As the guy who posted about this on his blog, I wanted to add in some additional comments...
1) Sorry that I hit everything in the middle of an outage. I've since edited my blog post to reflect that as it didn't need to be part of the original record.
2) I'd really appreciate consideration of changing the policy of not attributing third party photographs where they are displayed. There are many reasons for this, but primary is that it's an accepted practice to credit photographs with the photograph itself. As well, the Creative Commons attribution restriction does state that the attribution be given in a manner reasonable to the medium and the means. By crediting in a manner that is accepted and practiced in the photographic industry, it helps in a small way to let photographers know if the CC-license their material, it'll be used in a way that respects their wishes. Placing that data one click away is not obvious to users and doesn't feel "right" from the perspective of a copyright holder.
3) EXIF metadata should be preserved, even on resized images. Thumbnails can be recreated, so junking those isn't an issue. But stripping unrecoverable information, especially that which may contain author and license information, is a problem when the images are borrowed and used downstream. I wish I had a good way to strip just thumbnails, but I don't currently know of one. Flickr has the same practice as well, and it's annoying....
I realize that I'm not a part of your community and that I'm injecting an outside viewpoint. And, as a third party, there's only so much I can do. But I'm more than happy to discuss these issues if it is helpful.
James Duncan Davidson james@duncandavidson.com +1 503 784 8747
On 8/25/07, James Duncan Davidson james@duncandavidson.com wrote:
- EXIF metadata should be preserved, even on resized images. Thumbnails can
be recreated, so junking those isn't an issue. But stripping unrecoverable information, especially that which may contain author and license information, is a problem when the images are borrowed and used downstream. I wish I had a good way to strip just thumbnails, but I don't currently know of one. Flickr has the same practice as well, and it's annoying....
There has been some recent discussion on what exif data we should include in thumbnails. It is for us technically possible and generally people think it is a good idea. Unfortunately, some cameras add 25 KB of exif data to a picture; which is about the size of a thumbnail itself. The exif data has to be stripped before attached to the thumbnail.
I realize that I'm not a part of your community and that I'm injecting an outside viewpoint. And, as a third party, there's only so much I can do. But I'm more than happy to discuss these issues if it is helpful.
Outside views are greatly appreciated. As a Wikimedian you see things troubled; whether you want to or not. I'm very glad that you have taken the step to the mailing list.
James Duncan Davidson james@duncandavidson.com +1 503 784 8747
Cheers, Bryan
On 8/25/07, James Duncan Davidson james@duncandavidson.com wrote:
- I'd really appreciate consideration of changing the policy of not
attributing third party photographs where they are displayed. There are many reasons for this, but primary is that it's an accepted practice to credit photographs with the photograph itself.
Nyet. Plenty of books put the credit at the end. How many books have the credit for the cover art on the cover?
As well, the Creative Commons attribution restriction does state that the attribution be given in a manner reasonable to the medium and the means.
The medium is wikis the means is mediawiki. Click through is the reasonable manner in this case.
By crediting in a manner that is accepted and practiced in the photographic industry,
We are not part of the photographic industry. More relevant examples would be Encarta and Britannica online. Or just general websites.
it helps in a small way to let photographers know if the CC-license their material, it'll be used in a way that respects their wishes.
We have no way to know what the photographer's wishes are.
Placing that data one click away is not obvious to users and doesn't feel "right" from the perspective of a copyright holder.
Allowing blatent violations of :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_articles
does not feel right to a wikipedian.
As well as the spaming issue is becomes problematical in cases like this where there are three seperate authors to consider:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Caisson_lockenglish.svg#Description
- EXIF metadata should be preserved, even on resized images. Thumbnails can
be recreated, so junking those isn't an issue. But stripping unrecoverable information, especially that which may contain author and license information, is a problem when the images are borrowed and used downstream. I wish I had a good way to strip just thumbnails, but I don't currently know of one. Flickr has the same practice as well, and it's annoying....
This would require someone to rewrite the code. In understand that mediawiki uses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageMagick to resize images.
geni wrote:
- EXIF metadata should be preserved, even on resized images. Thumbnails can
be recreated, so junking those isn't an issue. But stripping unrecoverable information, especially that which may contain author and license information, is a problem when the images are borrowed and used downstream. I wish I had a good way to strip just thumbnails, but I don't currently know of one. Flickr has the same practice as well, and it's annoying....
This would require someone to rewrite the code. In understand that mediawiki uses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageMagick to resize images.
It does. Except for SVGs, which are rendered via rsvg. There're two available parameters: -thumbnail and -resize. One strips EXIF while the other doesn't.