Talk:Featured image proposals

Consensus?

"Once consensus is reached here"...

How can this consensus be reached? Is there any disussion? Where can I see the consensus for "The cycle map with contours" which appeared on the main page so fast? --Plenz 10:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

There's a secret Cabal meeting every friday that decides these things. No.. But seriously, if there is ever a problem then consensus will have to be reached, until then it's managed by people that have something to contribute. Erik Johansson 09:43, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

That consensus text is misleading - currently I pick featured images arbitrarily with no discussion. Would anyone prefer a different system? Ojw 20:05, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Please link to full size images

It would be nice if the thumbnails would link to the full size images. The latest featured image is nothing more than (totally nice) advertisment for the site (http://www.norc.ro/), not quite an image that one can look at. It could link to http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Image:Norc.jpg instead from where one can easily get the real image.

Also please do not use blurry resampled map images for the same reason. Two examples of bad images:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Image:Where-can-i-live.png

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Image:Coventry-ring-road-20080713-osma-z16-scaled.png

An alternative view might be that the website *is* the full-size view, since it includes not only the sample of map shown in the image, but the rest of the area as well?

The (i) icon will always link to the image itself. Does that work in your browser (can you see the blue i?)

I agree it's disappointing when people upload a 'specially resized' image when the wiki is perfectly capable of doing the resizing. Ojw 12:07, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, if I had known the blue "I" does link to the full-sized image, I would not have mentioned it. Thanks! That is not very intuitive though. It looks like part of the image itself. Maybe it could simply be shown outside the image? Or a text like "Show full-size image" at the bottom next to "Other featured images" (it looks like that would fit)?

Maybe you could add a paragraph at the top of the proposal page about the full images (if no-one objects)? For example: "Please do not rescale your image before uploading. The wiki does that for you. Some people will appreciate the full-sized image." My english is not that nice, so maybe this sounds weird. Cheers! HannesHH 10:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

IotW should have english information

An image of the week should at least have some english information available: See Talk:Main_Page#Image_of_the_week_2010-51 - no essential information about how to use it in english ... really bad timing for the christmas break where we might have some more vistitors ... -- Schusch 08:46, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion: Show new proposed images first: flip the list and move old ones to the end of the page

The page containing image proposals is rather long as some pictures are here since 2008. I suggest to flip the list and advice users to add their new images to the top of the page, i.e. make a “last in, first out” list instead of a “first in, first out” one. Thus it will be no longer needed to scroll down every time you want to see new stuff. I'll do that if someone agrees with me about that and there will be no disagreements. Kachkaev 19:11, 3 July 2011 (BST)

Is there a problem with pressing the "End" key to go straight to the bottom of a page? --seav 21:16, 3 July 2011 (BST)

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.

Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

A: Top-posting.

Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

… A quote (quoted there too) from wikipedia:Posting_style. Yes, it is not fully applying here since the sections are usually (but not always) separate from each other. However, I think the current style is fine (and that is the style which is also used on all other pages – exceptions?). --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 23:03, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Image licenses

It would be useful for featured images to explicitly state their licenses on the image description pages, preferably using standardised Templates. The images presented here are mostly well-suited for use outside of the OSM wiki (we advertise them on the Press page, for example), so I'd be happy if people would check for clear license information when proposing an image. --Tordanik 11:34, 7 September 2011 (BST)

Yeah I've also recently been insisting on no "Non-commericial" restrictions. I'm not sure if that has always applied, but I think it makes sense given that we'd like these images to be re-usable.

I would however appreciate more assistance from anyone and everyone who wants to join in with the pipeline here. We need more proposals lined up (by the creator of an image, or just by people hunting down awesome images and putting them on the wiki) Licenses & permissions should be checked and state clearly as you say, and any issues should be highlighted and discussed on the page (anything people like or dislike about proposals), ideally we'd get all that done for a pool of potential images making it easy to select from them each week.

