User talk:Omegatron/Archive/March, 2007

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[edit] Dablink

While I understand... I think it couldn't have hurt to wait a bit before making such a phenomenally large change. I may have thought of many things, but I'd never have thought to clear my cache... (though I did just recently, and it looks fine)... I still disagree with the idea of having the template, I don't think the extra lag is worth it... but I do understand what your point is. Thank you. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 06:24, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

What extra lag? — Omegatron 06:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Omegatron. Would you mind either commenting on my suggestion at Template talk:Dablink#Layout broken, or simply implementing it? I think it would avoid a lot of the headaches this change has caused. I hope you're not avoiding commenting because of my comments earlier about the PDF icon thing; if I offended you, I apologize. Mike Dillon 06:30, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

For some reason I didn't see either of these comments. Mets seems to have done the explicit CSS thing. No, you have not offended me. I don't even know what you said about the PDF icon thing. I'll go look and see if I should be offended or not.  :-) — Omegatron 06:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Capacitor symbol.svg

Hey, could you please tell me if there is all right with this image of capacitor ? I'm not good in electronics.. Thanks in advance, --odder 23:48, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

It's not quite the right proportions. See Image:Capacitor Symbol.svg and Image:Estructura ladder.PNG, for instance. There are other types of symbols in Commons:User:Omegatron/Gallery#Various. — Omegatron 06:30, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dismissing banner

If you want to permanently remove the top banner just add #siteNotice { display: none; } to your monobook.css page, and do a hard refresh. Prodego talk 02:17, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

But other things are put in the siteNotice, too. — Omegatron 02:19, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Then use #fundraising { display: none; } Prodego talk 03:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah. — Omegatron 03:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted picture question

Hi, I just noticed that a picture I uploaded was deleted without anyone letting me know. I was wondering if you could tell me who deleted the picture and why it was... The picture is Image:Pentagon precollapse.jpg. Thanks! Fresheneesz 06:56, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

21:35, November 24, 2006 Naconkantari (Talk | contribs | block) deleted "Image:Pentagon precollapse.jpg" (Image with no fair use rationale as of 17 November 2006) — Omegatron 07:06, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! Fresheneesz 20:45, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I need a hand

  • (also earlier left an response for you on TT:dablink!)

I made an suggested 'disclaimer' edit per the Cfd I nominated to rename Category:Categories for deletion (NBD- to 'discussion') but the template nesting on the line isn't robust using {{Fs}}, and {{TextColors}} (formerly just 'Co').

    I as trying for a mild 'colorized' thin banner message in the spirit of the comment/request in the CFD... But the two templates, as well as my third 'unwikitableized' (compare with Patrick's) attempt {{NestTextColors}} to work around the glitch are 'having issues. Not robust in programming lingo.

   My HTML + Wikimarkup knowledge is improving, but weak, so for example, I don't know how class plays with other stuff, and .css, etc. nor if there is just a more elegant way to get an boilerplate effect like the one desired. At the same time, as you'll see on the testbed (Talk of NestTextColors) things almost worked... then when applied on the cat page died... so I even saw a change of symptoms along the way. (see my summary on initiating the talk).

   Can you take a look under the hood here and see if you can make a quick fiddle to get the target message (last section) working, or point me in the right direction? Suggest alternatives. etc. Thanks. I'll stay clear. If you can't, drop me an 'can't do this now', (here will do) and I'll see if I can find someone else. Thanks! // FrankB 19:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Should I ask another? There is no indicator here in three hours and fifty minutes, give or take. // FrankB 23:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Come on, man: perhaps he has things to do. --Gwern (contribs) 02:30 6 January 2007 (GMT)
Thanks any way Omegatron. It's been dealt with now. Sorry to clutter your page. I probably should have gone to VPT. ttfn
(xpostGwern-- Actually, I hope he had a hot and heavy date <g>... for wish him the best, but T'was on an important page, and I'd seen him post minutes before I left him the note, and posts afterwards. I didn't pick his name out of an hat, but went to someone I knew was good, helpful, and then checked contribs making sure I'd found someone active and around.
      Suspected he would find the glitch with his ability essentially in 'two minutes flat' or so.


