Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section: Difference between revisions

According to MOS:LEADCITE, if I interpret correctly, references in lead sections may be omitted if the information is already in the body and references can be found there. I think there’s a problem with this guideline: if a reader wants to verify some information in the lead section, we’re forcing them to look through the article for that specific piece of information. Finding it may not be easy at all, for example if the information is phrased differently, or found in an unexpected section, or in the middle of a lot of text, or if the user is not familiar with Ctrl + F, or doesn’t have the lucidity to understand where the information is likely to be found by just scanning the table of contents, or even if they don’t know about this guideline and don’t assume that the source for the information can be found in the article body! In short, I think this guideline may make verifiability harder for readers. Sophivorus (talk) 11:52, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest that a user who wants to verify and edit the lead (per Wikipedia policies) should read the article first, which solves the issue. If the lead is supposed to be a summary of the body, then the only way to assure that is to actually read the body. Praemonitus (talk) 15:40, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requiring editors to read the article in order to edit the lead seems totally reasonable to me. However, requiring readers (aka not editors) to read the article in order to verify the information in the lead, seems unreasonable to me, per the reasons listed above. Sophivorus (talk) 15:47, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Controversial biographical facts about living people should be sourced, regardless, in my opinion. If a claim is often challenged then it might be a good idea to source that too. But I also think we should work on the principle of requiring readers to read the article because the lead is a summary of the article content, not an abridgment. I think that omitting the sources from the lead helps to make that distinction clearer. Betty Logan (talk) 19:18, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m unclear why your latter concern would be a requirement. If the helpful reader can’t edit the article because of semi-protection (or other reasons such as COI), they are free to report it on the talk page and the matter can be addressed by auto-confirmed editors. Otherwise, this issue just seems speculative. Praemonitus (talk) 19:38, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I know that MOS:CITELEAD has been a subject of perennial criticism. I can’t find the most recent discussion, but a prior one from a year ago is here. I’m increasingly coming to the view that it should be reformed, but it would take a large-scale discussion that extensively considers past consensus to get it changed. Sdkb ^talk 17:48, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some articles of wikipedia have citationless leads while others cite reliable sources. What do the rules say? What happens in case something is disputed (for example, the date of birth or the name a person was born with, if it was different at birth)?-Baangla (talk) 07:01, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The rules say that content that could reasonably be disputed must be cited. Some disputes are not reasonable. And when the lead summarizes material that is elaborated later with proper citations, then that material is cited. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:03, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why should a random reader know that the lead is a summary of content found below? Why should a random reader know that citations for the content they are reading right now, can be found in some section below? Sophivorus (talk) 13:31, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If they don’t know and complain about the lack of sourcing, they’ll be told. Gawaon (talk) 16:06, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I like MOS:LEADCITE. I think it avoids stuffing the full article in the lead. I wonder if it is an option to “cite” an article section in the lead. I agree that we shouldn’t make readers Ctrl-F, but encouraging them to skip the body altogether (by lead citations) seems self-defeating. Dw31415 (talk) 21:25, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can link to a relevant section, e.g., [[#Career|During her career]] in any section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:44, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Four thoughts:

• Verifiability does not inherently require little blue clicky numbers. A reader is able to verify our content if they can find a reliable source through any method at all, including methods like “using their favorite web search engine” or “contacting a reference librarian”. Merely hoping that they would look at another section for a citation does not seem too onerous by comparison.
• Remember how short most of our articles are. The median article has 13 sentences. 80% of our articles have less than 1,000 words (3–4 minutes reading time). Even someone who is impatient to find the ref can manage to glance over that much.
• Readers mostly (99.7%) don’t care about the sources. For example, you recently edited Electricity sector in Argentina. There are 68 refs in that article. There were about 6000 page views during the last year. That means that during the last year (if we assume even distribution), about 30% of the sources in the article were checked once and 70% were never clicked through (or, if you prefer a different distribution, 15% were checked twice and 85% never; or 10% were checked three times and 90% never). The other 5,982 page views had nobody clicking on them. Readers almost never check the refs. Therefore we should not put too much emphasis on “the readers” when we are talking about the correct way to organize citations.
• Sometimes the difficulty with sourcing the lead is that we’re trying to provide summaries. The sources cited in the body may provide details (“Wonderpam is indicated for the treatment of infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter baumannii, Burkholderia cepacia, Burkholderia pseudomallei, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Alcaligenes faecalis, and Moraxella catarrhalis“) and we want to provide a general statement in the lead like “used to treat bacterial infections”. Or similarly, we may have sources providing great detail about a person’s career, but not one that says something vague like “a long career in politics”, and while it’s a reasonable summary, trying to cite it may produce complaints from that class of editors who think that if it’s not Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing, it’s original research. In such cases, leaving it uncited might reduce pointless drama.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:10, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the section titled, “Editing the lead section” please add that an editor can edit just the lead, without having to open up the whole article for editing.-Baangla (talk) 06:55, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The lead section has no individual edit link, so please explain what you mean. Praemonitus (talk) 15:17, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On a mobile, when anyone clicks the 🖋️ icon on the top right, only the lead is editable, not the whole article.-Baangla (talk) 15:47, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can do the same on desktop via gadget. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:33, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, well then it’s not universal so the statement would need provisos. Praemonitus (talk) 14:23, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fall of Phnom Penh, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. (RfC is about MOS:REDUNDANCY) Dw31415 (talk) 01:07, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to ask for clarification about how MOS:LEADLANG is meant to apply when more than one non-English language is closely associated with the subject. The thread at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section/Archive 23#LEADLANG clarification and the ongoing RfC at Talk:Hebron (about including both Arabic and Hebrew names in the lead) show that editors are reading this differently.

LEADLANG currently says that “a single equivalent name in another language may be included in the lead sentence”, but the same numbered list also says that “separate languages should be divided by semicolons; romanizations of non-Latin scripts, by commas”. In [[1]] thread, @SMcCandlish commented that “separate languages should be divided by semicolons; romanizations of non-Latin scripts, by commas” should be added in a footnote which makes sense but was note that obvious with the current wording.

My concrete question is:

• In cases where more than one non-English language is closely associated with the subject, is LEADLANG intended to mean that

(a) we keep one foreign-language equivalent in the lead sentence and move the others to a footnote (or a “Names” section),

or (b) we move all non-English equivalents to a footnote and keep only the English name in the lead sentence?

It would be helpful if the guideline could state this explicitly, so editors facing cases like Hebron (Arabic and Hebrew) have a clear answer to rely on. Michael Boutboul (talk) 10:07, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’d say that, if two or more non-English languages are about equally relevant, moving them all to a note is the logical outcome. Gawaon (talk) 10:37, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

+1 Michael Boutboul (talk) 15:04, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That’s great, because one of them is definitely more relevant than the others (there is more than two). M.Bitton (talk) 19:33, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“If you want to start a war, keep one non-English equivalent in the lead and move all the others to a footnote. If you want to keep the peace, move all of them to a footnote.” Largoplazo (talk) 13:28, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

+1 Michael Boutboul (talk) 15:04, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That’s an easy choice. Since peace is not merely the absence of war, we’ll just keep the relevant non-English equivalent. M.Bitton (talk) 19:35, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Gawaon, @Largoplazo (and any other editor), would you accept to add this kind of sentence in MOS:FOREIGNEQUIV: “When more than one non-English language is closely associated with the subject, the lead sentence should normally not single out one of them. In such cases, all non-English equivalents should be placed together in a single explanatory footnote (or in a “Names” section or similar), rather than in the text of the first sentence, in order to avoid clutter and disputes over which language to feature” or should I launch a RfC for that? Michael Boutboul (talk) 09:14, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That’s a misleading question: the Arabic name is the undisputed local name, while the Hebrew name isn’t (it’s literally a foreign name with no special local status). Furthermore, adding the Hebrew name would serve no purpose other than to include a cherry picked part of the etymology in the lead sentence (something that is specifically disallowed by MOS:FOREIGNEQUIV). M.Bitton (talk) 19:43, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please don’t conflate two separate issues. Here, I am only requesting a clarification of the rule, not discussing a specific case. Michael Boutboul (talk) 20:24, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes discussing the specific case(s) helps us make sure that we’re clarifying the rule correctly.

