Photographs of fans: An addition to Fanlore's Image Policy

[fanloremod]

Thank you to everyone who has submitted feedback on the proposed addition to our Image Policy regarding photographs of fans on Fanlore.

 

Because we have already received a great deal of feedback on the draft policy, we have taken the decision to close the comments in order to get to work on revising this policy.

 

We realise that the original proposed text of the policy would not have been at all sufficient to protect fans' privacy and identity in the online world that we live in, and that this disappointed and alarmed many people. We fully acknowledge that it was not in line with what fandom would have expected from Fanlore and our commitment to protecting fans' identities, and we sincerely apologise for this. We will take all of the concerns expressed on board and work to produce a policy that is much more robust in protecting fans as we carry out our mission of documenting fandom.

 

Thank you again to everyone who took the time to respond to this proposal.

Original policy text:

Can I upload photos of fans to Fanlore?

Please be thoughtful when uploading photos of fans. Is this your own photo or one you found online or in a magazine? If you know the person in the photo, check with them about how they feel about their photo being used, or how they feel about a photo of themselves being uploaded. If a fan has passed on, reach out to their family or friends.

If you do not know them personally, then consider the context where the photo was taken and how widely it was distributed. Has it already been posted online? Was this a large public convention or small private event? Was this published in a fanzine, newsletter, newspaper or magazine? Consider whether the photo is being used to document a group activity or being used to identify a specific person.

If you are concerned about identifying individuals, one option is to upload a smaller or lower-resolution photo, or elect to not identify specific people (refer to them as "a fan" or "fans") unless it is necessary for the photo's purpose. Also, please keep Fanlore's Fair Use Policy in mind when uploading images you do not own.

If you would like to get more guidance on a photo you are planning to upload, please contact the Fanlore Committee, selecting the subject 'Editing help' from the menu. If you are concerned about a photograph on Fanlore that features you, please use the contact form to get in touch, selecting the subject 'Identity Protection' from the menu.

Linking to photos, as long as the photograph is public, is permitted and can be an alternative if you are unsure about uploading a photograph to Fanlore.

Comments

[kore]

I've seen that happen with Dreamwidth and even very old Livejournal posts, too, without any notification of the authors that stuff they wrote maybe 15 years ago is now going to be in a searchable wiki. (Dreamwidth and LJ both let people opt out of being searchable IIRC and AO3 gives you the option of not letting Google et al index your work. Which is often a lost cause but at least it's an option.)

[melannen]

Right? It's one thing to want it to be findable, or to quote small parts for commentary/documentation, but if you wouldn't repost a fanfic without permission, you shouldn't repost an entire meta post or a tumblr post or a rec post without permission either! It's not that complicated, or it shouldn't be, Fanlore has somehow managed to avoid verbatim reposting of large swaths of offsite fic. Meta writers deserve the same respect.

[melannen]

(It's also lazy as hell - a fanlore article that consists of a sentence saying "This post was made" and then quotes the post in full is a terrible, terrible wiki article.)

[kore]

Yeah, quotes in reference articles are supposed to be illustrative examples! Not hundreds of words that have just been cut and pasted from an original source. (Doesn't Wiki itself have a policy against doing just that....)

[kore]

+100 I REALLY agree with this. Limited quotes and a regular link would be fine, and if that means winding up with a dead link or a locked post later on, well, that's what happens on the internet, unfortunately. But there are pages on Fanlore that not only repost large parts of a post, or the post's comments, but also the link is to both a live HTML capture (I think that's what it is) AND a screenshot which effectively means the author has lost control of their post. Some people are going to argue that them's the breaks when you post in public, but that is very likely to have a chilling effect on fannish discussions if people realize that might be happening regularly to them.

Plus like tenlittlebullets already pointed out, there's doxxing and RL outing, not to mention harassment and stalking. Sometimes people, especially women, just need to lock all their online stuff down.