Talk:Susie Castillo

Marine 69-71

Hey buddy, I don't know who you think you are threatening me "that you're gonna block me" if I do this or that, but you don't scare me "bro".

Susie Castillo is Puerto Rican and Dominican, am I right? So then what's the point in saying "she considers herself Puerto Rican and Dominican" when she is both? I would hope she considers herself both since she is, but there's no point in saying that. That would be like me saying I consider myself white. If I considered myself Chinese, people would think I'm crazy. In the interview you're using as a source, she's saying that officially, she is both, something we could already figure out.

Now I really don't care because it's not that important but I aint gonna deal with some dude online threatening to block me over something he's wrong about. Bowser Koopa

• The article sourced talks about herself as a Puerto Rican. I think the Dominican statement in the sentence can go since it doesn't really address that issue, but it's a sourced statement leading to an article written by the subject herself and fleshes out who she is, and should be included. Whether the wording needs to be tooled with is another story. --David Shankbone 17:35, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Bowser Koopa, who do I think I am? I don't know, but I can tell you who I am.

1. I'm the guy who originated the article in the first place and who welcomes other editors who want to add new information which can be verified from a reliable source. I also welcome editors who will delete false information from any of the articles which I have originated. This is all in accordance to policy.

2. I am administrator in Wikipedia, who looks after the well being of its articles and will enforce Wikipedia's policies.

Now with that said, let me explain the following. I didn't threaten you, it was a "warning" directed to you and the other parties involved since it was stated in the "edit summary" and not the talk pages. Constent reverting is considered an "edit war" and that is one of the things that is discouraged.

The article originally, did not state that Castillo considered herself both Dominican and Puerto Rican, however, User:Dominicanflav7, believed that it important that it be stated what Castillo considers herself to be and therefore, provided a verifiable source as proof. That is permitted since it is cited. You deleted that information which was wrong on your part. Wikipedia is not about what we "like" or do "not like", but about what can be verified as fact. User:65.210.53.162, added the information once again and you reverted and so on and so forth. This was leading into a revert war, which is against policy and we were all warned. I welcome you and all new comers to follow the rules established (which I will post in your User page) and to become part of our project by making positive constructive contributions. Tony the Marine 19:06, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I still don't think you get it. Of course she considers herself to be Puerto Rican and Dominican, that's what she is. What else would she consider herself? black? chinese? The page says "she was greatly influenced by her Puerto Rican heritage but she has said in many interviews she considers herself both Puerto Rican and Dominican".....uh, is there any reason she shouldn't? She might have said she IS Puerto Rican and Dominican. It originally said she says in interviews she considers herself 100% Puerto Rican, and I guess that meant she thinks of herself as all Puerto Rican and not Dominican, not sure if that's what it meant though. But that would make sense. Saying she considers herself both doesn't, because she is both. Even the page used as a source doesn't say she 'considers' herself both, it says she is both.

I think this is one of the most unimportant things I've ever argued about. But I felt threatened and I don't take shit from some dude online. Bowser Koopa

Location of "Succession" boxes

The "Succession" boxes at the bottom of many of the Miss Massachusetts' articles are placed after the "References" and "External Links" sections. I think they seem to be lost down there, and should be moved to above the "References" section, because the articles seem to end once you hit the "footnotes," which I most often do not read.

If the "Succession" boxes were placed above the "Reference" section, they would become much more apparent and therefore useful to everyone, I believe. SeanMon 06:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes but they don't look as good where you suggest (in my opinion) and if they were changed, to keep things consistent, over 100 articles would need to be edited. -- PageantUpdater • talk | contribs | esperanza 07:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Birth date

I think her date of birth is wrong. how can she be a Scorpio and born in January? if she was born in January then she is either a Sagitarius or a Capricorn right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.180.75.234 (talk • contribs) 21:26, 14 April 2007

this guy seems to be right. I just did a search and I couldn't find a page with her birth date and zodiac sign on the same page, they either list her birthdate in January or her zodiac sign as Scorpio. her own myspace page www.myspace.com/susiecastillo says she's a Scorpio, so that would mean she wasn't born in January. I'll leave someone else to figure this one out, cause I don't really feel like it. I'm sure there's a simple answer. Axem Black

Image

Despite the fact the new headshot is lower resolution I believe it is more suited to the infobox because it is a headshot and she is face-on to the camera, compared to the event pic where her face is angled away. PageantUpdater talk • contribs 14:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, and she is looking at the camera and smiling. Additionally, for a beauty pageant holder (where we give her height in the infobox) a full photo is preferable. Regardless, that head shot is just no good. It's that simple. --David Shankbone 14:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

