Talk:Timeline of Philippine political history

Merger with Timeline of Philippine sovereignty
Please see Talk:Timeline of Philippine sovereignty. CMD (talk) 09:49, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Disputing article assertions re sovereignty
I just stumbled over this article. I'm not sure whether I've seen it previously, but I don't remember having seen it. I did look back a bit and have seen Talk:Timeline of Philippine sovereignty, but those articles are apparently only loosely related to this one. The lead sentence of the article says: "This article presents a timeline of the sovereignty [...]", which is not the same thing that the title of the article indicates. Also, some of its assertions re sovereignty are not supported and appear not to be factual. I think that the problem with factuality may have its roots in the difference between the assertion of sovereignty by a revolutionary group or organization and sovereignty held by by an entity outside of the group and, as in this case, generally recognized by the community of nations. I hope that is clear. I suggest that this article be revised to correct this or removed. I have not formalized this suggestion. Discussion? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:10, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Most sovereignty information came from the Timeline of Philippine sovereignty page which merged into this one. Sovereignty is a fuzzy concept sometimes, so if there are clarifications that could be made that seems a good idea. CMD (talk) 02:19, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I looked back at this pre-redirect version of that article. The assertions re sovereignty here appear to differ markedly from the info in the Sovereign Entity column of the table there. The WP article on Sovereignty has some info about the concept of national sovereignty. The assertions re sovereignty in this article need to be corrected. Also, lead sentence should be redone IAW the guidelines at MOS:LEADSENTENCE. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:05, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not following exactly. The text is the same. Is the issue that this page has columns for the nascent revolutionary governments? If so one solution is to col-merge the relevant columns to match the broader divisions from the oldid you linked. CMD (talk) 12:15, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I added a disputed tag to the article. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:42, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Here, I've WP:BOLDly added a Sovereign entity row to the table in the article with information similar to that column of the table in the merged-from article. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 14:12, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * (responsive comment to CMD) Sorry -- I added the two comments above and edited the article as described there before I saw your comment/question above. Looking at the table again, I note that the width and positioning of the columns doesn't match with the date ranges in the respective cells in the established and disestablished rows. I took that, along with the absence of the information I added in the Sovereign entity row, as implied assertions that the entities named in the table held sovereignty during their establishment periods. The row I added supplies explicit information which conflicts with such an inference, but I still have doubts about the clarity of the presentation here of what entities held sovereignty over the Philippines during which periods. I think that replacing the present column headers with date ranges from the established/disxtablished cells and moving the current column headers down to a row located below the Sovereign entity row would be clearer. How about that? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 15:00, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Certainly the clarity of presentation is tricky, as it's presenting overlapping entities in defined succession. I think it's difficult to solve that within this article format though. I see what you mean by sovereignty now; my reading of the initial row is not that they are Sovereign entities, but that they are Constitutional entities. No objections to your idea of switching the top row with the date range row however, if you feel that enhances clarity.Regarding your new row, shouldn't the United States column also cover Republika ng Katagalugan and US Military Government? Similarly, I don't think it should extend over "Second Philippine Republic". CMD (talk) 15:58, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * (added before reading your latest comment) That last suggestion is preliminary, for discussion, and needs work. Preliminarily, the first few rows of such a table might look like this:

(inserted 08:17, 17 July 2021 (UTC) WTM Proposed table revisions have evolved and, to minimize clutter, this later-revised version has been elided.


