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On-orbit photos

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@Epiphyllumlover: Is there a need for all of the photos of the county from space? I would think 1-2 is sufficient, as it's not like the topography/land structure has changed much between the Skylab and ISS photos. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 06:01, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Because the photos have been on the article since April 2020 and 16 editors other editors changing the article since then (plus one who thanked me to the best of my memory) were fine with it, the WP:ONUS is on someone wishing to remove them. Also, there are many other geographical articles with more than 18 images on the page (there are 16 photos from space, the courthouse, and the census map). It isn't as if the photos from space are displacing other photos. I didn't put the photos in the gallery; but another user recently preferred it instead of a single unobtrusive photomontage with smaller tiles which I had originally used. I was willing to go along with the extended gallery though. The photos have a variety of reasons to be there, or possible uses:
  • The time span for the photos ranges from 1973 to just a little less than two weeks ago. Astronauts photographed it more often than most areas of the United States. This indicates the general importance of the area to either the astronauts or the people on the ground who compile and send suggested target lists to the astronauts. I read about the lists from an astronaut. The office which runs the website requests that everyone who uses their photos on the internet to kindly send them a link. This is so they can monitor how or whether they are used. Back in March I cropped a satellite image into different parts and added the crops on various wikipedia articles, some without a photo. Shortly afterwards, I added an astronaut photo for another large lake nearby which showed it was completely ice-covered in the winter. Then on April 10th, an astronaut went and took photos of either the same things or the larger general area that I had posted the satellite photos to, except for the ones which were already ice free and were not as interesting. I think the timing is curious and could indicate that the use of the photos bearing the commons template for NASA astronaut photography is monitored (such as with a watchlist) by the same office which runs the Gateway to Astronaut Photography website and may have influenced the target list provided to the ISS. A watchlist could have picked up the astronaut photo and then someone in an office looked at the recent satellite photos which I had cropped. This is now the second occasion I think something like this has happened with the ISS astronauts. If they really are taking pictures for wikipedia it makes sense to show gratitude by using them.
  • Multiple images for the same thing quickly indicates to the viewer that north is not necessarily oriented up. Even if this is indicated by a caption it could be missed.
  • If you look at the map in the top right corner, see how Wisconsin is carved out? This makes it hard to identify the location of the county, since it matches with Wisconsin's Door Peninsula like a puzzle piece. Out of them, four are panned out views which show this. A reader seeing both the map at the top and an image should be able to recognize this, which will help in understanding this.
  • Two of the photos are at night, which is helpful in depicting the extent of urbanization at Escabana and Gladstone compared to the rest of the county.
  • Six of the photos show only parts of the county. If a reader clicks on the image, he or she will see the enlarged media viewer version and can access the extended caption showing what is depicted. This is significant because there are two peninsulas, two bays, and also the area off to the west with Escabana and Gladstone. (It should have another photo centered on just Escabana.)
  • Five of the photos indicate the melting and breakup of ice. During many years in this region there are incidents where people fishing on the ice get stuck on a newly broken floe and must be rescued. At times people have drowned due to hazards on the ice. The breakup of ice is of interest to boaters (notice which areas are ice-free earlier in the spring) and also of interest to those who want to fish, but don't want to get stuck. The pattern of ice breakup is best shown by pictures, even from these four you can see which areas are more hazardous than others. The hazard in general is obvious from the pictures and it indicates the need to seek reliable, off-wiki information about it. Also, the February 22, 2014 photo was taken during a brief moment in a series with other photos nearby, one which was just south of the county, but was listed as the official 2014 Image of the Day. This is because it documents the breakup of ice and the development of stringers. Because of how the currents work coming out of Green Bay and into Lake Michigan, the stringers are scientifically interesting.
  • One of the photos demonstrates a strong sunglint effect that is not often seen on close-up astronaut photos. Notice that the photo was taken during the morning, and to the east. This is interesting just in how it compares to the rest, and that it is an effect not often seen from space.
