUE. --JN466 17:15, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

1b is intended to make it clear that 'censorship' is not something one or two (or three) editors can assert as a lever in what would otherwise be a simple content dispute, but that there has to be some credible issue of censorship present. The aim is to prevent editors from putting controversial material into an article and then spinning out more-or-less paranoid fabrications of censorship to justify keeping their preferred version. I'm specifically thinking about argumentation I've seen on both the Pregnancy and Muhammad (and other) pages: people opposing removal because THEY are out there, and THEY will see that act as an opening to ravage other pages across the encyclopedia. 1b asks that there be some community discussion first about whether THEY actually exist as a concrete threat to the project, and that it be shown that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the specific removal in question is actually THEIR work.

Both the Muhammad and Pregnancy issue should have been simple matters of editors discussing non-critical image choice, but in both cases a group of editors asserted that fanaticism (of Muslims and Prudes, respectively) was a clear and present threat to the integrity of the project - with no real evidence or logic to back it up - and used that assertion and to gum up discussion with hyperbolic examples and rampant fear-mongering. When someone starts from the POV that THEY are out there, waiting, conversation is futile and collaboration is impossible.--Ludwigs2 19:03, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

NOTCENSORED is not a "principle of last resort". It is a policy on English Wikipedia. --FormerIP (talk) 18:39, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I think this in general seems sensible. Both pregnancy and this case should have been resolvable with significantly less effort. 1b) probably violates WP:POLICY though. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:11, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Your giant two-month RFC at WT:NOT failed to achieve the changes you wanted, Ludwigs. ArbCom is not a vehicle which you can use to drive policy change by fiat against community consensus. Resolute 21:10, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Just as an aside, that hasn't failed - it's just paused for the moment while a proper RfC is being developed. Don't count your chickens yet. --Ludwigs2 00:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, so what were the first several RfCs then? "improper"? Resolute 06:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I think this comment is pointless. No one is expecting to keep incidental material, the issue is that people stagger in declare something incidental and attempt to remove it against consensus. If editors were convinced it was incidental the images would no longer exist within the article itself. Tivanir2 (talk) 21:40, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

What is "obvious threat of censorship"? Someone threatening to blow up the WMF office? Cut off the head of Jimbo Wales? Or just showing on the page an saying: "this image offends me, it's banned by my church/party/country (which is usually in red on this list)"?ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 03:24, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Freedom of speech (or in the private educational context, academic freedom) is a fundamental principle upon which all others depend. Nothing good can come of any circumscription of this basic principle, whether it is on the level of the individual editor or of the completed article; nor is it the role of ArbCom to overturn pillars of Wikipedia, but rather to uphold them. Wnt (talk) 14:23, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Controversial material should be used judiciously

2) Controversial material must be used judiciously and circumspectly, taking into account both the needs of the encyclopedia and the preferences and standards of the readership as a whole. Injudicious use of controversial material draws Wikipedia into real world conflicts and damages its reputation as an independent, neutral source of information.

Comment by Arbitrators:

No. This is an excuse for ongoing partisan bickering, and "preferences and standards" is an excuse for people to argue over what the world wants to see. Moreover, this would actually support mass undeletion of fictional elements, individual Pokemon, etc., whose popularity exceeds the needs of the encyclopedia, as determined by past consensus. Jclemens (talk) 19:03, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

The problem is drawing a line at just where "controversial" ends and "censorship" begins. Tarc (talk) 01:16, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. On a scale ranging from "cautious" to "reckless", Wikimedia has generally been firmly at the "reckless" end of the spectrum, compared to reliable sources. The board resolution, intended as a corrective for a known issue, reflects that, just as the earlier BLP resolution addressed a known problem. .--JN466 01:32, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this proposal means very much unless the word "injudicious" is clearly defined. --FormerIP (talk) 18:37, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:12, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. --Elonka 00:56, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Written under the hugely mistaken assumption that Wikipedia is not part of any "real world conflicts" otherwise. Like the fight against censorship. Like I said in my own proposal, go read the article on Italian Wikipedia to find out where the WMF stands on censorship. Oh, and I think ArbCom banned all edits from CoS-owned IPs [95]. How's that for a real-world conflict? They could probably buy the WMF a few times and still have change left for a coffee (plantation). ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 03:34, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia as a Kinder, Gentler project

3) Where an article can be constructed in a way that avoids offense to a given segment of our readership without sacrificing the integrity of the encyclopedia, it should be so constructed. Pursuant to the recognition of multiplicity (below), we include offensive material in the encyclopedia at need, but not as a matter of casual disregard for the preferences of segments of our readership.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

That's the Christmas spirit. :) The exercise of "kindness and gentleness" is an area where Wikipedia has room for improvement. The content point is somewhat related to WP:GRATUITOUS, as well as the board resolution on controversial content. --JN466 17:07, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

"At need" is an unnecessarily high threshold. Editors include material, in the general sense, in an article when they feel it will make the article better. Everything after that is gravy. Tarc (talk) 00:59, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, we can lower the threshold some, if you care to make suggestions. The point is that there must be some threshold. Remember, there are plenty of people out there who think that any article can be improved by adding a picture of a penis. what threshold would you like to set? --Ludwigs2 01:56, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I think we already have policies and practices that deal adequately with the random placement of pictures of penises. --FormerIP (talk) 18:32, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Such as? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:07, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Such as WP:PERTINENCE. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:50, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Click on "random article" at the top left of this page, add a picture of a penis to the article you arrive at and see what happens. --FormerIP (talk) 20:31, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

And which policy/guideline are they going to remove the picture of a penis under? Or is it going to be under the principle of WP:DICK? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:31, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Could be. That or WP:COCK. They'll probably tell you which policy they are using, though. --FormerIP (talk) 21:34, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I think I misread your point, you're right that it would be removed under normal practices - thinking some more a policy would probably only be useful for hard cases so meh. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:40, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

@ASCIIn2Bme, nice. I retract the point. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:06, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

No way. I do not think this is anywhere in policies. Such approach can be taken by individual editors per common sense but would be very damaging if made a formal enforced principle. Enforced political correctness is the last thing Wikipedia needs. - BorisG (talk) 05:45, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia aims for inclusive consensus

4) Consensus on Wikipedia is broadly inclusive. This is essential for NPOV, since it is only through the inclusion of differing perspectives that we achieve an appropriately neutral tone in our articles.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed.--Ludwigs2 17:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Policy is not Law

5) a) Wikipedia is built on a consensus principle. Policy is usually held to reflect broad community consensus, and acts as guidelines for us to use within the context of consensus discussions, but policy is not law that can overturn or suppress consensus discussion.

5) b) Policy on Wikipedia is frequently revised, often without establishing consensus for the change first. As such, elements of policy may get drafted which are damaging to the encyclopedia as a whole. Contested elements of policy are subject to IAR until proper, broad community consensus for their existence is established.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. I am so tired of policy fundamentalism on project that I cannot even begin to talk about it. time to stamp it out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ludwigs2 (talk • contribs) 03:16, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Nope. IAR works well when there's local consensus to do so. A while back, through a tortuous process of discussion and evidence-gathering, a group of editors was able to add to the external links section of an article a link to a video that was in blatant contradiction of WP:EL, but all agreed it was an exception that improved the encyclopedia.

Treating the current understanding of WP:NOTCENSORED as a toxic misinterpretation of usual editor practice, and disregarding it in all instances where "right to casually, gratuitously, pointlessly (I assume) offend" activists are invoking it would entail such blowback that many would line up to defend it on principle, and the resulting chaos would be counter-productive. I can't imagine an instance where one, or a small group, could productively IAR an interpretation of policy that a vocal bunch of activists claims has universal consensus, without generating unproductive chaos. We have to do this the slow hard way: wide community consultation, sound reasoning, and trust in the common sense of the vast majority of editors here, as opposed to those who argue that "gratuitous offense is OK". --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:43, 14 January 2012 (UTC) Clarified 03:57, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

You do realize that others would argue that you are part of a vocal group of activists, don't you? I'd happily stop discussing this subject if you would stop pushing for it to get resolved in your favor. It's tiring. I haven't been involved in such an incredibly tiresome, unproductive discussion since people tried to rewrite the laws of physics to favor Transcendental Meditation. I suspect everyone else that you are struggling with feels similarly. I just fear that if we all stop, you will mistake exhausting your opponents for consensus. It's really not a matter of treating a policy as law in my eyes: I think it's a correct policy.—Kww(talk) 03:55, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

We're all tired. We have no choice, though. The resolution is a clear challenge to your interpretation of NOTCENSORED, so this discussion has to be had. I fear, barring some stroke of genius from the committee, that this tiresome process has only just begun. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:03, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww: people constantly accuse me of being an activist. unfortunately, no one ever actually manages to say what it is that I'm being 'activist' about. That's because I'm impeccably neutral (most of the time), and people get angry that I show up their own activism by reflection. You, Kww, are an activist for a particular (secular) position that you don't even realize you're being an activist for (because you think it's truth). That's why we're stuck.

The point of this is that activists such as yourself (in all good faith, since you think you're just being correct) try to manipulate policy to defend their POV. And because policy on Wikipedia is so badly structured and controlled (as I've said before, Wikipedia has the stupidest system of policy regulation imaginable), activists such as yourself succeed in manipulating policy to the detriment of the encyclopedia.

I wouldn't mind if Wikipedia were more authoritarian: that way policy would be more law-like but also more rational. I wouldn't mind if Wikipedia had a stronger consensus system: that way policy would become rational through participation and discussion. But wikipedia is in this in-between state where activists can manipulate policy to their liking and defend it as if it were law, and that's just plain irredeemably stupid. in a stupid system such as this, there needs to be an escape valve where people can point out that some tidbit of policy is just an ungodly ridiculous piece of crap. that's what IAR is for, so let's use it. --Ludwigs2 19:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

What has made you think that I'm unaware that I campaign for secular perspectives? I'm totally aware of that. Whether it's "truth" or not, it's certainly the foundation of an encyclopedia.—Kww(talk) 19:27, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww: I know that you're aware that you do it. However, I don't believe that you're aware that it's a POV in the same way as any other POV. I have this problem sometimes when I talk to atheists; I'm someone who really doesn't have an opinion about religion one way or another, so it's self-evident to me that atheism is in its own right a kind of faith (atheists hold firmly to beliefs about the nature of God, the existence of an afterlife, the purpose of spirituality - that these are all negative beliefs for atheists is irrelevant). Atheists, however, never seem to be able to see what they have as a belief system; for them it's 'realism'. You don't see secularism as a belief system, even as you spell out its tenets. You place it above other belief systems; you assert that Wikipedia is 'secular' without any sense that you realize that you're implying that wikipedia ought to conform to a belief system you hold; you've asserted, in fact, that your personally held belief system is actually NPOV in its own right. it's disconcerting. Wikipedia is not secular in the way you mean that word. wikipedia is agnostic: it simply does not prejudge what is true or false. it should not treat your secular POV any differently than any other POV on project.

Don't get me wrong: your POV has a big advantage in sources - many, many sources write from a secular POV, so it will in most cases be the dominant voice. But it's dominant because of sourcing, not because it's right, and that is the key mistake you make. --Ludwigs2 20:38, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Oppose. As much as I can AGF, I feel strongly that this is an attempt to avoid following the established policy where atttempts to change the said policy (attempts that, I thought, had some merit) have failed. I agree with Anthonyhcole that IAR requires consensus, which is clearly lacking here. There is some truth in the statement that changing policy is difficult but this is not an excuse to disregard it. I would also, as an aside, say that this focus on policy change and IAR kind of undermines the argument of the 'anti-image' faction that the number of images needs be reduced per WP:DUE, not offsensiveness. - BorisG (talk) 05:25, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm arguing that we take account of the educational usefulness of offensive images to be sure we don't needlessly offend our readers, and that we abide by WP:DUE and WP:NPOV when curating such content. They're not conflicting positions. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:47, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed findings of fact (Ludwigs2)

Muhammad images of limited value

1) The figurative images of Muhammad are of limited value to the article, neither representing the topic accurately nor filling any clear or obvious purpose for the article. They are not overtly inappropriate, but primarily serve decorative or illustrative roles that are of little consequence to the subject matter of the article.

Comment by Arbitrators:

The Committee does not have the necessary expertise to determine the historical and artistic value of a given image. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 20:27, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

I cannot state enough how odious this proposition is, and how much it runs against both the spirit and the letter of the project's core policies. Tarc (talk) 01:14, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you stated it just a little bit, because what you just said makes no sense to me. Why is it odious? How does it run against the spirit and letter of policy? Please explain. --Ludwigs2 01:51, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

As this is a content issue far outside of Arbcom's purview, I really don't see the usefulness of elaboration at this time. This point was talked to death at /images, WT:NOT, and Jimbo's userpage, I believe. Tarc (talk) 21:59, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the number of times this argument risen makes it a behavioral issue, not a content issue. --Ludwigs2 01:03, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Disagree in the strongest possible terms. Visual depictions of the subject is always of good value to an article. Beyond that, this is yet another card you've played over and over and over without ever coming close to achieving anything resembling consensus support. You are just hoping to use ArbCom to defeat the community. Resolute 21:13, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Also disagree with this. Visual depictions help visual learners, thus they are educational. Also all images are depicting important events within the life of the subject (muhammad) and do so in an tasteful artistic sense. These are not scribbles from a childrens coloring book and have the same value similar images in other articles hold. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:49, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• Disagree for a raft of reasons. But to judge from the Arbs' acceptance comments, not all of them feel these issues are outside their purview. Johnbod (talk) 03:51, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Given that all depictions of Muhammad are from long after his death and are in no way based on what he looked like or on depictions that existed in his lifetime, this statement would be correct without any doubt if the Muhammad article were purely a biography, ignoring the cultural and religious impact. It is inconsistent to argue that the article should be so restricted and then reject the present statement. I will research which editors, if any, are doing that and introduce this as evidence for bad-faith behaviour. (It is of course entirely possible that among the editors who are promoting Muhammad images, there are those who believe in one thing and those who believe in the other, with no overlap, resulting in the impression of bad faith where none is present.) Hans Adler 20:10, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

ContentCom too? I can only imagine the headlines: Wikisupremes rule that Persian Miniatures have "limited value" thus need be removed. Subhead: They didn't rule how valuable Wikipe-tan is. Presumably more so, because it's still there! ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 11:36, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

To my knowledge, none of the parties here are saying that the images should be removed entirely from the project. The dispute is as to which images, and how many images, should be used in which article (specifically the article Muhammad). I think everyone is in agreement that the images can be used elsewhere on the project, such as at Depictions of Muhammad, and other appropriate articles. --Elonka 15:28, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

This is true of the vast majority of images on Wikipedia. There's no reason to hold these images to a higher standard.—Kww(talk) 16:42, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Recognition of multiplicity

2) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia intended for the use of a multicultural, multi-faith, multi-ethnic, and otherwise broadly diverse readership.

Comment by Arbitrators:

So what? It's intended to provide "all human knowledge" to the greatest extent it can. That's not necessarily compatible with where this principle is going. Jclemens (talk) 19:42, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

The Wikipedia as a general project, yes. But we're on the English Wiki here, and while we do attract a global audience, let's not get all hoppy on political correctness and pretend that we're a happy, everyone-gets-a-share melting pot. 2/3rds of the contributions come from the US, UK, and Canada. This is the Western world's encyclopedia, and the West has a standard of religious freedom that is found lacking in other parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East. We have no obligation or expectation to make our content cozy for those who are, for all intents and purposes, outside of the project's purview. Tarc (talk) 01:13, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Tarc, that's the point to be cleared up, isn't it? If in fact Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that is intentionally written from a particular worldview, where all other cultural perspectives are obliged (so to speak) to sit in the back of the bus, we need to spell that out explicitly so that people (like myself) who prefer universalism are no longer confused on the issue. I'll be curious to see how we rationalize that in terms of NPOV; seems to me we'd need doublethink to manage it (War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Bias is Neutrality...). well, we'll see… --Ludwigs2 01:48, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Did you ever see that episode of South Park where they kept removing item after item from the Christmas play that anyone found offensive, til the end result was the kids dancing in a silent, Phillip Glass-like minimalist performance? I don't want the project to be that, something where all the sharp edges are shaved down into non-threatening nubs. Tarc (talk) 02:57, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

How dare you mention South Park on this page?! Don't you know how offensive they are?! [96] ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 03:33, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Tarc, that's not a realistic concern. The project is bound by its need to be complete and accurate, so it can never be whitewashed down to Glass-like minimalism. Besides, you seem to be confusing 'political correctness' and 'respect for difference'. PC is whitewashing, in which controversial material is simply avoided; respect for difference means exactly what it says, that we respect different worldviews and handle controversial material judiciously. What's wrong with being respectful and judicious? --Ludwigs2 03:38, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Really, not a realistic concern [97] [98]? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 04:09, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, really. What ar.wikipedia does in not our concern here. incidentally, I'm curious why I have a message on the ar.wikipedia version of my account. I've never been to that domain before. I assume it's some sort of welcome template, but I can't read a word of arabic. bizarre. --Ludwigs2 05:06, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Being "respectful and judicious" is not a concern of this project, doubly so it would compromise the project's ability to provide a quality article to the public. Tarc (talk) 21:57, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Beg pardon? "This is the Western world's encyclopedia"? Which policy states that NPOV is determined by community demographics? --JN466 05:26, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Common sense? That "en" over there stands for something, y'know. If a reader comes to the English Wikipedia to look at an article of Muhammad, the expectation that the article will contain images that are contrary to the teachings of Islam should be 100%. The English-speaking nations of the world do not adhere to any one religion over another; it follows that an encyclopedia in the primary language of these nations would not show preference or deference either. Tarc (talk) 21:57, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

You realise that more countries speak English than just the US/UK? English is the second language throughout India, and it is an important language in muslim countries like Malaysia. Additionally it is widely spoken worldwide by the global elite and in the tourism industry etc. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:24, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

@Ludwigs: I like to think of the encyclopedia as though it were written for an alien race that might one day discover the remains of a long extinct human species. They would be completely free of our petty biases, and presumably, if they came all the way here they would want to know as much about Earth and its prior civilizations as possible. When you think about Wikipedia in this vein your raison d'etre is to provide the most accurate and full possible description of our world. If this was my wiki, I would have an article for every asteroid, every human being, every molecule and a catalog of every photo ever taken (people/photos organized into notable and not notable categories, of course). I realize that this will never happen, and I also realize that an alien race will likely never discover wikipedia, but the principal stands that knowledge is, per se, important, regardless of how it might subjectively impact those who have yet to rise to a point where the thoughts and actions of others are not bothersome. When we start restricting content based on offense, we make the mistake that every enemy of art, every book burner, every person who has ever destroyed or excluded something because they found it offensive or painful. So forget "worldwide view" and start thinking "universal view." If we can do this, then we're on our way to creating a truly neutral encyclopedia (unless of course we join a galactic consortium of some sort. Then we'd have to deal with alien bias :D). N^oformation ^Talk 08:18, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

@NoFo: I don't embrace that particular vision of the project (for reasons detailed below) but if I take it as read for a moment I'd like Wikipedia to be one of the few human endeavors that alien race finds that doesn't convince them we were absolute a**holes (or whatever metaphoric excretory process they might have). Of course, our talk pages will put the lie to that in any case, but still…

That being said, you are making the mistake that I often find in students: you are confounding 'information' with 'knowledge'. Freshman always make the mistake of thinking that they have to get and read and memorize every detail of everything they are exposed to. After a few months (if they don't burn out completely) they learn to distinguish between the chaff and the wheat, picking out the parts that are important knowledge and ignoring the mass of irrelevant information. We ought to do the same on project. there's no knowledge wrapped up in these figurative images of Muhammad - at least not for this article - there is just interesting but ultimately unimportant information there. I get that you don't make that distinction, but you should. If you did, you'd recognize that NOTCENSORED applies to knowledge but not to information; since you don't, you end up trying to apply NOTCENSORED to everything and make headaches where headaches don't need to be made. --Ludwigs2 17:25, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I understand how you could see that in what I wrote, but it's less a mistake in understanding than it was a mistake in expression. I agree that there is a difference between knowledge and information (in a very literal sense too). Looking at it from the alien perspective again, any and all information and knowledge would seem to be important if keeping in mind that I'm assuming a long extinct human species for this scenario; this means no museums, no more hard copies of literature, paintings, etc. Jimbo early on used a phrase akin to "complete consortium of human knowledge," and I took this quite literally - it's one of the main things that drew me to the project. N^oformation ^Talk 20:23, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Definitely worth mentioning. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:07, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• Of course. Can I point out to Tarc who said

  2/3rds of the contributions come from the US, UK, and Canada ... We have no obligation or expectation to make our content cozy for those who are, for all intents and purposes, outside of the project's purview.

that there are plenty of Muslims in the US, UK and Canada, and your implicit exclusion of them from the purview of this project is stunning. And "Being "respectful and judicious" is not a concern of this project" is a socially incompetent perspective that is inimical to the goals of this project.

N^oformation, our readers aren't Martians, they're people with feelings. No one's discussing the removal of educationally valuable images, just offensive images that serve no real educational purpose. We must treat our readers as healthy humans, rather than as people who have sunk to a point where the thoughts and actions of others are not bothersome.

Kww, wrt "The responsibility resides with the reader, not the author.," the author has a responsibility to not gratuitously offend the reader. Common sense and decency demand that, and so does the Foundation. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:14, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I think you are missing the point of what I wrote. Yes people have feelings, but this isn't a self help book, it's an encyclopedia of knowledge and disseminating knowledge is literally the only goal of wikipedia - all policies, guidelines and pillars are simply the details on how to best accomplish said dissemination. If we write as though we are writing for martians, we can better provide an objective consortium of human knowledge because we don't have to consider that some people find certain types of knowledge wrong; if we're writing for people and willing to consider emotions and offense, we necessarily restrict the knowledge we can offer. As an encyclopedia I think this is wrong, for all the same reasons I think banning Catcher in the Rye is wrong. N^oformation ^Talk 10:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Just as an aside, I don't expect you to agree with me. We have very different world views. In my world view, peopole should be offended by almost nothing as I find that being offended is simply allowing someone or something else to control your emotions. Contrary to assertions of autism or racism, etc, I just learned a long time ago that being offended is a huge waste of time. Since nothing offends me (not to confuse offense with the Uncanny), and since it was a pretty easy conclusion to come to for me, I honestly do not have empathy for people who choose to be offended - and yes, it is completely a choice.

My world view may seem alien to you, but it's the world view of most of the people with whom I spend my time, who are, incidentally, scientists. As such, to me the majority of the world is completely mad and although I understand the idea of being offended (having at some point in my past been offended), I cannot grasp how people can continue to live like that.

Really though it's not my problem; I spend my time with the smartest people in the world, none of whom give a shit about this kind of stuff, and I avoid the masses 99% of the time. I'm here to disseminate knowledge and to do so within the framework of WP's rules. If at some point NOTCENSORED changes to a version that allows for offense to be considered, I'll leave the project rather than fight it, simple as that.

But please drop your arrogance at the door. Implying that someone is not a "healthy human" because they aren't bothered by the thoughts and actions of others is seriously condescending. Don't take that to mean that i am offended, btw; nothing anyone says here offends me, I only embrace the idea of keeping personal commentary off Wikipedia because I believe it to be the best way to further the goals of the project (that is, dispassionate discourse is more conducive to neutrality). N^oformation ^Talk 10:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, we're writing for the 99%. Gratuitously offending them is stupid. Whacking gratuitous figurative depictions of Muhammad on Muhammad will have a similar effect on the average Muslim reader as slapping a gratuitous porno photo on Bread, but more so, because the Muslim will look at the image, know there is no real educational merit in the photo and, reasonably assume it's been put there deliberately to offend Muslims. The hypothetical gratuitous porno photo is obviously put on Bread to offend everybody. I'm sorry you don't see this the way I do.

You refer to those who have yet to rise to a point where the thoughts and actions of others are not bothersome. I refer to people who have sunk to a point where the thoughts and actions of others are not bothersome. Why is my viewpoint the arrogant one? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:35, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Nofo - you just said (paraphrasing) that "You yourself don't get offended by things, being offended by things is a huge waste of time, and other people should not be so easily offended". But you've entered evidence against Hans for saying something you didn't like about you, you've said you'd leave the project if things don't go your way, you're complaining about other people's arrogance - those sure sound like offense to me. granted you are not as hypocritical about it as some editors in this discussion (who will tell other editors that they ought to grow thicker skins if they are offended by the images, but who scream civility, civility, civility!!! at the mere suggestion they themselves might have a bias), but still…

More to the point, however, we live in a world in which people have strong emotional attachments to other people, to things, to ideals… I understand the academic bubble - academia is a protected environment where we can work with ideas free of the turbulence of the political and social world, and a bit of that bubble ought to extend to Wikipedia. But academics never get in people's faces professionally, and neither should we. There is an occasional need to say socially unpleasant things, but few academics will go that route without double/triple checking their data and treading very, very carefully (you only need to recall the Bell Curve debacle to see what the academy does to scholars who are incautious advocates). Academics put their reputation on the line every time they challenge social mores; Wikipedia puts its reputation on the line every time it challenges social mores. That's not saying it can't be done; just that it ought not to be done without good cause. --Ludwigs2 18:07, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I did explain this above. It is not that I am offended by Hans or Anthony, it is that I believe that the best way for Wikipedia to function is to keep personal feelings about other editors out the project. When I say I would leave if NOTCENSORED changed, I don't mean that I would rage quit :). I mean that I am here for certain reasons and at the moment Wikipedia policy seems to coincide with those reasons. If the policy changed to that extent then it would no longer be a framework within which I could work. No hard feelings, just wouldn't be worth my time anymore. And yes, you are spot on regarding the academic bubble, I wish I had used that phrasing myself. That is exactly how I treat wikipedia. I do obviously disagree that we shouldn't "get in people's faces" though, but I have a feeling that neither you or I will change our opinion on that matter. N^oformation ^Talk 20:31, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

@Anthony: (i) No. Putting depictions of bread would be the analogy to draw. Or perhaps depictions of Muhammad in a porno. If you cannot see how a depiction of Muhammad is more relevant to Muhammad than porn is to bread then I'm not sure we can continue the conversation. (ii) You may call it "sinking," but if that is the case then you are essentially saying that hard scientists in general have "sunk," because as I wrote above, this is an attitude that is common among those educated in the sciences. Go to your local university's physics department and ask what they think about Muslims being offended by depictions of Muhammad. Expect to see blank stares. Basal human emotion is the default position of all humans and it's a decent amount of work to elevate yourself to a point where you can think of reality in the context of the universe: our insignificant squabbles are astounding. N^oformation ^Talk 20:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

(i) Some images of Mukammad at Muhammad add to the readers' understanding of the section they illustrate (e.g., #Islamic depictions of Muhammad, #European and Western views) and so, belong there. But others add nothing to the readers' understanding of the the section they illustrate (e.g., #Childhood and early life, #Beginnings of the Koran, #Conquest of Mecca). Though the latter group are pretty and interesting, and will aid memory, they don't add a jot of information concerning the topic of the sections they illustrate, but they disaffect many readers, so they should go.

(ii) This is a massive "two cultures" divide in philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, this question of "can we/should we privilege feelings?" I made the "sinking" vs "rising" distinction to point out there is more than one way to view the influence of feeling on cognition and behaviour. Social psychology and Affective neuroscience apply science to feelings. The charming and gorgeous Antonio Damasio (famously) and Jaak Panksepp (earlier but, possibly because he's a brittle curmudgeon with bad hair, unnoticed) argue that, on a species level, higher cognition evolved out of feelings and on an individual level it develops out of, and depends on, the brain structures that embody feelings. (But perhaps this is a bit way out for an ArbCom case.) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:00, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

a few slugs of good port this evening (tawny, please, ruby port is for chumps) so, forgive any excesses. NoFo - I absolutely agree that "the best way for Wikipedia to function is to keep personal feelings about other editors out the project." However, that's unrealistic. One glance at Mathsci's evidence will show you that there will always be editors who prioritize personal matters above all else. It's human nature, compounded by the peculiar constraints of the internet. I am curious, though, how you rationalize 'getting in people's faces' with that dispassionate academic bubble. I suspect this may be a disciplinary thing - I'm a social scientist by training (though I have a hell of a lot of experience with the physical sciences); you're sounding very much like a physical scientist of some sort. is that correct? --Ludwigs2 07:24, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

??? It is unwise to edit wikipedia when in a possibly compromised state. Mathsci (talk) 16:19, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

It's unwise to focus on personal attacks and ignore substantive issues. there's nothing in my post that sounds drunk, sloppy, or unreasonable, and it's a self-evident fact that there are editors such as yourself whose primary goal is to slander and defame. sad fact, that, but unavoidable. --Ludwigs2 04:27, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• I hope that doesn't entail applying the sum of all human prejudices across all articles. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 09:16, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
• Agree with the multiplicity principle. --Elonka 00:58, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
• True, but it is beholden on all individuals to recognize that when they are reading material that hasn't been specifically tailored to their culture, they will encounter things that are considered unacceptable by their culture. The responsibility resides with the reader, not the author.—Kww(talk) 16:45, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• Precisely. While we can recognize that Wikipedia is viewed by people of many cultures, we cannot allow ourselves to be beholden to them. Something the WP:Content disclaimer itself alludes to. Resolute 21:16, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

'Offense' clarified

3) The term 'offense' has dual meanings which should not be confused or conflated in the application of NOTCENSORED:

1. A violation of the rules, laws, standards, codes of conduct, or other well-defined and strongly established principles of a culture or group.
2. The feeling of displeasure an individual feels when confronted with something perceived to be insulting or disrespectful.

Causing offense in the second sense is rarely (if ever) a concern for the encyclopedia; Causing offense in the first sense can make the encyclopedia look bigoted.

Comment by Arbitrators:

I don't think there's as strong a delineation as presented here. If adopted, this would be a recipe for removing, say, Piss Christ as well as the images under discussion here. Jclemens (talk) 19:40, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Obviously this distinction would require refinement. but failing to acknowledge the distinction at all merely leads to endless confusion, as editors try to assert that broad violation of cultural mores are irrelevant because it's just individuals being offended. We cannot treat the violation of broadly established community mores as though they were equivalent to mere personal dislikes (e.g. the near universal distaste for gratuitous public nudity is not to be equated with, say, a personal distaste for lime Jello or an aversion to spiders). --Ludwigs2 22:51, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed, though I may need to reword it later when I'm feeling less offended₍₂₎. --Ludwigs2 13:56, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose'. This is basically a proposal for a policy change whereby NOTCENSORED would cease to apply where religious or social morality is a factor. --FormerIP (talk) 18:25, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose as well. In fact, this proposal would be colossally damaging to the project. Resolute 21:18, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I think I have to oppose. How small a group would you accept? I'm more dubious about Kww's point about religions, but the main reason for that is that the number of mainstream religious beliefs isn't particularly large. The number of groups of people is definitely breathtakingly large. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:45, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. No one has a right to be unoffended. Tarc (talk) 21:46, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. Again. Saying that a groups right if they are large enough trumps everyone elses is the equivelence of the women's article should be showing only people with, at a minimum, a veil since it is the same demographic that finds issues with both. The majority of the world does not have issues with pictures thus I say pictures should abound. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Wow: a multi-user, party-line rejection of what amounts to a dictionary definition? amazing… --Ludwigs2 22:53, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Oppose. This simply tries to elevate religious perspectives by assigning them the status of being a principle of a culture or group.—Kww(talk) 16:49, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• This is a tremendously misguided proposal. The Harris & Harris WMF-sponsored report in fact arrived at the opposite conclusion with respect to offenses over "sacred" images. [99] ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:42, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Core of dispute: Whether Wikipedia should lean towards 'social responsibility' or 'freedom of expression'

4) The core of this dispute is not over content per se, but over disagreeing interpretations of Wikipedia principles. Given that a number of images on the article contain depictions of the prophet, editors are divided over whether:

1. Such images should be subject to removal (in whole or part) because they offend the mores of a socio-cultural group and are not vital to the content of the article
2. Such images should be retained because removing them would be a form of censorship

In other words, this dispute is over what degree of social responsibility the project has not to offend its readership needlessly, and what degree of freedom of expression is necessary to create and maintain a useful and unbiased encyclopedia.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Ludwigs2 22:41, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia has, amongst other things, a social responsibility not to act on the basis of assumptions which may or may not be correct. I would tend to suspect that the current state of the article is less offensive to fewer people than some editors imagine. I may be wrong, but there has been no serious attempt to demonstrate otherwise. If you want to claim the moral highground of "social responsibility", you should be prepared to put in the spadework first. --FormerIP (talk) 00:42, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

As with every single argument you make on this topic, you are begging the question. You assume that the images are not important(/vital/relevant/material/etc.) to the article, yet you have never successfully presented such a case. That is only the first fallacy of your proposal. The other is that you are creating a false dichotomy of concepts that are not mutually exclusive. Truth be told, I find that ensuring freedom of information ("expression") is the socially responsible behaviour. We, of course, cannot be all things to all people, and it should be patently obvious by now that practicing censorship to suit one group that you identify with most is a non-starter. Resolute 01:26, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

I think that this is the larger issue to which you've been trying to appeal but for most of us (I'm speculating) the issue is simply over whether our policy already addresses this issue in the form of WP:NOT. "Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations" is an unequivocal statement. So the truth behind this FoF is that it is already addressed by policy. If Arbcom were to make a ruling espousing social responsibility it could not in any way contradict the policy as already written as this would be outside the scope of Arbcom's power. All they can do is reassert policy, they cannot change it. N^oformation ^Talk 22:53, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

except that (as you know) that particular addition to policy is recent and badly formed. it does not represent any consensus except that of partisans in this dispute, and needs to be IARed until it is removed. sorry, you don't get to write policy that supports your position and then claim that your position is correct because policy supports it. that kind of reasoning renders all policy worthless. --Ludwigs2 22:58, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

That phrase was added in April 2010 [100], or nearly 2 years ago so not really "recent" in wiki terms (compare Arbcom using 1 year as it's longest duration for non-indefinite remedies). It was discussed on the talk page (last revision before archiving), where it was regarded as an accurate summation of a pre-existing community consensus and implicitly part of existing policy anyway. Since then I'm not aware that there has been any discussion about it - and obviously any discussion there was did not come to a consensus to remove it. Given all this, the only possible conclusion is that it does represent community consensus. Furthermore your attempts to redefine policy in this area to match your views (see the evidence page) have been consistently rejected by the community (as has every other similar attempt, see the link to the history on Meta I posted previously), and I am aware of no evidence that Noformation has attempted to do this - he certainly was not involved in that addition to policy. On the substantive issue, policy and consensus has consistently chosen to value Wikipedia's principles of neutrality and lack of censorship higher than the principles, values and rules of other cultures, religions and organisations. Thryduulf (talk) 00:06, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense. If I'd noticed that when it happened I'd have objected to it then, and we'd have had this fight then - the fact that I missed it does not mean that I somehow 'lost my chance' to object to it. when we come back to it (an uninvolved admin is supposedly drafting a neutral RfC, though I haven't followed up on that) we'll see what the outcome is - I sincerely doubt it will be retained unmodified, because as it stands it fairly clearly contradicts NPOV.

Really, when it comes right down to it I just want you and your cohort to stop trying to play wiki-God: you don't get to demand that you get your way because you think your interpretation of some badly formed bit of policy in tantamount to divine law. if you cannot find a rational reason for your desired outcome, but have to rely on deus ex machina arguments about how policy is ever-inviolate, then you really don't have much to add to the conversation, do you? --Ludwigs2 00:28, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Policy is policy; ArbCom cannot and will not change policy nor rule against policy. - BorisG (talk) 01:31, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

They may, and I hope they do, find that the present wording of WP:NOTCENSORED contradicts the present wording of WP:GRATUITOUS, contradicts wmf:Resolution:Controversial content, and goes against the usual norms of intercultural behaviour. I'd like to see that recent perversion of policy put to a broad cross-section of editors in a well-structured RfC. Presently it just represents the view of the self-selected group of "right to offend" activists that naturally clusters around and owns such a policy. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:50, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

This may be so, but an ArbCom case is the wrong venue for this. RfC is the right venue. - BorisG (talk) 03:56, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

On the contrary, Ludwigs, so long as it is policy, so long as it remains on that page, and so long as you cannot find consensus to remove it, it's not going to be ignored (unless you can find consensus for IAR as there's simply no technical way to unilaterally impose IAR). That it was badly formed and too recent is your opinion, and unless you can convince enough other editors that your opinion is correct then it stands. This is just a simple observation of fact that should be wholly uncontentious: you cannot force policy changes simply because you think the policy is irrational unless you convince other editors that it is irrational.

Secondly, I am not trying to reinterpret policy - it is not vaguely written, it's ridiculously specific. My arguments have always been in reference to the policy as it is written as this is the whole point of policy. You are trying to change policy, literally, and for you to attempt to turn the tables by claiming that reading the policy literally is attempting to reinterpret it while actually attempting to change it is enforcing policy is absolutely ludacris.

I did not write that policy; as far as I recall I have not edited WP:NOT, so it's incredibly disingenuous for you to say such a thing.

Lastly, this is not a new topic for you. You have been arguing for offense to be an editorial consideration on WP:NOT since around the time that phrase added to the page and after almost two years you have still not found a consensus to do so.

