On 7/19/07, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)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
--
geni