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WP:AND states:
Sometimes two or more closely related or complementary concepts are most sensibly covered by a single article. Where possible, use a title covering all cases: for example, Endianness covers the concepts "big-endian" and "little-endian". Where no reasonable overarching title is available, it is permissible to construct an article title using "and", as in Acronym and initialism; Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9; Promotion and relegation; and Balkline and straight rail.
This wording has been used to justify using two names for the same subject in one title: Sega Genesis and Mega Drive ("Sega Genesis" and "Mega Drive" are two names that Sega used to refer to essentially the same product because it couldn't use "Mega Drive" in N. America due to copyright issues). This seems to me to obviously not be a case of "two ... closely related or complementary concepts"..., yet this wording was used to rationalize this title. See also a current discussion about that particular title: Talk:Sega_Genesis_and_Mega_Drive#Requested_move.
I don't know of any other article that constructs its title from two names like this based on WP:AND. Does anyone else?
Anyone agree or disagree this title is based on a misunderstanding of WP:AND? If agree, any suggestions on how to change the wording to be more clear about this? Thanks. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:26, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Further, WP:IAR is supposed to apply if there is a good reason. An inability for a dozen or so editors to pick one name out of two is not a good reason to "ignore all rules" and combine both in the title. It's a good reason to try harder. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
If you can end this dispute by deciding the current name it fine, and letting it drop, that makes you a hero. If you decide you're going to hold stability hostage to your idea of how hard we need to work on titling questions (hint: No we don't), then you're not a hero. What we need to "try harder" to do is to find a way to stop caring about the details of titling policy, and write an encyclopedia.
Demanding that others "try harder" when they're not being paid, and when you're not helping facilitate the goal you insist that they reach, is rude as hell. Cut it out, already. - GTBacchus( talk) 17:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Wolf, I'm not ignoring anything. I suggested the title I suggested as a result of that understanding, combined with my understanding of consensus -- a reflected in policy and guidelines -- about article titles. Now others are making even better suggestions. It's all good. Yeah, my big evil "agenda" of striving for better consistency and predictability in article titles. How terrible! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:23, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
As far as I know, the project has not been hurting for lack of consistency and predictability in article titles. We've actually been doing fine, following our usual well-supported practice of generally ignoring rules, and keeping red tape to an absolute minimum. We didn't need a lawyer to come in, decide this aspect of the project needs an overhaul, and then start carrying that out, without any apparent regard for the amount of disruption involved.
Invoking a superstitious concept such as "evil" seems extremely prejudicial and unnecessary. I'm only trying to talk about this world. - GTBacchus( talk) 19:35, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
I did find another example of this kind of title: Hellmann's and Best Foods. As far as I can tell, it was created that way in 2005 and has never been moved.
As always, I'm motivated by both getting our policy and guidelines better in line with consensus, or getting our titles better in line with consensus as reflected in our policy and guidelines.
In this case I see a conflict, and the solution can be achieved with either titles changes or with policy/guideline changes. I'm open to either. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:08, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Simply getting the guidelines and the titles to line up is not a worthwhile end in itself. The product is no suffering, so there is no problem to fix. The community has never made it clear that we want entirely consistent titles, guidelines and policies. In fact, if the cost of obtaining those is tens of thousands of words of debates, then it's abso-darn-lutely not worth it.
When did you carry out this cost-benefit analysis, and decide that your goal is worth all the static that you're generating? Can you unpack that reasoning for us, please? - GTBacchus( talk) 19:26, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
We are getting off track... this isn't really the appropriate venue to determine what the best title for a specific article is... there is an ongoing Move request RFC for that. The question we should be discussing here is whether the issues being discussed at that Move request indicate a need to change this policy in any way? I don't think they do, but perhaps I am missing something. Blueboar ( talk) 00:44, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
What is not clear, at least to some, apparently, is that this only applies to cases where the two names each individually refer to a distinct concept. "Big-endian" refers to something different from "Little-endian"; "acronyms" are not "initialisms".
One area, perhaps the only area, where this is unclear is when a company markets the same product under two or more distinct names. This is why I suggest we choose one of the statements above. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:32, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Do we really need to list and count all the individuals who have already objected to the current title, and summarize their reasons?
