[Foundation-l] Fair use images

[SJ]

On 3/9/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/9/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I agree with Ec entirely.  Image deletion is broken precisely because
> > it cannot be undone; please do not use it when deletion can be
> > avoided.
> >
> > It is also the duty of text uploaders to describe the text's source,
> > and justify its applicability to the article; nevertheless, we engage
> > in discussion with editors rather than deleting insufficiently sourced
> > work.  This mainly works because you can remove text from a page
> > without deleting it from the edit history.
> >
> > Consider creating a quarantine for images that appear to be improperly
> > tagged, or improperly used; removing images to that quarantine, and
> > leaving them there for a reasonable length of time (a month?) before
> > deleting them.  If anyone tries to remove a quarantined image, they
> > must give an explanation or proper tag.
>
> This is misleading and outright untrue in the case of older content. I
> maintain a temporary archive of media I tag for deletion, some other
> users do as well.. it's fairly easy to make your tagging bot go grab
> the actual image.  In the case of older content, it would have made
> its way into one or more image dumps (which are available for a
> limited time on download.wikimedia.org, and which I and several others
> maintain copies of forever).

How do you expect any user whose images have been removed to know this?
Can I send all users who are looking for old lost images to you?  Is a
list of users who keep copies of old image dumps?

See also the deletion discussion for
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Lost_images
which was a page designed to allow users to recover unnecessarily
deleted images.

> It is true that undeletion is a little less convenient for images, but
> it is untrue that it is irreversible.

>From a wiki standpoint, where 'reversion' is normally as a <30-second
process, it's pretty irreversible.  One admin's moment of passion can
lead to days or weeks of searching for an old file.

> It is also true that we've had images tagged with things like "non commercial use
> only" and included in featured articles for over a year.... some of these with tags
> saying they would be deleted right away... and they remain completely
> ignored until someone deletes them.

Why don't we fix these extreme, unacceptable cases first?  No need to
fix a different problem using this as a reason.

Rather than having people fret about "waiting for people to comment on
the deletion tag" -- everyone, admins or not, should be free to remove
an infringing image IMMEDIATELY to quarantine.  We should be firm in
protecting the freeness of the project, while being polite to
contributors and assuming the best of them.


> Worse, perhaps, is that fact that images which [are fully orphaned]
> sometimes even caues you problems [where users treat you like
> crap because you're removing their favorite picture]

If someone notices when you remove the picture, it's not "orphaned" in
the sense that noone cares for it.  Someone certainly does care;
though s/he may not visit the site more than once a month.  I don't
know how you're checking for orphans, but I sometimes find images used
in someone's user space, however productively, called orphans and
listed for deletion...


> If the user is still on Wikipedia then a week
> is long enough to get them to confirm the source,

This is not true for the majority of Wikipedians, who do not visit the
site every week; and doesn't even apply for the myriad image deletions
which wait a week... but never notify the original uploader.

> For what it's worth, in the over 20,000 media objects I've caused the
> deletion of, I've only had to restore one, and I've restored 4 others
> for other people.  Thats it.

Most contributors have no idea how to track down a deleted image; are
upset and offended by its removal, and simply come to the project less
often, or complain to one or two friends on-wiki.

For what it's worth, of the few dozen media objects I have uploaded,
three that were pretty clearly images taken by me were put up for
deletion and could easily have slipped by a less active editor.  Two
images that did not merit deletion and which I had uploaded into my
own user space, for working with later, were deleted without any
comment to me (presumably under a draconian "orphaned" criterion).

++SJ