Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Veganism and Vegetarianism

Article assessment statistics​ bot for the global summary table​

@MaynardClark:, @Throughthemind:, @Rasnaboy:, @Odontocetes:

do you know how to get the article assessment statistics bot (WP 1.0 bot) working for the global summary table​? It is working on most other WikiProjects, for example look at the WikiProject animal rights statistics box [1]. But it does not work currently for WikiProject Veganism and Vegetarianism. It would be nice to have the global summary table working for this WikiProject so we can display it.

There is some information about it here [2] and details how to set up [3] but it is not working, so something is not right. Any ideas? Psychologist Guy (talk) 11:16, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Veganism and Vegetarianism articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
	Top	High	Mid	Low	NA	???	Total
FA		3	3	12			18
FM					14		14
A			1				1
GA		10	8	55		1	74
B	2	29	40	240		5	316
C		57	94	590		7	748
Start		32	147	1,106		12	1,297
Stub		3	27	163		3	196
List		9	6	12			27
Category			1		215		216
Disambig					1		1
File					12		12
Project					8		8
Redirect		1	2	9	9		21
Template		1			14		15
Other			1		9		10
Assessed	2	145	330	2,187	282	28	2,974
Total	2	145	330	2,187	282	28	2,974
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 11,753			Ω = 4.44

Good news, it is now working. Psychologist Guy (talk) 22:36, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Essence of Assessment

Discussions of internal article assessment by Wikipedia editors and bots can be located and studied. MaynardClark (talk) 17:30, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposed page

Here's a proposed page for someone to excel with, Mahatma Gandhi and vegetarianism. It could include Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence and how vegetarianism was essential for understanding it. Just a thought. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:58, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: Here is other context

• Vegetarianism_and_religion#Hinduism
• Diet in Hinduism
• History of Brahmin diet

I am not familiar if and how Gandhi had personal preferences outside the norm for the culture in which he lived. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:17, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, he wrote and said vegetarianism is essential for a nonviolent activist, and that's the information I was thinking of which could be covered in a page. Exact quotes would be needed to that effect to make such an article topic notable, and could include favorite dishes, recipes, etc. Not one of mine, which is why I suggested it as a topic someone could "run with". Randy Kryn (talk) 23:29, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Reliability of PETA

Opinions are needed on the following Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: Reliability of PETA. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 03:11, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Vegan

Thanks to the people who set up this WikiProject.

I want share a problem and opportunity. I and some others set up meta:Wiki loves Vegan, which is a community group advocating for any Wikimedia Foundation sponsored event which includes catering to provide vegan options. I know that not everyone joins in-person wiki events, so that particular organization's objective may not be of pressing concern to many people here. However, I hope that people here share the sentiment that when anyone spends Wikimedia community money which comes from donors, then that money should go toward purchases which everyone finds accessible.

The bigger challenge, and this may or may not be out of scope of Wikipedia, is that there are no obviously available best practices for explaining to restaurants, caterers, and event planners what it means to provide vegan food. Typically, the food industry imagine that the vegan option is the same as the animal option, just without the meat. When there is a meal, vegans get salad and bread but no entree or buttered vegetables; vegans skip the dessert course because all desserts have dairy; and when there is coffee and cream vegans do not get a non-dairy creamer because they can have plain coffee.

I wanted to share this here as a real-world problem which wiki could address. I am imagining that all sorts of industries are looking for guidance, and if we could surface something and put it in an informative article, then we could shift public practice. Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:01, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Where I am based there are now plenty of "ordinary" non vegan restaurants which all serve at least 1 or 2 vegan options, and in that option there is a non-dairy desert. This is becoming more acceptable. This was not around ten years ago, so things are changing. I didn't know about the Wiki loves Vegan event. Maybe this WikiProject can help get more people involved. Psychologist Guy (talk) 20:19, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Mary Baker Eddy

@MaynardClark:

I am not convinced Mary Baker Eddy had anything to do with vegetarianism. Her biographer Gillian Gill commented "As the years went by, though never a professing vegetarian, Mrs. Eddy ate less and less meat, just a little liver or chicken occasionally, with perhaps fish hash for supper, or something light on toast. Bacon—or salt pork, as she called it—was her favorite meat, and pigs were kept on the estate to supply the household's needs." (Gill, Gillian. (1999). Mary Baker Eddy, Hachette Books, p. 392). She was a meat eater her entire life, although the quantity seemed to lower with age.

