Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Images and Media/Illustration taskforce/Archive 1


 * The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.  No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Thoughts about this project
I've set up this WikiProject with the aim of improving the presence (and consistency) of all sorts of images on Wikipedia. The perceived need for such a project arose from discussion of a predominantly picture-oriented Wikipedia, which general consensus seemed to indicate was not a great idea. While most WikiProjects to date have been oriented around the goal of providing structure to existing (or future) content, this WikiProject is oriented more towards attacking a particular problem: Wikipedia needs good illustrations.

To this end, I am hoping that the formation of this project will help us to systematically locate articles that need pictures, determine the most appropriate picture(s) for the article, and get the pictures (as detailed in the "Goals" section of the meta-page). Matters that need some discussion before all of this can really happen are:


 * Coming up with a set of guidelines which help contributors prioritize articles according to their need for illustration. Articles about a physical object, person, animal, plant, etc. just about scream out for illustration. Articles about abstract concepts, such as mathematical functions, can often be illustrated also. Articles like Love might be difficult to illustrate, and may be best without illustration. We need some policies about when illustrations are helpful, and when they're important.
 * Setting some rules about technicalities such as image size, appropriate format, placement within articles, etc. Many of these issues are already discussed in our policy pages about images, alternate text, and file silzes; these could use some organization and general bringing-together.
 * Setting some more standardized ways to handle situations in which there are many images in an article; so many that they nearly dominate the textual content. For example, Pig, Apple, Rachel Corrie, Images of sheep, Erotic art in Pompeii. The image use policy page again has some suggestions on this topic, but I think it could be improved. There is very little consistency with regard to image placement, size, alignment, etc.

I am hoping that once we have defined some guidelines for issues like the above, we can create the Wikipedia Picture Squad (as Eloquence put it :-) to tackle each issue.

-- Wapcaplet 13:30 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Portrait illustration
User:Bishonen recently posted a small conundrum to the Village Pump involving the shortage of photographs of late singer-songwriter Cornelis Vreeswijk. The relatively few existing photographs are not compatible with the GFDL, and Bishonen does not think it likely that any of the copyright holders would be eager to license their photos as such. I suggested the possibility of a Wikipedian creating an original sketch or portrait, based on existing photos; being an original work, it could then be licensed under the GFDL. This approach might be useful for other persons for which we have articles, and could be included in this WikiProject so that requests can be handled by any idle portrait illustrators we might have. Thoughts? Concerns? -- Wapcaplet 15:43, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * This is an excellent idea and one that I will definitely take up. There are a plethora of biography pages on Wikipedia that do not have a picture because there are no photographs that can be licensed under GFDL. Creating a portrait of the person based on a photograph falls under fair use and would benefit everybody. I'll start off creating a portrait of Cornelis Vreeswijk and we'll see how it goes from there. --Reverie (talk) 14:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I just uploaded a portrait of Cornelis. Hopefully I can add portraits to many more biographies from here on out. --Reverie (talk) 02:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

SVG
It appear than SVG cannot be support by wikipedia (commons). Have other vectoriel graph which can be support on wikipedia ? And can we do something to improve the situation, to be able to share SVG and vectoriel files. Yug 22:15, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Information Graphics
Hi WikiProject Illustrationians. Please have a look at information graphics which is an umbrella term for the types of illustrations that one might find in a how-to guide, an illustrated encyclopedia. Graphs, charts, but also mechanical diagrams, maps, and so on fall under the arch of infographics.

Anyway, I have dabbled with creating information graphics in the past. The problem I see with it in the context of Wikipedia is that the currently technology there isn't really a good "wikitext" style graphics format. SVG would probably be the ideal. But barring that, images will be mostly created on a one-off basis never to be changed again. That seems like a problem, especially in the case of timelines and charts which people might want to change quite a bit. Sbwoodside 03:35, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Request for feedback
I just downloaded Inkscape and made my first SVG-format diagram, Image:ELISA-sandwich.svg. I'd appreciate comments about it. — JVinocur (talk • contribs) 15:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:Notphoto
There's a discussion about the category associated with this recent (3 July 06) template for tagging images which are claimed to be photographs but "obviously" not. It's been used twice. I think that this project and WikiProject Photography should be given some input as to what happens. Discussion here. --Dhartung | Talk 04:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
 * User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
 * User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 22:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now moved the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 13:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Xara compatibility
I only work in XaraXtreme, and unfortunately the windows version does not support SVG export yet, which is a pain as I've lots of great things I could contribute in SVG rather than PNG. Does anyone know a workaround for this? I know open Xara supports it, but I don't have a linux system to run that. Emoscopes Talk 02:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Graphics Lab
There is a new Graphics Lab project that is trying to find a place in the English Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia talk:Graphic Lab for a discussion on how it could be integrated into existing projects to avoid conflicts and confusion. Thanks! MithrandirMage 00:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Complete Page Revamp
Hello there. I've taken the liberty of rewriting this WikiProject page in the interest of clarity and ease of use. I've added suitable templates to the top and restructured the project's description, clarifying and expanding upon this project's purpose, as well as how users may go about helping. I believe my efforts have been worthwhile, but if you disagree, please let me know by responding to this post; hopefully we can work out a compromise that will be both attractive and informative. Thanks, and happy editing! MithrandirMage  T   19:48, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Map Copyright
If I were to find a map on google and then trace over it and make it pretty in photoshop would i be able to release that into the public domain or use it in wikipedia at all.  Dom ' mc ' cas  18:42, 2 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not a copyright expert, but I suspect not - derivative work. The right page to ask is at Media copyright questions. But you might want to check Blank maps and WikiProject Maps/Source materials to see if they have what you want. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:34, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Image gallery
There is currently a discussion at the village pump, concerning the current way of displaying galleries, and a possible alternative. All editors are encouraged to take part. Puchiko (Talk-email) 23:26, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Anyone interested in helping design a new button for the edit toolbar?
Per this discussion, the next step in adding a footnote starter button to the edit toolbar (that's the row of icons you see above the edit box, when in edit mode) is to actually design an icon.

Icons look like this, individually.

Anyone interested? If so, please drop a note at the village pump discussion mentioned above. Thanks! -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:30, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Graphic designer needed
I'm looking for a skilled graphic designer.

I need an image for a non-barnstar Wikipedia award with the theme "World Traveler".

I was thinking perhaps the following image, without the barnstar, and with the globe (or another one) superimposed over the Wikipedia globe (or the Wikipedia globe superimposed over it) - I'd like to see the world's countries and the puzzle pieces (with the continents more prominent).

The image also needs a passport laying on the surface beneath the globe stand (where its shadow is, but the shadow should be retained as well). The image's background must be transparent (not white like the background of the image below).



Is this something you can do?

If so, please contact me on my talk page.

I look forward to your reply.

The Transhumanist 17:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Graphs
I feel that there could be some work done in standardising graphs. There is a bit of a hodge-podge at present and it could do with tidying up. Anyone got a few spare minutes?... 10:22, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

What the hell happened to this project?
where did everybody go?

Oh well. I'll look for help elswhere.....but I refuse to leave the project. Maybe it will pick up later.--Amadscientist (talk) 06:07, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposed project merge
Hi! I've proposed at WikiProject Council/Proposals/Files that this project be merged with a number of other WikiProjects related to images/files on Wikipedia. All comments there from the members of this project would be much appreciated. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 23:02, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Redirect proposal
Given the generally favorable response to the proposal, it is now proposed that this project be redirected if there are no objections so that its purpose can be carried forward by the new project, WikiProject Images and Media. Please join the conversation at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Images_and Media. Thanks. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:39, 22 April 2009 (UTC)