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I wrote most of UploadWizard. It defaults to Creative Commons licenses, usually. There is a way to use the GPL but you need to specify that you want a custom l
by neilk 15y ago
I wrote most of UploadWizard. It defaults to Creative Commons licenses, usually.
There is a way to use the GPL but you need to specify that you want a custom license, and enter it using wikitext. In this case the community's standard practice is to use the incantation "{{Free screenshot|GPL}}".
Unfortunately even UploadWizard doesn't help the problem here, because it doesn't help with image edits and what Wiki culture calls a "reupload". (This was a deliberate choice.)
For what it's worth, I care about the issues you raise. The real solutions require a total rethink about how Wikipedia keeps track of image metadata, though.
The community has different priorities at the moment, largely because they have inadequate tools to police the wikis, and this is why they get a bit trigger-happy on the revert button and written a lot of bots to complain about less-than-ideal edits. Most of them value encyclopedia quality far more than abstract niceties like "openness". I see it as a matter of not having the right tools to do both, though.
- redthrowaway 15y agoThanks for your hard work. I'll be sure to look into UploadWizard the next time I need to upload a picture. To be honest, even after 5 years of editing I had to google how to upload it. Wikipedia editing in general is rather obfuscated, but I find the Commons tasks that much more so due to my unfamiliarity with them.
- neilk 15y agoI'm just sorry that two years after I was hired, we still have basically the same problems, as evidenced by your comments. It's partially the nature of MediaWiki to be impervious to usability enhancement, but we also made some poor choices in how we attacked the problem. I have to take some of the blame myself there.
- ErrantX 15y agoHa! Yes, sorry I probably shouldn't have used such a broad brush. Some people do care deeply. I'm just frustrated with Commons at the moment for other reasons, and took the opportunity for a childish jibe. (good work on the UploadWizard :D)