Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Sintel

Sintel

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 5 Apr 2012 at 05:46:57 (UTC)

Original – The 2010 Dutch film Sintel, a 15 minute long fantasy film by Blender Foundation released under CC-BY

Reason: Notable film, decisively free, full version available, as high resolution as possible with our size limits
Articles in which this image appears: Sintel
FP category for this image: Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Culture, entertainment, and lifestyle/Entertainment
Creator: Blender Foundation

Support as nominator --Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:46, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- For the quality and the efforts behind the project. Saffron Blaze (talk) 13:12, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I'm pretty sure this is covered by WP:NOT. Papa Lima Whiskey 2 (talk) 14:43, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Which part?

"Not promotion" -- Entire project was CC from the get go, not OTRS. Interested parties can download a higher quality version from the official website and share it for free; we are not on the receiving end of promotion.

"collections of photographs or media files" -- We have an article, with several RS backing it up. This would do better in the "plot" section, but it would clash with the infobox on low-resolution monitors.

Can't think of anything else that would remotely fit. "Summary-only descriptions of works"? We have design and reception info. "Journalism", "Who's who", "a diary", "Internet guides", "Academic language." "Genealogical entries." etc.? Out of left field, no relevance to this media file. Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:04, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, license has nothing to do with intention. Just because something has the same license we do, doesn't mean we, as an NPOV encyclopedia, have a reason to promote it. Secondly, WP is neither a movie streaming site nor the Oscars, so what is this doing here? Thirdly, you make the very good point that Wikipedia does not offer the best viewing experience for this, so we're not even doing the users a favour. Much better to link to offsite hosting that's geared towards displaying such media. Papa Lima Whiskey 2 (talk) 18:45, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NOT does not cover streaming or "the Oscars", so policy-wise this is acceptable. For encyclopedic value, we have the plot of the film (which is a key part to articles on works of fiction). For the quality of the video, there are links to higher quality video feeds from the file. We are limited by the software limitations, and should not, for example in a nomination for File:Van Gogh - Starry Night - Google Art Project.jpg, say "Oppose, higher resolution versions available". We should work within the file size limits and not expect something the software doesn't support.

