Talk:Wikimedia Foundation/Communications/Wiki Unseen

Asquith Xavier

For the interested, there's a discussion relating to Wiki Unseen on en-WP at [1]. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:03, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much Gråbergs Gråa Sång for the notice. I have reached out to AfroCROWD, the main community lead and partner on this project. Hoping that they can chime into the discussion soon. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:40, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

MPourzaki (WMF) the first batch of images have either been removed, are under discussion for removal, or are at risk of being removed. This project needs to pursue more appropriate image style, or it will quickly draw significant negative community attention. Wikipedia is not an art gallery, we are an encyclopedia. "Artistic" interpretation or styling will generally diminish or destroy the value of an image for our purpose. In general these should be functional images serving a specific purpose - identification and accurate depiction of the person. Realistic portraiture. Alsee (talk) 17:30, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi Alsee, thanks for the ping. We are aware of the discussions and are following closely, reverting to the community's guidance here of course. At the time of this project, none of the selected biographies had any pictures. I know AfroCROWD undertook an extensive review and short-listing process before the portraits were commissioned to improve the representation of BIPOC people on Wikimedia projects, and furthermore, to release them under CC0 for the world to use. So perhaps the momentum that project Unseen created led to new images being released – 3 out of 6 figures have photos now, although as I'm sure you've noticed, not all these fair use pictures could be available on Commons. With the power of Wikidata, it's pertinent for content not to be limited to just one project. The project took great inspiration from WhoseKnowledge's work in this unique area. I look to your guidance on this – the portraits would have to be artistic or else they would be a copyright infringement of an original, no? Not sure how realistic portraiture of deceased people could be commissioned otherwise. The notion of using non traditional methods for copyright images often comes up after someone dies – given who usually owns the photos and that the subject's death often increases the license value. I'm not sure we've actually had much success getting licenses converted. Even lobbying photographers can be a multi year endeavour in some cases. I will loop in AfroCROWD for their guidance and project context. Always grateful for healthy discussions in the movement. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

@MPourzaki (WMF), if you have contact with someone who could arrange a leadimage for the Esther Griffith WP-article I just started, the article could use one. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:38, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Gråbergs Gråa Sång, you're amazing. On it. Will get back to you. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

@MPourzaki (WMF) Did you know that Ballpoint pen artwork was a WP-article? Anyway, Enam Bosokah is now an article. He's done some amazing stuff. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:50, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much @Gråbergs Gråa Sång. We are in touch with Enam and he is elated. Really appreciate the positive attention you are bringing to these up-and-coming artists and their work. By the way, here's an image for Esther. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 15:59, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@MPourzaki (WMF) Brilliant and added! And speaking of Esther, it seems she saw a mistake I made (this is why people should be careful about trusting WP, it's made by people) and edited the article about her. By luck or skill her edits were fine, but I left her a message at Talk:Esther Griffith. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:13, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your vigilance @Gråbergs Gråa Sång and for your support of these up-and-coming artists. Having a page on Wikipedia will without a doubt be a big source of pride for them. I will let Esther know to be careful about editing Wikipedia ... and may be it's time she starts a username and edits more ... Wikimedians of Trinidad :) MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 18:52, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Gråbergs Gråa Sång, my colleagues uploaded this image from Enam. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 19:47, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Added. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:43, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

MPourzaki (WMF) I know little about art, but I am knowledgeable about copyright. The boundary of what constitutes infringement can be a murky grey area - copying too closely from a particular copyrighted work may constitute infringement. However it is not infringement to view copyrighted images to learn what someone looks like, and to use that knowledge to paint (or draw) a new imaginary scene in any style of the artist's choice.

If the Foundation financially commissions work, we should ensure we hire artists with established skill in a realistic-portraiture. If we are courting volunteer artists, it should be clearly communicated to those volunteers that any given work may or may not be used. It should be communicated that a prime criteria of usability is the functionality of the image for identification and accurate depiction.

