KidzSearch Encyclopedia:Options to not see an image

Some people wish to not see some images. ("This isn't work safe! - My child might see this! - My country's laws forbid that! - My religion forbids that!")

Wikipedia is not censored. Content will generally not be removed because some people find it objectionable. Wikipedia will also not use specific disclaimers in articles warning readers of such content. All articles fall under the site-wide Content disclaimer. Readers who do not wish to be exposed to certain content have a number of options: These options will prevent certain kinds of content from being displayed.

This page assumes that (a) you still want to visit Wikipedia (rather than creating a fork or simply staying away) and (b) you do not wish to enter discussions within Wikipedia policy to have the image changed, removed or deleted by building consensus.

Wikipedia readers have two possibilities to influence the way Wikipedia content is displayed on their screens:

1. They can create an account, and log into that account for reading articles. Accounts have a number of preference settings. These allow to hide all images, or some of them.
2. They can locally filter content by using a proxy server, or by setting up their web browser in a certain way.

Wikipedia user preferences

Main pages: :en:Help:Preferences, :en:Help:Cascading style sheets, and :en:Wikipedia:CSS

To disable the display of images for a specific article, or for all articles on the "bad image" list, you must have an account. If you do not have an account, visit Special:Userlogin to create one.

Specific pages

Once you have an account, you can disable the images on a specific page by changing your personal settings at your CSS page. This allows you to avoid images that offend you without affecting other users. To do this, create a page at Special:Mypage/skin.css and add the following line:

body.page-(page name) img {display: none;}

e.g.

body.page-Muhammad img {display: none;}

There is a constantly updated list at this page that you can easily copy and paste.

All "bad images"

You can specify that all images listed at MediaWiki:Bad image list be hidden. To do so, you need to change your personal javascript page. See this page for details.

Other possibilities

If you are unhappy with the configuration possibilities available at present, you may consider submitting a code change for the copyleft Mediawiki (which displays Wikipedia's content). The Wikimedia Foundation, which provides the hosting and bandwidth for Wikipedia, lacks resources to implement many good and useful modifications to the software that displays Wikipedia's content. Such modifications can be created and submitted to the Foundation for addition to Mediawiki. An example of what could be created is a user option to not display images that are in certain categories.

Use a proxy filter

You can selectively block content by using a web filter program. Freely available examples include Privoxy, SafeSquid and DansGuardian. Once you have installed such a program, you have fine-grained control over what content is received by your web browser.

Configure your browser

How to block images site-wide (all Wikimedia projects)

Firefox 2.0 and 3.0

• either: right-click the example image to the right and select "Block Images from upload.wikimedia.org"
• or: select Edit/Preferences and in the Content tab click on "Exceptions" next to "Load images automatically". In the popup window, type "wikimedia.org" and click "Block".

Opera 9.0

• Right-click on the page, select "Block content...", and click on the image(s). If you only want to (un)block a particular image, and not all images from the same source, hold the shift key while (un)blocking.
• Click "Done"

How to set up your browser to not see images at all

Firefox 2.0

Without add-on

1. On Windows, select the Tools menu. On Mac OSX, select the Firefox menu.
2. Select "Options" on Windows, or Preferences on Mac OSX
3. Click the "Content" tab.
4. Uncheck the checkbox "Load images automatically."

With add-on

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/232 allows you to add a button to the Firefox tool bar that toggles images on and off.

Other Mozilla-based browsers

The Firefox 2.0 instructions may not work on all browsers in the Mozilla family (such as the GNOME web browser Epiphany). In that case, enter about:config in the location box, and change permissions.default.image to 2 to disable image downloads. To restore the default behavior, change it back to 1.

Opera

View->Images->No Images

Internet Explorer 7

1. Click the "Tools" button.
2. Select "Internet Options".
3. Click the "Advanced" tab.
4. Scroll down to "Multimedia" and uncheck "Show pictures".

Safari 3

1. On Mac OSX, select the "Edit" menu.
2. Click "Preferences".
3. Click on the "Appearance" button.
4. Uncheck "Display images when the page opens."

Related pages

• MediaWiki:Bad image list