User talk:Jeff G./Fair use sandbox

Hi Jeff G., I was wondering -- have you had problems with other users re: using the sandbox to get Fair Use templates ready? For the second year in a row, I'm having my (music history) students at MIT write WP articles. This year I'd like them to write the articles in a sandbox before putting them up (too many problems with students creating the page, writing a line, hitting save to make sure the page creation worked, writing the rest of the page, hitting save, and having the changes rejected because someone already speedy deleted the one-line stub). But I know the fair-use-check squad sometimes goes around and deletes images which are only referenced by user space/sandbox articles; just curious how often this happens to your sandbox. Thanks! -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 19:43, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Myke, thank you for your question. Only bots appear to have come by; humans appear to have missed the page or to have understood the disclaimer at the top. Sorry I missed your question - I'd have seen it if you posted it to my user talk page. My current procedure for fair use images, learned through painful experience, is to have an account, draft draft draft in preview mode (including categories), save changes early and often in a sandbox, when ready with the text of the image description page and the changes to the article do the actual upload (which for some unexplained reason doesn't support preview), make sure it looks ok (fix if necessary), and then immediately make the rationale true by adding the image to the article. For truly free images, I upload them to Wikimedia Commons instead so as to share with a much larger potential userbase. Good luck with getting your students to do this well. — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 04:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a little confused after reading the above exchange. It's been my understanding that if the image isn't in the Commons, with a rational if necessary, it's not allowed, period. Am I misreading the passage about about the upload to the article/sandbox directly, allowable under certain conditions, and subsequent uploads to Commons if they're "truly free."? I've seen images in Commons that contain a bunch of rational lines attached to them....

Can you set me straight?

---Shlishke (talk) 14:49, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use has no place in Wikimedia Commons - it's not allowed as a matter of policy. A very limited number of Wikimedia Projects allow fair use of works that are still copyrighted and for which we don't have clear permission under strict controls, one of them being English Wikipedia. When thinking about uploading a particular image, I rely on that distinction for the decision of where to upload. Sometimes, my uploads still can't stay on one or the other project, but I'm getting better at picking my battles. I use this sandbox to flesh out rationales sometimes, to save good ones, and to compensate for flaky Internet connections. Other times, I just use preview. There are cases when an image is ok to use legally in one jurisdiction, but not in another, and in such cases, if the ok to use jurisdiction is the US, such images can be uploaded to Commons, with a fair use rationale for use in the the origin country or some place with broader copyright protection than the US - examples are works sourced in Iraq which are ok to use legally in the US, but not in Iraq. Also, moving forward, there may be fair use rationales still in place on images as their copyrights expire, and those images can be copied to Commons as-is. Please feel free to tear the above apart, apply my sig to parts, and reply inline. — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 11:47, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]