Talk:Sudanese transition to democracy (2019–2021)

Crystal-balling

@Aréat: 2019–2022 is now more realistic than 2019 in the title of this article, so you were probably right to be bold. But given the 3-months-over-schedule conclusion of a comprehensive peace agreement and the 9-months-over-schedule creation of a parliament of at least 40% women, noone can really say if the transition will really end in 2022 or 2023 or ... later. If nobody objects, it seems fine by me to leave the article with the name 2019–2022 Sudanese transition to democracy. In 29 months' time we can revisit the question... Boud (talk) 00:59, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree. It seem to me that either we have it with the years it's officially scheduled for, only adjusting if and when it goes off plan, either we simply don't put years in the title. Having 2021 for seemingly no reason simply called for a change. Cordially--Aréat (talk) 01:07, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Title

2019–2024 Sudanese transition to democracy? --Regards, Jeromi Mikhael 08:19, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Coming here three months later I have the same question. The year 2024 is never explained. Could someone add a sentence about its origin to the article?--37.201.182.206 (talk) 12:17, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 12 November 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. There isn't going to be consensus for this move, no objection to immediate renomination to another title such as 2019 Sudanese government reform plan, Sudanese democracy transition plan or Sudanese transition to democracy which were proposed in the discussion (but I don't see this RM gaining consensus for any of those titles). (closed by non-admin page mover) Elli (talk | contribs) 02:48, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

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2019–2024 Sudanese transition to democracy → 2019–2021 Sudanese transition to democracy – The transition have been de facto ended by October 2021 Sudanese coup d'état. Panam2014 (talk) 14:25, 12 November 2021 (UTC) — Relisting. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 00:46, 20 November 2021 (UTC) — Relisting. VR _talk 05:41, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Obviously this should be moved, but I'm not sold on the new title. I'd prefer something like 2019 Sudanese government reform plan, if a title that is common use can be found. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 15:04, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

@Panam2014 and 力: The time scale for significant changes in the situation since December 2019 has typically been a few months - not a few days. So we don't yet know if the transition has ended: masses of Sudanese citizens seem willing to continue civil disobedience indefinitely. However, "-2024" is currently quite speculative. It seems like the original title that I put was 2019 Sudanese transition to democracy, with the idea that 2019 was the start.

I don't think that "government reform" would make sense, because the changes so far and the planned changes are much more fundamental than just "reform".

How about Sudanese democracy transition plan? While there were partial transitions to democracy after the first two revolutions, they're not as widely known as this one, and by the time that Wikipedians decide (by editing new articles) that the previous cases are part of human knowledge, the current transition will probably be considered to be "completed" (in the minimalistic sense of holding elections) and we'll be able to restore a year range if needed. The plan still exists. (In fact, al-Burhan claims that there was no coup, just a "rectification" of the transition.) Boud (talk) 15:40, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• This may be a little premature. BilledMammal (talk) 11:24, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

  True: we could say that the "military blinked first". I don't think changing to Sudanese democracy transition plan would hurt, though. If the civilians continue their civil disobedience and force the military completely out of power, or force the military to allow a civilian to become head of the Sovereignty Council now, as per the rules of the transition, they might advance or delay the 2024 revised end/election date (which we don't currently have a source for, it seems to me). If we switch to an undated name, then we won't need further renames. Boud (talk) 22:32, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose – wait and see. Dicklyon (talk) 08:29, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose: The suggested title implies that Sudan would have transitioned to democracy in 2021, not had its transition interrupted by a military coup. I would support simply Sudanese transition to democracy if the end date is too uncertain, but the post-coup situation is still developing so I suggest waiting. --Grnrchst (talk) 22:09, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Change the title?

