To date I have created 184 different banners for both the Hebrew Wikivoyage and the English Wikivoyage. At present I am capable of creating banner files from free pictures on Wikicommons or flickr very fast (that is, only if I already located beforehand a good picture file to create the banner from). The banner creation process involves first of cropping the picture file in Photoshop to the standard resolution & dimensions (2100 X 300), afterwards I usually slightly fix the contrast and/or colors, afterwards I upload the derivative banner file to Wikicommons and fill in the license information correctly to the uploaded file, and eventually I add the file to the relevant Wikivoyage article. In fact, when I create banners, most of the time is spent actually in searching for a successful panoramic picture file to make a banner from. In the recent months I have found out that searching for available good free panoramic pictures of destinations on flickr via this website usually helps me find a good free picture to work with much faster than going first to Wikicommons. (I of course create the banners from those flickr pictures only after I import those pictures from flickr to wikicommons with the help of this tool).
Either way, I now understand that like me, most of the main banner creators probably invest most of the time on searching for good pictures to create banners from, and less time on the technical part involved in creating the banners and uploading them. I also presume now that there are quite a few editors in the English Wikivoyage community whom want to help speed up the creation process of all the missing banners, but most of these people either do not know how to use an picture editing software to do that or how to upload the derivative banner files with appropriate licenses to Wikicommons.
Therefore, I suggest that the English Wikivoyage community would start working collaboratively through this page (which has never really been used since it was created in July 2013), in which we would join forces to first create a long list of names+links to the existing articles which still do not have banners, and that gradually we'll add next to each article name external links to existing free picture files, either on Wikicommons or flickr, which might be good choices for making the missing banners. I believe that if we join forces in creating such a list, the main banner creators (myself included) would be able to create all the missing banners in a much shorter time.
It is correct that most of the banner making effort is finding a suitable source image in the first instance. That said, is the technical bar for going to the next step and creating a 7:1 banner really that high? It can be done using nothing more special than Microsoft Paint with a few clicks (and GIMP makes it a bit easier).
I agree, I personally find the technical side of making banners easy, the most difficult (and at the same time most creative) work is finding a suiable photo, that looks good even after cropping. This is sometimes challenging for places with little pictures available in CC license and those I never visited. Therefore I often have doubts about representativeness of my selection and I enjoy cooperating with somebody who knows the place and can guide me. Those who does not have the technical skills for cropping the pictures or just don't care about this aspect of WV (fair enough) can use this page, which I didn't know before, but now I have it on my watchlist, so I can help out - perhaps the page would need some more advertising? If there is a suitable photo which just need a slight adjustment of ratio, inserting the picture in the banner directly and using {{crop}} template is a good option.
I am not in favour of creating (and maintaining) a long list of articles lacking banners, we can use tools for finding them instead, like for example this search. Danapit (talk) 08:49, 11 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
This whole thing strikes me as a solution in search of a problem. First of all, Andrewssi2 is correct: I have created many a banner in my day, and the only software I've ever used for that is MS Paint to crop and, when necessary (not often), GIMP to rotate. Secondly, Danapit is also correct that we have tools to identify pages without banners that would make redundant any long list of the type suggested here.
Lastly, is it really necessary to gain community approval for each and every individual pagebanner? It's not as if pagebanners are the same as DotM banners, which go on the Main Page and therefore call for a bit of scrutiny. The process seems simple enough to me: find a page without a banner, create one, done. In the exceedingly minute possibility that another editor comes by the page who dislikes the banner so strongly that he feels he needs to create a different one, he can, and in the even more exceedingly minute possibility that the original banner uploader comes back and takes issue with the change, the two of them can hash it out on the Talk page.
It seems that my suggestion was completely misunderstood and I am very sorry for that. I didn't suggest that from now on a voting would be necessary to select each banner, as AndreCarrotflower and Danapit implied. Again, what I am suggesting is simply that we'll have a more prominent page in which a lot of additional users would hopefully take part in the tedious task of finding possible good free photos we can use, so that the main users involved in creating banners would be capable of getting a lot more good work done (While of course each user that would end up creating a banner based on a suggestion made by other community members would in practice continue being the one whom determines whether or not to accept the suggestions at all, and if he/she likes one or more of the suggestions, he/she would be the one to determine which of the suggestions is his/her preferred photo to create the banner out of).
