Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates/Archive 13

Unused featured pictures

Here is an incomplete list of featured pictures that are currently not used in the article that they are supposed to illustrate. Feel free to investigate... --KFP (talk | contribs) 00:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

• Image:Day old chick black background.jpg (not used in any article, formerly used at Chicken)
  • This has been removed from the article with this edit for not being relevant to the section it was in, which was true. Probably could be reasonably re-added, probably best near the top as a general 'this is a chicken' shot, as it doesn't really depict any particular aspect of chickens. TSP 01:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Reincluded it in the article --Fir0002 06:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
• Image:Madrid-metro-map.png (not used in any article, formerly used at Madrid Metro where it has been replaced by Image:Red de metro de Madrid.svg)
  • New one looks better; probably nominate that as a replacement. TSP 01:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
• Image:Oceans.png (not used in any article, formerly used at Ocean)
  • Removed with this edit, per [comments] (by the remover; no-one else seems to have commented). Outdatedness seems to be the concern; it is missing the Southern Ocean (though there was also a concern that it marks some subdivisions of oceans as separate). Time for a more accurate redraw? TSP 01:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
• Image:Piratey, vector version.svg (formerly used at Piracy, now used in International Talk Like a Pirate Day and List of fictional pirates)
  • Moved out in this edit, when List of fictional pirates became its own article; so, in a sense, still illustrating the same article content as before. I've always been a bit ambivalent about these images. They're very pretty, but I'm not utterly sure what they're meant to encyclopedically represent. I can see that an article's editors might be a bit unsure as to what to do with such an image. On the other hand, the article is hardly over-illustrated, so it could probably go back. I'd prefer to see more factual pirate images, though. TSP 01:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
• Image:UK Roundabout 8 Cars.gif (not used in any article, formerly used at Roundabout where it has been replaced by Image:Roundabout.gif)
  • The latter is just a downsampled version of the original, so I just deleted it. howcheng {chat} 16:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
    • • Actually it was downsampled and flipped, presumably by an editor who felt that right-hand drive was more encyclopedic than left-hand drive. I've put the FP back, anyway, as there was no good reason given for the change. TSP 01:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Should they be readded? | AndonicO ^{Talk | Sign Here} 00:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

If they are no longer on any pages and consensus on those pages was to remove them for whatever reason, then they will need to be delisted. However, if they just got knocked off by some random person, I would say put them back. howcheng {chat} 00:57, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, there isn't any discussion for the Chicken picture, so I suppose it was "some random person". I haven't checked the others though. | AndonicO ^{Talk | Sign Here} 01:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

• Image:ISS Aug2005.jpg has been replaced with a more recent photograph, Image:ISS after STS-116 in December 2006.jpg, at International Space Station. --KFP (talk | contribs) 20:37, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Caption Issues

I haven't been frequenting this page in the last month or two, but I have noticed a concerning trend of placing captions in disproportionate importance. In particular, User:Trialsanderrors is making ridiculous demand on caption length. His claims are based on the need to prepare the image for the main page as POTD. The captions in question have everything a caption in an article should have, and are identical in detail to the thousands of successful nominations of the past.

This page has never been (at least in my mind) and never will be a page for getting "pretty pictures" onto the main page. What we are doing is looking for the technically excellent, the aesthetic and the unusual in photography. FPC is about identifying the best imagery available from Wikipedia's pages. And as such the purpose of the caption is to tell the voters what the photo is; basically the same caption as appears in the article.

But suddenly captions such as here and here and here etc etc which have all the information necessary to tell voters what the image is about, are being turned aside in favour of article rehashes such as this. Excellent photos are being opposed on the grounds of a caption!! Isn't that just absurd? A Wikipedia Featured Picture Candidate being opposed because of it's accompanying text?!

POTD is an entirely different department and should be handled by the "text" people. We are a collaboration by nature, and forcing the more photographically orientated users to come up with a great slab of text instead of getting people skilled in this area to do so is counter-productive and ineffectual. This page is independent of POTD!!!

As a conclusion I propose that the current criteria no 8 is modified so that the extended caption on the image page - note not nomination - is just a recommendation. --Fir0002 07:36, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Captions are needed sometimes. I think it's fair to ask for one when it's needed. Historical pictures and pictures of odd/unusual things especially need captions so the reader or assessor of the image can put it in context or understand what they're looking at. An image like the anti-Iranian jingoist image that could be considered racist or threatening was especially in need of a caption, not just for the front page, but to assess whether it was actually showing a specific significant event and had special encyclopedic value (it wasn't and didn't). Currently featured pictures do end up on the front page, and so each will need a caption anyway, and leaving it to "text people" as an afterthought simply doesn't cut it. Having said all that, I don't know why that photo of Golda Meir would need a special caption beyond text from her acticle, so the need for a specific caption can be challenged. Perhaps nominators should simply nominate the article to take the caption from (if they don't supply their own caption)? —Pengo 14:16, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Fir0002 on this one. FPs don't need captions to fulfill their purpose. POTD images are taken from the pool of FPs and captions are added at that point. I know it does put the onus on Howcheng and anyone else involved in POTD but making it a requirement at the point of nomination is silly. A good caption would help others to understand its significance perhaps, I agree, but I don't see it as something that is needed. Individuals who want to understand the image and the context of it should visit the page(s) it is used in. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 17:28, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Is the issue a nice caption, or sufficient metadata? I see part of the purpose of FPs as a way to highlight content which is not text, and which can be used other places in other ways, not just in an encyclopedia or in the specific article they were uploaded for. Part of these images being useful if for them to have sufficient and clear metadata. This does not necessarily have to be in the form of a well-written caption, but I think relevant information on the subject and circumstances of FPs should be present on the image page. Mak (talk) 17:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I think there are two parts to a good caption: the image's information and the subject's information. The image's information includes when it was taken, if a filter or longer exposure was used, who created it, etc. The subject's information includes who the portrait is of, how large the animal can get, how many berries the fruit can produce, etc. The information for the image can be pulled from the metadata, the creator's knowledge, or even common sense. The information for the subject can usually be pulled solely from the article (because by name, the article is about the subject). In the past, the nominator has been in charge of just the image's information, and usually a very brief description of the subject. This new proposal, which I am against, makes the nominator fully responsible for both the image's and the subject's information. I think that the image's information should remain the sole responsability of the nominator, and the subject's information remain the responsability of POTD (and/or the nominator, if he wishes to help). The nominator should be required to be familiar with the picture and its technical aspects, but not necessarily familiar with the details of the subject.

Therefore, the condition for not promoting or delaying promotion of an image should be if the caption doesn't include sufficient image information (e.g. if the time it was taken was important, but left out of the caption). But as long as the caption on the nomination covers what is unique about the image, or otherwise details the image itself (sufficiently), POTD can be in charge of the subject's information, and supplement the nomination caption with information from the article. --Tewy 18:38, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Last I checked "caption" has been a criterion from Day One. And I think it's perfectly fine to put the onus on the nominator or, by extension, the support voters to provide the caption rather than to free-ride on the scheduler's efforts. It's quite telling that Fir's little diatribe completely ignores encyclopedicness as a picture criterion, something seemingly everybody else agrees upon as the main criterion for en.wiki. And in most cases enc can only be established by creating the necessary context (see the Agassiz statue, which could've fallen out of the sky from all we can tell from the picture). So anything that increases enc and cuts down on the rampant free-riding on Wikipedia is ok with me. On the proposal it should be downgraded to a recommendation, it's a guideline for crying out loud. I've never seen a case where criteria were enforced by the closers against the consensus of editors. Not that I would mind if that happened. The image page vs. nomination page comment is just truculent wikilawyering. ~ trialsanderrors 18:45, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually it hasn't been around from "Day One" - FPC was a round for a looong time before that page was created, being guided only by the noble words of "beautiful, striking, shocking, impressive, titillating, fascinating, or in short just brilliant" (as well as adding significantly to an article) and sound common sense. The caption criteria was put in to stop captions such as "a dog" - favouring something a little more descriptive such as "an adult German Shepherd". At no point (until now I guess) was the caption placed in the role of POTD writeup. Did I ever say enc was not important? Of course not! I'm a huge fan of enc as one of the main criteria. You've certainly changed your tune from your POTD arguments to something a with a little relevance to this page - but you're still way out of perspective with the captions. Captions are good as far as they go, but even in your Agassiz example a brief example with a link to the wiki article would be perfect. And yes it is a guideline, but for crying out loud you are opposing a picture on those grounds! Now I'm sure most closer will have the sense to discount such votes but we should really lose some of the ambig created by having that wording on the criteria 8. Oh and btw, to save future embarrassment Trialsanderrors, you should really lookup the word "diatribe". --Fir0002 06:25, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, the word diatribe means exactly what I meant in this context, you don't have to worry about my English skills. And I don't think there is any need for me to continue this discussion, because it is very obvious that your only goal here is to be pissy. Start a blog if you can't interact civilly. ~ trialsanderrors 07:34, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

You could cut the hypocrisy with a knife! My concern above was anything but a diatribe. But I can understand it if you feel the need to discontinue this discussion - if I was arguing your side of the this I'd have given up long ago. However if you do feel like continuing, a response to the above would be appreciated. My goal is obviously not "to be pissy" as you so eloquently put it, but to stop this caption nonsense. --Fir0002 11:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

But the way I interpret that criterion, the caption it refers to is the one in the article(s), not in the nomination. I completely agree with Tewy in that the photographer should have the obligation to provide the image description including details on the capture, technique and the subject if appropriate. It seems that you're taking it a bit far by suggesting that contributors who don't provide a suitable caption (Remember, the caption is essentially for POTD! Featured Pictures do not use a caption at all - they're merely categorised and thumbnailed) are free-riding on Wikipedia. As for determining 'encyclopaedicness', surely visiting the page(s) that the image is on will aid in this. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 21:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to have your own interpretation. Mine is that the caption needs to establish enc, which in a lot of cases the article captions don't do. (If enc is established in the article, it's easy to just copy and paste.) The hard cases are the ones where historical relevance isn't apparent from the picture. But even then I find the effort minimal compared to the effort it takes to clean up and prepare the picture for nomination. And fwiw, my reading of the requirement that the extended caption should be on the image page is to ensure that the picture is explained even outside the context of an article. ~ trialsanderrors 22:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

What happened to captions being needed for POTD? Suddenly we need them for enc - despite the fact that the page the image appears on will surely have more info then even the best rehashed caption. --Fir0002 06:25, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

(reset indent) 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. For example of a caption I don't want, see Wikipedia:Picture of the day/March 29, 2005. Who is this girl? What is she carrying? Why is she working? Compare this with the second time this image appeared as POTD: Wikipedia:Picture of the day/December 1, 2006. Luckily, all of this text was in the source page from the Library of Congress.

So, I think that the caption should be necessary when it's not obvious from the article it goes in. For example, Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/World Map is one I opposed because we know nothing about this map. Who is Van Schagen -- is he a famous map maker? Is there anything special about this map? How does this compare with other maps of the same era? What's worse is that it's just in a gallery in the World map article. So what the hell am I supposed write about this image when it becomes POTD? At this point, I have nothing to say and so I just might end up skipping it because we get complaints when the POTD caption doesn't focus on the image.

On the other hand, wildlife/plant pictures don't need much of a caption beyond species identification unless the image is showing a particular aspect of the subject. The caption that's in Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Purple osteospermum is totally unnecessary. For a short-n-sweet caption that works for me, see Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Sather Tower -- buildings and viewpoint are identfied. A longer one that's good is Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Chicago River dyed green, focus on river -- buildings and viewpoint are identified, and a short explanation of why the river is green.

In the end, it's really on a case-by-case basis. I don't think that a caption written by the nominator is necessarily required because they might be so familiar with the picture that it's obvious to them what's going on. Hopefully by the end of the nomination period, questions about the image will have been raised and a useable caption will have been written. howcheng {chat} 06:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with this assessment. I also don't see why the caption needs to be added by the photographer or nominator. This is a collaborative encyclopedia after all. It can be added by anyone who wants the picture promoted. ~ trialsanderrors 08:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

That's amazing! A complete 180 without admitting you're wrong! Just a few hours agao you where complaing about people "rampantly free-riding Wikipedia" and not putting enough detail into their captions! Oh well it looks like my concerns are being addressed, and I hope we won't be seeing "oppose - caption is not fit for POTD" any more. All that's left is making this a little more concrete by modifying criteria 8 - any suggestions? --Fir0002 11:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh no, I will continue to ask for extended captions and when asked what kind of captions I look for point to PotD as an example, and will continue to form a judgmnt based on the criteria. Anything that improves the quality of the FPC discussions is fine with me. ~ trialsanderrors 17:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Fine you can ask for extended questions all you want - but you cannot oppose a photo because it doesn't have a POTD caption. You can't just make up your own rules, and as shown in this discussion captions are not intended to be used for POTD. So there is no valid grounds for you to oppose the image. --Fir0002 11:05, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Can't be said much better than what howcheng said... --Janke | Talk 08:55, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

PS: See my comments in the current prairie dog nomination. --Janke | Talk 14:08, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd agree with howcheng: some photos need extended captions while others are self-explanatory, usually on a case-by-case basis. It might be fairer to vote good photos with poor captions as support with caption or conditional support or something along those lines. These will then indicate that the picture itself is FP acceptable but the caption needs tweaking/expanding/etc. A caption is easy to change, while a photograph is not. --Asiir 15:59, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

As a reminder, an extended caption is part of the featured picture criteria:

Has a good caption. The picture is displayed with a descriptive, informative and complete caption. The image description page has an extended caption that is suitable for featuring the image on the Main Page.

