Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics/Political parties/Archive 1

Notability
This may be a bit UK/Ireland centric but hopefully we can get some feedback on this from other people too. It is clear that the world is, on the whole, awash with polticial parties. For Wiki, we have election box metadata tables and templates through which parties are linked, and in many cases to get the correct colour and links there must be corresponding articles.

However the United Kingdom is one of many nations in which minor (and sometimes incredibly small) political parties are formed to participate in elections. And if these are "one off" they must be of some extremely clear notability to have an article here. One very good example is the recently Prodd'd Money Reform Party who took part in one by-election for Westminster. They are clearly not a notable national political force, so the article is likely to be deleted without much comment. But then we have Forward Wales or Left List or Mebyon Kernow, which all could be argued as being too "small" for notability, too small for inclusion here.

So we need to decide on policy. We already have notability policy on so many things, I wonder if there is enough for political parties, both within the UK and worldwide. I hope we can get together to discuss this in time doktorb wordsdeeds 17:42, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


 * A notability policy has been proposed at User talk:Doktorbuk/pp. Comments are welcome there. Terraxos (talk) 19:52, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Missing political articles
Greetings. I would be grateful if anyone could have a look at my list of missing topics related to politics. Thank you. - Skysmith (talk) 12:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Canada
Please keep in mind that there is already a WikiProject Political parties and politicians in Canada project. GreenJoe 20:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Importance criteria
So, what importance do peopel think an ordinary page on a political party should get? High? Or mid? Or should there be a distinction between "major" and "minor" parties (with the latter being classified as lower importance)? IdiotSavant (talk) 11:47, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't really know. That's something we really need to figure out, though.  - Diligent Terrier  (and friends) 14:08, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Well that is what we are trying to discuss ! Please look at the progress we have in building a draft policy on notability of political parties. doktorb wordsdeeds 14:55, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I left my thoughts here. GaryColemanFan (talk) 23:45, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Pagemove
I'm not a member of this project (although I do have an interest in poltics and political parties), but I would like to suggest a pagemove to WikiProject Political parties. That would allow the categories of this project, such as Category:A-Class Political Parties articles to be renamed to conform to naming conventions for categories and to match similar categories used by other projects (e.g. Category:A-Class Australian history articles). If the members of this project do not object, I could update all relevant pages (mostly Template:WikiProject Political Parties and a few project and category pages) in a few minutes. Thanks, –Black Falcon (Talk) 19:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Support - Diligent Terrier  (and friends) 14:07, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Pictogram voting wait.svg|17px]] Doing... –Black Falcon (Talk) 17:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ Done. See Category:WikiProject Political parties. It will take some time for the pages to appear in the new categories. (By the way, I have updated the content of this WikiProject's templates to reflect the pagemove, but I have not renamed them.) –Black Falcon (Talk) 18:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Building the project
While people are debating importance criteria, can we at least start adding parties to the project by going through national lists? Pick a country, any country, and get to it. We can rate for quality and leave importance for later. --IdiotSavant (talk) 13:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Style guide for UK party articles
Hi. I have begun developing a style guide for articles relating to political parties within the United Kingdom. The intention of the style guide is to try and build some consistency in the way that party articles are handled by the Politics of the United Kingdom WikiProject, but since it will be overlapping your project scope you may wish to contribute. The initial proposal for the guide can be found at WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom/Parties. Regards. Road Wizard (talk) 12:51, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Collaboration?
Republican Party (United States) has been selected as the monthly collaboration of the project. However, little actual collaboration is done at the article. It would be good if the proponents of the nomination could explain which are the unresolved issues at the article which would need to be improved. --Soman (talk) 15:39, 24 June 2008 (UTC)


 * People might also want to give some thought as to what article to select next month. --IdiotSavant (talk) 02:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

New C-class
From the discussion on assessment, it looks like there's now a new C-class of article. So we'll need to go back and reassess the low-B's / high-starts into this category. --IdiotSavant (talk) 02:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I have been keeping an eye on the C-class discussion for a few days now, but it appears the new definitions for B-class and C-class have yet to be agreed. I would suggest waiting until the situation becomes clear to avoid having to repeat the work again later. As a first step though there shouldn't be any problem with adapting the project template to incorporate code for the C-class. Road Wizard (talk) 05:47, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I noticed; it seems to be a Start+ / B-, with "B" now focusing on the "B+" end of the scale. Can you update the template?  Having looked at it in an effort to find the no-importance bug, I'm really not up to speed on parser language. --IdiotSavant (talk) 06:12, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The C-class code should be fairly simple, I will look at it when I get back from work today. I will also see if I can spot the importance bug by comparing the template to other project banners, but I can't promise anything. Road Wizard (talk) 06:18, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I ended up adding C-class to the template myself (since it could be done with a copy paste), and I've added the category and run the bot on it. However, we still need someone to look at the no-importance bug sometime. --IdiotSavant (talk) 10:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * And then right after that, someone decided to update the template for another wikiproject I follow with brand spangly new code. So I flogged it.  Problem solved. --IdiotSavant (talk) 11:14, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Naming convention
Somewhere, there ought to be a link to Naming conventions (political parties)‎. --Soman (talk) 18:16, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
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Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 1937 articles are assigned to this project, of which 414, or 21.4%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-07-14.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place a template on your project page.

