Obscene images shake up Internet encyclopedia

Pornographic images contained on the Web site were recently revealed in a Fox TV news report.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Obscene and pornographic images that somehow escaped the notice of system administrators to make their way online has left the popular Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia in chaos. While he remains with the company, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has relinquished his top-level control over the Web site.

According to FOX News, Wales has relinquished control over Wikipedia's other sites as well. Sources in the company says Wales now has the same capabilities as a low-level administrator.

When an unnamed Wikipedia associate was asked who was now in charge of the company, his reply was "No one. It's chaos."

Pornographic images contained on the Web site were recently revealed in a TV news report. FOX News reported that Wales personally deleted the images earlier this month. While Wales reported that other images would be removed, many of the earlier images have since been restored to their original web pages.

Many high-profile donors to the Wikimedia organization, such as  Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Best Buy, USA Networks, Craigslist, have inquired about photos that could be construed as child pornography. There also graphic photo images of male and female genitalia and men and women or groups of people involved in sexual acts. The content can be readily viewed by children at most public schools, where students are encouraged to use Wikipedia as a source encyclopedia.

After Wales called for these images to be removed there were cries of protest, saying that such  actions betrayed the essence of the open user-generated online encyclopedia.

One protesting e-mail read in part, "In essence, right now Jimbo is deleting things based on his singular judgment about what should be allowed.. This is a large change and lack of a clear policy creates a very confusing and frustrating environment for editors."

But Wales defended his actions, writing that "much of the cleanup is done, although there was so much hardcore pornography on commons that there's still some left in nooks and crannies..

"We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Now, the correct storyline is that we are cleaning up. I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way it did, and I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen," the statement read.

---

'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'