This user subpage is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference. It was last substantively updated 14 April 2009. If you want to revive discussion regarding the subject, you might try contacting the user in question or seeking broader input via a forum such as the village pump. It was last substantively updated 14 April 2009.
Use of placeholders in a nutshell: Image placeholders were formerly used on Wikipedia for biographies of living persons but have since been deprecated. As of 2020 all placeholder images have been removed from the main namespace.
An image placeholder is a dummy image designed to draw attention to the need for an actual image. Wikipedia image placeholders were meant to be used on articles, especially those of living people, for the purpose of trying to obtain a freely-licensed image for them. In a Wikipedia Centralized Discussion this idea was found to be controversial. Changes to the software since then have also made the system less effective, and for both of these reasons it is not currently maintained. This page is preserved as an explanation of them.
Image:Replace this image male.svg or Image:Replace this image female.svg was placed on articles about living people that have no current free image. It was not intended to be placed on articles about other subjects, including people who died before the 1900s when photography became widespread. The image was intended to be placed at the top so that the image code is visible when the edit tab is clicked.
For pages without infoboxes the following format was generally considered best:
<span {{image class|Replace this image male.svg}}>[[Image:Replace this image male.svg|thumb|right|150px]]</span>
Images uploaded through this system end up in Category:Images of people replacing placeholders. A lot of the images uploaded through the system are copyright violations. Those that appear not to be should have their image copyright tag replaced with {{|Multilicense replacing placeholder|class=people|reviewed=1}} to keep them separate from the stuff that needs to be deleted.
So far the majority of uploads have been copyright violations. As a result, those that are not copyright violations should have their tag replaced with {{Multilicense replacing placeholder|class=people|reviewed=1}}
^This is part of a system in the software originally designed to allow alternative languages in the interface; see MediaWiki:Uploadtext/ru for example.