ProleWiki talk:Editorial guidelines/Archive

Proposal for (Start–End) dates in articles about past-existing states.

In articles about states or organizations that have existed in the past but do not currently exist, we add (START–END) dates between parenthesis in the title. E.g.:

• • Soviet Union (1922–1991)
  • People's Republic of the Congo (1969–1992)
  • Russian Empire (1721–1917)

— Comrade Forte ^(talk) 19:31, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Proposal for United States demonym

PROPOSAL: American is a term referring to the whole continent, and it suits United States imperialist ideology. So, as an effort to combat that reasoning, we adhere to using Statesian to refer to the inhabitants of that country. — Comrade FelipeForte ^(talk) 10:40, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Statesian also could refer to Mexicans, although I suppose they already have the term Mexican. The issue really becomes interested when you bring in the Federated States of Micronesia. There are Micronesians outside of the Federated States of Micronesia, but calling them Statesians would overlap with the USA term. As for the USA the word Yankee/Yank comes to mind, but some consider this offensive. Perhaps a true solution would be to eliminate the usage of such a demonym entirely: instead of saying "Lincoln was an American politician", instead saying "Lincoln was a politician from the USA". *Comrade Spookfessor ^(talk) 14:23, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

How about "Lincoln was a United States politician," or "Lincoln was a U.S. politician" ? Comrade Comwik ^(talk) 21:10, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion on linking

I was thinking if we could link a page twice if it's first mentioned in another header. We could restrict to linking only after a level 2 header or include a level 3 as well. — Comrade FelipeForte ^(talk) 10:52, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I also feel that linking in infoboxes should be allowed, regardless of the content of the article. This may be too obvious to be stated on this page.*Comrade Spookfessor ^(talk) 13:32, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Article media

(pictures in articles, as well as meta templates)

• Should always follow the reading direction. In left-to-right languages, they should always be to the right of the text (pictures should be thumbnailed). In right-to-left languages, they should always be to the left of the text. --CriticalResist (talk) 08:10, 19 November 2020 (-03)
• Pictures inserted in articles should always have a description added to them --CriticalResist (talk) 08:10, 19 November 2020 (-03)

Country names

• The United States should always be called U.S.A., U.S. (with the periods), United States or United States of America. It should never be referred to as America as this can be confusing. --— Comrade CriticalResist ^(talk) 16:29, 23 November 2020 (-03)
• When talking about historic countries (that don't exist any more), it's probably better to use their formal name so as to avoid confusion. France for example went through regimes in history, despite all of them calling themselves France, and the country still calling itself France today. In this case it can be confusing in some contexts to know if we're talking about, say, the French Empire, the Kingdom of France, or the French Republic (and the one of 1791 or the one of 2020). Thoughts? --— Comrade CriticalResist ^(talk) 16:29, 23 November 2020 (-03)
• The U.S.S.R. should always be referred to as such (with the periods), and care should be taken when referring to individual states in the Union. The USSR was not limited to Russia, and calling it Soviet Russia is a misnomer. I suppose it can be called the Soviet Union instead of the USSR too.--— Comrade CriticalResist ^(talk) 16:29, 23 November 2020 (-03)

Roman numerals

• Just starting the discussion on this one, but should we use Roman numerals at all? For example regarding World War I (World War 1)? As much as I like writing, in regards to this wiki they are an unnecessary bourgeois rule. So likewise, a royal name like "Philip II of Spain" would be "Philipp the 2nd". When talking about a specific chapter in a book, Arabic numbers should be preferred as well: "Chapter 2" instead of "Chapter II" (sometimes authors use Roman numerals to number their chapters). Some languages, such as French, write down centuries with Roman numerals, e.g. 19th century is written as "XIXth century". In those languages, Arabic numerals should be preferred too. --— Comrade CriticalResist ^(talk) 16:38, 23 November 2020 (-03)

Translations

I noticed that there are a few articles that are extrapolated from old dictionaries, when that is the case, i propose the following:

A disclaimer on the top of the page, that goes as follows:

This article is a translation from an original work, for more details, check the citations.

And that details about the translation go down to the references section, e.g what i did in the George Washington article.

Page title convention?

