Bryan Derksen wrote:
WikipediaEditor Durin wrote:
en.wikipedia is utterly failing at executing the
Foundation's mission, and
it is THE flagship project.
This is unwarranted hyperbole.
I agree. Such hyperbole does nothing for finding solutions.
If we're utterly failing, why is
Wikipedia a top-10 website that's rapidly gaining cachet as the first
place to look for general information, why is Britannica in terror of
us, and (specifically on the "free" front) why is the Wikipedia database
being used by literally hundreds of mirrors?
The photo archives are scared too. Once enough free material is
available on-line the markets for their proprietary stock will collapse.
Also, bear in mind that "free" is only one
half of our fundamental goal.
The other half is "encyclopedia". Adding fair use content may restrict
the "free" half while enhancing the "encyclopedia" half, so it's
hardly
an obvious net loss.
The same rationales that we use for fair use images can be used by
others who wish to use Wikipedia's material in the same context (as an
educational encyclopedia), so it's not like the fair use images are
completely useless for people wishing to reuse our content. They just
have to make the judgement for themselves which licences are compatible
with their use and strip out the bits that aren't.
I have always felt that a policy where we would not allow fair use
because we could not guarantee that it would be fair use when used by a
downstream user has been unrealistic On the other hand pushing our use
of fair use to its extremes would be foolish.
Ec