[CIMC-work] Pulling the graphic in question.

[Ian Bicking]

DickReilly at aol.com wrote:
> Actually, it is attached to an article posted by the Iraqi resistance 
> support network....which included reference to events in Palestine as 
> well. 
> 
> ( why jpegs loaded with article articles continue to be cycled for 
> gallery display above the wire is a mystery to me)


That's the way the code is.  And most of the images are attached to 
articles, so it makes for more variety.  I don't think there'd be many 
images there if it was only content posted as media (unattached to an 
article), though maybe putting in that restriction would be a useful 
modification, or something we could at least test.  I don't think it 
would be hard to implement, though there might be subtleties I'm missing 
(for instance, many images are attached to an "article", which is really 
only a group of images, like the shipyard worder images up now -- it's 
hard to distinguish that from a "real" article).

Another thing that might be useful is to associate media with its 
article even on the front page, so that the associated article title was 
displayed.  Then at least the images would seem a bit less random.

> But, it is brutally disturbing. The question we - and Dan LB - should be 
> asking is why? 

We can analyse it here, but that doesn't do anything for our readers.

I don't think this image would be seen as a disturbing image when 
attached to its original context and message -- or at least not in the 
same visceral way.  I think the issue is really that it showed up on the 
front page (I'm sure it's expired by now, so this is image is something 
of a moot point, though the general issue remains).  I think a reader's 
state of mind is much different when they view the front page, compared 
to when they read an article.  This flag isn't the only disturbing 
image.  I don't think it's fair to our readers to confront them with 
these things without some sort of consent on their part -- to me, 
clicking a link is consent, but visiting our front page isn't.  We want 
people to look at the front page as much as possible, we don't want to 
make it an emotional odyssey or demand self-analysis just because they 
type in our URL.  Of course, this all relates to images in center-column 
features as well, though at least those have context.

I'd hate to remove the media gallery because all of this matters only 
because images are so much more powerful than words (at least in the 
first ten seconds, over the span of years I guess words win out). 
Anyway, I think it's an editorial challenge.


I emailed the Dada list, and asked about what kind of controls we could 
do, so we know what our options are.  It was suggested that changing the 
publish date will push an image off the front-page gallery, which is 
kind of a hack, and I'm not sure if it's exposed with a web interface 
now.  Spud (the developer) also was thinking about adding a kind of 
generic field to content, that we could use however we wanted, e.g., to 
mark something to stay off the front page (or, if we wanted, to 
explicitly mark things for the front page and not display them there 
otherwise).

   Ian