Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

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Is copyleft unfree?

Rama Rama

23 Jan 2008 23 Jan '08

9:32 a.m.

Yesterday, I exchanged a few e-mails with a professional photographer to confirm the licencing status of some of his work on Commons. I discovered someone willing to confirm the licence, but evidently quite disgruntled by his experience of Commons. Two lessons can be learned from what I read: 1) We are victims of a paradox which forces us to be especially annoying with the most precious of our occasional contributors. A significant proportion of the high-quality photographs of celebrities uploaded on Commons are copyvios. This forces us to be especially strident with copyright issues towards well-meant photographers. Short of the most courteous civility, repeated requests amount to downright harassment, and may appear to question the word of the uploader. I don't have a magic formula to break the paradox itself, but we should make efforts to sensibilise our users: DO: * be extremely polite * apologise for bothering people with seemingly superfluous paperwork * apologise for seemingly doubting their word * offer to help and advise personally if the user needs anything Commons-related * formulise the request in such a way that a simple "OK" from the user is sufficient. Open-ended questions are creepy ("what next, my credit card number ?") and bothering ("how many bleeding mails will I have to send before they are content with what I gave them ?"). DON'T: * assume that the user knows all of our rules. We are there to guide them. * assume that the user is aware of problems that we encounter as Commons administrators (typically, that most photographs that look like his are copyvios). 2) There is definitely a trend of professional photographers to request credits under the image in articles. This is what they are accustomed to. I (and a few others) think that we should make efforts to sensibilise our users to this. We can definitely afford to credit people in articles. This is a small concession which costs us very little and can benefit us greatly. See http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aide:Ins%C3%A9rer_une_image&c… for instance. Cheers ! -- Rama

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David Gerard

23 Jan 23 Jan

11:43 a.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote (on commons-l):

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2) There is definitely a trend of professional photographers to request credits under the image in articles. This is what they are accustomed to. I (and a few others) think that we should make efforts to sensibilise our users to this. We can definitely afford to credit people in articles. This is a small concession which costs us very little and can benefit us greatly.

We can't promise that, and on en:wp it's general practice not to. *However*, where possible I like to credit the photographer in the caption anyway - particularly if they're a professional. (I like detailed captions in general - place, date, photographer.) Many do get very stroppy about a lack of caption credit especially if it's CC-by - even if we're within the letter of the licence by only having the credit on the image page, it's IMO not only polite but often *useful to the reader* to note who took the picture. [cc to wikien-l] - d. - d.

Gregory Maxwell

2:51 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On Jan 23, 2008 6:43 AM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Here we are again ... And again I find myself saying that it's not useful to have articles slathered with names promoting people thought. It creates inappropriate motivations for contributions (already spammers submit images to list their companies on the image pages), and unfair credit. No one wants to see the vanity edit warring that happens between images on articles further fulled by the use of an image also resulting in your name at the top of the most widely visited webpage for a subject. But these concerns are not in conflict with providing *good* credit: We could provide a credits tab, a more obvious expand icon, or any one of a dozen other improvements. We've talked about some of these before. Where are they?

David Gerard

2:57 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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But these concerns are not in conflict with providing *good* credit: We could provide a credits tab, a more obvious expand icon, or any one of a dozen other improvements. We've talked about some of these before. Where are they?

I believe it got bogged down in indecisive polls on a suitable replacement for the expand-box icon on images. What would it take (technically) to just replace that with a blue circle-i? - d.

Florian Straub

12 Feb 12 Feb

3:14 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote on wed, 23 jan 2008 14:57:16:

...

On 23/01/2008, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I believe it got bogged down in indecisive polls on a suitable replacement for the expand-box icon on images. What would it take (technically) to just replace that with a blue circle-i?

I assume that a quick and dirty approach would be to simply replace the image file by a new one (maybe of the same size) ... Regards, Flo

David Gerard

4:44 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 12/02/2008, Florian Straub <flominator(a)gmx.net> wrote:

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David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote on wed, 23 jan 2008 14:57:16:

...

> I believe it got bogged down in indecisive polls on a suitable > replacement for the expand-box icon on images. What would it take > (technically) to just replace that with a blue circle-i?

...

I assume that a quick and dirty approach would be to simply replace the image file by a new one (maybe of the same size) ...

