Talk:Human/Archive 28

Is it just me or does this article have a blantant pro-human bias? The humans are trying to portray themselves in a flattering right. Human viciousness and aggression isn't given in detail.

The opening section referes to the face that at any given time a small number of humans are air, sea or even spacebourne. This seems a little unnecessary, we could say in the article on fleas that some are living on eagles. I propose removing "as well as large numbers of humans at any particular moment flying in vehicles through the atmosphere, many others traveling over and beneath the oceans, and even a few individuals living in low Earth orbit." 81.101.142.64 (talk) 11:39, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree and have removed it. Not sure what the point of it was. — Satori Son 18:37, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Why is this man's scrotum longer than his penis? An average man's penis is longer than his scrotum and thus this article is misleading about human anatomy.

I assume that you are talking about the lead picture. The reason that it is misleading is that it was censored by the original artist to make it more acceptable to local American sensibilities. The woman has fared even worse, having had bits removed completely. Have a look at the Pioneer plaque article for details. Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:00, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

It's a dynamic plaque. It changes relative to the temperature of its environment.

--Victoria h (talk) 04:16, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

You mean they put clothes on when it gets cold??? Martin Hogbin (talk) 09:02, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Is the "s" at the end of Homo sapiens pronounced? I think it is, because I'm fairly certain that Latin doesn't have silent "s", but I'm not sure, because I've often heard people pronouncing it as "Homo sapien", without the "s" sound. --Aruseusu (talk) 22:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

You'd be correct. Homo sapiens is pronounced as you'd expect it to be. The reason you hear "homo sapien" is due to the common occurrence in the English-speaking of trying adopting a word from a different language and then trying to apply English grammar rules such as pluralization to it. For example, the plural of Bar Mitzvah is Bar Mitzvot, not Bar Mitzvahs; cannoli is technically the plural, while cannolo refers simply to a single tasty treat. What is happening here is people hear Homo sapiens, assume it's a standard, English plural, and then use homo sapien to refer to a single human. ~ Amory (user • talk • contribs) 23:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

"Even the most ancient human tools and structures are far more advanced than any structure or tool created by any other animal.^[1]

Judgmental and almost certainly false (even insect colonies have some fairly complex instrumentalities) and Sagan is not an appropriate source for human/animal comparative ethology.

Lycurgus (talk) 09:35, 10 July 2009 (UTC) (Postdated)

Is information about health and sanitation problems really relevant in the Diet section?

For instance: "Lack of food remains a serious problem, with about 36 million people starving to death every year." While relevant to the starvation article, say, this and other comments seem out of place in a description of the human species, mostly because they would be obviously out of place in reference to any other species. "Serious problem," for instance, is used here in a judgmental rather than descriptive sense. With the possible exception of discussions regarding conservation status (clearly not the case here), comments like that can only be judgmental, rather than factual. There are many articles where this discussion belongs, in the context of various opinions regarding the human experience, but human is not one of them.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.204.33.203 (talk) 04:43, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this for a number of reasons. Nuclear war would be justified as being called a "serious" threat to humans but this "lack of food" sentence makes it sound like the existence of all humans is threatened by a lack of food which is nowhere near the case. Furthermore, the problem is not even a lack of food but a host of problems (political issues, wars, droughts, etc.) which are preventing food production. If this was to be here at all it belongs under some type of "threats to existence" heading but way down at the bottom because it's not even a serious threat. I agree, take it down. This may sound cruel but from a purely naturalistic perspective, how is it a "problem"? --Victoria h (talk) 03:50, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I have added back in the the Pioneer image on the grounds that it was intended to be representative of humans and so it is more appropriate than any other image. That other species have actual photos of the species can't easily apply here as those other species are not taking the photographs of themselves (lack of technology). Humans view any animal of that species as arbitrarily representative but that is without feedback from that species (for obvious reasons). With humans though we can establish different metrics as to what is representative because we can ask people if 'x' is representative rather than simply assuming because 'x' is a photo of something then it'll do. If it ever comes up then the image we have is not censored. Ttiotsw (talk) 10:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I like the Pioneer image, and think it's very appropriate for the article lead. There are actual photos of humans further down, and that's fine too. --Ashenai (talk) 11:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The Pioneer image is an inaccurate, stylized caricature. It presents no information on many of the most important human features, e.g., how a human actually looks in 3D, in color, with a human's ubiquitous technologies (e.g., clothing and tools), etc. Just about any photograph of a human would be a vast improvement over the image.

Moreover, your logic is plainly fallacious. You say, in effect, 'The Pioneer image was intended to be representative of humans, therefore it is the most appropriate representation of humans.' This raises the question at once: intended by whom? The Pioneer image was crafted in a particular sociocultural context, amidst controversies, complaints, criticisms, and much fiddling - it was censored (notice that the woman's genitalia have been removed, and the man's appear substantially distorted), racialized and politicized, etc. It was an image created decades ago by a specific organization - NASA - for a specific purpose, and it is an image which is significant in its own right, i.e., it has its own article and a mass of . All of this makes it inappropriate for illustrating Human, for the exact same reason that Mona Lisa would be inappropriate. 'Mona Lisa' is one of the most famous depictions of a human in all history, but precisely for that reason it should be avoided in favor of an unknown, more informative image - a well-known image will not give readers any new information, and so cannot be useful in an article like this. As I said, any photograph would be an improvement, and we should discuss various options if there are any other candidates; but it matters much less which one we choose than that we choose one, if only provisionally, so as to bring this article up to the standard of every other species article. But the Pioneer plaque is unambiguously the worst image we could choose - see Talk:Human/Image and many past talk page discussions - because it is well-known in its own right rather than properly illustrating the subject matter (would you put an image of the White House at the top of our article on Houses?), and it is an inaccurate crude drawing, rather than an accurate photograph, of the article subject. And, obviously, just because something was intended as a representation of humans, does not make it a good representation; I just drew a picture on a sketchpad which I "intended to be representative of humans"; does that make my stick figure an appropriate top-level image for Human? -Silence (talk) 16:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Please read WP:CONSENSUS - the Pioneer plaque is the best image that the consensus to date has chosen. The Talk:Human/Image represents the views of the few editors who haven't worked out how to break the current consensus - it does NOT represent the current consensus. As I highlighted back in October last year the image is on a space craft and it represents the pinnacle of human technological development in that the image will remain the object that has travelled the furthest from Earth that any physical representation of human beings has ever travelled since the dawn of time. The Pioneer image represents the 'sapiens' in the species designation of Homo sapiens sapiens. We are "thinking man". Critical to this is tool use and more so the use of technology to inhabit new ecological niches is ultimately what divides us as a species from other species. The plaque will remain as good a representation of the sapiens in Homo sapiens sapiens as any and will remain unique for many years yet. The socioeconomic context you use is a red herring in that this is the English language version of Wikipedia located on US based servers and using US law. A global view need not apply. On the final subject, the image has not been censored in that the image we have is close to what was sent on the Pioneer craft. Ttiotsw (talk) 17:03, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree completely with Silence the Pioneer image is awful for the reasons that he states. It was censored, not by an editor here but by the original artist, to suit local US sensibilities. The story of this is there for all to see in the Pioneer plaque article. My problem is not just with the censorship but with the way that it was done, by removing body parts. For the Pioneer plaque itself there was some justification due to the tight launch schedule and the technical difficulties in creating the plaque. There is no justification here. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

It was not censored. Read the article - Sagan himself wrote that "The decision to omit a very short line in this diagram was made partly because conventional representation in Greek statuary omits it....blah blah blah ....not one Victorian demurrer was ever voiced; and a great deal of helpful encouragement was given.". (Actually you would only see the "short line" if the woman was shaven anyway but if she wasn't and you did a blur on the beaver shot then you would end up with what it is now but that is another matter). So it may have been unnecessarily self-censored but it was not censored per se by an authority. This is pretty tenuous excuse in the end though as the image represents humans and the gauntlet we have laid down is pretty simple - give us an image that represents humans better - NOT just some random image that happens to have a few humans in it but one that really is intended to represent humanity. I don't give a fuck what it is but it has to be representative and to date none of the competitive images have got close. Ttiotsw (talk) 19:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Why do you not use a composite of images in your box? Since this seems to be a perennial issue. Hardyplants (talk) 19:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts Ttiotsw. I have read the article and it is quite clear. The image was censored, although it is not clear whose decision it was. It may have been Sagan's decision, based on what he (possible incorrectly) feared the authorities might think, or he may have been told to do it, but the fact is that a line representing the woman's vulva was removed from the drawing. It is quite obvious that the woman is shaved, as is the man. Had that not been the case, and the pubic hair was shown, I would have no problem. A body part that would be clearly visible has been erased. This is not acceptable in a lead picture of a human, regardless of whether it has been into space or what it was originally intended to represent. Martin Hogbin (talk) 19:36, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Ttiotsw. Over many talk-page threads and much time, consensus has not formed to substitute another image for the Pioneer plaque. This discussion seems to recur three or four times a year. Each time, I put in my two cents:

• Yes, the Pioneer image is stylized and distorted and not properly representational of the human species.
• Many of us think the Pioneer image is rather absurd.
• All of that is beside the point. What matters is that:

1. It's one of the best-known depictions of humanity created to date.
2. Unlike other very well-known depictions, it was created for the express purpose of representing humanity to the universe. That it likely fails in that mission is beside the point because our job in selecting an image here isn't to represent humanity accurately; as encyclopedia editors, our job is to document representations of humanity. (This distinction and several of its parallels are basic to understanding the function of any reputable encyclopedia.)

