Talk:2019–2020 Maltese protests

Copyright issues

I also seem to have noticed that the content of the article clearly have copyright issues just by looking at this revision. Abishe (talk) 10:19, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Attempted to improve the wording, as suggested by yourself and another editor. Zugraga ^talk 11:19, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I am glad that you have been updating the article and thanks for sorting out the issue. Thanks for creating this article as most of them do not aware about this protest in Malta. Abishe (talk) 13:02, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! Yes, it's unfortunate that these protests and the political crisis are not being covered continuously anymore. Zugraga ^talk 13:04, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

It's better to nominate in ITN section as ongoing. Abishe (talk) 16:01, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Merge

Can I ask what the notability of the individual day protests is? Could they be merged into eg: November and December protests for readability and truncation to avoid repetition? Kilbosh (talk) 09:15, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Could we maybe summarise the November and December protests, but keep the daily information in a list article? A similar approach was taken for the Hong Kong protests Zugraga ^talk 10:59, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

That sounds like a reasonable approach, and will maintain the accessibility of this, the parent article. Kilbosh (talk) 11:35, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Name change to 2019 Malta Protests

Occurred to me while commenting on a different page - would 2019 Malta protests make for a better page title? Would come into line with 2019 Hong Kong Protests, and also not just the Maltese protesting. Location, rather than adjective? Kilbosh (talk) 15:18, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

There are the 2019 Algerian protests, 2019 Iraqi protests, 2019 Egyptian protests. I don't think that the adjectives necessarily refer to citizenship of the protestors - these are protests that happen in Algeria, in Iraq, in Egypt - and the vast majority of protestors are presumably locals in each case. Either way seems OK, based on consensus among the editors per a particular article. Though I suspect that the HK name was chosen because "Hong Kongese" or "Hong Konger" seems a bit more awkward than a 1-word adjective. Boud (talk) 23:08, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Point taken - having a look through Category:2019_protests it looks like the adjective is the predominant form. Thanks for pointing out. Kilbosh (talk) 23:40, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

2019 Maltese protests neutrality

Hi, I noticed you added a disputed Neutrality banner to the 2019 Maltese protests article, without adding the reasons for doing so in the Talk page. Was wondering if you could list the points you think are affecting the article's neutrality, so we can improve. Also, have a look at the 2019 Malta political crisis article, which is, in my opinion, very problematic. Thanks! Zugraga ^talk 11:37, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