Either way, it seems now that before we discuss this idea further it is first necessary for us to have an actual rough draft of the page I am suggesting in front of our eyes, in order for the community to make a better decision on whether this is a good idea or not. I will create a rough draft of my proposal later on today, link it here, and hopefully everyone else would then understand much better what I am proposing and why this might actually be a very useful tool that would help us speed up the whole process of creating all the missing banners. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 16:44, 11 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
The wording in my draft is not perfect (English is not my first language), but I think that now my suggestion is much better understood. Although ideally I would prefer that all the items on these lists were sorted by page views (as Andrewssi2 suggested above), since we are not capable of easily retrieving that data for the items in these tables, I instead sorted the items in these lists by their current size in bytes (as there is probably a somewhat correlation between the amount of work invested in each article and the article's popularity among the general public). Please check specifically the page User:ויקיג'אנקי/Proposed Banner Suggestions Section - Page 1 to see how I suggest people would add links to the picture files they'll find.
That would make sense to me too. Just don't overestimate the response you will get, ויקיג'אנקי. Most people who are interested will master the art of creating the banners quickly, and some people will only want to suggest images for e.g. articles they've written. The concept is fine, but I think we can provide the message in a far shorter way. Best practices in finding images are already mentioned elsewhere. All we need to add to the expedition is something like: "creating banners is easy and you can find an explanation [here]. However, if you don't want to create one yourself, you can still help this expedition along by helping to identify suitable images. If you've found an image, just add it to the relevant article below." JuliasTravels (talk) 08:24, 13 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
I have added one suggestion to the page. I am not sure that the table is in an easy format for an occasional editor to add a link. In many cases the problem is a lack of suitable images on commons. I would like something that encouraged readers to upload photos. I started creating banners using my own photos, although I have since created a few using commons images. Also a central page is likely to only be seen by regular contributors. Maybe we should add a para to the talk page of the more important articles which are missing banners.
It might be worth looking at the upload pages for the Wiki Loves Monuments competition [1] and [2] which try to help novice uploaders, by automatically adding commons categories etc. AlasdairW (talk) 21:37, 13 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Great initiative, I just added 7 images in a few minutes (note: some may need rotation). Finding images is fun, I recommend using Google Images with "Search tools" -> "Labeled for reuse with modification", that also shows image sizes, choose images with width over 1300. Easy way to make tangible contributions even during lunch time! Nicolas1981 (talk) 12:18, 17 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
I will definitely make use of people's suggestions in order to make a lot more good banners from now on. Hopefully more banner creators would make use of the banner suggestions section in order to make banners. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 04:03, 18 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Since it doesn't require the user to download the image to their computer/device and will inherit all copyright info, it may make banner creation even easier for some users. Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:54, 29 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Is this concept still working? It seems that suggestions are still open, so I'm not sure anyone is watching the lists. I was hoping someone could fix a banner for Monschau, which I'm currently working on, but I'm not sure there's a point to adding it to the long list of articles... Perhaps this image or one of these can work, but anything would be appreciated :-) JuliasTravels (talk) 22:21, 19 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
I don't know what concept you are asking about, but: Crop tool exists and works, but it is not easy to get an accurate aspect ratio - could be out by a percent or two. I have cropped your first suggestion as a demo.Monschau banner La Rur et la passerelle de l'hôtel zum Stern. If this is OK, use it, if not either crop one of the photos for yourself or specify which you want and how you want it cropped and I will do it for you. • • • Peter (Southwood)(talk): 07:20, 20 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, Peter (Southwood) :-) With concept I just meant the suggestions pages where all the articles are listed, and we can add proposed images per article, the project page this talk belongs to. But this works for me. JuliasTravels (talk) 09:44, 20 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
OK, I dont know if anyone is actively working on banner creation - I have other things to do at present - but I guess the list of images would save time if anyone gets around to it, so it might be worth adding to them when one cant make the banner oneself. • • • Peter (Southwood)(talk): 11:44, 20 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
This page appears to be four years old; it lists "the 16,957 articles which didn't have custom banners as of November 12, 2014". That is almost completely useless. Can it be updated?
