[Wikipedia-l] Require confirmed email address to upload images?

[Erik Moeller]

On 6/28/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Interesting. Oppose it for Commons? If anything images that are
> *claimed* fair use are easier to manage, I think... we already know it
> is copyrighted to someone else, and if it's being used under fair use
> it ought to be a notable image and therefore reasonably easy to
> find/source.
[...]
> I've seen plenty of dubious images on commons I would really like to
> have been able to get a good answer about.

My view is that having e-mail addresses on file is great for
_improving_ the state of information of images which we don't want to
delete because they are still "sort of" legal to keep around anyway.
You're right that many fair use images can be easily traced to a
source. Examples which are harder include: scans from the actual pages
of unidentified magazines or books, historical photographs from the
1940s to 1970s which were found on the web, etc. Here I'd often like
to contact the uploaders to get closer to the chain of events (often
something like photo=>book=>scan=>website 1=>website 2=>Wikipedia).

On the other hand, for dealing with material that is outright dubious
and not in compliance with our legal requirements, I think the answer
is to delete it. This "punishes" only the user who forgot to provide
the information in compliance with policy, rather than requiring _all_
users to go through a confirmation process. For a free content
repository like Commons, it's fine to be aggressive about licensing
requirements. An e-mail requirement added now to Commons would also
have little effect on existing uploads by drive-by users who don't
check their talk page -- and Commons has become significantly more
deletionist over time, esp. since image undeletability was added.

Besides, enabling e-mail confirmation for uploads only on en.wp and
maybe a few other wikis with fair use would allow us to gauge better
how useful it is before enabling it elsewhere or even globally.

Erik