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Lead is now false

This recent edit changed the lead to say that Trump is the fifth president elected with less than a majority of the popular vote. That is false, as the number is actually much higher (the correct number is at least 19). This change is also contrary to a recent RFC that concluded: "No consensus for a change. In about a proportion of 3 to 2, editors prefer the current text per option 1 ('elected with less than a plurality') to any of the other options that involve some variant of 'lost'." Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:14, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Did this fix the problem? ~Awilley (talk) 05:17, 3 May 2017 (UTC) Actually, after skimming the RfC you linked, I simplified it further to avoid the word "lost" that so many objected to, and to put it in plain English that nobody can misunderstand. ~Awilley (talk) 05:28, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
It says now that he's "the fifth to have won a presidential election while receiving fewer votes than his opponent." He received less of the national popular vote, but received more electoral votes, and the latter are the votes that count. The current version is talking about the national popular vote but doesn't say so, and therefore is confusing. I would suggest going back to the RFC version or clarifying what votes we're talking about. The RFC version also had the advantage of indicating that the opponent won a plurality rather than a majority. Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:31, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I don't think anybody is going to read "votes" and interpret it as "electoral votes". But if you insist, "...while receiving a smaller share of the popular vote than his opponent" also avoids the "plurality" jargon. ~Awilley (talk) 05:37, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@Awilley: I believe there is a prior consensus on this sentence. SW3 5DL (talk) 05:46, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict)@SW3, I see the consensus in the RfC not to use the word "lost". But RfCs are blunt tools and should not be used to prevent incremental improvements to an article. Just because a bunch of people agree it is confusing to say Trump "lost" something doesn't mean we have to use jargon like "plurality". I think I'm fairly well-educated, but I learned what the word "plurality" meant while watching the discussion on this talk page a few months ago. People shouldn't have to follow wikilinks in order to understand what an encyclopedia is saying. That's the whole point of WP:Jargon. ~Awilley (talk) 06:09, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@Awilley: We've had problems with editors who have WP:OWN problems. That's why this isn't settled properly. There have been a few RfC's but they failed because they were undermined. I agree we should eliminate plurality. As for the claim that Trump is not the fifth to lose the popular vote, that's not true. He is. That argument was hashed out, too, and settled. So ignore that. SW3 5DL (talk) 06:17, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, it must be clear that we're talking about the popular vote. This is especially necessary for historical purposes (context gets lost with time) and for those unfamiliar with USA politics. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:58, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@BullRangifer, as of right now, the article says, "...and the fifth to have won a presidential election while receiving a smaller share of the popular vote than his opponent." Are you wanting it more clear than that? ~Awilley (talk) 06:11, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Awilley, that is better. My point was that elimination of the distinction between total votes and popular votes created a problem. It's better now. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:15, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree with SW3, when he says "there is a prior consensus". There was a pre-existing stable version, and no consensus to change it. Moreover, the word "plurality" is used in thousands of Wikipedia articles. Google News currently has tens of thousands of hits for this word. We wikilinked the word "plurality" in the lead, for anyone unfamiliar with the word. Plurality voting is typically covered in high school.[1] Clinton won a plurality, not a majority, and that is indicated by saying Trump won less than a plurality. Why omit this key fact? It's very rare for a president to be elected with less of the popular vote than an opponent who won less than a majority of that vote. As currently phrased, the lead suggests that Clinton may have won a majority, perhaps a landslide majority, which is not necessary for us to suggest. Anythingyouwant (talk) 06:01, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
There are several holes in your logic. There will always be a pre-existing stable version on Wikipedia, and consensus can always change. Every word in the English language will have many hits on Google, but that doesn't mean we should use them all in the Lead section of this article. Your Google books search of "high school plurality" demonstrates only that a math text book used plurality in a story problem. And nobody is suggesting that Clinton won a majority or a landslide majority (see straw man).

As far as I can tell, our primary disagreement here is that you think we should use the words "elected with less than a plurality" and I think we should say "received a smaller share of the popular vote". Let's see if we can't agree on this: A "smaller share of the popular vote" is "less than a plurality". And "less than a plurality" is "a smaller share of the popular vote". Can we agree that A=B and B=A? ~Awilley (talk) 06:44, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Unlike the longstanding stable version, your new version does not indicate that Clinton got less than a majority of the popular vote. If you can concisely restore that information without the word "plurality" then please do. Saying "less than a plurality" suggests that Clinton got a plurality, saying by "less than a majority" suggests that she got a majority. The latter is false. Anythingyouwant (talk) 06:48, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
This article isn't about Clinton, and there's nothing particularly noteworthy about a losing candidate receiving less than half the vote. And nobody here has suggested that we should say Trump won "less than a majority". (Straw man again.) But you haven't answered my question. ~Awilley (talk) 07:03, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
When we say candidate A got more votes than candidate B, and we don't mention any candidate C, doesn't that suggest candidate A got a majority? I think so. Democrats emphasize that Clinton got more votes. That's true so we should put that in the lead. Republicans emphasize that Clinton's popular vote lead was not so big that she won a majority. That's true too, but you want to now suddenly exclude it from the lead. All I'm saying is that I disagree. I'm not going to revert you, given my promise not to edit the article. So go ahead and do what you want. I'm just saying that it gives the lead a partisan bias. And I think you know very well that it's very noteworthy when a losing candidate who receives less than half the vote nevertheless gets more votes than the winner. Anythingyouwant (talk) 07:12, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

@Awilley: Can we agree that A=B and B=A? Yes. SW3 5DL (talk) 06:52, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree that if A=B then B=A, no argument from me about that. Trump got fewer votes than Clinton, but heaven forbid we also mention that the vote difference was not so large as to give Clinton a majority. Anythingyouwant (talk) 11:02, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree w/ Anythingyouwant. Use "less than a plurality". (It is a bad idea to leave the text the way it is now, that Trump won less popular vote than his opponent. It is a bad idea because of the social environment the USA is and has been in, where Trump haters have and do take everything that isn't nailed down specifically, as mud to throw. [Don't know what I mean? Then turn on any media. The fact Trump said "I'm not standing by anything" when specifically meaning his comments re Obama, is used by liberal press to suggest Trump has "admitted" that he doesn't stand by anything he says about anything. Hell, I even heard Whoopi repeat again this week that "He said it!" -- referring to Trump's June 2015 comment about some Mexican illegal immigrants being rapists, where Trump left out word "illegal" but clearly meant it and clarified also later. The point is, there is so much concerted intentional hatred towards Trump, if you say in WP article Trump received less than a majority of popular vote, even though true, it will be picked up and intentionally twisted by Trump haters to imply that we have a president whose opponent received a popular majority while he did not. [How many times will that argument be made? Oh, perhaps thousands of times.] WHY would you add fuel to that fire in this environment, when "less than a plurality" fixes the situation and is totally encyclopedic, not only correct, but clear w/o adding wood to this crappy social-environment fire? But neither do I believe that this article isn't dominated by those who would fan flames of said unnecessary fire, as WP is a sort of "major media" too, not without bias.) --IHTS (talk) 11:52, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
It's just not as simple as that. As I have said before, it's only Americans who use the term "plurality". In many other English-speaking nations, the term "majority" is used to refer to the winning margin of one candidate over another ("Clinton had a majority over Trump"). In still others, "majority" is used instead of "plurality" ("Clinton won a majority") - even though it is technically wrong. It's better if unambiguous, easy-to-understand terms are used - even if it means using more words than should really be necessary. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:01, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
The OED agrees. It specifically states plurality is used in this manner in “U.S. Politics”. Objective3000 (talk) 13:15, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Awilley's edits. Using "plurality" is like putting up a speed bump for the reader. The 'plurality' argument is old and we should allow new editors to come along and make these changes. The article needs to be a smooth read and right now it is not. I keep referring to Barack Obama, but if you start reading it, you'll find it's a smooth and interesting read. Right now, this article is choppy, filled with disjointed sentences, and lately, attempts to smooth things out have been getting reverted flat out. I say let the edit stand a few days. And @Scjessey:, if you'll recall we had a gathering consensus that was subverted with an RfC that came out of nowhere. Interesting how those things cropped up at just when things were getting resolved. That's happened several times now. Let Awilley's edit stand. It's time to move on. SW3 5DL (talk) 13:51, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
  • First point: the article clearly says, in an invisible comment, "DO NOT CHANGE anything in this paragraph without prior consensus, see Talk:Donald Trump#Current consensus, items 8 and 15." So why do people keep changing it?
  • Second point: what exactly IS the consensus version? Consensus #4 said "Lead phrasing of Trump "gaining a majority of the U.S. Electoral College" and "receiving a smaller share of the popular vote nationwide", without quoting numbers." That has been struck out and replaced by Consensus #15, but Consensus #15 does not quote the consensus version, thus there is no easy way to know what it's supposed to say. It links to "the pre-RfC text" which says "Trump won the general election on November 8, 2016, in a surprise victory againstDemocratic candidate Hillary Clinton. At age 70, he will become the oldest andwealthiest person to assume the presidency, the first without prior military or governmental service, and the fifth elected with less than a plurality of the national popular vote." That was presumably the consensus version up to now. Right now the article says "and the fifth to have won a presidential election while receiving a smaller share of the popular vote than his opponent." That was the version put in by Awilley, in response to somebody changing it who obviously didn't know what "plurality" means. In effect it more or less restores consensus #4. I happen to prefer Awilley's version, but what happened to process and consensus? I'd like to lock this in and once again make the invisible comment mean something, so I am proposing a yes/no vote, below, to approve or disapprove Awilley's version. --MelanieN (talk) 14:46, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
MelanieN, I appreciate your second point about process, so I should probably explain mine. My first edit last night was a hurried response to Anythingyouwant's post that there was something false in the Lead. I saw that the previous editor was confused about what "plurality" meant, so instead of reverting outright I tweaked it to say Trump won the election but lost the popular vote. After making that edit, I re-read Anything's post and followed the link to the RfC where I saw consensus against using the word "lost". So I tweaked the wording again to say Trump received fewer votes than Clinton, and then tweaked it again because of another objection by Anythingyouwant. I discussed it with him for some time, hoping we could find agreement without having to resort to another RfC or something like that, because that is, in my opinion, how Wikipedia should work. You see a problem, make a change, discuss objections, find common ground, then implement a compromise. Respecting community consensus is definitely important, but should not get in the way of tweaking a sentence to make it more clear without changing its meaning.

Regarding hidden comments, I'm not a huge fan. When an article is well-written, clearly, stating uncontroversial facts with due weight and in neutral language, readers stop feeling the need to jump in and change stuff. Unfortunately the partisan tug-of-wars in articles like this too often result in jarring sentences with competing points of view, locked in by clumsy RfCs that make hidden edit warnings necessary. ~Awilley (talk) 15:50, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Hidden comments may be against guidelines. But, when it comes to recent politics, no matter how well-written an article, there is no way to satisfy everyone and folk will always feel the need to jump in and change stuff. At least, so it appears. Objective3000 (talk) 16:13, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@Awilley: I couldn't agree with you more. @Objective3000: That's true, but it is against guidelines. SW3 5DL (talk) 18:07, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@Objective3000 and SW3 5DL: Where is there a guideline against hidden comments? --MelanieN (talk) 20:33, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
WP:HIDDEN says When it is a mere local consensus that a certain edit should not be performed, the hidden text should be worded more softly to suggest to the editor to consult the talk page (or archive page if appropriate) for the current consensus prior to making the edit. Since consensus can change, it is inappropriate to use hidden text to try to prohibit making a certain edit merely because it would conflict with an existing consensus. But, the last time I saw anyone make a complaint, an admin said this was a good example of WP:IAR. Objective3000 (talk) 20:51, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
  • A. (the version up until yesterday): ...and the fifth elected with less than a plurality of the national popular vote.
  • B. (proposed new version, currently in the article): ...and the fifth to have won a presidential election while receiving a smaller share of the popular vote than his opponent.
  • B2. (proposed new version, shorter): ...and the fifth to receive a smaller share of the popular vote than his opponent.
  • B3. (proposed new version, shorter): ...and the fifth to have won the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. Technically incorrect because of Jackson situation.
  • B4. (fixing B3): ...and the fifth to have won the election while losing the popular vote.
  • A2. (proposed new version, clearer): ...and the fifth elected with less than a plurality of the national popular vote (i.e. Clinton received more votes but not a majority).
  • B2.1 (same as B2, but doesn't imply only one opponent): ...and the fifth to receive a smaller share of the popular vote than an opponent.
  • B5 (the same as B2.1 but adds no candidate got a majority) ...and the fifth to receive a smaller share of the popular vote than an opponent, with no candidate reaching a majority nationwide.
  • C Save info about the popular vote for later in the BLP since neither candidate's goal was to win it, and unusualness does not always equate to significance.

