Talk:2019–2020 Hong Kong protests/Archive 14

Protests still going on?
Hi there i noticed that the hong kong protests are mentioned here to have stopped. However, i would like to point out that the protest is actually going on in internet platforms such as Animal crossing and etc. This is because of current covid situations that are happening as of am writing this. Thus it can be said that it is reasonably valid to consider that the protests are still ongoing. I would request members to review this and make necessary decisions. Thanks --Hari147 (talk) 15:00, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I have an idea - we can use a section "Impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak" - and in it online movements can be discussed. Augend (talk) 23:02, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I would support that. As they are ongoing but not on the streets. — RealFakeKim  T  11:16, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Last protest
Some editors suggested that the protests ended on 21 March. I don't necessarily disagree with including an end date since the protest is temporarily halted at the moment, but 21 March seems like an arbitrary choice. Is there a reason why this date is picked? OceanHok (talk) 13:21, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I added a usnews.com source stating the last "large-scale anti-government protest" was New Year's day but that other protests continued. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 02:56, 24 April 2020 (UTC)


 * There as a larger protest about the Yuen Long attack on March 21 so I referenced that as the last large scale protest. — RealFakeKim  T  11:15, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Good thing to bring up. The usnews.com source doesn't address it since it was published before the 21 March protests. OTOH rfa lists the 21 March protest count as about 100, compared with the New Year's day count of about a million (correct me if I'm wrong.) So my personal preference would be to keep the January cutoff until a more recent strong source publishes on the matter. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 04:04, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

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 * 2019-10-01 Demonstration Hong Kong 11.jpg

Hong Kong protest edits
Hey, I have noticed my edits regarding the HK protests are reverted. Editors strive to maintain neutrality, but there is limited coverage of the other side and lesser-known side of the protests. The article in of itself is neutral, but the information provided is totally one-sided to the side of the protestors. Therefore, I proposed adding a section - "criticism of protestors," to which you deleted. If there is criticism of police responses, there should also be a criticism of the protestors section to balance things out and maintain a neutral even-handed tone. The criticism of violent methods, the counter-protests, and the people's negative views of the protests should also be presented to an audience who may not know about these protests. There are always positive and negative evaluations in any controversial article or Wikipedia pages of controversial figures, and I believe it is only right to do that. As a new user, I understand my citations and content may be a bit off, but I believe with the help of VIPs and other more senior and experienced editors like some of you here, we can add a section like this and highlight the concerns and criticism of the protests that are essential for one's complete understanding of the situation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Starslayer1234 (talk • contribs) 05:44, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Personally I agree with WP:CRITICISM essay that a "criticism of..." section should only exist "if the sources treat the negative material as an organic whole, and if readers would be better served by seeing all the negative material in one location", which I'm not yet convinced is the case here. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 06:36, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * As far as your edits, SCMP publishes a lot of WP:POV statements from CCP spokesmen and gives a lot of space (without rebuttal) to fairly bizarre CCP claims in its articles sometimes. So sourcing the criticism to higher-tier WP:RS sources than SCMP might be advisable, otherwise it might be dismissed as WP:UNDUE. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 06:36, 14 May 2020 (UTC)


 * You are drawing a false equivalence between the police, a government department, and protesters, who are not a monolithic or centrally organised group. The content you are adding is already covered neutrally in the "Clashes between protesters and counter-protesters" section. Adding additional sections for criticisms of protesters and counter-protesters would be redundant. Citobun (talk) 06:48, 14 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Most of the stuff you have added is in the article already in different sections (clashes, impacts, tactics and online confrontations). I don't think the education stuff is relevant to the protests. OceanHok (talk) 12:26, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 2 May 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: No consensus. It is without question that MOS:YEARRANGE prefers a YYYY-YYYY construction but also allows for a YYYY-YY construction. The question is whether there is a consensus on which construction to use. If I was participating, I would personally opt to support. However, I'm not participating in the discussion; I'm just closing it. On this basis, the discussion was on the borderline of whether there was consensus or not, so I looked at other articles. One thing I do note is that there is a genuine split; on the one hand, articles such as 2019–2020 Chilean protests use the four-digit construction; on the other, the article for the COVID-19 pandemic previously used the two-digit construction. In essence, there is no consensus other which is preferred for consecutive years; on that basis, the result of "no consensus" is a particularly, and maybe paradoxically, strong one. (non-admin closure) Sceptre (talk) 01:21, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

