Talk:Debbie Does Dallas

Link to full film on Commons

This article used to include the full film (now in the public domain) embedded in the article. This was removed by Darrenhusted. A compromise was reached at #Censorship of article whereby a link to the film on Commons would be included in the article, thus making it clear in the article that the full film was freely available without shoving porn in readers' faces. It was also decided that the link should be direct to the film, rather than obscuring it behind a general link to related media on Commons, and thus a compromise was reached. Subsequently Yann has converted the link to a general Commons link (going against the above consensus) and the embedded version of the film has been restored to the article in the interim.

This brings us full circle. I appreciate that consensus can change, but I would like to point out to Yann that ignoring a talk page consensus and simply doing your thing is not an appropriate course of action for effecting such change. I am also pinging @Freikorp, Dismas, and Scalhotrod: since they were part of the original consensus, I would like to see if their views have changed at all since the last discussion. It will only be a matter of time before another editor comes along and removes the thumbnail, so I'd like to see which version everyone stands by. Do we stick with the current version with the film embedded in the article or do we return to the previous version which just provides a direct link to the film? Betty Logan (talk) 20:46, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, All film articles link to the Commons category. I don't see why this one should be different. There are already 3 files in the category, and there are potentially more. This is an article about a porn movie, so one shouldn't be surprised about the content. Now Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, and we are in the 21st century where streaming movies accross the Net is common practice. Many articles about films have already the film embedded. This should be the standard if the film is in the public domain, or under a free license. I hope you won't argue that we have to go back to paper encyclopedias, where the film is only available elsewhere. Regards, Yann (talk) 22:12, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, this is stupidity. Yes, wikipedia isn't censored. But neither is it a porn site. Do you seriously want porn on the articles, just because some rule states that you can put it there? Is there some benefit for our readers to have it there? Or are people just trying to prove a dumb point. A link is more than sufficient. Spacecowboy420 (talk) 09:23, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

This is not about you adding a link, it is about you removing an existing link that has the backing of a consensus. Furthermore, there is no established standard for providing access to free materials: some articles embed a film if it is freely available, others do not. As you can see from the discussion above there is no consensus either way on embedding the film, but there is a consensus for the direct link to the film on Commons that you removed. You are more than welcome to field another attempt to obtain a consensus for embedding the film if you believe that is in the interests of the article but please do not unilaterally reverse an action that has the backing of a consensus. I have restored the link and kept the separate link to the category so I hope that will be the end of matter. If this is not acceptable to you then please discuss the issue here rather than simply reverting. Betty Logan (talk) 01:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Consensus may be needed to exclude the film, but it is certainly not required for inclusion. In any case, I think you will find that consensus has changed, as it does. Also, Scalhotrod is banned from all WMF sites, so don't wait for his opinion on this matter. Right Hand Drive (talk) 04:21, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, To fight a prudish agenda, you should start here. If you don't want to see a porn movie, do not read this article. Beside, it only shows a thumbnail. Regards, Yann (talk) 09:54, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I suggest you look through the diffs: you are the only person to remove content from the article. Betty Logan (talk) 19:36, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the problem here. The film is embedded in the article. There is no need to also have the link to the same file on Commons. Can someone explain why this is even being discussed? Right Hand Drive (talk) 21:30, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

The film should be posted as is. If you are against porn then don't go to a page about porn, its that simple. ContentEditman (talk) 00:59, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

To add the film and link should both be in it. The link page offers more options. ContentEditman (talk) 00:59, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

• @ContentEditMan and Right Hand Drive: please get consensus for including the embedded video before adding it back to the article. Previous consensus was to include the link only and there needs to be new consensus if you want to overturn that. Edit warring will only result in blocks. clpo13_(talk) 05:33, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

• (Alerted at ANI, originally wrote this for there but the thread was closed just before I finished writing it):

Completely ignoring what the film is or it's content, it is a notable film in the public domain and does not contain any material that would cause legal trouble for the Wikimedia foundation. As such, it is appropriate for us to at least link to for the sake of completeness. Regardless of what other sites do (they may come and go, but hopefully we, archive.org, and Google Books will last until the singularity), it's a good idea for us to provide some kind of access to public domain films, just as we provide access to public domain books and other works of art. (@Yann:) Everyone in this thread seems to agree on all that, so any accusation of prudishness is nothing but a violation of WP:NPA.

