Wikivoyage:Arrivals lounge/Archives/2019/January

Changing preview box image

When there's a link to an article from elsewhere at Wikivoyage, a preview box displays with an image. For Washington, D.C., it's of a building that I don't recognize and I that I certainly don't think is iconic or representative of the city. I'm not sure what that preview box is called, though, so I don't know how to change the image in it. Help? Thanks! - Sdkb (talk) 05:00, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I believe this has been discussed before. The preview pictures are automatically chosen from the article — often from pictures in listings. As I understand it, the only way to fix the problem would be to remove the picture in question from the marker/listing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 12:17, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, thanks for the explanation! That's kinda weird. For anyone with programming experience, I'd recommend making those previews customizable as something to look into. - Sdkb (talk) 18:57, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

That's a good idea, and it probably should be like that. Unfortunately, as far as I know, it's not currently. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:03, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Some relevant information can be found here and here. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 22:11, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

@SelfieCity, Sdkb: This indeed was discussed before, which has been swept from the pub since, and can now be found in the pub archive. In a nutshell, the image gets decided on by looking at Wikidata, which may or may not have a 'representative' image for the first listing in the article with a defined Wikidata id. If none is available, it looks at the first listing without a Wikidata id, but with a defined image. If none of these are available, the first image in the article gets used. This topic being brought up again made me make an attempt at overruling this in the simplest way possible, namely by adding an empty {{marker}} linking to a Wikidata id with a more desirable image. This, however, didn't work.

I am not sure what piece of code makes this preview, but I argued before and am still in favour of making that bit of code change its preference from Wikidata image > Listing image > In-line image to In-line image > Listing image > Wikidata image. I am debating on starting another discussion about this in the pub, since the current way of figuring out this image seems to be more bothersome than useful. Anywho, I hope my explanation of the workings of this 'feature' helped you a bit :)
-- Wauteurz (talk) 13:05, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I think that would be a great change and I'd definitely support this being brought up at the pub. The preview box images are a highly visible feature, and it's worth some effort to get them right. - Sdkb (talk) 15:20, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I guess "in-line image" refers to any ordinary picture on the page itself, right? A good example of where it goes wrong is Sierra Nevada — the area shown in the picture is almost completely flat, yet it's a mountain range! Or, another one, Lake Tahoe does not show a lake, but a road. Or another, example, New York City gives the picture of an airport (JFK, I assume), not the Statue of Liberty or the Brooklyn Bridge. I'd support a discussion on the pub about this. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:25, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Looks like it has been mentioned, I'll take a look. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:30, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

For anyone coming to this now, the discussion has continued here. - Sdkb (talk) 18:50, 11 January 2019 (UTC)