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:44, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Forward to Mars AfD
The party Forward to Mars Party has been nominated for deletion. Please comment if you wish. This really should kick my bottom into gear with regards to the proposed policy on notability, if someone can poke me in the eye with a to-do stick I'd be grateful! doktorb wordsdeeds 05:10, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Possible GA: Militant tendency
Seen while assessing. Does someone want to look at this and nominate it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by IdiotSavant (talk • contribs) 02:14, 8 July 2008
 * I have taken a look, but I think it will fail GA as it stands now. There are too many unsourced quotations and manual of style violations (punctuation is really messed up around some of the ref tags). It is close to GA if someone wants to put in the work, but I would suggest making sure it is closer to meeting the GA criteria before nominating it. Road Wizard (talk) 06:45, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Though this is a little OT, I think it would be helpful if "tendency" were defined better than it currently is as "The word tendency is often used by left-wing groups for an organized unit or political faction within the group." Шизомби (talk) 13:52, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

American Party
Right now a disambig page, but articles are needed on all of the parties mentioned there. I have a book on order which may help, The American Party Drama. Шизомби (talk) 13:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

How do I join this project?
Hi all! I am keen to get involved in this project, as I can help expand on South African politics... How do I join the project? Wasabigreen (talk) 14:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Edit yourself in on the main page (I've done it for you)? Other than that, Just Do It. --IdiotSavant (talk) 00:20, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If you are looking for ways to help the WikiProject, you could start at List of political parties in South Africa. Just take a look through that list and add missing parties and improve listed articles. Alternatively, take a look at the To do list on the main project page. Regards. Road Wizard (talk) 00:48, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks Wasabigreen (talk) 06:15, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Political parties
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

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We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

AFD nomination of UK Community Issues Party
I have recently nominated UK Community Issues Party for deletion. The discussion for the nom can be found here. If anyone can provide input, it would be much appreciated. Cheers. BlueVine (talk) 00:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I have replaced your http discussion link with a wikilink. Hope you don't mind. :) Road Wizard (talk) 00:59, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

"Ressurected" parties
Please can people take a look at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (political parties) about how to handle refusenik parties. Timrollpickering (talk) 19:46, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguations
In the last couple of months I've been disambiguating dozens of political parties' names... You are all invited to see my work at my Contributions page. --Againme (talk) 05:38, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. &mdash; Delievered by §hepBot  ( Disable )  on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Liberal Democratic Party of Russia
I've never had to resort to outside help to resolve a dispute because usually I just give up when people get really passionate about their edits and start reverting every edit. I'm not very good at resolving disputes and I didn't know what to do so I came here. There is a fight going on at Liberal Democratic Party of Russia involving mainly User:Farkas János, User:Gnomsovet, User:Miacek, and it is spreading into other articles and other language wikipedias, namely Russian. I fear it may spread to others such as Liberal Democratic Party of Pridnestrovie, lt:Rusijos liberalų demokratų partija, pl:Liberalno-Demokratyczna Partia Rosji and so on. Perhaps it is worth stating first that I am not a supporter of the LDPR; I am actually against them. The main issue for me concerns the party's ideology. The LDPR claims liberalism as part of it's platform, whether or not they adhere to common definitions of their own principles may be worth mentioning, but I think some form of liberalism should be listed in the party's platform in the infobox. This is confirmed by the party's own website here and by some of the comments on the article's talk page. I believe my opinion is in conformity with that of User:Gnomsovet, but his/her primary concern seems to be general neutrality in the article. User:Miacek has consistantly reverted all edits for days on on Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus and ru:Либерально-демократическая партия России. He insists that the LDPR and the LDPB are not liberal and calls all claims otherwise "nonsense". He doesn't talk much, but he does revert a lot. His source is what appears to be an editorial from the New York Times. Considering it seems to be an opinion piece from an American newspaper, I think it is hardly as reliable a statement of the party's own position as the party's website. I don't mind that newspaper article being mentioned anymore, but I do want the party's own positions mentioned somewhere in the article. I don't know what to do. The situation is deteriorating as we speak and I need outside help as soon as possible. Farkas János (talk) 03:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Please somebody help! Hurry, things are getting out of control. Farkas János (talk) 20:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Criticism sections
I've noticed that the articles of many Western political usually do not have criticism sections, and contain little criticism in general. In contrast, many the articles of many Russian parties contain a lot of criticism. Why the discrepancy? Should I start adding criticism sections to Western parties as well? Offliner (talk) 18:13, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Cultural difference. There's no reason why reliably sourced, relevant, and due criticism couldn't be in an article about, say, a party of the western country of Japan. ΔιγουρενΕμπρος! 20:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I would prefer not to have criticism sections in any article about a party. --Checco (talk) 09:42, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Why is that? Offliner (talk) 12:42, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Because...

