The epic battle for Wikipedia's "autofellatio" page
There are people who want Wikipedia to be absolutely child-safe and free of images of sexuality and violence. And there are people who think Wikipedia should be as accurate as possible and this includes adult pictures when discussing adult topics. Between them, a battle rages across all of the explicit entries in Wikipedia.
The Epic Battle For Wikipedia's Autofellatio Page
There is no set policy on using explicit images in sexuality articles, because Wikipedia refuses to put such standards in place. It lets its users decide, and the result is that editors who happen to go to one of these pages decide what is and isn’t appropriate. But just as it seems a decision has been made, other people come in and decide it hasn’t, restarting the debate as if it never happened in the first place. Wikipedia’s users are a bureaucracy that tries to run itself as a democracy. The result is anarchy. Anarchy with pictures of dudes ejaculating in 270 frames-per-second super-slo-mo.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who goes by the user name Jimbo Wales on the site, saw the autofellatio page as important enough to begin its debate on image use in February of 2005. “I invite people to think carefully about this photo in the context of an overall view of our charitable, humanitarian, educational mission,” he wrote, “and not be distracted by arguments about censorship and prudishness, which are very much beside the point here.” Yes, there was a penis being thrust into a man’s mouth on this page. But that penis needed to be “charitable, humanitarian, and educational” in addition to being covered in saliva.
Jimbo put the decision on the image up to a vote, but before there was a vote, it was decided there needed to be a vote on whether there should be a deadline on the vote. Then it was decided there needed to be a vote on how to interpret the outcome of the vote. However, according to the rules of this vote to decide the rules of the vote, no consensus was reached. So apparently the image-decision vote would not be valid. But they finally went ahead with it anyway. No consensus was reached on that vote either. So despite all this effort, and all the thousands of words written on the subject, no decision was actually made. This is apparently how things work on Wikipedia.