User:Rhododendrites/Reconsidering FPC on the English Wikipedia

There are two Featured Picture processes relevant to our articles. One is here on the English Wikipedia; the other is on Wikimedia Commons. There is considerable overlap between them. This page considers the extent to which the English Wikipedia's process should still be considered useful or closed as obsolete.

Background
Featured Pictures on the English Wikipedia began in May 2003 as the image-based equivalent of Brilliant Prose (what would later become Featured Articles). The Picture of the Day page launched in June 2004 (based on a similar template intended for userpgaes). Since then, our Featured Pictures process has gone through changes, but its purpose has remained to highlight high-quality pictures which can then be featured on the Main Page.

A few months later, Wikimedia Commons launched as the free media repository sister site to Wikipedia. As the new center of the vast majority of Wikimedia projects' media, it quickly created its own processes to highlight good content. By the end of 2004, there was a Featured Pictures candidates process in place.

More than 15 years later, we still maintain both processes separately.

Featuring pictures
The Commons FPC process broadly considers three factors: technical quality, educational value, and something like a "wow" factor. In practice, excelling in one of these three can compensate for shortcomings elsewhere. Editors' personal preferences also come into play, with, for example, some placing more emphasis on technical quality. The Commons FPC community includes several active Wikipedians concerned with illustrating an encyclopedia, but there are far more people interested in photography itself who participate on Commons than on Wikipedia, so the output can reflect that.

Wikipedia's process is presented similarly, but is more explicit about the educational value, reframing it as "encyclopedic value" and specifying that it must significantly add to an article. At minimum, that means it should be used in an article. In practice, editors' opinions vary on whether that means it should be prominent in the article, the relative importance of a "wow" factor, whether there should be multiple FPs for a single article, etc. Editors also differ on the extent to which usage on the Main Page should be considered (i.e. whether it should be of general interest as opposed to simply being a good depiction of a particular subject for readers of that subject's article).

Delisting pictures
In either process, an image which no longer meets standards for FPs (which have increased over time) can be delisted. This is generally uncommon, but does happen in extraordinary circumstances. On Wikipedia, images can also be delisted if they're no longer used in an article.

Different community
The most common reason offered for keeping a separate process is because the priorities and/or sensibilities of the English Wikipedia community are simply different from Commons. Therefore it should have a separate process to ensure control over what is displayed on the Main Page.

Low participation
Despite various efforts, participation on the English Wikipedia's Featured Pictures candidates process has struggled for years. Some pictures get promoted, but many end with no consensus to promote because of lack of participation, despite the threshold for promotion being lower than on Commons (5 in support required to promote rather than 7).

Low participation can lead to burnout as well as reliance on a small handful of regulars, who can have, for better or worse, an outsized influence on selection (both by nomination and by voting).

Low promotion rate
In large part because of the low participation, for some time the process has produced less than one FP per day, meaning we will necessarily begin reusing FPs for POTD at some point.

For example, in January 2020, here are the stats for Wikipedia and Commons:

It is also worth noting that of the 12 promoted on Wikipedia, 10 were already FPs on Commons (the other two have not been nominated there).

No function beyond POTD
If someone is looking for high quality images, they will use Commons, where the images live. If you search Wikipedia for media, you're almost certainly going to wind up searching Commons. There's no function to the FP process on Wikipedia aside from generating a pool for POTD, and it does a poor job of that.

More cumbersome than Commons
Due to the requirement that all FPs must be used in an article, regular editing can instantly render an FP invalid. Delisting requires yet more participation/time that we do not have much of. Likewise because of this requirement, in order to promote one high-quality image of a particular subject, another FP must be delisted, creating yet another process/discussion on the basis of comparison. On Commons, while the community may decline promoting similar pictures, there is no firm rule and varying depictions of subjects are often promoted.

Purpose of the projects
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Media are part of the encyclopedia, but here they are secondary to the articles. It is not the purpose of Wikipedia to catalog and highlight high-quality images but rather to find the best image possible to display in an article. On the other hand, it is the express purpose of Commons to collect free media for use in Wikipedia, and to develop processes to highlight the best available. These processes are just as flawed as any on Wikipedia, but are nonetheless aligned with the purpose of the project, and the substantially higher participation/promotion rate reflects that.

Notes on POTD
This page concerns the Featured Picture Candidates process, but on the English Wikipedia it is inextricably linked to the POTD process.

Don't use the Commons POTD process
The English Wikipedia community should have control over what is displayed on its Main Page. As such, regardless of whether it maintains a separate pool of FPs, it should not defer to Commons for selection of POTD.

English Wikipedia POTD process using Commons FPs
The English Wikipedia POTD process can easily use Commons FPs for POTD. Wikipedia has an ever-shrinking pool of unused FPs to choose from. Commons has a dramatically larger initial pool, and promotes three images every day. Some are not used in Wikipedia articles, but many are, and many others could be.

English Wikipedia need not defer to Commons POTD processes in order to benefit from Commons doing the work of promoting FPs. Of the 12 FPs promoted in January 2020 (see above), 10 were already FPs on Commons. Thus the English Wikipedia having its own process accounted for the addition of two FPs to the pool, while a couple dozen other possibilities were promoted on Commons.

Connection between POTD and use in article
POTD on Wikipedia functions to grab a reader's attention and bring them to an article. The priority is thus different from the question of what best illustrates the subject in the article. We often have several spectacular images of a subject that simply don't fit into an article, or which aren't exactly the most encyclopedic (e.g. an exciting picture of a bird's head as opposed to a boring picture which shows the bird's full body). There's no need to require that a POTD be in the article for it to do its job.