[WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Horologium]

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.