User talk:Rivertorch/Archive3

RIVERTORCH TALK ARCHIVE EARLY 2009

This page is an archive of past discussions. Please do not edit it.

Flagged Revs[edit]

Hi,

I noticed you voted oppose in the flag revs straw pole and would like to ask if you would mind adding User:Promethean/No to your user or talk page to make your position clear to people who visit your page :) - Thanks to Neurolysis for the template «l| Ψrometheăn ™|l» (talk) 06:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're asking this of someone with not even one tiny, unobtrusive userbox on his user page? Good golly, that is without a doubt the ugliest thing I've ever seen on Wikipedia. It makes Jimbo's fundraising banners look modest! Rivertorch (talk) 07:11, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have come prepared! There is a less intrusive userbox at User:Promethean/No2 «l| Ψrometheăn ™|l» (talk) 08:27, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if I were going to put userboxes on my user page at this time, rest assured that I'd consider deploying this one. My page is long overdue for an overhaul, so anything is possible. I might as well tell you, however, that while I oppose the sort of testing that was proposed in the straw poll, I don't think that the idea of flagged revisions in any form is necessarily evil. Rivertorch (talk) 01:24, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for thanking me[edit]

I rarely get any feedback on closing requested moves so it's nice when someone drops by to say thanks.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:41, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bösendorfer[edit]

Hi Rivertorch.

Sauter (from 1819) is still producing its own instruments, or am I wrong, is it today another company that is producing the instruments? I don't know...

I think your sentence "one of the oldest piano manufacturers" is very good. I haven't made the change, I think it's better if you will do it. I think you got a good reference. Fanoftheworld (talk) 22:31, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Replied here. Rivertorch (talk) 06:52, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry![edit]

I am sorry for moving "The Hobbit, under a false name. I thought the way that I had spelled it had been the correct way.--Shadow Mine (talk) 22:59, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am something of a zealot when it comes to assuming good faith, but I'm afraid you have strained my credulity to the breaking point in this case. Three inconvenient facts:

you moved the article twice, on different dates, using two different spellings;
you made no attempt to "correct" the spelling within the article, only the title of the article;
two images of the book, including the one in the infobox at the top of the page, clearly show the correct spelling.

Good faith isn't the same as gullibility. The evidence strongly suggests these moves were not mistakes. In any case, whether it's vandalism or simply carelessness, in either case you are risking sanctions including being blocked if you keep it up. Rivertorch (talk) 02:12, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you[edit]

Thanks for reverting vandalism to my page. A troll seems to be obsessed with me! Nunquam Dormio (talk) 08:48, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. It only happens to the best editors ;) Rivertorch (talk) 17:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Typeface[edit]

Originally, I was going to add template:fact, actually. I was reading over the template doc for it so I could properly add the date of addition, but then I read the bit about unsourced material and felt like there's no way that it could be verified. In retrospect it was a bit hasty. I agree that it should be kept, so I'm not sure why I deleted it. In fact, I think I can find a decent source for it right now. Thanks for questioning my spur-of-the-moment-ness. :) --Snaxe/fow (talk) 05:35, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. It looks like others had a go at it in the meantime, and your current revision works well. Rivertorch (talk) 06:23, 22 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

99.224.75.154 (talk) 23:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)[edit]

99.224.75.154 (talk) 23:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Homosexuality[edit]

Hey, can you check out: User_talk:Moni3#Homosexuality ? Phoenix of9 (talk) 13:57, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Been there, done that ;) Thanks for the heads-up. Rivertorch (talk) 23:50, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You learn something new every day[edit]

The file File:Willie hutch 04.jpg was uploaded in February, the user blocked in April. You can't upload files while blocked, but you can have files you uploaded by deleted. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:51, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Duh. I must have been half-asleep. Rivertorch (talk) 04:34, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

spook[edit]

thanks for your reply. If you have dictionaries saying "Dutch", that's fine of course. OED says "probably Low German". I suggest we could simply state "from Dutch or Low German" and leave it at that. --dab (𒁳) 20:37, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like another editor has made a constructive change to it in the meantime. Rivertorch (talk) 00:09, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Crocus[edit]

Sorry about that. I was trying to get a picture on the page, and I must have messed up. --Boy of The Waters (talk) 19:28, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. If you'd like to provide a link to the pic in question, I'll see what I can do. Rivertorch (talk) 21:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re:FAQ[edit]

Sounds like a good idea. I think the talk:Barak Obama page has one we could mine for ideas. Exploding Boy (talk) 05:34, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. I'll take a look tomorrow. Rivertorch (talk) 05:48, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I really like the way they've done it there. Rivertorch (talk) 17:32, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks[edit]

Thanks for your corrections on the article about "European exploration of Africa". In the discussion page of the article you have the references that you wanted. The translation of them are by automatic translator of google, unfortunately I'm not write well in English and, besides, I'm new to Wikipedia and I do not know yet how it works.

Greetings

Joan Giner —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.35.14.84 (talk) 21:11, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I'll look at it tonight to make sure my edit made it correct. I'll bet there is a Wikipedia in your native language. Editing there first might be a good way to learn how Wikipedia works. Rivertorch (talk) 00:37, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agatha Christie & Max Mallowan’s Alleged Affairs[edit]

Hi Rivertorch! Some time ago, I commented on the Agatha Christie talk page regarding the allegation that Christie’s second husband had affairs throughout their marriage and, after Christie’s death, married his longtime mistress. It has since been two months and there has been no debate or opposition to my suggestion to change the article accordingly. Since you dealt with the spoilers issue, I wanted to ask what you think of my proposed change to the article regarding Mallowan’s extramarital activities, if any. Thanks! SpikeToronto (talk) 04:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Replied there. Rivertorch (talk) 14:45, 26 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Stop Ex-Gay Therapies[edit]

Hi Rivertorch! I know you are a “practising” editor on articles relating to the LGBT community so I thought you might want to have a look at a recent article stating that the American Psychological Association is calling for an end to ex-gay therapies:

The country's leading authority on psychology is urging therapists not to tell clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or treatment.
Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD, chair of the American Psychological Association's task force on the matter, said there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation.
— Garcia, Michelle. “APA: Stop Ex-Gay Therapy,” Advocate. Advocate.com August 5, 2009. (Retrieved 2009-08-06.)

I get daily e-mail digests of articles from The Advocate and found that amongst them. Be patient, the silly thing takes a bit of time to load. Cheers! — SpikeToronto (talk) 21:28, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the link. I had heard the news but hadn't seen that article yet. Rivertorch (talk) 21:39, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Human image[edit]

I too am getting a bit tired of rehashing the same ground again and again. I'm glad you understand my points, even if we happen to disagree on what course of action is best. I'd like to try a different approach now, and explain my problem with using Pioneer plaque as our primary depiction of a human in terms of Wikipedia's policies of verifiability and reliance on reliable sources. I recognize that WP:V is deeply important to you — perhaps even more so than NPOV and avoiding censorship. However, my view is that we can have our cake and eat it too with regard to adhering to all of Wikipedia's core policies on Human. Allow me to explain (and I do apologize for the length):

I found your very first comment in this discussion exceedingly interesting. You noted that the Pioneer plaque is "not properly representational of the human species", that it is "stylized", "distorted", and even "absurd", but argued that all of this is "beside the point because our job in selecting an image here isn't to represent humanity accurately". Depending on what you mean, I might very well agree with you 100% here; however, while it is not our job to be the sole arbiter of the facts, it is our job, as an encyclopedia, to reflect the consensus of experts in the relevant fields — human biology and anthropology. That includes reflecting the consensus of those experts on the issue of whether women have externally visible sex-organs. The creators of the Pioneer plaque are not experts in the relevant field (and even if they were, they'd still be in the minority in censoring/removing the vulva), so favoring their version of human anatomy over the biologists' and anthropologists' version would be a violation of Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Undue_weight: "articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views; generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all".

All of this should be quite straightforward. I think what's led to all this confusion is the idea behind this statement of yours: "as encyclopedia editors, our job is to document representations of humanity" (bold added). This is quite correct — but it's not in this particular case relevant, because this isn't an article called "Artistic representations of humanity". Rather, it's an article called Human, which (as you can tell from the article's taxobox and categories) is first and foremost a biology article about a certain subspecies, and also secondarily an anthropology/sociology article about human culture ("secondarily" only because we have no other article about the biology of humans as a whole, whereas we do have separate articles covering the entirety of human society, culture, etc.).

What the article is not is a more 'meta' article about "how humans depict themselves" — which means that a famous depiction of humanity is at best only indirectly relevant to the article. (Properly speaking, such an image would only be relevant in Human#Culture, where how humans express their understanding of themselves is at least one of our many, many deliberate subject matters. But our biology section isn't about "how humans view their biology", it's about "the biology of humans" (with the self-referentiality being an unfortunate side-effect, not a feature or aspect of the intended subject matter). Our history section isn't about "how humans view their history", it's about "the history of humans" (again, with the same unfortunate self-referentiality as an inescapable 'meta' issue off to the side). And so on. I realize this distinction is very difficult to keep clear in one's mind, because our language is poorly suited to making such distinctions; but it is important that we keep it in mind, because otherwise we will forget what the article is actually about, principally.

For comparison's sake, imagine that 100% of the editors of Jew happened to be Jews; that would not suddenly change the article's subject matter into "How Jews view themselves", it would just mean that our article, which is still simply a straightforward article about Jews, happens to have, as an editorial footnote, a potential neutrality problem. Well, the same hypothetical scenario is actual in Human, and the sole difference between the two cases is that our situation on Human is inescapable (and probably permanent), so we just have to live with it. But 'living with it' still doesn't mean that "Human" transforms into "How Humans see themselves" (which, incidentally, might make an interesting psychology or sociology article if you feel like finding good sourcing on it — but it won't ever be this article, no matter what).

What is of central relevance to the article Human is the consensus of academic experts who study human beings, and their consensus views on humanity are what we must be careful not to deviate from in both our text and images. My argument is that a photograph is the simplest and most direct way to present visual information about humans which corresponds to the consensus of anthropologists, anatomists, etc. (A photograph that was photoshopped to, say, turn the humans into cyclopes would violate Wikipedia's stick-to-the-consensus-of-reliable-sources policy in the same way that our current use of Pioneer does. Visual information can violate or correspond to reliable sources and expert consensus in the same way that textual information can.) The views of astronomers are no more relevant here than they are on Lasagna or World War II; being an expert in one field does not make one an expert in another, and publishing lots of reputable facts on astronomy does not make one's opinions, attitudes towards, and preferred artistic depictions of a species of eukaryote even the slightest bit more reputable than if you were a banker, a carpenter, or a mathematician. -Silence (talk) 01:18, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for taking the time to clarify your position. No need to apologize for the length, although I often feel that I spend too much time at WP reading instead of contributing. Also, I find it difficult to focus on long blocks of text onscreen. Printing it out solves the problem (and destroys virgin forests and adds papermill runoff to my footprint on the planet). In any case, I suspect this will be an excruciatingly long reply, so tit for tat. I tried embedding my reply but it looks too sloppy that way, so here goes nothing (with excerpts of your remarks bulleted and in italics):

I recognize that WP:V is deeply important to you — perhaps even more so than NPOV and avoiding censorship.

Not more so, no. In fact, I'd say that censorship is probably what I object to most in this or any encyclopedia. As I explained on Talk:Human, however, I don't think of this as a censorship issue because the anatomical omission in the image didn't happen at the behest of Wikipedia editors; it was there on the space probe. It could be argued with some slight validity that by reusing the image we are perpetuating censorship, but we do that all the time with images of anatomically inaccurate artwork, and it strikes me as requiring a truly novel interpretation of WP policy to cry foul over censorship concerns in any of those cases. Same here.

A related question centers around whether it was censorship in the first place. Like you, I believe it was, but my understanding of the Wikipedia philosophy forces me to set such personal beliefs aside (or at least try very hard to) when editing an article. I would point out that in your rationale at Talk:Human you have repeatedly cherry-picked what is written at Pioneer plaque. Sagan's statement actually implies that he objects to the controversy over the plaque being framed as "censorship". So, in terms of WP:V, it's far from "case closed" that the plaque was censored. If you have an equally reliable source as Sagan who utterly refutes that, do tell. In the absence of that, it seems to me that calling it censorship is tantamount to injecting a personal POV into a question better framed in neutral terms.

Incidentally, NPOV is also tremendously important to me. In my experience, it's the hardest thing to achieve in a controversial article. And it's really no wonder that Human is controversial: it is perhaps the only article that seeks to summarize the aggregate nature of its own editors. Every one of us, on some level, probably feels that we have a stake in it. Because of that, identifying or even defining neutrality and non-neutrality is more difficult there than elsewhere. There is no lead image that everyone would agree is neutral in that context. My position has been that the distinctly imperfect Pioneer image has fewer potential neutrality problems than the alternatives. I consider it the least of various evils by virtue of being famous, historic, and designed for the express purpose of symbolizing humanity. As far as I know, no other image available to us meets those criteria. In every other case, we would have to make a choice. If the Pioneer image is not neutral, well, at least it's not our non-neutrality.

it is our job, as an encyclopedia, to reflect the consensus of experts in the relevant fields — human biology and anthropology. That includes reflecting the consensus of those experts on the issue of whether women have externally visible sex-organs.

Now seriously, I wasn't aware that that required the consensus of experts. LOL. More seriously, you might also mention everyone from physicians to certain artists and photographers to Wilt Chamberlain. In all seriousness, how on earth are human biology and anthropology the only fields relevant to the choice of lead photo? I don't get that at all.

The creators of the Pioneer plaque are not experts in the relevant field (and even if they were, they'd still be in the minority in censoring/removing the vulva), so favoring their version of human anatomy over the biologists' and anthropologists' version would be a violation of Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Undue_weight: "articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views; generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all".

Are you suggesting that those responsible for the plaque ever claimed to be experts in human anatomy? They made no such claim. Are you further suggesting that the image on the plaque is actually "their version of human anatomy"? Come on. It is a stylized line drawing with no pretensions of anatomical correctness or completeness, for crying out loud. You're refuting an argument that was never made in the first place.

I think what's led to all this confusion is the idea behind this statement of yours: "as encyclopedia editors, our job is to document representations of humanity" (bold added). This is quite correct — but it's not in this particular case relevant, because this isn't an article called "Artistic representations of humanity".

Neither is it an article called "Anatomically correct representations of humanity".

Rather, it's an article called Human, which (as you can tell from the article's taxobox and categories) is first and foremost a biology article about a certain subspecies, and also secondarily an anthropology/sociology article about human culture ("secondarily" only because we have no other article about the biology of humans as a whole, whereas we do have separate articles covering the entirety of human society, culture, etc.).

On the contrary, we most certainly do have another article about the biology of humans as a whole: it's called Human biology. We also have articles on the Human body and Human anatomy, Human physical appearance, Human body shape (strangely enough, the Pioneer image heads up that article too!), and Female body shape (in which two of the four relevant images show no external genitalia, and in the other two you really have to squint).

While the Human article includes much biological information, I wasn't aware of its being primarily a biology article. Indeed, after the lede come discussions of etymology and anthropology, then biology, then psychology, and then culture (which goes way beyond its sociological/anthropological definitions to discuss linguistics, philosophy, art, political science, and all sorts of other things). If you're approaching the question of the image from the perspective of this being just another taxonomy-based species article, then your objection makes more sense. I don't see the article that way, though, and, judging from its contents, neither do an awful lot of other editors. I would suggest that the article is an expansive overview of all the major facets of humanness.

What the article is not is a more 'meta' article about "how humans depict themselves"

True enough, but neither is it a meta article about how naked women look from the front. I'm sorry, but I think that "human" means a hell of a lot more than just the way people look when photographed (or drawn or painted or digitally imaged) at high resolution. What is the essence of humanity with all its flaws? Is it better captured by an anatomically-correct rendering or a flawed etching? I'm not arguing that the answer is the latter, but I don't necessarily think it's the former, either!

But our biology section isn't about "how humans view their biology", it's about "the biology of humans" (with the self-referentiality being an unfortunate side-effect, not a feature or aspect of the intended subject matter). Our history section isn't about "how humans view their history", it's about "the history of humans" (again, with the same unfortunate self-referentiality as an inescapable 'meta' issue off to the side).

I don't think the two sections—or the two disciplines, if you prefer—are comparable in that way. History is generally considered part of the humanities, not the sciences, and I would argue that history itself is very much about how humans view themselves and their past.

For comparison's sake, imagine that 100% of the editors of Jew happened to be Jews; that would not suddenly change the article's subject matter into "How Jews view themselves", it would just mean that our article, which is still simply a straightforward article about Jews, happens to have, as an editorial footnote, a potential neutrality problem. Well, the same hypothetical scenario is actual in Human, and the sole difference between the two cases is that our situation on Human is inescapable (and probably permanent), so we just have to live with it. But 'living with it' still doesn't mean that "Human" transforms into "How Humans see themselves" (which, incidentally, might make an interesting psychology or sociology article if you feel like finding good sourcing on it —[Try Body image. Like Human biology, it's already there. —Rivertorch (talk)] but it won't ever be this article, no matter what).

Hmm . . . I'm sorry that we're finding so many different points to disagree on, but I think that how humans see themselves is most certainly one basis of this article. The inconvenient (but verifiable) truth is that we see ourselves in myriad ways through innumerable lenses, and the different scientific and academic and artistic disciplines all seek to see ourselves in different ways, as well.

Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia of biology or even of science, broadly construed—it is a general encyclopedia. While it is essential that we use science to frame many topics, particularly those that have quantifiable components or that lend themselves to scientific terminology, we should not limit ourselves to science. Nor should we insist upon presenting "the ideal" or even "the precisely physically accurate" in an illustration of humans when there is so much that is flawed about our species and all that it has wrought. Better to acknowledge the flaws, I'd say (or, perhaps more accurately, show the flaws and let the reader decide whether to acknowledge them as flaws).

Finally, I'd like to reiterate one of my objections to changing the image which you didn't address here: the matter of controversy. I'm well aware that the current image is controversial. Like most of the articles I pay attention to, this one probably landed on my watchlist because of either a minor error that I corrected or an instance of vandalism that I reverted. (I don't remember which and don't feel like searching for it now, and it doesn't matter.) Since I started watching it, complaints about the image have arisen multiple times but never has consensus developed to change it. One of the reasons why, I think, is that many editors, including some who probably agree with your point of view more than mine, are very much afraid that the type of image you recommend would be even more controversial. I think their fear, which I happen to share, is justified. It may be unfortunate but it is nonetheless a fact that we are members of a species that tends to consider its population in terms of categories, and given the terrible legacies of racism, sexism, colonialism and so on, many people are very concerned about who gets depicted where and who gets left out. That's understandable, but it is likely to contribute to this article's "image problem" escalating from recurring argument into constant battle. Another point of contention about a replacement image is the question of clothed or unclothed. The arguments for either option make good enough sense to render it a moot point, but do you suppose that will satisfy everyone? It will not, and there will be continual friction, probably including edit warring, blocks, hard feelings, burnt-out editors, scary religious fundamentalists—the whole shebang. I don't think we should discount the value of (relative) stability in such a high-profile article, and I do think that's what we have now.

Thanks again for coming to my talk page to discuss this. While we still disagree, I now have a much better understanding of the basis for our disagreement, which apparently stems from differing views of the nature of the Human article and perhaps even Wikipedia itself. I hope that my response has been similarly enlightening to you. Feel free to continue the dialogue here, but be forewarned that further communication on my part may be longer in coming and shorter in bytes. Cheers, Rivertorch (talk) 09:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response[edit]

To make my response a bit easier to chew on, I'm going to divide it into different 'chunks' based on the topic:

Censorship[edit]

I don't think of this as a censorship issue because the anatomical omission in the image didn't happen at the behest of Wikipedia editors

But why should it matter who made the image? Imagine, if you will, an editor on our Woman article who objects to a nude image showing the vulva. That editor searches for a free-use nude image that deliberately censors the vulva, and finds one that was created by a non-Wikipedian. He then replaces the image on Woman with the erased-vulva image, and when other editors complain about the censorship, he says: "It's not censorship, because Wikipedia didn't create the image." This example shows clearly, methinks, that it's totally irrelevant who made the image; what matters is where we Wikipedians are choosing to use the image.

we are perpetuating censorship

What's the difference? How can you be anti-censorship, but pro-'censorship perpetuation'? I would argue that we do not do it "all the time", because pretty much all anatomical art we use, even when it has a minor error or something, was not self-censored by its original artist based on cultural taboos. Not all inaccuracy is censorship, if that's what you're suggesting; the Pioneer plaque is a special case for incorporating both.

Sagan's statement actually implies that he objects to the controversy over the plaque being framed as "censorship"

Read the paragraph carefully. What Sagan is actually saying is that he objects to the plaque being thought of as government censorship (and he's quite correct in that, the government had nothing to do with it). He never says anything about it not being self-censored — in fact, he explicitly admits that it was self-censored, when he says that "another reason" (aside from the Greek statuary one) they had for removing the vulva was that they were worried about possible "puritanical" or "Victorian" objections if the vulva were retained. That's such a good, clear example of self-censorship (which, again, is a form of censorship) that it should almost be the one we use at the top of that article to illustrate it unambiguously. It isn't my opinion that the vulva was removed from these images partly out of fear of arousing moral outrage; it's what the reliable sources state. 'Government censorship' and 'self-censorship' are two different types of censorship, and Sagan in effect vehemently denied the former while conceding the latter.

Anatomy[edit]

how on earth are human biology and anthropology the only fields relevant to the choice of lead photo?

They're the most relevant fields to the article, because the article is about humans in general, and those fields are the most general fields simply studying 'humans.' Other fields also play a role in various sections of the article, but secondarily or tertiarily. It's the same reason our Evolution article is first and foremost a Biology article, with the opinion of expert biologists holding sway, and only secondarily a social-cultural article (which would be a distinct topic, 'cultural views of evolution', analogous to a 'cultural views of humans' article).

Are you suggesting that those responsible for the plaque ever claimed to be experts in human anatomy?

Are you suggesting that it matters what they "claimed", when most people who see the image will have little to no knowledge of its background or its creators' words? We're using an image that appears to be a (very rough, but not at all 'cartoony') basic anatomical image of the human form. If the image is meant to be anatomically inaccurate, then we should explicitly note that in its caption, lest we mislead readers who take it as an accurate (albeit simplified) visualization of human anatomy. (But it would be far simpler to just replace it with something anatomically accurate, since we have so many thousands of good candidates to choose from.)

It is a stylized line drawing with no pretensions of anatomical correctness or completeness, for crying out loud.

It has no pretensions of completeness, but it certainly has pretensions of basic correctness. Otherwise it would not be proportioned correctly. For a simple line drawing, its stylization is relatively slight. It really does look just like a (very crude) anatomy drawing from the '70s. I would have less objection to an obviously "cartoony" drawing, like a stick figure, since at least then its function would be unambiguous and it couldn't misinform anyone (Indeed, I'm honestly a little surprised you haven't yet suggested we use a stick figure if you think the job of the lead image is solely to symbolically "represent mankind" rather than depict a real human or provide accurate visual information.)

