"users from Germany are the root of the problem" (Lars Aronsson, Commons-l, 27 Feb 2011)
Wow. I never expected to read such a phrase on Commons-l. Though I hate to possibly fulfil Godwin's law, when reading Aronsson's above cited claim, the infamous Nazi slogan "The Jews are our misfortune" (sv: "Judarna är vår olycka") came to my mind.
Mr. Aronsson obviously hasn't understood the Wiki system: if you think something can (or needs to) be improved, just DO IT or make a substantial proposal at the right place, but without spitting your contempt in the face of those who have done the pioneer work (even, if somewhat lousy).
Though Mr. Aronsson's second focus seems to be on German admins, it may have slipped his attention that default message templates used for notifying uploaders that one of their uploads is considered copyvio, derivative-work, missing permission, missing source or missing a license, etc. were not necessarily written by the admins who use them on a daily basis. But if Mr. Aronsson prefers, I can ask all 48 de-native-tagged admins on Commons to stop all their admin-work until we get Mr. Aronsson's personal approval.
The problem Commons is facing since a while, is massively missing admin-power/resources.
On February 23rd, Commons had 9 mio files. (read on [[:de:WP:Kurier]])
Today (Febr 28th), Commons has 9.35 mio files. (as of [[Special:Statistics]])
That means, in 5 days 350.000 uploads needed to be checked for detecting blatant and not so overt copyvios, for attack images/pages, for personality rights violations, for useless bullshit, for clearly promotional material, for missing source entry, for missing license, for missing permission (when uploader not identical to author), etc. etc.
Yes, we have 270 admins on our list. Surely all are doing valuable work. But rather few are active in the dirty work of upload patrol (To get a surely incomplete impression: http://toolserver.org/~vvv/adminstats.php?wiki=commonswiki_p&tlimit=15768000). Why? Though upload patrol may keep Commons existing (instead of being closed down by WMF after getting the 10.000th DMCA takedown-request), it doesn't make you any friends. You get angry reactions from clueless, careless or reckless uploaders, you are personally insulted, you even get death threaths, your userpage is vandalized, etc. but you NEVER get a thank-you from WMF or any institutional body of WMF or Commons (except from a few single users or fellow sysops). I'm not really asking for the latter, but mentioning it may help to understand the "constructive" impact of your rant.
Túrelio
(COI disclosure: admin on Commons, who is de-native, but has never written a default message template; Disclaimer: speaking strictly for myself, not for a non-existing de-admin cabal)
In einer eMail vom 28.02.2011 02:52:19 Westeuropäische Normalzeit schreibt commons-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org:
Message: 4
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:30:00 +0100
From: Lars Aronsson <lars@aronsson.se>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] "
To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <4D6AA638.7090607@aronsson.se>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Magnus Manske wrote MediaWiki, Commons was suggested
by Erik M?ller, and the Toolserver is German. The Germans
have contributed more than most to the Wikimedia projects,
especially in software and technology. Not to mention
the huge archive photo donations and Wikipedia Academy,
pioneered by the German chapter. However, the German
Wikipedia has a different set of standards, more strict rules
for inclusion and notability, and more speedy deletions. This
adds to the "focus on content, rather than people", and when
this is described as a problem on Commons, what I can see
is that users from Germany are the root of the problem.
Spanish or Norwegian admins on Commons are not the
problem, as far as I can see, despite using the same
..
--
Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.s
e