Sorry for posting it in another thread, I subscribed back to this list only to post this message: since the early of 2005 the Portuguese wikis invites to all users upload files *only* in Commons, because Portuguese wikis accept *only* free images.
The Portuguese Wikipedia has disabled new uploads because the civil war started (and maintaned) by some users up today don't have produced a new vote to review the copyright policy to allow ou permanently disallow fair use images, resulting in a project that accept only free images with only a small amount of sysops verifying if a image have source or not, and a largest amount of sysops don't do anything related to this (and some users mixing up the newbies saying something like "the source of origin from a image isn't necessary if fair use is accepted")
In any case, the bug 7742 [1] isn't fully filled. The Portuguese community has voted to disable new upload *and* replace the upload link by the link to a help page explaing what is the Wikimedia Commons and how to use it.
On 11/15/06, Luiz Augusto lugusto@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
The Portuguese Wikipedia has disabled new uploads because the civil war started (and maintaned) by some users up today don't have produced a new vote to review the copyright policy to allow ou permanently disallow fair use images,
[snip]
When we have problems with contributors who are unable to understand important aspects of our agenda like Free Content we must solve that problem through more communication.
So it is with much sadness that I view your decision to avoid unfree content by forcing the use of commons. Communication is most effective when it comes from someone close, from someone trusted, or from someone respected. Communication is best understood when it comes from someone who speaks your language.
If you were unable to educate some members of your own community about free content, then I fear commons will have no hope of educating these people because commons is no better at speaking your langauge, no better known to your users, and probably no better respected.
Such changes will only shuffle around and not solve the problems. See: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY
Hi
On 11/15/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/15/06, Luiz Augusto lugusto@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
The Portuguese Wikipedia has disabled new uploads because the civil war started (and maintaned) by some users up today don't have produced a new vote to review the copyright policy to allow ou permanently disallow
fair
use images,
[snip]
When we have problems with contributors who are unable to understand important aspects of our agenda like Free Content we must solve that problem through more communication.
So it is with much sadness that I view your decision to avoid unfree content by forcing the use of commons. Communication is most effective when it comes from someone close, from someone trusted, or from someone respected. Communication is best understood when it comes from someone who speaks your language.
Ok, I mentioned the civil war and now I need to explain it. In the past, a troll has discovered that Portuguese Wikipedia up to 2004 is a very smallest community and have started to atack all past decisions, including the image policy. Imagine a troll in a very very controversial subject... Imagine some users needing to change a policy and having a troll of your spokesperson... Civil war has started, some users has left from the Portuguese Wikipedia, and newbies that not undertand what is Free Culture instead to read the documentation reads the troll pages about the """fair use""".
If you were unable to educate some members of your own community about
free content, then I fear commons will have no hope of educating these people because commons is no better at speaking your langauge, no better known to your users, and probably no better respected.
Now the problem is another. The problem today is newbies that don't read documentation, like in all wikis, including the native speakers of English that don't read the documentation about image policy and don't undertand what is really free and what isn't free. The civil war is now dormant, specially after the upload disable. Commons have a biggest structure to host images and the basic documentation is translated or going to be translated. But the users don't RTFM
Such changes will only shuffle around and not solve the problems. See:
Yeah, but Wikipedia (neither Commons) don't have anything related to newbies that don't understand the copyright property and don't RTFM. And the biggest problem is upload of images with no source and no license tag (and Commons have a bot to discover images with no tag). And this isn't exclusively related to Portuguese, Spanish or any another language.
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