Template talk:Fair use rationale/doc

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[edit] The purpose of this page

I have become somewhat concerned of late that otherwise legitimate images are being tagged for deletion under I6 as not having a rationale, when the rationale seems obvious. What I would like to propose is that we come up with, in some fashion, exactly what we expect to see on the description page. Sure, there may be extenuating issues, but for 99% of the non-free images (or at least the ones that we have any business using), we can come up with a list of 3 or 4 things we want to see.

This page is NOT a way to weasel around the new replaceability guidelines. Please don't try to turn it into such - if we are a free encyclopedia, we really don't need to be using the "I found it on the internet therefore it must be fair use" images.

I, for one, have no particular attachment to any particular requirement - what I did with the page and template is really intended just to be used as a starting point. I think we need to make it as simple as possible for any user to supply the required information, but I really have no attachment as to what that required information is.

Anyway ... please give this proposal your consideration and let's try to come up with some guidelines to make this thing easier. BigDT 22:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I will be happy to support any fair use guidelines that allow the usage of legitimate press and promophotos of living persons until and unless a quality free substitute becomes available. Until and unless that issue is resolved, any fair use proposal will fail to deal with 90% of the problems that currently exist, and have caused me and numerous other legitimate contributors to cease loading any kind of images to Wikipedia whatsoever. I wish you the best of luck. Tvccs 01:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
That's exactly what I do not want to get into here. This guideline has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with promo photos. This guideline doesn't tell you what kinds of images you can use - it is only to assist in writing the fair use rationale. BigDT 02:06, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree, this is a fine idea and does not at all need to be that tied up with other debates. We need a place to explain to people what a good fair use rationale is. I personally would like a place to link "fair use rationale" when I'm explaining it to someone that isn't Help:Image page#Fair use rationale, which I consider to be a sort of description by 2 specific examples. If we can delete images because they have no rationale I think we can give a list of what a rationale should contain. This shouldn't be that hard. - cohesion 04:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
There's one huge problem with Help:Image page#Fair use rationale right now ... that text is over three years old. It predates our current image tags, CSD I6, and most of the fair use policy. So to an extent, this proposal is a recognition that it needs an update, but this is also something completely new - it is a firm set of requirements for a rationale that we as a community feel is a prima facia rationale, that is, one that can stand on its own and make the basic case that the image qualifies for fair use. BigDT 05:30, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Well then, if you wish to write a fair use rationale excluding the use of essentially all press and promophotos, that's your option. But if the various Wikipedia pages that are out there, some of which say you can use them, are not resolved and consolidated, the larger issue I pointed to above won't be addressed. I'm sure there are improvements that can be made to the "how to" of a fair use rationale, and perhaps some more detailed sample pages can be shown or pointed to. Tvccs 19:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
BigDT, this is a good idea that you suggested. I remember some times where I had to write rationals for images that are under fair use, I had writers block and tried to put something down. Now, with this, whenever I do use a fair use photo, this could work very well. I think this will come in handy with the folks at WP:FAC so they have a clear idea of what they can do. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 20:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
(reset)I like this idea generally, and think semi-boilerplate is the way to go. I'm not sure what "proportion" on work means, since generally you're using the entire image or whatnot, or it should be fairly obvious what proportion you are using. I'd also like to have some links to good examples. Images that have very good fair use rationale on the page that users could look at for examples. I'd also like to have "bad" examples. More than the invalid examples of "I got it off Google!", but ones where people tried, but they just didn't quite make the boat and explain why. Finding examples to use would be difficult (for me), but I think it would help to make this clear to new people and old people who are trying to improve their FUR (Fair Use Rationale). --MECU≈talk 21:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some background

It's probably worth pointing out that Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use was once largely devoted to getting fair use rationales standardised. Proceeding from the idea that there were not really that many classes of media that were allowable, the hope was that boilerplate could be written that would cover most of them. That's the purpose of things like {{albumcover}}, or {{movieposter}}, for instance. Of course, if the album cover is somehow being used in some other article, for instance in an article about the album cover designer, a rationale for that article is needed.

I suppose that it is true that we have largely moved away from this model, or never really got there ({{albumcover}} instructs users to write a full rationale). There remains no obvious reason to hand write a new rationale every instance in which an article about an album has an unfree image of that album's cover. If this was to be sorted out, much of our unfree content wouldn't need further attention to the rationale.

