User:Donald Trung/The unfair deletion of File:Thai-binh-hung-bao.gif
File:Thai-binh-hung-bao.gif is (sic) an image of a Ðinh Dynasty era Thái Bình Hưng Bảo (太平興寶) cash coin that was included in the English Wikipedia article Vietnamese cash between 2007 and 2017 as "[[File:Thai-binh-hung-bao.gif|thumb|320px|First Vietnamese cash:<br>Thai Binh Hung Bao 太平興寶<br>Đinh Dynasty (968-981)]]" until it was deleted with the message "Removing "Thai-binh-hung-bao.gif", it has been deleted from Commons by JuTa because: No permission since 2 February 2016." The same day it was transferred from the English Wikipedia to Wikimedia Commons.
The reason I decided to simply undelete the file 📁 myself without going through the hassle that is undeletion requests (UR's) is very simple, because this is an uncontroversial undeletion of what should be considered a controversial deletion. It's undeletion is part of a series of uploads related to the "Toda images" of User:Donald Trung/Vietnamese cash coins on Wikimedia Commons and a batch upload (Commons:Batch uploading/Illustrations of Vietnamese cash coins from Ed Toda's "Annam and its minor currency".), in fact this very image was the first image uploaded in this series. I've complained many times about the harmful "spam-fighter" culture on Wikimedia projects that prevent linking to good sources and the "Spamphobia" that sees any link addition as "an obvious COI" and the subsequent deletion of good sources from articles because it while preventing anyone from sourcing subsequent work in those fields, but the "tough on spam"-mentality is simply a symptom of a larger deletionist agenda that plagues all Wikimedia projects and harms these projects more than it benefits them. "File:Thai-binh-hung-bao.gif" is a paramount example of "Deletionism in action", first of all the image was uploaded to the English Wikipedia by the owner of Art-Hanoi, the website where the image was originally hosted on so the claim that they would exercise copyright © over it is preposterous, in fact he confessed to me that he quit using Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons because "they kept deleting my images" so he only uploads great educational content to his own website now. The other reason why this deletion is 100% unjustified is very simple, it's a scan of a public domain image, the original cash coin may be from 968 which may be irrelevant here, but the image was published in 1882 in Shanghai, the Qing Dynasty which would make its copyright © expired for a long period of time ⌚. The deletion of File:Thai-binh-hung-bao.gif was so rushed that one might even suspect the deleter to have not simply clicked on the link 🔗 listed at "Source" to read that in fact this image is in the public domain, why else would an image be speedy deleted on the same day that it was transferred from the English Wikipedia to Wikimedia Commons?
To me the worst part of this all is that this image was so easily deleted without review, non-admins can't scrutinise it because only the select few admins of this project can view the original file 📁, and the deleting admin did not check the link 🔗 at all (one can only assume as it was clearly stated to be a public domain image on Art-Hanoi.com), which means that there are countless of free educational images that were deleted (and are still being deleted) from Wikimedia Commons without scrutiny. This culture of deletionism has to stop 🤚🏻.
File:Thai-binh-hung-bao.gif in (the) Italian Wikipedia[edit]
The Italian Wikipedia article w:it:Van vietnamita is a direct translation of w:en:Vietnamese cash initiated on "21 gen 2008" by Carlomorino which also included a local version of the file 📁 now located at w:it:File:Thai-binh-hung-bao.gif which includes the message "NON TRASFERIRE SU COMMONS SENZA ADEGUATO VAGLIO Questo file probabilmente non è compatibile con le linee guida di Wikimedia Commons e il suo trasferimento deve quindi essere accuratamente esaminato perché potrebbe portare alla cancellazione del file. Se il file fosse già presente su Commons non cancellare questa copia. Do not move this file to Wikimedia Commons without adequate review!" Because it was deleted here prior, and the original English Wikipedia description "caricato su en:wiki da w:User:Pyvanet con lo stesso nome e la seguente descrizione Thai Binh Hung Bao 太平興寶 (968-981) (from art-hanoi.com) {{PD-link|http://www.art-hanoi.com/collection}}".
As of February 25th, 2017 there still is a local file on the Italian Wikipedia and I would strongly advocate against removing it.
In a nutshell[edit]
An image that's in the public domain that was uploaded by the owner of the source website got deleted on the same day it was transferred to Wikimedia Commons from the English Wikipedia (where it was for 9 (nine) years) within a day, my (Donald Trung's) undeletion of this file 📁 is uncontroversial, it's deletion should be considered controversial and Wikimedia Commons should have a way for non-admins to review bad deletions such as these. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (Talk 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 14:35, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
