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

[Andrew Gray]

On 17 June 2012 14:53, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17 June 2012 14:50, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> In short: the almost complete absence of anyone doing *anything*
>> clever in terms of reusing and repurposing our content strongly
>> suggests that there are practical barriers to doing so in general,
>> rather than the flaws with any specific model of what it is they want
>> to do.
>
> Which comes back to someone testing our practical forkability, then
> (as I've noted before) - arguably an important part of backup hygiene,
> but one which is in no way actually urgent at present.

I certainly don't think it's urgent to try now - I'm sanguine that the
WMF WP we have now will be around for a second decade at least - but I
do think it's important to remember when bringing up the issue of
competitors.

As there are no major and well-used forks at all, we can't reasonably
draw inferences of the desirability of a specific project from its
non-existence - we simply don't have the information to make that
conclusion. This applies whether the hypothetical fork is one using an
image filter, one using stable versions, one using peer-review
editorial control, one dynamically switching between varieties of
English, or anything else...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk