Commons talk:Featured picture candidates/Archive 7

Commons:Featured picture candidates/Set Candidate - Henry Holiday's Illustrations to Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark"

This one of mine will probably be difficult to close, but if someone wants to say how it is closed (e.g. tally up the results, say if it's promoted or not), then I'll do the rest of the work. I don't feel comfortable saying my own images are promoted, but I'm not about to cause our rather overworked closers tons of work over it. Just shove a message on my talk page when you're ready for me to step in Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:00, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

There is no reason why you shouldn't close your own noms. It clearly has passed, though I personally wouldn't have accepted it in the first place. Be my guest and promote at 8 pro - 2 contra. Lycaon (talk) 17:05, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you're sure, done. Adam Cuerden (talk)

I am, it's just a matter of counting, unlike on en:. Lycaon (talk) 19:10, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Why do I feel it personally

I'm writing this post mostly for myself, not to complain. Let's say I'm speaking to myself aloud :)
I am going to count few situations and try to explain to myself why I feel personally the way I am treated here:

1. Situation #1 .Comment by lycaon. There are no rules how many alternatives could be added to the nomination. To the best of my knowledge lycaon never made a similar comment on other users nominations. I do consider the comment, which was made by lycaon two times at this nomination as a harassment, a harassment by the one, who hates me personally.

1. Situation #2. I asked the user to include info about location of the image in the image description. My question was simply ignored. Let me guess that, if the same question would have been posted by let's say Richard, it will be addressed timely and properly and this brings me to the

1. situation #3. Here I did mention in the nomination that the image was taken in ZOO. Richard asked me to add the info to the image description and I did, but the same Richard supported the image from situation #2 and many other ZOO images never asking to add Zoo info to the description.

I could bring up more situation like those, but I believe it is enough. You are right, Richard, FPC is turning into QIC, but not because unique images with minor quality problems are featured rarely, but rather because the images of the same birds, insects and animals are featured over and over again.--Mbz1 (talk) 17:33, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I propose an entirely separate FP candidate page for hoverflies. --Calibas (talk) 01:55, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Can't help.   • Richard • [®] • 23:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Images of the same subject and the same exact material should be nominated for delisting and the best one kept. I try to never nominated any of my images if another equivalent existed, even if both would individually quality. Ideally they should all feature a different aspect. Having many FPs of the same subject is not a problem if they each show a different aspect of the subject. -- Ram-Man 01:28, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Ram-Man, could you please elaborate a little bit more, and maybe privide some examples of those different aspect of the subject in your understanding. For example, now in the current FP nominations we have 4 different nominations of the same dragonfly (the images weretaken few minutes apart). Do you believe they should be nominated as alternatives or each of them could be promoted on its own assuming the quality is OK? --Mbz1 (talk) 01:56, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Problem With The FP Image

Okay, compare the 3 images. Featured pictures are supposed to be the highest quality images we have on Wiki Commons, yet the logo we have for it is, in my opinion, the ugliest. I propose a complete redesign of the FP star. --Calibas (talk) 02:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that it is ugly, but compared to the other two, it definitely fades into the background. It isn't eye-catching. As it is, the quality logo simply looks bolder and more important. Maedin\^talk 06:22, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I much prefer the FP star to the other logos, because it is simple and recognisable. The two other logos are either too complex (the VI logo) or lacks contrast (the QI logo). --Aqwis (talk) 10:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I love the FP logo. The others may be flashy, but the star is simple and easy make out. -- Ram-Man 01:23, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

From my point of view only the featured picture candidate image is relevant. I did not even know about the existence of the QI.. Consequently from my pov it is a non issue.The reason is quite obvious, the other two provide no real benefit and the "valued image" is only created to provide an argument not to feature some. GerardM (talk) 07:27, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

How about File:Utmarkt Guld.svg? ØSalamander (Talk / Contributions) 05:26, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd actually say the opposite. FP logo is prettiest. Noodle snacks (talk) 07:21, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree, but it is overshadowed by two bolder, more colourful illustrations. Maedin\^talk 07:41, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I think this one makes a lot more sense to use as the FP image. The much easier to obtain VI gets a gold star, while FP gets a bronze star... --Calibas (talk) 02:33, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

•  Support This icon looks an order of magnitude better than the current one. I agree that something should be done to make the three icons more streamlined, as they currently are too diverse. -- JovanCormac (talk) 19:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
  • As long as streamlining does not imply that the VI logo or its color is changed because very many resources has been spend on designing that and selecting it among several candidates in two rounds, make templates and pages with matching skin, etc., I don't care . I basically agree that the current FP logo is not particularly "nice" to look at. Be adviced though that a logo is a strong identifier for an image project, and changing the color as much as suggested can lead to confusion among non-regulars, not understanding what the this "new logo" is about. Is it some "super FP"? The winner of POTY? Or what is it? When logos are modernized it is usually done in small steps, gradually transforming it into a more "modern" look, and I would propose to do something similar here as well. I also think it is important that the logos are quite different such that they can be easily distinguished when seen in thumbnail. Personally I would also prefer, that of the FP color is to change, that it does not approach the VI-colors, to avoid possible confusion. If you think it is misleading that the FP color is close to bronze and the VI color is close to gold, then rather change it in a different direction, which will not lead to such ranking confusion, for instance, go grey-scale. Grey-scale in a color-world sticks out as well very prominently. --Slaunger (talk) 20:15, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
• I think it is a pointless discussion comparing the logos or the purpose of each logo. Each represents an acknowledgement of some valued attributes of the image it is attached too. Comparing the logos is as pointless as comparing potatoes to bears. QI and VI are not awards for second and third rate FPs, each project has its own goals and criteriia. That someone thinks FPs are superior to QIs or VIs (and should therefore be gold rather than bronze!!) just represents their personal priorities. By all means develop more striking logos if you want, but don't be under the illusion that this is some sort of gold/silver/bronze medal competition!! :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 01:49, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I disagree. The idea behind the Featured Pictures is that they are, to quote Commons:Valued_images, "of both extraordinary value and technical quality". Therefore, FPs are required to fulfill both VI and QI criteria, and consequentially superior to images that satisfy only one of those two points. I believe this should be reflected by the icons used to represent them. -- JovanCormac (talk) 10:41, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
    • It is not correct that FPs have to fulfill QI and VI criteria. They often do, but there are many exceptions: For instance File:Bild 478.jpg, File:USA Antelope-Canyon.jpg and File:Antelope Canyon Mittags.jpg are all FPs of Antelope Canyon, but only one of them can possibly be VI, as only one VI per scope "Antelope Canyon" is allowed. And there are very many FPs which would fail to fulfill the VI geocoding requirement or some of the other requirements concerning metadat on the image page and categorization. Concerning QI, for instance File:Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre.jpg is also an FP but it does certainly not fulfill QI criteria. That said, it is pretty evident that FP is considered the most prestigious of the three by a majority of users. It is pretty well known that it is harder to get an FP than a QI or a VI. That said, I do not think you have to think in terms of a gold, silver, bronze ranking. The three different projects cannnot be so simply ranked relative to each other - each project has its own emphasis. --Slaunger (talk) 11:11, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
• The original statement "Featured pictures are supposed to be the highest quality images we have on Wiki Commons" is not actually true. Despite various pages that describe COM:FP images as "some of the finest on Commons" and "our main goal is to feature most valuable pictures", "highest quality" on Commons doesn't appear to have ever been the criteria. Most of its life the voting on COM:FP appears to have been about eye appeal and 'wow'. Even the criteria listed as "most valuable" seldom seems to be the actual criteria, unless what you value is eye appeal and 'wow' (I think it was due to the development of QI and also the increasing numbers of nominations, that stricter technical 'quality' criteria were introduced for FP). In a nut shell: FP is about attractive images suitable for POTD (to show off some of our best), QI is about improving the technical quality of uploads by Common's photographers, VI is about recognising significant & valuable images independant of attractivness and quality (those other qualities are tie breakers when choosing the best in a particular 'scope'). Ranking the 'awards' depends upon your priorities. Also, as most nominations for any of these 'awards' appear to be from their uploaders, it is hard to say whether they are even the 'best' on Commons within their groups. --Tony Wills (talk) 13:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose. A typical color-of-the-bikeshed discussion. The current FP star is fine. --Dschwen (talk) 20:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Quick question

I was just wondering what peoples opinions on this image were: File:Corey Taylor of Slipknot at Optimus Alive Festival 2009 2.jpg I know the resolution is lower than 2 million pixels but I think it is really an astounding image. I was wondering if it was worth proposing it or will it just fail because of it's resolution? Rezter (talk) 00:41, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that it would fail, but there's no guarantee of that. As you might have already noticed, there is a current candidate that is under the size limit, but, because of the subject matter, is running at 7 supports to 10 opposes. The majority of candidates that are below the required limit do get speedy closed, however. Do what you think is most appropriate; you won't be wasting anyone's time if you do nominate it. I would consider making a comment though, that you're aware it's under size but that you think the quality mitigates that. Additionally, you could consider contacting the creator and requesting a larger size. Many Flickr members downsample significantly, and he almost certainly has this at a higher resolution, and may be willing to release this single image. Maedin\^talk 11:40, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Mistaken promotion

Could someone please tell me what the procedure is when an image has just been featured when it shouldn't have been? Presumably the difficult part is informing the user who thinks they just got a featured picture. Do we ignore the error and let the picture retain its featured status? Maedin\^talk 06:32, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

• I don't have much say, but just correct the mistake, most users here are adults and shouldn't mind. Noodle snacks (talk) 11:12, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
• I presume you are talking about File:ComputerHotline_-_Syrphidae_sp._(by)_(2).jpg. IMO the promotion of this picture is a serious mistake that should be corrected (i.e. unpromote, then re-nominate). Not only did it not receive 5 votes in support (only 4), but it also received 3 "oppose" (albeit 1 of them after end of period) and 1 "neutral" votes, meaning half of the people who voted did not support the nomination! JovanCormac (talk) 13:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
• I corrected the promotion, removed it from featured lists, and informed Thomas. It is already selcted as picture of the day for August 25, 2009. Should we remove it there too? Yann (talk) 17:49, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, I think we should remove it as POTD. It has to be FP to become POTD. --Slaunger (talk) 18:04, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
    • OK. I removed the image. How to select another one? Yann (talk) 19:02, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
      • Thank you for doing that, Yann, I didn't feel comfortable doing it myself. Maedin\^talk 06:30, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Minor change to nomination procedure

I've implemented the results from #Proposal for portrait format vs. landscape format equation. I also cleaned up what people filling out the nomination see - hiding some of the material that they shouldn't be editing anyway in a subst'd template. It seems to work fine, with a hopefully very easy to use interface, and, thanks to using the subst: function, a very clean output. Let me know of any problems.

If I broke something vital click here, and change preload=Template:FPCnomNewerPreload back to preload=Template:FPCnomNewPreload - though I would ask that you not do this on a whim, since the proposal did have strong support.

Also, the sizes are set by {{FPCnom/Basic}} - I believe they're about right compared to what we've been using; we can poke at it as needed.

Adam Cuerden (talk) 08:02, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Cool.   • Richard • [®] • 15:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

It looks good, Adam, thank you! Maedin\^talk 15:18, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

No worries! Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:42, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I've changed the default format from portrait to landscape in {{FPCnomNewerPreload}} as this is the most common format and soem nominators seems to have forgotten to change the format for their landscape nominations giving them a portrait height, and thus a larger preview size than agreed. --Slaunger (talk) 09:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Censorship of File:Wiki-mam-intcs.png

I nominated the above image and found that it had been simply removed on the grounds that the page should be "family safe". I find no such rule on Commons:Image guidelines, but am well aware that the Wikipedia and Commons are not censored for minors. I am replacing the image with a link, not because I believe this to be the appropriate course of action, but because I think it is more likely this way that the link will remain and a consensus on what is allowed for Featured and Quality pictures can emerge.

Those of us working on the en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Sexology and sexuality project do not consider the subject trivial or obscene. Nor, in the age of the AIDS epidemic do we think it should be hidden away from anyone. Particularly striking and useful pictures, such as this should be celebrated as Featured and Quality pictures as much as those on any other subject. --Simonxag (talk) 14:46, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I think there is a difference between censorship and making something safe for work. I often check FPC during my lunch hour while at my office desk, and was rather alarmed to find that nomination on my work PC. Not because I am offended by the subject matter in the slightest, but because I could get sacked if someone had turned around and seen that on my monitor. For whatever reason it was removed, I support having it only linked to (with a NSFW warning), because it's a common courtesy for people to expect that they will not be viewing potentially dangerous images. If this doesn't happen, then I would have to give FPC a wide berth at the office, at least until the nomination isn't one of the first on view! I fully support these kinds of things at FPC, on Commons or at en:, but please don't make it difficult for people to actually view them. Some people edit from public computers in libraries and such, and therefore they would also be at risk and find themselves kicked from their local library. Maedin\^talk 15:01, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

• • Maybe it is fair to remind that it was me who removed the nomination and also suggested a link to be inserted in its place. No censorship at all, only common sense, considering that most of us probably wouldn't like our kids, or chiefs, to be surprised by this imge on our screen. Anyway, and considering the fact that this (to the best of my knowledge) the first nomination by this user, it looks a bit like POV to me -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 15:19, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
    • I take your points: I am used to seeing these images on pages that are already about the subject they illustrate. --Simonxag (talk) 15:45, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
• "Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor." Yep, it's censorship. We live in a sexually repressed society and the image might offend people. Personally, I'd make it PotD, I don't view the human body or any of it's functions as obscene. That's ridiculous. --Calibas (talk) 02:30, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm all for promoting images of this sort (providing they meet the guidelines), but I'll leave it to you, Calibas to explain to my boss why I'm viewing images of a pornographic nature on my work computer during lunch. I'm sure she'll be impressed with your determination to stamp out 'censorship'. I'll be sure to drop by and congratulate you on your ideals after I've been sacked.

In short, there's a difference between censorship, and using common sense to accomodate people. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 07:56, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Now that they have been expressed I accept the concerns of those who objected to the image being visible on this page. If you access a page on the Wikipedia you expect to see that subject illustrated. That's not the case with general pages such as this and images that might actually get the viewer into trouble shouldn't be presented inline. I think that should be stated in the Guidelines for nominators for all to read (and also to make it clear that the prohibition extends thus far and no further).

I am still unhappy about what was done. The image was not replaced with a link, it was deleted. The edit summary stated Sorry, FPC is supposed to be family safe. Insert a link if you like. None of the "common sense" that motivated the deletion was placed in the discussion. An editor less familiar with the Commons would have found it gone (at some point)assumed that they had done something "inappropriate" and backed off. I wonder how often this is what has happened in the past! Perhaps the term "censorship" is emotive: that's down to me, after all I am the one who had to start the discussion. Fortunately the term "family safe" seems to have been dropped: the Commons is not censored for minors. --Simonxag (talk) 12:10, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it could have been handled more delicately. Instead of being deleted, a link should have been inserted in its place. Fortunately, I do not believe this situation happens regularly; we are not often turning away potential contributors by deleting their nominations. Hopefully in the future we will be more aware. And I, for one, welcome images of that nature, so please don't be put off by our initial reaction (or the opposes now), ;-) Maedin\^talk 13:59, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Species identification as a FP requirement, another oppose reason discussion

I noticed that on Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/File:Vlinder1.jpg, two voters seem to oppose promotion on the grounds that the species of the butterfly pictured has not been identified.

We all know that species ID is not one of the FP guidelines, and whether it should be or not is not my point here. The point is, should those votes even count? Imagine seeing a vote like " Oppose Because I don't like the photographer. -- User", or, a little less provoking, " Oppose I have a hangover. -- User" - surely there would be an outcry and demand that the vote in question be retracted or simply discarded. While I am of course not comparing those "reasons" to the species ID one, what they have in common is that they have absolutely nothing to do with the picture itself. And it is my belief that when voting for a Featured Picture, reasons unrelated to the picture should be invalid.

But of course arguing about which reasons are valid for opposing is void as long as it is possible to oppose without stating any reason at all - something which definitely should not be allowed IMO. -- JovanCormac (talk) 13:45, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I totally agree with that. Opposing without stating any reason at all should not be allowed. Yann (talk) 13:57, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

• I think as long as the guidelines does not say "ID is not a requirement" the current opposes are valid. If it's not mentioned in the guidelines it's up to the voter to determine if it's an important enough reason to oppose. /Daniel78 (talk) 14:32, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

• • Actually, there were a few votes that pretty much amounted to "oppose - I do not like the user" votes a few months ago. No links; situation not worth dragging up again, but it's worth noting the votes were not discounted. (Though there was a strong reaction against it that made them very well-supported by most of the other voters). Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:26, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
• I am not against people for opposing for strange reasons, but I regularly point out that some reasons for opposing are not FP criteria. It sometimes appears that people are influenced by other peoples reasons, and quote a previous opposition as though it is some irrefutable criteria. With species identification it is an QI criteria and often it appears that people believe it is an FP criteria - hence my simple {{Info}} statement. Really people can oppose for whatever reason they like, but if they state their reason others can look closely for themselves at that aspect and decide whether it is a relevant criteria. Also I trust that if individuals appear to oppose nominations on spurious grounds, that others will recognise the fact and the credibility of all that opposer's reasons will be shot, and others will not give them any weight when voting. --Tony Wills (talk) 22:21, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

• There is much more to an FP than the picture itself. This is also spelled out in the full guideline, which is linked to from the nomination page. That includes taking care of the image page. Therefore it is indeed justified to oppose due to lacking id. What is the use of a pretty picture if you do not know what you see? And how should users find the image if there are no accurate and informative metadata? This is also in line with the project scope, where the aim of Commons is to provide "...educational media content..." with "The expression “educational” is to be understood according to its broad meaning of “providing knowledge; instructional or informative”." The homework (including identification) should be done prior to nomination. There are plenty of users here willing to help id, or who can assist in finding someone who can id. And there are plenty of external forums as well. --Slaunger (talk) 22:28, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
• I agree that it should be encouraged to provide a reason for opposing (and supporting) for that matter, but we also have to keep in mind that this is a multilingual site, and several reviewers may have a hard time expressing themselves in written English as this is the de facto language used. --Slaunger (talk) 22:28, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
  • That is true, and I have been thinking about how this problem could be overcome. I have created a template called OpposeReasons that does not require knowledge of the English language to state reasons for opposing, only to remember a few abbreviations. Examples:
    • {{OpposeReasons||f|c}} gives                                 Oppose    ▪ Focus problems  ▪ Low contrast 
    • {{OpposeReasons|My custom reason|p}} gives       Oppose  My custom reason  ▪ My custom reason  ▪ Overprocessed 
    • {{OpposeReasons||sm|oe|dof}} gives                      Oppose    ▪ Too small  ▪ Overexposed  ▪ Shallow depth of field 
      • I think it is interesting templates. If internationalized they could be of some use as the standard oppose reasons could be displayed in the language of the user. Personally, I probably would not be using such standardized oppose reasons template, as I find them a bit too "mechanical". --Slaunger (talk) 21:41, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I believe that a template like that could in time replace the standard "Oppose" template, in a redesigned voting process which requires people to state a reason when opposing. -- JovanCormac (talk) 07:22, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

• One set of FP rules cannot cover all cases and certain types of pictures need to be judged on different grounds than other pictures. Not specifying the species of an animal, in this case a butterfly, is similar to not specifying where a non-abstract landscape picture was taken, which to me would definitely be a reason to oppose a landscape picture. --Aqwis (talk) 23:20, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I am all for better descriptions, even adequate descriptions. If complaints of "not identified" is short-hand for "lack of good description" then fine. But often it seems to be demanding a species id, which (with due respect to those who do identify their images) is often very difficult to do accurately from a single photo. IMHO an inaccurately identified image is worse than an unidentified image. Most people getting images from here are unlikely to realise that most species ids are mostly guess-work, and they have not been verified by anyone, certainly not an 'expert'. Guesswork is not so much of a problem for 'higher' orders of animals where there are relatively few to choose from, but insects, fungi and even plants are usually a bit more difficult. So unrealistically demanding a species id is a bad idea. Often id down to say a genus level with only a tentative species id, is appropriate. --Tony Wills (talk) 05:08, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Tony. Living organisms should be id'ed to a taxonomic level, where it is visually distinct. For insects that will often be at the genus or level, for most plants at the species level sometimes genus level and sometimes subspecies level. Sometimes it can be done finer than that based on additional info. For instance knowledge about the distribution from a sources reference of more detailed taxa coupled with a knowledge of the location of a native living organism can be used to get further than what can be seen on the image. The important point is that the nominator shall not be forced to extrapolate sourced references into guesswork just to get to the finest possible taxon and meet some artificial requirement. --Slaunger (talk) 21:41, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Guidelines for non-photographic images and animations

Looking at the current guidelines, one cannot help but notice that they are exclusively geared towards photographic images.

Obviously, though, non-photographic images like technical illustrations are eligible to become FPs and QIs as well. It is clear that criteria like exposure, resolution and depth of field have no meaning when dealing with vector illustrations. Animations can be worthy of FP or QI status with a fraction of the 2 Mpx resolution prescribed by the guidelines (see File:Muybridge_race_horse_animated_184px.gif).

Because of these shortcomings of the current guidelines, I propose that we create separate sets of guidelines for non-photographic images and animations. -- JovanCormac (talk) 10:48, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Remember that guidelines are just guide lines, they are not rules, there is no prescription for what makes a good FP. For instance there is not a prescribed resolution, just a size below which many people are disinclined to vote in support of an image. The FP guidelines are a set of criteria that many people use when judging images, so when writing guidelines to help people submitt other kinds of work, remember you are not being presciptive, you are describing how people have been assessing illustrations/animations, and what makes or breaks the promotion of them. --Tony Wills (talk) 12:56, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

True, but the fact is that most people probably look at the guidelines first when they find a photo they really like, before nominating it. The first nomination is quite a big step for anyone (I know it was for me), and people tend to stay on the safe side with such a step, meaning they tend to not nominate a picture that they're unsure of whether it might make FP or not. For such people (the more experienced users don't need the guidelines anyway), the complete lack of even a mention of illustrations or animations in the guidelines (while they talk about photos everywhere) might look like an implicit statement that non-photographic images are not wanted as Featured Pictures - which is quite a disaster. And users seem to be listening, all right: To me, it looks as if illustrations and animations make up less than 3% of the FP library - and they certainly make up less than 1% of the nominations. -- JovanCormac (talk) 13:25, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't objecting to you writing some (just suggesting what they should be based on :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 20:33, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I might indeed write some suggestions quite soon. Any more ideas for guideline points are greatly appreciated. -- JovanCormac (talk) 22:14, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

The current guide lines are very much about digital photos. This means that historic material, restored material is judged with the notions of digital photography in mind. When you address the guidelines, you may want to factor historic photography in as well. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 07:17, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Good point! I will think of that. -- JovanCormac (talk) 13:28, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreeing with GerardM. Durova (talk) 16:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Also agreed. Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:50, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

So Many Nominations

I've been away from commmons for a few months, and just came back in the last month or so. I've got to say, wow there are a lot of nominations! This is probably a good thing, as it shows that Commons is getting more visibility. To my mind, about 40 or so per month is a good number for featured picture, enough to feed Picture of the Day with some extra. Yet in April there were 128 accepted into FP! And over 60 the next two months. It seems that a lot more people are looking at the FP page, and the top images generally get a large number of nominations.

Therefore, I'd like to put a suggestion to raise the nominations from 5 supports to 7 supports, everything else remaining the same. Looking at just the nominations active right now, most of the ones that are about to pass have far more than 7 anyway.

•  Support JalalV (talk) 08:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose I don't understand why raising the bar. FP is not only about POTD. Yann (talk) 09:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose, indeed, FP is not just a "feeder process" for POTD. --Aqwis (talk) 10:08, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose: this process is not a mere feeder for POTD; this would only serve to increase systemic bias: the fewer people understand an image instantly, the fewer vote on it; and if there's ever a downswing in numbers of voters- and we know there is around Christmas, and so on - the process breaks down completely. We can have two POTDs on the main page. We can't gain back users we drive off so easily. Adam Cuerden (talk) 12:12, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose in fact i think that there are soo many nominations, but your proposal will reduce number of featured pictures not number of nominations. Number of nominations may reduce for example some daily limit for nominations (or selfnominations) from one user. --Jklamo (talk) 13:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
•  Comment I certainly do not mind that we raise the bar, but I do not know if that is best done by raising the number of required support votes (it is one path). I think it is important that we constantly try to deve~lop and improve. Not only to keep our regular nominators challenged but also to improve our reputation as a media site as compared to other sites. There is a concern above that it could scare some contributors away. Well there is also the chance that if we raise the bar we could attract and recruit more professional media creators seeing this site as a pro-place as well.

Just prior to seeing this thread I needed a cool image of a canoe. I tried searching on Commons and I also tried on flickr.

I was dissapointed to see that the top hits at flickr were ten-fold more eye-catching than the search on Commons (don't you agree?). In all fairness the two sites have different purposes where Commons have more focus on the educational part, and regrettably our search engine (apparently) does not rank the results from a search such that the best images are shown first. However, it seems very evident for me, that we need to improve - a lot. Contrary to what many others state here, I honestly think that one of FPs major usages is to provide a feed for POTD - to be a show-off of brilliant and important images on the main page, and raising the bar such that POTD can just be fed by the very, very best we have to offer is one way to go to increase professionalism. I honestly think it has become too easy to get an FP as it is now. I have an image up now for review here, which has some quality problems, and I am surprised that it has not met more opposition until now.--Slaunger (talk) 20:11, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I honestly don't think that that would help attract people: a bar set too high risks giving people a bad experience where, say, they happen to nominate on a slow week and don't get anything promoted, feel we're ungrateful, and leave. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:54, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

As I said I am not sure raising the bar by raising the number of required support votes is the right thing to do (I do not know exactly how to raise the bar in the best way), but let me put it this way: For every 2300 files on Commons you find one featured picture. That means you can expect quite a lot from an FP. Think about it, the average user uploads 2300 images for every FP. Thus, I do not see a good point to try and retain nominators, whose nominations never pass because they are simple not up to a 'one in a 2300' standard. The challenge is to not make the experience a turnoff for the nominator and leave them in a state feeling, "if I can't get an FP there is no point in contributing". That can be done by giving the nominators some encouragements in the reviews. There is normally always something good to point out in a nomination, whilst opposing, and try to make them acqauinted with other areas on Commons where their contributions and competences can be of value and other image programs, like QI and VI. Another way we could improve could be to make it clear just how high the bar is before nominating. For instance by showing the FPs as a tiny, tiny 1/2300 slice of the big Commons pie. If you are very aware that you are trying to hit this small pie maybe the dissapointment in not hitting it in the first shot is less? --Slaunger (talk) 21:16, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

•  Comment I do agree with the general idea that the nomination process could use an overhaul, or at least a few additional rules. Like FPX, I believe that there should be a rule making possible a promotion before the 9 days are up, which seem awfully long for some "surefire" nominations. Look at this nomination for example, with 4 days to go it has 24  Support, 0  Neutral and 0  Oppose. No one believes this might not get promoted. I think there should be a way to do it earlier. Same with this nomination: After just 12 hours, it has received 10  Support votes and no negative ones. Surely there is no need to wait for 8 more days... -- JovanCormac (talk) 08:31, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I'll second that idea. Just like with FPX, there's little point leaving the nomination to drag on if the outcome is obvious. Maybe if it hits a pre-determined number of supports within a certain time limit? Obviously there would have to be case-by-case discussion, but I think this would work well. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 10:58, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
    • We could extend the "rule of the fifth day". Today, if a nomination has not gained any support (besides the nominators) after five days it can be removed as declined. We could extend this such that if a nomination has gained at least five support votes and no oppose votes after the fifth day it can be "speedy" promoted. That could help shorten the FPC page a little (but I still think the general bar should be set higher by some other means). --Slaunger (talk) 11:07, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

• I agree that we could expand the rule of the fifth day to include promotions. However, I strongly suggest that the point at which promotion can be "fast-tracked" be higher than only 5. At 5, it would take only 3 opposes to sink it, which is not at all unlikely in the remaining 4 days of the nomination. Plus, there are several nominations in the recent past that have gained 5 supports and still have enough opposes to prevent them from becoming FP. A figure more like 8 supports is (in my opinion) much more suitable to ensuring that the fast tracking of promotion doesn't have the unwanted side effect of reducing the quality of our FP promotions. Sorry if that sounds negative! Maedin\^talk 12:04, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

• I think that is a very valid point, and requiring 8 unanimous supports on the fifth day seems balanced for speedy promotion with low risk to promote an image which should not have been promoted. --Slaunger (talk) 12:08, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
• I totally agree, and in fact I think the rule should be as follows:

If at any point during the first 5 days of the voting period, the nomination has at least 10 votes of "support" (I think this is more cautious than 8) and the ratio of "support" to "oppose" votes is at least 2:1, the nomination may be closed and the picture promoted. -- JovanCormac (talk) 15:56, 30 July 2009 (UTC) I failed to consider the consequences of the "me and 9 friends" problem stated by Adam below. I retract this suggestion and believe we should instead implement his idea. -- JovanCormac 07:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that's a good guuideline. How about "If at any point during the last 5 days of the voting period, the nomination has at least 10 votes of "support" and the ratio of "support" to "oppose" votes is at least 3:1, the nomination may be closed and the picture promoted."

We need to make sure the image is up for long enough to receive widespread comment. Five days is a good minimum. Furthermore, this is meant to be rules for an expedited closure: The required ratio for speedy promotion ought to be higher, or it should probably run its full 10 days. Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:54, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I would support Adam's suggestions before Philipp's; I think if we intend to implement any support of speedy promotion, we should make it widely on the conservative side. If, after several months of experience, we are confident that we could afford to make the numbers or the ratios a little lower, we can change it then. But let's start cautiously, please? Maedin\^talk 18:13, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Aye. 3:1 would only not have succeeded if at least three more opposes (*) would have been given in the maximum of five days being cut off from the nomination. That's fairly reasonable, and by reducing it to, say, "last 4 days" or "last three days", it'd become even more unlikely that it wouldn't have passed. And, frankly, Philipp's really opens us up to "Let's me and my nine friends nominate some photos! I bet we'll get a lot of FPs! Heh heh." Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:49, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

(*) 10 supports could have no more than 3 opposes under that scheme, and 10s:5o just barely passes, so three more opposes.

I really think a fast track promotion should be based on unanimous support from at least 8 votes (10 is fine as well). As stated we should be conservative, and I would really prefer if a single alert user can stop a speedy promotion based on timed meatpuppet supports. --Slaunger (talk) 21:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

That works too, but there MUST be a delay built in: a lot of nominations can start out very well, then have an important problem raised, and the tide turns. We don't want to discourage that, so any speedy promote must be after a certain number of days. Adam Cuerden (talk) 00:00, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Speedy promotion after 5 days with unanimous support from 8 (or 10) votes sounds good for me. There is a delay and unanimousity is a good mirror to existing 5th rule day. --Jklamo (talk) 00:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree it should be unanimous for speedy promotion. 8 (or prefer 10) unanimous votes by the 5th day. --JalalV (talk) 02:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Adam, Jklamo and JalalV. But let us make it 10 unanimous supoorts after day five. 10 is easy to remember. It is a double up of the five supports after the full period, and it is sufficiently conservative to not risk promoting images, which would not be promoted with the old rules. --Slaunger (talk) 07:56, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

There is one thing we need to consider, however: Is this going to apply to sufficiently many nominations that it's worth doing it? If not, is it planned to slowly expand it until it is worth doing it, if things go well? We need a yes to one of the two questions before we consider taking this forwards. With ten or more supports, no opposes, the answer to the first is almost certainly "no" - so is the answer to the second "yes"? Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:52, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I did a quick count for July: 15 nominations in this month alone would have qualified for "speedy promotion", with several others only missing out by a whisker. To me, 15 in a month, one every two days, is a definite "yes" to the first question. Add to that approximately 8 current nominations that look well on their way to qualifying, as well. Maedin\^talk 18:10, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Which seems to clear the last concerns... Any objections in carrying it out? --Slaunger (talk) 21:57, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, if that's true, let's do it. Adam Cuerden (talk) 00:13, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm ready, but are we going to hold a vote? If yes, here is my  Support. -- JovanCormac 06:09, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I have been bold and added this fast track promotion scheme to the guidelines. Feel free to refactor what I have written there as I am not a native speaker.--Slaunger (talk) 14:32, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Featured Picture categories statistics

I have created a table showing the distribution of pictures among Featured Picture categories. I invite anyone to take a look at it; the statistics have the potential to surprise - or not, depending on what you expect. You can find it at User:JovanCormac/FPStatistics. -- JovanCormac (talk) 21:14, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Not much of a surprise. Bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs. --Dschwen (talk) 22:04, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it's bugs bugs birds bugs birds bugs bugs ;-) -- JovanCormac (talk) 05:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

More like bugs, bugs, birds, sunsets, bugs, bugs, restoration, bugs, bugs. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 11:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

All joking aside, I think it's time we seriously considered delisting a large number of arthropod shots. Just because a picture shows an insect and is detailed doesn't mean it should be featured. The bar for macro is really high on Commons, and there are several arthropod macros currently featured that wouldn't make it today. One example is this picture, which is about as ordinary as it gets. By contrast, see this one by the same author and you will know how high the bar really is, and that it is not neccessary to be satisfied with anything less. I will nominate several arthropod photos for delisting in the next few days. I'm still collecting them. Suggestions for nomination are welcome, I'll do the paperwork. -- JovanCormac (talk) 12:36, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I would rather see more images getting into FP from other areas than delisting old insect images. /Daniel78 (talk) 19:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Qu'il y ai beaucoup de photos d'insectes ne me dérange pas, il y a tellement d'espèces différentes! Ce qui est plus gênant, c'est quand il y en a beaucoup d'une même espèce courante. Dans le cas de plusieurs fois la même espèce seul les quelques meilleures devraient rester. --Luc Viatour (talk) 20:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Luc, it doesn't make sense to attack all arthropods the same; some species and genera are under-represented and others have multiple FPs. Maybe we could try to determine where we have significant excess within arthropods. Maedin\^talk 20:42, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I do not think existing bugs FPs should get special delisting attention. I welcome delisting of FPs which are not on par with current standards, but all types of FPs should be treated equally in that respect. Rather we should be glad to have so many talented macro photographers. I agree though that it would be very nice, if there more FPs from other less represented categories. But that should be achieved by recruitment, not by scaring of existing valuable contributors within macro photography. --Slaunger (talk) 20:53, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Slaunger is right. As many insect photos as there are, there is no reason to single out arthropods for delisting. I actually think an effort should be made to delist all the poor-quality images from the "early days" of FP, regardless of category. --JalalV (talk) 02:46, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't plan to "attack" any kind of pictures. If I see a FP that I don't believe meets today's standards, I nominate it (see my userpage for current nominations, they're all across the library), regardless of the category. However, I do think that we can (and should) demand particularly much from arthropod pictures. Why? Because there are so many of them, and they are easy to obtain. Don't protest just yet :) When voting on historical photographs, we let them get by with a quality that would never make FP on a digital photo. Why? Well, because you simply cannot expect more from a picture taken, say, in the 1940s. The arthropod category in the FP library shows us how much we can expect from a Featured arthropod picture - much more, in fact, than from featured pictures in many other categories: Supreme detail, vibrant colors, educational value. I think it is only fitting if we take this into account when voting on arthropod pictures (as well as on panoramas, which also have an extremely high standard). I know I do. -- JovanCormac 06:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 08:05, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to disregard Support from both nominator and creator alt. disregard them altogether

In this ongoing FPC, the nominator and user are two different users, and both have voted support. Personally, I would never had voted support for my own creation if another user had nominated it, as it seems like an unfair support bias kick-start of a nomination. However, we do not have anything stated in the guidelines telling this is not allowed, so I cannot say it is (formally) wrong what has been done in this specific nomination.

However, I would suggest that we added such a rule, that only one vote from uploader, nominator or creator is allowed to not inspire for teaming up with a friend, where the friend nominates and you then support as the creator.

Let me stress, that I am not trying to insinuate that teaming up has been done in the specific example.

As a matter of fact I have never understood why the vote from any of those should count, as they are sort of redundant. Of course, you support your own work or the work you nominate. For comparison, votes from creators and nominators are not counted at COM:VIC and at COM:QIC the practise is that you do not vote as the nominator or creator either (although, curiously, this is not stated explicitly in the guidelines).

Therefore, an alternative proposal would be completely disregard votes from creators and nominators just as in VIC and QIC. --Slaunger (talk) 21:18, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it's fine. If I think something by another user is so great that I nominate it, why should that mean that my vote shouldn't count? If anything, it's a rather strong support. Anyway, this would cause a lot more problems with counting votes, and would only serve to raise the bar in confusing ways, and discourage collaboration. Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:53, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

• QI & VI are completely different processes. I can not see any justification for not counting both nominators and creators votes, to do otherwise would mean that people who had their images nominated by someone else are at a disadvantage (effectively one less vote than if they nominated it themselves). Not allowing the nominator (whether that is the creator or other) to vote is just another way of upping the required votes by one, so why not just do that? Counting the nominators vote as an oppose if they are also the creator would be more useful ;) --Tony Wills (talk) 01:23, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• I know you are being tongue in cheek, but I think what you propose might just work. Especially not counting the nominators vote. However, I also like the idea of counting the creator's vote (such as creator/nominator) as an oppose. --JalalV (talk) 02:43, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• The last time someone nominated one of my restorations without telling me, I abstained. People criticized the abstention and it failed by a hair. This time I supported, and get criticized for supporting. When I nominate my own work at this project at anything approaching the rate of actual productivity, I get criticized and asked (by fellow administrators) to become less productive. The fact is, I have a total of 288 featured content credits across multiple WMF projects. Most of those are images, yet less than twenty percent of those credits are at Commons. This isn't funny. Stop dreaming up new and special rules on the spot to stymie productive editors. Durova (talk) 03:36, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
  •  Support Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 04:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't get the real point of this proposal. The nominator has put an image up because they believe it meets the criteria so why should their opinion not be counted, likewise for the creator or someone who edited the image to remove dust spots ? The corollary to this proposal is that if someone nominates an image of mine and I think it is not good enough, my oppose will not be counted—this also makes no sense. VC/QC comparisons are not comparing eggs and eggs. I think the process is working fine and this is not a good change - Peripitus (talk) 04:27, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• •  Support And sorry btw, I should have notified you, will in the future. -- JovanCormac 06:14, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
    • No need for apologies. It was a pleasant and flattering surprise, at least for a little while. Durova (talk) 14:36, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose I don't think there should be any rule banning anyone from voting for a picture. One person (the nominator) supports it, one vote. Another person (the creator) supports it, two votes. Even in high-profile politics, candidates are allowed to vote for themselves (and they do). -- JovanCormac 06:14, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• I can see why this is being suggested, but I find it rather discouraging and think it will hurt FPC. Not only will it be unnecessarily complicated, but it disregards perfectly valid supports. We have recently had a couple of situations where the creator actually opposed his/her own image; once, the opposer was also the nominator, and the other time the creator's image was nominated by someone else. People are capable of being objective about their images; in fact, some are probably more negative than positive about their own work. And honestly; if the nominator or the creator are considered biased and support without giving due consideration, that is never enough for promotion; if it gains three more supports and no opposes and it passes, then it was either good enough anyway, or the rest of us aren't doing our "job". Any of us who are actively interested in FPC can ensure that a creator and a nominator do nothing but boost the numbers a little; it might take a little more guts, to oppose when it isn't easy, but then that makes it your problem, not the fault of the nominator who supports his own nomination (I don't mean the your personally, of course). Tag teaming is more of an issue at QI; I have seen a non-regular at QI come in an promote each picture that a single user had there. I don't even know if it was intentional or not. At QI, it makes a difference, at FPC, the system is such that bias doesn't last long and can be quickly overturned. Maedin\^talk 06:36, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Noodle snacks (talk) 07:02, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I withdraw my proposal OK. It is pretty evident that a large majority of the regulars here is against this proposal of mine. That is OK, and actually i am glad the opinions are so consistent against it. Could we then perhaps state explicitly in the guidelines that both nominators, creators and uploaders can vote. Then we can avoid such a discussion again, in case another user like me finds that it is odd that nothing is mentioned about it in the guidelines, (and perhaps not would vote themselves as a creator in an equivalent situation). --Slaunger (talk) 08:02, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Picture Comment Template

Just something I've hacked together, as an idea for how commenting on a picture might be streamlined using a template. The main innovation is the ability to highlight a specific portion of the picture with a red rectangle, as well as the use of abbreviations for the most common oppose reasons.

