Talk:Images of Rachel Corrie

See also: Talk:Rachel Corrie

Contents

1 Copyright status of Corrie images 1.1 Newer talk regarding copyright status 2 Deleted images 3 Removed images 4 What to do with additional photos 5 Why remove the images? 5.1 New Talk regarding keeping the additional photos 6 Graft's removal

Copyright status of Corrie images

One problem we on wikipedia have is that certain photos of Rachel have been widely reproduced by many sources, to the extent that it is unclear who owns the copyright, and whether they have or haven't allowed use under the GFDL.

Some possible sources of permission:

• ISM (http://www.palsolidarity.org/rachelphotos.htm) (Martin: GFDL permission requested on four seperate occasions - no response) (Lir - "permission granted", no details given)
• mitfah.org (http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=1866&CategoryId=23) (GFDL permission requested - no response)
• indymedia (http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/03/1583823.php) (GFDL permission requested - no response)
  • web site says "© 2000-2003 San Francisco IMC. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere.".
• Rafah Today (http://rafah.virtualactivism.org/rachel.htm) (GFDL permission requested - no response)
• BBS News (http://bbsnews.net/bbsnphotos/?album=%2FIsrael-Palestine&) (GFDL permission granted! - details)
• ©2003 The Evergreen State College (http://photoarchives.evergreen.edu/dcs/orders/Community-Interest/Rachel_Corrie_Memorial%20-Peace_Vigil/) (GFDL permission granted! - details)
• Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace (http://www.omjp.org/rachelphotos.html) (don't own copyright to any of them, but suggested emailing the family directly)
• Diamondback (http://www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback/archives/2003/03/18/cartoon.htm) (GFDL permission requested - no response)

Please add any other sources to the above.

Newer talk regarding copyright status

...

Deleted images

• Image:BabyNamedRachel.jpeg
  • Not GFDL, fair use claim dubious
  • Not particularly informative or useful
  • deleted.

• Image:Rach3.jpg
  • Image file corrupted.
  • Deleted.

• Image:Rachel fractured.jpeg
  • possible copyright violation
  • user:Peter Chamberlain, user:Susan Mason and user:Dietary Fibre (suspected pseudonyms of user:Lir) claim that Wikipedia's been given explicit permission. Also user:RachelCorrie.
  • No evidence for above claims of permission being granted, and ISM did not respond to email requests for confirmation.
  • The photo is from the International Solidarity Movement (photo by Joseph Smith), Reuters is using it with their permission.
  • When a Reuters photo is credited with (Reuters, Handout), which this photo is, that means that somebody (the ISM) had a press release and handed out photos to anybody that bothered to show up.
  • Key point: the photo is not used anywhere but on User:RachelCorrie, a personal vanity page. Not needed.
  • Deleted.

Removed images

• 
  • GFDL replacement available at Missing image
    Rachelcorrie07.jpg
    Image:Rachelcorrie07.jpg
    
    

What to do with additional photos

There were/are essentially three options available for the "photo montage":

1. Remove it completely
2. Keep it on Images of Rachel Corrie - seperate from the main article
3. Keep it on the bottom of Rachel Corrie
4. Merge some images into Rachel Corrie, possibly as media: links, remove others (selected)

The reasons for this are discussed below.

There is also the option of:

1. deleting Images of Rachel Corrie
2. keeping Images of Rachel Corrie as a contentless redirect to Rachel Corrie (selected)

Currently the article is a redirect - option two. Jtdirl argued passionately against this option, saying "redirecting it will still leave us with a pointless page. We have enough images on the main page". He later clarified this: "the issue here isn't the naming of the article, which could be solved by a redirect. The issue is the principle. There should not be a page like this". The refactorer (Martin) still doesn't understand, but hopes that the reader can figure it out or Jtdirl can clarify.

The arguments for keeping it as a redirect were made by Martin, who threatened "If a sysop deletes it I shall make use of my magical sysop powers to undelete it and then turn it into a redirect". His arguments were:

• Doesn't break links, bookmarks, use special sysop powers, etc (IE, the generic arguments from wikipedia:policy on deletion of pages)
• Allows the history to be viewed by people interested in seeing what the photos were and/or using them.