2019–20 Hong Kong protests → 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests – I was asked by to revert my rename of this page to the proposed name. Reasoning was " 4-digit years are the preferred form per MOS" (on my talk page). When it was initially moved to that article, it apparently against a discussion on 1 January 2020 (archive 11), and I feel that another discussion must be needed to move it back to the 2019-2020 one. Starzoner (talk) 22:07, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Addendum: I posted it because the previous Rm chose the 2019-20 name. It needs another RM to move the title, and the MOS allows it so. I don't think the title can be inerpreted as yyyy-mm. Seriously? no one will interpret it as the 19th or 20th month of the year. I don't support the move of the page. Starzoner (talk) 16:09, 11 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Support per the 2016 RFC and our Manual of Style (MOS:YEARRANGE), according to which 4-digit years are the preferred form. Our MOS defines a number of exceptions (and "2019–20" is one of them), but still "2019–2020" is the preferred form. The exception is typically used for things like sport seasons and other annual events overlapping the flip of the year, and for which a common naming pattern exists per WP:COMMONNAME. Not so much for events of arbitrary length. The usage of the long form is also backed up by our general guideline to avoid abbreviations where they are not necessary (WP:ABBR, WP:NOTPAPER) or might cause confusion. More specifically, the form "????-??" should generally be avoided because it can be interpreted as either "yyyy-mm" or "yyyy-yy". While we do not support ymd dates except for in some specific areas (like in tables or citations), the underlying ISO 8601 international date format is meanwhile a common (and sometimes even mandantory) date format in most countries. Consequently, many people would attempt to interpret "????-??" as "yyyy-mm" first and only switch to decode it as "yyyy-yy" after recognizing that the month value is larger than 12, thereby unnecessarily slowing down the interpretation. (This interpretation is even more likely since the introduction of EDTF dates in 2019, where "extended month" values like "2019-21" are defined to mean "spring 2019".) All this can be avoided by not using this form in the first place. "yyyy-yyyy" cannot be misinterpreted in a similar way.
 * Further, if the Hong Kong conflict exists for a bit longer (unfortunately quite likely), we would have to switch to "2019–2021" anyway, because the form "2019–21" is not allowed to be used by MOS. Only, if the conflict is still solved this year we were allowed to retain the current form. Since there are other articles already spanning over three and more years, using the long form also improves consistency (WP:CONSISTENT, WP:TITLECON). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 23:28, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: WP doesn't do ISO8601 date formats --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 14:56, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia "does" ISO 8601, but only in some forms (the "yyyy-mm-dd" form) and only in some areas. And there is a reason for this:
 * Ironically you are making an argument pro the name change to "2019-2020", because the very reason why our MOS does not follow ISO 8601 more generally (despite it being in widespread use in the real world outside of Wikipedia) is because we deprecate the "????-??" form (which is also an ISO 8601 form) due to its ambiguity. In many countries of the world it traditionally means "yyyy-mm", whereas in some other parts it can be interpreted as an abbreviated year range "yyyy-yy". Our goal at Wikipedia is to be as clear as possible and therefore to avoid ambiguity. That's why we avoid the "????-??" form where it is not necessary to be used. So should we do in this case.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 21:52, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * MOS states "Although non-abbreviated years are generally preferred, two-digit ending years (1881–82, but never 1881–882 or 1881–2) may be used in any of the following cases: (1) two consecutive years". As said below it cant be confused with mouth as it is 19-20 which can't be mouths. Consistency only applies beucse you moved most pages with 2019-20 format. We shouldn't assume that the protests will last till 2021 ether as that goes against WP:NOTCRYSTALBALL. As for WP:COMMONNAME most people wright it 2019-20 not 2019-2020 in general and it is often refured to in the news as just Hong Kong protests. I think the common wright convention of 2019-20 justifies using the less favourable option. — RealFakeKim  T  14:52, 10 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Support. OceanHok (talk) 04:57, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Support — RealFakeKim  T  06:55, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Support Firestarforever (talk) 18:41, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Support Common sense, and that is what all other such articles do already.  D r e a m Focus  12:57, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Support for more consistency and all other articles. Someone whose requesting move this article should also moved 2019–20 Australian bushfire season to 2019–2020 Australian bushfire season for the same reason above. 36.68.160.53 (talk) 09:01, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment that discussion is headed for a snowball oppose. --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 14:56, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Because it is about a seasonal event for which a traditional COMMONNAME scheme exists. This does not apply to our case at hands here, so the outcome of that RM is of zero relevance here.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 21:52, 13 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose. This move proposal is based on a misconception. While we should indeed have year ranges expressed as 4-digit to 4-digit in other cases, MOSNUM permits years in the format "20XX–XX+1". There's no possibility of misconstruing it as , both because of the ndash (obligatory separator for  year ranges, as opposed to the hyphen in year-month) as well as the number that exceeds 12; also, "2019–20 Hong Kong protests" is more concise and elegant and easier to type than "2019–2020 Hong Kong protests". --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 16:59, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Still, people used to the yyyy-mm says abbreviation will be momentarily confused, which is best to avoid. Also, it’s rather hard to distinguish the ndash from the hyphen at a glance. sam1370 (talk / contribs) 02:55, 14 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Strong Oppose Per Ohconfucius. I would like to add that 2019–20 reads better that 2019–2020 in my opinion. — RealFakeKim  T  14:42, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: plenty of articles spanning two consecutive years with the naming format "20XX–XX+1" exist, particularly with sporting seasons articles such as English football, NBA and elsewhere. --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 14:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a completely different case. Annually or seasonally reoccuring events such as sport seasons often follow a traditionally prescribed COMMONNAME naming scheme, something that does not exist for out-of-a-sudden one-time events of arbitrary length which just happen to last over the flip of a year like the Hong Kong protests. They could be a matter of months or years, we simply do not know. There is no naming scheme for them in the outer world, therefore we are free to choose from all titles that accurately describe the topic and are allowed by our MOS. In this case, both forms are allowed, but one of them is recommended, and the other is only allowed as an exception to the general rule (and only until the end of the year, anyway). In addition, we also have other guidelines advising against the latter form. So, with a trivially easy solution at hands, why should we still choose the abbreviated form, which may save us two bytes (which is not of any value per WP:NOTPAPER), but is more difficult to decode in a project where we aim for the highest editorial and linguistical standards? I'm afraid, this doesn't make sense to me...
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk)

