On 10 Nov 2005, at 23:41, Tom Cadden wrote:
A number of problems are cropping up with the deletion of images.
- Many of the images being deleted are valid but
simply wrongly categorised. Often the problem is simply that the information requested at the time was less detailed than what we rightly request now. (for example {{fairuse}} rather than {{fairusein| }} )
There have been a lot of complaints of this. I have myself never seen one; I guess it does happen occasionally and these are probably slightly harder images to retrieve. I dont think I have ever seen an old image in a speedy delete category though. Being labelled {{fairuse}} rather than {{fairusein| }} is not currently a reason to delete - there is just a warning on {{fairuse}} that it is obsolete.
- Some people doing deletions aren't checking to make
sure that the deletion will not make a mess of some articles. Is it that hard to clean up problems a deletion may leave in individual articles?
The suggestion is that articles should have the image removed; I always do with article space (though not always I admit with user galleries and suchlike). With tens of thousands of images needing deleting a few failures to remove from articles are ind of excusable. Not ideal.
For example, all images in a template were deleted because they were down as fairuse. They were simply wrong categorised. They should have been in as crowncopyright given the source that was listed on the image, and crowncopyright images are explicitly allowed to be used in templates under their legal conditions. A whole series of templates were turned into blank boxes with red names by the failure of the deleter to simply checking the sources of the images first. (It took 30 seconds to establish that all the images were from the same source, which was crowncopyright.) But by then a template used widely was a mess, and the pages it was in turned into an amateurish shambles. (The deleter didn't even bother to remove the template from pages.)
I dont think crown copyright images should be in templates either. Anything in template space should be free.
Another example, a featured article lost a series of fine images taken by the article writer simply because as a newbie, though he had explicitly 'given' the images to WP, they were categorised as source unknown. All the deleter had to do was read what was in the file to know the user meant them to be covered by GDFL. (The information could be read on a copy of our page, still with the images in situ, on another website.)
There should be enough people reviewing in FA to sort out newbie errors.
Can we please remind the deleters that (a) old images may be valid but were downloaded when the commands weren't as informative as we have now. They can easily be fixed in ten seconds, rather than blanket deleted. Check to make sure there really are copyright problems.
No they cant. I often leave them, but often they have absolutely no source information that anyone can make any reasonable judgement from. We cannot read the mind of the downloader.
(b) have some cop-on about sources. A user may have innocently used the wrong category. (I rarely download images but at this stage I know in many cases automatically if the source of a politics or history image is genuinely fair use, should be crown copyright, or is clearly a copyright breach.)
There is no automatic fair use. Crown copyright is in many cases non commercial and not allowed.
(c) For God's sake read the notes people have typed in the file. The copyight category is often wrong. If in doubt check a source.
If people have written notes I usually recategorise rather than delete. Usually however this just means I move from {{nosource}} to {{unknown}} as there may be a source but no actual details so it is a speedy delete a week later.
(d) if you delete images, remove them from articles first. Otherwise you'll leave articles in a mess with red boxes where an image once was. Too many articles are being turned into messes because no-one bothered to do any follow up when an image was deleted.
Most people do this. Complain to them personally if they dont.
I have seen this complaint before. Please name names and pages if this is a real problem. There are many thousands of images to delete on current policy so vague accusations dont help.
Justinc