Oy. Lost focus again! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:20, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
As said, give this a few months instead of bringing a challenge after hugely debated naming dispute that was resolved. If no one bring up a non-policy issue that has reasonable merit why then it should be fine.(No one from either side, those who oppose the current name or those who support it should do so either as they would be trying to push a point with a likely biased agenda. If made it can be debated on the merits outside policy.∞ 陣 内 Jinnai 02:41, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm a little late to this party, but I wanted to weigh in a bit: I originally helped formalize the proposal for applying WP:AND to the Mega Drive/Genesis article (and am kinda regretting it now because of all the controversy it seems to have created). The reasoning, which at the time it seemed everyone could at least live with if not agree to, was that the compound name gave equal weight to both machines and at least implied that they were about the same overall topic. I acknowledged a risk that it could confuse a non-savvy reader by making them think the article was about a single object whose title was "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive", but the initial discussion seemed to dismiss that possibility. I'm a bit dismayed that the discussion has spiraled so far out of control since then, but at least it points to disagreement on what the proper application of this policy should be.
IMO, a compound name like this should be allowed to give equal weight to situations like this. We've already hashed the comparison and contrast issue to death, so I won't bother repeating it here, but as has been pointed out, there isn't really a clear winner for either name. Sufficient arguments on both sides to support or rebuke both names. But since people can't agree on the compromise EITHER, and other generic names (like "Sega 16-bit Console" and "Sega fourth-general console") have been rejected, I think this does say that the policy could use clarification - if nothing else, more specific examples of article titles where people DO agree that it applies.
I would go so far as to say that the outcome of the current round of discussions should be reflected in an explanatory comment related to this policy, since it is a significant factor. If we decide to ultimately reject the compound name, I think this policy should have a note on that specific debate so that we can avoid having similar fiascos in other articles. — KieferSkunk ( talk) — 20:38, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
From an outsiders' perspective, the truly horrible thing about this protracted and often bloody argument is that the outcome (between Sega Genesis and Mega Drive) is utterly irrelevant. Nobody outside of the protagonists in the debate gives a damn which it is...honestly...nobody. The overriding concern for the encyclopedia is not which name wins or why - but that whichever name wins does so sufficiently conclusively that nobody in the future will be able to start another massive debate about it again. The many outsiders who entered the fray (I'm one of them) really wanted the silly "compromise" titles to 'go away' more than to choose a particular title from the two obvious ones. The problem is entirely that the original editors of the article became so entrenched in their positions (and many of them still are) that they'll accept absolutely any title - including the most horrible ones - so long as the other name isn't the title. Quite ridiculous behavior.
Even now that it is overwhelmingly likely that Sega Genesis will win, we have editors who are trying to insist that we place "Mega Drive" in the lede sentence of the article ahead of "Sega Genesis"! The intransigence over these trivial matters is quite incredible.
Lessons I have learned from this fiasco:
SteveBaker ( talk) 21:43, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
Have you read WP:Lame?
To address your point about "Forward slashes are not forbidden in article titles" It has long been agreed that this is not the way to go because then all that happens is people move the squabble on to which name should come first. Take for example the dispute over Liancourt Rocks there was months of dispute over whether Dokdo should come first because it comes first in the alphabet or Takeshima should come first as the name is Japanese and Japan comes before Korea in the alphabet.
In this case there would be that argument coupled to precisely the same arguments you have been having about sources.
