On 24/09/2007, charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
William Pietri wrote
> That's an intriguing argument. It's not
hard to find almost any bit of
> information on Wikipedia, so by that reasoning we wouldn't be hurting
> anybody by shutting down entirely. All Wikipedia does is make existing
> information better available.
That's an intriguing fallacy. Actually WP is
constantly adding information that is not at all easy to find, unless you already know
where to look, and how to formulate your query. For example, it comes out of a book. On
the other hand, it genuinely is easy to find images (which are not generally used to add
information to articles, by the way, as maps and diagrams and graphs would) online, in the
kinds of cases under discussion.
Yes. If it wasn't easy to find images not under a free content
licence, we wouldn't have this problem.
People have no problem finding images of people; there is no problem
for Wikipedia to solve by expressly permitting nonfree images.
- d.