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The point of this policy is against having pure "gallery" articles such as Image gallery of Gandalf, Harry Potter images in the main Article space, and against the uploading of large collections of unencyclopedic images. Nobody disputes the wish of a photographer whose photos are used in many articles to administrate these potos in a photo album below his user page.

The current poll starts below at #Proposed rewording.


Occasionally Image Galleries come up for on AfD. They are usually deleted on the grounds that WP:NOT, an image gallery. I think that this is a wrong-headed position, and should be changed, at least in some cases, especially topics related to art and artists.

I hold it self evident that images are crucial for understanding works of art, and the for complex art-related topics, many images are necessary. One cannot fully understand the work of an artist, or a school of artists, or an artistic movement without seeing many images of the relevant art. I therefore believe that in order for Wikipedia to provide the best possible coverage of art topics, image galleries must be incorporated in some way into the project. Other types of topics may also need a large number of images.

There seem to be three choices available to a Wikipedia editor for presenting an image gallery, none of which seem to me to be viable.

  • Incorporate them into the article on the subject, which at first glance would seem to be the best option, but with which there are severe problems discussed below.
  • Have the images collected into a single article page or category on Commons, a method which I see as unworkable for the reasons discussed below.
  • Collect the images into a separate article as gallery which can then be annotated and arranged in a logical manner. This option, however, will, sooner or later, result in the article being subjected to AfD.

Before I discuss the problems I see with the first two options above, let me discuss another argument often brought against image galleries. It has been argued before that galleries are not encyclopedic because other encyclopedias don't have them. This is not actually true, as many encyclopedias will have galleries of some topics like flags or historical costumes. However I will admit that most encyclopedias don't have image galleries as a major feature. I think that this falls under the rubric of "Wikipedia is not paper". The number of images in other encyclopedias has been limited because historically producing images was expensive. We don't have that problem.

Incorporating the images into an article may seem to be the best solution, however it has problems. If an article is long, like the Book of Kells, then a significant number of images can be incorporated. It is important to note however that even in that article there were several images that could not be incorporated into the article and had to be linked to like this: (folio 8r). If an article is short or the number of images far outstrips the amount of text, then the article ends up with a large image gallery tacked onto the end, as in the article, Codex Aureus of Lorsch. I find this to be not aesthetically pleasing. It should also be mentioned that having a large number of images in an article significantly increases the download for an article. If a reader knows that they are clicking on an image gallery, then they will expect this, something they won't expect when clicking most article links.

It is often argued that Commons is the place for image galleries. I disagree. In the first place, it is my understanding that Commons was created primarily so that all Wikimedia projects could have access to images without the redundancy of uploading them to each separate project. Nowhere on Commons have I been able to find a statement to the effect that part of their mission is to host image galleries for the various Wikipedias. In addition I think that putting image galleries on Commons provides poor service for readers. We cannot assume that readers will be familiar with all of the Wikimedia projects. The most common means of informing a reader of the existence of Commons material, use of the {{Commons|article name}} template, is not particularly useful for a casual reader, they won't know what that little box in the corner means. It is true that a link to a gallery on Commons can be constructed which looks like a regular wiki link, but as this would take a hypothetical casual reader out of Wikipedia without warning, which, at the least, would cause confusion.

In addition to hiding information from readers or confusing them, another serious drawback of Commons as the host for image galleries is that it is a multi-lingual project. Any Commons editor can add a description in any language to any article on Commons. The result is articles like Commons:Louvre. This works well for the mission of Commons, but is not so good for an English language encyclopedia. This problem will increase as Commons matures. It is also relevant that descriptions on Commons are expected to be kept short, so heavily annotated image galleries might not be welcome there.

In short I believe that putting image galleries on Commons is the worst possible solution and that forcing image galleries into articles is a poor solution. I therefore propose that the relevant section of WP:NOT be amended so as to allow image galleries on topics that require a large number of images in order to be understand. Please understand that I am not proposing that every image gallery be allowed, only galleries for topics which need a large number of images in order to be understood. A gallery of images of single famous person, for example, does not lead to an increased understanding of that person, and should not be allowed. Dsmdgold 05:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

You have my whole-hearted support. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and most encyclopedias have entire folds with nothing but images+captions. You make an excellent point that the guideline should be updated to exclude subject areas where images are necessary to understand the topic. Commons is not an alternative, and it would make it would make republishing of the encyclopedia more complicated, as well as fragment the identity of the English Wikipedia. — David Remahl 15:36, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Most encyclopedias have entire folds with nothing but images+captions for the simple reason that printing a color page costs about ten times as much as printing a black-and-white page. The images are separated out to minimize the number of color pages needed. --Carnildo 19:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
And Wikipedia is not paper. Print encyclopedias have limited the number of image galleries because of the cost you mention. We don't have that problem. Dsmdgold 21:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Additional drawbacks of having galleries on commons is that it would force editors interested in the topic to monitor two projects. Also, since it seems to be the norm for on Commons for multiple copies of the same image to be retained, and image gallery on Commons can have a great deal of redundancy. (I had meant to make these points initially, but forgot to include them) Dsmdgold 16:46, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Commons has undeniable problems, but I don't think the solution is to create a fork of Commons on :en. The proper procedure is to work to improve Commons, to address its shortcomings so that it is more useful. Commons is still quite a young project, and it is understandable that not everything is working perfectly from the get go. - SimonP 16:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
But Commons isn't an encyclopedia and never should be. It's a repository of media geared towards facilitating locating a particular item in the library. The Commons gallery covering a particular artist would contain every item relating to that artist. A Wikipedia gallery would include the ones considered most representative, a wide range of periods, no duplicates, etc. — David Remahl 17:27, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I think you are confusing commons categories and gallery pages (which are actually just regular article pages, the same as here - except all that is put on them is a gallery of pictures). Categories contain everything, but a gallery page could easily be created containing all the artwork, sorted and annotated. Other problems such as multilinguality remain though. pfctdayelise 15:25, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I think Commons is working fairly well for what it is intended to be - a common repository of images. It does not work well as source of image galleries for an encyclopedia. The needs of the primary purpose of Commons, work at cross purposes with the needs of single language encyclopedia. Dsmdgold 17:57, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposed rewording

Currently the relevant part of the article states (as to what WP articles are not):

  1. Collections of photographs or media files with no text to go with the articles. If you are interested in presenting a picture, please provide an encyclopedic context, or consider adding it to Wikimedia Commons. If a picture comes from a public domain source on a website, then consider adding it to Wikipedia:Images with missing articles or Wikipedia:Public domain image resources.

I propose we change this to:

  1. Unencyclopedic collections of photographs or media files with no text to go with the articles. Annotated collections of images or media files illustrating a topic may be encyclopedic if they provide valuable support to an encyclopedic article or group of articles. Otherwise, consider providing an encyclopedic context, or moving it to Wikimedia Commons. If a picture comes from a public domain source on a website, then consider adding it to Wikipedia:Images with missing articles or Wikipedia:Public domain image resources.

Comments? A possible issue is that this makes some pages dependent on other articles for their encyclopedic worth, although we have this already with lists. --- Charles Stewart 22:27, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Poll, part 1 (section closed for new ballots) (31/9)

      • I am proposing a rewording of the above. See my comments below. DES (talk) 20:30, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
          • cHowever, annotated collections of images or media files illustrating a topic may be encyclopedic if they provide valuable support to an encyclopedic article or group of articles, and useful encyclopedic content of their own. In general such an annotated collection will provide some text identifing and discussing each include image or file. Additionally it will provide some sort of overall structure to the included images or files. These features will result in an artilce that is more than simply a collection of images or media files, but rather conveys encyclopedic information about the images or files, or about the subjects of the images or files, or both. If a page does not do this, consider providing an encyclopedic context, or moving the images or files to Wikimedia Commons. If an image comes from a public domain source on a website, then consider adding it to Wikipedia:Images with missing articles or Wikipedia:Public domain image resources.

