Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Non-free content enforcement

As many will be aware, the policy on Wikipedia:Non-free content (NFC) is complex and convoluted, and there are differences of interpretation over the policy and especially over how to enforce the policy. This has repeatedly led to blowups at WP:AN / WP:ANI. This RFC is to discuss concrete ideas on how we can improve enforcement of the policy.

Some suggestions to seed the discussion:

• improve policy and guidelines on this, to make them easier to understand for editors seeking guidance on a particular problem
• improve non-policy guidance and help. For example, improve the templates used on file pages to make misconceptions about the issues less likely, for editors stumbling into the NFC arena without a clue.
• develop a larger body of clear examples (WP:NFCCEG)
• use a bot or other automated tools to issue warnings of problems identified, on article talk pages and/or the talk pages of uploaders, leaving some grace period before removal
• require prior discussion on an article talk page before removing NFC content from FA and GA articles.

Rd232 ^talk 00:10, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Ideas

Highly limited exemptions for userspace

Adding a specific instance of the above issues, feel free to incorporate above:

• Scope-limited, time-limited, template-notified exemptions for NF usage in userspace when directly related to article development, on the two weeks to use-it-or-lose-it rule of thumb. So I can sandbox an article and work with it with images in place, let's say I was trying to figure out a layout problem; or I'm within days of moving my page to mainspace. Franamax (talk) 00:30, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I would argue strenuously against this. Layout problems dont require the images, they require images of the same sized. Nothing's stopping you from using an image of 'cookies' instead of 'corporate logo' or screenshot, set to the same thumbnail size as you wish to use. The images themselves dont affect layout, the size does, and thats on the nose for the definition of replaceable non-free. The proper images can be used when transferred to mainspace. -- ۩ Mask 01:26, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

But what's the difference? You are just adding a ridiculous difficulty to solving those problems. You're saying that before you can even start thinking about what those problems are, you have to scour the whole thing for possible non-free violations first or get bombarded with notices and edit conflicts. Be realistic. So long as I put a {{noindex}} on the userpage (which would be in a suitable template), I'm not advertising the work to the public. I'm trying to fix the layour, not re-hash the whole "free content" debate. If you find me abusing that to wrongly perpetuate unacceptable content, kick me down. If I'm trying to help, give me the time I need and no more than that. Candidate for refactoring if this gets too verbose. Franamax (talk) 02:00, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Because they are absolutely unneeded in that aspect. Look at out Five Pillars. Wikipedia is a free content work. Fair use images are needed to properly communicate certain ideas to the reader, but they are not to be decorative. In the example you use, especially no-indexed, there is no reader comprehension issue. The images are purely functional to figure out layout, and ANY image will suffice. Thats decorative use. Whats the big problem with keeping your list of images (perhaps on the talkpage of the userdraft?) and swapping them out when you move it? It's two seconds of work copying and pasting (there shouldnt be more then a couple/few fair use images in an article anyway) versus the same two seconds adding noindex tags and checking if you're within the timeframe. -- ۩ Mask 02:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

User space is not directed at "the reader" and is not part of the encyclopedia proper. Nor is it intended to be reused, and if NOINDEXed, it's not easily found by anyone anyway. Franamax's suggestion seems perfectly reasonable. Rd232 ^talk 02:19, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

It makes even less sense when no-indexed as I said. Non-free content is used when its needed to convey an idea about something that cant be conveyed in any other way. When used in the example he uses they're purely decorative. Literally any image he wants, with a thumbnail the size he wants the nonfree to be when in mainspace, will suffice for lay out needs. There is no 'reader' to worry about conveying the meaning the non-free content is supposed to because, as you said, its not part of the encyclopedia proper and not directed at the reader. You have precisely summed up my point, perhaps without meaning to. -- ۩ Mask 04:16, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

If it would be OK offline for temporary drafting purposes, why isn't it similarly OK noindexed in userspace? Rd232 ^talk 11:21, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Because offline on your computer is subject to your own decisions and nobody on wikipedia believes we can have policies on what you do on your own time away from the site? Honestly, are you asking why wikipedia doesnt have rules about what you do while you write your own articles on your own computer? If you choose to later donate/relicense them to the project, then our rules come into play. -- ۩ Mask 11:24, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about policies, I meant the legal aspect. Rd232 ^talk 12:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if it is ok or not ok, we dont say anything about it because its not our concern. Wikipedia telling you how to write your own material not hosted on their servers would be like Coca-Cola giving you dry cleaning tips. -- ۩ Mask 13:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Still missing the point. The question is if it's OK there (is it?), why is it not OK in noindexed userspace? Rd232 ^talk 15:11, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I get the point, and im saying were not going to answer it. whether or not you choose to use fair use images in your personal activities not on wikimedia servers is neither any of our business nor germane to this discussion, its one big non-sequiter. - ۩ Mask 20:58, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Bad idea. There are dozens of staled userspace drafts, not to count some users that like to move deleted content to userspace as eternal drafts. We need no more pages with non-free content. We have more fair use than any website in the world. --Damiens.rf 11:26, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The proposal was for temporary use. Basically, people can go around cleaning these up as now, but if the page is less than 2 weeks old, notify the user that it needs to be gone by 2 weeks. Simple enough, really. Rd232 ^talk 12:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I could agree to this. Of course with a clear temporal limit, but that should be manageable. This just seems like a simple, practical commonsense extension of our normal article use, and I honestly can't see how enforcing purity here serves any real purpose except upholding the principle for the principle's sake. Enforcing the rules here, especially against newcomers who are trying to write their first sandbox article, often causes needless confusion and frustration. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:01, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I think if you add in the idea of userification of pages from deletion discussions, keeping images that are only used on such pages for a limited time while the page is improved, would help this idea along. The one problem I'm seeing is that other users, seeing some users get the ability to use NFC on their user page (unaware of the time restriction) would put it on their own page arguing OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. What if we created a special section under the WP header which is the only place where userified pages can be put that can include NFC images for a limited time: this would make patroling and maintaining these aspects much easier. --MASEM (t) 05:13, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not keen on using project space for this sort of thing, the article incubator is still getting its legs underneath it, and we do urge editors to develop work in their userspace so as not to get too badly bitten. I'd prefer a mandatory template(s) to indicate the intention with end-time and categorization, let's say {{testcopy}} or {{imagesincluded}}. If a NFC patroller removed images from an untagged user sub-page, they vould notify with a matching UT template with a link to the limited-time exemption so the editor could restore the images and add the tag. Hopefully that's a simple enough system and if some editorz try to game that system, that can be addressed directly. Franamax (talk) 06:53, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Better communication

Maybe a suitable notice template (for user talk or article talk) should be used (ideally as specific as possible to the issue at hand), which explains things a bit more when editors do NFCC enforcement. Does something like that exist? If so, can it be improved, or used more consistently, etc? Rd232 ^talk 11:13, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

This idea is important, but the most ideal solution is to get away from templates. A personal note to the user doesnt have to be long to be informative, and can convey unique information on the specific case. -- ۩ Mask 11:26, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's my idea: Make twinkle notice when there is a previous similar warning on the user page and if it's so, update the existing warning instead of adding a news one. --Damiens.rf 11:28, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Better idea: Make twinkle post the warnings not directly to the user talk pages, but to a twinkler-special page, so that the user won't get the orange You have new messages message at tagging time. At midnight, some bot scans this twinkler-special page and posts at most one warning per user talk page, no matter how many images got tagged for each user. --Damiens.rf 11:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

If anything, if all bots that otherwise drop messages on userpages could use a common setting (say, specified on the top of a user's talk page by a template) into a user's subpage, and the user can then watch that subpage, it would be a lot nicer. But that's more a BAG question than image related. --MASEM (t) 19:47, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

FA and GA articles

Proposal: require prior discussion on an article talk page before removing NFC content from FA and GA articles, except where the NFC failure is unambiguous. Such articles are expected to ensure that NFC standards are met, so concerns that they are not should not lead to unilateral action unnecessarily. This does not apply to unambiguous NFC failures (such as missing Free Use Rationale), but it is strongly recommended to fix the problem rather than removing the image if at all possible, and if not to post an explanatory note on the talk page. Supposed NFCC failures which have a subjective element should be discussed on the talk page and not acted on unilaterally. Rd232 ^talk 11:19, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Images should be treated the same regardless of what articles they're used in. Setting up a class-like system for images just encourages gaming the system. Make the rules clearer, but treat all non-free content equally. -- ۩ Mask 11:29, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

How does acknowledging the special significance of GA and FA (because of the review processes, review processes which also cover images) "encourage gaming the system"? Rd232 ^talk 12:25, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Because not all images in a FA or GA were there when it passed the assessment. We don't freeze articles after those processes. -- ۩ Mask 12:27, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, that's true (but has nothing to do with "gaming"). Rd232 ^talk 12:35, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I dont think its in WP:BEANS territory to point out that an easy way to keep your non-free image from being deleted is to find a way onto a GA or FA, then use it without rationale wherever. I wouldnt be opposed to this proposal for images that passed the assessment provided that there was a clause acknowledging that if text changed enough to invalidate the commentary aspect or what have you they could be removed. -- ۩ Mask 12:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

That probably complicates things too much then; probably better to think about a general discussion approach (see separate heading below). Rd232 ^talk 12:42, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure about FAs, but I'd certainly oppose including GAs in such an extra rule. I can see no evidence whatsoever that a GA review typically entrils competent non-free image review. There is nothing in the procedural setup that could ensure that the reviewers are competent enough for doing this reliably. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:23, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

FA's can be challenged and delisted for various things; images can be one of them. While that is not a goal we must have, but I strongly feel that regardless of what rank or class the article has, they should be treated equally in policy. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 07:35, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Warning bot

Proposal: use a bot or other automated tools to issue warnings of problems identified, on article talk pages and/or the talk pages of uploaders, leaving some grace period before removal. Standard notices issued should be as helpful as possible on what's required. Rd232 ^talk 11:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

This is what BetacommandBot did. People got upset at bot notices. I thought it did an ok job though, seemed to be a bunch of drama over nothing. -- ۩ Mask 11:31, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Well maybe we should try again. The drama seems inherent in the topic; using a bot might help, because it would be written down (in the bot request) that it's OK to do it. Rd232 ^talk 12:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Warning bot for xFD/CSD images

The one thing about the whole FFD/CSD process for images is that the article talk pages are not notified when an image that is used on them is up for deletion. A good number of times now, an image, not one I uploaded, on an article I watch has been deleted, and the only notification is when a bot/admin goes through to delete the reference to it. Now, of course, one can argue that if the image is critical to the article I'm working on that I should add it to my watchlist, but I think that if a bot notified the article(s) in question when an image is up for deletion, this will help the entire process. Yes, it may encourage a bit more "me too" !voting at deletion discussions, but I'd rather see more input for images than what we have now. --MASEM (t) 12:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

That makes so much sense it's amazing it's not done already. We do now have CommonsNotificationBot doing a similar task for Commons files... Rd232 ^talk 13:02, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

In the spent years whose speech is dim, I seem to remember that whenever an image was subject to pending deletion, a tag would appear beneath it or replacing it on each page where the image appeared. I have no idea when this practice stopped, or why. It certainly did do a better job at getting image deletion discussions noticed. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 21:04, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

There's still some language somewhere in the deletion process instructions that asks nominators to do this, and I think Twinkle still tries to do it for some categories of deletions. The trouble is that all the old instructions talked of tagging the article pages, not the talk pages. And with article pages, there's the big problem that not all images have obvious ways of adding a caption to them. Images used inline in text; images used in infoboxes or other other templates, etc. Infobox templates are hugely different when it comes to how image-related parameters are coded, so it can be a non-trivial task even for the human tagger to find the right place where to add the notification; for a bot it's impossible. The actual practice has long been that most routine nominators do no manual deletion notification whatsoever; whatever Twinkle does gets done, otherwise it doesn't. A bot doing article talk page notifications would be highly beneficial. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:30, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Create the uploader bit

Of course, this will need help from the nerds coding MediaWiki. Just like we have the admin bit, and we vote to select who has admin powers, users intending to be image uploaders should first as permission for the community, and we would grant it only to those who have a clue about it.

Ideally, there should be some page where non-uploaders could request specific image uploads to be performed by uploaders, just like we sometimes request an edit to a protected page. An historic of good upload requests could help the user in a future Request for Uploadership. --Damiens.rf 11:40, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Better idea would be to make it something akin to a hybrid of autoconfirmed and rollback... grant it automatically on account creation, make it removable if the user shows an inability to follow community guidelines. -- ۩ Mask 12:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to agree with Damiens in part. Make this something that the users have to petition for (like rollback, autopatrolled, reviewer) to demonstrate that they understand the policies regarding uploading and are less likely to upload a slew of NFCC violating files. Hasteur (talk) 14:58, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

What is the evidence here? What proportion of new uploads are problematic? If we discourage 90% of first time uploaders whose contribution is good, to inconvenience 10% whose upload has problems, that is not a good trade-off. Jheald (talk) 17:17, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Take a look at Special:NewFiles. --damiens.rf 17:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, a huge proportion of newbie uploads is problematic. Watch my edits in the next few minutes, I'm going to go through the new uploads page now and tag some. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:06, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I just checked the latest 16 freshly uploaded files. 10 of them were problematic and had to be tagged or speedied. Of these, 7 were from new(ish) or inexperienced editors. This is not an untypical situation. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:20, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd rather it be the case that it is automatically set and removed on problems, than the reverse. Not only does that follow most other new user approaches, making an uploader bit be something you have to request/earn/prove/etc will discourage editors with legitimately good files (free or otherwise) from uploading them. But to counteract this, we can put warning language all over the upload templates that uploading too many images that fail policy will result in this bit being removed, and then encourage editors that are unsure to go to the "upload request" page idea below. --MASEM (t) 15:13, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

We could then distinguish the right to upload self-made material (maybe true by default) and the right to upload more complicated images (requestable by merits). Of course, we would still have to deal with the problem of fake/misguided claims of authorship, but I believe the problems with new-uploads would be much simpler if the upload page for a newbie, instead of listing all the complicated possibilities, simply said "YOU CAN ONLY UPLOAD PHOTOS YOU TOOK YOURSELF. Click here to request upload-superpowers". --damiens.rf 15:43, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I would certainly like to have a "block this user only from uploading images" button – it would be much more humane than doing full blocks. About Damiens' suggestion, I don't think there's any straightforward way to implement that, either technically nor procedurally. A user right is something hard-coded into the software, and how would that hard-coded function be taught to distinguish between different kinds of images? Unless you want to reduce the difference between the two status groups to a mere difference in the wording of the upload instructions. It would also be far too easily gamed and circumvented. Uploaders who now walk blithely past all the big red signs telling they need to add copyright status and source information, will just as blithely walk past any big red sign telling them to only upload self-made images. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:57, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I believe, maybe too optimistically, that a unique simple rule like "Only photos you took! Only drawings you made!" would be easier to enforce. There's nothing wikipediesque in such a rule. Even my grandma could understand that (had she not been dead). We could them super-speedy delete anything failing that, and immediately revoke the upload-bit. --damiens.rf 16:37, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

