[Wikipedia-l] picture themes

Mon Jan 24 07:00:16 UTC 2005

Lars Aronsson wrote:

>When I'm looking for a translation or explanation of a terms such as
>"Sub-Lieutenant" (a military rank), "jackdaw" (a bird) or "zucchini"  
>(a vegetable), it makes a lot of sense to see them in contrast to what
>they are not, for example a list of other military degrees, or a group
>of similar but different birds or vegetables.  But I think Wikipedia
>today is too much focused on describing each item on its own, and not
>enough on connecting or contrasting concepts to each other.
>
We do have "how to tell the difference between a bee and a wasp" and
similarly for moths and butterflies. Lots of articles have notes on
how the subject is different from similar subjects, and I'd be
surprised if anyone objected to such additions. If they're scarce
I'd say it's due to lack of energy.

I agree that there is a need for "visual disambiguators". [[Gallery
of mountains]] is an experiment along those lines, and in the
philatelic world the "stamp identifier" is an important reference
work consisting of a collection of pictures of the types of stamps
that don't carry any text - I was going to try making a WP-version
of such a thing eventually, when there are more images.

At this point you should probably try making some experiments.
Leave a note on the talk page about what you're doing (to fend off
the deletionists :-) ), and if experiments seem encouraging, make
a WikiProject and advertise it.

Stan