Wikitravel talk:Votes for deletion

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[edit] Policy on destinations "not open to tourism"

So what's our policy on place that aren't "open to tourism"? This could cover rocks in the ocean that happen to have CIA factboot pages, little military blips like Wake Island. Should we hold out with the idea that _someone_ has been there or might want to go there? Or are they silly things to even have in the database since they'll prolly only just be CIA pages... thoughts? North Korea is another one, thought more in the wild relm of possiblity... Majnoona 18:01, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)

Wake Island, Sealand, and the like should not have articles, just a mention on the continent, country, or whatever page that they are not open to tourism. As to North Korea, can a Chinese visit it? Is there any country whose nationals can visit North Korea? -phma 20:38, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)
I read about this recently in the Globe & Mail. North Korea is apparently a vacation paradise for Chinese people. Apparently they get a real kick out of the hard-core communism -- a flash back to different times in China. It's like Colonial Williamsburg of the Far East. (There are also apparently some casinos in Pyongyang, staffed entirely by Chinese and open only to Chinese tourists. Probably another draw.) --Evan 21:50, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)
Well, I have two different views on this. The first is this: one of the things I hate about mainstream guides is that they tend to leave out a lot of places because they're hard to get to or certain people aren't welcome there. For example, it's practically impossible to find a good guide to Burma, because the government there has let it be known that tourism is not welcome. I think having black holes in our guide because someone says you can't get there, or someone thinks you're not allowed, is just sucky. At the very least, I want to know what I'm missing.
I think we can trust travellers not to go places we tell them are really hard to get to or really dangerous once you get there. I don't think we have any obligation to hide destinations from people just because they're really bad places to be.
Now, after all that: I also don't know what we win by having CIA factbook imports about places that we're 99.9% certain no one's ever going to write a real article about. There's a diminishingly small possibility that one of the military contractors or cargo pilots remaining on Wake Island will help us write a guide, but... I'm not gonna hold my breath. Having a placeholder for an article that just isn't ever going to be written is probly not all that necessary.
On the third hand -- Hunh! Where did that come from? Somebody call the circus! -- I'm not sure what it hurts. On the odd chance that somebody does go back in and fill out Wake Island... it'd be really cool, wouldn't it? I could see it being very useful for those some-hundreds of people who go to Wake -- there's probably not any other guide to the island. --Evan 21:50, 21 Jan 2004 (EST)
I concur, leave them in. A wiki is an eternal construction site by its very nature. Keeping the DB clean is a good thing, but we want to be a world-wide travel guide; we should not plan in black holes on purpose. Leave that to the traditional media. I would not at ALL be surprised if we will eventually have articles for those "black holes". This is the internet. We have an audience in the hundreds of million - the chances that of all the travelguides, someone eventually (say in 5 years) contributes an article to wikitravel about those "black hole" places are actually pretty good. Wikitravel just needs to generate enough overall attention. -- Nils 22:47, 25 Mar 2004 (EST)
A bit late to join this discussion (which I found via "what links here"), but I want to point out that a usable guide to Wake Island wasn't all that unlikely to be written, nor was it especially difficult. :)
Addressing the larger policy question: Don't underestimate the interest of people in visiting places like this. I discovered in looking up some info about Wake Island that there are people who'd like to visit it because they grew up there, have a relative who died there, they dug the movie, because of its historical significance, or simply for its status as a geographic "blip". Even if all we could tell them was, "The sand is radioactive, the waters are mined, there's an ABM laser in orbit ready to blast aircraft, and your citizenship will be revoked by members of the Commonwealth, NATO, OAS, OPEC, WTO, or Myanmar (Burma)," that'd still be a valuable article, because it'd answer their questions about traveling there. - Todd VerBeek 10:40, 23 April 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Undeleted pages

So, for pages that survive v.f.d., it might be a good idea to copy the discussion to their Talk pages. That might keep them from coming up again in the future. --Evan 16:22, 20 Apr 2004 (EDT)

[edit] No nomination

I moved the following from v.f.d., since I don't actually see an article nominated for deletion. --Evan 13:39, 3 Nov 2004 (EST)

  • The link for Hyderabad on the Pakistan article connects to the Indian city by the same name.

Yes, I agree it wasn't a nomination: or rather it's someone mis-using the page to request a change rather than a deletion. But I didn't know whether it was possible to remove things once they were there. (Well of course it's possible, I didn't know it was policy.) -- Hypatia 06:07, 4 Nov 2004 (EST)

[edit] Why delete article of an important airport?

moved to Wikitravel:votes for deletion by Evan

[edit] Get Out the vote

I seem to be almost the only one who processes vfds these days. Contrary to expectations (see Wikitravel:External links), I'm not terribly rigid about killing the articles which would seem to be indicated from policy. This has led to an undesirable buildup of pending items. I'd like to encourage all users to vote more and make the outcome blindingly obvious. Also, if there are admins who would delete stuff if only they had a delete button to make it easy, feel free to just leave a note here or on my talk page letting me know which items and I will execute the indicated article while cheerfully blaming the admin who made the decision. -- Colin 03:44, 19 Jun 2005 (EDT)

I'd be happy to help in the slaughter, but alas, I don't have a delete button for normal articles — only images! Jpatokal 07:40, 19 Jun 2005 (EDT)

[edit] Deletion in German Wikitravel

Can anyone delete articles in de:Wikitravel:Bitte löschen? At the moment, there is no admin in action and there are still deleting candidates from April. Thanks, 84.182.83.21 11:27, 26 Jun 2005 (EDT) aka de:Benutzer:Steffen M.

If there is no active admin at the moment there should be one soon. Maybe you can put up a "call for admin" in Stammtisch? Guaka 16:45, 26 Jun 2005 (EDT)

[edit] 23 July 2005 Vandalism

All have now been deleted per speedy admin delete clause.

All these pages were created by vandalism. Were a chain of redirects caused by a page being constantly moved. Vandalism was undone by undoing each move in order it was done, now all that remains is to delete the redirect pages that were created as a result. Other pages have been redirected to similarly spelled articles. Rapid deletion is recommended. -- Huttite 01:13, 23 Jul 2005 (EDT)

User:Willy on Wheels! has declared a vandalism competition today. In anticipation of more vandalising pages I vote that any page moves that User:Willy on Wheels! initiates that appear to be vandalism should be undone in the reverse order that they were created and any subsequent edits by User:Willy on Wheels! that prevents those already vandalised pages being returned to their pre- move state should be deleted. After pages are returned to their pre-move state, any redirect pages created due to vandalism should be deleted reasonably promptly. Offensive and obscene article titles should be given priority. No further discussion should be needed concerning this user's vandalistic moves and edits. However, accept contributions that are positive and not destructive. -- Huttite 04:26, 23 Jul 2005 (EDT)
From the Wikitravel:Deletion policy: "Administrators may also, at their discretion, delete obviously violating articles and images, such as vandalized pages. If there is any chance that an article or image could be considered useful, they should go through the deletion voting procedure." So your proposal perfectly matches the policy. -- Wrh2 02:25, 25 Jul 2005 (EDT)

[edit] About the San Salvador Images

About Image:Sansalvador.JPG, Image:Teatrogransala.JPG, Image:PAALACIO NACIONAL.jpg, and Image:Galerias.jpg they are all from http://4elsalvador.com and the webmaster doesn't have any type of copyright on it or anything. So i dont know....... Im new to wikitravel and i dont know about all this copyright crap.. but I hope we straighten this out.

Thanks for talking with us about it. Under the Copyright law in effect in most industrialized nations, authors DO NOT have to explicitly claim a copyright. An author's work is only placed into the Public Domain (Public Domain == has no copyright and is free for the taking) if the author very explicitly releases it. So yes, according to your statements, this is a Copyright Violation. Any chance you could take some pictures yourself? If you do, keep in mind that we want pictures that represent what the traveller will want to know about that are unique to San Salvador. For example, every city has people, so don't take pictures of people. Or trees, McDonald's, etc. Check out other front page articles to get ideas about what is good. Alternately, you could try writing to the website owner and asking if it's okay to use the pictures here under the Wikitravel:Copyleft conditions. -- Colin 20:07, 11 Aug 2005 (EDT)
Well I Can't take pictures because I live in Indiana but I'm hoping to go to El Salvador Next Year but Ill write the webmaster and ask.
Good luck with that. Sadly, it rarely works, but it's worth a try. Expect the pictures to be deleted though if you don't get a response in time. If they are deleted and then you get the needed permissions, see Wikitravel:Votes for undeletion. -- Colin 14:22, 16 Aug 2005 (EDT)

[edit] Do talk pages get deleted too?

