Extreme violence should be cut too, as should racism

Just my opinion here, but while we're cleaning up, can we remove works that are extremely violent for no reason but people getting off on the violence? That's far more creepy than people getting off on consensual sex between adults.

I'd nominate the Hostel and Saw films and similar Gorn.

As for racism, I mentioned this in ATT, but do we REALLY need an article on The Turner Diaries and on Mein Kampf?

edited 15th Apr '12 8:29:54 PM by AGroupie

By that logic, we'll be forced to remove The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park!!

Yea...there's a lot of stuff I find racist, but prevailing mores don't agree with me, and there'd just be a huge argument.

I realize this isn't just about Google anymore, but content related to racist works isn't hurting our revenue stream.

If we cut things it should be due to the fact that it's not right for the site, which at this time seems to be a safe site. It's not about the revenue, I would say.

I do think that it clarifies what this site's supposed to be. But I'm not sure if we can handle this right now, with the current process already taking up much work and stress.

We'll just have to wait until the current panic tides over before we worry about new issues.

At this point, discussing topics like this is going to add to the general mood of unease and panic. How about we wait until we find out if we have a house before we start changing the color of the curtains. OK?

Torture porn should be cut? Uh... maybe. Yeah, sure.

Racist works? Yeah, cut them too. (Maybe an exception for Birth Of A Nation)

^ I still don't understand the logic here. O. Henry used just as many tropes in his racist works as in his nonracist works. What makes the tropes in the racist ones less suitable for analysis than the tropes in the nonracist ones?

That's the thing.

Why do we need "exceptions"?

The whole point of a core guideline is that it's a defining trait.

edited 15th Apr '12 9:13:31 PM by abstractematics

Uh, I wasn't arguing anything about the amount of tropes.

I hold an exception for Birth Of A Nation since it was a very revolutionary film, but on second thought, I might not want it on the wiki.

"This is not a site about the literary merit or historical importance of anything." I'm saying this not because I don't like literary merit or historical importance, but because we need to be fair about what we're really doing. If we're having an anti-racism or whatnot here, the site has to be safe from it.

Can we just not discuss this right now? Too much is still occurring and we shouldn't add fuel to a already large fire. Someone lock this!!

^^^ Why not? It's a site about tropes. We're documenting tropes. That's what we should be doing.

(To draw an analogy, Wikipedia has a lot of pages on white supremacist leaders, and that doesn't make me think any less of that site for it. Every once in a while, one of those pages was clearly written by a white supremacist, so I rewrite that page to be more neutral.)

edited 15th Apr '12 9:25:46 PM by feotakahari

I'd like to lock the discussion but then where will the next Hydra occur?

Will the respondents run off to some other corner of the wiki and come up with more stuff either to prove a point about censorship or to worry a particular bone of contention to death?

It should be noted that a lot of works will have racist/sexist undertones purely because they were written at certain periods in time where that was the norm (at least in the author's viewpoint).

Or a person might be so culturally myopic that when they write a work it comes out racist. So you'll see a work with a white guy saving all the brown savages, and think really? but the author won't see it as racist.

edited 15th Apr '12 9:33:38 PM by animeg3282

Maybe cutting racism is too much, but I do see the point with extreme violence.

I personally find The Crying Game horribly offensive, but I wouldn't ask for its page to be removed because it's a cultural milestone. Even though there are some weird things going on with the Wiki, we can't just start saying, "well, now that we're cleaning up, let's get rid of X!" The Turner Diaries and Mein Kamph, despite being absolutely abhorrent, are... sigh... cultural milestones in their own right. They aren't POSITIVE cultural milestones, but they're notable enough for indexing.

edited 15th Apr '12 9:34:30 PM by LargoQuagmire

This is an important discussion to have, but not in this context. Can we please stop running around starting fires?

First you have to define extreme. Then you have to say what is unacceptable; having the work listed at all or going into too much detail? You go too far on the violence front and you end up having to purge a huge chunk of the site.

edited 15th Apr '12 9:35:06 PM by Rationalinsanity

I was thinking works that are explicit about atrocities and etc. Same standards as with the recent policy.

I'll agree though that this might not be the best time for discussing this.

Behold: The slippery slope in action. This is exactly what I was worried about. Censorship encourages more censorship, even if the first few things banned are reprehensible and hard to defend.

This proposal should be completely rejected; the last thing we need is to once again expand the scope of this ban on certain works.

I don't see why either violence or racism should be cut.

If the violence is sexualized but isn't porn, then I guess that's something that the committee would have to go over. Torture porn obviously would go. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure a good amount of extreme violence isn't meant for people to get off on. Also, extreme violence would have to have a better definition about what it could refer to.

As for racist works, well, it exists. This website isn't giving a bad image by having pages talking about these sorts of works and tropes. This sort of stuff is talked about in a high school setting. If someone edits racist remarks onto a work page, then that can easily be fixed.

I'm not really sure what the big concern is about honestly.

I can understand the desire to remove heavily violent works - like pornographic works, if they have no redeeming value in plot, style or artistic merit, and they are just there to satisfy some sort of animal urge for blood, then why document them in detail?

Racism is... different, I think, if only because it's an intellectual thing and people generally aren't writing them for the purpose of physical gratification.