Talk:Endorsements in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries

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Rep. Grijalva Endorsement of Senator Sanders[edit]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=346&v=8pR9tXUMO-Q http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/10/07/bernie-sanders-gets-first-congressional-endorsement-from-ral-grijalva/?_r=0 Would someone go ahead and add Congressman Grijalva's endorsement, unless anyone has reason to object? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.107.52.89 (talk) 03:14, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to trim this article[edit]

As of right now this article stands at 248,161 bytes. That is far too large and is causing network slowdowns as the sheer amount of information here tries to load. I am proposing that we trim this article by removing people who are not notable regardless of their political office. For example, we have a slew of state and local level politicians who do not have their own wiki page. I propose that all of them be deleted. In fact, I propose a "pre-page" requirement for this article. If the individual does not already have their own wiki page they are not notable and will be removed. Comments/thoughts? --Stabila711 (talk) 20:31, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest just linking to the endorsement section of each individuals' presidential campaign page. This way we don't need to update both pages with each new endorsement — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.107.74.186 (talk) 21:13, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It currently works the other way around. This page is automatically copied to the campaign pages so everything is centralized. I am not overtly opposed to flipping it but since I am not the one that routinely adds endorsements I would like the opinion of the one that does (pinging PotvinSux). The problem with keeping all those extra people is that it is verging on promotion. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate list of facts. We shouldn't have an exhaustive list of every single person who endorses a specific candidate, that would be madness. Flipping the transclusions and having it copied from the campaign pages is not going to fix that problem. --Stabila711 (talk) 21:21, 12 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I get what you mean. I'm newer to Wikipedia editing so I apologize. How much would the pre-page requirement trim things down? I do think it handles the notability requirement because those with a Wikipedia page are notable for some form of reason. I like the idea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.107.74.186 (talk) 01:58, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the local officials (mayors, councilors, clerks, etc.) are really not that notable. Most of the party leadership are not notable either. There are dozens of these people listed on this page right now. That amounts to tens of thousands of bytes for people that would not even warrant their own page as they aren't notable. I wouldn't really know how much it would trim it down until those people were removed. I wanted to get other people's input before I went ahead and just removed these people but if nobody else comments in a day or two I am going to go ahead and make the change. --Stabila711 (talk) 02:21, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Where would Ralph Nader's endorsement go? From this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWwegTpTR7o and previous statements by him, it's apparent he has endorsed Bernie. However, putting him under celebrities feels like a disservice. I'm going to change the "former state governors" section to say "former political leaders." Please change that if you have a more appropriate idea.74.107.74.186 (talk) 08:30, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with your suggestion. If they don't have a Wikipedia page, I think that they should be removed from the lists. Hopefully that will cut down the size; eliminating the references for those people should help as well. Teak the Kiwi (talk) 04:59, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with both. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.107.74.186 (talk) 06:17, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree in principle that the page should be trimmed (this is indeed madness). The question, of course, is criteria. I think State Legislators are, as a rule, noteworthy. I think it is relevant that the clear majority of them DO have pages. Moreover, state party chairs and vice-chairs along with about two hundred other elected DNC members are Superdelegates and vote at the convention - their endorsement seems significant at a number of levels though few of them have pages. Anyone beyond that, I think a page-requirement is entirely reasonable. This would get rid of dem. party county chairs, just about all local legislators, and about 2/3 of mayors, as well as a number of "individuals." Thoughts?--PotvinSux (talk) 21:11, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@PotvinSux: I was originally going to include state legislators in the cleanup but after looking at the notability guidelines for politicians I get your point. Also, the superdelegate issue I hadn't thought of. I agree that everyone else that doesn't have a page should be removed and going forward a pre-page requirement for all local level legislators and individuals should be in place. --Stabila711 (talk) 21:32, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Stabila711: All in agreement here. Thank you for taking this on.PotvinSux (talk) 21:45, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Alright. I am working on other projects right now but I will start to trim the article tonight. I have to double check to make sure the people I am removing don't have a page already since most of them aren't even redlinked so it will take a little bit. --Stabila711 (talk) 22:09, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Are state assemblypeople notable enough for inclusion without their own page? People like Nelson Araujo and Michael Blake? --Stabila711 (talk) 01:48, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of culling the article, we could break it into sub-articles, either by type of endorsement or by candidate endorsed. Which would be better? The simplest would be by candidate. Sen. Clinton's article may still be too long, but we could cross that bridge when we get there. -hugeTim (talk) 01:23, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Hugetim: I am assuming once the actual candidate for each party is selected they will get their own endorsement page. Like for List of Barack Obama presidential campaign endorsements, 2012 and List of Mitt Romney presidential campaign endorsements, 2012. Until then, I feel that keeping everything on one page would be beneficial. Perhaps, we can cut down on the explanations after each endorsement. For example, the U.S. Representatives section repeats U.S. Representatives over and over again for each line. Instead of "Karen Bass, U.S. Representative from California", "Karen Bass, California" would suffice. In fact, Karen Bass, CA would probably be just as good. --Stabila711 (talk) 08:17, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly agree with removing redundant or overly long explanations. But, after trying to do one edit on the entire article yesterday and having my article crash, I really must insist that something more substantial be done. WP:SIZE says even are article less than half this size "almost certainly should be divided." Can you point to anything in that guideline that justifies keeping this article as is? -hugeTim (talk) 14:37, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It