Commons:Project scope/Update 2013/Main

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Scope Review 2013 links: Discuss stage 2 of this review Translation Help your community by translating the review Background Main review page: Background and process FAQ Links to current rules Project Scope Photographs of identifiable people Discussion: Introductory Scope wording Aim of Wikimedia Commons Excluded educational content Discussion: Files Must be a media file Must be an allowable free file format Must be freely licensed or public domain Licensing terms Evidence Precautionary principle 'Realistically useful for an educational purpose' PDF and DjVu formats Discussion: Pages, galleries and categories General pages, galleries and categories User pages, galleries and categories Discussion: Areas of particular concern Censorship "Neutral point of view" Discussion: Identifiable people Lead Legal issues Consent Moral issues Identification Examples Removal requests Other image sources Other proposals Other proposals

A discussion is happening now at Commons talk:Project scope/Update 2013/Stage 2 on how part 2 of this review should be structured. Please comment there.

Rationale

Over the last few months there has been a lot of discussion within Commons as well as outside about what the scope of Wikimedia Commons should be. Discussions have largely but not entirely focused on issues concerning the small proportion of holdings that relate to sexual imagery and to privacy/the rights of the subject. Both have complex moral and legal dimensions, and neither has yet been fully resolved. More generally, some of our polices have been in place for some time, and are overdue for a review.

Process for this review

Part 1 (completing now)

The intention initially is simply to gather a wide range of views from the wider Wikimedia community and to encourage constructive discussion. Plenty of time should be allowed for that - no specific deadline is envisaged.

Part 2 (not yet started)

Beyond that, we will need to see how the community wants to take things forward. There may be one or two suggestions, perhaps, that rapidly gain wide support and which could be adopted quickly. More contentious issues may need collaborative work on a proposal that has gained support during this initial phase. Finally, we may need to run some formal polls.

See Commons talk:Project scope/Update 2013/Stage 2 for the current discussion on how best to structure part 2.

Background materials and further reading

• The tragedy of Wikipedia's commons, a Signpost Op-ed by Gigs
• A response to The Tragedy of Wikipedia’s commons, two Signpost Op-eds by MichaelMaggs and Mattbuck in response
• A recent Request for comment regarding Commons' scope
• A 2009 proposal to tighten up on photographs of identifiable people. No clear consensus at the time.
• Issues involving living people in the WMF's BLP board resolution
• The WMF's 2011 board resolution regarding subject consent for images of identifiable living people
• The 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content. Click through to read sections 1, 2 and 3.
• 2010 Commons discussion of sexual content policy (not adopted) and the non-policy help file Help:Sexual content.
• A proposal of April 2013 regarding the content of User pages on Commons
• Commons:Deletion_requests/NASA_images_of_User:Huntster Example of "the reasonable doubt" term interpretation resulting in an extremely narrow project scope.