On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:37 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Unless you intend to try to roll that back on en.wikipedia and the Foundation policy,
Absolutely not. I don't have any real problem with the way fair use is handled on English Wikipedia, and have uploaded some files myself under that justification.
A project to facilitate *search* of existing non-free files on Wikimedia projects (which I think could probably be accomplished in the WMF Labs project, with no particular need for broad consensus) would, I think, be worthwhile.
But an effort to establish a new *project* to facilitate and encourage the upload of non-free files is something I see as problematic for a number of reasons: * Setting up a new project would take a lot of technical and financial resources * Establishing sensible policies to handle all the kinds of concerns established on this list would take a lot of volunteer resources; and strife and division is a possible, though not necessary, outcome * Volunteer resources to curate the site would need to come from somewhere; either they wouldn't, assuring failure; or they would come from existing volunteer pool, diluting our volunteer resources; or, just possibly, armies of new volunteers might be recruited for this new project, which would be a positive outcome. But I am skeptical that outcome #3 would be the most likely one. * Differing EDPs on various projects means many files wouldn't be useful across projects, or it would be difficult to determine whether they are. * If the new project is successful, it would (yes, among other positive outcomes) have the negative effect of working against efforts to get people to freely license their work, to upload images that are in the public domain but locked away in physical vaults, etc. This may not be of central importance to you, but it is important to a great many Wikimedians.
It is time to rebalance in favor of fairly and equitably supporting the
educational mission.
"Freely share" is part of the vision statement. It sounds to me like what you propose is simply a different vision than the one Wikimedia has convened around. I do not think your vision is a bad one, but I do think it's a different one, and I'm not sure that dedicating substantial resources to a bold new project is a good way to advocate for changing the basic direction this movement is heading.
-Pete