Wikipedia talk:Replaceability of fair-use images

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[edit] Another attempt at consensus...

So let's not let this die. Let's work harder to find areas we all AGREE on.

I'll go first ...

I think we all agree that Wikipedia articles, in order to be as encyclopedic as possible, should often contain images.

See? That was easy! What are more things we all agree on? Jenolen speak it! 04:52, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Is that meant as a joke? Daniel Case 06:03, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Not at all. I don't like the idea of giving up. It's contrary to the "wikis can solve the world's problems" spirit that pervades this project. I'm very serious... what are the things we agree on?
Also, I'm glad to see GMaxwell brought his usual gentle touch and reasoned consensus-building skills to the debate... How about doing something other than slashing and burning, Gmax? Jenolen speak it! 06:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
How am I supposed to build 'consensus' when the important break in communication is that some people here do not share the fundamental goal of building a free content encyclopedia? We can't have a page sitting around looking like policy advocating a position that the foundation itself has outright rejected, that a great image trumps a free image. --Gmaxwell 06:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
How am I supposed to build consensus... I know, it's tough! But I bet you can do it!! I know you can! Try really hard... and, you know, maybe start by respecting other editors? Just a suggestion... Jenolen speak it! 07:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I do respect you and the others who have edited in support of the initial version of this page. I respect that you do not share the fundamental free content goal of the project and because I respect you I do not seek to convince you that your motivations should be different. I understand that your goals and the projects goals may substantially overlap, and I welcome and applaud your contributions. However, where they do not overlap, I must reject your contributions. There really isn't much more to say. We aren't going to have a policy which says that a non-free image would be preserved over a free image purely on the basis of quality. --Gmaxwell 07:15, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I thought this policy page was meant as a joke. Have you read letter from the board? You are simply not going to sneak in quality as a reason to keep an unfree image. If you don't like the quality of a free picture, go get someone to create a better one. I must say that I've never seen a more mis-guided policy page in my stay here... Before I cleaned it up this page was more off the mark than Wikipedia:Toby. --Gmaxwell 06:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Please, no personal attacks. Did you see what I wrote into it, and emphasized, a long time ago: "A generic free-use image must be used over a representative fair-use one if there are no historical issues (such as a now-retired athlete or entertainer in an infobox devoted to summarizing career information)"? I have avoided the argument that quality alone would be enough to justify keeping an otherwise replaceable fair use image because it's against policy and I really resent people imputing that argument to the draft policy and (by extension) myself when the very text does not support that. Of course, quality does come into play when it renders the picture unencyclopedic.

And, I must say, coming from a guy whose response to my good-faith attempt to suggest that a notoriously horrendous image be deleted to encourage the creation and upload of a better one was to trash my own photographic skills, to say "If you don't like the quality of a free picture, go get someone to create a better one." is rich. Just rich. Daniel Case 21:53, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

You didn't "clean it up", you rewrote it into an anti-fair use screed and deleted half of it without discussion. In the article space, that type of edit is generally only done by people whose names start with a set of numbers and a period, and are usually what we call vandalism.
Since your name does not start with a set of numbers and a period I'll assume it wasn't vandalism, but rather you taking a rather heavy handed approach at WP:BRD. You've been bold, you've been reverted. Now let's see you discuss. --tjstrf talk 06:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
The first person to start a policy page does not obtain a special right to control its content simply by virtue of being first. There was absolutely nothing out of line in my edit, the current standing version is reflects a position which has long been soundly rejected. It is misleading and needs to be fixed. As the history of the page shows, it's been marked as rejected and historical several times now. The voices supporting this page would appear to be a minority currently. --Gmaxwell 07:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
On Wikipedia, any edit can be made if it is not objected to. If it is objected to, then it is on the contributor to generate consensus for their change through discussion. Your edit has been objected to. --tjstrf talk 07:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Yet, the prior version was objected to and I don't see a lot of talk.. Not even now. And cut the belittling, we've both been around here a while and we both know how it works.--Gmaxwell 07:16, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The new situation