Embedding Debbie Does Dallas compares to the image in Cunnilingus about as much as as embedding Night of the Living Dead compares to the image in Zombie (yes, I'm aware it starts off with a still from that very movie). The image illustrates a general concept to better identify it. You do not need the whole movie to identify the movie, it's perfectly fine to have a few stills and/or a poster. If that is not true, then we're gonna have to start pirating a bunch of copyrighted works. So, while it is good for us to link to public domain movies, we do not actually need to embed them into articles for illustrative purposes.

Like it or not, WP:NOTCENSORED applies only to us. It does not mean that we have the right to force readers to disable their own censorship.

For users who want to watch that movie or any other movie, there's no appreciable difference between hosting a movie here or on Commons. It can be accessed either way.

For users who do not want to view the movie (it is their right to say "no", even for something as insignificant as this), it is better if we place the movie on Commons. That way, "moral" crusaders (real prudes, unlike anyone here) cannot pretend that they opened the video by accident without presenting themselves as technologically-illiterate idiots. More reasonable individuals can still view Wikipedia while simply avoiding or blocking Commons -- which means that there's less censorship of Wikipedia. Bottom line: Hosting on Commons instead of Wikipedia actually brings about less censorship for more users and so follows WP:NOTCENSORED better than embedding it in the article.

(In response to something I'm seeing here): @ContentEditman: and @Yann: Some people do actually read articles about things to decide if they want to be involved or to find out why others are involved (despite a personal desire to not get involved), so the argument "If you don't want to see a porn movie, do not read this article" makes about as much sense as saying "don't read the Cricket article unless you've got your ball or bat ready," or "don't read the Islam article unless you've recited and truly believe the Shahada," or "don't read the Suicide article unless you want to die." Ian.thomson (talk) 07:53, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

That is about my thoughts, too. All else aside, it's hard to see what the benefit of embedding it in the article is -- is anyone actually likely to watch it here in a tiny embedded box? Nobody disagrees with the fact that we could embed it, and most people seem to agree that we ought to link it, but I'm just not seeing any particular arguments for embedding it beyond what feels like a desire to "take a stand", which isn't an encyclopedic argument. --Aquillion (talk) 10:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

There is an article about the movie "Charade". We have the full public domain movie available on Commons. We include the movie in the article. This article is about the movie "Debbie Does Dalla" We have the full public domain movie available on Commons. Why would we not include the movie in the article? Other than you don't think anyone is likely to watch it in a tiny box, whatdo you have any policy-based argument for not including the movie? Right Hand Drive (talk) 14:12, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it is unnecessary to host Charade here when it is on Commons. As I said, it is unnecessary to include a whole movie in an article about the movie. In fact, it seems kind of unencyclopedic, akin to posting a whole book in the middle of an article instead of just linking to Wikisource. There is no policy on the matter either way, but we do need to remember that this is an encyclopedia, not the Internet Archive. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

EDIT: wait, I forgot about WP:NOTREPOSITORY. Not including full-length public domain movies in any article is the only logical conclusion to be drawn from that. From an information perspective, there's no difference between hosting all of a movie or posting all of a book in the middle of an article. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:31, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

We are dealing with a digital file here, not text. The differences between including an embedded file and the entire text of a book are obvious. Right Hand Drive (talk) 15:52, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Ian.thomson you misread WP:NOTREPOSITORY. It apples to content that is not appropriately embedded in an article. Particularly note where it suggests consider adding it to Wikipedia:Images with missing articles. It's saying the content can and should be uploaded, and that it can and should be included in an article once an appropriate article exists to include it in. Alsee (talk) 14:50, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Just because one film has its entire length embedded doesn't mean that all films should have their entire length embedded; embedding the full length of movies that are in the public domain definitely doesn't strike me as "default" or as policy, just as something that people did in one or two places. I'm not seeing any arguments for why it should be done here. --Aquillion (talk) 23:50, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, I think the film should be embedded, but if there is a majority thinking otherwise, we could embed the trailer instead (no porn in this 3 min extract, and better quality), and link to the full movie on Commons. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:03, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm fine with this. Trailers are good for identifying the movie (assuming they're legally available), like quoting the back cover of book in an article instead of posting the whole book in the article. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

