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Current consensuses and RfCs

Current consensuses:

NOTE: Reverts to consensuses listed here do not count against the 1RR limit, per this discussion including an admin. It is recommended to link to this list in your edit summary when reverting, as ], item .

1. Use File:Donald Trump August 19, 2015 (cropped).jpg as the infobox image until the official White House portrait becomes available. (link)

2. Show birthplace as "New York City" in the infobox. No state or country. (link)

3. Omit reference to county-level election statistics. (link)

4. Lead phrasing of Trump gaining a majority of the U.S. Electoral College and receiving a smaller share of the popular vote nationwide, without quoting numbers. (link, link 2)

5. Use Donald Trump's net worth value of $4.5 billion, and matching rankings, from the Forbes annual list of billionaires (2016 edition), not from monthly or "live" estimates. (link)

6. Do not mention the Jane Doe rape lawsuit. (link)

Open RfCs:

• #RfC: Should social network links be added to the External links section?
• #RfC on including "false" in the lede
• #RfC: Should "Chairman of The Trump Organization" be listed as office in infobox?

Rejiggering the Edit Notice

@Mandruss, JudgeRM, Objective3000, MrX, Edge3, JFG, Coffee, Bastun, Ryk72, and Objective3000: In light of our previous discussion at the 1RR heading here and given the material in the above above section, I think we are going to need a bigger box for all the consensus related material in the article. Would anyone object if we swapped out the box I currently have in the editnotice space for the image with the one below? It has been adopted to reflect all relevant consensus points as of December 2016, and can be tweak by the admin corps as needed to reflect changing consensus in the article. TomStar81 (Talk) 12:24, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Before editing this article, please read the following: The subject of this article is controversial. As a result, certain words or phrases are maintained in the article as a result of predetermined consensus reached on this article's talk page. To avoid edit warring, consensus maintained material can not be removed, altered, or otherwise interfered with unless new consensus is established for the change. Reversions to reinstate any consensus approved material in this article are not counted against the current 1RR sanction in the article, however editors reverting to preserve consensus related material in this article are requested to link to the relevant consensus discussion, relevant rfc, or the consensus number listed below to verify that the reversion adheres to the consensus exemption in this article. As of December 2016, the following are maintained in the article as a result of established consensus: 1. Use File:Donald Trump August 19, 2015 (cropped).jpg as the infobox image until the official White House portrait becomes available. (link) 2. Show birthplace as "New York City" in the infobox. No state or country. (link) 3. Omit reference to county-level election statistics. (link) 4. Lead phrasing of Trump gaining a majority of the U.S. Electoral College and receiving a smaller share of the popular vote nationwide, without quoting numbers. (link, link 2) 5. Use Donald Trump's net worth value of $4.5 billion, and matching rankings, from the Forbes annual list of billionaires (2016 edition), not from monthly or "live" estimates. (link) 6. Do not mention the Jane Doe rape lawsuit. (link)

No objection, but I think it must absolutely include the consensus for 7. Many of his statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies were controversial or false. (link) That's far more important than some of the others on this list. - MrX 12:41, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

And it will when the consensus for #7 is formalized. I'll add it myself if I have to, although if we adopt the template we can add a note in this section (well technically the above section) to the effect that consensus - once established - should be added to the template, or if it is already present, updated in the template. TomStar81 (Talk) 13:00, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I beg your pardon, but consensus is already formalized. There is a standing consensus for the current wording. If it changes (which seems unlikely at this point), then the edit notice can be changed. - MrX 14:59, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

No objection. Bastun 15:10, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I just checked the page using mobile, and this section does not jump out at you. It is not visible as a notice at all. It is merely a heading in the table of contents. You have to click on it to read it. Maybe if we put it at the top of the page without a section heading, like the lede in an article? --MelanieN (talk) 15:32, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

External links

Hello. As everyone knows, Donald Trump's official Twitter account and Facebook account are used personally by him as official comunications to the public. I think the cited links should be mentioned there.

• Donald Trump on Facebook
• Donald Trump on Twitter
• Donald Trump on Instagram

Thank you all. Anjo-sozinho (talk) 03:55, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Please see WP:ELNO#social.- MrX 12:51, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

That will have to be revised if politicians continue to use them as primary communication channels. In the meantime I'm not opposed to some WP:IAR here, at least as to Facebook and Twitter, I don't know about his use of Instagram. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:05, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Anyone is free to propose changing the guideline, but they would need to make some strong arguments for ignoring WP:NOTDIR and WP:LINKFARM. Since these social media links would not improve the encyclopedia, IAR would not apply.- MrX 13:18, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I think the active use of them by the President elect and I, would argue, they are his main means of communication to the public would be reason to violate policy. However, might put up a rfc on this. Casprings (talk) 13:25, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Trump's heavy usage of social media (especially Twitter) makes it permissible in this case, IMO. Edge3 (talk) 14:36, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Let's not confuse issues here. This article is about Donald Trump, not about linking to his social media accounts one by one. Heavy or light use of these accounts still makes linking to all of them irrelevant. Obviously, a factoid can be added to the article that he uses social media frequently, if we have a reliable source that is. But what is the encyclopedic value of painstakingly linking all these accounts to this article? Do we need to spoon-feed the links to the reader for some reason? I can't see any benefits, although I can see clutter in the external links section if that proposal gets accepted. Dr. K. 15:07, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Equivalent to linking to his official website in the infobox, but far less prominent in External links. I differ with the words "painstakingly" and "spoon-feed". ―Mandruss ☎ 15:11, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Still why the clutter? What encyclopedic value do these links have to offer to the reader? Providing a link to these accounts, even in the EL section, implicitly carries the message that the readers are incapable of finding them on their own. It looks like spoon-feeding the links to the readers to me. Supplying links for convenience to readers does not look encyclopedic, at least to me. Dr. K. 15:17, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Same reasoning could apply to the website link. For that matter, everything in the article is something readers are capable of finding on their own, so you might as well argue that the article itself is superfluous. It would be different if he just used social media for the pointless casual chatter that most users use them for (I once saw a woman use Facebook to inform her friends that she had just gotten out of bed and was enjoying her first cup of coffee), but it appears that is not the case. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:36, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

It makes sense to list Trump's Facebook and Twitter pages. He's the first presidential candidate and now president-elect to use them as a means of communication, especially with such heavy use. Trump has already stated he plans to continue to use them to communicate with the American people. They are relevant, and in this instance, Mandruss has made an excellent point with WP:IAR . I don't see this as a violation of policy, but rather as the evolution of the policy as social media gains more prominence with this president. SW3 5DL (talk) 16:32, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Mandruss: Nice attempt at reductio ad absurdum, but here we are not talking about verification of an encyclopedic fact but rather about standalone links to social media accounts. Such links are devoid of WP:V value. The only thing they do is direct the reader to a twitter, facebook, etc. account., not for the purpose of verifying an encyclopedic fact but for the purpose to see the tweets, facebook activity, and so on. That's not needed and it is devoid of encyclopedic value. Dr. K. 16:44, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Hey, no fair with the Latin. If things in External links were needed for verifiability, they would be citations instead. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:46, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Mea culpa. I try to polish my very limited Latin from time to time. :) In any case, yes, since we don't use ELs for verifiability and there is really no compelling reason to have them at the bottom of the article, that's why we have to limit their number per the ELMINOFFICIAL guideline. Dr. K. 16:55, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

From WP:ELMINOFFICIAL: More than one official link should be provided only when the additional links provide the reader with significant unique content and are not prominently linked from other official websites. For example, if the main page of the official website for an author contains a link to the author's blog and Twitter feed, then it is not appropriate to provide links to all three. I don't see Facebook and Twitter links on the website, let alone prominent ones. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:03, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

It is ok to include the official website and perhaps the Twitter link, since you mentioned that it does not exist in the official site. After that, Facebook, Instagram etc. are just the slippery-slope to clutter. Dr. K. 17:13, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I am prepared to ride that slippery slope to Buzznet, Flixster, and Adult FriendFinder if he is shown to use them for substantive communication (or what a significant, non-fringe fraction of the population considers to be substantive per RS). ―Mandruss ☎ 17:24, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't think the President-elect's Twitter feed qualifies as "significant unique content". His notable Tweets are already covered by the press, and everything else is emphemera.- MrX 17:26, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Agree with Mandruss, and others who support inclusion. The arguments against are weak and press coverage, which is largely against Trump, is not reliable. This is an encyclopedia, this is the President-elect's BLP, and his use of social media is relevant and the links to his accounts belong here. SW3 5DL (talk) 17:34, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Should social network links be added to the External links section?

Donald Trump's official Twitter account and Facebook account are used personally by him as official communications to the public. He has stated that as President, he will continue to use these accounts to communicate with the American people. Should links to his accounts be included in this article's External links section? 17:46, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

• Donald Trump on Facebook
• Donald Trump on Twitter
• Donald Trump on Instagram

Support or Oppose

• Oppose - Per WP:ELNO#social, WP:NOTDIR, and WP:LINKFARM. Twitter and Facebook are already linked from the home page of President-elect Trump's https://www.greatagain.gov/official website.- MrX 17:53, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

  Actually, the greatagain.gov website links only to social media accounts owned by the Transition 2017 team, not Trump himself. See Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Trump has separate accounts for his own use. Edge3 (talk) 18:50, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

  Oh, that's a good point. Obviously since this is a biography and not a transition article, the official website listed should be donaldjtrump.com, which does in fact link to all of his social media accounts.- MrX 02:29, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

  That's an even better link. It also includes Instagram. This fully satisfies the phrasing of ELMINOFFICIAL. Dr. K. 02:53, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

  For the BLP-topic of Donald Trump we have (plus about-self-bio), for the CORP-topic of The Trump Organization we have (plus work-bio), for the ORG-topic Presidential transition of Donald Trump we have (plus gov-bio and soon or which are currently 404 errors). Part of the trouble is this page currently has the wires crossed, and we list greatAgain.gov as *the* website. Similar to Ted Cruz where we only list his senate-page, not his still-active campaign-page (Cruz has his fbook + twitr listed however). Contrast with Bernie Sanders where we list bernieSanders.com + sanders.senate.gov within the infobox and also as ELs (plus a fansite about his policy-stances). Old-school wikipedia policy is exemplified by the Tom Hanks page, where we list *zero* social media ELs, despite Hanks having 5m 'likes' and 12m 'followers' on them. We have ELs galore for Bill Clinton, including two clinton-specific-sites, but no social media ones. So it is an inconsistent mess, unfortunately. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 22:27, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose Per MrX and my comments below. Also as MrX stated, the facebook and twitter buttons are clearly visible at the bottom of the official website. They even have a Youtube button. This is a textbook case of not including the social links. Dr. K. 18:17, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - Per above and above. Any idea how many social sites exist? I don't think this is a road we want to go down. Objective3000 (talk) 18:39, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

*Support per WP:ELMINOFFICIAL - More than one official link should be provided only when the additional links provide the reader with significant unique content and are not prominently linked from other official websites. For example, if the main page of the official website for an author contains a link to the author's blog and Twitter feed, then it is not appropriate to provide links to all three. - The links at the bottom of the website's home page are not those proposed in this RfC. Upon clicking them one can see that they are for the transition team, not Trump the man (this is a bio of Trump the man). Has anyone shown that Trump does not use the personal accounts for substantive communications to the public? Not to my knowledge. Do reliable sources cover those communications to a significant degree? I believe they do. Regardless, I don't know that pictures of a bird and a lower-case f at the rarely-seen bottom of a page clear the prominence bar required by ELMINOFFICIAL. Awareness of those logos is far from widespread. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:45, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose after change of infobox website link, per WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, assuming that change stands. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:57, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support Arguments against are weak and outdated. WP:IAR applies here. Time to bring WP into the 21st century and ignore all outdated rules. SW3 5DL (talk) 18:53, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support per WP:ELOFFICIAL: "it may sometimes be appropriate to provide more than one link, such as when a business has one website for the corporate headquarters and another for consumer information." The transition website is separate from Trump's personal social media accounts. Furthermore, Trump's usage of social media has caught a lot of attention from the press. Edge3 (talk) 19:02, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support This ongoing attempt to suppress opposing views, in this case, Trump's very own, need to stop. The entire article is begging for a pov tag while Misplaced Pages is being made into a mockery. if the facts are on your side there is no need to suppress anything on such flimsy basis. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 19:27, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

  What needs to stop are your ongoing WP:AGF failures. There is no evidence of "suppressing opposing views" here, let alone the clear evidence required by AGF. What you're seeing are differences of opinion as to proper use of External links. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:48, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Got an edit conflict posting nearly the exact thing: What needs to stop is these constant attacks against other editors. No one is trying to suppress Trump's views by not putting a link to his Twitter account. Although you wouldn't know it by reading some of the cites given on the political articles; not everything is a conspiracy. Yet another WP:AGF violation. Objective3000 (talk) 19:53, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I note that many of the !votes you call conspiracy come with p&g basis, which you failed to provide in your own !vote. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:56, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose - Per WP:ELNO#social, WP:NOTDIR, and WP:LINKFARM. People can go to his official website for links to these. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 21:23, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

  His official website does not link to his personal social media profiles. There are separate social media accounts for his transition team. Edge3 (talk) 22:24, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

• Support as notable sources of information about the subject (especially given that every tweet from The Donald begets a 10,000-word WP article… ) — JFG 22:26, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support. He uses them to communicate directly with tens of millions of people and often the mainstream press will pick up what he says it a tweet and make it front-page news. His twitter account is probably the most important twitter account in the world right now and it should be included in the external links section. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:29, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support Trump's use of social media in the way he is using it (as a primary means of communication with the people) as an incoming head of state is unprecedented and the guidelines were not (and could not) have been written with a case such as his in mind. Also, guidelines are guidelines and exceptions can be appropriate, which is, I believe, what we have here. Marteau (talk) 15:56, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
• Comment If we're going to link to these in ELs then shouldn't there be a prose paragraph about it in the text itself? Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:24, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, definitely. I'm surprised Trump's characterization as "the social media candidate" is not yet mentioned in the article. — JFG 18:19, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

• Support as to Twitter, Oppose as to Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit, VampireFreaks, NextDoor, Couchsurfing, WeeWorld, Plurk, et cetera. Because...Donald Trump's Twitter site is a subject of immense media and public interest, and if it's not in the External Links then it ought to be in the Infobox.Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:30, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support as to Twitter and Facebook (and YouTube). For permanency; we can expect the Infobox Website data to get reverted back to the (outdated) campaign site from time to time. Oppose as to Instagram; see his current Biography page, "Meet The President Elect", President Elect Donald J. Trump, which shows Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube only. --Dervorguilla (talk) 21:24, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose social media sites as External Links, except perhaps for Twitter as a second "official site". I would look favorably on proposals to change ELNO to be less restrictive in most regards, but as of now it applies. That said, I think that there is much good sourcing for an extensive section on Trump's social media presence, and it should include these accounts as citations to the primary sources, providing secondary sources citing each of those primary sources are given also. Potentially this could even end up including a table of social media links in that section, listing various data like number of followers or frequency of use. Wnt (talk) 23:43, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

ELNO is of course a guideline for which exceptions in unusual cases are explicitly permitted. Trump is by anyone's reckoning unusual ;) Marteau (talk) 04:11, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

• Support. He uses them to communicate directly with tens of millions of people and often the mainstream press will pick up what he says it a tweet and make it front-page news. For example, his twitter account is probably the most important twitter account in the world right now and it should be included in the external links section. Anjo-sozinho (talk) 03:32, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

• Weak Oppose First, as a procedural matter, the RfC statement strikes me as non-neutral in tone, seeming to advocate rather clearly for one of the proposed options. Second, the term "official" as it is used in the second instance of the first sentence is clearly meaningless. If we are talking about Donald Trump as a private citizen, then what makes any kind of social media channel more or less "official" for a given individual? If we are talking about Donald Trump as the president-to-be, then no, it won't be an "official" channel in any sense, short of a formal administrative order; the fact that Trump is committed to continuing to use these accounts does not, in any legal or formal sense, make them official channels of the Office of the President, just because he occupies it while he is using them. Now, Trump could, theoretically, perhaps change that (though there are actual substantial reasons why that may be infeasible or even illegal to do so), but we have no reason to presume he will.

But those are all just incidental concerns about the way this issue has been framed. My actual substantive reason for opposing is that I don't think these links would represent useful supplemental resources for an encyclopedic summary of the topic, which I believe is a baseline evaluation that should apply to all of our content, even the outward-facing links. Clearly we will, with some frequency, be covering the content of Trump's tweets for at least the next four years--although, hopefully in a majority of cases, only after they have been covered reliable secondary sources. But just pointing at the accounts strikes me as an indiscriminate and context-less offering just for the sake of promoting everything the man has (or will) say on the account, without any encyclopedic framing. It will also open the door on validating social media accounts as de-facto acceptable links in other articles and in other contexts, an issue that I feel the broader community ought to weigh in on before greenlighting.

It's a tough call for me, because I generally view the external links section as a field for assisting our readers in reaching information that they may be interested in and which shouldn't be included in a Misplaced Pages article for any of a number of reasons, but on the balance of factors, I think this particular variety of link should be avoided. At the very least, we absolutely should not list it as an "official" page for Donald Trump, as this could easily mislead the reader into thinking it is an official instrument of the head of state and government of the United States, which it absolutely is not. Snow 05:17, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose Per Snow, very well stated. I have read all of the arguments and find this a slippery slope that could create a bad precedent for the encyclopedia.  g@rycompugeek  talk 12:53, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

While I totally appreciate the slippery slope argument, it can also be contended that our beloved encyclopedia should evolve with the times and reflect current means of communication. In 2005 your identity was a web site, in 2015 it's a social media profile. I believe that infoboxes about notable persons should list one social media account of their subject; it's usually fairly obvious to determine which platform is the subject's main outlet. Maybe a debate on Template talk:Infobox person would be the better venue? — JFG 14:23, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes it would be.  g@rycompugeek  talk 18:41, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

As an aside, I'm not sure the word evolve fits. Evolution generally moves toward more complex forms. I wouldn't characterize communication via tweet rants as evolving. An editor on one of the political pages suggests we stop using the "obsolete" NYTimes or WaPo as RS and start using far-left/right wing "news" sites since this is where younger people get their news. Evolution is slow partly because most changes fail, allowing the few that are actual improvements to thrive. Objective3000 (talk) 14:34, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Regardless of any editor's individual judgment on the validity of "tweet rants", the issue of documenting the preferred public outlets representing notable people is a legitimate question for the wider Wikipedian community to ponder… I for one would consider Edward Snowden's Twitter feed as highly relevant to his biography and infobox. There has been a similar debate for inanimate objects such as space probes, although that's a bit more far-fetched. Regarding your discussion of RS, I think the current guidelines are fine. — JFG 14:54, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Snowden as his situation allows little other communication. Trump has pretty much all communication mechanisms at his disposal as he sits in the bully pulpit. And, I'm fine with current RS guidelines. Objective3000 (talk) 15:18, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

• Support - Assuming that Donald Trump on Twitter is a red link, the bare minimum would be inclusion of the Twitter feed, which is part of his essential essence. Carrite (talk) 15:09, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
• Strong support for Twitter, due to the importance of this form communication from the subject of this article; weak support for the others. Deli nk (talk) 15:27, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose based more or less on what Snow says above. The purpose of wikipedia is primarily to provide encyclopedic information, or information which would be of use to individuals seeking what is basically encyclopedic information, which is what so far as I can tell external links are supposed to provide. Few if any social networking sites provide such information, and much of the information that they might contain which might be useful to someone seeking encyclopedic information will probably be presented without clear context as to what is being said. If information on one of those sites is clearly of encyclopedic utility, I have very very little doubt that rather quickly some more reliable source will discuss it, and very possibly even quote in toto. John Carter (talk) 18:19, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support. Summoned by bot. Given Trump's well-known and widely reported use of social media I think such links are both encyclopedic and necessary.

