User:Wapcaplet/WikiPiki

Illustrated Wikipedia

I've been scouting around for Wikipedia articles that could use illustrations or photographs, and supplying a few by snapping shots with my crappy digital camera (such as Capo, Sharp Zaurus, Cooking pan). It occurs to me that many, many articles could be helped by photos, illustrations, and the like - often, several different illustrations would be nice.

Then again, however, such imagery would very likely clutter the articles, and would be hard to lay out in a way that wouldn't dominate the text content (which is really the most important part). My thought is, why not create a new "language" Wikipedia predominantly for illustrations, photos, etc.? The Illustrated Wikipedia could be more or less stand-alone; captions, brief descriptions, and links to related topics would of course be there, but it would be built primarily around the notion of communicating through pictures. This strikes me as having several advantages:

It'd be like having an "illustration page" for each article. Any inter-language Wikipedia could link to the associated article in the Illustrated Wikipedia, for a larger (and hopefully more diverse) collection of illustrations and photos.
It would be a great medium for contributors whose primary interest in Wikipedia is adding photographs. Also for anyone with an artistic inclination towards sketching, painting, digital illustration, or other techniques.
It'd keep image clutter out of the main articles. One or two good illustrations could be placed on the main articles; the rest can be part of the inter-language link.

Of course, some of the problems that we already have related to images would be exacerbated:

Possible copyright issues. It'd be tricky trying to police the image contributions for violations.
Space on the server. I don't know how much of an issue this is, but obviously an article full of images takes up a lot more bits than an article of text.
Server load, handling requests for lots of large images (both uploading and downloading). Again, I don't know how much of an issue this is.

Comments? Criticisms? Has this already been suggested? (and where is a more appropriate place to discuss this?) -- Wapcaplet 16:06 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

We could call it Pikipedia :) CGS 17:03 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Or WikiPiki :) I think it sounds like a good idea, but the problems you mention are formidable. Plus creating a whole new Wiki would be a big task. But I've felt that Wikipedia, while incredibly cool, is a bit lacking in graphics. A Wiki just for graphics would be really useful for the Wikipedia. —Frecklefoot 17:14 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't think this is a good idea. It would simply decrease the effort going into Wikipedia. I have added hundreds of pics and would not have the energy or time to restart with another encyclopedia. The idea would not catch on and isn't even necessary, all the pics should go into Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an illustrated encyclopedia, we don't need two!

I have had no problems mixing pics and text so long as the pics are no more than 300 pixels wide.

Finally, would the creation of WikiPiki produce greater numbers of illustrators than we have now? So the work done on WikiPici would be work not done to Wikipedia.

Adrian Pingstone 17:57 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That is a good point. The last thing I want to do is draw contributors away from the text Wikipedia! And I wouldn't dream of suggesting that anyone start over with uploading pictures. The text Wikipediae are in great need of photos and illustrations, too; I am kind of conceiving this as a separate "language", almost. I have no idea if it's possible to create an encyclopedia without any text at all - surely there would at least have to be text for the titles of articles. I admit, my notion of what it would be like is somewhat hazy, but I'm visualizing it as an encyclopedia of pictures, rather than a text encyclopedia with pictures.

Further suggestions would be welcome!

-- Wapcaplet 18:11 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Separation of images and text is an archaic practice when people place those image plates arbitrarily in the middle of a thick book. What distinguishes established CD-ROM encyclopedias, like Encarta, from Britannica the most is probably their extensive use of multimedia. Textbooks, for all levels, including university-level, also feature more and more colourful appearance. We have the capability to illustrate words with visual aids, and we should do that. Images are way too undervalued.

If the images became too many (over one per paragraph or something), we can just link it to a section:

Images/multimedia

Plus, how can we possibly make this WikiPic multilingual? We'd have to double the entire Wikipedias form 20 in # to 40.

--Menchi 18:12 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Indeed. There's a language problem. One future project of the Wikimedia foundation might be a Free Image Back: it's already been suggested. In the meantime, I think the best thing is to simply pass images around between the different pedias. -- Tarquin 19:41 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I don't think a "WikiPiki" is necessary; what we do need are better ways to embed images in articles (currently it's a bit cumbersome) and to auto-rescale them as needed (automatic generation of thumbnails is really not too difficult). But there's no problem with adding lots of pictures to articles (e.g. Pig) or moving them to separate pages (Gallery of Pompeii and Herculaneum). --Eloquence 23:21 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

If you're worried about overwhelming the text, you can always use media: links instead. See eg Rachel Corrie for an article with a mix of image: and media: links. See the discussion page for the strange emotions pictures excite amongst some folks... ;-) Martin 00:49 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hmm. All excellent points. It's starting to sound like the idea of a pictorial Wiki has more flaws than benefits. Perhaps what is actually needed is a WikiProject for organizing pictures in the text Wikipedia; aside from some editing guidelines, we seem to have relatively few standards for image size, placement, captions, linking to larger versions, attribution, etc. etc., not to mention the issue of what kind of images would serve as good illustrations for a particular article. It might be difficult to make this into a WikiProject, since it would effectively encompass any article that might conceivably need illustration (i.e., all of them), but with a good set of clearly-demarcated goals, I think it could work, and be beneficial.

Thoughts? -- Wapcaplet 01:53 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I definitely think a WikiProject on the subject would be helpful. I think it is generally a good idea to expand the concept of WikiProjects from content-specific projects to problem-specific ones. One thing that would be cool is some kind of organized attempt to create new photos, e.g. a "Wikipedia picture squad", where people register and describe what they can do ("I live in city X and can make photos, draw images .."). Requests could then be systematically filled. There could even be contests and monthly awards ;-) --Eloquence 02:08 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That would be awesome. I agree that WikiProjects should be problem-oriented; there's no reason the notion of WikiProjects can't be expanded to include something like this. We do already have Wikipedia:Requested pictures, but it seems to be pretty sparsely populated. If you ask me, just about any article without a picture should have a request for one. I'll happily volunteer as the first (?) member of the Wikipedia Picture Squad.

Anyone else think a WikiProject would be good to have? -- Wapcaplet 02:29 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think some kind meta-space for storing images would be helpful, I'm sure there is a lot of duplication of effort from people of different languages finding/making images which would work in any language version. Perhaps a "Transload file" page to simplify importing images from one language version to another if nothing else.

my idea would work something like this:

image.wikipedia.org would go to the same place as bild.wikipedia.org, Íomhá.wikipedia.org, etc.

each page would contain either links to all the images of a given thing, or all images for all languages would be stored together in the image.wikipedia.org space¹. Maybe images are just categorised and heavily meta-data'd(keywords, list of similar/related images, etc.), working either as a search for all the images stored on image.wikipedia.org space¹, or, as there are already thousands of images stored on the various versions, it could search and refer to them all.

I don't think a "WikiPiki" would be useful as an encyclopedia, but as an image resource it could be invaluable, for wikipedia editors and people wanting pictures for external use.

¹This would obviously cause some conflicts where a word in one language means something else in another.

Boffy b 23:22, 2004 Aug 23 (UTC)