is finished. I only removed the least significant categories of Hillary's endorsements (to another article), and the article is down to almost half its original size (and no longer freezes my browser when editing it). Unfortunately, there are a bunch of broken links to references which I will help to fix later. -hugeTim (talk) 23:17, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This also broke the transclusion to Hillary's candidate page. I don't like this at all. Either move all of the endorsements or move none. Having half here and half there is a content fork and just make it really confusing for the people that are adding endorsements. --Stabila711 (talk) 23:20, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The transclusion works fine, other than the references. The status quo was ridiculous. I'm open to alternative suggestions, but there's no going back. -hugeTim (talk) 23:25, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No, the transclusion does not work fine. I only set it up to copy this one page. Hillary's candidate page is now missing all of the sections that were moved. I also don't know if I can do a labelled section transclusion of two separate pages. So now, whenever someone wants to add a batch of Clinton endorsements they have to check three separate pages. That is not fair to the people that keep this page updated. --Stabila711 (talk) 23:28, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You're right. I fixed it. The references are all working now, too. Any other issues? -hugeTim (talk) 23:57, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You performed a potentially contentious move without so much as a proper discussion. There was no input from PotvinSux who is the one who primarily keeps this page up-to-date. Splitting one person off into their own article also presents NPOV issues. Why does Hillary get her own endorsement article and the other candidates are lumped together here? Why shouldn't Bernie get his own page? What makes Hillary so special? Is it because she has the most endorsements? That isn't a good enough reason. --Stabila711 (talk) 00:05, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You said, a week ago, "As of right now this article stands at 248,161 bytes. That is far too large and is causing network slowdowns as the sheer amount of information here tries to load." PotvinSux agreed: "I agree in principle that the page should be trimmed (this is indeed madness)." The filesize of this article is even now at almost half of Wikipedia:Article_size#Technical_issuesthe absolute maximum limit set by the MediaWiki software (for reasons I don't understand). But you proceeded to discuss responses that would only reduce the size by 10% at most. Feel free to come up with an alternate solution--my work is easy enough to revert once you have a good idea. But the status quo was untenable and it was urgent to fix it, in my view.
Why does Hillary get her own endorsements article? Because she had too many endorsements to put in a sub-section, for technical reasons. Bernie could get his own article, too, and he probably should. The only reason I haven't done it already is that it is not currently necessary to bring this article down to a manageable size. I want to reiterate that I am not at all insisting on the particular solution I implemented, and I do apologize if my actions seem unnecessarily brash and insensitive. -hugeTim (talk) 00:50, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
While giving Hillary a page of her own might be the most convenient solution, I don't find it especially logical and I agree with the concerns Stabila711 has raised. Giving Hillary her own list seems to make the title of the article inaccurate because it is in fact missing the majority of what the title claims to contain. I'm not sure which way the NPOV issue cuts on this one, but inequity is generally best avoided. In general, I think this list is a perfect example of why both the notability and length criteria are not absolute, particularly with respect to lists; I do, though, certainly sympathize with the concern about size. We have cut a significant bit recently, and I think there is considerably more that can be done in this regard by cutting descriptions. I would not call the status quo ante this change ridiculous. If it were an order of magnitude off of the [intentionally flexible] length guidelines that might be a fair characterization. As far as the article crashing when you edit - I've found it sometimes slow down if I edit the entire article, but editing individual sections has never presented a problem for me, even prior to the cutting we've done of late. My suggestion is to restore and get to cutting some descriptions (for example: repetition of titles, gutting years of tenure, long-winded explanations of celebrities, etc.). I'm not sure exactly how many bytes we're at right now, but if making these cuts is a good idea either way, it would make the most sense to try this first and see how far we get. Other idea: creating a separate list for office-holder endorsements one one hand and for individual/celebrity/organization endorsements on the other. PotvinSux (talk) 01:18, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just look at the history page: the wikitext size peaked at 253KB about a week ago. You guys had it down to 238KB before I jumped in, a 6% decrease in size. I agree that a division into separate office-holders and celebrities articles would be reasonable, but I didn't go that route because it would involve a more drastic change to the structure. As it stands, I don't understand why you say "the title of the article [is] inaccurate because it is in fact missing the majority of what the title claims to contain." It's not missing anything. It includes all of Ms. Clinton's endorsements, just like her campaign does. As an aside, I don't understand what you have against subtitles and more detail Table of Contents, such as in Lists_of_mathematics_topics. I think they belong here and deliberately added them to Ms. Clinton's section. They would make it much easier to understand the contents at a glance and navigate this overlong article, not to mention making it easier to edit smaller sections so that your browser doesn't hang. -hugeTim (talk) 04:17, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You know what, you're right - they are all right there. I somehow missed the box when I looked last night. I think something that might make sense would be to put everybody's in a box and include some kind of summary. Or, alternately, to leave some (for example, national legislators and governors) outside of the box and put the rest (celebrities, etc.) in the box. Thoughts? (Also, I personally don't have anything against sub-titles or tables of contents in general or in this case) PotvinSux (talk) 18:05, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you're giving Clinton her own, you must give Sanders, O'Malley, etc. their own too. Otherwise that represents a non-neutral point of view and possibly a conflict of interests.74.107.74.186 (talk) 13:27, 23 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I somewhat agree. I'm not sure how this would represent a conflict of interest, but it could be perceived as non-neutral presentation. I, for one, would not be opposed to Lessig, O'Malley, and Sanders pages.PotvinSux (talk) 21:58, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if it is non-neutral, the problem already exists elsewhere. Only Hillary and Bernie (on the Democratic side) have their own separate "positions" articles. Anyway, go ahead and create separate pages for the others, whoever wants that. Be bold. -hugeTim (talk) 16:44, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Remove Webb & Chafee?[edit]

