Forum:User Avatar (Picture)

When uploading an avatar, under which license will it be? Or are avatars handled completely seperate from pics? --Kissaki 21:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Can you give an example please? Are you talking an image of an avatar that is kept on a wiki, or are you referring to the actual avatar itself?  Or is this the vector file for the avatar to be seen with a 3D-rendering package?  Your question can't even be answered without something more concrete here. --Robert Horning 22:33, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Does this have anything to do with Blog articles? --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 02:10, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm, seems it was on a sub wiki of wikia, sorry for the confusion.
 * In my users details (userpage probably) there was an image/avatar placeholder and in your preferences you could upload an avatar. It said something about it was a new feature... As it was on some kind of userpage and the user account is global on wikia, I thought it (the avatar function) would be global as well. --Kissaki 18:36, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * There we go: http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Avatars and http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Preferences --Kissaki 18:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I guess this has to do with "User Profiles" and turning wiki editing itself into a game. For wikis that have done this (like Halopedia) it has turned into a miserable nightmare of problems and hugely dis-satisfied users.... at least those who do heavy lifting and try to actually add and build content of a wiki are annoyed by these sort of features. Don't get caught in the trap of adding stuff like this unless the point of the wiki is to make the wiki into a game in its own right. No, I don't like this extension at all.

As far as licensing of "avatar" images are concerned, I can only imagine that the license you can use for the avatar is the same as what is acceptable on the wiki itself. Don't use images that are copyrighted by somebody else without permission, and try to work with the wiki license (like the GFDL) when at all possible. If you can't specify what the license of the avatar image can be used under, that is a local wiki limitation that should be avoided and corrected. --Robert Horning 21:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, so that's a sub wiki as well? Thought that/those basic wikis were kinda official from wikias site. Esp. as it links to this forum for avatar feedback. Anyway, thx. (Gotta check how wikia is organized later...) --Kissaki 00:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Each one of the wikis set their own independent policies based on consensus within the communities that develop the content. There are some rough general guidelines that come from Wikia Central (anyone can edit, you must use some sort of "open source" license for the content, try to be nice to new contributors), individual wikia wikis are given quite a bit of lattitude about what they can do.


 * In this case, this is a tool that a wiki community can choose to add to the wiki software running their site. Many communities have rejected this particular set of "extensions" (add-on tools)... IMHO for a pretty good reason for this particular extension.  If there is a particular extension to the "MediaWiki" software that your community would like to add, discuss it on the appropriate community discussion page/forum and if it seems like a good idea, bring it back here to Wikia Central and ask the staff to install that addition to the wiki.  There are several extensions that have been screened as not causing software problems and generally free of bugs that are listed on the Wikia Help wiki that you can consider... if you need those features.  The Avatar extension is but one of those extensions that you can consider.  --Robert Horning 01:52, 5 February 2009 (UTC)