I've only been opposing based on extended caption in cases where such contextual information is crucial for appreciating the significance of the image, but it is a valid reason to oppose any nomination. Of course, it doesn't particularly matter whether the nom starts with a good caption or it develops based on the input of everyone, but if no adequate extended caption ever comes around, that's a problem. Even if an image is fairly self-explanatory, a good extended caption is still an improvement.--ragesoss 17:54, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Have you even bothered to read this discussion? The whole criteria is what we are talking about! And as far as I can tell consensus is to remove this as a criteria and make it a recommendation. Certainly it's the consensus that in almost every case you can't oppose a nomination solely on not having an extended caption. --Fir0002 05:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I skipped around a lot in going through the arguments, and didn't read the opening post all the way through. In any case, even without criterion 8 as a requirement rather than recommendation, I think it's legitimate to oppose based on insufficient contextual information in many cases, especially for cases that are not user-created but rather historical and/or artistic in nature. Pinning down exactly what an image is showing you and why it's important is essentially an issue of encyclopedicity.--ragesoss 03:31, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

And just to be clear, I don't support weakening criterion 8. FPC, like other featured content processes, is intended not only to select Wikipedia's best work, but also to help bring the promising candidates up to as high a level as possible. With images, part of this is having as helpful, interesting and informative a caption as possible. Pointing to deficiencies in caption and context, and opposing if no one is willing to address them, ought to be perfectly valid, just as pointing out easily-addressed stylistic or formatting concerns (or lack of adequate images) is acceptable criticism at FAC.--ragesoss 03:43, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Well I'm sorry but you're going against the tide, consensus here and over at Featured Picture Criteria is the captions are only need to provide the details a view needs to know what the image is about. So for my Clerid beetle nom, it just needs to say it's a clerid beetle of whatever species. We don't need to go into a description into it's feeding habits and reproduction habits in order to determine if it's a good picture or not. As such it is not a valid reason to oppose an image based on a simple caption. If for instance the caption was "a beetle" a conditional oppose would be appropriate. --Fir0002 09:13, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Note that I supported your clerid beetle. And I extended the caption because I thought more context made it better. I would have supported even with the short caption, because an well identified animal, with date and location of the photograph, is sufficient info to ensure encyclopedicity. But I'm still requesting, and think it would be a helpful addition, if the image page gave a clear way that someone could verify the species identification. And obviously, if the reasons for an oppose vote get addressed, then that vote no longer carries any weight. But it's not a bad idea to make a habit of calling info-based opposes conditional oppose to make it easier on people the closing nominations.--ragesoss 15:57, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why, unless the image is violating a criteria in WIAFP then you can't really oppose it. I guess you could but that would be obnoxious and then the closer would have to ignore it. As for verifying species identification I honestly can't see why that would be necessary. --Fir0002 07:44, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

My two cents: I haven't read through the above discussion, but if anyone is looking for consensus, here's my two cents:

• If we don't know what the picture is about, or why it's important, it may be hard to support it. But frequently someone other than the nominator finds that information and shares it with us. So it's not critical.
• If we know what the picture is of and why it's important and valuable, then lack of a caption should not get in the way of making it a featured picture. Anyone can write a good caption after the event, and insisting that it be there before the nomination is just ugly feature creep. Keep the caption out of the nomination process - it just doesn't belong. Stevage 02:42, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

A good extended caption is not just a POTD issue. As an encyclopedia, our images are worthless without good captions. Good extended captions should not come after the process — as they are an integral part of the image as used in the encyclopedia. The captions are educationally vital everyday, not just the day we need something for the POTD box.--Pharos 09:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

They most certainly are not worthless, what is harder taking a photo or stringing a few words together? And I'm not against captions, it's the ridiculous length people all of a sudden are demanding of the captions. Look at an article, how many images do you see with captions of over 20 words? The caption on the FPC nom should be identical to that used in the article unless further information is required from a wiki-link to the article it resides in. Remember FP's used in the real world will be in articles, and that's the way the general public will see them. --Fir0002 07:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

We're not judging pictures by difficulty of creation, but by usefulness in the encyclopedia. An image without a good extended caption is of strictly limited educational value; when someone clicks on an image in an article, and discovers it's a featured picture, they rightly expect some decent background info on its topical context and creation circumstance. It is precisely because good extended captions should be relatively easy to create, especially when the photographer/image discoverer is actually around at the nomination process, that they are a requirement.--Pharos 23:24, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

To a degree we are judging an image by difficulty of creation - case in point is trying to get a flower photo featured! If someone goes to an article and sees an FP and they want more info on the subject it depicts they can read it in the article! Duplication of data is not a good practice.--Fir0002 06:53, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The duplication of data argument makes no sense here. The caption and the article the image is appearing are two different things. The caption describes and explains what can be seen on the picture, this is not the job of the article. --Dschwen 15:03, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I entirely agree, and if you'd read the whole discussion it is because captions like this are being used and captions like this are being rejected that I started this discussion. My idea of the perfect caption is the caption which would be used in the article. In which case it is ridiculous to go on about the breeding habits and egg size of a tawny owl or whatever. All you'd put in is a bit of info on the maturity level of the specimen, where it was photographed and maybe what it is doing. Image specific stuff. --Fir0002 23:41, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

• Apparently some people are getting quite worked up lately when it comes to the issue of captions. While I agree that no rules sould just be made up to judge some pictures by it I also believe that a dash of common sense sould be used whe it comes to captions. True, FPC is about pictures, but it is not a backpatting community for a couple of photographers which is completely disconnected from the rest of wikipedia. We are trying to build an encyclopedia here. Captions can be useful on FPC to document encyclopedic usefulness and to give the voters a bit of background needed to judge the picture. --Dschwen 08:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Digital manipulation of photographic FP candidates

I have proposed some additions to the guidelines suggesting that major digital manipulations should be disclosed. Please comment on the proposals at Wikipedia talk:Featured picture criteria#Digital manipulation of photographic FP candidates. --MichaelMaggs 07:43, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Review of featured pictures

Is it possible to review featured pictures? I recently (catching up on Signpost reading) came across this one: Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/World Map. I've studied several old maps in the past, and there are literally thousands of old maps out there. (Some website are [1]; [2]). I'm not quite clear what makes this map stand out from the others at Category:Old maps of the world (a mix of articles and pictures). And I absolutely agree that articles on some of these maps would be good. To actually look at this one in more detail - Image:World Map 1689.JPG - even a cursory inspection reveals that the corner artworks are showing the classical Greek elements of Air, Water, Earth and Fire. There is also a wealth of mythological figures and symbolism, as was common on maps at that time - here we have Zeus (Air), Poseidon (water), Demeter (Earth) and the Rape of Persephone (Fire), with Cerberus looking on and an interesting contemporary setting of war and conquest (it looks suspiciously like the English Civil War). Where is the caption for this picture being written? Also, I was very disappointed to see someone questioning the accuracy of the map - that misses the whole point of the Age of Discovery and the long history of the development of maps. We shouldn't be judging the map, but rather the quality of the scan and the map's historical significance. Carcharoth 12:43, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

For an example of an equally, if not more interesting map, see here. The Library of Congress Map Collection is here. From this I think we can use these maps on Wikipedia. Carcharoth 12:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

We have a delisting process, if you feel a picture should no longer be featured. Alternatively, you can nominate as new candidates one or more maps which you think are of greater notability and that might add weight to a delisting nomination. If you wish to add to the caption for that image, you can expand the Description section on its image page (although you need to be careful that your additions don't constitute original research). The caption for the main page won't be written until Howcheng allocates it a date for POTD. --YFB ¿ 23:27, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I'd actually prefer to find a source (needed to avoid WP:OR as you point out) and write articles for these maps, rather than write a caption for the picture. How many featured pictures are there, and how often are they reviewed? Carcharoth 00:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The official featured picture count is currently 730, they can be viewed at Wikipedia:Featured pictures. When someone sees an image there that they don't think meets the criteria, they can nominate it for delisting. --KFP (talk | contribs) 00:26, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

What to do with an improved version of an almost-closed candidate?

MIckStephenson's edit

We're close to decision-time for Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates#Killer_whale_mother_and_calf, where there is support based on content and opposition based on technical aspects, particularly sharpness & colour quality. A few days into the nom, MIckStephenson offered to try enhancing the photo, and at the same time I asked the photographer if he could make a better scan. I should have put the nomination into suspension then, but didn't think of it. In the past few hours, the photographer has told me he can't find the original photo, and upon learning this, MIckStephenson has done what I think is a good job of enhancing the version we have. (See User_talk:MIckStephenson#Killer_whale_photo) I'd like for MIckStephenson's edit to have a chance, if that's OK, without disrespecting the process. Should we add the new edit to the nomination, start a new nomination, or wait a while before re-nominating, or give up, or ... ? Kla'quot 08:57, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I see you already added the new version to the nomination page. I'll move it the nom to the "additional input required" section. Optionally, you can notify the opposers of the new version on their talk pages. --KFP (talk | contribs) 19:34, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

So how are we dealing with those kinds of cases in general? The Bézier curves nomination has been up for more than month now. ~ trialsanderrors 06:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Bezier curves

This nomination has been listed since February 21. There is still no consensus on whether to promote the combined version or the separate images as a set. Please comment. --KFP (talk | contribs) 10:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

• In general, I think we should leave the choice to the closer if there is consensus that the image should be promoted but no clear consensus over which one.
• In this case, the promotion of the combined version might be hampered because it might not fit properly into the article itself. If we're actually serious about creating featured sets, this might be the case. There is some support for the notion that the cubic curve is the "lead" picture, and the others belong to the set. ~ trialsanderrors 16:27, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'll promote it as a set tomorrow unless someone offers a compelling reason not no do that. --KFP (talk | contribs) 19:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

go for it. Debivort 21:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Good call. And can we pull the AFD nominations too now that they've been promoted to BJAODN? ~ trialsanderrors 05:04, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Main page talk discussion about featured pictures

Not sure where to leave this note, so leaving it here and at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. There is a discussion at Talk:Main Page#Tomorrow's featured picture about suitability of some pictures - kind of an attempt to prepare a response in case there is any reaction to the forthcoming eye surgery picture and the later 'hawk eating vole' picture. Input over there would be appreciated, or pop over there and ask people to bring the discussion somewhere over here instead. Thanks. Carcharoth 21:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Picture enhancements

Sorry for posting it in the wrong location. I thought I'd get the best response here. I am usually involved in the FAC review process and also write a lot of FAs. Although ideally I would like all articles to have featured pictures, which is impossible at the moment, I would still like to know what sort of improvements I can make for my articles. Assuming that I don't have JPEG artefacts, my image is non-blurry, and subject is in focus, are there some standard ways to improve an image? For example, should I run all images though the Auto-level function, or increase the saturation? I would like get the best looking images for a FA. =Nichalp «Talk»= 11:58, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry there is no such thing yet as a MakeFP Photoshop filter. The most crucial moment (IMO) is when pressing the shutter release, not afterwards. Some improvements are always possible, but They'll have to be done on a per picture basis. I can give you a bunch of examples where autolevels produces just crap. And increased saturation just for the sake of more colors is not advisable either. For encyclopedic purposes you should aim for faithful reproduction. --Dschwen 14:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! So what improvements can you suggest to make images in the article as close to a FP as possible? What should I be looking out for? =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Not to recruit...but if you hang around here for a while (voting and such), you learn quite a lot about what makes a good image, as well as how to improve your own. A lot of comments leave links to articles you might otherwise not have known about (e.g. Rule of thirds). --Tewy 18:29, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually I'm an average photographer, I hope to get some of my photos featured someday (though I've got two maps up to featured status). What I'm looking for is to make the images on a page more visually striking. As an article editor, I have to make do with what I have, so am looking for tips on what to do to make it as visually striking as possible. WP:WIAFP is not very helpful in these respects. =Nichalp «Talk»= 05:22, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

(outdent)*Do you have any particular page in mind? As Dschwen said above, there's not a catch-all foolproof set of instructions to make an image more eye-catching or useful - what can be done and the way to get the best results depends entirely on the original image. You might want to take a look back through some of the Featured Picture archives to see the sorts of edits that resulted in an image's promotion, but in almost every case the photo was pretty good in the first place. That's not to say that there's no point in improving photos that don't have a shot at becoming featured - any improvement is better than none. However, in some cases your time may be better spent in either taking a new shot, finding a better freely-licensed one (e.g. searching the Commons), or finding a Wikipedian local to the article subject who might be prepared to go and take a better photo. Some general points that can help a less-than-perfect image include:

1. Correcting tilt - check using the grid overlay function (e.g. in Photoshop) and compare with a vertical or horizontal reference, such as the horizon
2. Boosting contrast - a lot of cameras produce washed-out images which can be improved using Auto Contrast (not foolproof) or manual contrast/brightness tweaks. Be careful not to create blown 255,255,255 highlights or dead 0,0,0 areas, which is an easy mistake if you're overzealous with contrast adjustments
3. Slight saturation boosts can sometimes help. I typically never increase saturation by more than '10' on the Photoshop slider, any more than this accentuates colour noise and can create colour artifacts, not to mention looking unrealistic
4. Correcting colour-casts - using the wrong white-balance setting or in unusual lighting conditions can cause an image to have a coloured tint; don't trust the Auto Color tool for this as it is quite often completely, utterly wrong.
5. Very subtle use of the Shadow/Highlight tool can sometimes bring out detail or have a beneficial effect on contrast. It is very easily overdone and results in weird flattening effects or haloes around the edges of bright/dark objects. Use the sliders extremely carefully and use undo/redo to flip between the before and after versions; you might be surprised how much the image has changed and find that it looks odd compared to the original. If you concentrate too hard, for too long on an image, it's easy to become blind to the effects of these sorts of adjustments - make sure you do a reality check from time to time.
6. Reducing noise using a decent NR program such as Neat Image. Quite often the best results are produced by selectively de-noising the background, as excessive noise reduction on the subject can result in a loss of detail and weird 'smoothing' of similar shades.
7. Cropping can be used to remove distracting/irrelevant objects from a scene and also to improve composition, particularly taking into account the Rule of Thirds mentioned above. There are a lot of other compositional guidelines that can make a surprising improvement, depending on the subject. The best composition from an artistic point of view may not be the best representation for an encyclopaedia article, where the importance is on illustration more than on creating a stunning visual effect (these two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive).
8. Selective removal of distracting elements without altering the encyclopaedic content of the image can be done using the clone tool in some cases. Cloning is easy to do badly and should only be used for minor, 'out of place' distractions. It is also a good idea to note on the image page what has been removed and why.
9. Downsampling is a somewhat controversial way of improving the perceived sharpness of an image at full size. If you have a high-resolution camera or a stitched panoramic image, reducing the image size can increase the pixel-level sharpness without significant loss of detail. Bear in mind that high resolutions (300dpi +) are required to make good prints, while only 72dpi is needed for something to appear sharp on screen, so it's generally best to keep all the image data unless the file is unreasonably big. Almost all of Diliff's superb photos are downsampled by 50% from the original, but then he makes his photos using up to 50 separate images which are combined to produce exceptionally high-resolution panoramas (and he has a very, very nice camera). If you intend to downsample, it's generally best to use factors of 0.5 (e.g. DS to 50% or 25%, not 33%) and a proper sampling algorithm such as Photoshop's Bicubic sampling.

Not all, or indeed any of these are applicable to all images. The original shot will make or break attempts at improvement and if data is physically missing from an image (e.g. in blown highlights) then it's impossible to recreate it. Use common sense and look at the results objectively to see if your edit is actually making an improvement.

If you can point out a few examples of pages you'd like image improvements made to, either I or someone else here will probably be happy to take a look and suggest specific edits according to what's there. Hope that helps a bit. Happy editing (photographic and otherwise), --YFB ¿ 06:39, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow! That was really informative. Coming to examples, I'm currently copyediting Kaziranga National Park for FAC. Images here are not the best quality, so we have to make do with ones from flickr or commons. Any suggestions? =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:38, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

The first thing that strikes me is the size of the pics; they look too small and seem marginalised next to such a large body of text. The default |thumb| on its own produces a consistent width but adding |250px| after it (for all images) will balance things up on the page (and equal the infobox default width). Quality-wise, it's true there's not a lot to work with but a couple could be improved with cropping and possibly (gently) enhancing. Only one (the rhino) is desperately poor and should be re-sourced, although given the subject I can see that might be difficult. The maps and the portrait are fine. All the rest would benefit from the following tweak: in Photoshop, correct the global tonal balance by going to Image>Adjustments>Levels and dragging the left- and right-hand sliders until they reach the first vertical black area. I can see no point in sharpening any of them, in the main. Individual changes I'd recommend, top to bottom:

• Image:Assam_042.jpg - crop from the top down to the treetop and a little less fro the bottom. there's not a lot to play with in the sky but it might burn in to a tone.
• Image:Kazi_rhino.jpg - it's tiny and it's grim, but the tonal tweak should at least give it a bit more life.
• Image:Coracias_benghalensis.jpg - this has more potential, but all it really needs is tonal correction (again) and a heavy crop: I'd recommend a square crop, getting rid of the distracting leaves on the left, full height with the bird just left of centre.
• Image:Assam_028.jpg - crop 175px from top and bottom and clone out the metal object in the bottom right hand corner.
• Image:Assam_057.jpg - rotate 2 or 3 degrees CW and crop
• Image:Burning_grass_kazi.jpg - rotate until the grass "horizon" is horizontal, crop. After tonal adjusting, might benefit from burning in the sky to the left or better, using an adjustment layer to hold back the original tones.

If it's all too much, just say so and I'll upload some corrected versions. mikaul^talk 08:18, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I've also taken a look and one thing I'd suggest would be going back to flickr and obtaining the full-size versions of all the images, as they're licenced under CC-BY. That'll it easier to make high-quality edits, for starters. The rhino photo would benefit from a different crop from the full image. I've started some editing on Assam_042.jpg and will upload that one when I've finished with it. --YFB ¿ 09:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I think most of them are full size uploads. They're none too sharp, unfortuantely, so bigger probably isn't going to be (much) better, even if they were downsampled, which I would suggest they should be. mikaul^talk 12:02, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

My bad, I should have specified - the Peter Andersen images are all full-size but the rhino and the forest-burning are available at flickr at higher resolutions. Downsampling might still be a good idea but at least you're starting with all the data then. --YFB ¿ 12:06, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

With regard to increasing the image sizes, I agree that they're too small and 250px would seem a more sensible size. Unfortunately the manual of style specifically instructs against this. If you're hoping to get it through FAC, you may well find that they get made smaller again. Personally I think the default image size in MediaWiki needs increasing to reflect the increase in average screen resolution; not so long ago everyone was using 800x600 but now it's more likely to be 1024x768 at least. I'm using 1280x1024 and at that resolution the images look squashed into the margins. --YFB ¿ 10:25, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just added to a discussion (instigated by user:Nichalp! small wiki..) reviewing the 'images' section of WP:MOS and suggested the 180px stipulation be raised to something more sensible. Your point about screen resolution got me thinking that screen size is generally greater now too, 17" being something like a default. With more display real estate the bigger display font users will not be inconvenienced so much by a 250px thumb the way they were with the old VGA 15" monitors. Most of them will surely be dead soon anyway... the monitors, that is ;o) mikaul^talk 11:59, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, I'll add my opinion there. Cheers, --YFB ¿ 12:06, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the help everyone, really appreciate it. I was wondering if experts here could share some enhancement tips with some basic tutorials. I'm looking for something similar to what User:Tony1 has written for (User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a) a featured article criteria. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:42, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone modify this Greasemonkey script to work with Wikipedia?

There's a great script for Flickr made for Greasemonkey that adds a bar to the left of the picture with a gradient of black to white, and mousing over a shade turns the entire background to that color. It's really great to eliminate distractions on the page and is extremely useful for evaluating images, which made me think how useful it would be for looking at a FPC. It's some pretty complicated Javascript though -- would it be possible and would anyone know how to modify it to fit Wikipedia and/or Commons?

Script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/6934 -- BlastOButter42 ^See Hear _Speak 01:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Digital Manipulation

Everyone should have a look at this:

NPPA Code of Ethics Greetings, --Janke | Talk 15:04, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• Weird, I came here to post the same link. There's a lot of talk about this in the photojournalistic world at the moment, following the resignation of an award-winning photographer found to have been submitting "shopped" images: good article here examining the fallout, plus a formal apology by the newspaper he used to work for here. (Let's not forget the Adnan Hajj photographs controversy while we're on the subject). My thoughts are that image-based misrepresentation is a real issue to which Wikipedia contributors should pay as much attention as they do text-based misrepresentation. The wording of the [WP:FP?] photo-manipulation criterion is still too wooly, IMO (I've just added this point to the earlier discussion on the WP:FP? discussion page) and I'd like to see the criteria for "normal" WP image uploads (where IS that, exactly?) carry a similar notice. - mikaul^talk 17:05, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Musing over this a bit, would it perhaps be sensible to request that, in addition to {{Retouched}}, the uploader provide a copy of the original unretouched image, either as an en. upload or as a photobucket/flickr/whatever external link, for significant modifications? For example, I recently did a bit of work on the images in Kaziranga National Park per Nichalp's request above (not finished yet due to OMGsomuchwork IRL) and in addition to tagging with Retouched, I linked back to the original upload in the Summary box. The modifications I made were pretty significant in some cases. Does anyone have an opinion on this sort of edit, if properly declared (beyond "you made a rubbish job of it" :P)? I was working with pretty limited source material and as it's not my own photography, there wasn't the option to go back and reshoot. Thoughts? --YFB ¿ 19:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Pretty good job on the Coracias benghalensis. While I've made my standpoint on image manipulation pretty clear by now, I must say that the blurring of the bg (which I did myself on request with the blackbird image) is entirely tolerable for me. It could have been achieved with a different apperture more or less and the edit is clearly marked with links back to the original. Beter focus on the subject, better suited (at least as thumbnail) to illustrate the article.--Dschwen 20:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually it could never have been achieved by that camera as due to the small sensor size, except on extreme macro you'd never get such an OOF focus background. --Fir0002 08:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Wrong. It's just a question of f number (relative aperture). Obviously it was a Gedankenexperiment as I expect nobody to rip his compact camera apart. --Dschwen 08:32, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Rest assured I know what varying aperture does!! But with a small sensor like that, the relatively large aperture of f/4.9 used in this photo is giving similar DOF of a DSLR at around f/32. I know from experience from my old Kodak that even at f/2.8 images unless taken at extreme macro have virtually infinite DOF. --Fir0002 11:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Isn't it because the use of small sensors lead to small focal length in the lenses to cover the same view angle and thus have big DOF. If you put a 50mm lens on a point and shoot the DOF would be exactly the same as a 50mm lens on a SLR or medium format film. --antilived^{T | C | G} 12:01, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

(outdent, too many colons!) Isn't this argument a bit pointless? The important point is that this effect could have been achieved by the same photographer in the same place at the same time if he'd had a different camera/lens/whatever. This seems to make it acceptable. Conversely, it wouldn't be acceptable if to achieve the same effect the photographer would have needed a different subject or for the scene to have physically changed. When we're taking photos we're just stuffing what was there into a medium we can store. How it gets there is pretty irrelevant. The problem arises when people use cloning etc. to change what was there after it's been stored. I agree that we either need to ask for full disclosure on the image page and a copy of the original, or we say no, full stop, to significant cloning. Otherwise we're just asking for our own Adnangate. £.02 --YFB ¿ 15:06, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's a neat job on the Roller, nice bokeh ;o) I really don't object to sharpening, blurring, shading, dodging or anything which either emulates a different (better) lens or lighting technique, even when that changes some apparently fundamental properties of the subject, like colour, the 'customisation' of which is pretty much commonplace (vis. in-camera colour tempertaure and saturation settings) - notification of such modifications in post-processing is nice, but probably not much more than than half the d/a conversion story.

It's a whole different matter when the subject ends up being substantially altered in a way which would normally not be possible in-camera. In this definition, things like perspective correction and distortion, stitching, selective framing and cropping are all permissible modifications of a subject. Double-exposure-type modification is a notable exception, as it is capable of radically changing a subject's original settings in an unrepresentative way. Removal of a subject's original detail (or addition of new detail) via cloning should only be permissible in exceptional circumstances, when it can be proven (as we are used to doing with WP:SOURCE but with another image, as suggested) that the detail in question was wholly appropriate. mikaul^talk 00:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Minor nitpick, but the d/a conversion should be pretty tame with the main artifacts introduced at that point being sensor noise. The real in-camera image manipulation occurs when processing the raw digital image to JPEG whereby white balance, sharpening, contrast etc takes place. ;-) I agree with you though for the most part, but I would start to take exception with the idea of altering the image's lighting technique digitally, as this is almost impossible to do properly and will almost certainly affect the content. I wonder if we could summarise our digital manipulation policy (and actually have it implemented without problems) with something along these lines:

Minor digital image manipulation is generally acceptable as long as it:

1. improves the image's encyclopaedic and visual accuracy (ie matches the scene as it was captured as accurately as possible);

2. aids the viewer's understanding of the content;

3. does not deceive the viewer through selective addition/omission of content that may be relevant to the scene, even if doing so improves the aesthetics of the image

I know there is some potential to interpret these guidelines in various ways but it is probably important to make sure we leave some room for interpretation as each case needs to be discussed and it is difficult to rule on what specifically is and isn't acceptable on an individual basis. What do you think? Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 10:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I would disagree with that, but am not going to repeat myself. I can't see why this discussion has been partially shifted here anyway, it was started at WP:FP? and should be kept there. Breaking it apart like this is a bad idea both in terms of keeping it in one spot and that it effectively removes all the opinions already voiced. --Fir0002 12:01, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Fir, conflicted. It's in about four places, this discussion, I agree it's frustrating. Can it be conglometated somehow?

