This is an archive of past discussions about Template:Globalize. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Hi - This template sometimes gets added to articles where editors without much area of the article assume incorrectly that there is a global perspective. For instance, Category:Law has numerous articles that are specific to one or another jurisdiction's law. There is no point to putting {{globalize}} on things like "nominative use" which is a trademark law doctrine in some parts of the US. (And unfortunately it can often leave an ugly, unnecessary, distracting, and confusing-to-the-common-reader GIANT BOX on a page sometimes for years, as editor after editor feels unprepared to certify that the doctrine does not exist in other areas of the world.
I propose adding the following to the "Template usage notes":
For articles that may be local in scope with no corresponding content in other countries, do not add the template without affirmative knowledge that there is corresponding content in other countries. For instance, legal doctrines (as opposed to general principles or concepts); local historical events; etc. For these articles, simply note the appropriate local context in the lede.
Well, the current guidance is apparently too oblique, because I've had to pull "globalize" tags off of articles about specific legal jurisdictions where the tags weren't appropriate. And when I tried to explain why, I wasn't really able to get any help from the guidance on the "globalize" template. Is there any reason why we shouldn't also include something more direct? ...
In other words, what I don't see on this tag anywhere is a recognition that some topics are not global topics. The current guidance recognizes that we can remove the tag if there are no sources, but that's a rather different matter. What about Some topics are inherently local, not global, and should not receive the "globalize" tag. That's succinct, I think.
The why is simple: it's not actionable. But to determine this does require some research. Using your example, why is "nominative use" only valid in some parts of the U.S.? Did other jurisdictions in the U.S. or worldwide reject it, and if so why? I don't think there are any topics that are inherently local. But if there are no sources with a global view, we can't manufacture one per WP:NOR so the point is moot, and the tag should be removed (after doing the research). Your proposal assumes foreknowledge of global views, which is really a case of WP:SOFIXIT. Dhaluza17:00, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps I can better explain the problem for legal topics. There is a useful distinction between "doctrines", which are specific rules developed out of specific laws & cases; and, say, "principles" or "concepts". Obviously things like "rights" or "property" are general concepts and principles; these are, indeed, universal topics of global significance that would very likely have unique local variants. "Free expression" and "property" should have information about how these concepts are treated around the world not just in any one jurisdiction. But, for instance, there are all sorts of legal doctrines that are notable that are simply based in one jurisdiction's law. "Nominative use" for example was made up by courts in the 9th Circuit in the US. It was never "rejected" by other courts in the world; it's just not part of their law. Perhaps there are analogous concepts, but "nominative use" is not a generic name for the concept (at least not right now); it is the name of a specific legal doctrine that is rooted in US law. It is very likely that every body of law is going to have specific local doctrines for which there will be no counterparts in other bodies of law. I'm very interested in working on articles about topics and concepts of law that are global, but to just decree that "nominative use" is a global concept and go looking for counterparts in other bodies of law that are not called "nominative use" is, at best, original research. Does all this make sense? --Lquilter17:42, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but I don't think the issue is specific to legal doctrines, and we don't need a specific reference in the usage notes to every possible subject area. The basic issue is that you go as far as the available reliable sources will take you, and no further. A little extra research has provided sourcing for a more narrow definition, which should address the worldview issue. But it looks like other circuits may have rejected, or at least modified the doctrine, and legal scholars have provided critical commentary of the doctrine. This is certainly relevant, and should be included in the article to provide a NPOV, otherwise this article would just be a content fork from the 9th circuit court's POV. Dhaluza20:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
[B]ut I don't think the issue is specific to legal doctrines. Neither do I. Since you don't like either of the two other versions I proposed, then perhaps simply clarifying the existing language will solve the problem I have observed. Splitting the second bullet point (which two points don't really seem to belong together anyway) into two separate notes, and clarifying the "actionable" language into something that's a little more descriptive would help. For instance:
These tags should only be applied to articles where there are global issues.
These tags are not a badge of shame.
That preserves the current set of materials but explains "actionable"; since you described that as covering my concern, this would be a fairly small change to clarify. Thoughts? And, if you don't like this, would you please propose some alternative to address the problem?
Okay, per lack of objection to my last proposal, I made the (relatively) minor change of splitting one of the bullet points on the usage guidelines into two. The new wording is:
These tags should only be applied to articles where global perspectives are reasonably believed to exist.
These tags should not be used as a badge of shame.
The old wording was:
These tags should only be applied to articles where the concerns are actionable — They should not be used as a badge of shame.
When I saw the TFD for Template:Globalize/US and Canada, I looked at this template and saw that there are a lot of templates just like this one with the only difference being a location. I played around a bit and have been able to make a template to replace all of them. It is currently at User:Lady Aleena/Globalize. Here is how to use once it is moved here.