In fact "criticism" sections are often unencyclopedic or unrelevant at all, often they speak about single members of the party and not the party itself, in general I think that there is no need of "criticism" sections when you write a neutral article: readers will judge. --Checco (talk) 13:29, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Marijuana Reform Party
WikiProject Political parties members are invited to help improve the Marijuana Reform Party article, which needs much attention. Along with WP Cannabis, members of WP United States and WP New York are welcome to improve the article in any way possible. Hopefully we can all work together to upgrade the article status within the next 2 weeks. Feel free to use the article's talk page to discuss how the article can be improved. Thanks! -- Another Believer ( Talk ) 00:34, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Can i get some help referencing two articles
I'm talking about the Socialist Party USA and the Young People's Socialist League. Being that i'm not a supporter of these parties, being that i'm not an American. But can any of you help in regards off finding references from un-referenced section. If you decide to help drop me a message here or on my talk page. --TIAYN (talk) 06:24, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Official ideology/other ideologies
I have (increasingly?) seen that in most infoboxes, numerous entries in the "ideology"-section is added, whilst most parties only have one official ideology. I would like to have it made more clear what is the official ideology of the given party, and what is other ideologies rather given by external reliable sources (that part as today). For instance the official ideology could be given in bold typing, or with (official) behind it. Anyone think this seems like a good idea? -GabaG (talk) 15:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Part of the problem with ideologies is that they can change over time. In cases where we have an article for a party that has existed for 100 years what would you describe as the "official" ideology? Is it the ideology the party held when they were formed, the ideology held when they were in their most notable period of time or just their most recent ideology?
 * What would be your criteria for "official" ideology? Many editors argue that we cannot accept the account of the party itself as that would be making use of a primary source. Instead we should use the interpretation of reliable third-party sources. However, a third party interpretation will not necessarily agree with the party's "official" ideology.
 * I am not sure what it is like in other countries but UK parties often have significant ideological variations within the party. For example, the Conservative Party (UK) during the 1990s had a large schism on European integration; one faction wanted a closer relationship with other EU partners while another faction was vehemently opposed to any loss of UK sovereignty. The ideological infobox field is often changed on UK party articles as editors war over the "correct" ideological label.
 * Personally, I would prefer it if we could drop the ideology field altogether as editors often try to summarise the party position into 1 or 2 words in the infobox instead of presenting a more detailed account in the body of the article. Where an article section can be clarified or expanded, a 1 or 2 word field on the infobox can only be edit-warred. Road Wizard (talk) 18:56, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Since all ideologies stated in the infoboxes anyways are the current ones, I don't really see how my suggestion would conflict with the current practice. Historic ideologies are seldom treated in current infoboxes anyways. -GabaG (talk) 19:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think it is stated anywhere that the ideology has to be the current one. The template has no usage notes and I am sure many of the users of the template aren't aware that it has to be current. However that covers only a small part of my comment.
 * How would you define "official ideology"? As I said, parties can have quite conflicting ideologies. If one faction of a party says "we are neo-liberal", would that be official enough? If a senior member in the party says in a few speeches "we are a Euro-sceptic party" but then never mentions the phrase again, is that an official ideology?
 * Unless there is a clear definition of what constitutes "official" in the template usage notes it is just an open invitation for more edit wars. Road Wizard (talk) 19:09, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Unification of national political party infoboxes
At the moment, there is Infobox political party and also lots of national political party infoboxes. Many of these infoboxes are hard-coded tables, with basically the same content (the only differences are usualy links to pages about that country politics). Some of these infoboxes don't work correctly when some parameters are missing. I suggest unifying all those infoboxes using Infobox political party to something similar to User:Svick/Infobox Czech political party. Does anybody think this is a bad idea, or should I go forth with this change? Also, if there is a better place to discuss this, plase tell me where. Svick (talk) 13:07, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Nobody complained, so I'm going to change the templates one by one. Svick (talk) 19:48, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Provided this can be done without losing any information, it sounds a great idea. Warofdreams talk 10:21, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course I will preserve all parameters that the old templates have. Svick (talk) 11:08, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Eventually it would be great if most of these could be replaced by " {{Infobox political party|country = foo " Great work! Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  23:11, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Totally agreed. A unification or replacement of all these should be done.- Sthenel (talk) 17:55, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I fully agree with this. I was trying to use TfD to achieve the same. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:28, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It's no need that the see also section is in the infobox. Moreover, not all parties participate in the elections and sometimes the "See also: Elections in foo" makes no sense. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:58, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that vast majority of political parties either participate or would like to participate, but can't (e.g. are illegal), in elections, so the link should be there. As for whether the links should be included at all, I think they should, it's a good place for them. They could alternatively go to the See also section of the article, but someone would have to put them there, in all articles about political parties and I don't think anyone would do that, considering there is good alternative (links in the infobox). Svick (talk) 16:15, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Is there any action for the rest of the templates? - Sthenel (talk) 15:08, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean the ones that aren't changed yet? Yeah, I'm working on that, but it's going slowly, because I don't have that much time and because I check every page that uses the infobox I'm changing. Svick (talk) 16:39, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It would be good if deletion could wait until after the conversion has been performed using 'substitution'. This will make sure that no useful information is lost.  Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  17:26, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Are we talking about conversion/substitution or deletion of the rest templates. - Sthenel (talk) 20:40, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about conversion, e.g. . Svick (talk) 20:47, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