Coretheapple (talk) 21:44, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

• Support per WP:ELOFFICIAL LavaBaron (talk) 01:24, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support Summoned by bot. I am with Coretheapple no this one - Trump's made it pretty apparent that social media is the most effective way for him to get his message across to the people of the world. While I think it may be inappropriate to cite his social media in the body of the article, I think at the very least it is worth having his social media accounts listed as external links at the bottom of the page. Cheers Comatmebro User talk:Comatmebro 21:04, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support It's useful for people to have links to his social media there, so they don't have to go to his website. It would only add a few lines, and wouldn't crowd anything up. _{Adotchar| reply here} 21:35, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support for Twitter, given the amount of coverage it receives. Oppose for the remainder as there's been no substantive argument for why they are in any way remarkable. TimothyJosephWood 16:58, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support - WP:ELOFFICIAL trumps WP:ELNO#social (no pun intended). Bastun 17:47, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
• I lean towards qualified "support" because it's already clear that these newsfeeds will be favoured over traditional news briefings to journalists. Thus we are almost certainly witnessing a structural change. However, I wouldn't want the use of such links in this article to be a carte blanche for adding them all over the place. What about a formal trial period of, say, six months, with a review on this talkpage at that time? Just one question for the technically informed here: are such link targets stable? Tony (talk) 05:50, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support for Twitter. I agree with the supporters about the relevance to the subject's biography due to the extensive usage of the website and the notoriety of the posts made on it. Saturnalia0 (talk) 09:17, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support for twitter. Trump's use of twitter should be discussed in the article. It is part of many of the key themes of the campaign, and continues to be a unique aspect of his communication with the American electorate. Linking it is linking a unique primary document, rather than a dogpile list of links. Oppose adding facebook, et al. for the rationale that they did not play this unique role. I understand the WP:ELIMOFFICIAL arguments and respect them and, to be sure, I agree I wouldn't want it to be precedent for other pages, but, again, Trump's twitter is unique. Chris vLS (talk) 06:51, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support - Summoned by bot. As Chris vLS noted, I too understand the WP:ELNO argument however, the policy does state that we should "generally avoid" providing external links to social networking sites. "Generally avoid" gives some flexibility for situations like this. Because Trump has specifically stated that he intends to use his social media accounts as a means to communicate with the public, this is absolutely relevant and his accounts are worth linking. What harm does it do including them? Meatsgains (talk) 06:56, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support . We always give the official or principal social media account, regardless of the importance or unimportance of the person,so we unquestionably should do so here. Whether we should include others, depends on their significance; we don't do it as a matter of course. We frequently do for entertainment figures, or others whose media presence is a large part of their importance, so I consider it appropriate here also. DGG ( talk ) 23:56, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support for Twitter, with other social media to be examined on a case by case basis. Mr. Trump uses his social media accounts, Twitter in particular, as instruments for direct communication with the public. He has already made important announcements regarding the form of his future administration and foreign policy via this means. IMHO WP:NOEL was not intended to be applied as strictly as some of the oppose votes seem to believe. Given the degree to which he uses it, and what it is being used for I think failing to link at least his twitter account would violate both longstanding precedent and commonsense. For those appealing to a more rigorist interpretation of NOEL we could also cite WP:COMMONSENSE. Further, I endorse the above comments by Chris vLS and DGG. -Ad Orientem (talk) 00:19, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support Twitter for now, as being plainly relevant and a high profile presence. Oppose the others as much less significant. Trump is known for his Tweets. Guy (Help!) 10:34, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support as to Twitter. As per other commenters, his user of Twitter is a matter of considerable news attention. This is what External Links is for. Neutral as to other social media. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:32, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose, link spam and promotional advertising for a particular purpose, violates WP:NPOV. Sagecandor (talk) 23:05, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• Very reluctantly support inclusion of twitr (only), due to exceptional special circumstances. Primary official website of Donald Trump is www.donaldjtrump.com, but only since early 2015. It existed since 2007, but as a private website and/or email-only domain name, and thus as a *website* has always and only been a campaign-website, not a personal official page. Primary official website of Presidential transition of Donald Trump is www.greatAgain.gov, but only since November 2016. Primary official website of The Trump Organization is www.trump.com -- but none of these (donaldjtrump/greatagain/trump.com) currently link to his twitr and fbook feeds. Nor have they ever done so, that I could tell. With beyonce we link only to www.beyonce.com, because her main website links to her social media accounts. With Tom Hanks we do NOT link to his official website (he may not have one), and we do NOT link to his 12m-follower twitr nor his 7m-likes fbook ... which is probably INCORRECT because although those are not encyclopedic content, neither in beyonce.com! ELs are supposed to be "helpful to the reader, minimal , meritable, and directly relevant". Linking to Tom Hanks's fbook-or-twitr would be helpful (readers would want it), minimal (no official website), and directly relevant (about Hanks), but might not be "meritable" since they are technically unofficial (albeit blue-check-verified) and violate WP:LINKSTOAVOID #10. So what is the deciding factor? Sources almost never mention that Tom Hanks has a twitr URL, google-news search returns 24 hits. Donald Trump is a similar case: effectively he has no official website (despite his corp-job site and his guv-job site and his campaign-site) which links to his twitr, and if anything realDonaldTrump *is* the closest thing he has to an official website. Linking to Trump's twitr would be minimal (because no 'official' one links to it), as well as directly relevant and 'helpful' to the readership (they will want it). And there is merit, which overrides LINKSTOAVOID#10 and the unofficial nature, because google-news has 1400+ hits. Reliable sources pay attention to Trump's twitr feed, but not to Tom Hanks's twitr feed. Since no "official" Trump website links to his twitr, and since his twitr is close to being his quasi-official internet homepage, we should link to it. Still support keeping www.greatagain.gov as the infobox-link (until January when it will become whitehouse.gov) since that is what MOST readers will be here looking to find, but the twitr should be in the EL section... and probably as the first external link, followed by his transition-team-link www.greatagain.gov (his twitr is ALL about him whereas the transition team is mostly about cabinet-picks and only secondarily about Trump qua Trump). 47.222.203.135 (talk) 10:26, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, and not a vehicle for BLPs to use "as instruments for direct communication with the public". Jschnur (talk) 00:56, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Closing the RfC

The RfC template has been removed as the discussion period has timed out. (30 days) Furthermore, it seems there have been no additional comments since December 19, more than one week ago. Should we ask somebody to close this discussion? Edge3 (talk) 05:02, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Done. Now #31 in line. I recently saw an RfC at Village Pump hatted at the time the close was requested, and that stood until the close 5 days later. I guess everybody agreed that there was nothing else that could be said, and/or was preoccupied with the holidays. I don't see why an RfC should be shut down after 30 days, although it sometimes takes up to a month for one to be closed after the request has been submitted (I think that one got expedited because it was a high-profile one). ―Mandruss ☎ 07:40, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

FYI I had already filed a close request a bit earlier. They have now been merged. — JFG 09:57, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Chairman position in infobox

RfC on including "false" in the lede

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The current wording has been in the lede since September and was based on this RfC: Talk:Donald Trump/Archive 26#RfC: Donald Trump's false campaign statements. Recent discussion here has suggested it may be time to take another look at that wording. Based on that discussion I propose four options. (The number of references may be excessive; that could be trimmed before putting it into the article.) MelanieN (talk) 23:44, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Options

Option 1: Keep the existing wording:

Many of his statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies were controversial or false.

Option 2: Remove "false" from the existing wording.

Many of his statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies were controversial.

Option 3: Proposed new wording:

Trump made many controversial statements, and a relatively large number of them compared to other candidates were evaluated by fact-checking services as false.

Option 4: Same as proposed new wording #3, but with an additional sentence (proposing two versions, exact wording to be worked out if this option is chosen):

4_A. Partly as a result, and partly due to his existing status as a celebrity, Trump received more media coverage than any other candidate.

4_B. Along with his existing status as a celebrity, such statements resulted in Trump receiving more media coverage than any other candidate."

Option 5:

Trump made false statements 78% of the time according to the Washington Post. (see Washington Post reference listed in the box below) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Usernamen1 (talk • contribs)

Option 6: NEW Same as #1, but with attribution (non-WikiVoice) due to the generalization and quantification:

Many of his statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies have been characterized as controversial or false.

NEW

Late addition: Option 1A

Many of his statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies were controversial or false.

Late addition: Option 1B

Many of his statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies were controversial or false but those news sources do not accuse Hillary Clinton of controversial or false statements.

Option 1B is to provide context and because I believe Misplaced Pages editors may be trying to make that inference. There could be an option 1C that adds "but those news sources also accuse Hillary Clinton of controversial and false statements" but I don't know if that is true. Usernamen1 (talk) 18:39, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

References

1. ^ "The 'King of Whoppers': Donald Trump". FactCheck.org. December 21, 2015.
2. ^ Holan, Angie Drobnic; Qiu, Linda (December 21, 2015). "2015 Lie of the Year: the campaign misstatements of Donald Trump". PolitiFact.com.
3. Finnegan, Michael (September 25, 2016). "Scope of Trump's falsehoods unprecedented for a modern presidential candidate". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
4. Cillizza, Chris (July 1, 2016). "A fact checker looked into 158 things Donald Trump said. 78 percent were false". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
5. Dale, Daniel; Talaga, Tanya (November 4, 2016). "Donald Trump said 560 false things, total". Toronto Star. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
6. Finnegan, Michael (September 25, 2016). "Scope of Trump's falsehoods unprecedented for a modern presidential candidate". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
7. Cillizza, Chris (July 1, 2016). "A fact checker looked into 158 things Donald Trump said. 78 percent were false". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
8. ^ Gass, Nick (June 14, 2016). "Study: Trump boosted, Clinton hurt by primary media coverage". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
9. ^ "$2 Billion Worth of Free Media for Donald Trump". The New York Times. March 15, 2016. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
10. ^ Sides, John (September 20, 2016). "Is the media biased toward Clinton or Trump? Here is some actual hard data". Washington Post. Retrieved 12 December 2016.
11. Finnegan, Michael (September 25, 2016). "Scope of Trump's falsehoods unprecedented for a modern presidential candidate". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
12. Cillizza, Chris (July 1, 2016). "A fact checker looked into 158 things Donald Trump said. 78 percent were false". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
13. Dale, Daniel; Talaga, Tanya (November 4, 2016). "Donald Trump said 560 false things, total". Toronto Star. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
14. Finnegan, Michael (September 25, 2016). "Scope of Trump's falsehoods unprecedented for a modern presidential candidate". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
15. Cillizza, Chris (July 1, 2016). "A fact checker looked into 158 things Donald Trump said. 78 percent were false". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
16. Dale, Daniel; Talaga, Tanya (November 4, 2016). "Donald Trump said 560 false things, total". Toronto Star. Retrieved December 8, 2016.

Survey

You can comment briefly on each option if you wish, such as "prefer option #X", "option #X is acceptable", "Oppose option #X". Threaded discussion should go in the next section for ease of reading.

• Option #1 as that best fits WP:NPOV since multiple high quality WP:RS reflect that view. We can cobble at least a dozen sources to support this. Would compromise with option #3 if necessary, but the excessive wordiness and qualifications seems too much. Strong oppose to #2 as it is, at best, incomplete. EvergreenFir (talk) 23:49, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 2 I think the word "false" may well be excessive, as to declare something "false" means, more or less, that the person/entity doing the review made a thorough review of all relevant facts and determined that the claims were, in fact, false. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases of politics, it isn't the case that all relevant facts are necessarily always available. I might also support option 3, if perhaps the word "false" were changed to "unsupported," which I think is probably a more accurate description of the conclusions of the reviews which have been made. John Carter (talk) 00:19, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Follow-up: The phrasing of option 3 is unfortunately, vague. "...and a relatively large number of them compared to other candidates" leaves open exactly what are we comparing, and would be improved by saying something like "compared to the statements of other candidates," or "compared to those of other candidates," or similar. 4, being dependent on 3, I can't support based on problems with 3. 6 might work, but might need some clarification that it is referring to statements he made in the campaign, unless data as it comes in supports that his accuracy remains as weak as it had been during the period between the election and being swore in and, possibly, in office. John Carter (talk) 15:41, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

• Option #1 - as EvergreenFir said, this is amply supported by multiple, high-quality, reliable-sources, and is extremely important in the context of Trump's career. The historic significance is underscored by the large number of sources describing the level and consistency of the false statements as unprecedented. To omit it would be extremely misguided. Like EF, I would compromise with Option #3 if necessary, but it is needlessly wordy. I strongly oppose #2. Neutrality 05:31, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #3 because we need to have a neutral tone. Alternatively, I wonder if an alternative to "false" could be found that better describes the issue, e.g., "unsubstantiated".--Jack Upland (talk) 09:29, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #4 I think we should mention that they are false, as it is non a violation of neutrality policies if they are. However I do agree with that should have the extra sentence to clarify why it happened, but I believe it could be more concisely written as Partly as a result of his existing celebrity status and not as Partly as a result, and partly due to his existing status as a celebrity which was proposed. Emir of Misplaced Pages (talk) 14:11, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #1 It is what it is, and Misplaced Pages is not censored. We don't need to hide or obscure this important fact with weasel words. I acknowledge John Carter's point that some of what Trump has said (and the subsequent fact checking) is open to interpretation but there's a sufficient number of unequivocal, blatant falsehoods to warrant the current wording with no fear of bias. WaggersTALK 15:02, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #1 Backed up by multiple WP:RS and WP:CENSOR.Casprings (talk) 15:10, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #1 This would seem pretty straightforward. Not only is it amply supported by reliable sources, but also it has been a relatively stable sentence in a contentious article for over two months. For editors concerned with the word "false", perhaps it might be better to rewrite the sentence to instead use "falsehoods" (a common word used by fact-checking organizations). Arguments for removing "false" are pretty absurd. Multiple reliable sources over a long period support the position that Donald Trump lies on a regular basis, so I would say it is a kindness to Trump to say that many of his statements are "false" or "falsehoods" when it is clearly understating the egregiousness of his legendary mendacity. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:53, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

  It's only been stable because we're not allowed to change it. I'd be edit warring right now if it wouldn't result in a ban. Morphh 21:38, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

• Option #1 That's what the RSs say. Objective3000 (talk) 20:02, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #1 per all of the above except the "not censored" part. This has nothing to do with WP:NOTCENSORED as I understand it. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:40, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #3 per WP:DUE. Substantially the same as #1, but clearer. I think most readers understand that the major fact-checkers are as close to Objective Truth as we ever get, so this is not the usual attribution as "someone's opinion". They understand that those evaluations are the results of reasonably rigorous research, and that they haven't survived as major fact-checkers without fairly good track records for accuracy. Option #3 tells the reader where we got our information, and that this is not merely the consensus view of a group of Misplaced Pages editors. Further, the words "a relatively large number of them compared to other candidates" are important. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:14, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Prefer #4_B/4_A + #3, would accept #3 alone however... against #2 as whitewash, against #1 as logically a sin of false numerical equivalence, #6 is a slight improvement, #5 is good faith but suffers from over-specificity and selection bias. The fundamental bug in option#1 is that is says "many of his statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies were controversial or false" which can logically be simplified to say "many of his statements were false". The problem is not the word 'false' here, that is not disputed, the problem is the word 'many'. Compared to what? Compared to other candidates? Compared to the 1804 election when candidates were accused of being satanists? According to whom? WaPo? Rival candidates for the Republican nomination? Too many questions here. Option#2 avoids the problem, by keeping 'many' but removing 'false'. Option#4-and-#3 attempts to solve the problem, by splitting 'many...controversial' away from the 'some...false' language, which is an improvement. It is still weasel-words, but it is no longer as biased. It is hard to argue that Trump never said any outright false things, or against their being relatively enough of them that it deserves mention in the lead-paragraphs. It is *also* hard to argue that he said an EQUAL NUMBER of controversial things, as the number of things he said that were outright false; practically every single thing he said was controversial to somebody, whereas the things he said that were false did not rise to *quite* such quantitative heights. Option#1 conflates two things together, and omits that they are substantively distinct in quality AND quantity. To be crystal clear, I do not particularly care if 'some...false' is the qualifier used. I would also be happy with 'many...controversial' followed by 'an unprecedentedly vast number of...false' statements, because that gives the flavor of what we are talking about here. Trump is much more controversial than other candidates, and also much more prone to falsehoods than other candidates, not just in 2016 but in the past N generations. But it is unfair to paint his quantity of falsehoods, as being equal in number to his quantity of controversial statements. That is what option#1 does, and what option#3 (plus #4) attempts to correct. I consider this to be a question of following the WP:Accuracy_dispute guideline. Like the comment by EvergreenFir and Neutrality mention, I am happy to see the wordy choices of "a relatively large number of them compared to other candidates were evaluated by fact-checking services as false" be cut down, and I see little wrong with saying "a relatively large number of falsehoods". Or taking a cue from John Carter, "a relatively large number of unsupported statements and outright falsehoods." But the key word is 'relatively' here, and the key structural change is splitting 'false' away from 'many...controversial' as used in the just-prior sentence-clause. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 21:11, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Updated to cover #4_B, #5, and #6 (see insertions above). 47.222.203.135 (talk) 23:00, 15 December 2016 (UTC) ...oppose #1_B since it is just flat inaccurate, #1C is not an improvement because it begs the question of why the differential happened and says nothing about the steepness of the differential, plus is probably undue weight since it was Trump-versus-other-repubs for the majority of his campaign June 2015 to May 2016 and only a two-way campaign after Sanders suspended, aka June 2016 to early November 2016. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 22:15, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

