[WikiEN-l] GDFL compliance

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 10:02 PM, Michael Peel<email at mikepeel.net> wrote:

<snip>

> In the case of the images that I've taken myself and uploaded to
> Commons (CC-BY-SA license), pretty much the only thing I'm after for
> myself is attribution. I believe that's a standard stance amongst
> photographers that aren't also after money as a matter of routine.
> I'm not sure whether I'd go through all the trouble of uploading
> images to Commons/Wikipedia were that not the case.

I'd agree with this as well. Photography is, in this sense, more an
artform with a single end result, rather than a collaboration. Of
course, by uploading to Commons, you are allowing people to take the
original and modify it and so forth, but if the original you provided
is used, most people expect to be credited for that. Ask those people
who have numerous featured pictures and something of a reputation as a
photographer. They would be most upset if their pictures were used
without attribution. This is still the case even when photographers
are paid for what they produce - being credited is how they build a
reputation as a good photographer. Similar to how writers build a
reputation as a good writer (with a byline).

The strange things about use within Wikipedia is how unstable it can
be. Sometimes a picture you take will last in an article for years.
Other times, even after years, someone will come along with a similar
picture they have taken (sometimes better, sometimes not) and replace
"your" picture with theirs. It is "deep breath" and calm down point at
that time.

And then there are the thousands of pictures on Commons that are not
being used, either because no-one knows they are there (they need
sorting and categorising) or no-one has bothered to pick the best from
a page or category to use on a page, or because the pictures are
rubbish. It doesn't help that running a query across all projects for
each of hundreds of photos one may have uploaded is not really
practical. Ideally, uses of the photos would be recorded permenently,
so you could just check periodically and note with interest that a
picture you uploaded was used in an edit war on the Polish wikipedia,
or that a picture you uploaded was used for 5 minutes on the Japanese
wikipedia, and that a picture you uploaded has been in stable use on
the English wikipedia for 3 years, and so on.

If that is already possible (examining the history of use of each
image), please let me know (I'm going to be uploading some pics
today).

Carcharoth