Support Say it with images ;) Honestly, I do think it's a good idea to loosen up a bit on the current anti-gallery policy. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 22:49, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Support --Ancheta Wis 10:14, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

There's been no sustained objection to the idea of a change, and only support for my proposed rewording. I won't be around WP in the next couple of days: if on Monday no cogent objections to either have appeared, then I'll apply the change. --- Charles Stewart 23:25, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Support - DavidP 17:33, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

The internet IS a visual medium, the preoccupation with text as the primary vehicle of fact, is perhaps due to the reality that most people are schooled for professions that use the written word as currency - yet we are all inherently sophisticated evaluators of images. It is arguable that a single well placed image IS worth a thousand words (thus saving bandwidth), an annotation is often essential to provide the contextual bridge. As a side note purely visual encyclopedias exist and are numerous.

Support -- Art is about images. If its encyclopaedic, its encyclopaedic. I rudely suggest that those opposed might go to the library first, and look at a few encyclopaedias of Art first, to get an idea of what the concept is about. linas 17:39, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the support. Change applied. --- Charles Stewart 20:30, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I've changed this back, not because I think that it's a bad idea per se but that there hasn't been much input on this so far. This isn't a highly visable page like WP:CSD and it may take some more time for people to trickle in. An for the love of Mike, please stop with the "support" images. - brenneman(t)(c) 23:27, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Oppose. Use Commons, that's what it's for. What does a gallery provide, anyway? What's wrong with going to the articles which actually explain the pictures? And no, I don't intend on using a cutsie oppose image. User:Zoe|(talk) 02:56, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
    • If I were to take an Art History class in which the instructor said "I do not intend to show any slides of art, I am going to explan them to you and then you will understand them", I would walk out. Art cannot be understood without seeing it. You cannot understand an art movement or the corpus of an artist's work without seeing many images. If Wikipedia is going to cover art in a serious way, it must find some way of presenting many images on a common topic. Commons is a poor choice, in my opinion, in part because it is a multi-lingual project. (For other reasons please read above). It was my understanding that Commons was for providing a common repository of images that all of wikimedia projects could use, not hosting image galleries for the various wikipedias. Dsmdgold 03:16, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Conversely, if I were to take an Art History class in which the instructor merely showed slides instead of instructing, I would walk out as well. Most people cannot understand an art movement or the corpus of an artist's work when only lopoking at the images. Put them in the article where they belong. —Cryptic (talk) 19:38, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. If illustrations are needed, use those required. And since this is an encyclopedia, NOT an Art History class, not many are required. --Calton | Talk 05:08, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose, an image can teach a lot by itself, but come on. There needs to be some sort of explanation on a page, so an image gallery does not work. Images can be added to their respective articles, where they can be described properly. Titoxd(?!?) 01:47, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment - Can we explore the possibilities of adding the function of image galleries to Commons and making it more user friendly to counter some of the objections raised abt using commons for this purpose? --Gurubrahma 07:08, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. The proposed text is not clear to me: how much annotation is necessary? Can we have some examples? From the Village Pump post, I assume that Charles wants Gallery of illuminated manuscript images to fall under this provision, which has what I'd call minimal annotations: where does the image come from, and in what articles is it used (I fail to see why the latter information is useful). I'd support the proposal if more annotation is required, say a few sentences per image. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:35, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia articles should be principally prose. Each image should be useful to the prose it illuminates. Simple collections of images sink rather to the level of lists (albeit pretty ones) and don't actually impart any information of their own. The prose that ought to go with them should do that. -Splashtalk 14:18, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I hate to stoop to platitudes, but what about "an image is worth a thousand words". Anyway, we allow articles with only list material (if they are named "List of ...", why not allow articles with primarily images (if named "Gallery of ...")? — David Remahl 14:53, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I see nothing wrong with image galleries, as long as each image is accompanied by at least a paragraph of explanatory text. For example, a Gallery of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci would be just fine as long as it had a discussion of each image. --Carnildo 19:48, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support -- seems reasonable to me rydia 17:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

As the guy who kicked off this discusion, perhaps discussing some of the few good image galleries around will help people see why I see value in image galleries. I do this with a great deal of trepidation, realizing that any gallery I mention will bring to the attention of people who feel it should be deleted.

  • Gallery of sovereign state flags. This is, as I see it, a no-brainer many print encclopedias have a version of this, and its utility is obvious, there is no better way to help people identify a flag.
  • Gallery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. This comes closest to Carnildo's idea of an acceptable gallery. It would be better with more images.
    • The reason it comes closest is because the bulk of those image captions could be moved into article text proper and then linked together, and references provided for the captions et etc. -Splashtalk 02:08, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Erotic art in Pompeii - although this is primarily a gallery, it has more text than some.
  • William-Adolphe Bouguereau gallery - This gallery is one I have spent a great deal of time using, even though its anotation is minimal. It has helped me to understand, among other things, the evolution of the artist's work over his life in a way that the article simply cannot.
    • Then add the images, along with what you have learnt (and the reliable sources that back up the correctness of your learning) to the article or to spin-out articles. This article imparts no information to our readers. So there are pictures. Ok. -Splashtalk 02:08, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Gallery of Fayum mummy portraits - The annotation on this one is sorely lacking, if all of the portraits were identified it would be much better. However this has given much a much greater understanding of the diversity of styles (and level of skill of the artists) that exist in these portraits.
    • A good explanation would give much more and, more importantly, a properly written article would contain verifiably reliable sources that mean our readers are not left wondering what the accepted meanings of things are. (They can also form their own views, of course, but that's not our mission.) -Splashtalk 02:08, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I think that all of these galleries have a vital impact on Wikipedia's coverage of these topics. In my mind, they must be available in some form. the only question is what form? For the reasons I have discussed above, I think Commons is a lousy choice. One further note, I don't think that every image gallery adds this kind of value (for example, Gallery of Arc de Triomphe photographs adds little.) I don't even think that every art gallery is a good idea. The above mentioned Gallery of illuminated manuscript images, as it currently exists, could be (and has been) replaced by a category. Dsmdgold 01:10, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Support I had previously been very for moving things to the commons and I created a few AfDs towards that end. However, I have worked on the commons and it is not something that should be shown off to the average encyclopedia user. The commons is filled with text from many languages and sometimes the title is in foreign script, etc. All of this makes it hard to make the image gallery useful. I have also seen articles so over crowded with images that could have been placed somewhere else but where integral. Take Iranian architecture now and a while ago. Simply, we do not always have the expertise to write as much as we can show. If the method of Codex Aureus of Lorsch makes users happy then we can do it... but that page is more or less an image gallery. I have no problem tightening the language. (For instance we don't need a gallery of pictures of George Bush, however we could use a chronicle of Bosch's style) I think this is better than the previous wording so will vote for this. --- Comment by User:Grenavitar