From what I have searched, the quote "Man is not by nature carnivorous" does not appear in Eddy's writings, it might be a misquotation or entirely fictional. On a side note, the quote "man is not, by nature, carnivorous" is found in John Harvey Kellogg's book Shall We Slay to Eat? on page 11. What do you think? Psychologist Guy (talk) 20:06, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

"Vegetarianism was rejected by the founder of Christian Science, who repeated the doctrine that it was false to believe life and intelligence are in matter." (Jones, Gerald E. (1986) "The Place of Animals in Three American Churches: Church of Christ-Scientist, Seventh-Day Adventists, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints". Between the Species: Vol. 2: Iss. 4, Article 5.).

Psychologist Guy (talk) 00:02, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

So a version of the phrase is found in Kellogg and attributed to Eddy? Hard to believe that she rejected what many consider to be a basis for human rights (as not 'owned' individually by 'consciousness bodily' (as the phenomenologists, like Edmund Husserl, would describe it. MaynardClark (talk) 18:14, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Sometimes there is lack of historical information for people's dieting ideas or their quotes get taken out of context. In this case the quote was entirely fabricated. There is a long list of historical people who were never vegetarian but in modern lists of vegetarianism they are included by mistake or from people with an agenda. Isaac Newton for example was never a vegetarian. There is a lot of evidence to suggest Mary Baker Eddy was mentally ill. She did not believe the material world around her was real. She was not a vegetarian. I cannot find any evidence she directly communicated with Kellogg but in Richard W. Schwarz's biography John Harvey Kellogg, M.D.: Pioneering Health Reformer, on page 61 it says Kellogg was bitterly opposed to Eddy's Christian Science ideas which he believed were false. Both Eddy and Kellogg held direct opposite views about the world. There is evidence that Eddy was a plagiarist but the quote in this case appears to be a modern mistake. Somebody may have read Kellogg and somewhere down the line it got confused with Eddy, or more likely someone just made it up and falsely attributed to Eddy. It appears others have also used that line or one very similar to it. I just discovered that Ghandi also said "Man is not by nature carnivorous". Psychologist Guy (talk) 00:11, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Should it be included in the project

Perhaps a section 'Should it be included in the project?'

List of fried dough foods

Adolph Hitler

former vegetarians

Should those topics and articles be within our scope of concern? MaynardClark (talk) 00:24, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

I think former vegetarians is on topic, I am not sure about the other two. In regard to the "Open tasks" section, we should merge that content into the other sections. Psychologist Guy (talk) 18:36, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

I think inclusion or exclusion are reasonable here, though for List of fried dough foods, I am skeptical. Do articles about every non-animal product food need to be part of this project? Rice? Mashed potatoes? High fructose corn syrup? Okay now I'm hungry... Jmill1806 (talk) 16:48, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose inclusion of vegetarians If someone is a major figure in vegetarianism then fine; if someone is only incidentally vegetarian/vegan then no. List of incidental figures with a relationship to the scope of a WikiProject are hard to manage and outside the scope of typical editor interest. WikiProject Medicine for example routinely expresses regrets about including so many physicians just because biographies are not a popular editing interest in that community. If anyone wants to curate biographies do it in a list article or on Wikidata.
• Oppose inclusion of all non-animal food If a food is intimately associated with vegetarianism as a lifestyle or social movement, like plant-based milk or designated meat substitutes, then include it. Including food products which are merely compatible is not productive. If anyone feels strongly then data modeling food on Wikidata is an option where listing and tagging every food product is welcome. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:14, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

'designated meat substitutes' - Is this a category that includes cellular agriculture? I have (preliminary?) reservations for including lab-based meat generated from biopsied material from animals, although that might be called or designated as 'designated meat substitutes', MaynardClark (talk) 18:15, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Feeding 'caged and companion animals' who are designated as 'carnivorous': The generation of lab-based meat or 'designated meat substitutes' through forms of cellular agriculture may offer 'historic transformation' of the deeply-entrenched 'meat' industry (so that current species of 'meat animals' would no longer be 'kept' in 'factory farms', but does that discussion deserve place in this project (particularly as separate pages produced through this project's scheduled efforts? If other projecgts (or this project's individual members) push for developing well-written evidence-adequate articles on the topic seems tangential to whether or not this project should prioritize developing articles about means to feed plant-based materials of 'caged and companion animals' (to be readied some far off time in the future - or sooner). But then again, perhaps we ought to be more visionary about this project. MaynardClark (talk) 18:23, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Fictional vegetarian characters