Neither is it an article called "Anatomically correct representations of humanity".

Non sequitur. Our article on Frogs is not called "Anatomically correct representations of frogs", but our lead image of a frog is still anatomically correct, because the consensus in biology (and thus anatomy) is of primary importance for a species article. (It might not be the only thing of primary importance, but it's certainly of primary importance.)

Other 'human biology' articles[edit]

On the contrary, we most certainly do have another article about the biology of humans as a whole: it's called Human biology.

Equivocation; I took the time to say "biology of humans" rather than "human biology" because the two possibly articles have nothing in common; 'biology' in the first case is like "my biology is acting up", a reference to organic systems in the world (which happen to be studied by biologists); 'biology' in the second case is a scientific field of research, which is studied by sociology, not by biology. (In other words: biologists don't study how biologists do biology. Biologists study the biological world, and we have no article generally about the 'biological world' of humans, except Human itself.) (Also, Human body is basically just another take on the Human anatomy article, from a more holistic perspective; it doesn't discuss Life Cycle, Sleep, Diet, Genetics, etc., so it isn't the top-level article on the biology of humans; Human is.)

two of the four relevant images show no external genitalia, and in the other two you really have to squint

Notice that the legs happen to be just about locked together in all those images? Well, they're wide open in the Pioneer image, and the angle is comparable to what you'd see in Human body, File:Human anatomy.jpg, albeit even more visibly because the image on Human body is more turned away from the viewer. (Which is why they bothered to draw a vulva at all in the original image, before removing it.) Also notice that both of the articles supporting your case are specifically and exclusively about human "body shape", which means that all that matters to them is the overall 'shape' the body forms; on Human, our focus is not on the overall shape any more than it is on other visible details. (I'd also note that most of the articles you're citing receive little traffic and are relatively low quality on the whole, compared to the high-traffic, and often high-qualtiy or even Featured, pages I've been citing as examples, which better reflect general Wikipedia attitudes and consensus rather than particular editors' decisions. Body shape, for example, barely has 150 edits in its entire history, over 80 of them by a single editor! Citing a page with only 3 terse talk-page comments is hardly the strongest way to show community short for the plaque.)

Is Human a biology article?[edit]

While the Human article includes much biological information, I wasn't aware of its being primarily a biology article.

The spraaawling taxobox didn't clue you off? :)

Indeed, after the lede come discussions of etymology and anthropology, then biology, then culture

Anthropology is "the study of humans". Compare our Kangaroo article, where the first section is Kangaroo#Terminology, or our Animal article, where the first section is Animal#Etymology. Does that make those pages any less biological? In fact, this format is actually surprisingly close to many other species' biological articles, even though "Culture" sections are such a rarity. When I checked other biology pages, I was quite surprised. For example, our Bonobo article begins with a rather lengthy section called Bonobo#Name (including etymology); it then proceeds into Bonobo#Physical characteristics ('Biology'), Bonobo#Psychological characteristics ('Psychology'), Bonobo#Social_behavior, etc.! Similarly, our Dolphin article begins with Dolphin#Origin of the name, followed shortly by Dolphin#Evolution (their version of a 'History' section!) preceding Dolphin#Anatomy, Dolphin#Behaviour, etc.! Obviously they aren't exactly the same, nor should they be; but Human does follow the basic pattern and conventions of other species articles, and has done so for years—except in its lead image.

and then culture (which goes way beyond its sociological/anthropological definitions to discuss linguistics, philosophy, art, political science, and all sorts of other things)

Uh, I'm not sure what you mean, those are all analyzed in sociology, anthropology, etc.

If you're approaching the question of the image from the perspective of this being just another taxonomy-based species article

As I've said, I'm not approaching it from that perspective. I'm approaching it from the perspective that it's an unusual taxonomy-based species article, one including extensive coverage of culture for factual reasons (to conform to the consensus of human-researching experts, who agree that humans have complex culture along with agreeing that human females have vulvas :)).

History is generally considered part of the humanities, not the sciences, and I would argue that history itself is very much about how humans view themselves and their past. (moved up)

I might be inclined to agree with you, but that is a particular POV on an issue we need not seek to resolve or address on this particular article. Moreover, I should note that our particular #History section happens to be more about natural history (or the usage of 'history' in history of life and history of the Earth) than about written history per se, since our first two sections ('Origin' and 'Paleolithic'), and parts of the third section, are concerned with human evolution and 'prehistoric' events.

The 'essence' of humanity[edit]

humanness.

"Humanness" is not discussed in any of our sources for the article, as far as I can tell, so covering this topic here is a violation of WP:NPOV and WP:V, as it would represent our editorial opinion that the various verified, sourced facts about human beings are also part of an essentialist conception of 'humanness'. In reality, we have a totally separate article about 'humanness' — it's called human nature. If that's the article you thought you were editing, you might want to check it out; it's a fascinating topic, although not the primary topic of Human. (Otherwise our first sentence would talk say stuff like "Being human is considered the experience of..." rather than stuff like "Humans are bipedal primates in the species Homo sapiens which...", etc.).

I'm sorry, but I think that "human" means a hell of a lot more than just the way people look when photographed

As do I. But this article is not about the deeper meaning or essence or true nature of humanity. That is not a verifiable topic in this context. It is simply about humans, which means that an appropriate image is an image of a human; images in any case can only show appearances, not 'essences', so this is a false and unrealistic expectation. If human nature exists, it can exist only in the mind, not in any image.

What is the essence of humanity with all its flaws?

This article is not about the essence of humanity. The fact that you even think we, as Wikipedia editors, should be asking the question "What is the essence of humanity with all its flaws?" as part of our criterion for selecting an image, should demonstrate to you how hugely this futile quest deviates from WP:NPOV. It is not for editors to decide which image captures "the essence of humanity"; but it is quite simple, and easy, and our editorial duty to select an image which conforms to the consensus of experts about what an example of a human being looks like. That is all that is demanded of us by Wikipedia standards; the rest is politicking of various sorts, some important and some unimportant.

Is it better captured by an anatomically-correct rendering or a flawed etching?

Editorial symbolism violates WP:NPOV. This article is not human nature.

I'm not arguing that the answer is the latter, but I don't necessarily think it's the former, either!

I'm not arguing for either answer, because I don't think it's an applicable question we editors have to weigh in on for this article; even attempting to answer it (or to in any way address it) with our lead image would be a violation of WP:NPOV. The only question we are obliged to ask in selecting a lead image for Human is: "Does this image accurately depict a human?" That is the same question we ask for every other article, and making an exception here is not only unnecessary, it opens the gates to an endless, irresolvable controversy on a fool's errand of trying to visually capture the fundamentally invisible.

'How humans depict humans'[edit]

True enough, but neither is it a meta article about how naked women look from the front. (moved down)

This is a somewhat absurd response, and seems to misunderstand what I meant by 'meta'. (An article about how naked women look from the front would not be 'meta' in the way we were discussing; an article about how naked women think they look from the front would be.) I could just as easily have said 'this isn't a meta article about how naked women don't look from the front' to criticize the image, but that would be just as absurd as your rebuttal. The reason we should not misportray the vulva in our lead image is not because this article is about the vulva, but because it's about human beings, who reliable sources agree have vulvas when female.

Try Body image. Like Human biology, it's already there.

Well, body image is a little more specific than what I had in mind, since it's only about how humans view their bodies. (And I have already pointed out that human biology is in no way what we were discussing earlier.) But I'm glad that you now seem to agree with me that 'how humans view themselves' is a distinct topic from 'human', even if the former is one of the (hundreds or thousands) of non-primary topics potentially relevant to Human.

The inconvenient (but verifiable) truth is that we see ourselves in myriad ways through innumerable lenses

Inconvenient, verifiable, and not centrally relevant, since this article is not called "How humans see themselves". An article has only one 'basis', as I understand the term, that being its subject matter — in our case, that subject matter is a species called Homo sapiens, the human. That species happens to be remarkable for a very, very large number of reasons — and one of the reasons it is remarkable is because it has so many diverse ways of seeing and understanding itself. But other ways it is remarkable include the fact that it has a large prefrontal cortex, keeps pets, and has a extraordinarily lengthy childhood. The list is very long, and picking out one particular thing, "How humans see themselves", as the big focus of the article (so much so that it outweighs anatomical accuracy, and thus the entire fields of biology and anthropology, in importance), is not NPOV.

Conclusion[edit]

we should not limit ourselves to science

Agreed 100%. As the person who wrote our "History" section, and someone who has contributed almost exclusively to non-science articles, I could not agree more. But that it no way excuses favoring scientific inaccuracies over the consensus of the scientific community. There are plenty of images that are culturally accurate and hard-scientifically accurate; why choose an image that is neither, just for the irrelevant 'meta' reason that it's a famous depiction of humans (which would only be a relevant argument if this article was only about famous depictions of humans).

Nor should we insist upon presenting "the ideal"

Agreed 100%. (And the Pioneer plaque is an idealization, obviously.)

or even "the precisely physically accurate"

Nope. You miss the boat here. 'Physically inaccurate' in this context is another way of saying 'deviating from the consensus views of all reliable sources in the biological sciences', which violates our policies on citing sources, verifiability, and due weight in NPOV; on an article that's even partly biological, that isn't acceptable, because it denigrates the importance of biology and other sciences rather than maintaining neutrality between the fields.

when there is so much flawed about our species

"Flawed" and "inaccurate" are two very different things. An accurate depiction of a flawed human is acceptable (and, indeed, mandated, since no human is flawless); an inaccurate depiction of a flawed human, or an inaccurate depiction of a flawless human, are both unacceptable, because favoring biological inaccuracies on a biological (or part-biological) article violates Wikipedia policy.

Better to acknowledge the flaws, I'd say (or, perhaps more accurately, show the flaws and let the reader decide whether to acknowledge them as flaws).

I agree. That's why we need to use a photograph, rather than a cleaned-up, idealized drawing. A photograph means no one in the world has to choose which "flaws" to include or not include, which are important or unimportant, since they're already there in the real world.

the matter of controversy

I think I'll post something about this to Talk:Human, since it seems to be the only objection to changing the image that isn't just based on a misunderstanding of the role of lead images and WP:NPOV. Fear of the unknown is a very primal human emotion, and certainly something I am not immune to. Unfortunately, the only choices available are to step to some degree into unknown territory, or to have Wikipedia officially endorse a misogynistic cultural taboo (which is a real "image problem" of substance we are failing on, not just an issue of Political Correctness). Fortunately, once we have made that first step, we may find the process much less difficult than we'd first imagined; we really won't know until we've tried, and policy requires that we do try.

Another point of contention about a replacement image is the question of clothed or unclothed.

We should include both in the article. Clothed images show that humans have culture, and dress themselves in it; unclothed images like the plaque show human anatomy. I don't care that much which we use for the lead image, but my recomendation is to use a clothed image at the top of the article (which should appeal to you as a compromise between the 'biology' and 'social' sides of this article), and an accurate anatomical illustration of what males and females look like nude in Human#Biology. I think this is the best compromise, both for our readers' education and for avoiding substantive controversies. No option, including the plaque, can "satisfy everyone" — but then, it is not an encyclopedia's job to satisfy everyone. -Silence (talk) 19:49, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response to a response[edit]

I want to respond to several of the things you said, then ask you a couple of questions.

