User:Chaswmsday/Notes

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۩ AKMask

۩ M ask / AKMask

۩ M ask / AKMask

slippery slope fallacy

argument from setting a precedent

Per WP:VEGAN: Is allowing one meat dish per table equivalent to allowing one fair-use per infobox?

Per WP:VEGAN: Would the FDA declaring meat not to be meat equivalent to the Copyright Office deciding the meatiness of an image?

Would pork-based gelatin or red food coloring from the cochineal insect be halal or kosher or vegan?

Crunchy, vegan literary critics have each critiqued different passages of the same poem, with at least one line overlap by all taken together. Each indicates copyright. The entire poem is covered. They all publish in separate public domain literary journals/reviews. Downstream Snidely reads all, reassembles, publishes in Collected Poems by Snidely, under theory of "public domain". Snidely is guilty of copyvio. Are we critics? Of course not!

Given the responses last time, I've hesitated reopening this issue. I now believe I have misunderstood the argument against inclusion of historical logos. Please let me know if I'm now on the right track.

I followed through on my train of thought, so this got wordy. If nothing else, please read the bolded lines.

Throughout the entire discussion, I had been wracking my brain about what seemed to me an inexplicable bias against including historical logos in articles.


 * I don't recall reading anything in the much older arguments within the TV project about the use of logos that would have led me to any other conclusion.
 * Indeed, in almost all of the discussions about this article, the arguments were about denying inclusion unless the logo was crucial to understanding, or unless the logo itself were the subject of commentary.
 * "A very odd threshold," I thought. "This bizarre 'anti-logoism' had driven these editors to get the rules changed to support this curious position against a very particular type of information."

Then, I read a revelatory response from  ۩  M ask / AKMask: "Wikipedia is a free content work, fair use images harm our ideals, our goals, and the ability to redistribute wikipedia for any purpose, and as such are strictly limited."

Wait! What?! This isn't "about" logos?! This is really about ALL fair use images?! I don't remember hearing that before.


 * With this new context, AKMask's earlier statement made more sense: "Wikipedia is a free content work, we want reusers to be able to distribute it in any form for any reason to accomplish our mission of giving every person access to a high-quality reference work without fear of copyright encumberment."


 * However, I was then directed to read the "Veganism parable."
 * First, this essay on its face doesn't suggest it's referring to "fair use". It might just as well be an analogy for some other topic.
 * Reading it now with a more complete understanding of what it is supposed to be about, I still find it obtuse. Upon further analysis, I also believe the "veganism" analogy is flawed in several ways.
 * Reading it before the "revelation" completely wiped out any understanding I might have gained from AKMask's earlier statement.

After this revelation, I've tried to investigate this matter further prior to proceeding.

My understanding of the argument is that including fair use images (for that matter, anything fair use) either directly harms Wikipedia, or places it in some kind of jeopardy.
 * I don't have enough information at this point to understand this position, but it does seem on its face to be defensible (as opposed to a specifically anti-logo bias – my earlier misunderstanding – which wouldn't be defensible).

Were these logos not fair use images, I presume that they would be subject to no more or no less scrutiny than any other element of an article.

I have some ideas on how I might legitimately proceed with the articles I've been editing, but after finding out if I'm indeed on the right track, I need to understand this fair use issue to see exactly what the parameters are.


 * I'm unsure about fair use images which are permitted under the "avoid fair use" argument.
 * Are the allowed usages so compelling that they trump any harm or risk to Wikipedia?
 * Or is it that, in an ideal world, no fair use would be allowed, and that permitting any is merely a compromise, taking the matter as far as the Wikipedia community in general was willing to go?


 * Unfortunately, when I look up "fair use" in Wikipedia, I get an encyclopedic article strictly on the legal issues; for some reason, English Wikipedia's "fair use" is supposed to be stricter than the law's definition.
 * When I look up "fair use" in the meta portions of Wikipedia, I get only WP:NFCC, which purports to tell how to handle fair use images, but doesn't explain why they should be treated in a unique manner.
 * Looking up "deletionism" and "inclusionism" yields discussions about the existence of articles, not about the inclusion of elements within articles.
 * Also returned are dueling deletionist and inclusionist manifestos/arguments/quotes, all of which seem to me to be alternately serious, hyperbolic, silly or incomprehensible &mdash; but also useless in answering this question.


 * Armed with my "revelation", I've also searched for "fair use" arguments and counter-arguments anywhere I can find them, including in talk and incident pages. Although extensive, these seem to generate an extreme amount of heat, but almost no light.
 * There are citations of the WikiMedia Foundation's Mission Statement, but from the debates I've read, it seems there is reasonable disagreement as to whether it calls for Wikipedia itself to be free content, or whether it calls for all content within Wikipedia to be free &mdash; which, as far as I can tell, doesn't seem to hold true.
 * There are also references to WP:NFCC, but these just seem to be circular arguments.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone could point me to a reasonably succinct explanation of "fair use's" harm or risk to Wikipedia, or could provide that themselves.

If my understanding of the issue is on- or off-track, please let me know.

Thanks.--Chaswmsday (talk) 12:15, 31 July 2011 (UTC)