http://duncandavidson.com/archives/564
I responded:
"My apologies on behalf of Wikipedia and Wikimedia! I've emailed to wikien-l and commons-l about this post, asking for suggestions on how we can do better on this sort of thing. There's an editorial habit on English Wikipedia of not putting attributions on photos in the articles themselves, leaving that to the image page ... I think that's a matter for discussion as well."
I think we have to do better on this, at least in some way. The image page needs a BIG OBVIOUS CC notice. Many do, but some don't.
- d.
On 8/25/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://duncandavidson.com/archives/564
I responded:
"My apologies on behalf of Wikipedia and Wikimedia! I've emailed to wikien-l and commons-l about this post, asking for suggestions on how we can do better on this sort of thing. There's an editorial habit on English Wikipedia of not putting attributions on photos in the articles themselves, leaving that to the image page ... I think that's a matter for discussion as well."
I think we have to do better on this, at least in some way. The image page needs a BIG OBVIOUS CC notice. Many do, but some don't.
One immediate question raised: why is it that Safari does not see the CC licence tag on the image page at en?
IMO, we need some way of informing people that if they want to reuse images from Wikipedia, they *must* examine the image page for licensing data. Including attribution for CC-by may work, but only for CC-by images. (Also, there would be no explicit indicator that the attribution must be reproduced whenever the image is used.) We need some way of informing people about the requirements for images released under other copyleft licences so they can ultimately comply, or at least make a bona fide effort to comply. Doing this would be impossible in an image caption in an article.
Johnleemk
On 8/24/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
One immediate question raised: why is it that Safari does not see the CC licence tag on the image page at en?
It does.. or at least, it does for other people.
The license text is just regular HTML, no funny client side tricks. I don't see how it could fail to display unless S2 was down but S1 was up.
Indeed, there's some discussion on IRC - I see the image tags in Safari, as do several others.
Cheers WilyD
On 8/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/24/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
One immediate question raised: why is it that Safari does not see the CC licence tag on the image page at en?
It does.. or at least, it does for other people.
The license text is just regular HTML, no funny client side tricks. I don't see how it could fail to display unless S2 was down but S1 was up.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Good catch. Perhaps this needs cross posted to AN and VPT for centralized discussion onwiki? Would you like to spear that?
v/r, Navou
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 3:21 PM To: English Wikipedia; Wikimedia Commons Discussion List Subject: [WikiEN-l] Making damn sure image attribution is very clear
http://duncandavidson.com/archives/564
I responded:
"My apologies on behalf of Wikipedia and Wikimedia! I've emailed to wikien-l and commons-l about this post, asking for suggestions on how we can do better on this sort of thing. There's an editorial habit on English Wikipedia of not putting attributions on photos in the articles themselves, leaving that to the image page ... I think that's a matter for discussion as well."
I think we have to do better on this, at least in some way. The image page needs a BIG OBVIOUS CC notice. Many do, but some don't.
- d.
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
David Gerard schreef:
There's an editorial habit on English Wikipedia of not putting attributions on photos in the articles themselves, leaving that to the image page ... I think that's a matter for discussion as well."
I would be in favour of allowing some kind of attribution in the captions of photos. These should be kept as short as possible, probably just the name, and a link to more information.
If attributions would be included in the article itself, I think outside photographers would be more willing to license their work for inclusion in Wikipedia.
At [[User:Eugene_van_der_Pijll/Image_attribution_test]], I've worked out some ideas of what this attribution would look like.
Eugene
On 8/24/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
I would be in favour of allowing some kind of attribution in the captions of photos. These should be kept as short as possible, probably just the name, and a link to more information.
I agree. It doesn't actually have to be in the caption; in a tiny font immediately under the image is fine. If we're uncomfortable with the author name, we should at least put something like 'click to see copyright information' there.
I also think we should improve our handling of image metadata in thumbnails. At the very least we should retain copyright information embedded in the original.
-Matt
On 8/24/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
I agree. It doesn't actually have to be in the caption; in a tiny font immediately under the image is fine.
Author asks to be credited with a link. You see the problem yes?