But why should it matter who made the image? Imagine, if you will, an editor on our Woman article who objects to a nude image showing the vulva. That editor searches for a free-use nude image that deliberately censors the vulva, and finds one that was created by a non-Wikipedian. He then replaces the image on Woman with the erased-vulva image, and when other editors complain about the censorship, he says: "It's not censorship, because Wikipedia didn't create the image."

Not comparable. To answer your question, it doesn't matter unless you care about intent. If the Pioneer image had been chosen for Human (or any article) because it's censored, then that would be de facto censorship by Wikipedia. Because it was chosen for other reasons, by using it we are not engaging in censorship. Arguably, it constitutes bad judgment on our part, but it does not constitute censorship on our part. I happen to think that's an extremely important distinction. Censorship is something I happen to care deeply about, but sometimes the word is bandied about a bit too casually, imo, and that tends to weaken its effect.

What's the difference [between censoring and perpetuating censorship]? How can you be anti-censorship, but pro-'censorship perpetuation'?

Of course one can't, but your question appears to be based on the false premise that someone involved in the larger discussion over the image is "pro-censorship perpetuation". It's the matter of intent again: everything else being equal, no responsible WP editor wants to use a censored image—but everything else is not equal. Every potential image has its pros and cons. You and Martin and various others over the years have argued passionately (some would say interminably) that the matter of the missing vulva is a major enough con to disqualify the Pioneer image. Fine; that's a valid argument, and in some ways a compelling one. But implying that any of the editors who have argued passionately (albeit with more brevity) for keeping the image are in favor of perpetuating censorship is really a stretch. Some of us like other aspects of the image. Some of us acknowledge the anatomy problem but don't see it as a deal-breaker. It's a legitimate difference of opinion, in other words, and really isn't indicative of that anyone has censorship-perpetuation-loving tendencies, okay?

They're the most relevant fields to the article, because the article is about humans in general, and those fields are the most general fields simply studying 'humans.'

I'll quibble a little with your last clause long enough to give a shout-out to psychology, but I actually sort of accept your premise. If they're not the most relevant fields to the article, at least they're the most basic fields. And that is a point in favor of changing the image.

I'm honestly a little surprised you haven't yet suggested we use a stick figure if you think the job of the lead image is solely to symbolically "represent mankind" rather than depict a real human or provide accurate visual information.

Ha! I did think of it. Then I thought better of it.

*Equivocation; I took the time to say "biology of humans" rather than "human biology" because the two possibly articles have nothing in common;

(Face-palm) I apparently didn't follow the link. There damn well ought to be a Biology of humans article. I don't think I quite approve of Human being the "top-level article on the biology of humans". We may be animals, but we're the only animals capable of creating encyclopedia articles, and our article on ourselves shouldn't necessarily follow the herd.

Citing a page [Body shape] with only 3 terse talk-page comments is hardly the strongest way to show community short for the plaque.

What's "community short"? Community shorts I could imagine—a collective project wherein Wikipedians knit summerwear to veil the anatomically incorrect loins of the Pioneer plaque woman! :-p

The fact that you even think we, as Wikipedia editors, should be asking the question "What is the essence of humanity with all its flaws?" as part of our criterion for selecting an image, should demonstrate to you how hugely this futile quest deviates from WP:NPOV.

Oh, please. As a matter of fact, I think that if more Wikipedia editors asked questions like that, we'd have a better encyclopedia for it. Asking impractical, probably unanswerable questions, challenging assumptions, taking issue with cookie-cutter consistency between articles, even occasionally musing about standard interpretations of WP policies—these are not only legitimate things for editors to do but conceivably could save us from having a boring encyclopedia that in a few decades or so might as well be edited by bots. (To be fair, that wouldn't be all bad. Just think—no more vandalism or edit wars, just software glitches and worm-generated linkspam. AN/I and all the other noticeboards could be eliminated!) My point, which I guess I didn't make very well, was simply that we humans are fucked up enough that in some ways it could be seen as fitting for us to have a fucked-up picture headlining our article. It wasn't the main thrust of my argument, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Imperfect species creates imperfect image of itself to drift out of the solar system . . . and it's reproduced faithfully on said imperfect species' online encyclopedia (that any imperfect human can edit). There's a certain allure to it, I can't help thinking. Then again, we periodically undergo sustained efforts to minimize our imperfections, so there's also some appeal to using a deliberately less-imperfect image.

Two things I'm wondering about. The first is just out of curiosity. The image has been up for years, yet you recently described the problem as "urgent". Why now? To your recollection, is this the first RFC? Have you filed one in the past or started a discussion somewhere other than article talk (e.g., NPOV noticeboard) to bring wider attention to something you allege violates one of the Five Pillars? If not, why not?

I'd also like to know what you meant when you said (at Talk:Human) that we should "try [your emphasis] another option . . . for a more sustained period". Please define "sustained period" and explain what you mean by "try". I am especially interested to know what you think would constitute success or failure of such a trial, and what option(s) would be acceptable to you if even you deemed it a failure.

I should tell you that I found one aspect of your argument particularly persuasive, but I want to read your response to the preceding two paragraphs before I talk about that with you. (Don't feel obliged to respond to all of the rest. I've enjoyed the discussion but my time is limited and we could go back and forth on many of these points ad nauseam. Cordially agreeing to disagree is fine with me.) Rivertorch (talk) 08:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Since your time is limited, feel free to pick and choose which arguments to read and/or respond to.

To answer your question, it doesn't matter unless you care about intent.

Ah, but here you are modifying whose intent matters. Previously, you implied that the only one whose intentions matter is the image's creator, not the person who merely placed the image in an article — and if the creator isn't a Wikipedian, it's cool to use the image however we want, since then it's not our fault regardless of the image's contents.
Yet now you are apparently saying that the intent of the person placing the image in the article is what matters. So now you agree with me: It is possible for an image created by a non-Wikipedian to be used by a Wikipedian to censor a topic on Wikipedia. That's all my example was intended to show, and if you agree on this principle (that an image can be used censorially by Wikipedia even if no Wikipedian created it), the example has succeeded.
Now, having established that, I only need make two more points: First, no viewer of a Wikipedia article sees "intent". Viewers only see the effect of an article's content, and if the effect is censorial, the state of mind of some editor — who may not have even been active on Wikipedia for half a decade! — who originally added the image is completely irrelevant. Wikipedia never defends any aspect of its content on the grounds of a particular editor's pure heart and mind — if there's a problem, it fixes the problem, pure-intentions be damned! Secondly, over time any such image on Wikipedia will be handled by dozens of editors — and how are we to gauge the "state of mind" of all of them? Suppose 10 editors want a vulva-censored image used on Woman — but 5 want it because they want to censor an obscene organ, while the other 5 want it for non-censorial reasons. Whose vote counts in the question "If we use it, is it censorship"? If the image ends up being kept in the article, do the 5 pro-censorship editors make it censorial, or do the 5 supporters who don't care about censorship make it non-censorial? Or is the image "half-censored" somehow? :)
I think it is silly to even attempt such calculations, and it is not always possible to tell an editor's intent—plus it's bad form, being an infringement of assuming good faith, to infer bad motives on the part of editors who might seem to be deliberately censoring, but claims to be acting with purity of heart and a clean conscience. Really, intent simply shouldn't ever be what's debated when an image like the hypothetical one I noted is employed, because we are not trained psychoanalysts, and because the collaborative nature of Wikipedia means that no one editor's contribution stays just that one editor's responsibility — effect should be what we evaluate. (Hence, if the editor who put the censored pic on Woman never made any Talk page posts, so his intent couldn't be determined, the proper and relevant discussion would be: "Is this image having the effect of censoring facts relevant to this article?", not "Did the obscure editor who first put up this image years ago intend, at the time, for this image to censor anything?" If the effect of a certain usage of a given image is censorial, that's all that matters for WP:NOT; the policy makes no invocation whatsoever of "intent", which might exonerate a particular user, but cannot exonerate Wikipedia as a whole, which has users running the gamut of every possible "intent".

Censorship is something I happen to care deeply about, but sometimes the word is bandied about a bit too casually, imo, and that tends to weaken its effect.

I agree entirely. Fortunately, this does not seem to be one of those cases, since this is one of the most clear-cut cases of self-censorship I've ever seen in my life—Sagan is even kind of enough to invoke the terms "puritanical" and "Victorian" to concede the moralistic dimension of the decision to excise the vulva. :) Most instances of obvious censorships don't make that extra effort of obviousness. And even you admit that we are at the very least perpetuating censorship, regardless of the degree of our own guilt. (Which I don't particularly care about myself, since I'm not here to point a finger of blame at anyone; I'm only here to protect our readers from having verifiable and cited facts about human anatomy censored by Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is censored intentionally or inadvertantly. In other words, my purpose here is to improve the encyclopedia's educational value, not to condemn anyone to heresy for violating a Wikipedia policy; I honestly couldn't care less about who's to blame, if anyone.)

implying that any of the editors who have argued passionately (albeit with more brevity) for keeping the image are in favor of perpetuating censorship

It's not quite that simple. I'm not suggesting that some editors are in favor of perpetuating censorship, all else being equal; I'm arguing that some editors here have a skewed sense of priorities, which is causing them to favor non-Wikipedian policies (like "don't be controversial", "stick to the status quo", "establish consensus before ever making any change", "use abstract and symbolic imagery instead of literal portrayals", etc.) over actual Wikipedian policies (like "don't censor", "equal weight", "neutral point of view", etc.). In this case, that means considering (just for example) "don't cause controversy" to be a more important principle than "don't censor", which is completely backwards.
And in any case, the only reason I've spent so much time talking about censorship is because so many editors have gone to absurd lengths to deny that the image has anything to do with censorship, despite the explicit claims by reputable sources affirming that the vulva was removed partly on moralistic, "puritanical" grounds. The discussion of censorship has had nothing to do with allegations about the world-view of any of the plaque's defender (which I consider simply irrelevant); I already know most of the defenders of the image aren't pro-censorship in general, they're just being too dismissive of censorship in this case (probably in part because it isn't their primary sex characteristic being censored :P).

I'll quibble a little with your last clause long enough to give a shout-out to psychology

I'd agree with you if we didn't have a human mind article. Only human biology and anthropology can be said to have "human" as a whole as their field of study. That doesn't make other fields irrelevant, by any stretch of the imagination — but they're secondary, in the same way that physics is secondary on a chemistry article, or psychology on an economics article. But I digress, I'm glad we agree on the basic point.

Ha! I did think of it. Then I thought better of it.

:)

There damn well ought to be a Biology of humans article.

I agree, but I suppose it would mostly just be a fork of Human#Biology at this point. I think there used to be such an article, which was linked at the top of Human#Biology at some point; I'm not sure what happened to it.

What's "community short"?

Mea culpa, that was a typo for "community support". It's impossible to catch every error when you're writing a talk-page dissertation. ^_^

Asking impractical, probably unanswerable questions, challenging assumptions, taking issue with cookie-cutter consistency between articles, even occasionally musing about standard interpretations of WP policies—these are not only legitimate things for editors to do but conceivably could save us from having a boring encyclopedia that in a few decades or so might as well be edited by bots.

As a recreational activity, I agree. Being a lay-philosopher, I am quite fond myself of speculating about human nature and the sort. But I draw a hard, strict line between such speculation and our editorial duties, which should never involve original-research speculation, least of all on such complex and insoluble riddles — and I believe Wikipedia policy backs me up 100% on that matter. In any case, since any image we pick would be imperfect in some way, I see no need to maximize imperfection (thus decreasing the image's usefulness and encyclopedic quality) even if I do agree with you that human nature is fundamentally flawed. And, again, lead Wikipedia images are not meant to be symbols. (.. And, again, this article is not human nature. Among modern philosophers, you may or may not be aware that it's a matter of controversy whether humans even have a nature.)

