This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
Noting: I added the POV template only because the main (and at the time of adding only) contributor has recently been involved in numerous political articles and political AfDs. I have also been involved in political articles, so I do not feel I am able to fully say it was wrote in a neutral POV. I would like for an editor, who hopefully hasn't wrote/participated in political articles recently, to go over the article and double check everything is in a neutral POV. If it is, please remove the template.
Elijahandskip (
talk)
18:28, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Elijahandskip: How does the fact that I have recently been involved in numerous political articles and political AfDs give rise to a POV concern? Have you spent time reading this article to identify specific concerns before instantly tagging it with a presumption of POV?
soibangla (
talk)
18:40, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
::As I stated, I do not feel like I could say it fully NPOV, so all I tagged it for was to have an editor that hasn't been doing political articles ensure it is neutral. Also, the comment I mentioned from the most recent AfD on your talk page is one reason I am wanting someone who doesn't edit political articles make sure it is NPOV.
Elijahandskip (
talk)
18:45, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
I removed the tag because you've said it was added to grossly talk-about-the-other-editor, not because you want to talk about improving the article for any alleged neutrality problems. If someone decides there is content at issue, sure they can put it back up with a link to a discussion thread that obeys our
WP:P&G plus the Arbs ruling on US politics.
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
18:48, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Interesting how an editor who gave a barnstar to the sole contributor came in for the defense. Well, hopefully, it is NPOV because I don't want to read stuff about everyone's favorite conspiracy theory target.
Elijahandskip (
talk)
18:50, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Noting: I struck all previous comments, aka
recanting them, as I do not fell like having NPOV discussions about political articles. I'm going back to other topics.
Elijahandskip (
talk)
18:57, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Archive set up
I set up an archive for this page, just to move the first thread out of the way. If either of you want to undo archiving of the thread, I have no objection and will perform the task on request. But I thought it would best help get back on track to do it this way. YMMV.
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
19:29, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Did you know nomination
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as
this nomination's talk page,
the article's talk page or
Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
* ALT1 has a better wikilink target; however, there is some preliminary discussion about the article title. I don't know the procedures for DYK nominations (especially if there are deadlines), but ideally the title discussion will wrap up expeditiously, one way or the other, before a DYK goes active.
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
09:54, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
Antony-22, ALT1 is interesting but is too long. Hooks need to be 200 characters at most, yours is 219. The main hook, or the shortened ALT1, may be considered for review.
Szmenderowiecki (
talk)
02:49, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
That one is even worse, because my character counter shows 230 characters (ALT2a/b have 195 characters, though they may benefit from making the hook shorter). Also, please resolve the alternate/fake elector issue before proceding further.
Szmenderowiecki (
talk)
12:31, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Oops, thanks for catching that. I didn't realize my version of Word counts characters with... and without spaces. I used the without number.
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
12:02, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
ALT4: ... that Trump's fake electors plot saw his personal attorneys
John Eastman and
Rudy Giuliani speak to some 300 Republican state legislators in an effort to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election?
I want to point out that calling it "Trump's plot", which is different than the actual article title, is potentially a
WP:BLPCRIME issue. It's a fact that the fake electors were voting for Trump, but due to the strictness of BLPCRIME there needs to be at least an indictment and preferably a conviction to give someone "ownership" of a conspiracy. ALT2b does not have these issues. I'll leave it up to the promoter to decide.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
02:47, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
This thread is intended as preliminary discussion not a proposal to rename. A lot of RSs say "fake electors". The Jan 6 committee's
7-part plan uses the phrase fake alternate electors with alternate in scarequotes. I'm concerned that "alternate electors" (without the scarequotes) is too imprecise and unintentionally feeds oxygen to the forces that tried to pull this off. Same with "controversy". What about
Trump allies' attempt to use fake electors? ....
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
03:29, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
I was thinking about starting this article myself, and was going to use the title
Falsified electoral slates in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. "Fake electors" strikes me as being informal and possibly imprecise: the electors were real people; the documents were what were falsified. I agree that reliable sources support using "falsified" or a similar word instead of "alternate" because the people producing the documents were objectively not electors according to the law; if they had been approved by a governor or state legislature then a case could be made that "alternate" would have been more neutral, but that's not the case here.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
04:16, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I wrestled with the title quite a bit. What I came down with is that subsequent events would likely lead us to "fraudulent electors controversy" and thence to "fraudulent electors scandal," but for the time being to hedge on that. But with Trump being specifically named as a subject of the DOJ investigation yesterday, we may have crossed the threshold to go that way.
soibangla (
talk)
10:14, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
"Controversy" unintentionally injects a
WP:FALSEBALANCE as though there was a wisp of skunk odor from a million miles away that it might have been a legitimate gambit. Most RSs I have seen use "scheme". While not definitive, someone could do a google hits count as I did below for "(adjective) electors".