To repeat what I said before: In cases like this it is best to revert to the last stable name and failing agreement on that use the name used in the first version after the article was not longer a stub. That is the method that has worked for lots of articles eg gasoline and tram (to name on from either side of the pond). -- PBS ( talk) 05:31, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure if you're being serious or not, but obviously, I've provided much evidence and proof of my position. It has been attacked on various grounds, but it has still been presented. My point is that I don't recall anyone providing any evidence that the name "Mega Drive" exists more frequently in English-language reliable sources than "Genesis". Perhaps you're being hung up on semantics, but my point is this: I've provided a ton of evidence regarding the "Sega Genesis", and while people have criticized the policy and the methods, I have not seen anyone provide evidence that the opposite is true. LedRush ( talk) 15:36, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
How do we? (or indeed, do we bother to?) account for the historic advantage that certain countries have as regards use of the Internet and the amassed cache of data they have produced. i.e. North America had earlier and wider access to the net, along with large usage, i.e percentage wise they produce more content. Australia (Just to pick a random developed nation with a low-ish population) had later access to the net, lower uptake and a small population and so produce less content. So if a wiki debate arises concerning a term/name/something used by those two nations Australia will be at a disadvantage when it comes to pure numbers. Even if the Australia term is the "correct" one, common sense could be bettered by someone saying look at the numbers. Any system must account for this potential for systemic bias. - X201 ( talk) 21:50, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
A new proposal for ethnic groups naming conventions can be found here: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#New proposal for "Articles on peoples (ethnicities and tribes)". - Uyvsdi ( talk) 19:31, 13 November 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi
In regards to the "China"/"People's Republic of China" dispute, a group of administrators merged the articles on "Chinese civilization" and the "People's Republic of China" together at "China" The administrators argue that they are following Wikipedia:Article_titles#Non-neutral_but_common_names since "China" has been used to refer to both the civilization and the current PRC government on the Mainland I argue that it is advancing the POV that the People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government of China, and that "Non-neutral_but_common_names" does not apply since the words "Taiwan" and "China" are being used in a partisan manner, and that this is still a contentious political issue. Please see: Talk:China#the_article_was_merged.2C_not_moved.21 WhisperToMe ( talk) 00:42, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
This sentence "However, both "Pro‑choice" and "Pro‑life" redirect to more neutral titles, in keeping with point #3, above." is not a good example because it is essentially an American POV problem, and the phrases mean something else in other National varieties of English. I suggest we delete them and replace them and if someone wants such an example replace them with something else that does not carry such nationalistic baggage. -- PBS ( talk) 02:37, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Please consider weighing in on discussion at Wikipedia Talk:Naming_conventions_(clergy)#Mass_moving_of_articles_on_Syriac_bishops. Seemingly without discussion, User:Karnan on Nov 19 and 20 massively moved large numbers of Wikipedia pages - perhaps 50 - to new titles. He is adding "Mar", which means "Bishop", to the titles of Syro-Malabar Bishops. -- Presearch ( talk) 00:51, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
I think it would be a big help and clarification to incorporate the principle of least astonishment in this policy. (And that article needs to be expanded because the principle applies to much more than user interface design, software design, and ergonomics.) -- Espoo ( talk) 21:44, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. The most common name for a subject is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural; one should also ask the
questions outlined above; ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Neutrality is also considered; our policy on neutral titles, and what neutrality in titles is, follows in the next section. When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others.
Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. The most common name for a subject is often used as a title because it is recognizable, natural and upholds the
principle of least astonishment, i.e., when a majority of people are familiar with a certain topic by a particular name, and thus are likely to search Wikipedia for the topic by that name, they should not be astonished when they find the topic existing here under an unfamiliar name. However, one should also ask the
questions outlined above; ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Neutrality is also considered; our policy on neutral titles, and what neutrality in titles is, follows in the next section. When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others.
... –when a majority of people are familiar with a certain topic by a particular name, and thus are likely to search Wikipedia for the topic by that name, they should not be astonished when they find the topic existing here under an unfamiliar name ...
Besides the point made above about common search terms often not being professional or encyclopedic sounding, there's also the problem that the concept of astonishment is so culturally specific that I worry that enshrining it as policy would lead to more POV warring. I think Brits might not like the result: Since they tend to be familiar w American expressions, but not vice versa, 'least astonishment' would suggest titling everything in American English. The concept of astonishment is already covered w current criteria like CommonName, and that's probably sufficient. — kwami ( talk) 23:27, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
Editors (especially any with expertise in intellectual property law, or corporate law) may wish to contribute at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks. The issue of extending the coverage of the page to trade names as well as trademarks may not be as simple or automatic as some assume.
Noetica Tea? 22:07, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm not really all full on 100% positive, but shouldn't these three pages be titled in English?:
It seems to confirm so at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books) (Which I should have began this discussion, but that talk page is not watched very often, and the last thread was begun in August, and did not get a single reply, so I decided to start the discussion here, in hopes of getting a broader opinion base), and at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). I don't know the translation or I may have just done it myself. I could look it up, but am too afraid of stepping on toes or pissing someone off (Which never happens in our little land of Wikipedia).-- JOJ Hutton 00:02, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Even less English is Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya. I have a requested move for this one, which is active. (No one has voted so far. Be the first.) Another example of a non-English title is Praha hlavní nádraží. Kauffner ( talk) 02:36, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Talk:Libingan ng mga Bayani#Rename comes to mind. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:56, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
I don't know if there are verifiable English names,I don't speak whatever language that is. All I know is that its not English.-- JOJ Hutton 12:34, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Specifically, I just closed a discussion at Talk:Kodak#Moving_back_to_"Eastman_Kodak" as "no consensus" because editors couldn't agree on this point: business articles discussing the company generally start in the first sentence with "Eastman Kodak", but then through the body of the article shorten this to "Kodak". Some editors argue that this means "Kodak" is the common name for the company; other editors argue that using "Kodak" in the body of the article is just convenience, analogous to using "Obama" in the body of an article which started by referring to "Barack Obama". Which is correct? Edit: I'm looking more for answers regarding the general case of when our reliable sources use two different names like this; if you answer only regarding Kodak, it's not as helpful.-- Aervanath ( talk) 17:43, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
Obama -"Barack Obama"
shows thousands of sources that never use his first name at all.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
19:52, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
All editors are reminded that voting closes for ACE2011 in just over a day's time (Saturday 10 December at 23:59 UTC). To avoid last-minute technical logjams, editors are asked to vote at least an hour before the close, that is, by:
For the election coordinators. Tony (talk) 14:06, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Which naming principle should take precedence, #1 avoiding ambiguous or inaccurate names, or #2 using the common name as found in reliable sources? The recent, highly controversial move of the People's Republic of China to "China" relies upon the latter. Related to such are other articles Hirohito and Ireland. Ngchen ( talk) 03:56, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
It might help to point out that "ambiguity" isn't normally considered a weakness of an article title provided that the subject of the article is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the title. We don't mind titling an article Michael Jackson even though there are many other people, some fairly notable, with that name. Similarly we don't mind titling an article China even though there are other entities that are or have been referred to as China. Nearly all WP articles on modern countries are titled using the common short form of the country's name, and it was highly egregious to do differently for that one (for no apparent reason except something to do with Taiwan that has no influence on the English-speaking world's actual usage of the term "China").-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:35, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Could someone add Wikipedia:Naming conventions (cuisines) to the list of naming conventions? -- Jeremy ( blah blah • I did it!) 05:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
A guideline proposes using English in titles: Wikipedia:Article_titles#English-language_titles. I've been having a problem with Japanese articles. Most recently with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fumi-e. A closed discussion, incidentally. Quick! Before looking, what is Fumi-e? If you had to look first, it is not in general use in English.
Three problems here. Two are similar. Both English and Japanese are "language sponges" trying to adopt new words from other languages, quite contrary to the norm. The third is that Japanese are much closer in time to their feudal period than European cultures. They believe them totally unique, though there are English words quite capable of describing them. The other day, I tried to introduce "liege lord" to a Japanese-Anglophone editor. He found, instead, a band with that name, perhaps not realizing it was named after a common English-related feudal expression.
I lost the Fumi-e argument after one day of allowing editors to contribute. Several were editors on the article itself and hardly neutral. Right now we have hundreds, if not thousands of non-place articles with Japanese words that have not entered English and for which there is an English equivalent. I'm looking for support here (not votes. Too late for that! :). Student7 ( talk) 13:51, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Related discussion on using qualifiers when not needed: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New York City Public Transportation#Using qualifiers when no ambiguity exists -- JHunterJ ( talk) 13:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
PMA when you made this change on 22 August 2011 I think you made an inadvertent change in meaning, or at least it can be read that way.
Before there was as sentence:
The ideal title for an article will also satisfy the questions outlined above; ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Hidden comment BETTER EXAMPLE NEEDED For example, tsunami is preferred over the arguably more typical, but less accurate tidal wave.
It is clear from this sentence that ambiguous or inaccurate is referring to the bullet points in questions outlined above. But then it was a stand alone sentence at the bottom of the section. Now it is in the first paragraph:
Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. The most common name for a subject is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural; one should also ask questions outlined above; ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. For a discussion of neutrality in titles, see below. When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others.
The problem is that by extracting the phrase "ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources". Which after all comes after a semicolon, it can be used to support the "correct" name and ignore the common name. See this posting in an RFC at Use English. Now I happen to know that this is taking part of a sentence out of context, but I suggest that we either move the sentence back down the section, or we rephrase it to make it clear that we are talking about Precision and Conciseness -- PBS ( talk) 22:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
The second version has two semicolons without having parallellism. There seems a clear solution, which also may address the problem which brought me here (this
move discussion, in which the nominator quotes consistency as though it were the whole of the policy); break after "questions outlined above".
None of the questions decide article titles by themselves; in particular, ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are sometimes avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources.
JCScaliger ( talk) 04:35, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
- We decide on the common name through the frequency of use in reliable sources. Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. A common name for a subject is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural, but the consideration should also be given to the other questions outlined above in the section " deciding on an article title".