Add in this part: "If you can't, drop me an 'can't do this now', (here will do)", and the clarification request was hardly untoward four hours later. // FrankB 13:03, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I don't even understand what's going on in this section. — Omegatron 04:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

NBD - dealt with. I'd asked for help for a line in [1] added on Category:Categories for deletion which involved two nested templates. (These make a small discrete banner warning... see the cat or CFD discussion for result.) I'd asked you after checking you'd just made a post. The problem was fixed by CBD, who found an '=' character in the two nested templates, particularly, {{Fs}} was screwing up the parsing. The resultant solution is {{NestTextColors}}. Sorry we junked up your page. Best! // FrankB 16:27, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PETA photo

Hi Omegatron, I understand that this image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PETA_dumpster_incident_dead_animal_retrieval.jpg is about to be deleted. Since it seems to me it shouldn't, can you explain to me why it's being deleted? Thanks, Crum375 01:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Consensus was to keep the image after I got permission to use it, but User:Coredesat, User:Amarkov, User:Colourburst, User:Zscout370 "overturned" consensus and deleted it. You might want to talk to them. See Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_January_1 — Omegatron 04:37, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Images with permission

While you and I could debate this for a while, this was a policy that wasn't made to the knowledge of the community until it was actually made. It was one of the cases where Jimbo decided something and, as of that day, we had to follow it. I know people questioned the policy, but I do not think it will be reversed, since the only person that could do it is Jimbo himself. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 04:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo never changes his mind? — Omegatron 04:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
On issues such as this, I don't think so. You can always ask him. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 10:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I intend to.  :-) — Omegatron 14:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Water fuel cell

[edit] Stan Meyer

I did not and don't intend to start an edit war over the death of Stan Mayer, so I thought I'd explain my reasonings more clearly. I am not one who believes in the "government poisoned Meyer" conspiracy theories which I opine to be utter BS. However I do think we lack even a single reliable source citing the cause of his death (technically, we do not even have a reliable source to claim that he is dead - but I don't aim to start another rumor here :-).

  • For example look at [2] to judge the credibility of the last source you added.
  • Jimbo Wales objected to (see diff) using his own post on wikipedia (where one can look at article history to trace authorship, unlike on a forum or newsgroup) , as the source for his birthday. As a result his correct birthday was deleted and the article now mentions an incorrect, though verifiable, birth date for him. So you yourself can judge, how far below the expected wikipedia standards, sources such as this and this fall.

So IMO, lacking any real information, we need to delete the whole death section. What do you think ? Abecedare 19:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

And if it helps establish my fair intentions to you, I'll point out that the Lawsuit section of the article was written by me. IMO that is the onlu unimpeachably sourced (The Times) information on the page besides the fact that Meyer holds the listed US patents. And yes, I did verify that the article was actually published in the British newspaper, and did not base my addition solely on this online source (which did turn out to quote the article accurately though). Abecedare 19:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:RS is nice and all, but this is a wiki, and it's an encyclopedia. Our goal is to write about things. "Sometimes it is better to have no information at all than to have information without a source." But most of the time, it's fine.

Regardless, this material is sourced. If you don't doubt that the coroner's report really said that he died from an aneurysm, and you don't doubt that his obituary was really copied from a real newspaper, then leave it in the article. That's how wikis work.

If you have reason to believe that those source are, in fact, lying, then demonstrate why you think so. I find it hard to believe, since the original information (autopsy report, obituary) is readily available for confirmation, and the lie would directly conflict with their bias. — Omegatron 20:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect that is a specious arguments. Mine and your opinions are incidental and not relevant to whether the information stays; the determining factor is the policies - if you object to those feel free to argue that at WP:VP. In the meantime, one violates them at ones peril.
Also it is not up to me to prove that an unreliable source is wrong ! It doesn't matter whether it is true or not - the principle guiding wikipedia (note synonymous with wiki) is not truth but verifiability.Abecedare 20:37, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

This is perfectly in keeping with policy. See Wikipedia:Verifiability for details. Sourced material is better than unsourced, but if you know that something is true, don't remove it. If it becomes contentious, (better) sources can be found for it. If you are suspicious of an unsourced statement, put a {{dubious}} or {{citation needed}} tag on it. If you know for certain that an unsourced statement is untrue, remove it and discuss on the talk page.

