A number of problems are cropping up with the deletion
of images.
1. Many of the images being deleted are valid but
simply wrongly categorised. Often the problem is
simply that the information requested at the time was
less detailed than what we rightly request now. (for
example {{fairuse}} rather than {{fairusein| }} )
2. Some people doing deletions aren't checking to make
sure that the deletion will not make a mess of some
articles. Is it that hard to clean up problems a
deletion may leave in individual articles?
For example, all images in a template were deleted
because they were down as fairuse. They were simply
wrong categorised. They should have been in as
crowncopyright given the source that was listed on the
image, and crowncopyright images are explicitly
allowed to be used in templates under their legal
conditions. A whole series of templates were turned
into blank boxes with red names by the failure of the
deleter to simply checking the sources of the images
first. (It took 30 seconds to establish that all the
images were from the same source, which was
crowncopyright.) But by then a template used widely
was a mess, and the pages it was in turned into an
amateurish shambles. (The deleter didn't even bother
to remove the template from pages.)
Another example, a featured article lost a series of
fine images taken by the article writer simply because
as a newbie, though he had explicitly 'given' the
images to WP, they were categorised as source unknown.
All the deleter had to do was read what was in the
file to know the user meant them to be covered by
GDFL. (The information could be read on a copy of our
page, still with the images in situ, on another
website.)
Can we please remind the deleters that
(a) old images may be valid but were downloaded when
the commands weren't as informative as we have now.
They can easily be fixed in ten seconds, rather than
blanket deleted. Check to make sure there really are
copyright problems.
(b) have some cop-on about sources. A user may have
innocently used the wrong category. (I rarely download
images but at this stage I know in many cases
automatically if the source of a politics or history
image is genuinely fair use, should be crown
copyright, or is clearly a copyright breach.)
(c) For God's sake read the notes people have typed in
the file. The copyight category is often wrong. If in
doubt check a source.
(d) if you delete images, remove them from articles
first. Otherwise you'll leave articles in a mess with
red boxes where an image once was. Too many articles
are being turned into messes because no-one bothered
to do any follow up when an image was deleted.
Thom
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