The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Keep/Reform - Lack of discussion on pages dealing with copyright is the norm due to a lack of knowledge of the issues involved by many editors. Suggestions to merge with IFD are misplaced, IFD deletes by default and normally without any discussion and most fair use issues are resolved by quasi-speedy methods. WP:CP rarely has any discussion but relies on knowledgeable admins and others to sort through and cross out cases and is generally used for copyright violations where no fair use is alleged. Possibility of merger with WP:PUI makes the most sense but should not be imposed without discussion by the projects involved. The entire copyright violation review process could use some substantial work but that is far beyond the scope of MfD. Tagging as historical would do nothing to help reform the current processes. FUR and PUI will be tagged with suggested merger banners without prejudice to other resolutions or renomination should the projects fail to meaningfully discuss. Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 04:53, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This page appears to be (or perhaps to have become) a garbage can for non-free-use concerns, with a backlog going back to December. Apparently most people know this, as there have been only two new nominations in the past month (with no closures)—surely there are more non-free-use problems than that. Unless someone can find a better remedy, the page should be deleted so that the uninformed will not post there, expecting resolution of their concerns. —teb728 t c 20:13, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have archived the sections closed since this MfD nomination. This is the way it appeared at the nomination. —teb728 t c 18:14, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep experienced editors review the nominations there as they have time. If there's a backlog post somewhere about it, don't put it up for deletion. I'll work on the backlogs right now. -Nard 21:22, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK – Where should I have posted? Ah, I see you tagged the page with a {{backlog}} tag. And thank you for working on the backlog. —teb728 t c 22:13, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep But it does need more attention. Garion96 (talk) 21:30, 21 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep a backlog is not a good reason to delete something. - DiligentTerrier (and friends) 00:24, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – The problem is not merely the backlog: Until this MfD the page had been virtually abandoned. —teb728 t c 03:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or – at least modify the header to suggest better ways of reporting non-free-use concerns. Based on what Nard is doing to process the backlog: If a user is confident that an image fails WP:NFCC, he should tag it with {{di-replaceable fair use}} or {{di-disputed fair use rationale}}. If he is not sure, he should inquire at WP:MCQ, which produces a prompt response. —teb728 t c 03:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep or tag as historical. I don't think we need to outright delete the page. -- Ned Scott 07:40, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag as historical Still absurdly backlogged, and per TEB728 there are better places to go. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells•Otter chirps)} 11:20, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Pretty much per teb728. The existence of this page is not useful and will likely only be confusing to new editors or those without experience enough to utilize the primary WP:NFCC resolution routes. --Ave Caesar (talk) 11:21, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I am posting notes Wikipedia talk:Non-free content and WikiProject Law to see if anybody from there is willing either to join this discussion or to work the backlog. In the meantime I think that the Fair Use Review should remain for cases that are uncertain. For likely (or certain) violations, users should be directed to WP:PUI and WP:CP. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 18:36, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I believe there was some sort of discussion a long time back about a kind of Fair Use noticeboard which could incorporate concerns and address other issues. Something like this was highly likely to be used often and could have superseded this review page. Perhaps we should look into pushing foward with that idea? --.:Alex:. 18:45, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or mark historical - this seems awfully redundant to WP:CP, WP:PUI, WP:IFD, and the various Image CSD reasons, how many places do we need to discuss image copyright issues? Mr.Z-man 21:04, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I'm uncertain. Images that have no conceivable fair use justification should go to IFD, where they will receive copious attention from the right people. Textual fair use violations are rare and adequately covered by WP:CP. But what about questions about whether a fair use image should be included in a particular article? A good example is the review over the use of a Ramones album cover in punk rock; it was removed, but is still in use in the article on the album. An IFD nom would be in bad faith; a PUI nom would be silly, as its source and copyright info are already correct; CP isn't very specific. Dcoetzee 23:35, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  The place for that would be the article talk page in my opinion. BJ^Talk

• Mark historical, merge process with IFD. Since the typical outcome of a failed review is in fact deletion, and cases of the same kind are already treated at IfD routinely, we don't need this proliferation of venues. For the occasional cases where the issue is just about one of several usages of an image, as mentioned by Dcoutzee (good point!), I don't really see a problem with treating those at IfD too - it just implies a slight re-interpretation of "IfD" as "Images for discussion", just as we already do with "RfD" and "CfD", and since Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy we don't need to make a big deal out of that. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:28, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or mark historical. Per Future Perfect et al. Furthermore, the naming of the page is problematic, we've now got someone going around spam-soliciting for people with "professional expertise" related to "fair use" ... but the "professional expertise" which is most relevant here is expertise in English Wikipedia policy. --Gmaxwell (talk) 18:04, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Mark historical. The image deletion/review process is already complex enough without this page, the backlog is just more reason to shut it down. If this does get shut down the fair use review tags are going to need to be removed from the images. BJ^Talk 17:21, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak keep per above regarding to the tags and many other reasons. First, it is something like an institution that actually functions to do something. If we take it away overnight, what do we put in place to do those things? Second reason, though a very minor one, is that getting rid of this would create a ton of work for editors. We can, however, find ways to slowly phase it out. Chimeric Glider (talk) 01:44, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you look at the editing history prior to the nomination for deletion you'll see that it was pretty much unused.. except for people posting things there which were never responded to, so killing it shouldn't cause any harm. I think most people 'in the know' forgot about this pages' existence... had it not been forgotten it probably would have been renamed. --Gmaxwell (talk) 02:55, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag as historical and lock it. From January through May of this year, there were 243 posts, with the top ten users accounting for more than half of those posts. Pretty blatantly dead. There are more cobwebs there than editors. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:23, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Revamp proposal: Non-free content has to jump over a lot of hurdles to be here. I could easily imagine WP:FUR being replaced with something that has more teeth. For example, the WP:PUI process deletes images after 14 days. The WP:FUR process does nothing; just discusses the issue, and there's precious little of that happening. If this process had more teeth and required administrator close for deletions after 14 days, there'd be considerably more attention paid to this process. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I'm in agreement with Hammersoft's proposal at revamping this. Yes it's highly backlogged and isn't currently achieving much at the moment. But if certain problems were rectified and more attention was drawn to it, things may drastically improve. I'd barely heard of WP:FUR before this deletion debate believe it or not, which may explain why it is so backlogged if users like me are not too familiar with it or are not even aware of it's actual existence. After a little investigating, I haven't seen any attempts to try to improve this process, so I believe that we should look into rectifying problems first before considering this process for deletion. --.:Alex:. 20:07, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - there is no other good place to go to resolve the issue of whether an image is appropriate in an article. Talk pages of the article are not a good idea if the editors on the page can't agree and need an outside opinion. Because it isn't high traffic doesn't mean it should be deleted. PUI is no good in cases where the fair use status is determined by HOW it is used, rather than the actual copyright of the image. Example - image of bookcover is used in a list of further reading. There is no doubt that it is copyrighted and unfree, so PUI is not any kind of help. But, the placement and content determine whether this is acceptable fair use or not. The editors in the article can't agree. There is right now, no other good place to go for a third party opinion. pschemp | talk 04:06, 29 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Tag historical - and leave a comment redirecting editors to wp:pui or wp:ifd; this process stopped working a while ago. PhilKnight (talk) 23:13, 29 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.