• Option #6 (just added), but could agree to Option 3 and 4. Would also be fine with including fact checker attribution to 6 and I'm fine with alternative terms to false. Added a new option 6, because I didn't like any of the others. We can't leave #1 because it's in WikiVoice and the generalization of the body of statements and the selective assessment of statements is someone's judgement, which makes it subjective. It needs to be attributed outside of WikiVoice Morphh 21:18, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #1, seeing as nothing seems to have changed regarding its validity. Oppose #2 strongly unless someone can demonstrate that the veracity of his statements has changed; if it hasn't WP:DUE requires the inclusion of the material. The "reference frame" of NPOV compliance (=when an article is neutral) is set by reliable sources, not by some kind of "balance". About #3, it seemed to me that the veracity of claims is based on comparing the number of falsehoods to the total amount of claims checked, not necessarily between candidates. #4 is claiming that the large number of falsehoods in his claims is merely a matter of the base rate fallacy, in these terms - if nobody can substantiate that the base rate fallacy is indeed the reason why so many of his statements have been deemed false, oppose #4 as a misrepresentation. #5 seems like it may run afoul of WP:UNDUE unless that percentage - and only that percentage - is discussed by many other sources. About #6, I don't think the comments on the veracity of his statements fall under the scope of WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV at all. And if memory serves, when people talk about Trump's statements being often incorrect they are talking about the statements being incorrect, not just about people calling them incorrect. So unless that memory is incorrect, oppose #6 as well as a misrepresentation. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:31, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #6. Not #1. Historical note: Trump purposely made many statements that were false, outlandish, and offensive so as to divert Clinton into focusing her campaign message on his temperament rather than on economic change, causing her to lose the Rust Belt. Michael Scherer, "Donald Trump: The Person of the Year", Time, December 19, 2016. --Dervorguilla (talk) 02:23, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #1 because it's true and not any less neutral than the other options. However, I would accept option #2 as well because "controversial" can encompass the falsehood of many of his statements in his campaign. κατάσταση 04:07, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 2 - Though option 6 would also handle the statement being too broad and vague a statement phrased as fact -- which does not fit with WP:V where support is Op-Ed viewpoint expressions. Actually my impression was that Hillary was the one more characterized as 'deceptive' and that Trump was more 'controversial or offensive' (and sometimes just called nuts). Markbassett (talk) 05:58, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1 and don't really think this RfC is warranted since we already had one.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:05, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1 It is certainly well-sourced and the mainstream media agrees fully, which is how Misplaced Pages works. Plus, it highlights for the reader and draws Attention with a capital 'A' to the in general political sensibilities of Misplaced Pages editors, their consensus and their completely understandable animosity towards pretty much everything Trump says. Although we cannot explicitly alert the reader to the nature of Misplaced Pages consensus and how it is reflected in political articles, indirect indications such as this will suffice as an alternative and serve a useful purpose. Marteau (talk) 14:12, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1, largely per EvergreenFir. Option 3 is not terrible, but it's wordy and amounts to putting the source into the sentence, which shouldn't be necessary. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:37, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• not option 4 Due to the heated nature of this talk page, I am now limiting comments only to the first 1-2 sentences of the lede except I am making a small exception. Option 4 raises issues that appear to be opinion. That is not to say that other options contain opinion but attention was given to other non-celebrity candidates. Usernamen1 (talk) 04:15, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 2 - It's is not our role to call out things as "false" or "true", it's not even for us to say that things are "controversial". These are opinions, and carry that kind of weight when we use those phrases. We can point out that people disagree with Donald Trump or have made claims to the contrary of what he has said, but any phrasing such as the words I put in quotes denotes a kind of opinion, a choosing of sides as to who is right and who is wrong. Even Hitler's Misplaced Pages page introduction does not use the word "controversial" to describe him, it relies on facts of what was done and by whom and to whom. Simply say that people disagree with Donald Trump and have opposed him, and have done with it. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 04:24, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option Zero – Remove the sentence entirely. Given the walls of text consumed in this new debate as well as in prior ones, this sentence looks irremediably flawed. The article text in the campaign section accurately explains his way of speaking, the exaggerations and untruths, the findings from fact-checkers and the impact of this unprecedented approach on Trump's coverage, with the New York Times going so far as admitting to drop "normal" journalism ethics because Trump's campaign was "not normal". I have not seen a proposal yet which would accurately reflect this part of the article contents in the lead section, as we should. Instead, we've got this blanket characterization that "many statements were false" backed by 5 different citations (as if we have to prove it to readers) and no space for a finer analysis. Yes, Trump says weird things, which contributed to his popularity and his eventual election, but also to the backlash against him. No, his words should not be taken literally, and Misplaced Pages should not fuel the fire of controversy. — JFG 07:45, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1/4: Preferably without "controversial", as that is a separate issue which is harder to quantify objectively - i.e., something like "He frequently made false statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies. Partly as a result, and partly due to his existing status as a celebrity, Trump received more media coverage than any other candidate." zzz (talk) 09:00, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 4 is my preference, Option 3 is also fine. I don't much care for #1 (because it generates too much argument) or #6 (we don't have to soften "controversial" by saying "characterized as", everybody agrees his statements were and are controversial), and I oppose #2 (because it omits "false") and #5 (inappropriate for the lede). --MelanieN (talk) 20:16, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 4B - This wording contrasts Trump with other politicians in the past and explains why his "False" statements are important. By leaving "Opinion 1", it creates an illusion that Trump is the only candidate who had said controversial and/or false statements. Yoshiman6464 (talk) 02:52, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 2 as the term "false" as it used is POV. The fact that we even have this discussion points out that "false" is not unequivocal. It is by definition, therefore, a non-neutral POV. That cannot be erased by how passionately people hold that view so it needs to be removed. --DHeyward (talk) 03:20, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1 as it is concise and accurately states what fact checkers and major RS have said. Strong Oppose to Option 2 as it is misleading and post-factual.Daaxix (talk) 05:10, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 3 or Option 4. Option 1; WP:DUE. Option 5 is inappropriate, Option 6; same reason as Option 1. _{Adotchar| reply here} 10:32, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option #2 or just remove that line totally. Something like this would never get into obama's page that he lied about obamacare. (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/) KMilos (talk) 16:11, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
  • WP:NOTAFORUM, WP:OTHERSTUFF. !Votes which are not based on policy but merely personal preferences are appropriately discounted.Volunteer Marek (talk) 05:05, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
    • It's a relevant example of Misplaced Pages's WP:SYSTEMICBIAS that Obama's "Lie of the Year" award would never be mentioned in his BLP. Why not hold all BLPs to the same standard?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:17, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
• 2 or 6. Saying that a lot of his statements were controversial already strongly implies that the statements were considered by many people to include false material. But if we keep "false" in the lead, it should not be in wikivoice (even better than that would be to replace the controversial word "false" with a specific example or two of his most egregious falsities).Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:35, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
• 1, supported by reliable sources, no need to sugar-coat it. 201.27.125.81 (talk) 03:08, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1 - The preponderance of sources have not backtracked on their original reporting and fact checking in which they concluded that Trump has made many false statements. In the original RfC, fully 33 editors supported the current wording, and their arguments were seen to have more weight than the 21 who opposed it, by a large margin. The only thing that has changed since September is that Trump is now the President-elect. That fact does not change anything about how we should describe the conclusions reached by numerous reputable sources. Sources continue to amplify the fact that Trump "has little regard for the facts" ; that he continues to make false statements ; and in opinions expressed in reputable publications, that he outright lies.. Our responsibility to our readership is to present unvarnished, verifiable facts without sweetening their meaning with euphemisms (option 2), and word salads and equivocation (options 3, 4, and 6). It's ironic that our definition of reliable sources is based on reputation for fact checking and accuracy, yet while no one has challenged the reliability of these many available sources, they still express doubt that the sources actually checked facts. Astonishing.- MrX 15:43, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• Option 1 This is a declamatory statement of mainstream-documented fact. False is a factual statement, not a moral judgment. It's not clear why we are revisiting this, and I hope we don't make a habit of it. SPECIFICO talk 21:11, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1 or Option 3, both are well referenced and well documented and matter of fact and satisfy WP:Identifying reliable sources and WP:Verifiability and WP:NPOV. Sagecandor (talk) 23:07, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1 - existing wording is concise and accurate. --Pete (talk) 01:09, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1 If people are uncomfortable with the word 'false," they should take issue with the source of the statements, not dissemble reality to suit their comfort levels. RL have been overwhelmingly clear in documenting the atomic basis of Trump's many lies. This wording wouldn't even be controversial hadn't he become a politician and improbably enough, the presumed president elect. (I'm user AgentOrangeTabby, but can't reset my PW right now). 71.91.30.188 (talk) 02:49, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 2 or remove entirely. Unnecessary non-neutral commentary, exists only to poison the well. -70.162.247.233 (talk) 07:11, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
• None; my thoughts mirror JFG's almost to the word. FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 14:22, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1 - Concise, supported by reliable sources, and gives WP:DUE weight reflecting the relative importance of this topic. Option 2 and 6 are acceptable, but I still favor Option 1. Options 3-5 are too lengthy for the lead. If we cannot reach consensus, then I would also be fine with removing the sentence entirely. Edge3 (talk) 03:43, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
• Option 1 There is no question about this. There has already been plenty of discussion about this and the previous RFC. Cited from multiple RS, obvious, factual. Do I really need to go into detail here? It's the truth and we don't need to whitewash it. Centerone (talk) 08:33, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

• Irrespective of references, "false" inevitably reads like the judgement or opinion of the person who wrote the article. For this reason, wording such as "were evaluated by fact-checking services as false" is preferable. 109.146.248.18 (talk) 03:06, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Should we take this as a comment in favor of option 3? --MelanieN (talk) 18:08, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I interpret it as meaning "definitely against option#1" with some implied lean towards #3, but they might also be happy with #4 or #5 (they don't say). 47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:29, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

• Suggestion – RfCs with several options to choose from rarely end up with a convincing consensus. I would suggest proposing only one variant. Alternately, a more elegant solution might be to remove the iron-clad "this wording has consensus" notice in the code, as it refers to a campaign-time RfC and it is obvious from the discussion above that consensus has changed to a point where there is literally neither consensus today for that wording nor against it. Hence I would suggest closing this RfC as an inefficient process and just let editors play with the wording as they please. Sure, there might be some warring but there also might emerge some creative solution acceptable by most editors. — JFG 07:33, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

  I agree that it's going to be difficult for a new consensus to emerge with a multiple choice RfC, but has the past has shown us, editors frequently make ad hoc proposals in RfCs anyway. I firmly disagree with letting editors play with the wording, given how difficult it was to arrive at the current consensus, and the recent influx of WP:SPA and sockpuppet accounts.- MrX 14:33, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

  Agree with MrX. Something this contentious needs the structure and order of the RfC process, and letting editors play with the content often results in the content being determined by those with the most endurance, not a good way to determine content. If the RfC could be better framed, start over and reframe it. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:51, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Also, to abandon any consensus version and just let editors "play with the wording as they please" would be incompatible with the Discretionary Sanctions in effect at this page. --MelanieN (talk) 18:05, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I think the RfC being held is just fine, although the outcome will be ambiguous (because people will leave short comments only giving their opinion on one aspect). Once this RfC is over, rather than implementing immediately whatever the closer believes was the outcome, it might be a good idea to do as JFG suggests, and have a yes-or-no type of RfC on whatever language is the "winner" from this multi-choice RfC process. We may end up with option#1 being the winner from this discussion, and then have a yes-or-no discussion about whether option#1 is still the consensus... and if *that* future discussion ends in no consensus for change, well then, in some ways we wasted our time. But simply having the shortlist of four (or five) options, that THIS current RfC has formulated, is itself helpful; it narrows down the problems people have with the extant September-consensus wording. Which will be useful a year from now, when and if this comes up again. Nobody said wikipedia is an efficient process! JFG should know that from participating in earlier talkpage discussions here.  :-) Sometimes wikipedia takes a long time to get anywhere. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:29, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Sometimes wikipedia takes a long time to get anywhere - Yes, and that's even without requiring separate debates about whether a consensus is in fact a consensus. That's probably why that is never done (to my finite knowledge, that is). ―Mandruss ☎ 20:46, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes 47.222.203.135 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), I know it all too well, that's part of the charm of this project… Believe it or not, some topics are thornier than Trumpianisms. The epic New York titling debates of 2002–2016 last resulted in "no consensus on whether we have consensus to agree that there is no consensus". For your entertainment: Talk:New York/July 2016 move request. — JFG 22:25, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I stand corrected, it has been done at least once. Short of spending hours researching that at my slow reading speed, it looks to me like certain editors' disruptive refusal to accept a legitimate uninvolved close because it didn't go their way. The solution is policy that forbids that, while providing some recourse to deal with editors who show a lack of competence to close complex debates (that doesn't appear to be the case there). It is axiomatic (but invisible to many) that inadequate process rules result in monumental time sinks around relatively unimportant issues like the title of a single article. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:23, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

• Agree - don't like how it was set up. It guarantees that it stays the same. I added Option 6, but not sure if it's too late for people to review it. The problem with current wording should have been laid out as you can see, people are just going to say it's supported by multiple RS without seeing the problem that the current wording violates NPOV and BLP. Morphh 21:21, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

• About the "option 5" proposal, to cite a percentage of false statements given by one source: I think that is appropriate for the article text but not for the lede. The reason for having it in the lede is that it has been WIDELY reported, by many sources with different numerical results, but the common conclusion that the number of false statements is unusually high compared to other politicians. --MelanieN (talk) 20:41, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• There have been suggestions to replace "false" with "unsupported" or "unsubstantiated". That would misrepresent the sources, which evaluated his false claims by the "pants on fire" standard, meaning provably false - as when he denied ever having said something that he clearly did say. --MelanieN (talk) 20:48, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I think you missed the problem altogether with this RFC. The problem wasn't the word false, it was the use of WikiVoice and quantifying it with a weasel word "many", then applying it to a generalization. As many have said, the RS support that he made false statements. That's not the problem with the sentence. It's taking a judgement about those cherry picked statements and stating as fact a generalization. Morphh 21:45, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
• Not sure if I need to point this out, but the sources used as RS are media organizations that openly supported Clinton. And there are plenty of sources with Trump's team calling them dishonest. So it adds an additional POV element to it and I think !votes that say "the sentence is supported by the RS" should be measured when we're talking about stating this in WikiVoice. Morphh 02:39, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I look forward to your providing equally research-based reports from independent reliable sources demonstrating that Trump did NOT, in fact, tell more lies than the other politicians in this year's contest. ("Trump's team" doesn't count. They are neither independent nor reliable. Of COURSE they disagree - what would you expect them to do?) As for the editorial position taken by the papers, that's irrelevant - as long as they are sources with a reputation for fact checking, accuracy, and independence of the news/reporting side from the editorial/opinion side. --MelanieN (talk) 04:12, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
    • MelanieN well, you could perhaps visit the Fox fact checker, but really the 'fact-checkers' are just not the level of normal journalism reputation for fact checking, accuracy, and independence you seem to think, they are just Op-Eds from external writers to the paper for example Washington Post is in DC which voted 95%+ Clinton. It's an innovative serial format to make use of web journalism, and perhaps worthy to have regular sniping at politician blurbs besides SNL, and for WP use may have WP:WEIGHT of prominence. But it's not due for much more credence and there are enough criticisms on the web about bias and folks taking this too seriously somewhat mentioned at Fact checking. There's just no overall evaluation, or consistent stated basis of evaluation or even of which statements to pick -- it's apparently just whatever of the copious choices spouted that a writer thought most entertaining to review and if it's not badly written ranting or making stuff up it might go forward. I don't even have to go into the fine difference between 'fact', 'evidence' and 'truth' here -- I just have to point to RS sections on WP:NEWSORG and WP:BIASED. Markbassett (talk) 06:47, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
      • No, fact checkers are NOT "Op-Eds". Sort of the opposite in fact. This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how we approach sources. Also, this "Washington Post is in DC which voted 95%+ Clinton" is just ridiculous. Are you seriously saying that we should judge the reliability of sources based on what state/area they're located in? Might want to re-read WP:RSN. In light of such comments your !vote should be appropriately discounted since it is based on complete ignorance of policy.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:08, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

• Volunteer Marek I'll respond in some detail. Fact checkers are opinion articles that should follow guidelines according to my cited WP:RS section WP:NEWSORG. I'm pointing out that stating this line as an article opinion (or else not having the word inquestion) would be more faithful to the WP guidelines and faithfully setting out the cites and that it is only a particular kind of cite involved. Particularly applicable of WP:NEWSORG I think are the bits

"Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (op-eds) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact. "

"Whether a 'specific' news story is reliable for a specific fact or statement in a Misplaced Pages article should be assessed on a case-by-case basis."

"One signal that a news organization engages in fact-checking and has a reputation for accuracy is the publication of corrections."

And as an opinion of statements the WP:RS section WP:BIASED also applies, note particularly "Misplaced Pages articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective." and "When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources, such as editorial control and a reputation for fact-checking. Editors should also consider whether the bias makes it appropriate to use in-text attribution to the source."

• For the Washington Post ... allegations of it as biased or part of general media bias has been mentioned in prominent places such as Media_bias_in_the_United_States#Liberal_bias and MediaMatters.org, so regardless of what you or I may feel, the WP:BIASED guide says to attribute the statement. It seems loosely credible -- the paper is writing from a DC-located viewpoint, has an editorial board that endorsed Clinton including with statements like Trump was "bigoted, ignorant, deceitful, narcissistic, vengeful, petty, misogynistic, fiscally reckless, intellectually lazy, contemptuous of democracy and enamored of America's enemies," and said if he's elected president, "he would pose a grave danger to the nation and the world" here. Though the paper also noted she had issues and printed things like that she tells dreadful lies. (Being a DC paper, perhaps critiquing her skill relative to the rest of DC rather than condemning it ? ;-) )
• The Washington post fact-checker series associated to the paper differs from say the Politifact in that it's a 2-reporter series with a link for outsiders to provide topic suggestions that they pick at will from, includes numerous unrated articles and sort of public information items ('guide to detecting fake news', 'everything you need to know about obamacare', 'what may come up in the debate', etcetera). What they say about how they try to run it is as a 'reasonable person' feeling. They also state that differences in coverage for Trump versus Clinton do exist, with more looking at him since he said more. Demonstrably they only did 3 looks at a Clinton line in October for example...
• Secondary views that are negative about their accuracy have been given -- both structurally that the concept is mostly to criticise which drives into inappropriately doing scores - like rating a SNL skit - or indulging in soapboxing like denigrating Cruz saying (correctly) that the tax code is longer than the bible with "This is a nonsense fact." The George Mason University study about Politifact would seem also true here. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:13, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• MelanieN, The sentence doesn't say anything about other candidates, nor what statements were selected and analyzed. If we were looking at a specific lie, then we could try to find a source that gives a different POV or accept it as such. What we have here is a generalization and quantification, which is fine and IMO an accurate one, but it doesn't make that judgement a undisputable fact. Trump's team can absolutely give their POV on any particular example to say how they think the statement was taken out of context or whatever. Turning it into a generalization can only be combatted with equal generalization, such as the media is dishonest. And there is no shortage or RS on that point, particularly with regard to the RS being used to support the statement. Morphh 14:20, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

• Question about option #6, "have been characterized as controversial or false": I don't think anyone contests that they were controversial, do they? I think it is only "false" that is at issue here. --MelanieN (talk) 04:20, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

  In today's highly polarized American politics environment, it's difficult for a high-level politician to open their mouth and say anything remotely meaningful without it being controversial. I would consider "controversial" a low-value word there, almost noise. In my opinion the word does not convey the meaning supported by RS and appears to be a compromise word that could be dropped with little or no cost to the article. Not that I'm suggestiing yet another option, that can wait for another day and another discussion. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:31, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

  MelanieN - I think 'characterized' is supported as it means only that something was prominently said which is where multiple prominent op-eds would WP:V even where the content is disputed or coming from biased sources. It also is reflecting as noteable a characteristization that it was not the usual platitudes. I think even the Trump camp has characterized the statements as controversial, and even in WP discussions so ironically 'controversial' seems non-controversial. Markbassett (talk) 06:23, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm absolutely okay with Misplaced Pages's voice being used to say "false" because it is an undisputed fact. We don't need "the sky has been characterized as appearing to be blue." -- Scjessey (talk) 13:54, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Is your measure of "many" (a large number relative to truthful statements) a subjective term an undisputed fact? You're using an assessment of select statements (likely controversial ones) which were analyzed by fact-checkers. That's fine, but you can't use that stick to measure the body of his statements without any attribution in WikiVoice. You can't call someone a habitual liar in a BLP in WikiVoice without it being an absolute undisputed fact - like the capital of France is Paris type of fact, not the weasel worded generalized quantified BS we have now. Morphh 14:34, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

This sounds like an argument for option #3 (and I see Mandruss has changed his opinion from #1 to #3). Option 3 cites exactly where we are getting the information - from fact-checking organizations - and the reader can evaluate how much weight they give to the reports of fact-checking organizations. --MelanieN (talk) 15:13, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I voted for #3 as well and I like the #4 addition. I think Dervorguilla added an excellent quote from Time Magazine that is appropriate for the sentence context. My thought with adding 6, was that it was a minimal change to 1 which would make it compliant with policy by taking it out of WikiVoice. Morphh 15:24, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Morphh! But it would be more accurate to say, "Dervorgulla's excellent paraphrase from Time magazine..." :) --Dervorguilla (talk) 05:09, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@Morphh: My measure of "many" is an undisputed fact. Trump makes false statements more often than truthful statements. In fact, the scope of his lying has been described as unprecedented. Many reliable sources (example) go so far as to state lying was part of Trump's campaign strategy. The language we are considering with "option 1" is very generous, because it should say "most of his statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies were lies." -- Scjessey (talk) 18:51, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@Scjessey: I think a reasonable "reality check" would also indicate that we should probably best avoid using clearly prejudicial or judgmental terms, like "lies" without the best conceivable sourcing, particularly when dealing with a BLP who has a tendencey to sue. Some of the other comments above by you, such as the one about how he makes more false statements than true ones, seem to ascribe to you a truly amazing degree of knowledge regarding every word spoken by the man, as it would only be someone who has such amazingly detailed knowledge who would be in a position to be able to determine the relative frequency of accurate and inaccurate statements. And the only "reliable source" among the "many" you allege exist about how "lying" was a part of the campaign strategy is from an editorial, which we rarely if ever consider truly "reliable" for anything other than the opinions expressed.

I am no fan of Trump myself, far from it, but I have to say that some of the comments being made here seem to me to be possibly be problematic in and of themselves, and might merit some sort of review, particularly if they assert things which, apparently, even the sources produced don't necessarily assert. John Carter (talk) 19:37, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

It's not me making these statements. It's reliable sources. I linked to several in my comment. Reliable sources almost universally agree that Trump's public statements are more often lies than truths. That's just a documented fact. That's why I chose "option 1", because any watering down of "false" would be an egregious failure of our duty to the project. -- Scjessey (talk) 19:54, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I disagree that #3 waters anything down; if anything, it adds weight to the statement. It is not the usual hedging that we associate with attribution. I ask that you consider my !vote argument with an open mind. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:15, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Scjessey - re whether "undisputed fact"... Plainly 'false' is disputed even inside the current TALK. More of interest for article phrasing seems whether it is improperly stating an evaluation as an objective fact, is too vague such as whether this mixes in hyperbole and stupidity or which flavor of 'false' or what percentage of true there is, is unclear why the norm of a politician deception is noteworthy for this particular case, and so on. Since the article word seems putting forward a paraphrase specifically of the fact-checker content, then I think any article use of it should make that clear and reflect the WP:NEWSORG guidelines in both handling and attribution stating it as a specific kind of opinion. If the article line is looking for a generally not disputed overall characterization, then I think both parties have said 'controversial' and perhaps also 'sometimes offensive', but clearly disagree about 'false'. If you think the line is not to be only about the prominence of Politifact et al, then WP:NPOV applies and both positive and negative words would go in according to how prominent they were in use -- and I'm seeing "bigoted, ignorant, deceitful, narcissistic, vengeful, petty, misogynistic, fiscally reckless, intellectually lazy, ..." so 'false' might not make the cut.. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 04:25, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Markbassett, disagree that the word 'false' is disputed, by most people commenting here, at least. (If it was changed to 'lies'/'liar' then it would be disputed, especially in Scjessey's extremely loose formulation/summarization that we could theoretically say in wikipedia's voice "over 50% of sentences Trump spoke during 2015 and 2016 were lies" because that is both mathematically incorrect *and* incorrect in the connotation that every false statement by Trump was intentionally false, as opposed to being false-on-the-basis-of-unsupported-by-evidence, false-on-the-basis-of-hyperbolically-decorating-the-plain-truth-for-'impact', or the more usual sort of false-on-the-basis-of-being-incorrect-without-further-clarification-of-meaning as well as false-by-accident.) There is little question that sources *do* very much say Trump said *more* false things than other candidates, in percentage terms and in absolute terms. But it is also the case that, as you point out with your list of negative-words, the bulk of the sources tend to criticize Trump's statements in terms of how controversial they were, WAY MORE than in terms of how truthy they were. The main thrust of proposal #3, as I see it, is to stop lumping the 'many...controversial' things in together with the *different* kind of 'relatively-many...false-things-according-to-fact-checkers'. (Personally I believe we could strip the according-to-fact-checkers-bit, as long as we keep the 'relatively' qualifier.) It is correct to say that the quantity of false things was nowhere NEAR the quantity of controversial things, but it would be borderline-non-neutral to simply remove mention of the high relative percentage of false things compared to other candidates (as #2 does in my view), just as it is inaccurate to lump the false things in with the controversial things as #1 does ("Trump has many apples or bananas" is the problem here... we need wikipedia to be saying that Trump had way more apples relative to other candidates, and also-comma had more bananas plus a higher percentage of bananas relative to other candidates.) Saying that without being too wordy is difficult, but #3 is a good start. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 06:43, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@Markbassett: Most fact-checker organizations use the term "false" with great specificity, when referring to statements that Trump has made that are untrue. There appears to be significant agreement on this talk page that "false" is the most appropriate term. Trump has also made statements that are offensive for a variety of reasons, so the catch-all "controversial" seems appropriate. Again, there appear to be significant agreement on this talk page that "controversial" fits those instances. I would also suggest an argument can be made for using "lie", for those instances where Trump has obviously deliberately said something he knows to be false, as opposed to something where he just didn't have his facts right, but I have chosen not to pursue this line because it is unlikely to get consensus. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:19, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Scjessey - the difference in an article wording TALK is that WP:V for both 'controversial' and 'offensive' exist from Trump and critics, so that wording would be regarded as commonly said (i.e. common meaning both say it). Whether a campaign sub-story (cites Dec 2015- Sep 2016) re 'false' still has enough prominence now to suit the lead would perhaps drive it out, and if it stays perhaps it will be rewritten for this or other reasons. And in a year or so other things may crowd it out anyway. Markbassett (talk) 01:38, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

• Note: Based on a discussion elsewhere, I have added an alternate wording to option #4. If this option is chosen, we can work out the exact wording later. --MelanieN (talk) 17:15, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• Thanks much 47.222.203.135 (talk) 23:09, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• Two general comments in response to the above: 1) We are talking about the lede sentence, so detail and explanation are not appropriate. The detail and explanation go below in the text. The lede summarizes what is in the text. It is unusual to have citations in the lede, but that was recommended by the closer of the previous RfC. 2) It is simply incorrect to state that fact-checking sites are "op-eds". Quite the contrary, they are research-based reporting. They take a statement and compare it to reality. If someone says that Obama proposed admitting 200,000 Syrian refugees, and Obama actually proposed admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees, then the statement's truth or falsity is not a matter of opinion. If someone insists they never said something, and there is video proving that they did, that again is not a matter of opinion. That is the kind of statement that fact-checkers evaluate. --MelanieN (talk) 20:09, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• While it is true that fact-checkers are not op-eds, they can suffer from bias, in particular selection bias where they decide which statements NOT to fact-check (thus altering the final percentages by disproportionately deep-digging for new falsehoods and/or by disproportionately eliding truthful statements on individual candidates). 47.222.203.135 (talk) 23:09, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• Some of it is extremely nitpicky, like saying Trump falsely used the term "acid wash" when referring to "bleach bit" software, or falsely said Obama drew a "line in the sand" in Syria when actually Obama called it a "red line".Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:12, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• NBC News is not what MelanieN is calling "fact-checking sites". But I have no doubt you could cherry-pick some extremely nitpicky stuff from the fact-checking sites. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:53, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• Yes, I could, and will if anyone would like. NBC does fact-checking, so it seems like a fact-checking site, but maybe Melanie meant sites that exclusively do factchecking. Might I suggest that we focus on Trump's biggest falsity, and then consider it for inclusion in the lead, instead of including a vague assertion that smacks of namecalling? What we have now is equivalent to "liar, liar, pants on fire", and it might be better to say that Trump insisted the Earth is flat (assuming he said so), and leave it at that.Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:54, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Melanie - the applicable policy for an evaluation isWP:NEWSORG "Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (op-eds) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact." Without an attribution it's neither clear what the line is referring to and the line is not following WP guidelines.

Secondly - the question of if this is a now past time item or something about a campaign no longer due elevation, may have lead somewhere -- about two thirds of commenters want to reword or delete the line. But it seems those are coming from many aspects and are scattered. It might narrow things down to ask which one folks LEAST want and then pick between the two remaining and work on the specific from there.

And -- you really are giving a fantasy above about fact checkers, but it's not the RFC so I'll suggest you simply accept input was given that opinions about statements are opinion pieces and move along. If you must debate how bad they are more than I've already provided above, then post to my TALK page and we'll see if we can pursue cases. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 01:01, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, User:Anythingyouwant, to answer your question, I do mean "sites that exclusively do factchecking" and that is the kind of source that is provided. And no, User:Markbasset, I do not accept your assertion that evaluating the truth of a statement by checking it against observable reality is an "opinion", any more that it is an "opinion" for a scientist to make a measurement, or a teacher to evaluate a test answer as correct or incorrect. I know that a prominent Trump surrogate recently claimed that "there are no such things as facts anymore," but I do not accept that - and I don't think Misplaced Pages does either. --MelanieN (talk) 01:49, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi User:MelanieN, I don't understand why we would want to prefer full-time fact-checkers to part-time fact-checkers, assuming they are both at reliable sources, but in any event the former can be just as fallible as the latter.. If we want to refer to one as opposed to the other, can we please do so more clearly in the proposed language for the lead? Also, what do you think about the idea of mentioning one or two of Trump's biggest whoppers in the lead, instead of merely a vague accusation?Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:14, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not MelanieN, but I'll answer. It would be backwards to put a couple of examples in the lead instead of the concise summary that is currently there (see WP:LEAD). Trump's reputation for making false statement is not only documented by fact checking organizations. There is a very large body of sources to draw from. The American Enterprise Institute is not a reliable source for checking facts from actual reliable sources.- MrX 16:57, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

What MrX said. --MelanieN (talk) 19:31, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

MelanieN -- Please base on WP guidelines -- WP:NEWSORG is the WP guidance that states any analysis is to be presented as attributed statement, i.e. that persons opinion, and WP:BIASED allowing attributed opinions. As to your beliefs re their nature ... they go against WP guidelines and are demonstrably not a match to the actual pages behavior or considering the points of their critics, particularly the selection bias of their picking is not an overall on the person or organized but seems largely an hot-item-of-the-day being critiqued however they want to. Seems a decent thing to have a place to ridicule politicians -- but also they seem just getting ratings, lack methodology, and just would not rate highly as sources by WP standards.

• For example: (a) "exclusively do factchecking" nope ... Washington Post fact checker current first 19 items are 8 (42%) unrated articles; and even of rated items I see one condemning the internet at large about Pizzagate, and one aggregating up prior items to a worst of 2016 and not a direct check of someone ; and (b) "checking it against observable reality" -- note the lack of written guidance re methods of selection or mechanism of evaluation and subjective scoring. Looking at their first attributed piece "Trump’s outdated claims that China is devaluing its currency" ... they say "China hasn’t devalued its currency for about two years" ... not saying the specific fact there, and since the fact was August 15 of 2015 their "about two years" is exaggerated. That the Chinese currency controls still exist or that no devaluation steps have been needed since dollar has been rising lately were not mentioned as considered, nor is any alternative way to view the statement or any input of the other side. I can go with outdated a bit re 'devaluation' being a year ago, but why they awarded this 4 bad marks of a 'whopper' is unstated and unsupported by any literal metric or method -- it's just their subjective pick. Neither the 'about two years' nor the worst possible rating seem to meet WP norms of documenting, nor would the lack of other views pass the WP norms of NPOV.
• Look, the Post site is just two columnists in a DC market or viewpoint that are writing items to get ratings for their website ... it's a nice enough thing but they're not claiming to be infallible or objective and WP guidance would not give these two columnists a ranking higher than scholarly pieces for the same topics. That at least one scholarly study cited another such site as biased and that other NEWSORG articles flame some of their pieces as ridiculous are demonstrable facts. WP practice does report notable opinions as a notable opinion and so this seems a reasonable prominence to be in the article -- but not as an imagined prefect measure of truth. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 16:53, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Your view of fact checking sources seems to be in the minority here, probably because it's founded on broken logic like source "not claiming to be infallible or objective". I suggest you raise your concerns at WP:RSN.- MrX 17:07, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

What MrX said. --MelanieN (talk) 19:31, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

What MelanieN said. Objective3000 (talk) 19:37, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

What MrX, MelanieN, and Objective3000 said. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:52, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

MarkBassett is pointing out that fact-checkers, just like journalistic organizations in general, can be *biased*. Fact-checkers are almost unique, actually, because their specific mandate is to cherrypick statements which can be proven false. "Donald Trump held a campaign rally in Ohio during December 2016" is obviously a statement, and it obviously has a truth-value (it might be pants-on-fire or it might be mostly false or partially false or whatever). In this case, it is *slightly* controversial because I said 'campaign rally' and technically the campaign season is over, and it was a presidential rally or maybe a presidential-transition-rally, but since it was paid for with leftover campaign funds, I'll rate the statement as Almost Entirely True. Point here is simple: telling MarkBassett to take his concerns to RSN is wrong. The problem is not that fact-checkers are non-reliable (by wikipedia standards), the problem is that we have to be very careful not to say things like "according to fact-checkers Donald Trump is a fucking liar" as some commenters seem to wish we would, when in fact the only way to neutrally phrase it is to say "according to fact-checkers Donald Trump makes way more false statements than other presidential candidates". Note that we CANNOT say, without violating NPOV, that "according to fact-checkers Donald Trump makes way more false statements than Hillary Clinton" unless we are positive that fact-checkers as a group are not suffering from systemic bias. MarkBassett is arguing that is NOT the case, and his argument is not invalid. But just as there are limits to how far you can go, with known-to-be-biased sources, there are also limits on how far we ought to restrict ourselves: comparing Trump vs Clinton is dangerous, because there is evidence that fact-checking-organizations as a group suffer from bias towards one of the parties, or at least, bias against Trump's party. Comparing Trump to not just Clinton, but to all ~~25 candidates (repub/dem/L/G) in the 2016 cycle, and especially to all 100+ major candidates since dedicated fact-checking organizations became a fad, and saying that "Trump makes more false statements relative to other candidates according to fact-checkers" is a perfectly valid summarization. But we have to be careful here, and communicate to the reader what we are actually saying, and what we are actually not. "Trump makes many false statements" is way too weasel-wordy of a summary, we need to be precise, even if that means we need to be a bit more wordy in our summarization. As simple as possible but no simpler. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 10:47, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't see the words "liar" or "Hillary Clinton" anywhere in the options, and I'm lost as to why you are going to such great lengths to argue against language that is not on the table in this RfC. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:09, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Mandruss, the wording was quasi-proposed, in a running argument which started on the 14th and mostly ended on the 15th. So my going to such great lengths, was to try and convince people that were using unsupported / falsehoods / untrue / lies / damn lies / statistics, as if they were identical (and in particular as if fact-checking was unbiased enough to back up *any* of those terms rather than just merely some of them used carefully), should be considered unwise. We have to be careful with our language, because linguistic precision is the coin of the realm here on wikipedia. Only way to achieve neutrality, only way to avoid endless arguments about whether sentences need to be reworded, and so on. Here is the backtrail, in case you care still, and so that it is all in one place should the topic of 'liar' come up again in the future at some point -- not bluelinking these usernames since I'm just verbatim quoting what they said, here on the talkpage earlier in this thread.

• "...Trump did..., in fact, tell more lies than the other politicians in this year's contest ." ... --MelanieN (talk) 04:12, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• "...the Washington Post ... endorsed Clinton ...also noted she had issues and printed things like that she tells dreadful lies. ... Markbassett (talk) 03:13, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• "...You can't call someone a habitual liar in a BLP in WikiVoice without it being an absolute undisputed fact - like the capital of France is Paris type of fact, not the weasel worded generalized quantified BS we have now. Morphh (talk) 14:34, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• "...The language we are considering with "option 1" is very generous, because it should say "most of his statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies were lies." -- Scjessey (talk) 18:51, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• "...I think a reasonable "reality check" would also indicate that we should probably best avoid using clearly prejudicial or judgmental terms, like "lies" without the best conceivable sourcing..." John Carter (talk) 19:37, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• "...Reliable sources almost universally agree that Trump's public statements are more often lies than truths. That's just a documented fact. ..." Scjessey (talk) 19:54, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
• "...If it was changed to 'lies'/'liar' then it would be disputed, especially in Scjessey's extremely loose formulation/summarization that we could theoretically say in wikipedia's voice "over 50% of sentences Trump spoke during 2015 and 2016 were lies" because that is both mathematically incorrect *and* incorrect in the connotation that every false statement by Trump was intentionally false..." 47.222.203.135 (talk) 06:43, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• "...an argument can be made for using "lie", for those instances where Trump has obviously deliberately said something he knows to be false, as opposed to something where he just didn't have his facts right, but I have chosen not to pursue this line because it is unlikely to get consensus." -- Scjessey (talk) 13:19, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• and then my own hypothetical above, wherein I argue that fact-checkers CANNOT be used to support 'liar' because they care nothing for intent (and are biased via the combination of selection bias as well as media bias besides)

To be 100% clear, nobody (not even scjessey who was quite clear on that point) was attempting to add the liar-option, and I expect nobody will. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 22:06, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Partial self-correction, there is a new option containing "Hillary Clinton", added after your comments above. Still no "liar". ―Mandruss ☎ 09:13, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Usernamen1: - Re: 1. Your editsum seems to say that my revert was improper per WP:TPO, but the RfC options are "public domain" and your additions are not "somebody else's comment". 2. As I stated in my editsum, Option 1 is for "status quo", "no change", and there is reason or benefit to muddying that water with an Option 1B that in fact requires a change. 3. As you have it now, Options 1 and 1A are the same option, adding to the confusion. 4. Your new option 1B could just as easily be a new option 7. 5. You are creating a mess (similar to the mess of an RfC you started at the WikiProject, which had to be aborted) and I respectfully suggest you use more caution until you have more experience with the organization of complex discussions and RfCs in particular. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:47, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Option 1B gives some important perspective than 1A lacks so if an option 1 is chosen, strongly consider 1B. I am not certain which option and am not entering in an extended discussion but merely raise a consideration worth pondering. Usernamen1 (talk) 19:32, 18 December 2016 (UTC) (Note: I moved this comment from the "Close early" section to the "Discussion" section where it belongs. --MelanieN (talk) 20:54, 18 December 2016 (UTC))

@Usernamen1: IMO Option 1B should be called Option 7, and I would appreciate it if you would change it to an Option 7. It is NOT just a minor variation on Option 1. It is not like 4a&b, which are basically equivalent; they say the same thing in slightly different wording, with exact wording to be worked out if that option is chosen. It is assumed that people who choose 4, 4a, or 4b are favoring virtually the same thought, and will accept any negotiated wording that conveys that thought. But your option 1B is not equivalent to option 1, not at all. It introduces an entirely new idea (which may or may not be sourceable). If someone supports option 1 (your 1A) that does mean that they would be equally happy with 1B; I suspect many would oppose 1B (or 7). Anyhow, I second what Mandruss said. Please do not disrupt this discussion by introducing multiple new options, especially after so many people have already commented. Please leave the Options section alone (unless it is to change 1B to 7), and limit your comments to the Comments section. --MelanieN (talk) 21:13, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I authorize MelanieN to make those requested changes described immediately above. In an attempt to withdraw from the article, I am abandoning all efforts and edits in this article with the exception of the first paragraph, which I have devoted significant time and wish to see it to a resolution. I could change my mind and expand into more areas of this article but choose not to. Usernamen1 (talk) 04:18, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Usernamen1: - mmm think 1 is 'zero change' so you are talking an option 7 here... and for wording might need a relook. "Many of" has been discussed as vague, and "but those news sources do not accuse Hillary" isn't the case and is dragging offtopic a bit. Would it suit your context point if phrased 'unusually' such as "His statements in interviews, on social media, and at campaign rallies were noted by media coverage for being unusually controversial or false" ? Markbassett (talk) 11:18, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 1

@MrX, MelanieN, Objective3000, and Mandruss: What MarkBassett said... There's also a rather troubling piece by journalist Bryan MacDonald (in RT), “Facebook’s ‘Anti-Fake News’ Plan Looks Like Effort to Curb Alternative Media”. It quotes the widely repeated Breitbart story about PolitiFact.

