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A fact from Chad Wolf appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 29 November 2019 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that acting U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf stated that, as chief of staff, it was not his responsibility to determine whether the Trump administration family separation policy was right or wrong?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2019/November. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Chad Wolf.

Wikipedia

RfC: Describing legal status in lead

There is a consensus for the first two sentences of the lead to read as follows:

Chad Fredrick Wolf (born 1976) is an American government official who was named the acting United States secretary of homeland security in November 2019. His appointment was ruled unlawful in November 2020.

In my opinion, it seems to be the non-explicit intent of the commenters in this AfC that this consensus apply only so long as Wolf occupies, or claims to occupy, the office of Acting Secretary. Sorry --- there was a copy/paste error in the original close, which indicated the wrong text above; it is corrected as of the revised timestamp Chetsford (talk) 02:45, 23 December 2020 (UTC); edited 07:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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

Given that Wolf's appointment as acting United States secretary of homeland security has been subject to at least one successful legal challenge, what should the first two sentences of the lead be? AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 04:06, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Please select options for both the first and second sentences, if applicable. (If you select option D for the first sentence, a second sentence may not be necessary.) For example, a !vote for option A1 would be for the following:

Chad Fredrick Wolf (born 1976) is the acting United States secretary of homeland security. His appointment was ruled unlawful in November 2020.

First sentence:

Option A: Chad Fredrick Wolf (born 1976) is the acting United States secretary of homeland security.
Option B: Chad Fredrick Wolf (born 1976) is the de facto acting United States secretary of homeland security.
Option C: Chad Fredrick Wolf (born 1976) is an American government official who was named the acting United States secretary of homeland security in November 2019.
Option D: Chad Fredrick Wolf (born 1976) is an American government official who was unlawfully named the acting United States secretary of homeland security in November 2019.

Second sentence:

Option 1: His appointment was ruled unlawful in November 2020.
Option 2: A judge of the District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled his appointment unlawful in November 2020.
Option 3: The legality of his appointment is disputed.

Thanks, all, for your input! AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 04:06, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

