[WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges

[Peter Mackay]

> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jason Y. Lee
> Sent: Wednesday, 2 November 2005 15:13
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Press badges
> 
> The Accreditation policy below requires someone to be a 
> writer for several articles on Wikinews.  It doesn't quite 
> fit for any person who wants an accreditation for a press 
> badge as a photographer.  The reason behind my wondering over 
> press badges is that I live in Southern California, a place 
> where there is opporunity to meet a celebrity.  I have no 
> doubt, the same applies to anyone living in other parts of 
> the world when it comes to sports figures and the like.  The 
> thing is that a photograph of a famous person on the English 
> Wikipedia is usually a press or licensed photograph from a 
> professional photographer... unless the copyright has 
> previously expired on the photograph or they are a public 
> figure of government, which of course means their photograph 
> we get is public domain.  But how do deal with trying to get 
> a photograph of a television star without having any of the 
> copyright restrictions?  The only answers I can think of is 
> to ask the publication to copyleft it, or take a picture of your own.

> > http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Accreditation_policy

The same policy could (and should) be expanded to cover photographers. It is
an excellent policy.

Having photographs taken with free use on WikiNews (and Wikipedia) in mind
is certainly something worth striving for. However, we should pay some heed
to quality of product. It is easy enough to "clean up" an article, but there
are limits to how much a photograph can be improved after it has been taken.

A request for photographer accreditation should be accompanied by a
"portfoliio" of images already on WN/WP, and possibly the same sort of
people who routinely look at Featured Image Candidates could cast an expert
eye over them.

Peter (Skyring)