Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2024 archive

Deadnames of the deceased – yet again

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Names of deceased trans people

This initial discussion having led to an ongoing RfC means it should not also continue separately here, per WP:TALKFORK.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:13, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

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Well, we've had rather big discussions about former names of deceased transgender and non-binary subjects, and we kinda-sorta settled on wording along these lines:

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their birth name or former name (professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should be included in their main biographical article only if the name is documented in multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person.

but addition of this text has now been reverted by three different editors, so it seems like another discussion is in order, tedious as this may be. What are the issues with it?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:34, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

I have a technical problem: A transgender or non-binary person who already had a gender-neutral name may choose to keep it, yet the rule taken literally says we can't use any name at all in those cases. So I propose to add ", if different from their current name," following the parenthetical part. I believe that just clarifies the intention and isn't a substantive change. Zero^talk 06:34, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Is that needed? If someone only ever had one name and met WP:GNG then there would have to be multiple references to their name in secondary and reliable sources? But if that is a concern, how about removing birth name or so it only refers to former names? Or any former names?

I’m afraid I do not know the concerns that are leading to the whole paragraph being removed. Mgp28 (talk) 08:53, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I have to agree with @Mgp28 — it's not a former name if the person kept it and it will, in that case, always be true that there will be the name is documented in multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person, surely? —  OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 10:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Not necessarily if they're notable by a SNG like WP:NACADEMIC. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 18:37, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the issue here. If the trans or non-binary person didn't change their name, regardless of whether they're alive or dead, surely the name provisions of GENDERID wouldn't need to apply? We would simply use whatever name they used. Of course the pronoun and gendered words provisions might apply, if contextually relevant (eg, their birth name was Sam, and want to use they/them pronouns and gender-neutral terminology), but that's already covered in the first paragraph of GENDERID. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:14, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Currently, going by the text of this provision only, if there were an academic called, say, Sammy, who passed WP:N on WP:NACADEMIC and not WP:GNG, that would mean there would not be multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person. Therefore, we could not mention Sammy's birth name, Sammy, at all. Now, if you see the first name-related paragraph as introducing the rest, it's of course different. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 19:24, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that this is a problem. When an academic achieves academic notability but not general notability under their deadname, this wording would make it impossible to write about them in a way that makes sense. This doesn't match the cases of academically notable trans people that come to my mind but it seems likely enough to happen occasionally. We don't want our clumsy rule-crafting to restrict our coverage of notable trans people by making it difficult or impossible to write articles about them. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:56, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure it would be a serious problem. Suppose a deceased trans person had achieved academic notability per WP:PROF#C1, based on citations to papers published under their deadname. We could write about their work without using that deadname in the text proper; it would appear at most in the author lists within the bibliography, quite possibly only as a last name and first initial. That seems within the spirit of the provision. If they achieved academic notability per any other prong of WP:PROF, their deadname would be documented in the secondary sources that establish notability (e.g., their listing in the IEEE Fellows database). So, the criterion would likely be met anyway, and we could include their deadname (although we probably wouldn't need to). I agree that We don't want our clumsy rule-crafting to restrict our coverage of notable trans people by making it difficult or impossible to write articles about them; I currently think that this particular edge case isn't truly troublesome in that regard. XOR'easter (talk) 00:59, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Does the IEEE Fellows database contain "non-trivial coverage" about its fellows, as the proposed wording would require? It has the fellow citations, not just names and years, but that's not true of some other major society fellowship listings, and I think GNG-purists would discount the depth of its coverage. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:46, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Hmmmm, while paragraphs 2 and 3 of GENDERID apply in different contexts (ie, notable under former name or not) and as such are mutually exclusive with each other, I'd have thought that they're generally read in context with the other paragraphs of the guideline. I can't see why that would be any different in this case, unless you're reading each paragraph in isolation from the others?

In the case of our hypothetical academic Sammy, I would first apply the relevant parts of paragraph 1, then depending on their circumstances (notable under former name, or not, or deceased) apply whichever of paragraph 2-4 fits, before finally looking at applying any relevant parts of paragraphs 5-8. Our article would therefore refer to them as Sammy, as that name reflected their most recently expressed self-identification.

Alternatively, I guess you could add something like who was not notable under a former name (mirroring the language in paragraph 2) or who changed their name. Gets a bit clunky though. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:02, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Thinking on this further, while I still don't understand what the objection is, would tweaking the order of this to

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their former name (birth name, professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) ...

resolve the issue? It would mean that the clause only applies to those trans or non-binary people who have changed their name. Those who kept their original name would not be covered, because they would only ever have a current name, not a former name. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Why don't we just remove "birth name" from the paragraph entirely? If the birth name is a former name, then the paragraph applies; if it isn't, then the paragraph doesn't.

I copied it from In the case of a living transgender or non-binary person, their birth name or former name (professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should be included in the lead sentence of their main biographical article only if they were notable under that name, but thinking about it I don't see any benefit of it being included either there or here. BilledMammal (talk) 03:10, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

So for the living counterpart to this, the "birth or former name" is, I think, to create parity of guidance between someone like Ellen Page (someone whose former name was not their birth name), and Chelsea Manning (someone whose former name was their birth name).

That's still an important distinction to keep in the guidance I think, there are plenty who would be confused as to what to do if we don't mention it at all. And in the same way we occasionally get drive-by edits that intentionally insert deadnames, I could easily imagine drive-by comments along the lines of "but it's not a former name, it's their birth name". That said, we could somewhat simplify both of those paragraphs by moving "birth name" in with all of the other types of former names. You could also footnote the list of former name types, and reuse it in both paragraphs. There's enough potential for tendentious Wikilawyering that I wouldn't want to remove it entirely though. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:25, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

That's reasonable; no objection from me. BilledMammal (talk) 03:40, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Agreed — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 09:55, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest their former names (including birth name, professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should be.... Although I don’t see this as a problem. Guidelines aren't meant to be drafted to cover every possible eventuality, but to be interpreted using common sense and good faith. I think it would be clear the wording at the top of this section is not intended to prohibit mention of an unchanged name.--Trystan (talk) 00:21, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm still not sold on the should be included part of this, preferring may be included instead, but after skimming the last in-depth discussion about this I might have been the only editor who wasn't. As I said previously, I'd prefer for the guideline to allow for inclusion if the circumstances are met, and not mandate inclusion when the circumstances are met. But I wouldn't oppose this guideline addition simply because of that. Other than that, I don't really have an issue with this.

As for it being reverted three times. I guess the only way to truly resolve that would be to have a straight up yes/no RfC on whether we include this paragraph. Is that necessary? I guess we could directly ask the editors who removed it for their opinions, whether they're opposing because it wasn't RfCd, or if there's some other issue they have with it. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:01, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I definitely agree that inclusion of deadnames should not be mandated.

I would go further on that second point, though. There appears to be consensus on this Talk: page to include that paragraph and there is not consensus to remove it. I think we should treat such removal as vandalism. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 23:13, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I dunno. The reasons in the first revert's edit summary do make some sense, even if I don't agree with them. There are good faith reasons to oppose this being added in this manner (ie, without an RfC), as this can (to some) represent a substantial shift in how the guideline operates, so I would hesitate to call it vandalism. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Was this paragraph settled on by an RFC? If so could I see a link? I think as is this paragraph could be read as mandating deadnames of trans people, even though WP:BLPPRIVACY applies to recently deceased people and is a main basis for the current deadname policy for living people. Rab V (talk) 03:07, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I can see that it's unclear here — while the intention is to avoid mandating deadnames, it's easy to read as the opposite.

Would it be better if we change

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their birth name or former name ... should be included in the lead ... only if ...

to

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their birth name or former name ... may be included in the lead ... but only if ...

perhaps? — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 13:28, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I like “may”. Blueboar (talk) 13:55, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't, specifically because activists will use it to editwar against inclusion of them anywhere on the basis that it "is not required". We'll simply never hear the end of it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:38, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with "may". Loki (talk) 18:59, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't feel all that strongly about it, but various editors do, and have made this very clear. I don't think anyone in this discussion is unaware, from numerous previous discussions here and at VPPOL and elsewhere, going back 5+ years, of the fact that there is a large body of editors who consider former names of long-deceased notable subjects to be encyclopedic information, period. So, if the intent here is to change "should be" to "may be", to enable what's going to amount to socio-politicized editwarring to remove all deadnames, even of long-deceased persons, simply because they are former names of TG/NB people and because the guideline has been changed on the basis of nearly no discussion to seem to permit their exclusion, then I think that is a recipe for long-term drama-and-disruption disaster, without an RfC establishing that the community actually wants wording so vague and gameable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:05, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

@Rab V: It's a bit off-topic, but I don't think WP:BLPPRIVACY is the main basis for the current deadname policy for living people, as BLPPRIVACY only applies to names that have not been been widely published by reliable sources, and our deadname policy goes far beyond that. BilledMammal (talk) 03:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

of the fact that there is a large body of editors who consider former names of long-deceased notable subjects to be encyclopedic information, period There was a very well attended recent RfC on this guideline, and in the close it said With around a hundred editors responding across these RFCs taking place at VPP, it is obvious that there is a consensus against using the former names of transgender or non-binary people, living or dead, except when of encyclopedic interest or when necessary to avoid confusion. Also, there is clear consensus that a former name is not automatically of encyclopedic interest. Emphasis from the closer.

Accordingly, mandating inclusion by saying should be included in the lead ... only if <conditions are met>... would run counter to the first of our two recent RfCs on the guideline. For myself, changing "should be" to "may be" is nothing more or less than respecting the closure of the first of two recent RfCs on this guideline. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:54, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I disagree; encyclopedic interest is established by the use in multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person - exceptions may exist, but they can be handled by WP:IAR.

Further, it will reintroduce issues that would be resolved by the current wording; the current wording will stop most disputes over the inclusion of a deceased trans persons former name, but your wording will only stop disputes over the inclusion when the name doesn't meet the criteria. BilledMammal (talk) 03:04, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

On "encyclopedic interest", I'm not sure that's the case. Encyclopedic interest is one of those terms that we don't really define in a single, clear manner. The closest we get is the paragraph at WP:NOTEVERYTHING.

Additionally, the following paragraph of the same RfC said Where, exactly, the lines of encyclopedic interest and avoiding confusion are is not simple or clear and will likely need discussion on individual articles, although there is definitely space for more guidance in the MOS. By setting a floor for inclusion, multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage, we're providing more guidance. And by stopping short of mandating inclusion, we're recognising that what encyclopaedic interest is something that is contextually specific to each individual article. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:38, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

In other words, the RFC did not mandate the verbiage that was just added. This seems like a harsher policy towards deceased transgender people than what was intended in the closing statement of the RFC. Names that are not of encyclopedic interest but had been mentioned in secondary sources would be included. An example would be this edit on Brandon Teena's page. Though current secondary sources do not include the deadname, at the time of Brandon's murder the press treated trans people with curiosity or more open contempt and would often refer to them by their deadname. I think we should remove or soften the added paragraph to GENDERID while it is being discussed per WP:BRD as it is not mandated by the RFC closure. Rab V (talk) 07:19, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I found the original edit that added the paragraph to the MOS here. The editor admits it is a BOLD addition in the edit summary even linking to WP:BOLD, so per BRD, it should be removed while being discussed. Rab V (talk) 07:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Floating an idea: Moratorium on GENDERID changes

How many megabytes of discussion are we at yet over this, without much real change? Many of the participants in these discussions don't actually write much about transgender topics. For those of us who do, MOS:GENDERID doesn't offer much practical guidance, so we figure things out according to common sense, and that actually works fine.

I spoke about some of this^20:23 on WIKIMOVE a few months ago. And now every time it looks like we're approaching some kind of consensus, more discussion is needed. People show much more interest in arguing about this guideline than actually enforcing it: The Gloria Hemingway article went through a high-profile RM and subsequent news coverage while in blatant noncompliance with the guidance for quotes; articles about Caitlyn Jenner's athletic career, perhaps the most obvious application of the changed-name other-article rule, violate that rule more often than not. Arguing about GENDERID has become more of a moot court than a productive exercise.

What if we just imposed a moratorium and let people focus on writing good content and enforcing the guideline as it exists? Say that for one year, no new discussions may be started to amend MOS:GENDERID, nor may substantive changes be made to the section. Clarifying questions on talk would still be allowed, as would copy-edits to the section.

If people don't like that idea, then all right, I've long realized that these discussions go nowhere, so I'm not the one who has to keep arguing in the absence of a moratorium. But I thought I'd suggest it. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 16:02, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

On the Caitlyn Jenner point, about a year ago I went through every article that mentioned Elliot Page to make sure that they were compliant with the guideline. In doing so, I discovered a lot of articles that used his old name, and when I looked into the article history, in almost all cases it was due to vandalism. After I finished the tidy up, I added the articles to my watchlist, and in the time since I've had to revert more than a few drive-by edits restoring Page's deadname to the article.

Skimming over the search results of Jenner's deadname, I do see a similar issue as with Page, where a lot of articles are using Jenner's deadname in prose. Spot checking a few, some seem not to have been updated in a while, some seem to be vandalised, and there's at least one odd case where a local consensus seems to exist to ignore GENDERID entirely.

It seems a sad truth that pretty much any high profile trans or non-binary person whose deadname is known will have this issue occur on a semi-regular basis. And it would be great if more editors could be aware of this and help enforce the guideline. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:10, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• Jenner is a somewhat unique situation. She was heavily discussed back when we were first adopting GENDERID - and even then was considered a notable exception due to having Olympic medals won and records set under the name “Bruce”. The sports editors were insistent that the “name used when competing” should be maintained. Caitlin herself has commented publicly that she does not mind when her “deadname” is used in historical contexts (or even if people use “he” in such contexts) so there is no privacy/compassion issue. However, back when we agreed to make an exception in Jenner’s case, it was agreed that this should BE an exception and not a precedent. Blueboar (talk) 00:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I think a moratorium is a good idea. I find it hard to escape the conclusion that there simply isn't a consensus on any specific changes at the moment. (There is consensus on some broad points, but it always breaks down when trying to nail down the specifics.) Taking a break from trying to find what isn't there and focussing instead on productive editing would be of much more direct benefit, and may help a clearer consensus form in the future.--Trystan (talk) 00:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I have two specific concerns with a moratorium, but only in relation to the proposal above. The first is, if we do take a 12 month pause on this discussion, will the impasse actually resolve itself in any meaningful way? It seems that in the in the 3 months since the last discussion ended, little has changed. Will 12 really bring a resolution here? Secondly, I have a concern that if we did put a pause on discussions until December 2024, when we come back to the lack of guidance on how to handle the former names of deceased trans and non-binary people, there will be the question of "well why didn't you deal with this twelve months ago when the two RfC consensi were relatively fresh?" We've had two RfCs, one in August/September 2021, and one in May/June 2023, both of which demonstrate a need for guidance relating to the deadnames of the deceased. So how do we square that circle?

As for a moratorium on the rest of the guideline, I don't have an issue with that. Could it be better? Sure, but so could a lot of our policies and guidelines. But it's also not completely broken either. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:20, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea for largely the same reasons Sideswipe listed above. A moratorium won't do anything to resolve the issues being discussed, one of which is a relatively recent RFC. Delaying the consensus of that RFC would cause more problems than it solves. Loki (talk) 03:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

How would such a moratorium be imposed and enforced? Per WP:EDITING policy, people are free to post whatever proposal they like, absent some kind of community decision implementing a restriction. The only ways I can recall that such a moratorium has been imposed and obeyed are three: ArbCom imposes one, a consensus at ANI or another noticeboard imposes one, or an RfC comes to a consensus to impose one about the topic of the RfC and the closer of the RfC imposes it as part of the close; in all three cases there is either a community consensus behind it or ArbCom acting as a delegate of community consensus. But just some random editor like you or me unilaterally wanting to see it happen doesn't make it happen. Just, say, five people on a talk page "declaring" a moratorium isn't going to work, or factions of PoV pushers all over the place would have a field day, implementating year-long false-consensus blockades against anyone doing anything about their PoV pushing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:53, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

MOS:DEADNAME has an RfC

MOS:DEADNAME 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. BilledMammal (talk) 18:39, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Because of it's length, this has moved out of VPPOL and into its own page: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Names of deceased trans people.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:04, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC on JOBTITLES

Should the "Positions, offices, and occupational titles" section be changed to reflect actual practice, namely capitalising titles adjacent to names? ~~~~ A.D.Hope (talk) 19:14, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Survey

• CLOSE for longer RFCBEFORE or OPPOSE ... but might support some rephrasing of the guideline. For context, this discussion started above, with #Conflict between JOBTITLE and SURNAME. The proposer noted that, though JOBTITLES says to only capitalize titles before names, we do, in practice, capitalize some post-name titles, like "William, Prince of Wales". Above, I noted, "Per WP:NCROY, royalty often use titles in lieu of surnames. As such, the title is part of the name. Though subtle, I think there's a distinction between saying, for example, "William, Prince of Wales" vs. "Charles was the prince of Wales". Notably, capitalization seems to be standard practice around the various articles: In this ongoing RFC discussing how a list of funeral attendees should be presented, no one is suggesting lowercasing titles." I'd amend that to note, as NCROY does, that a similar title-in-lieu-of-surname practice is often used for non-royal nobility or consorts (Albert, Prince Consort). That said, there are a few exceptions, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell has both a surname and a title.
  Regardless of the inconsistency, I think the above proposal is too broad. I'd oppose an approach of capitalizing all adjacent titles (I'd prefer "George W. Bush, president of the United States at the time, ..." to "George W. Bush, President of the United States at the time, ...". I might support some explicit clarification to account for the type of British nobility titles OP has mentioned, but I think such an amendment should be tailored to those titles (and probably discussed at the relevant Wikiproject—Wikipedia:WikiProject Royalty and Nobility?—prior to an RFC).--Jerome Frank Disciple 12:11, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

• Over the past few weeks I've had a number of discussions about exactly when to capitalise titles; despite JOBTITLES the general consensus on English Wikipedia seems to be to capitalise them when they're directly adjacent to a person's name, except when they're commercial or informal. Rather than contradicting this, as JOBTITLES currently does, would it be worth updating the section? Although my preference would be for the current wording, I don't see any realistic prospect of either changing how titles are capitalised in practice or updating the thousands of articles which must technically be in violation of the MoS. Thoughts? A.D.Hope (talk) 19:22, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  MOS:JOBTITLE already reads:

  When followed by a person's name to form a title, i.e., when they can be considered to have become part of the name: President Nixon, not president Nixon; Pope John XXIII, not pope John XXIII.

  What change is being proposed? —Bagumba (talk) 19:33, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  Captalising when a title follows a person's name. JOBTITLES would currently have 'Richard Nixon, president of the United States', but I propose changing this to allow 'Richard Nixon, President of the United States' to better reflect how Wikipedia editors seem to capitalise in practice. A.D.Hope (talk) 19:36, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  I disagree with this proposal. To my eye, the example above is improper for English and promoting it would gradually lead to such words always being capitalized, more as in German. To try to "reflect how Wikipedia editors seem to" do something is not, in my opinion, a rational or sustainable way to organize the MOS.Dayirmiter (talk) 07:26, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  The above example isn't improper English, to my knowledge, although admittedly it wouldn't be endorsed by the Chicago MoS. I do see your point, but then organising our MoS to work with editors rather than against them is both rational and sustainable, surely? A.D.Hope (talk) 10:52, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Frankly, I think most editors would use an article there, "Richard Nixon, the president of the United States, ...." Would your proposal also require capitalization there?--Jerome Frank Disciple 12:02, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  No, it wouldn't. A.D.Hope (talk) 12:19, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Okay, so just so I'm clear: "Richard Nixon, President of the United States at the time" but "Richard Nixon, the president of the United States at the time"?--Jerome Frank Disciple 12:25, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Yes. I know it's anecdotal, but that's the style a lot of editors seem to naturally adopt. A.D.Hope (talk) 12:37, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  And it would be "Richard Nixon, president of the United States at the time", because the title is not directly connected to the name "as if part of it", but is part of another clause separated from the name by a comma.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:08, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  There's a well established principle in a number of style guides where the title preceding the name is capitalized, but not when it follows the name. So "President Nixon" and "Richard Nixon, president of the United States," but not "Richard Nixon, President of the United States." I'd argue that where you see the later happening, it's both against the MOS and generally incorrect. More often, I've seen people misread MOS:JOBTITLE to say that "president Richard Nixon" is correct, probably confusing something like "the president, Richard Nixon," where it would be lowercased. That said, royal titles like "William, Prince of Wales," are a different case in part because you would never say "the President" in running text without the president's name, but you would say "the Prince of Wales" because of how the title acts as name. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 13:08, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  I mostly agree with your comment ... although I do want to caveat you would never say "the President" in running text without the president's name seems ... which I suppose might be true if you mean "on Wikipedia", but certainly outside of Wikipedia, "the president announced" is quite common.--Jerome Frank Disciple 14:08, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  My understanding is that you should write "the President" in running text [w]hen a title is used to refer to a specific person as a substitute for their name during their time in office (the second bullet point of MOS:JOBTITLES). Rosbif73 (talk) 15:07, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for this! I was wondering where I had seen that—I wrongly assumed I had seen it in a third-party style guide, but I actually found that most style guides disagree! (In a 1999 article, William Safire announced that the NYT would be joining the AP in not capitalizing president even when referring to a specific person; he said his preference was to capitalize in such a case, though he said the approach was "no longer stylish".[1]) CMoS, AP, and NYT all seem to now agree to lowercase it. I must have seen that passage in MOS:JOBTITLES and just forgot it was there!--Jerome Frank Disciple 15:46, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, at the moment our MoS is very clear on 'the President' rather than 'the president' when referring to a specific person. Again, although that usage seems to have fallen out of favour among style guides it does still seem to be popular on Wikipedia, so changing it is a question of balancing stylistic trends with how editors actually write. As I understand it neither usage is really wrong, after all.

  I do wonder if the best thing would be to make the MoS itself less absolute on this issue and title capitalisation, and aim for consistency within a page rather than across the whole enyclopedia? I think @Mgp28 will back me up when I say that there are pages where the main editors would resist the MoS as currently written being strictly imposed, and not unreasonably. A.D.Hope (talk) 18:12, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Hurm, the examples there are "Queen" and "Pope", which seem a bit different to me than president, mostly because royal (and to a degree ecclesiastical) titles seem to be referring to the person, while president and governor would refer more to the office (i.e., one is more about WHO it is, the other is about the person's position). But that also sounds like I'm stretching for a rationale ... :) —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 17:37, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  I agree that it would feel totally wrong to write "the king" or "the pope" (referring to a specific person at a given point in time) but somehow more acceptable to write "the prime minister" or "the bishop" in the same context. If we are to change the guidance, we need clear rationale for the distinction. Rosbif73 (talk) 08:50, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think there's a clear one to make, and people who are more apt to write "the King" are more apt to write "the Prime Minister" when used in that same way, while those more apt to write "the prime minister" would likely be more apt to write "the king" when used as a stand-in.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  I have followed this discussion around a few different conversations since Talk:List_of_guests_at_the_coronation_of_Charles_III_and_Camilla#RfC_on_capitalisation_and_peerage_format. At that point it applied to princes, earls, lords and so on. MOS:SURNAME advised to capitalize these names. I was unconvinced that MOS:JOBTITLE should apply to all of these people but there was a possible contradiction so I suggested above that it might make sense to rephrase the example for when the title has become part of the name:

  • When they can be considered to have become part of the name, i.e. when combined with a person's name to form a title: President Nixon, not president Nixon; Pope John XXIII, not pope John XXIII; William, Prince of Wales, not William, prince of Wales

  I still think this could be reasonable, but only in the context of the title being part of the name in that position, not generically whenever a title follows a name. I would not think we should expand it to "Richard Nixon, President". Also, as presently phrased it might suggest capitalizing job titles that are never used as part of a name, "Adam Smith, Butcher", which I don't think it the intent. --Mgp28 (talk) 17:18, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Well "being part of the name" sort of wording has proven to be confusing and a major sticking point in previous discussions anywhere hear the subject of names and titles; we need to write around that completely, which I've been doing in the drafting so far.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

• Now that's its become clear this is about writing ""Richard Nixon, President of the United States" instead of "Richard Nixon, president of the United States", I have to oppose, because the comma separates them into separate clauses, and the title is no longer directly connected to the name.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:02, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose, reluctantly, for the same reason given by User:SMCandlish. Personally, I strongly dislike the trend towards writing titles in lower case (e.g., president in lieu of President). But it is true that several style guides have adopted the distinction between capitalizing a title only when it immediately precedes the name of the title holder and otherwise not capitalizing. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:37, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is English, not German, and moreover it's not Benjamin Franklin's English, either. Moreover, I don't support capitalizing a title like "president" when referring to a specific person, because that's a distinction without a difference, and one that is entirely missed by any user who has impaired sight or otherwise isn't using their eyes to take in this information. I only note that last because it was raised by other editors, not to suggest a change at this time.~TPW 18:39, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

I assumed that foreign language like Führer for Adolf Hitler. In full, Hitler officially styled himself der Führer und Reichskanzler (the Leader and Chancellor of the Reich) does not assume per MOS:JOBTITLE. --2001:4451:8272:C000:284C:2E39:ABD0:3DEA (talk) 11:56, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Neither of those are complete sentences, and it's entirely unclear what you are trying to convey. Probably not relevant anyway, since Führer is a German noun, and German nouns are always capitalized.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:27, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Capitalization of job titles in infoboxes

I changed the office in the Infobox officeholder template for John Merrill (American politician) from "53rd Secretary of State of Alabama" to "53rd secretary of state of Alabama", lowercasing the modified job title. Another editor insists that MOS:JOBTITLE does not apply to infoboxes. I don't see that exception in the MOS. He also claims that all other infoboxes use upper case for job titles, so I should leave them all consistently wrong (upper case). I admit there are many (but not all), though this is only because I have not gotten to all of them yet. Does this part of the MOS not apply to infoboxes? Chris the speller ^yack 05:23, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

In that particular case, maybe per MOS:OFFICE it should be capitalised? But in general, definitely not. But it's something that is very common, people writing Their Very Important Job in Capital Letters. soetermans. ^{↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK} 08:05, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

But MOS:OFFICE says it should be lower case because it is modified by "53rd". Note "37th president of the United States". Chris the speller ^yack 14:38, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Nixon's infobox uses "37th President of the United States" & "36th Vice President of the United States". GoodDay (talk) 18:29, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

We keep the offices capitalised in the infoboxes. GoodDay (talk) 18:28, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Concur with User:GoodDay. In general, we use the postgraduate academic convention of lowercasing titles in prose, when they do not immediately precede the officeholder's name. But for infoboxes (a layout device more commonly seen in magazines and K-12 textbooks), we use official and/or formal titles, which are still capitalized in title case. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:45, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Agree. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:20, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

There is no "magical exception" to this or any other guidleine or policy when it comes to text strings in infoboxes. I have no idea where anyone got that idea. Infobox entries are treated as list items (since that's what they are: lists of key points put in right-floated tables). They are written in sentence case, and follow all the other MoS rules. So, because MOS:OFFICE has us do "37th president of the United States", then it remains "37th president of the United States" in an infobox. There is no special pleading to be had about this, and not one single word in MOS:INFOBOXES suggests otherwise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:58, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

BLP/V/OR dispute about pronunciation keys in lead sentences

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: WT:Manual of Style/Lead section#Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Pronunciation – What began as seemingly a style question about a particular handful of articles has turned into a broad sourcing and OR debate, most especially as it pertains to pronunciations of individuals' surnames, with some particular BLP argumentation. This could really use input from MOS:BIO regulars not just MOS:LEAD regulars (to the extent they may differ).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:55, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Honorifics in infobox headings

While the "Knighthoods, lordships, and similar honorific titles" subsection says, "The honorific titles Sir, Dame, Lord and Lady are included in the [...] infobox heading", the "Honorific prefixes and suffixes" subsection says, "In general, honorific prefixes and suffixes should not be included, but may be discussed in the article", with no provision for including them in the infobox heading. Yet, some prefixes (e.g. "The Honourable") are typically included in the infobox heading. Could the guideline please be clarified re honorific prefixes such as "The Honourable", "The Reverend" etc. in infoboxes. Nurg (talk) 22:33, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Frankly, I've been interested in knowing why, out of all the titles of nobility and honorary titles in the world, there's an exception for two pairs (male/female) of specific titles from one specific country (UK). Largoplazo (talk) 23:28, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

My assumption is that it stems from WikiProject Succession Box Standardization/Guidelines § Peers and nobility (and maybe older versions of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility) § British nobility?) that privilege their titles when talking about British nobles — because that is the way that nobles have historically been described in academic works and encyclopædias here.

Given that we are a global publication, not a British one, we have already chosen not to privilege those titles thus, it seems reasonable to remove this weird exception from infoboxes. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 10:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

We include them because, as endlessly stated, they are effectively part of the person's name and almost invariably used by reliable sources. If John Smith is knighted, he is no longer simple John Smith but Sir John Smith. He is no longer referred to as Mr Smith, but as Sir John. It would therefore be doing a disservice to Wikipedia users not to use the standard style. It is tiresome to continually have to explain this. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

We do that in text. We don't put "Mr" in the infobox. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 13:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Mr, Mrs, Ms, Mx, are essentially meaningless strings/utterances that children use toward adults, a handful of especially old-fashioned newspapers still use before surnames for some reason, and people use in business and other interaction when trying to be particularly polite, so they really don't serve any encyclopedic purpose to mention, much less to highlight in an infobox. In policy terms, they would be a form of WP:INDISCRIMINATEly trivial verbiage to use here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

(This is about "Sir" and "Dame" again, if anyone hadn't already figured that out.) Wikipedia doesn't refer to him as "Mr Smith", either, so the distinction Necrothesp is trying to draw is immaterial. It's really tiresome to have a handful of editors refuse to drop the stick about this. To go over it yet again: It is common but not universal (even within the same publication) for many British and some other Commonwealth writers to use Sir/Dame for most but not all of the persons with such titles (depending on the exact wording of the material, among other factors), but it's virtually unknown everywhere else (or used in a tongue-in-cheek manner), nor is it commonly used (albeit not unheard of) in various contexts even within Britain, e.g. in film credits, journal citations, etc. Plus, various people who have these titles do not publicly use them, or only use them in particular contexts (same goes for Lord/Lady, etc.).

But frequency of use in particular source types really is immaterial in the end. WP does not go around calling people Sir This and Dame That at every possible mention, and there is a very long and stable consensus to this effect. Such a title is sometimes used once or even a few times when particularly pertinent, when the full name is given ("Sir John" and "Sir John Smith" are proper British style for this title, but "Sir Smith" is not). As WP doesn't refer to subjects by first name except under unusual circumstances, and usually refers to them by surname after first mention except under unusual circumstances, there is little call for "Sir" or "Dame" even when someone felt like applying it. In someone's own bio article, the Sir/Dame that applies to them will always be in the lead sentence (except in the rare case of someone who openly insists on not using it at all).

But in mentioning, outside their own bio, that so-and-so won a snooker tournament or narrated a documentary or starred in a TV show or died in car crash, there is very little appetite for Sir/Dame among either editors or readers. And it should be this way, since it has major WP:POV implications about endorsement of the British class-and-honours system, which is generally unrecognized anywhere else except particular Commonwealth jurisdictions, has has no more meaning to most readers than any other honorifics generated by any other authorities in other places, and has considerable opposition even among Britons and the broader Commonwealth public, as a product of royalism. This is not SupportTheBritishMonarchyAndClassHierarchyPedia. It's not our job to not-so-subtly choose a side in that ongoing and (post-EII) intensifying off-site socio-political debate.