Where should I post a request for a banner? I came here to ask for one for Sibonga; this is certainly not urgent (new & incomplete article, small town), but it might be easy since the place has a few big buildings with flashy facades. Pashley (talk) 13:41, 25 November 2018 (UTC)Reply
@Pashley: The number can be updated with {{PAGESINCAT:Has default banner|R}}, which prints 7793, which is the number of articles in the category Has custom banner and updates itself over time (though loading a cached version of the page doesn't force it to update). The seven list articles after that are hard to update. What we could do instead of that is make a list of regions and countries that need custom banners and link that to PetScan queries. For example:
As for the link to Wikivoyage:Banner expedition/Banner suggestions for all articles created after 11/12/2014, we could replace that with this query, which lists the newest articles without a custom banner by creation date (newest article → oldest article). If there's a template that fetches the number of articles a PetScan returns, then I'd be in favour of listing that behind the queries above so that everyone gets an idea of where their help is most needed. Of course ticking off empty queries with {{Done}} is fine by me as well.
I'm just coining some ideas here. If anyone has other ideas or insights as to how many people visit this project page in the first place (so we can decide on deleting or revamping), then please join the discussion :) -- Wauteurz (talk) 15:51, 25 November 2018 (UTC)Reply
It's on my watchlist, and I can crop images to make banners for people who will find a suitable image on Commons. It is not difficult, and I have done thousands. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood)(talk): 18:14, 25 November 2018 (UTC)Reply
At Hebvoy we decided that the phrasebook articles would mostly have banners of the people whom speak the languages, usually with their traditional clothing (in Engvoy you usually show store signs with those languages instead).
For some reason, it has been very difficult to find a good photos of Japanese women in kimonos that would make a nice panoramic banner. The best one I found so far is this.
I vaguely remember that such a banner already existed for one of the japanese articles but I could not find it.
Sure, moving it seems fine to me. If you do, please don't delete the redirect, to avoid breaking any incoming links (including from other sites or sister projects). —Granger (talk·contribs) 07:08, 5 November 2019 (UTC)Reply
I have no objections to moving this page. (Please keep the redirect, as I have it bookmarked, and that's how I find this page when I want it.) But if you/we decide against moving the page for some reason, at a minimum, please create a redirect at the suggested title that points to this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:26, 4 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion
I tink that the introduction to this page needs to clarify that it is mainly for articles without banners (or those that technically don't meet the requirements - wrong shape, too few pixels etc). Requests could be used for articles with existing banners, but I think discussion should have already started on the article's talk page, so that there is already agrement that the banner probably should be changed to one made from the requested image. (Discussions started one week earlier with no response also count.) AlasdairW (talk) 10:09, 22 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
I agree. I've had to mark the vast amount of new (spurious) requests because changing a banner unilaterally with no discussion is not the way to go and against standard Wikivoyage practice. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)10:19, 22 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
I'll take this a step further. I don't think articles with banners should be listed on this page at all. Rather, their discussions should be started on their respective talk pages. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 15:13, 22 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for adding this. It seems I somehow missed a ping from Piotrus a few days ago (sorry for that), but hopefully this page won't be bombarded with requests for articles that already have a custom banner. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta)00:25, 23 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
All good, but we should make it clear what to do for articles that have a banner. Start a discussion on that article talk page - is that all? Or is it best practice to report such discussion somewhere as well? I think this page should have a section for "articles with no banners" and "banner changes", the latter could link to talk page discussions, but frankly, why not centralize everything? Piotrus (talk) 07:26, 23 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
I think the situation for articles that already have a banner is covered by points 2-4 on the list. 2 & 3 cover technical matters which should be uncommon, and everything else is covered by "4 There is agreement to replace the banner (or no response after 7 days) in a discussion on the article's talk page. Please put a note about this discussion on Wikivoyage:Requests for comment." Requests for comment has a separate section for banner discussions. The current discussions posted there are where the proposer has already created a replacement banner, but I think it would be fine to have a discussion on "a banner cropped from this photo", and do the crop later, paricularly where the existing banner is poor. Discussions also cover the more serious problem of the banner showing completely the wrong place, usaully due to the image being incorrectly categorised on commons, and in cases like that it is sufficent to have agrement that the banner needs to be replaced. An example of where a discussion has already started, so suggestions are ok, is Cheonan.
I think it is better to keep banner discussions on the article's talk page. That way we are most likely to involve occasional editors who know the city, and we can all see if a similar discussion took place last year. AlasdairW (talk) 10:25, 23 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
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