Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2016/07

Do not allow GFDL-only images from now on

Commons:Licensing and Commons:Copyright tags strongly discourages licensing images as GFDL-only. Although GFDL is a free license, it has impractical and unnecessary restrictions: including the full text of the license. And even though the work being licensed is a smaller work (such as images), we still need to follow this restriction. Commons aims to provide free media for anyone, and GFDL seems to be against it. I am not saying that GFDL is very bad at all, but GFDL has a problem. That's why I propose prohibiting new images that are only licensed under the GFDL. This is to make Commons more free and more available to be reused by anyone.

My 2c

1. If a GFDL-only image that was uploaded after the date this proposal succeed is found, it will be speedily deleted after 48 hours from upload, if the copyright holder doesn't dual-licence their image with another free license (like CC-BY-SA-4.0, so new images with {{GFDL or cc-by-nc-2.0}} or similar won't be accepted anymore).
2. Edit {{GFDL}} to notify users that GFDL-only images are no longer accepted on Commons.
3. Update Commons:Licensing to notify users that GFDL-only images are no longer accepted on Commons.

Exceptions

• GFDL-only images uploaded before the date this proposal succeed will not be speedily deleted as a courtesy, but copyright holders of these images are strongly encouraged to dual-licence their images with another free licence.
• Files from another Wikimedia project that are licenced under GFDL only may still be uploaded on Commons.

• However, for files from another Wikimedia project be qualified for this exception, they should be uploaded (to the project it came from) before the date this proposal succeed before they can be transferred to Commons. There are concerns about "Wikipedia-washing", see Sebari's comment below.

★ Poké⁹⁵ 13:42, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Support

•  Support: Its about time, and the wording above sounds sensible. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 20:09, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
•  Support: GFDL has too many restrictions to make it practically non-free. I don't like the second exception, though, since it allows files to be "Wikipedia-washed", i.e. upload them to Wikipedia first and then move them to Commons. --Sebari (talk) 21:21, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

I adjusted the second exception so that "Wikipedia-washing" can't occur. Thanks, ★ Poké⁹⁵ 01:02, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

•  Support: Can't say I see anything wrong with this proposal, and GFDL has been a particular thorn for some time. — Huntster (t @ c) 21:28, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
•  Support but clarify that the wording to make sure that dual license templates have to have second license which is acceptable on Commons and {{GFDL or cc-by-nc-2.0}} and similar templates are not OK. --Jarekt (talk) 01:19, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Clarified that {{GFDL or cc-by-nc-2.0}} and similar won't be accepted anymore (since it limits commercial use), but I am worried that there are some photographers that are using {{GFDL or cc-by-nc-2.0}}, and we might drive them off on Commons due to this proposal. I think we should ask them first. ★ Poké⁹⁵ 01:47, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Oppose

•  Oppose. It doesn't seem like this proposal has been thought through. Does this only apply to images? What about PDFs that are within our project scope? Videos? Audio? In any case, banning a license by name is rather meaningless and could be bypassed by forking the license. There are also other free licenses in existence with similar requirements, such as GPL and Apache. Although they are not suited to content other than software, there is currently nothing that prevents such use. Commons:Licensing does not define acceptable licenses; it defines acceptable (and unacceptable) licensing conditions. For a proposal to be meaningful, it needs to identify licensing conditions that are unacceptable, rather than single out a specific license. This is not trivial. Would you like to ban licenses that require inclusion of all the licensing terms when distributing the licensed content? Congratulations, you've just banned a lot of comparatively concise licenses, like the MIT license. Should it only apply to "longer" texts? Well, then you need to define how long "long" is. If that also bans GPL and Apache licensed works, does the ban also apply to screenshots of free software? —LX (talk, contribs) 09:49, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
•  Oppose Yes, GFDL is for documentation and it is not so suitable for images, but preventing (by deletion) the use of such image is not suitable. Can I upload a GFDL-licensed image by putting it in an PDF with the license attached? Or a video with nothing but the image and the license? Or are we banning the use of the license for small/short files only (that are not long documentations)? Can we define what kind of files are small/short? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 17:03, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
•  Oppose for the proposal in the current state. Per above. --Steinsplitter (talk) 17:26, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
•  Oppose what for a nonsense ...--Alchemist-hp (talk) 09:25, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
•  Oppose nonsense. Dear a clearly defined license than one that can be changed later. --Ralf Roleček 09:40, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
•  Oppose GFDL conforms to COM:L and we should accept (as before) all licenses which are considered free including all copyleft licenses. --AFBorchert (talk) 11:27, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
•  Oppose Unfug. --ST ○ 16:04, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Comments