To try to sort this out, I'm posting this dispute at Wikipedia:Third opinion. I don't have a strong opinion on the issue myself. Mangojuice^talk 15:36, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Why the image quality is a big deal

• Pageant, the quality is a very big deal for images; it's just that many people give it scant attention. The photography on this site represents our work. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and when a person goes to an article the first thing they look at is the photograph. Because I love Wikipedia, I invested in equipment and with my time to try to enhance the photography on the site. It's been a learning experience: I'm not a professional, I have no website, and the only place I put my photos is on Wikimedia projects. I am perhaps jumpy when I see my work taken down for lower quality work. Recently, on Abi Fry, my work was replaced and I agreed that the photo that replaced could arguably be seen as better, even though it was far lower resolution. I am glad Craig Hurst is releasing his photos, but they are relatively "bottom-of-the-barrel" and are the sort that will almost always be replaceable. The idea is that we should be inspiring people to take better quality photos to replace lower quality. If all it takes to have your photo up there is simply to snap a shot with your camera phone or point-and-shoot, there is no incentive for people to improve their photography, invest in equipment, or to go out there and "Do It Yourself" as I have done. It's a far more important issue than most people realize. Last, and not least, Wikimedia projects are there to better the world, and to showcase the best free content and information, so that others can use it. When we use low quality over high quality, we become less relevant for other people to use (such as graphics departments). --David Shankbone 15:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

David -- to you, what makes one image "high quality" and another "low quality"? I think we can all agree we want as much quality as possible, but quality is a subjective judgement. Mangojuice^talk 15:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes: this is how I measure images - Wikipedia:Featured picture criteria. Whatever comes closest to this is what I think should be the lead photo. --David Shankbone 16:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that is a good way of describing what the best images are like, but it's not very informative because the standard there asks for maximum quality among all spectrums. What I was getting at is more along the lines of which aspects of quality are most important? I take it you think that resolution is quite important: I disagree with that in general. More resolution is better, but there are diminshing marginal returns: if an image is already of pretty good resolution, having more resolution adds only a little quality. (But extremely low-res images can be very poor in quality). So to me it's more a question of whether resolution is adequate or not. If it were a choice between two images of adequate resolution, I would always pick the one I thought was fundamentally a better image -- the best depiction of what it shows, good framing, focus, color, et cetera. Mangojuice^talk 17:28, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, generally. It's give and take and there is no bright-line rule, although I think by any measure the one PageantUpdater proposed for this article fails across the board. But more difficult to ascertain are the two photos on Courtney Barnas. The article, even more than Abi Fry, is not big enough to support two images, nor is the person notable enough. Which of those two images should be in the infobox? I think in situations like that, there is more room for nuance and argumentation around the Wikipedia:Featured picture criteria standards. The one on the left is of far higher quality, but is only 29KB. The one on the right is poor quality, poor color, and is not nearly as crisp as the one on the left, but is 296KB. I don't know the answer - Neither one is particularly useful to people off Wikipedia (and I do think its important to care about how useful our site is to people outside of our community). So in situations like Barnas, or Abi Fry, I think arguments can be made. Here, I don't think there is much of an argument. Even cropped, my photograph is approaching 1MB and is better than the the 99KB poor color, poor quality image of Hurst's. --David Shankbone 17:52, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm getting the gist from your argument that you believe that low-res run of the mill images are not worthy of being here. I take issue with that and also the statement that these sorts of images (i.e. the ones I've uploaded that Craig released) will always be replaceable. I have spent hours upon hours looking for free images of pageant titleholders, scouring search engines for pics on military sites, searching Flickr for released images and where none exist emailing owners of copyrighted images to see whether they would consider releasing. The point being... for the vast majority of titleholders, there are no free images available. Should we consider images such as those I added tonight less relevant or less useful just because they are of a lower quality? I believe not, because otherwise we would have had nothing at all. Regardless of how small an image is, its still better than nothing! Before I started my "crusade" for free images (and you can see from my user page that I have had a long term interest in this) there were very few images at all of pageant titleholders, and now some years have images of 10+ delegates available.

