Wikipedia talk:Possibly unfree files/Header

RFC: Should adding pufc to image captions be a required step in the WP:PUF process?
Consensus, such as it is, is largely in favour of removing the requirement, though several editors express concerns about the visibility of the process and suggest using a bot to notify editors of affected articles, whether through this tag or by a talk page notification. I would suggest these possibilities are explored further before the deprecation of the template. HJ Mitchell &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?  23:58, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I am opening this RFC to discuss whether the WP:PUF policy should still require adding pufc to image captions as part of the WP:PUF process. -- Тимофей  Лее  Суда . 14:38, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Survey

 * Remove this as a required step from WP:PUF and change it to "consider adding." -- Тимофей  Лее  Суда .  14:38, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Remove this as a required step from WP:PUF and change it to "consider not adding". The template is almost never added and risks remaining in articles after an image has been closed as keep, leading to confusion. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:41, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe we should remove the template all together? I think that would be best, but I didn't want to go to far. -- Тимофей  Лее  Суда .  23:45, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
 * We should preferably not make any difference between pufc and ffdc, as this causes confusion. Currently, pufc is listed as mandatory whereas ffdc is listed as optional but recommended. In practice, neither template is used in most cases. Deleting both templates sounds like a good idea. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:53, 16 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Remove Is there evidence that they draw a lot of discussion input and help change file fates? I can't imagine enough ordinary page visitors getting involved in copyright issues to warrant its inclusion. Sure, Twinkle could auto-add them and a bot could auto-remove them once done, but they are a blight on the mainspace and not worth it. "Consider adding" or remove completely. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:06, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose I would support properly enforcing this requirement as a mandatory part of the process. Thousands of files are, often quite rightly but sometimes needlessly deleted at PUF, often uploaded by accounts that have laid dormant for years despite being used in articles. PUF/FFD lay at the fringes of the community with only a small number of regulars - the pufc template is the only way in which watchers of the article are notified that an image may be deleted or removed before it's too late. I always add the template and think it's mainly down to laziness that so many others, especially some mass nominators, don't bother to - it paints us as an insulated, isolated group and only stokes the fire of annoyance at the NFCC/copyright policy's complicated enforcement clauses - it only seems polite and useful to let editors of a page know that one of the image has a questionable copyright status and may be deleted. I'd much rather have an erroneous deletion message left in an article (which is very small) than have useful encyclopedic content deleted due to false copyright concerns, which will occur if we don't notify editors of the articles files are used in, as they may have knowledge of the copyright status of the file which the nominator does not and be able to shed light on the situation. I imagine that the Twinkle helper omits it due to technical difficulties, but it only takes a second of manual editing. Personally, I would also support mandatory article talk page notification if pufc is not added - maybe that could be coded into Twinkle. Anyway, that's my 2p - thoughts? Acather96 (click here to contact me) 14:24, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I understand where you are coming from. I would support article talk page notification instead of the pufc template. -- Тимофей  Лее  Суда .  14:40, 17 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Strong oppose Don't think there's any valid reason to rehash this. Same uncontested reasons I've brought up when the policy has been violated. -Elvey (talk) 22:47, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment IIRC, the above remove votes ( -most are unsupported POV) are all from people who have violated this policy. At least some of them defiantly and/or routinely.  There's quite the COI (in the normal, not wikipedia sense.) -Elvey (talk) 22:47, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose simply removing this requirement, but support replacing it with a requirement for notification on talk pages of the affected articles. Notifying article editors is important IMO, but the article talk page is a better place than image captions. --Avenue (talk) 21:17, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Support complete removal; would support replacement with article talkpage notifications only if that step gets automatized in the same way as user talk notifications. Reasons: (a) Consistency with other deletion processes. Inline notices aren't obligatory at FFD or NFCR either. (b) Consistency with long-standing practice. Policy instructions on Wikipedia are supposed to be descriptive of actual practice. Like it or not, actual practice in this field has been to treat these as optional, for as long as I can think. You can't turn the wheel back just through insisting on an instruction in an out-of-the-way place (which few people read anyway.) This train has left the station. (c) Practicality: inline notifications are often ugly, disrupt reading experience, and may disturb the layout of infoboxes and other environments. Especially with images used in infoboxes or other templates, it is often also quite difficult to figure out where in the template code the notification should be added, because templates are wildly inconsistent about how images and captions are coded. (I believe this is also the reason why this part of the process has never been successfully automated.) (d) Workload. Image patrolling is a thankless and unpleasant job, and it's bad enough that it causes as much work as it does already. Most of it is caused by willfully irresponsible uploaders. As a matter of principle, I will strongly oppose any measure that makes the process more burdensome to the patroller than it is now. Personally, I will continue to absolutely refuse to do anything that isn't easily automated. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:00, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Support removal and replacement with article talk page notification, this is a more practical alternative which serves the same purpose. We should also apply this to WP:FFD. January  ( talk ) 07:01, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Discussion
It is my opinion that this additional step is unnecessary. Very few users actually follow this step in the WP:PUF process and the Twinkle helper completely omits it. This step is not in line with other image discussions including WP:FFD and WP:NFCR. WP:FFD states: "If the image is in use, also consider adding to the caption(s)..."

Omitting this step would avoid the risk of accidentally leaving behind a deletion message on articles. I feel that it would also keep the integrity of the article without placing needless tags on image captions. There was previously a discussion about a WP:NFCR template that concluded with consensus determining that adding the tag to articles instead of just images was not desirable. See RFC at: Template talk:Non-free review.

There have been previous discussions about this: Wikipedia_talk:Possibly_unfree_files and User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_153. -- Тимофей  Лее  Суда . 14:38, 16 February 2014 (UTC)