  • Comment. "Unencyclopaedic" has no meaning. At least, it has no fixed/objective meaning by which we should make any policy. It is normally used in deletion rationals when one cannot think up an arguement for ones position. --Oldak Quill 20:47, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Dsmdgold makes some good points about commons being a multilingual site - the image captions for the commons 'galleries' could rightly be in french or german as much as they could in english which would not help people wanting to see the info in english. the galleries definately add something to wikipedia, which we can do that other encyclopedias cant (but probably would have if they could) because wiki is not paper. ---- Astrokey44|talk 22:36, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Support 1 picture = 1000 words. If properly annotated, pictures are even more valuable. While commons may be a fine place to have images, I don't believe that they are as accessible there for most wikipedia users. Furthermore, if Wikipedia is condemned to contain articles on every insignificant school on the planet, why can we not also host galleries of images of relevance to our users. Denni ☯ 00:59, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Support 1 picture = 1000 words. It is pointless to describe in a million of words a collection of images. My main attraction for clasic enciclopedia is the collection of images. For exemple there are some gallery with arms and weaponery, gallery with classes of animals, gallery wich illustrate better than anything an article. I do prefere in an article decribing the arhitecture to see the images rather then a description, and also regarding an old manuscript I do prefere to see the images rather then a description of the images.CristianChirita
  • Support/Comment. Like many others commenting in support, I do believe that there is a place for some media galleries in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not bound by the constraints of a printed page. These galleries should be like well-curated real-world art galleries that permit one learn more about the art by looking at it in context with the other art in the gallery. Sometimes, there are just two many images for it to make sense as an article. And sometimes, having a lot of article text between images can make visual comparisons more difficult. The primary objection of those who do not support this proposal seems to go to the first sentence of the proposed new language. Therefore, I have an alternate suggestion for rewording that may address some of those issues while supporting the general concept.
Collections of photographs or media files that do not relate to an encyclopedic theme or that otherwise lack encyclopedic context. Annotated collections of images or media files illustrating a topic may be encyclopedic if they provide valuable support to an encyclopedic article or group of articles. Otherwise, consider providing an encyclopedic context, or moving it to Wikimedia Commons. If a picture comes from a public domain source on a website, then consider adding it to Wikipedia:Images with missing articles or Wikipedia:Public domain image resources. Crypticfirefly 04:34, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Support I wholeheartedly agree with the excellent introductory discussion set out by Dsmdgold. Galleries are entirely encyclopaedic in many instances, particularly for subjects related to the visual arts. Articles with a gallery tacked on at the end tend to look clumsy and involve a large download overhead for the casual reader. Codex Aureus of Lorsch is a good example as pointed out. Much better is William-Adolphe Bouguereau which covers the subject of the article, gives some examples of his works, with a link to a more substantial selection of annotated works in a separate gallery. Much neater, and an improvement for both the casual reader and more in depth researcher alike. Commons is not the correct place for the encyclopaedic use of images, but should be kept for the purpose it was intended - as a repository for the image and media files. I support the alternative wording proposed by Crypticfirefly. Now, off to vote on the William-Adolphe Bouguereau gallery AfD ... --Cactus.man ✍ 09:30, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

  • I am opposed to the policy as proposed. There would have to be much clearer guidelines on what would be acceptable. "Encyclopedic" calls for a value judgment on what is valuable and what isn't. Where does the line fall between a gallery of portraits by Ruebens and a gallery of the works of a first year art student? -- Dalbury(Talk) 10:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment This is what happens everyday regarding articles and is an issue regarding notability. Ruebens is clearly notable but the first year art student probably not. Inappropriate galleries would go down the same AfD or speedy route as inappropriate articles. --Cactus.man ✍ 11:59, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I understand concerns as to notability. I believe that there are certain topics, such as art, architecture, historical costume, flags, heraldry and other visually oriented where a picture galleries are the most efficient, if not the only way to express information. However there are some (most?) topics that are not helped by image galleries. For example most articles about people would not need image galleries of that person. (Possible exceptions would be people like Madonna whose changes of appearance over the years is a significant part of her career.) I think that appropiate galleries are those that are focused (their contents reflect a single prose article), organized according to an apropiate scheme (chronological, alphabetical, iconographical, etc.), and concern a subject primarily of visual interest. My concern is that in attempt to ban Gallery of George W. Bush images, we are banning the most easiest and best of way of convaying information on important topics, whic is why I believe this policy must be changed. Dsmdgold 16:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Support It annoys me that I cannot place up

images that will support the article, such as the differences between abstract Leonardo Da Vinci, to Donatello. One sample of image of each artists work simply is not enough. It's like saying the Mona Lisa is all Da Vinci did. I'm annoyed that I can't paint something and have Wikipedia host it even if it's related to article for instance chinese characters, or other abstract arts or logos for which the original copyright prevents Wikipedia from hosting directly. I need galleries to better support my articles. --Masssiveego 02:53, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Support I would like to express my support for gallery articles and also thank Dsmdgold on articulating this issue and, I believe, improving Wikipedia greatly with the change in this policy. --ShaunMacPherson 07:26, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Support
Galleries can be encyclopedic. Many paper encyclopedias include full-color inserts, and Wikipedia can improve on that. Galleries can go into articles, but articles don't need every picture, and readers don't want to wait for every picture to download. Comprehensive galleries should be in separate articles, so that interested readers can browse them, while others get the information they want from text and from the well-chosen pictures that are within the article.
A gallery takes up almost no space on a server. A single image might take a megabyte, but a gallery of a thousand pictures takes won't take a hundred kilobytes. They are an information bargain.
Commons welcomes galleries of pictures that it can host. The gallery can be repeated on Commons, and there can have annotations in multiple languages. The English Wikipedia should have its own gallery with English annotations.
An encyclopedia is a tool for organizing and presenting information. Galleries accomplish that goal in a way that text does not, and in a way that illustrated text does not. Prohibiting galleries prevents Wikipedia from making a major advance in the encyclopedia.
Fg2 06:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment - We've had quite a bit of participation in this thread. By my reckoning, we have 14 people expressly support my amendement and 4 oppose it. There are quite a few people who commented in general about image galleries, but who did not expressly support or oppose the amendment (namely, Dsmdgold, David Remahl, SimonP, Aaron Brenneman, Splash, Carnildo and Cryptic). It looks rather that among the people who have passed opinion on the amendment, we have a supermajority in favour of it. --- Charles Stewart 20:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I suppose you might consider that enough support to consider making a more formal (and more widely advertised) proposal. I suspect that the vast majority of readers are people like me - still thinking about the issues before we express our opinions. Rossami (talk) 23:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
    • For the record, I support Charles Stewart's proposed wording, although I recognize that disputes as to the meaning of the words "encyclopedic" and "unencyclopedic" may cause a great deal of sound and fury. As to a more formal and widely advertised proposal, where is the venue for a more formal proposal? I thought this was the place to discuss changes to this page. This proposal was advertised at Village pump (policy), and linked to from two relevant AfD debates, and a Deletion review debate. Where else should it be advertised? Dsmdgold 01:56, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I add my support, having only just stumbled across this discussion. I think images can add a lot. I appreciate that there must be some context around the images and I believe moreover the images should be properly described and fit within the context of the article. Examples where a gallery may support an article include geographic articles, where there is still a stub and more pictures than are covered by the lenght of the text. I do not believe sending people to Commons is useful unless there is a page of images, which would then justify the redirection. It is my view that images do need to be adequately described and categorised to be useful. An example of a picture which is not adequately described is Image:Eucalyptustreewithsun.JPG in Eucalyptus#Photo_gallery - nothing wrong with the photo gallery. With about 700 species a photo gallery is a useful way of displaying info. This photo gallery is frustrating though with such inadequately described pictures and to date poor coverage of the range of species. Others have disagreed and as there was no concensus at Talk:Eucalyptus#Illustration_of_this_article, inadequately described illustrations remain. While the image might have been appropriate in the early stages of development of the article, its continued presence without reference to the text or adequate illustration of any point seems unjustified.--A Y Arktos 20:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I support this, provided it is made clear that such a gallery shount not be just a collection of images. There should be at least a line of text in connection with each image, or in those cases where a single section of text is comparing two or more images there should at least be text that explicitly references each image. Given this restriction what we have is not so much an image collection but an articel where the image-to-text ration is unusually high. I think the curreht propsoed text does not make this clear enough. DES (talk) 20:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
  • based on my above comment, I propose the following altered wording:
    • Mere collections of photographs or media files with no text to go with the articles. However, annotated collections of images or media files illustrating a topic may be encyclopedic if they provide valuable support to an encyclopedic article or group of articles, and useful encyclopedic content of their own. In general such an annotated collection will provide some text identifing and discussing each include image or file. Additionally it will provide some sort of overall structure to the included images or files. These features will result in an artilce that is more than simply a collection of images or media files, but rather conveys encyclopedic information about the images or files, or about the subjects of the images or files, or both. If a page does not do this, consider providing an encyclopedic context, or moving the images or files to Wikimedia Commons. If an image comes from a public domain source on a website, then consider adding it to Wikipedia:Images with missing articles or Wikipedia:Public domain image resources.
    • I think the above better expanins what should and should not be included. DES (talk) 20:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Agree with User:DESiegel's proposal--A Y Arktos 21:26, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm not so sure of this rewording, it seems to be missing the point a bit. Do you think the William-Adolphe Bouguereau gallery as it currently stands would be acceptable under this wording? Dsmdgold 21:52, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
That would be about the minimum acceptable, IMO, and not really quite what I had in mind. it does give an organizational structure (chronological) which is valuable, and it does give some text for each image, specifically a title (or caption when there is no accepted title). It does not provide any content beyond the titles -- to me "annotation" suggests some substantive comment on the images (or their subjects if they are images of things, there to illustrate the things, say a gallery of "Firearms of WWII"). This page provides no such substantive comment, but it might aid another article that does so. This fits the letter of my wording. I am unsure just where to draw the line. I am open, of course, to further improvements to the wording. DES (talk) 22:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I see where you are going with it, but I think that you may be trying too hard to explicitly draw the line. The thing about Wikipedia is that you don't know what topics will be covered or what form they are going to take. I'd hate to see this used to remove perfectly good content because it doesn't fit someone's definition of "annotated." A question: is there a really big problem with people uploading their vacation photos into random galleries or something like that? Can you give a concrete example of a gallery that you don't think should be included? Given the nature of Wikipedia it might be better to approach the problem by figuring out what we don't want rather than trying to define what we do want at the risk of defining our "want" too narrowly. Crypticfirefly 00:47, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Support, as long as the wording is carefully chosen.--Srleffler 16:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Support, and agree with Srleffler, et. al., the wording should make it clear that the images have to have relevance and be captioned appropriately. (and what's wrong with  ?) ++Lar: t/c 00:10, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Support, cautiously. I'd point to Tarot of Marseilles as an example of an article I've worked on. On the one hand, the existence of an image gallery is helpful, almost to the point of being necessary, in that article. On the other hand, the article is not the best place for detailed commentary about each image. — Smerdis of Tlön 19:21, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Galleries of fair use images may violate copyright and endanger the Wikipedia project. Fair use depends on the context in which the image is used. For example, a small excerpt to illustrate a critical review is fair use. Aggregating a bunch of copyrighted images in a gallery probably is not fair use. The policy needs to take this into account. ike9898 02:39, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Indeed, this is an important point, and it has come up repeatedly in AfD and DRV discussions about galleries. Generally, I don't think WP:NOT is the right place to worry about this, but WP:COPY may need some commentary to reflect this risk. I'll start a new section below. --- Charles Stewart 16:26, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


