Commons talk:Volunteer Response Team

Shortest, standard, language-agnostic license statement for social media posts

Edit: As suggested by @RoyZuo, started a new thread in com:vp here: Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Shortest, standard an language-agnostic license statement for social media posts.

I'm interested in providing simple ways for people to share their photos to Wikimedia Commons. In particular, I'm interested in ways how they can share their Instagram posts. I have already read this, this, this and this and found them all very interesting and useful.

What do you think may be the shortest text they may add to their post that acceptably communicates their will to release it under a CC license? I'm trying to find something as short, standard and language-agnostic as possible, as I think something like that may (1) make it easier for authors to add it, (2) make it easier for everyone to search such freely-licensed content on Instagram, and (3) make it easier for us to confirm (even automatically) that the post has been licensed appropriately.

Ideally, I think a hashtag such as #CC_BY_SA_4_0 would meet all the criteria above. Do you think this would be clear and unambiguous enough? It does not include a link to the license, but the examples provided here don't include them either and seem to be OK.

Thank you! Diegodlh (talk) 19:12, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Just noting that a friend of mine who has long worked with Creative Commons stuff suggested that something like Copyright: #cc_by_sa_4_0 may be less ambiguous about the user's intention to release their post under a Creative Commons license. What do you think? Diegodlh (talk) 20:04, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Hashtag sounds like a cool idea. RoyZuo (talk) 09:29, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

You might wanna move this discussion to com:vp since it's a pretty general question. RoyZuo (talk) 09:30, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Great idea. Started a new thread here: Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Shortest, standard an language-agnostic license statement for social media posts. Thank you, @RoyZuo! Diegodlh (talk) 20:18, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a more relevant essay at Wikipedia:Images from social media, which it would be great to see brought up to date - it does mention modern social media, but only briefly and implicitly. Would be good to get more eyes and brains on it. I'd been meaning to bring the essay up to date it in the same way I did for Wikipedia:A picture of you, but had forgotten about it. Belbury (talk) 18:50, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Diegodlh: that actually seems a bit odd to me. Obviously, you need to own the copyright to issue a CC license, but other than that what does copyright have to do with it? I would even suspect someone who wrote that of not understanding what a CC license is, and thinking it was somehow a copyright status.

Also: nothing described here indicates how someone wishes to be attributed. - Jmabel ! talk 03:06, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, @Jmabel! I agree with you that "Copyright" may be confusing. Maybe "License" would be better, although less language-agnostic. Anyways, just the license hashtag would be better in the terms of (1) simplicity, (2) findability, and (3) machine-readability described above.

On the other hand, regarding an indication of how someone wishes to be attributed: I guess it should be OK to use the Instagram user's username or shown name, linked to their Instagram profile. I understand this is what we do with images from Flickr: we use either the user's real name or nickname, even though they are not shown right next to the license statement on the picture's description. See here: Commons:License review#Instructions for reviewers Diegodlh (talk) 20:33, 30 October 2024 (UTC)