Please choose only between these two versions. Don't propose third versions, because the proliferation of other opinions is the reason why these discussions too often end in "no consensus". Minor tweaks to the wording can be made after an overall approach is decided.

Threaded discussion related to the addition of new options along the way
Sorry, I can't fathom the lengthy wording of option B although I believe that "a smaller share" is clearer than "less than a plurality". I would say …and the fifth to receive a smaller share of the popular vote than his opponent, because we already say he won the election. Call it version B2. — JFG talk 16:25, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I am adding a version "A2" proposed below by another editor. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:28, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

C uses a false argument, as explained here. The whole object of the election is to win as many votes as possible, and that refers to the popular vote. The popular vote is the ONLY vote given by voters. The electoral vote is usually based on that. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:38, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

That diff refers to "the surprise upset victory, which happened in spite of the will of the majority". That's what readers of our present lead will think, but it's false, because no candidate obtained a majority of the popular vote. Sadly, many editors here apparently want readers to think Clinton did get a majority of the popular vote. Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:53, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
Anythingyouwant, that diff is to my words, words which I have revised, and yet you still complain. There is nothing in the lead which lends credence to your concern.
In what way does our current lead, or (also) B4, lead "readers to think Clinton did get a majority of the popular vote"? Both make it clear that she got more of the popular vote without relating it to the "majority". Let's look at them:
  1. CURRENT: "...and the fifth to have won a presidential election while receiving a smaller share of the popular vote than his opponent."
  2. B4 VERSION: "...and the fifth to have won the election while losing the popular vote."
There is nothing in either version which says or indicates anything about a "majority". They both confirm that Trump won the election, and that he got fewer popular votes than Clinton. That's a remarkable and unusual thing, only having happened five times.
The body of the article even has these words: "Clinton finished ahead by 2.86 million votes or 2.1 percentage points, 48.04% to 45.95%, with neither candidate reaching a majority nationwide." That isn't even mentioned in the lead.
Why not just drop the stick? You're kicking a dead horse. Your straw man doesn't exist. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:10, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
The lead does not allude to any candidates other than Clinton and Trump, and the lead says he got less votes than her, so any normal reader would conclude that the will of the majority preferred her over him. Which is false. Per WP:LEAD, the lead "may be the only section that they read....The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic." Anythingyouwant (talk) 06:29, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
Then all that needs to be added is that "Clinton finished ahead by 2.86 million votes or 2.1 percentage points, 48.04% to 45.95%, with neither candidate reaching a majority nationwide." We don't mention that fact in the lead, but mentioning it resolves the problem nicely. It's an extremely remarkable fact, so it's worth mentioning there. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:46, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

How about this:

  • B5 VERSION: "...and the fifth to have won the election while losing the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points, with neither candidate reaching a majority nationwide."

Would that work for you? -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

  • He's not the fifth to lose the popular vote by 2.1 percent. Try this: "...and the fifth to have won the election while getting less of the national popular vote; no candidate reached a majority of that popular vote." Anythingyouwant (talk) 06:58, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Good point. That was clumsily worded, so stricken. Here's a better variation of B4, using your ending:
B6 VERSION: "...and the fifth person to be elected president after losing the popular vote, with neither candidate reaching a majority nationwide."
That's directly from the body of the article. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:05, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
I don't see where the reader will think Clinton won a majority of the vote, especially since she's not the president. If she had won a majority, she would likely have won enough states to beat Trump. SW3 5DL (talk) 05:14, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Samuel Tilden got a majority of the popular vote in 1876 and still lost to Rutherford B. Hayes; nowadays it is possible to win the presidency with only 23% of the popular vote.[2] Anyway, my main concern with B6 is that it unnecessarily uses the word "lose" which is contrary to the close of this RFC (a point that User:JFG has emphasized). So: "...and the fifth person elected president with a smaller share of the popular vote than an opponent, and with no candidate reaching a majority nationwide." I write "no" instead of "neither" because "no" does not imply there were only two candidates (Stein and Johnson together got over 4% which is the reason why Trump and Clinton could both get less than 50%). Anythingyouwant (talk) 11:48, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

B4 is the best choice. ...and the fifth to have won the election while losing the popular vote.. SW3 5DL (talk) 13:31, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Survey

  • Version B. Clear, simple, does not require an understanding of the sophisticated and somewhat obscure term "plurality". Remember we are writing here for the world, not just for highly educated Americans. --MelanieN (talk) 14:49, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I would accept version B2 as well. --MelanieN (talk) 18:15, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I would accept B4 as well. B4 has the advantage that it matches with the wording used by most Reliable Sources. We had been avoiding any reference to "winning" or "losing" the popular vote because the popular vote is not an actual contest - but that might be considered Original Research on our part. B4 is clear and understandable and is not likely to cause as much edit warring as we have seen up to now over this sentence. This is in fact the wording we use in the article text, and to the extent that the lede is supposed to reflect the text this could be the preferred choice. --MelanieN (talk) 13:54, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Version C, Version A or something else that says neither candidate got a majority Version A2. The latter is much clearer, indicates the vote was close, and that no candidate got a majority. If I had to choose between B and B2, the latter is vastly more concise and polished, but both B and B2 imply that Trump had only one opponent, and thus that his opponent won a majority of the popular vote which is manifestly false. Regarding B4, I'm against it primarily because it contradicts a prior RFC that decided against using variants of the word "lose", but also because B4 fails to indicate that no candidate got a majority of the popular vote; that information is provided by both A and A2, thereby implicitly telling the reader that the popular vote was not a landslide and also that some other candidate(s) got a significant percentage. Version C would also be okay, since neither candidate's goal was to win the popular vote, and unusualness does not always equate to significance (Trump's hairdo is also unusual but does not belong in the lead). B5 would also be fine, whereas B2.1 would leave many readers with the misimpression that electing Clinton was the will of the majority. The latter is a very important aspect of the election, and is indicated by saying Trump got less than a plurality. By the way, Roy Goldsmith is right about wikilinking (the previous stable version included that wikilink). Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:12, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Threaded discussion
      • @Mandruss: I specifically said "If plurality is a problem..." Personally, I don't think it is. Therefore (IMHO), no wikilink. But, by the way, in the lead section space is at a premium. Links take less space than even a one-word explanation and no one has the follow the link. So (IMHO again), we ought to take LINKSTYLE with a bit of salt when applying them to the lead. And I don't understand your bullets 10 and 11; they don't seem to apply. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 18:44, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
What happened in another RfC matters not at all here. Consensus can and should change. This sentence must change. B4 is the best choice. It's plain English, doesn't need any links or parentheses to explain it, and it is supported by RS. SW3 5DL (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
@SW3 5DL: What happened in a very recent, widely-publicized RfC with broad participation DOES MATTER. I understand that you don't like the outcome, but that doesn't give you the right to hijack a separate discussion in order to push the wording that was expressly rejected barely a month ago. — JFG talk 18:23, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
@JFG: Huh? What are you talking about? Hijack what? I don't even have an option in this food fight. And as I recall, MelanieN and ScJessey and I had settled on the option that I believe you are now proposing, or close to it, when Bodhi came along and hijacked that consensus with the RfC you are referencing. And no, old RfC's do not matter. SW3 5DL (talk) 20:36, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Well, the word may be strong, but your outspoken support for B4 (including asking other editors to change their !vote) is in direct contradiction with the recent RFC, and it does change the subject of this survey which was a contest between writing "less than a plurality" or "a smaller share" of the popular vote. There is no point in re-igniting the no-consensus debate about "losing the popular vote". Again, WP:DEADHORSE. — JFG talk 20:47, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Where's a diff of me asking an editor to change their ivote? Are you talking about BullRangifer? JFG, he's the one who wrote B4. I was reminding him he needed to change his ivote from the other version he wrote and crossed out. I think you are wildly confused here. And any change in direction of this discussion was definitely not from anything I said. I think you need to read all the threads here. The direction got changed when multiple editors put up their own versions. That just happens here. Multiple people participate. Of course it will change. SW3 5DL (talk) 21:06, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
@JFG:, and one more thing, you seem to have overlooked my reply to you on May 3. here. I said I could support your choice of B2. But then BullRangifer came up with B4. It's better. SW3 5DL (talk) 21:10, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I saw your earlier support for B2, and I'm not reacting because you moved away from a version I suggested: I frankly don't care who proposed what. Unfortunately B4 directly contradicts a recently-concluded RfC and this wording is not necessary to resolve the current discussion, it just adds reams of text re-hashing prior arguments. And it should really be called C because it is not a derivative of B. Oh well… — JFG talk 21:29, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
    • No, he is not right, per MOS:LINKSTYLE, 9th, 10th, and 11th bullets. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:17, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
      • Roy Goodsmith did not say why we ought to have a wikilink. If the word plurality is fairly understandable to most readers, or even to 100% of them, there's still no prohibition on wikilinking it for further information. Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:20, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
        • Roy Goldsmith supported A (or failed to reject it, rather) wiith the rationale that it can be linked and therefore does not need to be previously understood by the average reader. That rationale is contrary to MOS:LINKSTYLE. I for one didn't know what the word meant until about a year ago, and I'm 60 years old and think I have a better than average vocabulary. If you can produce evidence that "the word plurality is fairly understandable to most readers", kindly do so. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:24, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
          • See my comment above at 06:01, 3 May 2017. In any event, I am happy to remove the word "plurality" if we would simply compensate by adding "and while neither candidate received a majority of the popular vote". Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:28, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
  • If the word is a problem, wikilinking like Roy Goldsmith suggested should still not be done according to the bullet points given by Mandruss so I don't see how Roy's counterpoint did anything but re-enforce Mandruss' point. Yes, he is also suggesting the word "plurality" may not be a problem but unless a person has a political science type background, I think the word is clearly obtuse and too jargony. (PS Somebody is rethreading the discussion... please don't do that. It made it difficult to reply here.) Jason Quinn (talk) 18:09, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Version B2 – Say "smaller share" but with shorter prose. — JFG talk 16:25, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
    @JFG: I can see B2 working. Let's see what @Awilley: thinks. It's really just a little copy edit so it's not so wordy. SW3 5DL (talk) 17:59, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Support B-whatever. The purpose of a Lead section is not to expand our readers' vocabulary by making them click on wikilinks, but to convey information using words most people already know. It shouldn't take an RfC to marginally improve a sentence without changing its meaning, and the current B version is longer than it needs to be because I was chasing the moving goal post of satisfying Anythingyouwant's many objections.

