[WikiEN-l] There are no pictures in Wikipedia any more

[Omegatron]

On 9/24/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>  I know the reason(s), of course, but viewing Wikipedia as a user
> (as I was this morning), this really significantly decreases its
> quality and usefulness.  I'm afraid I know the answer, but would
> there be any way of reversing the various death-to-all-but-the-
> most-rampantly-free-images trends?

Yes.  We should repeal the prohibition against "with permission only"
and "non-commercial use only" images.

On 9/24/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> [[Image:Replace this image1.svg|right]]
> [[Image:Replace this image female.svg|right]]
> [[Image:Replace this image male.svg|right]]
>
> Make the gap look more like a fillable thing.

Look through the links for those image description pages.  That's not
even all of them.  How many of our biographies don't have images?  How
many of those are directly attributable to our licensing policies?

This policy is not benefiting our readers, it's not benefiting our
users, and it's not benefiting our downstream users.  It degrades the
quality, coverage, and usefulness of our encyclopedia.  A minority of
ideologues are forcing their personal beliefs on the rest of the
community without consensus or popular support.

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia; not a free image repository.

The criteria for inclusion of media files in articles should be based
not on prohibiting certain "non-free" licenses, but on *preferring*
certain licenses over others.

We should produce a list of licenses in order of preference, with more
free licenses preferred over less free ones.  Then, media should be
used if:

1. It improves the quality or usefulness of the project to a typical reader
2. It is legal for us to reproduce on our site
3. There are no other media files on the servers with preferable
licensing terms  that fulfill the same purpose

If you don't like the non-free images, go right ahead and find or take
more free ones to replace them.  As soon as you've uploaded them to
the servers, the less free versions will be deprecated and deleted.
But in the meantime, we should use whatever we legally can.