-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Joe Szilagyi wrote: | Posting here as sometimes the admin noticeboard seems a bit too quiet... | | I've seen comments that this is happening more frequently now, where | [[User:Foo]] will suddenly say, "I withdraw | release/copyrights/permission/I just want all these 20-100+ images | removed from Commons". I had one that I reverted on 10 or so images the | other day where the uploader wanted images--good ones at that--from 2006 | deleted because Google was indexing them on Commons. They were all | images of random streets in another country. | | Should the upload forms be more clear/explicit and politely in-your-face | that once material is released under copyleft/GFDL, you can't | technically undo that? | | - Joe |
And before we get too hard-nosed about this, there are instances where we want to grant the individual the right to withdraw protection--believe it or not there are instances where people are actually not aware of the full implication of what free licensing means when they uploaded (yes, it takes some stupidity, but we are nice people, believe it or not). There are other possible reasons that are good faith rationale. We should make every attempt to address their concerns of course, and explain that if something has already been reused there's nothing we can do about it on that end, but we should be willing to remove their media in order to maintain good relations, which has a great potential to spread and evangelize to our free media culture in the future.
Of course, if their work has already been distributed widely across our projects, we'll certainly have to take that under consideration.
I might also add that it is pretty darn easy to distinguish when someone is withdrawing their license in a good faith manner and when it's "I'm taking my toys and bringing them elsewhere."
"Do no harm" is the operating principal. - -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Phone: 415.839.6885 x 601 Fax: 415.882.0495
E-Mail: cary@wikimedia.org