User blog:Gsimenas/Image guideline draft

I thought that we should make an official guideline for image uploads so that we could just link it when we need to let someone know about our image rules, instead of writing large comments about it all the time (yes, I do get tired of doing that).

Anyway, here's my draft:

Before uploading an image, please check Category:Images to see if the image that you want to upload is already on the wiki. All images are categorised by source, so finding duplicates should not be hard and we do not need repeats.

If you have confirmed that the image is not present on the wiki, then the following guidelines depend on whether the image you want to upload is an official image or fan art.

Fan art
Fan art are pictures that do not have an official source or are made by non-official artists. All non-sourced images are treated as fan art until an official source is found.

Guidelines

 * All fan art pictures are for personal-use only. Usage of fan art on official pages (articles, image galleries, category pages etc.) is  forbidden.


 * User pages, user blogs, forums etc. are pages where fan art can be used.
 * A fan art picture must be used somewhere as soon as possible, or it will be marked for deletion to keep the wiki's photo library tidy.
 * Fan art and off topic images must be marked as Category:Personal Photo and the description of the file should mention that the file is not considered to be official.
 * Fan art and off topic images should be minimally used on the wiki. In other words, avoid uploading too many fan art pictures.
 * Do not claim someone else's work as your own. Give credit to the original author of the picture.

Official images
Official images are illustrations and art that comes from official sources, which include: Sword Art Online light novel illustrations, Sword Art Online anime screenshots, Sword Art Online mangas, art made by the light novel (abec) or official manga illustrators, Dengeki Bunko magazines, Sword Art Online anime official site, official products (products licensed by people who officially contribute to the series) etc.

Guidelines

 * All official images MUST be sourced.
 * Sourcing is done in two stages: 1) An appropriate source category must be added to the uploaded file (see Category:Images for the image categories used on the wiki). 2) If Category:Extra Source is used or if the chapter/volume the image was extracted from is not obvious enough from the picture itself, the file page should include a description of the source or a direct link to it.
 * If the image was extracted from a third party site, but originally came from a magazine or some other official source, the description should include both the source to the third party site where the image was taken from and a description of the actual original source.
 * All official images should be uploaded in .png format instead of .jpg, unless the picture in .png format exceeds 4-5 MBs in size. Other formats are acceptable if, based on the circumstances, the format is better than the .png format (e.g. using .gif for animated pictures).
 * The wiki's .jpg thumbnail algorithms are very bad. That is why we only use .jpg format for very large files, as .png format images stop working properly when they reach around 4-5 MBs in size and .png pictures become overly large when compared to .jpg format pictures as the resolution of the file increases.
 * File names should be descriptive and not random, as random names make it hard to find the file. This also means that file names should not include characters that are hard to insert with an English keyboard.
 * Example of a good name: "Kirito flying to the World Tree.png". Example of a bad name: "BhhT4PLCAAAXVyp.jpg"
 * Only raw images are allowed. In other words, no English text should be visible in the picture, unless it was like that in the original.
 * Images of maps can have English text if the image is meant to be used on an article as a map of an area. Example: File:Sword_Art_Online_-_GGO_BoB_Map.png can be used on the Bullet of Bullets page, but File:Vol_06_-_008.png must be used for the Volume 6 page.
 * Avoid uploading low quality pictures, unless a higher quality version is not available.
 * Specify the licensing of the image. When uploading an image, you will see a "Licensing" drop down menu that you can use to select the type of license.
 * Images should not be modified to be counted as official. Redrawing (for light novel illustrations) and cropping is acceptable, but changing colours, adding content that was not present in the original etc. is forbidden.

Image sourcing tips

 * 1) Go to Google
 * 2) Select "Images"
 * 3) Click the Camera icon
 * 4) Paste the image URL/Upload your image
 * 5) Try to locate the source of the image.

It is likely to to be difficult with images that are popular online (such as Yuki Tatsuya's works), so you are not guaranteed to find the source.

Tip by: TUSF

That's all that I can think of at the moment. If anyone has any comments on what I have written above or sees something that I forgot to mention, please leave a comment below.