That wasn't a cheap shot. Now *this* was a cheap shot, but I laughed anyway. http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-September/028547.html
It was an honest statement of my opinion, and I don't know why you seem to have interpreted it as an attack or an attempt at debate oneupsmanship or whatever. I'm sorry if you were offended.
I think we can let these rules slide for user pages because editors contribute to the project and the project can't exist without their hard work, so we can allow them little insignificant perks like this. To tell an editor "you can contribute your hard labor to this project for free but you can't put up a pic of your kids unless you release the copyright" strikes me as - and again, no personal offense intended here - an incredibly petty act.
I really don't understand how the occasional non-free userpage pic will clog up anything. Of far more concern to me is the endless number of "fair use" pics in articles whose sole fair use justification seems to be "I want this".
Matt Brown morven at gmail.com:
Who's denying them the permission to put up pictures of them, their dogs or their kids? They can make the images PD, Creative Commons, GFDL ...
But if they want to put up restricted-license images, that's a step too far, IMO. Your userpage isn't the same as your personal homepage, and if you care so much about those image licenses, keep them there.
Given that unscrupulous mirrors will probably suck up the whole contents anyway, it's not smart.
I've put in probably thousands of hours of free labor too, and I'm sure most of us have, so that's a cheap shot.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com