I would assume talk pages should be deleted when an article/image is deleted, but this isn't stated anywhere that I can find. Talk pages get deleted too, right? -- Wrh2 21:34, 18 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I think in some cases there's a good discussion worth preserving. It might also be a good place to archive discussion of the deleted article. Maybe the corresponding talk page should have to be voted on, too? --Evan 16:35, 3 Sep 2005 (EDT)
It might be a bit heavy handed to force an additional vote on the talk page, since most often the talk page discussion is simply about whether to delete the page or not. Perhaps a policy change such that deletion discussions, including the talk page discussion, get archived when the page is deleted in a Wikitravel:Votes for deletion/August 2005/ page or some such would be sufficient? As things currently stand, it does seem a bit wrong to lose the discussion when a page gets deleted. -- Wrh2 14:39, 4 Sep 2005 (EDT)

[edit] Double redirects

I went through double redirects. Most of them are some leftovers after moves (mostly because of errors in names), and orphaned (sometimes links from Talk pages). I think most of them are subject to deletion. Also many of them have talk pages to be deleted. -- JanSlupski 15:24, 10 Feb 2005 (EST)

Why is there a need to delete most of these redirects? While deleting them may give the wiki some sort of neatness, it is unnecessary. These pages all exist as double redirects because someone redirected the page to another page that was then moved again. They will show up as orphan pages if they are not redirects. A better solution is to change these redirects to point directly at the latest or best article name. Only delete articles where it is completely unrelated to travel. -- Huttite 04:12, 11 Feb 2005 (EST)
Don't delete. Redirects are very practical for people like me, who often just simply type a URL to reach a page at Wikitravel. Guaka 20:10, 7 May 2005 (EDT)

[edit] TOC

Would it be possible to turn on table of contents of the vfd page? It's getting too long already. Thanks. Ricardo (Rmx)

The only way to suppress a TOC is with the __NOTOC__ tag, which I don't see in that page. Most likely the TOC is not appearing because there aren't enough sections to need one -- I think you need four sections before one appears (although I may be wrong about the number). -- Ryan 13:53, 14 March 2006 (EST)
It seems to me that it would be useful to change the formatting so that each vfd gets its own section. Right now, it looks like a little bit of a mess, and it's harder to vote on individual vfds. Doing that would give a reasonable TOC. -- Jonboy 14:06, 14 March 2006 (EST)
I took a stab at trying to make the page a bit more organized - I didn't think this would be too controversial, but if anyone objects please just revert my change. -- Ryan 14:25, 14 March 2006 (EST)
I like. It makes it easy to comment/vote on each item. And the easier it is to vote on, the more participation we're likely to get. -- Colin 15:56, 14 March 2006 (EST)

[edit] Swift deletion

Folks, the policy allows swift deletion and it should be used for obvious vandalism cases like Yugozcheckoslovakokai... Jpatokal 20:26, 30 March 2006 (EST)

[edit] Standards for photograph release, and VfD

Not sure whether this is the right place to discuss this (feel free to suggest alternatives), but: I'm getting concerned as to whether the standards now in use for deleting photographs owing to copyright issues may have tightened unnecessarily, and inappropriately, in recent times. As I paw back through the photos used for Previous Destinations of the month, I'm struck by how many of them were submitted with release language that's ambiguous at best, and sometimes nonexistent. There are a couple of these that I suspect would have been VfD'd if they'd been submitted with comparably ambiguous release language today. Is this a good thing? -- Bill-on-the-Hill 20:29, 6 April 2006 (EDT)

I don't think it hurts to be a bit paranoid about copyright, but you're right that there does seem to be an unequal standard applied to some images, with some people assuming good faith unless the image can be found elsewhere by searching the web, and others assuming copyvio unless the uploader specifically cites source and license. Hopefully if the proposed changes to the image upload page are made and all images are required to specify a license prior to upload then the ambiguity will be removed, and maybe at some later date we can go through all pre-existing images without specific license info and either tag them or remove them, thus eliminating the possibility that there may be copyvios on the site anywhere. In the mean time it's probably best to emphasize that in case of questionable images all attempts should be made to contact the uploader prior to listing an image for deletion. -- Ryan 03:30, 7 April 2006 (EDT)

[edit] User:Shalom Alechem

This user appears not to understand our copyright differences from Wikipedia, and he is not responding to messages. We really need to track down the source of each image he's uploaded -- it seems that most of them are from Wikipedia commons. Ones which are dual-licensed with CC-bySA can be kept once we add proper links to the original and attributions. Others need to be nominated for deletion. Shalom is very prolific, and help would be appreciated on this task. -- Colin 16:01, 10 April 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Image in user's page

The policy here is that requests for deletion in a user's namespace by that user are granted without discussion. I just extended the logic to images of the user in the user's space [1]. — Ravikiran 02:41, 21 April 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Articles for individual diseases

Should we have them? I am opposed, at least till we have contributors who will do more than simply copy from wikipedia. — Ravikiran 02:12, 24 April 2006 (EDT)

A disease is not a travel topic. "How to stay healthy when you travel" is a travel topic. - Todd VerBeek 09:46, 24 April 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Policy, style, and V.F.D.

I think the votes for deletion page is a poor place to work out policies and guidelines. If there are edge cases and gray areas in our policies, they need to be dealt with on talk pages, in the pub, or by proposing new style guidelines and policy pages. VfD should be for figuring out whether current pages don't fit into Wikitravel based on current rules, not for figuring out what the rules are. --Evan 19:39, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

My reading of existing policy says the redundant itinerary should be deleted under the "duplicate" rule if it cannot add something beyond the coverage of the encompassing itinerary. The beauty of a gray area is that you can legitimately see my question as a rule-making discussion and I can simultaneously see it as trying to figure out how the particular case fits in with existing policy. -- Colin 20:11, 11 May 2006 (EDT)
Well said. --Evan 20:29, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Archive VFD discussions?

I think we should start archiving VFD discussions as these are getting more contentious. It is good to have them as reference for future decisions or for changes in policy. — Ravikiran 08:18, 13 May 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Separate images and article deletions?

This page is getting huge and most of it is taken up with requests for image deletions. Should those be separated from the article deletion discussions? Pashley 22:38, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

