File talk:Non-free - Jessica Bennett described shock at recognizing this photo showed her 'resting bitch face' -b.jpg

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of a fair use image as a replaceable image. Please do not modify it.

The result was to delete the image. — ξ^xplicit 00:07, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

non-free usage?

Are we sure that this individual wants her face to be a permanent posterchild for RBF? That's the only use for this image. It's one thing for her to say she has this facial characteristic but it's quite another to have it as the the only pic in an encyclopedia without her consent. Also, one of the criteria says "not replaceable with free media" because "there are no free images that explicitly show the phenomenon known as "resting bith face". I don't feel that's true. Bette Davis has also been said to be an example of RBF, and she has photos here at wikimedia that tend to show it. So does Vivien Leigh. And those photos are of dead people with much less stringent requirements for wikimedia. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:03, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

@Fyunck(click): asks "Are we sure that this individual wants her face to be a permanent posterchild for RBF?" Well, let's see, did Jessica Bennett, select this screenshot, and deliberately use it to illustrate her article which described shock at realizing she had RBF? Since she did I think we can have 100 percent gold-plated certainty that she realized that her own publication of the image would associate her face with RBF.

As to whether it would be possible to find or create a "free" image showing the phenomenon. This is not a generic, replaceable image. It is the specific screenshot that Bennett says triggered her realization she had RBF, and the specific screenshot that she has described as triggering that realization. Bennett herself said she thought a verbal description of this image was not sufficient, and that NYTimes readers actually needed to see it.

Other authors have picked up the ball, and written their own articles on RBF, but Bennett may have been the first to write about it for such a high profile publication. It was through her article that I first heard about it, and that is probably true for some of the other authors, because they mention her article. Geo Swan (talk) 02:47, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

1. "The real trouble with 'Resting Bitch Face'". CBC News. 2015-08-11. Retrieved 2016-05-09. How would you react to your own expressionless face? Freelance writer Jessica Bennett was taken aback. After catching her own deadpan stare on television, she began to identify with the "Resting Bitch Face" or RBF meme on social media. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
2. Glynis Sweeny (2016-09-21). "Do people look at you and think "angry, distant, mean"?". Salon magazine. Retrieved 2016-05-09. The Times story, written by Jessica Bennett, describes the moment she joined the ranks of women who suffer from the dreadful scourge when she saw herself in a frozen screen shot from a short television appearance. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
3. Elizabeth Armstrong Moore (2015-08-03). "She's Really Not Mad: an Examination of 'RBF'" (in English). Newser. Retrieved 2016-05-09. Now Time columnist Jessica Bennett is writing about her own RBF in the New York Times—which she dissected recently while watching an interview she did on Hardball. (She's posted a screenshot on Facebook.) {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |trans_title= (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)

Regardless of her telling folks to check out facebook, it is not even remotely close to a free public domain image. I had to beg to get a pic of Rufus the eagle from Wimbledon even though the same pic had been on twitter and facebook. It wasn't allowed without the magic public domain license (which I got after asking the photo owner a bunch of times). A celebrity could tell someone to check out a video clip of them picking their nose but that doesn't mean they want an encyclopedia using the image to show what nose picking is all about. We have to be very careful when it's derogatory and it's a living person. I've been told that many times and it's why I brought it up here... to make sure it's ok to use this pic. The person on this site, participant 1 analysis 4, was used in a study... she allowed herself to be photographed for it. That doesn't mean we can put it in wikipedia. Queen Elizabeth II is also said to have RBF but I would really hesitate to use her pic. I do however think the bar is a lot lower if the person is dead. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:32, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

• Woah! You asked "Are we sure that this individual wants her face to be a permanent posterchild for RBF?" Please don't get lost in details you brought to the discussion. No one claimed the image is in the public domain. No one claimed JB directing people's attention to the image made it public domain. Even if, for the sake of argument, JB owned the intellectual property rights to the image, merely telling people to go look at falls far short of her putting it in the public domain.

  That is why I wrote a non-free use rationale.

• I don't see how your experience with Rufus the Eagle is relevant here.
• You write: "We have to be very careful when it's derogatory and it's a living person." Exactly how careful do you think we have to be?

  In this particular case, JB can't unpublish her NYTimes story, which she chose to illustrate with that image. So, if she were to write to us to request we not use the image, because she found it embarrassing, I would think we should not comply with that request.

  Over the years I have seen people make the suggestion we should bend over backwards not to embarrass people. But it was a long time ago, so remind me -- are you citing a policy? If so, which clause?

• Some years ago I started an article on a guy, who was both a professor at one of the Service academies, and an active NCIS agent. He had received an enormous cash award for some work that was so top secret that the public can't be told what it was. As an academic he had published papers, attended conferences, etc. I started an article about him, only to find, when I tried to return to it, a week or two later, it had been silently deleted.

  Confusing as hell. I tried different spellings of his name, everything. It took some time to realize that my memory was correct, I had created the article, and, even though there was no discussion of it, it had been deleted.

  I wrote to the administrator. The guy had written to OTRS, to request deletion. The admin told me the guy had no complaints about accuracy or bias, he just didn't want to be covered. The administrator thought the man's notability was near the cusp, and, in that circumstance, the man's request was enough for him to delete the article on his sole judgment. We went back and forth on this, every so often, for about two years. Finally I took the article to DRV. The result was a very quick overturn, to afd. The article sailed through afd. The reason I bring this up is that I think it shows that, when someone is notable, that notability over-rides their embarrassment.

