Original Campbell page
For the past month, SCPC has been continuing our work to improve the Wikipedia pages of our donors, as detailed in our earlier blog post. For the first phase of the project, we have been uploading photos of our donors that have Wikipedia pages and adding them in where appropriate. Sometimes, the effect has been to replace a low-resolution photo with a high-res color one. Other times, we have been adding images to pages where one did not exist before.
New primary photo on Campbell page
One example is former Governor Carroll Campbell’s page. Campbell was Governor from 1987-1995, and there should naturally be a number of color photographs from this time. Instead, the page only had a single, black and white photograph for the lead image. We uploaded our own color portrait as well as a few other images to add to the page itself. In the text of the page, where it talks about Gov. Campbell’s response to Hurricane Hugo in 1989, we decided to add a photo of Campbell touring the wreckage caused by the storm. While changes like these are small, they improve the overall quality of the articles and hopefully will be more engaging to the readers.
Post-Hugo photo now in the body of the text
We’ve learned a few lessons as well. For one thing, it is not enough to simply upload some photos you have copyright to. Using Wikipedia’s submissions ticket system (OTRS) you have to tag the photos with the {{OTRS pending}} marker, then send an email to the OTRS team with your copyright information; else, you risk the photos being deleted while waiting for a site volunteer to approve them (as I learned the hard way…).
Another thing we learned is that once the photos are uploaded, you cannot delete or edit the name easily. Forever will the photo for William Jennings Bryan Dorn be titled “W.B. Bryan Dorn” on the uploads page.
The full list of people whose lead pictures have been added or changed using photos from our collection is below:
- Cecil Wyche
- David Wilkins (higher resolution)
- William Workman
- John West (much better photo. Added photo to body paragraph)
- Richard “Dixie” Walker
- Tom Turnipseed
- George Timmerman
- Robin Tallon (higher quality, color photo)
- Nick Theodore
- Sol Blatt, Sr.
- Sol Blatt, Jr.
- Joe Rogers
- Kenneth Powell
- Robert McNair (accurate photo, see blog post)
- James Mann
- James Richards
- Bruce Littlejohn
- Olin Johnston (better photo)
- Robert Hemphill
- Jim Hodges (better photo)
- Alex Harvin
- Marion Gressette
- James Edwards (higher resolution version)
- John Drummond
- Drake Edens, Jr.
- Bryan Dorn (better photo)
- Don Fowler
- Butler Derrick (better photo)
- Carroll Campbell (better, color photo. Also added photo to body paragraph)
- Jack Bass
- Rembert Dennis
By Zach Johnson