Chafee & Webb have dropped out - should those sections be removed now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.107.74.186 (talk) 13:28, 23 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We don't remove past endorsements just because the candidate has dropped out. See the Republican page. Walker and Perry are still there. If all of the endorsements for the drop outs publicly say they switch and their section becomes empty, then we can remove it. --Stabila711 (talk) 19:02, 23 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting review of Bernie Sanders "endorsements"[edit]

This appears to be a really bloated list.

A random check quickly reveals that the list includes people who have just said friendly things or even who have done something as little as tweeting a slogan like "Feel the Bern." The video of Ralph Nader is not an endorsement at all. It seems reasonable to guess that many of those listed are not formal "endorsements" in the way that term historically has been understood. Johnlumea (talk) 02:56, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnlumea:For any specific endorsements you found that do not check out, please either remove them or tag them with this template: Template:Failed_verification. Why make others repeat (tedious) work you've already done? -hugeTim (talk) 13:51, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think tweeting "Feel the Bern" amounts to an endorsement as much as tweeting "I'm Ready for Hillary" does. These are among the preferred phrases for showing that you support the given candidate in the particular lexicon of this primary election. I don't even think there's much ambiguity in it. There are very, very few who actually utter "I endorse X," but it's not because they do not intend to publicly show their support for a given candidate (that is all an endorsement is after all). This list has taken a broad view of what counts as an endorsement (because, for one, the media do). The standard I have used is whether one can reasonably infer exclusivity of support. I think the Nader case would be a perfect example that falls short of the bar. I'm sure there are more, and I think it is absolutely worth ferreting them out. At the same time, looking for "formal" endorsements seems problematic - what is an "informal" endorsement, and is it not still an endorsement?PotvinSux (talk) 22:33, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You write: "I think tweeting 'Feel the Bern' amounts to an endorsement as much as tweeting 'I'm Ready for Hillary' does. Which, I would argue, is "Not at all." If the only standard is tweeting "Feel the" this or "Ready for" that, this could become a very long page indeed. There has to be a more meaningful standard of what an endorsement is. I am exclusively supporting Martin O'Malley, but nobody cares about that, and I would never insist that my exclusive support of O'Malley is anything that should be documented on this page. I would argue that the only endorsements that belong on this page are endorsements by elected or former elected officials — or by other national public figures (writers, filmmakers, organizational leaders, etc.) who are defined primarily in terms of their commentary on U.S. policy and civic life, and who are followed primarily for this reason. The number of people in this second category who qualify as public figures is exceedingly small, I would argue: People like Ralph Nader, Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, John Stewart, Norman Lear and the like. Johnlumea (talk) 23:06, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'll see to re-reviewing the list of Sander's endorsements. I do need help with Clinton's list. I still see some articles cited are not somewhat misleading. And can we try to make all the sections follow a similar pattern, so there's some sort of coherency. --Book wormed (talk) 12:23, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've culled through both the Sanders and Clinton list a number of times - I haven't found anything less "endorsey" than we might consider "Feel the Bern" - that is of course not to say that multiple eyes should not continue to go through them. We have already worked very hard to establish and maintain consistency as this list has developed. One of the major differences that remains is that Sanders and Lessig have a separate "Internet, Radio personalities" type section - so perhaps some of Clinton's individuals and celebrities should be funneled to such a section. Then, there are some minor differences in order between Sanders and the others (i.e. celebrities are put last before organizations for most). Any other differences you notice? PotvinSux (talk) 17:46, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Local Union Endorsements[edit]

Under the page-requirement we have in place for all those beneath the rank of State Legislator (excluding DNC members because they are "superdelegates" who vote at the nominating convention), local union chapters or divisions should, in my view, be deleted. For example, the Vermont AFL-CIO does not have a page. Similarly, the NYC chapter of the National Organization for Women does not have a page and should be cut. Ditto IBEW locals. Does anyone have an argument for keeping them?PotvinSux (talk) 23:18, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