Jimbo's recent concern about libel lawsuits from living persons (as he demonstrated on the article about himself, a living person) doesn't override our more fundamental policies, and shouldn't be misapplied to prevent us from achieving our goal of creating a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality. — Omegatron 21:03, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that argument was helpful. I am convinced by your pointing out "but if you know that something is true, don't remove it. If you are suspicious of an unsourced statement, put a {{citation needed}} tag on it." Since I am suspicious of the sources but not the claim, I won't place a citation tag on the statement or delete it. Abecedare 21:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I fully agree that the info could be sourced better (we can probably cite the original report if it's available upon request from the coroner's office, and we can find the newspaper that published the obituary and cite the paper directly), but there's absolutely no reason to remove it in the meantime unless there's controversy about it. That would be harmful and counterproductive.
No one doubts what the coroner's report actually said, including those who think Stan was murdered (according to the threads I cited); the controversy is about whether he was being honest when he wrote it and whether he is qualified. — Omegatron 21:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Frankly

Are you going to just delete my changes? Are you now going to ban me because I dared to change the article?24.193.218.207 21:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Have I deleted your changes? Please assume good faith. — Omegatron 22:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
How do I delete the unsourced statements category?24.193.218.207 22:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I'd appreciate

I'd apprecaite a read over of the changes of made to make sure they meet with your approval. If they meet with your approval I hope that you will prevent undue changes by other administrators. If my changes meet with your approval I will continue to edit the article to make it ever better, all while complying specifically with WP:CITE.24.193.218.207 23:46, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Water fuel cell

I hear you are now rooting for 24.193.218.207. See User_talk:Man_with_two_legs. True, or false? Man with two legs 10:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Rooting for? — Omegatron 14:45, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Whats the point in registering, any edit I make is just reverted. Do all edits have to be pre-approved? Why is everyone given access to the edit tag if edits must be pre-approved prior to inclusion?24.193.218.207 14:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Some of your edits were good, others were not. Only the bad ones should have been reverted. I haven't looked through the page since early yesterday. I'll see what I can do.
Also, frankly, your contributions will be respected a little more if you have an account, simply because IPs are commonly associated with drive-by vandalism. In theory, everyone's contributions should be respected equally, but in practice, "real" accounts seem more legit. — Omegatron 15:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:ZyMOS-Bot/Integrated circuit manufacturer logos

Why was this removed, specifically? logos are allowed. — Omegatron 22:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Logos are fair-use images and are not allowed to be uploaded on wikimedia commons, however they are allowed on wikipedia. I have about 400 IC company logos, so i need to use a bot to upload them. Uploading them manual is quite a pain.
  • Wikipedia Bots: On wikipedia A bot must be approved with a good reason to have it. My bot was not approved and baned. I asked for approval and was denied. My banned bot is User:ZyMOS-Bot.
  • Fair Use Image Usage: If I manually upload a logo it must be linked on a page within 7 days or its automatically deleted. I, of course can not link all 400 by my self, and many of the logos are of dead company's and do not have pages on wikipedia yet. I could make a temporary page with all of them linked until they can be properly used on a page, however fair-use images are not allowed on user sites, and the sandbox will not last long enough to link. Here is my denied attempt. User:ZyMOS-Bot/list_of_ic_manufacturer_logos, note my other external page is more complete, see below
  • Creating a logo article: I though about creating a actual page called IC manufacturer logos, but their is little precedent for this and is likely to get deleted, and wasting allot of my time.
  • So i gave up and put it on my wikihowto site, we are proposing as a wikimedia site
  • If you want to revive the fight, I will support you. I have the script to upload them with the appropriate licenses and descriptions. I can try to re-upload them, with approval. Or I can zip all the logo images and give you the file. We can also use the updated page from the other site and i have the info on my computer to finish labeling the unlabeled logos. i just haven't gotten to it yet.
Thanks for your interest: ZyMOS 19:21, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
please reply on my talk page, and u can copy it on your if you want, thanks

IC manufacturer logos is a good idea, and I see absolutely no reason why this content shouldn't be on Wikipedia. The pictures are not that high resolution, though. — Omegatron 19:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Well you think its worth another try. The resolution can't be helped unless i go though each one manually, but thats what wiki is for. Gradually getting better. ZyMOS 05:39, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Blocking the vandal

sex fiend.

Yep. — Omegatron 22:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey, User:jumping rock vandalized my user page too, among many other people's. I guess I'm somebody now. ;) FYI. Avt tor 22:48, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] COinS tag

Hi this may make it difficult for me to spot bad ISBNs (and ISSNs) (I scan for them from time to time). I'll have to think about it. Historically about 5% of articles with ISBN in them contained bad ISBNs (that is excluding ASINs mis-described as ISBNs, and ISBNs that were wrong but appeared valid). Just letting you know. Rich Farmbrough, 22:49 12 January 2007 (GMT).

