Guys,

I initially emailed Mike Godwin about this, thinking that in his capacity as legal counsel, and with his many, many years of online experience, he could perhaps help in getting this resolution amended, or cut the gordelian knot that it has placed on the Wikinews project.

My key concern is the retroactive application of this policy, and how this impacts the Wikinews project. The resolution itself seems eminently sensible and reasonable for a project such as Wikipedia where the goal is to provide as current as possible an encyclopedia article and the project can live without an image, or supersede a less-than-free image at some point in the future. Yet, with Wikinews, I believe it has a seriously detrimental effect. Our project has a policy of fully protecting – effectively archiving – any article older than seven days. We document history as it happens, and even when we are wrong the most we are about to do is append a correction. I would like to think this attitude could, over time, garner us more respect than many mainstream sources who will simply “vanish” things out of their archives to avoid being seen as having made a mistake.

In any case, the issue at point is images. One contributor has taken it upon himself to unilaterally apply the resolution, knowing full-well that it has widespread opposition within our community. I do not doubt that there were a number of images within those deleted that should have gone quite some time ago due to a lack of adequate fair use rationales and the like, but with so many deleted it is very difficult to establish what has been reasonably deleted, and what could have been salvaged.

One of my primary concerns is that this resolution was drafted whilst only thinking of the Wikipedia project, and not taking into account the special operating circumstances and needs of smaller projects – such as Wikinews. Had the resolution contained an exemption clause for Wikinews that made it effective from a specific date, I would not have found myself in the position where I seriously considered nominating a fellow administrator for desysopping due to unilateral implementation of the resolution. I avoided doing so after raising the issue on our project’s “Water Cooler” as it would have been overly divisive, and venting there calmed me down enough to not cause that much disruption to the project.

Moving on from that, I would like to discuss the possibility of the resolution being amended to take into account the special needs of Wikinews. Whilst Wikipedia can work from a very principled position where – if someone is still alive – you do not use a non-free image of them, this is not reasonable for Wikinews. As an example, if a popular pop star goes off the rails and gets their head shaved, it would be wholly inappropriate to use an older file photo of them with flowing locks, or wait six months until someone snaps them at a press conference with their camera phone (after the hair has grown back). I am sure that you will all be able to see from this example, and others it might prompt you to dream up, that news has its own special needs.

I would welcome the opportunity to open a dialogue on this, although I appreciate it is an eleventh-hour appeal against this resolution.

Brian McNeil