This would be the approach I would use as I think it's just cleaner if endpoint return values are always consistent, regardless of who the user is (EDIT - and of course, the user's permissions affect what endpoint they can access).

Indeed. In Pragmatic Programmer, Hunt and Thomas describe a Controller as: A way to control the view and provide the model with new data. It publishes events to both the model and the view.

Reinforcing your point about there not being a consensus on what exactly is MVC, the Wikipedia link you posted states that the Controller is one-way only (Accepts input and converts it to commands for the model or view), and not bidirectional like you state in your answer - that sounds more like an Adapter or ViewModel.

I would make an additional point: the type of average (mean, median or mode) you would use depends very much on the file you have.

I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a programmer who would think Gfx stands for "global effects".

You could make it so that a Country owns a set of CountryRelations, so you don't a FirstCountry/SecondCountry property - you just need one for the TargetCountry. (EDIT - though if it were a database table, then yes that makes sense)

@BobDalgleish True. I meant "purposeless" purely in terms of code compilation and not for anyone reading it. Its presence, though beneficial in terms of documentation, does also contribute to the number of relevant header files and therefore to the "noise" which the developer needs to get their head around.