On 7/27/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 7/27/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
[snip, out of order]
In my view, establishing clear ground rules for
votes to change policy
is a better way to deal with the problem than delegation of authority.
It allows for community consensus processes (and indeed requires them
to be tried first), brings out as many arguments and solutions as
possible, and enables everyone to share the responsibility, credit and
blame for the result.
The current image use policy reflects the position of the active
editing base and is result of a fairly strong consensus, not merely
the mob rule of a majority wins vote. There is no substantial desire
to change our policy.
The challenge is that only a bright line policy can protect us against
a "slow and often intensely frustrating process" for each of tens of
thousands of images per month. But a bright line policy will exclude
things which common sense would permit. I'd like to discuss ways we
can accept such exceptions without breaking the well functioning
policy and without creating a slow and intensely frustrating process.
Where is it that you see the current image use policy as ambiguous?
I'd actually say it's fairly clear.
I could see the benefit of having a relatively small number of people
decide what the policy says about a particular image, as it's a much
more efficient than voting, but I wouldn't want to give them the power
to make exceptions.
Policies should reflect common sense. If common sense tells us to
permit an image but policies tell us not to, then the policies should
be fixed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Fair_use&diff=23405…
Looks like policy was fine until September 2005. It should probably
be noted that the explanation of the policy change ("Because "fair
use" images are only not copyright infringement on Wikipedia when used
for strictly encyclopedic reasons, their use in other contexts on
Wikipedia is most likely copyright infringement.") is blatantly
incorrect.
Anthony