Template talk:Photograph/2012

Genesis

Several times lately I run into a problem of modifying {{Artwork}} to fit needs of large collections of photographs and it is not a good fit. So I created Template:Photograph which is meant to serve as basis for {{BArch-image}}, {{AAA-image}}, {{NYPL-image-full}}, {{City of Boston Archives photograph}} and possibly many others. It should also replace {{Information2}}. Some of the issues I am still unsure about:

• I changed {{Artwork}}' field name for "institution" parameter from "Current location" to "Institution" since it seem ambiguous. I am still not sure if "Institution" is the best. May be "Parent institution" or "Current owner"?
• not sure if all the fields related to artwork's make sense for photographs
• will probably need some sort of {{location|...}} for "camera coord" parameter
• might need "original description", "archive description" parameter for the descriptions copied from the original source.

--Jarekt (talk) 15:35, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks good (to me the major reason why we should have it in addition to {{Artwork}} is that it avoids the sometimes confusing "artist" field). I wonder also if we should have a "depicted something" that could apply to other things than locations (people, events etc.). We do not have good internationalization methods for that yet, but this template sounds like a good starting point to implement the oft-discussed use of some sort of tag system. --Zolo (talk) 16:20, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

To me the main difference from {{Artwork}} is "photographer" instead of "artist", "source" instead of "Source/Photographer" and "Institution" (or whatever will replace it) instead of "Current location". I am tired of always replacing those in templates derived from {{Artwork}}. --Jarekt (talk) 17:08, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes the "location" parameter is a mess but still there is a need for a place to support things like "collection" in {{AAA-image}}. I am not sure how we should do it. --Zolo (talk) 20:01, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I called it "department" - I am not sure it it is a good name but I do not want to call it "location" since it can be confused with {{Location}} and Depicted place. --Jarekt (talk) 02:02, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Original description

I do not know either how to best have an "original description parameter. What we need is a place for "info provided by someone else and that we should not change". But I do not see any word for that. 'External description' sounds weird, 'archival description' is probably too narrow. In the case of the Bundesarchiv we have an additioal problem, we should provide both the current description from the archives, and the original description provided when the photo was taken. --Zolo (talk) 09:42, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

"Original description" sounds good. But I think it should be next to the regular description only with the yellow warning about not changing it and possibility of being totally wrong, biased, etc. I also feel like for Bundesarchiv we should keep all the original descriptions in a single field, Kind of how it is done right now, except for splitting it from user provided descriptions. I feel that it is important to mark what came from the museum and what is user description, especially when they say something totally different. --Jarekt (talk) 02:33, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I wander where to place "Original description" for many collections it is going to be the only descriptions. So it should be towards the top. I also do not want to break the block of other descriptions, so may be very top? --Jarekt (talk) 03:02, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I had moved it toward "institution" because I found it kind of odd to have "original description" without mentioning where the image came from. But all in all toward the top is better, we just need to make the yellow box explicit about what "original" mean.

I would say we should put it between "title" and "description", as the title is also "original" (at least not made up by Commons user). --Zolo (talk) 06:38, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Original description (2d part)

(moved from Template talk:Inaccurate description)

I find the current text, compared to the old one, too short. I don't care a lot about the layout or the technical details, but the text should be accurate and descriptive. I suggest to use the following (english) text: For documentary purposes the original image captions are retained. However, they may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Factual corrections and alternative descriptions are encouraged separately from the original description. --PaterMcFly (talk) 05:59, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

{{BArch-image}} has retained "For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme." Now it adds "This description has been identified as biased or incorrect: {{{reason}}}" when the biased parameter is filled. Before that it just changed color from yellow to pink, which frankly was not understandable unless you have a look at the template code or spend some time comparing images using the template.

What is missing in {{BArch-image}} is "Factual corrections and alternative descriptions are encouraged separately from the original description. ". If that is needed it can be added, but I would rather not, as longer texts are less likely to be read, and I think the current text is already clear.

I infer you had not seen that the current template had retained the "erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme.", so maybe it needs to be made more visible. I guess the simplest solution would be to change the message's color. It could retain the old yellow, but I do not think it looks very good. Or maybe no color at all, like this ? I think it looks better but I am not sure it makes the text more conspicuous.

In any case I think these should be changes to {{Photograph}} or {{BArch-image}}, not to {{Inaccurate description}}, as this template is designed to be short and unspecific so that it can be used in as many templates as possible. --Zolo (talk) 07:19, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh, some good points you put up there. For the color, I don't know. Yellow is something that really attracts the reader, as there are a lot of boxes here on commons so that people don't read them... The current one with red border is also an option. I indeed didn't see that {{BArch-image}} kept the first part of the text. I was actually expecting {{Inaccurate description}} to be used on all images with original descriptions, not only on those that indeed are inaccurate (which was the case for the old template). I guess it would simplify the handling of possibly biased content (also by other sources) a bit if this was put into one template. Maybe name it {{Archieved original description|optional reason for identified bias}}? That would do both parts that are now combined in the {{BArch-image}} template into one.--PaterMcFly (talk) 08:37, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

There is a "original description info" in the template, that is left empty by default (but the field is called original description:

Original caption

This description has been identified as biased or incorrect: No way, he was pathetic. This is our great hero!