mikaul^talk 12:40, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Fir, I don't think you did really disagree with what I said in the discussion you referenced. You referred to the castle FP and how you believe that removing the people was perfectly acceptable because the subject was the castle and the people merely got in the way of the subject. While I see your point and to an extent I agree with you, I still don't personally think it is acceptable but I do think your views can be incorporated into the guideline I mentioned above, since it frowns apon manipulations relevant to the scene. By your argument, the people were not relevant and therefore I can't see your reasoning for disagreeing with the guidelines. As I did mention, there should always be some room for interpretation and discussion so I don't want you to think I'm trying to ban all cloning or anything. Did you have any other specific disagreements with them? Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 19:17, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Diliff, but I guess I'm a little edgy with the criteria now after the whole caption issue. Yes that is the only objection I had with those guidelines, that the castle is an example of acceptable cloning. But I still stand by that really this discussion should be happening back over at WP:FP? --Fir0002 23:42, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I think I like User:Antilived's illustrated approach below :) We're very much on the same lines, I think, it's just my loose terminology. I was using d/a a bit poetically... "analog" to refer to the Real World, "digital" to our photographich treatment of it. By "lighting" I meant the sort tonal corrections (incuding shading/dodging) which could conceivably occur if a shadow or additional light source appeared in the Real World. Your list of policies looks like the right sort of thing, but the language needs to be firmed up - I would emphasise changes to subject and/or the setting wherever possible, to avoid confusion. If we refer to an "image" or a "scene" or "content" it's fine for some shots but seems to exempt more encyclopedic object-based shots. Subject is the real issue and as a term it covers everything relevant, or could do with a little bit of qualification. What do you think? mikaul^talk 12:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Examples:

	Acceptable	Unacceptable
Before		Before
After	After	After

--antilived^{T | C | G} 11:16, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, it helps, but if I look at the example of the bird on the left, at first glance the only change I see is the cropping. The blurring of the background isn't immediately apparent. Could use a better example, as you said, and it would probably go a long way in providing real world examples of what we've deemed to be good and bad modifications. First we still have to reach some sort of conclusion about where to draw the lines though. Seems we're not quite there yet. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 19:17, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Neat graphic, good idea, possibly a bit arbitrary in the examples you chose but it would be a great way of illustrating typical examples of acceptable/unacceptable manipulation in each instance. I can see this taking the form of an wp:article, with relevant points based on something like this list which would ensure we cover the subject comprehensively. There could be a comparitive graphic for each point. As Diliff pointed out, they only need to be reference guidelines with room for manouver and debate; at the minute, there's nothing but vague and rather "technical" statements on some of the usual problem areas. This way there would be an example resource to hand to refer to during discussions. Maybe it's just a question of where to put it, rather than whether we should do it. Any ideas? - mikaul^talk 12:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

By and large I agree with that idea, but would add to those examples that of the castle discussed on WP:FP? --Fir0002 23:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've copy/pasted the salient points of this discussion to WP:FP? talk, where I'd suggest we thrash out some definitive guidelines for FPCs, before moving the same criteria on to WP uploads in general. mikaul^talk 12:12, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Delist because of over X old

I'm somewhat troubled by the repeated delist nominations because an image is over X old and would not pass today's standards with either no or very weak secondary reasoning to delist... by the logic the nominators are using we should start automatically delisting images one or two years after they were nominated which would leave us with no does not meet requirements now arguments but would also leave us without many of Wikipedia's great photos being featured. Cat-five - talk 02:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone's really nominated anything just because it was featured a long time ago. The concerns have usually been that the criteria have become more stringent and thus some pictures which were "among Wikipedia's best" in 2004 now look very ordinary. It's healthy for pictures to get a second look now and again to compare with "the current standard" - it allows us to show that our content has improved since Wikipedia was first established. While it's helpful for the delist nominator to provide detailed reasoning, in a lot of cases it's very obvious that an image isn't up to the current standards. We've discussed this heavily in the past, so you might want to look back through the archives of this talk page to see how a consensus developed in support of considering old FPs by today's criteria and delisting them if they wouldn't be promoted today. --YFB ¿ 03:10, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Criteria For Delisting

I wonder if we could discuss the Delisting process a little, specifically the Criteria for Delisting and the Burden of Proof.

1) Criteria for Delisting

As things stand, the only statement on what should be delisted is this:

"pictures you feel no longer live up to featured picture standards"

In reviewing the various resons given in recent FPDelist debates it would appear that this guideline does not describe in enough detail what reasons are justifiable in nominating and debating whether to delist. The implied rule of thumb from the above statement seems to be "would this photo would be promoted if it were nominated today". Is this sufficient? Is this clear enough? Is it even correct?

2) Burden of Proof

Following from the above is the burden of proof applied to delist candidates.

As it stands, a Featured Picture Candidate must prove why it should be a FP, whilst a FP Delist Candidate must prove why it should be delisted.

In other words, once a photo is promoted the burden of proof swaps from justifying why it should be an FP to justifying why it shouldn't be. In this system the status quo is favoured. That is, a "no consensus" delisting debate will lead to the photo retaining its status.

Should this be the case? Should a photo justify why it should stay (a tacit FP re-nomination) or should it justify why it shouldn't go (a status-quo preference)?

Witty Lama 20:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll just throw in my quick opinion and say that it should say why it shouldn't go (with the default being to keep the image). --Tewy 20:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Even if the criteria have become harder in the intervening period? Witty Lama 21:33, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Some images are so incredibly good that they should be kept despite the fact that criteria have become harder. There will always be changes to the criteria, but does that mean we should delist all of the otherwise exceptional images that are too small? I don't think so. For the images that are sub-par, however, a size cutoff of, say, 50% the current requirement might serve as a guideline. --Tewy 00:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely agree with Tewy - lack of consensus should mean keep. Debivort 21:36, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

True, but would this photo would be promoted if it were nominated today? should still apply. There's no need for any negative justification. If criteria have changed due to display technology, for example (most people have upgrapded their VGA monitors to much higher resoution displays, so 800x600 is generally not big enough) then we should certainly 'weed out' shots for which viewable detail was originally a strong FP nom point and effectively re-evaluate them. If (hypothetically) a stock library donated their entire catalogue to Wikimedia, much of what was once considered "the best we could get" might well no longer be the case. That sort of thing. Some images (I would hope) would remain FP just becasue they are iconic or "classic" in some way independent of current fads and advances. mikaul^talk 00:09, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Mick, could you give an example of the sort of image you'd consider the iconic/classic argument applicable to? I'm having difficulty thinking of one that wouldn't already be covered by our historical/irreplaceable images clause. Otherwise, I agree with you on this and I think that also puts me broadly in agreement with Witty Lama. As far as 'burden of proof' goes, it strikes me that requiring a consensus to delist shouldn't be that much of an obstruction to delistings, provided that we're clear about what constitutes a valid "Keep" vote. Recently we've seen a lot of "no particular reason to delist" votes which don't seem to reflect consideration of the image against current standards. Essentially, I think that requiring the application of the current criteria at a delist nomination would have the effect of placing the burden of proof on "why should we keep it", while ensuring that a consensus to delist is still required (i.e. no consensus = kept). This may mean that the closer has to disregard "Keep" votes which clearly ignore the current criteria. --YFB ¿ 02:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Would this not lead to a mass delisting? --Tewy 03:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it would if we were as rigorous with delist candidates as we are with new submissions. I'm not sure that's what YFB was suggesting, although a consenseus is required in both delists and submissions, so there's no real difference; Witty's point (2) is a bit of no-brainer really. I was thinking like Tewy, that we should be gentle on the old ones which are, first and foremost, Great Images. I did link to a current example in my last, YFB (:o/ - the starlet one is a good exmaple of not exactly historical, not particularly well-defined, only just big enough etc but it is a good enough shot and will hopefully remain a FP for all of the reasons it was promoted in the first place. I had a rant on the subject of image size/quality on the WP:FP? talk pages where I posted some examples of older FPs which perhaps illustrate my point. As you can probably gather by this, I personally place much less value on an image based its tech spec and would prefer to see "quality" classified on a more subjective, less pixel-pinching basis. mikaul^talk 09:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

So basically what most people are saying is that we should maintain a double standard in FP. To treat new pics differently to older pics? Witty Lama 16:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The double (or even triple and quadruple) standard was and is introduced with every rule change not followed by a rigorous audit. I'd suggest timecoding the FP tag and adding a promoted in June 2006 etc. category automatically. A bot could do all the tagging for old promotions. --Dschwen 17:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

But surely it's either an FP or it's not. we don't have levels of FP status. In Featured Article they have a FA review process that primarily deals with improving older FAs to current standards (and if that fails, delisting them). Unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases FPs cannot be "improved" to meet tougher standards. Therefore we are left with the option of either having a [IMHO undesirable and confusing] double-standard or holding older photos to current standards. Witty Lama 17:34, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Why does the double standard bother you per se? Double standards such as this are common in beurocractic systems (i.e. the different standards of proof in criminal and civil lawsuits in the US, or the ease of establish a sports record vs the difficulty of taking one down). What do you find objectionable about the seemingly symmetrical requirement that a consensus exist to delist, just a consensus must exist to promote - i.e. a consensus is required to change status rather than maintain it. If consensus was required to maintain status, wouldn't this imply we should be renominating all previous FPs essentially continuously?Debivort 17:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Right, I've just re-read my post above and I admit it doesn't make much sense. I'll break things down:

1. I think we need to look at this in conjunction with POTD and the rest of the Featured content. When a picture ends up on the front page under to the "Today's Featured Picture" headline, we are saying to the world (remember, Wikipedia is round about the 9th most-visited website on earth - a lot more people see this stuff than ever bother to comment on it) "This picture is an example of the best we have to offer". We are selling Wikipedia short if we are too cautious about delisting images which, even though they might be nice or interesting or pretty or classic, are no longer the best we have.
2. 3 years ago, Wikipedia had a far lower-quality set of images to choose from: affordable digital cameras were still a long way off film standards, bandwidth was limited so people routinely uploaded images at 800x600, and pretty much any image that was not obviously crap and made a half-decent job of illustrating something could be promoted. Among these, some were in fact Great Images. Very few of them are still the best we have to offer in 2007.
3. Featuring a picture is not a prize. We are not insulting/denigrating/being harsh to the uploaders or nominators of featured pictures by comparing them to current standards and finding that they no longer measure up. We featured it, we thanked the uploader, we put it on the main page for everyone to see, saying "so-and-so took this image, ain't it great, thank you!". Then time rolled on and the quality baseline of our submissions improved and we said "um, not sure this really fits in any more". When the image is nominated for delisting, we ask the original uploader to come and add their opinion and respond to criticisms if possible. If the consensus is that the picture would not be featured if nominated today, that means it's no longer the best we have. So we put a label on the image's page saying that, earlier in Wikipedia's development, this image was recognised as being excellent and among our best. We do not owe the uploader/nominator anything more than that, out of respect or gentleness or whatever. If people are only uploading their images because they want prizes and recognition, they're doing it in the wrong place. There's no harm in seeing FP as a carrot, but we shouldn't see delisting as a punishment.

Maybe, to allow each promoted image its 5 minutes of fame, we should hold off delisting nominations until after 1 POTD appearance (except in really obvious mis-promotions). Some images tick all the boxes no matter how many times they're nominated and there's no reason why these shouldn't get POTD'd more than once. But I agree with Witty Lama that being "gentle" to already-featured content is applying a double standard that will ultimately do us a disservice. No need for mass-delisting, but a steady flux of "right, let's get this out under decent light and see if it's still among our best" isn't going to do us any harm.

BTW, Mick - sorry I missed your example above. To be honest, I've held off voting on that one because it doesn't do much for me personally, but I can't find a criteria that it abjectly fails. It's a borderline case and I don't really think we need a codified rule to cover it. Can you think of any other examples, so I can give a more objective opinion? --YFB ¿ 17:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Hehe you did it again: the link I provided to WP:FP? talk was supposed to take you there. It's just a handful of FPs which I'd picked out as examples of images which do their best stuff at 1000 pixels. They're all fine images despite their falling short of our tough new criteria. I'd have written regardless of, but I do think we should weigh up even the most striking FPs against current resolution criteria and there is always the possibility that "the best that Wikipedia has to offer" will be superceded. Shots like this one might conceivably be improved, for example. The astounding Hubble images of ten years ago are generally blown away by more recent captures. I'm sure there are others lurking in WP:FP which probably don't deserve to be there for one reason or another, but I'm equally sure that arbitrarily pulling out everything under 1500 pixels isn't exactly the most discerning reselection technique. It's one thing to raise the bar for new submissions, which can easily be sized accordingly, and quite another to expect older FPs (which can't) to re-run the gauntlet based on definition and resolution criteria. As I'll not tire of pointing out, these aren't the primary factors behind quality pictures. mikaul^talk 23:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I should probably add that this argument applies to photographs only and scans of paintings, illustrations, etc are a different matter. mikaul^talk 23:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Heheh, OK - I admit it, I need shooting :-)

Looking at the images there, though, there are none which outright fail the resolution requirement as it now stands. Resolution wouldn't be a grounds to delist any of them. The only one I'd vote to delist of those you've linked is the High Cross one, which I've always thought was a bit of an odd promotion. The original image had the top of the cross cropped out and it had to be digitally re-added by stitching to another shot; the quality isn't great and nor is the resolution, but I'd vote to delist primarily because it wouldn't be at all difficult to get a better shot - not because of the technical shortcomings on their own. If you follow the link to the picasa page it originally came from, you can see that this image was most likely one flukey decent shot among a large number of snapshots - even then it's not perfect. Basically I think the location is highly photogenic and easily accessible, so we should expect something really nice for FP.