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
11:37, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
FYI per
WP:COMMONNAME I did a quick GoogleNews search on eight possible phrases. Maybe these weren't the phrases that matter most, so by all means add some more if you like. Short story........ "Fake electors" returned more than 3x the combined number of hits for every other phrase I searched. Overall hits from my searches (rounded to nearest thousand) are....
"(adjective) electors"
"fake electors" = 96,000
"alternate electors" = 6,000
"false electors"=6,000
"falsified electors"= 3,000
"(adjective) slate"
"fake slate"=1,000
"alternate slate"=6,000
"false slate"=zero (246 rounded down)
"falsified slate"= 5,000
And it bears repeating that the Jan 6 committee uses
Although I like it, note that the Jan 6 committee in their 7partplan describes this component as something done by Trumps allies rather than Trump himself.
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
23:39, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
We can get around a lot of these issues by excluding words like controversy or scandal, and identifying it by the year rather than having to decide whether Trump or his allies were mainly responsible, something that is under investigation and not even clearly known at this time. The main question now is, should we use "fake electors" (more common) or "falsified electoral slates" (more precise and formal)?
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
00:02, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
The fake electors were created to aid Trump, and their fraudulent electoral votes had his name on them as they were for him, hence they can rightly be described as his fake electors. We have several possible elements we could include in a title:
Who were they for? Trump. The beneficiary should be named.
A lot of these suggestions are unwieldy and not consistent with how articles are typically named on Wikipedia. It seems that the "fake electors" terminology is preferred by most commenters here, and given that there are a lot of existing Wikipedia articles that use the similar term
Fake news, I'm going to prefer
Fake electors in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. I'll likely set up an RM soon.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
05:46, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
I don't see a need for something so wordy. The
naming conventions prefer concision when there is no loss of fidelity.
Trump fake electors scheme, per
the NYT (or "plan" if there is any doubt of neutrality) meets the naming criteria. "Scheme" should be sufficient based on how we currently use it in the opening sentence, i.e., instead of saying the controversy is a scheme, just say the subject itself is a scheme. As for the current name, "alternate" is a euphemism that
reliable sources do not use nearly as often and the subject of the article is the scheme/plan itself, not the ensuing controversy or the scandal. We also have
many reasons to avoid using "controversy" in titles. czar06:38, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Czar, I agree that concision is a good thing to remember. I'd also like to address the legitimate concerns of
Antony-22. How about
Fake Trump electors scheme? Moving "Trump" ensures there is no ambiguity about "who" is "responsible" for the scheme. It makes no difference whether Trump or some underlings were the architects of the scheme. The use of fake Trump electors is the scheme. It's a very concise title that still includes Trump. He must be mentioned as this is a totally unique and new situation, all for him. Nothing done by his underlings is done without his approval or knowledge. The year is unnecessary as this is the only time this has ever happened, and the first sentence provides that information.
(
edit conflict) Wikipedia's guidelines are strict about reflecting
reliable sources, especially since this topic involves accusations of criminal activity (like fraud) by
living persons. At this time, there not yet been indictments. Also, the investigations are ongoing and there actually is ambiguity about the responsibility and criminal liability of various persons. The fact that there are no Biden fake electors itself means that
disambiguation is not needed.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
16:31, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
This subject is far and away more associated with "Trump" than with "2020 U.S. presidential election" in
reliable sources. It's also
far more often described as "fake electors" than even "false electors". We could quibble about the word order but the most obvious name still appears to be
Trump fake electors scheme, with "Trump" as the
natural disambiguation from any general "fake electors scheme" (i.e., it is not known as "the fake electors scheme"). Also what part of that title accuses criminal activity? The source material clearly discusses Trump allies as the source of a scheme about "fake electors". It's association between two known entities, not presumption of wrongdoing. czar00:17, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
Antony-22, I see your point, so let's wait with the "fraudulent" until there are convictions or until it is the word of choice by RS (we follow RS regardless of BLP, which only forbids "unsourced" negative content). So far "fake" seems the most common description. So now we're back to these two:
I do not see "Trump" as a disambiguator, but as an accurate description. They were literally only used for Trump. The Trump electors were fake, hence fake Trump electors scheme. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
15:16, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
We could also use "plot", rather than "scheme", as it's the more commonly used word:
These sorts of words all have nuanced connotations that make them inadvisable for article titles. They also lead to a lot of wasted effort in discussing them: recall how long it took to decide whether Jan. 6 was an attack, storming, insurrection, or riot. My preference is to avoid these words completely and focus on "fake electors" as the core noun phrase. If we are to use such phrases, there would need to be a strong
WP:COMMONNAME argument, but I doubt that any such phrase is dominant enough that it could be considered part of the name itself rather than as a descriptor.