Why remove the images?

Most wikipedians who commented wished to remove the images. The dissenters were Martin, user:GrahamN, and the unlogged in user "~ender", who supported the second option. The third option was suggested relatively late in the day by user:Ed Poor.

Arguments for removing the page (attached signatures may not agree fully with the exact choice of words, but give the general flavour

• A page of images is a "shrine" that "canonises" Rachel Corrie - this makes it "POV propaganda"
  • Jtdirl, Zoe, Danny
• Many of the photos are pointless and "add no value" - we can do without them.
  • Jtdirl, F1lby, Eclecticology, mav, Jimbo Wales
• Some of the images are questionable from a copyright POV and should be removed
  • Martin, Jimbo Wales

Arguments for keeping the seperate page:

• reduces the number of photos on Rachel Corrie, as requested
  • Martin, "~ender", Pizza Puzzle

Arguments for keeping the photos somewhere:

• If there are too many photos here, that is because other articles have too few photos, not because this one has too many.
  • GrahamN, "~ender", Martin, Ed Poor, snoyes, Pizza Puzzle

Jtdirl felt that having many photos of Corrie made Wikipedia appear American-centric. Also, he noted that many other (more prominent people) have no photos at all, and none have a seperate "images" page. Similarly, RK asked "Why do we have zero photos for people murdered by Hamas, Hizbollah and Islamic Jihad terrorists?"

Martin argued that though Corrie was American her death had been reported around the world, including in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the UK. Besides lots of subjects have a vast level of detail - the only thing new here is that the detail is in the form of images, not text.

Zoe compared Corrie with the victims of 9/11, which many people wish to move to meta or the sep11.wiki. One issue with this comparison is that most 9/11 victim pages on wikipedia have no (occasionally one) photos. Also, most 9/11 victim pages are still on wikipedia and have not yet been moved (or have been moved but restored).

mav made a good point about how photos can express a point of view, in response to GrahamN's question "how can a photo be POV?". Mav stated:

If a person thinks the GW is a moron the can insert that POV in his article by choosing a picture of GW with a stupid look on his face. This image gives the impression that the man is an idiot. Or if a person thinks that the NATO bombing of during the Kosovo War was a war crime against Serbs they can insert that POV into the article by placing 20 photographs showing mangled bodies of Serbs in that article and fail to include a single picture of what the Serbs did to the Muslims. That is how POV can be slipped into an article. We really need a policy on this.

GrahamN felt that having lots of detail was good - "If we want to create a great encyclopaedia, we should welcome and encourage this kind of obsessive thoroughness". He also felt that problems with bias should be fixed by *adding* photos, not removing them. Martin agreed with the general point: that having extra photos reduces, not increases, bias.

Specific photos: Two halves pointed out that the photo of Rania Noureddine and her child was not actually a photo of Rachel Corrie - at best it was a photo related to Rachel Corrie. whkoh felt that the head shots of Rachel Corrie should be removed because they do not facilitate understanding of the article. Jtdirl felt that we needed precisely one such photo. Martin felt that having a variety of photos of Corrie made the article more balanced, not less, by showing her both happy, and more sombre.

Ed Poor felt the photos should go to the bottom of the Rachel Corrie article, saying "I actually think they look good there! And they don't interfere with the reading of the article".

The article was listed on wikipedia:votes for deletion. Because he felt that it should be redirected, and because there had been no response to this detail, Martin later removed it from VfD. He subsequently apologised for removing the article from VfD without also redirecting the page, given that (including mailing list comments) there was consensus for removing the images.