I'd certainly agree with you about "pulling out everything under 1500px" - I'm fairly sure that's not what is happening/proposed here and I'm equally sure that were that to take place, people would be justified in voting Keep according to the current requirements. I think we've been talking somewhat at cross purposes regarding resolution - this particular discussion isn't, IMHO, concerned with what the current criteria are, so much as whether we should have different standards for delisting than for normal promotions. I think you and I are in agreement that the criteria should be the same, but resolution should be a secondary reason except for easily-replaceable, sub-1000px images. Does that sound like a fair assessment? --YFB ¿ 00:15, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with your last point about size being a secondary reason. Size alone shouldn't be a criteria for delisting. --Tewy 04:11, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd say that was about right, yes. Just to address concerns about double-standards: although it is less likely, the same consideration regarding image size and definiton would/should be given to the first submission of an image digitised prior to the last few years; it's not just about being "soft" on, or sentimental about, current FPs. Example: we should remember that modern digital capture automatically looks miles better on screen than scanned film, and the reverse is true in print. The appearance of high definition in many 6MP digital captures is deceptive; to gather the same amount of detail as good 35mm slide film, you would need more like a 30MP file. You would have to scan for it though, and for preview purposes (which is what many older film scans here are) that is rarely done. The "starlette" waverers are hung up on this, I think, even though it's a sharp caprture on Kodachrome 25, probably the highest definition colour slide film ever made. Sorry, I'm off on an essay again :o| ~basically, the criteria for delisting are the same as for submissions, there's just more chance in delisting that we might come across something which requires careful consideration aside from objective resolution data. mikaul^talk 10:50, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that, strictly speaking, this debate really belongs on WP:FP? talk, if someone would like to move it there. I mention this cos it's related to a fairly major re-jig of the FP? page I'm proposing at digital manipulation, if anyone would like to step in and stop me ;o) mikaul^talk 10:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it does belong here, given that both the list and delist debates go on here. Although a message probably should be placed at Talk:FP, at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Witty Lama 11:00, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

er.. there's no such place as talk:FP! This is talk:FPC, I'm suggesting a more appropriate place would be the talk:FP? (featured picture criteria) page. mikaul^talk 11:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean "there's no such place as Talk:FP?? What's Wikipedia talk:Featured pictures? Secondly your link to Wikipedia talk:Featured picture criteria was a piped link showing up as "WP:FP" - this is quite misleading and no surprise that I thought you meant Wikipedia talk:Featured pictures. Witty Lama 22:05, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I had no idea that even existed, sorry. By all means, post a link there. On more than one occasion poeple have complained about FP selection criteria being dicussed here, that's all. mikaul^talk 22:59, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Licencing and requirements for attribution for images on Wikipedia

This is not at all relevent to the FPC process, but I figured some similarly minded people here would have an opinion about something I stumbled across on the article Fraser Island. This image in the summary infobox says: "The photo should always have the phrase "Photo: Silje L. Bakke" in the caption. The word "photo" may be translated.". Given that the image has been licenced under GFDL (although CC would be quite similar I suppose), should this still be required? I understand that it is usually a matter of courtesy to respect their wishes, but doesn't such obvious attribution detract from Wikipedia? My opinion is that the attribution is on the image page - it doesn't need to be on the article page too. If I'm right in thinking this, is it wrong to remove this attribution from the article caption? Thoughts, anyone? Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 11:31, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Aricles are not signed on the article page, neither should photos. --Dschwen 16:17, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Ditto. Remove it and perhaps let him down gently on his talk page - he may not be aware of our policy of providing attribution on the image description page only. --YFB ¿ 16:24, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree but even finding the right userpage for him seems to be fairly convoluted, the one for him on commons consists really of just a couple of templates including one for improper location on his userpages in mainspace and I don't have the knowledge of norwegian to try to track down not to mention communicate with him on that wiki. Cat-five - talk 06:27, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Wikipedia Logo

I have closed this nomination due to licensing restrictions on the image. A) this is not a free image per the licensing terms requirements for FPC candidacy, B) the only reason this is allowed at all on the project is due to the fact that an exception had to be made by the foundation for certain uses or there would be numerous self contradictions and paradoxes in the usage restrictions (even more than there already are). Those who know me know that I never close noms anymore for reasons that you who know me know however in this case I felt it was necessary, I don't remember exactly where but there have been issues like this before (ever once in awhile the logo is put up for FPC) and it's unfortunate but even FPC guidelines aside we can't use the image outside of the official logo space and outside of the Wikipedia and a few other related articles. On the comment on the nomination that everyone is doing it, yes they are but when it is enforced they're told to take it off their user space and just because everyone's doing it isn't really a good excuse. I'm sorry if I sound like a bore but I've rather be proactive and do it myself than have the WP:Office Gestapo (sorry for anyone who may be offended by the comparison) cause pain for everyone when they'd assuredly overreact and probably do something stupid like lock down all of FPC and related pages. Cat-five - talk 07:06, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally it also had a snowball's chance in hell of passing but I try to never use that as a reason if possible. Cat-five - talk 07:10, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Sparrenburg nom

This nom was impropperly closed. I reopened it and put it back on the page to close again. Now apparently this means the voting period is extended?! That is just unfair. Should the impropper closing destroy the FP status of the picture? Why should that nom be open any longer than the others, especially if a policy violation was the reason in the first place.

This is just great! I won't complain that some of the votes cast on my recent nominations are a little unfounded, to put it mildly. That's just life. But if procedure is twisted on top of it, that just makes my wikistress level rise.

Ah well this bitching is not going to give me sympathy votes, but frack it, they should be about the images anyways... --Dschwen 07:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• I agree with you about the voting period being extended. Although it was only bad luck that an additional vote was negative rather than positive. ;-). It should be spelled out a bit more clearly at the end of the nomination though, that the voting period is closed and it is awaiting re-evaluation. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 08:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• Has the closing procedure for promoted noms always been as complicated as it is now? I tried to do my bit to reduce the promoted FP backlog, but only finished one - which took something like 15 edits to complete? Couldn't it be simplified or botted or something? Debivort 08:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• I worked with the pywikipediabot framework to create an automatic closing-bot for the quality image cadidates page on commons. I could create a similar bot for FPC. The consensus evaluation procedure would have to be done by hand (inserting the verdict promoted, not promoted, if promoted: which edit, what category the pic will be sorted into). For the latter I could even create a Javascript helper plugin. I'll go over the whole procedure and double check if it is feasable. --Dschwen 08:55, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• That would be sensational Dschwen! Look forward to it! Oh and I agree that your nom was closed improperly, I'm not sure Sunshine Man as a week-old user has yet learnt how FPC works. I don't want to discourage you Sunshine Man (if you're reading this) but please just take it easy for a bit and get used to Featured Picture Candidates for everyone's sake! --Fir0002 10:08, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I closed it as promoted. Since I opposed the picture there is no conflict of interest on my side. I also believe Dschwen's Externsteine and Fir's Goats were improperly closed. I don't think you have to be admin to close FPC nominations, but a certain amount of tenure and experience in the process are necessary to gauge consensus and close nomination. ~ trialsanderrors 20:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Fornicating insects, Fir0002 and technical obsession...

Hi, some people might remember from a few weeks ago when I dared to vote down one of Fir0002's incredibly dull tomato snaps. Well, after a short time away I have been able to sit down with the internet for a little while and see that not only was the tomato image eventually accepted, Fir0002's images have in fact rarely been off the wikipedia main page.

Wikipedia is nepotistic and inward-looking beyond belief. I suspected this before, but it has become astonishingly obvious.

I am sure Fir0002 will respond hastily with what seems his customary short temper. That's okay. Perhaps he's just a little frustrated at not being able to get out of his little creek in Australia and take photographs of anything except fornicating insects (as somebody hilariously put it...). In the last few weeks I have taken photographs of toxic waste dumps in Russian cities, heavily armed guards bearing well known MNC logos patrolling corporate headquarters and demonstrations in Turkey well attended by riot cops in full body armour. And yes, I love to come home and take some shots of cute lambs or ladybirds but I'd hate to think that I couldn't use photography for what it really is: a tool to document important epochal events.

The reason I am posting this now is because I was just flicking idly through the current featured picture candidates and I saw a shot of a French riot policeman get almost universally voted down.

Okay... I have to admit, it's NOT a stunning image. The isolation of the cop makes it seem rather sterile and meaningless, although I am more than aware that taking photographs in such situations is a LOT harder than pointing a macro lens at an insect on a leaf...

Therefore, my only real point here is that I think it's really pathetic that wikipedia FP disregards photographs purely for technical reasons. As somebody pointed out, there are hundreds of iconic images that people here would sit smugly and point out bad contrast, not "big enough", blur, "wrong" depth of field, blown highlights, wrong film speed, artifacts, whatever and whatever... I just want to give my opinion that people who say such things can never claim to be photographers: they are just technicians, most of whom have probably only used digital equipment, and so judge a photograph on whether its pixels retain clarity at 1600% (or whatever...).

If Fir0002 can take a single photograph that makes me consider the world in a slightly different light I will retract my comments aimed at him personally, but if not, simply carry on taking the excellent images of fornicating insects and others...

--Vaelta 08:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Well I agree on some points such as that some of the most iconic photographs are often poorly focused, exposed etc.; but I really really don't think that isolate cop have the impact of things like this and seriously that photo's quality is no where near the bar. Also, bear in mind that Wikipedia is an Encyclopaedia not a playground of journalism. Photography is not solely for journalism, maybe that's something you've misunderstood, it's art, it's information, AND it's a record of things. We could sure use some journalism in our FPs, but that's no reason to let in some rather poor shots just for the sake of it. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:53, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, of course, I do agree that the photo of the French riot policeman was NOT of featured picture quality, but only for composition, not for purely technical reasons. --Vaelta 09:18, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit conflict] Hi Vaelta - thanks for expressing your opinion here. I have commented in the past that I suspect people often use technical reasons to oppose an image as cover for other less politically correct reasons they might harbor for opposition. "Blown highlights" as a cover for "yet another boring flower." So I agree with you that there are flaws in the voting system that arise out of too much reliance on technical factors. That said, photography is a tool for documenting anything, flowers, humping bugs, nebulae, etc. not just "epochal events." If you feel this is the primary purpose of photos in an encyclopedia, perhaps you would feel more welcomed contributing to the images that are used in the "in the news" section of the main page. Now, one more point. I don't think it is appropriate to single out Fir0002 for a barage of snarky comments. He has contributed more very-high technical quality images to the project than any other user I know, and if the reward of seeing his name on the main page is enough to keep him contrinbuting, so be it. Moreover, it is needlessly mean. I hope you'll stick around though, because I am confident you will soon realize that you can have more influence on FP ethos with a carrot than with a stick. Debivort 09:04, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• What carrot can I offer? I understand that everybody takes the photographs they are able to take, and I'm not necessarily asking Fir0002 to accompany me to the middle of Russia so he can expand his photographic repertoire, but I do find it disconcerting to see how so many people on wikipedia are so keen to support anything an established member does. This is, as people keep pointing out, an ecnylopaedia: it should be neutral and free of bias. --Vaelta 09:18, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• Carrot = friendly persistent conversation - requires more patience than ranting, but more likely to work long term in my experience. As for Fir having a high success rate, I suspect this has more to do with his understanding of the current consensus criteria, taking many pictures, and then only nominating those he believes will succeed. In other words, I think the criteria have selected for Fir's work, rather than Fir's contributions and legacy guiding the criteria (which sort of seems like what you are suggesting). Of course he has his failures also: 1 2 3 4 5 etc... Debivort 09:41, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm in two minds about this. While I agree, there's way more to a good photograph than technical considersations, for the encyclopedia these are more important than usual, if for no other reason than the greatly reduced scope for inclusion of pictorial, "artistic" work which might "give" the reader something more than just clearly presented information.
However I don't accept that means we insist on shooting everything solely for descriptive purposes. I think we'd end up with a raft of seriously uninteresting PODs, for a start off, and slide gradually into a catalogue of context-free, flat-lit exhibits with the (arguably superfluous) capacity for ultra-enlargement. Pixel-popping is fun, but it is given way, way too much relevance on FPC. White backgrounds are often no more neutral than a subject's natural habitat, and much less interesting. As much as we are here to criticise, in doing so we also encourage improvements and steer FPCs to certain goals. Overall, I'd agree there is a danger of encouraging technical prowess over pictoral content, which would be a mistake, IMO.
mikaul^talk 10:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Vaelta, personal attacks are not tolerated here on Wikipedia. If you have an issue about our current FP criteria, that is fine, but attacking Fir00002 is extremely inappropriate. Please be more civil from here on out. Discuss the issue, not the person. --PS2pcGAMER (talk)

• I'd usually agree wholeheartedly, but I feel here that Fir0002 is a rather good manifestation of the issue. --Vaelta 17:03, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• That may be so, but there's no reason not to say something like "users starting in F and ending in 2", or "certain photographers from the southern hemisphere" -- people will still know what you mean. It's not like people aren't aware of the nepotism in regards to the FPC's, it's just something you have to live with. Nepotism sucks, but just like Wikipedia's rules against personal attacks, it's not going anywhere. I have personal issues with some of the pictures (not just of Fir's) that are voted in, but I just accept that they are accepted, and work a bit harder on my own lot. -- KirinX 17:18, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Vaelta, such a highly personal attack on one of Wikipedia's best and most prolific photographers is completely unacceptable. Your diatribe essentially boils down to the fact that Fir0002's type of work is different from yours, and that you, personally, rate your own images as more important than his. Others may disagree, and if you can prove your own images as consistently professional as his, you may find yourself on the FP page just as frequently. Fir0002 is there so often simply because a large proportion of his images are highly encyclopdic and of professional quality. --MichaelMaggs 17:49, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• This really is an incredibly touchy issue for wikipedia, isn't it? KirinX is probably right, and the guidelines against personal attacks are just as much a part of wikipedia as its rampant nepotism.