Seems to me the problems of phrasing perhaps arise because we still haven't completely got away from stating things as "if...then...else..." conditions or would-be algorithms, rather than acknowledging that there are simply various factors that may be taken into account when deciding on titles (probably more than the five bolded ones we list in the opening section), and that these are weighted and balanced in any given case to provide what we hope to be a satisfactory answer.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:02, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Born2Cycle you reverted out the inclusion of this paragraph
We decide on the common name through the frequency of use in reliable sources. When there are several common names for a subject, it is perfectly reasonable to select as an article title the name that best fits the other criteria in this policy. If the name of a person, group, object, or other article topic changes then more weight should be given to name used in reliable sources published after the name change than in those before the change.
With the comment
Revert. Strongly disagree there is consensus support for this change, certainly not mine. The MOST common name is given preference, and policy should continue to reflect that. Please discuss first such a radical change.
As you can see it has been discussed. What exactly is it in the wording I introduced that with which you disagree, or perceive there to be a problem? -- PBS ( talk) 08:56, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
@Septentrionalis PMAnderson: Your editing restrictions (detailed at Wikipedia:Editing restrictions#Placed by the Wikipedia community) are quite clear. You are Topic banned from WP:MOS and discussions anywhere on the project concerning the Manual of Style or technical aspects of the use of the English language anywhere on the project, including his own talkpage, for a period of one year. So what is your rationale for weighing in here notwithstanding that? Is there a tacit understanding with someone in power that you can weigh in on these types of discussions if you can behave yourself? Or are you seeing how thin the ice is by simply walking out on it with your arms outstretched? I personally find my own views on wikimatters are typically extremely well aligned with yours; more so than most other editors on these types of pages. But there will be precious little slack cut for you if you revert to your old ways. Please explain your presence here. Greg L ( talk) 02:22, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
As was amply demonstrated at Talk:Yogurt, PMA’s inflammatory manner of contributing would result in flamewars. Only after someone pointed out there at Talk:Yogurt that PMA wasn’t even supposed to be weighing in there did one editor write what amounted to “Oh… well if I had known that in the first place, I wouldn’t have taken the bait.” Ergo, since few editors new to discussions start from the very top and catch every post, it is appropriate and helpful to remind both PMA and the community that he isn’t supposed to be here anyway—as I just did, and rightly so.
There is probably no single ideal way to get PMA to comply with his editing restriction and it is obvious he is intent on testing the limits and wants to push them back. Given that he knew he was treading on thin ice at Talk:Yogurt and still managed to tick off some editors, I personally see no point to just pretending he has no editing restriction, ignoring that he is being provocative in places he is not supposed to be, not letting others know that they needn’t take the bait, letting him slowly devolve into his old habits, and finally letting a shoe drop at at ANI. ANIs are ugly and an utter waste of the community’s time if they can be avoided with a polite but direct reminder that it is not too much to ask that an editor abide by an abundantly clear and unambiguous editing restriction.
But, thank you PBS, for reminding me that it would be helpful to provide a fuller accounting here of just why it is so hard to reign in PMA. Perhaps you might try your hand at reminding him of his editing restrictions on his talk page; maybe you will have better luck. Happy editing. Greg L ( talk) 04:05, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Born, the fact is that we don't always use "the MOST common name", especially if "the MOST common name" is used by less than half the sources (which happens not infrequently when more than two alternative names exist), but my bigger concern is that you seem to be engaging in sloppy reversions. Do you actually have something against the idea that "If the name of a person, group, object, or other article topic changes then more weight should be given to name used in reliable sources published after the name change than in those before the change", or was this just a mindless reversion of a good change, that you're now going to correct? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 03:32, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Example: Say A is more natural, more recognizable, more concise and just as consistent with similar titles as B, but B is more concise. Even though A is favored by 3 of the 5 criteria, and a wash on a 4th, this statement suggests that choosing B is "perfectly reasonable" because, ignoring the common name criteria, B is favor by one of the remaining 3 criteria, and so is A. I don't think that reflects actual practice. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 05:43, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
Now, if there are multiple common names and none is clearly the most common, then, sure, we use other factors (i.e., consistency, concision and precision) to decide. But if one name is clearly the most common, then usually it's favored, and it's not "perfectly reasonable" to pick one of the other common names because it best fits the other criteria of the policy. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
But in the vast majority of cases we don't have such a controversy about most common. My concern with the proposed wording is that it would seem to discourage using the most common name in situations where there is no controversy about that, like in the David Owen example I just gave above, but other factors (like consistency) indicate another title. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I think that WhatamIdoing's changes put in most of what I was saying anyway. But it only touched one third of it. The other two were the addition of:
and the second issue was what to do about the sentence "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." because in at least one occurrence of a guideline discussion this has been used to justify using the "correct" spelling, eg a persons name in their passport as opposed to the name used in reliable secondary sources. (See this posting in an RFC at Use English). If reliable sources meant documents as opposed to for example experts then changing the phrase "used by reliable sources" to "used in reliable sources" would bring clarity to the sentence, but would that be acceptable as the reliable source could be an expert publishing in what what would otherwise be an unreliable source. -- PBS ( talk) 06:09, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Catholic Memorial School redirects to Catholic Memorial School (West Roxbury, Massachusetts). A move request failed, even though similar moves have been treated as completely non-controversial in the past. If this were a case where "Catholic Memorial School" was ambiguous, the failure of the move would be understandable. But that was not what was argued -- and in fact, the base name continues to be a redirect, not a disambiguation page. Rather, the argument was that the parenthetical provided necessary context.