However, none of this nor what you wrote is relevant to the point I made in the first place: Arbcom does not have the power to change WP:NOT even if they agreed with your reasoning. They can refer it for discussion elsewhere, but they cannot, as far as I know, rule that a policy be changed or reinterpreted.

The fact that you are the only editor in this dispute who is currently as risk of being site banned should be a wake up call for you to realize that maybe, just maybe, you have been wrong in the way you interpret the way Wikipedia is run and the way policy is interpreted. That is not meant to be condescending, I am hoping that it might make you a little introspective for a moment. N^oformation ^Talk 09:23, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed remedies (Ludwigs2)

Mathsci interaction ban with Ludwigs2

1) Mathsci banned from commenting on any matter concerning Ludwigs2 for an indefinite period of no less than 1 year

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed: I don't normally ask for sanctions against other editors (because I dislike the system we use on project), and this is a bit off the track for this arbitration, but I'm sick of having him breathe down my neck. Mathsci has sought sanctions against me multiple times in the year or so since the Race and Intelligence arbitration, generally appearing on an issue he has not previously edited solely to ask for sanctions against me. That is how he first became involved in this case (he entered an ANI dispute to try to drum up a topic ban for me); that's how he first entered the R&I dispute (he resurfaced after months absent from the discussion, ignored the mediation page and went straight to ANI about me), and there have been several times where he has popped in unannounced on one page or another just to try to convince some admin to sanction me. I have tried my best to avoid him - I don't edit in his topic areas or on pages he frequents, and have not entered into adminsitrative disputes that have centered on him - but he just keeps coming after me every opportunity he can find. I'll provide diffs later (because I'm too tired of him to want to look at his material at the moment), but an interaction ban would do no harm to the project (the only places he and I generally interact are where he's trying to get me screwed) and would generally make everyone's lives more pleasant. --Ludwigs2 09:23, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• Comment There have be no interactions for a year and a half in editing space between Ludwigs2 and me. I have been involved in only a minimal way with image discussions, mostly limited to finding sources, creating/editing a few biographies on those involved in the Islamic art world (Ernst J. Grube, Stefan Weber (Orientalist) and Edmund de Unger), locating and uploading high quality images from Persian manuscripts and helping build consensus in the compromise solution. I have given evidence in a previous case in which Ludwigs2 was a party, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration Enforcement sanction handling. The above statement seems to be a reaction solely to my evidence in this current case. The diffs were collected in answer to a query of Elonka on this page; it was Ludwigs2's requests to NuclearWarfare that led to them being presented as formal evidence. Normally remedies need evidence (diffs that are relevant to the case). In this case Ludwigs2 has provided no diffs. If he has grudges from previous ArbCom cases, in particular WP:ARBR&I, they would have no relevance here, as was already the case in AESH. On the basis of the evidence so far a case could be made for unilateral interaction bans between Ludwigs2 and several users, but I don't seem to be one of them. Mathsci (talk) 10:20, 3 January 2012 (UTC) ??? Mathsci (talk) 22:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• As I said, diffs will follow. for the immediately curious, however, Mathsci involved himself with the case he mentioned, a dispute I had with Ronz, I believe with the issue I has with quackguru that led up to the sanction handling issue, and two or three noticeboard disputes. I do not believe there is a single time that I have been mentioned on an administrative page in which Mathsci has not weighed in to ask for sanctions, regardless of context. Nor should this be surprising to anyone. Mathsci - for all his skills as a content editor - has a long history of extremism in conflicts with editors. He is regularly accused of trying to OUT editors under the guise of COI, and has a habit of gross misrepresentation of other editors (usually through extensive attack subpages that pile on misinterpretations of massive quantities of diffs in an aggressive smear campaign). Don't get me wrong: I welcome his content additions to this discussion, but here as elsewhere his content contributions come as an afterthought to a failed effort to get me sanctioned. most of his contributions to this case are pure, unadulterated slander. Telling him that he can no longer discuss me as a person or as an editor will in no way hamper any discussions or remove any valuable viewpoint, it will just preclude a whole lot of vicious nonsense that doesn't need to said regardless. --Ludwigs2 14:39, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

??? Mathsci (talk) 20:34, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Discretionary sanctions for editors using exclusionary arguments

2) Pursuant to Ludwigs2's principle #4, arguments which explicitly aim to exclude a significant viewpoint on a topic run counter to the principles and interests of the project, and in particular the core policies of Consenus and NPOV. Editors who regularly use such arguments are subject to discretionary sanctions.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed: why don't we put some teeth in the Consensus process… --Ludwigs2 17:42, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposals by User:Kww

Proposed principles

Religions are not popularity contests

1) Religious perspectives cannot be evaluated by determining the number of followers. The religious beliefs of large groups, such as the Sunni, must be considered to be of equal value to the religious beliefs of smaller groups.

Comment by Arbitrators:

I'll do you one better: why on earth would Wikipedia be trying to evaluate religious perspectives at all? We describe them, using appropriate sourcing, NPOV voice, etc. We don't say who's right or wrong. Jclemens (talk) 22:56, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

I think this depends on the context we are talking about. In some cases, WP:PARITY would suggest that the number of people who subscribe to a given point-of-view is highly relevant to the amount of coverage that should be given to that view in Wikipedia. In the present context, the question is about the relevance of the views of non-Mulisms, Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims who never got the memo about conforming to the expectations of Wikipedia editors. These are clearly not fringe views. But, as has been pointed out at various points on various grounds above, balancing different people's views makes less sense and is less do-able when we are dealing with the question of whether or not to display particular images. --FormerIP (talk) 17:27, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

This seems likely to violate WP:DUE. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:14, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes and no. I get what you are trying to say, but I don't quite agree with how it is said. I think this can be taken in two directions. First: that people who argue "Muslims are offended" are making two faulty assumpions: (1) that all Muslims are the same and (2) that said views have been consistent throughout history. Second: If we are going to argue that one religion's views must be explicitly honoured, then we must respect all religious views. So if we are going to censor this article to suit some Muslims, than we had better get around to deleting Xenu and replacing all uses of "God" with "G-d". Never mind the views of smaller religions. Resolute 21:24, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

[101] --JN466 05:17, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Arguments of this type are perfectly appropriate when combating attempts to force a government to treat creationism as scientific. But Wikipedia is not a state. Principles such as freedom of speech and freedom of/from religion have echos here but do not apply directly. This proposal is an attempt to exclude a legitimate concern from editorial considerations by appeal to the continuum fallacy. It would legitimise arguments of the type 'I am offended by the letter Q for religious reasons and nobody takes this into account, so we may never take religious taboos into account for any purpose.' Hans Adler 14:12, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Support as proposer.—Kww(talk) 17:09, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

The sum total of all religious proscriptions is breathtakingly large

2) Examining the religious beliefs of the world, one can find prohibitions against the depiction of a wide variety of subjects, ranging from dead people, to people, to women, to specific articles of clothing. Thus, it would be impossible to create a useful encyclopedia that shielded all religious beliefs from images that were offensive within the context of each faith.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Support, although I would note that the statement leaves aside the question of whether we can pick and choose. --FormerIP (talk) 17:30, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Is this really true? The number of religions with even a million followers is actually pretty small.

With things like dead people, organisations like the British Museum have returned dead bodies to the Australian aborigines. Even though they have not returned the Elgin marbles to the Greeks. If the British Museum can tell the difference it should be possible for us to do so to some extent. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:14, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is here, EH. If it's about affording respect to beliefs held by large numbers of people, with a million as a benchmark, the behaviour of the British Museum does not seem to back you up, simply because there are far fewer than a million Australian aborigines and far more than a million Greeks. The fact that the notional cash value of the Elgin Marbles would make Bill Gates gulp, whereas the notional cash value of two piles of ash probably wouldn't even make me gulp may also have something to do with it. --FormerIP (talk) 01:24, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Fair point, on the number of Aboriginies I thought there were more than a million. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:27, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, but I would re-word to include all content, not just images. Resolute 21:26, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Certainly we should do that. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:41, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a transparent attempt to legitimise a fallacious argument that goes as follows: We cannot prevent every instance of offence to everybody in all articles, so we must not prevent any instance of offence to anybody in any article. The same editors who are now promoting a fundamentalist reading of NOTCENSORED that raises the standards needed for removing offensive content when compared to universally acceptable content would no doubt misinterpret this principle in the same way. Hans Adler 14:19, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

No, the standard is, and has always been, the same as with any other content: Build a consensus that supports your proposed change. That your arguments of "it offends" has failed to sway the community does not mean that there is a different standard at work. It just means your argument was not convincing. Resolute 18:00, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Whether it is at work or not, the higher standard (which I believe exists de facto as a result of the dynamics of this site) has been claimed more or less explicitly by some editors: FormerIP [102], Noformation [103]. These are the diffs that I could find immediately, but I think I have seen other, even more explicit statements to this effect.

Basically it boils down to this: Are we not censored in the sense that people who feel offended can't force us to remove content, or are we not censored in the sense that we will ignore these people and others who think similarly, in a way we wouldn't if nobody had tried to force us? Or, even more extremely, are there entire category of otherwise valid arguments that we must exclude from our editorial deliberations? The first reading of NOTCENSORED is conservative. The other two are in tension with NPOV and mix content decisions with advocacy. Hans Adler 01:32, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Support as proposer.—Kww(talk) 17:09, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Well said. It's even one of Wikipedia's core disclaimers, WP:Content disclaimer. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 17:15, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

There are dozens of images of deceased Aboriginal persons on Wikipeida, see Lists of Indigenous Australians. Does anyone think this is wrong and/or violates Wikipedia policies (given that in various indigenous Australian cultures displaying and viewing such images is considered taboo)? - BorisG (talk) 18:09, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Your comment was in the wrong section, so I moved it. It was originally in reply to Eraserhead1. This is an illustration of my point. My understanding is that the aboriginal beliefs are against images of dead people, not of dead aborigines. No one even pretends that honouring this belief would be a good idea. However, I don't think anyone could give a logical explanation as to precisely why offending them is unimportant but offending Sunnis is a problem. By any objective standards, the two beliefs are equally reasonable.—Kww(talk) 18:34, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

There are a lot of realpolitik answers to that, but on Wikipedia we pretend principles matter, so "they are mainstream" is going to be the jimbolic answer to complement that the Shi'a are "very fringe". ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 01:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Boris, this is false analogy. If we had a photo of Muhammad, or even a painting by someone who knew him, everyone on this page, as far as I can tell, would support its inclusion. So no, I, and probably everyone else on this page, will not be arguing for the removal of photos of deceased aborigines, because, unlike imaginings of painters remote in time and place from their subject, photos of the subject of an article have real encyclopedic value.

Kww, for the record, I'm pretty sure it's just pictures of aborigines that they have a problem with. On Aussie TV we have warnings before shows that depict aborigines who have since died. But I'm no expert by any means on aboriginal culture. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 00:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Equal treatment requires scrupulous ignorance

3) The only method by which all religions can be treated equally and still have a useful encyclopedia is to scrupulously ignore religious objections to material. This must be interpreted in both a positive and negative direction: while material must not be removed due to a religious principle, it equally must not be included simply in order to offend a religious principle.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Not following the logic here, or how it relates to the specific case we're dealing with. Risker (talk) 03:53, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Oppose as essentially an OR argument that will make Wikipedia stand out against reliable sources, by being consistently and systematically more insensitive than reputable sources. We should simply follow NPOV. We have nothing to prove – other than being able to observe NPOV. --JN466 00:40, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Support otherwise we will be forced to draw lines which will get the tag of us discriminating against groups. Discrimination is against the laws of the united states especially for jobs on the religious side so we would need to sanitize everything, or we can ignore all of it and try to cause little disruption. As it stands now we can claim we cater to no religion so they are all treated equally but if that changes to we cater for some eventually it will be we must cater to all. I will point out that their are individuals that would love a case like this to argue simply for internet censorship rules.Tivanir2 (talk) 22:48, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I think arbitrators will appreciate that after reading a number of arguments of this quality it's hard to AGF. Hans Adler 14:26, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

See that comment doesn't make sense to me. If anyone reads what I post I always point out that I also do not make exceptions for things that cause me offense. We don't bend for Scientology, we don't bend for the christian sects, we don't bend for anyone else. We are being asked to bend for the simple reason that Muslims have a lot of adherents. To me that is silly since us assigning value to groups based upon shear numbers is saying to everyone else that they aren't important enough to consider. Also my other argument that where do we draw the line goes hand in hand with this. Almost all of the same community that has problems with these images demand that women be veiled, why would that not be considered a reasonable request if we are counting them as being a large enough portion of the world to change this? The alternative is we can try to make everyone happy and widely sanitize wikipedia of both writing and images, but I doubt that is what the aim of the project is.Tivanir2 (talk) 15:24, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Strong oppose. This insane principle is a relative of the automatic writing (or in Jimbo's words: "transcription monkeys") theory of content production. Hans Adler 14:26, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Well said, Kww. This is the strongest argument defenders of careless or deliberate gratuitous offense can muster; so it is important that it be addressed respectfully. It is a slippery slope argument: if we can't gratuitously offend Muslims, we won't be able to gratuitously offend Australian Aborigines, or Mormons either; where will it end? Kww points out that Wahabis object to figurative depiction of any human and asserts that, if we're going to only use depictions of Muhammad where they actually add something to the readers' understanding, out of respect for Muslims, fairness dictates we have to remove all images of people from the encyclopedia where they're not essential to the readers' understanding of the topic, out of respect for Wahabis.

It is a persuasive argument that I believe underpins the reaction of many editors to the Foundation resolution.

My response to this is no one, not even Wahabis, expects a project like this to be devoid of incidental depictions of humans, whereas a reasonable person would expect an encyclopedia article on Muhammad to contain no unnecessary depictions of Muhammad. That is, there is no slippery slope if you simply understand and apply the guidance contained in the Foundation resolution. As for Mormon temple garments, recently deceased Aborigines, Bahá'u'lláh, etc., just use common sense and decency. Sure, use such images where they add to the readers' understanding, but don't just scatter them around because they look pretty and "because we can." --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:43, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

So, this Rawls veil of ignorance taken to a pathological extreme. Rawls' theory was not that sound to begin with (don't get me started, but it was roundly criticized for obscuring socio-cultural inequities - which is part of the problem we're having here, isn't it? odd coincidence…); extending it in this lopsidedly anti-religious fashion is inane. --Ludwigs2 20:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• Support as proposer.—Kww(talk) 17:09, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• @Risker: simply stated, if we are to treat all religions equally (which I believe we must do), then we cannot accommodate the SunniShiite objections to images of Muhammad without being prepared to accommodate all objections by all religious groups. I doubt that anyone is willing to do that, and not one editor has argued that we should. No one is willing to remove all images of women, or of people, or of dead people, or any of the myriad of other objections. To accommodate any one religious objection without accommodating all of them is to introduce a specific religious bias into the project. The only method to avoid introducing such a bias is to ignore all religious objections. People bring up some arguments about particularly vile images, and I think all of those are covered under are policies against attack images: nothing about my argument should be interpreted to be applicable to images that are being included specifically to attack a religious group.—Kww(talk) 04:51, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
  • In Iran (a Shiite country, and one that places great emphasis on being an Islamic Republic) popular images of Muhammad do not attract major opprobrium. It's Sunnis (representing 85–90% of Muslims worldwide) who are genuinely distressed by such images, and are frequently quite unable to believe that any Muslim would ever have depicted Muhammad. --JN466 05:05, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose. Ignorance is not the way to go, and is not in line with the WMF resolution. Instead, it is better to remain aware of religious customs, so as to best present information. As the WMF resolution states: "We support the principle of least astonishment: content on Wikimedia projects should be presented to readers in such a way as to respect their expectations of what any page or feature might contain." So it would be inappropriate to (for example) make the primary image on the Jesus page a picture of Christ upside down on the cross, or nailed to a Star of David, or for the Muhammad article to show an image of Muhammad being tortured,[104] because those are not typical images within those religious cultures. Within Islam, though there is some variation, the #1 way that Muhammad is represented is through words and elaborate calligraphy, not through imagery. Every major encyclopedia that I have viewed respects this practice, so it would make sense for the Wikipedia article about Muhammad to reflect that practice as well, rather than trying to force some other minority representation that does not reflect widespread usage. This doesn't mean to remove all images of Muhammad from the project -- there are still appropriate places for images of Muhammad in more detailed scholarship, and on Wikipedia, such as at Depictions of Muhammad and other articles. But on the core biography article of this particular individual, images should be used only sparingly. --Elonka 18:55, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• How can you justify doing so without doing so for all other religions, large and small?—Kww(talk) 21:01, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• How is the British Museum able to return dead remains to Tasmania without risking their entire collection? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:17, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• The British Museum has its own policies, and that obviously does not include affording equal treatment to all religious groups. I'm not saying that it is impossible to avoid offending Muslims while not caring about whether we offend other religious groups. I'm saying that it would be wrong to incorporate their sensitivities into our editorial policies without equally incorporating all religious sensitivities. Since we cannot accommodate them all, we must accommodate none.—Kww(talk) 02:24, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Does it not? The British Museum have clearly appeased a pretty minor religion/cultural group here. If the British Museum feels it can accommodate the Australian aborigines, of whom there are only a few million at most, then I think we can accommodate significantly larger groups. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 13:50, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Given said artifacts were basically stolen in the first place, your example is rooted more in legality than it is editorial policy. Resolute 17:38, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• "Basically stolen" applies to a large amount of the stuff in the British Museum and every other major world museum. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Agreed, which is why this example is only distracting the discussion. Kww's argument that we should strive for consistency is valid. What others do is not relevant to us. Resolute 21:05, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• You miss my point: unless it has equally appeased all groups, large and small, it has improperly given preferential treatment to some groups.—Kww(talk) 16:55, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

• Obviously they don't think they have. The counter to that, which is backed up by the British Museum's stance, is that the number of cultural groups with equivalent objections to the Australian aborigines is so small that it doesn't matter if you appease them in cases where the value of the objects is low.
• I suggest we agree to disagree. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:05, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the header should be amended to avoid the ambiguity of the word "ignorance". Obviously it is not to be recommended that WP be edited in an uninformed manner. But our coverage of any topic should be disinterested, so that we avoid knowingly presenting information in pursuance of political or religious principles. --FormerIP (talk) 21:13, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Question for Elonka: How heavily illustrated is "every major encylopedia I have viewed"? I've been looking through Google books and am finding it hard to locate high quality tertiary sources that don't include pictures of Mohammed, except where you would not necessarily expect to see one in any case.--FormerIP (talk) 00:04, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I've looked through multiple different encyclopedia editions in the past at libraries (I was curious about the topic), though of course the nearby libraries are closed today for the holidays. Here at home though, at least in terms of tertiary sources, I have access to hardcopy editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Webster's New Explorer Desk Encyclopedia, the Oxford One-Volume Illustrated Encyclopedia, the Time-Life Timeframe March of Islam, the Harper-Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, and a few other works by lesser-known publishers. They are all illustrated to some degree, some of them heavily so. But not a single one includes an image of Muhammad. --Elonka 06:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

What I'd be concerned about in that selection is the ratio of images to text. The 2007 EB has about 0.27 images per entry [105], Webster's Desk has about 0.06 [106] the Oxford 1 Vol Illustrated has about 0.12 [107] and the HC Catholicism has about 0.07 [108]. As a ballpark, how many images do you expect the WP article on Mohammed to have? --FormerIP (talk) 16:38, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I am not understanding the point of trying to calculate exact proportional numbers of images to text. The Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia is an illustrated encyclopedia. Trying to use numbers to say that it's not illustrated, just seems bizarre to me. I have the encyclopedia here, on my desk. There are images on nearly every page. It's illustrated (shrug). To go into more detail though, here's another point of reference: I spent some time yesterday at a major bookstore to research the prevalence of images of Muhammad in current published works. I did my best to be extremely thorough, with my goal to go through every encyclopedia, every reference work, every almanac, every work of world history. I checked the Reference section, World History, Philosophy, Eastern Religions, Art, Biographies, even the bargain bins. I won't bother listing every book that I reviewed, but they included reference works on Islam, Muhammad, histories of the world, desk encyclopedias, and all kinds of other books, from publishers both academic and popular (I even went through the "For Dummies" books). In the entire store, most works included no Muhammad images at all, except for three books, one of which showed his name in calligraphy, and two that each showed one 16th century image with Muhammad's face veiled. My point being, that images of Muhammad are rare. Just because we can go to Google and find one in a few seconds, does not mean that they are commonly used in sources. The vast majority of publishers, even major academic ones, choose not to use the images. So for Wikipedia to prominently display images of Muhammad, when the vast majority of other sources do not, would violate the "principle of least astonishment". To answer your question of how many images of Muhammad would I expect the WP article on Muhammad to have, my answer is: "0-2". If it were up to me, I would put a calligraphic version of his name in the lead, and then 1 or 2 images down in the "Depictions of Muhammad" section, and the rest I would move off to Depictions of Muhammad or other more specific articles, such as Isra and Mi'raj, Black Stone, and so forth. Note I am not saying that the entire article should only have 0-3 images. There are plenty of other images that would be appropriate to include: Maps, books, architecture, those are all fine, and would match with typical usage in outside sources. --Elonka 17:38, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Elonka, nothing you have described demonstrates in any way that depictions of Mohammed are rare in sources. My point about text-to-image ratios is as follows. If a tertiary source, such as an encyclopaedia, has images in only about a tenth of its articles (as seems to be the case with the illustrated encyclopaedia you mention) and you see that the article on Mohammed has no image, this is obviously completely unremarkable and tells us nothing about what Wikipedia should do. Even in the case of the EB, about 75% of articles picked at random will have no accompanying picture. So you haven't demonstrated any particular scarcity to images of Mohammed.--FormerIP (talk) 18:11, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

FormerIP, I'm sorry, but this is getting into the realm of WP:IDHT. It's not about calculating text to image ratios and quibbling about whether sources are illustrated or not. In my research, I did go out of my way to seek out illustrated sources, and even so, in the vast majority of cases, they still don't include images of Muhammad. They'll include images of the Kaaba, Green Dome, Grand Mosque, Dome of the Rock, the Foundation Stone, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, samples from the Koran, pictures of clothing, weaponry, or representative images of what typical Arabian people from Muhammad's time may have looked like, but they don't include images of Muhammad himself. I invite you, or anyone, to replicate the experiment in any bookstore or library. Review a dozen major tertiary sources of your choice, turn to the index, look up "Muhammad", check the section on him, and see if the source includes an image of him. What you are going to find is that in most sources, there is no image of Muhammad, it's as simple as that. --Elonka 22:30, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

That may well be true. I'm not sure why it's relevant. Wouldn't the issue be whether we are treating Muhammad the same as we treat other similar topics under our editorial policies? Shouldn't we expect Genghis Khan and Muhammad to be illustrated in similar fashions? Doesn't the difference between the two articles already show substantial deference to Sunni sensibilities?—Kww(talk) 22:59, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Kww. In general, I don't see the equivalence as being between one Wikipedia article and another (per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS), but instead it should always be between an article and its related sources. To my knowledge, there are plenty of images of Genghis Khan in Mongol-related sources (as well as statues, coins, stamps, etc.), so if someone challenged that the Genghis Khan biography shouldn't include images (not that I've ever heard of such a request), it would be an easy response that the sources routinely carry images, so the article could carry images too. Which also fits WP:V, "material that is challenged or likely to be challenged." If images aren't challenged, then there's nothing to worry about. If images are challenged though, then we should look to the sources. And from my own research, the sources tend to not use images of him. --Elonka 23:38, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

One of the principles that people are claiming applies is this "least astonishment" thing, which provokes a question: are people more astonished by seeing an article differ from its equivalent in another source, or by seeing it differ from every equivalent Wikipedia article? I don't think conclusions can be drawn from a comparison performed along only one axis.—Kww(talk) 23:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Good point. And there is going to be some variation depending on the audience. For someone very familiar with the topic, it would be "astonishing" to see images of Muhammad, since it would be different from how other sources treat biographies of Muhammad. For someone completely ignorant of the topic, it might be astonishing to see no image in the infobox at all (then again, plenty of Wikipedia biographies have no images in the infobox). So there's no one clear audience. That's why I think a compromise position makes sense, with the most common cultural representation, calligraphy, in the infobox, and another image or two further down in the article, leading to the Depictions of Muhammad article, where the topic is covered in more detail. But perhaps this discussion is more appropriate for Talk:Muhammad/images? --Elonka 01:18, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Elonka, would it be fair to say that the sources you have actually listed (with the possible exception of the TimeLife book, which I haven't been able to find decent information about) actually do not contain any images within their entries on Mohammed? I'm able and willing to check, but you could save me time. I'm mildly interested that your bookstore trip turned up some material containing images of mosques or whatever, but I'm not finding it very compelling evidence.

Just for info, I spent some time yesterday copying URLs from Google Books. I'll post the results of that in talk shortly.--FormerIP (talk) 01:24, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

FormerIP, as I said above, the entries on Muhammed do contain images, just not of him. The images are generally of calligraphy and architecture. As another datapoint, I went to my local library today, and again engaged in a thorough search for images of Muhammad. I checked everything that I could find in the Reference, Biography, and Islam sections (about 40 books in total). I found one (1) image of a veiled Muhammad (the same actually that we are using at Isra and Mi'raj), several images of calligraphy, one image of a riderless Buraq (again from the Mi'raj), numerous images of Islamic architecture (most commonly the Kaaba, Green Dome, and Al-Aqsa Mosque) and one image of the cave of Hira. To repeat: The articles do have images -- they are just not of Muhammad. --Elonka 03:54, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time do do that research, Elonka. --JN466 05:34, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I would like to point out that by that reasoning entries for both men and women would need to include a fair amount of nude photography since if we go by what the world does more porn is produced per year than standard normal conventions of dressed individuals. Also it is not a factor of astonishment to go to a biography and expect a visual representation of the subject. In the article of muhammad I would expect images but in the Islam article I would not, as in the Islamic article it goes over his anicionic stance and is about the religion itself not about the person. Actually I am surprised more images during this time frame haven't survived though that could be for a variety of reasons. Tivanir2 (talk) 01:56, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:NPOV recommends assessing prevalence in the "best and most reputable authoritative sources". Would you count porn sites among them? --JN466 03:39, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The question is why wouldn't they be? They outsell regular movies and articles and arguably can show the human body very well from different perspectives. My point is that simply because mainstream does it doesn't mean we should follow suit. On a side note if it really came down to best and reputable someone could argue just taking the big name higher resolution images would suit this. If the majority comes from pornography but we turn our nose up at doesn't mean we are following the majority it means we are following the good judgement of the editors that have reached consensus of what has occurred on those sites. That being said consensus can be reopened but new talking points should be introduced if that is the case. I am itching for this to be over so we can actually finally get to the image review that has been kicked around for the last 2 and a half months. Tivanir2 (talk) 06:27, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Picking up on Elonka's point, an encyclopedia article should not astonish experts familiar with the subject matter and its presentation in the relevant literature. If it astonishes them, then it clearly is not a very good encyclopedia. On the other hand, an encyclopedia article may astonish people who at the time of their arrival on the page know nothing whatsoever about the article's subject matter. If an article astonishes ignoramuses, while presenting exactly what experts would expect it to present, then any astonishment is indeed educational. --JN466 03:39, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Heightened scrutiny is not acceptable

4) Proposals to examine the relevance of images more closely or more carefully because of religious offense are indirect methods of paying attention to that religious offense, and are not acceptable.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Not following the logic here at all. In all articles, images should be selected in relation to their educational value, their descriptive or illustrative value, or their aesthetic value, and all images should be able to be justified; one doesn't just throw images in because they're available. This has nothing to do with this particular article; it is the norm for *all* articles. Risker (talk) 03:56, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Harris & Harris expressly excluded "sacred" images from their discussion of "sexuality and violence" for the reasons cited by ASCIIn2Bme below, but the board working group expressly included sacred images in their recommendations regarding the curation of controversial content. The foundation followed the working group's suggestion and passed a benign, broad but definitely not vague resolution. I agree with the board's resolution and oppose this proposed principle as being diametrically opposed to the best interests of this project. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:21, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

If you consider that Commons:COM:Sexual content has twice been rejected, and the personal image filter discussions were met wtih a lukewarm reception at best, I would assert that the community itself has decided the Foundation's resolution is of marginal relevance. Resolute 17:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Also the WMF also wanted to create a way for people to self censor if things offended them through the image filter. They did not at any time say they wanted to censor articles for the benefit of any group and that unjust offense should not occur. I support the idea that unjust scrutiny should not be placed on something that is offensive unless a very good replacement that does not offend is available and approved by consensus. Tivanir2 (talk) 22:54, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

@ Risker: It's a repudiation of "We urge the community to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining whether it has a realistic educational use and applying the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement" from the Foundation resolution on controversial content. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:11, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

It is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia that it is work in progress. It has imperfections almost everywhere. One way in which Wikipedia is improved is that one of these imperfections comes under scrutiny for some reason, then a lot of editors together try to solve the problem, and in the light of the result other, similar problems are solved as well.

The normal reaction when some aspect of Wikipedia is getting a lot of attention (even unwanted external attention) is to try to get it right. The proposed principle intends to derail this natural process in certain cases, for reasons that have more to do with advocacy than with a reputable encyclopedia. It would elevate OTHERSTUFF to a valid argument in these cases. It seems clear to me that this would lead into chaos. Hans Adler 14:53, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. When the accuracy or neutrality of an article is challenged, we go and check our sources. That's standard, and indeed part of policy. It doesn't matter whether the concern relates to an article on politics, science or religion. The proper response to a challenge is the kind of research Elonka did, and reported on, in the section above. --JN466 19:27, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Support as proposer.—Kww(talk) 17:09, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

@Risker: Of course there are numerous reasons include or exclude images. Religious offense simply isn't a reason to include or exclude an image. It shouldn't be evaluated.—Kww(talk) 03:30, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

@Jayen466: Your response seems to be at something different than what I wrote. I did not propose ignoring objections based on article topics. I argued that when the only objection someone raises is religious offense, it shouldn't be taken into account, nor should it provoke any higher standard for image inclusion. Feel free to disagree, but please at least disagree with what I said.—Kww(talk) 19:37, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

(Got carried away a bit. To skip TLDR #press here.) I agree with this, even though the WMF board decided otherwise: "We urge the community to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining whether it has a realistic educational use and applying the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement." (I've emphasized the key aspects.) No English Wikipedia policies or guidelines currently support that part of the WMF resolution in part because it's rather meaningless bureaucratese. And I suspect that if put to a broader community RfC, I think it will fail. The attempt (by Ludwigs2/JN466) to introduce that wording in WP:NOT failed. [109] This begets a more important question: is ArbCom allowed to produce a finding contrary to what the WMF decided with regard to Wikipedia's content if the Wikipedia community doesn't support that position? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 17:29, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

The key issue here is the definition of "least astonishment". The image filter implementation referendum committee, of which sitting/active arbitrator User:Risker was part, wrote a FAQ explaining their understanding of that principle: "The principle of least astonishment means that users should never be surprised by content they were not expecting to encounter on Wikimedia sites. If you click on an article about cycling, you do not expect to see images of nude cyclists. If you click on an article about locks, you do not expect to see graphic images of - for example - sexual bondage. The image hiding feature allows you to make decisions for yourself that will reduce these possibilities." (Emphasis mine.) Leaving aside the first sentence, which is an absurd idealistic view that totally ignores WP:Content disclaimer, the examples do not support religious offense as a case to pay particular attention to, even though the fabled Harris & Harris "expert" report gave it as example using the Muhammad images in particular [110]. PolicyCom fail. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 17:47, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

The thing about the WMF statement is that it is limited to what it actually says. It's not "meaningless", IMO. It is simply benign, and probably intentionally so. If had been intended to say more, it would have done. I think it is fair to say that we have already met the bar of paying "particular attention" in this case. But the statement does not take away the ability of projects to reach conclusions according to their existing policies.--FormerIP (talk) 17:58, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Although I'm not particularly fond of the Harris report, it recommends that images of the "sacred" such as those of Muhammad be treated differently than naked cyclists. "That is why, we believe, potential decisions on the restrictions of these types of images must be decided by individual users and why we have recommended that registration be necessary to affect these images. A more general prohibition of them, given their nature, would seem to be moving too far, in our opinion, in the direction of general restriction of the projects. ¶ The reason we have come to that conclusion stems from our observation that pluralistic, multi-faith, and secular communities are a common feature of many societies around the world today (and the values of the international virtual community of the internet) and that in these societies, questions of the appropriateness of the display of “sacred” images, as defined by one community, are inevitably decided within the context of other communities who do not value the same images in the same way. It is about the struggle between the rights of some individuals to define the limits of appropriateness of some images for themselves and others, versus the rights of others to know, and the question of the amount and quality of respect that should be offered to each by each other." (Emphasis mine.) See also my proposal for two classes of controversial content. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:06, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

The nutshell version is that the Harris & Harris report did not recommend any editorial changes in how we treat images like depictions of Muhammad, but explicitly said the personal image filter is the only realistic tool to avoid offense in this case. The WMF board then made a vague and broad statement about "all kinds of potentially controversial content", and of course some editors jumped on the bandwagon an interpreted it as applying to whatever images they want to remove, including those of Muhammad. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:23, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

ASCIIn2Bme has misunderstood the situation. I have explained the problem and asked him to strike this and other comments here. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:20, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Religiously biased sources must be used cautiously

5) Sources which are written, edited, or strongly influenced by people that believe the topic to be divine have an inherent bias that must be recognized while constructing articles. Such sources can be used in articles with due caution and attribution. Such sources cannot be used in attempting to determine appropriate editorial treatment of topics within Wikipedia, for example while determing appropriate image content or placement.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Agree, up to the extent that we generally apply to sources that are bias for political reasons, for other religions or for other cultural reasons.

