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

[John Lee]

On 9/28/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/28/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/28/07, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 9/27/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Close on 50% of the images on en are non free. Text on the other
> hand?
> > > > A few percent maybe.
> > >
> > > Maybe you mean "a few percent" of all articles contain unfree exerpts
> > > of a larger published work... I could stomach that.
> > >
> > > But saying "a few percent" of all article text is unfree... that seems
> > > excessive, and hopefully incorrect.
> >
> >
> > Well, it depends on what we're looking at, but I assume most articles
> > contain at the very least quotations under copyright. I would be
> surprised
> > if the absolute number of articles with copyrighted text in them is only
> a
> > few percent. I would not be surprised if the overall proportion of
> > copyrighted text in Wikipedia, however, is a few percent - that seems
> about
> > right. You can't write a proper, comprehensive encyclopaedia article
> without
> > quoting someone (be it a historian, the article's subject, etc.), unless
> > you're intentionally going out of your way to make life difficult for
> > yourself and your readership.
>
> I think this is untrue in many subject areas; in practice, no quotes
> are needed for most technical articles and many popular culture
> articles.  They should be more common in history and so forth.


Haha, FA/GA reviewers these days are pretty strict about quoting critics in
popular culture articles; in fact, I suspect the vast bulk of our unfree
content, both text and images, is concentrated in this category.

I don't mean to overemphasize the use of fair-use quotes in the
> encyclopedia; I try to be realistic about it.  My point is that
> whatever that use is, it is enthusiastically embraced as necessary and
> proper.


Yes. Unfortunately some people have gone overboard with the images; I'm by
no means a "make everything free!" kind of guy, but sometimes seeing pop
culture articles full of unnecessary imagery makes me wonder if we really
need all this.

My derived point is that it's somewhat hypocritical to have a
> different stance regarding appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use
> images than for appropriate and carefully chosen fair-use text.


Indeed it is.

We would probably do better to have more of both, rather than less, as
> an Encyclopedia, for the Readers.


The most important thing is to use them as necessary and appropriate; as far
as possible, we must avoid any less (which harms the encyclopaedia) and any
more (which harms the free nature of our encyclopaedia).

Johnleemk