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yes, they are allowed JoeBugMan (talk) 12:15, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
As the creator we understand you like them but I'm looking for a policy base argument either way. Are these recreations of actual images?Moxy🍁 12:44, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
"We"? What are you, the queen? JoeBugMan (talk) 12:53, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
They are based off of several images, as I did not have the person sitting in front of me for a portrait, but they are my own creation, not a direct recreation of an image. JoeBugMan (talk) 12:56, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
They are being removed by multiple editors because of concerns that their AI generated and or user created resulting in a Caricature type image. I think they are great just a very odd addition to Wikipedia to have cartoon type images in place of real images. Must understand this has nothing to do with your artistic ability but related to the representation of real individuals. Moxy🍁 13:15, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
At least one of these images is a direct derivative of a copyrighted image (see discussion on Commons). I haven't had time to examine more, and the derivative status is a Commons consideration, not an en-wiki consideration, but I wanted to place on the record here that the statement based off of several images is not true for all these creations. Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:04, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Fair enough, I am willing to voluntarily remove any that people feel is too close to copyrighted material JoeBugMan (talk) 14:06, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
The challenge is that you told us above that they weren't copies of individual images. I found one that was. Now editors on Commons will not be able to trust your assertion that this material isn't copyright-infringing. Can you see how that makes things more time-consuming for the volunteers here and why that might make people skeptical of using these images? I seem to be one of the only people who was open to the use of these kinds of images and now I am no longer supportive considering the problems of potential copyright infringement here in addition to the BLPIMAGE issues discussed below. Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:11, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
I'm willing to remove any images if people make a case that they are too close to existing photos, but I stand by my assertion that they are not derivative work and that up until placing them in the public domain, I held the copyright. JoeBugMan (talk) 14:15, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Outside the wider discussion issue of using digital drawings, it's clear this individual is effectively drawing people from previously published photos and videos and presenting themselves as the copyright holder which likely isn't acceptable under copyright grounds. Rambling Rambler (talk) 20:26, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
Of those displayed above I have also now reported a second as it's a drawing based on a photograph hosted at Getty Images (see Commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/File:BruceHelford.png). Think all the photos displayed above should probably be removed from this discussion as I suspect all of them will be copyright violations. Rambling Rambler (talk) 21:09, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
This is from a conversation I had with Moxy:
Moxy: They are being removed by multiple editors because of concerns that their AI generated and or user created resulting in a Caricature type image. I think they are great just a very odd addition to Wikipedia to have cartoon type images in place of real images. Must understand this is has nothing to do with your artistic ability but related to the representation of real individuals. Moxy🍁 13:12, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Me (joebugman): First of all, they are not ai generated, as I have stated multiple times and I am willing to prove it. Second, they are not caricature type images by any definition, they are illustrations of the people. Third, they are not "in place" of a real image- no image (copyright free, that is) exists of these people, so I specifically created them and placed them in the public domain so that there would be an image that could be used without conflict.
I'm glad you like them, I want people to like them and I want people to know what these individuals look like without having to leave wikipedia and google them to find out if it's the person they were thinking of (as I have often been forced to do when browsing wikipedia, a favorite past time of mine)
Maybe this undertaking of mine was a bad idea, I just wanted to contribute in my own way, but it seems like people don't think it's appropriate. I never wanted to upset anyone, I just thought it would be good add an image where none existed and to correct anyone who thought I had generated them with AI- something I Definitely did not do and do not want people to think of me. JoeBugMan (talk) 13:33, 29 August 2025 (UTC) JoeBugMan (talk) 13:43, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, and I saw you targeted my additions for removal, even removing images from non-BLP- do you haver a justification for that or do you just like going on a power trip? JoeBugMan (talk) 13:25, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
They're not ai generated- they are made by me, a real artist, and I can prove I drew them if anyone is interested. Do you have any other reason for objection? JoeBugMan (talk) 13:32, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Yes we do I stated above.... that is concerned about the representation of real individuals with a caricature. Moxy🍁 13:40, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Accepting in good faith the image creator's statement that they are not AI-generated, I don't have a general objection to user-generated digital illustrations in any of these BLPs. However, several of these creations (, , , , ) are quite unflattering and in the case of living people might be considered to WP:BLPIMAGE's prohibition on the use of images out of context to present a person in a false or disparaging light. I also think the background colors are quite jarring and that the images would fit in better to the pages if the background colors were more neutral. That said, @JoeBugMan, you are not doing yourself any favors by re-inserting these images after multiplewarnings about the WP:BRD cycle and accusing others of going on a power trip. Dclemens1971 (talk) 13:38, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
I don't think the images being unflattering (which is a subjective opinion) is valid reason for removal of a picture- multiple pages of BLPs use photos that are unflattering (e.g. candid shot from a press junket), but they are not targeted for removal. Additionally, there are multiple biography pages that use an illustration, even though they lived in a time when cameras were prevalent,- should these also be taken down? Concerning the subjects not finding them flattering- If any of the people I have depicted do not like my drawings, I have no issue with them taking them down, I only request that they give me a chance to edit/redraw the image to their liking.
As for not doing myself favors, I stand by my accusation of ScottishFinnishRadish- he undid ALL the image additions I made on the grounds that they weren't fit for BLPs and he did this even on biographies of deceased people- Which seems underhanded to me, if not a direct violation.
With that said, I only wanted to contribute in a way that fit my abilities- I did not think this would cause so many problems. If the general consensus here is that I am not welcome then I will leave, no hard feelings. JoeBugMan (talk) 14:02, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Right, but an unflattering photo is still a photo that we can be confident is a real image of the person. We can't have confidence that an unflattering drawing is sufficiently accurate for encyclopedic use (and we are not generally supposed to use unflattering images for BLPs, period). Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:07, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Can you direct me to the section in BLP discussions rregarding unflattering images? JoeBugMan (talk) 14:09, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
If anyone else has a better memory than me, I have a memory of a previous RfC which found consensus against original artistic portraits but can't remember the name and can't find it off-hand. I do recall it covered both living and historical figures. CMD (talk) 13:48, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
I searched BLPN, but drawing (conclusions) and painting (with a broad brush) aren't helpful search terms in archives that large. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:34, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for having a second look. I vaguely recall there may have been some initiative to draw pictures of historical figures that don't have one, and a West African monarch was either part of those drawings or an example used in the discussion. CMD (talk) 15:10, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
The two key things to consider is 1) are any of the images too close to an existing, copyrighted photo of the person? If so, even with small artistic flairs, that would make them derivative works and no longer free images. and 2) if they are considered reasonably fair images of the people in question. In this case, while most seem reasonable, the first and fifth to me seem unflattering, but that's my personal opinion; editors on the respective pages should make that decision if the derivative work question is answered. Masem (t) 13:54, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
If there is anyone who objects to the look of my drawings (quality level, closeness to the subject, etc.) please let me know- I am willing to rework drawings to get them to a better level JoeBugMan (talk) 14:04, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
I'm guessing partially based on the unflattering expressions that the key source for most of these portraits is still frames from video. Like Masem says without seeing the original copyrighted works these were based on it's hard to determine if they're too derivative. But beyond that, the question is "are any of these images good?" and I'd generally say no. I certainly wouldn't want them representing me versus no photo at all if it were my biography. There's always a question of when it's better to have a bad free image than no image at all (witness the debates about terrible blurry screenshots of people from a distance or at events and whether or not that's worth adding) but to me these just don't meet the threshold here. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchstalk 15:20, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
If that's the consensus, that these images look bad and it would be better to have no image at all, then fine, I will stop making images JoeBugMan (talk) 15:27, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
derivative work from copyrighted images aside, it’s also opening a Pandora’s box of whether the artist is using Wikipedia to do promotional of their art and art style.
it also is concerning that artist in question appears to be bludgeoning the discussion. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 15:27, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
I don't know what you mean by 'bludgeoning the discussion', I'm just trying to defend myself. JoeBugMan (talk) 15:32, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
By their own admissions, they are WP:NOTHERE to build an encyclopedia, and are here for art. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 15:33, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
I recall a previous discussion but don't remember it forming any consensus. We have lots of awful photos, for example, many taken by Wikipedians or Commoners. Bluethricecreamman, do we complain when photographers donate their photos to Commons and do no editing/writing beyond adding their photos to articles? Are they also WP:NOTHERE?
I don't think Samuel JohnsonSamuel Johnson Samuel Johnson's lead image (top) is at all flattering, is quite blurry and makes him look jaundiced. The second here, shows Johnson's poor eyesight and apparently he hated it. But they are what we have, and nobody is saying they'd rather have no image than an unflattering blurry one.
We do seem to invent rules for Wikipedian-created-images that we don't apply to professionally created or other third party works, or to photos. Which to me seems odd for a project that exists for complete amateurs to write entire articles of their own dreadful prose. Most medical articles make one want to stick pins in ones eyes than read beyond the lead but we don't react to that by saying that we'd rather have no article on Tirzepatide than one so badly assembled?
Issues of copyright and whether the image is representative are important for all works, and issues with derivative works are unique to images created from others. But otherwise, could people please first think, would I be making this complaint about a historical work like Johnson's, or accusing a photographer of being here for their own ego rather than helping build the encyclopaedia with images too.
WP:BITE anyone? Accusing an editor of "bludgeoning the discussion" when the discussion is entirely about their own creations that hostile editors want to wipe from the project and 100% remove all their contributions is unfair and I think deserves an apology. Do you think if someone said that e.g. Bluethricecreamman's prose (I'm making this up) is so awful that we must remove all their edits from the project, then Bluethricecreamman might participate at an elevated level in that discussion?
