Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Crotalus-basiliscus-basiliskenklapperschlange.jpg

Mexican west coast rattlesnake edit

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 9 Feb 2011 at 18:40:40 (UTC)

Original - Mexican west coast rattlesnake

Reason: Good composition and EV
Articles in which this image appears: Crotalus basiliscus, Viperidae
FP category for this image: Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Animals/Reptiles
Creator: Holleday

Support as nominator --Citron (talk) 18:40, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment If this coiling is a common way this snake can be found, then I am inclined to support. If this is an uncommon "pose", then whereas this image is artistic, it would have insufficient EV (thought it is very eye-catching). Can this be clarified? Is this representative of a particular half-way common state of the snake? Greg L (talk) 19:57, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Euh... this is a strange question. See here File:Basilisken-Klapperschlange (Crotalus basiliscus).JPG--Citron (talk) 21:02, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh… yeah. Senior moment. Coiled-up rattlesnake. I guess I’ve never seen them hanging low like this. Had it had its head upright in a “strike the Lone Ranger”-position, I would have recognized it better. Greg L (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Rattlesnakes coil up, so that's fine, but I have an issue with the coloration of the specimen, according to the description of the species this specimen does not illustrate the typical diamond banding, and appears to be abnormally colored, also this is only a closeup of the specimen, not the entire animal, so it's EV for illustrating the species is near nil, and it probably shouldn't also be the infobox image for the article either for these reasons. — raeky t 23:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Raeky, see this Google-Image search on “Crotalus basiliscus”. It seems this isn’t a rare coloration. One might even say it is a rather pedestrian coloration. But I do agree with you about the extreme closeup; I find that it lends to eye-catching but it detracts from EV; a double-edged sword, if you will. Greg L (talk) 00:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't readily show the patterning of the scales which is a key characteristic for identifying the species in the field, and since it was placed in the infobox I feel it's just to fault it on it's ability to to identify the species, both on coloration and on showing the full specimen. Theres no reason an artistic closeup of the species couldn't be a FP, but i wouldn't want it to be the infobox image and it would need to relate somehow into the article, like maybe closeup features of a pit viper's head, like the eyes and the pits, all perfectly good reason for an extreme closeup of the head... But this picture was placed in the article replacing another infobox image which does show characteristic coloration. — raeky t 06:39, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I withdraw my nomination You are right. It's a bad picture, extreme closeup and uncommon "pose"! I understand why, on Commons, this picture didn't the unanimity. --Citron (talk) 17:21, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Commons is about picture aesthetics and not encyclopedic value. Here we put far higher weight on encyclopedic value over aesthetics, therefore for a species biological article this picture is less than ideal. — raeky t 21:36, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not Promoted --Makeemlighter (talk) 00:01, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn by nominator. Makeemlighter (talk) 00:01, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]