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United Kingdom free-use coats of arms

There are currently free-use alternatives for many universities in the United Kingdom's coats of arms. Whilst some coats of arms, such as Edinburgh, use a circular seal as their normal emblem instead of a shield, so the currently available substitution would not be appropriate, for many it would seem sensible, since fair-use imagery is only meant to be used if no free-use alternative exists. Right now, Oxon, Cantab, Dunelm, Exeter, QMUL, and York, to name a few, let alone almost all constituent colleges outside of London, are using free-use arms. However, there hasn't been a push to replace fair-use with free-use arms for universities; the switch normally seems to happen when a fair-use rendition is transferred to Commons, where it is invariably deleted as against Commons policy, and then the free-use emblazonment is quickly put in to fill its place. Instead of this less-than-reliable approach, we might want something more standardised.

Right now, coats of arms available with free-use break down into the following categories:

• Drop-in replacement – Free-use emblazonments are available which are not only true to blazon, but are mostly true to common depictions (based on the overall geometric positioning of elements, or on historic reliefs in buildings, neither of which is a copyright concern). These could probably be substituted without much notice or effect, for example: Imperial (commons), Birmingham (commons), Newcastle (commons), and Sheffield (commons).

This has already been done for Cantab, Dunelm, Exeter, QMUL, LSE, so would seem to be the sensible thing to do at least, especially given the inaccuracy of "no free-use available" guideline for these fair-use images.

• Truer to blazon - A couple coats of arms are truer-to-blazon than the symbolic and stylised arms used by the university. This holds for Warwick (commons), whose blazon, which is available in the Commons file description, does not match the official "flat logo" style rendition currently used.

This logic has already been steadfastly applied to Oxon and York, and recently to Bristol without complaints either, even though the drop-in could be improved; the university-supplied digital Bristol arms available were low quality and used excessive shadowing, looking more like clip-art.

• Shield only - Many free-use coats of arms are perfectly good renditions of the shield only, apart from notably QMUL and York. Whilst they could be rendered with mantling, this would be extra work to get it correctly, and when they are they would be handled by one of the above points anyway, so let's deal with them as currently is the case. These arguably are not under "no free-use available", as they aren't a true replacement, however, they could be considered as such, as they are a "good enough" replacement. As traditionally most university arms are displayed as simply the shield, it wouldn't be unreasonable to display these free-use emblazonments instead, for any of: King's—London (commons), Southampton (commons), Liverpool (commons), Leeds (commons)

Only Cardiff University has this in place, and only because the official arms were on Commons so were removed and replaced with the free-use arms (and subsequent attempts to revert back also went through commons)

• True-but-off emblazonments - Many other emblazonments available freely are not quite perfect: although they are true to blazon, they don't quite look official, not just only being the shield, but also needing some possible tidying. Some of these could be improved with a bit of effort, namely Glasgow (commons) has awkward bell corners (although the overall shape isn't too bad), Manchester (commons) has a bad nebuly border. These could be quickly fixed if we wanted to drop-in Shield only replacements, but there is no impetus to otherwise.

St Andrews's looks a bit tired, and the University of Nottingham's has awkward towers, but both are in place because their official renditions were deleted off commons

Just looking for what the community would think is a sensible course of action with this. Personally, I think replacing all up to any of the first three categories could make sense (as in replacing just the first, the first two, or the first three), and that official renditions should be re-uploaded not to Commons for other universities to make it more consistent. Shadowssettle_(talk) 11:41, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

My feeling is that we should be using free versions of the cost of arms wherever they exist – even if they are shield-only and don't show the full achievement. The Wikipedia policy says (WP:NFCCP]) "No free equivalent. Non-free content is used only where no free equivalent is available, or could be created, that would serve the same encyclopedic purpose." (my emphasis). If we take "or could be created" seriously, we should not be using non-free coats of arms at all, because they fail this test. We should certainly thus minimise the use of non-free images of coats of arms as much as possible. Robminchin (talk) 02:41, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

As I said, this is fine by me. I've tried to clean up the minor touches with Manchester, Nottingham and Glasgow, but if you think there are others improvements which are needed (there probably are) feel free to upload new versions. If you're adding achievements or mottos, I would prefer them to uploaded as a separate image, but do overwrite if it's just shield fixes. I guess it's best to boldly go ahead and replace them, I'll start with the "drop-in" replacements, but feel free to go ahead with the rest, and then we can revisit the issue once the inevitable complaints come in. Shadowssettle_(talk) 09:36, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Robminchin: Thanks for adding the long list of Durham colleges and more blazons. I'm just wondering (as I discussed below) if we are taking crest as the blazon (i.e. what you'd find represented in an encyclopedia) then should we take WP:NFCCP literally? In countries without traditions of heraldry (i.e. the United States), where seals are often in use, this doesn't apply, but in the UK, shouldn't official crests (even without current replacement) actually be removed by failing to meet the point you bring up? Shadowssettle_(talk) 08:51, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I think this is going to depend on the usage made of the cost of arms. I am not a lawyer but it seems to me, based on the fair use guidelines, that:

• If the university actually uses a true-to-blazon version of the arms as a logo then use of that precise image can be justified under fair use as representing a logo. This would normally mean that the second image field in the infobox would be empty (as it is for universities that use only a logo and have no arms, e.g. UCL). This also means that the image of the shield can normally only be used once on the main article for three university and not on other article or elsewhere on the main article, per the fair use guidelines.
• If the university's logo is a stylised version of the arms (e.g. Durham) or is completely different from the arms (e.g. Cardiff) then the use of a copyright image of the shield is going to be very hard to justify as fair use. If the image of the arms is not the logo of the university, then it should probably be replaced by a free-to-use version of the arms or removed.

