On 1/4/06, Chris Jenkinson chris@starglade.org wrote:
jayjg wrote:
You seem to know him well. Since you've decided to defend him, tell me, when he insists that "fair use" images can be used on Userboxes, and
that
attempts to delete them are attempts by "the mob" to enforce "copyright paranoia" and "wiki-law" that have "no basis in reality", and then edit
wars
both the policy pages which forbid it, and those who delete the images
from
the userboxes, is he helping others build the encyclopedia?
No, I think he's wrong on this issue, and I've promised elsewhere to talk to him about it.
Well, that's great, but again, the issue isn't this particular individual. Rather, this is a symptom: Why do we have administrators who are unfamiliar with policy? Why do we have administators who are unwilling to accept community consensus, and, indeed, seem almost unfamiliar with the concept? Why do we have administrators who think that it is so important to have "fair use" images on userboxes that it is reasonable to completely ignore any risks of copyright lawsuits against Wikipedia?
Those are the issues here, and your having a chat with your friend isn't going to fix the root cause.
Jay.