In the News: Wiki Porn Prohibition Ends

What makes you visit Wikipedia? To research historical personalities? To resolve disputes? Everyone who reads this has probably visited a Wikimedia site at least once. Wikipedia is, after all, the biggest informational resource on the Internet. With users worldwide, it offers information in 287 languages on almost anything and everything. It should be no surprise that people are curious about other people's nude appearances. As a result, Wikipedia includes pornographic and naked pictures from art and film. When there is porn, there are people who want to keep it hidden from other people.

The "hidden" photographs on Wikipedia were the subject of what Fox News dubbed an "expose" in 2010. They meant "expose", in case you haven't visited the website; they meant "hidden," which meant you had to click on it. The revelation that if a website covers everything, then "everything" will include sex startled Fox viewers. In response to the criticism, Wikipedia considered implementing a "personal image filter" to prevent the influx of potential wiki-nip-slips. (Keep in mind that while it's acceptable for kids to see breasts when nursing after they're weaned, they won't have any more boobies until they get married.) In any case, Fox recently revealed that Wikipedia has yet to resolve the "problem" of nudity on the site, even after speaking with over 20,000 users. They appear to have mostly given up on getting rid of porn, at least for the time being.

But does WikiNudity have a problem? Is censoring nudity or any other accurate content required of websites like Wikipedia? Who makes the decisions about what constitutes pornography, sexual education, and artistic nudity? Is it horrible to be nude? Why? To whom?

"There's no consensus about the need [for a system to purge Wikipedia of all nudity]," stated Jay Walsh, a spokesman for Wikimedia. To what purpose can it remove all nudity and prevent its restoration? Pornography on the Internet is more common than ever. And let's face it: Many frequently erased browser cache histories are the only side effects we know of.