I know Kww wants to apply this standard for all religions but in my view we should be cautious to make sure we aren't in reality enacting a stricter standard on Islam than we do for other religions as per WP:Systemic bias. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 16:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Disagree. Often academics in theological studies have their own beliefs and it is not normal practice to assume that affects the way they write. In the case where an academic writes a popular book presenting their personal views and interpretations of a religion or religious movement (e.g. the book by Omid Safi on Muhammad), content derived from that text should normally be included with attribution. Otherwise there is no reason at all to assume inherent bias in those sources. Mathsci (talk) 18:51, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose, per Mathsci and Elonka. This is not a standard applied in academic discourse. --JN466 19:18, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Support as proposer. To me, this is self-evident. It is also apparent that a substantial portion of the sources that Elonka and Jayen466 are using in their arguments aren't valid comparison points.—Kww(talk) 16:02, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you all need to read my words again, and pay careful attention that I am addressing the formation of editorial policy, not content. If we are to consider other sources' policies towards representations of Muhammad, we must consider what those other sources are. If they believe themselves to be bound by their religion not to depict Muhammad, they are not a valid comparison point for establishing our policy. They may have perfectly valid content. They may be perfectly usable as sources. That's why I proposed the use of "due caution", which is in no way a prohibition. Are they usable as a model for editorial policy? Absolutely and emphatically not.—Kww(talk) 23:19, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. I would be concerned about how we defined a source as "religiously biased". Any quality tertiary source is going to rely on experts to write its articles. So someone writing an article on Islam, is of course going to be very knowledgeable about the topic. Does that mean they are "strongly influenced" or biased? I would be concerned that this type of principle would open up a can of worms, where the religion of the author -- even if they were a highly respected academic -- would be considered a factor as to how we regard their reliability. And that would be a bad thing, if we were to start saying, "Well, Dr. so-and-so may be a tenured professor at a university and have written 20 books about this topic, but since they're a Muslim, they're obviously biased." Better is to stick with the usual definition of reliable sources, meaning reliable publishers, with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. So just because a work is entitled "Encyclopedia of Islam" or "Encyclopedia of Judaism" doesn't necessarily mean we should discount it as biased. --Elonka 18:34, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed findings of fact

"Principle of Least Astonishment" rejected

1) The "Principle of Least Astonishment" has been rejected as an editorial principle by the Wikipedia community, as shown in the RFC on the topic. It cannot be used as the foundation for editorial or Arbitration Committee decisions.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Self evident.—Kww(talk) 13:29, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Template

2) {text of proposed finding of fact}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Ludwigs2 site banned

1) Having demonstrated that his goals are incompatible with producing an encyclopedia, Ludwigs2 is site banned.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

??? Ludwigs2's goals are entirely compatible with producing an encyclopedia – more so than the goals of those disagreeing with him. And unlike some of his opponents, Ludwigs2 is open to source-based argument. --JN466 19:36, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Ridiculous. Arbs who have followed some of the evidence diffs carefully enough to understand their context will realise his intentions are entirely benign and constructive. I hope the committee will admonish him for ABF and bickering, with the threat of sanctions on the former. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:44, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

@Jayen466: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Muhammad images/Evidence#Ludwigs2's editing history has been largely confined to attempting to misapply WP:NPOV in order to provide undue weight to religion, superstition and fantasy would indicate otherwise.—Kww(talk) 19:46, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I've had a look at your first link. Not only does it not bear out what you're asserting ("dedicated to the proposition that Buddhism is not a religion"), given that Ludwigs2's first draft used the word, but what I am seeing is a really good-natured, collegial and constructive discussion that resulted in a new lead. --JN466 21:03, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Why, Jayen466, thank you for the courtesy of looking at 17% of a post that attempted to demonstrate a pattern, and arguing that looking at the other 83% of the post is unnecessary for determining whether I successfully demonstrated a pattern. Me, I've always tried to actually read and understand 100% of someone's argument before responding. Just think, by following your example, I'll be 6 times as productive as before.—Kww(talk) 21:58, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, you'd make all of us 7 times more productive if you hadn't bothered posting this at all. It's a ridiculously vague claim. You haven't bothered to explain what goals I'm purported to have, or how these purported goals are purported to be incompatible with making an encyclopedia, and then you've tossed in some seemingly random diffs from ancient history that purportedly demonstrate this purported thing which you haven't bothered to explain what it is or how it's meaningful. You'd have been clearer if you made a Madlib ("Ludwigs2's ____(noun)____ is/are ____(adverb)____ ____(verb)____ for a ____(noun)____…"). Then, at least, people could have had fun filling in the blanks rather than trying to guess at your meaning. --Ludwigs2 23:48, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I had a look at the second link, Jesus myth theory. Ludwigs added reliable sources supporting the overwhelming scholarly consensus that the theory is extremely fringe, supported by no current university-employed historians, religious or secular (the last time I looked, about a year ago). Kww backs this fringe theory, and tries to dis Ludwigs because Ludwigs backs the overwhelming scholarly consensus. I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't some kind of ideological crusade on Kww's part. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:01, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose. We (or Arbs) don't know what Ludwigs2's goals are and should not speculate about them. I oppose some of his policy interpretations (and proposals) but this is normal disagreement among good faithed editors. I am much more concerned with his communication style, particular with regards to WP:NPA and WP:AGF but these are another matter. - BorisG (talk) 15:03, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Hans Adler cautioned

2) Hans Adler is cautioned that fervently believing in his side of an argument is not a justification for demonizing or belittling his opponents.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Disproportionate in light of the quality and substance of the comments Hans replied to. There is something profoundly incongruous about editors claiming the right to make belittling remarks about whole nations and cultures in discussions on Wikipedia, only to then portray themselves as victims of belittlement if they are criticised for making such remarks. --JN466 20:19, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Hear, Hear! --Ludwigs2 22:41, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll ask you the same thing I asked Hans: provide me a diff where I made belittling remarks about any nation or culture, or where during the Muhammad debate I ever personally attacked another editor in any way. I did no such thing, I simply do not believe that we should restrict content based on offense (religious or otherwise). And yet, Hans accused me of being anti-Islam, indirectly called me autistic, etc - see the diffs in my evidence section. This is never acceptable here and WP:NOTTHEM applies if someone else does it first - this is why we have AN/I. N^oformation ^Talk 08:31, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Here, just today, you belittle everyone who is capable of feeling hurt, while presenting yourself as a member of an elite who do not have to care about the masses who have feelings that can be hurt. --JN466 15:49, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

And to which nation or culture do those people belong so that I may be described as racist or a bigot? Remember, Hans accused me of being anti-Islamic; I may be a bit of an elitist but in no way do I single out Islam or any other religion. That is the crux of the issue here. Yes, I think being offended is a waste of time and those who choose to be offended need to deal, but no I am not a racist. Also, this is from today - I guarantee you will find nothing in the Muhammad debate resembling that. I'm offering some personal stuff for this work shop but 99% of the time I talk only policy, and that's all I did for this debate. So Hans had nothign to go on but "Noformation interprets NOTCENSORED conservatively, therefore he is racist and autistic." Paraphrasing of course. N^oformation ^Talk 20:06, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Is there a reason not to topic ban him from discussing the images of Muhammad? I've not seen substantive contributions from him in that area besides popping in to accuse others of bad faith. (It's true that enormous archives of Talk:Muhammad/Images have been jumbled by some weird technical process making it rather impossible to read them in any semblance of an order. If Hans Adler has made positive contributions there, the technical issue prevent me from finding them.) ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:10, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I think the most important reason not to topic ban me is that most other other participants in that discussion have a much worse track record of "substantive contributions", under any reasonable interpretation of that term. Have a look at my evidence on Tarc, for example. He got involved before me, he started with accusations of bad faith directed at a specific editor (i.e. personal attacks), repeated them incessantly, and made more than twice my total number of posts in that fashion just in October. And unlike me, he did not make extensive efforts to convince the other side. Some of the behaviour by Kww was similar. Not to mention the subterranean quality of RobertMFromLI's contributions. Hans Adler 21:15, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Is there enough evidence of bad faith to justify such an action? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:07, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps there is. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 09:38, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

His first edit there was late this October, & he has made I think 19. I doubt you're missing much. Johnbod (talk) 07:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

@Jayen466: Can you point at a single "belittling remark about whole nations and cultures" I have made? Saying that religious objections are irrelevant to an encyclopedia's editorial policy doesn't belittle religious people in any way any more than saying that oil and water don't mix belittles oil or water.—Kww(talk) 20:57, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I still had the "stone age mythology" comment from another editor ringing in my ears when I wrote that. :) But you too have made statements that I would consider belittling; for example, "Common practice in the Muslim community shouldn't create any expectations on the contents of an encyclopedia.—Kww(talk) 14:37, 20 October 2011 (UTC)". If you compare that to an equivalent statement like, "What Americans think should have no bearing on what it says in an encyclopedia," I believe most any American would feel belittled and disenfranchised by that, because it basically says, "You don't matter, because you are an American". Now, I am not making any argument based on religion or nationality, either in the pro-Islamic or any other sense; I am not saying that Muslim sensitivities ought to be driving our editorial decisions. But I am arguing that the way to be neutral, and being able to prove that we are neutral, is to follow the most reputable and authoritative sources. --JN466 21:37, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

But that isn't what I said, and isn't even remotely parallel. What I said was more akin to "Common practice among pipefitters shouldn't create any expectations on Papal encyclicals". Religious groups are completely irrelevant to encyclopedias. That doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with a religious person contributing to an encyclopedia, which is a completely different thing: a Presbyterian may have perfectly valid insights on a scientific topic, for example, but he should expect an article on electricity to conform to the editorial standards of his church. Similarly, I have no objection to Muslims editing Wikipedia so long as they don't expect our articles to conform to the editorial standards of their religion.—Kww(talk) 22:28, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

None of that thinking about whose practices should or shouldn't be relevant to an encyclopedia is necessary if our aim is simply to follow the most reputable and authoritative sources (as policy actually requires us to do). --JN466 05:32, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Nothing in our policies requires us to refer to religiously biased sources as a source of editorial practice. Would you use People Magazine as the source of editorial guidelines about celebrities?—Kww(talk) 06:11, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I am not speaking of religiously biased sources, but the most reputable, authoritative mainstream sources. Or are you saying those are all biased? (Incidentally, did you know that an Islamic encyclopedia from the middle ages was still used as an authoritative textbook in European university teaching 500 years later? [111]) --JN466 06:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm saying that every source about anyone written, edited, or compiled by someone that believes the topic to be blessed, divine, or otherwise involved with supernatural forces has an inherent bias. With due caution, they can be usable as sources. They are, however, completely unusable as a model for editorial policy. The choice of images and their placement is a function of editorial policy. How many of your sources had no one participating that did not believe Muhammad was divine in some sense or another?—Kww(talk) 15:28, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Kww, by that logic, you would discard any article written by a Muslim academic, simply because they were Muslim? Can't you see how wrong that is? Should we ask everyone participating in Wikipedia:WikiProject Catholicism to avoid the topic, if they are Catholic? Or to avoid using any sources that were written by someone who was a Catholic? That would be absurd. --Elonka 18:38, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Of course not, and that's not what I said. I said they would be "unusable as a model for editorial policy". You and Jayen466 are using works by Islamic authors as evidence that it is the norm to respect Islamic restrictions on images. Of course Islamic authors respect Islamic restrictions on images, much the same as I would expect authors of any religion to respect their sect's restrictions on images. They are free to do so, but it isn't reasonable to cite their behaviour as a model for how the rest of us should behave.—Kww(talk) 22:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Kww, I'm sorry, but you're just completely wrong on this. First, it's disrespectful (not to mention illegal in some places) to tell any academic that because of their religious belief, it's not possible that they could write a neutral reference work. Further, I never mentioned any author names, so how do you even know the faith of the authors? Just because someone is writing about Islam, doesn't mean that they are themselves Islamic. Next, you're making an assumption that I only sought out works by Islamic authors, and that's false as well, as I sought out all works, with no filter whatsoever. What if I told you that some of the reference works were written by Jews, or by a Catholic nun? That you are wanting to disregard sources because of an assumption that the authors (who you don't know) must be Muslim, and that therefore they must be biased, is saying very poor things about your ability to assess sources in a neutral manner. --Elonka 22:44, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, you did not list your sources, so I retract that. Jayen466 did, and included an author that considers Muhammad to have received divine inspiration from God. I am not disregarding all of your sources, but I am saying that any Islamic sources need to be disregarded as a model for editorial policy related to Muhammad. Not for content, but as a model for policy. That's a significant and substantial distinction. Second, the neutrality of anyone writing about someone or something they worship is suspect. I don't know how you can believe that not to be the case.—Kww(talk) 23:14, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, no, we should not discount a source because of concerns about the personal beliefs of the person who wrote it. Reliability of sources is determined by editorial control, peer review, publishers with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, that kind of thing. Not by making judgments about the personal life of the author. And again, I invite you to repeat my experiment for yourself. Go into any bookstore, any library, pull out a dozen tertiary sources of your choice (anything you regard as reputable), and check their articles on Muhammad. It doesn't much matter the medium. Check books, films, video documentaries, and the "Muhammad" entry in as many different encyclopedias as you want, but I am confident that regardless of author, regardless of publisher, regardless of medium, that if you actually go out and do your own research, you will find the same thing I did: Reliable tertiary sources tend not to use images of Muhammad in their biographies of him. They may well illustrate the biography with other ways, such as with images of calligraphy and architecture, but they generally don't use images of Muhammad. Images of Muhammad are rare. --Elonka 06:27, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Kww, if you check the history, you'll notice that I never introduced Watt into the discussion, nor made him part of my argument. The reason we're talking about Watt is that ASCIIn2Bme mentioned him a couple of days ago. --JN466 07:54, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Elonka, are you telling me that if a professor at Brigham Young University wrote an article about Joseph Smith that was then published by Brigham Young University that there is no point in that process where we should identify that affiliation as a possible source of bias?—Kww(talk) 15:27, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that is more than a little different to accepting works written by a muslim that is published by a major University press that is a secular institution. Shades of grey and all that. I have no idea if the reputation of Brigham Young University is strong enough that the aren't would be fairly neutral, but it is far greyer than the sources I presume you are talking about here - which would affect its standing a source accordingly. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 15:47, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww, I am not familiar with the works of Brigham Young University, so cannot comment on that particular example. However, I can say categorically that just because someone may follow a particular belief system, does not mean that they are incapable of writing neutrally about the topic. The most crucial element in determining a source's reliability, is not the religion of the author, but the editorial control involved. See WP:SCHOLARSHIP. The way to determine reliability is editorial control, peer review, and acceptance by other sources. If you were to try and add something to WP:RS or WP:V saying that "Islamic authors cannot be treated as reliable sources when writing about Islam", I think you'd find yourself reverted pretty quickly. That stance is just not in line with policy and practice. --Elonka 19:06, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. And who exactly is "neutral" between a believer in the religion concerned, a believer in another religion, and an atheist? Johnbod (talk) 19:16, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll just once again point out that I didn't say that. I said that "Such sources can be used in articles with due caution", which is substantially different than "cannot be treated as reliable sources". I still see this as a completely different issue than "determining appropriate image content or placement". Even Sunnis that are perfectly capable of being totally detached from Islamic topics would be extremely unlikely to use an image of Muhammad in an article, and using that behaviour to support the idea that encyclopedias shouldn't use images of Muhammad isn't reasonable. I also didn't say that only Sunnis honored the prohibition. I will maintain that evaluating a list of sources for a topic with religious implications without analyzing them for religious bias is a woefully complete evaluation.—Kww(talk) 21:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww: the problem with that approach (as ever) is that you privilege one bias over another. You have a cultural bias towards secularism, and many of the statements you make are deeply colored by your own idiosyncratic beliefs on the matter. So why should your cultural bias be allowable while a Sunni's cultural bias be rejected? I know your answer to this: you're going to insist that your bias isn't a bias at all, but rather is the correct way to view things. But that is precisely what anyone with any cultural bias would say, so that's not really a credible argument.

The only credible solutions to the problem is (as Jayen suggests) to use NPOV and create a balance that reflects what happens in reliable sources. I really don't see why you don't see that. --Ludwigs2 22:49, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

"Correct" in some kind of cosmic absolutist sense? No. "Correct" in so far as no one has suggested an alternative that doesn't bias the project towards some religions in favor of others without completely gutting the project? Yes, until someone makes a reasonable counterproposal. So far, the only counterproposal on the table is to bias the project in favor of large religious groups that believe everyone should honour their restrictions on image use.—Kww(talk) 02:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww, again, I would ask you to review WP:SCHOLARSHIP. There is nothing there that implies that we need to use "caution" for a source because of the personal beliefs of its author. Instead (and I'm feeling like a broken record here), we base our opinion of the reliability of a source on its editorial control, on whether it's been peer-reviewed, on whether it's cited in other sources. If there's a source that you don't think is reliable, bring it up, post about it at WP:RSN, get other opinions. You might find support for discounting a source because it hasn't gone through sufficient editorial control. But we're not going to discount a source because the author happens to be Muslim. If you disagree with that stance, fine, go try changing the policy at WP:V and WP:RS, but I don't think you're going to find support for it. So in the meantime, we stick with Wikipedia policies as they are, and it would be helpful if you would acknowledge Wikipedia policies on this, rather than trying to make up your own. The way we write articles here is we look at lots of different reliable sources (some of which will indeed be written from different points of view), and then we try to summarize those sources in Wikipedia. We try to present the differing views in the proper proportion, and just neutrally report the general academic consensus. --Elonka 02:22, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Elonka, in turn, WP:NPOV has never been a part of our image selection policy. To the extent that I'm guilty of attempting to rewrite policy, it is only in response to the effort to corrupt WP:NPOV to allow censorship. I'll happily stop if you acknowledge that WP:IUP doesn't include the concept of surveying sources to determine majority usage in other contexts. Nor does WP:Choosing appropriate illustrations. Nor does Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images. Nor does Wikipedia:Image dos and don'ts. My effort to extend WP:REDFLAG to include religious bias has a better foundation than your claim that our image selection policy should be guided by other sources.—Kww(talk) 03:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww, to my knowledge, no one here is trying to censor anything. No one is trying to get images deleted. The dispute is revolving around the proper use of images, meaning which article they're on, how many we use, etc. But just because we're saying, "Let's not use this image on this article, let's use it on another article instead," doesn't mean we're "censoring" the first article. It means we're trying to use images in the proper proportion. That's not censorship, it's balance. For you to accuse others of trying to "corrupt WP:NPOV to allow censorship" is a bit of an overstatement, don't you think? --Elonka 03:27, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

No, I don't believe it to be an overstatement. Many of the participants in this discussion have made it clear that their intent in removing the images from the article is to make it inoffensive to Islamic readers, not to conform to academic standards. Since this runs afoul of "Wikipedia will not remove content because of the internal bylaws of some organizations that forbid information about the organization to be displayed online. Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations.", Ludwigs2 attempted to rewrite WP:NOT#CENSORED to specifically not cover what he considered "incidental" material, and the images of Muhammad in this article were listed as an example. You seem to have joined the effort in good faith, but for others the purpose is to remove the images, and misapplying WP:NPOV is simply another effort to achieve the goal. It used to be "the principal of least astonishment", but that is in the process of being soundly rejected by the community. If the NPOV argument is rejected, I'm quite certain that another argument will be attempted in its place.—Kww(talk) 04:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww: seriously? The Muslim community is (apparently) engaged in censorship; scholarly sources are (apparently) engaged in censorship; "Many of the participants in this discussion" are (apparently) engaged in censorship. Who isn't engaged in censorship on this issue, aside from you and a handful of other editors? And still you claim - somehow - to have a consensus supporting your position. I need to work through the math on that...

Plus, I'll point out that this clause was added to NOTCENSORED less than a year ago April 20, 2010 by Arctic.gnome, without (so far as I can tell) any discussion whatsoever. That hardly makes it unquestionable ironclad law on project.

What this comes down to, Kww, is that you don't like the kinds of compromises that have been suggested because you think that would be kowtowing to religious belief. You end up claiming that effectively everyone-not-you is engaged in censorship - a really unsupportable stance, mind you - because NOTCENSORED is the only leverage available that can keep what would otherwise be a straightforward consensus from solidifying. Do you think that's an unfair assessment of this situation? --Ludwigs2 05:13, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

From memory, you hate religions, right, Kww? I happen to hate them too, so we're on common ground. That said, I believe in the existence of the human reaction known as offense. Do you? It disaffects people from the cause of the offense, and induces hatred in them if the offense is seen to be deliberate and unnecessary. All I, Hans, Ludwigs and others are proposing here is that, where it's possible to do so without harming the educational value of an article, we should always choose the least offensive option. It's the polite and sensible thing to do.

You are expressly ignoring offense, as though it doesn't exist or doesn't matter, and framing our motives as kowtowing to religious diktats. Clearly that's not the case with me, given my genuine hatred for theocracy. I'd appreciate it if you would at least acknowledge that, and begin to consider the serious negative implications of the perspective that offensiveness doesn't matter. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:32, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

No, Anthony, I don't "hate" religion. I don't think it's relevant to encyclopedias. I don't think people should be making an encyclopedia's content conform to one. I haven't argued in favor of offense, or argued that we should seek to offend anyone. I've argued that we cannot take religious offense into account.—Kww(talk) 12:16, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

And that's because of the slippery slope/floodgates argument, right? If we take account of gratuitous offense to Muslims then we won't be able to gratuitously offend aborigines, Mormons, etc. either? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:53, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I've never argued "slippery slope", Anthony. I believe that if we remove these images due to offensiveness, our only option to preserve balance is to actively remove most images from most articles, because most images offend some religious group. To worry about offending Sunnis without worrying about offending all religious groups would be wrong. It's not a slope, more like a steep high cliff that I would rather not jump over. Still, it would be a necessary step to preserve a balanced editorial policy.—Kww(talk) 13:10, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

• I'm just going to jump in here to make a comment and this is my first comment in this entire Arbcom case, but I noticed that no one is actually reading what Kww is saying. Or, at least, they are not understanding him. He is saying (from what I gather) that the number of images used in any article whatsoever has nothing to do with the sources used (or not used) in that article. Sources have nothing to do with the correct number of images. The number of images to be used in an article is entirely up to editorial community discretion and has no relation to the sources or opinions of subjects in regards to the articles in question. Silverseren^C 12:46, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

That's my understanding of his view wrt letting reliable sources guide controversial image curation. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:53, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

• A reasonably accurate summation of my views towards the images/NPOV argument. And yes, SilverSeren, I sometimes feel like no one reads what I actually write. It's frustrating.—Kww(talk) 13:10, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, my understanding of Kww's position is that the choice and position of images on a Wikipedia article is solely an editorial decision for Wikipedia's editors, and not one that is dictated by external sources (reliable or otherwise). This makes sense given that we are illustrating our article based on the content we have, the images available to us and the technical possibilities and restrictions that are the result of being a wiki. We are not illustrating the articles, books, magazines or newspapers, etc. we refer to as sources, nor do we serve the same market. A newspaper, a book, an academic journal and a general-purpose encyclopaedia serve different purposes and consequently are illustrated differently. None of our sources are online, free content, uncensored, crowd-sourced general encyclopaedias based around the principle of the neutral point of view aimed at a global English-speaking audience (although some sources are some of these) so they will of necessity be making image choices based at least in part on factors not relevant to us, just as we make image choices based on factors not relevant to them. Thryduulf (talk) 13:19, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

The POV balance should reflect the POV balance in reliable sources, or at least the POV balance in English-language sources. It should not reflect the POV balance among Wikipedians, if that differs from the balance in RS. --JN466 16:33, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Seren: That's not quite true to what Kww has said. It's accurate as far as it goes, but recognize that Kww takes a fairly radical secularist view that religious POVs have absolutely no place on project. Yes, he says editorial judgement (not sources) determines the images to be used. But in his view 'editorial judgement' automatically excludes any opinion that the images should be limited in number (because any opinion that the images should be limited in number is - in his mind - religious advocacy that must be denied). In short, he's created a rhetorical black hole in which any position he disagrees with is sucked out of the universe of discourse. It's an elegant form of POV-pusjing, I'll grant him that, but it's still POV-pushing.

If you recognize Kww's secularist POV for what it is, then you can see this issue as conflict between two real-world POVs; when you see that, this becomes an obvious NPOV issue, and then using sources to resolve it suddenly looks like a natural and good idea. --Ludwigs2 17:02, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I like the way you put things sometimes: "a rhetorical black hole in which any position he disagrees with is sucked out of the universe of discourse". I agree that we are seeing some of the POVs underlying editors' positions surfacing, unmasking them as just that – POVs, some of them quite alien to mainstream scholarship. --JN466 17:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you like Ludwigs2's misrepresentation of my position, Jayen466. I don't see every effort to reduce imagery as religious advocacy. I see every effort to reduce imagery made by editors that have publicly stated that they want to reduce the image count in the article because the images are offensive as being based on religious advocacy. It's true that I see every shift in logic and argumentation that Ludwigs2 performs as being goal-driven as opposed to genuine, and his goal is to reduce the number of images because they are religiously offensive without sufficient counterbalancing value. He's stated that enough times that I see no reason to doubt it. Likewise, Anthonyhcole has stated that the religious offensiveness is his motivation in desiring to see the number of images reduced, and I see no reason to doubt that, either. It's possible that you genuinely see this as an NPOV issue, but I do see that logic as flawed.—Kww(talk) 18:07, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww: that was in such incredibly bad faith that I really can't do anything but laugh. You have stated explicitly multiple times that you believe religion has no place on project (first of many in this discussion, before my third post on the thread). Don't back-peddle now by trying to claim that you are only objecting because Anthony and I have publicly declared ourselves 'religious advocates'. I can diff out dozens of places where I have explained that my aim in this debate is to achieve NPOV (including the post that the above diff was a response to). if you choose not to see it that's your business, but trying to spin me as a foam-at-the-mouth religious nut is insulting. --Ludwigs2 19:54, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I've never denied that I think all religious objections to content should be ignored. I've been extremely consistent on that. I've argued that the images in this article should be subject to precisely the same standards as we use to evaluate images in any Wikipedia article, discounting any and all religious objections. You have stated that you believe the images to be offensive to a large group of people, and wish to remove them because of that. You've acknowledged that the source of that offense is their religious belief. I did not paint you as foam-at-the-mouth religious. I didn't say that you personally find them offensive to your own personal religious beliefs. I don't believe that, and haven't said that. I have said that your motivation to remove images is that you believe them to be they are religiously offensive without sufficient counterbalancing value. You've attempted to use the "principle of least astonishment" to do that. You've attempted to use NPOV to do that. Underlying that is your belief that causing religious offense is a problem, and, so long as you believe that, I expect that you will continue to change tactics until you find one that succeeds. I'm certain that you believe your efforts improve the encyclopedia, and that's all the WP:AGF demands of me. I am of the belief that your efforts have the precise opposite effect.—Kww(talk) 20:20, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww: this is about religion for you, not for me. I am taking the - eminently sensible - position that we should as a rule not be offending the mores and standards of our readers unless we have a damned good reason to. If you actually wanted these images treated like images on any other article that would be fine, but you're the one arguing for special treatment by insisting that certain kinds of arguments cannot be made here. It's nonsense. There is no reason to exclude religious perspectives on project; all we need to do is ensure that they are properly balanced (per NPOV). Do you think that religious editors are incapable of making reasoned choices? Because that's the only explanation I can find for your desire to block all religious perspectives from participation. --Ludwigs2 22:21, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

(ec)I think the two of you are seeing things that you wish to see rather than what is actually there. Seren pretty much nailed it; how other sources use (or not use) images should have no bearing at all on how the Wikipedia uses images. If that point of view encompasses certain religions that forbid the use of certain images, then so be it. Just because someone holds an opinion that a follower of a religion may be offended by does not mean that that opinion, or the person behind it, is anti- that religion. Any more than holding an opinion critical of Israel or its policies makes it antisemitic. The problem we're running into here is, just as there are actual avowed antismites who make similar criticism of Israel, there are avowed and actual Islamophobes that go out of their way to inflame Muslims by purposefully showing depictions of Muhammad. What both of you...Ludwigs and Jayen...are doing right here in this tangent is taking the opinions of editors like Kww or myself, holding them up to real, honest-to-goodness racist opinions that happen to run in the same general direction and tarring us as racists by association. Ludwigs is especially blatant ion this guilt-by-association tactic. I am hopeful that when it comes down to evaluating the mountains of evidence and workshop stuff, that the arbs can see clearly just how deceptive your argument really is. Tarc (talk) 18:15, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure no one's saying you're bigots. But what you're doing is implementing and defending an essentially bigoted policy, that facilitates the gratuitous offense of the members of a major world religion. Ignorant and bigoted is what I'd call that policy. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:55, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Wow, this is like having a winning lotto ticket dropped into one's lap. Anthony, you just iron-clad sealed and delivered on exactly what I said above. I hold Opinion A, a bigot also holds Opinion B, where A and B are similar...possibly even the same...but the motivations for each differ. My expression of A does not mean I support Mr. Bigot; to say that I do is the kind of logical fallacy that one learns about in freshman seminar, to be frank. Tarc (talk) 19:04, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I thought you'd appreciate that one. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 19:25, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Tarc, bull. I don't think that being critical of the state of Israel is anti-semitism by itself, but what would you say if a bunch of editors went to the Israel article and started arguing that Jews should not be allowed to edit the article because they are biased? Does that still seem proper to you? What if they insisted that the article contain many images of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians, of israeli Jets bombing Gaza, of Israeli settlers bulldozing settlements in the West Bank, and claimed that no one could remove those images because the only people who want them removed are Jews offended by negative imagery? Does that still seem proper to you?

We point out the things you actually do, and you accuse us of calling you names. nonsense. If you don't like the way you look when you voice certain opinions, then you should either stop voicing those opinions or explain why those opinions are not as objectionable as they appear. You don't get to run someone over in your car and then sue the person who calls the cops for slander.

We're not making you look bad, Tarc; your own actions are making you look bad, and we're just pointing it out. See the difference? --Ludwigs2 20:14, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Is this discussion really going anywhere useful beyond making more people eligible for topic bans? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:10, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

probably not, but that's the political gambit here. Tarc et al are gambling that they can win out on the 'victimization' front, getting enough people banned from the discussion on trumped-up behavioral charges that they can make the issue disappear for a while longer. I suggest you and Anthony and others leave me to carry that burden myself (mostly, anyway) and keep yourselves focused on the topic. I can confront this line of <cough>reasoning</cough> well enough on my own, and I understand and accept the risks involved. No sense anyone else putting their necks on the line. --Ludwigs2 20:23, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

No, not going really anywhere at all and I need to take my own advice here, but it is hard to sit by and have Ludwigs and Jayen lie about the motivations of myself and other editors. Neither of them...nor Adler, while we're at it...have ever pointed to a single diff or evidence to support their claim of racism or bigotry. What they do instead is couch it in terms of "it feels like " or "it seems like" something a racist/bigoted person would say, and then let the guilt-by-association linger for the reader. When I point out what they're doing, they don't recant, they just restate the accusation of bigotry even louder; Ludwigs did it [[over there and did it again above today. All I can do is voice my frustrations regarding being lied about as calmly and WP:NPA-free as possible and hope that the powers-that-be see what's been really going on here. Tarc (talk) 20:48, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

<sigh…> Tarc, no one's actually accused you of being a bigot - cut the drama, and follow the advice you so kindly give to others about growing a thick skin. If you really think your position is sound then you should have no problem justifying your repeated claims that all objections to the images reflect a vanishingly small number of PBUH fanatics rather than a general principle of Muslim faith, your dogged insistence that the images will not be removed no matter how many Muslims are offended, or your continued suggestion that Wikipedia is a Western POV project that should necessarily disdain Muslim perspectives. You said these things and more, so you get to make them sound reasonable and fair-minded. floor is yours… --Ludwigs2 21:58, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed enforcement

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1) {text of proposed enforcement}

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2) {text of proposed enforcement}

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Proposals by Wnt

Proposed findings of fact

There is presently no Muhammad image known, only arbitrary representations of Muhammad

1) It is false and needlessly inflammatory to declare that Wikipedia displays images of Muhammad. Barring future archaeological finds or genetic analysis of relics, there are no known photographs, portraits, imprints on coins, or other accurate renditions of Muhammad, nor even any detailed description exist from which a moderately accurate likeness might be created. The only means by which such images are identified is the assertion or implication by an author or reader that an Arabic man in fact represents Muhammad. In fact, some persons in recent times have given offense by suggesting that a stick figure, cartoon object, or even a classroom teddy bear represents Muhammad.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

• To be fair the same applies to Jesus and probably other religious figures. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:33, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, though a restatement of the proposition using correct terminology and a neutral trone would be that "no historically authentic likenesses of Muhammad exist, though there are verbal descriptions that are believed by most Muslims to represent authentic traditions, a view that many secular historians also find not unreasonable". This is not a significant issue here so long as the images used in the article are sincerely intended by the artists to represent Muhammad, using the artistic conventions of their time and place. Obviously the same can be said of all images of Jesus, and here as in many other places the opposers of images neglect to consider the difference between portrait-type images, and illustrations of narrative incidents, with all the images in the article being of the latter type. Johnbod (talk) 04:25, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support as clearly factual. --Ludwigs2 23:56, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Oppose. The statement may be true, but it's a ruling on content, and outside the scope of what ArbCom should be ruling on. --Elonka 17:47, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a valid criticism, here and below. I don't want ArbCom to declare specific policies on article content. Nonetheless, this particular conclusion seems like a pretty straightforward application of WP:V, and a way to try to pull some of the heat out of the argument, and there are times when ArbCom decides, for its own purposes, what it thinks is appropriate interpretation of the sources in order to decide who is right. I'll acknowledge that the principle may need reworking to meet this criticism. Wnt (talk) 03:50, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Pointless. The complainers find offensive that anyone dares to depict Muhammad. See Iconoclasm#Muslim iconoclasm. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 04:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed principles

Wikipedia articles should accurately describe representations of Muhammad

1) Because an image is established as an offensive depiction of Muhammad based on the assertion that it is Muhammad, rather than by any visible features of the individual depicted, Wikipedia would be mistaken to avoid offense by barring images even if its principles allowed it to do so. However, it is entirely appropriate to make clear that Wikipedia does not regard any of these images to be images of Muhammad, but rather, that they are images created by artists who use them to represent Muhammad in some context, and that is their opinion, not ours.

Comment by Arbitrators:

What? Nuanced sophistry. Any non-contemporary artistic depiction of any historical figure is necessarily the artist's own impression. I think it is overly optimistic to believe that anyone will be aided by such declarations. Jclemens (talk) 22:58, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Well, based on that rationale, the images would be better housed in art history articles rather than Muhammad. --JN466 05:20, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

This is largely true; for example, the article Depictions of Muhammad rightfully contains more images than Muhammad. (Though per this principle the title of the article might merit some further thought, though I'm not coming up with anything better off the top of my head) I note that the Medieval Christian views on Muhammad should contain some images that were probably correctly left out of the main article, such as the fresco portraying Muhammad in hell previously mentioned [112]. (non-party) Wnt (talk) 14:32, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I think this seems overall to be pretty sensible. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:07, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm having flashbacks to the courtroom scene of Miracle on 34th Street. Tarc (talk) 17:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Many of the sixteenth century Persian miniatures accompany prayers or invocations and, according to the secondary sources that describe them, have a mystical status. Amongst other things, they reflect the historical reception of Muhammad within Persian culture. It is a question of balance, not of finding "the right place", because there may be more than one "right place" (depending on context). I am not sure, however, that this ArbCom workshop page or its talk page are intended to be an extension of Talk:Muhammad/Images. Any compromise has to be binding. At any stage arguments can be advanced one way or another for breaking any consensus. I hope that arbitrators, particularly those like Risker who are experienced with image use and filters, can help work out a procedure for discussing and then adopting a binding and stable compromise, which is still flexible enough to allow minor tweaking of images. Mathsci (talk) 17:38, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose as meaningless. Wnt's vocabulary is not up to matters coming under aesthetics I'm afraid. Johnbod (talk) 04:30, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Oppose. This kind of finding is outside the scope of the case. Better is to stick with findings related to policies and user conduct. --Elonka 17:50, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Won't matter anyway. You don't stop complaints with an ArbCom finding or a disclaimer. The only "NPOV" for the complainers is their religious beliefs, which prohibit these images no matter what exception clauses we'd attach to them. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 04:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles should often be better illustrated than comparable printed resources

Wikipedia articles are provided online with an efficient thumbnail preview format and have had the advantage of an extensive image collection served from Wikimedia Commons, whereas many conventional printed sources are limited by color plate printing charges and even online sites may have less flexibility in delivering artwork. Therefore it is entirely reasonable for Wikipedia to include a larger number of any type of image than most roughly comparable secondary sources. Although summary style allows for the transfer of some images to more specialized articles where appropriate, the simple numerical comparison with other resources is not a reason to delete images from an article.

Comment by Arbitrators:

An excellent application of WP:NOTPAPER. Jclemens (talk) 23:12, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

• Agree, plus all the other factors that constrain and affect commercial publishing's use of images, which I have given above. Johnbod (talk) 05:31, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
• Obvious advantage of wikipedia over printed media, but needs saying. Mathsci (talk) 06:37, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
• This is true. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:13, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
• This doesn't speak to the problem at hand, which is about proportional representation and placement rather than the number of images. To be blunt, if a non-Muslim reader comes away from this article thinking that Islamic mainstream iconography works just the same as Christian and Buddhist iconography, and that there are lots of paintings of Muhammad about, illustrating stories from his life, then we'll have contributed to the sum total of ignorance in the world. A Western reader should notice a comparative dearth of figurative depictions, because that difference is educationally significant, as well as characteristic of sources in this area. --JN466 18:21, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• The reasonable reader could not come away with any such impression, since we don't say any of that in the article, in fact, we refute it explicitly. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:29, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

There certainly is "a comparative dearth of figurative depictions", and the images do serve an educational purpose because there have been many assertions on the talk page by presumably Muslim editors that the images we show could not possibly be by Muslim artists because, you see, Islam forbids such images. Johnbod (talk) 02:24, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

We are in agreement on that. That's why I have said it is useful to have an (illustrated) Depictions section. That's educational astonishment. But figurative depictions aren't the mainstream; neither in reliable sources, nor in real life. We just look ignorant if we pretend it is, and it's not a good thing for an encyclopedia to do. --JN466 11:48, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

We explain that in the depictions section. Johnbod (talk) 14:32, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

That's a bit like having an article on the Earth illustrated with flat-earth images, and defending it by saying: It's okay! We explain in the text that the earth is round! --JN466 20:15, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

It's only a very tiny bit like that, though. --FormerIP (talk) 23:50, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposals by User:PaoloNapolitano

Proposed principles

Religious conflict of interest

Withdrawn by proposer, replaced with the proposal below PaoloNapolitano 20:33, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Articles on religious topics may not promote or preach any religious views and editors who are editing and/or participating in discussions pertaining to their faith may have a conflict of interest with the subject. Comment by Arbitrators Comment by parties The first sentence is correct, but the implicit claim that it is relevant to this case is problematic. The second and last sentence is correct but seriously misleading. I am not sure that you have understood WP:COI. Hans Adler 08:34, 30 December 2011 (UTC) I am uncomfortable with this. even setting aside the second phrase (which other editors have commented on), I am concerned that the first phrase would become a tool for promoting skepticism, secularism, and atheism. All of these are strongly defined, quasi-religious belief structures in their own right, but editors often try to cast them as synonymous with 'neutral'. We'd have to cover promotion of anti-religious viewpoints, somehow. --Ludwigs2 14:26, 30 December 2011 (UTC) Part 1 is fine. Part 2, taken literally, would neuter a large swath of topics is such editors were removed. We all have personal biases, the trick is to set them aside when editing. Tarc (talk) 14:33, 30 December 2011 (UTC) You could also argue that militant atheists cannot edit articles on religion or strong Christians cannot edit articles on Islam etc. etc. this seems like a terrible way to go. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 16:55, 30 December 2011 (UTC) Comment by others It is covered by the "Close relations" section. PaoloNapolitano 13:14, 30 December 2011 (UTC) The first statement is correct (and may be relevant to this case) but the second is wrong. It would be wrong to suggest that Christians should not be editing articles on Christianity topics, etc. wp:coi is much narrower. What is not allowed is tendentious editing, and that may include promoting certain religious (or anti-religious) views. - BorisG (talk) 13:43, 30 December 2011 (UTC) I agree with BorisG. Even though some outsiders do study a religion, it's unreasonable to expect those outside a faith to take much interest in the fine points of its theology often enough to get Wikipedia articles written - and those who do may well have their own axes to grind anyway. Wnt (talk) 22:28, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Articles on religious topics(v.2)

Articles on religious topics may not promote or preach any religious views or give undue weight to fringe theories and beliefs. Editors with strong views or beliefs about the subject should exercise particular caution when editing such articles to maintain a neutral point of view.

