Jakew you say I agree that the protestor is included in the photo but the focus of the photo is the placards themselves This was acknowledged in the original caption when the image was first added From what I ve seen on Wikipedia inaccurate captions often go through a process of revision and editing much like the rest of the text in an article before a satisfactory version is arrived at This seems to have happened with the caption in question so I don t think the first version of that caption carries much weight as a definitive description of the image Furthermore you present your opinion about the focus of the image as if it were a fact with this phrase but the focus of the photo is the placards themselves Ok we all present unqualified opinions sometimes but you then use this phrase This was acknowledged in the original caption when the image was first added A subtle way of presenting an opinion as if it s a self evident fact and is recognised by others as such As for your comments about the difficulty in deciphering the image it is immediately obvious that the man in the picture is present unless there is something wrong with your vision or the way your brain processes images The placard on the right has no visible means of support without the man in the image In fact why am I even arguing the point the man is obviously there dark clothing or not The following part of your contribution is interesting Your leave it to the reader theory has some obvious problems One of these is that if one applies the same theory to an intelligent observer of a protest we would have to conclude that protests in general are not persuasive and are in fact utterly pointless Well let s overlook the scare quotes used with leave it to the reader Actually I argued that the reader has all the information they require to be able to interpret the image neutrally they may not do that but then that s true of almost any complex information you may present to a wide audience I think my theory yes those are scare quotes too would be more accurately described with a phrase such as The information is presented in a neutral way the reader will draw their own conclusions about what the information means to them You suggest that an application of the theory to the subject of protests themselves would lead us to conclude that they are utterly pointless Here you ve made an analogy between two very different concepts On the one hand we have an illustrative snapshot of a protest viewed on a computer screen and located in a long article which contains plenty of information covering both sides of many different aspects of the debate in question On the other we have the concept of an actual protest devoid of the neutral context provided by the long and detailed article in which the image appears and occurring over a period of time with all the movement and noise normally associated with a process etc Again not the most accurate of analogies Nevertheless let s examine your analogy further What you ve actually done is transfer the focus of the debate from the specific the particular photo under discussion to the general all protests I m sure that some specific protests are indeed not persuasive and utterly pointless and I m also sure that the opposite is true of other protests but to ascertain the effectiveness of a particular protest we would have to consider that particular protest We are actually considering a particular image and my comments relate to that particular image Again when you talk about advertising images you are talking in general terms and not about the specific The reasoning I ve just used above to challenge your protest photo of a protest analogy applies here to You mention undue weight The image does not give undue weight to a viewpoint it simply illustrates someone expressing a viewpoint already described in the text The reader is free to draw their own conclusions about the image For example a reader might decide that the image shows that those who oppose circumcision can be fanatical enough to make placards and protest about it and the reader may view that negatively does that add weight to the viewpoint The image simply adds extra factual information to this encyclopaedic article The reader will draw their own conclusions from it as they will do with the rest of the article and you should not try to control that You should in fact present the reader with as much information as possible about the topic so that the conclusions they reach are as fully informed as possible I did not really acknowledge that the image is eye catching I actually said with respect to your suggestion that images are more eye catching and will