[Wikipedia-l] Require confirmed email address to upload images?

Wed Jun 28 20:23:47 UTC 2006

Kat Walsh wrote:
> On 6/28/06, Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> But a confirmed email addresses for uploading photos ?
>> This is really way too sick. We would be annoying every single
>> contributor while gaining absolutely nothing.
>>
>> We should rather get back to the situation where unregistered users
>> have all the options available - editing pages, creating new articles,
>> uploading pictures, moving articles, everything.
>> Having to register doesn't stop a single vandal.
>>     
>
> Gaining nothing? It hurts users for us not to be able to contact them.
> Text usually stays, as a fact in an article can be found and supported
> by a source even if it is not the same source the writer used. But an
> image? If we cannot find the original and do not know where it came
> from, it must be deleted. That's a pretty big loss, I think, both for
> Wikimedia not being able to use it and for the original contributor
> who sees the effort they spent to upload and place it gone to waste.
>
> This isn't intended to stop vandalism, though it may slow it; any
> vandal can register an account with an email address also. It is
> intended to help good-faith users who want to contribute media. We
> need to be strict about enforcing proper tagging and licensing of
> images; we cannot budge on that. But it is a sad loss to delete things
> simply because they didn't understand the procedure and we don't know
> how to reach them.
>
> Confirming an email address is a small thing and a one-time thing, and
> does not require giving up anonymity. I still see it a net positive.
>
> -Kat
Hoi,
People who contribute a picture once are not vandals. It is ridiculous 
to suggest this

The rules of the "game" have increasingly become more restrictive and 
pictures that used to be acceptable are no longer considered acceptable. 
I have in the past uploaded uploaded pictures with permission. I had 
added a message about the original author at the time. Then came thumbs 
and these messages went, some time later people decided to check 
permissions could not find them and deleted stuff. I found it out after 
I signed on to that project after some time. Because of the elegance in 
which people the Commons "community" decide that it is their way or the 
high way, I became in many ways less interested.

People insist that it is not feasible to discuss changes to Commons 
policies with the projects in advance and, that it is sufficient to 
restrict this discussion to intimi.. This seems to me reminiscent to one 
of those tribes that ultimately moved into Africa in AD400 or thereabouts.

I also dispute that our problem becomes bigger. I am convinced that the 
problem is like a bell-curve, as the absolute number of pictures goes 
up, the percentage of what you consider "problematic" pictures stays the 
same however the number of material that you still want to check 
increases. When you confuse this with a growing problem you easily 
forget the number of files that have been checked. Because people are 
working hard on this in a best effort way and as we are quite ready to 
remove material that is in violation of our copyright rules the problem 
is not what is depicted.

By talking about it as if there is a crisis, you make it a crisis; it 
seems as if we are at war.. I am not convinced AT ALL.

Thanks,
   GerardM