-- Harry Wood (talk) 15:53, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I liked this short explanation of you (from the FIP page): “The idea of being quite strict with image of the week licensing, would be to make the full set of images quite nicely reusable. -- Harry Wood (talk) 00:01, 31 December 2013 (UTC)” In Addition there are other reasons for not allowing non-commercial only (those reasons which lead to a "no non-commercial only" license of OpenStreetMap itself and e.g. Wikipedia). --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 21:46, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Consequences, Risks, and side-effects of the license module Non-Commercial – NC a nice-to-read info brochure about "NC-only". --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 17:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I have just preliminary added that bit to the intro. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 00:31, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Finding an image during "Monday morning broken image time"

(the section was previously on the front page, titled "low zoom tiles")

@Template:Iotw_image/2013-28

Hi Harry Wood, I took the liberty to extend your "conjured caption". I hope that is not too much caption text!? If it is we can move the rough technical details to the file page. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 13:06, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Yup looks good. I would prefer to propose images first and discuss them of course, but when it gets to "Monday morning broken image time" I just had to come up with something quickly.

By the way, I think one good way to find images, is to look through the "weekly news summary" items (http://blog.openstreetmap.org ) Quite often there are new news things which have images related to them, or things you can take screenshots of.

-- Harry Wood (talk) 09:34, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I know those news summaries (the German one is Wochennotiz, which is also the basis for the English one). They always have an image - which could be copied of course if it is freely licensed. However, that also means that the featured images will be quite boring for people who also look at the Wochennotiz - having seen those images some weeks earlier already. ;-) And we may miss other interesting images that way. Still, it is a good source, and far superior to have no featured image on Monday. Would be great to have more images to select (and discuss) from. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 13:21, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Optimum time line of IOTW discussion and decision

If the images are decided and prepared in advance there is a much better chance for the users who translate the captions to do the translation in time, which means that it will be useful on the main page. Otherwise the translation is more or less only valuable for the archive. I am not working with those IOTW that long yet, so I am just making up something as suggestion/discussion basis/how I think it could be good. I think such a time-line (showing latest times) would be great to have:

• -14 (Monday 00:00) latest time to propose an image for 14 days later. Status: "proposed" (label below section heading, well, no label needed - that is implicit...)
• at least one week for discussion, improvement of caption and file page ("further reading" links, license, categories)
• -7 (Monday 00:00) decided, templates (Iotw_image/YYYY-w, Iotw_text/YYYY-w) and file page (add {{Featured date|YYYY|w}}) have been prepared. :'''Status: featured in week YYYY-w''' (label below section heading, maybe this should be a template like {{Iotw Talk section label|featured|YYYY|w}} which could automatically change depending on current week)
• at least one week available for collecting translations
• 0 (Monday 00:00) templates automatically go live on the main page (if there is no image yet, you can insert a placeholder image, and text)
• 7 (Monday 00:00) (earliest) delete the discussion of the last week's image (that allows people seeing the image on the main page to also see the discussion)

decision to feature an image should:

• be done preferably not by the user who made the proposal
• be based on discussion consensus
• allow at least one week discussion time
• be not more than three weeks in advance (to be not too much inertia), but at least/preferably one week in advance (for translations)

If there are short-term images (like group photos from conferences) this preferred process with minimum durations may be skipped and/or already prepared templates being moved to a later week. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 13:21, 12 July 2013 (UTC) minor additions: 14:02, 24 July 2013 (UTC) 14:37, 25 July 2013 (UTC), 00:38, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Access statistics for a featured image

Maxbe-stubaier-beschriftung_en.png

In week 29 File:Maxbe-stubaier-beschriftung_en.png was on the main page which had (Template:Iotw_text/2013-29) a permalink to the orignal slippy map. I asked User:Maxbe if he has any access statistics for his/this webserver. I was interested sine I had no clue how much a featured image on the main page was viewed and noticed. Maxbe thankfully did some log file filtering, the results are following (translated by me). The numbers, of course, only cover the viewers who clicked on the link inside the description (or inside the description on the file page). However, it gives a good impression of the magnitude of viewers, and also of the apparent importance of translations (we had caption translations for fr, de, it (since middle of the week), en; de also had a translated image). However, this was just one sample, one week.

• 225 total visitors (likely humans, bots were tried to be removed). Split down to the weekdays:
  • 54 Mon
  • 32 Tue
  • 40 Wed
  • 27 Thu
  • 29 Fri
  • 24 Sat
  • 19 Sun

• 225 split down by referrer:
  • 188 (≈84 %) send a referrer (last visited page). Most came via the main page or a translation of the main page. Few first clicked on the image:
    • 100 /wiki/Main_Page
    • 34 /wiki/DE:Main_Page
    • 17 /wiki/File:..._en.png
    • 4 /wiki/File:..._de.png
    • 4 FR:Main_Page
    • 3 RU:Main_Page
    • 3 IT:Main_Page
    • 1 ES:Main_Page
    • 1 Pt-br:Main_Page
    • 1 Sr:Main_Page
    • 1 SV:Main_Page
    • 1 UK:Main_Page
    • some with 1 or 2 hits from /wiki/Featured_Images/Jul-Sep_2013 and /wiki/Hauptseite and /wiki/Iotw.
    • some with each 1 hits from facebook, google plus
  • 37 no referrer sent

My rough interpretations:

• it seems that most attention is at the start of the week OR that there are many recurring visits to the main page (if you have already viewed the slippy map on Monday you likely will not again on Tuesday).
• it seems that translations are important but not very important. Of course that depends on how much translations of a language are there already and how much users access a translated user interface ("main page" link in the left menu then links to the translated main page; the logo does not, though).
• 225 people were that much interested in the image that they clicked on a link in the caption/file page. That means that we write captions for at least 225 people.

--Aseerel4c26 (talk) 01:06, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah that's interesting. Maybe there's about 3000 people seeing the featured image each week, and 1000 people reading the caption, leading to 226 people clicking on the link in the caption. I'm sure that ratio would vary a lot with what kind of link it is. Personally in this case I found it irresistible to see the rendering on a real slippy map. We could get some more stats on wiki viewership from User:Firefishy. In fact maybe he publishes them somewhere. I can't remember. In any case... it's quite a lot of people. It's definitely worth doing.

That's only the immediate effect too. We're also building an archive of images over time. This collection of images which are "good enough to be featured" is very useful for various things. We point Press people at it. and personally I find it useful for things like finding a nice image to make a presentation slide.

So yes... worth doing!

-- Harry Wood (talk) 09:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree to your "ratio" comments. There will be much variance of the different viewcounts depending on a whole bunch of variables.

I am a bit disappointed by the view non-English accesses. However, the not-logged-in user has to manually select the language (on each page again) - there is room for improvement (yes, I know, somebody has to have the time to do the improvements). And accesses to localized versions will only build up over time (assuming that translations did not exist before): only if people assume/know there actually is translated content on a localized main page version, then they will access the localized version.

The "wiki stats" link in Stats (top) does not work anymore. To be able to get page view counts one would need to get the logs (if there are) of the proxies in front of the wiki server. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 12:46, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Mapping party in Low Tatras 2013-10-13 traces.png

In week 44 File:Mapping party in Low Tatras 2013-10-13 traces.png was on the main page which had (Template:Iotw_text/2013-44) a permalink to the complete video. Vimeo features day-by-day stats. I do not really know when a day begins for vimeo, but I think it is UTC (or maybe auto-adjusted my timezone, which is UTC+1). Here are the single access counts (but also, still can access them at vimeo):

• 253 total visitors (likely humans, I guess/hope bots are removed by vimeo). Split down to the weekdays:
  • 66 Mon
  • 40 Tue
  • 31 Wed
  • 35 Thu
  • 26 Fri
  • 27 Sat
  • 28 Sun

So, the numbers are quite similar to the numbers of the slippy map above. Monday has roughly double (66) the visits of the later days of the week (~27). Tuesday is in the middle between high and low. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 22:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

no image on Monday

On Monday there was no IOTW. If the IOTW-team think, that they had no good images, they should clear the whole "Featured image proposals"-page or should move all entries to a new section "declined". --Brogo (talk) 07:17, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, they are all either "declined" or need additional work or something. Yes, right, the proposals page is not very clear about that for someone who never saw it before, thank you for pointing it out! "Declined" image entries get deleted every now and then (the decision to not use an image is a hard one). I will try to think about it at some time in future... Note that the "IOTW-team" (the one who selects images and prepares captions and templates) is basically only two people. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 10:40, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Some technical changes to the templates ("trimenglish")