Example:

{{PictureComment|File:NASA Mars Rover.jpg|300|240|0.3|0.55|0.1|0.3|{{Oppose}}|JovanCormac|I think the "head" of the rover is quite unsharp. ''(This comment is just for testing purposes.)''|b|c|dof|oe)}}

gives

Click for details -- unsigned

Syntax:

{{PictureComment
|/Picture name/ (with "File:" prefix)
|/Picture display width/ (*without* "px")
|/Picture display height/ (*without* "px", must be specified, should be proportional)
|/Left edge of highlight rectangle/ (number between 0 and 1, as a fraction of the picture width)
|/Right edge of highlight rectangle/
|/Top edge of highlight rectangle/
|/Bottom edge of highlight rectangle/
|/Caption of the collapsed table/ (the part before the "--", usually {{oppose}})
|/User name/ (displayed in the table caption)
|/Comment/ (displayed below the picture)
|/Reason1/ (OPTIONAL. Abbreviation for commonly used oppose reasons, e.g. "b" -> blurry, "oe" -> overexposed etc.)
|/Reason2/ (OPTIONAL)
|/Reason3/ (OPTIONAL)
|/Reason4/ (OPTIONAL)
|/Reason5/ (OPTIONAL)
}}

Comments are welcome. -- JovanCormac 10:20, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it is a very cool idea, and a very intelligent way to pinpoint issues with an image. I like the way you ahve used it in the Saturn nomination.

I think that maybe all these unnamed parameters will scare some users away from actually using them, and perhaps some could be adjusted and/or have default values. For instance the height and width shown, could be wrapped into a format=portrait|landscape|panorama|square named parameter with landscape as default if not chosen. Named width/height parameters could then be used to override default sizes if needed. The possibility to draw a rectangle is very handy when you want to point out a problem with an area in an image, be it an arrea, with a bad seam from a panorama stitch or excessive noise. A rectangle can also be used to propose a different crop in a very illustrative manner. Another type of application could be to point out the location of dust spots or distracting elements by indicating one or more point x and y coordinates. Specifying a point (as a template user) is simpler than specifying the boundaries of a rectangle. I do not know what is technically feasible, but I would definetely go for reducing the number of required unnamed parameters, having the possibility to override default settings via named parameters, and then I would perhaps try to eliminate voting stuff and standard messages from the template reasons, as I think it will be seldom, that automated messages are spot on, and most users would really dislike to have to look up the template documentation to find that esoteric abbreviation for the standard reson they are trying to insert. In that manner the templates use could also have applications beyond FPC. i think such a template is generally usefull many places on Commons. --Slaunger (talk) 13:41, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. The problem with specifications like "landscape" is that I know of no way do determine programmatically within a template the height and width of a picture, and both are needed for this template to work. So if, say, landscape defaults to a width of 300 or 600, I still need the corresponding height, which is why the user needs to specifiy it. If you know how to read a pictures height from a template, please tell me! I will implement it and create a much better template in the process. -- JovanCormac 15:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see you are doing it with tables, thus not being able to automatically maintain the aspect ratio of the images. In that case it is hard to make it work, only a crude model with an assumed aspect ratio for each format could be done then (disregarding square, which is trivial to do, but also seldomly occurring). So no, I do not have any good suggestion on how to solve that. Sorry. --Slaunger (talk) 22:03, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I actually tried using your template today, but I could not place the rectangle more than midways to the left. Anyway, I recalled that we have the new cool image annotator gadget instead. It is currently being discussed to enable it by default as a gadget. I think this could be a very handy tool for pointing out issues with an image during an FPC review as well, and I just used it this way on this file. The annotations can just be removed if and when issues are fixed. --Slaunger (talk) 14:55, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Who's going to do the honors?

With Maedin gone, the timed-out but unresolved nominations are quickly piling up. Already there are 17 unresolved FP nominations and 14 unresolved FP delisting nominations. I would do the closure myself but given that I created the next FP nomination in line and nominated all 14 delisting candidates I just don't feel comfortable doing it. Hope that someone will step in, or we're soon going to drown in unresolved nominations! -- JovanCormac 12:17, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I can do it. Tell me if I am not doing something correct as I have not done it before. Btw wasn't there a discussion about a bot to do this; what happened to that ? /Daniel78 (talk) 17:14, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I will try to help too. Yann (talk) 19:06, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Rules

Hello, It is not clear to me what are the minimum numbers of votes for an image to get featured. Is this OK? Yann (talk) 11:16, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

5 support, 1 oppose, 0 neutral Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Trompette - premier piston - montage perspective.jpg

From the frontpage:

• At least 5 supporting votes
• Ratio of supporting/opposing votes at least 2/1

so according to that it looks ok. /Daniel78 (talk) 14:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, so

5 support, 2 oppose, 0 neutral

would be OK too? How do we count the neutral? Yann (talk) 15:12, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes the ratio rule means that the number of support votes must be at least twice the number of oppose votes, which is the case here ( support ≥ 2*oppose ⇒ 5≥4 ). As far as I know the neutral votes are not affecting the result in any way. /Daniel78 (talk) 16:32, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

FPC closure bot

I started to look into this a bit today as the manual work one has to do when closing the nominations is very tedious. Just to try it out my first piece of code that I made today just goes through all the candidates and counts the votes and prints out to the console which nominations that pass the criteria for a featured picture. It currently looks like this:

  ⋮
File:Aialik glacier pano.jpg            : S:16 O:00 N:00 U:06 (Featured)                                                                                             
File:Aida poster colors fixed.jpg       : S:07 O:00 N:00 U:01 (Featured)                                                                                             
File:Ara ararauna Luc Viatour.jpg       : S:13 O:07 N:00 U:04 (Not featured)                                                                                         
File:Atmosphere composition diagram.svg : S:02 O:01 N:00 U:02 (Not featured)
  ⋮

where S=support, O=oppose, N=neutral, U=unknown (all other templates)

Aside from that I wrote down some points that needs to or could be considered:

• Parse/find the time of nomination
• Handle votes that have been striked out
• Invalidate anonymous votes
• Invalidate votes that were too late
• Invalidate duplicate votes
• Check if the nomination is withdrawn
• What to do with abstain, overprocessed and other templates, just ignore in the count ?
• There is no way the bot can currently look at an image and see which FP category it should be placed in. That needs to be done manually in some way, either by mentioning it already in the nomination or that the bot just place new featured picutures in some kind of unsorted pile that is manually sorted later by users.

 Comment A script like the VI or QI categorization tool would make that very easy: Commons:Valued images/Recently promoted and Commons:Quality images/Recently promoted‎. Yann (talk) 09:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

 Comment Thanks I had not looked at VI or QI, something like that could work. /Daniel78 (talk) 18:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

• Parse and find the nominator, to be able to notify him/her.
• Handle rule of the 5th day
• Handle FPX
• Automatically place FPX on images below 2MP
• It's unclear how additional edits (alternate versions) to a nomination should be handled by a bot, maybe we need a fixed format for indicating alternate versions to the same nomination.

 Comment The current implementation can now detect these candidates, but still it's a problem for the bot to decide which one to feature and the parsing gets a bit trickier, but if done one option is to chose the edit with most support and ignore the others. But probably as a first step I will just detect nominations with edits, ignore them and leave them for manual inspection. /Daniel78 (talk) 00:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

This is of course far from a complete spec, just a very brief start. If you have additional points or other issues please comment. Note I have not created any bot account or anything yet, just thought I should mention this here before I do too much. I know there has been some discussion about this earlier but I did not see any detailed plans.

/Daniel78 (talk) 00:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Closing can be done manually. That's easy and fast, and actually fun. The boring and long task is parking the images in the right pages. Closing VI is done manually, the bot works after that. Yann (talk) 22:08, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to take away the fun :) , but people come and go there might not always be anyone around that think it's fun, or when there are too many nominations they might pile up and the page gets huge and slow to load. Another advantage is that the nominations can be closed sooner to avoid people spending time on placing votes on nominations that are already over the time limit. But the bot could of course be made configurable to enable or disable closing. /Daniel78 (talk) 22:43, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I, for one, don't close the nominations unless I have the time to park the images. Otherwise I could close all pending nominations within a few minutes. Yann (talk) 09:44, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I closed about 35 nominations. If the bot would be working now, there are all waiting to be put away. Yann (talk) 15:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Bot request

I have now made a bot request for this. I am not sure exactly how detailed such requests must be, but if you have experience with this or just see anything unclear please add your comments. I have not seen much feedback here yet but I hope you all agree that a bot would be nice :). The only difference from the current process in the request is to put newly promoted pictures onto an unsorted page as discussed above.

And as a side note I volountered to do manual closure of nominations for a while, but making this bot takes up my time at the moment so hopefully other people can do that in the meantime. /Daniel78 (talk) 19:53, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Comment An interesting idea, and I'll be interested to see it in operation, but with one reservation. I don't think that the bot should handle FPX. Consider this nomination. Your bot would have FPX'd it for being under the 2MP, despite the fact that it would pass, 11 to 1. A bot cannot and should not assess images. People seem to forget that the 2MP 'limit' is merely a guideline, and that there are exceptions. Otherwise, it's a good idea. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 13:42, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
  •  Comment That is a very good point. One could try to make it clever and ignore gifs which probably would be animated in this context and thus might have a lower threshold for resolution, but I think it would be impossible to make it smart enough. I don't think there should really be any guesswork involved in a bot, it should just try to replace tedious manual work. The rule " Pictures tagged {{FPX}} may be removed from the list 24 hours after the tag was applied, provided there are no support votes other than that of the nominator." is easier for a bot to handle though, however I am not sure how strict to be on that as the rule use the word "may". /Daniel78 (talk) 14:28, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Daniel, Yann is right that it isn't the closing of the nominations which takes the time, it's the handling the promotions afterwards. I don't like to do closing until I can do the whole job (otherwise it just leaves the chore for someone else, which is never nice) and that is why they sometimes hang around for a long time. For that reason, I think introducing a bot to do the easy stage would create more hassle than it's worth. All of your considerations above (like late votes, duplicate votes, etc) are valid and would need to be sorted out, along with handling alternative versions (for example, this nomination, where in your example all oppose and support were lumped together) and handling the final support on this nomination, which a human can tell doesn't actually count at all. How easy would it be to override the bot's "decision"? My worry is that corrections would need to be made too often and sometimes not soon enough, and that those corrections would sometimes mean the difference between featured and not featured.

I don't mean to sound like a spoilsport; a bot would be nice, but I'm not certain that most of the closure stages are suitable for a bot. The two things that I can think of which would be best for a bot are notifying the nominator and putting the assessments template on the image page. I know that DustyBot already does the latter for English wiki FPs, so I'm assuming it can be done. This would at least knock out two time-consuming stages from the process of handling promotions. That is where I would like to see bot efforts being made, :-) Maedin\^talk 13:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I ully support Maedin on this: We don't need a bot, what we need is scripts, similar to en-wiki's vandal-fighting scripts Twinkle and Huggle, which can easily be installed by users, and let them quickly promote images simply by selecting from a few options, e.g. what category it should be sorted into; as well as possibly confirm the bot's assessment of who the nominator(s) and uploader(s) are. A lot of this is just copying images around, there's no reason a script couldn't be used, with some care. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:21, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmm I have sketched a middle way on the bot request page, where the vote counting has to be manually approved (and possibly adjusted) by a user (if the bot does not skip it altogether because it detects aspects which are too complicated to deal with anyhow) prior to archiving it, notify the nominator, and place it in a category, to await human categorization in the same manner as is done for both QIC and VIC. That is, automate what can be automated and assure easy human check of needed sub-steps in the process. --Slaunger (talk) 17:22, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The bot test run on vote parsing on January closures actually shows that the bot is at least as good at counting votes as the users doing closures that month, so I think that a bot assisted vote count to be user-verified will give an overall quality improvement (not that I am at all dissatisfied with the quality of closures now). --Slaunger (talk) 17:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

But, except in the tricvial case of failed nominations possibly getting tidied away a bit quicker, I don't think it'll save much time as it stands. One possibility might be to put some onus on the nominator: E.g. The nomiantor should choose the category the image should be filed under at time of nomination, this is displayed so that it may be changed to a better one as the nomination runs, and then a bot could do the promotion entirely itself for most nominations. Adam Cuerden (talk) 12:22, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Or...the user approving/correcting the bot vote count could indicate an end category. An experienced closure reviewer would know the end categories well assuring consistency - and that would save a process step as well. --Slaunger (talk) 20:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I was a away for some days. Anyway I think the count procedure even if it can't be perfect can be quite good, but having a manual confirm step sounds nice. The count parser is fairly good already but I can continue working with the part that move away confirmed counts. I think the idea of having a human that do the confirm step and also select the category sounds good, and then the bot just scans for confirmed nominations and move them away according to the current procedure. /Daniel78 (talk) 20:28, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way I also started with some sketchy versions of the templates suggested at bot request for results to be reviewed and results that has been reviewed. For example see the documentation for {{FPC-results-ready-for-review}} and {{FPC-results-reviewed}} where the reviewed results indicate a category to put the image in. It also means that if anyone wants to close a candidate before the bot makes the count they could just place the {{FPC-results-reviewed}} template directly. /Daniel78 (talk) 22:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

To nominate, or not to nominate...

Renominate?

Recently, while browsing through US Air Force PD images (sadly the only country to have made government pictures Public Domain) I happened upon this picture. It immediatly stood out to me, with it's intriguing and emotional subject. I was planning on nominating it today, when I noticed that it had previously been nominated. That nomination failed by the slimmest of margins, and generated a lot of discussion. I think that it is worthy of FP status, but my question is: should I renominate it? And if so, what is the proceedure? Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 19:32, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

If sufficient time has passed, just renominate it, I think. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:15, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Tongerloo abbey-Panorama.jpg

Hello, It seems that both versions received 6 votes. Which one is promoted? Yann (talk) 16:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Yann, I hadn't seen your question here and went ahead and closed that one. I also counted six votes for each, but assuming that the nominator supported his own alternative, as well, it made the tally seven for the edit. Hope that's ok . . . it seemed reasonable to me. Maedin\^talk 13:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Upload form

So, it's been a few weeks: How's the new upload form working out? Any problems? Adam Cuerden (talk) 12:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Radical changes to nomination procedure

How is this for a radical change: Introduce incentives for people to actually nominate other peoples images. This is to achieve a number of objectives.

1. ) Increase the representativeness of FP and hence POTD and even POTY.
2. ) Decrease the number of poor submissions
3. ) Broaden the participation in FPC

It would take some thought, as if we did it badly it would no doubt introduce new unwanted effects.

How about:

1. ) You can only nominate one of your own images if your previous nomination was of someone elses image and was successful (so choose carefully :-)
2. ) You can only nominate images by any one photographer/illustrator once per month.
3. ) You can only vote if you have previously nominated at least one successful candidate.

The logistics of keeping track might make some rules unworkable :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 13:37, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

• Interesting ideas. I do not like the second rule, though, which IMO unneccessarily throttles FP submissions with the artificial restriction of a single image per photographer and month. The third rule, however, makes a lot of sense. For me, the two major shortcomings of the voting mechanism at the moment seem to be the lack of a means to quickly do away with pictures that have little or no chance of promotion (FPX seems to be invoked much less frequently than needed) and the possibility to oppose (and support) without stating a reason for doing so (see below) which sometimes appears to start miniature flame wars. -- JovanCormac (talk)

• Definately radical - condition one is ok but for the "was successful" constraint. Option two will limit the numbers not increase them. Option three will only confirm FP as a closed shop, everybody is entitled to an equal say imagine not being able to support your own photo because you havent nominated one that was successful. I can also envisage a lot of nasty discussions over whether a person meets the criteria to vote. Gnangarra 14:30, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

• I think it is interesting ideas, and I acknowledge that some kind of fresh air would be welcome to FPC. However, I feel we are discussing it in the wring order. First we should discuss if there is something not working, and what result a possible change should lead to. Say, for instance that we would like to stimulate more diversion in the kind of images being nominated. Then what could be done to make us reach such a goal? There are other knobs to turn than changing guidelines. It could be a change of attitude to newcomers, it could be active forum work encouraging and actuvely recruiting potential good contributors already established as users. It could be activities aimed at attracting more good professional creators and persuade them into using free licenses, something we as a community seems to not do so well at times, see, e.g., todays thread, Commons:Village Pump#Some Feedback from a Free Culture Activist. --Slaunger (talk) 22:40, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

• I don't expect that there's any chance these ideas will be adopted, but I thought it worth stimulating some discussion :-).

@JovanCormac, the once per month thing was an arbitrary time span, but it is the idea of not just nominating the same persons images all the time (otherwise you'd just get collaborations where each just nominates the others images, not much different from people just nominating their own. I don't actually see too many poor nominations as being the fundamenta problem with FPC, I don't actually think FPX is needed. Nominators of 'poor' images should be given some helpful advice and encouraged to submit better images, FPX just looks like a slap-down.

@Gnangarra, the "was successful" constraint was to ensure they worked hard in choosing a good candidate, otherwise they could nominate any old rubbish :-). The suggestion that voters need to have voted on a previous successful candidate was a sort of round about way of testing their judgment (do they have any idea about what a good image is :-), but of course would not work as they would just vote on something that was about to become featured anyway.