I'm not sure I understand. You mean the explicit isbn= field? How does id=ISBN make it easier for you to find bad ones? How is this any different from other errors? — Omegatron 05:21, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
In this context "I" means User:SmackBot:- I scan the database for "ISBN", then visit each matching article and check that the ISBNs are either 10 or 13 digits, that they follow certain constraints (e.g. do not begin with a 6), and that the checksum is valid. I also format the number correctly. Hope this explains. Rich Farmbrough, 17:16 15 January 2007 (GMT).
Ah. You could scan all instances of cite book, as well, no? — Omegatron 17:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I would have to identify occurances of isbn\s*=\s* followed by a putative ISBN, but only in cite book: other templates use isbn = and I think I would insert the ISBN there to make isbn = ISBN xxxxx. I can't be sure as my main machine is doing an impression of a heap of useless junk at the moment. An early version of the setting is here. You'll see the problem. Rich Farmbrough, 22:19 15 January 2007 (GMT).
Short answer, yes I could catch the articles to check, but the ISBN would not be recognisable as such. Rich Farmbrough, 22:19 15 January 2007 (GMT).
OF course isbn = ISBN xxxxxxx would not be a problem. Rich Farmbrough, 22:20 15 January 2007 (GMT).

I would have to identify occurances of isbn\s*=\s* followed by a putative ISBN

You could also search for the output of the ISBN in the rendered article, no? isbn = xxxx in the template produces exactly the same output as id = ISBN xxxx.

but only in cite book: other templates use isbn =

The other templates currently use id = ISBN xxxx, but I'd like to change them to the newer style.

OF course isbn = ISBN xxxxxxx would not be a problem.

That would defeat the purpose of the isbn = field. — Omegatron 22:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I work on source using AWB. But I'm sure I'll come up with something... Rich Farmbrough, 10:07 17 January 2007 (GMT).
Incidentally Template:Infobox Book uses isbn = .... Rich Farmbrough, 10:17 17 January 2007 (GMT).

[edit] Portal:Electronics

Hey, I've added a number of your electronic diagrams to the portal, they're very good. Was just wondering, there are a few in png format, how hard would it be to convert those to svg? It sure would make them look better since I'm using them on a larger scale. Thanks  :) Joe I 05:26, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

User:Alejo2083 has been creating good SVG versions in Xircuit, among others (I drew the originals of the electrolytic capacitor model, the active lowpass filter, etc.) We have all been discussing various programs here. Also there were some discussions with User:Poccil about an SVG-outputting version of Klunky, which I think might be the optimal solution; writing our own SVG-outputting javascript circuit builder. Should be easy to edit since SVG is just text. But I don't know what happened with that. — Omegatron 05:33, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Steam

I have added a comment on Talk:Steam#Steam, Mist, and Water Vapor that I'd like your feedback on. --Tunheim 15:40, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Replaceable fair use

Hello there! It appears that there is a bit of conflict brewing on the template I mentioned. Since the template is protected (ergo all the warring parties are admins), page protection doesn't seem to be an action for ending the fighting. In any case, please discuss things on the talk page because it's much better than wheel warring. (I'm giving people involved in the RV-athon this message. If you know someone else who needs to read it, send it to them, too.) ★MESSEDROCKER★ 01:43, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I made the initial edit, but I haven't reverted it. The template should be made to show that the policy is disputed, and left alone until some consensus is formed. — Omegatron 01:45, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Speaking of which, did you notice that Wikipedia:Fair use criteria had been protected due to the edit war when you edited it? Jkelly 01:56, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I didn't notice at first. Have I reverted any of the content that is disputed, though? — Omegatron 01:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't say so... but people get pretty touchy about such things, as Messedrocker reminded both of us. Jkelly 02:02, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
They certainly do. The protection was to stop an edit war, and my accidental edits didn't continue the edit war, so I should be good. — Omegatron 02:25, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use policy edits

It's probably not productive to just make them to the policy while it's under discussion... Georgewilliamherbert 04:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

