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Change the main image
"Wikipedia is not censored" is not a good enough reason to have such a disgusting image at the top. There could be a section later in the page, with a warning that you have to click through to see that image. The main image makes me want to never visit Wikipedia again. I don't want to be forced to look at horrifying images.
91.158.66.11 (
talk)
22:44, 26 November 2021 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia, like it or not, is the number one research resource for most internet users, on all manner of topics. We should recognise (and respect) that some visitors may be upset by certain imagery, even if they can comfortably digest the information presented in the text. Is there no mechanism for applying a 'click to see image' filter?
2A00:23C7:3119:AD01:D065:7EEC:4667:EFD6 (
talk)
20:37, 15 February 2023 (UTC)reply
the image, which no one is forcing you to look at, should make you feel empathy for the suffering of this child. and after you read a paragraph or two, when you read that 300 million people were estimated to have died from smallpox in the twentieth century, you should be considering yourself lucky a) to have evaded the clutches of this disfiguring killer and b)that you live in a time and place where accurate information about this virus (and other viruses) is freely available.
70.31.166.89 (
talk)
22:50, 28 November 2022 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia shouldn't make me "feel" anything. Wikipedia shouldn't make me "consider myself lucky" about anything. Wikipedia should inform and educate, and how its users respond to that information is not Wikipedia's job to dictate.
The fact is, of the several images of smallpox infections in this article, many of them are successful in portraying the horrifying disfiguration that can be caused by this disease. They are all still orders of magnitude less likely to cause a traumatically shocking reaction in the reader than the one chosen for the main image.
I'd be first in line to promote this image back to the main spot if Wikipedia had a "hide sensitive imagery" setting. But that has been talked about for over a decade. The options that actually exist today are absurd suggestions for this issue. You can either hide every image by default, which, if you think about it, is no help to people that only want to avoid the sensitive stuff. If you don't already know what smallpox is, you have no idea what you're in for. Or you can install browser scripts to block specific images once you already know what they are ... which is a solution for absolutely no one.
This feels very off-brand for Wikipedia. We can all think of subjects that don't have graphic, disturbing photo representations of that thing, and for good reason. If they did, and Smallpox was the norm instead of an outlier, there'd be a lot more pressure for a sensitive-blur setting that was on by default. I'm sure I could visit LiveLeak and find an image that is objectively "better" for the Stabbing article than the 16th-century painting that's currently there, but since common sense is the norm for Wikipedia, the painting remains.
Eyevandy (
talk)
19:17, 11 September 2023 (UTC)reply
This image description is currently just a religious slandering with an attempt to link it "Likely" to smallpox:
Likely hemorrhagic smallpox during a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin epidemic in a patient who later died. Patient described as an unvaccinated Christian Scientist, who "thought that he could by power of mind prevent smallpox."
Should be more neutral and with a respectable source mentioned: "Patient with hemorrhagic smallpox during a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin epidemic [link to source]" — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
XXX (
talk)
04:36, 6 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Change was an undocumented addition in
this 25 December 2021 revision by
Featous. The language is derived from the
source (Archived link), but Featous replaced the caption of the image ("A patient likely suffering from hemorrhagic smallpox in a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, epidemic") with the description of the image. I'd agree that the description is irrelevant to the topic of smallpox - no other image contains such language as to the background of the patient, and the original caption was both more descriptive and concise.
WP:NPOV. --
Xthorgoldx (
talk)
05:22, 25 August 2023 (UTC)reply
The language applied in the 25 December 2021 page revision altered an image caption from
A person with probable hemorrhagic smallpox. He later died of the disease.
To
Likely hemorrhagic smallpox during a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin epidemic in a patient who later died. Patient described as an unvaccinated Christian Scientist, who "thought that he could by power of mind prevent smallpox."
The description does originate from the image source, but the description is irrelevant to the topic of the article specifically, and noticeably accusatory in comparison to all other images used in the page. Request reversion to previous caption for neutrality and conciseness.
The previous caption was truncated from the
image: "A patient likely suffering from hemorrhagic smallpox in a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, epidemic," listed as the image caption (whereas the Christian Scientist verbiage was the image description). As both descriptors are from the same source, the more tonally-neutral and concise of the two is more appropriate --
Xthorgoldx (
talk)
18:49, 25 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Done I agree the more concise caption is more appropriate in this context. I know of no policy that requires or suggests using an image's description verbatim from what is on Wikimedia in all cases. So I've
boldly made this change. --
Pinchme123 (
talk)
01:15, 27 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Decimated?
The current text states:
Because the native
Amerindian population had no acquired immunity to this new disease, their peoples were decimated by epidemics.
Decimated literally means reduced by 10%. Is this the correct word when we see a few sentences later:
Case fatality rates during outbreaks in Native American populations were as high as 90%.
Should 'decimated' be changed to some other word or phrase? 'Almost wiped out'? I know this may seem picayune but I think it is important to preserve some language.
Tfdavisatsnetnet (
talk)
04:10, 3 October 2023 (UTC)reply
The risk of death was about 30%, with higher rates among babies?
This is largely speculative, and the sources cited lack substantial evidence to support it. If the mortality rate had been that high before vaccinations, there would have been few surviving infants, given the numerous other diseases that also caused deaths. However, obtaining more accurate numbers is challenging. Hmm..
130.226.173.81 (
talk)
09:38, 28 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Semi-protected edit request on 19 June 2024
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