On 12/19/05, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-December/035512.htmlIn the rabid frenzy to cleanse the image database, mistakes are made. How are we going on some way to recover from them?
At this point, the best solution is for people to tag things or delete things to save the darn images. This requires no modification to the mediawiki software, nor does it carry with it the naming or storage implications of a full undeletion system... plus, it is available right *now*.
Your language shows the sort of disrespect common from those who are unconcerned about the legal status of our project. There is no rabid frenzy to delete the image, rather, the deletions are going unacceptably slowly.
There have been multiple responsible users, who ensured the images they deleted or tagged were unrecoverable, who have been chased away from the image cleanup process by user overwhelmed with anger, distrust, and disrespect.
As such I have no hesitation in saying that the unrecoverability of the few incorrectly deleted images is entirely the fault of the people who attack people for cleaning up images. Good job.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Your language shows the sort of disrespect common from those who are unconcerned about the legal status of our project. There is no rabid frenzy to delete the image, rather, the deletions are going unacceptably slowly.
Just as a meta-comment, I think it's to be expected that people will be unhappy; now that I've crunched through a bunch of old images, I can see where there has been a lot of wishful thinking - "WP is a good cause, and this photo is perfect for my article, ergo it must be fair use". But all we need is for some professional sports photographer to see a pile of his/her work gracing articles uncredited (and unpaid-for), and we could have a Seigenthaler-type scandal on our hands.
So the process is going to be painful, and there will be mistakes, but we'll be glad we did it sooner rather than later. People who have images they care about can help out by going back to them and making sure they are brought up to present-day standards. Also, commons is now big enough that it frequently has good replacements; the "commoners" are steadily discovering new ways to collect free-license images, and so many of the old fair-use pics have no further value to us.
Stan
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