Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/templates

someone needs to update MediaWiki:Licenses

Fixed stamp, I think that's the only one that is wrong now? - cohesion 19:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

On tagging - solely for our benefit or also for downstream users?

As I understand we are here to make Wikipedia's use of non-free content machine readable. Any content license that in a way that restricts any one of the four freedoms [1] [2] is classified as the same: non-free. Should we, however, provide additional tags for images which are licensed under a "less" non-free license? That is, should we delete {{noncommercial}}, {{fairusewithNC}}, {{Mozilla-logo}} and instead replace them with whichever {{non-free foo}} template is appropriate? I see benefit for downstream users in classifying images more precisely according to their licenses. It is, however, no benefit for us and, arguably, we should not need to concern ourselves with it. Thoughts? --Iamunknown 19:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Darn I thought I replied here before, but I guess I didn't save it. My only view on this matter is that we need to avoid creating the appearance that we consider such releases an improvement, and of course, that the additional templates are named with the non-free prefix so we can find the darn things. :) --Gmaxwell 02:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

{{fairusewithNC}} exists to stop people taging the darn things with an NC tag as well as a fair use tag. It is also useful in that it allows us to keep tack of the NC stuff people want to use in case someone forgets about the NC clause.Geni 21:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Need for the rename

I see a bot is replacing things like {{albumcover}} with {{Non-free album cover}}. apparently the magical properties of template redirects are not widely known...sheesh. --pfctdayelise (talk) 02:37, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Please read the discussion here. The changes are required to make the licensing status actually machine readable from the wikitext, and avoid the current insane mess where it's impossible to tell if an image is non-free without the mediawiki parser and a healthy dose of good luck. This is also explained on the project page here...

It's also the case that the old names were creating a large amount of confusion since people though things like {{game screenshot}} were something you put on all gameshots even ones from free software games.--Gmaxwell 02:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I 100% fail to understand how categories are not as machine-readable as template names. And I doubt that if the category system is confused (ie: it is not the case that all free templates provide free categories that are in the tree headed by Cateogry:Free licenses or similar, and same with non-free licenses & Category:Non-free licenses), I suspect it would be trillions less work to update the categories then to edit thousands of images.

If the names create confusion then by all means move a template and publicise its new, explicit name, but I don't see a reason at all to go and manually change all the old names to the new ones.

And it's not necessary to patronise me, in a heading, no less. --pfctdayelise (talk) 14:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, the categories are next to useless. Category:Screenshots of software is under Category:Fair use images and Category:Screenshots of public domain software and Category:Free screenshots are under Category:Screenshots of software. Even if the categories were properly done you would not be able to tell from the text of the image page alone without a lot of work (they come from templates) unless we start substing image licenses templates (or a stub that includes the category and the template). If you are just working from the xml dumps this change is useful (non-wiki mirrors/static html dumps/whatever), not so much for someone with a full mediawiki installation though. Kotepho 15:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

One bad example doesn't mean they're next to useless. As I said, it would be tons easier to just fix the categories than rewrite 400,000 or however many pages using perfectly fine templates.

Categories are available from query.php (see e.g. Image:Gckbox.jpg --> [3]), and according to m:Data dumps, the categorylinks table is available in the dumps. As far as I can see it is an equally "machine-readable" approach. --pfctdayelise (talk) 16:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

But it's not just one bad example... we see that sort of drift everywhere our category system is used. It has already been shown that the category system is a scale free network.. it is not a hierarchy, so it is not a classification of ideas. It is useful for many things, but it's not useful for reliable classification. --Gmaxwell 18:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Pfc, I'm sorry for being sharp with you but I'm more than a little tired of your heavy-handed ignorance. You seem always so willing to wade in and tell other people how to do things that they have worked for months on without becoming well informed yourself. I think that if not for the fact that among all the uninformed statements you throw out there are a number of really good ideas, you would be ignored almost entirely.

