This is a continuation of the watermark discussion started in this thread.
There has been a long-standing unofficial/semi-official policy that pictures used in articles should have watermarks removed before being used, so as to not break immersion. I specifically remember that, prior to becoming Staff, I was told by more experienced wiki members (and I think some were Staff) that no pictures should have watermarks attached and to crop any pictures to remove them. As we are becoming more conscious of and sensitive to copyright issues, not just as CYA but for courtesy's sake, we really need to formalize an official policy regarding this.
I do know that recently, some authors have been crediting pictures they take to the source they snagged them from, and noting whatever CC license the original picture was released under. I also know that many newer authors primarily or exclusively use pictures they've taken themselves, so copyright & attribution are not a concern. I feel that we need to encourage both of these practices.
So the questions are:
- What should be the official policy regarding cropping watermarks from pictures?
- What should be the official policy regarding giving attribution to pictures not taken or created by the original author?
- What should be the official policy regarding whether an author should be responsible for tracking down the original creator of a picture they want to use? Keeping in mind that the vast majority of pictures used on the site originally appeared in various creepypasta picture collections that themselves don't provide attribution and may have already had watermarking stripped off.
- Sub-question: If the author is responsible for tracking down the original creator, how diligent should they be?
Upon reflection, my opinion is that watermarked pictures do break immersion and shouldn't be used in articles, but that we shouldn't remove watermarks in order to make them "safe" to use. I also think that if an alternate acceptable picture can't be found, that no picture should be used at all. This also applies to pictures that aren't watermarked, but the CC license they were released under doesn't allow for sharing or reuse.1 I'm more unsure on how diligent an author should be regarding tracking down the original source/creator for a picture, especially since a lot of creepy pictures are just going to track back to whatever pic archive originally scraped the pics from other archives that scraped the pic off other archives etc. etc. However, if the author IS able to track down the original creator, and the license on the pic allows for reshare/reuse, then it should be credited in the comments, just like how we credit original authors of rewritten articles.
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