Comment by arjie
A valid question. These kinds of approaches are a pretty standard attack in the copyleft world. I don't know on what basis the community chooses forced-attribution vs deletion.
Marco Verch managed to get his stuff deleted: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests...
So it's a question of the execution of the operation really.
By the way, do you also have the same user handle on Reddit? I have the vaguest memory of you quoting someone else on the subject of denying a person suffering on the street drugs that went something to the effect of not wanting to do it because denying such a man drugs deny him his only escape from such reality or something of the sort.
I never did find that comment again, and it's been at the back of my mind for years (perhaps even a decade) and now I'm not even sure if I've asked you this before.
yes that was me! I love that quote (it's by samuel johnson), so it's really moving to hear it made an impression on someone else too. here it is:
What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco. "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence (says Johnson)? it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths."
-- Piozzi: Anecdotes