Agreed, I was going to suggest this too. So Articles for deletion and Images for deletion. Jpatokal 00:23, 18 May 2006 (EDT)
Really good idea. --Evan 16:59, 31 May 2006 (EDT)
I've created Wikitravel:Votes for image deletion as an image-specific VFD page. It would use a different Template:Vfid. (Along with this, I'd suggest changing this page to Wikitravel:Votes for article deletion, with a corresponding template.) Please follow up at Wikitravel talk:Votes for image deletion. - Todd VerBeek 17:09, 31 May 2006 (EDT)
Can I suggest Wikipedia's shorter names of "Articles for deletion" (AFD) and "Images for deletion" (IFD)? Jpatokal 22:22, 31 May 2006 (EDT)
Done. - Todd VerBeek 14:56, 1 June 2006 (EDT)
Are we sure that, in the long term, this is going to be necessary/desirable? I have a sense that the zillions of images presently tagged for deletion are due to just a few "helpers" who've shown up recently. Sooner or later they'll get a clue, and after that, it's not obvious to me that the benefits will outweigh the added complexity of putting the VfDs where they should be, monitoring multiple pages for "expiration dates," multiple archives, etc. -- Bill-on-the-Hill 22:32, 31 May 2006 (EDT)
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that as Wikitravel continues to grow, the number of clueless "helpers" is only going to increase... Jpatokal 22:42, 31 May 2006 (EDT)
Agreed about this issue not going away, which is also why I think we'll eventually need some more streamlined procedures for handling both bad-faith VFDs and good-faith copyvios... see Wikitravel talk:Deletion policy. - Todd VerBeek 10:17, 1 June 2006 (EDT)
Those helpers are what makes this site work. I most certainly hope that they will increase; that's the only realistic way we'll reach our goals. Making them feel welcome and giving them clue is the main way experienced Wikitravellers can be effective. --Evan 11:05, 1 June 2006 (EDT)
It took me a while to find this discussion - it looks like the IFD page and template have been implemented, but do we really need them? I'd rather look at just one page to see what's proposed for deletion rather than having to keep track of two. Also, while I agree that as contributions increase the number of VFD/IFD articles & images will increase it seems that the solution of having two pages simply means we'll eventually have two very large pages rather than one. I'd like to see the current system of putting everything on the VFD page kept as-is, and in the future if that page really does get unwieldy we can discuss speeding up the deletion process, or doing something similar to Wikipedia where the VFD page is simply an index that points to sub-pages, or doing something else entirely. -- Ryan 05:20, 28 July 2006 (EDT)
The VfD page is currently over 30 K bytes, largely requests for image deletions. Is it time to consider splitting it? Or to use more speedy deletes on apparent copyvios, perhaps make the policy "delete on sight and send the user a note"? Or to try something else? Pashley 05:43, 22 May 2007 (EDT)
I vote for more speedy deletes on obvious copyvios/rubbish. But ideally we'll soon have all uploads go directly to shared, so that will make it a non-issue... yay! – cacahuate talk 15:02, 22 May 2007 (EDT)
No, that will just move the problem to a different location. - Todd VerBeek 15:52, 22 May 2007 (EDT)
Her question was about whether we should reconsider splitting into AFD's and IFD's... and I'm saying no, partly because they WILL be separate if all images/files are moved and uploaded direct to shared, and also because I agree with the arguments of Ryan, etc above that 2 pages is more of a pain than one. And the VFD page right now isn't really all that out of control... I also agree with Evan that this is a good problem... it's not always fun, but that's why we have admins... to help sort out the good and bad additions. I think the discussion below about deleting vs redirecting (and actually putting our "speedy delete" policy to better use) will also help to keep the page manageable – cacahuate talk 16:22, 22 May 2007 (EDT)
D'oh... I understand your point now. Right, of course. - Todd VerBeek 16:44, 22 May 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Two weeks to ten days, maybe less?

Moved to Wikitravel talk:Deletion policy by Evan

[edit] Move during VFD

Looking at what happened on the List of Egged lines case (which has been moved to Bus travel in Israel while being voted for deletion) I think that moving a vfd-tagged article is questionable because:

  1. We'd still have to deal with the deletion of redirects.
  2. It sort of makes us lose the sense of continuity ("which article were we voting anyway?") and the whole voting history becomes harder to retrieve (maybe someone wanted the redirect to be deleted but not the actual article, etc).

I think that moving articles sometimes can be a sound alternative to deleting them, but maybe that should be done only after the voting is finished. Can you guys think of any cases where moving during vfd is a good choice or should we add a recommendation about keeping the article title during the voting procedure? Ricardo (Rmx) 14:54, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

Uh, I think that usually moving/renaming is something that's done instead of deletion-- ie it's another possible resolution. The difference this time was that it was moved before there was any sort of consensus that that was what needed to be done. It's prolly important to try and avoid waving the vfd around when what really just needs to happen is a discussion regarding the article name... which can usually happen on the talk page. In any case, this only seems to have come up this once, so it's prolly not that big a deal, but go ahead and add a line somewhere suggestion that pages not be moved until there is a concensus about what to do. Majnoona 15:08, 31 May 2006 (EDT)
The only reason this came up is because someone had no respect for the process to begin with. Asking people not to move an article while it's under VFD probably wouldn't be heeded any more than asking them not to remove the VFD notice unilaterally. - Todd VerBeek 15:21, 31 May 2006 (EDT)
I think moving is a reasonable thing -- but a note ought to have been left in the VFD that the move occured and of course a move does not cancel the vfd. And before a move, it should have been clear that a renaming was a discussed outcome. This would be similar to the common situation where someone suggests a redirect instead of a delete, and the redirect is implemented before the vfd is done. Like Todd said, the problem in this instance was someone who isn't yet understanding how to collaborate rather than the process itself. Collaboration appears to be a novel process to many contributors, and sometimes they react badly at first. If we're lucky, they learn and become helpful. -- Colin 15:57, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Reverse chronological order

There's been some concern about the length of this page, which I think is kind of valid. I find it hard to scroll through all the VFD nominations to find the last one that I read, and read on from there.

I think splitting articles and images will help a lot, but I wonder if there are some other tricks we can do to make reading VfD a more pleasant experience. One thing I've seen on some Wikipedia Votes for X or X nominations pages is that they run in reverse chronological order. That is, new items are added at the top of the page.

Consider if you've read VfD items A through F, and you'd like to see what the new items are on the list. If they're in chronological (OK, alphabetical, but you get my idea) order, they might look like this: 

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J

To read the "new" items (G through J), you have to start at the top and scroll down through all the ones you've already read. If items are in reverse chronological order, the newest items are at the top: 

J
I
H
G
F
E
D
C
B
A

You can start at the top and work your way down until you get to something you've already read, and stop there. For 30-50 items on a list, this can be a real eyestrain saver. I think the main point is that the length of the page stays the same, but the apparent length is shorter because you don't have to read so much of the page. --Evan 17:49, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

I don't think it matters much. There's a table of contents and you can just click on what you wanmt to look at. But I've no objection to the the change. Pashley 00:50, 5 November 2006 (EST)
I strongly prefer the status quo and would like to retain the comfort rather than bother to change the procedure. -- Andrew H. (Sapphire) 02:28, 5 November 2006 (EST)

[edit] Rail Travel & Airline Articles

While the current policy says 14 days of discussion, there is a very clear consensus that the Rail travel in Europe, Discount airlines in Europe, and Rail travel in North America should be kept. Rather than continuing to confuse the many anonymous users who are voting to keep these pages, would anyone be opposed to ending the VFD now? -- Ryan 20:48, 1 June 2006 (EDT)

Good idea. Pashley 21:07, 1 June 2006 (EDT)

  • Strong support. There is a clear and obvious consensus. - Todd VerBeek 23:19, 1 June 2006 (EDT)
Done. The policy says 14 days, but it seems senseless to keep articles listed when there is a clear consensus to keep and the reason for listing them was not covered by the Wikitravel:Deletion policy. I think the conversation should continue about how to speed up the deletion process in these sorts of cases though. -- Ryan 23:40, 1 June 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Categories

Now that we are making good use of catagories, should we be looking at a procedure to remove those that are not needed? I would thing this would be the place. Any comments? -- Tom Holland (xltel) 07:32, 20 October 2006 (EDT)

As Jani is fond of saying, bump. I don't see why extraneous categories should be treated any differently than other suspect pages, but Tom is right that this could use some discussion. -- Bill-on-the-Hill 09:52, 21 November 2006 (EST)
Agree. — Ravikiran 02:33, 14 February 2007 (EST)

[edit] "Outcome" in archives?

