File talk:8.35 cm PL kanon vz. 22.jpg

Replaceability

@Sturmvogel 66: This might have been a bit too hasty a nomination on my part. But it doesn't help that the rationale is so ambiguous. It should say: do any of the guns survive (meaning can someone take a free photo) and if not, what kind of photos of the gun do exist (and what are their copyright status). Guesswork should be kept at minimum, because the guideline assumes that you know whether or not free photos exist and use a non-free only when you are positive that all existing photos are non-free. It's also not intuitive to start the replaceability criterion with "Sure..." Rather, it would be wise to assess that diagrams are not free equivalents of a photo. Some other photos have the same problem with the rationales. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:04, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

I've had a problem with overenthusiastic Commons editors deleting various NFU photos that I've uploaded on the replaceability criterion over the years, so I was more than a little tired of that particular argument when I revised my rationale more than a few years ago. You, however, are making a much more cogent argument, but I have some fundamental problems with your requirements. You are asking me to prove a negative and we both know that's simply impossible. All I can do is use "to the best of my knowledge", which is that no guns survive anywhere that would allow for a modern donated photo. There are probably photos of the gun somewhere in the German archives, but I'm not aware of any in the donations that we've received from them and I'm positive that some are in various Czech archives. But, AFAIK, those are still in copyright with little chance of being released under a free copyright license.

Frankly, I find the NFU criteria a bit too strict on Commons and would prefer that images be allowed until a free image is actually located and acquired, but I'm unwilling to go through the shitstorm that I'd receive if I actually proposed that in an RfC. I think that our obligation to inform the reader as to what something looks like trumps the current interpretation of this gray-area of copyright law, but I believe that my views are in a distinct minority. (Despite occasional discussions of copylost.) In fact, I've given up on uploading NFU photos for a long time because of all the grief that I've gotten over the years; it just hasn't been worth the hassle. But I'll revise the rationale on this photo and hope that it suffices.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:26, 29 September 2016 (UTC)