Talk:Donald Trump/Archive 39

Major edit summarizing political positions
Just thought I'd start a new section in case people have anything to say about this recent edit I made. The climate change topic above is sort of related, but this is for a larger discussion about other things that have been changed or removed as well.  Jasper  TECH (talk) 23:19, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Wow, a 10% reduction in rps in one fell swoop? I hereby award you the Trimming Barnstar of Brilliant Prose! — JFG talk 01:05, 29 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Yeah, wow indeed. If we want to make major reductions in article size it needs to be done one step at a time. Doing so in the middle of a discussion is inappropriate. Making such a major deletion for the sake of page length goes against guidelines. Content should not be removed from articles simply to reduce length. Also, the POV template is not to be removed until the issue in question has been resolved. The major deletion comes off as an ulterior attempt to avoid that process. it's also not considerate to the many editors who gave their time and effort to the article. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 01:41, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No content was lost: everything is developed in excruciating detail in the myriad other articles about Trump's business, campaign, hair (thank God that one got deleted) and sex life. Besides, page history is your friend; feel free to restore what you think was unduly trimmed. However, please bear in mind that we have prior consensus that the Donald Trump article was too long, laden as it was with undue factoids and convoluted language from campaign times. In other words we all want to make it more encyclopedic, and that starts with sharper prose. I sincerely hope that most readers don't come to Wikipedia to argue ad nauseam over every tweet of The Donald and every over-reaction from well-meaning pundits. — JFG talk 02:23, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I wasn't aware of any guidelines saying that edits should be done in smaller portions, so please let me know if there are guidelines I missed. I decided to do it one swoop to make the section consistent instead of having full, lengthy segments for some political positions and summarized versions for others. I wish you would have stated what exactly was wrong with the edit instead of simply undoing the entire thing. I didn't just make a "major deletion," but re-wrote large portions of the section to condense the policy positions.


 * Please remember to assume good faith—I had no ulterior motives in editing the section down, nor what I trying to disrupt the ongoing conversation. The political positions simply have a lot of undue weight, and I was hoping to improve the article by shortening them. Take a look at the political positions in the Hillary Clinton article, for instance.


 * The POV template was removed because the climate section had been edited down to one sentence saying he disagreed with the scientific consensus of climate change. To me, it didn't seem there would be any debate about that, and new material could be reinstated if people felt it should be expanded. However, a POV-inline template could have certainly been added to the shortened version instead of reverting the whole edit.


 * The reason I felt free to do a major trimming of the section in this article is because there is a already a massive article about the political positions of Donald Trump. People's efforts to improve the political section in this article were not in vain, but can still be used to improve the main political positions article as well.


 * Would you mind self-reverting your recent removal of the edit I made? There's no doubt this section needs to be shortened, and if you or any editors see specific problems with content I removed or shortened, feel free to improve it by readding material from before the deletion, adding tags, or discussing it here. Thanks!  Jasper  TECH (talk) 02:42, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The guidelines involved were mentioned and linked to. Regarding 'one step at a time', again this should be done for reasons mentioned, esp out of consideration to other contributors. As for coverage in other articles, yes, there are other articles, but the main article should have a comprehensive and summary representation of the major topics and issues, while the sub articles can cover these things in greater depth. Main articles and sub articles commonly have a healthy amount of informational overlap, which is good. Just because something is mentioned in a sub article doesn't mean we have to say next to nothing about that topic in the main article. In reducing the climate change topic to a sentence or two, we still had the same problem, where Trump's position was not fairly and clearly represented. Last, I said the major deletion came off as an attempt to skirt the POV  resolution and subsequent tag removal. Had I thought you made the deletion for this purpose explicitly I would have said so. I've no qualms about reducing some of the text, but given the said situations this should be done mindfully. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 03:28, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you hid the above discussion under a collapsing template, but I'm going to undo that edit because I feel it is still relevant for future editors.

Some of the concerns you expressed can be resolved by having an easy-to-compare version of the text before and after the edit. Since I have rearranged large portions of text in order of (what I perceive to be) most notability to least notability, the original text has also been rearranged to easily compare the two versions. Additionally, I've made a few changes that are different from the original edit.

