Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Criteria RFC

OK, I was reading over the stuff [on WT:FPC] about sniping and declining quality of reviews. Someone said up there that they would like to see reviews more of the form "oppose - blown highlights (1a), too small (1c), subject cut off (1e)". I agree. Time to revive one of the things I drafted up before I went on wikibreak - a general overhaul of the criteria. Hopefully this proposal will increase the quality and consistency of discussion and remove some of the more emotional responses. It should make the criteria easier to understand, especially relating to photo quality.

The proposal

Change 1

This supersedes criteria 1 and 2.

1. meets professional image quality standards. In particular:

a) Optical and sensor quality: The image should not suffer from avoidable distortion or tilt, especially in architectual photos and scans. Blown highlights, crushed blacks [2], vignetting and noise/film grain should be minimised. There is no significant chromatic aberration and dust spots should be removed.

b) Editing and post-processing: Images are edited in a competent manner which does not degrade image quality. The image must not have visible compression, posterization or oversharpening artifacts or other signs of inappropriate/incompetent post processing. Any manipulation that causes the subject to be misrepresented is unacceptable.

c) Resolution. The image allows quality print reproduction. Still images must be at least 1000px on a side, though leniency is given for animations and videos. Panoramas need to be substantially larger than 1000 pixels in the longer dimension in order for sufficient details to be seen.

d) Exposure, lighting and tonality: The picture must have an accurate exposure, encyclopedic white balance and appropriate lighting. The image should have good contrast. Portraits should not exhibit the red-eye effect nor should they be taken with strong fill flash (typified by strong shadows and harsh highlights).

e) Composition and focus: The image has good composition. The subject must not be cut off or obscured without good reason. All important aspects of the image should be in focus, while those unimportant should be deemphasized (see depth of field). There are no distracting elements. Consideration is given to macro photography where the depth of field is often constrained by physical limitations and so the entire subject may not be fully in focus. Diagrams and maps are professionally and aesthetically laid out.

f) Panoramas should have no stitching errors. The frames must be consistent in exposure, focus and lighting.

g) Historical images should be of professional quality corresponding to the available technology of the era. Digital restoration is encouraged, but is not required. Reproductions should not exhibit moire.

h) Diagrams, animations and maps. Vector graphics should employ web-safe fonts and are valid SVG. Animations are smooth and at an appropriate speed.

• For visual examples, see Wikipedia:What is a featured picture?/Examples of technical problems and Commons:Image guidelines.
• This is not an exhaustive list on what can go wrong with an image. If you wouldn't see images with the problem in (say) National Geographic, then it's not of featured quality.
• Some flexibility may be applied for irreplaceable images with high encyclopedic value.

I think that covers most flaws. Let me know if I've left any commonly recurring ones out.

Change 2

This also incorporates suggestions some time ago to address reluctancy of GLAMs to donate materials due to lax attribution and whatnot.

This supersedes criteria 4, 7 and 8.

5. is accompanied by an image description.

a) Licensing. The image description page indicates the image is freely licensed and provides information to verify its copyright status. Fair use images are excluded and copyright violations will be deleted.

b) Image description. Image description pages should have a description of the subject and any metadata in English. The main subject is properly identified, including Latin and technical names where applicable. For historical images, the creator(s), year(s) of creation, title of the work, medium, place of housing and (physical) size are provided, if available. Geotagging of images is encouraged.

c) Documentation of manipulation and restoration. Any digitally restored image or edit of a nominated image [3] should have a summary of the edits performed on the image description page, with links to the original/unrestored version(s).

d) Caption The image has an informative, succinct and complete caption, which summarizes the information on the description page.

Remarks

1. 3, 5, 6 will be renumbered to 3, 2, 4 respectively.
2. Quantitatively <0.02%
3. I should note that some of our photographic nominations are already extensively edited when they are uploaded.
4. Existing footnotes will probably be kept.

It should be assumed that all of the applicable criteria must be met for the promotion of the image.

Some of these are negotiable in the context of discussing them here, especially those with respect to the image description. I wouldn't consider "no visible JPEG artifacts" to be negotiable, though. MER-C 07:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments

• Leniency should be given on resolution for highly important images where no larger resolution could reasonably be expected to be found or is impossible to get larger resolution versions. Also leniency should be allowed for subjects that due to rules about cameras (recently came up with pictures inside Islamic mosques) prevent high quality DSLR images from being obtained, potentially indefinitely. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 09:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I haven't been promoting FPCs for a while. When was the last time an image under the size limit was passed? I don't remember passing anything under the size limit that isn't an animation, SVG or video during the two or so years I've had a virtual monopoly on the closing process (if there was, I would have complained). If there are exceptions, they are very infrequent as to virtually not be worth talking about. MER-C 12:20, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Pale_Blue_Dot hasn't even been archived yet, still on main page. — raeky ^{(talk | edits)} 15:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
      • There's also the issue touched on in this discussion (which I'll grant you is TLDR) that the criteria apply to delist noms too. So long as images the size of File:Bison_skull_pile,_ca1870.png are retained, we need criteria that support the principles behind that. mikaul^talk 20:16, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Some initial thoughts:

1. I like the collapsible compatibility table idea and the new Image Description criterion. Plenty remains to thrash out in general (most obvious I'll mention below) but great ideas.
2. Criterion #1 should end at (e), with the remaining points under a new Criterion #2 for exceptions, non-photographic stuff and special cases.
3. Point 1(g) on historical images is short of the mark in almost every respect; "professional quality" is misleading and of doubtful use, moiré is only one of many potential problems with scanned stuff, and there are currently no criteria at all for exactly how we encourage people to digitally edit scanned/historical works.
4. The Descriptions Page stuff (#5) should be outlined in the exact same order it appears: Description, Source, Author, Permission. They all relate to important requirements that have been pulled up in recent noms.
5. Not convinced #7 should be shoehorned into the new #5, as captions are a quite separate and specific issue that even need a footnote at present.

Those are my first impressions, anyway. I'd also suggest that the actual wording and style shouldn't be debated until we get agreement on basic content, to save complicating things. mikaul^talk 20:33, 17 November 2009 (UTC)