How can we guide this volunteer to creating better images, rather than, at present, make them want to leave. -- Colin°Talk 15:42, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Written prose can be iterated on communally. A piece of art cannot.
we are an encyclopedia not an amateur art gallery. And I never proposed a rule that art can never be used.
also read that diff, the newbie is here only for their own art. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 15:54, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
There are lots of photographers on Commons who turn up at Wikipedia only for their own art, not for writing prose. They want their photos in the leads and showing up on google searches and even go as far as inserting their names into the filename. And yet I would guess this is the first time you have suggested that someone contributing images they made themselves to the encyclopaedia, and admitting to not wishing to be involved in the prose part of that, is WP:NOTHERE. I can think of several photographers for whom ego (in the form of little gold stars) is the entire driving force behind their contributions, and yet AFAIK, we do not have a "Delete per WP:EGO" policy when it comes to photography. Or SVG diagrams. But go freehand, or draw or paint a picture of a person, and suddenly "rules are invented": "Written prose can be iterated on communally. A piece of art cannot."
Photographs, diagrams and videos can also not be iterated on communally. We have no image format that permits this. I wrote about the problem of long-form-article-replacement videos at WP:NOTYOUTUBE. So I'm aware they are not collaboratively edited. But Wikipedia regards images as part of the encyclopaedia and our project would be worse without them. We accept that images are not collaboratively edited. We accept that photographers are often here only to insert their own art. Why invent rules when someone paints a picture of a person and that someone isn't Joshua Reynolds? Aren't we supposed to comment on the content, not the contributor? If this contributor is willing to revise their work, or change the style, etc, how could you "nurture" them (per WP:BITE) to produce material that is good?
Instead, this conversation is a textbook case of WP:BITE: "Treat newcomers with kindness and patience—nothing scares valuable contributors away faster than hostility." I do despair when people complain about "bludgeoning the discussion" when the accused literally is the topic of discussion. That's not the point of that essay. And the phrase "bludgeoning the discussion" is Wikipedia jargon, and battlefield imagery, so you've accused a newbie of a violent crime they don't even understand. -- Colin°Talk 17:48, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
My initial intent was not to promote my own work, but, if I am being honest, I may have started to treat it that way, which I can understand people objecting to.
I want everyone to know that this was not my initial intent, I just wanted to add cool images, but in the course of doing this I have probably let my emotions get the better of me, and in trying to defend myself (particularly in regards to assertions that my work is ai) I may have treated the pages of the people as, for lack of a better term, my "property"- which I admit is wrong.
Going forward, I have decided to refrain from making image edits to wikipedia and instead my participation will be limited to adding content to wikimedia commons, and other users are free to use my images as they wish.
I hope this resolves the issue for all involved- I never meant to cause harm and I hold no ill will towards anyone here that doesn't approve of me.
I would encourage you to, when you upload a new image on commons for someone who doesn't have an image on their page, at least drop a note on the talk page saying that the image is available, so that the folks who edit the article can have a reasonable chance of considering whether to add it. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 21:51, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
Thank you, Nat, I will consider doing that. JoeBugMan (talk) 22:49, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
@JoeBugMan: And even if they do, ask before adding. Save a lot of editor's time. - FlightTime (open channel) 22:55, 29 August 2025 (UTC)
I would also suggest including an explicit link to any source material you used for the images, so that we can make a clearer determination of whether they are close enough to the sources to be a copyvio, as Commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:LeonPayne.png appears to be, rather than making other editors do the work of tracking down the same sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:10, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
Afaik, Wikipedians have only written some guidance on AI-BLP pics, so "hand-made" BLP-pics isn't covered by that atm. IMO, they generally go against the spirit of WP:BLP (Be very firm about the use of high-quality, reliable sources) and WP:OR (this is the artistic vision of the netizen who made them, and btw, why is that vision WP:DUE?), so my knee-jerk reaction is "no".
That said, there is some precedence on WMF projects regarding pics like JoeBugMan's of dead people (maybe living too, I haven't checked), one example is Q26239535, Mercedes Richards on en-WP. On en-WP, we can generally "get" a picture of a dead person like her or Lane Smith, but JoeBugMan's Lane Smith might be accepted on Wikidata and whatever language WP that follows Wikidata. Well how about that: Lane Smith. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:14, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
That image you mention as an example is ironically not a good example. It was created as part of a project to highlight a lack of images for People of Colour, and is only present on the article of the artist (who importantly is notable) and not the actual subject's page.
They aren't random submissions by random people online. Rambling Rambler (talk) 17:45, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
@Rambling Rambler The origin is special, and most (not all, see for example Leonora Pujadas-McShine) of those pictures were kicked from en-WP, mostly on a "dead person, so we'll use a photo" rationale. But my point with this example is that while it's not used in her (Richards) en-WP article, you can see from Wikidata that it is used in her article on several other WP:s, I think because they don't allow some non-free stuff the way we do. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:54, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång I don't mean this in a nasty way, but frankly I very much don't trust the other WP sites because their standards are usually of a much lower quality across the board. Rambling Rambler (talk) 18:48, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
I still think in this case it's mostly about that they can't use non-free pics the way en-WP does. That, and some Wikidata automation. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:55, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
Royal Albert Hall (outside)
Royal Albert Hall (inside)
Isn't it terrible that we have to put up with these dreadful photos of the Royal Albert Hall? Will someone save us from "random submissions by random people online" defacing our encyclopaedia. Maybe we should delete them and pray that some professional photographer will (a) photograph these buildings at this level of quality and (b) give them away for nothing. Why are people on a website that has 100% amateur created text so prejudiced and condescending against amateur created images that are drawn or painted? Is it just a matter of quality combined with the freedom the Internet provides to be rude to strangers and newbies? Why must a painting of a person need to be created by a professional non-wikipedian, but a photograph not? Seriously? Policy based reasons please. Not prejudice. -- Colin°Talk 19:27, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
I'm speaking for myself now, but IMO there is a difference between photos and drawings. While I'm quite pleased these RAH pics are on Commons, I still don't want JoeBugMan's drawing in the Lane Smith article. Maybe that's hypocritical and/or inconsistent of me, but that's how I think. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:37, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
@Colin maybe in your attempt to be snarky you could not pretend to suddenly not know the pretty obvious difference between:
A) A user-submitted photograph of an actual location/object/person etc which inherently captures the actual nature of the thing in question (presuming there's no reason to suspect tampering).
B) A user-created drawing of their attempt to depict that location/object/person which does not do that and instead reflects the drawers perception of the thing in question.
One is as close to an objective representation of reality as you can fundamentally get, the other is WP:OR art project where you don't actually know if it's accurate or not and for all we know may breach Copyright of whatever it was based off of. Rambling Rambler (talk) 20:04, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
Personally I think there should be a firm No to any hand-drawn images supplied by editors themselves. We are an encyclopaedia, not DeviantArt.
The only "artworks" we should be allowing are notable images in RS for purposes where there are no other images, otherwise we have zero evidence of what exactly an editor has based their images on and are therefore essentially WP:OR in a visual form. Rambling Rambler (talk) 17:30, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
Here's a hand-drawn image supplied by an editor. It shows what it means to fold a rectangle into thirds, along the longer sides.
@Rambling Rambler, I think you have probably overstated your opinion. Do you have any inherent concerns about whether it only "reflects the drawers perception"? I mean, maybe I "don't actually know if it's accurate or not", so maybe it's showing how to fold something into 27ths instead of into thirds.
Or maybe you'd like to revise your comments to apply to, e.g., complex subjects? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:10, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing please show where an instructional image of folding a piece of paper is relevant to hand drawn images of people in bios which is the actual subject under discussion and what I'm therefore referring to. Rambling Rambler (talk) 01:17, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
Rambling, please show where your words, a firm No to any hand-drawn images supplied by editors themselves, say anything about "images of people in bios". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
I don’t know, maybe look at the opening sentence of the discussion.
”Are we allowing digital images in bios?”
All you’re doing is trying to do a political “gotcha” when the discussion is clearly about images of people in bios and not outside that. Rambling Rambler (talk) 09:36, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
I'm concerned that someone might look back at this discussion later and quote your comment out of context (because that happens all the time).
You said that you were opposed to "any hand-drawn images supplied by editors themselves". Since I asked, you've clarified that this is only about images of people.
Now we can ask: What if the image is hand-drawn, supplied by the artist, and of a person, but it's not supposed to be any particular person? Is there something wrong with a hand-drawn image, supplied by the artist, that is a diagram for an anatomy page? Or showing the correct placement of feet on a bicycle? Or illustrating an article about cooking?