21:52, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose MOS allows it, it’s short and doesn’t use unnecessary spaces, and pretty hard to confuse for the month. For example, “2010-11” or “2008-09” reads just fine. Also keeping in line with the name of articles such as the previous name for the COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic. sam1370 (talk / contribs) 21:44, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
 * If "2010-11" or "2008-09" read fine to someone is ultimately a matter of taste. If you want to hear my opinion on this, I think they do not. To me this indicates someone hasn't learned a bit from Y2K (which boiled down to the usage of an abbreviated year form).
 * However, what is more important than our personal preferences is that we are here to write an encylopedia adhering to the highest standards of presenting information in an unbiased and easy to understand form for everyone, not only a limited audience used to some specific forms. For this to achieve we have to avoid ambiguity.
 * For example, over here the usage of the ISO 8601 format "yyyy-mm-dd" is mandantory (which includes "yyyy-mm" as an abbreviated form), so the form "????-??" is interpreted as "yyyy-mm", not "yyyy-yy". If that isn't the case where you live your mileage might vary, but with ISO 8601 being an international standard in widespread use, even where it is not mandantory many people will first interpret "????-??" as "yyyy-mm" rather than "yyyy-yy". In the case of your two examples, this is even possible and they might make (or not make) sense of the form only from context. In the particular case up for discussion here ("2019-20"), the reader will, of course, recognize that a month "20" does not exist and therefore will deduce eventually that someone must have meant "2019-2020" instead. However, in many people's minds this will be a second guess, not the default. In cases such as "2019-21" or "2020-21" even this won't work any more, because, per the international date format's EDTF, this means "spring 2019" or "spring 2020", not "2019-2021" or "2020-2021". So, we are again in guessing territory, and will have to derive the correct interpretation from context - if the context is good enough for a reliable interpretation. Either way, this will cost time, and having to second-guess at something is inconvenient - and if it could have been avoided in the first place, it will be seen as an annoyance. Knowingly imposing ambiguities and inconveniences/annoyances on our target audience and not doing something about it is unprofessional.
 * The known ambiguity of the "????-??" form is the very reason why this form is generally deprecated in Wikipedia and why our MOS recommends to use the unabbreviated form "????-????" instead. There is no pre-existing naming scheme in the outer world we would be obligated to follow in our case, nobody forces us to abbreviate the year here, it is completely unnecessary. So, why should we first send our target audience hunting for the proper meaning when we can make it trivially easy for them to understand what is meant simply by not removing two digits?
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 21:52, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hm. I see, that makes sense, I did not know yyyy-mm was used that commonly as an abbreviated form elsewhere, and would cause ambiguity. I change to support. However, this is fundamentally different from Y2K as this one includes the first two digits of the year at the start. sam1370 (talk / contribs) 02:48, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for keeping an open mind striving for the best possible solution for our project.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 03:14, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Comment: Of course any such title would apply to any event that spans two years! We'll be revisiting the title if the protests last beyond the end of the year, but let's not change the title to anticipate something that may not happen, or indeed what form the title may take. We certainly don't use "xxxx-xx" format to denote year-month for titles here on WP. What's more, let's bear in mind the need to be clear and concise – yyyy–yy+1 is much much more widespread and logical than yyyy-mm. In fact, although we allow yyyy-mm-dd dates, WP doesn't do ISO8601 – this is made clear in WP:MOSNUM, and I spent half my wiki-existence correcting such misuses. --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 06:37, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Does anyone have sources for the use of the yyyy-mm abbreviation across the world? Because User:Matthiaspaul has said that "many" people use it, while User:Ohc on the move has said that yyyy-yy+1 is much more widespread. sam1370 (talk / contribs) 06:47, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * WP is autonomous in matters of style, and we really need to look no further. Our WP:MOSNUM considers yyyy-mm not to be cromulent, so it's simply never used here. Anything else is but a red herring. -- Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 07:04, 14 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose per RealFakeKim. I also suggest we move any "2019–2020", "2018–2019", "2017–2018", etc. stuff back to 2019–20, 2018–19, 2017–18. Full years aren't necessary between hyphens when an event took place in less than three different calendar years, especially if we are trying to predict how long an event will last for. KingSkyLord (talk &#124; contribs) 23:33, 14 May 2020 (UTC)