State-level unions seem quite notable to me. (They are certainly more politically important than random celebrities or city councilmen - and this is reflected in the fact that state-level union endorsements do make headlines in the mainstream media. Local unions are somewhat less notable, but some are quite important (e.g., SEIU 32BJ is enormous and has its own article). In any case, I don't think we can justify taking the unions out while we still have quite marginal celebrities, some with exceedingly thin (or just plain wrong) sourcing, like Tweets. Neutralitytalk 03:24, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I agree this is worth discussing (the discussion never seems to get off the ground until someone acts but so it goes): In order not to make these subjective notability judgments, we installed the page requirement. The exceptions made were for: State Legislators - because the majority of that population has their own pages - and DNC members - because they vote at the convention. In these respects, local and/or state union chapters are more like city councilors - they are very, very many and the majority of them have not been considered sufficiently noteworthy to create pages. Just like municipal legislators, there are a few who are noteworthy enough to have their own pages - and you gave one example - but I think it is telling that the vast majority are not. As with celebrities, I struggle to see how to objectively approach the question of marginality (other than this page requirement). How do we decide who is a marginal celebrity and who is not? Are we really going to start counting Grammys? It seems the same with union locals - what threshold of workers represented justifies inclusion? What share of a union's locals chapters are necessary to warrant inclusion? Does any local chapter of any union anywhere in the US make the cut? One would then have to extend this logic to organizations in general, which are also often state-based, etc. It just seems untenable. PotvinSux (talk) 18:22, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, also on your sourcing point, which I think is separate - when a celeb. tweets "Feel the Bern" or whatnot it seems like a fairly unambiguous informal endorsement. We couldn't expect these folks to hold press conferences to announce their support, and yet I don't think that they "matter" any less. This is manifested in that the media often cover these kinds of endorsements, which then shapes ideas of who is "cool" or "in" among what subcultures (and has more influence on voters than it probably should). PotvinSux (talk) 18:33, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You're right that action usually prompts the discussion. I certainly agree that state legislators and DNC members should go on here. As for local officials - that is trickier. I would exclude extremely minor local officeholders such as precinct committeemen and committeewomen (who are elected in some states). I'd probably keep most others (anything countywide, such as sheriffs, plus maybe elected officers in cities over 5,000).
I disagree with you on the slogan tweets ("Feel the Bern" etc.) - I do not think these are unambiguous. It's an expression of support, sure, but not at the level of an endorsement, which would be more explicit. I think an "informal unambiguous" endorsement is sort of a contradiction in terms.
As to both the celebrities and the union locals, I think that the sourcing question and the notable question aren't separate. I think they're interlinked - i.e., if an endorsement is real and significant, some media outlet will publish it. So for these categories in particular, I would favor a "no primary sources rule" - i.e., each entry must be supported by at least one secondary source - so that a random Tweet, Facebook post, or blog entry would not qualify. If we enforce this rule, we could remove the marginal celebrities (and locals) in one fell swoop - according to an objective criterion, so we wouldn't be counting Grammys. Neutralitytalk 22:58, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is a city councilor in a city of 10,000 more significant than a one-time drummer in a c-list punk rock band? I don't have an answer to that question - but whether or not they have a page seems like a reasonably objective measure so that I do not have to. Our cutting originally started because the Hillary section was growing so large as to be pushing technical limits (and threatens to begin doing so even as a standalone article) - next to spinning off the article, the most effective cutting we managed to do was of page-less mayors and local officials (and the vast majority of these belonged to cities and counties of more than 5k). If we are to consider some other criteria, drawing a figure for what is considered a significantly large city seems like a very arbitrary exercise. A secondary-sources only rule is far less arbitrary, but these are generally instituted to avoid bias - an endorsement is in and of itself partisan, so this doesn't strike me as appropriate. I think you're more saying that that the existence of secondary sources should be used as a marker of notoriety, but that is a criteria of notoriety for articles; the subsection for notoriety in lists explicitly states that the criteria for notoriety in articles need not necessarily apply.
As to the tweets, I do not think that an "informal endorsement" is a contradiction in terms because formality in the way I used it is a question of medium - not of authenticity. That is, one doesn't give an interview to his local reporter these days - instead, one tweets or posts to Facebook. Just because the former is more "formal" in a sense does not mean the latter is less significant as a sign of personal commitment. To the ambiguity of #FeeltheBern, one would not know to use the combination of words "FeeltheBern" without knowing that it is the slogan used to associated oneself with his candidacy. Ditto "ReadyforHillary." Where one says "Bernie Sanders looks interesting" as in the Spike Lee case (that was an interview, but nonetheless), I agree that that falls well short of the line, but when you're throwing out the campaign's main slogan, I think that is a fairly unambiguous show of support - because I think the vast majority of those who receive it interpret it as just that.
Back to the union local endorsements, I think these violate the criteria that we have in place at present (and that I think are holding up well). @Stabila711:,@Hugetim:, thoughts?PotvinSux (talk) 04:21, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As for the page requirements, can you please provide a source for the page requirements, so that I can have a review of it. State-wide and local union endorsements should be considered as endorsements, seconding @Neutrality:'s opinion. And as for celebrities tweeting 'Feel The Bern', it should be considered as an endorsement as it is noted in Sander's presidential election article that the message is an officially recognized slogan developed for the campaign. Book wormed (talk) 11:37, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The main editors of this page came to a consensus on a page requirement (see the longest thread here) as a way of staying within technological limits, maintaining neutral POV, and not needing to litigate each individual case based on increasingly arbitrary criteria. (I am sorry to keep removing these because I agree that it is somewhat contentious and requires discussion, but that seems to be the only way to get people to discuss.) Basically, my position on these is that they clearly violate the bounds of the page requirement as resolved at the time; though it was not originally my idea I have become protective of this page requirement because I think it is keeping us from becoming consumed in a Pandora's box worth of issues (for example whether a semi-famous guitarist is more important than a union local is more important that a council-member in a city of 250k people) for which I do not think we have ready or can develop answers, and which I think would probably inaugurate a needlessly contentious and worst of all fruitless circular conversation (I dread anything like what is going on with the GOP version of this article). I could see an argument for carving out exceptions for state chapters of organizations similar to what we have done for statewide legislators and DNC members (though not executive officials e.g. a liquor commissioner for some reason), but certainly not locals. Including all State Level people and orgs. would probably not tax technological considerations. As a separate issue, the AFL-CIO should not be on this list per the other threads on this talk page. I just have become desensitized to them, which is probably bad.PotvinSux (talk) 18:07, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of suspended candidates[edit]

