Wikipedia:Sexual content/FAQ

Note: For the official set of questions and answers on this topic from the WMF, see

WMF:QA Wikimedia Commons images review, May 2010

For an extensive collection of May 2010 news coverage and related discussions, see

Commons:Commons:News regarding the sexual content purge

Wikipedia sexual content FAQ

• Wikipedia contains a small proportion of quite shocking and explicit sexual images. Why don't you just delete them so the site is safe for children?

• Wikipedia is not safe for unwary, unattended children. It is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit — which means, child molesters and other criminals can and probably do edit it from all over the world. We don't take ID cards, we don't run background checks, and we cannot guarantee that your child will not be led by some innocuous-sounding link to a website or to an in-person meeting with something a lot worse than sexual content. Just as sunscreen can increase the risk of skin cancer by blocking only the weaker light that causes sunburn, censoring Wikipedia could put children much more at risk by concealing the wide-open nature of our site.

• Why don't you make a child-safe version of Wikipedia?

• We do—because we license everything with a Creative Commons license for open reuse, for any purpose, even commercial use. Sites all over the world reuse our material, and are free to select a subset of the content that is judged suitable for children by local laws and customs. What we can't do is decide which material is judged suitable everywhere in the world, because different cultures have different priorities. What we won't do is give up the right to cover topics for an educated adult audience based on what children might not be ready for.

Wikipedia editors manufacture content. Our site is like the truck that hauls the produce away from the farm—you can consume our product on the spot, but we haven't washed it off and checked it for worms.

• Within the United States there is a CIPA law that requires schools and libraries to pay for third-party censors to block certain types of Web pages. As American taxpayers are already paying for professionals to "filter" the content, there is no reason to rely on Wikipedia volunteers to do this job, especially when they are anonymous and not necessarily dedicated to the task.

• Why don't you set up a children's class of account?

• With every new edit, any article can become objectionable by some standards of what is appropriate for children. We can't just block out a few articles and say that children are safe to wander the rest. We can't trust a "dirty words" filter to prevent more disturbing content. You can reuse Wikipedia content to make a carefully screened site, but those reading it aren't seeing the most recent version, so they can't meaningfully participate in editing—which is what Wikipedia is all about.

• Does Wikipedia have policies about sexual content?

• See WP:Sexual content. The encyclopedia is not censored beyond legal requirements and certain encyclopedic guidelines. One of the more relevant guidelines is that Wikimedia Commons does not maintain material which is beyond the scope of its mission—it must realistically be usable for an educational purpose, where educational is used with its broad meaning of “providing knowledge; instructional or informative”. This generally excludes "private party photos" and "photos of yourself and your friends", without comment to the quality of the attire.

• Does Wikipedia house child pornography?

• None to our knowledge. But people upload new pictures every minute, and they are screened only by volunteers. You're free to join our project and help look for it if you are worried that someone might do this. But bear in mind that despite a serious-sounding allegation made by Larry Sanger on Fox News, no one has found any child porn here. Wikimedia Foundation’s General Counsel examined the so-called "child porn" (drawings from the early 20th century) and determined them to be legal.[1] Wikimedia does house artistic photographs of naked children made by Victorian photographers such as Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, and Julia Margaret Cameron, but these are entirely legal.

• Why don't Wikipedians respect Christian beliefs?

• Different countries, religions, cultures and subcultures—and individuals—have different ideas of what is objectionable and what isn't. For example, many Muslims strenuously object to certain illustrations of Muhammad. If Christians object to various sexual content, we as a community then have four choices.

• We can ban what the Christians object to, but ignore the Muslims' complaints.
• We can ban what the Muslims object to, but ignore the Christians' complaints.
• We can ban everything that any religion or culture objects to, right down to images of unveiled women.
• We can keep everything we possibly can.

It should be clear that our best option for an expansive, informative, and unprejudiced encyclopedia is to treat our own culture with the same detached, academic insensitivity with which we treat all the others.

We should also recognize that not all Christians (or Muslims) believe in censorship; and we respect the freedom of religion and the right of all people to think, inquire, and read as they wish.

• Why doesn't Wikipedia set up some kind of a council with a vote by international standards?

• Each country might have its own cultural standard. But cultural standards vary widely within each country. The viewpoint of the ALA never quite matches the viewpoint of the PTA, so every school library is a cultural battleground. As makers of an encyclopedia, our affinity should be with the librarians, and so we should work hard to defend our collection of articles from all who might diminish them. Our English Wikipedia is subject to the laws of one country, the United States, which will not allow any compromise that would be at all less stringent than its laws — so we should not change our standard in only those cases when other countries have laws that are more restrictive.

See also

• Wikipedia:Sexual content
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Sexology and sexuality/WIP-image-guidelines
• Wikipedia:Options to not see an image – an alternative and form of self-regulation.