   “As Breitbart observed: ‘When Trump said Clinton wants “open borders,” PolitiFact deemed his statement “mostly false” — despite the fact that Clinton admitted as much in a private, paid speech to a Brazilian bank on May 16, 2013. “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.”’”

May I have your thoughts as to the accuracy and verifiability of factchecker–checkers relative to the factcheckers whose fact-checking they check? --Dervorguilla (talk) 06:38, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Dervorguilla: - Did somebody propose Facebook as a fact-checker that we should pay any attention to? If not, I'm missing the point there. And are you really citing one "widely repeated" error (if it's in fact objectively an error) as somehow indicative of PolitiFact's overall reliability? If not, I'm missing that point too. If the one error is so rare that it needs to be milked to such an extent, that would tend to suggest more credibility, not less.
In any case, Markbassett's latest comments do not seem inconsistent with Option 3, which is my current !vote. My support for MrX above was meant as opposition to the apparent (or perceived) claim that we should omit the word "false" because fact-checkers are not reliable. I stand by that opposition until somebody shows me something relatively objective that says fact-checkers have a serious reliability problem—something like a peer-reviewed academic analysis from an institution not well-known as being a partisan think tank. Without that, we might as well skip the debate and just democratic-vote, since that leaves us with only our personal opinions and those of the sources we cherry pick to support them. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:13, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mandruss: No comment. --Dervorguilla (talk) 18:26, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@MrX, MelanieN, Objective3000, and Mandruss: More focusing on discussing article text and WP guidelines of the RFC topic... Even if the Bio lead would still retain this now-past bit of a particular subset of reporters at the lead level, my input was that the wording issues about it seem too broad and vague a statement phrased as fact, which does not fit with WP:V so I recommended option 2 (remove) though note option 6 (attribute-voice) would handle some. I have explained this was based on seems vaguely talking with wording dominant or tied to fact-checker sites but not stating that, which runs counter to WP:RS section WP:NEWSORG ("reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact"), that as crafted it is a general line where WP:NPOV directs other adjectives should be presented (""including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight"). If my input or reasons are unclear RSVP, otherwise just accept that there was an input like this. Markbassett (talk) 10:38, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Markbassett: I do have trouble parsing a lot of your language, so it's quite possible I fail to understand you. Option 3 makes no statement of fact except to concisely state what fact-checking organizations have said (which easily passes WP:DUE) and attributes the statement to them. Do you claim that that is not an accurate concise statement of what they have said?
too broad and vague a statement phrased as fact - I reiterate, the word "false" in Option 3 is not phrased as fact. Only Option 1 phrases it as fact, all other options that include the word avoid the use of wiki voice for it. I assume you understand the concept of wiki voice—if something is not in wiki voice, it is not a statement of fact. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:12, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mandruss:} In ranking, Option 2 and 6 came off better. Option 3 attribution and vagueness made it look worse than option 1 though it improves the part for wikivoice aspect. The word "services" and the cites shown convey it as meaning not about websites Politifact et al. But mostly the "relatively large number" seemed adding an additional vague and odd phrase on top of the existing issues. It's just not clear to me what that meant to say or if it's even the right paraphrase for cites or theme perhaps also said 'noted for extreme falsehoods'. The 'relatively large number' could go into 'relative to what' of is it 'relative to who' or is it meaning percentage of what he says or relative to how magnitude number for a richter 8.3 whopper or what. So to me overall Option3 just looked like a worse wording choice. Perhaps a more generic phrasing of it as 'unusual' instead of reltively large number' Markbassett (talk) 11:59, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Markbassett:
1. The cites can be changed and in my opinion are not actually a fixed part of any of the options.
2. The meaning of "relatively large number" is explained in the wording: "a relatively large number of them compared to other candidates". What could be more clear than that?
3. All concise statements are necessarily "vague". That includes your current preferred option, Option 2: "Many of his statements in interviews , on social media , and at campaign rallies were controversial {controversial to whom?]." I can't imagine prose suitable for the lead that could pass your vagueness test. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:11, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mandruss:} Umm ...

Being casual about finding cites later doesn't sniff right. Is there a specific, fixed thing trying to be said there or not ? In any case, this was discussing the options listed with context of cites provided, not as hypothetically other words and other cites could be made.

As to what would be more clear than "relatively large number of them compared to other candidates were evaluated' Well I though if it can be read as "one more fib than Hillary" or "they chose to evaluate him more often than anyone else" it's not only vague but inappropriately so. In any case I saw it as ADDING a potential new mess so that's why that one didn't suit me. Cheers. Markbassett (talk) 13:54, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Markbassett: At this point, you're not only repeating the same arguments, you're actually recycling some of the same sentences. You argument is largely premised on the idea that fact checkers are biased, so their fact checks are an opinion, and opinions must be attributed. MelanieN gave the best refutation of that when she wrote " Quite the contrary, they are research-based reporting. They take a statement and compare it to reality."

@Dervorguilla: Your argument seems to hinge on the idea that fact checkers are not always correct. To support that, you provide a single instance of Russia Today citing Breitbart. I rest my case.

Some folks seem to think we can't use the word "many" because it's vague. It's not vague; it's an imprecise generalization, but it has a clear meaning that is understood by any third grader. I explained this in more detail in the previous RfC.- MrX 13:09, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Side note: Given Markbassett's difficulty understanding the language of Option 3, it might be better worded as follows: "Trump made many controversial statements, and fact-checking services evaluated more of his statements as false than those of other candidates." The phrase "relatively large number" would be eliminated. But that decision does not need to be made in this RfC (or any RfC), and we certainly don't need another option. The RfC is not about copy editing questions. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:49, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

If 3 (or 4) is chosen, we can certainly tweak the wording as long as we keep the same meaning. --MelanieN (talk) 19:05, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mandruss - My comment was WP:NEWSORG quote, and if you've chosen to not hear that and a lot of side questions got put in, is perhaps your issue more than mine. Look if you cannot understand I saw three as worse than two then you're not respecting 'Mark honestly sees 3 as worse than 2' or not looking to do WP-based discussion. Meh -- say your piece, and listen for others to make their points. Markbassett (talk) 14:05, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

I cannot believe people are still arguing about the accuracy of "fact checkers". A few right wing opinion sites (like Breitbart) complain about them, but no serious organizations have done so. They are highly regarded reliable sources, because they would lose all credibility if their material wasn't unimpeachably accurate and are thus self policing. It's time for this line of argument to die, folks. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:04, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Close early?

"Trump identifies as a conservative, and..."

The lead includes the sentence "Trump identifies as a conservative, and his ideology has been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, and nationalist"

If we are to include the views of "scholars and commentators", it is a startling omission and even a misrepresentation of the discourse among scholars and commentators that the sentence doesn't mention how numerous scholars and commentators have described his political views with terms such as "far-right", "fascist", "Islamophobic", "anti-immigrant", "xenophobic", and many other terms that are much more widely used among scholars and commentators to describe his views than "protectionist" and "nationalist." In particular, there has been very serious and very extensive discussion over whether he can be described as a fascist; of course not everyone agrees that he is, but the opinion is held by many experts (political scientists, historians) and is debated seriously and extensively in reliable sources. --Tataral (talk) 18:35, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Turns out there's no source for the "conservative" bit so I have removed it. Next step would be to evaluate the sources for those other more detailed descriptors and consider whether to add them to the article and if so, whether they belong in lede. SPECIFICO talk 19:57, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Here is a source. "When you get down to it, I am a conservative person. I am by nature a somewhat conservative person... I never looked at putting a label on myself, because frankly putting a label on myself, it didn't matter — I wasn't in politics... It was something that absolutely had no bearing on me." Which is from August 2015, when he started running, and Jeb Bush was saying that Trump was not as conservative as Jeb Bush (and Trump was responding that like Reagan who ended up being a "pretty conservative" potus in Trump's words, Trump sees himself as "somewhat conservative" overall). Now, that should suffice to put the removed bit back into mainspace. Of course, there are a bunch of Donald-Trump-sayings about what he is, more broadly. Trump self-identifies as a TON of other things, besides "somewhat conservative" per above, but none of them are a political ideology:

• "...a victim of one of the great political smear campaigns in the history of our country"
• "We've actually expanded the party...I am a unifier ."
• Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich.
• I am a traditionalist . I have so many fabulous friends who happen to be gay, but I am a traditionalist.
• I am very critical of illegal immigration and the tremendous problems including crime, which it causes.
• I am not a fan of John McCain because he has done so little for our Veterans....
• I am against any path to citizenship for undocumented workers or anyone else who is in this country illegaly. They should--and need to--go home and get in line.
• I'm very angry. Because our country is being run horribly. ...I'm angry because our country is a mess!
• On trade, I am going to issue our notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
• I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again!
• I think I am a nice person. People that know me, like me. Does my family like me? I think so, right. Look at my family. I’m proud of my family.
• I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down, and will never enter America into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own affairs.
• In this race for the White House, I am the Law And Order candidate. ... I will work to ensure that all of our kids are treated equally, and protected equally.
• I’m going to make our country rich again. I am going to turn our bad trade agreements into great ones.
• My opponent asks her supporters to recite a three word loyalty pledge. It reads, "I'm with her." I choose to recite a different pledge. My pledge reads, "I’m with you – the American people." I am your voice.
• I am very underleveraged. I have a great company. I have a tremendous income. And the reason I say that is not in a braggadocios way. It's because it's about time that this country had somebody running it that has an idea about money.

But this sentence is about his politics, and in particular, his political faction within the United States political parties. It is possible to be a conservative Democrat like Joe Manchin, and it is possible to be a liberal Republican like Susan Collins. In the demographic breakdown used by public polling, they separate people into dem/repub/indep groups (party self-identification), which mostly aligns with who-you-voted-for-in-2012 self-identification (Romney-voters and Obama-voters), but they also ask if you consider yourself to be VeryConservative/SomewhatConservative/Moderate/SomewhatLiberal/VeryLiberal, which is quite different. Trump is, in terms of his party-id, a former democrat in the previous millenium, who is currently an independent-turned-republican. Trump is, in terms of his ideological-id, "somewhat conservative". He is also simultaneously nativist and populist, which are more fine-grained subcategories within the overall 'somewhat conservative' broad-brush category. But although he is also, as he likes to say, "very rich" that is not a subcategory of his "somewhat conservative" political self-identification, that is a completely separate demographic metric. (I also don't think that Trump's self-identification as a Christian belongs in his political ideology sentence, because unlike say Rick Santorum his religious views are not *central* to his political stances.) That is not to say that the various things Tartaral brought up don't belong, just that they don't belong in this sentence, because they aren't core political ideologies. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 12:39, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Back on the 17th, SPECIFICO removed some uncited material saying that Trump self-identified as a conservative, which was found in two places in the article at the time. The first modified sentence currently reads like this --

• 12/17 == Trump identifies as a conservative, and his ideology has been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, and nationalist. His stances on a few social issues, such as LGBT rights and drug policy, have been described as liberal or centrist.
• 12/22 == Trump's positions have been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, and nationalist.
• I suggest the following rewrite ==

  Trump self-identifies as a "somewhat conservative" Republican, and his positions have been described as populist, protectionist, and nationalist.

  (...not sure whether we need to re-include his specific positions on lgbt + preemptive war + defederalization -- since that is what 'somewhat conservative' means, a person who is more conservative than not, but sometimes takes a moderate or centrist or liberal stance on specific issues)

References

1. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/donald-trump-im-a-conservative-jeb-bush-121554

Because we are quoting him directly, I think MOS says we have to include the cite, even though we are right in the lead sentences? But I'm happy to add the cited-sentence somewhere appropriate in the body (positions subsections) and then leave the self-identification bit in the lead paragraphs uncited. The other sentence which SPECIFICO modified was also about self-identification, but THAT one just seems wrong, as of 12/17 it read as follows: "Trump ran as a self-described conservative, particularly in social and religious matters. His campaign emphasized American patriotism..." So I don't want to restore that portion, unless somebody has cites which say Trump was the modern equivalent of Santorum'12 and Huckabee'08 -- he clearly was not, per WP:OR at least. Will someone please fix the ideology-sentence in the lead, as I've suggested above, with the politico ref? Thanks. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 21:02, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

electoral college in first paragraph

The first paragraph used to mention the electoral college but that is a very minor point not worth of the 1st paragraph and not very historical nor time honoured fact for a bio. Besides, it is potentially misleading without a major revision because while the electoral college meets on December 19, the results are not opened by a joint session of Congress until January. After January 19, each state mails a letter by registered mail, which takes time. Usernamen1 (talk) 19:58, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I would think right now, the vote of the Electoral College is hugely significant. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:04, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with how it stands at the moment, other than the line "expected to be formally elected" when sources are using phrasing such as "almost certainly" or similar. Marteau (talk) 22:25, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I think the current wording is fine. It will be interesting to see what the exact count comes out to be. There are often an elector or two who vote differently from how their state voted. When we do get the final count, it might be worth adding that his electoral college victory ranks 46th out of 58 presidential elections according to the NYT. That would be valuable information to have in this article, if only because Trump keeps insisting that he won in a historic landslide. --MelanieN (talk) 23:00, 18 December 2016 (UTC

But does he read Misplaced Pages?? --Dervorguilla (talk) 05:34, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Now that he has been elected, it could probably be removed, it does not appear to have long-term significance, at least at this stage. - CHAMPION 06:18, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

For those interested in the final counts, please see Faithless electors in the United States presidential election, 2016 -- as predicted by MelanieN there were a couple defections from Trump (one Hamilton Elector vote for Kasich'16 and one libertarian-leaning vote for RonPaul'12), but interestingly there were also five defections from Clinton, three Hamilton Electors voting for a compromise-repub (Colin Powell who worked for Reagan and GWB but then endorsed Obama'08) and two for progressives (Bernie and one of the Dakota pipeline protestors). I do agree that this type of gory-details-stuff does not belong in the lead of the Trump biography, or even in the body I would strongly suggest, but several of the individual details were historical footnotes (oldest person to receive an ecVote + 4th native american + first african american repub and so on). 47.222.203.135 (talk) 21:15, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Lede wp:recentism

Why is most of lede (3/5 paragraphs) about his campaign and policies? He's lived a long life. A lot of the political stuff should be cut.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 01:54, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

It's actually likely that the lede will be MORE about the "political stuff" once he becomes president. Being president tends to overshadow everything a person has done before. --MelanieN (talk) 03:12, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

It's a good thing, though, to remember to balance the recent with the old. The campaign stuff (including 2000 and 2012) can probably be trimmed. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:00, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Muboshgu: Affirmative. --Dervorguilla (talk) 19:22, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Greek priest picture

I've been asked to self-revert this edit that removed a picture of Trump being "blessed" by the so-called "hedge fund priest". Per WP:BRD (it was originally removed by another editor), I will not be doing this. Although the "blessing" is mentioned in the article, it does not seem to be all that notable and it is particularly odd given that Trump isn't of the Greek orthodoxy. I'm not seeing a compelling reason for having this in the article. In fact, I don't think the fact of the blessing is notable either, with little evidence of significant coverage. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:05, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

A Wall Street hedge fund manager that is also a priest blessed DJT. Doesn’t seem notable for any mention. Objective3000 (talk) 14:23, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree that both the photo and the trivia about being blessed should be removed.- MrX 17:06, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I have no comments on the picture itself. However, from a process standpoint, the Bold edit was the removal of the picture by Avaya1, which I Reverted, and Scjessey counter-reverted. Discussion should happen with the status quo ante, i.e. with the picture included. It was recently restored by MiamiDolphins3, so I guess we're good to discuss… — JFG 17:57, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I support the preceding and Oppose the image and the prose. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:13, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Done. If consensus swings the other way, the image and/or text can be restored.- MrX 18:38, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

It's been included and removed a couple of times. It seems a bit misleading in front of the religion section, since it doesn't relate to the text. Avaya1 (talk) 19:59, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Not having read the attached prose, it sounds like the picture belongs either nowhere, or in Donald Trump in popular culture perhaps? (Which I thought was a practice ended forever ago, but apparently InPopCulture never dies....) If the ceremony was actually religious, then obviously my suggestion would be wrong, but if the ceremony was more ceremonial/symbolic/publicityStunt/fundraising/similar in nature then it would count more as a campaign event, or more as an in-pop-culture thing, and we have subsidiary articles about both. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:08, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Coverage in Fox Business News, Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, etc. Trump, a Christian, asking for a blessing from Christian priest seem relevant to the “religious views” section. Support text Cypresscross (talk) 14:30, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Invalid infobox usage

RfC: Should "Chairman of The Trump Organization" be listed as office in infobox?

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Should the infobox mention Trump's business title as Chairman of The Trump Organization in the |office2= parameter, alongside his other title as President-elect? Currently, the title is mentioned in the |occupation= parameter. Edge3 (talk) 13:24, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Example infobox shown on the side. Other proposed versions have included the full date, Ivanka Trump as successor, and other slight modifications.

Prior discussions: 1, 2, 3, 4

See also alternate example below, where the business position is listed at the end of the navbox and with a different background color. This might be a more appropriate display option. — JFG 09:16, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Survey: Chairman, office, infobox

Support or Oppose

• Support - The primary purpose of the infobox is "to summarize ... key facts that appear in the article" (WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE). Trump's business career is an integral part of his biography. In {{Donald Trump}} and in other parts of this article, the "President-elect" and "Chairman of The Trump Organization" positions already appear side-by-side. {{Donald Trump series}} lists articles relating to both his business and political careers. At the bottom of this article, {{S-bus}} is used alongside {{s-ppo}} and {{s-off}}, as if the positions are all equivalent. These examples show that the infobox, as it currently stands, is not giving the equal treatment to both positions that we are already displaying in other templates.

