On 7/19/07, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
Some thoughts on the topic in general, and personal experiences:
- On de.wikipedia, the second largest wikipedia, we only allow free
images. One can easily see what effects a "no fair use" policy would have by comparing en and de articles. No album covers there, which is not really a loss IMHO. On the other hand, having next to no images on celebreties (living or deceased), compared to en, is a pity, but can encourage people taking such pictures and uploading them. I did that myself already.
Photos of living people on en are generally required to be under a free license.
- IMHO awareness could be raised concerning the "fair use problem",
and I'm not talking about this mailing list. Maybe an automatic, big red border around all fair use images? Along with a hovertext asking for help in replacing it with a free image?
Replaceable fair use is already a deletion criteria on en.
- If this is not done already: A bot could flag all new fair use
images for deletion if they are not used on an article say, three days, after upload? That would give time to flag it fair use and to put it into an article, or remove it if it's not appropriate there.
Orphanbot
- Attempts to get free replacements for fair use images should be more
organized. The current single wiki page (or group of pages) on each wikipedia/commons is neither well-known nor particularly nice. There should be a central place for all wikimedia projects where images (or files in general) can be "requested". That place could then be advertised, for example, in the sitenotice. "Did you take pictures on a concert? Happen to catch that celebrity on film? Help improve wikipedia! Upload your photos under a free license on [[commons]]! See [here] for what images are wanted badly, or add some requests of your own!". Have an "image raiser" in between fundraisers :-)
Wikipedia does not need more banner ads. I prefer this approach:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fromowner_documentation