When doing today's maintenance, I experimentally added an "Outcome" line to the material being archived. It strikes me as possibly useful for the reader to have an easy way of seeing how the VFD process turned out. It's also just a little bit of extra work for whoever is doing the archiving. Opinions? -- Bill-on-the-Hill 09:52, 21 November 2006 (EST)

I like it, shouldn't be too much extra work... - Cacahuate 15:30, 13 February 2007 (EST)
I've been doing this too. Shouldn't be a problem. — Ravikiran 02:33, 14 February 2007 (EST)

[edit] Purging content before deletion

It seems to have become normal, or at least common, for pages up for VFD to be purged of any content other than the VFD banner. I don't think that's a good idea except in clear copyvio situations. The purge makes it hard to make an informed decision as to whether the page -- with its original content -- really should be delete. Why is this being done? Am I missing something? -- Bill-on-the-Hill 20:50, 8 December 2006 (EST)

I guess it should only be done if the text violates copyright or is in some way offensive. Xania 20:54, 8 December 2006 (EST)
I also tend to blank pages when the text is obvious vandalism or spam. I guess allowing that kind of text to remain published on Wikitravel even under a vfd banner isn't a good idea too (but I agree that it can make it harder for others to decide on the deletion). -- Ricardo (Rmx) 07:49, 9 December 2006 (EST)
Agree with Xania. — Ravikiran 02:32, 14 February 2007 (EST)

[edit] Images by User:AndyB

I've come across the following photos by this user, and each one says "Image Name, copyright Andrew Brown, 2003 (or 2004)":

They do not clearly state that they are licensed under a CC-BY-SA license. I would guess he uploaded them willingly, but it's possible he was unsure what the license meant. He uploaded these almost two years ago and hasn't contributed since, so I doubt leaving him a message on his talk page would get any response. I'm not sure what to do here. Any help? -- Fastestdogever 16:30, 8 April 2007 (EDT)

I'd say this is am "innocent until proven guilty" case. The site does clearly tell users about the license, so if "AndyB" uploads stuff that's copyright "Andrew Brown", I'd say we can keep it. Pashley 18:37, 8 April 2007 (EDT)

I agree that in a case such as this, where there's no reason to doubt the contributor's ownership of the copyright, that we can safely assume he meant to license them according to our standard license. (But this is also why I don't think we shoud allow uploads without a license specified.) - Todd VerBeek 00:09, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] deleting vs redirecting

There seems to be a lot of "don't delete, just redirect" lately... if we're going to continue in that direction, maybe we should just be putting the Merge template on the articles instead of VFD. What are the pros and cons of keeping non-articles around? Someone mentioned recently that it gives more for search engines to pick up on, so that could be good then. Is there a reason not to have excessive redirects lying around? – cacahuate talk 21:26, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

I would also like to have a clearer understanding of this issue. My assumption is that a redirect would only make sense if it is plausible that someone would ever search for that article title. Otherwise, being a parsimonious fellow, I thought the redirect would just be dead weight, a waste of space, clutter? The Lagansky district and Gorodovikovsky district articles looked like such dead weight, but if they boost search results, would it then make sense to actually make a bunch of non-article redirects for all sorts of minor sub-regions/districts? --Peterfitzgerald Talk 21:54, 25 April 2007 (EDT)
I've come to feel that a redirect that helps someone find (or link to) the information they were looking for is probably good one. I'm not thinking of search engines so much as Wikitravel visitors, who might not guess correctly whether we decided X needed its own article or could be part of another. So if we can look at an article title and confidently assume "someone looking for X probably wants Y", we should redirect it; if not then it is clutter, so zap it. With that said, I'm not sure redirects are valuable enough in that regard that we ought to go around making bunches of them proactively; it's more of a way to make lemonade out of a lemon. - Todd VerBeek 00:00, 26 April 2007 (EDT)
I've done some redirects proactively User_talk:Pashley#Test_old_names. Where there are two or more fairly common names, or an old well-known name and a new official one, we need a redirect to whichever we choose as the article from the one we reject. Pashley 00:36, 26 April 2007 (EDT)
Yes, they're certainly a good idea in many cases. I was just cautioning against getting carried away with it just for the sake of snagging search engine traffic. -Todd VerBeek 09:17, 26 April 2007 (EDT)
My main reason for suggesting this is that it's something any user can do, and it doesn't clutter VfD. --Evan 11:17, 26 April 2007 (EDT)
So then I guess I'd like to know more opinions about where we should draw the line between vfd and redirect. As of now, our criteria for deletion is if an article has no potential to become an article within wt's goals then it should be deleted... like articles for specific churches, hotels etc... and it even says if there are duplicate articles for the same place (and gives the example of Holland/Netherlands) that one should be deleted... especially the latter I think we'd all agree would just be a redirect. Hotels and restaurants, among others, are even listed in the "speedy delete" criteria, but I see these being redirected sometimes as well. So can we decide more specifically what to do and maybe rewrite part of the deletion policy to reflect it? – cacahuate talk 14:29, 26 April 2007 (EDT)
I think you're right that the "duplicate article" criterion for deletion is inconsistent with our practices... and I like our practices, so let's change the criteria. I don't think it's a good idea to redirect hotels and restaurants instead of deleting them, because it implies that we want to create those kinds of redirects, and they really don't serve any useful purpose. - Todd VerBeek 16:16, 26 April 2007 (EDT)
My feeling on this are that we should not leave too mnay redirect articles around that people can change into unwanted (against policy) small artciles without people noticing. It is meach easier to spot an N in the recent changes and decide whether it is worth an article than to spot changes to current redirect articles. I have heard people talk about "broken windows" in the past - is this similar? If we do decide to carry on doing redirects a lot, do we want a Wikitravel:Votes for redirection? -- DanielC 13:17, 29 April 2007 (EDT)
Would a sensible (and simple) policy be to delete, rather than redirect, when the article in question does not meet our Wikitravel:What is an article? guidelines? --Peterfitzgerald Talk 13:54, 2 May 2007 (EDT)
I think there are situations where we want to redirect a non-article title to an article. If someone sees we don't have an article for Greenfield Village (a large attraction) they might "helpfully" create one, but if we redirect that to Dearborn, where there's info about it, they probably won't. Someone turning a redirect into an article is less likely... and if someone does, we can usually fix it (with a quick merge) easily enough when we find it. -Todd VerBeek 15:07, 2 May 2007 (EDT)
Yes, sometimes it makes sense to redirect a non-article. I have vfd'd Eden project, but that is actually something a traveler might search for and specifically want to go see. It probably is a very good candidate for a redirect to the closest town rather than deletion. --NJR_ZA 01:16, 3 May 2007 (EDT)
What seems still unresolved in this discussion is whether the creation of non-article redirects is either undesirable because it encourages the proliferation of non-articles, or desirable because it preempts non-articles. My feeling is that the "is it a real place" criterion is too broad—maybe the policy could be: redirect, rather than delete, non-articles that someone might conceivably search for? --Peterfitzgerald Talk 15:56, 5 May 2007 (EDT)
Sounds like we're leaning in favor of redirecting attractions and destinations that you can't sleep in. I'll start doing that then too, and hopefully that will help diminish the amount of vfd's a little. I'd rather continue "speedy deleting" articles for hotels and businesses though. Any objections to that? – cacahuate talk 04:58, 14 May 2007 (EDT)
Agree, delete hotels and businesses, but redirect major attractions to containing or nearby town. If they get enough text to be unwieldy there, then move them out to their own articles. Pashley 06:38, 14 May 2007 (EDT)
A couple of cases recently suggest a new rule. There was a museum that wound up redirected to Dinosaur Provincial Park and Savica Waterfall looks like it will be redirected to a national park. Can we say in general that attractions in national parks should be redirected to the park? Pashley 20:45, 11 June 2007 (EDT)
I feel like our practices on redirecting v. deleting have strayed pretty far from the text of our Wikitravel:Deletion policy and we should probably update the policy to reflect this. Ultimately, it seems that if a redirect is possible, then it is better to redirect than delete. That is, if the place actually exists and is contained within a single destination article, we should just redirect to that article because 1. Redirecting is "cheaper" than going through the deletion process and 2. Redirects up page counts for the target article. Have I understood this well enough to change the policy, or would others object to this change? --Peter Talk 16:12, 28 June 2007 (EDT)
Yes we should update the deletion policy... I think we're agreeing to delete restaurants hotels and private businesses, and redirect attractions including museums and waterfalls to the city/park/region that contains them – cacahuate talk 06:21, 1 July 2007 (EDT)
I'm not going to bother reading the entire discussion, but I just wanted to say I dislike most redirects and think they should rot in hell. Viva the delete button! -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 06:27, 1 July 2007 (EDT)
More cases turn up as VFDs all the time, latest is Nalanda, ruins of a university near Patna. Last week, the Alhambra. I'd say major attractions like the Alhambra or Taj Mahal should have redirects. I think people might know of them but not have a clue what city or region they were in. Pashley 20:49, 3 July 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Special:Contributions/Kal0

I'm deleting these as they look to be from the same contributor as User:74.69.245.148, User:169.244.99.10, User:64.222.199.130 and User:Mainer2006 - places with little-or-no population that generally aren't even listed in Wikipedia, and in this case filled with listings whose address aren't even the same city. -- Ryan • (talk) • 20:22, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Mass deletion of images on Shared

