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Commons

Are pictures on the Commons eligible for nomination here? – Quadell (talk) (help)[[]] 16:32, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it is a problem if the picture comes from the Commons, but it should be used in an article on the English Wiki. If it is a good picture its would be easy to find an article to put it in if necessary. -- Solipsist 17:49, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Seems natural that they would be. Agree with Solipsist. — David Remahl 08:40, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Harsh comments

I'm a little concerned by some of the harsh, negative comments that get posted here from time to time (there's quite a few around at the moment). Unlike Featured Articles, photographs and images are rarely collaborative works and usually can't be edited or updated to address any criticism.

Its important to be able to explain your reasons for an oppose, but bear in mind that you might be hurting somebody's feelings and quite possibly discouraging them from contributing to Wikipedia. I'm aware of at least one occasion when my own comments (which I didn't think were particularly negative) helped to drive a good contributor away. -- Solipsist 08:27, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Picture size

I've noticed that a lot of people oppose pictures that just because they don't like it's resolution. Why upload a 1024 by 2048px picture, when we probably won't even use the full thing in the pedia anyway? Wouldn't a 640x480 work just as well? I think pictures should be voted on by composition, color and merit of subject, unless its size is lower than qhat's typically used in wikipedia. So, can anyone explain the rationale behind this? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 12:40, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

In the future, resolutions of displays are bound to increase. Also, Wikipedia may be printed in the (near) future, and then a 640×480 image is hardly usable at a reasonable size. Please see and discuss my thoughts on the subject at User:Chmod007/Alternate version proposal. — David Remahl 13:18, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There is an argument to say that until those things happen, 640x480 is good enough. Smaller featured pictures can always be delisted once printed Wiki's begin to appear. The primary focus should still be on encouraging good pictures for the online Wikipedia. -- Solipsist 15:52, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You say that images larger than 640x480 aren't used. By this I assume you mean embedded in the page as thumbnails, but reading an article on the Wikipedia isn't just reading the text and looking at the thumbnails, if there is a detailed diagram or photograph I will want to click on that and view it "full size", in which cas the 1024px version is very much "in use" on the wikipedia. Even if we accepted the argument that 640x480 is "good enough" for now, if we did ever want a printed wiki it would be much harder to get high-res versions in the future than it is now, while the authors are still lurking around. I would also consider Wikipedia to be a useful resource should I ever need a decent resolution image relevant to a subject, promoting 640x480 to FPs is hardly sending out the right message of the quality of Wikipedia's content. ed g2s • talk 02:07, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree — we should be encouraging the identification of the best possible quality content, not just what works well enough for a thumbnail. — Matt 19:40, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Calendars, vertical -vs- side-by-side

Recently there have been two edits to place the calendars side-by-side. I reverted the initial change back to the vertically stacked presentation with the comment that it is easier to compute the 14-day offset when you just have to scan down two rows of calendar instead of noting the day of the week, and using the other calendar in either a one week or two week offset on that day of the week. There has not been a reason given to use the side-by-side alternative other than "that looks better". I propose that we use the vertical orientation for its functional aspects, unless someone justifies the alternative with more reason than I've seen so far. Comments? - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 15:53, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to matter much either way to me, but I would have thought it should be the preference of whoever is currently doing the archiving. I guess the problem with the vertical alignment is that it leaves an ungly space on the left of the page - perhaps this could be filled with the current pic of the day. -- Solipsist 21:55, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Sure, if someone could figure out how to force them to be vertically stacked, and left-aligned that would be even better. - [[User:Bevo|Bevo]] 22:04, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Ah right, I didn't realise it was being used for that purpose, I made one of the edits to the side-by-side representation, indeed for esthetical purposes. What about putting the calanders vertically next to the TOC? I will give it a go, just revert it if you don't like it. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\talk]] 08:47, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)

Geyser sequence

Discussion regarding the desirability or otherwise of groups of pictures as Featured Pictures, in particular regarding Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates#Geyser_exploding

  • It was the series of four photos that was featured, not one by itself. Please take care when doing your administrative bit-fiddling. Pcb21| Pete 10:53, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • Bit-fiddling? I assure you this was the actual Featured Picture listed in the FP archives.
      • The series was featured as a series originally. I don't who changed that, or why they, or why it was not considered a bad edit and reverted, but clearly it didn't stay like that. Perhaps someone came up with a petty rule that series could not be featured. Pcb21| Pete
    • A series of images is difficult to judge and impossible to feature, that is, if they are all actual seperate images.
      • Why?
        • Featured pictures are selected for the Picture of the Day. Whilst technically it might be possible to modify the POTD template to show a collection of images, it is really designed to just handle one. You can see examples of combined sequences in the Pelican nomination below and the recent Mark_48_Torpedo_testing. Incidentally this picture's sequence would probably look better on the Geyser pages as a single horizontal composite of Nos. 2, 3 & 4 or 1, 3 & 4, although for a featured picture, I might prefer this one on its own. -- Solipsist 16:45, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
          • And where is POTD used? A few users' talk pages. A classic example of the tail wagging the dog. Pcb21| Pete 16:56, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • As you can see below, series can be nominated but they need to be combined into a single image.
      • Why?
    • Should you comment be taken as a support or oppose vote, or none at all? -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\talk]] 15:56, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)
      • In my biased opinion, the series is quite good, but clearly no single picture in the series is special on its own. Pcb21| Pete 16:22, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • If you would like to discuss the refeaturing of pics or the applicabillity of a series for featured pic candidates, lets do that on the talk page. this page is for voting. also, please sign comments with a ~~~~.Cavebear42 18:41, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • Discussion now moved. -- Solipsist 19:26, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Geyser exploding sequence

