Hi,

2014-06-17 15:07 GMT+05:30 Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org:

Hi Yann,

While we can have a different discussion about methods used and tone applied, if I understand correctly the core argument/discussion point here is the question whether US law applies to Commons or not; more specifically: whether a picture that is (likely?) not in the Public Domain in the US, but is in the public domain in its 'source country' should be considered 'free' or not.

No, the issue is not US law. The issue is the ridiculous requirements coming from some contributors.

The issue is that these contributors use the US law as a pretext asking for deletion again and again, when there is no reason to doubt that they were published. Looking at their demands, it seems that they would ask anything based on any law.

This is a returning discussion, and I'm always confused what exactly the answer is to that. The discussion is equally valid for any content project actually - all being hosted in the US. It would be good to have a more fundamental answer to it, and then follow it.

Whether or not the nominating account is a 'delete only' account etc. is less relevant to this discussion. The core question remains the same. It is a bit technocrat, I know.

The same user first argue for deletion because of URAA, and when it was not successful, ask again for deletion using another reason. Actually, this account does not produce anything useful. The only contributions are requests for deletions on controversial cases like this one. Looking for real copyright violations is useful, but arguing again and again on borderline cases is not.

I thought this question was already put for the WMF legal team as a question, but I wasn't able to find so quickly whether a useful reply resulted from that consultation.

Lodewijk

Regards,

Yann

2014-06-17 1:34 GMT+02:00 Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com:

...

Hi,

Some Commons contributors like to ask impossible requirements, and threaten to delete files if these are not met. We have now a case of famous pictures from the government of Israel and Israel Defense Forces.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Matanya#Files_and_pages_that_we...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Beba_Idels...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Abba_Hushi...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Aharon_Mes...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Avraham_Sh...

These are famous and valuable pictures, including two featured pictures on the Hebrew Wikipedia. These files have already been deleted and restored 3 times. When the URAA issue was not convincing enough, a new reson for deletion was advanced: that publication details were not given. Anyone with 2 bits of common sense can understand that these famous pictures were published soon after they were taken. There is no reasonable doubt about that. In addition, publication is not a requirement for being in the public domain in Israel.

After I restored these images, I was threatem by LGA, who is a delete-only account:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Use... There, more contributors argue on this issue.

By asking absurb requirements about publication details, these contributors threaten the project as a whole. If insisting, it will lead people to upload pictures like these locally instead of Commons. Then the idea of a central repository for all Wikimedia projects is gone.

Instead of looking for a reason to destroy these files, they should try to find a reason to keep them.

Regards,

Yann

On 17/06/2014, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:

with final consensus that "URAA cannot be used as the sole reason for deletion"...

This is a selective quote, missing the explicit caveat that: "Deleted files can be restored after a discussion in COM:UDR."

If the process is being followed correctly, there should be an established specific consensus via an undeletion request, *before* an administrator action can or should be taken.

Links: 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Massive_restoration_of_deleted_im... 2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Undeletion_requests/Current_reque...

Fae

We need an Uncommons, where the strict open license / PD rules are abandoned and we accept images as long as their fair use can be established. And don't delete unless that fair use is credibly questioned.

Conflating and comingling our educational role with open content advocacy was always risky and is proving impossible. Without devaluing open content, we need to separately support fair use for educational purposes, and stop letting cross-project advocacy games screw with our educational mission.

Third parties may or may not be able to re-redistribute, but we simply put it up with an explicit "reuse at your own risk".

I don't recall if the code which handles finding images at Commons can take a search path of multiple alternate image sources; if so, I would like to propose Uncommons as a project, initial central file upload default target replacement for Commons, and putting it in said search path.

This has gone on too long.

-george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com

Sent from Kangphone

On Jun 17, 2014, at 7:47 AM, Osmar Valdebenito b1mbo.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:

If you take a look at the undeletion requests after the URAA discussion, most of the images restored were deleted afterwards anyway.[1][2] The only exception that I've seen are some German stamps that haven't been deleted (yet). The problem is that, at this moment, most of the people whose valid images were quickly deleted and re-deleted are tired and have no intention to start again defending their contributions when they will be deleted no matter what.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Per%C3%B3n... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Undeletion_requests/Archive/2014-...

2014-06-17 10:31 GMT-04:00 Fæ faewik@gmail.com:

...

On 17/06/2014, Tomasz Ganicz polimerek@gmail.com wrote:

...

with final consensus that "URAA cannot be used as the sole reason for deletion"...

This is a selective quote, missing the explicit caveat that: "Deleted files can be restored after a discussion in COM:UDR."

If the process is being followed correctly, there should be an established specific consensus via an undeletion request, *before* an administrator action can or should be taken.

Links:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Massive_restoration_of_deleted_im... 2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Undeletion_requests/Current_reque...

Fae

faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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On 17.06.2014 17:26, George William Herbert wrote:

We need an Uncommons, where the strict open license / PD rules are abandoned and we accept images as long as their fair use can be established. And don't delete unless that fair use is credibly questioned.

