Wikipedia clearly has a problem with copyright images, but the way some users are dealing with this has infuriated many people. Part of the problem is that the details of what is now needed to define fair use has now been changed and more categorisation is required. Thousands of perfectly valid images were uploaded before this change. Users put in the information they thought were required at the time. Now they discover that they are in effect being accused of not giving enough information and the images are being deleted, without checking if the people who uploaded them can supply more information or a clearer categorisation as NOW required.
One user seems to be intent on pissing off most of Wikipedia with his approach. Furious users have left messages on his talk page saying such things as
- We have gone through a long process to get a formula for these photos which clears them for use and which has been approved by Mr Wales. I suggest you visit Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board and raise any concerns you have before taking action which will make a lot of people angry.
- your unilateral action is making a lot of people very angry
- If you look at his "contributions" you'll see he's been doing this to a lot of templates lately where it's quite clear (IMO) fair-use allows the images to be used. And yes, it's very unilateral: as far as I can tell he's acting nearly independently, and reverts edits back without any (or very little) discussion or consensus.
Another user deleted something from the Commons that had been wrongly moved to there by someone, when all that needed to be done was for the image to be moved from the commons back to where it came from. His delete screwed up 17 pages where that (very useful) image had been used. I had to delete the now empty image space from all 17 pages, then spend weeks chasing back the original image from the organisation that had supplied it first time around. But when asked him politely why he didn't check before unilaterally deleting he sent a snotty rude reply, and proceeded to delete a host of other perfectly valid images, screwing up more pages.
If people don't know what they are doing they shouldn't be doing it. And if they aren't legally trained they should take more care rather than dreaming up their own idiocyncratic frequently ridiculous interpretations of the law. Unless someone tells them to (i) be a bit more careful, and (ii) check with the original downloader before dumping images, Wikipedia is going to both lose a lot of perfectly valid images just in need for more information and find itself with a lot of pissed off users whose work is being destroyed by people who seem in a lot of cases not to know what they are doing and are making a complete mess of articles which for no good reason end up stripped of their images.
Thom
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