On 14/07/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I just have to say that if this pans out it'll be the best accomplishment to date for the foundation. Great job, and thanks for keeping us up to date.
I agree. This sounds like a really fantastic development so thanks a lot to the WMF team who have pulled it together.
I wonder if it would be a good idea for the Commons to develop a policy regarding an historical archive, ie. being one, or not, or a bit of both. At the moment there are no official policies but we kind of say 'don't rely on us to be a historical archive' because: - if you upload a blurry picture of your dog that you took on your mobile phone, there may not a lot of value in that to Wikimedia (also replace 'dog' with 'genitals' :)) - images may be re-uploaded under a more descriptive name and the originals deleted (because of bugzilla:709, can't rename/move images - note I think this is relatively rare, but the flag people in particular seem to be very anal about name conventions) - admins are only human, thus make mistakes and sometimes even go rouge (well, potentially) - although a deleting rampage isn't the same threat it used to be, thanks to image undeletion
ANYWAY... these are just the reasons why we would never promise to be a historical archive. But obviously we aim to preserve informative and unique data and these collections would pass on both points.
regards Brianna user:pfctdayelise