Template talk:Discrimination

Scope: Articles on discriminatory subjects

Should we be including all articles on subjects arising from some form of discrimination? I have the impression this navbox is already too big, but if we include an article like LGBTQ grooming conspiracy theory, then it seems implicit that all stereotypes and conspiracy theories will also be considered fair game. To begin to see the scope of such articles, start at Antisemitic trope and go from there. Note that the sidebar template is expanded to show:

• Andinia Plan
• Blood libel
• Cohen Plan
• Cultural Bolshevism
• Cultural Marxism
• Deicide
• Franklin Prophecy
• Host desecration
• International Jewish conspiracy
• Jewish lobby
• Jewish war conspiracy theory
• Judensau
• Judeo-Bolshevism
  • Żydokomuna
• Judeo-Masonism
• Kosher tax
• QAnon
• Rootless cosmopolitan
  • Doctors' plot
  • Slánský trial
• Self-hating Jew
• Stab-in-the-back myth
• White genocide
• ZOG conspiracy

But even if not all of these fit our definition of “discrimination”, there are even more possible topics to consider in the rest of the sidebar: {{Antisemitism sidebar}}.

This discussion raised per TenorTwelve’s recent revert[1] of my edit, in which I removed LGBTQ grooming conspiracy theory, Atlanta Braves tomahawk chop and name controversy, Chicago Blackhawks name and logo controversy and Kansas City Chiefs name controversy as being peripheral to the template’s purpose. — HTGS (talk) 00:40, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia:WikiProject Discrimination, Wikipedia:WikiProject Human rights, Wikipedia:WikiProject Sociology, Wikipedia:WikiProject History, Wikipedia:WikiProject Disability and Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBTQ+ studies. Raladic (talk) 17:22, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

I thought it was reasonable to remove those items, but, I would remove so many more. It's become such a huge list that it's really more of a "list of..." page then a template, it's not appropriate for a sidebar anymore. It feels like this template is being used instead of using categories, like: Category:Discrimination. However, I'm having a hard time finding the relevant guidelines to consider. Denaar (talk) 01:00, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

The relevant guideline is WP:SIDEBAR, and probably the text you’re looking for begins with: “Navigation templates are particularly useful for a small, well-defined group of articles; templates with a large number of links are not forbidden, but can appear overly busy and be hard to read and use.”

I agree though, and perhaps the best course of action would be to split it up. I think the most useful way of organizing lists for the reader would look a lot like what {{ Antisemitism sidebar}} looks like, rather than providing navigation that links someone reading Age of candidacy to Anti-Catholicism, when such readers are unlikely to be looking so broadly at discrimination as a subject of study. — HTGS (talk) 01:18, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

That makes sense. I think the main guideline is WP:NAV "navbox templates should only be created when they would be genuinely useful as navigational tools", and not everything needs a navbox WP:NENAN and lastly, Categories, lists, and navigation templates WP:CLNT. Forms of discrimination makes total sense as a grouping, where navigation between them helps one have a complete picture. But the way it is now, it doesn't feel like it's aiding in navigation. Denaar (talk) 01:27, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

WP:NAV and WP:NENAN are both essays, so they’re subordinate to WP:CLNT but they’re still both reasonable. — HTGS (talk) 06:38, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Regarding the mascot articles: I added the three team articles because there were people that were trying to remove the template from those pages, saying that those pages weren’t linked in the template, so I added the three specific teams with active names so it would be harder to remove the template from those pages. Of course, I argued that the mascot controversy article should cover all of them, but there were people that argued otherwise. -TenorTwelve (talk) 01:41, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

That makes sense. But after reading through the guidelines, I think we should think of this navigation bar as a "top category" and there should be "subcategory" nav bars. So Maybe there is the main discrimination pages, then separate sub-navigation bars for say - Social, Religious, Race/Ethnicity. So "Manifestations of Discrimination" could be it's own nav bar. I'm just thinking this through/throwing ideas out. Denaar (talk) 01:55, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Per my reply below, I would include the sports-team-name-debate articles in a category like “Examples of discrimination”, rather than “Manifestations of discrimination”. So an article like Genocide would be a manifestation, but the Holocaust would be an example. I do suspect that such a navbox/sidebar would be far too long, but at least that could be addressed properly by someone who wanted to begin compiling the list there, rather than trying to make the list complete at this template. — HTGS (talk) 07:07, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

@TenorTwelve You’re right that WP:BIDIRECTIONAL doesn’t always need to apply, but I think if you’re getting pushback at the article and at the template by independent editors, you should really be taking the issue to the talk page, rather than reverting. I hadn’t checked to see how recently those articles had been added, but if it was relatively recent then this probably also fits WP:BRD more explicitly, not just in principle.

