I thank you for this statement of what happened. Barring substantive
rebuttals of the facts you lay out, I find that I agree with you that,
while the goal was good, this was not rightly done. I apologize for
having supported it without realizing this. I still think ta bu was
acting in good faith, and doing what he felt was the best and only
course, but I now see that this was not correct; an annoucment - "I
believe that Wikipedia's use of TIME covers is invalid fair use for the
following reasons.", a week or so of time for comments, discussion
(either via an IfD, or simply as a freeform discussion), asking Jimbo
on eis talk page, rather than by email, *then* deleting the images,
would have been the right path to take.
Jesse Weinstein
On Feb 28, 2006, at 6:45 PM, Fastfission wrote:
1. An admin decided to start speedying properly tagged
images, as
copyvios. There are no CSD provisions for speedying copyvio images.
2. In accounting for his actions, when asked by a number of people,
the admin said that his personal interpretation of the fair use law
(and note that he pointed people to the page about the law, not our
fair use policy) was that these were copyvios and put Wikipedia at
risk. (Sound grounds and good intentions for discussing policy change,
but not throwing it to the wind.)
3. After some more people started wondering where he was getting the
authority to skip out on our copyvio procedures, he tells them to take
it up with Jimbo or the WMF. (Note that a board member of the WMF soon
said that they were indeed NOT the place to take it up with.) He then
alludes to a secret e-mail from Jimbo where he was given authority for
deleting any TIME magazine images he wanted without question.
4. Finally, the admin produces the "backchannel" e-mail. And guess
what? It said that the images should probably be AfDed, and that if it
didn't pass AfD then *Jimbo* might speedy them himself. So it didn't
quite give the admin the authority to speedy them himself in the
slightest. Nevertheless, the admin told everyone else to eat their
words in suggesting he was acting out of policy, and claims that this
validates everything he had done.