The image has been up for years, yet you recently described the problem as "urgent". Why now?

I consider issues of serious POV and censorship to always be urgent; more to the point, I think it is urgent for Wikipedia to deal, before anything else, with any image that could be used to spread the same misogynistic taboos (which ascribe greater obscenity to female than to male genitalia) that likely went into its inception, being so deeply ingrained in our own particular culture. I consider it more urgent to deal with subtle, latent, non-obvious biases than to deal with blatant and explicit ones, because the former are so much more insidious and seductive. Any male-dominated collaborative project with the slightest standards of academic integrity should consider even accidental sexism in encyclopedic coverage to be an outright emergency.
I also consider it a bit of an ethical issue to familiarize male viewers to some slight degree with female anatomy — at least, when we bother to use nude images to depict the human form/human anatomy at all, which I don't even think is necessary at the top of Human — because of the natural human tendency to have greater negative emotional reactions to unfamiliar stimuli. Many of our readers come from cultures with strictly sexist and misogynistic traditions and taboos, and even if we don't combat such issues (which ruin very real, very human lives around the world) at every turn, we should not "perpetuate" them in an article that is about humanity in general, not just about censorship or traditionally patriarchal cultures.
So, that is where my bias comes into play. :) Fortunately, Wikipedia policy happens to align with my instinct on this issue, so I haven't needed to use my pro-human-life ideology to support any of my arguments; it's been more than enough just to cite the policies.

To your recollection, is this the first RFC?

On this subject, yes. The subject has been discussed relatively briefly many times, but never in very much detail, because it's always been cut short by the lack of an ideal image. I have considered several times bringing up this discussion elsewhere on Wikipedia, but I decided to leave that to other editors because I didn't want to give the appearance of "drumming up support" for my own cause. As for why I didn't bother to make the change before — in the past, it was because I felt the image was an adequate place-holder until we found "the perfect image". But over time I've realized that if you leave the status quo intact merely for being the status quo, it will fossilize and make future change next to impossible eventually. So I decided to try to change it sooner rather than later; even if the image we end up with isn't the one I'd prefer, at least it will be a different image, which will make future improvement vastly easier. (Also, I did try to get the image changed last year, but I had to take a short wiki-break, and when I came back Lulu had accidentally deleted the last 7 months of archives, and I didn't feel like spending the time to figure out where they'd gone.)

Please define "sustained period" and explain what you mean by "try".

My meaning was: "Even if you think the Pioneer plaque is unambiguously and obviously the best image for Human out of the available candidates, you should still support switching it for another image on a trial basis, just to see if the editorial response it generates results in a better image than any of the candidates thus far." In other words, the chance for improvement is next to nil if we don't even attempt to look for anything better, by recruiting this article's editing readership. That argument was just directed at people who didn't think that any of the alternative candidates were viable, though; I don't think there's much grounds for that, they may be imperfect, but several of them would suit the article just fine, even in the long term.

what you think would constitute success or failure of such a trial, and what option(s) would be acceptable to you if even you deemed it a failure

Failure would be if we ended up with an image that clearly violates Wikipedia policies (like the current one), or if editors couldn't even agree on any criteria for selecting an image, much less on a particular set of candidates. Any image consonant with Wikipedia policy I'd consider "acceptable" at this point, even if I found it aesthetically substandard — I would consider an extremely well-done collage to almost be acceptable, for example, though veeery far from ideal.
I don't want to be specific about the timeframe, because that will depend partly on just how quickly vs. how intermittently editors put forward ideas and suggestions about the lead image; if no one is interested in productive discussion or problem-solving, the process could take a very long time, whereas if there's a big boom in interest (other than re-hashing of the same arguments again, which is inevitable), we could have this wrapped up in only a few weeks. Most likely, it will be somewhere between the two. (A side-issue, and one incidental reason I'm trying to get this started right now, is that classes are starting up for me in three weeks, and I will have less free time available then. So hopefully we will have a new image already in place by that time, even if it's just a provisional one.) -Silence (talk) 12:36, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll respond to several things you wrote and then offer some conclusions:

Ah, but here you are modifying whose intent matters.

No, I'm not. Maybe we both misunderstood each other. At any rate, this is getting way too involved. Sometimes I have to remind myself: It's only Wikipedia.

no viewer of a Wikipedia article sees "intent". Viewers only see the effect of an article's content

Oh, I don't know. The unwashed masses are one thing, but I rather like to think that quite a few viewers* don't take article content at face value. When I read something—be it in a book, magazine, journal, encyclopedia or whatever—I tend to consider the author(s), editors, and the medium. Surely I'm not the only one who does that. Now I'm trying to imagine myself never having heard of the Pioneer plaque and arriving at the Human article for the first time. Assuming I'm human and not extraterrestrial, I will damn well already know what humans look like. In fact, I cannot begin to imagine not knowing at least the rudiments of male and female human anatomy. (The only way I wouldn't is if I'm very young, in which case the lead image of Human is going to be the least of my Web-surfing worries, or part of an extremely insular society, in which case ditto.) So what will I think? I'll think, Hmm . . . line drawing of man and woman. Maybe I'll read the caption, follow the link to Pioneer plaque, maybe not. But I'm not going to think, Gosh, women have no external sex organs. Neither will I think, Oh, good, they censored the woman. In other words, I won't be misled by the image and I won't have some weird hangup about depictions of nude women reinforced by the image. So what is the effect on me? Zilch (except possibly some vague, gut-reaction Cool, that image has left the solar system thoughts).

* Is that what we're calling them now? Viewers? That sounds so zombielike. TV has viewers. Encyclopedias have readers, or at least they should. Maybe, to be more inclusive of text, images, and audio content, we ought to call them users.

Only human biology and anthropology can be said to have "human" as a whole as their field of study. That doesn't make other fields irrelevant, by any stretch of the imagination — but they're secondary

I don't quite agree with you there. Maybe it depends on what you mean by "as a whole", but biology probably has less to say about the mind than psychology does about the body. Also, calling the other fields "secondary" makes sense only if you see this article as just another taxonomy-based species article. I don't think it is that; it is unique in ways that no other article could be unique. But we discussed that point before. Enough.

I think there used to be such an article [Biology of humans]

Huh. If you get the chance at some point, maybe you could poke around. If it got deleted for some reason, it would be worth knowing whether there was anything salvageable.

As a recreational activity, I agree. Being a lay-philosopher, I am quite fond myself of speculating about human nature and the sort. But I draw a hard, strict line between such speculation and our editorial duties, which should never involve original-research speculation, least of all on such complex and insoluble riddles — and I believe Wikipedia policy backs me up 100% on that matter.

You missed my point, I think. By suggesting we ask "impractical, probably unanswerable questions" such as "What is the essence of humanity with all its flaws", I wasn't suggesting letting that get in the way of editorial duties. I meant that such questions or musings are a valid starting point, and that if we eschew that abstract territory and skip directly to the nuts and bolts of content, then we risk missing the larger picture. I'm sure you've run across WP articles that are methodically structured, thorough in their coverage of the topic, scrupulously neutral, free of OR, amply sourced—and utterly dry and boring. Human doesn't particularly offend in that regard, although it perhaps could be a trifle more colorful in places. We're not machines writing about ourselves, we're animals who happen to be the only animals capable of writing about themselves. The larger context of this article is that it's the only article whose readers are all reading about themselves. Those are special circumstances which might just merit a bit of flexibility in applying certain policies. One might even entertain the thought that such an extraordinary article merits the application of that most exceptional of policies: IAR.

Many of our readers come from cultures with strictly sexist and misogynistic traditions and taboos, and even if we don't combat such issues (which ruin very real, very human lives around the world) at every turn, we should not "perpetuate" them in an article that is about humanity in general, not just about censorship or traditionally patriarchal cultures.

This is one of most compelling points you have made to date, imo, and I largely agree with you. The traditions and taboos you refer to are worthy of further consideration with regard to this image and this article, and I for one would be very interested in learning more about them. However, the perpetuation you describe could be ameliorated significantly in at least two ways: by (1) including an additional image, anatomically acurate, elsewhere in the article and (2) captioning the Pioneer image with wording that acknowledges its inaccuracy. Also, you've made the claim without making the case that perpetuating the traditions and taboos in this context is likely to contribute appreciably to the ruin of any human lives. And even if it did, might not the selection of a photographic image have a similar effect by omitting, instead of a body part, entire categories of humans? We could simply be trading in one form of damage for another.

I also consider it a bit of an ethical issue to familiarize male viewers to some slight degree with female anatomy.

Pardon my bluntness, but I consider that to be an utterly bogus argument. What male viewers are you thinking of? Human doesn't exist in a vacuum: anyone who can find it can find other articles with anatomically correct images. What clueless male who is looking to familiarize himself with female anatomy is going to seek out the Human article, anyway? Speaking of "throw[ing] everything against the wall and see[ing] what sticks"! If you're going to include an argument like this, then I'd suggest you need to illustrate it with a plausible scenario or two.

I have been wrestling with this issue for several weeks now, and I consider it the most difficult conundrum I've encountered to date at Wikipedia. You make a number of eloquent arguments for replacing the image. While I am especially impressed (and partially convinced) by two of them, I do not fully accept the respective premises on which they're based.

The first of those two arguments was that Human is primarily a biology article. If I agreed with you there, I'd say the Pioneer plaque was clearly inappropriate for the lede image. As it happens, I don't agree (and probably cannot be persuaded), although after much reflection I have concluded that biology is, and certainly should remain, one of the main thrusts of the article. (This was where I sidled up to the fence you supposed I was straddling.)

The second argument is that Wikipedia could do potential damage to living humans by perpetuating the deliberate omission of the plaque creators. I have responded to that in some detail five paragraphs up, and while I think it's a highly questionable argument, it's also intriguing and troubling enough to merit further thought. (That is not an invitation to send a tsunami of words my way. Please distill.) I still am not straddling the fence, precisely, but I am leaning over it and gazing at the grass on the other side.

Frankly, your approach of employing such a large number of intricately detailed arguments isn't helping your case, I think. Picking out what you think are the two or three most important arguments and then summarizing them very succinctly would probably be more effective, whereas I'd imagine that quite a few people are put off by the sheer volume of what you have to say. My guess is that a number of editors coming to the talk page through RFC channels have seen all that text and decided they really don't want to comb through it in search of enlightenment. Speaking only for myself, you have given me so much to think about that it has been difficult for me even to determine what the pivotal questions are, let alone to focus on them to the exclusion of the myriad details in the periphery. While I've enjoyed our lengthy discussion, it has taken me longer to arrive at any meaningful conclusions than it would have if brevity had been the watchword. It's your style to be wordy**, and that's fine, but it isn't serving your purpose very effectively in this instance.

**If you hadn't noticed I occasionally suffer from the same malady, the evidence is before you now.

The reason that I offer this (unsolicited) advice is that I have decided to drop my opposition to doing a trial run of a different image. I want to emphasize that my definition of a trial run is markedly different from yours. To me, in this context, try means to give it a fair shot and see what happens, with the option of returning to the status quo ante if it doesn't work out. In my opinion, failure would include either of the following: multiple instances of edit warring involving established editors (this would include wheel warring) or a clear majority of established editors indicating their disapproval on the talk page of the replacement image. (I would argue that such a failure shouldn't shut the door on it permanently, btw. History is full of examples of worthwhile changes that came about after innumerable attempts.)

