Talk:Nelson Mandela

Semi-protected edit request on 10 November 2023
The 'Life' section is too long to navigate. I think it's best that the part about his Presidency (1994 until end) is split into a separate section called 'Presidency'. Hnfus43 (talk) 15:07, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. M.Bitton (talk) 16:52, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Israeli-Palestinian conflict
A featured article that includes barely a sentence on Mandela's role and opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! This is a clear gap that must be addressed. Makeandtoss (talk) 09:51, 14 January 2024 (UTC)


 * What was Mandela's impact on the "Palestinian issue"? As far as I know, he was the president of South Africa, not the Palestinians. Sakiv (talk) 14:25, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * His support for Palestine has been mentioned by others in relation to the conflict and the ongoing genocide case against Israel: here is a recent AP News article on the topic. Not sure how to include this without accusations of being "recentist", but pretending that his views on the subject are completely irrelevant as he was the president of South Africa is reductive and ignoring a lot of context IMO. We even have a whole article on Israel and apartheid, for example. GnocchiFan (talk) 15:08, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * He believed that only Israel occupies Palestinian land, which is a grave mistake. The Arabs, two months after the Nakba, did not make any effort to establish even an entity, not a Palestinian state. If we want to know why this happened to the Palestinians, we have to understand that it was not only caused by the Israeli occupation. Sakiv (talk) 15:27, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Mandela had opinions on many different world issues, from Ireland to Palestine to East Timor to Kashmir. In its FA-rated form, the article already does mention Mandela's approach to some of these, including the Israel/Palestine situation (see the "Foreign affairs" subsection). So the issue is already given some coverage at the article. Why, however, is there now suddenly a push to add further information on Israel/Palestine? It just seems like a response to the current situation in Gaza and for that reason amounts to WP:RECENTISM. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:23, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Prose
The article's current word count is 15,208 words, which indeed requires trimming. The trimming should be done in a manner that summarizes already addressed topics, including by creating separate articles. Howver, removing complete mention of some topics in the name of keeping it below 15k words leaves a biography that censors important parts of this politician's foreign policy positions and legacy.Makeandtoss (talk) 08:53, 19 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I made an effort to summarize redundant details in the article, and the article is now 15,069 words. Makeandtoss (talk) 10:11, 19 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Are forgetting the D part of BRD where you are supposed to discuss and elaborate on your objections? With all due respect to your efforts in developing the article to featured status, you are displaying editing behavior that resembles Ownership of content because you are just indiscriminately mass reverting my numerous edits without consideration to any argument except gaining your approval on these edits. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:18, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to discuss proposed prose alterations here at the Talk Page, but you still should not be repeatedly trying to push these through after you've been reverted. That's just WP:Edit warring. Make your case here and see if you can drum up support for specific edits. Remember this is a Featured Article that has already been extensively examined by many editors; we need good reasons for making changes. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:25, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * First, you claimed that the reversions were made because the article is very long. Now after I made an effort to reduce the article's size, you have made further reversions, saying that we have to "drum up support".
 * This behavior certainly sounds exactly like "Please do not make any more changes without my/their/our approval", which is elaborated in the guideline WP:OWNBEHAVIOR.