Conflating and comingling our educational role with open content advocacy was always risky and is proving impossible. Without devaluing open content, we need to separately support fair use for educational purposes, and stop letting cross-project advocacy games screw with our educational mission.

Third parties may or may not be able to re-redistribute, but we simply put it up with an explicit "reuse at your own risk".

"reuse at your own risk" = "risky" = "no reuse for most actors" Well done!

Emmanuel

On 17/06/2014, George William Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:

We need an Uncommons, where the strict open license / PD rules are abandoned and we accept images as long as their fair use can be established. And don't delete unless that fair use is credibly questioned.

There is no such thing as Fair Use copyright in most of the world. I suggest we save the movement's money, by focusing on *freely reusable* educational material. This is specified as part of the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation.[1][2]

If you want to donate material to an "uncommons", many websites without a strong concern for copyright already exist, there is no need to create another. They remain unusable for serious educators, writers or publishers.

Links 1. "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free content license" http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy 2. However, the FDC may be more flexible in allowing Wikimedia chapters to use their significant funds to pay for non-free projects. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round1/W...

Fae

If we don't maintain the focus on free media, we may as well direct people to a web image search, all of which is "use at your own risk" anyway, just like our proposed new repository. Being free content is the Commons value add over Google Images or the like. Keeping a nonfree image repository adds... what?

Also, I don't know what "fair use can be established" means. Fair use is established based on the particular nature of a specific use, so fair use for what exactly? On Jun 17, 2014 10:53 AM, "Delirium" delirium@hackish.org wrote:

On 6/17/14, 5:52 PM, George William Herbert wrote:

...

On Jun 17, 2014, at 8:37 AM, Emmanuel Engelhart kelson@kiwix.org wrote:

On 17.06.2014 17:26, George William Herbert wrote:

...

...

We need an Uncommons, where the strict open license / PD rules are abandoned and we accept images as long as their fair use can be established. And don't delete unless that fair use is credibly questioned.

Conflating and comingling our educational role with open content advocacy was always risky and is proving impossible. Without devaluing open content, we need to separately support fair use for educational purposes, and stop letting cross-project advocacy games screw with our educational mission.

Third parties may or may not be able to re-redistribute, but we simply put it up with an explicit "reuse at your own risk".

"reuse at your own risk" = "risky" = "no reuse for most actors" Well done!

Not my problem.

Educational role.

The whole mission of the movement, including its educational mission, is

*produce freely reusable content*, not just to run a website. Wikipedia in particular is an open-content encyclopedia, which can be adapted to many educational and other uses, by Wikimedians and third parties. If it's not an open-content encyclopedia, for example if Wikipedia articles make use of provincial American copyright loopholes that render them illegal to redistribute here in Denmark, imo it has failed in its educational mission. In my view, the fact that I (an educator not in the United States) should be able to legally reproduce and distribute Wikipedia articles, is part of the whole point of an open-content educational project.

-Mark

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On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 2:19 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:

the project and world benefit from [Commons] existing as is. But we need an alternative to support the educational mission, reasonable inter-project reuse, and end the endless deletion wars.

Yes, this. With highly visible guidance for licensing/use. Uncommons is a charming name.

SJ

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:06 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 2:19 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:

...

the project and world benefit from [Commons] existing as is. But we

need an

...

alternative to support the educational mission, reasonable inter-project

reuse,

...

and end the endless deletion wars.

Yes, this. With highly visible guidance for licensing/use.

If people are excited about starting up a whole new project, that's fine by me. I think you'll find that donors attracted to the "free knowledge" aspect of our vision & mission statements might be a little tough to persuade, but if you want to try, have at it.

Still, I have to wonder: are the considerable financial, human, and technical resources something like this would take justified? Why not simply create the visible guidance SJ requests on each wiki (presumably as Exemption Doctrine Policies), and enable a software feature that permits including an image from elsewhere on the web? Wouldn't that accomplish the same results, with vastly less effort, less expense, and less distraction to existing communities?

Uncommons is a charming name.

I have to agree on this point :)

Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 3:19 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

On 26 June 2014 23:17, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:

...

If people are excited about starting up a whole new project, that's fine

by

...

me. I think you'll find that donors attracted to the "free knowledge" aspect of our vision & mission statements might be a little tough to persuade, but if you want to try, have at it.

The more querulous Commons admins are treating "this is not provably 100% URAA safe" as equivalent to fair-use free-for-all, often seguing between the two in the same email. This is equivocation of a particularly unhelpful sort. Speaking as an unreconstructed Stallmanite, I say "what on earth."

David, I'm not sure how your message is supposed to connect to mine? * I'm not an admin on Commons, not sure if you intended to lump me in there * I have no position on URAA and don't think it's particularly germane to this topic

My comments in this thread have, I think quite clearly and consistently, been in response to George's proposal of "Uncommons," a site which would host copyright materials for the purpose of fair use. URAA files would not be a particularly interesting subset of the copyrighted files that could live on such a site (or, for that matter, on Flickr etc, in the absence of a DMCA complaint from a rights-holder.)

