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17 June 2013

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The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
Anti-Muslim pogroms in India (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)
Withdrawn by nominator Darkness Shines (talk) 20:26, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


I believe the closing admins reasons for deletion are flawed. He has said that the title was inflammatory and this is a valid reason for deletion, it is not per POVTITLE. All sources in the article, as well as many more given during the AFD all say Anti-Muslim pogroms in India, per POVTITLE "When the subject of an article is referred to mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title" He also gave as a valid criteria for deletion "sources" However bar one source all others were to academic publishers. The subject matter obviously passes the GNG and this is a topic of both academic and MSM interest. I believe this needs to be overturned. Darkness Shines (talk) 18:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Endorse - "I don't like it" is not a valid rationale for DRV filing, which despite the protests to the contrary, is what this really is. Nominator also seems to be cherry-picking the closing admin's rationale, which did not rest solely on "inflammatory title", but also noted "info is appropriately covered elsewhere under more generic terms" and "sourcing/NPOV". These types of articles come (and usually go) around all the time in this project, hyper-partisans pushing their partisan agendas. The keep votes were crap of the "it looks sourced to me" variety", so between that and the number of calls to delete, consensus of the discussion was read correctly. Tarc (talk) 19:04, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a case of IDONTLIKEIT, and I am sorry I missed a part of the closing rational, ny connection dropped out. The information in the article is not covered in other articles at all that I can see, and as already mentioned, the sources are from academic publishers so how is that a valid reason for deletion? Darkness Shines (talk) 19:10, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Lol what? "I lost my internet, so I didn't read the whole closing rationale" ranks up there with "my dog ate my homework". The subject matter is covered at Religious violence in India#Anti Muslim Violence and the specific topic articles linked from there. You're trying to fork constant into an unnecessary standalone article. Tarc (talk) 19:49, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry no, the connection dropped out while I was filing this and some got dropped without my noticing, and the content in the article is not present at Religious violence in India#Anti Muslim Violence, and even if it were, a content fork is within policy is it not? Darkness Shines (talk) 19:52, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:SIZERULE if I add the content which has been deleted it will put the Religious violence in India over the 100kb limit. Darkness Shines (talk) 20:03, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Which shows that the original nomination was flawed, the term has been used for years to denote other massacres. Merriam Webster gives a definition of "an organized massacre of helpless people" The term is not reserved exclusively for massacres of those of the Jewish faith. Darkness Shines (talk) 19:44, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is no evidence that the Muslim community is helpless in India although the opposite is true. To create it please first give Non partisan sources that the Muslim community is helpless in India. Solomon7968 20:14, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Any minority group is helpless when faced with overwhelming numbers, especially when the state or police refuse to help. Darkness Shines (talk) 20:26, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your above comment is WP:OR. I will not respond to it. Please give citations. All top posts in India are occupied from the Muslim community (from finance minister to Ex-President to RAW head) What more you want? Solomon7968 20:35, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is common sense, not OR. But as you insist, Women and Politics in the Third World "(Kashmir with a predominantly Muslim population) where, in the name of fighting terrorism, state security forces waged a virtual war against helpless civilians" Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism: Lessons from India "workers saying that the victims deserved what they got: this was evidence of extreme prejudice, given that the victims were helpless innocents who were tortured, raped and killed in unspeakably brutal ways" Darkness Shines (talk) 20:44, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So you forget about the Grand Mufti of Kashmir which issued a death fatwa because some teenage girls formed a band (that also wearing hijab). No one from Muslim community stood against this. Why are you not telling other side of story Mr. User talk:Darkness Shines Solomon7968 20:53, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could the temperature in this debate be reduced, please? This argumentative back-and-forth is not conducive to thoughtful scrutiny of the issues raised. I would tend to agree with Hobit that there are widely varying claims being made and a temporary undelete would be helpful in evaluating them.

    Certainly religious violence against Muslims takes place in India. No reasonable person would claim otherwise. The question is not whether to cover religious violence against Muslims in India, because clearly we should cover it. The question is whether to cover it in its own, separate article or whether religious violence in India or persecution of Muslims are better places.

