Major cleanup[edit]

I've added continents to this list to provide some hierarchy and I'm planning some further cleanup on this list. I will be bold in my edits, but I welcome any feedback on these coming improvements. Qono (talk) 03:57, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nationalities

Many of the nationalities listed for these photographers are incorrect. I plan on correcting this information using sources like PIC, ULAN, and other authorities.

Depends on what you mean by nationality? Where they were born, where they grew up, where they plied their trade which could be multiple countries? Can you describe the internationality of the coverage that will be provided by each of the authorities you plan to use? Aoziwe (talk) 07:12, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed that there were no Armenian photographers, so I copied in the content of Category:Armenian photographers. Their years of birth and death, where known, seemed helpful, so I added them. (Feel free to delete them if you don't like this innovation.) But their Armenianness? Ida Kar: "Her parents were Armenian", but there doesn't seem to be any other Armenian connection. Ohannes Kurkdjian (the Armenian form of whose name is different): born in the Ottoman empire, more specifically perhaps in what is now Armenia (but I didn't check), worked in what is now Armenia for part of his career. Gabriel Lekegian: claimed as Armenian; born in the Ottoman empire; active in what is now Egypt. Pascal Sébah: "born in Constantinople, then the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to a Syrian Catholic father and an Armenian mother"; active in what are now Egypt and Turkey. Jean Pascal Sébah: "son of Syriac-Armenian photographer Pascal Sébah" (and some unspecified lady); presumably born in either what is now Egypt or what is now Turkey; active in Constantinople. Samvel Sevada (incidentally, a highly problematic article): "born in Gyumri, Armenia" (which would actually have been the Armenian SSR at the time), active in Armenia. Of these six, Sevada is the only one with Armenian nationality. Now, I've no particular objection to use of "Armenian" to cover people who, regardless of nationality or domicile, consider(ed) themselves Armenian; but if we do that, then why not Basque, Catalan, Kurdish photographers? -- Hoary (talk) 09:13, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Subject area tagging

The various attributes tagged to photographers ("abstract", "advertising", "aerial") can be used to start new lists such as "List of abstract photographers", etc.

Within this list, I will incorporate the tags into readable prose, formatting entries as something like:

This will make for a more useful list and will allow editing individual entries to say why the photographer is notable.

Agreed. Aoziwe (talk) 07:12, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The new BOLD vesion, now reverted, lost all this information, so I would oppose that old new version. Aoziwe (talk) 10:49, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Aoziwe, Lopifalko, Hoary: I've added a section about this subject area tagging to the RfC below. I encourage you to provide feedback on this matter there. Qono (talk) 15:37, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Stricter notability criteria

With this new formatting, this list will exceed the 50kB "readable prose" size guideline given for article sizes. To mitigate this, I would like to come up with some kind of quantifiable criteria for inclusion.

For this primary list, I suggest a high bar like "photographers with works in the collection of four or more museums with more than one million visitors annually." Using the NYPL Photographers' Identities Catalog as a reliable source, this might be around 1000 photographers total, which should keep us around 50kb.

