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Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Leonard Siffleet

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Leonard Siffleet

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Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 18 Apr 2013 at 05:26:24 (UTC)

 
Original – Decapitation of Leonard Siffleet by a Japanese soldier during World War II
Reason
One of the most iconic images of the Second World War. I'm well aware that this is below the minimum size for FPs, but this specific image is famous — if it weren't in the public domain, it could qualify for the same kind of fair use rationale as File:Legendary kiss V–J day in Times Square Alfred Eisenstaedt.jpg has. Encyclopedic value is immense for Siffleet himself (his notability seems to depend completely on his being the subject of this photo), as well as for the Pacific War article. Unless we find a better-quality version of the same photograph, we're never going to be able to find something that could replace this image, and as such, we should waive FPC #1 and #2; it definitely "illustrates the subject in a compelling way, making the viewer want to know more"; it's PD; it's irreplaceable for the Siffleet article and for others as I noted above; it has an extensive English description; and it doesn't appear to have been the subject of extensive digital manipulation. Nyttend (talk) 05:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Articles in which this image appears
Leonard Siffleet, Decapitation, Pacific War, plus lots of others where it's used rather more tangentially
FP category for this image
Wikipedia:Featured pictures/People/Military
Creator
An anonymous Japanese solder
  • If we find a higher-resolution version, would we have to start this nomination all over again, or would we simply insert the better version and keep on going? Nyttend (talk) 13:18, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, reluctantly While this has loads of EV, FP is about finding our best work, and I can't help but think that means we should reject this. This isn't a particularly good scan (it's very high-contrast), and it's very, very low resolution (just 426x620px, large thumbnail size), and we haven't made any attempt to get a larger copy yet. I can't help thinking that if this was all we had for a painting, even if that painting was one that defined and codified an entire genre of art, we wouldn't even consider supporting it unless it could be shown to be impossible to get anything better (say, the painting was in private hands, and was now destroyed). As it stands, we haven't even really tried to do better. That's not really the FP ethos.
The Australian War Memorial offers high-res scans for sale. They cost money, of course, but that's the cost of wanting to do specific FPs. As I *cough* may know from experience. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:44, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't noticed at first glance that they charge a fee, but I think it's rather dishonest to make money from a public domain image, especially when it depicts a death (and it looks like this is not just the case of Australian War Memorial). Brandmeistertalk 14:11, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies for running on an off-topic discussion, but I've now run into three museums or libraries (!) that won't release high resolution images of public domain photographs or paintings. I wish we could hire a wiki-lawyer to just get this stuff available to the public already. – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 19:52, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You can find lots of wiki-lawyers here without a lot of searching. Nyttend (talk) 20:16, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your problem isn't lack of lawyers. At the end of the day the person who owns the original property (in this case the original photo) can do what they like with it. You need lobbyists to get a change of policy.©Geni 03:33, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wikimedia Australia has been in contact with the AWM over their images (among other things), and they're in the process of somewhat uploading larger - but not full sized - versions of images. These larger images will be of considerable use in articles, though they'll still be too small to be FPs. As I understand it, the AWM's position is that it's not funded enough to be able to provide full-sized versions of images online for free (even when these have been scanned in at high resolution, which often isn't the case) and the income it earns from selling full-sized versions is a useful source of revenue to support its activities (which include maintaining its excellent images database). Nick-D (talk) 11:20, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • This whole situation has been disappointing — not because of what people have said, but because the situation is clearly less featurable than I expected. May I withdraw? Nyttend (talk) 13:23, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not Promoted --Armbrust The Homunculus 14:41, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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