Wikipedia:Suggestions for gallery pages

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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This page in a nutshell:

Gallery articles are collections of images
Gallery articles serve as illustrated list articles

Purposes of Gallery articles

Gallery articles have two main purposes:

Visual organization

The gallery provides a visually improved means of browsing related articles that would be difficult to browse as an unillustrated list or category.

Organization

The gallery helps to organize related articles in a straightforward way. It helps readers to more quickly find what they need. Instead of having to read through a block of text, the reader can identify the subject of his interest via a visual representation of the subject. This is especially beneficial, if the readers main interest lies in the article he or she is looking for and not an navigational list itself.

Structure of a gallery article

Introduction

The introduction of a gallery article should typically be one or two sentences long, stating what the gallery depicts and briefly explaining into what subsections (if any) the gallery article is divided into.

Images

The images should be arranged using gallery tags or a template such as {{Multiple image}}. The following are examples:

Example 1: Gallery tags

which produces

First image
Second image
Third image
Fourth image
Fifth image
Sixth image
Seventh image
Eighth image
Ninth image
Tenth image

Example 2: Multiple image template

{{multiple image | width = 100 | footer = <center>This is an example of multiple images organized using the template.</center> | align = left | image1 = Example.jpg | alt1 = | caption1 = First image. | image2 = Example.jpg | alt2 = | caption2 = Second image. | image3 = Example.jpg | alt3 = | caption3 = Third image. | image4 = Example.jpg | alt4 = | caption4 = Fourth image. | image5 = Example.jpg | alt5 = | caption5 = Fifth image. }}

which produces

First image.

Second image.

Third image.

Fourth image.

Fifth image.

This is an example of multiple images organized using the template.

Important notes

In order to comply with WP:NOTGALLERY#4., a gallery article must contain accompanying text, such as an introduction and a clearly defined scope.