More on topic, I'd rather go for the most appropriate image for a position rather than the best quality image just because of its resolution. In this case I just think that the infobox image is a better photo. You also seem to be taking the position that I think your image should not be on the page. On the contrary, I think it is a highly valuable addition to the article, I just don't think it is best placed in the infobox. PageantUpdater talk • contribs 16:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

You are misreading my arguments here and on your own talk page, so I will quote: "You are uploading a bunch of Craig Hurst photos, and that's great when we don't have any, but they are very low quality." In other words, your low quality images shouldn't replace high quality images. And your low quality images will almost always be replaceable when we obtain higher quality. You and I are saying the same thing: "Regardless of how small an image is, its still better than nothing!" But on this article, we don't have "nothing". And no matter how much time you have spent going through search engines, I can assure you it pales in comparison with the time I have spent trying to learn photography, arranging to meet people, and taking original, high-quality photographs for the site. --David Shankbone 16:25, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

To be frank, you seem quite up yourself about your photography. Sure, I don't go out there and do it myself. Why? Because I don't live in the United States and I is practically impossible to take images myself. You again have ignored my argument on the Susie Castillo article. I know there is another image available, and I strongly support it remaining in the article, but I just don't think its the most appropriate image for the infobox. PageantUpdater talk • contribs 16:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Having pride in your work is not being "up yourself" - if I didn't think I did a reasonably good job with photographs on this site, then I wouldn't contribute. As the Abi Fry article, Kevin Bacon, the Sean Combs article, the hematoma article, the Catwalk article, and the list goes on and on...demonstrate, people find better photos than mine *all the time*. You shouldn't confuse self-assuredness, or pride in my work, with "up on yourself". If you want objective criteria, then a helpful guide is Wikipedia:Featured picture criteria. That's what I use, and that is a community-derived standard for what we consider optimal photography, and I think it should apply to measuring which photo goes in the lead. --David Shankbone 16:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion

I'm with David on this: a full-body image is preferable here. I'd go with that one. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 16:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Fourth opinion: After comparing the two versions (full-length vs head shot in infobox) I have to say I like the full-body shot up top better. It just looks nicer to me. howcheng {chat} 16:24, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Another solution?

Cropped, levels adjusted.

Hi, David asked me to have a look at this discussion. So I've tried my hand at a slight edit of the full body portrait. Durova^Charge! 16:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

As a third solution, to stop us going around in circles and continuing diatribe over this image v. that, I have simply done a headshot crop of David Shankbone's image for the infobox, whilst leaving the full-lenght in the body of the article. Hopefully this is a workable solution. (Sidenote... David if you said you have more images than this one... if there is one more suited to a headshot, perhaps it would be worth uploading?) PageantUpdater talk • contribs 16:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I like that solution. I don't like the full-body shot in the infobox because (1) it's too tall, and (2) it doesn't show enough detail of her face. (And also, she just looks sort of awkward -- like she's off balance or something -- notice how her arms look like they are of different lengths.) But the cropped version looks much better. Mangojuice^talk 18:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I will also look for some better, higher-res close-ups of Castillo. I think I have one from one of the Tribeca parties. As an aside, professional print photographers most highly prize full-bodied shots. Not being a professional myself, when I was photographing with the pros I tried to ape whatever they were doing, so many of my Tribeca shots are full-bodied. As it turns out, the Wikipedia community doesn't want full-body shots, they want face shots...something I didn't know. So, I won't make the same mistake at this year's festival, though I still really like the full-body Drew Barrymore, Michael Apted, etc. But we're not print, and the community has made it clear head/face shots are what they want, as a rule of thumb. --David Shankbone 18:10, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

If someone is going to do another crop on this shot I'd suggest waist length. Mainly I was getting the doorway out of the frame; that was a distracting piece of background. David's argument is sound; if there's a counterargument to be made I'd point out that either a breeze or static cling has made the dress drape in an odd way at her calves. The effect is more revealing, which might be desirable considering the subject. A waist length crop would be a fair compromise. The argument for using a head shot only doesn't quite make sense to me; this is a person whose career is based upon her beauty. Wikipedia's image sizing is based upon width; this is a long vertical image. The alternate headshot-only version was about 200px. Why not show more of her at 200px width?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Durova (talk • contribs)

Why not use both? That's the thing you don't seem to understand, its perfectly okay to use both a headshot and a long shot. Long shots are fantastic, but they're not suited to infoboxes because it moves the relevant info in the infobox such a long way down the page. They're better in the body of the article. PageantUpdater talk • contribs 20:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. I don't think it puts the information too far down the page; an infobox does not need to be scrunched all the way at the top, especially if it means we put lower quality images in order to make sure that all the info in the infobox is in the first three inches. Infoboxes are just facts and figures, and are ancillary to the article, and the graphic illustrations. Spatial arrangement takes a back seat to making sure we have high quality images, including full-bodied. It's also helpful to remember that the way you see an article is not the way other people see an article, given screen sizes, screen resolutions, and user preferences. --David Shankbone 21:16, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Twitter

She (Susie) has a twitter account. Her page should reflect it.

Majinsnake (talk) 01:03, 24 February 2018 (UTC)