How else are guidelines changed?
When things had some agreement on the talk page, I changed the policy page to demonstrate this. These changes either stuck or were further modified by others, leading to the "acceptable quality" clause instead of my "equal or better quality" clause, for instance. I agree now that a free replacement only needs to be of enough quality to meet its encyclopedic purpose.
This is how we do things. Only the changes that conflict with the "destroy fair use at any cost" crowd were criticized. — Omegatron 15:53, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questions you've asked me

Hi. That page is a little bit too noisy for me to feel like I can have any reasonable conversation there. You asked me if I think that there are people who aren't interested in free content. If you mean editing at en:, then yes, of course I think that. en: has admins who don't care about free content. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we had admins here who don't care about encyclopedias, given that there are more than 1200 en: admins. If you were asking only about the editors who had commented on WT:FU in the last week or so, I am agnostic, I suppose. I have a hard time keeping track of who said what, and what was hyperbole and point-scoring as opposed to being a real attempt to communicate.

As for the other question, which was more of an assertion about reuse, I'm not positive that I understand where you're coming from. I'm assuming, based on your editing, that your objection is to the replaceability criteria. Your position seems to be that we shouldn't be deleting media that could be replaced free content until we actually have that free content "in hand". Buttalk:Fair use&diff=prev&oldid=103749397 your statement "Prohibiting non-free content doesn't help downstream users at all, but it does hurt us" seems to be asserting that removing unfree content from a database dump is easy, and so we shouldn't really care about any of our criteria. User:Carnildo would be the person to ask more about this, but it really isn't trivial to do, at least when the unfree media is mixed in with templates or other complicated formatting. I suspect, however, that you're not really interested in whether that is true or not, becuase your interest is in "us", meaning specifically the en: Wikipeda website. If I'm right about the website being the only goal you recognise, our licensing policies are just not going to make any sense to you, and there's not much more to be said. I'd nevertheless ask you why, if your position is that unfree media that could be replaced should be kept and that free licensing is not as important as we think it is, should this not apply to text as well? Should we accept noncommercial or no-derivative textual contributions, some of which would no doubt be of much higher quality than what we produce? If not, why not, and how does text differ from other media? Would you be more or less interested in contributing to a project if the text wasn't freely licensed? Jkelly 03:38, 28 January 2007 (UTC)


Hi. That page is a little bit too noisy for me

Me too. And stressful. Aye.

If you were asking only about the editors who had commented on WT:FU in the last week or so

That's what I was asking. Do you think that most of the people defending fair use are defending it because they don't care about free content?
I certainly do, if you're wondering. All of my contributions are released under multiple FSF and CC licenses, including about 300 images and sound files.

Your position seems to be

Keep in mind that we're discussing a few different things at once on that page.  :-) My positions are:
  • There seem to be a few people who are campaigning to completely eliminate all non-free content from Wikipedia. This is severely misguided and completely contrary to the philosophy behind our project.
  • Legally-usable media that theoretically could be replaced with free media should not be deleted until that replacement is actually found or created. Deleting this legally-protected information without replacing it with a free alternative is destructive to the project. This is in keeping with the letter of our official policies and the spirit of our official philosophy.
    • But we should definitely make very clear in as many places as possible that the images are non-free and that we would really like free replacements if possible. Templates like {{reqphoto}} on the talk page of articles they are used in, listing of descriptions of all desired images on a page like Wikipedia:Requested pictures, watermarks on the images themselves to indicate even in article view that they are non-free... I'm sure there are even better ideas that we haven't thought of.

seems to be asserting that removing unfree content from a database dump is easy, and so we shouldn't really care about any of our criteria. ... I suspect, however, that you're not really interested in whether that is true or not, becuase your interest is in "us", meaning specifically the en: Wikipeda website.

Your suspicions are correct.  :-) I don't really care if it's easy or not; it's not our responsibility. As I've said multiple times, not all of our content is freely reproducible, no matter how freely we license it. Even public domain Nazi insignia isn't reproducible in Germany, for instance. Should we remove it from the project to make downstream use easier in Germany? Downstream users might end up in prison, after all!
It is certainly our responsibility to attribute our content in detail and clearly state what license it is under. But we already do that. In addition, it would be really nice of us to provide ways to extract only certain types of content from those database dumps for downstream use, and I don't know if we do anything like that or not. But the legality of reproduction is ultimately not our problem, since it varies wildly from country to country, and we shouldn't severely cripple our encyclopedia just because it might make copying a little more difficult for some theoretical downstream user.

some of which would no doubt be of much higher quality

Just a note: I originally added a restriction to the policy page that said free replacements should be "of equal or better quality". Some others changed it to say "of acceptable quality to meet its encyclopedic purpose". I thought "Ah, good point", and fully support this change. This is how consensus is made. Revert warring is not.

if your position is that unfree media that could be replaced should be kept and that free licensing is not as important as we think it is, should this not apply to text as well? Should we accept noncommercial or no-derivative textual contributions, some of which would no doubt be of much higher quality than what we produce?

