This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Because they can write whatever they want. If someone reversed what's written under which photo, and it remained unquestinedd by other editors, would you be able to tell something is amiss?
There is literally no license for the Charlottesville photo.
I don't understand the question. If there's no license for a photo, it can be deleted per the stated policy. This is a simple, binary question - does the photo include license information?
edit: Now that I look at it, you cannot upload copyrighted images to Commons at all, even if they are fair use (I did mention I'm not an expert on Wikipedia policy). The mugshot was on Commons, so even if it did have a licensing section, it would have been deleted since it's probably non-free. It would need to have been on Wikipedia, which does allow non-freely licensed images, provided, again, that the TPS report is fully filled out.
There is licensing information, hence the section entitled "Licensing" in large print, which is the requirement (see policy linked above).
If someone deleted the Charlottesville photo, and kept the mugshot, would you be able to tell that the policy was misapplied? If not, how can you tell that it was applied correctly here?
And you have evidence no one bothered writing such a section for the mugshot?
Yeah, I've never seen an image on Wikipedia without licensing information, and I've never seen an image on Commons that is copyrighted.
Yes, this user regularly does what seem to be (based on the rate and uniformity of log messages) semi-automated deletions of photos without licensing sections, including those illustrating such hot button issues as some kind of "flag map of Embera-Wouanaan", the logo of Sporge-Jorgen, and of course, the accursed demodex mite.
How would you be able to tell that the image had licensing information after it was deleted?
How is that evidence of anything?
That's irrelevant to the question. Your claim is that if the Brooks photo was not deleted and had no licensing information, nobody could tell. The question is, are there any photos on Commons/wiki without licensing information, and are there any copyrighted photos on Commons?
How is the fact that the guy who deleted this is running an automated unlicensed image deletion dragnet evidence of anything?
In the same minute that he deleted the Brooks photo, he deleted 18 other unlicensed images. In the ten minute window, he deleted 147 images total. All of them had been without a license for 8 days at that point. He then deleted the category that held images that were tagged as missing a license on July 3.
It's pretty obvious that this is an automated process where images without licensing information are tagged, added to a category, and then in 8 days those without licensing information are automatically garbage collected. I don't see any reason to add epicycles to this.
"When the Brooks mugshot was deleted from Wikipedia, it was the worst day of your life. For krd, it was Tuesday."
What? No, I asked my question because it's relevant to my claim, which is - if the Brooks photo was deleted and had licensing information, nobody could tell.
Yes. The way to get a position of influence in an organization is to actually do gruntwork.
You're missing the point. The point is that there's nothing to distinguish this photo from the 150 other photos deleted in those ten minutes except that you feel strongly about this image. There's no indication at all that the process has been abused.
At this point, it seems it is you who has the unfalsifiable belief, namely, that this entirely routine, automated action was actually politically motivated.
I'm not missing the point, it's just not relevant to my views. There's a lot of work in an org like Wikipedia including deletions, so these other 150 deletions don't move the needle either way.
There's no indication that the process was abused, because you cannot access the licensing info of the image at the time it was deleted anymore.
I literally proposed a test that would falsify it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link