Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Franco-Prussian War - Students Going to Man the Barricades - Illustrated London News Oct 1 1870.jpg

Students Going to Man the Barricades

 * Reason:Kind of an iconic image of France, with real-life imitating Hugo's literature.
 * Articles this image appears in:Franco-Prussian War, Siege of Paris, Fred Barnard.
 * Creator:Fred Barnard. My original two-part Scan was stitched together and straightened by Graphics Lab members VegitaU and Rugby471; I have done a full reworking of the restoration.


 * Support as nominator --Shoemaker's Holiday Over 184 FCs served 22:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. Durova  297 01:17, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. Sasata (talk) 06:55, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Support Image is clean and crisp. Strong encyclopedic value. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Support Would be great at The Illustrated London News if there were space... love the way it the spirit of the moment is presented, more than anything. --mikaultalk 00:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I suppose we could swap it in to replace File:Nasser-ed-Din Shah's last visit to Britain - 3.jpg, if desired. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 189 FCs served 04:53, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comments/Questions. Obviously this will be promoted cos no one checks EV, but last time a version of this was nominated I asked some questions that were never answered. I haven't reread the relevant articles closely, but the image page doesn't answer them, so can anyone provide answers to these questions yet? To quote myself: This is a lovely detailed scan of this image, but I just don't get it. I'm presuming that 'the students' are the group we can see marching behind what appears to me to be the main characters - the couple of soldiers (?), the old man, the young woman. Perhaps this has some deeper message about the students going off to do the soldiers work because they were mucking around doing other things like flirting with young women, but I really can't be sure of that. It's also an issue that other than the image captions, I can see nowhere in the articles where it's mentioned that the scene depicted occurred (i.e., the students going to the defence), or why it occurred - maybe I haven't read the articles closely enough. Incidentally, aren't the students going to man the fortifications, not the barricades?... --jjron (talk) 14:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, the Illustrated London News had artists on the spot to capture the scenes going on there. Yes, they were Barricades: This was during the period around the Siege of Paris. This is from a newspaper: It's not from an art journal.   Shoemaker's Holiday Over 189 FCs served 07:31, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Quite. You have to remember this was all before the advent of photojournalism and at the time engravings were made from sketches commissioned as the best way of reporting events pictorially. You generally don't ask such questions of a photograph of an event; you simply accept it as a record of what occurred and either draw your own conclusions or have them drawn for you. Presumably the artist either specified the presence of students or this was inferred by the newspaper editor, given the situation on the ground at the time. Whatever: this is how world events were portrayed at the time and has much the same credibility and indeed EV as a photograph of similar quality, if not perhaps equal spontaneity. --mikaultalk 11:10, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose I examined the articles based on jjron's comments and came to the determination that this lacks sufficient EV. It's in a gallery on Fred Barnard. Siege of Paris doesn't mention this event at all. EV in Franco-Prussian War seems to depend on this picture being representative of the Siege of Paris, and it doesn't appear to be so. So, the Siege article looks like the only place this could have sufficient EV, but as it stands, the events the picture purports to depict are not even mentioned in the article. That all adds up to an oppose based on insufficient EV. Makeemlighter (talk) 07:47, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * According to most modern views of history, the general population - not just the big players - are important too. As an encyclopedia, it may be difficult to include all aspects of this in a short encyclopedia article, but that does not mean we should actively work to exclude this when a good illustration of daily life at the time is available. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 189 FCs served 08:14, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Not that it matters now, but the point I was trying to get across was that rather than enhance the article this picture makes it confusing since nowhere in the text is this specific event mentioned. Certainly it's important to note what the residents of Paris were doing during the siege, but it's rather odd to illustrate an article with a picture depicting something that's not even mentioned in the text. It makes me wonder how important it was that the students manned the fortifications. Makeemlighter (talk) 00:31, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Why would this event itself be mentioned in the text? The city would have been in complete chaos at the time. Notable events were never recorded as images, unless they were staged afterwards as photographs. In fairness, this image would arguably be better at Paris Commune, given the spirit of revolutionary zeal it seems to be illustrating, but I'd definitely regard this and others like it as iconic and hugely relevant images of one of the most significant historical events in 19th century Europe. --mikaultalk 11:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Just for the record, this predates the commune. Shoemaker's Holiday Over 192 FCs served 00:22, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (Replying after the nom has been closed). The point I was trying to make, and also I think Makeemlighter was that FPs should be high EV things that add significantly to the content of the article - that's probably the most important criteria (even though it's not treated that way). If this event was historically so minor to be not even mentioned in the article it thus may not have high EV, so what it's