Hello friends

I would like to bring your attention on a little point.

Copyright issues are... hmmm... touchy and rather complicated issues. And it takes a lot of time to actually really understand them.

I can speak from personal perspective. I had NO idea what a free licence was when I started contributing to Wikipedia early 2002. My eyes started to really open in 2004 (yeah, over 2 years later) when I first met Richard Stallman at the first Wikimania (and thought... "what on earth is the guy talking about ????"). It probably took me a few additional years to really feel confortable with licensing. And even now... I must say that I still have points on which I am not knowledgeable enough (such as freedom of panorama, length of rights or orphan works). So... I completely understand that some of you (if not to say, most of you) are not fully informed about copyrights. And I understand you may "miss" important points.

Amongst the images uploaded during Wiki Loves Africa, most are fine. But obviously, some are potential copyright violations. I deleted quite a few already ;) We may identify them in the next few days or in a few months or even years. I heard that at least one image which was a winner of Wiki Loves Monuments in the past, was later found to be a copyright violation. So we may make a mistake in celebrating a winner that... should not be a winner.

At the global level, for the main contest, I will, with the other oldbies wikimedians, make sure to limit that risk. This is also why we request that uploaders provide a mean to contact them.

But I know that some of you decided to also hold a local contest and to decide of "best images from their countries". And this is GREAT.

If you have decided to do so, please, do not hesitate to talk with us of the images you plan to nominate as winners (in particular if you DO NOT KNOW their authors). So that other eyes can look at the nominated pictures and help decide whether the images are legitimate or not.

Please contact us and share your best choices with us. I can help. Other people can help such as Habib. Or others on Commons. To make sure the winners are actually really freely licenced pictures.

Cheers

Anthere