Why are WP crediting writers for images instead of the real photographers
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I have just been looking at new poetry in the Reader list and noticed at the top of the list is an image with the tag POETRY… it clearly states to the bottom right hand side (Photo by… then gives the name of the blogger with a link to the post. A lot of those image come from Pexels which WP now has a direct link for bloggers to choose an image with ease. Those images don’t need crediting as they are public domain images, but… why is WP crediting the writer of the article as the photographer?
I have been a WP blogger for over six years and have meticulously credited all photographers and artists whose work I have used on my blogs… I’m sure you would agree that is right thing to do when the images are ‘not’ in the public domain? In the last year I have become one of the photographers on Pexels. I now provide a large number of free images to be used online. I don’t mind not being credited for my images used on WP, or anywhere online. But I really would object to seeing one of my images credited to a writer, especially by WP… that’s horribly unprofessional and encouraging bloggers who don’t know better to perhaps do the same.
I’m an active member of the Pexels forum, and I can assure you, if the other Pexels photographers knew WP was crediting writers for their own creative photography, they’d be horrified.
Free stock photography doesn’t mean it’s produced by a machine… there is an intelligent human being behind every one of those images, who has generously donated a percentage of their work for web users to make use of. Please don’t insult us by falsely giving credit to someone who didn’t take the picture.
I hope you get that sorted very soon.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there, I’ve tagged WordPress.com staff to help you with this due to the nature of the issue. You’ll likely receive a response within a few hours from a staff member: https://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-help-in-the-forums/#how-do-i-get-a-moderatorstaff-reply-for-my-question
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Hi @suzyhazelwood, I’ll take a look a this for you, but I do know that at least when it comes to inserting photos into a post with our media library, we automatically insert the photographer’s name as a credit.
Could you possibly send a link to the offending article so we can take a look? There are lots of posts in the reader.
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There is no ‘offending article’, you seem to have misread what I’ve explained. The link is ‘not’ created by a blogger, it’s a WordPress header at the start of the feed of posts on whatever tag list you’ve chosen to view… it has the tag name overlaid in the middle of the image and a link to the blog on the bottom ride hand side of the image. Every time you refresh the feed, it changes to a new image linked to another blog. https://wordpress.com/tag/prose https://wordpress.com/tag/poetry
Some posts the image is linked to will be the bloggers own image or art, but most of the images I’m seeing are just posted by the blogger not owned. I double checked by Google image searching several of the pictures… some were listed on Pexels others were an image I couldn’t narrow down who it belonged to, but it was used hundreds of times… definitely not taken by the blogger. I’m not suggesting it shouldn’t have been used in their post, I’m saying that WordPress shouldn’t be stating in a link ‘Photo by …….’ when they are naming the blog, not the photographer of the image. It might be better to just have the blog name over the image rather than state ‘Photo by’ because in most cases the photo is not taken by the blogger.
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Okay, thank you. I think I understand now.
Images inserted directly into a post from Pexels, with our insert tool, will show the photographer credit. But these are featured images from the blog posts, and given the way featured images display, there’s no real spot for the photographer credit.
Here’s one I got from prose:
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/133643607/posts/7180In this case the fireworks image was used as it was a featured image for a randomly selected post. I am guessing that one is actually by the author.
On poetry, the randomly selected post showed this image as the background and said “Photo by (blog author)”
https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-scale-photography-of-typewriter-209257/Noting in that case, the photo on Pexels is simply credited as being by Pixabay, so there’s that, too :/ CC0 is tricky, especially given no photographer credit is required.
But I certainly can understand why it would be upsetting to imply the blogger is the photographer if they were not.
I can’t promise this would happen, but if we were to change the reader text to say
Photo from ______'s siteinstead ofPhoto by ______would that work? If so I can pass along that suggestion as feedback, along with your comments here. -
There is a link to the photographer on the Pixabay post at Pexels, it’s a little hidden, but it’s definitely there… top right, a very tiny link that says source. The link goes to the photographer who originally posted it on Pixabay ‘Barbara Bonanno’.
I understand WP can’t get into crediting public domain images on those posts in the Reader, or finding the photographer from another source, when the photo wasn’t taken by the blogger… it would be way too time consuming. I just think it looks unprofessional to be crediting those images in the way they have, and not a good example to those who use WP.
To use the word source, would sometimes be inaccurate, so yes, ‘Photo from’ is a good suggestion.
Please do pass on the feedback… it would be great to see that changed. Thank you for taking the time to look at this and for your understanding, it’s much appreciated!
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I will pass along the suggestion, and we’ll take it into consideration next time we iterate. Thank you!
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Just noting we’re working on a fix for this. :)
https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/pull/31100 -
Just adding that the fix has been merged, so it’ll now appear as “Photo from” instead of “Photo by”! :)
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It looks much better and makes more sense. Thank you so much for taking the time to fix this! :o)
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