Talk:Protest paradigm

Dispute over long quotes

Sphilbrick brought up an important point on my talk page about the use of long quotes in this article (currently a draft). For context, his whole comment is below:

I am concerned about the length of the quote in this edit

Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously, to protect the rights of copyright holders. That said, the mere fact that material in an article matches the copyrighted source does not automatically mean it is a copyright violation. One of the important exceptions is quoted material. You have complying with the important requirements that it be clearly identified as a quotation and attributed.

However, while Wikipedia, understandably, has avoided formal rules about lengths of quotes, generally speaking "a long quotation should not be used where a shorter quotation would express the same information." Even that statement comes from an essay (Wikipedia:Quotations), which doesn't have the same force as a guideline or policy.

I'd like to start with a discussion to learn your thoughts on this issue.

My response will focus on this general policy guideline stated by the user: a long quotation should not be used where a shorter quotation would express the same information. I believe that a shorter quote does not express the same information, and that significant information in the context of the article would be lost if trimmed. I believe this for many reasons: A) reading long quotes in the broader context of this article will better give the reader the opportunity to spot patterns they just read about for themselves, which makes for a more interesting reading experience; B) because seeing long-form text that pretty much all individuals frequently come across will ground the article in real-world clear cut instances of the protest paradigm that we encounter often without even thinking about, making it feel more grounded; C) because quotes are extremely relevant to the material covered in this article compared with the degree of benefit from including long-form quotes in other articles; D) quotes are clearly marked as such and are in blockquote format meaning they are easy to skim over, and I'm only planning to use 2-3 per section (the best examples I can find); and E) because the long quotes are rife with implications and multifaceted in their employment of the protest paradigm that are not sufficiently summarized using short quotes.

For reference, the five main characteristics of the protest paradigm are:

(1) narrative framing, (2) reliance on authorities, (3) no public support, (4) delegitimization, and (5) demonization.

In the below quotes, I will insert a number corresponding to one of the above characteristics when I believe it is invoked (usually many are invoked at a time, but I'll simply mark the best match).

Applying this method to the Boston Globe quote:

This is the problem with overstated expectations (4), and with confusing high emotion with effectiveness. The protesters' stated goal was to turn Wall Street into Tahrir Square, but too many Americans do have jobs to make an Arab-Spring-style uprising even possible (3). It's hard to take a protest fully seriously when it looks more like a circus (1) – some participants seem to have taken a chute straight from Burning Man – and when it's organized by a Canadian magazine and a computer-hacking group (1). (Also, organizers first declared that they would draw 20,000 protesters, but only 1,000 showed up. That's not a media conspiracy. It's math.) (3)

All of which explains why, when it comes to channeling liberal rage – or liberal sarcasm, which sometimes works just as well – Elizabeth Warren has a much better shot. Indeed, in a race that's getting national attention, she may have found the perfect medium for her corporate-accountability message. (4)

Not only does this quote invoke 3 out of 5 of the general characteristics of the protest paradigm—it also invokes more specific elements previously discussed in the article (like favoring bipartisan electoral politics over direct action).

Now doing the same for a Fox News BLM quote:

More than a dozen U.S. cities — still reeling from a grim night of violent riots (1) — have implemented nighttime curfews in an effort to mitigate the worst of what they have seen (2) in the days following the death of George Floyd, a black Minneapolis man who died in police custody after a white officer kneeled on his neck for more than 8 minutes in a moment caught on cellphone video. More than 1,000 people were arrested Saturday night alone after peaceful demonstrations turned into violent — and in some cases deadly — riots (5). Meanwhile, some 5,000 National Guard members have been deployed in at least 15 states in a desperate bid to stem the mayhem, chaos and wreckage (1). Attorney General William Barr said in a statement Sunday that as the rioting spreads in cities across the country, "voices of peaceful and legitimate protests have been hijacked by violent radical elements" (4) and that they are working to "pursue their own separate, violent, and extremist agenda. (3) It is time to stop watching the violence and to confront and stop it. The continued violence and destruction of property endangers the lives and livelihoods of others, and interferes with the rights of peaceful protesters, as well as all other citizens," Barr said. (2) Barr said the violence "instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups" in connection with the rioting is "domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly." (2)

Again, why I think this paragraph in whole is fantastic to include is because, in addition to invoking 5 out of 5 of the general characteristics of the protest paradigm, it showcases just how disproportionately authority narratives are being deferred to in order to supplement other strategies, which is discussed previously in the article. It also spends only around 5 seconds talking about the actual issue at hand, again previously discussed as a tactic. And finally, it focuses overwhelmingly on violent protests even though they were mostly peaceful creating a warped sense of proportion about the protests like previously described, therefore strengthening the legitimacy of the article's claims in the eyes of the reader.

