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"Elementary, my dear Watson, we're in the Public Domain."
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[edit] What is image sleuthing?
There are many thousands of images on Wikipedia. Most are tagged so that we know where they come from and how they are licensed, but some are mysteries, tagged {{unverified}}, {{no source}}, {{unknown}} {{no license}} or not tagged at all, with no obvious way to tell whether we can legally use them or not. Eventually, if we can't find out the source and copyright status of an image, we'll have to delete it. But some of these images are useful or attractive, and are begging to be rescued. That's where the image sleuths come in. The sleuths use any methods they have—from Google Image Search to uploader e-mails to secret informants met at midnight—to discover the source and copyright status of an image.
[edit] So how does this work?
Below, you will see up to 15 images with comments to the left of each. Sleuths set to work tracking down the origin, copyright and licence terms associated with each image. If there's general agreement that an image is acceptable – available under free licences, in the public domain, or legitimately a fair use – then you can move all discussion to the image's description page and remove the image from the list below. If the image can't be certified acceptable even after a week of searching, then image should be moved into the deletion process. (Sleuths often try to find suitable free or public domain replacements.)
If an image has been listed for over a week, or if the status of the image has been determined beyond reasonable doubt, then anyone can remove the image from the list and either tag it or list it on ifd. If there are fewer than 15 images below, anyone can add a new one. Some good places to look are Wikipedia:Untagged images and Category:Wikipedia files with unknown source.
If you do move an image to the deletion process, please always contact the uploader of each image, on their talk page: do not make the assumption that they are not contactable. More generally, contacting users does sometimes elicit the information and so is considered a good thing.
[edit] Contributors
| The following Wikipedians have signed up to be image sleuths. |
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[edit] The assignments
