Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Orders, decorations, and medals

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Proposal: Moving post-nominals from lead sentences to article bodies

An RM that will be of interest to editors here. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:24, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:32, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Deprecated language in citations for UK honours

Lists such as 1980 New Year Honours include the citation for the award, copied verbatim from the official source announcing the honours. This sometimes includes language we would not see used today, nor use in a Wikipedia article today, such as "For service to the disabled." and "For service to physically handicapped children." Should we change these to "For service to disabled people." and "For service to physically disabled children.", or should we leave them as they were originally written? Smasongarrison (talk · contribs) believes we should change them in line with the essay MOS:DISAB; I believe we should retain the original text. Rather than set up a formal RfC I am asking members of this most relevant wikiproject for their thoughts on this, and will alert other relevant Wikiprojects (Disability, Lists, UK, Awards).

My personal view is that if we change the wording, we could then see further requests for change in other areas of citations as language changes over time, or geographical disputes over county changes etc. Someone this year has an honour " For services to Children and Young People with Special Educational Needs.": that terminology may not be in use in 10 years' time.

The 1980 list has a statement Names and titles of recipients are shown as they appeared in this honours list. We could perhaps expand that to include a statement about the language of the citations, something like: The language of the citations may not meet current standards, e.g. in references to "handicap".

Your thoughts? PamD 17:04, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Definitely leave them as originally written. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a revisionist work. This is the top of a very slippery slope. -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:15, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

They are direct quotes of the citations, leave them as they are. Also we don't do disclaimers or editorial commentary. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:06, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

I think that this is a larger question about whether UK honors should follow the style guides of Wikipedia, such as capitalization etc. I also note that Wikipedia is not a primary source, and using deprecated terms is not consistent with any guidance that I'm aware of, such as Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Words to watch.

> Try to state the facts more simply without using such loaded words; for example, "Jim said he paid for the sandwich". Strive to eliminate flattering expressions, disparaging, vague, or clichéd, or that endorse a particular point of view (unless those expressions are part of a quote from noteworthy sources).

Seems pretty apt here. However, I recognize that I am not active in this community, and stumbled into these lists, while sorting categories. Mason (talk) 18:00, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

This also affects the honours list articles for Australia, Canada and New Zealand, I'm in favour of not changing citations. Nford24 (PE121 Personnel Request Form) 23:16, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Good point. Have alerted WikiProjects Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Commonwealth. PamD 07:04, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I think the direct quotes should be kept as is in the lists. In prose it's fine to reword them. ITBF (talk) 08:22, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely leave them as is, no question about it. Wikipedia is not censored and we are not a soapbox to right any perceived wrongs in the world. 5225_C (talk • contributions) 09:36, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Leave them as is; any acceptable term eventually becomes a slur in some mouths and there's no keeping ahead of that wave. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 13:04, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I am pleased 'Lists such as 1980 New Year Honours include the citation for the award, copied verbatim from the official source announcing the honours." I would hope the 400 plus similiar lists are 'copied verbatim from the official source'. Thankfully, the UK unlike Australia still gazettes the names of recipients in the New Year and Queen's Birthday honours. Anthony Staunton (talk) 15:25, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

When quoting the honour, it should be copied verbatim. When referring to the honour when composing new text, it can be written in today's English. So, in a list of honours, you would have:

1970, O.B.E., to John Smith, for service to the handicapped.

And in a biography of John Smith, you would have:

In 1970, he was awarded the O.B.E. for his work with disabled people. Daveosaurus (talk) 07:26, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree, I feel like this is the best way of going about it. Turnagra (talk) 09:32, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Completely incorrect, since the correct form is "he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1970 New Year Honours for services to the handicapped". Not "awarded" and not "O.B.E." and certainly not some modern revisionist doublespeak since it's perfectly obvious that this is the form of words used in the citation. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:18, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Necrothesp, except that I would put quote marks round "for services to the handicapped" to point out that this is the exact wording used in the honours list, regardless of whether it was wording which might be different today: I'd put quotes round "For services to local government" just the same way. PamD 14:48, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

It should use the original citation, but that should be in quotation marks where appropriate (eg in text). Tables can have a header saying it is original citation. Changing the citation would be a POV alteration. None of the examples given are offensive, even if they sound dated. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:19, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Silver Star listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Silver Star to be moved to Silver Star Medal. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 16:00, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}}, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.