However, you are wrong that this has anything to do with any photographs I have ever taken: I was merely trying to point out the incredible lack of diversity that was bred by featuring the same few wikipedian photographers over and over and over again. It is INCREDIBLY boring (and when the tomato picture comes around to the main page I will sigh with exasperation that this is the "best" that wikipedia can offer...). A little diversity is a very good thing. I think that at the very least more historically significant images should be featured on the main page. But never mind. If wikipedia wants to continue with the inbreeding then it must accept a few chinless wonders... --Vaelta 20:58, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• You seem to be ignoring two important points that have been brought up: 1) There is no need to be mean. It doesn't help. Why set out to hurt other people's feelings? 2) The FP process doesn't choose images based on authorship it choses them based on criteria. Fir has learned to match the criteria well. The lack of diversity has nothing to do with favoring particular photographers - it has to do with favoring narrow criteria, OK? Debivort 21:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, I do understand this. But narrow criteria, narrow minds, no? I have NEVER said that I think Fir0002's photographs are bad (except some I find very dull, such as shots of sliced vegetables), I just think that more diversity is required because I DO remember when each day's FP brought something very different. The featured articles are incredibly diverse; what happened to featured pictures? "Diversify or die" is a widely held truth... --Vaelta 21:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

• I completely agree with Vaelta have a look at all these diverse images which make me consider the world in a completely different light. Look at them and weep Fir. [3] --144.132.25.135 11:20, 2 June 2007 (UTC) (fir0002's brother)

• Funny, you sarcastic prick. But actually, because I work on assignments, the majority of photographs I take are copyrighted the moment I hit the shutter release button... therefore, I would not be allowed to upload them to wikipedia. However, if you would like me to email you a very low resolution collection, please, just send me an email... --Vaelta 12:59, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

• Don't bother d***head, i've got many assignments to complete too... --144.132.25.135 13:40, 2 June 2007 (UTC) (note: to the PC police this is how we talk in aus :) [4] (The_chaser is the best) so no real offense intended)

• Fir's brother, this thread was actually fairly civil until until you thought you'd try your luck at witty sarcasm. I didn't crack a grin so save the d***head comments. Get used to personal attacks there are alot of asses out there. Oh and do you usually call your brother by his user name. Vaelta, if you actually care to impart some change to the "inward-looking" attitude take Debivort's advice. A carrot will work better. If you don't want to take the time to make a difference, please dont bother Fir, me, or others who have spent time trying to improve the peoject's pictures. -Fcb981 05:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Thank you for seeing that it was not actually me who lowered the tone of the debate... And please, don't think I don't see the quality of input that so many people put into wikipedia, and as I am SURE I have already said, most of Fir0002's photographs are extremely proficient from a technical standpoint. However, I don't think it's right that the only way to encourage this to continue is by almost always accepting featured pictures from the same few photographers, none of whom have a track record of diversity in subject. It's NOT about the quality of the images, it's the lack of diversity that bothers me. I hope you can see that. And while I'd agree a prolonged session of carrot teasing might work well in changing wikipedia's policies, I really don't have the time. I just wanted to point out the "democratic deficit" I have noticed. --Vaelta 12:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• It's maybe time to point out that Wikipedia is not intended to be an exercise in democracy... --Dschwen 12:24, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I am tempted to blank this entire thread per remove personal attacks. Vaelta, it's obvious that you struggle to make polite, constructive comments and prefer to be snarky and vindictive. I strongly disagree that FPC is nepotistic; anyone who can take photos of high technical quality and encyclopaedic relevance can get them featured - if it was nepotism, there'd be a preference for Fir's work regardless of quality. You are a journalist and quite obviously place more importance on journalistic photography than on illustrative work, but whatever your opinion, both types are photography. The problem we have at Wikipedia is that, as you say about your own work, most journalistic photography is not freely licenced. If you'd perhaps like to give freely of your time and effort to produce journalistic, "epochal" images we can use, that's great, you're welcome to do so and we will feature them provided that you don't get blocked first for personal attacks. Actually, though, you've already admitted that you're far too busy to bother with anything like that... frankly with that attitude, you're really not welcome here. Wikipedia doesn't benefit from having sarcastic, self-important individuals taking cheap shots at others, particularly when they have made no constructive contributions to the project. --YFB ¿ 13:20, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Totally agree with YFB... While Vaelta is not the only one that has stooped to a low level here recently, I do find that he has been a catalyst for a lot of the rudeness and negativity. I have full respect for Fir0002's photographic diversity. Sure, he is limited in his ability to visit the far-flung parts of the world, but he has documented what he can very well and you cannot fault him for that. His photos are generally of a high quality and encyclopaedic in my opinion and that is all that really matters. I certainly don't let any loyalties - not that I have any loyalty to him anyway - dictate my opinions on FPC and I doubt anyone else does the same. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 15:08, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
• Yeah, agreed. Lets just remove this humongous unproductive waste of time. --Dschwen 15:30, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Seconded. When I vote for an image, I couldn't care less who's the author. I follow the criteria: if it is highly encyclopedic, is of high enough quality, has some "wow" (that's very important IMHO), and a free license, it gets my vote. There's a saying: "The most fervent critics are usually abysmally failed artists..." --Janke | Talk 15:39, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Vaelta, part of the problem is that this community does not find portraits interesting. Part of the reason I have been absent from FPC for the last 6 months was my frustration over getting any portraits through (that aren't paintings/B&W/exotic). I am not sure what can be done to change the community's view, but I know attacking Fir's excellent work is not it. -Ravedave 16:44, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• I think it is probably more so that it is difficult to take a really good portrait. Objects and landscapes are very static and easy to take time with, whereas portraits of any worth are usually of important people who are likely to give only fleeting opportunities for high quality portraits. I know I'd have trouble creating a stitched mosaic of somebody... ;-) Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 16:57, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Original Research in image discussions

I was chided for improperly researching for my opinion on the nomination for lions feeding. Originally, I replied there, but then I realized it was a huge chunk of irrelevant text the closer would have to wade through, so I figured it would be better to respond here instead. I wrote:

Images, are, in a way, original research, so criticizing discussion of images because it violates the policy against original research is a bit strange to begin with. It would be original research of me to go to Africa and write an expose on tame conditions at supposedly wild places. However, I'm not writing anything FOR the encyclopedia. The burden of proof is on the side of information, not lack of information. It is backwards to claim that someone is violating the "no original research" policy by casting doubt on information. 1) I read information 2) I doubt it 3) I bring up my problems with it 4a) someone responds with published research, or in the case of images, more information about how the image was taken or 4b) I remove the information I am skeptical about. Now, if I add in my own suspicions from my own experience, than THAT is original research. If I were to put on the image page "this image has suspiciously low shorn grass and might be from a zoo" that would be WORSE than original research; it would be wild speculation. However, this discussion is neither an encyclopedic article or an image description page, so I can bring up my problems, including speculation, other people can see where I'm coming from, and try to resolve the issue. For example, in one of fir's beetle pictures, I thought the white spots on the beetle might be injuries. This was just speculation, but Fir simply told me that all of the beetles had the same white spots, so I was good. In the case of this lions eating image, I'm particularly skeptical because the photographer didn't nominate, and it's easy for people get the origin of a image wrong, especially when they are translating it. Enuja 21:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it's really important that we all be skeptical about photographs. It is important to know that Black Hole is an artist's rendering, it's important to know how big the Soyuz is, and a huge number of other things. Speculation behind skepticism is not original research; it's a necessary part of removing errors from any collection of images. Now, I don't want to sound too serious here; I thought gren's comment "I'm not sure... but, I think you might be looking into the bloody carcass of the lawn mower. But that too is original research and should not influence your opinion :D" was hilarious, and gren's and trialsanderrors' comments together help me understand why the grass might be so uniformly low. But I want to make sure that skepticism is encouraged, not discouraged. Enuja 23:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Agree, and the spirit of WP:OR is to eliminate uncitable claims in articles not in discussions of articles.Debivort 23:40, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:NOR is for contributions to articles, not for WP or talk page discussions. ~ trialsanderrors 00:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:NOR says it is bad to have original research as article content, not necessarily in discussions about content. Debivort 00:22, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

So we're all in agreement then? I don't think the closer would've taken the objection into account anyway. ~ trialsanderrors 01:28, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

two backlogged noms

The two bird noms in the Decision time section are stale and awaiting a closer. They've been in that section for more than three and four weeks! I'd close them, but I have edits in the running. Debivort 01:48, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

• If I could, I would. But it's even harder with only one hand. If I closed them (as promote), and if someone is willing to do the drudgery then clearing backlogs would be easy. MER-C 12:27, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Done. Gawd, we really do need a helperbot for promotions. Feel free to slap me if I missed something. --YFB ¿ 14:27, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
    • User:PS2pcGAMER was testing one, but then disappeared. See Archive 12#Promotion bot testing. ~ trialsanderrors 03:29, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
      • There were some changes in the process of closing a featured picture candidate since the bot was created. I tried updating the bot to account for this, but as I have never coded in Python, I didn't get very far. In my initial testing closing only failed noms, some changes were needed to the code, such as adding a category (which is trivial enough to code) and removing {{fpc|*}} on the image page. If the image page just has {{fpc}}, the bot was able to automatically remove it without issue. I am not sure what other bugs existed for doing failed nominations. I didn't test what would happen if the nomination was successful. If anyone has any experience with pywikipedia or wants to find someone who does, I don't see anything wrong with modifying Veledan's work (see User:Veledan/FP Promoter/Source). When copying and pasting the code, click on edit first and then copy and paste it from the edit box. Otherwise, you will get utf-8 errors when trying to run it. --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 03:39, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
        • Well, that's a start. I'll drop HighInBC a note, he's pretty handy with this sort of thing. Cheers, both. --YFB ¿ 03:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Explain exactly what it needs to do, and I will put it on my list of things to do. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 03:59, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Awesome! Basically it needs to do as much as possible of the closing procedures described on the FPC page. For promotions, the only part that I expect would need human input (off the top of my head, I may have missed something) would be identifying the right category of FPs and perhaps naming the main article which it illustrates. The closing procedure seems to have got much, much more complicated over the past year or so, it's a real pain to do by hand nowadays. --YFB ¿ 04:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

As long as it works on Linux, it's fine by me. I was also planning to do this kind of thing, but never got around to doing it. MER-C 09:30, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I was originally thinking of a wizard for closing FPCs, with copies distributed out to all significant FPC closers. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to write it in the foreseeable future. MER-C 13:18, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I can write it, but someone else will need to run it, I have too many things going on my computer. I will make it *nix compatible, it may even work on a *gasp* Mac as well as real computers(hehe). It may take a little while as I am working on another bot as well. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 13:17, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

If you can write it, I can run it. That's the easy part :-) --YFB ¿ 13:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I just read the instructions, all the human would have to do is put "{{FPCresult|Not promoted| }} --~~~~ [[Category:Ended featured picture nominations]]" or "{{FPCresult|Promoted|Image:FILENAME.JPG}} --~~~~ [[Category:Ended featured picture nominations]]" on the page and the bot will do the rest. It should be easy to write, though there are rather a few steps for a promotion. I can see why you want a bot to do it. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 13:33, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

The user would probably also need to point the bot to the right category of Featured Pictures (e.g. architecture, mammals, etc.). --YFB ¿ 13:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey, what do you folks think of the bots deciding if a picture can be promoted or not? I can look at how many of what colors are used, and compare that the the success rate of the nominators previous nominations and their block log. I may even be able to get the bot to choose it's own image nominations based on how busy their talk pages are... (I am kidding) ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 13:35, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Uhm, not that I'd want to fight about who writes it, but I already have a promotion bot for commons QI which could be adapted, and I have a toolserver account to run the bot... --Dschwen 13:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Given the differences between the two procedures, I would have thought adapting it would be almost as much work as writing a new one? I'll leave the two of you to fight it out, but the use of a toolserver account is a good idea. High, how come you haven't gone down that route with your other bots? --YFB ¿ 13:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Date and Username detection, nomination archival, and user notification are tasks needed for both procedures. It's more similar than you might guess at first glance. --Dschwen 13:54, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough - good luck! :-) --YFB ¿ 14:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Please Dschwen take the job, I have not even started. I have another bot request on the table for WP:CHU and WP:USURP. I am thinking of a toolserver account, just never got around to it. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 13:50, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I have a free day tomorrow. Let's see how far I get. --Dschwen 13:54, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I know little about programming and robot manufacturing, but...

