Here! Here!

-and-

Hear! Hear!

Repeat Comment:

It would be to Fanpop's legal best interest to make crediting mandatory. In order to stay out of the legal quagmire they have to have plausible deniability, they have to show they did everything reasonable within their power to not promote theft.

Mandating the credit would cover that fairly well... as well as not giving medals to people who do not properly credit.

AND... if they do not want to cover their collective ass, at the very least factor in number of keywords & the image credit to the medal formula.

Not credit, No keywords = no medal.

yeah i agree!

Though sometimes (i have to say) images have been on peoples computer so long that either a) They have forgotten where they got it from and b) The website may of been moved/gone so... though i might just say that there are some exceptions.

Well just do what I do and add a disclaimer: "Not my property. Real source lost."

I totally am for this, sign me up.

yeah i do, i thought i would just say! lol

Add my name.

If you have losing the source, you can put "Unknown, please advise if you know"

But that only work once in awhile. If they are on every image from someone then it will not fly.

gabitha: if you have a couple of really old pics that you like, why not try searching for them again on google or something
or as lars said it can only fly with a couple of pics and i'm pretty certain you will survive if you can't post them :)

anyways I will definitely sign a petition, heck i would sign one saying at least 3 keywords is mandatory too

aye! here here! i agree! yes! definately!

*raises hand*

*signs petitition form*

I agree. Image crediting! Huzzah. My name, good citizen!

Signatures

Cinders
DrDevience
Gabitha
ineedcoffee
Lars
amazondebs
hooch-is-crazy
dazl

If your name is on here by mistake just let me know.

Put my name on that list with a capital "M"!

On second thought... leave it a lowercase m - more official as my username doesn't actually have a capital M.

Sure, go ahead and sign me up...

(Can I publicly humiliate the next person who uses "<3" in their image title? =D)

Signatures

Cinders
DrDevience
Gabitha
ineedcoffee
Lars
amazondebs
hooch-is-crazy
dazl
maybeastarbucks
DarkSarcasm

Sign me up. Although I was terrible with image credit when I first joined (I put the website. Bad Katie!) I think it would be good for the site.
P.s. Probably easiest for you to Ctrl+c my name than attempt to type it =D

Your name is Bad Katie? Cool...

why DO you have such a complicated username sualey!?
Sign me up..
ive asked this before: what do the fanpop four say about this!? i feel they are awfully quiet about it..since you say its fanpops legal problem,drd

I think that is a good idea.

Although I know what you are saying Gabitha! I have posted stuff that I have had for ages and don't have the credit for, so I am currently trying to track it all down. Its a mission, but its an important mission!

Signatures

Cinders
DrDevience
Gabitha
ineedcoffee
Lars
amazondebs
hooch-is-crazy
dazl
maybeastarbucks
DarkSarcasm
Saul_Mikoliunas
germany123
misanthrope86

(Misanthrope, you're signing, I assume? And Saul, I wrote out your name. ;o))

Yep I'm signing!

Did I give you a prop for this yet?

Sign me up. Just make sure to give me proper credit. ;D

sign me up

a bandwagon eh? better jump on it.

*sign*

11relaxing all your images have yourself as a credit..i didnt rate or report them..but i might have left a sarcastic comment ;)
you better start crediting the original owner of your images before signing the petition!

Like misanthrope86 said, I've been tracking all my stuff down for a while now and crediting it..or at least *trying* to..it certainly has been a mission.

*sign*

I'm in aswell. I don't want Fanpop to get sued someday.

Cinders
DrDevience
Gabitha
ineedcoffee
Lars
amazondebs
hooch-is-crazy
dazl
maybeastarbucks
DarkSarcasm
Saul_Mikoliunas
germany123
misanthrope86
Chel1395
Ajox

Cinders
DrDevience
Gabitha
ineedcoffee
Lars
amazondebs
hooch-is-crazy
dazl
maybeastarbucks
DarkSarcasm
Saul_Mikoliunas
germany123
misanthrope86
Chel1395
edennirvana
Ajox

*Signs*

Why did you all leave out super-hiro in your lists?

Signature

Cinders
DrDevience
Gabitha
ineedcoffee
Lars
amazondebs
hooch-is-crazy
dazl
maybeastarbucks
DarkSarcasm
Saul_Mikoliunas
germany123
misanthrope86
chel1395
11relaxing (???)
super-hiro
edennirvana
Ajox
Laura90

HAROLD'S POINT:

While I like the idea of more people crediting - I've hassled most of the users who've responded to this pick at some point about their image credits - there are three broad reasons why it isn't desirable:

1) It doesn't improve the situation. It really wouldn't change anything: those who are going to credit will continue to do so, and those who won't will put a random string into the field in order to submit it. Therefore it would be fruitless work for the staff.

2) Ease of clean-up. The way it is now, if the staff decide to clean up the site, they can much more easily remove content with an empty credits tag (by a simple database query), at the request of the copyright holder(s). If credits were mandatory, it would either require a lot more work to sort between properly and improperly credited images, or result in the situation where the staff would just remove all images from a spot in order to comply with a request.

