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

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 11:40 PM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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


There is a serious issue here. "least astonishment" is very much
distinct from "least offence". We don't guarantee the latter, and
never should.The former was hijacked by a silly board resolution, and
should be rescinded.


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