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fanlore2010-04-23 08:33 pm
cordelia_v) wrote in fanlore2010-04-23 08:33 pm
Entry tags:
Draft of Image Policy for Discussion
As Meri commented in an earlier post, we've been working on several projects in committee, and we're far enough along now to ask for your input on a few things. Today, I wanted to ask you to read and comment on a draft of our new Image Policy, which we've posted for discussion on Fanlore.
There are several areas we needed to develop clearer guidelines for, but we decided to make the image policy an earlier priority because some of you had expressed concern (rightly!) that Fanlore had no policy regarding explicit images, including those which might be triggering or offensive (or illegal to view) for some users.
It's only a matter of time before someone uploaded an image of Fenrir/Draco chan noncon fanart, mean to say. And while we'll host any art that is legal for us to host, we want to make it possible for those who find such images disturbing to avoid seeing them.
Once we started working on it, we realized that an image policy needed to address not only explicit/possibly offensive images, but also questions about uploading copyrighted images, fair use, and images that were being uploaded with the consent of the artist. So, the policy also covers all of those questions as well.
The draft we've posted to Fanlore has been vetted by the OTW's legal committee, and also relies heavily on Wikipedia's robust set of image policies. When you check it out, you'll see that it's pretty long and detailed, but please don't be put off by that!
We're going to post a link on the Editing Help and Tutorial pages to a much more streamlined "Cliffnotes" version of this policy, that contains links to get users started who don't need to read the whole policy, but just want answers to questions like: what templates should I use for art that has explicit images? or what templates do we use for images that are copyrighted or how can I filter out or avoid images that I might find disturbing?. But before we create the short version, we needed to get the full policy approved and in place.
We also wanted to ask your input on a question that is still open: how should we define "high res" and "low res" images in these guidelines? Images can be high res if they're uploaded with permission of the creator, or are in the public domain, or licensed for free distribution by their creator. But copyrighted images must be uploaded in low res, thumbnail versions in order to comply with standards for "fair use." We have our own ideas about what size a thumbnail image is, but we wanted your input about how you'd define "high res" and "low res" images for Fanlore.
OK, now that the intro is out of the way, here's the link to the full draft of the image policy. We wanted to leave this open for discussion until April 30th, and then we'll revise the policy to reflect the discussion and post a final draft to Fanlore.
ETA: a list of the various threads developing in this discussion
1. Some commenters asked whether we planned to recommend deleting already uploaded images that don't fit this policy, and my answer was no, although we hope that eventually new image summaries might be added for uploaded images that currently have little or no information. Some commenters pointed out that we do have some pages with explicit images on Fanlore already, and I responded that we'd set up a page for people to post links to explicit images that are already on the site, so that over time, those images pages could be edited to include the appropriate warning template. See the discussion here.
2. One commenter raised the question of images that might appear to be non-con taken alone, but which actually depict a consensual act in a story; you'd need to read the story to see that, and the image taken on its own would seem to be noncon. Clarification added to note that images should be categorized as explicit, non con, etc. based on what they appear to depict here.
3. One commenter made the suggestion that some images are NSFW while still not meeting the definition of explicit given in the policy. This person suggested that editors should include a note at the top of the article that it included NSFW images further down (so that they could choose not to scroll down, if they were at work), although such images wouldn't require the use of any explicit images templates.
4. There is discussion starting here about what category images depicting BDSM would fall into. The consensus seems to be that such images are possibly "explicit" but do not fall into the category of "non con," although commenters acknowledged that some readers would feel that BDSM was inherently non con. The consensus is that we should add a warning to the policy for such users, warning them that if they click through to "explicit" images, they may see images depicting BDSM.
5. A few commenters made the suggestion that we could add a warning category for extreme violence (where no sexual activity is involved) which strikes me a good suggestion, and I'll take it back to the committee.
6. There is a discussion here about why the policy addresses issues of copyright and asks for copyright tags in image summaries. Some commenters wondered whether it was necessary to include a discussion of copyrighted images in the policy.
7. There is a discussion thread here about one commenter's suggestion that instead of using warning categories and templates for explicit images, that the site as a whole should just have a click-through warning that the site contains adult comment.
8. Clarification added here that the image template for linking to explicit images of all sorts would result in a thumbnail that has a colored border around it (color coding for warnings) and not a line through the thumbnail.
9. A suggestion here that we add an alt text field to the template, to make Fanlore more accessible. I agree.
10. A discussion here about just putting all explicit images on subpages in articles.
ETA 2: You've all contributed a lot here, in terms of pointing out some things that need to be added or clarified in the draft. But I've got to go tend to RL stuff, since I've been responding to comments now for seven hours with very few breaks! I'll respond to any new comments tomorrow or later in the weekend.
There are several areas we needed to develop clearer guidelines for, but we decided to make the image policy an earlier priority because some of you had expressed concern (rightly!) that Fanlore had no policy regarding explicit images, including those which might be triggering or offensive (or illegal to view) for some users.
It's only a matter of time before someone uploaded an image of Fenrir/Draco chan noncon fanart, mean to say. And while we'll host any art that is legal for us to host, we want to make it possible for those who find such images disturbing to avoid seeing them.
Once we started working on it, we realized that an image policy needed to address not only explicit/possibly offensive images, but also questions about uploading copyrighted images, fair use, and images that were being uploaded with the consent of the artist. So, the policy also covers all of those questions as well.
The draft we've posted to Fanlore has been vetted by the OTW's legal committee, and also relies heavily on Wikipedia's robust set of image policies. When you check it out, you'll see that it's pretty long and detailed, but please don't be put off by that!
