Yes, the great Wikimedia Debacle of 2021 is over. See this post for the history up to now.
Here's the latest, and final I suppose, exchange:
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Comment Prominent public figures are certainly common targets of satire; Wikimedia Commons has many caricatures and editorial cartoons that do that. Note that these are generally from publications &/or by notable artists. It seems to me that you are manipulating free licensed digital media to create your own original editorial cartoons/caricatures. All well and good, but are they within Commons scope "Must be realistically useful for an educational purpose"? I think that's the matter up for debate. If your works were used in publications or major news source websites, for example, or if you yourself became a well known editorial cartoonist, I think they would be considered solidly in scope. As it is, your uploads seem more like personal art shared here for self-promotion. As such, social media seems a better place for them than Wikimedia Commons. Cheers, -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 20:10, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
Infrogmation:
Thanks for the response.
To me, responses from yourself and other admins seem to boil down to one fundamental objection: Images that are manipulated in some way only have educational value if that manipulation was made by someone or some thing that is well-known, or at least historically established within culture. I don't agree with that.
Regardless, I will concede the argument because, after all, this is your sandbox and not mine. I will continue to upload non-manipulated photographs to Wikimedia (I'm particularly fond of architectural sculpture) because I like what is being achieved here a lot. I will, however, reserve my not-famous-enough-to-be-relevant political commentary imagery for Flickr and the Creative Commons via that route. https://www.flickr.com/photos/shoes_on_wires/ if anyone is interested.
One final note. I think it's possible to achieve self-promotion through public service, and I don't see anything wrong with that. I guess self-effacing public service is more noble and "pure," but at the end of the day I think the goal is simply more public service, however one gets there.
Btw, "Infrogmation" is a hilarious handle.
Thanks.
Justus Whythealgarve (talk) 12:51, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
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So there you go. A big part of me letting this go so easily is that I did finally buckle under and pay the 78 bucks to Flickr for a pro account, so I can start uploading there again. When uploading images to Flickr, you get to set the license option for that image, and public domain is one of those options. Expect to see me throwing a lot of images into the public domain bin.