    Responding briefly to Anything's latest objection, it seems like a red herring to me. I have tried and failed to understand why it is important that we emphasize that Clinton got less than 50% of votes. This article isn't about Clinton, and it's the Lead section we're talking about. Could there conceivably be people who will read that Trump received fewer votes than Clinton and interpret it that Clinton won in a "landslide"? Of course. And most of those people will continue to believe that no matter what we write. It's not our job to write to the extreme fringes. Details on win-loss percentages and an in-line definition of "plurality" should be in the body of the article. ~Awilley (talk) 20:45, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Tangential meta discussion about editing comments after they have been replied to and a little personal back-and-forth ~Awilley (talk) 03:35, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • @Anything, your newest concern [3] that you added to your comment after it had been replied to (please stop doing that) is easily resolved by replacing the words "his opponent" with "Clinton". ~Awilley (talk) 23:11, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
My "concern" has been the same throughout: you have been implying that Clinton got a majority of the popular vote. You're right, I did add to my !vote after it had been replied to, but you quite predictably fail to acknowledge that I used underline and strikethrough as recommended, so please stop Wiki lawyering and painting me as some kind of disruptive influence, thanks. You might even want to make a peep when someone edits their comment without indicating the changes, after they've been replied to (see my protest above at this page). I will reply separately regarding your latest new proposal, which I assume is made because you acknowledge the falsity of versions B and B2. Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:26, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Regarding replacing "his opponent" with "Clinton", the falsity would remain. As I said above, "When we say candidate A got more votes than candidate B, and we don't mention any candidate C, doesn't that suggest candidate A got a majority?" Of course it does. I don't understand the problem with simply saying what happened per version "A2". Your criticism was that we shouldn't say "Clinton" because this isn't her BLP, but now you're suggesting to insert "Clinton", and even so that doesn't remove the problem. Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:46, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Anythingyouwant, on the editing comments, underlining the addition and placing it without a new time stamp in the middle of another comment that is already 75% underlined and stricken isn't very helpful. But we're way out in meta territory here. Let's get back to the central issue. Of course I acknowledge that there's a problem with implying that Trump had only one opponent. How about the following: ...and the fifth to receive a smaller share of the popular vote than an opponent. This implies (correctly) that the vote was split between more than 2 candidates, making it more likely that none of them got more than 50% which I think is your primary concern. Thoughts? I really would rather work together than fight you on this, and I apologize if my remarks about editing comments came across as overly personal. I commented because I was genuinely annoyed. ~Awilley (talk) 03:35, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
[Replying to Awilley's !vote and comment immediately preceding the "tangential meta discussion"]Please note that when User:Awilley !voted for version "B-whatever" there was no version B4 yet (i.e. B4 was added at 15:26, 4 May 2017). Moreover, B4 seems contrary to this RFC. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:48, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
People have rearranged the comments at this page so often that my reply to User:Awilley's specific "red herring" remark about me seems to have gotten lost. It is in my view important to at least briefly mention in the lead (without emphasis) that no one won a majority of the popular vote because if we merely mention that Clinton got more votes then many readers will assume that the will of the majority of voters was that she be president. That did not happen. We should follow the vast number of reliable sources that mention no one got a majority, which has the added benefit of implicitly alerting readers that the popular vote margin in the election was not a landslide, and that other candidates got significant percentages. Call this a red herring if you wish, and dismiss it as my "latest objection", but it's a very prominent fact in reliable sources that it was not a landslide popular vote, and no candidate won a majority. Only saying she got more votes is cherry-picking. Anythingyouwant (talk) 11:24, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment to @Sandstein:, Could you please clarify your close of this RfCas to whether or not you were saying that the RfC is closing as being in favor of "not using the word lost" in the lede, or are you saying it was one choice (which was the extant edit) versus three choices with the word lost in them? An editor is claiming that you meant to say that the RfC is saying we cannot use the word "lost" in the lede. Sorry for the bother. Thanks. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:48, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Thanks for responding. The RfC was not about the word "lost." It was simply about eliminating the word "plurality' and had nothing to do with the word 'lost,' which happened to be in the suggested options to replace the sentence in the article. SW3 5DL (talk) 22:38, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
That RfC was absolutely about the concept of losing the popular vote. The initial filer suggested to replace the "less than a plurality" wording with the "lost popular vote" wording. Several grammatical variants of the "lost" wording were suggested, and the overall balance of editor comments rejected all of those. I'm afraid that the same issues are being needlessly re-litigated here since the B4 variant was suggested. Surely, consensus can change but to demonstrate consensus on B4 we would need to run it through a proper RfC. — JFG talk 09:02, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

This RfC is about changing from plurality and the majority so far want to use B4. B4 matches the wording in WP:RS. Attempting to avoid using 'lost' is original research, as MelanieN notes above. This RfC right here, replaces all other RfC's on this issue. B4 is a legitimate choice. Consensus has changed. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:44, 11 May 2017 (UTC).

This local survey is not an RfC. We can't assume that consensus has changed without a community-wide discussion. — JFG talk 22:33, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
An RfC is done only when consensus cannot be reached, and it appears that B4 is gaining consensus. In addition, many of the items on the current consensus list were done 'locally' without a formal RfC. In addition, there are 1,934 page watchers. I don't think anything we do here could be considered 'local.' SW3 5DL (talk) 01:21, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
  • A. We don't need to worry about B or B2. No one's going to find a supporting source for them, so they'd likely get immediately eventually reverted, either for alleged falsity or per WP:BLPSOURCES. (The subject had three significant opponents, not one.) The only remaining choices are A, A2, and Abort. And A2 would likely get fought over per WP:BLP#Balance. Some reasonable (if partisan) editors could feel it's unfair to Johnson (without whom the subject might well have won the national popular vote). --Dervorguilla (talk) 01:52, 4 May 2017 (UTC) 06:18, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Threaded discussion
  • @Dervorguilla: The main question here is whether "less than a plurality of the popular vote" should be replaced with "a smaller share of the popular vote" or something along those lines. The problem you are describing is easily remedied by replacing "his opponent" with "an opponent", since the latter implies that there were more than 2 candidates. ~Awilley (talk) 03:35, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
    "We don't need to worry about B or B2. No one's going to find a supporting source for them" No? How about Vox? "Trump will be the 4th president to win the Electoral College after getting fewer votes than his opponent" and "it’s important to remember that he received fewer votes from Americans than Hillary Clinton"[4] --MelanieN (talk) 04:35, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@MelanieN: You're right. It looks like I ... misspoke. (But it's a bit questionable whether Vox would be RS here, given that they seem to have miscounted, no?) --Dervorguilla (talk) 05:57, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Vox didn't miscount. Some sources said fourth, some said fifth. It depends on how they count the election of 1824, where Jackson won the popular vote AND the electoral college vote but lost in the House of Representatives. BTW I couldn't find any major Reliable Source using the word "plurality" to describe this outcome. Can you? (Moving this question to the Discussion section so we don't clutter up the Survey any more than we already have.) --MelanieN (talk) 14:04, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@Anythingyouwant and Dervorguilla: To avoid hinting that there were only two candidates, we could add just one little word to B2: …and the fifth to receive a smaller share of the popular vote than his main opponent. Would you support that for brevity? — JFG talk 18:56, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@JFG: Perhaps "nearest" would be a better insert? -- Scjessey (talk) 16:01, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
@Scjessey: Meh. Most US presidential elections are described as a Republican vs a Democrat. Rarely does a third party make enough of a splash to warrant calling the main opponent "nearest". Only Ross Perot achieved this in living memory (with a whopping 19% of the popular vote vs 43% for Clinton and 37% for Bush). — JFG talk 18:46, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

It's unfortunate that there is no attempt in the options provided to rephrase Option A so as to overcome the objections to it, while retaining the important fact that neither candidate obtained a popular vote majority. I would be glad to educate readers: "and the fifth elected with less than a plurality of the national popular vote (i.e. elected with less than the highest number of votes received by any candidate when no candidate received a majority)." Or rephrase it without the word plurality: "and the fifth elected with less than the highest number of votes received by any candidate when no candidate received a majority". Leaving out that no candidate got a majority is biased in favor of Clinton, suggests that she got a majority, and completely fails to distinguish between a landslide and a squeaker. Or say it even more plainly: "and the fifth to have won a presidential election while receiving a smaller share of the popular vote than his opponent, and while no candidate received a majority of the popular vote." The poll is slanted otherwise, it seems to me. Arguing that in many elections no candidate receives a majority is beside the point; it's like arguing that we shouldn't mention Trump has children because may presidents have had children, or that we shouldn't mention in the lead that he's from New York because many people are from New York; the info is needed here because otherwise many readers will think she received a majority (which is what the DNC would like people to think, by the way). Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:37, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Your proposed wording looks even more convoluted than the proposed versions. The fact that Clinton didn't get a majority either is best left for her article. I don't see that it's implied by the "smaller share of the popular vote" wording. Only people with a predetermined bias towards thinking "Trump is illegitimate" would see this phrase as confirmation of their prejudice. — JFG talk 16:59, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
The green text I provided is not convoluted at all. You really think adding this is convoluted: "while no candidate received a majority of the popular vote"?If we merely say that candidate A got more votes than candidate B, and we don't mention any candidate C, that obviously suggests candidate A got a majority. Version B also gives no clue whether the popular vote gap was huge or tiny, which is a huge omission that is taken care of by the green text I suggested. Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:13, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I don't think it's a "huge omission", it's just too much detail for this bio. In a prior discussion (open the collapsed section and look at "Benchmarking"), we looked at many presidents' biographies, to check in which level of detail their elections were described. None went to such lengths, not even the agonizingly close Bush election in 2000, which merely says that Bush was elected president in 2000 after a close and controversial election against Al Gore, becoming the fourth president to be elected while receiving fewer popular votes nationwide than an opponent. Very similar to version B here. — JFG talk 17:29, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
That's nothing like Version B here. Version B here does not indicate in the slightest way that the popular vote tally was "close". Both the GW Bush and JQ Adams leads say it was close, and the proposed version here does not, obviously. Additionally, the JQ Adams lead says that there were more than two candidates, which removes the implication that one of the candidates obtained a majority of the popular vote. Neither the Adams lead nor the Benjamin Harrison lead says the winner lost the popular vote; I don't object to us saying that here as long as we don't imply Clinton won a majority. My global preference would be for only the Rutherford B. Hayes lead to discuss that he got less votes than his opponent, because in that case the matter was much more controversial given that the opponent (Tilden) got more than 50%. If we want to falsely suggest that Clinton got a popular vote majority, and suggest that Trump's presidency violates the principle of majority rule, then absolutely we should adopt this new proposed version. Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:38, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Anything, you have been very insistent for months that we MUST make it clear that Clinton got less than a majority. You are entitled to your opinion and have expressed it. Continuing to WP:BLUDGEON it does not make it any more correct, and does not make your opinion count for more than anyone else's. This is a survey. Let's see what people think, and respect consensus when it develops. --MelanieN (talk) 18:15, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Despite your screaming the word "MUST", I never said that User:MelanieN. I said that if we imply that one of the candidates got a majority of the popular vote, we should stop because it did not happen. I don't know how more meek and deferential I could possibly be than voluntarily opting to not edit this BLP. I guess I need to shut up entirely. Apparently the editors here do not want to even indicate in the lead that the popular vote was close. Fine. Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:24, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Actually it wasn't close. "No candidate in history has won the popular vote by so much yet lost the White House."[5] I'm not suggesting we point that out either, but it would be more accurate than "close". --MelanieN (talk) 19:30, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
I have added an Option A2 proposed below by another editor. It adheres to NPOV. Your comparison of the election to only four others regarding closeness is rather a limited comparison, no? Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:34, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
@MelanieN: OK, now I get your point. And it's an excellent one. I would advocate changing the Hillary Clinton lead accordingly. Would you have any thoughts as to why it currently uses the "plurality" phrasing instead? --Dervorguilla (talk) 06:44, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Let's deal with one article at a time, OK? 0;-D --MelanieN (talk) 15:41, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Again I agree w/ Anythingyouwant, we s/n leave any weak inference dangling that Clinton won a majority. (It's just not healthy.) How are either of these (the first w/ "plurality", the second w/o):
Trump won the general election on November 8, 2016, in a surprise victory over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. He became the oldest and wealthiest person ever to assume the presidency, the first without prior military or governmental service, and the fifth elected with less than a plurality of the national popular vote (i.e. Clinton received more votes but not a majority). His political positions have been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, and nationalist.
Trump won the general election on November 8, 2016, in a surprise victory over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. He became the oldest and wealthiest person ever to assume the presidency, the first without prior military or governmental service, and the fifth who received a smaller share of the popular vote than an opponent who did not achieve a majority. His political positions have been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, and nationalist.
Ok, --IHTS (talk) 18:54, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, "the fifth elected with less than a plurality of the national popular vote (i.e. Clinton received more votes but not a majority)" is perfect. I've added it as option "A2". Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:06, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
"He became the oldest and wealthiest person to assume the presidency, the first without prior military or government service, and the fifth elected with less than a plurality of the national popular vote.' was in the article already before Awilley changed it. It doesn't need to add that Clinton didn't get a majority of the vote. SW3 5DL (talk) 23:22, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

