Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups

CfD nomination of Category:United States ghettos

The related Category:United States ghettos has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. You are encouraged to join the discussion on the Categories for Discussion page.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Viriditas (talk • contribs) 09:22, 28 May 2008‎

Women by Ethnicity nominated for deletion.

Category:Women by ethnicity is being considered for deletion. Anybody interested in commenting, can do so at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_November_4#Category:Women_by_ethnicity.

Disparity in importance ranking between Talk:White people and Talk:Black people

One of these articles is rated as "top-importance" within this project, while the other article is only rated as "low-importance". Should both of these articles be labeled as "high-importance", or should they be rated as "top-importance" instead? Jarble (talk)

Requested move discussion

Hello. The following requested move discussion would benefit from broader input: Talk:Turks in Bulgaria#Requested move 7 November 2015. Thanks in advance for your participation. Cordless Larry (talk) 20:54, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

The necessity of galleries of personalities in the infoboxes

I opine that a centralised discussion about all articles would be the ideal solution. We are talking about general arguments that apply for every ethnic group. I think that wikipedia should be consistent in the content that it provides or excludes on similar articles and the lack of a coordinated guideline regarding this issue makes this encyclopedia look messy.

I invite editors who already expressed their view on this aspect on other talk pages to post their comments here: User:Maproom, User:Spacecowboy420, User:Steverci, User:Anonimu, User:Iryna Harpy, User:Alessandro57, User:Cordless Larry, User:Ghmyrtle. Hahun (talk) 10:11, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

In principle I agree with Hahun: these galleries are intrinsically POV, its encyclopedic values is near zero (much better are pictures of single notables in the respective section of the article) and are source of recurrent edit wars among users. Because of that on itwiki some months ago they have all been removed. On the other side, I understand too that reaching consensus about a general removal is a quite difficult task. Last but not least, how could this consensus be enforced? Alex2006 (talk) 10:23, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

My primary concern with these galleries (and with notable people sections, for that matter), is that the inclusion criteria are rarely clear. At worst, all such galleries might be considered original research, because without a source, who is to say that the selection of people is representative of the group? Cordless Larry (talk) 10:24, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I see no difference between having someone's picture in a gallery, and having them mentioned in the article. You're going to have to make a judgement about who is notable enough and fits certain criteria. I would agree that whatever decision is made, it has to be consistent within all articles. I am very much in favor of the galleries, however I would rather see them all go, or all stay than some go and some stay. They do benefit the article and wikipedia, encyclopedias have pictures, they spark an interest. We are making wikipedia a nice place for readers, not a nice place for editors. We should deal with the problems for the benefit of those who read the article, they don't care about edit wars, they care about content. Spacecowboy420 (talk) 11:19, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I have found the galleries informative. I feel the articles are better with them. The attitude "it's too difficult to check the facts, so let's not bother with them" seems inappropriate in Wikipedia. Maproom (talk) 11:49, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Who is arguing that ""it's too difficult to check the facts, so let's not bother with them"? To be clear, I'm arguing that in none of the infobox galleries that I've seen have the inclusion criteria been clear. I've never seen a reference to a source that states that the particular selection of people are a representation of the group, for example. They all seem to be based on editors' own perceptions of who matters, and are thus original research. Cordless Larry (talk) 11:53, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

This is exactly the main problem. A clear example is the collage currently on display on Italians, for which there is clearly no consensus, and which is disruptive, since several of the people who are displayed there are simply not notable enough to be included among the 20-30 most notable Italians, unless special inclusion criteria are used (politically correctness, etc.). The problem is that also the decision about these criteria is POV. That's why I say: better no mosaic at all, than a bad assembled mosaic. Alex2006 (talk) 12:32, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Surely, the same rules would apply for inclusion on galleries as apply for notability in articles. Maybe this is a strange idea, but I couldn't care less if the gallery gets changed 10 times a day, as long as it is there, showing people who represent the article. Wikipedia manages to have articles about abortion, obama and hitler, editors can deal with this issue. Spacecowboy420 (talk) 14:07, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, a person would have to be judged notable to be included. But that is not selective enough since there are hundreds or even thousands of notable Italian, English, Indian, German-American, etc. people. The question is, of all those notable people, what criteria are being used to select those who appear in the infobox? Cordless Larry (talk) 14:18, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards removal of galleries from ethnic group infoboxes. Yes, they are often informative, but even more often they are highly controversial and an arena for POV-pushing. I have myself been involved in several discussions and it's pretty hard to get a consensus on who is a representative of a certain nation. It'd probably be better to have images of notables in the respective sections of articles as proposed by Alex. Spacecowboy says he see no difference, but the inclusion of such images can easily be sourced, e.g. if we're talking about Germans's music section it's easily to find reliable sources pointing to a few composers as being the greatest and most influential German composers. --Երևանցի ^talk 14:21, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

@Spacecowboy420:, this was an idea which I had too to solve the problem: would it not be possible to rotate different galleries at certain times (something like FA on the main page)? I mean, if we have 200 notables on display, the criteria to choose them would not be so important anymore. Alex2006 (talk) 14:26, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but I doubt it would work. We would still get the same kinds of fights over who is part of the 200 as we have now over who is part of the 25. How many slots among the 200 should be reserved for modern sportspeople? How many for women? How many for people considered national heroes in ethnicity X's favourite patriotic narrative? How many for figures included to score a point against neighbouring ethnicity Y, who are also claiming them as theirs? Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:35, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Personally, on my first thought there more pros than cons for galleries in infobox. The main con is the inclusion criteria, which for now does not exist, but there's no constructive reason to not be made. The personalities included should be from an array of society, like from politics, culture (art, literature, music), sport, science, religion and others. However, every gallery need consensus, and I just don't understand how it happened without it. It is clear editors omission, and that is not an excuse to remove galleries from infobox. One of criteria, like in the case of Croats for some specific field of dispute (like sport) was Wikipedia:Pageview statistics. Galleries have a significant contributon to ethnic group articles. For example, if someone wants to check some not so known ethnic group as Italians, like Volga Tatars, or for some Croats, visitors receive firsthand who are their most notable personalities, and how those people look like. It gives an impression no word can convey, an image "speaks thousand words". There's no replacement for an image. Just a list of names in respective section is not good enough. We're living in 21st century, and not just now, even centuries ago was felt the need to have portraits and pictures of people and events. Also would agree with note above, "all stay, or all go", there's no middle. Whatever discussion is here, it needs to include thoughts from each ethnic group projects editors.--Crovata (talk) 14:34, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, I'm going to take a look at the talk pages of articles with stable galleries and see how they got their stability. I have a question...can an admin make a specific rule, for a specific article? Sorry, I'm not the most experienced editor here. For example: The gallery will not be changed without consensus being gained on the talk page, any changes without consensus gained on :::the talk page will be reverted to the original state, without the reverting editor being subject to any 3RR (or similar) rules. Having said all that, I'm very much in favor of a rotating gallery, that might actually offer an significant improvement for readers. Spacecowboy420 (talk) 14:40, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

The stability depends above all from the competence of the involved editors. :-) For example, the gallery of the Germans is one of the best which I ever seen, but the simple reason is that German-speaking are generally vey competent (it is enough to have a look to dewiki to notice that). Unfortunately, this is a kind of exception on wikipedia... :-) Alex2006 (talk) 14:49, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

In none of these cases does membership require notoriety. Why do we assume that any of these articles are about well-known or distinguished members of a given ethnic group? What is the point to showcasing well-known or distinguished members of a given ethnic group? Bus stop (talk) 15:17, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Agree, editors need to have certain level of knowledge of own nation to "see" who are more notable from the others. Hmmm, "What is the point to showcasing well-known or distinguished members of a given ethnic group?", that's actually a good question. Perhaps contribution to human civilization? To own nation?--Crovata (talk) 15:42, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I think the photo gallery dumbs down the article. Bus stop (talk) 15:51, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

What is wrong it dumbs down an article? Explain your thought.--Crovata (talk) 15:57, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

The depicted member is not necessarily representative of the group. Bus stop (talk) 16:18, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Aesthetically a group of c. 25 people is not, but people who politically and culutrally were significant ie. fought for, had and further developed ethnic identity and culture, I wouldn't say so easily they do not represent an ethnic group.--Crovata (talk) 16:28, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Now you are trying to concoct criteria. But the criteria that apply most are criteria of representativeness. Essentially this is a losing game. The choosing of people is a distorting process. If we were interested in accurately representing the group our highest priority would probably be randomness. That would probably include mostly anonymous members of a given ethnic group. Bus stop (talk) 16:57, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Even if the people are selected to be representative, that still seems like original research to me, unless we rely on a source that says "these people are representative of the group". I can imagine a source saying something along the lines of "Famous X-ian people include..." and us using that to base the selection on, but I'm yet to see one of these montages that is sourced in that way. Cordless Larry (talk) 18:27, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Should be no images of people at all. Nothing but a problem all over the place. Geneticists and social scientists agree that ethnic identity is socially constructed and cant be represented by individuals. Ethnic groups are represented/defined by communal and social norms ...not by individuals of said group -- Moxy (talk) 18:45, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I think that these mosaics are created mainly to self-glorify the different groups. In fact only "good" notables are chosen. None ever dreamed to put Toto Riina in the Italian collage, although he depicts well the Mafioso type, and Mafia is an important component of Italian society. Alex2006 (talk) 18:58, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Articles which can be illustrated with appropriate images should have them. This is an explicit part of the good article criteria. Appropriate images can be identified visually, just as for any other article. In fact, original images are permissible. Nobody is complaining that the photo in Rosa kordesii constitutes original research since it wasn't published in a reliable source as an example of the species, or that it is POV since a visually attractive specimen was selected instead of an old and dying one. Since the definitions of ethnic groups do have sociological meaning whether we like it or not, I would strongly refute the claim that articles about them cannot be illustrated, or need photos of ugly or infamous people for a false and blatantly disrespectful sense of balance. Nor should the presence of content disputes about which photos should appear in articles about ethnic groups imply that no images should be used, any more than we would delete an entire article the moment a dispute arises. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 19:45, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Actually during GA and FA nominations these info-boxs full of individual people linked get removed most times because they do not lead to information about said group ..they reappear after time and get overwhelming like at Tamils..... but the norm for our best articles can be seen at Toraja FA Taiwanese aborigines FA British people GA - Aboriginal peoples in Canada GA - Banat Bulgarians GA - Mikea people GA - Eskaya people GA - African Americans in Omaha, Nebraska GA - Antemoro people GA. Put it simply as per the essay Wikipedia:Image dos and don'ts - Don't overload articles with images. Don't add images that are not relevant. -- Moxy (talk) 20:35, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I first became aware of the OR issue in the discussion at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/British Cypriots/archive1. Cordless Larry (talk) 21:57, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)British people stopped having such images in September 2013, rather by accident (copyright problems with one element in a montage), and we eventually discussed it in February 2015 at Talk:British people#Infobox images?. Arguments for and against included: difficulty of selection; endless arguments; tiny image sizes; lack of encyclopedic value; ineffectiveness; inevitable failure to represent the subject of the article; the advantages of illustration in general; existence of collages in other such articles; GA articles don't have such images.
Americans dropped such images from the infobox in November 2014, soon after it had briefly grown to seven rows of six,[1] following discussions (Talk:Americans/Archive 3#Getting rid of the infobox mosaic for good and Talk:Americans/Archive 3#Infobox images) which cited British people as a good example of doing fine without such infobox images.
A recent discussion at Talk:Italians#Need a mosaic., where such images have been almost the only subject in 2015, mentions that Russians and Bavarians don't have such collections in their infoboxes while English people, Scottish people, Greeks, Catalans, Basques and Sardinians (maybe the current record-holder at 50) do. NebY (talk) 20:40, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Sardinians only has 40, NebY. I say only... Cordless Larry (talk) 22:01, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Oops - dizzy from keeping too many tabs open. Thanks. NebY (talk) 22:15, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

NebY, the Russians article didn't have such a collection in its infobox in October 2015 (during the discussion at Talk:Italians#Need a mosaic.), but meanwhile a gallery was added, with the motivation "every ethnic group article got its own infobox pictures". Probably this is how most the galleries appeared: by following what was seen at other similar articles. Hahun (talk) 22:17, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Yep, that's how these things spread. See the comment recently posted at Talk:White American#Pictures, for instance. Cordless Larry (talk) 22:21, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh! And now Talk:Russians is largely about infobox images, with even more disturbing arithmetic than mine, at least in this oppose: "Suvorov is though to have been 1/4 Armenian. I believe that the general rule should be that someone is at least 1/2 Russian." NebY (talk) 22:29, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

• Having just dipped my head into this stuff at Russians, I agree. If an infobox needs a picture, it can be geographical distribution: more informative, less controversial, less ILIKEIT. Max Semenik (talk) 22:41, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

We have guidance on this matter already as per (guideline) WP:LEADIMAGE about how the image should be widely seen as representing the topic. (essay) Wikipedia:Image dos and don'ts - Don't overload articles with images and Don't add images that are not relevant. To me this implies that the image should be of the topic hand and if its linked they would be to more info on the topic. Having random small mini images that are linked to random topics is not a good idea for any article on any topic. -- Moxy (talk) 23:32, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As a clarification as to where CON stood on the Russians article, the consensus last year was to remove it (see archived talk). The same goes for Romanians and a handful of other articles. At the moment there are disputes on the Ukrainians talk page about who can be defined as being Ukrainian, and how these definitions are arrived at. My take on it has not changed an iota: all of these galleries are POV and OR, and serve no other purpose than to act as an energy sinkhole for regular editors.

Further to the point, there are far more articles on ethnic groups that were not created by anyone from that ethnic group, and galleries have been added willy-nilly because someone, at some stage, thought that WP:ITSIMPORTANT to use the 'image' parameter in the 'ethnic group' template to create a gallery, therefore it's equally important that every ethnic group feature such a gallery. I've yet to come across anything in MOS suggesting that that's how the image parameter is designed to be used. I've been trying to copyedit and clean up articles on Latin American countries, as an example. Every time I get a watchlist alert for any of these articles, it's inevitably yet another IP popping in to change sportspeople, their favourite singers, etc. in the gallery. Much as I'd like to just remove all of the galleries on unwatched articles, neither do I WP:OWN them. Simultaneously, neither am I compelled to check on new celebs (et al) to ensure that they actually identify as being of that ethnicity. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:50, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Reply to Cordless Larry if "we rely on a source" which says "Famous X-ian people include..." - well, there exist books on Croats eg. "100 most significant Croats" and so on, but in that specific book's preface is written: "Author tends optimal objectivity, because he is aware that absolute objectivity in this kind of work does not and can not be ... deeply entrenched ideological divisions, and there are no unique scientific and historical criteria or undivided, generally accepted values ... [he] built and firmly established a criteria". I don't know what kind of criteria he built, but there several issues regarding so-called "small nations", but also "big nations". One of them is "small nations" proudly want to emphasize to "big nations" that they also contributed to human civilization, but here comes the problem - where begins and where it stops ethnicity and nationality, especially of those people who are of mixed ancestry, or specific ethnic ancestry, but later declared as members of another ethnic group, or cultural significance etc. There several cases among South Slavs (Croats and Serbs), where tried "stealing a national treasure" from each other, based on national, ethnical, cultural, historical reasons. For example, you'll find Nobel-winner Ivo Andrić, who was born a Croat in Bosnia and Herzegovina, initially declared as a Croat, to in later life while lived in Serbia, decided to declare as a Serb. He contributed in literature for all Yugoslavs, but he is claimed by ethnicity by Croats, Serbs oppose this and highlight it as their Nobel Prize winner, Bosnians claim his birth place. In the end, he is in infobox galleries and sections of all three ethnic groups, and not to mention that there were not controversies, kind of "yours Nikola Tesla (born a Serb), but Ivo Andrić (born a Croat) is ours", but this dispute was not settled on national and academical, far less on Wikipedian level. This is only one example, that shows, there's no strict criteria in the world, even less among editors to reach a perfect consensus for exact personalities. Now on second thought, galleries should be removed, it's not even fair for those ethnic groups who did not "contribute notable person", that does not diminish the value of human beings. This galleries are just "show off".--Crovata (talk) 00:51, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of the issues in that part of the world. I'm glad that you now agree on the problems of these montages. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:42, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Members of one community tend to a myopia about the humanity and achievements of other communities.

