Forum:Avoiding picture attribution

I'm sure most people are aware of the picture attribution that appears in image thumbnails. The things that say "Added by username". This is a feature Wikia have added. The rationale for it is as follows:

A while back Wikia gathered a few people who aren't familiar with wikis, got them to browse Wikia wikis and afterwards asked them who they thought wrote wrote the articles. Result was they didn't know that anyone ordinary person could. So Wikia created some features that would highlight what users are editing articles, hoping this would lead readers to realise that they themselves can contribute too. (w:User blog:Sarah Manley/Sneak Peek at the New Look - Community Activity)

People being unaware that they can edit wikis may be a problem, but just because something helps solve a problem doesn't make it ideal. e.g. robbery can help people who live in poverty and banning the internet can stop the spread of child pornography. But those "solutions" cause problems as well as solve them. Picture attribution in my opinion is bad because:

• Who uploaded an image of two people duelling has nothing to do with the article or section it is used in.
• Who uploaded the image is rarely the one who created or owns the copyright for it. (Simply scanning or screen capping doesn't give you any control of the image.) They shouldn't have their user name posted there moreso than the actual copyright holder or the licensing we're using the image under.
• It's like signing articles. You don't write articles to show off and articles are written and styled by multiple people. It's not fair to single out one or two of them and have their names appear on the article. Plus it will encourage people to add or change images unnecessarily just to show off their name.

It is possible to disable the feature, but following feedback on the new skin Wikia have made that against their terms of use to disable it by default. (This link sums it up.) It's also against the terms of use to make things like w:c:eushully:Template:Thumb which replicate thumbnails but don't include the picture attribution. Users can disable it for themselves individually, but that doesn't solve how it affects user's behaviour and reader's attitudes to what they see.

Since we can't remove it from thumbnails, I was wondering if most people are also against picture attribution, would they be interested in just not using thumbnails?

The alternatives are:

• Leave images float next to text without thumbnailing them. The disadvantage is this way the caption won't appear below the image, but hovering the mouse over the image will still show it.
• Put images in galleries using the <gallery> tag. This way they can have captions, but won't float next to text. This doesn't look too good unless it's a bunch of related images from the same paragraph.
• Put images in one column of a table, with text in another. This doesn't look too good outside of lists.

Here's some examples floating images and galleries, floating images and a table. I did try this on a few pages, but other users added |thumb to the floating images on the more visited pages.

So does anyone agree with the suggestions, disagree with the suggestions, like picture attribution, dislike picture attribution or have any other suggestions? If you do, please leave a comment. Thanks. -- Deltaneos (talk) 18:22, November 22, 2010 (UTC)

I love what you did with the floating images, looks a heck better, I'm in favor...BassNettoHikari2...Chat Page... 18:41, November 22, 2010 (UTC)

I'm really hating picture attribution as well. Even the terms they use are confusing. When I see "added by", I don't think "uploaded by", I think "added to this article by". Regardless of that, it's just altogether pointless and really messes up the flow of the articles. I think the floating images look fine, it's a bit annoying not to have the captions, but still better than having the attribution. If we go with galleries, we could eschew putting pictures in most of the articles, and just have a separate "gallery" section with the pics. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 01:11, November 27, 2010 (UTC)

It is possible to change "added by user name" to something else like "uploaded by user name". Although removing the user name part is probably not allowed. -- Deltaneos (talk) 15:11, November 27, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not too keen on the idea of a single gallery for all the article images. I've seen it on some video games articles, where people just post any images they can find, resulting a bunch of random screenshots and V Jump scans shoved together. I think it's better to keep the images near what they are describing. Wikipedia and some other wikis discourage galleries for an article's subject in general, suggesting the images either be removed or integrated into the article. -- Deltaneos (talk) 15:41, November 27, 2010 (UTC)

This is probably all unnecessary now. Wikia's have made their rules more lenient. We're now allowed to disable picture attribution. We should probably start a separate discussion soon on whether we should disable it or not. -- Deltaneos (talk) 21:27, December 10, 2010 (UTC)

Am I missing out on something here? It's probably because I'm using MonoBook, but I don't see the image attribution, unless it's already been disabled for days without me knowing. Toob (talk • contribs) 00:44, December 12, 2010 (UTC)

I don't think image attribution was ever enabled on Monobook (which I've been using since a little before Monaco was removed), but I may have hidden it in my monobook.css at some point as well. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 02:04, December 12, 2010 (UTC)

No, it never appeared in Monobook. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 10:02, December 12, 2010 (UTC)