The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Africa, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Africa on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AfricaWikipedia:WikiProject AfricaTemplate:WikiProject AfricaAfrica articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject South Africa, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of South Africa on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.South AfricaWikipedia:WikiProject South AfricaTemplate:WikiProject South AfricaSouth Africa articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject African diaspora, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of African diaspora on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.African diasporaWikipedia:WikiProject African diasporaTemplate:WikiProject African diasporaAfrican diaspora articles
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human rights, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Human rights on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Human rightsWikipedia:WikiProject Human rightsTemplate:WikiProject Human rightsHuman rights articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Socialism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of socialism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SocialismWikipedia:WikiProject SocialismTemplate:WikiProject Socialismsocialism articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Historyhistory articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Correction and Detention Facilities, a project which is currently considered to be defunct.Correction and Detention FacilitiesWikipedia:WikiProject Correction and Detention FacilitiesTemplate:WikiProject Correction and Detention FacilitiesCorrection and Detention Facilities articles
This article was copy edited by Scapler, a member of the Guild of Copy Editors, on November 26, 2008.Guild of Copy EditorsWikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy EditorsTemplate:WikiProject Guild of Copy EditorsGuild of Copy Editors articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject AfroCreatives, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of AfroCreatives articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AfroCreativesWikipedia:WikiProject AfroCreativesTemplate:WikiProject AfroCreativesAfroCreatives articles
This article has been viewed enough times in a single year to make it into the Top 50 Report annual list. This happened in 2013, when it received 13,311,292 views.
This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report4 times. The weeks in which this happened:
Latest comment: 1 month ago5 comments3 people in discussion
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
The 'Life' section is too long to navigate. I think it's best that the part about his Presidency (1994 until end) is split into a separate section called 'Presidency'. Hnfus43 (talk) 15:07, 10 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago6 comments5 people in discussion
A featured article that includes barely a sentence on Mandela's role and opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! This is a clear gap that must be addressed. Makeandtoss (talk) 09:51, 14 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
What was Mandela's impact on the "Palestinian issue"? As far as I know, he was the president of South Africa, not the Palestinians. Sakiv (talk) 14:25, 14 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
His support for Palestine has been mentioned by others in relation to the conflict and the ongoing genocide case against Israel: here is a recent AP News article on the topic. Not sure how to include this without accusations of being "recentist", but pretending that his views on the subject are completely irrelevant as he was the president of South Africa is reductive and ignoring a lot of context IMO. We even have a whole article on Israel and apartheid, for example. GnocchiFan (talk) 15:08, 14 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
He believed that only Israel occupies Palestinian land, which is a grave mistake. The Arabs, two months after the Nakba, did not make any effort to establish even an entity, not a Palestinian state. If we want to know why this happened to the Palestinians, we have to understand that it was not only caused by the Israeli occupation. Sakiv (talk) 15:27, 14 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Mandela had opinions on many different world issues, from Ireland to Palestine to East Timor to Kashmir. In its FA-rated form, the article already does mention Mandela's approach to some of these, including the Israel/Palestine situation (see the "Foreign affairs" subsection). So the issue is already given some coverage at the article. Why, however, is there now suddenly a push to add further information on Israel/Palestine? It just seems like a response to the current situation in Gaza and for that reason amounts to WP:RECENTISM. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:23, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 months ago17 comments3 people in discussion
The article's current word count is 15,208 words, which indeed requires trimming. The trimming should be done in a manner that summarizes already addressed topics, including by creating separate articles. Howver, removing complete mention of some topics in the name of keeping it below 15k words leaves a biography that censors important parts of this politician's foreign policy positions and legacy.Makeandtoss (talk) 08:53, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Midnightblueowl: Are forgetting the D part of BRD where you are supposed to discuss and elaborate on your objections? With all due respect to your efforts in developing the article to featured status, you are displaying editing behavior that resembles Wikipedia:Ownership of content because you are just indiscriminately mass reverting my numerous edits without consideration to any argument except gaining your approval on these edits. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:18, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm happy to discuss proposed prose alterations here at the Talk Page, but you still should not be repeatedly trying to push these through after you've been reverted. That's just WP:Edit warring. Make your case here and see if you can drum up support for specific edits. Remember this is a Featured Article that has already been extensively examined by many editors; we need good reasons for making changes. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:25, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Midnightblueowl: First, you claimed that the reversions were made because the article is very long. Now after I made an effort to reduce the article's size, you have made further reversions, saying that we have to "drum up support".
This behavior certainly sounds exactly like "Please do not make any more changes without my/their/our approval", which is elaborated in the guideline WP:OWNBEHAVIOR.
