On 2/5/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. You seem to be saying that
- there are instances of images with this template on them which are
mistagged and that 2. people might think the tags are correct when they might not be.
Yes, but also 3) this problem is becoming more and more widespread among these types of image tags.
I'm not sure how this is different than any other image tag, whether they have been changed or not.
It's different because when the template changes it makes makes tens or hundreds of tags incorrect all at once, as opposed to when an image is simply mistagged, that affects only one image.
You're right that both are a problem. The one of changing image tags seems to be easier to resolve, though. Don't change image tags except for minor grammatical changes. If you break that rule, at least go through all the tags and remove the tag from the images where it no longer applies. If that's too much work, start a new tag instead of changing the existing one.
A lot of fair use tags were changed around then to make their definitions tighter, easier to understand, etc. I don't think that was a bad thing, and it makes it easier to spot when they have been misapplied.
It is, of course, possible to define when a tag is supposed to be used without rewriting the actual text of the tag. Personally I'd suggest that policy changes should not be enacted by changing the text of templates, but that's just me. Another possible solution would be to remove the tag from the images where it no longer applies - a job which most naturally would fall upon the person changing the tag.
It seems to me that the result is quite obviously a bad thing - lots of images are mistagged. I don't really understand how you can suggest that there's nothing wrong with that.
Perhaps it would please you if "is known" is changed to something more ambiguous? Is asserted by the person placing this tag?
Changing "is known" would be one possible solution, though changing it to "is asserted by the person placing this tag" would be false and/or misleading in most of the same circumstances. I'd say such a change would actually make matters worse, because now anyone changing the tag is putting words into someone else's mouth - on top of being negligent now we're being libelous (and not just in the legal sense, giving people bad advice and attributing false statements to others is just plain *wrong*).
Perhaps we should put a little disclaimer on all tagging templates that they may in fact be incorrectly applied?
FF
Probably. But if a tag isn't correctly applied, what's the point of having it in the first place? Seriously, I'd rather have no tag at all than have an incorrect one. Image tags were originally descriptive, not prescriptive, and frankly I see no reason that should be changed.
Saying "this might be wrong" is arguably a good first step - but the real problem is that so many tags are wrong in the first place.
Anthony