Table:Image standards and choices

Conference Table

Discussion

I have been dealing with a lot of thoughts regarding the images on our wiki, both legally, picking and standards.

First of all, licencing. I think we need a standard box on every image page (could use one of those MediaWiki: messages to add it), stating the usage, the licence and whatnot about the image. I know we have our disclaimer page, but it would be neater for legal reasons to have it on the image page. Now I know, we have not yet have any legal issues regarding our images yet, but it is better to beat the competition before they reaches us.

Then is picking. A good example of what I am worried about is the Dr. John A. Zoidberg article. I don't like the choice of picture for this article, especially because Zoidberg is only drawn with teeth in 3 episodes, making the picture giving a misrepresentation of him. Another example is Kif Kroker, no where else do we use the design sketch for characters in their infobox, however, speaking of design sketches, I think they should be supplied in every article they are available (so, at least all main characters and major secondary characters). Then comes a third example, a bit different, as to supply my thoughts, the Zapp Brannigan article. While the picture is not extremely bad, I think we can actually provide a better picture. I am speaking of the picture where he says "I am the man with no name", cause the facial expression and line sums the Zapp Brannigan character up quite well. And it omits having Kif in the picture.

Standards is basically a relying on the picking, plus some more technical issues. I propose that for every character article, where an image can be provided, it must have been taken from the show or film (depending on where the character is). If a design sketch is available for a character, it must be provided in the article, but only as an image within the article, to give air to the article, and avoid give the reader the feeling that it is not just text. While content is good, images helps. And lastly, this is not a standard, but rather an encouragement, if you see an image for a character, and think it can be done better, don't hesitate, don't go silent, provide arguments in its talk page, be either the image's talk page or the character article's talk page.

There was probably more I wanted to add, but I forget now. But I guess this is enough to get some discussion started. --Svip^Talk 22:36, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

A lot of those early pics were uploaded by myself (at the time, there were no other users who could get screenshots of DVD's...) and I tried to use the following standards:

• • • A full-screen image (I think the first Zapp pic was a cropped close-up)
    • As soon after the character first appeared as possible (keeping the first criterion in mind)
    • The Character depicted should, if possible, be the only character on screen
    • Fairly representative of the character (keeping the first two criteria in mind)

So that's where we get a lot of the primary and secondary character pics. But I'm all for updating them. Especially if it'll look better in the long run. Especially, as you note, the teeth thing. Zoidberg shouldn't have teeth (I didn't even notice them in the pic, so good observation), so it should really be updated. And Zapp's should have Kiff removed. I think I picked that image because it was so boastful that it was perfect, but it does have another character in the image, so it's not ideal. And now that nearly all of our members can provide screenshots, there's no reason they can't be updated. As for the character design sketches, they actually used to be on several pages, but they were deemed unsuitable for the main image, and they just went away. I'm sure they're still in the database, and they'd be fine lower down the page, but they just weren't good main images (as you pointed out for Kif). --Buddy 23:18, 27 November 2008 (UTC)