Hi, 2014-06-17 15:07 GMT+05:30 Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>rg>: 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. 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. Regards, Yann

On 17/06/2014, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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_i… 2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Undeletion_requests/Current_requ… Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User: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(a)gmail.com Sent from Kangphone On Jun 17, 2014, at 7:47 AM, Osmar Valdebenito <b1mbo.wikipedia(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 17.06.2014 17:26, George William Herbert wrote: "reuse at your own risk" = "risky" = "no reuse for most actors" Well done! Emmanuel -- Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more * Web: http://www.kiwix.org * Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline * more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication

On 17/06/2014, George William Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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/… Fae -- faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User: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(a)hackish.org> wrote:

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 2:19 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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(a)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. 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(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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(a)hackish.org> wrote: 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_tex… 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.) -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 8:48 AM, Austin Hair <adhair(a)gmail.com> wrote: ​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(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

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(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

2014-06-18 0:55 GMT+05:30 Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com>om>: Yes. 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. Regards, Yann

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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. 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(a)gmail.com

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 12:51 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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. 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. 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. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

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(a)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 &lt;nawrich(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 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. 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(a)gmail.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4592 / Virus Database: 3972/7697 - Release Date: 06/18/14

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(a)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 &lt;peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net&gt; wrote: Sure if you want the severs to be confiscated within a week. No 1st amendment outside the US. -- geni _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4592 / Virus Database: 3972/7697 - Release Date: 06/18/14

I do not understand the relevance of this reply to my comments. ~~~~ -----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces(a)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 &lt;peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net&gt; wrote: 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(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4592 / Virus Database: 3972/7697 - Release Date: 06/18/14

Yann, On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 4:01 AM, Yann Forget &lt;yannfo(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 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 &lt;russavia.wikipedia(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: 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_speedi…. .. 2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Propose_t… 3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:LuisV_(WMF)#Attribution On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 11:37 AM, Erik Moeller &lt;erik(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote:

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 11:07 PM, Erik Moeller &lt;erik(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: 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 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: 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

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 &lt;pleclown(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 3:20 PM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net&gt; wrote: 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 &lt;peteforsyth(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: 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 &lt;putevod(a)mccme.ru&gt; 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. 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 &lt;petr.kadlec(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

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 &lt;faewik(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

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 &lt;yannfo(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: