This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Washington, D.C. article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9Auto-archiving period: 3 months |
Washington, D.C. is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on January 20, 2009. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This
level-4 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Other talk page banners | |||||||||||
|
Crime in DC has an article of its own, why is it a subsection of Demographics? Demography doesn't study crime stats. Sativa Inflorescence ( talk) 15:48, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
More than two years ago I raised concerns about the number of missing citations in this article. Since then this number has only grown to 28, which would be an automatic fail for an FA candidate. Unless this issue is fixed soon, I don't see how we're not going to have to nominate this for FA review. Bneu2013 ( talk) 03:54, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
If you're gonna have the National Cathedral (Episcopalian) it's only fair to also have the National Basilica (Catholic) otherwise it just looks like religious favoritism. Either have both or neither.
These are both significant architectural landmarks of near identical size (the National Basilica is the 2nd tallest building in DC) it doesn't make sense to have one but not the other IMO.
I was told by a mod that I could not add St. Patrick's Cathedral to the New York City info box because that would be "favoritism towards Catholics when American cities have churches of many denominations" WHY DOES THAT NOT APLLY HERE?
Alfred Carbo ( talk) 01:15, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Skimming through this article, way too many of the images are just exterior shots of neoclassical-style buildings. D.C. has plenty of those, yes, but they connote very little to readers, most of whom won't be able to identify them at a glance, about what content will be in that article section. In a few cases, they are the only real option, but in many others we could swap them out for better alternatives. Sdkb talk 06:39, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
In 2020, myself and a few other editors did a comprehensive redesign of this article's collage. We looked at the corpus of available quality images, considered the various visual signifiers of the city (going beyond just the touristy National Mall view), and applied established best practices for collage composition. The version we came up with (above left) I thought was really good. Unfortunately, image collages have a bad habit of deteriorating if not closely monitored, and when I checked in recently, it had deteriorated to the version on the right. Going through the changes:
The deteriorated version puts the captions under each individual image rather than at the bottom, breaking up its visual cohesion and increasing its overall length (which is particularly bad, since space is at a high premium given the article's already-long infobox). There can be an argument for doing that sometimes when the captions are really important (although personally I think such cases are very rare), but given that many of D.C.'s icons are globally recognizable, it's particularly weak here.
The 2020 design has a nice balance. It includes three images of iconic National Mall landmarks, but balances those with others: the National Cathedral, representing all D.C.'s landmarks outside the Mall; a featured picture of a WMATA station, a system known for its iconic architecture and encountered daily by many Washingtonians; storefronts in Adams Morgan, giving a sense of D.C.'s economic character and local neighborhoods; and displays in the Air and Space Museum to represent the Smithsonian museums.
The choices in the deteriorated version, by contrast, are weak. Collage images appear smaller than normal ones, so it's important that they look good at small scale. The top image is far too zoomed out to work for that — the Capitol building is miniscule, and basically nothing else is visible. Farther down, I'm flattered that an image I took of the Wharf is used, but it's very generic — it could be a marina in any city, so does nothing to visually identify D.C. The image of Georgetown is also so far zoomed out that the only identifiable element is the Key Bridge, which is not exactly the Golden Gate. The Smithsonian Castle image, while nice, is a poorer choice to represent D.C.'s museums than a gallery interior — someone who doesn't live here is unlikely to know what that building is, so it just adds to this article's overload of building exterior images rather than instantly connoting museums.
Given all this, I propose that we restore the curated 2020 design. Courtesy pinging Cristiano Tomás, who reverted my recent attempt to do so, and APK, who was involved in the redesign. Sdkb talk 00:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
restoring stable montage - it is BAD PRACTICE to have INDOOR IMAGES in a city's montage, I dont know how many times I have to write this. From Tokyo to Toronto, Paris to Beijing, London to Los Angeles. There doesn't seem to be any blanket consensus that I'm aware of that it is bad practice to have indoor images in the city, and examples of other cities that don't happen to have indoor images doesn't constitute one. Building from first principles, images in city collages ought to be visual signifiers representative of the city, and if indoor images fit that bill, why not use them? Sdkb talk 03:59, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia says DC, Columbia,was named for female. Wrong!!! Named for Christopher Columbus 2601:981:4401:1EA0:5166:5D93:CE43:CC52 ( talk) 18:25, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
I was told adding St. Patrick's Cathedral to the New York City collogue was "unfair religious favoritism" why does the same not apply here with the National Cathedral? It doesn't make any sense. Mods need to address this. Either apply rules consistently or don't have them at all. Alfred Carbo ( talk) 13:49, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
Accessibility nightmare that loses us readers. What is your opinion from the accesibility perspective. Do you have suggestions from this perspective? Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 04:27, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
See in this edit: The legend on the map notes that it was "photorevised" in 1983. That revision appears to have removed most of the "tempos" which were in the mall area until around 1970 (the caption is inaccurate because it does not take the revision into account) TEDickey ( talk) 00:53, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Washington, D.C. article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9Auto-archiving period: 3 months |
Washington, D.C. is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on January 20, 2009. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This
level-4 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Other talk page banners | |||||||||||
|
Crime in DC has an article of its own, why is it a subsection of Demographics? Demography doesn't study crime stats. Sativa Inflorescence ( talk) 15:48, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
More than two years ago I raised concerns about the number of missing citations in this article. Since then this number has only grown to 28, which would be an automatic fail for an FA candidate. Unless this issue is fixed soon, I don't see how we're not going to have to nominate this for FA review. Bneu2013 ( talk) 03:54, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
If you're gonna have the National Cathedral (Episcopalian) it's only fair to also have the National Basilica (Catholic) otherwise it just looks like religious favoritism. Either have both or neither.