For now, let's just quietly shut this down and restore A. It doesn't look like this survey is going anywhere. Any passing editor could immediately revert B or B2 -- and keep reverting -- per WP:BLPSOURCES or for falsity. (Trump had three significant opponents, not one.) A2 might stay for awhile, but any passing Libertarian editor could demand a new survey based on WP:BLP#Balance (unfair to name Clinton but not Johnson, who could arguably have given Trump the popular vote by endorsing him). --Dervorguilla (talk) 01:54, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree that the longstanding A should be restored until we get consensus for a new version that is not manifestly false. Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:01, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
What are your thoughts on this one? ...and the fifth to receive a smaller share of the popular vote than an opponent. ~Awilley (talk) 03:42, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
We need to deal with this repeated claim that it is somehow "false" to say that he got a smaller share of the popular vote than someone else. A few of you are inferring that this means the other person got a majority, but that is not at all implied in the statement, and it is not a conclusion that most people would jump to. This is an attempt to solve a non-problem. --MelanieN (talk) 03:53, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
P.S. BTW the George W. Bush says "becoming the fourth president to be elected while receiving fewer popular votes than his opponent". This has been in the article for a decade. It's apparently never bothered anybody. Now all of a sudden, it's false? --MelanieN (talk) 04:08, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
"This has been in the article for a decade." False. (It bounced around to a lot of expressions, the first it started moving in the direction of "fewer votes" was in this edit from 2012.) --IHTS (talk) 05:36, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
OK, half a decade. (I assume we wound up with that wording, having previously said "lost" the popular vote, for the same reason as we are avoiding "lost" here even though most Reliable Sources use it: because the popular vote is not actually a contest. If we were going strictly by Reliable Source usage we would say in both articles that he "lost the popular vote".) My point was, and is, that this wording doesn't seem to have been regarded as "false", i.e., that it might somehow falsely imply that Gore got a majority of the popular vote. This wording isn't false there, and it isn't false here. --MelanieN (talk) 13:45, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@Awilley: Thanks for coming up with a comparatively concise and logical solution. But the verb tense is wrong. He wasn't "...the fifth [presidency-assumer] to receive..." He was "...the fifth [presidency-assumer] to have received..." --Dervorguilla (talk) 04:43, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@Dervorguilla: He became the oldest and wealthiest person ever to assume the presidency, the first without prior military or government service, and the fifth to receive a smaller share of the popular vote than an opponent. I'm not a grammar expert, but it works both ways for me. ("He became...the fifth...to receive..." vs. "He became...the fifth...to have received...") ~Awilley (talk) 15:04, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

"For now, let's just quietly shut this down and restore A." Strongly disagree. This discussion has been open less than 24 hours, and it is currently running 2-to-1 in favor of option B. Please do not attempt to short-circuit the discussion in favor of your own preferred outcome. --MelanieN (talk) 03:48, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@MelanieN: "Option B's", not "option B". We're now up to three four option B's, not one. --Dervorguilla (talk) 04:02, 4 May 2017 (UTC) 04:43, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
True. But there are still twice as many people wanting a version of "B" than there are wanting a version of "A". We are looking at which approach to take - wording to be tweaked later if necessary.--MelanieN (talk) 04:06, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Version B has consensus. It should be implemented and this continuing disruption about,"neither candidate won a majority of the vote' needs to be stopped. It means nothing to the outcome, it means nothing in the article, and it means nothing on this talk page except more disruption. SW3 5DL (talk) 04:37, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Agreed. Version B seems to solve the problems. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:38, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
I have proposed the shortest version yet as B3. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:42, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Short is not a virtue if deficient. --IHTS (talk) 05:58, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Of course. Is it deficient? -- BullRangifer (talk) 07:10, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Labelling good-faith argument as "disruption" and insisting "needs to be stopped" is what is disruptive. Text that says only Clinton won "more votes" or "won the popular vote" leaves begging whether she won a majority, and even though nothing is technically implied by the omission she didn't, readers are gonna presume that who are otherwise unfamiliar. And that's bad. --IHTS (talk) 05:53, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@BullRangifer: Thanks for the helpful suggestion. The verb tense is wrong, though. It's "to have won", not "to win". --Dervorguilla (talk) 06:02, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Good catch. Now it's fixed. Will it work, or is it "deficient", as implied(?) by IHTS above? -- BullRangifer (talk) 07:10, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@BullRangifer:, he's the 5th to have won the election while losing the popular vote. But he's only the 4th to have won the electoral college while losing the popular vote. In 1824 John Quincy Adams won the presidency while losing the popular vote and failing to get more than 50% in the electoral college. ~Awilley (talk) 14:45, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Awilley, that's true. Per how we handle it at United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote, it's probably wisest that we just ignore that weird detail about the Jackson election and only mention whoever won the election and lost the popular vote (in the lead). It's simpler that way. The details can be in the body, but leave it out of the lead. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:22, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Fixed with version B4. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:26, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

"Despite winning a plurality of the national popular vote, Clinton lost the Electoral College and the presidency to her Republican opponent Donald Trump." We can stop worrying about using the word "plurality": that featured article doesn't even bother to link the term. --Dervorguilla (talk) 07:01, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@BullRangifer: I like B3. I believe that was a choice in one or more of the multiple discussions about this before. What we don't want is to say "neither candidate won a majority of the vote." That is totally misleading and will likely draw edit wars. This choice, A2, is not tenable. When you have to explain an edit to the reader, it's a bad edit ". . .and the fifth elected with less than a plurality of the national popular vote (i.e. Clinton received more votes but not a majority)." SW3 5DL (talk) 13:09, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Huh? (What is "not tenable"? What is "totally misleading"? What will "likely draw edit wars" and why?) Oh, am I being "disruptive" and "need to be stopped" again?? --IHTS (talk) 05:12, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

What do reliable sources say?

New issue: Above I raised the question of what Reliable Sources say, but am moving it here. What wording do Reliable Sources use? The vast majority talk in terms of "winning" or "losing" the popular vote.[6][7][8] We do use that wording in the article text. But in the lede, we chose to avoid a win-lose wording because the popular vote isn't an actual contest. That left us choosing between "fewer/less/smaller share" of the popular vote (option B, B2) and "less than a plurality" of the popular vote (option A, A2). I did find one source using the "fewer" terminology: Vox. "Trump will be the 4th president to win the Electoral College after getting fewer votes than his opponent" and "it’s important to remember that he received fewer votes from Americans than Hillary Clinton"[9] I did not find any major Reliable Source using the word "plurality"; anyone? Looked at in these terms, Wikipedia policy suggests we should use version B3 B4, because it is based on what Reliable Sources say. --MelanieN (talk) 14:25, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I think BullRangifer's B3 reflects RS. Also, the argument over 'majority' is the real false argument. The only votes that count in the American presidential election, are the electoral votes, where the candidate must achieve a minimum of 270 electoral votes. So this banging on about 'majority' is a false argument about either electoral or popular votes for this election. The so-called 'popular vote' cannot overcome the electoral college winner. Hillary could easily have got the majority of the popular vote and she would still have lost this election if those votes were not scattered among the states to give her 270. I suggest, through a process of elimination, we agree on certain points. The first is the most important, because otherwise, the rest is moot. Do we want to eliminate A, which is what is in the article now? Yes or No? SW3 5DL (talk) 14:33, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
We're always on safer ground when we follow the wording used in most RS. In common parlance, which is what most RS use, talking about winning the election (which is not the same as winning the voting) refers to whoever got the most electoral votes (which is subject to backroom dealings). Note that the people do not cast electoral votes, only popular votes. The actual number of votes cast by voters is the popular vote, and that's what's usually being referred to when sources talk about whoever won the most votes. Those are the votes which were cast by voters. That's why RS talk about winning and losing the popular vote. We should apply both "win" and "lose" terminology to each candidate (Trump won the election because he got the most electoral votes, but lost the popular vote, while Clinton lost the election but won the popular vote.). -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:00, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Just alerting that there is now a version B4, since B3 was actually inaccurate. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:28, 4 May 2017 (UTC)


Those arguments were debated at length and repeatedly found wanting. The latest RfC concluded that there was no consensus to include any variant of "losing the popular vote". I think this horse should rest in peace and proposal B4 should be withdrawn. — JFG talk 17:58, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

How important is "not a majority"?

The other issue under debate here, aside from whether to use "plurality" (A, A2), "smaller share" (B, B2), or "won"(B4), is that a vocal minority thinks it is important to point out that Clinton did not win an actual majority of the popular vote. They claim it is false to report the popular vote outcome without such a disclaimer, because readers will automatically assume she got a majority if it isn't explicitly stated that she didn't. I haven't seen any evidence for that, and most Reliable Sources have seemed comfortable omitting that clarification. We already do make that point in the article text. Let's reach a consensus about whether "not a majority" (or "plurality," which implies not-a-majority to those who understand the term and its implications) needs to be in the lede. --MelanieN (talk) 15:06, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

The question of 'not a majority' is a false argument. As I pointed out above, the Americans do not use the popular vote to elect the president. They use the electoral college. Trump won 306 electoral votes. He won 57% of the EC vote which is the majority that counts. There's no need to go on about the 'majority' of the popular vote as it is undue weight. Trump won the electoral college vote and lost the popular vote as the RS has noted. That's all we need to say. SW3 5DL (talk) 16:07, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
It's a misleading parity, since Trump won a majority of electoral college votes, but Clinton did not win a majority of popular votes. --IHTS (talk) 05:38, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Don't use "plurality". This creates an issue where there is none, as long as we leave it alone. Without dealing with it it's understood just fine. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:15, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Just alerting that there is now a version B4, since B3 was actually inaccurate. -- BullRangifer (talk) 15:28, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Do you want to strike out B3 so that it doesn't confuse the situation? --MelanieN (talk) 15:33, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Done. -- BullRangifer (talk) 16:01, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Side conversation about now-deleted material. --MelanieN (talk) 18:18, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
@MelanieN: Could you please remove that comment in the hat? I was not at all attempting to be disruptive. I was responding to your comment and was attemping to sort the discussion. I was not trying to subvert it. I wanted to revert the whole thing but BullRangifer commented at the survey. @BullRangifer: Could you please go back and remove your comment from the survey I put up, so that I can delete my portion of the survey? I'd appreciate it. Thanks. SW3 5DL (talk) 15:56, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
SW3 5DL: Looks like BullRangifer has already done so. If you want to delete the whole thing, including the hat, that is OK with me, and thank you. I know you did not intend to be disruptive, but opening new discussion threads and new survey sections while an original discussion is still going on has been a source of disruption to this page in the past. --MelanieN (talk) 17:31, 4 May 2017 (UTC) P.S. and if you want to delete this exchange between you and me, that is OK with me as well. --MelanieN (talk) 17:33, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@MelanieN: Yes, I can see how that would look like that, but sincerely did not intend that. Thanks. And thanks @BullRangifer:. SW3 5DL (talk) 18:15, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

How important is it for the lead to imply that Clinton won a majority?