There is no set date for the end of the transition to democracy and the 2026 end year seems to have just been made up by a random editor. I propose changing the title to Sudanese transition to democracy (2019–present) because we have no definite way of knowing when the transition will end. DrPepperIsNotACola (talk)

I got linked to this article from an article on the latest coup. 2026 seems both arbitrary and...well, it might not be happening. Article should be renamed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.166.133.174 (talk) 08:07, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 14 April 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. While there is no consensus as to whether the title should be Sudanese transition to democracy or Sudanese transition to democracy (2019–present), there IS a consensus to move the current title to a different one. Per WP:NOTCURRENTTITLE, I have moved the title to the one originally proposed by Festucalex. (closed by non-admin page mover) – MaterialWorks (contribs) 22:09, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

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2019–2026 Sudanese transition to democracy → Sudanese transition to democracy – Move per WP:CRYSTALBALL. The 2026 date is straight up not true. The transition plan was interrupted by the 2021 Sudan coup d'état. A previous move request in 2021 was dismissed as premature, but I believe enough time has passed to confidently move this. 〜 Festucalex • talk 05:59, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

agree Half-kratos21 (talk) 01:17, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

yes please, the title is ridiculous. it was made by a random editor with no source and must be changed right away Seekallknowledge (talk) 02:26, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Agreed 2601:5C5:8302:3940:74FB:50FF:4A37:BDB3 (talk) 04:25, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Move it. Heck, they might not even be still transitioning to democracy by the end of the month...if they had a roadmap to democracy, someone handed it to the new lieutenant. 98.166.133.174 (talk) 08:08, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

• strongly oppose it is not the first transition there are also 1985.

Panam2014 (talk) 11:57, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

@Half-kratos21, Festucalex, and Seekallknowledge: according to 2022 agreement, elections will take place in 2026. The problem is it is the second or the third transition period since 1956. Panam2014 (talk) 11:59, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

@Panam2014: If i'm not mistaken, there are no articles for the other transitions. 〜 Festucalex • talk 12:23, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

@Festucalex: short article could be created if it is not the case. Panam2014 (talk) 12:41, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

You can create articles about previous transitions using the exact dates. 79.225.188.217 (talk) 22:40, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Support - I don't think that new title is perfect either, but it's far better than the current one. Also, there's no articles about previous transitions as pointed out above. And if there were, these can easily use the exact years in their title. 2003:CD:EF2E:3000:9439:8E75:EA52:D7E6 (talk) 22:42, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

We must use the exact date here too. Panam2014 (talk) 23:16, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Oppose a move to a new article name without a year delimiter, because that would still suggest a transition to democracy is ongoing; in fact, this article (along with Sudanese peace process) has been largely abandoned since the 2021 coup, and now mostly serves as an archive of events, proposals and Western media reports from 2019-2021.

Instead, I suggest opening a Deletion request instead. This article (and Sudanese peace process) were almost entirely written by User:Boud who (notwithstanding a large volume of good contributions) has a precedent of writing broad-themed articles violating WP:Synth. See these AfD discussions: "Protests of 2019" (result:delete), "List of killed, threatened or kidnapped Iraqi academics" (result:delete). This article follows the same pattern: the editor at a point in time becomes interested in a current event, and equipped with WP:RECENT bias gathers a large number of English-language news reports (with exactly zero academic sources) and synthesizes it into a historical topic. The problem with synthesizing news reports into an article is that you inevitably add assumptions about its contextual place in history - e.g. that some sort of Sudanese transition into democracy will inevitably take place; and that this forms part of a grand Arab democratic awakening in 2019; both of which have turned out to be wildly off-the-mark. (which does not come as a surprise to historians and political scientists - who would have hesitated to assume that the setting up of a transitional government and "constitutional drafting" necessarily leads to democratization)

Once you take away the assumption that 2019 marked some kind of new epoch, and properly apply the WP:Notability criteria to the content, there's almost nothing of worth in this article that's not already covered in Sudanese Revolution and 2021 Sudan coup d'état. As it stands, this article is dysfunctional and should just be deleted.Ceconhistorian (talk) 07:12, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

@Ceconhistorian: Very interesting argument, and you certainly can open an AfD request if you so wish. My question is: how in God's name did an article with such dysfunction as you describe make it into WP:VITAL? 〜 Festucalex • talk 08:19, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

A common Wikipedia fallacy; editors wish they're participating in some epoch-marking current event, so they contort the assessment criteria accordingly. For instance, Iranian Green Movement ("Persian Awakening") is still classified as "High" importance by WikiProject:Iran (on par with Education in Iran). The article was written in the context of 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, when editors synthesized the news reports and enthusiastically documented the birth of a new democratic movement. In reality it was more of a temporary post-election coalition of reformists/dissidents coupled with catchy symbolism (green) which soon became antiquated, e.g. 2017–2021 Iranian protests contains no references to a "Green Movement".Ceconhistorian (talk) 08:53, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm starting to lean to your side, but I think it's only fair to ping @Boud to see what he has to say. 〜 Festucalex • talk 09:50, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Agree 100% better Matthew Campbell (talk) 20:03, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Neutral - as long as it references the date in the introduction we could link a disambiguation page for the other one. FusionSub (talk) 13:02, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