As for the substantive question, I really don’t see that those pages need the sidebar, just as I don’t think the sidebar needs them. These are examples of discrimination, not articles about discrimination as an area of study, or even topics on types of manifestations of discrimination. And honestly, even as examples of discrimination, I’m not sure that they even meet that threshold very well; the debate over how to name a sports team doesn’t fit my model of discrimination, and for many people on both sides I get the impression it’s not really about discrimination for them either. — HTGS (talk) 07:02, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

What I kind of think, I don't know if there is a precedent... I almost think there should be the top categories, and then a category that links to lists. "Manifestations of Discrimination" as a list, "Examples of discrimination" as a list, or as just completely separate templates somehow. But I don't know the precedent. I put a request over on WikiProject Templates asking for advice, I'm not experienced with building templates, just adding items to them. Denaar (talk) 02:58, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

I’m not sure I follow your picture here, but I was considering creating new navboxes for “Discrimination against ethnic, racial and national groups”, “Religious discrimination”, “Discrimination by sex, gender and sexuality”, “Discrimination by disability, genetic or physiological differences” and possibly some others. Does this jive with your ideal outcome? — HTGS (talk) 03:10, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

I would "be bold" and remove about 50% of what is on here but I'm afraid it would bring down the wrath of many editors.

But it used to have big category topics like:

Age, Caste, Class, Disability, Genetic, Hair texture, Height, Language, Looks, Mental disorder, Race / Ethnicity / Nationality, Rank, Sex, Sexual orientation, Size, Skin color

So, if we had a "top level box" with "big picture" topics, that would take you to the top level article, and then a separate template for each one of these, I think that starts to make more sense. Denaar (talk) 03:06, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

What would you remove? I could see a lot of this stuff going easily, but if it’s too complex to describe would you mind doing it in the sandbox? — HTGS (talk) 02:27, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

@Denaar I have thought about it a bit more, and I agree. I think we should simply remove the lists: Manifestations, Discriminatory policies, Countermeasures and Related topics (with perhaps some exceptions). This would bring the template into a clear purpose as covering discrimination predominantly by the groups it affects. — HTGS (talk) 01:56, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

I agree with this. It's been a while - I was hoping we'd get some additional editors to contribute ideas too. Denaar (talk) 17:08, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

We should keep them. Discrimination is a complex and complicated topic and is pervasive throughout society. There are many ways that discrimination manifests itself and this template should be representative of this. I believe that a comprehensive template is an encyclopedic template, offering an educational window into the world that represents the scope of the problem. -TenorTwelve (talk) 08:51, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

The purpose of a template is to help people navigate through articles that are incomplete on their own, where it's a series of articles meant to be read together. That's not how it's working today, it's just being used as a replacement for categories. These topics should be placed in categories, and not placed in templates unless they are a series of articles on a topic meant to be read together... and they aren't, they are just ones that belong in the category. The articles under "Forms" make sense because they are all articles on specific types of discrimination, broken up instead of being under one long article, to make it easier to read. Denaar (talk) 15:31, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

@TenorTwelve “a comprehensive template is an encyclopedic template, offering an educational window into the world that represents the scope of the problem”: I don’t think this is a reasonable assessment of what navboxes and sidebars are for. They should be reasonably short, and reasonably complete. I understand you mean well, but your goal here is at odds with WP:NAVBOX in seeking this sort of massively broad. The goal is to link readers to related pages, not merely provide a directory of all possible pages related to the domain.

