Template talk:Socialism sidebar

Criteria for inclusion in the people section

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)

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)

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)

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)

@Charles Essie: Somehow this template has only gotten worse over the past three years, with Moxy having now added a template addressing its size. Per editorial guidelines on navigational templates, sidebars are supposed to consist of "a small, well-defined group of articles", but this sidebar's group of articles is neither small nor well-defined. The "Intellectuals" and "Politicians" sections are clearly the worst, but the "Ideas", "Models" and "Variants" sections aren't much better. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:18, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

What about Michael Parenti?

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)

Algerian Socialism

I recently created a page for Algerian socialism. Can we add it to the variants section? if it needs more development before hand let me know Pikeuo (talk) 23:16, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Algerian Socialism Pikeuo (talk) 23:16, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

Just my opinion, but I think it might be better to make this article about socialism in Algeria in general because I'm not sure this specific ideology has enough notability for its own page. Charles Essie (talk) 03:31, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

It was reviewed by admin 21hrs ago and I haven't received anything telling me the page should be taken down for notability. Also, it should be taken into consideration the fact that Algerian Socialism isn't as well known in the West because Algerian history, although incredibly important to third worldism at the time, has been scrubbed from the popular imagination. Pikeuo (talk) 01:39, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

Some of the listed persons were both intellectuals and politicians, and yet they are only in one list.

It's not even that all of them are in one or the other category. Should there be only one list for people, or should they be in both? MZoooo (talk) 18:26, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

there should be no people at all in my view.... Bio pov link spam at its worse Template talk:Antisemitism sidebar/Archive 2#People section (Nov 2024). Thank God only 20% of our readers have to deal with these..... It's just too bad in thousands of articles there is zero visual educational images in the lead because of these things. Template:If mobile should be using much more widespread like at wildlife of Canada desktop vs wireless of Canada mobile. @Mathglot: as they have always been best at explaining why name shouldn't be in these types of templates especially living people.Moxy🍁 18:48, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 July 2026

You forgot social democracy. It is a form of reformist socialism. ~2026-38617-12 (talk) 22:15, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

Not done for now: Please clarify what section of the template it should be added to. In my opinion it might fit best in the "Related ideologies" section. Day Creature (talk) 23:03, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

Variants ~2026-38617-12 (talk) 23:57, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

 Done Seems reasonable to add it there. Day Creature (talk) 00:36, 9 July 2026 (UTC)