User talk:Woods1630

Speedy deletion nomination of List of hard science fiction films

A tag has been placed on List of hard science fiction films, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing no content to the reader. Please note that external links, "See also" section, book reference, category tag, template tag, interwiki link, rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article don't count as content. Moreover, please add more verifiable sources, not only 3rd party sources. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content. You may wish to consider using a Wizard to help you create articles - see the Article Wizard.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you plan to expand the article, contest the deletion by clicking on the button that looks like this: which appears inside of the speedy deletion ({{db-...}}) tag (if no such tag exists, the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate). Doing so will take you to the talk page where you will find a pre-formatted place for you to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the article's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Rorshacma (talk) 20:11, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of List of hard science fiction films and television for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of hard science fiction films and television is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of hard science fiction films and television until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article.Rorshacma (talk) 22:12, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for Speedily Deleting the Defunct Article that I Mistakenly Created: 'List of Hard Science Fiction Films'

• Comment. Thank you, Rorshacma, for deleting my 'List of Hard Science Fiction Films'. I would have liked to have deleted it myself (or rather, to have renamed and re-linked it), but I didn't know how. It has been superseded by List of hard science fiction films and television. I appreciate your attention and help. Woods1630 (talk) 03:39, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

List of hard science fiction films and television AfD

Just wanted to give you a heads-up that it's considered improper to "vote" twice during AfDs by bolding conflicting decisions. You seem to have changed your mind to merging the article from keeping to merging the article. If that's the case, you should strike your vote by using the <strike>-tags. I've taken care of that for you this time, but just be mindful of that in the future.

Also, I'm not really sure people understand what you mean when you support "editing" the article. There's an extant problem with the use of the term "hard science fiction" in the article that's making it difficult for people to support keeping the article. You might want on trying to more concretely define what is meant by that by citing reliable sources, such as the ones found on the hard science fiction article. Right now, it appears be an arbitrary list of rules that might sound like it's hard science fiction-based, but it's not sourced to anything. Be well, I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 08:22, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

March 2019

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to Mary, mother of Jesus, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. If you only meant to make a test edit, please use the sandbox for that. Thank you. Favonian (talk) 15:41, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi Favonian,

Thank you for taking the time to write a response. Please bear with me as I walk through the path that led me to delete selected image references.

As it happens, I have been catching up on some reading in the New Testament. As part of that I looked up some figures on Wikipedia.

I have used Wikipedia before to look up Biblical and other ancient figures and I hadn’t noticed this portrait issue.

The first portrait that suddenly struck me as odd (three days ago) was of Herod the Great. Instead of an image from an coin or statue (which I thought might possibly exist, though I don’t know for certain) the portrait was “made up” centuries later.

What troubled me was that the noise-to-signal-ratio seemed infinite on a static image like this. It seem like a good image for a discussion of how ancient people are portrayed in art; however, it seemed a poor choice to begin a biographical article with a speculative or unintentionally misleading image of the article’s subject person.

It occurred to me that there are other modern and historical, probably historical, and possibly historical figures on Wikipedia without headshots. So it would not be strange for an article to lack a portrait.

It seemed more honest to omit a painting not-based-on-actual-observations-or-data and to accept the absence of information where there was none. “Here is a random oil painting from a random Renaissance artist using his imagination,” seemed a poor choice to me.

Some other articles do have a section focused on art that will discusses painting, particularly Renaissance (and sometimes anachronistic Renaissance) works and how the artists painted “man with beard” taking no particular action and assigned a ruler or saint’s name.

For the handful of image references that I eliminated, there were others that I did not remove because they were not portraits but attempts to depict particular events described in written sources. In those cases it seemed to me that there was merit in beginning the article with the picture—an artist’s depiction of a ruler and his army fighting a particular battle or a biblical figure distributing loaves and fishes or performing a baptism.

The problem with starting an article with “bearded man” is that it suggests that the subject of the article bore a resemblance to that particular bearded man.

One particular sort of depiction seemed egregious: paintings of the Apostle John or Apostle Matthew holding or writing in a book or other document in order to suggest that the apostles = the gospel authors John or “Matthew”. The articles on the apostles are pretty clear that the consensus of modern scholars is that the Johns and Matthews should not be confused. (The Bible that I am reading is the New American Bible of the Catholic Church, which does a good job mentioning modern views on the gospel writers John and Matthew versus the Apostles.)

Inspired by the “Wikipedia:Citation needed” page (“If the content is nonsense or is unlikely to be true, be bold and delete it!”), I felt comfortable deleting the references to the images rather than asking someone to address each particular one. In most cases I added a comment to suggest why I did what I did and for the last few I mentioned that the picture could be moved to a discussion on art. (In writing to you, it occurred to me that, in very rare cases, there might be other fact-based, content-rich sources for a initial portrait—a funerary mask or painted face panel from a Greco-Roman mummy or a reconstruction by National Geographic or similar; in very lucky circumstances, there could be DNA information about hair, skin, and eye color from Church relics or the remains of an Apostle—Wikipedia lists locations for some of the remains; to see how the owner of those remains looked when he or she was alive would be fascinating and less misleading than a purely speculative oil painting from about 500 years ago when there was less data and fewer research methods available to artists.)

