I am very proud to announce that today, I have awarded a few very special wikiHow contributors with Barnstars and Awards in recognition for their efforts on one important aspect of wikiHow that is often overlooked: the image licensing process. Unless you have worked on other wikis before, trying to comprehend the image licensing guidelines on wikiHow is a very difficult task. Many people join wikiHow without a clue what “Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike” or “GNU Free Documentation License” is, and rightfully so. Thus, many editors upload images to wikiHow with improper licenses, whether they licensed their image under {{self}} when it was really a copyrighted stock photo, or even upload an image with no license at all! These issues are often overlooked on wikiHow, for a few reasons. The primary reason is that notifying users that their images are improperly licensed, and then going back in and relicensing the photos, is a long task that takes a lot of time out of one’s day, and there’s little visible benefit. Yesterday afternoon, in wikiHow’s IRC channel, vigilant contributor Monicapointed out an article on wikiHow that featured images that were clearly copyright violations. After Lewis Collardperformed a Google Images search for verification, he found that the images were indeed copyright violations, as the images were hosted on a variety of other websites with copyright notices included. Once this article was dealt with, Monica again found an article that featured images that were copyright violations, and handled them appropriately. I would like to commend, and personally give thanks, to Monica for initiating the big image sweep that would soon follow!Instead of just stopping there, Lewismade it his mission to continue and navigate through the most recent image uploads to try and find additional copyrighted photos. Two and a half hours later, Lewis completed this mission for the night, identifying over 75 copyrighted photos that should have never been uploaded to wikiHow! This wasn’t the first time that Lewis has hunted down copyright violations, either. I can recall many other instances where he worked with other editors on IRC to resolve image copyright issues. For his diligent work in identifying image copyright violations on wikiHow last night and many times in the past, I have awarded Lewis Collard with the Dedicated Contributor Barnstar. The second editor who is receiving a Barnstar today for her hard work with protecting the integrity of wikiHow’s images is Maluniu. For many years, Jenn took it upon herself to always monitor the Unlicensed Images queue, where images are placed upon upload if the uploader fails to license them. While she gave up officially assuming this time-consuming role a few months ago, she has continued to monitor the Gallery of New Files to find images that slip through the cracks and are improperly licensed for use on wikiHow. While I was working with Lewis last night, Jenn also contributed to our efforts by relicensing images that clearly did not fit on wikiHow under their current licensing and notifying uploaders of the concerns we have with improperly licensed images. For her patience and perseverance with the unlicensed images on wikiHow for YEARS, I have awarded Maluniu, as well, with the Dedicated Contributor Barnstar. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to recognize SudoKingand his efforts to resolve the concern we have regarding unlicensed images on wikiHow over the past few months. Beginning way back 27 weeks ago when he acknowledged (and reported) an image licensing bug, Lojjik began his pursuit to make it easier for us to respond to unlicensed images on wikiHow. Since then, Lojjik has spent much of his own, personal time creating, testing, and utilizing an automated script that makes it possible for us to deal with hundreds of unlicensed images at one time. By using his script, the time it takes to notify uploaders about the image licensing process, apply the proper license to images, remove copyrighted photos from articles, and delete unlicensed photos from the site has diminished. SudoKing’s work does not stop there, however! As many are already aware, he has created so many tools and scripts that have increased efficiency on wikiHow, and the work that Lojjik has done on wikiHow has certainly affected many. Therefore, I am happy to announce today that I am awarding SudoKing with the da Vinci Barnstar, in recognition of his endless service to wikiHow in the form of planning, developing, and programming tools that make our lives easier. Please join me in congratulating these individuals for their incredible assistance with a very tedious, but necessary task on wikiHow: ensuring compliance with copyright laws and guidelines in the form of properly licensing images.
