Commons search for "finger" shows unexpected NSFW search results
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	Jmabel
	Mar 6 2023, 2:12 AM

Description

This is the result of a search for "finger" on Commons, requesting file type GIF; the user was apparently hoping to find an image of someone "giving the finger":
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=finger&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image&filemime=gif

(WARNING: THE ABOVE LINK GIVES A HIGHLY NSFW RESULT)

I don't know what is going on behind the scenes here, but an innocuous search term should not result in displaying a set of sexually explicit videos. It seems to me that this is an inappropriate enough result that it should be treated on the same priority as a bug.

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Mentioned Here: T263818: Some autocomplete suggestions (some shown after typing just a single letter) in the search field are offensive

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Jmabel created this task.Mar 6 2023, 2:12 AM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptMar 6 2023, 2:12 AM

Thanks for reporting this. Please do not set the "Discovery-Search (Current work)" tag as it's up to teams what they plan to work on. Thanks.

Restricted Application added a project: Discovery-Search. · View Herald TranscriptMar 6 2023, 6:22 AM

Aklapper renamed this task from Quite unexpected search result to Commons search for "finger" shows unexpected NSFW search results.Mar 6 2023, 6:23 AM

Gehel triaged this task as High priority.Mar 13 2023, 4:18 PM

Gehel moved this task from needs triage to Feature Requests on the Discovery-Search board.

@Jmabel, thanks for the report. Note that file type gif on Commons makes it much more likely that you'll get NSFW results, just because of the distribution of NSFW images and file types. (NSFW media seems to be more likely to be animated (gif or video) than SFW media.)

Interestingly, checking the results today, the NSFW results are less prominent than they were before—though a couple are still right there.

I'll also note that Commons can easily add {{Negative boosted template}} to any page, or template used on such pages, if they want these images to show up lower in the rankings.

For instance they could add it to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:2257/layout a template used on many sexually explicit materials.
Or they can add Template:2257 to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost-templates and rank it. This however seems very much like a community decision due to NOCENSORSHIP and not a bug.

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Commons search for "finger" shows unexpected NSFW search results
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