Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-05-07/Fair use

In continuation of the story the Signpost ran last week about featured lists, discussion began Tuesday, involving more than two dozen editors, on the administrators' noticeboard. It concerns the inclusion of fair use images in lists such as that of Family Guy episodes, and the general undertakings of the Episode list WikiProject.

Last month, after noting its effect on the nominees for featured list status, Tompw initiated discussion about modifying the featured list criteria to exclude non-free content from lists. It was aimed mainly at lists for television series which contain a screenshot from every episode. Most in support of the changes stated that screenshots could be used on the articles for individual episodes, but need not be used in episode summaries, which generally contain only one or two sentences about specific episodes. Several editors 'strongly' opposed the modifications, citing various things, including the lack of usability of a screenshot for piracy. Others said screenshots simply made the list more visually appealing and an easier recognition of a given episode, without reading the summary. Discussion on the page continued through April.

On April 30, ESkog removed all of the images from List of Family Guy episodes, claiming a lack of fair use in his edit summaries. Shortly thereafter, an anonymous user reverted the change, but ESkog restored his version some three hours later.

The anonymous user again reverted the change, after which ESkog made mention of the issue on the administrators' noticeboard. At this point, administrator Ryulong quickly reverted to ESkog's imageless version and protected the page, saying, "fair use violations aplenty." The original posting by ESkog and note of protection at the noticeboard has since sparked nearly 40,000 words of discussion. In it, he described the inclusion of a screenshot for every list as a "decorative fair-use gallery". Cburnett was very unhappy with the change and quick protection by Ryulong, calling it an obvious endorsement of his preferred version. He also accused Ryulong of taking the administrative action of protection against a page to which he was involved in editing. Also troublesome was the definition of "decorative"; several users sided with ESkog and maintained the philosophy that listed screenshots should not be included.

Cburnett queried as to the amount of time that was spent ridding the Family Guy list of non-free images, when other lists, such as that for Naruto, were allowed to retain them. Ryulong then swiftly made his first edits to that list, three of which were formatting-related. The other was a reversion of the restoration by Someguy0830 of Zscout370's removal of the screenshots.

Peregrine Fisher appeared to be the main advocate for non-free image retention. He initially questioned the poor location of the discussion, and later tried to shed light on the decision that had been made regarding a proposed amendment to Wikipedia's fair use criteria. Discussion continued for a number of hours, concerning the number of editors required to achieve consensus, followed by numerous reminders that the discussion was not strictly a vote. Later, WAS 4.250 proposed that smaller (icon) sized images should be used, but the proposal was quickly dismissed. Administrator Cyde Weys, a major contributor to the discussion, said that he had taken the initiative in deleting images that had been orphaned since their removal from various lists.

Gmaxwell provided a list of articles that were featured, but had episode screenshots. The most notable were those of The Simpsons, a series for which there are eighteen seasons. Future Perfect at Sunrise and Picaroon9288 removed the non-free screenshots from these lists. For a number of the other lists, users who were unaware of the discussion on the noticeboard, reverted the image removal. Early Tuesday, Cyde created a page on which lists that have had their screenshots removed are to be added. Several users have since assisted in the massive removal of the images, sparking minor edit wars at various locations; a number of episode lists were temporarily protected because of disputes that arose from the removal of images, which involved multiple editors.

Consensus, or at least a general acceptance of the policy and the subsequent image removal effort, began to emerge Wednesday. Cburnett, who initially was unhappy with the immediacy of the matter and lack of consensus, praised editors for dealing with the issue in a professional manner. Hard feelings finally turned against Wikipedia's vague fair use policy for non-free images. Regarding long-term solutions to the problem, Crotalus horridus proposed a separate Wiki exclusively for popular culture. The forked site would continue to license text under the GNU Free Documentation License, but there would be a much less restrictive use on non-free content. The proposal generated discussion, but was considered unfeasible.