[Commons-l] Meet our photographers page?

[Ayelie]

On 6/10/07, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2007/6/10, Robin Schwab <contact at robinschwab.ch>:
> > Well that's to sell high res pics. For Wikipedia articles 300x450px do
> > just fine.
>
> No! As far as we want to be repository of images size is very
> important! People want to use Commons as source of images for many
> different applications and in most of them high resolution is better
> then low (or even low is unusable).
>
>        Welcome to the Wikimedia Commons
>        a database of 1,544,303 freely reusable media files
>        to which anyone can contribute
>
> As long as we do not want to change it to:
>
>        Welcome to the Wikipedia Commons
>        a database of 1,544,303 freely reusable media files
>        which are usable only on screen display
>
> we SHOULD demand high-res images.
>
> AJF/WarX
>
Note that Commons is not just a "stick the image here so we can use it on an
article" source, it's a free media repository to be used both on articles,
in userspace, for projects, and in many different conditions. When an image
is used on an article people still click the thumbnail to see the full-size
version; if we only have small ones it is annoying for people who want to
see a high-resolution version or use the images on school projects and in
other conditions.

Another very important point is that images often need editing or can be
improved for better use on articles; if they are low-res it is much harder
to edit them and quality is often lost. A high-res image of an owl you can
crop, lighten, darken, and make into various different images of eyes,
feathers, beak, ears, wings, etc. A low-res image is... just an image of an
owl and can't be used for anything else.

The statement that "people see the low-res GFDL and will pay me for a full
version" is a good point, but the fact that a few high-res images show of a
person's work and get them noticed is neglected. I've had requests from
people for images relatiing to ones I have taken that they've seen and/or
used; I opted to license them as GFDL as well but I could have requested
payment had I wished to. Having free images used on places like wikipedia
articles is a good way to get yourself noticed and known, and having
full-res versions uploaded so people can see the quality in detail is a
definite plus. As well, of course, there is the fact that it is towards a
good cause; these images of good quality are used in school projects,
presentations, and other instances where no payment would be recieved
anyway.

-- 
Ayelie
  ~Editor at Large
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