For the record, let me stress that I do not favor changing the image; I simply no longer oppose trying a different one. I appreciate your sustained civility, and I hope you can accept that those of us who don't see this quite as you do are not only entitled to our opinions but also to our own interpretations of WP policies. Over the next few days, I will try to summarize my thinking and post something along these lines at Talk:Human. Rivertorch (talk) 09:01, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wrap-up section-break[edit]

You're quite right to say that I should be less long-winded; if I were a savvier debater and rhetorician, I'd certainly be more concise. We are, after all, creatures of emotion, and long, involved arguments often have much less effect than snappy phrasings! :) Indeed, the desire to summarize my arguments is exactly the reason I made Talk:Human/Image back in '07 (and expanded it in '08), so I could just direct people to all the relevant points there. But the work I and others put into that page (including the policies I cited) has been repeatedly dismissed as 'just one editor's opinion', so I've been forced to make new arguments.

I'll try to keep your good advice in mind; my new attempt at conciseness will, I think, be Talk:Human/FAQdraft; if you see any major points missing there, or note any excess verbosity, feel free to comment on or revise it! :) Since it sounds like we basically agree (or at least agree to disagree) on all the major points here, feel free to pick and choose which, if any, of my below comments you wish to read and respond to. And thanks for all the food for thought!

I rather like to think that quite a few viewers* don't take article content at face value.

Perhaps so, but the face value and subtext are both parts of the "effect". To clarify: The apparent intention (what it seems to readers like Wikipedia intends) is part of your effect, but the intention you actually have is not. So a completely non-racist, non-sexist editor can still make edits that are utterly racist or sexist, entirely by accident. The state of mind of the editor is immaterial and irrelevant, because average viewers will perceive a given edit the same way whether it was originally made by Hitler or by Gandhi.

I cannot begin to imagine not knowing at least the rudiments of male and female human anatomy.

If by "the rudiments", you mean stuff like "they have five fingers per hand, two eyes, etc.", then I agree. But if by "the rudiments" you mean "the exact appearance of the vulva, pubic hair, etc.", then you'd be surprised. Not all human beings in the world are required to take sex education classes — and even the minority of humans privileged enough to live in a country where such courses are required, are not all old enough to have already become so familiarized.

But I'm not going to think, Gosh, women have no external sex organs. Neither will I think, Oh, good, they censored the woman.'

Nor did I ever suggest that you would. Most 'thoughts' people have are not conscious, nor are they formatted as sentences or propositions. Rather, they take the form of vague feelings and habits of perception-response. No one will think the exact sentence "Gosh, women have no external sex organs", but the fairly young and the fairly insular (who are not such rarae aves in terris as you might think) will be left at least as ignorant as they were before visiting the page, if not more ignorant — and that is the opposite of Wikipedia's job, reinforcing or preserving even subtle lacunae of knowledge. Nor will anyone think "Oh, good, they censored the woman", but many of them will have a slightly more positive emotional reaction to the image than they would have had if the vulva were visible — taboo information is not consciously reinforced by members of a society; it is reinforced without any conscious effort on the individual's part, simply by people being satisfied and content with censorship of the taboo, and being at least slightly averse, on the level of emotion, to visual depictions of the taboo object. For members of societies with such a taboo, every incidence of a nude woman with the vulva erased reinforces the taboo, and every incidence of one with the vulva uncensored violates the taboo, if only unconsciously.
What makes this a clear-cut matter for Wikipedia is the fact that we have no policy suggesting that we prioritize taboo-adherence over accurate informational content. Whether we subjectively consider the issue in question major or minor is beside the point — and determining how 'major' it is is a needless violation of NPOV in any case. What could be more POVed than justifying the censorship of a primary female sex characteristic on the grounds that it's not anatomically important? Such justifications merely dig the hole deeper (especially when we're simultaneously implicitly saying that the primary sex characteristics of the male are crucially important). Why is it Wikipedia's job to weigh in on its importance to begin with?

Is that what we're calling them now? Viewers? That sounds so zombielike.

Shruggeth. Since we're discussing a picture, not text, it seemed appropriate. And 'user' suggests 'editor', to me.

thorough in their coverage of the topic, scrupulously neutral, free of OR, amply sourced—and utterly dry and boring.'

In general, I agree 100%. And once the plaque issue is moving, I plan to put a lot of effort into trying to spruce up the rest of the article. However, I'd make one point: When an editorial decision is particularly controversial and emotionally laden, sometimes a relatively "dry and boring" choice is the very best one, simply because it is least likely to confuse and confound readers or editors. But obviously we can't go too far down that road, and a better way to get at what I'm suggesting is that a straightforward feature is sometimes a better approach than getting too 'fancy'.
(Also, in this case IAR fortunately doesn't apply, because improving the encyclopedia and following the rules converge on one solution with regard to the plaque.)

(1) including an additional image, anatomically acurate, elsewhere in the article and (2) captioning the Pioneer image with wording that acknowledges its inaccuracy.

Both of those options would be improvements I'd support. But the elegant/concise utility of just replacing the plaque with an accurate anatomy photo (either directly, by putting it in the lead, or indirectly, by putting it under 'Biology' and finding a brand-new photo for the lead) kills two birds with one stone. Trying to compensate for the plaque's censorship raises the risk of clutter or overcompensation, and is more likely to continuously lead to editorial debates in the long run than simply replacing it.

even if it did, might not the selection of a photographic image have a similar effect by omitting, instead of a body part, entire categories of humans?

Any image which is clearly intended to symbolize humanity will inevitably have that effect. The current plaque both omits body parts and omits entire categories of humans — just look at how many times people have complained about the "caucasian" appearance of the image. So at the very least a photo replacement would eliminate one of the two current problems. But in all honestly I don't really see how showing people a picture of an Akha tribesman could perpetuate any avoidable oppressive social structures. (And if nothing else, it avoids the appearance/effect of bias as much as any image could, since I don't think many people will infer from the image that Wikipedia is run by an Akha cabal. :) A cabal biased toward America and the West, on the other hand... Hmm..)

Human doesn't exist in a vacuum: anyone who can find it can find other articles with anatomically correct images.

First of all, most people who don't already know about female anatomy wouldn't know where to start looking; the 'very young' and 'very insular' you mentioned are the least likely people to know terms like vulva. However, that isn't really what I had in mind, since there are plenty of other ways they could quickly find that information. Instead, the reason I consider this a real issue, at least for some of our readership, is because from what I've seen most Wikipedia visitors are not Wikipedia addicts like us. :) They're random people who might have just done a google search and clicked on the first page they saw. Most of them only visit 1 or 2 articles on Wikipedia, before closing out; some, obviously, play the fun game of '6 degrees of Wikilinks', but I'd be quite surprised if a supermajority did. (Besides which, as a matter of policy, every article is ideally supposed to be able to stand alone; other articles should be supplements at best.)

The first of those two arguments was that Human is primarily a biology article.

I don't want to get into a tangent here, but I'd note that one interesting perspective on the relationship between biology and culture is that culture is a biological subject — one could consider 'psychology', 'sociology', etc. to be subfields of biology (analogous to ethology) in the sense that only biological entities can be studied by such means, and only as a consequence of biological features they possess (e.g., a large brain). However, I would not make that argument myself here, since I don't think it's the common understanding of the relationship between biology and the social sciences.
Besides which, I don't think it actually matters whether Human is 'mostly biology' or 'mostly sociology' or what-have-you; even if Human were only 25% biological, we should still pick an image like Akha which reflects human biology and culture, and not just pick an image that totally disregards human biology. (Or, much worse, misrepresents it.)

give it a fair shot and see what happens, with the option of returning to the status quo ante if it doesn't work out.

Barring a truly apocalyptic catastrophe, I don't think this is a valid option. No matter how much blowback an alternative image receives, it won't change Wikipedia's censorship policies. If it turns out after the switch that the Akha image violates policy in some unforeseen way (or possibly if it's just viciously controversial, for at least one substantive reason), I have two recommendations: Either (1) switch to a second, backup alternative (perhaps a photo, perhaps an anatomy drawing?), or (2) simply remove the image and make our taxobox image-free for a bit. Obviously 2 would be a temporary measure, but it might settle down tensions temporarily if we need to take some time to discuss new arguments or options. And I slightly like the idea of 2 (even though I prefer 1, or reverting to the Akha image as the first proposed alternative which doesn't violate any policies) because it doesn't give the illusion that the issue is 'settled', and thus encourages productive debate.
I don't have any particular attachment to any image, but I do think that we should treat the plaque on a level playing field with other image candidates, and not privilege it merely because it happens to have been on the article in the past.

In any case, I greatly appreciate your comments and your willingness to compromise, despite my failures to be clear or concise at various points. Although we don't see 100% eye-to-eye, I consider that an advantage — anyone who agrees too much with me can't be of much help when I get things wrong. :) I hope your voice of moderation will be of help when we give the switch-over a try, and I hope we can work together on more important matters of improving the article's contents in the future. -Silence (talk) 17:56, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I hope so, too. I was going to post something at Talk:Human tonight, but you've given me sufficient new food for thought that I may hold it another day. A few brief comments on the above:

. . . you'd be surprised. Not all human beings in the world are required to take sex education classes

I would be more than surprised; I'd be flabbergasted. I would suggest that very few human beings learn the basics of gender-specific external anatomy from sex ed classes. I would further suggest that anyone with Web access can easily find information on those basics, either here at Wikipedia or at a plethora of other sites (educational and otherwise).

the fairly young and the fairly insular (who are not such rarae aves in terris as you might think) will be left at least as ignorant as they were before visiting the page, if not more ignorant

We can disagree over the incidence of such ignorance among Internet users, and I suspect that neither of us has any data to support his argument. (And that is not a challenge, btw!) I will concede that it's conceivable there are a number of individuals who are totally ignorant of anatomy and come to Human and go away misinformed (much as they would go away misinformed after visiting certain museums or art galleries). Although I don't see it as a probable occurrence, it is a theoretical occurrence—and so it is best avoided. Point three in favor of your argument, even if I had to make it myself! :)

Also, in this case IAR fortunately doesn't apply, because improving the encyclopedia and following the rules converge on one solution with regard to the plaque

In your opinion, they converge. And you may well be right. But every Wikipedia policy, including IAR, is open to a certain amount of interpretation. For instance, if the Pandora's box you're preparing to open proves so contentious and distracting that a sizable number of editors wind up angry at one another and ignoring other articles, will the net effect be to improve the encyclopedia? This is one reason why I strongly suggest an escape clause, i.e., returning to the plaque pic if the trial run if Akha or whatever proves disastrous in that regard. In the end, consensus should rule, and if consensus cannot be reached, the default probably should be a return to the stable version.

Trying to compensate for the plaque's censorship raises the risk of clutter or overcompensation, and is more likely to continuously lead to editorial debates in the long run than simply replacing it

The risk of clutter is real but not terribly important. The risk of overcompensation seems nil if the anatomical inaccuracy that so upsets you is critically important in the first place. As for editorial debates, I'll defer to your judgment on that—you've been around here longer than I have—but I find it hard to believe believe that such debates would be more frequent or more contentious than ones surrounding a photo image.

Any image which is clearly intended to symbolize humanity will inevitably have that effect [potentially causing damage to living human beings]

We're back at intent vs. effect again. Clearly to whom? You talked about the "average" viewer. If there is such an animal, he or she doesn't read FAQs and won't see intent, only effect.

one could consider 'psychology', 'sociology', etc. to be subfields of biology (analogous to ethology) in the sense that only biological entities can be studied by such means, and only as a consequence of biological features they possess (e.g., a large brain)

It's not quite a chicken-or-egg question, since the natural sciences predated the behavorial and social sciences, but one could alternatively suggest that every science (even physics and chemistry) might as well be subfields of psychology because everything from empirical observations to hypotheses to the whole notion behind the scientific method is a function of the mind. I am not really suggesting that—it's a bit far-fetched—but I do think it highlights a problem of logic that rears its head when one tries to designate one field of study more basic or sweeping than another. But this may be getting beyond the scope even of user space. Email me sometime when we don't have an article to fix or ruin.