"trimenglish" has been inserted in some iotw-text templates. example. See Talk:WikiProject_Cleanup#Featured_Images.2FJul-Sep_2013_is_broken_.28included_in_Category:Pages_where_template_include_size_is_exceeded.29 for info. Please comment there. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 22:06, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

It is again Sunday and there is no new image for Monday

It is again Sunday and there is no new image featured for Monday. - What can we change to improve the featuring-process? --LordOfMaps (talk) 10:44, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Try putting images from the proposal page into templates earlier in the week or maybe even further in advanced, on the understanding that they may be delayed if something more topical appears. Also raise the profile of the image of the week a bit to maintain and eventually improve quality (for instance, why was it removed from the Community Blogs?); we could run a competition with a first prize of the image being featured on a special occasion such as OSM’s 10th anniversary in August, and also feature any others that are worth using. Andrew (talk) 22:44, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Yeah that's true. User:Rw used to post featured images to the OpenGeoData blog. This had to be done manually. We could reinstate that in 2014 (with the blog which is now at http://blog.openstreetmap.org ) . We could also post images to the facebook group and/or other social media. People in CWG have the access to this, but at the moment I'm the only active one. Looking to get things going properly again in the new year -- Harry Wood (talk) 23:07, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

@"Try putting images from the proposal page into templates earlier in the week" - yes, that is a good idea, see also #Optimum time line of IOTW discussion and decision above. However, what if there are no images proposed which are really feature-worthy (like now)? --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 00:07, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

There's not much to be done it there is absolutely no viable candidate. I think making the IOTW more visible in the blog or social networks as has been suggested by others already would help to increase the supply and avoid such a situation. However, even now there are quite a few images which would be worth featuring imo: "OSMBuildings in a sketch style", "Indian Railways Network Connectivity Map" and "Map of Bengaluru", for example. The only requirement with some of them would be following through with the license research. --Tordanik 08:48, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

We could some images as possible to feature without setting a date. --Andrew (talk) 07:21, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

What about using a template like {{vote|yes}} and {{vote|no}} to make the status of a proposed image more visible? --LordOfMaps (talk) 14:18, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, my first feeling is: no, because I think that the arguments should count more than an a simple pro/con. It is not really a democracy here anyway. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 00:48, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Once more. ;-) Comments e.g. at Featured_image_proposals#basemap.at would be good. Thank you all for your help! --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 17:34, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for external assessment of cppyright allegations

There have been a number of claims made here recently that images submitted here infringe copyright. I am no longer confident that these claims are being made in sound judgement, that anyone who submits an image here can be reassured it is worth the effort and that the comment process is beneficial to featured images as a resource to be redistributed (which I support). I therefore ask someone who ons what they are talking abouo assess these claims, preferably including images removed from the page.--Andrew (talk) 09:37, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean, however help with assessing the copyright status, as well as with the featured images in general is good. Do you mean that someone commenting here uses copyright arguments in order to try to prevent some not-liked images from being featured? As I myself made tries (IANAL …) to assess the copyright situation (e.g. there), I feel quite attacked if you mean it that way. Please be clear and open what you mean (use the front door instead of the backdoor …).

Please also note that we (at least I) are checking for copyright issues in relation with the free licensing. If you do a photo only for your personal use you will have usually less copyright restrictions which you need to care for.

What I think we should try to draft is some basic requirements list for Featured Images, so someone who wants to propose an image knows if it has a chance at all. This is an idea which I had since some time. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 11:49, 27 January 2014 (UTC), updated 13:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Draft Guidelines

It seems to me the work of recent months on images gives the basis for guidelines. Here's a rough attempt at doing so.

Preamble

Images of the Week are a way to showcase the multitude of uses to which OpenStreetMap data can be put and the actual collaborative nature of how data is collected and curated. Good images will be of interest both to the community and capable of being used elsewhere to support editorial or other pieces of media work about OpenStreetMap. Ideally images will not only have immediate impact, tell much of the story themselves, but they and the work they represent should be clearly licensed in a form which is reusable.

