Edit: Stickying some relevant “war reporting” from the comments to the post body, in a hopefully somewhat chronological order. Thanks for diving into the trenches everybody!

So the “and convicted felon” part of the screenshot that is highlighted was in the first sentence of the article about Donald Trump. After the jury verdict it was added and then removed again pretty much immediately several times over.

Then the article got editing restrictions and a warning about them (warning has been removed again):

During these restrictions there is a “RfC” (Request for Comments) thread held on the talk page of the article where anybody can voice their opinion on the matter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Donald_Trump#RfC_on_use_of_"convicted_felon"_in_first_sentence

Money quote:

There’s a weird argument for **slight support**. Specifically because if we don’t include it in the first paragraph somewhere, either the first sentence or in a new second sentence, there are going to be edit wars for the next 2-6 years. Guninvalid (talk) 22:01, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

There is a second battlefield going on in the infobox on the side (this has also been removed again at this point in time):

The article can apparently only be edited by certain more trusted users at the moment, and warnings about editing “contentious” parts have been added to the article source:

To summarise, here is a map of the status quo on the ground roughly a day after the jury verdict:

  • MueheOP
    7·
    5 months ago

    So, I think it’s pretty stupid to argue whether “convicted felon” should be in his opening lede line for Wikipedia.

    True though that may be, I don’t think it’s surprising that this would happen, and since making the post I have been falling down a rabbit hole of finding out how Wikipedia is handling situations like this, partly through taking more than a glancing look at the talk pages for the first time ever, and it’s fascinating.

    Currently my deepest point of descent is this sub-thread on the Admin board about the “consensus” boxes on top of talk pages being an undocumented and unapproved feature.