User:Amillar/Pictures

I have been submitting pictures for articles.

The list is now in user:amillar/contributions

Uploading

Wow, this is so cool! Have you been sending the pictures to Jason for uploading, or is there some more efficient way to do it?

I started sending them to Jason, then he gave me another method which is better. I don't think I'm supposed to give it out, so email me or Jason directly for more details.

Credit the source

I think it would be a good idea to give source and copyright information on these. See http://www.nupedia.com/policy.shtml for info on how Nupedia has handled this. --User:LMS


 * Legally, PD images don't need to be credited, but I always think it's nice to do so anyway. -- Stephen Gilbert

I'm crediting them as "Public domain picture from source " so that their public domain status could be readily verified if needed. --User:Alan Millar

Dude, you rock. And yes, it makes a lot of sense to credit the source. If nothing else, it lets newcomers know that we don't just stick pictures in from the web all willy-nilly. :-) It looks nicer this way. --User:Jimbo Wales

Size and Format

I am wondering if there is a standard size of the pictures that we should agree on. International Space Station seems to fit nicely in the article at its current size. Top of the page as the image location. Another example would be Osama bin Laden where the picture fits in perfectly. --- User:Jagged

I'd like to see Wikipedia adopt a standard size for a thumnail image to be included in the article. When the thumnail is clicked, another window opens with a larger view and a short caption. -- Stephen Gilbert

The policy we developed for Nupedia is that a highest-quality "source code" image should be uploaded somewhere, from which an appropriate-for-the-medium version will be made, and possibly a thumbnail as well at author's discretion. The source code might be input to a rendering program for chemical formulas or something, VRML, EPS or SVG for drawings, or high-resolution PNG for photographic images. This information should be preserved for later use, but sending a print-quality image over a phone line is not doing anyone any favors. Wikipedia needs a facility for uploading and saving this source data. Authors (or any stray editor) can make the smaller versions. --User:Lee Daniel Crocker

I really like that idea. The current facilities are somewhat limited but are workable. Essentially, all pictures right now are going into /images/uploads. We could do something like name.jpg for full size, name-thumbnail.jpg for small, and name-original.ext if the original is not JPEG or PNG. The namespace will fill up, but hopefully not too soon before we have some other way to manage it. Also, there is no index of the directory, so we have the potential to "lose" pictures if the link in the main article gets deleted. Any votes on what size the standard thumbnail should be? Remember the height/width ratio will be all different, so perhaps it should be something like "height or width not to exceed x " or something like that. I'm doing 240 pixels. --User:Alan Millar

Alan, the pictures are a wonderful addition, but are you sure they should be at the top of the page? Were I someone with a slow connection, I would want them at the bottom, so the text isn't affected by them, and there doesn't seem to be any obvious benefit to having them at the front.


 * Putting them at the top seems more traditional in an encyclopedia way. Of course we don't have to be traditional.  I like being able to see the photo then read about it.  I have noticed that both with IE 5.x and Netscape 4.7x on fast connections that the text gets displayed before the picture is downloaded. --- User:Jagged

If we stick with the thumbnail method, I think we should be fine with pictures at the top. All of the thumbnails I have submitted have been 10Kb to 20Kb at the biggest, which should load quickly enough. And as long as the picture is not in an HTML table, recent browsers (Netscape and IE 3.0 and up) will show the text instantly and then go back for the picture. -- User:Alan Millar

-  Thumbnails 

I've been uploading some pics and for the most part, I've included small pics with a link to the full-sized image. See 2001 U.S. Attack on Afghanistan - there is a C-17 pic in the middle of the page. A small pic along with a link to the large pic is nice because a) it gives people an option of downloading the large pic, without requiring them to do so, and b) it can be placed anywhere within the article without disrupting the flow of the text, because it will not dominate the page.

So, should we try to make thumbs of all these images as a matter of course? This could probably be done semi-automatically. - Tim

Actually, the whole image process needs some restructuring. One of the good thinks about the Wiki system for text is that the links are relative reference within the wiki system. What I mean is that if I link to bear I could pick up these pages and drop them down on another domain name and it would still work. But if I link to http://www.wikipedia/wiki/Bear, I am stuck with a specific reference to this domain name and directory path structure. We need an analogous relative reference system for the images, kind of like subpages or something similar. Also, text can be edited and changed, but images cannot be removed, rename, or overwritten (and as of this moment there isn't even a real-time index of the image files). When we have some sort of better image file management, then something like auto-thumbnails would make sense. --User:Alan Millar