If Wikipedia "national" portrait galleries of a few "representative" individuals help counteract such chauvinist ignorance by whetting curiosity about other communities, they may serve a useful purpose.

The effort to find consensus on gallery inclusion may inspire editors to give intelligent thought to inclusion criteria.

Nihil novi (talk) 04:02, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

That's a nice idea but the problem is that, judging by my watchlist, there is very little evidence of that being the case, whereas there is a lot of evidence of edit warring and lack of criteria-based consensus. Cordless Larry (talk) 09:01, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

I would strongly suggest getting rid of them. The informative value equals zero. There is too much room for interpretation (Was Mozart even an Austrian? Or Hitler?), and the potential for mischief of many sorts is endless. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 18:05, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Conveniences break

I have always found these galleries to be little more than a waste of space in the best case, and a massive quality and POV nightmare in the worst. In addition to the points raised by others above (unprincipled, no clear inclusion criteria, POV implications, frequent edit warring) I also observe the following:

• Unstoppable bloat. There is apparently an inexorable inflationary trend that forces these things to get larger and larger. I remember a time when we had galleries with just four or eight heads. Then there were 12 to 16; currently most of the heavily edited ones have at least somewhere around 25 or even more than 30, and the worst I've seen had 56. We get enthusiasts fighting to increase numbers on the basis of comparison: if group A has x images, then B "deserves" at least y – a logic that will guarantee that the trend remains unidirectional, with no end in sight. Some of these boxes fill about half the width of the article space on my computer screen, and go well beyond screen hight, eating up prime-value real estate on screen and pushing the actual information content of the infoboxes out of sight, thus destroying the actual function of an infobox.
• Inclusion of personalities without regard to quality and authenticity of depictions. Especially where patriotic editors are keen on including ancient founding figures of their group, we invariably end up with fantasy depictions of unknown provenance, dubious authorship or copyright status, low esthetic value and zero authenticity. You will find few boxes that don't include at least one or two entries that fail responsible editorial practice for historical portraits. Examples: 1 (at Greeks), 2 (at Berbers), 3 (at Turkish people), 4 (at Pashtuns), and so on. You could easily substitute each of these with this, without losing a single bit of encyclopedic information (and it would be more honest to the readers too), because their true information value is precisely zero.

In short, while I don't think we can (or should) come to some consensus here to actually deprecate the use of galleries altogether, and while I don't mind some galleries as long as they are well maintained, stable and moderate in size, I'd be strongly opposed to any renewed move towards universal use of galleries in the name of "consistency". Galleries are a Wikipedia fad, and there's nothing in them that would indicate they should be required across all articles. I'm extremely glad that editors on some articles (such as Russians and Romanians) have found the courage to resist the trend and demonstrate that an article can live well without one. If anything is to come of this discussion, it should be that we ought to recommend to local editors on other articles to give serious thought to this possibility, whenever a gallery starts attracting edit-warring or other editorial problems again. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:10, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there never seemed to actually be any consensus on the Romanians article for not having a gallery. Numerous editors trying to revive the gallery were met with comments along the lines of "we have consensus, we won't discuss it, we won't have a gallery". This seems like a pretty poor way to claim consensus, especially when there are editors on the article in question who are more than willing to put the time and effort into improving the article. If an editor thinks it causes too much drama and conflict to have a gallery, then they should step back from that particular discussion and allow the editors who are prepared to deal with it, to deal with it. Spacecowboy420 (talk) 12:38, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