I suspect that some more complicated cases could be found in India, which is enormously multilingual. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No objections from me, though I doubt it’ll help much. (The disputes will then simply be about whether languages are really “closely associated” with the subject.) Gawaon (talk) 00:10, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should also address whether putting alternative names in the infobox (if any) is sufficient, or if we want a footnote and infobox content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:36, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We have this problem on pages relating to Algeria. The country has two official languages, which are also the two spoken languages: Arabic and Berber (Tamazight).

However, due to pov-pushing, Arabic is always imposed, even for Berber-speaking regions. The MOS:FOREIGNEQUIV recommendations are cited as justification for systematically eliminating any visibility of the Berber language at the top of articles, disregarding any encyclopedic balance (even though this official language is used on town hall facades, road signs, APS news reports, etc.).

So, regardless of the solution chosen (two or more languages ​​at the top, a footnote, etc.), when there are several official languages, they must be given equal weight, and Wikipedia must not be used as a platform to favor one over the other. Monsieur Patillo (talk) 23:18, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. 1) Nobody speaks Tamazight (an artificial language). 2) The country only has one official written language (the script for the other hasn’t even been chosen, much less standardized). 3) We had a RfC about it (in which the misleading and simplistic statements were exposed for what they are). M.Bitton (talk) 23:31, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@M.Bitton, are you sure about that? We have an article about Tamazight, and it says nothing about it being an artificial language. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I am certain that it is an artificial language (as in not spoken by anyone) in Algeria. M.Bitton (talk) 23:41, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please refrain from imposing personal opinions and judgments (“an artificial language”). The RFC is inconclusive; it resulted in a tie (Talk:Algeria/Archive_3#RFC_on_Infobox_and_Lede). The withdrawal is not based on any established consensus but on a unilateral decision to remove the Tamazight names, justified by MOS:LEDE (example [2]). Monsieur Patillo (talk) 23:44, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is an artificial language (that nobody speaks). This is a fact. M.Bitton (talk) 23:48, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tamazight is a language, comprised of several dialects, spoken by 25-30% of Algerians according to INALCO in Paris[3]] The Algerian Press Service website publishes several news items daily, for example: [4].

There are, of course, conspiracy theories to deny this, such as this one: [5] Monsieur Patillo (talk) 00:00, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You mean “comprised of mutually unintelligible languages”. Anyway, Abderrezak Dourari (who needs no introduction) describes it as what it is “an artificial language that nobody speaks and nobody understands, not even the ones who invented it in a lab”. M.Bitton (talk) 00:05, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That’s INALCO’s opinion, not mine.

Dourari expressed this opinion in the press, not through academic work. We had the case of Abdou Elimam [6], who claimed that Algerian Arabic was the Punic language that had miraculously survived, before being debunked by the scientific community [7].

We can incidentally find the same rhetoric regarding literary Arabic in academic publications. Example: How can we expect a child to love an artificial language that is forced upon them, if the teacher strives to devalue and make them hate the idioms of their own verbal repertoire? in Le Système éducatif algérien face à l’hybridation linguistique by N. Khelouz. Therefore, please refrain from putting forward personal opinions based on press clippings or partial accounts of debates between specialists, and stick to what is widely accepted. Monsieur Patillo (talk) 00:23, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Abderrezak Dourari is not a random person, he is the director of the National Pedagogical and Linguistic Centre for the teaching of Tamazight. Anyway, following me here to argue about something that has been discussed ad nauseam isn’t going to achieve anything. M.Bitton (talk) 00:27, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]