Let’s Argue* Attribution

Edit: This article was written before the creation of @archillinks, the official attribution and source account as an alternative solution for Archillect’s followers .

Since @archillect was created, the biggest problem has been related to the same topic: Attribution. Beautiful content is found, shared, and now with the help of social media and an unexpected growth speed of the account, it can reach to millions of people in a single day. Powerful. But where does it come from?

As a creator, this was one of the most fragile yet important topics about @archillect so far. This is why, the topic has a subsection on the official about page, and this is also why I tried to be as loud as possible about this on social media.

As a result, this article was already in my to-do list long overdue. I will do my best to be as clear as possible in two parts.

Initial part will explain the primary technical barriers in the project and secondary part will give you a glimpse of my personal perspective about the topic.

Bear with me.

Technical Barriers

Over the times I have communicated with various minds over social media, I’ve realized that when they write/speak about attribution they don’t mean the same thing.

Let’s talk. From the beginning. To make everything as clear as possible I will label groups related to @archillect’s attribution problems, from my point of view.

First of all, majority does not care about how they reach to the beautiful content, how it is delivered or where it comes from. This is surely not an archillect-only behavior.

In @archillect’s case, a massive portion of followers only care to see inspiring imagery, and that’s all. And that’s fine (2016). They use manual methods when they need to hunt for the creator or source. Happily this (generally) works. Google is our friend.

The minority that talks about attribution, actually talks about two different things.

• Group A wants to see a name/credit with shared visuals.
• Group B wants to see the source of the visuals. They call this “attribution”.

So shortly, group A and B might have the same purpose or the same initial question: “where does this image come from?” — but the request is remarkably different.

From a technical point of view, sharing the source URL of a content and sharing the credit/creator of the content are very different things.

Archillect can currently do source-sharing to satisfy Group B, but sadly it’s not possible to write down the name of the creator to satisfy Group A. Let me explain.

To be able to name the creator/content of the image, @archillect should somehow be able to understand the image. Even Google can not properly do crediting at this point (even on text content). Attribution is still a big problem to be solved algorithmically because you can only share information that you have and @archillect does not have any data about the creator/title of the shared content.

Remember that (almost) all of the shared content is crawled from random posts over Tumblr, with no pre-set structure or format that contains credit or titles.

Therefore, it is quite impossible at this point to mine or determine the name, creator, title, work, [insert word here] magically from posts. What is there is there, and that is all.

Currently, to find the high(er) resolution images the algorithm already uses Google image search, and as you know, it is enough for finding alternative sources. Still, no attribution data. Only URL’s. More sources. (Group B, yay!)

So alternatively,

“Why not include the source URL with every tweet?”

Two reasons, #1 being the primary one.

1. It is very risky to share an unchecked URL over twitter, with almost 200K followers (by today). Who knows what else the source URL contains? Porn? Malwares? Internet kitties? Mistake(s) would only risk the account.
2. This is not a solution for attribution. This is only a solution for lazy people and archillect.com already has links to multiple possible sources for every post, and an additional shortcut for a reverse image search. From Group B’s perspective this is treasure.

If things are still unclear about the technical approaches, please consider reading this thread.

Also..

Let me be loud about my personal* point of view on @archillect’s attribution problems.

While the attribution/credit problem is there as a technical problem to be solved, it never became a problem for the creators of things* that were showcased* (algorithmically) without credits. As stated in the about page (http://archillect.com/about):

“If your work is shared and you want it to be removed from the archive feel free to contact. It will be done immediately. It was obviously too beautiful and got her (archillect’s) attention.”

On the contrary, as far as my experience goes so far with the project feedback, when creators see their content on @archillect they are very happy about it. When creators are mentioned (@) or linked they are retweeted manually to account followers. Manual work is not the best (means manual checking every mention daily, I wouldn’t prefer that!) however this is the most solid way at the moment.

Moreover, as you can see in the Chapters project, it is the creative scene that hold @archillect there. Chapters project currently has over 150 industry-leading professionals on board. This is how she initially managed to reach a beautiful crowd. In other words, if we’re talking about professional creatives, this is a point to consider.

As a creative professional my work, too, has been shared everywhere over the years, with and without attribution. Having good work on internet era has some side effects. If I had to pick an option between having my work shared or not on some random platform with a reach of millions of people every day, I would prefer my work to be shared, even if it had no credits. I know that if the work is good people will hunt for the creator anyway, and that is what happens on @archillect all the time.

In other words, from my personal perspective this is not a big issue however I still believe that it may be a problem for some other creatives. I understand.

Which brings me to the main point:

There is a minority that wants to know about attribution/credits, or more importantly, why it isn’t there.

When the attribution issue is stated/questioned with good intentions, I can nicely answer/inform/explain as a response:

“I am aware. I’d like to have a technical solution as well.”

I’m always happy to inform, always happy to share my earlier public discussions, always happy to share the technical reasons above to light any remaining dark spot(s) about the topic.

However, as a side effect of all the facts above, I find myself questioning the true motivation of a tiny portion of this minority, that are not-so-nicely asking for attribution, sometimes almost in the level of public flaming.

For those, I feel, the real problem is not attribution at all.

The real hidden issue (for them*) is how fast @archillect is gaining popularity.. and this becomes a problem as they* feel this is undeserved.

I have to tell you at this point, as the creator of @archillect: I was not expecting this growth speed as well. We are on the same page with you.

If you are in this category, and if @archillect found your work, and if you are offended by this, and if you want you work to be removed, let me know! Will be done instantly, as mentioned in… everywhere. You will be a first!

But.. undeserved? No. Only surprising. @archillect makes me and a vast majority of the people who are aware of the project, happy. She tries to fulfill her main purpose of creation: to inspire.

In other words, without being intentional about this, @archillect was a good project on a right moment of social media culture.

So once again, going back to the “technical issue of attribution” of the project:

This will hopefully be solved when there is a nice way to do this in an automated way. As I stated many times so far on all public channels in my reach, I would love @archillect to have this feature as well, it will only make her more valuable.

Peace.
Stay inspired.

This article is expanded from a previous twitter thread that contains both technical and personal perspectives. Feel free to feedback.