For some reason this really annoys me

[Talleyrand]

I don't know why but this has been annoying me to an unreasonable degree: Using pictures from Game of Thrones on characters. Especially for Character like Renly were he is described as having long hair yet the picture on his page show him with short cut hair.

I thought, seeing as the Tv show has its own wiki would it not be more accurate and apt to use the portraits of Characters drawn to their book descriptions on the ASOIAF wiki

[Scafloc]

I don't know why but this has been annoying me to an unreasonable degree: Using pictures from Game of Thrones on characters. Especially for Character like Renly were he is described as having long hair yet the picture on his page show him with short cut hair.

I thought, seeing as the Tv show has its own wiki would it not be more accurate and apt to use the portraits of Characters drawn to their book descriptions on the ASOIAF wiki

It does not annoy me.

The Harry Potter wikia and the Lord of the Rings wikia are some of the wiki's I check for inspiration and comparison. There they are using pictures from the films and are not restricting themselves to drawings that were made of the characters based on the books.

I would like to use drawings that are based on the books as well but the problem is the "fair use" matter. Most drawings are made by artists who make their money selling the pictures. If we would use their drawings on the wiki there is a risk people would not buy the drawings anymore. For this reason some wiki's use copies (of drawings) of lesser quality as not to threaten the sales.

For the moves the use of some screen caps will not very likely result in a decrease of viewers. The pictures may even serve to attract people. So using screen caps is "fair use" while using the drawings may not be.

[Evrach]

I agree with Lothbrok :/

But just a question of personnal view I think.

[Werthead]

I thought Amoka granted permission to use his illustrations on the Wiki, but there were copyright issues? However, Wiki later introduced a new copyright rule which let copyrighted images be used with permission, so I thought that was the way the Wiki was going to go.

I agree with the idea that the Wiki pages need more illustrations to make them more attractive, but using the images from one medium (the TV show) rather than the primary one (the books) could be confusing. If you are going to have a 'in the TV show' sub-section, having TV screencaps or promo pics in that section makes sense, but using them as the primary image for the overall article is questionable, especially where the character description in the books varies immensely from the actor portraying them (not just Renly, but Osha and pretty much every character who is noticeably older than the character, which is almost everyone, plus issues like TV Tyrion not having the misshapen features of Book Tyrion).

And yes, both the LotR and Harry Potter Wikis have had contentious discussions about this point as well.

[Scafloc]

It was not clear if Amoka really gave permission so to be on the save side it was decided not to use the pictures. See this discussion.

[Asarlai]

I agree with the idea that the Wiki pages need more illustrations to make them more attractive, but using the images from one medium (the TV show) rather than the primary one (the books) could be confusing.

Well, given that Mr. Martin has not deigned to write picture books, the types of images are rather limited. The official TV show shots seem more appropriate and professional than some third party fan art.

[Werthead]

Well, given that Mr. Martin has not deigned to write picture books, the types of images are rather limited. The official TV show shots seem more appropriate and professional than some third party fan art.

There is plenty of first-party professional art that could be used if the copyright issue is cleared up. Given the new Wiki rules that allow copyrighted material to be used with permission of the owners, there are clear alternatives available.

[Bahimiron]

Absolutely agree with the OP. There's a Game of Thrones wiki for the show. It's just weird that the ASOIAF wiki says things like Mormont is 'bald with a beard that goes to his chest' and right next to that is a photo of a guy with hair on his head and a neatly cropped beard. The wiki is primarily for the books, not for the show. As such the descriptions should tell you what the characters look like in the books. The photos showing you what the characters look like in the show is just an imposing presence.

The official TV show shots seem more appropriate and professional than some third party fan art.

No photos is more appropriate than photos that do not accurately convey what is written in the text of the entry.

[Scafloc]

Absolutely agree with the OP. There's a Game of Thrones wiki for the show. It's just weird that the ASOIAF wiki says things like Mormont is 'bald with a beard that goes to his chest' and right next to that is a photo of a guy with hair on his head and a neatly cropped beard. The wiki is primarily for the books, not for the show. As such the descriptions should tell you what the characters look like in the books. The photos showing you what the characters look like in the show is just an imposing presence.

No photos is more appropriate than photos that do not accurately convey what is written in the text of the entry.

I guess we will just have to agree that we don't agree.

[Ran]

My own preference? Amok did grant permission, but didn't want to put his work into the public domain or what have you due to the rules at the time. The rules have changed, so far as I know Amok's opinion has not changed that he's fine with it so far as his copyright is respected.

And so we should probably go with Amok's art, with appropriate attribution.

Maybe add a second template to discuss the depiction of the characters on the show, and include those images there? Certainly, the wiki is clearly a place people are visiting to learn more about the books and the TV series, so why not cater to both, within reason?

[Werthead]

Maybe add a second template to discuss the depiction of the characters on the show, and include those images there? Certainly, the wiki is clearly a place people are visiting to learn more about the books and the TV series, so why not cater to both, within reason?

That's a logical approach, though I'd suggest maybe altering the spoiler warning on the front of the wiki to make it clearer there will be spoilers for the TV series (though you could have it in a 50-point-high neon font and some people would still miss it ;) ).

[Scafloc]

I have no objection against this.

