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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 99.231.200.55 (talk) at 15:55, 14 April 2011 (→This map). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Proposed rename - 2010–2011 Arab World protests

This was the initial title of the article prior to the outbreak of protests in Iran, after which it was broadly agreed that this article's title should no longer be limited to the Arab uprisings. However, the situation in Iran appears to have largely subsided, making its incidence merely part of a global repercussion that has influenced demonstrations in a broad range of countries including China, the United States, and several others. Thus far, the only protests that have resulted in historic consequences are those that have taken place in Arab countries. I feel that generalizing the situation to the entirety of the MENA region gives this article too broad of a scope. Thoughts? Master&Expert (Talk) 03:54, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This has been proposed before, but the most recent discussion only had four participants, with two in favour of renaming and the other two opposed. This is not a consensus. I'm reposting the proposal for a broader audience. Master&Expert (Talk) 04:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - bigoted and feeds the stereotype that Arabs are the majority people in the Middle-East and North Africa. They are NOT. The Copts in Egypt, and the Jews in Tunisia were vital to the Revolutions there. This has nothing to do with the supra-identity 'Arab'.--Smart30 (talk) 10:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
From the article Arab world: 'The Arab League, a regional organization of countries intended to encompass the Arab world, defines an Arab as: "An Arab is a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic-speaking country, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic-speaking peoples."'. Furthermore, the article defines the Arab world as a region of Arabic-speaking countries. The Arab 'supra-identity,' as you call it, is based on common language, not ethnicity or religion. DerekMBarnes (talk) 23:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Copts are a religion, not an ethnicity. They are Egyption citizens, of Arabic ethnicity and Coptic faith. But this discussion is not about majorities. It's about whether Iran counts as part of the revolutionary wave, or as an outside impact. If it's an outside impact, then the rest of the countries are all part of the Arab world, and the title should reflect that fact. If Iran is part of the revolutionary wave, than it's about Arab World + Iran, which we, and others, call "Middle East North Africa" - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 18:50, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Copts are the descendants of the Ancient Egyptians and some Greeks. They have nothing to do with their Arab neighbors. I assume it was merely an honest mistake on your behalf. --Smart30 (talk) 15:31, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They have a lot to do with their Arab neighbours. Copts also speak Arabic, and some of their „arab neighbours” are also descendants of Ancient Egyptians, later Coptic Christians, but of ones who converted to Islam (Islamization of Egypt). I'll asume your mistakes are equally as honest - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 16:07, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I made no mistake sir, the sole reason Copts adopted the Arabic tongue is due to the fact their tongues were cut out if they spoke Coptic. The conversion of a handful of Copts to Islam was entirely marginal, 99% of Egyptian Arabs show no genetic markers suggesting Ancient Egyptian descent. However these markers are unmistakable in the Coptic(native Egyptian) population.--Smart30 (talk) 16:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Besides your word, what evidence do you have of your outlandish assertions? The exact genetic study would be nice. - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 17:01, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting... genetic markers or not, this is how both the copts and the Egyptian arabs see the situation. One of my coptic friends describes himself as "Egyptian of the Pharoahs", and despite at one stage holding a key security-related government post, he was never granted a security clearance, purely because of his ethnicity. When performing his duties, he was always accompanied by an arab minder "to make sure I do the right thing". None of these minders had any expertise in the area, so how they were deciding what the "right thing" might be is an interesting conjecture. And the similarity between coptic and Greek facial features, and the contrast of both to arab ones, is striking. Andrewa (talk) 21:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose-the current name is fine as it is, and imho, Qatar, Ertinea and Somalia (the latter is not Arabic) should be added--71.236.0.245 (talk) 04:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Qatar has only seen a failed coup, but I have not seen any source claiming link to the MENA protests, Somalia was discussed, and removed (see archives) and I don't know what Eritrea has to do with all of this. Please share some (WP:RS) links regarding these issues. - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 15:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support - As stated in the last discussion, the unrest in Iran was in connection with prior political events within the country, and was too brief to be considered part of the ongoing movement. I acknowledge Iranian protesters were inspired by Tunisia, but I no longer believe Iran is directly related to these events, and it can be moved to the "Impact" article, voiding the reasons MENA is currently in use. DerekMBarnes (talk) 23:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: How many times are people going to argue about the same god damn point? We cant take out Iran or Western Sahara for example and seeing that none of them are arab states the rename cant be done. -- The Eguyptian Liberal (talk) 13:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, Western Sahara is an „arab state” in the sense that its inhabitants are mostly arabs, but on the other hand it is not part of the Arab League - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 15:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support renaming, by DerekMBarnes's arguments. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 10:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support. Iran fizzled away pretty quick, and the internal factors (last year's post-election protests) seem to (slightly) outweigh the external ones (the „Tunisia effect”). The protests in the Arab countries seem to have emboldened them to come out again, but it was basically Green Revolution, part 2.
Also, Ive done a Google news count: Arab spring - ~2,120 results, Middle East North Africa protests - ~5,810 results, North Africa protests - ~6,890 results, Arab World protests - ~9,300 results, Middle east protests - ~16,400 results, Arab protests - ~14,600 results - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 15:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You need to do that count with quotation marks around the words in the search box so they look for the terms specifically. Otherwise, you're going to get results that may not be accurate to what you're searching for. For example, Middle East protests may be just coming up with a bunch of articles that use the terms Middle East and protests in the same articles, but not in conjunction as a single term. SilverserenC 15:29, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Slightly off-topic, can be moved to alternate section but relevant to the article name dispute, here is the revised Google News count according to Silver seren's suggestions: 1,210 results for "arab spring" [1]; 1 result for "middle east north africa protests" [2]; 2 results for "north africa protests" [3]; 17 results for "arab world protests" [4]; 105 results for "middle east protests" [5]; 43 results for "arab protests" [6]; 0 results for "greater middle east protests" [7]; 0 results for "tunisian revolutionary wave" [8]. Insofar as WP:COMMONNAME is concerned, this appears to be a strong argument against the current title, with Arab Spring coming out on top by over 1,000 results. This may not be a particularly refined method of analysis, however I believe it warrants a resurrection of the previous "Arab Spring" discussion, or at least an open discussion of all possible name changes based on popular usage or other elements of Wikipedia policy. I Oppose this name change on both the above grounds and the previous arguments concerning exclusion of non-Arab nations. Laika Talk: Laika 16:20, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The protests in Iran were and are significant and have been stated explicitly by the opposition leaders there to be in response to Tunisia and Egypt. It was because of the MENA protests that they decided to start protesting again themselves, as expressed by their leaders specifically. Because of this, we have to include Iran in the list and this, thus, makes the name Arab world inappropriate for the article. SilverserenC 15:29, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support these protests are refered to, everywhere as the Arab world protests or the ARab spring, that's just what this is, yet for some reason, the whole article has to be re-named to include 1 totally irrelevant student protest in Tehran, which happened a month ago and for which practically no-one showed up. It is ridiculous how that has played such a big role in this article, yet protests in other North-African countries like Uganda and Ivory Coast and Senegal and even Somalia (which is part of the Arab League) have been filtered out, the protests in Turkey being totally ignored, but this Iranian thing has to be given major attention. This motivated by political bias and does not fit in the neutrality policies of Wikipedia.Kermanshahi (talk) 21:12, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I...suppose it would be inappropriate of me to mention anything about your *cough* obvious userpage. But, being the main contributor to the 2011 Iranian protests article, I can tell you that you are dead wrong about what occurred during the protests. First off, there were more than five major protests over the past month, with most having more than 100,000 people attending. The protests have been just as large, if not larger, than the election protests that occurred in 2009. SilverserenC 21:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox photo