1. It's a fact that our old template names are not perfectly fine: there is no reason for someone to expect that a name like "{{albumcover}}" is actually an indicator of license status rather than something you put on all albumcovers regardless of their licensing status. We see problems created by this over and over again, ... and if you haven't seen it, I'm not sure why.. because the problems even spill over onto commons sometimes (things like from the library of congress as a license status). We see this same naming problem with virtually all of the non-free templates and with a few of the free templates.
2. Using a table of 47 categories I can still only identify on the order of 80% of the non-free images. The category names are constantly shifting. It is a losing battle to try to track categories. Anyone can create a new one at any time, and there is no straightforward way to make sure that it gets listed anywhere. Also, the standard Wikipedian aggressiveness against the perceived problem of 'over-categorization' (a problem you are very much a causative agent behind on commons) further exacerbates this issue because as soon as we did manage to get all non-free images into a single non-free images category, we could expect someone to immediately run around breaking it into 1000 subcategories which will be impossible to track.
3. Categorylinks table is not always correct: If there is a database burp while a page is being purged the links table changes can and are lost.
4. Categorylinks is not kept historically. In order to reliably find out if an image was originally claimed as non-free but later changed would require you to invoke a highly modified copy of the mediawiki parser on each and every revision. The mediawiki parser is slow and a large amount of software. Requiring a scan on the revision to find the right template version would make it much slower.
5. Changes to the license status of an image, at least on the level of free vs non-free content, should always be obvious as an actual edit to the image page. Right now with subject named template we can and do change the template to re-class large bodies of images. This is sneaky, misleading, and wrong-headed at least if done as anything other than a very temporary measure. By baking the non-free status right into the template name we avoid encouraging people to do wrong things.

Adjusting the template names neatly addresses all the important issues, and the only downside is that it requires editing a bunch of image pages. This is editing work that can be trivially and invisibly done once by a bot. Our failure to make license status templates look like license status templates was a mistake... we didn't know better then, but we do now. There is no reason not to fix it. Doing so doesn't prevent us from fixing the categories too, in fact it will make doing so easier because we will be able to set simple machine auditable rules like "all templates whos name begins with non-free must add a category from ...".

I could probably go on all afternoon on this, but most of what I have said has been clearly covered in prior discussions. Please put your preconceived notion of how things should work down for a while and listen to the things being said by folks who have worked extensively with this data. --Gmaxwell 17:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow, Greg. It's lucky I occasionally agree with you to save me from complete irrelance, isn't it? Throwing in a dig at my Commons work (a problem you are very much a causative agent behind on commons) while you're at it too. nice.

most of what I have said has been clearly covered in prior discussions. I read through the discussion that was linked to as explaining why this was necessary. In fact that discussion doesn't have any details about the merits of changing categories vs changing wikitext on all image pages. Half of the points you raised are only raised here. So which discussions were they? Because don't you think other people curious about this massive bot action, who like find out about it via their watchlist, might like to know?

Some of the things you say are equally true about templates as they are about categories, e.g. It is a losing battle to try to track categories. Anyone can create a new one at any time, and there is no straightforward way to make sure that it gets listed anywhere. switch 'categories' for 'templates'. Some are not, such as history of categorylinks.

I thought we just disagreed, as we have about many things, because in a wiki there's many ways to do the same thing, achieve the same goal, but we both have the wiki's best interests at heart so that's fine. But it's seems it's something more like: go away, stop showing an interest, because we know what's best and you, dear pleb, don't even need to know the full reasoning behind it. I feel like disagreeing with you is my personal character flaw. I think that if not for the fact that among all the uninformed statements you throw out there are a number of really good ideas, you would be ignored almost entirely. Was that supposed to be a back-handed compliment? I have never felt so humiliated in all my Wikimedia editing time. It would be one thing for someone I don't know or admire to tell me I was irrelevant. What a mistake to think that we were peers in WORKING TO IMPROVE WIKIMEDIA, and treat you accordingly. Actually, you're WORKING TO IMPROVE WIKIMEDIA and just tolerating having ignorant dissenters like me around.