What's happened since we introduced WP:CSD I6 is that users have had to go through the extra hoop of writing something down that will avoid having their image flagged by OrphanBot as having no rationale. This has spawned an awful lot of nonsense fair use rationales, such as "This is from the country's government website and is therefore fair use", or "This is a picture of the person in the article and is therefore fair use" or "This image is fair use because no freely licensed image exists". The help needed in such cases is very rarely that a better fair use rationale is needed, mostly these images need deleting.

There certainly are cases where particular media meets the spirit behind Wikipedia:Fair use but they don't belong to one of the common classes of things that we typically claim it for, and a page to help guide the uploader into writing a sound rationale could certainly be helpful. I suggest, however, that we might want to re-examine the boilerplate idea, and we need to avoid giving the impression that meeting WP:FUC #1 / avoiding OrphanBot / responding to whatever the fair use argument of the month happens to be is the job of the rationale. Jkelly 20:41, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree with a lot of what you are saying. One thing we could do with the template is have predefined parameters, eg, {{Fair use rationale|purpose=1|replaceability=3}} that would allow the user to create a good portion of the rationale without having to retype everything on every page. The concern I was hearing when I brought this up on the WP:CSD talk page is that some users didn't feel that the rationale was the same or obvious for, say, every logo. So by having a template with choices, we have a rationale there, but we also keep someone who isn't a copyright expert from having to come up with something from scratch for each image. BigDT 20:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ok ... so let's kick off the discussion:

I offer two questions to try and jumpstart discussion on the proposal ...

[edit] What's missing?

  • Question 1: What should be included in the rationale that I did not include? What should not be included, or should be optional, that I did include? BigDT 20:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
    • One important thing that's missing is that our usage must not compete with the copyright holder's usage. An image taken from a website that provides encyclopedic material, or for instance, a screenshot from a documentary film used to illustrate that film's subect (among many other cases) would compete with the copyright holder's usage and would not be permitted. --RobthTalk 01:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
      Good idea ... I have added that to the first part of the criterion ... feel free to revise. As I said before, I have no real attachment to what we approve - I just think we need something. BigDT 23:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Another thing that I think is important is that fair use rationales should often be fairly explicit and unique. I think we need to point out that we need more than just a generic rationale, and need something that is supported by the text in the article and even by the image caption in the article. I've noticed for example, a lot of film articles will use 3 or 4 screenshots, which I think is fine, but they often have identical fair use rationales. (ie it's low resolution, it doesn't disadvantage the copyright holder etc). So by that rationale, if a film has 3 million shots, any one of the 3 million could be used. I think it needs at least one sentence/point in the rationale that says something like "this image is important to the article because it depicts (describe what it depicts) and this is important in understanding the subject because (explain why it adds to the article). Things like album covers, book covers etc are fair enough - they are generally accepted as identifying the topic, but some of the others really look like decoration and when so many rationales are just copy and pastes without any thought - well, to me I think they are totally worthless. We may as well not even bother. I've seen copies and pastes that aren't even logical such as a screenshots of a solo performer that have things like "public domain images of this band are not available" etc. So if an article is going to use images, it should be clear why those particular images are used. I'm in favor of the guideline but I think it still allows for people to follow a certain set of rules, fill in the blanks and "justify" the use of their image, without necessarily thinking critically about the image or explaining why it's relevant. Rossrs 09:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Boilerplate text?

  • Question 2: Do we want any boilerplate text to be available or should everything be completely user-entered?
    • As an example, for "replaceability", we could allow the user to choose from choices like:
      • "None - the image is a screenshot, logo, or box art, or a photograph which itself is iconic (ie, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima) and no such thing as a free replacement could ever exist"
      • "Extremely unlikely - the image is a photograph of a one-time event used to identify or describe that one-time event and though someone else might have had a camera there, the chances are extremely unlikely"
      • "Difficult - the photo is of a deceased individual, reclusive individual, band, or other organization that has disbanded and is not likely to be available for another photo"
      • "Inconvenient - the photo is of a living person or object still in existence. Please note that this image will likely be deleted as it does not meet WP:FU criterion #1."
    • As a second example, we could allow the user to choose for "purpose" between, "primary identification of the article subject", "illustration of a particular paragraph or subtopic", etc.
    • In both cases, providing the boilerplate text would allow us to further categorize images for the purpose of patrolling them and finding invalid examples of fair use. On the flip side, if we provide boilerplate text, then inexperienced users may be inclined to just pick something, even if it doesn't apply. Any thoughts on this issue? BigDT 20:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