Are we really removing the endorsements of the candidates that have suspended their campaigns? Wouldn't those endorsements still technically stand unless those people issued a new statement? I was just going to revert the removal but I thought I would ask for some other opinions first. --Stabila711 (talk) 03:01, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would certainly retain them - notability isn't temporary, and this is supposed to be for the historical record. I might collapse them into a drop-down list. Neutralitytalk 03:25, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I just went ahead and undid the change. If someone wants to remove it again they can discuss it here. --Stabila711 (talk) 03:49, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I was wondering since we have restored Lessig's endorsement list, shouldn't we do the same courtesy to the other candidates who have proceeded with suspending their campaigns? In addition, I was thinking that we could possibly note down somewhere in their sections that these candidates have in fact, suspended their campaigns for further clarification. --Book wormed (talk) 12:14, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Forgetting to restore Jim Webb's section was an oversight on my part. I have restored the section. Chafee never had a section since he had no endorsements. I would be alright with putting a small blurb in the section of candidates that have suspended their campaign. --Stabila711 (talk) 12:37, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I made the edit removing Lessig because I had thought that the removal of Webb was due to him dropping out. I see now that this was a mistake and I apologize. Carry on! 74.107.74.186 (talk) 03:25, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

They should stay. It's historical information that they were part of the history of the campaign. See Endorsements for the Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012, List of Hillary Clinton presidential campaign endorsements, 2008 and other past campaigns. It's not just about 2016, the goal here is to write an encyclopedia of what happened. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:51, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Moved * "AFL-CIO Vermont and South Carolina divisions" under Bernie Sanders to be under Labor Unions instead of Organizations[edit]

I made this decision because the AFLCIO is a labor organization, same as the other unions listed. If this change seems incorrect, please let me know why. I also suggest, in case you don't consider the AFL-CIO to explicitly be a labor union, that you could change "Labor Unions" to read "Labor Organizations". Thoughts on both? 74.107.74.186 (talk) 03:31, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I was the one who opened the labour union section. I was conflicted at first, so I didn't add the union divisions. I'm fine with shifting labour organizations into the labour union section. --Book wormed (talk) 04:27, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Great! Does anyone have a dissent? Otherwise, I will make this change in 24 hours. 74.107.74.186 (talk) 16:03, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Its actually interesting that valid, credible and publicly declared union endorsements are permanently being tried to be bounced out, particularly by users that greatly contributed to expand and maintain a particular and competing political campaigns list of endorsements. It may be recommended that the particular user keeps his focus on the good house keeping he has demonstrated for the entries in the section of HRC, he has done a great job on keeping wikipedia up to date and readable. Focusing on all campaigns may be a little bit too much being asked for a single human being. I support the change and reinsertion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.220.39.147 (talk) 21:23, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have now made this edit because there seems to be consensus agreement for it. Quick question, if I were to register for a Wikipedia account, would my edits transfer since it's the same IP? That's one thing that's keeping me using my raw IP as an ID. 74.107.74.186 (talk) 15:42, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No they wouldn't transfer but you can put a link on your new user page to the IP's contribution page. The difference is that if the IP ever gets reassigned you could be linking to a page with contribs that you didn't do. --Stabila711 (talk) 15:49, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! What's the benefit of registering over not registering? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.107.74.186 (talk) 16:29, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:BENEFITS. If you do decide to make an account you should only edit logged in from that point forward. Switching back and forth between logged in and logged out can be misconstrued as sockpuppetry. --Stabila711 (talk) 16:33, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Lessig and Webb[edit]

We need to either add a note explaining that the two men suspended their campaign (at least within the Democratic Party) or to remove their endorsements. We can't just keep the endorsements like they are know. It's extremely misleading and lengthy.