Just to help things along, here is a version of the sequence aranged vertically. I skipped the first photo, because I think it detracts from the impact of the final two more exciting frames. I've also corrected the rotation and cropped off the distracting guy on the right. I tried a horizontal row too which ended up a bit of a wide panorama, but whether vertical or horizontal was better - there wasn't much in it. -- Solipsist 20:31, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It "helps things along" in the sense that you ignore my point completely and assume that your way - "one pic to rule them all" is right. Yet your own subsequent debate about whether horizontal or vertical display is better, proves that it is better to keep them separate so that our downstream users can make their own decisions freely, depending what screen res they are designing for etc etc.
On a separate matter, I don't like dropping the first pic because it gives a misleading impression of what a geyser is like.
Oh, and Cavebear42, thanks for the tip, but signed more comments than you've had hot dinners (so to speak) :). Pcb21| Pete 23:25, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Actually no, I don't usually like sequences and generally prefer a single frame that captures the moment - in this case it would be No 3. Otherwise, I'm left feeling that it should be a video clip. However, you are welcome to continue to persuade everyone that we should consider a group of individual images. -- Solipsist 00:43, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Funnily I do have a video clip from the same day. Even if it was very high quality, in the correct open format etc, I expect it would still fail the featured picture process... some pedant would point out it is not a picture. Pcb21| Pete 12:14, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Well, if it would be possible to directly illustrate the article it would be eligible, as much as the animated GIF's we currently have in the Featured Picture archive, Wikipedia:Assume good faith. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\talk]] 09:56, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

I get the impression that people approach FPC in different ways and I thought it might be useful to have some discussion to clarify or even change the purpose of Wikipedia:Featured Pictures.

In genereal, I believe WP:FP and WP:FPC are intended as a mirror of Wikipedia:Featured articles and WP:FAC which aim to raise the bar on writing authorative, interesting and complete articles. So I guess the main point for Featured Pictures should be to get more good, illustrative and freely usuable pictures into Wikipedia.

I can see four general directions for Featured Pictures

  1. Congratulate editors - Highlight great picture contributions from Wiki editors. If a user as taken a great photograph, or drawn an excellent diagram we should shout it to the hills.
  2. Illustrate articles - Encourage editors to find and make great pictures for all articles on Wikipedia. The most important thing is how a picture contributes to the article.
  3. Superb gallery - Create a gallery of some of the best free pictures that are available.
  4. Get on the main page - The POTD should be included on the main page along side 'Today's Featured Article'. This needs good images, but might also include unusual or intriguing images that make you want to click through to an article.

Of course, these ideas can overlap and we might want to emphasise a combination of directions. But there are some significant implications. For example, if we really want 4) Get on the main page, its important to include more pictures to avoid repetition (WP:FA has never repeated an article on the main page). If we really want 3) Superb gallery, we might want to be more exclusive. If we are aiming for 2) Illustrate articles, considerations such as a picture's size a suitability for printing becomes more important. And whilst a sunset might look attractive, if it only illustrates a fairly minor location page should we care, compared to an illustration on a more important page, say a drawing of a dinosaur. Finally of course on 1) we should favour pictures created by Wikipedians, although locating and importing the best images can be rewarded too.

There are also practical difficulties associated with 4) Get on the main page. It might not be possible to get enough real estate on the main page to fit in a Feature Picture. In the meantime, it might be a good idea to raise visibility by adding the {{POTD}} to some other Wikipedia community pages, possibly the neglected Wikipedia:Goings-on or Wikipedia:Community_Portal itself.

I think there is a natural tendancy to drift towards (3) simply because when presented with an amazing image its hard not to say 'support', but note that now we have WikiCommons it also has a Featured Pictures section that will probably have to go in the pure gallery direction. -- Solipsist 10:04, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for that extensive overview, you raise some excellent points in all and I agree with your line of reasoning. I think our main focus should be (2), we should focus on getting images that actually illustrate articles well, but the accompanying article should be fairly decent as well, we could consider only nominating images illustrating non-stub articles. I am a bit in doubt over the "by a wikipedia" issue, I do like the idea of user made images better, but in the long run it is not going to matter whether the best images in the Wikipedia were shot by (at that time) Wikipedians, it matter whether they are free images. At the current rate we do not have to repeat any POTD's, but I think POTD on the Main page is not something we should strive for. I think our current Main layout is excellent, and I don't see how a large POTD template would fit in it, maybe with a small thumb, but that would defeat the purpose. The only thing I feel we should get more strict at is image size, ideally every Featured Article ready for print would be accompanied by an illustrative print quality FP. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\talk]] 10:16, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Stock Xchng license problems

I was recently alerted to a licensing problem with photos from http://www.sxc.hu. There are many restrictions under the "DOWNLOADS" section: http://www.sxc.hu/info.phtml?f=terms , e.g. "Selling and redistribution of these photos (individually, or as a whole) without written permission is prohibited". This would mean SXC images are not public domain as I was lead to believe (Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources#General_collections). This affects a recently promoted FP: Image:Flaming_cocktails.jpg, which was quickly (perhaps too quickly) deleted from the commons as a result. IANAL but the user page for the author of this image ([1]) says "you can take my images for any work, you don't have to ask for permission ... use it ...". Does this place it under some sort of dual-license, one of which is PD ("for any work")? ed g2s • talk 16:59, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Public Domain" is not a particular licence; it is, in fact, the absence of one.
The author/creator is owner of the rights to the image, and as such he can license however he chooses; in this case, he seems to have released the image under a BSD-like licence (analogous to CC-BY, but obviously not actually that).
The site can prattle on as much as it wants about one needing written authorisation, but they cannot countermand the author.
IMO, the image should, indeed, not have been deleted.
However, we should of course make sure that any images which we have taken from SXC have been done so properly.
James F. (talk) 16:32, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Agree with Jdforrester. If the author gives free permission to all, then the stock xchng license is overridden. -- Chris 73 Talk 23:41, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

Image:Orion.jpg, which is a featured image, is copyrighted by its owner and I don't think it's eligible for release under the GFDL. I placed the image on Wikipedia:Copyright problems, but as it's featured I thought I had better mention it here as well. It appears that the NASA public domain thing was misunderstood, as it only applies to images created by NASA, and not all image which appear on NASA websites. Worldtraveller 17:08, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Supporting and opposing

