Talk:September 11 attacks

Survey

• Option B. September 11 was a multi-pronged attack, so a collage is useful for representing its different facets. I put considerable effort into the 2021 redesign, surveying the available images on Commons, composing them, and documenting my process (which I later generalized into the essay Wikipedia:Collage tips). Collages are notoriously unstable, though, and the present version does not display that same level of consideration.

Mostly copying my comment from above: Option A has two main issues. First, it's not balanced between the different parts of the attack. It has two images for the Trade Centers, either two or four for the Pentagon (depending on how you want to count), and none for Flight 93. More prominence to the Twin Towers makes sense given that they're where the vast majority of casualties were, but the Pentagon is given too much and there should be something for Flight 93.

Second, some of the images are low-quality. In particular, the CCTV frames at the bottom are so low-quality it's hard to even tell it's the Pentagon without either clicking on them or having some contextual knowledge. The first two are also basically the same. (Less severely, the firefighter image is also fairly dark, something that I think my replacement option fixes.)

I think Option B is balanced much better. The top image remains the same, as the sight of the towers burning is the most iconic image of the attacks. The middle left photo represents the rescue efforts and first responders. (It is placed on the left, where it works better, as the flag forms a natural border.) The middle right image also remains the same, and represents the Pentagon attack. The bottom left photo represents Flight 93 and the aviation aspect of the attacks. Lastly, the bottom right photo wraps it up by representing the memorialization efforts in the aftermath of the attack. Overall, each of the elements is recognizable (even at small scale) and both visually and topically distinct from the others, and the collage is short enough to keep the infobox from overflowing the lead section. Sdkb ^talk 03:37, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

• Option B The 3 images depicting the planes impact in option A don't add much and the memorial in B is significant. Lukewarmbeer (talk) 08:47, 24 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option B (mostly). Remove the broken plane fuselage/windows picture and the Ground Zero as it looks today picture, insert the fireman picture. The fireman picture should be included because it adds a "human touch" and reminds readers of the sacrifice made by thousands of rescue workers. It's quite a striking photo and very inspiring, a testament to the human spirit. TurboSuperA+_[talk] 09:11, 24 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option A, as this is really about the attack, and not memorials. Slatersteven (talk) 10:17, 24 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option A, would have to agree with Slatersteven. A collage for this page article should really be about the attacks, not memorials. BretHarteChitown (talk) 12:07, 25 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option A, I agree with Slatersteven and BretHarteChitown, and as I have previously stated, It is uncommon to encounter a memorial photo within a infobox, with actual events being the usual content instead. The purpose of a Wikipedia article isn't closure, but to create a comprehensive, neutrally-written encyclopedia of knowledge. Cena332 (talk) 02:52, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

  My response. Sdkb ^talk 03:28, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

• Option B, but I would replace the 9-11 Memorial South Pool photo with the fireman photo instead. Some1 (talk) 19:33, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

  Copying my reply in the thread above for ease of reference: The article is supposed to cover the attacks in the broadest way, which includes their impact/legacy. That's why we cover memorials in the article, and also mention them in the lead. So why not reflect them in the collage as well? In addition, they're visually compelling (memorials are designed to look beautiful) and they add some variety to the infobox so that it's not 100% photos of destruction.

  If people are open to having a memorial photo but just don't like that one, one of Tribute in Light might be a good option.

  One other thing to note: The fireman photo is landscape, compared to the current square orientation of the memorial pool photo, so if we swapped them we'd presumably want to crop it to maintain the vertical alignment/avoid making the Flight 93 image too small. Sdkb ^talk 18:46, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

• Option B, per User:Some1 (Summoned by bot). There's room for the memorial image later in the article, and there is nothing wrong with having multiple ground zero images. I'd hate to lose that impactful firefighter photo. TheSavageNorwegian 19:10, 27 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option B. Without prior reading of any of the arguments of the other participants here for option A or B, and being no ‘expert’ at all concerning this Wikipedia page, (but having intensely witnessed the 11 Sept 2001 event and its effects in the world,) I will vote for option B. For the wider world (excluding the ‘9/11-Wikipedia-experts’ who probably mostly are US citizens what I’m not), ‘nine eleven’ is about aeroplanes crashing into the twin towers, deeply insulting the United States of America; and hardly about the Pentagon being also hit by a plane (flight 77) or a hijacked flight 93 crashing in Penn. (which indeed have also happened but are not perceived as ‘essential’).
  Going from that (subjective) starting-point, I notice that collage A includes two of such ‘top relevant’ pictures (nrs. 1 and 3 of the WTC), collage B then has (in that personal view, assessment of mine) three top-relevant pictures: photos 1 and 2 of the WTC and photo 5 showing the September 11 Memorial which expresses the ‘coming-to-terms’ of the U.S. nation with the 9/11 event. --Corriebertus (talk) 21:39, 29 December 2025 (UTC)
  (After having read the pleas of TurboSuper, Some1 and SavageNrw for replacing the memorial photo with the fireman, I politely disagree with them. The fire fighter is for me ‘too well-known’ and not very specific for 9/11/2001; however, until today I had NEVER, anywhere, seen a picture of that 11 Sept Memorial (even though I’m a conscientious newspaper addict), and I think that whole memorial is very impressive and ‘telling’. --Corriebertus (talk) 21:56, 29 December 2025 (UTC))

