Sorry I am late to the conversation, but I have been reading everything. Here are my thoughts.

First, this is an excellent and well thought out discussion. I really like that we are discussing policies and actions more thoroughly on this site. It makes us better.

Second, the most important reason we should not have fan art on this site is because it is a copyright violation. Fan art is a copyright violation, not because the artist doesn't have Marvel's permission (although that is part of it), but rather that the user who uploaded it most likely did not seek the artists' permission to post it. Without the permission of the artist, no one has the right to post images from them.

Using Marvel-published art is different because we are using the artwork "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research." (17 U.S.C § 107) It is why we post images from comics, but not every full page of art from an entire comic book (a subject we should talk about later).

There are plenty of sites on the Internet for hosting fan art with artists' permission. We are not one of them. We don't need fan art images and we don't need any of the categories. Our policy should explain you can only use art that you have created or you have permission for.

Third, the bot can see tags, "links on page", and categories, so if it is tagged as Fan Art or in a Fan Art Gallery, the bot can catch it.

Fourth, we certainly should let users know that we will be enforcing Wikia's existing policy more aggressively. I understand that some users may lose images that they like, but if they don't have the rights to those images, they cannot host them on our site, whether or not they are in their User Galleries. To avoid being swept up by the bot, users can move the image or change the tag, but if we tell them that, they might hide some copyrighted images which will defeat the purpose of this work.

Since i'm also going through all images that currently do no follow naming conventions and are unlicensed (see Thread:910970), I will manually go through The User Images category and see what is allowed and what isn't. I'll air on the side of caution and delete anything even remotely suspicious, I'm assuming we're also not allowed to host images like the 3 found here User:Perryrogers, since they're not fan art and the user is just using them for his page.

This seems to confirm my fear that even licensed fan art in user galleries, as well as the user galleries themselves, were indeed at risk from deletion by a bot run.

I've changed the license to "Public Domain" and the type to "User Image" on both File:User-AnnabellRice.jpg and File:User-AnnabellRice Power Grid.png, as well as noted the artist's permission in the description; meanwhile, Copeinator123 previously changed User:AnnabellRice/Gallery to "User" type for me.

Are they all now safe from potential deletion?

That is true. If an image is tagged as Fan Art, it will be picked up. But the changes that were made to yours have kept your images and gallery safe.

Annabell's Gallery isn't here, but ADour's still is

Annabell's images aren't here

Okay, I've written the following that we can use as an announcement to highlight this decision, I just need to know how long a window we'll be giving before the purge begins?

Anyway, I'd suggest either May 15th or June 1st as the deadline.

I was thinking a month so June 1st

This discussion is becoming even more confusing but I'll try one more time.

First of all, drop those irrational fears about the bot run. A bot don't do anything we haven't decided. It's a responsibility of its operator to make sure that a bot does what's agreed upon. If a bot can't be programmed to that, it shouldn't be started and for technical side of things, bot can tell a difference between namespaces (in AWB:List, Filter...) Of course bot operators can make mistakes but we are working on wiki environment so we just undo unwanted edits. We all have undelete button, right?

Now for synopsis of our discussion: We have agreed to delete fan art galleries from main namespace. There hasn't been any highlighted announcement because Annabell and Copeinator have asked to give users time to change categories of images or "protect" images. Copeinator has proposed more detailed workflow (one month delete tagged, one month before deleting unused images) which nobody has commented on. I don't see a reason to wait but haven't commented on it because I don't oppose it either. Change of categorizing of fan art images from Fan Art Images to User Images was originally proposed by me as an alternative to deleting all fan art which few editors have proposed. Because they have disappeared from this discussion, I have also withdrawn that proposal. However, Copeinator and Annabell are still talking like we would delete category Fan Art Images. That's why I haven't been able to make an announcement of policy change which still demands to mark fan art to image template. If you can make an announcement about that policy change, please do. I don't have any objections to waiting times or categorization. But if you think that fan art should be in category User Images, please edit the policy also.