And why this process was not applied to the Greek template? - Sthenel (talk) 20:53, 19 October 2009 (UTC)


 * In my opinion, we should start with conversion whenever possible (i.e. Svick's diff). Once the template has been converted, one can debate deletion.  If the backend is very simple, like the example shown by Svick, then it's probably best to use 'subst' to replace all transclusions.  My problem was with the most recent deletions which didn't perform a subst, but just renamed all transclusions, but that's another problem.  It's not entirely clear that all these templates can be so easily replaced without some work to merge new parameters into {{tld|infobox political party}}. Eventually, it would be great if they could all be replaced, but some will require a bit more work.  This is my opinion on the matter. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  22:48, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Let's leave the hard ones for the end. We are doing well till now. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:06, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I was actually against this unification of infoboxes, but I acknowledge that the idea has some appeal and I see that there is a lot of consenus un it. I noticed anyway that the unified template is a little bit small as also the font is. Is it possible to have a larger template and bigger fonts on the model of almost all templates before? Thanks! --Checco (talk) 23:15, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * This is the default font for all infoboxes that use the {{tlx|Infobox}} backend and I think that for consistent appearance, all infoboxes should look similar. So, unless you gain consensus to change that template, I'm against this change. Svick (talk) 23:32, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Hoping to reach consensus, I observe that this is obviously a good reason for me to return to the late Italian party infobox... Anyway, isn't is better to have a bigger font in order to have the templates more readable? --Checco (talk) 06:45, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


 * The default font size for {{tl|infobox}} is 88%. What size do you want to use? I agree that gaining consensus is a better idea than forking the template, since this isn't a "walled garden". Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  21:10, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * If all infoboxes (not just the ones for political parties) use the same font size, I don't see any reason to make exceptions. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:56, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * 90% (as in most previous "national" infoboxes) would be OK for me. --Checco (talk) 10:07, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * So what? Nobody agrees with me? It sounds strange to me as most of the previous "national" political party infoboxes had the 90% font and also the Template:Infobox officeholder has the 90% font. --Checco (talk) 20:42, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I would support increasing the font size to 90%, if the infobox width is increased as well. However, I was hoping for more input before making the change. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 21:59, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Great, Plastikspork: you got it! That is just what I meant: 90% font size and increased width as well, as in Template:Infobox officeholder and similiar infoboxes. --Checco (talk) 22:10, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * So, can we do it? --Checco (talk) 14:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I will do some testing to see if I can come up with a reasonable width. As a first estimate, it would seem as though increasing the box width by about 2 to 3 percent should do it. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  20:14, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't understand why we have to increase the width. Do you think all other infoboxes are small? -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:53, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No, actually the other infoboxes (including Template:Infobox officeholder) have the same font I am proposing for the Template:Infobox Political Party. So why do you oppose an increase that is consistent with the other infoboxes? --Checco (talk) 14:15, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * @Plastikspork: Can you explain your position over Belgian parties, below?

"Populism" as ideology
The infobox expects us to give the party's "ideology." My question is, when would you give "populism" as the ideology? To me, this seems silly because every party wants to please the general population, and is thus "populist." The specific instance that prompted me to ask this is this one. Offliner (talk) 00:23, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that is too broad a definition of populism to be useful. I'd be prepared to use "populist" if a party does not claim, and is not generally regarded as having, an ideology beyond fulfilling what they deem to be the majority will.  Most parties have one or more ideologies which, however loosely or inconsistently applied, would suggest to me that "populist" would not be a neutral summary of their position.  Equally, most parties will openly aim to appeal to assorted minorities in a population on some issues, and in this sense they don't fit a narrower definition of populism. Warofdreams talk 01:06, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Belgian political parties
Until 11 June 2009 all Belgian parties had articles with titles in English, but on that day User:Fram moved all of them to French/Flemish titles because he was convinced that item 4 of Naming conventions (political parties) authorized him to do so.

I'm not sure of that. The names of Belgian parties, similarily to the Basque National Party and differently from parties such as Herri Batasuna, are frequently translated in English, so why that exception? As anyone of you can easily notice, almost all political parties (excluding some minority parties ex item 4 and some parties whose names are referred in the original language in English media, such as Fine Gael or Forza Italia) have articles with English titles. From France to Germany, from Italy to Greece, from Sweden to Estonia, and so on, this is exactly what happens. Also American, Asian and African parties follow that general pattern, despite some exceptions, most of which should be corrected. All of you know that.