 * Things clearly needing work there include the details of the governing body during US sovereignty and the presentation there (and in the table currently in the article) of the Second Philippine Republic clearly needs work in order to give proper visibility to the Government in Exile of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Discussion? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 17:20, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * (quick response to CMD -- I need to go do other things) Yeah, this is trickier than it ought to be. All this needs thought and work. The lead sentence of the article says, "This article presents a timeline of the sovereignty [...]" (flouting WP:FIRSTSENTENCE), so sovereignty is a front-and-center issue here. Sovereignty passed from Spain to the US in the Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10 1898 and effective (per its WP article) on April 11, 1899. At the very least, it seems as if this table will need a potful of clarifying footnotes. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 17:39, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I've re=drafted my suggest modification of the first few table rows below:

(inserted 08:17, 17 July 2021 (UTC) WTM Proposed table revisions have evolved and, to minimize clutter, this later-revised version has been elided.
 * (inserted 20:40, 16 July 2021 (UTC) wtm) I've revised the above once -- in place to reduce clutter.
 * That's closer, O think, but it still needs work. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 19:10, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

What's there to dispute? From a purely international point of view, sovereignty was all Spanish until it became American with the Treaty of Paris. All the revolutionary governments were unrecognized by everyone else and to assert "valid sovereignity" is just Filipino nationalism talking. Asado (talk) 01:39, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree. Proposal re this below. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:17, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's worth creating a separate mention of the government-in-exile, as the Commonwealth column time period goes fully from 1935 to 1946. It may be a better idea to rework the lead to explain the overlaps and concepts rather than try to somehow show it through the table format. The Governing body row for example might be better explained in a lead paragraph. CMD (talk) 02:36, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I disagree re this, Thinking about it, I would say that sovereignty over the Philippines was in serious dispute between The U.S. and Japan during WW-II, and the table ought to reflect that. I've updated my proposed revision of the first few rows to reflect that and moved it immediately below this. Please discuss disagreements

I think this table revision proposal has evolved far enough here for it to be inserted in to the active article and the disputed tag removed from there. Further revisions can be done as needed in the live article without having those revisions treated as part of a dispute under discussion. Discussion? Objections? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:17, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * No objections to it going live for the moment. Re the Commonwealth, if you separate the Government in exile, then the timeframe for the Commonwealth of the Philippines (currently November 15, 1935-October 22, 1946) would need adjusting. That seems more likely to create confusion than leaving it off. Alternatively, include the note of a Government in exile in the Commonwealth column, not the Second Philippine Republic column, consistent with not noting Spanish rule in every one of the early revolutionary governments. CMD (talk) 08:54, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The current version has a Notes row containing a general note re the timeframes. It probably needs more clarifying notes re some specific timeframes. That probably includes the timeframes involving the CofP, the 2nd Republic, WW-II Japan, and most/all cells saying saying "Disputed" but that need and timeframe date adjustments can be addressed outside of resolving this dispute. This table is trying to summarize a lot of information very succinctly, and it still needs tweaking to clarify points of possible confusion. If nobody objects today, I'll move this into the article tomorrow. I'm tempted to do more tweaking in place, but doing that before the changes are made live would prolong this dispute discussion. If anyone objects to this, speak up. Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:11, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * If you're going to put "disputed" for certain government bodies because of the Spanish-American War and Philippine-American War, you might as well put "disputed" for previous ones because of the Philippine Revolution vs. Spain... So just don't put "disputed" and just put Spain and US. Asado (talk) 06:31, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't understand this. I had been planning to close this dispute discussion and move the table changes discussed here into the article. I will hold off on that pending clarification from you about your objections. Are you saying that some parts of these changes as shown above need changing? If so, what particular changes do you suggest, and why do you suggest those particular changes? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:04, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh, I think I see. I said above that most/all cells saying saying "Disputed" probably need clarifying notes, and you are suggesting that the Philippine revolution vs. Spain also be indicated as "disputed" in this table. That merits discussion, I think, but I don't think that discussion ought to be a part of this discussion about a dispute over the way the table in general presents sovereignty as it applies to the entities named in the table. I suggest that we resolve this dispute about thow the atricle presents sovereignty in this table by going live with the table changes as discussed here as they are currently shown above, and handle disagreements between editors about individual bits in the table by separate discussions re specific suggestions for further, less sweeping changes after closing this dispute discussion. Do you have objection to that? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:46, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I started drafting additional footnotes, and that process led to yet another revision in place to these drafted changes in the table, as follows: These changes added clarifying footnotes for the areas identified as "Disputed" in the table about which Asado raised concern above. They also re-cast the dispute during the First Philippine Republic period as a dispute over sovereignty rather than as a dispute over governing authority under colonial sovereignty. I've left the earlier version visible above to illustrate the differnece this latest change makes.

