[Commons-l] Deletion of still-used images

Mon Aug 7 09:21:06 UTC 2006

Hello,

At the moment there are about 40 CommonsTickers (CT) set up. That is
quite good coverage, considering that a project is likely to need a
certain critical mass before it can support a CT. We have all the top
10 Wikipedias except English, of course (due to technical reasons).
There are another 35 Wikipedias that have 10,000-100,000 articles and
increasing our coverage there is definitely something to work on.

As CT coverage increases so does scrutiny of Commons admin actions,
namely, deletion of images that are still being used.

Why does this happen? Not because "Commons admins are arrogant and
don't care about local projects" (gee, that's defensive :)) but
because it's too much menial and manual work that arguably should not
fall on our shoulders. Or at least not solely.

I think we should adopt a clear policy that images shown to be in use
by CheckUsage should not be deleted unless:
* the image is currently being used by a vandal in a mass vandal
attack (this is rare, but appropriate to stop a vandal)
* [[en:w:WP:OFFICE]]-style intervention from Jimbo et al.

And also, we should create further ways of sharing responsibility with
the local projects and reducing menial tasks required by delinking.

One way which might help a bit, would be to create a tag (possibly
invisible) that would trigger a notice on CTs that said, "please
delink this image now or risk redlinks!" At the moment it seems
projects are not paying enough attention, perhaps. For example...
Image:Princesymbol.png - on 30th June I re-tagged this as a copyvio,
in an attempt to get the dozen-odd projects linking to it, to stop
doing so. On the 4th August it was deleted by another admin. Today, on
the 7th of August, it's _still_ being used by two projects (despite
being deleted) - ja: and fr:. Two of the top 5 projects!

So on one hand we have local projects upset at us for deleting images
in use and on the other we have projects who seem not to even care
when we notify them. It is a difficult balance to walk.

Another easy and obvious way is to get [[User:Orgullobot]] delinking
for us.  User:Orgullomoore is happy to implement the bot with
translations and we have a good 40 languages already done. I have
thought we should wait until the single login is implemented before we
do this, but it's been 6+ months "coming soon", so I think we should
go ahead and if single login happens, well good for it.

If projects complain about an unregistered bot, they can
a) get a CT and delink themselves
b) live with redlinks
the only exception being en.wp where the bot should be registered.
(because en.wp technically can't have a CT yet, no other reason)

Having this policy ("images shown to be in use by CheckUsage should
not be deleted") will do a few things:
* send a clear message to projects that we are not interested in damaging them
* allow us as a community to start examining our own actions more
clearly. Commons at the moment has no process or practice to
discourage reckless admin actions, partly because we've had this
ambiguous policy of allowing used-images to be deleted (ambiguous in
that it is policy, but can be very damaging). If we are clear that
this is not acceptable, we can be clear when our admins are in the
wrong and we can start a process, for example, "3 strikes and you're
out": 3 occasions of images being used and deleted (possibly in a
timeline, eg one year)-> automatic de-admin. You can forget once,
CheckUsage could be lagging twice, but three times... I don't think
so. (Note 3 occasions, not 3 images.)
I am not saying all the fault is Commons admins and they're terrible.
But we do make mistakes (as do all admins on all projects), sometimes
we do screw things up, and we should be prepared to be held
responsible on those occasions. That would be adult.
* it will probably increase the deletion backlog. After a period of
frustration with the unwinnable War on Copyvios, I've come to a
Zen-like acceptance that Commons, like all wikis, will always be a
work in progress, will never be a clean professional database -
because it's an ad-hoc arrangement run by volunteers. There will
probably always be thousands of images awaiting deletion.  So in the
long run, whether we delete copyvios today or tomorrow probably
doesn't matter. Deleting them tomorrow (that is, with no urgency) has
the added bonus of pissing off fewer people. I like it.

Sorry for being so verbose. Doubtlessly people disagree with me. If
you have other ideas about how to solve this problem, or constructive
criticism, I welcome it.

regards,
Brianna
User:pfctdayelise