    I want to say that "pogroms" is not a word you'd normally expect to find in the title of an encyclopaedia article----it's not our usual language. I think that even if DRV decided to restore the content we would have to find a more distant, more neutral, drier title for it.—S Marshall T/C 21:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We have a lot of articles with pogrom in the title [1]. The sources used in the article can be seen in my userspace here Darkness Shines (talk) 21:17, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We do not care if WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS and every single of the other stuff are related to Jewish History. You cannot erode Indian historiography by imposing the word "Pogrom". Your aticle title seems to be Political views of Paul Brass. Solomon7968 21:27, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmmmm. Up until I looked at Darkness Shines' list of sources, I was pretty clear that "pogrom" is a Yiddish word meaning "mass-murder of Jews by a mob of gentiles". I was intrigued to see that there really are sources (and here) that call the anti-Muslim violence in India "pogroms", and use that actual word in the actual title. Although I still don't think we should use that word, I can see how a reasonable person would disagree.

    For me, I think the key to this is that the experts don't have to be neutral, and indeed they usually aren't----it's accepted that subject-matter experts write books from an angle. We Wikipedians are constrained by WP:NPOV in a way that subject-matter experts aren't. I think our concern about neutrality underlies and underpins the consensus that emerged in the debate we're discussing, that we shouldn't have that article title. And I don't think a user would type "Anti-Muslim pogroms in India" into the search box.

    Darkness Shines, I think it's accepted that there are sources and they do use the word "pogroms". But the fact that there are sources doesn't mean that a separate article is the best way to cover the subject. Could you list all your objections to covering this under religious violence in India, please?—S Marshall T/C 22:10, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@User:S Marshall Your summary is fine. I hope Darkness shines agrees. Solomon7968 22:16, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)The first problem is size, Religious violence in India already stands at 93,686 bytes, to add all the information from the pogroms article will violate WP:SIZERULE as it will put the article over 100kb. Should the pogroms article be restored and expanded it would surpass the size limitations even more. There is also the fact that this is a subject of academic interest, it passes GNG as a stand alone article under those guidelines. Darkness Shines (talk) 22:22, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Are those all of the reasons that you want us to consider?—S Marshall T/C 22:26, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I reckon so, I am sadly, no policy wonk and have no ideas as to which policies I ought to be quoting. Darkness Shines (talk) 22:34, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. I'm looking into this subject at the moment, refreshing my memory on all the violence since the Godhra train incident, and trying to understand the shape of the coverage we already have (across all the various articles). My first impression is there's quite a chaotic mix of articles with varying scope and focus, and I'm starting to wonder whether the whole topic area wouldn't benefit from rethinking its structure a bit.

To be quite frank I don't think the solution will be to overturn BWilkins' close; there really was a rough consensus there to support it. But I do think our coverage of anti-Muslim violence in India needs to be improved, and I agree that there's academic interest in the subject, and I don't see why the sources you list can't be used. It's a question of working out a balanced and fair way to do it. I'm minded to try to help when I've done some more reading and thinking.—S Marshall T/C 23:54, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@User:S Marshall The problem is we do not have articles on some core issues. For example check the article Syed Ahmed Bukhari which I created two days back. Solomon7968 23:58, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure that missing articles are part of the problem. I'm just reading some of our very large number of articles about human rights in India, and I'm going through their histories. What I'm seeing is a whole lot of content written by a relatively small number of users, and it's often the same users in each article, interacting with each other again and again. I can see how pressures and tensions build up...—S Marshall T/C 00:12, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The thing which most frustuates me is lack of reliable sources on politics in India specifically the "Votebank politics". For example no Imam of any Indian mosque has a wikipedia entry though it is well known Imams are used for political purposes. The scale of lack of reliable source can be a headache to every editor who has a miniscule knowledge of the subject. Solomon7968 00:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@S Marshall: On why a separate article is not needed for this I had written at the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-Muslim pogroms in India that "If the articles, this one or the one already present, are written properly, they should only briefly be talking about various events as these events have their own separate articles. So if there is going to be only brief writing of few lines, why should there be two such briefs; one with a neutral title and another with an opinionated one?" §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 05:25, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to go with incubate. I agree that the close was within BWilkins' discretion and I think he deserves credit for being willing to make a difficult call. But the whole topic area is very complicated and difficult, and the more I look at it the more neutrality issues I see; our India-related coverage is chaotic and disorganised and an awful lot of it has been written by a fairly small number of people, many of whom have shown up in these debates. Although I see every evidence that those editors are writing in good faith, I think it's rather dangerous to allow our content of articles about violence and dissent in India to be controlled by a consensus of whoever shows up when "whoever shows up" is a small group of people. I think there may be appropriate content and sourcing that, with a little rewriting, could be incorporated into our existing coverage and I think it will all take longer than our customary seven days to assess in detail, so "incubate" looks correct to me.—S Marshall T/C 11:22, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"I think it's rather dangerous to allow our content of articles about violence and dissent in India to be controlled by a consensus of whoever shows up when "whoever shows up" is a small group of people." — I don't think singling India out is constructive. Same goes for the focus on only Anti-muslim violence! There is nothing wrong in letting those who are editing India-related pages in good faith, edit those pages because they form what seems like a small group of people to you! Isn't it a tad much to call it It is not dangerous.
"small group of people" - What group? AFAIK there are no group-membership services on Wikipedia. Those group members didn't sign up for something formally. Is that an euphemism for something? Small is a vague word. That article was not only not reliable it was also offensive and filled with personal inferences, opinions and conjectures.
There is no need to "incubate" this travesty of an article imbued with utterly partial insinuations and prevarications that are fudged together basing on deplorable POV. You've got to be kidding me(!) This is unacceptable. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 13:07, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Calm down, please. This isn't AN/I. Deletion review is supposed to be a drama-free zone.—S Marshall T/C 15:45, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am calm now. I changed the comment and shifted the focus back to content. This is not a war of nerves. Don't get on my nerves. Thank you. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 15:51, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Good. The first thing you need to understand is that the closing administrator will recognise my comments for what they are: I am endorsing BWilkins' close and recommending that this content is not published in the Wikipedia mainspace. The second thing is that the closer will have been paying attention and will know that there's already a copy of this material in userspace. What I'm actually asking for is no change to the status quo after the article has been deleted.