I'll add a note because some might find them misleading - I don't think anyone would find them lengthy.PotvinSux (talk) 03:28, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking that they should have their own collapsible section just like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. I actually find that they are distracting, and would like to see them there for historical purposes, but not in the way.
As a secondary point, I don't know if it is possible, but it would be nice to have the people that have suspended their campaign to be auto-collapsed be default, whereas those that are still in the campaign would have them auto-opened?? Just an idea Ciscorucinski (talk) 16:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I modified the page to fulfil the primary point I said above. I also suggested a change to the Template on Endorsements Box to help display the content better as per the secondary point Ciscorucinski (talk) 18:56, 22 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

IN NEED OF HELP TO ADD ALL NAMES OF MUNICIPAL AND COUNCILMEN FOR SANDER'S PAGE[edit]

Link: http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article43615482.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Book wormed (talk • contribs) 06:06, 8 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll work on this. Feel free to change the subheadings each person is listed under if you feel it's inappropriate. 74.107.74.186 (talk) 15:34, 8 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This has now been completed. 74.107.74.186 (talk) 15:54, 8 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Can we change Sanders's section to match O'Malley's, where there's a section for current and former Mayors and County Executives, and a section for current and former Municipal Leaders? It makes sense with the new addition. Also, wouldn't Annejanet Harp go into a statewide section? She works for the South Carolina Democratic party, not a local party.
That section in general can be seen as confusing, sure. I'm open to hearing suggestions. 74.107.74.186 (talk) 19:25, 8 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I think we should format O'Malley's to match Clinton and Sander's formatting. O'Malley seems out of place. In addition, thanks a lot for adding the new names onto the list. I'll see to working out O'Malley's section when I have time.--Book wormed (talk) 04:06, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome! 74.107.74.186 (talk) 18:14, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Folks, due to technological constraints a page requirement was installed about a month ago for all municipal officials below state level. See the longest thread on this page.PotvinSux (talk) 19:27, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
why don't we bury then campaigns that ceased to exist, that are no more campaigns, with endorsements that are history. That would make for a good page requirement. I think national or state level organizations do not completely reflect the footing of the candidate BernieXYZ — Preceding unsigned comment added by BernieXYZ (talk • contribs) 21:39, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As discussed elsewhere on this talk page, we leave those who have bowed out of the race because this page documents in part for posterity. Can you rephrase, "reflect the footing of the candidate?" I'm not sure what you mean. The "page requirement" means that we only include [officials below the state level] if they have a Wiki page. PotvinSux (talk) 03:26, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To your question, its very simple, if a given candidate has disproportionally more endorsements by what's called "the national/Washington establishment", and another candidate has more support/endorsements on a state and local level, such fundamental differences in reflecting the profile of endorsements should be to my mind kept visible. But there is a new page, so plenty of space and time to agree new page requirements for that page. BernieXYZ —Preceding undated comment added 19:51, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There is no such mismatch in practice (and technological considerations preclude addressing theoretical concerns). Clinton had/has several hundred municipal politicians that were removed/have not been since included because the page was starting to grind to a halt when users attempted to edit it. From an NPOV standpoint there seems to be a consensus that if they can't be included for every candidate, they should not be included for any candidate - precisely to avoid this misconception.PotvinSux (talk) 21:24, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reference Issues: Please note down in this section if you find any reference issues.[edit]

Just list down the candidate, the endorser and the issue at hand.--Book wormed (talk) 05:12, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed that List of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign endorsements, 2016 was just created.[edit]

Just noticed that List of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign endorsements, 2016 was just created. Should I and others be adding endorsements to Bernie's list from that page now instead of this one? 74.107.74.186 (talk) 20:51, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Minor ones should go there so this page can be more of a summary. I think that's the way Clinton's is done. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:48, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
They all automatically transclude from that one PotvinSux (talk) 21:17, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine but that's only a section from here. The minority stuff from here can be added there. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:44, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I think I see what you are saying. No, all of the Clinton ones transclude onto here. Her page is already up to something like 80% of the size the original page was when it started to crash on people - adding back all of the removed page-less municipal and party officials (about 16%) and the ones she has accumulated since the article was spun off (definitely more than 4%) would take it over that tipping point again. So, we can't include her pageless ones here or on her own page. Bernie Sanders is a different story - so long as they do not transclude on to here, I don't think it would be an NPOV issue to list his page-less endorsers on his own page.PotvinSux (talk) 03:44, 12 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Individuals" versus "Celebrities" versus ...[edit]

The distinction between "individuals", "celebrities", "leaders in business", and "Internet, radio, and television personalities" seems arbitrary and blurry. Does it serve any purpose? Alexbook (talk) 01:51, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Individuals might be like a catch-all term for those not fitting in those groups? 98.169.44.13 (talk) 06:22, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly how it has developed - we've just put people where they seem to fit best and if they don't quite fit anywhere else they go in "Individuals." In the half-year or more that this page has been around I don't think I've seen anyone complain about a placement or take offense if another editor moves one to another section. This leads me to believe it is not a cause for concern. I do think the categories are helpful - it might even be useful to have subcategories among celebrities (for musicians, actors, etc.) or in the Individuals section, but I do not feel strongly enough to go and do this.PotvinSux (talk) 02:53, 12 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Verses / Head-to-Head Matchup View[edit]

I always come on here and compare the candidates by their endorsements. I always thought it would be nice to have an addition section for a comparison of all candidates. I have created a mockup view of what I mean with an online tool, but I would hope that it could be more indepth. https://www.diffchecker.com/e8zgtckx Ciscorucinski (talk) 16:37, 22 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As a secondary point, I think the categories should be edited to be the same across candidates. In the link above, Hillary has "Labor Unions" but Bernie Sanders has "Labor Organizations" and is further subdivided into smaller categories. These categories should be consistent across candidates — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ciscorucinski (talk • contribs) 16:48, 22 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maps?[edit]

