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The lower part of the 'website' section appears to be written by some one from the organisation - I've added the 'advert' tag as it seemed the most apropriate. 80.41.171.18 08:53, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Why is evlekis continually adding the `website` section which contains many weasel words and as has been mentioned before is a blantant advert ? 58.81.137.194 ( talk) 11:27, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Their own web site [1] says that their mission statement is "To work in partnership with internet service providers, telecommunication companies, mobile operators, software providers, the police, Government and the public to minimise the availability of online illegal content, particularly child abuse images.". We currently make them look broader than they are. Secretlondon 03:52, 31 March 2007 (UTC) Aim [2] Our aim is to minimise the availability of potentially illegal internet content, specifically:
Role [3]
Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre deal with IM, chatroom etc. [4] Secretlondon 03:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Yesterday, a user named "Internet Watch Foundation" made an edit to this page. A request for them to confirm their identity and explain their edits has been placed on their talk page. In the meanwhile, their edits have been reverted to avoid conflicts of interest. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CheshireKatz ( talk • contribs) 20:08, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
As a result, less than 1% of potentially illegal content has apparently been hosted in the UK since 2003, down from 18% in 1997.
David.Monniaux ( talk) 21:49, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
We should not cite numbers that have no definition — these are marketing-speak, not encyclopedic. David.Monniaux ( talk) 06:13, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Should there be a mention of the IWF being funded by netsense? Klosterdev ( talk) 21:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
This from their website http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.226.htm he got the ISPA Internet Hero award.
If, as a casual reader, I read the introduction of this article, then I'm not really informed as to the activities of this organization. For instance, I hear that it maintains a blacklist of sites to be censored; yet this is not mentioned.
Later on in the article, we don't have much of a discussion of this blacklist and the criteria applied for sites to be in or out of it. David.Monniaux ( talk) 08:38, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Please note that "child pornography", "child porn" and "kiddie porn" are not acceptable terms. The use of such language acts to legitimise images which are not pornography, rather, they are permanent records of children being sexually abused and as such should be referred to as child sexual abuse images. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ticram ( talk • contribs) 21:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure that getting blocked is relevant to this article. That has to do with the way ISPs are filtering, and the way we responded. The IWF just makes the list, and can't be blamed for the way it's enforced (at least, that's the way I understand it.) Thoughts?-- Werdan7 T @ 03:29, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
yeah I guess their just "under orders" right? What should be done is thier ip adress should be blocked from wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.228.169.184 ( talk) 22:52, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
I think we can stop worrying about potentially blaming the IWF for something that is not really their fault:
If this was indeed Sarah Robertson's literal response, then there is something very wrong with their process. It sounds as if she had never seen the source code of an HTML page. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 11:54, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
Fair-use suggests and may require that we replace the image in the infobox with something else, such as the organization's logo. Comments? davidwr/( talk)/( contribs)/( e-mail) 00:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
{{
Infobox Website}}
was being used, which treated the IWF as a website rather than as an entity. I've changed it to use {{
Infobox Non-profit}}
instead, and moved the logo from a random floating spot to the infobox.
haz (
talk)
19:13, 9 December 2008 (UTC){{ editprotected}} The article says that a staff of 7 people is responsible for compiling and maintaining the blacklist. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/08/amazon-internet-censorship-iwf however talks of four people going through the list. The 3 may be management, but the Guardian number is more recent than the one in the cited source (which I can't find). -- Ticram ( talk) 19:28, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
{{
editsemiprotected}}
can be used to request changes to semi-protected pages.)
haz (
talk)
09:13, 10 December 2008 (UTC)Ok, just for wiki's information... Their site is now down. LOW ORBIT ION CANNONS HAVE DONE THEIR JOB. Consider incorporating this in the article. Dendre ( talk) 18:09, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
a list would be useful, seeing as this is a voluntary scheme-- Mongreilf ( talk) 17:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
There is a kind of list, compiled while the wikipedia block was in force, in the "Administrators' note" linked at the top of this page Martinwguy ( talk) 05:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
Ars Technica story on one IWF-using ISP blocking the Wayback Machine We might want to mention this in the article. 75.212.134.39 ( talk) 19:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
This quango continually makes the claim, on its website and in response to accusations of excessive censorship, that they only block "images of child sexual abuse". This claim is a blatant lie; Wikipedia itself called them out on this back in december when they gave the administators hell by blocking an image which did not in any way depict child sexual abuse, as well as the surrounding text. Yet despite what should have been a crushing and public humiliation for them, they continue to stand by their lies, openly admitting that they removed the Wikipedia block because it was causing them too much negative attention, not because the picture went against their own blocking policy (despite proof of the contrary).