Version B says: "the fifth to have won a presidential election while receiving a smaller share of the popular vote than his opponent." This obviously implies that there was only one opponent, and therefore that that opponent won a majority of the popular vote. The same is true of version B2. It's one thing to deliberately exclude from the lead that neither candidate won a majority of the popular vote, but quite another to include in the lead a manifestly false implication that one of the candidates did obtain a majority. Is it not obvious that the lead ought to be accurate? Moreover, if we include information about who got more of the popular vote (unlike in the Wikipedia leads for John Quincy Adams and Benjamin Harrison who both received less than opponents), then I don't see any harm in mentioning very briefly that no candidate got a majority, which has the added benefit of indicating that this was not a landslide election in the popular vote (about which versions B and B2 give no hint). Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:49, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

P.S. The false nature of B and B2 could be somewhat alleviated (e.g. by inserting the word "main"), but it would seem to require a new survey, and in any case I strongly oppose the consistent efforts here to to do somersaults (and jump through hoops and bend over backward) in order to avoid any suggestion in the lead that perhaps Clinton might not have won a majority. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:06, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Would making it into "main opponent" satisfy your objection? If so, that could be the compromise that brings us consensus here. --MelanieN (talk) 19:15, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
As I said, inserting that word would alleviate the problem, though many readers would probably still assume that Clinton won a majority of the popular vote. My objection remains that we are going to extraordinary lengths to omit a simple clarifying fact that also tells readers that this was not a landslide in the popular vote. And this survey should be closed as faulty. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:18, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
There was only one opponent. Neither Gary Johnson nor Jill Stein won any electoral votes. Johnson won around 1% of the popular vote and Jill Stein won 0.36 of the popular vote. Statistically they don't even register. As for wining/losing majorities, B4 settles it. Trump won the electoral vote, which counts, and lost the popular vote, which does not count. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:32, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
If you want to focus on electoral votes rather than the popular vote regarding Johnson and Stein, then do so for Clinton and Trump as well. I disagree with you that we should call Trump a loser in the lead while implying Clinton got a majority of the popular vote. Your position violates WP:NPOV, don't you think? Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:37, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
I've read over my comments several times now, I don't see anywhere that I called Trump a loser. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:41, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
You've supported version B4 which states: "and the fifth to have won the election while losing the popular vote." That matter was also discussed in this RFC, where the closer stated: "In about a proportion of 3 to 2, editors prefer the current text per option 1 ('elected with less than a plurality') to any of the other options that involve some variant of 'lost'". Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:50, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
What's that got to do with claiming I am suggesting we call Trump a loser? SW3 5DL (talk) 19:56, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Obviously, you want to put that Trump was "losing" into the lead, and "losing" is a variant of lost and a variant of loser Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:56, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
That's a gross distortion because, no, that does not follow at all. Calling Trump a loser is slanderous, but saying, ". . .he won the electoral college but lost the popular vote," is simply stating facts. I don't see how that in any way makes him a 'loser' especially in the sense that you are obviously using it. SW3 5DL (talk) 22:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

How important is it... to recognize that the lede does NOT imply that Clinton won a majority? This particular interpretation, and especially the odd notion that the statement is "false" because of the way some people might interpret it, seems to be unique to a few people on this page. (Suppose I say "I like eggs"; is that statement false because some people might infer from it that I am a vegetarian? Do I have to add "and also meat" to make it true?) Most Reliable Sources (and our longstanding George W. Bush article) don't seem to have this concern, and it may ultimately come down to a few outliers (no matter how passionate) not being able to overcome consensus and policy. Policy like WP:RS. --MelanieN (talk) 20:01, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@MelanieN: Which statement are we talking about? There are so many now. . .SW3 5DL (talk) 20:45, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
I am talking about the statements Anything objects to - the ones that don't specify "not a majority" or "plurality". The "B" statements. --MelanieN (talk) 21:01, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
So, Melanie, when version B refers to "his opponent" that doesn't imply he had only one significant opponent? Obviously it implies that. And if the only significant opponent got more votes, then that opponent necessarily got a majority. I believe you might just be bludgeoning and POV-pushing here? After you accused me of making this article a "battleground", I disagreed but voluntarily pledged to stop editing this article. I hope that decision has not paved the way for blatant POV in this BLP. Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:59, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
It doesn't seem she's doing any such thing. It's very clear. I agree with her vegetarian analogy. When we have to keep adding to make something clear to the reader, we've probably got the wrong sentence. And Trump did have only one significant opponent because the other two had no chance of winning the Electoral College, whereas, Hillary did have a chance. The others were not real opponents to either Trump or Hillary. SW3 5DL (talk) 20:45, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

See "How Gary Johnson and Jill Stein helped elect Donald Trump", CNN.

  • Trump: 62,984,825 which was 46.09%
  • Clinton: 65,853,518 which was 48.18%
  • Johnson: 4,489,221 which was 3.28%
  • Stein: 1,457,216 which was 1.07%

Anythingyouwant (talk) 21:28, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) About "one significant opponent", I offered to accept your suggestion of "his main opponent" - thus making it clear there were others - but apparently that still doesn't satisfy you. About "bludgeoning", I would be happy to have someone count up how many times in the past few days you have posted here that it's essential to point out that she didn't get a majority, or how often you have claimed that any statement that doesn't overtly say that is "false" - vs. how many times I have disagreed with you about "false". ("Blatant POV" is a new one, and rather over the top if you mean that some people might interpret an accurate statement to come up with an inaccurate conclusion.) As for "battleground", I will just say, you certainly have a funny way of stopping editing this article. --MelanieN (talk) 21:13, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Maybe someone should count up the times you have wrongly asserted I think it's essential for the lead to say she didn't get a majority. I have denied that previously here in response to you, and I now deny it yet again. What I have said repeatedly is we should not imply in the lead what is manifestly false: that she got a majority. There are various ways to remove that falsity from the lead. One is to explicitly say neither candidate got a majority. Another is to say he got less than the plurality. Another is to follow the JQ Adams lead and the Benjamin Harrison lead, by not discussing the irrelevant popular vote (which might well have been different in 2016 if it had been a determinant of victory). Regardless, I do think it would be wise and useful (not essential) to briefly mention that neither candidate got a majority, if we are going to mention that she got more votes, which also has the benefit of indicating it was not a popular vote landslide. Anythingyouwant (talk) 21:28, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
We've been down the 'neither candidate got a majority of the votes,' many times before. You mentioned somewhere you would consult with @NeilN:, so I'm pinging him to see if he can offer any suggestions for this dilemma. SW3 5DL (talk) 22:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
OK, I get it: you wouldn't insist that "not a majority" (or "a plurality") be included in the article if we didn't mention the popular vote at all. But since we clearly are going to include it, you do insist propose it as wise and useful but not essential. Because of your (IMO incorrect) belief that if we even mention that he got a smaller share of the popular vote, people will automatically assume "she got a majority". Which would be true if there were only two people in the race. But it won't be enough to indicate (by saying "main opponent") that there were other people in the race, to take away the assumption that the person who got a larger share actually got a majority. It has to be explicit, lest some people jump to a wrong conclusion. And philosophically you do believe that if some people might infer an incorrect impression from a statement, that makes the statement false (or even "blatant POV"). So even though the article text already says neither candidate got a majority, that has to be specified in the lede also. OK, at least now I understand you. Now all you have to do is convince enough people that this all makes sense. --MelanieN (talk) 22:33, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
It makes no sense to go through those gyrations to get to the simple fact that Donald J. Trump won the electoral college vote by 57% and lost the popular vote." That explains why he's president in one neat sentence. SW3 5DL (talk) 22:53, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
That is a false parity, since in one case a majority was won (electoral), in the other, not (popular). (Plus it's also already for a long time known in discussions that "losing" the popular vote is a misnomer [since it is not a race to be "won" or "lost"], so why do you keep beating that drum by continually suggesting that text??) --IHTS (talk) 05:55, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
"A false parity"??? Who cares? That's your OR reasoning. We document what sources say, and a huge amount of weight was given by those sources, and Trump himself, to the issue of winning or losing the popular vote. Trump is very thin skinned and obsesses about such things. He obsessed about mentioning it, just as you are obsessing about how we shouldn't mention it. You are in opposition to Trump and RS. You have created your own criteria, one not found in RS, to determine whether we should mention the popular vote, but RS don't listen to your criteria. They discussed Trump's losing it and Clinton's winning it very intently, and the voters did too, since it was the popular vote which proved that far more people voted for Clinton than voted for Trump. He was elected by some numbers, while she won the popular vote. She was the people's choice, and they felt cheated, so they discussed it and RS documented that. We follow what RS say, not your artificial OR "parity" idea. Please don't mention that word again, unless you have about a ton of RS to back it up as worthy of mention with even one word. -- BullRangifer (talk) 07:32, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
No, and you are really getting personal (uncivil) and WP:NOTFORUM here (who gives a damn about your Trump hatred?). My contention was that SW's view that "won the election" and "lost the popular vote" is a straightforward fact OK to state in the article, is instead a false parity, nothing more, nothing about RSs, but about misleading text. (And where did I say that the relative popular vote count s/b scrubbed from the article? Nowhere. What are you smoking to come up w/ such wild & erroneous accusations!? Please knock off your unwarranted hostility.) Oh, less I forget: parity, parity, parity, parity. --IHTS (talk) 10:34, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
User:MelanieN says about me: "you do believe that if some people might infer an incorrect impression from a statement, that makes the statement false (or even 'blatant POV')." No, no, no. Speaking of "his opponent" who got more votes implies he had one opponent who got a majority. That's a false implication, and the only readers who would infer otherwise don't understand how to read plain English. I have had it up to here with my comments being misconstrued, and it apparently makes no difference how many times I try to explain it in a different way. So do what you so evidently want to do. Consider me scared away from the article, and driven insane by the talk page. Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:05, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
P.S. Maybe coming from someone else this concern will be heard. Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
MelanieN, I also feel it is appropriate to clarify by saying "not a majority" if the lede says Clinton (or "main opponent") received more popular votes. It's important to this article because of the ongoing societal contention re election result "legitimacy". The incessant avoidance of simple & informative & appropriate clarifying language is what is POV, and in worse cases does imply the falsity that Clinton got a majority. p.s. Your "eggs/vegetarian" analogy is bogus. ("I like eggs" w/o other context has no connection/relevance re topic "vegetarianism", anymore than it has connection/relevance re liking/disliking anything else in the world, like hot climates or fast cars. So no clarification needed. But "received more popular votes" has direct connection/relevance to "a majority" or not, there are only two possibilities in the context of popular vote totals.) Your analogy fails but I'm not surprised SW jumps on it enthusiastically. (Thick POV.) --IHTS (talk) 06:20, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Because I was pinged, I'm going to respond (carefully) here and make a few general points:

  • Wikipedia articles are written for English-speakers worldwide, not just Americans.
  • Many functional democracies involve multiple parties.
  • In these countries, one person winning the majority of the popular vote is rare. Where I live, you wouldn't hear "x won the majority of the popular vote" when they garnered <50% of the vote from quality news sources.
  • You may want to look at newspapers or historical accounts of elections from other countries (or even the U.S.) to see what phrasings they use.

Again, these are general points - I don't know how useful they will be. --NeilN talk to me 22:57, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Neil. SW3 5DL (talk) 23:03, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Quantitative RS data

The most mainstream RS do use the term "plurality".