New Talk regarding keeping the additional photos

I don't care how many pictures there are, as long is the images don't get in the way of the text. Put them at the bottom of the page. --Uncle Ed 22:33 Apr 8, 2003 (UTC)

user:Zoe deleted the "photo montage". I think this should stay. The photos of Rachel balance the photo of her at the top of the article. The photo of the well balances the photo of the flag burning. The photos on the day balance the similar photos in the article text. The photo of the Olympia memorial balances the photo of the Palestinian memorial. Martin

I'm glad the photo montage was dumped. It remains ludicrously OTT and because of the sheer number editorialising the article. This woman was only at most a minor footnote of an American who got killed. Where are the photomontages of others? It is only because she was a blond blue eyed middle class American that makes her seem important. If she was simply a Palestinian or from anywhere she wouldn't be canonised this way. STÓD/ÉÍRE 17

54 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

I'm remaing silent on most of your "balance" statements above except for the one about the Olympia memorial balancing the Palestinian memorial. Since both of these are "pro-corrie" photos, I don't see how they balance each other instead of reinforcing each other. Balance would be achieved by showing an anti-corrie image. -º¡º

I was thinking of balancing reaction in different places, to reduce concerns of being Palestine-centric or US-centric. But you raise a good point. Obviously, there weren't vast numbers of "anti-corrie" pictures, but one image that does spring to mind is the definition of stupidity (http://www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback/archives/2003/03/18/cartoon.html) cartoon by Daniel Friedman. I'll see if I can get it released under the GFDL. Martin

That cartoon was in the back of my mind as a possible balance, but I suppose strictly speaking the balance to that would just be another cartoon (http://www.danzigercartoons.com/cmp/2003/danziger1600.html). -º¡º

Why were the photos deleted? Peter Chamberlain

Zoe removed them because they most of them were pointless and irrelevant to the article. A serious encyclopædia uses images to augment a page, highlight the narrative or inform and contextualise. What encyclopædias don't do is plonk a range of irrelevant images at the bottom of a page. Images should be included within the page, not put at the bottom as a form of shrine. That seriously POV's a page by suggesting approval for the person the page is about and the cause she was involved in. Whether or not we might personally agree is irrelevant. This page is about facts, not glorification. One facial shot and some of the incident are all that are needed to provide a readable, visually attractive, reader-friendly encyclopædic article on Rachel Corrie. For example, one of the pictures was of Rachel in Gaza. What was the relevance of the image? We know she was in Gaza. The shot didn't show her in Gaza, just showed a face shot of her. What was it telling us? That she was a woman? We know that. That she was blonde, white and good-looking? We know that too from an earlier shot. The image contained nothing special to warrant its inclusion.

Any professionally edited encyclopædia (and that is what Wikipedia says it is) would not carry such a shot, because it would carried no information that was not already there. It would be culled. So would most of the 'photo montage' images, which wouldn't make it past the first page layout in a credible encyclopædia. They belong on a Rachel Corrie site, which can be promotional and POV and so can carry as many images as it wants. But this isn't a promotional POV site, it is a NPOV encyclopædia, which means we cannot carry every image just because we feel it looks nice. Images if used too heavily, or if not directly factually irrelevant to the article, can unbalance an article's neutrality, by leaving the reader with the impression "well obviously she was important if this encyclopædia gives her so much detailed coverage." Our articles by definition must NEVER do that, simply present people with the facts. ÉÍREman 04:38 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

Im not sure I understand what harm can be caused by allowing this photos to remain? These are just photos, not promotions or POVs. I suppose I disagree that the quantity of images unbalances the site. Peter Chamberlain