User:Tatata has embarked on a campaign to tag all images on Shared with valid licenses. This is a very good idea, but he wants to VFD everything unless somehow proven otherwise, which is IMHO not the way to do this. Please see shared:Wikitravel_Shared:Travellers'_pub#Images_without_license_or_information and chip in. Jpatokal 07:02, 16 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] orphaning images before vfd'ing

I added a couple words in the intro to clarify that we shouldn't always orphan an image before adding it to the vfd page, but an anonymous user reverted my changes, which I've reverted again... I think images should only be orphaned first if they clearly meet the vfd requirements and we're just going through the motions of a vfd for the sake of policy. It's much easier for the admin clearing out the outdated vfd's to remove images from articles when deleting them than to figure out where they need to be readded to if the vfd fails. That line has been bugging me for a while, does anyone else disagree with my changing it? I'd even vote for cutting out that line altogether – cacahuate talk 00:21, 29 October 2007 (EDT)

I agree. Images should as a rule not be orphaned when listed for vfd; they should be orphaned when deleted. We might want to put some additional text on Confirm delete to remind admins to orphan images and articles before deletion. If an image is in such bad taste or such a clear candidate for deletion that it needs to be removed from a page, then it probably qualifies for speedy deletion rather then the vfd process.
A really nice feature would be if [[Image: ]] could detect the vfd template on the image page and display a small vfd notice where the image is used. I think a lot of image vfd's go unnoticed and undiscussed by wikitravelers until such time as the image is actually deleted. A number of times contributors have questioned by deletion of an image after the vfd process has completed, since they did not know that it was vfd'd.
--NJR_ZA 01:26, 29 October 2007 (EDT)
That would definitely be nice... maybe since you're so handy with templates you could create Template:ifd as a smaller version of the vfd one, which could be inserted into the image description on the page that it appears on. Only problem is that most images are on shared, so we would probably need 2 separate templates... one for directing to the :en vfd page, and one directing to the :shared vfd page. Perhaps Template:ifd shared or Template:ifds? – cacahuate talk 01:49, 29 October 2007 (EDT)
I'd actually prefer if we can do this in some automated manner without adding another step requiring us to add templates where ever the image is used. A mediawiki patch to the [[Image: ]] code should allow it to automatically detect the {{vfd}} template on the image's page on either en: or shared: and insert a small notice with the image. I'll test this locally to see if that can work and how much overhead it will generate. If it looks feasible I'll speak to Evan to see if he is willing to patch WT's mediawiki with something like this. If this can't be done I'll look into a Template:ifd type template. --NJR_ZA 03:03, 29 October 2007 (EDT)
See also Wikitravel talk:Deletion_policy#Orphaning articles/images - how to restore the links?. I'd be in favor of only orphaning prior to actual deletion. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:06, 29 October 2007 (EDT)
On third thought, I'd really like to cut out the entire line about "prep work"... it isn't necessary, and not generally how we've been doing it... anyone disagree if I remove it? – cacahuate talk 02:04, 29 October 2007 (EDT)
Bullet #2 right? I think it would be fair to remove that line—we have been taking the steps it lists only after reaching a final decision on the vfd page anyway. And it generally makes sense to orphan/merge vfd'd content only after we are fairly certain it is going to go. Orphaning an image for a vfd that gets voted away creates two unnecessary steps: the orphaning and the de-orphaning. --Peter Talk 02:36, 29 October 2007 (EDT)
Makes sense to remove it; we are not following it anyway. --NJR_ZA 02:56, 29 October 2007 (EDT)

This image has been recommended for deletion.

Had a bit of a look around and I think that messing with a mediawiki patch to change the way [[Image: ]] behaves might be a bit more involved than what I would like to get into right now. As per Cacahuate suggestion I have create a simple template (Template:Ifd) that can be used to add a notice where the image is used. If this looks usable then we can create one for shared as well. --NJR_ZA 08:44, 29 October 2007 (EDT)
That looks perfect to me! – cacahuate talk 16:07, 29 October 2007 (EDT)

[edit] CC by-sa not-1.0 images

Have I missed discussion somewhere to delete CC by-sa images that are not licensed under version 1.0? Last I checked, there was still plenty of uncertainty about the migration process, and IMHO deleting these would be jumping the gun. Jpatokal 02:27, 3 January 2008 (EST)

There was some discussion on Shared. I have been vehemently anti-not-CC-by-SA 1.0, but I think this would be an excellent issue for IB to step up and offer their resources (lawyers) to settle the matter. I understand Evan's thinking on the subject about upgrading the site's license, but the legality of that seems unclear too. Not to mention the hassle. -- Sapphire • (Talk) • 05:42, 3 January 2008 (EST)
There is also discussion at Wikitravel:Travellers'_pub#GFDL_and_Creative_Commons. I'm becoming vehemently pro CC-by-SA 2.0 or 3.0 for compatibility with others. Pashley 08:37, 3 January 2008 (EST)
Moved to Wikitravel_talk:Copyleft#GFDL_and_Creative_Commons. Pashley 10:42, 10 January 2008 (EST)
Probably the best discussion to date is at Wikitravel_talk:Image_policy#CC_by-sa_1.0_and_CC_by-sa_2.0. To quote Mark:
The reason that you can use CC by-sa 2.0 images in a CC by-sa 1.0 work is that the 2.0 version imposes no restriction on re-use that the 1.0 version does not impose. Content owners rights are fully respected when their work is used in accordance with the additional restrictions (however tiny they might be) which are present in the 1.0 version of the license.
This is logically equivalent to us allowing CC by 1.0 images: CC by-sa 1.0 is more restrictive than CC by 1.0, so if you follow the by-sa guidelines, you're also following the by guidelines.
Based on this, I suggest we clarify in the image policy that CC >1.0 images are allowed. Jpatokal 22:21, 5 January 2008 (EST)
...and to cover our legal ass I've asked the friendly folks at CC for an opinion. Jpatokal 22:32, 5 January 2008 (EST)

So here's Mike Linksvayer from CC. Basically, my logic was wrong, but the end result is right:

BY-SA 2.0 pretty clearly says *later* version, which BY-SA 1.0 clearly is not. That said, it is not clear that merely including an image in a web page causes that entire page to be a derivative of the image, triggering SA. For example, BY-SA images are used in Wikipedia articles, licensed under the FDL, which is not now compatible. But they do and you would have to provide notice of the license the included image is under.
This is a complicated issue and CC cannot give legal advice (even if it were a simple issue).

So, yes, we can use CC >1.0 images embedded within Wikitravel, as long as appropriate notice is given. (Which it is: click on the image and it clearly shows the license.) Hell, according to this, we could even use GFDL images! However, no, we can't retroactively change CC by >1.0 images back into 1.0. Jpatokal 07:50, 13 January 2008 (EST)

Khun 203.144.143.4, please read the above and stop VFDing images with CC >1.0 licenses. Since Creative Commons says including images in web pages is OK, and the original license is correctly recorded on the image page, and the community consensus seems to be that usage of such images is acceptable, I'm going to suggest amending policy to note this explicitly and a speedy keep on all images VFD'd only for this reason. All in favor, say aye! Jpatokal 07:12, 1 February 2008 (EST)
Already read the above, thanks.
OK to display in a web page isn't enough (and they didn't even say OK, only not clear that it isn't OK).
I've read many discussions about this, and "community consensus seems to be that usage of such images is acceptable" is bullshit.
But if you can get a consensus to speedy keep all images VFD'd only for this reason, I can take a hint.
~ 203.144.143.4 07:38, 1 February 2008 (EST)
Sure, there's plenty of debate and no consensus on whether and how to migrate 1.0 to a later version — but that's not the issue. The issue is, can a CC >1.0 image under that license be used as part of a CC 1.0 work? It's a little grayer than I'd like, but if CC and Wikipedia think it's good enough, then it's good enough for me.
I'd suggest adding the following to Image policy:

Images must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC by-sa) or a compatible license. Compatible licenses are:

The preferred version is Any Attribution-ShareLike (v1.0 and above). Use of CC by-sa versions that exclude 1.0 is allowed, but discouraged, as re-use of them requires explicitly noting the different version.

