How To Caption Wikipedia Images
A Practical Guide
Earlier today, as I was editing some drafts, I came across an image that was sourced from Wikipedia. Because of how important it is to make sure each story has a properly captioned image, I was curious about the best way to caption images from Wikipedia. After reading through the license details, I learned what was required and wanted to share what I found.
Finding an Image
Snails are my spirit animal, so it only seems natural to use snails for this example. After an extensive search for the most heartwarming image of a snail, I came across this page about snails on Wikipedia. I clicked on the image I wanted to use and was greeted with the full-size image, along with a way to view More Details about the image.
Captioning the Image
Clicking the More details button led me to a page detailing lots of things about that particular image, including details such as what license the image falls under, as well as who took that marvelous photo. After verifying that the license associated with the image allowed me to use it, the next step was to make sure I —
- Linked to the original image
- Credited the author of the image
- Linked to the license that is associated with that image
Other licenses might have different requirements, so make sure you read the license carefully.
Thankfully, Wikimedia gives me most of the information I needed to perform these steps. Unfortunately, when it comes to including this information on Medium, one more step is required.
First, I clicked on Use this file, which is displayed in the above screenshot. I was then greeted by this helpful little modal, which you can see in the following screenshot.
I checked the HTML box under Attribution, and then copied the HTML it generated into a tool that can render HTML. I happened to use https://htmledit.squarefree.com/ to do this, but if you have other tools, you can use those instead.
As you can see in the above screenshot, it turned all of that HTML into something I could copy and paste (the stuff in the bottom box) into the image caption. I followed these steps when captioning the splash image I used for this story, and now you can too for your images.
Conclusion
It is important for every writer to properly caption their images. Not doing so can lead to expensive legal consequences. I hope this guide helps put your mind at ease when it comes to properly captioning images that you find on Wikipedia (as long as the license associated with those images allows you to use them).
