K P a écrit :
> Why do people have to be "endorsed" to develop and create free
> content?  I am rather proud of Wikipedia's celebrity photographer, who
> politely takes pictures for Wikipedia articles without any
> endorsement, just like the best of Wikipedia's editors, politely
> creating accurate content on encyclopedia-worthy topics, without any
> endorsement from Wikipedia.  Isn't this what Wikipedia is?
Because some pictures cannot be taken unless one has been granted
special access conditions to a "press area". It is for instance very
difficult to take pictures of the speakers at a political rally unless
you're really in the front, which is reserved for the press and VIPs.
The same applies to a variety of events, or even to photographs of the
inside of buildings, etc.

Practical example: members of Wikimedia France took photographs of
presidential candidates during the election run. In some cases, they
were simply shooting from the public (and thus had to deal with e.g.
getting pushed when taking photos and the like), but the best quality
photographs were taken from the "press area", and they got access to
this area because Wikimedia France asked them to be authorized to enter
this area. (At least for major candidates; minor candidates who do
around 1% of votes tend to have more informal procedures.)

Organizers of such events do not generally grant press access to random
individuals. They want professionals, with a press card (we cannot help
there, at least in France, since press cards are only for professional
journalists), or at least, if we're lucky, they want an organization to
endorse the photographer.

Think of it this way: organizers cannot let every Tom, Dick and Harry go
to front row and take pictures, for practical reasons. In the past, the
criterion for admittance was "being a press photographer", which meant
one doing press photos as a professional job. In the era of
user-generated content, blogs, wikis etc. this criterion is becoming
somewhat of an annoyance. On the other hand, I can understand that
organizers and officials don't want hundreds of amateur photographers
rushing in with their compact cameras...

Wikimedia France talked about this issue to various officials and
organizers, and everybody seems to agree that there is a problem. We've
been asked to provide proposals. We'll have to think about this seriously.