Please let me know what you think of my reasoning. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 13:48, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello, I am Diannaa and I am an administrator. I think there's both too many quotes and the quotes are too long. The article is 25% quotations by word count. Typically we write Wikipedia content ourselves, summarizing our sources rather than copying them verbatim.— Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 19:43, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

You guys are the admins so if you insist then I am of course happy to trim down the quotes. But if you could provide a little more insight into the maximum amount of quotes you think are appropriate per example in the article (e.g., "2 quotes per example instead of 3," "3 quotes per section is fine if each quote is roughly half the average quote's current length," etc), that would be greatly appreciated. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 19:49, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

There's no set limit on the size or number of quotations. What we're supposed to do is use only short quotations, and only if there's no alternative. Wikipedia articles should for the most part be written in our own words, and quotations used only when absolutely necessary. For example, for a book, it would be more appropriate to provide a few short excerpts (one or two sentences) from reviews rather than extensive quotations from the book itself or from an interview with the author. Wikipedia:Non-free content#Text says "Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea"; "Extensive quotation of copyrighted text is prohibited." Please see Wikipedia:Non-free content, especially Wikipedia:Non-free content#Text, for more details. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 19:58, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi Diannaa, thank you for letting me know! I'm working with Sphilbrick to figure out a solution. What do you think of the sample I proposed in response to his comment (putting the full quote in an efn footnote template with clearly attributed sources and keeping the main article in summary form)? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 16:00, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your offer to help shorten the quotations. While I suspect and even hope that you have more interest in working on the draft article than debating style questions, I would like to add a few points:

• It is commonly but mistakenly assumed that administrators have special authority when it comes to editorial questions. Reaching decisions related to editorial issues relies on Wikipedia:Consensus, a process in which all editors can participate. The weight of arguments is more important. One hopes that administrators, who are expected to have extensive knowledge of policies and guidelines, will be more apt to express views grounded in well-reasoned rationale, it is never the case that an editorial decision can be rendered simply because the person making it is an administrator
• I am personally a big fan of the use of quotations in articles, for more than one reason. Stylistically, a sea of long text can be off-putting. I think it is more engaging when passages of text are sprinkled with other elements such as graphics, tables of relevant numbers, and quotations. More importantly, given the astounding fact that we let just about anybody contribute text to an article, it can happen that an assertion is made in an article, accompanied by a link to a source, but that source doesn't backup the assertion. Given the likelihood that casual readers are not going to check every reference, this can lead to problems. Inclusion of a quote is not a guarantee but it can help ensure that the assertions in the articles are accurate.
• While I support quotations in articles I'm an even bigger fan of using the quote parameter in a reference. Many editors are not aware of this option, but the citation template has an optional parameter allowing you to add a relevant quote which will not appear in the main text of the article but will appear in the list of references. That can be helpful for those readers who aren't willing to pull up the full reference but would like to see some evidence that the reference supports the assumption.
• I take responsibility for reaching out to Diannaa (talk · contribs), not because she's an administrator, but because she has extensive experience with copyright issues. (Over 100,000 CopyPatrol entries addressed, possibly more than all other editors combined). I was focusing on the absolute length of the quotation (152 words) while she picked a different metric — the proportion of the article comprised of quoted material. Both metrics are relevant.
• I agree with you that the Boston Globe article was very much on point. My suggestion (not an administrator dictate, just a suggestion from another editor) is to construct a paragraph mostly in your own words. It might say something like "A recent Boston Globe article hit on all six of these key points. It made the point that blah, blah, blah. The article also pointed out that something else. " Your paragraph might include one or two or three separate quotes from the Boston Globe in the main text of the article, and might support one or two or three with a reference using the quote parameter.

S Philbrick(Talk) 15:34, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, you cleared a lot of things up for me. Yes, I'm definitely more interested in the article itself than debate, but I just wanted to pause until getting a better sense of how to proceed with quotes, which I think your comment helped with. I actually wasn't thinking about the quote parameter in a citation — that's a great suggestion if I implement the summary-style paragraph as an alternative so that I can still keep the longer quote. That actually gives me another idea though in the same spirit that I like a little more: I could store the reference inside an efn template containing the entire quote so that it's easier to read, rather than being bundled in with ref info that should probably be separate from long-form quotes.

Something like this (a rough summary that I'd refine and probably lengthen before putting into the actual article) is what I'm thinking as an alternative to the current Boston Globe long-form quote:

"

Joanna Weiss of The Boston Globe invoked the protest paradigm in an article titled "The right way to get heard" in which she characterized OWS as a "circus", said "too many Americans have jobs" for OWS to be realistic, and advocated Elizabeth Warren as a better alternative to the movement.

