Scribble Orca > Status Update

"...images in which the subject is obviously nude (that is, not wearing any clothing that they could walk down the street in, even if relevant areas are temporarily covered). If a woman is not wearing a top in an image, for example, that is not permitted. Sexually suggestive imagery or imagery that depicts sexual acts also breaks our rules.

Given this, the comment in question has been removed. Please avoid posting images like this going forward to comply with our rules.

Sincerely,
The Goodreads Team

Guess the avatar will be the next to go....

.....link's still there. Gander at the genitalia of RATM. What's that michelangelo sculpture? and that other one, venus.... something, something?

and who is this person waving all these FLAGS, causing trouble for good art=citizens like us?

This is proof its no longer about whiny authors. You two scare me. LOL

This new partnership between Goodreads and the Chinese government? I don't like it.

Eh...actually, NC-17 images have always been flagged. It's also what causes the bulk of complaints about images on the feed/homepage because NSFW. I don't think this is a new conspiracy.

I don't think you have to worry for your avatar because it's to small to look suggestive.

Helen, Nathan's pic of prics was a senSORESHIP statement. Whoever whatever ifever flagged it precisely not because of the nudity, but because it was SPEAKOUTRAGE. My avatar is naked, my last pic on his status update is intercourseinaction and Giulio Romano was tonguesured, too.

I think it's time I meviewed me some artybooks.

for double posteriority, not to mention sockcocks

Not to quibble, but your avatar is a painting. Nudity in art =/= actual nudity. Not that I objected to the RATM photo, but I can understand why it was flagged.

Not to quibble a quibble, but art is also composed of not just images (not the use of this word in the ToS) but sculpture and gasp, real live flesh-and-blood living figures (ain't that performance art?). Nudity = nudity regardless of medium. It was flagged for its intent.

Scribble wrote: "Helen, Nathan's pic of prics was a senSORESHIP statement. Whoever whatever ifever flagged it precisely not because of the nudity, but because it was SPEAKOUTRAGE. My avatar is naked, my last pic ..."

I'm afraid I must disagree. It's 50:50 chance, at best. Just take a look at any thread about images in Feedback.

Also, like Jacob said, I can see how they would overlook a painting rather than photography. Your ideas about art might differ, but that's not what this is about - it's about what you might get ashamed to be caught looking at when someone glances at your screen and/or get in trouble for looking at. Which might be based on puritanical, but it's the way things work. You may rebel against this, too, but I maintain that the picture was removed due to the content, regardless of the flagger's intentions.

Helen wrote: "I'm afraid I must disagree. It's 50:50 chance, at best. Just take a look at any thread about images in Feedback.

Also, like Jacob said, I can see how they would overlook a painting rather than photography. Your ideas about art might differ..."

Being afraid to disagree sounds ominous, especially right here and now. Am I supposed to be tonsilout your opinion?

"They" are no more likely to overlook a painting rather than photography given the number of images posted on the site - and I doubt very much my comment was even flagged. I suspect it's much more likely to be 'bot software that's been created in response to the furore, since human eyes can't possible police the number of "outbreaks" and the software is catching anything vaguely "contra" and tagging it for eventual eyeballing - note the lag between original post and receipt of notification of "flag", with no evidence of an actual real live "member" (sorry the pun is just too too perfect) as having flagged.

Further, the logic just doesn't support the argument about users being ashamed (nor can I see how a corporation would be concerned as to users' feelings of shame when the user chooses to look at content). Firstly, users can block each other (so anyone who was offended by my posts can simply block me), thereby not seeing controversial content, and users can look at images of artworks equally as "pornographic" as the nude pic posted and linked on NR's status update thread, thereby risking equally "shameful" feelings if caught. What this is about is reaction to anti-censorship expression.

Fuck. This doesn't bode well for my Gullivera review.

I could just about understand GR wanting to cut reviews which were not actually about the books in question, but this sort of dangerous puritanism upsets me far, far more.

Scribble wrote: ""...images in which the subject is obviously nude (that is, not wearing any clothing that they could walk down the street in, even if relevant areas are temporarily covered). If a woman is not wear..."

But the avatar is classic! My God!

Yes, Warwick, this is no longer about simply asking people to moderate their opinions about authors in relation to a book review. This is just out and out...I don't know what. It kinda leaves me speechless - first of all the books "we" all like are just so not monkeyseemonkeydomoneycuprunnethover, secondly, who of either friend or follower in intimate or extimate circle could possibly have been bothered by four guys up and close and prickly perfect? I posit - none.

Yes, Lynne. I love me my avatar, even if Hypatia is largely discredited. Seems to fit me, somehow ;)

Yep. Clearcut bullshit – for me, actually, the first time I've really seen it since this brouhaha started.

This is all very disturbing Scribble and Warwick. Shades of things to come no doubt...

The end of an era perhaps?

Funny, ain't it? Has to be the ratbags playing tag that highlights the idiocy for what it really is...

Dunno about eras. We none of us own the infrastructure, just the fleshandblood. I hadn't considered an alternative plate-form, but this is really not my quaff.

LOL " Tuts of Sir Vice..."
Well! We certainly have very vigilant little fellow GRers, don't we?

I can't help wondering about all the people who have M/M S&M pics as their avatars, much more sexually involved with one another than the guys standing around in Scribble's pic.
...and those have been around for yonks.

My own avatar contravenes these tuts of sir vice, trav. And yes, M&M/S&M crowd are way over my head (any of them). Check out the top users on the Iberian peninsular!

Helen wrote: "Also, like Jacob said, I can see how they would overlook a painting rather than photography. Your ideas about art might differ, but that's not what this is about - it's about what you might get ashamed to be caught looking at when someone glances at your screen and/or get in trouble for looking at. Which might be based on puritanical, but it's the way things work. You may rebel against this, too, but I maintain that the picture was removed due to the content, regardless of the flagger's intentions.."

I did not feel ashamed at all looking at the pic that Scribble posted. I purposely called my children to look at it, and if I had been at work, I would purposely call my colleagues to look at it. They would have looked for a few seconds, smiled, and carried on working.

It really seems to me that there are people in this world with nothing better to do than create storms in teacups.

In fact, I'd be much more ashamed caught watching Lady Gaga's latest video than looking at a picture of a few men standing around in the nude.

If I had lotsa money, I would sponsor every damn American for a trip to Italy or the Louvre. Nudity is not going to bite you, people, and sex and nudity is not the same thing!

*applause*

My big question here is: why are you feeling ashamed to look at a photograph of four naked men in what is obviously a protest against censorship?

You should be proud of them, not ashamed! Are you also ashamed when viewing Michaelangelo's statue of David? http://www.architectureis.org/wp-cont...

(I'd rather not post it here, in case it gets deleted again)

The bottom line question is : why on earth, after so much work by psychologists, do people in the 21st century STILL display a phobia of viewing the human body in its natural state?

I don't get a culture where porn and violence is okay, but innocuous images of human nudity is not okay.

Our dear queen Victoria had really done her work well, hadn't she?

lol.. and I thought my country's censorship on kissing is bad..

Ironically, book covers like this one http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75... clearly contravenes the rules Scribbs was rapped over the knuckles with--but I'm guessing my bottom dollar that they won't be removed because, after all, Amazon can make money out of them!

Great book, that, btw.