Comparing this page with the 2016 Republican Endorsements page, it seems like it might be visually helpful to include maps of endorsements along the lines of those on the Republican endorsements page. I'm not sure what a good color scheme would be, but it might be worth including. 99.60.56.98 (talk) 01:39, 3 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Need to do something different?[edit]

The reference list is not displaying on this page, presumably because the page has passed the limit for the number of templates that can be used. I don't know exactly what we should do about this, but what this article has now isn't working in terms of displaying the references. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Metropolitan90, Toa Nidhiki05, and PotvinSux: So this page has hit its template maximum. That breaks the reflist and eventually will also affect Clinton's main page as well. There are two solutions to this that I can think of. Solution A is to delete non-necessary endorsements. Things like international politicians that would have no bearing on the vote and can't actually vote anyways. Solution B would be to subst: a bunch of the citation templates. That way they are put in the actual wikitext and the template is removed lowering the total template count. Thoughts? --Majora (talk) 03:33, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I would honestly say the local politicans should go. International endorsements are relatively interesting (like Sarkozy and some UK Conservative party members backing Clinton). Who really cares about a single local council member or mayor endorsing someone? The actual number of local endorsments would be great, but it's just a massive space eater right now. Toa Nidhiki05 03:51, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This page should be a summary page with the individual campaign subpages as different pages. Translucation was a terrible way to do this. Local politicians can go there if people care. The issue is that this is entirely an WP:OR game of using primary sources to determine which endorsements actually matter. Statements that "X has endorsed Y" are true but give no idea if anyone actually cares since we are missing independent secondary sources here. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:00, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The reason it got to be so long and comprehensive-ish is because there is no good research on the impact of celebrity versus politician, versus pundit, versus activist endorsements (WP:OR doesn't apply to talk pages). Absent such data, there was no way we were going to come to a consensus on that point especially when one candidate is endorsed by 85% of Democrats in Congress and the other has the support of entire genres of the music industry (just by way of example) - they have strength in different areas and I think that is valuable to depict. We made one major step in condensing the list, installing a page requirement because of technological constraints and technological constraints can be a great reason to justify summarization on this page. The question becomes how to do that. I think it would be reasonable to exclude everyone elected below state level. So long as there is a link to the full page, I think this would be fine.PotvinSux (talk) 18:24, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's not that complicated. We should look to secondary sources instead of things like Kitdotcom's twitter endorsement so we can figure out which endorsements are actually relevant and which ones are given WP:UNDUE weight in being put here (or at all). The problem is the nonsense idea that Wikipedians should make up their own rule (below state level doesn't matter) when a simple hard-line helping of finding basic WP:GNG policy is that we look to secondary sources, not primary ones. For example, we know that Oprah's endorsement of Obama was significant because we have secondary sources about the endorsement itself. Here, we have nothing but partisan bickering because it's an election year so both sides just want everything they can get here. How has Endorsements for the Republican Party presidential primaries, 2016 managed to accomplish this with an larger set of actual candidates? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:36, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, sure, we need to do something different. We have passed the technical limits. Suggest split to endorsements by federal officials, endorsements by state officials, endorsements by celebrities, etc. wbm1058 (talk) 22:31, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Wbm1058, Ricky81682, PotvinSux, and Metropolitan90: Alright, so I can start removing endorsements that are only backed up by primary sources if that is what is agreed upon. Right now there are over 200 backed up by Twitter alone just on Clinton's page. So removing those along with the ones on Sanders's should bring us back below the technical limit. I'll wait a day or two to see if there are any objections to this. Otherwise I will assume there is agreement and be bold in the removals. --Majora (talk) 22:40, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There seem to be two different conversations happening here - what should be done to fix the issue of the technological constraint and what should be included on the lists in general. This venue is a proper place to discuss the first issue only. We should not be removing things from other pages based on a conversation here because this conversation does not include the editors of those other pages (this page seems mostly to be an artifact of a period before the pages were split back in October or November). As it stands now, it would be relatively easy to alter the transclusion for both candidates to include only elected officials, for example, or only elected officials and "Notable Individuals," but not "Celebrities." That is the easy fix and the one I support.

If we don't like the easy fix, we should be summarizing what is included elsewhere by hand, according to some set criteria that we develop - say counts with a handful of examples for each category. To that end, I would not support the primary source secondary source distinction for a number of reasons, one being that in WP:VER there is an explicit guideline about the usage of twitter and similar mediums - they are considered verifiable evidence of an author's intentions without any prejudice for or against them (that I can detect) so long as the majority of an article does not rely on such sources. That is the case here, and thus there is no basis to exclude them as a class. WP:UNDUE is not helpful because it refers to the coverage of viewpoints about a contentious subject. These lists are not articles about whether a given person is good or bad in some objective sense - they are lists of people who have offered support for a given candidate. There is in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases no contention as to whether or not a given person or group endorsed a given candidate. Those few instances where there has been contention on such a question have been handled surprisingly respectfully and efficiently on the relevant talk pages.PotvinSux (talk) 23:28, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The author's intention is useful on an author's page ("Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities"). UNDUE tells us whether we should care to include a particular tweet on this endorsements page. Why are we going by "let's include the tweets of endorsements by musicians who have Wikipedia pages"? Is "musicians who have Wikipedia pages" mean that the endorsement is notable? There are tweets every day by Hillary Clinton for example. Does that mean that everything she says is itself worth including? It only matters if the tweet itself is the subject of secondary sources. Either way, that's not for this page. This page needs a summary section on each candidate which may just be the "nothing below state level" suggestion above. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:40, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies, in advance... I was in the process of expanding my response above, and I think it responds to most of what you just said. I'm just going to copy what I had going and repaste here...it might duplicate some of what I said above...