@Slaunger yes, you are right, we should start from agreed objectives, then discuss how to get there. --Tony Wills (talk) 04:41, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

• What about: you may only nominate your own work for FP if it has already passed QI? Regards, Ben Aveling 10:44, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

New style, if okay

This is a w:WP:FPC thing

I went ahead and went bold at Commons:Featured pictures. I designed a template similar to FP projects on Wikipedias, but with a different color scheme. Hopefully everyone likes it, but I can revert if anyone has a problem with it. Might also consider for the other pages in different languages. Comments? ZooFari 18:46, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I like it a lot! Great job, ZooFari, and thank you, :-) I don't have an objection to the enhancement in other places. Maedin\^talk 18:50, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I also did this page, which needed much work. IMO this is a better way to distinguish the guidelines and the candidates. But not my opinion that only matters, what do you think? ZooFari 22:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Overall, an improvement, but I do not fancy the broken star at the FPC page as we do not tag candidates at Commons with that icon. It is an WP:FPC-specific thing. --Slaunger (talk) 07:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking that myself. The icon seems a little unrelated; perhaps this one might be more suitable? Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 08:14, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

It is a nice icon, but again a WP thing. Users should not be in doubt if they are on a WP or a Commons page IMO. That is import for the project identity. Once upon a time, a long time a go, in a galaxy far away, I recall that even the WP:FP and Commons:FP stars were different. --Slaunger (talk) 08:21, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, without Wikipedia, there wouldn't be any reason for Commons to exist; all the projects are subsidiaries of Wiki. I've never been confused about which project I'm on; the way I see it, if we've got a decent, available icon there's no reason not to use it. We're all part of the same project, why do we need to create new window dressing? Surely the big 'Wikipedia Commons' logo over on the side is clue enough about where you are. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 09:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

The new design is great. It really made me happy when I first stopped at FPC today. -- JovanCormac 08:22, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I like it too, much better. /Daniel78 (talk) 10:07, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

No worries, the star is "removable" of course. Though what really distinguishes WP and COM is the big block of criteria sitting in the template ;-). So, remove it? ZooFari 15:44, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

• I was bold, and replaced the above icon with this one. I think it looks more appropriate, but feel free to replace it if you find (or make) something more suitable. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 12:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
  • ...which, I have boldly changed to the FP icon, as this is clearly a relevant icon for Commons:FP and not potentially misleading as the other one concerning project identity. But, don't worry mate, if you change it back again, I will not revert you, it is not the end of the world for me, I just feel that Todays featured article.svg (as visually appealiong as it may be) does not give the right visual impression of what Commons is about. It may be that Commons was created as a by-product of Wikipedia, but today Wikipedia is not so tightly connected with Commons and Commons has its own scope which reaches a little beyond servicing Wikipedia. --Slaunger (talk) 13:28, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Interactive picture annotation tool for marking problem areas

We waste a lot of time misunderstanding each other when it comes to pinpointing problem areas in nominations. See

• Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:California Sea Lions at Pier 39 August 7 2009.jpg
• Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Vista panorámica de Peñíscola desde el castillo.jpg

for two recent examples.

Recently, JovanCormac developed {{PictureComment}} for this very purpose, but it has not seen use except from the creator. I have tried using it a few times, but found the barrier too high. (Sorry, Jovan, this is not meant as critique, I still think it was a very good idea). In parallel Lupo has worked on making an image annotator to mark areas and add wikitext to these annotations on file pages, see Help:Gadget-ImageAnnotator, which will be enabled in a few days by default for all users cf. Commons:Village Pump#New interface feature. I have experiemented using the tool to mark problem areas in

• File:Vista panorámica de Peñíscola desde el castillo.jpg
• File:California Sea Lions at Pier 39 August 7 2009.jpg

and found that it is very easy and user-friendly to operate. However, it is not optimal in the FPC process because you have to leave the nomination page to get to see the annotations, and because it seems a little intrusive on the file page to leave critical nitpicking FPC-specific annotations there, which 95% of commons users couldn't care less about.

However, if the image annotator tool could be used locally on the preview image on the nomination page instead. It would be much more useful. I have therefore enquired Lupo if it was at all technically feasible to have such a local annotation feature on FPC nom pages. Luckily, this seems to very easy to do, the gadget creator could finalize it in a few days as part of the Commons rollout of the gadget, all he needs to do is modify {{FPCnom/Basic}}.

I think this is good news and I think this could be a valuable addition to the nomination process, and introduce some synergy. Since we are a multilingual community I also find it very helpful for reviewers who have a hard time describing issues and reasons for voting in English.

Are there any objections to introducing this tool? --Slaunger (talk) 09:44, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Comment Hallelujah. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 09:55, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Also, with regard to this image, my little brother wandered over while I was looking for the stitching error, and asked what 'Penis Cola' was. Out of the mouths of babes... Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 09:57, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
    • --Slaunger (talk) 09:59, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

• I really hope they introduce it as a standard Commons feature soon. As soon as I saw this tool, I knew that my {{PictureComment}} was terrible in comparison. I fully endorse Lupo's annotation tool! Once the FP review process is over, IMO the annotations could be deleted and would not disturb other users. -- JovanCormac 10:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
  • It might take "A day or two" according to Lupo, which is pretty soon... --Slaunger (talk) 11:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
    • It was not as simple as it first appeared to, but according to the creator it should be working now and tested on most browsers. One caveat will be that annotations can only be done from the subpage view. That is not from the big candidates list. maybe the nomination template should be modified such that it included a link to the FPC subpage alone, such that you do not have to first edit, then view and then annotate. Instead: view subpage, then annotate. The feature will be enabled tomorrow (European) morning. --Slaunger (talk) 20:42, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
    • It is enabled now. Remember to clear your browser's cache. Then see Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Vista panorámica de Peñíscola desde el castillo.jpg for an example. --Slaunger (talk) 10:04, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

      I've made the change Slaunger suggested (including a link to the nomination page) in {{FPCnom/Basic}}. Lupo 11:55, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Thank you for taking the time and effort to make that though, Jovan. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 11:01, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

• BTW: I'm sure this has already occurred to some people, but I'd like to point it out all the same: you can use image annotations to check whether an image is tilted. Choose a feature in the image that you think should be horizontal or vertical. Then click "Add a note" and draw a rectangle with one edge along the chosen feature. If the feature aligns well with the rectangle border, the image is not tilted. Release the mouse button and click "Cancel" in the note editor. :-) Lupo 08:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

• just realized it here Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/File:Umayyad_Mosquee_panoramic.jpg very great feature. -- Gorgo (talk) 13:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Criteria for non-photographs

We've talked about this a long time; I've taken the liberty of jump-starting the process with a few basic criteria. They are reproduced below. I have also rearranged some of the other criteria (without changing them) in order to keep photography criteria and general criteria separate.

I think we can agree that this is, at least, a start - they are rather general criteria, but the goal was to cover all non-phtographic media, with a few general rules - as such, I think we can agree this is a good start, if for no other reason than having criteria is better than continuing without them, as we are. Adam Cuerden (talk) 12:24, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Artworks, illustrations, and historical documents

There are many different types of non-photographic media, including engravings, watercolours, paintings, etchings, and various others. Hence, it is difficult to hard-and-fast guidelines. However, generally speaking, works can be divided into three types: Those that can be scanned, those that must be photographed, and those specifically created to illustrate a subject.

Works that must be photographed include most paintings, sculptures, works too delicate or too unique to allow them to be put on a scanner, and so on. For these, the requirements for photography, below, may be mostly followed; however, it should be noted that photographs which cut off part of the original painting are generally not considered featurable.

Works that may be scanned include most works created by processes that allow for mass distribution. For instance, illustrations published with novels. For these, it is generally accepted that a certain amount of extra manipulation is permissible to remove flaws inherent to one copy of the work, since the particular copy - of which hundreds, or even thousands of copies also exist - is not so important as the work itself.

Works created to serve a purpose include diagrams, scientific illustrations, and demonstrations of contemporary artistic styles. For these, the main requirement is that they serve their purpose well.

Provided the reproduction is of high quality, an artwork generally only needs one of the following four things to be featurable:

• Notable in its own right: Works by major artists, or works that are otherwise notable, such as the subjects of a controversy.
• Of high artistic merit: Works which, while not particularly well known, are none the less wonderful examples of their particular type or school of art.
• Of high historic merit: The historical method values very early illustrations of scenes and events over later ones. Hence, a work of poor quality depicting a contemporaneous historical event is nonetheless important, even if the artistic merit is relatively low. Likewise, scans or photographs of important documents - which may not be at all artistic - nonetheless may be highly valuable if the documents are historically significant. The reason for the image's historical importance should be briefly stated in the nomination, for those reviewers unfamiliar with the subject.
• Of high illustrative merit: Works that illustrate or help explain notable subjects, for instance, illustrations of books, scientific subjects, or technical processes. The amount of artistic merit required for these will vary by subject, but, for instance, an illustration that makes the working of a complicated piece of machinery very clear need not be notable as a piece of artwork as well, whereas an illustration for a book might well be expected to reach much higher artistic standards.

What is your opinion on technical issues like half toning for example? --Dschwen (talk) 12:41, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Generally, if it's reasonable to expect a non-half-toned copy, it's bad, and borders on FPX. But a half-toned image taken from, say, the first edition of a notable book, where there's no reason to believe a non-half-toned image will ever become available or even necessarily still exists, should probably be acceptable. That said, it's the nominator's responsibility to point out these mitigating factors. So, I don't think we should say half-toning always means an image should fail FPC, but we should certainly throw up some major limitations on when it's acceptable.

Obviously, there's more that needs said (albeit we should probably shunt some of it to the complete guidelines, instead of the summary) - but I hope you'll agree that it's long overdue that we make a start at this, and that this is, at the least, a reasonable start. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:52, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Other things needing discussion

Let's divide and conquer a bit. Put up anything you think should be discussed as possible criteria here!

Half-toning

As I say above, I think this should be generally discouraged, but may be acceptable in a few cases (such as book illustrations in first editions) where no non-half toned copy would be at all likely to ever be acquired. Example: In the 1910s and early 1920s, almost all colour illustrations in books were half-toned. It is often unclear whether the originals even still exist, and if they do, may be in private hands. If taken from a first edition, is a good-quality half-toned image suitable for FPC? I'd say yes, provided it can gain support. However, if someone scans a half-toned image of the Mona Lisa, I think that we can agree that's pretty much FPX territory. Does this view seem reasonable? Other thoughts on the issue? Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:05, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Bad cropping

Generally, it's been agreed that if a significant part of a painting or artwork is cropped off, it shouldn't be featured. Is this a good general rule, and if so, how should we phrase it? Should we specifically allow cropping provided an uncropped version is also made available, and linked to from the image? (Useful in some situations, to remove distracting elements) Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:05, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Other issues?

Add your discussions here! Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:05, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Animations

Animations warrant creating a separate set of criteria. Here are my recommendations:

• Resolution is (in general) irrelevant. This has only 184 x 135 pixels, but few would deny that it's worthy of being Featured. One can think of the frames as a third dimension.
• Sense of using an animation. Most of the time, animation is used to illustrate something which would be less adequately illustrated by static images. Using an animation to illustrate how a machine works is good, using animation frames to create a "slideshow" of an artist's work isn't.
• To be featurable, animations need to fulfill at least one of the following criteria:

1. Be a significantly better illustration of the subject than static images could be (i.e. "instant understanding", this is an example where this is the case).
2. Be of very high aesthetic appeal (like this one).

IMO those are the points that all current Featured animations have in common. -- JovanCormac 14:33, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

• I would argue that resolution is an issue. With support for ogv videos there is no excuse for crappy gif animations. --Dschwen (talk) 14:41, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I think the main issue with high-res animation is that the thumbnailer doesn't do animations or video: The full-sized one appears on every page, so at least having access to one of more appropriate size is still important until that's fixed. Likewise, OGV above a certain size can't easily be played over the internet, and the video codec is not yet well-supported for off-wiki downloading. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:03, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
  • If it weren't for a fact that is rarely mentioned aloud but is true nontheless: That everything except pictures is all but ignored on Commons. A single look at the main page should prove my point. While one day Commons might have an infrastructure that's actually useful for accessing videos (and sounds), this day is certainly not now, which leaves us with animated GIFs. In a few years animation in SVGs may finally be supported by most browsers, and then we can throw out all those technical GIF animations and replace them with SVGs which will be smaller in file size and scalable to any resolution. -- JovanCormac 15:27, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

I think we should probably leave out the specific licence to be of any size, and simply state that a lower size is permissible. For new animations, we really should start raising the bar a bit.

In particular, I would argue that the very small image you point out should NOT be a featured picture: This larger one should. Adam Cuerden (talk) 08:20, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree on that one. I didn't realize there was a bigger version. We should delist the small animation and feature the improved version. Also agree on simply leaving out size requirements. -- JovanCormac 11:30, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Did it. See the current candidates (both FP and delist) for nominations inteded to replace the inferior version with the newer one. -- JovanCormac 10:00, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

New Delisting Template

At the behest of Diaa abdelmoneim (and fitting in nicely with the recent revamping of Commons) I`ve created a new Delisting template, improving the appearance and adding some essential features. {{DelistedPicture}} (here), allows the delister to add a reason for the delisting, as well as link to the discussion. This brings it into line with the existing FP template, and provides more information. Any comments? Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 19:44, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Might be a bit hard to put a single reason there, different people might vote to delist for different reasons. And I wonder how fun it is for people to get such a big "rejected" sign on their images, especially since this one shows it so clearly with that thick and red X mark. /Daniel78 (talk) 22:10, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

There's no reason you can't have more than one reason on the template, now that I've chaged the layout a bit. It automatically expands to envelop the text, much like the FPX template. As for people's reactions to their image being delisted; well, if it's not good enough anymore, it's not good enough. The templates are designed to convey their information clearly, even to people who may not understand English, hence the (admittedly unsubtle) picture. That said, I'll have a look for (or make) some alternative pictures if you like. Do you have anything in mind? Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 22:27, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I think a renewed template should be much more discrete. When getting on the image page you get the impression that there is something wrong when you are met with a template like the one you have designed. On the contrary, albeit an image may not be featured anymore it is still probably way better than an average image on Commons. When we made the equivalent template for the Valued images project, we ended up with a discrete text-only template in a box with background and edge colors matching the project identity. See File:Curculionidae on Betula Richard Bartz.jpg for an example of such a template in use. Having an image delisted should not be a shame. Otherwise delisting becomes much too dramatic and demotivating for creators having their wirks delisted, maybe because the equipment they used a few years ago is simply not on par with what is expected today. It should be a gentle, natural retirement from FP status in my opinion. --Slaunger (talk) 22:34, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I have removed the graphic. Any better? Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 22:59, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes it is better now. Personally, I am not too keen on the reason thing. I mean, it may be "too small and noisy" by FP standards, but likely to be of significant quality and value as compared to an average image on Commons. I think linking to the delisting page should be sufficient. Yeah, a boring template, I know, but I really think it should be quite toned down. I mean this comes on after having removed the FP template, and removing that is quite a change already. --Slaunger (talk) 23:10, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, why does the above example still have the VI template on it? Shouldn't that be removed? It's not a VI anymore. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 23:00, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Huh, am I missing something? I cannot find a {{VI}} template anywhere on the file page of File:Curculionidae on Betula Richard Bartz.jpg? --Slaunger (talk) 23:10, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Slaunger expressed it better than me, I agree that a discrete box would be much nicer. We want to encourage people to contribute images to commons not scare them away by using negative templates on something that are closer to be something like a "silver-medal" for almost making it. They were passing the vote to be among the very best images on commons at some point. I think I would prefer something without negative colors as well. Perhaps using something like a grayed-out/inactive FP icon would be more in line with what I think it could look like if we also need to provide the information in other ways than text. That would not convey such a negative feeling while at the same time showing the FP context. Not sure it would work though, just an idea. /Daniel78 (talk) 23:13, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

IMHO, I think we should stick to the assessments template. It will be much easier to maintain it rather than having multiple delisting templates (how many do we have now?). Many of our previous delists are cluttered and make Wikipedia pages look bad, but I smile when I see a file page with the delisting template embedded in the assessments template. Just my 2 cents. ZooFari 23:19, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree with the others here. Displaying a reason like "too small and noisy" on the description page makes the picture look like an inferior one when compared to the average Commons picture when in fact it is inferior only to the best of Commons pictures, the Featured ones. I too feel though that the delisting process could do with a revamp, and a new assessment template might well be a part of it. -- JovanCormac 09:58, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

• The consensus seems to be to remove the reason field and make a new, low key graphic. As I'm currently at work, the icon will have to wait until I get home. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 12:34, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
•  Question @Zoofari - What do you mean by "...a file page with the delisting template embedded in the assessments template."? Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 12:39, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

• The assessments template already mentions its formal status (parameter com=2). I don't see why we need more templates when we already got that, but if we do choose your template, I suggest you create a bilingual one for localization. ZooFari 14:57, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Featured Audio?

Where do I find criteria for, and potentially nominate, an audio file for featured status? The file I am referring to is Ks0stm ^(T•C) 03:30, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Commons:Featured sound candidates. ZooFari 04:23, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Opinions on the "Arthropod Issue"

I was wondering what people really think about the ever-controversial "Arthropod Issue", and would like to ask your opinion. Fact is: 1 in 8 Featured Pictures on Commons is an arthropod (see User:JovanCormac/FPStatistics for details). Do you think this is too much? Should the distribution of Featured Pictures among the categories reflect the "importance" of the category? Do we need to lay down separate (stricter) guidelines for macros? Is the fact that insects account for half of all known living organisms an "excuse" for the imbalance? Or is it just that such macros are easy to take with good equipment?

As for my own opinion: Like the Wikipedia "Basics" projects, I think that the Featured Picture library should serve as a "Best Of" sampler of Commons. The idea of a sampler is to provide a balanced overview of the whole, and by this criterion the arthropods are clearly overrepresented by an order of magnitude. I am definitely against a "separate" treatment of arthropod pictures just because there are so many of them, though. Ideally, the community would look at the large amounts of high-quality arthropod macros already featured and set the bar along the lines of the best of them. File:Saperda carcharias02.jpg is a brilliant work of art, showing an insect unknown to many people in fantastic composition and breathtaking quality. File:Libellula depressa.jpg is a photograph of a dragonfly, and while it is certainly detailed and educational, it really doesn't have anything lifting it above the crowd - not the crowd of photographs, but the crowd of insect macros (no insult meant to the author in any way). Still, it is featured. I think what people need to realize is that with high-end macro gear, pictures like the dragonfly one are what you get pretty much every time. The amazing amount of detail exhibited by all of those macros astounds the layman (which I am), but the sheer number of such pictures on Commons and on the web appears to show that this detail alone just isn't that special. All other pictures on FPC are judged by criteria such as composition, and a lack of "Wow" is one of the most commonly cited reasons for opposing a nomination. The reason why insect macros usually elicit a "Wow" is that they show a highly detailed view that people are simply not familiar with from everyday experience - unlike most other photographs. When someone has seen 1000 macros, though, I think that it will take a little more than just detail (the trait that all of them share by definition anyway) to make him say "Wow", and this IMO is the viewpoint that should be assumed when judging such macros. -- JovanCormac 20:10, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Full Ack, Jovan. FPC makes me pretty Libellula depressa sometimes. Quite frankly - and I'm probably not making any new friends now - the problem is the photographic inexperience of a large number of reviewers. I find it sad that it is deemed acceptable to resort to wow as a reason for either opposing or supporting. I might be repeating Jovans comment, but many people who do not have the gear to create macro images are wowed by something they clearly cannot reproduce. However they seem to fail to acknowledge the skill it takes to create a well composed, well exposed image. The use of DOF, accurate color reproduction, etc. It is much easier for non macro images to think I could do that too => no wow. --Dschwen (talk) 20:27, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I think this is an interesting discussion. There is indeed a large discepency between what a typical user of Commons media is looking for and the typical material we have in our FPC archive. As an example, I just looked through the top 100 of the 2008 yearly wiki page hits statistics for en.wikipedia. The type of topics Wikipedia users come to read about are Popular internet sites, like YouTube and FaceBook, notabilities like Barack Obama or Michael Phelps, sex, movies, bands, major sports events, geography, technology and gadgets. Anthropods are certainly not on the list of what the typical Wikipedia user is interested in seeing (nor is anything I have ever contributed with here ).

