Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Politics, government, and law

The following discussions are requested to have community-wide attention:

Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard

Is the claim that there are genetic differences in intelligence along racial lines a fringe viewpoint? NightHeron (talk) 23:43, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:People's Mujahedin of Iran

There are a number statements in the article from former members of the MEK:

1. "According to former MEK member Masoud Banisadr, "[l]ooking at the original official ideology of the group, one notices some sort of ideological opportunism within their 'mix and match' set of beliefs"
2. "According to Masoud Banisadr, following the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980, MEK called Saddam Hussein an "aggressor" and a "dictator"."
3. " According to Ardeshir Parkizkari (a former MEK member), the MEK "called the events of Sept. 11 God's revenge on America."
4. "Maryam Rajavi has been reported by former MEK members as having said: "Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards."
5. "According to former MEK member Hassan Heyrani, "several thousand accounts are managed by about 1,000-1,500 MEK members".

Should these be removed from the article? Ypatch (talk) 17:03, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

Is the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) a reliable source for determining the reliability of fact-checking organizations? — Newslinger talk 14:35, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Ilhan Omar

Should allegations of an affair be included in Ilhan Omar's biography? NightHeron (talk) 12:23, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Julian Assange

There is a discussion about due weight in the lede, which contains this paragraph WikiLeaks' role in the 2016 US Presidential election:

During the 2016 US Democratic Party presidential primaries, WikiLeaks hosted emails sent or received by candidate Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State. The U.S. Intelligence Community, as well as a Special Counsel investigation, concluded that the Russian government carried out a hacking campaign as part of broader efforts to interfere in the 2016 United States elections. In 2018, twelve Russian intelligence officers, mostly affiliated with the GRU, were indicted on criminal charges by Special Counsel Robert Mueller; the indictment charged the Russians with carrying out the computer hacking and working with WikiLeaks and other organisations to spread stolen documents. Assange has consistently denied any connection to or co-operation with Russia in relation to the leaks, and accused the Clinton campaign of stoking "a neo-McCarthy hysteria".

(emphasis added)

Should the bolded sentence be removed? -Thucydides411 (talk) 12:15, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Progressive Slovakia

This RfC may also apply to the pages of other political parties with similar issues. When a political party mostly adheres to a certain variant of a particular ideology, should the more general ideology be listed in addition to the specific variant in the "ideology" section of the infobox? In this case, Progressive Slovakia is a liberal party mostly adhering to social liberalism. Ezhao02 (talk) 02:18, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

Are geonotices such as this one (requested by EllenCT, added by Deryck Chan, full request here) appropriate? It requests users to "Please send email asking the US government to require open access to federally supported research." My opinion is that no, it is not okay to use Wikipedia for political activism, regardless of how noble the cause. I've asked for removal, but I doubt the geonotice request page gets much traffic, so in the mean time, I think this is probably worth bringing up here to get some wider input. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 13:49, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2020 Republican Party presidential primaries

I see there has been some back-and-forth with the infobox. This is an RfC exclusively regarding the infobox template for the 2020 Republican Party presidential primaries. There is currently a similar RfC for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries.

The question is:
Should candidates other than Trump be included in the infobox?

The options are:
A - Include all candidates who have received delegates.
B - Include all candidates who have reached a certain other threshold (e.g. 5% popular vote). Please specify the threshold you prefer.
C - Keep Trump only.

– feminist (talk) 06:09, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:University of Pittsburgh

Should the lede and infobox say that this institution is "public" or "state-related?" ElKevbo (talk) 05:20, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums

RfC question: Should United States presidential election results tables be displayed in standard chronological order or reverse chronological order? – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 22:59, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Democratic Progressive Party

In articles about Taiwanese political parties, should left–right position be replaced with cross-Strait position? Ythlev (talk) 11:46, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Antifa (United States)

Should the subject of this article be capitalized (Antifa) or not (antifa)? feminist (talk) 07:19, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

As seen above on this page, MOS:JOBTITLES has been disputed numerous times due to strong disagreements in whether the names of political offices should be capitalised in the lead sentences of political office articles and elsewhere following the article/modifier. A retrospective analysis of 19 of these discussions dating back to 2011 (above) showed that the overall view is against the guideline as it reads now by approximately 2:1, but no discussion has ever been able to come to a reasonable solution.

Should the Manual of Style section be removed entirely as a guideline that does not have "general" support? (A substitute can be added later if it does have general support.) · • SUM1 • · (talk) 18:46, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Ronald Reagan

Should the lead section of Ronald Reagan include the following?

• A clause in the sentence on Reagan's first term stating that during said term he largely ignored the burgeoning AIDS crisis.
• A sentence (immediately preceding the ones on USSR) stating Reagan resisted calls for stringent sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa and vetoed a sanctions bill but was overridden by Congress.