On the two earlier AfD decisions: Iraqi academics – the full AfD discussion (including the rather tasteless reference to daisy cutter bombs in the closing summary) is more informative than just the summary decision; the full discussion points to the fact that the main content of the article was recreated as Violence against academics in post-invasion Iraq and remains uncontested, so the claim of WP:SYNTH is unsupported; – effectively that was a title-change-with-loss-of-editing-history rather than a true deletion of the topic (keep in mind that in 2007, the idea of what counted as a topic was less developed than now); 2019 protests: the first AfD was rejected as no-consensus, a second AfD was opened at a time when I was inactive in Wikipedia editing, and nobody bothered to ping me (a major contributor) about it; all the same it also has a useful discussion – after 13 days, there were 8 keep arguments versus 2 delete arguments, these were considered insufficiently referring to policy and the discussion was relisted; whether these two cases count as WP:SYNTH is unclear. But let's return to discussing this article rather than discussing old cases.

To respond to some specific concerns: "The problem with synthesizing news reports" – historians are welcome to add sources with context, but complaining that those sources are absent is not constructive; "that some sort of Sudanese transition into democracy will inevitably take place" – the initial version clearly says in the lead, the TMC and the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) alliance agreed on 5 July 2019 to a 39-month transition process to return to democracy, including the creation of executive, legislative and judicial institutions and procedures – that is not a statement about what will inevitably happen, it is a statement about the main political forces involved making promises on a 39-month transitional process that they call the 2019 Transitional Period; "grand Arab democratic awakening in 2019" – no evidence for this in the initial version or in a somewhat later version of 5 Aug 2019, still mostly by me (and the article is not in :Category:Arab Spring). There is a big difference between a process and an inevitability. Once historians catch up to the mainstream media, let their sources and information be added.

Article title and justification as stand-alone article. There were a whole lot of negotiations, agreements and plans made by the various political forces in Sudan in 2019, and they gave the name 2019 Transitional Period in their Draft Constitutional Charter. I see no justification for deleting the article: WP:NOTPAPER. I agree that the repeated renames with resetting the "end point" of the process to another future year became crystal-balling – I wasn't involved in these renames to –2022, –2024, –2026, although I did comment on the –2022 change (scroll up to see, @Aréat, Jeromi Mikhael, and DrPepperIsNotACola: who commented on these three name changes). I agree that a better name is needed, especially to avoid the concerns from not-yet-provided peer-reviewed articles by 'historians and political scientists'. I also find it unconvincing that political-scientists-with-unknown-sources consider negotiations and development of institutions as less sociologically notable than protests and coups; normally it's the mainstream media that are accused of focussing on photogenic events and violence rather than "boring" but significant processes of discussion, negotiation and formalisation of institutions.

Suggested names: (a) Sudanese 2019 Transitional Period, where '2019 Transitional Period' is in italics, to clarify that this is mainly a named plan made in the draft constitutional charter and associated events, i.e. the agreements just prior to it, the negotiating processes, the proposed institutions, and those few institutions that were actually created. (b) Sudanese 2019 democratic transition plans – as a descriptive title. Boud (talk) 16:09, 17 April 2023 (UTC) (strikeout old title, see below Boud (talk) 20:56, 18 April 2023 (UTC))

• Support: Where does 2026 even come from? It's not stated anywhere in the article, so it seems like a prediction that might not be accurate. It's like titling COVID-19 pandemic 2019–2023 COVID-19 pandemic just because of predictions that it will end in 2023. GamerKiller2347 (talk) 22:34, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Agree per above, and furthermore my own title proposal would be Sudanese transitional plans, as the plan per se, as others mentioned, is and/or could not be necessarily democratic to everyone.~Sıgehelmus♗_(Tøk) 00:05, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Alternative proposal: how about Sudanese transition to democracy (2019–present)? DrPepperIsNotACola (talk) 17:53, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@DrPepperIsNotACola: I'm afraid (2019–present) is even worse than the current title, since the plans were practically abandoned in 2021 as mentioned above. 〜 Festucalex • talk 18:20, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@Festucalex and DrPepperIsNotACola: how about Sudanese democratic transition plans (2019–2021), on the grounds that from Oct 2021 the 2019 plans lost their de facto status? (No italics, because this is not a formal name.) Boud (talk) 18:28, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

