[WikiEN-l] NYT: Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It's a Desert for Photos

[Durova]

Policy changes are usually slow and difficult.  Right now we have the
public's attention.  Wikipedians, collectively, have a habit of responding
to real world attention with onsite process and discussion.  That can be
useful up to a point, but it fails to appreciate two factors:

1. There are windows of opportunity for following up on these opportunities,
before the public's fickle attention turns elsewhere.
2. Most of the public neither reads nor understands WP namespace.

What we can do right now is communicate: reach a broader audience in the
mainstream venues they do read and educate them about copyleft.  Present a
coherent summary of WP's license structure and step by step practical
instructions for copyright owners to donate material so that we can use it.

Don't write that as an essay on Wikipedia; write it as an article for a
photography trade magazine.

-Durova

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

> Durova wrote:
> > The default action that people take when they discover Wikipedia would
> > publish their photos is to offer permission.  When we try to answer 'that
> > doesn't work, you need to go to OTRS and...' nine times out of ten their
> > eyes glaze over and they wander away.  They simply don't comprehend.  We
> > need to stop being defeatist and get serious about commuincating on a
> > broader scale that yes, these things are possible.
>
> Or we could do the unthinkable and change our policies to better
> mesh with the way nine out of ten people actually think.
>
> (Or, yeah, I know, pigs could fly.  But still.)
>
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