Currently, under this heading, the text reads Each objection should provide a specific rationale that can be addressed. Is this really intended? Unlike with featured article candidates, where prose can be improved, things reworded, etc etc, objections against featured image candidates are often not actionable. An objection like 'The photo is just not very exciting' is perfectly reasonable, despite not being something that can be addressed. Worldtraveller 16:36, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There are numerous oppositions that can be fixed, such as "image is too small, not sharp enough, overexposed, pixelated, etc". It's better to know for sure that an opposition is only the result of the image not being "interesting enough" than to not know that an opposition was the result of something fixable. -- BRIAN0918  16:40, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I agree there are lots of objections that are fixable - I was just concerned the wording was a bit similar to on WP:FAC, where the convention is that an objection that's not actionable is not regarded as a valid objection. I've adjusted the wording slightly, hope it's OK. Worldtraveller 17:22, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Even if it's "awkward angle" or "bad lighting", neither of which can really be fixed, they both indicate a real objection rather than a matter of taste (well, sort of) but they also give the nominator some idea what to try for in future submissions. It also softens the blow for those artists with delicate egos... --Andrew 04:48, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)
I think Worldtraveller's rewording works quite well. I guess the idea was to avoid simple 'object' votes without giving a reason.
A harder problem is to try and ensure that 'object' votes are worded in a way that they don't discourage the original photographer/artist/nominator too much. The real point of the FP section is to encourage more good pictures to be uploaded for articles. Several times, I've seen overly harsh critism drive contributors away, such that it would have been better if they had not had an image FPC nominated in the first place. -- Solipsist 08:42, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Suitable licenses for FPs