Types of Images

Historically images of the week have fallen into one (or more) of the following categories:

• Examples of mapping of particular areas or features (e.g., Berlin Zoo, Disneyworld, ). As OSM mapping matures this type of image is less likely to be seen as distinctive.
• Examples of mapping related to specific events (e.g., Sochi Winter Olympics, ). These are still popular images and garner significant attention and comment away from OSM.
• Use of OpenStreetMap data by external organisations in their daily work (e.g., footpath closure notice, Russian construction company, Spanish Police). These are of most interest when it is presumed the organisation also has access to official mapping, and the use of OSM reflects greater detail, accuracy or currentness (as in the examples listed). In these examples the story is in the use of OSM mapping.
• Art and Products (tablemats, OSM wallpaper, SoftCities etc). OSM map renders incorporated into any product including works of art.
• OSM Events (Mapping Parties, Hackdays, Conferences, Humanitarian Activations). It is fairly standard to have an image of attendees at larger OSM gatherings. Images taken indoors are perhaps less successful. Images with a good diversity of participants rate more highly than those without as they can help persuade people that OSM is not just for geeks. It is a good idea to inform people before taking a picture that you might want to submit it for IotW. Try and avoid images of several people looking at a single computer screen: it tends to look horribly posed and to date these have tended to reinforce gender stereotypes of who works the computer (see IotW passim).
• OSM Gadgetry (quadcopters, mapping apps etc).
• Analysis of OSM. Often in the context of how complete or accurate OSM can be. This often lends itself to colourful and appealing graphics. Often such images have three sub-stories: validation of OSM, use of OSM in other tools, and the analytical technique itself. Usually the first will have broadest appeal.
• Maps. Use of OSM to make paper-based maps (e.g., maps printed for Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, footpath maps).
• New cartography using OSM. Typically major new cartographic products within OSM should be showcased here (HOT layer) or specific experimental approaches to cartographic problems.
• Cake. OSM cakes must appear in IotW from time to time! This is an important tradition.

One aim is to ensure that the IotW is not too samey and that successive images are of different types. Images from known events ought to be planned in advance, with even some thought as to what kind of image is likely to maintain the variety. Such images can be held back when other events suggest something more topical, but may well be a useful buffer for the missing image on Monday problem.

Licensing

Ideally an image will be available either as one which can be used anywhere (aka PD, CC-0) or with a CC-BY-SA licence.

It helps to consider some other aspects of licensing to facilitate consensus on use of the image. A frequent issue is that a photograph may incorporate elements which themselves might have separate licence requirements. Again as ideal is that the licensing of such elements should be clear. Another ideal is that OSM data is used the OSM attribution statement is visible. Images clearly using OSM data but with incorrect attribution (such as when viewed using the Google Map API) will not be accepted as they deliver an ambiguous message about OSM attribution.

... tba. SK53 (talk) 22:45, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Draft Guidelines: Discussion

Thanks! This looks good and is a good addition to my more technical/process-oriented write-up above: #Optimum time line of IOTW discussion and decision. I will try to join in some weeks. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 12:12, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Review of the future of featured images

I am asking for opinions on the future direction of the image of the week. I have also posted this on the talk mailing list.

As has happened repeatedly recently, there is no image of the week well after it should have gone live and any suggestion at Featured image proposals is bombarded with criticism. I would like a discussion on where we go from here.

Do we want to keep the featured images?

Do you want to see a new picture promptly and reliably each Monday morning?

Should the image of the week get a higher profile? It used to be on the community blogs, for example.

Should the image of the week be a community project or should it answer to one of the working groups?

Does the process of selecting images need to be friendlier?

Should the image of the week continue to be maintained in the wiki or should it be maintained somewhere else and just be displayed there?

What would make you be willing to suggest an image, maintain the page or comment on the choice?

Are the suggested guidelines posted at #Draft_Guidelines helpful?

(not signed - by Wynndale (the one who signs with "Andrew") --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 00:06, 19 March 2014 (UTC))

And you, what are you doing? YOU are just bombarding the featured image proposals by criticism (and not even fulfilling your threats of legal expertise in the section above) but are not helping a bit yourself. Remember, those should be featured images – the best we have. Since I am one of the very few people commenting here, it seems you direct your critique towards me. I cannot help you, I think my comments are very useful. But your ranting is really not. Help, help by commenting. Why didn't YOU? Or do you only want to disrupt? By the way, your large list of discussion points is bad for discussion. Structure it. Make it own sections, if you really want to discuss the single questions. Otherwise this gets a very very unstructured discussion. Well, or you do not want a discussion but only want to disrupt, then it is good!

