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Add criticism list to sidebar, like for Template:Capitalism_sidebar. 2601:547:500:4C80:A0CF:8C62:2B3A:5898 (talk) 21:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

only influential thinkers and activists pls Thatjakelad (talk) 11:01, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree completely although I also think influential politicians also merit inclusion. Charles Essie (talk) 22:24, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What we probably need is a criteria for inclusion. Charles Essie (talk) 22:41, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think we need to establish a criteria for inclusion in the people section. Everyone seems to agree that it's gotten way to big and includes people who are arguably of limited importance but I think if we're going to trim it without edit warring we will need consensus first.

@Battlecry, Crazymantis91, DanielRigal, Erhik, Grnrchst, Jamzze, RVD3, and Thatjakelad: As participants in past discussions on this topic, I invite you to participate in this one. Charles Essie (talk) 22:45, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are definitely people listed in the "people" section that really don't have much to do with the topic or at least aren't commonly known to have been socialist (i.e. MLK). In this case, I believe that entries which are the most vague should be removed. As for the rest, they should be split into different eras within that section to help clarify why that name is listed. For example, one era could be early influences on socialism whereas another could be well-known contemporary proponents and so on. Just my two cents. Crazymantis91 (talk) 23:26, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A trivial place to start would be verifying which of these figures are explicitly described as socialists, either within their own articles or in the main article on socialism. Just for example, I've done a fair amount of work on the William Godwin article, and nowhere have I seen him described as a socialist (although he did inspire socialists like Peter Kropotkin and Robert Owen). So I went ahead a removed him. Repeat this for each person linked here and we'll probably cut down on a fair amount of fluff. -- Grnrchst (talk) 14:24, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose one key thing is to set out the purpose of the "people" section. The lable "people" is rather broad, probably allowing this issue to arise in the first place. Maybe this section should instead be redefined as "thinkers" or "philosophers", similar to that used by the conservative infobox. They also have a different section for "politicians".

An exclusion that could be adopted includes setting a high bar on their article importance level. So, only socialist-related people with importance rated as "top" for the socialist project could be included within the "people" section, or related sections. This then providing an easy to follow exclusion reason for removing people from the infobox list.

This would then remove the debate away from this list and places it within (althought not perfect) wiki's mechanism for debating article quality/ importance. This may shift the debate, but it places it where it belongs; within the talk page of individual articles.

A less quantitative way could be to check inclusion of socialist significance in article lead paragraphs. For example, Einstein is currently included in the "people" section, but nothing about socialism is mentioned in their lead paragraph. With anything on wiki, this could be edited in, but lead paragraphs are often the most edited part and would be sense checked by other writers outside this project if the significance of the article's subject within socialism was blown out of preportion in the lead.

I don't think any system for this will be perfect, but I think these methods might help in at least moving towards some form of criteria for the list that allows debate to take place elsewhere for changes. Jamzze (talk) 08:56, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if Tony Benn should be added to the people section. His major published works included books arguing for socialism and what socialism was about such as Arguments for Socialism and Why America Needs Democratic Socialism and he was a major figure in the history of modern democratic socialism in the UK. Dunarc (talk) 22:48, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that Michael Parenti made a major contribution to socialism. For example his works on the politics of media or of course Blackshirts and reds 45.11.61.7 (talk) 07:35, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]