The third thing you need to understand is that my position is backed up by policy. WP:PRESERVE says "preserve appropriate content", which is wording that, more than three years ago, I wrote. It will take time to assess which of that content is appropriate and what isn't, and how it can all be phrased in a balanced and neutral way. I'm formally requesting that time to assess it should be allowed.

And the fourth thing you need to understand is that the reason why I'm "singling out" articles about India is because this DRV has caused me to read them and I have become a little concerned. I have not accused you or anyone else of bad faith and in fact I went out of my way to be clear that I think everyone concerned is editing in good faith. But with the best will in the world, you, and other editors active in the topic area, are clearly passionate about the subject, and you may benefit from support from editors who have a little more distance from it. (Yes, I'm being vague. The specific concerns I have don't belong here and would raise hackles if I mentioned them individually. Spartaz whoever closes this DRV doesn't need to read them to assess what I'm saying against policy. We can go into it at a later stage.)—S Marshall T/C 16:14, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I believe if you do a little bit of research you might learn that there are other faiths also both inside and outside India who are suffering from abject communal violence. Just to clarify, I am only against these two things. (1) Semi-exclusive focus on anti-muslim violence and (2) singling out India.(cf. WP:BALANCE, WP:DUE, WP:IMPARTIAL) And don't take this the wrong way, but claims of ignorance about vehement persecution of other faiths don't mean they don't exist. The rest of your comment is fine by me. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 16:31, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Request temp restore - Clearly this article is quite polarizing. In order to make a proper judgement I will need to actually see the content of the article in question. It's hard to pass judgement on something when there is no context which can be used to make said judgement! PantherLeapord (talk) 02:14, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Non-administrator comment) - Here Bwilkins said, "I never claimed at any point that an inflammatory title was reason for deletion." And I concur, apparently the closer summed the arguments for deletion in a line where only one of the cited reasons was "inflammatory title" others were "info is appropriately covered elsewhere under more generic terms"; "sourcing"; "NPOV". The DRV-nominator here is the creator of the article and there are many behavioral and attitudinal issues with his editing. Attitudinizing as a impartial, neutral editor, he is far from one. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 05:10, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Overturn Agreed with Darkness Shines's nomination. I will strongly support undeletion. Please get the article restored. The result ought to be "no consensus". The consensus for "deletion" was never reached. Faizan 06:11, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you want the article restored then you need to write overturn, not endorse. Darkness Shines (talk) 06:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus doesn't mean unanimity nor is it a majority vote and Wikipedia is not a democracy. Only citing just a policy or commenting based on subjective liking towards the subject to increase the head-count, is not a valid ground for nullifying a legitimate consensus. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 07:20, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Deletion Review is not an opportunity to (re-)express your opinion on the content in question. You have already posted your comment there on the AFD. There is no need to recreate that imbroglio all over again. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 13:15, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
& other arguments? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 08:46, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse own deletion Darkness Shines is quite falsely claiming that I deleted because of an offensive title - in my close, I summarized a number of the arguments - one was that the title was inflammatory, but that was not a reason to delete. Mr Shines has been aware of this false statement for sometime after posting to my talkpage, but choosing not to listen to my responses. Mr Shines is focusing on one single false issue expecting responses like Only In Death's, and succeeding - thankfully only once. Do not allow this DRV to get as ugly as the AFD: that AFD led to blocks (✉→BWilkins←✎) 09:10, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the result ought to be "no consensus". The consensus for "deletion" was never reached. There had been discussion and votes for "Keep" too. Faizan 07:30, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse there was a consensus in the AfD for deletion. The central argument for deletion - that the article was not neutral and that the topic was covered elsewhere under more appropriate terms - is grounded in policy. The main argument for keeping the article was the existence of sources, which isn't particularly relevant to this argument. Hut 8.5 11:22, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse (note: I !voted delete in the discussion.) The closing admin summarized consensus accurately, including non-neutral framing, better covered elsewhere, etc. These are reasonable policy based grounds for deletion. --regentspark (comment) 16:54, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One question for you RP, does this subject pass the GNG based in the sources? Darkness Shines (talk) 22:22, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That isn't an issue here since the closing admin didn't cite GNG as a reason for deletion. But, no, I think it fails the 'presumed' criterion. --regentspark (comment) 20:52, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to clarify right at the top admin Spartaz has clarified, "Both precedent and policy allow deletion for a content fork or for hopelessly NPOV and both of these arguments were addressed in the closing statement. Meeting GNG is not necessarily a defense against that." Endless repetitions are not needed is what I think. Mr T(Talk?) (New thread?) 06:29, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And if your subject is "pogroms" then it actually doesn't pass GNG. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 07:53, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just because a few editors do not like the content or think it is not neutral is not a reason to delete, any perceived neutrality issues can be fixed through editing. The fact of the matter is that this subject matter does pass GNG and as such an article on it is allowed by policy. Darkness Shines (talk) 10:43, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No. Passing the GNG is not a guarantee that an article is encyclopedic. Pages can be (and are) deleted for a variety of other reasons, including WP:BLP, WP:NOT, WP:OR and WP:NPOV. Hut 8.5 16:54, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You can see Religious violence in India and Persecution of Muslims#India and read "pogrom" in place of "riot". That should give you the idea. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 12:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
  • File:Hispaniola greater funnel-eared bat in Los Haitises National Park.jpg – I just spent a very interesting 30-40 minutes reading through our CSD/FU/NFCC policies and also carefully going through this discussion. It would probably be useful to outline my understanding of where the policy is as this fundamentally informs the judgements I am making about weighting this discussion.

Firstly, this was deleted under CSD F7 where the relevant policy states

Non-free images or media that have been identified as being replaceable by a free image and tagged with {{subst:rfu}} may be deleted after two days, if no justification is given for the claim of irreplaceability. If the replaceability is disputed, the nominator should not be the one deleting the image.

On the face of it, the deletion meets the listed CSD process. The article was nominated for deletion as replaceable on 6 June and on the same day the listing was disputed with the claim:

This is the only picture of this species available on the internet. In order to create a replacement, one would have to fly to Hispaniola. What a species looks like cannot be "adequately covered with text alone". Also there are no sources for "adequately covering with text alone

The article wasn't deleted until 10 days later by an admin who was not previously involved in the article, thereby meeting the requirement to wait 2 days and that, if disputed, the file shouldn't be deleted by the same person tagging it.

There is a strong strand of opinion expressed in the discussion that any dispute about replaceability should result in a listing at FFD. I vaguely recall from years ago when I was active at CSD that admins were had discretion if arguments were poor to delete disputed fair use images under F7. Clearly historical precedence doesn't necesserily top the argument that all disputes should be listed as consensus can change and I do accept my memory sucks. I must have spent a further 40 minutes searching the archives of WT:CSD to try and establish the current policy on this and I did find a discussion addressing this [2] which explicitly says that in the case of disputed FU replaceable

the administrator reviewing the issue will make a judgment call either to delete the image, remove the tag, or send it to FFD

.