It can be very difficult to compare edits using the diff tool, so hopefully the table below will make it easier.

editbreak2
Suggestions welcome. If there are no comments for a while, I'll reinstate the edit.  Jasper  TECH (talk) 18:29, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't support your massive removal - the PP section here is tiny in comparison to the main article and does a good job of giving an overview of his positions - I suggest you start an RfC. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 22:42, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Not a bad idea, though I'm honestly surprised at the lack of support for this proposal. The articles on Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton don't have huge sections on political opinions like this article does. It makes sense to me that excessive detail on his political opinions should be removed in anticipation of all the other items that will begin to occupy the article, like his presidential transition and eventual actions as president.
 * I will certainly consider an RfC, but first I'll do a "min-RfC" by doing a courtesy ping to everyone who commented in the section above about climate change, since that is related to this proposal. Your opinions on this proposed change are welcome (I realize I'm double-pinging some people, but that way everyone gets notified).  Jasper  TECH  (talk) 23:44, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. I generally prefer brevity. There is a middle ground between academe who often go for large word counts (and sometimes obscure wordings), and those that think you can express complex concepts in 140 characters. I think that brevity in this case is more important, as the subject’s political positions appear to be in constant motion. I think the trim is a great effort and should be installed, after which people can fine tune what they think isn’t perfect. Objective3000 (talk) 00:16, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Soft support. This article probably needs a trim at the moment and will definitely do so as Trump's transition and presidency progress. JasperTech's logic seems reasonable, though I don't know if there's anything in policy about preemptive splitting. Madshurtie (talk) 00:32, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * As pointed out, Content should not be removed from articles simply to reduce length. Adding or removing content should be based on the idea of making a comprehensive summary. Also, the page is still going through a metamorphosis, so trying to delete and/or move content in the capacity JasperTech is suggesting, at this unstable stage of the game, is not advisable. Last, page length guidelines say that guidelines are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. If the only reason to delete/move content is because of page length, then no, that's not a good enough reason. There are plenty of GA and FA articles whose length far exceed guidelines. The Ronald Reagan and Barak Obama featured articles provides us with two definitive examples. There are many more. President's articles are generally longer than the average biography so we are not pushing the envelope on that note. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 01:55, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * As I said above, "The political positions simply have a lot of undue weight, and I was hoping to improve the article by shortening them"—the purpose was not mainly to shorten the article (though it doesn't hurt if it could be made more concise).
 * , it does seem like there aren't a lot of policies or guidelines that I can cite in this situation. Here are some relevant ones, but editor judgment is required to make sense of what terms like "briefly" actually mean.
 * WP:SPINOFF says it may be necessary to split articles where individual sections create an undue weight problem. Then summary sections are used in the main article to briefly describe the content of the much more detailed subarticle(s) (emphasis added).
 * WP:DETAIL is more vague, but says that information about a topic need not all be contained in a single article since different readers have different needs:
 * many readers need just a quick summary of the topic's most important points (lead section)
 * others need a moderate amount of information on the topic's more important points (a set of multiparagraph sections) (emphasis added)
 * some readers need a lot of details on one or more aspects of the topic (links to full-sized separate subarticles)
 * It's worth pointing out that in the political positions article, there is a discussion on the talk page (albeit one that's a few days old) about splitting it into about three parts. If that was done, the full three layers mentioned above would be quite well represented since the political positions article would be smaller and easier to navigate for the average reader.  Jasper  TECH (talk) 03:53, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Summarizing is hard work, which is why I thank for his initiative. This section still has a lot of campaign-related fluff which should be trimmed down to a sober summary of Trump's policies, with more weight given to his current official positions (if any) than to hyperbolic campaign pronouncements. That being said, the proposed version omits quite a few relevant policy areas which should be briefly covered too. To ease editing, I will open a structured working draft below which we can collectively refine until reaching a consensus version. — JFG talk 04:51, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I am very much in favor of what you did with the "fringe theory" section. It definitely makes more sense at the top. I'm still learning about formatting tables, so thanks for pitching in. This one will be a lot easier to edit!  Jasper  TECH (talk) 05:37, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Directionally, this looks pretty good with the following exceptions:
 * Under Social issues, let's not use the twisted euphemism "he has stated that he supports traditional marriage". It should be changed to "He opposes the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and believes the decision should be left to individual states, and that he would "strongly consider" appointing Supreme Court justices that would overturn the ruling."
