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

[Mark Wagner]

On 6/28/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think this is as clear cut as you think it is. In the case of
> requiring users to register to start articles, and we had solid
> evidence that our openess was actively harmful- pace Siegenthaler.
> I've seen no reason to believe that our current level of openness
> w/r/t images is actively harmful, and not merely a nuisance on the
> level of vandalism by IPs.

Perhaps you should do newimage patrol for a few weeks, then.  If
vandalism were taking place at the same rate as bad image uploads,
people would be screaming bloody murder.

My bot's spending about ten hours a day handling bad image uploads,
and I'm spending another two to three.  Between us, we're catching
about 95% of images without a license tag, about 20% of images without
a source, and about 2% of invalid fair-use claims.  I don't have time
to follow up on any of this -- if the uploader removes the {{no info}}
or {{untagged}} template, the image simply gets lost among the tens of
thousands of other problem images.  I can follow up on the ten or so
fair-use claims I dispute each day, but that takes another hour, and
doesn't do much good -- for every image I dispute, another 50 get
uploaded.

My best estimate is that there are around 100,000 images on the
English Wikipedia with a clearly invalid "fair use" claim or being
used in a manner inconsistent with their fair-use tag, and another
100,000 with an incorrect free-license claim.  Any one of those could
harm us worse than the whole Siegenthaler mess when the copyright
holder files an infringement lawsuit.

-- 
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]