Only one image can be in the lede, and the (intended) universality of this one makes it particularly suited to lead off the article. I wish we'd send another probe out with a better image, but until we do, this is what we're stuck with. Rivertorch (talk) 22:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

"Only one image can be in the lede" were does it say this? since a number of other pages utilize composites for complex subjects, I would like to know were this rule exists. Hardyplants (talk) 22:36, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, it should be said that the subject of this article is 'Human', not 'Depictions of humans' or 'Representations of humans'. I do understand that the Pioneer image was created with the intention of representing humans to whoever may be out there but the circumstances under which this was done were difficult and restrictive. The plaque was the best that could be done in those circumstances. Martin Hogbin (talk) 10:44, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

If you read images in Taxobox than the use of 2 images is rare but it can be done. The guidelines mention that though you can have two images (they use an example of camel that this is used "sparingly, and only when the article is long enough, and it makes sense to include the second image here and not later in the article. ". Given the article is about Humans i.e. the one sub-species homo sapiens sapiens rather than say the camel article which is at a genus and details two species, Camelus bactrianus and Camelus dromedarius, I don't see how a taxobox for a subspecies with no other related subspecies would need more than one image. It feels like a can of worms to imply that races are subspecies of humans because I imagine that for equality purposes we'll would want a selection of photos of different ethnicities. Is this the path we want to start down ? Personally I don't. Ttiotsw (talk) 16:22, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Me either. There's a good collection of photos farther down under Life cycle, anyway, which show ethnic differences as well as age differences. Now, if there were one- and two-hump humans, as there are camels, I'd definitely say we should have two pics up top. (Btw, imo, another reason for keeping the Pioneer image is that it may be the least controversial choice. That may sound weird, since we're in yet another discussion about it, but if we had one or even two photos, I think there would be much more frequent conflict, dissent, and drama. Imagine: ethnicity, sex, age, type of clothing (if any), group or individual, posed or candid—all these possibilities and more would provide endless fodder for argument.) Rivertorch (talk) 18:29, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree also, but why not just have a picture of a man and a woman. Martin Hogbin (talk) 18:48, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Because of ethnicity, sex, age, type of clothing (if any), group or individual, posed or candid, and so on; the choices are endless, and how will they be made? In other words, if by "picture" you mean "photo'", how will we ever find one that could be considered representational of all humans? If by "picture" you just mean "picture", well, that's what we've got now, right? Rivertorch (talk) 22:02, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

One of the most important above comments to note is "the subject of this article is 'Human', not 'Depictions of humans' or 'Representations of humans'." The arguments that have put forth for keeping the Plaque image:

1. "No one has been able to build consensus for any other image yet" - That's because there are too many replacement candidates of roughly the same quality. On a scale of appropriateness, with 1 being something radically inappropriate like an Elmer Fudd drawing and 10 being the Perfect Image, the Pioneer Plaque, with its explicit misogyny and racism, is a 2; we have hundreds of images that are a 5 or 6 or 7, including the simple and effective one I suggested. So the problem is that there are too many good or decent candidates to build up steam for any particular one of them, whereas the Pioneer Plaque has the unfair advantage of being the only image we've even tried, for more than a couple hours at a time, in the last 5+ years. Fear of the unknown is a natural human instinct, and that includes fear of changing a long-established, habitual image, even a woefully inaccurate one.
2. "The Pioneer Plaque symbolizes human accomplishment and technology, has been sent really far away, etc." - All would be relevant, as noted, if this was an article on human technology, space travel, or artistic depictions of humans. It is not. It is an article on the human species, which means our first and most important goal is to show what a relatively 'ordinary' human looks like, how it behaves, etc. If you think the Pioneer Plaque is such an awe-inspiring symbol of our technology, then move it to the 'technology' section; its irrelevancy (and, worse, its inaccuracy) to all other aspects of humanity, e.g., our biology, our clothing, our habitats and ecology, etc., outweigh its relevancy to a single particular aspect of humans (our space flight program), which arguably isn't even in the top 10 most important areas of human technology (why not a picture symbolizing irrigation, agriculture, water filtration, telecommunications, medicine, etc.?).
3. "We are 'Homo sapiens,' and 'sapiens' means 'thinking,' ergo what defines us as a species is that we think. So our lead image should show a product or symbol of human thought, not an aspect of ordinary human biology or society." - I'm not even sure I need to rebut such a silly argument, but I'll note anyway that 'thinking' is not in any way an aspect of what defines human beings. Humans with severe mental handicaps are still humans; and if a dolphin or chimpanzee or bee hive or something managed to exceed humans in intelligence, adaptability to new environments, etc., that would not make the dolphin or whatever a human. We are "Homo" first, "sapiens" only secondarily.
4. "It's a really well-known image, it was intended to depict humans, etc." - I already covered this claim above. The White House is a really well-known house, yet we would never think to put it at the top of the House article. Being really well-known is a disadvantage for a lead image for any article other than Pioneer Plaque itself. Our goal should be to use an unknown image, so as to keep the focus on the article subject itself rather than on some extraneous side-topic or sub-topic. And being intended to represent humans doesn't matter, because, again, this is not an article called Representations of humans.
5. "The image hasn't been censored because it accurately depicts what's on the Pioneer craft." - If this were Talk:Pioneer Plaque, you'd be correct. But this is Talk:Human. The image is supposed to depict a human, not the Pioneer Plaque. If it correctly depicts the plaque, but misrepresents what humans look like (which happens to be the case), then it's inappropriate for use on this article. It's that simple.
6. "Any other image would be too controversial." - And this image hasn't been controversial? Controversy is not a valid reason to exclude any image; only inaccurate or misleading or irrelevant content is such a reason, and the Pioneer Plaque has all of those in spades. We have many articles with extremely controversial lead images, and those have not been removed merely to oil the wheels. For example, it has been argued that we would need an image of every human race at the top of the article in order to avoid controversy; but, first, how is having a depiction of zero human races an improvement upon having too few?; second, why do we need to depict all the races when this article is Human and not Race?; third, would not this suggest that the most important manifestation of human diversity is race, which is an incredibly racist and biologically inaccurate assumption?; and fourth, does this not disregard the hundreds or thousands of articles we have on biological groups tens or hundreds or thousands of times more diverse than the human species, where we successfully use only a single image of a member of that taxon rather than using thousands of tiny images of each member? If it is not controversial on those articles, then it can only be an artifact of our bias and speciesism if it is controversial here to pick a particular random human example. (Which, again, the Pioneer Plaque doesn't even succeed in doing, since there are no humans in the image; just crude black lines on a white background.)

The job of an article's lead image is not to show every major group that is a subtype of that article; the job of the lead image is only to show an example of the article subject; hence we just use an example of a house on the House article, without worrying about whether it 'represents' every house (as though that were possible for anything, even a crude Pioneer House doodle), and without making a house collage of every different architectural design. The job of the lead image is not to mystically 'symbolize' the 'essence' of the topic; it's simply to visually depict some important features of the subject, in an accurate way. In that respect, almost any photo would be an improvement upon the status quo. -Silence (talk) 16:12, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

The current WP:CONCENSUS is the Pioneer image. It's pretty clear to most people it is a "Human". If people are having problems identifying what a human looks like and the current image is leading them astray then I suspect the Wikipedia article on the human species is the least of their problems. To change it then give us an image that we can all agree is "better" (whatever better is). This is quite a basic content dispute and it's up to the ones wanting the change to justify the change so given that to date no amount of talk has broken the current consensus so I think the next step is to either start an WP:RFC or ask for WP:REVIEW to perhaps crowdsource a new image. Don't use the argument you use above though as they are poor,

• your # 1 - appeal to Appeal to emotion
• your # 2 - I think is a Red herring (logical_fallacy)
• your # 3 - no we are sapiens and just to be sure they say it twice "sapiens sapiens" Ttiotsw (talk) 17:55, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
• your # 4 - irrelevant - House isn't a taxobox
• your # 5 - if it is supposed to be anatomically correct then don't keep giving us clothed humans which is the last picture that was tried.
• your # 6 - is a bizarre claim. If someone can't see that this human then they would not be reading Wikipedia.

