[WikiEN-l] Attributing "attribution required" free images

[Steve Bennett]

On 10/30/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Question: why should we give special prominence and mention of the
> original author to a carefully composed, lovingly shot photo whose license
> requires attribution to the author(s), and not give special prominence and
> mention of the original author to a carefully composed, lovingly written
> article/text whose license requires attribution to the author(s)?


The main difference is that the author composed their text *for*
Wikipedia, so we have no doubt that
they're happy with the lack of attribution. However, if we're copying an
image from Flickr, we just don't know - the intent behind labelling
something as "CC-SA with attribution" is pretty unclear.

In any case, there's no good reason we *don't* attribute authors better. And
in fact we don't really comply with the GFDL from this point of view: there
should be a clear list of the five main contributors.

I've noticed people seem to hold photos and text to very different
> standards. For example, I don't think I've once seen anyone remove chunks of
> quoted text for being 'excessive fair use', and yet similar actions and
> rationale for images are too common for me to need to belabor the point.
>
> It's a lot more effort to take a photo.

Steve