Due to recent events on the proposals page, but also influenced by your negative comments, I will not work in this hostile environment anymore. Have fun with all the selecting, prettying, …! --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 00:06, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Relax guys. We're all frustrated by the same problem. I think Wynndale's comment about "bombarded with criticism" comes across as harsh criticism of you Aseerel4c26, but really it's just one of several comments bunched together there. He's not just trying to be disruptive. You're enthusiastic about enforcing string copyright rules, and I appreciate that enthusiasm. It's actually very useful to know someone is watching the proposals and giving quick feedback about the problems, and very useful to know that we wont get something very poorly thought through added on there. Maybe there are ways you can alter your manners, or ways we can alter our rules, to make this seem more friendly and less like being "bombarded with criticism".

But in any case I actually think the real issue is a different one Wynndale mentioned there. "Should the image of the week get a higher profile? It used to be on the community blogs, for example"

Yes the wiki Main Page is now actually rather a backwater. it's three obscure clicks away from the openstreetmap.org front page. Up until recently it was one click away. But yes I have been meaning to start posting image of the week to blog.openstreetmap.org. Maybe I should do a round up of the first three months of 2014. How about that? The other thing is we could post images to the facebook group, to twitter and (a new one I recently registered 'OpenStreetMap' for) Pinterest. CWG (me) needs to figure out how to get some new trustworthy people involved in managing those channels. That's a job I've been dragging my heels on. Sorry

-- Harry Wood (talk) 01:51, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

You call it "harsh", I call it direct, straight, and without clutter to the point (regarding the issue in question), while still always being grateful for any suggestion! I could add three "could", "maybe" and "would" and a dozen smileys, yes, sure. No, I do not plan this. However, thanks for the bit of appreciation, Harry, at least one(!).
Yes, the featured images really should be in the blogs; as the Wochennotiz is (and I do not care about those third party non-free/open/privacy "social" networks)! And, yes, the website redesign is …. Enough now – the issue of no structured, aim-targeted discussion remains. --Aseerel4c26 (talk) 02:19, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Parked proposals

We have some proposals which we are rejecting, and then some which we are rejecting unless we hear back (Including two where Mapbox is failing help out by commenting here) In the past I've given some warning and then outright deleted them after a while, but maybe we should have an "parked" proposals page and move them there.

That way we can go back to them if we're desperate or if we're hoping people come and resolve the problems.

The main benefit though, will be to empty out this page a bit, so that it's clearer that we need people add new proposals here

-- Harry Wood (talk) 17:08, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

OK I've created a new Parked image proposals page -- Harry Wood (talk) 13:57, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Ordering of translations

In the Iotw text templages, the comment instructs us to "add languages before the text in English". However, the translations typically seem to be placed below the English text instead. So what's the best practice here? Is there a technical reason to prefer one or the other? --Tordanik 10:02, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Someone went through adding {{LangSwitch}} to the templates and the change of order appears to be related to that. But the use of langSwitch is actually a very bad idea; there is a stream of bogus languages in featured Images/Jul-Sep 2017 and the previous archives with full sets of 13 images are too big to display. It may even be best to simply revert the changes completely.--Andrew (talk) 13:27, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

An update: I have removed {{LangSwitch}} from the descriptions between April and June and the order seems not to matter. --Andrew (talk) 18:12, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

LangSwitch worked before, but a recent update of Mediawiki 1.28 (installed on this wiki in early June) caused it to break severely (the template expansion cache is no longer working properly), and I have passed a long time trying to fix what was causing it to break (but still avoid breaking the various pages using older templates or translation methods).

With #switch, there's another problem where fallbacks don't work, so there's no caption displayed (and using #default does not solve it correctly).

I'm testing another way to restore LangSwitch with fallbacks (and still disable it when listing all languages... only in image description pages, but not in lists of images where this explodes the parser and causes it to fail, or be now extremely long to render: now the lists only list English and one translation only). With this change the specific format for English (using a #if:trimenglish) will no longer be necessary (I've seen frequently people being confused by it): LangSwitch has another way to ignore fallbacks if needed.

The order of languages parameters does not really matter, it's just easier and cleaner to keep languages sorted by code.

