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Some questions and answers on this site contain potentially objectionable or NSFW images. Mostly depictions of nudity in art or artifacts.

The SE Content Policy:

Sexually Explicit Material. Accounts that use Stack Exchange to post sexually explicit or pornographic material, or links to it, will be suspended.

Given this discussion: What is the network policy on questions involving adult themes?, not to mention the couple times Sexuality.SE has been tried, there seems to be fair bit of leeway for communities to determine their own limits, within reason.

Should these images of nudity or objectionable content in art be censored, hidden in a spoiler block, or what?

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My opinion on this is very much the same as what I said in this question: Should offensive words in quotes be censored?

I don't believe censorship is productive. If the image is relevant and informative, it shouldn't be hidden. If it is not, remove it entirely. I don't think there is anything thus far posted that is in even close to violating the content policy. Sex and genitalia are pretty common elements in mythology, and depictions in many cultures are often nude. Questions and answers should be able to approach this stuff directly and without hesitation. No need to shy away from it.

While I don't believe this has been discussed explicitly, I feel there has been an implicit understanding that art and artifacts depicting nudity are acceptable. Plenty of examples of this have cropped up before, and got no backlash from either the community, or community managers:

And if you are creative:

* - Violence, rather than nudity

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  • I’m not trying to preempt any hypothetical work policies. The truth is, there are some people who would rather not see naked goat gods while browsing, and (out of respect for those people), I put the naked goat god image in spoiler markup. As mentioned, the original purpose of spoiler markup, still commonly used, was to hide rather inoffensive information that people simply do not want to see, since they have not yet viewed the work in question. I’d certainly oppose a policy of not having any naked goat gods, but it’s not censorship to give people the option of not seeing it. – Obie 2.0 Mar 15 '17 at 2:28
  • Any more than it’s censorship not to shout obscenities in my conversation with complete strangers, even if I have no personal issues with volume or vulgarity. I admit to (still!) being a bit perplexed as to why you think that all relevant and informative information should not be in spoilers (see: the original use of spoiler markup for relevant, informative spoilers). What’s wrong with recognizing that a sizable portion of the population might enjoy reading about mythology without seeing naked goat gods? The only issue would be if one tried to force such a policy on others. – Obie 2.0 Mar 15 '17 at 2:29
  • @Obie2.0 - Attempting to preempt people's hypothetical hangups about obscenity is harder, not easier, to predict. This sort of blushing reaction to a relevant work of art has no place in serious discussion. You shouldn't treat a part of the discussion like it's bad and dirty. If Health.SE starting replacing "vagina" with "hoo-ha", I would conclude they were childish and incapable of discussing the topic seriously. We are trying to aspire to the level of academic discourse. Using "Warning! Naughty bits!" spoiler blocks is a step away from that aspiration. – femtoRgon Mar 15 '17 at 15:49

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