Turns out it requires replacement in the skins directory - and telling the skin that the image is not 15x11. (15x15 looked OK in my experiments.) - d.

Andrew Gray

23 Jan 23 Jan

11:49 a.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Regardless of where we fall on the matter of "up-front" image crediting (I like it in principle, but worry about the practicalities), it's worth remembering that we should be careful about *promising* this. Commons can certainly encourage it, but if a project chooses to do things differently, there's not a lot we can do, and there's nothing worse than being trapped by a guarantee we can't hold to. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

David Gerard

noon

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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On 23/01/2008, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

> 2) There is definitely a trend of professional photographers to request > credits under the image in articles. This is what they are accustomed to. > I (and a few others) think that we should make efforts to sensibilise our > users to this. We can definitely afford to credit people in articles. This > is a small concession which costs us very little and can benefit us greatly.

...

Yeah. We promise a credit on the image page itself, which meets the letter of the licence. We will continue to encourage the projects to credit images in captions, because we acknowledge this is useful to the reader and polite to the photographer. (Note "useful to the reader" in there.) - d.

Artur Fijałkowski

12:15 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

2008/1/23, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

And why professional photographer should be better treated on Wikimedia projects than me or any other contributor? AJF/WarX

David Gerard

12:19 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

2008/1/23, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com>om>:

...

And why professional photographer should be better treated on Wikimedia projects than me or any other contributor?

When it's useful to the reader. I don't expect anyone to care when I took a picture, but if it's one of Alan Light's (CC-by-sa) celebrity shots the reader may well be interested. - d.

Artur Fijałkowski

12:22 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

23-01-08, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> napisał(a):

...

On 23/01/2008, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

2008/1/23, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com>om>:

And why professional photographer should be better treated on Wikimedia projects than me or any other contributor?

When it's useful to the reader. I don't expect anyone to care when I took a picture, but if it's one of Alan Light's (CC-by-sa) celebrity shots the reader may well be interested.

So write it in the article about Alan Light, not in article about celebrity. AJF/WarX

David Gerard

12:27 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

23-01-08, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> napisał(a):

...

> When it's useful to the reader. I don't expect anyone to care when I > took a picture, but if it's one of Alan Light's (CC-by-sa) celebrity > shots the reader may well be interested.

...

So write it in the article about Alan Light, not in article about celebrity.

Date, place and photographer are the basic information about a photo, and I think it's something the reader would expect to see in the caption. (Editorial decision on the project, of course; your mileage may vary.) - d.

geni

5:53 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Date, place and photographer are the basic information about a photo, and I think it's something the reader would expect to see in the caption.

The nearest book to hand (Charles Hadfield's "The Canals of the East Midlands") doesn't provide photographer name in the image captions. Neither does the second nearest (Jack Livesey's "Armoured Fighting Vehicles of World Wars I and II") -- geni

Stan Shebs

6:06 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

geni wrote:

...

On 23/01/2008, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Date, place and photographer are the basic information about a photo, and I think it's something the reader would expect to see in the caption.

I think the under-photograph cites are more of a newspaper/pamphlet convention, books typically having a dedicated section for any necessary photo credits. Stan

Rama Rama

6:43 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

The point is mainly that offering these labels might grant us more photographs. Hence, with a very little concession to the standard to which professional photographers are accustomed, we could replace lots of "fair use" pictures with Free images, and illustrate articles which lack images. But this clearly is far less funny than twisting words to expose suspicious language of a potentially anti-democratic nature, or than acertaining the purity of the ideology in which people contribute their images. It's not like we're making a project in the, you know, real word, is it ? -- Rama

geni

6:52 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

The point is mainly that offering these labels might grant us more photographs.

I doubt the number would be high enough to offset the costs involved,

...

Hence, with a very little concession to the standard to which professional photographers are accustomed,

Accustomed to what appears to be a non standard practice?

...

we could replace lots of "fair use" pictures with Free images, and illustrate articles which lack images.

doubtful. Remember fair use images these days are generally only allowed on wikipedia where they would be impossible to replace.

...

But this clearly is far less funny than twisting words to expose suspicious language of a potentially anti-democratic nature, or than acertaining the purity of the ideology in which people contribute their images. It's not like we're making a project in the, you know, real word, is it ?