In summary LangSwitch was correct (no bug in LangSwitch even if I have not optimized it a bit to save some server resources with this version of MediaWiki which much more costly than before and still has severe unsolved bugs, some of them having no workaround for now). — Verdy_p ^(talk) 01:19, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

The death of OpenStreetMap featured images?

The weekly "Featured Image" was a longstanding tradition of OpenStreetMap, dating back to the early history of the project, but sadly, over a decade later, it is basically coming to an end in 2020.

There has been decreased interest in the weekly featured images. A pesimist might worry that this is realated to general decline of the OSM community, or perhaps just that old community of wiki-editing enthusiasts with an overlap between OSM and wikipedia. But I believe it's more due to the less prominent place of the wiki in the navigation of OpenStreetMap.org. It is now a backwater, three obscure clicks away from the openstreetmap.org front page, where for long time it was only one click away. Also there was a nice redesign of Main Page, but it put the featured image below the fold.

In any case, the result of that is that is there's been less interest in proposing featured images. Where once it was a matter of choosing between a handful of competing proposals each week, we now need to go out in search of images and ask for permission to use them here, which is lot more hard work.

And when I say "we" I mean "I". The wiki-based set-up of featured images has allowed for efforts to be very collaborative. Potentially different people can help in different ways: Scouting for nice images, asking people for license permissions, uploading, editing, writing captions, selecting an image each week, and editing the templates to put the image in place. Anyone can help do these things. We can do it as a team, and people can increase/decrease their involvement. But in reality it has just been me driving it for years, with just small bits of help. In the early years before me User:Ojw was leading things (when I joined in to help and he quickly stepped away from it, I always wondered if he was feeling resentful in some way, but now I see he was probably just relieved to hand it over). Despite the potential for collaboration, maybe these things only work with one person sustaining their effort. So I guess that's a warning to anyone who wants to step up and resurrect featured images. You'll need to not only take the lead, but pretty much do it all yourself.

But I don't see anyone stepping up anyway. I stopped doing anything here back in May, as an experiment to see who would miss it, and there's not a great deal of evidence that anyone cares that much. Someone complained about broken images. Talk:Main_Page#"Image of the week" is broken. A couple of nice new proposals came in on here, but nobody did anything with them. OK I tidied them up just now, but I'm not going to put them as featured image. I plan to label this whole thing as coming to an end.

-- Harry Wood (talk) 00:21, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

First, thank you for running IotW for so long. It's been very handy for me as source of images for presentations and slideshows, and on the occasions when my work was featured here years ago, it absolutely made my week! :)

The comparatively low visibility is probably a major reason for the lack of interest. Even people who get a lot of mileage out of the wiki don't have much of a reason to regularly visit Main Page – there are now better places to get updated on OSM news (WeeklyOSM, the various discussion platforms) and arguably events (OSMCal, your local channels). So I tend to head straight for the software or tagging documentation I'm here for. And yeah, the fact that we almost completely hide our major platforms from osm.org doesn't help either. As a result of all this, I suspect that the headline image in WeeklyOSM, for example, gets much more exposure than the IotW nowadays. So if someone wanted to revitalize IotW, my suggestion would be to prominently announce the week's selection beyond the wiki.

But revitalizing IotW would require one or more people passionate enough to take up the job of maintaining it, and I unfortunately agree that it doesn't look as if volunteers are forthcoming. I'd love to be proven wrong on that, though! --Tordanik 20:55, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

The students of our projects (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/EuYoutH_OSM#Image.28s.29_of_the_Week_-_euYoutH_OSM_representing_OpenStreetMap_on_the_main_wiki_page_for_one_week_.3B-.29) were always very proud when they were allowed to be "the face of OSM" for a whole week. It would be a great, great pity if this wonderful project were to be discontinued. Such IotW can not be published in weeklyOSM. Ending IotW would be a great loss for the community. We at weeklyOSM know how difficult it is to publish weekly news and to recruit staff accordingly. Dear Harry, we would be very happy if we could submit more pictures in the future, for example from our next meeting in Romania or Spain. weeklyOSM has also visited you from time to time and has put the pictures you have published to "secondary use". Maybe we should consider if we can work together somehow. As a community we should definitely keep the IotW. --fredao 22:17, 13 July 2020 (UTC)