Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion
We welcome and appreciate civil discussion of requests to delete or undelete pages when reasonable objections are made or are likely, the advice in Wikiversity:Deletions is followed, and other options have failed. A good attitude is to explain what you have tried, ask for help or advice from fellow Wikiversity participants on what to do now, keep an open mind, accept any community consensus, and focus on how pages can be improved. Finding ways to improve pages is the preferred outcome of any discussion and consensus here. Pages should always be kept when reasonable concerns are adequately addressed. Reasons and responses should be specific and relate to Wikiversity policy or scope in some way, kept brief, and stated in a positive or neutral way. Vague reasons ("out of scope", "disruptive") may be ignored. A clear consensus should emerge before archiving a request. Often discussion takes a week or more to reach a clear consensus. Remember to add {{dr}} to the top of pages nominated for deletion. You can put "keep", "delete", or "neutral" at the beginning of your response, but consensus is established by discussion and reasoning, not mere voting. |
How to begin discussion[edit source]
|
Undeletion requests[edit source]
If an article has been deleted, and you would like it undeleted, please list it here. Please try to give as close to the title as possible, and list your reasons for why it should be restored.
Similarity of matter levels[edit source]
On December 25, 2022 User:Guy_vandegrift renamed the Similarity of matter levels page to Physics/Essays/Fedosin/Similarity of matter levels page without leaving the redirect to new page. But in Wikiversity there are some pages with links to Similarity of matter levels page, such as
Physics/Essays/Fedosin/Infinite Hierarchical Nesting of Matter, SPФ symmetry, Stellar Stefan–Boltzmann constant, Stellar Dirac constant, Substantial neutron model, Scale dimension, Gravitational constant, Physics/Essays/Fedosin/Praon, Stellar Boltzmann constant, Nuon, Physics/Essays/Fedosin/Discreteness of stellar parameters, Substantial electron model, Electrogravitational vacuum, Quantization of parameters of cosmic systems, Stellar constants, Physics/Essays/Fedosin/Hydrogen system, Substantial proton model, Coupling constant, Stellar Planck constant, Strong gravitation, Model of quark quasiparticles, Characteristic speed, Substantial photon model, Strong gravitational constant, Gravitational model of strong interaction, Covariant theory of gravitation, Physics/Essays/Fedosin/Monopoles, Physics/Essays/Fedosin/Velocity circulation quantum, Physics/Essays/Fedosin/Gravitoelectromagnetism, Field mass-energy limit, Physics/Essays/Fedosin/Quantum Gravitational Resonator.
There is no any explanation for the action of the User:Guy_vandegrift. I suppose he can explain. On the other hand it would be much better if the User:Guy_vandegrift take part in improvement of the Similarity of matter levels page, before its deletion in main space of Wikiversity. Fedosin (discuss • contribs) 06:39, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
My two edit summaries at User talk:Elominius (non-urgent)[edit source]
Deletion requests[edit source]
If an article should be deleted and does not meet speedy deletion criteria, please list it here. Include the title and reason for deletion. If it meets speedy deletion criteria, just tag the resource with {{Delete|reason}} rather than opening a deletion discussion here.
Pervasive copyright violations by User:Marshallsumter[edit source]
Though still active, this is a long discussion that should be archived and replaced by a status report--user:Guy vandegrift
|
---|
User:Marshallsumter has over 1500 images uploaded on this site. Most of these images were uploaded under a claim of fair use. Unfortunately, none of these fair use claims appear to be valid. Almost every one I have looked at followed the pattern "No free licensed or public domain alternatives known to exist to show…" followed by the description of the image. For example, some of this user's uploads state that:
Moreover, most of these images are not used in ways which comply with Wikiversity's Exemption Doctrine Policy. The vast majority of them are used in a decorative fashion to illustrate a topic mentioned in the text of a page, not to further any specific educational goal. Does Wikiversity have a process capable of handling the bulk deletion of these images? I can't imagine RFD would be able to handle it. Is there any better way to address this? -- Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 01:27, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
Discussion[edit source]I agree with the assessment that the use of many of these "fair use" images is not consistent with either the spirit of Fair Use or the Exemption Doctrine Policy. The simple solution is to delete all Category:Fair use files images uploaded by Marshallsumter. Are there any other suggestions? -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:26, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
(Unindenting for clarity.) With regard to the term "educational", the mission statement of the Wikimedia Foundation (as a whole!) is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally". Wikiversity does not have a unique mandate to create educational content - that is the purpose of the entire Foundation! - and neither does it have any unique privilege to use non-free content in the pursuit of that mission. You're focusing unduly on the single image I chose as an example, but I'll indulge you for a moment. The primary page where you used that image, Earth/Geognosy, does not even mention the image in the accompanying text. It appears alongside a definition of the term "geognosy". Moreover, it appears directly below another freely licensed diagram of the Earth's structure; you clearly found that one accurate enough to display, so it's not at all clear why you felt the need to use another non-free image with substantially the same content. Diagrams are almost never justifiable as fair use, as they are by their nature replaceable with free content (even if that content has not yet been created), and this one is no exception.
Let me take another completely different example to show that this is not an isolated issue. On 28 July 2014, you uploaded File:Transportation-terminology.jpg, an image of a highway with cars and trucks at sunset, and declared that you were using it under fair use. You provided no justification for your claim of fair use, and you only used it on the page Draft:Terminology/Quiz, as a decorative element on a quiz about "terminology". At no point does the quiz even mention highways, cars, trucks, nor sunsets. The only connection I can see between this non-free image and the page you used it in is the fact that you obtained the image from a web page titled "The Definitive Guide to Transportation Terminology to Stay on the Same Logistics Page". The image was a decorative element on that page, and it does not serve any other purpose on this site either.
Or another: on 1 October 2016, you uploaded File:Diversity_of_plants.jpg under a claim of fair use, with the justification that "no free use or Public Domain image known to show the diversity of plants". I have an extremely hard time believing that no freely licensed images exist which contain multiple different plants, nor that it is somehow impossible to create a freely licensed collage of plant pictures. I am especially troubled by the fact that the image description indicates that you recognized that "apparently the image of sunflowers in copyrighted, and the image was deleted from Commons", and you uploaded it in knowing disregard of those copyright issues.
Or yet another: on 29 November 2017, you uploaded File:Referral_letter_1.png. This is a photograph of a private medical document which was deleted from Wikimedia Commons over copyright concerns. You provided no justification for it being fair use on Wikiversity, and you failed to provide accurate source information (the Commons URL it was deleted from is not the original source of the image), and the page you used it in contains no text referencing the image - it appears under a header with no additional caption or explanatory text.
None of these uses are justifiable as fair use under any definition of the term - neither Wikiversity's, nor WMF's, nor the law. Claiming otherwise - claiming that any image can be an "educational illustration" if it appears alongside a related piece of text - represents a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright law and fair use. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 04:37, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
I personally don't see any advantage in engaging with Marshallsumter regarding this issue. As with dozens or hundreds of previous discussions, it is likely to only result in long diatribes of misdirection without any acknowledgement or acceptance of the actual issues involved. Instead, I recommend we focus on the community response to the situation at hand. Omphalographer has identified issues which apply to hundreds of uploaded images. OhanaUnited has looked into several images and confirmed the findings. I have similar concerns regarding the images I've viewed. Others are welcome to review and confirm (or object) if they wish. But, accepting for the moment that the concerns are legitimate and widespread, do we want to just delete them all and have Marshallsumter start over, providing adequate fair use justification of any such images? Do we want to prohibit Marshallsumter from uploading any Fair Use images, as there is clear disregard for what Fair Use is and how it should be applied, and none of us has time to oversee this effort? Or is there someone willing to investigate the issues and identify which images legitimately meet Fair Use and EDP guidelines? I'm inclined to delete them all and give Marshallsumter a chance to start over and demonstrate that he is able to apply guidelines appropriately going forward. Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:45, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
I may have missed some of the subtleties here, but would requiring images to be uploaded to (and suitable for) Wikimedia Commons rather than Wikiversity offer a practical solution? Generally speaking, I prefer images to be on Commons because there is more checking to make sure they are appropriate and the images can then be used in any sister project in any language. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 22:11, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
What is the status of this discussion? It's been open for nearly a month now with no action. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 08:04, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
|
Thousands of unused files[edit source]
There are thousands of unused files on Wikiversity. 5.000 can be seen on Special:UnusedFiles. There is a general clean up project on Wikiversity_talk:File_Review and one of the things discussed is unused files.
So far unused non-free files have been deleted and files without a license have also been tagged for deletion. That leaves files with a free license. So the question is what to do with those.
Unused does not always mean unusable. But if the file is not in use anywhere there is a risk that it is out of WV:Scope.
Example: The first file on the list is File:Sysop buttons.png. It is not in use and there is no links to the page. How to move forward?
- Should files be discussed one by one?
- Should there be a speedy template to add and if there are no objections after 90
7days the file can be deleted? And if someone disagree they can remove the template and start a regular DR? - Should they be taken in batches?
- Should we just leave all the files alone?
--MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 12:19, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
- I'll wait to hear more from the community regarding which option(s) everyone would prefer. But regarding Option 2, I would use Proposed Deletions (90 days) vs. Speedy. We have a long history of tagging things and allowing 90 days for anyone to remove the tag if they want to keep the resource. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:26, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
- Looking through the unused files list, I get the sense that the majority of them fall into a couple of basic categories:
- Slide presentations and other class documents created by User:Young1lim, which should probably be indexed somewhere and kept. There's a ton of potentially valuable material here and it would be a shame to delete it. (Update: this accounts for 4264 of 5791 total unused files in the last database dump!!)
- Graphs, diagrams, and homework assignments uploaded by ENES100 students. These are useless out of context and should be deleted.
- Files uploaded but not used by User:Jtneill's students for Motivation and Emotion pages. These should be deleted.
- Unused files or homework assignments from Filmmaking. These should be deleted as well.
- I would hesitate to use proposed deletion for these files, as there's simply so many of them that it'd be difficult for other editors to review what's up for deletion.
- Instead, as a first step, how about if we remove all of Young1lim's files from the list by creating a temporary page linking to all of his PDF uploads? Most of those files have fairly systematic names, so it should be straightforward to index them on that page. Getting those files out of the way will protect them from deletion, and should make it easier to figure out what's going on with the rest. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 22:12, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
- Update: I've created a temporary list of User:Young1lim's (previously) unused files in my sandbox. After Special:UnusedFiles updates, those files should be off the list, making it easier to handle those. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 23:35, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
- Omphalographer I do not think that a link is enough to make Special:UnusedFiles skip the files.
- But I think it sounds like a good idea to take the deletions in similar batches. If they are added to categories it would be easier for users to see the files. Then files could be nominted for deletion one category at a time. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 06:42, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
- I'm pretty certain the links I used should be sufficient; the files I linked to now all show my sandbox under "File usage", the same as any other file link would. It might be a few days before the page updates; it currently says the last run was on the 4th. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 07:08, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
- UnusedFiles has updated and... well, either the links don't count, or there are a lot more PDFs that I missed somehow. Wow. I'll look into this. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 19:40, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
- I'm pretty certain the links I used should be sufficient; the files I linked to now all show my sandbox under "File usage", the same as any other file link would. It might be a few days before the page updates; it currently says the last run was on the 4th. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 07:08, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
- Update: I've created a temporary list of User:Young1lim's (previously) unused files in my sandbox. After Special:UnusedFiles updates, those files should be off the list, making it easier to handle those. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 23:35, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
Omphalographer I added all free files from Young1lim to User:MGA73/Sandbox2 and if https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/73587 is correct then there are 1845 unused files. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 16:46, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
- Omphalographer I wonder if system can handle it if a page use 20k files. For example this file File:DM.H.2.Logic.20180302.pdf is unused but if you click what links here it shows my sandbox. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 18:33, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
I have now added the files to 21 galleries in User:MGA73/Sandbox2 to User:MGA73/Sandbox22. Lets see if that does the trick. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 09:00, 28 May 2023 (UTC)