So -- who was this addressed to, if not me? What did my message have to do with URAA, or with querulous admins?

Pete

On 17 June 2014 17:53, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:

educational and other uses, by Wikimedians and third parties. If it's not an open-content encyclopedia, for example if Wikipedia articles make use of provincial American copyright loopholes that render them illegal to redistribute here in Denmark, imo it has failed in its educational mission.

We already do this, and it's been going on for a decade.

The English Wikipedia is stuffed full of text added under a "pre 1923 so public domain" basis, which of course is a complete minefield anywhere else in the world. Some of it is tagged, some of it isn't

See, for example, the 12000+ pages (often very prominent) in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_articles_incorporating_text...

Some of this is PD in most of the world (assuming life+70). Some isn't. We cheerfully warrant it all to be CC-BY-SA...

(In practice, I think this is reasonably de minimis. The amount of material that survives is relatively small in many articles, and I've even removed a few EB1911 tags when it's been written out entirely. But it's interesting to compare this with the way we handle Commons material.)

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 8:48 AM, Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 5:26 PM, George William Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:

...

Conflating and comingling our educational role with open content

advocacy was always risky and is proving impossible. Without devaluing open content, we need to separately support fair use for educational purposes, and stop letting cross-project advocacy games screw with our educational mission.

This is the most intelligent thing I've seen said on this list in a while.

​I agree. The fair-use situation on the English Wikipedia is so absurd that I've had to use only an external link for a close-up shot of Madeleine McCann's distinctive right eye​, which must be one of the most-reproduced photographs ever. I also had to go through very, very long discussions to persuade people that it was okay to post Scotland Yard e-fits of men they wanted to trace in connection with the disappearance.

And, as always, Holocaust images are still routinely challenged.

Sarah

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 8:58 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:

Can you clarify -- who do you intend by "we"? If your answer is "English Wikipedia," I think we already have a somewhat workable solution to this complex problem: fair use is permitted in certain cases.[2] Of course, you probably mean something broader. But the solution English Wikipedia has chosen is available, by virtue of a WMF resolution,[3] to every Wikimedia project. So if fair use is the issue, why not simply propose permitting it at specific local projects?

The whole point of Commons is to serve as a central repository of shared images for Projects to use together. The same image on en.wikipedia and ru.wikipedia and es.wikipedia and the dictionaries and books and travel and...

The failure of Commons is that it's defaulting to a fuzzily defined highest common denominator on licensing.

What we need here is another shared image repo which is defaulting to the *lowest* common denominator on licensing. I.e., somewhere I can stick an image which is fair usable on en.wikipedia and make it available to all the other projects, even if it would fail Commons retention criteria.

It is in the combination of "the only common repository" and "highest common denominator" that Commons fails. I have no problem with Commons remaining as-is if we have an alternate lowest-common-denominator image repo that will automatically be searched for images as Commons is now.

Pete -

An apologia for Commons, and the obvious implication that use on projects will have to (if people actually care to enforce local standards) require checking license status for every Project use, do not in any way lessen the need for Uncommons.

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 11:12 AM, George Herbert <george.herbert@gmail.com

...

wrote:

...

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 8:58 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:

...

Can you clarify -- who do you intend by "we"? If your answer is

"English

...

...

Wikipedia," I think we already have a somewhat workable solution to

this

...

...

complex problem: fair use is permitted in certain cases.[2] Of course,

you

...

probably mean something broader. But the solution English Wikipedia has chosen is available, by virtue of a WMF resolution,[3] to every

Wikimedia

...

...

project. So if fair use is the issue, why not simply propose permitting

it

...

at specific local projects?

The whole point of Commons is to serve as a central repository of shared images for Projects to use together.

I think if we're going to talk about the *whole* point of Commons, we should look back at the original proposal for its establishment, which clearly identified it as a place for *freely licensed* works: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-March/014885.html

...

The same image on en.wikipedia and ru.wikipedia and es.wikipedia and the dictionaries and books and travel and...

But en.wikipedia and ru.wikipedia and es.wikipedia have different standards about whether a non-free file can be used. So, does a shared repository for non-free files really make sense, considering that most projects prohibit them outright, and those few that do permit them only permit them under very narrow and unique circumstances?

...

The failure of Commons

The failure of Commons? You consider the most extensive project created in the Wikimedia movement a failure? On what grounds?

I have no problem with Commons

...

remaining as-is if we have an alternate lowest-common-denominator image repo that will automatically be searched for images as Commons is now.

"Fair use" law in the U.S. is pretty tightly tied to the way something is used; so the very act of publishing something *outside* of a use context would, by its very nature, strain at the limits of the fair use provision. And English Wikipedia's standards are actually much tighter than those of the U.S. law in that regard.