If they are relevant then there is no problem other than the need to consult a visually attractive page. But if off message (ie, not strictly and unambiguously relevant) they suggest to the reader that the author of the page really wants to put them in, and that poses the question why? Is there an agenda? For example, if you picked up a magazine that had an article on George Bush and which carried a host of 'personality' photographs that aren't strictly relevant to the piece (George Bush smiling to camera, George Bush in London smiling to camera, George Bush in Belfast smiling to camera, etc) you'd get the subliminal message that George Bush is (a) a nice guy, (b) popular all around the world. But if you in an article on the US plant pictures of the US flag being burned in Berlin, Rome, Dublin, Baghdad, etc you'd be sending a different message. An NPOV article needs to be careful that all articles are (i) relevant, (ii) not repetitive, unless they contain some new fact. The photomontage contained two headshots of Rachel. Why? An earlier image in the picture showed us what she looked like. It showed her after being knocked down - that is relevant, if not already covered. One of her hours earlier with a megaphone. Yes it is relevant, if we don't already have one earlier. One of her at a well - so what? If her involvement in protecting wells is mentioned in the text, the image should be there. Plonked in a photomontage below the image is contextless and so irrelevant. It is the same as if we had an article of Mother Theresa, and we followed it with a photomontage of Mother Theresa with a child. MT with another child. MT looking saintly. MT in a generic photograph that was taken in Calcutta (even if it doesn't show that), another MT shot of she looking saintly, you'd say such a montage was OTT and propagandising and you would be right. It is all about a sense of balance and proportion and this article in the way it used the images was unbalanced and disproportional. Without a pointless image overload, it looks far better, far less propagandistic and so better able to do Rachel justice. ÉÍREman 04:59 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

Or, how about "one photo is enough. Two at max." q.v. Spanish moss or dragonfly for a way to have more than one included but not in a way that's excessive and takes too long to download. Koyaanis Qatsi

No, I would not feel a photomontage of Mother Theresa at Mother Theresa is propaganda. Both Theresa and Corrie deserve to have their photos displayed. I do not feel the photos here were irrelevant. You state that a picture of Corrie at a well is irrelevant, but seeing as how she was involved with protecting wells from destruction, it doesn't seem so inappropriate to me. If you feel it takes too long to download these, then move them to a seperate page. Peter Chamberlain

Peter, there was originally an Images of Rachel Corrie article, but it now redirects to this article.

--cprompt

I think if the text needs images, then as many as are needed. If an article needs a hell of a lot of images to highlight what it is about, I have no problem with that. The bottom line is revelancy. If it needs 5 and has 5 relevant photos, fine. But if it has 5, of which 4 are just there for padding, not to highlight anything, then kill them. I think wiki should use as many images as possible, but avoid irrelevant images and photo-montages. I have done some pages with a heck of a lot of images, but (and I can think of one article), every image is relevant in what it shows. I could have added more but didn't, because there would have been pointless repetition. If you have 10 relevant images, use them. If you only have one, that is fine. But no repetition for the sake of a cause you personally may believe in. Re the well image, if it is relevant it should be placed next to the place in the text that describes that. And bad as that photomontage was, it was 100 times better than the cringe-inducingly OTT page on its own. If that page ever makes a return, it will be put straight back onto the Votes for Deletion page. ÉÍREman 05:23 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

I'm still not clear on exactly why people are so keen to have a whole gallery for this one article, when we have thousands of articles with no illustrations at all? It really does strike me as a subtle attempt to slant wikipedia towards a particular POV; lots of pictures of poor Rachel being victimized by the evil IDF (not that I'm a fan of the IDF, mind you), but very few for any other aspect of the conflict. For instance, do we have any pictures of the Jews that were disemboweled by Arabs in Hebron in the 1920s? I bet a few of the more graphic ones would get the anti-Israeli crowd fuming about "too many inappropriate pictures". What we've got now is a century of intense and complicated conflict illustrated by a dozen pictures of one person and an incident that happened a few weeks ago.

I wonder how this would play out if there were a "three-month" rule, where you couldn't add any info about current events until three months after they happened. This is supposed to be an encylopedia after all, not a newsmagazine. Stan 05:45 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