We have absolutely no tradition of using parenthetical phrases for anything other than creating a unique page title. If we are going to start using them to provide context to the casual reader, we must update our policy documentation accordingly. Alternatively, if we are not going to start using them in that way, we need to re-inforce that determination and make it much more clear, as it apparently is not currently.
-- Powers T 01:28, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Ah, so B2C was recalling my comments at Talk:Crime_Patrol_(TV_series)#Requested move, which had nothing to do with "retaining unnecessary disambiguation in titles", but was a "primarytopic" discussion. I admit that I have been generally opposed to a number of claims of "primarytopic" where some decent disambiguation makes more sense. As for who re-opened it, it was B2C who asked for it to be re-opened, after it had already been relisted to get a wider sampling of community consensus. It seems odd to be accusing those who participated for the low participation. As for outrageous, I think it's to be expected that sometimes the particular article decisions may seem to be not well aligned with the articulation of general principles; that not's really outrageous, just means that there's still work to be done to reflect the consensus practices in the guidelines. It's not always going to be easy. In the disambiguation question, the issue of what's "unnecessary" may be tricky, possibly depending on whether one considers the universe of existing WP titles, or the universe of topics that readers are likely to be interested in, for example. What's "unnecessary" to one may be "useful" or "crucial" to another. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
This argument of yours is similar in principal to what you said at Talk:Catholic_Memorial_School_(West_Roxbury,_Massachusetts)#Requested_move: "Unnecessary deletion of useful disambiguation." That's inverting what WP:PRECISION says, which is to avoid unnecessary precision, where "necessary" means necessary for disambiguation from other uses. It doesn't say to avoid deletion of precision that is not necessary for disambiguation; it implies the exact opposite of what you're arguing. And it has nothing to do with any other meanings of "necessary" or "unnecessary" as you try to imply it is when you say above, "What's 'unnecessary' to one may be 'useful' or 'crucial' to another.". I will also note that back on December 6th, LtPowers ( talk · contribs) grouped you along with Noetica and Tony as "the opponents of this process [to remove unnecessary disambiguation]" [2], so I'm neither the first nor the only one who has noticed.
You're free to argue anything you want, of course, but to me this is an example of arguing a fringe position, directly opposed to policy and consensus-supported practice, that you and a few others support. And if you keep doing it without persuading anyone beyond your group of 3-5 editors pushing this POV, at some point that becomes disruptive. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:01, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I baulk at this title: Financial Instruments and Exchange Law (it's a Hong Kong law, actually), and Professional Evaluation and Certification Board (New York, actually).