-Pete _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:

The problem is the behavior of a certain core set of Commons admins;

George, SJ, and Nathan:

In addition to Erik Moeller's initial proposal that Commons be used as a repository for *free* media files (linked previously), there has been a very recent referendum that speaks very directly to the Wikimedia community's commitment to holding the line on the principles of free licenses, even in the face of negative practical consequences. That referendum was the recent proposal to use the MP4 format. When concluded, more than 300 people had voted against compromising on this principle, while fewer then 150 voted in favor.[1] Of course there are some considerations that are specific to that case, but it is useful to consider now, because the central topic is essentially the same in both cases:

Should we sacrifice free content principles, if that sacrifice will enable us to distribute more educational content?

The answer was a resounding "no."

The people you, Nathan, are accusing of behaving badly, are the ones who are doing the hard, day-do-day work of enforcing the expressed consensus of the Wikimedia community, which values a commitment to free licenses.

-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video

And yet we have a global, and in many cases (and specifically, en.wp) local Fair Use policy, which is quite actively and productively used, and has been since around day one of the first Wikipedia.

Uncommons is not a change in policy. It is ultimately a technical matter; a software and project solution to disagreement as to whether Commons' project reflects the totality of the Projects' desires and needs for shared content or not.

The MP4 thing is not the sole and total consensus. The totality of consensus has been and remains that Fair Use - not unlimited, but within reason and focused on educational value - is here to stay. Unless you intend to try to roll that back on en.wikipedia and the Foundation policy, then objecting to a technical solution to make that content more practically reusable is simple obstructionism towards the educational mission.

It is time to rebalance in favor of fairly and equitably supporting the educational mission.

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:

...

The problem is the behavior of a certain core set of Commons admins;

George, SJ, and Nathan:

In addition to Erik Moeller's initial proposal that Commons be used as a repository for *free* media files (linked previously), there has been a very recent referendum that speaks very directly to the Wikimedia community's commitment to holding the line on the principles of free licenses, even in the face of negative practical consequences. That referendum was the recent proposal to use the MP4 format. When concluded, more than 300 people had voted against compromising on this principle, while fewer then 150 voted in favor.[1] Of course there are some considerations that are specific to that case, but it is useful to consider now, because the central topic is essentially the same in both cases:

Should we sacrifice free content principles, if that sacrifice will enable us to distribute more educational content?

The answer was a resounding "no."

The people you, Nathan, are accusing of behaving badly, are the ones who are doing the hard, day-do-day work of enforcing the expressed consensus of the Wikimedia community, which values a commitment to free licenses.

-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

2014-06-18 0:55 GMT+05:30 Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com:

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:

...

The problem is the behavior of a certain core set of Commons admins;

Yes.

George, SJ, and Nathan:

In addition to Erik Moeller's initial proposal that Commons be used as a repository for *free* media files (linked previously), there has been a very recent referendum that speaks very directly to the Wikimedia community's commitment to holding the line on the principles of free licenses, even in the face of negative practical consequences. That referendum was the recent proposal to use the MP4 format. When concluded, more than 300 people had voted against compromising on this principle, while fewer then 150 voted in favor.[1] Of course there are some considerations that are specific to that case, but it is useful to consider now, because the central topic is essentially the same in both cases:

Should we sacrifice free content principles, if that sacrifice will enable us to distribute more educational content?

The answer was a resounding "no."

The people you, Nathan, are accusing of behaving badly, are the ones who are doing the hard, day-do-day work of enforcing the expressed consensus of the Wikimedia community, which values a commitment to free licenses.

Sorry, but this is a strawman argument. No, these people are not enforcing any consensus. Actually, they are precisely working against the silent majority in the case of URAA.

All we need is a bit more of common sense. I think we could have a tag for borderline cases saying "probably OK, except some uncertainities". We already have this for some freedom of panorama issues (FOP), and for URAA. Then reusers are clearly warned about the situation, and are free to use the file depending on their own requirements.

Anyway, seeing that these cases are very unlikely to get into legal trouble, the claim that these cases put our reusers into danger is a complete bullshit, IMHO.

-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video

Regards,

Yann

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.

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:51 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 3:29 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:

...

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.

So you want to split the role of "image repository" into two projects - one that is freely reusable for all possible reusers, and one that is useful in the first instance for all WMF projects and secondarily for anyone else using it in an educational context.

Ok, I get that. But there are some unanswered questions:

1. Why would our "Uncommons" be superior to Flickr or any other repository

of images that can be used under fair use doctrine? Is it that we are categorizing them? That we might be able to select the "best" file for a particular usage, and replicate that out in context across projects?

Well, let's start with control and quality control.

If I put an illustration on Flickr, and you say "Oh, cool, great for Wikipedia article on Foo" and image linked it, I could take it down or change it. Minor modifications are one thing; me taking my Flickr and changing it from Nyan Cat to a pair of human female breasts, the day that the Wikipedia article on Foo was featured article of the day, is a big deal.

