Talk:Director-General of the World Health Organization

Requested move 30 April 2020

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 per consensus. (non-admin closure) – Ammarpad (talk) 16:21, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

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Director-General (WHO) → Director-General of the World Health Organization – The full name of the organization in question is used more often than abbreviations when it comes to titles of the leadership/structure of an organization. Examples include Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Organization of the New York City Police Department. lovkal (talk) 12:50, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Paging @Magnovvig:

Hi Lokval. I see what you are trying, but think that it is not a policy, and would feel much more comfortable if we could leave it as is. Acronyms are often useful. In support of my position I adduce these pages:

• NATO phonetic alphabet, a spelling alphabet
• NATO Stock Number, a coding system for NATO military supply equipment
• NATOUSA (North African Theater of Operations)
• DGF Flensborg
• DGSE Companies
• CMA Music Festival

Look at these pages on Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Afghanistan) is in fact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
• The Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (Albania) is in fact the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Albania

etc... so I would vote to keep this page as is. @Lovkal: Magnovvig (talk) 13:50, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

• Support move. I think the full title is more natural than parenthetical disambiguation in this case. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:16, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
• Support. Full title is better than using a parenthetical disambiguation. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:38, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
• Support, more natural. Director-General is a common title, meaningless without the organization.--Bob not snob (talk) 07:22, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
• Support – the acronym is not so unambiguous, more particularly recognizable as a disambiguator, and the full title is most appropriate. Dicklyon (talk) 23:31, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Clear common name. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:28, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

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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.

Section about Taiwan

The material about Taiwan is only tangentially related to the position of Director-General. The sources cited barely mention Director-General Tedros, and don't give any information about the Director-General position itself, which is what this article is supposedly about. (This is not a biographical article of any particular director-general.)

I think the material should be removed as irrelevant WP:COATRACKing. What do others think? —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:44, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Not relevant to this particular article and it would probably be a better fit in World Health Organization. lovkal (talk) 16:06, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

• After more than a day with no objections, I've removed the material. If anyone disagrees, please discuss it here. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:05, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

By the way, this topic is already covered at the World Health Organization article. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:06, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

• "After more than a day with no objections, I've removed the material." Insufficient time lapse. I've undone the removal. Magnovvig (talk) 06:45, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

That is inappropriate. You do not have consensus for restoring it and have given no argument for restoring it. You are the only one in this discussion trying to include this irrelevant material. Moreover, the additional material you added today is non-neutral. Please gain consensus before re-adding any of this per WP:BRD. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:08, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Magnovvig: I see that you have reverted again without substantively participating in this discussion or addressing the problems with the material – specifically that it is irrelevant to this article (WP:COATRACK), that parts of it aren't supported by the sources (WP:V), and the non-neutral phrasing of the last paragraph (WP:NPOV). The other two users in this discussion (User:Lovkal and I) have said that the material does not belong in this article, so you are edit-warring without consensus. —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:15, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Actually, it is *you* who are 'edit-warring without consensus', because *you* made the changes to the article without proper edit summary notification. Has the definition of an edit-war changed since I last saw it? To your eternal shame, I see what you are doing: first you remove reference to source material that implicates the DGWHO ; next, you entitle the section with a misnomer, when the voanews source article and Taiwanese MOH Chen clearly implicated Adhanom ; then you use Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch to blunt the thrust of MOH Chen ; then you remove reference to historical dates ; then you lessen the impact of the NDP Health critic ; then you misdirect by replacing the DGWHO's surname with his given name (my jaw dropped with this edit, really you surpassed yourself) ; then you removed clear reference in a source newspaper article to DGWHO Adhanom (did you even pause to read the news article?) with the gratuitous tag line "rewriting to follow the source" (lol) ; then, finally, after you had let your mistaken edits percolate for two days, you removed the section with the tag line "removing per talk" when the "consensus" was only two editors to one editor (hah). This is highly partisan editing, and leads me to ask you to disclose 1) whether you are paid a commission for your subtle vandalism leading you to discard the text ; 2) whether you have any connection (blood relations, friendship, collegial relations, or otherwise) with the WHO or anyone involved in that organization including but not limited to the DGWHO. Magnovvig (talk)

I'd rather not spend time pointing out all the mistakes in this long and silly comment, but to answer your specific questions: I am not and have never been paid for editing Wikipedia, and I do not have any connection whatsoever with the WHO. I also don't have any strong feelings for or against the WHO—my goal here is to ensure the article follows WP:NPOV, WP:V, and other Wikipedia policies and guidelines. I would suggest you consider taking a break from this topic and work on something where you are able to keep a level head and edit neutrally. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:20, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

I removed the section as non-topical and irrelevant to this article. Taiwan and WHO is for the WHO article, not the DG article. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:19, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I can't believe we even have to have this conversation. This article is about the heads of a very large global organization. It is completely inappropriate and WP:UNDUE to make three-quarters of the readable prose about a job be about whether the organization subscribes to the One-China policy. WP:COATRACK indeed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:27, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I am sorry you feel as you do. I note that everyone is free to contribute to the balance of the article. I have contributed my share, why not contribute your share to the article (and rebalance it) rather than destroy another editor's good faith contributions? Perhaps you might look to my defense here. I know this is a highly politicized issue in your country right now, but when all is said and done they are your tax dollars at work. Are you pleased with DGWHO Adhanom's conduct in relation to Taiwan? He doesn't even bother to reply to a million dollar donation. If you were in his shoes, would you do the same? Magnovvig (talk) 05:06, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

If I wanted to add criticism about the current President of the United States' response to Taiwan, do you think I should put it in Donald Trump or in President of the United States, which is about 42 presidents? If I want to say something about how the current queen of England responds to Taiwan, do you think it would make sense to put that in Elizabeth II or in Monarchy of the United Kingdom, when there have been nine of them since the UK formed in 1801? I ask, because what you've done is put the content specific to the 9th holder of this office into an article about all of them. If you want to complain about Tedros' own behavior, then there's an article about him. If you want to complain about the entire WHO's decision to adopt a one-China policy, then there's an article at World Health Organization. But don't come to the "job" page to push your dislike for a policy that doesn't have anything directly to do with the job itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:05, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Not only that, the content isn't really about Tedros—it's mostly about the WHO in general. I'm mentioning this to discourage anyone from adding this material to the Tedros Adhanom article, where it would just be a more subtle WP:COATRACK. The controversy about the one-China policy is already discussed in detail at the World Health Organization article, where it belongs. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:10, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you, Granger. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Moving your contributions to an article where it's more relevant is hardly "destroying" anything. lovkal (talk) 10:34, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

concur w/ Lovkal--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:26, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

I am confused. I do not see anything about Taiwan in this article.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 16:41, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

See my 19:19, 6 May 2020 (UTC) comment above. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:30, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Ah, thank you Headbomb, much appreciated. I agree with your edit, i.e., the (previous) section discussing Taiwan was non-topical and irrelevant to this article.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 01:36, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Usable photo of Nakajima?

The 4th director, Nakajima, has no photo at present in this list. Presumably the copyrighted photo used in his personal article cannot be used on this list. But I noticed that a freely downloadable editorial that he published in 1994 in the journal World Health contains a photo of him: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/326982 I lack time and expertise in scoping out copyright issues but possibly someone should figure out whether WP could freely use that photo for him. --Presearch (talk) 00:56, 15 June 2021 (UTC)