Comments? And oh yes, let's finally merge the en Image policy into shared Image policy as Senor .4 long ago suggested. Jpatokal 08:00, 1 February 2008 (EST)
You say "Sure, there's plenty of debate and no consensus on whether and how to migrate 1.0 to a later version" but just in case you missed it, what I said was "I've read many discussions about this, and "community consensus seems to be that usage of such images is acceptable" is bullshit.".
You say "but if CC and Wikipedia think it's good enough, then it's good enough for me" - good enough to display as a web page, yes - but not for other purposes. ~ 203.144.143.4 08:10, 1 February 2008 (EST)
What I'm saying is that I see plenty of debate about migration, but (AFAIK) you're the only one calling for deleting CC >1.0 images.
And the policy here is for the set of web pages called Wikitravel. The responsibility for reusing correctly is the re-user's problem, not Wikitravel's. If somebody takes Wikitravel CC by-sa 1.0 content and doesn't mention the license, it's not our fault, and neither is it our fault if they use 2.0 content and don't mention that it's 2.0. Jpatokal 09:39, 1 February 2008 (EST)

Speedy keep all. It would make a lot more sense to gather a consensus to delete <1.0 images somewhere aside from the VFD page before flooding it with nominations – cacahuate talk 01:16, 2 February 2008 (EST)

Speedy keep all. I think it's clear that CC-by-sa 2.0 and above images can be included in our articles, both legally and within the spirit of the contribution of those photographers. -- Mark 13:26, 5 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] Archiving of VFD discussion where the outcome is keep/merge/redirect

Wikitravel:Votes for deletion says: "If the consensus is to keep, redirect or merge, then ... copy the deletion discussion to the talk page of the article being kept or redirected." and then a bit further down "copy the deletion discussion to the Archives page for the appropriate month"

Wikitravel:Votes for deletion/Archives says: "2. All vfd discussions are to be archived here, whether the outcome was deletion, keeping the article, redirect/merge, etc."

So just confirming - copy it to both? Or does the above need to be amended? ~ 58.8.10.56 10:08, 10 January 2008 (EST)

This bothers me too. IMO vfd decisions to keep/merge/redirect should be archived at the relevant talk page, not on the vfd archives page. The vfd archives should exist only to archive discussions that have nowhere else to go (since the appropriate talk pages have been deleted). --Peter Talk 14:46, 10 January 2008 (EST)
I disagree. The two archives service different needs, and both should be used. Keeping the discussion on the article's talk page provides useful precedent the next time the article comes up for VFD -- as they often do. Keeping it in the monthly archives (1) maintains a convenient way of ensuring that VFDs have been processed correctly, and (2) allows searches for precedents where the searcher doesn't remember the name of the article in question. The VFD archive is our corporate memory, not just for what has been deleted, but also for how the whole process works. It should be inclusive. -- Bill-on-the-Hill 17:10, 10 January 2008 (EST)
Fair enough, I hadn't really thought of that second argument, but that makes a lot of sense. --Peter Talk 17:19, 10 January 2008 (EST)
Couldn't we have a post-VFD template to pop on the article talk page to explain that the page was VFD'd, that the outcome was to not delete and that the discussion has been archived, and to generate a link to the appropriate VFD discussion archive page? Something like {{vfdkept|January 2008}} - ?
In principle, yes, and if we were constrained on storage space so that we needed to minimize redundancy, that would be the way to go. In practice, we're not so constrained, so why not make the information available directly and easily? Talk pages aren't our face to the world, and it doesn't hurt to have them "cluttered" with stuff like the VFD discussions. -- Bill-on-the-Hill 09:52, 11 January 2008 (EST)

[edit] Archiving of VFD discussion where the outcome is speedy deletion

The guidelines don't currently cover this. Presumably if there's only a deletion nomination, that can also be speedy deleted without being archived. What should the guidelines suggest be done if the VFD page discussion about an article page that's speedy-deleted comprises comments from more than one user? ~ 203.144.143.4 06:47, 12 January 2008 (EST)

I don't see a problem as long as everybody agrees that it should be speedied. Of course, if somebody disagrees, then it's not a speedy deletion candidate anymore and should go through the full VFD process. Jpatokal 08:46, 12 January 2008 (EST)
BUMP! I think the guidelines should be tweaked - anyone have any further input before I propose how to clarify the policy? ~ 203.144.143.4 16:41, 29 January 2008 (EST)
Personally, I don't find the archiving process "speedy". If it's an uncontested speedy, then I say let someone delete the nomination (estimated time: 10 seconds) instead of archiving (estimated time: 90 seconds). --Jonboy 16:50, 29 January 2008 (EST)
I'd rather we archive everything that gets listed on vfd when deleted. This will give the contributer that listed it a record of what happened, regardless if it was deleted after 14 days or speedy deleted. Articles that are speedy deleted on sigh by an admin before being listed don't require archiving. Granted, it does take a bit longer, but collectively we actually do have a lot of time to manage it. --Nick 00:55, 30 January 2008 (EST)
How about this as a compromise (this for anything where the outcome is a speedy delete): if there is no VFD page nomination, then only delete the page and don't archive anything; if there is a VFD page nomination but no discussion on the VFD page (so nothing more than straightforward "Delete" nomination/votes - in other words, there really isn't anything worth archiving, only an unqualified consensus to delete) then delete the page and don't archive anything; but if there is a VFD page nomination and any form of discussion (so there's more than straightforward "Delete" nomination/votes, even if there isn't an outright objection - in other words, there's actually something actually worth archiving) then archive the discussion as appropriate (normally to VFD archive page only, but in exceptional circumstances also to article Talk page at the discretion of whoever is doing the deletion/archiving).
Another suggestion: speedy delete nominations which don't need archiving (as defined by the above suggestion) don't need to be (and probably shouldn't be) removed from the VFD page immediately. They should be left there for at least 24-48 hours, and are very easy to clear off the page en masse later. ~ 203.144.143.4 02:10, 30 January 2008 (EST)

[edit] Why the "Don't know" tag does not apply

I can buy the argument for deleting images without explicit license tags on Shared, because there is a license pulldown, and anybody ignoring that clearly has no clue. However, here on en, Special:Upload clearly states:

All uploaded images are automatically licensed under CC-by-SA 1.0.

So there is no such thing as a "don't know" on en -- all images are CC by-sa 1.0 unless otherwise specified. Hell, you could even construe that to say that all images uploaded are CC by-sa 1.0 in addition to any other license the user may choose to specify! Jpatokal 07:00, 1 February 2008 (EST)

I absolutely agree. There's no such thing as a "don't know" license on Wikitravel. Anything that lacks a specific notice is CC-by-sa, so long as the author has sufficient rights to grant. -- Mark 13:58, 5 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] CC-by-SA discussion (A)

