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At Maine gubernatorial election, 2018, User:MAINEiac4434 contends that a donation from an individual to a candidate equals an endorsement and thus should be included under that section on the page. I contend that an affirmative statement by the candidate or endorser is necessary to include the article and that including donors as endorsers is a violation of BLP. What are your thoughts?

There are disagreements about the input for the 'political position' parameter of the infoboxes of political parties. See for example Talk:Liberal Party of Canada#Drop "Center-Left", Talk:Democratic Party (United States)#Political position discussion, Talk:Labour Party (UK)#Centre-left to left wing. I have also heard that there have been edit wars over this issue (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics#Removing the 'political position' field from the party infobox).

The issue was also discussed at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)/Archive_27#Political_position. The question is whether this parameter should be removed. RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 09:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC). VarunSoon (talk) 07:42, 18 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Causes too many problems and endless edit-warring. I think we should also remove the "ideology" field for similar reasons. Number 57 09:30, 18 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • For an example of why this parameter is such a pain in the arse, take a look at the history of Blue and White (political alliance) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). The position section has been endlessly changed since the article was created with some editors claiming it's centre-right and some centre-left. There was a talk page discussion and there's even a note left in the code to ask people to stop changing it and refer to the talk page, but it hasn't stopped the shenanigans... Number 57 20:58, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I'm a bit reluctant to argue in support mainly because I view it as usually helpful to ordinary readers, but concur that this is a frequent source of edit-warring and editorial disputes that are a waste of everyone's time. In my view, at the very least, the bar for sourcing should be raised (where possible, using academic sources as opposed to merely news articles and print sources that happen to use certain terms), especially in view of the fact that it's easy to cherry-pick a small minority of sources that describe parties as being a certain ideology/position otherwise, even if it implies that the field would be left blank. I'm especially not a fan of using the same source (Nordsrieck) across dozens/maybe hundreds of articles for this purpose. Mélencron (talk) 13:02, 18 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• @Mélencron: I don't think that the academic sources are in agreement with each other either. That is because, at least in my view, the one-dimensional left-right political spectrum is inadequate for sorting political ideologies (where would you place libertarianism, for instance?). It is not clear what is the necessary characteristic(s) for an ideology or a political party to be categorized as left-wing or left-leaning, or to be categorized as right-wing or right-leaning. Is the left defined by social liberalism or by anti-capitalism? Is the right defined by conservatism or by pro-capitalism? I propose that we let the 'ideology' parameter do the informing for readers. VarunSoon (talk) 21:18, 18 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Support: Given that the project is supposed to be an international resource, and how political position is very much relative to the location of the political "centre" in a given country, it becomes increasingly bad a description of a party's position the more editors see it; the political centre in the UK is not the same as in the US or Canada or Australia (the Democratic Party are rather much more centrist if you placed them on the UK political scale, but are centre-left by US measures), and the political centres there are in turn different to various EU countries, or African countries, or Asian countries, or American countries. As a shorthand, political position is becoming increasingly outdated and is already pointlessly divisive, as it connotes different things to different people (even just between social and fiscal conservatism/liberalism, let alone other descriptions of political ideology). That's not to say that there is no room for it to be discussed in the article prose — as above, it can help situate a party within the relevant national politics — but given that it needs to be explained so as not to be misleading, it has limited informational utility as an infobox field. — Sasuke Sarutobi (push to talk) 13:20, 18 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with you. Determining the political orientation of a party even locally provides crucial context in local politics. For example, last time I was looking into Spain´s election results and saw that the PSOE had the greatest margin of votes but did not win an absolute majority of the seats. I then looked into information of the political position of the parties to see with whom it may make a coalition to govern.Thinker78 (talk) 17:30, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Support, as per nom. Bondegezou (talk) 10:41, 3 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose'. Yes, clearly there is editorial disagreement on political positions of political parties as well as geographic nuances. However, the political positions of political parties is one of the most characteristics of a political party. Should be remove all potentially contentious fields from political parties - then, well, we'll end up with just their name (and maybe not even that). Icewhiz (talk) 14:18, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support for populist parties as the infobox can have left-wing populism or right-wing populism, making the position field redundant. I'd also support for similar cases. I am neutral on other situations, as there are good arguments on both sides. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) wumbolo ^^^ 20:32, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• @Wumbolo: Do you think that the fact, that there is no consensus among political scientists concerning the exact necessary and sufficient conditions for a party to be categorized as being left-wing or right-wing, is an issue for the infobox's parameter? VarunSoon (talk) 03:18, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose Keep the parameter, but use the country's own Overton window instead of the international one. Or, we can use the position the party ascribes to themselves. Or, we can use the position local sources ascribe to the parties. Either way, this is vital information. — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  15:33, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• @Mr. Guye: But what about parties that are libertarian? VarunSoon (talk) 05:23, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• @VarunSoon: I think in the U.S., the Libertarian Party would be considered to be "center", though I defer to the sources. I expect this to be different for Dutch libertarian parties, who would probably be considered "center-right".  — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  03:45, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong opposition - Whether a party is left wing/right wing/center is vital information for the average reader. I support Mr. Guye's idea (of using the country's own Overton window). --MrClog (talk) 16:11, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - this is useful information, and in many cases there is no real dispute over positioning within a country's politics. If there is some dispute, the article can summarise the sources and the field can show the consensus. If there is no consensus on the position of a party, the field can be left blank. Warofdreams talk 15:50, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. I think it is crucial information. Just because people disagree on something doesn't mean that something shouldn't be included. One possible solution is to talk about the position and put in the field the various positions editors believe the party have, with a note, making it required that the position should be in reliable sources. Thinker78 (talk) 17:23, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Christian democracy is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Christian democracy until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:35, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Donald Trump is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Donald Trump until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 11:13, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Barack Obama is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Barack Obama until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 11:17, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In case anyone is interested, see Talk:Chairman#Requested move 8 May 2019. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:18, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See this discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:19, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

I have recently introduced this offer to the reward board and thought that it would be of interest to this WikiProject. To sign up leave a message on my talk page here, or sign up at the Reward Board entry here. (Do NOT edit the page immediately below, which is a transclusion.) Thanks! – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 22:37, 13 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Political science is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Political science until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:46, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have nominated Albert Kesselring for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:16, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Men was recently created and is looking for more participants. -- Netoholic @ 03:27, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]