On 6/10/07, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx@gmail.com> wrote:

2007/6/10, Robin Schwab <contact@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