Another issue is copyright enforcement. On WMF projects, we have the consistent reporting and investigation mechanism under DMCA using OTRS or Legal (depending on how upset the complaintant is), with contextual understanding of WMF project usage, ability to see who and what articles depend on an image, etc. We have and take due responsibility with sensitivity to Context. For Flickr, they have no responsibility to us or our articles; they care only about their direct user and themselves. They may use much less stringent criteria for establishing that a copyright problem exists than OTRS does, for example.

I don't see Uncommons as a selection mechanism. I see it as a logical sharing mechanism for things that editors who are doing cross-wiki content pollination projects can use easily and painlessly. They're selecting what content from (mostly) larger wikis they want on smaller ones (and sometimes the other way around). This is just the one stop shopping location to put the common version in once you determine you'd like to use this image in five articles across five languages.

2. How would Uncommons not fall prey to same set of issues that have beset

Commons for years? Copyright status would still need to be investigated to some degree, FUR would need to be policed at least a little, etc. etc.You'd attract the same people, probably, with the same biases and prejudices and problems.

Again - Uncommons is about usage. Usage of an Uncommons image on en.wikipedia needs to comply with english FUR policy. Use on the Malaysian wiki needs to comply with their standards, etc. Uncommons cares that the image is used somewhere. If it stops being used everywhere due to FUR issue then perhaps it should not be in Uncommons, but we should not be too hasty with that as perhaps other Wikis have less stringent local legal requirements and FUR policies and will come to use it later on.

So; remove if a valid copyright complaint comes in (OTRS / Legal), remove if it really truly is not being used anywhere anymore, otherwise the use/don't use is up to individual wikis and their policies.

We could centralize the fair use templates / justifications at Uncommons so people could see directly what the justifications were on particular wikis and articles, and under different local policies.

3. EDP files on projects are currently already hosted by WMF, so what we're

really talking about is pushing them into the same bucket to focus curation resources. Considering the challenges, would it be better to just implement an easier common architecture for these files (i.e. make discovery of files from various projects simpler on any individual project)?

I think it's easier to do it this way. We have Commons special cased in; we can add Uncommons in parallel. The curation problem is about the same, on many levels, but the removal problem is much easier as the controversial free content issue just goes away.

Having a central location also avoids the scenario where it's uploaded to en.wikipedia, then reused on fr.wikipedia, and later investigation shows it's not FUR compliant on en.wikipedia and it gets removed despite being FUR compliant under fr.wikipedia policy. This is a nontrivial ongoing problem with Commons, and would be if people started directly interwiki grabbing images..

That's not a conclusive proof, but I think it's easier this way.

This is a strong argument for locating Uncommons outside the USA. Somewhere where the copyright laws allow the widest range of images to be kept. Images can be tagged for where they are free and where they are not free.

~~~~

-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of George Herbert Sent: 17 June 2014 09:29 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] The tragedy of Commons

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.

-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

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a) Why would they be confiscated if the contents are locally legal? b) 1st amendment you refer to is presumably to the US constitution. Do you know for a fact that similar law does not exist anywhere else in the world? - (citation needed)

~~~~

-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of geni Sent: 18 June 2014 10:18 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] The tragedy of Commons

On 18 June 2014 08:43, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:

This is a strong argument for locating Uncommons outside the USA. Somewhere where the copyright laws allow the widest range of images to be kept. Images can be tagged for where they are free and where they are not free.

Sure if you want the severs to be confiscated within a week. No 1st amendment outside the US.