In the thread above, the term recognisable is being bandied about as though it's easy to define. Why do I get the feeling this is on purpose, to make article titles as unrecognisable as editors please. There are several reasons we need to spell out some instances where locations can be included in titles:
I suggest that some exceptions be included—for example, when a financial instrument, organisation, or (workforce) position could refer to multiple topics, it's permissible to add the name of the location in parentheses after the wording, in short form where possible (HK, NY, US, UK, etc.). Tony (talk) 10:09, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
As far as how "Verified Audit Circulation" identifies its title unambiguously... it does that because there is no other topic in WP to which that name refers. This is explained in detail at WP:PRECISION, including this statement: "when a topic's most commonly used name, as reflected in reliable sources, is ambiguous (can refer to more than one topic covered in Wikipedia), and the topic is not primary, that name cannot be used and so must be disambiguated." Here you see "ambiguous" is clearly defined in terms of other topics covered in Wikipedia. It is in that sense that unambiguously is intended to be interpreted in "identify the topic of the article unambiguously". -- Born2cycle ( talk) 10:52, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Oh deary me. Please refer to my comment of a couple of minutes ago in the section above - the general sense of it fits here as well. SamBC( talk) 17:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I also don't see the distinction to which you refer in practical terms. Can you (or someone) provide an example of a title what would be recognizable to someone familiar with the topic, but not to someone "with a basic knowledge of the subject field", or vice versa? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Specifically, how do we express and convey this in this policy without creating a situation in which article title discussions are even more contentious than they already are? How do we determine whether a given name is sufficiently likely to be used as a search string to warrant this special treatment? How do we decide what exactly that special treatment should be in each case? And, perhaps most importantly, how does this really change anything?
In the current situation, someone searching with "audit circulation" -- the first ghit, by the way, at least for me, is the website of Verified Audit Circulation - verifiedaudit.com -- might come upon our article at Verified Audit Circulation. They will realize it is not their article seconds later after reading the lead.
Now, how would the situation change if we followed one of your suggestions, say by moving the article to Verified Audit Circulation Corp? Well, the same user would end up at the same article, with a slightly different title. They will realize it is not their article a few seconds later after reading the title and/or the lead. I'm sorry, but I really don't see a big difference here. In fact, at least in the current case they are likely to realize that WP has no other article named Verified Audit Circulation, but in the suggested situation, being at Verified Audit Circulation Corp is likely to wrongly suggest to them that there is another article named Verified Audit Circulation. So at best, it's a wash, and it's likely to make matters worse. Please explain how this would be an improvement. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:27, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
You say "the current way" "potentially leads the searcher/reader to fall on the wrong article more often than not". Please explain how changing the name of the article currently at Verified Audit Circulation to Verified Audit Circulation Corp would even affect the likelihood of users searching with, say, "audit circulation", reaching this article, much less make it less likely. If you believe the same article, when moved to Verified Audit Circulation Corp, will be less likely to show up in the "audit circulation" search results simply because of the title change, then you don't understand how google searches work. First, Verified Audit Circulation will remain a redirect to the article. More importantly, google will "learn" where the new article has been moved. Remember, it's reporting results largely based on article content, not the article title... we can move the article to Red fairies in Volkswagens, and google will still find it. I think you're assuming the title in general, and even a minor change in the title, affects search results much more than it actually does.
You say, "a Gsearch for 'Verified Audit Circulation Corp' doesn't show the WP article". Right. So what? Who is going to be searching with that string? What does that show?
You also say, " whereas the WP article for the company shows up when searching for 'audit circulation'." Right. Again, and why do you think that will change if the article is moved to Verified Audit Circulation Corp? People will still be searching with "audit circulation", and the article now at Verified Audit Circulation Corp will be just as good of match, and will show up the same spot (all other factors held equal) in the search results.
What am I missing? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:35, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Like I've said four times now (search for "devil" on this page), the devil is in the details. How do we express and convey this in this policy without creating a situation in which article title discussions are even more contentious than they already are? How do we decide whether a given name is "generic sounding", or not? How do we decide how to disambiguate it if there are no other uses to disambiguate from? That is, Cork (city), for example, is disambiguated with "city" because it is the only use of "cork" in Wikipedia that is a city... but we need to have other articles to know that. If there were other cities named Cork, the "city" would not be an appropriate disambiguator (unless it was the primary use relative to the other cities). If there were no other uses at all of "Cork", then it could just be at Cork. Our whole system of deciding how to disambiguate is based on looking at other uses in Wikipedia; so how do we decide how to disambiguate when there are no other uses?
Finally, and most importantly, what problem is solved by introducing all these complications? How is Wikipedia improved if we start predisambiguating titles of articles about topics with generic names?
Now, what typically happens in these discussions when they get down to these nitty-gritty questions is... the discussion ends. Over and over, and we never get anywhere. That's the point.
With regard to Peter Jones and Paul Smith, there are over a dozen other uses of each in WP, and we've decided that among them there is no primary topic. That's a separate issue, one that we're accustomed to handling. The issue we're talking about is disambiguating something even when there are no other uses in WP. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:32, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
Colleagues, it seems useful to gather here a few imponderables that might have a bearing on our discussion above. I approach these from a position of ignorance. Please add to this list, anyone, article titles that might help us to sort out what to do.
