Alasdair wrote:
If the feeling is that such a "weak" filter
would (regardless of how the
pre-populated "filter lists" are created) still attract significant
opposition on many projects then I personally don't see how there can be
any filter created that is likely to gain consensus support and still be
useful - except for one that gives users the option to hide "all" images by
default and then click on the greyed out images to load them if they want
to see them.
You're confusing the opinions of a few extremists on foundation-l with
general consensus. It's unclear what percent of users actually want this
feature, particularly as the feature's implementation hasn't been fully
developed. A few people on this list have been trying very hard to make it
seem as though they're capable of accepting some magical invisible pink
unicorn-equivalent media filter, but the truth is that they're realistically
and pragmatically opposed to any media filter, full stop. This is an
extremist opinion (it's not as though extremist opinions are particularly
uncommon around here).
Personally, I want to believe that if the Wikimedia Board is making such a
strong push for this feature to be implemented, there are very good reasons
for doing so. Whether or not that's the case, I wouldn't look (closely or
broadly) at the comments on this mailing list and try to divine
community-wide views.
MZMcBride