[Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 9:41 PM, Andreas K. <jayen466 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com
>> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 2:44 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >
>> > The English Wikipedia community, like any other, has always contained a
>> wide spectrum of opinion on such matters. We have seen this in the past,
>> with long discussions about contentious cases like the goatse image, or the
>> Katzouras photos. That is unlikely to ever change.
>> >
>> > But we do also subscribe to the principle of least astonishment. If the
>> average reader finds our image choices odd, or unexpectedly and needlessly
>> offensive, then we alienate a large part of our target audience, and may
>> indeed only attract an unnecessarily limited demographic as contributors.
>> >
>>
>> You completely and utterly misrepresent what the principle of least
>> astonishment is supposed to address. It is a matter of where people
>> should be directed, when there are confliting disambiguation issues.
>> It doesn't refer to content issues in the slightest. Period. We don't
>> say you can read an article about X and not see pictures of X. That is
>> ridiculous.
>>
>
>
> The principle of least astonishment is mentioned thrice in the board
> resolution on controversial content:
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content
>
> "We support the principle of least astonishment: content on Wikimedia
> projects should be presented to readers in such a way as to respect their
> expectations of what any page or feature might contain"
>
> Signpost coverage:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-06-06/News_and_notes#Board_resolutions_on_controversial_content_and_images_of_identifiable_people
>

Yes, but that is not proof of what we as a community understand the
principle to mean, it means the board is on crack.



-- 
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]