Recently a few pictures which are copyrighted, but used with permission have been put forward as Featured Pictures. In terms of how they can be used outside of Wikipedia, they are no better than fair-use image. If these go through it sets a worrying precedent, in that anyone photo could be submitted, provided that we get permission from the author (which in a lot of cases they would be prepared to give: high exposure of their work, a link back to their site and not having to worry about third party use). Image galleries of "cool pictures" are ten-a-penny on the Internet, what makes this one special is that I can look through, and then use whatever I find, however I like, such is the philosophy of Wikipedia ("The Free Encylopedia"). This is a gallery of the best Wikipedia has to offer, not the best copyright photos Wikipedians like. ed g2s • talk 11:00, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Your statement that copyrighted images ...are no better than fair-use image is wrong. Fair use requires specific rationale for a particular use. This rationale doesn't extend to featured picture uses. There is no violation in a case where wikipedia has unrestricted permission.
My statement was preceded by "In terms of how they can be used outside of Wikipedia", for which the following statement was not wrong. A 3rd party has no more right to use an image Wikipedia has permission for, than an image Wikiepdia has deemed fair use. ed g2s • talk 02:48, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
OK, I see what your saying now, stick with the copyleft ideal for featured pictures. But many licences (like free-for-non-commercial, or free for encyclopedia uses) are much better than fair use w/r to wikipedia customers. Duk 04:30, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
However, some permissions granted to wikipedia have certain restrictions, like a credit requirement. If one of these is a featured picture will that requirement be honored? does the copyright holder need to be credited wherever the image is used?
what makes this one special is that I can look through, and then use whatever I find, however I like. Not quite true, GFDL and CC copyrights still have restrictions, and the images are still owned by the author. You may not use however you like. Are you suggesting that only PD images be used for featured pictures?Duk 13:46, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
No, but the can be used for any purpose, provided the terms of the license are adhered to. CopyrightedUsedWithPermission images cannot be used unless the user gains permission from the author. "Fair use is tolerated" is talking about Wikipedia as a whole. The whole paragraphs is explaining why fair use should not be tolereated in FPs. ed g2s • talk 02:48, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Agreed with Duk above. You seem to want to follow some made-up personal philosophy instead of the actual policy for Featured Pictures. I am following the policy, which states that fair use is tolerated, implying that images which actually have permission should be tolerated more. -- BRIAN0918  14:03, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Brion, I thought that fair use images were not allowed for featured picture use, because the way feature pictures are used isn't a valid fair use rationale (see the top of the project page). Duk 16:00, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
My understanding of the paragraph is that they don't like to tolerate fair use because they don't want to be restricted to image galleries, and want to have permission from the copyright holder. Copyrighted and CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat aren't restricted to image galleries, and do have permission. Regardless of the exact meaning of that paragraph, the statement in the policy is that images should be PD or GFDL, not that images must be PD or GFDL. As Andrew said, "Of course a free license would be preferable, but commons:Featured Pictures is the place for such ideological purity." -- BRIAN0918  04:48, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well I think that is slightly the wrong emphasis. Its not really about building a gallery. I've always thought the point of Featured Pictures is to encourage people to find more good pictures for Wikipedia by highlighting particularly good contributions. As such any image with a license that is suitable for Wikipedia should be eligible for FP. The exception is FairUse images which are ruled of of FP, because they are only really FairUse in the context of their article.
Of the current nomination
  • The Snowflakes are a problem, because of their '{{copyrighted}} with permission for use on Wikipedia only' license. You would think this is fine, but following Jimbo's edict last year this is actually one of the deprecated tags (since it doesn't allow for use on downstream forks).
  • The Z Machine is {{CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat|...}} which is fine. The slight caveat is that the condition on the ProvidedThat... includes its 'use on encyclopedia-related articles'. You could argue that that should rule it out from FP in a similar fashion to FairUse images, but in practice just about everywhere we use FP images they lead through to the encyclopedia article.
Now somewhat irregular licenses such as {{CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat|...}} are a bit of a pain compared to the big three, free licenses. We could change the rules for FPC to explicitly restrict nominations to PD, GFDL and CC-by-SA, with a view to stearing all uploads to these licenses. But I would rather see changes to FPC to encourage contributions to niche areas. We are fairly heavy in tech photos, flowers and spiders, but don't have nearly enough diagrams or portraits. -- Solipsist 13:30, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • The wording for the Z Machine copyright is just bad on my part. He said it was alright to be used in encyclopedias. As for the opposition to permitted images, as I've said before: if we were to deny featured picture status to images such as this which have the proper permission, that would wipe out the possibility of any photos which require specialized equipment, such as rapid-shutter, micro-photography, or imaging done in the non-visible parts of the spectrum. The only reason we have space images (such as from Hubble) is because we are lucky that the U.S. Government releases them into the public domain, when they could easily restrict them, as they have done with the Z Machine image. FPC is not for showing off the photographic skills of Wikipedians, but for showing off brilliant images. Restrictions like this are skewed in favor of photographs taken by Wikipedians with your average camera equipment (plus, nearly all PD images are only going to be such photos since specialized equipment didn't exist back then). -- BRIAN0918  13:42, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Because we really want to use it isn't a justification for infringing copyright. the point of this project (the wiki) is to create an Free content encylopedia. It is important that "when free content is modified, expanded, or incorporated within another work, the resulting work must be legally distributable". This does not mean that we can use things which are legal for use here and only here. If I wanted to, for example, sell calenders from the images here, i should ahve the legal right to. Now, the free use copyrights we use here (such as the GNU do allow for an anuthor to say that they want to be credited as the work moves on. if this is the only restriction, it is resonable to call it free and use it. if there are other restrictions then we should walk away. Fair use is permitted to a point but only when it is furthering the art (meaning advancement of knowlage or science) and no alternative is available. featured pics dont satisfy that criterium and must be pd or explistly free for all. at the bottom of the edit an article page there is a link to Wikipedia:Copyrights which has a few rules to act as a guideline. (also, the labs are all 3 private companys working govt contracts, these are NOT govt emplyees and therefore that tag does not apply) Cavebear42 08:34, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Once you've started deleting the ~1000 images in Category:Images used with permission, that's fine, but until then, the image should be kept. I'll probably hear back from the copyright holder soon with the proper licensing. -- BRIAN0918  08:43, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I don't think you should get rid of the image, merely that it unsuitable for fetured pictures. Just because we can use it legally, doesn't mean we should in this case. ed g2s • talk 11:29, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
You are aware that there have been 3 different orders by Jimbo for all such materials to be deleted, followed by a bit of discussion leading to a decision that we'll hold off for a little, but that new such images aren't allowed, aren't you?
James F. (talk) 12:20, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It's all very very simple: copyleft licences only.
In practice, that means PD, BSD, GFDL, and the CC licences other than the NC ones.
That's it. Nothing else:
  • Fair Use is not suitable for featured status, ever.
  • Copyrighted but Wikipedia has been granted permission is not suitable for featured status, ever.
  • Copyrighted with free use "as long as the tone is positive" is not suitable for featured status, ever.
  • Copyrighted with free use "as long as the context is educational" is not suitable for featured status, ever.
Statements that this is wrong are at odds with our long-term established copyright policy and project goals ("free content").
To put it another way - if it can't be hosted on Commons, it can't be a featured picture.
Hope this helps.
James F. (talk) 11:35, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wait, are they not suitable for just featured status, or are they also not suitable for being included in Wikipedia at all? What about free use "as long as credit is given" or free use "as long as it is on an encyclopedia"? -- BRIAN0918  14:19, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This is about featured status permissiveness; overall inclusion in Wikipedia rules currently allow the first, second, and third, but eventually will only allow the first (Fair Use), and then only when there is no alternative and the image is required and needed.
James F. (talk) 15:55, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
To put it another way - if it can't be hosted on Commons, it can't be a featured picture. Now you see that's exactly where I would say you are going wrong. We haven't had Commons around for very long, so perhaps now is the time for the policies to diverge. If all you want to do is build a gallery of visually impressive free images then Commons:Featured picture candidates is the place to go. The Wikipedia version of Featured Pictures should be about featuring useful and hopefully attractive images and diagrams which illustrate Wikipedia articles. As such any image that has a license that is acceptable for Wikipedia should be OK for Featured Pictures (with the exception of FairUse). So
  • Copyrighted but Wikipedia has been granted permission is not suitable because it is not suitable for Wikipedia (deprecated tag).
  • Copyrighted but Credit must be given is suitable for Featured Pictures, at least until such a time as the general image use policy is changed.
Lets also thank User:Brian0918 for taking the trouble to contact copyright holders to clarify they licenses are obtain permissions. Its unfortunate that he was shooting for a deprecated license on Snowflakes, but that should just tell us that the FAQs for contributing images need rewriting to make the signposts bigger.
This isn't the first time. I might happen to know that 'Wikipedia only' licenses became deprecated last year, but most newcommers wouldn't have a clue. In the past I've spent over an hour trying to find a link to Jimbo's edict in order to explain why 'Wikipedia only' licenses are no longer acceptable and I don't think it is mentioned anywhere. I still have to point back to the Wiki-L mailing list archive to find it. -- Solipsist 19:59, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
By "Copyrighted but Credit must be given" do you mean "Copyrighted, free-use provided that credit is given", if so, then that has always been ok AFAIK. Anything that prevents or restricts third party use is not ok. Does this mean we are now agreed that the Z-Machine and Snowflake images are no longer suitable candidates? ed g2s • talk 21:02, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I was going to say 'no, I'm still comfortable with using the Z-Machine image license', but I'm beginning to have second thoughts. Its a borderline area. I would still argue that an FP candidate should be allowed if it has an image tag that is allowed by Wikipedia. In particular that includes {{CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat|...}}, however it is possible to use that tag to construct a deprecated tag, for example {{CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat|it is used on Wikipedia only.}}, so you have to consider the actual restriction and whether it still counts as an "Any-purpose" copyright which is the section CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat is in. With the Z-Machine image the current restriction is 'encyclopedic use only' - although this isn't quite right; its also available for 'related news stories' and probably a whole range of other purposes if someone could be bothered to clarify it with Sandia. However it is also clear that Sandia do want to control how the image is used. As such these restrictions can also be interpreted as special cases of 'educational use only' which would make it a deprecated tag and not OK for Wikipedia in general. Of course if you take that interpretation, the image should also be deleted from the Z-machine article and that is surely not what Sandia want. -- Solipsist 09:57, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
But the Z-Machine image is CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat, which isn't a deprecated tag, so there's no reason to eliminate it from FPC. I'll probably hear from the snowflake copyright holder soon about its status, so it's easier to just leave it on FPC until he replies than to re-nominate it. Also, this was never a vote, only discussion. -- BRIAN0918  21:10, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It's ProvidedThat part includes "use is for encyclopedias". I can't see how this can reasonably be stretched to include use in an image gallery. —Korath (Talk) 21:32, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
What image galleries are you talking about? If it's a wikipedia gallery or a gallery on one of Wikipedia's third party copies, it should be alright. If they're not one of the third parties that copies the Wikipedia site, why should they matter? -- BRIAN0918  21:38, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Featured pictures visible and Wikipedia:Featured pictures thumbs. Permission was granted for use in encyclopedias, not for use on websites whose primary purpose is to be an encyclopedia. The galleries are not encyclopedia articles. Neither are User Talk pages, which is where {{Pic of the day}} usually shows up. —Korath (Talk) 22:48, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
This is not a question of legality, but principle. There's no point in having a gallery of copyrighted pictures that we're allowed to use, but no-one else is. This is supposed to be promoting the best of Wikipedia. Copyrighted images that we're allowed to use but can't be used by third parties are, by no stretch of the imagination, the best that Wikipedia can offer. ed g2s • talk 00:59, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Just to point out the CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat cannot not include usage restrictions, it's still a subset of CopyrightedFreeUse, so the the current Z-Machine license is non-sensical. ed g2s • talk 00:52, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out Ed and Jd. The project pages, Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates and Wikipedia:Featured pictures, only mention GFDL and PD. What other licences does that cover? CC? --Duk 16:58, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Creative Commons is ok aswell (except for the NC variations). The general philosophy of Wikipedia (the "Free" bit) is that any third-party use should not be prevented. ed g2s • talk 21:08, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Duk - please see Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ for a description of what licenses are and are not acceptable on Wikipedia. →Raul654 00:55, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Let's see if we can get the PotD on the Main Page

