Adding illustrations and other visual media to an article adds another welcome dimension to Titannica. When doing so it is of primary importance to ensure that valid copyright laws and rights are not infringed. This page outlines the guidelines that apply to the use of images on Titannica. Please try to follow them unless there is a good cause for ignoring them.
To Upload[]
To upload images, visit Special:Upload - add to pages using [[Image:Filename.jpg|thumb|Caption]]
Requirements when uploading[]
If such illustrations are uploaded it is important to ensure that their source is cited properly. The description that should accompany an uploaded article should include:
- Observe our copyright policy when uploading images.
- Use the Image description page to describe an image and its copyright rules.
- Use a clear concise title for the file. An obscure name like "zag_031.jpg" is not as helpful as "zagor.jpg".
- Remember that an image that is uploaded will replace any file that already has that name.
- Try to edit (crop) the images to show only the necessary information.
- Try to exclude any watermarks or text in the image (this includes copyright notices; those belong in the text of the image description page).
- The JPEG format for photographic images is best, and SVG (preferred), PNG (if no svg is available), or GIF (as a last resort) for diagrams and other low-contrast images.
Even on the vast wikia servers we only have a finite amount of disk space and bandwidth available and images take up a lot of space. Therefore remember that Titannica is not an image gallery. Images are uploaded to support articles. Please upload images solely for the purpose of illustration. Generally, no more than one or two images should be used in an article although there are exceptions to this, notably for the longer articles.
Describing images[]
When creating an image, it is important to include text to describe the content of the image. This can be done by editing the [[Image: ]] page text. In all cases, the images should be accompanied by a specific note with:
- credit for the original author of the image or other media file (if the file is a fan-created work) including a link where the original author may be contacted, or
- the original source of the image or other media file (if the file is derived from an official Fighting Fantasy work, e.g. illustrations from books).
You must also include information about:
- whether the file is uploaded to Titannica with express permission of the author, or under fair use rules, and
- the source of the file, being a specific book, magazine, other official work, a website, or any other medium.
Adding the appropriate descriptions on the Image: page not only ensures that Titannica remains compliant with copyright rules, but also provides much more practical information for anyone who may want to use an image in the future. NOTE: Boilerplate Messages are available for most of the official Fighting Fantasy works, which take away much of the admin burden for users. See the section below.
Copyright[]
Please note: this is an abbreviated version of the official copyright policy – please visit that page for more detailed information.
When you upload an image, make sure you own the image, or that it is in the Public Domain, or that the copyright holder has agreed to license it under the Creative Commons License. Please note its copyright status on the Image description page.
Images that are scans of book covers, fall under the category of fair use, as long as they are not posted in large numbers. Be sure to include the appropriate Boilerplate Message with the description.
Many Fighting Fantasy fans and licensed publications spend time creating their own artwork, which might be recreating images from the books or original imagery inspired by the books. Before uploading previously published or fan-created images to Titannica you must have the express consent of the author. If you do upload an original fan image, you must include a note naming the original author, a link to the author's website as a source, and confirm that the image is posted with the author's consent. This may require leaving a notice on the image's talk page.
Boilerplate messages[]
By adding a copyright messages to an image, you are expressing the permissions given to view it under our license. To take the pain out of this, illustration templates have been created which will do most of the work for you, and which also standardize the output. There are a number of templates that have been set up that we refer to as ‘boilerplate messages’. Essentially, these templates make the task of adding correct information and license wording much easier for the user. Please have a look below and try to choose the correct template. This will help avoid possible copyright infringements.
There are a number of sources from which you might get an illustration and they can be divided into two sets:
- Sourced from an Fighting Fantasy Publication
- Interior Illustrations
- Book Covers
- Sourced from elsewhere (including ‘own work’)
Fighting Fantasy Publications[]
Interior Illustrations[]
For all internal illustrations from the books, when you are uploading them, there is a simple method. An example illustrates how:
You want to upload a picture of Zagor from The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (book) book. In the Upload area browse for the image on your computer.
In the free text field type:
==Description== A picture of [[Zagor]] {{I-FF1}}
This will appear as in the example at this link: Example Interior Illustration wording.
