Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Projections

Projections (Set)

 * Reason:

I am sure the following will seem overwhelming to most (myself included), so allow me to put this rationale first. The following 20, yes 20 images are all illustrations of various ways we depict our Earth as a whole. They both individually and collectively illustrate these projections often as the only image in their article. Their presence (I address them as a collective for the sake of my sanity) allows for the understanding of concepts which would otherwise only be represented mathematically. Truly, a picture is worth a thousand words in their case. In each image latitude and longitudinal lines are provided (no matter the distortion) to provide a sense of scale. As a set they are useful in side to side comparison where distictions in the projections would be otherwise difficult to describe. Their technical qualities are superb in my opinion--universally high resolution, consitent colouring and sharpness at least comparable to other FPs.

This list is by no means final, I am sure the panorama makers out there know of more projections. I am also open to the removal of some of these images, they are admittedly similar in some cases, though we have precedents for promoting similar images (bugs, anyone?) and I consider their EV to be distinct from each other.

On a logistical note, they are organized alphabetically.


 * Articles: Most of these images (particularly the less common projections) appear only in their namesake articles. Others, like Mollweide appear in further articles where they have generally good EV.

They all now appear in List of map projections.


 * Creator:Mdf source images from NASA


 * Support as nominator --Cowtowner (talk) 04:54, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment I think that consolidating the most notable or recognizable ones into a single image would be a major improvement. You should definitely consider merging these images rather than leaving individually as such. -- mcshadypl T C  06:38, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 *  Strong Oppose  Too many images, so very little EV, especially as a set. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  07:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Allow me to clarify. You cannot ask to have us consider each image in a set individually for EV. I won't do it, especially since you did not link to any pages where these images appear, or any articles where the set appears. I don't see much EV in this in general. Some of these fail at WOW for being plain, some are so ill used as to be unneeded. Overall, this is a bad nomination. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  07:41, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * WOW is not a criteria. There is commons:Commons:FPC if you are more interested in that. Educational value is the goal. Please keep this in mind when reviewing images. Noodle snacks (talk) 09:14, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * WOW is too a criteria, all be it an informal one. It is taken from the FP description where it states FPs should be "eye catching". Look at the Gates portrait comments. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  21:54, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * WOW is most definitely not a formal criterion, but the following is "A featured picture is not always required to be aesthetically pleasing; it might be shocking, impressive, or just highly informative." As for your opposition it appears to be born out of sloth and a lack of willingness to evaluate them individually; this is not, in my opinion, a valid reason to oppose (or to support). Also, there is no article where all of these images appear together (I explained this in the nomination), this should, however, be forthcoming. Just for you, the images are now linked to their articles. Cowtowner (talk) 23:56, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Since you are new here let me explain something to you. If there is anyone that hangs around FPC that you don't want to insult, it would be me. I am notorious for responding poorly to such things. I would, if I were you, choose your words carefully. I reserve the right to judge a submission as a whole instead of individual items. In doing that, your submission fails. No apologies, not even further explanations, it fails. And congratulations, you pissed me off. Have a nice day. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  00:18, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Nezzadar, in the interest of fact, Cowtowner has been here (FPC) roughly three times as long as you have. To all, please remain WP:CIVIL. Noodle snacks (talk) 00:33, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks Noodle, I'm resigning myself from this aspect of the discussion; if someone wishes to continue it, take it up on my talk page please. I hope I haven't appeared out of line; I still stand by my reasoning. Cowtowner (talk) 00:45, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I was refering to the comment "your opposition it appears born out of sloth and a lack of willingness to evaluate them individually" and warning cow that I take attacks seriously and will not hesitate to respond in kind. I made no mention of time. I will disengage here for the benefit of FPC, although I believe that this is nothing more than nomination spam. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  06:10, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment - This collection of images is really begging for a List of Map Projections (or something similar) article. If the list had specific properties and grouped the images into broad types it would be quite a valuable article in my view. I'd argue that if this was promoted as a set that it should be shaved down to a small number of key examples for different projection types. I don't think they should be merged into one image personally. There is a pretty easy DYK for anyone interested in producing such a list in my opinion. Noodle snacks (talk) 09:14, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I was thinking the same thing, when I have time (tomorrow, maybe) I intend to attempt to create an article as such. Cowtowner (talk) 23:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose Too many images. Maybe one good Earth map would be nice, but here's a bunch of half decent images. Plus, the white lines are highly distracting to me. In addition, not all the images are equal. What I mean, is that some of them have white backgrounds, others have black backgrounds. Some of the images are pixelated when viewed at full resolution (Craig Retroazimuthal for example). Takeiuchi (talk) 18:51, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: 4 of this user's 9 contributions are to FPC Mostlyharmless (talk) 22:35, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That was bias and irrelevant MH. Unless you think this is a sockpuppet, there is no place for that...
