https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62598
--- Comment #72 from Lupo <lupo.bugzi...@gmail.com> --- Sorry for the lengthy reply, but I felt your questions deserved detailed answers. (In reply to Jon from comment #71) > http://sustainableman.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/DrIanMalcom.jpg That remark applies perfectly to the development of this whole feature. The Commons community has pointed out these problems before this feature went live, but the powers that be chose not to listen. So don't give me witty quotes! > This got personal for me as I have 294 edits on Wikipedia... Please don't take this personally. That's an unhelpful frame of mind to try to solve this problem. Besides, you could upload your images through other channels, could you? (Normal desktop upload...) And perhaps it would also help you understand the problems better if you had more edits on WMF projects and thus more direct experience with the projects this feature was developed for. (No offense intended, but with that few edits you're really still a Wikipedia noob. There are noobs who know what they're doing, and I trust you're one of those. But don't generalize from yourself to other noobs. Most first have to learn the ropes, and this copyright thing is more complicated than writing your first (or 2nd, 3rd, or 4th) Wikipedia article.) > Open questions: > * Are we seeing the same repeated offenders uploading images in good faith? In general, no. Most try this once, upload a few or a batch of files (if a batch, it's frequently sports images taken from various websites and invariably rights managed by some agency such a Getty or USA TODAY Sports). Relatively few uploaders try again a few hours or days later and keep uploading images the next days. However, those who do keep making the same mistakes. Some uploaders even keep uploading the same image repeatedly, even though it was deleted as copyvio and they were notified about that. Either they did not understand why the file they uploaded is gone, or they don't care. We also sometimes see people uploading the same image again a few hours or days later even if the first upload has _not_ been deleted and is still there. Evidently, they don't get warnings about duplicates (or ignore them), and evidently they don't remember what they already did or don't know how to find their own uploads. I have no numbers on this; it isn't very frequent, but it does happen regularly. Personally, I give repeat offenders a personalized talk page message (not autotranslated, but very simple English text: "Stop uploading images taken from other websites. If you continue to upload copyright violations, you will be blocked."), especially if I catch them in near real-time. That works most of the time; most _do_ stop after that and I rarely have to block. (But that apparent success rate of that simple message may be a coincidence: typically I give that after the third bad upload, then allow for a fourth "grace" bad upload, and block on the fifth. Not very many uploaders do actually upload that many files.) If that doesn't help, I block for a short duration (for first-timers; if it happens on several days, I increase block lengths) and leave yet another message that tells them why they are blocked and that again instructs them to read up on scope, copyrights, and licensing. BTW: about messages: there is a reason I use this simple blunt message. I made the same experience already years ago at the English Wikipedia fighting vandalism: templating vandals with {{test}} templates of increasing severity (last time I looked they all had weasly text like "please use the sandbox for tests", "please don't vandalize", "you apparently vandalized, you might be blocked") has absolutely no effect and leads to a block. I had much better success by simply telling vandals after the first or second incident right away: "stop vandalizing or you will be blocked". Most stopped after that without me having to block. A concise, stern, and clear message giving a direct order ("stop doing this") and giving a clear promise of consequences ("you _will_ be blocked") is much better. It tells them "hey, somebody is watching my fooling around, and if I continue this crap, there'll be consequences". Of course, if they don't stop, you then have to block. Actually, I don't think "good faith" is part of this problem. I stated somewhere above already that I do *not* think these uploaders acted in bad faith: they just don't grok copyrights, free licenses, what the Commons is, or what a "free encyclopedia" is. I see very few clear vandalism attempts of "bad faith" uploads. Let's keep "good faith" out of this discussion: it is a given for all involved. You have to realize that nowadays especially the younger generation thinks anything on the web was up for grabs. No wonder with instagram, tumblr, twitter, facebook, pinterest, ... and all the "share this" buttons everywhere (or "re-tweet this" encouragements). *Of course* people think it was fine to re-post stuff taken from elsewhere. They do not realize that the Commons, being limited to freely licensed media, *is different*. > * Are we sending messages to users? Yes; uploaders are normally notified on their talk pages when one of their uploads is marked as problematic. The messages tell them that something is wrong with their uploads, that they should read the relevant pages about our scope, copyright, and licensing, and instructs them to react (and even tell them where and how). The messages used are even auto-translated in the user's language, if possible. > Is there a way we can communicate to them better? Define "better". Possibly the wording of the templates could be improved. But see below. > Are they responding? No. I did already wonder whether they actually do see the talk page messages we leave (especially if they're logged in on some Wikipedia, upload from there, and we reply on their Commons talk page). But even if they see them: we can't educate all these uploaders individually through personal interaction. We also can't contact them on their local Wikipedia talk pages: unless you automate this, it's too much hassle for already overloaded curators at the Commons. > Do they repeat upload? See above. Please don't muddy the waters with "success stories". Of course there are some. The problem here is the success-failure ratio of about 10%-90%. And those 90% bad uploads are creating too much work. I might add that any bot operator whose upload bot produces 10% of bad uploads gets into trouble quickly and will see his bot blocked. Here we have an upload channel that generates 90% of bad uploads. In summary: I think you're right that this is more a social engineering problem than a technical problem (and I said so before). Technical measures alone will not be sufficient to solve this. But either solve this social engineering problem quickly, or shut off this feature until you have a clear idea how to tackle it, or severely throttle the feature through technical means until you know how to solve the social part. (And "solving" the social problem might involve educating Internet users at large; see above about "share this" buttons and the like.) Right now, this upload channel with its failure rate of 90% is not acceptable. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug. You are on the CC list for the bug. _______________________________________________ Wikibugs-l mailing list Wikibugs-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikibugs-l