It is entirely enough that WP sometimes uses these titles in running text when they are especially contextually pertinent, and almost always in the lead of a knight/dame's own bio. This is WP:DUE. We are not hiding the fact of the honour and title where it's relevant, but we are not bandying it about all over the place to drive an impression that the person is the "social better" of everyone without the title and somehow deserves greated reader attention and interest – notability – as an article subject, higher authority as source of virtue, or most importantly more trust as a source. As a simple example of the first sort, it is unquestionable that Sir John Burdon, a rather minor provicial politician (and as a writer, downright unimportant), is at least an order of magnitude less notable than David Bowie (who turned down a KBE) and various other world-famous Britons never offered one, e.g. George Harrison, Florence Nightingale (OM), William Blake, Charles Dickens, Alan Turing (OBE), J. R. R. Tolkien (CBE), Charles Darwin, etc. (Consider further that three of Darwin's children were knighted as adults, but are barely notable.) As an example of the second sort of concern, see Albert Henry (politician) and Jean Else, who had Knight/Dame Commander revoked after criminal activity, within recent memory. As an example of the third sort, Sir Thomas Innes of Learney might be referred to as such in his role as Lord Lyon (a role firmly embedded in the British class and nobility system), but in a source citation to one of his books (and in prose about his role as a writer) should not use "Sir", because his material outside his professional scope isn't, through some power of noblesse, more reliable than everyone else's even within subjects he liked to think of himself as something of an expert on (his material on tartan and Highland dress, for example, has various outright errors as well some very bold and documentarily unsupportable claims that are dismissed with good evidence by later leading researchers on the topic; and even his material on Scottish heraldry, his actual expertise, is laced with novel ideas that he claimed were rooted in Scottish tradition but were not).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Well put. Thank you. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 15:14, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Incidentally, a useful comparator might be Malaysian honorifics. How often does anyone refer to her as Yang Berbahagia Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh?

(As it happens, we do put that in the infobox, which is why I deleted my previously-typed rant and replaced it with what I actually wrote 5 hours ago. I'm not sure we should do, though; I think I'd be happy with them only being down in an "Honours and accolades" section or whatever, but it should certainly remain consistent with what we do for British honorifics.) — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 15:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

How often does anyone refer to her as Yang Berbahagia Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh. Exactly. They don't. Probably not even in Malaysia. How is that in any way comparable to someone knighted under the British honours system who is commonly referred to using their title? Have a look at the BBC website, for example. It is standard practice there to use titles when people have them. No, they don't always appear (journalists can be as ignorant about these things as anyone else), but they usually do. All the guff about titles not necessarily being used in other countries is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is whether they are commonly used in the country of origin. And they very, very clearly are. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:19, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

The provincial titles not so much, but a Google search for "Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh" shows that the national honorifics are quite widely used there.

But also, people here widely talk about "Paul McCartney" or "Alan Sugar", without the "Sir" prefix, and likewise baronets.

I don't think they're as essential here as you claim. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 20:23, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

They definitely aren't. They're a deferential courtesy thing favoured by some-but-not-all British writers, and even those only some-but-not-all of the time. Here's a simple test: Google News search on "Sean Connery" [2]. The occurrences of "Sir Sean Connery" are downright rare, when it happens it's almost always a British source, and it is not universal in British sources (e.g. this Daily Express article [3] of a few months ago does not contain "Sir" anywhere in it. It took less than 30 seconds to find that, and there are more. What this tells us, inescapable, is that this is entirely optional and is a PoV-laden honorific. It hass not "become part of the name", it not "inseparable from the name", it is not "always used", so it is not anything Wikipedia should be doing, either in running prose when the title is not relevant (e.g. in reference to a film role), nor by violating the purpose of infobox parameters to leave |honorific_prefix= empty and make the blantantly false claim |name=Sir Sean Connery. And what's been done at the Margaret Thatcher infobox is even worse, filling |name= with an honorific phrase that disagrees with the article title and lead, is virtually never used in RS, and is just something one might use (if she were still alive) in polite personal address, like when writing a letter or introducing her to someone. Utterly unencyclopedic approach. Similar PoV-pushing screwup at the article on actor Christopher Guest, with |name=The Lord Haden-Guest. This is absolutely not what |name= is for, and any title that adheres to him as 5th Baron Haden-Guest since the death of his father belongs in other parameters or not in the infobox at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

What an absolute surprise that editors who oppose the use of titles are completely misrepresenting the points I made. My point is that "Sir, "Dame", "Lord" and "Lady" are almost always applied before the names of people with those titles. You can argue they're not until you're blue in the face. That doesn't make it any more true. The fact is that in British RSs they almost invariably are. How is it helping our readers if, for dogmatic WP:IDONTLIKEIT reasons, they are omitted from the beginning of the articles? it has major WP:POV implications about endorsement of the British class-and-honours system... And that sums it up in a nutshell. It's a POV argument. The NPOV, on the other hand, is clearly to use titles that are used and not to omit them. It is not Wikipedia's job to omit facts because editors do not like them or to take some sort of stand against the British honours system. They should clearly appear in the lead and the infobox of the individual's own article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Probably every reliable source refers to the UK's current monarch as "King Charles" and his elder son as "Prince William", yet for some reason "Sir" and "Lady" get this treatment on Wikipedia based on the rationale you're giving but those same people's higher-ups don't. I realize that they're distinguished in the guidelines by designating them, respectively, as "honorary titles" and "job titles", but being someone's son isn't a job, and it's an artificial division for what most people probably just think of as "titles". The distinction has no meaningful relevance to the considerations here. Largoplazo (talk) 17:44, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

It does indeed have a great deal to do with source usage, and with a difference of type between the titles; "Sir/Dame" are honours, while "King/Queen" is a functional role of major societal significance. The fact that the latter is also a form of nobility and not a fully republicanist role like president is immaterial. It's instructive to look at RS treatment of Christopher Guest, then look at the trainwreck infobox in our article on his. He is virtually never referred to (except in old coverage of his brief stint in the House of Lords) as Baron Haden-Guest, Lord Haden-Guest, or Haden-Guest at all. He is known to the world almost entirely as Christoper Guest, and should be referred to by that name by us everywhere but in his own lead where we need to give more detail, and maybe in any coverage in another article of his short political career, but only in wording that makes it very clear we're talking about the notable Christopher Guest not some random non-notable guy named Lord Christopher Haden-Guest that no one's ever heard of. But abusine the |name= parameter to jam in a nearly unrecognizable title is ridiculous and "reader-hateful".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

The material is clumsily written, and consequently does not match actual practice. It should probably read something like: In general, honorific prefixes and suffixes should not be used when refering to persons, but may be discussed in an article about that person, and included in the |honorific_prefix= or |honorific_prefix= parameter of their biographical infobox. In particular, "honorific prefixes and suffixes" include: ...

The other option would be to actually remove the parameters from the infoboxes, or sharply limit their use with some kind of re-documentation, backed up by clearer guideline wording about infoboxes and titles, but I think that would require a really big contesus discussion (like an RfC at WP:VPPOL, as we did with getting rid of the |ethnicity= and |religion= parameters years ago after they were abused for WP:OR all the time).

See also Template talk:Infobox person#Placement of "Sir", yet another perennial discussion of treating Sir/Dame as "magically special", with a propososal to stick them into the |name= parameter instead of |honorific_prefix=.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Given a choice, I'd delete all such titles from bio infoboxes-in-question. Seeing (for example) "Right Honorable" in Canadian prime ministers' bio infoboxes, appears fluffery in nature. GoodDay (talk) 20:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree when it comes to this "The Right Honourable" stuff. These are not titles, they are "styles" used as forms of address or honorific reference, and should not be used in infoboxes much less in running prose. It is noteworthy and very important that articles like Charles III and Elizabeth II do not have |honorific_prefix=His Majesty or |honorific_prefix=Her Majesty (and several more such styles could probably be added to it by obsessives, judging from what's in articles like List of titles and honours of Elizabeth II). There is a clear consensus at royalty articles to not do this. What's happened in that fanbois of the British class system who have not got their way on this have jumped over to less-watchlisted articles on lesser figures and tried to get their way at those instead. Maybe it's a WP:FAITACCOMPLI thing, where if enough articles on knights and premiers and baronets and duchesses and lords mayor and etc. are festooned with this craptrap, they'll be able to re-force it back into top-level royalty articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

|honorific_prefix= should be used for these titles, that is what it is there for. GiantSnowman 18:07, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

That something exists isn't proof that it should.

OK, so,in real life, people aren't like "I'm going to the Sir Elton John concert". They just aren't, is all. Since that is sky-is-blue true (source: if you don't know this you should get out more), our job is is to look for refs that will support us speaking like normal people rather than finding excuses to not speak like normal people. Serve the reader, not the editors at the Times.

(FWIW, I don't know about British newspapers, but book authors basically never use Sir Elton John either), it appears.

But, you know, on the other hand...this is a hill the Brits will die on, clinging to the remnants of a glorious past (which, fully understandable). It'd be heavy lifting to make a change, maybe just leave it lie. We won the Revolution, let them have this one.

On the hand, Brits should realize that this "Sir" stuff is actively offensive to some Americans (and maybe Indians, I don't know). We're republicans, citizens not subjects (yeah I know about the recent change, but still) and some of us take it seriously. Fourth of July and all. Article 1 of the American founding constitution says "...no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall...accept of any... Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." That only applies to federal offices, but still. So, Americans aren't really on board with any of this stuff, mostly. True, few Americans are very offended, but why even annoy readers with snobbish Medieval claptrap? Herostratus (talk) 02:53, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

IF anybody wants to open an RFC (or whatever else is required) to see about deleting 'honorific_prefix' from bio infoboxes? I'll go along with it. GoodDay (talk) 03:14, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Ah, so what some Americans believe should rule Wikipedia, should it? Ignore actual facts because some Americans (God knows why) might be offended by them. At least we British are open about our class system and don't try to claim that we don't have one as many Americans laughably do (you might not have titles, but your class system is actually more entrenched than ours). And also note that anyone in Britain can receive a title. Many people who do started out as working class. We won the Revolution, let them have this one. You mean the First American Civil War? The one some Americans (the ones who didn't fight for the King) won almost entirely because of the support of the Kingdom of France? The one that was predominantly about money? Not much to boast about there. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:51, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

For the record, not everyone with concerns about this stuff is making that sort of nationalistic argument at all (though given the nationalism behind the viewpoint on the other extreme, I'm not surprised to see this come up). The real issues are several, including multiple forms at once of inconsistency (in treatment of one title type versus another, between one category of bio articles and another, between the "name" in the infobox and in the article title and sometimes even the entire lead, etc.); the WP:CONLEVEL problem of one wikiproject going around changing thousands of articles to defy the guideline's intent, the purpose of an infobox, and that specific infoboxes intent and documentation; the NPOV problem of treating people with such titles as if they are magically different from and better than everyone else; the nationalistic issue of a sense that British editors (and not all of them, just those who favour this labelling system, and beyond that want to use it in a markedly undue manner) have more say than anyone else over how articles on British subjects should read, despite this being a global encyclopedia not UKPedia; and so on.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:05, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

@Necrothesp: I'm not an American, fwiw. GoodDay (talk) 00:10, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

@GoodDay: I was answering Herostratus, who was talking about titles offending American sensitivities. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:28, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Herostratus, I'll have to agree and disagree by turns. That a template used on hundreds of housands of pages, and intensely watchlisted, and subject to a great deal of active community input over many, many years (including multiple WP:VPPOL RfCs about what it says and does), has specific parameters for titles and for names, and clearly documents their distinct usage, absolutely is strong evidence that these parameters should exist and should be used as documented. But RfC away if you think you can change consensus on their existence. I know where I'm placing my bets, and I wouldn't want them deleted, since at least they provide a rationale to stop injecting honorifics into |name=, which is a frequent problem anyway but would be magnified tenfold. It is correct that people almost never say "I'm going to the Sir Elton John concert". But WP isn't based on colloquial speech patterns, it's based on high-quality writing. So it is much, much more important that the vast majority of independent RS do not refer to him as "Sir Elton John", either; it's almost entirely a Briticism, and confined to publications that, frankly, are classist and just like to do this, while everyone else in the world refers to him as simply "Elton John", including plenty of British writers. But that really has nothing to do with whether the parameters should exist. It does mean that the parameter purposes should be followed, with "Sir" in the pre-nominal title parameter where it belongs and just "Elton John" in the name parameter, because his name is "Elton John" not "Sir Elton John", both in a strictly-speaking manner (that longer string is a concatenation of a pre-nominal title and a name) and in a source-usage, WP:COMMONNAME manner. What is way more troubling than a few instances of crap like |name=Sir Elton John is the WP:FAITACCOMPLI behavior of WP:ROYALTY in going around totally screwing up the infobox on almost every member of the British peerage (probably others) with nonsense like |name=Baroness Thatcher at Margaret Thatcher. That's just un-fucking-believable and it needs to be undone, by an RfC if necessary.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:18, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I haven’t been following this discussion, but I don’t think there’s a clear consensus(?) and Omnipaedista, it seems you should be aware of this before continuing to change infoboxes. — HTGS (talk) 04:34, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

The documentation of the relevant template (Infobox person) has been indicating that |honorific_prefix= is to be used for these titles since at least November 2017‎. For the past 6 years, no one seems to have changed this bit of the documentation. This is the deafening silence of consensus (WP:SILENCE). --Omnipaedista (talk) 04:49, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

1) I don’t think infobox guidance should generally be taken as infallible, and certainly should defer to MOS. 2) I don’t have skin in this discussion, but while conversation is ongoing it seems sensible that nobody should be making changes. I also didn’t mean to call you out or condemn your actions at all, because I’m assuming you didn’t know about this thread. — HTGS (talk) 23:12, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Given that we have related discussions happening on at least two pages (here and Template talk:Infobox person), without a crystal clear consensus forming, this is probably something that should be RFCed, presumably here and "advertised" at sensible places like WP:VPPOL, WT:BIO, WT:BLP, WT:ROYALTY, the main WT:MOS talk page, etc., since this would ultimately affect a large number of articles. There are basically two questions:

1. Should the |honorific_prefix= and |honorific_suffix= parameters be kept or deleted, at templates like {{Infobox person}} and its derivatives?
2. If kept, should the long-standing documentation be followed, or be changed to permit use of honorific titles in the |name= parameter?

Other questions that could be asked, like "Should MoS address this directly?" and "What would be the point of the |honorific_*fix= parameters if titles could just be put in |name=?" and "Should it be okay to not use the subject's name at all and instead use something like |name=Baroness Thatcher?", really depend quite obviously on the answers to the two basic questions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:29, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I do not think that the editors proposing a change have demonstrated a change in consensus. If these editors think they can change consensus, they are invited to open an RfC at WP:VPPOL as suggested above. Local consensus (WP:LOCALCONSENSUS) cannot override community consensus. —Omnipaedista (talk) 03:48, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Previous discussions have already been concluded: see here and here. These recent discussions had a straightforward result: no changes are to be made to the relevant template descriptions; the consensus has not changed and the template descriptions still say what they say. --Omnipaedista (talk) 18:44, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Template documentation does not reflect consensus. This is basic policy. Atchom (talk) 00:31, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

That's made-up nonsense. See WP:CONSENSUS policy. Consensus is determined by editorial discussion and actual practice, and can form anywhere. When template documentation is consistently followed by everyone on the site except a handful of editors from a single wikiproject going around and doing things that violate multiple guidelines as well as the template documentation (which is long-standing and well-discussed), then we know exactly what the consensus is and who is defying it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:07, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

When template documentation is consistently followed by everyone on the site... It isn't. It's been completely inconsistent until Omnipaedista decided to go around "enforcing" it and shouting down anyone who objected. The discussion above shows just how little consensus there is. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:27, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd add that there was a consensus (before Omnipaedista's thousands of mass edits) for Sir/Dame to go into the name field if the person had a prefix such as Honourable/Right Honourable. Atchom (talk) 17:43, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

You are mistaken. Of course there was widespread use before my edits. The earliest such edit I can remember is by MarnetteD back in April 2015 (the article was "Alec Guinness", an intensely watchlisted article). Within the next couple of years after that edit, most of the articles about knighted celebrities and famous politicians had been changed accordingly and the new common practice was eventually documented in Infobox person's documentation (I only started editing that parameter in late 2020). Two years ago some further clarification became necessary so an actual RFC started. The consensus of that discussion was that 'Sir' and 'Dame' are high-grade (as opposed to routine) honorifics, not actual names, and have no place in the "Names" part of the infobox. The only editor who seems to believe that the RfC had no consensus seems to be Atchom. --Omnipaedista (talk) 13:35, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I would note that the RfC was never closed. I'm not sure it ever was a formal RfC in any case. Claims that there is any sort of formal consensus are therefore extremely flimsy. Changes to infoboxes that have existed for years have essentially been made by a handful of editors who clearly don't approve of titles (quite vociferously and insultingly anti, in some cases, as can be seen above), who have then cited a consensus that doesn't really exist to support their actions. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Please see WP:RFCEND (section "Duration"). Please also note that consensus on Wikipedia does not mean unanimity as per WP:CONS. --Omnipaedista (talk) 15:06, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

That works both ways, and you have no leg to stand on. Enough. Atchom (talk) 18:49, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

It was your side that lost the argument in the relevant RfC. In any case, MOS is effectively about the body of the text of an article not about infoboxes. The discussion here is rather pointless and just keeps echoing the main discussion which is to be found here: Template_talk:Infobox_person#Placement_of_"Sir". --Omnipaedista (talk) 20:13, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, the RfC which ended inconclusively and which has never been properly closed? Please stop misrepresenting consensus or lack thereof. You clearly have a fixation of some sort, as shown by the immense efforts you put in reverting articles until other editors give up. Atchom (talk) 22:12, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I simply edited a number of articles that did not comply with what the documentation says. Then you started hounding my edits (WP:HOUND) by following my contrib history and reverting my edits because you disagree with what the documentation says. If you do not like the documentation, you can try to change if before reverting my edits. --Omnipaedista (talk) 18:54, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Plus, have you actually read WP:RFCEND? "If the matter under discussion is not contentious and the consensus is obvious to the participants, then formal closure is neither necessary nor advisable." --Omnipaedista (talk) 19:16, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Bibliography

Does MOS:DOC, specifically the general guidance to not include academic/professional titles, apply only to article subjects, or does it also extend to the authors of works included in an article's bibliography? See recent edits here for context. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 10:31, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

It applies generally. If we put "Dr.", "Prof.", "PhD", "MD", etc., etc., into citations, then virtually every citation of a journal would be nearly unreadably peppered with these abbreviations, because most journal-published academics and research scientists and other field professionals have one or more advanced degrees. We have millions of citations to such authors, and they do not include all this claptrap; it is a strong consensus against doing so.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:49, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I certainly thought as much, and I hope the other editor will accept this independent confirmation. I just wasn't in the mood to keep wrestling with them over it. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 21:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

RFC on CONTEXTBIO

Editing disputes still raging across Wikipedia biographies regarding ethnic identifications in the lede for historical figures, namely the definition of what constitutes relevancy to the subject's notability. Multiple discussions were held on this talk page on how to address this policy gap, and we have a similar precedent in an RFC on Spanish regions.

Should MOS:CONTEXTBIO define the relevancy to the subject's notability in this way?

“ Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability. Similarly, neither previous nationalities nor the country of birth should be mentioned in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability. The relevancy to the subject's notability is determined by examining how the majority of reliable sources identify the subject. the most commonly used primary identification in reliable sources. ”

Makeandtoss (talk) 21:10, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (CONTEXTBIO)

• As previously discussed editors are struggling with how to identify historical figures and this has resulted in endless debates on what constitutes relevancy to the subject's notability because this policy has been applied selectively and inconsistently without regard to citizenship, nationality or residency, examples include how Jesus is described as a Jew instead of a Roman; Niccolò Machiavelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo Galilei as Italians instead of Florentines; Aristotle as Greek instead of Chalcidian/Macedonian; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz as German instead of "Holy Roman Empirer"; Maimonides as Sephardic Jewish instead of Almoravid; Saladin as Kurdish instead of Abbasid; Muhammad as Arab instead of Hejazi. Making the majority of reliable sources the determining criteria on how a subject should be identified would settle these raging discussions, and restore consistency to Wikipedia's biographies. Makeandtoss (talk) 21:21, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
• Overall I would lean toward supporting this a different approach to improving this guideline section (for reasons I detail at some length at the WP:R&E essay), and it would be consistent with community decisions in back-to-back VPPOL RfCs removing the ethnicity parameter from infoboxes and the religion one as well except from infoboxes pertaining to religious leaders. However, someone (privately, not on the essay talk page) raised a concern about erasure, and I think it's valid. If a subject strongly identifies a particular way (within the sorts of categorization we're talking about here) and makes it clear that this has major socio-cultural, political, or similar importance to them and their life and activity (whether secondary sources dwell on it or not), then it should not be suppressed from the lead, absent a considered editorial consensus to do so, even if this is based on WP:ABOUTSELF material not secondary coverage. An example of due editorial consideration toward exclusion would be Meghan Markle, who has clearly identified herself repeatedly in the public record as bi-racial, but who has not made a big deal of it as a socio-political matter, so her ethnic background is not in the lead. Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson is a similar case. Taika Waititi is apt to be a counter-case, because of the material at Taika Waititi#Support for indigenous artists; Māori ancestry is something he puts forward in his life as action and activism. Same goes for Tina Turner and Buddhism. I would need a lot more coffee and snacks to figure out how to work that into some kind of proposed guideline language, but maybe others can beat me to it.

  As for historical figures, it's a different matter, almost always about historical accuracy of particular terms (usually over-broad modern labels). I've seen several recent discussions of this sort, and the principle always comes down to "this is not RewritingHistoryPedia". Christopher Columbus should not be identifed as "Italian" (at least not without careful clarification of meaning); there was no nation-state named Italy in his era; he was a Genoan (Italy/Italia existed as a general regional term, but that does not equate to a nationality or an ethnicity, and Italy has never had just one ethnic group and language). Similarly, Bridei I was Pictish and lived in Pictland; he should not be described as Scottish or from Scotland. Atahualpa was Incan, not Peruvian.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:20, 6 January 2024 (UTC); revised 09:11, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

  Update: I cannot support the change to the "most commonly used primary identification in reliable sources" wording, for reasons I covered in detail in the discussion section. It's a major step backwards. Worse, the more I read of nominator Makeandtoss's intent and extended rationales, the more extremist and counter to actual consensus they prove to be. I no longer think the proposal open here has any chance of success, or should be given any further consideration. See below for details why. This guideline does need improvement, but this proposal – and some counter ideas by Andrew Lancaster from the opposite extreme, also covered in detail below – are not going to get us there.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:11, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• I agree with this, and with SMc’s points. Trying to import modern political geography back into the past doesn’t make sense, and we should as in all things be following the majority of RS and not trying to argue the ethnicity or nationality through OR. “German” is perhaps an exception to the examples given above, since the ties of ethnicity and language go back into pre-history and Germanic peoples existed long before any Germanic political entity; hence you will find that term in historical RS. The “Holy Roman” counter-example offered above would be absurd, as the HRE didn’t function and was never seen as a country or nationality nor really an identifier; I doubt you would find the suggested descriptor in any RS. But “Italian” rarely makes sense pre-unification, and as a term prior it is hard to pin down or geo-locate. The proposal would also help with what is a long-running issue in many articles, which has been the determined effort by a small number of editors to reclassify all British people as either English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish, often based on the flimsiest of grounds and rarely with any reference to how they are described in RS. Much of this has been linked with what was seen as the runup to (possible) Scottish independence, and the frequency of such edits has dropped now that the Indy movement is in the decline, but it is still a recurring issue. MapReader (talk) 05:37, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• ...by examining how the majority of reliable sources identify the subject: "Majority" needs tuning. It's possibly unlikely that a majority of sources will mention this background, yet it still might be lead worthy. For example, most sources on Caitlyn Jenner might assume the reader knows her background, and won't be constantly repeating it. Can the threshold be objectively quantifiable?—Bagumba (talk) 05:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  i understand your point but what I meant was the majority identification in the sources. So if Saladin is described as Kurdish in five out of fifteen sources and as an Arab in two, Kurdish would be considered the identification of him in the majority of sources and thus can be used in lede. Makeandtoss (talk) 08:05, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  I see a few issues. 5/15 is not a majority, so perhaps there wouldn't be a clear identifier for Saladin. Still that is a matter of how we describe him. But "the relevancy to the subject's notability" seemed to be more about how to determine whether it is mentioned in the lead at all, which is a separate issue from the content of what is mentioned. —Bagumba (talk) 09:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  5/15 saying Kurdish > 3/15 saying Arab, as an example of course not a real number; thus 5/15 would be the majority identification*. When RS identify the subject in a certain way, then the identification would be both due for the lede, and due for the lede in the ethnic group reported. Makeandtoss (talk) 21:19, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  I think we're interpretting majority differently. I took it to mean > 50%, while you're referring to it as the greatest number.—Bagumba (talk) 11:25, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  That actually gives me serious misgivings, Makeandtoss. Five out of 15 sources is far too insufficient to label Salidin a Kurd in the lead. Rather, our article body should say that various sources cited describe him as Kurdish, while a few argue he was an Arab. It is not our "job" as encyclopedists to hide the fact of source discrepancies; rather, we point them out and give WP:DUE weight to the arguments (which would be none at all for WP:FRINGE ones like "Saladin was really from Japan, and a conspiracy has hidden this from the world" :-). If only 7 total out of 15 sources address the question at all, it's still not a strong indicator that our lead section should make any ethnic claim at all, rather than just stating the known facts about where he lived and when.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  I gave this as an example, these are not real numbers. In the body, we can say that a few sources described him as Kurdish and a few argue he was Arab. But in the lede, we have to assign him to an ethnicity, as we do already do with Aristotle and Machiavelli. Makeandtoss (talk) 08:33, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  "in the lede, we have to assign him to an ethnicity" - We absolutely do not, and at various articles we don't because the sourcing is weak or contradictory, or because it is not encyclopedically pertinent to that person.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:06, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think it is a good biography if the person is not tied to any group. In many articles where the sourcing is weak or contradictory, the most commonly used identification in RS should be used; and again, in cases where the person cannot be tied to a polity. Makeandtoss (talk) 13:43, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  Not plastering a questionable or questionably relevant ethnicity label into the lead has nothing to do with whether the article subject is "not tied [in our material]" to some group or polity. You're misconceptualizing this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  Of course sources need to be weighed - both for number and authoritativeness - with disagreements worked through on article talk pages in the normal way. And of course many RS won't use any national or ethnic descriptor for a person at all, which is both unsurprising and irrelevant. But it doesn't make sense to be challenging the proposal on the basis of "how would this work?", when WP runs on that basis already. Yes, editing by consensus isn't always easy. The purpose of the proposal, AIUI, is to reinforce the point for a field (of biography) where some editors like to argue from details (where someone was born, their parentage, where they became famous, etc.) which all should be seen secondary matters. Arguing that someone should be described as, lets say, "Mongolian", on the back of a citation that says they were born in Mongolia but doesn't explicitly use the term "Mongolian" is clearly a form of SYNTH, as the conclusion being edited into the article isn't explicitly used by the source. Editors do this, I think, partly because such assumptions normally 'work' (i.e. most people born in Mongolia can safely be described as 'Mongolian' - but not all) and partly because of the natural desire to cling to an unambiguous rule that makes editing easier and resolves disputes. But someone born in Mongolia who left as a child, resettled in China and became a famous Chinese film star is a "Chinese film star", if so described by the RS, and the article can go on later to note his or her birthplace in the body.

  We had similar discussions in the WP projects for film and TV, since there were editors fond of arguing the nationality of a creative product on the back of their own chosen criteria (such as who paid for it or where the production companies are based) rather than relying direclty on the RS, as they clearly should. Both projects now have words similar to those proposed above within their respective MoS. MapReader (talk) 11:04, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  I endorse Mapreader's take, entirely.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:11, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  Because it might reduce misunderstandings, I want to note that I also agree with this. I also like the non-extremism of this: most people born in Mongolia can safely be described as 'Mongolian' - but not all. I think that is many cases we can use terms such as Mongolian for historical people. That does not necessarily mean it is often going to be the best choice in the opening line, but I think the term does not need to be banned from opening lines when it comes to historical people. I suppose/hope that my opinion is reasonably uncontroversial.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:57, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

  This is basically false dichotomy. Blueboar has already explained and demonstrated how to work such a term into a lead when it might be questionable as a personal label, by using it as modifier of something else, with that combination resolving to something we have an article on (e.g. Italian Renaissance, Mongol Empire, etc.) instead of as an "Italian person", "Mongolian person" ethno-cultural label of the individual. Sidestepping this as if "the Blueboar approach" is somehow wrong instead of eminently sensible has much to do with why you and I have been at loggerheads. It simply is not the same thing to say that so-and-so was a 14th-century Mongol scribe from Khanbaliq (when we're not really sure whether the person was actually ethnically Mongol), versus to say that they were a 14th century scribe from Khanbaliq in the Mongol Empire. Note carefully how Alexander the Great says he was "a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon" not "a Greek king of ancient Macedon". This stuff matters. (And failure to understand this is why the Christopher Columbus lead is presently such a trainwreck. Niccolò Machiavelli is not making this kind of error, but it would actually probably be better to work in "Italian Renaissance" instead of just "Reniassance" to make it clearer to readers unfamiliar with what "Florentine" means, especially since the lead rather boneheadedly doesn't even link to Republic of Florence until a later paragraph.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:19, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I have updated my proposed text based on the feedback received above; "the most commonly used primary identification in reliable sources" would be the best way to counter the stated concerns. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:11, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The hypothetical problem I see is if 3/5 sources describe a person's ethnicity as X, but another 15 make no mention of their ethnicity at all. Does X have enough WP:WEIGHT to be mentioned in the lead? What are the objective criteria for determining its inclusion? —Bagumba (talk) 11:30, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

This is where primary identification comes in. For the case of Saladin, after a quick google search, it seems he is most commonly referred to as Ayyubid leader (dynasty), followed by Kurdish leader (ethnicity), then Muslim leader (religion), and then if ever as Arab leader (culturally). Assuming hypothetically that the first identification was non-existent, i.e. he was never referred to as Ayyubid, then we should be able to use Kurdish leader, which would be the most commonly referred to primary identification, which would establish relevance to the subject's notability, regardless of proportion of mention in RS. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:58, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Then my question is regarding secondary identification. Assuming they are not the primary identifier, when would ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc. be suitable for the lead? —Bagumba (talk) 12:32, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

If there exists a primary identification, for example American, then no it shouldn't be, unless relevant to his notability, ex: Barack Obama. If a primary identification is lacking/ambiguous, due to pre-modern era, then an ethnic (secondary) identification should be used as the primary identification if this is relevant to his notability as seen in RS. Makeandtoss (talk) 12:44, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Then I would say having Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead... precede The relevancy to the subject's notability... in the same paragraph is confusing. They seem unrelated if the point is really about the primary identifier, and not a person with, say, a clear nationality, but still deciding whether mention of their ethnicity is also worth mention in the lead. —Bagumba (talk) 13:10, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree it is confusing, in the beginning I wanted to add this to the first paragraph of the guideline, something along the lines of: "In pre-modern cases, where identifying to a specific polity is ambiguous or impossible, then use the most common identification in RS." But this would have conflicted with the second paragraph which states that ethnicity should not be used. So I ended up deciding on just adding the definition of notability relevancy since there is a limitation on ethnicity mention. Makeandtoss (talk) 13:32, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Kurdish leader is misleading at best since Saladin's ethnic background played no part in his notability. This is true for the overwhelming majority of the Muslim historical figures given that they all belonged to the Umma (the Muslim nation), a concept that is unique to Islam. Unfortunately, attempts at replacing their ethnic background with the word "Muslim" (essentially, their nationality) in their biographies have been met with criticism by those who tend to compare Islam to other religions. M.Bitton (talk) 12:52, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Again, for the fourth time, we are talking hypothetically; my answer above said in case that Ayyubid was not used; Kurdish should be used because that's how RS describe him. But in the current case, Ayyubid should be used, since he is clearly tied to a polity, as evidenced by how RS refer to him. Makeandtoss (talk) 13:30, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

What is important according to the current WP:ETHNICITY text is what kind of designation reliable sources use to give "context" to a person and the causes of their notability. Although this is not exactly the same as saying that we should just follow sources for pre-modern people, I think it comes close. So in other words the chosen word does not have to actually "play a role" in the notability of a person, only that it has to describe the context of it. The example currently given is that it might be the country where a person did activities that made them notable, although that clearly is not meant to cover all cases. (Descartes is not Dutch for example.) So I think my understanding of the text is closer to that of M.Bitton. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:09, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I share the same concern as Bagumba's "The hypothetical problem I see", and addressed this a bit in a post in a different part of this discussion. The issues I have with Makeandtoss's "algorithmic" approach described above (if there is no dynastic term, then use an ethnic one, and lacking that in the sources, use a religious one, and lacking that then use a broader cultural one) are a) it presupposes that we must include such a label in the lead, which simply is not true, and b) it confuses these things as being some kind of hierarchy, but no such relationship exists between them (each is a different axis, if you will, that is orthogonal to the rest). Someone might be overwhelmingly notable as a religious leader (e.g. a pope), or an influential figure across a broad multi-ethnic culture (e.g. mainland China) without their "ethnicity" being lead-relevant in any way. Dwayne Johnson is a good example; his multi-ethnic background is in the article body and not mentioned in the lead. It probably should be in the lead of Taika Waititi because he is notable (in a comparatively small but not encyclopedically insignificant way) for involvement in Māori-related causes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:22, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

It is not a hierarchy, what I described was numerical frequency. Johnson is irrelevant since he is straightforwardly identified as American, thus there is no need for his ethnic background in lede, since it does not play any role in his notability; and since there are no RS saying other than American, primarily.