So it does look that both policy and custom and practise support the admin reviewing the CSD request using their own judgement on whether or not to list the disputed replaceable file at FFD. None of the arguments around disputed replaceability being requiring listing at FFD really discussed this nuance and I think its fair to say that this argument pretty much amounts to arguing that by not listing, the closing admin incorrectly applied policy. This isn't consistent with the written CSD and the acknowledged practise reflected in the WT:CSD discussion. Based on that, my opinion is that we should not overturn and relist unless we find that the closing admin was manifestly wrong when they used their discretion to delete rather than list at FFD. I am not seeing any consensus to say that this was the case. The endorse side make a strong argument that this image is potentially replaceable and that the stated reasons given at the time of deletion for disputing this are extremely weak - a sprited defence of the irreplacibility of the image during the DRV has been overcome by the endorsing arguments. On that basis I find that the policy based arguments here are to endorse the deletion. This does go some way against general practise at DRV, which is to pretty much list anything at XfD if a decent argument against the deletion is put forward. Why am I not using my discretion as DRV closer to do that? Essentially, I don't see a credible argument to refute the argument that this file can potentially be replaced by a free image.
One final note. I completely discarded the arguments by PantherLeapord as they were based on labelling users he disagreed with and I would most certainly have taken some adminstrative action against him had I noticed this while this discussion was on-going. I also have not given much weight to arguments about the why's and wherefores of the NFCC and whether they should be overturned. The final analysis is that DRV looks at process and consensus and this has to be based on the current policy rather then where we want the policy to be, although policy can drift and change before the actual language of the policy is updated. The NFCC which underpins the deletion is mandated by the foundation and is therefore not subject this drifting consensus until a clear consensus to change them has been established. On that basis I couldn't give weight to arguments that we should ignore them in this case. – Spartaz Humbug! 18:36, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
File:Hispaniola greater funnel-eared bat in Los Haitises National Park.jpg (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (article|XfD|restore)

The deletion of this image as being replacable fair use ignited a debate on WT:NFCC that is turning into yet another war between those trying to uphold policy as such (like me; a certain editor only called me a deletionist because of my actions in another, very different NFCC 1 case, best described as being carrots to pineapples in comparison), free content purists, and deletionists. The deleting admin stated that "Fair use doesn't apply just because you find it hard to get a free photo. The bat still exists and a picture can be taken of it, therefore grabbing a non-free picture isn't legit." However, this seems to be a special case because this particular species has only really been caught on camera in this particular non-free image; we should just use common sense here and put this up for further discussion with third-parties who have better knowledge of our consensus in NFCC 1 cases. ViperSnake151  Talk  01:39, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although I am an involved party, I would like to point out that User:Nthep deleted the image with no comment, just that it fails criterion 1. User:Eeekster was the one with the comment above, and I don't believe he is an admin. Surfer43 (talk) 02:05, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is correct. I deleted the file for failing to meet NFCC#1 namely that a free use image of the bat could reasonably be created. If the concensus is that a free image could not reasonably be created then I'm more than happy to restore the file but then there is a possible discussion about whether NFCC#2 (respect for commercial opportunities) is being met, if the image is that rare. The NFCC are a package so while this discussion maybe about the application of one criteria, just check that chosing a different interpretation of one doesn't potentially mean that others are now not being met. NtheP (talk) 09:50, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
User:PantherLeapord was the only one calling names. Surfer43 (talk) 02:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overturn as an improper F7 and send to FfD. Disputed fair use != Invalid fair use, a discussion is certainly called for, and not just an escalating back-and-forth between the uploader and the tagger. Jclemens (talk) 07:19, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • On the one hand, I agree with Jclemens to the extent that speedy deletion should be reserved for clearer-cut cases. The purpose of the speedy deletion rule is to empower sysops to delete material without a discussion, but the community has set many limits on that. They're wearisome to read in detail but the underlying principle is always: it should be absolutely obvious to a neutral observer why the deletion is right. In cases where a neutral, good-faith observer might think "that's arbitrary" or "that's a matter of opinion", speedy deletion isn't the right tool for the job. In this case there is good faith doubt so a discussion is necessary.

    But on the other hand, I don't think there's any point in sending it back to FFD, because our FFC and NFCC pages are attractive to people who're focused on the "free content" part of Wikipedia rather than improving the actual articles. FFD will just delete it again because that's what FFD does. The people who're focused on encyclopaedia-building find FFD and NFCC a bit alien from the rest of the encyclopaedia because those venues are so militant in their focus on free content. To me, it's quite obvious that material that (a) it's lawful for us to use, (b) nobody objects to us using, and (c) enhances our encyclopaedia should be used. Deleting such material is obstructive, destructive, and grossly and blatantly WP:NOTHERE to build an encyclopaedia.

