Maybe they'll hire Quinto.

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Yep, Fair Use images are not allowed on the German Wikipedia. Only some of the Wikimedia projects allow non-free content (here's a list of projects) due to different local copyright laws. Several of the smaller projects use non-free content under some kind of fair use, even though their local laws might not really allow it.

"Fair Use" does not exist in German law, although there's something similar, the "Zitatrecht" (quotation right), but it's more restrictive. And the German Wikipedia community chose to not include non-free content, because Wikipedia wants to be a "free encyclopedia" with free content that anyone can use. But there are also some provisions in German (+ Austrian and Swiss) copyright laws that allow using images that the English WP can't use. For example photos of statues and artworks in public places (Panoramafreiheit).

German law includes exceptions for the use of symbols of banned organizations in education, science, research, news coverage and art (Â86 StGB, (3)). So history books and educational sites like Wikipedia are allowed to use these symbols (as long as they don't use them in totally different contexts). IMHO, the use of swastikas in video games should be allowed, as games are art, just like movies (Indiana Jones, Inglorious Basterds, etc..). But not everything that's allowed by the law is allowed by the BPjM.

The German Wikipedia did it that way. New versions by anonymous and new users are added to the version history just like any other edit. Users that are not logged in get the to see the latest reviewed version and a new button/tab called "Entwurf" (draft) is shown at the top linking to the latest non-reviewed version (if one exists).

And just like in the Road Runner cartoons, Wikipedia will just ignore the abyss below, run to the opposite side of the canyon and happily continue its journey into the future, while the coyotes (= trolls, spammers, vandals) will suddenly notice the large amount of fresh air beneath their feet and descend into the land of pain (because now people will pay even less attention to their desperate attempts of getting some social interaction with real people).

They are not hidden in the history. If an edit has not been reviewed yet, a new button/tab titled "Entwurf" (draft) is shown at the top (between the "article" and "edit" buttons) that links to the latest non-reviewed version. So the "extra effort" consists of one simple click.

I don't see the problem. The personality rights warning doesn't mean that they don't want the image (it doesn't lead to deletion of the image), it just warns re-users that they probably can't do everything they want with this image. Many countries have laws that limit what you can do with images of other people without their explicit permission. For example, if there's a photo of Harrison Ford under a free license, it would be no problem to use it in encyclopedia articles, news stories, etc.. But a company can't use it to advertise their products without the permission of Mr. Ford.

Maybe the recent collapse of the Historical Archive of Cologne that buried thousands of invaluable historical documents underneath tons of rubble will cause more historical archives to re-think and open up and share their contents with the public.

Unfortunately, many museums and archives are more concerned about making profits with their historical documents rather than making some effort to make them available to the broad public. Many still think they own the copyrights to century old documents and paintings just because they are in the museum's possession.

And 250k free historical photos are great news of course. As Germany's terms of copyright protection are 70 years after the author's death (just like the rest of Europe), most photos of 20th century historical events are still copyrighted. With this donation and the recent donation by the Bundesarchiv, we finally get lots of free images from this period of time.

There are exceptions for works of art and science, see Strafgesetzbuch  86a. So it's allowed to use the swastika in films, documentaries, history books, etc.. but it's not OK to print it on t-shirts for example.

Kaufhof is a fairly big chain, but not when it comes to games and electronics. The few Kaufhof stores I know have a rather limited selection of games and their prices are usually pretty high, so only few people buy their games there. Most of the time, they don't even change their prices over time, so you have to pay full price for games that are more than a year old. It's just a PR stunt to get some press (at the moment, the press will print anything that vaguely mentions "killer games"). I guess they are going to just put the games back on the shelves in a few month when nobody cares any more.

The purpose of the new system is not to prevent vandalism (idiots will still add their crap anyway), but to ensure that ordinary people won't see pages that include "xyz is a fag" or other such crap. Because it's shit like that that could give WP a bad reputation among the ordinary non-techy people.

Most people are of course able to identify such obvious vandalism. But only a small percentage of people reading Wikipedia actually realizes that everyone can edit the articles just by clicking the "edit" button. And even fewer know how to browse through the version history to access an unvandalized version or even restore this version. And while tech-savy slashdotters know how Wikipedia works and probably won't care, the IT-handicapped peeps are driven away from the site by such vandalism.

And there's a rather huge gap between 19th century editors that could decide what they wanted to see printed in their books/newspapers and what not; and "Sighters" (or whatever they will be called on the English WP) that only verify whether a new version (which is still viewable by everyone, just one mouseclick away) is vandalized or not. Especially if there are thousands of users with that status.