How about fixing the upload process? It's atrocious in the first place. Virtually every image I upload has to have a tag manually added to it because the upload process doesn't give enough options or explanations. — BQZip01 — ^talk 20:17, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• I instinctively liked the 'block this user from uploading images' idea when I read it, but FutureP's argument actually put me off it a bit: why should we be being 'humane' to editors who intentionally, or at least knowingly, flout the guidelines of the community? Uploading crappy images after everyone's patience has been exhausted is a wider behavioural issue. ╟─TreasuryTag►Subsyndic General─╢ 21:09, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
  • There are users (I could name a few) that are great content editors/ccreators but utterly incompetent uploaders. Right to upload should be a privilege. But right to suggest an upload (that is, right to upload an image for evaluation) could be open for anyone. --damiens.rf 21:20, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Upload-this-for-me request page

"some page where non-uploaders could request specific image uploads to be performed by uploaders" - that's a good idea in itself, though there are practical issues. The whole file upload licencing thing can be a nightmare to navigate - if we had a page like that it would be very helpful. If it was very prominently linked, it would do a lot of good even if we didn't fiddle with the user rights to force newcomers to use it, because it would be so much easier. And it would obviously give a chance for experienced users to help prevent uploads that shouldn't be made, and get the licencing right early on. Rd232 ^talk 12:30, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:FFU? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:53, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, only obligatory. --damiens.rf 17:37, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but rejigged to cover both users who can't upload for technical reasons, and users who can't upload because the whole thing is too damned confusing and scary. And after rejigging, link it appropriately from various places to reflect that. Rd232 ^talk 19:13, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is useful. It will not reduce the number of bad upload attempts, and only cause more work because each attempt, both good and bad, will have to be processed manually by an experienced editor. It's less work letting them first try and then just delete the bad ones (and hope they'll learn from the experience, which often they don't). Besides, if we're talking about images they created themselves – which is the ones we actually want to have – they'll typically not yet be previously published. There's no way, technically, how we could help them uploading something from their own computer. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:25, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Well if it ain't broke don't fix it. Oh wait, "hope they'll learn from the experience, which often they don't", said someone familiar with the issue. Also, "if we're talking about images they created themselves" - I thought of that. It's not hard to figure out a system where offline images can be submitted by email, to supplement an onwiki request. Finally, I'm not thinking about this purely from the point of view of improving NFCC. I know several new users who would have posted images for fair use (and they would have been very valid uses, greatly enhancing the relevant articles' encyclopedic value) if they could only figure out how. They couldn't, and gave up. I offered to help, but wasn't entirely sure about all the FUR stuff myself, and by that time they had lost faith in the idea. Rd232 ^talk 23:16, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the offline/email suggestion: OTRS already handles Wikipedia:Contact us/Photo submission which could probably be expanded to cover non-free images. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:23, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Possibly, but I doubt they'd appreciate the extra workload. And this is something any suitably experienced user can do, it doesn't need OTRS. But, that does serve as a model. Rd232 ^talk 15:36, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

@Fut.Perf., What you say unfortunately makes sense. Maybe the upload bit should be more like an image use quarantine...--damiens.rf 23:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea, but those responding to requests should clearly be able to deny requests noting things easily failing NFC (and explaining why to the user). --Masem 15:13, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Of course. Acting as a filter before upload is definitely part of the point. Rd232 ^talk 15:38, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Image use Quarantine

New users will lack a bit that will prevent their uploads to appear on main space until they are unlocked by bitted users. Users may run for Request for UploadBittership and repeated bad image use may make your bit revoked. By the way, how hard is to get something implemented on the software in the unlikely case we can actually achieve consensus for such a marvelous apparatus implementation? --damiens.rf 23:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Explain users XfD is no big deal

The most dramatic complains about images being nominated for deletion come from editors that believe it's beyond obvious why the image should be kept. Some help page should explain these folks that no harm is done if a dick nominates a good image for deletion based on spurious arguments. If they're so sure the the argument is stupid, they should just let it roll. --Damiens.rf 11:44, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

This kind of thing needs much more advertising in general. Not only does it help this specific case, but it takes care of much of the drama generated from VfD/IfD/MfD in general. -- ۩ Mask 11:50, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

What do you have in mind more specifically? Some kind of notice on the deletion discussion, or somewhere else? Or an essay that can be linked to? Rd232 ^talk 12:32, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Can't we go directly for brain implants? --Damiens.rf 15:48, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that deletion discussions at FFD are underpublicized and underscrutinized. Those with a particular interest in removing NFC regularly patrol the debates, while those who prefer improving articles (the majority) only pop in when an image in an article they're working on gets nominated. This is one reason why I support a more visible discussion -- such as on the article talk page -- as a first step before listing at FFD. TotientDragooned (talk) 20:05, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

TotientDragooned is exactly right about that imbalance between NFC regulars and the majority of editors. Actually, to someone who thinks (whether they are right or wrong) that an image improves a page, XfD really is a big deal. Would we ever tell anyone that CSD or AfD are no big deal? The perception that XfD is just housekeeping is part of the problem here. Once one gets into a discussion about whether or not certain information can or cannot be conveyed without an image, one is discussing a serious matter of editorial judgment, not something where one can click off a checklist, and both sides of the debate should be assumed to be intelligent and acting in good faith. It's not a matter of explaining that it's no big deal. It's a matter of explaining that it's nothing personal. And the best way to achieve that is to communicate with the user in a way that acknowledges that they have strong feelings, and treats those feelings with courtesy. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:29, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Please re-read my point above. This proposal asks to be made clear somewhere that there's no reason to freak out over a nomination you believe is fundamentally flawed, as fundamentally flawed nominations won't get your image deleted.

It may sound as an strange clarification to ask, but experience shows the greatest FfDs dramas will come from editors that are complete certain about the appropriateness of the image. They are the most likely to open ANI threads or to ignore AGF on the deletion discussion. --damiens.rf 22:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

And I'm saying that some users will react strongly even if that's explained to them, and it doesn't have to mean that they are being unreasonable. Faced with a situation like that, the best approach, and the best way not to wind up in DR, is to treat their concerns with courtesy, and if the flawed nomination is going to end in a "keep", take their side in the discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:04, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Create a zero-tolerance policy for personal attacks on deletion discussions

There's no reason to talk about editors in image deletion discussions. We should talk only about images, policies and articles. A new policy should be created to allow the automatic removal of any comment/vote containing any criticism towards any of the participants. --Damiens.rf 11:47, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the sentiment, but bad-faith nominations sometimes need to be examined. -- ۩ Mask 12:12, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Not at the deletion discussion. --Damiens.rf 15:48, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, bad faith nominations need to be called out on the spot to alert others to the fact [redacted] Carrite (talk) 03:16, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Personal attack removed. This is precisely the sort of thing we indeed should have a zero-tolerance policy for. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:27, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

And, of course, nominators should watch what they say about editors who argue for keeping. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:09, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

• I support a zero-tolerance policy for personal attacks on any Wikipedia page. But this has really nothing to do witn nonfree content.  Sandstein  06:39, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Automatic remove mee too votes

FfD discussios are not vote based. Arguments like "Delete - Per Bongo" or "Keep - Per Jongo" are just noise, and would only influence incompetent admins. They should be removed from the discussion on sight. --Damiens.rf 11:51, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a constant problem in any *fD discussion. *fD are discussions, not votes. Sometimes someone else has enumerated the position for keeping or deleting so endorsments of that position is all that needs to be said. To remove other editor's positions borders on refactoring editor's content. Just do the same thing with ill reasoned positions at AfD, refute the position and demonstrate in policy why it's invalid. Hasteur (talk) 15:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't work. Few admins have the guts do close a FfD against the vote balance, not matter how hallow some arguments are. --Damiens.rf 15:50, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

XfDs are there to tease out community's assessment as a whole. If some particular views have wide support, but others very little backing, that is part of what the process is there to discover. Admins are already directed to concentrate on the questions identified by policy for input, and what the responses are specifically saying about them. Jheald (talk) 17:12, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

What you describe amounts to a vote. It doesn't matter how many editors agree with a given argument. The arguments should be judge on it's strength. Mee too votes are but a noisy drama fuel. --damiens.rf 18:10, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

XfD's can deal with some fairly subjective questions. In such cases, to take the temperature of the community, to determine how strong the community believes a particular assertion is, it is useful to listen to all the voices. It also transparently shows the wider community is being listened to, so at the end of the day everyone can own the outcome. Like it or not, it's part of how we determine WP:CONSENSUS, and that process is part of what keeps WP alive. Jheald (talk) 18:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I understand most me too votes as indicating, "I agree with the general views of the nominator (or people opposing deletion)." They're valid opinions. If I make what I personally consider a good deletion rationale for something, it's relevant that another editor says they agree that it's a good one. Everything does not have to written out repetitively. DGG (alternate account) (talk) 21:52, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

^what he said^ .. seriously though, I do agree with DGG on this point. If someone makes a good logical and a policy based argument, then I don't see what's wrong with a "per Bongo" !vote. While consensus isn't strictly about "numbers", and the arguments themselves are taken into account - we're only kidding ourselves if we say too adamantly "It's not a Vote!!, and numbers don't count" — Ched :  ?  01:58, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

• Because XfDs are not votes, weak arguments should simply be disregarded in the closure. If they are not, this can be raised at DRV. Deleting opinions would only give rise to edit wars on XfD.  Sandstein  06:41, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Require prior discussion attempt for cases with subjective element

Proposal: require prior discussion on an article talk page before removing NFC content from articles, except where the NFC failure is unambiguous. If there's a subjective element (eg judging whether it's merely decorative), an attempt at discussion is required. A time limit (7 days?) applies for deciding the issue. The image can then be removed, unless there's consensus to keep. Note: the "discuss if there's subjectivity" core idea could be structured all sorts of ways, so feel free way to suggest alternatives. Rd232 ^talk 12:40, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion for a third way that might satisfy, instead of removing the image, turn it into a link by adding a prepending colon. If after discussion the image is held to be fine, erase the colon and make the link back into a thumbnail, or delete the link if its not. Solves the use problem without 'vanishing' the image, and makes a visual cue that something is up for a user unfamiliar with our processes more then simply blanking the image altogether. -- ۩ Mask 12:51, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Maybe. But then we might as well use a placeholder "NFC image under discussion" image, with an explanatory caption pointing to the discussion, and with a colon link in the caption to the relevant file. Rd232 ^talk 12:56, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

That does sound like a better idea, and is one that would have my full support. -- ۩ Mask 12:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

This is bad idea. Why don't just discuss it on FdD directly? Your concerns seems reminiscent of the problems I pointed in #Explain users XfD is no big deal.

And this reminds me of a proposal that appeared in a recent talk discussion... will post bellow. --Damiens.rf 15:54, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

An excellent idea. There is no rush to remove fair use images if a little patience can make discussions more inclusive and collegial. TotientDragooned (talk) 20:10, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

• Bad idea. Simply too much work. Sorry, life is too short for this. Problematic images are still mass occurrences. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:27, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
• I support this idea in principle. Problematic images are mass occurrences, but so are apparently problematic image removals.  Sandstein  06:42, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
  • First, please provide a recent example of a pattern of mass "problematic image removals". I'm not aware any such thing is happening (contentious FFD nominations, yes, but not mass removals from articles). Second, a general prohibition of such a type of edit would be an unacceptable limitation of the basic rule of WP:BOLD. If a simple bold edit can solve a problem, it must always be legitimate to first try and simply do it. Third, this draws out discussion over an unduly long period. So, you'd first have to conduct a discussion on talk, let's say for a week, during which the image stays on the page, and if then there's still no unanimous consensus, you'd then have to open an FFD, for another week, during which the image will again stay on the page? There's no way you could keep track of all these discussions for so long. I'm not prepared to keep two pages watchlisted for two weeks for every single image I have to challenge. – Fourth, if you're proposing a "no-removals-without-prior-discussion" rule, why not start with a "no-additions-without-prior-discussion" rule? After all, non-free content must only be used if there's a consensus for it. Anybody who wishes to use a non-free image except in a few of the generally accepted blanket categories, let them first make that proposal on the talk page, before uploading. Would you also agree with this? Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:08, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Rename Files for Deletion to File for Discussion

Rename Files for Deletion to File for Discussion so that image owners get less likely to freak out when some image is nominated. Nothing in the process needs to be changed. Just how it's called. --Damiens.rf 15:54, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is useful. People above said they want obligatory discussion before deletion. But FFD is exactly where this could be done. Doing it on FFD directly has the advantage that you immediately get outside, neutral and competent observers on the case, and that article editors can immediately see the policy context (precedents, other similar cases etc.), plus, if a consensus for deletion is reached, it can be acted upon right then and there. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:31, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

• +1 — Ched :  ?  02:05, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
• I am surprised this is the last page that is Anything for Deletion (but then I am an old fart who still uses VFD when it comes to articles when talking to people). I agree with the rename. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 07:37, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Remember that Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia first and foremost

m:mission says, The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We are, first and foremost, a free encyclopedia. While completely omitting non-free content will inhibit our educational mission, we must strive to keep such content to a minimum—if we allow non-free content where it would not benefit our readers (e.g., in userspace), then the "free" aspect of Wikipedia begins to crumble. But we also must remember to ignore all rules. If someone needs to upload a non-free file for use in a userspace draft with the full intent of moving the draft to mainspace within a day or two, then it's not hurting Wikipedia's mission.

We simply can't use non-free content carelessly, but we also can't destroy educational content. I always hear the complaint that people have no time to add FURs to images, so they just tag them for deletion instead. Shame on those people. An encyclopedia contains educational information. If something without a FUR would meet the non-free content policy with a FUR, add one, for heaven's sake. This is a collaborative encyclopedia—we have to clean up after sloppy uploaders and images uploaded years ago. Deletion is not the answer to any problem. When your car's windshield has a crack in it, you don't buy a new car. You get the windshield fixed. If a file is missing a FUR, then you add one, not delete the entire file. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, but it is an encyclopedia.

/ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:53, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

• In a way, I agree more with the text of what you said, than with the section header above it. The recent Dispatch article talks about a "conundrum" between being a free encyclopedia, and being an informative one. As you say very clearly in your closing sentence, there's more to the encyclopedia mission than just being free, although being free is of course important. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:19, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Some of Fetchcomms second-paragraph text unfortunately reinforces the frequent practice of regarding—and using—a FUR as a rubber stamp without individual consideration. Mass-used templates used for FURs do also encourage this practice. Peripitus (Talk) 21:21, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

While I agree that boilerplate rationales aren't always a good idea, I think the problem is with editors who don't understand their appropriate application. Obviously, a FUR does not automagically make any non-free image OK for use. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 13:46, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I find that, in general, the boilerplate rationales are a poor idea. I frequently run across users who have been given the impression that because there is a such a way of producing a rationale, that is a sufficiency. It is not obvious to many that there is good and bad FUR. - 10:52, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

• Very few of the images that end up at deletion discussions do so because of purely formal reasons, of missing rationales that are truly a routine matter to fix. Most deletion cases actually cannot be remedied simply by changing the FUR or something like that. When your car's windshield has a crack in it, you don't just plaster it over with sellotape; you actually delete the windshield. And about the fixable ones, I, personally, do reserve the right to choose whether I want to spend my time fixing them or not. If I personally find the stuff valuable, yes, of course. But the 1015th image of the latest power ranger model, the latest American trash sitcom episode or yet another non-notable wrestling contest? No, just no. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Well, there are two parts to that analogy, I suppose—in many cases, the disputed files should be deleted as violations of the NFCC and such. But I'm more talking about CSD-tagging files rather than FfD. Some windshields must be removed altogether, but others can still be patched (and I get sick of seeing those ads on my TV). If a file does meet every criteria except, say, it's lacking a license tag or a FUR, then might as well save others' time and add the missing tag. But you're right, tagging them is justified by policy, and I also get tired of looking at hideous film posters and the like. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 13:46, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Just keep historical and educational material

If a fair use image or file clearly has potential historic or educational value, it shouldn't be deleted, even if it isn't being used in an article currently. This becomes especially important whe dealing with old uploads from relatively inactive accounts. It also becomes important to the extent that policy is thought to demand that articles must be rewritten to draw specific attention to fair use images. There's enough digital camera filename files, snapshots, and unused logos out there whose deletion will never be really controversial; but anything with general encyclopedia value should simply be kept, or at least have its deletion postponed, until a proper place can be found for it. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 03:36, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that the idea of "general encyclopedic value" is highly subjective. What is an important historical photo to one may be unnecessary to another. Furthermore, some historical and education photos can be replaced with free content. There can't be a blanket exception for any specific class of non-free materials. --MASEM (t) 05:07, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

This is a solution in search for a problem. Very few good non-free images get orphaned just by chance, when there is still a good chance they could be useful. They get orphaned because somebody resolves we don't need them. If we don't need them, they can be deleted, period. The principle that we keep only those non-free images we really need is the most fundamental part of the whole policy; changing that is just not going to happen. And it's not as if such items would vanish from the memory of humanity just because we don't keep them on our servers. We are not a general-purpose non-free image mirror depository. If it turns out later that an image is needed again, it can always be re-uploaded. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:15, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Distinguish between genuine fair use and free non-Commons material

At least some files have been uploaded to Wikipedia rather than Commons, not because they are genuinely unfree, but because the submitter's uncertainty over the vagaries of copyright law or uncertainty about whether they are suitable for the scope of Commons or not. They may be anonymous folk artifacts, images once owned by defunct businesses, a photo of a truck or farm machine from an old family album, or documents from the era of 8-bits, BBSes, and handles. This sort of material is likely to be demanded to comply with fair use policy when what's really at issue is the submitter's uncertainty about copyright, or whether the material was published with an intent to encourage its duplication. If it seems meant for free distribution, or any copyright owner is likely unidentifiable or out of business, it should only have to meet a test of potential historic or educational value. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 03:36, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

We cannot convert a non-GFDL or CC-BY license into one of those if it is not explicitly given by the copyright owner, regardless of the freedom of reuse they state for the image. We are looking at free content as any that is limited by copyright, not cost. This is something that the Foundation clearly lays out, what they consider free (and ergo, what is non-free). --MASEM (t) 05:05, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Cases like out-of-business companies are already covered insofar as they can be assumed to pass NFCC#2; that means the bar is lowered for them to some extent. Other than that, there really is no reason to make any exceptions here. I really don't know why being "from the era of 8-bits, BBSes, and handles" should constitute any kind of reason for exemption. "Anonymous folk artifacts" are usually PD anyway (in most European countries at least), but of course there's often the issue of a separate photographic copyright. Photos of a truck from an old family album could almost always be replaced with new and correctly licensed photographs. And so on. What you are describing is basically just a "I-don't-care-about-copyright-so-I-assume-nobody-else-does-either" attitude, and making allowances for that is just a license for intellectual laziness. The only serious gray area where deletion practice needs to watch out is at the interface between non-free items and PD-old/PD-US items; sometimes images get tagged as non-free because the uploader is too lazy to work out their actual copyright status, when if they had investigated it as they should they could have found out it's actually PD (let's say because of non-registration or non-renewal in the US). FFD discussions quite often catch these cases successfully. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:26, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

In the future, insist on the free licensing of logos and the like

My impression is that a large number of free images are various logos, uploaded by users working on articles about the business that uses them. I've long suspected that many such images were uploaded by stakeholders in the business.

I'm not a specialist in the field, but surely there must be some version of one of our acceptable licenses that satisfies the free redistribution requirement, while requiring attribution and not prejudicing the business's right to use the image as a trademark. If so, we could at least in the future insist on its use for such material. This would stem at least part of the influx of new non-free images, add to the body of available free images. Logos for defunct or otherwise historical businesses that aren't being edited by insiders would need a case by case pass, but that's no more than what they should be getting now. <mustache twirling> And knowing which logos were uploaded by business insiders would be .... of interest to me. </mustache twirling> - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 16:40, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

That's unrealistic optimist. Do you believe anyone would be freely releasing self-images for using in bios if we give them the chance to use a non-free publicity image of themselves? --damiens.rf 16:56, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

If it's their publicity image, it would seem to me that they can release it under whatever license they want. We would insist on a license that avoids fair-use issues. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 17:26, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Sure they can, but would them? Understand my point. As long as they can upload it and retain control, they would not release it as free content. We "insist" on free image of people by forbidding the use of non-free images on these cases. How do you suggest we "insist" on free logos? By forbidding the upload of non-free ones? --damiens.rf 17:36, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. From this day forward, if you want your logo on Wikipedia, you must upload it under a free licence. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 17:47, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Again, following up from the previous sections, we cannot magically change the copyright license on copyrighted works (even if the copyright is not explicitly stated, in which case it defaults to standard US copyright law); only the copyright owner can grant that permission. Even if the company is defunct, someone still owns the copyright assets. (To be clear, there is a common case where logos made of simple geometric figures and normal text fail the threshold of originality for copyright, and therefore cannot be copyrighted even though they are still trademarked, in which case we can place them in the public domain. But the determination of what is a failure of originality is still somewhat subjective). --MASEM (t) 17:01, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not talking about what we're doing. I'm talking about business owners and agents; if it's possible to use an acceptable free license that only affects copyright and not trademark, these people would have authority (or at least apparent authority) to release images under that license. If they want their logo on Wikipedia, after the effective date of the change, that's what they'll have to do. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 17:26, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

We have the ORTS (see meta:ORTS and Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team) whereby if businesses want their logo (or any media) in a free-use license for WP but can't upload it themselves, they can agree to allow it to be released in a compatible license. the ORTS reviews such requests and then tags such images with the right language to allow for free reuse on WP. This has certainly been done in the past (File:A Different View.png). But again, to emphasis, the copyright owner must participate in this process: they don't have to initiate it - any WP can email companies to request the re-licensing - but they do have to send the key email/letter confirming their agreement to re-licensing. --MASEM (t) 17:34, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Judging from my experience elsewhere, I suspect that most organization logos are uploaded by owners, employees, or agents of the organization being represented; they are the copyright owners. In that situation, at least, I'd say that a pre-upload statement along the lines of "you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License" would be enough. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 19:02, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Where are you getting your statistics from? With my experience of the whole non-free logo thing, I would suspect only a tiny percentage are uploaded by those who own them. Also, this isn't as simple as you make out- even if you've got an interest in a business, perhaps a massive one, the logo may not belong to you. The same thing's true of publicity photos; they often do not belong to the subject. By default, of course, they belong to the photographer. This is something I've done a lot of work with- I've uploaded plenty of stuff released from "official" sources, some of which has been sent to us, some of which I've requested. I've even got pictures and sounds that are now featured. This would, of course, be the ideal solution to the problem, but it cannot eliminate non-free use altogether. If you're interested- FP released by production company after a request, FP released by the photographer, set of FS released by the band, and there are plenty of others. This is some of the work I'm most proud of, and I think it's a great thing for Wikipedia but, sadly, right now, it's not really viable on a large scale (though, I have gotten logos before). J Milburn (talk) 22:28, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't have hard data, but the non free files I see with most frequently are logos that have been added to infoboxes in articles about various businesses. This is the area of policing I am busiest in. Many of these articles, which typically come to my attention for being spam written in rosily vague PR language, are obviously written by writers who have a conflict of interest. They are advertisements inserted into Wikipedia by corporate PR departments, business owners, or consultants hired to advertise on Wikipedia. (The presence of a detailed but unreferenced history of the business is a giveaway.) My feeling is, if they have COI issues, they own the copyrights, or are agents of the actual owner, with at least apparent authority to license the image for use on Wikipedia. This may not stop the filling up of the files space with garbage no longer used in articles, but it at least would reduce the number of non-free file submissions.

(Question. I assume non-free files that aren't used in articles are fingered by one of the several file patrolling bots, so these logos will eventually be removed as unused/nonfree after the articles are deleted. If this is not the case, let me know, and I will add it to my own list of cleanup tasks.) - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 00:57, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

On the last point , there is at least one bot that discovers orphaned non-frees, warns the uploader, and tags for deletion 7 days later.

I do note that the default upload form, if you know you want to upload a logo, immediately assumes you aren't the owner of the logo, tagging it non-free. That might be part of the problem, but COI itself is a big issue. If a company is invested in making sure they aren't doing COI but providing WP with resources to make an accurate article, they can likely be contacted to release their logo for an appropriate license for WP. --MASEM (t) 15:50, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

It would surely be a helpful idea to let the upload form present the logo uploader with the option "I own the logo's copyright and I hereby release it under cc-by-sa", alongside with "I downloaded this logo from the Internets". --damiens.rf 16:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Disagree. We need more than just the mere assertion of some anonymous person on the Internet that they own the logo. J Milburn (talk) 22:35, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Is it still possible to upload an image without at least a registered account? - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 03:51, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Non-Free Content Noticeboard

Coming off from an idea Delta provided, and given the tendency for such issues to end up at WT:NFC, a non-free content noticeboard at WP:NFC/N) could be used as a dispute resolution page for when non-free use is questions. Now, I realize that we have WP:NFCR but this is often only for single images and really doesn't work well for, say, a page where overuse of NFC is called into question, or even images used across multiple pages. One aspect of this may be to reformulate NFCR to allow it to deal with single-case issues. Discussions on whole classes of images or articles should still be fielded at WT:NFC. --MASEM (t) 17:50, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer to use only one place for both cases. All we need to do is to change the How to nominate section so that it's not only directed for single file cases. --damiens.rf 17:57, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Something we might also consider is allowing such discussions, as to whether a particular use of an image is appropriate, rather than exclusively its very existence, at WP:FFD -- particularly if the proposal above to re-brand FFD as Files for Discussion goes through.

I can see merit in the parallel existence of two tracks -- one (WP:NFCR) that is slower, more open-ended, more discursive; and one (WP:FFD) where discussion is set against a tighter, strictly guillotined time-scale. Jheald (talk) 18:05, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Yea, there would still need to be two venues, one where admin action is absolutely needed if the deletion closes as delete, and a second that may require admin action but not always the expected result. We just don't want three or more such boards around. (Or at least as long as we keep WP:MCQ as generic for any media, free or non-free, and aimed at newer users, while NFCR or NFC/N is set up around non-free use specifically. --MASEM (t) 18:23, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The Two Versions

This is Devil's Advocate territory, but... what about having a user-based preference to hide non-free content? That way, people interested in re-use won't be misled, or need to check every image individually. It could possibly satisfy both ends of the cultural spectrum on this issue. (This wouldn't be easy to implement, but that's probably made moot by it being a terrible idea...:) ) PS I mention this because I thought it might be productive or illuminating to for the different sides to each say why it's a terrible idea. Rd232 ^talk 22:05, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Out of interest, I assume you picture this as "NFC is there, but it can be hidden", as opposed to "there is some NFC, but you can only see it if you want to"? I don't think it would fix the current issue, because, presumably, the policy would stay the same. J Milburn (talk) 22:17, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I meant the former, on the basis that that's what the vast majority of readers will want. Rd232 ^talk 22:56, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Terrible idea from the UI standpoint (see discussions two years ago about depreciating automatic data formatting tools and linking for similar reasons); but I could see a left-hand menu link to provide the "redistributable" copy of a page which excludes NFC. You'd likely need the Wikimedia software to include bits for images to mark them as non-printable in the redist copy. --MASEM (t) 22:17, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Not sure the UI makes that much difference; but that suggestion would be a good supplement. Technically, all the information is there on the relevant file page, so maybe it isn't so unfeasible. Rd232 ^talk 22:56, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

The highlights of the date formatting/linking problem is that this means if you are a article quality reviewing editor (like at GA, FA, PR, or CE), you would have to review the page twice - once with non-frees in place, once without them. A second aspect is that unregistered users would not have the ability to select this (as a preference), and then we'd have to go into discussion about what the default setting should be for unregistered and new users. The idea of a NFC-free page works better as a link on the side which anyone can get to without registering or setting preferences, though probably would still require editors to make sure the page still "works" without said media. (eg if the text talks about "this [nfc] figure to the left", that would need to be edited away since that pic wouldn't be there in the second version). But this review would be easier to manage. --MASEM (t) 23:02, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't see what problem this proposal would solve. Few people (only the diehard purists) would prefer to see a whole encyclpedia completely devoid of non-free images. The image-free page versions would also often make no sense, because wherever non-free images are in fact used legitimately, the text typically refers to them in some way. Finally, it would save us no labour and no conflicts. We would still have to expend the same amount of effort policing the image-full versions to make sure some reasonable standards are met, no matter whether those standards were the same as now or slightly more liberal. The Foundation rules about minimality and replaceability would still remain in force, obviously. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:10, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that only "die hard purists" would want to see a non-free-cleansed version. What if a teacher wanted to prepare a custom CD of articles from WP to distribute to their class but needed to avoid copyright issues due to the school's restrictions or even their local laws? What if someone wanted to publish a book of WP articles for commercial gain but exclude non-frees to avoid redistribution issues (however stupid this idea is, people DO do this)? I can see a number of reasons for a reader to want to access the NFC-free version easily. Now, granted if NFC is being used right (NFCC#8 specifically) the removal of the image should hurt the comprehension of the article, but that's a decision the end user needs to make themselves. --MASEM (t) 23:19, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Provide guidance about bad arguments for XfD

Lower in this talk, I became aware of how editors favoring deletion can be frustrated by repeated claims of "common sense". Obviously, that's a faulty argument for keeping an image. We already have Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, which focuses on articles rather than files. Why not develop a corresponding page, specifically about XfD? Obviously, this won't do much good for spammers, who are unlikely to listen, but for good-faith editors, whether favoring keep or delete, it may be a way of raising the level of discourse, improving understanding, and lowering the amount of drama. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:59, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm all in for the creation of such page. I'll start my contributions right now:

1. "An image is worth a thousand words".
2. "Bad faith nomination".
3. "The image is used in a featured article".
4. "Mee too".
5. "Following your argument, we would have to delete all images on Wikipedia".
6. "Any image can be described by words" (in reply to "this image adds no relevant information that can't conveyed by free text alone").
7. "It's fair use".
8. It's low resolution. Thus, fair use."
9. It's educational. Thus, fair use."
10. "The article used this image for ages and nobody complained".
11. "Irreplaceable!" - (as if NFCC was multiple choice).
12. "The event shown in the photo never gonna happen again. Irreplaceable!" - (but why do we need to see the event to begin with?).
13. "Historic image" - (for any image that shows an historic event)
14. "They would never sue us".
15. "This is the climax scene in that series' episode"
16. "I couldn't find a free replacement. You should first go and find a free image, then delete this once you found one" (per FPaS suggestion bellow).

