On Wednesday (February 18), Mike Hadreas, the artist higher often known as Fragrance Genius, posted a determined plea on X: “Can somebody please change my Wikipedia footage? How do you do it? It’s haunted me for years.” What was then his artist picture 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 positioning are nearly all the time old-fashioned, unflattering, or each. And Hadreas isn’t the one one talking up. Swedish pop star Zara Larsson is outwardly locked in a chilly conflict with one person who retains swapping out the picture on her web page. In a new TikTok, Larsson addressed the rogue editor straight, 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 capable of enlist one among his X followers to cast off what he referred to as the “corpse in crimson lipstick,” Larsson would have required the help of a high-level Wiki person (somebody who’s made not less than 500 edits) or web site 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 vary an artist picture on Wikipedia. Simply be certain the picture is freely licensed, which suggests you both took the image your self or you’ve the categorical permission of whoever took it.
By way of Social Media: Put up a 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 simply’re nonetheless credited in all future makes use of. Or you may cite Inventive Commons Zero Public Area Dedication 1.0 to launch the picture utterly into the general public area.
By way of Electronic mail: Submit an appropriate image by way of photosubmission@wikimedia.org, alongside a press release confirming that you simply personal the copyright on the picture and a selected licensing settlement (Wikipedia recommends CC BY-SA 4.0. In case you don’t personal the copyright to the picture you need to use, whoever owns the rights—normally the photographer, until 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 need 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.” Exchange that textual content with the file identify of the picture you uploaded, then scroll down and click on “Publish modifications.” (To be Wikipedia samaritan, you must also write an edit abstract describing what you modified and why.)
By way of the Discuss Web page: Click on “Discuss” within the high left nook of the artist web page. Go to “Add subject,” and make a submit with the topic “Picture Edit Request.” Hyperlink out to a different appropriate image anyplace else on the internet, verify that you simply’re the rights holder, and embrace one of many above licensing agreements. Assist ought to quickly be on the way in which.
