On 8/1/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
How much value does a photo being "free" really add to any given encyclopaedic article? Is this policy about promoting "free" images not at odds with other policies which are all about producing a high quality encyclopaedia? What happens when the goal to produce a "high quality" encyclopaedia is at odds with the goal to produce a "free" encyclopaedia?
The value is project-wide, not necessarily on an article-by-article basis. And I think Jimbo would say that a high quality encyclopedia is never at odds with producing a free one. Wikipedia could still be high quality even if it lacked fair use images. Most encyclopedias do *not* have an image for every article and do not feel the need to, much less images of lesser known celebrities and video games.
Also, I think the more free and good looking images Wikipedia has, the more impressive and useful it is. Wikipedia is currently the only site I know of on the 'net where you can get high-quality vector images illustrating a wide-variety of things (parts of cars, household items, hydrogen bombs).
Ugly free images can also inspire better free images. I have many times replaced well-intentioned but amateurish free images with re-done, more professional looking free versions. If everything is a slick un-free image, though, the obviousness of what should be replaced goes down a bit.
FF