What if the image is hand-drawn, supplied by the artist, and of a particular person, but it's a professional portrait? Some of the c:Category:Official portraits of presidents of the United States are paintings. Should we really fuss about it if the artist created an account and uploaded a scan themselves, rather than following our usual process of a random person on the internet downloading it from the White House's website? I don't think so, even though it's exactly the kind of thing you say should "be a firm No". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:31, 1 September 2025 (UTC)
They are allowed to be uploaded, but Wikipedia is under no obligation to use any of them, per WP:Consensus, WP:VNOT, and WP:COMMONSENSE. Images should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Note also MOS:IMAGEQUALITY. If I uploaded a high resolution extreme closeup photograph of some celebrity's face showing only their nose and one eye, no one would be beholden to use it in any article, no matter how accurately or reliably I portrayed their left nostril. If the consensus for any given article is against including a user-created image, regardless of medium, we can simply omit it. We as Wikipedians should not be desperately grasping to shoehorn any scrap of free media merely because it exists, nor delude ourselves into thinking that if no images are on Wikipedia then no readers will ever know what a subject looks like: readers are entirely competent to use Google, Bing, AskJeeves, etc. (maybe even books!!!!) to find other images of subjects that currently do not have high quality, freely licensed online images. We don't create or structure Wikipedia articles purely to cater people who just woke up from a 20-year coma and have no other means of receiving information. --Animalparty! (talk) 23:58, 30 August 2025 (UTC)
Some years back, an editor was making a big stink about professionally painted, realistic official portraits of US presidents. The artist might try to flatter the subject! (See also posing and lighting tricks that are popular with photographers.) The colors might be slightly off! (Oh, look: Here's two copies of the same photograph, but they were scanned in with different settings, so they're noticeably different colors.) It might not be objectively accurate! (Have you heard of image filters, or have you been living under a rock for so long that you don't know what "to photoshop" means?)
I think we expect photos as the default, ordinary, normal approach to images for living people. However, there are exceptions (e.g., YouTubers who never show their faces), and I think the rule should be that this choice is available to editors if there is a consensus at the article for a particular image to be used. Which, BTW, is exactly the actual rule for photos, because nothing stays in articles without at least a minimal amount of consensus behind it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:17, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
I have seen several specific discussions on situations similar to this one, but I can't remember one that ended in "Yep, let's use that USERG drawing/painting in a BLP". Have you any good examples of current en-WP mainspace use that you describe?
I don't see any useful distinction to be made between images by people who happen to be Wikipedians and images by people who happen not to be Wikipedians. I think the more useful distinctions involve whether the portrait is the most accurate we have available (generally no for people in the era of photography, often yes for people before then, but see Wikipedia:Historical portraits and pictures for some suggestions for when a portrait is far enough removed from the historical record to make it preferable not to use it.
Outside BLP, the field gets much wider. I have no problem with "pictures" like the leadimages of Arminius or Abbas ibn Firnas. And yet I don't think is any good for Abbas ibn Firnas en-WP article. Does that make sense? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:06, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
Above Rambling Rambler claims photographs are is as close to an objective representation of reality as you can fundamentally get, the other is WP:OR art project where you don't actually know if it's accurate or not. There are several problems with this. Firstly, Joshua Reynolds painting of Samuel Johnson is also not a photograph, yet we accept it. There's a fair degree of scepticism that any portrait painting is "accurate" vs either flattering to the person who paid lots of money to have it done or potentially unflattering against the person whom it seeks to ridicule. Secondly, unless no images of a person are available in any publication anywhere, the idea that we don't know if it is accurate is, well, silly. We can use our judement. Same way as we can judge if my photo of Kilchoman Cross is actually of that cross and not some other one. You've frankly only got my word for it unless you investigate and compare. But thirdly, there is a reason I chose those two photos of the Albert Hall, and the file description page has a clue. They are not plain photographs. Both are stitched HDR panoramas. One has twelve images taken at three different exposures and the other 21 images at three different exposures (so 63 photos combined). The latter took several minutes, during which people on the stage moved about. When merged by software, the result creates a blurry mess, ghosts and twins where people have moved. Photoshop is necessary to select a frame and literally paint that one as representative, and paint-out others as not. Then the HDR image file needs to be tone mapped to the SDR JPG you can see on your monitor. That requires artistic judgement to move around a dozen sliders about to produce something I personally think represents what I saw, but, well, who knows? You weren't there. And finally there's the problem that the hall ceiling is lit by modern LED lamps, which produce monochromatic output that is virtually impossible to capture faithfully on a camera sensor. That shade of glowing lilac on the ceiling? My best attempt at reproducing what I remember seeing. There are colours my camera saw, that my high-end professional-grade monitor can display, but which likely your low end consumer monitor cannot. Photoshop and Lightroom all guide me and my artistic eye towards finding some compromise. It is in short, about as far away from an "objective representation of reality as you can fundamentally get" for an image taken by a DSLR camera.
Editors citing WP:OR are missing a fundamental. The policy says Despite the need for reliable sources, you must not plagiarize them or violate their copyrights. Rewriting source material in your own words while retaining the substance is not considered original research. We have a mental model that a camera is like a photocopier or scanner and hand drawn or painted works are less accurate. But it isn't binary and the cameras in mobile phones today often take multiple shots and combine them with computational algorithms and AI in ways we have little control of. We are required, for text, to hand-write. We aren't allowed to scan or photocopy the source material and plonk it on Wikipedia. We need to summarise it in our own words. And this is, according to our very policy on the matter, not original research. And neither is doing that for an image. We have created a project with billions of original sentences and paragraphs created by random amatuers. The freedom we have to attempt to capture the essense of a source or explain a truth in our own words, extends to images as much as letters.
Could it actually be that for many editors here, the images presented at the top of this section are simply not to their taste? I personally wouldn't want that style of artwork if I was asking someone to paint my 80-year-old mum to help me remember her when she dies. But it is a modern style I see in magazines and newspapers and books. I'm no art critic expert. Someone earlier suggested an RFC. That would, at this point, be a phenominally bad idea. The editors on this project are mostly familiar with crafting text on articles (or arguing on talk pages). You would be asking opinions of people who have literally never considered the idea before, have no experience of doing it or selecting such works, and yet asked to give their !vote. And based on this and earlier discussions, the RFC would present images the proposer dislikes, considers amateurish or cartoonish or in some other way inferior.
Imagine going back 25 years and asking people in the street whether they think it a good idea to crowdsource an encyclopaedia. Where the articles on ketogenic diet or tourette syndrome are written by non-health professionals, just random people who turned up. Hell no! But it turned out to be not such a daft idea. At this point, I think this project lacks some direction and a community of artists who could create images for us, by hand. We have a community of photographers and I suspect a small community of SVG diagram creators, but not so much for those who draw or paint. Images are a vital component of this project. The idea that those who are here only to contribute images are WP:NOTHERE is frankly ignorant and insulting. I know of over a hundred photographers on Commons who delight in seeing their images on multiple Wikipedias and only a few of them are capable of stringing enough sentences together in a meaningful way to contribute to text in an article. They are here to build the enyclopaedia. How can we advise those who want to contribute with their artistic abilities? In a way that is welcoming, not hostile. Well, for a start, we need to stop inventing rules that don't exist.
Our article on Svetlana Mojsov has no image. Mojsov discoverd GLP-1, which led to a weight loss medication that actually worked and is transforming lives and economies. At Science.org there is a painting of Mojsov by Katty Huertas. At VinFuture Prize there is a painting of Mojsov. At the bottom of that page, there are paintings of other prize laureates. In my opinion, these would be great additions to the enyclopaedia. Wouldn't it be wonderful if those artists, or similar, could be persuaded to offer their work here? If the VinFuture Prize foundation decided to donate their commissioned works with a CC BY SA licence, we'd take them. There is no policy rule that says the creator of that image cannot be a Wikipedian, just as we have no policy that says our text at ketogenic diet must have been created by a non-Wikipedian medical professional, published in a medical publication, and released with a CC BY SA licence so we can photocopy it on to our pages. -- Colin°Talk 10:54, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
I'm going to keep it very brief given I've been mentioned:
I have no issue with examples such as Samuel Johnson because they are Reliably Sourced. They are works of note that have been discussed, critiqued etc and despite any potential concerns over flattery or lack thereof we have the ability to discern via Reliable Sources that they are a reasonably accurate representation of said person. They are not "random editor who has drawn what they claim to be a reasonably accurate representation of the individual" which likely violates what's set out in WP:OR under WP:IMAGEOR.
Copyright is another major issue I and several others have raised. Rather than write a long paragraph about my personal tastes of these attempted portraits we are discussing I actually looked into them and was able to positively identify nine examples of them being clearly derived from copyrighted works (including films and adverts), and have therefore nominated all of them for deletion as a result (Commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/Drawn_Portraits_Uploaded_by_JoeBugMan#Drawn_Portraits_Uploaded_by_JoeBugMan). What the inciting editor's work has actually done is provide a textbook example of why we shouldn't accept editor drawn images of people, because we have no way of actually proving they didn't breach someone else's copyright by drawing based off of a reference image.
We can Wikilawyer this (pointing to various policies and guidelines) but ultimately it comes down to simple consensus… do the editors who work on a particular article want to use a particular image?… do they like it?… is a better image available?… would no image be preferable? These are, by their nature, subjective determinations. But that’s ok. Nothing says consensus can’t be subjective. Blueboar (talk) 14:55, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
I agree. Mostly I happen to dislike sketches (e.g., the one that was in Gisèle Pelicot for a while), and mostly other editors prefer photographs, so it happens that I usually get what I want on this score. But I wouldn't want to set down a firm rule against it; after all, Wikipedia:No firm rules is a core policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:38, 1 September 2025 (UTC)
agreed, i think consensus of folks matter too. But Moxy seemed to have started this because one user was mass including their art on a lot of pages at once. I think WP:ONUS applies here if someone goes and does this? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 18:09, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
"We have no proof that they didn't breach someone's copyright" is a bad rationale for criteria about which types of image to include in articles. If we think an image might be a copyvio, then we have separate mechanisms for dealing with that, that do not involve throwing away big swathes of content because some of them are dubious. I would suggest that the vast majority of copyvio images on Wikipedia are photographs, many copied from the web somewhere and many taken by the uploader but of copyrighted content. Does that mean we should outlaw all photos because some of them are copyvios? No. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:16, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
I think Blueboar and David Eppstein are right. There is no policy reason to reject "editor drawn images of people". That a particular user has encountered problems with copyright when failing to avoid creating a derivative work is not in any way relevant to the general issue. Our project is absolutely filled with copy/paste copyright violating text lifted from our sources, and we deal with that without going "Oh, we must ban all these amateur editors, who it seems, just copy their sources". I mean, I believe quite a lot of edits don't even cite their sources. And those that do might have sneakily copied another source to hide their plagiarism. Really we should give up on this amateur-content-creation lark.