Support Frankly I never understood why there was a policy against image galleries. ESPECIALLY when it comes to artists, image galleries can be absolutely necessary. We aren't limited with limited page space nor copyright, as the works of all of the revolutionaries are public domain by now, so I see no reason to continue this restriction. --Cyde Weys votetalk 21:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Oppose While there are certain situations where galleries could be considered encyclopedic, ultimately I think it's something that's going to be misused. See, for instance, Maine coon/gallery which is nothing more than a random selection of photos submitted by Maine Coon enthusiasts. It is very easy to create and maintain a gallery over at Wikimedia Commons, and then link to it from here as needed. -- MisterHand 22:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Just to be clear: you are concerned that both the wording I proposed and the wording proposed by DES would, if either were policy, lead to a keep outcome in that AfD? If so, is there any further qualifications that you can think of that would separate good from bad galleries? --- Charles Stewart 00:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
      • There's nothing particularly wrong with either of the alternatly worded proposals. I just feel that this takes us into "I know it when I see it" territory, where it's harder to vote on specific criteria. Kind of like the whole "Patent nonsense" vs "Utter nonsense" thing, a bizzare distinction if there ever was one. From where I'm coming from, it seems better to keep all galleries on Wikimedia Commons and keep text articles here, linking back and forth as appropriate. --MisterHand 05:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose There is no need for galleries as any articles can host these imagines with a much better explaination and organization than the best possible gallery. If a gallery is properly annoted it will simply duplicate the work of the article and will be tedious and redundent to read if you also read the article. Enclycopedia have galleries because they are paper, we can do better. If need the article could have gallery sub-section, but it is ridiculous to have people follow a link to see the images that apply to the article. If an article seems to be too image heavy then it probalby should have sub-sections split into seperate article just as we do with other large articles. Please do not open the door to galleries!!--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 21:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Support I haven't actually waded through the above novel but I get the gist, and IMO it's long overdue that these changes were made. A picture is worth a thousand words is a very true statement. The photos should be readily availible where there is space. Not all outsiders will think to click on the commons link and will miss out on heaps of great images. --Fir0002 23:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support I think that the first rewording ("Unencyclopedic collections of photographs...") is a great improvement. It's important that we leave some flexibility in the interpretation of guidelines, because there will always be cases that we don't expect; I trust others' judgement. The most important aspect of this rewording, as I see it, is to emphasize that galleries are ok as long as there is some sort of encyclopedic context provided. ~MDD4696 03:15, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support I have read the above including coments from people who object to galleries, but I have not read any reason for not allowing them more serious than that some people don't like them. Myself, I have previously come across places where someone has wanted to use a gallery, attached to an article but on a separate page for reasons of space and loading time as mentioned above, but that others took against it and insisted it be deleted. It seems to me quite evident that visual subjects need pictures and not words. Otherwise, why does the national gallery have pictures on its walls instead of big posters of text describing those pictures. They could save loads of money just having written descriptions of famous paintings, could have a complete set of articles displayed describing every famous picture in the world. Yet instead they insist on putting up actual pictures. A ban on galleries is very odd in an encyclopedia which seeks to be as broad as wiki. I think the simple amendment making 'encyclopedic' galleries permissable would be a good start on this. If the exact definition of 'encyclopedic' becomes an issue, then maybe the definition could be drawn more exactly later, but an area of discretion seems appropriate. Sandpiper 05:53, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. u p p l a n d 15:50, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I do think galleries are acceptable in some situations, all of your examples in fact, but I think the wording "encyclopedic" will cause trouble. It needs to be a little more objective than that, is encyclopedic the same as factual? I don't want a Gallery of streetsigns. - cohesion★talk 10:49, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose Any images with a place on an encyclopedia will be able to accompany some sort of description, annotation or commentary. --BigBlueFish 16:54, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support wording "Mere collections of photographs or media files with no text..." A gallery with annotations is an article. A gallery without is not. Postdlf 20:40, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support; The Bouguereau gallery shows the potential for many other galleries, and they should not have to frequently defend themselves for exceptions to a policy. "Encyclopedic" is always going to be a malleable term, but the cases that fall on the borderline are the ones that need to be discussed.--ragesoss 03:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose. This proposal is fundamentally unnecessary. List format is adequate for legitimate encyclopedic purposes (see my examples below). All this proposal would do is open the door to vanity and cruft. I already see editors contemplating galleries of their own photographs. This has bad idea written all over it. Durova 11:07, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose --Wulf 23:40, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Support – I believe 'image galleries' along the lines of what you're thinking of would be encyclopediac and beneficial to Wikipedia – Gurch 22:15, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Poll, part 2 (7/4/1)

