Talk:Fractal art/Archive 1

old comments
This article should probably be merged with fractal.&mdash;Eloquence 17:12, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

Maybe not, it depends on whether fractal article is contextually readable in an art context. - A person April/2004

Please keep the descriptions on the external links clear and concise. Wikipedia is not about promoting your site or your favorite site. Instead, help the reader find whatever's interesting to him or her by using simple, straightforward, minimal, neutral terms in your description. 66.245.10.124 02:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * If it's a gallery of fractal art, mention the art medium used: images, music, animation, etc.  Don't just describe it as "art" or as something vague like "fractal delights".
 * Don't say that it's a big or important site. That goes without saying.  The site shouldn't be linked if it's trivial or doesn't have much to offer.
 * Don't evaluate the site. Obviously you think it's good or you wouldn't have added it.  This is not the place for poetic odes to the wonderfulness of whatever it is you're linking to.  Show off your writing talents on your own site, not here.

Gallery
I don't see the need to have almost a dozen images on this page by the same artist. one should suffice. Wikipedia is not an art gallery. TheRingess 06:44, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Fractal Music
Quoting the article: "Fractal music is able to produce more realistic natural sounds and subtle tunes than conventional approaches." This seems to be the opinion of someone advocating fractal music, rather than a factual claim. I suggest replacing it by something factual like "fractal patterns have also been used in music", and add some references. --LR 19:16, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Examples; "Burning Ship"
The so-called "burning ship"-fractal seems to be mainly advertised by one of its own inventers, and - as far as I know - is not widely popular. There are certain to be many other objects more suitable to the article. I could think of Julia sets of complex mappings, attractors of dynamical systems (e.g. the Lorenz attractor, the Henon attractor etc.), and many others. --LR 19:18, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

This article needs to be renamed
This article should be renamed to something like "Computerised Fractal Image Generation" as it has very little relevance to the subject of "Fractal Art" in its current form.

It makes no mention of any creative input by artists (who are people, by the way), and implies that fractal art is simply a collection brightly colored computer-generated graphs of deep Mandelbrot zooms reulting in "interesting pictures". This may have been the case ten or fifteen years ago, but it is nonsense to suggest such a thing in this day and age when the art form has become a sophisticated and beautiful branch of visual art.

Those Wikipedia members who watch this page will be well aware that all edits and additions to the page get wiped out once a month by a small number of individuals who can neither see nor accept the vast evolution of fractal art that has taken place since the days of fractint, only to be replaced by the same old out-dated stuff which ultimately gives fractal art a bad name.

Below are some additional links to just a handful of places to find some real fractal art for those who wish to enjoy something above and beyond a psychedelic Mandelbrot:


 * Infinite Art by Janet Parke
 * Fractal Art by Damien Jones
 * Gumbycat's Cyberhome - Linda Allison
 * Fractal Art by Paul deCelle
 * Chaoscopia - Etienne Saint-Amant
 * The Paramathematical Gallery - Samuel Monnier

Enviria 09:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Enviria:
 * Fractal art is more than visual art. The article's title is fine.
 * The regular readers of this page do an excellent job of keeping the text relevant.
 * The purpose of the article is not to promote your favorite artists.

Art and the Mandelbrot Set
I went ahead and removed this section. To me this section did not really add anything to the article. It talked about a hobby that some people have and included a few pictures from the same person. This section more properly belongs on the Mandelbrot page.TheRingess 16:31, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

7 April 2007 External Link Edits
Ringess, I took the time to make edits which I believe improved this page. Your characterization of each of them as "link spam" on 14:46 7 April 2007 seemed baseless, so I reinstated them. On 20:53 7 April 2007 you again removed my edits. Your explanation, "reinstated deleted link, removed link to forum and commercial link and faq link per WP:EL and WP:COI," does not seem to justify removing my edits. I have to ask you for further explanation.

1. I linked the words "fractal flames" in the link descriptions to the Wikipedia page for the topic "fractal flame." Please explain why you think this is not appropriate.