I would add more as they come to mind. --damiens.rf 15:17, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, yeah, some of these sound eerily familiar. Such a page might in fact be a good idea. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:17, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

BTW, don't forget this one: I couldn't find a free replacement. You should first go and find a free image, then delete this once you found one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:25, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Though I think most of these are fine, I will take exception to the FA one, or at least, insist on careful explanation of this. This is not to say an image used in an FA gets a free pass, but at least for any FA that has passed since 2009 where the strength of the image use and review has been high, there's a reasonably good indication that the image (assuming present during the FAC period) passed NFCC, moreso than for any of the other above "reasons" for keeping an image. For earlier FAs where the image review was not as high, this cannot qualify, and there's always the likelihood that an image in a more recent FA may become unnecessary (such as through the discovery of a free replacement that wasn't known about before), or consensus has changed on the subject matter. So while the general argument of saying "its used in an FA" is no assurance to keep an image, it holds more weight in very limited cases than most of the other arguments presented. --MASEM (t) 16:36, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Sure. Most of these "arguments" should be listed together with a discussion about what "kernel of truth" they might actually contain in certain cases, and how to state that properly. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:07, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Mentioning the image use has survived an FAC per se, is never helpful in such discussion. Has the concern raised in the nomination been debated at the FA Review? If, so, just paste the wining arguments. If not, what as the point of pointing to the FA issue to begin with? It's like saying "A previous strict quality analysis of this article overlooked this problems, so we should overlook it here again.". --damiens.rf 17:34, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

That's what I mean. I agree just saying "it is in a FA, and therefore untouchable" is bogus. But if you can say "it has been reviewed at this FAC in 2010 (link here)", you're implicitly bringing in other opinions into this, adding more discussion and viewpoint for review. And of course one can counter this as well, saying "Well, only one person commented on the images, I think there needs to be more discussion" or the like. In essence, providing the FA statement provides a basis to build more discussion on, but alone is not a good argument to support a keep or delete statement for an image. --MASEM (t) 18:27, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, all! When I get around to it (aarghh!), I'll start a draft based on the discussion here (please continue to add possible items as you think of them), and I'll provide a link, both here and at WT:NFCC. I agree with FP's suggested number 16, and I also agree with Masem's comments about FA. In addition, I'm going to partly, not entirely, take issue with the following (numbered as above), partly for the purpose of figuring how to better nuance them, and partly to try to provide a counterbalance, recognizing that there can be flawed arguments supporting deletion as well as supporting keeping:

3. What Masem said.

5. I think there are cases where this can be a bogus reply to a criticism, but there are also cases where it is valid! (It depends upon the soundness of "your argument".)

6. I agree with this one. But the argument to which it responds, "this image adds no relevant information that can't [be] conveyed by free text alone", is itself one of the worst offenders in the entire category. Same thing as repeating "Decorative!" as a mantra. There are cases where it is true and valid, but others where it is false and unhelpful. To discuss this criterion (NFCC#8) intelligently, one needs to actually engage with the content, no matter which position one takes. Truly, if we can raise the level of discourse on this one point alone, the entire effort will have been worth it!

13 (and to a lesser extent 15). Somewhat the same issue as with FAs. Simply saying that it's historic, or that it's climactic, is a flimsy and off-point argument, I agree. But observing it in the course of explaining how an image makes it possible for readers to understand a key aspect of a page (in cases where it does) is entirely valid, and I don't want such a list to label valid arguments as bad.

--Tryptofish (talk) 17:24, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The point of 13 is exactly that. Being an image of a "climax moment" is not a reason to keep a non-free file. But being an image that "helps readers to understand a key aspect of the page" is. --damiens.rf 17:34, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

• Seems to me these (or almost all of them anyway) are certainly inadequate statements made tout court, all by themselves -- as they all to often are. That is the sense, I think, in which they were originally posted here; and in my view it is something worth pointing out. But some of them may not always be inappropriate points to make as destinations for comments, when supported by evidence and/or argumentation -- something which perhaps could be said in the intro. Jheald (talk) 17:41, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
• I've never been a huge fan of Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, but that's partially a byproduct of the large number of shortcut links the essay has; some are mildly inappropriate in tone, at least when used nakedly rather than as mnemonics. (Any en: editor whose contribution faces deletion deserves, at minimum, an explanation in English. My preference is to link policy and essay pages to words in sentences that describe what I'd want the user to take from the passage.) Some of these may have some merit for some images if not for all ("They would never sue us", when defunct businesses or obsolete products are involved.) That said, I don't think this is a horrible idea. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 19:48, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
• Another one to add: This image is free, anyone can download it from that website. (free beer vs free speech mantra misunderstanding). --MASEM (t) 13:20, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Sure. And there's also a more sophisticated version of that goes "since this image is readily available from many websites, our use is not making a difference in the copyright holders ability to profit from the image". --damiens.rf 14:28, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
• And another: This other article uses an image like this in the same manner, so should this one, and its counterpart We don't have images like this in similar articles, it doesn't need it here (aka the equivalent of OTHERSTUFFEXITS). --MASEM (t) 15:51, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Good stuff, thanks, keep 'em coming! I'm watching closely. (Per what Masem just pointed out, and what FP said earlier (about "kernel of truth") I'm going to insist that what comes out finally will treat keeping and deleting approximately the same, rather than giving one or the other an advantage, and will point users to how to make a better argument.) --Tryptofish (talk) 20:56, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

• I started User:Tryptofish/Arguments to avoid in image deletion discussions. Additions, suggestions, improvements, brickbats, whatever, are welcome (there, rather than here). Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 18:20, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Excellent start. Perhaps some of the images on the shorter sections need to go, but they do otherwise liven up a discussion on a debated topic. and I'm fine leaving the "usernames" as you have them to make it clear which side things fall onto. --MASEM (t) 19:10, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
    • Good and evenhanded. Two points to consider. First, as far as I know the valid argument for "historic" is with respect to the image, not the event. If an image is itself historical or iconic and is the subject of sourced commentary as such, e.g. Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (where the photograph and the circumstances of taking the photograph were an important part of the event), that's an argument for inclusion -- see WP:NFCI. Second, vis-a-vis WP:GOFIRST it's controversial to say that WP:SOFIXIT is a bad argument in deletion discussions. I strongly believe, as do many if not most, that editors should take a moment WP:BEFORE deleting or nominating to see if the problem is not one that has a simple technical fix. The point is, the person who makes a nomination has gone first, and they ought to think before they act. Others say flat-out that they're under no obligation to make technical fixes rather than deleting images. Arguments get made on both sides and they're not going away. The power of your essay is that it's evenhanded, and something that thoughtful editors everywhere can and should agree on. I think if you come down on one side of this particular issue versus the other here it's less likely to gain acceptance in that way. - Wikidemon (talk) 19:32, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
      • Thank you both very much. In the interests of keeping (trying to keep??) the discussion in one place, I'm going to copy both your comments to User talk:Tryptofish/Arguments to avoid in image deletion discussions, and reply there. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:26, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

(Technical) Refactor FfD to be more like AfD for easier browsing and sorting

My understanding is that currently, the FfD page is structured like AfD used to be, many years ago. (And get offa my lawn!) All nominations for a single day are included in a single page for the day they were nominated on. These, in turn, are transcluded into WP:FFD. If FfD were formatted more like WP:AFD, several advantages would flow from that restructuring. Individual file nominations would all be on separate subpages, which would be transcluded into day pages and so forth.

Getting nominations before the right eyes is IMO the single most important factor in getting reliable results and minimizing followup controversy. Separate subpages for each nomination would allow their categorization using WP:DELSORT for at least some nominations, and get files as well as articles to the attention of interested projects. The current setup does not really allow or encourage this. It may well be that many files just aren't going to be categorizable. For those that are, calling the nominations to the attention of the right projects would improve confidence in the results. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 15:17, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Completely support this. Image deletions in Commons is already like this. We could copy their experienced.

I would be very good to have pages/categories for Magazine cover deletions, Politician images deletions, historic image deletions....

In a side note, you'll have to agree that to be consistent, you should support my infamous mass nominations of images of a given topic, since it groups in a single day the discussions about a given rationale (magazine covers go May 29, historic images go May 31, etc...)--damiens.rf 16:29, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I completely support this too. (But I oppose the infamous mass nominations, the famous mass nominations, and the unknown mass nominations.) --Tryptofish (talk) 20:43, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Pause fair-use culling until FUR tool is operation

WP:FURME is being merged into WP:TWINKLE, but it doesnt currently work. As a result, I beg that the NFC enforces take a break until the tools are working again, or refocus their efforts to develop these tools so that it is easy for ordinary people to add FURs to images. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:06, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Comment: Dickishness, lack of consensus, and perceptions of fanaticism

I'm going to quote some things I've written over the last couple of days at WP:AN/I. Some users don't like what I have to say very much.

If large numbers users are justifiably astounded by the legalistic strictures and subjective requirements of what is alleged to be non-free image use policy, I would question its entitlement to the label of "policy" to begin with. There are those who are about building an encyclopedia; that is our primary purpose, and we're only peripherally about displaying the power of collaborative development or the support of some general "free content community". These goals, however fervently held, are peripheral to the goal of building an encyclopedia. At least one "only free content" advocate compares the cause to other socially obnoxious cranks like vegans. The bulk of the editorship, busy with other tasks, is constantly being interrupted by lectures deploring the environmental cost of meat, nagging about fat and cholesterol, and weeping salt tears over the suffering chickens in their pens.

The history of non-free content policy is a history of asshattery, which you have to have several years of experience with the project to get a panoramic view of. First came the demand that each such use, whether unique or of a type already recognized as apporpriate, must bear a fair use justification. Fair enough. Then the justification had to appear in a template. Then it had to appear in a separate template for each article. Each such change results in a drive for mass deletions of files, many of which were uploaded by editors who no longer stop by that often. Now comes a demand that articles themselves be rewritten around images, and another fair-use pogrom. A minority of editors have made removal of fair use material as a cause, and press for more numerous and subjective strictures. The majority of editors holds no such commitment to the cause, and notices only when articles they are interested in are effectively vandalized. I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that this policy has at least been partially highjacked by a minority, with a commitment to a cause that makes building an encyclopedia a secondary issue.

...

With the best of faith, the people who subscribe to the belief system that engenders all of these issues do not perceive a significant difference between "fair use image" and "copyright violation". Because of this, they aren't going to see bulk nominations for deletion as "being a dick". They aren't going to see their view that consensus does not matter in these issues and that the entire purge is non-negotiable as "being a dick". They aren't going to see repeated demands for the revision of image description pages every time they get a new stricture in the policy page as "being a dick". They aren't going to see the use of deletion procedures as the best way to raise these issues as "being a dick".

...

Misguided zeal to eliminate fair use images, and if they cannot be eliminated, to make their retention as difficult as possible, and subject to continuous, repeated second guessing, may be part of the problem. It is my opinion that it is. It is also my opinion that a fair use policy that can be read as making that sort of editing seem desirable does too little to discourage dickish behavior. This remains so even if the editors acting under that interpretation do so with the best of intentions given their beliefs about what's good for Wikipedia.

And I'll say it again. The most basic problem with NFCC as currently written is that it, and the history of changes to NFCC policy, have with the best intentions encouraged dickish behavior. Not every editor deeply involved in NFCC wants a free-content-only encyclopedia, but a fair number adhere to this minority viewpoint, and that is one group of editors that takes a strong interest in shaping fair use image policy. This is going to cause PR issues among the broader editor base.

If we want to decrease dickishness here, in my opinion first step would be to treat no part of the policy as non-negotiable. There should not be any perception that there is a drive to reduce the use of fair use images, or decrease their numbers. We get to establish to what extent fair use images are welcomed or tolerated here. Consensus is how that decision is made. I believe part of the problem is that people who want no or very few fair use images have had a disproportionate influence in shaping the policy as it currently stands. This isn't an accusation of bad faith; just a standard sort of community failure, one of the standard logical flaws of collective action. Users who care deeply about reducing fair use images are going to care more about what the policy says and how it is enforced than users who just want to make articles. This, I see, is starting to be a problem.

I also don't think that purely subjective grounds to restrict the use of an image should be raised first on deletion pages. These tell editors that they have contributed something unwelcome. WP:NFCC#8 should probably be deprecated, at least as a ground for deleting anything. New vague and subjective grounds for deletion (non-transformative???) should not be invented, and their use should result in speedy keeps as no valid criterion for deletion. We should establish that image description pages are not article pages, do not require citation to authority, and are there purely for compliance.

Most importantly, WP:FFD needs its version of WP:BEFORE. Whenever deletion of content is at issue, it is for the best to know that less drastic alternatives were tried first. Subjective concerns should not result in deletion of potentially useful material. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 17:44, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Would you consider rewriting your post to say the same necessary unpleasant truths without the unnecessary unpleasant words? The discussion has been surprisingly amicable so far. Thanks in advance, --damiens.rf 17:52, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I would like to bring attentions to these theses:

1. No part of WP:NFCC should be treated as non-negotiable;
2. There's not a drive to reduce the use of fair use images There shouldn't be a drive to reduce the use of fair use images;
3. Consensus should determine to what extent fair use images are welcomed or tolerated.
4. It's a problem that WP:NFCC was disproportionately influenced by people who want no or very few fair use images;
5. WP:NFCC#8 should probably be deprecated.

It's of my understanding that all of the above point have been pushed by the post above. I apologize in advance if I misunderstood something. I have no intentions of putting words in anyone else's mouth, neither in misrepresenting anyone's argument. These come from my honest understanding of the text.

