The current topic article returned in the feed's "In the news" content is often mismatched from the article editors have chosen, and labeled as "pictured".
Is there any way to get the actual image used from the "In the news" web template, rather than guess?
If we do need to guess can we implement a service version of the old iOS system:
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | None | T199344 Improve feed content | |||
| Declined | None | T165807 Improve news lead image selection | |||
| Resolved | • JMinor | T226226 Document news lead image selection |
I think MCS could implement this approach the iOS app used. Then it would need to add a new property for each news story which would list the image for the story. Then clients could switch to using the image MCS has selected. Note that the "(pictured)" string usually refers to only one picture for all news stories. So, only one news story gets a user selected image. The other ones MCS would have to guess by either selecting the page image of the first link or the one with the highest page views.
T166092 is related to this - any automatic selection of images should not display fair use or other non-free images.