Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Guidelines

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These are the guidelines for writing Picture of the day (POTD) blurbs.

The steps to take in order are:

  1. Select an image to be the POTD (see #Scheduling).
  2. Add {{picture of the day|Month day, year}} to the image description page. If it's a rerun, add an additional date parameter to the already-existing template.
  3. Write the blurb (see #Writing the blurb).
  4. Notify the nominator and/or uploader using {{NotifyPOTD|salutation|Image:imagename.jpg|YYYY-MM-DD}}.
  5. When it gets near to the scheduled date, create the protected version.

Contents

[edit] Scheduling

The PsOTD are taken from the featured pictures generally in the order of their promotion (FIFO). The promotion order can be found either by going through the archives or in reverse order on the various group pages of Wikipedia:Featured pictures thumbs. The PsOTD are usually scheduled about a month in advance. Specifically, by the first of the month, that month's archive page should be complete.

Try not to schedule the same "theme" in close succession (such as having two bird pictures right after each other). If there are two images of the same subject that were promoted close together, put a gap in between their appearances (such as these two carbon nanotube images which were promoted in close succession).

Certain images may be placed on specific days to honor anniversaries, such as this map of India, which ran on Indian Independence Day.

Not all Featured Pictures will be scheduled for POTD. For example, Image:Earth-Moon.png is just too wide to fit into the layout.

[edit] Reusing older PsOTD

Because it is often the case that fewer than seven new featured pictures are promoted per week, it is advisable to rerun at least one older POTD. The reruns are also taken in order of promotion. Try to select older pictures that have only appeared as POTD once.

[edit] Monthly archive page

If a page for the month does not yet exist, you will have to create it. It's rather simple: Each day's entry consists of a template call: {{POTD/Day|YYYY-MM-DD}}. Add one template for each day in the month. It's easiest just to copy a previous month's source and just change the dates.

[edit] Writing the blurb

To schedule a new POTD, click the "create" link on the month's archive page. This will create a new page with preloaded with a template call.

[edit] Template parameters

Parameter Example Purpose
image Example.png The image name, without the "Image:" prefix.
thumb Example.png A thumbnail image, to be used in the Main Page version in place of the actual image. This is used for animated GIFs, such as this one, so that only a single frame (you may have to create it) will appear on the Main Page (for bandwidth considerations).
size 300 (Optional) The image's size, without "px". For landscape orientation images, use the default size (300px) and delete this line. For portrait orientation, the usual size is 250px. When this greater than 400 (for panoramas), the layout will change. The standard size for panorama images is 500. All image sizes may need to be altered depending on the image (for example, an exceptionally tall POTD).
rowsize 250 (Optional) The image's size in the "row" version (this appears on the Main Page). For landscape orientation images, use the default size (250px) and delete this line. For portrait orientation, the standard size is 160px. When this greater than 400 (for panoramas), the layout will change. If this line is deleted, the size parameter will be used. If that doesn't exist either, then the default size (250px) will be used.
colsize 300 (Optional) The image's size in the "column" version (this appears on some of the Main Page alternatives and some user pages). For both landscape and portrait orientations, this line may be deleted. For panoramas, this should be no greater than 400 (at this size, the layout will change as above).
title [[Article name]] This serves as the alt attribute of the image as well as the wikilinked title for the "condensed" (no text) version. The article should be the one that is best represented by the image, but in some cases it may be too difficult. See this and this for examples of the latter.
caption (see any existing PsOTD) The caption should be as specific as possible about the image itself. If there is not enough to fill the entire space, then you may take some text from the article. If there is not much to say about the image, try to get a part of the article that is illustrated by the image. The name of article (the same one you chose for the title parameter) should be in bold and wikilinked. Do not link to articles that do not exist (i.e., no red links on the Main Page).

How much should you write? The total amount of text, including the image credits, should stay within the top and bottom borders of the image. This means there will be a lot more room for portrait-oriented pictures than landscape-oriented ones. For panoramas, there is no set limit, but try not to be too wordy.

Examples:

Examples of bad POTD captions:

  • Euro symbol - this caption doesn't describe the image at all, but talks about euros and the euro symbol in general.
  • Child labor - this caption just talks about child labor in general. Contrast this with its second appearance as POTD.

You should also familiarize yourself with the existing Featured Pictures. If there is another image that covers the same topic/article, try to make the caption different than what was written for the previous FP.
credit Photo credit: Jimbo Wales The credit for the image. If the image was a collaboration, add the name of everyone who worked on it. If it's a Wikipedian and they don't have a user page, link to their talk page instead. We usually do not have off-site links to photographers' web pages (on Flickr, for example). Even if the author is unknown, say so.

[edit] Animated images

For animated images, unless the file size is small enough where it won't cause bandwidth problems for the Main Page (for example, this animated horse), you should create a single-frame thumbnail (this can be done using Adobe Photoshop or the GIMP) and place this in the thumb parameter of the template as described above. Then, a corresponding subpage of Wikipedia:Today's featured picture (animation) will have to be created (see examples). This is done in a two-step process.

First, create the page at [[Wikipedia:Today's featured picture (animation)/Month day, year]] (replacing the end with the actual date, such as April 1, 2007) by taking the first line of the POTD template and replacing it with {{subst:POTD column (note no closing braces). On the protected version, you will have to add a link to Wikipedia:Today's featured picture (animation).

Examples:

[edit] Protected version

The protected version is the one that will actually be transcluded onto the Main Page. Having two versions allows non-admins to make updates to the POTD caption while it's protected, but prevents vandalism from appearing on the Main Page. The protected version should be created soon before the POTD date, no more than a week beforehand. It is created by replacing the first line of the template with {{subst:POTD row (note no closing braces).

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