??? I just provided abundant evidence of usage above: Trump "fake electors scheme" (54,800 results) and Trump "fake electors plot" (79,400 results). That's impressive enough for us to follow per common name, especially the last search phrase justifies a title of
Trump fake electors plot. We follow what RS say, no matter what
other things exist here. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
20:31, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
No, 79k vs. 55k is not that big of a difference, especially since those are not the only terms in use. A slim plurality doesn't mean it's the common name, it means that there is no common name. Also, people (even experienced editors) often forget that
WP:COMMONNAME is just one of several title
WP:CRITERIA: consistency is explicitly one of these criteria, that "the title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles", so it can't be dismissed as an
WP:OTHERSTUFF argument.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
22:01, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
I agree that it's not enough of a difference to be the sole determinative factor. We're just discussing switching two words in the current title, and there are compelling reasons why the two words HAVE to go:
"Alternate" has to go because it is the misleading word chosen by the perpetrators. It's literal propaganda.
"Controversy" has to go as there is no controversy in RS. All RS agree these electors were fake and part of a fraudulent election scheme/plot to steal the election.
Current: Trump alternate electors controversy
Proposed: Trump fake electors plot/scheme
"Fake" and "plot" or "scheme" enjoy massive usage in RS.
I agree that
Trump fake electors plot is better than the current title. I don't object to making that move now. I'm not convinced it's the best title or that it's really in line with policy, and there could still potentially be an RfC or RM in the future. I think we've both made our points, and I'd like to hear from others so that we don't monopolize the discussion.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
05:37, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
Also, going back to the Google News search: "fake electors" has 105k hits, "fake electors plot" has 25k, "fake electors dispute" has 16k, "fake electors scheme" has 7k, and other terms like conspiracy, fraud, and controversy have fewer than 200 each. Clearly, "fake electors" alone is much more common than any alternative.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
06:47, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
I agree that it's an improvement.
FormalDude, is there any particular reason you lean more toward "scheme" than the more commonly used "plot"?
Trump "fake electors scheme" (54,800 results) vs
Trump "fake electors plot" (79,400 results). Plot implies secrecy more than scheme, and there is clear evidence that many of the involved tried to keep it secret and used misleading words to describe what they were doing. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
16:04, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
I think either version would be an improvement. I think our discussion in this thread has been good enough that we can now proceed to an RfC. I'll start one below. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
15:43, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
"Fake electors" appears to be the
WP:COMMONNAME, and is more recognizable than a more formal term like "falsified electoral slates". Many existing article titles already use the similar term
Fake news.
Some may consider "alternative electors" to be more neutral. The terms "fake" or "falsified" are justifiable because reliable sources support that the people producing the electoral documents were objectively not electors according to the law, as none were approved by a governor, state legislature, or Congress.
This title avoids the need to sort out whether terms like "controversy", "scandal", or "fraud" are appropriate, and whether Donald Trump himself or Trump's allies were responsible for the scheme. Other title proposals using these terms may have
WP:BLPCRIME issues, especially since there have been no criminal indictments as of yet.
I oppose: 1) fake is too casual; 2) doesn't specify Trump; 3) doesn't note it is a controversy, scheme, plot or something.
soibangla (
talk)
17:15, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
@
Valjean: The discussion isn't going towards any kind of consensus; people keep suggesting different titles that aren't in conformity with policy. It's also out of order to unilaterally withdraw someone else's RM. At this point, if you've settled on a different proposal, you should propose it here and make your case.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
18:06, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
The following is a closed discussion of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a
move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Trump alternate electors controversy → ? – A good discussion about a better title exists above, and we seem to have boiled it down to two options that are widely used, with "plot" being used 45% more than "scheme". While search results are an important consideration, other factors may be seen as more important, so please provide reasons for your choice:
Plot. I feel both portray essentially the same meaning, and therefore it seems logical to choose the one that more people will be searching for, which appears to be "plot". ––
FormalDudetalk22:48, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
Scheme I agree that both present essentially the same meaning, but I would encourage looking through the results to see at what page you stop getting consistent RS's. Excluding what it felt are duplicates, Google found 101 results for "scheme" and 69 for "plot". Including duplicates, I found that scheme resulted in significantly more pages of RS results. BrigadierG (
talk)
00:24, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
"Fake electors" alone appears to be the
WP:COMMONNAME. In a Google News search, "fake electors" has 105k hits, "fake electors plot" has 25k, "fake electors dispute" has 16k, "fake electors scheme" has 7k, and other terms like conspiracy, fraud, and controversy have fewer than 200 each. Clearly, "fake electors" alone is much more common than any alternative.
There is no grammatical or disambiguation reason for adding a descriptive term such as "plot" or "scheme".
While the proposed terms are not as bad as some others, they are in a grey area for
WP:BLPCRIME issues, especially since there have been no criminal indictments as of yet, let alone convictions. The lead of the
Conspiracy article describes "plot" as a synonym for "conspiracy", which is a crime, and existing article titles using the term "plot" all seem to be assassination attempts and occasionally kidnapping attempts:
Gunpowder Plot,
20 July plot,
Throckmorton Plot,
Popish Plot,
Babington Plot,
Main Plot,
Bojinka plot,
Doctors' plot,
Lithgow Plot. Additionally, there has been some discussion above about whether Donald Trump himself or Trump's allies were responsible for the scheme, something which has not yet been tested in a court of law.