Yes, we must include any label, at least one, in identifying people in their biographies. This is what every RS does. I have never read about any person who is not identified to any group.

Keep in mind that the policy issue we have here is that editors are warring in articles of historical figures because the national/citizen/resident identification is so ambiguous/even sometimes unknown, and they are unable to use one identification, or use a specific identification out of many. The definition above would solve this problem by simply avoiding OR and bickering, and using what RS have use most commonly. Makeandtoss (talk) 13:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

"Yes, we must include any label, at least one, in identifying people in their biographies" is provable (and already proven) completely wrong. You can argue that we should, and people will argue in support of and against this idea, but there is no principle anywhere that requires this, and if you tried to establish one I guarantee you it would fail because we already have a long string of per-article consensus decisions in particular cases to not do it. While I supported, above, the general idea of clarifying this guideline in some ways, your proposal and the out-of-nowhere ideas behind it are clearly not going to be the way we get to any such clarification or better dispute resolution. But let's move on ....

For Johnson, "since [ethnicity] does not play any role in his notability" is correct (or seems to be, based on RS treatment). But "since he is straightforwardly identified as American, thus there is no need for his ethnic background in [the] lede" is not correct; whether someone has a citizenship identifier in the lead has no bearing of any kind on whether or not (usually not) they should also have an ethnic one; that is determined by connection of their ethnicity to their notability in reliable sources (and, I have argued, to their promotion of it in ABOUTSELF material as central to their life and motivation). "since there are no RS saying other than American" is also wrong, since you are pitting "American" (his nationality) against his biracial ethnicity as if they are either/or alternatives in the same category when they obviously are not. There clearly are sources that go into his ethnicity in detail; whether there are sources that don't mention him being American (there are, albeit short ones) is immaterial, since that has nothing to do with his ethnicity; whether their could be sources that deny he is an American is just irrelevant absurdity we don't need to contemplate. Again, you are badly misconceptualizing the entire nature of what these terms mean and how to approach them encyclopedically. It is clear that this proposal is just going to fail and that someone with a better handle on this subject will have to propose something more sensible later.

This really demonstrates the severe issues with how you have misconceptualized all of this: "the policy issue we have here is that editors are warring in articles of historical figures because the national/citizen/resident identification is so ambiguous/even sometimes unknown, and they are unable to use one identification, or use a specific identification out of many. The definition above would solve this problem by simply avoiding OR and bickering, and using what RS have use most commonly." Literally every single element of that is wrong, as is the entire proposition as a whole:

• The issue we actually have is that there is frequent editorial conflict about such identifiers because various editors are often inapproriately using various kinds of labels (often for the same awful reason you want to do it, a false belief that such labeling is required, though sometimes also out of an equally wrong notion that every possible label that can be sourced must be used, including in the lead).
• Inability of editors to accurately assign a historical figure to a polity is extremely rare. Rather, the disputation is almost always (with regard to "nationality" or something that can be mistaken for it) about misuse of a modern-day geopoltical term in a way that is guaranteed to confuse a large number of readers – instead of just writing clearly, as in: "Xerxes Youill of Zounds was a philosopher of the 3rd century BCE in Elbonia (in present-day southern Ruritania)".
• There is no evidence anywhere that an inability of editors to settle on one single indentifier in particular is a serious or recurrent issue. There is no principle at all, in any policy, guideline, or even well-supported essay requiring or even encouraging us to do this. An attempt by one editor to reduce a bio subject to a single such term (especially an oversimplifying, ambigous, or anachronistic one) when RS indicate one or more other identifiers – a conflicting/alternative (often more specific) one, or an additional one of a different sort – should be included, leads to principled opposition from other editors.
• On the opposite side of the spectrum, usually (not always) well-meaning but misguided attempts to either include a poorly-sourced label in the article at all (especially when it does not match the subject's own self-identification), or to include a properly sourced identifier in the lead (or the infobox or, often, as a category) that does not pertain to the subject's notability or to their own strong ABOUTSELF presentation, also generates principled dispute.
• In various cases, a firm consensus emerges to not use such identifying labels at all about a particular subject, but to write differently and better, to put the subject within a particular geo-historico-cultural context in the lead and the body, instead of relying upon simplistic adjectival or noun labeling.
• Your proposition would solve abosolutely nothing and simply increase disputation. You mean to require the inclusion of a label no matter what, mandate only a single label no matter what, and make that only be the label that is most common without any regard to the fact that various sorts of indentifiers are of completely different sorts, with no connection to each other, not "in competition" with each other, and each of entirely severable importance (and verifiability) levels with regard to the subject and our coverage of them.

In short, this is very close to the daftest proposition I have ever seen in my 18+ years on Wikipedia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:11, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• A few problems I see with trying to create general rules for these cases, rather than seeing it as a normal case by case decision.

• (1) I think in many of the cases this relates to, some kind of "ethnic" or "national" identity is widely seen as part of a person's own way of seeing themselves, and so this proposal is not really proposing a solution to the problem as it normally manifests itself.
• (2) SMcCandlish starts from the assumption that terms like "Italian" refer to modern states only. In fact they are old geographical and national terms and they were used by people to identify themselves and others long before that state existed. So I think this approach, which accuses those who disagree of anachronism, is ironically itself a good example of a type of 21st-century anachronism which is leading to polarized talk page discussions, and misunderstandings. This type of polarising talk seems to be a growing problem on Wikipedia. We need to be able to discuss things a bit more subtly or else we'll end up dumbing the encyclopedia down and just deleting everything that's awkward to talk about.
• (3) With those two previous points in mind, from a practical stand-point this is a nuclear option which is basically sweeping a difficult but encyclopedic topic off the table and "banning" it from Wikipedia. (No doubt people will try to defend the proposal by saying this not the intention, but let's be honest. That is how this will be used.)
• (4) FWIW I personally think that another major anachronism which is dumbing us down is the idea which many editors seem to have that national or ethnic identities are "all or nothing". Why can't people have two important identities? Although this is being pushed for by certain types of people in our time, it is nonsensical now, and it would not even be comprehensible to the historical people we write about. Machiavelli identified as Italian and Tuscan and Florentine, and these were all very important to him. The decision about whether any of these are notable enough for the lead is one which should be made case by case depending upon the people involved. We should not be "correcting" Machiavelli and scolding him for thinking he belonged to a nation which had no modern-style political status.
• (5) Just on a practical note, there is also no need to stress about whether to name all three of those identities in Machiavelli's specific case because being Florentine automatically implies the other two. In the case of Ibn-Khaldun though, I see nothing wrong with saying that he identified with different nations that did not perfectly overlap. (For example: Arab, Maghrebi, North African, Andalusian, depending upon whatever the sources confirm to be notable for his case.)
• (6) Notability is NOT the only reason to include certain information. It might just be helpful or necessary in order to make something comprehensible. For example, there also seems to be a tacit assumption that we shouldn't identify people based on the geographical area they lived in, using modern geographical terms. (For example: She lived in what is now Bavaria.) I think this is often a very useful thing to do because ancient regional names are often complex topics themselves and not easy to understand or use. (If this is not a problem, then just adding "what is now" is apparently all we need to do in many cases.)
• (7) To be clear, I see no reason at all that we ALWAYS need to give ethnic or national or any type of group-based identity. I fear that creating general rules could also go in the direction of all articles trying to look like other articles. I think kind of drive towards uniformity is also a problematic tendency on Wikipedia.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:06, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think anyone here had self-identification in mind. It doesn't matter if Machiavelli referred to himself as Italian [which I don't think he did since Italian identity emerged in 19th century], since per the current guidelines he should be referred to as Florentine (his place of citizenship and residence), but RS have [supposedly] described him as Italian, and therefore WP should reflect what RS says, without including the fact that he had overlapping identities of being Christian, European and Mediterranean. Just following what the RS have referred to him most commonly as: Italian philosopher [again supposedly].

The amendment above is simply a definition of what is meant by "relevant to the subject's notability", since as we can clearly see that disputes over what is relevant or irrelevant is raging across WP biographies. This is a clear policy gap that needs to be addressed. As for your concern about general rules, I don't understand it since the definition of guideline is creating general rules; my suggestion above is simply an elaboration, and not the addition of any new rules. Consistency will result in less disputes, and inconsistency will perpetuate the current raging disputes. In any case, this will be solved, naturally, on a case by case basis, with editors depending on the guideline to achieve consensus. Makeandtoss (talk) 12:52, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The key to resolving Machiavelli (and others) is to break from “standard language”… instead of writing “Machiavelli was an Italian/Florentine political philosopher” write: “He was a political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance”. This places him in his time and era (and even geographically) … while avoiding all the angst about his “nationality/ethnicity”. Ie… think outside the box, and look for alternative ways to phrase the information. Blueboar (talk) 14:33, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

That is often a helpful approach.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

@Blueboar:, but why is that a better solution? What is wrong with calling him Florentine? The renaissance is a fuzzy modern term explaining how some (but not all) academics describe this person. Why is it so terrible to say where someone is from if that is a notable fact?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:37, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Because he had an impact beyond just Florence. His writings are evocative of a historical era, not a particular city state. Blueboar (talk) 19:52, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how that makes a difference. Does this mean we can't call George Orwell English? I can see how your proposed argument might lead to a editor consensus though and I have no actual problem with it. I just want to say that it does not look like anything we should be using to right a rule for all articles. It looks like a personal preference. (A reasonable one perhaps.) FWIW I prefer calling Machiavelli Florentine and this is partly because his position in various movements is very debatable. He is a one off, and a turning point, according to many sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:55, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, there's no reason for this to be some kind of either-or. I.e., use "was a Florentine political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance" or more clearly (since that could be misread by someone as referring to something called "Florentine philosophy"), "was a political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance, from Florence", or something to this effect.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:13, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Good. To be clear; that's fine by me in that specific case. To be clear; my concern is about creating strict rules that might stop us calling a pre modern person an Italian. I would like make sure that the option remains open to editors. So just to confirm, I believe that if a historical person had an international influence, this does NOT mean they can't be described by their country, such as Italy. That option should remain open to editors.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:57, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

@Makeandtoss: If "the amendment above" refers to the change to "most commonly used primary identification in reliable sources", I think this is a problematic step backward, because it very strongly implies that only one (not just one of the same kind but one at all) can be included. If "how the majority of reliable sources identify the subject" wasn't perfect, it was certainly better, since it accounts for the RS having a consensus on multiple identifiers. (And we should call them identifiers. The word identifications is ambiguous: the identification of William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon as the actual author of works attributed to him has periodically be subject to some dispute, but this has nothing to do with ethnic, regional, national, religious, other indentifiers that are used to describe him. And definitely not identities, which is pomo identity politics jargon that has nothing to do with historical figures, nor many who are not very modern, nor even many who are very modern.) Anyway, if the currently poorer wording or something close it is kept in the proposal, it at least needs the syntax corrected. With the struck material removed, it presently reads "The relevancy to the subject's notability is determined by examining the most commonly used primary identification in reliable sources" but "examining" no longer serves a function, and actually renders the result senseless (in what way will wil be "examing the ... identification"? for it's length? its sonorous qualities? its agreeableness to modern sensibilities? LOL). But seriously, this should just go back to "The relevancy to the subject's notability is determined by examining how the majority of reliable sources identify the subject", and re-work from there. For one thing, it has to account for strong WP:ABOUTSELF identifications; there is no rationale for suppressing them if they are integral to the subject's self-conception, self-presentation, motivations/inspiration/intent, etc., even if the can presently for a particular subjectly only be determined from primary-source materials such as interviews.

@Andrew Lancaster: I generally agree that coming up with a broad rule about this is challenging at best. We tend not to give up very easily, though, especially when there is clearly an appetite for something more concrete than "it must be dealt with on a per-article basis" (which has not been working all that well, though personally I think it's been better than some might have expected). I have some quibbles with or observations on your numbered points: In order:

1. If this is true in a particular case, it will be reflected in the source coverage. Really, it has to be or it's not something we're in a position to write in the first place.
2. I don't start from any such assumption at all; I'm just aware that the counter-assumption that they can be used with impunity is most often wrong. All claim are treated here as false unless verifiable (rather aggressively in BLPs), and for terms like this, that verification will be case-by-case both as to the term's use in such a way historically and as to its use by the subject (or across the preponderance of the RS in reference to the subject, and we have to distinguish those cases very clearly). Show me RS proof that Columbus called himself an Italian. The fact that the name Italia goes back many centuries does not mean people used it as an ethno-national identifier or that a particular person did, and the notion belies a poor understanding of the history of what is now Italy. Nor do a bunch of modern sources using "Italian" as a shorthand (or socio-politically motivated label) make it accurate and usable by us in this way; we have a responsiblity to not perpetuate demonstrably incorrect claims even if found in some otherwise reliable sources. It is vaguely possible that such "Italian" (italiano) self-identification was somehow the provable case for him, but in many rounds of discussion about his case in particular, I've seen zero evidence of any kind in this direction. It's pure WP:OR, to satisfy modern desires to glom onto him as a figure of historico-cultural importance to Italians and most especially to Italian-Americans. More generally, the whole principle is completely unsound. The fact that some broad geographical area has, going back a long ways, a loosely defined name for it (or even a really specifically defined one) has no automatic implications for historical usage as any form of identifier. It doesn't even have such a necessary implication in modern usage. As a simple example, the British Isles is a quite specific geographical name, with very little in the way of definitional wiggle room, but it is used as an identifier by literally no one. ("British" means 'from [Great] Britain' or an an extended and disputed use 'from the UK', not 'from the British Isles'.) There are other serious problems with this, most pointedly that such terms often cover different geographical extents (and sometimes different peoples within them) over time.
3. That's slippery slope (the fallacious kind, for lack of any evidence) with elements of Reductio ad absurdum and false dichotomy. The "unless relevant to the subject's notability" criterion is quite clear, and very familiar to us all from its repeated use in WP:BLP, so there is no basis on which to predict the doom-and-gloom scenario of all such information being washed away. There'll simply be a lot less of it in lead sections, and many of us think that would be an improvement. As noted above, though, I would also permit WP:ABOUTSELF as a factor; someone who strongly identifies in a "cause" kind of way with an ethnicity, nation, religion, etc., should have that in their lead. E.g. Tina Turner's Buddhism belongs in her lead, because her later interviews and other self-statements are not only dominated by the topic but by its relation to her songrwriting (i.e. what she's primarily notable for).
4. "Machiavelli identified as ..." sounds like more anchronistic OR to me. Trying to couch this in terms of "identities" is a late-20th-century-to-present, postmodernist, socio-politicized reconceptulalization. Elsewhere in this material you've criticized anchronistic approaches that would be incomprehensible to the subject they're being applied to, but this is a major case of doing just that. But, yes, some "all-or-nothing" or "there can be only one" approach to such matters is wrongheaded, and I think the "most commonly used primary identification in reliable sources" change made to the proposed wording was a severe step backward.
5. That "he identified with different nations" sounds like more OR. I would want to see rigorous sourcing for such a claim about someone like Ibn-Khaldun, and I'm about 99% certain that it would not come out in such pomo wording. Agreed on Machiavelli and redundancy.
6. There is nothing incomprehensible about leaving out an ethnicity claim, and the obsession with jamming them into the lead is an extremely Western and mostly American one. They definitely should be included if strongly tied to notability and for some cases of ABOUTSELF reasons. On the second point, I see no one arguing for suppressing things like "in what is now Bavaria" or "in modern-day Bavaria" or the like, though we should be first giving the historical name of the pertinent place[s]. What we should not do is misuse modern geographical (usually geo-political, really) terminology that is anachronistic and has the effect of rewriting history. There is nothing at all wrong with "Bridei I was king of the Picts, and ruled from a base of power in Fortriu (in what today is north-central Scotland)" or whatever. [Made-up example; I have no idea where Bridei I's throneroom was, and our article on him doesn't either.] What we don't do is say he was a Pictish king in Scotland (which did not exist then; the Scots, then confined to what is now south-west Scotland, were his enemies), much less than he was a Scottish king.
7. Yes, a requirement to include an ethno-national identifier would be ridiculous and just lead to very misleading trash in many cases. The desire to do it is rooted ultimately in pseudo-scientific essentialist and racialist (not the same as racist!) nonsense, though few people would consciously realize it. Anyway, the "all articles trying to look like other articles" thing is a real issue, and is pretty much why we're here having this discussion. An editor sees an ethnicity in one article and assume's it a "standard" and then they get mad when reverted because the claim is anachronistic or otherwise wrongheaded, it's not really encyclopedically pertinent and just comes across as "Jew tagging", "Black tagging", etc., is not properly supported by the sources (at all or because of conflict between them), or some combination of these.

I think the general aim of establishing a guideline on this is a good one (and I'm happy that the direction it's aiming is consistent with the WP:R&E essay I wrote; I hoped that it would lead to such a WP:P&G change). But I do have concerns about the specific wording.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: I think you are missing a lot of the points and changing the subject a lot?

1. This is clearly not about one particular case. My concern is that what is happening here is that people are trying to in effect ban a whole type of information which is sometimes (not always) notable and worth giving. We are going to cancel a type of information which academics, who we are supposed to follow, would use. (Consider the examples in the opening post, which seem bizarre and historically ignorant to me. Why can't we say Aristotle was Greek???) It fits with the general trend of switching from editor discussion to legalistic debates. As can be seen here, it does not stop debates or dissatisfication. This type of law-making instead of consensus approach is in effect a way for insiders with a lot of time to just overwhelm other potential types of editors. It does not make the encyclopedia better, and I don't see anywhere above where anyone proposing these rules is talking in terms of encyclopedia quality. This law-making is an exertion of power by people trying to get their personal preferences, so it is just a disguised conflict.

2. I haven't looked at the case of Columbus, but again this is not about one case? Also I am not focussing on BLPs, because that has not been what any of the examples are about. You seem to seriously be suggesting (still) that people like Machiavelli or anyone else born before the 19th century should almost never be called Italian? What's really wrong with calling him Italian if academics do?

3, 7. To be clear, I am certainly in the camp which accepts that Wikipedia has an ongoing problem with obsessive overspecification of ethnicities, religions, ancestors etc. Delete when trivial. I am not a fan of infoboxes with "ethnicity" etc at all, and I think they are a bigger problem. But I come here having seen adjectives, sometimes being used geographically, being deleted from running text, because of this push. What's more some people like Macchiavelli or Ibn Khaldun were clearly people whose nationality (or nationalities) are uncontroversial and frequently noted, and indeed part of what interested them. (I am using the term nationality in the broad and oldest sense, and not in terms of 21st century ID cards.)

4. "Identity" is a modern usage yes, but we are writing in modern English. It just means that Macchiavelli saw himself as Florentine, Tuscan and Italian, and described himself and the people he knew that way. Let's not get into a sourcing debate here but academics also describe him that way. He was certainly Italian even if he had not seen it as important. The term identity is simply used by modern academics in order to try to write precisely about how people see themselves. Scholars with expertise are supposed to be the sources who guide us on WP? We don't get to cancel some academics for being "postmodernist", or did I miss more law making? The use of the term "postmodernism" as an insult against academics when trying to force opponents not to use them is another aspect of the way in which American polarizing "culture war" language is taking over here. Please let's not do that?

5. That was a hypothetical and not meant to be debated here. However I come here from the ibn Khaldun discussion, and what we have there is no big disagreement among editors about the facts, but ONLY an argument coming from this debate, that we should remove all references because that is what is now normal. So I am seeing the cause and effect are working in almost the opposite way to how you describe it? Again, no one is arguing against deleting trivial or overly certain-looking designations, for example in infoboxes. I am concerned about WP giving itself a policy of removing adjectives from running text despite being used by reliable sources. This would be a legislative decision on Wikipedia which is against the spirit of many reliable sources.

6. I see no one arguing for suppressing things like "in what is now Bavaria" or "in modern-day Bavaria" or the like, though we should be first giving the historical name of the pertinent place[s]. What we should not do is misuse modern geographical (usually geo-political, really) terminology that is anachronistic and has the effect of rewriting history. There is nothing at all wrong with "Bridei I was king of the Picts, and ruled from a base of power in Fortriu (in what today is north-central Scotland)" or whatever. The first sentence is fine, if true, but AGH!! I see no reason at all to agree with the need with the two new rules you've then added after that. I see no reason to prefer Fortriu or avoid northwestern Scotland. That seems like a purely personal and highly eccentric preference. Academics certainly don't write that way. Coming back to the first sentence what I see above certainly implies that modern geographical terminology is itself a problem that has to stop: Christopher Columbus should not be identifed as "Italian"; there was no nation-state named Italy in his era. When I read that I am assuming the lead did not say "had Italian nationality", but just that it said "Italian" and we're being told to stop. So the adjective always implies there was a modern nation state? Really? Well I disagree. Italian does not now and never has been a simple concept but why would we say that Gallileo was not Italian, or Aristotle was not Greek. These are not fuzzy or controversial cases. Reliable sources describe them that way. This is a bizarre accusation, and I think going around deleting such bare adjectives (without any extra technical words like ethnicity or nationality) for people like that is not going to improve this wikipedia.

7. See 3.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:40, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

In the same order again:

1. It is not possible for a guideline change proposal that governs when information should be in the lead based on relevance (to notability and hopefully also to ABOUTSELF, as I've argued) to be a ban on including information in the article at all. Just repeating this "the sky is falling" claim (and injecting "cancel culture" dogwhistles) after it's already been addressed is not constructive. Blueboar's advice about rewriting Machiavelli (as an example) with precision and clarity, above, is exactly how to address the Aristotle case. Guidelines providing rules of thumb, to which exceptions sometimes apply, is not "legalistic", "lawmaking", or "exertion of power". This kind of straw man and argument to emotion is not constructive either.
2. Your argument depends upon hand-wringing about a handful of isolated cases, so yes, specifics like Columbus, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and ibn Khaldun are certainly pertinent to examine and deal with reasonably. "Hard cases make bad law", since you keep wanting to make legal analogies. "What's really wrong with calling [Machiavelli or Columbus] Italian if academics do?" What's wrong with it is that it's misleading and confusing anachronism motivated by a modern nationalist PoV, academics often avoid it (cherrypicking a few who don't isn't demonstrative of anything), those who do sometimes use it are almost always using it in a short-hand fashion after being more precise, and writers who use it with impunity are generally not academics or other subject-matter experts.
3. I'm skeptical you've really come at this from a studied and considered viewpoint at all, instead of having just blindly wandered into a subject (evidently at Talk:Ibn Khaldun) which fired you up in some manner and has inspired a bunch of exaggeratory and alarmist polemics. Strong evidence of this is that {{Infobox person}} and its progeny have not had |ethnicity= since 2016; thus, "I am not a fan of infoboxes with 'ethnicity' etc at all, and I think they are a bigger problem" is nonsensical and demonstrates unfamiliarity with how WP actually addresses ethnicity and related matters. Inappropriate or dubious identifier adjectives being removed "because of this push" to remove them is tautologous. If you think one was removed that was actually appropriate in the lead after all, then that is a matter for the talk page of that particular article; nothing about this proposal (though it presently has other severe issues and will not succeed) or a more sensible proposal would change that.
4. Repeating dubious assertions about Machiavelli's alleged terminology use without any evidence impresses no one. I addressed the "academics" hand-waving already, and I repeat that we have to disinguish very clearly between what terms modern writers use (and exactly how) versus known self-identification by historical subjects, but you keep treating these as if they're the same. "The term identity is simply used by modern academics in order to try to write precisely about how people see themselves": that's actually true for some uses of "identity" in some scholarship, but it's not what you are doing here; you are clouding the distinction between "how people s[aw] themselves" and "what terms modern writers use" (and why and in what contexts, the latter questions often being quite significant).
5. When you present arguments and rationales for them, you don't get to decide whether others can debate them. "we should remove all references": I'm assuming that meant ethno-cultural identifiers, not citations. I examined the ibn Khaldun discussion from top to bottom, and you are completely mischaracterizing it, to try to make a grandstanding "doomsday scenario" pseudo-point here. It's a debate about whether to say that he was "an Arab", which is ambiguous and pointless label-sticking; whether instead to say he was "one of the most prominent Arab and Muslim scholars and historians", which is encyclopedic rewriting with precision and clarity per Blueboar above, and uses "Arab" in a way that clearly indicates a cultural meaning not an ethnic one; and whether also to say he was a Maghreb, which is a reliably sourceable and more specific and meaningful ethnic term than than waving "an Arab" around. There is no suggestion anywhere in that discussion to remove all such terminology, in the lead much less in the entire article. Hint: never trust that claims you make about what other editors are doing and saying will not be investigated. "So I am seeing ...?" is not a question. "no one is arguing against deleting ... overly certain-looking designations" is not true; you are, in spades. You want to pin ambiguous and confusing labels on historical figures simply because you find them convenient and you can cherry pick a few academics doing it – and I would bet good money that you've latched onto it out-of-context, and what the academic in question actually did is precisely define the subject's historico-cultural context from the start and then use "Italian" or "Arab" or whatever other ambiguous and/or anachronistic term as a shorthand for what they'd defined (which has nothing to do with what WP is saying to our own readers in our own leads). Cough up some sources you're relying on and we'll examine them, and I'll show you.
6. "I see no reason to prefer Fortriu or avoid northwestern Scotland." Then, "AGH!!", you clearly should not be editing material on WP about historical subjects because you fundamentally misunderstand how to do encyclopedic writing in that topic area. Nor are you paying attention in this discussion: I did not say "avoid northwestern Scotland" (or use "northwestern" at all – why would you change that?); I explicitly included "in what today is north-central Scotland" as where Fortriu was [scholars mostly think], immediately after "Fortriu". Next, "Academics certainly don't write that way" is just unbelievably wrong and strongly indicates again that this is not a subject area of competence for you, but that you have wandered in and started pontificating. "So the adjective always implies there was a modern nation state?" More precisely, it strongly and wrongly implies to a large subset of our readers (probably the vast majority of them) that the Italian nation-state existed in era of that biographical subject, because the overwhelmingly dominant meaning of "Italian" is 'pertaining to the country [i.e. modern nation-state, 1861 onward] of Italy'. What specialized uses of it as a shorthand for something else actually mean will vary quite widely by context (which will already have been explained by the writer): e.g. Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire), any of innumerable combinations of any of the List of historic states of Italy, the Italian peninsula only, Italy (geographical region), Italic culture, Roman Italy, Italian Republic (Napoleonic) and its immediate successor Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic), etc. Such an intended meaning on WP must be explained clearly to our readers. Just calling Machiavelli or Columbus "an Italian" is ambiguous and history-distorting, as if intended to confuse readers. The fact that we have some articles making this mistake does not make them models or invalidate the principle; it just means we have more articles to improve. There should be no difficulty in understanding this (must less any reason to stubbornly stick to misapprehension after being given voluminous explanation and rationale). "Italian does not now and never has been a simple concept": You don't say! That is entirely the problem with bandying it about as if it were a clear and simple label. How is this not sinking in? And of course you immediately contradict yourself anyway, with "not fuzzy or controversial". Use of such terms is proven controversial by the very fact that there's controversy about their use, and the meaning of "fuzzy" (in that sense) is "not a simple concept" in the first place. Please think through the meaning of what you are writing from one sentence to the next and how one statement relates to another. Randomly firehosing a stream of mutually exclusive "reasons" in a Gish gallop manner to try wear out the opposition is not going to work.

Your input on this simply is not cogent and has actually been getting worse the longer this goes on. You've come here with preconceived notions that are demonstrably faulty, yet will not budge.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:05, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

You seem to be deliberately throwing up smoke screens and trying to escalate this with personal attacks. As far as I can read between the lines, you've actually started to realize that you probably agree with me on most points, and so now you want to make sure everyone sees me as stupid? Looks like it. Problem is that you need to slow down, stop the attacks and misrepresentations, and read what I actually write.

1. Context. I said the policy aims to make deletions easier within the running text itself as opposed to the infoboxes. I said this because you (or someone) implied that this is all about infoboxes, when it clearly isn't. Yes: I do understand we are talking about the lead text specifically. Nothing I have written says otherwise. (But of course policies like these will always have spillover effects.)

2. You are making an extraordinary bad faith accusation here about all the editors who would dare to call Machiavelli Italian. Personally I have explained that I prefer Florentine, but I really can't get worked up about him being called Italian. He was Italian, according to him and modern scholars anyway. (Read the last chapter of the Prince.) This is less than 2000 years ago after all! LOL. There does not have to be a state of Italy for there to be Italians. Neither normal people nor academics associate "Italian" with a specific political regime IMHO.

3. More irrelevant aspersions and once again taking my remarks out of context. Stop this. "infoboxes etc" was clearly a point about general trends on WP, and not about one specific template. And me not knowing the parameters of that template does not prove I am ignorant? I keep away from them. Anyway, the context is that I was clarifying that I probably do not disagree with the general tenor of your preferences in most practical cases. You seem to have totally ignored that, because you are on such a roll arguing with imaginary me. In any case, the point was that neither of us should be writing general rules in order to enforce our preferences. Remember, I was replying to There'll simply be a lot less of it in lead sections, and many of us think that would be an improvement.

4. you are clouding the distinction between "how people s[aw] themselves" and "what terms modern writers use" (and why and in what contexts, the latter questions often being quite significant). No, I am most definitely do not. BOTH academic usage and how people saw themselves are potentially relevant in local discussions about what words to use. On this point (4) I originally posted a remark about Macchiavelli's own use of terms (and CONCEPTS), and you replied by trying to make a big thing out of the word "identity" which you associated me with comical/evil postmodernists with French accents. So, in this childish way, you introduced the side discussion about academics. Concerning Macchiavelli see 2.

5. You are just writing fiction here. Where did I say all these things? I can't even follow what you are accusing me of. I rarely edit on ibn Khaldun, but I commented on the discussion. If you want to see a better discussion I was involved in see Averroes, which is how I think the editors at ibn Khaldun should have been working. What does this even refer to: "no one is arguing against deleting ... overly certain-looking designations" is not true; you are, in spades. Where? You want to pin ambiguous and confusing labels on historical figures Which labels on which figures? simply because you find them convenient and you can cherry pick a few academics doing it – and I would bet good money that you've latched onto it out-of-context, and what the academic in question actually did is precisely define the subject's historico-cultural context from the start and then use "Italian" or "Arab" or whatever other ambiguous and/or anachronistic term as a shorthand for what they'd defined (which has nothing to do with what WP is saying to our own readers in our own leads). Cough up some sources you're relying on and we'll examine them, and I'll show you. Cough up sources for which edit proposal? I did not make one either here or on ibn Khaldun. This is utterly misleading. Please consider posting an apology or deleting this deliberating misleading personal attack along with the others.