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I do not understand the relevance of this reply to my comments.

~~~~

-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Fæ Sent: 18 June 2014 10:20 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] The tragedy of Commons

On 18/06/2014, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:

This is a strong argument for locating Uncommons outside the USA. Somewhere where the copyright laws allow the widest range of images to be kept. Images can be tagged for where they are free and where they are not free.

I have now uploaded nearly 400,000 public domain and other freely released images to Wikimedia Commons. Every week there are times I break into a sweat wondering if one of the many institutions I have taken the original images from, will attempt to prosecute me personally under 'sweat of the brow', conflicting international law, database rights, misuse of a website under a tacit contract, etc. Even though I am careful to ensure I have made "reasonable efforts" to ascertain that the images are free to reuse, mistakes happen and I am subject to UK law, along with the long reach of US law and the Wikimedia Foundation has made it clear that there is no guarantee that any legal costs as a direct result of my volunteer work would be covered by them.

Deliberately setting out to avoid copyright law and uploading material to an aggregating website that you know for certain is "non-free" and supplying it so that others may avoid copyright, is a far riskier thing to do. If a civil action against a volunteer were taken, I doubt there could be a defence in court based on "good faith" or "reasonable effort".

I note that a WMF trustee has made a supportive comment in this thread, however before Wikimedia starts officially encouraging and promoting sharing non-free media using donated charitable funds intended for free works, any "uncommons" proposal should be carefully advised on by lawyers. At an individual level, I would recommend that volunteers protect themselves with anonymity using technical means to ensure their contributions were untraceable, so that only the website host could ever be prosecuted in relevant jurisdictions. Note that just because your server is in Peru, does not mean that works protected under US or EU law may not be vigorously defended in local courts. Legally, this may well be treated as an internet piracy website, they tend to not end well.

Commons has 21,500,000 files, the unnecessary drama created (literally) by a couple of admins who should be able to talk to each other rather than wheel-warring, and then forum shopping, over some works suffering under the consequences of the rather daft URAA, represent a pin-drop in that ocean of freely reusable media. This does not make Commons "tragic", indeed it feels like a mellow place 99% of the time as nobody really notices the committed content contributors.

Links * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Staying_mellow * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WW#Wheel_war

Fae -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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Yann,

On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 4:01 AM, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:

The rules of the project, "free license", or "in the public domain in USA and in the source country", are fine as long as they are not used to game the system.

Yann I totally agree with this.

The problem is, that the URAA RFC goes against that statement entirely by ignoring or turning a blind eye to the copyright status of files in the US.

Can you explain why there is the blaring discrepancy in your viewpoint here?

Cheers

Russvia

2014-06-18 1:43 GMT+05:30 Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.com:

Yann,

On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 4:01 AM, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:

...

The rules of the project, "free license", or "in the public domain in USA and in the source country", are fine as long as they are not used to game the system.

Yann I totally agree with this.

The problem is, that the URAA RFC goes against that statement entirely by ignoring or turning a blind eye to the copyright status of files in the US.

Can you explain why there is the blaring discrepancy in your viewpoint here?

Cheers

Russvia

My point here is not about URAA, but about exaggerate requirements from some contributors. And gaming the system is exactly what YOU did when you speedy deleted the 4 files I mentioned in my first message.

I several times proposed to allow only a restricted sets of files affected by URAA, not all (e.g. only files older than 50? years, or/and orphan/anonymous files, and/or government files). It seems there is a wild consensus about such a compromise, but you deliberately ignore my proposal, and choose to attack unilaterally the whole issue.

Yann

Hi Erik:

Thanks for your comment. I noticed your comment at [[1]] so hope they are related.

Yes; making proper attributions and satisfying all license requirements are a bit complicated and time consuming. See my proposal at [[2]].

I requested the help of CC team; but didn't get any response so far.

I requested the help of the WMF legal; Luis Villa (WMF) commented that "Yup, I understand - it is a difficult situation, and we'd like to help. But interpreting the license obligations for the public is also tricky for us, so we're working on it. " [[3]]

Any further help is highly appreciated.

Regards, Jee

Links:

1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Peteforsyth#Some_recent_speedie.... ..

2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Propose_to...

3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:LuisV_(WMF)#Attribution

On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 11:37 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:

...

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.

Yes, agreed. Deletion is frequently applied in an overzealous manner based on arbitrary interpretations and lack of nuance. It would be appropriate to more frequently apply tags like {{Disputed}} and to rely more on social contact to resolve incomplete metadata, rather than aggressively purging content in the fear that a single byte of potentially non-free content may infect the repository.

It is correct that I proposed Commons as a repository of freely re-usable media -- indeed, that is a key characteristic which distinguishes it from other sites and services, as others have pointed out. I think it's absolutely crucial to maintain that aspect of its identity. I worry that the creation of any kind of non-free repository would dramatically alter the incentive structure for contributing to our projects. Especially when negotiating releases of large collections, it will be much harder to argue for free licensing if it becomes trivial to upload and re-use non-free files.

But maintaining that commitment requires that we also maintain a capacity for nuance in how we enforce it, or we turn into a club of zealots nobody wants to be part of rather than being effective advocates for our cause. That includes understanding that some situations in international copyright law are ambiguous and unresolved, that some files may present a minimal level of risk and can reasonably be kept unless someone complains, and that copyright on all bits that make up a work can be difficult to trace, identify and document comprehensively and consistently. Moreover, it should include (in policy and application) an emphasis on communication and education, rather than deletion and confrontation.