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

Number of deaths in the infobox
I would like to restart the discussion on how many deaths should be displayed in the infobox. In my opinion the discussion here is out of date. I would also like to state that considering we state in the lead "In addition, protesters have linked the protests to at least nine suicides" and in the deaths by suicide section "at least nine cases of suicides that appear to be linked directly to the demonstrations" it doesn't seem logical to me that we can't put it in the infobox as well. — RealFakeKim  T  08:00, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Why do you think that an RfC concluded 5 months ago is out of date? I continue to think that listing suicides as deaths in the protests is inappropriate. I haven't noticed anything happening that would change my mind.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:37, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * When it was closed it stated "The consensus is that the deaths figure in the infobox should not list the number of suicides for now" it's been a few mouths since then so I think it's appropriate to ask the question agian. — RealFakeKim  T  12:11, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Looking at the full quote of "The consensus is that the deaths figure in the infobox should not list the number of suicides for now because there is disagreement among reliable sources", I'm personally uninterested in more discussion unless there are new sources in 2020 that are better than the sourcing that was considered insufficient in 2019. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 22:36, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Five pf the left suicide notes connecting their deaths directly to the protests. I don't this it is going to get more reliable than that. — RealFakeKim  T  12:17, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately that doesn't qualify as encyclopedic WP:RS. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 03:11, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
 * In any case, we don't normally list suicides as deaths relating to a conflict. If someone killed himself because of his experiences in the Vietnam War decades before, that isn't added to the death toll of the war. Clearly, suicides are relevant when you are accessing the impact of a conflict, but they are not deaths in the conflict. And in this case they are being used to bolster the numbers of deaths, as the suicides far outweigh the numbers of people actually killed in the protests. That's just dishonest.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:07, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Five primary sources, of which you wish to extract a WP:OR conclusion and ignore all other related factors in favor of one. Among actual reliable sources, nothing has substantially deviated from the outcome of the RFC, so the RFC is still current. Notwithstanding, the figure is a protester claim and not something to present as fact in an infobox.   --Cold Season (talk) 18:34, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Orange banner
Would like to see this posted as an Ongoing item listed WP:In the news on the frontpage, however there is an orange banner currently. How can we address it to resolve the issues? - Indefensible (talk) 16:14, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The long one was a drive-by editor and I disagree with the lead one. We have tried our best to cut the article but it has proven to be difficult. — RealFakeKim  T  08:23, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
 * No discussion - I remove tags.  starship .paint  (talk) 09:13, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
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 * Flag of Hong Kong (Black Bauhinia with wilted petals variant).svg