See Talk:Main Page#Picture of the day.3F --mav 03:09, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bot assistant

Please see this link for more information. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:33, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Incandescent Pahoehoe fountain - title link mystery

Can anyone figure out why opening the subpage using the title link for the Incandescent Pahoehoe fountain nomination goes to the subpage Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Pahoehoe_fountain.gif, whilst editing the link in place goes to Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Incandescent_Pahoehoe_fountain which seems to be where most of the votes are. (Not that it seems to matter much). -- Solipsist 17:47, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, the title link was screwed up. The nominator made the title link one page but then created the nomination on another, apparently. I fixed it. --brian0918™ 17:52, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Dooh - I looked at that, but somehow didn't see it. Thanks for the fix. I guess we should delete the orphan version. -- Solipsist 19:26, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Suggested addition to instructions

I know it's important to avoid m:instruction creep but I think for this page it might be nice to suggest that nominators indicate what articles the image illustrates. I think we've mostly solved the "What links here" problem, even for Commons images, but it makes life easier for voters, and it also reminds people of the Featured Pictures criterion "...should illustrate a Wikipedia article in such a way as to add significantly to that article."

That said, I don't think my unilaterally adding instructions is a good idea. Comments? --Andrew 07:57, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

Er, I feel foolish. It's there already, just not very prominently. --Andrew 16:17, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

Well I was going to say isn't that already in there, but you are right several recent nominations have been forgetting to mention which article is being illustrated.

But that introduces some other changes I've been thinking about. I've mentioned it before, but I would like to see the English Wiki version of FPC move to put more emphasis on apt illustrating of articles.

With the current set of instructions, we have done an excellent job of encouraging people to mine the available sources of PD images, most especially the archives of US government institutions. This is all well and good, but it means we are baised against large subject areas which are outside the pervue of the US goverment. There are some 500,000 articles now and the majority of them aren't illustrated.

We also seem to be way to harsh on diagrams, which is probably counter productive. It is rare for a diagram to look as pretty as a large NASA photo of a nebula, but if an illustrator contributes a diagram and has it savaged on FPC they are not likely to spend the time to draw another one. Yet there are thousand of articles that can best/only be illustrated by a diagram.

What I am thinking is that we should move away from the beautiful, striking, shocking, impressive, titillating, fascinating, or in short just brilliant instuction to an excellent example of xxx, where xxx is whatever class or category you can think of. So NASA will already have the class of 'astronomy photos' pretty much sown up, and User:Fir0002 currently owns the class of 'spiders'. But until recently we had no portraits, and the class of 'circuit diagrams' is pretty much wide open. The first example promoted to any particular class might only be quite good, but hopefully it would encourage someone else to say 'I can do better than that' in the hope of displacing it.

Another good example is the User:Aka's photo of a vase I recently nominated. Everyone was pretty much agreed that it was a quality photo of a so-so vase. But has anyone thought 'I can photograph a better vase than that'. Meanwhile there are hundreds of pages of everyday objects without illustrations (we don't have a illustration of spear!?!).

