This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the John Quincy Adams article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
John Quincy Adams was a History good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
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I'd like to propose a change in photographs: the partial citation at the bottom is of a colorized photograph of JQA that would make a more inspired visual (in my opinion). I think the candid setting and the quality of the colorization takes you back to 1840; it enriches the article. If there's a representational issue with using digitally or otherwise artificially colorized images than using "primary sources" then I'd just like to point out that the current daguerrotype displayed is visibly penciled in. Between the two images I think the colorized one is more appropriate.
I'm sorry, but I do not believe it is possible, as the original owner of the image (The one who colorized the photo) has not made it available for Creative Commons on Wikimedia Commons, or has not made it Public Domain. All photos on Wikipedia are from Wikimedia Commons and all photos on Wikimedia are either licensed for use on Wikimedia by the original creator, or Public Domain for their respective reason. If you believe otherwise, please respond to this reply.
Proposition: It is a common convention for presidential articles to include portraits from the president's tenure. This is consistent across basically all U.S. presidential articles. However, the image used for John Quincy Adams is from two decades after his presidency ended. I suggest we change the image to either of the first two options. EarthDude (talk) 13:34, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Articles on US Presidents appear to prefer photographs to paintings. Compare the image for Martin Van Buren, dated 1855, about the same length of time after his presidency as the current image on this page, and that's been a 'featured picture' and 'picture of the day' [1].
John Quincy Adams is the earliest photographed president as far as we know [2], and the current image appears to be a touched-up reproduction of a photo from around that time.
An exception would be Andrew Jackson, of whom there is a known photograph [3] from around the same time as the JQA photo.
It also seems relevant that JQA's public life continued after his presidency, right up until his death. The article specifically about his presidency uses the image from which Option 2 is extracted[4], which depicts him as he would have looked during his presidency. The current image depicts him as he would have looked during his term in Congress after leaving the presidency. Carleas (talk) 20:45, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
His presidency was by far the most exceptional and important time of his life, and I belive the infobox portrait used should capture him during that time as well EarthDude (talk) 15:11, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: @EarthDude, I'd suggest rewriting your RFC question to be along the lines of "Which image should we use for the infobox" and that you include the current image in the selection.
E.g.:
Which of the following images should be used for Adams' infobox?
The statement "It is a common convention for presidential articles to include portraits from the president's tenure. This is consistent across basically all U.S. presidential articles. However, the image used for John Quincy Adams is from two decades after his presidency ended." is far from neutral. You state your position in the RFC question. Your position should not appear in the question. You can put your position in the discussion. TarnishedPathtalk11:20, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
very few of the 19c presidents were lived in black and white--they lived in color and the painters captured that key element much better than 19c photographers. Today a portrait photographer takes LOTS of shots with very elaborate lighting and very good film. They then discard 99% of the shots and use only the one that best captures the subject. In the 19th century they took very few shots with poor film and weak lighting and had little choice in picking the final result. Rjensen (talk) 05:21, 22 January 2025 (UTC).[reply]
Re-reading MOS:LEADIMAGE, I was reminded that the lead image should be "... the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see." So I went to Amazon.com and typed "John Quincy Adams", and got at least 10 different images of JQA, most of which were from the jackets of books. At least one of them is A (Option 1), and at least one of them is B (Option 3). So we're pretty safe with either of those two.
There were discussions of this lead image in this talk page from 2016 and before. It is none too soon to have another such discussion. I don't even think that A (Option 1) had been uploaded to commons yet in 2016. Also, a lot of the argumentation was based on primitive fallacies like "photos are better than paintings because they are more realistic" or "paintings are better than photos because they are in color". So even though they came up with B (now Option 3), which was a reasonable choice, it might be a good idea to start over.
To me, both A (Option 1) and B (Option 3) are appealing images. It is a plus for A (Option 1) that it shows JQA while he was president, but even for B (Option 3), he was still a Congressman, so he was careful about his appearance, and it makes a difference. Bruce leverett (talk) 06:02, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Status quo A photo is better than a painting and given that John Quincy Adams is the earliest photographed president this image is quite notable. The other two options are not an improvement to the article. Nemov (talk) 19:41, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
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Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. WanderingMorpheme 18:31, 26 October 2023 (UTC)
Option 1
Option 2
Option 3 (Current Image)_by_Gilbert_Stuart_and_Thomas_Sully_(Harvard_University_Collection_H187).jpg)
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![[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Martin_Van_Buren_by_Mathew_Brady_c1855-58.jpg){kind=link}
![[3]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:78yo_Andrew_Jackson.jpg){kind=link}
![[4]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Quincy_Adams_by_Charles_Osgood.jpg){kind=link}