Wikipedia talk:Featured picture criteria

What makes a bird photo verifiable?

I'm thinking of uploading this photo I took and nominating it for FP. I'm reasonably sure it meets the technical criteria, but I'm unclear on how to show it meets "Is verifiable". To the best of my knowledge, it's an adult male house finch, but that's basically WP:OR, as I'm not an acknowledged expert on bird identification. On the other hand, that seems to be the norm with "own work" FPs of animals, of which there are many. So how does this actually work? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:52, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

@JJ Harrison, Frank Schulenburg, Rhododendrites, and Charlesjsharp: any thoughts on this? -- RoySmith (talk) 01:16, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith: can you check the link? It's not working for me (permission). I may not be the best person to answer, as I find enwp's featured picture process/criteria to be rather cumbersome and inconsistently applied, but certainly it's true that some OR is typically required of the photos. Even if I take a picture of, say, a famous musician, it's still just me saying that's who it is and someone else verifying by googling the musician's name and giving it their best judgment. We can't submit our own photos if we take a very strict view of V/OR here. On Commons, there aren't many people who regularly check nominees for accuracy. Charles is one. I would only typically scrutinize ID if what's written strikes me as amiss (but if it's outside North America, it probably wouldn't seem amiss to me beyond the level of order). Happy to take a look when the link works, though. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:59, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Rhododendrites, Sigh. Flickr can be so stupid sometimes. Apparently, by default, making an album public doesn't make each individual image in it public. I think it's fixed now, but just in case, here's the album link. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:09, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

It sure looks like a house finch to me. Streaking under the wing, color of the cheeks, and overall hue suggest house rather than purple finch, which is the main other species house finches get mixed up with around these parts. As for whether it's a FP on enwp, I'd defer to those who are more active here. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:22, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi Roy, whenever I have issues identifying a species, I ask the biologists on the German Wikipedia (my main wiki). They've created a super helpful system, which you can find at Redaktion Biologie/Bestimmung ("Bestimmung" = Identification). Usually, you'll get an answer within 24 hours and I'm more than happy to ask about your finch image if you'd like me to (requires the image to be on Commons; don't worry about the file name, I'm a file mover and we can fix that later). Other than that I'm subscribed to Cornell's Birds of the World and could check the species there as well. Best, --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 02:10, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

A few people have recommended this resource on dewp to me. It sounds much more functional than what I had originally tried: asking on a Commons Village Pump. :) I tend to use the "/r/whatsthisbird" subreddit, but Invertzoo presented to WikiWednesday yesterday making pretty strong argument to get on the iNaturalist train, too. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:22, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I've been contributing to iNaturalist for a while myself and can confirm that their reviews are helpful (although I learned more by asking the biologists on the German Wikipedia because they're most often willing to answer follow-up questions). Other than that, I just looked the House Finch up on Birds of the World and the only similar species are the Purple Finch (C. purpureus) and the Cassin's Finch (C. cassini). Now, the House Finch differs from the Purple Finch by "lack of heavy carotenoid coloration on nape, back, and wing coverts", and from Cassin's Finch "by heavy ventral streaking and lack of distinctive back streaks." – So, I'd say you assessment is correct, its an adult male Haemorhous mexicanus. Best --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 02:31, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Frank Schulenburg, Thanks very much. I uploaded a few from that album a while ago. I think this search should find them. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:36, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Roy, this is an easy bird to identify as others have said. Identification can be very time-consuming. LBJs (Little Brown Jobs) are a nightmare. This is how I work. If I'm in the field I ask a nearby birder or guide. I check birding websites to see what was around that day. I check the internet, including Commons and Flickr. I look up the likely species in a field guide, trying to establish subspecies, sex, plumage, form, age (e.g. juvenile) etc. I always buy the best field guide I can for the territory. I check id on birdsoftheworld. I do not find iNaturalist reliable. I search reliable private websites for the territory (like sharpphotography!!). I contact known experts if really stuck. This is easier for me as I contribute free images to field guides. Every year I have to correct the identifications of a handful of my images.
The other relevant issue is submitting an image to FP on Wikipedia. I submit potential FPs to FP at Commons first, so that technical quality is OK, then the issue here is usually about encyclopaedic value. Your image would not pass FP at Commons and might struggle at QI, which is where FP candidates should be tested first. FP image candidates have to have been on Wikipedia for 7 days - they are often the lead image. Charlesjsharp (talk) 09:44, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Charlesjsharp, Thank you for your help. I've nominated this for QI. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:26, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Is the background artificial, Roy? The bird looks as if it has been 'cut out'. Charlesjsharp (talk) 15:37, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Charlesjsharp, Heh, I was waiting for somebody to ask that :-) No, it's just a white fence about 30 feet behind the bird that just got DOF'd out of existence. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:41, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Try for a natural perch and a natural background... Charlesjsharp (talk) 15:49, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Stub articles