As far as I'm concerned they have zero credibility right now, and if I was running an ISP I would have terminated my contract with them after that incident. It shows at the very least that their blacklist contains a huge number of false positives, that their control and review process is poor or nonexistant, or at worst that they are knowingly and deliberately decieving people about the kind of files they are blacklisting (their handling of the wikipedia incident sadly suggests to me that it's the latter).
The reason I'm posting this here is because I know that if I add this to the article someone's going to take issue to it and revert it, so I was hoping to get the support of a few others here before attempting anything. - —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.5.84.176 ( talk) 03:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
This was removed due to WP:NPOV concerns:
The IWF has been criticized for claiming tax-free chairty statues. When other censorship groups in the UK are not considered charities. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/20/iwf_charity/ They have significant commercial income – turning over several million pounds a year - and therefore they are constituted as a Limited Company, rather than a charity. They have also been listed on http://fakecharities.org/pages/posts/internet-watch-foundation57.php?searchresult=1&sstring=internet+watch+foundation as a fake charity do to the hundreds of thousands ofpounds they recieve from the EU.
Nobody is denying that the IWF receives money from the EU, but the "fake charity" tag could be seen as a violation of WP:MORALIZE. The IWF is a curious organization , and has been described as a quango, although it does not strictly fit the bill for this either.-- ♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 19:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
Much of the discussion below relates to A Wikipedia problem. What is wrong with REPORTING negative views about a person/organisation. To report views (if verified) is not musing it is (perhaps wrongly) what is thought. Too many times Wikipedia "editors" remove views which are widely held - I think these should be included. Not to do so results in the non-academic approach - academics look at both sides, take the views of other academics/writers/people into account. They do not shy away from reporting the negative. Too many times on WIkipedia we get the "Hitler was quite nice" approach because we do not want to offend. It is not balanced to ignore the negative. The IWF is a sinister organisation (which is my view) but I could find a whole load of people who say so (academics/journalists etc.) I wouldn't edit the main page to that effect because I know it would be removed not by IWF supporters but by the Wiki pedants. I see someone had mentioned that the IWF is a self-appointed (true), unregulated (true) organisation - this was removed shortly afterwards. Why? To include the negative is NOT unbalanced, it's balance.
My point was this - being neutral is not ignoring the negative - I was making just a general Wikipedia point. Saying nice things about people/things which all the world (academic and scientific, legal or journalistic) think are flawed is not neutrality - it's false political correctness. Do you think a true encylopedia would expunge crictism of Hitler, Stalin et al - just to appear neutral? I think not. This aticle in fact is not that bad, but others on Wikipedia take NPOV to mean we must expunge known and verified cricticism. "We must be nice even to those who are evil/flawed" That's not what academia or Encyclopedias are all about. They must reflect what is thought - certainly when it is overwhelmingly negative to the subject. As I say above let's have, therefore, Hitler was on the other hand a very nice man type of entry. That's just stupid and academically wrong. I despair of Wikuipedia - sexless, banality, NPOV political correctness gone mad. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.62.44 ( talk) 21:56, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
As of today I have been receiving this error on Megaupload: "Your IP address 89.167.221.3 has just downloaded 345435 bytes. Please wait 7 minutes, then try your download again." Sent an email off to complaints@iwf.org.uk as wikipedia says its their policy not to block whole websites, but they have done with MegaUpload. If it continues, its gearing up to be another "Incident" to be listed. -- 78.105.115.195 ( talk) 18:35, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
In any case, something seems fishy here. - 137.73.174.170 ( talk) 16:02, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
The problem reported here is almost certainly not due to IWF blocking, but is a side-effect due to ISPs using proxy servers to implement IWF filtering. I have added a detailed explanation, but at the moment am having some conflicts with another editor; if the article does not contain suitable content, look at this revision. Information on use of proxy servers by ISP is here. More useful information at here. A sample file that gives trouble if any user of the ISP has recently used the file sharing system is The first file of Scientific Linux (1 of 11; of use for testing download only). Pol098 ( talk) 08:46, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
The following would be totally OR in an article, but as talk, here goes: after trying unsuccessfully to download Scientific Linux from a file-sharing site, I investigated reasons for the failure and found out what I added to the article. I phoned my ISP, explained the issue, and asked explicitly if they were using a transparent proxy; they said yes. I asked how to get round it and they said there was no way within their system. They were quite clear that the proxy was the reason why it was not possible to use the site. It applied to both private and business accounts (I have seen it reported that it is private accounts only; mine is business). I pointed out that IWF protection was possible without a transparent proxy, but they were adamant that it would not be changed. There is a solution: change to an ISP that does not use a transparent proxy; most do, one has to look around. Pol098 ( talk) 11:57, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
The article gives one brief mention that the filtering also blocks "racist" content.