 * Are you sure? I heard Trump in a recent interview (October probably) answer squarely that the question of same-sex marriage was "settled by the highest court" and that he wouldn't attempt to touch it, notwithstanding his personal views on the matter. I believe you are referring to his position on abortion, which indeed he said should be left to the States, hinting at the possibility of having the Supreme Court some day overturn Roe v. Wade (but that wouldn't be his call, obviously, separation of powers and all that…) Therefore I believe we should rather write something like "Trump personally supports traditional marriage[cite 1] but has confirmed that the legality of same-sex marriage nationwide was a settled issue".[cite 2] No time to hunt for sources right now, sorry. — JFG talk 13:48, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not sure. The problem is that he seems to straddle his position on controversial issues to suit the mood. If he has published a clear, unequivocal, unwavering position on SSM, then I am not aware of it.- MrX 14:08, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Here you go: Trump: Same-sex marriage is 'settled,' but Roe v Wade can be changed (now amended in working draft) — JFG talk 14:58, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, I can live with that.- MrX 22:01, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Under Fringe theories, I'm OK with removing the "questioned President Obama's citizenship status" material as long as we retain the similar material elsewhere in the article.- MrX 13:32, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, this sad episode is covered by a lengthy, well-cited and community-supported paragraph in the "Political involvement 1988–2015" section, I distinctly remember helping craft a consensus version at the time (although it's been somewhat bludgeoned since then, but that's ok). — JFG talk 13:48, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Working draft
This is splendid work but it is an opinion piece. Compounding the difficulties is that Hillary had public positions and private positions, sometimes differing. Trump is likely to have the same. A campaign release is liable to be not exactly what the candidate thinks. This might be why presidential biographies tend not to have a political positions section. Usernamen1 (talk) 06:15, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Moving towards consensus
Does the lack of recent comments on the working draft as currently amended mean that we have consensus or that nobody likes it? I feel that we should go ahead and push it to the article, as the current contents are seriously outdated and bludgeoned with campaign-related cruft. Comments welcome. — JFG talk 23:11, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Personally, I have not reviewed that draft because I object to the entire idea of a such a wholesale replacement of material in this article, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Editors routinely spend weeks tweaking a couple of words.  Dropping in such a mass of text is, in my opinion, not the way this article should be improved. I advocate incremental changes and therefore do not support this draft.  Marteau (talk) 01:32, 4 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I think the proposed working draft removes far too much material. For example, Trump's entire position on the minimum wage is missing from the working draft. Surely that belongs in the "Economy" section. I sympathize with the idea that the "Fringe theories" are not really political positions, but they are very notable and need to be in the article. Even though it's awkward, I think "Fringe theories" fits best under "Political positions." -Thucydides411 (talk) 01:57, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Feel free to add missing material by editing the working draft, that's why it's here. The goal is to build a broad summary, i.e. covering all major policy topics as tersely as possible. Details should go to Political positions of Donald Trump, which itself is already too long and should be split soon into three pages: Economic policy of Donald Trump, Domestic policy of Donald Trump and Foreign policy of Donald Trump. — JFG talk 02:48, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Strong oppose such a gutting of an article. The mass simultaneous replacement of many sections is simply not how Wikipedia is meant to work. Continuous incremental improvement, with individual discussions if necessary - not "Oh, we talked about all of these changes (in one talk page section) and nobody objected so we have consensus..." It's a recipe for disaster and accusations of ownership. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 17:56, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It just seems like there is a serious double standard among many editors (myself included, as shown by my !vote in this RfC) to want to include controversial material about Trump much more than any other president article does. This extends to the policy positions as well. The working draft should be able to remove the undue weight placed on his policy positions while still summarizing almost everything the article currently does. A lot of the removed prose in the working draft are merely quotes and statements from Trump, which can be more briefly covered by short, concise sentences.  Jasper  TECH (talk) 18:55, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * As has been pointed out to me on several occasions, every article should be judged on its own merits, not in comparison with other articles. Seriously, this is proposing cutting "Foreign policy" to six sentences; and "Economy" to a mere two! That's ridiculous! Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 21:02, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with that the sections on Economy and Foreign policy have been shortened too much and lack substance. Feel free to expand them. — JFG talk 22:06, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * No, because your proposal to gut the article's multiple sections in one edit lacks consensus. That's not how Wikipedia articles are improved. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 22:17, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, there was reasonable consensus that this section should be summarized, then made a proposal and I just formatted it for easier collective editing. The intent is to build a consensus version collectively, not to "impose some gutting". If this is not how Wikipedia articles are improved, then I don't know how. This approach sure looks better than starting multiple revert wars on each factoid…  Shall we work together? — JFG talk 22:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Although I generally prefer the concept of attacking one area at a time, in this case I support your approach as it attacks one general article problem. Gaining consensus may be difficult. Objective3000 (talk) 22:57, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * , the problem with the idealistic approach of making one small edit at a time to slowly reduce the size of the section is that it would leave many intermediate versions of this highly-visible article with undue weight placed on the parts that had not been summarized yet. Hopefully by pinging interested editors we can achieve consensus on a version that will adequately summarize his policy positions from the get-go once it's implemented. Tomorrow I'll take a look at the foreign policy and economy sections and see if I can improve them, but maybe someone will beat me to it by then.  Jasper  TECH  (talk) 03:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)


