Pete,
The other day, Daniel Case referred on Commons to Commons' "failure as a
community to formulate a clear policy about posting identifiable nudes in
private places without any indication as to whether they have consented to
publication of those images under a licensing scheme that allows for nearly
unlimited reproduction, distribution and modification of them".
In reply you said, on Commons, "Daniel, I have no doubt that it happens on
our site all the time, and it's horrible, and it's something we should stop
if we possibly can."
Yet now, faced with those "horrible" things that happen "on our site all
the time", and which come up time and again in gender gap discussions, you
want to send us bird-watching and tell us about all the great things
Commons does.
Shame on you.
Oliver said a very stupid thing. Your seizing on it to deflect from the
fact that the spirit and letter of the board resolution are routinely
ignored in Commons looks like a devious gambit that presents us with a
wonderful opportunity to distinguish those who pay mere lip service to the
idea of putting those "horrible" things right from those who actually want
to.
As for the greatness of Commons' expertise in intellectual property law, a
journalist friend of mine shared the following anecdote in discussion on
Wikipediocracy a couple of days ago:
---o0o---
My latest magazine piece (here if anyone is
interested<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2013/0508/Provoki…)
is about Ambon, Indonesia, a place few professional photographers go to
anymore. The photo desk couldn't find anything decent to illustrate the
story, and I suggested maybe trolling through Wikipedia commons for old
Dutch public domain stuff. Photo editor cut me right off, told me they'd
introduced a strict policy a few years ago of never user anything from
commons because they invariably draw take-down notices and threats. Even in
the case of pictures of public domain works (an old map for instance), no
doing. He said the pictures themselves are frequently stolen from museums
or government archives. The lawyers told us that commons has such a bad
reputation for accurate licensing that a downstream user such as ourselves
could ultimately be considered culpable if anyone chose to go that route.
---o0o---
There was a coda to that when I found that his publication actually have
some Commons images on their website (though never in print editions,
apparently). I gave an example from last week:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2013/0506/Are-South-Af…
It turns out it was a copyright violation: it is used on
postzambia.com in
two articles dated three months prior to the Commons upload, which was done
by a drive-by account that never edited before or since.
http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=25747
http://www.postzambia.com/post-print_article.php?articleId=26113
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:GuyScott.jpeg&oldid…
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Guy_Scott&diff=497500562&…
And before someone clever comes along and suggests The Post probably took
it from Commons and put it on the articles' web pages three months after
publication, let us note that there are dozens of photographs of Mr Scott
on
postzambia.com, as you would expect for a Zambian newspaper, whereas
Commons has exactly one: that one.
So much for Commons' intellectual property expertise. Yes, Commons may have
lots of information on freedom of panorama in countries all around the
world, most of which may be accurate, but what good does it do if the site
is riddled with copyright violations.
Keep watching the birds. They're beautiful.
Andreas
On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
I have to say I share Russavia's bafflement around
this issue.
The accomplishments people have made on the platform of Wikimedia Commons
are, in my view, staggering. Just this morning, a couple Wikipedian friends
told me about the photography of JJ Harrison, somebody who has uploaded an
extraordinary collection of bird photos, among many others. It's worth a
look.[1]
The collection of freely licensed photos and other files at Commons is
enormous, diverse, and useful. It is fairly well organized. Tons of useless
junk gets weeded out. Hundreds of Wikimedia projects are supported in their
various missions.
All this happens in spite of there being a firehose of junk and copyright
violations pointed at Commons every single day.[2] In spite of the fact
that native speakers of many, many languages have to find ways to work
together. In spite of the fact that people bring astonishingly varied
projects and dreams and hopes and expectations to their work on Commons.
What is the thing that makes all this possible? The dedication of the
volunteers. The people who sit down at their computers day after day to
pitch in whatever way they see fit. Sorting through deletion nominations,
filling requests to rename files, considering policy changes, and -- my
personal favorite -- gradually amassing probably the best compendium of
knowledge about certain aspects of international intellectual property law
ever assembled in human history.
When I hear people refer to this community as "broken," I am amazed how
out of touch they are with the reality and exquisite beauty of what Commons
is. I can only assume they are overly influenced by a small number of edge
cases that have come to their attention god knows how, and have generalized
on those experiences to draw a fallacious conclusion.
With all that said, of course, there's a tremendous amount of stuff that
could and should be done to make Commons work better, to make it a more
inviting and respectful environment, to make it more effective at advancing
the Wikimedia mission.
But one thing I am damn sure is not part of that solution is offhand
insults directed at the community of dedicated volunteers who sustain and
nurture Commons. Even if there are unhealthy social dynamics in the way the
site functions (and there certainly are), I can't begin to imagine what
theory of progress would rely on calling them out as a reflection of the
overall health of the project.
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
[1]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/JJ_Harrison
[2] For instance, one recent day saw 48 nominations for deletion:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/2013/05/04
On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Russavia <russavia.wikipedia(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
And of course I love how you skirted the issue of
your statement that
Commons produces nothing beyond photos of genitals.
I'll be waiting for your numbers of how many genitals files are on
Commons, out of the 17 million files in total we have. I'm having a
guess here; perhaps 3,000? Maybe 5,000.
But I do know that
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Uncircumcised_human_penis
and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Circumcised_human_penis
basically pales in comparison to
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:All_Nippon_Airways_aircraft_at_T…
And yet we have a problem on the amount of cock pics on Commons?
Seriously?
Any time you feel like reasonable discussion on things Ironholds, feel
free to chime in; because your comments were nothing more than
ill-informed opinion.
Cheers,
Russavia
On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 4:59 AM, Oliver Keyes <ironholds(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Quite honestly, is it any wonder when people make such statements that
editors from Commons basically ignore them, and don't bother
responding -- much like the weekly "Commons is broken" threads we see
elsewhere...you know the ones I am talking about.
I would suggest that if you have a weekly "your project is broken"
thread
something is going terribly wrong.
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