 * Let me get this straight. I need to have a multitude of edits and additions to say if a picture is nice or not? Not going for it. My oppose vote still stands. Takeiuchi (talk) 19:44, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It is standard practice to note when a new user appears and tends to focus their attention here quickly. Any 'vote' will still stand and be taken on its merits unless there's an indication of impropriety. No personal offence is intended. --jjron (talk) 13:58, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that MH's comment should be disregarded for the vote count. Now, if Wikipedia have the mechanisms sockpuppetry should be investigated in this case. Takeiuchi likes video games.  franklin.vp   23:11, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It's only really sockpuppetry if they were using both of their accounts for the same purposes, e.g. multiple voting on FP noms. If you want the user investigated, you'll have to give evidence pointing to a particular puppetmaster, which it doesn't seem you have. In any case, this shouldn't be discussed on an open nom, and I suggest hiding MH's comment and the replies (including this one). Papa Lima Whiskey  (talk) 00:53, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I have not edited my user page all that much, since I haven't had the time. I am not a sock puppet, and I hardly know anyone on here, other than that harmless thinks my photo critique is rather poor. I do like Video Games, but I am also taking a photography class, and doing rather well in it. Takeiuchi (talk) 19:44, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you may have misinterpreted their purpose. The fact that there are so many is in part tied to the monumental nature of their task and perhaps the impossibility of it; their quantity is also a dubious reason for opposition in my opinion. Using "one good Earth map" would be firstly unencylcopedic in their articles and is in opposition of the aforementioned reason for their quantity. As for them being "half decent" they each sport quality resolution and excellent sharpness, but feel free to elaborate on this point. Cowtowner (talk) 23:44, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I also think you are misunderstanding something. I don't think they are terrible pictures at all. But Wikipedia lists Featured Pictures as; "The best pictures Wikipedia can offer." These pictures are good, but not the best. We can't use all of them, and we can't just use a handful of them, because yes, that would be "unencyclopedic". As such, I still oppose it. Takeiuchi (talk) 00:29, 7 November 2009 (UTC
 * Could you explain to me your rationale for not being able to use them all? Thanks, Cowtowner (talk) 00:31, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * OH!!! This is spectacular! I definitely SUPPORT (and all of them). I also agree there should be an article about the projections in general. I don't know about possible technicalities of Wikipedia but, if possible, they should be featured individually. I guess that was the intention of the nominator. It is easy to evaluate each of them, in terms of quality of the images because if one of them is sharp and have enough detail and color quality the others will have since they are computed (produced) out of the same set of images. The set it self is quite a collection. The big number is just showing the impossibility of making a plane of the earth and the attempts of many many men. Put there bright minds as Euler and Gauss. With this collection a man of the 15th century would probably become instantly rich. To produce and devise some of these took centuries. The thing is that some are good because they are angle preserving, some are area preserving, some are none of these. This is a monument to several hundreds of years of human history. The man trying to understand the shape of the earth. The attempts to create the perfect projection is linked to the creation of modern geometry, to the discovery of America, to Politics, even to Einstein's relativity. Some of them look like a bad picture of the earth but in fact it is just an illusion an illusion created by us being used to see only few of these in our school Atlases but the truth is that all at bad pictures of the earth and all are useful or were in a way or another.  Franklin.vp   23:20, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong Support. Very high encyclopedic value, for the articles they are placed in. Attractive and accurate. Mostlyharmless (talk) 01:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. I consider the opposes of Nezzadar and Takeuichi to be outside the Featured Picture Criteria. Mostlyharmless (talk) 01:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, however recent opinion is that FP has lost it's wow and is in danger of losing it's purpose as a consequence of that. See the comments at the Gates photo nom. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  06:11, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Support per nom. All encyclopedic cartographic projections, and excellent as a set to show the distortions each generate upon a flat plane.  