So, as I assume you are all aware, the board issued a strong statement on the direction it wants its projects to go with licensing. This statement reemphasizes the foundation's mission as a free content creator first and foremost. It makes it clear that unfree images are to be used not to fill gaps while we await the arrival of a free image of a difficult-to-find subject, or to provide marginal aesthetic gains. Anyone participating in this discussion should read this set of clarifications from Kat Walsh, the board member who issued the original statement. That comment makes it quite clear that this page should not be in the business of trying to enforce quality standards--that's for IfD to do, and it is a question entirely separate from the issue of when an unfree image is necessary. "We are a project for the long term, and waiting for a free image that is reasonably possible but takes a bit longer to get, is in the end more in line with our goals than never getting a free image at all." That makes it very clear what our job is here; not to draw meticulous lines on the issue of just how much effort we think is too much to expect a free image, but rather to seriously examine the question of how we can best ensure that we permit truly necessary fair use images (and there are many) while remaining in keeping with the spirit of the quotation above. We are a project for the long term, and we need a guideline to serve that aim.

The text that was on this page before today is untenable as guideline or policy in light of this statement from the board. If people insist on having it remain there, so be it, but do so in the knowledge that it has no chance of winning approval. I, for one, would like to have a workable, reasonable guideline page here which we can use to sort out some specifics of how to deal with fair use in a manner commensurate with both the goals of the foundation and the interest of illustrating important subjects for which no free image is possible. Accordingly, I'm going to revert this page to Gmaxwell's version. It is in many ways a blank slate, and offers room to fill in specifics where necessary, and isn't burdened by some of the wrong turns the original version of this page took. I hope that people will be willing to move forward constructively from here. --RobthTalk 07:11, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, good cite. I felt bad about removing so much, ... but the page was simply too misguided: Too many of the places where the page went into detail (plants and animals, for example) there isn't going to be a lot of discussion at the end. There are other places where it needs to be fleshed out, like in respect to historic one time events... and how exactly people should get exceptions made for things which should only be permitted with a very strong reason and by exception (like photos of places). Since the page is being used to mislead some discussions (it looks like policy), I edited it in something of a hurry. I look forward to your improvements. --Gmaxwell 07:19, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
"waiting for a free image that is reasonably possible but takes a bit longer to get, is in the end more in line with our goals than never getting a free image at all." In context, was "waiting" intended to include waiting for all authors involved in the creation of the image to die, consecutively waiting for December 31 to come and go, and consecutively waiting 70 years? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 01:54, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

over all I'd say the stuff in the May not be reasonably replaceable is replaceable and the objects section ignores the issue that wikipedians either through jobs or universities have acess to a lot of objects that may not be on public display.Geni 18:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but do they have the permission to photograph them for public display? If they do, do the terms of their employment allow them to claim copyright (and thus GFDL, CC or release it) on any images they create in the course of performing their job duties (assuming they are not U.S. government employees)? Even if they do, do they know for sure their employers will have no problem with them going and doing this sort of thing on work duties?

There are a lot of variables people seem determined to neglect until they actually come up. It would be at the very least a good idea to consider possible solutions to these issues when they are purely hypothetical and can be discussed rationally, rather than in the heat of a raging edit war. Daniel Case 21:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

the unlikelyhood of none of them being able to take a free image is limited.Geni 20:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Geni. In the US at least, "work for hire" status doesn't happen unless specifically stipulated in the terms of their employment agreement, which is fairly rare for people who aren't employed as photographers. As far as employers minding, I don't see it being an issue, especially for someone working in a scientific organization. When we hear of it being a problem first hand, then perhaps we should think about what to do with it... until that point it only sounds like a hand-waving argument to keep using non-free images. --Gmaxwell 00:50, 18 February 2007 (UTC)


I raised three issues; the two of you only responded to one of them, and not definitively at that.

First, it might be a good idea to read our own article on work for hire, which quotes 17 USC §101:

Works Made for Hire. -- (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire.