We have not agreed to delete fan art images. As I mentioned earlier, few editors suggested it but when fan art images were defended, they haven't responded. As it's possible that I've misunderstood them and they actually meant also just deleting galleries, we should disregard those posts for now. If someone wants to propose deletion of all fan art images, it should be done on an another thread, because this one has become too cluttered and uncertain. Also we haven't decided anything about deletion of unused images, we have a separate discussion for that.

Do you think that my synopsis on our discussion is correct?

Artful: I have disregarded your posts from my synopsis because I couldn't fitted them in. That first post had some great insights about licensing and copyrights and I really hope that everyone pays an attention to them. But you seem to think that we have already decided to delete all fan art from the site which isn't the case. Annabell and I have both opposed banning and deleting of all fan art based on this thread. I'm personally for banning it but with caveats I have told before and believing it should be done on a dedicated and highlighted thread. What really confuses me is that both Annabell and Copeinator have responded to your post and didn't seem to found anything contradictory.

I hope that we'll reset this discussion to this post and you would comment first was my synopsis correct. I have no strong opinions about the matter besides removing fan art from content namespaces. I have tried to act as a neutral mediator for this discussion, but as you can see, failed miserably. Maybe we should ask an outside help from admin notify thread or if you have already reached a consensus which I just can see, tell me. For me it seems that you're not making any sense or have I just lost my mind.

EDIT: I posted this before seeing the previous two posts. I'll comment them later on this thread.

The main issue of confusion appears to be whether Fan Art will stay, Fan Art as thing is still allowed, However as I stated when this entire conversation, 90% is either unlicensed or doesn't have permission, so it appears we have agreed to go through an delete all that appears under the Fan Art category as a blanket to get rid of all illegal images them.

Now for the remaining 10%, in order to save them we have decided to change their licensing so they aren't caught under the blanket of the illegal fan art. I personally don't like the Fan Art category and like the idea of either User or Public Domain, but if once the images have been deleted we go back to Fan Art if thats what people want.

I proposed after the purge we go back to calling the User Galleries "Fan Art" simply because it's the path of least resistance to take something already established categorically that looks much nicer than the budding "User", but if someone wants to take the time to make the new nomenclature and categories appear just as polished, then that'd work too.

Your synopsis is correct. Thank for bringing us back to topic.

Bot run: Agreed. It will only do what I ask it to do and I will be cautious. You are exactly right; if something gets broken, we can go back and fix it.

Deleting Fan Art Galleries: Agreed. They are not needed. I am fine with the timeline and Annabell's message is great. The workflow page is an excellent idea. I have already added some things to it.

Deleting all Fan Art: This seems like the biggest point of confusion. I will try to clarify without repeating myself too much.

All fan art should be deleted from this site. It should be deleted for two primary reasons.

Reason one, posting fan art is a copyright violation unless we have permission from the artist. I can only think of one instance that has come up in the past where an artist asked to post his own work on his own page. I cannot find another example of posted fan art where we have a clear and verifiable source that gives permission.

Reason two, this website is dedicated to cataloging published Marvel creations. Fan art is not licensed by Marvel nor is it published by Marvel. We are not here to document fan art. Even if a Marvel artist did a commission for someone and said "Sure, post it on the Marvel Database", we would still not want it here because that is not what this site is for. Other websites on the Internet fill that purpose.

If you feel that the "delete all fan art" belongs in a separate discussion, I don't mind creating that, but there isn't much more to say. We are in violation by continuing to have that artwork on our site. This is not a matter of my opinion or group consensus, but it is Wikia's policy and copyright law.

EDIT: My last sentence sounds very harsh and I apologize. I am just worried about the state we are in. Since we have known about the copyright violations and we haven't done anything about it, we are not acting responsibly. We just don't need Fan Art and we really don't need an artist filing a complaint against us because we are illegally using artwork.