The problem is that we are making the project in the real world and thus have to understand that by allowing instance on Mr doe we also end up having to allow mr wetriffs.com. -- geni

Rama Rama

7:24 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

...

Hence, with a very little concession to the standard to which

professional photographers are accustomed,

Accustomed to what appears to be a non standard practice?

Yes, who in the world would do that, apart the BBC, CNN, the Times, the Washington Post, and bleeding everybody ?

...

The problem is that we are making the project in the real world and thus have to understand that by allowing instance on Mr doe we also end up having to allow mr wetriffs.com.

We don't *have* to do anything. And how would that be a problem ? -- Rama

Gregory Maxwell

7:58 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On Jan 23, 2008 2:24 PM, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hence, with a very little concession to the standard to which professional photographers are accustomed,

Accustomed to what appears to be a non standard practice?

Yes, who in the world would do that, apart the BBC, CNN, the Times, the Washington Post, and bleeding everybody ?

Perhaps you could help geni and I by making some screen captures of articles on the BBC, CNN, or better some online encyclopedias and drawing a circle around the photographer's name. Seriously. We're apparently not seeing what you are seeing.

...

The problem is that we are making the project in the real world and thus have to understand that by allowing instance on Mr doe we also end up having to allow mr wetriffs.com.

We don't *have* to do anything. And how would that be a problem ?

Treating contributors equally is an ethical obligation and arguably required by some of the licenses. It would be unfortunate to have to reject some images because we don't want to display "Image by fagssuck.com" in the body of an article.

geni

8:36 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hence, with a very little concession to the standard to which professional photographers are accustomed,

Accustomed to what appears to be a non standard practice?

Yes, who in the world would do that, apart the BBC,

BBC credits AP and getty http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7204570.stm

...

CNN,

Nope mostly credit Getty and AP

...

the Times

nope http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/arsenal/arti…

...

, the Washington Post,

At last one that actually does so.

...

and bleeding everybody ?

How many counter examples do I have to provide

...

The problem is that we are making the project in the real world and thus have to understand that by allowing instance on Mr doe we also end up having to allow mr wetriffs.com.

We don't *have* to do anything.

You start offering caption guarantees and we will

...

And how would that be a problem ?

Generally it is not considered a good idea to advertise porn sites in your image captions. "Prussian Blue courtesy of all Jews should hang inc" isn't even going to be legal in quite a number of countries. -- geni

Rama Rama

25 Jan 25 Jan

11:37 a.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

Nope mostly credit Getty and AP Yes, "credits" indeed. To agencies or to the photographer personally changes nothing. One of the photographers to whom I talked was requesting credits be given to the client for whom he'd made the image.

...

How many counter examples do I have to provide

You don't. Your claim that the practice is not standard is effectively disproved by exhibiting examples of major sites doing it. Your providing instances of sites which do not changes nothing.

...

We don't *have* to do anything.

You start offering caption guarantees and we will

I have absolutely not suggested giving any sort of guarantee whatsoever, which would obviously be both stupid and infeasible. I have suggested making our users aware of the fact that giving credits in this way can in some cases be a constructive behaviour. I think that we see, too often, people removing credits on principle, which discourages valuable contributors and serves no purpose. I believe that people should be educated in considering whether this is necessary or benefitial. That is all.

...

And how would that be a problem ?

Your first example (wetriffs) would not be a problem, in my opinion. For your second example, we'd just refuse to run the credits. Once again, I never suggested that we guarantee credits, nor that giving credits should be systematic. Incidentally, congratulations on your Godwin point. -- Rama

geni

5:55 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 25/01/2008, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Nope mostly credit Getty and AP

Yes, "credits" indeed. To agencies or to the photographer personally changes nothing.

Interesting claim. Pretty much every legal system outside the US disagrees with you.

...

One of the photographers to whom I talked was requesting credits be given to the client for whom he'd made the image.

How many counter examples do I have to provide

You don't. Your claim that the practice is not standard is effectively disproved by exhibiting examples of major sites doing it. Your providing instances of sites which do not changes nothing.