Yes there might be a size problem. However, I do not think I would agree in any way to redefining notability. If a person meets our notability standards for them to have their own article then they can and should be listed in appropriate lists accordingly. If size becomes a problem then perhaps instead the approach to take is as per List of English writers. Aoziwe (talk) 07:18, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Aoziwe: I'm not recommending new notability guidelines for photographer entries, or even for lists of photographers, but I do think that for this high-level list, we should have stricter, objective guidelines for inclusion. Qono (talk) 17:47, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. We already have a template for this: List of Chinese photographers, List of Bangladeshi photographers, List of Greek photographers, List of Korean photographers, List of Norwegian photographers, List of Polish photographers, List of Slovenian photographers, List of Turkish photographers. -Lopifalko (talk) 07:24, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I was referring to them being split alphabetically, not by country. By country is something else again, and could/should operate in parallel. Aoziwe (talk) 07:31, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I am trigger happy and rushed ahead with splitting up by country. There are often many articles in those lists of photographers by country that were not in this list. -Lopifalko (talk) 07:52, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Lopifalko: If you're replacing the list of photographers with a link to the country's list article, it is best that you migrate the members of that list as well, including the designations that the photographers have been tagged with.
So, for example, Mohammad Rakibul Hasan was tagged "(Doc, Jour, Art)", so his entry on the List of Bangladeshi photographers should ideally include that info as "Mohammad Rakibul Hasan, documentary, journalistic, and fine-art photographer". Qono (talk) 17:43, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I did add any that were in the long list but missing from the country-specific list, but I didn't add the genres, which I've long disliked. I find them restrictive and at times pointless because people do not always fall neatly into them. I usually leave them off for photographers I have written articles on. If there's consensus in favour of them then I will copy them over. -Lopifalko (talk) 18:03, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, "Fine Art photographer" (preferably so capitalized) is unambiguous and unrestrictive. It means "I am [my client is] an Artist. Therefore these inkjet giclée prints are Fine Art, their resale value will appreciate, and your handing over a wad of moolah for them will make you feel like a Fine Art connoisseur." -- Hoary (talk) 01:33, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"this list will exceed the 50kB 'readable prose' size guideline given for article sizes". Yes, and this won't matter in the slightest, because it's not prose and nobody would want to read it even if it were one quarter the length. So I don't know why anyone would want to invest a lot of time and energy in shortening it. However, if you must, then let's consider: "photographers with works in the collection of four or more museums with more than one million visitors annually". This is an amusing idea. It concentrates on those galleries to which tour groups are bussed in to take selfies in front of famous paintings and that host "blockbuster" exhibitions (the huge majority of which have nothing to do with photography). Also it would recognize photographers who had the good sense to take pix of artists and art hangers-on. Tough for such photographers as Johannes Pääsuke, whose work I first encountered at the Estonian National Museum: he's important in Estonian ethnography, but who cares about that? And Tartu (site of the museum) is some way off the bus route whereby Japanese tourists "do" the Baltic states in one week flat. -- Hoary (talk) 01:33, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Hoary's comments, in particular that the one million annual visitors means excluding many quality photographers and potentially pandering to the agenda of museums that can stage blockbuster-type shows. Excellent artists who show at smaller but high quality galleries (like this Berlin example) would be lost. It also ignores the fact that modes of distribution are changing in a myriad of ways that can't be precisely predicted.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 02:20, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The "photographers with works in the collection of four or more museums with more than one million visitors annually" guideline that I suggested is not meant to be exclusive, but a rough starting point. It is an objective way of establishing notability for inclusion in this list (I'm not talking about notability for inclusion on Wikipedia, or inclusion in other sublists of photographers). Notability can certainly be established in other ways, I'm just suggesting that an objective level of prominence would be a useful guideline. Qono (talk) 02:49, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well then, how about WP:ARTIST, which is tougher than WP:GNG or ANYBIO? Being in several collections or having authored a significant body of work seems reasonable. That said, I am not really sure that stricter criteria are required, since as Hoary says, no one reads this as prose. There is more pressing work to be done here. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 03:17, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@ThatMontrealIP: WP:ARTIST is a great place to start. WP:LISTPEOPLE is also useful here. I understand that nobody reads this as prose; "readable prose" is just a phrase used to mean article content excluding references and other code. For the list to be useful, it needs to be a reasonable size and have some sort of WP:LISTCRITERIA. It seems that we're generally in agreement that photographers listed here should be notable and follow Wikipedia's general notability guidelines for lists. Qono (talk) 03:39, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is sounding more reasonable, Qono, but I'm still puzzled. What's the purpose in limiting the number of photographers included? (Right now, I can only think of one possibility. If somebody produces a vanity article about themself, they can prevent it from being an orphan by linking it from here. But the corollary is that listing here can work rather well as a guide to freshly added spam.) -- Hoary (talk) 05:28, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I use it all the time as a spam radar. This could be an argument for bringing back those from the country-specific lists I so unhesitatingly moved (and more, where those lists were more thorough than this). -Lopifalko (talk) 05:43, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I am learning some good techniques in this thread!ThatMontrealIP (talk) 05:50, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And for warning of new articles that will often require cleanup. -Lopifalko (talk) 06:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Use of PIC

I suggest that PIC is NOT a suitable reference for use in Wikipedia. One of its major sources IS Wikipedia, hence any such reference is circular and useless? Aoziwe (talk) 11:34, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with that. It's particularly US-centric, for one.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 16:26, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The PIC is published by the New York Public Library, which is absolutely a reliable source. Wikipedia is not a source for the PIC, it merely points to Wikipedia articles when there is a corresponding article.Qono (talk) 17:18, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The PIC explicitly states Data from and includes Wikipedia under that title. If that does not mean source what does it mean? Aoziwe (talk) 10:32, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ok but in the Canada section, for example, you use it exclusively to establish something or other (notability? that is already in the article). It is a)incomplete as did not include several people I checked), b) reliance on a single source excessively (if we are just going to use their database for every entry, why not just point there), and c) UC-Centric.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 17:23, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I totally agree. The source isn't perfect and it shouldn't be the only source we rely on. But it is a reliable source for nationality and birth and death information, so my using it as such to cite my sources is appropriate. It is especially important to cite when talking about living persons. It has the nice side-effect of establishing some kind of baseline notability as well, though, again, it should not be the only source used for determining notability. Qono (talk) 17:46, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Qono, "baseline notability" is described in existing guidelines. Want something stricter in order to qualify for listing here? About 36 hours before you posted the comment immediately above, I asked (on this talk page, a short way above): "What's the purpose in limiting the number of photographers included?" I'm still wondering. -- Hoary (talk) 04:31, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Qono, you say that PIC "is a reliable source for nationality and birth and death information". I thought I'd look. Up for the challenge of, uh, leaving my comfort zone, I looked at the PIC entry for Anne Geddes. An unspecified amount of the (minimal) data is described as from Wikipedia and/or Wikidata. If this is true, then no, it's not reliable. -- Hoary (talk) 05:52, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

RFC on changes to this page[edit]

ThatMontrealIP (talk) 21:14, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Within each section, should the entries by sorted alphabetically or chronologically?

The consensus is that each section should be sorted alphabetically. Cunard (talk) 00:34, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
If you are meaning two separate sub lists then possibly okay. Aoziwe (talk) 10:00, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No The clear consensus is for alphabetical. Also, Qono, since your bold edits are the reason for this RFC, why not let an uninvolved party close this?ThatMontrealIP (talk) 22:45, 6 April 2019 (UTC) ThatMontrealIP (talk) 22:40, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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Should date of birth and date of death be added to entries?

There is unanimous consensus that date of birth and date of death should be added to entries. Qono (talk) 16:00, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should nationality, date of birth, and date of death information be supported using reliable sources if that information is in the entry's corresponding article?

This proposal is closed as no consensus. Thus, per status quo, there is no mandatory requirement for "nationality, date of birth, and date of death" to be cited — but, best practice is to source statements wherever they appear per WP:NOR and WP:LISTVERIFY. Noting further, that this proposal was in line of the status quo itself and a no consensus close implies there is no deviation from current policies. --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:57, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
  • I agree with part of what you're saying, Hijiri 88. This agreement aside, when you say that This list should include both links to articles and entries on photographers who, [...] are WP:NOTEWORTHY enough for a mention in an encyclopedia article but not WP:NOTABLE enough for their own articles, you're proposing a radical change to the list as it is now. It is, of course, entirely legitimate to make this proposal, but please do so under a new subheading, one that will draw people's attention to it. -- Hoary (talk) 12:10, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I thought it was a given that lists include people who don't have their own articles, but it doesn't really matter here, since I only said it to summarize my reasoning given in mor detail at the AFD, as an explanation for my answer to this question. I might make a separate proposal tomorrow: my poor phone is dying... Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:10, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • This isn't a question of "should we include non-notable individuals." Lists of examples of people should, as a rule, include only notable examples (as opposed to lists that can be exhaustive, etc.). That's just WP:LISTPEOPLE (and WP:NOT -- lists that include non-notable examples inevitably turn into heaping piles of steaming spam). This question is just about whether inline citations are needed for basic biographical information. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:15, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
See the AFD comment(s) I linked to. Hobo is an example of a photographer who is NOTEWORTHY enough for inclusion in a list (hence his having brief entries in other encyclopedic works), but apparently not NOTABLE enough for a standalone article. My argument was conditional on the idea that all the info currently in the article would be more useful if incorporated into a longer article. If this list included his dates, the article would be a complete content fork. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:10, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Most people remove red links in lists as per the essay Wikipedia:Write the article first.--Moxy 🍁 14:19, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not talking about red links, though...? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:41, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's about non links...Wikipedia:Red link "Lists of "notable people" in an article, such as the "Notable alumni" section in an article on a university, tend to accrue red links, or non-links, listing people of unverifiable notability. Such list entries should often be removed, depending on the list-selection criteria chosen for that list." What you're suggesting is a change in this criteria here... adding people not notable enough for their own article to this list that doesn't contain any sources. --Moxy 🍁 14:51, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Please read my comments more carefully. I was quite clear that I think an entry in this list should require an entry in a reliable source's list of noteworthy photographers. That would make this list much more useful than what it is now, which is essentially a list of links with unsourced attribution of nationality. If all the entries under "Japan" were cited to the Dictionary of Japanese Photographers and similar works, regardless of whether they currently have articles on en.wiki, that would solve both problems. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:56, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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Is the Photographers' Identity Catalog (PIC) a reliable source for nationality, date of birth, and date of death?