Further, this template will never be complete with its current scope. It has clearly crept (see Scope creep and WP:LISTCRUFT) into the territory of giving examples of discrimination; and that list is near-endless. — HTGS (talk) 20:50, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

I decided to BE BOLD - I'm not against having multiple templates as the final outcome; but I still think we should have a "main" or "primary" template, that links to articles that then have "sub" templates on them. But I don't think we'll generate any discussion unless a change is actually made to the template first. Denaar (talk) 18:40, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

This is a conversation on editor behavior, not on how to improve the template

That was not the way to do it. The right way would be to hold a pre-RFC that works on a clear proposal, not a “let’s cut all discriminatory measures out of the core piece that binds them all together for users to navigate through and then figure out what we’ll do after” and then, hold an RFC to get input from the community on how to handle such a delicate topic.

So do gather input for a pre-RFC and RFC, you’ll need to actually publish this discussion at the main WikiProjects such as WP:WikiProject Discrimination, WP:WikiProject Sociology,WP:WikiProject Human rights, WP:WikiProject History, WP:WikiProject LGBTQ+ studies, WP:WikiProject Disability to name a few of the main WikiProject with heavy overlap on discrimination. Or publishing it on WP:CENT even.

But ”It's been a while - I was hoping we'd get some additional editors to contribute ideas too.” as you mentioned above was not the way to go. This template only has ~130 page watchers, and even fewer talk page subscribers. I only came here after I saw the massive -7,000k deletion of 250+ articles from the template of your edit on my watch list.

The minimum would be a notification of the WikiProject Discrimination.

As for the merit of what happened here - I don’t think we serve our readers by making it more difficult to find historic manifestations and policies. The only people who would benefit from that would be people that may have committed such acts.

Having a central navigational template that tracks major discriminatory events throughout humanity seems pretty important for an encyclopedia. We are not servicing people by trying to hide past events of discriminatory nature. Thats how history repeats itself, but forgetting about the past. Raladic (talk) 07:21, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

You're incorrect. Please see WP:CANVASS. Even that page says "discuss on the talk page" is the first step for any article on Wikipedia. However... no where does it say "do a RFC before making changes". There is a consensus here on the talk page that we need to make changes to the template, therefore, it's appropriate to make changes to the talk page. Denaar (talk) 12:55, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

You are confidently incorrect. Local consensus dos not override broad consensus. Which in this case is the longstanding consensus, the status quo, for the inclusion of the 250+ articles you removed from the template. Quietly having a discussion among two people without inviting the affected community is an extremely weak local consensus. Here is the ArbCom statement from 2013 on Levels of consensus.

You have been around long enough to know that a change that affects 250+ articles is not something that’s typically decided between two editors without informing the affected community.

Canvass explains how to appropriately inform people and how not to do it. That is what WP:APPNOTE and WP:INAPPNOTE is about. It would be inappropriate to invite a few editors who share your personal opinion, but it would be appropriate to invite editors that have shown an interest in topics of discrimination. To do this, we have WikiProjects. The last time this was litigated in a broad fashion that I’m aware of was, unironically the essay WP:No queerphobia on the topic of editors who may share discriminatory opinions against LGBTQ people - where, an editor with certain personal views as described on their user page, wrongly alleged canvassing after they wanted to delete the essay Wikipedia:No queerphobia (and the snow closed DRV) and were summarily corrected by the community of editors and admins (several of which are currently or have been in the past part of ArbCom).

Broad reaching changes affecting a large part of the project or large parts of a topic space (such as removing 250+ articles from a major navigation template without a clear plan) need broader support from editors interested in that topic space. Please reread WP:CANVASS, the first line on the intent in particular to ensure a quality discussion with a consensus from the community is achieved. Raladic (talk) 17:01, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

I've been doing some digging, and I think I've found a solution we can aspire to as an idealized solution. Look at:Index of psychology articles.

If you look at the template on the right, it has top level articles. Then - it as a category for "Lists!". I think this is an idea way to simplify this navigation bar AND keep all the navigational functionality. Denaar (talk) 20:03, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

There is another example of how to reduce an expanding nav bar here at Template:Abuse. They have a "more..." link that links to "Abuse" - which is a main article which lists types of abuse, a short description, and a link to a more involved article. Denaar (talk) 20:14, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 October 2 § Template:Discrimination sidebar

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 October 2 § Template:Discrimination sidebar. Raladic (talk) 05:35, 6 October 2025 (UTC)