Images submitted for FP have been opposed because they are in stub articles. There is currently no requirement for article length/quality. We should clarify the rules.
I would support the following addition to FPC Criteria:
An image cannot be opposed because of the quality of the article(s) Charlesjsharp (talk) 11:11, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the spirit of your suggestion, but not how it's written: I'd say that there's some ground to complain, if the article is recent, or if there's doubts about notability. The usage requirement has a certain amount of "the article it's used in shouldn't be in risk of not being there in a month" implied. But the standards should be pretty low. Enough that it's not at risk of an upmerge, so just a half-decent stub that says more than - as a rough example. "Fooius barium, or the Great Fubar, is a mollusk in the genus Fooius." - which is all material one might expect to see in the genus article's listing of species. Similarly, "The Bar of Foo is an 1945 book by F. Bar, part of his 'Quirky Customary Practices' series." - all of which would likely be in the author's article. Likewise, it needs to overcome the general notability guideline enough to not be at risk of deletion, and should probably have one decent source. In other words, the article must be sufficiently good that it is not at risk of disappearing through merge or deletion.

Secondly, the requirement for EV does provide article requirements in some cases. If you want to have an animal's headshot in a well-illustrated article and get it to FP, you probably need at least a couple sentences describing the head anatomy. The image should feel like a natural part of the article, not mere filler. In short, the image needs to have EV in the article as it stands, and needs to have more of some type of EV - showing some thing off better than the other images therein.

Once it's passed those minimum standards, and especially if it's well beyond them, then I agree.

Now, if you want it to get on the main page, that's another question, and the poor article quality might push it out of consideration until there's enough structure there to make a blurb, and have a reasonable linked article, but that's separate. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.7% of all FPs} 18:39, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I agree. This is is not about POTD where requirements are stricter. Charlesjsharp (talk) 19:13, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

[Standard semiannual comment about application of enwiki FP criteria being inconsistent and overwrought thanks to their interdependence with but separation from always-editable articles (and low participation levels that increase the influence of idiosyncratic perspectives), and how we should just pull POTD from the the much larger and significantly overlapping Commons FP pool.] ... *ahem* I would, of course, support removing article-related criticisms from assessments of images unless there's an active deletion or merge discussion (in other words, just saying it should be deleted should be insufficient -- start an RM or AfD if you feel that way). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:27, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

At Wikipedia,censorship or alteration of other users' comments is strictly prohibited. – Sca (talk) 15:10, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

This is indented under my comment, but I don't see how it's a reply to what I wrote? Unless you're saying that "don't make up your own rules" or "let's refine the rules" = censorship (???). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:39, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Re "removing article-related criticisms." – Sca (talk) 16:05, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I understand now. I didn't mean editing someone else's comment to remove the criticism. I mean "remove" abstractly, as in "remove them from the equation". — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:28, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @Sca: who brings this up often. Tomer T (talk) 14:24, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

As the category's name denotes, all Featured Picture candidates are pro forma candidates for Picture of the Day (POTD), and thus are theoretically candidates for the main page.
The main page has its own parameters and practices. Notably, at ITN/C articles of less than 300 or so words often are criticized, and sometimes rejected, as "stubs," i.e. too brief for MP posting. This won't change because someone doesn't like what someone else at WP:FPC posts there (there being here).
At Wiki, all users are free to post their thoughts and opinions without fear of censorship or alteration – unless they are demonstratively shown to be engaged in disruptive editing or vandalism, for which there are due administrative processes for solution.
— WP:AGF – Sca (talk) 16:01, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

PS: Recommended reading: A discussion at WP:ERRORS of the POTD for May 29 (the Coat of Arms of Wisconsin), which providentially bears quite directly on the above. – Sca (talk) 13:05, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Putting aside TRM's issues, I think it's a mistake to import the challenges of the POTD blurb into an evaluation of the image at FPC. With the time between promotion at FPC and appearance on the main page, the article could've gone through many changes and would need to be checked out anyway. If those who curate the main page/POTD want to require a page to be start class+ (for example), that doesn't need to affect FPC. Approve the image, and if the article hasn't been improved by the time POTD comes around, either someone can improve the article a bit to make it compliant or we can find another POTD. Refusing to promote it because of the current status, long before it's POTD, doesn't help. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:39, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Once again, all Picture of the Day nominations are perforce candidates for a POTD on the main page. There's no separate category for non-POTD nominations at WP:FPC. The "challenges," i.e. POTD criteria, aren't being "imported," they're already in effect here. – Sca (talk) 14:37, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Beacause of the argument on a current nomination, I propose a vote:
An image cannot be opposed because of the quality of the article(s)