NOT RELIABLE:

The consensus is that per WP:CIRCULAR, Photographers' Identity Catalog (PIC) is not a reliable source for nationality, date of birth, and date of death because to an unknown extent, some of their data is sourced from Wikipedia or Wikidata. The PIC entries for Anne Geddes, Yosuke Imai, and Kikuchi Shingaku were listed in an earlier discussion and in this discussion as citing Wikipedia and Wikidata.

Cunard (talk) 00:34, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

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  • Hoary, Aoziwe: Davidrlowe, who is responsible for the PIC, has clarified below that Wikipedia is not used as a source for the PIC, and so it is not circular. See my proposal below. Qono (talk) 15:02, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Qono: Please be a bit more skeptical if you are going to discuss sourcing; the word of a Wikipedia account claiming to be involved in the site in question, saying that it doesn't get information from Wikipedia, when the site itself clearly says otherwise (and this is backed up by a quick investigation), should not be accepted on its face as you have done here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:50, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for this information, Davidrlowe. Very helpful. I just wanted to confirm, since this currently is the major point of contention on whether or not the PIC is a reliable source, that Wikipedia is not used as a source for the PIC. Is that right? Qono (talk) 20:59, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That is correct Quono. I refer to the Wikipedia page where I find them to exist; that is all. And my primary interest in getting data from Wikidata has been Identifiers for other databases (Library of Congress, BnF, etc.) where I did not already have them. I'm sure there have been instances where I've taken a date from Wikidata, but that would be an exception, and not a common practice. I generally already have life dates, and use those to confirm my match to the Wikidata entry. Davidrlowe (talk) 21:10, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Davidrlowe. Thank you for your amazing efforts on PIC! It is impressive. I do have a question, which has bearing only on the use of PIC as a reliable source here, and not its general value or usefulness, which I think is tremendous. The question is this: do you have sole editorial oversight over the entries-- i.e. is anyone else involved in the editorial side of PIC, or does anyone else review your work in house, as part of the PIC team as would happen in a journal or newspaper? ThatMontrealIP (talk) 05:09, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
ThatMontrealIP, sort of. The PIC data lives in the NYPL Photography (and Print) Department cataloging database (a SQL database called TMS [The Museum System]). There are 3 of us working with photographs (and another 3-4 with prints), all of whom are either Librarians or Specialists with many years' tenure at NYPL. So in the course of our cataloging we all have eyes on these records, though I am most engaged of the staff in this kind of authority work. Also, I should point out that the majority of the research on these names is done by the author(s) of the sources I am indexing. For example, Palmquist & Kailbourne's Pioneer Photograpers books: I am matching their entries to PIC's (and adding information from them where PIC is lacking); else I am adding a new entry to PIC where they have a photographer I lack. These editors are known quantities in photo research, and I take their work on authority in absence of any conflicting information. For the most part, PIC is aggregating, organizing and normalizing information that I (as a photograph cataloger) would consult otherwise in the course of my work. I do original research on photographers when I cannot find (any, enough, or good enough) information elsewhere in the literature. But, no, there's not a peer-review in the sense of a journal. Davidrlowe (talk) 17:50, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Davidrlowe: Could you explain where PIC got its information on the 19th-century Japanese photographer Kikuchi Shingaku, if not from Wikipedia? Per my analysis below, it seems highly unlikely that the information was originally taken from any source other than English Wikipedia. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:50, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A qualified okay. I would agree if the above two discussions, and the advice, is retained in an easily identifiable position, for example as formally (yet to be) closed discussion retained with the project banners at the top of this talk page? And perhaps also easily linkable to from other articles that may use PIC as a source. Aoziwe (talk) 09:53, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Why don't you let an uninvolved party close this?ThatMontrealIP (talk) 22:43, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, Davidrlowe has claimed (not "clarified") that PIC does not use Wikipedia as a source; this claim is contradicted by the explicit wording used on PIC itself, and by a critical reading of the content cited to Wikipedia. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:50, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • As the above comment from Davidrlowe makes clear, the PIC does not use Wikipedia as a source, and so its use on Wikipedia is not circular. Qono (talk) 15:42, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Qono: I don't buy that: a COI editor tells us "Don't worry -- my website doesn't take its information from Wikipedia", despite the fact that the website itself says otherwise: "Yosuke Imai", for instance, explicitly says Data from: Wikipedia (visit site); Wikidata (visit site) and repeats Japanese Wikipedia's unsourced claim that he was born in Kamakura (note that I'm not saying he wasn't born in Kamakura -- I'm saying the info came from Wikipedia); "Kikuchi Shingaku" not only cites Wikipedia in the same fashion but its giving the photographer's name in Japanese order because he was born before 25 January 1868, without any indication that that is what it is doing, is a tell-tale sign that it copied our article with its unique Wikipedia styling (also, it says Kikuchi's birthplace is unknown, when a quick Googling revealed that he was born in Wakamatsu, in modern-day Tendō, Yamagata -- the information is "unknown" if Wikipedia doesn't include it). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:50, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

If a source is deemed reliable, should there be a limit on how many times it is used?