[The Pale Griffin]

That's a logical approach, though I'd suggest maybe altering the spoiler warning on the front of the wiki to make it clearer there will be spoilers for the TV series (though you could have it in a 50-point-high neon font and some people would still miss it ;) ).

We already had that problem with the book spoilers...over books that have been out 10 years. I shudder at the thought of those looking for tv series info....

[The Fan]

I agree, the advent of the HBO show has changed the world of ASoIaF dramatically, and the wiki and board will also likely need to follow suit to accommodate both types of fans (and hopefully unite them into one group.....fans).

Having both book description drawings (Amok) and also HBO's take on the character seems like a great idea. :thumbsup:

[Evrach]

I agree, the advent of the HBO show has changed the world of ASoIaF dramatically, and the wiki and board will also likely need to follow suit to accommodate both types of fans (and hopefully unite them into one group.....fans).

The HBO show is just a "by-product", like the board game, the card game or the resin figurines. It doesn't have to change the world of ASoIaF, not "dramatically" anyway... All the informations about all the cards even realeased in the collective card game aren't on the wiki, nor the board games rules, or the list & pictures of the dark sword miniatures... the HBO series doesn't need to get the precedence toward the books in any case OMHO, including the pictures of the characters.

For this, there is a specific wiki dedicated to the TV show. And it's also possible to have an "external link" toward the TV series wiki isn't it ?

[Ran]

The show, OTOH, has a far higher profile than all those other by-products combined. That makes it quite a different case. We get a huge amount of traffic to the wiki specifically due to the series. FYI, the wiki is as popular as the forum and our Westeros.org proper site, but something approaching 80% of visitors come via search -- i.e., it's people who aren't regulars. I believe the whole Westeros.org site is somewhere north of 300,000 unique visitors on a month-to-month basis, which is quite incredible to me, especially as we didn't realize how big the wiki was until we put in Analytics about a week ago (oops -- should have done it sooner!)

So ... I think the second template approach would be cool, and maybe allowing people to beef up 'In the TV Series' sections.

We could, of course, go the full portal route, and split book portal from TV show portal. I suppose that would have some benefits, but at the same time, I'm not sure we have sufficient numbers of editors to really support it.

Or maybe it's a situation where, if you create the portal, they will come? Don't know...

Re: Spoilers,

The amazing thing is, our traffic is huge for the wiki, and it must be people watching the show looking for info... and we've never had one person contact us to complain about being spoiled. IMO, the vast majority of people who hit up wikis for information actually want spoilers, and want to know where things are going.

That, or they haven't figured out how to e-mail us to complain. ;) But given the sheer number of visitors, you'd think one of them would bitch to us if they could.

All that said, when we have more time, we're going to work at increasing spoiler protection.

[Werthead]

We could, of course, go the full portal route, and split book portal from TV show portal. I suppose that would have some benefits, but at the same time, I'm not sure we have sufficient numbers of editors to really support it.

I think it would be more logical to simply reciprocate the links to the TV Wiki articles that we already have in place (pretty much every single page has a link to the corresponding WoIaF article, with spoiler warnings, which I'm sure must be contributing to your uptake in hits). This would radically reduce the workload for such a project, as would mirroring the TV Wiki articles in a TV portal part of the WoIaF as we already discussed.

I'm mildly sceptical about the portal approach because the risk of spoilers is immense: the BSG multi-portal wiki works because the different incarnations of the franchise have nothing to do with one another: reading an article on the 1978 series' version of Apollo doesn't spoil anything at all about the 2003 character of the same name, for example, whilst the risk of cross-book/TV series confusion is greater, though this can be eliminated with multiple spoiler warnings and so forth.

I need to look at the figures more closely (I only set up Google Analytics on the TV Wiki last week), but since the TV show began the TV Wiki's hits have likewise shot through the roof and we now have at least half a dozen solid editors working on the Wiki every day improving stuff to an impressive degree (we seem to have picked up some excellent crossover appeal with the True Blood Wiki fanbase, who have leapt on board whilst their show is on hiatus). AWoIaF making use of this manpower and work through the links, portal or mirroring approach would seem to make sense.

[lady narcissa]

In general, my preference for pictures on character's wiki pages - as a user/reader - is to see a variety of mediums. I like to see how characters have been interpreted by multiple sources. So I like seeing pictures from the tv show of the actors along with how artists have interpreted those same characters in paintings or how characters have been drawn on game cards or trading cards. And in the case of GRRM's characters, I'd probably think including pictures of the Dark Sword Miniatures for the characters available would be interesting as well.

[The Pale Griffin]

This debate has raised a new question for me at least. I've added some info to characters from the RPGs and the So Spake Martin collection. Before I go further on that I would like some clarification as to whether or not that should be put in with the stuff from the books or kept separate? It's in the same "universe", so technically it could be put in on the same pages as the stuff from the series, but before I go adding a whole bunch more stuff, I just want to hear your opinions.

As for the pictures, maybe as a caption in the pictures, you could put something along the lines of "Ser Loras Tyrell, as portrayed in the Game of Thrones series" and have the Game of Thrones part of the caption link to Werthead's wikia article for the tv show. Keeping the link to the wikia further down, for those that missed.

[Werthead]

I believe the Wiki's policy is to note that anything from the RPG or SSM is 'semi-canon' (i.e. canon until GRRM says otherwise). It can be put on there but needs to be marked as "Semi-canon sources suggest this House's motto is..." etc.