Greetings,

I am happy to draw the attention of active Wikimedia User Group in Africa to a just concluded discussion on Wikimedia Commons where it was established that images taken by community members at Wikimedia events may be attributed to the user group provided all the photographers (who are community members) agree to it rather than wrongly uploading them as "Own work" by the organizers.[1]

There are cases where organizers of Wikimedia event upload images taken at the event as 'Own work" when they are clearly not the photographer who took those images (such as the Iranian Wikimedia User Group issue that led to the discussion). When told to correctly attribute the works, they sometimes say " My camera was used, so I am the copyright holder" , " I organized the event" or "The images were taken by some members of the user group and I don't know who took XYZ images" . Yes, this is possible if different people were asked to take images either with their personal camera or equipment belonging to the organizers. Regrettably, these images usually get nominated for deletions by Commons's user per the community precautionary principle (COM:PRP) if not properly attributed [2]

In the course of the discussion I noted above, a user created a template for Iranian Wikimedia User Group which was really useful in resolving the aforementioned copyright issue. I am drawing the attention representatives of user groups to this template with the hope that they can adopt it and use it when a case like this occur.


Regards,

Isaac.


https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/User_problems#Photos_by_Iranian_Wikimedians_User_Group [1]

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Iranian_Wikimedians_User_Group [2]