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

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 11/28/05, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 20 000 images tagged as having no source information
> 5 000 images tagged as having no copyright information
> 8 000 images tagged as being "fair use", but unused in any article
>
And how many were by unique individuals?  It's not like someone can't
be notified about more than one image at the same time.

> If the administrator places a warning on the uploader's talk page, in
> addition to removing the image from articles where it's used, and
> waits a week to give the uploader a chance to respond, it takes over
> two minutes to delete an image.  This represents the additional time
> needed to check for responses on the user's talk page, check for
> responses on the talk page of the admin informing the user, and check
> for responses on the image description page and image talk page -- and
> 99% of the time, it's wasted effort, as the uploader has forgotten
> about Wikipedia entirely.  Total effort involved in cleaning up the
> problem images: 1100 man-hours.
>
So if 25 people spend 1 hour a week it'll take...less than a year. 
The problem with this would be?

Even if it's wasted effort 99% of the time (and I think this is a
gross exaggeration), what about at least notifying users who *are*
active, like, say, someone who currently serves on the board of the
foundation?

> It's not as if efforts to notify people haven't been undertaken.  The
> policy change was announced on the WikiEn-L mailing list, on the
> administrators' noticeboard, on several Village Pump subpages, in the
> Signpost, and for several weeks everyone's watchlist had a note on the
> top informing them of the change.  The only thing that hasn't been
> done was individual notification on the talk pages of uploaders, and
> that's because there are almost 35000 problem images.
>
> --
> [[User:Carnildo]]

It's a big problem.  I don't see that as an excuse to not do things right.

Anthony