User:Edbrown05/Cartoon musings

Thank you for the links Ash Lux. I find myself framing the issue of cartoon use in terms of the No original conclusions debate on the Water cooler. It less so contains elements of the debate stub editorials. Cartoons are a matter that draw on creativity and originality, that could be subjected to collaboration.

Yet, a Jimbo comment during the LA Times Wikitorial experiment, "It seems impossible for someone who disagrees with the central thrust of the original editorial to both respect the intentions of the authors, and also to have a voice," suggests that a separate Wiki project (WikiTOONS) would be unworkable.

But that doesn't make it right that a cartoon struggles for space on this wiki, when nearly every other news organization provides for them. What's wrong, or rather, right about that?

Yeah, bore my brains out with WikiMedia, they ain't got an answer, nor a cure.

On Wikitorial and WikiTOONS

I like the Wikitorial idea, but it seems down now. And Jimbo is correct that essentially "comments" are the best way to make editorials possible. But I've said this dozens of times.

Since you brought it up, I'll repost the section you like to above.

Might be a good idea to allow people to post cartoons they draw. Could separate into categories, like political, religion and so on.

• I think this is a great idea, however there are two problems, first is by definition a political cartoon can not be NPOV and the secound lesser problem is finding people to draw them that are willing to allow the cartoon into public domain or GFDL. If these two problems can be worked out I think this would be great for WikiNews --Cspurrier 17:34, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it's fine to try. Cspurrier is wrong that individual cartoons need to be NPOV. Articles need to be NPOV in whole. And individual sentences and paragraphs need to use NPOV langauge. But individual sentences, pagraphrapgs, and pictures need not present all sides of the story. So artists need to be prepared for cartoon's to be shot down if they effectively "use POV language". But the natrual tendency of a cartoon to depict only one side of the story is not itself a problem. Simply posting the cartoon next to a paragraph who shares its views, and not the intro, goes a LONG way towards making this possible.

As an extreme example, imagine your article favors one side by a word ratio of 1-3, as often happens, but has a cartoon mildly leaning towards the word count loser. You'd have to be #$%^*@! stupid to remove that cartoon. Nyarlathotep 10:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

(replying to ed's query on my talk page reg. 'toons)

my thoughts on cartoon are no different from those expressed above. i too wld like to see them in wikinews, but don't see a way to do it while conforming strictly to the NPOV policy. the trouble with cartoons, i think, is that they almost always run foul of the npov requirement of fairly representing persons/views/actions, (someone can almost always argue with some justification that they do not).

to use them on wikinews, we could (theoretically, zealous admins may please note, and take cursor off of those buttons :)

• dilute the npov requirement in policy
• use the usual means (discussion and... ahem, consensus building) to choose cartoons which are sufficiently (though not quite absolutely) npov.
• use a cartoon to illustrate a particular pov in a story, with corresponding weights given to other povs elsewhere (or in other cartoons), as suggested by nyarlathotep.
• cheat. such as upload cartoon to commons (which doesn't have npov req.) and use a template (such as wikipediapar) or linking in wikinews to point to the cartoon (similar to the (now dead?) pov.wikicities. so the cartoon is not displayed, or emphasised in the wikinews article and hence has a very modest pov effect.

i do think that doing any of these will potentially pose a thin-edge-of-wedge problem. i'm also not sure from where we're going to get good quality cartoons to use? Doldrums 08:57, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Water cooler topic: Webcomic Entry Proposal

Dear Wikipedia Editors, I'd like to submit my work for Wikipedia's Webcomic editors to consider. I am a freelance illustrator and writer and have been doing this comic for some time, though it has just recently been brought online. Though still on a blogspot site, I hope you might find it worthy of a listing: http://www.kittyandpiggy.blogspot.com.

My work has appeared alongside Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall, and I communicate with David Rees. My illustration portfolio and full resume and publishing history can be viewed at http://www.creativehotlist.com/r-magill

Thank you for your consideration.

Regards, R. Jay Magill, Jr.

I'm not entirly sure what you're asking, but it sounds better suited for commons:. (I believe they have some cartoons there - commons:Category:Cartoons, Commons:Category:Editorial cartoons, and Commons:Category:Comics) Bawolff ☺☻ 18:13, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind that i fixed your links. Bawolff ☺☻ 18:16, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

You are welcome to contribute an editorial cartoon to any story here on Wikinews, or wikipedia articles. Commons may be the best upload location since many larger stories have both a wikipedia article as well as wikinews articles.

In general, we have few editorial cartoons here on wikinews since its harder to modify them collaboratively, but we are always looking for more image like content for articles (just look at all the articles we stick national flags onto). Editorial cartoons here need to avoid biasing a story. Nyarlathotep 16:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Mr.Magill,

I struggled with an interest of introducing cartoons to Wikinews last Fall. Some of the issues I confronted:

1. Wikinews maintains a strict policy of reporting with a “neutral point of view”. Facts are neutral, opinions are editorial. An editorial cartoon expresses a viewpoint, so it would find itself in the company of editorial news stories, which are not published here because they express a viewpoint.
2. Because of the point above, the inclusion of a comic illustration for the story French riots continue into second week was relegated to an “External link” at the bottom of the page. Not a very satisfactory placement in my opinion.
3. A 4-panel cartoon such as those you are engaged in might be best presented as it own headline: Kity and Piggy: Abramhoff. But how would other contributors collaborate with the content of that cartoon? Or should Wikinews create a content space for the sole purpose of cartoons, such as a new Topic category.

These are just some thoughts of mine from having travelled down this road for a brief distance. You may be interested to know that there was once a very lively debate to allow publication of editorial content on Wikinews. It was ultimately voted down. Whether cartoons, which by definition are expected to lampoon people and events, would be acceptable is another matter.-Edbrown05 18:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, thats a shame about the French cartoon, I almost mentioned that one as a prime example of a sufficiently unbiased cartoon.  :)

A cartoon doesn't need to be totally unbiased, it only needs to be balanced within the context of the story. You just run into some "a pictures worth a thousand words" effect. I believe we'd ultimately accept editorial cartoons if we had one dedicated contributor who really tried hard to keep them neutral, and did not exert a predictable left or right bias via the cartoons. We'd start optimizing the placement and comments to balance the story. For example, you could have an editorial cartoon next to a paragraph about one POV, and an oversized text quote from a pagragraph about the other.

Anyway, Mr. Magill, your very welcome to try, but people will hold you to a higher standard of neutrality than other users. I'd also be best if the cartoons target less controversial stories. Oh, plus, people arn't going to like any cartoons with running characters, purely situational cartoons, like the French one, are far more likely to fly. Nyarlathotep 19:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I think its too bad the cartoons arn't happening here, but I don't see that changing any time soon. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:12, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

thank-you for the cartoon.

Made me laugh. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:16, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

sometimes u win, sometimes u lose cartoon