So why that Belgian exception? Belgium is definitely a multilingual country, but not in the sense that there are minority parties. The parties on which we are talking about are mainstream parties representing the two large French- and Flemish-speaking communities whose names should be translated in English: there is no reason for not doing just that and en.Wikipedia needs uniformity! Having those articles with English titles is more practical (they are more easy to understand) and respctful of Wikipedia uniformity.

I ask the editors of the project to tell here their opinion and I hope we will soon be able to amend this strange exception and return to the previous (English) titles for Belgian parties (as they were until 11 June). --Checco (talk) 22:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I will add that I also support the returning of Belgian political party articles to English language titles. As Checco rightly states, this would keep the encyclopaedic categorisation of Belgian political parties in step with virtually all en.wiki articles on political parties with non-English native language names, as uniformity is vital for a large encyclopaedia project such as this.--Autospark (talk) 01:58, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, use English titles. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 04:23, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Apart from consistency, why? Why does exception 4 not apply (it does not mention "minority parties" at all, so I don't see how that's an argument), and why does some Wikipedia-invented translation take precedence over the commonly used name? As you can see on Talk:Socialistische Partij Anders, translating such names creates problems. The most often used name in English nlanguage sources is most often not some English language translation of the party name, but the original name. See e.g. vs.  or  vs. . Is it "Flemish Interest" or "Flemish Interests"? Flemish Liberals and Democrats or Flemish Liberal Democrats? "Christian Democratic and Flemish" or "Flemish Christian Democrats"?  uses the latter versions. We have more hits for "Flemish Liberal Democrats" than for the Wikipedia version Flemish Liberals and Democrats, but of course we have even more for VLD. Of course we should have redirects from all English variations that are in use. But why should we impose one unofficial and disputable English translation above the official and also commonly used name? Fram (talk) 08:23, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm happy that oher users agree with me on the issue. I think we can find a good compromise by moving the mainstream Socialist, Liberal and Christian Democratic parties of both Flanders and Wallonia to their English names, while leaving Vlaams Belang where it is and maybe leaving Flemish/French names for the Greens (Ecolo, Groen!). --Checco (talk) 14:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'ld be more happy if you replied to my post instead of just looking at the two people that agree with you. It's a discussion, not a headcount. We have one agreement without arguments, and one aghreeing because of consistency, which is a rather weak reason. One could equally argue that political parties should follow the example of other organisations an companies and keep the original name (see e.g. Médecins Sans Frontières, Gaz de France, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, ...) Fram (talk) 08:30, 17 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I was simply proposing a compromise. It is not useful to take those organizations and companies as example. The issue is that almost all political parties with English titles. Why should Belgian parties be an exception to that general rule? I hope to hear more opinions. --Checco (talk) 14:15, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Why are those organizations and companies not a good example? Consistency has been given as the main reason for translation, but it is unclear why we should have consistency within the political parties, when it is in itself not consistent with similar articles about non-political groups. What makes political parties the exception? And if an exception can be made for political parties, why can no exception to the exception be made for Belgian political parties, certainly when you consider that that exception is already in the guideline? Now, it looks a bit like "we apply the parts of the guideline we like, and ignore those we don't like". That's not how things should work, of course... Fram (talk) 15:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As for your compromise: "I think we can find a good compromise by moving the mainstream Socialist, Liberal and Christian Democratic parties of both Flanders and Wallonia to their English names" ignored my post, which made it obvious that these parties don't have an English name. They have no official English name, and they have multiple commonly used English names besides their official Dutch or French name (which is alo often used by English language media). Moving them to "their English name" would involve a random choice between a number of translations, creating problems (with e.g. the translation of the SP-A) where none have to exist. Create redirects from all commonly used English translations, and have the article at the official name in original language. No disputes, no interpretations. Fram (talk) 15:19, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I realize my last comment was a bit terse. I believe that we should use English titles for political parties whenever there is an authoritative source for the translation.  Obviously, there are cases where the native name is the name used in the English language.  One good source for the English name would be the political party's own website.  Another good source would be a reputable English language newspaper's translation.  There are some cases where translations will be problematic, but translating is still desirable (e.g., Cyrillic Russian names).  Belgium is an interesting case, as there is more than one official language.  Choosing the Flemish or French name as the primary article name may be viewed as preferential.  It may be viewed as a neutrality compromise to choose English. Of course, we should strive for consistency, but we can always make exceptions where consistency doesn't make sense.  This is my current thoughts on the matter (hopefully not WP:TLDR). Plastikspork ―Œ (talk)  17:43, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

