Forum:Temporary forums/Overhauling image policies

So I felt I might be the best person to write an OP for this, since T:GTI was partially made in response to my own images uploaded to the wiki. Back in 2012, I used to upload images from VHS rips on YouTube of various oddities, and these ended up all over the site. Eventually, the head admin User:CzechOut made the page and featured several of my images as "bad examples" of images uploaded to the site.

Alongside this, we also have T:IUP, which is a less flashy list of basic rules about use. GTI and IUP are so similar that we should consider merging them into one simple guide. But more importantly, along side this, we need to question two things. A) should this new guide be written from scratch, and B) how many of these decade-old-rules still stand-up to scratch?

The main point of this debate is to state that A) these guides should be combined, b) the writing needs to be updated and newer images need to be found, and c) many of the rules in both T:GTI and T:IUP should be changed or retired.

Widescreen images
This was the favored practice of admins a decade ago, but isn't so in-vogue today. Basically the idea was that by cropping the top and bottom of images to look "widescreen" instead of 4:3, it would made the focus of the images more clear.

To me, this seems like something that might have seemed cool in 2011, but is just odd in 2023. It's my belief that since over 65% of televised Doctor Who stories were broadcast in 4:3, it should not be our official policy that we have to cut out details on the top and bottom just to make it look more slick. The cropping on our files, in my opinion, should correlate to whatever looks best and gives an accurate view of the story itself.

TURN LEFT
Okay, so this is a big one that might initially appear a little blasphemous. I've taken some graphic design courses since I started on this wiki, and I have never had someone repeat to me the rule about all images facing inside of the design. Like, I've never never never never had someone tell me "the person's face must never face away from the book's spine because then the reader will remember that reality exists and they'll close the book." Never.

So I do think it would be a good idea for this being our official preferred policy to be retired.

Color Comics
So this has been one of my big disagreements over the past decade with this guide is one of the main rules of the comics: "No colourisation allowed". Why is this disagreeable to me?

Well, let me put it like this. A few years ago, on a forum which sadly wasn't archived at all, we had a mini-debate about SPECIAL EDITIONS (The Five Doctors, Dalek Invasion of Earth, a bunch of stuff on The Collection, etc. And it was the concluding opinion of CzechOut (again, to my memory, since that era is gone) that it didn't matter. We, as a wiki, should count all episode editions as valid, and we should use whichever image looks best at a thumbnail level.

If this is the case, why do we ban the use of colorized comics? If a color comic, published officially, looks better at a thumbnail size that the black-and-white original, I think that's what should be used. This is also an impractical rule due to how obscure some first edition comics are.

For instance, I (as an American) collect old back-issues of TV Comic. Let me tell you that these issues are so rare and hard to get that it isn't even funny. And the reprints featured in Doctor Who Classic Comics are gorgeous and much easier to get a hold of, but according to our own rules they aren't good enough. If you don't have a hyper-obscure first-edition copy of some comic from 1965, you're out of luck because the reprint is banned.

Basically, I think this one needs thrown out immediatley.

Separate rules for out-of-universe images
This has come up recently in the edit history of the image used on Rafe Wallbank. Basically, some editors on this wiki believe that images used on out-of-universe pages should have separate rules from those on in-universe pages. That is, the basic standard for cropping and framing, and what sort of images we use.

I am inclined to agree with this position. Looking at Rafe's page, it is a little silly that he's framed like one of the main Doctors, and cropping it just hides extra details in the photo.

One Image Per Section
This is a rule I don't think used to be here, and I personally think it's not needed. This made sense back when we were combining of all of the Master's pages into one, meaning the page was the length of War and Peace and was likely to blue screen your laptop, but now that we're going back to trying to keep concepts separated, it should be up to editor's discretion how many illustrations make the page work better.

Allowing promotional images
So I thought I would include this one, since it's a rule we recently changed and I think it's generally been for the worse.

Basically, for characters who didn't otherwise have illustrations (audio/prose characters mostly) we used to allow promotional artwork, mainly the miniature comics printed in Doctor Who Magazine. But years ago, we had another debate in another unarchived forum, and one of the admins came to the decision that because "advertisements are not stories," we would discontinue this policy.

I think this has been a mistake, as do others, and I'd like to make this part of our official policy once-more.

File Size limit
Finally, comes the big one. File size limit. This has long been a struggle on this wiki, as we are requested to stick to a file size limit of 100kb, while also being asked to post images above 250px wide. Having to use third party software to compress images is a major pain and is not user-friendly.

At the end of the day, Fandom has a file size limit of 10MB. So if the company investing money into us don't have a 100kb file size limit, neither should we.