[WikiEN-l] "Fair use" abuse on user pages

Thu Sep 22 19:56:26 UTC 2005

On 9/22/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> One way to get around this is to of course modified the captions to
> say that they MUST be used in actual *articles* (i.e., in the article
> namespace). I might do that soon.

I would greatly approve of that.  IMO there is no fair use for a
nonfree image outside of article space (excluding the temporary use of
one in a user sandbox for an article under development).  I've been
very aggressively deleting references to nonfree images in user space
lately.  There has been some whining but nothing major.

Several of us are now speedily deleting nonfree images that have no
article references on the grounds that an image that is not being used
logically cannot be being used as fair use.  I am also aggressively
tagging nonfree images that are used in articles which reasonably can
be replaced by free alternatives (e.g. photos of buildings that are
still standing, or of common objects like late model cars) with
{{fairusereplace}}.  And images which do not appear reasonably
replaceable and which are being used are being tagged as
{{fairuseverified|article}} (with datestamp) to indicate that someone
has looked at the image and its use and verified that its use *in that
article* is likely to be fair use.

I'm being somewhat bold in doing what I'm doing, but based on what
Jimbo's had to say to the list lately and based on my discussion with
other admins, this is what we need to do.  A lot of images are going
to get deleted during this cleanup -- including a great deal of
softcore porn that's currently linked only to user pages -- and I
suspect quite a few editors will get ruffled feathers when some pet
image or another gets either tagged or deleted.

Kelly