  • I must, with no small amount of regret, still oppose. As it stands, I'd prefer a passionate defence on AfD for granting an excellent gallery exemption, as opposed to lots and lots of squabbles over whether or not Gallery of Pokèmon cosplay winners was "encyclopedic". For example, Gallery of sovereign state flags would not be deleted if we nominated it 350 times. All that being said, I think that this is making excellent progress. - brenneman(t)(c) 11:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Dsmdgold has provided an excellent breakdown of the vote so far at User:Dsmdgold/Sandbox --- Charles Stewart(talk) 05:34, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose. Existing policy is sufficient if editors make better use of list format. For example, List of countries (a featured list candidate) already includes images of all national flags. List of Presidents of the United States (a featured list) includes a thumbnail portrait at every entry. List of Final Fantasy titles (a featured list) incorporates logos and images with descriptive text. Editors of art history subjects can adapt these formats to their own projects. This proposal addresses a nonexistent problem in a way that invites exploitation. AfD recently removed a gallery of pet cats over the cat owners' strident objections. Adoption of this proposal would only aid the absurd to grasp at straws. And to clarify any doubt, I oppose every version of this proposal with equal vigor. Durova 19:09, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment There is a fundamental difference between these fine lists and the type of galleries we are proposing. All of the images on these lists are mainly decorative. This is because thess lists are not about the images, they are about countries, presidents and game titles. Although it is desirable to have the type of illustration provided, it is by no means necessary; a list of countries is complete without little flag icons and list of presidents is complete without tiny portraits. A gallery is about the images, and would not be the same thing without it. The William-Adolphe Bouguereau gallery would pointless without the images. Image size is also an issue. Things like flags (which are usually relatively simple geometric designs with a limited number of colors), and portraits of a single person can be shown effectively with small images. More complex images can't. The larger the images, and the more there are of them, then the more the "list" will resemble a gallery and the more likely someone is to start an AfD under the rubric that Wikipedia is Not a Gallery. Bringing up the Maine Coon AfD is a bit of a red herring. There was exactly one Keep vote, from the article's creator. The same thing happens on hundreds of other types of AfDs. Charles Stewart and I, the most vocal proponents of galleries voted Delete. Dsmdgold 15:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Response Nothing prevents editors from meeting their needs within list format. Images would be central to a List of paintings by Vermeer. By following existing examples of featured lists that include images, new Wikipedia entries should be safe from AfD. A selection of Vermeer's major paintings with date of creation, location of current owner, size and medium, and sourced critical opinions should be very safe from deletion. Sloppy lists are prone to deletion, of course, and a sloppy gallery that poses as a sloppy list is no exception. Durova 18:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support the general idea per dsmdgold's fine arguments; neutral on the wording. Galleries unquestionably can be informative and enlightening, and that's what an encyclopedia is all about. Draeco 23:11, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose While I conceed that there are certain situations where image galleries could be useful, both proposed rewordings could leave the door open to what I've already seen too often, and that's users flooding anime and video game pages with screencaps. With this as policy, the fight over them would turn from a simple rollback to a prolonged war. Since I can't think of a strong enough rewording, I must oppose. --InShaneee 04:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
    Below I proposed that we develop a separate guideline on images, with examples, to make clear which galleries were considered acceptable and which were not. Having separate gallery pages makes it easier to keep down the number of images (at the moment, the response to the AfD on the Gallery of Socialist Realism was to put the gallery on the article page, providing a precedent for putting galleries on pages), and galleries of fancruft are easy to AfD.
    If you've got examples of users flooding these articles with images, that will be useful for developing the guideline: we've got relatively few examples of what not to allow. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 16:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Any misuse should go thru AfD. User:Ejrrjs says What? 21:13, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Neutral. Keep it at what it already is; there's no problem with the current rule. -- King of Hearts | (talk) 03:59, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Support (though I'm not sure what the currently-considered version is). The blanket prohibition against image galleries is artificial and unnecessary. Some galleries are perfectly encyclopedic and appropriate, just as some lists are. (And others, of course, are not.) We don't need a tyranny of the prose paragraph here; we don't need to regard images as second-class citizens. The default should be to allow, and unencyclopedic or otherwise inappropriate galleries can be dealt with via AfD. Steve Summit (talk) 04:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
  • strongly support; not this particular text, but the need to change the policies to allow galleries of art styles and major visual artists. I find shocking the idea that galleries of art are unencyclopedic. Paintings are images and every encyclopedia ever that has had the option has recognised the need to show them. I'm even more shocked by the idea that a gallery of Socialist Realist art is non NPOV (what's next - stone age art is "anti-vegetarian POV" because it supports hunting and eating animals?). I'm not sure where to put my comment, but if I had been even slightly aware of the AFD I would have opposed it in every way I reasonably could. Note, this does not mean that the images should not be kept on the commons. That is an entirely independent question. Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia and encylopedias should cover visual arts as well as fancruft. Mozzerati 13:52, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose, while I feel that there are some galleries that are encyclopædic and help articles, I can only help but think that opening the door in this fashion will result in a lot of ugly, useless, pointless galleries. I'd rather make exceptions to the current rule and keep galleries of flags, paintings, and artworks, than make exceptions to delete a montage of "Winners of the Delaware Pokémon Championship, B-Division, 1998-2003". Lankiveil 04:47, 18 March 2006 (UTC).
  • Strong Support Image galleries are useful and encyclopedic. Going to commons is a bother. Johntex\talk 22:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Useful and encyclopedic. —Nightstallion (?) Seen this already? 14:12, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose: I really think image galleries are more appropriate for the Commons. Any changes to the current policy will only add unecessary confusion while opening the door for increased abuse (and further clogging of the AfD process). --Hetar 03:06, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose': Not useful and not encyclopedic at all. When was the last time you saw a for-profit encyclopedia with 200 pictures in a row, with no text to explain them? Without text, wikipedia just becomes an image hosting service. Without text that MEANS something, wikipedia becomes a blog. Neither of which is what it is. Any article that deserves pictures should get pictures that help explain and build substance to the article. Secondarily, I remember stumbling across a user page that was an image gallery of naked people, and up-close pictures of genetalia. While it would be a travesty to censor wikipedia, what happens when any user can make entire galleries of naked people in provocative positions? Then the project begins to run into legal issues with age verifications. Further, image galleries exponentially increase the risk of a copyvio image being included. ⇒ SWATJester Ready Aim Fire! 19:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - Listing of flags is a perfect example, as are aninmal/plant stubs. -Ravedave 22:35, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Two things

Rossami has said something to the effect that he thinks that the proposal, despite the strong show of support it has received, needs more thinking through before it becomes policy, and that while the makeup of the vote is strongly in favour of my proposal, the total number of votes is not high given that it is a policy change.

I think that is right, and there is a risk here: I think the case made that there are galleries worthy of inclusion is solid, but one can legitimately fear what other galleries might start appearing if they are allowed and the mess on AfD if the rule for inclusion is not well formulated.

I think, though, that the best way to combat this risk is to have a change to WP:NOT that merely expresses that certain galleries can complement Wikipedia, and leave it to another guideline to try to spell out which galleries those are. I think the wording of the proposal that is being voted on suffices for this. I welcome suggestions as to what should go into the proposed guideline. So far, I think it should outline:

  • A list of reasons that might justify enclyclopediac merit for a gallery;
  • Examples of galleries that are and are not encyclopediac
  • Relevant AfDs.

Happy New Year! --- Charles Stewart 19:46, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal Charles, there is enough support in my view to justify the limited change you are proposing. Galleries, in the right circumstances, definitely augment articles. Thinking cap regarding guidelines being donned as we speak. --Cactus.man ✍ 13:08, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Galleries with many fair-use images

As ike9898 has commented above, and as has been mentioned in several AfD's involving galleries, aggregating many images together that individually may be justifiable according to fair use may collectively violate the law, since, in American law, in assessing whether fair use is applicable, assessment is made of the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.

