Unflattering portraits

[Smiley]

A thread for the worst BLP pics.

[ArmasRebane]

I dunno, at least the Spivak one demonstrates some unusual personality and flavor.

Sports are a hotbed of this, there was actually some press about how bad they often are because they're blurry crops from wide court shots: https://www.theringer.com/2017/7/14/160 ... dia-photos

I kind of feel like they do serve some purpose in that they definitely push people to freely license some images to replace the terrible stuff.

[Smiley]

Sports are a hotbed of this, there was actually some press about how bad they often are because they're blurry crops from wide court shots: https://www.theringer.com/2017/7/14/160 ... dia-photos

Great stuff, cheers.

This is a literal profile picture — a picture that captures only Abdur-Rahim’s profile. His ear looks like some sort of weird mollusk; we see about 2 inches of his neck before an unidentified object juts in. The photo is of such poor quality that Abdur-Rahim looks like those cliffs that old prospectors decided vaguely resembled a human face.

I like to think he’s licking his lips like a cartoon character because he just smelled a freshly baked pie on a windowsill and doesn’t yet realize the pie is part of a trap laid by his cartoon nemesis.

This is an URBO — an Unidentified Ryan Bowen–like Object.

[Smiley]

Image Conspiracy Theory

On Alex Jones's syndicated talkshow, he commented multiple times in mid April, 2013 that in his Wikipedia photo he was extremely constipated, and his production schedule and team made it unable for him to go to a restroom - adding that this unflattering photo was used by Wikipedias' liberal user-base to further defame his image. 76.106.2.110, 27 April 2013

[Ming]

To be fair, images of Jones that don't make him look like the flaming asshole which he is appear to be quite rare.

[Smiley]

This is Bendor "Bendy" Grosvenor, supposedly.



He doesn't seem to like Wikipedia very much.

The rush to Wikipedia

Some Wikipedia fans keep saying; why don't you go and make the Wikipedia entries better? First, it's not my job. And second, those people have clearly never had to do battle with the various (always anonymous) self-proclaimed experts who lurk in Wikipedia's depths. I'm afraid it's very rarely worth the bother.

[Giraffe Stapler]

This is Bendor "Bendy" Grosvenor, supposedly.

Without the moustache, that guy is the spitting image of my uncle.

[tarantino]

Paul Bearer (T-H-L), deceased professional wrestling manager and funeral director.


Quin Snyder (T-H-L), head coach of the Utah Jazz.

[Poetlister]

Pierre de Fermat (T-H-L). To be fair, there can't be many photos of him extant.

Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński (T-H-L), Polish philosopher.

William Rankine (T-H-L), Scottish physicist. "He was an enthusiastic amateur singer, pianist and cellist who composed his own humorous songs."

[Beeblebrox]

I recently nominated a small pile at commons uploaded by the same user. They were taking screengrabs from youtube videos of zoom meetings that were cc-by-sa and cropping them into terrible blurry headshots. I don't think it was malicious, but I also don't think living people should be subject to random crappy screengrabs being used to represent them.

[Smiley]

I recently nominated a small pile at commons uploaded by the same user. I don't think it was malicious,...

Yikes.

[Poetlister]

The problem with BLP pictures is that as long as someone is alive, the "fair use" loophole can't be used to allow a photo in copyright to be posted. This is because there is always the chance that someone will take a new picture and declare it to be an approved version of CC.

[Beeblebrox]

I recently nominated a small pile at commons uploaded by the same user. I don't think it was malicious,...

Yikes.

yeah....its not great. I'm not at all sure what will happen with the deletion nominations, but most of the uploads have been taken out of use on en.wp, and it's unlikely any other project wants poorly-timed, blurry images of state-level politicians from Vermont, so to my mind there is no reason to keep them, but Commons will be Commons about it so it's anyone's guess.

[Ada Sinn]

I recently nominated a small pile at commons uploaded by the same user. They were taking screengrabs from youtube videos of zoom meetings that were cc-by-sa and cropping them into terrible blurry headshots. I don't think it was malicious, but I also don't think living people should be subject to random crappy screengrabs being used to represent them.

