[WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

Thu Aug 18 01:07:44 UTC 2005

Stephen Bain wrote:
> And to hell with the 'work-safe' crowd. They shouldn't be looking at
> pictures of people's bits on company time anyway.

I almost agree, but I do think that there is some "work-safe" thinking
which is sensible.  Our normal editorial judgment easily covers this
case, but it is helpful I think to understand that one reason for our
editorial judgments is the "work-safe" argument.

The "work-safe" argument that makes sense to me is just a subset of the
"principle of least astonishment" principle.

If I'm on an article about  the USB standard, or about Thomas Jefferson,
then I'd be pretty astonished if either on the page, or on any link from
the page, I got some actual pornography.

So yes, if people would get in trouble at work for looking at various
things from work, they shouldn't be looking at them at work.  But people
ought to be able to casually surf wikipedia for work-related topics
without fearing that they are going to accidentally stumble onto
something astonishing.

I don't know of any cases where we come close, even, to violating this,
because it's just very simple and reasonable.

--Jimbo