Nathan wrote:
A lot of the issues Kevin is probably referring to revolve around the 2011 debate, and many of the most blatant problems have since been cleaned up.
Perhaps some of the most blatant problems have been addressed, but I'm skeptical. I admit I haven't been following this discussion terribly closely, but I just looked at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems again and the first link I clicked...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/asian
The first result is "File:Asian vulva.jpg" while the third result is "File:Asian penis.jpg". Perhaps our search capability is simply really bad. Personally, I would expect a search for the term "asian" to show pictures of Asians. I think there's room for at least consideration of lessons from other fields, such as the principle of least astonishment. Another way of framing this particular issue (search) might be: are the results users receiving what they were looking for or expected? I think in many cases, image search is failing our users.
MZMcBride