As the article itself notes, that "or" means a lot. It means that anything covered by (1) is a work for hire, and when created by an actual employee instead of an indepedent contractor it is a work for hire regardless of any language in the employment agreement. And with more and more of us creating all sorts of documentation as part of the scope of our employment, and with more and more quality digital imaging devices available to more and more people it is naïve to presume that only those hired to actually take pictures as part of their job duties will be creating photographs in the process of their jobs. I can think of many situations in which photos could be created for employment purposes by non-employees.

And do not underestimate the lengths to which companies will go to claim proprietary rights over anything their employees create in their course of their jobs, no matter how seemingly unrelated to their jobs such creations are.

Which brings me to the fact that, even if the image clearly isn't related to the job and the photographer isn't an independent contractor, many companies tend to discourage photography in the workplace, if not outright ban it. Consider the guy who was temping at Microsoft, until he got canned for putting some relatively innocuous pictures he'd taken during his workday on his blog. And he admits they were right to do so. He has a very valid point about the blanket nature of nondisclosure agreements. Did you consider how ubiquitous those are?

Corporate America, and corporate World for that matter, is extremely paranoid today about these things. I temped once (for a third party) at a place where the other temp and I were called to the manager and told to move our cars, after the guys on the security cameras found the license plate number didn't match with any known employees. We had to park off the property.

The reason I bring this story up is that, yes, the same place also had "NO PHOTOGRAPHY" signs posted everywhere. And what was so sensitive here, you ask? Defense contractor? Well, it was a consumer-goods distribution center for a supermarket chain. I went to the Soviet Union once and that was more relaxed.

All the same, I understood it when I read an article about corporate intelligence and the lengths they will go to to get information. As any real spook can tell you, nothing you get in the way of intel is useless — it may only seem that way at the time. Even a badly-taken photograph for Wikipedia.

And even if there isn't such a rule at the company, put yourself in the shoes of the supervisor who finds one of his workers took a groovy picture of the assembly line (or whatever) for Wikipedia. He's going to think, "Well, it's nice for Bob that he's so comfortable here he thinks that taking pictures for Wikipedia is more important than what he's supposed to be doing. What else is he doing when he's supposed to be working that I don't know about? Maybe I don't want to know, and there's an easy way to make sure I never do". Don't ever assume your boss wouldn't think that way, because even if he doesn't, he's got to think about whether his (or her, FTM), superiors will see it the same way.

This isn't an argument for using non-free images as placeholders, as it seems that decision has already been taken. It's an argument that deleted fair-use images are not and will not be as quickly replaced as some people here think, at least not without active efforts on the community's part to bring that about, and the quality of the articles that relied on them will suffer in the meantime. Daniel Case 03:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

You're ranting and waving your arms Daniel, and it is only hurting your argument. Where you were allowed to park has absolutely nothing to do with rules about photography.
You're missing the point. But enough of us both not being civil. It has everything to do with making a larger point about corporate paranoia making it unlikely that people will just feel free to shoot pictures at their jobs to replace pictures. Daniel Case 05:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
This is precisely about using non-free images as placeholders, because thats exactly what keeping a non-free image because of a fear that free ones will take time to find. You are right that it will take an active effort on the community's part to bring us free images.
If it were as active as the effort to find and delete fair-use images was, in the hope that the magic of this act of creative destruction would bring us replacements, I wouldn't be complaining.
It also took an active effort on the communities part to bring us free articles. If you don't think enough effort is being made... that well over a million free images is not enough, then feel free to contribute to help out. --Gmaxwell 04:42, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
That's "community's", but enough petty spelling flames. I just wish some of this had been thought through and done before the policy was changed to allow more active enforcement because it made some admins' jobs easier.

In the meantime, how would I go about proposing some sort of "Image replacement of the week" thing? Do we have one already? If not, why? Daniel Case 05:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

You can help with Wikipedia:Featured articles/Image survey, a new project working toward improvements in image use.--Pharos 02:31, 19 February 2007 (UTC)