You realize that you could use the above argument to claim that being owned by google is standard practice (I can exhibit examples of major sites that are owned by google). Try thinking about your argument for a moment. The Dorling Kindersley Science Encyclopedia does not credit in captions. Clayden Greeves Warren and Wothers's Organic Chemistry doesn't credit in captions The BBC's Space our final frontier doesn't credit in captions. Guinness world records do not credit in captions

...

We don't *have* to do anything.

You start offering caption guarantees and we will

The considering has been done. The answer is no.

...

And how would that be a problem ?

Your first example (wetriffs) would not be a problem, in my opinion.

That is rather the problem.

...

For your second example, we'd just refuse to run the credits. Once again, I never suggested that we guarantee credits, nor that giving credits should be systematic. Incidentally, congratulations on your Godwin point.

Prussian blue are not nazis and Antisemitism has a long history in Europe before Hitler gave it a bad name. -- geni

David Monniaux

6:07 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

I HAVE AN IDEA I think this all stems from a bad user interface. Currently, users have to click on the image to go see the image description page. Many users do not know that. Proof: on OTRS we get tons of people who assume that the only resolution they can get is the thumbnail, and they ask for a larger version. I can therefore understand that photographers want credits under the picture, since most users don't even know that they can get the credits by clicking. Maybe MediaWiki should: - extract credits from the image description and show them as a tooltip over the image - or put a discreet link underneath for the informations (the small "enlarge this" icon we use at the right of the caption is NOT understood by most people).

Jastrow

6:12 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

Le 1/25/08 7:07 PM, David Monniaux a écrit :

...

I HAVE AN IDEA I think this all stems from a bad user interface.

Amazing. I was just going to post the same message. :-)

Bryan Tong Minh

6:13 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 7:07 PM, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux(a)free.fr> wrote:

...

- or put a discreet link underneath for the informations (the small "enlarge this" icon we use at the right of the caption is NOT understood by most people).

I in fact never knew what that icon was for until you sent this mail. And I'm not exactly new to MediaWiki. Bryan

David Monniaux

6:20 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

Bryan Tong Minh wrote:

...

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 7:07 PM, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux(a)free.fr> wrote:

- or put a discreet link underneath for the informations (the small "enlarge this" icon we use at the right of the caption is NOT understood by most people).

I in fact never knew what that icon was for until you sent this mail. And I'm not exactly new to MediaWiki.

By the way, I'm arguing on another mailing-list that our discussion interface is deficient: for instance one has to click on '+' to leave a message, which is not intuitive and does not look like any other non-MediaWiki site out there. As a consequence, when we tell folks to "go discuss the issue on the discussion page" they don't even know how they can do this.. I begin to suspect that many problems with have with outsiders (= people not from the Wikipedia community) would be alleviated if our user interface was better understandable, more in line with what users are used to and they expect. I think that the templates and menus for filling out image descriptions and licenses were a step in the right direction.

Rama Rama

6:34 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

David's point is coherent with what I experienced when one of my photographs was used improperly without autorisation. The journalist to whom I wrote claimed that it was my responsability to state my name for credits to be given. Her arguments surprised me (beside being legally bizarre) as my name was indeed stated under the image. But only the Commons image page, which you reach by clicking on the image, not on the article itself. I also suspect that they used the small resolution image which appears on the article, rather than the higher resolution available on Commons. -- Rama

para

6:39 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

Bryan Tong Minh wrote:

...

- or put a discreet link underneath for the informations (the small "enlarge this" icon we use at the right of the caption is NOT understood by most people).

I in fact never knew what that icon was for until you sent this mail. And I'm not exactly new to MediaWiki.

The last time this was discussed*, there were some interesting proposals for more descriptive icons, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thebainer/thumbtest>. Some of the icons, though maybe not these specific versions, are well known around the world as "more information". Time to move forward and implement one in MediaWiki? * <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.commons/2566>

David Monniaux

27 Jan 27 Jan

8:53 a.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

para wrote:

...

I don't want to sound anti-icons, but... Icons and pictograms are used on customer appliances sometimes for reason of space, but another reason is that they allow the manufacturer to sell the same device in multiple areas with different languages. European driving signs tend to use pictograms for things that US driving signs use plain English for. One reason is that European driving signs are meant for an international audience - the truck driver from Italy should not have to scratch his head to understand a "begin freeway" sign in Germany, while US signs assume the driver reads some English. Driving signs are learned for the driving test. But the strange pictograms in many devices and software are just a pain. There are lots of programs in which I cannot figure out the user interface, and I'm a computer scientist! MediaWiki is fully internationalized. We can show a different user interface in each language. "Crédit photo" in French, "Photo credits" in English, are perfectly understood by everybody. Strange pictograms aren't.

