Commons:Deletion requests/File:Mary Gay Scanlon, official portrait, 116th Congress.jpg

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This deletion discussion is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive. You can read the deletion policy or ask a question at the Village pump. If the circumstances surrounding this file have changed in a notable manner, you may re-nominate this file or ask for it to be undeleted.

File:Mary Gay Scalon, official portrait, 116th Congress.jpg

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From Facebook. Doesn't seem to be an original US-GOV photograph. Leave DR open until shutdown is over. House website is down. Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 08:08, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Hedwig in Washington: Commons:Deletion requests/File:Mary Gay Scanlon.jpg - Alexis Jazz ping plz 08:46, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
 Delete per COM:PCP. It does look like an official photo but we should wait until House has an official photo before hosting it on Commons. Abzeronow (talk) 18:25, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
 Speedy delete Thanks @Alexis Jazz: for the information! --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 00:03, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If the source isn't an official one, same thing. The owner of the copyright deserves the rights. If lawmakers don't care, good night. --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 00:55, 24 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Except it is an official Facebook page run by her staff. Connormah (talk | contribs) 08:21, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't matter, no license there. FB is NOT a valid source for Commons. --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 08:55, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh, what is WRONG with you pedantic children? Are we just going to ignore the fact that this photograph is just as obviously an original US Government work as all of the other congressional portraits that were uploaded this year? Look above you! 20 other nearly identical photographs with the same attributions as the one you're trying to delete! The ONLY reason that we're having this discussion is because Mary Gay Scanlon's portrait (the image in question) was singled out in its original upload, having been uploaded early because she was elected in a special election before everyone else. You morons are ignoring logic and common sense in favor of rigidly and selectively enforcing rules that anybody with two brain cells to rub together would see don't apply here. Westroopnerd (talk) 00:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with @Westroopnerd: . Who the hell would doubt that this is an official congressional portrait? Y'all are throwing years of precedent right down the drain. I don't get the virtue signaling/point you all are trying to make by ignoring obvious facts to push your own superiority complex onto everyone else. Nothing more than crowd control trying to be chief of police. MB298 (talk) 00:50, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Westroopnerd: Calling other users moroons and having less than two brain cells is not acceptable and will ultimately end up in your account being blocked. Behave, stay mellow. Stop insulting others for your failure to provide simple, required information. The uploader(!) has to proof the validity of his/her claims.
@MB298: You should know better, Westroopnerd is a newbie; you are not. We are talking about the possibility of keeping the files here, not throwing down the drain anything.
Again, the proof is in the pudding: According to Commons policies, every single media here HAS TO HAVE A FREE LICENSE. Taken things from Facebook doesn't make them free. Simple. What looks similar doesn't matter -> without a proper SOURCE AND LICENSE Commons cannot host these things grabbed from the web. If it's really THAT important to you: instead of wasting time insulting others, get going and find the proper sources. Government is open for three weeks. --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 03:56, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hedwig in Washington: Listen, pal, I've got better things to do with my time than argue with the guardians of the Wikimedia file hosting sewage system. All I ask is that you apply some consistent regulations here for once. If you're deleting Scanlon's portrait, you've got about 20 other portraits to nominate for deletion. I've got better things to do with my time than defy common sense, so it looks like that role falls, again, to you. Chop chop. Westroopnerd (talk) 04:48, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To further illustrate my point, here's a random example. File:Virginia Foxx official photo.jpg. This image has been around, in good standing, since 2017 with no more than Facebook as a listed source. File:Joe_Wilson_official_congressional_photo.jpg has been around since 2017. File:French Hill official photo.jpg has been around since 2015 with the same attribution. I consider it my duty to call out inane enforcement of rules when I see it, and duty calls right now. If you're really willing to go to war over Mary Gay Scanlon, you have a lot of work ahead of you. Westroopnerd (talk) 04:55, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And, since I'm having a lot of fun here, don't get on my case for not providing the necessary source information here when I'm not even the one that uploaded this photo in the first place. Acquaint yourself with the situation at hand before you jump in and accuse people of failing to provide what's necessary for an image to be posted. Westroopnerd (talk)
First and foremost: I am not your pal, behave. So, you have better things to do? Then stop whining, add sources. Or jump in a lake. Come back when you have a few more than 100 edits. Let the grownups handle this. --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 08:50, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hedwig in Washington: Westroopnerd shouldn't have called you "pal" as he was talking to you directly, but I don't take offense to his other insults which are merely in our general direction. If someone wanted to say "the Commons community is a bunch of assholes", I wouldn't want to censor that. I don't see that as a personal attack. More importantly, I think they do have a point. Realistically, do we honestly believe there is any plausible scenario in which this isn't a work from the US government? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 13:02, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hedwig in Washington: Your hypocrisy is overwhelming. You haven't responded to a single one of my actual arguments and have instead told me to "jump in a lake" (telling someone to commit dangerous actions, real mature there) and have disqualified my opinion simply because I don't have a lot of edits. Is this really the behavior you should be exhibiting as a Commons administrator? If so, I'm glad I don't spend a lot of time in this toxic community. Everything wrong with the Wikimedia populace is on display right here. Westroopnerd (talk) 21:21, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Westroopnerd: nah, this is no display of "everything wrong with Wikimedia". I just said I basically agree with you! And so does MB298. And I may not have as many edits as Hedwig (97K, Hedwig has 129K), but I could overtake Hedwig if I wanted to. And MB298 has 161K edits! If you want to see everything wrong with Commons on one page, try my user page. It's not everything, but it's a start. If you want to see everything wrong on many pages, try the various administrator noticeboards plus archives. Hedwig is generally cool, but you were a bit rude and should have expected to get something in return. And may have caught Hedwig on a bad day. @Hedwig in Washington: to judge a user by editcount and saying they are not a grownup is beneath you. Even if they bit first. - Alexis Jazz ping plz 00:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hedwig in Washington: Let me get this straight: you took so much offense to someone calling you a moron and then "pal", saying that those actions will lead to him being blocked, and then told him to commit suicide (while knowing you could get away with it, cause of all the power and influence you "deserve")? So much for "don't bite the newbies". Here's a little advice: Don't take things so personally, and don't push away people who actually try to contribute things. Toxicity ain't a good thing. MB298 (talk) 21:35, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@MB298: how is jumping in a lake suicide? Are there sharks in the lake? Is it a lava lake? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 00:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Alexis Jazz: I could've interpreted it wrong, but, anyway, regardless of the meaning it didn't really do anything but make Hedwig look like a hypocrite. MB298 (talk) 02:14, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
 Comment http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=S001205 no photo yet, but this is where I would expect it to appear.
..or not. Because now I'm confused. Take a look at File:Virginia Foxx official photo.jpg. This is the official photo of Virginia Foxx, it's also found on https://foxx.house.gov/about/default.aspx. Now the confusing bit: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=F000450 has a very similar but clearly not identical photo in the same setting, Image courtesy of the Member. Very strange. But in that case, let's assume for the sake of argument Virginia Foxx had a friend take the photo for bioguide.congress.gov and the photo of Mary Gay Scanlon we are discussing here was also taken by a friend for use on Scanlon's official social media. Would that mean this friend would hold the copyright for this photo? I actually think.. not. Works by a US government employee as part of that person’s official duties are not entitled to copyright. As we've established before, this is also true when the US government contracts another party to create a work instead of creating it themselves. @Clindberg: I can't remember where those discussions took place.. do you? - Alexis Jazz ping plz 13:34, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Alexis Jazz: Not to insert my nose where it doesn't belong, but just as a point of clarity: some members of Congress like to update their official portraits every few years, while others have one photo taken and use it for the next 40 years (it's really up to the individual lawmaker's discretion). File:Virginia Foxx.jpg is the image scene on the Bioguide link and was almost certainly Foxx's official portrait back in 2008. She's since updated it to File:Virginia Foxx official photo.jpg. Clearly, the people that run the Bioguide either don't know or don't seem to care that she's no longer using her older portrait as her official one anymore. Which sort of makes sense when you consider that it's managed by Congress's central offices and maintains records for all current and former Representatives and Senators - they've got better things to do than hunt down every brand new portrait that's been taken. Woko Sapien (talk) 15:04, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Alexis Jazz: Also for what it's worth, Scanlon appears to be using this portrait on her Congressional Twitter account now. Woko Sapien (talk) 15:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The legislative notes for the 1978 law said that works where the government simply used contractors in lieu of having their own employees do the work should have their copyright withheld: it can be assumed that, where a Government agency commissions a work for its own use merely as an alternative to having one of its own employees prepare the work, the right to secure a private copyright would be withheld. I'm not sure what makes Facebook an invalid source in this case -- if it is under control of her staff, seems just as good there as a personal website. As for Virginia Foxx, she has been a representative since 2005 -- she could have had an official portrait done every two years, though probably less often. The other one is at File:Virginia Foxx.jpg and was uploaded in 2008. Both would appear to be official. As for this one... I probably lean  Keep as the same photo is on her twitter account, etc. The official portraits are usually not square, and it would be good to get a version without the Facebook EXIF data, so it should probably be overwritten when we get a better version of it. But I don't think there is a significant doubt that this is at least a crop of the official portrait. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In regards to the "FB is NOT a valid source for Commons" point above... free images can certainly be uploaded to and found on Facebook. I've outlined my reasons above as to why I believe this to be an official congressional portrait. Though not all of the examples above have the metadata, enough are clearly marked off in the metadata as works by the U.S. House's office of photography for us to generalize, I believe. These are officially run social media accounts by federal employees. Connormah (talk | contribs) 22:45, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
 Keep For the reasons stated above that it seems pretty obvious that this is an official Congressional portrait. Woko Sapien (talk) 14:36, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It seems like there's a general consensus that this is an official Congressional portrait. It also seems like a needless amount of scrutiny has been applied to this image in particular, compared to other Congressional portraits that are being uploaded. Could an Admin make a call on this soon? Woko Sapien (talk) 19:56, 7 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Kept: Three weeks have passed and a deletion consensus hasn't been reached. If anything, the discussion has made a stronger case for keeping - especially when you consider how much this image is being scrutinized compared to other images of members of Congress. The fact that the discussion devolved into a shouting match didn't help much either. Woko Sapien (talk) 23:34, 9 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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