Can you provide the link to the deletion discussion?

[Midsize Jake]

Can you provide the link to the deletion discussion?

Looks like there were three of them, but the talk pages are identical. And there appears to have been a preliminary discussion on the Help Desk page. Maybe his idea was just to establish a precedent (assuming there wasn't one already), but if anyone really wants to make a dent in this problem, they'll need a lot more people with plenty of free time, not to mention willingness to deal with a large cadre of Freikulturkinder wack-jobs. The last being a rather rare commodity.

[Poetlister]

Someone notes Robert Flanders (T-H-L) as an article with a rubbish picture. Very true, but that doesn't mean that it's a good idea to have rubbish pictures! Anyway, I'm not sure that he's notable enough; he's a former Associate Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and an unsuccessful Senate candidate, neither of which qualifies him IMO.

[Beeblebrox]

I do what I can on a case-by-case basis at Commons, but I have little to no hope of accomplishing any systemic changes there anytime soon so I don't really try.

[tarantino]

French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre (T-H-L).

[Beeblebrox]

That's.... not great but it was done by a notable artist, the subject has been dead for nearly 200 years, and there is actually an interesting backstory to the whole thing if you look at the "mistaken portrait" section of the article.

[Poetlister]

Sir John Herschel (T-H-L). There are three other pictures of him included in the article, so there was scarcely any need for this one. It was taken by Julia Margaret Cameron (T-H-L), who is regarded as one of the greatest Victorian photographers though many of her portraits are pretty dire.

[Ming]

Seriously? This is a HUGELY famous picture: it's the lead image in both the Britannica and Royal Society articles, and another pair of Cameron portraits head various other articles. Omitting it entirely would be bizarre.

[Poetlister]

Yes, but this is a thread about unflattering portraits and it's extremely unflattering.

[Smiley]

... it's extremely unflattering.

Herschel loved it.

The picture of the old paterfamilias with the black cap on is, I think, the climax of photographic art, and beats hollow anything I ever beheld in photography before.

[tarantino]

Jonathan Brookins (T-H-L), MMA fighter.

Here's a photo from his ESPN bio.

[Smiley]

There are over a hundred Gary Numan pics on commons. Here are three:



Guess which one they chose for his wiki infobox...

[Smiley]

[Midsize Jake]

Guess which one they chose for his wiki infobox...

Apparently this is the work of User:SomeWhatLife (T-C-L), who's been on WP for only about three months. He got the image as a screen-grab from this Youtube video (which carries a CC-BY license) in which Numan thanks his fans for the fact that his new album, Intruder, debuted at #2 on the UK album charts.
Mr. SomeWhat appears to be a Numan fan, but as I recall, there's considerable controversy in the Numan fan community over whether or not Gary should admit to wearing a hairpiece. The WP article doesn't mention this, possibly because existing sources aren't considered reliable enough, or maybe because some of his WP-based fans are reverting any attempts to include that information. Using this as his WP photo might be just another salvo in this ongoing conflict.

[Smiley]

I figured they used that one because Gary is there in his car.

[Giraffe Stapler]

Mr. SomeWhat appears to be a Numan fan, but as I recall, there's considerable controversy in the Numan fan community over whether or not Gary should admit to wearing a hairpiece.

Please - they are known as Numanoids!

Cosmetic surgery? I can't get enough: 1980s icon Gary Numan on face lifts, his FIVE hair transplants and why elf 'n' safety is driving him out of Britain

[tarantino]

Halle Berry (T-H-L), not currently used on enwiki, but it is used for her bio on a half a dozen other language wikis.

Hank Aaron (T-H-L)

[Smiley]

[Smiley]

[Poetlister]

That's a truncated view. This is the full picture.

[Smiley]

Mike Rossi looking uncannily NPC-like here.


Uploader: MRossi

[Smiley]

Where's Swirsky?

Spoiler

[Smiley]

don cheadles reaction when looking at his wikipedia pic is don cheadles wikipedia pic

h/t Tess McBreezy

[Zoloft]

This topic is hilarious, and we should harvest it into a blog post.

[Smiley]

It's Mikey Day day today.