Option C1. I prefer this option because it seems most neutral to me. As far as I know, only one judge at the trial level has ruled Wolf's appointment unlawful, so it seems a little premature to declare in wikivoice that it is unlawful. But it also seems not right to say, without qualification, that he is the acting secretary. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 04:08, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Option C1: I'm going to push back a little bit on AleatoryPonderings' assessment that the district court ruling is not enough to call the appointment unlawful. The judge has the ability to make that call, and it does stand as such until it is overturned by a higher court, which may or may not happen. However, I think that option D is problematic because it implies (in my opinion) that it was obvious from the start that the appointment was unlawful, which doesn't sufficiently convey that the legality of his appointment was either accepted or merely disputed for most of his tenure. Option C1 is best because it neutrally states both facts—that he was named acting secretary, and that the appointment was later ruled unlawful—while also making clear the timeline of events. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 04:41, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Option D best reflects the legal situation -- at no point was Wolf exercising legal authority and orders he issued are invalid and without force. The 2019 naming, widely criticized as unlawful at the time, was in fact unlawful. Feoffer (talk) 05:05, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Option C1: It strikes a proper balance in both describing the appointment as unlawful while accurately describing that he is an American government official and that he was named secretary. Gbear605 (talk) 05:22, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Option C2: I'm going to take a different tack from the others: I think C2 is most neutral, as it allows for him to be described as the (admittedly, de facto) acting secretary while noting that only a trial judge has declared his appointment unlawful—that also allows for additional information for appeals (if any happen later) to be added. In short, "1" is just ever-so slightly too final for this encyclopedia: if it's been ruled unlawful, well, why is he still in office and all, etc.? So I think C2, while conveying the information fully, still allows us to add more information later, information that might otherwise conflict with such a bold declaration if we choose "1". — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 22:42, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Javert2113, I think he's still in office because Trump is choosing to ignore the ruling. I haven't seen any evidence of a stay or injunction that would allow Wolf to remain pending an appeal. That's not to say that the rest of your point is invalid, but I think that the "why is he still in office" argument is a weak one. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 22:50, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid you've erred, my friend Tartan357—I meant that to be the response of a random reader to reading C1 and seeing the infobox. That's all. — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 22:53, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Javert2113, oh, okay. That is a good point, then. It's possibly a WP:SURPRISE consideration. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 22:55, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, and just one of general readability (gotta get our wikilinks in, somehow, right?). — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 22:56, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Either C1 or D: It's important to describe both that there was an attempt to appoint him acting secretary of Homeland Security, and that this attempt was unlawful. I don't think it matters if this attempt is described in the first sentence or in a second, separate, sentence. Loki (talk) 01:18, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's quite important to mention the court's ruling "in the same breath" as we mention the naming, it's not as if no one noticed the naming was unlawful at the time. This makes D a better option. But if we ultimately choose C, we should end the C clause with a semicolon, not a period. Feoffer (talk) 11:04, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Feoffer, I disagree about the semicolon. Option C is long enough as it is (when I wrote it, I tried to shorten it, with limited success). I think a long, somewhat unusual-sounding sentence like "is an American government official who …" adverts sufficiently to the oddness of Wolf's legal status that a semicolon is unnecessary from a content point of view (not to mention a grammatical oddity). AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 17:44, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Option B2: Option C is redundant; the sentence already says he's U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, so it's not necessary to also say he's an American government official. I prefer option 2 since it gives important context to explain why it can be said his appointment is unlawful. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 04:37, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment on capitalization. These kinds of positions are always capitalized when used as formal titles. I know of no publication that uses them lowercase, and they are uniformly capitalized across Wikipedia. It is incorrect to use lowercase here. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 04:44, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - As far as I know, MOS:JOBTITLE says that when the name of a position is not being used as a title (e.g., Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf or President-elect Biden), it should be in lowercase (e.g., Chad Wolf, the acting secretary; or Joe Biden, the president-elect). For an example in the media, see [1]. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 04:46, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  Antony-22, no, it is correct per MOS:JOBTITLE. Your claim that "they are uniformly capitalized across Wikipedia" is false. Maybe take a look around, such as at President of the United States, before making such a sweeping assumption. The word "the" acts as a modifier in the above cases. AleatoryPonderings is correct. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 05:25, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The rules must be different for secretary-level positions. I've never seen any publication or Wikipedia article use the lowercase under any circumstances. I think it's because "Department of Homeland Security" is always capitalized as a proper noun, so "Secretary of Homeland Security" inherits that capitalization. (If it's not a specific named position, then it would be lowercase; you'd say that "X was a deputy secretary", and that "X was the Deputy Secretary of State for Management".) In any case, the usage on Wikipedia indicates that there's a strong consensus to always use the uppercase, just like every other publication I've seen does, and the MOS should reflect this. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 19:10, 5 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Antony-22, If you wish to alter the Manual of Style, please establish a consensus at WT:MOS. For a counterexample to your view about secretary-level positions, see Mike Pompeo. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 19:18, 5 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Option C1 or C2 I think this best summarizes the situation. He was named acting secretary. This was later ruled unlawful. Saying he was "unlawfully named" acting secretary, though accurate, elides the important aspect that the ruling came many months after his appointment. "An American government official" is probably the best we can do in describing his current job, since that at least is true and anything more specific is under dispute. I view 1 and 2 as equally acceptable: 1 is more concise, 2 is more detailed, both are true. In any case, the wording doesn't need to be perfect, since the article will soon need to be updated to reflect new information and a changing situation. Unlawful or not, he probably won't be acting secretary for much longer. Plus, there will likely be a number of additional court rulings that could change or clarify the situation. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 09:40, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Option C1. It seems to adequately summarize the verifiable information and offers a neutral emphasis. I prefer it to D because D overemphasizes the unlawfulness of Wolf's tenure. What's most important is what he's been doing, not whether he was doing it legally. I prefer C1 to B because "de facto" is jargon-y and not widely understood. I prefer C1 to C2 because C2 is too much detail for an opening paragraph. R2 (bleep) 18:43, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
C1 or D. C1 is more neutral, but I feel it takes two sentences to say what it needs to say and it "buries" the information about the appointment being unlawful in a second sentence. I know that C is technically different from a sentence such as A, but only in context. To a casual reader C by itself would not appear to say anything more than the fact that Chad Wolf is the current secretary. D is more blunt and offers little in the way of context to how this happened (until the last lines of the lede). How about a version where C1 is reformulated to consist of a single sentence while still presenting the same information? PraiseVivec (talk) 13:40, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
C2. Simply saying "his appointment is unlawful" in the lead makes it soundly like it's a settled, widely-agreed upon fact that his appointment was unlawful, when in fact this is a single district judge saying the appointment was unlawful. On the other hand, merely saying his appointment is "disputed" doesn't go far enough in indicating the legal issues his appointment has given rise to. And I don't think that these two sentences are too much for an introductory paragraph. Orser67 (talk) 15:20, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
C1. Although option D can be considered to be an appropriate option too, but I presume that option-C1 might be a better option for it. Ali Ahwazi (talk) 09:53, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

At this point, Wolf is almost certainly going to be leaving his position not long after the RfC is closed. With that in mind, we will also need to consider how it should be phrased in the past tense. Gbear605 (talk) 15:37, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Gbear605, Yeah, I was thinking that too. Options C1, C2, and D, which seem to be the most popular, are already in the past tense, so I don't think any modification would be needed there. Re-tensing any version of option B seems harder. Maybe … is a former American government official who was the de facto acting secretary of homeland security from 2019 to 2020?

I am also wondering how to do the infobox, which has also been the subject of controversy, but first things first I guess … AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 15:44, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gbear605 and AleatoryPonderings: See the way I handled this at Kevin McAleenan before this RfC started. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 11:27, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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

Chad Wolf

I am extremely sorry for messing around with Chad Wolf. Suchi Sobel (talk) 22:53, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Describing resignation

Special:Diff/999795692 is my best attempt at describing Wolf's resignation today without using language that suggests he legally was acting secretary. I was thinking of saying "purported to resign", because it's not clear that one can resign from an office one does not hold, but "purported" (even if accurate) reads as POV to me. Any improvements welcome. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 00:40, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Chad Wolf's current position as it applies to opening statement.