Alex Nordstrom

26 Jan 26 Jan

12:29 p.m.

New subject: [Commons-l] Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

Friday, 25 January 2008, David Monniaux wrote:

...

Maybe MediaWiki should: - extract credits from the image description and show them as a tooltip over the image

Yes, and it should also use CSS to make this show up when printing an article.

...

- or put a discreet link underneath for the informations (the small "enlarge this" icon we use at the right of the caption is NOT understood by most people).

Yep. Ideally, I'd also like to see CC-style icons indicating the licensing of the image, at least for well-known licences. In a collaborative project, authorship information can easily get impractically complex to display inline all the time, but we really could make it easier to find. However, we also have to contend with images that were never really intended to have a caption, such as icons in templates. -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

Florian Straub

12 Feb 12 Feb

3:20 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote on sat, 26 jan 2008 13:29:08 +0100: [credit icons or text]

...

However, we also have to contend with images that were never really intended to have a caption, such as icons in templates.

If you just change the view of |thumb| images that would be a problem. Icons in templates are usually not used with this parameter. Best regards, Flo

Alex Nordstrom

8:28 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

Tuesday, 12 February 2008, Florian Straub wrote:

...

Alex Nordstrom <lx(a)se.linux.org> wrote on sat, 26 jan 2008 13:29:08 +0100: [credit icons or text]

However, we also have to contend with images that were never really intended to have a caption, such as icons in templates.

If you just change the view of |thumb| images that would be a problem. Icons in templates are usually not used with this parameter.

That was actually my point: how do we provide a proper "credits hint" for images that don't have a caption? (The ones that don't have the "enlarge" icon today.) Why should an image get a less visible credit just because it isn't used as a proper illustration? -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

Gregory Maxwell

23 Jan 23 Jan

7 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On Jan 23, 2008 1:43 PM, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

The overwhelming majority of most professional photographers works are used without the sort of credit you are describing, so you're making a false argument. I think we should provide *great* credit, industry leading credit, but that doesn't mean we need to litter the articles with it. In theory we could also encourage people to contribute by setting up an advertising box in the left side bar and give free space in the rotation to everyone who contributes.... :)

Delphine Ménard

12:19 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On Jan 23, 2008 1:15 PM, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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2008/1/23, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com>om>:

And why professional photographer should be better treated on Wikimedia projects than me or any other contributor?

I find this is the kind of creepy open end question that' scares people away ;-) I don't see in Rama's sentence anything that says "we should credit professionals and not others". As a matter of fact, the rest of the thread suggests that crediting the photographer altogether, whoever they are, should be a rule. Except we can't promise it to anyone. Delphine -- ~notafish http://blog.notanendive.org NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

David Gerard

12:25 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Jan 23, 2008 1:15 PM, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

> And why professional photographer should be better treated on > Wikimedia projects than me or any other contributor?

...

I don't see in Rama's sentence anything that says "we should credit professionals and not others". As a matter of fact, the rest of the thread suggests that crediting the photographer altogether, whoever they are, should be a rule. Except we can't promise it to anyone.

Previous discussions of this on wikien-l have noted that text authors don't get a credit on the page itself (theirs is in the history), so why should photographers? That's why I'm speaking in terms of "useful to the reader" - and date, place and photographer are the basic expected information about a photo that a reader would expect to see. - d.

Gregory Maxwell

2:56 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

2008/1/23 David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>: [snip]

...

That's why I'm speaking in terms of "useful to the reader" - and date, place and photographer are the basic expected information about a photo that a reader would expect to see.

Were that really true in all cases we would expect to see things listed that way on other encyclopedias and even news sites. Yet thats often not the case. Certantly there are many cases where the date and place are very relevant. In many of those cases we find that information in the captions already. The photographer is usually pretty irrelevant to someone simply learning about a subject, but is important for other purposes so it should be easily and obviously available. It isn't right now, and that should be fixed.

