[WikiEN-l] overzealous image deletion?

[Matthew Brown]

On 12/5/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Stated another way, not only does a poorly-composed fan shot of
> an author at a book signing trump a professionally-photographed
> headshot, an imageless article trumps that headshot, too.

I think this needs the clarification that this might only apply if the
professionally-photographed headshot has not been licensed
appropriately.  I certainly am very in favor of notable individuals
providing us their press photos under a free license.

I don't agree with either extreme proposition here.  I don't think
that an article is automatically better with no image than a fair use
one, but neither do I think that a fair use image is automatically
better than no image.  It is definitely the case, though, that
imageless articles tend to inspire properly-licensed image
contributions much more so than articles with an appropriate but
fair-use image.

I also agree that in the majority of cases, fair use images on
articles on living persons could be replaced with a free image.  There
are some cases where such replacement is extremely unlikely, and in
those cases I would accept an argument for a fair-use image,
particularly if it is one that would be freely available to us under a
Wikipedia-only or noncommercial-only or educational-only license, so
that we are not actually in potential legal difficulties.

What do people think about fair use images of historical things that
no longer exist?  In these cases, nobody can go and photograph the
thing - our only hope of getting a free-licensed image is persuading
someone who owns the copyright to one to donate it.  (Short of waiting
for copyright expiration, if it ever even happens given the continual
raising of copyright periods)

-Matt