On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Wil Sinclair <wllm(a)wllm.com> wrote:
I've never heard "Principle of Least
Astonishment" used this way. I've
only heard it used in the context of software design- specifically
user experience- and never to describe content. WP seems to agree:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment
Certain terms seem to have special significance in the WP community;
is this one of those cases?
Yes -- although I don't think it's been linked in this discussion, I'm
pretty sure the resolution Kevin is referring to is this one:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content
Two comments on that:
- It does not have specific requirements of the community that must be
complied with; rather, it makes suggestions of stuff to keep in mind, which
have certainly been much discussed since the passage of the resolution in
2011;
- Beyond the issues related to applying a principle of software design
to the world of editorial judgment, this resolution has itself been the
topic of some controversy in the Wikimedia movement. But not, as far as I'm
aware, from the Commons community specifically; as I understand it, it was
more a matter of the German Wikipedia community rebelling at the notion of
a software feature designed to suppress (for instance) images depicting
nudity from the default view (or even as an opt-in feature, since that
would require tagging certain images in a way that might support entities
outside Wikimedia to apply censorship.)
FWIW, I'm not taken aback by words like "fuck," but in my experience
it always undermines serious arguments that it is used
in.
Agreed. Especially in a discussion of meeting cultural expectations, this
seems like a very strange and provocative choice of words.
Pete