Talk:Erigeron canadensis

@Peter_coxhead Hello Peter, for the gallery title, although "Gallery" is a popular title my thinking in using "Photographic Description" is that it's slightly more than a gallery, but was intended to be a systematic description of the plant with explanations, so that those with a visual orientation can use it, which I suspect is the majority of people - the title of Gallery doesn't to me convey the systematic side of this. Let me know your thoughts. Meteorquake (talk) 11:52, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Meteorquake: I understand your logic, but (1) there's a standard set of sections we use for plant articles (for a rather over-detailed template see WP:PLANTS/Template; it doesn't include "Gallery" but this is a common section heading); (2) WP:NOTGALLERY would be interpreted by some editors as meaning that there are too many images in the article.

I think WP:NOTMANUAL also applies; we aren't supposed to be constructing an identification guide. The question to be asked always is "is this suitable for an encyclopedia?" Peter coxhead (talk) 12:09, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My thought is that a visual description is important.

Textual descriptions are of very little value to most people, whilst those who can read them will be using formal published Flora or formal online ones (like Flora of North America) rather than Wikipedia. In many ways the text description is not of use except for plants whose descriptions are genuinely hard to come by or assemble. The text description has a little bit of use in that iNaturalist quotes the wikipedia text against a taxon, which may help people if the description is written in a comparative way by describing a plant in comparison to similar species.

What is mostly lacking everywhere are good visual descriptions that people can follow, and the main thing about wikipedia is it allows such things to be collaborative, freely available and easily findable.

I think that's in the scope of wikipedia since it's meant to provide an article so that people can 'know the plant' and as they're mostly not going to get that from a text description, it follows a visual one is required.

'Knowing the plant' of course is more than identification, since you hope that we all do our bit and other people will add in sections about usage and culture etc, but nothing has a use unless the plant can be known.

It's worth also recognising that some Wikipedia species have thousands of views per day (e.g. Datura stramonium runs at about 1000 views per day), which is an astonishing footfall, but that also makes Wikipedia an essential place to put such a visual description. Meteorquake (talk) 13:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Meteorquake: well, all I can say is that I believe that visual descriptions wouldn't be considered within the scope of Wikipedia by those who work at the Manual of Style, so I think this is something you need to raise more widely. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:40, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, I'll give that a shot! Meteorquake (talk) 06:33, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just having a look at the style guide here I can see the following support the idea of a photographic description, and also the naming of the gallery to something different from "Gallery" -

"A gallery section may be appropriate in some Wikipedia articles if a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. Just as we seek to ensure that the prose of an article is clear, precise and engaging, galleries should be similarly well-crafted. Gallery images must collectively add to the reader's understanding of the subject without causing unbalance to an article or section within an article while avoiding similar or repetitive images, unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made."

"One rule of thumb to consider: if, due to its content, such a gallery would only lend itself to a title along the lines of "Gallery" or "Images of [insert article title]", as opposed to a more descriptive title, the gallery should either be revamped or moved to the Commons."

"Images should be captioned to explain their relevance to the article subject and to the theme of the gallery, and the gallery itself should be appropriately titled"

"Some subjects easily lend themselves to image-heavy articles for which image galleries are suitable, such as plants"

I'll raise a talk point there for extra clarity... Meteorquake (talk) 06:46, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]