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Okay, LX and Zhuyifei1999 has a good point. There is no exact definition of "small"/"short", and it seems my proposal is a bit useless since the GFDL can be changed. I am withdrawing my proposal now, thanks for your opinions. ★ Poké⁹⁵ 10:50, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This section was archived on a request by: ★ Poké⁹⁵ 10:50, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

New criteria for speedy deletion

Hi. I notice lately that Wikimedia Commons has been flooded with personal photos that are out of scope. Should we amend the speedy deletion policy as follows?: The following media will now be nominated for speedy deletion: Personal photos(unless the person was notable) Do you like my idea?--100.36.171.168 16:34, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Personal photos are allowed if used on user pages. We also have no notability guidelines, and using Wikipedia's is not always the best (wikibooks may still have use for some things, Wikinews, etc.) Those type of things are really still a judgement call that likely needs a DR. Speedy deletes don't really give uploaders a chance to defend their stuff. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:50, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Very bad idea, IMO. Speedy deletions are for images where there is obviously no particular need for admin discretion... cases where either there is an obvious legal need for deletion, or the community consensus is so well established that debate would just be a waste of time.... things like copyright violations, re-uploads of previously deleted files, and duplicates. "Scope" is always a judgement call... it's a matter of opinion, and so should be open to discussion.

There are 'personal photos' of unremarkable people that are in scope, because they usefully illustrate something like a behavior, ethic group, mode of dress, medical condition, whatever.. Even if a image is simply 'uploaded' as spam does not directly imply that it might not fill a unique gap in our collection. Sometimes they simply end up being used to make the examples used in an article like 'selfie' more diverse. Revent^talk 23:40, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Exactly: User:Revent tells it like it is. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 03:43, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

List of used photos: "USED UPLOADS"

It would be very nice if there was a point "List of used photos" ("USED UPLOADS") on the menu. (I have uploaded hundreds of photos. I am happy to know, see what use. (No matter where))

for example:

English | USER | 0 | 0 | Talk | Preferences | Beta | Watchlist | Uploads | "USED UPLOADS" | Contributions | Log out

--Molgreen (talk) 12:27, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/glamorous.php

In Preferences under Gadgets, you can turn on that tool for categories, so you have a link to see usage for all images in that category. I don't know of a way to get a link added for a user's uploads, but you can do that once you go to the tool page. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:35, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Fine. Thank you very much. That is very helpful.

Something I would additionally wish: a link to the corresponding to the images. (So I can learn which images / motives for others are interesting. So my wish for the menu item "USED UPLOADS".)

--Molgreen (talk) 14:23, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

When you are using the tool, click the "Show limited details" -- that will show you a breakdown by image. "Show details" gives you links to the individual articles (though you can also just go to the image page on the individual project to see those as well). I agree it might be nice to have a per-user link to the tool in the sidebar if turned on in preferences, much like categories. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:42, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Many Thanks. That's what I was looking for. And yes, it would be very nice if this would be preset. --Molgreen (talk) 16:20, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

@Molgreen: Another thing to try... go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets and turn on "Global Usage Badges". The tool works on COM:MyGallery, and will indicate global usage count for an editor's uploads (It's 'my gallery', but you can change the targeted editor once the tool is actually loaded). Revent^talk 23:46, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

@Revent: Hello Revent, thank you for this tip. I was inactive for some time and could test it only now. Works great. Thank you. --Molgreen (talk) 04:45, 4 August 2016 (UTC)