Pete Forsyth wrote:
On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 11:07 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
than aggressively purging content in the fear that a single byte of potentially non-free content may infect the repository.
You're attacking a straw man. I hope you do not sincerely believe anybody acts out of such a childish fear. Rather, we have committed volunteers at Commons who take seriously our commitment to the world, to provide a repository of files that can be (pretty) reliably reused under a free license, or as public domain materials. Maintaining the integrity of the collection, in the face of literally hundreds of problematic uploads every single day, is a big job, and certainly some less-than-ideal decisions will be made along the way.
Apart from the moaning I see on this email list, I generally hear good things from those who visit Wikimedia Commons. "Tragedy?" Citation needed, for real.
Uploading media to Commons isn't as awful today as it once was. That's nice. But video support is pretty awful. Search support is pretty awful. Even browsing images is pretty bad. Support for moving (renaming) files is rudimentary and restricted. And there are many other flaws... but you're right that it probably doesn't amount to a tragedy quite yet. There's plenty of moaning on this e-mail list, but the issues are alive and real.
I largely agree with Erik. Users at the extremes have the power at Commons and this reality is actively damaging the wiki culture. Commons isn't alone in having this problem: the defensive (and hostile) response to the firehose is expected and predictable. But it still remains a real problem.
MZMcBride