  • Having a larger number of photos indicates the progression of the seasons and how this changes the landscape. The only months omitted are December, July, October, and September. If there were good photos for these, I would probably add them and arrange them by month instead of by year. As a group the photos document change in the landscape rather than just repeating the landscape again and again. Only two of the photos are from the same day, and they are close ups of the two peninsulas. The most common month is June--out of the four known for sure to be from June, two photos show the two peninsulas, one shows Little Bay de Noc, and the other one has the sunglint; they don't repeat each other. Since it always changes it isn't the same picture twice.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 13:58, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So in other words, they're pretty and you like them, so they should stay. Seriously, none of this is discussed in the text of the article, so much of what is written above in the bullet points doesn't really matter. If those topics were ever added to the article, then the photos could be added back to help illustrate them. The whole first bullet point is irrelevant speculation, and I'd like to see some hard sources for that. I'm in favor of removing all but one photo and calling it a day until the prose in the article might support additional imagery. Imzadi 1979 → 18:22, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please assume good faith, Imzadi1979.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 18:27, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Several of the photos focus more on Wisconsin and Door County. Clicking on them, there are a handful that don't really show Delta County at all because Michigan is obscured in cloud cover, or Michigan is at the very edge of the image. At a minimum, those need to be removed so that what remains has Delta County, or at least Michigan, as a subject. Then we can discuss what's left to see if/how they contribute to the encyclopedic value of the article. Imzadi 1979 → 18:33, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I swapped out one photo with another one taken seconds later so that Delta County is better centered. The next photo after it in the series shows the brightening of dawn which obscures the city lights. Delta County is larger than it seems because it includes a water area too, and sometimes snow can resemble clouds from a thumbnail. Even cloud cover (within some limits) has some informational value pertaining to the sort of climate in the area; sometimes clouds form only over land on calm days, on other days they form both over water and land. The 1997 photo shows small clouds only forming over land, but not water. I had reservations about the first one from 1973 because of the cloud which covers the western part of the county, but it does not cover the whole of either peninsula, and it is currently the oldest useable photo of the sort on commons. The county was photographed on a cloud-free day in the winter during Apollo 16, but I am currently attempting to get the file onto commons. It may take some weeks because it requires a Phabricator request; the photo shows much of the United States and is over one gigabyte in size; I am hoping they can alter the settings or software somehow so it can be uploaded directly. I am in favor of replacing the 1973 photo with a crop of the Apollo 16 photo eventually.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 19:07, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just taking a wider view of U.S. county articles as a whole, it's truly unusual to include any pictures of a region from space. What makes Delta County so special that it needs to have 14 pictures? Is it the distinctive coastline? Would you support adding 14 pictures from space to, say, Ida County, Iowa? How is putting these pictures in the article any different than putting them in a category on Commons and linking to it? What benefit do our readers get? –Fredddie™ 22:33, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I went and added one for Ida County. The photo makes sense from the thumbnail if you are from the area and can pick out the relative locations of the nearby cities from memory. From MediaViewer you can pick out the interstates, so it isn't that bad for a larger number of readers. Many more people have driven on I-29 and I-80 than have driven through Ida County, so a picture showing where Ida County is relative to the interstates and memorable exit signs should help them relate to the county. Why did astronauts take so many pictures of Delta County? Sometimes the targets are based off of what is being studied. Searching around, it seems people were studying Ice in northern Green Bay (also this link)and Lake Michigan in general (page 9). Starting with the Landsat program in the 70s it seems that there were regular NOAA papers dealing with the ice over the decades. More recently there has been some literature about climate change and the ice in the bay. There is other literature I didn't link to.
I wouldn't object to more photos for Ida County. Of course they wouldn't be looking at lake ice and the differences in cloud formation on land compared to water. Instead a series for the county could depict the ordinary seasonal changes and a comparison of good versus drought years would be enough. A close-up depicting center-pivot irrigation would also be nice. Since astronauts might not be taking enough pictures, a motivated editor might have to use satellite coverage from Earth Explorer to fill in gaps in the Gateway to Astronaut Photography.
I would gladly "barter" the photo of the Stonington Peninsula for anyone who wants to create an article about it and put the photo on that article instead of this one. And if the gallery is too intrusive, the remaining photos could go back into a photomontage although Imzadi prefers the gallery. An overall consensus could form for the individual articles such as Gladstone, Michigan, Little Bay de Noc, Big Bay de Noc, and Garden Peninsula to only use photos not repeated on this article since they are related-topic articles. If others prefer it that way and want to change out some of the other photos to the other locations' articles I will go along. And that way readers would not encounter the same photos twice which isn't the greatest but sometimes unavoidable.
As for the readers right now, the ones who live in the area would probably be interested in the photos and click on them to read the more extended captions which most have from Commons. As general interest goes, the "From space" section is more interesting than the demographics and politics sections, except once every four years when the politics section becomes more interesting. The "From space" section is probably more interesting to younger readers who are more curious about such things, while adults probably are more interested in "history" and the lists of communities and adjacent counties. People who don't care about photos but are looking for specific information such as major communities or where it is on a map won't scroll to the bottom anyway so they wouldn't even notice that they are there. Overall the photos from space are a rephotography series covering 50 years of change; this should raise questions and pique interest from readers with the time and energy to elucidate their questions.
The Gateway to Astronaut photography website could be a good resource for many geo-articles which don't have much on them, especially less populated areas where less material is already on commons or is potentially transferable from flickr. The main obstacle against this is that a majority of the U.S. individuals making edits on this website are located in the northeast and the west coasts. They probably lack familiarity with most geographical features which allow people to identify where the photo is located. Because most photos on the Gateway website do not have location information embedded into them, the photos must be searched by the location of the ISS at the second the photo was taken. (I was lucky for Ida County that a photo with coordinates for the target was already cataloged.) Because astronauts often take photos at an angle rather than straight up and down like earth observation satellites, the subject of the pictures may be hundreds of miles away from the location directly underneath where the ISS was. So finding more Ida County photos to illustrate changes in the landscape may entail combing through much of Iowa and adjacent states. Some people who live in Ida County or near it probably could do it, but how many of them edit wikipedia?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 01:03, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And? Typing out a wall of text doesn't make you more right. I think Imzadi1979 said it correctly, "...they're pretty and you like them, so they should stay." It's ok to just say that. –Fredddie™ 05:25, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I can see the case for one image to illustrate the overall geography of the county, but an entire gallery is excessive. If they don't add obvious value to the reader, they aren't worth including in the article. SounderBruce 04:35, 24 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The value is evident in the detailed captions which many of the images have on Commons; the captions show up on MediaViewer. It worked better as a photo montage since there weren't gallery captions appearing over the Commons caption in MediaViewer. Since you commented, an IP editor removed the section and placed one of them back in the article. I am not sure why that one was chosen to be kept, there are more recent images of better quality.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 22:42, 29 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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