Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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How do you choose which articles to work on ?

Greetings! My question is the next. How do you choose the articles you want to work on ?

In my case, it's simple. I read articles on topics that interest me and I read the related articles (For example, internal links).

If I don't have time to work on it. I write a note on my user page to work on it later. Anatole-berthe (talk) 01:57, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that really depends on who you ask. Polygnotus (talk) 22:29, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Everybody's different. Some people are on a mission to document every professional cricket player, every TV station, every species of reptile, every politician in their home country, etc, etc. I like to explore the history of where I live and as often as not, my interest in a topic is sparked by going past some building or park and wondering if there's more there than meets the eye. And, just like Anatole-berthe, my user space is littered with stubs of future articles that never went anywhere. RoySmith (talk) 22:39, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aye, I figure that everyone will have different motives. I've ceased article writing because this list of articles I have worked on is also a list of articles I need to maintain, and it's gotten too long. Every year I do maintain that list. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:51, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everybody for yours answers ! Anatole-berthe (talk) 13:27, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a WikiSloth: I work on whatever catches my eye, most often merely to untangle awkward wording; though I pay more attention to areas where I think I know something, like heraldry and polytopes. —Tamfang (talk) 23:08, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Change the license of logo Aeropostal (airline of Venezuela)

Hi ,wikis ,please any admin or bibliotecary change the license of logo (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aeropostal_logo.svg#mw-jump-to-license) ,the logo is not copyrighted peer article 325 LOTTT says in the template:PD-VenezuelaGov,the source:(https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_Aeropostal_Alas_de_Venezuela_(Aerol%C3%ADnea).jpg ) ,Article 325 says any work (logos,coat of arms ,photos...) created by public sector considered to the public domain. AbchyZa22 (talk) 14:07, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can we please change the wording of protected {{ambox}}es?

I previously left a message elsewhere, but got no response.

If you visit the page of many current events, you'll see:

This article documents a current event... Feel free to improve this article or discuss changes on the talk page, but please note that updates without valid and reliable references will be removed. [Emphasis added]

But many of these articles are semi- or extended-protected, so most readers can't actually edit the article, despite the kind (or teasing?) invitation. And for those experience editors who can edit them, they probably don't need to be reminded to add reliable sources.

So can we change {{current}}, and all the similar {{ambox}}es, to remove the invitation to edit from quasi-protected articles? ypn^2 18:46, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question about the meaning of political spectrum terms in the infobox of political parties.

Hello. I am wondering something lately, and that is some ambiguity around political spectrum terms. We say, for instance, that the Democratic Party of the US, is Center-left on the page for that party. But where on the spectrum does this lie? Is it, for instance, between the center and far left? Or between the center and that aforementioned point. Really, I am curious and I think we need some consensus to clear this up. I am also confused by other parties, such as the Republican Party of the US. Is it the case where, as specified in the infobox, the party RANGES from center-right to right-wing? Or that its mostly in BETWEEN those points? I feel like it is not at all consistent. Thank you for reading this. Jayson (talk) 23:49, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For the past few years, this is my in-mind concept of what it means to be on a certain portion of the political spectrum based on the descriptions in the Wikipedia Infobox, and I can't find any guidelines that standardise the meaning, and its not consistent. Jayson (talk) 00:01, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My personal choice would be something at least two-dimensional, such as the Nolan Chart or The Political Compass. Donald Albury 01:23, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I have done that. On the page for the Irish political party Aontu, I made such in the same section using information already cited. Unfortunately it was reverted Jayson (talk) 01:44, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're overthinking this.

This is not Discrete mathematics. This is not the sort of thing in which you can meaningfully ask whether "1 to 2" means "includes 2.0" or "asymptotically approaching 2, but never getting any closer than 1.999999999...". This is a fuzzy spectrum with approximate signposts stuck in it. "Center-right to right-wing" means stuff that's anywhere between or around those two points. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:37, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention the fact that parties given the same description can have many differences. A good descriptive section on their major policy positions would seem to be much more useful than these tags. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:01, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And… let’s not forget that the meaning of the terms “left wing” and “right wing” have shifted and changed over time. Stances that were considered “left wing” in 1900 might be considered “right wing” today and vise versa).

Also, these terms have different meanings when talking European politics vs American politics.

These nuances make such terms awkward to use as an infobox data point. They require context. Blueboar (talk) 13:19, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes they require context. But if you're just doing a quick look up ("Who's this TLABBQ in my news feed again? I keep mixing up the political parties in that little country"), then "Ah, they're the lefties" may be all you want or need. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:56, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In theory, the right answer should be to follow the consensus of reliable sources. But that would require going through literally hundreds of thousands of newspaper articles, political journals, reports, books, etc. etc., and then weighing them per date published, reliability, POV concerns, and then figuring out how exactly to count them, and then tabulating and summarizing them, and then repeat this process every few years for each party.