If we're uncomfortable with the author name, we should at least put something like 'click to see copyright information' there.
That is a software issue.
I also think we should improve our handling of image metadata in thumbnails. At the very least we should retain copyright information embedded in the original.
-Matt
How do you tell what in the original is copyright information?
On 8/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/24/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
I agree. It doesn't actually have to be in the caption; in a tiny font immediately under the image is fine.
Author asks to be credited with a link. You see the problem yes?
We don't have to accede to that. However, it might be reasonable, for classes of free image requiring credit, to give credit in the actual article use.
If we're uncomfortable with the author name, we should at least put something like 'click to see copyright information' there.
That is a software issue.
Of course it is. However, we're discussing how what we do with images in articles can be improved, many aspects of which are software issues.
I also think we should improve our handling of image metadata in thumbnails. At the very least we should retain copyright information embedded in the original.
How do you tell what in the original is copyright information?
Read up on image metadata formats.
Quite a lot of people use IPTC metadata, which includes fields such as 'Copyright'.
I'm not talking about in-Wikipedia metadata, to be clear - I'm talking about metadata in the image.
-Matt
On 8/24/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
We don't have to accede to that. However, it might be reasonable, for classes of free image requiring credit, to give credit in the actual article use.
It create a lot of potential for disputes, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings. It's much better to provide uniformly attribution on the image page, where we can comfortably provide a link.
On 8/24/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/24/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
I agree. It doesn't actually have to be in the caption; in a tiny font immediately under the image is fine.
Author asks to be credited with a link. You see the problem yes?
Yep.
If we're uncomfortable with the author name, we should at least put something like 'click to see copyright information' there.
That is a software issue.
No, it's a community issue. Unlike trying to guess the author name such a proposal has no substantial technical limitations.
Get the community to approve the operation. Resolve how it should work for tiny images... this would be a trivial change, we could have it right away.
I also think we should improve our handling of image metadata in thumbnails. At the very least we should retain copyright information embedded in the original.
How do you tell what in the original is copyright information?
We should retain all the EXIF that doesn't bloat the file (means drop the binary fields, the exif thumbnail, and any ICC profiles). This has been long discussed and a bug is opened for this.
Going further and adding data from the image page into the exif would be even better... but thats quite a bit harder.
On 8/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
We should retain all the EXIF that doesn't bloat the file (means drop the binary fields, the exif thumbnail, and any ICC profiles). This has been long discussed and a bug is opened for this.
Going further and adding data from the image page into the exif would be even better... but thats quite a bit harder.
However, my experience is that most professional photographers and those very concerned with being properly attributed ensure that these metadata fields are populated in their images. I certainly do so.
-Matt
On 8/24/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
David Gerard schreef:
There's an editorial habit on English Wikipedia of not putting attributions on photos in the articles themselves, leaving that to the image page ... I think that's a matter for discussion as well."
I would be in favour of allowing some kind of attribution in the captions of photos. These should be kept as short as possible, probably just the name, and a link to more information.
If attributions would be included in the article itself, I think outside photographers would be more willing to license their work for inclusion in Wikipedia.
At [[User:Eugene_van_der_Pijll/Image_attribution_test]], I've worked out some ideas of what this attribution would look like.
Eugene
I made a minor improvement to your first method, see: [[User:Georgewilliamherbert/scratch3]]
Wikilinked the credit text, basically...
On 8/24/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote: [snip]
I would be in favour of allowing some kind of attribution in the captions of photos.
This has come up may times before. There are a lot of points against it.
I'll summarize some of them:
* It would be wrong for us to widen the attribution gap between photographers and text writers. We can't inline credit all text authors because some articles have hundreds of authors. So inline credit would provide discriminatory attribution.
* Some images also have a large number of authors, or authors with long names. Some articles have many images, we have hundreds of articles with over a hundred images. This gives images the same inline attribution problem as text.
* So long as we allow non-human nameish names for users inline attribution becomes an platform for non-removable POV insertion and advertisement. SEOs have already noticed that they have much better luck getting their links into wikipedia by submitting images. We'd increase the effectiveness dramatically by moving it into articles.