{{Globalize|article or section|place 1|place 2|place 3}}
This is a good idea, but I don't think that someone will support the deletion of all those templates. The goal is to use {{Globalize/North America}} instead of {{Globalize/US and Canada}} (however, I don't know why those templates are here. I think that they're racist) Macy's123(talk)00:14, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
I have placed a message on the other templates' talk pages about this. I know that there are hundreds of articles to deal with if this is done, but there isn't the need for so many templates when one can do the trick. - LA @ 16:00, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
It might be a good idea to start categorizing these articles by country. There are currently eleven pages of articles in the Category:Articles with limited geographic scope. In my opinion that is too many to be manageable. The country-centric categorization can be removed for now, but the discussion should be opened about getting the articles in the parent category into subcategories. If the articles were sorted into subcategories by country, then country-centric projects could expand the articles that need help. I could open this discussion in Categories for discussion. (That would be a switch, asking to be allowed to create categories instead of getting them deleted.) For now, I will remove the country-centric categorization from the template. Thank you for pointing this out. - LA @ 05:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The main deletion argument was that it wasn't widely enough used to need the category (there were two members for NZ, the only existing category, and the template was used nine times total I think). If someone went through and sorted all the globalize templates by category, that would defeat that argument. If you think it would be a useful way to have the centric-articles get fixed, it seems like there's enough of them that some sort of subcategorization should be done (the people suggesting delete were probably unaware that some 2000 articles could be sorted that way). You could maybe start sorting them, see how large the categories end up, and maybe do a deletion review with more information. Rigadoun (talk)17:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't even know where to start with those articles. I have enough going on right now. This is a pleasant diversion. - LA @ 19:31, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
doesn't work.
If I put {{globalize|introductory paragraph}} or even {{globalize|section}}, it still says "article or section." I have repaired this temporarily by reverting the template to the February 17, 2008 version, but hope that a more permanent fix is in the works. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 19:31, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Paradoxically, as a sort of feat in objectivity, I am against my own proposal. The reason for it is that one category denotes whole articles having the issue, whereas another of them indicates individual passages in articles having it only. Still, putting it forth:
Because I believe it might appeal to many other Wikipedians if they only realised. Wikipedia is not about "me", it is about truth.
To bring what looks like an unsupervised semantic overlap between two categories to wider attention. It is likely that habitual users of one category are not aware of the existence of the other category (like I wasn't). They should become interlinked somehow. Perhaps they are but I didn't notice. In that case, perhaps, the interlinking is not conspicuous enough.
I've just found out that the primer category only contains 30 items, as contrasted with 2,428 items contained by the latter. Therefore, the primer should be merged into the latter (if at all). The cause of the disparity in sizes is that template {{Where}}, which puts articles into the primer category, is underpublished and largely unknown to the community. (I've just tagged {{Where}} as {{Orphan}}.)
—6birc (talk) 08:03, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
What? The difference between the two categories is exactly what they say on the tin. Both indicate that some information relates to some geographic region, but they state very different things about what's wrong with it:
While there's some overlap between the two, they are essentially different concepts, and either can be the case without the other. I feel that it is essential to preserve the distinction. And for the record, I have considered making an ambox version of {{where}} for instances where the problem is with an article or section as a whole. Maybe something like "This article is unclear in the geographical scope to which it applies." This would also put articles in Category:Vague or ambiguous geographic scope. For all I know, there are probably many articles that could use such a thing. -- Smjg (talk) 02:15, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the above user. There needs to be a globalize/Western since I feel that a majority of the articles in Wikipedia give precedence to western viewpoints. (Neutronstar2007 (talk) 02:48, 25 October 2008 (UTC))
Overhaul completed
I've just finished a heavy reworking of this template into a more meta-template style. Now, all of the individual sub-templates (such as {{globalize/USA}}) inherit directly from it, as opposed to just copying its style. This means that any structural changes (such as using a new image, or tweaking the wording) need only be applied to the master template. In addition, I've added some flexibility which should make it easy to add new sub-templates in future.
As the uploader of Globe important.svg, I'm obviously biased. But I sincerely think that the more detailed globe looks neater, also when rendered low-res. - SSJ☎21:10, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Anyone else find it ironic in that the template for representing a global view has it spelt the way the US does as opposed to the rest of the world? Heh... --87.113.116.23 (talk) 12:19, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Please see here for my proposal of a new template, that would be put on articles that need to have their sources globalized - i.e. on articles that rely on a very similar set of sources likely representing one and the same POV.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 13:56, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
Bug with aliases
I used a {{globalize|U.S.|UK|Canada}} and found two problems:
The aliases/redirects for countries do not work well. For instance, if you use {{globalize|U.S.}} it will look like it works, but actually the article is put in the non-existent Category:U.S.-centric – you really have to use {{globalize|USA}} to get the real Category:USA-centric. It seems the only solution would be to make the Template:Globalize/U.S. be a copy-paste of Template:Globalize/USA (instead of a redirect), etc. for all aliases.
Also, Category:Canada-centric was missing: I just created it, but there may be more missing.
This is an archive of past discussions about Template:Globalize. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