In fact there is very little overlap between the topics our FP archive covers and what Wikipedia users are mostly interested in. My guess is that if we look at most other Wikimedia projects, except perhaps the rather esoteric Wikispecies project, the picture will be the same. So, I think it is quite understandable that we get complaints from time to time about yet another bug photo on the main page, as this is simply not the kind of subject which interests the typical user.

I think the underlying reasons for this are as follows.

1. We are (fortunate) to have some highly skilled and productive macro photographers around here willing to freely license their images despite having invested in expensive equipment. We should not try to scare those away, as their high quality contributions are in scope of the project and appreciated.
2. I think Jovan is correct that the wow issue is easier to achieve with the macro photos for the reasons mentioned by Jovan. Users should not be deluded into thinking that all those shots are easy though. Some are in a league by itself, and the effort needed in making some of those shots require a lot of good equipment a lot of skill, luck, timing and a lot of postprocessing time as well.
3. Pictures of living organisms are trivial to handle from a licensing point of view. When we try to deal with subjects such as notabilities, popular internet sites, screen shots, and other kinds of topics which interest the public, we have big time problems finding exceptional quality material which is feely licensed. If you get a good shot of Madonna you would most probably be a pro, and would not want to give your work away for free, as this would be the way you make a living.
4. Certain popular topics such as a games console would typically not get featured because it is very hard to produce an image of such a subject which makes it stand out as one out of 2300 images on Commons.

It was out of frustration of this clustering of pictures circling around the same subject which lead me to originally propose the Valued images project. Here the criterion of "only one VI per scope" was introduced to motivate users into thinking in new ways and new topics to contribute with - to spread out and get more diversity so to say.

One thought I have, which could lead to more diversity at FPC would be to insist on "no more than one FP per topic/scope" as well. That would mean that the competition would get harder when you nominated an image of a subject which already has FP status, as you would have to be better than that one. This could motivate users to spread out their nominations in new directions such that we would get more diversity, whilst keeping our most brilliant macro photographers busy contributing the best-of-the-best within macro photography. The amount of diversity we would get could be controlled by how similar subjects can be before they are considered to depict the same topic/scope as an existing FP. In VI quite narrow scopes are accepted. If we were to adopt a similar scheme here, I would suggest to that the topics/scopes should be broader. For instance, whereas species plant scopes are normally accepted as distinct for VI it could be max one FP per plant genus (or family). --Slaunger (talk) 21:52, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

You know, one day, I'll finally find the page where I proposed the Valued images project ;-). Downloading a full history dump of commons right now... --Dschwen (talk) 22:20, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

When you have downloaded the first revision of the draft proposal from Jan 7, 2008 you can stop downloading... no, actually, you are right, the idea had come up from time to time in FPC and QIC prior to that (also at WP:FPC as I recall) and it was actually Tony Wills who first coined the term "valued image" at a slightly later stage.--Slaunger (talk) 22:37, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it is way beyond the issue of credit (which you deserve for making the actual structured proposal and working hard to get it on track), for me it is a question of sanity! I cannot seem to find that discussion, and neither do I remember with whom I had it. Nahhrgghh! :-| --Dschwen (talk) 22:53, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

 

I fully agree that "one image per scope" should be a Featured Picture policy.

• 
  Do we really need this (currently a candidate) featured...
• 
  ...when this already is? Those macros are ridiculously similar!

I hope we can all agree that something needs to be done about the extreme cluttering of pictures of the same subject in the arthropods category. -- JovanCormac 22:27, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. Having two of those as FPs gives little meaning. --Slaunger (talk) 22:37, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to have to object to the concept of one per scope, though: while those images are very similar, extended too broadly, we could hit a situation where, say, we get people objecting because one painting by a major artist is featured, or that, for instance, because the frontispiece to Gustave Doré's illustrations of Don Quixote is featured, we cannot feature the image of him fighting the windmill. Adam Cuerden (talk) 04:44, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, in your example, the new candidate is clearly better. Since we do not allow delist-and-replace nominations - indeed, L. recently caused massive disruption when such a procedure was proposed in a candidacy - it would be better to promote the current candidate followed by delisting the other other one.

And if the other image doesn't always get delisted? Well, then, perhaps we should set up a delist and replace procedure. Adam Cuerden (talk) 04:47, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Hm, it is not at all clearly better to me. In fact I argued the opposite way a few hours ago. --Dschwen (talk) 05:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, okay, we can argue that point, but the main point is that we don't have a way to compare them in direct contest, so trying to forbid photos similar to existing FPs risks preventing better photos from ever coming in on that subject. Adam Cuerden (talk) 06:25, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

If we were to have a best in class exclusion principle, that would of course imply that we would have to adjust our process such that it is assured that the best image within its class/scope/topic is featured. Whether that implies that we should introduce a "Most Featurable Review" in analogy with the "Most Valued Review" in VI or an almost equivalent "replace or delist" process is something we would have to discuss and settle. I think that the stir that was caused in the nomination you mentioned before when a delist and replace was proposed in a nomination, was because it was done in the middle of a nomination, where it had not been discussed on the FPC talkpage first if we should have a replace or delist process. So boldly using a nomination to delist and replace was considered w:WP:POINT. --Slaunger (talk) 06:39, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Adam, I agree with you that the new butterfly picture is better than the old one. I therefore think it should replace it. We need a procedure to do that. The Don Quixote example is far-fetched, though. The two butterfly pictures are identical in subject and composition (I believe those should be the exclusion/replace criteria). Two different Don Quixote illustrations by the same artist are certainly not. -- JovanCormac 07:22, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I can point you to opposes based on the fact that we already have another featured picture of an image by the same major artist. If we add unique in scope to the criteria, it's going to end up abused by a certain group of people, who have pretty much said they want only photographs to ever be featured, to make things much harder on non-photographs. Experience tells me that most of the following are not at all far-fetched:

• Claiming that only one image in a large set of different images should be featured, e.g. only one (or at best a small handful) of Doré's 370 or so engravings of scenes from Don Quixote being allowed to be featured. Note, of course, that having a complete, high-quality set is a huge boon to Wikipedia's reputation.
• Where multiple, highly notable images exist on a subject, only one being allowed to feature. E.g. I think there are five paintings of Queen Elizabeth (of England and Wales), by different artists, at different times of her life. Being restricted to one would be ridiculous.
• Ignorance on the part of reviewers: E.g. I know that X looks somewhat similar to Y, but the subjects are different and several Wikipedias have articles on both X and Y. I don't think to say that, so my image of Y is opposed as redundant to X, and by the time I clarify, the nomination is so disrupted, and has so many invalid, but not crossed-out oppose votes, it can't pass.
• W and Z are photos of the same subject, showing the same phenomenon, but do so in interestingly different ways. Only one can be promoted, concealing an intriguing choice.

I'd suggest against this. A very few number of similar photos are worth it to prevent the strong possibility of idiocy about scope. Adam Cuerden (talk) 07:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Please see my proposal below for what I believe is a way to address all of those points. Note that the proposal does not impose a change on the nomination procedure at all, and in fact discourages opposes on the grounds of similarity (the weeding out comes afterwards). Note also the focus on similarity in both subject and composition, addressing valid worries such as your Elizabeth, Don Quixote and natural phenomenon examples. -- JovanCormac 09:16, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

 Question for Adam: Do you agree that here is a large discrepancy between the kind of topics typical Wikimedia project readers consumes the most (see above) and the kind of topics being nominated and promoted at COM:FPC? --Slaunger (talk) 12:26, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Swiss cow example

To further stimulate the discussion about "only one FP per scope/topic" and how narrow or broad such a topic should be lets have another FP example

• 
  Dschwens Braunvieh breed Swiss alp cow
• 
  Slaungers Fleckvieh breed Swiss alp cow

In this example the scopes are slighty more different than in Jovans example above as the FPs depict two different breeds of swizz cows. Should both of them be featured? Personally, I think the scope overlap is too large and only one of them should stay, and from my point of view it should be DSchwens version, as its composition and overall quality is superior. It is also used as the lead image in en:Cattle. My FP is honestly a (somewhat lucky) point and shoot, taken at a lower altitude, where you cannot even see the alps, it is uploaded directly from my camera. Absolute no processing. I only took one photo. I have not even looked at the histogram prior to nominating. I have not even bothered addressing a valid issue raised by Jovan about an overexposed snout during the nomination. An entirely lazy nomination. Why? Because it has just become too easy to get things through. I do not think such sloppiness should be rewarded by an FP tag, especially not when there is a superior FP dealing with almost the same topic already. --Slaunger (talk) 07:42, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Just for the record, mine isn't postprocessed either! --Dschwen (talk) 12:44, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes they should, both are remarkable entries, both having comletely seperate Wow factor and reasons for promotion. Lets not forget, the subject is the cow, not the background. The background makes the composition but a person looking for these for a project will be looking for the cow, foremost. The first one [Dschwen] is excellent for its techincal merit, exposure and depth. The second [Slaunger] shows animal expression brilliantly. Should the first be demoted due to the expression not being quite as good as the second one? I don't think so. Should the second be demoted because the sky isn't as good as that of the first? I don't think so. As for post processing etc, that shouldn't make any difference, this is the Commons, not a high end magazine for pure photography. There are plenty of other sites to go to for that kind of solo recognition Julielangford (talk) 12:13, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for a process to eliminate multiple Featured Pictures that are very similar

I've completed the first draft of a proposal to deal with the problem discussed here. Up for your review and consideration at User:JovanCormac/FPHeadsUp. -- JovanCormac 08:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Question Is it OK to comment on it here instead of on the discussion page of the proposal? I am concerned about scattering the discussions too much around. --Slaunger (talk) 10:13, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, I agree. Comments here are fine. -- JovanCormac 10:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
• I think it is a pretty good proposal, and I like it in the respect that it separates the promotion from the "what's best" discussion. That is nice because, if the reviewers also had to deal with competing, already featured material, it would put a too large burden on the reviewers shoulders. What I do not particularly like is the extra work such a process could imply, e.g., first going through all the trouble of getting an image featured only to see it loose its FPC status afterwards, if there is a better one within the same scope there already. If you, as a reviewer knows that there is a (what you perceive) better FPC of the same subject/composition/whatever we decide similar is, I think it would be difficult not to let that influence the review itself (a larger inclination to oppose).
• Another foreseable conflict will be fights about when images are similar enough to be considered as competing for being the only one. There I think a precompiled catalogue of examples would have to be developed first and agreed upon here, before rolling it out. This example catalogue will, in the beginning, not cover all aspects of similarity, but would give a good start in establishing firm guidelines for demoting based on similarity "Heads up" as JovanCormac calls it. There are already some pretty good examples to consider in the proposal and in the examples given above. The most severe problem will probably be to reach consensus on whether the examples should be considered to be representative of the same or different scopes/compositions....--Slaunger (talk) 12:01, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Well, to avoid precisely this conflict the proposal calls for people to vote on whether the similarity is obvious enough or not. If 2/3 of voters think so, I believe it's a pretty good approximation of general consensus - the same that is used to feature pictures as well. -- JovanCormac 13:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose I'm sorry, but I suspect this is going to cause problems with areas of general ignorance on Commons. Take the cow pictures given as examples above. Yes, the shots are similar. But they are different breeds of cow, and such breeds could reasonably have their own articles on Wikipedias, but since the number of technologically-savvy farmers is much smaller than technologically-savvy non-farmers... I just don't think that Commons could handle this well. I'm sorry. Adam Cuerden (talk) 12:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Concerning the cows, you are right that both of the breeds have their own page on several wikis. The problem is that the view traffic on these quite exotic pages is so low that the impact of having those plastered with each their FP is negligible. Its just not what the masses wants. They don't even care too much about Doré either. I just fiddled a little around with single page statistics for July 2009 on en.wikipedia.org using http://stats.grok.se and here are some observations
    1. en:Michael Jackson - 10 million page views
    2. en:Sex - 1 million page views
    3. en:Cattle - 80,000 page views
    4. en:Gustave Doré - 18,000 page views
    5. en:Braunvieh - 1000 page views
    6. en:Fleckvieh cattle - 500 page views
  • From which I deduce
    1. Having an FP image of Michael Jackson having sex with a cow (I'm sorry, I hate it when that happens) has a 10,000 fold more view impact that having yet another FP of yet another cow breed.
    2. Dschwens lead image cow FP has a view impact four times larger than any Doré image, which makes me wonder: How many Doré FPs is it worthwhile featuring given the relatively small view impact.
    3. Even then, Doré is considered way more interesting than cow breeds from a readers pint of view! Which means that cow breeds really stink (pun intended) from a readers interest point of view.
  • --Slaunger (talk) 13:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

 

Yeah... um.. you realise that Doré illustrated The Bible, Don Quixote, Dante's Inferno, and other majorly important works. This isn't just about his own article. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:48, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I do realize that, but I did not think of looking at the page views for those. The two articles en:Don Quixote and en:Inferno (Dante) each have monthly page views around 80k, e.g., as popular as "Cattle", and Doré has the last image in the first article and the lead image in the second. Concerning the bible, Doré is not mentioned in the main article en:Bible. He may be mentioned in some specialized subtopic thereof, but I did not manage to find it. This makes me change my mind about Doré, where it seems like some FPs from Doré are relevant, but I do not think his entire works are, image by image. Just to clarify, I do not have anything personally against Dorés works. In general, I think they are brilliant. --Slaunger (talk) 06:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

• There seems to be everything but a consensus on what to do, but I have the feeling that lots of users think that something should be done. The shortcomings of the current Featured Pictures library as a representative sampler of Commons (which it is kinda being advertised as on the main page) are just too obvious. This brings up the question: Besides quality (QI), value (VI) and general excellence (FP), do we need yet another library, hosting pictures, videos and sounds maybe (everything but pictures is neglected in FP), that can serve as a sampler, a gate for the average Wikipedia reader to the media archive Commons (which for some reason seems to be much less accessible than WP)? A Commons Palette maybe? -- JovanCormac 14:13, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
  •  Comment I have a hard time understanding what the difference would be between your Commons Palette and the objectives of the VI project (asuming we adjusted the VI guidelines to account for movies and sound, which could be done and has been discussed several times). --Slaunger (talk) 19:17, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
    • The difference is that with such a hypothetical sampler, factors such as quality and "Wow" would matter (which they don't with VI); but in addition, the subjects would be balanced according to notability and importance (which they also aren't with VI, they just have a "one image per subject" rule). -- JovanCormac 21:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
      • OK. I understand. Personally I do not think it is a good idea. I do not think we have enough users/reviewers to leverage a new image project, and I think many would be confused at to the new projects identity and how it relates to existing ones. Not to mention how confusing our occasional visitors looking for media repository material would find it to be. --Slaunger (talk) 06:17, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. It seems that I'm the sole voice of dissent here but I - honestly - don't think that anything at all should be done to change the FP system. It is fine. If you don't want to see lots of pictures of arthropods, just don't look at the FP Arthropods page! Elsewhere, the number of "duplicates" is so small that I cannot see why it could bother anyone in any way. More importantly, I want to address Slaunger's comment above concerning page view statistics on the English Wikipedia and its relevancy to our FP process. Commons should not become a populist "photo site" that only presents the type of pictures that people know they want to see - rather, it should also present photos of more obscure subjects, and neither should it bind itself to the English Wikipedia - or even the Wikipedia project as a whole - in such a way that our FP process/FP collection is defined by the number of page views of an article on that individual project. The English Wikipedia's FP process' being bound to its articles in such a way is most of the reason why I no longer have any interest in that project's FP process and I must say that should the FP process on Commons become more similar to the English Wikipedia's, I can easily see myself losing interest in it.
  •  Comment I'd like to add, that I do not suggest that we should lay in the dust to match exactly the kinds of subjects, which are most often viewed on the English Wikipedia. I chose that one for the example because it is the largest and most well known project - meant as an eye-opener to reality. My point is that there is an enormous difference what the typical user is interested in and what we offer. I do not think they should match exactly, they should differ to surprise the viewer and get them interested in new subjects they did not know were there. On the other hand I do not think it is healthy that there is so little overlap between the FP and usage world. It is the first time I have ever looked at such usage data and personally I was surprised and dissapointed to see that it is such (trivial, sorry to say) topics, which are the most viewed. --Slaunger (talk) 18:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
• I think part of the problem is that many (Commons editors) see FP as a "showcase" for "representatives of our best pictures of a variety of subjects" - I don't subscribe to this view, and in my eyes it is, and should be, a process in which pictures are individually judged on whether they are among the best of Commons, based on semi-objective criteria such as technical quality, resolution, and most importantly, "wow" (which is what sets it apart from the QI process, a process which unfortunately does not apply as stringent technical quality criteria to its candidate pictures as it should), but regardless of what other pictures there may be of the same subject. --Aqwis (talk) 16:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Another thing: it is unnecessary and incorrect to think that the Picture of the day and Featured Picture processes need to be equivalent, i.e. that any Featured Picture needs to have a chance at appearing on the front page of Commons. I, too, agree that a large number of often very similar pictures appearing on the front page is a bad thing, but the FP process doesn't need to be altered in order to fix this. --Aqwis (talk) 16:06, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Opinions differ, of course, but let's not forget that on the main page, we write: "If you are browsing Commons for the first time, you may want to start with Featured pictures, Quality images or Valued images." This, for many people, is just not true. First-time Commons users don't want to start with a library where 1 in 5 pictures is a bird or an insect, nor do they want to browse random pictures simply for their high quality. What they want is a balanced overview of what Commons can offer them, or, ideally, a semantic portal with a selection of excellent pictures giving them an impression of the kind of work we do here. Such a portal has to use some kind of system weighing the importance/educational value/attractiveness of subjects, and the more balanced its contents are, the more random visitors will enjoy using it. At its present state, the Featured Pictures library simply isn't up to that job because of its large imbalance in subjects; neither is QI or VI, for that matter. So what do we offer random visitors who probably wonder what kind of archive Commons is anyway when the Picture of the Day this month once again has featured a mind-boggling six arthropod pictures in 13 days, two of them of the same species? -- JovanCormac 18:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Aye, well, I always forget to load up my images, so... Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:22, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Aqwis here: if we want more diverse FP, restricting arthropods is the wrong way. It would be much better for everybody to increase FP about other subjects. Yann (talk) 22:33, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

How? By lowering the standards in other areas as well? Nope, FPC voters will have to change their mindset a little. --Dschwen (talk) 22:50, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I didn't write about "lowering the standards". But encouraging people to submit existing images on other sujects might be a good start. Then we need to recruit photographers interested about other subjects. But last, I don't think that FP should necessarly match the most read articles. We are creating a multimedia repository of educational topics, not a free pop culture compendium. Yann (talk) 23:11, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I think the issue here is that the standards of quality is low and there is little limit to expectations. Voters are too easy on the candidates and let it pass there way without either not noticing even the most obvious flaws or it is all about the amusement. "Oh it is too boring" is the one I hate the most. Over at wp:FPC where I usually hang out, you'd never see some of the nominations here get promoted. Probably because quality matters more than EV standards, and Commons is doing the opposite: It has "wow" so it gets promoted. Arthropods are too cool not to get promoted, and the macro bar is quite lower than what it should be. ZooFari 23:08, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It is not encouraging to the user who submits a photo about an "other" subject to see to opposed with the the ususal "no-wow" while at the same time average quality macro shots gets regularly waived through. --Dschwen (talk) 23:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I could be totally wrong here but maybe the reason we have so many anthropods as FP is that we have photographers that enjoy photographing those specific creatures and we have a group reviewers who are wowed by such photographs(which attracks more photographs to the subject) all are totally oblivious to technical merits of the photographs. The challenge is if there are too many of one style of photograph then its upto the photographers to deliver something new, until then we can always fall back on more Library of Congress and NASA images to to provide variation. Gnangarra 06:27, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