{{Inaccurate description}} can also be used through {{Original caption}} used here

I agree that it does not look completely satisfactory. But I cannot think of any good solution (though I would tend to find it better to have the red-bordered box below the description than above). Yes I think we can have {{Archived original description}}. It will not always be suited to all kinds of files (eg the identification of a bird in an old book can be inaccurate, but mentionning "political extremeness" will sound rather odd), so I am wondering if it adds much value compared to the simple "original caption" header in the margin.

About the look, I have tried to make {{BArch-image}} look as simple as possible so that we are not disrupted by too many things, but yes yellow would still be more visible. However I am not quite sure that it needs to be made too conspicuous. In a way, for most readers, the most important part should be the "wiki description", as it should be the accurate one (and of course is more useful for thos who do not speak the language of the original description).--Zolo (talk) 09:34, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

The question is probably, how big the risk is that a) People missunderstand the original description to be accurate when it's not b) People edit and "fix" that description or delete it because it is inaccurate.

I for myself find the original descriptions interesting, as they are (in the case of the BArch images) a good example of Nazi propaganda in those days. People should be encouraged to write adequate wiki descriptions first (by far not all of the BArch images have them yet). Of course, this mostly needs german speakers.

I personally find the layout of {{BArch-image}} kind of dificult to read, because it has at least 3 different descriptions which look very similar on a first glance. Maybe we can add a bit of formatting or coloring to the layout of that template? And I guess, since the wiki description should be the most important for the users, it should be first. --PaterMcFly (talk) 11:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes I agree that it may not be immediately clear (though I hope it is a bit easier than the previous template that I found really hard to understand). In most cases there is no "archive description", which makes things easier. Moving things around a bit might makes things better, but I cannot thing of a perfect solution. As the archives point out, it makes more sense to to keep all things added by the archives around the same place. If we move original description down, we should probably also move the title below the "wiki description". I am not sure it would look very good but maybe.

I am not too worried about users mistakenly modifying archive-provided texts. The description may not be completely clear~in read mode, but the page source code should be sufficiently clear. I think most people will understand they should not change a parameter called "original description". --Zolo (talk) 12:07, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I'd just put the wiki description on top, right below the title, so there is title-wiki desc-original description-archive description-depicted place.

Is there a bug in a template or is the text in here really mixed up? Here, the Archive description is biased, not the original description.--PaterMcFly (talk) 13:46, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

About your first point. I do not have strong opinion on that. But yes sometimes it loos better.

About your point 2. Actually neither {{BArch-description}} nor {{BArch-image}} have a way to indicate whether it is the "archive description" or the "original descripiption" that is biased. If that appears necessary, it can probably be added to the template. However, when the archive description is biased, it should be notfied to the archive, and once they fix it we should be able to get the non-biased description. The case of the original description is different in that the biased description should not be fixed, not even by the archives. So in most cases, it should male more sense to relate the "biased" parameter to the original description. --Zolo (talk) 16:47, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I've provided an error report. I first thought that something in our image description might have gone wrong, but it doesn't look like that, since the problem already was in the first version. --PaterMcFly (talk) 14:29, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

So the question is basically how to make the "original description" look better and clearer. Maybe we could use {{Quote}} to give it a distinctive look, see {{Photograph/sandbox}}

Another thing that may be a bit confusing is that translations of the original description are given in the main "description" field, along with additional info. It may be nice to have a "original description translation" parameter but I cannot think of any good way to render it. --Zolo (talk) 16:53, 3 July 2012 (UTC)+Zolo (talk) 18:03, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Identation might be a good idea, however I would not use {{Quote}}, because that adds quotation marks that might not be suitable sometimes. Is there something that idents without the quotes (but acting like a box anyway, just using ":" wouldn't work)?.

I'll try something on the sandbox about the translation. --PaterMcFly (talk) 12:44, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I do not think there is currently a template without quotation marks, but it could easily be created from {{Quote}}.--Zolo (talk) 12:48, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I'll try something later, but I'm a bit out of time at the moment. --PaterMcFly (talk) 18:37, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I used the sandbox to make a test with the (very simple) Invisible box. I think that could work. If later we want borders or color or whatever, only a single template would need changes. --PaterMcFly (talk) 18:35, 25 July 2012 (UTC)