We're going to post a link on the Editing Help and Tutorial pages to a much more streamlined "Cliffnotes" version of this policy, that contains links to get users started who don't need to read the whole policy, but just want answers to questions like: what templates should I use for art that has explicit images? or what templates do we use for images that are copyrighted or how can I filter out or avoid images that I might find disturbing?. But before we create the short version, we needed to get the full policy approved and in place.
We also wanted to ask your input on a question that is still open: how should we define "high res" and "low res" images in these guidelines? Images can be high res if they're uploaded with permission of the creator, or are in the public domain, or licensed for free distribution by their creator. But copyrighted images must be uploaded in low res, thumbnail versions in order to comply with standards for "fair use." We have our own ideas about what size a thumbnail image is, but we wanted your input about how you'd define "high res" and "low res" images for Fanlore.
OK, now that the intro is out of the way, here's the link to the full draft of the image policy. We wanted to leave this open for discussion until April 30th, and then we'll revise the policy to reflect the discussion and post a final draft to Fanlore.
ETA: a list of the various threads developing in this discussion
1. Some commenters asked whether we planned to recommend deleting already uploaded images that don't fit this policy, and my answer was no, although we hope that eventually new image summaries might be added for uploaded images that currently have little or no information. Some commenters pointed out that we do have some pages with explicit images on Fanlore already, and I responded that we'd set up a page for people to post links to explicit images that are already on the site, so that over time, those images pages could be edited to include the appropriate warning template. See the discussion here.
2. One commenter raised the question of images that might appear to be non-con taken alone, but which actually depict a consensual act in a story; you'd need to read the story to see that, and the image taken on its own would seem to be noncon. Clarification added to note that images should be categorized as explicit, non con, etc. based on what they appear to depict here.
3. One commenter made the suggestion that some images are NSFW while still not meeting the definition of explicit given in the policy. This person suggested that editors should include a note at the top of the article that it included NSFW images further down (so that they could choose not to scroll down, if they were at work), although such images wouldn't require the use of any explicit images templates.
4. There is discussion starting here about what category images depicting BDSM would fall into. The consensus seems to be that such images are possibly "explicit" but do not fall into the category of "non con," although commenters acknowledged that some readers would feel that BDSM was inherently non con. The consensus is that we should add a warning to the policy for such users, warning them that if they click through to "explicit" images, they may see images depicting BDSM.
5. A few commenters made the suggestion that we could add a warning category for extreme violence (where no sexual activity is involved) which strikes me a good suggestion, and I'll take it back to the committee.
6. There is a discussion here about why the policy addresses issues of copyright and asks for copyright tags in image summaries. Some commenters wondered whether it was necessary to include a discussion of copyrighted images in the policy.
7. There is a discussion thread here about one commenter's suggestion that instead of using warning categories and templates for explicit images, that the site as a whole should just have a click-through warning that the site contains adult comment.
8. Clarification added here that the image template for linking to explicit images of all sorts would result in a thumbnail that has a colored border around it (color coding for warnings) and not a line through the thumbnail.
9. A suggestion here that we add an alt text field to the template, to make Fanlore more accessible. I agree.
10. A discussion here about just putting all explicit images on subpages in articles.
ETA 2: You've all contributed a lot here, in terms of pointing out some things that need to be added or clarified in the draft. But I've got to go tend to RL stuff, since I've been responding to comments now for seven hours with very few breaks! I'll respond to any new comments tomorrow or later in the weekend.
Accessibility
If I understand this correctly this is the draft of the whole of the policy covering all aspects of images on fanlore.
There is nothing that I can see here about making the inclusion of alt text for images mandatory, or even strongly suggested. Many images on Fanlore now do not have any alt text and sometimes also do not include other text description in lieu of alt text. Is this something that should be covered here, or is that covered in the how to upload an image pages that don't yet exist? Is there a technical way to make an alt text field manditory? I believe it should be if it is not.
The section on Filtering out objectionable or upsetting images certainly seems to imply that the only reason someone might wish to not see images, all or only some of them, is due to content. There are accessibility reasons to want all images turned off, or all high-res images shown smaller or all images shown only as thumbnails. The section links to a wikipedia help page about filtering images and as near as I can tell, discusses filter capabilities that Fanlore doesn't have. Am I missing something? Is there a setting anywhere that would let me turn off all images? All I can find is a setting for the size of thumbnails and the images on the image page itself, no way to block images on pages in general. ETA: Okay, I read that wikipedia page more thoroughly, and I see that they are talking about using browser settings and editing "my Javascript page" (???) to change how images are shown. I see that they are also assuming that the only motivation for wishing to block images is due to content. This does not seem to be a very accessibility-friendly or user-friendly way to approach this.
As an aside, I really don't care for the wording used there: objectionable or upsetting. There's lots of very non-emotional reasons, reasons that don't cast any aspersions (intentional or not) on either the viewer or the creators/fans of images for wanting to filter those images. Some more neutral language there would be a good thing.
Re: Accessibility
This is a very good suggestion, and I'm actually ashamed that I didn't think of this myself (since I use alt text myself when I upload images on webpages I've designed in RL, duh).
I will ask Chris C., the Mediawiki power user who's designing the templates for this, if an alt text field can be made mandatory. Chris tells me that she can in fact set it up so that all images are turned off (if I understood her correctly---I'm going to ask her to read this). And you're right that we should add language to this that acknowledges that there are also non-emotional reasons for wanting to filter images.