For many biographies, especially for politicians, the infobox shows progression through each office, along with the transitions from one officeholder to the next. Excluding Trump's business position from |office2= would be a glaring omission.

While recognizing WP:OSE, other politician bios have included non-governmental positions. For example, Ronald Reagan lists his prior position as President of the Screen Actors Guild. Edge3 (talk) 13:24, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

• Support – I am sympathetic to the argument that no distinction should be made between political, military, academic or business positions, provided that we list only significant roles. Aside from the Reagan case, we also have the Dwight D. Eisenhower article listing his military posts alongside his academic position as President of Columbia University (1948–1953), which even overlaps his role as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (1951–1952). The Trump case pleads particularly strongly in favor of inclusion because his business career dominates 45 years of his 70-year life, whereas his political emergence only covers 18 months so far. See also a similar discussion on Talk:List of Presidents of the United States#Prior service which was concluded in favor of listing his business title as "prior position" to President-Elect. — JFG 17:02, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support. Though from now on Trump's presidency will overshadow the other things he's done in life, I think it is important to note that the info box of a highly viewed article is likely to catch a typical reader's eye first. Piggybacking on what User:JFG said above, President Eisenhower's box has his other positions in it. Because the Trump Organization looks like it's going to be handed down Trump's family (see Ivanka Trump's infobox), I think it makes sense to note that he was the 1st Chair and President of the Trump Organization. It needs to be made clear: Trump led this large organization prior to becoming the 36th President-elect. CatcherStorm 02:19, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
• No idea. Suggestion: read the Infobox officeholder template. "Many officeholders are known for more than just their appointments (e.g., Clint Eastwood), and hence it may be desirable to merge this infobox with another one, like {{Infobox person}}." --Dervorguilla (talk) 19:15, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is a no-brainer. Being chairman of the Trump Organization is not "holding an office". Being "in office" is a very specific term that refers to elected officials in forms of government, and has nothing to do with private sector employment. Just because they effed up the Reagan article, it doesn't mean we should repeat the mistake here. -- Scjessey (talk) 19:26, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose – Per Scessey.—Fundude99 20:09, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
• What Dervorguilla said, don't screw up the officeholder infobox, just have an officeholder infobox at the top, immediately followed by a Template:infobox person which has the details of his business career(s) and such. Omit the photo-parameter from the 2nd infobox, and voila. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 20:13, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Office" is a public, elected, position. Not a job. Bastun 21:05, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - While the word "office" can refer to non-governmental positions (office sense 1b), its meaning in {{Infobox officeholder}} follows from the definition of the word officeholder.
  I am not interested in what other editors have decided at other articles, per WP:OSE. The salient points of OSE are that (1) no two situations are exactly alike, and (2) one could cherry-pick examples to support any argument they wished to support. Community consensus lives in policy, in guideline, and sometimes in discussions with wide participation in public venues—not in sampling of things done in other articles. OSE is a widely-accepted essay for a reason. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:30, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support - It is beneficial to the page while quickly and neatly presenting his previous positions. Archer Rafferty (talk) 3:18, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose I do not think it provides any useful information. The field is useful when the office is better known than the person, for example the office of presidency of the U.S. is better known than anyone who has held it, while Trump is better known than his company. Also, Trump's main influence at the company comes from being owner and chief executive officer. A chairman is often a figurehead or non-executive position. As a point of pedantry, he is not chairman of the Trump Organization, but chairman of the board of directors of the Trump organization. TFD (talk) 04:46, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose While it is a significant company and important to his life history, it is not a public office. The President-elect will become the first President without prior public service experience, and that is significant. Placing the chairmanship of his private company in the infobox equates it to elected or appointed office, whether political or institutional (university, red cross, boy scouts, other public-profile instiutions, etc.). This is incorrect to do. His company is important, but being the chairman of the company is not on the same level as being a public officer, elected, appointed, or an institutional head.   Spartan7W §   05:20, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

  Why must the infobox entries be limited to public office only? If, as you say, his business career "is a significant company and important to his life history", shouldn't we reflect that in the infobox? The guideline is "to summarize ... key facts that appear in the article" (WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE). Edge3 (talk) 19:24, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose as it's not a political office. GoodDay (talk) 18:18, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support – It is an appropriate addition to best summarize Trump's career in the infobox, and there are numerous examples of other articles that feature leadership of private organizations, the military, and universities in the officeholder infobox. - Bokmanrocks01 (talk) 22:58, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - The Trump Organization is not a public office which that parameter is for. Naue7 (talk) 03:13, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - It's not a public office. The Reagan counter-example doesn't convince me, as it is an elected union position, far closer to a public office than a business position. Michael Bloomberg's infobox omits his business career altogether, even though is business career is arguably far more notable and his political office less so. No great surprise, our first "CEO President," George W. Bush, has no business info in his infobox. Chris vLS (talk) 06:18, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Discussion: Chairman, office, infobox

(Response to !vote by 47.222.203.135) - Dervorguilla referred to embedding officeholder in person, so what you said isn't what they said. Just sayin'. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:23, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I was referencing their bolded notvote which said "no idea" specifically. As in, this is a poorly-posed question, the correct answer should be something completely different than the binary choice being offered. For the record, I'm okay with embedding person inside officeholder, embedding officeholder inside person, just using person and covering the potus-details as part of that, starting with officeholder and then following it with person... but please don't abuse oficeholder by jamming stuff that does NOT belong into it... and as I understand the rfc, notvoting 'support' means that ceo will be jammed into office2-param whereas voting 'oppose' means that ceo/realEstateDeveloper/televisionPersonality/bestSellingAuthor/'politician'/etc will eventually be jammed into occupation-param ... both of which are sub-optimal, since one is malformed and the other is insufficient space. Thus, since I have no idea whether to notvote support or notvote oppose, I opted to follow dervorguilla and notvoted No Idea, with a specific suggestion for an alternative way forward that does not involve restricting ourselves to a single infobox and trying to force-fit everything. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 21:26, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Interesting suggestion... maybe we don't have to use {{Infobox officeholder}} after all. Edge3 (talk) 02:12, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@47.222.203.135: Nailed it. --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:25, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with others here that we should not put his business career into the politician infobox. But can we use two separate info boxes? Politician followed by business person? MelanieN alt (talk) 14:45, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Then we would end up with two infoboxes. Another option is using {{Infobox person}} only rather than {{Infobox officeholder}}, since Trump's business career is equally noteworthy as his political career. His political office can still be reflected in {{Infobox person}}. Edge3 (talk) 16:34, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

And yet another option is to embed officeholder in person, producing one hybrid infobox, as linked by Dervorguilla in their !vote. It's been awhile since I've seen that done, but as I recall the embedded portion is a shrunken version of its normal self (by perhaps 20%), which I felt wasn't very attractive (and would be seen as de-emphasizing his presidency). Obvious pushback for either alternative option due to the widespread but misguided opinion that All Infoboxes For U.S. Presidents Must Be The Same. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:28, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Mandruss, to avoid the shrinkage-effect, you have to specify "| module = {{infobox foobar | embed = yes ... " which you can see JFG doing in his chairman-embedded-within-officeholder example, below. If you forget the embed=yes thing, then you get a shrunken inner infobox (ugly). 47.222.203.135 (talk) 02:01, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

We have already tried embedding {{Infobox officeholder}} in {{Infobox person}}, as the article used to have a simple Infobox person (or at least I tried it in edit mode, not sure it was ever in the history log). While technically elegant, this method puts all the personal info (children, alma mater, website, etc.) before the various offices held, so it really looks inappropriate for a future president. And it doesn't resolve the question whether his business position should also be listed as an office rather than an occupation. Thus it looks like a dead end to me. — JFG 00:03, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Note that we have {{Infobox Chairman}} which redirects to {{Infobox officeholder}}, so perhaps we could embed that into the template, thus listing the Chairman position towards the end of the box. See how that would look here to the right. — JFG 01:22, 24 December 2016 (UTC) –––––––>

{{Infobox Chairman}} is used in only a handful of articles (stubs), and since it redirects to {{Infobox officeholder}} I don't think {{Infobox Chairman}} would help here. The example you propose (on the right) is essentially {{Infobox officeholder}} embedded within itself. Edge3 (talk) 05:11, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

What Edge3 said. Just merge {{Infobox officeholder}} with {{Infobox officeholder}}. This looks like it may be the closest analogue to the most relevant example at Template:Infobox officeholder, which actually refers to an old version of the Clint Eastwood article (not the current version as I'd thought). My error. --Dervorguilla (talk) 08:12, 24 December 2016 (UTC) 20:14, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes it is a secondary {{Infobox officeholder}} within the main {{Infobox officeholder}}, which compared to the |office2= option puts the Trump Org position at the bottom of the navbox (and with a grey background) vs showing it close to the presidential office up top. I think this would resolve the main objection of dissenters. — JFG 09:11, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't like any of these examples because they use the word "office" when describing his business position. -- Scjessey (talk) 17:47, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

@Scjessey: As a corporate officer of TTO, he's "someone who holds an office of trust, authority, or command". --Dervorguilla (talk) 20:34, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

But few dictionaries make use of the extended definition of "in office", and neither does Misplaced Pages. It would confuse the reader, perhaps leading them to think Trump may have held some form of public office prior to the presidency. -- Scjessey (talk) 21:29, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is that the usual infobox for businesspeople is {{Infobox person}}. We don't have a perfect solution for those who had a lengthy business career before entering public office. Given the dictionary definitions cited, I agree that his chairmanship over The Trump Organization may be construed as an "office" for the purposes of {{Infobox officeholder}}, even though it is not the normal usage for this template. Edge3 (talk) 22:39, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Donald J. Trump
President-elect of the United States
Taking office	January 20, 2017
Succeeding	Barack Obama
Vice President	Mike Pence (elect)
Website	greatagain.gov
Chairman of The Trump Organization
Occupation	Real estate developer
Timespan	1971–2017
Predecessor	Fred Trump
Known for	Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago
Website	trump.com
Personal details
Born	Donald John Trump (1946-06-14) June 14, 1946 (age 78) New York City
Political party	Republican (1987–99, 2009–11, 2012–present)
Other political affiliations	Independent (2011–12) Democratic (2001–09) Reform (1999–2001)
Spouse(s)	Ivana Zelníčková ​ ​(m. 1977⁠–⁠1992)​ Marla Maples ​(m. 1993⁠–⁠1999)​ Melania Knauss ​(m. 2005)​
Children	Donald Trump Jr. Ivanka Trump Eric Trump Tiffany Trump Barron Trump
Parents	Fred Trump Mary Anne MacLeod Trump
Relatives	Trump family
Residence	Trump Tower, New York City
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania
Net worth	$4.5 billion
Television	The Apprentice
Twitter	@realDonaldTrump

We could also try the old-school approach. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 01:55, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

@47.222.203.135: Looks good to me. (The 'Nationality' data can be safely omitted, though.) --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:07, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I love this idea! Edge3 (talk) 05:39, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. The "outbox" looks like the way to go. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:21, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

+1 I would approve of this scheme. — JFG 14:55, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I've made a few modifications to the proposed infobox so that it is more consistent with the info already displayed on the current infobox. User:47.222.203.135 (or anyone else), feel free to modify as needed. We should also figure out a way to add the images (both the portrait and the signature) through the WP:OUTBOX approach. Edge3 (talk) 04:44, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Proponents should look at the markup and consider the ongoing maintenance problems. Expect the OUTBOX (shouldn't that be OUTFOBOX?) to be broken regularly. If that's an acceptable trade-off to you, fine, but it should be considered. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:53, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

 Done – Added portrait and signature via Module:InfoboxImage. The whole box should probably use Module:Infobox rather than manual markup. — JFG 14:04, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Barron Trump mention in infobox and navboxes

Donald Trump's youngest son, Barron, is mentioned in the infobox here with no link, which is fine because his article was deleted and redirected to Family of Donald Trump#Barron Trump per AfD. There is however inconsistency in other places where he might appear: he is not mentioned at all in Template:Donald Trump and he has been on and off Template:Trump family. There is an ongoing discussion about whether to mention him and whether to link him at Template talk:Trump family#Barron or not Barron. Please participate there to reach a coherent consensus. — JFG 17:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Assorted suggestions

36th Prez-elect?

I recommend that we do not add 36th to President-elect of the United States, in the infobox. Though it's accurate, it will also confuse our readers, by making appear as though we're suggesting Trump will become the 36th President. Note: We didn't use 35th while Obama was President-elect. GoodDay (talk) 17:42, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you. It's not historically significant that he is the 36th President-elect. The "-elect" designation is merely temporary or transitional. Edge3 (talk) 18:28, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree also.- MrX 18:40, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

+1. Trivia clutter. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:15, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

1RR volunteers needed

Due to 1RR, I am out of service for another 10 hours as to reverts of clearly bad edits (there is no 1RR exemption for reverting clearly bad edits, short of clear vandalism, clear BLP violation, etc.). Therefore volunteers are needed to spend their 1R's on at least two items.

1. An attempt was made to change the infobox image and add acaption. The image was reverted but the caption remains.

2.

Both edits were against consensuses in the consensues list. It would be very helpful to have a 1RR exemption for reverting such edits, but that would likely require an act of ArbCom or something. If I'm being overly cautious here, the rules sorely need adjustment to better reflect practical reality. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:21, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

 Done both. JudgeRM (talk to me) 21:27, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. You violated the 1RR rule by doing both, and yet benefited the encyclopedia. My point is that we need to either strictly observe the rule, modify it as needed, or scrap it. The current situation is unacceptable. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:30, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome (I honestly don't see it as a 1RR violation, and even if it was, I believe this exists for a reason). JudgeRM (talk to me) 21:33, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

1. It clearly was a violation of 1RR as currently written. There is no exemption for that type of revert, full stop. 2. Your IAR rationale is that 1RR can be violated if it benefits the encyclopedia. The problem with that reasoning is that everybody thinks their edits benefit the encyclopedia, so it's the same as removing the 1RR rule completely. The goal is not to provide a defense at ANI but to avoid the need for ANI in the first place. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:36, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

If someone asked me one rule where IAR shouldn't be used, I'd probably say 1RR. Doubt it will cause you any problems. But, if you self-revert one of your reverts, I'll re-revert it. (Try saying that ten times quickly.) Objective3000 (talk) 21:43, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

According on of the edit notice, reverting changes to the infobox image is 1RR exempt per admin TomStar81 here.- MrX 21:47, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, my understanding is that 1RR doesn't apply to the infobox image. The caption is associated with the image, and is thus included in the 1RR exemption. Just my opinion. Edge3 (talk) 22:52, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

By my reading of the 1RR rule, two closely-linked edits can be considered a single revert, so the image and caption can be reverted together indeed. — JFG 00:06, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

• Arbitration Enforcement Admin Note - As the amended editnotice states: Reversions to reinstate the consensus-approved image in the article are not counted against the established 1RR sanction in this article...; therefore there was no 1RR violation made by the editor reinstating the image (contrary to Mandruss' assertion) — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 23:07, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

MrX and Coffee are correct; 1RR does not - repeat not - apply to the infobox image; this was worded as an exemption specifically because there is a consensus based mandate to keep this image in the article. Therefore, with regards to the image, feel free to revert as many times as needed to keep the currently approved version in the article. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:08, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@TomStar81:, (edit conflict) The only issue is that we can't make editors using mobile devices see the ARBCOM warning (as was the case in this last switch). Do you think a more strongly worded hidden comment, perhaps listing the potential for being blocked, would satisfy the fair warning requirement? — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 23:22, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I stand corrected, I could have reverted the caption. But I could not have reverted the birthplace without waiting 10 hours (and then spending my next 1R on that, thus rendering myself impotent for another 24 hours). My essential point stands. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:17, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mandruss: Has there been a discussion held establishing a consensus on how the birthplace should be displayed? — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 23:26, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Coffee: Yes, and that discussion is linked from the consensuses list item 2. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:28, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mandruss: Any and all edits, or reverts to edits, that have been fully backed by an established firm consensus cannot be seen as any form of rule violation (1RR or otherwise). This is precisely what WP:IAR is for. Of course, it is highly recommended that you immediately inform an administrator (at WP:ANI - or even WP:AIV due to this page's visibility) so that the offending editor can be blocked ASAP (so as to prevent an edit war from ensuing). — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 23:38, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Coffee: That is not in the list of exemptions at WP:3RRNO. If it's an unwritten rule, I submit that it should be written. If IAR is all you need, we could dispense with the exemptions list. All of those things are improvements to the encyclopedia, no? Anyway, no editor can be blocked for editing against a consensus unless it's shown that they were aware of the consensus. We have many "drive-bys" who were not involved in discussions and can't be expected to know about a consensuses list that exists only here and in a few other articles. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:45, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mandruss: The best place for a specific rule to be displayed regarding the proper editor conduct in this article, is in this article's listed Arbitration Remedies... and it is: Consensus required: All editors must obtain consensus on the talk page of this article before reinstating any edits that have been challenged (via reversion). It stands to reason that if the consensus has already been obtained that such a discussion would not need to take place again, so therefore the consensus version always stands until further discussion. This was fully hashed out during the lengthy discussions we had at ArbCom regarding my placing these remedies a few months back, and for all intents and purposes was fairly well accepted by the standing ArbCom. Furthermore, any active Arbitration Remedies supersede any normal courses of action for specifically heated or high-vis arenas. So, as long as you feel that your actions can stand up to any AE review, with the clear purpose of the improvement of the encyclopedia, then you should never feel the need to hesitate in doing the right thing. The administrators can then decide whether the "offending" editor needs guidance or more severe remedies at such a time, even if others feel it may have been a minor mishap it is still best to notify an admin so that we can keep track of and hopefully prevent any repeat violators. - Now as a further way of resolving this I'm also keen on the idea of that list of consensuses being formalized/split to its own subpage and protected, in which case I would gladly add such a link to the current editnotice. But, I'll leave that decision up to the more active editors here. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 00:14, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

@Coffee: Pretty good idea, thanks! @Mandruss, MrX, Objective3000, TomStar81, and Edge3: et al, wouldn't it be beneficial to list the consensus FAQ in a separate subpage? We could transclude it at the top of the Talk page (expanded) and in the edit notice (collapsed). Hopefully that would raise awareness of the most frequent issues and save time for new editors and regulars alike. Trump is pushing the creative boundaries of Misplaced Pages: so much winning! — JFG 01:38, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected or full-protected? ―Mandruss ☎ 01:53, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mandruss: I would suggest full protection, in the same manner as the editnotice itself is. Just to ensure that only administrators familiar with AE procedure can update it per established consensus and to ensure the intentions of the ArbCom rulings are followed. Anyone should feel free to create the subpage though, and just let an admin know when to lock it down and add it to the notice. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 02:28, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

@Coffee: That means effectively an uninvolved admin close for every consensus, except that a close statement would not necessarily be required. We would no longer be able to agree among ourselves that we have consensus. I don't necessarily oppose that but it would be an added degree of bureaucracy (and I'm not aware of any ArbCom rulings that have any bearing on how consensuses are decided). As it stands now, the list is itself subject to BRD and one asserted consensus has been contested resulting in an RfC now open. I don't disagree that the current setup could be a problem, but it hasn't been yet. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:51, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

While I feel that the absence of an explicit, written 1RR exemption for this invites conflict and edit warring (it is not unreasonable to assume that a list of seven exemptions is a complete and comprehensive list, that anything not listed there is not exempted), I will henceforth ignore 1RR for this type of revert and link to this thread in lieu of that exemption. We'll see how that goes. Again, my goal is not to have a defense at ANI, AE, or anywhere else, but to avoid having to defend my actions there. I think an explicit exemption would be respected by many editors. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:29, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm coming late to this party and I don't know how relevant this is, but a few months ago there were a couple of discussions at my talk page, where I was asking for clarification of the rules. I'm just passing along what others said in other contexts; I am still a learner in this area. Two possibly relevant points:

• Per this discussion: If you remove three unrelated things from an article in three different consecutive edits, that does NOT count as three reversions; it is one reversion. The rules say that "an edit or a series of consecutive edits that undoes other editors' actions … counts as a revert." From what I see of this discussion, it sounds like User:JudgeRM did NOT violate the 1RR rule if he made a pair of reversions in consecutive edits. And User:Mandruss could have made several reversions, if done consecutively, without violating 1RR.
• Per this discussion, about the requirement to obtain consensus at the talk page before reinstating any edits that have been challenged via reversion: On the face of it, this sounds like it gives the advantage to a person who removes content: by removing it they make it "contentious," and a talk page discussion is required to reinstate it. But the discussion at my talk page said, not so. A removal is also an edit. If the edit was to remove longstanding material, and someone restores the material, that means that the REMOVAL was contentious, challenged by its restoration, so that consensus must be obtained on the talk page to REMOVE the longstanding material, and in the meantime it stays in the article. "The removal of longstanding content is the edit that can be challenged via reversion." "the wording carefully specifies "reinstating any edits that have been challenged" instead of "reinstating any additions that have been challenged" for this very reason." "The wording is meant to favor the status quo and stabilize the article." This looks to me like edits to restore consensus are legitimate challenges to an edit that went against consensus, and it is the edit against consensus that needs to be justified at the talk page. --MelanieN (talk) 08:29, 24 December 2016 (UTC) P.S. This is basically what User:Coffee said above: "It stands to reason that if the consensus has already been obtained that such a discussion would not need to take place again, so therefore the consensus version always stands until further discussion."

