I'm sorry for being behind the curve on this, but could someone point me to a discussion or policy explaining when & why the requirement to be autoconfirmed in order to upload files was created? Doesn't this just shift whatever problem it tries to solve to Commons, which doesn't have that restriction?
Same reason as why autoconfirmed even exists: Prevent throwaway accounts.
On Nov 20, 2008, at 8:52 PM [Nov 20, 2008 ], Erik Moeller wrote:
I'm sorry for being behind the curve on this, but could someone point me to a discussion or policy explaining when & why the requirement to be autoconfirmed in order to upload files was created? Doesn't this just shift whatever problem it tries to solve to Commons, which doesn't have that restriction?
-- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
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On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 8:52 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm sorry for being behind the curve on this, but could someone point me to a discussion or policy explaining when & why the requirement to be autoconfirmed in order to upload files was created? Doesn't this just shift whatever problem it tries to solve to Commons, which doesn't have that restriction?
I don't know and can not find where it was decided to include upload in auto-confirmed, but I do remember complaining about it previously when the criteria for auto-confirmed status was extended.
Search for 'upload': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_Proposal/Poll2
At the time new users got a completely unhelpful permission denied response from the software, at least now you get a wall of text which somewhere has a link to commons.
The benefit that some people tried to convince me of is that this policy effectively restricts the addition of images which are not freely licensed to established users. I'm not convinced that this is especially beneficial, and I suspect the added complexity of uploading to commons probably costs us contributions enough to offset whatever benefit the current behaviour brings.
I'd rather see a more nuanced quarantine and approval process to deal with the low quality of submissions by new users. .. or, at least make the upload button go straight to commons for users who can't use it locally to cut out the extra chances for confusion.
On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 1:35 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 8:52 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm sorry for being behind the curve on this, but could someone point me to a discussion or policy explaining when & why the requirement to be autoconfirmed in order to upload files was created? Doesn't this just shift whatever problem it tries to solve to Commons, which doesn't have that restriction?
I don't know and can not find where it was decided to include upload in auto-confirmed, but I do remember complaining about it previously when the criteria for auto-confirmed status was extended.
Search for 'upload': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_Proposal/Poll2
At the time new users got a completely unhelpful permission denied response from the software, at least now you get a wall of text which somewhere has a link to commons.
The benefit that some people tried to convince me of is that this policy effectively restricts the addition of images which are not freely licensed to established users. I'm not convinced that this is especially beneficial, and I suspect the added complexity of uploading to commons probably costs us contributions enough to offset whatever benefit the current behaviour brings.
I'd rather see a more nuanced quarantine and approval process to deal with the low quality of submissions by new users. .. or, at least make the upload button go straight to commons for users who can't use it locally to cut out the extra chances for confusion.
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Making the upload button go straight to Commons would create a lot of problems there, as nonfree content that would be legitimate on Wikipedia would be routed there and subsequently deleted, creating headaches for them and confusion for the uploader. I think an approval process might work, though there's certainly nothing stopping anyone from saying "There's an image at [link here] that I believe could legitimately be used in [[article]], could you please have a look and upload it if you agree?"
On 11/23/08, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Making the upload button go straight to Commons would create a lot of problems there, as nonfree content that would be legitimate on Wikipedia would be routed there and subsequently deleted, creating headaches for them and confusion for the uploader.
True but admins of commons are actually expected to understand and care about copyright before passing RFA. On enwiki a user doing significant image patrol will be lucky to get 50% support.
At least on commons the shelf life of copyvio is typically not measured in years.
I think an approval process might work, though there's certainly nothing stopping anyone from saying "There's an image at [link here] that I believe could legitimately be used in [[article]], could you please have a look and upload it if you agree?"
If said image is "inside my camera" this would only be a bureaucratic impediment to me. Of course if I created the picture myself I should take it straight to commons anyway.
But as far as bureaucracy goes, a centralized "requests for fair use" page might have some merit, if it helps avoid a pathological situation where 3 or 4 anime buffs have decided that a higher file size limit means "episode videos are okay as long as you cut out the credits". Or worse they could upload war about it until "concencus" [sic] is reached.
Suffice it to say I'm not optimistic about the longevity of the extra server space being touted.
—C.W.
On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 4:04 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Making the upload button go straight to Commons would create a lot of problems there, as nonfree content that would be legitimate on Wikipedia would be routed there and subsequently deleted, creating headaches for them and confusion for the uploader.
Would create? We'll it's pretty much already done: If you're not autoconfirmed (which most of the 'but I just want to add this' crowd will be) the only way to upload is to go over to commons. After the message you got when you were not autoconfirmed was changed to mention commons we did see more ENwp traffic, but it was nothing commons couldn't handle. It helps that commons has a lot less distractions when it comes to processing images.
Commons is the direct target of the upload link for several large Wikipedias, and it's only one hop off from English. I can't see making it direct increasing the load in any way that commons admins can't handle.
I think an approval process might work, though there's certainly nothing stopping anyone from saying "There's an image at [link here] that I believe could legitimately be used in [[article]], could you please have a look and upload it if you agree?"
Right. Thats my preference. If it was done well in a way that made requests easy to write and caused them to be quickly handled it might effectively make the upload process for these images a lot easier, if a little less personally gratifying for the initiator.