    FFD and NFCC have become so free-content-focused and so deletionist that there's little point in having them. We might as well go the de.wiki route of not hosting image files locally at all and putting everything on Wikimedia Commons.

    For that reason input from the wider community is to be sought, not the free-content crowd who congregate around FFD and NFCC. I'd recommend that this goes to RFC, but I see that there's already one open on this very subject on WT:NFCC. DRV should wait for the community to decide at that RFC and then enforce the community's will.—S Marshall T/C 07:44, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    • "our FFC and NFCC pages are attractive to people who're focused on the "free content" part of Wikipedia rather than improving the actual articles". I'm sure your handful of GAs qualify you to write off the opinions of people like Masem and I as nutjob extremists who aren't really here to improve the encyclopedia. You're the one suggesting we do away with one of our central policies. You're the one with a minority fringe view. You're the one ignoring the "community's will". J Milburn (talk) 09:30, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • EXCUSE ME!? AFAIK the greater community's will is that fair use images should be used where the free alternative is not of acceptable quality (Such as the initial free replacement for the Playstation 4 image). I would hardly call that a "Minority fringe view"! PantherLeapord (talk) 09:37, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • Marshall is of the view that if an image meets three criteria: "(a) it's lawful for us to use, (b) nobody objects to us using, and (c) enhances our encyclopaedia [then it] should be used." This amounts to doing away with the non-free content policy, which is deliberately far stricter than his very liberal ideas about non-free content use. That is the fringe view. I am making no comment about this image, I am defending myself and others from his attack against us. J Milburn (talk) 09:45, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • Also, of course that's not the community's will. "I know there's a free image, but I don't like it very much, so we'll continue to use the non-free image." Bullshit. J Milburn (talk) 09:46, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
            • Free image purism is just as detrimental to the encyclopedia! When a fair use image is of much higher quality AND encyclopedic value than the free image then it is obvious that using the free image will only DEGRADE the quality of the article the image is used on. Would you rather use the free version and degrade the article or stick to the higher quality fair use image? PantherLeapord (talk) 09:48, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:NFCC#1 is the very REASON that this image was falsely deleted in the first place! WP:NFCC#1 is why we are here today! If WP:NFCC#1 was not CONSTANTLY misinterpreted by free image purists and deletionists then this image would NOT have been deleted to begin with! As this bat is EXTREMELY RARE and ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to get a photo of then it SHOULD be kept! PantherLeapord (talk) 09:56, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment S Marshall is quite mistaken about FFD. A file was kept as recently as 12 May.[3] One was also kept on 19 May but that was withdrawn by the nominator.[4] On 3 June one was "not deleted" with a supervote because someone gave "a correct reason".[5] The normal procedure is not to close discussions with a consensus to keep[6] and so by no means all images are deleted. Thincat (talk) 10:14, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Respect for Commercial Oppurtunities There is complete respect for commercial opportunities because the owner allows it to be on Google Earth and it is freely accessible online. Having it freely available on Wikipedia will not change a thing. Surfer43 (talk) 11:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: I've left a comment on the photo's page asking if the author would be willing to release it under a free license. As far as I can tell, no one has even attempted this yet (which, frankly, is ridiculous). Hopefully this will be able to solve the entire problem. If anyone speaks it, it may be worth trying to contact the photographer in Spanish, too. J Milburn (talk) 11:47, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • undelete and list I agree with S Marshall in nearly all respects on this one and would like to see an RfC on the broader issue. But DRV's job isn't to worry about how broken FfD is, it's to overturn bad deletions. And this one is clearly not a speedy case or even close to it. A new picture can't be reasonably gotten by anyone at this time so IMO it should be kept at FfD. Just needs to get there. Hobit (talk) 19:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse deletion, obvious case of replaceability, and as such obvious and legitimate use of admin judgment in processing an F7 case. No case was made that this bat is significantly more difficult to find and take a photograph of than all the thousands of other species we have free nature photographs of on Commons. Any competent nature photographer could do again what the author of this photograph has done: travel to the Dominican Republic, visit its National Park, go to one of the caves (tourists do that every day), find a bat. There is not a shred of evidence that the opportunity to take the present photograph was somehow unique or overwhelmingly difficult to repeat. This is a slam-dunk case; not even anywhere close to borderline. Note also that on the image talk page, where the uploader first contested the speedy deletion proposal, he did not in fact bring forward any argument challenging the replaceability charge. He was arguing about whether the photographer had a commercial interest in the picture and other such things, but that just demonstrates he unfortunately failed to understand the NFCC criterion, which says "is available, or could be created". No substantive counterargument to the replaceability tag was made. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:44, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • If the animal is hard enough to photograph that only one picture exists (which is my understanding), that it _could_ be recreated at some point is pretty crazy. Where is the bar here? Someone could take a picture of an extinct species by recreating it from a preserved cell at some point in the future. Is that "could be created?". Or I suppose time travel could be found to be workable at some point so everything could be created. Yes, those are extreme, but the bar here to someone going out and getting such a picture is huge and unreasonable. My examples (ok, not the time travel one) are not significantly higher as creation of certain animals from cells is doable, if damn expensive at this point. Hobit (talk) 19:32, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm pretty certain walking into that cave and finding a bat sleeping in it is not significantly more difficult than getting access to the current Prime Minister of Kazakhstan and gaining permission to take a free portrait shoot of him (which nobody seems to have managed so far either, but he's still covered by our "living persons" rule). The fact that this particular bat has not been photographed more often is apparently not due to it being super-rare or super-secretive; it's just that its habitat happens to be limited to a relatively small part of the world (but still, that part of the world is not somewhere in the middle of Antarctica or at the bottom of the ocean; it is inhabited by some 10 million people and visited by thousands of tourists each year.) – And no, it is certainly not the case that only this one image of it exists; it's just that so far none of the existing ones happen to be free. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:46, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • Just so you know, this is the only picture taken of it on the internet. If it is so common, why is so little known about it? Surfer43 (talk) 00:56, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • False- as Thincat has shown below, there are other pictures out there. Further, there seems to be plenty of literature on the species- note my quick expansion of the article, and note the large number of hits on Google Scholar. Further, even if it was little-known, that wouldn't preclude it from being common. The IUCN seems to be quite clear that it's "locally common in specific areas" and "reasonably widely distributed". J Milburn (talk) 01:11, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overturn Needs an actual discussion of the full set of issues. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overturn I'm sure it was outside deletion policy to have speedy deleted the image. It was not one of "the most obvious cases". Whether it would or should survive a deletion discussion is not a present concern. Thincat (talk) 19:48, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have found a photo published in the US in 1980, seemingly without notice but I don't know how to tell whether copyright was subsequently registered.[7][8] I think ASM are making their early Mammalian Species notes available deliberately.[9][10] And, of course, someone could ask. Thincat (talk) 20:17, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've sent an email. I'll keep people posted. J Milburn (talk) 23:51, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse deletion. A lot of the claims being thrown around in support of using a non-free image here are just plain wrong. The image this discussion concerns is not the only one on the Internet, as Thincat has shown. There may be more out there, as there are plenty of hits on Google Books and Google Scholar. This leads me to the second point- this does seem to be a fairly well-documented species. I've started to expand the article a little, but there's no doubt plenty more that could go in (the taxonomic history alone seems to be highly complex and interesting). Concerning the replaceability of this image, however: it is neither the case that the species is super-rare (the IUCN notes that it is "locally common in specific areas") nor that it is super-isolated (it is "reasonably widely distributed", according to the IUCN, on an island with a human population of 20 million). Also, for what it's worth, it looks pretty much the same as the Mexican funnel-eared bat (for which we do have free images), only bigger. There's really no way that a non-free image of this species would meet NFCC#1, and so the deletion seems quite appropriate. J Milburn (talk) 