The consensus is that if a source is deemed reliable, there should not be a limit on how many times it is used. Cunard (talk) 00:34, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should the unsourced attributes listed in the key (abs, adv, aer, etc.) be retained?

The consensus is that the unsourced attributes listed in the key (abs, adv, aer, etc.) should not be retained. Cunard (talk) 00:34, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
changed !vote to facilitate concensus.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 06:51, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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Broader comment

You can have both alphabetical and chronological if you make this a sortable list. Different forms of list are allowable per Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists. The best lists, the ones that become Featured, contain more information than mere names. See List of computer criminals, List of culinary nuts, List of India women Test cricketers, List of Australian Open men's singles champions, List of Archbishops of Canterbury, etc. Too much information in a list would make it difficult to use. But too little information reduces the value of a list. See Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates for some discussion on the topic. At the moment this list has little value, and is comparable to Category:Photographers by nationality. I support efforts to add useful information, and to start building this list toward something that could be accepted as Featured. SilkTork (talk) 00:09, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The page should start with following WP:LISTVERIFY like they have done with List of street photographers. (that is informative in its own right by way of notes and leads our readers to even more information because of the references) Having an RfC for a page with zero sources for BIO info and sub-classification within their field is not a good thing.--Moxy (talk) 15:25, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You like List of street photographers? Oh, good! [Pats self on back. See its history, February/March, 2017.] Note a couple of things: First, chasing up these more-or-less explicit references to "street photography", and then providing these as references (in the Wikipedia sense), took a load of time and energy: more per photographer than can be devoted to a member of a not-narrowed-down set of photographers in general. Secondly, the terms "street photography" and "street photographer" have been used by knowledgable people with meanings entirely different to that expressed in that list's introductory text. (See as examples this and this on the Fox Movie Flash team of commercial photographers-in-the-streets.) -- Hoary (talk) 05:07, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It would be good to add information. I often am puzzled by such questions as "Um, who was that amateur photographer who left a pile of glass plates of scenes in Sadogashima? Early 20th century, Japanese, male, name neither long nor unusually short." First sentence of the relevant article: "Tomio Kondō (近藤 福雄, Kondō Tomio, January 24, 1900 – November 15, 1957) was an amateur photographer who lived on and energetically photographed Sado island in the Sea of Japan." Useful entry in a page such as this: "Tomio Kondō (1900–1957), amateur photographer who lived on and energetically photographed Sado island (Sea of Japan)". However, the clarity/summarizability of Kondō's interests make him atypical. Select five photographers on this list o' lists at random, and I think on average each will be harder to summarize in a short sentence, other perhaps than blandly/generically ("photojournalist of world trouble spots", "photographer of near-abstract compositions", etc.) ¶ As for sortable lists, I think they're very good for certain purposes. For example, when looking for alternative software for a given purpose, I like lists that let me select what runs under Linux. For this list, I don't see how they'd be useful; and I can easily imagine how often the markup would be broken by a lot of those simple folks (inexperienced SPAs) more or less desperate to add entries about their employers, uncles, selves, etc. -- Hoary (talk) 05:07, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think this list is so broad and long that no-one is likely to use it. I do not base that on having examined stats, but we should, rather than giving just our own opinions! I use this list only to be notified of new articles (whether "COI junk" or articles requiring some attention). It would be a shame to be without that as an editor's tool. There are many and better ways in which this is done using more narrowly defined lists, and categories (though categories do not seem to be able to be used to link to in the way lists are, but they already provide all the sub-dividing Qono dreams of).
Sourcing, for example as is used in the list of street photographers, requires meticulous attention to find an independent reliable source to support the claim that a photographer works in a particular genre (consider, for example, is street portraiture 'street photography', or 'portraiture'. I say the latter and not the former, but others disagree).
I think we're creating unnecessary work for ourselves. Across the board, articles on photographers are given little editor input, and I speak as someone who has probably touched base with most of them. I hope we choose a solution that requires as little effort as possible to maintain. --Lopifalko (talk) 13:36, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Broad question: What's it for?

