Talk:Women in peacekeeping/Archive 1

Lead

I started a short lead and shifted what was in the lead to a section in the main body. I think it's best to wait until the main body is built up, based on the scope, and then add a summary with repeat references to extend the lead. Boud (talk) 13:37, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Title

The title shouldn't have arbitrary capitalisation. My guess is that women's participation in peacekeeping is acceptable as a valid topic. Any objections to women's participation in peacekeeping as the title? Boud (talk) 13:37, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

@Lad04, 4xxxx4, ZN2736151433, Kaw226, Mam1220, and Bookku: I see no objections to the lower case title, but there's an even more fundamental question: what is intended as the scope of this article? There is still a problem with ambiguity in terminology - see peace process#Definitions. To keep politicians and bureaucrats happy, and to satisfy funding sources for "doing something", throwing words around without bothering to check if people agree on what they actually mean is common practice.

Is the scope meant to be mainly just implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325? or only women's involvement in peacekeeping in the sense of keeping peace after an armed conflict is resolved? or should it be an overview of women's role in peace processes more generally?

A risk with this article being about the implementation of UNSCR1325 is that this would risk being a WP:SPLIT of the section United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325#Implementation, although the section over there mostly seems to be a list of institutional plans (documents, funding, legal decisions on creating more institutions or legal bodies or grants), and not much independently sourced information about the actual effects of all this institutional machinery. This article is more about general research results and some specific case examples, so it does seem to be complementary to the section over there.

My feeling is that women's role in peace processes, i.e. with a wider scope, would be less arbitrary than women's participation in peacekeeping alone. Boud (talk) 16:05, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

@Boud

Topic specific I also would prefer women's role in peace processes.

My general view: I know many editors and readers prefer narrow scope articles, but personally, usually, I prefer broader scope, at least in initial stages of any article draft. At collation level we guess some sources would be available but what becomes available can always be different than our own initial expectation. So let the title scope be broader first and take the call on title after first version is ready, if at all a narrower scope title is needed.

Reader would get maximum background of the topic in broader scope titles. We encyclopedist, put in huge effort in researching sources, not able to collate some good relevant information we come across because of narrow scope of draft name is neither fair to our own efforts nor helpful to Wikipedia project.

Bookku (talk) 03:07, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

The biggest challenge with making it about "women's role in peace processes" will be to find references about that as an actual subject. Without refs that deal with that overall topic as a discrete, notable subject, the article may not meet WP:GNG and could easily be accused of WP:SYNTHESIS. - Ahunt (talk) 13:40, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Did you visit google scholar, google books, Wikipedia library and archive.org with search for 'women's role in peace processes' ? Bookku (talk) 14:08, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Nope, I am just providing a warning that if you change to that title you will need to incorporate refs that show it is a discrete and notable subject. Refs need to be found to justify the move, not after it. - Ahunt (talk) 14:42, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your valuable guidance. You are an experienced user we can learn a lot from you. Also pl. let we know any women related articles you contributed to, it may help other users to learn from your contributions. Bookku (talk) 15:19, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I am trying to be of some help here, so I hope that is at least succeeding to some degree. This article has had a tortured history, which some new editors here may not be familiar with. The short version is that it started off as some student assignments to add information about women's roles to the article Peacekeeping, which I keep an eye on as a former peacekeeper. Despite being from a US university, the students given the assignment were not very motivated or literate and their additions were badly sourced and incomprehensible. After they were all finally done, their additions had to be removed as illiterate. I did discuss this with their academic supervisor, hoping they would do some supervision, but all I got were excuses. They took the deleted text and started this new article as a WP:CONTENTFORK instead. They worked on it for a bit, but at that point it was nothing like an encyclopedia article, just some point form notes, and so I moved it to drafts so it wouldn't just get deleted. Since then, in December 2022, the student's term ended and they immediately lost interest and so this draft has languished until some regular Wikipedia editors have now found it. I am still not convinced this is a notable subject on its own, that would pass WP:GNG. It may be that it needs reducing to a section and then re-incorporating into Peacekeeping once again. For now I am happy to keep an eye on it, make sure it isn't getting expanded without references or turned into some sort of WP:COATRACK and see what others can do with it. - Ahunt (talk) 16:16, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

