[WikiEN-l] Artists' impressions

[Erik Moeller]

On 5/18/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   Silly question - are "artists' impressions" (pictures attempting to
> illustrate a subject in the absence of definitive information) allowed in
> Wikipedia? There are topics where we will never have a free image. Could we
> envisage letting editors draw an image, stating clearly that it's simply an
> "artist's impression"? Would it violate WP:OR?

It's tricky. I had the discussion a while ago on [[Katie Holmes]],
where I added this free content drawing from Flickr:
http://flickr.com/photos/mricon/2081064/in/set-52272/

Someone later replaced it with a fair use photo. We did argue a bit
about WP:NOR, but it also turned out that the drawing was actually
traced from a famous photograph of Holmes, rendering the free content
argument null.

In another case on de.wikipedia.org, a user created many fairly
abstract drawings of celebrities and added them to articles. These are
now all removed. There may have been copyright reasons for that, but
they also looked a bit weird and out of place.

>From these anecdotes I would conclude that we have to be very clear
that the picture is an original work and not a directly derivative
one, especially not from a single work. In addition, there has to be
general consensus that the picture accurately and neutrally depicts
whatever it is meant to depict. Insofar as it is possible to cite
sources, they should be cited.

As for WP:NOR, you could make the argument about any original creation
by Wikipedians. We do not. What matters more, especially in the case
of living people, is that the original creations are generally
considered to be good, encyclopedic and useful.

Erik