A three-month rule would be terrible, IMHO. We have the luxury of keeping on top of news items as they occur. It is very difficult to go back in time and piece it all together. Wikipedia is a living document. It is healthier for there to be an excess of information that must be fine-tuned and preened rather than not having enough information to work with. As time goes on, so too shall this article and all articles. More information may shed new light or create new connections. That is part of what wikipedia is all about. Or, interest in this topic may die out as other news items enter the fray. These debates are healthy for wikipedia. I'd like to modify your last sentence. Instead, I'd say...wikipedia is supposed to be an living and evolving encyclopedia, not a shrine. Shrines are terrific and important (see: September 11 Memorial Wiki), but this is not the place for one. I am personally against montages on wikipedia. As for this article, I think three images are fine: Rachelcorrie07.jpg, Rachelcorrie04.jpg, and Corrie-after-crushing.jpg. I also wonder why her quotes are so important. No offense, but those quotes are neither succinct nor eloquent. Kingturtle 06:07 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

---

Some responses:

"well obviously she was important if this encyclopædia gives her so much detailed coverage"

If anyone orders the importance of subjects according to wikipedia coverage, sie will come away with a highly distorted view of the world. For starters, poker, Atlas Shrugged, and 30,000 US towns and cities get very good coverage in wikipedia.

One of her at a well - so what? If her involvement in protecting wells is mentioned in the text, the image should be there.

So it was said, so it shall be done. I'm somewhat dissapointed at the if though - you did read the article, right?

It is the same as if we had an article of Mother Theresa, and we followed it with a photomontage

We have an article on Mother Theresa. I encourage you to add good GFDL photos to it. At the moment it has none.

Do we have any pictures of the Jews that were disemboweled by Arabs in Hebron in the 1920s? I bet a few of the more graphic ones would get the anti-Israeli crowd fuming about "too many inappropriate pictures".

I encourage you to add such an article, if there is not one already, and add good GFDL photos to it, if it does not already have them. Note that this article had only two semi-graphic photos (now has one), and they're both fairly bloodless.Martin

---

Clearly some people are afraid that this article reads like pro Palestinian propaganda. That is not the intent of the article and I for one think the article is NPOV as written. If you are afraid that it makes some Israelis look bad, just come out and say it instead of hinting at it. Then we can address your specific concerns if they are valid.

In other words: if an article about a dead Palestinian activist is less detailed than an article about a dead Israeli activist, that does not make the first article POV. The solution is not to reduce the amount of detail in the first article, but rather to increase the amount of detail in the second.

---

• delete this page: summarised above
• user page shrine: user talk:RachelCorrie
• Olga: User talk:Olga Bityerkokoff
• copyright status of an image: Image talk:Rachelcorriemar.jpg

Graft's removal

I removed the additional photos, and some in the body of the article. It was too much, really. Some people still use modems, damnit! Graft 03:12 26 May 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, these photos are all thumbnailed and in JPG format, and they're all ensconsed within <div> tags so that browsers should be able to layout the page without downloading the images. But hey, when I browse the web from a modem I turn off automatic image downloads anyway... :)

If you're really worried about modem users, perhaps you should direct your attention first to Erotic art in Pompeii? Martin 03:22 26 May 2003 (UTC)

The modem reference was a joke, of course, apologies for confusion. I think in the case of images, our principle should be minimalism. One could inject dozens of pictures into many articles, but why should we? What does it add to this article? The images of erotic art in pompeii are a different case, i think, because the article is -about- imagery, and the images say more than the article will ever be able to. This is hardly the case with the Rachel Corrie images. Is it really so important for people to have a picture of Rachel Corrie at burning man? Graft 03:53 26 May 2003 (UTC)

I disagree with Graft. Most of the images on this page are OK. Frankly I think pages should have as many images as possible, once they provide a useful source of information. Personally I think the top two in the additional images section are irrelevant and by being placed there even though they add nothing other than show RC in different poses risk POVing the article by making it appear that we hero-worship her to such an extent that any image of her is worthy of inclusion. But other than those two I think there is no problem and Graft was completely wrong to remove the images. The other images contextualise RC and so deserve inclusion. FearÉÍREANN 03:40 26 May 2003 (UTC)

No, I think we should only include images when they add useful information - our purpose is to inform, after all, we are an encyclopedia. We would consider details like Rachel's favorite foods unworthy for inclusion (i hope) - shouldn't we have similar standards for images? Why include two post-bulldozer incidents? Should we have a "time-lapse"? Images are expensive - they take up space and bandwidth. They distract - and thus detract - from articles. Not to mention that four pictures in one article is unusually high for our biographical articles - why are we setting new precedents here? Graft 03:53 26 May 2003 (UTC)

This is not the New York TImes of 1850! Images properly laid out do not distract, they

• contextualise
• give a professional visual layout to a page which attracts the reader in the way a text-only page all too often repels.

