Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-05-31
Making money with free photos
Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons are home to a number of expert photographers who contribute professional-quality freely licensed photos (see the 2009 Picture of the Year candidates on Commons, for example). But while free licenses make it easy for Wikipedia and other projects to use, distribute and modify these photos, they still allow the original authors to derive income from their work. Copyleft licenses—in particular, the GFDL and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licenses—have significant requirements that come with the right to freely use licensed works, and many people and organizations are unable or unwilling to meet these requirements. This is where entrepreneurial Wikimedian photographers step in, licensing their work in other ways—for a fee.
I spoke with two such Wikimedians to learn more about what it's like trying to make money through photography while contributing to Wikipedia. Diliff and Muhammad are both prolific contributors of Featured Pictures on the English Wikipedia, and have similar perspectives on the financial issues surrounding free photography.
Commercial opportunities and limits
For both artists, the commercial limits of Wikimedia photography are readily apparent. Neither considers himself a professional photographer in the strict sense, and photography revenue makes up only a small portion of their income.
Both Diliff and Muhammad receive occasional inquiries about licensing through Wikipedia and Commons, mainly through placement in articles or searches on Commons rather than Main Page exposure for Featured Pictures. However, stock photography sites provide a more reliable source of income for each. According to Diliff, "most people actually find my work elsewhere (mainly stock sites) in terms of sales, although it would be fair to say that I earn more on a per-sale basis from Wikipedia, as I am able to negotiate a better price than I get from stock photography sites,... anything from £25 to £200 [$40 to $300] depending on what the images is, who is interested, and what their use/requirements are." Muhammad averages around $100 per sale through a stock photography site.
Increased visibility through Wikipedia is probably a net benefit commercially, these photographers estimate, but not enough to be the primary reason they contribute. "I'm grateful that Wikipedia gives my photography commercial visibility," says Diliff, "but I see it is a two-way street. Wikipedia/the public benefit from higher quality images than they might otherwise have had, and I receive commercial interest from people who might have otherwised used stock photography sites to find what they wanted, so I don't feel like either Wikipedia or myself is being exploited." He adds, "I'd almost certainly still be uploading my photos if they weren't attracting any commercial interest." For Muhammad, "there are few better feelings than sharing with others the great sights one has seen".
Concerns about exploitation
Compared with other kinds of contributors, photographers often have different attitudes toward Wikimedia's requirements for free licenses, which include the freedom to use contributions commercially. Diliff explains:
I have always been loathe to allow big-shot corporate, commercial entities to take advantage of what Wikipedia offers to the public, so when I get enquiries about whether the intended use of one of my images would be okay with me, I do remind them that they must provide attribution and refer to the license text (ideally with a hotlink or URL); but if they are gracious enough to do that, I am happy to let them use the image without paying for it. I will happily remind them, though, that if they want me to waive these conditions, they would have to pay for the privilege.
Text contributions can be mirrored and served with ads, printed and sold, or adapted and built on for commercial projects, but the copyleft provision of Wikipedia's license prevents most commercial uses that contributors would view as exploitative. Perhaps more significantly, commercial use of Wikipedia articles remains relatively insignificant; it's hard to make money by inserting ads next to the same articles Wikipedia provides clean, without major investment to build something better from them. Photography is a different matter: individual photographs are easily deployed in commercial contexts, from advertisements to illustrations accompanying non-free text to magazine and book covers to commercial artwork. The reuse of pictures from Wikipedia and the Commons is widespread—sometimes in accordance with the relevant license, but more often not.
Muhammad reports that the "Illegal use of my pictures is quite vast. There are those who only partly follow the license and others who completely ignore everything and consider the images public domain." Diliff is similarly concerned that "most people seem to think that Wikipedia = free to do whatever you want with the content", but he is "not actually sure how big the issue is, as I think what we're aware of is only the tip of the iceberg." Some Wikimedians use the reverse image search service TinEye to monitor unattributed use of their images, although its incomplete web index reveals only a slightly larger piece of the proverbial iceberg. Contacting offenders is usually effective in either getting them to follow license requirements properly or removing images. Some Wikimedian photographers also report converting cases of infringement into opportunities to charge for usage rights, although neither Diliff nor Muhammad pursue that strategy.
