Forum:Real world people for whom we have no picture

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Forums: Index > Wiki discussion > Real world people for whom we have no picture

So, as I'm sure you all know we have a lot of people who worked on the games who we do not have pictures of, leading to a lot of empty infobox image slots. Now, as it turns out we have no consensus or rule on how we tackle this. To my understanding we would usually add @hide, which completely removes the image row from the infobox. However this is not the case.

I would like to suggest we reach an agreement on how we handle this, so we can have standardization across the wiki more easily.

The way I see it we have three options:

Use @hide to remove the image section when being viewed as an article.
Do nothing and leave the "Upload Image" button.
Add a place holder image, which will be the same for all "real world" people we do not yet have images for.

None of these three options would lead to the removal of the "image needed" tag and this suggestion not extend to in game or mention only characters, but such a concept could be up for discussion if so wished.

Placeholder image[]

My personal preference is the third option, "add a place holder image". This would mean that instead of having no image space, or an image space with the "Upload image" button, it would have a picture that shows there is no specific image yet. This would allow pages to look less unfinished and allow for standardization, but still signal to users that we need an image for this person.

Here is a mock up of what it would look like using the default anon display picture, the image we use doesn't necessarily have to be this one, I believe it makes a good example. JASPER//"Do you like hurting other people?" 23:10, July 13, 2014 (UTC)

Energy X's suggestion[]

That is an interesting propostion. I think the further action should be done: add the anon picture (perhaps smaller), but for voice actors or any article that lacks an image to have caption:

Or, at least, something like it. Energy X 23:21, July 13, 2014 (UTC)

Sorry if I was unclear (I did originally write this with just devs in mind so it may still have that effect), I did intend that we apply this to all real world people who are missing an image (so including voice actors). I didn't think this needed to be applied to all pages (including non-humans or non-real world people), but would not object to such a suggestion. However, if we were to extend this to cover non-human articles too, the placeholder should be appropriate IMO.

I do like the note you've added below the image, though. JASPER//"Do you like hurting other people?" 23:27, July 13, 2014 (UTC)

Comments[]

I'd leave it as it is. Porter created that add image button for a reason, it has a good place there and is a user friendly button to add content. I'm not bothered by the appearance of it. Developer's image have reasonable chance to be found, someone just has to make a good effort in scouring the internet for them (unlike some VB and MO character which don't have an image for sure). So on these kind of pages the button can stay in my opinion. And this particular placeholder image you suggest doesn't look that well on a page. Jspoel 23:23, July 13, 2014 (UTC)

I agree that the anon placeholder is not the best choice, which is one of the reasons I want to bring this up for discussion, as someone may have a better suggestion. Personally, I don't like the button in the slightest and a note like X suggested would also serve to remind people they can upload a real image. JASPER//"Do you like hurting other people?"

23:33, July 13, 2014 (UTC)

I like X's option. Agent c (talk) 00:27, July 14, 2014 (UTC)

An interesting proposition:

I personally helped lead the stubs project, and learned to hate the real-world stubs, as I spent hours looking for information and pictures for those articles. It got to the point where I began using @hide, as well as removing the stub headers for real-world articles that only needed an image, and kept a personal directory in-case I could ever find images for them in the future. The reasons why I did this are two-fold: 1. Many developers and such do not have an image on the Internet that can be found publicly, even when they are listed. 2. Many developers and such have common names, and there were times where it became impossible for me to discern whether someone with the name was the correct person or not, short of sending them an E-Mail, and I simply refuse to spam messages out to random people.
This might be a better solution, but I always hated leaving that button there, as one of the reasons why we have such a huge real-world article stubs list, is because people were going through adding the stub header onto every page that had the upload button still visible in the info-box.
I do not like this at all. The only reason why we have placeholders on Van Buren articles is because those are the images used by the developers. Even by adding an anonymous placeholder, we are still being dishonest with the article content by having an image with no correlation with factual content we have pledged to cover here.

I personally still approve of @hide as our main solution until images are found. ^{Some Assembly Required!} 00:42, July 14, 2014 (UTC)

I too have tried a number of times to find pictures for these people, but have failed miserably. At best I can only find the person's linkedIn or IMBD, both of which are also missing the pictures, other than those anything I get back is someone else with the same name. I think we do need to accept that some of them will never have real pictures. JASPER//"Do you like hurting other people?"

13:25, July 14, 2014 (UTC)

A brother in suffering, I see... I am still disappointed with myself that I finished most of the stubs, but never got around to finishing the real-world stubs. But goddamn are they tedious with very little payout. I will be returning to active editing sometime soon (I hope), so maybe then I will find the time to sit down and power edit through those articles. Whatever decision you come up here, I will put towards my future work.

^{Some Assembly Required!} 13:28, July 14, 2014 (UTC)

These are some very interesting ideas that have been brought up; and we really do need to clarify how do deal with these imageless pages (for voice actors, developers etc.).

I think the @hide option is best as of right now. To me, the anonicon is a little too blurry when its size is blown up in the infobox. (Maybe it could be shrunken though, which could look nice.) I don't think leaving the "upload image" option is helpful. I wouldn't realistically expect that option to really bring someone -- especially a casual article reader -- to search for images of sometimes very obscure individuals.

I'm not a fan of the note; it's too "work in progress." Realistically we do need work done to get images. Still, we should find a balance between acknowledging that we need to improve a page and keeping the page completed enough to warrant encyclopedic value -- to be complete enough to look professional. To me, it's just too sloppy to have a big note announcing that a page needs major work; it takes away from encyclopedic value, especially when we can use the "image needed" template instead.

If anything, the "image needed" template should suffice because at least that would (1) keep things consistent for pages that need images and (2) look prettier than a bunch of text below the placeholder image. 69.l25 (talk) 01:47, July 14, 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the Anon image does look a tad blurry. If this was a case of choosing which image we would use (should we rule in favour of using a placeholder image) I would have made sure to have found one which looks higher quality, but I didn't want to spend ages trying to make it look HQ just to demonstrate the point. I agree with what you say about the "upload image" option. JASPER//"Do you like hurting other people?"

13:25, July 14, 2014 (UTC)

Added a new infobox, transparent and smaller icon. Looks better anyway than all that white. Jspoel

15:36, July 14, 2014 (UTC)

I had intended to have a transparent background, but when I did the "colour select" tool and deleted the white it left a thin white border around the icon. Thanks for uploading a transparent one, Js; looks much better like that. JASPER//"Do you like hurting other people?"

16:23, July 14, 2014 (UTC)

I know this may sound rather simpleton of me, but why not add the Nukapedia bottle cap as a place holder? I'm not a fan of the @hide as if we do manage to find something it won't get placed or people will forget about it.--Kingclyde (talk) 23:56, July 14, 2014 (UTC)

One similar idea I had was to black out the bottle cap and have a white question mark in the middle. The nukapedia bottle cap would certainly work better than the anon DP if we chose to apply place holder images to add pages, instead of just real world people. JASPER//"Do you like hurting other people?"

13:28, July 15, 2014 (UTC)

I would personally have no issue with that. Makes a lot more sense as a default placeholder.

^{Some Assembly Required!} 13:31, July 15, 2014 (UTC)

(←) I don't like the bottlecap. It's a bit amateuristic. I think the transparent, small anon icon is acceptable then. As is the current Upload image button in my opinion. Jspoel 16:35, July 15, 2014 (UTC)