Comment by Arbitrators

Religious != fringe, with certain exceptions. Speculative claims about scientific fact are treated as such regardless of the motivation of the claimant, while speculative claims about supernatural material are not evaluated by Wikipedia, since we have no basis on which to do so, and as such we merely report about them. Jclemens (talk) 23:10, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties

I can go with this. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 15:49, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others

Do you prefer this wording over the first proposal? PaoloNapolitano 18:58, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed findings of fact

Locus of Dispute

The disputes involves whether an image of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad should be included in the biographical article about the Prophet. Some users argue that unveiled images of the Prophet are offensive to Muslims and the images should be either be replaced with veiled images or removed. A long-standing dispute has arised from the issue.

Comment by Arbitrators

Comment by parties'

• I'm not sure unveiled is correct here as per Johnbod - but maybe someone else has better information. Other than that this seems reasonable. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
• As Eraserhead says, I've seen no evidence that modern Sunni objections are any different to veiled and un-veiled images. Historically they evidently were more acceptable, hence their production, but I'm very dubious that it makes much difference now. According to other parts of the page, few or none of the parties actually want to remove all images, so this dispute apparently centres on whether the appropriate number to have is the current 6, or the 4 proposed by Resolute, or some other number (Hans Adler is a mathmetician, so when he says that there should be images, but that the correct number might well be zero, we should I suppose resist challenging his logic). What a tiny issue to generate so many words! Note also that very few people are supporting placing whatever images we have higher up the article than they currently are, starting on the 5th screen down on my wide screen. Johnbod (talk) 18:36, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't know where you get that claim about my position from, and without a diff it's impossible to see whether I miswrote or whether you misunderstood something that was clear. My position is, and has been for a long time, that as a matter of policy (not opinion) the correct number of images is a matter of NPOV and consensus, which must take into account religious offence and the traditional iconography of the man. My personal opinion is that 0–2 is the reasonable range, with 0 better than 2. But as this is just my opinion, I would of course accept 6 (the current number) if this came up as consensus after a fair discussion, i.e. without disruptive attempts to wikilawyer away important aspects. Hans Adler 21:25, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others

Proposed. PaoloNapolitano 21:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposals by User:Johnbod

Proposed principles

Different types of images

In the illustration of a biographical article different types of images perform different functions. In particular images of the subject in a narrative scene from their life perform a different function from portrait images.

Comment by Arbitrators

Comment by parties

• Agree as proposer. This point is clearly not grasped by many however. All the Muhammad images now in the article (like almost all older Islamic images) are narrative images. Johnbod (talk) 15:44, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely correct, and a key point. It appears that narrative images are less offensive to Muslims. At the same time they are essentially just ornamental for Wikipedia articles. Apart from informing about the cultural perception of the subject in later centuries, they merely liven up the text. (There have been claims to the opposite, but these look to me like bad-faith attrition warfare, as I don't remember seeing a single reasonable argument other than those of the OTHERSTUFF type.) Hans Adler 10:03, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• Agree. Artist's impressions of events usually add little or nothing to the readers' understanding of the events described, particularly when the events were remote in time and place from the artist, though they can act as an aid to memory; whereas an accurate portrait by an artist who knew the subject is very valuable. I will always remember the powerful effect this image of Constantine had on me. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others

Proposed findings of fact (Johnbod)

Type of images currently used

In the article as it was at the start of this case, five Islamic images with figurative depictions of Muhammad and dated between about 1250 and 1808 were spread out through the middle and lower part of the article, with none in the first few screens. All were narrative-type images illustrating specific incidents in the life, as opposed to portrait-type images, and were placed near where these incidents were covered in the text. One Western narrative-type 19th century image was used near the end of the article.

Comment by Arbitrators

Comment by parties

• Hopefully uncontroversial, & covering basic relevant facts. Johnbod (talk) 18:04, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Seems reasonable. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others

• Support as factual. Thryduulf (talk) 00:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Narrative images objected to

Several editors, on the Muhammad/Images talk page and in the proceedings here, have expressed the opinion that narrative images, when used to illustrate the events of the life rather than in the section covering "Depictions of Muhammad", were merely decorative, worthless or trivial as illustrations, and lacked any significant benefit to the article.

Comment by Arbitrators

Comment by parties

• Hopefully uncontroversial, & covering basic relevant facts. Johnbod (talk) 18:04, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• I don't think this is actually true. Noone has argued that all the narrative depcitions should be removed. The point needs to be put a little more subtly. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• It doesn't say that, and is phrased very precisely. I will dig out diffs later but I think we all know that exactly these things have been said. Johnbod (talk) 18:21, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• I think it would be legitimate to say that "Several editors, on the Muhammad/Images talk page and in the proceedings here, expressed the opinion that narrative images outside the Islamic depictions section were merely decorative, worthless or trivial, and lacked any significant benefit to the article." (emphasis my change) -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:24, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• True: "..., when used to illustrate the events of the life rather than in the section covering "Depictions of Muhammad",..." inserted above. Johnbod (talk) 18:30, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• I can go with this. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:31, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• I can't speak for anyone else, but this misrepresents similar arguments I myself have made. What I have suggested is that the images of Muhammad and the events of his life lie somewhere between artistic representations and religious iconography; they are not factual or realistic, and so cannot be claimed to provide knowledge in their own right which protects them from removal. This is not to say they are worthless as imagery, but only that they are not protected by NOTCENSORED since they add no significant content value. Just being clear. --Ludwigs2 20:43, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Fair enough; I have added (bolded) "...worthless or trivial as illustrations..." above. Some diffs of yours from the evidence may help refresh your memory: "...material that is trivial, tangential, decorative, or otherwise of no real consequence...", ...images which are merely decorative elements, artistic illustrations, unneeded exemplifications, page fillers, or other material of negligible content value for the article.". Johnbod (talk) 21:14, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Certainly as art, outside of the scope of this article, they aren't trivial - thus the new wording is better. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks John. Though I'll remind you as a matter of principle that if you're going to "refresh my memory" it is your obligation to represent my position correctly. My actual words in these two passages is

  What I have been saying is that NOTCENSORED should apply when material has a clear mandate for being in the article, but should not be invoked over material that is trivial, tangential, decorative, or otherwise of no real consequence.

  while there is a strong consensus that <some> controversial images (…) are central to the topic of that article, it is not clear that this same consensus extends to protect images which are merely decorative elements, artistic illustrations, (…)

  Neither of these statements makes a definitive comment about these particular images or comes close to substantiating your proposal here; I dislike being misquoted, and I would ask you to take more care, please. --Ludwigs2 21:57, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Glass houses and all that ;). -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:27, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Yes, let the readers decide. But I'd note that the proposition begins "several editors" and does not refer to Ludwigs specifically. Johnbod (talk) 22:30, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• It doesn't really matter, since I'm not objecting to your proposal per se. Just asking you to be a bit more conscientious about accurate representation - advice (yes) that I'm sure we would all profit by. --Ludwigs2 23:30, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• I agree to this. Though imaginative depictions of events do have some value as aids to memory, they add no relevant information to the section they illustrate. I haven't objected to relevant figurative depictions in Muhammad#Non-western_views or Muhammad#European_and_Western_views either. In fact I've advocated for illustrating the latter with an image of Muhammad taken from the frieze surrounding the US Supreme Court building. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:37, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others

• Support. Whatever your opinion of the merits of the objections, that the objections were made is factual. Thryduulf (talk) 00:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

No evidence produced

No evidence was produced to support these personal views. [referred to in previous section]

Comment by Arbitrators

Comment by parties

• Support. Johnbod (talk) 18:04, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Which personal view is this? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:16, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Clarified. Obviously this section is more likely so be disputed, so I've split them up. Johnbod (talk) 18:24, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• I'd say the evidence was that calligraphy was much more common and therefore the number of depictions should balance the reality of how Muhammad is portrayed - and the fact that no-one has come up with a reason for including them beyond WP:ILIKEIT. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:28, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• That is a different point. (Please keep spacing when you comment - I keep having to add lines) Johnbod (talk) 18:33, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• John I really don't see how one can prove that images are "only decorative" for any article under any circumstances to the degree you want here, but beyond a single image of the same type that is likely to be the case in general. What can be proven fairly easily is the positive for including calligraphy. There is a significant value in showing how the Chinese, the South Asians, the South East Asians, the Arabs typically represent Muhammad, and we aren't currently really doing that, currently we have three images showing how the Turks represent Muhammad with calligraphy and very few images from other cultures.
• There is value in including such imagery, as even an expert like yourself has said that they aren't really aware as to how the Chinese, the South Asians or the South East Asians represent Muhammad, for example the Chinese Muslims might well use Chinese characters for their representations. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:13, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• The other way to "show they are trivial" would be to imagine the images in question are under copyright, then which images can you justify under fair use? Those images would then not be trivial. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:30, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I can't prove that negative. It's up to those that claim the image adds relevant information to the section to demonstrate that. Tell me what the black stone image adds to the readers' understanding of the events described at Muhammad#Childhood_and_early_life. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I would think it obvious that it is not something that can be demonstrated by evidence. Arguments can be put forward on either side and a consensus can be reached. That's really all. Arguments in favour of the black stone image have been put forward on various occasions. There have been discussions about the image which always came down in favour of including it. These don't prove its value, but its a pure red herring to suppose that this is the name of the game. --FormerIP (talk) 01:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

That's false. It is very simple to say what an image adds to the reader's understanding that's relevant to the section. Really simple. You just name one thing. Go ahead. Name something. Claiming it's not possible to demonstrate this, is false. The reason you can't demonstrate educational value in some of the Muhammad images is not because one can't do that with an image, it's because many images in that article, and the black stone image is a perfect example, add nothing to the readers' understanding of the events described. Unlike this image at Hippocampus. This image tells the reader the shape and location of the structure better than words ever could. See? When an image has a real educational use, it's easy to demonstrate. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Look, demonstrating the triviality or usefulness of an image is not difficult. The question to ask is this: If the image were not present, what would the reader be missing that he could not get from text? Now every image is going to have a certain basic value in that it makes the page prettier and gives the reader a visual focus, but if that's all the reader is losing, then the image is trivial. For instance, the image at right would clearly not be trivial on the turboprop page: It shows the operation of a turboprop in a way that would be very difficult (if not impossible) to capture in words, and its removal would seriously reduce the usefulness of the article. NOTCENSORED would protect this image even if someone had a religious proscription against seeing turbines. Contrast: would removing the black stone image from the Muhammad article reduce the usefulness or informativeness of that article in this same way? would it reduce it in any way at all? That is the measure of triviality.

Even if we decided a controversial image was trivial we could still use it - obviously - if we came to a consensus to do so. all that 'triviality' would mean is that NOTCENSORED cannot be invoked to force an image onto a page over all objections. --Ludwigs2 02:22, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Disagree with your last point. Local consensus or no local consensus, it's never OK to use offensive images when they don't add to the readers' understanding. That would gratuitously alienate them, in direct opposition to our commitment to respect and serve our readers. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

You are all arguing about whether NOTCENSORED protects an image: it doesn't. It doesn't "protect" any images at all. All it states is that Anthonhycole's argument is both against policy and completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Other arguments have to be made about whether an image should be kept or not. There really isn't a consensus that the images are "trivial" and, (and this is a very important and), "triviality" is not normally an argument to delete an image that is in the public domain. If it was, 90% of our imagery would be removed. Most images in most articles could be removed without measurable damage to the article that contains them, and a decorative image of Muhammad is no more nor less of a problem than a decorative image of Lady Gaga. If we apply the same standards to the imagery in this article that we do to images in other articles, there's no motivation for removing the figurative images. Seriously: go take a look at featured articles like David Bowie and Murray Chotiner, or, perhaps more appropriately "good" articles like Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great, and try to explain why these standards you try to apply to Muhammad don't apply there. Typical Wikipedia articles have images that are related to the topic. Lots of them. There are no arguments that are not specifically proscribed by policy that would make Muhammad any different. There may well be a better set of images to illustrate the article, but "offensiveness" just doesn't apply as an argument with the set of images that are in the article.—Kww(talk) 04:25, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

@Anthony: well, I see you're point. I was assuming that a proper consensus would naturally not develop in a way that offends a particular group. A consensus to use offending material can only develop in two ways: (1) convince that offended group that there's a good reason for the material, or (2) block the offended group from participating. if you exclude #2 (which is the current unpleasant norm on the article) then consensus will lean towards including only those images that everyone (including most Muslims) acknowledge as useful. That's the way consensus is supposed to work.

Of course you're always going to have a couple of editors arguing that Muslims won't ever be reasonable and must be suppressed; people, I swear...

@Kww: Please try to wrap your imagination around the idea that it is the very nature of NOTCENSORED that's in flux here. I understand what you believe NOTCENSORED says; I keep pointing out to you that what you say is patently ridiculous.

1. You've totally misrepresented the argument (I specifically said triviality wasn't a criteria for removal, just a measure of value)
2. You're engaged in fear-mongering (there will be no great purge of 90% of our imagery no matter what happens here)
3. You've consistently ignored our basic premise - that offensiveness matters - even to disagree with it (How can anyone argue with someone who refuses to see the difference between David Bowie and Muhammad in the real world)

You apparently have not bothered to listen to a single phrase I've uttered since October, and it's incredibly irritating to try to have a conversation with someone who's that bloody rude. You talk, but you don't listen; that sucks. --Ludwigs2 05:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

@Ludwigs2: I've listened, but I've rejected your argument, and you don't have any new ones.

1. Anthonyhcole (to whom I was replying) was continuing to argue that images had to add educational value, which, in general practice, they don't. You had, indeed, said that local consensus could keep trivial images, I was pointing out that our normal editorial process is to load articles with trivial images.
2. I was not saying that 90% of our imagery would be removed: I said that 90% of our imagery is trivial, which is evidence that the standard he is attempting to apply to Muhammad is different than the standards applied on most Wikipedia articles. I have used the 90% number in previous discussion as a rough estimate of the number of images that are offensive to some religious sect, but even then, I'm not "fear-mongering". You are right that if we accommodate the Sunnis on this issue, there's no real risk of the remaining images being removed. What doesn't seem to register with you is that that is my objection: to remove these images without removing the others creates a project which is biased towards the Sunnis for no reason other than that they are a large group that protests loudly. If we remove these images on the grounds that you propose, we have a moral imperative to remove the other 90% ourselves.
3. I have not consistently ignored your basic premise: I've described it as an assault on fundamental encyclopedia principles. You may not like my characterization, but I've read your words. The problem is that you start with the basically false assumption, build an entire debate around it, and then complain that other don't listen when we aren't persuaded.—Kww(talk) 12:21, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Thyrd: What part of my statements that "trivial images can be kept or removed at editorial discretion" is lost on you? We don't need to have a consistent policy over whether we always keep trivial images or always remove them - they are not important to the article. If no one wants to remove a trivial image, we don't have to discuss the matter; if someone does, then we do have to discuss the matter.

seriously, why should the fact that no one wants to remove non-offensive imagery preclude us from the removal of offensive imagery? That's like saying that cops should not ticket people parked in handicapped zones because they don't ticket people who park in other places. --Ludwigs2 16:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

You're right that 90% of images in articles add nothing to the readers' understanding of the section they illustrate. You're wrong about me applying a different standard to such figurative images in Muhammad. Most educationally valueless images in this encyclopedia are not offensive. Wherever I see content that is offensive, upsetting or harmful that adds nothing useful to the readers' understanding of the topic, I oppose it. Consistently. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

A huge percentage of them are offensive to the Wahabi, for example. They seem to be quiet about it, but the images are no less offensive to them than images of Muhammad are to the Sunni. By the same logic that states that the images of Muhammad are offensive, so are all images of people. Yet, you don't seem to be asking that all decorative images of people are removed. Why are decorative images of Muhammad bad, while decorative images of people are OK? It's this kind of inconsistency that makes me believe that we cannot accommodate your wish to be inoffensive.—Kww(talk) 15:57, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

" By the same logic that states that the images of Muhammad are offensive, so are all images of people." Hunh??? Kww - in what strange universe does this qualify as 'logic'? --Ludwigs2 16:13, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Step by step, Ludwigs2.

1. Images of Muhammad are offensive to Sunnis.
2. Images of people are offensive to Wahabis.
3. The religious beliefs of the Wahabi are of equivalent importance to the religious beliefs of the Sunnis.
4. Thus, if the beliefs of the Sunni are sufficient to make us treat a decorative image of Muhammad as offensive, the beliefs of the Wahabi are sufficient to make us treat a decorative image of a person as a person.

Let me know if you need to to break any of those steps down into smaller substeps.—Kww(talk) 16:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Your question is, "Why are decorative images of Muhammad bad, while decorative images of people are OK?" It would be nice to accommodate the feelings of all people everywhere wrt the potential offensiveness of all of our decorative images. Unfortunately, as you demonstrate, that would strip the encyclopedia of much of its imagery. So I support paying particular attention to the real educational value of offensive images only when they offend large groups of people, and where this can be done without causing more actual harm to the project than good.

Removing decorative images of Muhammad from Muhammad is courteous and respectful to our millions of Muslim readers, and it will endear us to them. Retaining such images will alienate them. That's a net positive for the project.

We do not put a decorative nude at the top of Pregnancy and do not fill Haredi Judaism with decorative images of women. These are small gestures of respect toward our heterogeneous readership. Muhammad should be no different. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:57, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

(e/c)Kww: that still doesn't work logically - why are you so stuck on rules?

1. Images of Muhammad are offensive to Muslims in general, including Sunnis and Wahabis (it's general proscription in Islam, that's interpreted differently by different sects).
   • Wahabi beliefs, thus, are a fanatical version of general Muslim beliefs, making them far less prominent source-wise
2. However, If Wahabis want to make the argument that figurative images of people should be removed, they should be allowed to do so
   • we would evaluate their request properly on a page-by-page basis (or image-by-image, or as a matter of policy - however they choose to do it)
3. In some cases the Wahabis would get what they want; in most cases they would not, and this is perfectly correct

This is how consensus works

You want a rule that says Wahabis will never get their way, because you're afraid we'll have a rule that says Wahabis will always get their way. You fail to recognize that it is your insistence on having a rule that's getting in the way of consensus discussion, which can handle these issues much more effectively. --Ludwigs2 17:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

@Ludwigs2:This is why I wonder if you have a comprehension problem. I never expressed a fear of a rule saying that Wahabis will always get their way, I've expressed a fear that we won't have such a rule. You are explicitly devaluing the Wahabi belief structure by describing them as "fanatical", when their belief structure is no less reasonable than the Sunni beliefs. No more reasonable, either, because there's no scale to measure the reasonableness of religious beliefs. I've said that if we remove an image because it is decorative and offends Sunnis, we must delete all decorative images that delete any religious groups, because to do otherwise would be to create an encyclopedia that is religiously biased towards Sunnis. I've stated that the desire to cater only to some groups' religious beliefs without catering to all is wrong. The obstacle to consensus is the insistence that we pay attention to religious beliefs in the formation of editorial practice. Following your path creates an editorial policy which is biased towards certain groups not because they are right, not because they make logical and persuasive arguments, but because they are aggressive in pointing out their offense.

@Anthonyhcole: There's no reason to grant special deference to Muslims in terms of the contents of the Muhammad article. It's a biography, not a religious article.—Kww(talk) 18:44, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

It may surprise you, Kww, but the Wikipedia definition of neutrality does not imply treating all religions the same, or viewing them all as equally important (or equally unimportant). Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject. That's the only definition of neutrality we have. Your logical step that "if we consider one religious view we have to consider all of them equally to avoid bias" has no basis in policy. The only way in which we treat all religious viewpoints the same is that we accord each, without bias, whatever prominence it has in reliable and authoritative sources. --JN466 18:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Jayen: Yes. This is why I keep pointing out that I think Kww is trying to promote a secular POV: What he's actually saying, IMO, is that Sunni and Wahabi beliefs are both equally false with respect to secular truth, and thus should be treated equally. --Ludwigs2 19:21, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Religious beliefs don't have a truth value that can be measured on the same scale as other things, so I can only treat them as "equal". This is the point I have been making all along. If I haven't made it clear yet, I will state it one more time: religious beliefs are not to be weighted in as a POV in our decision making process, and NPOV does not force us to evaluate the merit of religious beliefs. Dismissing some religious beliefs as unimportant relative to others according to their popularity perverts NPOV to have precisely the opposite effect.—Kww(talk) 19:45, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww: we don't evaluate truth. ever. We evaluate POVs according to their prominence in sources. Your desire to exclude a particular kind of POV from consideration because you personally happen to believe it is false is antithetical to the principles of the project. --Ludwigs2 19:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

The foundation of NPOV is that by representing things in proportion to their popularity, we will eventually converge on something that approximates the truth. Religious beliefs do not converge as the result of study and examination the way that secular topics do. Your desire to use that principle to align our image selection process with religious practice is antithetical to the principles of the project, and perverts the purpose and intent of NPOV.—Kww(talk) 20:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Additionally, what NPOV actually demands of us in this context is to dispassionately discuss the penetration of different prohibitions on image use within Islam without making value judgements as to which of these beliefs are "fanatical" or "reasonable". It doesn't require us to actually act on any of these prohibitions, which is what is being proposed here.—Kww(talk) 20:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

That's just nonsense; you know it as well as I do. This is not about popularity, and even if we were trying to converge on something that approximates truth (which strikes me as an odd way of thinking of it) we would not try to assert what that truth was first and then try to converge on that. You cannot insist that secularism is 'true' and then suppress all religious viewpoints which don't conform to that 'truth'. That's not NPOV, that's DOGMA.

And no one (excuse me, no one except you and RobertM, I think) is suggesting that we are 'acting on' anyone's religious beliefs. You seem to believe that not insulting a faith gratuitously is equivalent to engaging in worshipful deference (In other words, I'd have to explicitly say that I did not believe Jesus was Lord otherwise I'm effectively practicing Christianity). That is a step or two beyond nonsense. --Ludwigs2 02:47, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not nonsense, Ludwigs2, it's the key concept here: by treating religion as relevant to our editorial policy, you force yourself to either weigh it or abdicate to it. You can yield to them all, or you have to choose whether the value of a particular image somehow justifies offending group X, but simultaneously be willing to say that the beliefs of group Y are sufficiently important/justified/reasonable that they outweigh the value of some other image. You have to compare the value of an image and the importance of a belief and somehow come up with an answer of "less" or "more". There's no way to accomplish that balance. By recognizing that they are irrelevant to the project, that weighing never has to be done. Many people seem to be confusing "relevance" and "importance". They are completely distinct concepts. The laws of the State of Kansas are completely irrelevant to judicial proceedings in Botswana, for example. Saying that doesn't make any value judgment as to the relative correctness, truth, or importance of the two, it simply states that they have no relationship to each other. Similarly, religious beliefs are irrelevant to our editorial policy. That also doesn't make any value judgment about the relative correctness, truth, or importance of the two, it simply states that they have no relationship to each other.

Weighing religious beliefs and deciding to respect some in some circumstances and offend others in other circumstances is the opposite of neutrality: it's making value judgments about religions. Ironically, that's the very thing you seem upset about.—Kww(talk) 03:32, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

No, kww, it is nonsense, and what you've said here is even more fear-mongering nonsense. This is not some binary system where we are forced) to "yield to them all". Nor do we have to concern ourselves with "the importance of a belief"; we only need to acknowledge that group X would prefer not to be confronted with something, and weight that into our choice of whether we do something. Nothing is going to stop us from presenting information we need to present as an encyclopedia: this is all about our choices over non-critical material.

So, let's pull your hyperbolic claim straight out into the light and look at it: let's say your worst-case scenario happens, and all the non-critical images that offend someone are removed from the encyclopedia. What's the problem? the images are non-critical by definition, so the encyclopedia is just as good an encyclopedia before and after; nothing necessary has been removed. it's a little less colorful, and a little more 'textish', this is true, but on the other hand it's more reader-friendly. You and I both know that nothing like this extreme case is going to happen, and even the extreme case is non-problematic. So what in heaven's name are you fighting about?

I am SO looking forward to your answer to this… --Ludwigs2 19:29, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

That's not worst case, Ludwigs2. I've said multiple times that it's a preferable outcome to what you propose: an encyclopedia that accommodates the religious beliefs of loud or large groups without accommodating the religious beliefs of small or quiet groups. That's the worst case scenario: the precise one you are arguing for.—Kww(talk) 19:50, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

and as I said (quite specifically) above, that's not what I'm arguing for. If small groups want to make their claims, they should be listened to just like big groups.

But for the sake of argument, let's look at your worst case scenario? How would this come about?

• A small group doesn't complain about something that purportedly offends them: How would we know that it offends them? We're not mind-readers; all we can guarantee is that when they register a complaint they'll be listened to.
• A small group complains about something, but we have a good reason to use the material: nothing wrong with this. The most difficult case here would be something like the Wahabis saying we shouldn't show images of people anywhere. If it came to that, I suspect it would be resolved so that articles pertinent to the Wahabi sect would (respectfully) not show any depictions that weren't considered necessary, and the rest of the project would remain untouched. But even in the worst-case scenario of this worst-case scenario - where the Wahabis manage to get all non-essential depictive images removed from the project - what's the problem? they are non-essential images, right?

The point here is that if a group complains we listen, we discuss whether we really need to do what they are complaining about, we take appropriately balanced remedies that preserve both the quality of the encyclopedia and our relationship with our readership. There's no real conflict here between these two goals, so I can't see what you are objecting to. --Ludwigs2 20:57, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

You have to weigh it then. Just like we do with political concerns and other things every day. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:01, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm here because the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation urged us to pay particular attention to real educational use and reader expectation when curating conrtoversial content. Kww is saying we can't do that because we'd have to strip the encyclopedia of all incidental depictions of people, out of respect for Wahabis. No. That's false. No one, not even a Wahabi, would expect an encyclopedia to contain no incidental images of people. A reasonable person would expect our article on Muhammad to have no unnecessary images of Muhammad. Kww is misrepresenting the meaning and consequences of the Foundation resolution. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:18, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others

While it's true that no evidence was produced to support the objections, per Eraserhead I'm not sure what evidence could be presented to support them. What wasn't acknowledged by those making the objections was that good arguments were made that the images were not trivial, etc. and the views tended to be expressed as if this were uncontested fact rather than opinion that did not enjoy consensus. Thryduulf (talk) 00:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

@Ludwigs2: Don't confuse triviality with relevance, they are distinct metrics. The turboprop image is not relevant to Muhammad, and so it's also irrelevant whether it is trivial or not. It's very relevant and not at all trivial at Turboprop, File:AirDolomiti ATR72 I-ADCC MUC 2010-02-21.jpg (the second image at the turboprop article, illustrating a "typical turboprop aircraft") is relevant but trivial, just as the image showing the workings of the turboprop engine is relevant but trivial at ATR 72. At Air Tahoma Flight 185 (an article about the crash of a turboprop aircraft due to fuel starvation), the image would only arguably be relevant, but it would clearly not be trivial (the engine stopping working was the cause of the crash). The black stone image is undoubtedly relevant to the Muhammad article, given that it illustrates the adjacent paragraph about Muhammad's involvement with the stone. Whether the image is trivial or not is more debatable, but if the question is asked "If the image weren't offensive would we include it?" - with the answer almost certainly being yes, seems to speak volumes to me. Thryduulf (talk) 05:45, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Thyrd: Being relevant is expected of any image. I mean, I suppose there may be some cases where someone (say) adds a picture of a flower to an article just to make it look pretty, but for the most part images are expected to be relevant to the topic in some tangential way. that's a non-issue. The only issue we need to be concerned about is the triviality issue: again, whether the article would lose concrete knowledge if the image were removed. so let's run it down:

• turboprop removing the turboprop image would make that article less informative - not trivial; keep (or find a better)
• ATR 72 removing the turboprop image would not make that article less informative - trivial, but maybe nice; keep or remove at editorial discretion
• Muhammad removing the Black Stone image would not make that article less informative - trivial, but likely offensive; remove unless there is a strong, inclusive consensus to keep it

What speaks volumes to me is your question/answer: If this image weren't offensive, we might or might not use it - again, at editorial discretion - because the image is not all that important to the article. There are plenty of images of the Black Stone, some with a depiction of Muhammad but most without, so statistically we probably would have used a different one that did not depict Muhammad (just by random chance). However, This image of the black stone was chosen (at least in part because it has a depiction of Muhammad (because editors here are worried about censorship (because editors here know that depictions of Muhammad are proscribed)). If the image weren't offensive we most likely wouldn't be using it specifically; because it is offensive we apparently must use it. Does that make sense to you from a policy perspective? --Ludwigs2 06:21, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually if we had an image of the black stone without Muhammed in it that would be purely decorative on the Muhammed article and there would be good argument for replacing it with the image of the stone and Muhammad as that directly illustrates the relevant part of the article. The only reason given for why this image should not be subject to the same standards as every other free image on the project is that it offends some people, but as that is an invalid argument it is rightly discounted.

I know you don't like the fact that offensiveness is irrelevant, but it is by a policy that you (and others) have tried to change in various ways, in various places at various times (the most recent being this case), but on every occasion the community has rejected that and chosen to hold the principle of neutrality higher than avoiding offending some groups.

Above you accuse those you disagree with not listening to you about your interpretation of what notcensored, etc. means. How many more times do we need to say that we (and the community in general) have listened, but we have rejected it. WP:IDHT explains in perfectly clear language that disagreeing is not the same as not listening. Equally we've listened to your arguments that the images add nothing to the article and can therefore be removed as trivial. We agree with you that material that adds nothing shouldn't be on the article, but we disagree that these images are an example of that. To take it to very simple principles, say that you made the statement that "all green footballs should be thrown away because they are irrelevant." and we agree that green footballs are irrelevant and should be thrown away for that reason. You then point to a football and say "Green footballs are irrelevant and should be thrown away!", to which we reply "Yes, green footballs are irrelevant and should be thrown away, but that is a blue football and blue footballs are relevant and should not be thrown away". All your arguments since have been saying "but green footballs are irrelevant" and/or "but green footballs should be thrown away" (and forrays into why green footballs are irrelevant) without recognising that we're keeping this football not because we want to keep green footballs, but because we disagree that it is green. Thryduulf (talk) 06:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Thyrd: the only place that offensiveness is irrelevant is in the heads of you and your cohort. There's no logical grounding for it: it's an irrational, anti-liberal belief. You can put it into policy and hold it there by brute force for a while (just the way that you can push offensive images into articles and hold them there by brute force), but that does not make the principle right, or reasonable, or rational. Frankly, you and your cohort represent the worst threat that any consensus system can face - those who (in all good faith, perhaps) are willing to warp the system to create an exclusionary consensus amongst themselves to the disadvantage of the excluded group. This is Jim Crow politics, ghettoization, taxation without representation, the status quo before the Suffrage Movement. I realize that you don't see this, which is why we're having this problem. I also know (from many, many historical cases) that efforts like yours never last. It is not a question of IF your perspective going to fail; it is a question of WHEN, and of how much collateral damage you're going to inflict on the project between now and then.

Wikipedia is built on the concept of inclusionary consensus; your continued efforts to mandate the exclusion of particular viewpoints goes against principles at the very heart of the project. --Ludwigs2 16:49, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: Policy explicitly tells us that offensiveness is not something to be considered - if an image is legally usable and increases a reader's understanding then we should definitely use it. If an image is legally usable and harms the article (e.g. by being irrelevant to it; remember offensiveness is not something we consider) then we should definitely not use it. If an image is neutral to an article, then we should only use/keep it if there is no better alternative available that we can legally use. This applies to all images on all articles, whether offensive or not. Ludwigs is right when he says that in order to use a controversial image all that is required is local consensus. Thryduulf (talk) 05:45, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

We? I, personally, always consider offensiveness. If an image offends many readers, I'd never use it, unless it's the only way to convey important information. In my experience, most people behave that way here. WP:NOTCENSORED is interpreted as urging people to ignore offense, including religious offense, but that reading contradicts usual practice, contradicts WP:GRATUITOUS, displays contempt for our readers, and diametrically opposes the May 2011 resolution.

Has anyone looked into the history of WP:NOTCENSORED to find the "reasoning" behind the present wording and who's responsible for it? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:56, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

@Thryduulf, how does the black stone image add anything to the article? From the other narrative images we already know what Muhammad is generally depicted like, so what does that image add? We could instead show how that scene is generally shown by muslims, which will undoubtably involve calligraphy but how that will be presented is definitely interesting and relevant to the article.

Thinking about celebrities above with regards to offensiveness we actually already do take it into account the vast majority of the time. Our celebrities articles aren't full of pictures of them drunk or high or whatever. And I doubt for the typical celebrity such imagery isn't "much less common" than other depictions. Especially given that 76% of UK Facebook pictures are of people who are drunk (this is not a legitimate statistical comparison, but does show that people like taking pictures while drunk) and I'm sure the tabloids regularly include them.

There's even value in including such imagery as it shows what the celebrity looks like when they are having fun - which seems to have significant value to me.

The only reason to avoid having pictures of drunk celebrities in their articles is to avoid offending them and that it makes us look insensitive, that's it. Certainly the justification for including more than a couple of depictions here is weaker than the justification for including pictures of drunk celebrities. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 07:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

As I said before, offensiveness is irrelevant under the current policies. There may be a case for changing the policy, but this is a wrong venue to discuss this. - BorisG (talk) 12:43, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Boris, the de-facto reality of how the policy is generally applied is extremely important. Even someone like Amy Winehouse or Elvis Presley doesn't have depictions of them drunk/high, and both of them are dead so the BLP policy doesn't apply. Unless there is an alternative explanation as to why we don't include pictures of drunk celebrities beyond their offensiveness its quite clear that we clearly do take it into account regularly, and treating this case as an exception to that de-facto policy seems rather strange.

Following through from that treatment of celebrities (assuming that the only argument against such depictions is offensiveness) it becomes increasingly difficult to justify any depictions at all here, which actually seems a bit of a shame. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:54, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

The comment one back misunderstands what calligraphic "representations" of Muhammad are. They are variations on his name and a number of formulas including it and praise of him etc. They do not refer to particular episodes etc. You say "We could instead show how that scene is generally shown by muslims" but detached calligraphic pieces play no part in that. The only option is the picture, otherwise the incident is not "generally shown by muslims" other than in pure text, and we do not need to follow their practices there. I totally reject the 'illustration as trivial ornament' argument pushed by Adler & Cole, and for which they have produced nothing but there personal prejudices, which run against all normal practices of illustrating biographies, both in Wikipedia and normal publishing. They may like to claim that only engineering diagrams are useful, but the whole of publishing practice in reliable sources is against them. Illustration of events in narratives is highly useful, and the Black Stone image is a good example of this. The incident is hard to visualize otherwise, and the image is memorable and useful. It is not "authentic" but it is the closest to his time that we have, and fortunately neither local dress nor Islamic styles of representing figures changed all that much in the intervening period. Would a contemporary image be all that much more useful? Very probably not. Don't let's pretend we would even be having this discussion if it were not for the offensiveness issue. Johnbod (talk) 22:17, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Replied on talk. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:33, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

(←) @Eraserhead: "Unless there is an alternative explanation as to why we don't include pictures of drunk celebrities beyond their offensiveness its quite clear that we clearly do take it into account regularly[...]". In most cases I suspect that it would be undue to focus on their drunken exploits, but for some celebrities it's obviously a significant part of their notoriety so at least an argument could be made for inclusion of such a picture. However, when I searched on Google images I was unable to find a single free image of a drunk celebrity, not even Amy Winehouse (although it's worth noting that we do include an unflattering free image of her at Amy Winehouse#Controversy). Thus there are at least two alternative explanations for not using such images that have nothing to do with offence, WP:UNDUE and WP:NONFREE, and your argument does not prove we "take it [offence] into account regularly". Thryduulf (talk) 11:34, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The article is a biography

The article Muhammad is a biography, not an article on religion as such.

Comment by Arbitrators

Comment by parties

Self-evident, one might think, but has been disputed by Hans Adler above. Johnbod (talk) 10:08, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

To quote this very high quality German book on the history of Islam (written by Gudrun Krämer), which I bought over Christmas in anticipation of FA work on the Muhammad article: "One must write the history of Muhammad and his community on the basis of Muslim sources, or one cannot write it." ("Die Geschichte Muhammads und seiner Gemeinde muß man auf der Grundlage muslimischer Quellen schreiben, oder man kann sie nicht schreiben." p. 20.) That's the first sentence of section "Muhammad, der Prophet". Of course the Muhammad article is a biography. And of course it is also a religion article, just like Jesus and Gautama Buddha are also religion articles. If you apply binary logic to a watercolour painting and scan it in text mode (resulting only in black and white pixels, not even grey), then you get a distorted caricature. It's not our job as editors to distort the world like that. And the silly idea that we have to do it only ever comes up in connection with very contentious topics. Try to argue like that at WP:FAC and see how far it gets you.