The elephant in the room is a policy that is so Rube-Goldberg-convoluted—so counter-intuitive—that a 10-year editor and admin is "still a learner in this area", and yet applies to every editor. Policies that are that hard to understand are bad policies.
WP:3RRNO still needs an item 8. It does not follow automatically from the consensus version always stands until further discussion that "reverts to consensus version are exempted from 1RR". That is not an inference that ordinary editors should be expected to make. I tend to take policy very literally and err on the side of caution, partly because my one block resulted from my failure to do so. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:28, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps now you understand my similar frustration with the similarly frustrating Arbcom "Any US political article is subject to 1RR, but furthermore if someone opens an RfC on something, well that's it for pretty much 30 whole days" ruling... Bastun 12:36, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

@Coffee: Above you wrote that "The only issue is that we can't make editors using mobile devices see the ARBCOM warning (as was the case in this last switch). Do you think a more strongly worded hidden comment, perhaps listing the potential for being blocked, would satisfy the fair warning requirement?" With regards to the mobile editing issue, that sounds like something that the foundation ought to be looking into since a lot of articles here do have edit notices covering editing. As for a strongly worded hidden message, the problem with that is that it would only be seen if someone was specifically editing the effected area, and even then they may not read to much into it since the note wouldn't show in the main space, just in the editing space. We had the same problem at the aircraft in pop culture article, the hidden notice was not terribly effective if editors went to tweak one small section as opposed to editing from the top of the page. That being said, we can try it and see if it helps, but I would not hold out much hope. TomStar81 (Talk) 13:27, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I added this as consensus #7. While this is not optimal in my opinion (one could argue that this is not subject to consensus, so it has no place in the list of consensuses), it provides some visibility that would not exist otherwise. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:43, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm inclined to moving it out of the list and placing it as a NOTE: above. Thoughts? - Ryk72 22:51, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Only that many editors seem to ignore a talk page's prologue as inconsequential "fine print", as evident in the number who don't appear to be aware of the 1RR restriction. A NOTE above would serve to quickly resolve conflicts in this area, but the higher visibility of the thread would probably prevent more of them. I believe in a proactive approach, not a reactive one. (That said, a NOTE above would be an improvement over nothing but this discussion buried in the archives.) ―Mandruss ☎ 23:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Or did you mean a NOTE above #1 but still in that thread? ―Mandruss ☎ 23:07, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mandruss: I did mean a NOTE above #1 but still in that thread - below the section header, but either directly above or directly below the "Current consensuses:" list heading was my thought, and with sufficient style as to stand out. Sort of explanatory text for the list. - Ryk72 23:18, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with that. It would further increase visibility by making it the first thing read, usually, while eliminating my initial concern. I'll do that, subject to further comments. Objective3000 says below, I think I agree with adding it to the list, but it's unclear whether they prefer #7 to NOTE. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:27, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

My concern is that this doesn’t prevent a trip to AE if some editor wants to cause you trouble over something unrelated. It does provide a better defense. Which doesn’t mean that an editor might not still have to take time to deal with an AE complaint. I think I agree with adding it to the list – perhaps with a warning to be careful with anything that could be construed as a 1RR vio. Objective3000 (talk) 23:12, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I didn't look, and just curious, does every new editor receive the complimetary and informative "discretionary sanctions" notice? Also, since I have not been involved in this type of situation before, could someone tell me why, and what benefit, having "All editors must obtain consensus on the talk page of this article "before reinstating any edits that have been challenged (via reversion)".", instead of the normal WP:BRD? Otr500 (talk) 02:47, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I believe the DS advice is issued only to editors whose editing suggests that they are not aware of the DS.
I'm guessing that we (they) didn't want to refer to an unofficial essay in an official rule. And that we (they) didn't wish to be connected to the perennial debate over whether to promote BRD to guideline status. Both are pure guesses. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:31, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Question:

Russia

Why does the article not mention anything about Trump wanting to improve relations with Russia? I'm sure this is more important than his feud with the pope for example. Burklemore1 (talk) 03:39, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose we could add something about him wanting to improve relations with Russia by greatly strengthening and expanding U.S. nuclear capability.- MrX 03:50, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

In the Foreign Policy section it mentions several ways in which he suggested cooperating with Russia. --MelanieN (talk) 08:36, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I think it should be direct that he wishes to improve relations though, rather than stating he will consider recognising Crimea as a Russian territory and lift sanctions. Statements regarding nuclear capabilities should be added too. If I'm correct also, Trump has made comments about wanting to improve relations with Russia during the Republican presidential primaries. I think it would make a nice addition. Burklemore1 (talk) 16:54, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Lifting sanctions so he and others can make more money and pollute the Arctic is not what one normally thinks of when discussing "improved relations" in the political sense. This is one of his conflicts of interest, where he wishes to use his political power to improve his business opportunities. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:57, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

BullRangifer, please limit your comments here to what you think we should have in the article - not what you think about Trump. Thanks. --MelanieN (talk) 04:43, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

BullRangifer, are we suppose to consider your opinion on how the article should reflect its content simply because you have a negative opinion about him? Favouring one side of the political spectrum is not a way of maintaining neutrality. Burklemore1 (talk) 07:25, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Our personal political opinions (and we all have them) don't go into the article, but the opinions expressed in RS do make up our content. You asked about "improved relations" and I mentioned the type he has proposed, but which you, for some odd reason don't want to mention ("recognising Crimea as a Russian territory and lift sanctions"). Those are exactly the types of things to mention because they are what RS mention. "Nuclear capabilities" is another suggestion you made above above, although expanding them does not "improve" relations. It increases the risk of war.

A vague mention of the words "improve relations" is meaningless political fluff and puff posturing. We should mention what he has actually said he would do to improve relations. He has already picked ExxonMobil's CEO Rex Tillerson to be Secretary of State, a concrete move which will improve relations because Tillerson is very good friends with Putin, owns huge oil concessions in the arctic, and removing the sanctions which prevent drilling will "improve relations". There are plenty of RS which discuss why this is happening.

So recognising Crimea as a Russian territory and lifting sanctions preventing oil drilling are two things to mention. If RS mention this is done because Trump, Tillerson and Putin will make a lot more money, then that too should be mentioned. We don't add or delete/whitewash content because of our political opinions. We add what RS say. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:11, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Prior government experience

There has been some tweaking recently about how to describe the fact that he is the first person elected president without ever having held public office or served in the military. Until recently it said just that: "He is also the only individual in U.S. history to be elected president without ever having held public office or served in the military." That's clear enough. But on the 21st it was changed to "without any prior experience in public service", with the rationale that this is the same wording as the 2016 election article. A few days later it was changed to "without any prior experience in military or other official public service," which was then changed again to "without any prior governmental experience." That's how it reads now. What do we think it should say? MelanieN (talk) 18:49, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

• My own preference is for the original wording: "without ever having held public office or served in the military". That makes it clear, since there have been presidents who never held public office but served in the military, and there have been presidents who held public office but did not serve in the military, but he is the first to have done neither. I don't like "prior governmental experience" - what does that mean? We have all had "governmental experience" in one form or another. (I taught for a few years in the public schools, I guess I have had governmental experience.) I also don't particularly like the generic "public service" because, again, nobody really knows what that means. (Does volunteering to clean up the beaches count? Hey, I have done public service!) Reliable Sources are talking about two specific things here - holding public office and serving in the military. Let's not muddy it up. MelanieN (talk) 18:49, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I just edited the article without first reading these comments. I figure "He is also the only individual in U.S. history to be elected President without prior military or governmental experience" is sufficient. I don't like the sentence structure of that earlier version. -- Scjessey (talk) 19:41, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I'd be OK with that wording. --MelanieN (talk) 23:32, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

"We have all had 'governmental experience' in one form or another." What was Trump's?Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:53, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Getting a drivers license? Filing for a construction permit? Being sued by the Justice Department? --MelanieN (talk) 23:32, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I suspect that almost all readers would understand "government experience" to mean "experience in government", but the latter phraseology would be fine with me; it covers experience in political office as well as experience in the military. Without "experience in the public sector" would be okay too.Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:51, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

And this reversion by Richi surely violates the usual WP:BRD process, does it not? Trump is unique in modern history as being a president with no prior military and/or government experience (presidents always have one or the other), so it is ridiculous that this should've been removed. -- Scjessey (talk) 21:33, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I think political office and military service can be rolled into one term, for purposes of the lead, in order to be concise and avoid undue weight. What that term is is something that we ought to discuss, and I have no preference at this point.Anythingyouwant (talk) 21:43, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Public service and military service both fall under government service, since the military is part of the government. IMO not having any prior government service would suffice and it is not loaded. 69.166.119.17 (talk) 23:39, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

• Current wording "elected President without prior governmental experience" is clear and concise, I don't see the need to explicitly distinguish political and military positions here, as both are government jobs. The linked article on prior experience of US presidents is very detailed. — JFG 09:30, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

• Literally, military service could be considered a subset of government service. However, the preponderance of people these days have a very negative view of government and very positive view of the military and separate the two. So, I think both need be included for completeness. Objective3000 (talk) 14:35, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I give up on the batshit threading above, so I'm outdenting. Normal human beings understand there is a difference between military experience and regular government experience because the former usually involves putting your life in harm's way. In the context of the presidency, they are always considered to be separate. There is no single word than can be used to adequately cover both, and since we are talking about two words, we can dispense with the notion it would somehow be undue weight. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:30, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

They are definitely different things and both should be mentioned. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:55, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

• The current edit "without ever having held public office or served in the military" has already caused confusion per this edit. Naue7 (talk) 03:22, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

• No, trying to conflate two different things into oversimplified wording does create confusion. Mentioning both leaves no confusion about what is meant. They should both be mentioned. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:14, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

• @Naue7: The edit you linked seems to just be one editor who doesn't understand the meaning of the word "or". Vrrajkum (talk) 23:00, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

• I prefer the original phrasing "without ever having held public office or served in the military". It's perfectly clear; I dislike the current edit "He will also be the first president without prior military or other governmental employment" because although military service is technically government employment, the public generally views serving in the military and holding public office as two unrelated things. "Governmental employment" is also rather vague; it could mean something as mundane as working for the DMV, whereas "public office" clearly refers to elected office. Vrrajkum (talk) 23:00, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Incorrect. A public office can also be an appointed office such as secretary of state or secretary of defense. 38.121.92.211 (talk) 23:39, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

• I see that User:Anythingyouwant just changed it from "He is also the only individual in U.S. history to be elected president without ever having held public office or served in the military" to "He will also be the first president without prior military or other government employment." He changed it in spite of the invisible comment "NOTE: This sentence is being discussed at the talk page; please do not change it, but join in the discussion." His edit summary was "No big change here, just ten words shorter." Well, I for one think the change to "employment" was a "big change" and inappropriate. Nobody up to now has proposed the words "governmental employment", and that is not what the Reliable Sources are talking about. They are talking about elective office, not some vaguely defined "employment". He is the first president who has neither served in the military nor held elective office, per sources. I invite Anythingyouwant to self-revert and get consensus before making a change like this, especially to a sentence tagged as currently under discussion at the talk page. --MelanieN (talk) 23:33, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

I didn't see it as controversial, and wouldn't you agree that the sentence has already been changed unilaterally after you installed the little note? Anyway, the word "employment" obviously includes any elective office, but I will modify that per your request.Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:39, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Comment - Without judgement on the appropriateness of the proposed wording, I believe that "elected" is meant, not "elective". - Ryk72 00:08, 27 December 2016 (UTC) I stand corrected. Between the Pacific and the Atlantic heading eastwards, "elective office" is apparently correct. The wondrous vagaries of "American" will never cease to amaze. My humble apologies. - Ryk72 09:27, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

It has been changed a dozen times during this discussion - that's why I added the note. I mainly objected to the word "employment", and you have now changed it to "governmental service"; OK, "service" has at least been part of the discussion here. I still prefer the more precise (and better sourced) "public office" or "elective office," but that is what discussions are for. --MelanieN (talk) 00:42, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

• I prefer the first phrasing "without ever having held public office or served in the military", as best conveying the RS intended message. I also think that phrasing has more WP:WEIGHT appearances in print than the terms "public service" and "governmental experience", and that those terms are actually things Trump could claim, so seem not the way to phrase it. Markbassett (talk) 05:38, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I like this edit from Anythingyouwant (probably because it is similar to the one I did 4 days ago), but how many more times is "This sentence is being discussed at the talk page; please do not change it, but join in the discussion" going to be ignored? Let the discussion play out, please. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:28, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

How's it similar? My trivial edit had nothing to do with the word "military", and was merely for conciseness.Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:33, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Attempt to summarize

This discussion has been going on for five days. There have been lots of tweaks about the exact wording - "public service", "public office," "governmental experience", "government employment" - but I think we can at least decide this: should we specify "military" experience separately, or use "government" alone to include military service? Reviewing the discussion I see that six people want to mention "military" separately, and three say that "government" alone is enough. Can we conclude that there is consensus to specify "military" separately from "government"? (In addition I note that Reliable Sources mostly do. Sources point out that almost all previous presidents had held previous elective office; of the five who didn't, two had held cabinet positions and three were military commanders.) If we can agree on this, that leaves only the exact wording of the other part of the sentence. --MelanieN (talk) 15:13, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

That summary seems consistent with the current wording: "At age 70, Trump will become the oldest and wealthiest person to assume the presidency, and the first without prior military or other governmental service." So shall we leave it and move on?Anythingyouwant (talk) 15:20, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

That would work for me, although I preferred the original version that listed "government service" before "military" - because more than 40 presidents had prior government service, and only three had military service only. Let's give others a chance to comment. --MelanieN (talk) 17:38, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree that government service should come first. -- Scjessey (talk) 17:51, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Okay, how about this: "At age 70, Trump will become the oldest and wealthiest person to assume the presidency, and the first without prior civilian or military governmental service."Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:08, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Ugh. Was the original wording "without ever having held public office or served in the military" so awful? It is precise, and it is what Reliable Sources say. Is it really necessary to muddy the water in order to save a few words? --MelanieN (talk) 18:32, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

How about:

The first elected without prior governmental or military experience, Trump will become the oldest and wealthiest person to assume the presidency.

It's concise and contains everything everyone seems to want. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:52, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I oppose any version that suggests wrongly that military service is not governmental. And I'm against moving the prior service stuff before the age and wealth, given that the latter is more publicized. And I'm against a huge extended wiki link for all of this, as if neon signs were sadly unavailable.Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:58, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

We can avoid that problem by eliminating the vague word "governmental" and saying "held public office" instead. I do agree that the sentence structure of Scjessey's proposal may be a little hard to parse. How about "Trump will become the oldest and wealthiest person to assume the presidency. He will also be the first who never held previous public office nor served in the military. did not previously hold public office or serve in the military." --MelanieN (talk) 19:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

That would be okay if you put the wlink over "previously hold". Public office includes military officers, but your language is okay (and not redundant) because it excludes enlisted service. I suggest using one sentence instead of two (removing "He will also be"). I think the language I previously suggested today is less convoluted, but whatever. Heaven forbid we should use a word like "government" that has a slightly inferior reputation to the word "public" (note that your summary above asked "Can we conclude that there is consensus to specify 'military' separately from 'government'?" I thought so, but now we're asked to completely exclude "government").Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:20, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, I prefer "public office" because it includes elective office and appointive office (like the cabinet) but excludes things like being a teacher or a policeman or working for the DMV. Those are "government" positions but they are not "holding public office", which is what all but three previous presidents have done. (I don't think many people would describe a military officer as "holding public office" - that would be a real stretch.) But this wording is one of the things still subject to discussion, as I indicated at the start of this section. --MelanieN (talk) 23:45, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Why do you want to include one weekend per month in the National Guard, but not a lifetime career as a state policeman? Anyway, "public office" typically does include policemen and the like (that's why they're called "officer"). Seriously, why not just say he's the first who never before served in government? Everyone knows that includes the military. But if we're going to get specific about the military, I don't see why we need to completely excise the word "government" when referring to civilian positions.Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:54, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I served in the military. I would never claim that I served in government without a clear explanation of what I mean by that. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:00, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I served in the military too, and it was a government job. Anyway, if we want to be explicit about it, the standard language is that he never had a "military" or "civilian" job in the public sector/government. I've already described at least four versions of this that I can agree to, including ones that explicitly say "military". Are you okay with them too, User:Mandruss?Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:11, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I did not see a problem with "without ever having held public office or served in the military", as the military needs to be seperate. However, "IF" we are going to nit-pick then "Public office" would exclude police officers ("public officers") in some states and the judicial branch in others. New Hampshire and North Carolina exclude legislators from the definition of "public official". Texas defines "appointed officer", "elected officer," "state employee," and "state officer" separately.