Above, ThatMontrealIP asks various questions. Should the list(s) (or we) do this, or do that? Each, in context, is sensible enough. I mean, given that the goal is (goals are) XYZ, how can we more efficiently attain XYZ without undesirable side-effects?

Trouble is, there's little understanding of XYZ.

I rather cynically suggested (some way above) that this list was a useful for us disinterested editors to spot new COI junk. Lopifalko much less cynically pointed out that it's a good way to spot new, well-intended articles that might benefit from assistance. Yes, true. I also said that, if the entries were amplified with short summaries, it might serve as a memory jogger. ("What was the name of the Magnum photographer who did the book on religious fanatics in the US?" [search within page] "Oh, right, Carl De Keyzer.") Though on reflection this would be very hard to implement.

Each of these strikes me now as a rather desperate attempt to come up with one or more uses for something that outlived its original usefulness over a decade ago. Here it is, at the age of one month. What stands out is that little known (and still redlinked) photographer Willian Klein. And then one realizes: that misspelled red link wouldn't have stood out back then, four years before the start of the article on William Klein (photographer). Most of the names would have been in red. These are photographers that, six user IDs and some IP numbers thought, many people would want to look up in an encyclopedia: Let's create articles on them, and watch the red turn blue. (In retrospect, this list of redlinks was hardly the stuff of an article, well intended though it was.)

