This is a slight tangent, but please let's be slightly more precise with wording about what free media content Wikimedia Commons legitimately hosts.
The scope of Wikimedia Commons is to host all free media with any rationale for "reasonable educational reuse".[1] The vast majority of content never will be used on any other sister Wikimedia project. This means: * "Reasonable" in a very wide sense, including cultural value, historical value, illustrative use. So some random modern photograph of a couple kissing in the street might be out of scope, but if the photograph was taken 80 years ago, then it has historic value, or if the photograph was at a pride march, then it probably has cultural and illustrative value. * "Reuse" is anywhere and "educational" is subject to generous and very wide interpretations of potential value. This means media that someone would find quite interesting for illustrating a school project, or as a pretty screensaver on their phone, or because it's something illustrative about cats to post on Twitter.
Consequently, Wikimedia Commons is *not* limited to what might be "notable" for an encyclopaedia, so there is no automatic deletion for yet another photograph of someone's breakfast, nor even for a selfie photo, so long as there can be a case made by anyone for reasonable reuse.
The only areas where additional guidelines often lead to deletions (and difficult deletion discussion), is for media with demonstrated issues of invasion of privacy or consent,[2] apparent harassment, or a not very special photo of private parts[3] of a specific type for which we happen to have plenty to choose from already. Lastly, policies do evolve, albeit very slowly, and no local policy overrides the WMF top-level policies such as on privacy or harassment.
This tangent was not about copyright, so before anyone points it out, "free media" has a quite specific definition at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing. But that's a rabbit-hole of its own.
Links 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope 2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_peopl... 3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Nudity#New_uploads
Fae
On Wed, 26 Feb 2020 at 08:56, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Commons is a project with a specific purpose. It is to host all media that fits the use of any other project. As it is English Wikipedia notability standards are used to justify why files are not to be kept on Commons. This is contrary to its very purpose, it is not acceptable and it is not for the Commons community to decide otherwise.
When at OTRS a license is given for the unfettered use of media respecting an approved license, there is no argument, no rule inside OTRS itself that is applicable particularly when that media is explicitly asked for on another project. Thanks, Gerard
On Wed, 26 Feb 2020 at 09:39, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
Scope is a Commons community decision, OTRS is solely about licensing
On Wed, 26 Feb 2020 at 15:30, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, No it is an administrative process. It follows its own rules IN ORDER TO
do
what it does. The notion that material is to be useful to Wikipedia is
NOT
covered by any legal restraints. This notion that is alive and well, the notion that copyright can be retroactively applied never mind the
original
copyright holder is that as well.
Yes, the underlying work is legal, the process is definitely not and consequently the process has to be revisited, is to be revisited in order for OTRS to function for all of us. Thanks, GerardM
On Wed, 26 Feb 2020 at 08:09, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
to quote Gerard
There is no law that insists on the existing rules and regulations as
put
forward, rules and regulations that are blatantly unfit
for purpose.
OTRS is very much a legal process because its related to Copyright
laws,
both in the US and in the country in which they reside. Every transaction(image upload) is a person giving away their rights in
regards
to that work OTRS needs to ensure that the person is fully aware of the consequences of that action. OTRS holds an absolute record of that
action
of when it took place, it protects all parties should there be an issue
in
the future in particular the WMF and our volunteers who were involved
in
the process.
On Wed, 26 Feb 2020 at 13:57, Gerard Meijssen <
gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
wrote:
Hoi, Thank you for demonstrating the extend OTRS is not fit for purpose. I understand that OTRS is governed by rules and regulations but a
reference
is made to "legal". There is no law that insists on the existing
rules
and
regulations as put forward, rules and regulations that are blatantly
unfit
for purpose.
Particularly the line: "- it must not say the use is to, for, or on Wikipedia" is problematic because either this is a list as stated
what
OTRS
adheres to or, it is not. It is a negative and as such it reads that
it
is
NOT about any Wikipedia and its vagaries.
Yet again it is brought to the attention that the negative attitude
is
to
be acceptable because of a perceived workload. Apparently it is
easier
to
say no than to say yes and that is in itself mystifying.
OTRS has not moved on with the time and as such it does not even know selfies... An issue not confined to OTRS is that understanding of
copyright
and licensing is dim anyway. When a copyright holder provides us with material, it is licensed by the copyright holder to be available
under
a
WMF permitted license. When the copyright holder provides it under a secondary license elsewhere or when our material is used elsewhere
with a
more restrictive license, it does not follow that we are in breach of copyright. I have fought such "delete on sight" battles and the only
result
is no response on the image that was to be speedily deleted. The rule should be; when material is provided to us, the license is checked at
the
time and any and all issues NOT involving the copyright holder are to
be
seen as irrelevant.
