User:Acdixon/Delete the image; don't sink the nom

I'm an article creator/improver. My goal is to beef up articles to GA or FA quality if I can, or at least past the stub or long but incoherent stage if I have enough sources to do so credibly. The bottom line is, I edit articles, and I am only concerned with Wikipedia policies inasmuch as they affect my ability to do that. Thus, while I am very concerned with WP:NPOV and WP:V, for example, I am less concerned with and less familiar with, say WP:IUP. So it irks me when I spend weeks or months gathering sources and expanding an article from whatever whacked-out form it exists in to something with at least a reasonable shot at being recognized for quality, only to have someone come by and blast me with an oppose !vote because the free-use claim on an image I probably grabbed from another article at the last minute is unclear. Content reviews are getting harder and harder to come by as it is, and in my experience, all of them seem to come near the time for the nomination to close. This leaves me scrambling at the last minute to find the user who uploaded the image (assuming they are still active) and prod them to clarify their free-use claim to the satisfaction of another user, and do it in a timely fashion so my nomination doesn't fail, causing me to have to repeat the entire process and wait another month to see whether I can get this one article promoted before I have to return all those sources to the library.

I propose instead that users who are concerned about an unclear free-use claim nominate that image for deletion on the basis of an unclear free-use claim and not oppose the article's nomination for good or featured recognition. Not only would this make me lots happier (which is, after all, the ultimate goal of Wikipedia) but I believe it will make Wikipedia as a whole better. How? Read on.

Concessions, acknowledgments, and other preemptive strikes
Before I begin, allow me to make some acknowledgments that will hopefully allay the fears of those whose first inclination is to disagree with me.

The goal of Wikipedia is to create a free encyclopedia
I get this, and I support it fully. Inasmuch as we can use images that are free to use without restriction, we should, and inasmuch as we can respect other people's intellectual property rights, we should. As someone whose livelihood is inextricably tied to intellectual property rights, I'm all for adequately verifying that we haven't violated those rights. I respect copyright, if not necessarily those looking to extend it interminably. I believe the result of implementing my suggestion would be to support and enhance Wikipedia's goal of creating a free encyclopedia, not weaken it.

You are the nominator; all the problems are yours to fix
This is arguably a valid, defensible contention, but I don't believe it serves the ultimate goal of creating a better encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are ultimately judged on the completeness and quality of their content, not so much for their aesthetic appeal. In some cases, an image may serve a vital rhetorical purpose, but in the area that I am most interested in (biographies), they are more often just to say "This guy/gal is dead, but this is what he/she looked like when he/she was alive." Nice to have? Sure. Secondary to actual factual content in the article itself? Absolutely.

So, what happens when something which is undoubtedly important, but definitely of lesser importance than quality prose prevents the recognition of an article? The folks who improve articles are less inclined to do so, because they know that these tangential issues stand between them and recognition of their work. I am motivated by seeing my work recognized as good or featured by the Wikipedia community. Does that mean my life is sad and borderline meaningless? Maybe. But I get the feeling that I'm not alone, at least on this point. (Sometimes I do get that alone feeling where I just need a hug, you know?)

The GA and FA criteria include images
Believe me, I'm quite aware of WP:WIAGA and WP:WIAFA, which state in part that a good or featured article must have "images that follow the image use policy and other media where appropriate, with succinct captions, and acceptable copyright status. Non-free images or media must satisfy the criteria for inclusion of non-free content and be labeled accordingly." I'll be honest; when an image in an article I've nominated is challenged, my first thought is "Can this article get by without the image?" In other words, I usually try to nuke it and go on because, once again, images are of secondary concern to me. This doesn't necessarily make the encyclopedia better, but as I've contended above and hope to show below, opposing GACs and FACs on the basis of insufficient free-use claims doesn't either. Rather than take the onus on myself to try and find out who uploaded the image, where they found it, whether we can tell who published it when, or if the person who created it died a long time ago, I'd rather just take it out and throw the onus back on you to show that this article must have that image to be good or featured.

Contentions

 * Image author and article author are often different users
 * The article author is an expert on the article; the image author is the expert on the image.
 * The problem is with the image, not the article.
 * FfD will get more attention from more people that can help.
 * Opposing the nom may not get the image changed in other articles.