User talk:Nederlandse Leeuw: Difference between revisions

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Hello, I hope you’re doing good. I noticed that you were involved in the AfD process for the lists of dynasties and states for Turkic (AfD discussion) and Iranian (AfD discussion) origin, citing how they failed WP:LISTCRITERIA.

I wanted to know your opinion on List of Pashtun dynasties, as “this list also includes rulers and dynasties who are of disputed origin, possibly originating from Afghan or other origins.” Would this qualify as too poorly defined?

What would be an example of a good type of list for this topic? Are lists like those for the Kurds fine? Or caste-groups like Rajputs or Jats? I’ve edited the Jat one quite a lot, so I want to know if it is better to avoid these lists altogether?

Sorry for dumping so many questions on you. Feel free to delete this message. Thanks. Ironborn392 (talk) 03:57, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Ironborn392, it’s a good question. When creating or reviewing such lists, we try to look for objective WP:LISTCRITERIA that are WP:DEFINING for said list. Usually, language family is WP:NONDEFINING or WP:OR/WP:SYNTH. But just language can be defining. THe Pashto language is arguably central to the identity of Pashtuns. One important issue with this contention, however, is that there is no agreement on the existence of a Standard Pashto, see Pashto#Literary Pashto. Yet, the varieties are widely described as “dialects”, not “languages”, and there is no suggestion that Pashto itself is a language family rather than a language. To me, it seems that this is a sufficient criterion to base a list on.

The fact that This list also includes rulers and dynasties who are of disputed origin, possibly originating from Afghan or other origins. does risk it becoming a catch-all for vaguely Pashtun or Afghan stuff. I would start by placing Template:Citation needed after every single WP:UNSOURCED sentence in the list. If nobody has bothered or been able to provide those reliable sources in a year or so, you can remove those sentences. If I were you, I would start there. Good day, NLeeuw (talk) 08:53, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the advice, will do. Have a good day. Ironborn392 (talk) 15:59, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, would you permit another attempt at a list for Turkic or Persian states if the lists were better defined? For example, not by language group or culture (i.e. Persianate states don’t count for Persians), but solely by origin? Ironborn392 (talk) 16:29, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m not in the business of “permitting” or prohibiting anything; I’m just a regular editor like you. But I would discourage the creation of all such lists based on language group, culture or origin, as these traits tend to be inherently subjective and contentious. If anything, I would try to focus on agreed geographical boundaries wherever possible. See for example List of tribes and states in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. All items in this list must be situated on the territories of contemporary Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. That way, disputes regarding ethnic, linguistic, national, cultural or ‘original’ identity may be kept to a minimum. So a list of tribes and states in Afghanistan (within its internationally recognised borders) would be the appropriate scope. It should be easier to identify, geographically, where a group of people or a state existed, rather than what their ethnic, linguistic, national, cultural or ‘original’ identity may have been. Good day, NLeeuw (talk) 16:55, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you know it’s unsourced you simply should not add it. So why did you do it? Doug Weller talk 14:44, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good question. I sometimes do that when I intend to add a source later, or expect that it would be easy for anyone else to find and add a source. Sometimes I do that when I’ve rewritten an unsourced sentence that I think is inaccurate to a sentence that is more accurate, but that people still shouldn’t take my word for it, and that a source is still warranted. I do this especially when I’m editing Wikipedia on my phone and finding and citing sources is a lot more complicated than from a desktop or laptop. It is an admittedly lazy/sloppy practice. Is it prohibited? NLeeuw (talk) 14:59, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is. See WP:VERIFY, specifically WP:BURDEN Doug Weller talk 15:04, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think so. WP:BURDEN says If you think the material is verifiable, you are encouraged to provide an inline citation yourself before removing or tagging it. I take that to mean that I’m encouraged to provide an inline citation to material that I think is verifiable before tagging (or removing), but I’m not required to. It does not say whether the person who added the material in the first place must be someone other than myself, so I think it can be me. The only thing I’m not allowed to do is to restore[ material] without an inline citation to a reliable source once it has been removed by anyone.

Plus, Whether or how quickly material should be removed for lacking an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. In my view, when I’m (a) adding or (b) rewriting an unsourced sentence, and add a cn tag, I’m leaving the article in a better state than I found it, especially in scenario (b). For scenario (a), you could make a case that it’s not necessarily better than before, but that might depend on the circumstances as well.

Nevertheless, other editors may – depending on circumstances – always remove such a sentence (tag or no tag), and I may not restore it until I’ve provided a source (as I intended to do, or considered easy for others to do). I’m not sure if this is a valid interpretation of WP:BURDEN, but I think it is. Good day, NLeeuw (talk) 16:45, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Nederlandse Leeuw.

We are reaching out as you have been highlighted by the Invitation List tool as someone who may be potentially interested in our upcoming #MedievalWiki event on Friday 25th October.

You can find out more about the event on the registration page. We hope to see you there!

