Wikipedia Is Filled With Hardcore Porn! [citation needed]

As you may be aware, Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is written and edited by nerds who do all the work for free in an attempt to gather all human knowledge into one comprehensive database. But according to the conservative bulldog World Net Daily, it is also a repository for salacious, hardcore pornographic material. Like strippers! Gay homosexual sex! And titty fucking! In fact, they might as well start selling monthly subscriptions and buying ads in AVN Online! Check out their list of moral-destroying smut that's totally accessible to everyone ...

# Recordings of women experiencing orgasms
# Videos of nude men participating in "ejaculation educational demonstrations"
# Detailed photographs of men and women masturbating
# Images of mammary intercourse
# Close-up images of topless women and male and female sexual anatomy
# Large-scale photos of men performing oral sex on one another (and performing oral sex on themselves)
# An illustrated list of sex positions
# Threesomes
# Photos of nude strippers
# An image called "Virgin Killer" depicting a naked prepubescent girl from the 1976 cover of a Scorpions album (banned in the U.S.)

Our first thought upon reading this was that we are not spending enough time on Wikipedia. Our second was that we'd like to see some examples of this salacious content, because we had trouble finding any: those "nude" strippers are actually mostly* covered up, the sexual positions and anatomy photos are no worse than what you would find in a (really cool) biology textbook or on the Discovery Channel, and the gay fluffer pictures are tastefully non-explicit (at least by our standards*). What a ripoff!

Not only is this an unusually misguided display of anti-porn hysteria—anyone looking for free unblocked smut can do a lot better than Wikipedia—but their complaints show a shocking misunderstanding of how Wikipedia actually works. It's completely created, edited and policed by its users —i.e. anyone and everyone—and if there's a problem the users are the ones who fix it.

Take that infamous 1976 Scorpions album cover, which could be considered child pornography: it might have been banned, but one could also argue that it has some sort of historical relevance. If the community doesn't agree, then the community of Wikipedia users can remove it ... which they did are still debating**. (Here's the ongoing discussion about it, which predates the WND article by almost three years.)

Tattling to the FBI about nudie pics on the internet is like complaining to Congress about evolution. Hating it enough won't make it go away. Besides, one way or another people have to learn about strippers—so it's either on Wikipedia or in a strip club. Take your pick.

· "Is Wikipedia wicked porn?" + "Naked young girl photo troubles 'Wikipedophilia'" (wnd.com)
· Fluffing (Wikipedia)
· Wikipedia T-Shirt (bustedtees.com)

* Updated to reflect some specific photos which a reader bought to our attention after we posted this entry; however, we still don't think they're anywhere near as bad as the WND article makes them out to be.

** Update (5/9): Another reader has informed us that the banned Scorpions album cover has been restored to the Wikipedia post in question since we first posted about the issue, and the debate about it among Wikipedia users continues.

Send an email to Dashiell Bennett, the author of this post, at dashiell@deadspin.com.

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