Wikipedia follows a convention of common names before official name. This is why they renamed "Communist Party of China" to "Chinese Communist Party". What convention do we follow with regards to this? I'm guessing prolewiki prioritizes official names over common ones because China was moved to People's Republic of China. However, NATO seems to be the odd one then because as per the official name should be North Atlantic Treaty Organization (page doesn't exist but i'll make it as a redirect to NATO for now). IMO, the official wiki policy on this convention should be highlighted on the editorial convention page to avoid inconsistencies in the future. Good day,  ☭ Field Marshal ☭  05:17, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

The phrase "Chinese Communist Party" isn't more common, its just wrong. All Chinese people (1.4 billion of them) use CPC. Regardless, I do prefer the official name in nearly every case. North Atlantic Treaty Organization should be the original page and NATO should link to it. -Comrade Spookfessor ^(talk) 06:38, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Following discord discussion, we've decided it to be best to use the shorthand version wherever possible, for the sake of saving space and avoiding long titles, as well as making our wiki approachable and familiar to readers (for example, using "Vladimir Lenin" instead of "Vladimir Ulyanov", as readers will likely be more familiar with the former. --Comrade Jucheguevara ^(talk) 21:35, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with shorthand as well as full name, but even if readers are not familiar with a particular name, a redirect from "Vladimir Lenin" to "Vladimir Ulyanov" already serves to familiarize the reader with a particular name. EcuRed, the Cuban encyclopedia, uses full name and shorthand in title, for instance. So to state my opinion in this, for names of people, I agree with shorthand and known name, but for organizations and countries, I prefer the full name as well. Might as well be something we have different from Wikipedia hehe — Comrade FelipeForte ^(talk) 22:23, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Archive

Promote discussions here about editorial styles --FelipeForte (talk) 23:39, 17 November 2020 (-03)

I'm going to be adding my suggestions to the talk page and I guess we use the actual page for the things we agree on? In any case I added several suggestions with this edit, hopefully categorized in the new chapters below. Remember that whatever we decide, the important thing is to be consistent across the whole wiki. --CriticalResist (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2020 (-03)

Article title

• Only the first letter should be capitalized, as well as proper nouns (city names, people's names, etc).--CriticalResist (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2020 (-03)

The title should always be the official name: Hellenic Republic instead of Greece, North Atlantic Treaty Organization instead of NATO. For a person's name we should use the official name, but not necessarily the name on the birth certificate. We should not dead-name trans people, but we shouldn't use nicknames in the title of articles about people. *Comrade Spookfessor ^(talk) 11:23, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Article body

• When writing the page title in the body the first time, it should be bolded if that name is in the introductory paragraph (before any headings).--CriticalResist (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2020 (-03)
• When writing down the title of a creative work (see External works below) it should be put in italics.--CriticalResist (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2020 (-03)
• When directly quoting someone or something, the quote should use the quote template (see imperialism and the Engels quote) if the quote goes on several lines, or simply in "quotation marks" if the quote is shorter.--CriticalResist (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2020 (-03)

• Unless the quote is too big, blockquotes should be used instead (like used in this answer or by the use of <blockquote></blockquote>). Refer to, for instance, this edited book chapter, where the smaller quotes are put in blockquotes. --FelipeForte (talk) 09:27, 19 November 2020 (-03)

• Abbreviations should be written fully when they first appear in an article, and then can be abbreviated in () right after. Later in the article it's possible to use the abbreviation without reminding readers of the full term. So for example "The Organisation of American States (OAS)" or "The Organisation of American States, or OAS". Then later you can just write "OAS" when referring to this org. --— Comrade CriticalResist ^(talk) 16:29, 23 November 2020 (-03)

External works

(such as movies, interviews, books, novels, etc)

• We should, if known, include the date the work was first published in parentheses. For example: The Wretched of the Earth (1961). --CriticalResist (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2020 (-03)
• We should also respect the naming convention as published. Again taking this book as example, it's either published under The Wretched of the Earth (not the capitalisations) or Wretched of the Earth, so both would be acceptable. --CriticalResist (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2020 (-03)

The Wretched of the Earth or The wretched of the Earth? Considering we're editors, we're free to not follow the editorial rules of the market, so I kinda tend to prefer lowercasing it as much as possible. I consider The wretched of the Earth the better option when citing this work. --FelipeForte (talk) 09:36, 19 November 2020 (-03)

Adding pronouns to the pages of individuals (when public information)

Given ProleWiki supports the LGBT community, it would make sense to add pronouns to avoid misgendering. This would be a small and unintrusive way to avoid misgendering in an article it could look like this

Firstname Lastname(They/them)