Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Captions

Infobox image dates

MOS:CAPLENGTH advises denoting the date of an image concisely, and gives an example e.g. "Cosby in 2010" for Bill Cosby. I find this is nearly universally followed for people. In my experience, it is usually followed for other things as well. For example "Central Christian Church in 2013" for Central Christian Church (Greenville, Texas), "Dundee Methodist Church, October 2009" for Dundee United Methodist Church, "Westfield Hurstville in November 2018" for Westfield Hurstville and "The Wellgate Centre in 2007" for Wellgate Centre. Sometimes these types of captions are shortened to something like "The church in 1963" or "The lighthouse in 1995" which I think is fine as the name is already stated at the top of the infobox.

I recently found some captions that were nothing but a year, e.g. (2022) for Huntington Street Baptist Church which I think is just too cryptic and without precedence. After fixing several to align them with typical infobox captions, I was reverted by Beyond My Ken who strongly objected (User_talk:MB#Please_stop_changing_the_captions.), so opening this up for broader discussion. MB 02:20, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

It's abundantly clear to anyone but an rank imbecile that "(2022)", for instance, on a photo of an 19th century church is the date of the photograph and not the date the church was built. We have no obligation to submit to the lowest possible level of intelligence in writing our encyclopedia, nor should we assume that our readers aren't intelligent enough to understand such information when presented to them. Perhaps the poster above would be happier editing Simple English Wikipedia. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:17, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Many of our readers are "rank imbeciles" then, and we should allow for them. A caption with just a date looks odd & puzzling, and should be avoided. Especially in brackets - what's that about? Captions should never be entirely bracketed. Even "In 2022" would be significantly better. Johnbod (talk) 22:31, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. There is zero reason for the brackets. It does squat. And no reason to leave out a preposition. Or a noun, for that matter. Remember, Wikipedia material is free to r reuse, and being stingy serves no one. oknazevad (talk) 23:09, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

PS, BMK's response is beyond the pale (pardon the pun) of civility. Just because others give considerations to their edits you don't does not make them less intelligence. Cut that crap out. oknazevad (talk) 23:10, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, as a fellow imbecile, I think that the image and caption in question (2022) would best be presented with no caption. It doesn't seem needed as a definer or a descriptor. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:06, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not, technically, an imbecile (I am an idiot tho, or so I've been told), and I'll just point out that, in America, the lowest IQ with which you can get in the army is 85 (they tried 80 a couple of times, but it it didn't work out), and 1/6 of Americans don't meet that standard (I believe this applies generally to other countries as well). So keep in mind that 1/6 of your readership is not smart enough to be cannon fodder. So we need to be aware of this. So, I think that either no caption, or a caption describing the entity, is what we need in cases like this. I don't know as we need an actual rule for this tho. Herostratus (talk) 02:17, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think the guideline needs to change, but if you're looking for wider consensus to add clarification to captions, consider me on the pro-clarification side. Unless there's some particular need for extreme concision (trying to avoid a MOS:SANDWICH issue maybe?), a caption like "The lighthouse in 2022" is fine. I might push, gently, for a caption like "In 2022" for an article with a bunch of images of the same subject in various years, rather than repeat "X in 2018", "X in 2019", "X in 2020". No parentheses needed. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:07, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

All very sensible. Johnbod (talk) 15:19, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

I can't think of a single reason why you'd want more than one or two images of the same thing in different years. Maybe if something significant about it changed through the years, but in that case use the caption to point out what changed. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 22:51, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

The usual case is with biographies. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:31, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Support "X in 2022", not "(2022)".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:14, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

context matters. if I go to articles on works of art, the default is "Work name (year of completion)". this they may make articles on architects use one or the other as long as there is inter-article consistency. eg for Frank Lloyd Wright may show his works either way. however in such a case i think the first image caption should establish the style eg "

Wright House (constructed in 1950)". Masem (t) 12:38, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree that "(2022)" is not good form. I worry that it is also unclear for visually impaired people who are using screen readers. I also agree with the point made by Masem that the date of the photo will not always be the date that matters in context and that flexibility should be given in order to take account of that context. Furius (talk) 18:49, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Italics for (left) and (right)