In the end we're talking about 1 image in the lede. People can stick as many other images as they like in the article. If by the end of the article the reader is completely confused about what a member of the human species looks like then we have failed catastrophically. To suggest that the Pioneer image helps the confusion as to what the human species represents I think is patent nonsense. Ttiotsw (talk) 17:55, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with a picture of clothed humans. What is objectionable about the current image is that it is intentionally incorrect. I am surprised that you do not consider the intentional removal of a depiction of part of the human body in order to appease (real or imagined) local sensibilities as censorship.

We cannot possible hope to show the whole of humanity in one picture, just as we cannot hope to show all insects in the insect article. Any photo of a man and a woman would be better that the image we currently have which, as an image, has absolutely nothing to commend it.

I can understand that interest and passion felt by many people in the plaque as an icon of human achievement in space exploration but that is not what this article is about, it is about humans. Martin Hogbin (talk) 19:37, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

The fundamental argument that you overlook is that when it comes to the crunch then everything in WP has to be sourced from someone else not us; now the image we have is very much by a notable human, about humans and intended to represent the image of humanity to others in the Universe. It's a no-brainer across all WP policies on notability and WP:NOR which is probably why it has stayed around for so long. The current image at the most basic level has a role of helping entities *anywhere* in the universe identify a "human". On the issue of clothing; much is made of its supposed "censorship" of a tiny part of the female anatomy and yet clothing is the ultimate arbiter of identity and the vast majority of the clothed female images we probably can gather will cover these private parts. Clothed images will censor the human form more than this image.

I think that you are mistaken if you think that the image "has absolutely nothing to commend it" - a notable human (Carl Sagan) thinks it represents humans. Who are we to argue ?. An alternative image ultimately needs to be considered to represent humanity NOT by us but by someone as notable as Carl Sagan. Now that would be a image worth adding but I've seen no candidate to date that passes muster. Ttiotsw (talk) 21:37, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

1. You seem to be a little unfamiliar with the usual conventions of logical argumentation and debate. Realize that citing fallacy pages you've found on wikipedia does not constitute a counterargument or rebuttal of any form, particularly when the page is not relevant to the paragraph you're responding to. For example, you cite Appeal to emotion in response to what is really a disagreement on premises: I made no emotional appeal (although I did describe an emotion, fear, as a side-note - but an emotional appeal evokes an emotion (instead of making a substantive point), it does not simply make explicit reference to one), The substance of my point 1 was not an appeal to emotion, but an essentially (if intersubjectively) factual claim - the claim that no image has been provided because there are a large number of roughly equal-quality acceptable images, no one of which can amass the same level of support as the singular image which lacks quality but possesses (irrelevant) institutional support and the weight of status-quo. Now, either I am right or wrong; if you disagree, you are free to provide contrary reasoning or evidence. A valid counter-example you might have found or demonstrated, for example, would have been to cite an obviously stand-out photo of humans and establish that even a photo every anti-Pioneer editor could get behind would not hold a candle to the popularity of the Pioneer image. This, again, would be an issue of fact, as much as any editorial dispute can be. Emotions have no more to do with this particular argument of mine than they have to do with any argument between humans. The problem is that you disagree with so many of my premises here that you tried to use a wikilinked fallacy (and a suitably vague one, since you couldn't find anything easy like affirming the consequent in my reasoning) to avoid having to directly address any of my points. Unfortunately, this doesn't really work in practice. I could have just responded to your points, as well, by citing dozens of fallacies; but quantity of wikilinks and appeal to 'logico-babble' is not what makes a counter-argument strong.
2. Nor is #2, above, a red herring. In fact, it is doubly ironic that you would accuse #2 of being a red herring, apparently based on the fact that, again, #2 is talking about red herrings - in that #2 claims that a particular argument supporting the Plaque image is irrelevant (red herrings, remember, are simply any irrelevant arguments - so instead of appealing to the logical term to try to impress people, you might be more constructive by saying 'That argument of yours is irrelevant because... X', thus having the added benefit of actually explaining and defending your claim of irrelevancy.. just a suggestion). The point #2 was making was arguing that there are certain criteria which a lead image must meet, e.g., having greater relevance to the article subject than to peripheral matters, and that the Plaque does not meet that criterion. Since that is the form of the argument, and this form precisely corresponds to the topic of this debate (Which is: "What criteria should we use to choose the lead article for Human, and does the Plaque meet those criteria (a) adequately, (b) better than any other available (or potential?) image?), it cannot be irrelevant - it is relevant almost by definition, since its form follows the discussion topic exactly. Now, what my argument could be is, quite simply, a completely incorrect, or horribly unreasonable, claim. I could simply be wrong. By there is a difference between an incorrect claim and a logical fallacy, and if you think I'm wrong on this point, it's on your head to explain why. It is not formally self-evident. :)
3. To add to the irony, your "sapiens sapiens" point is a red herring - unless, hopefully, you were joking. "sapiens sapiens," obviously, is not our trinomic classification name because we're really really "thinky"; it's our classification name because the type subspecies of a species pretty much always just repeats the species name, for simplicity's sake. An amusing example of this is Gorilla gorilla gorilla - the genus, species, and subspecies all repeat "gorilla," I guess because taxonomists either have no sense of absurd humor, or an extremely acute one. :) Regardless, none of this is relevant to what image would best grace the Human article. This isn't an article about the name of our species, it's an article about the species itself; the name is a footnote at best, of little significance compared to actual features of our physiology and society.
4. We aren't discussing taxoboxes, we're discussing lead images. Every article with a lead image is relevant to our discussion, because taxoboxes don't change lead-image policy in any way whatsoever (except, of course, in aesthetic ways - e.g., by slightly discouraging use of horizontal images). And if we were discussing taxoboxes, it would only stregthen my point about the inappropriateness of the Pioneer image, because there is zero precedent on any other species page for preferring drawings (especially inaccurate and low-quality ones that are noteworthy in their own right) over photographs. And, again, there is less than zero precedent on any other bio-article for preferring the drawing (which, almost by definition, will have more subjective and stylized characteristics than a comparable photo of the same subject matter) when on top of everything else it is censored, inaccurate, decades old, and politically and culturally loaded.
5. You don't seem to quite understand what "anatomically correct" means; I apologize if i was unclear. "Anatomically correct" means that if the human's anatomy is visible, it must be uncensored and accurately portrayed. That doesn't mean we have to show bare flesh in every possible context; if we're depicting humans in a grocery store, for example, making them nude just to maximize information content is missing the point. This isn't just an article about human anatomy, so it's entirely appropriate to show humans clothed in various ways (though obviously at least one image on the page should show them nude), so as to avoid misinforming potential readers about how common garments are in human cultures. Compare humans to hermit crabs - we could avoid showing hermit crabs in their shells, in order to clearly illustrate their anatomy in every image. But this would be misleading. It is more informative to show them in a common, normal, natural setting, even if this means sacrificing a few anatomical details for the sake of other visual data. Though we should, preferably, also show an image somewhere of the crab without its shell - and, even more obviously, the worst-case scenario of all would be to use an image where the crab isn't wearing its shell, but the details of the shell-lacking anatomy are censored or inaccurate. That worst-case scenario is what we're dealing with here on Human, and only the anaesthesia of familarity (and of course our cultural biases and expectations) have prevented us from remedying a problem that would not even have been an issue on any other species article.
6. I'm not sure what you mean here, since your grammar is a tad opaque and I don't know which claim you're specifically responding to. Could you clarify? Thanks.

Your argument that 'everything in Wikipedia must be sourced' is a rather bizarre turn, and an interesting one, but I'm afraid it's a quite enormous deviation from Wikipedia standards and conventions which, were we to take it seriously, would require that we remove every image from every article which is not an image also used by another, reputable source which we are citing as evidence of the connection between the image and the article. In other words, you are either proposing that we arbitrarily suspend Wikipedia standards for Human, or you are in effect proposing a new expansion of Wikipedia's No Original Research policy, an expansion which would require that a reputable source first deem an image to be an appropriate representation of an article's subject matter, before that image can be used to illustrate the subject. Rather than getting too deep into wikiphilosophical issues this raises, interesting as they might be, I'll simply note the impracticality of this approach. Nor does it actually improve the reputability or relevance of our images. Remember, you are not citing a neutral source; you are not even citing a relevant expert, i.e., an anthropologist. You are citing NASA, a particular U.S. organization (or, even worse, you are citing a particular human being, Sagan, as though being a 'noteworthy individual' somehow makes one a reliable source, even assuming that reliable sourcing is what was at issue here!); what makes the image they happened to choose to depict humans for one particular mission the authoritative human depiction from now till the end of time? Why is a U.S. organization, and not a Russian or Chinese or U.N. or other international image, the source we're appealing to for this 'objective' depiction of the entire human race? In your zeal to escape bias, you are just increasing our bias; in your zeal to avoid having to make an editorial stand or express editorial opinions through our choice, you are actually worsening our editorial bias by several orders of magnitude, precisely because you are making Human an exception to the standards we employ on every other article in general, and on species articles in particular. The problem is that, rather than following Wikipedia convention and just picking an example of a human like we'd pick an example of a kangaroo for the Kangaroo article, you're trying to find some mystical, omni-representational, hyper-objective "Platonic ideal" of an image to encapsulate the human essence in a way that appeals to our highest human ideals and references one of our greatest technological accomplishments. It surprises me that I even need to point out how profoundly inappropriate this way of choosing an image is for a Wikipedia article, how catastrophically more biased it is than simply choosing any old photograph illustrating the subject matter in question. It's advocating a noble agenda, but it's still advocating an agenda, whereas just picking a normal image of a human, even an imperfect one, would be a vast improvement and would follow Wikipedia convention infinitely better.