License issues
One strategy some Wikimedian photographers use to gain more control over print use (Muhammad does this, Diliff does not) is to release photos only under the GFDL Version 1.2, which is very similar in spirit to the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, but requires that the full license text be printed along with licensed works in media where a hyperlink to the license text is not possible. Effectively, this acts as an "online-only" license, creating more opportunity for directly selling licenses for print publication. The GFDL lets Muhammad decide on a case-by-case basis whether to charge for print use:I do not mind my pictures being used by those who cannot afford to buy them. What I despise is rich organizations who can afford to buy pictures being cheap and using them.
A preferred option for many Wikimedian photographers, including both Diliff and Muhammad, would be a non-commercial license such as the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license. Fir0002, an aspiring photographer who retired from Wikimedia projects in 2009 to focus on commercial photography, cited the lack of a non-commercial license option as a major factor in his retirement. Wikipedians have also noted that some professional photographers would allow their work to be used on Wikipedia if they could disallow commercial uses.
- For more on the perspective of these photographers, read the full interviews with Diliff and with Muhammad.
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Wikimedians at Maker Faire, brief news
San Francisco Wikimedians at Maker Faire
For the third year, members of the Bay Area/San Francisco Wikimedia meetup group had a booth at Maker Faire, held May 22 and 23, 2010 in San Mateo, California. Maker Faire is put on by Make Magazine and O'Reilly Media, and features a wide range of "makers" – from people who work with electronics to those who build custom bicycles. The faire has a wide range of steampunk and Burning Man-style art, as well as educational, science and technology and craft-centered booths from local and national makers. The Faire typically attracts nearly 100,000 people.
The Wikimedia booth this year featured computers to demonstrate the projects, displays featuring a visualization of anonymous edits, and two games (the Wikipedia Game and a game to guess various Wikipedia languages). The booth was very popular—thousands of people stopped by to chat about the projects and pick up stickers and buttons provided by the Wikimedia Foundation. About a dozen community members and Foundation employees staffed the booth throughout the weekend.
Briefly
- Naoko Komura, the Wikimedia Foundation's Head of User Experience (UX) Programs, will leave the Foundation on June 17. The announcement came shortly after the deployment of the new "Vector" skin on the English Wikipedia and other major projects, concluding the usability project as planned when it was initiated in January 2009 (see Signpost coverage). In March this year however, the project was made permanent as UX Programs and it was announced that Komura would stay on as a member of the permanent Wikimedia staff (see Signpost coverage).
- The Wikimedia Foundation has hired Ryan Kaldari (User:Kaldari, an administrator on the English Wikipedia and Commons) to develop fundraising software.
- According to a 27 May progress update, Flagged Revisions is mostly complete except for user interface issues, which the developers are looking for an "HTML & CSS guru" to solve. A discussion concluded this about changing the terminology of "Flagged Protection", which will now be called "Pending Changes".
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WikiProject Zoo
- Brown University and Université Laval are the new WikiProject Universities Collaborations of the Month
- Join Operation Brothers at War, a special initiative at WikiProject Military History to bring American Civil War articles up to featured status in time for the war's 150th anniversary
- WikiProject Munich is searching for German translators
This week, we checked out WikiProject Zoo, a project that covers the exhibits and facilities at zoos, aquaria, aviaries, and safari parks. The project was started in December 2006 by Spike Wilbury and revived in October 2009 by ZooPro. The project's current coordinator is The Arbiter. WikiProject Zoo is home to over 700 articles, including five Good Articles. The project maintains connections to WikiProject Animals, WikiProject Biology, and WikiProject Ecology. In addition to expanding and improving existing articles, members of WikiProject Zoo would appreciate help tackling redlinks on several lists, including the lists of zoos, aquaria, dolphinariums, butterfly gardens, and zoo associations. This week we interviewed project member Donlammers.
What motivated you to become a member of WikiProject Zoo? What zoos, aquariums, aviaries, and/or wildlife refuges have you visited?
- I started with the Denver Zoo because my son loves to go there, and the Phoenix zoo because I was researching the Arabian Oryx Reintroduction. I have not been to many zoos: the Denver Zoo, the Downtown Aquarium, Butterfly Pavilion, Naples Zoo (a really great small zoo), and Seaside Aquarium are about it.
The project is already home to some impressive photography, yet the project still maintains a list of requested photos. What are the challenges to attracting photographers to a project like WikiProject Zoo?