That said, I want to make it clear here that I disagree with each one of these theses on the most basic level. Wikipedia, as a project would have to pass through fundamental changes if it were to make any of them truth. --damiens.rf 18:24, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that's a very unfair synopsis, although I would have phrased it "There shouldn't be a drive to reduce the use of fair use images." - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 18:55, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The change you propose is acceptable, and will not change my instance on it. --damiens.rf 19:02, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I would only add that I think that we have a larger problem than a handful of disputed deletions here. The willingness to ignore consensus and treat current incarnations of NFCC as an immutable first principle is a larger concern. Speaking in very general terms, Wikipedia jargon for that kind of position is "being a dick". Which is why I am unwilling to label any editors or edits involved in the controversy as being obviously wrong. The issue is systemic.

This is the big, though vague and subjective, thesis: In its current state, the non-free content policy page encourages editors to be dicks. No single editor is to blame. The page starts with a presumption against encyclopedic content. It invites the constant revisiting and re-nomination of an article's files, and requires no further formality than notifying the original uploader. It demands retroactive compliance with every technicality for images uploaded long before WP:NFCC existed. There are too few safe harbors that say what clearly is allowed; this was not always the case. And, while I'm not naming names, my impression is that too many people think it's OK to be a dick where non-free images are involved. Where non-free image removal is at issue, too many users are willing to tolerate behaviour that in other contexts would be considered disruptive or out of bonds.

If my perception offends, I can't help that. No single editor is to blame. It's an ideological conflict, and each side believes they're acting in good faith for the good of the encyclopedia. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 19:44, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I strongly agree with points 3 and 4. Foundation policy contradicts point 1, but it's true that the Foundation decree has been very broadly interpreted by those involved in FFD, and I suspect the wider community does not share their views. I hope these recent NFC RFCs will shed some light on these issues. TotientDragooned (talk) 19:57, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

@Smerdis, I have seen this following point being indirectly raised in some of these recent discussions, and now here. The point that there are relevant difference between the current state of WP:NFCC and some of if older incarnations. And this has obviously being used as a way to discredit the policy.

I have to disagree with this idea. Edits to this policy is very tightly controlled, and I'm pretty confident we would be deleting the very same images even if we were to use some June 2006 version of this page, for instance (didn't looked further). The current version is pretty much clearer, but it states the exact same principles. --damiens.rf 20:06, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

For the record, this is the first version of the policy, from janvier 5, 2006. It's impressive how it's essentially the same. --damiens.rf 20:13, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The history of anti-NFC-enforcement rhetoric is certainly no less filled with asshattery than the history of enforcement, as Smerdis' repeated insulting postings clearly demonstrate. Just one little point: "First came the demand that each such use, whether unique or of a type already recognized as apporpriate, must bear a fair use justification. Fair enough. Then the justification had to appear in a template. Then it had to appear in a separate template for each article. Each such change results in a drive for mass deletions of files". Nothing of this is true. The demand for rationales is exactly as old as fair use policy as a whole; it's been there ever since 2003. There was always a requirement that rationales had to be provided separately for each article. There isn't now, and has never been, a requirement for rationales to be in templates. Less fine rhetoric please, more attention to facts. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:55, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, many of us oppose templated rationales because it takes away all thought and becomes 'if i put this on here I can use it' instead of 'can I really justify using this image?' -- ۩ Mask 23:05, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the issue of templated rationales is using {{Non-free use rationale}} where the user still needs to fill in every required highlight from NFCC, as opposed to a more freeform nature is what is being objected to - but as correctly noted, there is not requirement to use a template version, its simply a matter of convenience to make sure you hit all 10 points of NFCC. There is a whole thony issue of using rationales like {{tl:Logo fur}} where the uploader only is required to provide two fields and the rationale is already baked in, for the most part (though can be overridden), which is very problematic since there should be a unique rationale for each image. --MASEM (t) 23:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

"there should be a unique rationale for each image" - why? Some rationales are the same, because it's the exact same situation. For example every time a company logo is used in an infobox in an article about that company, it's the exact same situation. It's make no sense to demand that identical situations be given unique descriptions. Rd232 ^talk 23:46, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, in my view, what the development of the templates and the history of cleanup deletions show is that the whole story of insisting on written-out rationales has been an abject failure, and probably wasn't a very good idea from the start. The focus on formalities has indeed led to a very problematic attitude that sees the rationales as just templated paperwork, and since you have to do all that objectively senseless stereotyped paperwork for the routine cases (logos, cover art), people get to think it's always like that. I would prefer by far if we just allowed for completely canned rationales, pre-built into the fair use tags themselves, for the truly routine cases (logos etc.), because here the information value really is close to zero and it's all completely predictable. But in return have an absolute zero-tolerance policy against meaningless boilerplate for those cases where it really gets interesting (like, historical photographs). I also don't think it's a good idea to teach uploaders that they should cover a checklist of mentioning all 10 NFCCs. Most of that is again useless boilerplate. We don't need them to say for the thousandth time that "it's low resolution" and "it meets the media-specific policies and is encyclopedic". Of course, the image has to be all these things, but that's something everybody can simply see, it's not something the rationale needs to tell us. What we do want the uploaders to actually tell us is why it's not replaceable and why it's crucial for the article. If you bring them into a situation where by necessity they write stupid boilerplate in the other parts, you'll never be able to persuade them that they shouldn't write stupid boilerplate here, where it actually matters. Fut.Perf. ☼ 04:54, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Boilerplate rationales are ok for logos and cover art where clearly the image only belongs in one article and in the infobox/header of that article. But that's exactly for one use of the image on one article, because we do argue that these images are being used to identify the corporate identity, and thus, by their nature, can only represent that identity. Any more reuses of the image, or in a place outside the standard infobox/header, needs a rational that can't be just a boilerplate. But even with the boilerplate, I would encourage editors to come up with any additional rationale language to strength the image's use (for example, in video game articles, I try to associate art style, character identification, or the like that appear on the cover to the game, so that its doing more than just cover ID). --MASEM (t) 05:03, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

In fact, after reading this Smerdis seems completely unaware about the document he's reading, and is imagining some giant change when none occurred. Have you read through previous versions of the NFCC Smerdis? -- ۩ Mask 23:07, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I just wrote Wikipedia:History of non-free content policies, which might come in helpful here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, and thank you for putting the effort. I would have added a bit more about the Betacommand_Bot fiasco, which probably did more than anything to color my perception. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 03:04, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Smerdis, I have not read through the replies here, but I would like to make a few points. First of all, your idea that we should deprecate NFCC#8 (which, you may not be surprised to learn, I consider ridiculous) essentially amounts to saying that we should be free to use non-free content, whether or not it is helpful to the article. It would open up the doors to pictures splashed over articles which are adding nothing but decoration. NFCC#8 is, I would argue, the most important of our NFCC- removing it would make a mockery of the entire enterprise (which, I guess, is your ultimate aim). Secondly, you create a dichotomy of "good encyclopedia writers" and "NFC NAZIS". This just doesn't exist. I'm willing to assume it was just hyperbole, but it's not at all helpful. It's exactly the same as me creating two categories of "free encyclopedia writers" and "VANDAL SCUM WHO IGNORE OUR POLICIES". It's pretty easy to see which of those two you would fall under, with that post. Ranting about how people need YET MORE chances to save images (there are already a disgusting number of hoops that have to be jumped through to get rid of even the most obvious violations) is all well and good, but it's hard to take that suggestion in good faith, when you have quite openly said that you do not feel that there is a problem. Had you done work in the area and realised that legitimate files were being deleted because people didn't get a chance to fix them, this would perhaps be different. However, you seem to be trying to counter the perceived impossibility to upload a file legitimately by making it as hard as possible to delete anything- I get the impression that, if we keep the NFCC at all, you'd like to see a situation where non-free content is not deleted, it's just tagged as needing cleanup. Finally, I'd like to say that your "there are some people who specialise in this area, therefore, there is a problem" argument is just bollocks. I'm not even going to back that claim up- if you can't see that it is the case, then it's a waste of my time. There are only a few regular editors in some WikiProjects, too. Hell, there are only a few people working on any given policy. Exactly the same argument can be made against any policy. Why are you not arguing against them? Oh, because, accept it or not, you're partisan too. The only reason those who respect the NFCC look so off center to you is because you find yourself further off to the other side. J Milburn (talk) 13:54, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Again, my perception is driven by history. Probably the most memorable was the Betacommand fiasco. This resulted in a large amount of Wikidrama, and apparently was fuelled by an external push to purge large numbers of unfree images. We are apparently still cleaning up after that last mess. My preference would be to avoid repeat instances of the same sort of disruption, by heading off any further pushes for a purge. This makes me react to anyone going around proposing image deletions in bulk with some alarm.

My other big picture concern is disregard for consensus. My understanding is that each of the several Wikimedia projects gets to set the level of nonfree content they are willing to accept, except for Commons. Consensus is usually the way these things are decided. My unscientific impression, and I'm not going to name names here either, is that at least some editors have opined that bulk file deletions merely enforce the will of the Foundation, which trumps consensus. To me, this raises a red flag. A body of editors who start deletion processes on content under a belief that they are doing so under a privilege to ignore consensus suggests even more unconstructive drama on the way. If you believe you have a mission that trumps consensus, you're probably going to disrupt the community, even if you are doing so with the best of intention. If you believe that reducing non-free files is worth pursuing even if it diminishes the quality of the articles in which they were used, you're probably going to disrupt the community, even if you are doing so with the best of intention. If you think there are just too damn many non-free files, and that reducing their numbers is a good in itself, you're probably going to disrupt the community, even if you are doing so with the best of intention.

I just don't want to see the drama that will certainly arise when a minority of editors gets it into their heads that it's time for a great purification. Civility becomes unachievable for mere human beings in those environments. My fear is that the editors who are calling for stricter interpretation and enforcement of the policy are being indifferent at best to the kinds of disruption that have historically arisen from mass deletions of files. The tenor of some responses here and at WP:AN doesn't do much to calm those fears. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 16:09, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

"Again, my perception is driven by history." - your knowledge about the history of NFCC enforcement had been shown to be wrong by FPaS above, Smerdin. --damiens.rf 16:51, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

break 1

I really don't care about the history of how we got here (except in a positive, constructive way, to appreciate the thought that has gone into the policy), but I'm more concerned about where we are now. In that regard, I'd make my own variation on the numbered list:

1. Consensus should determine to what extent fair use images are welcomed or tolerated, taking into account the informational purpose of the page where the image is used.
2. It's a problem that present day deletion discussions are disproportionately influenced by people who want no or very few images, of any sort.
3. WP:NFCC#8 should be recognized for what it is: a subjective call, one that takes into account the information contained on a given page, how the information is sourced, and how readers can best come to an understanding of it. We need to get away from what is, in effect, a presumption of "guilty decorative until proven innocent otherwise".

--Tryptofish (talk) 18:19, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

So, what do you want? "An image meets NFCC#8 until proven otherwise"? How does one "prove otherwise"? The burden of proof has to be on those wishing to include the content, and, of course, that is currently codified in the NFCC. J Milburn (talk) 20:04, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh, yes, I want to have no rational discussion at all, because all I want to do is spam Wikipedia with a lot of non-free images. You see, the tone of that question to me is exactly what the problem is with these debates. Seriously, what I want is what I said: taking into account the information contained on a given page, how the information is sourced, and how readers can best come to an understanding of it. What I don't want is either "side" taking the position that they have no burden of argument (not proof, just reasonable argument), because that kind of attitude is not only intellectually lazy, but also has the effect of shutting down rational examination of the issues. I'm not asking anyone, unilaterally, to prove anything, because this criterion isn't a matter of proof (in the scientific sense of the word). It's a matter of subjective editorial judgment. All too often, we have editors arguing, "Well, I can understand this article without needing to see that image, so obviously it's just decorative." Hey, I meet that bet and raise you: let's remove all images from the project, and also do away with differences in font format. The titles of a page, and the headers of sections within a page, should all be the same font size as regular text, and also, no italics or bold. Yes, I suppose a reader could come to understand our articles even that way, but it's a foolish idea. Editors who do more than just devote our efforts to file deletion sometimes actually create content. Sometimes, we believe that an image helps our readers better understand the subject. That's a grown-up position to take. All too often, XfD is dominated by users who just want to stick their fingers in their ears and repeat "decorative!". --Tryptofish (talk) 20:33, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Most editors take the inclusion of pictures for granted, and don't understanding the difficulties that the Foundation is treading when it is trying to build a free content work while allowing some non-free use. As noted by the Foundation, they consider the inclusion of non-free files as "exceptional", and that means we do need to default of removal if the exception is not satisfied. That doesn't mean we have to be elitist about it - we certainly don't prevent images from being used before they are shown to be proper exceptions. But when it comes time to review images, we do have to look for reasons why it should be kept as an exception and if those reasons are demonstrated by the rationales and other facets of image handling, we do remove it - in other words, we do assume "guilty until proven otherwise". --MASEM (t) 20:43, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

As you say, the Foundation does allow some non-free use, and we don't have to be elitist (or, what some users may consider "dickish") about it. What I want is for editors to hold both sides of the issue in mind at the same time. I'm fine with expecting editors who want to include an image to explain how it adds to understanding. I'm fine with that, OK? It's so illuminating that some editors seem to jump to the conclusion that I wouldn't be. But I expect that, when an editor who has worked hard on content creation steps up and explains how the image adds to understanding, the editors proposing deletion will treat that explanation as one that has to be, at least, given a fair hearing. Instead, I see too many cases where there is a refusal to drop the stick, and to insist, insist, insist, that no, it's really just decorative. If you can come up with a mathematical proof that something does or does not add to readers' understanding, well, you can't, so let's let go of this insistence on proof. Consensus, not proof. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:03, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