• The closer needs to define some things, such as:
  • Which WP:FP subpage a promoted image goes to (Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Places/Panorama is formatted differently from the others)
  • Caption for the WP:FP subpage
  • Possibly a different, shorter description for Wikipedia:Featured pictures thumbs, Template:Announcements/New featured pages and Wikipedia:Goings-on
  • Authorship of promoted version
  • Wikipedian created image or not
  • "Bot off" flag for special cases such as sets
• If an edited version is promoted, will the bot replace the original in articles? --KFP (talk | contribs) 14:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Did anything ever come of this? ^(H) 20:57, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Move suspended noms to subpage

I would like to suggest we move the suspended nominations to a subpage (/suspended nominations or whatever). The main FPC page is long enough, and the suspendees are just tacked on the end. They don't require voter input but rather a (almost always) confirmation of accuracy or copyright. When something develops, they can be moved back into the "further input needed" section. Until, let's keep them out of the way.--HereToHelp 01:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

But in order for something to develop, voters and users familiar with accuracy or copyright have to be able to find the discussion. A subpage would deviate attention away from the very nominations that need it. --Tewy 03:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I worry they would just be forgotten - I mean, even closed noms on this page are forgotten for weeks. Debivort 03:33, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Kimi Raikkenon Nom

Hi,
First up, sorry for not keeping this on the discussion of the actual nom, but just didn't get time to do it while it was up. I really think we need to review FP's such as Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Kimi Räikkönen and others which contain copyrighted logos on them. The reason I'm relatively sure that such images can't be licensed freely is because I've tried to submit photos of motocross riders with logos on their jackets etc to istockphoto and they were rejected because the logos are copyrighted against reproduction without permission. I think this FP and similar ones would run into the same trouble as the licenses they are under include in discriminatory commercial use. --Fir0002 12:03, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I would have thought that Wikipedia may be more exempt from such extreme restrictions but I suppose if the images are licenced as unrestricted commercially then the same may apply. I know for a fact that iStockphoto doesn't accept anything remotely trademarked. I even submitted a panoramic view of the Thames in London that featured the London Eye on the left side of the frame and it was rejected because the image of the London Eye is trademarked... iStockphoto are in my opinion far too overcautious (yet inconsistent - there ARE a few London Eye photos on there that have slipped through the cracks) but I have no idea of the legality of Wikipedia using similar images. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 12:14, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

To echo Diliff's observations, if this happens to be the case, then many images licensed as free on wiki are not. Consider the images in the Times Square article. I'm not a copyright expert by any means, but I think that the quality and proportion of logo present are important to consider. Also, the car itself may be considered a trademarked entity, and subject then to fair-use under critic/demonstrative criteria. Thoughts? --Cody.Pope 12:42, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• Stock libraries have to be careful what they are permitted to license for use themselves, so when content looks like it might require licensing an already-licensed image (of whatver kind) they turn it down. Wiki images also have to be re-licensed, but there are both protocols for uploading images and guidelines for images that include them within the frame, at WP:LOGO. One part expressly states:

  It is not necessary to seek formal permission from the owner in advance of using their logo, so long as the usage is fair use, does not create any impression that the logo is associated with or endorses Wikipedia or the article it appears in, and does not create any reasonable grounds for complaint by the owner.

  and I would tend not to be put off by anything other than non-contextual logo use. Not sure a review is not in order, but I'd say the stock libraries approach was way too restricted. mikaul^talk 12:49, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I just visited the Science Museum in London, where they have Mika Häkkinen's crashed Formula 1 car on display. There is a "NO PHOTO" sign in front of it, and I asked an attendant why. She told me the sponsors don't want to be associated with a crashed car - very logical. In fact, they have put a large sheet of Scotchlite under the car, which will spoil any attemps to shoot the car with flash (don't ask me why I know... ;-), and the very, very low ambient lighting necessitates hand-held exposures of around 1 or 2 seconds at f4... (don't ask me why I know... ;-) --Janke | Talk 13:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Thread removed

• Link to removed content

Unproductive thread speedily archived. --YFB ¿ 17:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Good call, lets leave it that way. ^(H) 17:43, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I normally oppose that practice but in this case I agree very good call, ranting personal attack threads have no home here. Cat-five - talk 15:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Question

I have found a picture that fits all the requirements for a featured picture. However it was originally uploaded on the French Wikipedia and as such I have a hard time using it. Also it is kind of tricky to list the author. Can I still nominate it?--St.daniel ^Talk 20:14, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

What's the image?--Pharos 20:19, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

If it is under a free license then it can be moved to the Commons, and then used here. ^(H) 20:56, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok thanks --St.daniel ^Talk 11:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

When moving the image to Commons, use CommonsHelper to generate the description for you. howcheng {chat} 17:50, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

clarification of historically mitigating circumstances / possible rewrite needed of those

First of all I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea how to best do it but from reading recent historical FPC's there seems to be a lot of confusion and argument about the historical picture guidelines and while I hate instruction creep as much as the next person I think they should really be clarified or possibly even totally rewritten. Cat-five - talk 15:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I was just looking at this while copyediting the featured picture criteria. Historical images are cited as exceptions to the first three criteria there, which might warrant a separate note or guideline, but I figured it would probably amount to no more that a reiteration of the mentions they already have there. I'm also considering a proposal to include a guideline about retouching of historical images in criterion #9. I'd certaonly be interested to hear any proposal you have.
I'm not aware of any other set of guidelines about this – are there more somewhere else?
mikaul^talk 19:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there is any other set but if your thinking that a different set of guidelines for retouching historicals vs non historicals I agree entirely because they're two entirely different things though we'd have to be careful about instruction creep as always. Cat-five - talk 15:56, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Commons

Although this has been probably discussed before. Why do we not "stop" this process completely. We should encourage people to upload their images to commons and commons should take care of all our free licensed images. Commons does have its own featured picture thing. Featured images should be shared by all wikis by default. -- Cat ^chi? 23:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

It's to do with encyclopedic images; less of an issue on commons, hence different criteria here. mikaul^talk 00:31, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Commons FPC has very different criteria from the English Wikipedia's FPC. Some/many of the images promoted there wouldn't stand a chance here and vice versa. --KFP (talk | contribs) 10:37, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

What I want to achieve is to have one location for our source of images. Featured pictures are the best English wikipedia has to offer so I feel they are more then welcome on commons. I sincerely believe that commons should be preferred location for free uploads. Because of the gradual move of all free images to commons, this process here will eventually become completely useless as on the long run we will not have any free images on en.wikipedia and instead in commons. These images are of decent quality and should be used on all wikis.

No one is forced by the foundation to use commons but on the long run it would be quite strange for people not to use it.

We can fix both procedures or we can move this process to commons for example.

-- Cat ^chi? 13:29, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Most of the English Wikipedia's featured pictures are hosted at Wikimedia Commons and all of them should be. The featured picture process here is for identifying free images that greatly enhance articles on the English Wikipedia. --KFP (talk | contribs) 13:35, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Thats fine by me. I would however find it more productive to have a more unified FPC process. We are one wikimedia site as a whole even if our individual project goals may be different. -- Cat ^chi? 13:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The Commons FP process is more about "pretty pictures" and the criteria there specifically says encyclopedic value isnt a consideration where as the FP process here is about encyclopedic value. As such en.FP should be solely the result of what our community thinks as such it needs to within our pages. Gnangarra 14:12, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

See this page, if you haven't already. Of course, all wiki media should ultimately have a base there and only there, but it's still very early days. At present, AFAIK, there's no tireless bot around progressively migrating all Wikipedia images to commons, but that's what is required and is certainly on the cards. The process will go almost unnoticed by wiki users and editors alike, as things will work in exactly the same way. One thing which won't ever change, however, is the need for WP:FP. It's just a category, basically, but one relevant solely to the encyclopedia (in a way that COM:FP isn't) and a great incentive for people to upload quality WP:ENC photos. Commons exists alomst solely to avoid duplication of media resources, not to relieve other wiki projects of their specific duties and responsibilities. WP:FP should clearly stay right here within the encyclopedia. mikaul^talk 14:38, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Commons is a multi-language free content media aggregator; we are an encyclopedia. The needs of the two aren't same, and I would anticipate that over time the fraction of images that have seperate descriptions/categorization on Wikipedia will only increase. WP:FP is just one aspect of that. In fact, viewed purely from an English Wikipedia point of view there is really no advantage for us in ever uploading to Commons rather than locally. Dragons flight 15:14, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

• I'd also like to point out that commons only allows free licenses where as wikipedia allows fair use as well. Some people (like me) are not fully supportive of commons goal to "creat a free media repository" It bothers me that any company out there. Even something nasty like Shell Petrolium, could use my photos in their adds without my consent. Plus, by uploading quality images there, it makes getting money for photos all the more dificult. Anyway, I think that that fact makes a compelling reason to keep a seperate place for pictures. -67.170.166.185 16:20, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Second opinions requested

Can I have a few second opinions on how to close Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Burrowing Owl, please? I feel that unencyclopedic and technical concerns turn what would be an obvious promotion decision into something that's really borderline. Also, should I box it for the time being, to indicate that !voting has closed. MER-C 08:35, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Even though it's in the borderline range (69% if I counted and did my math right) it's still in the promotion range I think but if in doubt it should be put under the more comments needed section and left open for a little while longer to get more input. Cat-five - talk 09:10, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Under a straight vote-count, this would be a simple promotion. If consideration is given to the detail in the rationales and reference to the Featured Picture Criteria, it starts to look a bit shaky - I count 7 supports which provide no rationale at all beyond "great image" or "beautiful" (these aren't among the criteria), plus another 7 which boil down to "great image, beautiful, encyclopaedic" without any qualification of what is encyclopaedic about it other than the fact that it's a picture of an animal for which we have an article. On that basis, I think it'd be a "not promoted"... although - caveat - I was one of the opposers. --YFB ¿ 21:05, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I concur. I would say there's no consensus here. The opposition arguments are lot stronger IMHO. howcheng {chat} 21:21, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

That's an extremely slippery slope though, countless noms would be promoted if we discounted all the oppose votes that didn't cite a reason, if we're going to be really by the book on this then we need to write down and implement that any votes without a policy based reasoning included in the vote will be discounted. Cat-five - talk 00:56, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if I agree completely. Discounting of oppose votes would generally only occur when there is a significant argument raised for the promotion of the image that was not addressed. And vice-versa (and probably more likely), a support vote might be discounted if it did not address a significant reason for opposition. A lot of FPCs aren't very contentious and it comes down to a matter of opinion and taste - in which case it probably wouldn't be necessary to ignore simple supports or opposes, while other images may be fatally flawed with many voters ignoring an important criteria. It should be stressed that the more justification you provide with a vote, the less likely it is to be overlooked or discounted, but I don't think there will ever be a simple/automated way to find consensus for all scenarios. It will always be necessary to look at each case individually. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 06:58, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Well put. --YFB ¿ 16:35, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

There is now a third version, recropped to 4X3 ratio.--MONGO 05:02, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Mixed up

Two delist noms are in the suspended nom section. Anybody care to fix that? --Janke | Talk 07:18, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

The delist nominations can also be suspended. In both cases, higher res versions are pending. Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 08:12, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, didn't realize that. Thanks, --Janke | Talk 18:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

np >_< Jumping cheese ^Cont@ct 06:46, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Be careful with astronomy pics

Please be careful with astronomy pics. Featured picture: Image:Sun,_Earth_size_comparison_labeled.jpg was deleted because the SOHO project, like the ESA as a whole, follow a non-commercial license for the reuse of their images. This is the second time I can recall seeing a featured astronomy pic deleted for having an incorrect license. Dragons flight 14:06, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Good point. I note that Davepape raised this concern during the nomination but it wasn't addressed before Raven4x4x promoted it. Should probably have ended up in the Suspended Nominations category until that was clarified, but we all make mistakes. I'll make a point of checking licences for astronomy images. Cheers for the heads up, Dragons flight. --YFB ¿ 14:39, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Even NASA pics can't really be trusted anymore since they now work with outside companies who may or may not have their pictures released under PD per government regulations as is the case with pictures taken directly by NASA (with the exception of their logo and all other gov logos but that's a different issue) Cat-five - talk 16:38, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

On NASA sites there is often a notice saying they are PD unless stated otherwise. On such sites they point out when there are restrictive licenses. On other sites it is less clear. ^(H) 05:17, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Suspended noms

We have three suspended nominations that have been around for over a month, and they all seem to have been neglected. Austrian Barrel Organ and Mt. Rainier seem to be waiting on higher resolution images, but both photographers haven't edited since May. Emblem of the Papacy was nominated in March, but had some form of accuracy dispute and hasn't had any new comments since April. I'd like to finally do something with these if I can; for the first two I'll ask the photographers if they're still editing, but I'm not sure what to do about the Papal emblam. Any suggestions? Raven4x4x 06:31, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the Emblem of the Papacy has been sitting there for quite a while now. Although almost all the voes are for support, the accuracy issue still remains. How about placing a link at the top of the page asking for more feedback?!? As for the other pics awaiting higher-res versions, how about placing a time limit on them? For example, after one month (or however months the community decide upon) and a high-res version is not uploaded in that time period, the pic is automatically reopened for delisting voting based on the low-res version. Thoughts? Jumping cheese 01:50, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

relisting

I don't understand the protocol behind taking some old nominations back to the top of the page. This has happened a few times sporadically recently, and if I had been closing the noms, I would have closed them, with no promotion, under the rationale "no consensus formed to support the image within a week." (Note - a lack of consensus to promote is different from a consensus not to promote). How do we know when a nom gets a second chance to attract attention? Debivort 05:51, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering the same thing, and I think nominations should only be relisted if there are too few votes. If there aren't enough votes to determine anything (consensus or lack thereof), perhaps some extra opinions could sway consensus in one direction, or at least reinforce a weak consensus. But if there are already enough votes to determine that there is no consensus, then the nomination has run its course, with consensus to promote not reached. Relisting the nomination would only bring in more votes that disagree. --Tewy 06:14, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

But the instructions pretty clearly say "For promotion, if an image is listed here for about seven days with four or more supporting votes (including the nominator), and the consensus is in its favor, it can be added to the Wikipedia:Featured pictures list." These noms were in the evaluation stage for seven or more days but didn't garner four or more supporting votes. I think we should either:

1) not relist them - but just close with no promotion, or

2) change the wording in the above closure instruction. Perhaps to something like: "Nominations are under voting consideration for seven days, or until there are at least four votes including the nominator's. After this time, if the image attains a consensus is in its favor, it can be added to the Wikipedia:Featured pictures list."

