Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/AMThu, 18 Dec 2008 06:15:11 +00002008-12-18T06:15:11+00:000615vUTC 39

Critical commentary
What's the point of allowing non-free images to be used for critical commentary? Wouldn't original critical commentary violate No original research and WP:SOAP, as well as violating Neutral point of view unless all major viewpoints are represented? -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 01:15, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * take a look at Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima it is an article about a picture, not an event almost everything in that article is critical commentary, as it discusses the image, usage, and effects of that particular image. critical commentary is by default neither positive nor negative. it is just sourced important commentary about said image. βcommand 02:36, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "Critical commentary" does not mean "A Wikipedia editor's critical commentary". In some cases (see Guernica, Mona Lisa, or for that matter Virgin Killer), an image may have well been the subject of significant sourced critical commentary outside of Wikipedia. It is not original research to write what reliable sources such as well-respected publications have to say about them, any more than it's ever original research to cite and attribute a source. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * IMO those are merely reports and summaries of existing critical commentary rather than critical commentary in and of themselves, which would be sufficient to meet the "in the context of critical commentary" criterion for cover art, but insufficient to meet the "for critical commentary" criterion used for screenshots, visual art and promotion material. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 06:23, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I just looked through the archives. The last time this received serious, in-depth discussion was in What is "critical commentary"? in archive 31. In that discussion, the consensus was that "critical commentary" basically means "criticism and / or commentary", and we only use the misleading "critical commentary" term because it's a legal term. If so, why doesn't the guideline explain the term or at least mention the fact that it's using the American legal definition of "critical commentary" rather than the plain English definition? -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 05:09, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I've added an RFC. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 08:24, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand the basis of the question. To me (non-American, non-legal), "critical commentary" means casting a critical eye on the subject. That eye may discern a variety of positive and negative aspects - the role of a critic is not solely to disparage, it is to make balanced observations. Furthermore, critical commentary must always come from outside of Wikipedia, since we are here to report, not to comment by ourselves (well, in mainspace anyway :). Is there a mismatch in my understanding? Franamax (talk) 08:39, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think by the sound of it you may have a mismatch, and I'd recommend you do read the discussion that Gordon linked above, particularly the contributions from User:Wikidemo, since Wikidemo is actually a US Copyright lawyer in real life. The point is, as Gordon has said above, that "critical commentary" is an American legal term which essentially covers anything justifiable as "purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research" (17 USC 106).  But see the earlier discussion, particularly Wikidemo's comments, for a fuller presentation. Jheald (talk) 10:12, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm - that pretty much matches my non/non-view - critical commentary means talking about something, not just saying something exists. I like this quote from Wikidemo: "a requirement that an image be used for purposes of commentary means that it has to actually support and expand on what is said in the text. Merely proving with a picture that the text is true is not adding any commentary value". Franamax (talk) 11:08, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * In response to your first comment, that's also how I interpret "critical commentary" as a term in plain English, but including one's own subjective judgements and interpretations of a work is prohibited by No original research, while summarizing what critics have said about something is merely reporting or summarizing criticism, not making it. Basically, I have four questions. Does this policy use "critical commentary" in the plain English sense, or in the legal sense? If this policy uses "critical commentary" in the plain English sense, isn't everything encompassed by the term prohibited by No original research? If "critical commentary" is used in the legal sense, why doesn't the guideline explain what it means in accordance with Explain jargon? If "critical commentary" is used in the legal sense and cannot be easily defined, why isn't there at least a statement that it cannot be easily defined, followed by a list of examples like the one at No personal attacks? -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 02:21, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, in reference to something that was said a few posts up, "critical commentary" is NOT a term used in U.S. copyright law, and Wikidemo has been very clear about how in that sense it is a very POOR term to use. It's an amalgamation of two SEPARATE terms that show up in fair use discussions: criticism and commentary. You can look up my past comments on this subject, but I believe that the term is very poorly defined. It either means something that would plainly be barred by WP:NOR, or it covers everything we do at every article. I can't imagine very many images of an article subject that do not "support and expand upon" what's in the text. Croctotheface (talk) 19:55, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I would support changing this phrase as well. I did a Westlaw search for the phrase a while ago, and got very few results. There is no use using a faux-legalese term that doesn't have an ordinary meaning. If we want to be more demanding than simply "commentary" we should articulate what we mean in plain English. Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:13, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, let's try this, replace all references to "critical commentary" with "sourced and verifiable encyclopedic content and discussion in relation to the non-free work", since that's what "critical commentary" is. ViperSnake151 02:22, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd support that. By the way, I accidentally used the politics RFC template rather than the policy RFC template. I've replaced it with the correct template and added a new timestamp. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:53, 13 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I support replacing it, but I hope we can come up with a slightly more phrase term to use instead. I don't see why we need to say "sourced" when all material must be verifiable to be included at all.  I don't see why we need to say "encyclopedic" because something inappropriate for an encyclopedia should be removed anyway.  I think that we could just use the term "commentary" and define it as something more like "enhance the reader's understanding of an element discussed within the article". Croctotheface (talk) 15:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC) Actually, I think we should probably just stop using the term or anything like it.  We've gotten by this long by saying "screenshots are OK for critical commentary" which, as the current discussion shows, was tantamount to just saying "screenshots are OK" and then following that up with a more or less meaningless phrase nobody really understood.  Obviously all non-free screenshots have to pass all of the NFCC, so saying that they're for "critical commentary" or whatever else is basically redundant; they need to pass a much more stringent set of criteria to be considered in the first place.  Croctotheface (talk) 15:52, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There's a difference between sourced material and verifiable material. Material only backed up by an unreliable source could be sourced but unverifiable if the source is unreliable and no better sources are readily available, while a claim could be easily verifiable without any specified source if sources are readily available, for example if someone added a fact tag to the claim in the tree article that trees are plants, or added a citation in the pasta article to support the claim that pasta is a type of food, I suspect that edit would be reverted. According to Verifiability "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation.", and Citing sources specifies six reasons for citing sources. I'm not aware of any policy or guideline prohibiting unsourced material in general. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 03:41, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * My point, which I probably did not make well, is that I don't see why we would shift from verifiable, which is the standard for all of WP, to "sourced and verifiable" in this one instance. I have the impression that the whole "sourced and verifiable and encyclopedic" litany was designed to just put in as many adjectives that Wikipedia editors would consider as indicators of "good" content, regardless of whether they actually came to bear on what we were talking about.  Being sourced has nothing to do with criticism or commentary, so I don't see why it should enter into the equation here.  Croctotheface (talk) 05:59, 18 December 2008 (UTC)