OTRS is a Wikimedia Foundation sanctioned function. It insists to
function
as is and therefore *a new mandate is required* because as is, it
does
the
worst possible service. There is no Wikipedia, there are 300+, there
are
other projects that require a functioning Commons and as it is, it is
not
fit for purpose.
You may remember when English Wikipedia had egg on its face because
of
the
deletion of what became a Nobel prize winner. There are MANY science
awards
and we want a picture for all awardees in addition, in the Scholia
tool
we
want pictures of any and all people that authored a paper. Thanks, GerardM
On Wed, 26 Feb 2020 at 02:06, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
For legal reasons OTRS requires very specific wording, it declines permissions that fail to meet that very strict wording.
The person must;
- establish their authority to license the image
- the license must be a free license PD or CC-by
- it must not say the use is to, for, or on Wikipedia
- it needs a URL to associate the permission with
If the media meets these requirements than it will be accept, if it
doesnt
it gets rejected. Scope is something that gets decided on on
Commons.
Wikidata has had an impact on scope, quite literally everything is
now
within scope. We havent even yet got to the issue about Wikidata
items
including trademarked logos and copyrighted works for which Commons
cant
have images under fairuse
Commons has fallen behind when it comes to the capability of taking
photos
of ones self (selfies) the default position when Commons started
was
that
taking a high quality photograph of yourself wasnt possible there
must
have
been someone else pushing the button. What happens is Commons asks
for
the
subject to obtain permission from the photographer and submit that
to
OTRS,
the systems falls over because the photographer cant prove that the
photo
they took of themselves was taken by themselves because the
underlying
assumption is that that isnt possible. The vast majority of agents
on
the
commons permission queue are people from commons who have learnt
the
policies and have the tools to do the work.
OTRS permission behaves as expected because there is a very narrow definition of whats acceptable, anything that doesnt fit gets
rejected.
The
very real need to be pro-active in ensuring the permissions queue
doesnt
get overwhelmed and backlogged contributes to the fact that the
grey
is
treated as black -- close it, delete it, move on.
In an ideal scenario a closer relationship with google via flickr
to
make
it possible for Wikidata to link in there as well would be a
potential
solution to those areas where copyright is an issue as it would
still
enable the ability of having an image accessible via a link.
On Wed, 26 Feb 2020 at 05:00, Michael Maggs michael@maggs.name
wrote:
> This has nothing to do with Commons only supporting Wikipedia.
Commons
> supports ALL of the Wikimedia projects, and always has. > > As is quite clearly set out in the Commons SCOPE policy, “a file
that
is
> used in good faith on a Wikimedia project is always considered > educational”, and hence is in scope. Of course, that includes
Wikidata.
> > Under the same policy, Commons does not editorialise on behalf of
any
of
> the projects, and an image that is acceptable to Wikidata is by
design
> acceptable to Commons. > > If the Wikidata community considers that an item on an individual
is
not
> acceptable (for example because it has been added solely for > self-promotion), Wikidata can - under its own rules - delete it,
and
hence > the link to the image on Commons. > > Commons would then delete the image as not in use (and not
otherwise
> educational). > > None of this relies in any way on the specific definition of
‘notable’
as
> used on the Wikipedias; that’s simply not relevant. > > The problem here seems to be an additional hurdle that has
apparently
been > added to the guidance given to OTRS volunteers. OTRS has so far
as I
know > no mandate to decline images that fall within Commons Scope, and
if
they
> are indeed doing that, the guidance should be changed. > > Michael > > > On 25 Feb 2020, at 16:11, Gerard Meijssen <
gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
> wrote: > > > > Hoi, > > Apparantly at Commons they have standardised themselves to only
support
> > Wikipedia. > > > > At Wikidata we have people who are notable according to our
standards.
We > > are actively asking them for images to illustrate our
information.
The
> best > > suggestion we get is: do not ask for images because they are
deleted
at
> > Commons. > > > > When this is what awaits us when we standardise on one label
Wikipedia,
> it > > is obvious that this is the worst scenario for the "other"
projects.
The > > projects who operate to different standards who have notability criteria > > different from English Wikipedia. > > Thanks, > > GerardM > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe:
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