...continued from Image:Viking ship in Stockholms strom.jpg

What you're suggesting conflicts with the second sentence of shared:Copyleft which says: Anyone can use Wikitravel content according to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 license.
Can you provide a link to a reputable expert resource which confirms that non-CC-by-SA-1.0 content can be legally incorporated into CC-by-SA-1.0 content (NB: NOT that the two can be displayed on the same web page, but that they can be merged and the result then distributed as CC-by-SA-1.0)? ~ 203.144.143.4 05:36, 23 January 2008 (EST)
Jani contacted CC about this and they responded, but that is just about what we can do as a web page and does not touch on redistribution. Again, the main issue seems to be the text of our copyleft, not our practice. Perhaps we should either add caveats about the images and redistribution, or we could come up with a way to have image licensing automatically display in the print-versions of Wikitravel pages. But I don't think breaking with our years-old practice and mass deleting non-1.0 images is the way to go. --Peter Talk 05:56, 23 January 2008 (EST)
I don't think Wikitravel should accept images it can't redistribute.
Creative Commons have confirmed that this image can't legally be redistributed as part of a Wikitravel article, and it clearly conflicts with both the letter and the spirit of shared:Copyleft, so it should be deleted. ~ 203.144.143.4 06:16, 23 January 2008 (EST)
I'm very confused by this last response. These images can be redistributed with our guides. That's not so much an opinion as a fact, the WTP Chicago guide, which should be available shortly, uses lots of CC-2.0 images and properly attributes them. We just need to 1) explain how and 2) make it easier to do, rather than rush to delete useful images. And I certainly don't see how you say that this image conflicts with the spirit of the copyleft—that Wikitravel guides be reusable by anyone for any purpose, provided that they are properly attributed and shared-alike. And where did CC "confirm that this image can't legally be redistributed as part of a Wikitravel article?" --Peter Talk 06:48, 23 January 2008 (EST)
Are you suggesting that separately licensed text and images can be combined on the same printed page and the result not be considered a derivative work? ~ 58.8.240.57 07:39, 23 January 2008 (EST)
I suppose you could either consider it a single derivative work, or simply a print out containing several original works. But I don't think that matters, so long as whoever prints it out for redistribution does include licensing information & attribution information for whatever is on the page.
Speaking of which, our current "print-version" pages do not include any attribution information (in addition to licensing information) for images. This is in violation of licensing requirements (for anyone who prints them out for redistribution) & we should fix this. File attribution & licensing information should automatically appear on print-version pages that include the file. But following the logic by which you are arguing to delete this image, we should instead delete all images?!, since our current print-version format does not properly attribute them. --Peter Talk 08:08, 23 January 2008 (EST)
I don't think there can be any doubt whatsoever about this - if you take some text describing a place, and some pictures of the same place from another source, and combine them, print them, and sell them as a guidebook - that guidebook is a derivative work. Agreed? ~ 203.144.143.4 08:57, 23 January 2008 (EST)
Now, you've neither responded to my points nor explained why this is relevant, but no, not agreed. There most certainly is doubt—the very response from CC, which I linked above, says word for word, "it is not clear that merely including an image in a web page causes that entire page to be a derivative of the image." I don't see the difference between a print-out version and the web version. And ultimately, as I've said at least twice above, what is important is that all content is accompanied by proper attribution & note of its license. We do that on the web, regardless of image license—that's what is required by any CC-by-SA license. We don't do that in print, regardless of image license. So again: we do not need to delete these images. We do need to fix our print output to include image licensing & attribution info. --Peter Talk 09:12, 23 January 2008 (EST)
I'm not sure I agree with your definition of derivative. Switching media itself will probably qualify as derivative. I'm not sure why that is germane to this discussion because it doesn't address the licensing issue but a printed guide book that is an amalgamation of many articles here would, I think, automatically qualify as derivative. Also, by my reading of copyleft, every contributer to the original pages would need to be acknowledged in the print version. --Wandering 13:26, 23 January 2008 (EST)
There is a difference between web and print. For print, the entire derivative can only be distributed under one licence (or one set of licences, each licence covering the entire derivative), and that licence (or set of licences) has to be compatible with the copyrights on the work that comprises the derivative. ~ 203.144.143.4 09:41, 23 January 2008 (EST)
Says who? --Peter Talk 09:48, 23 January 2008 (EST)
This is all very confusing. Peter's edits notwithstanding, it still seems to me that the ONLY proper license is 1.0 and any contribution that is not made under 1.0 should probably be deleted because the contribution was not made according to the terms and conditions set out by wikitravel. How can we say that contributions not properly licensed will be deleted and then keep them anyway? If many images have to be deleted then that is too bad but the number of incorrectly licensed images should not be a factor in figuring out licensing issues. Even if we make changes to licensing down the road, I don't see how those changes can apply to contributions made in the past so, IMHO, we should delete the images, fix the licensing, and move on. If you've used improperly licensed images in your Chicago book, I wouldn't worry too much because, even if they were improperly uploaded on wikitravel, a license for use exists. I don't see how you can get sued by an unhappy wikitravel contributer. --Wandering 13:51, 23 January 2008 (EST)

I was giving one example of a derivative, not a definition.

It's germane because derivatives can't comprise works with incompatible licences.

I don't understand why it would be OK to use "improperly licensed images" on the basis that "a license for use exists".

I don't understand why the likelihood of being sued is relevant - surely our concern should be to ensure that Wikitravel is legit? ~ 203.144.143.4 15:08, 23 January 2008 (EST)