Irrelevantly yours, pfctdayelise (talk) 00:46, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I wrote a nice counter to some of the statements written above... along with a little bit of apology... but after consideration I believe that it would be better for our ability to work together to send it privately. I want to state that while I disagree with PFC's positions on a number of things, and have some disputes about her style.. I do respect and appreciate her work. She is not currently, nor do I expect her to ever be irrelevant. --Gmaxwell 01:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem with using categories and all the other things is that they are not accessible directly from the wikitext. Ideally, an end user could tell if the image were nonfree merely by examining the wikitext on the image page. Getting the categories requires significant additional work -- at least one additional query for a live user, and either additional tables from the dump or a full implementation of the wikitext parser for a static dump user. On top of that, the category system is completely scrambled. Consistency may be a hobgoblin, but this is a case where we want the hobgoblin. Kelly Martin (talk) 16:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

(ec) The Non-free foo templates will make database queries regarding non-free media usage on Wikipedia much easier (e.g. fair use on userpages, number of inline uses per image, etc.). --Iamunknown 16:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Not really. If you go by templates (and some people do subst them so you would miss some) there is not much difference between 'find all non-free tags and name them 'Non-free foo and 'find all non-free templates and put them in 'Category:Non-free image copyright tags. Standardizing all of the category names to 'Non-free foo' would be useful though or having every non-free image in 'Category:Non-free images' directly. Both of these ways of doing it have the advantage of not having to edit 350k images. Kotepho 16:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

They shouldn't be substituted. I wonder if there is a way to indicate that they should not be (either by putting them in a category if they are substituted - I wouldn't know how to do that - or by having some large red text show up - wouldn't know how to do that either). --Iamunknown 16:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

We should also rename the cats for consistency sake, but since almost nothing has been substed, it's a pretty trivial matter of changing the templates. The simple way to address the subst issue is to teach orphan bot that if an image doesn't use the license templates correctly that it's unlicensed... And of course, a license status template should never be substed. --Gmaxwell 17:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd say i've unsubsted something like 100 of them by cleaning out Category:Image copyright tags of images occasionally. I have no idea why anyone does it. Could you run a list of all pages in the image namespace that match say.. /<\/?(no)?include(only)?|\{\{#/? I don't normally do text. On orphanbot, it would make more sense to just add a category and have humans deal with it. Slapping something that says there isn't a license when there is one is only going to confuse people. Kotepho 18:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Actualy the substing problem is currently taken care of by making all non-free templates transclude the {{Non-free media}} template. If someone subst for example {{Non-free logo}} on an image page then the regex querry would still find it because {{Non-free media}} would then appear as part of the substed template code. It's not it's primary purpose (I think the point is to be eable to just do a "whatlinkshere" against the image namespace on the template and get a complete list of all non-free images in one operation.), but "subst protection" is a handy side effect. --Sherool (talk) 13:14, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

And not an accidental one... :) In any case, people shouldn't be substing these and we should probably trap all of the non-free templates so that if you subst them they turn into deletion notices+Non-free media... I figure that once we're done getting all the pages converted I'll do a fair amount of template consistency work, and I'll setup a trap like that. --Gmaxwell 14:30, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the redirects

So what is the plan for the redirects? Just keep them around for a while and then delete when people seems to no longer use them? Personaly I think converting them to "soft redirects" with a message along the lines of "to ensure machine readability of non-free image tags please use {{Non-free ***}} instead" in some suitable "warningy" box. Categorize as superceted tags/historic or whatever and protect. If we just delete them there is a high risk of recreation, and the explanation would help educating people who do not understand why we could not just leave the redirects as they where. --Sherool (talk) 15:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea. Might want to get together a template for it. Note that I have already deleted a few redirects, so check my deletion log. --Cyde Weys 15:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

