User:Ricken/SandboxPG/Image use policy
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This page sets out the policies towards images, including format, content, and copyright issues.
Selecting images for uploading
Copyright and licensing
Before you upload an image, make sure that the image falls in one of the four categories:
- Own work: You own all rights to the image, usually meaning that you created it entirely yourself.
- Freely licensed: You can prove that the copyright holder has released the image under an acceptable free license. Note that images that are licensed for use only on AmtWiki, or only for non-commercial or educational use, or under a license that doesn't allow for the creation of modified/derived works, are unsuitable. (example, see below for details) When in doubt, do not upload copyrighted images.
- Public domain: You can prove that the image is in the public domain, i.e. free of all copyrights.
- Fair use: You believe that the image meets the special conditions for non-free content, which exceptionally allow the use of unlicensed material, and you can provide an explicit non-free use rationale explaining why and how you intend to use it.
Privacy rights
When taking pictures of identifiable people, the subject's consent is not usually needed for straightforward photographs taken in a public place, but is often needed for photographs taken in a private place. This type of consent is sometimes called a model release, and it is unrelated to the photographer's copyright.
Because of the expectation of privacy, the consent of the subject should normally be sought before uploading any photograph featuring an identifiable individual that has been taken in a private place, whether or not the subject is named. Even in countries that have no law of privacy, there is a moral obligation on us not to upload photographs which infringe the subject's reasonable expectation of privacy. If you upload a self-portrait, your consent is presumed.
Examples
Normally do not require consent of the subject
- A street performer during a performance
- An anonymous person in a public place, especially as part of a larger crowd
- Partygoers at a large private party where photography is expected
- A basketball player competing in a match open to the public
Normally do require consent
- An identifiable child, titled "An obese girl" (potentially derogatory or demeaning)
- Partygoers at a private party where photography is not permitted or is not expected (unreasonable intrusion without consent)
- Nudes, underwear or swimsuit shots, unless obviously taken in a public place (unreasonable intrusion without consent)
- Long-lens images, taken from afar, of an individual in a private place (unreasonable intrusion)
Uploading images
Format
Generally speaking, you should not contribute images consisting solely of formatted or unformatted text, tables, or mathematical formulas. In most cases these can instead be typed directly into an article in wiki markup. This will make the information easier to edit.
Image titles and file names
Descriptive file names are also useful. A map of Blackspire could be called "Blackspire.png", but quite likely more maps of Blackspire will be uploaded to AmtWiki, so it is good to be more specific in a meaningful way, e.g. "Blackspire map Jan2012.png", or "Blackspire map chapter markers.png". Check whether there are already maps of Blackspire on AmtWiki. Then decide whether your map should replace one (in each article that uses it) or be additional. In the first case give it exactly the same name, otherwise a suitable other name. Avoid special characters in filenames or excessively long filenames, though, as that might make it difficult for some users to download the files onto their machines. Note that names are case sensitive, "Africa.PNG" is considered different from "Africa.png". For uniformity, lower case file name extensions are recommended.
You may use the same name in the case of a different image that replaces the old one, and also if you make an improved version of the same image – perhaps a scanned image that you scanned again with a better quality scanner, or you used a better way of reducing the original in scale – then upload it with the same title as the old one. This allows people to easily compare the two images, and avoids the need to delete images or change articles. However, this is not possible if the format is changed, since then at least the extension part of the name has to be changed.
Required information
- Description: The subject of the image. This should explain what the picture is of (ideally linking the article(s) it would be used on, and other identifying information that is not covered by the bullets below. For example, a picture of a person taken at a public event will often identify that event and the date of the event. (This is different from the image's caption or alt-text, and might be more descriptive than these.)
- Origin (source): The copyright holder of the image or URL of the web page the image came from
- For an image from the internet the URL of an HTML page containing the image is preferable to the URL for just the image itself.
- For an image from a book this is ideally page number and full bibliographic information (author, title, ISBN number, page number(s), date of copyright, publisher information, etc.).
- For a self-created image, state "Own work"
- Author: The original creator of the image (especially if different from the copyright holder). If the image is being uploaded with the permission of the creator, contact information should be provided.
- Date the image was created, if available; a full date, if available, is better than simply the year
- Location at which the image was created, if applicable and available. This can be as specific as a GPS-derived longitude and latitude.
- Other versions of this file on AmtWiki e.g. cropped or uncropped, retouched or unretouched.
- Rationale for use (only required for non-free images). A separate non-free rationale is required for each use of the image on AmtWiki. Details of what is required for the non-free rationale is described in more depth on the non-free content page.
Adding images to articles
Content
The purpose of an image is to increase readers' understanding of the article's subject matter, usually by directly depicting people, things, activities, and concepts described in the article. The relevant aspect of the image should be clear and central.
Placement
Image galleries
Images are typically interspersed individually throughout an article near the relevant text. However, the use of a gallery section may be appropriate in some articles if a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. Images in a gallery should be suitably captioned to explain their relevance both to the article subject and to the theme of the gallery, and the gallery should be appropriately titled (unless the theme of the gallery is clear from the context of the article). Images in a gallery should be carefully selected, avoiding similar or repetitive images, unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made.
However, AmtWiki is not an image repository. A gallery is not a tool to shoehorn images into an article, and a gallery consisting of an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should generally be improved in accordance with the above paragraph.
Articles consisting entirely or primarily of galleries are discouraged. Using animated GIFs to display multiple photos is discouraged. The method is not user-friendly.
Fair-use images should almost never be included as part of a general image gallery, because their "fair use" status depends on their proper use in the context of an article (as part of analysis or criticism).
Displayed image size
Images adjacent to text should generally carry a caption and use the "thumb" (thumbnail) option.
Deleting images
To nominate a picture for deletion, add an {{ffd}} tag to the image description. This process may be used for images that are low quality, obsolete, likely to remain unused, or whose use under the non-free content rules is disputed.
