Feature summary: When inserting files/images, add "scale" (or a similarly intuitive parameter name) as an alt to "upright". This is purely for editing convenience; no change in wiki behavior.

I ran this by the village pump on WP-en and got a positive response - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Village_pump&oldid=1134065541#Should_we_have_a_more_intuitive_word_for_resizing_images_than_%22upright%22?

Benefits: The parameter name "upright" was originally a way to narrow an image in portrait orientation, and it's an intuitive word for that. However, it's since been expanded for all resizing relative to the readers default settings. The phrasing "upright=1.5" for a wide image is counter-intuitive, and in fact I've been reverted (back to deprecated absolute pixels) by an editor who thought that "upright" could only be used for portrait orientation. It also took me a long time to start using it because "upright" didn't make sense to me for its extended use. If I'd been using it all along, there would be tens of thousands more images on WP-en sized this way rather than with pixels.

I believe that if newbies could use "scale" (or similar short intuitive word of your choice), we might see a greater shift from deprecated fixed sizing. I'm not requesting that anything be changed with "upright" itself, only that we add a second word that would trigger the same behaviour: i.e. that "scale=1.5" and "upright=1.5" would have the same effect of widening an image by 50%.

PS IMO only "upright" should be usable on its own to scale an image to 75%. It would be unintuitive for "scale" to have that effect. That is, IMO "scale" should require a numerical value and thus not be a perfect synonym for "upright". Then in the user guides we could change the instructions to "scale" for a custom proportion, with "upright" as a shortcut for portrait orientation, and a technical footnote that "upright" can also be used for the former but is deprecated because users may find it confusing.

Posted for further comment on WP-en VPR.