A proper image can never detract from a page any more than proper headlines, proper layout, proper structure and professional style can detract from a page. And no, four pictures in one article is not "unusually high" for biographical articles. I was one of those who slated this page when it used far too many irrelevant images, creating the visual impression that this was a POV shrine to RC. But most of the images, bar two, are consistent with proper encyclopædic standards and professional layout and would be used by other encyclopædias. If an article has only two images and both are irrelevant then they should be removed. If however it has five, six or more relevant images then it should use them. BTW no modem user has ever said they had a problem with the number of images. I myself am on a very slow line (broadband it ain't!) but if the images are worth seeing and add to the contents of the article and the professionalism of its layout they are worth waiting the short time it will take for them to form.

Re the "new precedent", in the last few months, the use of images on wiki has rocketed, with a number of users joining who are professional layout artists or who have access to images that are not copyrighted. Most of the pages I have accessed tonight, for example, have images, one of them nine images, all relevant and all worth seeing. As I have said, I have been a severe critic of this page in the past, but it now for the most part has revelant well placed images, bar two which I do think should be removed because they are irrelevant. FearÉÍREANN 04:12 26 May 2003 (UTC)

10 images are way too many. This article looks like a shine with them and having them makes this page weigh in excess of 200 KB which means a user on a 56K modem will have to wait 40 seconds to load this page assuming they are using the full 5 KB/second allowed by law over US phone lines. However download speeds of 2-3 KB/sec are far more typical which means that dial-up users have to wait over a minute to download this page. And then there is the POV issue of how the excessive images unbalance this article by injecting sympathetic feelings into users. A picture says a thousand words... none of which we can make NPOV so we should limit these photos to a few that illustrate how she looked while alive and also how she died. That doesn't require 10 images. --mav 04:26 26 May 2003 (UTC)

Various news organisations have been heavily criticised by pro-Israeli groups for not showing the flag burning photo, and I was proud that Wikipedia was immune to this criticism. Now I find that we have opened ourselves up to this criticism, and the justification is to make the article more neutral! That seems utterly bizzare to me, I'm afraid. Martin

My issue isn't with any particular image but the set as a whole. With 10 images this page looks like a bizarre shrine that a stalker might have in his bedroom. Her protest of Israel is something we want to illustrate so I agree that that image is valid to have. So that leaves us with; one image to illustrate how she looked in life, one image to show her opposition to Israel (something I happen to sympathetic too, BTW), and one image showing how she died. Each of those images have encyclopedic merit and are not excessive by any means. --mav

I agree. That image is what I would regard as a "must be in. It contextualises RC and her politics. BTW I have a 56K modem and the last time I looked at the page with the full images, it uploaded in 14 seconds! The previous time (and I know it shouldn't have done it but somehow it did) it opened straight away. FearÉÍREANN 18:42 26 May 2003 (UTC)

OK. I have placed two photos back in that I think are relevant and encyclopedic. I've also distributed all the other photos onto the four different image pages and have added alt text to the displayed images in this article to point readers to the additional photos. As it is there is one photo for each section which is more than enough to illustrate 1) how Corrie looked in life, 2) What she did that set the stage for her being famous, 3) The incident that made her famous and 4) the reaction to the incident. The other photos just tend to add additional nuance to these four themes and therefore it is not necessary to display all of them at once. Just remember that we are an encyclopedia here so we try to get to the point and have the detailed stuff in daughter articles (in this case on separate image pages). --mav 19:41 26 May 2003 (UTC)

By the by, that's a US flag she's burning. She refused to burn the Israeli one.