As for textual contributions, if we can create free content that is equally informative, then that is superior. Our goal is to be high quality but also freely distributable; if we can have both then that is clearly the best case. In the case of text, we almost always can have both.
The only cases in which a paraphrase is not encyclopedic enough is the case of direct quotations. So we use them under the United States fair use doctrine. We can't license them under the GFDL since we don't own their copyright, and this is clearly stated in our copyright documents. Not all of the text on this website is under the GFDL, as some people on that talk page will try to tell you.

how does text differ from other media?

Can you paraphrase Image:Tianasquare.jpg in a way that provides the same information as the original? How about Image:1938 Interior of Berlin synagogue after Kristallnacht.jpg or Image:Aa McVeigh bombing.jpg? You'll have to do just that if the "delete non-free content" crowd gets its way...

Would you be more or less interested in contributing to a project if the text wasn't freely licensed?

I would be less interested, of course. — Omegatron 06:03, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think it is less a viper pit since the edit war. There was some real nastiness a couple of weeks ago. I mostly agree that we need to recognise a limit to what we can do in terms of ease of reusability. It seems to me that you and I only really disagree about two points. The first is the replaceability criteria, which I think is an overall gain for us; people really don't upload their amateurish pictures of their university architecture or the author at the book signing when there's a professional photo already there. It's also absured to be asking people to freely license a photo they've taken when articles are full of random photographs where the copyright holder didn't have to do any such thing. User:Gmaxwell may be able to come up with some statistics about this eventually. I'm not at all sure that this criteria is really up to local consensus at en: (and when I say I am not sure, I mean I am not sure -- I really don't know). The other thing we disagree about is that there is any real movement to get rid of fair use on en:. There are a couple of people who think that it would be a good idea, and even I think that it is more of a headache than it is worth some days, but there's never been any real support for the idea, and I doubt that there will be in the future. If anything, making conservative and thoughtful use it is, I suggest, the best way to ensure that it continues to be an option here. Jkelly 06:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)


Replaceability
people really don't upload their amateurish pictures of their university architecture or the author at the book signing when there's a professional photo already there
You really want people uploading blurry webcam pics of celebrities to replace publicity photos that are completely legal to reproduce and very redistributable? If we can get a public domain image like Image:PatrickStewart2004-08-03.jpg, that's great; we should encourage that as much as possible. But if not, I don't see how this is an improvement. Downstream users who can't reproduce our fair use images (if such a downstream user even exists) can also find free replacement images, you know. The people trying to change these policies are straining for gnats and swallowing camels. Anyway, I think people will simply disagree about this point for a long time. We need to find a solution that pleases as many contributors as possible.
It's also absured to be asking people to freely license a photo they've taken when articles are full of random photographs where the copyright holder didn't have to do any such thing.
Hmmm... I think that if they're going to freely license a photo, they'll do it regardless of whether it's replacing an image in an article or not. In most cases, these photos are taken by people who make their living selling them. Copyright exists for a reason, you know. I'd love to see statistics on this, too, though. On the talk page someone suggested that deleting images actually encourages their replacement, but I'm highly skeptical. I imagine a handful of images are replaced, but the rest are just forgotten. And there are certainly other ways to encourage free replacements. Statistics about all of this stuff would be very helpful to the discussion.
Regardless of whether it turns out to be beneficial or not (I predict not), deleting images before a replacement is found is in conflict with our official policy, and there simply isn't a broad enough consensus for this to change official policy (if that's even possible). "In cases where no such images/sounds are currently available, then fair use images are acceptable (until such time as free images become available)."
Movement to get rid of fair use
There certainly is. This is hinted at in the policy's wording: "Most popular non-English Wikipedias do not permit unfree images at all." It seems to me that a bunch of other language Wikipedias completely eradicated all non-free content, and now they're trying to make the same thing happen here. See:
The smaller changes to policy are just small steps towards this ultimate goal. Obviously this should not be allowed to succeed. — Omegatron 16:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)