On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think the concept of the project is the problem. I'm skeptical that an "Uncommons" project built around fair use could be workable, considering that the validity of a fair use claim is context-specific and no cross-wiki project (like Commons) is going to have an easy time managing that requirement.
We don't have to. As a basic inclusion rule, someone justified an image on a fair-use project, and someone else wants to share it. If its use gets deleted on both those wikis (and anywhere else that started using it) due to not complying with fair use, and it stays out of use, we identify a cleanup procedure. But as long as a basically credible "it's fair use over here" exists for 1 or more projects, it's a candidate for Uncommons.
Uncommons should *never* see an image deleted out from under an article using it, for example. If someone feels it's not compliant with X wiki's local fair use criteria, they go to X wiki, argue the case, get it removed from the article(s). Uncommons would consider deletion if all the projects which tried to use it rejected it on fair use grounds.
Caveat that a copyright violation in the US, where the servers are, may still need to be removed even if fair-use in (for example) Argentina and Botswana apply, which is unfortunate, but we have a process for people to report copyvios of their images to the Foundation, and allowing OTRS to do their thing as usual would cover that.
The problem is the behavior of a certain core set of Commons admins; time and time and time again we have it reported here, we see it on Commons. While not lawyers, they attempt to be extraordinarily demanding when it comes to "legal" accuracy. Far more than the actual WMF lawyers have required, incidentally.
It's not surprising that the locus of the dispute often revolves around community members who have been banned on other projects but reached positions of authority on Commons. Perhaps Commons social structures haven't evolved enough to deal with people who are both productive and deeply disruptive, and who are not uncivil but contribute to a toxic environment.
I understand, and applaud those who still want to attempt to reform that. The curation of the free content is affected along with the spillover into fair use content.
That said, it's time to move on, for a large bulk of the content hosting role. The fight now engaged on Commons is not the fight that content creators and curators on projects need or want to be engaged in.