It is likely that free-to-use versions will resemble "official" versions of the arms, but they shouldn't be exact copies or they would would infringe the copyright of the official version. The official version can change over the years as well (e.g., compare the historical development of Hatfield College, Durham here with the Wikipedia version). Robminchin (talk) 15:05, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

If it is their logo, then I completely agree, however for no university I know is their logo a true-to-blazon emblazonment with no name or text. Thus there will be both a logo and shield, so are you saying those shields should be changed to fair-use, even when the logo correctly shows how the university portrays itself, so the crest should be representing the coat of arms not brand (see my point below to Moxy). That would mean reverting the crest on University of Cambridge to a non-free-use one, which seems silly to me... Shadowssettle_(talk) 15:25, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're saying here. As long as the arms are shown, I don't think there is a need to show the crest (if there is one – many of the old universities have arms but no crest) or other parts of the whole achievement, although this can be done if desired. How much of the achievement to include is probably not something that needs to be specified.

If the university is not using the arms as a logo, then it is very hard to see how a fair-use argument can be made to use a non-free image (the other part of policy that might apply is WP:NFC#CS if there is sourced discussion of the image itself – but my understanding is that this would have to discuss, in this case, the artistic decisions made in the rendering of the blazon rather than discussion of the elements of the achievement, as it would be possible to illustrate the latter with a free version). But I don't understand how that would result in having to use a non-free image for Cambridge. Robminchin (talk) 19:01, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Although just because an institution isn't using the arms in its brand identity on its website, that doesn't mean it's not using them as a logo on degree certificates, for example. This might satisfy the fair use criteria, although it would still be better to use a free use version if possible to be on the safe side. It's not so clear cut that we need to go around deleting all of the non-free coats of arms. Robminchin (talk) 00:29, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Fair, I just think it depends on what we mean by arms, I feel like the role of "how the university projects itself" is the point of showing the logo, so generally free-use should be better Shadowssettle_(talk) 12:49, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

This has come up before for a few country articles. In many cases a "fake" alternative was rejected because its not a true representation of a copyrighted item although it satisfied Harold criteria. And those that a very close in recreating the certified version end up being copyright infringements. That said fake version that may be non true representations are used all over and usually only removed AFTER a discussion.--Moxy 🍁 01:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

@Moxy: I don't exactly know what you mean by "Harold criteria" (feel free to link), but yeah, this is the reason why I personally have been cautious about replacing arms, because it's not an issue of heraldry, heraldry is generally quite clear that same blazon=same arms, it's an issue of what we mean by crest, do we mean the blazon, or do we mean how the university represents itself. However, I've seen Oxford as the lead example (not because of it's prestige, but because what it shows) of not only what we mean, but why we mean it. Oxford shows a (very neat) free-use emblazonment, but it needs to show it because any of the official renditions these days are too simplified, so do not match the blazon, or what people would be shown if they walked around Oxford looking at reliefs, read a history book or manuscript, wanted to know what this symbol meant when somebody was talking about Oxford, or wanted to know what the coats of arms are. It's just how the University wants to brand itself right now. The arms shown match how Oxford is represented in churches, books, buildings and the like around the country (see commons for some); unlike logos, which are purely branding exercises, crests are frequently part of the historical fabric of some monuments and ties. The logo is the place to show the universities choice of mark and contemporary branding, and if the crest isn't a lead emblem for the university, it's probably not used that often (outside of regalia) and so the official rendition isn't that important.

This boils down to why even show the crest_{(and no, I'm not bringing up the argument of if "we should get rid of it", that's been around too many times, please do not bring it up)}: it can't be to show how the University sees itself—many don't really use their crest much—instead, it's because these are the official symbols of the institution, which have historical, legal, and encyclopædic value. Logos and emblazonments come and go, but the crest is a unique identifying symbol that is used (in the United Kingdom at least, which is what this discussion is on) to frequently distinguish institutions. Note, this is not an attack on any points; I don't know where you stand on the issue, I was just trying to clarify Shadowssettle_(talk) 08:51, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Help with DeVry University

Hello,

I am attempting to publish several very straightforward updates to DeVry University. I believe these will benefit the encyclopedia as they all replace out-of-date information. As I have a WP:COI, I can't make these edits myself without an independent reviewer(s). The first proposals are Talk:DeVry University#Request Edit May 27. Thank you for your consideration. NaturaRagazza (talk) 16:12, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

@NaturaRagazza: I have responded on the talk page and added the {{request edit}} tag to add this to the list of outstanding requests: the process is explained in Wikipedia:Edit_requests. TSventon (talk) 16:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)