I just wanted to say that I really strongly support the central ideas put forward by Erik here: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Commons I can't say if I agree with every single detail of his proposed implementation, because I'm not really qualified to judge all of it. But the central ideas, as proposed here: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-March/014826.html are valid and important. I especially like the requirement of NO fair use materials on the commons proper. Fair use is often problematic and complex, and so I really want to encourage the creation of free alternatives even to fair use. (Even though, at the same time, I strongly support the concept of fair use and would like to see it expanded and strengthened and clarified legally.) I think it would be very nice to be able to have portfolios of images of specific topics, even when we only use 1 or 2 of the images in a particular article on a particular wikipedia. For example, we might quickly end up with 50 different pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. One thing that I strongly recommend is that we get started on the right foot from the beginning on this site, *requiring* a certain level of documentation: what is this? where did it come from? what license(s) is it under? who is the creator? when was it created? Part of the idea here is to create a central core of material that we *and* those who license our content can feel comfortable using. (Toward that end, we should have a mechanism to store, but not display by default, high resolution images.) --Jimbo p.s. I do not like the use of the word 'altruism' in his proposal, but that's just something he said on the side, not central to what he's talking about. I wouldn't mention it, except that it's a philosophical peeve of mine. :-)