Antony-22, you're repeating what you already wrote above and it got no traction, so it's a waste of time here. Your method of searching is totally flawed. To illustrate, you're essentially saying the title of the
Ford Mustang article should be
Ford because "Ford" is more frequently found in searches than
Ford Mustang.
Concision is preferable. This is all about Trump, and only Trump, so use his name. The nitty-gritty of who, among those who were doing all of this for him and with his knowledge and consent, came up with and developed the plan, is explained. The reason plot and scheme are good terms is because this was a secret operation.
RS, not BLP crime, rule here. We describe and use the terminology used by RS. Note that we are not suggesting adding the word "treasonous" to the title as that is used by few RS.
Your suggested title hasn't gotten any traction either, whereas the suggested titles in this RfC have support. As mentioned above, the exact number of Google hits is not the only factor, so it comes down to personal preference. Which is the better title than the one we have? "Alternate" has to go as it is a deliberately misleading propaganda term used by the plotters. "Controversy" has to go as well, because there is no controversy in RS. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
14:37, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
Participants routinely propose alternatives in RfCs. The entire purpose of an RfC is to equalize the discussion by giving everyone a place to state their arguments succinctly, whereas unstructured conversations tend to favor people who post more rather than lead to a decision on the merits. I've made my proposal so I'm happy to let the !votes come in.
To respond to your points: I'm suggesting that the title should be something akin to
Ford Mustang and not
Ford Mustang car or
Ford Mustang automobile.
WP:BLPCRIME, like the rest of
WP:BLP, applies to all statements about living persons in any article, and it is possibly the most taken seriously policy on Wikipedia. No RS supports that anyone has been convicted or even indicted for a crime at this time. My proposal didn't get much less traction than yours; only two agreed with either of your proposals in the above discussion, and one agreed with me in the short time the RM was active.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
21:50, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
Comment: Google's initial count is generally wrong. If I scroll to the last page of results on Google News, I get around
~175 articles for "fake electors plan",
~224 articles for "fake electors plot", and
~218 articles for "fake electors scheme". You may get different numbers if you click those links. There's no point arguing for a title based on which of those numbers are bigger, as these numbers are similar, all generally wrong, and there's 20 different ways you can try and generate them. The only thing you can gather from this is that those three phrases are used a similar amount in sources, so your argument should be based on something else, I think.
Endwise (
talk)
06:50, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
@
Endwise: the last page trick on Google hits is just never worth doing. Google arbitrarily returns about 200 or so hits for almost any subject, and there doesn't appear to be any reason for the exact number. For example, heading to the last page of a "Donald Trump" search gets me 206 results. The hits reported on page 1 are certainly not exact, but it's at least somewhat useful.
Firefangledfeathers (
talk /
contribs)
16:09, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
Plot and scheme don't feel like the right tone to me. They are a bit passionate and arguably not NPOV. How about Trump fake electors plan, Trump fake electors controversy, or similar. –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
06:32, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
Novem Linguae, "controversy" is part of the current title and has to go because there is no controversy in RS. "Plan" is meaningless. What kind of plan? Plot and Scheme are much more accurate descriptions of the type of plan and are used by RS, so to use them is to preserve NPOV by not letting our own editorial bias neuter what RS say. Quote sources accurately. Editorial bias violates NPOV, so don't let it affect editing. It is not words and sources that must be "neutral". It is editors who have to be neutral when they edit by not getting in the way of the sources. Neutering the language of RS violates NPOV. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
06:54, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
There is plenty of RS that uses "fake electors plan". Talking down to me about being true to sources isn't needed here since many sources exist with this wording.
[1][2] This issue is not as black and white as your tone indicates, with plan, plot, and scheme all having between 50,000–100,000 results on google. –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
07:35, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
Here's why I don't like "plan":
Plan: a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something.
Scheme: a plan or program of action, especially a crafty or secret one.
Plot: a plan made in secret by a group of people to do something illegal or harmful.
So which one describes what happened best? "Plan" is true, but it's vague and doesn't begin to convey the true nature of what happened. It was a "secret plan" although not fully carefully hidden. Afterward, much more about the planning has come to light, including instructions to keep it secret and use misleading terminology like "alternate". "Scheme" can imply some secrecy, and "plot" really does. That's why I favor precision, just like all the articles we call "conspiracy theories", not just "theory". "Theory" would be true and get a lot of Google hits, but it's so vague as to be worthless. That's why I don't like "plan". It's so vague as to be worthless. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
14:57, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
I support a move to either "scheme" or "plot". Both are an improvement in terms of recognizability and naturalness. I have a very slight preference for "plot" as it shows up more in a Google News search and because "scheme" has some connotative differences in British vs. American English.
Firefangledfeathers (
talk /
contribs)
15:07, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
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.
This page is an
archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the
current talk page.
