User:Jason Quinn/NPOV is a problem for images
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Photos that stray far from neutrality and violate our neutrality policy are becoming a problem at Wikipedia. Such photos can be misleading, distort reality, or promote a non-neutral visual message. As editors, we need to learn to identify such photos and eliminate them. My experience is that editors are severely under-prepared to tackle this issue. Editors tend to just "want photos" and that bias often trumps good judgement over a photo's inclusion in an article, even in the most egregious cases of deliberately propagandist photos.
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This page in a nutshell: Photos can be deceptive. They can be misleading or deceitful. They can be manipulative. These qualities, intentionally introduced or not, are counter to our aims of being a neutral encyclopedia. Editors must be extra resistant to photos that raise concerns and be extra willing to forego the photograph in question. |
Photographs greatly increase the value of an article on Wikipedia and are crucial to its success. No amount of text, however well-written, can precisely describe a person's face, a landscape, the subtle aspects of a salamander's body, or the texture of some tropical tree's bark. Photos convey in an instant such intrinsically visual information. The old saying "A photo is worth a thousand words" is an understatement. Yet, photos are never really "neutral". For most photos this concern is neglibible and they are worth including in our articles. For example, typical biases in photos are merely related to photographic aesthetics and technical aspects of the photo. These things can be, but usually aren't, a problem.
The problem is at its worst when photos are used to send a political message or for self-promotion. Wikipedia is no longer a fringe website. Governments, political organizations, and public relation companies are now editing Wikipedia to change and form public opinion. Given the power of photographs, replacing unflattering photos with flattering ones (or vice versa) is becoming a tactic they are employing.
How do we go about spotting and stopping this? Well, it has to start with recognition of the problem itself which many editors do not see.