User:Peteforsyth/PotD

Pete Forsyth and Sarah Stierch are working here (as of May 2011) to document the processes around selection of Picture of the Day and Media of the Day on Wikimedia Commons.

Context

• How do PotD/MotD relate to Featured Media?
  • COM:POTD states that "As of 1 July 2007, all Pictures of the Day are chosen among the Featured pictures of Commons." COM:POTD also provides a link to instructions on how to select a Picture of the Day, although the link is not very prominent and can easily be overlooked. According to the instructions, "Anyone can select a Picture of the day from the Featured pictures that have not already been Picture of the day."
• How do other projects leverage the PotD/MotD programs? (Do some language Wikipedias, for instance, simply mirror the Commons PotD on their front pages?)
  • Jayen's preliminary research indicates that Russian, Chinese, Bengali, Bulgarian, old-Belarusian, and Ukrainian Wikipedias all automatically republish the Commons PotD. (See talk page)
  • The "Did You Know...?" nomination process could be something to examine as well.
• Are there enough administrators and/or administrative contributors to sustain the program? Are there backlogs or other stresses on those involved?
• Compare to Commons:Picture of the Year

Technical infrastructure

There is a template for each date, e.g. Template:Potd/2011-05-19. This is then accessed by the main page, and transcluded into the monthly listing (e.g. Template:Potd/2011-05).

Human roles in maintaining PotD/MotD

• Who determines consensus?
  • Any individual editor can select a Featured picture for main page appearance. The instructions for selecting a picture of the day state,
    • 6. It is generally discouraged to replace existing POTD inclusions with other ones, unless
      • The original inclusion did not provide a reasonable diversity in subjects, creators, etc. over a couple of days
      • There are substantial arguments for replacing with an image which fits much better with the given day
    • 7. If a replacement is done, it is the responsibility of the replacing user to move the original image to a vacant day including already completed translations.
    • 8. Replacing one image with another based on an argument that it is a better image is not a valid argument. Images which have been promoted to featured pictures are equally worthy for inclusion on POTD once promoted. If you think a current unused featured picture is not up to current featured picture standards consider nominating it for delisting. If delisting succeeds, the image is removed from the pool of unused featured pictures.

• Can decisions be appealed prior to main page placement?
  • According to the instructions (see above), a Featured picture may be moved to a different day, to ensure diversity of main page content and prevent repetitiveness, but once selected by a user will appear on the main page at some date; either the original date, or an alternative date.
  • However, if an image is deemed unsuitable, it can be nominated for delisting (removal of Featured status). If delisting succeeds, the picture will no longer qualify for a main page appearance. PotD slots are filled several months in advance (at the time of writing, all slots seem to be filled until well into December, i.e. over half a year ahead). This means there is more than sufficient time to contest featured status for an image before it will actually appear on the main page.
• Are there disputes? If so, how are they resolved?
  • Images nominated for delisting are discussed by the community at Commons:Featured_picture_candidates#Delisting_candidates. Discussions last 9 days. According to the rules, the result is determined by vote counting rather than merit of argument, and closing discussions is a task mostly handled by a bot (User:FPCBot). Voting editors must have registered an account at least 10 days prior, and made at least 50 Commons edits. While promotion to Featured status requires a 2:1 majority of editors judging the image to deserve featured status, delisting a picture requires a 2:1 majority in favor of withdrawing Featured status, which means that one-third of voting editors judging the image to deserve Featured status is enough for the image to retain Featured status.
• Who implements consensus?

Process for promoting one's own work

(describe; also compare/contrast to processes on en-wp and other projects)

Process for determining PotD

(describe; also compare/contrast to processes on en-wp and other projects)

Audience and users

• Who is interested in seeing the PotD?
• Who is interested in understanding the PotD process?
• Who is interested in participating in the PotD process?

Does the current setup serve all stakeholders sufficiently?