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Commons talk:Featured picture candidates

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to Commons:Featured picture candidates.
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candidate list
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With some 1500 FPs being added to the galleries each year, it's a lot of work to keep the galleries working and accessible. Sometimes changes need to be done to keep the now 19,634 FPs in order. The FPCBot has also been acting up lately, due to old code and people doing "their own thing" (please don't!) in the galleries. Aristeas is currently hard at work to fix the FPCBot as much as possible.

Recently there was a misunderstanding about the links on the gallery pages, and that led us to wonder if the links are hard to follow for others too and perhaps it's time for a change.

For more than 10 years, the links to different galleries have been represented by images with a linked text caption. This is a very stylish and nice way of creating shortcuts to other galleries, but even these link templates are becoming more cluttered as more FPs are produced. More countries, taxonomy orders and families, etc. are getting their own pages just to keep the individual pages at a manageable size.

So, I'm wondering if it's time to change the layout of these templates and make them more compact and perhaps easier to understand. Below are two examples of what the templates looks like today (under a roll-up button to save space here):

And here are two examples of what they could look like if we use just icons and links instead:

Places Natural - (only collapsible here on this page to save space, on the gallery page it would be displayed in full)
Birds - (only collapsible here on this page to save space, on the gallery page it would be displayed in full)

What do you think? Should we keep the old system or is it time to move on to a more compact style. --Cart (talk) 11:33, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank you very much for your initiative, Cart, and for your nice design of the new layout! IMHO your draft is already very clear, clean and elegant. I am fine both with the traditional layout and with your new proposal, but the new layout has the advantage to be much more compact and simpler – this makes it much easier to add new entries in the future. In addition it helps to avoid misunderstandings. Sometimes people want to add new FPs right to the overview of the gallery pages instead of the appropriate section; this can be avoided if we use just silhouettes and flags in the overview. And even our friend User:FPCBot has made similar errors in the past! (If anybody is interested in the details, I can explain them, but I do not want to waste your time by describing them here.) Therefore it would also be safer and avoid possible errors and mistakes if we would switch to the new layout. Therefore I plead for the new layout. Best, – Aristeas (talk) 09:40, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Thank you very much, Cart, for your thoughtful proposal and for all your hard work! I fully support switching to the more compact layout. In this case, less is truly more. The simplified structure reduces visual clutter, improves navigability, and minimizes the potential for confusion. It also makes the system more scalable as the number of galleries continues to grow. The new design is an elegant and smart solution to a practical problem. Well done! Best regards, -- Radomianin (talk) 10:20, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment The proposed change for birds makes finding the right link much harder for those who are not experts on the subject. I rarely propose birds pictures on FPC, but I would be confused. Well, may be the non-experts should let others propose FPCs on a given subject. Yann (talk) 15:13, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yann, you raise a valid point about the birds. Let me have a think about it, I have some other ideas. Do you think the flags would be preferable to the images we use now? --Cart (talk) 15:29, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, flags are an easy way to represent a country, and better than an random image of that country. There may be images representing a country, but it is quite a cliché (Statue of Liberty for USA, Eiffel Tower for France, etc.). Yann (talk) 15:35, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support I was unsure in the beginning, but the more I read, the more I am convinced that this proposal with flags and bird icons is the best way we can do the gallery design for FPC. --Kritzolina (talk) 05:16, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We are not bound to just one style, we can use the flags for countries, silhouette icons for easy subjects like towers, buildings, airplanes, weather, etc. but keep small photos for birds animals and plants with difficult latin names. Preferably the photos should be chosen with care, and cropped and smaller versions can be created so that all the photos have uniform dimensions and don't drag down opening the page. I think generic icons should be kept only for the general links like 'Birds' so that no one can mistake it for linking to a specific family/genus/species. It's a bit more work, but it might be worth it. Here is an approximate example of how the birds template could look:

Birds ver. II - (only collapsible here on this page to save space, on the gallery page it will be displayed in full)

Pinging Aristeas, Radomianin, Yann, but anyone is welcome to add their thoughts. Keep in mind that the Bird page is the most complicated page, if we get that one right all the other will easily follow. --Cart (talk) 16:11, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • From a subject expert's perspective, a well-chosen, distinctive image for each bird family or genus would likely be the most helpful. As someone who regularly curates and arranges visual content across various projects, I can only speak from a practical point of view. Consistent symbols or flags tend to create a clearer visual structure and make navigation easier, especially for users who aren't deeply familiar with the subject matter. At the same time, I acknowledge that visual clarity doesn't always align with scientific depth. That's why I don't want to overstep my bounds and would rather leave the final judgment to our experienced photographers and subject matter experts.
Regarding landscape images and similar gallery categories, I must admit that representative and aesthetically pleasing photos are more suitable for our coffee table book. I look forward to hearing the thoughts of our fellow contributors. Best regards, -- Radomianin (talk) 16:38, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would be consequent and use flags for the countries and silhouettes for birds etc., just as in your first proposal; that’s clear, clean and compact. When I want to find the correct gallery page, I always look at the text (or just press cmd+F and enter the first letters); I never decide on the base of a photo on which gallery page I click, not even when it comes to the Eiffel tower or Statue of Liberty. OK, that’s me, I’m a text and keyboard lover, but I also cannot imagine much advantage of photos for other people. Flags are clearly better than photos to identify a country, and regarding birds or other animals I see no advantage for photos over silhouettes, because IMHO > 90% of all people cannot identify a bird family/order etc. from a photo. Sorry, no offence, just my 50 cent. – Aristeas (talk) 07:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    But you can just ignore my comment above, Cart, if most other people or you yourself prefer another solution. I do not want to block a consent. Best, – Aristeas (talk) 18:57, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, judging by the under-whelming amount of people who have commented on this so far, I'd say it's safe to assume that most user don't give a toss about how the galleries look, as long as they get their FPs and don't need to do any of the maintenance. I'll wait a full week for this, and then we'll see. --Cart (talk) 19:20, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you very much, Cart and Aristeas, for your thoughtful and well structured suggestions. I also see symbols like flags and silhouettes as a real improvement in terms of organization and gallery maintenance. As an occasional contributor, I certainly don't want to overshadow our experienced photographers - but from a graphical perspective, I really appreciate your solution and am happy to support it. Kind regards, -- Radomianin (talk) 21:52, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with the first proposal (to replace with flags and silhouettes). What matters is that the gallery is concise and easily navigable - having lots of little thumbnail pictures don't really help this, it just looks cluttered. Re. are the small photos of birds necessary in order to make the right link easier to find...to put a bird picture in the right gallery you're going to have to look up the order, family, and possibly genus on the internet (probably on Wikispecies) anyway, unless you have a really good understanding of taxonomy, which only the most dedicated birders are likely to have. I don't see how the small photos are really a useful visual aid in this process. Birds that look very similar can be in very different families. Cmao20 (talk) 22:59, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

File renaming

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For the sake of my blood pressure: Can people who "think" they know what they are doing, NOT rename files during nominations. It's such an unnecessary mess to clean up. Thank you. --Cart (talk) 19:07, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have to second this. Renaming a file during its nomination is complicated and risky – one has to check and to change many things. It’s always the best to check the name of a file thoroughly before nominating the it. The next best solution is just to wait until the nomination is over, then the file can be renamed (if necessary) as usual. If and only if there is a really urgent reason to rename a file right during the nomination (e.g. because the name violates Commons’ policies or contains characters with a broken encoding), please ask some experienced nomination plumber like Cart or me for assistance. Best, – Aristeas (talk) 14:25, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
PS: This also means that reviewers should please not demand the immediate renaming of a file. Voting with  Oppose or refusing a  Support vote solely to force the renaming of a file during the nomination is neither wise nor friendly. – Aristeas (talk) 14:25, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FYI: Edits by User:Aristeas-test

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Dear FPC regulars, just a short hint for your information: Don’t worry when you see that some of the common tasks which are usually carried out by FPCBot are sometimes handled by a new user, Aristeas-test. This is a legitimate alternative account of yours truly. I need it to test improvements for the FPCBot code I am currently working on. Running my development version of FPCBot requires a username and a password, and I don’t want to use my own account and password, (i) due to security concerns and (ii) in order to avoid any confusion between my personal edits and any edits made during the test runs.

I will patrol all these edits meticulously to rule out any damage. If you nevertheless notice any errors in the edits made by Aristeas-test, please tell me about them on my talk page, then I will fix them. This can also be very useful to find bugs and regressions, so thank you very much! All the best, – Aristeas (talk) 08:52, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Checklist?

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We spend a lot of time begging for basic criteria to be fulfilled at FPC. Either because new users don't care about reading the instructions/rules or due to old users getting careless and forgetting them. It's never fun having to repeat the same requests over, and over again, so here's a little idea I've been toying with for a while.

What if we could simply have the checklist on the nom? I'm no expert on how to build this sort of code for a good layout, but this is a rough example of what a nomination with a checklist could look like. The list is exactly the same as is mentioned in the rules.

File:Intertwined roots of two birches next to Myrstigen hiking trail in Brastad.jpg

Voting period ends on 7 May 2025 at 11:03:34 (UTC) (unless closed by the 5th-day rule)
Visit the nomination page to add or modify image notes.

Checklist:
File name
Image description
Categories (what, where, who, when)
Quality
License

Intertwined roots of two birches next to Myrstigen hiking trail in Brastad

The next step in the idea would be to allow people to simply mark things that could be improved. No signature needed, that can always be checked in the 'File History'. Example:

File:Intertwined roots of two birches next to Myrstigen hiking trail in Brastad.jpg

Voting period ends on 7 May 2025 at 11:03:34 (UTC) (unless closed by the 5th-day rule)
Visit the nomination page to add or modify image notes.