Seriously, time to put this discussion to bed. Newbie editors (or image creators) should be treated kindly and helped to avoid issues such as copyright. It is up to editors working on particular articles to reject/select images, not for people to invent imaginary policy reasons to remove them all. -- 09:11, 1 September 2025 (UTC) Colin°Talk 09:11, 1 September 2025 (UTC)
Except that WP:ONUS is a thing. If a newbie is mass-including their art, and others think it violates the WP:BLPIMAGE or WP:NOR, we are under no obligation to accept their art.And it is not WP:BITE if the inclusion fails to meet WP:ONUS. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 18:11, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
You cite a lot of WP:UPPERCASE. For example WP:ONUS is a link to Wikipedia:Verifiability, about WP:V not guaranteeing inclusion. But nobody was citing a source to insist an image gets included. I think you picked that shortcut because you thought the image maker had some kind of "ONUS" to convince you and other editors that they were entitled to contribute to the project. Elsewhere we saw someone say that this contributor should suggest their image on the talk page, rather than edit directly. Now, that's not an uncommon conflict avoidance strategy but it also isn't standard editing practice. All editors go about WP:BOLDly making edits and adding their own words that they think improve the project. There's no special rule that image makers have to behave differently when adding their own images that they think improve the project. There are six images at the top of this page, all added to articles that had no image (and now have no image). Yet you claim that constitutes "mass-including" and is somehow behaviour to be discouraged. This is simply "making shit up" about images not to one's taste. These so-called rules are not enforced or even given a moment's thought when editors (new or otherwise) add their photographs to articles. When one of our best photographers comes back from their travels and uploads a bunch of images to articles, we don't get this kind of nonsense, and it is frankly time-wasting nonsense. Nobody wikilawyers them about ONUS and nobody, when they find out they are just here to add photos, tell them to fuck off per WP:NOTHERE. Please drop the stick. -- Colin°Talk 07:21, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
Your reams of text doesn’t change the fact that Wikipedia isn’t an amateur art gallery. you’re the only one going supernova here in defense of some strange principle that we humor every newbie artist, at the expense of the project.
If someone else decides to mass add amateur art to a bunch of articles, it seems wrong to let that happen without carefully allowing community consensus. And if that is somehow offensive to you, I suppose I’ll see yet another essay reply Bluethricecreamman (talk) 14:07, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
Scaring away contributors to this amateur project, using few words, would indeed be a skill you have refined. Well done. -- Colin°Talk 14:45, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
Arbitrary break
The commons deletion discussion has resulted in the deletion of JoeBugMan's images. Meanwhile I found another relevant example, linked from C:Commons:Village pump/Copyright: We don't have an article on Joanna Penson (died 2023) but the Polish article is illustrated by a crop from a mural featuring her: File:Kobiety Wolności 10 (cropped - Joanna Penson).jpg. Does the existence of this free image, which arguably does not meet our standards for portraits on biographies, prevent the use of a fair-use photo of her here (if we were to have an article)? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:49, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
is that that free-use pic would not prevent en-WP using a non-free photo in that hypothetical article. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:59, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
The answer probably depends on what "our standards for portraits" are. One might not choose to put that in an infobox, but one might be perfectly willing to use that in a ==Legacy== section with a caption like "Penson was one of several women represented in a mural in [city]". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:05, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
Judith W. Rogers Official portrait on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by Simmie Knox.
Another hypothetical: IfJudith W. Rogers was no longer with us, this portrait of her could be seen as preventing the use of a fair-use photo of her, but that's something for editors to discuss if and when it becomes an issue. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:55, 8 September 2025 (UTC)
I have seen enough complaints from editors over the years about serious portraits like this one that I would indeed not be surprised if someone claimed that it interferes with their right to put a copyrighted-but-maybe-fair-use photo in the article. These arguments usually come from well-meaning but ignorant editors who think that professional portrait artists produce the visual equivalent of a fictional novel, and that photographic manipulation shouldn't be considered a realistic concern. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:42, 14 September 2025 (UTC)
Do you believe that the RFCs and other discussions leading up to the creation of WP:AIIMAGES actually intended to ban very simple diagrams, such as File:Circle.svg, if they were AI generated? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:21, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
The text is as was developed through the RfC, and stuffing it with various exceptions serves no positive purpose. CMD (talk) 03:24, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
The text as was (allegedly) developed through the RfC: This text mostly comes from the closing summary of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/AI images#Relist with broader question: Ban all AI images? That RFC asked editors only "Should AI-generated images be banned from use in articles? (Where "AI-generated" means wholly created by generative AI, not a human-created image that has been modified with AI tools.)" and did not ask anyone to !vote on or even suggest any particular text.
The relevant part of the closing statement from that, BTW, says this:
"We have decided that, subject to common sense and with a number of exceptions, most images wholly generated by AI should not be used on en.wiki. Obvious exceptions include articles about AI, and articles about notable AI-generated images. There may need to be some less-obvious exceptions, and we need more thought and community input about AI enhancement of an image originally generated by a human, and about using AI to generate simple images such as Venn diagrams. The community objects particularly strongly to AI-generated images (1) of named people, and (2) in technical or scientific subjects such as anatomy and chemistry. There is also well-articulated concern about the use of AI that's been trained on copyrighted content, which sits poorly with Wikipedia's strict attitude to fair use.
Now that we've made this decision, there's an opportunity for a group of interested editors to draft an essay with a view to presenting it to the community for ratification as a guideline."
I find that AIIMAGES does not represent the RFC's closing summary in several ways. A non-exhaustive list of differences includes:
It oversimplified the result in ways that reject AI-generated images more strongly than the closing statement supports (e.g., "subject to common sense and with a number of exceptions" has been omitted).
It omitted the statement about "using AI to generate simple images such as Venn diagrams", which the closing statement did not intend to reject.
It put the (well, a biased version of the) closing statement into a policy, despite the closing statement saying that (a) it needed to be presented to the community for ratification and (b) it should be proposed as a guideline, not a policy.
I therefore think that we should not take this text (or even the closing summary itself) as holy writ; they are neither of them text that was developed by the community or approved in an RFC (or even a talk-page discussion).
Positive purpose: The positive purpose that I see is that it's stupid to have editors argue – and I believe they will – that a very simple diagram is acceptable if I draw it with paper and pencil and acceptable if I draw it in graphics software, but that exactly the same thing magically becomes very, very bad if AI generates it. Editors have to WP:Use common sense, as the closing statement (but not AIIMAGES) said, and I believe that not arguing over who made a very simple diagram counts as using common sense. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:01, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, there needs to be room for the use of AI in generating simple diagrams that are strongly directly by a prompt (eg one I just tested is ). When the product of the AI is just simple shapes and text that, even if generated directly by a human, would not be copyrightable, that should be fine, the AI here is only helping in simplify the time to do the drawing. Its when we're asking the AI model to do something that would likely be copyrightable if it were being made by hand by a human, with or without the support of a non-AI computer program like Photoshop. We don't want those types of images. Masem (t) 04:10, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
@Masem, I think that copyright is not quite the right standard. I think it should not only meet the WP:PERTINENCE standard ("Images should look like what they are meant to illustrate, regardless of whether they are authentic") but also do so at a glance. This means, e.g., that the article 9999 (number) doesn't get an AI-generated image showing 9999 dots, because it takes too long to count them up and see if the image actually shows the correct number of dots. But the article 9 (number) could have an AI-generated image showing nine dots, because anybody smart enough to edit Wikipedia should also be smart enough to count a single-digit number of dots in an image. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
I don't see why having editors argue over whether something is simple and a diagram is a positive outcome. You have just posted here about the cost/benefit of discussing 144 examples, how many issues prompted this proposal? Are editors not using common sense in the way you assert? Is there a collection of simple diagrams we have been unable to use? (As an aside I just asked Gemini to help illustrate pi, and it mislablled the diameter and sort of mislabelled the circumference, so I really doubt the tool is well-aligned with the purported purpose.) CMD (talk) 04:32, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
If I asked a random person in the street to "illustrate pi" they might well get it wrong. Should we ban "people" as well? I'm not sure you've demonstrated anything fundamental other than that some current AI tools have limitations and that the quality of prompts is hugely influential in the quality of output. Clearly the fact you reviewed the results and you'd have been the one taking responsibility for uploading any image and inserting it into an article, means we do actually have a functioning quality mechanism. If AI had generated an image that is equivalent to one you'd have drawn (but perhaps lack artistic ability or tooling to achieve) what really would have been the problem. Indeed, why on earth would one feel the need to mention it?