Looking over the images again, I'll offer my personal second-impressions. I think it was the water-color images that really grabbed people's attention as inappropriate for our purposes. If I may exaggerate, our Cubism article illustrates how art style can conflict with functionality (chuckle). The Greaves image - I'm not sure if it's an artistic style or artist skill or just me - but it makes me a bit uncomfortable. It feels amateurish, unflattering, and perhaps even a bit disrespectful of the article subject to use it as their encyclopedia portrait. I want better on behalf of our article subjects. The Miller image, by the same artist, strikes me as notably better. The style of the Addy and Dieng-Kuntz images took me a bit by surprise, and I think the previous images primed me to approach them skeptically. On reconsideration, those images do seem to fulfill the job of "identification and accurate depiction of the person" and I believe our general image guidelines. I predict those will be accepted. Alsee (talk) 23:33, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

@Alsee, I would love to discuss copyrights with you further as I'm always fascinated by the depth of the discussions. I am very grateful for your feedback and reflection, and for all the input we have received on this first, pilot phase of Unseen. We hope there will be future phases of the project where we can support affiliates and groups around the world to address different visual gaps for different minorities, this was a conversation starter and boy are we conversing :) I sense that the community would appreciate more realistic / functional representations and a more grassroots-led effort. I also take note of your feedback about the style of the individual artists, very valid. I look forward to learning where the community lands on this discussion and how we can take the lessons forward for the next phase of Unseen. Many many thanks. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 15:41, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

thank you for the initiative. you have presented the community a dilemma: open license primacy or photo-realistic aesthetic primacy. i do know something about art, and those watercolors are clearly appropriate. i would suggest moving to small grants to artists based upon a wishlist or traffic to "image needed". you could then add them at wikidata and #wpwp. cheers. --Slowking4 (talk) 01:59, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you @Slowking4, I've enjoyed following the discussion around this dilemma and look forward to building on this pilot phase. Thanks for your suggestion. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 15:43, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Enam Bosokah

Viewing Enam's artworks initially at small thumbnail size, my first impression was lukewarm or ambivalent. But after seeing GGS's comment above that they are ballpoint drawings, I viewed them full-screen and was in greatly impressed. (I might know less about copyright than Alsee and less about art then Slowking, but do have a little knowledge of both.) The situation reminds me a bit of the Wikipedia articles for 18th-century people where the portrait we have is a monochrome engraving styled after a lost painting (in that case, both are PD, but I was thinking of how the ballpoint crosshatching technique has similarities to the way an engraver creates light and shade).

Anyway, I created Portrait of Marian Ewurama Addy (Q111206684) on Wikidata to represent the artwork, as distinct from the photo of the artwork. But there is not much I could say about it: what year was it made (undated recto, can we assume c. 2021?), what are the dimensions of the original, where is the original held, what materials were used other than ballpoint pen (wove paper, acrylic or gouache?)? We usually record that kind of thing either on Commons via c:Template:Artwork, or on WD; it's the kind of baseline data that is usually found in an art-museum catalogue to identify a work. @MPourzaki (WMF), can you supply any info?

It also seems the bot hasn't created a WD item from Emam's article yet. I'm not sure how long that normally takes, but boldly went and made one by hand: Enam Bosokah (Q111206777). I'll need to do some reading and flesh out these entries. Thankfully Gråbergs Gråa Sång has already assembled sources for me at w:en:Enam Bosokah.

I notice the signature appears to be “Boski”, does Bosokah always sign this way? And is that a real-life nickname? I notice he signs “Boski” and his Behance ID is eBoski; I've held off adding that as a pseudonym (P742) or nickname (P1449), and put it only in the painting as an inscription (P1684).

[edited 09:36, 13 March 2022 (UTC)] ⁓ Pelagic (talk) 21:51, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so very much @Pelagic. I'll source the missing information for you. Appreciate it. MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Pelagic, I received this information from Enam:

• Completed in December 2021
• Dimensions: 15 x 10.5 inches
• Made by ballpoint pen, acrylic and paper – paper was Strathmore 300 series Smooth Bristol

Thank you very much, MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Adding illustrations is a great way to bridge gaps

It's nice to see the first few candidates here. This seems part of an ongoing project -- where does it happen? Is there a connection b/t this work and the illustration workshops (en, commons)? It would be good to integrate w/ the work on-wiki artists are doing (and invite these artists to join the projects + upload their own work, as you say)

What's the rough budget for this / what does that translate to in terms of scale (for CSB purposes)? @Slowking4: if there's a priority queue or bounty board, we have a number of streams of requests-for-illustrations now (including the graphics labs above), and we should help people who want to do more of this work polish their skills and get better + faster at portraiture. If we have to fill gaps w/ commercial artists who are not yet part of the community, there are also reproduction-shops in many regions that can do portraits at quite a high volume. And many of these image-candidates could be well served at scale by local historians and archivists, who merit outreach in the same breath (for both freely licensed images and for those suitable for reproduction). 22:55, 25 May 2022 (UTC)