While I personally love complex templates, I think user entered is the way to go here. Otherwise I think you will have a system more complex and confusing for people than we have now. I mean, we could have some variables, and have them all plug in nicely, but there are people who think that things like {{albumcover}} simply are not fair use rationals. I personally would like to see more of a rationale than the simple template as well. So, having some clear instruction, and a template for formatting would be best. It may have some parsing to make sure there are key parameters entered, and maybe offer some help if there isn't one, but beyond that I think it will become too confusing and never be adopted. - cohesion 04:33, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opposition?

Is there any strong opposition to making this a guideline at this point? I would like it simply as a place to point to to help people make the rationales, not binding, but informative. - cohesion 01:25, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy deletion criterion I6

Images uploaded after May 4, 2006 that contain no rationale whatsoever should be speedy deleted 7 days after notice is given.
  • Just a technicality, but this sentence should say it only applies to image used under fair use. GFDL images don't contain fair use rationales and as it is phrased now, that would make them deletable for not having a fair use rationale... - Mgm|(talk) 13:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Yep, of course :) I changed it. I don't think the plan is to ever make this policy though, just a guideline. - cohesion 13:41, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • For my 2 cents, I liked the fact that this section includes (at present) a request that editors try to complete the fair use rationale rather than just deleting it. Too many Wikipedians have itchy delete-trigger fingers. 23skidoo 03:29, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Upgrade from proposal

I saw where Angr upgraded this page to a guideline. I have redirected Wikipedia:Fair use rationale here (it was going to a help page with extremely outdated information that predates most of our current fair use policy) and I have added a copy of the template here.

There are still a few things that should probably be finalized. Should anything be added or removed from the template? Should some of the text be revised? We probably want to get the template pretty close to its final form before people start using it without substing (otherwise, there could be orphaned parameters). --BigDT 03:48, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mgm's view

This proposal makes perfect sense. It forces people to think about fair use in the right way. We should probably get the template pre-loaded for newbies and all that. But it should definitely be included and made into a guideline to get this started. - Mgm|(talk) 13:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question: CD/DVD/TV captures

Hope that this is the right place to post this (sorry if it is not).
With captures - are we allowed to reproduce on wikipedia if they a referenced back to the website and are we allowed to "cut" and use the image? Or is this considered not a "rationale guideline" usage. -- Zarief 20:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

This page is more for discussing how to write the rationale, not what images qualify for fair use. The page you are looking for is Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. However, to answer your question, a TV/DVD screenshot is fine if the subject of the article is the TV program itself or the DVD itself. It is not acceptable, however, if the article is about trees and the DVD happens to show a picture of some trees. The key is whether or not a free version could be produced. If we are talking about Captain Kirk, no free image of Captain Kirk can ever be produced - it would be a derivative work of the real thing. So you can use a screenshot of Captain Kirk from a Star Trek episode. But if you are talking about something that exists outside of the TV show that the TV show just so happens to be about - even if that something is really, really hard to come by - that's not allowed. Does that help? --BigDT 21:00, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale/doc

Since this really is just instructions for how to use Template:Fair use rationale, I've converted Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline into a template documentation page for the said template. -- Ned Scott 04:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Ehh, I kinda like guidelines being in wikipedia namespace. Also this move has created cross namespace redirects and double redirects. Open to other opinions though of course. - cohesion 22:06, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree. If anything, it should be expanded. There's a very real problem that a lot of people who want to do the right thing don't have a clue what goes into a fair use rationale. We need to be trumpeting this guideline from the rooftops, not hiding it as template documentation. --BigDT 04:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Ok, unless there are objections I'm moving it back, it's not really directions on how to use this particular template as much as it's what needs to go into a rationale. Whether people want to use this template or not doesn't matter. (also there are issues of the broken redirects etc) - cohesion 20:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
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