6. you clearly should not be editing material on WP about historical subjects because Quit the personal attacks and aspersions for goodness sake! I might have misread you a bit here but once again you are completely missing the bigger point. You proclaimed two rules which do not exist: we should be first giving the historical name of the pertinent place[s]. and secondly What we don't do is say he was a Pictish king in Scotland Concerning the second [edited] one, I suspect now that we are on the same wavelength in practice. Concerning the first one I am just frustrated that you throw this new demand for a general rule in when we really really don't need it. This is not about how historians write, but about how I think this community goes wrong when people make hamfisted general rules. Places like Fortriu are not only poorly known to our readers but their locations are often the subject of a lot of uncertainty and debate. Why should these get automatic "precedence" over, for example, geographical descriptions. These things should be handled case by case. In fact, what do you even mean by precedence here? It just seems like another chaotic change of subject.

6* I am separating out this little bit because it actually gives a glimpse of what you would really argue about the actual topic if you could stop yourself changing subject the whole time. You write that "Italian" strongly and wrongly implies to a large subset of our readers (probably the vast majority of them) that the Italian nation-state existed in era of that biographical subject. I don't think so, at least not in the case of Italy in the 1500s. People might (rightly) think he was a citizen of AN older Italian state, but I see no reason to think they'd assume that that today's Italian state goes back that far. Anyway, I can at least see that this is a reasonable type of concern which could be relevant in many cases. the overwhelmingly dominant meaning of "Italian" is 'pertaining to the country [i.e. modern nation-state, 1861 onward] of Italy'. I don't think people naturally assume anything specific about which exact constitution we are talking about when we are talking about pre modern people at all. The normal meaning is just someone born in Italy. But I can accept that such concerns do exist in some cases on Wikipedia and of course I agree that reducing or removing ambiguity is a good thing to do when possible. (This does not mean we should go around writing rules we do not need.) Just calling Machiavelli or Columbus "an Italian" is ambiguous and history-distorting, as if intended to confuse readers. You've got to stop asserting that everyone who makes these edits is doing it for bad faith reasons. But please understand I agree with the basic idea, and it is also how I work. I tend to use Florentine for Macchiavelli. I don't claim to know why people keep switching it to Italian. The point is that I think these things need to be handled case by case. Columbus and Macchiavelli are quite different cases in this regard for example. (Machiavelli was arguably even an Italian nationalist. He was at least an early promoter of such Italian nationalism.) Every case is going to be different. I don't see any sign that a reasonable general rule can be written which will not actually make articles worse. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:18, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Too tired to address this right now, and a break from this back and forth is probably a good idea anyway. But you really need to get past the idea that stern disagreement with what you are saying (much of which I quote directly) and concerns raised about what level of understanding you show, by what you are saying, of key facts and concepts in the subject area (whether you think the criticism is accurate or the concerns valid) is you being "attacked".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:46, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think making things up about people who disagree with you is an acceptable or even necessary way to make your point. I suspect that we agree on a lot of things, but you've chosen to seek conflict and confusion by attacking me personally and by changing the subject constantly and distorting what I write. You've made it clear in your own replies now that you are deliberately writing in a way intended to make other readers ignore me. I think we disagree on ethics.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:44, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I would like to simply go back to your real relevant opinions which I originally disagreed with. Then everyone can judge for themselves. These are your stated positions about the example of Macchiavelli being Italian, which I do indeed believe to be fundamentally mistaken and inconsistent with academia and indeed Wikipedia practice in many different history articles (except perhaps for what is now happening in the opening lines of ledes):

• Calling an historical person like Macchiavelli "Italian" is a misleading and confusing anachronism motivated by a modern nationalist PoV.
• People who would write that Macchiavelli is "Italian" are generally not academics or other subject-matter experts.
• More precisely, it strongly and wrongly implies to a large subset of our readers (probably the vast majority of them) that the Italian nation-state existed in era of that biographical subject, because the overwhelmingly dominant meaning of "Italian" is 'pertaining to the country [i.e. modern nation-state, 1861 onward] of Italy'.

As far as I can see, despite all the indignation about needing sources and so on, these personal opinions are not based on any sources or special study. Now here is my opinion based on my personal experiences:

• Although terms with multiple meanings or shades of meaning in different contexts can be ambiguous, this is not unusual or avoidable, and basically this is for the most part an essential part of human language which we are naturally skilled at from a young age. Words like Italy (or in fact Florence) normally have both clear, simple, generic meanings at the same as they have more specific context-related meanings. This is not unusual, and the drama being imagined here in these discussions looks like a self-enclosed fantasy reality. For example, "during the middle ages, Italians/Florentines/Scots/Poles..." is clearly normal both on WP, and in academia. Less common and only when really necessary, do we say things like "people living in what is now..." or "people living in the medieval regime of...". In fact, such attempts to be exact would in fact be MORE confusing in MANY cases. Editors of history topics are constantly handling this type of problem, looking at each case, because avoiding Italy won't always be good. Note also that for example that our History of country-X articles almost never start with the year when the latest constitution was installed. No one gets confused by that. And think about countries closer to the biases of most Wikipedians and let's do a thought experiment: According to your vision of reality, why aren't you worried about calling Shakespeare English? Won't people then assume that the [United Kingdom] nation-state existed in era of that biographical subject? Really?

Note that I am not here making any editing proposal about any specific case, only arguing that such cases can be entirely unproblematic and should not automatically trigger bot-like deletions. Such styles of editing disrupt and worsen good editing discussion. (Furthermore I am not here addressing the existing "rules" because they give different rationales to you which I think are problematic in different ways. For example it is made clear that WP editors have accepted that reliable sources call Copernicus Polish. WP editors apparently decided to disagree with reliable sources because he spoke German. I think that eventually needs review one day. Also it clearly not only allows us to call Shakespeare English, but also to call Macchiavelli Italian. The problem, as noted under the new proposal, is that reliable sources about HISTORICAL people often use more types of "context" than the ones we seem to be restricted to for BLPs, e.g. for Goths or Arabs.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:13, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Suggestion#2

To avoid confusion in the first suggestion, we can leave the guideline as is, and add another "clause" at the end that would solve the policy gap from which the current editing disputes are emanating:

“ In pre-modern cases, where it is difficult or impossible to tie a person to a specific polity through citizenship, nationality, or permanent residency, the person can be identified with his ethnicity or religion if this is how the person is referred to most commonly and primarily in reliable sources. ”

Makeandtoss (talk) 13:41, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

 Question: do you think a mention in passing of someone's ethnicity (in multiple RS) establishes the relevance of their ethnicity to their notability (for it to warrant being mentioned in the lead)? M.Bitton (talk) 13:46, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, otherwise we will have no identification for the person at all in the lede, a sign of a pretty bad biography in my opinion; or we will have multiple conflicting identifications in RS and we do not know what to choose from them and continue the discussions about them perpetually. Makeandtoss (talk) 13:53, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I had a feeling this was heading in essentialist and worse directions. This is unfortunate, since it probably dooms a consensus forming on any substantive revision to this section until this "the article is broken if the lead doesn't have ethnicity labeling in it" position is dropped.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:24, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

WP doesn't write in "generic he" language, for starters. This doesn't appear to be wording that addresses a real and common problem that we need to solve. It's rare for a figure to not be ascribable to a polity at all; what is much, much more common is for an ethnic term to be not ascribable. So this is rather backward. And it has nothing to do with the general concern which this larger discussion opened with, which was overuse of ethnic (especially) and some other labels in lead sections when they don't pertain to encyclopedic importance of the person (mostly framed as "tied to their notability", though as I've pointed out, it can also be a matter of strong self-identification with a group, religion, nation, etc., in WP:ABOUTSELF materials.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:24, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

What local editors often also need to consider is clarity and possible misunderstandings. I think we should give local editors some flexibility to play with options, and not define too much at too high a level. "German" might be quite useful in one case, and quite misleading in another. Many of the adjectives we are talking about can be a fuzzy mix of ethnic, geographical and political. Terms like German can have a common sense meaning but this might mean that readers miss how historians of different periods might use them in more exact but differing ways. We need to write in a way which reflects that reality.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:12, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

For once I'm mostly in agreement with your wording, but you are using the wording to come to a conclusion (above and below) that the wording does not support. What you say here (at least if interpreted at face value) is a very sharp contrast to what you said in the original thread above in your points 1–7 material, which vociferously argues for applying labels like "Italian" and "Greek" and "Arab" that (as you put it here) "might be quite useful in one case, and quite misleading in another" and "can have a common sense meaning but this might mean that readers miss how historians of different periods might use them in more exact but differing ways". You're weirdly applying a double-standard to "German". I have no idea why you veer from recognizing that these terms are "a fuzzy mix" here, to denying that in the material above ("These are not fuzzy or controversial"). And below you split the difference in an incomprehensible way, propounding that they are indeed fuzzy and with confusably mixed meanings, then insisting that we must use them regardless. You deny your own "We need to write in a way which reflects that reality" principle in the vast majority of your input in this discussion. Much further below, you say "one of the issues we often consider for words like German and Frankish for pre-modern people is how we think readers might misunderstand the terms in certain periods", yet the vast bulk of your argumentation here has been stubbornly against employing any such consideration at all and using such labels with impunity any time we can get away with it because some "academics" allegedly did it (never mind that most of them do not and the few who do are using it as a shorthand after they have already made the precise historical context more clear, which is something we can't do in a lead sentence). You seem not to be conceptualizing the material clearly enough to understand the WP:Policy writing is hard implications of what you are saying from one post to the next, and to not care as long as you ultimately get the result you want (which is use of labels like "Italian" and "Greek" and "Arab" despite paying lip-service to the concern that they're too ambiguous for many historical subjects). And again you claim below that infoboxes have an ethnicity parameter, which hasn't been true for over 8 years. You do not appear to have a firm grasp on the subject and seem to be just opininating for the sake of opinionating, based on incorrect assumptions. (That said, the opener of this proposal has also done exactly the same thing, just from the opposite extreme.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:37, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I think you are trying to completely rewrite what I said. I'd like you to consider deleting this highly misleading post. All of my posts have been about whether the wide range of situations implied should be handled by general rules like this, or at local level. I am certainly NOT someone who would normally be falling on the side of accepting controversial extra adjectives.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:37, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Everyone who gets disagreed with and rebutted wishes the criticism would disappear. I never said you'd be on the side of accepting controversial extra adjectives, but you have argued forcefully and repetitively for including one adjective as long as it's common, without any regard for whether it is misleading to our audience if used in the context of the lead. If you feel you are being misunderstood, then maybe re-read what you've written (which will take a while) and see what's unclear about it. I'm quite good at parsing material like this, and if I'm coming away with an impression you think doesn't match your intended implication, then others likely are as well. At least we can agree that much of this is going to come down to "local" determination at a particular article, though that doesn't mean we can't address any of it generally, and your no. 3 below has some merits if it can be made more concretely meaningful.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:36, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

No I very clearly did not forcefully and repetitively for including one adjective as long as it's common and your own posts show that you realize that. There is indeed a communication problem but this is mainly because you are exerting enormous effort to try to bulldoze me out of the way by constantly giving utterly misleading explanations to everyone about what I supposedly think. If you have truly been parsing carefully (which I doubt) then that means you have been deliberately misleading. Just don't do it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:35, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Oppose. The text makes no sense IMHO. It clearly presumes that words like "Italian", whenever they are used to describe a pre-modern person, will be designating "citizenship, nationality, or permanent residency", or perhaps "ethnicity or religion". That is anachronistic, and it sounds like we are going to be giving these pre-modern people a passport check. Wikipedia does not need the types of crazy debates and edit wars this list of allowable reasons will create. People were called things like "Italian" for lots of overlapping reasons including geography and it is not up to us on Wikipedia to say that they should have been more bureaucratically neat and tidy. If we are talking about infoboxes that specifically use exact terms like ethnicity and nationality then this proposal isn't making that clear. I think the main result of this approach, which is already starting, is editors running around deleting adjectives like Italian from people who are uncontroversially Italian, and described that way by reliable sources. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:59, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

But that makes no sense? The wording proposed would deliver the same outcome as your closing sentence, since they both - correctly - follow the sources. MapReader (talk) 22:57, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

If this proposal is simply about following normal policies then we do not need it. If it is about infoboxes or BLPs then it should be re-written. But the way I understand it, this proposal is about how making it easier to delete adjectives from running text without agreement from local editors, by citing this legislation. It is not just about whether things are verifiable, but also about making sure terms are used "consistently", "because this policy has been applied selectively and inconsistently without regard to citizenship, nationality or residency". For this reason, I object to this demand for uniformity. Note the wordings in the opening posts, and this proposal. Apparently some normal ways of using the term "Italian", whether sourceable or not, are not going to be as acceptable as others on Wikipedia. As it happens, the normal use of the adjective Italian for "pre modern" people is a particularly good example of the problem. For thousands of years it has defined a region where people are born and grow up. The way academics use the word in such contexts is basically just normal English, but being geographical, it does not fall within the realm of what is acceptable according to this proposal. According to normal policy we don't have to cite anyone for using normal English on Wikipedia, and so Machiavelli is Italian whether we have a source or not, but this proposal will mean "Italian" can be deleted if unsourced, because supposedly it would be SYNTH to use this word without a source. Of course it is easy to find sources which call Macchiavelli all kinds of things, but we all know how this works. Once a rule is created mass deletions start, and normal local editors will not have time to handle them all. We'll have people saying that one citation is not enough to prove notability and so on. I come to this discussion because this push towards uniformity is already causing silly debates. Debates at local level on these types of issues often get most difficult when roving non-local editors push for WP-uniformity. It is a way to feel important. General rules create a feeling that you don't have to listen to local editors because you are speaking for the community. I say all this as someone who is quite critical and sceptical of ethnicity adjectives in leads of historical biographies. However, I feel this needs to be handled case by case, and according to our NORMAL policies. As a normal English adjective we can use the adjective Italian to describe Macchiavelli if local editors agree that this makes sense. This decision should NOT be NECESSARILY based on determining whether someone had "citizenship" etc, because such general rules will only make discussions more difficult. "Italian" is a relatively easy case, but words like "German" or "Frankish" regularly require much more discussion, and this approach here is ham-fisted and will only make things more complex. OTOH, if anyone wants to propose deleting more infoboxes then that might be interesting. I am not against all rule-making or uniformity pushes, but it should be clearly solving a problem that pre-existing rules don't cover.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:39, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

P.S. In reality one of the issues we often consider for words like German and Frankish for pre-modern people is how we think readers might misunderstand the terms in certain periods, even if correctly used. Such editing decisions are IMHO important and necessary. They are also hard to write rules for. The above proposal is trying to do that, by taking a position which is biased against certain types of usage which editors will now have to "fight" for. The proposal is quite clear on being against calling Aristotle a Greek or Goethe a German for example, but I don't think such usages are particularly deserving of attack. I think this is a personal preference of the proposer, and not something anyone seriously doubts can be sourced. But this should be up to local editors. Asking for a source is fine, as always, but when such demands are made en masse in uncontroversial cases as part of a push for someone to get the style they personally prefer, this is not good for the encyclopedia.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:54, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

P.P.S. As further explanation I think I should mention that I came here from the ibn Khaldun talk page. There, the proposer Makeandtoss demanded sources for one adjective but then immediately accused the replying editor of cherry picking and choosing a minority position over a majority position. If notability discussions go in this way they become circular. On Wikipedia, accusations of non-notability sometimes happen when editors simply have a different general impression of the literature. This leads to circular discussions but the way to break those circles is NOT for editors to cite ONUS at each other, whereby editors try to "win" by wikilawyering for deletions. This will lead to no adjectives. It is better for editors to positively seek more sources such as publications specifically addressing the adjectives involved.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:25, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Not going to go through all of this; most of it's already been covered in previous discussion in the main thread. But just to isolate something important to much of what's been covered above and which is central to your entire line of reasoning about this sort of subject: "For thousands of years it ['Italian'] has defined a region where people are born and grow up" is flat-out misinformation. This English word appeared in the late 14th century in reference to the language. It was later applied (early 15th) to the geo-cultural region in which the language was spoken. The origin, italiano, of course has a much longer history, going back to the Latin name Italia. But its historical usage in Latin and later Italian language does not correspond to the modern English term, not anciently (when it referrred only to the tip of the "boot") and not during the Medieval or Renaissance periods. More to the main point here, the fact that "Italian" (or italiano or "Italy" or Italia for that matter) have long had meanings that were geographical, regional, or cultural is immaterial, because they were not the same geography, region, or culture as meant by modern English use of "Italian" or "Italy". In short, you are making arguments (over and over again at great length) that are invalid because you know little about the subject matter and you make provably wrong blind assumptions about the meaning of terms (both to our audience and in historical source material).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:54, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

This is a very strange line of argumentation. You using the history of an English word, which you presumably got from a dictionary or something. Clearly we are talking here about "concepts" which can be written in different languages. Hardly anyone wrote about such topics in English before the 14th century, but people in England did know Latin and French. Most importantly, whether or not you are right or wrong is remarkably irrelevant to this discussion as a whole and the ONLY purpose of your posts seems to be to cast aspersion on me personally. How does this post help the discussion? Does the word Italian have a clear meaning when we use it as an adjective to describe a pre modern person, whether it be in everyday English or in scholarly works? Yes. The rest is trivia as far as this discussion is concerned. I think you should consider deleting your post.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:45, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

FYI our map about this subject indicates the core concept is a little more than 2000 years old (although as you say, there are older version of the concept which had different boundaries). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RomanItaly.png --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:49, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Utterly missing the point (all of them). Fortunately, I think others will understand without any difficulty that the concept of "Italian" in the modern English speaking mind is not the concept of "Italian" in mind of the English when the word in English first appeared, which in turn was not the same as the italiano and Italia concept in medieval [what-we-call-today] Italy, which in turn was not even anywhere close to the same concept as Italia in the Roman era. The ONLY purpose of my posts (with regard to you) is to show that they are logically and factually faulty and should not unduly influence the outcome of consensus on this topic; it has nothing to do with you personally, only with the content of what you are posting. If you refuse to even understand how central things like this are to the discussion, I can't help you. I'm confident that others understand fully that if an editor cannot even conceptualize of these difference and wants to just hand-wave them away as meaningless trivia, when they are the sort of thing that is at the very root of intense disputes about labeling, then whatever they are proposing as the solution to that problem is bound to be faulty.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:21, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I think you are obsessed with trying to "win" something here but I am not sure what. I did not argue for it to be used in any specific case but all I said was that Italy should be a term available for our editors to use for historical people. I am against this extreme position that such terms need to be avoided all the time. As a fact outside of Wikipedia, Macchiavelli is objectively Italian and not just commonly called that. I'm all for avoiding confusion but maybe Wikipedia has created too many of its own internal myths which create confusion and make these things more difficult. Outside of Wikipedia historical Italy is a rather straightforward concept and does not demand anything about specific regimes. You might be right that it is entirely irrelevant but you have brought in these rather technical-looking claims to try to argue that I am stupid and need to be ignored. Unfortunately they were not actually correct in any relevant way. I propose that you just stop writing ad hominim.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:35, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Gave this a long rest, and pored back over all of it. Here's what it comes down to for me:

• As Andrew Lancaster put it, various labels "might be quite useful in one case, and quite misleading in another" and "can have a common sense meaning but this might mean that readers miss how historians of different periods might use them in more exact but differing ways".
• This obviously applies to a whole lot of terms, like German, Italian, Greek, Arab, British, Turkish, etc., that have had different meanings and politico-cultural and geographic scopes in different historical contexts.
• This seems to be understood and accepted throughout all this discussion.
• Yet various parties (including, somehow, Andrew Lancaster) argue to apply "Italian" to both Machiavelli and Columbus as if not understanding and accepting this, or perhaps wanting to make a special exception for that term for some reason. This is a make-or-break issue for me (the source of most of our disputation of previous weeks), and I'm not going to be alone in this.
• A complication weaving throughout the entire thread and many separate earlier ones is that "reliable sources use this term" is often applied as a WP:OR hand-wave, taking no account of the fact that a historian might apply "Italian" (or whatever) to a historical subject as a shorthand term after having established a more precise historical context for the biography subject and a particular circumscription of what they mean by that label in that context, but Wikipedia has no space to do that in a lead sentence, and especially cannot engage in blantant equivocation by conflating unrelated meanings of a term in disparate sources to arrive at an implication to the reader that the typical modern sense of the term ('of or pertaining to the nation-state of Italy' in the case of "Italian") is what is applicable; that's novel synthesis of the worst sort.
• Such terms as "Italian" can often be used appropriately by connecting them to something else that makes sense in the historical context of the bio subject e.g. "was a Venetian painter of the Italian Renaissance" instead of "was an Italian painter of the Renaissance, from Venice".

I do not believe any solution to [mis-]labelling problems, proposed above or below, now or later, is going to be successful unless it addresses these kinds of concerns.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:42, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Suggestion#3

• Currently MOS:ETHNICITY only has a clear guideline for modern people, and the way I see it our practical problems come from mission creep, because the part of the text which was clearly written with modern people in mind is clearly influencing debate on historical articles. For the sake of clarity I would like to propose we make it clear that historical figures should have more flexibility. Otherwise we supposedly can't call for example call any historical people an Arab. In other words WP is becoming illogically biased against the ways historical people are commonly identified when discussing certain regions and periods as opposed to others.
• Looking at the obvious intensions of the text, while recently living people may be affected by what WP says concerning their sexuality, dual citizenship, religion, or some types of ancestral ethnicity, it is entirely artificial to force ourselves to see such things as problems when it comes to historical people. Why make things harder for editors?
• Concerning the logic of the existing text it is also worth noting that when carefully parsed it currently does NOT say that we need to use a term which describes what made them notable. It says that we need to use a term which "provide context" for whatever made them notable, such as "where the person was a citizen, national, or permanent resident when the person became notable". So everyone who thinks we can only call someone an Arab if being an Arab is what made them notable seems to be misreading the text?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:47, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

“ Long dead historical figures should be identified in ledes in ways which are consistent with the ways in which reliable sources describe them and their notable activities, and which aim to avoid creating misunderstandings for modern readers. ”

On the face of it, this wording is vastly more reasonable than the stuff above (even if I don't agree with much of your rationale for arriving at it). But it's not sufficiently concretely meaningful to be guideline-worthy. Everything WP ever writes has to be "consistent with the ways in which reliable sources decribe" the topic, so this isn't advising anything new, different, more specific, more general, or anythign else. "Aim to avoid creating misunderstandings for modern readers" is a very good goal, but needs practical elaboration. (And we wouldn't use the spelling "lede".)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:25, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for taking time to address what I actually wrote this time. However I am not sure that your concern is really one that other editors will necessarily find important. I think that part of what you object to is what also triggered your personal attacks and that is that I have a different underlying philosophy about how these "rules" should work. You apparently work a lot on such rules and you have strong ideas about what is normal, and you apparently think people who would like a different approach are just ignorant, and need to be bullied into submission. So it seems worthwhile to describe how that difference looks to me. Maybe it will expose common ground or at lesat help us define the differences. I think that if a guideline (as I personally prefer to see them) mainly just points Wikipedians towards standard good practices which are also described in other guidelines then this is generally going to be a good thing. In such cases our guidelines just guide. I see no problem with that. It can help make sure editors work together in the right way. It does not then become a debate in itself; I think that it is only because of "emergencies" such as BLP problems that some guidelines need to define everything right down to which adjectives belong in an opening. For the rest, things should be left open to local editors if there is no actual need for legislation. Sometimes; as in this case, a simple guideline just help editors to see that another guideline does NOT need to be applied in all cases. When we try to write rules for everything then we get the kinds of discussions which brought me here; And please understand that by this I mean discussions where editors are NOT really reading the sources together anymore (as opposed to just googling and counting), but are instead constantly talking about what has been said elsewhere on Wikipedia. When the editing is secondary to the wikilawering then the project suffers. You might not see yourself as part of it, but there is an organic tendency on Wikipedia for these types of discussions to become a drive to uniformity and silly infoboxes and the like. This then leads to real problems such as the way in which Wikipedia has become an actual producer of certain urban myths which get spread over social media, such as the obsession with trying to define people and peoples by the language they speak at home. (Which has apparently happened in the case of the nationality of Copernicus, who reliable sources call Polish, but Wikipedia doesn't apparently because he spoke German and this blows our minds.) We sometimes need to take a step back and look at the big picture. I think my proposal is unusual in the sense that it is guided by the aim of simply trying to support good editing, and not the aim of trying to explain everything.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:11, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry. Here is a more to-the-point response. My interpretation of the situation is that we have a rule written for modern people and it is not clear about whether to apply it for historical people. So if you place the above text into that context I think its purpose is quite clear. It is partly telling people when DO NOT NEED TO apply the rules designed for modern people.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:03, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but how many people can you name whose fame comes from their being Arab? One? Three? Is there a single human being whose Arabness "made them notable"? The guideline you are suggesting makes absolutely no sense for the vast majority of pages and articles. شاه عباس (talk) 08:47, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I think you might misunderstood. I agree with the doubts you raise with your sarcastic question. My understanding is that some people coming to the discussion either already believe, or have encountered other editors who already believe, that MOS:CONTEXTBIO means that we have to only use ethnic etc designations in the lead if they are essential to their notability. That is not what our current text says, but people believe it does and this is affecting editing. So what I am proposing (and maybe the wording needs improvement) is that our text should clarify that for HISTORICAL people, Wikipedians can stick to their normal priority of using the best sources to guide them. The questions when editing will therefore become "which designations do the best sources use when they are most carefully giving their reader context and describing what "type" of person is being discussed. Does this make sense? Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:02, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

believe, that MOS:CONTEXTBIO means we have to only use ethnic etc designations in the lead if they are essential to their notability isn't that what is meant by "ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability"? M.Bitton (talk) 13:10, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

• No, "essential to" and "relevant to" have different meanings. Reading the whole current text makes it clear that "relevant to" basically just requires that expert sources use a designation when discussing whatever makes that person notable. Furthermore the text with all its examples and explanations shows pretty clearly that the main concern is about "modern-day cases", where mistakes could have an importance to living people such as politicians. In most modern-day cases, this will be ... or ... ... then in contrast the part which you cite is given ...should generally not be ... nor ... which seems to just give the other side of the story concerning "modern-day cases". My understanding of this text is that the main concerns for HISTORICAL PEOPLE are (or should be) only triviality and lack of clarity, and not specific legal and sexual issues. Problems with dual nationality etc (which is one example used) are not a problem for someone who died 100 years ago. Anyway, whatever the history of this text, for example the vague word "general", the aim here is to make it clear. I believe that we DO want Wikipedians be guided by reliable source usage, and avoiding triviality or anything which might confuse readers in ways which can be avoided. I believe that if we have editors working in that way then we automatically cover most/all concerns when it comes to HISTORICAL people.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:22, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  it clear that "relevant to" basically just requires that expert sources use a designation when discussing whatever makes that person notable. let's put that to a test: If a subject X is a famous science-fiction author who also happens to be gay. Do you think that his sexuality (regardless of how many times it's mentioned in various sources) belongs in the lead if no sources discusses its relevance to his notability? M.Bitton (talk) 19:58, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  It does not matter how many times it is mentioned, but it DOES matter HOW it is mentioned. First, we should not use an example of someone who was recently alive, like most science fictions writers. So let's say we are talking about one of Napolean's generals for example. Of course if he is basically only well-known because he was gay, then I think we have no doubts. Let's make it more difficult, and say that it is not the only thing he is well-known for. But the problem is that you don't tell me what reliable sources DO say about this person. That's what we'd need to look at. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:00, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  It's less about how it's mentioned and more about whether it played a part in in the person's notability. M.Bitton (talk) 22:34, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

  These might really resolve to the same thing; I think Andrew Lancaster is getting at the idea of "how the source mentions it" in the sense of "in a way that pertains to their notability". If your hypothetical subject was closeted, then maybe it wouldn't come up, but if they frequently wrote about LGBT themes throughout their notable work, then it probably would. I have to agree though that "essential to" and "relevant to" are nowhere near synonymous.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:47, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  If they frequently wrote about LGBT themes throughout their notable work, there would be no issue, but the trouble arises when RS mention the sexuality or ethnicity when discussing the subject's personal life and then editors insist on having it in the lead simply because it's sourced (even if it played no part in the subject's notability). M.Bitton (talk) 19:21, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  Right, so basically the same general thing as trying to put Dwayne Johnson's complex ethnicity stuff into his lead. Well, the pertinent guideline material as of current version is Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability. Similarly, neither previous nationalities nor the country of birth should be mentioned in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability. This seems quite reasonable, at least with regard to modern subjects. I think what you're describing above about the gay writer is simply defiance of the guideline (a behavioral problem), not lack of clarity in the guideline. Where it's missing guidance is on historical/premodern subjects, for whom modern terms of this sort can be particularly problematic even if when connected to notability, and even for subjects that are from only a few generations ago. LGBT activists, and those from particular ethnic, religious, and other cultural groups, are apt to make "erasure" versus "visibility/representation" arguments about such terms, including even with reference to historical subjects, and this can be problematic. Their concerns are not immaterial, but often their advocacy is going too far, and tends strongly toward anachronistic terminology, and this why the community has not been swayed to integrate erasure/representation concerns in the guidelines (yet?). E.g., one egregious example I chose to ignore and leave to others to deal with was a claim (I forget which article it's in) that the Nazis oppressed "the trans community" in Germany, Poland, and other places under their thumb. There was no such thing as the trans community then, even if the broadest sense of "community", and the term and concept "trans/transgender" was not yet in use. People who would today identify as trans where conceived of and termed differently in that era, including by themselves not just by outsiders. That sort of mistake is not (in the lead, at least) being made at James Barry (surgeon), which is quite careful to avoid such anachronisms, and yet it is no way engaging in "erasure" as it covers the person's history in the lead as what we'd today call trans[gender] just without using that term as a label. I think we have the opposite issue at Taika Waititi, where his mixed Euro-Māori ethnic background has been removed from the lead, despite his deep involvement in various Māori causes making it notability-connected, even if somewhat marginally. This sort of ethnic-causes involvement does not seem to be the case with Dwayne Johnson, so it not being in his lead makes sense there. These issues sometimes to get improved; e.g. John Taylor, Baron Taylor of Warwick, originally said "he became one of the youngest people in the upper house and the only black peer" (in that context meaning the only living one), but was later improved to "the third person of Afro-Caribbean origin to enter the House of Lords" (with age in the upper house stuff moved to another sentence). Labeling him "Black" (especially in a British context) was weirdly racialist, and smacked of "Black-tagging" (though I think "origin" might be an awkward and even misleading word to use there; "ancestry" would probably be better, and I'll try that edit right now). And it's nowhere near the lead sentence.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:36, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

While I support this suggestion in principle, "long dead historical figures" is ambiguous, and could be applied to someone who died in 1990s. Also, if this sentence allows figures to be identified in ledes in ways that reflect RS, then it says nothing on the avoiding mentioning ethnicities sentence in the same policy. I would recommend: "Historical figures before the establishment of the League of Nations" or something along this line. Not sure about the second part however. Makeandtoss (talk) 17:12, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

• The 1990s were yesterday! :) I can see we have a generation issue. LOL. I think this specific part of the wording can be discussed further but to be honest I can't imagine most people writing history articles would find this very unclear. But FWIW many countries use 100 years as a guideline for when they make private records public.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:52, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  Well exactly, leaving it undefined would leave it prone to different interpretations. Thus maybe something more concrete can be included in the definition. Makeandtoss (talk) 19:33, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  By avoiding detailed rules, clarity becomes better. As explained, I don't think we can write a positive general rule about what we have to write. Such rules are intrinsically difficult write. That's what we learned on Wikipedia in the past many times. For MODERN people special rules were created because of specific concerns. What we should make clear is that for historical people we can revert to simpler rules which are used more generally around WP: using RS and avoiding ambiguities. These ARE clear. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:15, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Why the qualifier at all? Every biographical article should describe someone by the labels commonly used in the most reliable sources. What different approach are editors expected to take for the living or recently deceased? MapReader (talk) 22:03, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

If you look in the examples and click around the main concerns are about the effects that remarks about past citizenships, dual citizenships, sexuality, etc could have on living people. Secondly, I think even then no special rule would have been necessary except that what has happened in WP is that there have been enormous waves of people inserting and deleting adjectives like "Jewish", "Moslem", or "Homosexual" etc, in the first lines articles. This type of categorization is apparently an obsession of a lot of people who come to WP. This also affects historical articles, but I don't think the text that was created was designed for historical articles. I think just helping people to realize how our core content policies should be used would have been easier for people to understand and enforce in historical articles. So for modern articles they have written specific rules based on the modern world, but our experience is showing that they can't easily be applied to all time periods. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:24, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Above it is said that "we have a rule written for modern people and it is not clear about whether to apply it for historical people", but there certainly is not a carve-out for them. So really this actually comes down to "We have a rule. It was written in language that primarily addresses modern people. How do we rewrite it to better account for considerations that apply more to pre-modern historical people?" If we focus on that (and on particular points such as I identified here, in part on Andrew Lancaster's own observations/wording, and advice from Blueboar), then this might go in a direction of a wording-change proposal the community could support.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:53, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

No, we should not define this based on what the "majority of reliable sources" say. One of the problems with doing so, is for many doing so will favour sub-national and regional identifiers. Where someone is only a national figure there will be few articles covering them from a international perspective as we are required to do. There will however be many articles within one country talking about them from a perspective that focuses on sub-national and regional perspectives (because focusing on national alone is insignificant or unimportant when it is common between all actors in national media). If we do this, articles will become increasingly confusing to non-local readers as we move further and further away from anything near Westphalian citizenship, and it basically becomes wholly self-identification. In the first sentences of acticles, a more general (generally broad Westphalian) citizenship should be used. Ethnic, lingistic, and cultural "nationalities" should not take precedence but where important and covered significantly in reliable sources should be included in the body of the article, or where appropriate later in the lede. We need to remember to put our readers first, it should not be about claiming certain people and/or ingnoring Westphalian citizenship or denying its significance in place of righting wrongs. For non-modern persons, my preference would be to mention the states/nations that existed at the time they were alive (not to map modern understandings of citizenship on to them).--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 21:10, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with "mention the states/nations that existed at the time they were alive (not to map modern understandings of citizenship on to them)" strongly; if we want to help readers understand where a pre-modern location was we can do that with "in modern-day southern China" or "in present-day Chile" or whatever. However, a common problem we have is that material often does not "favour sub-national and regional identifiers" even when it should, and instead turns nationalistic, e.g. claiming Columbus and Machiavelli as "Italians" and completely blurring the distinctions between various "Italian" nations that were at war with each other and spoke different (albeit related) languages. It's rather like treating all the countries of the former Yugoslavia and their peoples as "Yugoslavia" and "Yugoslavians", except that it's predicated on present-day nationalism (and diasporic "cultural patriotism", especially from Italian-American quarters and the like). That is, there are two distinct problems here: the one I'm talking about of national-and-broader scope writers often glossing over very encyclopedically meaningful historical distinctions, and the one you're talking about of more local and regional publishing interests choosing to dwell on sub-national interests and ignore larger national and international impact and relevance. Rarely is someon really "only a national figure"; there will be both a "subnational pride" angle with regard to them and a national one (which for historical subjects may be inappropriate/misleading/rewriting-history to begin with), both of which may interfere with proper international encyclopedic coverage.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:16, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll opine just because I've seen the nationalistic edit war spats over ledes on my watchlist from time to time. The solution noted before that seems to work often is to just remove an adjective like "Italian" that is identical to the modern nation/ethnicity and replace any mention with just "of the Kingdom of X" or whatever. Such identification in the lede makes little sense imo, unless RS generally agree on it themselves (those that actually discuss the matter of ethnic/national/linguistic identity directly -- not merely say once in prose "the precocious Italian explorer would soon become ...").