Thus you see that simply typing {{I-FF1}} gives you:
- The Source (i.e. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, 1982 (Puffin Books)
- The Interior Illustrator (i.e. Russ Nicholson)
- The Licensing (complete with full licensing wording)
- The relevant Categories (i.e. Book Illustrations | FF01 Illustrations | FF1 Entries)
All you need to type in is the description.
The format for other books is the same i.e. {{I-FFXX}} where XX = the number of the book (for books 1 to 9 type just 1,2,3 etc rather than 01, 02 etc). Non-standard books have the following templates for interior illustrations only:
- Sorcery:
- Sorcery 1: The Shamutanti Hills - {{I-S1}}
- Sorcery 2: Khare - Cityport of Traps - {{I-S2}}
- Sorcery 3: The Seven Serpents - {{I-S3}}
- Sorcery 4: The Crown of Kings - {{I-S4}}
- AFF books:
- Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World: - {{I-Titan}}
- Out of the Pit: - {{I-OOTP}}
- Dungeoneer: - {{I-Dungeoneer}}
- Blacksand!: - {{I-Blacksand}}
- Allansia: - {{I-Allansia}}
- Introductory Role-playing books:
- Fighting Fantasy - The Introductory Role-Playing Game - {{I-FF}}
- The Riddling Reaver - {{I-RR}}
- Novels:
- The Trolltooth Wars (book) - {{I-TTW}}
- Demonstealer - {{I-DS}}
- Shadowmaster - {{I-SM}}
- Zagor Chronicles
- Book 1 - {{I-Z1}}
- Book 2 - {{I-Z2}}
- Book 3 - {{I-Z3}}
- Book 4 - {{I-Z4}}
- 10th Anniversery Year Book: - {{I-10AYB}}
- Wizard Only Books:
- Eye of the Dragon (book) - {{I-FF60}}
- Bloodbones - {{I-FF61}}
- Howl of the Werewolf - {{I-FF62}}
- Stormslayer - {{I-FF63}}
- Night of the Necromancer - {{I-FF64}}
- Blood of the Zombies - {{I-FF65}}
- Warlock Magazine
- The format is similar as for main gamebooks, except that instead of 'FF' use 'W'; i.e. {{I-WXX}} where XX = the number of the book (for books 1 to 9 type just 1,2,3 etc rather than 01, 02 etc).
- Questbooks
- The Tasks of Tantalon - {{I-ToT}}
- Casket of Souls - {{I-CoS}}
Exception to Standard Template Use for the Interior of a book[]
The main exception to the above is when an illustration comes from a book with many named illustrators and you actually know which one of the illustrators did the illustration. This applies especially in the case of illustrations from Titan and Out of the Pit. The standard template for both of these books names all the illustrators and says that the specific illustrator is unnamed. In some instances you may know the illustrator and therefore this statement may be incorrect. In this case you will have to write all the details without reference to a template. A good way to make this quicker might be to find an illustration that is from Titan, that is already uploaded and copy all the relevant details from the background detail for that illustration.
Book covers[]
These are obviously individual, i.e. there is only one per book. Therefore they should be uploaded and the full details (including description, source, illustrator, licensing and categories) should be typed up. There are only a limited number of covers and many of these have already been uploaded. An good example of an uploaded cover is: Image:FF1 Wraparound.jpg. Have at how this is laid out within the ‘edit’ view for that entry.
In all cases the following template is added:
{{BookCover}}
Sourced from elsewhere (including ‘own work’)[]
- {{imagelicensing}}
- This is the style of license that should generally be used. It takes four variables, the license, creator/owner, source, and rationale. The format is:
- {{imagelicensing| license= (ccl | pd | fairuse | copyright | other | nonegiven) | owner= | source= | rationale= }}
- See its documentation for complete details and alternate versions. By default it presents:
- License
- This image has been uploaded without choosing a license. The uploader has been made aware of the fact that this may be construed as placing the image under a Creative Commons by-nc license, if he/she is the copyright owner.
- Owner/Creator
- N/A - it is assumed that the original uploader is the owner/creator of this image.