Since that's not going to happen, I would recommend going with the least common denominator - i.e., what everyone agrees to. Since everyone in 2024 calls US. Democrats some form of "left", and Republicans some form of "right", we should probably leave it at that, and not try to decide between "center-left" or "left" or "center-left to left" ad infinitum. ypn^2 19:09, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think of "center-left" and "center-right" merely as labels indicating parties that can govern without having to form coalitions, as both the Democrats and Republicans can. Within those spectrums are shifts in sentiment (Ds voting for Rs and vice versa) as well as contradictions (people who declare themselves fiscally conservative but socially liberal, those who might be religious but are concerned more about fair distribution of wealth rather than efficient creation of it, etc.). So, spending much time focusing on subdividing such political categories might just be a waste of effort, especially in articles meant as mere summaries of political activity. Dhtwiki (talk) 06:25, 10 December 2024 (UTC) (edited 22:22, 10 December 2024 (UTC))[reply]

As Donald Albury has pointed out, a single axis is overly simplistic, if you know how authoritarian someone is you may not know how they stand on economics. I much prefer a two axis system, but that can work out very differently depending on whether you use your second axis to measure how egalitarian/redistributive a party is as opposed to how much they believe in central planning and state intervention in or control of business. Personally I also think it important to know where a party stands on the grey/green spectrum and on the issue of how big is your tribe. But here we are writing a General Interest Encyclopaedia, and doing so as a global community covering many different nations political setups, so there is a case for not over complicating things while accepting that this is much more complex for an encyclopaedia that covers both the current day and also the past, as well as our writing one article that has to cater both to the local audience for whom this is their political milieu as well as the curious foreigner who probably doesn't know how different the meaning is of the word "Republican" in a Belfast scenario as opposed to a Brooklyn one. At the heart of this issue is the question of our audience. US sources operating in a two party system and describing the US system for a US audience will of course default to a blue/red two party system. Just as anyone writing about Belgian politics has to be aware of the Flemish/Walloon divide. But if we are writing about politics for a global audience we need to explain the very different politics of different countries in ways that informboth a local audience and a global one. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:11, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And how complicated that can be is illustrated by this attempt to map many countries on a pair of axes that are different from the usual left-right (economic) vs authoritarian-libertarian axes. We would need to find quite a few reliable sources for each country to do anything like that in Wikipedia. Personally, I think political space is multidimensional, but the more dimensions you incorporate, the harder it is to present the space in visual form. So, a one-dimensional chart of political position will always give an incomplete, and possibly misleading, view, of what distinguishes one party or politician from another, while a two-dimensional chart will take up more page space, and beyond two dimensions becomes impractical. In any case, any presentation of a party or politician's place in political space will require reliable sources. Despite being a visually-oriented person, I think any explanation of political positions should be in prose. Donald Albury 15:39, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. A political spectrum is on two axes (or more). But for the sake of simplification you can approximate both to one axis. A multi-axis designation for an something intended as a broad overview wouldn't be necessary in most cases. If it happens that two axes go in different directions, then for scoring on one axis you'd probably have to broadly estimate which direction is more extreme and then put lean-left, moderate, or lean-right. In other words, I'm not really seeing the problem. EEpic (talk) 06:56, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SYNTH says you cant take one source that says far-left and one source that says far-right and move it to the center. That means that, for the Libertarians in the US, you can't just approximate as "center". Jayson (talk) 15:35, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is certainly something we should not be saying in Wikivoice. We should apply political labels only if they are supported by most reliable sources that address political orientation. Donald Albury 16:30, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Introducing Let's Connect!

Hello everyone,

I hope that you are in good spirits. My name is Serine Ben Brahim and I am a part of the Let’s Connect working group - a team of movement contributors/organizers and liaisons for 7 regions : MENA | South Asia | East, South East Asia, Pacific | Sub-Saharan Africa | Central & Eastern Europe | Northern & Western | Latina America.

Why are we outreaching to you?

Wikimedia has 18 projects, and 17 that are solely run by the community, other than the Wikimedia Foundation. We want to hear from sister projects that some of us in the movement are not too familiar with and would like to know more about. We always want to hear from Wikipedia, but we also want to meet and hear from the community members in other sister projects too. We would like to hear your story and learn about the work you and your community do. You can review our past learning clinics here.

