On 3/9/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning(a)netzero.net> wrote:
Keep in mind that many of the oldest images were
uploaded before
explicit licensing was required, and a general assumption that the
content was uploaded with licensing under the GFDL. That assumption has
since been proven to be inaccurate in many cases, and a reason why this
is no longer taken at face value. Still, going after older unlicensed
images is hardly a good policy, especially when the uploader didn't know
they were supposed to provide licensing information. For new images and
recent uploads, yeah, you need to meet the licensing requirements. And
copyright enforcement is done on most images that are recent uploads.
Most images on EN have some kind of license attached... but it's often wrong.
It's very depressing to go through and correct the tagging because of
two factors:
1) A lot of them (45,846 on enwiki at the moment) are fully orphaned,
it feels like such a pointless activity to retag these.
2) Sometimes other users treat you like crap because you've found out
that their favorite picture is a copyvio or otherwise unacceptable for
inclusion on our site.
Worse, perhaps, is that fact that images which fall under (1)
sometimes even caues you problems under (2). :(