[WikiEN-l] BetacommandBot, (currently) centralized discussion

[George Herbert]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 12:30 PM, <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:

> No the problem of using a bot to remove all fair-use images system-wide,
> without any attempt to find any free images or even show evidence that any
> free
> images exist.
>
> That's the problem. It's harming the project. Please address it  directly.
> Thanks.
>

That's not even vaguely what's happening.  Your statement fails to match
reality.

Betacommandbot's runs are taking fair use images that don't have a currently
valid fair-use justification, including justification for the specific
page(s) it's used on, and tagging them as such.  The normal process that
follows removes those images if nobody fixes the lack of tags.

Some images whose use falls under existing policy are being tagged because
they don't have a currently compliant fair-use justification - this is an
administrative issue, and one that Betacommandbot is not addressing.  If
someone doesn't notice and manually fix it then the image will get deleted
even though its use was in fact policy compliant.

A vast majority of the images so tagged aren't being used in compliant
manners, though.

It is not useful to throw up grossly false misrepresentations of what's
going on when discussing this issue.  I agree, as do a lot of others, that
the current process for identifying and fixing images that are properly used
but not properly tagged right now is inadequate.  Some people have spent a
lot of effort trying to follow Betacommandbot around and fix those things; I
have intermittently tried, but the nature of how it's being run makes that
difficult for me.

But the accusation that anyone is trying to remove all fair use from the
project is simply false.

Betacommandbot does nothing to images with current, valid fair-use
justifications.  Individual editors and admins sometimes review such
justifications and challenge those they feel are not policy compliant, but
they are not doing so on a wholesale basis trying to rid the project of
those images.



-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com