I hear many time that people think this is a great project, but in fact the Commons' administrators were quite hostile towards it from its very beginning. Like in many other issues, most of the complaints were technical, but I cannot believe that technicalities are the problem here. None of the images lack source. The person who contributed the images and relinquished his/her copyrights is always mentioned, but not in the field where the administrators expect it. The fact that the "description" template is produced automatically makes this minor error very easy to ignore or fix. An administrator merely needs to look two lines below, and if it is really disturbing, an automated process can fix the error in the future. Many people upload images manually and the risk of error there is much higher. The fact that these technicalities were enough to block the project (not the bot, but the whole project, as this bot is actually the door between the localized interface and the Commons) makes me wonder whether these technicalities are just an excuse. The Commons, the Wikipedias, the Foundation and the chapters are all part of one structure. The Commons' administrators have more privileges than any other element in this structure. They are entrusted with a huge international project, seen by people from five continents, they are selected for indefinite period of time, and they don't have to reveal their identity. It is also unclear who they are accountable to. These privileges mean that the administrators need to be extremely careful and cooperative. The fact that none of the administrators ever thought of contacting a chapter to consult it about local copyright arrangements or to suggest project related to the Commons is an indication that most administrators are not aware of the structure within which they operate, and don't understand the way Wikimedia works. Being an administrator at the Commons doesn't necessarily mean deleting images whose source is unclear or approving controversial material on the account that it is "educational". Being an administrator also, and most importantly, means knowing the way the Wikimedia movement works, being interested in new projects, offering help, and being fully cooperative with new initiatives. Think about it - had one of the administrators sent a template code to the email of the Pikiwiki project, the whole "source issue" would have been resolved. However, the administrators chose to take a passive approach, complain about the minor error without explaining it properly, and blocking the project eventually. This is not how things should work. The administrators also must remember that the rules are there to serve the community. It is not the community that need to serve the rules. The spirit of the project always comes before the technical rules. If obeying the rules becomes more important than the spirit of the project, then it's a sign that the project is decaying. Dror K _______________________________________________ Commons-l mailing list Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

I hear many time that people think this is a great project, but in fact the Commons' administrators were quite hostile towards it from its very beginning. Like in many other issues, most of the complaints were technical, but I cannot believe that technicalities are the problem here. None of the images lack source. The person who contributed the images and relinquished his/her copyrights is always mentioned, but not in the field where the administrators expect it.

The fact that the "description" template is produced automatically makes this minor error very easy to ignore or fix. An administrator merely needs to look two lines below, and if it is really disturbing, an automated process can fix the error in the future

Many people upload images manually and the risk of error there is much higher. The fact that these technicalities were enough to block the project (not the bot, but the whole project, as this bot is actually the door between the localized interface and the Commons) makes me wonder whether these technicalities are just an excuse.

Think about it - had one of the administrators sent a template code to the email of the Pikiwiki project, the whole "source issue" would have been resolved.