Commons talk:Project scope/Update 2013/Aim of Wikimedia Commons

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Scope Review 2013 links: Discuss stage 2 of this review Translation Help your community by translating the review Background Main review page: Background and process FAQ Links to current rules Project Scope Photographs of identifiable people Discussion: Introductory Scope wording Aim of Wikimedia Commons Excluded educational content Discussion: Files Must be a media file Must be an allowable free file format Must be freely licensed or public domain Licensing terms Evidence Precautionary principle 'Realistically useful for an educational purpose' PDF and DjVu formats Discussion: Pages, galleries and categories General pages, galleries and categories User pages, galleries and categories Discussion: Areas of particular concern Censorship "Neutral point of view" Discussion: Identifiable people Lead Legal issues Consent Moral issues Identification Examples Removal requests Other image sources Other proposals Other proposals

Proposal 1

• Please discuss the above proposal here.

Proposal 2

The point of this change is to emphasise that the aim is not limited to providing a media file repository, on its own merely a technical aim, but supplemented by these points it ties back to the open knowledge movement (hence an additional change of "Wikimedia Foundation projects" to "projects of the Wikimedia open knowledge movement"). The term "reliable" I would assess by the reliability of similar releases on other sites, such as Getty Images or Flickr. If Commons is more reliable than these sites, then the project is meeting this aim. --Fæ (talk) 09:20, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

• By "collegiate" do you mean to say "collegial," or are you specifically talking about academic use? - Jmabel ! talk 16:09, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The first three bullet points looks fine, assuming we do think there is a need to provide more context. The fourth worries me, as it is not restricted to media that are in any way 'educational'. The last two are, it seems to me, more internal and procedural desiderata than top-level aims. It would be interesting to have more view on this, though. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:37, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Documenting the sum of human knowledge is, by definition, educational, it seems to me. Powers (talk) 12:40, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) I'm a little troubled by the directness of "to assure media files have a reliable copyright release". That puts a lot of pressure on Commons volunteers, and 100% assurance is very hard to come by. Also, it seems like this clause is more of a necessary condition than a goal of the project. Powers (talk) 12:40, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
• I would also consider adding "organized" or some other similar qualifier to the "free and simple open access" clause. It may be implied in "simple" but I think we should make it explicit that the repository is useless if end users can't find the files they want. Powers (talk) 12:40, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

• Many of the points are contradictory - you cannot have "all" and "free". It also seems too political by talking about the "open movement." Ottava Rima (talk) 00:53, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

This topic appears to be of lesser interest/priority to the community than some of the others in this review, and I propose that we should close it down now. That will allow us in part 2 of the review to focus our full attention on the most important and/or contentious issues. Please comment at Commons talk:Project scope/Update 2013/Stage 2. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:44, 23 July 2013 (UTC)