• @Zugraga: I did add a reason indeed. It is not the right time to edit it, as things are still evolving. I do agree with you that the other article has problems. Continentaleurope (talk) 11:42, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Oh...Well, I do not think that that is a valid reason not to have an article on the protests though. Could you add a section on what you believe are the Neutrality issues in the text in the article Talk page, as per the banner? Thanks! Zugraga ^talk 11:46, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Let the readers/writers share their view on the talk-page and then we see. The reason given is vague on purpose. For every claim once needs to state according to whom and be neutral. The article has to give the context of political background, the political splits, the groups for, the groups against, the views of experts/sociologists/political analysis, post crisis, EU values, etc. Continentaleurope (talk) 12:00, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Well, you mention "state according to whom and be neutral" - is it a case of having unsourced statements? Could you maybe add the citations needed template where this is the case? I'm not exactly sure about this being a neutrality problem, a current event problem, or something else. I mean all points of view are listed, including Muscat, Mizzi and Schembri's statements regarding the issue. Re: political background, the article links to the Political Crisis page, although that isn't much of a help given its weakness. Reactions are clearly sourced and listed, in particular EU ones, with reactions from other politicians identified by their political belonging group (EPP/Opposition, etc.). As for the views by "experts/sociologists" - I'm not exactly sure this warrants a neutrality banner. There are sourced views from constitutional experts, from the Speaker of the House, from a host of experts already there. Also, there was a current events banner to the page, but it was removed early on. (Thanks for adding it here, I cleaned the discussion from the previous discussion we were having re: Perellos) Zugraga ^talk 12:20, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Just to clarify that even though the template uses the brief expression "neutrality", the issue is neutral point of view, not neutrality. These are not the same thing. To plagiarise a recent comment I saw on WP talk pages: almost all sources say that Hitler was utterly evil, so the Wikipedia article on Hitler overall says that he was utterly evil: the article is definitely not neutral; this is because the sources overwhelmingly say that Hitler was utterly evil. We don't need to be neutral about whether or not 2+2=4 or whether division by zero is valid; the former is standard arithmetic and the latter is nonsense. But when the sources diverge, NPOV is generally needed. Boud (talk) 14:25, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Continentaleurope: Please state clearly what you think is non-WP:NPOV about 2019 Maltese protests. The tag is only meant to indicate that there is a dispute among editors of this article that is not yet resolved. I don't see any dispute between editors of this article. Complementarity between this article and 2019 Malta political crisis makes sense to me; each of the two articles should have brief summaries of the material in the other, in appropriate places. But the existence of the two articles has nothing to do with NPOV issues, it seems to me. What sentences or paragraphs in this article ignore or mis-represent the POV of reliable sources? Even better: try editing them, and it's only if there is an editorial dispute (hypothetical example: Zugraga keeps reverting your edits) that you need to bring this to the talk page as an NPOV dispute. Boud (talk) 14:43, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Boud: Just as a qualifier, I believe that I have not reverted any edits by Continentaleurope. The only reversions I carried out were edits by an IP address who kept adding political parties as lead figures of the protests. The protests are organised by NGOs, who expressly do not invite political parties to the protests, but do not stop representatives of these parties from attending their activities. I did not revert the edits when these political parties were added as "parties to the civil conflict" in the Infobox by an unregistered user. I have a lot of qualms about listing political parties in the Infobox, both for the Opposition side, as well as the Labour Party in government. (I did revert the addition of two minor/fringe far-right parties which, so far, I was unable to find any reference to in the articles relating to the protests). I also am conflicted with listing President Vella as a lead figure on the Government side, but I honestly do not know how to square that particular circle. The Infobox is, in my opinion, a bit unwieldy. Moreover, there are a lot of conflicting (I hazard to use the word "fake") news relating to injuries, specific/alleged events during the protests and the legality of specific protests. My reading of the situation is that Continentaleurope genuinely wishes the article to represent more views, or to somehow have it flagged as a 'developing story'. But I obviously may be wrong with my interpretation. Zugraga ^talk 17:37, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Zugraga: The "hypothetical case" was meant literally as a hypothetical possibility, not an actual event :) (e.g. hypothetical event: boud keeps reverting edits without justification) - I haven't analysed the details of editing, but my general impression (without having done a detailed analysis) is that there is not any NPOV dispute, and that editing has been friendly and constructive. Continentaleurope - if Zugraga has understood your intention correctly (my guess is 'yes'), then you are welcome to put some notes on this talk page of "TODO" tasks that you feel are needed to improve the NPOV of the article, for points that you don't right now have the time or know the sources for. You can also label them as an NPOV issue on the talk page. But "work is needed on improving NPOV" doesn't justify an NPOV dispute flag on the article. The list of work tasks you gave above is quite broad. If neither you nor Zugraga nor other editors have the time to respond to them right now by doing edits, that's not a reason for using the NPOV template. The more specific you make your proposed list of tasks, the more likely it is that someone will come along and work on them. Boud (talk) 20:58, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Boud: Yes, I understand. Apologies if I came on too strongly. I was just qualifying the discussion. The suggested edits by Contintentaleurope were reversed by Satellizer, as these were viewed to be Wikipedia:Tag bombing. Also, as most of the suggestions referred to adding details to the opening paragraphs, were viewed to be counterproductive. I did try to address Continentaleurope's suggestions in the references, particularly the ordering, and I placed them 'in their correct' place - if the text mentioned "political parties", I moved the references to the parties there. The same with respect to the references in other places. I remain a bit at a loss on the next steps. Maybe I should take a step back again for a couple of days. Zugraga ^talk 18:22, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Zugraga: I don't think you should feel under pressure that this article is non-NPOV. Continentaleurope is an experienced editor - I think it's up to him/her to make a clearer TODO list on this talk page for improvement, especially regarding points that could be seen as non-NPOV. This article and the crisis article make sense being complementary, and Continentaleurope's comments seem to apply more to the crisis article rather than this one - sociological/political analysis of the overall crisis probably makes more sense than just of the protests on their own, unless it's about the horizontalist, "leaderless" nature of the protests (as in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Chile, Hong Kong), which would be sociologically interesting; the sources talk about the "leaderless" nature of almost all these sustained street protests of 2019. Boud (talk) 23:28, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

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Refs to chase up

Refs :47 and Camilleri are missing (invoked but never defined) right now. Check the edit history or maybe the Crisis article for clues. Boud (talk) 00:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