Thoughts? Debivort 06:31, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

(2) is ambiguous and an example of how difficult it will be to define what is, in effect, a slightly vague time-slot.(1) may be a little harsh, but it makes more sense. The reality is noms hang about for more than seven days anyway. With this welcome flexibility and a commitment to delist once it seems unikely to be promoted, we have a "back door" which can be exited and the nom re-entered if anyone cares enough to do it. I wonder, though, whether a re-nom shouldn't be allowed within a certain time – say a month? – to allow time to "freshen the eye" with repect to the image. Good call this, it was starting to bug me too :) mikaul^talk 07:31, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

It's possible that if a nomination has under four votes, it was simply nominated at a bad time and didn't get a fair run, so stretching the seven day limit a bit might bring in some more votes that could sway consensus towards promotion. But I do agree that for the most part, if a nomination has run its course, there should be no promotion. --Tewy 19:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Good points Mik and Tewy - so - how do we resolve this so that all noms are treated uniformly? Debivort 19:31, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

That's why it's about seven days. MER-C 13:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

The nomination I most recently relisted was the Moon one. At the time I came to close it there was one support (from the nominator), one comment and one oppose. Technically yes I could have closed it due to lack of consensus, but it hardly seems fair to decide anything from such a small sample size. I would only do this for noms with an extreme lack of comments, eg I closed this one, as even with a lack of comments it was obvious where consensus was heading. It seems to me that if consensus is impossible to determine because of a lack of comments then that isn't fair on the picture. Raven4x4x 01:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I think fairness derives from uniform application of the promotion rules to all noms. If noms should be given extra time for voting, then let's build that into the procedure - I outlined one possible way above. Debivort 01:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

The "about seven days" comes from afd, which I'm sure most of us are familiar with. I don't have any particular view on relisting, except that is should happen when there is insufficient opinions to decide. If I'm not sure, I just leave it until consensus is reached. Either way, I don't think we should codify exactly what consensus is at FPC as Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. (Not to mention that I probably won't read the definition).

Which reminds me, I might get around to zapping that owl one tomorrow. MER-C 13:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

There's no reason to lay down laws, I agree, but if the guidelines at the top mentioned lack of clear consensus leading to closure, at least there is something to point people to. The Moon one is a good example of a pic that everyone is so sick of seeing that they just got used to scrolling past and don't even notice it's there. Close it, leave it, and sure as God made little green men, it'll pop back up eventually.mikaul^talk 14:04, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Replacing a FP

While I was browsing around the USGS Astrogeology Martian Hemisphere Point Perspectives website I discovered a higher resolution image of Valles Marineris than the current FP of the same subject. Actually it is an identical image, but for some reason the USGS website has a larger image than the NASA website. I realize that I could upload a higher resolution image and link to it through the "Other Versions" field, but wouldn't it be better to have the higher resolution image more prominent? I'm hesitant to step on anyone's toes because it is linked to so many other pages and maybe my idea of "better" would be considered by some to be a step in the wrong direction. Is there some sort of standard in dealing with these types of situations? Please let me know your opinion. Cacophony 09:05, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi. If the image is essentially the same as the current FP but clearly of higher quality, you can just upload the higher quality version over the current one and optionally post a note here. If the image is not essentially the same and clearly of higher quality, you can suggest replacement via Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates#Nomination_for_delisting. Cheers, --KFP (talk | contribs) 19:50, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office

Why was this nomination moved to "suspended nominations"? Debivort's copyright concern appears to have been a joke. There are obviously no copyright problems with this standard White House release. Chick Bowen 04:38, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Never mind--dealt with. Chick Bowen 04:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

The joke wasn't that obvious, so I understand the misunderstanding by the user who closed the nomination. ^_^ Jumping cheese 04:44, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

D'oh! Next time, more smiley faces. Debivort 05:53, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Discrepancy in the featured picture count

There is about a 1% discrepancy in the number of featured pictures at the moment. See WT:FP#Discrepancy in the featured picture count for more information. Please comment over there. MER-C 13:11, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Problem with Rule of Thirds article

Hi all -- I'm having a bit of a problem with an anonymous editor on the article Rule of thirds, who keeps editing the article to include an unsourced statement, on the grounds that he believes it's true without citing a credible reference. His reasoning amounts to unsourced speculation and/or original research. Despite explaining why his statement cannot stand on the talk page, he is being insistent, and if I revert again I will be violating 3RR. I would appreciate it if some of the regular participants here could take part in the discussion there, even if it's to disagree with me. Thanks... -- Moondigger 16:35, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

more on relisting

OK folks - so the practice of relisting noms for greater discussion is clearly well intentioned. The most recent relisting was done with the rationale of generating "a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached."

But, what if this nom gets more attention in this pass, but it is mixed? What if it gets 50% supports and 50% opposes?

Under the normal criteria, we say that's failing to achieve a consensus for promotion. But it certainly isn't a consensus not to promote either! So should we relist noms that are 50/50% (but receive lots of votes) because no consensus has been reached? I say no - they failed to get a promote consensus - just like noms that don't generate enough enthusiasm to get even 4 support votes.

The argument that there was some coincident fluke in voting activity, because of which there are fewer voters active, seems not to hold any water because other simultaneous noms receive plenty of votes and discussion. My two cents. Debivort 04:17, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

First, I agree with the gist of your original point up the page. If no more than four votes are collected withing seven days, a nom should be removed. Lack of response = lack of interest = uncompelling image; I don't buy the "fluke" hypothesis either.

Second, I can't see why there should be special rules on consensus for FPCs. A 50-50 vote is even greater argument for non-promotion than no interest at all, IMO. It does suggest a re-nomination at a later date (I think I suggested a "sabbatical" period of a month up the page somewhere) might be a worthwhile venture, but in the case of those with insufficient votes, nominees should probably take note if the few comments they do get are strongly negative..

In general, relisting should only be for exceptional cases, like updated images, copyright clarification, that sort of thing. mikaul^talk 11:26, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Quick opinions

I'm tempted to suggest one more picture of mine: Image:EileanDonanInsideView.jpg - however, I've come to the realisation that I'm a poor judge of my own photographs. Anyone think it's worth nominating? Adam Cuerden ^talk 23:15, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

This type of question is exactly what Wikipedia:Picture peer review is for. Admittedly, it's not the most watched page on the project, but you might get the feedback you need there. Enuja 23:27, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Might is the key word. I put an image up there three weeks ago and have not had a simple comment on it - good, bad or otherwise. Several other pics have suffered the same fate. AUTiger » talk 00:17, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying don't nominate, but I think there may be some complaints about composition and the completely blown out sky. If in doubt, give it a try. --jjron 09:05, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the blown out sky would probably be a big complaint, as well as some purple fringing in the upper left. It would be a tough nomination to promote, if you ask me. --Tewy 17:08, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Results of a failed FPC nomination

I have two proposals for steps to be taken whenever a FPC nomination fails:

(1) Per the discussion at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Christus (mosaic at Ravenna), the image's page can have some kind of indication that the image was nominated for FPC but did not pass. This is done for articles that fail to pass a nomination for Featured Article status. If the concern is that putting a "This picture failed" tag on the image page is degrading to the photographer or uploader, then perhaps a milder approach is to use the tag only for images that might conceivably be re-nominated, so that it's easy for potential nominators to first review the discussion of the original failed nomination.

(2) After the nomination fails, keep the discussion of the failed nomination on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates for another week or so. Right now, the discussion disappears as soon as the nomination fails, and then an interested party has to poke around in the archives to see what the last few comments were and what the admin's comments (if any) were.

Thoughts? Spikebrennan 20:22, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• I agree there should be a tag, if only for the convenience of nominators. Failed FA and GA noms get such a tag, I believe. BTW, spike, the discussions don't disappear, they are simply archived, eg: Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/July-2007. Debivort 22:09, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• I disagree for the reason you stated. People, even though they shouldn't, judge a photo which has failed a FPC nom as worse than if it had never been put up. I remember a while ago (maybe half a year) the people over at the water article were debating what to use as the lead image. And one of my photos was suggested, but the fact that it had previously failed a FPC nom was used as a bad point about it. People can relatively easily see the file links history with a FPC subpage in it and see that it has previously been nominated IMO --Fir0002 22:20, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Fir. Just hit control+F and type "featured picture candidates". However, consensus can change and renominations on possibly feature-worthy images are OK after a reasonable period of time. MER-C 12:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, I think a tag could be made quite polite and even encouraging of renomination, that said, it is more work for the already over-burdened closers, and that is my source of ambivalence. What happened to the bot effort? Debivort 14:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, but the volume is too low for a bot to be useful at the moment (hint, hint) - it would be quicker to do it manually at the moment. MER-C 12:04, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Debivort, I am aware that the discussions are archived, but simply keeping them on the main FPC page for, say, a week, under a category called something like "Recently closed nominations" would enable one to find the information all in one place. Alternately, "Recently closed nominations" can simply be a link to the appropriate section of the archive page. Spikebrennan 10:48, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The latter idea - a link to the the current archive page is a great idea, but I won't support making the FPC page longer and even clumsier to load unless the reason was really compelling. Debivort 14:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I would not leave the images an extra week. Even on a high speed line, this page is huge and sometimes slow. I would like a link to recently closed nominations placed on the page, just for ease of use. I do like the idea of adding a "this was a FPC" box to the image; for our purposes it is easy to tell from the "this image is linked from" section of the page, and I don't think it is useful anywhere else. Zakolantern 16:30, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

A link to recently closed nominations would be better than leaving them for a week, I also support the "FPC box" idea ;) ^8thstar 16:58, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Fir in that you can simply view the "File links" section of the subpage to see if the image had been nominated before. I also agree with others that creating a new section would make an already large page huge. I understand the reasons for these proposals, but they're just not needed at this time. --Tewy 17:31, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Fir.. a permanent "failed fpc" box will only act as a disincentive, and be unfair on photographers who have their works nominated by others, only to have the image tarred with a 'not good enough' tag. It's not like reviewers of fpc's have any problem working out which images have failed previously anyway. —Pengo 07:36, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

• When I first looked at this, this proposal sounded good, but as I thought about it, it seemed like less and less of a good idea. For one thing, the closing procedure is already too complicated. For another, it is true that "failed nom" looks like a scarlet letter. If the closing procedure ever becomes automated, I'd be interested in putting a failed FPC template on the image's talk page (not the image page itself), but that's about it. I, too have wondered: "what was the decision on that FPC nom I voted on?" but it really isn't hard to check the archive or watch a subpage you're particularly interested in. Enuja 13:22, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose links tag per Fir0002 and others; the file links section is sufficient. And there's already a link to the recently closed nominations on the FPC page, although I must say it's not all that obvious (at the top of the page in the list of links in the blue box on the right-hand side, it's the third bottom one called Featured picture archive; it goes straight to the current month). --jjron 08:45, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Whats going on here?

Aguest 9 picture of the day

Picture of the day

Nevado de Toluca is a large stratovolcano in central Mexico, located about 80 km west of Mexico City near the city of Toluca. It is generally cited as the fourth highest of Mexico's peaks, after Pico de Orizaba, Popocatépetl, and Iztaccíhuatl, although by some measurements, Sierra Negra is slightly higher. It is often called by the Nahuatl name Xinantécatl, "Senor Desnudo" in spanish, which is usually translated as "The Naked Man" although other etymologies have been suggested such as" Lord of the Cornstalks" (chinām(itl) 'cornstalks' + tēcatl 'lord of').Photo credit: Global Volcanism Program: Nevado de Toluca

that aint featured --Childzy ^{(Talk|Contribs)} 23:04, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. The person who wrote that has been notified. I just haven't gotten around to doing a new one yet. howcheng {chat} 23:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

• thanks for letting me know it fair confused me (not that thats hard) --Childzy ^{(Talk|Contribs)} 23:28, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Done now. howcheng {chat} 23:44, 2 August 2007 (UTC)