Collaboration group
Me and have teamed up to improve this article, subarticles and related articles. If anyone else wants to join or help with something you can reply to this thread or message me on my talk page (rember to ping me and I will respond quicker). Any help will be appreciated our goals as of today are: Thanks, — RealFakeKim  T  09:19, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) Make sure all articles relating to the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests are up to date with the latesting information from English and Chinese news sources
 * 2) Improve articles of events that have already happened (e.g. Causes of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, Timeline of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests (March–June 2019) & Chinese University of Hong Kong conflict) to GA/FA level
 * It is just a goal for the distant future. We are simply curious to see if there is any other editor interested in this project. OceanHok (talk) 12:46, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I am interested in joining this project. --CRau080 (talk) 18:55, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Nice, I'm guessing you will be doing minor edits and fixing typos as that's what your doing now which is much appreciated. — RealFakeKim  T  09:59, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for this. How would you, and others, intend on splitting this article? Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:08, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure personally but we are open to all suggestions. — RealFakeKim  T  09:56, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I think we can trim the article a bit and see whether some less important information can be moved to the subpage without repeating here. The article is getting a bit too long. I have gone ahead to trim the history section a bit. I think the Deaths and Reaction can be trimmed a bit more. I do have plans to start a "Media coverage" section similar to Umbrella Revolution, but I am not sure if it really needs a separate page. OceanHok (talk) 17:24, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm planning on added an effect on health and effect on mental health in the impact section so it could be spilt after? — RealFakeKim  T  14:18, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I also think more of the background section could be cut and put into the subarticle. — RealFakeKim  T  14:22, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with that the article has been getting a bit too long, especially as there must be some spare room for information on future developments without having to restructure over and over again. I am still not sure how to restructure it. One particular question which may serve, at least in my view, to exemplify the problems is this: How to deal with the duplicate occurrence of the "yellow object" incident in the article? In quite a few instances, the description can be made more compact *and* clearer by combining sentences (without making them too long of course) and putting the relevant references at the appropriate junction of the sentence, instead of at the end. This has of course already been done in many parts of the article, but not in all. This work may also require checking of the references, which could perhaps be the starting point. This will likely lead to the deletion of some references. It will bring the article closer to achieving GA/FA status no matter how we decide on the structure, and hence be a worthwhile investment, I believe. --CRau080 (talk) 22:37, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the late reply, . It is true that the article is repeating itself. Regarding the yellow object incident, I guess we can replace the wordings we have in the misconduct section with the wording we have now in the history section directly. I do think that this is an important event in September 2019 though. OceanHok (talk) 21:06, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your response, . I agree that the yellow object should indeed be mentioned twice – I believe that this need not be a weakness of style at all once the phrasing is (almost) the same in the two instances. With other repeats in the article (I may have overestimated their number), we may deal on a case-by-case basis. --CRau080 (talk) 21:14, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I have made some edits on the "yellow object" incident, however I ended up using somewhat different phrasing in the two instances. If or somebody else could look at this and make further changes where necessary, I'd be grateful. --CRau080 (talk) 22:40, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * hey i would like to work with you guys on this until for hong kong related stuff i contributed to timeline of the 2019-20 hong kong protests (may 2020) user:finn.reportsFinn.reports (talk) 14:29, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That's great! Right now the focus of this group is to monitor the development of the events and ensure that all the articles are up-to-date. OceanHok (talk) 14:06, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay i will also just work on that than. User:finn.reports Finn.reports (talk) 16:36, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