And the most analogous featured article -- Hillary Clinton -- also says plurality (in the lead). --Dervorguilla (talk) 16:54, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Dervorguilla, please actually look at some of the articles, not just the fact that they include "Trump" and "plurality" in the same article. Taking the USA Today results: Of the 8 articles displayed by the link, seven are opinion pieces (i.e. not Reliable Sources), and the one news item is not about the presidential election and uses "plurality" in an entirely different context. WSJ is behind a paywall but of the snippets I can see, I don't see any that seem to say what we are talking about, i.e., "plurality of the popular vote in the 2016 election" - and many of them are pre-election so they definitely aren't. Bottom line, this search tells us nothing. Let's refine the search to look for actual news items that are actually about the popular vote outcome in the 2016 election.

You keep bringing up the Hillary Clinton article. WP:OSE. We don't know who decided that or why. Let's decide what we want to do at THIS article. --MelanieN (talk) 18:12, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Agree. We have to decide what's best for this article. I think B4 settles it nicely. SW3 5DL (talk) 18:20, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
B4 won't fly. As i wrote above, the latest RfC concluded that there was no consensus to include any variant of "losing the popular vote". I think this horse should rest in peace and proposal B4 should be withdrawn. — JFG talk 18:50, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
It's an election. One wins, one loses. The RS call it that. I don't see any prohibition to stating it in plain language. It seems to be the obscuring of the win/loss that is causing this sentence to be brought up for revision over and over. Plain English should settle the matter. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:21, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
It's an election, indeed, won or lost by the electoral college. The nationwide popular vote is not an election. Those arguments were abundantly commented and settled in the RfC that you had called. — JFG talk 19:48, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
B4 settles the matter, imho. He won the electoral college, he lost the popular vote. This is a different RfC with better choices. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:59, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
JFG, we can't ignore Trump's loss of the popular vote. There was a huge amount of RS commentary about that fact, and one of Trump's notable lies at that time was that he had not lost the popular vote. He got pretty creative with multiple deceptive and factless theories about why he either didn't lose the popular vote, or why he did (millions of illegal votes for Clinton was one).
The lead must be concise, without unnecessary detail, so B4 very simply avoids a lot of controversial wordings and issues while mentioning the two aspects to the election which were most noted in RS. Your obsession with not connecting Trump with the word "lose" or "loss" is very Trumpian. He was raised to never lose and to never admit when he did lose. In his own mind he never loses. His myriad and constant losses and defeats are always someone else's fault. Roy Cohn even taught him to call every defeat a victory, and that's what he does. Well, Wikipedia is not Trump. We don't lie here. We're documenting that he won the election (IOW the electoral vote) while losing the popular vote, and that by a huge margin (which should be discussed in the body of the article). Trump hates that fact, but we don't care what he thinks. -- BullRangifer (talk) 02:59, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
@BullRangifer: I have no "obsession" and nobody is "ignoring" the result of the popular vote. My conclusion from the numerous discussions which repeatedly found no consensus is that such detail is not necessary in the lead of Trump's biography, or in Clinton's biography for that matter. The appropriate page is the 2016 election. — JFG talk 10:26, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
And we don't care what *you* think, BullRangifer, when you showcase your Trump hatred WP:NOTFORUM-style and psycho-analyze the article subject for us. (Are we allowed equal time? (Redacted) --IHTS (talk) 10:51, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
@MelanieN: From the comments above: "If you can produce evidence that 'the word plurality is fairly understandable to most readers', kindly do so." ... "People shouldn't have to follow wikilinks in order to understand what an encyclopedia is saying." The data show that USAToday does sometimes use the word plurality in describing the election. The newspaper has the third-largest print circulation in the US; so it likely tries to use words that most of its readers can understand without following a link.
Also, most Wikipedia readers can understand the leads in most featured articles -- including, for example, the Hillary Clinton article. The term "plurality" is used there, with no wikilink. That doesn't mean we have to use it; it just means we can. --Dervorguilla (talk) 22:44, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Well, at least one person didn't understand it. The edit that touched all this off [10] had the edit summary "Clearly, it is not correct that Trump didn't obtain a plurality of the popular vote. He did. He did not, however, obtain a majority of the popular vote, as one opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton obtained millions more votes by individual voters than he did." Clearly, this editor has no idea what "plurality" means. --MelanieN (talk) 22:48, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, agree with MelanieN. Hillary beat Donald like a drum in the popular vote. But he did the same to her in the electoral college. SW3 5DL (talk) 22:54, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@MelanieN: True, but I'd have to call him a rather "unreliable" editor! Perhaps he thought the term meant "more than one vote" (singular)??? ... Given that this often becomes the most viewed article on Wikipedia, there's going to be at least one editor who fails to understand any given four-syllable word... As I keep pointing out, though, the Hillary Clinton article is a featured article, and there was evidently no consensus to remove the term plurality from the lead -- or even to wikilink it.
In any event, I doubt we're going to establish a consensus here without an RfC. I'd like to acknowledge, however, that you've had to spend some time correcting a couple of careless errors I made, and I do appreciate it. --Dervorguilla (talk) 02:07, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
He's a pretty reliable source to answer the question, "does everybody understand what "plurality" means?" 0;-D Reliable answer: NO! --MelanieN (talk) 04:21, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Not really, he just has his own definition that he thinks is better than the standard dictionary definition, per his user talk. Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:31, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
This evening in the car I was trying to explain this dispute to my wife, an intelligent woman with 19+ years of formal education. She stopped me halfway through with, "Wait, what does plurality mean?" ~Awilley (talk) 06:10, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
I'll infer that your spouse appreciates A2 then. 🙂 Anythingyouwant (talk) 11:45, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
MelanieN, you are so right. I've always failed at parsing those sentences because it is a very mixed and self-contradictory message. Avoiding the word "plurality" altogether saves lots of problems. He won the election while losing the popular vote. That's all the lead needs to say. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:06, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
@MelanieN: From the lead: "His political positions have been described by scholars and commentators as populist..." Some readers would understand that term to mean "popular"; many others would have no idea what it's supposed to mean. (Actual definition: "Favoring the common people".) --Dervorguilla (talk) 04:52, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
"He won the election while losing the popular vote. That's all the lead needs to say. -- BullRangifer". Bad for two reasons: Popular vote is not a "race"; implies falsely that Clinton received a majority. --IHTS (talk) 06:33, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

@BullRangifer: is correct. Donald Trump . . . won the election while losing the popular vote. It does not in any way imply that Clinton received a majority. It simply tells the facts and is backed by RS. We need more eyes on this. I'm wondering what @MrX: has to say since he's just made a comment on another thread. SW3 5DL (talk) 13:29, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

@MelanieN: Can we clean up the choices and move them down? The threads are getting too long and the choices seem displaced. Thanks. SW3 5DL (talk) 13:37, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I'd rather not, because they already have a lot of responses in the form of a survey. If I move the options, do I move the survey results too? If I don't, do people have to !vote a second time? One list of choices, in one place, is important IMO. --MelanieN (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Keeping it all together is important, I agree. I just don't want it to get lost. Maybe we could link it occasionally in comments as a reminder that we're referring to the survey hereSW3 5DL (talk) 14:52, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
You guys are crazy. (I don't mean that literally.) This discussion started out with a disagreement over whether a single word in the lead should be changed from "plurality" to "majority". It morphed into two options, soon to be replaced by five or more. And 10 or more screen pages of debates. In a normal article, any one of the options would be alright.
In 99.9% of Wikipedia articles, even in the lead section, this would require at most a couple of paragraphs on the talk page. Most editors would simply slap in the replacement word and then, if they wanted to, wait for possible reversions; see WP:BOLD. But Trump is like 10 or 20 articles at any given time that attracts many people who, in seems, prefer to argue on the talk page rather than contribute to articles.
I don't know anyway of fixing this, other than the ten-year rule; see WP:10YT. As for me, I'm off to edit more productive articles. (Anyone can hide this using the {{hat}}/{{hab}} construction.) --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 15:14, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
@RoyGoldsmith: Indeed this is crazy: welcome to the Trump article! And you could have even more fun suggesting a single-word good-faith well-sourced change at Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. — JFG talk 18:15, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
It's been like this for the better part of a year. Welcome to Groundhog Day. --MelanieN (talk) 18:24, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
I don't have much of an opinion on this, but I tend to think clarity and concision are good for an encyclopedia. "... won the election while losing the popular vote." seems to accomplish that.- MrX 19:08, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
If clarity and concision are desired, then "...won the election" is the best choice. The popular vote game was a game that neither candidate was playing, so it might be best to leave that out of the lead, and mention it later in the article, especially since the popular vote difference was not unusually large. If the popular vote difference had been one single solitary vote, I suppose we would still be trumpeting in the lead that Hillary won it --- and still without bothering to give any hint that she won less than a popular vote landslide. Right? Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:45, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Anythingyouwant and MrX, "The popular vote game was a game that neither candidate was playing,..." That's factually wrong. The popular vote is the ONLY vote given by the voters. The overall strategy is to win as many votes as possible, and those are what constitutes the "popular vote". A secondary, and parallel, strategy is to win the states where each vote is worth most. For example, each vote cast in Wyoming is worth 3.6 as much as the same vote cast in California. Wow! That's how a candidate who wins small states and loses big ones can lose the popular vote and still get enough electoral votes to win the election. The popular vote IS THE VOTE upon which everything else hinges. All efforts aim to get as many as possible, everywhere possible, but especially in those small states. That's the popular vote "game" BOTH "candidates were playing".
It was a very big deal because of the surprise upset victory, which happened in spite of the will of the majority more voters than those who voted for Trump. It was constantly mentioned, so we can't ignore it. The subject is so notable that we even have an article which deals with the subject, United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote.
RS didn't ignore it, our article doesn't ignore it, so we can't do it either. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:27, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
If "the will of the majority" is so important, then why have editors such as yourself been fighting tooth and nail to keep out of the lead any hint that Clinton did not get a majority? Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:34, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
I have tried to avoid that mess. Above I mean a majority, as compared to Trump, IOW she got more than he did. The "plurality" and "majority" debate on this page is really weird, using meanings not understood by normal people. To avoid anymore problems for you (everyone else understands what I mean), I'll strike it and fix it. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:48, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
"A secondary, and parallel, strategy is to win the states where each vote is worth most." Wrong. Winning specific states is not a "secondary strategy", the election is won by racking up 270 electoral votes and consequently strategies center on winning "battleground states" while maintaining red or blue states to reach the 270 figure. --IHTS (talk) 11:26, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't think it's all that important that it needs to be mentioned in the lead.- MrX 00:19, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

This one Talk section now has 95,852 characters. And, the argument seems to be over a few words. It may be fiction; but supposedly Pope Julius II said to Michelangelo: “When will you make an end?”. Think about that before debating another minor point. Objective3000 (talk) 00:23, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

It beats apathy. Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:26, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
I dunno. It’s just that sometimes we fight too hard for our own wording. I don’t mean to cast aspersions. It’s just that one man’s lack of apathy is another man’s OCD. (You can quote me; but I’ll deny I said it.).:) Objective3000 (talk) 00:40, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
Count me apathetic, if that's your preferred spin. I call it a sense of proportion. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:24, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
I did not mean to imply that you are apathetic, User:Mandruss. All I meant was that being over-interested is better than being under-interested, and perhaps you are neither. Cheers. Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:19, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Disruption?