I don't think that this is an issue for WP:NOT, but if, as I expect, we allow some galleries onto WP, then we should make some comment about this risk on WP:COPY. I'll make a comment on the talk page there. --- Charles Stewart 16:39, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Many galleries will have very few fair use images, or none at all. As stated, this is a concern for WP:COPY. --Cactus.man ✍ 13:11, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I should emphasize that all of the AfDs on galleries linked to from here have involved only galleries without any fair use images. It's really a risk for the future. --- Charles Stewart 13:37, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

There's one type of gallery that I haven't seen directly mentioned yet (but I may have missed it in the straw poll above), and that's the gallery of images created by a specific Wikipedian. Many such galleries are linked on Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Photographers (my own is at User:Slambo/Gallery), and Wikipedians who wish to declare their availability as photographers are encouraged to create such galleries of their own works on that page (see also Wikipedia:WikiProject Photography). Slambo (Speak) 14:29, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

With your gallery, there's no resource issue since the images are used in articles as well: I'd call this showcasing your contributions to WP. But in general, isn't the Wikipedia Commons user space better for this kind of thing? --- Charles Stewart 15:27, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I would have thought this proposal was only in relation to articles in the main namespace, not user. pfctdayelise 15:36, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Have to agree with pfctdayelise here. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to create galleries to your image contributions in your own WP Userspace, whether they are hosted on Commons or not. --Cactus.man ✍ 15:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
WP:NOT is mostly about what kind of things can be articles, but it also talks about what is appropriate in user spaces. The section Wikipedia is not a free host or webspace provider might be invoked if someone found user space galleries inappropriate. While this proposal might give a defence against that charge, it does not constitute a free pass. --- Charles Stewart 15:55, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
If the pictures in question are already being used in articles anyway I don't think you can claim the user is using Wikipedia only as a free webhost. --Cyde Weys votetalk 05:42, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely agree with Cyde Weys, this is no different to providing links on userpages that many users do to the articles they have created or helped along the way. These just happen to be images. If they are unused and orphaned, chances are they will go the way of IfD anyway. --Cactus.man ✍ 15:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure where this fits in all the above discussion, so i've added it at the end... Generally, I cannot see a problem with a collection of images, aka a gallery. After all a picture is worth a 1000 words. The big problem is whether it is encyclopaedic or not. I had contemplated going around Guildford and taking photos of all the public sculptures in the borough - Would a gallery of Sculpture in Guildford be allowed/encouraged/liked/disliked/prohibited/deleted? Surely it gives a flavour of what Guildford is like. -- SGBailey 00:28, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Under the proposals above, I don't think that a gallery of artwork that happened to all be in a single town would be considered encyclopedic, unless the town was widely known for being a major repository of artwork of a single style or artist. If Guilford is like most towns, there probably is sculpture from a wide variety of periods, styles and artists, so I would guess that, even if the above proposal is made official such a gallery would probably not survive AfD. Dsmdgold 00:39, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

User:Aaron Brenneman/Gallery of Socialist Realism

I asked to have this gallery userfyed to Aaron's userspace on WP:DRV. It's a good example of the kind of quality gallery that AfDs randomly attack and kill with the current WP:NOT policy. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 05:32, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

AfD discussion can be found here. --Cactus.man ✍ 08:21, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I'd note that this gallery would not pass under the more restrictive second wording. Having seen the boat page at Commons (which I didn't know they did) I'd still say that this is a good example of a gallery that should be housed there with a soft redirect. I can however imagine that encyclopedic content could be written for this gallery that, as opposed to annotating each image, gave an overview for which seeing the whole was important. Still thinking about alternatives. - brenneman(t)(c) 12:17, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree on either count: if the gallery were to be translated, how would that be handled? How would it be ensured that the gallery continued to be maintained in accordance with en.wikipedia policy, when little of that policy is enforced there. The AfD vote would have been harder for the deleters to swing, since their arguments would have had to be more nuanced than WP:NOT an image gallery. The while question of repair would have been seen to be to the point (though, in fact, I don't agree the gallery needed repair, I would have argued it to win the AfD). --- Charles Stewart(talk) 13:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Afterthought What I said above is unclear, I'll rephrase it. Firstly, I am astonished that there are still people following this debate who think that Commons is capable of housing quality galleries of encyclopedic worth: it is not for both technical reasons and due to lack of suitable policy. The serious alternatives to this reform that I see are either to house galleries as a section or sections in the most suitable article (some, eg. Zoe, have said they want this) or to argue (as I think is possible) that the current wording actually permits galleries such as the socialist realism gallery; DES's rephrasing can be seen as a disambiguation that makes this interpretation explicit.
As to insisting on there being substantial text, why would a quality gallery that has more text than most stubs be at risk of deletion? The whole question should be whether having the gallery makes Wikipedia a better encyclopedia. Having rules about the minimum acceptable ratio of text to images seems like rulecruft to me. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 19:20, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Color me confused. I looked at the gallery a few days ago when it was in Aaron's userspace (I'm not stalking you Aaron, honest!), and I think it's encyclopedic in its own right. Commentary on how there are recurring themes (how Lenin always seems to be looking in a certain direction, how lighting is used for emphasis and to make people look more heroic, etc.) seems very encyclopedic, and any cogent discussion needs multiple images to make the point about similarity. I'm not sure why this example ever was even up for deletion (but then I'm inclusionist)! I see it (or something very similar) is now incorporated into Socialist realism, and it adds to the article, and all is as it should be, so maybe I'm missing the point about this particular gallery? In general though, if there are rules/policies/guidelines to be added they ought to emphasise what the gallery brings to at least one article as a metric, and as it stands now presumably almost no one would argue for deletion ++Lar: t/c 21:23, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
This gallery belongs were it is now as part of the article Socialist realism and eventually sprread out amoung subarticles (Socialist realist Architechure etc) as the information is expanded on. There nothing gained by looking a building and a a painting of Stalin side-by-side and I cannont understand any advantage to seperating the text of the article from the gallery. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 22:25, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I think it is better (more convenient) to have a separate article and gallery. There's a certain issue of taste at stake here, and reasonable people will disagree, but my impression is that people who care about visual information prefer to separate. It might be good if we could find a more concretely grounded case here, or at least construct an example and run a poll based on it. --- 18:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I dislike the implication that because I believe gallery should be included within the article as opposed to having an article page on its own, that I don't care about visual information. I think it very important that we have visual information. In fact I think it is so important it should be in the first place people look illustrating the textual explination. Please show me what you think is a better example I just do not understand where it can be better to have the gallery outside the article. But I am not closed to the possibilitly there could be such a case, although I think it would be an exception to the rule all the same. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 14:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Why this proposal is unnecessary

I've reworked part of the gallery of Socialist Realism into list format to illustrate why we don't need a policy change. Lists are an underrated format. They can already satisfy the needs this proposal attempts to address.

Here are four featured lists for comparison:

If Wikipedia had a list of Oz book illustrations, then the images and layout would be almost identical to the current list about the Oz books. Only the supporting text would change. There's no reason why Wikipedia couldn't have lists about paintings and photographs, since it already features lists about books and video games. Wikipedia featured list guidelines encourage the use of relevant images.

This solution has several advantages:

  1. It requires no change in Wikipedia policy.
  2. Table format can include more information than a gallery.
  3. Table format is easier to read and reference.
  4. This reduces potential cruft problems because tables require slightly more skill to create than galleries.