 * The "idealistic" approach, as you call it, is how Wikipedia is designed to work and how it actually works in practice. This article isn't an exception, and you're addressing a problem that doesn't exist.  Small, multiple, incremental changes does work.  What you're proposing is largely unworkable. I might agree with one change and disagree with another but we're talking multiple editors discussin multiple sections, simultaneously, on a rapidly changing talk page. Were we to go this route, then when someone imposes the "consensus" version, you'd find multiple discussions opening simultaneously as editors interested in one area find their area of interest has changed.  Why do we need to reduce the sizes of sections? (WP:NOTPAPER). Is the "original" version of each section above still the current version, or have there been better edits made, since?  Who would make the final decision to publish?  Sorry, this is a terrible idea. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 11:08, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Your response doesn't seem to address the concern of intermediate versions of the article with undue weight placed on them. The method of improving the article one edit at a time may achieve the same end result, but so does working on a draft version—the same approach was used when creating the article about the business career of Donald Trump. Having a draft version also has the benefit of avoiding edit wars and helping everyone work together with cooler heads. I believe the "original" version shown in the working draft is still almost identical to the one in the article, though feel free to update it if it's not.


 * As for ownership, that's easy to solve—the person who enacts the edit just needs to mention all the editors who contributed to the consensus version. Anyway, check out the economic section now and see if it looks more satisfactory. The foreign policy section can be similarly expanded.  Jasper  TECH (talk) 00:34, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

What undue weight would that be? You've mentioned this strawman a couple of times. Editing normally - small, incremental changes - is not any more likely to lead to "undue weight" than a small cabal of editors introducing a single mass change to large portions of the article. Even if that were the case, it is easier to fix things that were introduced in small increments. Your proposed change culls an entire subsection, but that's not introducing bias by omission? (Also, please actually read WP:OWN, you missed my point entirely - any mass change is still subject to normal editing). Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 09:23, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Given some editors' preference for gradual changes, I have started by applying the proposed changes on the summary section, and I may edit other sections shortly while being careful not to "gut" them. Let's see how it goes… — JFG talk 21:29, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * ZOMG, NO! Look at all of that undue weight you left beh- oh, wait, no, you didn't... Good job. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 21:48, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * LOL — JFG talk 22:00, 7 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I took note of your revert and invite you to raise your objections to my edits here. As you see, discussion is ongoing around a working draft to trim and update this section, and your input is welcome. — JFG talk 22:00, 7 December 2016 (UTC)