The real problem, as far as I am concerned, is not that the images are present in the article. The problem is the attempts to prevent necessary editorial discussions that take all relevant circumstances into account by declaring all those circumstances that might threaten the status quo irrelevant or forbidden. This completely prevents any meaningful consensus on the proper weighting of these circumstances per WP:NPOV. And this strategy has worked, not because the argument is credible, but because to protect the status quo it is sufficient to disrupt any and all attempts to find a consensus. Hans Adler 11:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

(e/c) What you fail to acknowledge about Johnbod's position is he does not say it is binary. He says the rather sensible and evident thing that the purpose of this article is biography. Looking at Muhammad, as a man, who lived a man's life, is neither irrelgious, nor any other epithet, anyone wishes to throw around. The purpose of this article is not the History of Islam or Islam; it is not Muhammad in Islam; it is not Muhammad in pictures -- we have other articles whose focus is those things. Yes, Muhammad has a biography different from Jesus, and different from Buddha, and different from billions of others; that's why we write it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I "fail to acknowledge" that Johnbod doesn't say it is binary because it's not relevant whether he admits it or not. It is rare for black/white logic users to be so open about it as to openly say stupid things like, "you are either with us or with the terrorists". He is simply claiming that one of the two most important articles about Islam is not a religion article, and his only argument is that it happens to be a biography. (In terms of page views, Islam > Muhammad > Allah+God here, and Muhammad > Islam > Allah+God on the Arabic Wikipedia. In both languages, the combined page views for Allah and God are less than a third of those of either Muhammad or Islam.) It's like claiming that Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant etc. are not also philosophy articles. Most readers of the Muhammad article are interested in the man because that's the best approach to the subject of Islamm, not because they want to learn how Arabs lived around 600 CE.

That the Muhammad article is (also) a religion article doesn't have any dramatic consequences anyway. It just means that an Islamic prohibition against images of Muhammad is more relevant there, and will get more weight, than in an art history context. (Simultaneously, it strengthens the case for inclusion of such images. Showing how the founder of a religion is and was displayed by his followers through the ages is a much stronger encyclopedic reason than just putting random artist's impressions there which have nothing to do with how the subject looked.)

The annoying thing that's going on here is that people keep looking for trump cards that automatically decide everything. General consensus about NOTCENSORED goes as far as that saying something is offensive is never such a trump card. However, the claims that NOTCENSORED itself is a trump card that prevents consideration of offence are neither common sense, nor do they have consensus, nor are they in the interest of the encyclopedia. They are simply a form of fundamentalism. Hans Adler 18:18, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think your comments regarding Johnbod are either correct or helpful. What I find annoying is all these unprofessional (personalized) statements, by many in these disputes, about other's thinking ability and/or motive. Moreover, such statements are contentious, without getting anywhere productive, and they lead to battlegrounds. For example, I would dispute your characterization of Johnbod's reasoning process. He strikes me as a nuanced thinker, from what I have read, even when he disagrees with me.

If there are no dramatic consequences, than there should be no drama. But what appears to be going on is that different editors are differently prioritizing things. For example, I disagree with both your image points: 1) I don't think Islamic prohibitions mean much to how we treat the biography. Not because those prohibitions don't matter very much to members of the faith (they do matter, in varying individual degrees to each follower), but because the faith's prohibitions are not something that can be disputed -- that they exist can be noted, however. Nonetheless, our purpose is not to present a biography through the lens of faith, which any given reader cannot be counted upon to share (or even to share, in the same way). 2) As for your parenthetical, I find that a weak reason to add anything to the article, because the article is his biography, and not the multitude of other issues introduced by follower's views after his death, that are better and more deeply covered in other articles. I recognize, however, that these priorities and their weight, I have laid out are differently viewed by others (including by others, like me, who view the current images in the article to be educational and well placed). Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:22, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree. Relevant comparisons include Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great more than Jesus, as Muhammad clearly existed and was written about in contemporary histories in different cultures. Certainly his religious impact on the world has to be considered and discussed, but that doesn't mean that an article about him is substantially different in form. Adler's point that most of our sources are Islamic is valid, but is a reason to view our sources more skeptically than normal, not a reason to shift our normal editorial practices.—Kww(talk) 12:32, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

"Shift our normal editorial practices" is hardly a fair choice of words in this context. Most of our biographies have infoboxes. Giuseppe Verdi does not. That's because his article is not just a biography, it's also an opera article, and most members of WP:WikiProject Opera feel offended by infoboxes. Not to mention the numerous sound samples on that article. It is your side that is trying to set up special rules that would outlaw certain normal editorial considerations, based on an extremist reading of NOTCENSORED which, as far as I am aware, has never been supported by a consensus in a policy discussion. Hans Adler 18:32, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree. As noted in the past, one can discuss the deference Muslims show towards Muhammad without having to actually be deferential. Tarc (talk) 15:05, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree as well. This is, ultimately, an article about a man. The importance he had on the formation of a major religion obviously cannot be understated, but that is not a call to write the biography from a religious POV. Resolute 15:12, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others

Proposals by User:Egg Centric

Proposed principles

Wikipedia cannot be, and should not be, entirely neutral

Wikipedia strives to take a neutral point of view. Nevertheless, it is time to recognise that in certain respects its very existence represents certain liberal/libertarian values, perhaps best summed up in the phrase "knowledge wants to be free". Wikipedia also has a responsibility to promote these values.

Therefore Wikipedia must take a stand - to the extent that it must be prepared to take sides and fight against reactionary Islam if needs be. Its international position demands nothing else.

Comment by Arbitrators

How about Wikipedia just follows its own pillars, rather than picking fights with anyone over anything? Jclemens (talk) 23:06, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties

• No thanks. Mathsci (talk) 16:33, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• Wow. No. --Ludwigs2 16:40, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• No way. This would be a gross hindrance in our ability to be neutral. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 16:53, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• You made a mistake making this about "reactionary Islam". We've no shortage of people demanding their personal beliefs be reflected in Wikipedia's articles, be they religious, political, national, cultural, etc. By their standards, Wikipedia can never be neutral. Resolute 16:56, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• If we actually did this it would make such arguments stronger as they wouldn't have to pretend they are being neutral when they aren't being neutral. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:02, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• At least you're being honest, but NPOV is non-negotiable. Sorry. --JN466 17:48, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• Hmm, either you're commending Egg Centric for being honest to state what he really means, or you're implying that others here share this belief but aren't being honest about it. or both. Tarc (talk) 19:05, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• While I do think there may be an undercurrent of anti-Islamic feeling evident in these proceedings – it would be surprising if it were otherwise, as anti-Islamic feeling is common, and I am keenly aware that there are currently no Muslim editors involved in the debate – I don't actually believe that you personally have any particular axe to grind with Islam. Your edit history in the Muhammad article is incompatible with such an assumption. --JN466 20:40, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

For the record, opposed. Tarc (talk) 19:05, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others

• Agree as proposer. Egg Centric 16:20, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Painting Islam as being any more or less "reactionary" than any other religion isn't reasonable.—Kww(talk) 16:26, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

That was not my intention. I don't understand why you think it was. You also entirely miss my main point. Egg Centric 16:28, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Calling out one particular religion certainly emphasises it. Also, we have no obligation to "fight" anything, simply to ignore this class of request.—Kww(talk) 16:31, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it is reasonable to assume that scientoligists or pagans are not terribly fussed about pictures of Mohammed. But let's drop that...

My entire point is that, actually, Wikipedia does have an obligation to fight censorship. It just hasn't realised it yet, as said responsibility comes from position rather than intention. Maybe this will be the incident that means its users will realise that. Egg Centric 16:36, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll give you credit for expressing (one side of) the core issue here, albeit in an awfully extreme way. We are at a cross-roads where we need to decide whether Wikipedia is a pure information source or whether it extends itself into social engineering. IF we go the social engineering route (which I oppose), then we need to be very careful about what social activism the project is going to engage in. We are past the point where we can effectively hide social constructivism behind the mantle of pedagogy. --Ludwigs2 16:46, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Being a fairly extremist libertarian, I oppose social engineering for the sake of it too, and in an ideal world, where it wasn't the case that everything affects everything else we could be an entirely neutral pure information source. Unfortunately, such a thing is not possible once you reach our size. So what should we stand for? By being an enormously popular information source we already stand for anti censorship. We are already changing the world. It is time to recognise that explicitly. It is in our interests. Egg Centric 17:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

We should stand for trying to be a neutral source, and we do a fairly good job of it. There are very few sources who even try, the BBC is one of the only examples I can think of. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:08, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Yet the BBC deviate from neutrality in certain circumstances - for example they never tell the truth about TV detector vans. And they certainly stand up for press freedom in various ways. Same thing here. Egg Centric 18:52, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Islam, radical or otherwise, is not a direct threat to Wikipedia. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 01:18, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

This is in conflict with WP pillars. Islamism and Islamic missionary activity is and will not be widespread here. PaoloNapolitano 16:21, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

This principle shares the fallacy of those protesting the images. Wikipedia does not show these images to make some anti-Islamic stand at all; rather, the goal most often to illustrate our articles to show artists' conceptions of some of the key events in early Islamic history. We don't claim these images are images of Muhammad, whose appearance is unknown; rather, they illustrate how an artist drew a scene which requires someone to be carrying out actions Muhammad took at the time. Whether the artist draws a veil over the face of the person shown, or if someone scratched out the image for religious reasons, or drew an icon or an aura or something, it doesn't matter - the figure in the image is simply a place holder to illustrate how some events played out, and the choice of how to do it was a choice made by an artist (or someone later holding the work), but not our decision. We simply report the sources we have, and the only statement we're making is that this is what our sources said. Now some people might say we shouldn't print what we see - in other words, not be an encyclopedia, and in that we must naturally disagree - but that's not us disagreeing with them, but them disagreeing with us. ;)

Proposals by AGK

The committee opened this case on 21 December 2011. Using the standard timetable for cases, the evidence phase would end on 4 January 2011, the workshop phase would end (and the proposed decision would be posted) on 11 January 2011, and arbitrator voting (and the whole case) would end around 18 January 2011. However, as was communicated by the clerks in the evidence deadline they specified when opening the case, we made the decision to extend the evidence phase by one week, to accommodate the influx of new arbitrators on the new year. We also reserved the right to extend each subsequent phase by one week, to avoid overwhelming the new committee.

At this point, I have prepared the draft proposed decision and intend to publish it here for the review of the parties. However, although I have finished writing the draft, I do not want to be seen to prejudge the case before the evidence phase formally ends. Although we seem to have most of the evidence submitted, we will honour the current timetable. In lieu of a full draft decision, here is my summary of the case - which I have already published internally. The parties can probably surmise from my explicit recommendations here what the content of the draft decision will be, and comment on the general approach or specific content of this summary is very welcome. AGK [•] 19:11, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Summary

Discussion of this summary

The following is a summary of my view on the dispute, what findings we should publish, and how we should resolve the dispute. My intention is that this summary will be extended into a proposed decision in the standard format.

The dispute relates to the use of images at the article Muhammad (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) and involves a group of contributors, most of whom were named as parties to this case. Broadly, the aim of the first faction of contributors was to retain the images used in the current version of the article, and the current order of images. The basis for this position is that Wikipedia is not censored and, as a biography, the Muhammad article must include portrayals of Muhammad; the inclusion of images is therefore a reasonable editorial decision under the principle of least surprise. In Islam, drawings or paintings of Muhammad are rare, so this faction asserted the article must rely on artwork created after Muhammad's death (such as those from an atypical period when Islamic artwork was common) because no images of Muhammad exist that were created during his life.

The second faction of contributors moved for the removal of some (or less commonly, most) artistic portrayals of Muhammad, or for the portrayals to be placed less prominently in the article. The justification for this argument was that: the images were not made during Muhammad's life and therefore cosmetic in that they added nothing to the reader's understanding; that there was little use of images in reliable sources about Muhammad; and that the wide use of images wrongly implies that artistic portrayals of Muhammad is common in Islamic artistry, which corrupts the reader's understanding of the subject. Images of Muhammad are uncommon in Islam, and the reader would be surprised to find such images included. This faction argued that the of images of Muhammad were not important to the quality of the article, and therefore that the images were unjustifiable in the context of the 'principle of least astonishment'.

Before this dispute came to arbitration, the disputants participated in extensive discussion of the images of Muhammad, at Talk:Muhammad/images. A decision was reached by consensus that some images of Muhammad should be included, although no agreement could be made about the precise number of images to include, nor which types of portrayals (if any) to use in replacement. Ludwigs2 opened a request for comment at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not about the application of the policy that "Wikipedia is not censored", and framed the discussion in terms of whether the images of Muhammad was 'incidental' to the article in that they were unessential to the reader's understanding - and therefore that inclusion was not a justified 'astonishment' of the reader. The disputants engaged in informal mediation of the dispute and discussed the issues extensively, without success. In November 2011, Resolute also proposed an alternative method of treating the portrayal of Muhammad (by basing Wikipedia's portrayal on that of secondary sources), but this was unsuccessful.

In addition to the question of striking a balance between images of Muhammad, it was suggested that more use be made of alternative forms of portrayal, such as calligraphic images (which are comparatively common in Islamic art) and veiled representations (which are more common than portrait-type images). The disputants explored a different composition of files, including more calligraphy and less images of Muhammad, and of a different order of images. The discussion was complicated by there being several possible ways to order the images, by debate about whether using less images constituted censorship, and by the question of applying the Wikimedia Foundation's statement on the 'principle of least astonishment'. The dispute has been deadlocked for some time, and its intractability has been compounded by the conduct of several disputants, which was abrasive, unprofessional, or confrontational.

Wikipedia policy is that all content must be written in a Neutral Point of View. The dispute turns on whether the use of portrayals that are not typical of artistic coverage of Muhammad is a subversion of the neutral viewpoint. The offensiveness of the image to the reader (critical to the "principle of least surprise") and the argument that removing the images must be censorship (critical to the tenet that "Wikipedia is not censored") are secondary issues. However, from the comments made during this dispute, it is clear that several parties have prioritised one or both of the secondary issues over the question of balancing the use of images. The Arbitration Committee does not adjudicate content issues, such as that of the use of (atypical) images of Muhammad over calligraphic or veiled portrayals, and we will refer the question of which images to use in the Muhammad article to the wider community.

In the decision, we will give some guidance to the disputants for engaging in similar content disputes in the future, and we will sanction a small number of editors who have been disruptive to the discussion. However, to resolve the dispute, our final decision will be to defer the dispute to the attention of the wider community - community-based dispute assistance has not been employed as much as it should - with the hope that, with our refinement of the scope of the dispute, it easier to come to a decision. As part of our guidance to the disputants, we will note that editors who engage extensively in an intractable dispute can become frustrated, and that it is important to be aware that as editors we are limited in our ability to contribute constructively to a deadlocked disagreement before our exasperation makes us unprofessional or unreceptive to compromise. In such cases, we implore disputants to seek the involvement of the community. We encourage the disputants of this case to consider if their participation in the coming consideration by the community of this dispute would be useful, and we will use standard discretionary sanctions to improve the ability of the community's administrators to exclude disputants who choose to engage in the community proceedings but whose participation is ultimately disruptive. Our advice will be that consensus about portraying Muhammad will be determined by a group of participants who did not contribute to the discussion, and in turn that the discussion be participated in primarily by editors who are not involved in this topic. AGK [•] 19:11, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

See, Discussion of this summary

Outline of draft

The workshop closes in a few days, and the Arbitration Committee is on-schedule to publish the proposed decision. I intend to publish the full draft on this workshop a few days before the proposed decision phase opens, to allow the parties to review, but I thought it might be helpful to publish the outline of my draft now. I am not publishing the full draft - only an outline - because I am not yet satisfied with the wording of all the proposals, and I have a handful of other proposals to add. I also haven't decided on what the remedy regarding the underlying content question (of what depictions of Muhammad to use). I also may have more user conduct findings and remedies to add.

• Proposed principles

  • Dispute resolution
  • Sober eyes
  • Neutral Point of View
  • Wikipedia is Not Censored
  • Fetishisation of policy
  • Principle of Least Astonishment
  • Role of the Arbitration Committee

  Proposed findings of fact

  • Annal of dispute (general history and background of dispute)
  • Substandard participation in case
  • Ludwigs2 (conduct)
  • Tarc (conduct)
  • FormerIP (conduct)
  • Circular discussion

  Proposed remedies

  • [placeholder for main conduct finding]
  • Discretionary sanctions for Muhammad
  • Ludwigs2 remedies:
    • Ludwigs2 topic-banned and Ludwigs2 restricted (separate proposals)
    • or Ludwigs2 banned
  • Tarc topic-banned
  • FormerIP admonished
  • General admonishment

  Proposed enforcement

  • Standard enforcement provisions

AGK [•] 15:46, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed principles [AGK]

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Proposed remedies [AGK]

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

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Proposals by User:Anthonyhcole

Proposed principles [Anthonyhcole]

Principle of least controversy

1) When curating controversial content, and multiple options are equally effective at portraying a concept, the least controversial option should be used.

Comment by Arbitrators:

This sets up debates about which of multiple images would be most "effective". I don't see a need to go there. Jclemens (talk) 23:01, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

It's a slight rewording of WP:GRATUITOUS: "When multiple options are equally effective at portraying a concept, Wikipedia does not retain the most offensive options merely to "show off" its ability to include possibly offensive materials." The wording of this proposed principle does not rely on an understanding of motive. Clarification of this would save us a great deal of time and trouble at Muhammad and other articles without costing the encyclopedia one bit of educational value. I give an example in my evidence. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

@Jclemens and Tarc, if you don't see a problem with offensiveness, you won't see a reason for this principle.

@Resolute, I don't expect you to be swayed by this; as for the community in general, everyone pretty much does this already.

@Hans, that content dispute resolution is difficult is no reason to ignore the offensiveness of candidate images.

@ASCIIn2Bme, an artist's impression of an event in a remote time and place (such as the black stone incident) is obviously no more informative about the event than a piece of obscure calligraphy. One is offensive to many readers, the other not. Hence, choosing the former to illustrate the event is gratuitously offensive. Using the same image to illustrate Muhammad#Islamic depictions would be highly informative regarding the topic of the section, and so would not be gratuitous. Should WP:GRATUITOUS explicitly include offensive use of sacred imagery? Yes, but I'm not about to edit that guideline while this arbitration is in progress; that would be improper. I hope the committee will respond in some way to the Foundation's explicit concern that this project take account of religious offensiveness, and not simply ignore the Foundation in this signal exemplary case. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:30, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

@Boris, this is what most editors (not those that think offensiveness doesn't matter, of course) have been doing all along. --Anthonyhcole (talk)

I tend to agree with ASCIIn2Bme. The only thing this change does is set up yet another round of arguments that will again fail to sway the community. Resolute 15:59, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

All this seems to be is goalpost-moving. Someone wants to get rid of an offensive image? All they have to do is redefine "effective", similar to what some tried to do with declaring Muhammad images as "incidental". Tarc (talk) 17:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

This clearly goes too far, and I also agree with Jclemens. Given that we don't have effective processes to resolve content disputes, it's no wonder there is an almost universal desire to create relatively objective criteria which can decide some instances. But they often turn out not to be so objective, after all, and lead to unintended consequences when taken too literally. What we really need is a general awareness that, e.g., whether an image is necessary for an article or just incidental/ornamental is a matter of degree rather than a black/white matter. Hans Adler 18:41, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Response to Anthonyhcole's response: I am not proposing to ignore offensiveness. Not at all. But your proposal basically says that we have no choice. We find out which images are least offensive, and then we have to use them. I think this is never so clear, and in reality we should factor in all sorts of concerns. I am sure you don't mean it so literally, but unfortunately experience has shown that such rules are always interpreted in the most literal way possible. Hans Adler 22:08, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• Another fine-sounding principle of little practical use in this case. An artist's visual depiction of an event is hardly ever equivalent to an image of calligraphy in a foreign script and language, which most English Wikipedia readers can't read and/or comprehend. Also, there are obvious problems with defining "least controversial" when one group forbids the precise type of images commonly used by rest of the world. What is least controversial: breaking the mores of one group, or abandoning the representation normally used everywhere else for the sake of one group? You should really be proposing this principle at WP:GRATUITOUS and seek community consensus there, not here, as ArbCom doesn't normally forge new policy like this. (And examples of how you see this principle applied are crucial.) ¶ By invoking WP:GRATUITOUS here, you also seem to be operating under the mistaken assumption that the images in dispute here are gratuitously offensive, like a naked woman in the article on automobile would be. I know the WMF doesn't make the distinction between gratuitously offensive and "possibly controversial" material in their Resolution, but insofar most Wikipedia editors do make this distinction, by not introducing religious offense as an instance of explicitly gratuitous offense at WP:GRATUITOUS. So you are pushing your luck quite a bit with this proposal here, trying to circumvent normal policy approval methods. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 06:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
• This is a policy proposal. Wrong venue. - BorisG (talk) 19:21, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: this is what most editors (...) have been doing all along.. It is one thing what people do (out of common sense) and the other thing to mandate it. And even if we agree to mandate it, it should be done through the normal policy change. I agree the current policy is badly worded as it refers to the intent, which is hard if not impossible to assertain. But this is a wrong venue to even discuss this. - BorisG (talk) 06:56, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:GRATUITOUS is a relatively new guideline. It has only been up since Oct 2011 or so. It was not announced broadly because its text was tacked to the end of an existing guideline. There was no explicit discussion for its adoption on the talk page. A few attempts to copy-edit it have been reverted on procedural grounds by participants in this Arbitration. But I think it's fair to say that it does have some community support. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 07:06, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Others have said the same about WP:NOTCENSORED. Whatever. They conflict. They need to be reconciled. One conforms to rational social interaction norms, the other is essentially an autistic/psychopathic stance. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:11, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Nothing needs to be reconciled, Anthony; policy > guideline, every time. Tarc (talk) 14:51, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines#Conflicts_between_advice_pages. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:49, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

When our commitment to intellectual openness clashes with our commitment to serve and respect our readers

2) Wikimedia's foundation principles, our commitment to intellectual openness and commitment to serve and respect our readership, very rarely collide. When they do it is occasionally necessary to compromise the former principle in order to strengthen the project and serve the widest possible audience.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I derive this proposed principle from this page of the Harris report. Essentially, sometimes we censor; sometimes we remove content because it is sexually, violently or religiously offensive. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:11, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

See, this is where IMO you go wrong. You read the reports and the resolutions and whatnot as granting you permission to censor. That's not how it works. "Begin With Openness Tempered by Service" is the principle, we can take into account the religious concerns of a group of people, but that accommodation for them is automatic. If put to the community, and the community says "we hear the concern but feel it is not enough of a justification to censor this material", then that's going to be the end of it. Tarc (talk) 15:12, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I literally didn't understand that. Is there a typo' in there somewhere? Did you mean to say "not automatic"? If so, well, yeah. It's a statement of principle, not a how-to manual. How-to is up to editors. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:41, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, "not". The point was, it is a bad statement of principle. If there is such a collision, then the Wikipedia community should discuss how to resolve the collision. I want to ensure that there a "compromise" is always an option to consider, not a mandate. The door has to remain open for us to simply say "sorry, the concern over the offense caused by this material is not important enough to alter our presentation of it". Tarc (talk) 15:13, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with everything from the third sentence on. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed findings of fact [Anthonyhcole]

Relevance of the Foundation resolution to this project

1) The May 2011 Wikimedia Foundation Board resolution concerning curation of controversial content addresses this project. It addresses curation of sexual, violent and religious images that are offensive to broad groups of people, an objectively recognizable social process. It refers to such images as "controversial" to distinguish them from images that are offensive only to relatively small groups or individuals. It urges us to determine whether our placement or categorization of such content has a real realistic educational use. It urges us to apply the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Each of these points is poorly understood by many commentators at the current RfC on the principle of least astonishment, [113] and many contributors to this case. Fruitful discussion about the applicability of the Foundation resolution to this project can only occur in an environment where these points are clarified, unequivocally. I ask the committee to please endorse any points you feel confident about, and please seek clarification from the Board where you feel uncertain.

• The May 2011 Wikimedia Foundation Board resolution concerning curation of controversial content addresses this project.[114][115]
• It addresses curation of sexual, violent and religious images[116] that are offensive to broad groups of people, an objectively recognizable social process. It refers to such images as "controversial" to distinguish them from images that are offensive only to small groups, or individuals.[117]

This clarification of their use of "controversial" is essential because many commentators believe the resolution will open the floodgates to trivial or vexatious claims of offense.

• I've put the next two points into separate sentences to emphasise both points, equally. In all present discussion on the resolution, the first point, real realistic educational use, gets overlooked.

My summary of how, I believe, the Foundation resolution applies to Wikipedia can be found here. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:29, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is not a straight report of the resolution. Compare for example what is said here and in the report about "placement". Better just to quote or refer to the full resolution. Johnbod (talk) 01:09, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

For the convenience of others, the resolution says this about placement. If this proposed FoF is incorrect, how is it incorrect?

We urge the community to pay particular attention to curating all kinds of potentially controversial content, including determining whether it has a realistic educational use and applying the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement.

--Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

You say "It urges us to determine whether our placement or categorization of such content has a real educational use." It doesn't. The resolution only says that we should apply "the principle of least astonishment in categorization and placement". Very different. Johnbod (talk) 01:23, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the resolution does urge editors to consider whether images have 'realistic' educational value. This is not an unduly exacting standard, and it is not the same as real education value, and it does not suggest that the educational value needs to be somehow empirically demonstrated, as has been suggested.

I think that all that needs to be said is that is it realistic to suppose that, in an the article Muhammad, it is realistic to suppose that, for example, an illustration of the subject's life taken, for example, from an extremely significant work of Islamic literature might provide a legitimate form of education for the reader. It educates as to how the event was depicted within an Islamic culture of that period. Realistically, that is educational, and to say otherwise must be either Philistine or else hidebound. --FormerIP (talk) 02:03, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

You're right, the proposal should say realistic, as the resolution does. I've corrected that. I disagree with your second paragraph, though. Whether the Board wants us to simply determine that an offensive image has some educational value (as all images related to a topic do), or significant relevant value, is open to interpretation. This is something we'll need the Board itself to clarify.

Please don't describe people who disagree with you as Philistine or hidebound. I can't believe you persist with this ad hominem right here on the workshop page. If the only educational use an image has is to say something about Islamic depictions of Muhammad, it belongs in the section Muhammad#Islamic depictions of Muhammad. Needlessly putting such an image in Muhammad#Childhood and early life when it tells the reader nothing whatever about Muhammad's childhood and early life is inappropriate, particularly when it is a figurative depiction of Muhammad, and you know that such use is offensive to millions of our readers. That would be deliberately, gratuitously alienating and disrespecting our readership, working diametrically against our commitment to serve. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:17, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Normal relevant illustration constitutes a "realistic educational use". Obviously you and Hans Adler don't accept this, but we will have to wait until an RFC to find out how many agree with you. Johnbod (talk) 04:23, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

All images currently on the Muhammad article have a realistic educational use, and I have never denied this. Please try to be more accurate in what you write about other people's opinions. The phrasing "realistic educational use" occurs in a paragraph that was written specifically with Commons in mind and whose application to Wikipedia (if any) requires intelligent interpretation. The phrasing corresponds to the following in WP:NOTCENSORED: "Content which is obviously inappropriate (such as an irrelevant link to a shock site, or clear vandalism) is usually removed quickly." I have never argued that this applies, either. However, the following applies: "We support the principle of least astonishment: content on Wikimedia projects should be presented to readers in such a way as to respect their expectations of what any page or feature might contain." (In a resolution paragraph not specifically directed to Commons.) "[...] some articles may include text, images, or links which some people may find objectionable, when these materials are relevant to the content. Discussion of potentially objectionable content should not focus on its offensiveness but on whether it is appropriate to include in a given article. Beyond that, "being objectionable" is generally not sufficient grounds for removal or inclusion of content" (NOTCENSORED). Hans Adler 19:20, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Every time I read the resolution, I see it with less and less teeth, or applicability here. The urge and suggest, and much of what they urge and suggest either aims directly at the Commons or is largely out of our hands (i.e. image filters). What small part is applicable to us just reaffirms that the primary commitment of the project is to openness and to be free of censorship, and that what we use should be of educational value to the reader. This thing was never a mandate to censor, or a platform from which to delete images; it was a reaffirmation of our basic principles with a caution to take special care in regards to material some may possibly find offensive. Tarc (talk) 15:24, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed remedies [Anthonyhcole]

The community should initiate a request for comment to determine its position with regard to the Foundation resolution on controversial content. The RfC should be widely advertised, at CENT, on watchlists, and elsewhere while it is running. The advertisement should be phrased in such a way as to make the implications of the RfC clear to editors unfamiliar with the resolution. To this end, the wording of the advertisement should be the product of an inclusive discussion. The terms and structure of the request for comment should be the product of an inclusive discussion. The RfC should only be launched once those involved in its drafting are agreed on the meaning of the resolution; this will almost certainly involve requesting clarification from the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Please feel free to add or subtract. This is just my first thoughts on the matter of an RfC. These recent comments by Coren and Jclemens are just one example of the need for clarification. (That page if filled with confusion and contention with regard to the meaning of the resolution.) Personally, I think all of the questions on that page are clearly answered by a careful reading of the resolution, the working group's recommendation, and the Harris report; but it is too much to ask respondents to an RfC to have to pick through those lengthy entrails for clarification, and without such clarification discussion would be dominated by ignorant assumptions on all sides. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:10, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Any member of the WMF may weigh in as individuals if they wish, but there is nothing we need from them collectively to initiate such a discussion. Tarc (talk) 15:26, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

I rather suspect that if you ask the Board for further clarification on what exact material should or should not be on this project, their response will be "la la la can't hear you la la la WMF is not a publisher la la la 47 U.S.C. § 230 la la la still can't hear you...". Franamax (talk) 05:53, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Sure, they'll be reluctant to get more detailed about specific types of image; but I hope, where they see the community is entertaining competing contradictory understandings about whether they were even addressing this project, and other such fundamental meanings of the resolution, they'll want to be understood on that general level. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:38, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposals by User:Thryduulf

Proposed principles [Thryduulf]

Wikipedia is illustrated

1) Wikipedia is illustrated. It is therefore reasonable for readers to assume that any given article will be illustrated if relevant, usable images exist.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposed. Hopefully it should be self-evident. See also #Wikipedia articles should often be better illustrated than comparable printed resources. Thryduulf (talk) 02:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia contains images considered objectionable or offensive by some readers

2) Wikipedia contains images considered objectionable or offensive by some readers, including visual representations of people which may be protected by some cultures.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Taken from the Wikipedia:Content disclaimer. Thryduulf (talk) 02:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Offensiveness is irrelevant

3) Wikipedia is not censored, image choice is based on relevance to the article, including the due and undue weight of choosing to illustrate a particular subject. The (perceived) offensiveness of an image to one or more people or groups is neither a reason for including nor excluding an image.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

This is a fundamentalist position, derived from WP:NOTCENSORED ("Beyond that, 'being objectionable' is generally not sufficient grounds for removal or inclusion of content.") by ignoring the crucial words generally and sufficient. Hans Adler 10:14, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

This follows from the above two principles and also from #Wikipedia is not censored [Resolute] (to save duplication I'm not restating that principle here). See also #Offense isn't enough. Thryduulf (talk) 02:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Religious doctrine is irrelevant

4) Wikipedia will not remove content because of the internal bylaws of some organizations that forbid information about the organization to be displayed online. Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations. Equally, Wikipedia will not add or show such content solely because it is not prohibited from doing so.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

This wording from NOTCENSORED is relatively recent and has only recently come under scrutiny due to widespread misapplication. As it is ambiguous, it should not be repeated here. It would not have stayed in NOTCENSORED for long if it could not be understood as simply reaffirming an obvious fact that occasionally needs pointing out to partisan editors. By explaining the rationale for the first sentence, the second sentence implicitly restricts it. With the second sentence in place, the first sentence cannot be understood as an extreme principle that cannot be justified by the second sentence. But through teleological interpretation and selective ignoring of the second sentence, the first sentence is being misunderstood as saying that concerns (not just internal bylaws) of organisations must not even factor into editorial decisions, and that the second sentence extends this to fraternities and religions. As a matter of basic reading comprehension, this is not a reasonable interpretation. The reason it is popular is that some editors are desperately looking for extremist language in NOTCENSORED and this is the closest they find there.

Some editors interpret this passage even more extremely, and Thryduulf seems to have added the last sentence in an attempt to address this. Although a similar formulation has recently been added elsewhere in NOTCENSORED ("not sufficient grounds for removal or inclusion of content"), this approach is not appropriate as it tends to support the fundamental misunderstanding according to which NOTCENSORED give considerations of offence no status at all in editorial deliberations. What it actually does is giving them no special status. Hans Adler 10:42, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

And now I realised what the heading for this proposed principle is: "Religious doctrine is irrelevant". That is of course false in this extreme form, simply per NPOV. Even for general topics (though the principle almost holds there), but certainly for topics such as religion founder biographies, which are inextricably linked with religion. Religious doctrine is not a trump card, even in religion articles, but it is always part of the deck along with thousands of other cards. Hans Adler 10:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

All but the last sentence taken directly from WP:NOTCENSORED. The final sentence is the logical corollary of it and flows from WP:NPOV and WP:DUE. See also Tarc's proposed finding of fact: #Islamic prohibitions against images. Thryduulf (talk) 02:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

5) The choice of a source to use a particular image does not evidence a rejection of other (types of) images.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Could not agree more. This cuts the legs out from under one of the main anti-depiction arguments, which centers on a presumption as to why sources use or do not use images. Drawing one's own conclusions from sources that do not actually support those conclusions strays into WP:OR/WP:SYNTH territory. Tarc (talk) 15:30, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The wording is poor. I think "a particular image" is meant to be "a particular type of image". After this correction: The key word here is the singular indefinite article a. If a survey shows that the overwhelming majority of illustrated reliable sources don't use a type of image and that any such use that does occur is clustered at the lower end of the reliability spectrum, then this can be evidence of a rejection of this type of image. (It can also be a consequence, e.g., of the more reliable sources generally being of a different type, such as scholarly treatment of very specific details vs. general references.) After the necessary corrections, I don't see how this principle could help in this case. Hans Adler 10:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Sources choose to use and not use images for a huge number of reasons, not all applicable to Wikipedia, and many (possibly most) of which are unknowable. Accordingly, just because a source uses image A does not mean they rejected image B, nor if they did reject it why it was rejected. The title of the principle is a basic scientific principle, the text of the principle follows from it. Thryduulf (talk) 02:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not its sources

6) Wikipedia is an online, free-content, open-source, crowd-sourced, uncensored, general-purpose, secular encyclopaedia based on the principle of the neutral point of view and aimed at a global, English-speaking audience, its sources are not (although some are some of these). It is not a blog, book, magazine, newspaper, journal or scripture, although most of is sources are one or more of these. Consequently it serves a different audience to, and is subject to different technological, cultural and legal restrictions than, its sources. The choice of images to illustrate a Wikipedia article will of necessity therefore be different to the choice of images used to illustrate its sources.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Endorse: this gets to the issue without engaging in specific controversies. Reviews of the image usage in academic journals, popular books, magazine articles, etc. are all interesting, but the forces that drive image selection in our sources don't necessarily correspond to forces that place pressure on us.—Kww(talk) 21:02, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment: this seems dangerously close to declaring that Wikipedia is a primary source in its own right. Is that where you're meaning to go with this? --Ludwigs2 22:34, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

• Ludwigs, I'm not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. AGK [•] 23:39, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
  • The way I understood it, Ludwigs2 meant that Wikipedia would become a secondary (not primary) source in its own right, rather than a tertiary source reflecting secondary sources. --JN466 23:48, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose. Of course there are minor aspects of how image usage in an online encyclopedia will differ from the graphic design of a newspaper. But, mutatis mutandis, where we have interminable disputes about how prominently we should include contentious content, prevalence of such content in the most authoritative reliable sources is the final arbiter, as it is in any content dispute. Speaking about the wider issue, rather than the Muhammad article, if editors want to include fringe-type images in Wikipedia articles that are not used in reliable sources, but are only found in questionable/unreliable/fringe sources, then cutting ourselves off from NPOV / DUE is unlikely to be helpful, because it will open the door to Wikipedia becoming a fringe source itself. NPOV is a pillar of this project applying to all content. It is non-negotiable. --JN466 14:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

• Our purpose for images is to illustrate what we have written. Wikipedia does not follow reliable sources in it's topics' categorization for articles, which is why we have almost 4,000,000 articles and growing. That's a lot of article sections to illustrate. We do not, and absolutely cannot, by ethics (plagiarism) and law, copy the writings of almost all reliable sources into our articles.