Durova 12:54, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

This looks great! Another advantage is the big box on the table encourages editors to leave more detailed information than they might put in caption format.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 18:03, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
What you have done makes an attractive page and is a fine format for a gallery. The fact that creating such a table requires a higher level of technical sophistication than using the <gallery> tag is a serious drawback rather than an advantage. If this were to be the only allowable way to create collections of images it would discourage many (including myself) from doing so, and prevent others completely. The ability to do computer geek things has no correlation with the having the knowledge to produce high quality galleries, and in fact may have a higher correlation with the desire to produce galleries of cruft. Your example featured lists, although they are image intensive, differ from the type of articles we are proposing in a significant way. The lists are about something other than the images. The images merely illustrate the article. Although it is nice to have images of all the Oz book covers, they are in no way required to make the list complete. A list can be featured with having only a few illustrations.(See, for example, the premier featured list, List of North American birds, which has less than 5% of the list items illustrated.)
The more serious problem with your solution is that an article whose main purpose is to showcase related images is a gallery. Calling it a list and putting into a table format doesn't change that. Current policy prohibits galleries. If you were to expand your table to include all of the other images in the gallery at the end of Socialist Realism, it would eventually be listed at AfD with the rational "Wikipedia is Not an image gallery". (In actuality, it would probably be speedied as recreation of previously deleted content.)
In short, presenting an image gallery in at table, as you have done is a fine way to make a gallery, perhaps the best way. It should not be the only way to make a gallery. And, as long as policy states "Wikipedia is Not an image gallery", no gallery, no matter how it is formatted, is safe from deletion. Dsmdgold 02:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
The technical side of table creation is pretty simple if you start from an existing table. Just copy the code and cut and paste as needed. I'm sure that experienced editors would be willing to help coach a newcomer.
Other than that, your rebuttal hinges on semantics. The best lists may resemble galleries. They also resemble articles. (Bad lists resemble categories). A gallery uses gallery code syntax. Another fundamental difference between a list and a gallery is the list's ability to organize and convey more information. Crufty galleries won't convert into lists: there simply isn't enough encyclopedic material to sustain them. There's a lot that can go into a good list of images. A list of Ansel Adams photographs could discuss technical aspects of theory, composition, and reproduction. Gallery syntax is capable of little more than presentation of images. And as much as I enjoy Ansel Adams, I'd AfD an uninformative gallery of his photographs in a heartbeat. Durova 04:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, part of my rebutal rests on semantics, this is after all a project mostly about stringing words together. It doesn't matter how you define a gallery, it matters how those who opose galleries define them. In my experience any article whose purpose is to showcase images will eventually be defined as a gallery by those who opose galleries, and listed on AfD. (I would suggest creating such a table, and then listing it on AfD to see how many "WP:NOT" votes it garners if it didn't violate WP:POINT.) If I thought that galleries could be saved by converting them to a table format, I would do just that, convert all of the galleries I think are useful into such a format, call them lists and walk away. I just do not believe it would work. I don't think we actually disagree that much. As I see it, we both believe that well organized articles consisting of annotated images should have a place here. We differ on the best way to organize such articles and on wether or not current policy allows such articles.
Since your Ansel Adams example is hypothetical, let us look at a real example. What is your opinion of William-Adolphe Bouguereau gallery, which uses only the gallery tag?
As a side note, I've never asked for another editor's help on formatting issues, and I'm not likely to ever do such a thing. If I can't figure out to do it myself, I just don't do it. Foolish pride perhaps, but I don't think I'm the only person who thinks that way. Dsmdgold 13:04, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
What appears to be at the core of your argument is that you refuse to learn table format. This is a weak reason to lobby Wikipedia for a change in policy. Your own example demonstrates that sets of images with encyclopedic content and informative text can survive AfD. Another example is Gallery of Vergilius Romanus miniatures. Both of these examples would be better as lists where editors could convey more information.
What matters is not how a few extreme deletionists define a gallery, but what the policy actually states and how the community interprets it. There is in fact no policy that defines all lists of images as galleries. Durova 15:41, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
It is interesting to see that you see something I label as a sidenote as the "core" of my argument. However, I do feel that requiring someone who has an interest in creating galleries to learn a new, somewhat complex, set of skills is not in the best interest of the project. Barriers to participation should be as low as possible.
Although your format has some advantages, I find it less aesthetically pleasing than the using the gallery tag. I also do not see that since articles using the gallery tag can be broken into sections by using the gallery tags multiple times in a single article and images with a gallery can have captions that your format allows for more information on a single image.
It does matter how a "few extreme deletionists" interpet policy, and as long as the policy is "no image galleries" there will be problems with collections of images no matter how formatted. There is no policy that defines lists of images as galleries because, so far as I know, there are no lists of images. If you know of one, please point it out to me. The deletion of the Socialist Realism gallery is evidence that not all galleries survive AfD. Galleries that should have been kept have been deleted because of WP:NOT. That is the core of my argument. Dsmdgold 16:31, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
If that is the core of your argument, then it doesn't explain why you reformulate our disagreement into a mere question of formatting. Your response about the relative merits of lists and galleries appears to have been written in haste. Can you show any gallery that is as informative as The Oz Books? Durova 17:12, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Let's back up here a moment. You started this thread by pointing to this page which you claim to be example of a "list" format which would makes this proposal unnecessary. I examined your page, and noticed that, as it currently stands, it contains no information, not found in the original gallery. You merely moved the information around and enclosed it in a table. By doing this you did not change the nature of the article. Your page, as it currently stands, is still a gallery, the only difference is the format. This is why I have been talking about format. In my eyes, your proposal boils down to "If we change the format of a gallery and call it a list, it will be safe from AfD." I disagree with this. If I have misunderstood you, I apologize.

Now you ask "Can you show any gallery that is as informative as The Oz Books? ". Yes, William-Adolphe Bouguereau gallery is, in its way, as informative as the The Oz Books. I suspect you will disagree, so let me expand. First let me say that I have feel the that the article The OZ Books is no more relevant to this discussion than the article Book of Kells. I say this because, although there is a superficial resemblance between, the that list and your proposal, they are fundamentally different things. The Oz Books is list of texts. As such the least important column is the the one with the pictures of the covers. In in a gallery the most important - the essential column would be the picture. Now why would I say that the Bouguereau gallery is as informative as The Oz Books. I believe that an article can be judged by how well it answers what I think of as the "framing question". This is the underlying question which brings a reader to an article. As I see it, the framing question for The Oz Books is "What are all of the Oz Books". The framing question for the Bouguereau gallery is "What does a painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau look like?".

This leads me to the nature of "information". I did notice that in your proposal you included a column, now largely blank, for "Comments". Perhaps it has been your intent that once this column is filled in, then the "gallery" will have been converted into a "list" and only then would the article be acceptable. If this is so then this puts you into the camp with Carnildo and several others who have commented above, who see "more words" as the key to conveying information. I disagree. Although some words are necessary to provide context for an image, the image conveys more information than any amount of words. There is a quote, from whom I don't know, that "talking about music is like dancing about architecture. The same thing is true about art. You cannot explain art well in words. In order to understand art you must look at art. I mentioned above that I saw the framing question for the Bouguereau gallery as "What does a painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau look like?". I see this also as the most important question that can be asked about Bouguereau or any other artist. ALL other information about the artist is secondary to this question. Information about when and where the artist lived and worked is important only as it helps explain why the artist's art looks the way it does. In the end, however, the art itself is more important. In a gallery, the images are what matter, the words are secondary.

I see that I have gone on for quite a bit here. I apologize, but as we seemed not to be understanding each other, more words were what was needed. Dsmdgold 14:12, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I would have liked to have included more information in the list format version I created for discussion. Unfortunately nearly all of the statements were redlinked, so instead I described the relevant information that a list could accommodate. These are things a typical university art history lecture would discuss. Gallery format does not support this information. What you have shown is a larger gallery with more images, divided by decade. That is all. The reader doesn't even learn what medium the artist uses or where the originals may be found. I'm thinking in the interests of students who want to write critical reviews of examples from local museums, and of artists who want to examine these works for professional reasons. JPEG images do not convey the original painting's dimensions. They do not communicate brush strokes. They do not reveal whether the artist's use of paint was sparing or generous. JPEGs are limited by lighting conditions, by camera technology, and by photographer skill.
I see nothing "fundamentally different" about lists of images and lists of other creative subjects. Wikipedia policies make no such distinction. Current policy states that images require context to become encyclopedic. Otherwise they belong at Wikimedia commons. An eighteenth century ivory netsuke of a cat may be encyclopedic, but editors cannot presume that readers already know the Japanese netsuke tradition and Wikipedia must not open its doors to gratuitous snapshots of housepets. Durova 18:52, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Durova that it is possible to see lists and galleries as similar kinds of page: namely collections of information, and hence one can interpret the existing rules in a manner that already covers galleries. However the point is not what interpretations we can ghive to rules, but what interpretations are given to rules: when I argued in the Socialist Realism DRV this point, almost noone took up the point, and the appeal failed.