That reason for the list evaporated quite some time ago. (Actually I may have been the person who instituted the "no red links" rule.) There's nothing necessarily wrong with a creation outliving its original purpose and gaining another, quite different purpose. But what's the purpose? -- Hoary (talk) 01:06, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I might point out that I started with a couple of questions and Qono modified it to add more.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 01:24, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I added the questions in the RfC to capture all of the concerns that resulted in ThatMontrealIP's revert and am happy to be named a co-author of the RfC if ThatMontrealIP prefers. Qono (talk) 01:45, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hoary asks an important question. My thinking is that this list would develop and grow and be split off to become a jumping-off point to various sub-lists of photographers by nationality, area of practice, time period, artistic movement, and so on. The purpose is to provide an entry point for the curious reader to find out more about photographers, depending on what that reader's interest is, be it a particular subject matter or country. Qono (talk) 01:45, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
OK, Qono, I think I understand. Let's take one or two well known photographers -- perhaps one of those listed way back when; anyway, one or two photographers that we people discussing the matter here on the talk page can be expected to know -- and try to provide a sample, or samples, of fully formed entries. (Some way above, I did this for Tomio Kondō -- I know him fairly well, but for some reason keep forgetting his name -- but he's little known and atypically pigeonholable.) Let me kick this off, unashamedly ripping off the intro to the linked-to article:
Martin Parr (born 1952), British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector, known for photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world.
Is this the kind of thing that you have in mind? -- Hoary (talk) 02:34, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hoary: Taking the long view, Martin Parr might appear in multiple lists that would eventually be linked to on this page: List of British photographers, List of documentary photographers, List of photojournalists, etc. Taking the shorter view, I think that the short introduction you wrote is a fine example, assuming that it would be well sourced and cited properly. Even better, for select entries we could add an image that exemplifies the photographer's work. Qono (talk) 02:44, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
OK, let's take the first of your little list of links: British photographers. No need to say within this that he's British. Do you then envisage:
Martin Parr (born 1952), documentary photographer,[reference 1] photojournalist[reference 2] and photobook collector,[reference 3] known for photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life,[reference 4] in particular documenting the social classes of England,[reference 5] and more broadly the wealth of the Western world.[reference 6]
? If so, I don't think that this will work. You could do it up to fifty times or so, but there are now very roughly two hundred Youkay British photographers listed. So are you going to break this down to "List of British documentary photographers" (but a huge percentage are "documentary" in some sense or other); "List of British photojournalists" (but "photojournalist" is an untrendy term that many photographers avoid, I suspect in part because it creates an image incompatible with that of Artist and high-priced inkjet giclée prints); "List of British photographers L–R" (probably contravenes MoS); or both "List of British photographers active 1975–1999" and "List of British photographers active 2000–"; or what? -- Hoary (talk) 04:46, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There are many photographers that are difficult to categorise under topics, unless those categories are as broad as, perhaps, "documentary", "art", "portrait", "landscape" and "commercial", which are so broad as to be mostly pointless. "Documentary" and "art" being most so. And so many photographers can be categorised under multiple titles. Unless someone's total repertoire can be categorised as, for example, "street photography", whcich is not often, then I usually give up categorising out of frustration. -Lopifalko (talk) 07:50, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hoary: I think the work required to reach this ideal doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for that ideal. Even with 200 entries, if 10 editors put work in, that's 20 entries each. Over time, that's manageable.
In regards to how various lists will be split once they reach an unmanageable size, I think the editors of each list can cross that bridge when they get there. I don't think it something we need to map out right now. That said, lists like "List of 19th-century British photographers" or "List of British photographers active 1900–1950" or similar sublists like you mentioned would be a potentially useful way to split up those articles once they got to be too large on their own. Qono (talk) 15:28, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That seems a lot of time and effort by people whose Wikipedia-photographic energies would be far better employed elsewhere. My recent work creating the article John Harding has reminded me that coverage of significant US photographers, though good at times (Rondal Partridge), can be non-existent (Harding, till recently) or feeble (Jim Dow). And US photographers are disproportionately well written up and easy for anglophone editors to research. Japanese photographers are increasingly well known, even in English; virtually no Japanese photographer, however significant, gets an article here that goes beyond the perfunctory. When we get to, say, Lithuanian photographers, even the article on Antanas Sutkus is feeble. Is there no photographer article that you're equipped to improve and whose improvement seems more worthwhile than work on this or other lists? -- Hoary (talk) 00:15, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hoary's comment strikes me as a highly articulate (much better than I can muster, for sure) way to say that the juice is in the articles, not the lists, and our time is better spent there. I tend to agree.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 05:14, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hoary:, @ThatMontrealIP: I'm interested in improving all areas of Wikipedia. Editors are free to edit wherever they please, but if we're counting, this list is more trafficked than the article on Antanas Sutkus (249 pageviews vs. 6,119 in the last 30 days). Given that measure, one might argue this list is more important. This is all moot; discussions about how to focus editor effort might be more appropriate on WikiProject pages. Discussion here should focus on how best to improve this list (WP:TALK#USE). Qono (talk) 16:35, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Where are Qono's "10 editors" who will "put work in" if they are not here already? --Lopifalko (talk) 13:06, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Lopifalko: This list is the result of input from 2,266 editors. Or, on the other side, List of street photographers is a well-cited list of about 200 photographers that is largely the result of a single editor (Hoary). We can make this a well-cited, useful list, and we should talk about the best way to get there (WP:TALK#USE). Qono (talk) 16:35, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Though yes, I did do a lot of work on it, List of street photographers was created by Northamerica1000. I don't know what the purpose was: as Northamerica1000 left it, it had no advantage that I can think of over Category:Street photographers. And after all the work that I put into it, it's pretty much the same other than for the addition of a reference saying "credible source X says that this person is/was a 'street photographer', does 'street photography', photographs in the street, or photographs in a way associated with 'street photography'". In retrospect, (i) all that dreary work of adding references has achieved is to make it harder for people to add links to dubious (and probably CoI-influenced) articles; (ii) I have trouble detecting any other utility in that list; (iii) I wish I'd instead put all that time into improving an article. (This couldn't have been Sutkus: Unfortunately I don't read Lithuanian, and didn't/don't have access to a copy of the large Retrospective book. Though the new Planet Lithuania from Steidl does look tempting....) -- Hoary (talk) 00:15, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Qono, "2,266 editors" yes, but how many do anything more than drop by to drop in a wikilink? Your point about "List of street photographers" is my point entirely: 1 person of very few doing any sizeable work in this space. Everyone has areas in which they specifically enjoy editing and I'm not going to tell anyone they shouldn't be working on one area and should be working on another. More power to you if you want to work on this list. However we're devising a system here that you're suggesting others will contribute to. My experience of watching this list doesn't bear out your expectations. That's it from me on this now, I don't want to labour the point. --Lopifalko (talk) 13:11, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Feel free to deplore, Moxy, but who has mentioned blocking anyone? -- Hoary (talk) 07:37, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Should this list include information on photographers who don't have their own articles?[edit]

This was talked about a bit above. Obviously I don't support inclusion of vanity content cited to primary sources by the non-notable photographers themselves. I'm talking about people who, for instance, have short entries in The Encyclopedia of Japanese Photographers, but about whom we do not have enough to build a standalone article here at the moment. My reasoning is that, if any of the above proposals about including sourced dates, etc., pass, then one-line substubs like Gorō Hobo (which is likely to get soft-deleted in two days or so, because I !voted based on the assumption that List of Japanese photographers would be an acceptable place to incorporate the three pieces of information in the article at the moment) will be useless content-forks.

