[Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

Sun Aug 27 12:37:36 UTC 2006

On 8/26/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> The WMF does have a lot of work and too few people to do things. When
> the Foundation is to these things as well, when do they have time to do
> their Foundation work?
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
Maybe the foundation should expand.  There are certainly some people
who want to be members, who haven't yet been given the opportunity,
despite the fact that the bylaws say they should.

Wikimedia is "powerful enough now that we can insist on [free images],
and get it, from just about any celebrity".  Joe Schmoe Wikipedian is
not, and if a dozen people contact someone claiming to be acting on
behalf of the foundation, even that power is quickly going to
dissipate.

At the very least a press release should be made asking for free
images of celebrities.  Or maybe a "Personal Appeal from Wikipedia
Founder Jimmy Wales", for images, not for money.  Maybe an official
address where companies can "send their pictures", along with a
standardized release form putting them under CC-BY-SA.  Then at least
anyone who wants to go rogue and start asking for images on their own
has something to point to.  But what makes sense in addition is to
have a coordinated effort to get the word out, so as to avoid
duplication.

I'm not at all good at writing press releases, so I won't volunteer
for that.  But if no one else wants to do it I'd be willing to
maintain a page on meta where we can gather contact information and
hand out assignments to contact the appropriate people.  It's not that
it's a hard job, it's just that the Foundation hasn't contacted
someone and asked them to do it.

As a final note, consider this.  Wikimedia is very protective of its
trademark.  For good reason it doesn't want random people speaking on
behalf of itself.  The *only* way to leverage the name of Wikimedia is
to get official permission to do so.  Aside from that, just randomly
contacting huge corporations and asking for free pictures pretty
please, it just aint gonna work.

Anthony