I don't think the list format is generally to be preferred: some galleries benefit from the visual content being presented in a dense format, and I think we should formulate policy in a manner that gives most flexibility to editors to find the best way of presenting content so far as we can keep maintenance functions working properly. Further commentary can supported with galleries by making captions into wikilinks: eg. William-Adolphe Bouguereau gallery contains captions that are wikilinks to articles on the particular painting. Equally, some galleries may benefit from the comment-heavy list format, but I don't think the Gallery of Socialist Realism is one. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 19:33, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

The Gallery of Socialist Realism has other problems. The main article disparages the genre as an example of state intervention hampering creative expression. The gallery itself organizes around portrait subjects rather than around artists or artistic styles. Many editors would no more enjoy a dozen portraits of Stalin than a dozen portraits of Hitler. The burden rests with the creators to justify why this is encyclopedic, to provide NPOV balance for the inherent Communist POV. One of the most disturbing subtexts to this presentation is that, had it survived AfD, it would have offered the ideal precedent for neo-Nazis to glorify Hitler with a gallery of stills from Leni Riefenstahl's documentaries.
While I don't think that was the intent of the Gallery of Socialist Realism, policies and precedents must be examined for their potential exploitation. That gallery was problematic and this proposal is more problematic. "Important" art does not exempt editors from the standards that apply to any other Wikipedia entry: introduce the subject, provide citations, and present context. In terms of research value - the elements that would help a high school or university student to write a term paper - the best galleries are only at the level of article stubs and mediocre lists. I respectfully suggest that editors address these concerns before attempting to change site policy. Durova 20:48, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
You raise an interesting point about galleries potentially conveying POV, but I don't see how the issues are more difficult than for regular articles (and AfDs are regularly used to delete articles that are considered unmaintainable). I think stills from Riefenstahl films would make an excellent gallery, of obvious encyclopedic importance. Having such a gallery simply means that one has something to monitor against neo-Nazi POV pushers, but generally they tend to care more about Holocaust revisionism that Hitler-idolising.
One can argue that there are better ways to argue the Socialist Realism gallery (maybe by date of composition is best?), but the idea that it presents a Marxist-Leninist POV I find hard to credit. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 21:34, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
The Socialist Realism movement itself was overtly Marxist-Leninist and under state control. And while Leni Riefenstahl was a brilliant and innovative filmmaker, her two most important films were also some of the best Nazi propaganda. I do think that a gallery of flattering portraits of Stalin would do well to include some context. Durova 22:27, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
These pictures were propaganda on behalf of a state that no longer exists. I can imagine that Russian nationalists might find the nostalgiac force these images have to be of value, but that's about it. How exactly do you propose the POV is to be combatted? By putting a comment on each Stalin picture saying "This image portrays Stalin in a heroic light, but he is in fact widely condemned as a monster. See the Great Purge article for details."? The POV of these images is too slight to merit such a heavy handed approach. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 15:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

This discusion has strayed abit. This proposal in no way depends on the value of the Socialist Realism Gallery. However, no one who voted delete in the AfD did so on the basis of the quality of the gallery, or because of the propaganda precedent it may have set. In fact on commentor said "a gallery is not appropriate even if it were an ideal gallery." (emphasis in original). This gallery was deleted because it was a gallery, not because it was a sub-par gallery. Yes each image of the Bougereau gallery could use more information. However, I, for one, am unwilling to spend my time improving articles that are always on a metaphorical chopping block. Until this policy is changed that will always be so.

Durova's comments as to the usefullness of jpgs are, of course, correct, and also irrelevent, as any "list" of images will use the same jpgs. On a larger scale you point to one of the hardest aspects of studying art. Prints, facsimiles, pictures in books and slides, all fail to transmit the information you talk about. In an even larger context, even when standing in front of a work of art in a museum, something is lost of the artists original intent, since the viscetudes of age, and lack of context can change the look and meaning of the piece. However, in every case, we do the best that we can do with what we have. As a side note, you speak of being useful to students who might want to use us as a starting point for research on art in local museums. I live in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. We have no art museum. (We do have a really cool Frank Lloyd Wright building though.) Wikipedia is meant for everone on the planet, not just those who live near museums. Looking at a jpg is a pretty good alternative to not seeing the art at all.

My details about the shortcomings of JPEGs are reasons to compensate with additional information such as artwork location and detail images. This research information can be especially valuable to people who have to travel to museums. When I visited the Louvre I went upstairs to a Jean Fouquet portrait instead of peering through a forest of golf caps for a glimpse of the Mona Lisa's eyebrows. At the Getty Museum I headed for a particular Hellenistic statue with a shady history. Durova 06:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

However, rather than comparing apples to oranges, as is done by comparing The Oz Books to the William-Adolphe Bouguereau gallery, lets compare pears to pears. I have created a hypothetical gallery here of a common type of miniature found in medieval manuscripts, the Evangelist Portrait. Let me first say that I am not proposing this as a prefect gallery. Its faults are many. I would say that, if I were to attempt to make this a gallery, I would introduce an additional level organization by sorting the images by period so that all of the Insular, Carolingian, Byzantine, etc., would be grouped together. For each image information is included on the manuscript where the image is found, the institution and shelfmark of the manuscript, the folio on which the image occurs, the content of the image (i.e. which evangelist it is an image of), the date of the image, and the dimensions. Not all of this information was available for each image, and I was too lazy to look it up. This is a fairly information rich gallery. For purposes of comparison, I have reformatted this information in the "list" format proposed by Durova (that is, in a table). Note that the "list" contains no information not in the "gallery". Are both of these lists? Are the both galleries? Is one a list, and one a gallery, and if so why? Is either one an acceptable article? Both? Neither? (In answering these questions, please try to ignore the specific subject matter of these galleries.)

BTW, Durova, you comment that you would have liked to include more information on the your reworking of the Socialist Realism gallery but most of the links were red. I also noticed that you placed the name of the artist in the first column. Both of these things indicate to me that we are seeing the purpose of these articles differently. I see the images as the most important thing, and thus would have put them in the first column. Also, if you had clicked on the image, rather than the artist, you would have found that most of the image pages have indormation on media and dimensions. Dsmdgold 03:28, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Some of your questions are already answered above. As Wikipedia matures certain lists are likely to resemble galleries. List of Japanese artists is in its infancy. It could improve in many ways. Eventually one of those ways may be a column of images. Durova 06:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Galleries that would be better as lists

Dsmdgold earlier cited Gallery of Pompeii and Herculaneum as a gallery of obvious encyclopedic merit: in fact I think this page doesn't work well as a gallery, and would probably be markedly better in Durova's list format. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 15:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Conclusions

I've went ahead and moved this to 'old discussion' on the centralized discussion template (seeing as there has been no activity in almost a month). The result of the straw polls (combined) is 38 support, 14 oppose, and one neutral, which seems to indicate fairly strong support for the proposal. --InShaneee 00:45, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Are galleries OK for administrative purposes?

I haven't had time to read through the whole page yet, or the policy, but I do have one quick question: is is OK to have galleries in the Wikipedia:WikiProject namespace for administrative purposes? I have recently been gathering together all the pictures realted to a certain area in order to organise them and to help decide the best way forward regarding organisation of the articles. The gallery can currently be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/Images, along with an alphabetical list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/Images/List. It is not fully organised yet. Other, similar administrative galleries I have seen are Wikipedia:WikiProject Harry Potter/Images, and an images subpage seems to be a common subpage of many WikiProjects. What I want to know is whether this is OK and what the best way is to organise such material and keep track of it? Carcharoth 10:27, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

your galleries are not in article namespace, and are thus no problem. The point of this policy is against having pure "gallery" articles such as Image gallery of Gandalf, Harry Potter images, and against the uploading of large collections of unencyclopedic images. dab (ᛏ) 15:02, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, thanks. Carcharoth 15:19, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Galleries

Suggest comment on Wikipedia talk:Galleries. Good luck. John Reid 05:44, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

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