This is of course a massive leap from an actually criminal activity like child pornography to manipulation of political speech, and should get about half the article's length discussing exactly how it is defined and what content/sites it blocks.
But all we've got is a silence from the "watchdog" people writing the article -- which is somewhat creepier than the filter itself.
For example, would it filter an academic article discussing Polynesian cannibalism? A political party that says "immigrants are responsible for crime"? Downloading a digital version of "Tintin in the Congo" or "Mein Kampf" from a bookstore? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.201.168.129 ( talk) 00:39, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
There are a number of problems in writing balanced articles on an organisation such as this. One of the more paranoid worries is that anyone who includes too much (verified) criticism will be seen as an apologist for pedophilia and may himself be investigated or (less paranoid) content will be removed because the organisation itself (or its supporters) will remove the addition because it does not like the unaplatable fact. Secondly there is the old Wikipedia problem that when someone includes a (supported) negative view that is seen as POV (even when supported). As I have written elsewhere I see so many examples of the "don't say that Hitler was a nasty man" kind of removals - to remove negative views (supported by academics and historians) is not restoring balance, it is supporting your own POV! Like it or not a good many in the world have thought that Hitler was a nasty man (they may be right or wrong but that those views are so current becomes fact on its own). The best example of this has been an Homeopathy artcile - all the world (rightly or wrongly) scientific and academic see Homeopathy as a sham - and yet that must not be said (at least to the extent of evidence). it's all a bit lets be nice to people! The article on the IWF is not at all bad in terms of balance but there have been examples of additions being removed with deal with negative aspects and yet which are either clear fact or can be supported by reputable references. The point of an encylopedia is surely that it will be used. If unpalatble facts are removed then it cannot be used correctly - to gain facts/information to make ones own mind up, to do original research etc.etc. If (and I say IF) much of the academic world think the IWF needs more scrutiny, is secretive (perhaps for a reason), is not ityself regulated, is self-appointed (a clear fact), holds the ISPs to ransom, is part of an censorship "industry" with its own agenda/crusade, then it needs to be said. And if it needs to be said with some vigour then I see nothing wrong with that so long as it is supported. Fact is not POV, it is only accused of being POV because the accuser does not agree with the conclusion the fact will draw, or is a person who who does not understand the academic approach (both sides, different views = balance=truth). —Preceding unsigned comment added 2 October 2010 by JackRance22 ( talk • contribs)
Is there any commentary on this by a reliable source somewhere addressing that IWF has over time (racism, what they consider to be criminally obscene adult material, whatever that is) expanded it's remit and is therefore gradually reducing freedom of expression? Where does it stop, politics? 81.174.196.48 ( talk) 12:22, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
The blacklisting of sites may be concealed by a generic HTTP 404 "page not found" message rather than a more appropriate HTTP 403 "forbidden" message.