I see above that there's no set standard for when to use italics for stage directions in captions like (left). I was wondering, when I do decide to use them, should the parentheses be italicized, e.g. (left), or just the word, e.g. (left). I'd lean toward just the word (the recommendation of Chicago), but curious to hear others' views. I do feel that the MoS entry should say something about this, even if there's no set standard, as it seems to come up fairly often. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:39, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there need to italicise them at all? To answer your specific question, I agree, the parentheses should not be italicised, but that (for most readers) leaves a crunched up close parenthesis. So (left) needs the {{--)}} template to render (''left''{{--)}} as (left). Simpler to me would be (right) as (right) and—at least for this case—avoid the potential messiness of these italic issues. — HTGS (talk) 21:23, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

The italics are more consistent with how WP treats all "asides" to the reader (hatnotes, the {{crossref}} template, etc., etc.). It's rare permissible use of "talking at" the reader, an implied form of WP self-reference. I would do it as (left) because the entire construction is such an aside. If the aside were removed, there would be nothing left there, not an empty "()". And doing it as (left) produces display problems which are either an accessibility issue for people with poor eyesight or require annoying template gimmicks as described above.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:06, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I was unaware of such a convention, and that does make sense, but I don’t personally feel that the stage direction here is such an aside. It is often a necessity to tell the reader which subject is the subject; it is content and not meta. Unlike the “are you in the right place?” and “would you like to read more?” asides, this one is aimed at conveying meaning to the reader about the content (“this is what we’re talking about”). A stage direction (imo) is no more an aside than most captions are. — HTGS (talk) 19:44, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

But yes, the italicise-all approach does make sense from that pov. — HTGS (talk) 19:47, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

• Just to note that how to format such "stage directions" has been discussed many times and we never seem to get anywhere. [1] EEng 15:44, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Mobile enlarged photo captions unreadable

(Sorry if this is addressed elsewhere) I sometimes look through only the photos without really reading the article. On my phone the caption often extends into an ellipsis (eg "Mary Queen of..."). I was wondering if there is a way to view the entire caption without scrolling through the entire article? .phoebewalsh (talk) 21:37, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Clarification on MOS:CREDITS

Not a huge deal, but since I saw some articles on my watchlist getting edits citing this...

Unless relevant to the subject, do not credit the image author or copyright holder in the article. It is assumed that this is not necessary to fulfill attribution requirements of the GFDL or Creative Commons licenses as long as the appropriate credit is on the image description page. If the artist or photographer is independently notable, then a wikilink to the artist's biography may be appropriate, but image credits in the infobox image are discouraged, even if the artist is notable, since the infobox should contain only key facts of the article's subject, per MOS:INFOBOX.

There's a case here that isn't covered. Specifically, this seems to be assuming that the main reason for crediting in the caption is to call-out the artist. However, there's another reason for crediting: as a subtle disclaimer about non-representative guesstimate images made centuries after an event / life / etc. where the depiction is on romantic / political grounds, or dubious images that might represent the subject, but might just be a hypothesis, and might be flat misidentified. In these cases, I think an artist credit + year is helpful basically to clue the reader in "beware." A few examples:

• Revolt of the Comuneros has a lead image from over 300 years later. (Of course it does, because it's not like the Spanish government was going to let you celebrate rebels in the 1500s period when they were fresh in memory and eyewitnesses existed.) I think crediting the author prominently is good, especially since a reader clicking the link will find out Gisbert was a liberal and that this was a heroic / romantic interpretation of the event in line with 19th century Spanish politics that would lead to the Glorious Revolution (Spain), and not something remotely meant to be historically accurate.
• Simon Thassi has an author credit in the infobox, but as a very relevant warning that this time the gap between the person and the artist is 1700 years long and not even from the same region. (This comes up with a lot of figures from antiquity, really - we have depictions from cultures wildly separated in time and place due to a lack of contemporary images. I just remember this one because another editor at one point edited it to be even blunter, although this was obviously removed later as laying it on too thick.)
• Thomas Bayes has an image that might be of him but almost certainly isn't, since the source is very sus (it didn't cite its own source for the image at all, and the author isn't particularly reliable, so the odds of him just picking a random image he thought looked right is very high. And 1700s fashion experts say it isn't likely he picked correctly.). But the image is fairly known nowadays due to lack of anything better to use, but we might as well at least warn readers that the image probably isn't accurate.