Noting: I added the POV template only because the main (and at the time of adding only) contributor has recently been involved in numerous political articles and political AfDs. I have also been involved in political articles, so I do not feel I am able to fully say it was wrote in a neutral POV. I would like for an editor, who hopefully hasn't wrote/participated in political articles recently, to go over the article and double check everything is in a neutral POV. If it is, please remove the template.
Elijahandskip (
talk)
18:28, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Elijahandskip: How does the fact that I have recently been involved in numerous political articles and political AfDs give rise to a POV concern? Have you spent time reading this article to identify specific concerns before instantly tagging it with a presumption of POV?
soibangla (
talk)
18:40, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
::As I stated, I do not feel like I could say it fully NPOV, so all I tagged it for was to have an editor that hasn't been doing political articles ensure it is neutral. Also, the comment I mentioned from the most recent AfD on your talk page is one reason I am wanting someone who doesn't edit political articles make sure it is NPOV.
Elijahandskip (
talk)
18:45, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
I removed the tag because you've said it was added to grossly talk-about-the-other-editor, not because you want to talk about improving the article for any alleged neutrality problems. If someone decides there is content at issue, sure they can put it back up with a link to a discussion thread that obeys our
WP:P&G plus the Arbs ruling on US politics.
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
18:48, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Interesting how an editor who gave a barnstar to the sole contributor came in for the defense. Well, hopefully, it is NPOV because I don't want to read stuff about everyone's favorite conspiracy theory target.
Elijahandskip (
talk)
18:50, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Noting: I struck all previous comments, aka
recanting them, as I do not fell like having NPOV discussions about political articles. I'm going back to other topics.
Elijahandskip (
talk)
18:57, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Archive set up
I set up an archive for this page, just to move the first thread out of the way. If either of you want to undo archiving of the thread, I have no objection and will perform the task on request. But I thought it would best help get back on track to do it this way. YMMV.
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
19:29, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Did you know nomination
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as
this nomination's talk page,
the article's talk page or
Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
* ALT1 has a better wikilink target; however, there is some preliminary discussion about the article title. I don't know the procedures for DYK nominations (especially if there are deadlines), but ideally the title discussion will wrap up expeditiously, one way or the other, before a DYK goes active.
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
09:54, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
Antony-22, ALT1 is interesting but is too long. Hooks need to be 200 characters at most, yours is 219. The main hook, or the shortened ALT1, may be considered for review.
Szmenderowiecki (
talk)
02:49, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
That one is even worse, because my character counter shows 230 characters (ALT2a/b have 195 characters, though they may benefit from making the hook shorter). Also, please resolve the alternate/fake elector issue before proceding further.
Szmenderowiecki (
talk)
12:31, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Oops, thanks for catching that. I didn't realize my version of Word counts characters with... and without spaces. I used the without number.
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
12:02, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
ALT4: ... that Trump's fake electors plot saw his personal attorneys
John Eastman and
Rudy Giuliani speak to some 300 Republican state legislators in an effort to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election?
I want to point out that calling it "Trump's plot", which is different than the actual article title, is potentially a
WP:BLPCRIME issue. It's a fact that the fake electors were voting for Trump, but due to the strictness of BLPCRIME there needs to be at least an indictment and preferably a conviction to give someone "ownership" of a conspiracy. ALT2b does not have these issues. I'll leave it up to the promoter to decide.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
02:47, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
This thread is intended as preliminary discussion not a proposal to rename. A lot of RSs say "fake electors". The Jan 6 committee's
7-part plan uses the phrase fake alternate electors with alternate in scarequotes. I'm concerned that "alternate electors" (without the scarequotes) is too imprecise and unintentionally feeds oxygen to the forces that tried to pull this off. Same with "controversy". What about
Trump allies' attempt to use fake electors? ....
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
03:29, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
I was thinking about starting this article myself, and was going to use the title
Falsified electoral slates in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. "Fake electors" strikes me as being informal and possibly imprecise: the electors were real people; the documents were what were falsified. I agree that reliable sources support using "falsified" or a similar word instead of "alternate" because the people producing the documents were objectively not electors according to the law; if they had been approved by a governor or state legislature then a case could be made that "alternate" would have been more neutral, but that's not the case here.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
04:16, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I wrestled with the title quite a bit. What I came down with is that subsequent events would likely lead us to "fraudulent electors controversy" and thence to "fraudulent electors scandal," but for the time being to hedge on that. But with Trump being specifically named as a subject of the DOJ investigation yesterday, we may have crossed the threshold to go that way.
soibangla (
talk)
10:14, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
"Controversy" unintentionally injects a
WP:FALSEBALANCE as though there was a wisp of skunk odor from a million miles away that it might have been a legitimate gambit. Most RSs I have seen use "scheme". While not definitive, someone could do a google hits count as I did below for "(adjective) electors".
