- File:Hispaniola greater funnel-eared bat in Los Haitises National Park.jpg (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (article|XfD|restore)
The deletion of this image as being replacable fair use ignited a debate on common sense here and put this up for further discussion with third-parties who have better knowledge of our consensus in NFCC 1 cases. ViperSnake151 Talk 01:39, 17 June 2013 (UTC) [reply- Although I am an involved party, I would like to point out that User:Nthep deleted the image with no comment, just that it fails criterion 1. User:Eeekster was the one with the comment above, and I don't believe he is an admin. Surfer43 (talk) 02:05, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- This is correct. I deleted the file for failing to meet NFCC#1 namely that a free use image of the bat could reasonably be created. If the concensus is that a free image could not reasonably be created then I'm more than happy to restore the file but then there is a possible discussion about whether NFCC#2 (respect for commercial opportunities) is being met, if the image is that rare. The NFCC are a package so while this discussion maybe about the application of one criteria, just check that chosing a different interpretation of one doesn't potentially mean that others are now not being met. NtheP (talk) 09:50, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- User:PantherLeapord was the only one calling names. Surfer43 (talk) 02:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn as an improper F7 and send to FfD. Disputed fair use != Invalid fair use, a discussion is certainly called for, and not just an escalating back-and-forth between the uploader and the tagger. Jclemens (talk) 07:19, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- On the one hand, I agree with Jclemens to the extent that speedy deletion should be reserved for clearer-cut cases. The purpose of the speedy deletion rule is to empower sysops to delete material without a discussion, but the community has set many limits on that. They're wearisome to read in detail but the underlying principle is always: it should be absolutely obvious to a neutral observer why the deletion is right. In cases where a neutral, good-faith observer might think "that's arbitrary" or "that's a matter of opinion", speedy deletion isn't the right tool for the job. In this case there is good faith doubt so a discussion is necessary.
But on the other hand, I don't think there's any point in sending it back to FFD, because our FFC and NFCC pages are attractive to people who're focused on the "free content" part of Wikipedia rather than improving the actual articles. FFD will just delete it again because that's what FFD does. The people who're focused on encyclopaedia-building find FFD and NFCC a bit alien from the rest of the encyclopaedia because those venues are so militant in their focus on free content. To me, it's quite obvious that material that (a) it's lawful for us to use, (b) nobody objects to us using, and (c) enhances our encyclopaedia should be used. Deleting such material is obstructive, destructive, and grossly and blatantly WT:NFCC. DRV should wait for the community to decide at that RFC and then enforce the community's will.— S Marshall T/C 07:44, 17 June 2013 (UTC) [reply- "our FFC and NFCC pages are attractive to people who're focused on the "free content" part of Wikipedia rather than improving the actual articles". I'm sure your handful of GAs qualify you to write off the opinions of people like Masem and I as nutjob extremists who aren't really here to improve the encyclopedia. You're the one suggesting we do away with one of our central policies. You're the one with a minority fringe view. You're the one ignoring the "community's will". J Milburn (talk) 09:30, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- EXCUSE ME!? AFAIK the greater community's will is that fair use images should be used where the free alternative is not of acceptable quality (Such as the initial free replacement for the
Playstation 4 image). I would hardly call that a "Minority fringe view"! PantherLeapord ( talk) 09:37, 17 June 2013 (UTC) [reply- Marshall is of the view that if an image meets three criteria: "(a) it's lawful for us to use, (b) nobody objects to us using, and (c) enhances our encyclopaedia [then it] should be used." This amounts to doing away with the non-free content policy, which is deliberately far stricter than his very liberal ideas about non-free content use. That is the fringe view. I am making no comment about this image, I am defending myself and others from his attack against us. J Milburn (talk) 09:45, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Also, of course that's not the community's will. "I know there's a free image, but I don't like it very much, so we'll continue to use the non-free image." Bullshit. J Milburn (talk) 09:46, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Free image purism is just as detrimental to the encyclopedia! When a fair use image is of much higher quality AND encyclopedic value than the free image then it is obvious that using the free image will only DEGRADE the quality of the article the image is used on. Would you rather use the free version and degrade the article or stick to the higher quality fair use image? PantherLeapord (talk) 09:48, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Take a look at
non-free content criterion 1. We do not use non-free content when a free image could reasonably be created that would serve the same purpose as a non-free image- we certainly don't use non-free content when free content is already available. This is not particularly controversial. J Milburn ( talk) 09:52, 17 June 2013 (UTC) [reply