 

Voters need to be educated about the standards of modern macro photography, it's as simple as that (and apparently something we all agree on). And unless those standards become widely known, I don't believe it would be undue to specifically mention macros in the guidelines and to maybe provide a link to the page of a professional macro photographer like [1] - with all respect to our talented macro people, I do not think we have even 20 macros on Commons (out of more than 250 featured ones) that can measure up to the worst of the photos showcased there (let me point you to such qualitative and compositional highlights as [2], [3], [4] and [5]). -- JovanCormac 07:41, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think the 12 macros on User:Richard Bartz all out-compete your examples of excellence . That said, I do think you have a point, that a significant fraction of our macro FPs are not on par with the highest standard today, and I find it a little embarassing that we include those in the showcase of the best we can come up with. But this extends further than only macros IMO.--Slaunger (talk) 08:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd say they're on par with Richard's macros (except for the "Head of a Fly", which really is in a class by itself - it looks like it was taken with an electron microscope, not a camera). But those are his best, and everyone knows that Richard is the king of macro on Commons. Even the top macros by other talented people here IMO cannot quite measure up - close, but not quite. -- JovanCormac 09:40, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, if that's the case, why don't we just delist all the other insect pictures, and only let Richard nominate anthropod macros? Problem solved! (Obviously, I am kidding. :P). I'll put my suggestion forward as soon as I get back from walking the dog. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 10:03, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Comment – I tend to agree with those that don’t see any serious arthropod issue. The problem (if there is one) is the relatively high number of skilled macro creators contributing to FPC and the lack of experience/knowledge of many reviewers evaluating their pictures. Yes, many bug pictures are being promoted that do not deserve the status, but that also happens with old engravings (which have an extraordinary success rate) and nobody complains. I disagree that a system similar to the English FPC or to VIC should be implemented here, regarding the number of FP’s in each category/species/theme. The main reason for my disagreement is that the promotion criteria go well beyond (as it should) the mere illustrative value of the pictures, embracing more subjective components like aesthetics, creativity and originality which, together, make what we call the ‘wow factor’. A last note about the comparison between Commons bug FP’s and the given examples of professional shots. Has anyone noticed that those are all small resolution images? And that many excellent FPC candidates are rejected because of size and sharpness issues? No, I don’t think that they are so much better than Commons’ and that only Richard’s pictures have similar quality. Or, by the way, that very expensive gear is needed for creating excellent macro shots. -- 89.214.21.133 00:27, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose Restricting to just one, IMO would not benefit the Commons. Look at it like this. In a class of 30 people, only 15 can pass because the pass ratio is determined by the top 50% in the class. The candidate that came 15th, has work that is in a completely different league to the candidate that came first. Should that candidate pass? Should the second, third etc pass? Or should only the candidate with the highest mark pass? An education system that runs like that would swiftly grind to a halt and the result would be catastrophic for a community. The impact on the commons would be similar - it would become a place for just the elite and would deperately need a name change from Commons, to something else. I totaly understand the points being made about that one shot, that stands out from the rest, but instead of looking for ways to penalise other entries which are great, but not quite as great, or removing one great image to make way for one that may be slightly better - why not think of a way to reward good work, while still keeping that ultimate featured image at the fore. The commons, is a big place, and by it's very name and meaning, it should be kept a place of unision, sharing, community, togetherness - with a shared objective. It is not determined by the 20 or 30 or so people who vote on FPC, at least, it shouldn't be. There are lots more people to take into consideration, including those who are not registered. A person looking for a butterfly image may well be looking for something completely different to that "one featured shot". It's not all about one shot, nor should it ever be. It should not be for any one person, or type of person or group - whether they are excellent photographers, or not. The person who produces images that are not spot on or under par what others may create, may be learning, they may be moving up that skills and equipment ladder, and one day, maybe, they will get the shot of a a lifetime. It would be a shame if that image didn't become part of the project due to past rejection, or even comments that didn't give any encouragement earlier on. Yes, photographers who have invested time, money and sweat into making it to the top of that skill ladder need to be rewarded, I agree, but there are lots of rungs on a ladder, not just the top one, and the difficulty of the climb should always be remembered by those who made the top one. Julielangford (talk) 11:56, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose A better "solution" to the "problem" would be judicious use of delist. Noodle snacks (talk) 03:18, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Ha! Well said. I'm trying best I can. -- JovanCormac 15:50, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

No, that is actually not a solution, at least IMO, as I think the problem is that people are overestimating the quality of most macro shots relative to other photography. --Dschwen (talk) 00:24, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

• Suggestion If we are letting through macro pictures that aren't what they should be, can someone please update the guidelines to reviewers to cover whatever is being missed? Thanks, Ben Aveling 11:08, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Testing the FPCBot

I have now spent enough time with the implementation such that it's now in a testable state both for vote counting and for parking the finished candidates. So I have performed some manual testing (and will do some more) of the bot so you might see some nominations being edited by it. But note that I am still running with 100% manual supervision from my own computer for testing. Just to restate in a very condensed format what it currently do:

• Goes through the list of current candidates and find the candidates where the voting period is over, count the votes and add {{FPC-results-ready-for-review}} with the found information. The bot will not move it away until a user has verified the results. The bot currently ignores some candidates and to not touch them such as: FPXed, Withdrawn, Candidates with several versions of the image...
• Looks for verified results and park those pages according to the current procedure.

Thus the bot can run in two modes, a 'close' mode, and a 'park' mode. There were some discussions earlier whether the close mode was necessary. However I do not see any big problem now when the intermediate "review" step is added. It also makes it clearer when the voting period is over as the bot can close it sooner; what do you think ? It seems to count correctly most of the time and it handles all language specific vote templates that I have found.

The verification procedure performed by a user involves changing the {{FPC-results-ready-for-review}} to {{FPC-results-reviewed}}, if you need to correct the results you just change the named parameters. The reviewer also need to add the category parameter so the bot knows in which FP category to place the image.

I know there are several issues to improve and sort out, but the main functionality is now implemented. /Daniel78 (talk) 17:58, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks pretty good, Daniel. I like that the results are reviewed; that makes me feel so much more comfortable! The only thing about the three it's done so far is that there is no "featured, not featured" placed after the heading. Was that just overlooked?

Ah thanks for pointing it out, it was actually implemented in an early stage but I forgot to put it back when I introduced the review stage, I'll put it back. /Daniel78 (talk)

Great, :-) Maedin\^talk 10:30, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, could you please tell me what will happen after the reviewer provides a category? Will the image be placed only in Featured pictures, list? Is that the end of the bots involvement with the images? (For now, I mean, not necessarily in the future.) How soon after review does the bot run, is it immediate or is there a delay? Sorry for the questions, I'm curious and know very little about bots, and obviously have an interested in FPC, :-) Maedin\^talk 20:01, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

No problem, questions are good and everyone can have opinions about what and how the bot should do things. Currently I am just manually invoking it, but my thought was perhaps that it could run once or twice a day. If the candidate is featured it will do all the steps mentioned here, but currently there are no passing nominations so I have not had the chance to run a test on that yet. However some of the categorization pages are locally sorting the images in one page, like Commons:Featured_pictures/Places, the bot can't handle that. For the bot to handle such cases either the different subcategories would have to be moved to subpages, or the bot would need a "unsorted" place to put them for manual sorting later. /Daniel78 (talk) 20:35, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Considering the amount of work that the bot would save, I really don't mind if an "unsorted" place would have to be used. I'd be happy to regularly sort those images. Now that the bot has been run on a promotion, I can see that there will need to be some maintenance in order to provide better descriptions. Wicked Witch 2 is not too bad, but I can just imagine the nightmare it would be for some of the other file names we see around here! But that's ok, too, because I don't mind cleaning those up every now and then, either.

Oh, and also, sorry, why does this one have results before the voting period is over? Just wondering, :-) Maedin\^talk 20:06, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah the time was actually pass the closing time in my timezone :), I guess I need to convert my local time to UTC before checking if the candidates have timed out. /Daniel78 (talk) 20:35, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks really good, Daniel, :-) When do you think the bot will be ready to run on its own? I will draft some changes to the guide on closing (assuming you haven't already). I'd prefer twice a day instead of once, but once would be fine, too. Whatever you and others think is best. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maedin (talk • contribs)

Not sure when it will run on it's own, I am going to run it manually for a while to see if it runs smoothly, and it also needs the requested bot flag. /Daniel78 (talk) 21:51, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I marked one as reviewed. Hope that's ok. I couldn't wait to try ;-) Maedin\^talk 09:22, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

No that's great, you need to set the category parameter though. I will try to change the template such that it prints out some warning if it's missing (needed for the ones that are featured so the bot knows which pages to place it in). /Daniel78 (talk) 12:33, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, 'doh, how did I forget that! Sorry, I'll remember next time. Maedin\^talk 13:39, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I updated the template such that if it's reviewed and featured but is missing the category a warning text will be printed. /Daniel78 (talk) 18:19, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Question By the way the two templates mentioned adds the images to temporary category pages, but that makes the entire candidate page also appear (with all it's different language links) in the category. Anyone knows how to prevent that ? /Daniel78 (talk) 22:46, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I know a way. I am pretty sure that there are much more elegant ways, but to prove the principle, I have made "a hole through example" (from template, to page, to list) at
    • User:Slaunger/Sandbox/TestTemplate
    • User:Slaunger/Sandbox/TestPage
    • User:Slaunger/Sandbox/TestList
  • Hope that can inspire you. It is probably easier for you to just look at the source code tahn for me to try and explain it... --Slaunger (talk) 20:33, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Thank you, I will have a look at it. /Daniel78 (talk) 20:51, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

It seems that the bot didn't understand the closing I made [6]. Or did I do it wrong? Yann (talk) 08:59, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it's just that the bot doesn't know how to handle a nomination with multiple images yet. It needs to be closed in the normal manual fashion, without bot involvement. Hope that helps! Maedin\^talk 09:02, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

True, when there are multiple candidates on one page it needs to be fully closed according to the old manual instructions. I have mentioned it in the template it puts on the candidate. Unless there are clear rules for how to nominate edits of an existing nomination such that the bot can parse and understand exactly what to do it will have to ignore them. /Daniel78 (talk) 19:24, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Please test - Featured Pictures World Map

Please help me test the beta version of my newest brainchild, a template showing a selection of Featured Pictures and their position on a world map. It displays small icons in the location of a picture (icon depending on the picture's category). The map has a convenient hover feature that will display a popup containing a preview of the picture and a description of its contents when moving the mouse pointer over an icon (done without JavaScript, in pure CSS). Also, it can use existing (decimal) coordinates, and scale to any size. It is very easy to add new pictures and modify existing ones. If you want to know how, feel free to dig into the code (no documentation yet).

My idea is that a map like that could one day become a sort of "portal" to our Featured Pictures library. To ensure an optimal and representative selection of Featured Pictures displayed, the map is 100% hand-maintained.

Here is what you will get:

(Actually the icons have been updated, but basically it looks like this)

Ready to try it out? Here's how:

Step 1: Add the following code lines to your monobook.css file (located at User:YOURUSERNAME/monobook.css) and bypass your browser's cache afterwards:

.FPWorldMapIcon {}
.FPWorldMapIcon .more { display: none; }
.FPWorldMapIcon:hover .more { display: block; }

Bypassing the cache will log you out of your account in many browsers, you need to log in again after bypassing for the template to work; all of this only needs to be done once.

Step 2: Now you are ready to see the actual map. To do that, simply go to User:JovanCormac/FPWorldMapTest. If you didn't do Step 1, all you will see is an ugly mess of thumbnails.

The template is 100% CSS 2 compliant. I have tested it with the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Google Chrome. It seems to work fine with all of them. I can't say anything about older versions, though.

Please report any issues you encounter and tell me what you think about the idea. -- JovanCormac 15:21, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I did as you said and it came out quite nice except for a few issues, but it might just be my browser. I'm using Firefox 1.0.6 (mum's paranoid and hates downloading stuff and my PC isn't connected to the net since I'm not at home most of the time). Anyways, I opened it and got a map with icons over it (like in your preview pic) but the thumbnails are all in the top right corner. Probably just the old browser.

Another thing I was wondering was you said you wanted it to be like a window to the FP's, but if you need the lines of code, then people without users can't use it, no?

BTW, it's a swell idea! --SuperJew (talk) 06:55, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, what do you know? I just looked at it again and it's working fine! As they say here in Israel: קבל ח"ח (Transliteration: kabel het-het), it means: recieve positive reinforcement. --SuperJew (talk) 07:00, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Firefox 1.0.6??? They don't even release updates for that one anymore. If your mother really is paranoid about security I strongly suggest she updates, instead of sticking with a dinosaur...
Anyway, I'm glad it worked even with this very old browser. The issues you had with the placement were probably caused by me messing around with the code, trying to find a problem reported to me. As for your question about users having to update their monobook.css file... well, that's just for now. If the community endorses it they can update the global stylesheet, and then it will work for anyone, even non-users, without having to edit anything at all! -- JovanCormac 07:38, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I try to put by her every now and then, maybe download Google Chrome, but she's kinda fanatic sometimes, insists she doesn't want viruses or doesn't have enough memory on the computer. The map worked fine on Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13. I will test on Firefox and Google Chrome when I'm at school (in a couple of weeks), and I might manage to find a computer with old IE (5.5 or 6). Keep up the good work --SuperJew (talk) 16:04, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Comment Considering the large number of pictures in the FP library, would it be possible make one of these for each category? Eg. Insects, Vehicles, Panoramas etc? I'd be more than happy to assist, if you could show me what to do. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 14:34, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Forgot to say, I love it. You really do deserve that barnstar. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 14:42, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Thank you. As for your question: The template is build in a modular fashion. It can very easily be duplicated, and adapted to create category maps like you proposed. Also, the background world map can be changed very easily, even to a map with a different aspect ratio. As mentioned, the template will scale to any size ({{FPWorldMap|800}} will give a map that is 800 pixels wide while {{FPWorldMap|400}} will, you guessed it, give a 400 pixel map), so it is suitable for use on all pages, including category pages. However, it is worth mentioning that I created this template specifically to provide a balanced, human-maintained overview of all Featured Pictures (the very thing that the FP library is lacking), with the various icons serving as a way to distinguish between the categories. If we simply added all existing geotagged FPs to the map in a robot-like fashion, we would probably end up with something a lot less useful (overlapping, cluttered icons; an imbalance towards landscape shots as they are most likely to be geotagged etc.). If you would like to add pictures to the map, you need to edit User:JovanCormac/FPWorldMap/IconLayer (instructions are in the page's source code). After saving, your addition (if done correctly) will instantly be displayed on the test page mentioned above, or on User:JovanCormac/FPWorldMap. Have fun! -- JovanCormac 18:26, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
•  Question Is the addition to monobook.css just something temporary ? /Daniel78 (talk) 18:02, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
  • What do you mean by "temporary"? You can undo it any time, simply by removing the code lines from monobook.css, if that is what you are worried about. And as I wrote in reply to SuperJew above, the change could be introduced by an admin into the global stylesheet, which would make adding those code lines to monobook.css obsolete and would permanently enable the template for all users and visitors of Commons. -- JovanCormac 18:26, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Sorry my question was exactly what superjew asked, I missed it. /Daniel78 (talk) 20:34, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• That's a pretty sweet idea. Then again, I could also make a WikiMiniAtlas] layer with only FPs... --Dschwen (talk) 22:18, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Your MiniAtlas was indeed on of the inspirations for this template. However, the Atlas is often incredibly slow (probably due to server overload), and this makes it a pain to use sometimes (sadly, because it is certainly one of the most inventive additions to Wikimedia of all time). As a "portal" to the Featured Pictures library it is therefore highly unfit. -- JovanCormac 17:31, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
• Very nice. But what happens if say there are many featured pictures of/from the same place? --Muhammad (talk) 14:52, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
  • This is already the case! As Jovan stated above, he makes a choice to keep it uncluttered and representative. --Dschwen (talk) 15:04, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
• I have finally had the time to try this out.
  • My first thought was that this was a duplication of the WikiMiniAtlas, but on the WikiMiniAtlas you do not have the seperation in topics, you have that here which is nice. However, a nice thing about the WikiMiniAtlas is that you can zoom and thet there is no redundancy in the the maintenance effort. It is a pity that the WikiMiniAtlas is so slow at times, as I think there is more perspective in developing that solution such that it could also have topic layers.
    • True, but as you said often the MiniAtlas is so slow that I cant't see it becoming a thing that is shown on the entrance of FP in the near future, unless someone donates $1 Million or so for a really fast server - for that is surely the kind of budget Google uses for their lightning-fast maps. It is also worth noting that WikiMiniAtlas requires JavaScript to run (no other major part of Commons does; some corporations have it turned off for security reasons), while the FPWorldMap doesn't (pure CSS).
  • One thought could be that parsing a parameter to the {{Location}} template, like the type could be used for some kind of coarse subdivision and then perhaps, if some intelligence could be built into looking at the categories an image is associated with (I realize that is hard though).
    • I'm afraid I don't quite get what you mean here...
  • One concern I have about the CSS solution here is the maintainability and selection of which FPs to show on the world map. I do not know how many of our +2000 FPs are geocoded, but even if the fraction is not very high and we subdivide the FPs into one or two handful of topics it would lead to immense clutter on a world map is all were to be shown. Especially considering that many FPs are concentrated in quite small regions. So some selection of the best of all FPs has to be done to select those shown on the world map. Is that not correct? And who is going to select those?
    • You are quite correct, showing only a selection of Featured Pictures was the basic idea behind the project from the start. The main reason for this, however, was not fear of cluttering the map, but fear of 80% of the icons linking to animal pictures, with most of those animals having six legs or more. I can't stress enough how serious the "Arthropod Issue" is on Commons. Simply looking through the history of POTD for the past months, one might think that this is an entomology website. The extreme imbalance towards arthropod macros in our "representative" sections FP and POTD is one of the top three problems Commons has IMO.
      So yes, making a selection among FPs is neccessary. As for who is going to do that - well, everyone's invited to. The code of the template is fairly easy to read, and adding new pictures can be done in under a minute. It is open for everyone right now, just like POTD is.
  • Have you ever seen the clickable world maps at Category:Ecozones? I think they are quite elegant for zooming in on continets, sub-continents and areas. Could these clickable maps be used somehow for navigating and avoiding clutter?
    • I agree. Since we have a lot of pictures from Europe and the US, I already had considered making separate, larger maps of those where more pictures can be shown.
  • When I see a photo on the world map, other icons in the area are shown on top of the thumbnails. That takes away some of the niftyness of the solution. Is that a browser-specic feature or the same on all browsers? (I am using IE7 on Win XP)
    • Definitely a browser issue. Time to upgrade! IE7 apparently has problems correctly interpreting the z-index CSS attribute. Works fine with IE8 and all versions of Firefox (even version 1). The newest versions of Chrome and Opera also do it correctly (don't know about older ones).
  • Otherwise a novel idea, and nice work. You have a lot of good, creative ideas. --Slaunger (talk) 22:29, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
    • Thank you. I hope that one day something like this map will become a good portal to the FP library. -- JovanCormac 08:33, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Automatic archiving

This page grows rapidly due to high activity (which is good) and often reaches a size where it takes a long time to load on a slow connection. I have therefore enabled automatic archiving using MiszaBot. Since we already had 6 manually created enumerated archives, I have configured the archiving to continue this scheme beginning with archive 7. It is currently setup to archive threads which have been inactive for the last 21 days and threads are saved in archives with a maximum size of 250 KB. The 21 days and 250 KB is selected somewhat arbitrarily as a guesstimate of what will work well here. If you think the values should be tweaked, feel free to do so by editing the template at the top of this page. I believe the first run will be tomorrow, which will then hopefully lead to some cleanup of the page. --Slaunger (talk) 21:15, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay with me. Thank you for setting up the archive bot, Slaunger. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 21:16, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

No problem. I had been annoyed for some time that it exhausted the memory on my (admittedly old) cell phone, when I loaded the page, so instead of complaining, I thought I'd better do something about it . --Slaunger (talk) 21:24, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Rules of fifth day

I am planning to add handling of the delisting candidates to the FPCBot, but the guidelines is unclear about the rules of the fifth day. There is the new (second) rule that say "Pictures are speedy promoted if they have 10 support votes or more and no oppose votes.", but under the delisting rules only the first rule is mentioned. So is the second rule also valid for delistings ? That is if they have 10 delist votes and no keep votes they could be delisted after 5 days. I assume so but the guidelines should in that case be clearer about it. /Daniel78 (talk) 20:18, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd say so as well, i.e. both rules of the 5th day should apply, even though they will be mostly theoretical. I've never seen 10 "Delist" votes on a candidate, much less 10 "Delist" votes and no "Keep" vote. -- JovanCormac 06:34, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Barring exceptional circumstances, I'd be inclined to let delist candidacies run the full term if they're to end in delisting, as a courtesy to the original content creator, and those that supported him the first time. Adam Cuerden (talk) 12:50, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I have now implemented support for handling delistings in the bot. It currently do use both the fifth day rules (but so far it has not affected any candidates). I'll change it if there is a consensus here to do so. Personally I am currently neutral to whether they should apply for delistings or not. But I think that either they should both apply or neither should. /Daniel78 (talk) 00:33, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Picture of the Year 2009

Please see this discussion. Further input from the community would be nice. Best regards, — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 08:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• Also see Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2009/Preparation, the preparation page for the Picture of the Year 2009 competition where all ideas are being collected. We are planning to introduce a Jury Prize this year, which will probably take a while to set up, so it's far from too early to start. -- JovanCormac 11:12, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Added to FP requirements

Have added the following text to FP requirements:

'Well documented. For digital restorations, an unedited version of the image should be uploaded locally and cross-linked from the file hosting page. Edit notes should be specified in detail, such as "Rotated and cropped. Dirt, scratches, and stains removed. Histogram adjusted and colors balanced."

