On 12/6/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Well, I guess I'm mostly sympathetic to that view. I didn't think the creation of free images was a core goal of Wikipedia. Rather, having a ready supply of usable images - free or otherwise - was. I don't feel strongly about it as long as the effort of producing free images doesn't distract us too much.
::just about falls over::
Yes, the creation of free images is a core goal of Wikipedia. It even says so in the mission statement on wikimediafoundation.org: "The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content..." Images are content, too, and judging by the debate over this I'd say it's considered a fairly important part of it!
There are plenty of reference materials on the web available at no cost to view; what makes Wikipedia's mission different and important is its being free-as-in-speech rather than simply at no charge.
I don't propose that we get rid of *all* unfree or insufficiently-free content; there are cases where our use is legitimately fair. But we do use it far more than we ought to, without sufficient justification, and I think it hurts the goal of "growth, development, and distribution" of truly free content to use it where a replacement could reasonably be found. (I know at least a few people who are not motivated to take their own photos for an article if they see the article has one already; do you check the copyright status of images every time you browse to see if one may be something you ought to replace?)
We don't just use *text* on subjects that are hard to research from accessible sources, even should they give permission to reprint on Wikipedia or noncommercial use only. Why don't we, if our goal really is simply a steady supply of articles? I can only say that it isn't. We quote fairly from works where we need to in order to write about them, but otherwise are strictly free content.
Being free of immediate legal concerns is a bare minimum, but if that's all we're doing I think we're failing at our mission.
-Kat who is, unfortunately, not a very good photographer