[rhindle]

This topic is hilarious, and we should harvest it into a blog post.

A blog like this could probably get a lot of attention too. Easily digestible for public consumption.

[tarantino]

Mike Rossi looking uncannily NPC-like here.

Uploader: MRossi

Reminds me of Dale Gribble without the sunglasses.

[Smiley]

[tarantino]

heh, Nick Nolte. Not used, though.

[Smiley]

[Smiley]

[Ada Sinn]

This thread makes me genuinely laugh.

[Smiley]

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as featured in the Russian wiki.

[Midsize Jake]

We could definitely use a new blog post. And since I've been hobbled by a (somewhat minor) injury these past couple of days and confined to the ol' easy chair, I went ahead and made a start on it:

One of the inherent problems with Wikipedia, since it's a website, is that articles look boring if no images are displayed in them. It's understandable that Wikipedians don't want their articles to look boring, but there's a catch, which is that Wikipedia images are supposed to be "free use," which is to say they can't have restrictive copyrights or usage licenses. "Fair use" exceptions can be made for educational purposes, but that rarely applies to biographies. (For other articles, it's typically not a serious problem because even if the article's primary author(s) don't have a free-use image handy, there's usually someone with a camera or a drawing program who can supply one if, say, a request is posted on Wikipedia:Requested pictures.)

That means Wikipedians often have to "get creative" when working on articles about people. And as it happens, some people prefer to maintain some degree of control over their own likeness, and how images including their likeness are used. Often this is no joke — it's bad enough that "ugly pics" can show up in supermarket tabloids, attack blogs, or Reddit threads, but when Wikipedia attaches one to your biography, that's what people see as soon as they Google your name. This can affect your professional image and influence public perception of you, whether or not you actually care about those things. And whether or not the image is copyrighted or licensed, the mere fact that it's on Wikipedia means nearly everyone will assume it isn't, and use it accordingly, i.e., "freely."

Unfortunately, as has always been the case with Wikipedia biographies (and especially those of living persons), Wikipedians tend not to be concerned about the wishes of the subject, no matter how problematic or personally damaging the article may be for them. True or false, if an assertion appears in a "reliable source," it's eligible to be in the article; if it doesn't appear in a reliable source, some Wikipedians will still try to include it. And if anything, the situation is even worse for images, because all that's required for Wikipedians to add an uploaded image of someone's likeness to an article is an assurance from them that the image is the uploader's "own work," and that the subject in the image is actually who the uploader claims it is. Unless by accident, neither of those assurances are ever really verified by any non-Wikipedian third parties — much less the article subjects themselves. What's more, the second of those assurances is often completely ignored, especially for subjects who aren't easily recognizable.

The image use policy does contain a section on privacy rights, but of course, that only says that if someone can photograph you in a public place, you essentially have no privacy rights as far as Wikipedia is concerned. There's a subsection on "Moral issues" that suggests that personal images obtained through illicit means without the subject's consent are "normally considered unacceptable," but again, if the uploader claims to have clean hands, that's good enough for most Wikipedians. And to be fair, most uploaders do try to keep their hands clean, if at all possible. That's good, except that those clean hands often come at a price: image quality.

So, how does this play out in real-world terms? Thankfully, there's no need to speculate about this. We can see the results first-hand!

...And this would be followed with some examples.

Whoever's reading this, feel free to correct/clarify any of the above points, or point out where I'm either being unfair or too generous. Normally we develop blog posts "behind the curtain" so to speak, but this isn't really a "scoop" or a boat-rocking exposé, and there might be legitimate experts on this subject who are lurkers or just-occasional posters.

We also need a clever title, of course. Something simple like "Wikipedia's 'Ugly Pics'" would probably be the logical choice for SEO purposes, but SEO considerations haven't stopped us from using puns and other clever titles in the past.

[Smiley]

Nice work. I'll ask Bendy if he has anything to say.

[tarantino]

This is a fact. I looked up "ugly" in the dictionary, and found a picture of Jojo Seaweed.

That isn't very nice. It was prodded a year ago, but some asshole removed the prod without explanation.

[Smiley]

Boy, those Wikipedia editors sure do hate that Gary Null guy.