Well, maybe you are a very good example of the mentality of people who
should stay out of Commons. That mixture of
- "I don't understand why Commons admins apply different laws for
different countries ! They should just ignore them all !"
- "I don't understand something, so NEITHER SHOULD YOU"
- "I don't understand what the law in France and Germany limits our
uploads so much, can't Commons admins change them ?"
I do understand the difficulties of being a newcomer on Commons. But I
think that some people do not understand the difficulties of being an
admin on Commons. Commons admins are at least as useful as the
clueless newcomers who upload copyvios could possibly become, so why
should they be treated like servants? I have spent hours interacting
with a stroke patient about copyright law, have you?
Commons has to respect the law of the USA (where the servers are), the
law of the country in which the images are uploaded, and the law of
the country where they were made. I have photographed swastikas in
Switzerland and uploaded them without breaking any law.
Commons, just like Wikipedia, is a private projet on which
contribution is a privilege. Your point about "a service they don't
want and didn't ask for" could apply just as much to the NPOV policy
on Wikipedia, so I suggest you keep it for British ISPs.
Commons is first and foremost a repository of Free media. If that
makes it useless for you, too bad but so be it.
Debatable and a half indeed. That is typically what produces outputs
which look incoherent from the outside.
Commons admins are more than willing to buy the magic remedy that will
make everybody understand what we do. But I am not convinced that this
"hollier than thou" attitude towards admins is said magic remedy.
-- Rama
On 09/12/2008, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
2008/12/8 Delphine Ménard
<notafishz(a)gmail.com>om>:
Another thing that might be worth looking into is
whether the Stanton
Grant [1] is only for Wikipedia (as is stated in the press release) or
whether Commons enters into that overhaul. Because if it does, we
might have a chance to make Commons the cool project it deserves to
be.
The focus of the Stanton project is Wikipedia, but due to the fact
that uploading media to Commons is an integral part of editing a
Wikipedia article, we hope that we can at least name some of the key
challenges and make some improvements in that area as part of the
project. We're also working on a separate grant proposal focused
specifically on building an optimized workflow for media uploads.
I am noting with some interest the idea to use local projects
essentially as a first contact point for all media. My primary concern
about such an approach would be the risk of diluting an already
difficult commitment to free content. That said, I don't want to deny
the problems that Lars pointed out, and I think serious technical and
social efforts will be required to address them, one way or another.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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