[WikiEN-l] Dead wikipedians and how to really make a project boring to death

[Sherool]

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:20:53 +0200, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthere#Image:Norbert3.jpg_listed_for_deletion
>
> Norbert was a much appreciated wikipedian on the french wikipedia. He
> contributed a lot.
> Wikipedia is not produced by machines. But by living beings. We should
> value people and we should value good contributors.
>
> Norbert died some time ago. It was the first wikipedian we lost on the
> french project. At that point, he was the editor with the largest number
> of edits. And it was not only typos. He left us a last word just before
> he had an operation and did not survive it.
>
> We sent flowers to his burial. We told his family how important he was
> for us and they were proud of what he did for Wikipedia.
> A text was written about him. And for some reasons, it was translated on
> the english signpost
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-10-10/News_and_notes.
>
> I uploaded the picture of Treanna on the english wikipedia. It was the
> picture he had on his user page. A bad image, but the only one we had
> for him. Certainly an image which will never be reused by anyone. But an
> image of Treanna.
>
>
> The crime : it was uploaded as a non-derivative license. So, it is
> proposed for deletion.
>
>
> And frankly, I can not ask Treanna any more if he would be nice enough
> to change that license to make it free by wikipedia definition.

Sorry if I'm beeing an insensitive prick here, but why not simply ask his  
family to change the license? With the author dead the family is the new  
legal copyright holder (unless he left a will stating otherwise), and we  
obviosly know how to get in contact with them. I mean by all means give  
them some time to grieve before confronting them with the GFDL release  
forms or whatever, but if we are planning to keep the image around  
permanently it seems like the only real solution. It is what we would have  
demanded of anyone else (people have literaly been banned for insisting on  
using NC or ND images of themselves on theyr own userpage), and I for one  
do not apreciate having double standards. Either we allow every unfree  
image with a sufficiently compelling "sob storry" to stay, or we stay true  
to our stated goals of free content even if it means that an image of  
someone dear to us can not be used. Personaly I favour the later.

-- 
[[:en:User:Sherool]]