What seems necessary in any biography is to localize quickly the reader to your subject in place, time, and general cultural context. This is where I think the editors arguing for the need to have some ethnic/linguistic/national identifier in the lede, when possible, are coming from. But then the simple counter is that you can localize and contextualize without saying something like "Columbus was an Italian navigator etc." as part of our already exhaustingly long lede sentences, perhaps just separately in the next sentence or as an independent phrase: "...; he was raised and worked in Renaissance X (modern-day Y), and did his most well-known work at Z." SamuelRiv (talk) 03:56, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree that using Italian is anachronistic. But what if the majority of RS have described him as Italian? That's the main point of the edit, so that WP would reflect RS and thus end the nationalistic edit war spats. Makeandtoss (talk) 08:24, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe that "the majority of RS" is a well-defined concept. It is certainly something that the nationalists would argue about, for instance by discounting other-nation sources as being non-reliable for this because they are too nationalistic. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:32, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Well naturally not every RS is independent or necessarily reliable in certain topics as mentioned here. We either define RS more properly, or we just leave it ambiguous for editors to solve out between themselves. Either way it would be an improvement from the current situation, where instead of relying on RS, editors are relying on their opinions and personal research. Makeandtoss (talk) 08:43, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course, but it’s the standard that WP uses. Editing isn’t always easy, but citing from sources is a lot better than some of the OR/Synth arguments you sometimes see editors try to construct. MapReader (talk) 08:45, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Additionally, "the majority of RS" is not accurately assessable on a question of this sort without doing a tremendous amount of research (since it's a quantitative claim about sources that exist in a very large number), has to take account of the actual meaning intended by each writer (did they define "Italian" at all? Did they define it as having a scope and meaning in that context that differs from the everyday nation-state meaning it has today? In most cases, probably yes). And at the end of the day WP has a requirement to paraphrase and rewrite source claims in our own words so as to not plagiarize them, nor produce results confusing to our readers; most especially, WP has a responsibliity to not impart false information even if some of the sources are unclear or – much more often – are being OR-spun with novel interpretation to reach an unclear and misleading implication.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:13, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Well we don't have to research what every single RS says about them. If an editor presents a bunch of RS claiming this is the primary identification, then any other editor can challenge them on that, and eventually it should be clear which is used more often and more primarily. I think this is better than engaging in a tremendous and endless amount of discussions based on the personal OR of editors. Makeandtoss (talk) 08:43, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

My point is that arriving at such a claim about the RS usage, with it comes to a label like "Italian" for a historical figure, is almost certainly going to be OR, namely novel interpretation and synthesis of sources (probably cherry-picked ones that make some use of the term somewhere, but with very different implications than the one presentently being made at, e.g., Christopher Columbus).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:22, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:OR and WP:SYNTH apply to article prose, not to the evaluation of sources. It is not OR to estimate whether there is a suitable consensus of sources to write a statement in wikivoice vs by attribution, for example. Otherwise we couldn't have an encyclopedia. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:18, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

But by that logic, we could also disregard any "reliable sources" that use anachronisms. We could disregard sources that would otherwise be reliable where they call Christopher Columbus or Niccolò Machiavelli Italian. There is something of an inconsistency with saying that we must follow "reliable sources" that are spreading falsehoods in the form of anachronisms. A falsehood reprinted a million times is still a falsehood. We accept what reliable sources say because it is assumed what they print is true. Not simply because they print it.-- Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 03:03, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

The assumption that what RS prints is true is the basis of WP. Otherwise, it is left to editor's personal preferences, which is already causing numerous edit wars in this specific instance. Makeandtoss (talk) 08:57, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, but in accepting what reliable sources say about nationality (when anachronistic), we are ignoring other reliable sources (ie those that identify the birth and death of a person and when certain nations existed). We must be able to consider this more general information when evaluating sources. Editors arguing for anachronistic claims of nationality don't believe the sources are true (eg that the person has nationality in a nation that was formed only after their death). These editors just wish to rely on sources despite the fact that the claims contained in them are false. I don't think we are obliged to create or amend a policy to encourage or reinforce that. Weighing reliable sources should not be reduced to a counting exercise. If some traditionally reliable sources are printing the truth and others obvious falsehoods, we aren't required to accept falsehoods. It just seems clear to me that we should be attributing those nationalities to persons which they had during their lifetime, not modern nationalities foisted on them after their death (even if otherwise reliable sources are complicit in the foisting).-- Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 12:12, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I completely agree with you that modern nationalities shouldn't be imposed on previous civilizations. If in five centuries there comes a new state called Eurasian Empire where I live, I would be pissed if they write in my biography that I was a Eurasian WP editor. It doesn't make sense at all. But this is just one case; there are other cases where for example the subject and most RS have identified them with a racial group, yet we are not allowed to use this, despite not having another option to put in to provide cultural context. That aside, I understand your concern, maybe I can suggest a middle ground of a both qualitative and quantitative criteria to reach consensus, but I am not sure how that would be phrased: "most high quality RS available"? Makeandtoss (talk) 12:57, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

That's cavilling. Using OR to arrive at a conclusion not supported by the source material (namely, that Columbus was "Italian" in the sense that word generally means today, rather than only in a specialized sense used by the sources but unexplained in our lead, of being from Genoa, one of the independent city-states that was only nominally part of the Holy Roman Empire Kingdom of Italy, which did not include all of modern Italy), and putting such an implication or outright claim into our article, is OR regardless whether you announce your intentions and "rationale" for them on the talk page or just do it all in your head before making the bad edit. Also "The assumption that what RS prints is true is the basis of WP" is false; WP relies on what the preponderance of source actually say and mean by what they say, and gives due weight to differing views in the sources by how well they agree with what the rest of the reliable sources are indicating. Makeandtoss is confusing the idea of sources indicating Columbus was Italian (when they use that term at all) in a particular sense of that word, with sources using the word at all, without any regard to what is meant by them when doing so. Never mind that most soruces that are actually reliable are more specific. It is not proper to arrive at a reader-misleading use of a term in our lead on the excuse that the term with a different and contextually clearer meaning is used by sources. Source usage of a term somewhere somehow does not require WP to use it, most especially not in a way that is guaranteed to mislead a large number of readers. It's not even so much a matter of, as Darryl Kerrigan put it, that "[some] editors just wish to rely on sources despite the fact that the claims contained in them are false"; most of them are not making false claims. Rather, some editors just wish to rely on bare occurrence of a word with multiple meanings, without any account of the meaning in that context, and robotically re-use the word on WP in way that has for most readers a false and ananchronistic meaning. Whether that happens because the editor favors that PoV, is unaware of the problem, or simply doesn't care about the problem, is mostly immaterial. It's still a problem, and definitely OR, just of a subtle sort.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:44, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure what you are trying to say. I just opened the Columbus article and the Italian adjective is linked to Britannica, which doesn't give any context on what is meant by that. Furthermore, the label is given an OR and unsourced note, which states that this term is supposedly used because "the Latin equivalent of the term Italian had been in use for natives of the region since antiquity". Look, my proposal here doesn't aim to give anachronistic labels to people. Is Genoan predominantly used to describe him in the best sources possible? Then he should be described as so. Is Italian predominantly used to describe him in the best sources possible? If so, then it would be just our job to reflect that on WP, especially considering there is no context given in the example of Britannica. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:51, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Or, as has also been accurately mentioned, simply saying Columbus was "-ian" of any state may be anachronistic enough to be a disservice of the reader. That's again why I question the practice of piling on adjectives in a lede sentence, when adding even a single preposition -- "from Genoa" -- would make it more flexible. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:26, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

He was born in the Republic of Genoa, so it should be reasonable to call him Genoan if RS support it? I am also against piling adjectives and think only one or two maximum should be used in the opening paragraph. Makeandtoss (talk) 19:19, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:DEADNAME - Expand

"If a living transgender or non-binary person was not notable under a former name (a deadname), it should not be included in any page (including lists, redirects, disambiguation pages, category names, templates, etc.), even in quotations, even if reliable sourcing exists. Treat the pre-notability name as a privacy interest separate from (and often greater than) the person's current name. For example:"

Why does this only apply to transgender people? IMO, it should apply to any name that existed before someone's notability, not just transgender/non-binary people, for exactly the same reasons above (no legitimate reason greater than the privacy consideration). My tightness (talk) 02:02, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

WP:SAMESURNAME

WP:SAMESURNAME says "In an article that is not about either unrelated person with the same surname, continue to refer to them both by their full names." Should this be amended to "...continue to refer to them both by their full names, unless only one person is mentioned within the same section (or sub-section)."?

For example, this comes up in the 2024 Welsh Open snooker tournament page. There are two players with the same last name, Kyren Wilson and Gary Wilson. In the "Summary" section of the prose, Kyren is only mentioned once as he was eliminated early in the tournament. But as Gary went on to win the event, his name was used multiple times, especially in the "Semi-finals" and "Final" sections. The editors decided for those sub-sections to only use the full "Gary Wilson" name at first mention, then switch to "Wilson", which I think is better than continuing to use his full name. AmethystZhou (talk) 01:38, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. When we summarised the semi-final match between Gary Wilson and John Higgins, for instance, it seemed adequate to use "Gary Wilson" on the first use and "Wilson" thereafter, as it's clear which of the Wilsons played in that match. An issue also arises with seven-time world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan, as another snooker player is named Sean O'Sullivan. It would be incredible clunky to have to refer to Ronnie O'Sullivan by his full name on every single use, across countless articles, just because there exists another player with the same last name who has never been ranked higher than 73rd in the world. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 14:49, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Any general consensus on list of publications by the article subject?

I have a lot of rules of thumb that I've seen used, but is there any general consensus on what to include (maybe from RfCs or noticeboard discussions)? --Hipal (talk) 19:47, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

It depends a lot on the type of subject and the type of list. For book authors I would include all published books. For scientists who have published hundreds of journal papers, in a "selected publications" list within a biography, I would include a small enough number to make it obvious that it is really selected: maybe six for a typical case, more only if each addition beyond that can be justified by significant independent coverage of that publication. For journalists who have published hundreds of newspaper or magazine articles, I think it is rare to see a listing of any of them, and would require special justification. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:33, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks.

One of the most common rules of thumb I've seen used is to consider the publisher; looking for self-publication, vanity publishers, very small publishers, etc.

While I've seen mention of trimming a research publication list by impact factor, I don't recall seeing it done. --Hipal (talk) 21:00, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

"Impact factor" is an aggregate measure, supposedly correlated to the strength of a journal, calculated by averaging the number of citations per paper over some time window. Selecting papers by the impact factors of the journals they were publishing in is like a form of WP:INHERITED: very inaccurate for determining significance. Better to just look at the citation counts of the papers themselves. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. The significance of a research paper usually correlates with the IF of the journal it's published in, but not always. It's better to look at the number of citations of the paper, as well as what papers are citing it (are those high-impact papers too?). Although be aware that recent (only several years old) papers will naturally have fewer citations than older papers. AmethystZhou (talk) 02:00, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Organization and stylistic changes

After answering a question at the help desk, I was left pondering about this guideline and engaged in a quest of organization and stylistic changes to improve the page. It was to improve the form, visuals, style, navigation, organization. I did not intend any meaning changes and if there is any it was likely unintended. I hope the changes are of the liking of my fellow editors. If not, feel free to discuss or change. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 06:58, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Unimportant age details at time of death

When is it useful or encyclopedic to say something like "he died seven and a half weeks before his 93rd birthday" instead of "he died at age 92"? I might be convinced to allow something like "she died one day before her 100th birthday", but where do we draw the line? Chris the speller ^yack 18:22, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Chris the speller, I see no point in including that sort of content. The age at death should be sufficient. Eddie Blick (talk) 19:13, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

At a minimum, I would expect a reliable source to mention it, establishing some significance.—Bagumba (talk) 19:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to you both for the response. There are hundreds of these, including some like this: "exactly two weeks before his 95th birthday". What precision! But what good does it do for any reader? I will nibble away at this pile of excessive drivel. Chris the speller ^yack 20:41, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Chris the speller, a related point is that in many cases where such expressions appear the date of birth is unsourced. Therefore any expression of a span before or after a birthday would be unsourced, also (unless the span is stated in the obituary or has some other reliable source). Eddie Blick (talk) 00:43, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

While I agree that a line should be drawn, if the detail is reliably sourced, I don't see how it benefits the reader to provide a less precise range rather than a more precise one. The fact that such references commonly occur in reporting suggests that it is a detail likely to be of interest to readers, and I would generally be opposed to any sweeping campaign of removing these details, absent a lack of sourcing. BD2412 T 23:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

If the specific date of death is provided, can't the reader determine for themself how much of a "partial year" of age they had at the time of their death? I don't really see any need to include something extraneous like that, especially when it's already there for anyone who actually is interested. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:22, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I find such details to be excessive, with the damage being distraction and undue weight. Birthday anniversaries just aren't (usually) that important. It is appropriate in some nonencyclopedic writing that is trying to add some color to the story, but Wikipedia should stick to plain facts. I think some editors would even reject this as analysis of the sources (assuming the sources just give the birth and death dates). Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 03:14, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Since 99.7% of our dear departed did not die on their birthday, for uniformity we should either specify the proximity to their birthday or omit it. If everybody gets the birthday mention, who's going to pitch in and add it to the hundreds of thousands of articles that don't yet have it? Easier to remove it from the relatively few articles where the subject's niece or nephew added this unencyclopedic trivia. Chris the speller ^yack 04:16, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I am sure that newspapers have some rule for this. It is very common for news reports to indicate this proximity where it is close (within a few weeks). Taken to the opposite extreme, why do we say of someone, "he died at age 92" rather than "he died in his 90s"? BD2412 T 04:43, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

In my first post at the top of this discussion, I asked "where do we draw the line?" To me, "until his death three months before his 56th birthday" is only slightly less preposterous than "until his death ten months before his 56th birthday". Chris the speller ^yack 05:15, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

where do we draw the line": YMMV. Depending on where and when, some are satisfied if it's verifiable (or even via WP:CALC), others may get into whether it's WP:DUE. Ultimately, there's the WP:ONUS policy:

While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article.

—Bagumba (talk) 05:34, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Saying that someone died weeks before their birthday is more informative to the reader than merely stating their age. Within two weeks is probably a reasonable cutoff, unless we are talking about some milestone (100th birthday, for example), perhaps for which celebratory plans were already in the works (see, e.g., Betty White#Betty White: A Celebration (2022)). BD2412 T 20:53, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I think if a reliable source deems it important enough to mention, so should we. GiantSnowman 21:00, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with BD, we certainly do not need any campaign to remove all such mentions. We are writing for the facts, yes, but that does not mean we should strive to make this place completely devoid of colour (anyone else still running Vector 2022?) We are not robots, but if anyone wants a rule, then yes, it seems silly to mention a birthday if it was more than a month out, and removing that seems fine to me. Beyond that, personally I wouldn’t add such detail without it being closer than a week on either side, but to remove it is more of a waste of time than many, many other things you could be doing instead. — HTGS (talk) 22:38, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Revisiting the issue of anachronistic demonyms being applied to historical figures

When we can write "[Name] was an [actually historically correct demonym] [occupation/role], from [historical place], now in [modern place]", or even "[Name] was an [occupation/role] of [historical place], now in [modern place]" without a demonym at all – or using any equivalent wording like "today in [modern place]" or "in modern-day [modern place]" – then we not only have no good reason to write a grossly misleading "[Name] was a [history-distorting and reader-confusing anachronistic demonym] [occupation/roles], from [historical place]", there are also many good reasons to not do it. I think that this needs to be covered more explicitly in this guideline, probably using concrete examples along the lines of the generics I just wrote.

Multiple discussions, with unclear resolutions, have archived away here and at other pages. This classic example of the anachronism dispute is describing Christopher Columbus as "Italian" and even his voyages as an "Italian" endeavor, a viewpoint pushed especially by Italian-American interests as a matter of ethno-nationalistic pride. The problem is that Italy as anything like a nation-state did not exist in his period, and the Italian penninsula and mainland consisted of a number of independent states (typically with their own Italic languages, many of which still exist as minority languages; the one we today call Italian is actually Florentine). Columbus was Genoan, not "Italian", and his voyages were a Spanish project (and Spain actually was at least de facto unified into a single nation by that point, unlike Italy). But there are many such disputes ("Chinese" is another fairly frequent one, and can be problematic for multiple reasons, including completely different ethno-linguistic groups in the region, and often multiple competing kingdoms/empires and other polities within the bounds of what today is mainland China).

Usage of modern-day national labeling of historical figures and group is (at least in the cases about which I've seen recurrent dispute) rarely based on much actual evidence rather than opinionated assertions and personal (often diasporic) preferences. Even much of the evidence presented tends to be OR distortion. E.g., it is easy to find RS using somewhere in them the term "Italian" in reference to someone like Columbus or Dante, but only as a shorthand after the author has explained where they were really from, Genoa and Florence respectively, and that these were independent states; or using the term with a particular cultural-geographic regional sense particular to the material in question and already laid out in detail in that work. Either of those is very distinct from the modern nation-state sense that WP would imply to almost all readers by saying "Columbus was Italian". But proponents of this wrongheaded anachronistic labeling in WP articles ignore the sources' highly contextual usage (when it can be found at all) and claim they can simply apply "Italian" to any such figure "because RS do it", despite our lead sections having no such clarifing prior contextual material or special in-context definition that has been explained. Plus, various sources about such figures are not actually reliable historical, ethnographical, or other works, but are lionzing biographies written too often by Italian (or Chinese, or whatever) Americans with a promotional slant (often, in the Columbus case, also promotional of Catholicism and of socio-political conservatism, and revisionism in support of that conservatism, especially against criticism of Columbus, the Catholic Church, and Imperial Spain as colonialist and violently exploitative).

Here's a point of evidence about historical English usage with regard to "Italians" in particular that is worth consideration:

• Lutkin, Jessica (2016). "Settled or fleeting? London's medieval immigrant community revisited". In Allen, Martin; Davies, Matthew (eds.). Medieval Merchants and Money: Essays in Honour of James L. Bolton. University of London Press.. Full-text access to this is available (unusually, for JSTOR) since it's an open-access work.

In summary, the immigrant merchant and labourer populations in England from the late medieval to early modern periods were recorded distinctly as Venetian, Florentine, Genoan, Lucchese [Tuscan], Lombard, Milanese, etc. While "Italian" was sometimes used in this period (perhaps when it was known that the person was from somewhere in that region without more specifics being available), it clearly was not the default way to refer to such people in English, even historically. Rather, it has only become one in the modern era (and especially among Americans) after the Italian unification in 1871. It's interesting that "German" (sometimes "Teutonic") was more used in these English records (with more specific terms being rare, though "Saxon" appeared a few times), surely owing to the fact that the Holy Roman Empire was already using this term (and Deutsche and cognates in the German langauges) by this era. Similarly to the German case, "French" was usually used instead of more specific terms like "Picard" or "Gascon", owing to it being a largely unified nation by then. But the Netherlands were not, and terms like "Fleming", "Zeelander", "Hollander", and "Gelderlander" appeared frequently along with a more generic "Dutch" (MidEng "Doche"); the Netherlands didn't exist as a unified country until the Batavian republic in 1975; while the United Provinces of the Netherlands dates back to 1579, and is sometimes mislabled "the Dutch Republic", it was actually a conferation of independent states, though it at least provided a then-extant rationale to begin lumping them all together as "Dutch".

There's a lot of other material like this available about demonyms and their historical usage in English, though much of it is paywalled and needs a The Wikipedia Library account or other institutional access means to get at the full text.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that we have no reason to use misleading anachronistic labels like calling Columbus "Italian" when we can say accurately that he was Genoan, from a city in present-day Liguria, Italy. As I pointed out before, we would not refer to King Bridei V of the Picts (r. 761–763) as a "Scottish" ruler, but as Pictish and based in Fortriu, in present-day central to north Scotland. (The unification of what today is Scotland, merging Pictland with Gaelic Alba, didn't happen until 843; and inclusive of Strathclyde/Alt Clut, not until around the beginning of the 12th century). WP is mostly pretty good about this sort of thing, but there is a bad habit among certain clusters of editors of engaging in particular forms of anachronistic ethno-national labeling. "Italian" and "Chinese" are the most common I've run into, though I've also seen it done with "Spanish" before the unification of Spain, and with "Russian" as inclusive of places that were not at the time part of the CIS, or the USSR, or Imperial Russia. There are probably many other cases I've missed, in subject areas I don't wander into as often.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:13, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Hon Prince Vincent Venman Bulus

biography Binfajnr1 (talk) 11:33, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

? What do you want done? Can you be more specific & include some citations if you think Bulus is notable? Peaceray (talk) 13:36, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

"Serving/serves/served as"

I have been active in creating and editing business biographies here for many years. For a few weeks now I have been replacing phrasings such as "John Doe serves as the CEO of XYZ Inc", with "John Doe is the CEO of XYZ Inc". The latter is more concise, and I think clearer and more neutral. The edit summary I have typically given is "copyedit, more neutral language". None of my edits have been reverted. On my talk page, User_talk:Edwardx#"serving_as"_non-neutral?, Anastrophe has asked "can you point me to the policy or discussion where it was determined that "serving as" is non-neutral language?".

MOS:OPENPARABIO reads "The first sentence should usually state ... One, or possibly more, noteworthy positions, activities, or roles that the person is mainly known for, avoiding subjective or contentious terms." I think that "serves as" is subjective and contentious. Private sector companies, PR and the business press encourage us to (at least subconciously) see some sort of equivalence between private sector business roles and what might traditionally have been called "public service".

For business biographies this seems clear-cut. But what about politicians, armed forces personnel, roles in not-for-profit organisations, and unpaid roles? I think that we should consider removing "serving/serves/served as" from all articles, and would much appreciate hearing the views of other editors. Edwardx (talk) 19:19, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for starting this, Edwardx. I'll repeat my question/arguments from Edwardx's talk page here, for further clarity. First largely responds to the question of use for military, politicians, etc.

"[...] I'm still unclear in what way describing someone as serving a particular position or role is non-neutral - it doesn't sympathize with nor disparage the subject in any way that I can discern. Politicians and military personnel work within the broader scope of what is commonly and accurately characterized as "public service". With the exception of extremely minor public service, such as serving on a small town's city council, where the members only fill that role part-time and earn a living elsewhere, those in public service aren't expected to work for free. Being paid doesn't change what their role is."

And reply to the contention that the biz press encourages its use so that we subconsciously see an equivalence with public service:

"But is that the case? I hate to throw out the original research argument, but that's what this appears to be. Absent a concrete policy stating that the terminology is overtly violating WP:NEUTRAL, rather than an individual editor's notion about what the term might mean, I think you should bring the matter up in the appropriate place for broader discussion, rather than imposing this as a blanket change. I'm unable to find any reliable sources that support your opinion on this. I've seen 'serving as' used to describe a "low level" customer service representative position - that's why it's described as "customer service".

Look forward to other perspectives as well. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 20:09, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

I would prefer to see this sort of phrasing only for unpaid roles that one might actually consider as service rather than employment. Or maybe for someone serving in the armed forces; that's also commonly called service. But not for just a job, CEO or otherwise. "Served as" has the connotation that to hold this position is a service to society, and (in cases where it is just a job rather than obviously being a service) we should avoid that. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:40, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

I broadly agree with Edwardx's edits, though there may well be cases where "serves" is appropriate. However, I disagree with the edit summary. I don't think it is a matter of neutrality. I would use an edit summary along the lines of "plain English". The text being removed is often just verbiage, and not the great writing we aspire to. If a link was desired for plain English, there is the essay Wikipedia:Use plain English. Nurg (talk) 00:12, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

We also need to consider narrative flow. It is utterly tedious to read an article where every sentence is "Smith was this, and then Smith was that, and after that Smith was the other thing". Phrases like "served as" break up the tedium, which is sometimes necessary for readability. BD2412 T 00:53, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

This is dubious... repetitive prose usually derives from syntax problems, in which case the solution is not to start substituting synonyms. See WP:ELEVAR.

"serves as" is usually not the simplest and most direct way of solving the sentence. Popcornfud (talk) 01:20, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

It is bog-standard terminology, however. See, e.g., William Francis Rocheleau, Great American Industries: Manufactures (1900), p. 8: "The stick served as a lever, and the stone as a weight". No lofty subjective praise is read into that. It is more descriptive than "was". BD2412 T 17:39, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Sure, it's an extremely commonplace construction, it's just usually not the simplest one.

Your "stick served as a lever" example is actually a different usage of "to serve" — it means in the sense of using something to achieve another purpose, like a field serving as a parking lot. Joe Biden is not serving as the US president in the same sense. Popcornfud (talk) 18:17, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how False Title applies to this at all, as it has nothing to do with adding or substituting synonyms; it actually argues against excessive brevity. Wikipedia, just as the False Title essay points out, is, unlike newspapers, not constrained for space. Good/great writing is not only about writing in the simplest, most terse, manner.

I've found some past discussions here on WP about the matter, but nothing outside of WP that suggests there's something nefarious or dissembling or puffery-ish about use of serving as/serves as/served as etc.

The past discussions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_221#%22Serving_as%22_in_lede_of_politics_articles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Marcia_Fudge/Archive_1#How_should_we_word_the_lead_sentence?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch/Archive_7

The last one there has the most discussion, and while I only skimmed through it, the sense seemed to be that it's not problematic per se, and certainly not harmful, but could be but isn't strictly puffery/PoV.

In my personal opinion which holds zero weight, it strikes me as over-policing of speech. Also of no weight at all but interesting, from etymonline, '[...] Sense of "be useful, be beneficial, be suitable for a purpose or function" is from early 14c.; that of "take the place or meet the needs of, be equal to the task" is from late 14c. [...]" - all of which seems to be its use in this context.

Amusingly, in its earliest usage in the late 12th century, it had the connotation of 'be a slave'. Quite the opposite of puffery! Fortunately, this is not the 12th century.

When people have asked me in the past what I do for a living, I can recall saying, for example, 'well, in one aspect of my job I served as [...], but I also served as [...]" when describing my job functions within a company, since in many of my jobs I wore multiple hats. Perhaps though I was overcompensating for a lack of self-esteem.

My sense - in terms of WP and non-rigid standards/practices - is that we should just do as we do with date formatting, BC/BCE, and other things - if it's one way in an article, leave it that way, if it's the other way, leave it that way. I don't think it needs wholesale replacement. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 19:17, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

My bad — I linked to the wrong essay entirely. WP:ELEVAR is what I was thinking of. Sorry for the confusion. Popcornfud (talk) 19:47, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Nice essay. Just an essay, though, and one that provides no counterpoint to the problem of repetitive monotony, which makes it harder to actually maintain focus while reading a text. This is not an all-or-nothing proposition, there can be a middle ground, and there are definitely circumstances where "served as" is more informative to the reader than merely "was". A person can hold an office in name only and do nothing in it, and it can accurately be said that the person "was" whatever the title of the office was, but not that they "served as" the holder of that office. BD2412 T 20:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Apart from elegant variation, we there is also avoidance of close paraphrasing, the need to phrase things differently to the source. (I agree that "served" is usually better than "was".) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:42, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I'll just add the relevant essay here, since to my surprise it hasn't been mentioned yet. WP:AREYOUBEINGSERVED Popcornfud (talk) 08:13, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I see that @Edwardx: continues to purge the terms "serves", "served" etc from articles, but with no rationale, just 'copyedit'. I repeat my objections - however mild - to this, as there's no policy or guideline or even reliable source that I can find that states that those terms are bad/wrong/inappropriate/manipulative/disembling/deceitful/nefarious/must be purged from Wikipedia.

I, and probably most people, wouldn't get the impression that Jamie Dimon is a public servant if his bio noted that he 'serves as the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of JPMorgan Chase'. I see no difference between "serves as", "acts as", "works as". It means filling a role and doing a job. It's plain english.

It doesn't praise or denigrate to say "X served as regional manager" rather than "X was regional manager", or even "X acted as regional manager". WP:ELEVAR suggests avoidance of excessive use of variable wording, particularly where it introduces confusion. I don't think it argues that variety in terminology is to be avoided at all costs.

As I suggested before, if an editor runs across an existing article and it uses 'is/was' or 'serves/served' etc., leave it as you found it, as both are reasonable. Absent some guidance that these words are problematic, I think that's a fair compromise.