I think that RFC is a classic example of asking an outrageous binary question, voting on it, and which very obviously only gets unqualified supports from knee-jerk reactionary voters. Anyone thinking more about it saw problems with the proposal. I don't see how that's a good starting point for generating P&G text. It was imo a waste of time. The community needs to explore how AI images can be used and where they can't or where there are often problems. IMO the closing comment should have been "You asked the wrong question (for which there was very clearly no consensus for support). Please let's discuss specifics and not get into a vote for quite some time, until it appears clear there's a likely consensus of this specific or that specific". -- Colin°Talk 08:39, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
The community has been exploring it for a few years at this point, resulting in the multiple RfCs on different aspects of the issue. CMD (talk) 09:10, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
A simple diagram of a happy face, reportedly from ChatGPT. Would it really be terrible if this were used in Happy face?
Why "simple": Because I don't think that the community wants to see either medium- or high-complexity images from AI. We don't trust it. We don't want to go to a lot of work to see whether the image is accurate. We want to be able to see at a glance, with no special skills, that it's correct: A smiley face is a smiley face. File:Bi koma bost laurden.png shows the concept of 2.5 out of 4. File:Decision tree example.png shows what a flow chart looks like. File:Orange County Commission, 2025–2027.svg shows five blue dots and one red.
Why "diagrams": Because I think that the community has formed a consensus against photorealistic images generated by AI. There are photorealistic AI images that I think could be useful and appropriate (e.g., File:Woman with neck-length brown bob haircut from behind.png would be a nice illustration for Bob cut#Types), but there's a consensus against it at the moment. Is there a different category that you think would be more appropriate? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:47, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
I understand why the words, the issue is the words are flexibly interpretable. Which thus informs the rest of my prior comment and its unanswered questions. CMD (talk) 02:57, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
Most ordinary words are flexibly interpretable, including words like wholly generated by AI. If I give it a prompt, is that "wholly generated"? I'd say so, but a wikilawyer could "flexibly interpret" the wording differently. I think that, in practice, most editors are capable of figuring out whether something is a "very simple diagram". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:57, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
While some simple diagrams might merit inclusion in the wiki, simple diagrams as a class definitely don't fall into the category of "obvious exception". I also think there is no point in even having this conversation unless we are actually experiencing a problem with simple diagrams that ought to be included getting removed from the wiki simply because they are AI-generated. -- LWGtalk 22:04, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
I disagree. The existing text does not match the RFC results; it does not align with common sense; it does not match the views of the community. Why should we leave known-wrong text in this policy and wait for a dispute to arise?
I am curious if you could give an example of simple diagram that you believe should be included in a Wikipedia article, but you would reject it if you learned it was AI-generated, solely on the grounds that it was AI-generated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 3 September 2025 (UTC)
Why should we leave known-wrong text in this policy and wait for a dispute to arise? It's not known-wrong, it's believed by you to be wrong. I think it's fine. As far as I can tell it has been working for its intended purpose and hasn't resulted in negative effects so far.
I am curious if you could give an example of simple diagram that you believe should be included in a Wikipedia article, but you would reject it if you learned it was AI-generated, solely on the grounds that it was AI-generated. I cannot give an example of such a diagram. So far I have not seen any simple AI-generated diagram that I thought should be included in a Wikipedia article, but if I ever saw one, I would not advocate for its removal solely on the grounds that it was AI-generated. As a general rule, I don't advocate for the removal of content that I think is beneficial to the wiki, since that would be a waste of time. -- LWGtalk 04:04, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
As far as I can tell it has been working for its intended purpose and hasn't resulted in negative effects so far. Text that says you can't do something results in .... nothing happening. WAID is complaining that this "nothing" is way too wide in scope and includes lots of images that could improve the project but aren't being created or added to articles. I'm not sure how you can determine that this is "working" when one of you says the "nothing" should be "this big" and the other says no, the "nothing" should be "that big". If the "nothing" is too big, you simply won't know about all the great images you aren't getting. You can't be confident it is "working" at all.
I think for such simple diagrams this prejudice against AI is just silly. Creator will simply not admit to using AI. You won't be able to tell then if it is working or not. All you do is miss out on the images being correctly described and categorised on Commons. -- Colin°Talk 07:28, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
When I say "it's working" I mean that before WP:AIIMAGES there were a large number of low quality and some outright disinformational AI-generated images on enwiki, and I wasn't sure where the community consensus lay on including them. Now, when I see an AI image that is subjectively bad or of unclear accuracy, I just remove it and link this policy. The potential drawback of this policy is that high-quality AI-generated images might be removed when they should be kept. But I have yet to see a single example of this happening, so I agree with CMD that this is a not actually a serious problem.
As for "the creator will simply not admit to using AI", I share that concern. In the RFC that led to WP:AIIMAGES I advocated against an outright ban in favor of mandating that AI images be clearly labeled as AI-generated. The community eventually landed on a stronger stance, but still fell short of an outright ban and allowed for common sense exceptions. So far that seems to be working well so I see no reason to complicate things. -- LWGtalk 14:29, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
But if the high-quality AI-generated images were uploaded to Commons by editors who didn't admit they were AI-generated, because they knew en:wp was weirdly prejudiced, then that would also explain why you aren't seeing examples. I don't think your "mandating that AI images be clearly labelled as AI-generated" could possibly work, especially for simple stuff. How could you possibly tell the above happy face was AI-generated unless someone says.
And if people didn't bother contributing high-quality AI-generated images at all, because they knew ep:wp was weirdly prejudiced, then that would also explain why you aren't seeing examples. It isn't just that high quality images "might be removed". You seem to be saying you haven't actually seen any "common sense exceptions", which makes me concerned, as people clearly thought there should be some. -- Colin°Talk 15:09, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
It's possible that negative attitudes toward AI on enwiki prior to the RFC somehow scared away all the people with good AI images without deterring the people with bad AI images. A simpler explanation is that AI is not currently an effective way to produce high-quality images in the vast majority of cases. If the technology improved, I might support using AI images in certain cases to produce illustrations like this to be included in an article like Simul-climbing with a caption like "diagram of a simul-climbing setup generated by GPT-9000". But that is hypothetical at this point, and the community consensus is currently to take a harder line.
It sounds like "it's working" means "I can revert images easily, in a way that minimizes the risk that I'll have to discuss this and find a consensus".
This means that if I were to add File:Carita feliz.png to Smiley#Ideogram history, with a caption that says smiley faces don't always show the outline of the head, your goal would be to remove it as quickly and simply as you can, because AI is bad and wrong and banned by policy. Questions like "Does this image improve the article?" or "Should we use some common sense?" or "Should this be discussed on the article's talk page?" are things that would require time and effort from you, so they are undesirable. The most important point is that getting rid of AI should be quick and easy for you. Right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
As a user from Commons who deals with a lot of AI-generated images: AI-generated diagrams (infographics, flowcharts, schematics, maps, graphs... etc) tend to be of very low quality. They often contain:
Inappropriate or gibberish text
Fabricated data, especially in graphs and maps
Missing, incorrectly placed, or duplicated labels
Arrows or other markers pointing to the wrong place, or in the wrong direction (especially in flowcharts)
Objects or text laid out in incoherent ways, like text disappearing off the edge of the image
Misplaced information in tabular layouts, as if the "author" had lost track of where they were in the table
Extremely simple images, like the smiley face above, are easy enough for a user to create themselves without the assistance of an image model. I see no compelling reason to make an exception on the basis of simplicity. Omphalographer (talk) 22:35, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
There is a lot of noise here and not a lot of compelling examples, so I will offer one up: File:Pinwheel scheduling.svg, as used to illustrate Pinwheel scheduling. I used AI to generate the grey shading of the stylized gear wheel in this image because AI drawing skills for this sort of thing are better than mine despite their own imperfections (the original AI-generated drawing had noticeably irregular gear teeth that I cleaned up manually). Beyond that, the image is indeed a simple diagram (rather than something intended to be interpreted as a photorealistic image or artwork) and all of the actual information content of the image (the lettering, coloring, and sequence of letters on the gear wheel) was drawn by me afterwards. The AI part is more decorative, to convey the idea of a gear wheel, than actual diagrammatic information.
Is that the sort of diagram that you would like to block from being used?
What reason do you have for preventing its use? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:02, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
@Omphalographer, I agree that bad images are bad, but do you really want to throw out the baby with the bathwater? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 18 October 2025 (UTC)
I don't think there is any good reason for a simplicity exception. If an image is as simple as a smiley face or a circle, it takes trivial effort for human editors to create them, and indeed we almost certainly have better human created alternatives. I think that adding an exception for "very simple diagrams" generated with AI will simply create confusion. Cases like David Eppstein's creation of Pinwheel scheduling.svg seem to be relatively reasonable exceptions that I don't think any reasonable person would seek to remove them from the wiki (although I do wish that the generative AI usage was disclosed in the description). My worry with a simplicity exception is that it solves no problem and creates a needless loophole (i:e, well-meaning people will upload "very simple diagrams" with obvious problems, thinking it is allowed under policy when obviously it is not). The talk of "prejudice" against generative AI is very silly. Personally, the problem I have with generative AI is that opening the door to it risks flooding the wiki with useless crap. No-one is seeking to remove things like parliamentary diagrams or smiley faces from the wiki because they work for their intended purpose. It would be trivial to simply use the diagram tool on toolforge, or even just get out a pen and paper and draw a smiley face yourself, but in instances like this I think the only problem with these images is that writing an exception for them opens the door for more insidious generative AI images. As LWG says, I think there's no point in having the argument unless it solves a real problem, and I am very skeptical of having this argument if the aim is to open enWP up to more generative AI images. LivelyRatification (talk) 21:29, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
AI-generated drawing of a hair style
On the one hand, if we don't mention an exception for simple diagrams, then I worry – with IMO good cause – that we will get perfectly good, obviously correct images removed from articles.