01:24, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse deletion(as uploader) - per J Milburn. I hope the author releases it. Surfer43 (talk) 17:31, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overturn This did not meet the speedy criterion--it was disputed free use, and disputed free use needs to be discussed, not speedied. It's every bit as clearly not a speedy as if it were an article deleted via A7 on the grounds that the deleting admin said that on balance, they didn't think it was "sufficiently" important. it's only indisputable cases that are appropriate for speedy. This is being challenged in good faith and must be discussed. Better there than here. DGG ( talk ) 16:25, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • And now the person who disputed it in the first place has recognised that it should have been deleted and endorses the deletion? J Milburn (talk) 23:24, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Plain wrong, DGG. "Disputed free use"? There was no claim of free use anywhere. The file had clearly been uploaded and labeled as non-free, and it was obviously agreed that there was no free license for it. And as for the challenge to the replaceability claim, it's the same as with any "holdon" tag: what matters is not that the deletion is contested "in good faith"; what matters is that it must be contested with a pertinent argument. To challenge a replaceability tag, the minimum condition is that there must be a tangible argument addressing the issue of replaceability. Since the person who was challenging the deletion never made any such comment and never said anything about the possibility of creating a replacement, there was effectively no challenge for the deleting admin to consider. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:32, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • As I said right at the start, there's absolutely no point sending this matter back to FFD because FFD can almost always find a reason to delete fair use images, even when it's an image we can lawfully use that's improving the encyclopaedia. We should close this DRV without result, pending the outcome of the RFC at which point there will be a recent community consensus to compare it against.—S Marshall T/C 10:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • S Marshall: Why don't you stop beating around the bush and just admit that the image violates policy, and that you simply don't like the policy? J Milburn (talk) 10:50, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • Indeed. And of course, the policy RFC, no matter what its outcome, would hardly affect this file anyway, since it is by no means clear that the file would meet the reworded criterion any more than the current one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:55, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
            • With pleasure. The image violates the current version of policy. The current version of policy is utterly moronic, consisting as it does largely of text written by a self-selected group of free-content advocates which now enables them to delete perfectly lawful fair-use images on the basis that it's theoretically possible that at some point in the future someone will travel to a cave in Borneo, take a photograph of a bat and give it to the world at large----and they're actually outraged when someone challenges their right to do this, as if their actions benefitted the encyclopaedia! It's accepted that Wikipedia aims to produce an encyclopaedia of free content, but surely providing gratis educational content for the benefit of all is a higher aim than handing out libre content for the benefit of scraper sites. Surely where there's conflict the encyclopaedia should come first. Surely the policy needs revising by the community at large before it's fit for purpose. The RFC currently in progress should be advertised more widely to help achieve this.—S Marshall T/C 11:35, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
              • Sorted. Closing administrator, S Marshall accepts that this file does not meet policy, and opposes this deletion because of a distaste for the policies. Specifically, S Marshall doesn't like NFCC#1, and seems to believe that we should use non-free content if no free content exists, not merely if no free content could be created. In accordance with how these discussions are meant to be policy-based, and not merely vote-counting, I do hope S Marshall's comments are ignored. Marshall: I've expanded the article somewhat, and it actually appeared on the main page last night (of course, in opposing the inclusion of non-free content, I am actually damaging the encyclopedia, as you so kindly reminded me). It is currently illustrated with a picture of a related species (or, if you believe certain authors, a member of the same species) so similar that the original description didn't even bother to describe the appearance of this species beyond comparing it to that one. It really isn't the case that a photograph would improve the article to the enormous degree that you believe. If you want to improve the article, go and expand it. There are plenty of sources left which I haven't cited, many of which no doubt contain important information. J Milburn (talk) 12:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly not quite as sorted as you think.  :-) I wish to raise two points in answer.

