[Foundation-l] Fair use being badly abused on en.wikipedia

[Matthew Britton]

--- Chad <innocentkiller at gmail.com> wrote:

> The abuse of fair use images is absolutely rampant on the
> English Wikipedia.
> During my tenure as an administrator, I deleted over
> 26000 pages, the
> vast majority
> of which were Fair Use Images.
> 
> Thousands upon thousands are deleted every month, and yet
> it still
> never seems to
> stem the tide of incoming images. Until uploading FU
> images on the
> English Wikipedia
> is forbidden, the problem will not be getting smaller.
> 
> Chad H.

No. You deleted over 26000 pages the vast majority of which
were non-free images with a missing or invalid claim of
fair use. 

You are confusing non-free images without a fair use claim
with *all* non-free images. The latter is a completely
different thing.

Uploading non-free images without a valid claim of fair use
is *already* prohibited; it being a wiki, however, this
still happens. Prohibiting non-free images altogether will
not solve the problem -- they will still be uploaded, and
still need to be deleted. 

Here is an analogy with another aspect of Wikipedia. I have
reverted over 26000 edits the vast majority of which were
vandalism. Thousands upon thousands of vandal edits are
reverted every month, and yet it never seems to stem the
tide of incoming vandalism.

Now vandalism is already prohibited; the equivalent to
banning all non-free content in this analogy would be to
ban all *editing*. See the difference?

-Gurch