On Wednesday (February 18), Mike Hadreas, the artist higher generally known as Fragrance Genius, posted a determined plea on X: “Can somebody please change my Wikipedia photos? How do you do it? It’s haunted me for years.” What was then his artist photograph dated again almost a decade to 2017. (Hadreas’ frequent collaborator Blake Mills additionally caught a stray).
Musicians have lengthy suffered in silence on the capricious whims of Wikipedia editors. Artist pictures on the location are virtually all the time outdated, unflattering, or each. And Hadreas isn’t the one one talking up. Swedish pop star Zara Larsson is seemingly locked in a chilly conflict with one person who retains swapping out the photograph on her web page. In a brand new TikTok, Larsson addressed the rogue editor immediately, vowing that “I’ll by no means cease altering that image to a pleasant one. I’ll by no means cease.”
Larsson’s web page—like these of many high-profile artists—falls beneath what’s referred to as prolonged confirmed safety, which restricts public enhancing. So whereas Hadreas was in a position to enlist one in every of his X followers to put off what he referred to as the “corpse in pink lipstick,” Larsson would have required the help of a high-level Wiki person (somebody who’s made at the least 500 edits) or website administrator.
Whether or not you’re a musician who cringes each time you Google your self or a stan who is aware of your fave deserves higher, listed below are a number of methods to alter an artist photograph on Wikipedia. Simply make sure the picture is freely licensed, which suggests you both took the image your self or you might have the specific permission of whoever took it.
By way of Social Media: Put up an appropriate image on Instagram, X, Fb, or one other social media platform with a licensing assertion within the caption. The Inventive Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Worldwide licence (CC BY-SA 4.0) ensures that you just’re nonetheless credited in all future makes use of. Or you may cite Inventive Commons Zero Public Area Dedication 1.0 to launch the photograph utterly into the general public area.
By way of E mail: Submit an appropriate image by way of photosubmission@wikimedia.org, alongside a press release confirming that you just personal the copyright on the picture and a selected licensing settlement (Wikipedia recommends CC BY-SA 4.0. For those who don’t personal the copyright to the photograph you wish to use, whoever owns the rights—often the photographer, except possession has been transferred—ought to ship within the launch assertion as a substitute.
By way of Wikimedia Commons: Begin by making a Wikimedia Commons account, or logging in to Wikimedia Commons with a pre-existing Wikipedia account. Click on “Add file” on the left-hand menu, and fill out the add kind. When you’ve uploaded an appropriate image, you may crop it and add a caption. Go to the web page you wish to replace and click on “Edit” within the top-right nook. Within the edit window, search for “Infobox musical artist,” then delete no matter’s listed beneath “picture.” Change that textual content with the file title of the photograph you uploaded, then scroll down and click on “Publish adjustments.” (To be a superb Wikipedia samaritan, you must also write an edit abstract describing what you modified and why.)
By way of the Speak Web page: Click on “Speak” within the high left nook of the artist web page. Go to “Add subject,” and make a submit with the topic “Photograph Edit Request.” Hyperlink out to a different appropriate image wherever else on the net, verify that you just’re the rights holder, and embrace one of many above licensing agreements. Assist ought to quickly be on the way in which.
