[Wikimedia-l] Someone wants to put their promotional photo on Wikipedia. What's best practices?

[Jane Darnell]

In the Netherlands, we have Wikiportret for promotional photos of living people
It gets used pretty often

On Oct 11, 2013, at 9:44 PM, David Gerard wrote:

> I just got a phone call and followup email today asking about how to
> upload a photo to be on a Wikipedia article.
> 
> This has got to be an incredibly common request. What's a standardised
> way to handle it?
> 
> Here's the text I wrote back with:
> 
> ===
> OK - the key point with contributing a picture to Wikipedia, or rather
> to Wikimedia Commons, is that you are contributing it to the world -
> under a free licence.
> 
> (You can't contribute a picture "for use in Wikipedia" - Wikipedia
> doesn't accept those. It needs pictures of living people to be under a
> licence where literally anyone can use it.)
> 
> So, you need the person or body who owns the copyright in the picture
> to contribute it under a free licence. This means you lose control
> over the picture, but it does contribute it to the world. This does
> not control unpleasant reuses - so be very sure you think this is a
> good idea.
> 
>   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Contributing_your_own_work
> 
> This works quite well in my experience for promotional photos. It will
> rapidly become *the* picture people use.
> 
> Creative Commons by-sa is a good licence, I think - anyone can use it,
> but anyone can reuse it.
> 
> Once a picture is uploaded to Commons, it can be used on Wikipedia articles.
> ===
> 
> - But there's got to be a better text and/or page I could refer them to ...
> 
> Assume the person this is for knows very little about Wikipedia or
> content freedom.
> 
> 
> - d.
> 
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