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Pinging editors who have changed the color of the sidebar at least once:@Wabbuh:,@Tpwissaa:,@RideTheLightning99: and myself. All of us except Wabbuh have made it pink, but Wabbuh argues it should be green because green has previously been used on Wikipedia articles to represent progressive parties in the US, particularly on election maps.
I would argue that the only reason why we use green on those maps is for color contrast and accessibility for colorblind readers, especially on maps where we use multiple shades of red (see map to the right), so representing progressivism as pink would make the map harder to read. But that doesn't mean that the color green is perceived as the progressive color here in the US or is customarily thought of as a "progressive color", Wikipedia generally uses pink for that, which unlike green does have a meaningful association with social democratic / democratic socialist parties (seePolitical colors), whereas green is explicitly associated withgreen politics, which is not the same thing as progressivism.
In other words, we use green on so many American articles simply because green is an easily distinguishable "third party color" in a 2-party country that uses red and blue, not because it has anything to do with progressivism.
TL;DR: I think we should change it to pink to be in line withTemplate:Progressivism sidebar. I think the fact that 3/4 of us four already tried to do this means there's already a rough consensus for that among people who've edited this template. I'll boldly change it back to pink after leaving this comment, but I invite everyone to use this talk page for all disagreements going forward because there's a lot of undoing when what we really need is discussion.
I changed the template fully back to pink. Also added a US-specific symbol for progressivism, the single purple flag is already on the international progressivism sidebarRideTheLightning99 (talk)19:20, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this move. The green flag was also confusing as it is so connected with green politics. I understand why the user wished to use green due to some historic connections, however the use of the green flag (a flag which to my knowledge has not been used by progressive political groups) seemed out of place.Tpwissaa (talk)20:53, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with changing the color simply because so many United States Wikipedia articles about progressivism use the green color. It's simply a waste of time to change the color to pink. Also, nobody is going to confuse progressive politics with green politics. Changing the color from green to pink is like changing theTemplate:Conservatism US from red to blue just because conservatism is closer associated with blue worldwide. This template isn't about the world; It's about the United States, and from my knowledge green is simply more associated with progressive politics in the United States than pink.Zyxrq (talk)15:13, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Zyxrq: You may want to read the comment I left on this thread explaining how green has never officially been associated with progressivism in the United States, it's only widely used to represent progressive third parties on various Wikipedia articles because green works as a "third color" with colorblind-friendly contrast to red and blue, especially on maps where multiple shades of red (including pinks) are used to show the relative strength of the Republicans by county, such as the map I showed in this thread. Vanilla Wizard💙17:59, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I did and the same can be said about pink not being an official color, many progressive political parties don't use pink, for example theDemocratic party andGreen Party of the United States. AlsoGreen politics is widely considered progressive, I don't know why you think the opposite. Pink has basically little connection to progressivism within the united states, simply more progressive political parties that are operating today use green.Zyxrq (talk)16:11, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is that no one color has been consistently used to representAmerican progressivism in any official way, not green, not pink, not anything else, but at least pink is meaningfully connected to progressive politics more generally. Green politics is its own distinct thing. Even if green parties often support progressive positions, it wouldn't be accurate of us to suggest that green and progressive politics aresynonymous by using the color scheme ofTemplate:Green politics sidebar in this template instead of using the color scheme ofTemplate:Progressivism sidebar. Those are two different templates for a reason. Vanilla Wizard💙19:11, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Green was used on the main Progressive sidebar before pink, 18:51, 25 October 2024 is when Green was originally added. Pink was added to the main sidebar on 21:08, 16 March 2025 by you @Vanilla Wizard. So the argument that Pink has any major significance to Progressivism is dubious at best. Green was used on the template for United States Progressivism on its creation and it seems Pink was originally added on 15:04, 29 October 2025 also by you Vanilla Wizard, if not can you correct me?Zyxrq (talk)19:25, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't sure on what the color should be when I originally created it. Now there is a clear consensus that it should be pink and not green and my stance has changed to support that consensus.RideTheLightning99 (talk)20:37, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pink was added to the main sidebar on 21:08, 16 March 2025 by you @Vanilla Wizard Not exactly, the edit I made to the main progressivism sidebar was an attempt at fixing another editor's edit for them; Wabbuh said "The other political ideology sidebar templates like this have borders" but accidentally made the entire thing a dark purple color rather than adding borders, so I added borders but made them more of a magenta color to match the flag icon that was already there for a very long time and hundreds of edits before either my edit or Wabbuh's edit. And before that, there was a series of very short-lived colors and icons, including (as you mentioned) a short-lived green border, theprogress pride flag, arose symbol, and before that, no colors or symbols at all. It's been stabilized at the current design for a good number of edits from a good number of editors by this point, it never used green for a long period of time.
