On 5/21/2012 12:33 PM, Carcharoth wrote:
one was a link
to a find-a-grave page with a photo of the
subject (unneeded because we already had a photo of the subject)
That is arguable.
It depends whether it is the same photo at the same
time of life or not. If the only free photo of someone shows them in
old age, a link to a site legally hosting a picture of them in their
youth would be relevant and should be kept in the external links
section as something that readers would likely want to follow. (It
also betrays an attitude of: we have one image, we don't need any
more, as opposed to curating a visual record of the topic).
Actually, the reverse
was true: the picture we had was her official
photograph from her tenure in congress (1960-1975), and the picture from
find-a-grave, which is not dated, is obviously a picture of a
substantially older woman. As she lived for another 13 years after
retiring from congress, it is likely that the picture was taken during
that period. And yes, the photo we are using is PD (as are all
Congressional portraits), which is likely why that is the photo used in
the article.
This leads me on to one of the big gripes I have about
Wikipedia and
its use of images. Because of the free-content model that Wikipedia is
based on, the image use in articles tends to be skewed towards public
domain and freely licensed images. For many subjects, this is not a
problem, but for some subjects to get a balanced *visual* record of a
topic, you need to use (or refer in the text to) non-free images as
well, or if fair use is not possible, to link to a site that legally
hosts such images.
I don't get involved in the image wars. I tend to look for
PD images
simply because they aren't going to be entangled in those wars, but I
don't have the absolutist mentality of "only PD images" or "all of the
images possible, copyrights be damned" that we see all too often here.
The 'ideal' encyclopedia would use these
images (and likely have to
pay to use them), but Wikipedia seems to think that it is possible to
have encyclopedia articles that use free images only, and still
maintain NPOV in terms of the images used. I actually think that in
some cases the use of only PD or free sources skews the visual
presentation, and badly so.
What I tend to do in such cases is link to places where the reader can
view such images. I can provide some examples if anyone wishes to
discuss this.
Carcharoth
As I noted (in the edit summary, and in my discussion here), the link
was of limited utility, as it's simply a black-and-white photo of the
subject, with absolutely no information (date, copyright, etc.), and was
probably taken after her congressional career ended, after which her
profile was substantially lower. I don't see how (in this case, at
least) the removal of the link unbalances the article in any way.
FWIW, the article in question is [[Julia Butler Hansen]], so you can
look at the article and assess whether the removal of the link was damaging.