If we don't like the easy fix, we should be summarizing what is included elsewhere by hand, according to some set criteria that we develop - say counts with a handful of examples for each category. To that end, I would not support the primary source secondary source distinction for a number of reasons, one being that in WP:VER there is an explicit guideline about the usage of twitter and similar mediums - they are considered verifiable evidence of an author's intentions without any prejudice for or against them (that I can detect) so long as the majority of an article does not rely on such sources. That is the case here, and thus there is no basis to exclude them as a class.

To the points that were made above, WP:UNDUE is not helpful because it refers to the coverage of viewpoints about a contentious subject. These lists are not articles about whether a given person is good or bad in some objective sense - they are lists of people who have offered support for a given candidate. There is in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases no contention as to whether or not a given person or group endorsed a given candidate. Those few instances where there has been contention on such a question have been handled surprisingly respectfully and efficiently on the relevant talk pages. As to WP:GNG, see: WP:N#NCONTENT and to a lesser extent WP:NOTESAL. The guidelines are explicit that notability does not apply to content within articles, however the guidelines also - again explicitly - foresee that some lists will need to make decisions about inclusion or exclusion on the basis of notability and MOS:LIST dictates that inclusion criteria be explicitly stated in the lead in the sub-heading WP:LEADFORALIST (those inclusion criteria have to come from somewhere, ostensibly editor consensus). We must somehow develop suitable criteria for this particular page that leaves us within technological constraints, and we are all proposing criteria. To reiterate, the criteria that I propose is that this page include elected officials and, if space allows, "Notable individuals." In this way, we can keep the transclusion. Otherwise we will need to get rid of the transclusion and copy over the sections we find appropriate for inclusion here.PotvinSux (talk) 23:28, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Clinton's page is huge – 384,000 bytes and takes several seconds to load. Really it's close to borderline that it should be split, so practically, that precludes having a single comprehensive page covering all endorsements for all the candidates. Transclusion is helpful for keeping the pages synchronized. I suppose the rationale for this page is for readers to be able to compare candidates endorsements "side-by-side". Personally, I think comparing various classes of endorsements (national, state, celebrity) would be interesting. The labeled section transclusion feature has a capability I'm not sure I've actually seen used before: different pages can include or exclude selected sections; there can be arbitrary numbers of sections, which can also overlap arbitrarily. So, we could use this feature to split the page to multiple lists, by grouping like sections of each candidates' individual lists, and still show all the endorsements... just on two or three or more pages, rather than a single elephant-sized page. – wbm1058 (talk) 03:51, 8 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    @Wbm1058: LST is done on the Republican endorsement page to place the sections onto the candidate's individual campaign pages. I set it up. It isn't hard to do. You just have to wrap the sections with <section begin="section name" /><section end="section name" /> tags. And then on the article you want to transclude to you would do {{#lst:Article name|section name}}. That is an interesting suggestion but it won't solve the template limit that has been reached on this page. --Majora (talk) 05:03, 8 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I see that for the Republicans we transclude in the opposite direction, i.e. from the equivalent of this page to the pages for the individual candidates. By doing it that way you limit the total amount transcluded on the equivalent of this page to just things like the citation templates, etc. but not the endorsement lists themselves. We could do that to alleviate the transclusion limit, but the sheer size of this page would be unworkable; Clinton's list is big enough by itself, much less that merged with Sanders' onto the same page. wbm1058 (talk) 15:44, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This probably won't go an especially long way, but if I'm understanding the method you're describing we could exclude the former office-holders sections.PotvinSux (talk) 16:40, 8 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think we could do that. It might be enough to keep this within the transclusion limit. Would need to create several separate labeled sections. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:35, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Who cares about the references ?[edit]

Exactly nobody cares about the references for all these endorsements. Proof: they are not displayed, at least since 16 February, and nothing was done to treat the problem. Perhaps being honest with that and protecting the references by <noinclude>...</noinclude> in the transcluded pages could help staying below the template_include_size_limit. Pldx1 (talk) 08:39, 29 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Because this page in all five million pages here is managed entirely by screwy transulation, we should ignore all policies regarding references? There is no way to "fix" it short of removing that and actually providing short summaries of the endorsements but it's heavy into campaign season so I'd guess we'll fix it when the primaries are finished. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:24, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Though this might be the easiest fix of all, it does not work because guidelines are explicit that one page cannot be used as a source for another. That's a hard rule.PotvinSux (talk) 23:55, 7 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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