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

[vaznetti]

One thing that strikes me in this regard, and in the examples provided by you below, is that there has been over time a change in the way in which fans adopted pseudonymity between the period of in-print zines and the internet age. I have work in print zines from the late 1980s and early 1990s under my legal name, and many of the women in the pictures you provide below will have probably done the same. And indeed my first forays into fandom on the internet were also carried out under my legal name -- in those days one often got an email via one's school, for example, and the kind of services which allowed you to get a second one were still coming into existence. Within a few years I had adopted an early version of the pseud I currently use, as it became normal for people to sever the connection between their fannish activites and their other online activities. I think it may be the case now that the internet cultures among many groups have shifted away from pseudonymity -- but for many people involved in the history of fandom in the internet era it remains a strongly held ideal. I don't think that it would be historically sensitive to paper over that norm in an attempt to "skip" from two very different less-pseudonymous cultures.

Material in those early days was less widely distributed, and distributed in different ways. I remember the days of zines with different editions for gen or low-rated het material, explicit het material, and any form of slash. Being a Star Trek fan was not strongly associated with being a producer or consumer of pornography. Fanfiction, and the culture which surrounds it, has changed a great deal over this time -- as has the internet. The searchability of images, of face-recognitions software, etc. does I think mean that people are right to be more cautious of the ways in which their own images and the images of others are distributed. The concerns of individuals photographed in the (say) 1980s and 1990s -- a period when I was certainly attending cons and being photographed -- will necessarily have changed to reflect the changed ways in which that material is now able to be disseminated. This is in itself a part of our history.

[ratcreature]

This. At first on the early mailing lists I participated under my RL name, but with the shift to blogs and then LJ I switched to using a pseud because I did not want search engines for my RL name to give as first result the fandom stuff, since then I was still at university and had no idea whether I wanted to pursue a professional path where you might not want the first google results be your thoughts on porn. Also, associations between pseud and RL names aren't necessarily bi-directional, i.e. I never minded fans knowing my RL name, it's the reverse lookup I've always been more wary of.

[kore]

THIS THIS THIS

(When I first posted to Usenet about fannish stuff I had a college account, exactly.)