WikiPortraits: Transforming the Wikipedia photo desert into a green oasis
08-09, 14:00–14:55 (Poland), Warsaw (20+24)(interpretation)
Language: English

This session discusses the role of high-quality portrait photos in enriching Wikimedia Commons and augmenting Wikipedia articles and Wikidata items. We'll cover the complexities of mass-scale portrait photography at events, including challenges such as obtaining press credentials, release/consent, and licensing. By reviewing projects such as WikiPortraits Studios in North America and Festivalsommer in Germany, we hope to enrich your understanding of open media, and how you can bring similar initiatives to your community.

Join us for a panel discussion on the critical issue of low-quality images on Wikipedia. With millions of monthly views, Wikipedia's global reach demands visually engaging content. However, many biographical entries on Wikipedia lack quality portraits due to stringent requirements for Creative Commons licensing or public domain. This issue has been widely recognized for years, even inspiring a dedicated @badwikiphotos account on Instagram.

We will discuss systematic approaches and efforts to address these shortcomings, including those covered at Wiki Covers Events. Volunteer photographers from the German-language Wikipedia have pioneered event and portrait photography for the past several years with projects like “Festivalsommer,” “Landtagsprojekt,”, “Berlinale-Projekt”, and press photography. Wikimedia photographers from the United States have also contributed press photos, and began WikiPortraits in 2024 as a new initiative to fill visual gaps on Wikipedia by systematically covering events such as the Sundance Film Festival and the South by Southwest (SXSW) film, music, and interactive festivals, Cannes Film Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

While the coverage of SXSW 2024 was a U.S.-based effort, the photos filled a global need – the images were incorporated into more than 50 Wikipedia language editions for an estimated 4 million monthly views. Sundance images contributed another 500,000 views per month. Future plans include Commons photography at the Cannes Film Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

This panel will gather the founders of WikiPortraits and a representative from the German Wikipedia working with similar photography initiatives, to share their learnings from their long history of projects. Panelists will discuss the process of media credentialing and ways to recruit volunteer photographers. It will provide practical tips for photographers and for those interested in creating pop-up photo studios.

We will also discuss how affiliates can support photographers, such as the German chapter Wikimedia Deutschland with “Redaktionsbestätigung” for press accreditation, reimbursement of travel expenses and the loan of camera technology including photo drones.

These efforts are an important step to make Wikipedia less of a “desert for photos” (Noam Cohen in The New York Times) in topic areas that repeatedly generate an enormous volume of page-views.

Session recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/wLgxZTcjhjY?si=RGuEZ6YdMd0WhoQ9&t=16983

How does your session relate to the event themes: Collaboration of the Open?* –

Our goal is establishing a repeatable and scalable way to create openly licensed photos to help fill visual gaps on Wikipedia. Volunteers from Germany and the United States will be sharing their efforts and best practices for attending events, obtaining press credentials, and setting up portrait studios in an effort to obtain quality, freely licensed photos of notable individuals. Our methods are replicable by volunteer communities across the world, and our goal is that our session will inspire international communities to collaborate and set up similar initiatives to contribute towards open visualization.

 What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?* –

Everyone can participate in this session

 How do you plan to deliver this session?* –

Onsite in Katowice

 What other themes or topics does your session fit into? Please choose from the list of tags below. –

Collaboration, Campaigns, Capacity building, Events
See also: Slidedeck
Kevin Payravi

Kevin Payravi (User:SuperHamster) is a software engineer from Dallas, Texas, and has been editing Wikimedia projects since 2007. In addition to day-to-day editing, Kevin has developed a number of tools to help wiki readers and editors, including Cite Unseen, View it!, and Indie Wiki Buddy. He also serves on the Board of Wikimedia DC and as an organizer for the Ohio Wikimedians User Group. Each year, he helps organize WikiConference North America and Wiki Loves Monuments in the United States.

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Jennifer 8. Lee

Co-Founder of WikiPortraits and WikiCred.
Andrew Lih

Andrew Lih has been a Wikipedia editor since 2003 and that year was one of the first academics to use Wikipedia in the classroom as student assigned work. He is the author of the 2009 book The Wikipedia Revolution: How a bunch of nobodies created the world’s greatest encyclopedia. He currently serves as the Wikimedian at Large at the Smithsonian Institution and Wikimedia Strategist at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He is an administrator on English Wikipedia and Wikidata. In 2022, he was named a Wikimedia Laureate for his lifetime work with Wikipedia, and in 2016, he was named the U.S. National Archives Citizen Archivist of the Year.

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