Green was used on the template for United States Progressivism on its creation and it seems Pink was originally added on 15:04, 29 October 2025 also by you Vanilla Wizard, if not can you correct me? That is very incorrect, I am neither the first nor the second editor to make it pink. The first editor who made it pink was RideTheLightning withthis edit, the second was Twipsaaa withthis edit.
So the argument that Pink has any major significance to Progressivism is dubious at best. While I disagree for the reasons why I explained (seepolitical color, or most editors' opinions here or at the other template where pink has been used without objection through quite a few revisions by now), even if we agreed there is a dubious case for pink, there is a much weaker case for green.
I understand your rationale for wanting the color to be green. I don't object to it even being used as the color for the box. However, the crossed green and US flag does not fit. The green flag (thereby representing green as a political color) is not connected to the progressive movement. Green politics is itself a different set of beliefs and the green flag would make more sense used in that context. Red is currently used by and associated with conservatism through the Republican Party. If one were to use a crossed red flag and US flag in the infobox that would obviously be absurd due to the red flag's association with left wing politics. Due to the ambiguity of the use of green (even with its use by some third parties) it seems the best bet, and least confusing, is to stick with the color scheme from the main Progressivism template in general.Tpwissaa (talk)19:51, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Back to moose. The Great Seal is used for more establishment ideologies (Liberalism, Conservatism, Centrism). Progressivism isn't usually considered a part of establishment politics.
At first I was going to revert this because who is vs isn't a part of "the establishment" isn't something Wikipedia dabbles in, but after looking at more US ideology templates, namelyTemplate:Libertarianism US andTemplate:Socialism US, I think there's a version of that argument that I would agree with: for more specific ideologies, we tend to use flags instead of the greater coat of arms.
But this makes the Bull Moose symbol more of an issue. If every other template uses either the arms or a color flag, and no other ideology template uses a party symbol, then this template is too inconsistent with the rest.
I think what we should do is create one of those crossed flags icons like all the others. No such image exists yet, but it should be easy to make.
I believe the color of the flag ought to be purple as opposed to pink. If one clicks through to the Progressivism political color, the color associated is Purple and not the hot pink used in the image. I don't know how to adjust the color scheme however this change should be made in order to keep in line with the overall theme and political color that is the root of this conversation.Tpwissaa (talk)19:53, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think it might instead be better to make a pinker flag image forTemplate:Progressivism that matches the hex color used in its borders rather than making this one more purple since both progressivism-related templates are intentionally pink. That template uses the purple flag file over the pink flag file because the purple one still more closely matches the pink color used in the border (since the only existing pink WikiFlag is a very light pink). Perthe article on political colors, pink is a better fit than purple. Purple in the United States is more often seen as the color of centrism, as it's the average of the two major party colors (see also:purple state & the color choice atTemplate:Centrism US), whereas pink is associated with social democracy (which in America is synonymous with the term democratic socialism) as well as progressive social/cultural political positions such as support for LGBT rights. Vanilla Wizard💙22:50, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Sirfurboy The reason theNational Progressives of America (NPA) which founded in 1938, should be included in the navbox is because it contributed significantly to the History of Progressivism within the United States. It was founded as an attempt to take theWisconsin Progressive Party (WPP) -(Which was the "De facto" successor to the1924, Progressive Party)- successes to the national level. The WPP was very successful and at one point held more power than the Republican party and Democratic party within the state -(This was during a significant portion of the 1930s and 1940s. The WPP also elected multiple governors, senators and congressmen.)- The NPA's significance comes from the history of the WPP. -(Note: This paragraph also gives a reason why we should add the Wisconsin progressive party to the navbox.)- As I think they should be included together. We also could just add the WPP because it was more successful than the1948, Progressive party when it comes to winning elections.Zyxrq (talk)17:39, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As I suggested in my edsum, the discussion should be at the article talk page and not here, as you will need to add the SIDEBAR template to the page before it can be included. SeeWP:BIDIRECTIONAL, which also states:
If a disagreement should arise, please centralize discussion at the article talk page, not that of the template (which may be watchlisted mostly only by template coders).