But if we do mention it, then you worry – IMO also with good cause – that garbage will get put in articles, and then maybe someone will demand that the garbage be kept because some AI-generated images are allowed, and therefore this AI-generated image is required.
I wonder what you think of the image here. It's a hair style. Specifically, most women of a certain age, from an Western/English-speaking country, can tell you at a glance that it's a Long bob (haircut). There is no equivalent photo in any of the relevant articles. Do you think this image is "useless crap"? Does it have any "obvious problems"? If I put this in an article, would you instantly revert it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:39, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
I'll first preface this by saying I obviously don't think that the image you posted is a "very simple diagram", in that it would take some effort for a human to replicate it. (I am almost certain you agree with me on this.)
Supposing an instance where someone added a relatively unproblematic diagram of a generic human's face or hairstyle or whatever that was generated by AI, and there was no other free-use alternative available, I would remove it because I am very concerned about using depictions of humans generated by AI. Obviously there are some utilities for generative AI, it can create some helpful images like in the instance you've posted, but I think the risks of misleading readers and establishing a precedent for the use of AI-generated images to depict humans is quite troubling.
But probably what I would do in the exact instance you describe is not simply remove the image, but search for a free-use replacement, of which therearemany (three separate files linked). Hell, I am a woman with a (somewhat messy) long bob haircut, if I could be bothered I'd get a friend to take a photo of the back of my head.
I don't think anyone here is seeking to argue over the inclusion of an AI-generated smiley face. I think that the stubborn editor who hates generative AI, even at the expense of valuable content for the wiki, does not meaningfully exist. Both in your hypothetical and for the actual policy change you propose, there are reasonable, human-created alternatives that could be used without any significant loss for the reader. I think that there are editors who are concerned about the misleading potential of generative AI (and the potential copyright violations) who might be seeking to remove images that are unhelpful for the wiki. I, personally, am fine with sacrificing some high-quality generative AI images in the name of accuracy and trust, but that is not the issue at hand here. I fear that this proposal seeks to solve a problem which does not exist. LivelyRatification (talk) 22:21, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
Does it matter how this image was made?
I have some concerns about photo-realistic images of fake people. Even if it looks typical (e.g., doesn't have a strange number of fingers), it might accidentally happen to be a Look-alike for a real person, which feels unfair to them.
I have many fewer concerns of sketch-like drawings of people. (Nobody's going to mistake a stick figure for a real person.)
The problem that I'd like to solve here is:
What we have written in the policy is a more anti-AI statement than the actual RFC closing statement. This is inaccurate, and inaccurate = bad.
We really shouldn't be concerned about the provenance for some simple images (simple diagrams, rather than photo-realistic images, or images – like the bob above – that are nearly photo-realistic). For example, this image illustrates the concept of 1%. Does it matter if it's made in Photoshop or by an AI tool? I don't think so, and yet we do have editors who read WP:AIIMAGES: "Most images wholly generated by AI should not be used in mainspace...other categories of exceptions may arise through further community discussion. Community members have largely rejected making exceptions merely because an image lacks obvious errors" and say "Well, we don't care if it's accurate. AI images shouldn't be used in articles except for articles like Artificial intelligence visual art, there hasn't been an RFC to overturn this, so if it's AI, it's outta here!" We can't really stop mindless rule followers from following rules; we have to give them more accurate rules.
My fear here is basically scope creep. The RfC closing does say "we need more thought and community input about AI enhancement of an image originally generated by a human, and about using AI to generate simple images such as Venn diagrams". I would not be opposed to allowing venn diagrams, circles, simple drawings etc that are generated by AI or with the assistance of generative AI, or more likely trouting any editors who seek to remove a drawing of two overlapping circles because it was generated by AI. But I do object to using near-photo realistic images to depict concepts or images of generic people. I don't object to telling off editors who seek to remove a smiley face made using generative AI, what I do object to is adding exceptions to the "no generative AI images on Wikipedia" policy. And ultimately, if the diagrams are very simple, then it would be trivial effort for an alternative image to be created and used instead. Perhaps there is no reason why generative AI-created images shouldn't be used, but is there a particularly compelling argument as to why they should be used? It might be unfair in a sense, but ultimately it is an unfairness I am fine with in the name of preventing AI images from proliferating on the wiki. LivelyRatification (talk) 09:23, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
If we actually have a "no generative AI images on Wikipedia" policy, then why would you be telling off editors who seek to remove a smiley face made using generative AI? Do you normally tell editors off for enforcing policies? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:21, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
The closing comment in the RfC stated the newly created policy would be subject to common sense and with a number of exceptions. I think exceptions for “very simple diagrams” and the like would fall under “common sense”. Dronebogus (talk) 12:19, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
You may think that the closure states that it would be "subject to common sense and with a number of exceptions" but AIIMAGES says nothing like that. Instead it states that "Obvious exceptions include articles about AI and articles about notable AI-generated images; other categories of exceptions may arise through further community discussion." There are no exceptions listed there for simple images and no exception for common sense. That is the whole reason we are having this discussion: because the text in AIIMAGES does not match the sense of the RFC that created it. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:35, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
Exactly so. It's allegedly based on that RFC summary, but it does not represent that RFC's summary accurately. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
Then I support adding “simple geometry or locally agreed-upon exceptions” Dronebogus (talk) 10:31, 28 October 2025 (UTC)
I'd rather have just "simple geometric shapes" and not risk WP:LOCALCON complaints. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:46, 28 October 2025 (UTC)
I think we do have a clear consensus that the policy text does not conform to the RFC summary nor thus reflect any community consensus. At the very least we should be workshopping how to include "subject to common sense and with a number of exceptions" rather than stonewalling that idea any further.
I note someone above said the "The talk of "prejudice" against generative AI is very silly". Be cautious about labelling someone's comments as "silly" when they patently are not. Prejudice rests on two things. The first is "an adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge of the facts." Banning an "AI generated image" is by that definition, absolutely a prejudice, as one has not considered (knowledge) the image itself, and whether it is useful for the article and accurate in what it portrays. The second aspect of most definitions of prejudice, is that it is unreasonable. Now that's within the bounds of editor opinion, and I don't think it is at all civil to say another editor is being "silly" for having the opinion that banning images based on the tool used to create them is "unreasonable".
Let me give you an example. Wikipedia is a free content encyclopaedia. That means our content has to be free to reuse and part of that means media types that have a patented component are not permitted to be uploaded to Commons. We miss out on the latest technology that Apple, Amazon and Disney use to deliver UHD HDR images to your TV, for example. But I knew some Commoners who went further and believed the media should only be created by free content software (running on Linux, of course). That using commercial software like those from Adobe was harmful. They actually wanted us to restrict the media to only that generated by free software. In their eyes, this would force image makers and photographers to use this free software, and win-win, it would become better as more people used it, and superior to the commercial stuff, which was sinful. I thought they were "silly". But today, I see people arguing about the "tool" used to create an image, and am just shaking my head again.
People saying it is trivial to use the diagram tool on sourceforge to draw a smiley face, or think their pencil drawing would be accepted in an article, remind me of those same open-source-fanatics who thought it was "trivial" to master the Linux command line to process your Camera's RAW files, or with a straight face suggested normal humans might master something with the unlikely name of GIMP. This was in the days when you downloaded Linux and it didn't come with WiFi drivers because they were patented and you had to FTP them separately from some server in Iceland.
I'm also seeing shades of when "proper" photographers with DSLRs looked down on the "crap" produced and uploaded by the untalented masses with their mobile phones. That the availability of a tool to generate something that appears "good enough" encourages a new wave of contributors, who are lacking appropriate self-filtering and critical eye that someone who previously laboured to produce an image would have learned from experience. These are people problems, not tool problems. -- Colin°Talk 09:08, 29 October 2025 (UTC)
You know what's easier than creating an image in software, or even creating an image with an AI tool? Using an image that someone else already created and already uploaded. The demand isn't just that editors create images without using AI; the demand is also that all editors refuse to use existing images that were created and uploaded by someone else and have been tagged as AI-generated, even for something as simple as a smiley face. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:17, 29 October 2025 (UTC)
Image size in the lead updates
This policy section (WP:IMGSIZE) contains two interesting statements:
The lead image in an infobox should not impinge on the default size of the infobox.
Therefore, it should be no wider than upright=0.9 (equivalent to 228px).
The first statement, the idea of correlating infobox size and image size, is based on this December 2018 edit, whose edit summary said:
tweak wording re infobox/lead image. Per intent of Moxy, this puts all info re lead image/infobox in one place in a separate section where it can be easily identified
As far as I can tell, this is related to Wikipedia talk:Image use policy/Archive 15#Policy dictating size? from February 2019. It's curious that it's in response to a couple of editors saying the policy should not tell us what size things should be that's what the MOS is for, but that was still simply the status quo since this July 2011 edit.
The second statement, the mention of 228px, was added in this April '25 edit, whose edit summary said:
This is not intended as a permanent change; discussion is still ongoing at talk and we should continue working out a new consensus there. The wording can be adjusted after this happens.
The January 2024 discussion at the Village pump proposals page included numerous mentions of infoboxes and visual examples of the Earth article infobox. The consensus found there was in the exact same context as this policy section.
This policy page has 845 watchers, of which 30 visited recently. The village pump proposals page has 3,736, of which 294 visited recently. This is a difference of almost 10x / 5x.
It's not in the spirit of WP:Consensus for the much smaller forum to so casually override a broader community consensus decision.