  It's funny 'cause I've never seen that firefighter photo until this RfC. I agree with TurboSuperA+ above that the firefighter image adds a nice "human touch" to the collage, which collage B in its current form lacks. The 9-11 Memorial South Pool could be placed in the #Rebuilding_and_memorials section of the article. Some1 (talk) 04:42, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

• Option B, but I agree with User:Some1 above, to replace the Memorial South Pool photo with the fireman. It's very much a symbol of the event to see a fireman in a photo. ^🥑GUACPOCALYPSE^🥑 19:13, 30 December 2025 (UTC)
• Option A - Images should focus purely on the attacks themselves (which is what the article is about), not the "legacy" of such. We already have an apropriate section for such "memorial" images. I also personally find the replacement of the firefighter with the American flag to be tacky. ―"Ghost of Dan Gurney" _(hihi) 05:15, 3 January 2026 (UTC)
• Option B, but replace American flag rubble with firefighter rubble from option A. Per sdkb it would be a geometric problem to replace the reflecting pool with firefighter; however, I disagree with sdkb that the firefighter is too dark. Rather, it is high-contrast which makes it easier to understand at the small display size of an infobox. The firefighter is more clearly a destroyed building whereas the flag could be confused with a scrap metal heap due to the presence of the buckets in the foreground.

The Pentagon CCTV frames are illegible, as others have said, and thus don't merit inclusion.

Per infobox purpose the "purpose of an infobox is to summarize, but not supplant, the key facts that appear in an article." Given that the lede concludes with discussion of the memorial it is appropriate to have an image of a memorial at the bottom of the infobox. Uhoj (talk) 20:56, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

For editors who prefer to keep the firefighter photo, I think this is a much better swap, since it replaces one image of Ground Zero rescuers with another. Sdkb ^talk 00:58, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

• Option B - This is a difficult choice but as a Wikipedia reader I think option B is what I would expect to see in this article. My main problem with option A is the three images from the Pentagon camera footage. This is not commonly associated with it and are confusing for most readers. Option B presents this more clearly. My only concern with B is the image of the Flight 93 fuselage fragment since it is not immediately obvious what it shows but overall B is the better option. Ismeiri (talk) 23:31, 3 January 2026 (UTC)
• A but ditch the tiny Pentagon pics, overall the images seem better quality and most suitable for the lead. In B the one with the US flag isn't necessary and seems off (nationalistic?), and memorial pics can be featured elsewhere in the body Kowal2701 (talk) 23:13, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

• Oprion B, as I find it has the most descriptive images in terms of illustrating the events to the readers. Although I do like the firefighter image in A. Swee☩ Amber|Bbyshrkbss2 14:44, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

• Option B with fireman image from A, as others have discussed. I don't particularly mind which image gets replaced, but the fireman image is very iconic. {{GearsDatapack|talk|contribs}} 20:53, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Discussion

• From top, left to right: The Twin Towers burning
• A rescue worker at Ground Zero
• Collapsed section of the Pentagon
• Fragment of the Flight 93 fuselage
• 9/11 Memorial reflecting pool and One World Trade Center

RfC close/implementation: OK, so following up, this RfC hasn't gotten a formal close, but looking at the !votes, there are 10 editors who support some variant of Option B and 5 who support Option A, with the former group providing more explanation/rationale, so I think it's clear the consensus is for B. Many of the Option B !voters, however, expressed a preference for keeping the fireman photo, so that should be retained. No one rebutted the argument Uhoj/I made that the rubble-and-flag photo makes the most sense to swap out because it's another photo of Ground Zero with similar dimensions, so I will proceed with that in the implementation. I will also move it to the right of the Pentagon photo so that the fireman forms a natural frame and update the caption, alt text, and hidden comment. That leaves us with the result at right.