For example, Socialistische Partij Anders could use the title listed on the Party's own website here. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 17:51, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That's not a name, that's a description. Yes, we could use that, we can use anything we agree on, but we should be very careful then to make clear that it is not the English nam of the party, but an ENglish language description of what the party is. As for the previous name of this article (before moving it back to the Dutch name), the same page you linekd states "The exact meaning of the ‘a’ is difficult to translate". Perhaps we should honor this? Fram (talk) 09:38, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * We can discuss on SP.A, but it is a fact anway that all the other names of parties have a clear and simple English translation: "Christian Democrats and Flemish", "New-Flemish Alliance", "Flemish Liberal Democrats" and so on. I think we can easily work out a compromise and we need to do that consistently with the custom and rule of en.Wiki to have articles about parties with English titles. --Checco (talk) 12:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The rule has a written exception which applies for 100% to Belgian parties, if you insist on applying the rule. Consistency for consistency's sake is useless, there has to be a good reason for it anyway. And you examples of "clear and simple translations"... Flemish Liberal Democrats? Or Flemish Liberals and Democrats, where it is now? Both are only a description, not a translation or an official name, the party is called Open VLD, "Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten", so neither the current article title nor your suggested article title would be correct... "Christian Democrats and Flemish"? Uh, no, the page was at Christian Democratic and Flemish. Apparently it is not so simple after all? Fram (talk) 13:09, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * In fact I was wrong: the clear and simple translations are "Flemish Liberals and Democrats" and "Christian Democratic and Flemish". Sorry for the mistake, but the fact is that there are clear and obvious translations, so I don't understand why there should be an excecption based on your personal interpretation of the naming rules on political parties. --Checco (talk) 13:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It is not my personal interpretation, it is the rule. Your interpretation, that it is only for minority parties, is not to be found anywhere in that rule. And your translation of the Open VLD, and thus also the current location of that article, is incorrect. It is a description, not a translation. See how tricky it is to get it "right"? Much safer and better to leave the original names, you can't go wrong with those. Fram (talk) 13:28, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Having a good deal of experience with Belgian articles, I can see exactly where the problem lies. First of all, given that we have redirects at our disposal, we shouldn't stress too much about having multiple ways to translate the name of the party, this is true for almost every political party in any language. Nonetheless, in some cases it may not be appropriate to translate the name. While CD&V seems like it should be translated, Vlaams Belang is usually not, and I think it should stay in Dutch. Also, SPA indeed seems not to make any sense when translated to English, so maybe we should choose between the Flemish Socialist Party (yes, it's not their current name) and SPA.

Also, Google counting is dubious and should be avoided if possible. I don't think websites such as monstersandcritics.com and eTaiwan News should be taken to represent (informed) English usage. We could perhaps use the BBC as a guideline; see - "Flemish Christian Democrats" and  - "Vlaams Belang".  Oreo Priest  talk 15:58, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, could somebody please list which parties we are talking about? This discussion should not be an abstract one.  Oreo Priest  talk 16:00, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Let me be the first one backing up Fram here. Those political organisations are, just like any other organisation, known under their native name. That's how they are defined and that's how they should be called. Translations can be used as nothing more than clarifications in the article. This does not only apply to Belgian parties, but to all political organisations around the world - so in my opinion the general convention is wrong. May I add that Plasticspork's suggestion of using English as a 'neutral' solution between French and Flemish is not valid at all, as there are no Belgian political parties with a French and a Flemish name (everything's split up, remember?). By the way, there are only a few (small) parties (example) with a name that combines French and Flemish, and that article has an English name, which clearly violates exception n°6. To conclude: Fram's suggestion of naming all articles in their native language with redirections from the most common translations seems like the best fit - not just for Belgian parties but for all of them.
 * To answer Oreo Priest's request, I guess we are talking about these parties...--GraafGeorge (talk) 16:09, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * This is the English Wikipedia, so, regardless of "definition" in the native language, we translate the names for things where appropriate. Can you imagine the confusion if Communist Party of China was under the native title? The policy of favouring English (not restricted to political parties mind you) makes perfect sense. The question here is whether in certain cases the native names are more appropriate.  Oreo Priest  talk 21:42, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * @GraffGeorge, How is my idea not valid at all? See the example that you provided. Again, I said "we should strive for consistency, but we can always make exceptions where consistency doesn't make sense".  I guess it was WP:TLDR. Thanks! Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  22:04, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I admit that using Chinese names would not be ideal, but there is still a lot of truth in Fram's point that translations are just clarifications of the original 'package content'. It's not easy to describe all connotations that would be lost in translation. And Plasticspork, I prefer to not make this a discussion about semantics, but your statement "Choosing the Flemish or French name as the primary article name may be viewed as preferential. It may be viewed as a neutrality compromise to choose English.", clearly indicated your assumption that Belgian political parties have both French and Flemish names. I merely tried to correct that error. Please do not accuse me of that imprudence.--GraafGeorge (talk) 03:36, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It appears the word "may" did not translate. Thanks for spotting the problem! Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 03:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Query re Australian Democrats page
Hello, I would like to seek some advice regarding the Australian Democrats page. I haven't edited wikipedia pages for some time and am a little rusty, so pls forgive if the rules have changed or I am somewhat out of place here.

I work with the Australian Democrats as part of the efforts to rebuild the party. Much has changed, much of what has happened in the last 2 decades is missing, and the page really requires a complete rewrite. There is no history post 1992, but history bits are being shoved in to the electoral success section, the policy section is severely lacking, many details are missing or wrong and when someone even less familiar with wikipedia than myself tried to update some content the inevitable undo battle began... (I had managed to block those out of my memory!)