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
11:37, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
FYI per
WP:COMMONNAME I did a quick GoogleNews search on eight possible phrases. Maybe these weren't the phrases that matter most, so by all means add some more if you like. Short story........ "Fake electors" returned more than 3x the combined number of hits for every other phrase I searched. Overall hits from my searches (rounded to nearest thousand) are....
"(adjective) electors"
"fake electors" = 96,000
"alternate electors" = 6,000
"false electors"=6,000
"falsified electors"= 3,000
"(adjective) slate"
"fake slate"=1,000
"alternate slate"=6,000
"false slate"=zero (246 rounded down)
"falsified slate"= 5,000
And it bears repeating that the Jan 6 committee uses
Although I like it, note that the Jan 6 committee in their 7partplan describes this component as something done by Trumps allies rather than Trump himself.
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
23:39, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
We can get around a lot of these issues by excluding words like controversy or scandal, and identifying it by the year rather than having to decide whether Trump or his allies were mainly responsible, something that is under investigation and not even clearly known at this time. The main question now is, should we use "fake electors" (more common) or "falsified electoral slates" (more precise and formal)?
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
00:02, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
The fake electors were created to aid Trump, and their fraudulent electoral votes had his name on them as they were for him, hence they can rightly be described as his fake electors. We have several possible elements we could include in a title:
Who were they for? Trump. The beneficiary should be named.
A lot of these suggestions are unwieldy and not consistent with how articles are typically named on Wikipedia. It seems that the "fake electors" terminology is preferred by most commenters here, and given that there are a lot of existing Wikipedia articles that use the similar term
Fake news, I'm going to prefer
Fake electors in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. I'll likely set up an RM soon.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
05:46, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
I don't see a need for something so wordy. The
naming conventions prefer concision when there is no loss of fidelity.
Trump fake electors scheme, per
the NYT (or "plan" if there is any doubt of neutrality) meets the naming criteria. "Scheme" should be sufficient based on how we currently use it in the opening sentence, i.e., instead of saying the controversy is a scheme, just say the subject itself is a scheme. As for the current name, "alternate" is a euphemism that
reliable sources do not use nearly as often and the subject of the article is the scheme/plan itself, not the ensuing controversy or the scandal. We also have
many reasons to avoid using "controversy" in titles. czar06:38, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Czar, I agree that concision is a good thing to remember. I'd also like to address the legitimate concerns of
Antony-22. How about
Fake Trump electors scheme? Moving "Trump" ensures there is no ambiguity about "who" is "responsible" for the scheme. It makes no difference whether Trump or some underlings were the architects of the scheme. The use of fake Trump electors is the scheme. It's a very concise title that still includes Trump. He must be mentioned as this is a totally unique and new situation, all for him. Nothing done by his underlings is done without his approval or knowledge. The year is unnecessary as this is the only time this has ever happened, and the first sentence provides that information.
(
edit conflict) Wikipedia's guidelines are strict about reflecting
reliable sources, especially since this topic involves accusations of criminal activity (like fraud) by
living persons. At this time, there not yet been indictments. Also, the investigations are ongoing and there actually is ambiguity about the responsibility and criminal liability of various persons. The fact that there are no Biden fake electors itself means that
disambiguation is not needed.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
16:31, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
This subject is far and away more associated with "Trump" than with "2020 U.S. presidential election" in
reliable sources. It's also
far more often described as "fake electors" than even "false electors". We could quibble about the word order but the most obvious name still appears to be
Trump fake electors scheme, with "Trump" as the
natural disambiguation from any general "fake electors scheme" (i.e., it is not known as "the fake electors scheme"). Also what part of that title accuses criminal activity? The source material clearly discusses Trump allies as the source of a scheme about "fake electors". It's association between two known entities, not presumption of wrongdoing. czar00:17, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
Antony-22, I see your point, so let's wait with the "fraudulent" until there are convictions or until it is the word of choice by RS (we follow RS regardless of BLP, which only forbids "unsourced" negative content). So far "fake" seems the most common description. So now we're back to these two:
I do not see "Trump" as a disambiguator, but as an accurate description. They were literally only used for Trump. The Trump electors were fake, hence fake Trump electors scheme. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
15:16, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
We could also use "plot", rather than "scheme", as it's the more commonly used word:
These sorts of words all have nuanced connotations that make them inadvisable for article titles. They also lead to a lot of wasted effort in discussing them: recall how long it took to decide whether Jan. 6 was an attack, storming, insurrection, or riot. My preference is to avoid these words completely and focus on "fake electors" as the core noun phrase. If we are to use such phrases, there would need to be a strong
WP:COMMONNAME argument, but I doubt that any such phrase is dominant enough that it could be considered part of the name itself rather than as a descriptor.
