Credit for Images

Hi, all you cats and kittens! Thanks to the excellent work of Emily, we now have a way of including image credits directly in our system which will be visible on character images, like so:

If you haven’t reviewed the graphics policy recently, you should know that it’s required that you only post images that you have either commissioned yourself (externally or through the graphics team here), that you have explicit permission to use, or that come from a source that invites you to repost (though those often require credits, too, in their own policy). This also happens to cover “borrowing” text, video, or any other intellectual property. This requirement is also part of the legal policy, as we can’t allow you to break copyright laws on our server.  Beyond that, it’s just a dick move to steal art. 😉

Most images you find on DeviantArt, unless the artist has specified that they can be shared, cannot be reposted without permission. Many of the image manipulations you find take an enormous amount of time to create and/or folks have paid the artists to do that for them. I’ve spoken with several of you—or asked your TF staff to speak to you—when I’ve seen this happening, as I look through the recent media uploads to make sure things stay both legal and savory.

For most images—and on the wiki—you can accomplish credit by just listing the source directly under the image, in addition to on the description, but with avatars it was a little more difficult to do this. Now, it’s as simple as putting something in the description box, as Vince did here:

This will cause a little blue button to appear on your character image, which will let people see who took the time, energy, and talent to create it for you. If someone on the graphics team created it for you, you should still credit them, and you can even link to their profile with the simple HTML code demonstrated above.

It’s just that easy!