"

I'm going to start converting quotes into something closer to this format for the time being since I feel like this is a happy medium — please let me know though what you think of this proposed alternative. Excited to get this implemented!

(As a side note, my attempt at using collapse top/collapse bottom below for some reason wouldn't properly render text below collapse bottom, instead grouping it in with the collapse section. I can't find any templates that properly let me collapse on a talk page and I've struggled with this in the past, so if you have any suggestions for collapsing talk page text, that would be super helpful.) Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 16:29, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Source stuff

Notes

References

|}

Sample text that should not be rendered because it is written after collapse bottom Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 16:29, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

On the one hand I'm thrilled that you are willing to engage instead of simply pushing back which is obviously what should happen but doesn't always.

However, despite having years of experience, including long-term interest in citation styles, I haven't used the EFM template enough to feel comfortable with it. As you have already noted, references are handled a little differently on talk pages, and I'm finding the combination trying to do references on the talk page using a template I'm unfamiliar with, coupled with collapsing content has overwhelmed my ability to figure out how to test what you want to try. I thought I'd solve one problem by creating a sandbox User:Sphilbrick/EFN test, so that the content would be an article space rather than talk page space, but I haven't yet figured out why the EFN footnote isn't showing up.

The second issue relates to the length of quotes. As you already surmised, I have concerns about using to longer quote in article space. For years I've wondered if an argument can be made that the length of a quote in a reference, either using the quote parameter in a citation or as a footnote, could be longer than a quote used in an article. While I think such a case can be made it is not simply that editors could agree upon it — the limitations on quotes is partly due to copyright law issues and we have to get the lawyers involved. I've worked with the Wikimedia lawyers on copyright issues, but I don't think I'll surprise you if I say that involving the lawyers in such an issue is far from a trivial undertaking. I'm not sure I have the bandwidth to take that on at this time.

My hope is that can break this into a short-term and longer-term issue. In the short term I hope you will simply shorten the length of quotes used, and if you are still editing over the longer term, I might find the bandwidth to address the more challenging issue of how to acceptably incorporate longer quotes into an article by means other than dropping them into the main text of the article. Sphilbrick

Thanks for letting me know, I appreciate you creating the sandbox and working on getting some of the syntax issues figured out. It sounds to me like you believe we should not include the long-form quotes at all until we get confirmation from lawyers. I'm a little disheartened that copyright in such cases is so strict even with regards to having a footnote with one paragraph, but if that's the case, I can simply summarize the quotes until we get better clarification. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 15:58, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

I've asked Diannaa to comment on the proposal and would like to hear what she has to say if that's alright Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 16:01, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you need the quotes at all, since all the material therein is readily available on the Internet. My preferred method would be for you to write the article in your own words and cite your sources, using quotes sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 19:45, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

I feel like including a paragraph or so of the best examples of the protest paradigm from each article (in a way very tucked-away behind an efn) serves the same purpose as Wikipedia articles: making the most important information more accessible to the reader in order to save the readers the time of having to dig deep to access said information themselves. Sorry, I'm not trying to be argumentative. I just feel like the absolute of never making long-form quotes accessible in a Wiki page might not always be best for the article. If you insist though then I can back down or start a separate RfC, as I don't want to cause any drama. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 21:01, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Once I finish the Gaza war protests section, I'm going to move the article to the mainspace. If you insist, I'll remove all the footnotes, so feel free to let me know if you see the current format as seriously problematic, and no worries if this is the case. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 18:15, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Article is incredibly america-centric

I'm aware this article is new, but I've noticed a general slant not only towards left-populism, but American media in general. The article's topic should theoretically cover the whole world (i.e outlets like Belarus 1 or Pink (Serbia). _⛿ WeaponizingArchitecture | yell at me 23:01, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Before removing essential sourcing and introducing citation errors, please consult the talk page in the future if you dispute specific sources.

You're welcome to expand the article if you feel like it's America-centric. But the reason it's America centric is largely because it's better documented in America and more prevalent in America than many other countries. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 01:45, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

For future reference, if you have criticisms of an article (especially one that's already been reviewed by other editors and admins), the best course of action isn't always to immediately add the "multiple issues" tag to the top of the page—starting a discussion on the talk page is often a better course of action because your opinion about issues with the article might not always be shared by others. If everyone added tags every time they had a problem with a page instead of starting a discussion, every Wiki page would be marked as having "multiple issues", even when it's better to raise more specific concerns on the talk page instead. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 01:57, 14 October 2025 (UTC)