- The problem is getting photos of the zoo. The bulk of people who visit zoos take pictures of the animals, not of the zoo. There may be a lot of pictures in zoo categories, and a lot of them are quite impressive, but a large majority are close-ups of the animals, and don't really help in illustrating articles about a zoo.
What are WikiProject Zoo's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?
- Words and pictures. We have some 700 articles now, of which about 270 are stubs and a similar number are start-class. As of my latest count, there are almost 1000 red-links (implied article requests) in our various lists. We have pretty good criteria and a "template" for creating start-class articles, so new articles or stub-to start upgrades shouldn't take too long for anyone interested. For those interested in higher-level articles and promotions, we currently have no A-class and no FA articles, and more importantly very few GA-class articles. In addition, getting pictures of particular zoos (not just individual animals) requires someone at that specific zoo. Anyone interested in photography and willing to put their pictures out with an appropriate free license can contribute to this part of the effort.
Anything else you'd like to add?
- Anyone can contribute, even if just for their own local/favorite zoo. Anyone that visited a zoo recently and has photos they are willing to post as free can contribute, even if they don't want to do anything else. Anyone that wants to help but doesn't know how to start, or knows what they want to do but not how, can and should ask questions on the project talk page.
Next week's WikiProject Report should put a smile on your face. Until then, entertain yourself reading old Reports in the archive.
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Features and admins
Administrators
One editor was granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Waldir (nom).
Bots
Six new bot tasks were approved this week, leaving 20 open applications.
- DASHBot (task 12) Solve redirects on templates that use navbox
- Signpost Book Bot (task) Takes Wikipedia Signpost articles and puts them into book form
- AnomieBOT II (task) Create daily subpages of Template:TFA title
- SporkBot (task) Orphan/substitute templates listed at WP:TFD/H
- TedderBot (task 5) automagically remove
{{current}}template (and others, currently{{current related}}) from stale pages - SmackBot (task XXIX) Clean up specific section headers, expand month abbreviations, various minor fixes common to pages in Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the Air Force Historical Research Agency
Featured pages
Ten articles were promoted to featured status this week: Action of 1 August 1801 (nom), Cyclone Gonu (nom), Brill railway station (nom), HMAS Australia (1911) (nom), Lycoperdon echinatum (nom), Parthian Empire (nom), Henrik Sedin (nom), Banksia menziesii (nom), Keith Miller with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (nom) and Lemurs of Madagascar (book) (nom).
Four lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of numbered roads in Kawartha Lakes (nom), List of protected areas of Svalbard (nom), Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance (nom) and Spice Girls discography (nom).
No topics were promoted to featured status this week.
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: Victoria Cross (Canada), John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Jupiter Trojans, Iravan, Jesus College Boat Club, Tōru Takemitsu and Bronwyn Bancroft.
Former featured pages
Two articles were delisted this week: Delhi (nom) and Aleksandr Vasilevsky (nom).
No lists were delisted this week.
No topics were delisted this week.
No portals were delisted this week.
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Hakea laurina; Spotted Dove; Cornelius Vanderbilt; Tachysphex sp.; Albino American Alligator; Polyporus squamosus and Act III, Scene 6, from Le Cid.
No featured sounds were promoted this week.
One featured picture was demoted this week: Takakkaw Falls (nom).
Seven pictures were promoted to featured status this week.
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Chicago skyline at sunrise -
Chicago 'L' tracks in the Chicago Loop at the Adams/Wabash station at night -
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1937 anti-Bolshevik Nazi propaganda poster -
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Period sketch of an encampment on the California Trail -
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Arbitration report
The Arbitration Committee has neither opened nor closed any cases this week, leaving one case open.
Open cases
- Transcendental Meditation movement (Week 14): The case was opened to deal with circumstances surrounding articles related to the eponymous movement, similar to the circumstances at issue in Scientology pages a year ago. The case is being voted upon.
Other
- The Results of the May 2010 CheckUser and Oversight elections have been deemed unsatisfactory. Up to six Oversight positions and three Checkuser positions could not be filled, because only one candidate—Amalthea, a candidate for CheckUser—reached the 70% threshold. This was the first CheckUser/Oversight election to use the SecurePoll process. All eight Oversight candidates and four CheckUser candidates had been vetted by the committee and presented to the community for consideration.
- Amalthea has been granted CheckUser permissions, subject to identification in accordance with WMF identification policy.
- The Arbitration Committee and the Community have begun a review of how CheckUser and Oversight permissions are granted.
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