As WMF volunteers seek image donations from cultural institutions, it is important to communicate that we follow best practices. One of the things that makes a difference is our documentation: when volunteers edit a historic image it needs to be clearly documented as such, with a locally hosted unedited original readily available for comparison. This matter actually has made a difference when negotiating with museums and our most prolific volunteers follow the practice already. Should be an uncontroversial addition to formalize. Durova (talk) 15:03, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

• I agree in principle, but please note that the picture that caused you to add this requirement, File:Battle of Antietam2.jpg, was already crosslinked with its original version even though you opposed it for not being. I do hope you will reconsider your vote :) -- JovanCormac 16:13, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
  • "where possible" should be added after "uploaded locally" - if nothing else, the original scans can be too large to upload except in a reduced/JPEG'd version. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:16, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
    • Actually they should always be uploaded locally. This is important in case the hosting site changes. JPEG is the normal format for these unedited versions since the uncompressed formats often do not thumbnail. Compression can be applied on the rare instances where the unedited JPEG exceeds 100MB. Since it certainly is always possible, no qualifier is necessary. Durova (talk) 16:28, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
• Even though the documentation requirement makes sense, FPC has seen an alarming shift towards "requirements" unrelated to the image itself lately, notably people opposing (even FPXing) insect macros because of missing species id. We need to be very careful not to let things like encyclopedic value and image metadata creep in as criteria through such proposals, because we already have Valued Images and if the line between FP and VI starts to blur, it will hurt both projects. -- JovanCormac 16:34, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Documentation issues actually have been a deciding factor with establishing institutional partnerships and obtaining large scale donations of archival images. This is exactly the sort of thing that ought to be formalized since it affects our core site mission of obtaining material. Durova (talk) 16:43, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
    • One other aspect of making the best practice explicit is that originals and restored versions are kept separate. Too many people think that "their" version of an original is so much better so that everyone has to see it. In this way there is a clear distinction between an original and a restored version. GerardM (talk) 16:55, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
    • As I said, I agree with you that linking to the original when uploading an edited version should be a requirement. But I don't believe that in general, image metadata (like species id) should play any role in the FP review process. Quality is already an integral part of FPC, and plays a role in at least 95% of all nominations. If the role of metadata continues to grow as well (as it is currently doing), we might as well merge FP, QI and VI, or at least give every Featured Picture the QI and VI seals automatically, which would firmly establish QI and VI as "second-rate" Featured Pictures, a status they have already in the minds of many. -- JovanCormac 17:16, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
      • The importance already is well established. Experienced restoration editors have been opposing underdocumented nominations for a long time. This proposal has nothing to do with QI or VI; it regards a factor which has affected Commons's access to institutional image donations. Durova (talk) 18:52, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
        • Durova, could you please explain what you mean by "This is an issue that has caused museums to back away from prospective donations"? I don't understand the relation between your proposed FP requirements and donations by institutions. I have imported several images from the LoC, but I didn't import the original TIFF files, which are not directly useful for Wikimedia projects, and the source at LoC won't dispappear any time soon. Yann (talk) 19:41, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
          • A specific incident happened several months ago when an Australian museum backed out of negotiations, based upon worries that undocumented edits would significantly alter the presentation of material if they donated to Commons. They feared that amateur efforts at improvement would degrade the historic integrity of donated material. Significant progress has been made in recent months in the Netherlands, with both Tropenmuseum of Amsterdam and Spaarnestad Museum of Haarlem agreeing to donate large numbers of digital files to Commons. GerardM, who posted above, is our primary representative in negotiating with both of those institutions. Part of Gerard's success has grown from assurances that people such as Adam Cuerden and myself practice high documentation standards. Durova (talk) 22:35, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
            • OK, good to know that. I think this should be written down somewhere, so that prospective restorators know what guidelines they need to follow. Yann (talk) 23:01, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
              • Good suggestion. Am stuffed up from a particularly bad case of hayfever today; ought to sit down with a few others who do this and draft a guideline. Best regards, Durova (talk) 23:41, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
      • To reply to JovanCormac, I must disagree with you on that point. I think it is one thing for FP to represent "pretty images" but the context and information about those images is vital to understanding the image. I do not mean only 'encyclopedic' information (equivalent to the FP criteria on WP) but that metadata of media items is vital to their being used. I don't know about the species ID issue, but I can say that for historic images - things that were not originally .jpgs and have been subsequently taken out of their original context (book, photoalbum, painting, etching...) - then describing the original's physical location and difference from the current FPC is vital. Without that info, we just have a modern image of something that looks old. And, further to the point about museum donations, yes. When talking to museums/archives it is extremely helpful to pull up on screen an example of how an item in their collection is being treated with respect. The most common response I get when talking to museums about how we might end up modifying their PD pictures is "but we need to insure the integrity of the collection". The kind of metadata criteria being proposed here forms part of our promise of ensuring that integrity. Best, Witty lama (talk) 20:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

How far does the rule of "two versions" go?

Based on the results of the votes, the following pictures will both be featured:

How far does the rule "Two different versions of the same picture cannot both be featured, but only the one with the higher number of votes." go? Applying common sense, I'd say those are two versions of the same picture. -- JovanCormac 16:16, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. This not QI. Only one of them sould be featured. I consider it two different versions of the same subject. --Slaunger (talk) 16:22, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I think we just feature the one with more votes, or the best ratio support/oppose. Yann (talk) 19:28, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

We're lucky there is one, as they're almost tied: One has 6/3, the other one 6/1. -- JovanCormac 19:46, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

 Comment I think, it is two separate nominations. Photos was made in separate days (see EXIF), separate by composition, colours and lighting. Separate users support it. But one FI is very good result for me. The overall objective - to make good photos and upload good images, a minor target - to receive awards. George Chernilevsky (talk) 18:39, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

That's a good attitude you have. Btw. how did you find the spider again on the second day? Is it a pet spider? -- JovanCormac 18:55, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

 Comment I think those pictures should link to each other as "other versions". If one of them is a FP having another version kind of upgrades the other one too. --Ernie (talk) 10:16, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

 Info It like a pet, but still dangerous. The size with legs approximate 18 cm. Poison is similar to a wasp, however a dose much more. Hairs on a body is too poisonous. Speed of movement of 5-7 km/h. I leased this spider from a private zoo collection. My son of age of 13 years helped me: cautiously placed this spider in area near my photocamera. A abandoned beach of the Black sea was used as similar photostudio. --George Chernilevsky (talk) 21:06, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Wow, hard-core parenting ;-) --Dschwen (talk) 21:25, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

This is family :-). I have caught my first alive viper in wild at my 11 years ago. I did instructing it before giving it a spider. My son is good non-professional biologist. It can already catch a alive snakes in wild, and is able to correct address with dangerous animals. --George Chernilevsky (talk) 16:48, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I didn't know you could lease a spider... pretty cool. -- JovanCormac 21:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Spiders were not pretty cool (quiet), rather a little bit nervous. In total there were 3 tarantulas of different kinds (wait for nominations). --George Chernilevsky (talk) 16:48, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Please, vote

In my opinion, ihis is the same picture:

Possible variants: denoised, cropped, brightnes / colour balance changed, minor changed composition, etc...

And this is NOT the same (very diffirent composition and angle of view)

Also exist way with nomination set of pictures.

In my opinion, Featured == Ultra-nice, very applicable for Picture of The Day, but not always unique, not VI. --George Chernilevsky (talk) 09:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Please, add Your votes with argumentation:

•  Support this opinion --George Chernilevsky (talk) 09:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
• I agree on your examples, the first ones are the same, the second ones are not. But whatever the rules say I just don't think it's good form to nominate more than one image of a similar subject, something which applies to the spiders, the singers, and the birds alike. FP represents a selection of great pictures, and part of the FPC process is the nominator carefully preparing and selecting which picture to nominate, rather than throwing a bunch of similar pictures at the community and hoping that one of them will get enough votes to pass. -- JovanCormac 15:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
  • I partially agree with your arguments. However, if to apply this rule it is too far, it will close doors for potentially fine photos.

And... do not get me wrong. I do not wait for the FI award for my second photo same spider. I modestly hope, that best of my creativity is not made yet, all in a future. --George Chernilevsky (talk) 16:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The one thing I must point out is that we need to be careful not to block improvements. We don't have a delist and replace system (though we probably should) so it may be that we need to accept some duplication, then weed out later. Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:16, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The guidelines state "Normally there should never be two featured pictures that are just different versions of the same image" which I think is pretty clear. It is talking about versions of the same image, not the same subject. That is we don't want different crops, or different retouched versions of the same image, and that's all there is to it. I don't think there is an need for any instruction creep to be more specific or specify that we don't want images similar by some degree, the community decides by voting what will be an FP, people just refuse to promote lots of the same type of images (like too many sunsets etc) it is a pretty much a self policing feature of the process. --Tony Wills (talk) 09:43, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

New procedure for Featuring Wikipedia FPs?

The fact that the Wikipedias as well as Commons all have separate Featured Picture libraries is one of the worst design mistakes in the entire Wikimedia ecosystem IMO. While we probably won't change that in the near future, I'm wondering if it might be possible to find consensus on some kind of procedure enabling us to "mass import" FPs from the English Wikipedia FP library, making them Commons FPs as well.

Of course the voting procedure used on EN is different from ours, but nevertheless most pictures they promote seem to fulfill Commons FP standards as well (this isn't true for FPs from all language versions, but for EN it is). Notably, virtually all of Wikipedia's FPs are already on Commons, and freely licensed.

Like many other users, I love browsing the Commons categories, looking for new pictures that have the potential to become Featured. Searching the recent Wikipedia FP promotions is not half as rewarding. I have literally seen hundreds of Wikipedia FPs that are not yet Featured on Commons but would make it without a doubt, yet I didn't bother to nominate them because I prefer finding "new" FP candidates.

Maybe we can agree on a system like QIC for pictures that are already Featured on EN, where nominations are decided upon within 48 hours and a single vote from a (trusted?) reviewer is sufficient for promotion, allowing for a much higher throughput with less bureocracy. Nominations could even be created by a specialized bot designed to find images Featured on EN but not on Commons, which would relieve Commons users of that tedious task and ensure that no treasures are overlooked.

What do you think? -- JovanCormac 15:09, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I can see the motivation and possible benefit, but to ally Commons FPC so strongly with just one Wikipedia featured picture process is an (implied) negative on the others. I can particularly imagine that our German friends will have a few words to say on the matter, in the vein of, "What's wrong with the pictures that we promote? Do we not apply the criteria well enough, do we have poor tastes?" I'm not active at German FPC so I can't say at all, I'm just musing on a possible reaction. It just seems a bit unfair (and unjust?) to say that EN Wiki turns out good stuff and the others . . . well, might not? Maedin\^talk 16:28, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Maedin, Commons is its own wiki not a part of any Wikipedia, en or one of the other 700+ (?) languages. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:07, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I must admit I don't quite see how your statement agrees with Maedin. It seems to say something quite different from what she wrote. -- JovanCormac 17:58, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that would be unjust at all. German FPC regularly passes pictures with a resolution far below 2 Mpx, something which isn't done on Commons or EN. AFAICS, EN's Featured Pictures seem to be quite compatible with Commons, while DE is one of many language versions whose passing criteria appear to be a little lower than our own. Of course, any WP version determined by consensus to have standards equivalent to our own should participate in the "fast track" process. Excluding the others does not neccessarily mean that they turn out inferior stuff, just that in general, their standards are not the same as those used on Commons. After all, no one really believes that there aren't any differences in standards between the language versions - if there weren't, all FP libraries from the Wikipedias could be merged right away. -- JovanCormac 17:56, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried suggesting this at en:FP? Lycaon (talk) 18:11, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I haven't, but since the suggestion concerns promotion rules at Commons, I don't think it would make sense to, either. -- JovanCormac 19:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

While I agree that it is unfortunate that we now have so many parallel systems I do not like the idea of auto-promoting WP:FPs to Commons FPs. There are differences between the two projects, which mean that their flavours are different. On Commons I think it would be fair to say that the technical requirements are sligtly higher and a little more emphasis is on aesthetical characters (composition, colors, etc). On WP:FP the highest emphasis is on encyclopedic value, not only value for Wikimedia projects in general. Moreover, WP:FPs generally favor encyclopedic value based on what is found valuable in English-speaking countries. Thus, there are images, which can be WP:FPs but not Commons FPs, and there are images which can be COM:FPs and not WP:FPs. A year or two ago, I considered them very identical. That ended when I tried to also participate in WP:FPC with a few nomination. I found that I could learn different things the two places, and what was OK one place was not OK at the other place. Actually, I also learned to appreciate the difference. Let me just give an example of the two flavours and how that would lead to something you probably don't want if you blindly autopromote WP:FPs to COM:FPs:

• 
  This is a COM:FP. It is color saturated, to make it look better and give it a better wow. I then tried nominate it for WP:FP...See next image.
• 
  At WP:FP more neutral colors were preferred and it would give a more objective representation and thus a better EV. So it was this edit that was promoted instead. If this was also a COM:FP we would have two, almost identical COM:FPs. That is, of course, not what we want. Personally i like both edits for their individual quualities and their slightly different emphasis

Another byproduct is that it would imply that getting WP:FP status is harder than COM:FP status, since any WP:FP would be a COM:FP, but it is not all COM:FPs, which can be promoted as WP:FPs. i do not like that the WP project should get a higher status than the COM project. They are simply just different, and one of them is not better than the other. They just emphasize slightly different aspects of the images. --Slaunger (talk) 12:48, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The points you are raising make sense, but please do note that my tentative proposal doesn't call for an "auto promotion" of WP FPs, but rather for a much simplified way of promoting pictures on Commons that already have FP status on WP (my guess is that at least 90% of recent WP:FP promotions would make Commons FP as well). On QI, not every candidate gets promoted, so using a similar system wouldn't mean all WP FPs eventually become Commons FPs. The truth is that FPs on Commons are supposed to be our best pictures, and with the vast majority of contributors being mainly active on Wikipedia, our FP library is lagging behind. It is simply ridiculous to ask nominators at Commons:FPC to go to WP:FPC, copy the information, re-nominate the entire thing in a process that is almost identical, just to get that additional listing. I'm not saying my suggestion of a "fast track" promotion is the best way to overcome that tedious nonsense, but if it isn't, what is? Wikipedia uses Commons as an image resource. Why shouldn't Commons rely on work done at Wikipedia as well? -- JovanCormac 16:15, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

And btw., two different versions of the same image being Featured on two different lists (as in your example) is a total disaster, and makes the mess created by having more than one list even worse. -- JovanCormac 16:19, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

At WP:FPC the emphasis is mostly on encyclopaedic value. Commons is sort of like a photo competition with fairly strict image quality guidelines and other composition rules. I think commons should be the former, but it isn't. For this reason I think the two projects are not fundamentally compatible. Many candidates here wouldn't succeed at enwiki for enc reasons. Many FPs at enwiki wouldn't pass here for "wow" reasons. There is a reason that the set of my nominations here and there don't intersect strongly. Noodle snacks (talk) 11:46, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

While that may be true for your nominations, it is obvious that in general, the two FP libraries intersect very strongly, so IMO it makes sense to find a way to reduce the amount of duplicate work. -- JovanCormac 15:36, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with the often voiced opinion that en.FPC has a high emphasis on encyclopedic value. The argument comes up pretty often but the WOW factor seems very important to me as well. Especially Noodle Snacks macro pictures and stunning landscape photography exhibits a solid wow. And I am sure Noodle Snacks knows that. His use of HDR to increase wow in his pictures leads me to that assumption. One difference between the two is still seems to be the (albeit small) difference in minimum resolutions. I strongly hope commons standards won't get watered down by autopromoting some of the severely downscaled images from en.FP. --Dschwen (talk) 16:09, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I still don't get the logic of why there has to be some sort of fast track route for en wp images on Commons. They are separate wikis both in the sense that Commons is not a 'pedia & Commons is not solely en. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:24, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Me neither, sorry. Just in case you were expecting an answer from me with that indentation ;-) --Dschwen (talk) 20:13, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the main point of tagging images with FP, QI, and VI is to add these images to a short list of images definitely worth considering when you are looking for an image. The fact that any wikimedia project has promoted an image makes it worth considering. Category:Featured pictures already contains images featured on the Croatian, English, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Malay, Polish, Slovenian, Spanish, and Turkish wikipedias. So we already already know about these other FPs without adding them to Category:Featured pictures on Wikimedia Commons. I think we should follow your lead and concentrate on highlighting more un-recognized gems from our collection of millions of images. So keep up your good work in finding new images :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 08:21, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, Category:Featured pictures doesn't actually seem to include en:wp FPs! ... and the structure of the category means it includes delisted FPs and failed nominations tooo ... something for me to fix :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 08:28, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Disregard "Oppose" votes without a reason for opposing

This has been discussed again and again, so I think it is time that we finally implement a strict policy against opposing votes cast without stating a reason (a recent example being in this nomination, the third vote).

