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

[Todd Allen]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 1:57 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 6:06 AM, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes, actually, along with several other educational ones, some with
>> children's games, her school website, etc. The chances that she would
>> randomly stumble across a sexual image on Wikipedia are -vanishingly-
>> slim, ...
>
>
> There is another aspect to this, which is that Wikipedia presently gives
> undue weight to the weird, bizarre and even the completely made-up. To give
> an example: every kid will look up the word fuck at some point in their
> lives. Wikipedia offers, at the bottom of that article, the sexual slang
> template
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Sexual_slang
>
> with links to (partly illustrated) articles on a whole slew of weird and
> obscure practices, while missing out many of the slang terms ordinary
> people actually use in the bedroom. Basically, it's urban dictionary,
> written for the lulz, rather than sex education.

{{sofixit}}, just like any area with NPOV/undue weight issues.

>
> Even the article on the humble gel bracelet
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gel_bracelet
>
> contains more about a sexual urban legend than anything else, and it too
> comes with a template offering helpful links to Wikipedia's bizarre world
> of sex.

It's well known for that. Like it or not, that's the aspect of them
that most sources write about. That's not in that case undue weight,
it's -due- weight.

>
> Larry recently illustrated another way in which kids can come across
> Wikimedia's wealth of sexual media:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE4Z9qunAc4

Good for him. Care to summarize his argument? I don't particularly
care to watch his video, or for him in general after the
OHNOESVIRGINKILLERIMAGE!!! hysteria a while back.

>
> As Seth Finkelstein pointed out the other day, there is opposition to
> pornography both from the right, on a family values basis, and from the
> left, from feminists countering male bias. These are quite separate, but
> equally valid concerns.

And like anything, we should catalog and report on the debate over the
issue in articles about it, accurately summarizing reliable sources
with due weight for each position, without as a project actually
taking a position ourselves.

>
> It's not for nothing for example that Anita Sarkeesian's article was
> vandalised with porn. Male-fantasy porn expresses male dominance; in this
> case, it was used to emphatically reassert that dominance, because
> Sarkeesian had threatened it. It's as symbolic as the babe calendar on the
> office wall: it signals that women don't have much to say in that office,
> and can be greeted with cat calls or put-downs.

Alright, so someone is both a vandal and a jerk. I'm not seeing the
relevance in that, to a discussion about having sexual images in
articles where they -are- germane and on topic. Could you please
clarify that?

>
> I am not against pornography per se. I just wish that if the projects have
> it, they'd handle it responsibly, the way everybody else does quite
> naturally. That means with respect for subject privacy, gender issues,
> child protection issues, and so forth. Just be professional about it and
> follow best practice.

You are, of course, starting from the presumption that the way you
want to do it -is- the "responsible" way, or what have you. I have no
problem with developing best practices, and certainly I don't think
anyone will argue that we should host or retain porn or near-porn
involving kids, but you want a very strict practice. A lot of us
disagree to that, and really don't want to treat such images
significantly differently from others, so long as they clearly involve
adults. I think we could also develop privacy best practices, such
that the subject of a photo must either be: a) Unidentifiable (or
rendered unidentifiable), b) Show clear awareness that they are being
photographed, or c) Give an explicit release. But I don't think c) is
necessary if a) or b) are satisfied.

>
> Andreas
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Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.