I would appreciate it if closer watchers of this article could keep an eye on the collage going forward. Collages have a really bad tendency to be tampered with in a way that degrades them over time. However, per WP:CONLEVEL, an RfC result should not be overturned without another discussion at the same level, so if anyone ignores the warning and tries to do so, they should be reverted. If there is a future RfC about the collage, please ping me/the other editors who participated in this one. Sdkb ^talk 00:23, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Support the Option C collage that @Sdkb proposed as a combination of what others had said about the two initial collages. I think the Flight 93 fuselage image more broadly represents the attacks than the 3 still-frames of Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, since there is another image from the Pentagon attack.

I don't really have an opinion either way on the memorial image. Seeing as the article does deal with the aftermath of the attack, I think its inclusion could be reasonable.

I think the image of the firefighter better represents the human element of the attacks than the image of the flag, as the rescue workers in the background of the flag image just blend into the rubble when the image is viewed at this size. It would be lacking for the infobox collage to just have pictures of buildings, plane parts and inanimate objects, and no good image of the humans involved; the main deal about these attacks is that they killed a lot of humans. Mhazandaren (talk) 15:26, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

The memorial image has not reached a consensus to be included in the Infobox, please reach a consensus first, as 8 editors have objected to it @Slatersteven @BretHarteChitown @Some1 @Thesavagenorwegian @Guacpocalypse @GhostOfDanGurney @Uhoj @Kowal2701. You haven't had any WP:DISCUSSION with them about it. Cena332 (talk) 03:17, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

@Cena332, you attempted twice to remove my comment above. Others have reverted you, but I will reiterate the warning Moxy left on your talk page: This is a clear-cut violation of the WP:TPO guideline, and if you persist you will be blocked. You have also just pinged only the editors who agree with you (mostly — Uhoj in their !vote supported the memorial photo), which goes against the canvassing guideline.

Setting that aside, there was clearly some disagreement above about the memorial photo, as there was with several other photos in the collage. (It's not clear from the !votes alone how many objected to having a memorial photo vs. primarily just wanted to keep the fireman photo.) But the editors supporting it cited a guideline in support of their argument (MOS:IBP, which establishes that infoboxes should reflect all facets of a topic) whereas those opposing it mainly used JDLI reasoning. No one objected after Uhoj suggested and I concurred that it was better to swap out the other Ground Zero rubble photo so that we didn't have two photos of the same scene. And there was clear consensus against Option A, so after the discussion went dormant for more than a month it was time to implement the prevailing consensus to restore Option B, even if it involved an element of a bartender's close. Sdkb ^talk 06:53, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

In you're edit you had place this part Warning 🚨: This collage was agreed upon to and you also put a comment which me or BretHarteChitown hadn't noticed because we were simply removing the false Rfc statement you added, but BretHarteChitown later corrected the mistake, because you typically don't put that above a comment, when the collage hasn't been agreed upon. You also placed {abot} under BretHarteChitown's photo collage. You don't get to decide to close the conversation, and close other people's collages without engaging in a consensus, about the lead problem people are facing with your collage. Cena332 (talk) 07:17, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Can we have a formal close, by an uninvolved editor? Slatersteven (talk) 16:50, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Cena332, I find it a little hard to parse what you're saying, but if it helps clarify, the hidden comment was a copy of the hidden comment to be used in the article to help keep the collage stable, not a comment on talk page behavior.

Slatesteven, uninvolved closes are always optimal when we can get them. On purely the Option A vs. some variant of Option B question, the consensus seems quite clear (10 editors to 5), so I stand by the view that we should have implemented the prevailing consensus (and per the RfC rules a formal close is not required to do so). The main point of contention seems to be whether to swap out the other Ground Zero photo or the memorial photo. Because that was not the primary question in the previous RfC, it seems we should have a follow-up one to gain clarity on that point. I'll start that below. Sdkb ^talk 19:38, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

September 11 attacks

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review

Previous peer review

I've listed this article for peer review because I've been chipping away at it and got rid of the various citation needed templates, but would like advice on what else to adjust. It's an extensive article, and takes multiple sets of eyes to find any issues. Much love, rock on, thank you for your time!