While this is what the cited article claims, it is incorrect. There is no standardized HTTP error code indicating that meaning as of yet, but there is a proposed error code: 451. I removed the inaccurate claim, but I didn't mention 451 as it's only a draft RFC at the moment. -- holizz ( talk) 04:47, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
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"IWF claims to have succeeded in reducing the percentage of the worldwide child sexual abuse images that are hosted in the UK from 18% in 1996 to 0.04% in 2018." This doesn't make sense prima facie and/or is needlessly unclear -- 18% of what? 18% of all worldwide hosted childhood sexual abuse images? This would infer that the IWF knows how many sexual abuse images exist in 1996 and in 2018 (but doesn't account for the presumed growth in number of images) and it infers that the IWF knows how many were hosted in the UK. Is that what this sentence is meant to indicate? (if so, it seems to convey complex information in a weird and unnecessary way to the reader) LaceyUF ( talk) 01:28, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
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![]() | In December 2008 the UK-based Internet Watch Foundation blocked access to Wikipedia article Virgin Killer for a large proportion of British users. For a full explanation and the latest information, please see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/2008_IWF_action. The IWF has since rescinded the block. |
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The lower part of the 'website' section appears to be written by some one from the organisation - I've added the 'advert' tag as it seemed the most apropriate. 80.41.171.18 08:53, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Why is evlekis continually adding the `website` section which contains many weasel words and as has been mentioned before is a blantant advert ? 58.81.137.194 ( talk) 11:27, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Their own web site [1] says that their mission statement is "To work in partnership with internet service providers, telecommunication companies, mobile operators, software providers, the police, Government and the public to minimise the availability of online illegal content, particularly child abuse images.". We currently make them look broader than they are. Secretlondon 03:52, 31 March 2007 (UTC) Aim [2] Our aim is to minimise the availability of potentially illegal internet content, specifically:
Role [3]
Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre deal with IM, chatroom etc. [4] Secretlondon 03:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Yesterday, a user named "Internet Watch Foundation" made an edit to this page. A request for them to confirm their identity and explain their edits has been placed on their talk page. In the meanwhile, their edits have been reverted to avoid conflicts of interest. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CheshireKatz ( talk • contribs) 20:08, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
As a result, less than 1% of potentially illegal content has apparently been hosted in the UK since 2003, down from 18% in 1997.
David.Monniaux ( talk) 21:49, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
We should not cite numbers that have no definition — these are marketing-speak, not encyclopedic. David.Monniaux ( talk) 06:13, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Should there be a mention of the IWF being funded by netsense? Klosterdev ( talk) 21:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
This from their website http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.226.htm he got the ISPA Internet Hero award.
If, as a casual reader, I read the introduction of this article, then I'm not really informed as to the activities of this organization. For instance, I hear that it maintains a blacklist of sites to be censored; yet this is not mentioned.
Later on in the article, we don't have much of a discussion of this blacklist and the criteria applied for sites to be in or out of it. David.Monniaux ( talk) 08:38, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Please note that "child pornography", "child porn" and "kiddie porn" are not acceptable terms. The use of such language acts to legitimise images which are not pornography, rather, they are permanent records of children being sexually abused and as such should be referred to as child sexual abuse images. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ticram ( talk • contribs) 21:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure that getting blocked is relevant to this article. That has to do with the way ISPs are filtering, and the way we responded. The IWF just makes the list, and can't be blamed for the way it's enforced (at least, that's the way I understand it.) Thoughts?-- Werdan7 T @ 03:29, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
yeah I guess their just "under orders" right? What should be done is thier ip adress should be blocked from wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.228.169.184 ( talk) 22:52, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
I think we can stop worrying about potentially blaming the IWF for something that is not really their fault:
If this was indeed Sarah Robertson's literal response, then there is something very wrong with their process. It sounds as if she had never seen the source code of an HTML page. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 11:54, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
Fair-use suggests and may require that we replace the image in the infobox with something else, such as the organization's logo. Comments? davidwr/( talk)/( contribs)/( e-mail) 00:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
{{
Infobox Website}}
was being used, which treated the IWF as a website rather than as an entity. I've changed it to use {{
Infobox Non-profit}}
instead, and moved the logo from a random floating spot to the infobox.
haz (
talk)
19:13, 9 December 2008 (UTC){{ editprotected}} The article says that a staff of 7 people is responsible for compiling and maintaining the blacklist. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/08/amazon-internet-censorship-iwf however talks of four people going through the list. The 3 may be management, but the Guardian number is more recent than the one in the cited source (which I can't find). -- Ticram ( talk) 19:28, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
{{
editsemiprotected}}
can be used to request changes to semi-protected pages.)
haz (
talk)
09:13, 10 December 2008 (UTC)Ok, just for wiki's information... Their site is now down. LOW ORBIT ION CANNONS HAVE DONE THEIR JOB. Consider incorporating this in the article. Dendre ( talk) 18:09, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
a list would be useful, seeing as this is a voluntary scheme-- Mongreilf ( talk) 17:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
There is a kind of list, compiled while the wikipedia block was in force, in the "Administrators' note" linked at the top of this page Martinwguy ( talk) 05:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
Ars Technica story on one IWF-using ISP blocking the Wayback Machine We might want to mention this in the article. 75.212.134.39 ( talk) 19:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
This quango continually makes the claim, on its website and in response to accusations of excessive censorship, that they only block "images of child sexual abuse". This claim is a blatant lie; Wikipedia itself called them out on this back in december when they gave the administators hell by blocking an image which did not in any way depict child sexual abuse, as well as the surrounding text. Yet despite what should have been a crushing and public humiliation for them, they continue to stand by their lies, openly admitting that they removed the Wikipedia block because it was causing them too much negative attention, not because the picture went against their own blocking policy (despite proof of the contrary).