Either (1) switch to a second, backup alternative (perhaps a photo, perhaps an anatomy drawing?), or (2) simply remove the image and make our taxobox image-free for a bit. Obviously 2 would be a temporary measure . . .

(1) It's doubtful that any one photo would be less contentious than another. An anatomy drawing might work, but I personally find it problematic. Modern, clinical-type drawings are just so lifeless and reductionistic. I had given some thought to something like this, which has the advantage of being famous and detailed, but I'm not aware of anything comparable depicting a woman. (2) is probably a more viable option. It makes for a gray screen, but I suspect that a crime of omission would be less problematic than one of commission. If a photo trial fails, I'd still prefer to revert to Pioneer, but I wouldn't have a major problem with no image at all. Incidentally, no image at all might be the least controversial way to get the Pioneer image off the page. I'll probably say something about that at article talk.

Two more quick questions. First, you have talked a lot about taboos and traditions but you haven't clearly established how what happened with the Pioneer plaque fits into all that. Can you, without resorting to synthesis (in the WP sense), demonstrate the connection? (Not for me but for everyone and for the record.) Second, I like your suggestion for an FAQ very much and think the draft as of now is an excellent start. How do you want to handle proposed changes? Since there is no associated talk page—it's in talk space already—I don't know whether to strikethru or just edit it or start a discussion at the bottom of the page or what. Rivertorch (talk) 06:21, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

after visiting certain museums or art galleries

A good counter-example. One of several relevant differences: An art gallery's job is not to educate visitors about biology and other physical, sociological, etc. disciplines. (In the same way, an encyclopedia's job is not to display pretty pictures, except insofar as doing so serves educational purposes.) It is Wikipedia's job to inform readers about such matters, whereas an art gallery could care less. I'm sure people have left ice cream stores spectacularly uneducated regarding human anatomy too; but you can't blame ice cream stores for that. You can blame encyclopedias.

But every Wikipedia policy, including IAR, is open to a certain amount of interpretation.

I accept that. But only within reason. Just as editors are free to interpret to policy however they wish, other editors are free to criticize their fellow contributors' interpretations, if those interpretations deviate from the norm without strong reasons to back up the variant view. The upshot of this is that all editors are fallible, but discussion is how we know when one editor's interpretation or another's is mistaken in a given context.
Despite this, not a single editor in the entire history of the Human article seems to have even once actually explicitly explained or defended an interpretation of policy which would permit the use of the Pioneer plaque as our primary depiction of a human. At most, pro-plaque editors have dismissed policy interpretations without explaining what is wrong with those other interpretations, or in some cases have put forward bizarre and unusual interpretations of policy without justifying this novel interpretation. I fully accept that many users disagree about exactly how to interpret and implement policy; but that in no way renders adhering to policy any less crucial. It just means that policy itself is subordinate to common sense and reasoning; if someone can put forward an extraordinarily, astoundingly, relevantly powerful argument for suspending a policy, then suspend it we shall. But suspending multiple policies simultaneously, without any apparent justification or reasoning to back up that suspension, just won't do. I accept that many will disagree with removing the plaque image, but their opinions only matter for consensus-building to the extent that they can reasonably defend them — including defending interpretations. (You'll notice that I have defended my own interpretations numerous times, e.g., by citing specific, clear-cut quotations straight out of policy pages.)

if the Pandora's box you're preparing to open proves so contentious and distracting that a sizable number of editors wind up angry at one another and ignoring other articles, will the net effect be to improve the encyclopedia

One could make the same argument against any other occasion when Wikipedia has adhered to non-censorship. I imagine we lost many dozens and dozens of editors, for good, as a result of refusing to censor Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. That does not change Wikipedia policy. I would hope that the effect of switching away from the image will be a net increase in productive editing, but you should not forget: Editors are here to benefit Wikipedia's content. Wikipedia's content is not here to benefit editors. The community exists for the encyclopedia's sake, not the other way around.

the default probably should be a return to the stable version

If the 'stable' version did not directly violate Wikipedia policy on numerous fronts, then I would strongly agree. But unfortunately, it does. Until an "interpretation" is substantively defended (e.g., with policy-page quotes and point-by-point explanations of how the plaque evades Wikipedia's proscriptions) which demonstrates that the plaque doesn't violate policy (as opposed to merely asserting that it does not violate policy, without providing a basis for this claim), it's just not a realistic option.

Clearly to whom?

To the vast majority of (perhaps even all) readers. No one has provided any way the image could harm anyone, so I don't see the point of such speculation. If a user comes to Human expecting the lead image to be a magical symbol representing every possible variation of the human experience, human nature, human culture, or what-have-you, then that user is most benefited by having his expectations shattered here, rather than letting that user continue to visit other articles with that same NPOV-violating misconception. Consistently following Wikipedia policy is the best way to familiarize users with that policy. (This holds true both for regular editors and for people who only visit the site once every few weeks, on a whim of a Google search.) The only thing we have to fear is arbitrary inconsistency in policy adherence.

everything from empirical observations to hypotheses to the whole notion behind the scientific method is a function of the mind

This suggests that the study of every scientific field's activities (cf., sociology of science) is a subfield of psychology. It doesn't suggest that the subject matter of every scientific field is a subfield of psychology, because what is being studied (e.g., stellar evolution) does not depend upon psychology, even though the act of studying does. In contrast, the subject matter of psychology does seem to be contingent upon (if not outright subordinate to) the subject matter of biology.

Modern, clinical-type drawings are just so lifeless and reductionistic.

Reductionism is the breakdown of a complex system into smaller parts. An anatomy drawing (especially one lacking labels of the body parts) is only reductive in the weakest possible sense; a substantially reductionistic program would instead show an image of, say, human DNA or a human cell. Besides, the idea that anatomy drawings are cold or 'lifeless' is a POV, and Wikipedia cannot endorse it through any action. However, I do not support using an anatomy drawing in the lead (though it would be preferable to the plaque). It has nothing to do with the subjective 'lifelessness' of the image; anatomy drawings (much like the plaque) just aren't as visually rich as most photographs, when the relevant subject matter includes human technology/culture in addition to human biology.

which has the advantage of being famous

No famous drawings. Fame is only an advantage if the article is about the image. Otherwise, it's a distraction. (Imagine if we put an image of the Mona Lisa or a photo of George W. Bush at the top of our Mammal article!!) Also, Vitruvian Man is a deliberately inaccurate sketch meant to show human limb proportions, not what humans actually look like.

no image at all might be the least controversial way to get the Pioneer image off the page

I would think that most editors would just revert such a change, if no replacement were provided. I certainly would be inclined to revert such information removal, if I wasn't aware of the full background of the image's problems. Plus removal makes it impossible for users to see, respond to, discuss, criticize, etc. any alternative images to the plaque. Using no image in the taxobox should be a last resort, since taxoboxes are designed for image inclusion.

Can you, without resorting to synthesis (in the WP sense), demonstrate the connection?

Some degree of synthesis is necessary for relating any two distinct ideas, even when one is a logical consequence of the other. However, I can point out the connection without making substantial original research in the Wikipedian sense. Sagan makes the point for me. He says that a reason the female sex-organ was removed was because of deference to possible "puritanical" or "Victorian" sensibilities. To quote our Puritan article:

"In modern usage, the word puritan is often used to describe someone who has strict views on sexual morality, disapproves of recreation, and wishes to impose these beliefs on others. The popular image is slightly more accurate as a description of Puritans in colonial America, who were among the most radical Puritans and whose social experiment took the form of an Anabaptist theocracy."

And to quote our Taboo article:

"A taboo is a strong social prohibition (or ban) relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and forbidden. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society.... Taboos can include dietary restrictions (halal and kosher diets, religious vegetarianism, and the prohibition of cannibalism), restrictions on sexual activities and relationships (sex outside of marriage, adultery, intermarriage, miscegenation, sex between people of the same sex, incest, animal-human sex, adult-child sex, sex with the dead), restrictions of bodily functions (burping, flatulence, restrictions on the use of psychoactive drugs, restrictions on state of genitalia such as circumcision or sex reassignment), exposure of body parts (ankles in the Victorian British Empire, women's faces in parts of the Middle East, nudity in the US), and restrictions on the use of offensive language."

Obviously citing Wikipedia's own articles wouldn't do if we were talking about adding this discussion into article text. But these quick little quotes make the connection obvious, and certainly seem to accord with common usage. (Though the reason I haven't bothered to make these arguments on Talk:Human is because they're really quite beside the point. All that officially matters for Wikipedia is whether the image is censorial of relevant information, not whether it reinforces a cultural taboo.)

How do you want to handle proposed changes?

Usually, Talk:Human is ideal, so as to avoid hiding discussion from editors who work on the article. It's good that there are no talk pages for FAQs, since that would segregate away debates from the view of the people who most need to see them. Feel free to simply edit it as you wish; we can easily see each others' changes without bothering with strikethru, and if I disagree with an edit, I'll say so (if it's not an important difference for the Human article, perhaps on this Talk page at least for the moment) and/or change it. If this page is ever to become an official FAQ, then it's best to start now with disowning it and making it a collaboration. If there's something you want to discuss before making a change, bring it up on Talk:Human if it's important or warrants input from various editors, or if you prefer you can just bring it up here if it's a minor issue, e.g., formatting. I suppose another way to handle it would be to start a distinct discussion on Talk:Human as soon as we ran into a real disagreement. -Silence (talk) 07:35, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Editors are here to benefit Wikipedia's content. Wikipedia's content is not here to benefit editors

I never suggested the latter; you apparently missed my point. A healthy collaborative atmosphere is extremely important, especially in the case of long and complex articles on major topics. If veteran editors unwatch the article or leave the project or weary of acrimony to the point where they no longer are productive, then the article suffers. And in the case of an article as weighty as this one, the encyclopedia suffers as a whole.

[Clearly] to the vast majority of . . . readers

You may have missed my point here, too. (A disadvantage of formatting our discussion this way is that it's hard to keep track of what we're replying to, but I still find it easier than endless indentations.) You talked about the undesirability of Wikipedia's perpetuating "sexist and misogynistic traditions and taboos . . . which ruin very real, very human lives around the world". My most recent point stemming from that original comment was that, given the vast readership and growing reputation of Wikipedia, any image we choose to lead off Human may be seen by many of our readers as powerfully symbolic, rather than merely illustrative. In other words, in this case I am suggesting that intent may be far less important than effect, because more than a few of our readers may fail to see themselves in a (supposedly) illustrative photo. That is not the case with the Pioneer image, which was used to illustrate (in a flawed manner) the entirety of H. sapiens sapiens. Images, even those intended only to illustrate, can be hugely powerful. That's why I've moved toward the fence on the Pioneer image, and that's also why I haven't climbed over the fence and embraced the idea of a photo instead. I understand what you mean by "The only question we are obliged to ask in selecting a lead image for Human is: "Does this image accurately depict a human?", but I don't think it's a given that virtually all our readers will understand.

