Issues of image copyright info on en.wikipedia[edit]
We have a horrible problem with untagged, insufficiently referenced images on en.wikipedia. There seem to be multiple, interconnected problems.
A major lack of sources for images
Images without tags, that allow them to be easily grouped by license
Users who upload images without sources or license info
Difficulty blocking Users who do this
The policies requiring that all images have a source and a acceptable license are a mess - they are spread over many pages, inconsistent, and confusing. Users often claim they can't understand what needs to be done, and this may well be true.
Due to the confused docs in regards to sourcing images, and the fact that people are lazy, there are many images without source information uploaded every hour.
The policy on harassing, reminding, demanding and blocking people who upload images without sources is also in disarray. There is a sentence in Wikipedia:Copyrights that claims "In extreme cases" people can be blocked for uploading copyvios, but that's not very clear, nor applicable to images simply missing info, rather than being known copyright violations.
The main reason to become more hard-nosed about images without sources is that we have lots of people happy to upload images - we are not suffering from too few uploads. Rather we are suffering from massive legal uncertainty over unknown images, and lots of obviously unacceptable images. Making it harder to upload images with insufficient information, and making the penalties higher, is an important step.