If the plans for democratic transition haven't been formally abandoned, I'd prefer for the title to reflect that, but your title is still better than the current one. DrPepperIsNotACola (talk) 18:36, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

The sources don't seem to show any abandonment of democratic transition plans. Boud (talk) 20:56, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@Festucalex: I haven't been following this topic for a long time, but I noticed that British diplomat Rosalind Marsden writing for Chatham House said in March 2023 that the democratic transition is very much ongoing, that the Sudanese resistance committees are a key player, and that disruptions could still occur (she turned out to be right). Boud (talk) 21:28, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support - Sudanese transition to democracy (2019–present) The December 2022 agreement between forty different civilian and military groups and the 6 April 2023 continued negotiations between FFC-CC and the military on one side and FFC-DB negotiations on implementation of the Juba peace agreement with facilitation by the Trilateral Mechanism mean that per the known sources (as opposed to unknown sources), the democratic transition is ongoing. Whether or not the current "boys with toys, bang! bang!" can disrupt the long-term sociological processes is purely speculative. So far, at least, we have no sources saying that any of the 40 groups have suddenly been destroyed. So Sudanese transition to democracy (2019–present) seems the best justified by the sources as a descriptive title. Boud (talk) 20:56, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
• Support - As the recent events show, there is still an ongoing process, so (2019–2021) would not fit. On the other hand, the 2026 date is completely unjustified, with no plan specifically mentioning this year (not to mention that the recent clashes make the implementation of these plans unsure, WP:CRYSTAL). I'd support Sudanese transition to democracy (2019–present) to distinguish it from other previous events, although depending on notability it might be WP:PRIMARY which would justify the non-disambiguated title too (although recentism should be avoided of course). Chaotic Enby (talk) 08:04, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

  Edit: Apparently according to an earlier reply one plan mentioned elections for 2026, but this is not mentioned anywhere in the article. Again, not only should it be mentioned if relevant (it very probably is), but, especially given the recent events, there is no way to predict these elections will actually be implemented. Chaotic Enby (talk) 08:07, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

  Feel free to update 2023 Sudanese general election further or, if you think that consensus is likely enough, do a bold move as suggested on the talk page there. Dec 2022 + two years + 'after that' seems the best that the sources currently say, but "next" would be better supported by the sources. None of the sources point to promises of a no-election scenario. In any case, that discussion makes sense at Talk:2023 Sudanese general election or with edits of the article that have a fair chance of consensus. Boud (talk) 11:53, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support some sort of change Including 2026 in the title is clearly a problem per WP:CRYSTAL. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 19:47, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
• Support Sudanese transition to democracy, but if not that then I'd support Sudanese transition to democracy (2019–present) instead. WP:CRYSTALBALL certainly applies in the current title Presidentofyes12 (talk) 15:06, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

2026?

How do you guys know it is exactly 2026? 64.187.181.156 (talk) 13:09, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Its not true Matthew Campbell (talk) 20:05, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

There are no sources that say 2026 Matthew Campbell (talk) 20:05, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

There's a rename proposal in the section immediately above. You're both welcome to present arguments for or against any proposed names or propose a better name. Boud (talk) 21:47, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Before the rename proposal goes through, would it be premature to change the intro to "The ongoing Sudanese transition to democracy..."? The 2026 date isn't sourced anywhere, and the opening sentence doesn't have to perfectly match the title, so this would be closer to a regular edit. Chaotic Enby (talk) 08:09, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't think you need to wait to edit the lead, as long as it's within the spirit of the discussion here. Maybe remove 'ongoing' and put something more like 'a series of political agreements among Sudanese political and military forces for a democratic transition'. The title does not necessarily have to be in bold in the first sentence. Boud (talk) 12:03, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Done! Chaotic Enby (talk) 20:11, 21 April 2023 (UTC)