Image use on the wiki

Hi everyone,
I hope everyone had an enjoyable Tuesday evening (in the US) and that European viewers who will be seeing the season premiere over the next few days will have just as much fun as the North American fans in rediscovering the majesty that is Damon and Carlton with all guns blazing at their keyboards. We've had an amazing influx of editors from around the globe taking part in Lostpedia in the last few days, but I just wanted to speak out about the use of images on the wiki.

Lostpedia uses images under the United States Fair Use Doctrine. Basically this means that the images on Lostpedia within articles should be used in such a way to illustrate the point being made within the text content.

In several articles, we have seen an influx of images that do not do this. They are from the correct show that they are trying to reference, but they aren't necessarily informative images. I will use two images from Sawyer's article to illustrate the issue at hand.

Firstly, we have this image of Sawyer with Locke's father, and the original "Sawyer", Anthony Cooper. The image is entitled: "Sawyer gives Cooper the letter he kept with him most of his life." then links to the article for the episode The Brig from which it came from. It is also in line with the content written within the wiki which tells the story of Cooper's arrival on the Island, the conversation Sawyer finally had with the man who caused the death of his parents and Cooper's death at the hands of Sawyer.

This is an excellent use of images on the wiki. It illustrates the situation, and most importantly, the content in the article. It is a great aid visually to the text content in the page.

Now for the otherside of the issue. We have this image to the right. This is from the episode Eggtown, and was on the article with the subtitle "Sawyer agrees to help Kate release Miles from the boathouse."

Now, I think we can all agree that its a good photo of Josh Holloway as Sawyer, and the image does in fact come from Eggtown, and does come from the scene it is said to have come from. However, there is a problem with it. The image doesn't actually convey any information relevant to the article, even if it is from the correct scene. It says he is agreeing to help Kate to release Miles, but Kate is nowhere to be seen. He is smiling, almost jovial looking and is casually holding his hand on his hip. At no point does it actually help convey the context of the article. It is really a superfluous image.

The vast majority of images on articles are there to aid and benefit the contents on Lostpedia, and they do just that. But we need to make sure, as editors, that the images are used to illustrate the content of our articles, not just illustrate the article and make it more visually palatable for the users.

Lostpedia Tops Wired's 8 Best Pedias

Look in the June 2008 issue of Wired Magazine (p. 52) to see Lostpedia topping the half tongue-in-cheek list of Wired's 8 best non-Wikipedia Pedias. Yup, the W8BNWPP, an honor indeed. At least we beat "Dickipedia" and more importantly "Wookieepedia": "Did you know that "snot vampire" is slang terminology for the Anzati species? Of course not. No one did."

Oh and did I mention who came in 8th? You'll have to click over to Wired's online edition here to see.

And I thought we were all "wikis", not "pedias". Then the 8th place wouldn't even qualify for the list because it's a pedia, but definitely not a wiki. There you go. In any case we topped them all. Or was it the other way around? The list wasn't numbered. Oh well, so we're not Mom's cure for diarrhea, but we're in good company anyway and we're honored: Thanks, Wired!

Name that Car: Lost Edition

Here's a fun game for you while we wait for 4x06 next week. I was editing our Wiki list article on cars, and thought that the image thumbnails could be a trivia test for Losties.

This is how it works. In the following images from Lost, name the main character driving or riding in the car. If you know that, you should know the episode.

The list will be a mix of difficulty: 4 each in categories or Easy, Medium and Hard.

To play, don't click on the images (the URL filenames sometimes give away the answer), and see if you can do it just from the 400 pixel thumbnails.


For every correct answer in Easy, score 1 point.
For every correct answer in Medium, score 2 points.
For every correct answer in Hard, score 3 points.

Post your score in comments and see how you do against other Lost fans.

For more than you want to know about cars in Lost, see our article: Automobiles

EASY (1 pt.)
1.



2.


3.


4.



MEDIUM (2 pts.)

5.


6.


7.


8.


HARD (3 pts.)
9.


10.


11.


12.




Scroll down for answers



















Highlight between the lines to reveal inviso-text answers

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EASY
1. Hurley (or Johnny) - from "Everybody Hates Hugo"
2. Charles Widmore - from "Live Together, Die Alone"
3. Locke - from "Deus Ex Machina"
4. Mr Eko - from "The 23rd Psalm"

MEDIUM
5. Sawyer - from "The Long Con"
6. Kate (or Tom Brennan) - from "Born to Run"
7. Sawyer - from "Confidence Man"
8. Helen - from "Orientation"

HARD
9. Jin - from "... In Translation"
10. Kate - from "Through the Looking Glass"
11. Christian Shephard (or Ana-Lucia) - from "Two for the Road"
12. Kate - from "Left Behind"

---

Good Job! Next time we'll test you on license plates! Just kidding I think.

Name That Tune Lost Edition

Have you ever wanted to help Lostpedia's articles, but didn't know where to start? Put your musical knowledge to the test and see if you can improve our article on commercial Music featured in Lost. Everyone knows about Mama Cass at the beginning of Season 2, but did you know there are over two dozen unidentified songs on our wanted list? Lostpedia user Dreamingtree72 recently compiled a task list for these mystery songs at the very top of the Music article talk page, complete with episode name and time stamp. If you know the song, just click edit and post it there!

August - Wiki Improvements

Hey everyone. We're well into August, and at the moment we're busy working on improvements to the site in general. We have put lots of thought into the organisation of the Portals. At the moment they are based on the cast listings for the show, which has caused much consternation, and they are... terribly ugly.

We are working on designs and revisions to make the site look much nicer and more functional. Portals are the area of the site that we've overlooked recently, so we are working heavily to make them better for Season 4 onwards, basing them on the affiliation of characters within the show, rather than their cast listing.

So, take a look at this very early design concept, and please tell me what you think via the wiki's discussion tab.