These are both significant architectural landmarks of near identical size (the National Basilica is the 2nd tallest building in DC) it doesn't make sense to have one but not the other IMO.
I was told by a mod that I could not add St. Patrick's Cathedral to the New York City info box because that would be "favoritism towards Catholics when American cities have churches of many denominations" WHY DOES THAT NOT APLLY HERE?
Alfred Carbo ( talk) 01:15, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Skimming through this article, way too many of the images are just exterior shots of neoclassical-style buildings. D.C. has plenty of those, yes, but they connote very little to readers, most of whom won't be able to identify them at a glance, about what content will be in that article section. In a few cases, they are the only real option, but in many others we could swap them out for better alternatives. Sdkb talk 06:39, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
In 2020, myself and a few other editors did a comprehensive redesign of this article's collage. We looked at the corpus of available quality images, considered the various visual signifiers of the city (going beyond just the touristy National Mall view), and applied established best practices for collage composition. The version we came up with (above left) I thought was really good. Unfortunately, image collages have a bad habit of deteriorating if not closely monitored, and when I checked in recently, it had deteriorated to the version on the right. Going through the changes:
The deteriorated version puts the captions under each individual image rather than at the bottom, breaking up its visual cohesion and increasing its overall length (which is particularly bad, since space is at a high premium given the article's already-long infobox). There can be an argument for doing that sometimes when the captions are really important (although personally I think such cases are very rare), but given that many of D.C.'s icons are globally recognizable, it's particularly weak here.
The 2020 design has a nice balance. It includes three images of iconic National Mall landmarks, but balances those with others: the National Cathedral, representing all D.C.'s landmarks outside the Mall; a featured picture of a WMATA station, a system known for its iconic architecture and encountered daily by many Washingtonians; storefronts in Adams Morgan, giving a sense of D.C.'s economic character and local neighborhoods; and displays in the Air and Space Museum to represent the Smithsonian museums.
The choices in the deteriorated version, by contrast, are weak. Collage images appear smaller than normal ones, so it's important that they look good at small scale. The top image is far too zoomed out to work for that — the Capitol building is miniscule, and basically nothing else is visible. Farther down, I'm flattered that an image I took of the Wharf is used, but it's very generic — it could be a marina in any city, so does nothing to visually identify D.C. The image of Georgetown is also so far zoomed out that the only identifiable element is the Key Bridge, which is not exactly the Golden Gate. The Smithsonian Castle image, while nice, is a poorer choice to represent D.C.'s museums than a gallery interior — someone who doesn't live here is unlikely to know what that building is, so it just adds to this article's overload of building exterior images rather than instantly connoting museums.
Given all this, I propose that we restore the curated 2020 design. Courtesy pinging Cristiano Tomás, who reverted my recent attempt to do so, and APK, who was involved in the redesign. Sdkb talk 00:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
restoring stable montage - it is BAD PRACTICE to have INDOOR IMAGES in a city's montage, I dont know how many times I have to write this. From Tokyo to Toronto, Paris to Beijing, London to Los Angeles. There doesn't seem to be any blanket consensus that I'm aware of that it is bad practice to have indoor images in the city, and examples of other cities that don't happen to have indoor images doesn't constitute one. Building from first principles, images in city collages ought to be visual signifiers representative of the city, and if indoor images fit that bill, why not use them? Sdkb talk 03:59, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia says DC, Columbia,was named for female. Wrong!!! Named for Christopher Columbus 2601:981:4401:1EA0:5166:5D93:CE43:CC52 ( talk) 18:25, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
I was told adding St. Patrick's Cathedral to the New York City collogue was "unfair religious favoritism" why does the same not apply here with the National Cathedral? It doesn't make any sense. Mods need to address this. Either apply rules consistently or don't have them at all. Alfred Carbo ( talk) 13:49, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
Accessibility nightmare that loses us readers. What is your opinion from the accesibility perspective. Do you have suggestions from this perspective? Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 04:27, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
See in this edit: The legend on the map notes that it was "photorevised" in 1983. That revision appears to have removed most of the "tempos" which were in the mall area until around 1970 (the caption is inaccurate because it does not take the revision into account) TEDickey ( talk) 00:53, 30 March 2024 (UTC)