In that way, the problems in the application of Commons policy are not that different from the problems in the application of policy on Wikipedia. It's just that Wikipedians who are used to operating under the regime of Wikipedia's policies frequently get upset when they are subjected to an entirely different regime. Their experience is not that different from that of a new user whose article gets speedied because the source cited to establish its notability doesn't quite cross the threshold applied by an admin.

In my view, it would be appropriate for WMF to take a more active role not in the decision-making itself, but in the training of and support for administrators and other functionaries to ensure that we apply policy rationally, in a manner that's civil and welcoming. That goes for these types of deletion decisions just as much as for civility and other standards of conduct. WMF is now organizationally in a position where it could resource the consensus-driven development of training modules for admins across projects to create a more welcoming, rational environment - on Commons and elsewhere.

Erik

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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.

I think it's absolutely crucial to maintain that aspect of its identity.

So what is your proposal for how to effectively curate the firehose of good and bad content that is uploaded to Commons day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute? We have a collection of processes that has been good enough to get us to where we are today. I don't think anybody believes it's perfect, but it's gotten us this far. What, pray tell, would be the better approach? Do you really think that if you present a better idea, it will be rejected? Do you think we *enjoy* sifting through the details of a zillion files, and comparing them to a zillion copyright laws, personality rights laws, FOP laws, etc.? I guess I can only speak for myself, but I'd much rather be creating content than curating it. But curation is the glaring, everyday need at Commons, so I pitch in.

It's also absolutely crucial to keep my house from turning into a garbage dump...which is why I take the garbage out every week.

But maintaining that commitment requires that we also maintain a capacity

for nuance in how we enforce it, or we turn into a club of zealots nobody wants to be part of rather than being effective advocates for our cause.

Good God, Erik. Seriously, with the name-calling? Seriously? I don't know why you did it to begin with, but since you have, please share with us who the zealots are, and give some evidence of zealous behavior. If the "zealotry" is as obvious as you seem to assume, we should have no trouble running those ne'erdowells out on a rail.

But the reality, I think, is much more straightforward: this "club of zealots" is a figment of your imagination.

-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]

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

Well, just yesterday I saw a (good but slightly amateurish-looking) image that is to be deleted because the metadata embedded in the /other/ images of the uploader indicates multiple cameras were used. Clearly, no one has more than one camera, so it must be a copyright violation. (would post the URL but forgot which image)

Childish fears indeed.

Magnus

Indeed. The old days had gone. Now people have so many gadgets. Further, forensic research is not our business. Another grey area is the handling of selfies. People need evidence that the photo is taken by themselves. They even do dummy tests to verify if it is possible from such an angle. Tired by the arguments, Legal released [1].

Links:

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Authorship_and_Copyright_Ownership

Jee

Regards, Jeevan Jose

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 1:43 PM, Pipo Le Clown pleclown@gmail.com wrote:

Aren't you mixing things a little bit ?

Nobody denies that there are problems with video support, Search engine and image display. But this is not (completely) the responsability of the Commons community. The software is provided by the foundation, and we deal with what they give us. If you want to point fingers, point them in the right direction.

Regarding the URAA shitstorm in a teacup, I will stand on my position: Saying "It's not our problem, and we won't provide legal advice or help if there is any problem" (ie: "I wash my hands of it") is not very helpfull. The position of the BoT and the statement from the legal team are at least confusing and a open door to problems.

The current situation at hand is messy, and not very well handled by the community, I will admit that. Quoting from a famous movie: "it's a huge shit sandwich, and we're all gonna have to take a bite", but adding manure to shit will not help to sweeten the taste.

Pleclown. Le 27 juin 2014 09:22, "MZMcBride" z@mzmcbride.com a écrit :

...

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

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On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 3:20 PM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:

Indeed, and as there is a notice on the Wikilegal article stating that it is not legal advice, it can and will be ignored by those who think they know better. Cheers, Peter

That message on their every "advice" as part of [1] because they can't advise the community.

Jee

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer

On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 5:27 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:

So what is your proposal for how to effectively curate the firehose of good and bad content that is uploaded to Commons day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute?

Hi Pete,

I would generally advocate for the following:

- more emphasis on education and positive communication in cases of good faith, constructive behavior; - more tolerance for ambiguity regarding files in the collection (e.g. when the legal situation is truly ambiguous), and more use of tagging over deletion; - software which supports all of the above effectively.

Some of this is easier to act on. For example, the threshold at which we decide to delete (rather than wait, or tag) is one which we can modify. The templates we use for communication purposes are easy to edit to be friendly or specific. Software is slower to build, but we should definitely keep in mind what the ideal curation tools should look like, as well, so we can plan on where we situate it in the longer term roadmap of development efforts.

I do believe, though, that a lot of this conversation should ideally take place on Wikimedia Commons itself. These types of threads illustrate that there's a lot of real frustration in the larger community today. I would encourage folks who want to see Commons become a friendlier, more positive environment to not give up, but to advocate for changes to practices and policies on Commons itself, including in deletion discussions and policy debates. I don't think setting up a new site is likely to be the answer, though if someone wants to draft a clearer proposal for how such a site would work, this list is certainly one appropriate forum to discuss it.

Erik

"Accidentally, I have one of these FFD nomination pages on my watchlist. Yesterday it was renominated for the THIRD time by the same user (the second one was keep as well). And I can not act on it anymore. Apparently, at some point the user will get an admin with a stricter interpretation of the policies, and the file gets deleted."

