Wikipedia:Funny biographical images (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)​

Unfunny humor page that fails the letter and spirit of WP:BLPIMAGE. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 07:09, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Supporting a move to Wikipedia:Unusual biographical images. Plenty of other strange and humorous lists use "unusual" as a descriptor. See Wikipedia:Unusual articles, Wikipedia:Unusual place names, et cetera. ✶Antrotherkus✶^✶talk✶ 22:03, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment It being unfunny (in your opinion) is irrelevant. Wikimanisbackuwu (talk) 13:54, 1 March 2025 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE[reply]

• I mean, making a list of "funny biographical images" so people can point and laugh is obviously a BLP problem. But there's also an important criticism here, which is that it's more of a BLP violation to have all of these unflattering images actually being used in people's articles in the first place. I suppose I'm at delete simply because I don't trust that that the list will be used or maintained appropriately, but there's a real problem here that does deserve attention. Many of these images are a) not a meaningful free alternative and b) worse than nothing. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:52, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • A move would also be an improvement. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 01:45, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • To your last sentence, it's a great point. I have personally removed images of terrible quality from BLPs for that exact reason: they are worse than nothing (e.g. Jared Lorenzen). It's perhaps something we should discuss over at WT:BLP. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 04:36, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Move to Wikipedia:Unusual biographical images. The framing of these images as "funny" seems disparaging, contrary to WP:BLPIMAGE, and often doesn't fit (is an image of an attempted presidential assassin really funny?) However, Wikipedia's penchant for strange biographical images has been discussed externally (1, 2, 3), and thus is definitely noteworthy among Wikipedia enthusiasts. If we are to reframe this article around unusualness rather than funniness, which seems to be the de facto criteria anyway, we will have a list akin to WP:Unusual articles, which indeed includes BLPs. -insert valid name here- (talk) 01:43, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am struggling to see how this take aligns with BLPIMAGE: "Images of living persons should not be used out of context to present a person in a false or disparaging light." Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 04:36, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @The ed17 it doesn't, but in the context of it being a humorous easy as well as the fact that Wikipedia has no firm rules allow many pages like this to exist. Wikimanisbackuwu (talk) 04:51, 2 March 2025 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE[reply]

    Even with context these images are still "unusual", that isn't a bad thing either, it just means they aren't what is usually expected for a bio image. It's also not disparaging since well... we're not belittling them or anything. Some of these photos may be a little embarrassing at worse but at the end of the day, these people are in the public eye and have made the choice to be, if they see their articles they can always WP:APoY and replace the photo. Anyway yeah I support a Move. 7kk (talk) 20:21, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    My intentions with this move are to redirect the quality of unusuality from the person onto the image itself. BLPIMAGE doesn't prevent any and all photographs that could be seen as unflattering from appearing on Wikipedia; if it did, Ed Miliband bacon sandwich photograph would not be an article. In that case, we have an article on it because multiple outlets delivered commentary about the photographs themselves, as we are attempting to do here. -insert valid name here- (talk) 02:40, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree with -insert valid name here-, Move. Wikimanisbackuwu (talk) 04:42, 2 March 2025 (UTC) WP:SOCKSTRIKE[reply]

  Move: The new name would make the subject of the list clearer. I don't find that much humor, but I do find it interesting. TansoShoshen (talk) 06:11, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Move to unusual but keep. I fail to see how listing them as unusual images would be any worse than using them in the articles. Funny is maybe not the greatest word for this. PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:01, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]