As there's no clear consensus above, perhaps someone can link to any reliable sources outside WP that argues that there's something inherently problematic with the terms. I can't find any. The terms are used broadly in business, politics, academia, research, activism, and more. We shouldn't be making up language rules based on whims. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 21:36, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Edwardx please stop making this change. It is the equivalent of changing “till” to “until”; both forms are acceptable, and you have better ways to spend your time than policing the way people use English. — HTGS (talk) 22:54, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

While I don't necessarily disagree with the edit on one level (per my comment earlier), I have only made such an edit myself as part of a larger and more significant edit (as far as I recall). In the context of the copy editing that can be done, it is quite a minor issue. To address the last sentence of Edwardx's post, I don't think there should be a campaign to remove the wording from all articles. I suggest to Edwardx that they focus rather on more worthwhile edits. Nurg (talk) 23:36, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

I just did a random spotcheck of some of Edwardx's "copyedit" edits. All three of the edits I reviewed ([4], [5], [6]) look like improvements to me and good examples of where simple "be" verbs do the job better than "serve". Popcornfud (talk) 08:21, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for their varied and interesting thoughts, and especially to anastrophe for uncovering some earlier pertinent discussions. Stepping outside of Wikipedia for a wider view (and we should be seeking to mirror what is written in reliable secondary sources anyway), I have been looking at how obituaries in the leading reliable sources and profiles in Britannica.com, Biography.com, Forbes.com, Simple Wikipedia, etc. None of them use "serves/served as" to describe for-profit CEO/chairman/director roles. For political and military people, they generally avoid it in the opening sentence, and often in the entire first paragraph. We should be seeking to emulate the best secondary sources. The nuances of language matter, especially in the lead, which is all that most of our readers bother with. Using "serves/served as" can be seen as a value judgement, it is needlessly verbose and we should prefer plain English.

My (reconsidered) view is that we should not use "serves/served as" to describe any for-profit CEO/chairman/director roles, and we should avoid it in the first paragraph of any biography. Edwardx (talk) 11:45, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I see that the removal of "serves/served" etc continues apace, now eliminating it even from military service. I am compiling some information regarding this matter which I'll post later. I still await any reliable sources that state that 'served/serving' etc biased/subjective/a value judgement/to be avoided. I am only going through Britannica.com thus far, and the claim that 'none of them use serves/served as to describe for-profit CEO/chairman/director roles' is not reproducible.

When the difference between "verbose" and "plain" is a matter three letters, I think we're in trouble of reducing WP to a very low literacy threshold. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 20:32, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Collapsed below is a list of biography entries from brittanica.com. I've done my best to randomly poke around through different disciplines but it's obviously not comprehensive; in fact, the list is short, because I've spent way too much time finessing the formatting to wikitext; that's also why I haven't bothered with visiting the other online encyclopedias, I've put more than enough work into this as it is. I prefer to make decisions based on information, not speculation or personal observations in a vacuum.

I have excluded any person whose notability is primarily in public service – politicians, military leaders – or where the only use of 'serves/served/serving/' etc. is in regard public service outside of their primary notability. If I had included its use in public service bios, I'd estimate the list would be half-again larger.

The split between 'public service' and 'not public service' is not black & white at times, and I'm open to striking any for which a compelling argument against inclusion is tendered. I would note, however, that in earlier discussion the split was on formal public service, i.e. political/government/military service, which seemed less of an issue in discussion. Working for a publicly-funded organization, or one that receives some level of government funding, doesn't explicitly mean it's "public service", imo.

I've restricted findings to occurrences in the first or second graf; only the latter is noted when it occurs. Editor Edwardx is not confining the removal to the first or second graf, I would note – all instances are seemingly being removed, but I haven't reviewed every single edit; if I'm mistaken, apologies.

The only elisions are when the use is in the first sentence, as it would mean including birthdate/place etc.

I could discern no obvious inclination or reluctance on Brittanica in using the term. Brittanica seems to have no issue with its use in business bios. I acknowledge my own confirmation bias in this, as I hope others would of their own findings. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 17:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Click at right to show/hide ___

André Lwoff – French biologist (2nd): "He spent most of his research career at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, serving on the board of directors from 1966 to 1972. From 1959 to 1968 he was also a professor of microbiology at the Sorbonne in Paris. When he retired from the Pasteur Institute in 1968, he served as director of the Cancer Research Institute at nearby Villejuif until 1972." Andrew Dickson White – American educator and diplomat (2nd): "After graduating from Yale in 1853, White studied in Europe for the next three years, serving also as attaché at the U.S. legation(sic) at St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1854–55." (grey area) Anna Wintour – British editor (2nd): "Wintour was the daughter of Charles Vere Wintour, who twice served as editor of London's Evening Standard newspaper." "After working as a fashion editor for a series of New York magazines, she served as editor (1986) of British Vogue and as editor (1987) of House & Garden, which she controversially relaunched in the United States as HG." Azim Premji – Indian businessman: "[...] Indian business entrepreneur who served as chairman of Wipro Limited, guiding the company through four decades of diversification and growth to emerge as a world leader in the software industry." Barry Diller – American media executive: "American media executive who served as CEO of numerous companies, most notably Twentieth Century-Fox (1984–92), where he created the Fox Network, and IAC/InterActiveCorp (2003–10), an Internet venture." Beno Gutenberg – American seismologist (2nd): "Gutenberg served as a professor of geophysics and director of the seismological laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, from 1930 to 1957, when he retired." Carlo Rubbia – Italian physicist: "In 1988 he left Harvard, and from 1989 to 1994 he served as director general of CERN" Carol Ann Duffy – British poet: "In 2009–19 she served as the first woman poet laureate of Great Britain." Columbus O'D. Iselin – American oceanographer (2nd): "For Harvard he served as assistant curator of oceanography (1929–48) and research oceanographer of the Museum of Comparative Zoology." Craig C. Mello – American geneticist: (indirect usage) "His curiosity was largely influenced by his father, James Mello, a paleontologist who had served as the associate director of the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C." (grey area) Denis Diderot – French philosopher: "[...] was a French man of letters and philosopher who, from 1745 to 1772, served as chief editor of the Encyclopédie, one of the principal works of the Age of Enlightenment." Dumas Malone – American historian, editor, author: "He edited the Dictionary of American Biography from 1929 to 1936 and the Political Science Quarterly from 1953 to 1958 and served as director of the Harvard University Press from 1936 to 1943." Ellen Fitz Pendleton – American educator: "American educator who served as president of Wellesley (Massachusetts) College for a quarter of a century." Fenton J. A. Hort – British biblical scholar: "In 1856 he was ordained in the Anglican Church and for 15 years served as a minister near Cambridge." Franz Mehring – German historian and journalist (2nd): "Thereafter, he edited the socialist Leipziger Volkszeitung and served on the staff of the party's official publication, Neue Zeit ("New Age")." Fukui Toshihiko – Japanese economist and banker: "Japanese economist and banker who served as governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ) from 2003 to 2008." Georges Cuvier – French zoologist (2nd): "After graduation Cuvier served in 1788–95 as a tutor, during which time he wrote original studies of marine invertebrates, particularly the mollusks." Henry Dunster – American minister and educator (2nd): "Dunster was educated at the University of Cambridge (B.A., 1631; M.A., 1634) and then taught school and served as curate of Bury." Hunter S. Thompson – American journalist (2nd): "He served as a sports editor for a base newspaper and continued his journalism career after being discharged in 1957." (this during military service, but, grey area) Ignacy Krasicki – Polish poet (2nd): "He served as one of the closest cultural counselors to King Stanisław II August Poniatowski; in 1795 he was named archbishop of Gniezno." (grey area) Indra Nooyi – American business executive: "Nooyi served as the company's CEO (2006–18) and chairman of the board (2007–19)." Ita Buttrose – Australian journalist, editor, businesswoman: "[...] Australian journalist, editor, and businesswoman who was the founding editor (1972–75) of the highly popular Australian women's magazine Cleo and the first woman to serve as editor in chief (1981–84) of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers in Sydney." Jackie Milburn – British football player: "He retired in 1956 and, after serving briefly as a manager for Ipswich Town (1963–64), became a sports journalist with the Sunday Sun and News of the World." James Manning – American educator: "[...] was a U.S. Baptist clergyman who founded Rhode Island College (renamed Brown University in 1804) and served as its first president." Jerzy Neyman – Polish mathematician and statistician (2nd): "After serving as a lecturer at the Institute of Technology, Kharkov, in Ukraine, from 1917 to 1921, Neyman was appointed statistician of the Institute of Agriculture at Bydgoszcz, Poland." "He served on the staff of University College, London, from 1934 to 1938, and then immigrated to the United States, where he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, becoming chairman of a new department of statistics in 1955 and residing as a U.S. citizen for the rest of his life." John McPhee – American journalist (2nd): "He served as an associate editor at Time magazine (1957–64) and a staff writer at The New Yorker (from 1965)." John Pond – British astronomer: "Pond was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1807 and served from 1811 to 1835 as astronomer royal." (grey area) Lei Jun – Chinese entrepreneur: "[...] Chinese business executive who was a cofounder (2010) of electronics maker Xiaomi Corp.; he also served as chairman and CEO." Lene Hau – Danish scientist: "Hau also took a position at the Rowland Institute in 1991, serving as principal investigator for the Atom Cooling Group until 1999." Lou Gerstner – American businessman: "American businessman best known for the pivotal role he played in revitalizing the ailing IBM in the mid-1990s; he served as CEO of the company from 1993 to 2002." Maria Ramos – Portuguese South African economist and businesswoman: "Portuguese South African economist and businesswoman who served as CEO of the transportation company Transnet (2004–09) and later of the financial group Absa (2009–19)." Marissa Mayer – American software engineer and businesswoman: She later served as CEO and president of Yahoo! Inc. (2012–17). Martin Evans – British scientist (2nd): "In 1978 he joined the faculty at Cambridge, and in 1999 he accepted a post at Cardiff University, where he later became president (2009–12) and served as the school's chancellor (2012–17)." Meg Whitman – American business executive and politician: "[...] American business executive and politician who served as president and CEO of eBay (1998–2008), an online auction company, and later of the technology company Hewlett Packard (2011–15)." "After the latter restructured, she served as CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (2015–18)." Moses Hess – German author and zionist (2nd): Hess saw a material application of his beliefs in an idealistic, somewhat anarchic socialism, and he organized workers' groups while propagating his ideas in the radical newspaper Rheinische Zeitung ("Rhinelander Gazette"), for which he served as Paris correspondent from 1842 to 1843. Myron C. Taylor – American financier and diplomat (2nd): "At the behest of J.P. Morgan he became a director of United States Steel, serving as chairman of its finance committee from 1927 to 1934 and as chairman of the board and chief executive officer from 1932 to 1938." Nora Perry – American journalist and poet: "She served as Boston correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the Providence Journal for a time while continuing to contribute stories, serials, and poems to various other periodicals." Ohno Taiichi – Japanese businessman (2nd): "He served as assembly shop manager in Toyota's vehicle-making operations, then quickly climbed the corporate ladder as his manufacturing expertise was recognized." Ozzie Guillen – American baseball player, coach, and manager (2nd): "After four years in the minors, Guillen was traded to the White Sox, where he served as the team's starting shortstop for 13 years (1985–97)." Patricia A. Woertz – American business executive: "[...] American businesswoman who served as president and CEO of the agricultural processing corporation Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM) from 2006 to 2014." Paul Gervais – French paleontologist and zoologist: "At Montpellier, he served as professor of zoology and comparative anatomy (1845–65) and became dean of the faculty of sciences (1856)." Paul Nurse – British scientist (2nd): "He also held various positions at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF; now Cancer Research UK), notably serving as director-general (1996–2002) and chief executive (2002–03)." Ray Stannard Baker – American writer (2nd): "At Wilson's request, Baker served as head of the American Press Bureau at the Paris peace conference (1919), where the two were in close and constant association." Reed Hastings – American entrepreneur: "He served as its CEO (1998–2020) and co-CEO (2020–23) before becoming executive chairman (2023– )." Rex W. Tillerson – American businessman and statesman (2nd): "He later served as the general manager (1989–92) for Exxon's oil and gas production in a region that spanned Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas." Rex Warner – British writer (2nd): "In the 1940s he served as director of the British Institute in Athens." (grey area?) Robert Nardelli – American businessman: "American businessman who served as CEO of Home Depot (2000–07) and Chrysler (2007–09)" Roger Ailes – American television producer and political consultant: "He began a career in television the year that he graduated from Ohio University (B.A., 1962), serving as a property assistant for the Cleveland-based program The Mike Douglas Show."<br "By 1965 he was working as a producer for the show, and in 1967–68 he served as executive producer, receiving an Emmy Award for his […]" (remainder unavailable to non-subscriber; I thank Brittanica for how much they do make available) Rubem Braga – Brazilian journalist (2nd): "For a three-year period (1961–63) he served as Brazilian ambassador in Morocco." (grey) Saad al-Hariri – prime minister of Lebanon (lede begins with 'Lebanese businessman') (2nd): "After receiving a degree in international business from Georgetown University (1992), Washington, D.C., Hariri worked at Saudi Oger, a large Saudi Arabia-based firm owned by his father, where he oversaw construction work and served as a maintenance contractor for the Saudi royal palaces." Shirley M. Tilghman – Canadian molecular biologist: "[...] is a Canadian molecular biologist and the first woman to serve as president of Princeton University (2001–13)." Sir Julian Huxley – British biologist (2nd): "He later became professor of zoology at King's College, London University; served for seven years as secretary to the Zoological Society of London, transforming the zoo at Regent's Park and being actively involved in the development of that at Whipsnade in Bedfordshire; and became a Fellow of the Royal Society." Sir Michael Ernest Sadler – English educator (2nd): "He served as secretary of the Oxford University Extension lectures subcommittee from 1885 to 1895 and as steward of Christ Church, Oxford, from 1886 to 1895." Tom Brokaw – American television journalist and author (2nd): "Brokaw served as NBC's White House correspondent during the Watergate scandal and worked on the floor of the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1976." "From 1976 to 1982 he served as a host of NBC's popular morning program Today." Ulf von Euler – Swedish physiologist (2nd): "After his graduation from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Euler served on the faculty of the institute from 1930 to 1971." Umberto Agnelli – Italian industrialist: "[...] was an Italian automotive executive and grandson of Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of Fiat SpA. He served as the company's chairman from 2003 to 2004." Ursula Burns – American executive: "American business executive who served as CEO (2009–16) and chairman (2010–17) of the international document-management and business-services company Xerox Corporation." "She was the first African American woman to serve as CEO of a Fortune 500 company and the first female to accede to the position of CEO of such a company in succession after another female." W. Averell Harriman – American diplomat (2nd): "The son of the railroad magnate Edward Henry Harriman, he began his employment with the Union Pacific Railroad Company in 1915; he served as chairman of the board in 1932–46." Walter Cronkite – (2nd): "Before returning to the United States, he served as UP bureau chief in Moscow (1946–48)." William Rainey Harper – American educator: "[...] was an American Hebraist who served as leader of the Chautauqua Institution and as the first president of the University of Chicago. William S. Paley – American executive: "He transformed the small radio network into a media empire, serving as president (1928–46), chairman of the board (1946–83), founder chairman (1983–86), acting chairman (1986–87), and chairman (1987–90)."

So, I posted factual information here two days ago that clearly shows that "[...]the leading reliable sources and profiles in Britannica.com [...] use 'served/serves' in biographies for people in "[...] for-profit CEO/chairman/director roles [...]", contrary to the claim that none of them do, and that it is used [...] in the opening sentence, and often in the entire first paragraph." I agree that "We should be seeking to emulate the best secondary sources", and one of the best sources uses the terms. I can find no reliable secondary sources - none, anywhere - that claim or even allude that "Using "serves/served as" can be seen as a value judgement [...]". Yet the purging of the term continues. We should not be making wholesale changes to WP based upon vague feelings, when we have objective evidence that the terms are acceptable for one of the best reliable sources. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 21:33, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps we can have a compromise. It seems perfectly fine to change “serves as” in the present tense, for simplicity, but for those positions once-held, the past tense should not be changed. What do you think, @Edwardx? — HTGS (talk) 22:26, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps there's a UK/US component here, and certainly there's a lot of personal preference, but whenever I read "Joe Biden is serving as the Nth president" or some-such, I wonder what the REAL president is up to while this Biden stand-in fellow does his job. This is a usage not dissimilar to Popcornfud's example above "Q. is it really a car park? A. No, but it will serve", ie is an adequate substitute. Clearly military serve abroad and in their particular branch and it is not uncommon to thus refer to diplomats, but isn't it the most common usage for political/public roles that "Biden is" and "Trump was" president. What useful purpose does the more elaborate phrasing serve? Pincrete (talk) 09:03, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Again, we keep going with personal opinions and speculation, and apparently evidence is not helpful at best, dismissed at worst (while we're here, Pincrete can you explain your addition of "Italic text" to the William Rainey Harper entry in the collapsed section above?)

I've never come across the notion that the term confuses people into thinking there is a shadow presidency or other conflations. It seems a stretch, and only if one is overthinking the plain language presented. In my opinion.

The various iterations of how the term 'serve/s/d' is used differently aren't a strong argument against this usage - shall we digress, for example, into the definition and usage of the term 'set', in all its 430 (and growing) distinct usages? If I said "I set the chair aside me", is it likely someone would misinterpret that to mean that I congealed a chair next to me?

I'll refer to sources 'outside of' WP and outside of our own personal opinions (and, again, actually provide the results, rather than 'summarizing' it through my own lens). While not acceptable as reliable secondary sources, they provide a look into what large-language-models "think". I chose three of the better known AI.

Click at right to show/hide ___

ChatGPT 1.) Me: "What does it mean to "serve as" a position?" ChatGPT: "To "serve as" a position typically means to fulfill the duties and responsibilities associated with that position. For example, if someone serves as the CEO of a company, it means they are in the role of CEO and are performing the tasks and making the decisions expected of someone in that position. It implies active engagement and participation in the role, rather than merely holding the title." 2.) Me: "Does the term "serves as" in relation to a job imply a value judgement?" ChatGPT: "No, the term "serves as" in relation to a job or position doesn't inherently imply a value judgment. It merely indicates the function or role someone holds within an organization or context. Whether that person performs their duties well or not is separate from the statement itself. For example, saying someone "serves as the manager" doesn't pass judgment on their managerial skills; it simply states their position within the company." Google Gemini 1.) Me: "What does it mean to "serve as" a position?" Gemini: When someone "serves as" a position, it means they hold that position and fulfill its duties and responsibilities. Here's a breakdown: Position: This refers to a specific role or job title within an organization, company, or government. It outlines the expected tasks and authorities associated with that role. Serve: In this context, "serve" means to perform the duties and obligations that come with the position. It emphasizes the act of fulfilling the role's purpose. For example: "Sarah is currently serving as the CEO of the company." (This means Sarah holds the position of CEO and is actively carrying out the responsibilities of that position.) "The council member will serve as a representative for the local community." (This indicates the council member's role is to act on behalf of the community.) Here are some synonyms for "serve as": Hold Occupy Fill Discharge the duties of Be in office as 2.) Me: "Does the term "serves as" in relation to a job imply a value judgement?" Gemini: "No, the term "serves as" in relation to a job typically doesn't imply a value judgment. Here's why: Focus on Function: As mentioned before, "serves as" emphasizes the practical aspect of fulfilling a role. It highlights the function of the job, not its perceived importance or worth. Neutral Tone: The term doesn't inherently suggest the job is good or bad, high-paying or low-paying. It simply describes the position someone holds. For example: "John serves as a sanitation worker, keeping our streets clean." (This statement focuses on the function of John's job, not its perceived prestige.) "Maria serves as the CEO of a tech startup, leading a team of innovative developers." (Here, "serves as" describes Maria's position without implying its value compared to other CEO roles.) However, there are some situations where the context can introduce a subtle judgment: Emphasis on Unexpected Role: If "serves as" is used to highlight someone taking on a job that might seem unusual for them, it could imply a temporary or unexpected situation: "The famous actor served as a waiter during his time in acting school." (This suggests the job may not be his usual line of work.) Even in this case, the judgment is more about the unexpectedness of the situation, not the job itself. Overall, "serves as" remains a neutral way to describe someone's role in a job. The surrounding context is more likely to introduce a value judgment than the term itself." Anthropic Claude 1.) Me: "What does it mean to "serve as" a position?" Claude: The phrase "to serve as" something typically means to function in a particular role or capacity. Some examples: - She serves as the president of the company. (Meaning she holds and performs the duties of the president role) - This document will serve as a contract between the two parties. (Meaning this document will function as and be treated as the official contract) - The internship will serve as valuable work experience. (Meaning the internship will provide and act as beneficial work experience) - This valley serves as a wildlife corridor. (Meaning this valley functions as a route/pathway that wildlife use to travel between habitats) So in general, to "serve as" a position, role, thing, etc. means to act in that capacity or perform the purpose/function of that position, role or thing. It denotes taking on the responsibilities, duties or purpose associated with whatever is stated after "serve as." Let me know if this explanation makes sense! 2.) Me: "Does the term "serves as" in relation to a job imply a value judgement?" Claude: "When used in relation to a job or position that someone holds, the term "serves as" does not inherently imply a positive or negative value judgment. It is still simply stating what role or capacity that person is functioning in. For example: "John serves as the company's CEO." This is just a factual statement about the position John holds, without any implied criticism or praise of his performance in that role. "She serves as the head of the marketing department." Again, this is just objectively describing her job title and responsibilities, not making a subjective assessment of how well she does that job. "He currently serves as a judge on the district court." Stating the position or occupation someone has, without judging whether they are good or bad at being a judge. The phrase "serves as" is still just descriptive and denotative in this context, not connotative or evaluative. It does not automatically signal whether the person is doing a good or poor job in that role. Only additional context clues, like describing the person as "effectively serves as" or "poorly serves as" would start to imply an evaluative judgment of their performance. But the base "serves as" phrase alone is still just stating the role itself, not judging the quality of their service in that role. It remains an objective descriptor when used in relation to jobs or positions.

cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 19:07, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I have been replacing phrasings such as "John Doe serves as the CEO of XYZ Inc", with "John Doe is the CEO of XYZ Inc": Good. Having such a role is not "service" in any meaningful sense, and using that term in that context is clearly promotional/aggrandizing (MOS:PEACOCK). We might get a consensus that the term is more properly applicable to the military, maybe to political office and civil service positions, and conceivably even to ecclesiastical roles, but after 20+ years it's clear there is no consensus appetite for using such language with regard to commercial job titles and board/officer positions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:45, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Have you read the discussion above? Your opinion is noted; however, the evidence suggests that you are wrong. No editor has yet provided any evidence - only personal opinion - regarding the matter. I've presented evidence that it is not peacock wording, and that other leading reliable sources (Brittanica) have no disinclination to using the term. There's nothing promotional or aggrandizing to state that someone hold a particular job or fills a particular position. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 03:54, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

For a lot of people, "served" contains an implication of positivity. This is easiest to see in non-uses of the term. According to us (Wikipedia), Elizabeth Holmes didn't "serve" as CEO of Theranos; Sam Bankman-Fried didn't "serve" as CEO of FTX; Gregory W. Becker didn't "serve" as CEO of Silicon Valley Bank; Richard S. Fuld Jr. didn't "serve" as the final CEO of Lehman Brothers; Kenneth Lay didn't "serve" as CEO of Enron; Putin doesn't "serve" as President of Russia; (let's jump straight to it...) Hitler didn't "serve" as Chancellor of Germany (but the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany did). (Brittanica follows this pattern for ones I've found, except Putin, who acquired "served" in 2008 and still has it.) This association of "serve" with something positive or at least self-sacrificing doesn't hold in all cases, of course, but there's plenty of evidence that it exists. EddieHugh (talk) 15:46, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

This phenomenon is perhaps a combination of two definitions of "serve" found in various dictionaries – "provide with something that is needed" and "work for; to do your duty to". That's Cambridge dictionaries. Britannica has: "to provide what is needed by or for (someone or something)" and "to hold a particular office, position, etc. : to perform a duty or job". Examples from Collins: "If you serve your country, an organization, or a person, you do useful work for them" and "If you serve in a particular place or as a particular official, you perform official duties". By using "serve" for various leaders, we can be seen as impying that, in addition to leading, their acts as leaders were useful or needed. EddieHugh (talk) 16:12, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

"For a lot of people [...]" Can you quantify this? If I wrote "For a lot of people, "served" contains no implication, positive or negative", would that hold any more water? Instead, I think a more honest construct would be that "Some people infer that "served" expresses praise; some other people don't make that inferrence". "This is easiest to see in non-uses of the term." Is it easy though? The Elizabeth Holmes article here appears to have not used the term either before or after her fall. Same for Sam Bankman-Fried. Gregory Becker's article did use it - until Edwardx removed it this past January, so that's a null example. Contrarily, here on WP

José Napoleón Duarte 'served as president of El Salvador'

Joseph Stalin 'was the longest-serving leader of the Soviet Union'

Pol Pot 'served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea'

Saddam Hussein 'served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003'

What is 'easy to see' is that there are no easy to see patterns of its usage across an array of biographies, both on WP and Brittanica - probably because it doesn't imply praise, though it wouldn't surprise me if there are some folks who believe Stalin got a bad rap.

"By using "serve" for various leaders, we can be seen as impying that, in addition to leading, their acts as leaders were useful or needed. Only the Collins' definition adds a modifier that could be inferred to mean 'praise' - 'useful' (and that is some seriously weak "praise"). In all of the others, it describes utility. Alone, the term is neutral; only if we add modifiers does it carry a value judgment. What is a value judgement is how some editors infer praise in an otherwise neutral term. I don't think we're required to dumb-down wikipedia to cater to the whims of some editors. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 20:37, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

For a lot of people is implicit in its non-use in high-profile articles on Wikipedia, which is edited by... a lot of people; it's also supported by basic dictionary definitions: surely "useful" is a positive quality; and surely the definitions that refer to providing what is needed are indicating something positive, too. Yes, "a lot of people" applies to the opposite view, too. But what's the benefit of using "serve" when for plenty of people (backed up by basic dictionary definitions) it implies something positive? Why not use another word ("be" is the obvious choice) that is unlikely to cause any such interpretation from anyone? (Noting that I agree with some of the readability points above – eg, don't use the same word repeatedly.) EddieHugh (talk) 18:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

For a lot of people, "served" contains an implication of positivity. Not necessarily. For example, prison sentences; "serving one's sentence" is the most common way of referring to someone's time incarcerated. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 20:17, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

That's a different case, based on a different meaning of the word; I don't think anyone's proposing changing that. EddieHugh (talk) 18:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

It's not, they're based on the same meaning. See the Google definition, spend (a period) in office, in an apprenticeship, or in prison. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 20:41, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Officeholder aristocratic titles

Either there isn't any guidance or I haven't been able to find it, but I've not been able to find any guidance on how aristocratic names are treated in infoboxes or other box lists. I have included Lord Rosebery's infobox as an illustration of the issue. According to MOS:SURNAME the first use of an aristocrat's name should be in full, or using the title that they held at the time they held office. Additionally Wikipedia:NOPIPE suggests that piping the link from 'Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery' to the Earl of Rosebery isn't the right approach. I also don't think simply listing the title without the holder's name is particularly effective, given that a father and son might hold the same office and this might be easily missed by readers. Ecrm87 (talk) 16:06, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

The Right Honourable The Earl of Rosebery KG KT PC FRS FBA
Rosebery in 1909
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 5 March 1894 – 22 June 1895
Monarch	Victoria
Preceded by	William Ewart Gladstone
Succeeded by	The Marquess of Salisbury
Leader of the Opposition
In office 22 June 1895 – 6 October 1896
Prime Minister	The Marquess of Salisbury
Preceded by	The Marquess of Salisbury
Succeeded by	Sir William Harcourt
Lord President of the Council
In office 10 March 1894 – 21 June 1895
Prime Minister	Himself
Preceded by	The Earl of Kimberley
Succeeded by	The Duke of Devonshire
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
In office 18 August 1892 – 10 March 1894
Prime Minister	William Ewart Gladstone
Preceded by	The Marquess of Salisbury
Succeeded by	The Earl of Kimberley
In office 6 February 1886 – 3 August 1886
Prime Minister	William Ewart Gladstone
Preceded by	The Marquess of Salisbury
Succeeded by	The Earl of Iddesleigh
Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal
In office 5 March 1885 – 9 June 1885
Prime Minister	William Ewart Gladstone
Preceded by	The Lord Carlingford
Succeeded by	The Earl of Harrowby
First Commissioner of Works
In office 13 February 1885 – 9 June 1885
Prime Minister	William Ewart Gladstone
Preceded by	George Shaw-Lefevre
Succeeded by	David Plunket
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
In office August 1881 – June 1883
Prime Minister	William Ewart Gladstone
Preceded by	Leonard Courtney
Succeeded by	J. T. Hibbert
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Hereditary peerage 7 May 1868 – 21 May 1929
Preceded by	The 4th Earl of Rosebery
Succeeded by	The 6th Earl of Rosebery
Personal details
Born	Archibald Philip Primrose (1847-05-07)7 May 1847 Mayfair, Middlesex, England
Died	21 May 1929(1929-05-21) (aged 82) Epsom, Surrey, England
Resting place	Dalmeny Parish Church, Edinburgh, Scotland
Political party	Liberal
Spouse	Hannah de Rothschild ​ ​ (m. 1878; died 1890)​
Children	Sybil, Peggy, Harry, and Neil
Parent(s)	Archibald Primrose, Lord Dalmeny Wilhelmina Powlett, Duchess of Cleveland
Alma mater	Christ Church, Oxford
Signature

Ecrm87 (talk) 16:06, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

There's been sporadic, recurrent dispute about this. The upshot is that editors largely concentrated in the wikiprojects WP:PEERAGE and WP:ROYALTY have decided on their own, in what amounts to a WP:FAITACCOMPLI action, to repurpose various fields of {{infobox person}} and derivatives of it, to shoehorn aristocratic titles into the |name= (or sometimes other inappropriate) parameters, and have just gone and done this to tens of thousands of articles, despite this not being consistent with the templates' own documentation of the meaning of these parameters, or with MOS:BIO regarding such titles (covered in various subsections of MOS:PEOPLETITLES. In short, we have a disputed mess in which the infobox of, say, Margaret Thatcher claims that her name is "The Baroness Thatcher", which is obviously badly incorrect. That title belongs in one of the other parameters, |honorific_suffix=. To make matters worse, the |honorific_prefix= parameter (intended for things like "Duke" and "Dame") has been widely misused to insert a form of address that would be used only when writing a letter to such a person or perhaps when introducing them at a formal engagement, but which is not how they are normally referred to in writing by anyone ever. (The most common of these misuses is "The Rt. Hon." or "The Right Honourable".) And even the baroness part should not have "The" on it (that's used when describing the title in a stand-alone manner, not when used directly with the person's name). For the Thatcher case, the obviously solution is: |name=Margaret Hilda Thatcher|honorific_suffix=Baroness Thatcher<br />{{Post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|LG|OM|DStJ|PC|FRS|HonFRSC}} , and this is what agrees with the lead of the article. Another potential solution is one or more additional parameters, e.g. for gentry/peerage titles, and possibly for formal address, though the latter is arguably not encyclopedic information (much less infobox-level core information), and is better covered at the article on the general class of title (i.e., it is "how to address peers of particular ranks" and "how to address knights/dames" and "how to address Scottish lairs and clan chiefs", and "how to address judges", and "how to address members of parliament", and etc., etc., etc. information, and not particular to someone's bio. A simpler solution is to just remove the address string, and put the aristrocratic titles in the extant |honorific_suffix= parameter; there's something to be said for such simplicity versus making a complex template even more complex without there being a clear reader-facing benefit.

Anyway, there have been several abortive discussions about this at various places, but nothing has resulted in action, and this might have to be resolved with an RfC, perhaps at WP:VPPOL since it has implications for a large number of articles. I've had other projects going on which absorb most of my time, and this is why I've not bothered RfCing this already. It definitely does need to get resolved one way or another.

