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Revision as of 19:50, 7 August 2022

This is the talk page for discussing WikiProject United States Presidents and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

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United States: Presidents Project‑class

This page is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States Project This page does not require a rating on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. This page is supported by WikiProject United States Presidents.

White House New Year's Reception

I created this article last year: White House New Year's Reception. Any help improving it would be appreciated! Thank you, Thriley (talk) 08:23, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

RfC notification

A request for comment that may interest members of this project has been opened at Talk:Donald Trump § RfC: Should the lead section have any citations?. ––FormalDude talk 19:51, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Categories for laws signed by Presidents

This is a thought I've had for a while. Is this project against categories being created for U.S. Presidents who have signed laws during their presidencies? A hypothetical category could be "Legislation signed by Barack Obama" or "Acts signed by Barack Obama". --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 19:10, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Turned this into an Rfc in case people hadn't seen this. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 20:33, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

• Question: Would you provide a brief neutral summary of any previous conflict over this issue? I'm unfamiliar with the situation, and would like to understand more. BusterD (talk) 16:45, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Don't think there was a conflict over this type of issue. But I'm basically asking if articles about U.S. federal legislation should be categorized by the respective President that signed the bill into law. For instance, laws signed by Barack Obama could be categorized under "Legislation signed by Barack Obama" or "Acts signed by Barack Obama". Or by some other naming format. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 18:13, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Given the lack of broader context I'm inclined to agree this seems an obvious sort of categorization. Such approvals define somewhat the office holders' tenure and performance. I'm not seeing an argument against it, but would be happy to be better informed. BusterD (talk) 20:46, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Honestly, this seems like a pretty uncontroversial change. WP:BEBOLD, if you see the niche. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 20:47, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

We could divide the main cats into a container category by what year the law was signed by which president. I think "Legislation signed by Barack Obama" as an example is probably the best way to name such categories. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 18:55, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't have any issues with the subject matter of legislation being signed by Presidents. It seems a monumental task as there are many Presidents and a lot of legislation. You would have to find reliable sources for each President. You would have to categorize each type of legislation signed and the dates of signing. Best of luck to you. Thanks. Cmguy777 (talk) 21:48, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

This Rfc can be closed as there is consensus for my proposal for categorization. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:07, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

User script to detect unreliable sources

I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Misplaced Pages. The idea is that it takes something like

• John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (John Smith "" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.)

and turns it into something like

• John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.

It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.

The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.

Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.

- Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:02, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

What's the point of presidential rankings?

The introduction for pretty much every Misplaced Pages page for a U.S. president cites a "survey of historians and scholars" that ranks the presidents.

• Why? Are these surveys really notable enough to be in the introduction of every president? I'm not a trained historian, but it seems kind of silly to me to "rank" presidents who lived in completely different eras and did completely different things in completely different contexts. Do historians really find these numbers useful?
• What should be done when rankings change? There's an ongoing dispute on the Andrew Jackson page about how to address the decline in Jackson's rankings. Is the point of the rankings to describe the current academic consensus, or to take a historiographical approach that charts a president's rankings over time?
• These rankings seem ripe for systemic bias. How do we address that? For example, Andrew Jackson played a major role in the ethnic cleansing of the United States, and the academic communities that formed in the resulting whites-only America are still mostly white. It strikes me as biased to describe Jackson's performance as "favorable" because a bunch of white academics ranked him high in "public persuasion," especially when he was persuading people toward racist policies and surveys of Black academics have ranked him as an "institutionally racist" "white supremacist." How can we better address this bias without making the introductions too bulky?

In my opinion, the best solution is to remove these rankings from all of the POTUS introductions and move them to the corresponding "Historical reputation" sections. FinnV3 (talk) 13:12, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, it above all else is used to demonstrate how high (or low) regard they're held in, though admittedly does take from a limited sample size. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 19:27, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that's basically why. I have no strong opinion on whether they need to be in all the presidential lead sections, but the only reason why this is being brought up now is because FinnV3 was upset to see it mentioned that Andrew Jackson was ranked highly compared to other U.S. presidents. He tried to argue that he wasn't, but he had to concede when he was shown irrefutable evidence that he was. Now he is just trying to change the rules. Display name 99 (talk) 19:50, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

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