I would like to re-enable local uploads on the English Wikinews for the
purpose of fair use image uploads only. We have worked in the last few
weeks on a whitelist policy for cases where we believe fair use to be
acceptable:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Fair_use
This includes screenshots, publicity photos explicitly intended for the
media, logos, and images under "semi-free" licenses which we might get
under a fully free license eventually, but where a breaking news
situation requires us to make a temporary compromise.
This is very important for us; we've already had to delete screenshots
that showed a security flaw scooped by Wikinews because they were
non-free and therefore not allowed on the Commons.
For now, there would be two upload links, "Upload media" and "Upload
fair use media", one pointing to the Commons, the other to the local
upload page. In MediaWiki 1.5, we can point "Upload file" to the
Wikimedia Commons, and hide local uploads from the navigation. That way,
we can apply "security by obscurity". Only people who read the fair use
policy will find the local upload link.
I'd like to ask the Board to register any objections within the next
week or so. If there are none, I would also recommend that the other
language editions follow a similar procedure to develop their own local
fair use policies, so we can re-enable local uploads on these editions
one by one.
Erik