Wikipedia founder’s anti porn drive
By Bala Shah

Wikipedia is one of the top 10 websites accessed by Indians. And it is equally popular around the world. Apart from being a rich source of research and educational material,   it can be credited as one of the greatest achievements of idealistic, global volunteer effort. Wikipedia is among the top 5 sites in the world and is read by 325 million visitors every month.

Wikipedia, like other international websites Facebook and Google’s Blogger, has its small share of controversies about adult material.  What is considered art in France may be banned in Singapore.  Wikipedia, like Facebook, attempts to strike a balance between different cultures and societies.

While most credit Jimbo Wales for started Wikipedia, one of his ex friends and colleagues Larry Sanger also did much to get Wikipedia off the ground.  Larry left the Wikipedia project but still harbours animosity towards Jimbo and Wikipedia.  So much so, that Larry Sanger contacted the FBI in April, 2010 to complain that Wikipedia was distributing child porn.  International media published for a few days Larry’s allegations about such porn on Wikipedia, but the story died out soon.

No one believes that Wikipedia would ever consciously allow child porn and so media dropped the story in late April, 2010.  But it seems that Wikipedia management is still smarting from the news headlines about child porn

On May 7, 2010 (India time), Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales announced a crackdown on all porn

“
Wikimedia Commons admins who wish to remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests have my full support.  This includes immediate deletion of all pornographic images.  We should keep educational images about sexuality - mere nudity is not pornography - but as with all our projects, editorial quality judgments must be made and will be made - appropriately and in good taste.  I am stating here my public support for admins who are prepared to enforce quality standards and get rid of a large quantity of what can only be characterized as "trolling" images of people's personal pornography collections. I am fully willing to change the policies for adminship (including removing adminship in case of wheel warring on this issue).  I think our existing policies here on commons are sufficient to deal with the problem - with the minor exception that many things should just be speedy deleted and argued about later.  If you want to be technical about it, please consider this a policy change in that regard.  Try to relax.  Anything which is deleted can be resorted if there's a good reason. -- Jimbo Wales
“