Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Guidelines

These are the guidelines for scheduling and maintaining the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD), a section on the Main Page that is automatically updated every day with one or more featured pictures, accompanied by a blurb. The general steps to schedule a POTD are as follows:

1. Choose a date in the future from the subpages linked at Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Archive that does not yet have a featured picture scheduled.
2. Select a featured picture to be the POTD (see #Scheduling for details). Images that have a connection to the chosen date (e.g. birthdays or event anniversaries) are often selected.
3. Add {{Picture of the day|YYYY-MM-DD}} to the local file-description page for the featured picture. If the picture is a re-run (which should hardly ever happen, because there is a huge backlog that have not yet been scheduled), add an additional date parameter to the existing template.
4. Create and complete the POTD subpage, including a blurb (see #Writing the blurb for details).
5. Place a note on the talk page of the bolded article using {{subst:UpcomingPOTD|[File:]Example.png|YYYY-MM-DD|[optional comments]}}. A header is automatically added and the message will automatically be signed. There are two slightly different layouts that can be used; see the template page for further details.
6. Notify the nominator and uploader of the featured picture using {{subst:NotifyPOTD|[optional salutation]|[File:]Example.png|YYYY-MM-DD|[optional comments]}}. A header is automatically added and the message will automatically be signed. There are two slightly different layouts that can be used; see the template page for further details.
7. Approximately 26 hours before 00:00 UTC on the scheduled date, a bot (currently AnomieBOT) will create the protected version (if it cannot, it will place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day; in that case, it will have to be done manually – see #Protected version for details).

These steps can be automated using the POTDhelper user script.

New contributors may wish to start by simply writing blurbs for scheduled POTDs at Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Archive that do not yet have them, but please follow the guidelines at #Writing the blurb, in particular ensuring that all facts mentioned in the blurb are mentioned and cited in either the linked bolded article or the image file's description page.

POTDs are selected from the pool of featured pictures on the English Wikipedia. No image that is not a featured picture is eligible for POTD. In general, they are scheduled in order of their promotion to featured status (first in, first out). This sequence is most easily found by consulting Category:Featured pictures that have not appeared on the Main Page, which is arranged in chronological order of promotion. Alternatively, the order can be inferred by going through the archives of featured picture candidates, or in reverse order on the various group pages of Wikipedia:Featured pictures thumbs). So that POTD selections can be reviewed for content and style, and be properly protected before Main Page appearance, POTD scheduling should be done at least three days in advance.

In general, try not to schedule the same "theme" in close succession (such as having two pictures of animals on consecutive days). If there are two pictures of the same subject that were promoted close together, separate their appearances by approximately a month at minimum, such as these two pictures of carbon nanotubes, which were promoted in close succession, or the six individual paintings in William Hogarth's series Marriage A-la-Mode, which were promoted as a set. Alternatively, multiple POTDs of the same subject may be run on the same day, with one being randomly displayed at any one time. This arrangement is typically used for a set of featured pictures, such as a single series of banknotes or coins.

Certain POTDs may be scheduled on specific days to honor anniversaries, such as this map of India, which ran on August 15, 2006, India's Independence Day. Featured pictures involving individuals are commonly scheduled for their corresponding birthdays.

Not all featured pictures will be scheduled for POTD. For example, File:Michele Merkin 1.jpg is a bit too salacious and File:Japanesesuicide.jpg is too grotesque. The standard for inclusion on editorial grounds (as opposed to technical ones) is to use an analogy: if a picture probably would not make the front page of a major newspaper like The New York Times, then it should not be on the front page of Wikipedia either. Additionally, if the article chosen to accompany the picture is not up to scratch (e.g. if there is a template message such as {{More citations needed}}), the appearance may be delayed until there is a suitable article to accompany the picture. If you skip a certain featured picture, be sure to add it to Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Unused with an explanation.

The easiest way to schedule a POTD is by finding a future date in the monthly archive pages (linked to at Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Archive) that does not yet have an image scheduled and clicking on the "create" link for the date. This brings up some pre-filled wikitext in the editing interface, with the template syntax used to contain POTD data. The parameters displayed are the compulsory ones for each POTD scheduled; other parameters may be occasionally required for more complex selections (see § Template parameters). To schedule a new POTD, click the "create" link on the month's archive page. This will create a new page preloaded with a template call as detailed below.

If a page for a month's archive does not yet exist, you will have to create it. Each day's entry consists of a template call: {{POTD/Day|YYYY-MM-DD}}. Add one template for each day in the month, along with a header and the month's POTD category. It is easiest just to copy the source from the same month in a previous year and simply change the dates accordingly.

Each POTD must specify an article in which the image appears. This article forms the basis for the blurb that accompanies the POTD. If a featured picture appears in multiple articles, prefer the one that is most relevant to the image (typically the one mentioned below each entry in the directory of featured pictures). The article selected should not already be scheduled as the boldfaced article in another Main Page section, such as "Today's featured article".

A blurb is liable to be amended or even rejected if it does not meet the following criteria:

• The article should preferably not be a stub.
• The image must appear in the article.
• All facts mentioned in the blurb must be found in the target article, or in the description linked to the image itself, if it's a specific detail not relevant to the article topic.
• All facts in the blurb must have a citation to a reliable source.

All the preloaded parameters below should be filled in as instructed; there will rarely be any need for additional parameters to be added. Note that a

In some cases, such as 2017-07-01, a set of related pictures are selected as the "pictures of the day". In that situation, subtemplates (such as Template:POTD/2017-07-01/1, Template:POTD/2017-07-01/2, and so on) are created for the individual pictures as described above and the main template uses Module:Random to choose one to display.

The protected version is the one that will actually be transcluded onto the Main Page. Having two versions allows non-admins to make updates to the POTD caption while it's protected, but prevents vandalism from appearing on the Main Page. The protected version should be created about 48 hours before the POTD date. Its transclusion in Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow means it will automatically be cascade-protected. It is created by replacing the first line of the template with {{subst:POTD row (note no closing braces), and copying (without the See Also section) to the protected version.

In case of multiple pictures, the protected versions of the subtemplates should be created from the unprotected versions as described above, and the protected version of the main template should be created by simply changing the random-selection wikicode to refer to the protected subtemplates.