[Commons-l] FW: Commons != kindergarden

Sun Nov 12 16:46:16 UTC 2006

dear spanish wikipedia admins/users

There has been a thread on commons-l recently relating to you and i think it would be a good idea to bring you into the loop so this can be resolved without interproject conflict.

The initial posting on the thread was the following by Artur Fijalkowski [wiki.warx at gmail.com]
>From some time I've observed very strange thing:
>
>Most of uploaded on commons copyvios is made by users who has
>spanish-like nicks, write in looking in this manner language, etc.
>
>Because I see very large time coincidence with closing upload on
>es.wiki, I have (I hope) very good method of solving that:
>
>I'm going to ban every user who will look like from es.wiki to me,
>without any warning after first upload.
>
>Maybe than complains of such users will force them to open upload :)

This was followed by the following reply by Lennert Böhm [lennert.boehm at gmx.de]
>But isn't Commons supposed to be the repository of images of all the  
>Wikis, so that at some point in the future, all files will (are supposed  
>to) be uploaded to Commons? Finally there's a Wikipedia that does that and  
>you are trying to make them regret their decision?
>I don't believe this to be a good way of action.

This was followed by the following reply by Lukasz Garczewski [tor at oak.pl]
>Lennert Böhm napisał(a):
>> But isn't Commons supposed to be the repository of images of all the  
>> Wikis, so that at some point in the future, all files will (are supposed  
>> to) be uploaded to Commons? Finally there's a Wikipedia that does that and  
>> you are trying to make them regret their decision?
>> I don't believe this to be a good way of action.
>
>Me either.
>
>However, Artur has a poin there, or rather - he has hinted at a very 
>serious problem we're facing right now.
>
>On one hand using Commons should be easy and fun (it's still a wiki, 
>right?). On thee other, however, if we make it to easy we may not be 
>able to cope with the amount of copyvios.
>
>I am 100% for moving all uploads to Commons, but I believe we have to 
>have a procedure for that. I.e. some things should be done well *before* 
>local uploads are disabled on a given wiki.
>
>Some of those might include:
>* translating most of the interface
>* translating key project and help pages (the commons community should 
>complie a list of those)
>* translating key templates
>* having at least N active Commons admins speaking the language of the 
>wiki in question at level 2 or higher (where N is... well... I don't 
>know, you tell me ;))
>
>I'm not sure if that's all. Any other ideas?
>
>The main idea is: yes, let's do this. But let's do it one step at a 
>time, based on a common process.

As you can see from theese posts the commons admins are rather unhappy about you essentially dumping your copyvio problems on them when they are ill equipped to handle it. 

the way i see it there are three ways out of the situation.
1: spanish wikipedia reenables uploads and goes back to dealing with most of thier own copyvio problems. 
2: the spanish wikipedia users/admins make a significant effort to help deal with the copyvio problems with spanish users on commons.
3: commons adopts and extreme zero tolerance policy towards anyone who appears spanish

Of the ways out the third option is the least favorable, but it is also the only option that can be implemented without your help.