User talk:Lwalt/Archive index/2012/January

File:Great Seal of Maryland reverse.png listed for deletion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Great Seal of Maryland reverse.png, has been listed at Files for deletion. Please see the to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Magog the Ogre (talk) 16:44, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Response:

At the time that posted the reverse and obverse sides of the Seal of Maryland, the rationale provided for those postings complied with guidelines under the WP policy regarding non-free content. I had correctly referred to the relevant copyright status at the time of adding the images to WP, as in the case here. The reverse side of the Seal of Maryland also showed this same information at the time of its original posting.

The problem here is really that a bot was allowed to convert and move these images to WP Commons (where they don't belong in the first place, since they're subject to copyright restrictions) and tag the images without regard to their copyright status. At no time should state seals be tagged as in the public domain, as I see is now the case with wholesale removal of these seals to WP Commons. From what I see here, the mass move and retagging of copyrighted images to public domain status appear as trigger happy as posting speedy deletes when the original information was ignored and discarded.

I know of no state seal that falls within the public domain, and redrawing state seals for use on Wikipedia and its sister sites would be inappropriate and would not comply with copyright guidelines on their use (no one has authorization to redraw protected a seal for personal use, so the seal must be presented as released from state records). In the end, deletion of this state seal from WP would result in disrupting the flow of content for all Maryland-related articles that refer to information related to its history, such as in this article, and related, state-sanctioned activities. That would be unfortunate because this action equally destroys and discounts the work of others who volunteer their time to creating knowledge to the Wikipedia project. → Lwalt ♦ talk 11:08, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

January 2012 Newsletter for WikiProject United States and supported projects
--Kumi-Taskbot (talk) 19:33, 16 January 2012 (UTC)