We want to invite community members who are:

Part of an organized group, official or not
A formally recognized affiliate or not
An individual who will bring their knowledge back to their community
An individual who wants to train others in their community on the learnings they received from the learning clinics.

To participate as a sharer and become a member of the Let’s Connect community you can sign up through this registration form.

Once you have registered, if you are interested, you can get to know the team via google meets or zoom to brainstorm an idea for a potential learning clinic about this project or just say hello and meet the team. Please email us at Letsconnectteam@wikimedia.org. We look forward to hearing from you :)

Many thanks and warm regards,

Let’s Connect Working Group Member

Serine Ben Brahim (talk) 11:21, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MOS article title discrepancy

I recently learned that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Visual arts includes the article title guidance "If the title is not very specific, or refers to a common subject, add the surname of the artist in parentheses afterwards". I encountered this when Peeling Onions was moved to Peeling Onions (Lilly Martin Spencer) for this reason by User:SilverLocust. This seems to be contrary to the general rule of not using disambiguation unless necessary, and is also not in sync with other comparable guidelines like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (music) which follow the general rule. Is there a reason for this local consensus overriding the global one that I am missing? Fram (talk) 08:37, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, I moved it from Peeling Onions(Lilly Martin Spencer) to Peeling Onions (Lilly Martin Spencer) after another user had objected to renaming it just Peeling Onions. But as noted at WP:MISPLACED#Other exceptions, there are some naming conventions that call for unnecessary disambiguation. The other thing people usually point to when disagreeing with WP:MISPLACED is WP:ASTONISH. Also, MOS:ART isn't a local consensus. SilverLocust 💬 08:46, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, "local consensus" was not the right choice of words, I meant a more specific guideline overruling the general one and not being in sync with most other ones. Fram (talk) 09:08, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But anyway, the question is, is there a good reason why the band, movie, album, book, .... "Peeling Onions" would all be at the title "Peeling Onions", but for the painting we need to add the name of the artist? Fram (talk) 09:39, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If there were two or more notable paintings called “Pealing Onions”, disambiguating by artist would be helpful.

Otherwise, we don’t need to be so specific. We can disambiguate as “Pealing Onions (painting)” to distinguish it from the book, album, etc of the same title. Blueboar (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov has an RFC

Talk:Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Nemov (talk) 14:35, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion to rename many criticism/controversies articles to include both concepts in name

Ok. First, I am posting this here, because I can't figure out a better forum (this is a cross-WikiProject issue). Second, sure, criticism and controversies are separate concepts. But consider for example Criticism of Facebook, CNN controversies/Controversies of Nestlé and existence of categories like Category:Facebook criticisms and controversies. Having looked at several of articles on criticism/controversies about companies/organizations, I am really hard pressed to find difference between them, and we already have several categories grouping those concepts together (like the mentioned Facebook one). (Rarely, we have two articles about this: consider Criticism of Wikipedia vs List of Wikipedia controversies - but this is pretty exceptionaland perhaps a case of navel gazines asking for a merge).

For those who care about category trees, few points:

we do not have Category:Controversies by company (subcat of Category:Controversies by organizations; only Category:Criticisms of companies (subcat of Category:Criticism of organizations - and yes, the plural vs singular is another, if minor, issue to fix).(Mentioned Wikipedia list of controversies is just in Category:Internet-related controversies) Creating them, of course, is not hard, and should be done, but that won't solve the problem of conceptually similar articles with different names (Criticism of Company A vs Controversies about Company B).
- We do, however, have Category:Corporate controversies...
according to our category structure, Category:Controversies is a subcategory of Category:Criticisms. Whether this is correct, I am not sure, trying to make a hierarchy for such content is challenging - here, I am just noting how they are related at present in our structure
- however note that the only entity I noticed that has both controversies and criticism categories has a reverse order here: Category:Donald Trump controversies is a subcategory of Category:Donald Trump controversies

Before you tell me to take this to (probably inactive anyway) WT:COMPANIES, let me point out similar issues with, for example, Category:Controversies by person vs Category:Criticism of individuals (hey, BLP-caring folks, have fun :P; and hey, US-politics-caring folks, did you know Trump is the only person to have both a criticism and a controversy category? Have more fun :P Anyway, Criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Criticism of Jesus are again hard to conceptually distinguish from Controversies related to Sheikh Hasina or Controversies surrounding Silvio Berlusconi. Oh, and if you think you can tell the difference between then, then try to tackle this weirdly named stuff arbitrarily spread between those categories: Commentary about Julian Assange, Donald Trump's comments on John McCain, Historical assessment of Klemens von Metternich, Reception and legacy of Muhammad Khatami, Commentary on Edward Snowden's disclosure and Jack Abramoff scandals (I think this is the only scandal-page in the biographies; BLP folks - you may want to rename this, together with its category... Update: I've started a RM for that one)

Then of course we have the rest of this can of worms - for example Scouting controversy and conflict (why conflict??).