WP:NFCC#1 was not CONSTANTLY misinterpreted by free image purists and deletionists then this image would NOT have been deleted to begin with! As this bat is EXTREMELY RARE and ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to get a photo of then it SHOULD be kept! PantherLeapord ( talk) 09:56, 17 June 2013 (UTC) [reply- Comment S Marshall is quite mistaken about FFD. A file was kept as recently as 12 May.[3] One was also kept on 19 May but that was withdrawn by the nominator.[4] On 3 June one was "not deleted" with a supervote because someone gave "a correct reason".[5] The normal procedure is not to close discussions with a consensus to keep[6] and so by no means all images are deleted. Thincat (talk) 10:14, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Giving examples of images that were kept does not invalidate what I said.—S Marshall T/C 11:27, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Respect for Commercial Oppurtunities There is complete respect for commercial opportunities because the owner allows it to be on Google Earth and it is freely accessible online. Having it freely available on Wikipedia will not change a thing. Surfer43 (talk) 11:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: I've left a comment on the photo's page asking if the author would be willing to release it under a free license. As far as I can tell, no one has even attempted this yet (which, frankly, is ridiculous). Hopefully this will be able to solve the entire problem. If anyone speaks it, it may be worth trying to contact the photographer in Spanish, too. J Milburn (talk) 11:47, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- That is definitely a good thing to have done. If you get a reply of "no", for me that would make the situation clear cut. Thincat (talk) 12:25, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I will leave the comment en español. I doubt he won't allow it. Surfer43 (talk) 17:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I sent him a private message in Spanish. Hopefully he gets it. Surfer43 (talk) 01:09, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- He replied "You have my permission to use it on Wikipedia." I sent him another private message explaining we need it to be released under CC BY-SA 3.0. Surfer43 (talk) 17:14, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- undelete and list I agree with S Marshall in nearly all respects on this one and would like to see an RfC on the broader issue. But DRV's job isn't to worry about how broken FfD is, it's to overturn bad deletions. And this one is clearly not a speedy case or even close to it. A new picture can't be reasonably gotten by anyone at this time so IMO it should be kept at FfD. Just needs to get there. Hobit (talk) 19:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion, obvious case of replaceability, and as such obvious and legitimate use of admin judgment in processing an F7 case. No case was made that this bat is significantly more difficult to find and take a photograph of than all the thousands of other species we have free nature photographs of on Commons. Any competent nature photographer could do again what the author of this photograph has done: travel to the Dominican Republic, visit its National Park, go to one of the caves (tourists do that every day), find a bat. There is not a shred of evidence that the opportunity to take the present photograph was somehow unique or overwhelmingly difficult to repeat. This is a slam-dunk case; not even anywhere close to borderline. Note also that on the image talk page, where the uploader first contested the speedy deletion proposal, he did not in fact bring forward any argument challenging the replaceability charge. He was arguing about whether the photographer had a commercial interest in the picture and other such things, but that just demonstrates he unfortunately failed to understand the NFCC criterion, which says "is available, or could be created". No substantive counterargument to the replaceability tag was made. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:44, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- If the animal is hard enough to photograph that only one picture exists (which is my understanding), that it _could_ be recreated at some point is pretty crazy. Where is the bar here? Someone could take a picture of an extinct species by recreating it from a preserved cell at some point in the future. Is that "could be created?". Or I suppose time travel could be found to be workable at some point so everything could be created. Yes, those are extreme, but the bar here to someone going out and getting such a picture is huge and unreasonable. My examples (ok, not the time travel one) are not significantly higher as creation of certain animals from cells is doable, if damn expensive at this point. Hobit (talk) 19:32, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm pretty certain walking into that cave and finding a bat sleeping in it is not significantly more difficult than getting access to the current Prime Minister of Kazakhstan and gaining permission to take a free portrait shoot of him (which nobody seems to have managed so far either, but he's still covered by our "living persons" rule). The fact that this particular bat has not been photographed more often is apparently not due to it being super-rare or super-secretive; it's just that its habitat happens to be limited to a relatively small part of the world (but still, that part of the world is not somewhere in the middle of Antarctica or at the bottom of the ocean; it is inhabited by some 10 million people and visited by thousands of tourists each year.) – And no, it is certainly not the case that only this one image of it exists; it's just that so far none of the existing ones happen to be free. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:46, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just so you know, this is the only picture taken of it on the internet. If it is so common, why is so little known about it? Surfer43 (talk) 00:56, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- False- as Thincat has shown below, there are other pictures out there. Further, there seems to be plenty of literature on the species- note my quick expansion of the article, and note the large number of hits on Google Scholar. Further, even if it was little-known, that wouldn't preclude it from being common. The IUCN seems to be quite clear that it's "locally common in specific areas" and "reasonably widely distributed". J Milburn (talk) 01:11, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Edit: There are only a few photos of it on the internet. Surfer43 (talk) 01:16, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- This is getting silly. We don't judge the replaceability of an image based on how many images of the subject we can find on the Internet. J Milburn (talk) 01:33, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn Needs an actual discussion of the full set of issues. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn I'm sure it was outside deletion policy to have speedy deleted the image. It was not one of "the most obvious cases". Whether it would or should survive a deletion discussion is not a present concern. Thincat (talk) 19:48, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I have found a photo published in the US in 1980, seemingly without notice but I don't know how to tell whether copyright was subsequently registered.[7][8] I think ASM are making their early Mammalian Species notes available deliberately.[9][10] And, of course, someone could ask. Thincat (talk) 20:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I've sent an email. I'll keep people posted. J Milburn (talk) 23:51, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion. A lot of the claims being thrown around in support of using a non-free image here are just plain wrong. The image this discussion concerns is not the only one on the Internet, as Thincat has shown. There may be more out there, as there are plenty of hits on Google Books and Google Scholar. This leads me to the second point- this does seem to be a fairly well-documented species. I've started to expand the article a little, but there's no doubt plenty more that could go in (the taxonomic history alone seems to be highly complex and interesting). Concerning the replaceability of this image, however: it is neither the case that the species is super-rare (the IUCN notes that it is "locally common in specific areas") nor that it is super-isolated (it is "reasonably widely distributed", according to the IUCN, on an island with a human population of 20 million). Also, for what it's worth, it looks pretty much the same as the Mexican funnel-eared bat (for which we do have free images), only bigger. There's really no way that a non-free image of this species would meet NFCC#1, and so the deletion seems quite appropriate. J Milburn (talk) 01:24, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I quote Miller, who first identified the species: "Except for its greater size, Natalus major so closely resembles specimens of N. stramineus from Dominica as to require no further explanation." (p. 399). J Milburn (talk) 01:28, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- And for what it's worth, I've just come across another photo online, in this article. J Milburn (talk) 08:26, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion(as uploader) - per J Milburn. I hope the author releases it. Surfer43 (talk) 17:31, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn This did not meet the speedy criterion--it was disputed free use, and disputed free use needs to be discussed, not speedied. It's every bit as clearly not a speedy as if it were an article deleted via A7 on the grounds that the deleting admin said that on balance, they didn't think it was "sufficiently" important. it's only indisputable cases that are appropriate for speedy. This is being challenged in good faith and must be discussed. Better there than here. DGG ( talk ) 16:25, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- And now the person who disputed it in the first place has recognised that it should have been deleted and endorses the deletion? J Milburn (talk) 23:24, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Plain wrong, DGG. "Disputed free use"? There was no claim of free use anywhere. The file had clearly been uploaded and labeled as non-free, and it was obviously agreed that there was no free license for it. And as for the challenge to the replaceability claim, it's the same as with any "holdon" tag: what matters is not that the deletion is contested "in good faith"; what matters is that it must be contested with a pertinent argument. To challenge a replaceability tag, the minimum condition is that there must be a tangible argument addressing the issue of replaceability. Since the person who was challenging the deletion never made any such comment and never said anything about the possibility of creating a replacement, there was effectively no challenge for the deleting admin to consider. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:32, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- As I said right at the start, there's absolutely no point sending this matter back to FFD because FFD can almost always find a reason to delete fair use images, even when it's an image we can lawfully use that's improving the encyclopaedia. We should close this DRV without result, pending the outcome of the RFC at which point there will be a recent community consensus to compare it against.