Unless, a reliable source has done an academic survey and reached supportable conclusions on the proper way to illustrate Wikipedia topics and article sections, we cannot. As importantly, we cannot borrow, reformulate, and redeploy, "types" categorization of images from other areas of published research and we cannot base them on our own construction of "types". All images are unique. Many of our images are original. Virtually all of our written content is meant to be original. Thus, it is left for editors to reach consensus on images regarding usefulness to what we have written -- that is, in fact and by ethics and law, a new expression of it to the world. Will we be perfect, no. Mistakes are a price of creativity. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:01, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Totally agree (especially with the diacritics disputes in mind) with all but the last sentence. The words "of necessity" are way too strong here. We don't have to illustrate the tree article in a way fundamentally different from how our sources illustrate the topic. And in fact, on the occasions that we do illustrate a topic in an unusual way and this becomes contentious, we should also be able to explain why we are doing so. Hans Adler 11:04, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

The first two sentences are based on Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Introduction, Wikipedia:About, Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. The remainder logically follows from that. Thryduulf (talk) 13:41, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

@Ludwigs2: No. Using our own choice of images makes us no more and no less of a primary source than does using our own choice of words in articles does. Thryduulf (talk) 00:19, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

@Hans Adler: What the final sentence is saying is that we are making different choices, even if we end up using the same image to illustrate the same topic, we are choosing from a different pool of available images with a different set of criteria for the choice and a different set of restrictions on our choice. I agree that it's not optimally worded to convey this meaning, but I'm unable, at least at the moment, to come up with a better phrasing of comparative length and clarity. We should always be able to justify our whole articles - both content and presentation - whether they widely differ from our sources or not. The same standards apply to all articles, regardless of topic. Thryduulf (talk) 13:04, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia policies apply equally to all articles

7) The policies, guidelines, standards and methods that apply to Wikipedia articles apply equally to all Wikipedia articles. Biographical articles about religious figures are held to no higher and no lesser standard than other articles.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Support. Even so, I think this may miss the actual problem. If I understand the counterargument correctly, it is that some articles are effectively owned by outside groups: Muhammad by Muslims, Wahabi by the Wahabi themselves, etc., and this ownership creates a need for greater sensitivity to them in some group of articles.—Kww(talk) 00:38, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

No, that's not the counter-argument. My assertion is that it is oafish and offensive to use decorative depictions of Muhammad at Muhammad. If Muslims owned the article, there'd be no images of Muhammad of any kind on the article, neither decorative nor useful. The community owns the article, and we don't gratuitously offend our readers. My counter-argument is against casual, careless, pointless (I assume good faith on this) use of offensive images; an argument that opposes the deliberate ignorance that you espouse, the only effect of which is the needless disaffection of millions of readers. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:20, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Cannot but agree with this benign proposition. Realise, though, that we curate our content, and do so with possible offense in mind, and we don't gratuitously offend our readers. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:20, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment: I'm tempted to oppose this, not because I disagree with it, but because from other comments you've made your goal with this is to leverage policy fundamentalism - you want to try to prevent the use of rational thought on this issue so that we are forced to obey the literal language of policy. I'm not going to overtly support any principle whose goal is to established ironclad wikilawyering. --Ludwigs2 02:57, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree. External offense can be considered but it can not be the sole reason that an editorial change is made to an article. This consideration is why depictions were moved to the later/lower half of the article many months ago. Tarc (talk) 15:37, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The principle is correct as stated, but to me Thryduulf's rationale appears to suggest that the intended application is as follows: When a biographical article about a religious figure comes under scrutiny for reasons that lie outside Wikipedia, it must not be brought to a higher standard in terms of NPOV than other, comparable articles which are not under scrutiny. If true, I would consider this wikilawyering of the worst kind. Hans Adler 19:28, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Most if not all editors arguing for many depictions have severe misconceptions about certain parts of policy, though not all about the same parts. It's hard to keep track of who is arguing for which misunderstanding. I have now researched this in your case and found that your fundamental misunderstanding is this (all taken from elsewhere on this page):

• "Policy explicitly tells us that offensiveness is not something to be considered [...]."
• "[...] I (and others) justify asserting that being offensive will never be an acceptable reason to remove an image from an article [...]" (Note the word acceptable where NOTCENSORED has sufficient.)
• "Our policy explicitly tells us that offensiveness is irrelevant. You can try and change that policy if you want [...] Until policy is changed though, everybody needs to abide by it."

I withdraw my above statement to the extent that it speaks about your intentions. However, given your rationale for your proposed finding of fact 2) below, I don't even think I am very far off here.

Also, the words "higher standard" have so far come up only in connection with the misunderstanding that I sketched above:

• "This [i.e. not overtly inappropriate, but primarily serving decorative or illustrative roles that are of little consequence to the subject matter of the article] is true of the vast majority of images on Wikipedia. There's no reason to hold these images to a higher standard." (Kww)
• "Whether it [i.e. a higher standard for removing offensive content as opposed to other content] is at work or not, the higher standard (which I believe exists de facto as a result of the dynamics of this site) has been claimed more or less explicitly by some editors: FormerIP [118], Noformation [119]." (Hans Adler)
• "I argued that when the only objection someone raises is religious offense, it shouldn't be taken into account, nor should it provoke any higher standard for image inclusion." (Kww)

Hans Adler 11:50, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

This needs explicitly stating as it is fundamental to many of the arguments put forward by Tarc and Kww et al. It should be a statement of the blindingly obvious but apparently Hans Adler and Ludwigs2 et al don't see it that way. Thryduulf (talk) 22:03, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

@Hans Adler: Eh? Of course every article must be held to the same high standards of neutrality. We strive to have every article be as neutral as it is possible to be, even if it isn't currently (Wikipedia isn't finished). All external scrutiny means is that we should presently focus on bringing that article up to standard if it currently isn't. It doesn't mean a higher standard applies, because that implies that bias is acceptable in other articles - which I hope everyone can agree it isn't. Outside interests do not get to dictate to us the content of our articles, whether their desire to do so is driven by religion, marketing, politics or whatever. I really don't understand how this can be regarded as Wikilawyering? Thryduulf (talk) 08:37, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed findings of fact (Thryduulf)

Core of the dispute

1) Some groups of people regard some or all depictions of Muhammad as offensive. The core of the dispute is about whether, and if so to what degree, this is relevant to editorial decisions regarding images used to illustrate Muhammad and related articles.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

• Agree. There is a lot of fine-sounding stuff talked about NPOV and other issues, but we all know we would not be here if the images were not found objectionable by some and had not generated a great number of drive-by complaints from (in the great majority) anon ISPs (whose expressed viewpoint is not shared by any of the parties or commenters in this case so far). This is the elephant in the room. Johnbod (talk) 21:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

• The actual root of the problem is the present interpretation of WP:NOTCENSORED. That policy is read as ruling out any consideration of offensiveness, particularly religious offense, in our curatorial decision-making. This conflicts with every-day practice by almost all editors on all articles. Healthy humans are always sensitive to any possible offense their utterances may cause, and never cause needless offense in their dealings with others.

Presently, this ignorant, antisocial, destructive interpretation, which is a cancer on the project, is loudly and aggressively defended by bunch of radical "right to offend" free speech activists, who assert that Wikipedia is unique among public service projects in that it is OK for us to gratuitously offend our public.

Hans has begun an analysis of the history of WP:NOTCENSORED. I see it began life as a benign statement that we are not "G Rated". I.e., Vulva will contain images of vulvas, Penis will contain pictures of penises. How did it evolve into a diktat that no one may consider the offensive nature of any content, especially religious content?

It is probably time for a community-wide discussion on the question of whether we should take offensiveness into account, how we should take it into account, and what offense we should attend to and what we should ignore. All of these points are the essence of the carefully considered guidance contained in the Foundation May 2011 resolution. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think my editorial concerns, or Jayen's NPOV concerns have much to do with offensiveness at all and rather have to do with attracting sensible editorial balance. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:24, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there is a single core. This is one of the key disagreements underlying the conflict. Another one is the automatic assumption that everything that is said in support of removing the images is tainted by a supposed association with evil intruders attacking the project (especially Tarc keeps making this pretty explicit). To other key points appear to be derived from these two, but had so much weight in the dispute that they must also be mentioned: The attempt to keep all arguments against image inclusion out of the discussion on procedural grounds and the attempt to shut down discussion completely to protect the status quo. Hans Adler 11:13, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

It is slightly more complicated than this, but this I think is the fundamental point. Thryduulf (talk) 23:30, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles do not have n images

2) The number of images on Wikipedia articles is determined based on the length of the article, the subjects it covers and the number and nature of the images available. This determination is based on a consensus of editors evaluating the available images, not by choosing the most appropriate n images (regardless of the value of n).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Agree. Nor do we normally intend to give a balanced survey of all the different images that have existed, as some have implied; that is for articles on iconography. We just choose the images that will best illustrate the subject. Johnbod (talk) 22:26, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Solving this editorially has always seemed the most sensible way forward. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

This is only one side of the medal. The number and type of images on an article is also subject to NPOV and in particular to WP:WEIGHT. If almost exclusively images of WASP people were available for the article Race and ethnicity in the United States and these were generally of a higher quality than even the best images showing other groups, then we would still try to get a reasonable mixture. If that were impossible due to lack of usable images representing certain groups, we might decide to simply reduce the overall number of images of people to the point where we could get a reasonable balance with what we have. Or, given that images of people (while certainly relevant) are in no way vital and do not really serve an encyclopedic purpose on the article, we might decide not to use any at all. Which, incidentally, is what the article is doing right now. Though presumably for different reasons. Hans Adler 11:28, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

This is a factual observation based on every article and appears contrary to how some people here want to treat Muhammed. The only exception is some list articles that set a maximum of 1 image per entry, but we're not dealing with a list article here, so that's not relevant. Thryduulf (talk) 21:52, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposals by Former IP

Proposed principles

Accusations of social prejudice

1) Where accusations or insinuations against editors of racism, cultural phobia or other forms of social prejudice can be substantiated, appropriate community or administrative action should be sought. In all other cases, such accusations constitute a serious breach of WP:NPA, particularly if they are made repeatedly against multiple editors. Moreover, they are likely constitute poisoning the well and lead to a loss of good faith amongst editors.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I believe this to be a root cause of some of the ill will between editors involved in the discussions. --FormerIP (talk) 22:24, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

A resounding yes to this. I addressed this matter here today and in response to this one last week. Tarc (talk) 00:03, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

hmmm… does this cover making accusations of being an advocate, of being an apologist, or of having a cultural or social bias towards a religion? If it covers those, this seems like a purely vanilla call for greater attention to wp:CIV, which I can endorse wholeheartedly. if it excludes those, then it appears to be a Machiavellian scheme to ensure that only your side can use insulting language. can you clarify, please? --Ludwigs2 03:44, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

A similar principle should of course apply to any accusation made in breach of NPA. I have picked out accusations of racism, far-right extremism etc because I have observed them. If you think there is a parallel case of other accusations being made against editors, then you should submit that to the evidence page. I do not think, though, that merely observing that an editor has a particular POV amounts to a personal attack. On the other hand, suggesting that an editor is racist, or holds other forms of unsavoury political view which they have not expressed, amounts to talkpage slander. --FormerIP (talk) 13:03, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

"Talk page slander" is not currently a matter of policy. We have one distinction: no personal attacks. I need to point out, however, that actual racism - should it exist - is a far more serious problem mere advocacy (which is easily handled by NPOV). Saying that editors cannot raise a concern about the more serious problem but are free to slander each other left and right with the less serious accusation seems counter-productive.

But more to the point, personal attacks involve assertions about the person; comments about observable behavior are not generally considered such. For example, calling someone a vandal flat out is likely a personal attack, while pointing out that they have been vandalizing pages (by blanking them, adding stupid comments, etc.) is never considered a personal attack. In the first case one is making a comment about the person (i.e. what kind of person s/he is), in the second one is making a comment about the person's behavior (what the person does). Several editors on the Muhammed article indulge in comments or behaviors that attack the person of other editors or of Muslims more generally put: accusing them of being advocates, apologists, PBUH fanatics, of having religious agendas, and worse, often simply as a matter of speculation with no credible evidence behind it. Those are personal attacks. On the other hand, I have tried to carefully point to behavior that looks problematic: e.g. statements and actions that appear to demean, revile, or suppress Muslim editors and/or Muslim perspectives. These may not prove to be true (that is something the Arbs will decide for themselves), but they are perfectly valid behavioral observations that need to be raised and considered. In fact, I sincerely hope that they prove not to be true, but we would all be remiss if the issue were not raised and considered.

I understand that there are editors who will perceive these considerations as personal attacks (just as I've heard people who were engaged in overt vandalism try to use NPA to defend themselves from what they perceive as personal attacks, just before they got blocked). I also recognize that some editors may not understand how troubling some of their statements and actions might look to objective editors (much less to the Muslim community). That is unfortunate, but irrelevant. --Ludwigs2 16:44, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposals by Mathsci

Proposed principles [Mathsci]

Purpose of Wikipedia

1) The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content online encyclopedia. This is best achieved in an atmosphere of collegiality, camaraderie, and mutual respect among contributors.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Copied from Abortion case as equally applicable here. Mathsci (talk) 06:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Elonka already did that one above. But agree. Johnbod (talk) 06:19, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Support. --Elonka 19:33, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Consensus

2) Wikipedia works by building consensus through the use of polite discussion—involving the wider community, if necessary—and dispute resolution. Editors are each responsible for helping the debate move to better approaches by discussing their differences rationally. This applies to any and all pages on Wikipedia, from articles to templates to project space.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Copied with slight editing from Abortion case as equally applicable here. Mathsci (talk) 06:20, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Conduct and decorum

3) Wikipedia editors are expected to behave reasonably, calmly, and courteously in their interactions with other editors; to approach even difficult situations in a dignified fashion and with a constructive and collaborative outlook; and to avoid acting in a manner that brings the project into disrepute. Unseemly conduct, such as personal attacks, incivility, assumptions of bad faith, harassment, disruptive point-making, and gaming the system, is prohibited.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Copied from Abortion case as equally applicable here. Mathsci (talk) 06:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Fair criticism and personal attacks

4) Wikipedia is a reference work, not a battlefield. Each and every user is expected to interact with others civilly, calmly, and in a spirit of cooperation. Open discussion is encouraged in every area of the encyclopedia, as it is only by discussion that cooperation is possible. However, certain types of discourse – in particular, personal attacks – are not only discouraged but forbidden because they create a toxic atmosphere and thwart the building of consensus. For this reason, editors are expected to comment on the edits, not on the editor. Editors with concerns about other editors should use the community's dispute resolution processes calmly and civilly to resolve their differences rather than repeatedly engaging in strident personalised criticism in multiple forums. Editors who are unable to resolve their differences should seek to minimize the extent of any unnecessary interactions between them and, in extreme cases, may be directed to do so.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Copied from Abortion case as equally applicable here. Mathsci (talk) 06:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Talk pages

5) The purpose of a Wikipedia talk page is to provide space for editors to discuss changes to its associated article or project page. Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject, nor for proposing unpublished solutions, forwarding original ideas, redefining terms, and so forth (see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought). Although more general discussion may be permissible in some circumstances, it will not be tolerated when it becomes tendentious, overwhelms the page, impedes productive work, or is otherwise disruptive.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Copied from Abortion case as equally applicable here. Mathsci (talk) 06:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Policy pages

6) Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are meant to codify existing best practices. While edits to policy pages are often prompted by specific editing experiences, it is inappropriate to alter policy pages to further one's position in a specific dispute.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Copied from Abortion case as equally applicable here. (The policy page was WP:NOT.) Mathsci (talk) 06:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Repeated discussion

7) Subsequent attempts at discussion of a topic previously settled by community discussion are often initiated by those not initially achieving their desired outcome. Those satisfied with the previous outcome are less likely to re-engage in subsequent discussions, creating an inappropriate bias toward change in subsequent discussions of the topic.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Copied from Abortion case as equally applicable here. Mathsci (talk) 06:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps a rephrase or addition to point out that editors that continue to defend the original consensus risk being perceived as tendentious as the argument continues without end.—Kww(talk) 14:08, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, consensus is always subject to change, and a local consensus by a limited number of users is not really a consensus in the first place. You simply want to make it so that anything you can push through sticks, no matter how many other editors contest it, or what reasons they may provide. Effectively you're declaring martial law, and handing yourselves guns. wunnerful. --Ludwigs2 20:16, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree. Yes, consensus changing, yada yada. But just as repeat AfDs of the same article can begin to be seen as tendentious over time, the same can be said about forcing the same issue to be discussed over and over and over. Its kindof like when someone invokes WP:IAR or declares immunity from WP:3RR to protect a BLP article; yes you have the rules on your side to do so, but you better be damned sure you're in the right, or be prepared for the boomerang. Tarc (talk) 15:43, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Role of the Arbitration Committee

8) It is not the role of the Arbitration Committee to settle good-faith content disputes among editors.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Copied from Abortion case as equally applicable here. Mathsci (talk) 06:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed findings of fact [Mathsci]

Discussion of Muhammad images

1) In previous discussions, a consensus had been formed about the use of images in the article Muhammad. That discussion was reopened in 2011 by various editors including some of those listed as parties in this case. Discussions took place in various venues, including Talk:Muhammad/Images and User talk:Jimbo Wales. With the use of images in mind, some editors attempted to change wikipedia policy on WP:NOT. No stable agreements resulted from these discussions which were repetitious and at times involved unduly personalized interactions between editors. Despite several well-meaning attempts, sometimes at cross purposes, no scheme has so far been found for resolving this dispute and changing the pattern of discussions, which have continued on these arbcom case pages.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Thank you, Mathsci - I like this summary. However, it does not discuss the positions (and arguments) of each faction - which I think is necessary. Excluding that, how else does this differ from the summary I wrote? If this is simply less verbose then I am happy to adopt it, but I wonder if there are specific differences between this proposal and mine. AGK [•] 16:58, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

If there are any inaccuracies/imprecisions, I will correct them. Mathsci (talk) 09:02, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I think a better summary than the AGK proposed equivalent, but some "stable agreements" did result on aspects of the issue. The general impression that many not involved with the page for very long have that the page is/was completely deadlocked is wrong and should be rebutted. It's a slow-moving glacier but it does move, though you have to watch for a while to see it. Johnbod (talk) 15:11, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

You have been following or involved in these discussions for a long period, so probably have a better idea of this. Very recently there did appear to have been some kind of consensus following the "compromise" proposal of Resolute et al, but that was not stable as the episode in Anthonyhcole's evidence shows. Would it be true to say that, from the evidence, over a long period there was an established consensus about various points which a handful of editors have tried to break? Mathsci (talk) 16:49, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Such issues as the lack of a facial depiction in the infobox, no images on first presentation screen, and an overall reduction in the number of facial images have been fairly stable for a long time. It met the usual working definition of consensus: not everyone was happy, but most were happy enough that edit-warring didn't break out. The issue would be how one categorizes the drive-by IP editors. Obviously they were not satisfied, and the idea of simply discounting their opinion is what upsets some editors.—Kww(talk) 17:02, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Not entirely I think. I have summarized (very brutally) the discussions archive by archive for the last 18 months below, & will add comments there. Johnbod (talk) 22:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Kww, I was under the impression that this dispute did not concern the edits of anonymous contributors, because Muhammad has been semi-protected since July 2009. AGK [•] 17:07, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

But the images talk page has not, and that is what the case revolves around. The article itself gets relatively few changes re images. Johnbod (talk) 17:10, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I think Kww is thinking of the argument, if I recall correctly by primarily Ludwigs, that our editorial consensus needs to take account of the religious objections of the IP's. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:17, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Which, in so far as we have a consensus, it does, in terms of placement, nothing in the infobox, keeping out "hostile" images etc, but on a basis of tact not censorship. Johnbod (talk) 17:26, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

The above editors have it pretty much right in my view, AGK: the page itself is relatively stable, but the topic of imagery has provoked so many comments that it received a specific subpage so that discussion of other issues could proceed without disruption.—Kww(talk) 17:31, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Good summary. I also, am under the impression that there was consensus to remove an image that was deemed, on its face, needlessly detracting from the subject matter, from the western section (Muhammad in Hell). Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:24, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there has been a blatently hostile image on the article for many years, or not for any length of time (see Eraserhead's table in evidence). The last proposal to add one on was by Anthonyhcole here, who also wanted to add an extra-offensive and vanishingly rare life-size statue. Johnbod (talk) 17:36, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the benefit of your experience. I think this points to an issue the arbitrators (and editors) need to be cognizant of: different bases for objection: 1) That an image, on its face, to any reasonable viewer, detracts from its subject; or 2) That an image must not exist, at all, no matter how it looks, to any reasonable viewer. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:02, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

@ AGK. Thanks for your reply. The summary is just my reading of the situation. It deliberately avoids discussing content in any way at all. You raised the question of "factions". Certainly various participants or parties here have mentioned factions. One conduct problem here might be that some editors persistently insist on a black and white division between perceived opponents during discussions. That may indicate a WP:BATTLEFIELD approach to editing, which is not helpful in discussions. Mathsci (talk) 17:48, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

@Mathsci, a minor point perhaps, but the discussion at WT:NOT did lead to one lasting (minor) change: [120]. Also, while I can't speak for other contributors, my participation in the WT:NOT discussions was not particularly motivated by the Muhammad dispute. It was as much or more about (1) the time it took to fix the pregnancy lead image, (2) illustrations like the fisting, autofellatio, pearl necklace and hogtie bondage photographs – areas where Wikipedia just seems to go off the deep end, using the image curation standards of 4chan, rather than those of any reliable source I am familiar with, (3) incompetently executed sexual drawings (I am tempted to call them doodles) of the sort we have in the creampie and frot articles (and including three or four images in the sexual position article), which in my experience seem to stay in Wikipedia mainspace (rather than behind a Commons link) because of people shouting NOTCENSORED – as though an image's sexual content somehow absolved it from the requirement to comply with the artistic minimum standards that we readily apply elsewhere. As Johnbod says, it's also not quite true that the article's images have undergone few changes in recent months. Off the top of my head, we recently changed one of the Quran images, and I've added images showing the Kaaba, the Mosque of the two Qiblas, the Dome of the Rock, a Hilya, a Quran page, the Muhammad calligraphy presently in the infobox, and the phrase PBUH over the past couple of months; the Black Stone image was deleted and then restored. Still, what you say is in the ball park to the extent that it pertains to the core dispute here. --JN466 20:06, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Well said. --Ludwigs2 20:19, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

It does seem like the non-depiction images in Muhammad have seen sensible changes. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:49, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

And aspects of the depictions too. Johnbod (talk) 22:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

In answer to Mathsci's question to me here: "Would it be true to say that, from the evidence, over a long period there was an established consensus about various points which a handful of editors have tried to break?", I have summarized (very brutally) the discussions archive by archive for the last 18 months. What this really brought home to me was how much the most active editors changed in late October/early November 2011, when the level of discussion got really high. There was a real "changing of the guard". But there were always editors trying to reduce/remove the figurative depictions, for most of this time De Causa and Wiki55. I wonder if they would have said they wanted to keep any at all - I rather think not. Here are the summaries (note that, as mentioned on the page itself, the sequencing is rather odd):

• • • Archive 18, Aug-Nov 2010. One long "basic issues" section. Regulars are: Amatulić, Robertmfromli, Alwiki (=Wiki55?), Artic Gnome, dab, some Kww (the only party here)
    • Archive 19, Dec 2010-March 2011. Long basic issues section begins in March. Regulars are: Amatulić, Wiki55, De Causa, Good day, Chowbok, Ludwigs2 appears in March
    • Archive 20, March-April 2011. Very long basic issues stuff, but includes image by image poll where removal of 1 image is agreed & rest kept; 7 voters on most sections. Regulars are: De Causa, Ludwigs2, Amatulić, Wiki55, Chowbok, Johnbod appears
    • Archive 22, August-Oct 2011. Long debate after WMF resolution. Regulars are: De Causa, Ludwigs2, Amatulić, Wiki55, Johnbod, Robertmfromli, & from late Oct: Resolute, Hans Adler, Anthonyhcole
    • Archive 23, a) May-July 2011 - pretty short b) 27 Oct to 3 Nov - very long. Regulars are: Ludwigs2, De Causa, Robertmfromli, Johnbod, Anthonyhcole, Resolute, Hans Adler, Tarc
    • Archive 24 Nov-Dec 2011. Lots of debate. Cast of Arbcom case assembled

Johnbod (talk) 22:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Battleground approach to discussion of images

2) The discussion of images in the article Muhammad involves many finely nuanced and multifaceted aspects—cultural, historical, religious and artistic. The view that it involves two different and opposing camps is divisive. Persistent reference in discussion to such claimed divisions, no matter what the justification, indicates a battleground approach to editing and has only obstructed progress in discussions.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Mathsci (talk) 12:49, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. For example both Eraserhead1 and Anthonyhcole have suggested adding figurative images of Muhammad in ways that I oppose as being needlessly provocative, despite our general positions being the other way round. Johnbod (talk) 13:15, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Per Johnbod. I can't be lumped into the "image removers" group because my preferred article has (coincidentally - I'm not wedded to any arbitrary ideal number) the same number of figurative depictions as the present article, and have no problem including images that John rejects based on their offensiveness. My emphasis is on educational value: removing images of weak value if they're offensive; retaining images that are offensive, provided their educational value and relevance is obvious and significant. And I oppose Erasorhead's notion that a figurative depiction would be appropriate for the lead. There are many more than two camps here.

On this point, I'm in favour of the arbs taking as long as they need to think this issue over before presenting us with their proposals. It's complex and nuanced and, as Kww pointed out recently, the participants here are still struggling with grasping each other's position, still refining the language with which we express our own. I'm in no hurry, and I believe we're all benefiting from this discussion. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:56, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Strongly agree with the spirit and good sense of this. This "sides" terminology is not only divisive, it is in many important ways, factually incorrect. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:58, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree to some extent. However, at the point when I joined the discussion, the polarisation already existed to such an extent that it would have been ridiculous to ignore it. One of the polarised parties was fighting with deeply unfair methods, and that needed (and needs) pointing out. Hans Adler 11:35, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agree. Although there might appear on the surface to be two viewpoints (removing images vs keeping images) it isn't as simple as this (e.g. it completely ignores placement of images) and there are many different reasons for people wishing to keep or change the status quo - e.g. offence, censorship, neutrality, prevalence in sources, comparison with other Wikipedia articles, "social justice", etc. This needs to be resolved by constructive discussion about the merits or otherwise of the individual pictures themselves and their relation to the whole article and alternatives available. Thryduulf (talk) 13:01, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposals by Hans Adler

Proposed principles [Hans Adler]

Good-faith consensus finding and status quo

1) As a wiki, Wikipedia is built on the fundamental principle of consensus. All editors are required to contribute to the consensus-finding process in good faith. The search for a consensus may occasionally get unproductive or disruptive and have to be postponed. It is not acceptable to rely on this mechanism and block reasonable productive discussion in order to defend a status quo.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Seems mostly obvious and uncontroversial. The only point of contention that I am anticipating here is applicability. For this, see my evidence on Tarc, and see how Resolute's compromise proposal was disrupted. Hans Adler 18:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Wikipedia's reaction to attempted censorship

2) Attempts from outside Wikipedia to censor our content lead to increased scrutiny. In such cases, it is vital that the community focuses on getting the articles right and makes sure that reactance do not get into the way of NPOV and other policies. This applies equally on the height of the public attention and long after the attempted censorship.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

See my response to AGK at #Increase in number of images since the cartoon controversy. It is hard to tell how many editors are thinking in the reactance logic, but there are good reasons to suspect many of them are, and some of the observed behaviour is so far out of bounds that I think it only makes sense in this context. Based on this, I think this principle or something similar might be relevant to the case, and even if it's not used for any specific findings or remedies it's still worth pointing out. Hans Adler 18:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It seems unlikely that any editors here are unaware of the Jyllands-Posten affair, the Muslim petition linked to in the New York Times article (comprising close to half a million signatures) for Wikipedia to remove the images from this and the Depictions article, or the boxes at the top of the Muhammad talk pages, which refer to past protests against the images that led to the article's indefinite semi-protection. And while we have plenty of Christian and Jewish editors working on articles on Christianity and Judaism, we lack a strong Muslim editor base. --JN466 19:05, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

My understanding of the views of everybody else who has commented in this regard is that the events around the time of the cartoon controversy are not relevant to their views. Thryduulf (talk) 18:30, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

@Jayen: Correlation does not imply causation. Unless you have evidence to the contrary, the state of one article that was involved in a controversy the best part of 4 years ago does not necessarily imply anything about why we may have an under-representation of Muslim editors, particularly as depictions of Muhammad are not offensive to all Muslims (see discussion about this, I think it's on talk). Anyway, even though everyone here is almost certainly aware of the previous dispute, this is a separate one. Thryduulf (talk) 19:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed findings of fact [Hans Adler]

Religious offence not a priori ruled out as an argument

1) According to WP:NOTCENSORED, religiously motivated feelings of offence are generally not sufficient grounds for removal. This does not rule out a careful weighting of offence (along with other reasons for removal) against reasons for inclusion. A number of editors interpret WP:NOTCENSORED as requiring that such feelings must not be given any weight at all in editorial deliberations. This interpretation is incorrect.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

This interpretation is objectively incorrect per the wording of WP:NOTCENSORED. Evidence that some editors still interpret it that way:

• Coren: "Offensiveness should not be a factor in deciding whether or which images to use [=heading] The substantive matter revolves around whether some images may be "offensive" and should be excluded on that ground. This is exactly what WP:CENSORED is meant to prevent, despite repeated claims that it is being misused when used for its primary function." (Note how the heading is much more extreme than the body of this proposed 'evidence'.)
• Thryduulf: Proposed principle 3).
• Kww: "The nature of the controversy is one which is irrelevant to the project, and must be ignored while making all policy and editorial decisions." (on workshop page)
  "NOTCENSORED simply eliminates a kind of argument for removal [...]" (ditto)
• Noformation: "Wikipedia is a secular encyclopedia and we are not censored. Policy specifically prohibits considering religious beliefs when deciding content." [121] (probably not formally in evidence). Hans Adler 18:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: Good point. I take it you are referring to WP:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 41#RfC on NOTCENSORED and some related discussions in the preceding talk page archive. That RfC had a number of serious problems:

• It was opened by Ludwigs2. That alone is sufficient to make almost any proposal fail. I wish he didn't start RfCs at all as it is simply counterproductive.
• Extremely poor choice of examples of supposedly incidental material. If you declare a nude photograph of a pregnant woman to be incidental on Pregnancy and the goatse image to be incidental on Goatse.cx, then obviously the responses will reflect the implied, unreasonably inclusive, definition of "incidental".
• A lot of editors opposed the proposal based on the rationale that there should be no incidental material in the first place so it was moot. They were apparently not aware of the practical problem that has arisen in this context.
• Some editors (many of whom are involved in this dispute) opposed based on a misreading of NOTCENSORED that has also been argued for on these pages. However, this misreading is extreme and in no way describes standard practice. So long as it has not been enacted as correct by an actual consensus, it is no more than a misunderstanding and real arguments related to Wikipedia's purpose and procedures are required.
• Some opposing editors confined themselves to the insinuation that the RfC was an attempt to game the Muhammad images discussion.

This list is not exhaustive. For example, I checked the first editor whose name I did not recognise and found borderline suspicious edit history. (3 months of minimal editing in 2007, then no activity whatsoever until the editor returned early 2011 and immediately started full participation including writing a consolidated ACE guide, followed by no activity since Christmas.) Hans Adler 20:59, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

The mega discussions at WT:NOT did not support giving weight to offence, nor has their been a consensus in any of the image discussions that offence is relevant in this specific instance. Thryduulf (talk) 18:33, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Muhammad images in a state of equilibrium, not consensus

2) With respect to figural depictions of the subject, the Muhammad article is in a state of equilibrium between those who would prefer more or more prominent figurative depictions and those who would prefer less. A number of editors have claimed that this equilibrium represents a consensus. That is incorrect. There is no consensus on the number, type and placement of figural depictions.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

We have clear evidence that many want more figurative images, want them in the infobox, or even want the painting of Muhammad in hell. We also have clear evidence that many want no figurative images at all or want them confined to the section discussing such depictions. (We also have evidence that the equilibrium moved slightly in favour of such images as a reaction to attacks from outside Wikipedia.) Consensus is when most editors feel that a situation is reasonable and that it would not be worth to make a fuss just to get it absolutely right. Mere equilibrium without consensus is when most editors feel that a situation is wrong and absolutely needs changing, but know that they can't do anything about it because others would pull vigorously in the opposite direction.

Evidence of the incorrect claim:

• Tarc: "The article as it is right now is a product of consensus, as Resolute has noted below." [122]
• ??? (I think there is more evidence of this. I will add it here if and when I find it.)

Hans Adler 18:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Er, what? Who has been arguing for more depictions to be added? I recall no such person or discussion, and IIRC the "in hell" image has been derided by all parties involved in this case as inappropriate. Tarc (talk) 20:24, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Weakly supported claims of usefulness

3) Many editors have made blanket claims that the figural depictions of Muhammad are encyclopedic or educationally useful in the article. When they were pressed on the matter, the only arguments offered were (a) based on the general relevance inherent in every naturalistic but imprecise depiction, and/or (b) based on the cultural role of these pictures in the reception of the subject.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

• Johnbod: "I think the pictures are certainly useful and, as the selection has evolved, well-balanced." (Response to AGK; does not give any reasons, which were not asked for explicitly, but goes into great detail otherwise)
• Resolute: "In my view, the depictions most certainly aids the article. And the truth is, this should be so self-evident that such a question should not even need to be asked. They are direct representations of the article subject, in most cases showing the subject during a notable moment of their life. Their very nature is educational: they reveal how Muhhamad has been viewed throughout history, even by Muslims. The very fact that we have 100 Islamic depictions and nearly 150 total should make it self-evident people throughout history have found value in such imagery. I believe we do too, exactly as we do on any other article subject." (Response to AGK)
• Alanscottwalker: "The images are educationally useful. If they need to be further contextualized by the text, to avoid unwanted implication, than that can be readily done. The Muhammad article is the biography of a man -- this is not an article whose purpose is art, art history, religion, or architecture. It is apparent by looking at them that the images in the article bear some kind of naturalistic representation of the man, Muhammad, although they are certainly not photographic. (Indeed, it is the fact that they do so, that gives rise to any religious objection that they could be idolotrous). They are images of a man, that all have said is the man Muhammad, doing things that are important in the story of his life." (Response to AGK 1; continues with cultural observations)
• Alanscottwalker: "An important reason for the policy is because we are in the project to make knowledge as concrete and accessible as we can to a pluralistic audience. Thus, in the biography of a man, we at a minimum say: this is a man's life, this is what is important about him, these are illustrations of that. All topically related images used in an article (thus having consensus) are contextualized and explained in words, not misrepresented, and not deleted. "
• FormerIP: "Including images for the sake of including images is good enough." (Response to AGK 3)
• Tivanir2: "I find all the pictures useful; both caligraphy and images since they show different things about muhammad. Calligraphy gives us information about how he is currently portrayed in the Islamic world, while the images give us an idea of how his followers perceived him to be. Both give us insights into what he has molded (i.e. legacy) the religious followers into today." (Response to AGK)
• ASCIIn2Bme: "As I said in my reply to your first question: the art-type depictions included are reception-type images: they illustrate how Muhammad was depicted in various cultures across time. There was a time and place where anthropomorphic, non-veiled depictions of him were common. And it was an important Islamic culture." (Response to AGK 3)

Hans Adler 18:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

PS: It's instructive to also look at the following.

Responses to Roger Davies' question at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Muhammad images
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Roger Davies asked: "what is the rationale for the assertion that the inclusion of images of Mohammed is per se educational?" The following are all responses he got at the time. Mathsci: "There are copious academic WP:RS discussing Islamic religious art from 1300 onwards, so there seems to be no question about educational relevance in an appropriate context." (b) Hans Adler: "I do not assert this, so I must play devil's advocate to answer this question. Some readers are not used to long texts and find their thoughts wandering off when they try to read them. They must be kept entertained with pictures, and an artist's impression of what the text is about is better for helping them to focus on the text than a relevant landscape or building photograph, which in turn is better than an abstract picture such as a calligraphy." [(a) as devil's advocate] Tarc: "Well, how can they not be? This is a visual media that should made use of images whenever possible. The only difference between this and other articles on historical figures is that adherent's of this one's beliefs do not like images. We can't setup a special class just for Muhammad, a standard that other articles are not held to." (a) Alanscottwalker: "I wouldn't put it that way. All images convey information, but it's a matter of context and what we say about them, as to whether they belong (current image policy about multi-media presentation speaks of preferring images that look like what they are suppose to represent, whether or not authentic)." (evasive answer) Amatulić: "As in any biography of an historical figure, including examples of the variety of ways artists in different cultures and times have depicted the subject serves an educational purpose, imparting information, relevant to the topic, that cannot be easily imparted through prose. Illustrations of prose also serve an educational function by enhancing the reader's interest in the prose. Educational content also includes illustrations of significant events, in addition to illustrations of the biography subject." (a), (b) Ludwigs2: "I have been trying to get the advocates to provide a rationale since the beginning, without much success. The best rationale I can see from this discussion is that there is some art-historical significance: the images are notable because of their use in rare but significant historical contexts. In fact back at the end of October I offered a compromise position in which we would create a section in the article to discuss the art history of such images (that would have worked for me because it provided a clear rationale for inclusion of these images). The compromise was shot down by editors objecting to the idea that the images should be limited to a section discussing them." [(b) as devil's advocate] Resolute: "Given consensus has held for years that the images belong, the burden of proof lies with those who wish to make the change. Consequently, the proper question is: "What is the rationale for the assertion that the inclusion of images of Muhammad is per se not educational?" So far, the only response to that question has been "because I say so". More to the point, why should an image of Muhhammad be viewed any different than an image of Richard I of England, Ivan the Terrible or Cleopatra? You can't ask that question of one article without asking the same of the others. Hans touches on one argument: such images reinforce moments of the subject's life while also helping to break apart the text, which is a benefit to the reader. They visibly show how the subject has been viewed throughout history. In the case of Muhammad specifically, the fact that the method of depiction has changed over time is itself educational." (evasive answer), (a), (b) Jayen466: "Images of Muhammad are unquestionably educational in Depictions of Muhammad. Inclusion of a small number of Muslim images of Muhammad in Muhammad, in the correct context, likewise seems educational, to make the reader aware that there has been a pictorial tradition in Islam – albeit very much a minority tradition – and to illustrate salient aspects of that tradition. This may well be astonishing to some Muslims who are entirely unaware that there have been Islamic depictions of Muhammad, but even Muslims like Omid Safi are writing about these images. On the other hand, inclusion of a large number of such images, to the exclusion of mainstream Islamic imagery, is positively misleading, because it misrepresents the primary focus of Muhammad’s artistic reception, which has always been the word. Right now, we don’t have a single image of a Quranic inscription in the article. We don’t even have a photograph of the Kaaba, despite its outstanding importance in Muhammad’s personal life and the religion he founded. (For reference, the Online Britannica article on Muhammad is illustrated with four images: one of the Kaaba, two of the Prophet’s mosque, and one of the Shahada.) Imagine if the words of Shakespeare had had such an impact that there was no town and city in the English-speaking world that did not have artistic calligraphic renderings of his name and quotes like 'To be or not to be ...' or 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day ...' displayed in homes and inscribed on public buildings, to the extent that such renderings had become a notable art form in their own right among a fifth of the world's population, and were widely used to illustrate Shakespeare biographies. Then imagine editors arguing on the Shakespeare talk page that images of such inscriptions, or a photograph of the Globe Theatre, should have no place in the article on Shakespeare, because they 'don't show what Shakespeare looked like'." [(b) as devil's advocate] FormerIP: "Images depicting historical/mythical events and showing the artistic styles, content choices etc of cultures connected to the topic of the article are always educational. I would also suggest that Wikipedia generally has a low bar in terms of how far we require images we include to be "educational". In the context of the article, I'm not sure what is meant by the "per se" part of the question. For practical purposes we have to select particular images which do have educational value. Others which do not (for example, a child's drawing), we leave aside." (a)

Note the evasive answers, and note how most of those who did try to give an answer chose between (a) and (b). I believe the reason is as follows:

(a) is an extremely weak argument that doesn't really hold water when compared to offending a major world religion that does have quite a few English speakers.