Regarding this edit summary, what did I or User:Awilley have to do with the edit? What was my involvement, SW3? Accusing people of disruption is a serious charge. It can even cause innocent editors to recuse themselves from making article edits, as I have voluntarily done with regard to this article. Anythingyouwant (talk) 21:01, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

I think I had removed the unnecessary outdent from SW3's post. It might interest SW3 to know that one of the strange hallmarks of tendentious editors is that in threaded discussions they go out of their way to have their posts flush with the margin. (See Wikipedia:Tendentious_editing#One_who_fails_to_appropriately_thread_their_posts_on_talk_pages.) In any case, having zero indent in a bulletted survey section is messy, which is why I fixed it. But I don't think the issue is important enough to warrant any further discussion here. ~Awilley (talk) 22:09, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
@Awilley: My comments are threaded properly and not constantly flush with the margin, but when that particular thread started getting longer, I used the outdent so I could better see what I was writing. The need to do that has nothing to do with tendentious editing. SW3 5DL (talk) 22:27, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
Glad to know I had absolutely nothing to do with it. Incidentally, I often use outdent when presenting a bulleted list or blockquote, which seems a valid reason. Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:41, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
@Anythingyouwant: I apologize for including you in that. You've got a new comment somewhere in there and I thought you'd done rearranging but you'd not. SW3 5DL (talk) 23:54, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Trump revealed highly classified information to Russians

The Washington Post is reporting that "President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said that Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State."[11] This is worth watching and may merit inclusion in this article at some point. It seems pretty "unpresidented". Other sources as well: [12][13][14][15]- MrX 21:46, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Not at some point. Given that multiple sources, including the New York Times, this needs to be in the article.Casprings (talk) 23:32, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
Looks like the Washington Post found another super secret anonymous "official" in the white house saying vital intel was given to Russia that is not even shared with allies. The 4 articles listed are reporting just on the post article with no confirmed information anywhere to be seen. Also it should be noted that the national security adviser, who was in the meeting, said it was just reviewing common threats from ISIS and that the Washington Post article was false. Nothing about intelligence sources, methods, or military operations were discussed according to him. Looks like a nothing burger. But if it even should be included anywhere perhaps Presidency of Donald Trump would be a more appropriate place. PackMecEng (talk) 00:06, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
The story is certainly very hot. I’d wait a day or so, and agree that it probably belongs in Presidency of Donald Trump for now. Objective3000 (talk) 00:16, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
The President of the United States cannot "leak" classified info, though. The media did all sorts of hand-wringing in the Bush admin over the Valerie Plame affair, and it came to nothing. If the President releases top secret info, it is de facto declassified. TheValeyard (talk) 00:43, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The president can legally declassify information, but presidents don't usually do that in the context of bragging, and usually not to unfriendly states. I think this is a big something burger with all the fixins, and a side of freedom fries.- MrX 00:32, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
I eat my freedom fries with béarnaise sauce. Objective3000 (talk) 00:37, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
Include. See AP. "The anonymous officials told the Post that the information ... was considered so sensitive that details have been ... tightly restricted even within the U.S. government." Readers can use the material to decide for themselves: Is the President unable to discharge his duty to remove government officials who can't be trusted to keep sensitive information secret from the government's avowed enemies? (In this case, the Washington Post.) "In case of [the President's] Inability to discharge the Duties of the said Office", Pence has to take over. Art. II, § 1. --Dervorguilla (talk) 01:30, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
The Post broke this story just a couple of hours ago. How about we wait until the sun at least rises once on this before we go rushing to put it into the encyclopedia, whaddaya think? Marteau (talk) 02:01, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
Spoilsport! --Dervorguilla (talk) 03:39, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Include, but not yet. Wait a day or two for the story to stabilize and possibly additional sources to emerge. A sentence or two in this article, details in the "presidency" article. BTW notice that the carefully worded official "denial", echoed by PacMecEng above, does not falsify the WaPo report. The "denial" says "Nothing about intelligence sources, methods, or military operations were discussed". Nobody said they were. But something highly secret was disclosed, namely INFORMATION. Information from which those two experienced intelligence officials can probably deduce the source. --MelanieN (talk) 16:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

At this point I still think it should be in Presidency of Donald Trump not his main article. Also I am a little confused what you mean with the denial part? We do not know exactly what information if any was given, so nobody really knows how McMaster's claim on sources, methods, or operations fits. We just know that information was not given, and that they said the WaPo article is wrong in some way. PackMecEng (talk) 16:59, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
P.S. Trump has now admitted he gave sensitive information to the Russians,[16] so let's drop any "alleged" suggestion. Trump and his people claim it was perfectly OK for him to do so, even though he himself didn't know where the information came from, and even though aides that were in the room took it seriously enough to immediately notify the CIA and NSA of what Trump had done.[17] Naturally we are never going to know exactly what information was given - it was highly classified, after all. (There are hints that he mentioned a city whose identity is highly classified.) But McMaster's denial did not relate to anything the WaPo had said, so it doesn't disprove WaPo's reporting. As for "wrong in some way," we are used to hearing "false" and "fake news" (without any detail as to exactly what is false or fake) from this Administration. --MelanieN (talk) 18:47, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
@MelanieN: Trump may perhaps have "admitted he gave sensitive information" to the Russians. But I've read through both sources, and I haven't found any passages that make that claim. --Dervorguilla (talk) 21:53, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Separate page for Trump's Russia policy?

Relating to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Donald Trump revelation of classified information to Russia, I think there needs to be a separate page on Donald Trump's foreign policy specifically with regards to Russia. Content from Russia–United States relations, Foreign policy of Donald Trump, Donald Trump revelation of classified information to Russia and even Donald Trump–Russia dossier could be moved there. Power~enwiki (talk) 00:07, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Numbers as words and formatting

I would like if we could reach a consensus on how to format numbers as words in the article. Currently there are multiple different styles being used. The three most common styles seem to be using a regular space, using plain &nbsp; code and using {{nbsp}}. According to the MOS:Numbers the preferred method is using {{nbsp}} Markup: 21{{nbsp}}million

However, this article has already exceeded the maximum number of templates that it can support. Wikipedia:Template limits#Post-expand include size This can be seen at the bottom of the page with how the navboxes and authority control templates will break. Adding even more templates I think is not a good idea as the page would break more than it already is. I would suggest that instead of using the {{nbsp}} template or plain space we standardize the article to use &nbsp;. Markup: 21&nbsp;million Jeanjung212 (talk) 15:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, while that worked for the existing template replacement I thought it would be good to reach consensus here as well for the numbers that contain regular space still (of which I believe there are 30+ at least) and if we standardize we also be changed to &nbsp; Examples of these can be found searching the source for 'million' or 'billion' Jeanjung212 (talk) 16:25, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Remove "Trump criminal investigation and appointment of Robert Mueller."

This isn't a newspaper. I reverted the addition, but my revert was un-reverted. Power~enwiki (talk) 05:58, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I removed the content again as it was not supported by the cited source – Mueller said "My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted", and reliable sources say that Mueller is a special counsel not special prosecutor (I do note that special counsel redirects to special prosecutor). A dedicated section is undue, at least for now. I would propose adding just one sentence under "Foreign interference in election:

In May, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation.

Or something like that. Politrukki (talk) 08:03, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Here is the source of the quote: “My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination...." Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein

Justice.gov

Should a mention of a Special Counsel because of the investigation into Russian Interference in the election be added to the lede?

With the fact that there is now a special counsel investigating if the Trump Campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, should this be added to the lede? The issue of Russian interference in the election and possible collusion by Trump's campaign seems both historic and likely to dominate the rest of his Presidency. If we don't add it, when should we?Casprings (talk) 02:11, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I don't support including only the Russia investigation in the lead, but I think we should introduce a new paragraph briefly summarizing his presidency so far, particularly his first 100 days, since the lead right now basically stops at his victory in the election. That could include the Russia investigation, I guess. NoMoreHeroes (talk) 02:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
@Casprings: Yes. I support mention of that in the lede. SW3 5DL (talk) 13:11, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
The focus of the investigation seems to be on the Trump campaign, and certain individuals associated with it. There's no current evidence Trump himself is under investigation. With that in mind, I believe it is not worthy of the lede at this time. Obviously that may change in short order. -- Scjessey (talk) 16:22, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, this needs to be mentioned in the lead. The Trump campaign obviously includes Trump, its leader and key figure, and this development obviously has a large impact on Trump himself and his rule, which is evident from the coverage of it. --Tataral (talk) 18:07, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Table of Contents

Hello. It is impossible to find things in this article since a series of edits about 10 days ago. @Omanyd: I will be restoring the TOC later on today. -SusanLesch (talk) 14:33, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

TOC is restored. It can still be improved but at least I can find my way around now. -SusanLesch (talk) 19:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:JOBTITLES

I've noticed on this article & the articles of the other US presidents & articles of US vice presidents, that we capitalize the offices in the intros. Example: "45th and current President of the United States", instead of "45th and current president of the United States". Yet on a few of the US state governors & lieutenant governors articles, I've run into editors at (for example) David Paterson & Wendell Anderson pushing "governor of state", instead of "Governor of state". Which is correct, folks? Capitalizing or de-capitalizing? GoodDay (talk) 22:26, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

The formal title of the office is "President of the United States" (POTUS) and so "president" is capitalized. If we said "the United States' president" or "the president of the country Unites States", it is not capitalized as those are not the proper titles. I suppose someone could write "the president of the United States" not meaning to say the title and so not capitalize it, but you would not know if it was done by mistake. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 06:44, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
@GoodDay: "He is President...", or "His job title is President...", or "He is the president...", per MOS. Not "He is the President...". --Dervorguilla (talk) 19:46, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Ok. Sure wish we could apply this to the state governors. GoodDay (talk) 19:51, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Assessment of Donald Trump

Now that we have included Trump's personal attack against Comey (that he is a "nut job") in the lead of Comey's article, I think it's time to revisit the question of how psychiatrists, psychologists and others assess Donald Trump; ideally we should have a section titled "mental health" or something. This has been extensively discussed before and there are very solid, very high quality reliable sources that are available, and it seems very strange that the article doesn't mention this subject at all, considering its very extensive coverage in reliable sources. (In response to the latest developments, even his own officials have described him as "a complete moron."[19]) --Tataral (talk) 00:36, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

This is a bridge too far. Historians/scholars will weigh in on this subject after the conclusion of the drama, as they did with Nixon and others. As an encyclopedia, we shouldn’t prejudge anything. It certainly seems that we might have adequate evidence of the makeup of his psyche. It’s interesting and instructive to look into the minds of past figures well after their deaths, with the maturity of information then available. But, while a person is alive, we shouldn’t consider opinions of psychiatrists, psychologists, and such that have never interviewed a subject, unless the person has been convicted of something. This is still a BLP. Objective3000 (talk) 00:54, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
This has been disputed by other psychologists.[1] It could be appropriate to put in a BLP only if a qualified psychiatrist or psychologist has personally analysed him. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:25, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/psychiatrist-allen-frances-donald-trump-mentally-ill-world-class-narcissist-a7582131.html

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 20 May 2017

Qrmoo3 (talk) 11:25, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

I added [[Category:Recipients of the Order of Abdulaziz al Saud]] as per the request. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 11:36, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

GA Review

GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Donald Trump/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: KAP03 (talk · contribs) 16:15, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

@KAP03: Are these not just article message templates, and not actual maintenance tags? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 11:18, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree this review should be quick failed. A quick look at the history sees quite a bit of back-and-forth over the past 24 hours about the Saudi Arabia visit, with several large-scale reverts. That instantly disqualifies it under the "stability" part of the GA criteria. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 14:29, 22 May 2017 (UTC)


Remove "Other Political Affiliations" Tab

This should all be under the existing Political party tab.

Please view President Ronald Reagan's Wikipedia page for an example of what this should like:

Democratic (before 1962)
Republican (1962–death)

DMGUSA

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 19 May 2017

IT IS A SERIOUS OMISSION TO NOT INCLUDE A CLARIFICATION OF A PHRASE IN THE DONALD TRUMP ARTICLE. HERE IS A COPY OF THE PROBLEMATIC LINE: Although the Obama campaign had released a copy of the short-form birth certificate in 2008...When the White House later released Obama's long-form birth certificate....