* Even if it's not advertisement we have users with names like "User:NoseNuggets"... if thats their preferred name for attribution it would be a bullet in the head of the current professionalism of our pages.
* Related to the above, we already have problems with users fighting to keep their pictures of their pets in articles. We really don't want the reasonable suspicion that people are trying to get their "name in lights" hurting our ability to AGF.
Most importantly: * There are simple actions we can take to improve attribution which don't have these problems.
I've suggested several in the past that we provide a more obvious attributions link, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/example
We could also adopt the popup-imagepage part of Lupin's Navigation Popups (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:POPUPS), which might help somewhat.
I've also suggested we create a "Credits" namespace as a second associated namespace, like "Talk". The Credits namespace could provide an editable place for interested authors to list themselves, the image pages could be automatically displayed at the bottom page.
If attributions would be included in the article itself, I think outside photographers would be more willing to license their work for inclusion in Wikipedia.
At [[User:Eugene_van_der_Pijll/Image_attribution_test]], I've worked out some ideas of what this attribution would look like.
Eugene
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 8/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I've suggested several in the past that we provide a more obvious attributions link, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/example
I strongly support this. Our current interface does not make it clear that the credits are available by clicking on the thumbnail. I suspect it would remove a lot of the problem.
-Matt
On 8/24/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I've suggested several in the past that we provide a more obvious attributions link, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/example
I strongly support this. Our current interface does not make it clear that the credits are available by clicking on the thumbnail. I suspect it would remove a lot of the problem.
-Matt
This is nicely done, just linking to the attributions. Discrete, but highly visible should you be wanting to use the photo.
KP
Gregory Maxwell schreef:
On 8/24/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
- It would be wrong for us to widen the attribution gap between
photographers and text writers. We can't inline credit all text authors because some articles have hundreds of authors. So inline credit would provide discriminatory attribution.
Most of our text is written by wikipedians. They do not expect attribution. Text that is imported from other sources should be attributed. (EB1911, MathWorld, etc.)
Photographers outside of Wikipedia also expect attribution.
<snip>
- Even if it's not advertisement we have users with names like
"User:NoseNuggets"... if thats their preferred name for attribution it would be a bullet in the head of the current professionalism of our pages.
This is no problem: we don't have to add attributions to Wikipedia users, only to external sources.
I've suggested several in the past that we provide a more obvious attributions link, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/example
This looks good, I like it.
Eugene
On 8/24/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote: [snip for reordering]
I've suggested several in the past that we provide a more obvious attributions link, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/example
This looks good, I like it.
Well then. :) If we agree, lets move forward! :)
[snip] Some nitpicking with the rest of your message. :)
Most of our text is written by wikipedians. They do not expect attribution. Text that is imported from other sources should be attributed. (EB1911, MathWorld, etc.)
They most certainly do expect attribution. I do. Many other people do. We've had angry complaints from people where we've screwed it up. And we've had people specifically demand better attribution for text authors, including a speaker at WM2006 as I recall.
Attribution It's required by the license. We provide it via a click to the history page.
Photographers outside of Wikipedia also expect attribution.
So do photographers who contribute directly.
Shall I forward your message to commons so that a bunch of photographers can mob you? :)
This is no problem: we don't have to add attributions to Wikipedia users, only to external sources.
This isn't true. In fact, providing inconsistent attribution can give us substantial licensing problems. What we do now can easily be argued as both customary and reasonable to our medium and means of distribution. If we start breaking it up we make a mess out of it.
Not to mention that it would just be rude to provide better attribution for people who may not even know we exist over the people who slave over the site day after day.
On 8/24/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/24/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote: [snip]
I would be in favour of allowing some kind of attribution in the captions of photos.
This has come up may times before. There are a lot of points against it.
I'll summarize some of them:
- It would be wrong for us to widen the attribution gap between
photographers and text writers. We can't inline credit all text authors because some articles have hundreds of authors. So inline credit would provide discriminatory attribution.
- Some images also have a large number of authors, or authors with
long names. Some articles have many images, we have hundreds of articles with over a hundred images. This gives images the same inline attribution problem as text.