It wasn't a discussion that happened so long ago that it would be inherently obsolete. Even the option to move further to 300px, for which there was a lack of consensus found there, was supported by more people than the last discussion here (9 support, 8 oppose).
So, we need to match this policy section's numbers with the idea that 250px does not impinge on the default size of the infobox. Is that upright=1? --Joy (talk) 23:00, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
@Joy, please replace that with something sensible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:39, 18 October 2025 (UTC)
The default size of an infobox is 22em, unless the specific infobox template forcibly overrides that. At 22 em, that is sufficient room for a 228 px width image, and anything larger will cause it to stretch, which we don't want to happen. Note that images in infoboxes are not considered thumbnails compared to those images generally inline within the text. Masem (t) 12:35, 18 October 2025 (UTC)
I don't think anyone actually cares much about a 10% difference in infobox widths (250px is less than 10% wider than 228px). Most people won't even notice it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 18 October 2025 (UTC)
What does this number 22em really mean, what is the rationale for it? Where is this documented? Why is it more important to think about stretching that than to address the consensus of editors about what sort of images they told us they want to see there?
With regard to the idea of images in infoboxes not being "considered" thumbnails, the discussion that produced the aforementioned consensus involved numerous mentions of infoboxes as well as looking at examples of a top infobox image. It's not clear who you would be referring to in this consideration. --Joy (talk) 08:30, 19 October 2025 (UTC)
"em" is the pixel width of the "m" character at the default font size; it's not documented well as you have to dig into the template pages, the Lau module codes, and other discussions to find this (I had to to answer this). I can't tell you when or where it was decided for that but that's been the way for well over a decade.
The reason infobox images are not thumbnails is that their size is fixed, whereas thumbnail sizes are set based on the user's preference in size. Masem (t) 12:36, 19 October 2025 (UTC)
I wasn't asking about the em mechanism, but rather what was the significance of 22em, that is, why would that be substantially better than e.g. 21em or 23em or whatever. If it's not properly documented at all, I can't imagine that we have to treat this magic number as a sacred cow now. It seems more likely someone tried it and it seemed fine, and it stuck.
They're thumbnails in the sense that they're a smaller picture that allows for a click to open up a larger picture - at least that's been the organic meaning of the thumb parameter on images here since as long as I can remember. How is this difference between fixed and variable relevant to implementing this change? Do you expect that so much of empty space will be left around the other elements of infoboxes that readers will complain, or something like that? --Joy (talk) 13:03, 19 October 2025 (UTC)
That 22em is to make sure the infobox is shown with a comfortable width for nearly all non-mobile interface screens. Exactly the process that was selected is something I can't easily find in the talk page archives but I know that's been the standard for years. And specialized infoboxes can specify larger sizes (like {{Infobox NFL game}} uses 27em width than 22em). But in relation to your last question, I think yes, that the size was selected to prevent too much white space in the fields below the image. I can see from past discussions on the talk page of MOS:INFOBOX that it may have been 25em in the past but broadly editors cemented on 22em as the appropriate width for all infoboxes, since it was essential infobox appearance needed to be standardized. Masem (t) 13:13, 19 October 2025 (UTC)
Since there's a fair bit of space between 25 and 22, it seems we've got a lot of fairly safe options here. --Joy (talk) 13:32, 19 October 2025 (UTC)
Okay, so that was a dead end, because people brought up reasons to interpret the image size discussion as not specifically talking about infoboxes and infobox sizes. --Joy (talk) 10:23, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
If the policy is not describing best practice, then it's not a good policy and should be changed. Everyone consistently ignoring policy is a pointless situation. --Joy (talk) 12:43, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
It's not that infobox images aren't "considered" thumbnails; they actually aren't thumbnails. Here's three versions, all set to the same size:
Comparison of image formats
Thumbnail
Basic
Frameless
What makes it be a 'thumbnail' is the lines drawing a box with room for a caption and the little click-to-enlarge icon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 19 October 2025 (UTC)
practical status of largely landscape images on top of infoboxes
So, going back to the original contention - this policy section ends up being too strict to deal well with the practical reality of our articles. I came here after observing discussions about max size at {{Infobox Australian place}}, and it struck me as weird that we make a lot of them smaller trying to observe policy I never saw enforced anywhere else.
We have a lot of articles where portrait images are most appropriate on top of the infobox, such as biographies, where this narrower baseline (228px) seems to make sense, otherwise we just risk having either too much height, or a lot of useless information on the side of people's faces. If there's usually naturally less information on the right and left side of these pictures, we shouldn't encourage having them wider. It makes sense in context, so it's fine.
But, we also have a lot of articles where landscape images are on top of the infobox, such as places, where this narrower baseline naturally restricts the amount of information we convey to the reader. Sure, sometimes there will be useless panorama images where you see something pointless. And sure, we seem to have a tendency by a lot of editors to stuff an entire useless gallery in there. But sometimes there are classical landscape images there that contain reasonable information on the sides and they shouldn't be crammed into a narrow space. Editors habitually extend them into the entire width of the infobox, or the pictures end up smaller than they could and should be. For example:
Those were just some megacities that immediately popped into my head, but we don't have to look at these possible outliers - it happens elsewhere, too:
I gave up after a few minutes of searching and constantly finding these examples. I'd have thought waterfalls and rivers would be a nice example where you can easily replace a landscape image with portrait, but even as I found examples of that, I also got the impression that it wouldn't do a lot of them justice, let alone others.
The way this policy is written it sounds like we want to encourage editors to use portrait images. That seems like a fairly arbitrary, uninspired choice, that doesn't actually have organic consensus. --Joy (talk) 11:30, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
As I mentioned, you *can* change the width at the specific subtemplate that uses Infobox, like the NFL one that I pointed out. And in fact per "{{Infobox settlement/styles.css}}, its already set to be 23em wide instead of 22em. You should probably check with the appropriate wikiproject and suggest making that larger if you want to include more landscape oriented photos in the infobox. Masem (t) 12:13, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
I will also add that having a montage of images in the infobox like iwth most of those city pictures defeats the point of an infobox - its supposed to rapidly summarize information about a topic, including one or two relevant images to best illustrate it is helpful, but making it a gallery that takes a whole page to scroll past to see the info is not appropriate. Masem (t) 12:19, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
File spam is a huge problem in city articles New York City has 17 Files: for 4 paragraphs of lead prose. Moxy🍁 12:29, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
As I said, that doesn't change the fact that single pictures in these cases need some width to not be tiny. IOW even if we magically decided to reduce all those infoboxes to a comparatively tiny amount of pictures, odds are we would still run into a preponderance of landscape pictures, not portraits. --Joy (talk) 12:45, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
Maybe to clarify - it's not that these pictures then 'impinge on the default size of the infobox', rather editors are by and large just fine letting those picture width choices define the width of the infobox, rather than making sure some space is left on the sides. --Joy (talk) 13:17, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
What I am saying is that it is possible to change the css to make the infobox wider to support landscape photos, but that change for a specific infobox template should be discussed at the appropriate WikiProject page or at a central location. The width is overridable at the CSS level, so you just need the consensus to change it for that template, and for something like infobox settlement it would make sense. However, we would not change it for all infoboxes as most that use images are using square or portrait based aspect ratios so narrower is better. Masem (t) 13:44, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
That is all fine and well, but this policy wording still remains a problem even if we do that. If the infobox is always meant to be the thing that decides the width rather than the picture, and if the folks over there at infobox X don't want to widen the infobox any more than the width of the top images (which is basically the status quo), then their infobox image usage is still not compliant with this policy. --Joy (talk) 16:15, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
That I can fix and just didn't to be clear that that size is for default infobox width of 22em, but should me infobox templates allow for larger sizes. That way, it should clear that with a infobox that allows for larger widths you are not constrained to 228px Masem (t) 16:28, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
This is better, thanks, but I still think we should put the 'impinge' claim in context, to avoid the appearance of "this is the rule. but also it can not be a rule.":) --Joy (talk) 16:48, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
We are using "should" so that it is not a hard rule ( contrast to requirements of non free images), but I'm not sure how we soften that up further Masem (t) 17:05, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
That meaning of "should" is not clear to some editors. We have some editors who think "should" is just a polite way of saying "must".