3RR exemption
I think two 3RR exemptions apply to my reverts on this page (e.g. the fourth one) — obvious vandalism and reverts of evasions of a block (LTA). — Galaxy Dog talk • contribs 01:32, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Protests vs Riots
The Hong Kong unrest have been called 'protests' by the pro-independence/democracy protestors. They have condemned the use of the word 'riot' to describe their demonstrations. However, the Hong Kong government and Chinese government call this unrest 'riots'. I don't think that we should be leaning towards the protestors, even if they are supporting democratic values (Wikipedia should not be biased towards any political ideology).

I think that we should be watching the US protests/riots as a reference to the naming of this page. There is a similar amount of violence during the demonstrations, as well as a similar amount of debate regarding 'protests' vs 'riots'. On Twitter and other platforms, there has also been debate over the hypocrisy of governments (especially the United States Government) of calling Hong Kong protests as 'protests' while calling the United States protests as 'riots'.

For now, should we leave this page as 'protests' or change it to 'riots'?

JMonkey2006 (talk) 00:16, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hong Kong protests is the WP:COMMONNAME. If Hong Kong protests actually get as violent as the US protests the protesters may have won already. Calling this a "riot" is definitely leaning towards the government's and the Chinese government's standpoint, which was neither the consensus of the majority of the people in Hong Kong, nor the standpoint taken by most of our mass media/RS (both local and international). OceanHok (talk) 04:10, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input. The 'Twin Cities riots' page had been renamed to 'George Floyd protests', and rightly. JMonkey2006 (talk) 23:43, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yep. As two specific examples,  and  currently use "protest" rather than "riot" terminology. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 22:52, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The New York Times should not be considered a reliable source due to its frequent release of opinionated and biased content (some not indicated as opinion). Most news sources do use 'protests' however there is a clear discrepancy when reporting the United States protests which have been called riots. Some United States news sources such as NYT and FOX are clearly biased towards the United States and should only be used when they have been identified as unbiased; most articles relating to Hong Kong and China by the NYT are biased against China (for obvious reasons). JMonkey2006 (talk) 23:43, 30 May 2020 (UTC)


 * "2019–20 Hong Kong protests" is the most neutral title this article could have. Moving this page to "2019–20 Hong Kong riots" means classifying all protests as riots, the position taken by the Hong Kong and PRC governments. This means such a move is inherently political whether you intend for it to be or not, because then Wikipedia is adopting a policy taken by one of the two political camps. A government officially adopting a position does not magically take away its bias or legitimise it for similar adoption on Wikipedia.


 * Furthermore, the position opposite to "the protests are riots" is "the protests are not riots". This specific debate is not a question of whether the demonstrations are indeed protests, but a question of whether or not they are all (or mostly) riots. Even if one firmly believes all the demonstrations in Hong Kong have been riots, they will still recognise that people are protesting something and not just showing up for the fun of it. Rioting can be used as a form of political protest, and although it has been adopted as a tactic by both protesters and police, it does not make up all that has transpired in the past year. The argument over whether peaceful demonstrations or riots have characterised the majority of the protests is irrelevant to this discussion, as moving the page to adopt only one of them would mean ignoring the existence of the other. If you call all the protests riots, you are adopting a political stance; if you assert no riots happened during the protests, you are adopting a political stance. However, if you call the protests "protests", you are not making a political statement. This is why most media outlets tend to use "protests" instead of "riots" regardless of political leanings; even China's state-run People's Daily calls the demonstrations "protests" for this exact reason (for examples see here and here).


 * A good TL;DR is: The word "protests" alone can mean peaceful protests and/or riots, while "riots" only mean riots. If you do not believe "protests" is a neutral term, then please suggest a better one, because "riots" is not a neutral alternative. Centre Left Right  ✉ 07:23, 30 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you. You've actually made me change my vocabulary to 'protest' for any and every demonstration. JMonkey2006 (talk) 23:43, 30 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Despite reaching a clear consensus for this article, articles relating to previous protests in Hong Kong:

have not had a clear and standard naming convention. Protests before the 1997 reunification have been referred to as 'riots'. Is there a specific reason for this, or is this biased against anti-British protesters?