- Source
- N/A
- Rationale
- N/A
Editing images[]
To replace an image with an edited version, use the upload file page, and make sure that your file has the same name as the one that you want to replace. Converting an image to another file format the (end of) the image name changes, hence one gets a separate image description page.
Deleting images[]
- Drop a line to the person who uploaded the image, telling them of your concerns. You may be able to resolve the issue at this point.
- Remove all uses of the image from articles – make it an orphan
- Add one of these notices to the image description page
- copvios: add the copyright infringement notice for images from possible copyright infringements to the image description page:
- otherwise: add the listed for deletion notice to the image description page.
- List the image on one of these links:
- copyvios: list the image on possible copyright infringements
- otherwise: list the image on Titannica:Images for deletion
- The image can then be deleted after two weeks in the normal way – see our deletion policy
To actually delete an image after following the above procedure, you must be an administrator. To do so, go to the image description page and click the (del) link. Do not click the Delete this page link, as this will delete the image description page but leave the image intact. To delete the image talk page (if any), you can use the Delete this page link as usual. Note that as of the MediaWiki 1.9 upgrade, images can be undeleted or reverted to an earlier version.
Image titles[]
Before uploading an image to Titannica, please check whether there are already images of the subject. Then decide whether your image should replace one (in each article that uses it) or be additional. In the first case, give it exactly the same name, otherwise a suitable other name.
Using the same name[]
Using the name of an already existing image means replacing that image. You may use the same name in the case of a different image that replaces the old one, and also if you make an improved version of the same image – perhaps a scanned image that you scanned again with a better quality scanner, or you used a better way of reducing the original in scale - then upload it with the same title as the old one. This allows people to easily compare the two images, and avoids the need to delete images or change articles. However, this is not possible if the format is changed, since then at least the extension part of the name has to be changed.
Using a new name[]
Using a new name means creating a new file on Titannica. Suitable names are descriptive titles that are useful in identifying the image.
As a rule of thumb, the name of any new image you upload should start with the article title of the object or person it shows. If there's more than one object or person, choose the most important one.
Avoid special characters in filenames or excessively long filenames, though, as that might make it difficult for some users to download the files onto their machines. Note that names are case sensitive, "zagor.PNG" is considered different from "zagor.png".
Renaming images[]
Currently, there is no easy way to rename an image – it has to be downloaded, then uploaded using another name. Administrators are allowed to "copy" images to a new name this way and delete the original image, if the file name doesn't adhere to the above rules.
Format[]
Use the following guidelines to determine what file format should be used for your images:
- Drawings, icons, political maps, flags and other such images (basically those with large, simple, and continuous blocks of color) should be in SVG, PNG or GIF format.
- Photos and photo-like maps should be in JPEG format.
Try to avoid cropping or otherwise editing JPEGs too frequently – each edit creates more loss of quality. If you can find an original of a photograph in 16-bit or 24-bit PNG or TIFF, edit that, and save as JPEG before you upload.
Size[]
There are many technical hints in this section that some people may not have the tools or expertise to deal with themselves. If, for example, you find a great image that needs to be cropped, resized, or recoded and you don't know how to do that, ask someone on Palace of Learning to do it for you.
Scale and crop images to a size appropriate for the article. Keep in mind that many browsers still use 800x600 displays, and so images wider than 200-300 pixels may overwhelm the article. Larger images also take more time to download over slow links. Likewise, images smaller than 100 pixels wide may be difficult for users of larger displays to see. An optimum size for images with text flowing around them would be 200 pixels. Images without text on the side can be wider.
Images appearing in a sidebar should be resized to a width of 200 pixels; larger images would stretch the sidebar while smaller ones would leave an unused border. Don't put all images in a sidebar, though – floating images are preferred.
In terms of image file size, please also bear in mind that not everyone has a broadband internet connection. A considerable number of people have 56kbps modems or slower connections than that. Images stored in an article should generally be kept below 100 kilobytes in size. The smaller the better. Larger images are okay to use as a link, but please warn people that the image is larger.
See also[]
Revision history of articles containing images[]
Old versions of articles do not show corresponding old versions of images, but instead display the latest ones, unless the file names of the images have changed.