- So long as we allow non-human nameish names for users inline
attribution becomes an platform for non-removable POV insertion and advertisement. SEOs have already noticed that they have much better luck getting their links into wikipedia by submitting images. We'd increase the effectiveness dramatically by moving it into articles.
- Even if it's not advertisement we have users with names like
"User:NoseNuggets"... if thats their preferred name for attribution it would be a bullet in the head of the current professionalism of our pages.
- Related to the above, we already have problems with users fighting
to keep their pictures of their pets in articles. We really don't want the reasonable suspicion that people are trying to get their "name in lights" hurting our ability to AGF.
Most importantly:
- There are simple actions we can take to improve attribution which
don't have these problems.
I've suggested several in the past that we provide a more obvious attributions link, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/example
We could also adopt the popup-imagepage part of Lupin's Navigation Popups (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:POPUPS), which might help somewhat.
I've also suggested we create a "Credits" namespace as a second associated namespace, like "Talk". The Credits namespace could provide an editable place for interested authors to list themselves, the image pages could be automatically displayed at the bottom page.
If attributions would be included in the article itself, I think outside photographers would be more willing to license their work for inclusion in Wikipedia.
At [[User:Eugene_van_der_Pijll/Image_attribution_test]], I've worked out some ideas of what this attribution would look like.
Eugene
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
But all text is under one license. The problem isn't about attributing the photographer, the problem is about the numerous different licenses for images. As this is the case for images only, the solution is to include THE LICENSE, not the photographer, under the image caption.
Of course, the licenses, except for PD are generally not understandable by mere mortals for images, and one common ones appears not to apply to images at all, but that's another story.
KP
On 8/25/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
But all text is under one license. The problem isn't about attributing the photographer, the problem is about the numerous different licenses for images. As this is the case for images only, the solution is to include THE LICENSE, not the photographer, under the image caption.
Of course, the licenses, except for PD are generally not understandable by mere mortals for images, and one common ones appears not to apply to images at all, but that's another story.
Many editors, including myself, license our text under other licences; the Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike and Attribution licences are common, as is releasing the text into the public domain. The latter is not too big a deal (although you can argue morally the author should be credited, and we should specify that parts of the text are in the public domain), but the fact is, Greg is probably right about the need for consistency in treating different types of content.
Johnleemk
On 8/24/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/25/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
But all text is under one license. The problem isn't about attributing the photographer, the problem is about the numerous different licenses for images. As this is the case for images only, the solution is to include THE LICENSE, not the photographer, under the image caption.
Of course, the licenses, except for PD are generally not understandable by mere mortals for images, and one common ones appears not to apply to images at all, but that's another story.
Many editors, including myself, license our text under other licences; the Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike and Attribution licences are common, as is releasing the text into the public domain. The latter is not too big a deal (although you can argue morally the author should be credited, and we should specify that parts of the text are in the public domain), but the fact is, Greg is probably right about the need for consistency in treating different types of content.
Johnleemk
So, when you edit a Wikipedia article, you contribute your text under another license, how?
When different things are different, there might be a reason to dreat them differently. A photograph is an entity in itself, while a word here and there, and sentences here and there, even an entire article in Wikipedia is seldom ever the contribution of only one editor, and is not generally taken, except for mirrors, like a photograph, as an entire usable object.
Photographs are not text, nor vice versa.
KP
On 8/26/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/24/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/25/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
But all text is under one license. The problem isn't about attributing the photographer, the problem is about the numerous different licenses for images. As this is the case for images only, the solution is to include THE LICENSE, not the photographer, under the image caption.
Of course, the licenses, except for PD are generally not understandable by mere mortals for images, and one common ones appears not to apply to images at all, but that's another story.
Many editors, including myself, license our text under other licences;
the
Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike and Attribution licences are
common,
as is releasing the text into the public domain. The latter is not too
big a
deal (although you can argue morally the author should be credited, and
we
should specify that parts of the text are in the public domain), but the fact is, Greg is probably right about the need for consistency in
treating
different types of content.