Hello everyone! I just thought I'd let you know about a page I created today titled List of fictional vegetarian characters, modeling it after some pages I created for LGBTQ characters. I know its lacking in some areas (like games and film), but I think its a good first start. The more entries on there, the better, although those entries should be well-sourced. In the future, vegan characters could possibly be spun off onto their own page, titled something like List of fictional vegan characters as well. Anyway, I thought I'd start the discussion here. I'm open to all suggestions and improvements. Hope to hear from you all. --Historyday01 (talk) 03:22, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for creating that page. Jmill1806 (talk) 16:48, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Sure! I'll keep looking for more characters as time goes on, but I think what I put together is a good start. Historyday01 (talk) 03:08, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Vegan celebrities missing information from their articles

@BrikDuk:, @MaynardClark:, @Throughthemind:, @Odontocetes:, @Jmill1806:, @Bluerasberry:

Do you know if Alec Baldwin, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Zac Efron, Ariana Grande, or Leonardo DiCaprio are vegan? Many websites say they are but there is no mention of it on their articles. Angelina Jolie and Chris Hemsworth are former vegans. Arnold Schwarzenegger is on a plant based diet but you read all these articles and their diet is not mentioned. I think we should improve these articles if we have reliable sources they are vegan or ex-vegans. Psychologist Guy (talk) 16:23, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Miley Cyrus is no longer vegan, the article has been updated. Psychologist Guy (talk) 16:29, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree that we should assiduously monitor such persons' diet status and keep their articles updated as long as they qualify for inclusion in the project.

IMO, however, it is merely 'a diet that is morally obligatory', but not in itself sufficient to qualify any human individual as morally exemplary.

Anyone's merely not doing something wrong' will not in itself justify making everything else about a person 'morally normative!

I think that we can favor not eating animals without idealizing or idolizing those who refrain from eating animals in ways that set them up for indiscriminate adoration. MaynardClark (talk) 17:21, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Years ago I'd added List of vegans and List of vegetarians to the 'See also' sections of entrants pages. This added large additional daily views to those two pages. Within a short time an admin removed all of them, and the page views of the two articles similarly declined. More recently I asked at one of those talk pages if the 'See also' ban was still on and had one response that it would be up to each individual page if the link would stay or not. Personally I see it being beneficial to add "List of vegans" etc. to the 'See also' of those listed, and the former attempt showed it was of interest to readers. Maybe others besides myself can comment on the talk pages of the two articles to bring the discussion back around again, and this could also include the interesting new page List of fictional vegetarian characters. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 18:00, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

I do not know whether any of these people are vegetarians or vegans. BrikDuk (talk) 16:59, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Barnstar

Introducing Template:The Veganism and Vegetarianism Barnstar. Jerm (talk) 16:09, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Vegetarian/Pescetarian/Vegan lists up for deletion

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of vegetarians (4th nomination) Psychologist Guy (talk) 01:53, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Richard Levins

@MaynardClark:, @Jmill1806:

Is there any real documented evidence Richard Levins was a vegetarian? The answer appears to be no. MaynardClark you wrote "That's because you (and most others) look only on the Internet", if the evidence is not on the internet anywhere, then where is it? Most books and journals have been scanned into the internet and a check on Google books and academic journal searchers such as JSTOR reveals nothing. Obituaries of Levins do not mention he was a vegetarian.

The book The Truth is the Whole: Essays in Honor of Richard Levins was edited by Maynard Clark, I also read your tribute to Richard Levins but no mention of vegetarianism can be found here. You request on the WikiProject page that mention of his lacto-ovo vegetarianism is needed but no sources seem to support it. Maybe you personally knew Levins so perhaps you have some personal experience with the man but not one reliable source on the internet mentions his vegetarianism so I don't think we can improve his article in relation to this WikiProject. Psychologist Guy (talk) 00:07, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I knew Dr. Levins, who would often say that he was vegetarian (lacto-ovo vegetarian) for ecological reasons, and he stated that moral concern for others ought to be developed ecologically (not 'in a rights framework'). But then, he was a 4th generation Marxist, also. Obituaries were written by those who didn't care about the topic, and I wish we had made a point to include that in what others had said about him. Let me reach out to his students who contributed to the book and to those who contributed to his 3-day birthday symposium the year before he died. MaynardClark (talk) 00:32, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Well he looks like the kind of guy who would be vegetarian because he was concerned about environmental matters and he did live a long life. I'm disappointed it wasn't mentioned in an obituary but as you say the writers wouldn't have personally known him. Let me know if you find any new information. Psychologist Guy (talk) 00:56, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