You would have to allow objections like 'that class is too narrow'. We might also consider doing this as an adjunct to the main FPC process - a sort of minor barnstar if you like. Of course this would only be worth doing if it genuinely encouraged people to illustrate more of the nooks and crannies of the pedia. -- Solipsist 20:14, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree, although I'm not sure we should completely restrict it to, say, one image per "class" (eg 1 image for all spiders). Thanks for the inspiration, I think I'll go through the list of "articles all encyclopedias should have" and make sure they have pics, and find ones for those that don't. --brian0918™ 20:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

User:Brian0918 neglected to mention that he added a picture to spear. Of course such a mention here would be a challenge to image workers. How about Image challenge of the day? I tried to think of something unlikely, but my first thought of plunger already has a reasonable, indeed realistic, image. I thought shoelaces might not be encyclopedic, but there is an unillustrated article. (SEWilco 03:37, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC))

I'm not sure restructuring the FP process is a good idea, but lately it has tended to be more a repository of beautiful photography than a collection of great encyclopedia illustrations.
There certainly are big subject areas that are not well-covered, although things are definitely better than they were - a year or so ago I spent some time poking around for things to take digital photos of. I think mine are still at blackjack and excavator (no, someboy improved on my blackjack picture) - hardly featured picture quality, but better than the no pcitures they did have. But I think a lot of that territory (anybody with a digital camera can go snap a shot) has been covered by now. Lots of the remaining ones are a little harder (Beowulf cluster, for example).
I'm not sure FP is the way to get pictures attached to all those articles. Certainly encouraging broader coverage would be good - it's really reasonable to say "nice picture, but that article already has a picture of a V-22 Osprey, so that picture doesn't really add significantly - but FP by its very nature picks out a few pictures.
I suppose one should suggest a WikiProject:Illustration (there probably already is) but WikiProjects just makeme feel tired. I think the thing to do is for a few people comfortable with Inkscape to just sit down and illustrate a bunch of articles. It's usually easy to produce something much better than no illustration (e.g. Windscale fire). With luck, someone like User:Wapcaplet will come along and say "I can do better than that!". (If people are going to do this, m:SVG support would be really nice; if you think so, pester User:Brion VIBBER, he turned it off). --Andrew 21:11, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

I think (if anyone cares) that the current problem with WP:FP and WP:FPC can be easily seen when it is compared to WP:FAC. No one would suggest limiting the number of featured articles on a particular subject (how many "History of" and "Battle of" FAs do we have?). People here are too focused on making our image gallery nicer with lots of pretty pictures. This page is meant to encourage, promote and recognize good and descriptive images here on Wikipedia, not to make a page with hundreds of pritty pictures of nebula and insects (not to say that they shouldn't be recognized). Images should be cohesive with the article and add to it. I have seen featured pics stuck to the end of an article as an afterthought (usually in a gallery with several other pictures). This misconception could be corrected if we remove or stop updating Wikipedia:Featured pictures visible. This page does not serve our purpose as an encyclopedia- leave that page to the commons. The thumbs page can be replaced by the automatically updated Category:Wikipedia featured pictures (only missing the alt text and animations are sometimes screwed up- no big loss there). I'd also recommend converting Wikipedia:Featured pictures to something that more closely resembles the FA page (it is wrong to write made by since everything is editable and some images have contribution from many people). I have a feeling this proposal won't be taken too kindly, however. Something should be done, promoting an image right now takes my 10 minutes (maybe I'm just slow) and with about 4 images a day this creates a backlog <currently of 7 images>. BrokenSegue 22:30, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

User:AllyUnion is currently working on a bot to automate this, but I agree that we should get rid of Wikipedia:Featured pictures visible and Wikipedia:Featured picture thumbs. I'm glad that we're not so strict that we don't accept images like the first photograph ever, or the only known photo of Chopin. --brian0918&#153; 23:07, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
See User:Kurando-san/FPC. -- AllyUnion (talk) 02:46, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Variation upon Category:Wikipedia featured pictures: Encourage use of subcategories rather than all one big pile. I can't decide whether it would be better to encourage people to create special category classifications under C:Wfp, or to simply pick up whatever categories are already on an image. The former takes more work but makes C:Wfp have a certain look. The latter encourages people to generally categorize images. I lean toward the latter, and perhaps a bot can automate copying subcats under C:Wfp as well. I know merely using image cats or image cats and parent cats would cause an interesting conglomeration; I'd consider autocats a continuing challenge to bot writers...and for all the subcats to be susceptible to reassignment by the bot of the month — Ah, another award! (SEWilco 03:18, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC))

Further use of Category:Wikipedia featured pictures: Use subcategories for FPNominations and FPNomination-Failed to isolate them from accepted images, perhaps with subsubcategories by month to keep bins small (and a bot can clear out older months). (SEWilco 03:18, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC))

In the interest of encouraging the photo-gallery pictures to wind up in the right place, I mentioned the commons process here and on the FP template. I don't know if it will help, since nobody reads the boilerplate. --Andrew 10:22, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
Let's ditch Wikipedia:Featured pictures thumbs. It doesn't even indicate what article the pictures illustrate, and it adds time to the promoting process. --Andrew 10:54, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
I have also started voting Submit to commons instead for images that don't illustrate an article. Seems like it might make the point. --Andrew 10:54, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
Good idea. I will begin to vote similarly in the future. Any suggestions about how to proceed with the thumbs page? Should we VfD it? I have a feeling people not regularly involved with FPs will vote against deletion. BrokenSegue 23:40, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure about deleting the thumbs page. On the one hand I like the idea of reducing the impression of FP being a gallery by emphasising the relation of FPs to the pages they illustrate. On the other hand, the thumbs page maintains an element of the chronology that images were promoted. This turns out to be useful when selecting, images for the Pic of the Day. I can still get the sequence from the FPC-archive so it is not an over-riding concern. -- Solipsist 10:08, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Monitor Calibration

Moved from discussion of Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Tetons and Snake River -- Solipsist 09:14, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

File:Test Black.jpg
Test Image

Question : Who sees a black rectangle and who sees a black square and a grey square on the Test Image ? Ericd 22:48, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • I do. TomStar81 03:41, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Let me elaborate: All I see is a black rectangle, even when the picture is blown up. TomStar81 20:44, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I see black and gray sqaure, but I only ontice it when it is blown up. BrokenSegue 19:08, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I see the two squares very clearly, without blowing it up - Adrian Pingstone 19:37, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Now it's 10:45pm here and I can barely distingish the two squares, that appeared clearly in natural light this morning. Ericd 20:47, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Black and grey. --brian0918&#153; 21:07, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • two shades of grey (i cant vouge for the top being true black) Cavebear42 21:19, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Easily see the black and grey. --Fir0002 08:12, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I see one as black, the other as a lighter black... I wouldn't necessarily call it gray.... -- AllyUnion (talk) 02:45, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
    Doesn't gray == light black? BrokenSegue 00:17, 21 May 2005 (UTC)


Image server overloading

Following a discussion on the Village Pump, I was lead to this discussion of some current problems with the MediaWiki Image Server.

