[Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Risker]

On 14 June 2012 16:19, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 14 June 2012 20:36, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > Least surprise is one way to try and get around this problem of not
> > relying on the community's own judgement in all edge cases; I'm not
> > sure it's the best one, but I'm not sure leaving it out is any better.
>
>
> The present usage (to mean "you disagree with our editorial judgement
> therefore you must be a juvenile troll") is significantly worse.
>
>

I'm not entirely certain that you've got the "usage" case correct, David.
An example would be that one should not be surprised/astonished to see an
image including nudity on the article [[World Naked Gardening Day]], but
the same image would be surprising on the article [[Gardening]].

The Commons parallel would be that an image depicting nude gardening would
be appropriately categorized as [[Cat:Nude gardening]], but would be poorly
categorized as [[Cat:Gardening]].  One expects to see a human and gardening
but not nudity in the latter, and humans, gardening, *and* nudity in the
former.

Now, in fairness, we all know that trolling with images has been a regular
occurrence on many projects for years, much of it very obviously trolling,
but edge cases can be more difficult to determine.  Thus, the more neutral
principle of least astonishment ("would an average reader be surprised to
see this image on this article?/in this category?") comes into play. I'd
suggest that the principle of least astonishment is an effort to assume
good faith.

Risker