Take Wikipedia content. Add a brilliant cartoonist. Shake. You get WikiWorld.
Greg Williams is a veteran illustrator and designer from The Tampa Tribune newspaper in Florida. As a fan of Wikipedia, he started drawing cartoons based on the articles in his spare time for fun.
Now he’s put them four of them up for public consumption on Wikimedia Commons, the Wikipedia sister project for free media content. They’re fabulous.
Pingback: WikiWorld: Beautiful Cartoons based on Wikipedia Articles « Daveydweeb.blog
I’m confused. (A) How is this artist’s use of the Wikipedia “puzzle globe” logo in his own logo NOT a trademark violation? (B) How is it not a violation of Wikipedia’s own “conflict of interest” guidelines for this cartoonist to post his OWN artwork into Wikipedia articles?
Granted, they’re cute cartoons. But Wikipedia isn’t a CV-building bulletin board, and I don’t think most researchers are looking for cartoons when they look up a topic.
I agree putting them prominently in the articles in Wikipedia is problematic and irrelevant as an encyclopaedic function. They are in Commons, which means they are part of a body of visual, audio and video works that folks are free to use.
As for the trademark, Brad Patrick the Wikimedia Foundation legal counsel has engaged with conversations with the creator, so it appears they have worked something out. You may want to contact him directly though.