Could you give the DR link? We can think about topic ban him from any URAA related DRs.

Jee

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 9:38 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:

On 17.06.2014 16:47, Osmar Valdebenito wrote:

...

If you take a look at the undeletion requests after the URAA discussion, most of the images restored were deleted afterwards anyway.[1][2] The only exception that I've seen are some German stamps that haven't been deleted (yet). The problem is that, at this moment, most of the people whose valid images were quickly deleted and re-deleted are tired and have no intention to start again defending their contributions when they will be deleted no matter what.

I personally kept several Argentinian flies arguing that the URAA can not be the sole reason for deletion.

Accidentally, I have one of these FFD nomination pages on my watchlist. Yesterday it was renominated for the THIRD time by the same user (the second one was keep as well). And I can not act on it anymore. Apparently, at some point the user will get an admin with a stricter interpretation of the policies, and the file gets deleted.

Cheers Yaroslav

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Hoi, Arguably when all repositories of media-files are Wikidatified, general availability could be as difficult as selecting the appropriate license.

To do this no new project is needed as the Wikidata team has started work. All that is needed is to have one database to know about all media files. Thanks, Gerard

On 18 June 2014 11:01, Petr Kadlec petr.kadlec@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 7:00 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

...

From the technical side, supporting one-click (i.e., easy to use) file moves between wikis would be enormously helpful here. This would allow transferring files to Commons or from Commons without much pain, which should reduce a lot of friction. As David notes, we could set up additional file repositories for use in Wikimedia wikis, but it requires solving the hosting issues mentioned above.

This. Creating a completely new project when all what people want is an ability to easily reuse an image they saw on another project (i.e. on enwiki) means creating thousand new problems instead of solving one. (You could devise a bit more sophisticated solutions instead of file copying, e.g. direct cross-project image use like “[[en:File:Example.jpg]]” or whatever, but they create other issues to solve; one-click cross-project file upload could be easily implemented right now.)

-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

Hoi, When it is appropriate to mention Wikidata, I will mention Wikidata. The other side of the coin is that not every thread in this list needs to be about Wikipedia or used as a platform to promote it. In this instance technology was discussed where Wikidata may be of service. Consequently it is relevant and opportune to mention this.

A single editor in Commons can tweaks license information as much as it might be in Wikidata. Remember both Commons and Wikidata are wikis. It is likely that a property will be needed to reference an OTRS instance. Reasons why a file has issues will be as much be defined by properties and qualifiers. Really Fae, not much will change except that a Russian may view all this in Russian and a Brazilian in Portuguese.

Effectively the number of people who will be able to understand what is expressed will increase. More people will be able to find media files... Remember, that IS the objective isn't it? Thanks, GerardM

On 18 June 2014 11:19, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:

On 18/06/2014, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:

...

Hoi, Arguably when all repositories of media-files are Wikidatified, general availability could be as difficult as selecting the appropriate license.

To do this no new project is needed as the Wikidata team has started

work.

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All that is needed is to have one database to know about all media files. Thanks, Gerard

Not every thread on this list needs to be about Wikidata, or used as a platform to promote it.

The vision that a single editor in Wikidata tweaking a licence field, effectively overrules detailed assessments of copyright, RFCs, or deletions of media for good reasons such as OTRS request, courtesy deletions and so forth, is not one I recognize as being within the original intended scope of Wikidata.

Fae (Writing from the grave.) -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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All ended in a good way as Sven Manguard unblocked her. Hope the Hebrew Wikipedia will recover from the painful memories soon.

Regards, Jee

On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 2:33 AM, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:

Suite of the drama.

A request for a topic ban against LGA, who made these deletion requests, was started by Hanay, a user from the Hebrew Wikipedia.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Use...

Now she is blocked for one week for "canvassing", because she informed the Hebrew Wikipedia of the request.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Blo...

This affair is going to degenerate in a full war between Commons and some Wikipedias, if a solution is not found.

Regards,

Yann

2014-06-17 5:04 GMT+05:30 Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com:

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Hi,

Some Commons contributors like to ask impossible requirements, and threaten to delete files if these are not met. We have now a case of famous pictures from the government of Israel and Israel Defense Forces.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Matanya#Files_and_pages_that_we...

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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Beba_Idels...

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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Abba_Hushi...

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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Aharon_Mes...

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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Avraham_Sh...

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These are famous and valuable pictures, including two featured pictures on the Hebrew Wikipedia. These files have already been deleted and restored 3 times. When the URAA issue was not convincing enough, a new reson for deletion was advanced: that publication details were not given. Anyone with 2 bits of common sense can understand that these famous pictures were published soon after they were taken. There is no reasonable doubt about that. In addition, publication is not a requirement for being in the public domain in Israel.

After I restored these images, I was threatem by LGA, who is a delete-only account:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Use...

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There, more contributors argue on this issue.

By asking absurb requirements about publication details, these contributors threaten the project as a whole. If insisting, it will lead people to upload pictures like these locally instead of Commons. Then the idea of a central repository for all Wikimedia projects is gone.

Instead of looking for a reason to destroy these files, they should try to find a reason to keep them.

Regards,

Yann

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