":::I'm with  about the smoothness, but I've another question too.  The NASA links that you provided above seem to show a globe where the Antarctic Peninsula is clearly visible.  On the globe above it seems to be obscured by seasonal sea-ice.  Any chance of using a sea-ice-free globe at your next iteration?  It's perhaps not as realistic (since there's always some sea-ice), but at the moment the globe appears to show a strange composite of seasons.  And, given global warming, cutting out the sea-ice makes your globe future-proof!  ;-) 

 :::On another unrelated note, the light blue regions on the globe may not be denoting shallow water but might simply be recording actual ocean colour.  In shallow water regions, chlorophyll (and sediments, etc.) can create a strong signal, and the deep water regions of the globe show a palette that is independent of their depth (c.f. the brighter regions of the Southern Ocean).  Anyway, that shouldn't affect your (sterling and much appreciated) plotting efforts, but when you label up the resulting globe you might want to explain the brighter blues that way.  Cheers,    

 == It might sound absurd == 

 I know it might sound absurd but the Infobox Planet for Earth should or, most probably, it must contain an information about the human population. I wanted to know what is the human population on earth and I thought I could find it at the Earth's infobox but I did not. I never thougt to look at the World population article. Only after, I found out where it is. But I think that some people that had the same question as me, have searched the info on the Earth article. Anyway, it's a good idea to do a new section at the infobox, maybe with all the three values: 
 * 6,671,226,000 - 2007 
 * 7 bilion - predicted for 2013 
 * 9.2 billion - predicted for 2050 
    
 :If there is interest in this, my suggestion is to use a separate infobox for the population, then place them both at the top and use . If the box is displayed contracted, it could list multiple population stats for both past and future without impacting the page layout.—   

 == Earth-related topics == 

 Placing the ""Earth-related topics"" infobox at the bottom has resulted in several attempts to create a redundant ""See also"" section. Should we: 
 # Accept the redundancy between the two? 
 # Move the contents of the ""Earth-related topics"" infobox back under ""See also"" and scrap the infobox? 
 # Move the infobox back under the ""See also"" section header? 
 # Keep deleting attempts to create a redundant ""See also"" section? 
 Thanks.—   
 :How about leave an HTML note in the last section of the article telling people to make sure they check the infobox at the bottom of the article prior to creating a See also section? That will probably discourage many of the people wanting to create the section.    
 ::That might work: perhaps a single link under a ""See also"" section that points to the ""Earth-related topics"" infobox. Thus: Earth-related topics.—   
 :I think having the infobox expanded by default would also help; I didn't even notice it until I saw the edit summaries mentioning it's existence. An HTML comment isn't a bad idea, but it doesn't help readers.   |   
 ::Unfortunately I think the standard is to have it contracted. Plus it is inevitable that somebody will come along and contract it again.—   

 Okay here's my thinking behind that section: I agree with the concerns about having a ""See also"" section too cluttered with too many links and making the navigation/info box at the bottom is a good idea. The problem with that is many users won't notice that navigation box and I'm sure many users find see also sections useful. The four links I added are all articles that contain a list of a lot more articles which is kind of like putting a navigation box (but more comprehensive) into one link. I think perhaps an article could be started titled ""List of Earth-related topics"" or ""List of basic planet Earth topics"" or something like that and all those topics in the navigation box could be listed in that article plus