Durova  357 04:21, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment While the potential EV is unquestionable, the images do not currently contribute as well to the article. Perhaps nomination should be suspended till the article or list that NS refers to is created. --Muhammad (talk) 15:01, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * To which article are you referring to? In their own articles, I believe the contribute nicely. As I mentioned before, I will try to make the aforementioned list; this will be a new experience for me so it may take some time though. Cowtowner (talk) 18:50, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment These images are tagged as "Own work" for the upload, but the nomination claims NASA as the creator, whats wrong with that picture? —  raeky  ( talk 17:20, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * This was my error, I misread the upload, the source images were from NASA; a wiki user did make these, however. I've corrected the nomination, good catch. Cowtowner (talk) 18:50, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Article created the framework for a list article has been created at List of map projections. This increases the overall EV and addresses many of the requests made above. Currently, the article only includes the images proposed here, but should eventually be expanded (either by myself or others). Cowtowner (talk) 20:05, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: this should not be taken to mean that the images have no or little encyclopedic value in the articles they are already in - their EV in illustrating these concepts is high. Mostlyharmless (talk) 22:37, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I completely agree, the purpose of me making this article is merely for the sake of having one where all of the set can be seen together, Cowtowner (talk) 23:22, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 *  Neutral  Changing to neutral because of the list. I still think this should be a featured set, but we don't have those now, and we can always double back and change it later. The list needs some fine tuning, but I like it a lot. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  00:33, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * P.S. 1) Should we make the backgrounds to the projections transparent instead of black. 2) Moved some comments so everything was above the line for voting. Please be careful people. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  00:36, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment I've expanded on the list. We have an example in this set for each category, with the exception of gnomic and perhaps equidistant (can't find an example). Can we add two more images to ensure completeness? Can probably afford to drop a few in the cylindrical and azimuthal categories (4 images each). Noodle snacks (talk) 01:24, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Support Want to see Gnomonic and Equidistant examples in there though. Noodle snacks (talk) 01:27, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the work on the article Noodle. I, too, would like to see a Gnomic example. We have a potential one here but I don't think it compares with the others. Regarding equidistant projections, we have a few examples listed here, of which 4 are nominated here. Personally, I would prefer that all the nominated images of azimuthal and cylindrical categories remained; especially in the azimuthal ones they are distinct and offer EV to their respective articles pretty much equally. Cowtowner (talk) 02:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As a follow up, some potential additions I stumbled across are the two-point equidistant and the Aitoff projection. The former would address your concern with equidistant projections, the later is of equal quality as the other images. Cowtowner (talk) 02:13, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Suggest either and/or for equidistant are added. I haven't seen User:Mdf around for some time, so I don't know if he'd be able to create a consistent Gnomonic image or not. Noodle snacks (talk) 02:44, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Added both, now the gallery looks bad though, a necessary evil I'm afraid. Cowtowner (talk) 03:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I find them boring and I don't like the white spotty lines. I appreciate it's necessary to show the lines of long. and lat. but they stand out too much (when viewed at full size) and the images are very dark.-- Silversmith Hewwo 23:28, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As discussed boring is not an official criterion, in fact it is noted that the images may not always be interesting. As for dark, see this, this and this. This colouration is more or less standard for this type of image. Also, the EV is greatly enhanced by longitude and latitude lines. Cowtowner (talk) 00:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * You managed to show me 3 images I also wouldn't have supported if I'd been around at the time of their noms. Yes, there is official criteria, but individuals also have individual criteria, otherwise we'd all just agree on the ones that tick the official boxes.-- Silversmith Hewwo 12:35, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That's generally the point of having the official boxes - so we can tick them off and avoid ticking users off instead. We may apply our interpretations to those boxes, but ultimately our opinions are just that: interpretation. I still think the precedent stands. Cowtowner (talk) 01:34, 10 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment You missed a few Cowtower. Was that on purpose? Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  05:11, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it wasn't. There were quite a few but it's understandable that some got overlooked. I've added the Cassini one to the nomination, thanks. Have you found any others? Also, would you consider changing your vote to support? Cowtowner (talk) 05:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that. Forgot to hit save page. Yes, found others. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  06:51, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * ... and more. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  06:59, 9 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Conditional Support of all but one with the condition that these are promoted as a set, not as 21 individual independant nominations. I oppose the Two Point Equidistant projection of Asia, as it has significantly less EV (it is tailored to look good for the region of asia and bears no resemblance to the projection if it were done of the Earth as a whole.) Also, I pity the promoter here, this is going to be a bit of work. Meanwhile I am working on that list. Go for FL baby, ooh! Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  07:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for finding those other images, but they're currently orphans. If you'd like to add them to their articles I'd probably add them to the set (except for the Van de Grinten, I think we have one already). With the two-point one, part of the idea is that it does not cover the whole world. It is more akin to what you would see from a very high altitude looking down. Cowtowner (talk) 14:45, 9 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Following from the discussion between Cowtowner and Nezzadar, I suggest suspending this nomination until the whole set has found its place in article space, should be easy enough to achieve. Papa Lima Whiskey  (talk) 21:55, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added the Gall-Peters projection to its article and added it to the nomination, I also checked on the Cassini projection and it is included as well. The second van der Grinten projection is more or less superfluous as I can't find the appropriate article for it (other than the one we already have an illustration for). I'd say the suspension is more or less unnecessary at this point (I have done a comprehensive search of commons, wikipedia and mdf's page and come up with no more, so I doubt that any others will surface). Cowtowner (talk) 01:16, 10 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment. Can someone please clarify. 1. How did we determine Mdf to be the creator rather than NASA? (An uploader is not a creator). 2. If these were created by a user then that would seem to qualify as Original Research, especially as there is no suitable referencing, and thus preclude these images. --jjron (talk) 14:14, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Closers: Please do not close this until Jjron's concern is addressed This is serious, and Kudos for finding this. Nezzadar  [SPEAK]  17:29, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment More details on image creation would be desirable (particularly, naming the program used). Cries of "foul, OR" are not yet warranted imo. Criterion 8. Papa Lima Whiskey  (talk) 21:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * If mdf did create them: All of the projections have mathematical definitions (see Aitoff projection for an example). Let us assume that MDF started from a NASA map with some 2d projection. First, you'd convert the pixels of that projection back to spherical coordinates (you can do this from the formulas). Then you'd go from spherical to your new projection using the mathematical definition. If mdf was able to get the data already in a spherical format then you can remove a step. I guess we need to decide if the article references are sufficient. We could send mdf a message but he is only active periodically. Noodle snacks (talk) 10:14, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment It was determined that mdf created these based on the license which was a self release. What Noodle proposes as a method for creating these appears most plausible to me and in my opinion would not be original research. I've gone back and reviewed the sources of the 24 articles and they appear to be solid. For some of the stubs Flattening The Earth - 2000 Years of Map Projections is the only source, but it appears to be a fine reference. The rest of the articles (constituting the majority) have multiple reliable sources (e.g. universities, books etc.). Cowtowner (talk) 23:13, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree with Noodle Snacks: straightforward mathematical transformations from known formulas does not constitute original research. There might be a question regarding referencing of the formulas, but the transformations themselves would be verifiable and involve no original thought.  Suggest suspending the nomination pending sources.  Durova  364 03:30, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

--Makeemlighter (talk) 03:14, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No consensus. Makeemlighter (talk) 03:14, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This seems premature, current it is +5 Support, -2 Oppose. In most other noms that would be a pass, this should be suspended instead of closed pending the result of the formula references. Cowtowner (talk) 03:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Numericly, this is valid. Also, this got a lot more time then most noms because the closers took a few days off. Honestly, the problem was that no one actually voted on individual images either. With a new threashold of five votes, this wasn't even really close. Be happy that this spawned a good list article. Work on that, you might just get it up to FL status. Nezzadar   [SPEAK]  18:42, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * What do you mean? The votes were for the images as a set. This set has a consensus for promotion. Mostlyharmless (talk) 02:48, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks to me like we already have a consensus to promote all but the Two-Point Equidistant Projection of Asia. However, if we could just address Silversmith's concern about the overly prominent white dotted lat/long delineators (should be possible as a batch process?), we could indeed promote the whole set. Papa Lima Whiskey  (talk) 13:51, 26 November 2009 (UTC)