Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria

The following is currently a proposed addition to the review process examining the fair use ofimages. It is not official policy or guideline, but is a suggestion being discussed.

In order for the use of an image to be considered as fair use, each of the following criteria must be met:

1. The image description page must be complete and accurate as explained at Wikipedia: Image description page. The image must:

a. be considered to be the type of image for which a public domain or free use image would be unlikely to be available, or to become available in the near future.

b. be considered to be extremely difficult or impossible to duplicate by other means, such as a Wikipedian with a camera.

c. be correctly tagged. ie the tag must correctly identify the type of image.

d. contain source information.

e. identify the copyright holder.

f. be of sufficiently low resolution. (to be determined)

g. contain a "fair use rationale" as explained in Wikipedia:Image description page. The rationale must be presented in a manner that can be clearly understood and which is relevant to the article in question. The reviewer may choose to accept a reasonably presented rationale in good faith without necessarily agreeing with each point asserted, as long as it does not contain information that the reviewer believes to be incorrect or misleading. If incorrect or misleading information is removed, and the reviewer believes that the remaining information is sufficient to provide a reasonable fair use rationale, then the rationale should be accepted. If the reviewer considers that the rationale is incomplete or does not provide sufficient detail to make a determination, then the reviewer should consider that the criterion has not been met.

2. The use of the image in the article must:

a. identify the subject of the article, or specifically illustrate relevant points or sections within the text, and must not serve a purely decorative purpose.

b. add to the quality of the article without duplicating information contained in other images.

Reviewers are urged to consider that some discretion and personal judgement is required in assessing whether certain of these requirements are met, and in these cases may choose to assume good faith, unless there is reason to doubt. Other users may be invited to review or comment if a clear determination can not be made.

If the image is used in more than one article, it is preferable that individual articles are assessed individually with a seperate template box used for each article reviewed, as future edits to a particular article may render fair use claims as void.

Template:reviewedfairuse should be added to the image description page for images that are deemed as meeting each of these criteria.

Template:reviewedfairusedisputed should be added to the image description page for all images that are deemed as potentially able to meet the fair use criteria, but which do not specifically meet each criterion at the time of review. Each criterion that is not met should be listed within the template to allow other editors and reviewers to investigate further.

As the aim of this process is to improve Wikipedia, reviewers should, where possible, attempt to elevate the standard of the fair use of the image, by making any edits they consider appropriate, where possible. For example rewording an inadequately written fair use rationale, or deleting unnecessary information, is a far more constructive action than simply deeming that a criterion has not been met.