That frustration, I can understand. If the uploader and other editors have made a good faith attempt to rationalize the image and does not immediately fail obvious criteria (like having an equivalent free replacement), the discussion on the image should not be how to nullify the good faith effort but if the rationale can be improved to make it a clear reason to allow it as a non-free exception. But we still need to realize that even in such discussions, we have to ask the question "should WP be making an exception for this image?" Even with the best-intended uploads, there are images that really don't work out because they go against NFCC. I think what part of this is is that those that are adamant about NFC minimization are becoming frustrated themselves with users that don't know all the ins and outs of NFC and upload images willy-nilly, a good proportion that fail NFC clearly, but take time and effort to clear up. Thus, the attitude that "all images fail unless you prove to me otherwise" stems from that experience. Education of end users, the implimentation of the uploader bit and/or the request to upload suggestions above, possibly some time of New File Partol, and the like to minimize the time dealing with images that clearly fail NFC would likely help to stem this problem. --MASEM (t) 21:19, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thank you Masem, those are good insights. And I, in turn, can understand that frustration, with those who upload willy-nilly. What I'm asking for is when an editor who is not an image spammer, who is motivated by wanting good content, argues on this particular criterion, that editors who want to delete not transfer their frustration with the willy-nillies onto the good-faith editor. And to recognize that a file that passes all the other criteria does not have, absolutely have, to be deleted on criterion 8 just to make a point. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Trypto, you are doing what I mentioned earlier- categorising people into "evil deletionists" and "valiant content editors". That's neither useful nor a reflection of how things are. You mention how some people are unwilling to drop the stick, repeating a mantra of "decorative"- there are, equally, those who refuse to drop the stick and just repeat a mantra of "it's fine". This is the problem- I would be more than happy to welcome a domain of rational discussion, and that's the way I certainly try to hold myself on these issues, but the trouble is that rational debate is useless against someone who just shouts "NO NO NO". Contrary to what some may assure you, it's not just those who respect the NFCC that can behave completely irrationally- I've found it's much more common on the other "side" (your word, not mine). What particularly annoys me are people who use the phrase "common sense" as if it's a code word that means that they are correct. Common sense and ignoring rules where pertinent are important, of course they are, but merely using the phrases does not suddenly mean that you are right. J Milburn (talk) 21:47, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I feel like we are making very good progress in this discussion, now! (I sound like a shrink, oh well.) I'll stipulate that I've participated in relatively few XfDs, generally only those where an image is on a page on my watchlist (and not uploaded by me). My experience has been as I described. Can we agree that it is unhelpful for anyone in an Xfd discussion to just repeat a mantra? The users who upload "willy-nilly" are one thing, but users who just believe that the image is helpful may be only occasional visitors to XfD, and are likely to be speaking in good faith. Editors who frequent XfD should try to remember that. It's slightly like "don't bite the newbies", except that these are highly experienced editors, just not experienced with NFCC. I've been pretty appalled by the tone of discussion at some of the XfDs I've seen. If someone says it's common sense, a good idea is to consider whether this is someone who lazily does this all the time (not worthy of respect), or someone who is relatively new to XfD. If the latter, don't bite, just explain to them that it's not obvious to everyone. It's certainly reasonable to expect someone to explain how an image adds to understanding content, but sometimes it takes a follow-up to get them to do so. What I have seen is, instead, either an assumption that they will not, ever, have a better explanation than "common sense", or that they have simply given a bad explanation like "common sense", when they actually have explained thoughtfully. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:15, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

It occurs to me that someone who cares a lot about a page can, sometimes, react to a deletion nomination by thinking that it's obvious how the image adds to understanding, and may invoke "common sense" out of a feeling of frustration with having to defend the image. Please don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that I think it's right to do that. I'm only offering it as a way to understand where it may be coming from. I'd be all in favor of having something written somewhere saying that "common sense" is a bad argument to use—just as we have a list of bad arguments to use at AfD. As a tip to editors who frequent XfD, it's good practice, and a good way to spare yourself unwanted drama, to put yourself in the shoes of the editor who says "common sense", and moderate the tone of your argument accordingly. On the other hand, an editor who serially claims "common sense" again and again is another matter entirely, and I'm not defending that. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:51, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

My apologies for coming back to a bit of thread that has gone cold; but I think the question of what it means for the burden to be on the uploader is an important one.

My view is that Tryptofish makes a good point above, and I think that it is useful to take some cues from what happens in a real-world legal environment when the burden is placed on the defence to establish a point -- see eg our articles on legal burden of proof, rebuttable presumption and affirmative defense.

Our closing admins, recall, are directed to consider whether arguments being put forward are strong or weak, and to weight them in their deliberations accordingly. My understanding of the effect of the burden is that it is an instruction to the closing admin as to when an argument should be considered strong or weak. The burden placed on those who would seek to keep the image is the burden to make a case -- it is not for those who would delete to show that no rationale could be created, it is enough to show that no rationale has been created. In this way, even quite a generic "delete" argument ("fails NFCC#8") is to be considered a strong argument, if no case to make the image has been made.

However if (in the closing admin's judgement) a substantive case to keep the image has been made, that the admin considers on the face of it a strong or at least a plausible argument, then against that background, as in the real-world cases above, a delete argument that does not address that case, but just says "fails NFCC#8" without explaining the deficiency in the specific argument that has been made as to why the image should pass NFCC#8 (or whichever of the other criteria) has in comparison to be considered a weak argument, and weighted appropriately. This is essentially the point that Tryptofish is making above: if a serious argument to keep is made, that argument must be seriously met or the image should not be deleted. This is the background against which both guidance and practice (cf eg [1], [2]) require that there must be consensus to delete if at FFD an image is to be deleted. Jheald (talk) 10:42, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Jheald, thank you for that absolutely beautiful and insightful explanation. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:35, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

break 2

Some more numbered points:

1. The best evidence of consensus is the practice, custom, and precedent established by editors as they work. "Consensus is a normal and usually implicit and invisible process across Wikipedia."
2. I believe that the current custom and practice of editors with regard to fair use image use represents the actual current consensus.
3. I believe that the current custom and practice of editors with regard to fair use image use is generally acceptable.
4. I believe that the text on the current WP:NFCC pages on English may not accurately reflect majority accepted practice, custom, and precedent, and its more subjective passages may suggest that more deletions are appropriate than live consensus would go along with.
5. In that case, the policy page text must yield to the informal consensus formed by practice, custom, and precedent rather than vice versa.
6. Those who want to change the evolved practice, custom, and precedent that embodies this consensus bear the burden of persuasion that it should change.
7. "The community is more likely to accept edits to policy if they are made slowly and conservatively, with active efforts to seek out input and agreement from others."
8. The BetacommandBot fiasco is one of the worst episodes of Wikidrama the community has ever witnessed. (There may have been worse ones, but they probably had to do with Danzig or Bosnia-Herzegovina and I wasn't paying attention.)
9. The BetacommandBot fiasco had relatively little to do with Betacommand's editing or interaction with users per se.
10. The BetacommandBot fiasco instead resulted from a perceived outside directive to get rid of a lot of fair use files.
11. That was a very bad idea, for reasons relating to the points set out above.
12. I don't want to see the episode repeated.

- Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 22:29, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

You reference this "current custom and practice of editors with regard to fair use image use". Surely, that's the NFCC, which would place you as the one acting against consensus/seeking to change consensus. J Milburn (talk) 22:35, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

You do understand that the BCB issue was something we had to do because of the Foundation resolution? It was a fiasco because people didn't want to conform to the change that our benefactors had requested of us. --MASEM (t) 22:39, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

This cannot be stated enough. While our view or it and what it means can differ somewhat, there is an actual Foundation Resolution behind this, which has also placed limits on the extent of an EDP. We quite succinctly can not throw out NFCC #8. That was placed there at the behest of higher powers. -- ۩ Mask 01:53, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

What you're telling me is that it's the Foundation that's being the dicks here. They'd be willing to drive their flagship community to the point of civil war to further a free-content agenda. "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

I am going to have to dial back any plans to be more involved in image review. If consensus is irrelevant, the opinions of rank and file editors are irrelevant, and any admin active in the area will be expected to lay down the law from on high regardless of community consensus, I won't either know how, or be willing, to act. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 12:27, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The Foundation said, via its resolution, that all non-free images after a year of its decree, needed to have certain aspects in place. With more than 300,000 non-frees at that time (I believe), either human editors working at 100 images/day or a bot was needed to assert that. The community chose to go with the bot. The bot did exactly what it did, but what happened is that older editors started getting pissed off that tens of warning messages from the bot about the possible image problems were flooding their talk page, and demanded that they not be notified, and then they got upset when these images were being deleted in line with consensus without their knowledge. At this point, yes, there was an attitude breakdown and things got ugly, but that blame is on those editors that contribute a lot but do not spend time to observe and understand the changes to WP policy and they occur. (eg, if, after a long and well published change that only sources from academic journals could be used for WP:V, you would still have a large number of people unaware of that change and complain quite vocally when editors go around enforcing it). There's also editors that still believe we're based on "fair use" and not "non-free" (there is a difference!), and don't understand why NFC exists.

It is important to note that there is consensus behind NFC - most of NFC was in place before the Foundation's resolution, the resolution only giving teeth to assure compliance was done by a certain date. --MASEM (t) 12:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, the specific criterion of NFCC#8 wasn't explicitly dictated by the Foundation. It had been in the NFCC policy for much longer, and the Foundation merely confirmed that the NFCC as it then stood was an acceptable implementation of Foundation policy. The criteria that are explicitly mentioned in the Foundation resolution are minimality ("must be minimal", "within narrow bounds") and replaceability. But of course it may be argued that #8 is also crucial, because without it the minimality condition would be impossible to implement – if there's no restriction on some minimum standard of how crucial/useful/indispensable something has to be, we'd be open to essentially arbitrary usage of just about anything on any editor's whim. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:22, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Sure sure, the Foundation didn't necessary spell out every point that NFCC made, but I was trying to get at that the core NFCC policy was already there when the Foundation gave the resolution (and thus acknolwedging the NFCC as a good example as it addresses their key points of concern like minimization and rationales for use), and that it hasn't changed much since. That version of NFCC was developed by consensus before the Foundation made statements otherwise, countering the claim it doesn't match consensus above. --MASEM (t) 14:29, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

My respect for Betacommand/Δ has just risen substantially. Even someone with the patience of a saint would be hard pressed to remain calm dealing with the bot fallout. That said, I think the operation of the bot was a serious mistake. Way too many respected contributors went dark in its aftermath. That reaction also leads me to wonder what the real consensus as to these files is. If a policy change is announced and publicized, and policy pages revised, but edits based on the change are greeted with strong distaste by the broader community --- then no, there never was real consensus for the change.

The role of bots and automated editing probably needs to be addressed. A personal anecdote: take a look at the talk and history of one of the few non-free images I still have here, File:Mark eden bust developer.jpg. This image is an advertisement for a defunct business. I have vivid memories of these ads from my adolescence; but as the associated article, Mark Eden bust developer, shows, one of the chief claims to fame of this bit of quackery and pop culture trivia is the more than ten years of mail fraud litigation that arose from the claims made for this gadget in its advertising. The file is quite useless unless all the text including the small print is legible. One editor, sniffing for large nonfree images, tags it for reduction. I remove the tag and add a note to the talk page. He adds the tag back. I remove it again and sent him a note on his talk page. He agrees: the text is the point and needs to be readable, and as such the file should not be reduced in size. This consensus only holds until the next bot happens by, to rescale the image without anyone reading the talk page. Thanks, User:ShakespeareFan00, for your help with this, BTW.

If I sometimes seem exasperated, it's because I have learned to associate the unfree image policy with this sort of conduct. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 16:03, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

To be fair that's not quite how I remember the BCBot affair happening. As I remember, there was some ongoing good-faith discussion at the time about how to go forward, albeit it was meandering and not really getting anywhere. But Beta acted as if the way forward was stomping in in size 9 hobnailed boots, regardless of collateral damage, regardless of the effect on community cohesion, and absolutely righteous that the rules had to be enforced, let the heavens fall -- until he was forcibly stopped. Eventually the community did work out a plan to move to compliance in a managed way; it took quite a long time, and a lot of work; but did get there eventually, with ultimately a lot less collateral damage.

The lesson, I think, is to consider how we best get to where we want to achieve, not just insist that the rules is the rules. Jheald (talk) 16:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I have a different recollection, but of course that was 3 years ago too, so.. Scanning through the BCBot ArbCom case, he actually did get approval from BAG for the image task, but by that point, the BCBot was a monolithic thing that did a LOT of tasks. I still think the community agreed to the bot, just that personalities and annoyance exaggerated the problem. --MASEM (t) 17:19, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

on the issue of bot tasks for images, there are some that should be done, such as assuring there's a license template (even if its wrong) within the image file description, or making sure that the article name that the image is used on is contained there. These are machine-readable requirements for NFCC, and it's black or white if they pass or fail. Any other image-related bot tasks needs human elements. I was not aware we had a bot that tagged over-sized non-free images, as in essence few argee what is oversized (I've tried to have some suggestions of when we need to raise an eyebrow to a large non-free image and how it meets low resolution, but there are always exceptional cases that the high resolution is needed.). If there is a bot, it needs a per-image opt-out through some type of template, with the understanding that humans will likely review those opt-outs to make sure that they're not being used blatantly wrong. Same with most of the other subjective measures of the NFCC policies. --MASEM (t) 18:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes. I'd be more comfortable with talking about how to get rid of all the unfree files we don't want, once we figure out a way to better preserve the ones we do. And keep them, without subjecting their submitters to a repeated barrage of automated notices. The full history of the NFCC discussions of files can occur many different places: on file pages, in templates, file talk pages, article talk pages, user talk pages, XfD pages. Bots (and some Twinkle-assisted editors) don't even appear to read file talk pages. Again, XfD needs a BEFORE. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 19:25, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Just to note: I don't believe there has been a bot that explicitly deletes images. Tags them for deletion catagories, cleans up after admin deletion, yes, but none to do the task itself. That always needs a final human editor check to confirm. This misunderstanding is part of why the BCBot issue got out of hand, because they thought the bot was doing the actual deletion, and not what it was, simply tagging for review. --MASEM (t) 20:04, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Not always the most comforting reassurance, even if we don't at this moment seem to have so many newly minted firebrand admins burning to "process the backlog" making ten deletes a minute with semi-automatic tools. I don't know what the statistics are for files tagged with "slow speedys" that are saved from deletion once their allotted number of days are up, but I would guess precious few. Jheald (talk) 22:07, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

If that is true, I would read that as an argument that the correct images were tagged and that there were few false positives. -- ۩ Mask 22:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

You can at least see what's come up at WP:FFD. Speedy tagged files are harder to browse, but they appear in Category:Disputed non-free Wikipedia files. My unscientific survey since I started paying closer attention to these pages is that indeed, much of this stuff is dross (and the freely contributed stuff is usually worse than the fair use stuff, having little encyclopedia value except maybe for an article on bad snapshots, which I will create sometime maybe next week and append an extensive gallery.) - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 00:33, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

And so?

It seems to me that there are at least a number of things we all could agree on. Better communication between the shepherds of the NFC policy and the rest of the editing base seems to be a recurring theme. A number of good ideas seem to meet with fairly general approval.

1. A plainspoken and plain English essay, explaining non free file policy clearly and memorably; it's suggested that this be cast in the familiar format of "this argument we've heard before is weak, because...." The tone of the original essay, I would say, has been improved over the years beyond the original; I was not a fan of earlier versions.
2. Bringibg FfD discussions within the ambit of WP:DELSORT. I hope this would improve the visibility of WP:FFD discussions among potentially interested projects and editors. What I don't know is whether doing this would gob up the bots that preen the DELSORT pages and other pages, and how hard it would be to make them all work similarly.
3. Some way to bring some kind of semi-finality of review of any given upload for any given article. This file and its attending explanation have been reviewed and found justified by a neutral editor, at minimum.

There are some other good ideas here along these lines that probably merit further discussion. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 04:10, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

All but the last one are workable, and the only problem with the last one is a large portion of the NFCC depends on context within an article and if the article changes substantially any 'final' review would/could be initiated again. As long as we're up front that the finality of the review only really matters when the contextual information for the image is substantially (not exactly) similar to what passed review, I would welcome the opportunity to have a centralized place to discuss these. -- ۩ Mask 21:12, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

What's ideal?

