[WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

Wed Sep 14 22:09:45 UTC 2005

On 9/14/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Practical reason #1: The submit button and accompanying text referring
> > to the licensing of submissions are identical.  We'll have to change
> > those.
> 
> And that would be hard??

It depends.  Do you want users to have the option to selectively
retain copyright over everything on their user and talk pages?  If so,
I think that path leads to license hell.   If only images, how do we
keep them reasonably differentiated without inspiring more
Pioneer-12s?  It might not be hard, but I don't think it can be done
gracefully.

> > #2: Inertia and lack of differentiation between user space and
> > the rest of Wikipedia.  People already expect to be able to take items
> > from all of Wikipedia under GFDL license.
> 
> Why would reusers even want or need to also have user pages? Also, from my
> experience, users in general do not like to have their user pages on other
> websites. So keeping user pages in the same database dump that reusers use has
> no practical benefit to anybody except maybe the person who creates the
> database dumps (exporting everything and only having one dump is easier).

Take the user pages out of the database dump.  I don't see a problem
with that.  But database dumps certainly aren't the only method of
reuse.  We cannot base our policy on database dumps alone.  Reusers
want content, and our submission policy to date has been that all
submissions are licensed for reuse.  We cannot arbitrarily change that
ex post facto for existing content.

If we're going to maintain sections where reuse is NOT permitted, I
think we have an obligation to make that clear, and again, I think it
leads to a real mess tracking what has been submitted under which
license and where it can be used and reused.

> > #3: License hell as described in the next paragraph.
> >
> > If we make an arbitrary exception, I think it could ONLY apply from
> > whatever point we choose going forward.  Current content has already
> > been submitted under the old terms.
> 
> The old terms, as you put it, do not allow any NC or special use images. So
> what is your point? Do you mean to say that all NC and special use images now
> marked for deletion be deleted regardless of what namespace they were displayed
> from?

NC or special use?  Please clarify further, as I want to be certain to
answer the question you're asking rather than one I think you're
asking.

-- 
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused