Commons talk:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Photos from Parlamentul Republicii Moldova Flickr stream

About contacting the Parliament

Hi @Rosenzweig: Thank you for a nicely explained closure performed at Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Photos from Parlamentul Republicii Moldova Flickr stream and sorry for the slight procedural mistake of adding comments to a closed DR.

I owe you a reply to the suggestion of 'get the parliament to make some statement or file some VRT permission' and why it hasn't been done by me (I don't know about the others supporting the keep). In this particular example I personally do not want to reach out to neither the Parliament nor Mr. Bizgu (although I can't see any gain in contacting Bizgu – he's not making any decisions) and I don't think it makes sense for anyone to do that, and I'll explain why I see it this way.

Commons has a large set of rules that filter incoming material, in order to make sure that the materials on Commons are truly free (COMM:WELCOME: "Unlike traditional media repositories, Wikimedia Commons is free"); one of the things we keep in mind while filtering incoming material is COM:PCP: when in significant doubt, better delete a file.

The case of the Parliament of Moldova is such that they decided they want their material (of obvious public interest) to be freely accessible and reusable, basically public domain, which they have set by configuring all their Flickr material to be [the Flickr version of] public domain.

If the Parliament was an institution that would've initiated [or responded to an invitation to] a collaboration with something representing Wikimedia (chapter, UG, or even a particular user) to have their material uploaded to Commons in an effort to open up their archive, I would've gladly explained to them some technical details of how to proceed so that every aspect of this 'transaction' is valid per Commons rules. In practice, I would've instructed them to write to VRT in addition to setting a universally acceptable CC license on Flickr.

But the Parliament is not in this position. They are publishing their content in public domain and as far as they're concerned that's it. Who wants to use their material is welcome to do so.

Having this context, I do not have the slightest imagination of what would I, or anyone else, write in an email to them per your (and some others') suggestion. The text would have to be something along the lines of: "Hello, excuse me, you are the MVP for opening up your archive, we are grateful and so on, but could you do us a solid? – there is this project Wikimedia Commons, we would really like to use this material, but we cannot do so until you write an email to us in which you make a clear statement that you are the copyright holder of these materials and you are OK with releasing them as public domain... for legal reasons you have to follow this particular email template... oh, and there is no guarantee that this email will be accepted by our Volunteer Response Team. K thx bye xxx"

If I was the person in charge of replying to incoming email at the Parliament and I received this message, I would straight up delete it.

But let's assume they said OK, then went ahead with everything we've asked them and received green light from VRT. Would this situation be too different from now? I mean, within the materials they meant in the VRT email there still would've been images they don't hold copyright onto – example 1, example 2, example 3 – and the rest of the files would still have Eduard Bizgu in EXIF. In my opinion we already know everything they'd confirm. I think there would be no significant doubt resolved.

Conversely, let's assume they refused to write such an email not because they don't react to lunacy but because they thoroughly reviewed our request and decided to politely decline it, in which case I don't imagine what reason would they state. "We released the materials in public domain but we'd like Commons to not have it"?

The onus may be on me to contact the Parliament, the PCP may dictate we need to delete these files without everything sorted up the Commons way, but per my reasoning above this is complete bollocks and am not willing to proceed. I want these files to be here on Commons, I want the most powerful man in Moldova (by political ranking, this is the chair of Parliament assembly) to have good quality images in his Wikipedia biographies, but if this requires contacting the Parliament to ask them to play by Commons rules, I will not do it.

Maybe you see this another, more logical way. If you consider it would help the case, please share. Thanks.

PS: I could not find images on https://multimedia.parlament.md that would be loaded from the site itself and at the same time be mirrored on Flickr. So I don't quite get your reasoning of the Parliament not being consistent by releasing 'photos by Mr Bîzgu on their own website with an "all rights reserved" notice'. Only images originating on Flickr were being imported to Commons; when they are used on the site they are clearly embedded from Flickr. Gikü (talk) 20:09, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

[1] is from the site (from [2]), it's also on Flickr at [3]. So they're not quite consistent IMO. --Rosenzweig τ 20:50, 13 December 2021 (UTC)