Fastfission wrote:
On 11/29/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com>
wrote:
Personal file server ?
You seem to be saying that the images were not used in articles for
quite some time, were labeled as being used without a license (fair
use), but because they were images personally important to you, they
should be kept on Wikipedia servers forever. To me, that sounds like a
"personal file server" -- a place to keep images for yourself, with no
substantive relation to the Wikipedia project.
A long time ago (3 and a half years ago perhaps ?), I started a
wikiproject called the ecoregions, both in english and french. The idea
was to describe what some authors have been calling ecoregions, ie,
regions ecologically homogeneous, as opposed to "regions" defined by
political borders. In starting that project, I was aware it would go
very very slowly. There are more than 800 classicaly defined ecoregions
on Earth.
On the french wikipedia, at that time, I was the only one with remotedly
a biology/ecology/geology/pedology background, so it was unlikely the
project could interest anyone. While I was quite involved in it in
english, we were only 3-4 editors taking care of it. In particular Tom
Radulovitch.
Still, over the years, a few ecoregions were drafted, some in french,
others in english.
The project was inspired by a project started by the WWF, with funding
by the National Geographic, with a decent presence on the net and
particular a real neat GIS. I contacted the National Geographic two
years ago now, for a grant. It unfortunately did not succeeded.
I thought that if I could get a grant for this, I would stop working and
take care of this full time, because for me, it made more sense than the
real life job I was doing.
On the world map, work has been quite extensively done for some
continents, or rather political areas. In particular Canada and Europe,
and of course, quite a bit in the USA as well. Now, other areas are
practically undone. And amongst those, Africa. I had the opportunity to
go several time in Africa in the past years, and other times my husband
as well. I, as an agronom and soil scientist, he, as a geologist and
mineralogist, were typically people who had great opportunities to bring
back real neat pictures of these areas, in particular areas which are
not reachable unless you accept to sleep on the rocks several nights in
a row.
When I decided to take care of that project, I had a long long long time
perspective. Not thinking in days or weeks as many contributors, nor in
months; but rather in years. So, little by little, I built up a frame
for that project, and on the 3 computers I have owned since I started
participating, I stored images. I put some on Wikipedia. The ecoregion
project was definitly in substantive relation to the Wikipedia project
and I would find a bit hurting that my storing a few images in the
perspective of some of the articles I would write later would be
interpretated as "personal storing" area.
As it happened, I was diverted from my original project, and chose
instead to offer much of my free time to the community good.
These weeks, I sometimes regret it. I must confess it. In the past few
weeks, I have spent possibly 15 hours taking care of trying to remove
mails from the english mailing list and english help desk per request of
a person. I have found it deeply UN-satisfying experience.
And I am now facing the question : is it really more worth to the
project that I answer jerks on OTRS, for the good of the community,
while I get no satisfaction of this activity, while it brings me so
appreciation from my peers and while it will *never* help me find a job
again in the future ?
Or is it best for the project that I go back taking care of the
ecoregions, and maybe at least get some academic recognition for my work
as well as the satisfaction of seeing the project grow ?
My mistake might be to have a long-term vision of Wikipedia. In keeping
these images under my user name, I go on believing that one day, I will
go back to doing something "constructive" as an editor, rather than
loosing my time on OTRS and other administrative tasks.
For me, deleting these images is a bit like abandonning the idea of that
project.
Again, maybe
you may not really realised, but when I uploaded these
images, Commons did not existed. So, it was perfectly understandable
that an editor with a bunch of images that could be useful for the
encyclopedia would upload them where it was possible to upload them.
The images in question, I thought, were tagged as "fair use". Which
would not be allowed on Commons anyway. Nobody is deleting PD images
which are unused, to my knowledge. The entire discussion is about the
deletion of images labeled as "fair use" which are unused. If that's
*not* what you are talking about then I suppose I (and others) have
been confused about what you are complaining about from the beginning.
Maybe there is a language barrier here, because I'm not quite following you.
FF
I already explained the "fair use" issue around these images. What I
wrote above is an attempt to explain why these images are not used.
Possibly, for the topics which interest you, Wikipedia is roughly done.
For the topic which interest me, Wikipedia is still in infancy. It is
still a work ongoing :-)
In case you wonder, here is a link to one biome page :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deserts_and_xeric_shrublands
Here is an example of one :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Deccan_dry_evergreen_forests
No pictures are available...
Still a lot to do :-)
Ant