In any case, I still haven't seen a single persuasive argument for keeping this image here; I have seen even less persuasive argumentation for not even giving an alternative to the status quo a fair try, to see if it's so impossible as has long been assumed by some editors. The Pioneer image has never had substantial consensus support; it's just been kept because no other image has had a chance to garner consensus, most of them not even being given a fair shake. The mountain of problems riddling the Pioneer Plaque have been brought up countless times before, but complacency has prevented them from ever being addressed, and I see now that every time we let these shortcomings slide, it becomes more difficult to root out the problem next time around as people forget the issues that were brought up last time, and become more and more used to the flawed, anatomically and socioculturally misleading, misogynistic and bizarrely racialistic, and frankly just not particularly good-quality, children's-style drawing adorning a very important article on a very important subspecies of (rather gifted) eukaryote. -Silence (talk) 23:05, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we digress - we don't need a formal debate structure to discuss the lede image. The image we have has consensus from a number of editors and they watch this article for many reasons - I think I started here because of reverting vandalism, same as Giraffe and Peanut butter. It stays in my watchlist along with a few hundred other articles. I don't know the agenda of the other editors but I think my agenda on this article has predominantly reverting vandalism. Your complaints about the current image, calling it "flawed," "anatomically and socioculturally misleading", "misogynistic and bizarrely racialistic", "not particularly good-quality, children's-style drawing ", "censored" and then also accusing the other editors of "advocating an agenda" and "complacency" are uncalled for. You make it sound like we're being unreasonable when it is you that wants to change the image. Give us alternatives images that we can decide.

On the matter of 'roos, I'm pretty confident that if Kangaroos edited Wikipedia then they too would argue as to what image of a Kangaroo would be representative of 'roos. Consider the unique nature of the Human species article as being the only Wikipedia article in which all editors have a conflict of interest by definition of being a member of the group that the article is discussing (it's like having a Staff of Microsoft edit the Microsoft article. Perhaps we should let a machine decide the image ?. How about giving us a list of images and then we use a RNG to decide which image. That way no human made the final decision. For that matter a bot could randomly shuffle the images on a periodic basis. Ttiotsw (talk) 08:16, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

"Give us alternatives images that we can decide." - I have done so. (Though I did so in order to prompt a discussion; your RNG suggestion is the latest in a series of the most bizarrely unWikipedian suggestions I've heard you put forward as a criterion for how to pick a suitable image. Again, I hope you're just joking here. Discussion is healthy and is what builds consensus.)

"Consider the unique nature of the Human species article as being the only Wikipedia article in which all editors have a conflict of interest by definition" - You couldn't be more wrong here. There are hundreds of articles which every editor on Wikipedia will by definition have an interest in. Yet that is a reason to be more careful to stick to Wikipedia convention and NPOV, and to avoid using unnecessarily misogynistic imagery. Just for example: Every Wikipedian has a vested interest in our articles on Society, Life, Technology, Computer, Earth, Language, Sadness, and Encyclopedia. Yet has that prevented us from finding suitable photographs to illustrate all those pages? Not in the least. The only thing that has kept us from doing the same on Human has been a lack of interest and will. It is not any more inherently difficult to accurately illustrate Human than to do so for Kangaroo; and if we had a mix of kangaroo and human editors, one would hope that we'd have neutral and accurate illustrations for both species' articles, rather than for neither or just one of the two. :) It is because we have a natural interest in this article that it is so crucial that we be detached and NPOV, in keeping with Wikipedia policy. That doesn't mean we have to be outright inhuman or pretend to be aliens or anything like that; all it means is that we need to treat this article in essentially the same way we treat other articles. It's that easy. -Silence (talk) 16:59, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Am the only one actually offended by this image? I just cannot understand how anyone could think that it is acceptable to delete a part of the human body; just pretend that it does not exist. There are many customs and taboos on the way humans can be depicted. If we wish to take account of any of these there are many better ways to achieve this. We could have our humans clothed or partially clothed, that at least would be honest, people do actually wear clothes to cover parts of the body that are not considered acceptable for public display. We could change the camera angle or the stance so that parts we do not wish to be seen will not be seen, a little less honest maybe but at least we tell no lies. Another option, that that artist may have chosen had she realized the fate of her picture, would have been to show the humans with natural pubic hair, maybe that would have been considered less shocking by some. The picture we now have gets the worst of all worlds, in many cultures it will still considered offensive because of its nudity, others do not like it because of what it does not show.. In my opinion is unacceptably dishonest it purports to depict something which it does not. It is intentionally inaccurate and therefore should be ruled out on principle, regardless of its provenance. Martin Hogbin (talk) 08:53, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

With respect, Martin, you are beating a dead horse. Parts of your argument are persuasive, but they have been made here before without affecting consensus. Now, maybe your argument is absolutely right and prevailing opinion here is wrong, but that doesn't matter. Despite its flaws, which to the best of my recollection no one here has denied, the image we see at the top of the article is there because there is consensus for it to be there. Because consensus is a policy, there needs to be a really, really good reason to ignore it, and preoccupation with admitted anatomical inaccuracy in a world-famous image just doesn't suffice. It has been suggested that RFC is the appropriate next step if you want broaden the audience for your argument and perhaps see the consensus change; I agree with that suggestion. Rivertorch (talk) 09:19, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Let me just make this last point to make absolutely clear what I am complaining about. Suppose that another (very conservative) country had been the first to send an image of humanity on a journey out of the solar system. Had the image consisted of two people in the customary dress for that country you might have thought it a bit over-nationalistic. On the other hand what would you have though if they had produce two full frontal, nude and shaved, images, but with all the body parts that were considered unsuitable for public display in their culture omitted? Would you have considered that a suitable lead image for this page? Martin Hogbin (talk) 13:16, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

The questions are hard to answer because their premises are hugely improbable. I'm not sure that trying to apply the same reasoning to a scenario that didn't happen and was unlikely ever to happen is anything more than futile, but here goes. If the image in question were selected by highly notable scientists who chose it to represent humanity to the universe, I'd think it might well be an appropriate lead image for an encyclopedia article on Humans. If, instead of commissioning a new image, they'd used an old painting or sculpture that distorted, omitted or obscured body parts, I'd feel similarly. But in either case, I'd either respect prevailing consensus and let it go or seek outside opinions to bolster my own opinion and try to change consensus. Rivertorch (talk) 20:23, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Martin's points are extremely troubling ones, and should be taken more seriously. Would you editors be so nonchalant if it was the man's penis, rather than the woman's vulva, that had been censored (by completely erasing it as though it weren't an anatomical feature at all!)?. It's not even as acceptable as if both genitals were being censored. Imagine: If the woman had her sex-organ and the man did not, would you find that so unproblematic? Think hard about it.

Now. If one plans to cite a Wikipedia policy, one should first be acquainted with what the policy actually says. To quote Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus can change: "Consensus is not immutable. Past decisions are open to challenge and are not binding, and one must realize that such changes are often reasonable. Thus, "according to consensus" and "violates consensus" are not valid rationales for making or reverting an edit, or for accepting or rejecting other forms of proposal or action."