So long as we have a bot running for a while quickly converting them to the correct template it doesn't much matter. I like the idea of leaving them be and only deleting them when they are finally dead. --Gmaxwell 17:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

exeperence with getting people to stop useing other templates suggests that a firm "stop useing this" will be required.Geni 21:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I have already seen 2 people revert cydebot with edit summaries indicating they were confused. I can't find them now, but they were new users... So yes, we will need something. - cohesion 00:25, 24 April 2007 (UTC) I should say, the edit summary indicated to me they were confused, they weren't like "help me what is going on" but more like "this stupid bot is going berzerk" :| - cohesion 00:26, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Well for a rather extream example {{AutoReplaceable fair use}} should never have been used by people but it had been from time to time until I turned it into a message saying "don't use this".Geni 15:02, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Categorization vs per rationale tags

I think we should probably have a centralized discussion about the merits of tags that categorize versus tags per rationale. It's the subject of a lot of discussion on the front page, and it affects a lot of templates, so. What do people think? The two extremes are {{non-free wii fps virtualconsole screenshot}} or {{non-free screenshot}} maybe with categories. Or the "Iamunknown" option of having specialized templates that pull content from a single centralized standard template, but allow inclusion of specific categories. (I personally lean towards that). - cohesion 00:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

License template seperation

Would it not perhaps be useful to separate license templates from other templates? For example license templates could be moved into a psuedo- (or true) namespaces "License". So you could have {{License:Screenshot}} etc. That might also improve machine readability, because anything starting with {{License: would be a license, whereas going from wikitext now, things starting with {{ may or may not be licenses. (They might be {{created with inkscape}}, for example.) If, as the current aim seems to be, all licenses start with the words "free" or "non-free", that will be a way to distinguish between license and non-license templates, but you're relying on that convention being followed. Maybe having a separate License: namespace would be a more explicit convention? --pfctdayelise (talk) 03:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Well you could say that the use of the license namespace too requires the convention be followed. ... Making sure the convention is followed actually won't be a problem, ... bots will detect any image that isn't marked with an identified free or non-free license template and mark it for deletion. We already have that today (see User:OrphanBot) but keeping track of the existing templates is a problem (Carnildo says he has about 300 regular expressions to grab all the forms of non-free template that people use). Adding a license namespace would be fine, but I don't see the driver for it so long as we have something consistent to match on... And we'll still need something consistent for non-freeness testing to match on, since non-free licenses are treated very differently for us. So we end up with {{License:Non-free album cover}}. I don't object to that but it is even more additional typing and I expect some people would oppose it on that basis. --Gmaxwell 04:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, having a separate namespace means it would be just another convention, but I have a feeling people pay more attention to namespace separations than naming conventions. Maybe not.

I was not thinking of something like "License:Non-free album cover", since an album cover does not explicitly confer any type of license, and if we're going to be strict about names it wouldn't make sense to put non-license designations in a License namespace.

I was thinking more of have a tag {{album cover}} or now {{non-free album cover}} if you like, and within in that it has "bla bla this is an album cover, fair use etc" and also {{License:Copyrighted}} or {{License:All rights reserved}}. Eh, I guess re-users would still have to use Special:ExpandTemplates or something to get that info, unless we started substing such templates, which I guess we won't.

My point was kind of: isn't it more machine readable to have something that is explicitly reserved to mark copyright/license status, rather than something that it used to mark multiple , distinct meanings? (Categories and templates are both multifunctional in this way.) --pfctdayelise (talk) 04:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

But thats part of the problem for the "fair use" templates.. they are used to convey the argument for fair use status... which does differ somewhat for different content types. I argued against doing it that way, but a lot of people are very heavily invested in it. Breaking it up would require putting multiple things on the page and I get the sense that it wouldn't fly. Can we do the license ns thing on commons? :) --Gmaxwell 05:53, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why not. It seems like a useful way to clearly (machine readably) distinguish between licenses and other kinds of tags. Another way would be to use some different kind of wikisyntax, but that's a lot more work to implement. --pfctdayelise (talk) 06:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Mascot template?

