Stephen Bain wrote:

And to hell with the 'work-safe' crowd. They shouldn't be looking at pictures of people's bits on company time anyway.

I almost agree, but I do think that there is some "work-safe" thinking which is sensible. Our normal editorial judgment easily covers this case, but it is helpful I think to understand that one reason for our editorial judgments is the "work-safe" argument.

The "work-safe" argument that makes sense to me is just a subset of the "principle of least astonishment" principle.

If I'm on an article about the USB standard, or about Thomas Jefferson, then I'd be pretty astonished if either on the page, or on any link from the page, I got some actual pornography.

So yes, if people would get in trouble at work for looking at various things from work, they shouldn't be looking at them at work. But people ought to be able to casually surf wikipedia for work-related topics without fearing that they are going to accidentally stumble onto something astonishing.

I don't know of any cases where we come close, even, to violating this, because it's just very simple and reasonable.

--Jimbo