With best wishes, Medievalfran (talk) 18:46, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately I’ll be attending a different event at that time, but the project seems interesting to me. I’m open to being introduced to it some other time. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. NLeeuw (talk) 20:52, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

	The Barnstar of Diplomacy
	Your approach the things is what we’re looking for in every editor….. You should think of grabbing some administration tools becoming an administrator…..my assumption is you’ll have widespread support. Moxy🍁 21:46, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I gratefully accept the kind words. But it is only possible to be so diplomatic when dealing with such friendly and constructive editors as yourself. I think a role as an administrator would not really suit me, but I appreciate the suggestion that you think me worthy of becoming one. NLeeuw (talk) 21:52, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see by my talk page userbox post…. I also think being an administrator would be tough and something most common sense individual would avoid Wikipedia:Articles are more important than policy. Again- Good job! Moxy🍁 21:59, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t know if you saw my nominations from this October 28 Tfd, but very similar to your nominations, we have too many sidebars on almost every topic. For world leaders and politicians it is a complete mess. A lot of them are better of being navboxes. Similar to NENAN, I’m thinking of creating NENAS – Not everything needs a sidebar. I’ve updated my NENAT essay to make mention of WP:Leadsidebar. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:58, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WikiCleanerMan Hey, thanks for telling me! I didn’t see those nominations, but I very much agree. The problem I’m currently facing is trying to justify the very existence/purpose of topics footers. At first, I thought they were an ideal replacement for redundant sidebars due to the great overlap that existed in practice already anway. But Moxy pointed out to me how topics footers are now blowing out of proportion as well, even if they are autocollapsed and don’t mess up the upper-right corner of articles like sidebars do. Long story short: we seem to be moving the problem of overlinking, rather than solving it. At User:Nederlandse Leeuw/Culture sidebars#Purpose of topics footers, I’ve been gathering some thoughts, but it’s not well-structured yet.

My preliminary conclusion is: topics footers emerged originally as duplicates of categories for purely topographical navigation between cities and local administrative areas within a given administrative division, such as U.S. states or states of India. The only 3 advantages they had (and still have) over categories, is that you can

1. immediately see the other members (articles) of a category and
2. immediately navigate to them,
3. without first leaving the page you’re currently on.

That’s it. That’s the only reason why these topics footers exist. There has never been a successful, concerted effort to develop standards for scope, inclusion criteria, or even layout for such topics footers. Many of them were soon expanded with arbitrary links to the History, Politics, Economy, Society and Culture (these 5 themes are the most common, but there are many more) of a given region,

• without any discussion on talk pages whatsoever, without any clear names or documentation for the subject, purpose, usage or scope of the topics footer (in violation of WP:TG no. #3 Template function should be clear from the template name, and #5 Templates should be clearly documented as to their usage and scope.),
• and disregarding (existing) categorisation or lists (arguably in violation of WP:TG no. #6 Templates should not be used to create lists of links to other articles when a category, list page, or “See also” section list can perform the same function.).
• The biggest ones now have well over 100 arbitrary links and have become almost completely useless (arguably in violation of WP:TG no. #8 Templates that violate the guidelines on this page, have poorly defined function, are redundant (…) or violate any Wikipedia policies may be nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion.).
• Of course, most of these topics footers are now autocollapsed to reduce their sheer size and obstruction to the reader, even if the layout of the rest of the article is barely affected due it being a footer below the article. But this is arguably in violation of WP:TG no. #1: They should also not be used to “collapse” or “hide” content from the reader. Moreover, autocollapsing these topics footers also diminishes advantage no. #1, that you can immediately see the other members (articles) of a category. You’re just forced to click ‘Show’ instead of the relevant category below (even though the categories are far more precise in leading you to closely related articles instead of a jungle of 100+ arbitrary links of articles that have soooooooomething to do with Fooland)…..
• Besides, I’ve noticed that the topics footers suffer almost as much from mismatches between links to articles and transclusions by articles as the culture sidebars do. To quote myself from 3 days ago: Template:Wales topics has 138 links (!), and 282 transclusions (!!). I think this is wayyy too much to begin with, even before we ask the question whether we should merge Template:Culture of Wales into it or not. The fact that it has almost double the number transclusions to the number of links suggests that people are dumping the footer Template:Wales topics under lots of articles that they think are of general importance to “Wales”, regardless of whether those articles are actually mentioned in the footer itself. That is a sign of poor editing practices.

This is simply not possible with categories: they will by definition ALWAYS properly link between articles and the categories those articles are in. Maintenance of categories is far easier and much more transparent than these topics footers.

So, I’m in a bit of a crisis. How am I supposed to justify the existence of topics footers if I don’t see their purpose? And: should our conclusion be that all topics footers should just be deleted because they so apparently blatantly violate common guidelines for templates? I’m not sure I’m willing to embark on such a huge effort that will lead to much more pushback than with the phaseout of culture sidebars.

Sorry to unload all these thoughts on you. I hope I’m not overwhelming you, but as probably one of the most active users seeking to clean up templates around here (in which you honour your username very much!), you might be the exact person who could give me helpful advice on this. But please don’t feel like you have to answer it all (at once). I value your input. Good day, NLeeuw (talk) 15:02, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A bloated navbox is never a concern even if it contains links relevant to the subject. For instance, Iran-United States relations and Soviet Union-United States relations navboxes are super huge, but don’t violate any policy of size, linking of articles, navigation, MOS, or anything. Dividing up subjects to each and every navbox is not ideal unless it warrants it. But of course there are exceptions where it can be allowed. But it depends. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 21:34, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly has racism against turkish people. I am guessing you had some problems with turks growing up in your home country. Your actions and edits makes you look inhuman, go to some therapist and let it all out.

Here is why you are a racist(maybe racism in your subconscious):

The term MENAT explicitly includes Turkey, which is sometimes excluded from MENA definitions.

Edits with comment: “m”

The term MENAT explicitly includes Turkey, which is usually excluded from MENA definitions, even though Turkey is almost always considered part of the ‘Middle East’.

Whoa there cowboy, you didn’t have to insert your own opinion here. Wiki admins try not to be racist against turks — impossible. Your hate just degrades yourself to a lesser being by allowing hate in your mind and heart, not the turks. ~2025-34161-87 (talk) 23:46, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]