As far as I'm concerned they have zero credibility right now, and if I was running an ISP I would have terminated my contract with them after that incident. It shows at the very least that their blacklist contains a huge number of false positives, that their control and review process is poor or nonexistant, or at worst that they are knowingly and deliberately decieving people about the kind of files they are blacklisting (their handling of the wikipedia incident sadly suggests to me that it's the latter).
The reason I'm posting this here is because I know that if I add this to the article someone's going to take issue to it and revert it, so I was hoping to get the support of a few others here before attempting anything. - —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.5.84.176 ( talk) 03:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
This was removed due to WP:NPOV concerns:
The IWF has been criticized for claiming tax-free chairty statues. When other censorship groups in the UK are not considered charities. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/20/iwf_charity/ They have significant commercial income – turning over several million pounds a year - and therefore they are constituted as a Limited Company, rather than a charity. They have also been listed on http://fakecharities.org/pages/posts/internet-watch-foundation57.php?searchresult=1&sstring=internet+watch+foundation as a fake charity do to the hundreds of thousands ofpounds they recieve from the EU.
Nobody is denying that the IWF receives money from the EU, but the "fake charity" tag could be seen as a violation of WP:MORALIZE. The IWF is a curious organization , and has been described as a quango, although it does not strictly fit the bill for this either.-- ♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 19:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
Much of the discussion below relates to A Wikipedia problem. What is wrong with REPORTING negative views about a person/organisation. To report views (if verified) is not musing it is (perhaps wrongly) what is thought. Too many times Wikipedia "editors" remove views which are widely held - I think these should be included. Not to do so results in the non-academic approach - academics look at both sides, take the views of other academics/writers/people into account. They do not shy away from reporting the negative. Too many times on WIkipedia we get the "Hitler was quite nice" approach because we do not want to offend. It is not balanced to ignore the negative. The IWF is a sinister organisation (which is my view) but I could find a whole load of people who say so (academics/journalists etc.) I wouldn't edit the main page to that effect because I know it would be removed not by IWF supporters but by the Wiki pedants. I see someone had mentioned that the IWF is a self-appointed (true), unregulated (true) organisation - this was removed shortly afterwards. Why? To include the negative is NOT unbalanced, it's balance.
My point was this - being neutral is not ignoring the negative - I was making just a general Wikipedia point. Saying nice things about people/things which all the world (academic and scientific, legal or journalistic) think are flawed is not neutrality - it's false political correctness. Do you think a true encylopedia would expunge crictism of Hitler, Stalin et al - just to appear neutral? I think not. This aticle in fact is not that bad, but others on Wikipedia take NPOV to mean we must expunge known and verified cricticism. "We must be nice even to those who are evil/flawed" That's not what academia or Encyclopedias are all about. They must reflect what is thought - certainly when it is overwhelmingly negative to the subject. As I say above let's have, therefore, Hitler was on the other hand a very nice man type of entry. That's just stupid and academically wrong. I despair of Wikuipedia - sexless, banality, NPOV political correctness gone mad. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.62.44 ( talk) 21:56, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
As of today I have been receiving this error on Megaupload: "Your IP address 89.167.221.3 has just downloaded 345435 bytes. Please wait 7 minutes, then try your download again." Sent an email off to complaints@iwf.org.uk as wikipedia says its their policy not to block whole websites, but they have done with MegaUpload. If it continues, its gearing up to be another "Incident" to be listed. -- 78.105.115.195 ( talk) 18:35, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
In any case, something seems fishy here. - 137.73.174.170 ( talk) 16:02, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
The problem reported here is almost certainly not due to IWF blocking, but is a side-effect due to ISPs using proxy servers to implement IWF filtering. I have added a detailed explanation, but at the moment am having some conflicts with another editor; if the article does not contain suitable content, look at this revision. Information on use of proxy servers by ISP is here. More useful information at here. A sample file that gives trouble if any user of the ISP has recently used the file sharing system is The first file of Scientific Linux (1 of 11; of use for testing download only). Pol098 ( talk) 08:46, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
The following would be totally OR in an article, but as talk, here goes: after trying unsuccessfully to download Scientific Linux from a file-sharing site, I investigated reasons for the failure and found out what I added to the article. I phoned my ISP, explained the issue, and asked explicitly if they were using a transparent proxy; they said yes. I asked how to get round it and they said there was no way within their system. They were quite clear that the proxy was the reason why it was not possible to use the site. It applied to both private and business accounts (I have seen it reported that it is private accounts only; mine is business). I pointed out that IWF protection was possible without a transparent proxy, but they were adamant that it would not be changed. There is a solution: change to an ISP that does not use a transparent proxy; most do, one has to look around. Pol098 ( talk) 11:57, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
The article gives one brief mention that the filtering also blocks "racist" content.
