On 4/25/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I don't see why civility needs to be limited to community members, however that term may be defined.
Social issues only kick in with community members.
Not so.
Firstly, many people are potential community members or indeed simply fairly new community members.
Secondly, the way we treat good-faith contributors who are not regulars impacts our reputation in the wider world.
Thirdly, the way we treat non-regulars impacts the way we behave towards everyone.
Dialogue before dispute saves a lot of problems. When you delete first you are presuming that you are right do so, and that sets in motion a completely different social dynamic.
I'm not going to contact the person who added all the "Fair Use" images I remove. I don't even know who they were in most cases. If they object they are free to contact me. Contacting people before making edits is not normal wikipedia practice.
Actually, in most cases, informing the uploader and tagging the image for seven-day deletion is normal practice. This is normally done in a semi-automated fashion with notification templates and is not a great imposition, even if you don't have automated tools to speed this up.
This of course doesn't apply to egregiously bad misapplications which can probably be speedied, since little attempt to do the right thing have been made.
-Matt