Moreover, solid consensus does not actually exist for the Pioneer Plaque, nor has it ever. I know this, because I've debated this very image many times over the past 4 years. Ironically, I've been one of the main defenders of keeping the image here in the past, on the grounds that we hadn't found a perfect, flawless replacement. Many times I (like other editors) have responded to valid criticisms of the Pioneer Plaque's use on Human by saying that, although the Plaque was far from perfect, it was good enough for the time being. That was my mistake; my natural perfectionism got the best of me, and blinded me to the fact that a merely good image is still a huge step up from a misogynistic, misleading, and in all ways inappropriate placeholder. The only "consensus" that has ever developed around the Plaque in the past was the consensus that the Pioneer was an adequate, if flawed, placeholder until consensus gathered for a suitable replacement. Unfortunately, I and the many other editors who were present for that decision neglected to consider the fact that, over time, new editors come to an article; they aren't familiar with the article's history, and take it for granted that any long-time staple of the article must have absolutely impeccable standing among the community. And, given time, expectations can shape reality. But, sadly, the increase in reputability around the image has been illusory, because none of the actual problems have been resolved over the course of this collective amnesia. I now realize that the solution is not to sit and wait and hope some image will float out of the clouds that everyone will simply adore; nor is the solution to cite a nonexistent 'consensus' and appeal to nonexistent, unworkable, and even anti-Wikipedian justifications for the image, e.g., "a noteworthy person created it so it's a good representation of its subject" (???!) or "it symbolizes our highest ideals" (at best irrelevant, at worst a clear violation of WP:NPOV) or the like. The status quo is simply not tenable. So let's fix this. -Silence (talk) 16:59, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

There doesn't appear anything broken to fix. We have an image that shows humans and seems to work with a broad range of editors. If you read a bit down from WP:CCC then you will notice the process to change the consensus.....

* Third Opinions involve a neutral third party in a dispute between two editors
* Mediation involves a neutral third party in a dispute among multiple editors
* Requests for Comment invites greater participation
* Village pump invites greater participation
* Wikiquette alerts offer perspective on impolite or other difficult communications
* Resolving disputes offers other options

I think we can skip the third - this is multiple editors. Have you done these steps ? Look at it from this side and all we see is that a few want to censor the image from this article, we get accused of anti-Wikipedian behaviour and yet we're not presented with many alternatives. Yes you did mention Talk:Human/Image but looking at that I see no one has bothered to expand the alternatives in the past 9 months. Given the vast numbers of 'bots already editing Wikipedia I fail to see how my suggestion is "unWikipedian". that if we e.g. had a pool of suitable images e.g. seasonal ones then a bot could alter the current displayed image to suit the current season in that country based on a heuristic (e.g. RND/PRND/list). Ttiotsw (talk) 18:18, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

What is your response to my question above Ttiotsw? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Martin Hogbin (talk • contribs)

Um, this is again rather irregular. Discussion of the image has barely begun; it is entirely possible, if you provide stronger arguments (i.e., ones closer to standard WP practices, conventional image use in other articles, etc.), that you will convince me. One would hope that you, too, are potentially open to persuasion. This is exactly the purpose of Talk pages on Wikipedia: for reviewing proposed article changes and resolving disagreements. The options you listed above are intended for otherwise-intractable disagreements. I'm not "accusing" anyone of anything, least of all anti-Wikipedian behavior. Everyone here, on both sides, only wants to improve the Human article. What I was pointing out is that a number of the statements defending the Pioneer Plaque image's usage have been in direct contradiction to how decisions are ordinarily made on Wikipedia. Irregularities:

i. When a series of serious problems (bias, inaccuracy, censorship, lack of useful information, etc.) was pointed out with an article feature, WP:CON was cited (where it did not actually exist), instead of trying to resolve the problems or explaining why they are unproblematic. Moreover, it was cited in a way that directly violates the actual letter, and spirit, of how consensus on Wikipedia works, and what its role is: "Now, maybe your argument is absolutely right and prevailing opinion here is wrong, but that doesn't matter. Despite its flaws, which to the best of my recollection no one here has denied, the image we see at the top of the article is there because there is consensus for it to be there." (In other words: 'It doesn't matter whether you're right, nor does it matter if everyone agrees that the image has plenty of flaws, because we already have consensus.' Never mind the aforementioned Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus can change policy that "Past decisions are open to challenge and are not binding, and one must realize that such changes are often reasonable. Thus, "according to consensus" and "violates consensus" are not valid rationales for making or reverting an edit, or for accepting or rejecting other forms of proposal or action."

ii. In a most strange inversion of WP:NOR, an image's appropriateness and relevance to an article was justified on the basis that it was created by a noteworthy individual: quoth Ttiotsw, "a notable human (Carl Sagan) thinks it represents humans. Who are we to argue ?. An alternative image ultimately needs to be considered to represent humanity NOT by us but by someone as notable as Carl Sagan". (Moreover, his intent to represent humans for alien races has been repeatedly cited, as though that alone shows that it actually represents humans well; apparently 'noteworthy' = infallible? If Charles Manson did a drawing he intended to represent humanity, would that automatically be a good illustration for Human?) This is astoundingly bizarre, and utterly unheard-of as a criterion for determining image relevance in Wikipedia's entire history, as far as I'm aware; an inaccurate drawing of a frog by Carl Sagan (who is neither an artist, nor an anthropologist or biologist, nor a herpetologist) could never be justified for including at the top of Frog, over an accurate photo, simply on the basis that it's Carl Sagan! Carl Sagan is easily one of my favorite human beings in the history of the world. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the Pioneer Plaque's appropriateness on Human. It would only be relevant if this were the Carl Sagan article, or at least an astronomy article!

iii. The choice of Pioneer Plaque has been extensively defended on the basis of self-reference: 'We're humans, so we're justified in making radical exceptions for our own article, which are made on no other species article (and, indeed, on no other article on Wikipedia).' Yet this is a direct violation of Wikipedia's policies stating that we should avoid self-reference and minimize our biases, rather than highlighting and reveling in them. Whether or not you like the Pioneer Plaque, there is absolutely no precedent in Wikipedia for suspending ordinary Wikipedia conventions on the basis that "this article's about us!" Otherwise we'd also ditch our image conventions on our articles for Wikipedia, Life, 21st century, etc. The whole goal of Wikipedia's neutrality principle is to treat stuff about us in exactly the same way that an objective observer would. There is no basis in Wikipedia policy or in long-standing editorial conventions for suspending objectivity and visual accuracy when we're writing about ourselves, just as there is no basis for suspending a global and non-parochial view just because 'we're us,' as suggested by Ttiotsw: "this is the English language version of Wikipedia located on US based servers and using US law. A global view need not apply."

iv. The image has been repeatedly defended based on complete irrelevancies, e.g., that the image is "unique," that it's "on a space craft," that it "represents the pinnacle of human technological development" (which is obviously false anyway), that the image "has travelled the furthest from Earth... since the dawn of time." Leaving aside the non sequitur in using this to justify an illustration for Human (which should tell us visually about human biology and culture, not merely happen to be an important cultural artifact!), doesn't that make it less relevant to Human? In my experience, most humans tend to live on Earth. This isn't an article about space flight.

v. When a very serious problem with the image was raised - the fact that the image was deliberately censored to remove the woman's external, visible genitalia (while leaving the male's genitalia intact.) - this issue was mocked and ignored by editors dismissing the female vulva as "the beaver shot" and making astonishing arguments such as: "much is made of its supposed "censorship" of a tiny part of the female anatomy and yet clothing is the ultimate arbiter of identity and the vast majority of the clothed female images we probably can gather will cover these private parts. Clothed images will censor the human form more than this image", as though an image which explicitly lies about what the human body looks like by removing an anatomical feature is less "censored" than every image where a human is wearing clothes! By which logic, every image where someone is wearing pants is more censored that any image of a naked man where the penis has been digitally erased, leaving only an empty space between the legs, exactly like the one we have on the Pioneer Plaque female on Human (which, incidentally, is the only image of a naked human on the entire Human article!). If this was done to the male's genitalia on the top of the Human article it obviously would not be abided; that it is considered acceptable because is instead being done to a female is a serious indicator of our bias, and completely valid grounds for immediate emergency removal of the Plaque image simply because of the huge potential for spreading misconceptions about female anatomy (which, in fact, most of our readers probably are not particularly well-acquainted or familiar with, and thus are very vulnerable to the misinformation and subtle misogyny spread by such censorship), even leaving aside the message it sends about Wikipedia's stance on censorship and suppressing female (but not male) human sexuality. Really remarkable.

vi. "Perhaps we should let a machine decide the image ?. How about giving us a list of images and then we use a RNG [random number generator] to decide which image. That way no human made the final decision. For that matter a bot could randomly shuffle the images on a periodic basis." ????