To make it simple, we can probably retain only criticism for ideologies and concepts (Category:Criticisms by ideology; Category:Criticism of science).

And I am not feeling like tackling Category:Scandals by type into this (subcat to controversies by type).

But I'd like to suggest that we rename all articles and categories for criticism and controversies of organizations/companies to follow Category:Facebook criticisms and controversies and few others named in this fashion.

For people, I suggest "Criticism and controversies related to Person X" or just rename all controversies to criticisms (because Criticism and controversies related to Jesus, for example, sounds a bit weird). That said, again, conceptually, criticism of Jesus and Controversies surrounding Silvio Berlusconi are pretty much the same (Jesus is a controversial figure to some; Berlusconi has been criticized, and those pages cover all those aspects).

Really, almost all of those articles are pretty much conceptually identical, so even if you think you have a handle on how to draw the line between controversies of foo and criticism of foo, please note that enforcing this will be next to impossible. Rather than having multiple names and two category trees for conceptually identical articles, I think standardizing them to one is going to be best. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:34, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think a first step is to go through these controversy articles to make them more of a summary style rather than listing every single incident where the topic came under controversy. Criticism of Christianity is maybe halfway there but it still has too much dissecting to specific indicents.

A second step would be to strip legal aspects like lawsuits to separate articles, eg like Litigation involving Apple Inc. which generally stays more factual to actual things that happen in courts of law, rather than the commentary and criticism of from a range of sources. This might not be a possible step for several of these, but we should not try to mix criticism and ligitation. Masem (t) 03:59, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or how about we don't have either? I don't think that we should have stand alone criticism/controversies articles or sections (for aren't we advised to integrate such stand alone into the article? Aren't they simply relics of a less rigourous era doomed to be eventualy disassembled?) Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:46, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

+1. By their nature, these articles are either POV forks or so close to it that the end result is the same. Controversies and criticisms shouldn't be made standalone solely for being controversies or criticisms, whether it be as a separate article or a section within an article. They should be incorporated into the article like any other facts, and if they don't fit, then they're probably not due. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:19, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about that. For some large subjects, we can expect many subtopics/subarticles. If there's room in Wikipedia for a fairly niche article like History of religion in the Netherlands, then there's probably room in Wikipedia for a general article like Criticism of religion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:34, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, this wouldn't be the line of reasoning as regards more discretized controversies, e.g. Chinese Rites controversy. Remsense ‥ 论 02:39, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. A one-size-fits-all approach might not be appropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, Controversy does a good job at outlining its distinction as a state of prolonged public dispute—ergo, controversy is properly subcategorized under criticism, requiring additional narrative and intersocial characteristics. Remsense ‥ 论 02:12, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Per Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Naming, I'd rather look for names that avoid both "Criticisms of" and "Controversies of" when possible, especially when the subject is kind of narrow. Criticism of Walmart could be divided into a couple of less POV-ish-ly titled articles, like Labor relations at Walmart (currently a redirect). Other parts, like Criticism of Walmart#Midtown Walmart (500+ words on the construction of a single store) could either be blanked or merged to a more relevant article (e.g., Midtown Miami). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:41, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree; this likely should be done with many of these articles. I'm not sure that all of them should be liquidated, though I'm not immediately hitting upon a specific counterexample. Remsense ‥ 论 02:45, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Horse Eye's Back Some of them are certainly due (Criticism of capitalism or Criticism of Marxism, etc.), although I am sure we can find a few that wouldn't survive AfD. Criticisms of particular individuals is probably the most problematic aspect and we should really look at all articles there carefully, although for historical figures it is less of an issue (and if my post here results in clearing of some BLP-violating detritus, great). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:44, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was talking in terms of individuals. My understanding is that criticism in the context of Criticism of capitalism or Criticism of Marxism is referring to scholarly criticism and not general negative feelings (we have separate pages after all for Anti-capitalism and Anti-communism). I would expect for example that an article "Criticism of Hegel" would note Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right but not that his mom thought he was a jerk. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 04:33, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have these FAs on "controversies":

I didn't see any with "criticism" in the title. We have five FAs on "scandals":

At a glance, I don't think that a one-size-fits-all renaming to "Criticism and controversies related to _____" would be appropriate for any of these. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:28, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]