??? I just provided abundant evidence of usage above: Trump "fake electors scheme" (54,800 results) and Trump "fake electors plot" (79,400 results). That's impressive enough for us to follow per common name, especially the last search phrase justifies a title of
Trump fake electors plot. We follow what RS say, no matter what
other things exist here. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
20:31, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
No, 79k vs. 55k is not that big of a difference, especially since those are not the only terms in use. A slim plurality doesn't mean it's the common name, it means that there is no common name. Also, people (even experienced editors) often forget that
WP:COMMONNAME is just one of several title
WP:CRITERIA: consistency is explicitly one of these criteria, that "the title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles", so it can't be dismissed as an
WP:OTHERSTUFF argument.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
22:01, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
I agree that it's not enough of a difference to be the sole determinative factor. We're just discussing switching two words in the current title, and there are compelling reasons why the two words HAVE to go:
"Alternate" has to go because it is the misleading word chosen by the perpetrators. It's literal propaganda.
"Controversy" has to go as there is no controversy in RS. All RS agree these electors were fake and part of a fraudulent election scheme/plot to steal the election.
Current: Trump alternate electors controversy
Proposed: Trump fake electors plot/scheme
"Fake" and "plot" or "scheme" enjoy massive usage in RS.
I agree that
Trump fake electors plot is better than the current title. I don't object to making that move now. I'm not convinced it's the best title or that it's really in line with policy, and there could still potentially be an RfC or RM in the future. I think we've both made our points, and I'd like to hear from others so that we don't monopolize the discussion.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
05:37, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
Also, going back to the Google News search: "fake electors" has 105k hits, "fake electors plot" has 25k, "fake electors dispute" has 16k, "fake electors scheme" has 7k, and other terms like conspiracy, fraud, and controversy have fewer than 200 each. Clearly, "fake electors" alone is much more common than any alternative.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
06:47, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
I agree that it's an improvement.
FormalDude, is there any particular reason you lean more toward "scheme" than the more commonly used "plot"?
Trump "fake electors scheme" (54,800 results) vs
Trump "fake electors plot" (79,400 results). Plot implies secrecy more than scheme, and there is clear evidence that many of the involved tried to keep it secret and used misleading words to describe what they were doing. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
16:04, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
I think either version would be an improvement. I think our discussion in this thread has been good enough that we can now proceed to an RfC. I'll start one below. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
15:43, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
"Fake electors" appears to be the
WP:COMMONNAME, and is more recognizable than a more formal term like "falsified electoral slates". Many existing article titles already use the similar term
Fake news.
Some may consider "alternative electors" to be more neutral. The terms "fake" or "falsified" are justifiable because reliable sources support that the people producing the electoral documents were objectively not electors according to the law, as none were approved by a governor, state legislature, or Congress.
This title avoids the need to sort out whether terms like "controversy", "scandal", or "fraud" are appropriate, and whether Donald Trump himself or Trump's allies were responsible for the scheme. Other title proposals using these terms may have
WP:BLPCRIME issues, especially since there have been no criminal indictments as of yet.
I oppose: 1) fake is too casual; 2) doesn't specify Trump; 3) doesn't note it is a controversy, scheme, plot or something.
soibangla (
talk)
17:15, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
@
Valjean: The discussion isn't going towards any kind of consensus; people keep suggesting different titles that aren't in conformity with policy. It's also out of order to unilaterally withdraw someone else's RM. At this point, if you've settled on a different proposal, you should propose it here and make your case.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
18:06, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
The following is a closed discussion of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a
move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Trump alternate electors controversy → ? – A good discussion about a better title exists above, and we seem to have boiled it down to two options that are widely used, with "plot" being used 45% more than "scheme". While search results are an important consideration, other factors may be seen as more important, so please provide reasons for your choice:
Plot. I feel both portray essentially the same meaning, and therefore it seems logical to choose the one that more people will be searching for, which appears to be "plot". ––
FormalDudetalk22:48, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
Scheme I agree that both present essentially the same meaning, but I would encourage looking through the results to see at what page you stop getting consistent RS's. Excluding what it felt are duplicates, Google found 101 results for "scheme" and 69 for "plot". Including duplicates, I found that scheme resulted in significantly more pages of RS results. BrigadierG (
talk)
00:24, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
"Fake electors" alone appears to be the
WP:COMMONNAME. In a Google News search, "fake electors" has 105k hits, "fake electors plot" has 25k, "fake electors dispute" has 16k, "fake electors scheme" has 7k, and other terms like conspiracy, fraud, and controversy have fewer than 200 each. Clearly, "fake electors" alone is much more common than any alternative.
There is no grammatical or disambiguation reason for adding a descriptive term such as "plot" or "scheme".
While the proposed terms are not as bad as some others, they are in a grey area for
WP:BLPCRIME issues, especially since there have been no criminal indictments as of yet, let alone convictions. The lead of the
Conspiracy article describes "plot" as a synonym for "conspiracy", which is a crime, and existing article titles using the term "plot" all seem to be assassination attempts and occasionally kidnapping attempts:
Gunpowder Plot,
20 July plot,
Throckmorton Plot,
Popish Plot,
Babington Plot,
Main Plot,
Bojinka plot,
Doctors' plot,
Lithgow Plot. Additionally, there has been some discussion above about whether Donald Trump himself or Trump's allies were responsible for the scheme, something which has not yet been tested in a court of law.
