Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Painted turtle native range

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 2 Mar 2011 at 23:04:25 (UTC)

New alternate version with full state names, editable text ~~and named countries~~]]

Reason

From the FPC criteria, this graphic especially demonstrates good use of sources and helpful illustration to an article. More than twenty sources were checked and combined. Also, an issue of readers understanding geography was clarified by showing political boundaries and key rivers along with the species extent. This follows a concern from the FAC. Wiki-linking state names and common rivers is discouraged at FA, would result in huge list-y sections of blue, and really not help the reader as much as a diagram that combines all the info. While the article had already made FA, I'd grown to feel that a first class map would take care of an issue and really help in a picture worth a thousand words manner, to combine a lot of info for the reader.

Also, lack of quality maps (both in look and in content) is a common problem we have on wiki where our content often looks worse than magazine nature articles or certainly than field guides. I hope this map is a step in the right direction.

Articles in which this image appears: Painted turtle
FP category for this image: link to category from WP:FP that best describes the image (check categories first)
Creator: Fallschirmjäger

Support as nominator: Proud of FS's work! --TCO (talk) 23:04, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support High EV per nom. JJ Harrison (talk) 10:14, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wow, very nice! Hopes this becomes a trend! Sasata (talk) 16:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support - ooooh, lovely. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:54, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support we need so much more of these kind of images. Nergaal (talk) 16:57, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support: WP needs more maps like these and I hope an FP will encourage more people to create them, they do require a good deal of effort. It's a good example of how the SVG format encourages reuse if images since the base map was created by someone else. Also, though not visible here, the sources for the information are very well documented and WP:VERIFY needs to apply to images as well as articles.--RDBury (talk) 17:09, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support excellent and very high EV. —innotata 20:18, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Extremely high EV. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neutrality (talk • contribs) 14:56, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support per everyone. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 21:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support This image has all the bells and whistles, you couldn't ask for anything more in a map.--NYMFan69-86 (talk) 21:38, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support Thanks for all the support! Fallschirmjäger ✉ 23:27, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Some unusual choices: some, but not all, rivers are labeled and/or shown (including several small tributaries of the upper Tennessee River, but not other rivers). Why were those rivers chosen? Two-letter postal abbreviations are used for Canadian provinces and U.S. states, but full names are used for Mexican states. And the countries of Canada, the United States and Mexico are themselves not labeled. Spikebrennan (talk) 01:30, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Rivers included are only those described in the article text as noted in caption. Want to stick with this for illustrative connection to the article. We will look at the state and country names concern.TCO (talk) 01:55, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - The position of the Tennessee River is not quite correct. See map here. The confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio rivers is not near the Indiana border, it is farther west. The position of the Columbia River is also not quite correct: the point where the river crosses the US-Canada border should be further east, near the Washington-Idaho border. See this map. ~~Oppose~~ until corrected (but with appreciation for the work done so far-- I just think that the map needs a bit more work before it's ready for FPC).Spikebrennan (talk) 18:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC). Opposition withdrawn in recognition of the additional corrections (but I'd still recommend following the Wikiproject:Maps conventions). Spikebrennan (talk) 14:11, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Question Is it possible to upload a version with modifiable text to Commons? I'm guessing there was one at some stage. This would make it easier for other Wikis to translate and use the map. Makeemlighter (talk) 01:58, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Working on a new version to make the suggested changes. Fallschirmjäger ✉ 16:00, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Done - See new version above that now has full state name labels, named countries and editable text. Fallschirmjäger ✉ 21:23, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can tell why you used abbreviations initially; the new version looks crowded, and at least the country names need to be fixed somehow, perhaps by omitting them. —innotata 21:31, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed about looking crowded. Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps/Conventions appears to implicitly recommend that labels be omitted if they're not important. For that matter, the conventions article has specific style recommendations about what colors to use. I also note that the labels for the individual state names are, in the new alt. version, kind of haphazardly oriented (some are true horizontal, some apparently follow the arc of the latitude lines, and some are angled so as to fit into a given state's area-- there's not a clear pattern. I'd recommend doing away with the labels of states (but leaving the state borders), and otherwise following the Wikipedia:Distribution maps and Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps/Conventions/Areas maps conventions to the extent practicable. If the conventions are unsuitable for this map, then by all means let the folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps know as I am sure that the conventions can be improved. Spikebrennan (talk) 22:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Prefer to keep the written out state and province names. I'm glad you made us add them. Think it serves my article better. The purpose of the map was to show the political boundaries and rivers in concert with the species distribution, to support the discussion in article. I agree it is prettier without. But I think better for the reader to have one map, rather than literally two. And the average international reader doesn't know all the state locations (or even average USAian know all the provinces). (I think we can nuke the country names, I will handle that in captions and these are features much more likely to be known.) We will fix Tennessee joining Ohio and also figure out British Columbia better.TCO (talk) 22:55, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've refined the shape of both the Tennessee and Columbia rivers to be more accurate now. As for the state labels, they are differently angled depending on their size and readabiliy, but I agree it doesn't look great. A possible solution would be to angle them all horizontally but in order to do so they would have to be decreased in size a fair bit, which will make them hard to read, to ensure they fit. Fallschirmjäger ✉ 23:26, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support Great quality and highly relevant to the article as the subspecies overlapping is a point of discussion. I'm surprised and delighted that sources exist to show such detail. Credit to Fallschirmjäger's artwork and TCO's research skills. One question arises. What is the biggest size in width this image can be shown on if it's on the front page? Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 00:37, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Have same question. Actually kinda worried that it might not be Front Page suitable, although I really feel as a diagram, it helps combine info.) One thing we could do for a main page run would be to take all the state and river text out. Also, the caption can be skinnied down to 2 columns rather than 3, by cutting the left hand column. (In article, I really prefer to stay full width as I blather on so much about aspects of geography, that labels are needed. I realize this means people on mobile devices will have to scroll.) P.s. And yes, every individual dot in the SW is sourced and we even looked at different references that disagreed and figured out which were most recent or thorough or the like (and mention disagreements in text or notes in article.)TCO (talk) 01:01, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Picture of the day doesn't show up on the mobile wikipedia homepage anyway iirc. JJ Harrison (talk) 01:04, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments on the edit, please Makeemlighter (talk) 03:10, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer the edit. Jujutacular ^talk 13:27, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer the new one as well. It's not crowded at all and better facilitates interpretation of the information.--NYMFan69-86 (talk) 15:00, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Edited version is the one in article, now. (Which should say something. ;-)) I appreciate the reviewers in pushing us for the improvement as it has increased EV. We're no longer making people look up province/state names. Also Tennessee River was improved as were all the BC rivers and actually the species boundaries in BC. There is a tension between the most pretty image and the one that is most helpful as a diagram. Given we are full size in the article and have this issue of a heck of a LOT of geography being covered in article text (read it now), think we need the political labels. I've now seen 20+ range maps of C. picta and you can see different traits followed in a field guide (where size is small, and content is really clipped) versus a report like COSEWIC. I think we are a bit closer to COSEWIC in purpose, which also has lots of geographic detail along with species range.TCO (talk) 16:33, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Per TCO. The edit is more informative and accurate. Fallschirmjäger ✉ 00:34, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Painted Turtle Distribution alternate.svg --Makeemlighter (talk) 05:25, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]