Since recent events have changed his positions: The opening statement needs to reflect his current position; not previous first while burying current. I suggest the following to discuss. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:AD80:40:472:8966:8379:FF2F:85D5 (talk) 08:21, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Chad Fredrick Wolf (born 1976) is an American government official who is the Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Strategy, Policy, and Plans since 2019. He was named the acting United States secretary of homeland security in November 2019 but, the appointment was ruled unlawful in November 2020, he later submitted his resignation as acting secretary, but not as under secretary, on January 11, 2021.[4] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:AD80:40:472:8966:8379:FF2F:85D5 (talk) 08:14, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer the current version since DHS secretary is the more important of the two positions, by far. The lead doesn't need to be unduly focused on his current position. Regardless, the currently-used text has been established by the above RfC, and a new one would therefore be needed to change it. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 11:22, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The close on the RfC specifically says "this consensus apply only so long as Wolf occupies, or claims to occupy, the office of Acting Secretary", so it no longer has any effect. That being said, the opening sentence is worded so that it's still accurate after stepping down: it's still true that he "was named the acting United States secretary of homeland security in November 2019" and "His appointment was ruled unlawful in November 2020." Given that he'll no longer be Under Secreatary in about a week, I don't think the wording of the lead sentence needs to be changed. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 21:43, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Surely it still has persuasive effect, even if it's not "binding"? It's consensus language on how to describe a perplexing fact. While these needn't be the first two sentences anymore, necessarily, they should still stay as consensus language. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 21:48, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Antony-22, that close says: In my opinion, it seems to be the non-explicit intent of the commenters in this AfC that this consensus apply only so long as Wolf occupies, or claims to occupy, the office of Acting Secretary. You're omitting some pretty important context there. I agree with AleatoryPonderings that it is still consensus text even if we decide it no longer needs to be the first two sentences. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 01:17, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can honestly say that the current first sentence can be used in a school paper? an opening statement that needs 5 more sentences and a nest of commas to explain? We have a jumbled piece of garbage first paragraph, that is unintuitively confusing as to what his job title is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.179.168.81 (talk) 09:00, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's because his legal situation is very complex. You can't ignore that reality just to end up with better flow. This is an encyclopedia entry, not an essay. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 18:14, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is a website dedicated to providing current and concise clarity. The "current" beginning paragraph might be well written in 50 years as a biography. But, Currently, anyone who supports it, supports putting confusing history first while burying the top changes of today. I agree with the above that, "We have a jumbled piece of garbage first paragraph, that is unintuitively confusing as to what his job title is." Current first; unless you like sentence spaghetti that causes muddy information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:AD80:40:472:8966:8379:FF2F:85D5 (talk) 18:57, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, this is an encyclopedia. If you have a better, encyclopedic way to phrase the lead sentence, please propose it. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 19:02, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Read the first post in this section... I DID. Similar to Michael Jordan's page ... In an encyclopedic order. Current information first... and history in the history. Do you support clarity or soup sandwich sentences built on ego-over-information? I am new here and don't know what or how to create a formal Request for Comment, though you will create a biased one as I probably would - being against garbage..., will you or admin Tartan357 create one please. You both have, know how, and see that a new purple box RfC whatever that is, is being asked for.

@@ Line 101: / Line 101: @@
 This is a website dedicated to providing current and concise clarity. The "current" beginning paragraph might be well written in 50 years as a biography. But, Currently, anyone who supports it, supports putting confusing history first while burying the top changes of today. I agree with the above that, "We have a jumbled piece of garbage first paragraph, that is unintuitively confusing as to what his job title is." Current first; unless you like sentence spaghetti that causes muddy information.  <!-- Template:Unsigned IP --><small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/2605:AD80:40:472:8966:8379:FF2F:85D5|2605:AD80:40:472:8966:8379:FF2F:85D5]] ([[User talk:2605:AD80:40:472:8966:8379:FF2F:85D5#top|talk]]) 18:57, 13 January 2021 (UTC)</small> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
 :No, this is an encyclopedia. If you have a better, encyclopedic way to phrase the lead sentence, please propose it. [[User:AleatoryPonderings|AleatoryPonderings]] ([[User talk:AleatoryPonderings|'''???''']]) ([[Special:Contributions/AleatoryPonderings|'''!!!''']]) 19:02, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
+Read the first post in this section... I DID. Similar to Michael Jordan's page ... In an encyclopedic order. Current information first... and history in the history. Do you support clarity or soup sandwich sentences built on ego-over-information? I am new here and don't know what or how to create a formal Request for Comment, though you will create a biased one as I probably would - being against garbage..., will you or admin Tartan357 create one please. You both have, know how, and see that a new purple box RfC whatever that is, is being asked for.