Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/arts/20funny.html?_r=1

by timwiseman • 17 years ago

11 18 17 years ago

timwiseman4• 17 years ago

I thought this article was rather interesting especially this line:

Also, it can be difficult to persuade a talent photographer to go along with that approach [of supplying a CC licensed photo] because one free photograph can drive out all the others,...

I would think it would be relatively easy to hire a talent photographer to explicitly take a series of photos to be released under creative commons.

Even if for some reason many of the traditional talent photographers refused, if they were so keen on getting a better photo for use on wikipedia it seems like it would be easy to hire talented amateurs or lower tier professional photographers that would love the exposure that would come with having it used for wikipedia, even if they had to lose control over it to get that.

RK• 17 years ago

Try getting the copyright to wedding (or similar) photos.

If the photographer doesn't flat-out refuse, that will be be an extra x% charge (somewhere around 50-100%) to make up for the lost gouge they normally charge for "reprints".

And even though one photographer might hire another under "work for hire" terms (i.e. the second photographer holds no copyright to the photos they personally take). Don't expect that you can hire the photographer to work under those terms directly for you at the same rate.

timwiseman4• 17 years ago

Yes, almost all professional photographers are reluctant to relinquish their copyrights and will as you say "be an extra x% charge". But if these people, who literally make their living on their appearance and reputation, are serious then they should be happy to pay that extra money.

If they are unwilling or unable to do that but still care about their picture on wikipedia, then they can certainly get a talented amateur to do it for a very reasonable fee. It (probably) will not be as good a professional photographer, but it will be better than what wikipedia likely has now and will be cheaper even with relinquishing copyright.

tokenadult• 17 years ago

"A few celebrities, like Plácido Domingo and Oliver Stone, have had the foresight to provide their own freely licensed photographs. And considering the money that stars spend to maintain their image, it is surprising that more have not invested in high-quality, freely licensed photographs for Wikipedia and other sites. Perhaps they don’t recognize how popular Wikipedia is. In June, for example, Ms. Berry’s article had more than 180,000 page views."

There we have it. If the subjects of the photographs care about how they look on a very widely viewed website, they will see to it that a good-looking photo with the appropriate license is submitted to Wikipedia. If some of the current photos are really, really bad, the photograph that would improve the status quo could be taken by almost anyone. For more image-conscious celebrities, they will still want to hire a photographer with experience and good equipment, but all it takes is a contract (freedom of contract is a wonderful thing) that the photograph will be licensed in the way that Wikipedia desires, and the photograph can go to Wikipedia.

cdr• 17 years ago

See other comments here and elsewhere - deletionists are a major problem on wikipedia, and especially so when it comes to photos. The photo problem really is mostly a wikipedia problem.

lsb• 17 years ago

It's a desert of photos, but being able to see a 70 megapixel Currier & Ives engraving of your home town circa 1879 (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Currier_&_Ives_Br...) is absolutely amazing.

biohacker42• 17 years ago

The NY Times should have its links link to what they are talking about, not the NYT's own pages about that subject. This is glaringly bad design when what they are talking about is a web page.

Actually I shouldn't blame this on design, this is someone's "strategy" for more add revenue.

wmf• 17 years ago

There's even a name for it: black hole SEO.

mquander• 17 years ago

In the linked article, whenever they mention a person with a particularly poor Wikipedia photo, they have a hyperlink. When I saw this, I thought, "how progressive for them to link to all the photos so I can see what they're talking about!"

Of course, they don't actually link to the Wikipedia photos, or even the Wikipedia page. They link to the near-useless, generic NY Times "more content about this" page for that name.

I guess it was never a mystery why people started leaving newspapers for blogs, was it?

cruise02• 17 years ago

Not to mention that there are seven pictures of Halle Berry (still not enough) on her Wikipedia page, when they criticize one bad photo as if it were the only one there.

sfphotoarts• 17 years ago

I have found that photos on WikiPedia are almost impossible to make 'stick' - someone who has no idea comes in and deletes them. I submitted some supporting and with license granted to CC around an artist bio and someone who had only ever contributed articles about Dr Who deemed them unworthy and deleted them.

liquidben• 17 years ago

I had a similar experience that alienated me to contributing. (Geeky confession) I posted a comic book cover to an article about a derivative character of a comic book character. The usage of a comic book cover for demonstrative purposes was covered in their hard-coded fair use Q&A for posting images. A few months later, a page was created as a blanket article about all alternate versions of said character. The article I'd donated to was excerpted to that page, along with the image.

So what happened? The image was deleted from Wiki because the fair use notice wasn't updated to explain how the image's use on the new page was covered.

I was notified about this before it was deleted, and replied to the person who set it in motion, asking them why a redundant disclaimer was necessary for an excerpt. In return I got a link to the fair use page. I thought about deleting the image link with the excerpt. I thought about copy/pasting the original fair use text so it was in there twice. I thought about punching that guy.

Instead, I quit editing articles at WikiPedia. Just wasn't worth the frustration. I'll fix spelling occasionally, but that's it.

pwmanagerdied• 17 years ago

Too true. I was never a huge editor, but I did a decent bit here and there, but also quit after having to deal with bullshit like this all of the time.

zacgarrett• 17 years ago

When working for my former boss I uploaded a photo of him that I had permission from the photographer to do anything I wanted with it. I didn't check the exact right boxes when uploading the photo and it was removed. I tried again, no luck. After about 5 times of trying to put this photo I gave up. It was not worth my time to even bother adding this high quality photo to wikipedia.

philwelch• 17 years ago

At Wikipedia, copyleft license fundamentalists rule the roost. We used to have fairly liberal "fair-use" policies about having photos, but that viewpoint lost out.

For similar reasons, all the audio content on Wikipedia is Ogg Vorbis.

lacker• 17 years ago

Yet another one of a long stream of articles from the NYTimes insulting Wikipedia. They should add a "Disclaimer: we consider free information online to be a competitor, and hope it fails" to these sort of article.

timwiseman4• 17 years ago

But this one was insulting. It clearly portrayed the facts with limited judgment. At least as I read it, it made the "prominent personalities" that did not supply properly licensed photos as the source of the issue, if it is a real issue.

At least as I understood it, it was quite neutral to wikipedia itself.

timwiseman4• 17 years ago

Sorry, I had a major typo. I meant to say: "But this one was NOT insulting."

Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos

Related Stories