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Administrator of Wikimedia Commons and Silesian Wikipedia, former Polish Wikipedia administrator.
My resistance
editSo, are you the part of great Wiki movement, providing open content for million of users? Then do it! But there's too much fights. The hit is deletion request and when image got deleted, it's a won fight. Do you ever thought of that? I mean, how personal issues impact content and why "outsiders" should suffer? How would you feel if you'd want to buy something in the shop and it's available, but you can't have it because X put it on the shelf, Y doesn't like X and Y removed it?
The iconic example is deleting picture of so-called "illegal sockpuppet". The user gets banned and when that user creates other account and use it to avoid ban, it's against the rules. But what if that other account is used to upload good pictures? They are deleted. Not in every case, but I've seen such cases. It was horrible.
Let me propose something. Keep in mind - I'll try to do exactly the same, as I'm not crystal clear - I want to improve myself. Before any action think: how would it impact non-wikipedians? If it would be bad for them, then just don't do it. We are here to serve, create public garden which have to reflect different tastes. Keep your opinion your opinion. Don't make it as a way to force others what they can see or get from Commons and what they can't. Trust me, it doesn't mean chaos. I think that it even can improve content - less fights, less leaving users. If you hit somebody with knife, don't smear the blood on face of every watcher.
This picture is the symbol of my resistance against biased and/or pointless deletion of files. It was deleted. The arguments were:
- It's a copyright violation (and this is not) - derivative work of copyrighted material. One person said it, the rest repeated. Thankfully there were persons who actually know copyright law. One would think that if you are talking about copyrights, you should know at least basics, but no. So, the point is that it could be trademarked. It's like patents. It's totally different and we don't deal on Commons with trademarks. How come that people think that red M in the white circle can be copyrighted? Do you really think that you can't use any letter in any shape, because I'm sure that they all were used earlier? Do you think that Nintendo was the first to use it? No, they wasn't.
- It's outside the scope - argument used when you don't like uploader or picture itself. Every picture have realistic encyclopedic use. I remember how photo of some young porn star - blurred selfie in dirty mirror using camera, bad even for cellphone photo, was kept, because "it could illustrate article about buttocks". Really? Who's gonna believe that? Tip: she was nude, her vulva was visible (if you could call anything "visible" in this picture) and the votes were voted by male teenagers.
I know that one shouldn't say "keep that because we have worse pictures", but why not start with these worst like unused selfies of users with only one action, i.e. upload of this photo? Or maybe do mass cleaning up? Nah, it won't happen. It's just the Commons fight, a silent aggression. Of course there are many fair SCOPE rule uses, but as long, as this rule is used, it will help to delete some bad pictures and it will be the weapon to game the system and fight pictures or users we don't like. I prefer to have these bad pictures than to have such dark side of Commons. I'm not telling that I think that some users uses SCOPE to make their fights. No, no. I know that. Including many admins, which should rethink their ways.