User talk:Barsongrobe



Hello, Barsongrobe, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like this place and decide to stay.
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 * If you have a question that is not one of the frequently asked questions below, check out the Teahouse, [ ask me on my talk page], or click the button below. Happy editing and again, welcome! Rasnaboy (talk) 04:08, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Images
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for placing a "paid conflict of interest" disclosure on your user page. Your contributions are appreciated and it's great to know about the American West collection of photos at the Boston Public Library as I share your interest in the American West and with historical photographs. However, I noticed that you are adding captions to images you have placed in articles that promote your employer. Please read thru our policies and guidelines regarding COI editors here WP:COI, and pay special attention to this section: WP:PAY. If our readers want to know where an image came from or who shot the photo, they can click on the image description page where they can read all of the extended information and metadata.

I removed this information on Mammoth Hot Springs but there are many other pages where you have added promotional COI content which is discouraged. Could you please consider removing that part of the image captions?

Nice to meet you here and hope you have a happy holiday season. Netherzone (talk) 17:44, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The editor is a library worked who wrote provenance information for a photo from the 1890s. Referring to that as "promotional COI content" is very extreme reading of the policy you are citing, not supported by text, none of which addresses this type of edit. I understand if you have a stylistic issue with including the name of the repository from which a historical photo comes—which I don't personally see as any more controversial than including the publisher in a book citation—but please approach the issue as a stylistic one rather than throwing around acronyms. I do not personally see how your edit to remove this information has improved the article at all, and your suggestion that they can click on the image to see image metadata is not an argument that has any bearing on what should and shouldn't be included on Wikipedia; everything on Wikipedia is supposed to be able to be found elsewhere. Dominic·t 20:39, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Hello @Dominic, I am happy to undo my edit to the caption if you think it violated policy or had an extreme reading of it. As an editor who works on visual arts/photography content, usually we only include the collection if the object is a unique work (meaning only one exists, such as a painting or a unique sculpture - not a multiple). Photographs are usually produced as multiple prints from the negative or glass plate or digital file; which is the case with William Henry Jackson's beautiful image of Mammoth Hot Springs, Pulpit Terraces. (I am also a hot springs aficionado which is why the article was on my watchlist).
 * There are multiple copies of this photo in numerous collections including the MET, the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Henry Ford Museum, and others. The print that is in the MET collection is of a much higher quality than the one in the Boston Library, and it was already available in Commons..
 * I do not understand why WP should prioritize one collection over another for a multiple photograph that exists in several collections around the country. Dominic, I'm sorry if I did something wrong, but it just seems promotional to add such an extended caption like that, esp. knowing that the editor who did so is being paid by the library. @Barsongrobe, I'm sorry if you found my note brusk, but it did seem a little odd to include that caption when there was a better image of the same photo available in Commons, and the photo itself is a multiple object that is held in numerous institutional collections. I made the edit in good faith, and I apologize if my notice above re: paid editing alarmed you.
 * Below are two image-files of the same photo to compare the image quality between the Boston Library and the Metropolitan Museum prints of the same photograph, for illustration purposes and clarification. [[File:Mammoth Hot Springs, Pulpit Terraces - DPLA - 528c84b004e3103607a006e96e662765.jpg|thumb|Mammoth Hot Springs, Pulpit Terraces - Boston Library Collection]] Mammoth Hot Springs, Pulpit Terraces MET DP204492.jpg Netherzone (talk) 22:35, 19 December 2023 (UTC)