I asked some time ago on Wikipedia:Image copyright tags and got no answer, and I went ahead with a decision of my own, but I'd like to see if anyone here has any thought - what tag should be used for a picture of an organisation's mascot? Example: Image:Animania mascots.png. I finally chose (what used to be) {{logo}}, but I was wavering between that, something like {{CopyrightedCharacter}}, and something more generic. Thoughts? Confusing Manifestation 06:46, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, sorry for asking this while the page is still more working on adding the "non free" tag and not on the general concept of the templates. Confusing Manifestation 06:47, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, WP:CSD#I7 spesificaly mention "Any image or media with a clearly invalid fair-use tag (such as a {{logo}} tag on a photograph of a mascot) may be deleted at any time.(...)". So tagging such photos with the "logo" template is probably not advicable... I actualy think {{statue}} is the best fit for things like mascots (I think a macot costume could fit into the "(...)other three-dimensional work of art(...)" criteria, though the tag could maybe be made more generic to cover all photos of 3 dimentional copyrighted works (so everyting from statues, action figures, and people dressed up as Darth Vader and what not), rater than focusing purely on statues as it does now... --Sherool (talk) 07:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem with that is that not all mascots are like sporting mascots, where the (or at least a) main depiction is in the form of a person in a costume. For a lot of organisations, the mascot appears only as a drawn character, usually cartoon-like. For examples, see the Animania mascots linked above, the Linux mascot Tux, or even our own (kind of semi-unofficial) mascots like Wikipede and Miwiki at Wikipedia:Mascot and Wikipedia:Wikipe-tan. So {{statue}} isn't going to cut it. I'm pretty sure fair use would cover them, since there's no free alternative (even if someone else drew them, it would be a derivative piece of fanart and hence a copyvio in itself). Confusing Manifestation 00:01, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Well Tux and Wikipe-tan are both free licensed so we should not be mixing them in with non-free licensed regardles of how we tag them. As for non-free 2D mascots I think the "Character artwork" tag covers that nicely. We should just tweak it's text slightly to either mention mascots too, or generalise it to just say "illustration of a copyrighted fictional character" or some such. --Sherool (talk) 14:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, I should have clarified that I specifically didn't mention Tux and Wikipe-tan in my original statement for that very fact. So, guess I'll go for a modified Character artwork tag. Confusing Manifestation 22:43, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Non-free prefix

Is it realy needed? This prefix is complicating the memorization of templates' names. This will enable automated tools to detect such images by ... "\{\{[Nn]on-free" What's the problem in detecting such images? For example, in Ru-Wiki there is category ru:Category:Изображения:Добросовестное использование:Все (all fair-use images), where FU-license tags duplicate the FU-imges, and bots are working with this category, not with templates. Alex Spade 15:32, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Sure, see above in my rant to PFC. Also, putting it in the tags helps educate people... Once they all have it it should take very little work to remember (all non-free tags begin with non-free, which also helps you find them in special:allpages). For those who don't want to memory ANYTHING, the upload form dropdown has options for the templates. Since we can now make more upload forms on enwiki we could expand the selector to support all approved tags if we wanted to.--Gmaxwell 16:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Actualy Special:Prefixindex/Template:Non-free makes ie even easier, unlike Special:Allpages it will only list the ones that start with Non-free :D --Sherool (talk) 14:31, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Awesome tip. I'll have to remember it. And in response to the original parent: yes, this is necessary. I don't think it complicates anything because having "Non-free" at the beginning of every template name only requires the memorization of a single new rule. --Cyde Weys 01:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:HelloProject-Photo

I just ran through this strange variation of promophoto: {{HelloProject-Photo}}. Is it really needed? --Abu badali ^(talk) 21:47, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it's not, and it's being upmerged shortly. The more we get into the details of this Great Renaming the more confident I am about its importance. There are so many people who don't understand the distinction between licensing and categorization, and it will be good to clear it up once and for all. --Cyde Weys 01:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:Image template notice

There are many categories (~250) that are using {{Image template notice}}. Some of the transclusions will have to be updated, for obvious reasons. --- RockMFR 15:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I've seen cydebot run around changing links to the templates on talk pages and such so I asume it will get around to updating these too in due time... --Sherool (talk) 06:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Input request