(b) is much stronger, but once you acknowledge that we include the images to inform about cultural matters, you cannot deny that we must inform about these cultural matters accurately. This clearly leads to a reduction of the number of images. Consequently, quite a few editors try to deny that religion and culture have any relevance to the article in the first place and stick to (a). Hans Adler 20:01, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

PS as it may not be clear to someone who has not experienced this before: The problem was that the (a) and (b) groups of image supporters did not argue with each other about this, as one would normally expect in a good-faith consensus-finding discussion. Rather, they joined forces to form a two-headed hydra. It was useless to address argument (a), because whenever an editor supporting it got into the defensive, another editor would appear arguing for (b) instead. And vice versa. Hans Adler 21:12, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: Thanks for your comment. Would you like to add something new to my short list of explanations of usefulness, or could you simply not think of anything else, either? (I have tried repeatedly, over months, but I can't.) Hans Adler 20:01, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

PS: I have changed "unsupported" to "weakly supported" in the heading. Sorry for the original tendentious language. Hans Adler 20:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

(Comments by other parties start here)

I have adressed the general issue of the usefulness of illustration as illustration at several other points on the original page and here, but have not given a full-blown presentation on why, since since the earliest surviving European manuscripts that we have from nearly 2,000 years ago, up to Wikipedia, people have consistently found it useful to illustrate books with images showing the narrative scenes that are described in a particular text (which of course is exactly why the images we are talking about were created - to illustrate biographies of Muhammad). This is partly because the point seems so basic that you either get it or you don't, and also because it appears to lie within the area of the issue that will be reserved for the RFC (where I am very confident the vast majority of editors will get it). I must say I missed Roger Davies' question, which probably would have been the place to put that. I have rather a lot to say on aspects of the question of the suitability of these particular images which have not had much discussion, but it will have to wait for the RFC I suppose. It is difficult to communicate with people who only think scientific diagrams and the like are actually useful, as opposed to decorative, trivial, pretty, having "the general relevance inherent in every naturalistic but imprecise depiction", as Hans so elegantly puts it etc etc. Anyone who is used to looking at our biographies of medieval political leaders (like Muhammad) will at least be very used to seeing such images in quantity; the point Hans makes is not at all particular to the Muhammad biography. Johnbod (talk) 02:20, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

When one finds oneself arguing contrary to almost everybody else it is time to step back and evaluate one's position, not accuse the world of being wrong. While none of the listed symptoms exactly fit, I am reminded of m:Megalomaniacal point of view that I found for the first time earlier today. Thryduulf (talk) 18:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

• I'm adding my comments here because they might not be seen above. Hans Adler's submission here is unconvincing and does not seem helpful in any way. Mathsci (talk) 21:26, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposals by User:Example

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Analysis of evidence

Place here items of evidence (with diffs) and detailed analysis

FormerIP's edits of talk-page image captions

These were entered as evidence of talk page disruption by JN466. For ease of reference, here's the link to the rather underwhelming ANI thread on that issue. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 11:03, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

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My comments about this are above at #FormerIP_2. --FormerIP (talk) 21:02, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

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Eraserhead1 Evidence entry for EggCentric

EggCentric created a section above that more or less called for the project to acknowledge a libertarian leaning in the project and to actively protest against "stone-aged" religions. Eraserhead1 promptly entered this into the Evidence page as examples of battleground behavior.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I am becoming a bit concerned over Eraser's usage of the Evidence section. What Eggcentric posted is being unanimously rejected, it was quite frankly a pretty dumb point to make, but are we at the point here where that == WP:BATTLE behavior? IMO the Evidence page is for identifiable examples of problematic behavior, not for a person who posts one thing in the Arb Workshop. Tarc (talk) 17:58, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

• The addition of those diffs raises questions about the reliability of the rest of his evidence. Mathsci (talk) 09:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• In the recent abortion case NYyankees51 got officially reminded about similar behaviour. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:36, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• He was a party to that case with a long history of involvement on the article talk page as detailed in the evidence of MastCell. It was not for making a posting on the workshop page. Mathsci (talk) 11:20, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• NYyankees also wasn't commenting on a public discussion, due to his widespread participation we know its a one off slip, and his comment is less bad than those made by Eggcentric here. Ultimately though if the committee doesn't think it warrants a finding they won't take it into account. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 14:23, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• If Egg centric had made any edits to articles or article talk pages vaguely related to Muhammad, this would be relevant. Mathsci (talk) 23:37, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• I suggest we agree to disagree. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 12:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Anthonyhcole's statements about Ludwigs2

I was challenged [123] to explain how my evidence describes a contradiction.

In November Anthonyhcole wrote to Ludwigs2: "Your incessant whining on and on and on about the motives, intentions, character and god knows what of those who hold a different view is making so mush noise that it's impossible, or at least very unpleasant trying, to make any progress or find common ground."

About 7 weeks later Anthonyhcole wrote about Ludiwgs2: "I don't recall him deploying anything I'd consider a personal attack. [...] No element of BATTLE applies to his behaviour."

The two statements seem contradictory to me, unless Anthonyhcole employes some totally non-standard definition of personal attack which somehow excludes comments about "motives, intentions, character and god knows what of those who hold a different view". Furthermore BATTLE states "Wikipedia is not a place to hold grudges, import personal conflicts, carry on ideological battles, or nurture prejudice, hatred, or fear. Making personal battles out of Wikipedia discussions goes directly against our policies and goals." Also seems in direct contradiction with Anthonyhcole's November description of Ludwigs2's behavior quoted above. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:53, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

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On 27 December Resolute accused Ludwigs2 of WP:TE, WP:NPA, WP:IDHT and WP:BATTLE. I refute that. I accuse Ludwigs2 of violating WP:AGF and ceaselessly bickering. He's wrongly being accused of lots of policy violations that I see no evidence of - at least not enough to warrant sanctions - but he is very, very guilty of forever bickering with people who bait him, and responding to ABF with ABF. That's the problem. Don't confuse these with WP:NPA, WP:IDHT, WP:BATTLE or WP:TE. They're different things. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:13, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

So, "bickering" "on and on and on about the motives, intentions, character and god knows what of those who hold a different view" is not at all prohibited by NPA, BATTLE, TE, and IDHT? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 03:43, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Correct. They're a breach of ANNOYING and AGF.--Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:29, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

So, if someone [hypothetically] retorted to you that "you are an intellectual coward, Anthonyhcole", they'd be breaching nothing besides the WP:AGF guideline (WP:ANNOYING being a red link)? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 07:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I guess it would have a lot to do with my history with them. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:37, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Let's just say that it wouldn't be the only time when you changed your statements about someone rather substantially [124] [125]. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

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Analysis of Anthonyhcole's evidence

In his statement Anthonycole refers to a discussion on Talk:Muhammad/Images, implying that he had suggested that a photograph of the Black stone be used instead of an early fourteenth century image from an illuminated manuscript, now in Edinburgh. Looking back at the discussion, his account seems inaccurate in several respects. In trying to seek clarification as to what proposal had been made by Resolute I had made two edits. [126][127] These were my last edits to that page. I was then asked a polite but slightly confrontational question by Anthonyhcole.[128] When he received no reply from me, he raised the question in a separate section[129] and was told by Amatulic,[130] amongst others, that the matter had already been discussed some time back. At no stage did Anthonyhcole mention a photograph in that discussion which rapidly degenerated.[131][132][133][134] Mathsci (talk) 09:58, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

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This is not a criticism of Anthonyhcole, just a commentary on his evidence. Mathsci (talk) 10:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

You're mistaken. I don't imply that. You, incorrectly infer it. I said: "I attempted to propose this alternative on the talk page but was shouted down." I'd appreciate it if you'd strike your error, if you see the (easily made) mistake you've made. If it's not clear, I'll explain in more detail. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:12, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• You wrote on the evidence page, "There is an alternative image, a photograph of the actual stone, which I believe is at least as informative about the subject, and is not offensive. I attempted to propose this alternative on the talk page but was shouted down." But you never mentioned such a photograph in any of the diffs above. Saying now that that was your intention after three weeks of silence on the matter is not particularly helpful, nor does it seem to be evidence. Mathsci (talk) 10:23, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I have always thought the black stone image is inappropriate. See the last 3 paragraphs of this November discussion:

Extended quote

If Britannica mentions it that's good enough for me. It's a delightful story that, apocryphal or not, is an important enough element of the tradition for mention in an encyclopedia, so I have no problem with us mentioning it. Now we need to seriously address the question of educational value. Leaving aside the fact that we happen to have such an image at hand (that's no argument for inclusion), that images make articles more readable (there is no shortage of images) that this image is a fine representation of the art of this era or that tradition (this is not an article or section on art, or depictions of Muhammad), does this artist's impression increase the reader's understanding of this event enough to justify the limited space it takes up? How does it add to the reader's understanding of the event? Does it mislead the reader? Please understand I'm not on a campaign of stripping images of Muhammad out of this article. I want to ensure all image use here is relevant and as educationally potent as possible. I argue (above) there are much more useful, educational and relevant images of Muhammad that deserve inclusion here. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I had been waiting for a time when I thought a reasonable discussion could be had on the topic. I opened the conversation on the image; and was described as disingenuous and sly, and petulant for objecting to being called disingenuous and sly. So I quit the page at that point, before I had made my proposal. It left me wondering how many other people have been bullied off the page.

If it is clear to you that your above analysis is mistaken, I'd appreciate it if you would strike it. I've added to my evidence that I then quit the page, to hopefully make it clearer. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:48, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Without commenting on the actual image issue, I think you perhaps over-reacted [135] to comments on your edits. The episode you link to gives a good illustration of why, even with the best possible intentions, discussing this kind of issue over a prolonged period can have adverse effects on all involved. Mathsci (talk) 12:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Above, you say I implied something, and that this seems inaccurate on several levels, when in fact you were mistaken. I said I had attempted to propose something, and you read me as claiming I had proposed something. A simple enough mistake. Would you do me the courtesy of striking your comments, and I'll strike my responses, so we'll save others the trouble of reading them? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:42, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

There is no mistake here at all. You claimed on the evidence page "I attempted to propose this alternative on the talk page but was shouted down", but you actually made no such proposal; all you posted was a very curt, one-line "Can someone please tell me what important information this imparts to the reader?" ("this" referring to the image in question). We don't go by what you intended, we go by what you actually did. Or didn't do, as the case may be. Tarc (talk) 14:52, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

You are telling me that I made no proposal. That is correct. Had I succeeded in making a proposal, I would have used these words in my evidence: "I proposed." I attempted to propose, but failed to. So I used "I attempted to propose" in my evidence.

My attempt to propose began when I opened that thread asking if anyone can tell me what important information the painting conveys. Once that was established, I intended to argue that the photo is of equal didactic value and should replace the painting. I realise that, just looking at my first sentence, "Can someone please tell me what important information this imparts to the reader?" and without me telling you this is laying the groundwork for a proposal, you're not to know that's what it is. But I have told you, in my evidence. I said, "I attempted to propose this alternative on the talk page but was shouted down."

The reason it didn't develop into a full proposal is that you accused me of being disingenuous. Then Johnbod called me sly, and then you called me petulant for being offended by your language,[136] and I quit the page. So, I opened that thread with the intention of proposing a swap: the photo for the painting. But my attempt failed, because I don't see why I should have to deal with someone who treats me the way you and Johnbod do.

I wonder how many decent people you've driven off the project with your appalling behaviour.

So, Mathsci, I know it may not look like an attempt at a proposal, but it got cut short. Now that you know this, unless you believe I'm lying, of course, would you do me the courtesy of striking your incorrect analysis that began this thread, I'll strike mine, and we can save everyone a bunch of needless reading? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:11, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Trust me Anthony, I have driven no one worthwhile off the project. I called your behavior petulant because you refused to explain exactly what you were suggesting unless we withdrew our comments. I found the way you initiated that discussion...essentially with a demand...to be quite condescending. The fact remains that you made a claim in your statement that was never in fact happened. Tarc (talk) 00:29, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Here you point up the major behaviour problem, not just with this article, but underlying Wikipedia. In order for me to continue discussing content on that page, I am obliged to put up with insult and offense. Is it any wonder that we are losing editors and have never attracted much in the way of serious scholars? If this were a living room or conference, you and Johnbod would have been out the door long ago. But you stay, so I leave.

Your last statement is a falsehood. I attempted to make a proposal. That attempt began with a polite question.[137] Mathsci, reasonably, didn't see that in my evidence. I have now explained, and I expect that he probably does see it now. It is becoming more important to me that this thread be struck, as you continue to repeat that I made a false claim, and casual readers are unlikely to know who is making false claims here, which is bad for my reputation. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:24, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

My perception of events was that you did not explain the previous decision on the Black stone when I asked a question of nobody in particular. Instead you volunteered your point of view, challenging me with a leading question. I did not give a reply. After a while you opened up a new section asking the same question but to everybody. At no stage was there any hint that you were going to reveal that you preferred a modern photograph of the Black stone. Since it can't be read from the diffs of events three weeks ago, it can't really be accepted as evidence. In ArbCom cases the story is told with diffs, whether that is fair or not. Mathsci (talk) 03:38, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Could we have an arbitrator's opinion on this please? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:47, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Anthonycole, why are you trying to hold several editors' feet to the fire for holding opinions in opposition to a content guideline ? This is nitpicking in the extreme and really unworthy of an Evidence entry, IMO. Tarc (talk) 13:25, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

How dare you accuse me of "attempting to hold editors' feet to the fire"? How dare you deride my good faith evidence as "nitpicking in the extreme"? Your tone is offensive. It doesn't belong on this page, or anywhere on this project.

Plenty of people believe your view on offensiveness accords with WP:NOTCENSORED, which is a policy. If a policy and a guideline appear to contradict each other, the usual practice is for a community-wide discussion to determine how best to reconcile them.

I'm sure that, if there is anything improper with my evidence, the arbitrators will guide me. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:43, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I am criticizing your Evidence presentation, not you personally. There is a difference y'know, so please, stop internalizing everything said to you. Tarc (talk) 13:48, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Anthonycole, One doesn't begin a real discussion with a rhetorical question, which is now what your evidence and your own admissions suggest you did. Doing so may reasonably be viewed by others as disingenuous (in that you already have decided the answer to your question), and sly (in that you are asking a leading question to arrive at a "gotcha" moment). When you ask a rhetorical question, you invite people to attack the style and presentation of the rhetoric. Should your interlocutors take the bait, and bite? Perhaps not, but that doesn't change the fact that your rhetoric is the provocation and any real discussion is derailed by your rhetoric before it begins. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:35, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

One may begin a real discussion with a rhetorical question. In this instance, I didn't. I began with a question that required an answer. A genuine question, which FormerIP answered. You have misunderstood the meaning of rhetorical question, so I can't really respond to that part of your personal attack, as it makes no actual sense. And I don't really know how to respond to the part where you prove that I am sly, either, because you have misunderstood the meaning of leading question, so I can't make any sense of your "proof".

What you seem to be trying to assert is that, in discussion, it is somehow illegitimate to ask a question of the interlocutor that you believe you know the answer to. Again, I just have no way of responding to that.

I was bullied on that talk page. And you are compounding it here with your (sorry, I don't know how to characterise what you just did). --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:23, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

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I was not part of that discussion. But anyone reading Black Stone#History and tradition should be able to tell why the picture showing what Muhammad did with the stone can be argued to be more relevant (in his biography) than the modern-day silver-enveloped stone (which was put in silver after it was shattered in a siege 100+ years after Muhammad's death). ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 11:32, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I think evidence should be facts, not intentions. Attempted to propose sounds misleading to me, since, as it is hard to understand what constitutes attempting. Intended or planned appears more accurate, but then it is not useful as evidence (but also not harmful eitther). Either way, such soft evidence is very likely to be ignored. - BorisG (talk) 17:29, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough, Boris. I've changed "attempted to" to "opened a thread with the intention of." --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:07, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Besides, there's another typical image of the whole Kaaba building during the Hajj further down in the Muhammad article. [138] ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:16, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Analysis of evidence by Hans Adler

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Honestly I am rather disturbed trying to sift through this level of extreme, wordy cherry-picking is allowed to stand. Is that Evidence Bot not still running to cap ppl at 500 words and 50 diffs? I find Adler's level of scrutiny, as the working page it stood on Dec 30th here to be a bit creepy and stalkerish, honestly. I mean, every single edit for 3 months, even vandalism reverts or comments at AfDs was evaluated and either kept or discarded? Tarc (talk) 13:45, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

From a formal standpoint you have a point about the volume. I will see how I can boil this down further. However, you have engaged in disruptive behaviour for over two months while making almost no constructive contributions to the discussion. (I didn't state this in the evidence, but I am also not aware of any constructive contributions of yours to the Muhammad images debate in the past. To use your own words, you seem to be mainly regarding the Muhammad article as "a soapbox from which to pontificate". []) Since this was as part of a mob, you stayed just below the sanctionable level all the time. IMO that kind of behaviour is much worse than mostly constructive behaviour interspersed with a few episodes of going ballistic. It is also much harder to document.

I am sorry that you do not like my method and consider it "a bit creepy and stalkerish", but I don't know what I could have done about that other than giving up any hope that you will be made to change your behaviour and simply not documenting it. Believe it or not, but the purpose of this method was to be fair to you, and my research was quite open-ended. I have used the same method in the past w.r.t. some other editors in completely unrelated contexts. Sometimes I was quite surprised to find that these editors were actually quite valuable contributors in other, less contentious areas in which I had never met them. Or I found that there was really some deeper misunderstanding going on. In this case, however, the impression I got was that the misunderstanding consists in you believing that the concerns presented by Ludwigs2, Jayen, me and a few other (non-Muslim) editors in good faith are really just a pretext for supporting the early 2008 push to censor Wikipedia by some Muslim fundamentalists. That kind of bizarre misunderstanding, if my impression is correct, hardly works in your favour. Hans Adler 19:12, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

While we are here, can you explain this edit? In the light of your behaviour at Talk:Muhammad and Talk:Muhammad/images over the years and especially more recently, this almost looks like a self-description to me. As an academic with no pets I am simply not qualified to argue with pitbulls, and I hope that the arbitrators will consider this in my favour in connection with any animal welfare concerns that may come up in this case. Hans Adler 19:26, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

What you miss in all of your edit stalking are past discussions on issues such as "Muhammad as a pedophile" and "did he rape Aisha?", where I came down squarely against those who were trying to get stuff like that into the article. I do not have an anti-Islamic agenda, nor do I have a pro-Islamic agenda; I have an anti-agenda agenda. Same reason I work to keep garbage off both the Obama and the Santorum articles; ideology doesn't matter. As for the pitbull thing, it stems from a sort of in-joke regarding a user who became rather unhinged because his rec sport article got deleted. See User talk:GalingPinas#Hello from Anna. Tarc (talk) 19:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Of course I noticed your interactions with that particular brainiac, but I wasn't aware of the connection. I think the problem with all agendas, even a priori good ones such as an "anti-agenda agenda", is that they tend to make us see things only from a single perspective that may be often the right one, but can also be spectacularly misleading. Hans Adler 21:05, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I endorse every word of what Tarc just said. His motives are pure. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 20:10, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmmmph... the fact that Tarc is a good, dedicated editor (which I don't think anyone here - certainly not me - would deny), does not in any way, shape, or form imply that he is always in-the-right about everything. People make mistakes, people have biases and preconceptions and habits they may not even be aware of. shit happens. The fact that Tarc works against people who want to claim Muhammad was a pedophile is a credit to his name, but it is not a 'get out of jail free' card for every coarse thing he does in other contexts. Tarc has an unpleasant tendency to stereotype, denounce, and pounce - that's unfortunately useful when one is in fact faced with real bugbears (like the muhammad-as-pedophile people), but it makes life miserable for the rest of us who merely disagree with him, yet find ourselves treated in the same way. --Ludwigs2 20:23, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Yep. That's true, too. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 20:35, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Sarcasm is helpful, guys. At the end of the day, I will stake my reputation as a bearish ass against the outright denigration of you three (Adler, Cole, Ludwigs) who have characterized many of us at various times as Islamophobes, racists, holders of prejudice, autistics, psychopaths, and unethical individuals. Good day, gentlemen. Tarc (talk) 20:48, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

No sarcasm intended, Tarc. Though I will note the ironic contrast between your evident pride over being a bear and your complaints about crossing paths with someone who shares those same bearish qualities. Not everyone's going to run when you growl, you know. --Ludwigs2 21:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't call other editors racists and autistics, among other things, that is the very key difference. Please don't attempt to mitigate your behavior by pointing a finger at me; we are not the same. Tarc (talk) 22:30, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Neither do I, Tarc, despite your efforts to make me look like I do. --Ludwigs2 00:06, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

And that is a lie, as evidenced by the diffs on the Evidence page where you actually call other editors racists. I'll leave it at that. Tarc (talk) 01:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, yeah… Tarc, If you honestly believe that you can say whatever distasteful comments you like so long as your motives are good, I don't know what to tell you. Personally, I don't know anything about your motives, and don't give one flying fig about them whatever they are. I observe what you do and I comment on your behavior; if you don't like how what you do makes you look, then maybe it's time you learned to do something else. Now you're pissing me off so I'm disengaging; if you need to have the last word, take it. --Ludwigs2 01:34, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I didn't read Anthonyhcole's 20:10 comment as sarcastic at all, and his 20:35 response to Ludwigs2 would make no sense under such a reading. By the way, the article moral credential effect seems tangentially related. Hans Adler 21:05, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Hans, please could you place all the diffs you want to present (no more than 50) directly within your evidence? Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 21:09, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

This is either a non sequitur or an extremely obstructionist comment insinuating that it's not allowed here to link to a normal Wikipedia article in the course of a normal discussion. If it is the former, please move it to its proper place and remove this response. Hans Adler 00:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry I wasn't here to respond earlier. My two earlier comments are sincere. I know Tarc has the best interests of the project at hart, but believe he needs to truly listen to those he disagrees with rather than lalalala as he ad hominems, sarcasms and games them out of his face. I love Tarc, actually. He's as funny as hell and I usually agree with his POV (but not his tactics). I also admire Malleus for his, well, everything. I usually agree with his POV, too. But they're both anachronisms, their behaviour is of the first ten years of this project. We're reaching maturity now; starting to look at ourselves and learning to modify our behaviour to better ensure our basic goals. I sincerely hope they can adapt to the new environment here, because I will sorely miss both if they choose not to. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:01, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

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Analysis of Tarc's edits

The following is an analysis of User:Tarc's edits, as portrayed by User:Hans Adler. It reflects only his personal view, and could go on either the Evidence page or this section of the Workshop page. I have decided to leave it here to allow for easier rebuttal by anyone who wishes to do so. NW (Talk) 00:48, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

An analysis of Tarc's edits shows him in 'defending Wikipedia against hostile intruders' mode throughout – right from the first edit. Numbers in the following classification of low-key disruptive behaviour are those of the diffs at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Muhammad images/Evidence#Tarc's unfair status quo defence.

• ad hominem (21/46 edits):
  • accusation of bad faith (1, 2, 28, 33, 35, 40)
  • inappropriate political correctness accusation (4, 35)
  • authoritarian posturing / talking down (4, 6, 16, 22, 28, 29, 31, 35, 36, 43, 46)
  • threatening (6, 7, 8, 16, 17, 18, 29)
  • unclassifiable PA (7, 9, 15, 46)
  • other (2)

• unconstructive interpretations of interactions (except ad hominem) (17/46):
  • misrepresenting another editor (out of context quoting, hyperbolic rephrasing, false talk page history claims) (5, 7, 12, 13, 19, 28, 39, 41)
  • claims consensus immutably strong (6, 10, 16, 19, 23, 39, 41, 43)
  • false analogy (6, 7, 16, 18, 26, 28, 34, 41)
  • vague, unverifiable claims of past convincing arguments (10, 17)

• weird policy interpretations / applications stated dogmatically (12/46):
  • all arguments related to religious feelings a priori inadmissible (13, 27)
  • foundation resolution inapplicable to Muhammad images (1, 2, 8, 23, 29, 40, 43, 45)
  • other fundamentalist policy view (27, 29, 31, 35)

• unreasonably understating case for image removal (7/46):
  • only a few extremists are offended; or discussion is really about early 2008 campaign rather than best editorial practices for area under public scrutiny (31, 35, 36, 39, 41, 42, 43)

• unreasonably overstating case for image inclusion (5/46):
  • dogmatic claims of encyclopedic value (implying value sufficient to override other concerns) (6, 31, 39)
  • other WP biographies have anthropomorphic images (11 to some extent, 26, 28)

With very few exceptions I did not see any contributions towards an actual consensus, such as pointing out a weak point in an opponent's argument, providing evidence to support one's own assertions, acknowleding valid points made by an opponent, otherwise advancing the discussion towards more insight, agreeing to disagree on matters open to interpretation, or any willingness to compromise in any way. Instead, I found countless posts such as "What part of 'no' did you find confusing? We do have a strong consensus that is ignored by a couple of loudmouths, is all." (diff H) Hans Adler 22:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

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I have singled out Tarc in this way because nobody else adressed his behaviour in the evidence, his approach to the discussion (basically just trying to make it impossible) was typical but particularly clear, and I had neither time nor space to deal with all editors who followed a similar approach. While I personally think that 0–2 is the reasonable range for number of depictions at the article and tend towards 0 rather than 2, I don't feel about this very strongly and have always been open to being convinced by rational arguments that the current much higher number is appropriate. (E.g. I have learned in this dispute that today's Shiites have a much more relaxed attitude to Muhammad depictions than Sunnis. This took much longer than it should have, because for a long time nobody bothered to mention this, or to point at any earlier discussion where I could have learned this.) What has caused my occasional outbursts, of which I am not proud, was primarily a wall of editors who filled Talk:Muhammad/images with their statements to the effect that image reduction must not even be discussed, even though a number of well-intentioned editors felt that such a discussion was necessary, none had occurred in the recent past, and it was unclear how the Foundation resolution changes things. Hans Adler 22:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
So the Workshop is now a dumping ground for stuff that won't fit in the Evidence section? Can the Clerks please address this? Tarc (talk) 22:47, 11 January 2012 (UTC) This appears not to be an analysis of evidence presented on the Evidence page. It is part of the submission that Hans Adler originally added as his own evidence within the last few hours. Mathsci (talk) 22:52, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Honestly, the bulk of Adler's entire Evidence presentation is little different from what Jayen tried above; casting aspersions of disruptiveness on others who hold a different opinion. They came in demanding image removal, and failing that demanded compromise of "some" image removal, and now have the gall to complain when that unreasonable stance was pointed out. There was a complete failure to appreciate that over the last few years, some images had already been deleted and others moved down the page in a sort of pre-"principle of least astonishment" effort to not place a depiction of Muhammad right at the top of the article. I'll say it again, if I am called a racist by someone, as Ludwigs and Alder did, or if I'm referred to as an autistic psychotic, as Anthonycole did...and as the likes of Jayen and eraserhead1 egg these editors on....y'know, they damn well better expect some barbed responses. I'm good and done pissed off now. Tarc (talk) 01:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Clarification: I don't say you're autistic and I've never used "psychotic." I say the project has adopted a perspective on offensiveness that is shared by autistics and psychopaths. There are superficially attractive arguments in favour of that perspective, and a portion of the project has been persuaded by those arguments. I'm not implying anything about your ability to respond to the feelings of others. I truly haven't a clue about that. I have only ever used "autistic" and "psychopathic" to describe the project, not individuals. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:23, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I am returning to this trainwreck of a sub-topic only to note that that is the proverbial distinction without a difference, i.e. the "I didn't call Person X stupid I just said Peron X was being stupid, so its ok" defense. You have described an action in offensive terms, then insinuated that I and others have undertaken that action. A to B to C, Anthony. I also find your goading of Ludwigs at User_talk:Ludwigs2#Bighting to be rather deplorable. It takes a fair bit of nerve to condemn the (alleged) acts of others and then turn around and do it yourself. Tarc (talk) 22:57, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Not at all. I'm accusing you and many others of defending an autistic/psychopathic perspective. You and they may be attached to this perspective because you're mentally ill, but I haven't even speculated on that possibility here. There are plausible justifications for this stance: caring about the offense we cause is against policy, is the most popular; Kww's slippery slope argument (where will it end? this will open the floodgates) is the most convincing. You don't have to be mentally ill to go along with this crazy perspective, you just need to be persuaded it's sensible. History is full of examples of healthy people supporting unhealthy policies.

The antisocial nature of the project's present stance toward offending its readers needs to be bluntly called what it is.

As for that post on Ludwigs2's talk page, It's not goading. It's pleading. You made a comment that didn't deserve responding to, the very kind of comment he habitually responds to at length. I was begging him to ignore you. How you turn that into goading, I just don't get. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:58, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

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Template

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General discussion

Jimbo rules us all (here)

The outcome of this arbitration seems preordained in certain respects. Jimbo Wales has just decided that the Foundation Resolution overrides current Wikipedia policies [139]. And ArbCom decided reaffirmed that Jimbo makes policy on the English Wikipedia [140].

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There has been quite a sea change since that 2006 case in regards to how much authority Wales actually has to affect policy changes unilaterally. While the admin (and higher) bits technically remain active, I think the backlash from the Wikipedia community would be shockingly swift were this or any other case decided by fiat. To his credit, I believe he long ago recognized this and would not presume to do anything of the sort regarding this image discussion. Tarc (talk) 17:18, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any ArbCom or WMF decision that says otherwise. It's true that he didn't impose his desired outcome in the VNT debate, yet, but that's really a minor wording issue compared to this, and he didn't have a WMF board decision behind him on that, unlike here. Anyway, it looks like ArbCom members (who are all appointed by Jimbo anyway) are very much in favor of the resolution's universal sweep of controversial content. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:03, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you may be right that Arbs will be minded to try to apply the WMF statement. But I don't think they are likely to take it to mandate any universal sweeping. Probably not even a galactic dusting. --FormerIP (talk) 18:30, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

So Jimbo can make sweeping changes because ArbCom says yea and ArbCom are appointed by Jimbo... seems like a visual model of circular reasoning, just saying. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Not to mention a massive conflict of interest. Resolute 17:08, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Also would like to point out this statement "We start with a bias towards openness but agree to limit that openness, based on respect for our users, as little as possible. That is why, we believe, potential decisions on the restrictions of these types of images must be decided by individual users and why we have recommended that registration be necessary to affect these images." which to me basically says the individual needs to censor things for themselves not the community to censor things for users. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:06, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

That is from the Harries section on "sacred" images, which was overruled by the WG and board. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 07:12, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• I do not accept that Jimbo "rules us all". In fact, he has in the past shown some dramatically awful decision making processes that have done more harm than good to this project. His opinion is opinion, nothing more. If he wishes to go to the Foundation and have it issue an edict in support of censorship, he may do so, and deal with the consequences of that action. Resolute 17:08, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Um, it was my understanding that Arbcom cannot make policy. It would seem illogical, then, that Arbcom could decide that some person makes policy (even Jimbo). Arbcom is trying to do indirectly what it is not allowed to do directly. Ken Arromdee (talk) 23:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

You missed a key element. ArbCom did not grant Jimbo that right. The blurb is in the principles section. They merely reaffirmed his right. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:25, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Even if they didn't say that in the first place it still is silly that the people who are picked by Jimbo are the ones to affirm anything for him that it is circular. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:58, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

They're not strictly appointed by Jimbo any longer. They are elected and Jimbo gets to regally assent their election. --FormerIP (talk) 02:23, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Mostly I am just poking a bit of fun. I haven't seen jimbo throw his weight around significantly because he can, so it isn't like a power mad person demanding everyone jump on their left foot all day. I just thought it was a little funny that it occurred like that. Tivanir2 (talk) 06:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Of potential interest: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification#Request for clarification: Jimbo as policy maker. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:25, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Ongoing RfC on adopting as guideline part of the WMF resolution dealing with controversial material, namely the principle of least astonishment

At Wikipedia talk:Follow the principle of least astonishment. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 05:23, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 12:43, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Straw man

Many Muslims are offended by figurative depictions of Muhammad. I, and the Foundation, believe we should pay attention to the offense we may cause our readers, and minimise that as much as possible, where this would not diminish the educational value of the encyclopedia. Failing to take this degree of care is displaying contempt for our readership.

My opponents in this dispute equate my stance with deferring to Muslim superstition. But that is not the case. This is a straw man. If I were deferring to Muslim superstition, I'd be opposing the image use at Depictions of Muhammad, Muhammad#Islamic depictions of Muhammad and Muhammad#European and Western views, which I'm not. I am respecting the feelings of our readership.

My opponents don't address my actual question, why would we use an image many readers find offensive, when it adds little or nothing to the readers' understanding of the section topic? What motivates a person to defend the retention of such an image? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:33, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Your argument is based on the false premise of "it adds little or nothing to the readers' understanding". Many who wish to retain the depictions feel that it adds greatly. Tarc (talk) 03:38, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

No. I'm not addressing them. I'll happily have that argument with them; I've tried on three separate occasions to do so, but was ignored and bullied. No, I'm addressing you and those like you who assert that being offensive will never be an acceptable reason to remove an image from an article. How do you justify that? If an offensive image is related to the topic but adds nothing to the readers understanding of the section, why would you leave it there? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:05, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Regarding how I (and others) justify asserting that being offensive will never be an acceptable reason to remove an image from an article, it is very simple: doing so is incompatible with WP:NPOV. As I explained time and again during the WT:NOT discussion, NPOV requires us to treat all offensive and potentially offensive images and other content in the same way, regardless of who is offended by it and why. This leaves us two choices, firstly to be deferential to everybody who is offended by anything - Muslims offended by pictures of Muhammed, Aborigines offended by images of people who have since died, Middle Americans offended by pictures of a bear female breast, conservative Christians offended by homosexuality, Scientologists offended by inclusion of sacred text and images, people offended by portrayals of weapons, arachnophobes offended by pictures of spiders, Saudi Arabians offended by pictures of un-veiled women, etc, etc, etc. Or, secondly to be equally non-differential to all of them - i.e. ignoring offence. Given the first option includes mutually exclusive positions (one group of people offended by the inclusion of an image, another group of people offended by the non-inclusion of an image), Wikipedia has taken the pragmatic course of action and chosen the latter route, "Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive, even exceedingly so (see Wikipedia:Content disclaimer). Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images will always be acceptable to all readers, or that they will adhere to general social or religious norms.", "Wikipedia contains many different images, some of which are considered objectionable or offensive by some readers.". We include in articles images that are relevant and due and do not include images that irrelevant and/or undue. We do this for all images on all articles, whether anybody finds them offensive or not. Thryduulf (talk) 04:53, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for addressing the point of this thread. Respect is not deference. It is respectful to remove the photo of a recently deceased aborigine that is illustrating Boomerang, where another image or none at all would be just as educational; deference would be removing the photo of a recently deceased aborigine from that person's article, where the image conveys important relevant information. Respect would be removing an artist's figurative depiction of an event in the prophet's life from the section describing the event, when the image adds nothing to the reader's understanding of the event, such as here, here and here. Deference would be removing figurative depictions of Muhammad from Depictions of Muhammad, Muhammad#Islamic depictions of Muhammad and Muhammad#European and Western views, images that have real educational use in those sections. I would see the inclusion of a picture of Mormon sacred garments at Underwear as gratuitous offense; whereas such an image is essential to Temple garment.

The Harrises limited their discussion to images they described as "controversial," and meant by that images for which there is real world evidence that significant controversy surrounds their display, so this is not opening a floodgate.

You finish this post by repeating the often heard myth that "We include in articles images that are relevant and due and do not include images that irrelevant and/or undue. We do this for all images on all articles, whether anybody finds them offensive or not." I can't be sure which elements of WP:DUE you're referring to here, or what definition of "relevant" you're using, but I'm addressing real educational use, and there are images all over Wikipedia, including those 3 Muhammad images I linked to, that add nothing to the readers' understanding of the topic of the section they're in. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:12, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

From comments others have made, there is at least no consensus that the images "add little or nothing" if not a consensus that they do add significantly. Certainly at the RfC at WT:NOT, everybody who commented on the examples Ludwigs2 gave disagreed that the images of Muhammed were "incidental", whether they agreed or disagreed that "incidental" material was "protected" by NOTCENSORED.