Regarding "Promotionalness", how old would a film have to be before we considered featuring it not promotional? Fifty years? 100? Do genres count, say a documentary is less promotional than a feature film? If so, that's biased. If a high quality version of A Free Ride could be found, should it be promoted, or would we be giving the filmmaker free advertising? If you are worried about any "advertising" vibes, we could just not show the file on the main page. Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:50, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I agree with PLW2 that this fails WP:NOT in my opinion (particularly WP:NOTREPOSITORY). I may try an AfD but the bar for deletion is low and it is also on Commons, which takes months to delete things had has an even lower bar than WP. So this is some barely notably fantasy story, but let's say it was An Inconvenient Truth and that got released under an appropriate licence? It would be deleted before you could blink. Our articles should be about a subject, not be the subject. Images and other media should be selected to educate the reader about the subject, not require them to view the whole thing. I have no problem with the article linking to the full and best-quality video, hosted elsewhere. Colin°^Talk 07:53, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let's remember Commons is not Wikipedia and this file is more than welcome there and should be linked to both the Blender Foundation and Sintel articles. Saffron Blaze (talk) 09:56, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what level of linking you had in mind, but it's pretty clear that Blender Foundation output would be starting to get pretty crowded by now - three films and a video game that exists in two major variants, presumably with trailers - you'll eventually hit a limit in terms of acceptable direct linking from the Blender Foundation article. Papa Lima Whiskey 2 (talk) 11:05, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't aware that WP was bound by such limits. When an article section gets too big a dedicated article would be created or a category on Commons with all the relevant media files could be used. This is getting ahead of ourselves though. The question is whether this is suitable content for a Wikipedia article. The material is within scope on Commons and useful for highlighting what Blender can do. Saffron Blaze (talk) 12:13, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree Commons has differnet rules. It quite clearly isn't encyclopaedic content, which as I said is about as subject rather than being a subject. On Commons, the requirement is that media be for an educational purpose, which is defined as "providing knowledge; instructional or informative". This film, in its entirity rather than merely clips, does not satisfy that requirement. It is not an educational film. The "highlighting what Blender can do" is satisifed within seconds. Colin°^Talk 13:07, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is not clear to me this film doesn't meet the the stadard of being encyclopaedic content. While the extent of that value is open for debate I would tend to leave that judgement to those that have interest in the film and the Blender software. The part I don't get is where you imply a short clip would be sufficient. What purpose would supplying a short clip achieve when the full file is readily available? ...other than restricting the user's choice in the matter. Saffron Blaze (talk) 14:22, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The same reason that a TV program about a film shows clips of the film. Or an academic book about a novel doesn't contain the entire text of the novel. We explicitly don't allow this for text. For example, one doesn't find the entire text of Pride and Prejudice in the encyclopaedia article (but we do link to the WikiSource and a number of other externally hosted alternatives). The main reason WP:NOTREPOSITORY only says "entire books" and not "entire books, albums or films" is that the latter have been very unlikely to be freely licensed so this hasn't been a problem. Perhaps it is time that was made clearer. Colin°^Talk 15:09, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Don't get the analogy to books. It's not as if the content of a movie is forced on a page as it would be with the text of a book. Are you saying that emedding a link to the full text of the book is wrong? If so then I suppose embedding a link to the full content of a video file would be wrong too. Saffron Blaze (talk) 15:22, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The content of the movie is on the page. That's not a link to the movie, it is the movie (albeit only streamed when you press the play button). The File:Sintel movie - Blender Fondation.ogv is on Wikipedia's servers (copied from Commons). Colin°^Talk 18:11, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think there is more than a semantic difference between the two conditions of having an orginal source text document in an article and the option of pressing a button (or clicking a link) to retrieve a media file. This difference should allow for handling of the material differently as well. I will say that there seems little merit in having the actual file on WP and Commons. Saffron Blaze (talk) 18:39, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See Commons:Deletion requests/File:Sintel movie - Blender Fondation.ogv. Colin°^Talk 18:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Turns out that Commons can't delete the movie because Wikipedia uses it. And Wikipedian's are using it because Commons has it: if the movie has an article, someone will want to embed the whole thing just because they can. So it doesn't really matter that the movie has no educational purpose. If Commons did not exist, I think WP:NOT would disallow it to be held by WP. But you can't delete media on WP that is also held by Commons. So I still think it can't pass as a WP featured picture because it breaks policy. Colin°^Talk 12:26, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. This comes back to the question of whether the standard for notability for featured pictures is higher than for articles. To me, it has always seemed clear that it must be, particularly when an individual artwork is being proposed. Among paintings, for example, we have generally promoted frequently discussed paintings by major artists; even if a high-resolution reproduction existed for a public-domain or otherwise free painting by an amateur or non-notable painter, we would not be inclined to feature it unless it represented something of interest in itself. In this case, the film itself is not terribly important or valuable, nor does it illustrate the software or the creator better than other available images. So it does not represent Wikipedia's best work. Chick Bowen 19:17, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What about an AfD on WP? The movie has not won any awards, no notable people were in on its creation--it has no notability. Clegs (talk) 09:54, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- I think the article topic is just notable enough: a few 3D magazines both online and print have covered it. There's an interview on CreativeCommons. Very much special-interest only. Technically, this movie doesn't "illustrate" anything because it is the thing. That, IMO, separates it from being an encyclopaedic picture/video, or being educational (any more than anything is educational about itself by being merely existing). It is out of scope. Unfortunately we have some circular logic going on that prevents its deletion. Colin°^Talk 10:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not Promoted --Makeemlighter (talk) 00:06, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]