I'm still not happy. The photo of her at a well should be left in because she spent considerably more time at wells than she did burning flags. Also, we definately need a photo of one of the bulldozers so that people have some idea of what these armoured bulldozers look like - this is vital if people are to properly comprehend the limitations of visibility faced by the IDF driver.

On a presentation note, the "click here" alt-text is just wrong for all kinds of reasons. Ick, ick, ick! Martin 20:01 26 May 2003 (UTC)

I never much cared for the alt text click here stuff either but there are only so many ways to indicate to a reader that, well, clicking on these particular images will bring them to a page with more images. I do like your solution to this; media links. I also replaced two images with one; one of the images showed the bulldozer, the other showed Corrie. So I replaced those with one image that showed both and then a combo of media and gallery links to take care of the other images. --mav 20:38 26 May 2003 (UTC)

You've just replaced two GFDL'd photos with a copyrighted photo. That's a considerable retrograde step, in my opinion, so I'll be reversing it.

I'll also be reinstating the Palestinian memorial. You say it's not necessary. I agree - the article can probably survive without it. But I'm not interested in what's necessary, I'm interested in what's ideal. I'm sorry to say this mav, but I totally resent you coming along and cutting swathes out of my work and effectively saying "sorry mate, it's a good article, but next time can you not try as hard?". I know that's not friendly, but it's how I feel. Martin

We've already gone over this and the outcome of the vote clearly favored "Many of the photos are pointless and "add no value" - we can do without them. " Too many images like this is, IMO, a violation of our NPOV policy since it emotionally unbalances an article. It also makes this article less accessible to users with slow modems and is visually distracting. Five images is way more than enough. Which ones are shown is a detail I'm not particularly concerned with. --mav

Since that discussion (vote?? there was no vote...) we've removed a few images, and moved other images to media:links, which is presumably why Jtdirl is now broadly supportive of the images in the article, where he was broadly opposed during past discussion. Regarding two specific points:

1. slow modems - Why aren't you complaining about, say, Erotic art in Pompeii? The use of images in this article has always been mild, with proper use of thumbnails and <div> tags to minimise inconvenience to modem users. Graft said that his modem reference was a joke, so it seems that you're the only person who seriously has this concern.
2. visually distracting - that's a matter of aesthetics, but I believe that most readers find images engaging, not distracting. You're the first person to make this complaint, certainly, while many people have said that they believe that the images look good: GrahamN, Ed Poor, Eloquence, and probably more if I look through the archives.

You've also mentioned NPOV concerns - but I'd like to get these two issues out of the way first, since they're new. Martin

Erotic art in Pompeii is a mess. Thumbnails are needed and the excess photos need to be moved. I'm also no longer omnipresent on Wikipedia and simply didn't know that this page had gotten out of hand. That page will require much more work than this one took though... How does the reference to Graft have any bearing on this? Facts are facts and the page as it was takes and average of a minute to download for most dial-up accounts in the US. Having too many images distracts the eye away from the text. Simple as that. --mav

Since these two complaints really aren't specific to this article, I suggest we take this discussion someone where else - probably to the manual of style or the image use policy talk pages. Martin

Hm. I find it interesting that relegating a non-free image to a media link is somehow more legal than displaying the image. A condition of our special use is to credit the copyright holder, no? Then how is a person supposed to see this credit when all we dispay is a media link? In this case the special use photo tells more of the story and is far better ; we have permission so lets use it correctly. If and when we "outlaw" special permission photos then we can deal with this issue then. --mav 21:14 26 May 2003 (UTC)

OIC, it is a supposed "fair use" photo. We really should at least get special permission. --mav

I've tried on a number of occasions, but the ISM are apparently too busy to read their email. You may wish to consider removing the media links to Image:Rachelcorrie01.jpg as well, which is also a copyrighted image. But I should mention this thread to user:Eloquence, since I recall him having opinions on the subject. Martin

Incidentally, this article is #5 on a google search for Rachel Corrie... Martin

That's great! --mav