First, we do indeed have a rule that only allows a few dozen fair use images on the whole encyclopaedia---but we also have a meta-rule that governs our rules. From the start, I've been showing that this case is the poster child for a rule that stops you building an encyclopaedia. It's also a rule that's under RFC at the moment and from the beginning, I've been saying that the outcome of the RFC should prevail. These are not views that closers typically disregard, and although it's accepted that they don't always win either, I certainly do join issue with you about whether they should be ruled out completely!

Second, your many excellent content contributions are welcomed and appreciated. However, the implication that they give you any moral authority to tell others how they should contribute to Wikipedia is denied. If I decide to improve that article, then I'll be the judge of what I should do to improve it.—S Marshall T/C 14:49, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We do not have a rule that "only allows a few dozen fair use images on the whole encyclopaedia". That's simply false. Further, if this image is your poster child, your campaign is doomed to failure. Reread my endorse vote above. There are numerous images of this species on the internet. It is moderately common and well-distributed on an island with a large human population. It is well-documented. It looks almost identical to another species for which we do have free images. Even if the RfC does result in adjustments to the NFCC, this article would still not warrant a non-free image for these reasons, unless, through some unlikely twist of fate, large numbers of people start supporting the ridiculous "No free images? Oh well, just find one on Google!" adage that you seem to support. As for your second point: That's hilarious. So I have no moral authority to tell you how you could improve the encyclopedia, but you feel justified in telling me that I'm damaging it? Pull the other one. J Milburn (talk) 15:30, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
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