3) Supporting implementations. Given that we don't want the situation where the staff deletes all images in a spot, or even all images from a given user (another possibility if image crediting is mandatory), policing image credits becomes a major task of site maintenance. This requires a number of things the site doesn't have, such as: image credit flags (which I generally think are a good idea, as I've suggested elsewhere) for users to report problem credits, as well as a lot more site moderation. The staff and moderators now aren't able to maintain even the broken content on the site - adding the investigation and correction of problem image credits into the mix is not something the current infrastructure could support. There'd have to be a bevy of moderators maintaining image credits...and while I think that DrDevience and I are pretty fair when we provide guidance in this area, fan moderation does have problems of power and prestige associated with it (the abuse of these), which I suspect is a big reason why the site doesn't have moderation abilities with the higher medals any more. This third item - supporting implementation - isn't an insurmountable problem, just a very hairy one to figure out how to make it work.

There's also the question of the existing content. This isn't a reason to not implement mandatory crediting, but is a sticky issue that would then have to be addressed. There are hundreds of thousands of images on the site without credits now. What does the staff do with them in order to implement mandatory crediting? Do they all get deleted? Is there a grace period for users to correct their images before they get deleted? Or do they remain without tags until a copyright holder requests their removal?

Possible advantages:
What are the advantages of requiring image credits? There are two potential, realistic benefits:

1) Users might pay more attention to the FAQ and various credit instruction articles in order to learn how to do proper image credits, accelerating the process that we have now. I suspect that the majority would continue to put garbage into the field, though.

2) Having a lot of garbage in the credit fields might incline the staff to work on implementing an image credit flag for reporting improper image credits. But that has attendant problems of maintenance, as I described above.

3) Users who bombard the site with thousands of images now would be prevented from doing so, as each image would need its own credit.
This would result in two problems, however: a huge amount of rancor from those users (resulting in a lot of negative word-of-mouth in public tirades) and a huge drop in image volume on the site. Right now, I believe that images are one of the big draws for the casual site user (while videos are what bring them to the site and picks cause them to register), keeping them on the site. Without the images keeping eyeballs on the site, there'd be a big drop in ad revenue for the site.

All these things represent a big problem with implementing mandatory credits. In all, there's no significant realistic benefit to requiring credits, and you'd have to make a pretty strong case for why to change the status quo - particularly recovering lost revenue - for such a change to be made, particularly before the site launches/moves out of beta testing.

(Copy-pasted from the pick linked in the first post).

thats why i wanted to know what the fanpop four say about this...

why did u all leave me out? thanks cinders! (Y)

sorry super- hiro i just copied and pasted the list and added edennirvana...

*gets out black pen*

scribblescribblescribblescribblescribbleu­nre­ada­ble
anddefinetelynotaletterscribble

Signed.

I will sign :)

I sign. :D I always credit my things. Since all but 2 of them were mine, anyways. One I credited to the creator and one I couldn't find, so I put that it wasn't mine.

Definitely signed! I'm trying to improve my crediting, as i get a bit confused about how it works sometimes.... But I swear I'll improve!

im signing!

*sign*
soz my pen doesn't work so i used a Quill.

I'll sign too!

Signature

Cinders
DrDevience
Gabitha
ineedcoffee
Lars
amazondebs
hooch-is-crazy
dazl
maybeastarbucks
DarkSarcasm
Saul_Mikoliunas
germany123
misanthrope86
chel1395
11relaxing (???)
super-hiro
edennirvana
Ajox
Laura90
PkmnTrainerJ
Temptasia
Spotty_Vision21
tushtush
oblix
inespinto

Here Here =D

Cinders
DrDevience
Gabitha
ineedcoffee
Lars
amazondebs
hooch-is-crazy
dazl
maybeastarbucks
DarkSarcasm
Saul_Mikoliunas
germany123
misanthrope86
chel1395
11relaxing (???)
super-hiro
edennirvana
Ajox
Laura90
PkmnTrainerJ
Temptasia
Spotty_Vision21
tushtush
oblix
inespinto
blind_moon

Not to be a butt-head (and I realize that's offensive to butt-heads around the world), but I feel the need to point out that "most fanpoppers" can't be said to have an opinion on the issue...it's "most of the fanpoppers who've voted on this issue", which is an infinitesimal fraction of fanpoppers (at the moment, 54 users have voted, meaning that the majority is 30 users)...

Edit: which makes this forum thread really impressive: you've almost managed to get a 1:1 ratio of voters to signees! Bravo!

I'm for it

I am slowly getting the feeling that this is not really all that important to the site. Ive said it before: I am pro fanpop and will support any decision made. But there seems to be more politics involved than: lets make this mandatory. Cause well wouldnt it be mandatory? Wouldnt there be a disclaimer?


Dr.D says: AND... if they do not want to cover their collective ass, at the very least factor in number of keywords & the image credit to the medal formula.

Not credit, No keywords = no medal.

I am really annoyed when people dont keyword properly, repeat things etc: but heck Ive seen stuff posted by uhm "One of the fanpop four at least " that was definitely repeat posting, stuff with 3 keywords and the spotname/tv show wasnt even one of them...is anyone going to criticize them? " hey man when did you join dont you know how this works? Thats 2 stars from me...Uhm no! or I have not seen it yet..

Somehow I cant see how this is all helping fanpop when even the creators of the site dont really seem to care all that much that these "unwritten rules of fanpop" are actually followed..I will continue to credit, put proper keywords and a description so that new fans( to a subject or show) have fun on a spot, too. But I will just stop pointing it out to people (except for those who ask to be contacted when I find older stuff without credits) if they dont.
I cant be oh I dont know the English equivalent...(Google says:) more papal than the pope...!

*Takes out pencil*
*Signs*