, ,

JMonkey2006 (talk) 23:43, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * NYT is listed as reliable at, feel free to complain on that board if you disagree. We just report based on what the sources say; this is not a WP:FORUM for discussion about how you believe that the mainstream media is biased against your position. As far as I'm concerned, the matter is closed. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 00:49, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * In my opinion Hong Kong 1966 riots and 1967 Hong Kong riots should be moved to 1966 Hong Kong protests and 1967 Hong Kong protests, or more specific titles. I say this for the same reason I listed above, which is that the demonstrations included, but were not limited to, riots. I do not believe Hong Kong 1956 riots or Hong Kong 1981 riots should be moved because both events were clashes where neither side was protesting anything. In 1956 Nationalists and Communists clashed over the removal of Republic of China symbols from Lei Cheng Uk Estate. In 1981 a road accident angered many local youth who subsequently rioted after tensions flared amongst them. Of course this is my opinion and not consensus; it may not even comply with WP:COMMONNAME. Whatever name is already commonly used by historians reigns per policy as I understand it. In regards to this article's title, WP:COMMONNAME is easier to determine because the topic is still being covered. Centre Left Right  ✉ 05:02, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * The events in 1966 and 1967 were generally considered as riots. 六七暴動 (1967 riots) is undoubtedly the common name in both RS and history textbooks. It is the terminology used by historians and it was a well-accepted characterisation in Hong Kong that should not be challenged. OceanHok (talk) 07:29, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * There is actually no Wikipedia policy which says we need to use the same words that sources do. In fact, it's the opposite. If you disagree, please provide a link to the policy.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:35, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * What you've just said is definitely not true. WP:COMMONNAME clearly states that we prefer the "name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources)". I am curious about where or from who you get this conclusion from. OceanHok (talk) 09:42, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about terms used within the article.--Jack Upland (talk) 22:08, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * 2019–20 Hong Kong protests and riots? — RealFakeKim  T  08:20, 5 June 2020 (UTC)


 * "Wikipedia should not be biased towards any political ideology"-that would be in direct contradiction to the Wikimedia Foundation's principles. While we write the articles in an NPOV fashion, it's only in free-speech/democracy environment this encyclopedia could exist in the first place.104.169.17.5 (talk) 00:52, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Change the protest start date to June 9, 2019
Huge protests and demonstrations started from June 9, 2019 when 1.03 million of Hong Kong people protested against the Extradition Bill.Marxistfounder (talk) 11:09, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

The protests are not "ongoing" and do not deserve to be on the "in the news" section.
There has been absolutely nothing of note in the territory for weeks now. The movement is all but over, and the annual Tiananmen vigil 18 days ago (where only a handful turned out) is not a justification for its repeated inclusion.

Not withstanding of course that the article is overwhelmingly biased towards the protest POV.--86.6.171.132 (talk) 10:23, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

As for the protests going on or not, I´m afraid I cannot agree with you on this point. The protests are still ongoing, even though large-scale rallies are probably over (owing in no small part to the coronavirus pandemic). Additionally, the protests were re-ignited by various bills which have been proposed by the Lam administration and which are obviously restrictive. As for NPOV, I agree that this article is biased towards the protesters´ POV, but this is due to the reports in various media outlets which are sympathetic to the protesters (here, RS should apply, although this article should be more balanced in my opinion). Regards, --85.216.245.67 (talk) 18:13, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Although major marches and demonstrations are on hold and are expected to be significantly limited by the lack of approval by the government, using COVID-19 as a pretext, riot police are still on high alert and mobilised to stamp out any signs of demonstration. However, that's not to say there are no low-level conflicts. People are increasingly unhappy with the oppressive environment, and there are reports of riot police acting very aggressively, and passers-by getting injured. But whether it deserves to be pulled from ITN or not, that discussion isn't happening here. --  Ohc  ¡digame! 19:23, 22 June 2020 (UTC)