[Foundation-l] Sexual images of questionable provenance

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:22 AM, David Moran <fordmadoxfraud at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think it's helpful or useful to classify images that aren't
> currently being used in an article somewhere as second class, or more
> readily deletable.  There are, I think it safe to say, TONS of images on
> Commons that aren't being used anywhere.  So what if we have male nudes far
> in excess of what would ever need to be used in one article?  The point of
> commons isn't as a hosting substitute for Wikipedia's article, it is as a
> repository of free images.  For most purposes, people will only need one
> image out of a group, but offering a variety from which they can choose can
> only be beneficial.
>
> If the free-ness of an image can be reasonably disputed, fine, go ahead and
> delete it, but don't start setting up separate standards for deletion based
> on an image's use.

It's also worth considering hypothetical books at Wikibooks or courses
at Wikversity that teach the art of nude portraits, for which a large
wealth of such images would be needed as examples. A simple search on
Amazon for "nude photography" returns many such books [1]. Just
because the nudity-related articles on Wikipedia can't use all of
these types of images doesn't mean that they are useless to our
projects.

Obviously non-free images are a different topic entirely, and if these
images are unacceptable for other reasons then they should be handled
accordingly. However, deleting an image just because it is not
currently used at Wikipedia is awfully short-sighted.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=nude+photography&x=0&y=0

--Andrew Whitworth