PS, on the matter of link-piping with regard to such a person in other articles: It would depend on the context. If it's clear in the sentence that "the Earl of Rosebery" is in reference to a specific person known by that title at the time, then the piped link is not necessarily problematic, but only if the actual name of this person has been given previously in the same article. Far too often I run across piped links of this sort in a non sequitur manner, seemingly put there by British editors who are personally familiar with who the subject of the link is, without considering that even many other British readers would not be and that virtually no one outside the UK will be. So, at least at first occurrence, using [[Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery]], will be more appropriate. It might simply be [[Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery|Earl of Rosebery]], in a later occurrence, since depending on the context we might take advantage of the new standard (since about a year ago) of linking once per major section yet also consider who the person is/was already adequately explained in a previous section. There's a bit of a tension between those two ideas. In various cases, such a title should just be left off, when it's not contextually pertinent and/or doesn't match typical RS usage; e.g. Christopher Guest is not normally referred to as [5th] Baron Haden-Guest except in reference to his brief stint as a parliamentarian, or in other peerage-pertinent contexts, but not as a actor-director-writer (where even the "Haden-" is almost universally dropped, at his own preference). On the other hand, any time the title is being referred to as the title itself, or in the plural, it should link to the article/section on the title not the present title-holder.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:51, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

It’s even worse than User:SMcCandlish’s explanation of this issue. See for example the infobox for Selwyn Lloyd, where the reader is informed that Lloyd’s successor as foreign secretary was one “The Earl of Home”; his time as leader of the house was under the PM Alec Douglas-Home. The casual reader is left unaware that these are one and the same person, whose status had changed between positions. Cambial — foliar❧ 13:30, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't see this as a problem. Home was known by different names at different points in his life. The infobox should reflect that. Atchom (talk) 00:12, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

That’s unhelpful to readers and serves no useful purpose. Cambial — foliar❧ 05:46, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

That's just an assertion without evidence. If you are reading about 20th century British political history, you should expect a degree of specialised vocabulary. And titles are very much part of that. Atchom (talk) 13:24, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

”Our readers ought to be better informed” -type arguments are not serious. This is an encyclopaedia. The purpose of the infobox is to reflect key facts for the page. That Lloyd’s successor as foreign secretary and the prime minister while he was leader of the house are the same person is relevant to facts about Lloyd. By no stretch of the imagination is Alec Douglas-Home changing his name a key fact for the article about Selwyn Lloyd. Cambial — foliar❧ 14:48, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't know, the name of the predecessor or successor is pretty important to get right, as a matter of basic respect as much as anything else. How would you like it if someone else butchered your name? Atchom (talk) 17:44, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

The purpose of the website is to best inform the reader. It’s not to honour people with styles of address. To answer your question; if I’d been dead for 30 years I doubt I’d give much, if any, thought to my name being "butchered", tortured a description as that is of using someone’s common and given name. Cambial — foliar❧ 18:08, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

"Earl of Home" is common name. You're like the Jacobins over at French Wikipedia who insisted everyone had to be known by their "normal names" which led to stupid article names like "William Temple" for Lord Palmerston. Atchom (talk) 19:22, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

You needn’t worry about boxing shadows fighting revolutionaries dead for two centuries. But their malign influence, and community consensus, has evidently determined that Alec Douglas-Home is the common name, hence the article title there. Cambial — foliar❧ 20:46, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Technically, Douglas-Home was still a peer when he succeeded to the premiership, but given that he disclaimed his peerage as quickly as possible in order to continue in office, I think it makes more sense to use his name as a commoner than to be technically correct (the best kind of correct). Choess (talk) 01:14, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I see I misunderstood the locus of the dispute. He was Earl of Home when he succeeded to the foreign ministry, and would have been referred to as such in the contemporary press. The peerage isn't an irrelevancy here—his article devotes a few sentences to Labour's objections to a peer in that position. This is to some extent a question of taste, but I don't think the benefit of consistency in imposing a single "common" name throughout the article outweighs the benefit of using the names a reader would find in an outside source, contemporary or otherwise. Ultimately infoboxes simply don't have the bandwidth for this kind of subtlety; the reader confused by the nuances of Douglas-Home's career will have to read the lead of his article rather than skimming the infobox of his predecessor. Choess (talk) 01:46, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

You're right, this needs to be clarified but doing so would have a big impact. I don't have the knowledge or time to open an RfC myself. Is there anyone who is willing to do so? Ecrm87 (talk) 17:53, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't know the answer. But concerning Selwyn Lloyd & all other Speakers of the GB/UK House of Commons? I'm curious as to why the prime minister is included in their infoboxes. The speaker doesn't serve under the prime minister. Same thing with the leader of the Opposition, who also doesn't serve under the prime minister. But, I guess that's another topic. GoodDay (talk) 14:53, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I would remove PM as well for these things. Atchom (talk) 17:44, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:NOPIPE has four bullet points, none of which is relevant to the example given. Rosebery's full name appears at the upper left of his article; English is conventionally read from left to right, making that the "first use" specified by MOS:SURNAME. Father-to-son succession as hypothesized is so rare that I don't think it's worth altering general practice. I don't really think the infobox should be cluttered by a complete series of offices—those have been sensibly placed in templates at the bottom of the article since Wikipedia began, essentially—but it's rather late to expect people to use good judgment and discretion about infoboxes. Choess (talk) 01:14, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Consensus on adding disabilities (blind/deaf) in biographical article first sentence?

Disabilities are almost never mentioned in first sentences, just nationality and occupation. See Category:Deaf actors for examples. However this article (Kaylee Hottle) seems to be breaking established status quo. 🅶🅰🅼🅾🆆🅴🅱🅱🅴🅳 (talk) 12:47, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

• The first sentence should highlight attributes that the subject is most notable for. Which attributes should be mentioned is very subject specific. Sometimes an attribute is crucial to a person’s notability (ie the person is notable because of that attribute), while the same attribute may be trivial to the notability of another person. Blueboar (talk) 13:25, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Does WP:SELFID come into play at all? How does the subject of the article consider themselves? An actress who is deaf, or a deaf actress? soetermans. ^{↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK} 13:33, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Not for the opening sentence. That should be based on independent sources. Blueboar (talk) 13:51, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

When it is central to the subject's notability, it should be mentioned. When not, not. An example where it is central and mentioned is Chieko Asakawa. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:02, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

I gotta be honest, in both of the articles mentioned above I would make sure the disability is in the lead, and maybe the second sentence, but I wouldn’t put it in the first sentence as they are. Most people should be regarded for their work first, then their disability. The fact that they are deaf or blind is not the primary reason these people are notable, but it has clearly had a strong impact. — HTGS (talk) 06:33, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

If nationality is there, then I don't see why disability can't be (as long as it's important to their notability). Zanahary (talk) 22:59, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

We can’t load everything into the first sentence. Which attributes/aspects to put in the first sentence depends on the specific person. There is no single way to do it. Even nationality (which is usually presented in the first sentence) can be presented in a later sentence if there are other aspects of the person that are deemed more relevant to notability. Blueboar (talk) 00:57, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I think the first sentence should include the primary things which made the person notable. For Helen Keller, that probably would include her disabilities; that was a crucial part of her notability. For Ray Charles, not so much—he was primarily notable for being a musician, not for being blind. So, there's no "one size fits all" solution there, it has to be done case by case. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:42, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

This whole quandary of trying to put all the notable things a person is known for in the lede sentence, against the need to write neutrally and dispassionately about a topic is a long standing problem. The lede sentence dies not need to full encapsulate the person, that is the purpose of the entire lede. More notable factors should be mentioned earlier but that doesn't necessarily mean the first sentence if that creates awkward tone per NPOV. This sometimes means that was a person is most notable for may not be mentioned in the first sentence but in a sentence or two later as to give context to why that notability exists or came about. — Masem (t) 20:13, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

RfC: "convicted felon" / "convicted sex offender" in the lead sentence

Regarding MOS:FIRSTBIO, which says in part The opening paragraph of a biographical article should neutrally describe the person, provide context, establish notability and explain why the person is notable, and reflect the balance of reliable sources. Should this include or exclude the terms "convicted felon" or "convicted sex offender" in cases where the subject is notable for something else but is also a convicted felon or sex offender? Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein are two key examples where edit warring of the lead sentence to include or exclude this phrasing has occurred. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:27, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Maybe this falls into RGW territory, but I think it should list the crime specifically. “Sex offender” can mean anything from rape in a dark alley to being gay before 2003, it doesn’t really tell the reader anything and depending on the crime it can actively mislead them. Same for felonies in general.

Whereas if you say “convicted rapist”, that maintains notability while being unambiguous. Likewise for felonies, “convicted felon” doesn’t really say anything. Did they commit arson or did they bounce a check? Snokalok (talk) 18:40, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

It depends. The opening sentence of an article should explain what the subject is primarily notable for. Someone like Jeffrey Dhalmer is really only notable for his crimes. The opening sentence appropriately focuses on his mass murder. People like Epstein and Weinstein, on the other hand, are notable for a lot besides their crimes. While we definitely should NOT ignore their crimes, we should not highlight their crimes over the other things that make them notable. A more nuanced opening sentence is more appropriate (Epstein was a businessman who committed sex crimes… Weinstein was a Hollywood film producer who committed sex crimes). Blueboar (talk) 18:47, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I'd say the answer is almost always no, at least for the felon part. That's rarely why these kinds of individuals are notable in sum total, and it almost always feels like a smear rather than neutral statement of fact (Safiya Bukhari is a convicted felon, but that's absolutely not the summation of her career, to pick another example.) Even if someone like Donald Trump got convicted, which would be an immensely historic and notable event in America, it still wouldn't make sense to say the most important thing about him was that he had a criminal conviction in the first breaths. The only places I think it makes sense is when the person's claim to notability is central to why they even have an entry (such as their criminal acts being the only reason they have an article.) There's also the issue of the fact that "sex offender" or "felon" is a massive gamut of potential crimes and would essentially lump without elaboration; to take the previous entries together, that a civil rights activist who got a patently unfair trial is equivalent to a Hollywood sex pest. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:47, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Almost always no. If their crimes are a major enough aspect for a first-sentence mention, it should almost always be possible to be more precise. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:34, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Snokalok. We should describe the actual crime (and not just when the perpetrator is independently notable). So for instance, HH Holmes is described as a con artist and serial killer, not just as a felon.

In these particular cases, Harvey Weinstein would be described as a "convicted rapist" and Jeffery Epstein as a "convicted child sex trafficker". In both of these cases, I think enough of their notability is for the crimes that this should be a first sentence mention. Loki (talk) 19:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

It should be case by case weighing the reliable sources about the person. I don't think a blanket rule prohibiting the use of "convicted felon" is logical. Otherwise we might as well change FIRSTBIO to only include the first reason the person was notable. Nemov (talk) 20:08, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

It depends on if their crime is the reason for their notability. In most cases it's better to treat it with more detail and context further on, e.g. X is an American musician and entertainer. In 20xx they were convicted on Y counts of Z. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:34, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Agree with everyone here. When I see "convicted felon" crammed into the first sentence of the lede, it's often a red flag that the writer wants to cry "Shame! shame!", but realizes that the details would make the person seem not evil enough. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:57, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Exclude per WP:LABEL and instead describe the conviction in the first sentence if that is their main notability. Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:07, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

This is an issue that's come up at DYK and ITN. The common problem is that if you are trying to say something about a person in one sentence, there is nearly no way there is sufficient context in that one sentence to explain that subjective negatively-toned phrase (even if 100% objectively true) and provide the context that is appropriate to explain what for or other aspects related to that, which makes the phrase stand out as non-impartial or dispassionate writing. Where there is more space to supply the full details (like what they were convicted of), such as later in the lede or within the body, that language is fine. BLP does not require listing everything a person is notable for in one lede sentence, and to me it makes much more sense to wait a sentence or two, or even one or two lede paragraphs, to address such topics so that the lede works from the most objective material to more subjective later, using to opportunity in later paragraphs to give that context and breathing room.
The only exception here would be for a person where their only means of notability is from doing or suspected of a crime, in which case it's hard to say anything else for a lede sentence. — Masem (t) 21:14, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

For both those people, without reading either article, I would expect to see details of their crimes in the second sentence, but not the first. This conforms with what you have quoted above, and I see no need to change it. In most cases I would not write simply “convicted X”. These people are notable for their crimes, not for the fact that they were convicted. We lead with the conviction because we don’t want to be unclear and to avoid allegations of libel. — HTGS (talk) 22:37, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Unless the primary reason someone is notable is a crime or crimes they committed, no, I don't think we should be describing them in the first sentence as "convicted felon" or "convicted sex offender". And really anywhere in the article we should report what RS are reporting, and unless are RS are calling them those things, we shouldn't either. We should report what RS are saying: "In 2014, X was convicted of a sex crime." "In 2024, Y was convicted of securities fraud." Or whatever. Valereee (talk) 00:17, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

To me, this is where a bio is really no different than any other article. I could start off an article about, say... capacitors by saying, "A capacitor is a component used in making pulsed-power energy weapons." But what I have there is a headline meant to grab attention, yet tells me absolutely nothing about what the subject is. The first sentence of any article should answer the question of what in the broadest, simplest terms possible, and that rarely consists of some label. It will be vague, but that's fine. Details are for later. Only in cases where that's all the subject is notable for, such as Charles Manson, would that even make sense. In most cases, the person is something else, whether notable for it or not, but that something provides context for whatever crime or label they became notable for. For example, Mary Kay Letourneau begins "...was an American sex offender and teacher who pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child." The label is rather redundant and pointless, but is also preceding the context needed to explain it, so it's awkward to read. What she "was" was a school teacher. That provides context for what she did, which was have sex with her student. One needs to precede the other for the story to flow coherently, and the same is true for any article. Every sentence is context for the following sentences. Zaereth (talk) 01:09, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I think this is what you're saying is ...was an American sex offender and teacher who pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child works better? If so, I agree. — HTGS (talk) 02:49, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that's partly what I mean. I agree with many here that much of the use of labels is often more a case of recentism and emotion. Labels are a convenient way of boiling something down to a pure stereotype, which makes them very effective at eliciting an emotional response. But they're not one bit objective and an example of a poor way to write an article. We're no longer conveying facts but trying to provoke a gut-reaction emotional response to persuade the reader to a particular opinion, and those who say otherwise would only be fooling themselves. As an example of a well written article, see Adolph Hitler. We don't start off by saying he was a bigot and a mass murderer. He was, but we don't need to resort to name calling and such emotionally charged words to convey it, nor does it need to be in the first sentence. We start off with his role in German government and the Nazi party, which is the logical place to start, and then go on to describe all the horrible things he did. Those horrible things speak very loudly of their own accord, we don't need to add labels as a big exclamation point. That's what a very well-written article should look like, and a bio of a living person is no different. Zaereth (talk) 18:59, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I fully agree with you, and also see parallels to discussions regarding a select few political articles starting with "....is an American far-right politician" ... but perhaps that is a wholly separate conversation. To me, labels shoehorned into the lead sentence like this doesn't seem encyclopedic and gets into RGW territory. Connormah (talk) 20:23, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Connormah, but it's more than just shoehorning labels into the first sentence. This is where it gets difficult to explain to people, so bear with me here, but much of what separates good writing from bad is counterintuitive. People put all this huge emphasis on the importance of the first sentence, but for all the wrong reasons. The first sentence, also called the "topic sentence", is simply to provide a starting point, and it's important only for providing the necessary context for the next sentences. But it's not --by far-- the most important sentence of the article nor the one people will remember. What people will always remember is the last sentence, and --by far-- the most important sentence of the entire article is the last sentence of the first paragraph, which is called the "thesis sentence". Note in the Hitler article, the thesis sentence is where we describe his genocide. That's why the article is so well written, and why these others read like they were written by 4th graders. Zaereth (talk) 03:58, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. I've been trying to highlight this problem for years, but this is a succinct way of explaining why the lede sentence doesn't need to be crammed with everything a topic is notable - as long as that's achieved by the lede paragraph or in some cases the whole lede, if we are properly summarizing the article. I believe a lot of the current problematic examples are driven by editors that feel that these bad behaviors must be called out ASAP, but that just doesn't gel with good encyclopedic writing. Masem (t) 04:21, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Very well put by both of you - I agree fully. Connormah (talk) 04:40, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I've been right there with you, Masem, at least at BLPN. It's just so counterintuitive that it goes in one ear and out the other, but I'm not making this stuff up. Plenty of sources out there to confirm this, which is why I think a lot of these problems could be solved if we simply had some guidelines on good writing practices. I don't think it's a problem we can solve by simply adding more rules, because rules can never encompass every possibility. But if people could see that what they're arguing for is really a hinderance to the goal they're trying to achieve, maybe they'd be less apt to put so much emphasis on the first sentence. Everything before the thesis sentence is merely a starting point and a pathway leading up to the most important aspect of the subject. Zaereth (talk) 04:58, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

• I oppose the use of the terms "convicted felon" and "sex offender" in the first sentence of biographies except for cases where 1) the commission of those crimes is the primary reason for the subject's notability and 2) there isn't a better way to describe the subject and their crimes. I believe the use of those terms comes across like an attempt to smear or shame the subject, but more importantly I think describing the specific crimes a person was convicted for (if DUE) provides a more accurate picture for readers. Hatman31 (talk) 02:42, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
• One thing I would add to the above discussion is that the main reasons a person is notable can shift over time as the body of reliable sources about them grows; it isn't fixed in time at the point they first became notable. For Epstein in particular, surely the coverage of him as a high-profile sex trafficker far outstrips whatever notability he had in other aspects of his life, and the lead sentence should reflect that.--Trystan (talk) 02:46, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  I agree that someone like Epstein is now most written about because of the girls, but being a highly connected, mega-rich financier facilitated his deeds. Putting "American financier who …" and then summarising the crimes, is a more efficient way of providing context IMO. Pincrete (talk) 07:36, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

• What is the reason behind saying "convicted"? Senorangel (talk) 04:42, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  Because that makes it obvious that we're not accusing them of a crime out of nowhere, we are reporting the results of the court. It's important to be careful with accusations of crime because of the possibility of libel. We wouldn't have wanted to say, for instance, that OJ Simpson is a murderer in Wikivoice because he was never convicted. Loki (talk) 05:25, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  "Convicted" does not seem to be necessary because, in the absence of court rulings, the first sentence should not describe a person as a criminal. The RFC proposes "convicted criminal", not "convicted of a crime". It appears to strengthen the case for a crime, not trying to be careful with the accusation. Senorangel (talk) 04:54, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

• When I see "convicted felon" crammed into the first sentence of the lede, it's often a red flag that the writer wants to cry "Shame! shame!" Stylistically, and in more efficiently fully relating the narrative Letourneau ... was an American sex offender and teacher who pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child works better. As does Weinstein ... was an American convicted rapist film producer who was found guilty in ???? to XX counts of rape and other sex offences ditto how one would write Epstein or Jimmy Savile as their profession followed by their 'crime' stated explicitly wherever possible. I have so often found myself arguing that, except in a small number of cases, the previous life is a significant component of the notoriety, not an afterthought. Even if Weinstein is now mainly regarded as an offender, his role in the film world facilitated those offences, ditto Savile, Epstein and Mary Kay Letourneau. So "profession who did this" is the most concise way to give context to the crimes. Nobody bothers to write articles (either in the real world or on WP) about un-finished sex trials committed 45 years ago, unless the accused is famous for other reasons. So even to those who write about his crimes, or who despise him for his crimes, he's the internationally known film director who had sex with a 13 year old model not the accused sex offender who happened to make successful films. I don't also see the sense of 'felon' or 'sex offender' when the charges can be stated explicitly. If it's worth telling me that someone committed a crime, it's worth telling me what it was, otherwise we might just as well say 'bad person'. Where subject's SOLE notability is their crime, this obviously doesn't apply, but those cases are rare and tend to be the most heinous crimes.Pincrete (talk) 07:28, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  100% agreed. If I hadn’t read this I would have written something substantially the same. — HTGS (talk) 05:00, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

• There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this. There definitely are articles where it gets crammed into the lead in a weird or unnecessary manner, but it's also true that sometimes someone's crimes can overshadow prior notability (we would not, for instance, describe John Wilkes Booth solely as a stage actor in the first sentence of his lead, even though he was famous as that before he became famous for something else.) I would similarly characterize Epstein as someone whose primary notability is now his crimes. --Aquillion (talk) 08:46, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  I think that John Wilkes Booth's first sentence is perfect and would not be improved by adding the phrase "convicted felon" to it. (Well, obviously, since he was never actually convicted, but you get what I mean.)

  Part of the confusion here is that while nobody likes the proposition as phrased, the opinions on what to do instead are going in two very different directions. To somewhat oversimplify, one is that we should avoid saying bad things about the subject of the article in the first sentence, and the other is that we should be more specific about the bad things we say about the subject of the article in the first sentence. The way the RFC is currently framed, these two opinions seem to both be taken as "no" when actually they're opposites: if we can't describe Epstein as a convicted child sex trafficker in the first sentence of his article, I would very much prefer "convicted sex offender" to nothing. Loki (talk) 21:46, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

  I disagree that it's about avoiding saying bad things about the subject of the article in the first sentence. For me it has nothing to do with that.

  There are two questions here. The first is the terminology RS are using. If the very best RS are using "Convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein", we use it too. If they're instead using "Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of sex trafficking," that's what we use. I see that NPR is using "Court documents made public on Wednesday disclosed the names of dozens of powerful men with alleged connections to convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein",[7] so that would for me be the argument to use that term.

  Whether it goes in the first sentence is a second question. The lead sentence identifies the person. We don't put every possible label they could be identified with in there; we use the important ones for identifying the person, and we decide which are important by what RS are using as identifiers. Has nothing to do with good or bad. What matters is whether multiple of the best RS are using a term as a primary descriptor. If multiple of the best RS are identifying Epstein as a "financier and convicted sex trafficker", we call him that in the first sentence too. If instead they're saying things like "Financier Jeffrey Epstein, who after being convicted of sex trafficking committed suicide in jail," then no. Valereee (talk) 13:04, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

  I did say it was an oversimplification, so thank you for giving your side of the story.

  That being said, I also don't agree with this take. We rely on the sources for facts, not wording. WP:OUROWNWORDS is just an essay but it explains why this is so better than I could. Loki (talk) 17:35, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

  Well, as you say that's an essay, not policy, and particularly in the case of the lead sentence for living people, exact wording can be very important. When we're deciding how to identify people, we should follow RS. Valereee (talk) 18:28, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

  Exact wording can be very important, which is exactly why we shouldn't dodge the responsibility to craft the best possible wording. There are a variety of problems with pawning off our responsibility to word things appropriately in this way.

  For one, Wikipedia is not a newspaper (or book, or other type of RS) and often the way newspapers word things is contrary to how an encyclopedia would. There are many entries in the WP:MOS where the way we word things is contrary to how many newspapers would. The one that comes to mind immediately is MOS:ENGVAR.

  Second, newspapers (or books, or studies, etc etc) aren't Wikipedia and aren't obligated to follow Wikipedia policy. WP:FALSEBALANCE/false balance calls out a specific common example of this, but several others exist.

  Third, and arguably most importantly, Wikipedia policy allows for the possibility of sources that are biased but reliable for facts. I would never want to decide whether any particular line calls a certain politically charged historical event "the Nakba" vs "the Israeli War of Independence" based on which bias the source containing that fact happens to have. Loki (talk) 20:29, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

  But Loki, if NYT/WSJ/NPR/BBC/whatever top quality source aren't calling someone a sex offender, if they're instead saying he was convicted of a sex crime, why would we decide to call him "a sex offender" in the lead rather than saying he was convicted of a sex crime? Valereee (talk) 20:37, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

  I don't like "sex offender" myself, but for the wording I prefer, the reason why we'd call someone a rapist rather than a person convicted of rape is because

  a) it scans better

  b) article subjects should have their major sources of notability introduced as early as possible

  c) the longer wording IMO introduces a level of skepticism that is incompatible with WP:NPOV unless we have a concrete reason to doubt it. Loki (talk) 21:00, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

  The first sentence is not required to be a full summary of why a person is notable; the lede in total needs to do that, however.

  If a person is sufficiently notable for more than just a conviction or equivalent, even if the conviction is likely more widely attached to the person than the other notable factors (as in all the cases we are discussing here), then having the lede sentence include the conviction can create a total lede that inappropriate in tone required by BLP and NPOV. It is far better to discuss something like a conviction in a separate sentence where one can include the necessary context, rather than forcing just the descriptor in the lede.

  Whenever I see articles that do place convictions in the lede sentence in these situations, it reads as if the editors have been trying to RGW to call out the person as "bad", which is not what we should be doing, Wikipedia should be written amorally to maintain its impartial and dispassionate tone. Masem (t) 18:25, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I think "convicted" in the lead sentence of already famous people is often swayed by recentism or campaign to WP:RGW. People like Kellen Winslow II, who were not involved in a "trial of the century", probably have WP:UNDUE weight placed on their crime(s).—Bagumba (talk) 09:37, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

• In general, it seems like almost every time I see something like ", and convicted felon" in the lead of an article, it could be dropped without much issue. Usually, it does not seem relevant enough to the article to warrant being in the lead. There are a few people famous solely for their criminal acts, like famous serial killers or drug lords or whatever. In this case, we can just say "Alice Jones is a Swiss murderer" or "Bob Smith is a Canadian mafia boss" or whatever in the lead. This also has the advantage of being more accurate. In cases where it's like "Carol Glockenspiel is an Irish-Botswanan lawyer, politician, and convicted felon", where she was on the cover of magazines for all this other stuff 40 years and was disbarred after some kind of legal malpractice mumbo-jumbo -- is it really that important that we need to put in the very first sentence?

Another thing that's worth noting is that "felony" encompasses a very broad range of things. Dennis Rader is a felon because he raped and murdered a dozen people; Jeff Skilling is a felon because he did the Enron scandal. Martha Stewart is a felon because she did insider trading, which is certainly bad, but she did not rape or murder anyone (as far as I know). We also have people like Tanya McDowell, who spent five years in prison because she lied about where her house was so her son could go to school in a different district, or This guy, who probably doesn't pass GNG, but nonetheless is a felon because he stole a $2 candy bar. I don't want to get into a whole politics thing here, but there are a ton of people who are criminals for very dumb reasons, so it makes me a little uncomfortable to see stuff like this way up in the first sentence of an article. Sure, people are asswipes sometimes. But I think it's pretty obvious that, say, Kenneth Lay was an asswipe, and we don't need to say he was a "convicted felon" for this -- whereas there are a large number of people for whom this seems unfair or unnecessary. I think that being clear about the nature of the crime will make this distinction obvious: if replacing "is a felon" with the actual details of the crime makes the lead sentence sound idiotic and petty, then we know that including it in the lead sentence is idiotic and petty. and we know that we should probably not have it in there. jp×g🗯️ 05:44, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

(Brought here from WP:RFC/A) - Leaning towards the inclusion of more detailed summary of the crimes committed rather than a broad label. Seems most editors agree that "felon" is to vague a term to include into the first sentence. I would say we can't sugar coat Wikipedia, if a person is notable for being a criminal, it wouldn't be accurate to omit that information from the lead. Now it goes without saying that if it is included in the lead, there needs to be matching weight in the body and from reliable sources as to not violate blp protections. MaximusEditor (talk) 16:06, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

It's more likely that its suitable in the lead, but not in the lead sentence (MOS:ROLEBIO). Too often the lead sentence is an excessive laundry list (and not just for felons). —Bagumba (talk) 16:31, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

• Comment - The scope of this RFC is not clear. The section heading is "... lead sentence", but the description then quotes MOS:FIRSTBIO "The opening paragraph ...", before citing examples of "edit warring of the lead sentence". It is perfectly reasonable to mention a crime/felony in the lead paragraph but not necessarily the lead sentence. Another example is Rolf Harris - see discussion and subsequent RfC. Perhaps this RFC should propose some alternative wording to MOS:BIO § Opening paragraph and/or MOS:BIO § First sentence so it it clear exactly what is being proposed Mitch Ames (talk) 06:42, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

MOS:CONTEXTBIO

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I would like to make some suggestions for changes to the initial part of the MOS:CONTEXTBIO since Ethnicity redirects to that section, and to make it a little clearer and inclusive of information in the examples. Can I work on a draft and post it here - or is there another process? Thanks!–CaroleHenson (talk) 15:31, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

You should say what exactly the problem is or what you're not understanding before rewriting the entire section on your own and then asking for feedback.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 15:35, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I underlined the type of changes I am suggesting. If I am going to spell out the exact changes, I might as well write the draft.

I am just looking for process. It sounds like the process is to post the suggested draft here.–CaroleHenson (talk) 15:51, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Carole, respectfully, you need to explain concisely and clearly what you want to change. Nothing here makes any sense. GiantSnowman 20:10, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

GiantSnowman, I am a little confused. There are bullets of the changes. The main difference is that the examples are inline with the guidelines. There is a link to compare the current Context section with the draft.

I am guessing that you are confused about 2 topics I added. I have added regional identity up for discussion, and I think it would be good to keep that. The Indigenous people conversation shouldn't have been started.–CaroleHenson (talk) 20:32, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I repeat, slightly more forceful - this whole section is a mess and it is not clear what you are seeking. GiantSnowman 16:17, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

GiantSnowman, I am not hearing that from anyone else. When I get no detail about the problem, it's hard to understand where it's coming from. Here's a summary of where things are at:

• Use in the article - is completed.
• Regional identity - is an open issue.
• "Additional restrictions"? - I believe is resolved, waiting to hear back.
• Indigenous people - I have struck out (striked out?)
• The draft is up-to-date with changes discussed here and a couple of other edits by others. Have you reviewed Draft:MOS CONTEXTBIO? That is really the key point.–CaroleHenson (talk) 16:58, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

GiantSnowman, I looked at your edits to see where you might be coming from. It appears that you remove people's birth country info - also removing name info in their former language. Is that your concern? There weren't any changes for foreign born, dual citizenship scenarios.–CaroleHenson (talk) 17:15, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

"I am not hearing that from anyone else" - the issue is that you don't appear to be hearing from anyone, likely due to confusion. Either you can clarify as I have requested multiple times, or this discussion will get nowhere. GiantSnowman 18:06, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

One editor has made direct edits to the draft. Others have made comments here and I made changes to the draft. Your comments are not constructive, they seem to be meant to be disruptive. Unless there is something constructive that I can deal with, restating what has been done on this draft seems counter-productive and is creating a lot of unnecessary rhetoric. There's nothing more for me to summarize or restate.–CaroleHenson (talk) 20:08, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

WP:AGF - I am trying to help you, and you are unable or unwilling to listen and engage. GiantSnowman 20:36, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

A common thread with this editor. This discussion is not clear or specific about the problem so I don't see the need to accept any changes from the draft.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 22:13, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

@CaroleHenson I also would like to know what the problem being solved is here. I am generally open to reworking guidelines where needed, but rather than read through and make a bunch of notes to compare your draft with the current version, it would help us a lot if you said explicitly what your goal is. If you are trying to make text clearer, more legible, or easier to understand, that’s one thing; if you are trying to impart new meanings, that’s another. Neither are verboten, but it helps us to help you if you let us know what you are trying to do. (“Help me… help you!”) — HTGS (talk) 23:19, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

HTGS I appreciate your respect and politeness. Let's simplify this, then. The main things that I am interested in are the examples integrated with the guidelines and one of the examples showing both sentences of a two-sentence guideline. I know for next time not to do more than one or two things at a time. I am going to close this out - and resubmit with just two of my changes and I kept Alanscottwalker, so he doesn't have to do that twice.–CaroleHenson (talk) 00:55, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Tribal citizenship is a political status not an ethnic status. There are innumerable classes and books available on Native American law. Yuchitown (talk) 18:34, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Draft

I created a draft Draft:MOS CONTEXTBIO with:

• an introductory statement about whether content should appear in the article, since WP:ETHNICITY redirects to this section. - removed per HTGS
• integrated examples with the guidelines, using the format from MOS:BIRTHDATE for consistency and with focus on the example.
• updated verbiage a bit about the examples, like to provide a second sentence example where a person's birth country is notable or defining importance.
• simplified the Native American information, per the comment and discussion about citizenship and because the information is incorrect or simplified for Canada, for instance, it does not consider the Indian Act which does not require citizenship. Of course, this information can be expanded as needed.
• removed the link to the WP:NDNID / WP:NATIVE-IDENTITY essay, which was said at Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Patricia_Marroquin_Norby that the discussion of self-identity and the document as a whole needs to be reviewed.