Reductionism is the breakdown of a complex system into smaller parts. An anatomy drawing (especially one lacking labels of the body parts) is only reductive in the weakest possible sense; a substantially reductionistic program would instead show an image of, say, human DNA or a human cell. Besides, the idea that anatomy drawings are cold or 'lifeless' is a POV

Of course it is, but it's not the sort of POV that is problematic when deciding on what type of image to use for an article. And reductionism, btw, is also "the practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon, esp. a mental, social, or biological phenomenon, in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level, esp. when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation." Weakest sense or no, I think I employed the word well within the boundaries of its accepted usage. A photo shows a human, who is more than just a unified collection of body parts. The Pioneer plaque was intended to symbolize humans, who are more than just unified collections of body parts. An anatomy drawing is intended to depict a unified collection of body parts—no more, no less; it would be worse even than using a photo of a cadaver, and if my objection to that is somehow unacceptably POV, then I am at a loss for words.

Fame is only an advantage if the article is about the image. Otherwise, it's a distraction. (Imagine if we put an image of the Mona Lisa or a photo of George W. Bush at the top of our Mammal article!!)

How about Jimbo Wales at the top of Chordate? (Momentarily more) seriously, though, I'm not sure that fame's distraction is always a negative. There could be instances where the image choice is a real surprise, makes readers do a double-take, and motivates them to actually read the article. Take a look at Hearing impairment. Wouldn't a well-proportioned bust of Beethoven be preferable to a symbol of a highly stylized (or is it censored?) ear with a slash through it? And hey, we don't want to discriminate against people just because they're famous. The Mona Lisa—or, more accurately, the subject who sat for Leonardo—is just as human as some Akha tribesman. (Your second example might suffice for Puppet or sociopath, I suppose, although he's neither as cute as Pinocchio nor as personable as Bundy.) In any case, there's the fame of the subject of an image and then there's the fame of the image itself. It's the latter that struck me as an advantage of the Pioneer image when I first encountered the Human article. A hell of a lot of people recognize it instantly for what it is, and instinctively see it as fitting for the article. You have spent some time and had some success persuading me that we need to look beyond the instinctive and consider it analytically, but instinct is important insofar as it ties in with what I was saying about powerful symbols.

To quote our Puritan article . . . And to quote our Taboo article

Uh-uh. Most of us know quite well what "Puritan" and "taboo" mean, and I definitely don't need excerpts from WP articles on my ever-lengthening talk page, especially if they don't specifically address the censorship of women's bodies. You have alleged misogyny vis à vis the censorship of the female figure, and you referred to a tradition of such censorship. Can you in some way (beyond quoting words like "Victorian" uttered by Sagan, who was not an expert on 19th-century mores) link what happened with the plaque to an ongoing pattern of censorship of the female figure in illustrations? Again, I'm not asking you to answer me here and now; I'm reminding you that I considered your argument against perpetuating a historical injustice a strong one, and I'm forewarning you that specifics are liable to be asked about that at Talk:Human if we ever get to that point. Rivertorch (talk) 10:46, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

given the vast readership and growing reputation of Wikipedia, any image we choose to lead off Human may be seen by many of our readers as powerfully symbolic, rather than merely illustrative. In other words, in this case I am suggesting that intent may be far less important than effect

Exactly! You've perfectly summed up the entire point I've been trying to make. Thank you!! This is precisely the thought that's been motivating me to recommend a photograph (along with the ubiquitous usage of photos on similar articles). Precisely because any image we choose to place at the top of Human will run the risk of being interpreted symbolically rather than literally, we need to either do one of two things: (1) permanently remove the lead image from the top of Human (an option unfortunately ruled out by taxobox convention); or (2) find an image that is as unsymbolic-looking as possible, so that we can minimize as much as possible the impression (i.e., the effect) upon our readers that the picture is supposed to depict "humanity", as opposed to depicting "a human" (i.e., 'any old human'). A photograph is a best way to achieve this effect, since readers who are familiar with other Wikipedia articles (particular species articles) will see that we are simply being as non-symbolic here as we are on all the other species articles, and readers who are not familiar with Wikipedia will still see that the image is not stylized, idealized, or caricatured like a symbol, icon or pictogram would be, which will give the first indication for such users of how and why Wikipedia employs lead images. (Information that will serve them well not only on Human, but on any other future article they may visit.) And the best type of photograph, in turn, is one that joins the virtues of visual informativeness with simplicity, clarity, and straightforwardness.

more than a few of our readers may fail to see themselves in a (supposedly) illustrative photo. That is not the case with the Pioneer image

See, here's where I thought you were going with this argument: "That is exactly the case with the Pioneer image". At least, going by the views of some two-thirds of editors on Talk:Human, the Pioneer image makes people (especially non-whites and females) feel excluded or subordinated precisely because it's so obviously an image intended to represent 'the whole human race', thus suggesting that anyone who deviates from this perfect idealized NASA standard is as a result less human. The entire point of a photo is to mitigate this effect; even if it cannot be cancelled in 100% of all cases, we can at least greatly reduce its incidence (as much as any image could) by making it obvious that the image isn't intended to capture all of human diversity, nor is it intended to capture humanity at its best, nor is it intended to illustrate humanity's highest ideals. The more straightforward and unpretentious our image is, the less potential there will be for interpretation as a POVed symbol for humanity.
That aside, it is an advantage if readers come to our Human article and do not "see themselves" in the photo. If readers, instead of seeing themselves per se, see 'any old human', we will have done our job well.

A photo shows a human, who is more than just a unified collection of body parts.

Of course. But just as it is not the job of a lead image to advocate philosophical reductionism, so too is it not the job of a lead image to combat reductionism. These are irrelevant considerations. If it was Wikipedia's job to combat reductionism, then our human body article wouldn't include anatomy drawings either, since it would be wrong to educate people about the body based on its constituent parts.
To be a bit less silly, anatomy drawings have nothing to do with philosophical reductionism, for our purposes here. They are ubiquitous in the relevant sciences, and therefore it would be POV-pushing original research to reject them. The 'feelings' a picture evokes are not the primary criterion for its inclusion or exclusion, since the same picture will evoke radically different feelings in different people. The reason a typical anatomy drawing would be inappropriate for the top of Human would be because it'd fail to depict human culture, society and ecology; it has nothing to do with how anatomy drawings 'feel' to us editors. (It isn't our job to dictate which images are most 'nice-feeling' and to suppress all unpleasant imagery.) The reason a corpse would be inappropriate for the top of Human is primarily because a corpse is at best too specific and unusual an example of a human, and at worst not properly a 'human' at all. (Compare the inappropriateness of putting a picture of an Embryo or Zygote at the top of Human.)

There could be instances where the image choice is a real surprise, makes readers do a double-take, and motivates them to actually read the article.

I expect that this would happen quite often naturally, all on its own, simply because readers frequently visit articles which they aren't terribly well-acquainted with. I don't think we need to force it. I certainly can rarely predict exactly what an article's lead image will look like before visiting that article. It sounds like you have something more extreme in mind, but keep in mind that highly 'surprising' images are at least as likely to scare readers off as to fascinate and draw them in. A reader who went to the Human or Animal article and found a picture of a mime at the top would certainly be surprised, but the net effect would probably just be that the reader wouldn't take the article seriously, and/or would be confused and put off by not understanding exactly why editors would pick a subject of highly specialized relevancy (a street performer) to illustrate such a general article. They might even think they were on the wrong article.
Plus Vitruvian Man wouldn't surprise anyone who knows about the image already, its relevance will be opaque and confusing to those who don't know about it, and in both cases it won't provide much relevant visual information to curious readers. (Which makes the image an almost exact analogue of the plaque.)

Wouldn't a well-proportioned bust of Beethoven be preferable to a symbol of a highly stylized (or is it censored?) ear with a slash through it?

Beethoven wouldn't be a horrible pic, provided that the image made the relevance visually clear: A painting of him cupping his ear or holding some sort of hearing aid would be appropriate, but one of him playing piano would not be. (Indeed, the latter sort of image would just profoundly confuse people who aren't familiar with Beethoven's biography.)
Not all stylized images are censored. You'll notice that the caption under the image in question reads, "The International Symbol for Deafness". When such a symbol is available, and internationally recognized, it is preferable at least to crude caricature drawings of deaf people (analogous to the plague), if not to photos. However, the case is not analogous, since Hearing impairment is an auditory rather than visual phenomenon, so it is understandable that finding an adequate visualization of it would be difficult. There is no such excuse for finding a visualization of a species like Homo sapiens. We are quite common and easily photographed. Symbolic images might be excusable when an article is only about an abstract concept or an invisible thing, like our Science and Love and Trajectory — and, yes, possibly even Human nature — articles. But it would be absurd and relatively unhelpful to use a symbolic image at the top of Frog, Bed, Sun, or Osama bin Laden.
Incidentally, if it were our goal to emulate an image like the one on Deafness, I'd recommend something like this image, possibly the most common and often-used visual symbol 'intended to represent humanity' in history. I considered suggesting this image a while back to highlight the fact that our cultural biases are what make us think that the plaque is the most obvious candidate to fulfil these (largely irrelevant) criteria, but decided not to make the debate on Talk:Human even more complicated. (But it would be in the same vein as my stick figure suggestion.)

A hell of a lot of people recognize it instantly for what it is, and instinctively see it as fitting for the article. You have spent some time and had some success persuading me that we need to look beyond the instinctive and consider it analytically, but instinct is important insofar as it ties in with what I was saying about powerful symbols.

A hell of a lot of people on the English Wikipedia are white males brought up in the West. (And probably almost all of them are at least 1 of those 3, despite the rare extraordinary contributor who is neither white nor male nor Western.) If cultural biases and upbringing had no role to play in shaping our 'instincts' and gut reactions to things, I'd have much less problem endorsing the 'whatever just feels right' approach. But unfortunately, what feels right to one group of people may not feel right to another — and Wikipedia is required to take a global, NPOV perspective on such matters. This is why it's important to think clearly and analytically (if not completely unemotionally) about what we're saying in using the plaque as our main Human image: Because our instinctive feelings tend to be less considerate of unseen minorities than our relatively enlightened thoughts.

Can you in some way (beyond quoting words like "Victorian" uttered by Sagan, who was not an expert on 19th-century mores) link what happened with the plaque to an ongoing pattern of censorship of the female figure in illustrations?

If I find the time to browse through the gender studies section of my library, I'll get back to you. However, I sense that citing and quoting books will not be of help in achieving the goal you mentioned of conciseness. :) An awareness of Wikipedia policy is sufficient to make this a clear-cut case, until a strong counter-argument arises. -Silence (talk) 20:47, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, incidentally, you seem to have misunderstood my Sagan quotes. Sagan's expertise in the Victorian era is 1000% not at issue here, because I was quoting both Wikipedia and Sagan to demonstrate a modern and contemporary conception of what "puritanical" and "Victorian" signify. That's why I quoted definitions for modern uses of those terms, rather than citing pages like Victorian morality (which are more concerned with the actual mores of that period). I'm here to show that present-day taboos are being reinforced with the plaque's use here (even though they're named with reference to past historic periods), not to show that 18th-century (or older) taboos are. -Silence (talk) 20:50, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Section break (let's make it the last one*)[edit]

* I need to move on to other things. You've probably said more on my talk page than everyone else combined since I registered my account. Fortunately, it was almost entirely bullshit-free : )

I don't think I have any substantive rebuttals to anything you just said. I might just mention that Beethoven with a hearing aid would be an unencyclopedic anachronism, but . . . So let's leave it at this for now. I'll put something on article talk over the weekend. I'm also inclined to want to close the RFC soon: since it's drawing no new comments anymore and is only a week away from expiring, the space may as well be freed up on the page.

To reiterate briefly, I am not supporting your proposal but have come to share some of your stated concerns about the image and am open to trying a different one. Rivertorch (talk) 08:59, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. -Silence (talk) 15:16, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

LOL. Now that was short and sweet! Rivertorch (talk) 20:07, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

:) -Silence (talk) 21:03, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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