On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Sankar Viswanathan
<sankarrukku(a)gmail.com
Hello Bishaka,
Thank you for your response to my mail.
The discussion is still going on. But the dice is loaded in favor of
deletion.
There are certain points which were raised in the discussion.
Wikipedia is paranoid about Copyright. Of course this is a result of the
U.S law and any number of cases. There was a time when any image available
on the web was accptable to Wikippedia. I think they had some problems then.
Of course there are some people who take delight in Deletion. Kind of a
sadism.
<<So to keep such images in Commons, either Indian government or Commons
needs to have a policy addressing all pictures for which original authorship
is unknown, or at the least about paintings of God which is widely
available. Until then, we can either assume good faith and keep this image
or start a new mass DR for all the images in the category Hindu deities.>>
Indian government will not do anything. But Wiki Commons can do something.
Another thing which is surprising is there is no assumption of Good faith. I
am a volunteer. How do I benefit by the uploading of the image? Actually
most volunteers like me do end up by spending money, because my internet
connection is not free. I do not use an internet connection provided by any
organization. This atitude of "there is no assumption of Good faith" will
put off many people.
I can not imagine anybody from India suing Wikipedia over an obscure
painting in a temple.
Now they are quoting the U.K law on which the Indian law is modelled to
say that Wall paintings are not covered. This would effectively stop upload
of many of the paintings in temples.
But in India in a public temple, the installed idol itself is held to be
the temple’s legal owner, and the beneficiaries—those to whom the endowment
is dedicated --—are the general public. Does this change the position? I
wonder. I have posted this.
I am having another problem with this image. There is one person called
Pebble101 who is bent on deleting this image from the article.He deleteds it
time and again for no reason. He could be the author of the last unsigned
remark on the deletion page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Saraswati&action=history
The problem is there is nothing I can do. When I had such problems earlier
I was asked to go for Arbitration.
I thought I had to share my concerns with some one.
Thank you.
Sankar
Service to Humanity is Service to God