Draft talk:Manual of Style/Israel- and Palestine-related articles

Draft

This is a good idea; I suggest noting that "massacre" should not be used as the title for recent events (past five years?), as it is too soon to determine whether the name is appropriate.

In addition, I suggest you also recommend that WP:CATPOV is followed very closely; it's common for editors to do drive-by categorization adding things like "massacre", "mass murder", "war crime" etc, even when it is not the consensus of reliable sources - even when it is not even alleged by a single reliable source. A guideline to point to to say "don't do that" would be very helpful.

Finally, it might be useful to provide some guidance on when to use Template:Infobox military attack and when to use Template:Infobox civilian attack BilledMammal (talk) 04:08, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These are constructive ideas. I'm wary of adding too much to the draft, because I want to focus on getting the idea of a MOS accepted in principle. I would say the best way of doing that is by starting with one or two points virtually everyone can agree upon. Otherwise, I could see a "no consensus" outcome where there's too much disagreement over the specifics of the draft but broad agreement over the idea.

For example, both you and Nableezy currently agree that massacre is overused, but disagree whether it's appropriate for recent events. It's more realistic to write what we do agree on into the guideline, adopt it as an example, then have a discussion or RfC on this talk page later on.

WP:CATPOV on the other hand is something I would like to add now. The principle of a sourcing requirement for specific categories (massacres or war crimes) seems uncontroversial though I'd like input from editors of different views. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:08, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree with such a proposal, but it seems there might not be community consensus for it. See this discussion, which seems to have been closed as "didn't reach a conclusion".VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 23:25, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Vice regent: I'd respectfully disagree. The comments in that discussion generally indicated that people wanted a single standard, but it was unclear what that standard should be. I believe this MOS would be the missing global standard. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:42, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think MOS giving a global standard is a good idea, but it should be validated by a community RfC.

Another question for you is: if sources describe an event as a massacre rather than call an event as a massacre, should we still use the term? For example, if a source says "The massacre of civilians last month..." but never explicitly call the event "Nuseirat massacre" does that count? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 06:53, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion yes, but we also need to be clear that a source saying that other people have called it a massacre ("called the 'Nuseirat massacre' by some") is evidence against us using the term, not evidence for. BilledMammal (talk) 07:19, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Something else to consider is we can be selectively ambiguous. Even if we can't reach an agreement on how a source must describe a massacre to qualify, agreeing that source-based arguments are the best would help discussion closers. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 14:54, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd use "Infobox military attack " if a large majority of casualties are military; otherwise "Infobox civilian attack" is more appropriate. We can also merge these two into "Infobox attack".VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 23:29, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with that; I suggest using "Infobox civilian attack" only when there is a consensus in reliable sources that civilians were the target. Using it in other circumstances would push a POV by using language such as "perpetrators", and thus it’s better to use an infobox that presents that information in a non-partisan manner. BilledMammal (talk) 07:21, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly disagree that "all attacks are presumed to be against military targets unless proven otherwise". Why not do this the other way around? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 00:15, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not that we should presume them to be against military targets unless proven otherwise; it's that we should present them neutrally unless proven otherwise. Of the two infoboxes, "military attack" is more neutral, as it avoids loaded language like "perpetrator". BilledMammal (talk) 02:34, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Military attack" is absolutely not neutral, because it presumes the victims to be combatants, therefore lawful to kill under International Humanitarian Law. I've "perpetrator"_with_"attacker" proposed to replace "perpetrator" with "attacker". VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 22:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Draft 2

While I appreciate the initiative and attempts at brainstorming, the suggestions made here have nothing to do with style, and everything to do with guidelines. More importantly, even if we were to consider either, I think this will end up doing more harm than good. Just a quick look at the draft and at some of the comments here, this seems like it will end up circumventing WP guidelines and policies, and not complementing them.

To cite two example:

Draft states "The term 'massacre' should be avoided in article titles related to the conflict unless it is the WP:COMMONNAME as used by almost all reliable sources." On the other hand, this is not supported by the policy it is referenced to, which states: "prefers the name that is most commonly used." The former is an impossible criteria to meet.
A suggestion on talk page states: "'massacre' should not be used as the title for recent events (past five years?)." This is not supported by any guideline nor is it sensical to give incidents of victims of this conflict less descriptive terms than those of other conflicts, risking creating a highly biased hierarchical structure for conflicts. We should not have to wait any number of years; the good thing about WP is that consensus changes as RS changes, and moves can be made in real-time.

Makeandtoss (talk) 09:50, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Makeandtoss: The goal of this guideline is to codify consensus when existing guidelines aren't working due to inconsistent application. Whether or not this'll do more harm than good, I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

I'll change "almost all" to a significant majority of English-language sources to reflect the original policy. The goal of the wording is to foreclose the x is a massacre because y civilians were killed argument that frequently occurs and doesn't benefit discussions.

