Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Help:Displaying the international wheelchair symbol

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellany page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus. While a minority of commenters seek outright deletion under the logic that even the archiving of this page is harmful (as it is liable to confuse most readers), most of those advocating deletion appear to do so because the page represents a "bad idea." In such cases, the standard practice is to mark the page as historical, leaving the record of the failed idea intact. This is done to prevent Wikipedians from having the same arguments eternally over the same "bad ideas"; a reference to an archive is often enough to stop recurrences. In this case, this is no obvious reason to abandon standard practice, and no consensus to delete by any reasonable measure. Xoloz 15:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help:Displaying the international wheelchair symbol

This page was created to help users upload a font to display the disabled access symbol when the copyright of Image:Handicap reverse.svg was in dispute. This method was rejected, and eventually the copyright issue was resolved. Therefore this help page is redundant. Nothing links to this page except talk pages.  – Tivedshambo (talk) 22:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Speedy keep no reason to delete this page, and the ISA image is still copyrighted. User:White Cat doesn't know what he's talking about, and has made a completely inappropriate decision. The en.Wiki debate regarding this image clearly established that it is, in fact, a copyrighted image. -- Ned Scott 22:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete, this and all the debate surrounding this symbol is a huge waste of time. This page adds virtually nothing to Wikipedia. — The Storm Surfer 23:17, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep, mark as {{Historical}} if you wish, but the debate is ongoing and this is still an option to be considered. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• *sigh* more ISA drama... Just tag it as historical. On the bright side, the page, at the very least, lets editors know about the DejaVu fonts (though I don't know how they would find the page!). --Iamunknown 00:42, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete; the method is inaccessible to the majority of users. It is better to use a free replacement than a font-based loophole that the majority of people cannot see. --NE2 10:34, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete, though not for the reason specified by the nominator. It's true that the debate is ongoing, but under no circumstance will this page aid in its resolution. Regardless of whether we can use the symbol directly, in no way does the page provide any sort of real solution. While well-intentioned, it advises users to deliberately circumvent Wikimedia Foundation policy by exploiting an unintentional loophole. Therefore, I believe that tagging it "historical" or "rejected" is insufficient. (If it were merely a bad idea, I wouldn't advocate deletion.) —David Levy 15:15, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete - Although this is one of the most interesting attempts to solve a copyrighted image problem, I cannot view this as historical because the page was created only about 6 weeks ago. The method to view the symbol is highly impractical, and like NE2 said, a far better way to solve the problem would be to create a temporary image presenting a handicap and then released into public domain. ~Iceshark7 19:43, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete For us that are not computer geniuses, that seems pretty hard to see. (I see a big blue ? )—trey^{bang me} 22:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Do you even understand what this page is about? -- Ned Scott 22:35, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

What are you talking about? —trey^{bang me} 22:39, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Trey makes a good point on, that it is not useful for everyone, since not everyone knows how to manage a wheelchair symbol via a font. There are some excellent editors on Wikipedia without any skills of computing at all, and that's why a replacement image is to be used in place of a font. ~Iceshark7 22:53, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment The point of this page was to explain as clearly as possible to nontechnical users how to add support for the Unicode character. The reason you are seeing a ? is clearly explained on the help page.

Comment Is it worthy, to dedicate a whole help page for step-by-step instructions just to show a single image? ~Iceshark7 07:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

That said, from day one I wanted the symbol be sent as a simple image file. This solution is very much my second choice. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:16, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Clearly, its not doing the job it was meant to do.—trey^jay–jay 00:32, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I fully understand why you created the page, but it isn't actually a solution. There is absolutely no relevant distinction between simply displaying the icon and implementing this cumbersome alternative. Our goal is not to skirt Wikimedia Foundation policy by exploiting an unintentional loophole. —David Levy 00:43, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. Per Ned Scott. This may be important, and should be kept. Giggy _U^CP 00:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Would you care to explain why the page may be important? —David Levy 01:15, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep until a proper solution can be found. However, I would like to note that while this may be a legal way to get the icon to show-up, this "accessibility" icon is not, in itself "accessible". When used in infoboxes, such as [1], it may be preferable to simple have a checkmark next to the phrase "Wheelchair accessible". But regardless, it is necessary in some instances to have the logo/icon itself, and this page provides a solution (abit quirky and exploitive of a loophole) for the moment, but once an approved, perhaps Wiki sanctioned solution can be found to the icon, the you can speedily delete Tiggerjay 00:14, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

By the way, it would be legal to use a simple image file instead of this workaround. The problem is that it's unclear whether WP:NONFREE and Foundation:Resolution:Licensing policy would permit that. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:33, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah, yes you are correct -- so read: "permitted on wikipedia" instead of "legal"... :) Tiggerjay 00:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. This isn't a legal issue at all. Irrespective of convenience (or lack thereof), a page that encourages users to deliberately skirt Wikimedia Foundation policy by exploiting an unintentional loophole is not a "solution." It's completely unacceptable. There is absolutely no practical distinction between displaying the icon as an image file and asking users to download a special font. Either we can use the icon or we can't. —David Levy 01:33, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

• Strongest possible delete - I don't know or care if the ISA meets Wikipedia's copyright needs or not, but this is an unacceptable workaround. Unlike a message board, our target audience is NOT our own membership. We can't expect random internet users to download a font to read the encyclopedia. We can't expect people who receive a copy of Wikipedia on a CD to have a random font. We can't expect users of sites that reuse Wikipedia content like about.com and answers.com to have this font. This is an unacceptable workaround and this needs to go away quickly. --BigΔT 05:08, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, the character in question is part of the Unicode standard, so it may make its way into more fonts in the future. And we already ask users to use suitable fonts to read the article Japanese writing system, for example. But I agree that this is not the best solution and I would much prefer using a simple image file. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 16:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment What I've seen, is that many new computers already get supplied with eastern fonts (Chinese, Japanese...), and the reason why is probably because those are viewed as very useful for some people. It is very rare that people would actually need to install additional fonts to read another languagem on these days. In this case, I can't see any other purpose from the help page expect that I would get a wheelchair symbol to show. I don't really want the hassle to install a whole new fontset just to view one single image I could just look by going to Handicap.svg. ~Iceshark7 07:11, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep and mark as historical (or rejected). Really, the tendency to reject proposals via MfD is harmful if you actually intend on deleting the page. It was a good faith solution, it didn't work (or we don't see it working at this point), leave it alone. Gracenotes^T § 03:40, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • By the way, I also suggest moving it to the Wikipedia namespace. Gracenotes^T § 03:41, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.