Thanks, ⚠︎ ArkadenBoden ⚠︎ (talk) 13:23, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

@ArkadenBoden: I can see a few page needed template. I think starting there would be advisable. Hacked (Talk|Contribs) 20:53, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Survey (collage follow-up)

• Option 1: In short, this replaces one image of Ground Zero with another, so that we don't have multiple. Some more detailed rationale:
  As I wrote in the Wikipedia:Collage tips essay, Collages should ideally represent the full diversity of the subject. Option 1 is carefully balanced between the many facets of the attacks: The top image represents the attack on the Twin Towers, the middle left image represents the rescue efforts and first responders, the middle right image represents the Pentagon attack, the bottom left image represents Flight 93 and the aviation aspect of the attacks, and the bottom right image represents the memorialization efforts in the aftermath of the attack. Option 2 has two Ground Zero photos, and while they're both visually compelling, that's more than we need (this shows up in the caption, where there's nothing left to link for the second image without violating WP:DUPLINK). It also lacks representation of the memorialization efforts. Additionally, by replacing a square photo with a landscape photo, it makes them both smaller and eliminates the visual balance with the second row.
  Some editors argued in the last RfC that including representation of the memorial aspects is inappropritate. I strongly disagree. The article is supposed to cover the attacks in the broadest way, which includes their impact/legacy. 9/11 had a sizemic impact on American culture, so this element is crucial. That's why we cover memorials in the article, and also mention them in the lead. Per MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE, The purpose of an infobox is to summarize, but not supplant, the key facts that appear in an article, so imagery of a 9/11 memorial is also fully appropriate there. In addition, the memorials are visually compelling (memorials are designed to look beautiful) and they add some variety to the infobox so that it's not 100% photos of destruction. I'm open to alternative images of memorialization if editors have a particular problem with this one (perhaps another photo showing the memorial pools or one of Tribute in Light), but we ought to have something. Sdkb ^talk 19:41, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
• Option 2 - I prefer the inclusion of the "Rescue workers at Ground Zero" image over the "9/11 Memorial reflecting pool and One World Trade Center" one just based on personal preference. It's a beautiful & high quality image, and showing the rescue teams "climb over and dig through piles of rubble from the destroyed World Trade Center as the American flag billows over the debris" adds a nice human (and dare I say it, patriotic) touch to the collage. As for the pool/trade center photo, there's already some at September 11 attacks#Memorials, so I don't think we need another one in the collage. Some1 (talk) 22:45, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

  The "we already depict this in the body" argument doesn't make much sense to me. We depict basically everything in the collage somewhere in the body as well, often just from a different perspective (the Ground Zero Rescue Workers photo would fit right in in the rescue section of the body). The Ground Zero Memorial photo in the body is an aerial shot, which is quite different from the ground-level one in Option 1. Sdkb ^talk 01:15, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2 It seems strange to include an image of the memorial/current WTC 1 within the lead collage. ~ HAL333 14:51, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

  Option 2 – I agree with Hal 333 that having the memorial in the lead collage doesn't seem like the better choice. While I understand the argument that the photo represents content from the body, I believe the photos representing the September 11 attacks should be photos of the attacks and their aftermath. Our efforts to memorialize the event and the lives lost are important, but distract from the gravity of the real images otherwise represented.

  I disagree with other comments that option two is somehow less diverse. It captures the same diversity of the attacks. While Ground Zero is depicted twice, the NYC attacks loom larger in both casualty count and the public perception/memory of the event. Option two still provides images from the various attacks, and includes visually striking photos. Bravelake (talk) 03:32, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2 – I vote for this collage and will repeat it's uncommon to encounter a memorial photo within a infobox, with actual events being the usual content instead. The purpose of a Wikipedia article isn't closure, but to create a comprehensive, neutrally-written encyclopedia of knowledge. Cena332 (talk) 14:17, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

•Option 2 For this very reason: Collages should ideally represent the full diversity of the subject. I know that Wikipedia is supposed to be based on sources and not our personal experiences, but having lived in NYC on September 11, I can tell you that in my own experience, it seemed like American flags instantaneously seemed to pop up everywhere. I had never really noticed flags anywhere before that and always thought of New York as being non-patriotic, so it felt like a huge change to suddenly see flags all over the place. Slava570 (talk) 22:02, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Discussion (collage follow-up)

Pinging editors who participated in prior RfC: Lukewarmbeer, TurboSuperA+, Slatersteven, BretHarteChitown, Cena332, Some1, Thesavagenorwegian, Corriebertus, Guacpocalypse, GhostOfDanGurney, Uhoj, Ismeiri, Kowal2701, Babysharkboss2, and Mhazandaren. Sdkb ^talk 19:52, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Has the other RFC been closed with a conclusion? Slatersteven (talk) 14:58, 9 March 2026 (UTC)