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. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
