Talk:Clear Creek (Harris County, Texas)

Why?

The image shows the creek, its surroundings. What more could you ask for? --William S. Saturn (talk) 04:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand that the image does, strictly speaking, show the creek, but the image is primary showing a submerged car. As a similar example, I once saw a post-card with a picture of a homeless man laying in front of the White House. I would not argue that this picture would be appropriate for the White House article either. If it is a choice between including that picture or leaving the White House article without an image the article is obviously better off without the image.

The question is not whether or not you can see the topic in the picture but whether the picture helps make the article better (bearing in mind that the point is to create serious, encyclopedic articles). --Mcorazao (talk) 23:57, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

This article is a stub with little information. Any photo of the creek would help the reader's understanding. --William S. Saturn (talk) 00:31, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, the image shows human interaction with the creek. Unless you have any legitimate objections to the image rather than WP:IDONTLIKEIT, I will soon restore it. --William S. Saturn (talk) 23:29, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Look, WP's guidance on this is fairly limited so unfortunately we mostly have to just fall back on good judgement. Certainly I don't agree with the "any image is better than no image" philosophy. The question that has to be asked is whether the image is "encyclopedic" (a term that admittedly is ill-defined). My general criteria (personal opinions to be sure) would be

1. Does the image show what it is intended to show in a clear way?
2. Is the image reasonably eye-catching and free of distracting elements?
3. Is the image a "serious" image with respect to what it is intended to show (i.e. will the reader see the image as meaningful or silly)?
4. Is the image educational and instructive in some way?

Not that an image has to perfectly fulfill all of these criteria but if it is seriously failing some then its inclusion has to be questioned. To me the image fails #2 and #3. Even to the extent that it somewhat passes #4 it's educational value is not outstanding (certainly not enough to compensate for #2 and #3).

--Mcorazao (talk) 23:51, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

What is not serious about the image? Why does a showcase of clear human interaction with the creek not improve the article? And, does the image not enhance a reader's understanding (all that really matters)? --William S. Saturn (talk) 23:59, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Look, do as you want. I've explained myself but it seems this has to be a contest of wills and I'm not going fight over a stub article. --Mcorazao (talk) 03:41, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Mcorazao, I don't appreciate your comments, tone, and attitude toward User:William S. Saturn per above to "look, do as you want.." after you have engage in an petty reverts over two images that you did not seem to like for whatever reasons—mostly subjective. It appears to me that you take ownership—to a serious extent—of articles that you create and/or involve in major edits. Please rethink about your tone and attitude when you comment and/or revert other editors under any article. You do not own the articles that you create. If you can't handle other editors contributing to articles that you have created, then you should not be editing Wikipedia or creating articles. In addition, any image—regardless of quality, size, etc.—to help illustrate a topic in an article is better than none! Please refrain from disrupting other editors' contributions with petty reverts just to make a point. —RJN (talk) 10:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I totally agree with User:Mcorazao, as soon as I saw the page, my eye was immediately drawn to the car, and I stopped thinking about the subject of Clear Creek, started thinking about the car. It's an unnecessarily distracting element, and it has the appearances of a nonverbal form of POV-pushing to include the picture with the car in it, especially twice from two different angles. It distracts from the subject and adds undue weight to the presence of the submerged car. Is Clear Creek a Wild and Scenic River? No, of course not, not by any stretch of the imagination, but is there a submerged car visible along every stretch, or even a fair number of stretches of the watercourse? No. Therefore the pictures with the car, from two separate angles, are not a fair representation of the body of water. I can fix this impasse; I will take some decent representative photos of the creek, license it on Commons, and then replace the current pictures with them. I can probably get this done by Wednesday of next week. As far as Mcorazao's "comments, tone, and attitude" go, he hasn't said or done anything inappropriate or uncivil. The only overtly uncivil attitudes I see on this talk page are RJN's, failing to assume good faith when he accused Mcorazao of being disruptive and having ownership of the article.Mmyers1976 (talk) 19:10, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, it took me a lot longer than I planned to, but I finally got around to replacing the pictures with the sunken car. The previous pictures were not optimal for the reasons User:Mcorazao and I stated above, and also for the reason that the car is no longer there, it have been retrieved from Clear Creek, so that picture is not representative of the creek as it is today. I only added one picture, because this article is a stub and certainly doesn't need two pictures at this stage in the game. Mmyers1976 (talk) 21:06, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Good work on the image.--William S. Saturn (talk) 21:27, 25 February 2011 (UTC)