Last modified: 2013-12-10 16:45:38 UTC
As some of you might know, Commons does not allow free pictures of recent buildings without freedom of panorama. This leads to many deletions that will be hard to replace when the buildings finally reach PD status, because users have left or are no longer interested in the subject and nobody else remembers those images. Therefore, emijrp proposed to have some kind of "time capsule", i.e. an image that only becomes visible at a future date. This would work more or less like page protection. While the picture is invisible, the page associated with it should be editable, but will feature some kind of warning against inserting the picture in articles. The visibility date should be settable by sysops at any time. After the set time has passed, the picture should become visible and also appear in categories This feature could work as an extension to be enabled only on Commons, or in MW core if other usages are found for it.
Thank you for your interest to improve media collection on Wikimedia Commons. You're right, Freedom of Panorama is an issue, and your arguments are valid. * * * Wikimedia Commons already handles this case through Undelete in ... categories. So what you could do is: 1. upload the relevant files for an architect 2. request its deletion 3. add them in [[Commons:Category:Undelete in 2037]] page * * * Furthermore, the French and English Wikipedia allow to upload recent building pictures in their EDP (see [[meta:EDP]] to check the different copyright exemption policies of Wikimedia projects). That could also be a solution to host files there. * * * Another way to solve your problem would be to prepare an internal (ie non public) media repository to store pictures for later use. * * * With these three solutions, I wonder if your feature request is the easiest way to achieve your time capsule objective and if it would be interesting to implement this solution. (switching state to UNCO, priority: normal)
(In reply to comment #1) > Wikimedia Commons already handles this case through Undelete in ... categories. It's an acceptable compromise for the moment, but I trust automated methods more than manual ones, especially when it comes to volunteers. Plus, deleted pages cannot be edited. (In reply to comment #1) > With these three solutions, I wonder if your feature request is the easiest way > to achieve your time capsule objective and if it would be interesting to > implement this solution. Yes, I think this feature is the easiest way to achieve this objective, as it only involves a one-time edit from an administrator. Adding files in special categories or keeping them off-site (either on wp or another repository) involves human intervention both now and when the files become PD. I would like to see some feedback from the people who originally came with the idea before taking a decision, though.