I find the reason given by User:Future Perfect at Sunrise for removing a gallery (if "it starts attracting edit-warring") quite questionable. I thought that the argument for including something is the fact that it improves the article from the readers' point of view, not the fact that it is stable, creating no difficulties for the editors. The antidote for avoiding edit wars should be the protection of the article, not the deletion of the thing that generates disputes between contributors. If Albanian and Serb editors begin edit warring at Kosovo article should we just roughly eliminate the article or work harder for a compromise? Hahun (talk) 13:19, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

The inclusion of Ivo Andrić in Serbs gallery, or Ivan Gundulić and Ruđer Bošković among The 100 most prominent Serbs, generates dispute from Croatian readers' point of view, not only Croatian editors. The fact that galleries are based on OR consensus from real world, it is beyond our (Wikipedian) reach to compromise on something which does not have compromise in real world. Is it good we go against our NPOV principles and accept false criteria and status quo of the real world, or be an example to the world? And we can't see this galleries from "developed" nations point of view, but on a global scale for all nations and ethnical groups, eg. Amazon tribes. Showing off "notable persons" looks more like a nationalistic masquerade. A masquerade of national collective hiding behind individual deeds.--Crovata (talk) 13:59, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

@Hahun:, FPaS didn't give "it starts attracting edit-warring" as a reason for removing a gallery. Rather, I read him as pointing out that there are many reasons not to have a gallery and that that possibility could be recommended to editors especially when they are so engaged in an edit-war over selection of images that they may have forgotten it's questionable whether the very thing that they're fighting over must or even should exist at all. NebY (talk) 14:42, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise and Fut.Perf.:, this was exactly the problem by Italians: we reached a consensus to substitute the mosaic with an Italian flag, and after a couple of weeks someone arrived, started an edit war, and forced the others to accept the mosaic again. I am not interested at all to decide who has to stay in the collage, provided that is notable: Raphael can substitute Bernini, Baggio Pirlo, and Volta Fermi. But the problem starts when someone decides that a non-notable (or more) deserve to go there. For example, on the Italian collage a couple of months ago landed a wrestler (!!!) unknown person of a sport (sport?) which is not popular at all in Italy, and was put near Michelangelo and Dante...Another specialty of the house :-) are ancient Romans (like Caesar) who periodically appear on the collage of the Italians. Demonstrating that this choice is wrong takes away a huge amount of time, which could be much more usefully used to create new articles, correct wrong info, etc. Alex2006 (talk) 15:01, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Future Perfect at Sunrise, which article has 56 images in the infobox? I thought NebY's 40 was crazy enough. Perhaps there should be a prize (for finding, not creating, the article with the most). Cordless Larry (talk)

Seems it was Iranian peoples, a couple of weeks ago [2]. It's been reduced to 30 in the meantime though. Ironically, "Iranian peoples" (note the plural) isn't even an ethnic group at all. Greeks was at 40 for a while [3], now back at 25. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:49, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

How do we make the leap between "Iranian peoples" and well-known "Iranian people"? That is what I don't understand. The title of the article is not "Distinguished Iranian people". So, why the emphasis on celebrity? Bus stop (talk) 21:45, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

No idea, I never edited that article. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:17, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

