On 12/7/06, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
But then you have to demonstrate the "harm."
Pretty easy, we have had plenty of examples of folks who didn't bother to upload an image because we "already had one" in the form a fair use image. It's happened to me personally, and it's not news. That alone makes a pretty good example of harm becuase I don't think anyone would argue that it's not better to have free images instead of non-free ones.
You can also point out that since our goals which explicitly include free content, any addition of non-free content is harm. Not all additions are net-harm, however. The preamble of the Fair User Criteria on enwiki addresses the issue of harm vs net harm like this:
"The primary goal of Wikipedia's fair use policy is to protect our mission of producing and distributing free content which is perpetually free for unlimited distribution, modification, and application for all users and in all mediums. This goal could best be met by completely disallowing all content which is not free content; however, we understand that in order to completely meet the second part of our mission, producing a quality encyclopedia, we must permit some non-free material for critical commentary. Thus the authors of the English Wikipedia have decided to permit a limited compromise which is outlined in this policy. Most popular non-English Wikipedias do not permit unfree images at all."
So the FUC would have us ask the question "Does excluding this material preclude us from being a good encyclopedia?". Here the building is visable and photographable by all, so we must answer "No" even if we accept the notion that we can't be a good encyclopedia without a picture of this building. As a result, we can conclude that including the image is a net-harm from the perspective of furthering the goals of the project.