Citations for both additions would be placed in the article body in the respective sections for AIDS (which includes the relevant sources listed immediately below) and Apartheid (which was affirmed by an RfC in October). Sdkb (talk) 05:43, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Naomi Seibt

Which description is more suitable here?

A) She is a climate change denialist.

B) She is a climate change skeptic.

C) She is a climate change denier.

--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 04:10, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries

This is an Rfc exclusively regarding the infobox template for the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Previously, there was an Rfc about state pages, and this does not affect that result.

The question is:
Should withdrawn candidates that have delegates (Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Bloomberg) and candidates still in but with no possible path to victory (Gabbard) still be included in the infobox?

The options are:
A - Remove all withdrawn candidates and candidates with no possible path.
B - Remove withdrawn candidates but keep all candidates still in the race. Possibly with a 5% threshold?
C - Keep as is.
D - Other.

Thanks all! Smith0124 (talk) 23:28, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Republican Party (United States)

Should the lead include mention of the fact that the Republican Party shifted its racial and geographical composition to the South and White Americans after the successes of the Civil Rights movement in the 60s, and that the party appealed to racial conservatism after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

The text in question would summarize the "Composition" section of the body[1], and would reflect the contents of more than a dozen peer-reviewed studies on the matter. ^{RfC expired and extended by Sdkb (talk) at 23:25, 2 March 2020 (UTC)}

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gender studies

This is related to an earlier proposal to rename/reformat {{Masculinism}} and {{Masculism sidebar}} that failed to reach consensus. To wit, should these templates be reformatted to reflect their focus on the men's movement instead of masculism? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:43, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Media coverage of Bernie Sanders

Should we mention that Ocasio-Cortez described the report from the Politico magazine as anti-semitic?--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 23:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Legality of bestiality by country or territory

The purpose of this RFC is to determine what the article should state is the legal status of bestiality in Germany.

Shall the table show, for Germany:

A.

Germany Illegal

Or

B.

Germany Legal, unless forced, in which case Illegal

?

Answer A or B in the Survey. Conduct back-and-forth discussion in the Threaded Discussion section. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:09, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries

This is a two part RfC.

A. Prior to a caucus or primary, should candidates only be included in the infoboxes of primary and caucus articles if they are polling at an average of 5% or above on FiveThirtyEight.com?

B. After a caucus or primary, should candidates only be included in the infoboxes of primary and caucus articles if they have won delegates in that contest? - MrX 🖋 01:43, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Talk:The Washington Post

Should the abbreviation WaPo be placed in the first sentence? KyleJoan^talk 05:20, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2020 in the United Kingdom

There is a disagreement about the link label to provide for the incumbent parliament, given in the "Incumbents" section near the top of the page. Should it be labelled as:

A. Parliament – 58th?

B. Parliament – The 58th, elected December 2019?

C. Other (please offer suggestions)?

RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 23:27, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2020 Nevada Democratic caucuses

Should the article include the February 13-15 Point Blank Political poll? - MrX 🖋 14:53, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

Question: What should the general rule/principle/guideline be for categorizing current localities by historical administrative subdivision in Central and Eastern Europe? There are quite a few articles of cities and towns that have been categorized not only in which administrative subdivision they currently are in, but also by the former subdivisions.

Typical example: Eišiškės, a small town in Lithuania, is in these categories: Category:Cities in Lithuania, Category:Cities in Vilnius County, Category:Šalčininkai District Municipality, Category:Vilnius Voivodeship, Category:Lidsky Uyezd, Category:Nowogródek Voivodeship (1919–1939). The first 3 categories reflect the current administrative subdivision. Vilnius Voivodeship was a subdivision in 1413–1795. Lidsky Uyezd was a 2nd-level subdivision sometime between 1795–1915. Nowogródek Voivodeship (1919–1939) was an inter-war subdivision.

General options:

• A: categorization should be limited - by what? Whether it is referenced in the article? How long the subdivision lasted? How large the subdivision was? To the 1st-level former subdivision? To how recent subdivision was? Etc?
• B: categorization should not be allowed (i.e. current localities should be removed from the former subdivision categories; historical information could be preserved in a different venue like a separate list or an addition to the locality article or something similar to the "historical affiliation" box as in Görlitz#History)
• C: status quo; no general rules; specific issues with individual categories should be addressed at WP:CfD

22:24, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Talk:People's Mujahedin of Iran

Should this sentence "According to The Daily Beast,a few months after the executions, relatives were handed plastic bags with their children's belongings" be included in the article?Saff V. (talk) 09:12, 19 February 2020 (UTC)