I look forward to your responses. There is a place to provide comments in the draft.–CaroleHenson (talk) 02:04, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I just made a change to the draft to group Nationalities, residency... and Other into two sections. There are no new guidlines, the major change is linking the examples with the guidelines, as is done in other MOS guidelines. I ran a compare pages here. You need to go down to "Context" and then it helps to remember that the examples are integrated and nationalities information is grouped into one section.–CaroleHenson (talk) 13:10, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I took out the two section headings. It seems to have disturbed the flow, as discussed in "Additional restrictions".–CaroleHenson (talk) 19:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

If you have a new topic, would you please add a new subsection at the bottom of this section? It makes it so much easier to track the conversation. Thanks!–CaroleHenson (talk) 19:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Use in the article

“Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should not be used in the article …”

Well… we’re not off to a good start.

Just to make we’re on the same page, this section is about making sure that the context for an article’s lead stays on-topic, with regard to what makes the subject notable. It is not a set of rules for talking about ethnicity. The shortcut MOS:ETHNICITY (etc) leads here because it is a common shortcut to use to inform people about the guideline. I use it a lot myself in edit summaries because it’s a common error that needs correcting; this does not mean that the Context section is about ethnicity in biographies. — HTGS (talk) 07:01, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

HTGS I removed it from the draft.–CaroleHenson (talk) 11:40, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Regional identity

In reviewing A 2018 RfC on Spanish regional identity in the lead resulted in consensus to use the regional identity that reliable sources use most often and with which the subject identifies., I wonder:

• Should regional identity go in the intro?
• If so, it seems that this statement could apply to regional identity in any country. For instance, "Use the regional identity that reliable sources use most often and with which the subject identifies."–CaroleHenson (talk) 11:35, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I made an edit here to try a universal statement on for size. The complete sentence is If there are two or more regional areas of importance, use the regional identity that reliable sources use most often and with which the subject identifies. How is that?–CaroleHenson (talk) 14:12, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

"Additional restrictions"?

Is the intention of the draft to introduce additional restrictions on how national and regional identities, apart from Westphalian citizenship, are presented? Because I'm not convinced of a consensus or community appetite for that, but as of this moment the draft looks to me to point in that direction. Newimpartial (talk) 12:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I moved your question here for context, Newimpartial. The content comes from the existing MOS:CONTEXTBIO guideline. No new guidelines are added. What do you mean by Westphalian citizenship? See the bullet list above.–CaroleHenson (talk) 12:37, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah, Newimpartial, I am guessing you are referring to the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Peter Lorre examples. They are currently used in MOS:CONTEXTBIO, but one or both of them could be changed if you'd like. That would make sense.–CaroleHenson (talk) 12:45, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

To answer your question, the status quo version of CONTEXTBIO uses "nationality" a great deal, a term that sometimes equates to citizenship within the Westphalian system of national states and sometimes does not. Your proposed changes seem to me to elaborate based on the premise that nationality always refers to Westphalian citizenship, though perhaps I am not understanding your intended meaning correctly. I do not believe there is existing community consensus on this - if anything, I think the median view onwiki is somewhat less prescriptive about this than the language of the existing guideline. And yes, my impression is based partly on the way examples are presented in your draft. Newimpartial (talk) 12:49, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Newimpartial, I don't know what you are talking about. What specific sentence do you think was changed?–CaroleHenson (talk) 13:12, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

To answer your question, I think my issue begins with moving The opening paragraph should usually provide context for that which made the person notable ahead of the section header. I have always read that sentence as governing what is to be included in terms of "nationality".

Newimpartial Okay. I made the change. It's no longer a lonely sentence and flows better.–CaroleHenson (talk) 14:02, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Also, in the status quo text the ethnicity, sexuality clause with its generally...unless reads to me as filling in some of the exceptions, noted in the previous paragraph with in most modern-day cases. By moving it to a separate paragraph the impact of both sections shifts towards "use nation-state nationalities" - "don't use things that could be seen as ethnicities", whereas the current flow of text does a better job of acknowledging the logic of the exceptions IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 13:17, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Newimpartial, I made the sentence Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability or of defining importance. Underline just for emphasis here.

I am trying to figure out what else can be done - remove the section headings? What do you think should be done?–CaroleHenson (talk) 14:13, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I removed the section headings. The combined guideline and example flows almost exactly the same now as the previous separate guideline and example flow, except Copernicus is up with other nationality examples.–CaroleHenson (talk) 14:46, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Indigenous people

I changed "Native American and Indigenous Canadians" to "Indigenous people" to be universal here for the parenthetical / phrase part. (I am sure more will come about Native Americans and Indigenous Canadians).–CaroleHenson (talk) 14:40, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Does that make sense? It seems to, for consistency, but it may be adding a guideline that doesn't make sense for other countries.–CaroleHenson (talk) 19:04, 2 June 2024 (UTC) Strike out.–CaroleHenson (talk) 20:18, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Native American/First Nations citizenship

I'm restoring the section on tribal citizenship per Tribal sovereignty in the United States:

Native American and Indigenous Canadian status is based on citizenship, not ethnicity. Indigenous persons' citizenship can be listed parenthetically, or as a clause after their names. (See also {{Section link}}: required section parameter(s) missing.)

• Wilma Pearl Mankiller (November 18, 1945 – April 6, 2010) was a Native American (Cherokee Nation) activist, social worker, community developer, and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

• Tribal sovereignty ensures that any decisions about the tribes with regard to their property and citizens are made with their participation and consent. Bureau of Indian Affairs, US Govt
• American Indians and Alaska Natives are members of the original Indigenous peoples of North America. Tribal nations have been recognized as sovereign since their first interaction with European settlers. The United States continues to recognize this unique political status and relationship. National Congress of American Indians
• Tribal enrollment requirements preserve the unique character and traditions of each tribe. The tribes establish membership criteria based on shared customs, traditions, language and tribal blood. Tribal enrollment criteria are set forth in tribal constitutions, articles of incorporation or ordinances. The criterion varies from tribe to tribe, so uniform membership requirements do not exist. Department of the Interior
• Canada recognizes that Indigenous peoples have an inherent right of self-government guaranteed in section 35 of the Constitution Act , 1982. Negotiated agreements put decision-making power into the hands of Indigenous governments who make their own choices about how to deliver programs and services to their communities. This can include making decisions about how to better protect their culture and language, educate their students, manage their own lands and develop new business partnerships that create jobs and other benefits for their citizens. Canadian Government

@David Fuchs: this is not simply "a couple individuals" discussing this. Tribal sovereignty is recognized by the Unites States and Canada to this day and historically through the creation of treaties. Please provide sources that show tribal nations are not sovereign nations and do not determine their own citizenship before removing again. You can discuss wording, but it's a federal fact these are sovereign nations that determine their own citizenship laws.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 18:40, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

With some very limited exceptions, the opening sentence of a biography should deal with nationality only, not religion/ethnicity/being indigenous etc. If that status is somewhat relevant, it can be mentioned later in the lede. GiantSnowman 18:47, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Being enrolled in a tribe isn't actually about race, it's citizenship. For example, Shania Twain holds a status card and is included in the rolls of a First Nations tribe even thought she has no Native ancestry because she was legally adopted by a First Nations man as a child. And any case, most Native / First Nations people who are written about on Wikipedia tend to work in fields related to their tribes, culture etc.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 18:51, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

...that still does not mean it should be mentioned in the opening sentence of a biography. GiantSnowman 18:52, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

So citizenship doesn't go into the lead of articles?  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 18:54, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Not tribal citizenship, no. GiantSnowman 18:55, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Na·tion·al·i·ty: the status of belonging to a particular nation. Please provide sources that says tribal nations are not nations.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 18:57, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

"National" in its citizenship sense is the recognized international state. So saying someone is U.S. national is not saying they are not American Indian or anything else Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:22, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I think this is a common misunderstanding of what the WP:MOS actually says. The MOS does not say that nationality = Westphalian citizenship; it says that In most modern-day cases, this will be the country, region, or territory where the person is currently a national or permanent resident - and indigenous nationality is a prime example of a set of cases where the original rule doesn't work as a rote formula. In fact, if a BLP subject is, say, a Navajo whose career is based in Navajo national territory, it would be a more natural application of the rule to use Navajo instead of, or in addition to, American nationality. Newimpartial (talk) 20:19, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

International recognition as a sovereign state is not required. We regularly identify people as being English, Scottish, or Welsh in the first sentence, e.g. we say Catherine Zeta-Jones is a Welsh actress. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:07, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

We also refer to people as Puerto Rican, Bermudian, and Faroese. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 20:26, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Tribal Sovereignty is not International Sovereignty, so it does not fit here. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:59, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Please elaborate and provide sources that tribes are not sovereign nations.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 19:03, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Where is that definition on Wikipedia? Wikipedia denies sovereignty of Tribal nations exists. --ARoseWolf 19:06, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

List of sovereign states. GiantSnowman 19:12, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Iroquois passport is an example of times tribes have used their tribal sovereignty as sovereign nations and has had various success/failure, so you can't say they are absolutely not recognized internationally. The Iroquois passport evolved from negotiations with the US State Department, Canada, Britain and other countries and has been used since 1977. Israel and Ireland both recently accepted these passports.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 19:13, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

That article says that it a "expression of sovereignty", other than an actual legal document, and says that "The governments in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada have refused to endorse the document as valid document for international travel. Additionally, the document does not appear on the list of forms of acceptable identification to cross into Canada." GiantSnowman 19:15, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Taiwan is not recognized by China as an independent nation, should Category:Taiwanese people be merged to Chinese people? You can see how using one nation's refusal of sovereign recognition can be a slippery slope. The fact is, the Iroquois passport has been accepted as valid by other international nations, even in recent years.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 19:18, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Taiwan is recognised by the majority of the world and was formerly a UN member. Is the same of the Iroquois or any other Native nation? GiantSnowman 19:22, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

They're in the process of that, actually.

In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Article 3 of the UNDRIP states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” As such, each nation of Indigenous peoples has an internationally recognized right to freely exercise its own origins, system of organization and political formation. Having self recognition in the definition was a victory, as nation-states had fought for the right to retain the power to define who is Indigenous. The United States (along with Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) initially voted against the Declaration, reversing its position two years later.

UCLA: How are Indigenous Peoples recognized internationally?

Also:

Indigenous peoples are frequently classified as a racial minority. However, it is important to understand that “Native American” or “American Indian” are not strictly racial categories. Being a member of a tribal nation provides a membership status. Because of tribes’ status as sovereign nations, Indigenous peoples/tribes are political entities. Whether an individual is a member of a federally recognized Indian tribe depends on the membership rules of each individual tribe. Those requirements usually have some basis in “blood quantum” ancestry, however, other criteria may also be used. A DNA test cannot tell you that you are Native American, because that status is defined by belonging to a tribal nation or community. “Native American” or “American Indian” thus differs from racial minority groups because it entails membership and that membership connotes a distinct historical and political relationship with the federal government. UCLA: Are Indigenous peoples a racial minority?  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 19:56, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

From the US Department of of the Interior - "Tribal nations are pre-existing sovereigns over which states have historically lacked authority. One of the roles of the federal government, since the time of this Nation's founding, has been to protect Tribal nations from state regulation, intrusion, and overreach."

From the NCAI - "American Indians and Alaska Natives are members of the original Indigenous peoples of North America. Tribal nations have been recognized as sovereign since their first interaction with European settlers. The United States continues to recognize this unique political status and relationship."

I can not believe that there are fellow Wikipedians that are advocating the denial of tribal nation statehood without a single shred of evidence provided by reliable sources. Linking to a Wikipedia list is not a reliable source as Wikipedia is not a reliable source.

The United Nations recognized Indigenous peoples right to self-determination and self-government and encourages other states to recognize and affirm such. The United States is one such state that does so for sovereign tribal nations within it's physical borders that it maintains treaties with.

Members of a Indigenous or tribal nation are citizens of a sovereign nation and should be treated as all other citizens of sovereign nations around the world. --ARoseWolf 19:42, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

the denial of tribal nation statehood Generally speaking, Native tribes are not sovereign states [8]. They are not "independent and not under the authority of any other country". PhotogenicScientist (talk) 21:57, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

As stated above, MOS says In most modern-day cases, this will be the country, region, or territory where the person is currently a national or permanent resident, which doesn't mean the Westphalian system (which is "a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory").  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 22:02, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not disagreeing with that - see my more lengthy reply below. Just pointing out to ARoseWolf that "tribal nation statehood" isn't an exactly accurate phrase. Tribes aren't really sovereign states - they're closer to dependent territories. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 22:09, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

The infobox parameters under discussion are "citizenship" and "nationality". If you would like change these parameters to "Westphalian nationality" or "sovereign statehood", you could certainly make that proposal but that would need to be a separate discussion. Yuchitown (talk) 14:50, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Infobox parameters? This discussion is about an addition to MOS:CITIZEN, which is about the lead section. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 15:01, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I stand corrected. I have them coupled in my mind because they usually echo each other. There's even less constraints of what goes in the lead sentence and lead section. I don't understand why it is so onerous to you for Native American people to list our tribal citizen in our introductions. That's exactly what we do in real life. Yuchitown (talk) 15:33, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Again, I'm not disagreeing with that inclusion in the lead - refer to my more lengthy reply below. And please try to keep straight who you're talking to in a discussion, if you're going to personalize the arguments. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 15:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

See Sovereignty [https://www.britannica.com/topic/sovereignty/Sovereignty-and-international-law] but its not that Wikipedia does not recognize anything, its that they are two different things. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:16, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

"International sovereignty" isn't a real term in the literature, maybe you mean international recognition. Tribal sovereignty, at least in the United States, is based (among other things) on international agreements (treaties) between nations. See Kalt and Singer tribes are not merely clubs; they are sovereigns – domestic dependent nations who never voluntarily relinquished their powers over their territory. Moreover, the treaties and statutes recognizing the reserved rights of tribes implicitly affirm tribal political powers of their retained lands. Treaties are literally de jure recognition of a separate sovereign.

And just to be clear, tribal citizenship also has very real world effects in the United States on things like criminal jurisdiction. For example, state and municipal courts do not have criminal jurisdiction over tribal citizens who commit a crime on an Indian reservation. Tribal citizenship, at least for federally recognized tribes, is at the least unambiguously recognized by the United States. TulsaPoliticsFan (talk) 20:08, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

No, international sovereignty, U.S. state sovereignty is not the same either. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:25, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Can you point to where you're getting your definition of "international sovereignty"? Because asserting it is a different type of sovereignty without defining how is not really helpful. Sovereignty (whose page doesn't mention the term "international sovereignty") is already a fuzzy concept in both law and political theory, so if you're using a more nuanced version of the phrase you should probably explain it. TulsaPoliticsFan (talk) 20:49, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I have, but I'm sure you know there are different degrees of sovereignty, that's just the way the world is. For example, neither Mongolia nor South Africa operate under American Indian law. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

A grand total of two people weighed in on adding the verbiage; it has never been vetted or approved by any sort of critical mass of editors that should be necessary to add something to an existing guideline. None of the stuff you're saying above is relevant to the fact that consensus hasn't been established to put the content in, and the fact that plenty of people have argued against your novel interpretations of it to try and end-run around people calling you out on it. Start an RfC. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:05, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Quit moving the goal posts and just have the discussion here like we're supposed to.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 19:06, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

There's no moving goalposts. I just think a neutral RfC, should you be able to craft one, would be far more useful for the wiki. Most people don't follow all the Manual of Style pages. Wider participation is good, right? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:33, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's a step you could have taken rather than refuse to even start a discussion here after being reverted and being told to discuss it.  oncamera  _{(talk page)} 20:08, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I believe a critical mass of editors was achieved in this discussion last year, the result of which was that the text in question remained in the MOS based on the support of more than a grand total of two people. Newimpartial (talk) 21:32, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, this is a fraught issue... but I believe it boils down to how we determine someone's nationality (which is technically distinct from citizenship, though there's a lot of overlap). Looking at this issue just for Native Americans...

• Native Americans are considered American citizens [9]. Native Americans are self-governing and have some legal jurisdictions; however, by most accounts, Native American nations do not have international sovereignty - what they have tribal sovereignty [10]. And the United States retains ultimate international sovereignty over tribal lands. So, if we're asking about the nationality of a Native American in an international scope, the general answer would probably be "American."
• However, nationality differs a bit from citizenship - citizenship is more about duty/allegiance to a state, whereas nationality is more about legally belonging to a nation. And the United States recognizes Native American tribes as "dependent domestic nations" [11]. So I think there's also nothing wrong wtih referring to someone by their Native nationality.

It seems that according to current policy, we could refer to someone's tribal nationality in the first sentence of the lead (provided, of course, said nationality is relevant to their notability). "Native American (X Nation)" seems to be to a comparable phrase to "American" in terms of this first sentence. At the least, it provides the same "where are they from" information.

That said, I don't agree with the inclusion of or as a clause after their names, as shown at WP:NATIVEIDENTITY with the example "Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo)". While that form may work for style within articles, it's too specialized a way of referring to someone to be used in the first sentence of a lead.

(Also, the example being added is pretty poor - the text added here isn't the actual first sentence of the lead of the article. It's also redundant, linking Cherokee twice). PhotogenicScientist (talk) 21:38, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

One refers to Cherokee language. Agree that a better example could be chosen. Yuchitown (talk) 23:36, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Agree, the example should be changed/updated PersusjCP (talk) 23:41, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

@PhotogenicScientist, we should note the assumption that Native Americans are American citizens is only true after 1924. TulsaPoliticsFan (talk) 03:24, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

This is actually a good point, I agree with this. PersusjCP (talk) 05:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Good points, but note also that all American citizens are also American nationals , the two go together in that situation (but not all American Nationals are American citizens). Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:46, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I know that Native American voices are always going to be outnumbered here (and, while Wikipedia publicly laments lack of Indigenous inclusion, it provides no support for those of us here), but I am still going to try to not have our tribal citizenship suppressed on this platform. Tribal sovereignty proceeds the existence of the United States and Canada; treaties with tribal nations are the supreme law of the land (U.S. Senate). The Jay Treaty still allows First Nations and Native American people to freely cross the U.S.–Canadian border. Not all people enrolled in Native American tribes even live in the United States. People use their tribal IDs at airports, etc. For notability issues, typically tribal citizenship is the defining feature of many Native peoples' core identity. It's usually the first thing we list after our names. Why are you so invested in removing this information from its place in Native biographies? What do you gain from not allowing us to list our tribal citizenship, as we do in real life? Yuchitown (talk) 19:49, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

• Support inclusion For some individuals, tribal citizenship is a defining characteristic. That said, there should be care to ensure that the subject is, in fact, a citizen of their tribal nation. --Enos733 (talk) 20:31, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

  If enrollment is defining characteristic, won't the article sources say they are enrolled? Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:48, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, so why do you not want it in the infobox and in the lead sentence where it usually is for almost every Native American biography and has been for years? Yuchitown (talk) 21:03, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Could not agree more. Yuchitown (talk) 20:39, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

• Support having tribal citizenship be included. It is citizenship in a sovereign nation, not just someone's race or ethnicity. Agree with Yuchitown that tribal sovereignty is often the defining aspect of someone's identity in the way that citizenship to a country might be for someone else. It is legally this way, as PhotogenicScientist said. In the US, they are domestic dependent nations, and are sovereign entities. This doesn't mean that people should put Native American in the same way that they might say "American" in the lede, but it should definitely be allowed to say their citizenship just as any other person. PersusjCP (talk) 22:37, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Comment. My experience is that (1) Native American activists feel strongly that only people listed on official tribal rolls should be listed here as Native Americans (as opposed to the many people with an unverifiable family story of Cherokee ancestry), and that personal statements of Native American heritage are unacceptable as a substitute, but (2) membership on tribal rolls is difficult or impossible to verify. At best, in some cases we have newspaper stories about tribal leaders stating their membership, or published obituaries that are maybe more believable than those family stories, but most such sources are nonexistent for most living Native American people. That puts us between a rock and a hard place: we cannot include this information if it is not verifiable, but it is not verifiable. Demanding that we must include this information (when we cannot include it because we cannot verify it) is a non-starter. Anyone more knowledgeable in these issues want to clarify? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:36, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

A WP:RS stating one's membership in a specific tribe has been the precedent as of yet, but like you said, a lot of the time they only say that someone is "of __ descent" which isn't enough to declare citizenship. In that case, I think it should be as per usual, such as if they were born in the US, then default to American. However, if it can be reliably sourced, it should be in the lede (and put the heritage somewhere later in the opening paragraphs or something, as you would with other ethnicity markers) PersusjCP (talk) 23:44, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

This is a conversation about nationality not ancestry. Tribal newspapers, many of which are online, and other Native media mention tribal citizens all the time. Yuchitown (talk) 23:46, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

David - I don't see this addition as being a requirement, but as an option. I would also suggest that this information should not added to the lede unless the subject is especially known for being a tribal citizen. On sourcing, there are some individuals, especially tribal citizens who serve on a tribal council, where tribal citizenship can be verified, as well as tribal newspapers as Yuchitown says above. - Enos733 (talk) 04:32, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

• I support restoring the guidance. It's helpful, and it's generally aligned with other parts of the MOS that emphasize nationality over ethnicity. I agree that it can be difficult to verify whether someone is actually enrolled in a tribe, but we have to take the word of reliable sources (and sometimes uncontested self-description) as we would in any other case of nationality. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:13, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  No. Not if the position is the person can't claim it unless they are enrolled. In other words the statement 'X is Cherokee" in the source does not prove they are a "national". Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:33, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  Maybe, but if a reliable source makes the claim "X belongs to the Cherokee nation", why would we treat that different from any other claim a reliable source may make? PhotogenicScientist (talk) 13:29, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  That's my point. The source may not refer to enrollment in a dependent nation at all, just join the person (biographical subject) to the name of the various peoples, eg. not the Pottawatomie Band of Oklahoma, but the Pottawatomie. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:06, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  That seems like a semantic difference, and an edge case example. I don't see why something like that would preclude the proposed change to this MOS page. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 14:19, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  Our lived experience as citizens of our tribal nations, for example the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, are not "edge case examples" or "semantic differences." During COVID when the tribes had to lock down their reservations and Pueblo, and the tribes were providing vaccinations, it was life or death. I wish people could familiarize themselves with the subject on hand instead of trying to weigh down discussions based on personal opinions. Yuchitown (talk) 14:55, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  Edge case? That makes no sense, there are multiple dependent nations with specific names and also other names used generally. It is likely in almost every case. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:38, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  I see the problem, when there appear to be multiple bands (nations?) within a Native group... two people may both be "Cherokee", while their nationalities are actually "United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians" and "Cherokee Nation"(?). Similar issue in the Potawatomi example - it looks like their official name is just "Potawatomi," so a person belonging to the Oklahoma band may consider themselves "Potawatomi". But they also might consider themselves as "Citizen Potawatomi Nation"....

  Unless there are serious complaints from actual Native people, I think the best way to handle nationality is to associate them with the more inclusive nationality (e.g. Cherokee, Potawatomi, etc). That seems to be the most in-line with how other nationalities are handled in leads. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 16:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  But even were you to allow that, you have not indicated what to do when the person is only linked with a general name, and not a particular dependent nation, and you can't assume they are a dependent national. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:06, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  As I understand it, you can't claim citizenship in the general group's name unless you belong to a particular tribe. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 18:49, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  No. That's the issue. What does someone mean when they say "I am X", do they mean they are X of Y, X of Z or something else. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  Doesn't really matter, does it? As long as their being "Cherokee" is documented in a reliable source, and relevant to their notability. Then there's no issue with us simply saying "X is Cherokee" in the lead. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 14:56, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  Well no, not if you are representing it as their nationality, their nationality is not "Cherokee" its Eastern Band of Cherokee" or something else. See eg. Amanda Crowe. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:07, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  What a person says about themselves is not reliable. In most of these sources they are just regurgitating what the subject says about themselves without thinking because most non-Natives don't understand the dynamic. That is why we look for Native media or Native sources to make the declaration. Non-Native sources aren't affected one way or the other. But tribal nations are potentially affected. Most sources wouldn't question if you said "I am American", especially if you are in fact in the US stating it. But what if they found that you were not born in the US to American parents (birth) and there is no record of your attempts to become a citizen of the US through any legal process (naturalization)? That is the two ways you can legally become an American. Would Wikipedia still state you are American? The issue is Native American sovereign nations do not have physical borders and so they may be scattered among multiple physical nations but they have their own distinctive laws for citizenship. The way we determine who is Native American is by who claims you not who you claim to be. --ARoseWolf 14:35, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  No. You have no basis to assume or presume anyone is unreliable especially in BLP or RS (should you have specific evidence in an individual's case then present the evidence in RS, and don't make it original research) you can't assume or presume, nor wish away what RS say. You make a very poor argument because carrying it to its logical end, we must assume and presume what you are saying is unreliable. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:13, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  ...and sometimes uncontested self-description... Our category structure for people who self-identify as being of Indigenous descent - without independent reliable sources either confirming or questioning that self-identification - are placed in categories such as Category:People who self-identify as being of Native American descent. This places them in the category tree under Category:Transracial (identity) and Category:Native American-related controversies, alongside proven frauds. Being of Indigenous descent and being a current member of a First Nation/tribe aren't the same, but it would be surprising if simple self-identification of membership were accepted as sufficient, given the highly skeptical default approach to claims of descent.--Trystan (talk) 14:06, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  Can we please focus? Being a citizen of a nation is the conversation. Yuchitown (talk) 14:56, 31 May 2024 (UTC)Y

  I agree; this is about citizenship, not ethnicity. We generally include citizenship in the lead (when we know it, and often perhaps inappropriately when we can only guess at it). We more often do not include ethnicity, unless it is specifically relevant. As such, I agree that Native American tribal citizenship, when known and verifiable, should be included. Perhaps a good example here is Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana, a single citizenship that mixes multiple ethnicities. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:00, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

• Support including tribal citizenship in lead. I agree that tribal citizenship belongs in the lead when it can be verified in an independent reliable source, in particular sources from the Indigenous press/media or the tribe itself. If the citizenship/nationality is coming directly from the person who is the subject of the article or a non-reliable source, it should default to American or Canadian, whichever is relevant. Reiterating what has been said above that this discussion is about citizenship/nationality, and not about ethnicity, ancestry, heritage, or race. Netherzone (talk) 15:56, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
• Comment - Wikidata data modeling would offer insight Wikidata does not have a recommended best practice for this either, and I think this challenge would be easier to solve at Wikidata than it is here in Wikipedia. If anyone wants to meet at d:Wikidata:WikiProject_Indigenous_peoples_of_North_America to explore data modeling options then I would participate. Last year at WikiConference North America a group presented "Indigenous Artists and Wikidata", which, while insightful, also determined that experts and stakeholders did not yet agree on how to describe the relationship between people and indigenous community affiliations. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:52, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
• I actually dislike the proposed form of the addition here. First, adding the nation or tribe “parenthetically, or as a clause after their names” is no better than simply allowing people to write prose that works clearly case by case. And as for the example of Wilma Mankiller, she is already notable for her tribal affiliation. She does not need the parenthetical, nor any additional justification for mentioning her tribal citizenship. Her article would be worse with that addition, and as such, the article doesn’t actually use the parenthetical as it’s written above. If we are to give an example with the intention of saying that any random bio who has/had tribal citizenship should have that citizenship in the lead, it should be one who is not notable for any reasons connected to their tribal status.

And at that point, I don’t know that I see it as much different to giving the American state as part of their dominant context; sometimes it will be relevant (if the person gained notability predominantly in the context of the tribal nation), other times it won’t be (if their notability was gained more as a citizen of the rest of their “country”), and we surely shouldn’t mandate, nor proscribe it at this level. — HTGS (talk) 07:21, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

• Support inclusion of tribal citizenship in lead. Native American tribes are sovereign nations with citizenship. It is not a matter of race, ethnicity, ancestry, phenotype, or color. The argument that tribal citizenship doesn't belong in the lead because tribes are domestic dependent nations is a nonsense. We do not waste our time quibbling over whether or not to mention in the lead that Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican, Duffy is Welsh, Samantha Barks is Manx, Heather Nova is Bermudian, Mari Boine is Sámi, Lemanu Peleti Mauga is Samoan, Tiare Aguilera Hey is Rapa Nui, Berta Cáceres is Lenca, Rigoberta Menchú is Kʼicheʼ, Roch Wamytan is Kanak, Masrour Barzani is Kurdish, Evelyn Wever-Croes is Aruban, and Eivør is Faroese. This should be simple. I am disappointed that some editors, who seem to have a drive-by knowledge of the issues at hand, have been quick to dismiss, demean, curse at, threaten, pearl-clutch, or otherwise speak down to or over Native editors on these matters. This is not respectful. It behooves non-Native editors to take a moment to familiarize themselves with the topic and engage with what Native editors have to say. Mistakes will happen, nobody's perfect, but active listening and learning is crucial for collaboration. Certainly, if we want to avoid the bias that Wikipedia readily admits exists, we must avoid behavior that discourages Native participation. Notably, there is consensus for inclusion among the Native and Native-allied editors who regularly edit on Native subjects. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 22:26, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
• Strong oppose Per the reasons I have outlined at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 April 27#Category:Unrecognized tribes in the United States, this is a very controversial issue. Making this an official MOS guideline is strongly discouraged because many unrecognized could be left out. Throughout the world, indigenous identity is primarily ethnic, no matter how much you try to legislate it. Official tribal enrollment is absolutely not the same thing as being a U.S., Canadian, or U.K. citizen, and we should leave politics out of indigenous identity.

To recap my position (from the category discussion):

Federal recognition is a controversial topic.

We should look at serious non-biased anthropological and sociological research, not solely on decisions made by bureaucratic governments that may not always be fair to every indigenous group.

I primarily focus on ethnic groups in the Middle East and Balkans, and categorizing thousands of individuals people according to "tribal citizenship" would be extremely offensive to some. For example, what if Serbia, Iran, or others do not officially recognize certain ethnic groups that Western anthropologists would certainly recognize as genuine ethnic or ethnoreligious groups? For example, if we were to label Yazidis or Alevis as self-identified minorities, that would be completely unencyclopedic, POV, and totally unsuitable for Wikipedia.

Same goes for China. There are also many unrecognized ethnic groups in China, since the Chinese (PRC) government officially recognizes only 56 ethnic groups. Should we also categorize every single individual from those unrecognized minorities as "self-identified minorities"? Certainly not, as that would be very awkward, controversial, and out of line with what Wikipedia categories should really be all about.

The same should apply to Native Americans, First Nations, and other indigenous peoples in North America.

I would also suggest taking a look at this book which discusses this issue in detail: Forgotten Tribes: Unrecognized Indians and the Federal Acknowledgment Process.

As a result, I would strongly recommend leaving this out of MOS biography policies and to evaluate each article on a case-by-case basis. Equiyamnaya (talk) 00:38, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't see what ethnic groups in the middle east have to do with tribal governments in the US and Canada. Federally recognized tribes are more than just ethnic groups, in fact, many tribal governments represent several or many different ethnicities within the nation (e.g. the Tulalip Tribes, Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, etc): they have a community, legal jurisdiction, (often) a land base that they govern, and as others have stated, tribal ID's are acceptable forms of ID for tribal citizens. They have a nation-to-nation relationship in the United States (and with the Crown in Canada). It isn't simply deciding to categorize people based on their tribal citizenship vs ethnic origin, it is treating them the same as you would the citizen of any other sovereign nation. PersusjCP (talk) 01:05, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Exactly this. Thank you, PersusjCP. If an editor wants to include that a subject is a descendent of or mention their ethnic heritage they can do that within the article. This is focused explicitly on those whose citizenship lies with a recognized, meaning a government has signed a binding treaty with, sovereign tribal nation. That is what recognition is. Governments decide who to sign treaties with all the time and those treaties give recognition. The US government is not deciding who is legitimate as these sovereign tribes were always sovereign, even as they were forced to move off their lands and onto reservations, even as programs were developed that forced assimilation, they still maintained their political distinction. The US government acknowledged the mistake of forcing the disbandment of tribal governments and restored it with federal recognition of the treaties they agreed to. Enrolled members were always citizens of their respective tribal nations and that citizenship should be recognized. --ARoseWolf 11:41, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

• I see it has been obliquely mentioned, but worth a direct link to WP:UKNATIONALS. CMD (talk) 14:01, 19 June 2024 (UTC)