I'll plan to move these changes into the article tomorrow, unless there are further objections. Once again, the purpose of these changes is to resolve this dispute re the oversimplified depiction in the table of the sovereignty situation. Once this is done, this discussion can be closed, the disputed hatnote can be removed from the article, and separate discussions opened as needed re specific matters of editorial concern. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 16:48, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Here, I've merged these table rows into the table in the article. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:24, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Language for display of wikilink targets
A number of wikilinks in this article, though target Wikipedia articles with English language titles, display piped wikilink names in the Tagalog language. As amny of those Tagalog language names are real jaw-breakers for non-Tagalog speakers and are difficult even when subvocalized while reading, as this is the English Wikipedia, and as the articles targeted are titled in the English language, I propose that these wikilinks display the English language titles of their targets. Objections? Discussion? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 14:57, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Article titles should be used unless there is a compelling reason otherwise, as they would be most expected and easily understood, with translations left to the main articles. CMD (talk) 15:24, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This is more complicated that I had hoped. I'm doing it in several edits:
 * 1. Republika ng Katagalugan to Tagalog Republic (1896) and related; here.
 * 2. Haring-Bayang Katagalugan here (just removed the instance with the piped wikilink)
 * 3. Republica Filipina to Tejeros Revolutionary Government (piped to a more specific target in that article)
 * 3+. Some of this doesn't make any sense. After "aka" in the "March 22, 1897 - November 1, 1897 column, "Republica de Filipinas" links to a different plce than "Republica de Filipinas" in the November 1, 1897 - December 14, 1897 column. I'm going to take a break (I don't know how long) and come back to this later and try to figure out what the next step ought to be.
 * (more coming) Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 16:24, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

(Major pause pending result from the section below) I've paused doing further work on this pending a result from discussion of a wider suggestion in the section below. I expect to back the edits described above out very shortly pending that result. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 21:17, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * here, I've backed out the changes I described above in deference to discussion in the talk page section below. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:24, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Suggested fallback to a much earlier version of this article
Maybe I'm seeing more problems with this article in its current state than exist, but it seems to me that it is a godawful mess. I characterize it that way reluctantly, but that's how it looks to me. Part of that comes from the fact that I'm more comfortable scrolling vertically than horizontally, part of it comes from the dispute discussion above (here), part of it from the difficulties I ran into above trying to fit wikilinks piped with Tagalog language labels into the English Wikipedia, but mostly from a combination of all of that.

It seems to me that all of this difficulty began with this edit ​without comment by an anonymous editor which added the Chronology section and the table within it.The story behind this may be more complicated than that but, if it is, I am unaware of the complications. I won't cast this as a proposal, but I am suggesting that this article be reverted to the version prior to that edit and this merge-from be undone.

