[Foundation-l] Racism in Commons

[Tony Wills]

First, sorry if my points have already been made and/or answered I have
tried to read all the fore-going  discussion but may have missed things.

1) The main POV pushing here is to call all these cartoons racist.  It would
seem clear that the Ariel cartoons are on the face of it against Ariel
Sharon and his policies/actions.  To see Ariel Sharon as being used as a
proxy for the Israeli nation, or Jews is an interpretation that requires
input from the viewers POV.

2) Not yet used in any wikimedia project is not the same as "not useful for
any Wikimedia project".   I expect that at any one time the majority of
images on commons may not be in use, that does not mean they are outside the
project scope!

3) Keeping only a sampling of images as an 'exemplar' is not appropriate
either, commons does not have a quota of any type of images, either they are
within the project scope or not, we have no need to restrict supply, the
projects can pick and choose what they want to use.

4) The 'original research' question doesn't seem relevant, that normally
applies to research by the contributor themselves anyway.  You might as well
define all original photos on commons as original research.

I would have thought the main problem with a lot of Bush and Sharon cartoons
would be a question of defamation.  But then if you take the POV that they
are actually about a whole nation or its peoples, then perhaps you can not
argue that one ;-).

I would like to see the cartoons with useful descriptions putting them in
context, when were they produced, in response to what news, actions etc.
Looking at political cartoons in isolation makes no sense.

Does everyone here actually understand the idea of a media bank?, commons is
not just a convenient place to store images currently in use on other
projects.  Also commons gallery pages are not articles to provide
information on the subject, but, along with the category system, they are a
way to find the images to illustrate some aspect of the subject on other
projects.  I think the problem here is that some people think a gallery on
commons should be a place to promote the subject depicted (with air brushed,
promotional, photos), rather than part of a filing system .

- Tony.