This very probably explains why it is so difficult to promote closed nominations just now. The FP-Visible, FP-Thumbs, and FP-April-Archive pages as well as the FPC page itself are all very image heavy, and I for one experience multiple page load timeouts when trying to preview or save pages during the promotion process.

I've split FP-thumbs into three separate pages to avoid loading all thumbs at once, and we might have to think about splitting FP-Visible into smaller parts.

Until the servers are reorganised/upgraded it seems to help to only make changes to one of the relevant pages at a time — because each refresh takes several minutes I'm usually tempted to edit all five related pages in parallel on separate browser tabs, but this seems to guarantee overloading the image server.

Of course this is still pretty painful, but it is as well to be aware of where the problem. -- Solipsist 09:30, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Bot assisted promotion

It has been suggested that User:Kurando-san be used to assist in promoted FPC to FP, and performing all the steps necessary. Please see User:Kurando-san/FPC for the discussion. -- AllyUnion (talk) 02:40, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Question

Can drawn pictures (flags, arms, etc) be nominates for FP status? Zscout370 (talk) 23:44, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Drawn pictures and diagrams - absolutely. You can already find several on Wikipedia:Featured pictures visible. However, we have had a good coat of arms nominated before and at that time the concencus was that it didn't quite make the grade. I doubt a flag would have an easy ride either, but it would depend on the drawing and how well it illustrated the article. - Solipsist 07:32, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Picture problems

It seems that a hardware/power failure is affecting the availablity of a significant fraction of images at the moment. Featured Picture Candidates, and Pic of the Day are of course pretty badly affected by this. There's not much we can do, but if the problem persists we might consider extending the normal voting deadline for the current candidates. -- Solipsist 16:45, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Looks like it has all cleared up quite quickly, so no real problem. -- Solipsist 21:43, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Suggestions for improving this page

I'd like to make two suggestions for changing how this page works.

  • Am I the only one who feels that 2 weeks is much, much too long? Most nominations to the featured article candidates are decided in 5 or 6 days, and it takes *much* longer to read and evaluate a 30 kilobyte article than it does to evaluate a picture.
  • I think this page would benefit greatly from have some sort of objective criteria against which nominations can be judged. Just my 2 cents. →Raul654 22:51, May 20, 2005 (UTC)
    • I think the 2 week window is a good idea. If you regularly frequent this page and every time you look at a photo (for that 2 week duration) and say to yourself, "Wow! What a great picture"... then it deserves to be a featured picture. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:12, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
      • I'd have to agree that most nominations are pretty well decided within a week and there is some discussion about the voting time frame in the Talk archive. One problem is that one week may not be long enough for the picture's original contributor to notice that it has been nominated (infrequent Wikipedian or on holiday). A bigger related problem is that now many images are hosted on the Commons, it is increasingly likely that no one will have the EN-wiki image page on their watchlist and won't notice an {FPC} tag being added. I tend to inform a Wikipedian directly on their talk page, but if they are on an interwiki it isn't always easy to figureout which talk page they might notice.
      • Clearer voting criteria, and possibly different criteria for different types of image might be a good idea. The 'beautiful, striking, shocking, impressive, titillating, fascinating, or in short just brilliant' criteria have served reasonably well but are a bit vague and are sometimes used for off-base objections. -- Solipsist 06:25, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

List of Acacia species

  • You can't be serious! You are telling me it was by design that I should be going down the list and then, all of the sudden, there's a bullet with like 200 species names all stacked up. Just because it was on purpose does not make it good form. It's messy, ugly, and above all else, confusing and disruptive. If there's a special case for those species, then say it, but don't just leave them like that. There's no point in having some reason like that, but keeping it to yourself while the readers are puzzled. --Dmcdevit 15:20, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree there seems to be an uncomfortable change of pace on that list, but how does this relate to Featured Pictures? -- Solipsist 18:17, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Methinks Dmcdevit confused featured picture candidates with the newly created featured list candidates... at least, that's the only rational explination I can come up with. →Raul654 18:20, May 21, 2005 (UTC)

Your opinion

File:Dreadlocked Gabriele.jpg
Dreadlocks
Dreadlocks

Hi there.

I thought I'd get the opinion of some seasoned photo-judges. Look at the photo to the right. It's not special enough to be featured, but I was wondering whether you could give your opinion on its quality.

The thing is, I'm arguing with someone who thinks it's so incredibly low quality that it must not be used on Wikipedia. I personally think it is perfectly fine. Fairly average for Wikipedia.

The current version has had its contrast increased. You can see the original version if you go into its history.

Thanks. — Chameleon 20:54, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I have over a thousand images on Wikipedia and will only put on quality pics. I agree strongly with that person you call "someone", the enlarged pic is well out of focus and not satisfactory for WP (others may disagree!). We don't want poor pics on WP because modern cameras (I use a digital medium-price Olympus) are capable of much better focus than this - Adrian Pingstone 21:42, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
OK, thanks for your opinion. Perhaps the image could simply be reduced in size to reduce blur? The thing is, it is the only properly-licensed photo we have for Dreadlocks. — Chameleon 21:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
BTW, the debate is about whether one or both of the pictures to the right should adorn our article on dreadlocks. The rasta pic is not properly licensed. — Chameleon 22:02, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
Well I wouldn't say that the quality first picture here is so bad that it can't be used, but it isn't a terribly good example of dreadlocks. The second one is quite a lot better. It might be a good idea to pursue asking for a clearer free license on the second picture, or perhaps look for another example alltogether. Unfortunately a quick search of YotoPhoto produced only two examples - one of which is poor and badly framed, the other, whilst quite good and large, is totally inappropriate. But there are many more image sources that could be checked. -- Solipsist 06:11, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, you see, the first picture is also the only one we have to illustrate the very common practice of wearing dreadlocks among mainly white countercultural movements (and if you Google for "dreadlocks" you get about two thirds white people, so it's not insignificant). So, I think there is room for both. Yesterday I asked the photographer of the rasta pic to release it under the GFDL and I'm waiting for responses to other copyright enquiries too. — Chameleon 10:40, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
As a wearer of 'dreadlocks' myself and a self proffessed white-boy I will endeavour to upload a large, well defined picture of my locks... which are much better. Maybe the problem is the dreads themselves.

