John Lee wrote:
Yes. Unfortunately some people have gone overboard with the images; I'm by no means a "make everything free!" kind of guy, but sometimes seeing pop culture articles full of unnecessary imagery makes me wonder if we really need all this.
Sure enough. But making things free requires a little more sophistication than plugging something in and boldly claiming that it is now free. Those indiscriminate louts make it very difficult for those of us who would take a more permissive attitude.
My derived point is that it's somewhat hypocritical to have a
different stance regarding appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use images than for appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use text.
Indeed it is.
We would probably do better to have more of both, rather than less, as
an Encyclopedia, for the Readers.
The most important thing is to use them as necessary and appropriate; as far as possible, we must avoid any less (which harms the encyclopaedia) and any more (which harms the free nature of our encyclopaedia).
The difficulty with this is that it requires an ability to have a global outlook on the subject. It's about the overall result, and not about whether this or that specific item is fair use, and that's a tough transition for some people. Where would Wikiquote be without fair use? Paper books of modern quotation can be had at any book store, and I don't see a lot of fuss from publishers about these collections.
Ec