Re: Gallery policy

"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&section=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
>
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