I created that merge-from article back in 2009, but I've never been happy with it and this isn't a case of editorial vanity fun amok (or at least I don't think it is). Perhaps I should have discussed this semi-privately with (an editor I respect and often defer to) before airing it here, but I think this needs wider consideration. Please do discuss this below. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 21:17, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Removing the table seems equivalent to deleting the article. The remaining arbitrary list of links is not enough to stand on its own. I have no immediate position for or against the table, however shifting from one poor article format to another doesn't seem a useful point of discussion. (The list could be placed into Outline of the Philippines, if necessary.) CMD (talk) 01:05, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I've backed out the work I had started doing in the section above before running into difficulties described there, pending resolution here. I see the problems here more as content problems than as format problems, or maybe I'm seeing content implied by presentation format in some cases. Those wikilinks piped to Tagalog language for presentation are one example, wikilinks with different targets but identical presentation namings are another, some of the wikilink target choices questionable, the choice of what columns to present and how polity date ranges relate to sovereignty transitions seems questionable (e.g., what about the period of time between the Japanese invasion and the 2nd Republic? That's ignored.), I've noticed gaps and overlaps between the date ranges (those are probably explainable, but they are unexplained). That's all that comes immediately to mind, there may or may not be other issues here. This comes up as I'm needing to cut back on the amount of time I spend with Wikipedia -- I see a lot of work here headed towards a not very satisfactory result, and I don't see myself as having the time to do that work. 13:16, 22 July 2021 (UTC)Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill)
 * It strikes me that the Timeline of Philippine history article is relevant here. That article seems to duplicate a lot of what this article is trying to do There is nothing there on the chronology of sovereignty over the Philippines, though. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 14:48, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Fourth Republic
We all want to lump the Marcos era into one "era" but for the purposes of this article, the 4th Republic didn't start on December 30, 1965 (when Marcos became president). Howard the Duck (talk) 14:02, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think the IP who put the dates in a few years ago is likely to response here. Sounds like a good change. CMD (talk) 14:35, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

some Polities row items revisited
There are some problems cells of the Plotiies row of the table. I've marked those cells ' below, with ' being ' and ': Rough explanation:
 * The US Military government and the Philippine Commission coexisted during this rough time period, with the philippine commission responsible for areas which the US Govt considered secure and the US military responsible for the areas in dispute with the polity fielding the Philippine Republican Army.
 * The picture re details of US governance was muddled during this period, and US Insular Government here is, I think, oversimplified (see . Philippine Commission would be better here, IMO.

I propose the following:

except that where I have indicated  above, there would instead be a link to a clarifying footnote re the transition from US military to US civil colonial government.

Also, I note that the US flags need to be redone to period-correct flags.

Barring discussion to the contrary, I will probably do this in a week or so. Discussion? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:32, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

I have updated my previous draft of proposed updates to the Polities row of the table. Besides updatinng the US Colonialism columns, I've extended acknowledgement in the table of continued Spanish sovereignty following the Philippine Declaration of Independence. Please discuss any objections to or further changes proposed in this table row. I hope to update this row of the table in the article in a few days.

Updates to this version since originally posted here Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:55, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
 * two minor updates soon after posting
 * I noticed a date discrepancy re Second Philippine Republic with the dates in that column heading and added a clarifying footnote.
 * Copied recent changes to the table headings in the article to the table excerpt here.
 * The proliferation of so many columns is oversplitting (three different columns for 1897 alone, American commissions appearing with the same prominence as governmental systems). There are differences to tease out, but separation can be just as misleading as clumping. On a technical note, the table above has gone a bit misaligned towards the end, with the third-fifth republics being at the wrong dates. CMD (talk) 13:56, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree that the table is daunting. Also, my most recent change above caused me to look at the date ranges in the headings vs. the dates of some entries in the polities row -- there are probably other disparities there in addition to the one I made note of. However, I think all of that ought to be looked at separately from the discussion in this talk page section -- all of the table rows need to be considered, not just the one under discussion here. A fairly long article in a more verbose format was merged into this article some time ago (see here) and the merged info is now expressed more succinctly. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 17:38, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

✅ -- Here, I've updated the Polities row in the table to match the row shown above. I think further changes are probably needed in this and other table rows, but discussion in this talk page section is not needed for that. , Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:44, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Further table revisions beginning April 2022
In this series of edits, I have WP:BOLDly edited the Sovereign Entity and Governing Body table rows, attempting to reconcile or clarify apparent conflicts. I also inserted a row introduced as NOTE indicating that table content below that point reflects the viewpoint of the post-independence Philippine government regarding pre-independence history. This is an attempt to address the fact that, below that point, information re U.S. administration during the period of conflict between the U.S. and Filipino revolutionaries is pretty much absent. I am not at all sure that the table reflects even this correctly -- for example, in the Constitutional Document row cell of the August 14, 1898 – July 1, 1902 column. Please discuss here and/or improve on my changes. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:38, 8 April 2022 (UTC)