A collage of photos from several countries would be good, not just Cairo.--93.137.14.197 (talk) 14:10, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures from multiple countries would be good, not just Egypt, but not really a collage … Elium2 (talk) 14:48, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Iv'e done so with the pictures from articles, quality pictures are needed for a better collage.
  – HonorTheKing (talk) 15:18, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Djibouti: minor or major?

In the summary table, the djiboutian protests are listed as minor, yet in the map it's featured as a major protest. So, which one is the correct one? - 79.113.91.8 (talk) 09:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What are the criteria for determining if it is a major or minor protest?

Because as of now, it seems rather, well, subjective. Perhaps we should say if protests draw X number of people for X number of days within X amount of time, they are considered major protests. It's just that there seems to be no clarification of what is considered major or minor. And what is major or minor depends on the editor. Editor A may think that protests in a certain country are just minor spats, whereas Editor B may see them as demonstrations of historic proportions. So are there some guidelines on what makes a protest major or minor? Lilly (talk) 01:45, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is no criteria, it's propaganda rhethoric actually, I mean the Iranian protests which were only 2 days, in which hardly a thousand students turned up (just look at the "timeline" on the article itself, the last 2 weeks, they update every day, but there hasn't been a single protest, only quoting of some officials have been saying) and in which only 3 people were killed is labelled as "major" next to the protests in Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, in which hundreds of people have been killed, is just ridiculous and clearly politically motivated. Also I take a major issue with the name of this article, this is the Arab World protetest, the Arab Spring, this is how it's called in all media, but WP found the need to somehow re-name it "Middle East and North Africa protests," merely so that they can include the completely irrelevant student protest which took place in Iran, months ago. But I'm afraid we'll have to wait months before any objective editing can be done here.Kermanshahi (talk) 21:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Middle_East_and_North_Africa_protests#Overview

I think it would be better to split the "Government Change" colour into two different colours. My reason for this is because Jordan and Oman didn't experience much unrest and violence before they changed the government. Syria and Yemen have experienced very violent unrest. 99.231.200.55 (talk) 11:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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