Hey Sarah et al
On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 12:18 PM, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
I think this is my first Commons deletion nom. I'm trying to act rather than expecting others to do it, but it's not a particularly pleasant experience. I understand why people don't want to get involved.
You did good. But I will give you the same advice that I give others.
Always look at the copyright status first. If the copyright status is an issue, away it goes by way of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:L and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:PRP -- You may wish to enable in Preferences (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets) under maintenance tools "GoogleImages tab" and "Tineye tab" - this will add tabs to the top of every image to make it easy to search for other results
If copyright checks out, for private settings/expectation of privacy images, then look at whether consent was given for their initial publication (as per http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:IDENT). Ignore things such as whether they have given permission for photos to be uploaded to Commons, for photos to be made available under free licences, etc for these are not actually required -- initial publication is what matters currently.
Try to avoid, especially for high quality (legal) sexuality images, arguing against scope. Human sexuality is an all-encompassing topic, and what is depicted is definitely part of (legal) human sexuality. You may not like it, but part of Commons mission does include hosting resources relating to (legal) human sexuality. This is going to be a somewhat emotional hurdle that many will basically need to accpet, and realise that such photos are not something that are going to disappear, but it is definitely something that we can manage inline with our other policies (some of which I've described above). By making the "scope" less of any argument in nominations for such high-quality photos, it will keep your nomination to the point, and others will often fall inline. By making scope an issue, you risk what Mattbuck has done, in demonstrating scope (make note, it is only a comment from him, not opining on whether they should be kept or deleted), and also risk making the issue an "emotional" one. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:%22Donkey_p... is perhaps a good example of how generally not to conduct a DR; it was overly emotive, and missed the point that the underlying image was basically a copyvio. So avoid scope arguments if you can for high quality photos, or "unique" images - keep such arguments for the low quality "here's a photo of my dick y'all"-type shots. But in your current nom, scope won't be an issue.
Hope this gives you a little bit of basic understanding of how, I at least, approach DR's on Commons.
Cheers,
Russavia