I have suggested that the page editing be halted until we can put together some of the missing content. However, I am fearful that anything we put up will be immediately dismissed as promotional regardless of how we construct it. I seek your advice on how best to go about updating this page?

Would it be possible to downgrade the page to needing a cleanup? --Kathoc (talk) 11:43, 20 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In cases like this it is often best to make a "sandbox" copy of the article elsewhere to allow you to play around with it out of sight of the readers or the other editors. That then allows you to make mistakes, test new ideas and make major adjustments to the article without it affecting the live version of the article.
 * Once you are happy that your sandbox copy is good enough to replace the real article then you can invite other editors who seem to be interested in the article to take a look. If they are happy then you can transfer your edited text back to the article. That way there is less risk of an edit war as all sides get to have an opinion on your sandbox version first.
 * I would suggest working on the article at User:Kathoc/sandbox. I will be happy to assist if you need help setting it up. Road Wizard (talk) 14:58, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I am a member of the Australian Democrats. I have been working on a substantial rewrite and have been in contact with User:Kathoc by email. Afte two weeks on my Sandbox, I rolled out 'phase 1' after drawing attention it on the article talk page. I have experienced some problems with user User:Timeshift9. Within minutes of the roll out, he reverted it saying that I shouldn't pare back 40,000 char article to 17,000. I doubt he even read the changes, as he would have seen I created a new page to shorten the article instead of delete entire sections. I have left messages on his talk page and at the article page but he has not responded. I believe I advised I was working on the rewrite in good faith and gave all an opportunity to comment on the work. I wish to re-post the changes. My work as it is still sits at [] and [], while Timeshift's revert is still at Australian Democrats. I suspect I could have a revert-war conflict if I revert to my version of the article. Can I please have some moderation with Timeshift, and some advice on how to proceed? Thank you. Paul</b> Paul Roberton (talk) 03:25, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of United Malays National Organisation
I have done a GA Reassessment of the United Malays National Organisation as part of the GA Sweeps project. I have found that the article does not meet the current GA Criteria. Here is my review. This is a high level review, and the issues raised do not represent the entirety of the article. I will put the article on hold for a week pending work and notify all interested projects and editors. Once work on this initial review is accomplished I will do a more thorough review of the content. If you have any questions please contact me on my talk page. H1nkles (talk) 17:22, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

UK Independence Party
I've noticed that UKIP has been given a Mid level of importance for your project but your definition for Mid level states 'Mid Articles which are somewhat related to political parties.' as UKIP is a political party then should it not be High or Top.DanielR235 19:06, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the importance descriptors need changing - they really aren't accurate. Despite what you correctly point out our definition states, almost every article categorised for importance is on a political party.  Given that, I think that UKIP's importance rating is roughly appropriate - the same as given to Plaid Cymru or the Ulster Unionist Party, and greater than the British National Party or Green Party of England and Wales. Warofdreams talk 21:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Importance is basically assigned on vote share. Less than 5% = low, 5 - 10% = mid, more than 10% = high, top reserved for parties influential beyond national boundaries or which have been widely emulated in other countries.  UKIP's general election results suggest a low rating, but this is dragged up by its EU Parliament results to a mid. --IdiotSavant (talk) 22:51, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
 * If that's an agreed principle, we should change the descriptors to state it. Warofdreams talk 10:52, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think its ever been agreed. But its what I've been doing consistently in the couple of thousand articles I've assessed.  Vive la anarchy! --IdiotSavant (talk) 11:39, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining, in that case I agree that UKIP is correctly labelled I just wasn't sure before due to the descriptions.DanielR235 14:31, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

What is a political party?
What confers the status of "political party" on an organisation? I haven't found any definition for the concept on the project page. I have just read the article Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), a South African organisation currently in the news (the leader was recently murdered). Much to my surprise I noticed that the article is included in this WikiProject. Now here's the rub: In terms of the law in South Africa, the AWB is not a political party. An organisation is only a political party if it is registered as such by the Independent Electoral Commission. The AWB has never participated in any election nor has it ever been represented on any legislative body at any level of government. What are the criteria used by this Wikiproject for including or excluding organisations/parties? Roger (talk) 13:40, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * If you go to my user page and follow the link "/pp", you'll see the one attempt I made at formulating a Wiki policy on this very topic. Sadly the thing fizzled out; it became far too difficult to draw an agreeable definition of a notable poliitical party, either in general or specific Wiki policy terms. It is something I would like to revisit, but the one attempt made so far does not fill me with much hope... doktorb wordsdeeds 14:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that BUT that page is not really very helpful for my question. It discusses notability criteria for political parties. It doesn't really define what a political party is. Me being South African I have it easy for local political parties - the law unambigiously defines whether an organisation is or is not a political party. Roger (talk) 19:41, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The relevant question isn't South African law - lots of countries have political parties which are not legally recognised (or in some cases, even illegal). I'd go by whether it behaves in accordance with the definition on the political party page: "a political organization that typically seeks to attain and maintain political power within government, usually by participating in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions."  You've said they don't contest elections - but do they seek power, either by influence, protest, or by force?  --IdiotSavant (talk) 00:01, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi Ho
Have been tagging for WP Politics as there a large number of categories that are obvious scope 'fits' that have been never tagged with a project template - and have come across this project - and on the project page there is not at first glance - where this project scope relates to the other project - has anyone any memory in this project (many projects lose older participants and as a consequence across the board project memory can be very short indeed) of where the separation occurred between the two projects in the past? I am only tagging obvious crossover categories - and will steer clear if someone here with a longer involvement here can outline the need for this project precedence against the other (is it dormant for instance without showing up as such?) - and where a possible reasonable scope/boundary assertion can be made... also it seems socialism crept in at politics project - any info on that relationship would be appreciated - cheers - I am very low usage on the weekdays - so no hurry for a response SatuSuro 05:57, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