Thanks again for writing thoughtfully. I do appreciate the time it took and I apologize for causing you grief. I hope you see that my aim was to retain facts by eliminating images not based on contemporary observations or portraits that were more misleading than informative. Take care.

Woods1630 (talk) 06:07, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

“Bearded man” or “mother and child”! :) Woods1630 (talk) 06:09, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Oops. The risk of recycling. “In writing to you...” should be “In writing to one other Wiki community member who also wrote me today....” Woods1630 (talk) 06:12, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Images of Biblical characters and figures from antiquity

You have been going through articles such as Moses, Abraham, Jesus, etc., removing the images and leaving edit summaries such as Deleted link to French _portrait_ executed 16+ centuries after the individual lived. Better to have no portrait than a fantastic one on the Moses article. Stop doing that. It isn't a "portrait", it is an illustration, of course no one knows what he or these other figures actually looked like, in a number of cases such as this one there is even doubt if there ever was such a person. That doesn't matter, we still illustrate WP articles with images, "fantastic" or not.Smeat75 (talk) 16:17, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi Smeat,

Thank you for taking the time to write a response. Please bear with me as I walk through the path that led me to delete selected image references.

As it happens, I have been catching up on some reading in the New Testament. As part of that I looked up one or two figures on Wikipedia.

I have used Wikipedia before to look up Biblical and other attention figures and I hadn’t noticed this issue.

The first portrait that suddenly struck me as odd (three days ago) was of Herod the Great. Instead of an image from an coin or statue (which I thought might possibly exist, though I don’t know for certain) the portrait was “made up” centuries later.

What troubled me was that the noise-to-signal-ratio seemed infinite on a static image like this. It seem like a good image for a discussion of how ancient people are portrayed in art; however, it seemed like a poor choice to have an initial false or unintentionally misleading image of the article’s subject person.

It occurred to me that there are other modern and historical, probably historical, and possibly historical figures on Wikipedia without headshots. So it would not be strange for an article to lack a portrait.

It seemed more honest to omit a painting not based on fact and to accept the absence of information where there was none. “Here is a random oil painting from a random Renaissance artist using his imagination,” seemed a poor choice to me.

Some other articles do have a section focused on art that will discusses painting, particularly Renaissance (and sometimes anachronistic Renaissance) works and how the artists painted “man with beard” and assigned a ruler or saint’s name.

For the handful of image references that I eliminated, there were others that I did not remove because they were not portraits but rather they were attempts to depict particular events described in written sources. In that case it seemed to me that there was merit in beginning the article with the picture—an artist’s depiction of a ruler and his army fighting a particular battle or an biblical figure distributing loaves and fishes.

The problem with starting an article with “bearded man” is that it suggests that the subject of the article bore a resemblance to that particular bearded man.

One particular sort of depiction seemed egregious: paintings of the Apostle John or Apostle Matthew holding or writing in a book or other document in order to suggest that the apostles = the gospel authors John or “Matthew”. The articles on the apostles are pretty clear that the consensus of modern scholars the Johns and Matthews should not be confused. (The Bible that I am reading is the New American Bible of the Catholic Church, which does a good job mentioning modern views on John and Matthew.)

Inspired by the “Wikipedia:Citation needed” page (“If the content is nonsense or is unlikely to be true, be bold and delete it!”), I felt comfortable deleting the references to the images rather than asking someone to address each particular one. In most cases I added a comment to suggest why I did what I did and for the last few I mentioned that the picture could be moved to a discussion on art. (In writing to you, it occurred to me that, in very rare cases, there might be other fact-based, content-rich sources for a portrait—a funerary mask or painted face panel from a Greco-Roman mummy or a reconstruction by National Geographic or similar; in very lucky circumstances, there could be DNA information about hair, skin, and eye color from say Church relics or the remains of an Apostle—Wikipedia lists locations for some of the remains; to see how the owner of those remains looked when he or she was alive would be fascinating and be less misleading than a purely speculative oil painting from about 500 years ago when there was less data available to artists.)

Thanks again for writing thoughtfully. I do appreciate the time it took and I apologize for causing you grief. I hope you see that my aim was to retain facts by eliminating images not based on contemporary observations or portraits that were more misleading than informative. Take care.

Woods1630 (talk) 05:56, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

“Other ancient figures”. Ugh. Sorry about the typos. Woods1630 (talk) 05:57, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Current WP-thinking: Lead images should be natural and appropriate representations of the topic; they should not only illustrate the topic specifically, but also be the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:43, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

BTW, as long as no one has replied, it's ok to edit your edit your own comments (typos etc). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:06, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for both comments, Gråbergs. Woods1630 (talk) 16:21, 1 April 2019 (UTC)