All of this is leaving aside the arguments for the Plaque which simply aren't very good ones, e.g., ones that misunderstand the role of lead images by thinking that they need to somehow Platonically, symbolically 'represent' all humans, when in fact lead images only need to provide a useful example of the article subject. But I won't re-list the arguments that just aren't very good here, because they've been rebutted both here and on Talk:Human/Image. What I am highlighting here is the truly strange, idiosyncratic, and, yes, even unWikipedian (though of course not anti-Wikipedian) defenses of the Plaque here. I expected plenty of initial resistance, but I didn't expect it to be so.. surreal. This is just not how things are done here; we don't put censored and inaccurate images on Wikipedia articles merely because the article is about us, the image is heart-warming, has not been deleted previously (not how WP:CON works, I'm afraid.), etc.; we don't select images based on random number generators; and we don't use major dispute resolutions as a first resort, in lieu of any actual discussion of the important issues. As I pointed out, this is the reason Talk pages exist. So - let's talk. These problems are in no way intractable, but they are serious, and we do need to fix them if the Human article is to be brought up to the high standard of encyclopedic species articles. -Silence (talk) 21:27, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Borderline case of WP:TLDR here, but a point or two in response. Regarding the "series of serious problems (bias, inaccuracy, censorship, lack of useful information, etc.)" you refer to, these matters have all been brought up here before. In some editors' opinions they are serious, but many other editors disagree. In the past, consensus has been that they're not serious enough to warrant changing the image. Of course, you're right that consensus can change, but that is unlikely to result from reiterating old arguments over and over again. There are 28 archives linked to this talk page. I have neither the time nor the patience to search them exhaustively, but I do know that this topic and the pro and con arguments associated with it are far from new, and I am confident that most of the concerns you've raised have been hashed out rather thoroughly before. Maybe you're explaining your position better than others have done before you, but I'm finding the volume of words here daunting, and when I skim it I see words like "unWikipedian", which doesn't exactly induce me to go back and read it more carefully. We're all entitled to our opinions. Rivertorch (talk) 03:16, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

This has been discussed many times over the years, but I will reiterate my support for the Pioneer plaque image. I think the consensus remains to keep that image pending the introduction of an image that a new consensus can form around. -- Donald Albury 23:56, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate your input, but do you have any response to the many problems that have been raised regarding the Pioneer image? I'm particularly curious about the censorship issue, since it's generally not a practice on Wikipedia to spread (much less showcase or emphasize) misinformation.

I would also note that there are plenty of valid alternative images. I've linked to one, the Akha example, plenty of times (and see also Talk:Human/Image), and since multiple people seem not to have noticed (and I'm honestly surprised that no one in the course of this discussion has yet noted even a single problem this proposed replacement has, among all the people who have defended the Pioneer one despite its dozens of flaws!), I'll post it here (above right). However, I don't particularly care what photograph we use to replace the Pioneer image, since I think once we've eliminated the entrenched status quo the floodgates of high-quality images will open and we'll then have plenty of input, and time to carefully and reasonably whittle down a list of, some fantastic photographs of humans. Ultimately a real, satisfactory consensus will be reached, with an image that does not violate Wikipedia standards, policies or conventions like the plaque. But it's not going to happen if we never let Wikipedia do what it does best: be open and free to collaborate and experiment and discuss options, using both talkspace and articlespace, until a solution is reached. The fact that we've been so unwilling to do this with the Human lead image (perhaps because it's so prominent) has, I think, been the main reason we've failed to resolve this problem for so many years; but once we get started letting people actually actively collaborate and try new ideas, I really do think we'll be surprised by how quickly the editing process works to arrive at a vastly improved alternative. But in the meantime, incremental improvements are both desirable and necessary. -Silence (talk) 00:22, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

The main objection has been the claim that the image we have has been censored. The image we have is not censored. Here is an example of if what we had was censored

. Do you see the obvious difference ?. I'm pretty confident that the image we have is not censored in that it is pretty close to the original image that was provided by the artist or as close a fair-use derivative to make no difference in recognising an example of the "human" species should you see one. If we had a censored image then it would obviously make it grounds for removal. But we don't. So...,

• The image we have is close to what the artist created i.e. it is not censored
• The image is to show what a human looks like to those unaware
• The image is from a reliable source
• There is no original research in using this image

A lede image serves the purpose of allowing us to recognise what a member of the species looks like. Thus what Sagan et al did is topical to us in WP in that the intent was to show what humans looked like to those that did not know what humans looked like ("Ah so that is what Species 5618 looks like !. Looks harmless enough. Small braincases I see."). This makes the Pioneer plaque uniquely placed to be the Human taxobox image. I actually am pretty confident most humans know what a human looks like so the Human taxobox is unique across all articles but it is quite possible that the objecting editors here were unaware of what humans look like and when they discovered that humans were not in fact line drawings that they understandably are complaining and so, yes we should hear that argument. I'd still be pretty amazed how we failed given most biological and artificial vision systems I know of rely on edge detection and so a line art drawing is always a good candidate for pattern matching but I'm no expert so perhaps if the objecting editors explained how their particular vision and pattern recognition systems worked then we can find a compromise image that works for all species-who-read-wikipedia.

If Sagan et al are not notable, not a reliable source or fringe as a source of an image that can be used to identify a human then that is a valid claim but I'm pretty confident he would be accepted as a source but I could be wrong. Why not poll that ? Ttiotsw (talk) 02:23, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Now, now — let's not get too cute and forget what's actually being discussed. You already tried this fallacious argument earlier. See Point 5 in my second post to this discussion:

""The image hasn't been censored because it accurately depicts what's on the Pioneer craft." - If this were Talk:Pioneer Plaque, you'd be correct. But this is Talk:Human. The image is supposed to depict a human, not the Pioneer Plaque. If it correctly depicts the plaque, but misrepresents what humans look like (which happens to be the case), then it's inappropriate for use on this article. It's that simple."

We are not, nor have we ever been, discussing censorship of the Plaque. We've been discussing whether or not the Plaque, faithfully represented, incorporates censorship of the human form. No editor on this talk page has ever claimed that the Plaque itself is being misrepresented, nor has that ever been one of the dozens of reasons put forward for removing Plaque from the top of Human. What has been claimed is that the human form is being misrepresented — a much more serious allegation, and obviously one that is much more relevant to Talk:Human, since our job here at Human is to accurately convey as much significant information as possible about humans (including about human anatomy) to our readers.

Based on your argument above, either you haven't been paying close attention to the exchange regarding censorship, or you are disingenuously trying to shift the topic of discussion away from what we've actually been concerned with — the misogynistic removal of the vulva from the female diagram (on the Pioneer Plaque actually sent into space, obviously), while leaving the male's sexual organs unaltered. (The same for this repeated canard about 'reliable sources', which reflects a complete lack of understanding of Wikipedia image policies and WP:NOR; "Original images created by a Wikipedia editor are not, as a class, considered original research.")

I will assume your good faith, and accordingly will remind you that the artist of this image admitted that the visible female genitalia were deliberately censored in it. Quoth the Sagan: "The decision to omit a very short line in this diagram was made partly because conventional representation in Greek statuary omits it. But there was another reason: Our desire to see the message successfully launched on Pioneer 10. In retrospect, we may have judged NASA's scientific-political hierarchy as more puritanical than it is." Mark Wolverton attests that the original version included a "short line indicating the woman's vulva." So, Sagan admits that the vulva was removed out of fear of offending people who were OK with seeing a penis, but not with seeing female genitalia. The facts are right there, plain as day. Cut and dry. This is not a matter of dispute. What boggles the mind is that, having established this censorship as fact, some are still defending the image as an illustration at the top of our article on the human species despite its blatant, and deliberate, inaccuracy. This is about as clear-cut of a case as one finds on Wikipedia: The pic's gotta go. Our job is, among other things, to teach people about human biology (including anatomy) — not to parrot deliberate misrepresentations as fact. -Silence (talk) 03:39, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Given you understand the past history of the subject and want to change consensus (which you have every right to do) then the next step should probably be more formal WP:DR when you hit an impasse rather than aiming for longer and longer Talk page discussions. If this article was about Human biology then a more accurate picture may be needed. It isn't. It is about "Human" the species. The image we have allows the viewer to identify a human should they ever see one and has clean copyright and has broad support from a number of editors. I think you should start an WP:RFC or WP:REVIEW if you want to break this impasse. Ttiotsw (talk) 04:50, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not aiming for longer discussions, I'm aiming for a mutual understanding through discussion. As I said, I'm open to your arguments, and hopefully you are open to mine, so there is no reason we can't resolve this simply by assessing the issues and presenting our cases reasonably. If you think outside intervention is needed, feel free to appeal to it. But I don't see what the big deal is, myself.