 * Sorry, but that's not how Wikipedia works. All articles are open for editing. If you have an objection to a certain edit, you are expected to come here and elaborate on it; we are not expected to ask for your permission. Makeandtoss (talk) 17:02, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not trying to dominate this article for the sake of it (although obviously, as the editor who got it to FA status, I care about it retaining that status and don't want to see it decline in quality). I have clear concerns about several of your recent edits. First, I don't agree with your additions of extra material on Israel/Palestine, as I think that that is WP:UNDUE and motivated by WP:Recentism; nevertheless, that issue is being discussed in the section above, so let's not repeat ourselves here. Second, you removed longstanding text from the FA-rated lede, for reasons that don't seem terribly clear, and as a result of which the lead fails to mention one of the most important facets of Mandela's career. As per WP:BRD, you have to make your case for these changes and gain a consensus for them. However, I would say that I don't think all of your other edits, which mostly consist of trimming back prose, are a bad idea. In general I would not oppose those. Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:28, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Again, thanks for your edits in this article, but let me stress that I can edit it without needing to discuss. We shouldn't reach the R in BRD on after every single B edit. So I will reinstate all the edits I made, and you are more than welcome to revert the ones that you are specifically opposed to, then you can come and express your specific concerns, and we can discuss them. As for recentism, the guideline is irrelevant, since I didn't add any single piece of information that revolves around recent events. Naturally, people would come here to read this article given uptick in recent coverage, and they would expect a featured article to be comprehensive and contain the information they are looking for. Therefore, that's why it's necessary for the featured article to be up to the WP standard, and not have any clear gaps in it. Makeandtoss (talk) 15:30, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You can WP:BEBOLD, but you can't reinsert content that was reverted without getting WP:CONSENSUS for the change, especially when an editor has identified some concerns. Like it or not, we did reach the R in WP:BRD and now comes the D. The WP:ONUS is on you to get consensus for any changes you think would improve the article without edit warring. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:58, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * WP:ONUS relates to whether information should be included in the article. But half my edits were not even about including information, but removing some redundant information from the article. You chose to indiscriminately revert all of my edits (both inclusion and exclusion), which demonstrates not a concern for ONUS, but a more likelier a sense of ownership. Please refrain from this editing behavior that disrupts constructive edits to the article, and revert what you disagree with, and not every single edit. Makeandtoss (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Do you have any objections to any of the edits I instated in the past that have nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Makeandtoss (talk) 13:23, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Both of you are demonstrating signs of disruptive behavior by refusing for the third consecutive time to engage in reaching consensus. Not to mention signs of content ownership by demanding editors seek approval first for any edits. While I am assuming good faith so far, if this behavior continues, it will be reported as disruptive. Makeandtoss (talk) 09:45, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Assume good faith. Midnightblueowl has not edited Wikipedia since before your ping. I must have missed your ping and will have to review the content. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:12, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm looking through the diff now. It's mostly small language changes and removing some sentence clauses. I don't "object" to them perse, but I don't know that they're an improvement. I see you took out a part on Mandela being criticizzed for being friends with Castro and Gaddafi. Why? – Muboshgu (talk) 03:53, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * As Muboshgu points out, I wasn't deliberately ignoring you, Makeandtoss, I simply haven't been active at Wikipedia for over a week. As to your proposed changes, in addition to all the Israel/Palestine stuff I would object to the removal of the sentence in the lead dealing with Mandela's role in the Pam Am Flight trial; it's important that that remain in the article. Ideally I would like to see the criticism over Mandela's friendship with Castro, Gaddafi etc retained, as I think it is significant, although if the supporting source is now being listed as unreliable then I suppose we would have to find a better source if we are to retain the information. As to your other prose changes, I have no objection. Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:59, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for communicating. Excluding the material related to IP, Pam Am flight trial, and Mandela's relationship with these leaders, I understand that you have don't objections to the rest of the edits and so I will restore them accordingly.
 * I will leave the material related to IP to later.
 * As for the Pam Am flight trial, the lede is a summary of body. The fact that Mandela was mediator in that trial is not mentioned in body. And the parts of body that deal with Pam Am trial is barely one sentence, so this does not really qualify for this mention in the lede. So based on these arguments, would you support removing it from the lede?
 * As for Mandela's relationships with some other leaders, the claim in question has an unreliable source tag on it because it references the IBtimes, a subpar source. Naturally, as both of you have indicated that a featured article needs to be dealt with extra care, you would support this sentence's removal in case no RS are presented to support it? Makeandtoss (talk) 10:30, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If the IBTimes is no longer considered sufficiently high quality, then yes the information based on it should be removed; unless of course we can find a better source for that information. Regarding the Pan Am Flight trial, the main body of the article may not use the word "mediator", but it does describe Mandela's mediating role between Libya on the one hand and the US/UK on the other. I would support the retention of that information in the lead. Midnightblueowl (talk) 09:13, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The IBTimes source has long been flagged as unreliable per a tag on the article. Since you agree that it is not reliable, and that no better source has been found, I will be removing it. Fine with me keeping the mediator role, although I find it not to be a summary at all. Makeandtoss (talk) 14:27, 13 February 2024 (UTC)