Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Common bluetail02.jpg

Common Bluetail Damselfly

Reason: High quality shot with good EV
Articles this image appears in: Damselfly, Ischnura heterosticta
Creator: Fir0002

Support as nominator --Fir0002 05:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support well done. — Aitias // discussion 02:27, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support and Question, any idea what Image:Unidentified Damselfly 6171.jpg or File:Unidentified Damselfly 6142.jpg is? I found dragonfly/damselfly heaven the other day, it has literally hundreds of them swarming everywhere and I recognise the nominated species. I rigged up a mt24ex rip off yesterday with some aluminium and the radio triggers. I have half a dozen species to capture yet. I also tried stacked extension tubes on my 400mm, but ditched it in favour of the 200mm because I thought the lighting wouldn't be so good. The results turned out to be excellent back on the computer though and the huge working distance is likely to be really useful. The only downside to the 400mm for damselfly/dragonfly hunting is the weight (very close to 3kg with batteries and battery grip). Noodle snacks (talk) 09:28, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Answer: I'm by no means a biologist so I can't really help you with the IDs - I find Brisbane Insects a useful site and you can also use the Victorian Museum/Australian Museum to help with IDs. But yeah awesome that you've found a nice spot! How is the autofocus with the extension tubes? Because they would be very handy with a 400mm's working distance. The lighting on this seems a bit odd though - cyan cast. --Fir0002 08:53, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Lighting is probably just a white balance issue there. Those two are with the 70-200mm though. Autofocus was good, there is quite a bit of range that it works over (maybe 1.5m) and it still seems to have the accuracy and speed that the 400mm seems to be known for. For these small damsel flies a bit more magnification would be handy (another box of tubes or one of those 500D magnifiers instead). It isn't at maximum magnification but File:Unidentified Damselfly 6171 2.jpg is a 400mm shot from approx 2 meters away with my diy flash rig. The image is a 50% crop. Noodle snacks (talk) 09:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - The article is little more than a chaotic gallery of images. Pictures cannot (should not) be evaluated independently of the articles they illustrate. How can we stamp a seal of high EV to an image in these conditions, without perverting the ultimate goal of FPC? Commons FPC is the right place for this particular image. -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 11:51, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- The image is used in Damselfly as the taxobox image and is demonstrative of Damselflies in general (being a fairly common species in at least one part of the world). In my book a high quality image of a species has pretty easy EV regardless of article usage. Either way I created Ischnura heterosticta, where it more specifically serves to display what the male of the species looks like. Furthermore the FPC criteria don't really mention the state of the article, to allow for future growth one should really be asking would the image be of use if the article was of featured quality. Noodle snacks (talk) 12:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I gave damselfly a bit of a clean and removed about 50% of the images. Noodle snacks (talk) 12:32, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Much better now. But I'm still opposing as this picture (in the gallery) has better quality and resolution. Also, this FP was removed from the taxobox to insert the present picture. Although it still remains in another stub, I wonder if this is a good practise. Alvesgaspar (talk) 12:53, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - The first image you linked to is Ischnura senegalensis (The Common Bluetail article is about that species), this image is of Ischnura heterosticta. The two are found in geographically distant locations and are probably just a case of Convergent evolution. To resolve the ambiguity I had already tagged the image for renaming, which will happen when the bot gets around to it. The old FP is fir's image, so I doubt anyone is going to get insulted. It looks to me as if its due for delisting. Noodle snacks (talk) 13:48, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      - I'd like to echo what NS said above - I think that an image's enc value is almost entirely independent of the content of the article; it's an intrinsic attribute of the image. Furthermore I'd argue that an image has even greater EV in a stub because it is essentially doing the work of the (missing) text and thus the 1000 words are put to good use. --Fir0002 11:59, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      - Well, that is certainly not the spirit of WP:FPC. If it were, pictures would be evaluated only on the basis of their intrinsic quality and potential EV (like in Commons FPC and VIC), and the need to be part of an article wouldn't make sense. In the limit, your final argument justifies the existence of articles consisting of image galleries only. -- Alvesgaspar (talk) 14:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        On the contrary, this is precisely in the spirit of FPC: Taking the adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words," the images featured on Wikipedia:Featured pictures should illustrate a Wikipedia article in such a way as to add significantly to that article. If the article already has a detailed description of a damselfly then the accompanying image adds less to the article than if the article had no text (note this doesn't mean that I think an article should just be comprised of images!). --Fir0002 22:45, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support for quality and EV. WRT the above, the picture must contribute significantly to an article to have EV, but at the same time the photographer is not responsible for writing articles or fixing their problems (unless he causes them...). Fletcher (talk) 03:29, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I think Fletcher said it best and I agree with that assessment. ~ ωαdεstεr16_«talk^stalk» 04:26, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Before being photographers, we are all editors here and thus share some responsability for the quality of the articles we edit. Using them with the sole purpose of showing our photos or serving our nomination interests may (and does) cause damage to the encyclopaedia. The profusion of image galleries is a significant sign of that practise. In this particular article (Damselfly) a FP was removed from the taxobox with the purpose of hoisting the present candidate, not noticing that this other FP, which is in the gallery, has a much better quality and resolution. Alvesgaspar (talk) 12:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral IMO Alvesgaspar raises some important points. The purpose of FPC is to recognize pictures that contribute well to articles. The damselfly infobox should have the best quality and resolution, which IMO is not this image. That said, the creation of the stub is IMO good as it facilitates the image and will probably be better written by future editors. Muhammad(talk) 15:53, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I'd actually disagree slightly, in my view the taxobox image should be the clearest representation of the subject at thumbnail size. Noodle snacks (talk) 08:01, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per arguments by Alvesgaspar and Muhammad. This has been a problem for some time now. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 13:17, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:Ischnura_heterosticta02.jpg --Noodle snacks (talk) 01:25, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]