Incidentally, this article is about human biology — and human culture, society, etc. But the very fact that you suggested a false dichotomy between "Human biology" (which is an article about the field called 'human biology') and "'Human' the species" is bizarre, since 'species' is a biological term! Every species article is by definition biological; humans are alive, are they not? Regardless, spreading misinformation about human anatomy is not appropriate for any encyclopedia article, be it about 'human biology' or the 'human species'. The Pioneer Plaque image belongs on our Pioneer article, because it is relevant and necessary there; it doesn't belong on our Human article, especially not at the top, where it only conceals, simplistically caricatures, and misleads with regard to the human form. -Silence (talk) 16:33, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know why we are still having this silly discussion for the five-thousandth time. In my mind, a short sketch line representing a woman's vulva is really not the most defining feature of human beings, as Martin Hogbin and apparently Silence seem to feel (and write about at many, many thousands of words in length). Maybe Sagan and the Pioneer team should have added/retained an extra little line... I really do not care very much, but inasmuch as anyone might, that seems like it belongs in the Pioneer article or somewhere like that. It continues to seem to me that the fact that we humans are bipedal, with a symmetrical body planned, opposable thumbs, eyes and mouth in the head, divided into two genders, mostly hairless, and, well, technologically capable of launching things into space seems a lot more interesting than the exact angle of some missing line (or whether testicles hang 10% lower than a penis, or whatever it is that is supposedly so desperately falsified in the illustration). LotLE×talk 08:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

We have not been the only ones to complain about the unsuitability of the current image.. If you look back of the history of this page you will see several editors who have mentioned the subject. No one is claiming the missing line is representative or a defining feature of human beings. The only reason that it is being discussed is that a decision was made to intentionally miss this part of the body out. Had the plaque had an eye missing, I would be complaining about that. This is not just censorship but censorship in its most insidious form. Had certain parts of the image been blacked out, as in the diagram on this page above, it would at least be clear that he image had been censored. To remove a part of the body, with no sign that it had ever been there is more typical of the actions of a totalitarian dictatorship. Martin Hogbin (talk) 10:27, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Then start an WP:RFC or WP:REVIEW. The most recent analogy is with the images on Muhammad. Some objected to a particular presentation of Muhammad. The consensus was to have the images they objected to in the article on the grounds that Wikipedia is not censored. The same applies here. We have an image - we're not questioning its creation (in the Muhammad case I'm pretty sure all the images are artists impressions of Muhammad rather than true-to-life) - but that it depicts the subject. Ultimately the grounds for rejecting those appeals is that Wikipedia is not censored. In this same way, it is you who wants to censor the image we have from this Wikipedia article. Though Silence says WP:CCC I seriously doubt that the consensus on the images in the Muhammad will change though periodically some quixotically try. I feel a cross-over to this article for this image.

The grounds for rejection are if it fails in its duty of informing the reader what a member of this species looks like, if it has copyright issues or if there is a "better" image. Better on the grounds of a better copyright e.g. PD verses CC verses Fair-use or it better informs the reader about the human species. The thought and effort that has gone into the Pioneer image to help show what a human looks like make a good candidate and I think its copyright is very good. You have to beat that. If you have failed here in Talk then start WP:DR if you do not like this summary. Ttiotsw (talk) 11:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

As Silence has said, some of the arguments are taking a surreal turn. Objecting to something because it has been censored is not normally considered censorship. A good example of real censorship is what you get if you search on the Chinese version of Google for Tienanmen Square. You do not see pictures of the protests with the tanks blacked out, you just get pictures with no tanks in, taken on the days when there were no protests. That is far worse because it is a deliberate attempt to deceive. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:25, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

It's amusing that you'd even try to suggest that I have "failed" here in talk; the discussion has barely started, and already numerous problems have been put forward regarding the Pioneer plaque, while zero problems have been put forward regarding the image I proposed as a replacement. Moreover, most of the support for the plaque has been based on a defense which violates Wikipedia policy, per WP:CON: "Thus, "according to consensus" and "violates consensus" are not valid rationales for making or reverting an edit, or for accepting or rejecting other forms of proposal or action." Another relevant line from WP:CON, "Consensus is not in numbers": "Wikipedia does not base its decisions on the number of people who show up and vote; we work on a system of good reasons." The strength of consensus is directly correlated with the strength of the reasons behind that consensus. If you want to build a solid consensus, then, your task right now isn't to simply have strength in numbers; you must respond to the arguments put forward with some compelling, overwhelming reasons for allowing inaccuracies on the top of Human, and for why the alternative images are absolutely, unambiguously unacceptable. On Wikipedia, editorial decisions are not a battle of popularity; they're a collaborative exchange of reasoning.

As a side-note, I expect an apology for the dishonest tactic used in "In this same way, it is you who wants to censor the image we have from this Wikipedia article." at some point. Equating an editorial decision about using one image as opposed to another (where both have the same content, but one has more of it in the form of greater photographic detail) with "censorship," while at the same time denying that deliberately removing the human genitalia from a nude drawing is (self-imposed) "censorship," is as much an insult to the English language as an unwarranted failure to assume good faith. Both you and I are above such word games. I have not accused you of "censoring" the image you removed from the top of Human, even though it is the exact same action. 'Cause that'd be silly. :]

I also don't know if Lulu expects that I'll disagree with any of his points. If so, you'll be disappointed; I have never said that the vulva is "a defining feature of human beings"; all I've said is that it's a feature of human beings, which is sufficient grounds for eschewing a nude image that has deliberately censored it. If the middle fingers of the humans in the Pioneer Plaque had been removed instead, I'd be just as opposed to its use on Human, even though I don't think that middle fingers are a "defining feature" either. (Although hopefully we would agree that the female reproductive system is a tad bit more important than a particular digit.) Moreover, I agree that "the exact angle of some missing line" is not the most "interesting" aspect of the Human article; I am not discussing this at length because I wish to, nor because it's what most "interests" me. I'm raising the problem because it's an important problem. This isn't fun - it's work. (The fun part comes later.) I'm plenty bored too, but being bored is not a valid excuse for using an inaccurate and informationally lacking (compared to just about any photograph) doodle as the lead image of the Human article. This is not a big philosophical issue; it has nothing to do with how 'important' you consider one part of anatomy or another. It's a straightforward matter: The image isn't anatomically accurate, and therefore isn't serving our readers if its goal is to show readers the human form. The degree or nature of the inaccuracy doesn't matter at all, because there are plenty of completely accurate alternatives available — photos, which by their nature mitigate the subjectivity, simplification, and idealization of a drawing. -Silence (talk) 16:33, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

My two cents; I think the Pioneer image is fine for the lead, especially given it's purpose of giving a general impression of our species to a possibly non-humanoid race. There are a lot of details that aren't going to be captured in a simple drawing. We have plenty of close-up photographs of anatomical parts (Vulva included) on their respective pages. I don't see why the lead image for a broad topic such as Human should be required to show every aspect of human external anatomy. It can be argued that there was a bit of censorship on the part of the original illustrators, but I don't think Wikipedia's use of the image implies censorship in this context. Really; we're talking about a single, short pencil line. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 22:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

We don't need an image that shows the vulva; personally I don't think we need nude humans at the top of the article at all, since we don't show a nude hermit crab on Hermit crab. Perhaps a more realistic and detailed anatomical image should be added instead of the Pioneer one, in the Biology section. All that matters is that if we show an image intended to represent nude humans, the image represent anatomical features accurately. If we show clothed humans in the lead, their clothes and visible body parts should be accurately rendered; and if we show nude humans in the lead, their bodies should be accurately rendered. As I see it, there are two different choices, the latter being preferable because it is what almost every other species article does:

1. Make the top image a nude anatomical illustration. In this case, the most important thing is that it faithfully and accurately present the human body. This is its function for the article, so the absolute worst situation would be if the anatomical diagram or photograph contained inaccuracies — or, worse still, deliberate inaccuracies stemming from cultural taboos infecting the anatomical accuracy.
2. Alternatively: Make the top image a normal photograph of any old human, clothed and in a human environment, e.g., a field, town, city, etc. This is probably the best choice, because it will show that humans aren't usually seen nude, just as the Hermit crab article does. Moreover, this will completely negate any worries about censorship, since there won't be any visible genitalia to censor (unless we happen to choose, say, a photo of some tribe that does not fully conceal its genitalia in public, which would be fine too). Then we can provide a real, uncensored, accurate anatomical image of a nude human in the appropriate section of the article — the discussion of human biology, etc. This compromise would be the best of both worlds: we'd provide all the same information and more, without any of the controversial censorship and cultural bias inherent in the Pioneer Plaque. And we'd be following the conventions established on every other Wikipedia article, particularly the other species articles, which whenever possible eschew drawings, especially censored drawings, drawings which don't depict an environment around the organism, and drawings which don't depict important normally-seen trappings of the organism, e.g., body hair, clothing, fingernails, etc. -Silence (talk) 22:51, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

While I don't have an issue with the Pioneer illustration, I wouldn't have objections to alternate illustrations that met the criteria that you describe. Do you know of any GFDL illustrations that satisfy that criteria? OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 23:51, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I question Silence's assumption that all species lede should use same criteria on the grounds that the purpose of the image in the lede in the taxobox for Human will intrinsically be different from the images of other species simply because all conscious readers of the article are human (at this time). Thus all these readers already know what a human looks like. Adding an image to show what a human looks like is a waste of time. This is why an image that is intended to inform non-humans what a human looks like is a more appropriate image because every human in the world already knows what a human looks like. This cannot be said for any other species (i.e. there is no other species in the world that every human knows what it looks like). Therefore the conventions used on other species articles need not apply on this one species article simply because of the species of the article readership makes the conventions used on other species article not always applicable. Ttiotsw (talk) 00:06, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Ttiotsw, I've already addressed your point that our readers are human. This is not a sufficient grounds for suspending Wikipedia policy, and such reasoning is explicitly discouraged by Wikipedia:Avoid self-reference. Our readers are also all Wikipedia users, but we treat the Wikipedia article the same way we treat every other article on an encyclopedia or reference tool. Our readers are all (at least to some degree) English-speakers, but we treat the English language article the same way we treat other languages' articles.

