"Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, and should illustrate its articles with as many or as few images as appropriate." seems right.
Fred > Hi all, > Do content policies still get discussed on this list? I'm a bit out of > touch. > > Anyway, I seem to keep running afoul of the "image use policy". > Several galleries that I've added to articles have been removed. (And > see this response to my second attempt to gallerise one article: > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Stevage&action=edit§ion=236 > ) > > The key parts of the policy > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IG#Image_galleries) are: > > * "Articles consisting entirely or primarily of galleries are > discouraged, as the Commons is intended for such collections of > images." > -- it's not clear whether this includes articles that currently lack > text (as opposed to articles that could never be much more than a > gallery) > * "However, Wikipedia is not an image repository. A gallery is not a > tool to shoehorn images into an article, and a gallery consisting of > an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should > generally either be improved in accordance with the above paragraph or > moved to Wikimedia Commons." > -- It's not clear what "moving...a gallery...to Wikimedia Commons" > means. It sounds like this was intended for cases where the images > existed only in Wikipedia itself, rather than being linked from > Commons. > > On the other hand: > * "The images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value > and add to the reader's understanding of the subject. Images in a > gallery should be suitably captioned to explain their relevance both > to the article subject and to the theme of the gallery" > > > So, here's my thinking in response to the above: > 1) "Wikipedia is not for images, Commons is for images" is just bad > logic. Commons is a dumping ground for *all* images. Wikipedia is an > encyclopaedia, and should illustrate its articles with as many or as > few images as appropriate. (It's not like duplicated storage is a > problem.) > 2) The Commons links are incredibly obscure, and I don't think the > average punter ever sees or visits them. It's like telling someone to > ring the hotline for more information - they just don't. The link > doesn't give any indication whether there are 2 images on Commons on > 200. > 3) Galleries let you illustrate a much wider range of the subject > matter than by simply placing images in the margins. For example, in > the contentious [[Lamington National Park]], we could illustrate all > the waterfalls, most of the important flora, fauna, and geological > features. > 4) An image of captioned animals under a section entitled "fauna" (and > likewise for flora etc) seems perfectly in keeping with the guideline > under ("on the other hand") above. > > Thoughts? Comments? Am I on the fringe? Are guidelines like this still > subject to debate and change? > > Steve > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