2. You removed links I added to Fractal Animation, Fractal Forums and the Fractal Art FAQ. These seem legitimate to me. They are excellent resources. I do not see anything in the Wikipedia policy pages you cited which justifies their removal. Please quote the specific sentences on the External Links page and the Conflict of Interest page which require the removal of these links.

3. You added links to Apophysis and Ultra Fractal. I deleted these links because Apophysis and Ultra Fractal are both already linked in the article text and also on the Wikipedia page for the topic "Fractal." Please explain why you think Wikipedia needs these redundant links. Moreover, Ultra Fractal is commercial software. Please explain why you think this link is okay but the link to Fractal Animation is not.

Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.101.37.196 (talk • contribs).

Regarding #1, sorry didn't see that I did that I will reinstate those wikilinks. I just checked, and fractal flames is alredy wikilinked in body of article. The general style, is to link to a topic the first time it is mentioned and not thereafter. Regarding #2, please WP:EL See item #10 which says that forums are normally to be avoided. I removed the faq, there's no need to link to a faq. If it has material that can be used to improve the article, then include it here and use it as a reference, ditto for the fractal animation website. Regarding #3, I did not add the links to apophysis or ultrafractal, you removed them. It's questionable whether or not they belong in this article, but they do seem to be used by a lot of people and each has its own article. They are both linked to on their respective article pages, but that does not mean that they should not be linked to here.

Regarding COI, perhaps there is none, but if the purpose of adding those links was to drive traffic to those sites, then there is. Please see WP:NOT

Please consider adding material to the article, citing reliable sources and not just adding links.

TheRingess (talk) 22:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

3rd Opinion on External Links
Please see discussion above and look at this version.TheRingess (talk) 22:37, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The forum site is definitely not needed, and against WP policy. The FAQ is really old: it hasn't been updated since 2003 (according to the FAQ itself): certainly there must be better resources now, and good info could likely be added to the WP article. On the other hand, the site fractalanimation.com seems good to me: can you clarify your objection to it?  Cheers, Doctormatt 00:28, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I have no real strenuous objection to the fractal animation website. My only objection would be that if we include this gallery, we should try to include all galleries on the web.  Then the external links section might be longer than the article.  In short, include one, include all.  I suggest that we use the dmoz template with an appropriate category. Thanks for responding.TheRingess (talk) 01:10, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I've not heard that objection before. Why doesn't it apply to every external link (e.g., there are two links to fractal software websites, but we don't worry about having links to every one, do we?) in every article?  Having the external links section on WP articles run amock seems to be a recurrent problem, but usually bold application of WP:EL takes care of it.  At least, that's in my decidely limited experience. (Sorry, I don't know what the "dmoz template" is.) Doctormatt 04:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I still have no real strenuous objection. I'm beginning to think that the UF and Apophysis links aren't really needed, they are commercial and do have their own articles with the links on those articles.  I'm still of the opinion that gallery links (in any art category) would fall into the realm of links to be avoided.  Generally they are commercial and they don't expand on the material included.  They do serve as examples of their particular art form.  However most if not all fractal art galleries can be found with a quick google search.TheRingess (talk) 15:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * (1) Apophysis is freeware, and the site appears to me to have no ads, so I don't think it is commercial, though I agree that a link is not needed here since there's one on the WP article for it. (2) To me, one of the most important kinds of information one can provide about visual art is examples, and they do expand greatly on the material.  If a gallery site is (too) commercial, it can be removed simply on that basis.  On the other hand, watercolor, drawing, and pointillism have no external links, so perhaps WP people are just down on visuals.  (3) A huge percentage of information on WP can be found "with a quick google search": why have most of WP at all?  Cheers, Doctormatt 17:02, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think WP people are down on visuals. I just think that we don't really wish to promote one website over any other.  A casual reader has no context for understanding why one gallery link was included but not another.  I added the dmoz template, and if you surf to that page, there are over 100 links to galleries.  I worry that if we include some but not all of those, then a casual reader might perceive the galleries we include as somehow more representative of this art form. Perhaps I worry needlessly.  I think that including the link to the open source directory is a better solution. We have now given the reader plenty of visual examples.  That's my reservation in a nutshell.TheRingess (talk) 03:29, 9 April 2007 (UTC)