The article contains a lot of factual errors e.g. It claims UPC was formed in 1955. This is not correct. Please consult the article on UPC found at http://upcparty.net/upcparty/roots_adhola.htm It may also be necessary to explain the social base of UPC. Again consult http://upcparty.net/memboard/19mar10_socialbase.htm  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.110.80.160 (talk) 00:13, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

UPC corrections
The article contains a lot of factual errors e.g. It claims UPC was formed in 1955. This is not correct. Please consult the article on UPC found at http://upcparty.net/upcparty/roots_adhola.htm It may also be necessary to explain the social base of UPC. Again consult http://upcparty.net/memboard/19mar10_socialbase.htm  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.110.80.160 (talk) 00:15, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

EU flags in political party templates
There is currently a dispute between two editors on a large number of templates of political parties in Europe. See, for example, Political parties in Slovakia. One editor has asserted that the EU flag should be included in all templates related to individual EU member states, while one (me) has asserted that the EU flag does not belong in templates that are related to individual members and not the EU as a whole or as an institution, unless supported by reliable sources.

Please could WikiProject members help to resolve this by adding their opinions? The discussion can be found here. Bastin 03:51, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Political parties articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Political parties articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (&diams;) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Politics is in danger of losing its featured status
See Portal talk:Politics – the portal has not been properly maintained for well over a year, and will probably lose its star unless it's improved soon. BencherliteTalk 12:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

AfD
I've nominated the page List of political parties in North Korea for deletion. I thought it would be courteous to notify the relevant WikiProjects. --Selket Talk 19:42, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Eretz Yisrael Shelanu
Comments would be welcomed on the talk page of this article regarding its place in the political spectrum, as well as some eyes in general due to the recent arrival of some sockpuppeteers. Cheers, пﮟოьεԻ   5  7  21:56, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Trying to add data to Vermont Political Party Strength Wiki Page
I'm having trouble adding the info to the vermont political party strength page. If someone could simply fix the page for me, that would be great. All the data is correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.237.140.29 (talk) 16:21, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Monarchist National Party


The article Monarchist National Party has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * A search for references found only a few minor mentions, WP:RS support for the majority of the article not found, fails WP:N and WP:V

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

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Indian National Congress
Please have a look at the Controversies and criticisms section of the article Indian National Congress. The section is quite long, and I feel that it should be integrated into the rest of the article, or so WP:CRIT advises. Please comment on the talk page, and establish a consensus. I have also notified WikiProject India about this.  The Mi ke •Wassup doc? 16:45, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of National Conservative Unity Party


The article National Conservative Unity Party has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * A search for references found two minor mentions in published works (gBooks), was unable to verify the article content beyond "it exists", fails WP:N and WP:V

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:50, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Deleting American 3rd Party?
I am not a registered user, so I can't officially propose something for deletion, but I have proposed deleting American 3rd Party. There are very few results found in a Google search that match this particular party. The few that mention the party are either broken links or (in one case) outdated. That one case (a website called Darkhorse 2000) was set up to list and describe a ton of third parties, most of them by my reckoning not notable. Please see Talk:American 3rd Party for a more detailed argument. 71.184.241.68 (talk) 22:46, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Problem with the article political party
As copied from the page Talk:Political party:

The "partisan style" section currently has the following subsections: There is no actual mention at all about true multi-party systems where actual executive power is shared pretty much equally among more than two major parties. This system is actually used in at least Finland, Sweden, and Germany. It is, however, not used in either the United States or the United Kingdom which are, in effect, two-party systems (Democrats vs Republicans in the USA, Labours vs Tories in the UK), but this is not the "American and British" Wikipedia, this is the Wikipedia in the English language, and so it should cover all aspects of the world. J I P &#124; Talk 19:46, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Non-partisan - the entire concept of parties doesn't exist
 * One-party system - only one party is allowed to hold power
 * Two-party system - two strong parties hold all actual executive power
 * Multi-party system - two strong parties hold almost all actual executive powers, but there might be a few minority parties holding a small share of it