Obviously if we incorporated a line of text on all the people currently on the list, as well as all the others who are WP:NOTEWORTHY but not WP:NOTABLE, this page would be expanded massively, but that's normally dealt with by splitting articles, not blanking information that is reliably sourced and interesting but doesn't meet some arbitrary page-specific inclusion criterion.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:51, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Rhododendrites and ThatMontrealIP: Did either of you read my comment? I'm not talking about "bypassing notability guidelines" (I explicitly cited the guideline that says notability does not apply to content within articles) or shoehorning in non-notable individuals, but allowing this list to be a merge target for articles on people who are notable but not "notable" in the sense of already having their own article. I gave a clear method of determining this (having an entry in an encyclopedic work on the topic), which would rule out random non-notable people who call themselves renowned photographers. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:49, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Did either of you read my comment? Yes, though you did not specify a specific inclusion criteria in that post. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Photographers was a for instance, but thank you for clarifying that what we are talking about is including those who have an entry in an encyclopedic work on the topic. That's obviously better than just "one reliable source," as I mistakenly inferred above, but ultimately doesn't change my opinion. There's another question implied here, though: whether to include notable people who just don't have articles yet, but I don't think you're asking about that, right? It sounds like that wouldn't apply to the example you gave? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:18, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there's "notable" (as in, notable enough to be included in a list) and then there's WP:NOTABLE (as in notable enough to have an article). Theoretically, the only reason we can't build an article out of sourced descriptions and commentary on Hobo's photographs is that that information would make little sense without the photos themselves, and those won't be under copyright forever. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:24, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Can we improve upon the segregation of male and female photographers?[edit]

It bothers me that List of photographers predominantly contains male photographers, with the women split into various "List of X women photographers" articles. We potentially give the appearance of a canonical list of photographers, but which predominantly only contains men. Wikipedia policy states that "If an article becomes too large, or a section of an article has a length that is out of proportion to the rest of the article, it may be appropriate for some or all of the article to be split into new articles." I have followed that rule in moving women to the women's lists. Here are the women's articles (with number of entries in parenthesis):

Those articles above with few entries may be better merged into List of photographers or into List of women photographers. But why are we even separating by gender? We could instead have one list for all photographers; or a "List of male photographers" and List of women photographers; or separate by nationality—we already have the following country-specific lists (but, apart from Japan, none for the countries with the longest lists of photographers: USA, UK, Canada, Germany):

Any thoughts? -Lopifalko (talk) 07:53, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Entirely agree. Let's get rid of the separation by gender (it's always been a sexist, male-dominated industry) but do include a separate list of women photographers for the many researchers interested. 180.150.38.239 (talk) 10:47, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note that we do have categories that should work well for that: Category:Photographers, which includes Category:Women photographers (but no Category:Male photographers). -Lopifalko (talk) 11:00, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
On this point, consider Lotte Meitner-Graf as just one, arbitrarily chosen example. She's in Category:Austrian women photographers and also Category:Austrian photographers; because the former is a "non-diffusing subcategory" of the latter. The same principle should be applicable elsewhere (though it might need advocacy and agreement beforehand in some discussion page). -- Hoary (talk) 14:23, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If this list is to be chopped up, I'd much rather it were chopped up by period than by sex. How about people active –1874, 1875–1899, 1900–1924, 1925–1949, 1950–1974, 1975–1999, 2000–2024? (Of course, a lot of people would make multiple appearances.) -- Hoary (talk) 14:23, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in favour of putting them all in the one list. I was originally thinking that organising by period seemed sensible, but imagined the overlap would make it untenable. However on reflection, given you seem to be taking overlap in your stride, it seems OK. -Lopifalko (talk) 16:12, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'll be candid and say that if I'd be taking overlap in anybody's stride, it wouldn't be my stride. Sorry, but I have no appetite for doing even a co-conspirator's share of what would probably be a lot of work. (As Moxy points out above, my attitude to this page is deplorable.) I'm busy with very different WP work (on my hard drive), as well as "RL". -- Hoary (talk) 03:28, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

With categories, when gender is involved it's typically a non-diffusing category, meaning that if someone is in "Spanish women photographers" that person can also be in "Spanish photographers". I'm not sure if there's a rule that applies to lists, too, but I don't see why the principle is any different. We shouldn't have "male" be the "null gender". In mainspace, though, there are concerns about duplicating content that don't apply to categories... — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:21, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FYI I opened Wikipedia_talk:Stand-alone_lists#is_there_a_corresponding_guideline_to_DUPCAT_for_lists?. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:27, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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