THE LATTER PART, 'RELEASED OBAMA'S LONG-FORM BIRTH...' SHOULD COMPLY WITH TRUTH AND HISTORY, JUST AS THE FORMER PART, 'A COPY OF THE SHORT-..." DOES.

THE LATTER PART SHOULD READ: "WHEN THE WHITE HOUSE LATER RELEASED A PDF COPY OF THE OBAMA'S LONG-FORM..."; (NOTE: THE WORD "PDF" IS OPTIONAL, BUT THE WORD "COPY" IS MOST ESSENTIAL.)

PLEASE, PLEASE CORRECT, FOR SANITY'S SAKE. THANKS. Floydbeck (talk) 13:27, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

I have translated this request to: “Please change ‘When the White House later released Obama's long-form birth certificate’ to ‘When the White House later released a copy of Obama's long-form birth certificate’". However, this is not what the source says. Also, the image on the web is obviously a copy since you cannot put a physical object on the web (yet). Objective3000 (talk) 13:38, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure the MCP could do it, but Tron put the kibosh on that. END OF LINE -- Scjessey (talk) 16:16, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. This is needed based on the above discussion. (and lowercase letters are your friends)  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  16:41, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Special counsel

I see no mention of Special counsel and or Robert Mueller anywhere in body text of article ? Sagecandor (talk) 21:35, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Probably belongs in other articles until/unless they specifically start pointing at him. Objective3000 (talk) 22:07, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree that it should be included in this article, but it's sufficient to only mention it briefly in the body for now. It's a highly notable development related to Trump and directly related to his firing of the FBI Director. --Tataral (talk) 23:17, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
It deserves mention somewhere, but not necessarily that detailed here, because it will be part of this existing section. The details will be going here: Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections#Investigation by Special Counsel. We are developing this content. Come and help us. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:04, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
Okay, but currently, Special counsel not mentioned anywhere in the body text, at all ? Sagecandor (talk) 16:16, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Photograph chosen is biased to the point of being a joke!

NO ACTION
No consensus to change the photo from the official photograph. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:48, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion 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.

Rarely have I witnessed such an overt (and I mean overt!) display of political basis on Wikipedia as exhibited by the choice of the photograph used for President Trump! Whereas on the Hillary Clinton article we are confronted with a radiant, smiling Mrs. Clinton, on this article we see a bad hair day, scowling Mr. Trump. The photograph used on election night by CBS (never accused of being pro-Trump) would be far more appropriate.

See, for example, 3:59.44 of this video from election night on CBS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktx8YfHkWU0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by HistoryBuff14 (talk • contribs)

@HistoryBuff14: That's literally the official White House portrait. Take up your complaints of bias with the White House and Mr. Trump. EvergreenFir (talk) 18:02, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
That’s his official portrait? As my Jewish friends would so succinctly put it: “Oy vey!” I withdraw my complaint and express my apologies to all. This must be the most inept administration regarding PR in our nation’s history!HistoryBuff14 (talk) 18:08, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
@HistoryBuff14: Yes, indeedily it is his official one! See here. Oy vey indeed! EvergreenFir (talk) 18:13, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
Don't feel bad HistoryBuff14, I thought it was a joke too when I first saw it. Then I thought maybe it was supposed to look like Barnabas Collins.- MrX 20:32, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
No apology necessary, HistoryBuff. We all felt the same. When this came out we all said, "What was he thinking???" But apparently that was exactly the image he wanted, for him to be glowering at us from every post office and government office wall. He often scowls for photographs - maybe he thinks it makes him look strong, I am told he studies the Clint Eastwood scowl and tries to match it. I really didn't think he would do it for his official presidential photo, but there you are. --MelanieN (talk) 20:39, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
I think this is an excellent photo for the first term, showing that he's not just another grinning bleepity bleep. 😁 Anythingyouwant (talk) 21:42, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
Luckily at least it is definitive. We spent the better part of a year arguing endlessly over what image to use for his infobox. We all agreed that the official photo as president would be the one we use. So like this photo or not, at least the arguments are over. --MelanieN (talk) 23:41, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
This picture 📷 is literally used by the white house 🏠 site, and official pictures like these are always used for politicians.
(Donald Trung (talk) 05:49, 28 May 2017 (UTC)).
I like the photo, it takes the man seriously. – Athaenara ✉ 09:28, 28 May 2017 (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.

Media coverage and public perception of the campaign

The lead section currently summarizes media coverage and public perception of Trump's presidential campaign by saying:

Many of his campaign statements were controversial or false, generating much free media coverage.

After taking a few weeks off this page and coming back with a fresh reading, this sentence stands out as a "sore thumb" of unencyclopedic tone in an otherwise well-written and neutral lead section. It also emphasizes only a negative aspect of Trump's campaign while not mentioning for example Trump's unusual policies or the support he enjoyed at rallies; this can be construed as a lack of balance per WP:NPOV. For those reasons, I would suggest amending this sentence thus:

His campaign received an unusually high level of earned media coverage and rally attendance due to his boisterous style, unconventional policies, and controversial or false statements.

Comments welcome. — JFG talk 08:15, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

I disagree with the proposed change. I also don't think the lead is particularly well written. It deliberately downplays the criticism of him, even by cherry-picking which criticism that gets mentioned, as in "His political positions have been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, and nationalist", when just as many scholars and commentators have used terms such as fascist, authoritarian and far-right, and when most scholars and commentators agree he isn't just a populist (or protectionist, etc.) politician of the usual sort, but something different. Also, it's high time to consider adding something about the whole obstruction of justice issue (which includes, but is not limited to, the firing of Comey) and talk of impeachment to the lead. --Tataral (talk) 14:35, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
If you think the lead is not neutral, feel free to make suggestions to improve the text (in another thread please; this one is to discuss a specific proposal on just one sentence). — JFG talk 16:02, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
I also disagree. The suggested edit is another run on sentence meant to distract. @Tataral: I agree with you about the downplaying of criticism. Note that the whole article downplays the criticism and what little criticism is allowed is couched in soft terms. There has even been an attempt to soften Trump's "five children from three marriages," to "three marriages and five children" as if the children arrived through spontaneous generation. The article also widely diverts from the standard of having "Early life" first and stuffs the confusing and nonsensical "Ancestry" at the top. There are no presidential BLP's that do this. SW3 5DL (talk) 15:46, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
Could we stay on topic in this thread please? You may open separate threads to discuss your other grievances about the article. — JFG talk 16:02, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
On the contrary, the posts above are on topic. There is a chronic problem of downplaying any negativity or criticism of Trump in this article. BLP considerations are one thing, but the rest is Trumpian standards not Wikipedia standards. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:12, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
Dear SW3 5DL, those are certainly worthwhile questions to ask, but please ask them in another thread. I came up with a precise and narrow suggestion to discuss, please let's focus on that here. I hear that you don't like this proposal; fine. Let's hear what other people say. — JFG talk 19:29, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
You opened this thread because you want to sanitize yet another sentence in this article. Two editors have just told you they don't agree. You seem to be the one off topic. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:43, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Way too wordy without the benefit of conveying any information of real importance. It also dilutes the very notable fact that he is frequently makes false statements. His policies are not unusual; they're just controversial.- MrX 20:20, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Agree it is way too wordy and does not improve the reader's understanding. SW3 5DL (talk) 20:39, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - as per comments by MrX and SW3 5DL. I agree with them on this. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:44, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I would oppose any edit that further waters down the defining characteristic of Trump as a habitual liar who made so many outrageous comments during the campaign (and since), the breathless media could barely keep up. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:20, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Approval Rating

Donald J. Trump has one of the lowest approval ratings in history, 40%. Ityaboi44r (talk) 20:58, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

There's an article for that. — JFG talk 18:46, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Lede sentence survey

I implemented what appears to be the choice in the survey, B4, but it has been reverted. It appears to me that the new wording, 'won the election, lost the popular vote' etc., has consensus in the survey and I would like to put it back, especially as we've implemented changes with far fewer votes, and MelanieN's comment shows she clearly supports B4. SW3 5DL (talk) 16:54, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

MelanieN is a fine editor but she is not the final arbiter of consensus; neither are you, neither am I. The substantive issue with your edit is that the claimed local consensus only involves a few people and goes against a much wider consensus to reject all variants of "losing the popular vote" for the lead section text, as documented in a recent RfC. Several participants mentioned in this new thread that option B4 went against the wider consensus, as what was supposed to be a quick informal survey turned into walls of text WP:REHASHing the same arguments from prior discussions.
Eventually this thread died from exhaustion, but you resurrected it from the archives and you called for a formal close. So far, so good, however you barely waited a few days with no closer stepping forward, and proceeded to "implement consensus" all by yourself. That's WP:GAMING, plain and simple. I also note that an experienced closer for delicate matters, Winged Blades of Godric, commented that he was "not even sure this qualifies for a closure". Either let it go, like the proverbial deceased equine, or wait for an admin to properly close the thread. In the meantime, the current consensus (item 15), with uncontested minor changes, is still in force. — JFG talk 18:09, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
RfCs do not have to be formally closed when consensus is clear (see WP:RFC and WP:NOTBURO). JFG, do you dispute that the supermajority of seven editors supporting one version, while the next most popular version only has two supporters, is an clear indication of consensus?- MrX 18:27, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree with MrX. This survey does not require a formal closure. There is a clear consensus and I see no reason not to implement it. I would add that there is nothing in policy giving less weight to anything called "local editors" ivotes. SW3 5DL (talk) 19:30, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

moved discussion from editor talk page to here where it belongs

Greetings SW3 5DL. With this edit you claimed to "implement new consensus per talk page" but the discussion on the "popular vote" wording has not been closed and does not clearly establish a consensus for your change. You should know better, as you yourself restored the thread from the archive and requested a formal close of the discussion a week ago. Please respect the process. — JFG talk 14:55, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

JFG, there is a clear consensus, especially as we've implemented change with far fewer ivotes, and I note you implemented you choice for the Russian Ties without anyone supporting your choice. I do respect the process which is why I've gone to the talk page. SW3 5DL (talk) 17:02, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
JFG, as I've explained to you before, RfCs do not have to be formally closed when consensus is clear. Do you dispute that the supermajority of seven editors supporting one version, while the next most popular version only has two supporters, is an clear indication of consensus?- MrX 17:07, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
The issue is that this local consensus goes against a much wider consensus endorsed by a recent RfC. I will comment further on the article talk page. — JFG talk 17:32, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
No, that's not the issue at all. This is a new consensus and the RfC you keep referring to does not say what you claim it does, and in any event, consensus can and has changed. SW3 5DL (talk) 17:58, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
JFG, I'm not sure what you mean by "a much wider consensus" as pertains to the sentence in dispute. Perhaps you could elaborate?- MrX 18:10, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
JFG, As I mentioned in a comment above, there is nothing in policy about 'local editors.' Nor did I find anything in policy that says the ivotes of these 'local editors' carry less weight than editors from the 'wider community.' In addition, there was nothing in policy that said consensus cannot change after an RfC. I would say that the RfC was malformed. This new survey makes it very clear that editors want to say, "won the election but lost the popular vote." This is what RS says. SW3 5DL (talk) 21:10, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
As mentioned on SW3's private talk page, I was getting ready to elaborate on the article talk page section that he graciously opened. My full comments are above; closing this so people can comment on the proper article discussion. — JFG talk 18:16, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Collapsed section was re-opened by SW3 5DL and mixed with the above discussion. Restoring original comments in the original order, minus the collapse. Please reply in the above thread #Lede sentence survey, not here. — JFG talk 20:11, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
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