While I agree with a lot of what Smerdis of Tlön has had to say, I'd like to tackle this a bit differently. I think NFCC#8 is where the largest problem exists. I'd like to discuss what we _should_ have in articles, rather than what policy says.

• Say we have an article about a sports star who had one or two major triumphs in their life. If no free image of either of those triumphs exist (say hitting the winning run at the 1920 World Series or some such, should we include a non-free image? The image itself doesn't add to the user's understanding per se, but it is clearly desirable as let's the reader see, rather than just read, about this important event. They can see what the stands look liked, how the teams were dressed, the racial makeup of the crowd, etc. None of that would probably be in the article, but an image would allow one to better "get a sense of the history" even though the image wouldn't actually improve understanding.
• Say we have an article about a mass killing where no free images exist. Children, adults by the dozens laying about with gaping holes and blood. One can easily describe the scene, but it's a case where the emotional impact of the event, which is key to groking the event, but not key to merely understanding. Should we have such an image?

As someone who would drop our NFCC standards down to "clearly fair use" given a choice I'd strongly support both of these. But current policy doesn't allow for it. What do others think? How important is "emotional impact" to understanding? How important is being able to see a major event in the life of the subject of an article? There are tons of other cases, but I thought these two might be a good starting point for a discussion. Hobit (talk) 02:20, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

• First case, nope, that doesn't require an image on the page of the sports star to talk about the elements around him. There might be use on a "history of the sport", but not on the player's article. Now, I have no problem with a non-free image of a deceased public figure, and if not a portrait, trying to capture many other elements with that, but that's for one image. Anything else needs to be discussed in depth within the article.
• Second case, we cannot pander to emotionally-telling images, either side of the spectrum, without having sourcing that describes said aspects as emotionally-telling, and to this, this is more so where the images themselves need to be the subject of discussion, otherwise we're creating a bias that we can't take. (Even if something like the Holocaust is universally considered a "bad thing" we cannot take that view, but instead attribute our view to what scholars and historians have said).
• And note, we cannot use "clearly fair use" because that's weaker than the Foundation's minimal requirement. --MASEM (t) 02:29, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Masem, I think you missed my point I think I was unclear (though I'm not certain). Assume for a moment we could add any image we wanted. I think you'd have to agree that adding those image would produce some additional understanding--what everyone looked like etc. Things that the article might not mention but might be relevant to the person reading the article (racial make up of the crowd, how the stadium looks similar, and different, than today etc.) Does that gain surpass NFCC#8? Let's assume no for the moment. But is it better than not having the image? That is a much lower bar. Obviously a page full of images would interfere with the readers understanding. Are the images more likely to add to the user's understanding than remove? Would a paper encyclopedia feel an image would be worth the space rather than an additional 40 words? I'm asking for a theoretical "lowering of the bar" to some epsilon. Then I'm asking what should our bar be--not because of the Foundation, but because it's the right thing to do? Where should the epsilon be and why? Are these examples above or below your ideal (ignoring the Foundation for a minute) bar? Hobit (talk) 07:18, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
    • NFCC is a means to a goal, not a goal in and of it self. The rules make more sense when you remember to think about this as a project, of which the website is just a face. The project is to build a sum of knowledge with the widest possible reuse, because of our goal to give every person on the planet with a store of knowledge. This includes commercial reuse, teachers, community distribution efforts, all sorts of use cases. To name just one, an offline version of wikipedia ships on the OLPC. Free content is a means to achieve that end. -- ۩ Mask 20:45, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
      • Fully get that. But as it's trivial to remove images tagged as non-free, I'm not seeing why we need to worry about that too much. Clearly missing images make the article more difficult to read, but it's exactly the kind of images we won't add (purely decorative) that cause the least problem. And frankly our fair use claims don't really rely on the non-profit status of Wikimedia. Finally, are we cutting off our nose to spite our face here? Just how many commercial groups are there that reuse Wikipedia? What percent of them are worried about non-free images? What percent would prefer a better article with non-free images? I think it's plain the images I describe above would help the articles in question. If that helps 99.95% of our users and causes minor harm to 0.05% isn't that okay? Hobit (talk) 21:25, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
        • We have to go by what the Foundation wants, who are the people that provide these servers. If you don't like that they want redistributable content and minimization of free, they are who you need to talk to. That said, they have allows for limited exceptional use of non-frees. That means, just because a picture may have some improvement for understanding of an article, if it doesn't significantly help, we shouldn't be including it, else we're not being exceptional in non-free use. That's why the two cases you give above may help understand the topic, but don't significant improve it compared to, say, a portrait of the player themselves or a well-noted photograph of the event, respectively to your examples. --MASEM (t) 23:31, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
          • What the Foundation wants is very general—the specific interpretations are up to us, and subject to consensus. The Foundation does not prohibit fair use content on the servers.It rather wants to minimize it the the degree consonant with the other objectives of the Encyclopedia. Even those who think that fair use should be maximized to the extent US law permits would agree that the Foundation policy at present does not permit this, and everyone is very willing to go along with the Foundation policy. The question is what is needed for the objectives of enWP, which is the clear communication about the subjects covered. It is nowhere stated that this must be purely abstract verbal understanding; conveying the emotional import of events is part of encyclopedic communication. We are therefore justified in permitting this as a reason for fiar use content. What we have to decide is whether we want to do so. We can do so if we want; we can restrict it if we want. Either way falls within present Foundation policy. Most people probably take a middle view, and permit the use for other than intellectual communication in some cases. It has proven very difficult to exactly define those cases, and so Smerdis's approach that it must go by the article by article development of consensus is the only practical approach,. It is clear that the people on each side will not convince each other, and so the only way to go forward is by compromise. Any insistence on one's own preferred policy at this point is, quite simply, non-constructive. DGG ( talk ) 03:46, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
            • The poiny I'm making is that the Foundation are the ones that have created exactly two classes of media: free (as in freely redistributable), and non-free. We cannot make a special case for images that may have licenses that seem ideal (freely redist for academic and/or non-profit use) because the Foundation has said so; they are non-free as much as a random screenshot or movie poster, from the Foundation's POV. And I've tried suggesting that we favor (But not give any other special allowances) to academic or NC reuse licenses over unlicensed ones when selecting images, but that was shot down here. As to what is minimal use, NFCC#8, etc. that's all still consensus. What this comes down to that the argument that we should have less restrictions on "friendlier" licenses isn't going to work. --MASEM (t) 04:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Prod NFC use

OK, here's another approach: {{Prod NFC use}}. Collapse a disputed image for 7 days (using the {{PROD}} tracking approach), and then remove the use if it hasn't been fixed. Fixing wold be more likely here, because the image has been hidden (there are complaints that mere talkpage notification is ignored, and removal especially without notification often meets resistance). Example (doesn't do the right alignment, that would need sorting as an extra parameter):

Non-free image use proposed for removal
It is proposed that this non-free image be removed from this article, for breaching the non-free content criteria 8. album

Rd232 public ^talk 11:19, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking along the same lines, though it should be noted that sometimes the image is used as a template parameter. The template should output an image - so that both '[[File:{{Prod NFC use|filename}}]] and 'image = {{Prod NFC use|filename}}' both don't break a page ... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:02, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Propose Delta NFCC notification bot

Moved here from WP:ANI - last revid: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&oldid=436849136#Propose_Delta_NFCC_notification_bot

There is a certain view on NFCC that non-compliant uses (even merely technically non-compliant uses which are easily fixable and in no way a legal problem) need to be removed immediately, to the point of allowing a WP:3RR exemption for NFCC removal. That is the view of a minority, and it is the root of this entire long-running saga (which goes well beyond Delta, though he's at the centre of it). If we could just agree to give notice of impending removal, we'd have a lot less drama. A bot would be highly suitable for this, to leave a note on the talkpage about non-compliance. Editors can then follow up manually for NFCC uses not fixed a week later; it would be a WP:PROD-like system (and could probably use some of the same template/category tracking technology). Delta could operate such a bot, since it would be mere notification. Such notification would also serve to educate a lot more users on these issues; seeing an image unexpectedly removed from an article you're watching is really not a good time to be suddenly confronted with the intricacies of NFCC. Talk pages obviously also offer more space for an explanation than an edit summary does. Rd232 public ^talk 15:20, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, that is millimeters away from my currently running detection script. For editors including an image, that detection is simple, for those that are already there, it is more difficult.

Please, propose a suitable name for the bot, and I will do the first step of that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

• I see a repeat of the past, warnings do very very little, people will ignore it until the file is removed from the article and not until then. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 15:25, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

  I don't expect that either, ∆. But well .. we try notifying the editors when they add an image but there is no rationale, and we try adding messages to talkpages. Rd232 is suggesting that we then wait a week and then .. well, as I do not expect that anything will be done about it (but maybe about a small fraction of it), we just proceed with what we are doing anyway - removing images from articles which fail WP:NFCC. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:33, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

  Even if such notification didn't result in any files being fixed at all, there has to be less drama involved in doing something after a week's notice than with no notice. And with more space for an explanation on the talk page, it's also more likely that people responding to removal will understand what's going on and act appropriately, and not simply revert. Rd232 public ^talk 15:42, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

  Thats where you are wrong, Hammersoft and myself gave over a months notice for several currency related pages and overuse, We where ignored until we removed the overuse. Then all hell broke loose, after over a month of leaving talk page notices. So it really doesnt do anything productive except cause more paperwork, and slowing down the process. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 15:44, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

  Just because the approach doesn't always reduce drama to zero doesn't mean it wouldn't reduce it overall or on average. And if the notification is done by bot, with appropriate template/category tracking, it's not that much more work. Rd232 public ^talk 15:55, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

• I do agree to that, though I have about as much hope for things being fixed as for editors adding citations after a {{cn}} is added - some are done, but the majority stays for years ... and as Delta says, don't expect the dramah to be less, people will still scream, yell, cry, edit-war. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:46, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

  Well if we had a PROD-like template/category system, there'd be more potential for those who want to preserve valid NFCC use and are familiar with the issues to quickly fix lots of relatively easily fixable cases. That puts less onus on the average editor who is clueless about it and needs to start from scratch in understanding when the notification appears. Rd232 public ^talk 15:59, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

  Again, true .. but it will not make the difference. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:03, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

• Note: for those who want to start now to add rationales, see this list. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:05, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

  Hmm, that'll keep you busy for a while...Modernist (talk) 16:14, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

• Well that banknote Rfc is still open well past its expiry date, so anytime anyone wants to request its closure so we can get a formal endorsement of Delta's idea of what is and is not pointless paperwork around en.wiki, go right ahead. MickMacNee (talk) 16:06, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support BetacommandBot used to do this, right? What's wrong with automating notifications? Folks are too afraid of automation even though we cam improve efficiency immensely with it. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 17:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

It was a horrible mess in the past. I'd support it if it's subject to community oversight, has a kill switch, is run in in a clearly defined manner, operates only on new images and image uses, is run on a trial basis before full or long-term implementation, etc. - Wikidemon (talk) 17:45, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

• oppose this kind of bot was one of the bigger issues at the time. What delta needs to do, and what I suggested last time, is to kick contested removals off to the noticeboard for someone else to handle. The project will not go down in flames if it takes an extra few minutes to remove the image. The entire reason I started that last thread was to avoid the kind of situations where Delta is hammering revert on a very minor mistake in the fair use, a typo in a page name, a page move, etc. A bot will not fix that kind of situation. As I stated last time, I would support Delta being allowed to use a very limited automated tool to kick these images off to the noticeboard, I think it should do the following: 1. Post a message on the noticeboard so the other NFCC users can go handle it. 2. Post a message on the users talk page informing that he's done this, with a link to the noticeboard. And he should walk away from that article.--Crossmr (talk) 22:45, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support per above. Bot would serve to educate many users who are unfamiliar with NFCC #9. Seems foolish to be doing it by hand. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 00:34, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Sounds like good sense. Problem is, the obvious "solutions" aren't solutions. There's BEEN a bot that does this work, and it hasn't helped one bit. People don't care. People don't care until their images are being removed, or images are being removed from an article they care about. THEN they care. --Hammersoft (talk) 02:32, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support. Ironically, Hammersoft, your opposition fits the attitude of more than a couple people working in this area to a tee. Attitudes don't change. They don't want to change, and they won't until certain individuals end up blocked and banned. Part of this proposal, it seems, is to try and prevent Delta from going down in flames again. One would think NFCC regulars would prefer that option. As to the point itself, I don't expect such a notification system to have a huge obvious impact any more than you do, Hammersoft. But I can say that the first time around with Delta, we had to hammer him over the head to have him put talk page notifications into BetaCommandBot's script, and the end result from my primary project was that the number of images fixed and saved was measured in the hundreds. So don't tell me notifications don't work at all. Additionally, such notifications offer the potential to teach users so as to help prevent reoccurances of improper rationales or usage in incorrect namespaces. Additionally, you could look at the BLP cleanup efforts, and how much work was accomplished by getting projects involved. To wit, run me a report of images with potentailly incorrect FURs/NFCC problems on articles within the WP:HOCKEY scope, and I'll look to clean them up. I can't say whether there would be more than just minimal improvement if we do this, but I heard the same complaints from the "can't fix, don't try" group on the BLP deletion mess and said the same thing then: Offer tools and notifications. End result? That backlog is over 95% cleared last I checked. There is no harm in allowing time for notifications to work, or fail. Resolute 23:04, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

  tools:~betacommand/nfcc/rationale_missing.log.old is a list of all affected pages. Open that with Excel or some other cvs program (items are separated with tabs) and cross check it with your wikiproject. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 23:09, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

  That helps somewhat, though it is a little difficult to parse through 8800 entries for what I am interested in. Looking over the ones that are obviously hockey related, most of them appear to be a case of university logos that have a valid FUR for the men's hockey team article, but not the women's. Makes sense as the women's team articles are relatively new in most cases, and it is likely that the creating editors simply copied the infobox over. In this case, it is a rather simple fix, and yes, if there was a periodic notification to the project talk page that "these articles in this scope have images with invalid FURs", would provide little challenge in maintaining. I've done a few for now. Should get to others as I have time. Resolute 00:13, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

---

Crude idea of working:

• When an editor is inserting an image which is tagged to be in the non-free media category, and the image does not have a rationale for which it can detect whether it is for that specific article (i.e., the article name is not linked directly, the article name is not linked via a redirect, the article name is not contained as a string in the text of the image description, ánd the rationales do not link to disambiguation pages which do link to the correct article) - then the bot could leave a notice (after, say, 5 minutes or so) on the talkpage of the user including the image that the bot could not detect the rationale, and ask if the editor could have a look (5 minutes, so the editor would have had time to write the rationale, maybe they were first inserting, then writing the rationale, after 5 minutes we can expect that the editor 'forgot'). Same goes for the disambig-case, but that needs a different message.
• We could discuss what could be done, say, an hour after a message was left on the talkpage of the user and the user (or someone else) did not fix the rationale - leave a message on the talkpage of the page that there are images without rationale? If there is a message on the talkpage about the image, and it has not been solved for, say, a week, the next process will take place:

• For the stuff that is now there without such a rationale (for whatever reason that it is 'broken'), or material for which was notified on the talkpage that it is there for a week after insertion, either the rationale should be fixed, or the displaying of the image should be disabled once, and wait for someone to re-insert it - that person will then get the message from the bot and the process continues. No-one should re-disable that image (within the time agreed upon for the talk-page message), except if it is not fair-use (i.e. the image can not be used on that specific page under fair-use - e.g. the image is outside of mainspace, or is purely ornamental), or we have been through the process of removal - 're-insertion, bot reminding user, bot tagging on talkpage' a couple of times without it getting fixed.