Sorry, but that's not how Wikipedia works. All articles are open for editing. If you have an objection to a certain edit, you are expected to come here and elaborate on it; we are not expected to ask for your permission. Makeandtoss (talk) 17:02, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm not trying to dominate this article for the sake of it (although obviously, as the editor who got it to FA status, I care about it retaining that status and don't want to see it decline in quality). I have clear concerns about several of your recent edits. First, I don't agree with your additions of extra material on Israel/Palestine, as I think that that is WP:UNDUE and motivated by WP:Recentism; nevertheless, that issue is being discussed in the section above, so let's not repeat ourselves here. Second, you removed longstanding text from the FA-rated lede, for reasons that don't seem terribly clear, and as a result of which the lead fails to mention one of the most important facets of Mandela's career. As per WP:BRD, you have to make your case for these changes and gain a consensus for them. However, I would say that I don't think all of your other edits, which mostly consist of trimming back prose, are a bad idea. In general I would not oppose those. Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:28, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Again, thanks for your edits in this article, but let me stress that I can edit it without needing to discuss. We shouldn't reach the R in BRD on after every single B edit. So I will reinstate all the edits I made, and you are more than welcome to revert the ones that you are specifically opposed to, then you can come and express your specific concerns, and we can discuss them. As for recentism, the guideline is irrelevant, since I didn't add any single piece of information that revolves around recent events. Naturally, people would come here to read this article given uptick in recent coverage, and they would expect a featured article to be comprehensive and contain the information they are looking for. Therefore, that's why it's necessary for the featured article to be up to the WP standard, and not have any clear gaps in it. Makeandtoss (talk) 15:30, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
You can WP:BEBOLD, but you can't reinsert content that was reverted without getting WP:CONSENSUS for the change, especially when an editor has identified some concerns. Like it or not, we did reach the R in WP:BRD and now comes the D. The WP:ONUS is on you to get consensus for any changes you think would improve the article without edit warring. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:58, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
WP:ONUS relates to whether information should be included in the article. But half my edits were not even about including information, but removing some redundant information from the article. You chose to indiscriminately revert all of my edits (both inclusion and exclusion), which demonstrates not a concern for ONUS, but a more likelier a sense of ownership. Please refrain from this editing behavior that disrupts constructive edits to the article, and revert what you disagree with, and not every single edit. Makeandtoss (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm looking through the diff now. It's mostly small language changes and removing some sentence clauses. I don't "object" to them perse, but I don't know that they're an improvement. I see you took out a part on Mandela being criticizzed for being friends with Castro and Gaddafi. Why? – Muboshgu (talk) 03:53, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
As Muboshgu points out, I wasn't deliberately ignoring you, Makeandtoss, I simply haven't been active at Wikipedia for over a week. As to your proposed changes, in addition to all the Israel/Palestine stuff I would object to the removal of the sentence in the lead dealing with Mandela's role in the Pam Am Flight trial; it's important that that remain in the article. Ideally I would like to see the criticism over Mandela's friendship with Castro, Gaddafi etc retained, as I think it is significant, although if the supporting source is now being listed as unreliable then I suppose we would have to find a better source if we are to retain the information. As to your other prose changes, I have no objection. Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:59, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Muboshgu:@Midnightblueowl: Thanks for communicating. Excluding the material related to IP, Pam Am flight trial, and Mandela's relationship with these leaders, I understand that you have don't objections to the rest of the edits and so I will restore them accordingly.
I will leave the material related to IP to later.
As for the Pam Am flight trial, the lede is a summary of body. The fact that Mandela was mediator in that trial is not mentioned in body. And the parts of body that deal with Pam Am trial is barely one sentence, so this does not really qualify for this mention in the lede. So based on these arguments, would you support removing it from the lede?
As for Mandela's relationships with some other leaders, the claim in question has an unreliable source tag on it because it references the IBtimes, a subpar source. Naturally, as both of you have indicated that a featured article needs to be dealt with extra care, you would support this sentence's removal in case no RS are presented to support it? Makeandtoss (talk) 10:30, 8 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
If the IBTimes is no longer considered sufficiently high quality, then yes the information based on it should be removed; unless of course we can find a better source for that information. Regarding the Pan Am Flight trial, the main body of the article may not use the word "mediator", but it does describe Mandela's mediating role between Libya on the one hand and the US/UK on the other. I would support the retention of that information in the lead. Midnightblueowl (talk) 09:13, 12 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
The IBTimes source has long been flagged as unreliable per a tag on the article. Since you agree that it is not reliable, and that no better source has been found, I will be removing it. Fine with me keeping the mediator role, although I find it not to be a summary at all. Makeandtoss (talk) 14:27, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
level-3 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. M.Bitton (talk) 16:52, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Not done: According to the page's protection level you should be able to edit the page yourself. If you seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. NotAGenious (talk) 17:02, 18 September 2024 (UTC)