Name: Anonymous 2006-12-03 3:50
Wikipedia is in the midst of being taken over by exclusionist idiots who are far more interested in making Wikipedia fit under the GNU Free Documentation License than making it useful for average users.
Here's the nut of the argument: Most celebrities and public figures don't like having cameras on them all the time, so they take promotional photos released to the media. Most media outlets don't have a problem using them, but NOOO, Wikipedia has found a problem.
A group of users has decided that because these promotional photos, which were previously allowed, are copyrighted, they need to be replaced with copyright-free images. Like, images taken by nerds for nerds. The argument is that, since the person is alive, by God, a photo can be taken, so we MUST remove the old, perfectly-fine-minus-a-little-copyright photo now.
An example is Kristen Bell, the star of Veronica Mars. Her original image was removed because of this standard and they actually wanted to replace it with this piece of shit camera phone photo.
Or Washington politician Rodney Tom. The guy who put up the image actually went through the trouble of calling his office and seeing if use of the image was okay, but since they chose to keep copyrights, the person who tagged the image disagrees and the image is going to be taken down.
They're not doing this one-by-one. A group of about 15 users is doing this en masse on certain kinds of pages. If you've recently been on a biographical Wikipedia page without a photograph, this is why.
When I first noticed that a few people were doing this, I gave them a piece of my mind and tried to reason with them, but they won't listen, because they're more concerned with listening to something Jimbo Wales said in an interview than honest-to-God common sense.
This shit is simply retarded. How long do you think it'll take for Wikipedia to bureaucratize itself to death like this?
Here's the nut of the argument: Most celebrities and public figures don't like having cameras on them all the time, so they take promotional photos released to the media. Most media outlets don't have a problem using them, but NOOO, Wikipedia has found a problem.
A group of users has decided that because these promotional photos, which were previously allowed, are copyrighted, they need to be replaced with copyright-free images. Like, images taken by nerds for nerds. The argument is that, since the person is alive, by God, a photo can be taken, so we MUST remove the old, perfectly-fine-minus-a-little-copyright photo now.
An example is Kristen Bell, the star of Veronica Mars. Her original image was removed because of this standard and they actually wanted to replace it with this piece of shit camera phone photo.
Or Washington politician Rodney Tom. The guy who put up the image actually went through the trouble of calling his office and seeing if use of the image was okay, but since they chose to keep copyrights, the person who tagged the image disagrees and the image is going to be taken down.
They're not doing this one-by-one. A group of about 15 users is doing this en masse on certain kinds of pages. If you've recently been on a biographical Wikipedia page without a photograph, this is why.
When I first noticed that a few people were doing this, I gave them a piece of my mind and tried to reason with them, but they won't listen, because they're more concerned with listening to something Jimbo Wales said in an interview than honest-to-God common sense.
This shit is simply retarded. How long do you think it'll take for Wikipedia to bureaucratize itself to death like this?