The only difference between embedding a trailer and embedding the full movie is the content. The reader sees only a single frame until they choose to start the movie playing. Your acceptance of the trailer but not the movie suggests that your objection is to the content of the movie. Right Hand Drive (talk) 15:55, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

That's like saying "the only difference between hosting a quote from a book and the whole book is the content." No, it's the focus, and per WP:NOTREPOSITORY we should not be hosting whole documents when we only need a quote (or trailer, or photo). And read WP:AGF (another policy, that word you've been enjoying using despite an apparent lack of familiarity with it), because I've made it quite clear that I don't think we should be moving other public domain movies (no matter their content) from articles to Commons as well. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:59, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I am sorry. Ian.thomson. I am assuming good faith, but your arguments suggest that your issue is not atechnical one but a content concern. I'm not sure what "focus" means except in regard to the content of the file. Right Hand Drive (talk) 16:38, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

If that's the conclusion you're drawing from my arguments, then you're reading stuff into it that I'm not saying -- i.e. not assuming good faith. If it was this movie's content I had a problem with, I'd be saying "take it off Commons too," and wouldn't have a problem with full-length movies in other articles. Instead, I'm actually suggesting that we withdraw all full-length movies from this site and focus more on being an encyclopedia instead of being Youtube. By "focus," I mean that this is an encyclopedia that only describes what a thing is, rather than distributes that thing. We do not host source documents of any other kind, and you've presented reason why movies and only movies would be exempt from that policy. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:46, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Ian.thompson, can you please acknowledge that you understand that Wikipedia does not host the movie? Right Hand Drive (talk) 17:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Right Hand Dribe, will you please quit focusing on semantic quibbles that are irrelevant to what I'm actually saying and address my main points? Ian.thomson (talk) 07:37, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

It is directly relevant to the application of WP:NOTREPOSITORY. If you started this discussion with a misunderstanding of how the embedding worked, that's fine, just say so and we'll move on. I am honestly not sure what points you think you have made other than vaguely waving a hand at WP:NOTREPOSITORY. You have failed to explain how that section policy applies and several people at the Village Pump have disagreed that it applies at all. Right Hand Drive (talk) 15:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

• Comment/Request: I think it's fairly obvious that we're going to need a site-wide RfC about hosting porn movies on Wikipedia article space. Someone please notify me on my talk page when this occurs. Softlavender (talk) 05:29, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

• SPAs: Johnuniq has noted that "Right Hand Drive was created on 14 September 2015 and has a total of 31 edits, all concerned with adding the film to the article. ContentEditman was created on 4 February 2016 and has a total of 5 edits, all supporting adding the film." Softlavender (talk) 05:29, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I side with Yann on this issue. It's unfortunate that this had to be censored. A video of a film is effectively an educational resource, just like an image. It is made abundantly clear in the article that this film is pornographic, and anyone reading it should have enough sense to know that before opening the video. It's not like the video starts playing as soon as the article is opened, like unfortunately happens on some websites. And the film doesn't even open with nudity, so people have several minutes—quite enough time—to close it if they open it accidentally. We have plenty of videos shown directly on Wikipedia, and because we're not supposed to be censored (I thought wikis, free information resources, were all about that concept), I think this film should be no exception. The video file of The Birth of a Nation, a movie with very explicit and extreme racism, is slapped right onto its Wikipedia article with no controversy (as it should be), but a porn film can't be shown apparently, and I think the double standard made there is pretty sad. PseudoSkull (talk) 20:49, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

The long-standing consensus is pretty old now, I think it would be entirely reasonable to hold another RFC if you feel strongly about it. I do agree that the "compromise" solution was driven by a double standard, although—and I say this as the editor who uploaded the video to the Commons—I have always found the embedding of full feature films in articles to be gratuitous and slightly unencyclopedic. I honestly don't see how the Wikipedia article about The Birth of a Nation is enhanced by supplying the whole film embedded in the article. I think it is very likely that readers may want to download these films so it has always seemed more useful to provide a link to do that. Betty Logan (talk) 21:29, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

@Betty Logan: I just wanted to take the opportunity to say that I really appreciate you uploading the full film to Wikimedia Commons. It's been useful to my transcription efforts.