His son Alejandro wrote to me that we "don't know of any published mention of my father's diet. He was not vegetarian his whole life, but only in his last few decades." The last few decades of an 85-year life can be a significant biographical time period for a biographical comment. I am waiting to hear from his officemate and co-author, Tamara Awerbuch-Friedlander in Tel Aviv. His later-life research collaborators, like Richard Lewontin, could elaborate from experience with him and his conversations, research publications, and "scientific research directions." Because he was a communist in Cuba, FBI surveillance force him to forego institutional position in the Caribbean, and he "ended up doing vegetable farming for a living on the island’s western mountains." MaynardClark (talk) 07:25, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

In theory, could we get one of those students or family members to state publicly that he was vegetarian? Such as a tweet? Maybe you could do this yourself, Maynard, though I don't know if it would count. Unless something like that happens, I don't see how we can include it in the WP entry. Jmill1806 (talk) 13:11, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

References

Gustav Mahler‎

Gustav Mahler‎ was a vegetarian for a while [4], during 1880-1888 according to biographies. I think this information is relevant to his article, but it has been removed for being "trivial" (see talk-page). Psychologist Guy (talk) 14:48, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Help save the List of fictional vegetarian characters!

I was deeply disappointed to see today that the article I created on September 7, not even 20 days ago, was nominated for deletion. Please comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional vegetarian characters so the page can be saved! The more people who comment, the better. Thanks! Historyday01 (talk) 05:35, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of vegetarians (4th nomination)

This deletion request also covers List of vegans, and may be of interest to participants in this wikiproject. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:31, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Happy World Vegetarian Day!

Happy World Vegetarian Day. Have been adding red link brackets to mentions of the North American Vegetarian Society, which founded the day. There was once an article for the title but it has been deleted, the project should maybe ask an admin for a copy of that article for a project subpage so it can be worked up. Missing Indian buffets. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:33, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Vegan food companies

Hey guys, this is a topic that I'm interested in so have already made an article for Meatless Farm and I'm working on one for Moving Mountains. I only really know about companies active in the UK so if there are some overseas brands that are notable then please let me know and I can potentially do them next. Thanks Osario (talk) 12:13, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Vegetarianism reduced to diet

The talk page of the Vegetarianism Talk:Vegetarianism article has a discussion taking place about why the said article defines vegetarianism as a diet rather than as the dictionary definition of the word which is as a belief system and social movement. This confusion of the definition has become a cause for Afd nominations for other vegetarian pages. Editors, for example, are asserting that a diet is not a reason to categorize a list and this was recently argued for the 4th time with no consensus at: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_vegetarians_(4th_nomination) with reasoning based on lack of understanding of what -ism means and how vegetarianism is a set of beliefs and social reform movement. Thank you for any comments as this inaccurate definition will continue to affect other pages relevant to this project. BrikDuk (talk) 19:38, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Improving the AIC article

@Throughthemind @Psychologist Guy @MaynardClark @C.J. Griffin @Josh Milburn @Odontocetes @Jmill1806 @Bhagya sri113

Is there any scope of improving the Animal–industrial complex article? I've tried my best (and still am). Unfortunately, it is on the verge of deletion as some editors feel it is a fringe concept. However, I see it is well-known in the academic circle and is a growing concept in the animal liberation movement. Also see the related discussion for including speciesism in the Discrimination article/template here: Template talk:Discrimination § Discrimination includes all forms of discrimination, human or non-human. Rasnaboy (talk) 07:10, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, there's loads of literature on the animal-industrial complex. It's a pretty central concept in critical animal studies, and is used in other areas of animal studies broadly understood.

It's hard to know what will satisfy editors who stick their fingers in their ears and shout FRINGE FRINGE FRINGE -- has any indication been given of what the critics are actually looking for? Josh Milburn (talk) 07:27, 16 October 2020 (UTC)