Stan Shebs wrote:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
When we say "that's policy", what we're *really* saying is "because I and a few other people said so". Learning the *reason* why we do things, so that a) we can do them properly, and b) we can explain them to others, is vital.
The image use policy page said all that three years ago when I started at WP, and it still does; I didn't have any trouble understanding it after working on WP for a couple weeks. The upload page has all manner of links and warnings, which link to even further explanations, eventually going back to first principles for those that want to learn all about copyright law.
While I want to assume good faith in all of this, in actually looking through a random swath of recent untagged uploads, the explanations that come to mind are either that we have many editors with the IQ of a turnip, or they are deliberately ignoring the policy and explanations we're putting in front of them. Whichever the case, their uploads are not helping build the encyclopedia, and we need to stop making excuses for them.
Stan
I agree here. I want to AGF, and perhaps in a number of cases, yes, the editor is just acting in good faith. But I've seen a number of cases -- even on Commons -- where the uploader just wanted some pictures for his article. Take, for instance, the images on [[Michelle Kwan]], which are all licenced under the GPL and yet are sourced from Encarta or some Tripod webpage -- neither of which mentions *anything* about the GPL. Numerous images previously used on the article as fair use were taken down (for what reasons, I know not) and replaced with these ostensibly "free" images. I suspect this is more common than we might think. I browse the celebrity articles quite often, and I keep seeing this game of musical chairs going on with the images because they're fair use. Each time the image gets replaced with either an image lacking source/licence data or another fair use image -- in either case, the image will end up deleted after a while, and the cycle will repeat. Is it any wonder that fans get fed up and start blatantly lying to us about the copyright status of images?
Then there are some cases where you just have to AGF but also yell "what the bloody hell were you thinking?" at the uploaders. For instance, there's an image of [[Tunku Abdul Rahman]] on Commons tagged as public domain because of age when it wasn't even taken 50 years ago. (And I really doubt Malaysian copyright law provides for such a short period of copyright.) And then we have a number of images tagged with a template identifying them as PD because they are a work of an employee of the Malaysian Prime Minister's Office. Only problem is that there's *nothing* to show that this assertion is true. The Malaysian PM's site is copyrighted by the Malaysian government, with all rights reserved -- and I doubt it wasn't created by employees of the PM's Office.
These mistaken taggings are more worrying, IMO, because they tend to come from active editors who just don't know any better. For most other cases I think it is reasonable to AGF, but most images with copyright problems *are* uploaded by throwaway accounts or people who blatantly lie to us. These are the two main problems (from my experience): good and active editors simply not knowing better, and throwaway accounts/bad faith editors uploading just any old damn image -- and in some cases tagging it incorrectly as free.
Having said that, I do think that it might be a tad over-reacting to make it extremely complicated/impossible for new editors to upload images. The problem is that the only good way to tell if someone is acting in good faith and at least knows something about our policies is by how long that editor has been here and how many edits that editor has made. Pretty much anything else is subject to gaming, as Mark Wagner/Carnildo has pointed out.
John