illustrating may not be FP material if only for that reason, not because the image itself is bad. And the reason I said ...aren't the students going to man the fortifications..., which SMH said was wrong, is because the caption on the image itself says this very thing - so who's right, SMH or the person that added the original caption? Personally, for the record I kind of like this picture, but I'd say EV is a significant problem here, as it was two years ago. --jjron (talk) 08:06, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * But surely if it illustrated the event in an important news publication at the time of the siege it has massive relevance. Why must this illustration be mentioned in the text any more than a photo of the crowds during any historic event? I can only suppose you see it as less veracious because it's an illustration, and it probably is, but this was before photojournalism and the immeditate precursor to it. As such it stands on it own merits as do other wartime FPs. mikaultalk 11:39, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Take a look through say a 10 year old newspaper and ask yourself how many images there are relevant to an encyclopaedia now. Newspapers, magazines, etc are different from encyclopaedias and have different aims - just because an image has been deemed newsworthy doesn't make it encyclopaedia worthy, much less featureworthy. It has to stand on its own. And if we were being asked to judge a photo of a crowd (that wasn't mentioned in the article) during a historic event I'd probably give the same response. FWIW we should be able to expect an illustration or painting to do more than a photo as the artist can manipulate it to show what they want far more than with a photo. So no one has attempted to answer my question about "the main characters - the couple of soldiers (?), the old man, the young woman" - the artist has made them the main subject but we don't know why, and quite possibly the people at the "Illustrated London News" didn't know why either, so just guessed at a caption and title (this type of thing has happened certainly up till recent times where newspapers rush a good picture to print with little to no information on what it's actually depicting). We need to move beyond old = historic = high EV = featured. That equation does not necessarily hold up, and each item should be evaluated independently. --jjron (talk) 05:00, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So do you propose we delist the three examples I linked to? They all portray people and wartime events not mentioned in the article. Like the engraving here, the locations depicted (if stated) aren't in dispute and we rely on the veracity of the illustrator for the identity (if any) of those portrayed, along with the event apparently depicted. They're all outstanding images in their own right; this isn't an "old = featured" issue. As you say, these things are the same today as ever, in fact I'd say the selectivity of your average photojournalist allows for a very special kind of manipulation which, due to people's total acceptance of photographic images as what actually happened, is a far more potent mojo than the product of a sketch artist's imagination. No, I think we have to accept these images, generally regarded as fair representations of past events, as the best way of adding visual detail to accounts of war, and the very best of them to be well worth featuring here and elsewhere. I'm not sure how to respond to your question about 10-year old newspapers. You mean the likes the Kosovo War, WTC attack, invasion of Iraq etc (historical accounts of them and WP articles on them) would be worse off with the inclusion of key photographs from those events? What value those images in 150 years time? Sorry, I just don't get it. --mikaultalk 06:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, I think your three examples do depict things mentioned in the articles: countermeasures to poison gas, Czech resistance to Nazi occupation, and the Bougainville campaign. The middle one is pretty weak, but at least connects somewhat to the article. The picture in this nom, however, depicts an event that not only isn't mentioned in the articles, but the importance of which is actually put into question by the article. Apparently, the Prussian commander "never had any intention of attacking the city" and it looks like an actual attack on Paris never occurred. So how significant is what's depicted in this picture? As far as the newspaper thing...what looks important at the time may not be important in retrospect. Perhaps the newsmen expected an attack on Paris. This attack never occurred, so the people who would have participated in its defense aren't terribly important. Makeemlighter (talk) 19:26, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * But you don't explain why these images themselves – the moments in time they depict – must be mentioned in the article to be relevant. They add information and scenarios not mentioned in the article because they are depictions of typical human activity during extraordinary circumstances: war. That's what makes them striking and informative. I don't need to read about these images in the text to appreciate their relevance. In the case of the Paris image we have a depiction of the spirit of defiance in the air as the siege commenced. The city would have been in chaos, streets full of people literally up in arms, rushing to repel the advancing German forces. The ILN artists, trapped in Paris, were shipping out sketches by hot air balloon. What the intentions of the Prussian commander have to do with it I don't know... it was a siege! An attack would only have been necessary if the tactic of attrition failed, which of course it didn't. By definition, being under siege, the city defences served both as a stonghold against invasion and an imprisonment of the entire population. Citizens would have been mobilised as a show of defiance and strength while incursions into the German lines were launched. Exactly how news of the investment of the city was received by the Parisian public isn't described in the article and, reading the article, we would have no inkling of their reaction, were it not for the inclusion of that image. Isn't that enough? Honestly, for me, I gleaned as much from this one image as I did reading the adjacent text. --mikaultalk 23:36, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

--Sedd&sigma;n talk|WikimediaUK 23:08, 14 August 2009 (UTC)