Captions on FPC edit
This page has been created as a time saver for FPC discussions relating to captions. It states my stance on the subject, and what I believe is the correct perspective on the issue as defined by the guidelines of the page, the history of the project and the opinion of the community.
The key issue here is that since the introduction of the new template generator people have begun to place a disturbing importance on the nominated image's caption. The error seemingly caused by "Proposed caption" section of the new template. This section implies the need for creating a POTD style caption. However a POTD style caption never has been and currently isn't a requirement of a featured picture. The caption which accompanies the picture on a nomination should be of similar detail to that of the caption which accompanies it in the article it appears in.
Aside from the fact that POTD is a seperate entity to FPC, there is sound commonsense behind a article-style caption accompanying the nominated image. The featured photo will appear only once on POTD, however it will spend it's life in an article where it will be constantly viewed without the POTD length caption which is currently demanded by many editors on FPC. So if an article length caption is what people are going to see accompanying the FP every day than an article length caption is what should be seen on FPC
The caption on FPC in my view should only contain the facts which describe that image specifically - ie what it shows (an adult german shepherd), and if relevant where it was taken (eg a dog show in Melbourne). Any further generic information which is used to create a POTD caption is superflous and can be found in the linked article.
Before going further it is worth considering the captions in these two nominations: Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Melanerpes erythrocephalus and Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Image:Low flying cessna 150.jpg. The first of these featured a caption which was acceptable, the second one which was not. However the "acceptable" caption was in fact a direct copy and paste off the associated article from the "description" page with an additional line which was irrelevant to a caption - it was more concerned with why it should be featured "And this photograph has enough quality which deserves FP as archetype of the species". The "unacceptable" caption contained all the information which was necessary to inform the voter about that particular picture. It stated what it was, what it was doing and where it was taken from. Perfect - or at least quite acceptable. Yet the first caption (ie the article rehash) is what most voters preferred...
What is the point of such an article rehash? Does it serve any purpose beyond appeasing the misplaced demands of certain users? If a user is that interested in the subject they should get that information from the article not a FPC caption. Such extended information is only useful to a POTD where a member of the public glances on the main page - and POTD is a completely seperate project run by seperate people. Sure it's nice to help out Howcheng with the POTD caption (who is primarily involved with this project) - but he is quite capable of copy and pasting from the article himself!
From the lengthy discussions which the community had earlier (and now seem to lie forgotten by voters) Howcheng is not interested in article rehashes. "Let me weigh in on this as the POTD guy. Here's my ideal situation in terms of what I want for captions. I don't want rehashes of the article -- I can do that myself when I write the POTD blurb. What I want are details that are specific to the images themselves." Also "The caption that's in Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Purple osteospermum is totally unnecessary." - Howcheng commenting on the recent trend in caption demands
That previous discussion made clear that the community think that photos should be judged by their accompanying text and that POTD captions featuring article rehashes were unnecessary and unwanted. And when considering the scope of the project ( Featured pictures are images that add significantly to articles, either by illustrating article content particularly well, or being eye-catching to the point where users will want to read its accompanying article) it is almost ludicrous to see people opposing fine images based on their caption. I mean FPC is about finding the best photos Wikipedia has to offer - not the best captions. The only purpose of the caption on FPC is to inform the voter succinctly what the image is about - the image should do the rest.
As you can see in the Cessna nomination linked above, a user demanded the caption should be compelling enough to make the voter read the article - when Featured Picture Candidates is obviously about images being "eye-catching to the point where users will want to read its accompanying article'"! Please don't turn FPC into something it's not and focus on judging photos - not text!