OK - about derivatives and incompatible licenses. My point about being sued or not was just un-lawyerly advice. Since Wikitravel Press has apparently no relation with wikitravel, the legal position of the producers of the Chicago guide is not for me to determine (unless I think they are improperly using my contributions). My point is pretty straightforward here - any image not explicitly licensed as cc by sa 1.0 should be deleted. --Wandering 15:23, 23 January 2008 (EST)
Perhaps we should have a separate discussion on the implications of the current licensing scheme and printed guide books in the wikitravel press pages. I think there are a number of issues that need to be clarified - including, but not limited to, the definition of a derivative work, the rights and responsibilities of the person who reuses the works, the rights of the original contributers and how they will be protected, and, though this is not associated with licensing, making it a responsibility of wikitravel admins to declare a commercial interest in wikitravel material.--Wandering 15:23, 23 January 2008 (EST)
Yes, we will need to move this discussion as well.
Now lets try and clarify this discussion, as a lot of what is being discussed is frankly irrelevant. In particular, I have no idea why 203 is making assertions about definitions of derivative works—definitions are decided by the existing text of the CC licenses, not by us, and anything left unclear is open for pragmatic interpretation. Also, the statement "I don't understand why the likelihood of being sued is relevant - surely our concern should be to ensure that Wikitravel is legit?" indicates a profound misunderstanding of the legal issues under discussion. As Mike Linksvayer from CC said, "it is not clear that merely including an image in a web page causes that entire page to be a derivative of the image, triggering SA." Because the license does not address the issue under discussion, we are in a legal gray area and therefore there is plenty of room for interpretation by interested parties. Ultimately our goal in dealing with such an undefined legal area is to make sure we do what is best for Wikitravel, meaning a) what makes sense for running the site, and b) what keeps us (or IB) from getting sued. Deleting all non-1.0 files would clearly make no sense for running the site, and there is little if any chance that anyone would sue us (particularly if we make the changes under point three below), and even if they did, it is extremely doubtful that they could win, since they would have to show damages, which would be a task of Kafkaesque levels of absurdity.
First, our copyleft is not a piece of legislation, it is a policy we create. If it contradicts something we are doing, we can simply change it—the only thing that could prevent us from changing it is if the change would undermine what we understand to be the rights of previous contributors and users. Changing the text of the copyleft to allow non-CC-by-SA-1.0 files does not undermine anyone's rights, since it does not affect anyone's contributions at all. It merely conforms the text to a practice that has been used throughout pretty much the entire history of the site.
Second, to keep our site "legit," all we need do is ensure we are complying with the terms of the licensing of material on our site. We already do this, as we provide attribution & licensing information for all material on Wikitravel.
Third, There is one legal wrinkle that we need to work out, because although we have kept to the terms of share-alike in listing the appropriate licenses for individual files, we have also given the impression in our Copyleft & elsewhere that all the content of the site is available for re-use under CC-by-SA 1.0. This is not accurate and is arguably a violation of the share-alike clause for files licensed under share-alike versions >1.0. More importantly, we should be clear about this to help downstream users re-use wikitravel content, in line with our basic goal of print re-usability.
To fix that third point, we need to 1) alter all text advising down-stream users that they can re-use all WT content under the CC-by-SA license to indicate that they should also include image-specific licensing; and 2) optimally, alter the code by which print-version articles are generated to automatically grab licensing & attribution information from the Image credit template.
While some of the discussion may be irrelevant wrt whether or not to delete this particular image, I wouldn't call it irrelevant by any means. The collective work/derivative work distinction arises because, according to the license, derivative work has to be licensed cc-by-sa-1.0 while collective work can be from multiple sources, each with a different license, as long as each component is correctly attributed. It would seem to me, and I could be wrong, that improperly licensed images in derivative work would render that derivative work to be not in compliance with the terms of the cc-by-sa-1.0 license. Since the definition of collective work includes 'unmodified form' and the definition of derivative work includes "any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted," I would assume that print (as opposed to web) is a modification. Of course, an easy work around for this exists by ensuring that, at any single point in time, the web version matches the print version (unless a printed guidebook is itself considered to be recasted - but that's best left to lawyers to hash out).
I also disagree that the problem is with copyleft. The problem is that wikitravel has explicitly informed contributers that all material is cc-by-sa-1.0 and can only be cc-by-sa-1.0 and then allowed the selection of other licenses when uploading images. cc-by-sa-1.0 says "This License constitutes the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the Work licensed here. There are no understandings, agreements or representations with respect to the Work not specified here. Licensor shall not be bound by any additional provisions that may appear in any communication from You. This License may not be modified without the mutual written agreement of the Licensor and You." Seems pretty clear to me. Unless there are legal opinions on equivalence between the different licenses, I still don't see how we can keep images not properly licensed. If pragmatism were the only constraint, there would be nothing to stop us from copying text from wikipedia and then waiting for a lawsuit. Obviously, we don't do that here. --Wandering 21:55, 23 January 2008 (EST)
Your first point, if I understand correctly, is that the print version of Wikitravel articles is a derivative work comprised of the images & text on the page, while the web version is a collective work. If this were true, we could not include images in the print versions that are anything other than CC-by-SA 1.0 because that would compromise the essential promise of our copyleft—that anyone may print out & redistribute our guides provided they include attribution & share-alike. If this were true, then we could also just solve the problem by simply adding image tags to the thumbnails in question telling our software not to include them in the print versions. So even if this were true, as you argue, it would still be a bad idea to mass delete all non CC-by-SA images, since there is a more practical way to deal with the problem.
But I don't accept this argument at all. Why on earth would reading a WT guide on paper rather than online turn the exact same body of collective work into something derivative? The act of printing out a WT article does not somehow negate the fact that it is a collective work, created by the collective contributions of all the contributors to that article. To make it a collective work, under the broad wording of the CC-by-SA licenses, all one needs do is assert that they have not changed it substantially to warrant a claim of ownership over a new form. In any rate, that decision (and it is an easy decision to make) is, as you say, up to the re-distributor to make, not for us. We do, however, have an obligation IMO to make it clear to downstream users that our work is a collective work that sometimes does include works with different licensing than 1.0 Attribution-ShareAlike, which will require proper attribution and licensing.
I disagree completely with your second point. The problem is not that "wikitravel has explicitly informed contributers that all material is cc-by-sa-1.0 and can only be cc-by-sa-1.0" while allowing files under other licenses. That betrays nothing to the contributors who either decided to contribute text under CC-by-SA 1.0, nor does it betray anything to the contributors who uploaded files under other accepted licenses in violation of the outdated text of our policy which did not match our practices. The problem is that Wikitravel has explicitly informed re-distributors that they could redistribute our guides without citing any licenses beyond CC-by-SA 1.0, when in fact we do have images in our guides under licenses that require ShareAlike under non-compatible later versions of CC Attribution-ShareAlike. That has already been done and we cannot undo it, we can only set about correcting it in the future.
There are two options for correcting this problem. The first, as has been suggested in this thread, would be to delete all images on site that require ShareAlike for licenses other than CC-by-SA 1.0 (that would be all CC Attribution-ShareAlike licensed files 2.0+). The second, as I've proposed, would be to clarify our instructions to down-stream redistributors of Wikitravel content. This would entail rewording several of our MediaWiki files & adding clarification to our copyleft. I argue that we should go further than this and also rework the way in which print version articles display attribution & licensing to make it easier for downstream users to comply with the terms of CC Attribution-ShareAlike. But it seems to me very obvious that the second option is superior, because it allows Wikitravel to continue to cooperate with other open-source licensed projects on maps, images, and other media, rather than painting ourselves into an archaic and incompatible licensing trap. Comparing these two proposed solutions, I see only disadvantages to the former, reasonable and surmountable challenges to the latter. --Peter Talk 22:54, 23 January 2008 (EST)
I disagree completely with your disagreement re my second point. Whether our practices are outdated or not is not the issue. The issues are (1) what does the license say, (2) what licenses do we say we accept and (3) what conclusions will a reasonable person draw from what the license says and the way we describe what our license says. For example, a reasonable person would draw the conclusion that material submitted by him/her will be reused only on other web sites from the phrase "If you do not want your work to be re-used on other web sites and modified by other users please do not submit!" while the terms in the license makes it clear that the work can be reused in any media. This is the sort of thing that lawyers love and could go to court on and argue about intent, deceptive practices, reasonable conclusions, etc. till the cows come home. As long as there is no money involved, no one cares but add money to the equation and all sorts of issues of intent, deception etc. arise and these are best avoided. So, the question re the images is what will conclusions will a reasonable person draw from the license and from what we say about the license. We say - only cc-by-sa-1.0 (and very clearly at that too). But then we allow people to submit stuff under other licenses. While I can't see how that can be used to sue wikitravel that doesn't mean that someone won't find a way to do so and, IMHO, it is better to just delete non 1.0 images and be clear about what we accept going forward. The license talks about derivative works and collective works and uses words like "unmodified form" when describing collective work. You say taking an article from a website, combining it with others, and repackaging it as a published guidebook for sale is not modifying the form. I suspect the courts could easily draw a different conclusion partly because of three things: the re-used on web sites disclaimer above, the change in media, and the addition of money. In fact, what cc intended when writing the license is no longer the issue but rather it is what a reasonable person can conclude from the license and from information provided by wikitravel about the terms of the license. My suggestion is, and I think these are fairly simple, (1) dump images not cc1.0. (2) either clarify the terms of the license, or remove all descriptions and replace with a pointer to the license and (3) remove all other licenses from the list (why do we have other licenses listed anyway?). We also need a code of conduct for admins who intend publishing guide books - something simple like a declaration of intent or something - so that conflict of interest doesn't become an issue for the admin publishing the book.--Wandering 11:50, 24 January 2008 (EST)

I find the implication that I am somehow making disingenuous arguments here because of my WTP affiliation about as offensive as it is baseless. No outcome from this vfd proposal will affect my work on the printed Chicago guide in any way—there simply is no basis for such a conflict of interest. If there were, I would not let it stop me from advocating what I honestly think is good for this site, as I have always done. If you are interested in creating a conflict-of-interest policy, the appropriate way to do that would be to either write a draft policy & see what others think, or raise discussion about it in the pub or on a Wikitravel_talk:Conflict_of_interest page. Not here. In any rate, if my insight is unwelcome, I will no longer contribute. --Peter Talk 16:46, 28 January 2008 (EST)

I find the implication that I am somehow making disingenuous arguments here because of my WTP affiliation about as offensive as it is baseless. I don't think I've implied that anywhere (and I reread my arguments carefully). You seem to be drawing an implication that is not intended and I am certainly not accusing you of making disingenuous arguments. Quite the contrary, I should think, since I'm discussing things openly and clearly here and am reading and responding to your insights and arguments. Why would I bother if I thought your arguments were motivated by self-interest rather than by reason? About the conflict of interest policy: My experience is that a conflict of interest policy is always a good idea wherever conflicting objectives exist (which is not the same thing as saying that the conflicting objectives are actually affecting policy). It is in the interest of members who have conflicting interests to have such a policy in place - I, and other wikitravel users not using wikitravel material for-profit, have no interest in such a policy because it does not help us in any way. If you think you don't need one, that's your call.
In any rate, if my insight is unwelcome, I will no longer contribute. There are many contributers on wikitravel and, IMHO, you shouldn't take negative implications (whether meant or not), or even personal invective, from one person to heart. Have some faith in the quality of your ideas and your contributions (which are excellent). Disagreements are valuable in any open venture like this one because they bring important issues out onto the table for discussion and, as a valuable member of the community, you should wade into them rather than withdraw from them. (If this sounds a bit patronizing, I apologize. Couldn't frame it any other way but that is not my intention!) --Wandering 12:42, 29 January 2008 (EST)
There was absolutely no reason to bring up a conflict of interest policy in this discussion beyond that of maligning me personally. This is clearly not the place for such a proposal. Although I realize that your comments are in good faith, I think you have both misunderstood most everything I have said here, clearly misjudged me as a person, and stepped outside of the bounds of appropriate discussion and wiki-etiquette. And I am insulted by this patronizing, presumptuous, and unsolicited advice, and for the continuing attacks elsewhere, and for the continued misrepresentations, and for the continued lack of a proper apology. --Peter Talk 13:54, 6 February 2008 (EST)
Me and my buddie Forrest Gump have been following this conversation and all we can say is Gollleee. Two of our favorite contributors are having a disagreement. Neither of you are responsible for this problem, and it seems far from resolution. Me and Forre