Besides, even if there are some exceptions we have to make for Humans as opposed to other species (and there clearly are some: just look at our extensive culture section!), that doesn't mean that one of those exceptions should be the suspension of Wikipedia's commitment to neutrality, accuracy, and not censoring relevant information, all of which are violated if we use the Pioneer Plaque as Human's sole nude anatomical image. (And, remember, I'm not claiming that we are censoring the Plaque; I'm claiming that the Plaque, by its creators' own admission, comes pre-censored, which makes using it as our only illustration of nude humans on Human inappropriate.) We still have standards. If you think that depicting humans is a waste of time, then why not remove all the pictures from this article? And if you think depicting the vulva (but, apparently, not the penis..?) when we present full-body anatomical illustrations is a waste of time, then you do not comprehend the fact that many of our readers are youths and people from cultures where information about the genitals (especially the female genitals) is scarce or even suppressed. Propagating misconceptions and obscenity taboos regarding female genitalia, especially when we propagate such images in a double-standard mode by not also using censored images of the penis, is directly contrary to Wikipedia's central goal of spreading reliable information to its readers. (Remember: Most of our readers are male, and if you think that every male already knows what a naked female really looks like.... :)) -Silence (talk) 00:19, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Jamie, I collected a list of various candidate images at Talk:Human/Image a while back, and I recently added a couple more upon request. Of these, I think File:Akha cropped.png is the best compromise image; although I'm not completely happy with every aspect of it, it does avoid all the valid concerns and controversies surrounding the Pioneer Plaque, is visually clear and vibrant even at 200px, and treats humans the same way we treat every other species in its article: in a natural environment, with expected trappings (in this case, clothes, accessories, tools, and held objects rather than a spider's web or a crab's shell). It even has both a male and female depicted side-by-side, a surprisingly difficult requirement to find fulfilled in our free-use photos (many of my other very good image candidates have the sole shortcoming of lacking an adult male and female, e.g., File:Bonda umbrella s.jpg and File:IMG 8829a.jpg and File:Cambodia family.jpg and File:Tikar crop.png — though strictly speaking this isn't necessary, since it isn't done on most other species articles, I've made an effort to find such multi-sexed images partly to avoid controversy and partly because it does significantly enhance the image's informational content, as long as the sexes are depicted accurately). -Silence (talk) 00:19, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of any of those photos, as they focus too much on particular cultural aspects of humanity; i.e, they're really no different than representing humanity as a blonde white couple sitting at a coctail bar. This is why I tend to favor the drawings. I'll admit that the hair is perhaps a bit on the occidental side of things, but the facial features seem to be fairly neutral in terms of racial characteristics. Perhaps we could come up with some sort of compound photo depicting a wide range of humans? (similar to what we do with articles on ethnicities)? OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 01:39, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I recommend reading through Talk:Human/Image a bit, as I covered this very issue extensively there. To summarize: It is not the function of any article's lead image to encapsulate or symbolize every possible subgroup or type of the subject matter. For example, on Ice cream we aren't obliged to include a collage of all the different major flavors, brands, or styles of ice cream. All that's needed is a single image illustrating various important features of ice cream. In fact, a collage would actually be inferior to a single image, for three reasons: first, it would introduce bias in which images we exclude, since it would then become more arbitrary that we have included, say, 5 images rather than 6, or 6 rather than 7, etc. (this isn't a problem for one image because our exclusion criterion is non-arbitrary; rather than saying arbitrarily "we're setting a limit at 7", we simply don't allow the possibility of additional images, and thus needn't justify the particular number we settle on); second, it would introduce bias in what criterion we use for selecting images — if we try to include one human of each race, for example, that will show that we're biased toward the view that race is an important indicator of human diversity; and third, it will require that we make all the images smaller than they would have been on their own, thus diminishing rather than increasing the relevant informational content we present, since the information we're trying to present at the top of Human is the basic defining characteristics of humans (e.g., bipedalism, upright gait, opposable thumbs, an enlarged skull, use of technology and culture, complex society and intercommunication, etc.), not a generic hodgepodge of token diversity.

For comparison's sake, look at almost any other species article. Frog is an article about 5,000+ species, yet it settled on just a single image to go at the top of the article. This despite the fact that Frog covers a subject matter thousands of times more biologically diverse than Humans. Same for Vertebrate, Eukaryote, Primate, Carnivore, Mushroom, or for that matter Society, Molecule, Star, City, or Nurse. In all these cases (and billions more — to some extent or another, every article, even a biography article, cannot be fully encapsulated by a single still image), one could make the case that we need a collage. But this is not how images are usually selected for articles, it is not necessary, and it introduces more problems than it fixes. Far better to just do what we do for most articles: Pick some random (but of quite adequate quality) image of the subject matter for the top of the article, and then include other images of the subject matter lower down in the article, so that the end effect is the same as if we'd used a collage, but more gracefully and efficiently presented by distributing the image of different cultures around the page, wherever appropriate.

Also note that, while collages are an extreme rarity among species articles, drawings are absolutely unheard of when there's a viable photographic alternative. So, while there's at least a little precedent for using a collage (even though it wouldn't serve our purposes well here, since we need to show a full human body in as much detail as possible and not just a bunch of faces), there's absolutely no precedent for using crude, detail-lacking black-and-white sketches for any taxon that has available photos. (Also, I'd like to echo your point that the Pioneer Plaque just worsens this problem, because for a variety of reasons it appears to depict white people. Although this evidently wasn't the artists' intent, we've received a large number of complaints about the seemingly "caucasian" features on the Pioneer Plaque. Perhaps part of the problem is that the image's caucasian features, like the hair style, are very prominent, whereas the changes intended to introduce other ethnicities are more subtle — the woman's eyes, for example, arguably seem slightly slanted (maybe?), but not on Human, where the image is too small for that to be noticed. So, one way or another, the unfortunate effect of the image is to give many the appearance of racial favoritism. But at least we can say with some confidence that this is unintentional, unlike the deliberate and intended sexism of the image. That's something, at least.) -Silence (talk) 01:59, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I did read through Talk:Human/Image; a lot of fair points are raised, though quite a bit is from one viewpoint (User:Silence). Just saying. If I had to chose a candidate image from that bunch, I'd lean toward Cambodian family; it's a simple family scene with a bit of age and gender variability (though it'd be nice if there was a slightly wider age distribution). That said, I think we should keep looking. I certainly don't have my heart set on the Pioneer plaque, as the objections raised are cetainly reasonble. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 02:47, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, anyone is free to edit Talk:Human/Image, and I'd love to see more viewpoints expressed there (especially arguments against any erroneous points I made). The only reason it's mostly me there is because most people have too much of a life to bother exploring these issues in so much detail. :p But I do think that the arguments there all reflect normal Wikipedia policies and conventions, or at the very least ubiquitous editorial habits. Likewise, I encourage anyone interested to join me in continuing to search for better alternatives; even once we've removed the Pioneer image to replace it with whichever photograph is most adequate for the time being, we can continue trying images for some time until a new status quo is attained. There's nothing wrong with a little image instability once every decade or so on an article :P The world will not end; indeed, it's positively helpful and healthy to see what good ideas people can come up with.

Also, aesthetically at least, I agree with you that File:Cambodia_family.jpg is the most appealing of the proposed images. It's a great composition, and full of useful information (though possibly it might be improved for our purposes by cropping one of the extra kids out..?). The only reason I haven't promoted it is because it has lots of children, but no adult male, which could make it controversial. Since the editors here seem to be very controversy-averse (almost to a fault), I figured the easiest compromise image would be the one most similar in basic content (other than the nude one I listed) to the current Plaque, but with the extant problems remedied: File:Akha cropped.png. Still, I care much less about which particular photo we choose, than about us choosing a photo at all in order to bring the article up to the standard of every other species article on the wiki. I don't want us to get so bogged down in the imperfections of the alternatives that we forget the anatomical inaccuracies, lacunae of visual information, and latent misogyny expressed in the Plaque. As I noted above, we have a lot of mediocre-to-quite-good photographs, vs. an atrociously uninformative and biased drawn caricature. Not to beat an undead horse, but the disparity between the Plaque and the photos outweighs any disparities between the photos themselves by an order of magnitude. -Silence (talk) 04:38, 5 August 2009 (UTC)