—S Marshall T/C 10:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- S Marshall: Why don't you stop beating around the bush and just admit that the image violates policy, and that you simply don't like the policy? J Milburn (talk) 10:50, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Indeed. And of course, the policy RFC, no matter what its outcome, would hardly affect this file anyway, since it is by no means clear that the file would meet the reworded criterion any more than the current one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:55, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- With pleasure. The image violates the current version of policy. The current version of policy is utterly moronic, consisting as it does largely of text written by a self-selected group of free-content advocates which now enables them to delete perfectly lawful fair-use images on the basis that it's theoretically possible that at some point in the future someone will travel to a cave in Borneo, take a photograph of a bat and give it to the world at large----and they're actually outraged when someone challenges their right to do this, as if their actions benefitted the encyclopaedia! It's accepted that Wikipedia aims to produce an encyclopaedia of free content, but surely providing gratis educational content for the benefit of all is a higher aim than handing out libre content for the benefit of scraper sites. Surely where there's conflict the encyclopaedia should come first. Surely the policy needs revising by the community at large before it's fit for purpose. The RFC currently in progress should be advertised more widely to help achieve this.—S Marshall T/C 11:35, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Sorted. Closing administrator, S Marshall accepts that this file does not meet policy, and opposes this deletion because of a distaste for the policies. Specifically, S Marshall doesn't like NFCC#1, and seems to believe that we should use non-free content if no free content exists, not merely if no free content could be created. In accordance with how these discussions are meant to be policy-based, and not merely vote-counting, I do hope S Marshall's comments are ignored. Marshall: I've expanded the article somewhat, and it actually appeared on the main page last night (of course, in opposing the inclusion of non-free content, I am actually damaging the encyclopedia, as you so kindly reminded me). It is currently illustrated with a picture of a related species (or, if you believe certain authors, a member of the same species) so similar that the original description didn't even bother to describe the appearance of this species beyond comparing it to that one. It really isn't the case that a photograph would improve the article to the enormous degree that you believe. If you want to improve the article, go and expand it. There are plenty of sources left which I haven't cited, many of which no doubt contain important information. J Milburn (talk) 12:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly not quite as sorted as you think. :-) I wish to raise two points in answer.First, we do indeed have a rule that only allows a few dozen fair use images on the whole encyclopaedia---but we also have a meta-rule that governs our rules. From the start, I've been showing that this case is the poster child for a rule that stops you building an encyclopaedia. It's also a rule that's under RFC at the moment and from the beginning, I've been saying that the outcome of the RFC should prevail. These are not views that closers typically disregard, and although it's accepted that they don't always win either, I certainly do join issue with you about whether they should be ruled out completely! Second, your many excellent content contributions are welcomed and appreciated. However, the implication that they give you any moral authority to tell others how they should contribute to Wikipedia is denied. If I decide to improve that article, then I'll be the judge of what I should do to improve it.—S Marshall T/C 14:49, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- We do not have a rule that "only allows a few dozen fair use images on the whole encyclopaedia". That's simply false. Further, if this image is your poster child, your campaign is doomed to failure. Reread my endorse vote above. There are numerous images of this species on the internet. It is moderately common and well-distributed on an island with a large human population. It is well-documented. It looks almost identical to another species for which we do have free images. Even if the RfC does result in adjustments to the NFCC, this article would still not warrant a non-free image for these reasons, unless, through some unlikely twist of fate, large numbers of people start supporting the ridiculous "No free images? Oh well, just find one on Google!" adage that you seem to support. As for your second point: That's hilarious. So I have no moral authority to tell you how you could improve the encyclopedia, but you feel justified in telling me that I'm damaging it? Pull the other one. J Milburn (talk) 15:30, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. Patently unfree and replaceable. Mackensen (talk) 22:01, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse - Obvious fails to pass the
non free content criteria. Valid speedy deletion. Garion96 (talk) 12:20, 23 June 2013 (UTC) [reply
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