[Foundation-l] Speedy deleting images w/o explicit license

Sat Sep 17 22:51:28 UTC 2005

On 9/17/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Dori wrote:
> > Jimbo I think it's a terrible idea to delete images w/o explicit
> > license information because the default assumed license is the GFDL.
> > The uploader may not know that the image needs to be tagged, and we're
> > going to lose many images this way.
> 
> It is far preferable to drop material of unknown status than to keep it.
> It can always be resubmitted if it's genuine.

It's not unknown, as the upload dialog clearly states that what you
are uploading has to be under the GFDL. So we're now going to delete
all the images of those who thought it was understood that they would
be licensing them under the GFDL. I often didn't bother to tag (or it
was during the time when we weren't tagging) an upload, and I'm sure
many others have done the same. We'll now be undoing people's work
because of a future rule that they had no way of knowing at the time
that they submitted the work.

It can't be resubmitted if you don't know about it, or if you're no
longer editing on Wikipedia. Like I said, many of these will also be
incorrectly labeled as unknown when they are in fact GFDL. There is
also possibility of mischief, and I believe deleted images are purged
after a certain amount of time (is it true of deleted text as well)?

Dori