[Wikipedia-l] images on commons and gfdl

Mon Jan 17 11:49:11 UTC 2005

Hello, 

Not sure exactly where to write about this.

I may have not understood something very well, if not, please explain to me.

When someone upload an image to wikicommons and place it under gfdl license, I would tend to say that re-using this image would have to follow gfdl license. We know that we do not respect well gfdl license for text, since it is very difficult to follow all authors, but for an image, it should not be a lot of problem to respect it, since there is only one author, the one who took the picture.

So, normally, to follow gfdl license, when we use the image we should 1) mention the gfdl and 2) mention the author, no ? So that anyone reusing the image would be able to follow the gfdl in turn.

What bugs me is that if I upload a picture to say the french wikipedia, it is written in the image comment that I took the picture, so I am granted the authorship of my work, and anyone using the image could either mention wikipedia or myself. But at least, he has the information available. Besides, the reader can see a description of the image.

When I upload an image on wikicommons, I can write this information over there, but this information is no more directly available to the guy using the information.

The author name is not mentionned, nor is the description. On some wikipedias, there is a sort of mention toward the description page, but to be fair, the link is not frankly visible.

Look on the english wikipedia :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ThoraThora1.JPG

Practically, if a reader comes around and want to use the picture, I am ready to say that in at least 50% of the case, either he will not see the link, or he will not care and just take the picture.

I would be glad that template makes it more obvious where the author and the description of the image is.

In other less completed wikipedias, there is no template at all. So, in effect, my authorship is gone and I cannot even complain to the guy using the picture, since he just has no idea who the author is.

http://ht.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hoggar5.jpg

I took that picture and in this case, display of the picture is to my opinion a sort of "violation" of the contract between wikipedias and its authors. Would it be possible that a standard template is set, and mandatory for any picture resources used from commons, so that even if this template is not locally translated, a basic template redirects to the proper LICENSE TERMS and information ? 

Finally, I think it a bit embarassing that when I upload to commons, I have no more choice of languages. Perhaps I did not find it yet :-) Is there a way to make a comment both in french and english ? Would not it be nice that the software recognise this, and displays the french comment on the french speaking projects, while it would display the english comment by default on all other projects ?

I think this is important. I was beginning to upload many pictures on wikicommons to share them. Still, I am a bit bugged to discover that doing so sorta ripped informations which should be mandatory, imho, below the image itself.

What is people opinion on this ?

Anthere

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 The all-new My Yahoo! – What will yours do?