On 8/11/06, jkelly(a)fas.harvard.edu <jkelly(a)fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
I think that there is plenty of room for
contributors to wikimedia projects
who aren't interested in the potential for reuse of those projects, but I am
wondering where en is at if admins are actively dissuading contributors who
value it.
Jkelly
At a place which is somewhat better than where it used to be. I've
been blocked more than once for repeatedly removing obviously non-free
images from encyclopedia articles and from the main page. My blocks
of course weren't explicitly over what I did but how I did it,
similarly to your RFC. But the copyright page used to say that
"Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify the text of
all Wikipedia materials under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License", and there were quite a few admins who claimed this meant
that images need not be under any license at all, so long as it was
legal for Wikipedia to use the image. I guess I was acting with far
too little patience, as many of Wikipedia's policies over non-free
images have gotten a lot better on these points.
Anyway, there are some admins that still don't understand what it
means to be a free encyclopedia. But most of them now get it, and
even accept it. That said, patience is still required when creating
new policies, unless you don't mind getting involved with a number of
heated disputes, and getting asked to leave the project.
Anthony