It might be helpful to remind editors that lead images do not need to be inside the infobox, and that if they need a larger or wider image, they can put it above the infobox. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
I've never encountered a case where, if there is an infobox, the page leads with a image outside of it. Masem (t) 19:05, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
I've seen it before. Usually, I "correct" it so the image is inside the infobox. But if it were a particularly wide image, I think I'd leave it alone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:20, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
I gave it a shot, see if it's an improvement. --Joy (talk) 04:28, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
@Moxy why do you disagree with the last edit? What other orientations should we discuss other than portrait and landscape? --Joy (talk) 07:35, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
We should not be engouraging editors that when there is a landscape that we should difer from the norm. Moxy🍁 12:49, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
Looking at the list of these popular infoboxes, there's a big contingent of various biographies, where rules for portrait will make sense, and a big contingent for various places, where rules for landscape will make sense. Anything with a mapframe or a location map in the infobox is likely in the latter group as well, that's another ballpark of 1.2M - 2M (sometimes it's only one, sometimes it's both, sometimes it's neither but the top image is an image map, it's hard to gauge). With about 5M infoboxes total using InfoboxImage, that's already enough to conclude that at least a significant minority is not addressed by this policy wording. --Joy (talk) 13:08, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
I think the issue is that if you want to have more space for landscape images, they must still meet the confines of the infobox but there is the ability to establish a larger width at the template level for that. However it is still the case that the bulk of infobox images are best served with portrait type aspect rations, to which 22em will be the default and thus going larger than 228px is not helpful Masem (t) 13:28, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
I don't see a rationale in this statement. Where do we see that meeting these confines is the best practice for landscape images, what is this claim based on? --Joy (talk) 13:34, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
If you have an infobox template that uses a larger width, the landscape image still must fit inside that width. Masem (t) 14:02, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
Again, this just isn't the case in practice. Editors have habitually set infobox parameters to e.g. size 300px or upright 1.23, and the infobox templates silently accommodated the extra pixels, and that was it. --Joy (talk) 14:10, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
The question is, how often are people usi g images larger than the confines of the infobox? If there's only a few instances, that's likely not practice and may be a problem in actually doing that. Masem (t) 15:02, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
Look at some of the examples I posted above. I wasn't looking for them for more than ten minutes, it's not uncommon. --Joy (talk) 17:35, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
What we do want are consistents width of infobox among the same set of articles, so if editors are frequently using larger widths than the infobox has set as default, that default should be changed. It is okay for one or two infoboxes of a given type to set widths, but if many of them are using wider images, it's better to expand the default size to be larger to accommodate rather than force a size. This is for both standardization and also to help with different ways readers might have set up their browser. In terms of language here, we are still using "should" so there is nothing preventing one from specifying an image larger than the infobox (it will scale). Masem (t) 18:33, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
Who is "we", and why do "we" believe that consistent infobox width is a big deal? I certainly don't care about this. I'd like the infobox width to not look silly (e.g., a very wide image resulting in a huge amount of horizontal whitespace in the columns underneath the image), but I don't care whether the infobox is a different width when clicking from article A to B to C. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
It seems to me that infobox image width should be determined by the following, applied in order:
Encyclopedia-wide thumbnail size, as determined by community-wide consensus, then
Scaled by a fixed factor for all infoboxes, determined by community-wide consensus, then
Optionally scaled by a fixed factor for a given infobox template, determined by relevant consensus (depending on the template, this may be project-wide or Wikiproject-level), then
Optionally scaled by a fixed factor for a specific article, determined by relevant consensus (article talk or Wikiproject), then
Scaled by the user's thumbnail preference.
For (purely illustrative) example: the 250px thumbnail size, scaled 0.9x for all infoboxes, scaled 1.2x for all infoboxes of that type, no article-specific scaling, scaled 300/250=1.2x for a user with 300px preference, would result in 250*0.9*1.2*1.2 = 324px width.
This would mean that only the already-defined encyclopedia-wide thumbnail size is a specific pixel value; everything else is a scaling factor. 4 would be intended to be very rare, only used for edge cases (such as a very vertical image), and maximum scaling factors could be placed on 3 and 4 to prevent ridiculous widths. The result would be that a given reader would see (almost all) infoboxes of the same type as the same width, and all default-scaled infoboxes would be the same width. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 19:34, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
Also, maybe infobox image size scaling should be a separate user-settable preference separate from the existing thumbnail size [scaling]. I suspect that logged-in editors care a lot more about infobox width than most logged-out readers. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 19:39, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
We would rather editor avoid pixel perfect layouts, letting the page stylesheets handle image sizes. That's just good HTML practice, and avoids catering to a specific layout that may look good on one screen or browser but terrible in another. So using relative widths and upright setting gs is what we want to encourage editors to use. So when it comes to the infobox, we shouldn't be tryo g to mess about with the image size, and if there's a class of infobox that normally uses more landscape images, the infobox class should be expanded in the template styleshhet that trying to force each template instance to a random size. Masem (t) 20:44, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
I think that's reasonable for the general case, but editors need to be able to accommodate the special case, too.
Imagine that an infobox for a 50% of then are 16:9 aspect ratio landscape, and 50% of them are 2:3 portraits. Should we make the infobox wide to accommodate the landscape ones, in which case the portraits will be bigger than we want, or the other way around, and now the landscapes are too small?
I think the solution is to not make it a one-size-fits most, and instead to let editors do what's sensible for the specific circumstances. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:22, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
If there is a non trivial amount of cases where a wider image is desired, it is better to make a new template (or possibly add an argument to the existing?) to enable a wider template. Like, I could see such a flag on the settlement template as Skylines or major cities will generally be a landscape image, while for small towns a photo of a major building or landmark likely will be portrait. Specifizing size beyond that should only be for exceptional cases, and not something haphazardly used across numerous cases. Masem (t) 21:28, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
Maybe the best thing to do would be to have a general argument for all infoboxes, specifying |image_size=landscape or |image_size=portrait. That would be easier for a lot of editors than guessing about a reasonable pixel-based width. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:48, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
One problem that I see is that many of those city articles are using {{multiple images}} which to best I can tell require a width parameter to be set. It's far better that if a montage of images were being used, they were constructed together in a simple image which they would be able to have dynamic sizing. Masem (t) 22:29, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
What you're saying sounds logical to me on the face of it, but I've seen so, so many examples of #4 that this all seems more like wishful thinking.
Even if we were to collectively decide that the new best current practice is to stop doing that, it would require a huge cleanup effort to track down all the various size=XYZ parameters that people have been sprinkling in over the last few decades or so. We should think carefully before we commit a million volunteer hours to cleaning this all up, even if it seems very messy.
The option of trying to care much less about consistency in this regard is absolutely reasonable, because we have little proof that the bulk of the existing inconsistencies bother readers.
Likewise for the option of explicitly giving more leeway to landscape images. --Joy (talk) 22:22, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
Based on what's been said recently I've updated the language so that it should be clear allowing a larger image to expand the infobox is fine but just not preferred. Getting to a place where forced size should not be required will take far more effort and this at least reflects what's been in practice done here. Masem (t) 22:37, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
WRT I like that you removed the overly broad 'impinge' claims. Thank you.
I still don't think we have much reason to believe there is broad consensus that infobox width consistency between pages is necessary. When articles about world cities differ in infobox width, and nobody even bothers to notice that, despite huge readership, we can't really properly claim it's a known issue, let alone that the policy should advocate something about it. --Joy (talk) 09:16, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
The issue with city ones is that if they are using the multiple image template, they can't get away from specifying a px width for that. But as I also have said, I think having that many images as the image part of the infobox defeats the purpose of the infobox which is supposed to be all the relevant info at a glance, and having to scroll down past a number of images defeats that purpose. But that goes beyond this discussion. Masem (t) 12:16, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
I think that the "consistency between pages" line could be removed. Unlike (apparently) Joy, I have noticed that some infoboxes are different widths, but he is correct that nobody complains about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:21, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
You must have misread something because it was me who removed that part, exactly because I noticed many are different widths, cf. list of examples I posted above. --Joy (talk) 20:44, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
Updating WP:AIGI to cover AI upscaling
There was a pump proposal back in July on the question of updating the AI section of this policy to also cover AI upscaling, where AI software is used to add detail and resolution to low quality historical images. It ran until September 5, was never formally closed, and was automatically archived without action.
Should it be reviewed and, if appropriate, acted on? Belbury (talk) 19:42, 31 October 2025 (UTC)
As an uninvolved admin, I would readily conclude that discussion decidedly had support for blockign the use of AI upscaling in such cases (outside of demonstrating that on articles dealing with the topic of AI upscaling), so it should likely be added. Masem (t) 22:56, 31 October 2025 (UTC)
Your input is welcome. Magnolia677 (talk) 19:39, 5 November 2025 (UTC)
Illustrations of people
What is policy regarding a user-created illustration of a person? I'm referring to Talk:Emi Koyama; an editor uploaded an illustration they made of this person based on video of them; they seem to be part of a project(in SpanishPortuguese) to illustrate articles about women/trans/nonbinary persons with articles that lack photos. I'm concerned about demonstrating that it is an accurate depiction of the person. 331dot (talk) 23:49, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
I'd also be concerned about violating the copyright of the video. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:55, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
I've removed it from the article. 331dot (talk) 12:39, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
This sounds like a weird violation of the spirit of WP:V and WP:BLP. If we know we're in the 21st century, and we know we have easy access to photography, then that is the standard for reproducing the appearance of a person. Employing other methods just makes things more complex for the readers for no obvious benefit. --Joy (talk) 12:00, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
Note also that this policy's section on "Diagrams and other images" already includes:
Additionally, user-made images may be wholly original. In such cases, the user-made image should be primarily serving an educational purpose, and not as a means of self-promotion of the user's artistic skills.
An illustration of a person is an original work but not really wholly original given the moral rights of the subject; but even disregarding that matter for a moment, it's easy enough to say that the illustration is inherently a promotion of artistic skills. --Joy (talk) 12:03, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
The intent here seems to be to provide images of women/LGBTQ persons who don't have copyright compliant images available; but the way to do that is to solicit them(especially in the case of Emi Koyama who has her contact information on her website) not create their own. 331dot (talk) 12:52, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
This project seems to be the source of this effort. 331dot (talk) 13:27, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
Someone should contact them and get them to drop the drawings part until there's some sort of consensus about it. --Joy (talk) 14:15, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
I asked the user who uploaded the illustration of Emi Koyama to come here and/or ask their leaders to, but they aren't interested in pressing their case. I've also interacted with the second user who added their illustration to the article mentioned by Nikkimaria. 331dot (talk) 16:07, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
![](./File:Portrait_of_Samuel_Johnson_("Blinking_Sam").jpg)
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