User:ESkog is thinking about removing the standard rationale from the non-free templates, and is requesting input here. His thinking is that since we require a real rationale we shouldn't include a partial rationale in the template itself. Thoughts? - cohesion 04:00, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that sounds good. --Cyde Weys 15:13, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't like this change. Anyone who knows me from wikipedia or commons will know I'm a great proponent of free use. However, it seems we are getting caught up in doing something useless here. This template could have on fair use rationale that applies to all logos that use it. Something like: "This is an unreplaceable logo that is the main subject of the article {{{1}}} and is therefore believed to be fair use when hosted in the US by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation." What sort of source would you need? The logo always comes from the company whose article it's used in so there might not even be a need for the parameter but if there is then it should be mandatory. I don't see any rationale other than this that would allow a logo to be used on Wikipedia so why over-bureaucrify things for users who just want to upload a logo. Is it to deter them from uploading fair use\logos? Probably, and if there was a discussion regarding abolishing fair use, I would probably be in support of that but using this method to prevent users from using fair use is just, well, annoying. Yonatan ^talk 07:05, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

You could have said that in 1/10th the words. ;) The "boilerplate" reasonings are often abused really badly, but as Yonatan says they do have some use. We should find the middle path. --Gmaxwell 07:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I seem to have a habit of overelaborating. :P Yonatan ^talk 03:22, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

you broke our categorization

Categorization for the subcategories of Category:Webcomic media have been broken by the move to {{non-free comic}}, which does not cover webcomics. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 03:22, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Question on Art template

Are instances of the {{art}} automatically {{non-free 2D art}}? Was wondering specifically about this one. It seems like it should be {{PD-art-US}}, although not PD worldwide. Gimmetrow 04:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, if someone have incorectly tagged a PD artwork with the fair use "art" tag then the bot will not fix this. It just renames the tag, hopeully the new name will help avoid people applying it incorectly in the future. --Sherool (talk) 06:43, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Template:Non-free historic image

Does a fair use rationale need to be given in addition to this template? If so, we might wanna make this clear on the actual template. Yonatan ^talk 22:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I think yes. Some times the free alternative for historic image can be easily found. Alex Spade 07:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Surely. The rationale must explain what's the event in question, why is this considered a notable event (with sources) and the most important: Why do we need to illustrate this event. I.E., how this image helps in the readers understanding of the event.

For instance, any unfree image of a famous basketball match depicts a unique historic event, but it doesn't mean we need to used such image to talk about the match in question. --Abu badali ^(talk) 13:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I am rather puzzled...

... as to why the various specific tags are being upmerged to a single non-informative tag, rather than simply moved to "Non-free [old title]." Is there a rationale for this? -- Visviva 07:11, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Fewer templates makes it easier to maintain and keep track of them, also these are copyright tags, not "images related to <foo>" tags. For free licenses and public domain images it makes sense to create "source based" tags (to make people know we can find more free images at said source or just for attribution purposes) but even there we don't have "by subject" tags, "GFDL sport images", "CC-BY-SA images of cars" etc would make little sense, just like there is no point in seperating between non-free screenshots from a Wii game and a Commodore 64 game, it's all just non-free screenshots. Any extra categorisation should be done manualy independanty of the copyright status (though mixing free and non-free images in the same cat should generaly be avoided). --Sherool (talk) 07:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

But just as the source or nature of the work may affect the grounds for believing something to be GFDL/PD/etc., so may the source and nature of a work impact the grounds for believing its use to be fair. My comment was is particularly in reference to {{non-free govt-logo}} ... for 99% of these it would be possible to write a standard fair-use rationale right into the template (although I realize it's not considered kosher to do so): something like "official low-resolution logo of X, retrieved from official website of X, used to illustrate the article on X. As a unique and possibly trademarked work, cannot be replaced. Does not compete with X's use, as X's use of this symbol is not commercial." ... or something of that nature. I'm not an FU expert, but this seems like useful information. -- Visviva 09:13, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Image:Seal of Freetown, Massachusetts.gif

Could you please make a new template, say "non-free seal" for government seals? The uploader has been edit warring with your bot, and I agree they have a point, government seals are not really the same as organization logos. -Nard 15:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)