Antony-22, you're repeating what you already wrote above and it got no traction, so it's a waste of time here. Your method of searching is totally flawed. To illustrate, you're essentially saying the title of the
Ford Mustang article should be
Ford because "Ford" is more frequently found in searches than
Ford Mustang.
Concision is preferable. This is all about Trump, and only Trump, so use his name. The nitty-gritty of who, among those who were doing all of this for him and with his knowledge and consent, came up with and developed the plan, is explained. The reason plot and scheme are good terms is because this was a secret operation.
RS, not BLP crime, rule here. We describe and use the terminology used by RS. Note that we are not suggesting adding the word "treasonous" to the title as that is used by few RS.
Your suggested title hasn't gotten any traction either, whereas the suggested titles in this RfC have support. As mentioned above, the exact number of Google hits is not the only factor, so it comes down to personal preference. Which is the better title than the one we have? "Alternate" has to go as it is a deliberately misleading propaganda term used by the plotters. "Controversy" has to go as well, because there is no controversy in RS. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
14:37, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
Participants routinely propose alternatives in RfCs. The entire purpose of an RfC is to equalize the discussion by giving everyone a place to state their arguments succinctly, whereas unstructured conversations tend to favor people who post more rather than lead to a decision on the merits. I've made my proposal so I'm happy to let the !votes come in.
To respond to your points: I'm suggesting that the title should be something akin to
Ford Mustang and not
Ford Mustang car or
Ford Mustang automobile.
WP:BLPCRIME, like the rest of
WP:BLP, applies to all statements about living persons in any article, and it is possibly the most taken seriously policy on Wikipedia. No RS supports that anyone has been convicted or even indicted for a crime at this time. My proposal didn't get much less traction than yours; only two agreed with either of your proposals in the above discussion, and one agreed with me in the short time the RM was active.
Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs)
21:50, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
Comment: Google's initial count is generally wrong. If I scroll to the last page of results on Google News, I get around
~175 articles for "fake electors plan",
~224 articles for "fake electors plot", and
~218 articles for "fake electors scheme". You may get different numbers if you click those links. There's no point arguing for a title based on which of those numbers are bigger, as these numbers are similar, all generally wrong, and there's 20 different ways you can try and generate them. The only thing you can gather from this is that those three phrases are used a similar amount in sources, so your argument should be based on something else, I think.
Endwise (
talk)
06:50, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
@
Endwise: the last page trick on Google hits is just never worth doing. Google arbitrarily returns about 200 or so hits for almost any subject, and there doesn't appear to be any reason for the exact number. For example, heading to the last page of a "Donald Trump" search gets me 206 results. The hits reported on page 1 are certainly not exact, but it's at least somewhat useful.
Firefangledfeathers (
talk /
contribs)
16:09, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
Plot and scheme don't feel like the right tone to me. They are a bit passionate and arguably not NPOV. How about Trump fake electors plan, Trump fake electors controversy, or similar. –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
06:32, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
Novem Linguae, "controversy" is part of the current title and has to go because there is no controversy in RS. "Plan" is meaningless. What kind of plan? Plot and Scheme are much more accurate descriptions of the type of plan and are used by RS, so to use them is to preserve NPOV by not letting our own editorial bias neuter what RS say. Quote sources accurately. Editorial bias violates NPOV, so don't let it affect editing. It is not words and sources that must be "neutral". It is editors who have to be neutral when they edit by not getting in the way of the sources. Neutering the language of RS violates NPOV. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
06:54, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
There is plenty of RS that uses "fake electors plan". Talking down to me about being true to sources isn't needed here since many sources exist with this wording.
[1][2] This issue is not as black and white as your tone indicates, with plan, plot, and scheme all having between 50,000–100,000 results on google. –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
07:35, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
Here's why I don't like "plan":
Plan: a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something.
Scheme: a plan or program of action, especially a crafty or secret one.
Plot: a plan made in secret by a group of people to do something illegal or harmful.
So which one describes what happened best? "Plan" is true, but it's vague and doesn't begin to convey the true nature of what happened. It was a "secret plan" although not fully carefully hidden. Afterward, much more about the planning has come to light, including instructions to keep it secret and use misleading terminology like "alternate". "Scheme" can imply some secrecy, and "plot" really does. That's why I favor precision, just like all the articles we call "conspiracy theories", not just "theory". "Theory" would be true and get a lot of Google hits, but it's so vague as to be worthless. That's why I don't like "plan". It's so vague as to be worthless. --
Valjean (
talk) (PING me)
14:57, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
I support a move to either "scheme" or "plot". Both are an improvement in terms of recognizability and naturalness. I have a very slight preference for "plot" as it shows up more in a Google News search and because "scheme" has some connotative differences in British vs. American English.
Firefangledfeathers (
talk /
contribs)
15:07, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
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