Johnleemk
So, when you edit a Wikipedia article, you contribute your text under another license, how?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multi-licensing
When different things are different, there might be a reason to dreat
them differently. A photograph is an entity in itself, while a word here and there, and sentences here and there, even an entire article in Wikipedia is seldom ever the contribution of only one editor, and is not generally taken, except for mirrors, like a photograph, as an entire usable object.
Whole paragraphs are certainly reusable content, and I suspect Greg was correct in stating that most articles are the product of one or two editors. I'm still not sure if anyone other than myself has made major edits to articles like [[Second Malaysia Plan]] and [[Ketuanan Melayu]].
Photographs are not text, nor vice versa.
Certainly, but when there are similarities, there is a case for consistency in how we approach those similar areas.
KP
Johnleemk
On 8/25/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I've suggested several in the past that we provide a more obvious attributions link, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/example
I've done some more mockups in a similar vein here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thebainer/thumbtest
These mockups are all achieved with wikitext (and a little HTML) but obviously something like this would be implemented by way of a MediaWiki message.
On 8/26/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
I've done some more mockups in a similar vein here: These mockups are all achieved with wikitext (and a little HTML) but obviously something like this would be implemented by way of a MediaWiki message.
Any ideas on how to handle this for captionless images and for really small images?
I've added another proposed look to your page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thebainer/thumbtest
The thought behind my proposal is that the universal copyright symbol is more likely to express the importance of the information behind the link. The hand icon signifies something that you can click on.
In terms of encouraging proper image-reuse this is even better than simply providing the authors name, since it encourages people to look at the license information as well. If we ever implement bug9616 (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9616) we could change the icon depending on the license... Or do so for logged in users.
I've also made it replace the pre-existing caption icon, so it doesn't consume any additional screen real-estate.
I've overlapped the image slightly, which may cause some problems in IE... but if we actually wanted something like that style both possible sources of problems (broken z-index handling and PNG transparency) can be worked around.
On 8/26/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
The thought behind my proposal is that the universal copyright symbol is more likely to express the importance of the information behind the link. The hand icon signifies something that you can click on.
Red C notice will tend to be percived as hostile.
On 8/26/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Red C notice will tend to be percived as hostile.
Why?
-Matt
On 26/08/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/26/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
The thought behind my proposal is that the universal copyright symbol is more likely to express the importance of the information behind the link. The hand icon signifies something that you can click on.
Red C notice will tend to be percived as hostile.
It will convey the message "do not touch." CC-style icons would be much better, though there isn't an icon for GFDL, or indeed most non-CC licenses.
- d.
On 26/08/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/08/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/26/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
The thought behind my proposal is that the universal copyright symbol is more likely to express the importance of the information behind the link. The hand icon signifies something that you can click on.
Red C notice will tend to be percived as hostile.
It will convey the message "do not touch." CC-style icons would be much better, though there isn't an icon for GFDL, or indeed most non-CC licenses.
Though I must say, I really like Stephen Bain's use of an (i) symbol. We should use that instead of the current two-boxes image in Monobook - it much more directly says "click here for the information on this image."
- d.
On 8/26/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
It will convey the message "do not touch." CC-style icons would be much better, though there isn't an icon for GFDL, or indeed most non-CC licenses.
There are the freedom defined license icons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:License_icons
I've added a few more ideas to the page.. including a more neutral (i.e. not red) copyright + magnifying glass.
On 26/08/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
I've added a few more ideas to the page.. including a more neutral (i.e. not red) copyright + magnifying glass.
+1 for this. It's informative and polite.
On 26/08/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
CC-style icons would be much better, though there isn't an icon for GFDL, or indeed most non-CC licenses.
{{sofixit}} ;-)
On 8/26/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/08/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
CC-style icons would be much better, though there isn't an icon for GFDL, or indeed most non-CC licenses.
{{sofixit}} ;-)
Eh, it's also the case that the creative commons stipulates that those icons can only be used to link back to their site, AFAIR. .. which isn't really what we want for the inline use.
On 27/08/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/26/07, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/08/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
CC-style icons would be much better, though there isn't an icon for GFDL, or indeed most non-CC licenses.
{{sofixit}} ;-)
Eh, it's also the case that the creative commons stipulates that those icons can only be used to link back to their site, AFAIR. .. which isn't really what we want for the inline use.