Andrew Gray

3:03 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On 23/01/2008, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Certantly there are many cases where the date and place are very relevant. In many of those cases we find that information in the captions already. The photographer is usually pretty irrelevant to someone simply learning about a subject

It's an interesting question. The photographer is useful if they're an "artist" - it's interesting and "adds value" to know that a photo was taken by Adams or Capa or Carroll. If they're you or me, it's less helpful, because the name has no immediate meaning. On the other hand, it may be useful to characterise the photographer - "taken by a pedestrian" or "taken by a visitor" or "taken by a staff member" - to give context to the image within the context of the topic. For a lot of our military / governmental images, captioning the unit or organisation is helpful. The rule I tend to use, incidentally, is "give a name prominently in the caption if that name might reasonably get wikilinked to an article". -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Magnus Manske

2:10 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

On Jan 23, 2008 12:15 PM, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

2008/1/23, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com>om>:

And why professional photographer should be better treated on Wikimedia projects than me or any other contributor?

Everyone should be treated better. But we won't do that, it's a tradition ;-) So at least we should treat professional photographers better, because they are a potential source of lots of high quality images, in contrast to the occasional PD-USGov image or holiday-snapshot-without-people we get from people like myself... Magnus (sorry, couldn't resist)

Artur Fijałkowski

2:47 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

2008/1/23, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com>om>:

...

On Jan 23, 2008 12:15 PM, Artur Fijałkowski <wiki.warx(a)gmail.com> wrote:

2008/1/23, Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com>om>:

And why professional photographer should be better treated on Wikimedia projects than me or any other contributor?

And then most of people like you or me who are not *professionals* would say f*** this project if there everyone is equal, but some are equaller... AJF/WarX

David Monniaux

3:39 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

Artur Fijałkowski wrote:

...

And then most of people like you or me who are not *professionals* would say f*** this project if there everyone is equal, but some are equaller...

It is a fact that many of the photographs we get are low-quality jobs (photographs of places taken on vacations with tons of tourists, overexposure in sunny places, etc.), that we lack photos of celebrities, and that one way to get these photos is to provide a pleasant environment for professional photographers. But I agree that we do not want to create two categories: VIPs who have a right to be credited inside articles, and common folks like me or Rama or you. :-)

Alex Nordstrom

26 Jan 26 Jan

12:39 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

Wednesday, 23 January 2008, Rama Rama wrote:

...

* formulise the request in such a way that a simple "OK" from the user is sufficient.

Careful with this one. "OK" is rarely a clear enough assertion of authorship and consent to license. Better then to send a message with a boilerplate response and say "reply with this if you agree with what it says". We run into this problem all the time, and it's mostly because new contributors ask artists for Wikipedia-only permission. Then they find out that this isn't sufficient and immediately rush to ask the artist "do you grant Wikipedia 'the GNU license'?" and so on, instead of using http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Email_templates directly. -- Alex Nordstrom http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.

Florian Straub

12 Feb 12 Feb

8:24 p.m.

New subject: Musing with professional photographers: further lessons learned

Rama Rama <ramaneko(a)gmail.com> wrote on wed, 23 jan 2008 10:32:11 +0100 and since it has been such a long time I decided to use some kind of full quote :)

...

What about a page or section on a page explaining all this stuff (except the OK part) to them? We could then point them to there by linking it from notification and otrs templates ...

...

As we already saw, this point is quite disputed. I'm going with Andrew here, who suggested to insert a link to the author when there's a chance of him getting an article. At German Wikipedia we currently do the same thing with painters. On the other hand: Are readers really interested in all these details? I think the people interested in details will also click the picture to enlarge it. Then they will see the name of the photographer as well. Either way I think we need to explain the circumstances to our contributors, which I just did: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3AFAQ&diff=99387… I also liked the idea of changing the icon below the thunbnails. Maybe the i-thing or localised text would really be better, but I'm afraid that's a question for the devs ... Best regards, Flo -- Flo's movie quiz: The lord tells me, he can get me out of this match, but he's pretty sure: You're fucked!

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participants (15)

Alex Nordstrom
Andrew Gray
Artur Fijałkowski
Bryan Tong Minh
David Gerard
David Monniaux
Delphine Ménard
Florian Straub
geni
Gregory Maxwell
Jastrow
Magnus Manske
para
Rama Rama
Stan Shebs