*@Kilbosh: removed some of the references, while a number of sourced statements were also removed or altered. These were: Daphne Caruana Galizia's "assassination" was changed to "death". The sourced statement "The protests are unprecedented in Malta's political history since its independence." was removed. A source saying that the crisis is constitutionally unprecedented was also removed. The phrase that the spontaneous memorial keeps being cleared "even a few hours after photographs and flowers are left for Caruana Galizia's memory." was also removed. A source stating that plainclothes policemen are taking photographs of protesters was also removed. I cannot explain these removals. Zugraga ^talk 20:05, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kilbosh: In this version 935736607 at 11:41, 14 January 2020‎ by Dimadick, I could only say see one place where a claim had more than three references - [155][166][164][165]. I reverted your series of edits because it would have been too much work to sort out which edit did what: the result (see above) left the article with undefined references and the disappearance of sourced statements, which would have been difficult to trace to individual edits. While WP:OVERCITE has a good point to make, there is nothing wrong with having three references to justify a claim. No news sources are 100% reliable. It's not difficult for a reader to check three sources if s/he is worried. I haven't checked the particular case that has four sources; whether or not four sources are appropriate there depends on the particular fact being claimed and the way that information is presented/claimed in those sources. Boud (talk) 21:35, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Boud: Have been clearing up the article from duplicated references, as per WP:overcite - there are a number of statements that are references by two or more newspaper articles (albeit different publishers) with the same story, leading to article clutter. I have gone through these carefully and left multiple references where for example different parties or complainants are mentioned. A number of invoked names of references were broken, but to my knowledge these had been fixed. Nonetheless, the article has been reverted - I will review as necessary. Thanks for highlighting the broken links.Kilbosh ^talk 21:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

The same story from different newspapers (assuming these are not just copy/pastes from a single press release or AFP/AP/Reuters original source, which happens with some newspapers) increases (modestly) the probability that the information is true. A list of three sources is not clutter - the reader is not forced to check all three sources. Verifiability is a key element of Wikipedia. Six sources for an uncontroversial claim is clearly excessive. In general, three sources may not be needed, but if they are reasonably independent from one another, then OVERCITE does not say that having three sources is unacceptable. I would suggest that you separate out your corrections into different classes of edits so that others can agree or disagree with the edits separately.

About the two missing refs: I saw just now that the two missing references were from an older (late December) 'overcite' edit, not the recent one. Boud (talk) 21:59, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

You make a valid point on segregating different classes of edits, and that will be borne in mind. Nonetheless I stand by my view that there is excessive duplication of references throughout the article. Overcite guidelines talk about selection of references to avoid needless repetition, and I put forward that there is clutter, especially where sentences are sectioned by references when a single, well chosen reference would account for the entire statement. I thank you once again for reminding me about etiquette for editing and will take this on board. Kilbosh ^talk 22:15, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Doing this in one section at a time will generally also make it easier for others to analyse and debate the validity of specific de-overcitation edits. Keep in mind that different readers will have different viewpoints on the reliability of sources - I think it's quite rare to find a single source that all readers will acknowledge as reliable. I also find that for these types of articles, it's not that common that a single source gives the full picture. Anyway, thanks for the constructive discussion. :) Boud (talk) 23:05, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

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Wikipedia, fix your machinery (programming)

As of the date and time I'm typing this. In the second paragraph there is a reference to Joseph Muscat that reads just "Muscat". In the THIRD paragraph, there is a reference to THE SAME PERSON as "Prime Minister Joseph Muscat". I'm one of those gadflies hated at Wikipedia because I'll read the 2nd paragraph of an article before I read the 3rd one, and then fail to realize that it's MY fault that I think that's a normal way to read. When I got to what "Muscat" was doing, I thought Muscat had become independent from Oman again. THIS CAN BE AVOIDED and it is NOT DIFFICULT. At the beginning of an article there should be code (I don't know how to do it in HTML but I can do it in MS-Word) setting something (call it "tiger") to 0. Every reference to Muscat should be IDENTICAL: an expression amounts to 'if' "tiger"=0,"Prime Minister Joseph Muscat", else "Muscat" (even better if the true-condition is followed by '(hereinafter, "Muscat")') followed by a ratchet that adds "1" to the value of "tiger". When you set it up CORRECTLY, you can move text all around hither and yon and it will always be true that the first and only the first reference to Joe Muscat will display as "Prime Minister Joseph Muscat" and every later instance of the SAME CODE will display as "Muscat". I find that to be a very SIMPLE thing to do, and a simple standard for me to expect before I'm asked to donate money.2600:1700:6759:B000:1C64:8308:33BC:E2D6 (talk) 04:51, 12 December 2023 (UTC)Christopher Lawrence Simpson