• Support please sign
• Support please sign
• Support please sign

An image can be opposedbecause of the poor quality of the article(s) or because they are stubs

• Support please sign
• Support please sign
• Support please sign

If the votes are tied after two weeks (15 August) I will vote. Charlesjsharp (talk) 16:28, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

• @Charlesjsharp: FPC and POTD are different processes; their article quality requirements aren't identical. Note 1- The word "article" appears a total of 5 times in the FP criteria (see criterion 5 and 6). If the article quality is good enough for FP criterion 5 and 6 to pass, then the article quality is good enough for the FP nomination to pass. Note 2- The word "main-page" does not appear in the FP criteria. Therefore FP candidates cannot be opposed based on main-page suitability/quality requirements/etc. The guideline for appearance on the main-page is at POTD guidelines which specifically addresses FPs whose articles aren't good enough for main-page. It says: "Not all featured pictures will be scheduled for POTD. (...) if the article chosen to accompany the picture is not up to scratch (...), the appearance may be delayed until there is a suitable article to accompany the picture." Again, FPC and POTD are different processes. FPC is not POTD. Bammesk (talk) 20:59, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, yes, I know Bammesk. But either we change the rules or we need to stop voters (like User:Sca) opposing on the basis of stub articles. Please can you vote. Charlesjsharp (talk) 21:07, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

• Sca's opposes aren't confined to stubs, he also opposes or objects to anything he doesn't like to see on the main-page, such as computer games, math and science images, anything he finds unsuitable for the main-page. I doubt changing the rules will fix it; the rules have been working for years. Let's hear from others. I am pinging the participants in this thread and the more frequent FP participants of recent past: @Charlesjsharp, Adam Cuerden, Rhododendrites, Tomer T, Sca, MER-C, Janke, Armbrust, TheFreeWorld, Mydreamsparrow, and Andrew J.Kurbiko:. Bammesk (talk) 23:20, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

• True. A [long overdue IMO] topic ban for Sca would head off many of these "is X really a valid vote" threads. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:52, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

• In the light of the two comments above, how does one get an admin opinion? Charlesjsharp (talk) 13:46, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

  You want to topic ban someone just because they have a different opinion from you? My "admin opinion" is that the rules should be clarified if there's some uncertainty about how they should be applied, rather than labelling a difference of opinion as a behavioural issue. Personally I think it is legitimate to reject an FP if the article is a stub, per criterion #5: "Adds significant encyclopedic value to an article". If the article concerned is just a stub, it's hard to see what difference a pretty picture is going to make to it, so I think FP contributors should expand the article at the same time to make it clear why the picture is relevant. But evidently your interpretation of that is different to mine.  — Amakuru (talk) 14:24, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

• You want to topic ban someone just because they have a different opinion from you? - when the "different opinion" is a years-long habitual disregard for these criteria, yes. it's hard to see what difference a pretty picture is going to make to it - I find this logic really strange. What's the difference? Either the picture illustrates the subject (or some aspect of the subject) well or it doesn't. A good picture of a lizard illustrates that species regardless of whether it's a one-sentence stub or a FA. I suppose the tethering of FP to the state of a specific article at a specific point in time, making it dependent on text that could change at any moment, as well as connecting it to the main page, will necessarily invite idiosyncratic criteria that have nothing to do with the image. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:41, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
• Sca doesn't go by the FP criteria diff1nom1, diff2nom2, which manifests itself in slow and persistent disruption: frustrates participants including newbies, weighs on participation, sinks nominations in certain categories. He says no to doing something to revise the FP criteria diff3, diff4. Bammesk (talk) 03:24, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

• Amakuru's reply is not well informed. Sometimes an image is all we have to illustrate rare species. If you are to call the image in this stub article Hemiolaus_cobaltina, or this one from Rwanda "pretty pictures" would be insulting. Charlesjsharp (talk) 14:14, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Archiving

Looks like we had a couple manual archives ("archive 1" and "archive 2") that were more than a decade old, but the only ones in the archivebox. Then we had one other that was being autoarchived, "Archive 1". I've merged the first two into the latter and replaced the archives box with talk header. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:00, 2 August 2021 (UTC)