Furthermore there is no consensus that I've seen demonstrated, nor anything I've seen in the evidence (although I might have missed something) that supported paying attention to offence we may cause readers, whatever their religious beliefs. It has even been disputed just how significant a proportion of Muslims find the depictions offensive. Thryduulf (talk) 03:51, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree, Ludwigs2's choice of incidental examples was problematic at that WT:NOT discussion. But, I'm not having the argument over the educational value of particular images at Muhammad in this thread (in fact I'm not having it anywhere because no one will engage with me on that point). There are editors who refuse to take offensiveness into account under any circumstances. These are the editors I'm addressing. Wrt your second paragraph, the Foundation has resolved that we should pay particular attention to real educational use when curating controversial images. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:05, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Excuse me, don't drop the blame on me for the WT:NOT discussion: the problem there was editors who kept reframing what I said in nonsensical ways. Not much I can do when I say 'X' and everyone keeps going on as though I said 'Y'. But that's the problem you're having here, too, isn't it? Image proponents want to claim that the images add something but refuse to quantify what that something is, because (I assume) they are aware that the minute they quantify it their something will turn out to be practically nothing. it's like the story of the Irishman who traded his herd for a locked box, because not knowing what he owned made him feel like a rich man. --Ludwigs2 04:30, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Thryduulf made me say it. Sorry, sorry. But, really, the Goetse.cz image was incidental? I have a lotto ticket from 2008 that I haven't checked, because it's kind of like being a billionaire, but it doesn't pay the bills. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

The "it adds little educational value" argument is utterly meaningless, because it directly coincides with the "it is offensive" argument. Complete and perfect overlap. Consequently, the former argument is simply used as a shield for the latter. The intellectual dishonesty of that argument is proven by the fact that its greatest proponents have not targeted similar images that just don't happen to be controversial in the eyes of some. Resolute 05:13, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Intellectual dishonesty? What makes you think it's OK to use that kind of language here? You're right that this pretty much only comes up when people find the images also offensive. Educationally valueless images abound on the project, but they look pretty and can be an aid to memory, so no one really minds them being here. But when they're also offensive to many readers, they should go. That's not intellectual dishonesty, just common sense, and common decency. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:12, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

A: just as an aside, I respect the 'intellectual dishonesty' challenge. If there's one thing that Wikipedia ought to make sure of, it's that we editors are making intellectually valid claims. I don't think Resolute's made a decent case for it here, but if he thinks its true, it is certainly worth reflecting on. --Ludwigs2 07:25, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind at all, if the claim was substantiated, but it seems to be being used simply as a casual insult. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:40, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. except I'd have used the word 'callow' --Ludwigs2 17:06, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Anthonyhcole: "[T]he Foundation has resolved that we should pay particular attention to real educational use when curating controversial images.". We do. It's called WP:NOTCENSORED + WP:DUE. Where there is disagreement about which images are appropriate (or where in the article they are best, etc) we discuss it in terms of the educational value, due weight, etc, both in terms of the image(s) themselves and relative to alternative available images. We do not discuss them in terms of offensiveness, because per policy and [[141]] studies that is irrelevant. At Wikipedia talk:Follow the principle of least astonishment the proposal to elevate the board's words to guideline station is currently being rejected as (depending on individual readings of it) either redundant to or in contradiction with, the existing policies.

We are here at arbcom now because that discussion has been derailed by a small number of users engaging in (it is alleged here and on the evidence page) battleground behaviour, tendentious editing, and "I didn't hear that"-type behaviour. Thryduulf (talk) 05:18, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes. WP:NOTCENSORED is commonly interpreted as ruling out any consideration of offensiveness in curatorial decisions. You link to Part 3 of the Harris' report to support the assertion that we do not discuss images in terms of offensiveness. The Harrises suggested leaving the problem of controversial religious images to the reader, rather than editor curation, but the Board delegated a working group of board members to study the Harris report and make recommendations to the Board. That working group expressly disagreed with the Harrises' suggestion and recommended including offensive religious images among the images that editors must pay particular attention to. The Board report reflected this, expressly. You'll notice I oppose the incorporation of the Board resolution into policy, at present, because I believe we need some clarification before meaningful discussion on some of the finer points can be had. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:12, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

@Resolute: nonsense. I have said many, many times that offense is not much of an issue where there is a valid reason for it. The issue arises when we start offending the mores and standards of entire cultures for trivial reasons. You keep wanting to argue that there is no reason too trivial to apply NOTCENSORED to, and that's just an unsupportable perspective.

And hello! Did you really just say that it's intellectually dishonest not to argue against images aren't offensive to anyone? You might want to think that point through a bit…

@Thryduulf: it remains to be seen who that 'small number of users' derailing the conversation is. I'm pretty convinced it's your side of the debate, using ridiculous policy interpretations and overt hostility to stifle what ought to have been a straight-forward content discussion. We'll see. --Ludwigs2 06:32, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Who determines what is and is not "trivial"? Who chooses which "cultural mores and standards" we follow and which we don't? As there are many cultures with mutually incompatible beliefs and values we cannot, even if we wanted to, follow all of them. Thryduulf (talk) 12:20, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

That's the key point; we as Wikipedia editors make these decisions, and the decisions of the past have come squarely down on the side of the depictions being not trivial, not incidental, and entirely educational. Ludwigs, Jayen, et al, have raised the issue again, but the reception to their proposals has been, at best, lukewarm. Tarc (talk) 15:18, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Of course we can follow all of them. We are required to reflect all significant POVs in text in proportion to their prevalence, per NPOV, and we can do so in images too. Or at least we can accept the burden that policy places upon us in this regard, and do our best to get the POV balance right where images do have a clear POV charge. --JN466 15:35, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Jayen: This is something that could easily be handled by NPOV if you would drop the NOTCENSORED stick and allow the discussion to happen.

And Tarc: "a local agreement among a small number of editors is not a consensus," particularly when the editors in question go out of their way to make the talk page too hostile for rational discussion. Sorry. --Ludwigs2 16:38, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

There has been a rather sizable number of editors who have weighed in on the matter over the years to retain the depictions, with the policy of WP:NOTCENSORED to bolster that argument. You have never made a persuasive argument to change that consensus. Applying the WMF resolution didn't work, labeling them non-educational didn't work, labeling them incidental didn't work, and the RfC at WT:NOT didn't work. Tarc (talk) 17:59, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

So you keep saying, but it's not what I've seen. In fact, the number of people who have opposed the images over the years is clearly much larger than the number of people who support them, it's just that the opponents are fragmented - dealt with and driven off one-by-one by a small group of editors determined to prevent any new consensus from forming. am I wrong? --Ludwigs2 04:18, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Quite wrong, yes. We're talking about voices that actually count, remember. Tarc (talk) 04:28, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

LOL - yeah, that's been the tactic all along: restrict things so that the only people who are allowed a voice are the people on your side of the discussion. It's a time honored tradition, of course (only modern societies have a conception of universal participation, and it's not a well-respected principle in any but a few), but that doesn't make it any less distasteful. --Ludwigs2 04:42, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Talking 'bout a resolution

Anthony, as I understand it, your position is we need to determine if any image we use in main space is "controversial." What are the parameters and rubrics for that determination? How is that determination made? Is such a determination anywhere embodied in any current policy? Thanks. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:21, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it's anywhere in policy. The need for clarification of this, as well as the meaning of "least astonishment" (see Wikipedia_talk:Follow_the_principle_of_least_astonishment) and clarification of how mandatory the resolution is, all lead me to oppose, for the present, attempts to shoehorn this incompletely understood resolution into policy. The discussion here, and hopefully among the arbs, is clarifying things considerably, and I'm hoping the findings and statements of principle that arise from the case will also add to our understanding.

The Harrises, who carried out the study into controversial content for the Board, say this in Part One of their report.

Because language matters, it is for this reason that we prefer the term “controversial content” to “potentially-objectionable content.” Objectionable content is, obviously, content to which any individual user takes issue, for whatever reason. Far from lacking an objective test, the designation of objectionable to content is always immediately apparent. If I nominate it as such, it takes on that designation. Who can argue the assertion that I take offense at pictures of balloons (if I am phobic about them), or descriptions of the mating habits of mammals. No one. Allowing “objectionable”, or, even worse “potentially-objectionable” as a trigger to determine potential modifications to Wikimedia content is, in our mind, much too broad a definition whose adoption would be dangerous for the intellectual health of the projects.

“Controversial,” on the other hand, to us, implies a social process, an acknowledgment that certain types of content (say, images of explicit sexuality) generally create a reaction among broad groups of individuals, each acting independently, and without ulterior motive, that gives us more confidence that we might consider these reactions legitimate and worthy of consideration. There are objective tests for the concept “controversial,” we believe, whose use can ensure the legitimacy of consideration by an open Wikimedia culture of potential modifications to that openness.

The Board resolution says:

Some kinds of content, particularly that of a sexual, violent or religious nature, may be offensive to some viewers; and some viewers may feel such content is disrespectful or inappropriate for themselves, their families or their students, while others may find it acceptable. "Controversial content" includes all of these categories.

So, it's offensive content of a sexual, violent or religious nature. And the Harrises refer to broad groups being affected, as well as objective tests for controversy. Your thoughts on this, and how it should or would apply to this case would be very welcome. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:40, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, if it's not in current policy, it is my understanding, this is not the place to discuss it. I will note that the board resolution offers no guidance on line drawing with respect "some kind of content, particularly that of a sexual, violent, or religious nature." That could be because, they view no line drawing necessary or wise, or they just don't know how to do it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:16, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

They're leaving the line-drawing to us, as they should. We design the policy to implement their resolution - because we have to, and because it's the right thing to do. As for whether we should be discussing the implications of this resolution for this case here, we must. This is now a guiding principle for our behaviour here, so, whether en.Wiki policy has caught up with that principle yet, or not, the arbitration committee is morally bound, and legally bound by the terms of use, to take the resolution into account. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi Anthony, These are the [terms of use https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_use] correct? Where do the terms of use say that? Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:06, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

You're right, I was thinking of the new proposed terms of use that say

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees releases official policies from time to time. Some of these policies may be mandatory for a particular Project or Project edition, and, when they are, you agree to abide by them as applicable.

which was presumptuous of me (but not very), but I was also assuming this resolution is mandatory, which is yet to be clarified, and that's too presumptuous. So I've struck my error. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

All those quotes are saying that "Some kinds of content are controversial" and "Some kinds of content are offensive". So what? We know that, indeed we know that some people find images of Muhammed offensive and it's therefore controversial. I refer again to the Wikpedia:Content disclaimer: "Wikipedia contains many different images, some of which are considered objectionable or offensive by some readers." and the policy Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not censored, "Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images will always be acceptable to all readers, or that they will adhere to general social or religious norms.", "Wikipedia will not remove content because of the internal bylaws of some organizations that forbid information about the organization to be displayed online. Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations." and "Discussion of potentially objectionable content should not focus on its offensiveness but on whether it is appropriate to include in a given article.".
Our policy explicitly tells us that offensiveness is irrelevant. You can try and change that policy if you want (here is not the venue though), but the history at m:Controversial content/Timeline and the many archives of WT:NOT suggest that you will have hard time. Until policy is changed though, everybody needs to abide by it. Thryduulf (talk) 15:13, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I think you're right about that. So many people tell me WP:NOTCENSORED instructs us to ignore offensiveness, that it must be true. I'm not changing policy here, in fact, presently, I'm arguing against a proposal to incorporate part of this resolution into policy. What I'm doing is telling the arbitrators that, though en.Wiki policy hasn't caught up with the Board resolution, they are cognizant of it and are morally and legally obliged to take it into account. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:50, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Thryduulf: That's absurd. The spirit of NOTCENSORED has always been that we don't remove useful encyclopedic content if it's needed to make a good article. It was never intended to suggest that all of our readers' preferences and mores are censorship which we must ignore, nor was it ever intended to suggest that we must use Wikipedia to combat things we think are censorship in the real world. You're coming off sounding like an evangelical secularist, someone dedicated to forcing people to confront things that are against their religious principles whether or not it is of any value to the encyclopedia. That's wrongheaded. "Wikipedia is not censored" only means that we are not obliged to remove things just because it offends to mores of some group; It does not mean that we must include such things, or even that we ought to include such things - those are editorial decisions that should be made according to the value of the material in question to the article. --Ludwigs2 16:34, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely we do not remove "useful encyclopaedic content" just because it offends someone. The evidence presented in this arbitration cases shows that there is a consensus that depictions of Muhammed are useful encyclopaedic content on the biography of Muhammed. My understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that you disagree with this consensus (i.e. you are saying the images are not encyclopaedic and so it doesn't matter if Wikipedia is not censored or not); that Jayen466 is saying that only a strict evaluation of the prevalence of images in reliable sources can determine whether something is encyclopaedic or not; and Anthonyhcole is of the opinion that it doesn't matter if something is encyclopaedic or not, if it offends significant groups of people then we shouldn't include it. Thryduulf (talk) 17:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

May I? Sorry for butting in. I can't speak for Ludwigs2, of course, but I think figurative depictions of Muhammad are very encyclopedic when they increase the readers' understanding of the topic. For instance, the section on European and Western views needs several images illustrating how the West has visualised Muhammad. The section on Islamic depictions of Muhammad should be as heavily illustrated as the section size permits. But some of the figurative depictions in other sections of the article add nothing at all to the readers' understanding of the topic of the section. The reader would be just as informed on the section topic if the image was gone, or replaced by a landscape or calligraphy. In this latter case, because the images are offensive to many of our readers, the polite and sensible thing to do is remove the images. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:11, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

(e/c) Thryduulf: I don't believe any such consensus exists, and I think your evidence to that effect is just so much hand-waving. And you apparently do not understand my perspective (or Jayen's, or Anthony's) at all. where do you get that stuff?

I'll explain my position yet again, and I'd ask you to read it carefully before responding so that I don't have to explain it an N+1th time in the future.

• I don't believe a real consensus exists about these images; I believe the group of you have chased off all opinions other than your own and claimed a false consensus.
• I don't believe there is anything wrong with these images in themselves, except that in the particular context of the Muhammad article they serve no explicit or necessary purpose, and they bug a significant subset of our readership.
• I do believe that NOTCENSORED is only intended to protect material that serves an explicit or necessary purpose on the article, and not as a tool to protect editors' right to bug our readership for some peripheral reason.

You keep repeating the fact that these images are "useful encyclopaedic content" but you refuse to explain what's useful about them. until you do, your repeated claims are just so many puffs of air. Now, hot air will let you blow up a lot of skirts on wikipedia, I'll grant you that, but eventually people are going to notice that it's nothing but hot air. You put us in the position of having to badger you endlessly to explain yourself (and then accuse us of being tendentious because of it); but seriously, when are you actually going to explain yourself? If you don't do it now, then you'd best just admit that you can't so we can get past this nonsense once and for all.

Anthony: agreed. --Ludwigs2 18:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Ludwigs, what answer could ever satisfy such a question? How does one justify the usage of Washington Crossing the Delaware in dozens of articles? Honestly, you stray into Tolstoy-ish What Is Art? territory with this sort of demand. Tarc (talk) 18:54, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Tarc, it's easy to answer that question for anyone willing to use common sense. "Washington Crossing the Delaware" is innocuous and non-problematic: if someone wants to remove that image or change it with a different one no one will will really care; a few editors will discuss it for a few days and it will be resolved reasonably one way or another. With an obviously necessary image - like a penis image on the penis article - the value of the image is blatantly self-evident; we need to show some depiction of a penis otherwise we are not fulfilling out encyclopedic purpose. The problem with the Muhammad images is that they don't have the clear mandate of a penis on the penis article and they are not innocuous and non-problematic like the image of Washington. Common sense should dictate that we don't offend a large group of people without having that clear mandate to do so. In fact, this has been a discussion sticking-point all along: those on your side keep blurring the 'value' boundary that is self-evident to everyone else: Whatever value these images might have, there's nothing that mandates they be on the article, so using them should be a matter of discussion and editorial discretion, not something that invokes NOTCENSORED. --Ludwigs2 20:42, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

We'll set aside the "common sense" jab and note that what you're doing is erecting (pun unintended) a hurdle for "Muhammad" that "penis" and "Washington..." do not have. We have 3 articles for which images that otherwise satisfy WP:NFCC are available, but only the former gets an extra condition; your religious offense litmus test. For everything else, "is it an image of the subject?" and "are we free to use it?" are pretty much the extent of the dissensions. What this case has really been about all along is that creating an extra condition based on religious offense is a clear and literal violation of Wikipedia policy on image censorship. Everything else...the WMF, the incidentals, and on and on, is gravy. Tarc (talk) 20:59, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

That wasn't a jab, that was a statement of fact. and of course you've missed the main point about the penis image, which is that it passes the 'litmus' of value vs. offense (it just happens to be offense against cultural mores rather than religious mores). so in fact, we have three distinct cases:

• A Washington image, which offends no one and is not mandated on any article (handled by consensus)
• Muhammad figurative images, which offends a significant group of people and are not mandated on the Muhammad article (and should probably be excluded because of that)
• A penis image, which offends a significant group of people but does have a clear mandate on the penis article (and should be retained for that).

You want to ignore the possibility of the second case - that a controversial image may not have a mandate to be on a particular article - because it's inconvenient to your argument. But your desire to ignore that case leads to all sorts of bizarre conclusions (putting NOTCENSORED in opposition to NPOV, creating avenues for visual POV-pushing, …). In short, you have to go to such extremes to keep the second case from rearing its contrarian head at you that you make a mockery of logic and ethics. --Ludwigs2 22:38, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I and many others believe that the depictions of Muhammad are mandated on the article, that's the thing. The controversy just does not matter. We're just covering old ground again here though, I'm sorry I got sucked into this tangent. Tarc (talk) 23:56, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Tarc, the resolution addresses this project, and it specifically applies to images that cause religious offense; do you think it applies to pictures of Muhammad? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 00:58, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

And, Tarc, if the resolution applies to images of Muhammad (let's face it, it does), what are the implications for our image curation at Muhammad, and does our present practice there conform to the resolution's guidance? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:32, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

99% of the study and the resolution was aimed at the Commons and their particular cesspool of problems. The overall gist of the 1% that could possibly be applied to this case only strengthened the concept of openness trumping offense, IMO. As I have noted before, if the WMF resolution really is adopted to en.wiki, I do not think it is going to be in a way that you and Ludwigs et al. are going to like. Tarc (talk) 13:24, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

The first two sentences are falsehoods. The Harrises' report addresses all projects, the working group's recommendation addresses all projects, and includes offensive religious content for our special attention, and the Foundation resolution addresses all projects except for one sentence where it explicitly addresses Commons (confirmed by two signatories), and it explicitly includes offensive religious images for our special attention. Would you please strike the first two sentences, as a casual reader might be misled by your confident assertion of a blatant falsehood? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:22, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Anthony: Tarc is not going to retract anything. His modus operandi is to assert his personal beliefs as established fact and make snide comments about anyone who disagrees; retracting would be an admission that he is not the sole purveyor of truth on project, and Lord knows that's not going to happen. Just let him do his supercilious thing; he's so bald-faced about it that I doubt anyone will make the mistake of buying into it.

It's actually one of the more interesting phenomena on project: die-hards always pick up tactics from the people they oppose. This assertion of belief as authoritative fact is precisely what religious fundamentalists do, and I know that's who Tarc spends much of his time confronting. I see the same thing over on fringe science pages, where some pro-science editors have gotten in the habit of using logic that makes fringe advocates look like Rhodes Scholars. it's fascinating, even if it does give me headaches. --Ludwigs2 04:12, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

You two really got your antagonism honed to a fine edge, but I'm not going to rise to the bait, guys, sorry. The Commons has far more problems than any other project, so, yea, all of this is really more applicable to them. The WMF may say and advise whatever they like, but at the end of the day they are not a governing body. Short of taking the rare and sometimes controversial office action, they do not govern us, issue commands, or dictate actions. They urge. They advise. They suggest. The en.wiki community as a whole will eventually be the ones to decide how much to weigh offense vs. censorship, and given past cases where similar things have had to be decided, e.g. the Virgin Killer cover, I'm not really too hacked up about it. Tarc (talk) 04:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

The new terms of use that the Board is considering includes "The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees releases official policies from time to time. Some of these policies may be mandatory for a particular Project or Project edition, and, when they are, you agree to abide by them as applicable." "official policies" links to a list of resolutions including this one.This controversial content resolution may be mandatory. At the very least it is strong guidance explicitly directed at us and explicitly addressing religiously offensive images.

The Virgin Killer image is categorically different from the black stone image in Muhammad. The Virgin Killer image is the very topic of a large section of the article. It doesn't illustrate the topic; it is the topic. It is highly relevant to the article. The black stone image was painted centuries after the event, in another culture, and gets Muhammad's hair length wrong. It adds nothing whatever to the reader's understanding of the topic.

I am amazed that, at this late stage of the argument, you are still conflating our treatment of highly relevant (didactically essential, really) images with our treatment of frivolous bits of decorative fluff that have no impact on the readers' understanding while alienating millions of them. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:03, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Again; simply, it will be the community who will decide what weight to place, if any, on the WMF's recommendations. Note that WP:POLA was rejected. As for your characterization of the Virgin Killer album, you are quite incorrect; the article is about the album, not the album cover. It does indeed illustrate the topic, so the analogy to the Black Stone image and Muhammad's article is quite fitting. Tarc (talk) 13:49, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree, the best thing would be for the community to decide its response to the resolution. A widely advertised, well structured community consultation would be very appropriate. Of course POLA was rejected. It was doomed from the start. I voted against it. We can't possibly decide anything about that resolution while so many (pretty much all) editors have no understanding of its meaning or even whether the Foundation was addressing this project. Virgin Killer is 90% about the image on the album cover and the ramifications of the image on the cover. Muhammad doesn't even mention the black stone image. One article is mostly about its offensive image; the other doesn't even mention its offensive image. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:13, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Do keep up, AC. There is a whole paragraph on the story right next to the image! How many other places have you been peddling this misinformation in? Johnbod (talk) 14:43, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Please reread what I said. Please don't patronise me and I'd appreciate it if you'd strike your insulting accusation that I'm peddling misinformation. Aren't you the editor that accused me of being sly? You're half the reason I gave up editing that page.

I said Muhammad doesn't even mention the black stone image. Image. Not "black stone;" "black stone image." I'm explaining how utterly valueless that image is to the Muhammad article compared to the centrality of the cover image to the Virgin Killer article. That article spends about 90% of its text discussing the image and its ramifications. Muhammad doesn't mention the black stone image at all. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:58, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok, but why on earth should it mention it? It is there to illustrate the text, not the text to describe it. That does not make it "valueless", "trivial" or all the other nonsense you throw around. Johnbod (talk) 15:09, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Please read what I said. I'm not asserting Muhammad should mention the image. No, not being mentioned in Muhammad doesn't make the image a trivial piece of decorative fluff; its inability to add anything to the readers' understanding of the black stone event does that. I was arguing that this piece of page prettiness is in a different category of import... Oh geez. Just read what I said. Carefully. What I actually said. I tried to discuss this very point with you on Talk:Muhammad/images but you just called me names. Please don't say things like "all the other nonsense you throw around." It's insulting and humiliating, and reflects poorly on you. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:43, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. To use non-free images, there must be a rationale that satisfies WP:NFCC. Free images are under no such restriction or condition of use. That it depicts a scene describes i nthe body of the article is all that is needed to use it. Tarc (talk) 15:31, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I'm out of here. Ludwigs, man, I really feel your pain. (Sigh). Arbitrators, I've put my case. I won't add any more to this. Good luck. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:43, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

lol - You've gotta love the purity of it, though: That "We must do it because it's not prohibited" logic isn't isn't just twisted, it's positively acrobatic. --Ludwigs2 16:20, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Can I point everybody to this thread?

User_talk:Anthonyhcole#What_is_the_problem_with_controversial_image_use_on_Wikipedia.3F Feel free to edit or add to that thread, if you have a problem with present image use policy. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:27, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

A discussion on your own talk page amongst editors who agree with you is not going to affect site-wide policy one bit, I'm afraid. Tarc (talk) 18:00, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not a discussion, actually, it's just a succession of concise posts; people putting their view on the problem with our handling of offensive images. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 20:47, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

That excludes people who disagree that we have a problem with our handling of offensive images. WP:NOTCENSORED and WP:DUE, etc, work perfectly in all but a tiny minority of cases, and in the majority of those cases it's not a problem with the process but with users not engaging with the process (deliberately or otherwise). Thryduulf (talk) 00:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Yep. It's meant to only address perceived problems with controversial image curation. Existing policy, or at least its current interpretation, specifically ignores offensive content, which is a problem because it necessarily means we'll be casually, ignorantly, needlessly, possibly deliberately, offending our readers; and because we've been told by the Foundation to pay particular attention to the curation of certain types of offensive image. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:47, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm jut wondering at the purpose of gathering only like-minded editors in a single spot. If you all wish to hone your argument and fine-tune the details, I guess I see that, but it comes off as a little...line in the sand-ish. Tarc (talk) 13:18, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Which element of that policy you linked to (WP:BATTLE) does this violate? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:25, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

"In large disputes, resist the urge to turn Wikipedia into a battleground between factions". You're using an Arbitration Workshop page to solicit like-minded editors to join you in being like-minded. That's about as prime an example of factionalism as one can find, IMO. Tarc (talk) 13:39, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Since I don't have such an urge, there is nothing for me to resist. What you just did was impute motive, bad motive. That's offensive, and specifically despised behaviour here on Wikipedia, and everywhere else for that matter. Please try to resist the urge to do that. What I'm doing there is

Once everybody who wants to has chimed in, we may be able to find a form of words that comprehensively and concisely expresses the harm being done to the project by present controversial image use practice. Then we can move on to compose a similar statement of possible remedies and their advantages and disadvantages. Only then will we be in a position to put something rigorous and persuasive to a widely advertised RfC.

[142] That is, I'm trying to put coherence, rigor and concision into the argument against present image use here. I believe that if interested readers got together and honed an argument, without the distraction of personal attacks (see the assumption of bad faith in the preceding comment), red herrings, straw men, etc, etc, that the defenders of gratuitous offense are constantly spraying the whole debate with, we could actually save a lot of everybody's time. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:58, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

How is quantifying people as "defenders of gratuitous offense" anything but bad faith? No one is arguing for gratuitous offense per WP:Offensive material since no one wants to put on here cartoons with bomb hats, muhammad mask porn through outs or dante's muhammad in hell. Assuming that others are here to just offend isn't even giving them a credible attempt at either them bringing up something you haven't thought about or vice versa. Just a thought. Tivanir2 (talk) 03:37, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not assuming others are here just to offend. But defending the notion that "we must not consider offensiveness" is defending casual, careless, gratuitous and even deliberate offense. Doing the first is necessarily doing the second. Sorry if me saying that in so many words offends those that argue we don't care about offending our readers. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:45, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes but that rational is no more useful then if I go and find things on this project and demand they be removed because they offend. A prime example is the flag burning pictures brought up on the what wp notcensored is not discussion. I don't like the fact that they exist but I am not campaigning for their removal simply on the grounds of offense. Hell prove to me they need to be in more articles and I will fight for them, simply because offense isn't something that is considered. That doesn't mean joe x put that picture there to offend me, they might just be doing it to illustrate a point (like say the freedom of speech article.) Tivanir2 (talk) 00:42, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

But Tivanir, that's exactly the point you're missing; this is not about individual people being getting miffed. Flag desecration is a well-know cultural controversy, the desecration of flags is frequently done as a political act to offend a particular group or culture, and Wikipedia does not become a party in a real-world dispute. If someone where to add images of a burning stars and stripes to the United States article, you would be well within your rights to remove it as offensive. This doesn't mean that you'd want (or be allowed) to remove burning flags from everywhere on the project, but where they've been added to articles in a way that serves no real purpose and gets under people's skins, you are making the encyclopedia better by removing them. --Ludwigs2 01:24, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

"If someone where to add images of a burning stars and stripes to the United States article, you would be well within your rights to remove it as offensive.", no he (nor you, me or anyone else) would be firmly in the wrong to remove it as offensive. We'd be within our rights to remove it, subject to WP:BRD, as irrelevant, undue or vandalism (if we believed it to be any of these). This is exactly the same as if the inserted picture was a penis, Babe Ruth or a cute bunny rabbit. Removing irrelevant and undue images (where there consensus that they are irrelevant and/or undue) does help the encyclopaedia, removing images because they are offensive does not. Thryduulf (talk) 03:16, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Except, Thyrd, using the logic that you and others have used here and on the Muhammad page, a cohort of editors could go to the United States or Flag of the United States articles and add a half dozen images of people defacing the US flag, and there would be no way to remove them. Such images are perfectly appropriate pictures of flags, they are topically relevant, it doesn't matter whether they are useful or necessary on the page; anyone trying to remove them is self-evidently doing so because they are offended by seeing their flag burned; NOTCENSORED applies, end of discussion.

Of course, you and I both know that would never happen, because any effort to add flag desecration images to US articles would be mobbed by by pro-American editors in sufficient numbers to remove the images. No one would listen to your NOTCENSORED argument there, because no one would be willing to believe that all pro-removal editors are flag-waving fanatics. Your NOTCENSORED argument cannot be applied uniformly to different groups: the "We don't pay attention to offense" argument works when it is applied to groups which are currently subject to prejudice, because the necessary first step in making your argument work is asserting that the group being offended is primarily composed of people who are irrationally offended and must be suppressed. Whether you realize it or not, you've created an argument that sounds perfectly logical in the abstract, but that only works when one makes implicitly prejudicial assumptions. --Ludwigs2 15:20, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

To avoid going around in circles I shall refrain from again demonstrating how this is incorrect. The previous several occasions should have been more than sufficient. Thryduulf (talk) 16:23, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense. --Ludwigs2 17:10, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Thats just it instead of me complaining about the exist of a burning flag (the flag of the US for example) I would be worried about where it is not what it is. For something like that in the countries that hold those it would make sense. For freedom of speech it makes sense. On the article of the United States it is tangible at best so someone tossing out NOTCENSORED doesn't answer the basic question of "Yes it's offensive but why are we putting it here?" Again simply because it is offensive to me doesn't mean I want it removed completely, and quite frankly if I know it is on a webpage I want to visit there are ways to filter it out right now with third party and eventually with wikipedia options my offense doesn't trump someone elses right to learn. Tivanir2 (talk) 20:08, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Tiv, you sound like you're making the argument that Jayen and Eraser and Hans and I have been making all along. Why should the "why are we putting it here?" question apply on the US article with respect to flag desecration, but not apply on the Muhammad article with respect to proscribed images? --Ludwigs2 21:09, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is the same question you should be asking of every image on Wikipedia, "Is the image relevant and due here?". With respect to the images on Muhammed, you and Tivanir disagree about the answer. Tivanir, Tarc, Kww, and most others believe the answer is (paraphrasing), "Yes, they are relevant and (at least some of them) due because they illustrate the biographical article about Muhammed". On the other hand, Hans Adler's opinion appears to me to be that they aren't relevant enough because they are offensive. Jayen seems to be of the opinion that because they aren't used in reliable sources they are undue. Eraserhead seems to think their either undue and/or not relevant, I think at least partly because they are offensive (but I'm not completely sure I understand why he thinks this). Thryduulf (talk) 23:08, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I think some (1-2) depictions are relevant and useful, and I'm waiting to hear an argument beyond WP:ILIKEIT as to why the rest of them are useful.

If we then disagree on how many depictions are useful then I would suggest splitting the difference. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 23:15, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Thryduulf: that's not where we disagree. You and Tiv and Tarc and Jayen and I (I'm quite sure) evaluate these images in exactly the same way. Where we disagree is over how to evaluate Islam. You all assert that Islamic perspectives deserve absolutely no consideration (per NOTCENSORED), while we argue that Islamic perspectives should be weighed in along with other considerations (as spelled out in NPOV). This isn't really about the images at all, except that we disagree on how to handle the competing real-world POVs. --Ludwigs2 00:00, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, NPOV is the reason why Wikipedia is not censored (it is impossible to be censored and neutral), and thus NPOV is why the offensiveness of any image to any group is irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 00:51, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Thryduulf: I know you keep saying that, but - and I cannot stress this enough - it makes no sense. You've completely conflated the concepts. Look:

• The idea behind NPOV is that we present different POVs in careful balance in order to avoid favoring one POV over another; we mirror the distribution of credible perspectives in real world sources so that we can preserve our reputation for neutrality.
• The idea behind NOTCENSORED is that we are free to use material that someone might object to if it advances the purpose of the encyclopedia.

There is a small subset of cases in which the two principles overlap (where one POV group is trying to censor input from a different POV group), but otherwise they are completely tangential to each other.

Frankly, when you conflate NPOV and NOTCENSORED in this way, you end up mangling both principles. You turn NOTCENSORED around to imply that we must show material that people are offended by (by asserting that we are being censored if we don't), and by that act you end up destroying the proportional balance between POVs that NPOV demands. You yourself become the POV trying to censor another POV, and you defend your right to censor that POV by pointing to NOTCENSORED as justification, and that's just wrong under any rational consideration. Do you see what I'm getting at? --Ludwigs2 03:16, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

That "NOTCENSORED" means we "must show material people are offended by" is a logical fallacy that is not what I arguing for, as has also been explained many times (certainly at WT:NOT and I think also here). NPOV means that we have to treat all views equally, we can't pick and choose to take into account some views of offence (e.g. depictions of Muhammed) and ignore others (e.g. depictions of unveiled women). Given that removing all images of unveiled women would be offensive to many people and not removing all images of unveiled women is offensive to many people, and we cannot do both we have only the choice to kowtow to neither or abandon neutrality. Again this has been explained many times. Thryduulf (talk) 19:56, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Thryduulf, you can say that the moon is made of green cheese, if you want. Whatever you do however, is very different. Here in the above post, for instance - ironically, right after you disagree with the statement that NOTCENSORED means we must show offensive material - you argue that we must show offensive material otherwise we are kowtowing to Muslims. Of course, you've couched it in this weird fake-out - inventing some unknown group which has a cultural or religious obligation that they must see images of Muhammad, and then insisting that NPOV forces us to balance Islamic POV against the POV of this hitherto unknown cultural entity (do you have sourcing showing the existence of that group, incidentally?). But even if we were to accept the existence of this completely imaginary group, it still would not be grounds for retaining excess, superfluous images of Muhammad on the article.

You're just reinforcing my point, Thryduulf. --Ludwigs2 22:13, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

NPOV and NOTCENSORED certainly mean that we have to show a couple of depictions, but just not six, the value of a couple can easily be justified with a decent editorial argument beyond WP:ILIKEIT. An infobox depiction can be justified on the grounds that its standard on Wikipedia, and an depiction in the Islamic depictions section can be justified on the grounds that Islamic depictions exist.

I'm much more dubious about extending it any further than a couple of depictions as no-one seems to have a justification beyond WP:ILIKEIT. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:08, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the hang up is more the idea that the end number has to be between zero and the current status to some individuals. Coming to a table with prepackaged requirements isn't a compromise or seeking one it is seeking a concession on one half of the argument. If the images were approached at the angle of we will determine how many we need when we get there instead of we definitely need to reduce some there would be far less friction. I still think the image by image review of everything and submission for new images would be the best way to go, but that will have to be decided after this case. Tivanir2 (talk) 15:47, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree that this is a good idea and its reasonable to look at the depictions as a whole.

I also agree that there is probably more of a hang up than there should be about the possibility of increasing the number of depictions, and I am certainly happy to hear any arguments in favour of doing so.

However I also think its extremely unlikely that anyone could possibly legitimately justify increasing the number of depictions. Calligraphy is such an important means of expressing Muhammad (as per Johnbod's comment that its much more common than depictions) that to marginalise it further would be extremely hard to justify - especially as no-one has managed to justify including more than a couple of depictions beyond WP:ILIKEIT. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:22, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

That is actually the point though, I don't feel strongly about any version be it one two or 18 separate pictures in this case. That is why I always asked for image review. Do we need every image that is in the article right now? Probably not but that goes for each side. I am for including calligraphy and actually showed a change of mind when Jayyen brought up the point that mosques use the koran inscriptions as being useful in the section on legacy. Potentially it could go under koran but we would need a way to verify it was also done during his lifetime or post mortem and I have no idea if it occurred as either. But even stated above in this workshop by multiple people they think that the status quo should be 0 and maybe up to 2 but anything else it is hell or high water. I do not find that kind of view useful since drawing lines in the sand on anything starts people into combative mindsets and us versus them mentalities. Tivanir2 (talk) 04:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I suspect poor communication is to blame here, especially as all of these editors were prepared to sign-up to Resolute's compromise (or at least Jayen's implementation) which had four depictions. If someone can produce a coherent argument as to why more than 2 depictions is desirable I'm certainly prepared to split the difference.

An image review sounds like a sensible step. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:26, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually there were useful discussions on this happening when you arrived at the page & (after your own little proposal did not get accepted) started demanding an RFC & then this case, thus distracting everybody from them. Johnbod (talk) 17:49, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

The only proposal I have made was after the start of this arbitration case, so your timeline seems a bit off... -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)