Rant: Wikipedia

Why do so many Wiki articles on cars have really crummy photos of the car sitting in a shopping mall parking lot? I assume these are all taken by some Wiki-dork numpty who just happens to be walking by and thinks "hem hem, gee, I should put that on the Wikinets!" - surely the owners of these cars wouldn't take such awful photos and put them up on a reference site, right?

Here's what I'm talking about:

It just goes on and on...

I don't know about everyone else but I have about a million good pics of my cars, some of which don't even have ANY shopping carts in them. If I were going to upload something on a Wiki site I'd make sure I put up something worth looking at.

For comparison, here's an actually good, interesting, composed photo from a Wiki page. It CAN be done.

You know you can edit the entries, right?

Interesting pictures usually do not give a good view of a cars dimensions. I think the 3/4ths side shot gives the best entire car view. Such artistic shots are pretty cool, but make it difficult to really judge a car.

Drewsifer wrote: Interesting pictures usually do not give a good view of a cars dimensions. I think the 3/4ths side shot gives the best entire car view. Such artistic shots are pretty cool, but make it difficult to really judge a car.

I think he's not necessarily against the 3/4ths view, just the fact that the pics are taken with dirty cars, in bad lighting, or in a weird location. A decently composed 3/4ths view would be much better, IMO

Cute pictures of the MR2. Useless for recognizing one should you see it on the street.

The other Wikipedia pictures are not cool or special. They clearly show what the car looks like though.

What kind of car is that just above the Jeep?

I think it's a Mazda Cosmo. (20B powered.)

JeepinMatt wrote: I think he's not necessarily against the 3/4ths view, just the fact that the pics are taken with dirty cars, in bad lighting, or in a weird location. A decently composed 3/4ths view would be much better, IMO

Exactly, a good 3/4 shot can be a great view of the car. Just not generally one taken of some other schmuck's car, from face height, in a shopping mall parking lot. Here are a couple:

Meanwhile, from the same article... ...sigh.

BTW the Mazda Cosmo was a special case, seeing as it wasn't actually in a shopping mall parking lot. But since the car itself is a rusty, dented POS with two flat tyres and garbage strewn about, I figured I'd include it in the rant anyway.

Why would you upload that to Wikipedia?!

I've seen that picture on Wiki too and thought the same thing. It just didnt bother me that much.

Even with the rust, flat tires, and garbage that car still looks good to me.

If I had a better looking Cosmos I'd take picture and improve the wiki article....or maybe not.

I guess all it shows for the most part is the geeks who write/edit wikipedia articles are a different group than those geeks who are really into cars.

To all you complainers: Upload your better pictures!

I definitely understand the gripe though, and never understood why they always put up crappy shots. I think it has something to do with "fair use" photo's. Since no one can put up a copywrited photo up there, about the only non copywrited place to pull from is just some random person taking a random picture in a public place. Hence the crummy shots.

Are those Work Equips on that Cosmo? That thing would look sick slammed.

When you consider the fact that many/most photos accompanying ads on Craigs are REALLY crummy, maybe some of these were posted on WICKEDpedia by folks with good intentions. At least the lighting is decent.

The only thing dumber than no pic for an ad on CL, is an ad with a picture that looks like it was taken at midnight on a moonless/starless night

It's due to copyright issues. Wikipedia can only use public domain/creative commons photos. Someone actually has to go out there and take better photos in order to get better ones for Wikipedia.