I advocate again Stephen Bain's little blue circle-i, which IMO clearly says "for info about this photo" and would be the obvious pointer to off-page credits, licence, etc.
- d.
On 8/27/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I advocate again Stephen Bain's little blue circle-i, which IMO clearly says "for info about this photo" and would be the obvious pointer to off-page credits, licence, etc.
Bear in mind that there are plenty of good icons to choose from on Commons that we could choose from. The one in my test seems to hold up well at very small resolutions (~15px), I think that would be the main criteria for choosing an icon.
On 8/26/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Any ideas on how to handle this for captionless images and for really small images?
Possibly just change the alt (and title) attribute for the image? Have the standard alt (ie. the image page title) or the user-supplied one (if any) and concatenate a notice on the end.
I've added another proposed look to your page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thebainer/thumbtest
The thought behind my proposal is that the universal copyright symbol is more likely to express the importance of the information behind the link. The hand icon signifies something that you can click on.
I don't know if the copyright symbol conveys the correct message. To me, the symbol displayed next to some work typically conveys that there are (most if not all) rights reserved in relation to that work.
I've overlapped the image slightly, which may cause some problems in IE... but if we actually wanted something like that style both possible sources of problems (broken z-index handling and PNG transparency) can be worked around.
Well, my tests are just hacks really. If we actually implemented something like this, it ought to be done in the software and configurable through a MediaWiki message.
On 8/26/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
Possibly just change the alt (and title) attribute for the image? Have the standard alt (ie. the image page title) or the user-supplied one (if any) and concatenate a notice on the end.
Not great, but obviously harmless and easy to implement. Just pull the add on alt text from a MW message.
I don't know if the copyright symbol conveys the correct message. To me, the symbol displayed next to some work typically conveys that there are (most if not all) rights reserved in relation to that work.
I have to admit I was really thinking post-bug 9616.
We'd then be able to the color of the C depending on the license status of the image. For example, green C for PD/attribution licenses, green reversed C for copyleft/sharealike images, red C for non-free images).... but it's generally a bad design practice to convey important things with color.
There is an argument to be made for a design which results in any confused people thinking they can't use the image rather than that they can... Most of our images have some sort of copyright related implications.
Well, my tests are just hacks really. If we actually implemented something like this, it ought to be done in the software and configurable through a MediaWiki message.
Of course it should be implemented in MediaWiki, but any issues with HTML and browser behavior would remain.
I'm not especially keen on making the entire behavior a configurable message, just the message text.
It might also be useful to create an icon combining a magnifying glass.. since thats the other half of the purpose of clicking on the image. I don't think the current magnify-clip image is at all obvious.
On 8/26/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
I've done some more mockups in a similar vein here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thebainer/thumbtest
These mockups are all achieved with wikitext (and a little HTML) but obviously something like this would be implemented by way of a MediaWiki message.
I really like these. I don't think you've quite hit the perfect combination yet though, but you're close. Some thoughts:
- The copyright symbol is a good idea, as it screams out "This image is not necessarily public domain" - The little hand just adds clutter, and is confusing when you actually have the mouse pointer over it - The "i in a box" is good, but needs something more to make it explicitly about the image. - It should be obvious that the image can and should be clicked on. - The (c) with the magnifying glass is sort of on the right track, but really hard to see. Took me a while to realise that that's what it is.
Maybe a combination of the (C) and the (i) ? ("Copyright information"? - or is that too cute?) A (C) with a small hypertext link saying "credits"?
Note in any case that even clicking that link doesn't really solve your problem: it's very hard to find the text that says "Photo taken by sannse". We really need to rethink how we present that information, so we have a single piece of text that says "This picture was taken by Wikipedia user sannse. You can reuse this image as long as you attribute her and follow [[these rules]]."
Steve
On your last point, most images on commons use the information template. I think it makes authorship bloddy obvious. Do you agree?
If so the best solution is to move free images to commons and use the information template.
On 8/29/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/26/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
I've done some more mockups in a similar vein here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thebainer/thumbtest
These mockups are all achieved with wikitext (and a little HTML) but obviously something like this would be implemented by way of a MediaWiki message.