Does this seem a reasonable case? Would it be fair to perhaps mention this in MOS:CAPTIONS? I'd lightly suggest something like:

Unless relevant to the subject, do not credit the image author or copyright holder in the article. It is assumed that this is not necessary to fulfill attribution requirements of the GFDL or Creative Commons licenses as long as the appropriate credit is on the image description page. If the artist or photographer is independently notable, then a wikilink to the artist's biography may be appropriate. Image credits in the infobox image are discouraged, even if the artist is notable, since the infobox should contain only key facts of the article's subject, per MOS:INFOBOX. However, an artist credit + year may be appropriate when a picture long postdates the subject, or the accuracy of the image to the subject is otherwise dubious, to indicate when an image is more an artistic work rather than a historical one.

SnowFire (talk) 02:05, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I would think if there is reason to believe the accuracy is dubious, it would be more helpful to just say that explicitly. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:21, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I do agree in egregious cases like the Bayes one I linked above, but I suspect that this might be tricky to enforce in general due to just how common it is. Elizabeth I's portraits were painted by people who really saw her, but art historians consistently think that the images of the older Elizabeth were more flattering than reality, for example. But expressing that succinctly in a caption seems tricky to do, and might get repetitive to stick a disclaimer on basically all of the portraits that "By the way, artists who paint royalty unflatteringly don't get hired for future work." SnowFire (talk) 17:02, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Sure. But I don't agree that what you're proposing is an adequate substitute. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:48, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

What would be? I don't really follow what the issue is here. One, I agree with Johnbod that crediting artists sufficiently famous to be bluelinks makes sense, even in an infobox caption (and certainly linking the image itself is valid when there's a separate article on that). It's still saying something indirectly about the subject: that they were interesting or important enough to be addressed by a big name. Two, on dubiousness - writing out "this image is imaginary and artistic" would be tendentious and repetitive for many subjects, and true about essentially any depiction. This disclaimer would end up in all of the captions. Writing out the date the picture was created instead and its provenance is a way to communicate information more succinctly and relevantly - the reader can nod along and say "Huh, this is a 1500s depiction of a topic from antiquity" without it coming across as axe-grinding about The Treachery of Images. SnowFire (talk) 16:31, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

The issue is that, aside from the time-gap case, your proposed change doesn't address the problem you're hoping to fix. The essence of the disclaimers in the Thassi and Bayes cases is the explicit statements that these are "imaginary"/"doubtful" - those seem quite reasonable in that respect, though I agree that we don't need an "art is not life" disclaimer in every case. As for the time-gap possibility, that is addressed elsewhere in the guideline. I've made that clearer - does that address your concern? Nikkimaria (talk) 00:10, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I'd think that an improvement. I also think that where the artist is a really important one - Durer, Holbein, Titian etc, not merely notable, we absolutely should name and link the artist. Johnbod (talk) 02:56, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I added it here: diff. Feel free to adjust or revise. SnowFire (talk) 17:02, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

• Johnbod, this really should be clarified to add the Visual Arts caption information. An RfC? I had added back Gilbert Stuart's credit to the opening images at John Adams and was again quickly reverted. All interested parties should first read the discussion at talk:Abigail Adams, and then change the language here and revert back the Stuart credit and all other credits of major artworks used as opening images. It's about time to fix the visual arts language onto this page, by getting this into a wider audience of editors if needed. Gilbert Stuart's work is as famous as any American artist, and his attribution on his work portraying the United States Founding Fathers and closely related topics should be honored and respected by Wikipedians. As for this discussion, I did not know about it and would have responded to a ping by Nikkimaria, who knew I was interested in the topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:38, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
• I've added the Gilbert Stuart credit to the George Washington first image per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Captions#Tips for describing pictures which links to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Visual arts#Image captions. Addition of such credit is addressed by the overriding guideline for such captions. The caption credit to Gilbert Stuart should also be returned to the John Adams opening image (joining the article Abigail Adams, where the Stuart name and link exists due to the discussion on the article's talk page). Randy Kryn (talk) 00:09, 5 April 2024 (UTC)