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

Thu Jun 29 03:15:41 UTC 2006

On 6/28/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> As for requiring email address... eh. They are typically just as
> throwaway as a wiki account. I have no problem with the current method
> of deleting with extreme prejudice. By deleting such images WP is not
> missing much.

The practice of deleting with extreme prejudice is the best tool we
have today on enwiki. It is, at least somewhat, effective. However
deletion creates a lot of opportunity for tension in the community,
there are a lot of people who would like to keep their favorite image
at any cost, at least any cost short of them figuring out the
copyright status themselves...

The status quo has become socially harmful, so we must reach out for
more middle ground approaches which do not compromise our legal and
ethical obligations or the fundamental goals of our project.

When I can demonstrate that I've make a more complete attempt to avoid
deleting an image a reasonable person should expect to have a more
calm response.

> It depends if you want to implement this as a way of verifying
> licenses (I don't think it will help with this), or as a way to slow
> down image uploaders (it will slow them down, but I think it's a bit
> underhanded). Now what would be REALLY good to slow down problem
> uploaders would be if we could block users from uploading, only ( see
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4995 , my baby!). Seems
> like it could be really handy on en.wp too. Because copyvio image
> users do not also tend to be copyvio text users, that's my
> observation.

We have previously used email contact in some cases to verify licenses
but since around 80% of deleted images do not have an email contact
it's not possible currently to institutionalize the behavior and gauge
its effectiveness.

I am unsure exactly what level of image upload reduction there will be
but based on the impact that the removal of anon editing had on the
creation of new articles I would not expect much if any at all.  I
must also point out that whatever reduction does occur will almost
certainly be strongly biased in favor of reducing the uploads of
images which we would be subsequently deleted.  Thus it would only
take a small number of rescued images to offset any reduction in the
rate of good image uploads.

A question for the list, is anyone aware of a single other site which
is even semi-popular and accepts images uploads without an email
confirmed account?  It's is my thought that such a request has long
since been the norm on the Internet, and as a result will not pose a
substantial or unexpected hurdle for our users.

The fact that one of the internet stock photo sites we've we've taken
images from on commons has confirmed emails will likely save hundreds
of free content images from deletion.