This is of course a massive leap from an actually criminal activity like child pornography to manipulation of political speech, and should get about half the article's length discussing exactly how it is defined and what content/sites it blocks.
But all we've got is a silence from the "watchdog" people writing the article -- which is somewhat creepier than the filter itself.
For example, would it filter an academic article discussing Polynesian cannibalism? A political party that says "immigrants are responsible for crime"? Downloading a digital version of "Tintin in the Congo" or "Mein Kampf" from a bookstore? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.201.168.129 ( talk) 00:39, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
There are a number of problems in writing balanced articles on an organisation such as this. One of the more paranoid worries is that anyone who includes too much (verified) criticism will be seen as an apologist for pedophilia and may himself be investigated or (less paranoid) content will be removed because the organisation itself (or its supporters) will remove the addition because it does not like the unaplatable fact. Secondly there is the old Wikipedia problem that when someone includes a (supported) negative view that is seen as POV (even when supported). As I have written elsewhere I see so many examples of the "don't say that Hitler was a nasty man" kind of removals - to remove negative views (supported by academics and historians) is not restoring balance, it is supporting your own POV! Like it or not a good many in the world have thought that Hitler was a nasty man (they may be right or wrong but that those views are so current becomes fact on its own). The best example of this has been an Homeopathy artcile - all the world (rightly or wrongly) scientific and academic see Homeopathy as a sham - and yet that must not be said (at least to the extent of evidence). it's all a bit lets be nice to people! The article on the IWF is not at all bad in terms of balance but there have been examples of additions being removed with deal with negative aspects and yet which are either clear fact or can be supported by reputable references. The point of an encylopedia is surely that it will be used. If unpalatble facts are removed then it cannot be used correctly - to gain facts/information to make ones own mind up, to do original research etc.etc. If (and I say IF) much of the academic world think the IWF needs more scrutiny, is secretive (perhaps for a reason), is not ityself regulated, is self-appointed (a clear fact), holds the ISPs to ransom, is part of an censorship "industry" with its own agenda/crusade, then it needs to be said. And if it needs to be said with some vigour then I see nothing wrong with that so long as it is supported. Fact is not POV, it is only accused of being POV because the accuser does not agree with the conclusion the fact will draw, or is a person who who does not understand the academic approach (both sides, different views = balance=truth). —Preceding unsigned comment added 2 October 2010 by JackRance22 ( talk • contribs)
Is there any commentary on this by a reliable source somewhere addressing that IWF has over time (racism, what they consider to be criminally obscene adult material, whatever that is) expanded it's remit and is therefore gradually reducing freedom of expression? Where does it stop, politics? 81.174.196.48 ( talk) 12:22, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
The blacklisting of sites may be concealed by a generic HTTP 404 "page not found" message rather than a more appropriate HTTP 403 "forbidden" message.
While this is what the cited article claims, it is incorrect. There is no standardized HTTP error code indicating that meaning as of yet, but there is a proposed error code: 451. I removed the inaccurate claim, but I didn't mention 451 as it's only a draft RFC at the moment. -- holizz ( talk) 04:47, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
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"IWF claims to have succeeded in reducing the percentage of the worldwide child sexual abuse images that are hosted in the UK from 18% in 1996 to 0.04% in 2018." This doesn't make sense prima facie and/or is needlessly unclear -- 18% of what? 18% of all worldwide hosted childhood sexual abuse images? This would infer that the IWF knows how many sexual abuse images exist in 1996 and in 2018 (but doesn't account for the presumed growth in number of images) and it infers that the IWF knows how many were hosted in the UK. Is that what this sentence is meant to indicate? (if so, it seems to convey complex information in a weird and unnecessary way to the reader) LaceyUF ( talk) 01:28, 7 July 2021 (UTC)