Commons talk:Deletion policy
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This talk page is for discussing changes or improvements to the English original version of Commons:Deletion policy. For help with using or understanding the policy, see Help:Contents, Commons:Help desk, and Commons:Village Pump. |
| This is the talk page for discussing improvements to Commons:Deletion policy. | |||
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Duplicate images[edit]
Something has to be changed in the procedure of deleting duplicate images. It happened to me more than once that an upload of mine of a photograph was deleted because it got nominated as being a duplicate, and it was replaced by another one. I rarely upload images I do not work on, like cropping, noise reduction, scratch removal or exposure adjustment, and it is strange to note that they are replaced by originals that are not fit to publish. They are not duplicates! Even a minor crop makes them different from the original. The deletion process is rather quick-and-dirty and because the file is deleted, it does not leave a trace in any logging or history-status. I propose that duplicates should be treated as a normal DR, because the uploader should be able to have a say in it if a file is not a duplicate. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 09:49, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
- I believe the policy is fine as is it, but we may have a problem in implementation. One thing that can certainly help with avoiding deletion of non-duplicates is adding a {{retouched}} template, since this should make it obvious that the file is not a straight duplicate. Sebari – aka Srittau (talk) 10:43, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
- There is one big disadvantage: this is not an obvious thing to do to the general uploader. You would have to convince anyone to do that in order to make the procedure work. Besides, it does not solve the issue of no-logging in case of deletion. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 11:47, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
Advertising or self-promotion[edit]
The "Out of scope" section contains a point "Advertising or self-promotion" as a deletion reason. Similarly, Commons:Criteria for speedy deletion contains G10 criterion: "This includes only content uploaded to promote goods and services, outside our project scope. Files that illustrate contemporary or historical advertisements do not fall under this criterion."
I think, these criteria are too vague and tend to be misused or misinterpreted. Generally, every file "promotes" its subject and every file indicates concern and/or interest of its creator as well as its uploader on the subject of the file. This fact itself cannot be the main criterion of compliance with the Commons scope. I think, we shouldn't have too narrower scope criteria for "commercial" or "personal" items than we have for "non-commercial" items (hills, houses, villages, science, nature, events etc.). The "advertising reason" should be not misused for deletion files with envy, within competing fight etc. Commons should be resistant to such damaging concerns.
We should distinguish unwanted files rather by their genre and by quality of their description, rather than seek for some definition of minimal notability level. In essence, it doesn't matter who the file uploaded (whether it is "self-promotion" or "not-self-promotion"). Generally, documentation of persons, facilities, events or goods can be totally in scope even though their are uploaded by engaged persons. Following from the copyright principles, some types of content (related to copyrighted work) cannot be uploaded without author's consent, i.e they needs to be uploaded as "self-promotion" and cannot be uploaded in any different way. We should welcome and inciate such a "self-promotion" of artworks, architecture etc., to cover documentation of architecture of non-FoP countries, document toys, good packages, book and record covers, tickets etc.
We should define, which kind of files is really out of scope. E.g.
- images devalued by advertisement writing or retouching
- insufficiently described or undescribed images (files) of subjects which are not commonly known and are hardly identifiable from the file without a description, and not really usable and categorizable without identification.
There is a question whether Commons project should have its own criteria of notability of subjects (places, events, people etc.) or some other criteria (private places / public places etc.). Anyway, promotional effect itself should not disqualify a file from Commons. Every file "promotes" its subject. --ŠJů (talk) 14:29, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
