Sunday, 7 October 2007, David Gerard wrote:
You're behaving as if you have a right to someone's attention.
That's not what I'm saying. I have, however, had people complain because I didn't notice messages to this effect on their user page (you'll notice the template is used very frequently on user pages or even images rather than on user talk pages) or when I didn't notice it on their user talk page (often because I was using UserMessages.js) or because I chose not to cater to the demand/request to go off-site.
But this isn't about me or my rights. I simply happen to know what a Commons janitor's workflow is like, and I know we need that workflow to be as smooth as possible to preserve the integrity and organisation of Commons so that it can be of as much use to other Wikimedia projects and society as possible. Occasionally visiting uploaders enabling e-mail notifications so that their works aren't deleted when they forget to add the necessary legal information is a step in that direction. Slowing janitors down in their process of identifying such works is a step away from it.
Commons is a service project for other wikis. They work on those wikis - writing those "encyclopedia article" things, as previously noted (even if you decide it's deeply offensive and sarcastic to even mention it)
I consider informing someone with 16,000 Wikipedia edits that there's such a thing as "encyclopedia articles" pretty unnecessary, yes.
- and upload pictures here. If you're trying to
righteously drive them away from wanting to even bother with commons, which is what your attitude here comes across as, then you are doing both Commons and the projects it was created to serve a great disservice.
Personally I think "don't use Commons to discuss Commons matters" is the attitude more aimed at driving people away from Commons, rather than "enable notifications so that you know what's happening to your work at Commons".
I've updated the usage section of the template to recommend Enotif instead. I won't mess with the deterring wording of the actual template (as much as I disagree with it), because I don't want to distort the intended statement of those who use the template.