User talk:Splarka

Although this image is listed as public domain, it might contain copyright palette information (but can you copyright a tint map??)  This makes me think about the following sentence from our policy page: "Although screenshots are OK, raw graphics from the IWADs are not." IANAL, nor can I speak for Fredrik's reasoning at the time of writing, but I can understand how a resource view (including something like this) would never be fair use, since by definition it has been reverse engineered from an IWAD, which is still proprietary.

There have been several inconclusive discussions about image copyrights (here is another one), and IMHO this wiki would benefit, in the long term, from a more detailed copyright policy. Any new input you can bring to that topic would be greatly appreciated. Ryan W 13:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Remember that fair use images weren't allowed on Wikicities at all when we started. It took a bit of persuation just to get an OK for screenshots, and the Doom Wiki copyright policy still seems to reflect that. Today, I think something similar to Wikipedia's policy on fair use images would work. Under that policy, "raw" graphics are certainly fine for illustrating specific information, when not used gratuitously. Palettes should be fine (the data can be extracted from any screenshot anyway), but complete sprite sheets such as Doomfaces.png are probably not a good idea. Fredrik 15:09, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I can see the point of the TINTTAB images possibly violating the resource copyright, as they are basically the exact data existant in the lump, wrapped around a bitmap with the game palette, and compressed into a gif. I've retagged them with Template:ResourceView for now. If this is still too much of a copyright violation, what one could do is save them as a jpeg, which would destroy the original data while preserving the graphical representation of the data. --Splarka (talk) 18:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Licenses
Excellent! Long overdue. A couple of possible tweaks: Ryan W 17:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
 * TC stands for total conversion, not technical. Also, the template  is not related to licensing;  should be used instead.
 * IANAL, but the existing template seems to cover the cases "Don't know" and "Somewebsite" already.
 * "Doom 64 map view" would IMHO be less confusing/ambiguous than "Midway map".


 * I basically compiled this list in 5 minutes in order to upload some files more lazily. Any changes to this should probably be discussed by the community and performed by the local administration (as I am just a prole here, my staff powers should not overlap with my noobness (but I felt creating that list from the existing templates was pretty harmless)). However, some notes on why I did what I did:
 * I titled it "technical" as the body of the template includes that word. It also appears in the proper category for image uploads, and appears on at least one image page: Image:Doom64start.JPG.
 * The usual argument against this (such as on commons or wikipeda): An uploader will not usually choose 'unverified' to upload an image. Having a neutral-sounding default license selection insures that people who don't care what license they upload with will not likely choose one on the list that is inaccurate just to keep their image up. This is also the reason there is no function that forces the user to choose a GFDL/Free license on those projects either (it would just make them lie).
 * Although I did do some minor tweaks based on your suggestions. --Splarka (talk) 18:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 *  . . . as the body of the template includes that word.  True enough.  It's just that the word "technical" has a very specific meaning on this wiki, which is almost never relevant to walkthrough articles (where the template in question would be used).
 * I didn't want to make "unverified" a menu option (sorry if that was unclear). I was trying to say that the menu options "I don't know" and "Found it on some web site", and "No license" if you really want to keep that, should also lead to.
 * Anyway, it's still a big improvement over any upload page we've had before. :>    Ryan W 19:10, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 * "I didn't want to make "unverified" a menu option". I got that part, but if a person starts noticing that is what happens when they upload, they might start choosing a random free license to bypass the immediate deletions of their inappropriate images. --Splarka (talk) 19:19, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmm, that hadn't occurred to me. This wiki has been pretty lucky so far &mdash; 99 percent of the delinquent behavior is nowhere near as subtle as the situation you describe, and so many of our image uploads are of the same two types (screen shots and map views) that anything out of the ordinary is easy to spot.  Still, it can take us months to actually delete something.  Hopefully it would just be one isolated user at a time, who we could ban if they refused to stop.


 * Since you work on the main Wikia page, you probably have a lot more experience with malicious edits, but I would think that if a user really wanted to hide copyright problems repeatedly, they would quickly learn to choose "GFDL" from the menu no matter what the other options were.   Ryan W 01:38, 15 September 2006 (UTC)