I therefore propose the following policy, replacing the current wording "Please include a few words about why you liked/didn't like the picture, especially when you vote oppose." on Commons:Featured_picture_candidates:

--- PROPOSAL

The votes cast not only serve as a way to determine whether a picture will become Featured or not, but also as valuable feedback for the author/nominator, giving that person insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the work/nomination. For this reason, civic virtue demands that at least when opposing a candidate (which has been carefully selected for nomination by someone) a valid reason is given for doing so. All opposing votes cast without stating such a reason will be discarded from the results as invalid.

There are many valid reasons for opposing, and in order to not inhibit the voting process in any way, only the invalid reasons shall be listed here:

• No reason given at all (obviously)
• "I don't like it", or other empty assessments
• "You can do better", or other reasons criticising the author/nominator rather than the image

Ideally, reasons are given in English as it is by far the most widely understood language on Commons, but of course, any language may be used to state a reason (therefore, language problems are not an excuse for failure to provide a reason for opposing).

--- END PROPOSAL

I really hope that we can find consensus on a change of policy here, as empty votes can be quite frustrating for authors and nominators trying to understand what they can do to improve the quality of their works and nominations. It's really a matter of common sense IMO - if someone cannot take the time to state why he disagrees with the nominator on the quality of the picture, the vote might as well come from a sock puppet, so useless is it. -- JovanCormac 11:14, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Oppose Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 12:02, 22 August 2009 (UTC) Just kidding :P
  • Ha! When I posted this, I just knew that someone would make that joke. -- JovanCormac 14:48, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
•  Support This is long overdue. If you're going o take the time to actually review an image and oppose it, the least you can do is give the nominator/creator a reason. Perhaps we should also have a seperate, fully explained list of things to avoid when opposing, much like Wikipedia`s w:WP:IDONTLIKEIT? Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 13:11, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Agreed on the list thing, but the proposal should probably be kept to a bare minimum for now since from past examples it appears pretty hard to push through a change in policy on here (which is a good thing, we don't want to change those every few days). -- JovanCormac 14:48, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
  • In time, we might even be able to do away with the still ubiquitous "reason" No WOW, which is seen in at least 30% of all nominations... -- JovanCormac 15:02, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Comment You might want to change the language of your proposal to be a bit more gender friendly Jovan; a large percentage of Commons members are female. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 13:17, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Thank you for pointing it out, you are right of course. I changed it instantly, hope it's OK now. -- JovanCormac 14:42, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Much better. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 15:49, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
•  CommentI'm all for keeping this proposal simple for now. Too many good ideas get buried under irrelevent discussion. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 15:49, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
•  Oppose - Se o inglês for a língua escolhida;  Support - Se outra qualquer língua puder ser utilizada -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 18:17, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Okay Alvesgaspar, I give up. What's the translation? I'm assuming 'inglês' is 'English', 'lingua' is 'language' and 'utilizada' is 'used' or 'utilizsed', but aside from that I'm stumped. Does 'escolhida' have something to do with learning, or scholars? Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 19:00, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Sorry for making my point that way ;-) (I suppose it goes against Commons policy?...). The translation reads: Oppose, if English is the chosen language; support if any other language can be used. It is not by change that the “old vets” at Commons FPC were never able to solve the problem (if there is one). The idea is well intentioned but not feasible. Surprisingly, the main obstacle to force the oppose votes to be justified is not the language but the subjectivity of the reasons. If the picture has some obvious technical flaws, then objective reasons such as sharpness, lighting, detail or composition usually prevail in the evaluation, which becomes somehow easier for the reviewers to make and explain. But when the images are technically excellent or very good, or their intention is a little more than to illustrate some theme (like my recent nomination with "too much wet sand"), then the aesthetical component becomes important and it may be not easy to explain why one likes or dislikes them. In those cases, to state “no wow”, “nothing special” or any other fuzzy reason is the equivalent of confessing that we don’t like the picture but can’t say why. Remember that FPC is just a poll, not a discussion forum where the promotions are decided by some kind of consensus. Yes, it is nice for the creators to have constructive opinions on their images. As I have said many times, FPC has been an extraordinary experience for me, where I have learned more about digital photography in two years than in all the time before. But we cannot force all reviewers to a role they are not prepared or not interested to play. Yes, I support the romantic proposal but really don’t believe it will work. -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 19:58, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
    • No, it's a point well made, and I like the way in which you made it. The only reason I didn't google the translation was that work has blocked access to every site save this and Wikipedia. The easy access to these sorts of translators, and the wide range of languages spoken by members who can also speak 'inglês' leads me to believe that the language barrier won't be a huge hurdle; the main problem will be getting word out that Featured Pictures isn't just for those who can converse in english. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 20:36, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

It's true what you say about not being able to put disagreements into words, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I, for instance, follow your rules when it comes to opposing; if I don't know why I don't like it then I don't oppose, at least not that instant. I wait for other people to comment, generally someone else will be able to verbalise what it is that spoils the image. I myself don't think that 'no wow' should be excluded as a reason for opposition; it is a valid argument. What I don't like is people just stating 'no wow' and not giving the creator/nominator any real feedback as to what they could do/should look for to improve their submissions. For instance, if I nominate something, I am nominating it because I think that it fits the criteria (or at least my interpretation thereof). If a reviewer does not consider the picture worthy, than they are well within their rights to say that it has 'no wow'. But I would appreciate at least an attempt to explain why the image arouses no feeling, or what they would like to see in a picture of that subject; for example, more action. That way I know where I've gone wrong and I can improve my nominations. No argument is 'invalid', as long as the person making it explains it, and I think that's what Jovan was trying to get across when he made this thread. Opposing without a stated reason helps nobody, but not properly explaining your reason, especially when it comes to compositional matters is nearly as unhelpful. My apologies for the length of this response, words are clumsy when it comes to expressing thoughts succinctly. Sarcastic ShockwaveLover (talk) 21:00, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

 Support No me gusta inglés. ;) Durova (talk) 19:23, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Support, though, of course, something lie "Oppose per [Nominator with valid oppose]" should count as a valid oppose. Agree with Alvesgaspar, and will add: if in doubt, count the vote until it can be translated. Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:09, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
•  Support but people will just make up reasons. I support without a rationale from time to time. It doesn't mean that I haven't thought about it. I consider a reason for opposing polite more than anything. Noodle snacks (talk) 23:30, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
• Yeah, agree with Noodle snacks. Well intentioned proposal, but I think it will replace no-reason opposes by stupid-reason opposes. And those tend to drive me even more crazy ;-). And don't even get me started about that "no wow" crap... --Dschwen (talk) 00:19, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
•  Comment To Alvesgaspar: That's why the proposal specifically states that any language may be used. You have nothing to worry about :)
  To Adam Cuerden: You are right, of course. There is nothing wrong with concurring with another voter who has made a valid point. And if in doubt, the vote should always count (we don't want to see discussions on whether a vote is valid or not; after all, the point of the proposal is just to get people to think about the candidate a little before opposing).
  To Noodle snacks and Dschwen: True, they might simply make something up. But still the policy will force them to at least take the time to do that, and while they're at it, they might actually think about the picture a little and maybe find a reason that's better than the made-up one they were going to use. -- JovanCormac 10:31, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
•  ⠎⠞⠪⠙⠚⠑⠗ ⠍⠑⠝ ⠚⠁⠛ ⠜⠗ ⠕⠉⠅⠎⠡ ⠇⠊⠞⠑ ⠕⠗⠕⠇⠊⠛ ⠋⠪⠗ ⠊⠙⠊⠕⠞⠊⠎⠅⠁ ⠁⠝⠇⠑⠙⠝⠊⠝⠛⠁⠗, ⠙⠑⠞ ⠜⠗ ⠊⠝⠞⠑ ⠁⠇⠇⠞⠊⠙ ⠇⠜⠞⠞ ⠁⠞⠞ ⠎⠜⠞⠞⠁ ⠕⠗⠙ ⠏⠡ ⠧⠁⠙ ⠎⠕⠍ ⠜⠗ ⠙⠡⠇⠊⠛⠞. /Daniel78 (talk) 11:58, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
  • That's Braille, isn't it? Which is cool (even though my browser can't display it), and of course an acceptable language for writing a reason in. It's really about the time taken to do so, showing at least some appreciation for the author's/nominator's effort. -- JovanCormac 15:06, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Yes, I think you need the correct font installed. /Daniel78 (talk) 22:19, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
      • Hm, I keep rubbing my finger across the screen, but I just .. cannot .. read .. it! --Dschwen (talk) 18:32, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
•  Support if the proposal is extended to all votes I am all for adding reasons to votes, but I do not see a point in singling out only oppose votes. Why is it that only users opposing a nomination should give reasons? I think it is equally relevant that a reviewer supporting a nomination gives a reason as to why they really think this particular file should be considered as "as some of the finest on Commons" as in written in the preamble of the COM:FPC page. (Only one out of 2300 images on Commons are featured).--Slaunger (talk) 09:18, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think requiring supports to be justified works very well because we traditionally don't encourage the nominator to talk about the image, in order to concentrate focus on the image itself. If the nominator's support is unsubstantiated, why should the others? Adam Cuerden (talk) 10:48, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Requiring that oppose votes are supplemented by a reason is also a break of traditions, so what is the difference? Why discriminate betweeen which types of votes should be substantiated. Maybe it would be a good idea if the nominator reasoned why he/she thinks this image is so special. Quite frankly I see more often support votes here, which I consider unqualified than oppose votes. When I see a stream of four unconditional support votes after a nomination I can't help thinking that some of these "quick" reviews were not very thorough. --Slaunger (talk) 11:08, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

If nothing else, support is, in theory, more about a lack of problems. It's hard to give concrete reasons for support in many cases. Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:10, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

IMO, it is not neccessary (but still nice, of course) to give a reason for supporting. A vote of support basically says that the voter agrees with the nominator's assessment regarding the picture's excellence, i.e. the reason for nomination (which should ideally be stated in a few words by the nominator). -- JovanCormac 17:59, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

If this oppose-discrimitaing proposal is accepted, this will effectively lower the bar for an image to become featured (as the barrier for opposing will be larger than for supporting). How should be then reset the bar to its current position? Raise the number of required support votes by one? --Slaunger (talk) 20:49, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Honestly I do not see a purpose in this proposal. It is very easy to come up with an oppose reason like for example "no wow" or better yet "Just a panorama." I am not going to vote either way here but in my opinion we should let oppose votes with no reason to stay.--Two+two=4 (talk) 03:56, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Oppose —kallerna™ 08:53, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The vote is over, Kallerna. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 12:42, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Why, who voted on how long the voting period is :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 12:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

•  Oppose Pointless if the aim is to improve the quality of opposes. (I agree with the sentiment, but this is just a bureaucratic imposition that will cause more problems and achieve nothing) --Tony Wills (talk) 12:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Possible sub-proposal

Should "We have enough of X" be an invalid reason to oppose? It seems that, if it is, it should be stated explicitly. Is it ever a valid reason? Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:36, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

This issue reminds me of a recent incident on QIC—a photographer selected four photos of the same subject (ostensibly the best selections from a pool of many shots of that subject) and nominated them all for QI status. Two of the four were summarily dismissed with a comment like "Why do we need four QIs of this subject?" I didn't think that that was a valid reason for opposition at all, since the task at hand was to judge whether each image individually met the QI criteria. FPC is (and ought to be) more selective and deliberative than QIC—slight variants of the same image made by a single creator oughtn't all receive FP status, of course—but in a general sense, I don't think we should discourage the promotion of multiple FPs illustrating a given subject. —Notyourbroom (talk) 03:34, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I do not think "We have enough of that" should be a valid oppose reason, but I do think "We have better of that" is a valid oppose reason, which is also substantiated by the phrase Value - our main goal is to feature most valuable pictures from all others in our guidelines. We had the discussion a short while ago on the subject on making more clear exclusion principles in #Proposal for a process to eliminate multiple Featured Pictures that are very similar. That discussion showed that there were quite some differences in what different reviewers see this situation, and it ended in not formulating this more specifically than what we already have. Different reviewers have different opinions about this as well well as the importance of many different aspect, but since several reviewers opinion (vote) is needed for promotion, we get more or less the average opinion on when something is better, and how narrow/wide "that" should be interpreted. So exclusionists opinions will be averaged out by inclusionists. --Slaunger (talk) 09:04, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

We're once again quickly approaching the Arthropod Issue (see the very long discussion above). Undoubtedly, the "we have enough of that" reason is most often seen when dealing with arthropod pictures, simply because, well, we do have a lot of them (whether we have enough seems to be highly controversial). I agree though that simply stating "we have enough of X" should not be a valid reason for opposing, but like Slaunger I do think that "we have better" (along with an example of "better") certainly is a valid reason. -- JovanCormac 17:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

•  Oppose Too negative, a

 Comment please state reason for opposition as a courtesy to the author/uploader. Lycaon (talk) 20:28, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

has always done the trick. Lycaon (talk) 20:28, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Sadly, it hasn't. I can recall at least one incident in the last month where someone opposed, was asked to provide a reason, and didn't (although I can't find the particular page now). -- JovanCormac 20:11, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

And what about that one time we just got per Lycaon as an answer. That was somewhat funny (and depressing). So, yeah, I think the proposal is a toothless tiger. --Dschwen (talk) 13:59, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Please remind me. That was funny (but indeed also depressing, so sorry for that). Lycaon (talk) 14:22, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Here [7] . --Dschwen (talk) 15:37, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

 Comment Since 5 people supported this proposal (excluding myself) and only 1 person opposed, I have added the proposal to the section "Voting" on FPC as a new rule. -- JovanCormac 16:24, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I like this! Good work on implementing this proposal. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 16:26, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

And as the sole person opposing it for being unbalanced I of course also respect its implementation as I am outnumbrered . Requiring it for oppose votes is, after all, half way to requiring it for all votes. Better than nothing. --Slaunger (talk) 16:29, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I just realized that I had counted your vote as a support, when in fact you were supporting the extention to all votes... so it's only 5 to 1, but still sufficient (you didn't oppose the proposal after all, just supported a different one . The one opposing vote was Lyacon's, even though you could argue he only opposed the sub-proposal). -- JovanCormac

And if things get worse yet, I'll just add my own, "implied", vote to the statistics as well... -- JovanCormac 17:22, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

No big deal, I am still very much outnumbered . --Slaunger (talk) 21:20, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Commercial promotional images

fantasy version

straight version

fantasy version

File:Bush133647.jpg

straight version

This doesn't seem to be a huge problem yet, but sooner of later advertising/PR companies will see that even if they can't have editorial control of en:wp articles (or other wikipedia's articles) they can use commons as a backdoor promotional vehicle for promoting their products or services. Our hunger for 'free' images means that we will willingly accept their high quality, carefully crafted, promotional images. From one point of view we certainly want these high quality images. But on the other hand we want images of 'reality', what the item actually looks like, rather than an air-brushed fantasy version - but due to the resources available for advertising, the air-brushed fantasy version will probably always have more appeal than the real thing - it is likely to be featured and used on many article pages. Articles will look more like glossy PR material than ever. --Tony Wills (talk) 23:06, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Is this just a prophylactic rant, or are you following up with some kind of proposal? ;-) --Dschwen (talk) 03:21, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a Wikipedia problem to me. Let them worry about how their articles look; I don't see any reason why Commons shouldn't accept (and Feature!) such images provided that they are free and of high quality. When judging on FPC, I try to think of every picture submitted as an artwork, rather than an image actually showing something. So if we Feature a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, I don't see why we shouldn't promote a professional PR photo as well - in a way, they're the same thing. -- JovanCormac 06:19, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

In passing people often attempt to use Commons for promotional purposes in exactly the same way that Tony suggests.

While I have been informed that this must be seen as a "trade off" - good image but with promotional content - I do not always agreed.

This may be seen as an example. Initially every image had "please visit my website" or derivations thereof. Equally the user page was previously rather more promotional. Now it is ok (to me) & we have some good images from someone who is a craftsman. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:28, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Meh, this discussion was spawned by this nomination, and I already mentioned this nomaination of Mrs. Merkin. While Tony may be right (although it is a bit of crystal balling) we actually want/need some of these pictures. If not for their subjects then atleast as examples of photography styles. And as far as the Merkin pic goes, sure, this is probably not how Michelle Merkin the person looks like when you meet her in the supermarket, but it is how Michell Merkin the product looks like. And that is what is relevant about her in the first place. --Dschwen (talk) 14:09, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough & thanks for the pointers - I confess I would not have voted for them :). Having said that I see & understand your logic - much more logical than some of the arguments I have dealt with. Thanks & regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:21, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I think there is a significant difference between an image of someone or something in a publicity shot, and an image taken by a third party. It is a bit like media (ie newspapers, TV etc) accepting neat parceled up news items from PR companies and publishing them verbatim. I don't have any great problem with commons accepting them. But I'm not sure that we actually 'need' them, apart from as examples of PR spin. For general use is the fantasy version File:SkodaSuperbII.jpg better than File:Škoda_Superb_II_TSI.JPG. The case of this Skoda image isn't quite what I am talking about though, as the image isn't directly from the Skoda PR department, but kindly released by a commercial photographer ... but it does make me wonder where those PR companies are. We already seem to have examples of publicists editing (sanitizing) their clients wikipedia articles. Same thing in articles about political figures - the headline photo selected might as well be straight from the PR division, so wikipedia articles start looking like an election leaflet. I suppose you can say it's the *pedias problem, they need to take care about what they use, but if there is a glossy PR image that we award FP status to, you know which one will get used :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 06:16, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Heavens, not a portrait with decent lighting on commons. Noodle snacks (talk) 06:19, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

fantasy vs. straight? Tony, you'll have to do better than just applying random labels to pictures to prove a point. Sure, pictures from professional sources should not blindly get accepted here, but the same goes for any photo. Just ask yourself if the professional pictures misrepresent their subjects. Crappy lighting, haphazard background and amateurish composition do not automatically equal authentic, and professional lighting setup, high quality hardware and well planned setup do not automatically equal fake. Is it immoral to provide a picture that gives the best possible view of a subject? No. As long as it does not misrepresent the subject. In fact every contributor should try to do that. Try to capture the essence or archetype of an object or person, not some random bad hair day, not some random dirty car with cluttered background. --Dschwen (talk) 15:45, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really talking about commercial vs amateur pictures. And although the Skoda painting prompted this line of thought, I don't think that contribution was instigated by a Skoda PR machine. I am just asking do we want to encourage 'packaging'/'promotional' images and essentially give free en:Product placement adverts? --Tony Wills (talk) 20:49, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Painting... This is not a productive discussion style. Especially as you do not really seem to have an insight in how the picture was shot. The 16s exposure time are indeed real. The camera was attached to the car with a glass truss rig [8]. While the car was slowly pushed for a few meters (the photographer has spoken up in the mean time). There must indeed be some amount of retouching to remove remnants of the truss, but calling this photo a painting is uncalled for. You are using inuendo rather than arguments here. --Dschwen (talk) 21:28, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

'Painting' is only a derogatory remark when used by photographers I think :-), and I'm not sure why the term worries you (apart from being aggravated by my arguments :-). Thanks for following up the 'making of' bit. If you could add suitable annotations to the image page so that it is clear that it is not an 'action' shot of the car flying through a tunnel, but a staged 'studio' shot with a few bits air-brushed out, I might withdraw my oppose :-). Your comment (and this reply) appear to be more relevant to the FPC page than this discussion. --Tony Wills (talk) 00:21, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Uhm, yeah studio shot? Since you apparently do not need me (or facts for that matter) for your "arguments", you can continue this without me. --Dschwen (talk) 01:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

'Studio' was in quotes, as in extreme controlled environment. Simply we demand higher standards of staged 'studio' work where people have full control of the environment and can repeat the shot until it is perfect (and, yes I think that image was of that high standard) --Tony Wills (talk) 03:14, 21 September 2009 (UTC)