Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Captions

message: I see above that there's no set standard for when to use italics for stage directions in captions like . I was wondering, when I do decide to use them, should the parentheses be italicized, e.g. , or just the word, e.g. . I'd lean toward just the word (the recommendation of Chicago), but curious to hear others' views. I do feel that the MoS entry should say something about this, even if there's no set standard, as it seems to come up fairly often. Cheers,  talk 17:39, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there need to italicise them at all? To answer your specific question, I agree, the parentheses should not be italicised, but that (for most readers) leaves a crunched up close parenthesis. So (left) needs the  template to render (left as (left. Simpler to me would be (right) as (right) and—at least for this case—avoid the potential messiness of these italic issues. — HTGS (talk) 21:23, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The italics are more consistent with how WP treats all "asides" to the reader (hatnotes, the  template, etc., etc.). It's rare permissible use of "talking at" the reader, an implied form of WP self-reference.  I would do it as (left) because the entire construction is such an aside. If the aside were removed, there would be nothing left there, not an empty "()".  And doing it as (left) produces display problems which are either an accessibility issue for people with poor eyesight or require annoying template gimmicks as described above.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:06, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I was unaware of such a convention, and that does make sense, but I don’t personally feel that the stage direction here is such an aside. It is often a necessity to tell the reader which subject is the subject; it is content and not meta. Unlike the “are you in the right place?” and “would you like to read more?” asides, this one is aimed at conveying meaning to the reader about the content (“this is what we’re talking about”). A stage direction (imo) is no more an aside than most captions are. — HTGS (talk) 19:44, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

text: But yes, the italicise-all approach does make sense from that pov. — HTGS (talk) 19:47, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Italics for (left) and (right) 

message: (Sorry if this is addressed elsewhere)
I sometimes look through only the photos without really reading the article. On my phone the caption often extends into an ellipsis (eg "Mary Queen of..."). I was wondering if there is a way to view the entire caption without scrolling through the entire article? .phoebewalsh (talk) 21:37, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mobile enlarged photo captions unreadable 

message: Not a huge deal, but since I saw some articles on my watchlist getting edits citing this...
:Unless relevant to the subject, do not credit the image author or copyright holder in the article. It is assumed that this is not necessary to fulfill attribution requirements of the GFDL or Creative Commons licenses as long as the appropriate credit is on the image description page. If the artist or photographer is independently notable, then a wikilink to the artist's biography may be appropriate, but image credits in the infobox image are discouraged, even if the artist is notable, since the infobox should contain only key facts of the article's subject, per MOS:INFOBOX.
There's a case here that isn't covered.  Specifically, this seems to be assuming that the main reason for crediting in the caption is to call-out the artist.  However, there's another reason for crediting: as a subtle disclaimer about non-representative guesstimate images made centuries after an event / life / etc. where the depiction is on romantic / political grounds, or dubious images that might represent the subject, but might just be a hypothesis, and might be flat misidentified.  In these cases, I think an artist credit + year is helpful basically to clue the reader in "beware."  A few examples:
* Revolt of the Comuneros has a lead image from over 300 years later.  (Of course it does, because it's not like the Spanish government was going to let you celebrate rebels in the 1500s period when they were fresh in memory and eyewitnesses existed.)  I think crediting the author prominently is good, especially since a reader clicking the link will find out Gisbert was a liberal and that this was a heroic / romantic interpretation of the event in line with 19th century Spanish politics that would lead to the Glorious Revolution (Spain), and not something remotely meant to be historically accurate.
* Simon Thassi has an author credit in the infobox, but as a very relevant warning that this time the gap between the person and the artist is 1700 years long and not even from the same region.  (This comes up with a lot of figures from antiquity, really - we have depictions from cultures wildly separated in time and place due to a lack of contemporary images.  I just remember this one because another editor at one point edited it to be even blunter, although this was obviously removed later as laying it on too thick.)
* Thomas Bayes has an image that might be of him but almost certainly isn't, since the source is very sus (it didn't cite its own source for the image at all, and the author isn't particularly reliable, so the odds of him just picking a random image he thought looked right is very high.  And 1700s fashion experts say it isn't likely he picked correctly.).  But the image is fairly known nowadays due to lack of anything better to use, but we might as well at least warn readers that the image probably isn't accurate.
Does this seem a reasonable case?  Would it be fair to perhaps mention this in MOS:CAPTIONS?  I'd lightly suggest something like:
:Unless relevant to the subject, do not credit the image author or copyright holder in the article. It is assumed that this is not necessary to fulfill attribution requirements of the GFDL or Creative Commons licenses as long as the appropriate credit is on the image description page. If the artist or photographer is independently notable, then a wikilink to the artist's biography may be appropriate. Image credits in the infobox image are discouraged, even if the artist is notable, since the infobox should contain only key facts of the article's subject, per MOS:INFOBOX.  However, an artist credit + year may be appropriate when a picture long postdates the subject, or the accuracy of the image to the subject is otherwise dubious, to indicate when an image is more an artistic work rather than a historical one.
SnowFire (talk) 02:05, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I would think if there is reason to believe the accuracy is dubious, it would be more helpful to just say that explicitly. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:21, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I do agree in egregious cases like the Bayes one I linked above, but I suspect that this might be tricky to enforce in general due to just how common it is.  Elizabeth I's portraits were painted by people who really saw her, but art historians consistently think that the images of the older Elizabeth were more flattering than reality, for example.  But expressing that succinctly in a caption seems tricky to do, and might get repetitive to stick a disclaimer on basically all of the portraits that "By the way, artists who paint royalty unflatteringly don't get hired for future work."  SnowFire (talk) 17:02, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure. But I don't agree that what you're proposing is an adequate substitute. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:48, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: What would be?  I don't really follow what the issue is here.  One, I agree with Johnbod that crediting artists sufficiently famous to be bluelinks makes sense, even in an infobox caption (and certainly linking the image itself is valid when there's a separate article on that).  It's still saying something indirectly about the subject: that they were interesting or important enough to be addressed by a big name.  Two, on dubiousness - writing out "this image is imaginary and artistic" would be tendentious and repetitive for many subjects, and true about essentially any depiction.  This disclaimer would end up in all of the captions.  Writing out the date the picture was created instead and its provenance is a way to communicate information more succinctly and relevantly - the reader can nod along and say "Huh, this is a 1500s depiction of a topic from antiquity" without it coming across as axe-grinding about The Treachery of Images.  SnowFire (talk) 16:31, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue is that, aside from the time-gap case, your proposed change doesn't address the problem you're hoping to fix. The essence of the disclaimers in the Thassi and Bayes cases is the explicit statements that these are "imaginary"/"doubtful" - those seem quite reasonable in that respect, though I agree that we don't need an "art is not life" disclaimer in every case. As for the time-gap possibility, that is addressed elsewhere in the guideline. I've made that clearer - does that address your concern? Nikkimaria (talk) 00:10, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

text: I'd think that an improvement. I also think that where the artist is a really important one - Durer, Holbein, Titian etc, not merely notable, we absolutely should name and link the artist. Johnbod (talk) 02:56, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

text: I added it here: diff.  Feel free to adjust or revise. SnowFire (talk) 17:02, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification on MOS:CREDITS