I really like these. I don't think you've quite hit the perfect combination yet though, but you're close. Some thoughts:
- The copyright symbol is a good idea, as it screams out "This image
is not necessarily public domain"
- The little hand just adds clutter, and is confusing when you
actually have the mouse pointer over it
- The "i in a box" is good, but needs something more to make it
explicitly about the image.
- It should be obvious that the image can and should be clicked on.
- The (c) with the magnifying glass is sort of on the right track, but
really hard to see. Took me a while to realise that that's what it is.
Maybe a combination of the (C) and the (i) ? ("Copyright information"?
- or is that too cute?) A (C) with a small hypertext link saying
"credits"?
Note in any case that even clicking that link doesn't really solve your problem: it's very hard to find the text that says "Photo taken by sannse". We really need to rethink how we present that information, so we have a single piece of text that says "This picture was taken by Wikipedia user sannse. You can reuse this image as long as you attribute her and follow [[these rules]]."
Steve
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Steve Bennett schreef:
I really like these. I don't think you've quite hit the perfect combination yet though, but you're close. Some thoughts:
- The copyright symbol is a good idea, as it screams out "This image
is not necessarily public domain"
The copyright symbol is a bad idea, as it screams out "This image is definitely copyrighted". That should not be the default.
The (i) is much better.
Eugene
On 30/08/2007, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
The copyright symbol is a bad idea, as it screams out "This image is definitely copyrighted". That should not be the default. The (i) is much better.
ALT=and TITLE= "Copyright and licensing information for this image"
This comes up as a tooltip in most graphical browsers.
- d.
On 8/30/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
The copyright symbol is a bad idea, as it screams out "This image is definitely copyrighted". That should not be the default.
I imagine the vast majority of images on Wikipedia are indeed copyrighted.
The (i) is much better.
For me it doesn't sufficiently convey the idea that it's information about the photographer/copyright holder. Sure, you'd click if you want to know more about the image itself, but you don't realise you need to click it if you want to reuse the image.
Steve
Steve Bennett schreef:
On 8/30/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
The copyright symbol is a bad idea, as it screams out "This image is definitely copyrighted". That should not be the default.
I imagine the vast majority of images on Wikipedia are indeed copyrighted.
Perhaps, but a large number of images that I have uploaded are not. It's a bad habit of museums and other institutions to claim copyright on public domain images just because they are the ones who have that picture in their possession.
I don't want Wikipedia to follow their lead.
The (i) is much better.
For me it doesn't sufficiently convey the idea that it's information about the photographer/copyright holder. Sure, you'd click if you want to know more about the image itself, but you don't realise you need to click it if you want to reuse the image.
The (c) may be better for people who want to reuse the images, but they should know they have to look for the conditions on that. The majority of our visitors are here to read the articles; not to reuse them; I'm concerned about the impression that an article littered with copyright sign will make.
Eugene
On 30/08/2007, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
The (c) may be better for people who want to reuse the images, but they should know they have to look for the conditions on that. The majority of our visitors are here to read the articles; not to reuse them; I'm concerned about the impression that an article littered with copyright sign will make.
Yeah. It conveys "don't touch" rather than "this image is copyrighted". And of course that's completely wrong when it isn't copyrighted.
- d.
On 8/30/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote
Yeah. It conveys "don't touch" rather than "this image is copyrighted". And of course that's completely wrong when it isn't copyrighted.
Most of them are copyrighted. ... We could, ultimately, use a different symbol for PD images.
But that doesn't solve the "don't touch" problem. "Don't touch" is not the right message, but if our choices are "don't touch" vs "this is PD" (which is apparently what people are getting from no comment at all.. which boggles me and sounds like bullshit, but who am I to argue) I'd argue that "don't touch" is actually the better message to send.
I think the "i" alone is a substantial step forward from where we are... but it doesn't sufficiently convey "you need to look here before you can reuse this".
I'd really rather we use javascript to cause context-click to pop-up a notice, or otherwise prevent people from just blindly saving the thumbs. There really isn't any good reason for someone to right-click save our thumbs.