  Bringing this back to this image, Bennett is a public figure, routinely appearing on TV, so, if the image were relevant, I don't think we should give very much time to worrying if she found it embarrassing.

• The link you provided, [1], is interesting, in and of itself, but I am not sure if it is really that relevant to this discussion. No, we couldn't use the image of participant 1 here, while I think we should go ahead and continue to use the Jessica Bennett image, because Bennett, an important figure in the popularization of the term RBF, explicitly named this image as the trigger to her recognition that she had RBF, in her NYTimes article, in the CBC interview, probably elsewhere too.
• I provided you three, count'em three references, written by other people, that explicitly refer to this image of Bennett. I think this firmly establishes that the image cannot be replaced by a freely distributable alternative.
• WRT your Queen Elizabeth example, I think it exposes a flaw in your initial suggestion that we seek a free alternative. You or I can't go to our free images of Liz, or Kristen Stewart, looking for one that we think shows RBF. We aren't RS. Using an image we picked almost certainly means using one that no RS has explicitly identified as showing RBF -- so doing so would lapse from WP:no original research. Geo Swan (talk) 19:13, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

NFCC#1

@Geo Swan: I'm replying to your message to me on your talk page here because it is relevant for the deletion nomination.

I read the part on WP:NFCC#1 and found it untenable when I decided to nominate, but arguments for or against the inclusion of the image necessarily spill over to WP:NFCC#8 (contextual significance) as well.

Non-free images are either used to identify the topic (think of a e.g. a book cover) or when the images themselves are the object of critical discussion.

Regardless of how much Bennett is discussed, this article is about the "resting bitch face", and not "Jessica Bennett's resting bitch face". A "resting bitch face" is easy to replicate so as to produce a free alternative. This is why it's not possible to justify the use of a non-free image as the one that identifies the topic here.

The other option for including a non-free image would be to critically discuss the image itself. For all that discussion about Bennett's writing and appearance in the media to be relevant at all, it should be present in the article and not just the image description page. As of now, the article only says: "Jessica Bennett also described the phenomenon in an August 1, 2015 article in the New York Times" - this statement hardly needs to be accompanied by a picture to be understood.

Whatever opinions Bennett has about which image people "need" to see to understand the phenomenon is not a justification we can use. If a noted and respected film critic told me that everyone "needs" to see the film Godfather to understand cinema, should I upload the entire film and embed it in the article on cinema? Of course not. We must follow our policy. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:08, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

You wrote: "Regardless of how much Bennett is discussed, this article is about the "resting bitch face", and not "Jessica Bennett's resting bitch face"." And, in my opinion, Bennett's realization she had RBF, and the NYTimes article it triggered, were an important part of the spread of the meme. So, I think her realization, and the photo she said triggered her realization, belong in our article. Geo Swan (talk) 01:05, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

None of that addresses NFCC#1. Your claim is that we need this to illustrate RBF because there is no other obtainable equivalent. That's incorrect, since there are many living people who have been noted as having RBF, and so their free content pictures are available for use (or easily made available by taking a picture of them). "This improves the article" doesn't mean we're allowed to use non-free content. It has to improve the article, have no potential free alternatives, and meet all the other non-free content criteria. ~ Rob^Talk 03:19, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

• Excuse me, but your suggestion, that we take a public figure who has routinely been characterized as manifesting RBF, and then use a free picture of them, and asserting that image shows RBF, does not comply with the policy of WP:no original research.

  If a reliable source says an image shows RBF, then we can say it shows RBF. But my opinion, or your opinion, as to whether an image illustrates RBF, is completely irrelevant, and can't appear in article space, because you and I aren't reliable sources.

  I think you are also overlooking a point I tried to include in the article -- the role Jessica Bennett's recognition that the broadcast image of her showed her with RBF, played in popularizing this meme. Her NYTimes article triggered a flood of interest in the meme, and, as I pointed out above, much of the press coverage she triggered specifically mentioned this key screenshot.

  This article sat there for about seven or eight months, before several people showed a sudden concern in it, seemingly because they object to the word "bitch". They took the article to AFD, where it was kept. Subsequently, it seems to me they are performing informationectomies on it, including Ms. Bennett's role. Geo Swan (talk) 23:51, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

• I have no objection to Ms. Bennett's role. I have an objection to a copyright violation. MSNBC owns this image, and they've not released it for our use. There is no reasonable claim that this is not replaceable. It's not original research to present any picture of Ms. Bennett and say "Ms. Bennett wrote a NY Times article acknowledging her resting bitch face." ~ Rob^Talk 23:55, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

I know it has no weight to bear on this issue, since it is a private conversation between me and Ms Bennett, but she seems to have no problem with us using the photo in this particular instance. She obviously doesn't own the photo, MSNBC surely must. I'm still against using it but her words to me were "as long as this photo is being used in direct reference to the article I wrote -- with a link, which it is -- I am fine with it." and "I would have let the New York Times run it; instead we opted for the link." As I said this really has no weight here, and I'm still against it for policy reasons, but at least if it does wind up staying I will not have a lingering bad conscience. She will not upload a public domain photo as she does not really want to be the poster-child of RBF. So take this as you may. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:46, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it.