Checklist:
File name OK
Image description  Not OK
Categories (what, where, who, when)
Quality
License OK

Intertwined roots of two birches next to Myrstigen hiking trail in Brastad

Is this something that people would find useful, should be discussed, or is this a completely daft idea? --Cart (talk) 15:31, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comments (checklist)

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  • Looks great to me, but I have no idea how complicated this might be to build. --Kritzolina (talk) 17:53, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not complicated at all. If you just want it like above, the code is already written and I could add it to the FPC preload template in a few minutes. :-) But I suspect there might be some ways to tweak this to be even better. There are some (not dragging other folks in just yet) who are better coders than me. Also, let's see what folks have to say. --Cart (talk) 18:31, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Btw, it is totally possible to test this for a limited time, say 2 months, and then evaluate. If we like it and it works, we keep it. If it doesn't function as we thought, we alter it or return to the old ways. --Cart (talk) 18:39, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, that would be a good idea. Yann (talk) 18:59, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure about including 'quality' on the checklist. The other items feel like procedural, administrative things that are necessary in order to produce a good thoughtful nomination that has the greatest utility to reusers. But 'quality' is a lot more subjective than the others and is really the main part of what we're judging when reviewing anyway. Or, in other words, the other items on the checklist are the basic prerequisites that the nominator must fulfil before we can start thinking about 'quality' more deeply as reviewers.
Apart from this quibble, I think it's a great idea and we should do it. Cmao20 (talk) 23:16, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I actually agree with you about not including 'quality'. I only put it in the list because it is on the list of things mentioned in the rules on the FPC page. I wanted to hear what other people think and see if someone might raise an objection, and you did. I had similar thoughts about 'License', but then again we've had plenty of noms where the permission, or freedom of panorama etc. wasn't checked properly, so should perhaps keep that anyway. --Cart (talk) 23:47, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cool idea, certainly very helpful. Agree that it may be better to omit ‘quality’ because quality is a complex aspect which is open for discussion during the voting, while the other items on the checklist are rather procedural prerequisites which fit perfectly into a checklist. – Aristeas (talk) 11:01, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting idea but I'd support it only if there is a way to roll it out in a very lean way (no more bureacracy, please!), I'd definitely keep quality but not in a subjective way. I'd document whether the file is a QI or not. That will encourage unexperienced users to get familiar with the expectations regarding QI first. Poco a poco (talk) 14:34, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks Poco a poco! I'm not sure what you mean by "if there is a way to roll it out in a very lean way". If you mean if it's easy to add to the code or remove it if we don't like it after a trial period, then yes, it's only a line in the code that needs to be added or removed. Or do you mean that you want a simple way to remove it from your nomination, to make it optional for people to include it or not?
    QI is not a requisite for FPC, it's not in any of the things to check before you nominate something. And it also only apply to photos by Commons users. If we stick it in the checklist, people might get the notion that photos by NASA, from Flickr, old photos, etc. should also go through QIC. That would be chaotic.
    Finally, all "bureaucracy" is not bad, this is meant to spare voters the constant nagging about the basics that we have today. --Cart (talk) 16:16, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Cart’s checklist would be an excellent tool to make us step back and make sure that our nominations meet the basic criteria for every FP nomination. However it would not a good idea to require that every FP candidate is already a QI – (1) because QIC does not allow images not made by Commons users (IMHO a bad rule, but we will not be able to change it as it seems to be a holy grail for some QIC regulars); (2) because sometimes even excellent images fail on QIC because they are experimental, abstract, minimalist etc.; and (3) because the manners on QIC are now often so bad and the assessments on QIC are often so arbitrary that we cannot require people to participate in QIC before nominating something at FPC. We could, of course, say that almost every FPC candidate should fulfill the requirements for a QI. But even then exceptions must be allowed, see (2) in the previous sentence; and therefore it would not be very useful to include ‘Quality’ in the checklist. Quality is just too complex for a checklist with formal requirements and often needs to be discussed in the FP nomination itself. In general I can’t avoid to get the impression that some people (not thinking of anybody in particular) consider QIC and FPC as promotion machineries which should run smoothly like a clockwork and have the purpose to promote as many of their photos as fast as possible. That’s not the purpose of QIC and even less of FPC. So things which slow down the machinery, prevent it from overheating, foster diversity, urge us to reflect our principles and visual habits etc. are good. A bit of bureaucracy is good if it helps to slow down, step back and reflect before making yet another nomination. – Aristeas (talk) 17:13, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, "quality" shouldn't be included. We are sometimes at very different points along the quality continuum between “art of photography” (aspects like composition, weight, color) and “craft of photography” (aspects like chromatic aberration, noise, or depth of field). The QI process only focusses on the latter, whereas at FPC we should – at least in my humble opinion – focus much more on the former. --Frank Schulenburg (talk) 17:34, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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