I think the RFC is definitely deserving assuming it goes anywhere, because I see a lot of weird arguments made above. A lot of them basically say that "the full film is not needed, so why have it?"—well, a lot of encyclopedias refuse to include any information about films and other popular culture- and media-related topics, such as Britannica (at least for a long time it did), but Wikipedia has chosen to include film articles, from Wikipedia's very inception. You know, Wikipedia doesn't need to include any of that popular-culture information. Can't the human race survive without it? But we would never make that argument, because of course we can survive without most of the enhancements we have today, but they do enhance our experience in life, so it would be better if they were included and worse if they were not.

But that's more of a response to the above discussion and not to you, and I do appreciate that you are focusing on enhancement rather than absolute functional necessity or bare minimum viable product as the subject of your concern. But, to that point, I would say that embedding a film on an article absolutely is an enhancement, just the same as an image is. It costs Wikipedians barely anything to embed videos into articles; it's just a bit of formatted text. It's really useful to me, as somebody who looks up silent films on a regular basis for information about them, to immediately be able to look at the film in full, right on the very page I was on, and skim through the video—just to see it—or maybe verify something about it really quickly, or for any other purpose (being that they are in the public domain, this makes sense). While films are (generally) originally made for entertainment purposes, our showing of it is a demonstration of what the film substantially was, so it is therefore educational in nature. In fact, being able to watch a film on the Wikipedia article that talks about it allows readers to gain a more thorough understanding the film, as watching it gives you the experience, while reading about it gives you the general knowledge that is up for interpretation. And, if nothing else, it increases awareness of these films, and without it Wikimedia Commons would surely see a loss of interest among its contributor base to upload silent film files at all, which in my opinion would be an unfortunate loss overall for the free-info world. It would surely be an unfortunate loss even to me just as an individual.

On the RFC: I will abstain from doing that. Anyone else can if they want, but I ask please don't ping me in it, or involve me in any way. Back to WS for me. PseudoSkull (talk) 02:11, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Relevant Village Pump discussion

I've started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Should_we_move_full-length_movies_from_article_space_to_Commons.3F. I don't see why we're hosting full movies of any kind in any article, when we have Commons for that. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:10, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

RfC about embedded pornographic movie in A Free Ride

A hardcore pornographic movie has been embedded in A Free Ride since 2012. Rather than just remove the movie as was done here, I have started a request for comment. I assume that the results of that RfC will be useful in guiding actions here. Right Hand Drive (talk) 00:29, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

"Richard Balla"

This is a link, so I can't change it, but the linked article refers to "Richard Bolla" or "Bollo". No idea which of these spellings is right.188.230.240.75 (talk) 14:38, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Greetings. I looked into it. There's no typo, at least not by Wikipedia. Our article says "Richard Balla", and links to the article for actor Robert Kerman. Robert Kerman used the name "Richard Bolla" or "R. Balla" in several Pornographic roles. However in Debbie Does Dallas, he is indeed credited as Richard Balla. If there was a typo, it was in connection to Debbie Does Dallas, and it survived into the release of the film.

On a side note, it isn't difficult to make the fix yourself if you do find a problem in a link. When you click edit, a simple link is created like [[this]]. The double-brackets convert the word 'this' into a link to the article titled 'this'. However the article is using a slightly more complicated link in this case. The link actually looks like [[Robert Kerman|Richard Balla]]. The actual linked article is on the left side (the link goes to the Robert Kerman article), the right side is the text-link shown in the sentence (the reader sees Richard Balla as a clickable link). The character in the middle is called a pipe. You can probably find the character above ENTER on the keyboard, as a shift-character. Alsee (talk) 12:46, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

where's the film?

if it public domain where's the film? 1timeuse75 (talk) 17:26, 14 December 2024 (UTC)