I've been scouting around for Wikipedia articles that could use illustrations or photographs, and supplying a few by snapping shots with my crappy digital camera (such as Capo, Sharp Zaurus, Cooking pan). It occurs to me that many, many articles could be helped by photos, illustrations, and the like - often, several different illustrations would be nice.
Then again, however, such imagery would very likely clutter the articles, and would be hard to lay out in a way that wouldn't dominate the text content (which is really the most important part). My thought is, why not create a new "language" Wikipedia predominantly for illustrations, photos, etc.? The Illustrated Wikipedia could be more or less stand-alone; captions, brief descriptions, and links to related topics would of course be there, but it would be built primarily around the notion of communicating through pictures. This strikes me as having several advantages:
Of course, some of the problems that we already have related to images would be exacerbated:
Comments? Criticisms? Has this already been suggested? (and where is a more appropriate place to discuss this?) -- Wapcaplet 16:06 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Indeed. There's a language problem. One future project of the Wikimedia foundation might be a Free Image Back: it's already been suggested. In the meantime, I think the best thing is to simply pass images around between the different pedias. --
Tarquin 19:41 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I don't think a "WikiPiki" is necessary; what we do need are better ways to embed images in articles (currently it's a bit cumbersome) and to auto-rescale them as needed (automatic generation of thumbnails is really not too difficult). But there's no problem with adding lots of pictures to articles (e.g. Pig) or moving them to separate pages ( Gallery of Pompeii and Herculaneum). -- Eloquence 23:21 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Hmm. All excellent points. It's starting to sound like the idea of a pictorial Wiki has more flaws than benefits. Perhaps what is actually needed is a WikiProject for organizing pictures in the text Wikipedia; aside from some editing guidelines, we seem to have relatively few standards for image size, placement, captions, linking to larger versions, attribution, etc. etc., not to mention the issue of what kind of images would serve as good illustrations for a particular article. It might be difficult to make this into a WikiProject, since it would effectively encompass any article that might conceivably need illustration (i.e., all of them), but with a good set of clearly-demarcated goals, I think it could work, and be beneficial.
Thoughts? -- Wapcaplet 01:53 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I've been scouting around for Wikipedia articles that could use illustrations or photographs, and supplying a few by snapping shots with my crappy digital camera (such as Capo, Sharp Zaurus, Cooking pan). It occurs to me that many, many articles could be helped by photos, illustrations, and the like - often, several different illustrations would be nice.
Then again, however, such imagery would very likely clutter the articles, and would be hard to lay out in a way that wouldn't dominate the text content (which is really the most important part). My thought is, why not create a new "language" Wikipedia predominantly for illustrations, photos, etc.? The Illustrated Wikipedia could be more or less stand-alone; captions, brief descriptions, and links to related topics would of course be there, but it would be built primarily around the notion of communicating through pictures. This strikes me as having several advantages:
Of course, some of the problems that we already have related to images would be exacerbated:
Comments? Criticisms? Has this already been suggested? (and where is a more appropriate place to discuss this?) -- Wapcaplet 16:06 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Indeed. There's a language problem. One future project of the Wikimedia foundation might be a Free Image Back: it's already been suggested. In the meantime, I think the best thing is to simply pass images around between the different pedias. --
Tarquin 19:41 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I don't think a "WikiPiki" is necessary; what we do need are better ways to embed images in articles (currently it's a bit cumbersome) and to auto-rescale them as needed (automatic generation of thumbnails is really not too difficult). But there's no problem with adding lots of pictures to articles (e.g. Pig) or moving them to separate pages ( Gallery of Pompeii and Herculaneum). -- Eloquence 23:21 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Hmm. All excellent points. It's starting to sound like the idea of a pictorial Wiki has more flaws than benefits. Perhaps what is actually needed is a WikiProject for organizing pictures in the text Wikipedia; aside from some editing guidelines, we seem to have relatively few standards for image size, placement, captions, linking to larger versions, attribution, etc. etc., not to mention the issue of what kind of images would serve as good illustrations for a particular article. It might be difficult to make this into a WikiProject, since it would effectively encompass any article that might conceivably need illustration (i.e., all of them), but with a good set of clearly-demarcated goals, I think it could work, and be beneficial.
Thoughts? -- Wapcaplet 01:53 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)