Forum:Character page main photos

Is there a policy concerning the main photo representing particular characters on their respective articles? Specifically, do we want to have the most current picture representing the person, such as with Worf or Kirk? Spock has a movie-era photo, whereas I think a photo (a promotional one, if possible) would be more appropriate. -- StAkAr Karnak 00:00, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with having the most recent, or rather latest in time, shot in the sidebar. I would like to see one from "Unification". I do NOT agree with promotional shots. With DVDs out there, the screencaps are of high quality if people know what they are doing, and the production stills are not from the episode themselves. To make matters worse, many of the production shots are just plain crap, with terrible lighting, or crappy color balancing, etc. --OuroborosCobra talk |undefined  00:10, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * There's no fixed policy on this, but general agreement for quite some time was to use something like "first appearance" (not necessarily first scene, but from the first few episodes) and "last appearance" (not counting alternate futures here). This makes sense, because it easily shows the changes a character has gone through. I agree, no promo pics, please. ADDITION: Just seeing the changes to Reginald Barclay, I also think it should be "first pic" first, "last pic" second, not the other way around. -- Cid Highwind 08:52, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean by "it should be "first pic" first, "last pic" second"? If you mean the oldest, chronologically, should be listed first, isn't it more important to see what a character looks like 'now' first, and than see an age progression through the article? -- StAkAr Karnak 17:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * As there is no official policy, I think it best to go on a case by case basis. Uhura for example looks much better with her "most well known" picture first, and then progressivly on. Also, for characters with younger versions of themselves ala Charles Tucker III, the "first appearance" pic would clash with the "Baby/Childhood" section. This also allows for the "older-chronologically" picture to be in the section talking about them when they were older. I say case by case basis. - AJ Halliwell 17:48, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, older picture first to show how they've aged, especially when both pictures are in the sidebar (ie, the Barclay example above has both his first and last appearances, but in reverse order at the moment). -- Sulfur 17:49, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I assumed we were talking about just the sidebar images used on a character article here... in which case, it should be "first appearance" as the top pic, "last appearance" as the bottom pic. "First" and "last" here being from a production POV, so no childhood or "possible future" images. If we're talking about the "whole" article, the images outside of the sidebar should obviously each have some connection to their surrounding text - and if that text is in chronological order, the images should be as well. -- Cid Highwind 18:11, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

We are indeed talking about the sidebar. My reasoning was that, since we have the sidebar to show most recent/oldest pix, the main body of the article can go from oldest appearance to most recent in chronological order. On a related point, I think that there are several promo pix throughout the site, though they are uncategorized/unmarked as such. -- StAkAr Karnak 21:31, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * As I said above, images outside of the sidebar should have some relation to the text. If the text is purely chronological, then the images will (automatically) be as well. If the text isn't, having images in such order would mean that they have no relation to nearby text in at least some cases - bad idea, I think. -- Cid Highwind 09:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)