@Ahunt: Thanks for that background: this makes it much clearer why the scope is so fuzzy. I don't really mind personally either a narrower or wider scope, but I think it'll be hard to improve the article without having a well-defined scope. My current feeling is that unless someone (or some people) can find a well-defined scope justified by sources (or by this article being justified as a natural WP:SPLIT of a bigger article), the pieces that are complementary to existing articles could be merged into them - e.g. some to a Background part to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which currently has a bit in #History in reverse chronology; and other parts to the #Impact 2nd level header and the #Impacts 3rd level header. The #Impact section over there is of mixed quality in terms of WP:RELTIME. Leaving the current draft here for a few months to see if someone (or some people) can sort it out can't hurt, but defining a scope would help. Boud (talk) 23:23, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I think you have hit the main key point: at no time has this article ever had a clear "scope" or "aim" of what what to be covered and what excluded. I think before any more work is done on it, that really needs to be agreed upon. I do agree with you, too, that the agreed scope can be very broad or very narrow, but it needs to be "something". The students that started this never defined what they were trying to cover here.

One further warning: as of the time it was moved to drafts, many of the references were "fake". They were real refs, but in no way supported the text, they were random. I think they were hoping the professor wouldn't check. In recent years we have had many universities engaged to create or improve articles with a failure rate of 100%. I wish they would stick to term papers instead. - Ahunt (talk) 23:36, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

• Requested inputs from WT:WOMRED#Requesting inputs

TODO

@Lad04, 4xxxx4, ZN2736151433, Kaw226, Keith D, Mam1220, and Bookku: I think this article is viable, but overall, while the current content appears to be well-sourced, it looks like a list of somewhat disconnected notes on the topic, rather than an encyclopedic view of the topic.

The current content is mainly about XXIst century women's participation in UN-type peacekeeping operations following from UNSCR 1325. Unless the aim is to strictly restrict the scope to this period, we need at least a stub of a section - with good sources (not just common sense) - giving something about women's participation in peacekeeping during the past few thousand years. It's valid to focus on the formalisation introduced by UNSCR 1325 - the article doesn't have to be complete in order to get into mainspace - but it does have to have an encyclopedic structure.

And we need sentences here and there that put the different parts into the context of the overall topic.

My feeling is that the amount of work needed to connect together the pieces - without doing WP:SYNTH - shouldn't be much, but without that work, this article won't be ready for mainspace. Boud (talk) 13:37, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Suggesting revisit of cn revert at draft stage.

@Ahunt

This has reference to your this revert.

This draft is not submitted for review. Many times well read editors can write content first at draft stage and then add citations later. To my understanding @Boud seems equally far older hand at Wikipedia as much you seem to be and would already know that before mainspace they need to add citation. We all know Boud's passion for their User:Boud/Draft:WikiProject Peace. IMHO we can afford reasonable WP:AGF towards Boud at least at draft stage, I hope you would not mind.

For newbie editors AFC reviewer will not give permission any ways un till new users addressees all the relevant issues. Bookku (talk) 07:02, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Agreed (except that my experience is not a factor to take into account). @Ahunt: How about scrolling up to the previous section and helping improve this article towards becoming viable for mainspace? You can easily find references in the linked articles, but all of us are volunteers with finite amounts of time available. Boud (talk) 11:53, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

It is completely ludicrous to add text to an article, draft or not, and then tag it with a "citation needed" tag. Please read WP:BURDEN All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution. If you have a ref for the text than add it, if you don't then don't add the text until you do, otherwise it is assumed it must be personal opinion or WP:OR. Adding uncited text and tagged it is directly working against this article from ever being accepted for mainspace. If the article is foolishly moved to mainspace with all kinds of uncited text outstanding it will either get moved right back to drafts as "not ready" or that text will get removed as per WP:V Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed. Sections of the article being unsourced may also result in it being sent for directly to deletion upon a move to mainspace. - Ahunt (talk) 13:48, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

There is not currently any controversy among editors contributing to this draft article about whether that new section has valid content or not. The material I added is not material that is likely to be challenged. Moreover, Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. This article is still a long way from being acceptable for main space. It needs extensive work, and tags that currently play the role of TODO notes are perfectly reasonable given the lack of volunteers willing to evolve this article into an acceptable state. Boud (talk) 15:43, 2 July 2023 (UTC)