I will make sure that any form of notification can be a) tuned completely on-wiki, b) turned on and off per type of notification, and that all 'timings' can be set on-wiki. That that will be similar to e.g. XLinkBot and COIBot, where the on-wiki edits can be almost completely formatted using the on-wiki settings. Any administrator can adapt the settings, edit summaries, whether and how it edits, or what the content is of the messages.

I do expect however that editors do assist actively when editors are 'complaining' about the remarks/edits of the bot - I will take technical responsibility of the bot, but will simply turn it off if I get attacked in person about its actions and I do not feel that I get support in countering those attacks, or if I feel that it will all come down to me. We seem to agree here that the current practice is not the way forward, this is a suggestion that I might want to take up

Still waiting for a suitable name, though. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:03, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

What about User:NFCCheckBot ?? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:49, 29 June 2011 (UTC) (claimed the account anyway, but if there are better suggestions coming up, I can always change username or claim another account). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:53, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I think this is good, but maybe the discussion should be moved to Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Non-free_content_enforcement (where I also made another suggestion of a PROD-like approach, with template concept). The wider thread seems to be drifting once again to a "no consensus" outcome about restricting Delta, so let's focus on what we can do that might make things a little better. There's no panacea, but the complete pessimism I've seen from some editors in this thread about being able to achieve any improvements in handling NFCC is a bit depressing. We've got to keep trying - what's the alternative? Rd232 public ^talk 11:28, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I did claim User:NFCCheckBot for this. Settings as they progress are in User:NFCCheckBot/Settings. For now semiprotected until we go live (if ever). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:38, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

This was already tried. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FairuseBot. The bot stopped conducting work in February of this year (I don't know why). Looking at the last 20 images it tagged with {{Di-missing some article links}}; 9 have never been fixed [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. 2 were fixed [12], 1 with a purpose of use "This is a more appealing image" [13]. 9 were removed from the article violation [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. I.e. the 'success rate' of fixing rationales for their intended use was 10%. 5% if you discount the uselessly weak rationale of "more appealing". In short, a bot will not help this problem. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Please keep your pessimism in check. By all means, bring your experience of what has been done before, but let's try and use that to improve on it. What leaps out at me from the old Fairusebot notification eg at Talk:South Australian state election, 1979 is that there is no time limit. Without that, it's just one of a bazillion "problems to be fixed one day", and it's no surprise that it's fixed at about the same rate as other problems. A timebound PROD-like element for notification should be substantially more effective (especially if the edit summary makes clear the deadline). Also, I'm not sure what use tagging the file is, if it leads to the template being left hanging from removals like this, because users aren't aware of it. Tagging the article (like with the collapsible PROD NFC use template idea in the section above) would make for better cleanup, I think. Rd232 public ^talk 15:05, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Hammersoft, I am not suggesting it will solve the problem. I don't think it will either. But lets see if we can:

• Notify editors say 5 minutes after they inserted a non-free file, but for which there is not a (detectable) fair-use rationale for that use (here, I will try both to detect whether the user has been warned for that file before, and if so, ignore giving a warning, and whether the user has been warned enough about these things). Such users may be flagged/reported somewhere.
• If after 1 hour, or something like that, there is still no rationale, we tag the talkpage with a time-dependent template (I can easily write the bot so that it checks whether that was done in the past already, so again, no repeats).
• Then, after one week, I could make the bot collect all those that are now tagged for a week, still not solved, and report them somewhere local (e.g. in a log) and we can just massively remove them all for that day. Complaints - well, the person inserting the image was warned, it was noted on the talkpage.
• For the rest, Hammersoft, I will go on and remove them. Just like we are doing now. But as soon as the bot is up, I will not in any form edit war to enforce that the rationales are written, I will not edit war removal if the editor refuses to write, I will just let the bot tag and come back a week later. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:18, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

IRC output (see the settings for the timings):

• [17:05] <NFCCheckBot> Commissioner of Agriculture of Tennessee http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=436862766&rcid=449769166 user:Diezba Media: File:Tennessee Department of Agriculture.jpg
• [17:05] <NFCCheckBot> Commissioner of Agriculture of Tennessee http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=436862766&rcid=449769166 user:Diezba Non-free media included by user: File:Tennessee Department of Agriculture.jpg
• [17:07] <NFCCheckBot> Commissioner of Agriculture of Tennessee http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=436862766&rcid=449769166 user:Diezba transcluded media File:Tennessee Department of Agriculture.jpg over 120 seconds ago - remind the editor to write a rationale.
• [17:15] <NFCCheckBot> Commissioner of Agriculture of Tennessee http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=436862766&rcid=449769166 user:Diezba transcluded media File:Tennessee Department of Agriculture.jpg over 600 seconds ago - disable the media.

'remind the editor to write a rationale' is something that could be done by the bot, 'disable the media' is then going to be 'tag the talkpage so anyone can remove the image in a week if it is not solved'. I know, some people will write the rationale, most will not, and that tag on the talkpage is not going to help either .. and I will make the bot smart enough to make sure that the tagged talkpages will be un-tagged when all rationales are there, and when they are not, that the tags result in categorisation. You have no clue how fast I can empty a category with articles which have been tagged for a week for having an image without rationale on it ... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:22, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

No it really isn't. We've had bots, and people who act like bots doing this for a long time and it's never really solved anything at all. A bot is not the solution to the problems with NFCC. An entire shift in the way things are done is what is needed.--Crossmr (talk) 23:01, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

No, Crossmr, the only solution is to get a team together who actually get the rationales placed where appropriate, and who remove those where rationales can not be made. This bot is by no means meant to solve the problem, that still needs to be done by the editors, but I see this as a way of flagging everything, and to leave reminders to those who may not have noticed that the image they use is actually non-free. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:12, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Notifications do very little. Notifications only made the problem worse before. If you want to solve this problem, and better the encyclopedia you need to actually start talking to people. A lot of the people with problems are new and inexperienced users, and a bot doesn't fix that. An attempt needs to be made to actually reach out to the user, offer your assistance in writing the fair use rationale or otherwise guiding/mentoring them through the process. Sounds like a lot of work, but the only alternative is the battleground we've had over this for years.--Crossmr (talk) 23:04, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree on the notifications part. But every time the bot sees someone insert a non-free image, and that image is not carrying a machine readable rationale (which generally means, that there is not a proper rationale, or the rationale is 'broken' - which may be as minor as a typo in the link) then we could notify that editor that the image needs a rationale, or that the rationale needs a fix. As long as we do not flood the editor with those requests (which can be easily done) there would not be a problem. Tagging the talkpage (and keeping the tags up to date) would help us in finding the problem cases, and it would be easier for editors to fix the cases. At the moment there is no form of on-wiki detection which articles contain images which have a 'broken' rationale or which do not have a rationale at all. It is impossible to go through it. I am willing to write a system, with the help of the community, that tags and notifies editors a couple of times (I can even make it work like XLinkBot, who does not revert/warn established editors: give IP editors more often a remark, give new editors up to 5 remarks about non-free images, and give established editors one or 2 in their complete lifetime here. We can push this as low as we want. 'establishededitornotifications=0' in the settings - and it would not notify them at all, set it to 1 and they get one in their lifetime. You are right, there is no need to warn editors 50 times on 50 subsequent additions of free material (though, by then, maybe someone should seriously talk to such editors). And if we have this notification system, and a tagging system in place, maybe we can get people together to fix the massive backlog in stead of two or three who would have to do them all. Because, whatever people argue, these images do fail the policy, and some are plainly not usable as fair-use and should go. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:49, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

The solution is to do what I'm doing right now. Actually go out and improve articles. It means writing some fair use rationales, it means manually doing things, but so what? If the alternative is to alienate users, then it's the right thing to do even if we can't all process 10 images a minute. NFCC is viewed poorly by a part of the community, it leads to conflicts both with them and new users who don't understand. If everyone in NFCC stopped that kind of behaviour and started manually editing and communicating with users over images the problem would be solved. Fix rationales that can be fixed (page moves, typos, extremely obvious stuff, like COMPANYXLOGO.JPG being on COMPANYX article) and let users know you've fixed it up for them and offer assistance. So far I've had nothing but positive responses from users, even at times where I've removed NFCC images from articles. By doing this, you're doing many things. You're improved articles, you're improving the project, and you're improving the image of NFCC. By improving the image of NFCC more users are likely to become involved in it which will help spread out the workload. At a point where you've done that, it might be helpful to create the right kind of bot to help things. Once everyone likes NFCC again, running a bot to report lists of articles to projects might be helpful. Doing so now will give the impression that if you don't fix them immediately the NFCC patrol will come through and remove them. Create a friendly image then do it and you're more likely to get people involved and improve the process.--Crossmr (talk) 01:12, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

We can promote as much good will as possible, but there will always always be a fundamental dislike for it because it is stricter than fair use law and that it is mandated by the Foundation and seems counter to the development of individuals' views of what an encyclopedia should be. Look at notability - we have probably the smoothest possible process to deal with topics some may believe non-notable, and yet the guideline is hated by a good quarter of the established editors.

As for a bot, it is absolutely needed, but the question is whether to remove and tag, tag and warn, or whatever set of steps best informs editors. Editors may still resent even one talk page template message, but we have to look to the greater good, and if that's the best means of getting the uploader's attention, then it should be done in addition to any other means to get eyes on picture to be corrected (and if readded if it was removed). We cannot be passive about this, which is what the touchy-feely approach proposes. --MASEM (t) 05:32, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, in the time I've done it, I haven't received anything but praise, even in removing galleries of non-free images. I'm there right now doing it a better way. It's more work, but the work is relative to the motivation for doing it. One motivation was stated and it was "to remove non-compliant images" if that is a users goal and not "improve articles and the project" then I could see why people might not want to do it the way I'm doing it right now. I'm very familiar with notability I've often been involved in AfD debates over non-notable subjects and if you'll note I actually started the Notability Noticeboard. Notability is an entirely different beast as notability speaks to the very existence of an article on the subject. NFCC is just about illustration of the subject. As I stated, templates are not the way to go. The first contact shouldn't be a template in this case. It's got too high of a failure rate to have an overall positive benefit. Nowhere was I passive in the work I did. If images needed to be removed, I removed them, but I left a personal edit summary and a personal note on the page of the involved user(s), if that user was still active. I noted one case where it seems the account was basically made to upload and add the image, but then hadn't edited in like 8 months. I figured there was not much point in talking to him, so I left a personal message, not a templated one, not one with a big warning sign, on the talk page and explained the issue in plain english. The solution is right there, it works, but it doesn't jive with how some people want to do things. As I stated earlier in the discussions, the solution might mean that NFCC is no longer the right place for some people currently doing it.--Crossmr (talk) 06:08, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying that way is wrong, but with 1000s of images that need to be remedied, it is not a practical solution to get this done in a timely manner (Which it needs to be) unless you get the community to work behind it. If the community doesn't want to get involved then we need to go with automated tools however impersonal this may come across. There's ways to humanize those tools, noticeboards or other places where newre editors can get further instruction and help. Having a few editors do a few images at a time is "passive", we need a large number of editors or a bot/automated system to make this "active" conformance to the Foundation. --MASEM (t) 06:17, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

It's entirely practical. There is no deadline even for NFCC so long as we're moving forward, we're doing it. As I said above, improve the image of NFCC and you're likely to get far more people interested in it. The alternative is alienating editors and continuing down the path we're going and that isn't acceptable in a community.--Crossmr (talk) 08:41, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Crossmr, I still don't see what is against a bot that notifies a user who forgot to write a FUR. OK, the bot should not leave hundreds of messages, but it might lead to some who know that it needs to be done (you could work on emptying categories in stead of a list where you might run into cases where someone else already fixed the article for you), &c. Also, having proper tagging of pages which have non-free content with broken/missing FURs would help your work as well. Sure, what you do, actually fixing them, also is part of the process. And note, I am far from the point that I would make a bot remove them - Wiki-syntax is too complicated for that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:58, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

At this point people are not that keen on bots and NFCC. At a later point a bot could be run for some tasks to help clean-up images. But at this point there shouldn't be any of that. There should be no scripts, nada. They should just be going out looking at images and cleaning up them, either by fixing them, or removing them if there is absolutely no way they belong in an article, and then talking to the user. A bot is useless right now because it's impersonal and NFCC needs some personality. If you want to run a bot to generate reports or add a category to the images or something that would be fine. But user interaction over NFCC issues right now should be done by users.--Crossmr (talk) 22:54, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Crossmr, that just creates the issue we have. If you want to bring this stuff to a reasonable halt, you will have to educate people who use non-free images. Even if you do 50 a day, we have a backlog in the 10-thousands. And if 5 people are doing this job, you will see that there are going to be many cases, where someone before you already went to the article, and you will be doing double work. Moreover, in the meanwhile, most of the editors adding images a) have no clue that for the non-free ones they use they have to add a FUR, and b) of those that do know that there is something like NFCC most don't check that the work they are using is actually non-free. If you want to really shorten the list of pages with broken/missing FURs, you also need to work on a smaller influx of such cases. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:07, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

In regard to Crossmr's concerns, I think it's a great idea for an editor who finds a file for which the file page is inadequate to fix it. But I also think it's a great idea to have, in addition, a bot that educates users who did a bad job of uploading how to do it correctly (or at least points them in the right direction). So I think the right approach is for the bot to not be bitey, even if it removes the file (I'm neutral about whether to remove or just warn). A single message to the user, written courteously and informatively should be fine, perhaps with escalating messages (much as we do for vandals etc.) for users who ignore the advice and keep on uploading badly. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:13, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Tryptofish - I am not (yet?) in favour of bot-removals, too likely to go wrong. I might be in favour of having a list there which can be cleaned out if the problem is not solved in a reasonable time (though still, maybe an attempt to fix it could be done).

I will make the 'warning' system completely adaptable via the settings, just like for XLinkBot (except maybe some machine readable tagging (e.g. via a template that produces no output or an invisible tag). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:24, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Proposed Solution

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive248#Request exemption of restrictions ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 02:21, 6 July 2011 (UTC)