The suggestion on avoiding "massacre" for recent events isn't one I've added to the guideline because it's too controversial at the moment. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 14:43, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the case that this is “to reflect the original policy” then this would neither complement nor contradict the original policy and is therefore redundant. Makeandtoss (talk) 15:06, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like we'll have to agree to disagree. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 22:08, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Chess, @Makeandtoss, you're both right in a way. But in that case, I'd suggest discussing "massacre" with respect to all scopes, not just the I-P conflict. WP:COMMONAME still has some ambiguities. For example, I disagree with BilledMammal's criteria here, but this is something the community should decide and then it should apply to all topics.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 02:27, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not opposed to this exercise in principle, but I do wish to remind everyone that per WP:CONLEVEL we cannot make an agreement that contradicts policy. Suggestions for extra stuff: the WP:WESTBANK agreement, and the boilerplate sentence that is added to most articles on Israeli settlements (I forget where it was agreed to). Zero^talk 01:48, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration/Current Article Issues/Archive. Legality of Israeli settlements Selfstudier (talk) 15:38, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's a lot of trouble getting a policy change, it seems to me we can decide about aka's tho, can't we? Selfstudier (talk) 15:47, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Name vs Descriptor

@Chess, you brought up a good point on whether sources should use "massacre" as part of a proper name or merely use it as descriptor. BilledMammal implies it should be the latter, but I'm not so sure.


Event	General hits	As a name			As a descriptor
Event	General hits	"massacre"	%	Alternative	"massacre"	%	Alternative
1929 Hebron massacre	345	22	7%	Riots: 2	103	30%	Riots:122
Qana massacre	2510	207	8%	Attack:39	766	31%	Attack:1230

The above table shows that if we consider "massacre" as a descriptor, then we find other descriptors as actually more common. If we use "massacre" as part of a name, then we find "massacre" predominates all other names, but the vast majority of sources don't actually use this name in reference to the event.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 17:00, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Vice regent: I suppose there's three possible approaches:

Editors define what a massacre is and use that definition as a descriptive title (status quo)
Editors look at whether reliable sources describe an event a "massacre", and use the plurality or majority of reliable sources (also status quo)
Editors look at sources ascribing a name to an event, and whether that name includes the word "massacre", like the Boston Massacre example in WP:COMMONNAME.

I really, really, dislike the first approach as it almost never achieves consensus despite being the main contributor to wordcount in RMs.

The second approach is usually what achieves consensus in discussions, but the third approach what I would argue is a better reading of common name.

The issue with the second approach is that it's not mutually exclusive. If Al Jazeera describes an event a massacre, it can describe the event as an attack, a riot, or a pogrom with equal validity. This means there can be multiple, or no clear majority.

I would personally take the third approach and require a significant majority of sources that have a name for an event, to use "massacre" in that name for the term to be acceptable. But that's somewhat out of step with what the community has historically agreed upon in RMs in this area which is why I didn't propose it as I was unsure if it'd get consensus. My main priority with this guideline was to get rid of the first approach, and I didn't want to overreach. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 19:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the second approach will give us multiple descriptors and which to use will have to be decided based on editorial discretion. This makes approach #2 similar to #1.

In most cases there will be no proper name that is used in >50% of sources. In such a case would you rather look for a proper name present in a plurality of sources (as few as 7% per above table) or use approach #2? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 23:28, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Vice regent: The general results numbers includes sources that don't use a name. For the Hebron massacre, the "after the storm" book says year 1929, at the time of the pogrom in Hebron. That's a description of the event, not a name of the event. There are many other cases like that in the 345.

In this case, I would divide by the number of times the event has been referred to by a name. So, if the only two names are Hebron massacre and Hebron riots, Hebron massacre is used by 22/(22+2) or approximately 92% of the sources. This would be significantly more than 50% for the Qana massacre as well. I wouldn't put this specific math in the guideline itself, but I'm using this as an example.

In the event that it's impossible to show a WP:COMMONNAME used by the significant majority of reliable sources, terms such as "massacre" should be avoided. This would remove some of the editorial discretion you mentioned by creating a standard for most articles. The editorial discretion should be limited to deciding between more neutral terms, like attack or riot. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 00:31, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Chess The approach you describe is certainly worth considering. The downside is that, in some cases, it could entail ignoring >90% of RS on a topic, which I think will not sit well with many.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 08:20, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Vice regent: I'm fine with leaving it vague on whether the second or third approach is to be used. I believe getting editors to stop filling RMs with debates on civilian deaths/methods of killing/international law is enough of a benefit to justify a guideline. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 01:52, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposing at WP:VPP

@Vice regent, Selfstudier, Zero0000, and BilledMammal: I'm going to propose this in a week or so at WP:VPP. Since you've all commented here, which of you be interested in co-sponsoring this? I believe it would be more acceptable if the proposal came from both sides of the conflict area. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 03:00, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that WP:WESTBANK should be included. I'll try to think of wording when I return home in a few days. Zero^talk 03:42, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]