That article is just an example. Any article, on any group of people, ethnic or otherwise, is ostensibly about that group of people. It is not about outstanding members of that group of people. The sorts of articles under discussion are invariably about groups of people sharing some common traits resulting in some degree of group cohesion. The articles are never about famous members of that group. The fame of the members featured in photo galleries is often unrelated to whatever qualities unite the group. They achieve renown in some sphere of activity and they are a source of pride to other members of their group. But if the article is ostensibly about that group of people and their common traits, then we are going far afield by picturing people whose accomplishments often have nothing to do with the group of people to which they belong. Bus stop (talk) 07:52, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Ah, true. Sorry, it seems I totally missed the point you wanted to make. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:39, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I also think that editors are not aware of what these infoboxs look like in the mobile versions ...that Iranian people is so overwhelming with images (have to side scroll to see them all)..as a result I bet many simply navigate away from the page. Losing readers because of image spam of this nature. WP:LEADIMAGE talks about this problem. This type of image spam will be hard to stop -- Moxy (talk) 17:16, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As the person who started the thread Talk:Iranian peoples#Images in infobox I can see both sides of the argument. My original concern was the 56 images (and growing) which was unreadable on some phones etc. and suggested a maximum of 25 (5 x 5) or 24 (4 x 6), although I would prefer fewer, whilst User:Zyma thought more were appropriate. I think a limited number of pictures in the infobox can be helpful, to show the history and diverse range of people within the scope of the article. The problem is, once a gallery has been set up, editors repeatedly add their "favourite" often plugging their favourite politician, pop-star or sportsperson - hence my suggestion of one per century to emphasize the depth of the history, not the hear and now.
Presumably, as with other infobox parameters, it would be possible to limit the number of images, so that images after the agreed number do not show. There could also be a guideline in the template documentation, requiring talkpage consensus for inclusions/removals. - Arjayay (talk) 17:31, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

The entire premise for the photo box in these articles is faulty. Most members of the group under consideration have no fame. Most of the members are anonymous. Most do not have articles on Wikipedia. They might have lived comfortable lives. They might have lived impoverished lives. They may have been gems of humanity or they may have been the dregs of humankind. Why are we engaging in the value judgements necessary to choose the handful of people highlighted by a photo box? It doesn't matter what criteria are used. Are we really trying "to show the history and diverse range of people within the scope of the article"? That may be a minor consideration. But the major consideration is that we show the world the great people that emerge from a given milieu—be it ethnic, nationalistic, or by some other factor of cohesion uniting a given group of people. If we are to have this discussion we should be honest about what we are doing. We should acknowledge that we are omitting 99.99% of the members of that group from the outset based on their anonymity and their absence of renown beyond perhaps a small circle of family and friends—or they did achieve renown, as another editor pointed out above, but we don't approve of the renown they achieved. If the article is about the group of people—why can't we just stick to the subject? Why the ton of editorializing? When people are shown who do not achieve fame or who only garner a modicum of fame, we show the reader the appearances of members of the group and this may be helpful to the reader. I think the images matter insofar as the physical characteristics of facial structure, body type, attire, and perhaps setting and a few other factors can be seen. Images in a photo box are capable of conveying characteristics common to that group of people. Bus stop (talk) 19:09, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree with all above.. as seen by this edit the rational for inclusion is so odd. We should have a RfC on this matter...that is "not" to overwhelm the lead of articles with so many images that "do not" link to more info on the topic at hand. Add info to WP:LEADCLUTTER about this -- Moxy (talk) 19:42, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Wow, "people who aren't completely white, people for whom visual evidence is inadequate, and ugly people". Odd indeed. I think we have a rough consensus here, but agree that an RfC would be good to establish something with more support. Cordless Larry (talk) 19:46, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

And now someone has added Hitler to the gallery of famous Austrians. Who may very well have not regarded himself an Austrian. Just like Mozart. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 18:02, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Was the RFC ever called? Photo montages are being removed by citing this talk page thread, but I agree with User:Cordless Larry that a wider show of support is required. Meters (talk) 19:13, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. I would be interested in taking part however. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 19:29, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I think all galleries must be changed with the national flags like in Americans or maps, when some groupe of people has no flag, like Slavs. --Targatron (talk) 19:49, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for the deletion of all the galleries of personalities from the articles about ethnic groups

Seemingly there is a significant number of commentators which support the general removal of infobox collages. I think there is a great opportunity to get a general agreement on this matter. It is clear that it has to be a board consensus, which must involve as many editors as possible, otherwise there is a big risk for this decision to be challenged in the near future. Consequently, I will open the RfC process, hoping that more people will adhere to this proposal. Hahun (talk) 23:05, 30 November 2015 (UTC)