Stag on Hill

I've closed the nomination for Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Stag on hill early, largely because it has copyvio problems, but also because of concerns over the nomination and voting pattern of several users acting in collusion.

Just for the record, I don't have any problem with faked photos, composites, or even collages - as long as the end result is an image which helps to illustrate an article well. However they should be acknowledged as such and attribute their sources as appropriate. -- Solipsist 07:30, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Astronomy pictures

Hello picture people - I'm posting here to let you know about featured pictures at the astronomy portal. We currently have a featured picture every day, and I've been trawling through Category:Astronomy images for pics featurable on the portal. Probably many astro images are not categorised, but a lot of people here must see a lot of astronomy images which could be featured there, so I wanted to say that if anyone has any suggestions they can visit the portal picture page. Standards will be somewhat lower than here, I don't think we'll be voting on them, I've just been putting up pictures that I personally think are nice and striking so far.

Any help from anyone else much appreciated! Worldtraveller 12:41, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Threshold for promoting

Recently, the image Teller-Ulam device 3D.png was promoted to featured image status even though it only recieved 66% support. I am not aware of a precedent for considering 66% to be consensus. IMO, this image should not have been promoted without broader support. Kaldari 15:44, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It looks like Cleistocactus strausii2.jpg was also promoted without consensus (only 66% support). Kaldari 16:07, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, looks like I was wrong. Apparently there is precedent for considering 66% to be consensus. Personally I think that's an absurd threshold to consider "consensus", but whatever. Kaldari 18:14, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Sorry not to reply sooner (I've got a woeful internet connection recently - thanks NTL :( ), but as you have probably already seen, the general guidelines are at Wikipedia:Consensus. However, its not really about a fixed percentage of support votes, the actual comments and other judgement calls often comes into play. For example if an image only gets a few votes it needs to have stronger support as there is an implied base of voters who are not interested in it; a self-nomination vote is also likely to be discounted in deciding whether there is sufficient quorum.
Some voting forums on Wikipedia use different thresholds, but a rough twice as many supports as objections is easy to assess. Overall, the only real point of WP:FPC is to encourage people to contribute and find good images for Wikipedia. You don't want the barrier to be impossibly high, but it needs to be high enough that an editor feels satisfaction when they do manage to get one of their pictures promoted. And if a sub-standard image makes it through the guantlet, or if standards improve over time, there is always the delisting section at the bottom of the page. -- Solipsist 19:06, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. I was just concerned that we were giving too many subpar images featured status and not living up to the "beautiful, striking, shocking, impressive, titillating, fascinating, or brilliant" standard. No harm though. Kaldari 19:36, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Flea

I don't come here often, so I'd be grateful if the regulars would help me out. We currently have a scan of the huge drwaing of a flea from Robert Hooke's Micrographia as a featured picture, image:HookeFlea01.jpg, but Geogre has uploaded a couple of (to my eyes, at least) much improved versions: Image:Flea-Hooke.gif (1.2 MB) to JPEG as Image:Flea-Hooke.jpg (300 KB). Geogre is too modest to worry about "featured status", but is there a simple way to "transfer" FP status from the old jpg to the new gif of jpg? Or do I need to propose the old one for removal and the new one for FP? -- ALoan (Talk) 16:01, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well seeing as how I do hang around here quite a bit, and uploaded the previous version of Hooke's Flea, I'm probably as well placed to comment as anyone.
First off, its good to ask the question. We don't really have a mechanism for replacing an FP with a new version. On the whole it doesn't come up very often. Minor image correction changes to an FP probably just goes happen without comment, although if someone didn't like a change, it might prompt a delisting process.
A couple of times, it has been suggested that a nomination should replace a similar previous featured picture. There is one at the moment with one of Fir0002's sunsets. The same has happened with one of Fir002's spiders and, more interestingly, a replacement for Raul654's Lincoln memorial. In those cases, a renomination process took place, but no changes were made - perhaps in part because simultaneous promotion/demotion makes for a confusing vote.
Looking down Featured pictures visible I don't see any pictures that I remember being changed much after being promoted.
In this particular instance, if it were simply a larger version of the existing Image:HookeFlea01.jpg I would say, go ahead and switch the tag. However, the suggested replacement is quite a different version of the same original image. In particular, bigger isn't always better - although Image:Flea-Hooke.gif has nearly four times as many pixels, it is a scan of a reproduction which has been printed using a halftone dot pattern. I think it may have slightly more actual resolution, but only slightly.
I suspect the originals of Micrographia didn't use halftone printing for the images, but rather had prints from hand engraged plates based on Hooke's pencil(?) drawings. There used to be a rather nice online facsimile by Octavo at [2] but it looks like it may have gone now.
The new image shows lines along the page folds (all the original plates were fold out pages). There are also differences in contrast and shadow detail, and the title top right has changed (is the new image from a German translation?).
Overall, it is not clear to me that this is actually a better illustration, and I would suggest nominating it as a replacement FP. -- Solipsist 20:39, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I too think the original image is actually nicer than the newer ones. Kaldari 21:54, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Subcategory

Category:Wikipedia featured pictures now has a subcategory: Category:Featured desktop backgrounds. — Chameleon 15:24, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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