[WikiEN-l] Userboxes and fair-use images in userspace

Thu Jan 5 13:17:43 UTC 2006

From: Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com>

> But as we've discovered, lots of people get unduly
> attached to
> images that they can't legitimately use. I've
> applied a very
> light touch on image tagging myself, still get
> carping and reverts.
> 
> At some point (soon I hope) we'll get to where all
> fair use image
> descriptions include links to the exact set of
> articles where their
> use is justified, then it will be sufficient to run
> a variant of
> Orphanbot to quietly comment out all other attempts
> to use. Bots
> are relentless and are hard to accuse of bias or
> favoritism, so
> even the intransigent will learn to give up.

I think one of the issues on fair-use images in
userspace is that people haven't thought through the
use of those images. I'm guilty of this myself - I
understand fair-use/copyright etc very well, but it's
easy to not consider it when you're busy creating
something.

Perhaps we can prompt people a little better: the
boilerplates for {{fairuse}} {{albumcover}} etc could
be modified to include the words 

"Note: This image must '''NOT''' be used on User
pages, Talk pages or Template pages. If used there, it
''will'' be deleted from the page '''without
notice'''."

This is a helpful reminder to people building a
userbox or a userpage, to people dropping a "thank
you" or a "be less stressed" note on a talk page etc.

It also means that, if such problems happen in future,
people can't say they weren't warned or didn't know or
(my excuse) didn't think about it.

It's a lot better than expecting people to click a
link to a page of legalese or to be familiar with the
discussions we're having here. Especially for new
users, who are most often blamed for misusing images.

:"REDVERS"

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