[WikiEN-l] Re: yet another image lost for posterity

[Stan Shebs]

Anthere wrote:

>
> I have the feeling that in one year or so, freely licensed orphan 
> images will indeed be deleted on the english wikipedia. That would be 
> well within what I currently observe.

It wouldn't surprise me, I seem to recall some people muttering about
that a while back. Just imagine all the AfDers migrating over to IfD!

> I do not think people will bother moving them to commons, it is too 
> heavy to do.

As a board member, isn't it within your power to pay a developer to
come up with an automated way to transfer images from language WPs
to commons? It's been wanted for some time, and would solve a lot of
our image management problems. Commons has evolved much better ways
to deal with large masses of images.

>
> Overall, our license issues strike me as being more confusing and 
> messy every day that goes by.

Organizations that deal professionally with as many images as are
now in WMF's collection often have persons paid to do nothing but
deal with license issues, calling and writing copyright holders for
permissions, negotiating prices for licenses, etc. Pinching down on
non-free images is basically our strategy to simplify things so
that the Foundation doesn't have to start interviewing job candidates...

Stan