There is clearly an understandable difference between a police officer and a military soldier or officer, and a "civilian". Part of the media attention, besides the fact that he has never held any "government office", elected or appointed, is that Trump has no prior military service. I am sure reaching captain in a military academy will not count. I submit that, "... and the first without prior military or governmental service.", would be as close (and as short) as we can get. Otr500 (talk) 02:30, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I also agree to the current version as of this post, even though I think the word "military" is superfluous, but can live with it.Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:01, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

American conventions

There is an inconsistency between placing the quotation mark before or after the period. As Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States, I suggest we place quotation marks after periods and commas in this article per MOS:TIES. TranquilHope (talk) 00:23, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Please see MOS:LQ. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:10, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

LQ takes priority over TIES. Mind you, it is hard to understand why the MOS would do that. TFD (talk) 01:10, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

TFD is right. Extremely short quotes go inside the closing punctuation, and longer quotes go outside. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:20, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Or to be more precise: The punctuation goes inside the quote if the punctuation is PART of the quote. A full sentence: punctuation inside. A snippet: punctuation outside. --MelanieN (talk) 00:51, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Harassment of teenage girl

I believe his harassment of a teenage girl should be mentioned somewhere in the article, judging by its coverage in reliable sources, e.g.

• Donald Trump’s Harassment of a Teenage Girl on Twitter Led to Death and Rape Threats, New York Magazine
• Here’s what happened when a brave young woman stood up to troll-in-chief headed for the White House, New York Times

--Tataral (talk) 05:12, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

No it shouldn't, I don't recall "reliable" sources having been elevated to that of a court of law. That, and how irrelevant this is pertaining to the biography of Donald Trump's life, and it's pretty debatable calling what he did "harassment" to the point it's grey area territory. User:Archer Rafferty 6:31, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Tataral: If you believe that information from the sources could fit in either Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations or Legal affairs of Donald Trump, then feel free to add content or bring discussion to the talk pages on those articles. User:Archer Rafferty: Due to widespread media coverage of these events and similar events/allegations about Donald Trump's treatment of women, on Misplaced Pages these subjects are relevant information to be covered in Donald Trump's biography, though to limit the size of Trump's main article, the content is , effectively making them an extension or part of the series on Trump's life. Thanks. WClarke (talk) 08:13, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

If you think including every allegation of harassment or sexual assault in an article is beneficial be my guest but don't be naive to the fact most of it is either flat out false (ie pedophile claims), irrelevant (ie this), or trivia clutter. (ie nearly everything being edited into this article nowadays). User:Archer Rafferty 4:33, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

(Redacted)

It has not received sufficient attention to merit inclusion. TFD (talk) 01:07, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, at least for this article. If anyone wants to start List of Donald Trump's bullying, intimidation and attacks on other people, there is loads of information in RS. Seriously, that's a legitimate topic. Just work out better wording for the title. It's a very notable subject. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:27, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

That would inherently be a WP:POVFORK, no better than List of Donald Trump's most awesome ideas. Both ought to remain redlinks, per NPOV. It is not possible to have a balanced neutral article which cuts up a natural topic (Donald Trump or Political positions of Donald Trump or Cabinet of Donald Trump or whatever) into artificially smaller subcategories like Only the bad stuff about Donald Trump and similarly Only the good stuff about Donald Trump. Somebody suggested that Donald Trump on Twitter or perhaps Donald Trump's use of the Internet were valid topics, and if he continues using them throughout his presidency I don't doubt such articles will be written as valid WP:SPINOFF subsidiary efforts. But there should never be Only bad things Trump said on Twitter and also should never be Only nice things Trump said on Twitter. Having enough sources for an inherently POV topic-delineation, does not make it any less POV -- compare with gerrymandering where the politicians draw the lines so as to guarantee incumbent-re-elections and unfairly tilt the region-wide totals towards one of the major parties, rather than to delineate natural constituencies or geographically neutral tiling polygons or whatever. Topics must be chosen/titled in an encyclopedic fashion, too, not merely sufficiently sourced. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 00:29, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree that this probably doesn't work for this article. His long history of cyber-bullying is now and appears to be building as a significant issue. Post-election, it does not seem to abate. We may need to find a way to add this in some manner. Objective3000 (talk) 00:47, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

restart section about whether Trump identifies as a conservative

• now: Trump's positions have been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, and nationalist.
• new: Trump self-identifies as a "somewhat conservative" Republican, and his positions have been described as populist, protectionist, and nationalist.

References

1. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/donald-trump-im-a-conservative-jeb-bush-121554

Does this look okay? Mainspace previously said "Trump identifies as a conservative" but it was removed as being unsourced. See existing Talk:Donald_Trump#.22Trump_identifies_as_a_conservative.2C_and....22 for previous discussion with Tataral and SPECIFICO (courtesy ping in case they want to add anything). 47.222.203.135 (talk) 00:15, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

It is more correct that he said it during a debate. You would need a reliable secondary source that explains how he self-identifies. TFD (talk) 01:13, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

As a general principle, a primary source may well suffice for self identification. - Ryk72 05:57, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Disagree. There is no policy-based reason to do so and it fails "Self-published or questionable sources as sources on themselves" as it is unduly self-serving or questionable. Note we do not say that Bernie Sanders is a "democratic socialist," but that he describes himself as such. And there are a huge number of secondary sources that say he describes himself that way. We do not call Hillary Clinton a "progressive," although she has claimed to be one. (The claim is dubious.) The article on Tony Blair mentions that he calls himself a "democratic socialist," but does not say he is. There are plenty of sources that question whether Trump is a conservative and no guarantee that he would claim to be one if there were no advantage in doing so. TFD (talk) 15:00, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Not really seeing the unduly self-serving or questionable; particularly w.r.t. inclusion as an (self-)attributed statement. I make no suggestion that a primary source is sufficient for us to include definitive categorisation of a person in line with their identification of themselves; it's clearly not. I do suggest that a primary source of Person X saying "I am a Y" is sufficient for us to say Person X self-identifies as a Y or Person X has described themselves as a Y. Outside our political articles, this type of sourcing is more than sufficient for an (self-)attributed statement. Both Sanders & Blair include attributed statements of self-identification. I would have no issue if these were sourced to statements made by Sanders & Blair, respectively. - Ryk72 21:54, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

More substantial wall

I disagree with this edit because it is unintentionally misleading. It suggests (at least to some readers) that there is not already any wall of any sort along the southern border of the U.S. The main text of this BLP uses the language "more substantial" wall, and I don't think two words in the lead about this are two too many. Trump's proposal is to build a big wall, instead of the current small wall, not instead of nothing at all.Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:42, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Where are the reliable sources reporting that Trump says he wants to build a "more substantial" wall? Or where Trump even acknowledges that some parts of the border already have a fence or wall? (BTW re "instead of the current small wall": if you are under the impression that there is already a wall along the entire southern border, you are mistaken.) We need to report what he said, not what we think he meant to say. And what he said, repeatedly, is that he intends to "build a wall" - a "big, beautiful wall". His call-and-response at every rally: "What are we going to build?" "A wall!" "Who is going to pay for it?" "Mexico!" Not a "bigger wall" or a "better wall" or a "more substantial wall", just "a wall". He gives the impression that he thinks, or wants his listeners to think, that the wall will be something brand new, not just an expansion of what is there now, and IMO we misreport his platform if we impose our own interpretation. I didn't notice the "more substantial" in the main text and I will take a look to see if it is sourced. --MelanieN (talk) 16:32, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

That's exactly right. There are only relatively small portions of the border that have any type of wall at all.- MrX 16:47, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking at the section in the article's text: it lists three references. None of the references says or implies "more substantial". I will remove those two words when I can (can't right now per DS). --MelanieN (talk) 16:52, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

The BLP says:

References

1. Johnson, Jenna (May 13, 2016). "Trump: All policy proposals are just flexible suggestions". The Washington Post.
2. Woodward, Bob (April 5, 2016). "Trump reveals how he would force Mexico to pay for border wall". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
3. Hamilton, Keegan. "The US already has a border wall and it's basically useless", Vice News (November 3, 2016).

The last of those three references makes abundantly clear that there is already a wall along parts of the southern border.Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:59, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Vice news is not a reliable source as far as I know, and you seem to be reading only the headline anyway. Further into the article is says " But the fence abruptly ends in some places, leaving vast open stretches. In the most absurd cases, 30-foot sections of fence are surrounded on both sides by miles of wide open space." - MrX 17:11, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Why don't you think Vice News is reliable? In any event, both you and Melanie are mistaken if you think Trump is proposing a wall along the entire southern border. Even if he were, it would still be misleading to imply that there is no wall presently along any part of the southern border, which is what our lead is now implying.Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:16, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Of course there are walls and fences along parts of the southern border. Everybody knows that. Our lead doesn't in any way imply there aren't. (And you, in your initial paragraph here, clearly implied that you thought there was already "a wall" - not "some walls" or "a series of walls" but "the current small wall" - along the southern border. I'm glad we agree there is currently not "a wall," but some walls and fences primarily in populated areas, leaving the vast majority of the border unfenced.) Trump's proposal was to built "a wall" - not "to strengthen the existing walls", not to "expand our system of walls" - but to build "a wall". All of the commenters on his proposal (estimating the cost, describing its feasibility, etc.) assumed that he meant a wall along pretty much the entire southern border. That's what he has said, repeatedly. A new wall, 1000 miles long (with natural barriers taking care of the rest) and 50 feet high. There is nothing in any of the three sources, express or implied, to support our describing his proposal as a "more substantial" wall. More substantial than what? He hasn't even acknowledged the existence of anything current. --MelanieN (talk) 17:33, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Vice.com seems to feature sensationalistic reporting and headlines; does not seem to be frequently cited by others; seems to have an open submission policy; and I can find no evidence that they have a reputation for fact checking. Nothing in the lead implies that portions of the border don't already have a wall, fence, or natural barrier.- MrX 17:44, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I have no quibble with the accuracy of the Vice report. It makes clear that some portions of the border have an existing wall or fence, and vast stretches do not. It does not in any way support a suggestion that Trump is calling for a "more substantial" wall. As I said with my revert: that is putting words in his mouth - words he has never said. --MelanieN (talk) 17:48, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

User:MelanieN, you are mistaken. Trump has taken the position that, "Of the 2,000, we don’t need 2,000, we need 1,000 because we have natural barriers". Even where there's a natural barrier, he said on 60 Minutes that fencing would suffice in some places instead of a wall.. Maybe if we can agree about what he's said, then we can get consensus on the lead language.Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I was just modifying my comment above to say 1000 miles long and 50 feet high. That's still a new wall. Not a "more substantial" wall than... what? He has never said. He has never uttered those words. And we should not put them in his mouth. --MelanieN (talk) 18:05, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand why you think we'd be putting words in his mouth; no one suggested putting "substantial" in quotes or even attributing that word to him without quotes. The point is that he is proposing to expand what's already at the border, and already approved for the border, rather than proposing to build everything from scratch. Surely there must be an acceptable way to indicate in the lead the former rather than the latter.Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:13, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

The problem is that he never says "I'm going to expand" or "I'm going to add to" or anything like this. He says "I am going to BUILD a wall." Period. And the wall he describes - concrete and 50 feet high - is completely different from anything currently in place. It IS, in fact, starting from scratch. --MelanieN (talk) 19:10, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

No, he has actually been much more nuanced than merely saying "I am going to build a wall" (e.g., as I explained above, he allows for some fencing, and some natural barriers too). In any event, I think you're missing the point. There are already some walls, and some fences, and some natural barriers down there, and still more have already been approved by Congress. So he's not proposing to build a barrier along a border that currently has no barriers, which is what the lead currently implies. Do you want the lead to suggest that he's proposing to install the first-ever physical barrier between the two countries? Because that's what you seem to be advocating, intentionally or not.Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:27, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

• "I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words."
• "I'm building a wall, OK? I'm building a wall. I am going to do very well with the Hispanics, the Mexicans."
• "It’s going to be a big, fat, beautiful wall!"
• "A nation WITHOUT BORDERS is not a nation at all. We must have a wall. The rule of law matters."

Yep. That's real nuanced.- MrX 21:36, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't recall having asserted that every single sentence Trump's ever uttered on the subject has been nuanced.Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:39, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

We are talking in circles. I don't see anything in the lede sentence that implies there is nothing there now. Trump himself says, over and over and over, that he is going to build a wall, we must have a wall, we can't have a nation without borders (which he seems to imply is the current situation?). Even when he modifies the proposal a little bit in calmer settings - only 1000 miles of it will be wall, and part of it could be fence instead of wall - he still refers to it as his wall. He still leads the chanting of "build the wall" at rallies. He has NEVER suggested that it will be an addition or expansion of what is there now. Presumably (one hopes) he does know that there is a partial wall/fence along the border now, but he clearly thinks it is nothing that can be compared to his big fat beautiful wall. Anyhow, the bottom line is sourcing. I doubt if we can find a single reliable source that says he is really talking about expanding or "making more substantial" the existing border barriers. If he doesn't say it, and reliable sources don't say it, then we can't say it. Basically this is Original Research on your part. --MelanieN (talk) 00:06, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

You say, "I don't see anything in the lede sentence that implies there is nothing there now." Many readers, especially foreign ones, will not agree with you. How painful would it be for us to extremely briefly indicate that there is something there now?Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:13, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

If we don't have any Reliable Sources pointing this out in connection with Trump's plan to build a wall - and if Trump himself has not pointed it out - it would still be WP:Original research. Or, if you prefer, WP:Synthesis. OR and synthesis are not only painful - they are not allowed. --MelanieN (talk) 06:31, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I have edited the BLP like this. Please let me know what you think.Anythingyouwant (talk) 15:11, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, I think it's unnecessary, but if it solves the problem you see with the sentence, I can accept it. It does seem like a fair representation of what he is saying. --MelanieN (talk) 15:25, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Moving footnotes out of the lead

I don't know if an entire new RFC is necessary to merely move the footnotes out of the lead, but I'd be glad to start one if necessary. IMHO, either the lead should be fully footnoted, or not footnoted. To have four footnotes after one sentence, and no footnotes anywhere else in the lead, looks silly to me, and it's unlike any other lead I've ever seen. These four footnotes should of course go later in the article.Anythingyouwant (talk) 15:37, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

The footnotes follow the most contentious sentence in the entire article. For that reason, I think they should remain and the rest of the lead should omit footnotes for readability. I would not oppose removing them from the contentious sentence if I knew that editors wouldn't simply remove the sentence or alter it to suit their personal POV. - MrX 16:25, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I seem to recall (can't find it right now) that the footnotes on that sentence were inserted at the recommendation of an admin who closed a discussion on the subject. --MelanieN (talk) 16:34, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

You are correct. Sandstein commented that including the footnotes was part of the proposal, thus part of the consensus outcome.- MrX 16:56, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

The footnotes were swept into a discussion of larger issues, and there was never any separate proposal to footnote one and only one sentence. But I'd be glad to start an RFC about that. The most controversial sentences in lots of leads exclude footnotes.Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:02, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

We already have an RFC about that sentence. Let's not start another one while that one is open. The footnotes issue can be dealt with after that RfC is resolved - and may not even be necessary depending on how that RfC is resolved. --MelanieN (talk) 17:36, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

this part is too loaded

and the first without prior military or other governmental service.

Government service include teacher, police officer, clerk, mail deliverer, midwife, firefighter, paramedic, senator, representative, governor, mayor, alderman, land commissioner, secretary of state, secretary of defense, general in the army, private in the army, submariner, you name it.

There is no need to split military from other government service. IMO just "and the first without prior governmental service" is sufficient.

207.245.44.6 (talk) 17:16, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Please see the existing discussion above at "Prior government experience". --MelanieN (talk) 17:37, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

This is journalese. All presidents had been elected to government office before becoming president except: Taft and Hoover were cabinet secretaries, Grant was Commanding General of the United States Army and Eisenhower was Chief of Staff of the United States Army. That's not just any government or military employment. Had Trump served in the Peace Corps or not been medically unfit for the draft, his background would still have distinguished him from the others. TFD (talk) 21:29, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think military should be split from the rest of government. If he worked as a private in the army or worked as a teacher in a school, he would have done governmental service. 207.245.44.6 (talk) 23:30, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Net worth contradiction

The infobox lists DJT's net worth at $4.5B and uses a citation that says $3.7B. The consensus list at the top of this page says that the real-time net worth should not be used. I agree. However, the $3.7B number comes from a detailed Forbes article in September, not from their real-time estimates which are not updated in real-time for DJT as his holdings are generally private. ]. Objective3000 (talk) 20:55, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Intro

Can we please keep it simple. Along with his others descriptions, he's President-elect of the United States. He will be sworn in as the 45th President. We don't need to go on about when he was projected elected (November 8) or elected (December 19), as that's too elaborative for the lead. Besides, this will all be changed to 45th President of the United States, on 20 January 2017. Keep it neat, like the Mike Pence intro. GoodDay (talk) 21:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

ISIL not ISIS

The usually used and preferred abbreviation of the group is ISIL on Misplaced Pages. In addition, the group's name is "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" on the article so ISIL makes more sense. Or maybe we should just use its full name at the article here instead. 117.207.145.10 (talk) 22:41, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

That's true, but the media persistently calls it ISIS, and that's what most people seem to call it. (I don't really know or care what a bunch of terrorists call themselves and doubt many people do either.) Maybe we can say something like "the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, abbreviated as ISIL or sometimes ISIS when in Syria", which covers all bases. White Arabian Filly 22:49, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

No just ISIL or the full name. Including the abbreviations and the full name will make it too long. 117.207.145.10 (talk) 23:02, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

It's called neither ISIS or ISIL. It's simply called IS. 207.245.44.6 (talk) 23:27, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I.S. seems better than ISIL or ISIS, because it has spread outside of Iraq, Syria, and the Levant (e.g. to Libya). I would always use periods though ("I.S.").Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:36, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

It's called with all terms whether IS, ISIL or ISIS. The other one is Daesh. I think it is better to avoid the abbreviation confusion and use the full name in the lead. 117.207.145.10 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:04, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 December 2016

It is requested that an edit be made to the extended-confirmed-protected article at Donald Trump. (edit · history · last · links · protection log) This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, that is, specify what text should be removed and a verbatim copy of the text that should replace it. "Please change X" is not acceptable and will be rejected; the request must be of the form "please change X to Y". The edit may be made by any extended confirmed user. Remember to change the |answered=no parameter to "yes" when the request has been accepted, rejected or on hold awaiting user input. This is so that inactive or completed requests don't needlessly fill up the edit requests category. You may also wish to use the {{EEp}} template in the response. To request that a page be protected or unprotected, make a protection request.

My request is to add the artist in which Trump used as his entrance song in his presidential campaign Who is Daniel Robinson The song being Darkness Rises. You can easily google it or if you want I can send you all the links. He has used it many times, and it has gotten media attention, We think it fair to add this to Trump's page or add this artist to Misplaced Pages. The song Darkness Rises was Trumps main choice for his entrance in most of his campaigns rallies. Djrrecords (talk) 07:38, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I'll let somebody else handle this, but note possible COI implications in the username. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:52, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

FYI for the major editors here

The box on the right is the FAC toolbox, which the Military history Wikiproject has adopted for its A-class reviews. Among other things, this box contains a link to a script that checks the external links in any given Misplaced Pages article, and when used on the article article Donald Trump its shows that some of these links may not be working. Under the BLP protocol, information in the article can be removed if its sources are not up to par, so someone may want to look into this if they get a moment. TomStar81 (Talk) 12:30, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Trivia added to lede

Somebody added this sentence to the lede: "Trump admires Richard Nixon and, as well, claims to admire Auric Goldfinger and P.T. Barnum." I consider this trivial to the point of nonsensical. IMO it doesn't belong in the article, much less in the lede. I can't revert it right now; does someone else want to? --MelanieN (talk) 15:43, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

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