Talk:Selaginella kraussiana

Removal of File:SelaginellaKraussiana.jpg from Gallery

The file SelaginellaKraussiana.jpg was recently removed by Kingdon. I think the removal was a mistake since the image illustrates certain features of Selaginella kraussiana that aren't shown in the original picture. The original picture illustrates a poorly focused image of Selaginella kraussiana, but that demonstrates what the clubmoss looks like in high light with a light green coloration. In low lights though the plant often looks darker as is illustrated in SelaginellaKraussiana.jpg. This second photo also serves to show the reader, much better what the clubmoss looks like since it is much better in focus. I think both of these photos should be kept as they illustrate both important and different features of this clubmoss species. Its true that there isn't much text in the article, but I don't see how that is a sufficient reason for excluding relevant photos in the text. Obviously using a small gallery is a good way of incorporating such important photos into the text until more text is added and the photo can be incorporated so that the text flows around the image. In the meantime I don't think we should exclude relevant information that this photo clearly provides. See Wikipedia:Galleries. This wiki policy is quite clear cut that the use of galleries is allowed and that their inclusions should be judged on individual merits and not set policies. For plant articles there are often widely differing growth forms and unclassified variations that can't be fit so that the text wraps around them, yet need to be shown so that the reader understands these features of the plant. I think the inclusion of this photo clearly falls under that category.Chhe (talk) 19:24, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

That page points to WP:IG. The biggest problem with galleries is that they risk being dumping grounds for a bunch of poorly chosen and presented images. The part of WP:IG which I'd emphasize is the way in which galleries should be a way of presenting relevant concepts, for example "Images in a gallery should be suitably captioned to explain their relevance". So if one photo shows the stigma of a flower, it might be captioned "Oenothera has a cross-shaped stigma" and another photo might have a caption about leaf shape or whatever. In this case, maybe the solution is just to change the taxobox picture to use File:SelaginellaKraussiana.jpg instead of the one it uses now. I've given that a try. If there's some important point which the out-of-focus photo illustrates, then we can come up with a suitable caption. Where to put a second image was probably over-emphasized in my edit summary; the bigger issue is whether the second image shows anything which the first doesn't. Kingdon (talk) 14:37, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

As explained above, the out of focus image shows something the more focused image doesn't, namely what the clubmoss looks like when grown in high light. This particular clubmoss looks quite different when grown in different light levels and its important to illustrate that. Thats why I said above that they both should be included.Chhe (talk) 16:19, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, put it back then. Just say what it is showing. Kingdon (talk) 02:58, 4 January 2010 (UTC)