"A Unit Investment Trust (UIT) is a US investment company offering a fixed (unmanaged) portfolio of securities having a definite life."
Ah, but read on, way past the opening text that would appear in a google search entry: if you missed the opening "A", you'd fail to understand that it's actually a type of investment company. I'd rather have the "class of ..." or "type of ..." up-front at the opening; this is part of a larger problem that occurs when articles are not themed clearly as generic or titular, and it brushes up against the practices of naming titles. So I suppose it should be downcased per MOSCAPS, although I've had to mount an RM to have it moved (sigh). Chaotic casing and unclear openings are not helping the recognisability issue one bit. Another little issue is that the UK equivalent is called Unit trust, as it notes at the top in tiny print. I find this rather unhelpful to the readers.
Dohn Joe, I trust you will not launch in and change the first one while this issue is being discussed (as you've done previously when I've raised examples here). Tony (talk) 10:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Tony, how many times will you bring up the same point, and elicit the same explanations, like Bkonrad has taken the time and energy to do, again, here, which you will not address, only to bring it up again and again and again? Enough!. If you just repeatedly raise the same issue and don't engage in constructive dialog, you're just being tendentious and disruptive, by definition. See WP:TE. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Of late, I've been involved in a few page move discussions (most notably for USB, which is currently at DRN) related to WP:ACRONYMTITLE. In my opinion, the present wording is overly strong and doesn't reflect the general consensus on titles (particularly WP:COMMONNAME). Suggested rewording of the section in WP:NAME:
- Avoid ambiguous abbreviations
- Abbreviations and acronyms are often ambiguous and thus should be avoided unless the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject (e.g. NATO, laser, USB). The abbreviation UK, for United Kingdom, is acceptable for use in disambiguation. It is also unnecessary to include an acronym in addition to the name in a title. For more details, see WP:ACRONYMTITLE.
And the corresponding line in WP:ACRONYMTITLE:
An acronym or initialism should be used in a page name if the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject (e.g. NATO, laser, USB). In order to determine the prominence of the abbreviation over the full name, consider checking how the subject is referred to in popular media such as newspapers, magazines, and other publications.
Thoughts? As it stands, the wording plainly doesn't reflect the way moves are being closed, as the community seems to prefer WP:COMMONNAME to override the "avoid" stance unless there's genuine cause for confusion. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) ( talk) 12:58, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone know of a case where the proposed wording would indicate a different title from the current wording? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:41, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Coming late, I know, but I just studied the USB thing and this proposal that came out of it. I basically like the proposal, saying to mostly avoid acronyms except really good cases, as opposed to the old way that said to use good ones. But I would object to putting USB into that list; it would be much better to use examples that don't carry the baggage of controversy. I'm a bit confused by the comments of TechnoSymbiosis, who says he agrees with SMcCandlish, but appears to want more acronyms, not fewer; and by SMcCandlish's comments, who seems to think this change will encourage acronyms, when it seems more intended to discourage them. Am I reading things wrong? Dicklyon ( talk) 04:47, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Can anyone give one good reason that National Tax Agency is not National Tax Agency (country name)? The title is a translation into English, too. This is where previous practices relying on "primary topic" are becoming ludicrous. I arrived there from a category list. Tony (talk) 02:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I should also add that if the article was at National Tax Agency (Japan) it would wrongly imply that there are other topics in WP whose name is "National Tax Agency", and this one is not the primary topic. That would be misleading. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 05:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
While I generally dislike redundant disambiguation, I find it more of a good thing in cases like this, where the "name" on its own is really just a generic description. (It's not really "the" national tax agency, it's just "a" national tax agency which happens to be the only one that Wikipedia currently titles with those exact words.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:49, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Noetica's comments.
Kotniski, some good points.
B2C, it's not just that the way it's been set up, this uniqueness trumps clarity thing. In fact, it's worse than that: it's that uniqueness as a WP article title, as a topic that is treated in a WP article, trumps clarity and utility, both in WP categ. lists and more importantly on google search displays. For example, there can be scores of vehicle motor taxes, but the one WP means is that in Ireland. Very irritating to have to travel to the article to learn this. And the response from these realms: "Oh ... but it's the only article we have on vehicle motor tax, so finders keepers." I don't buy it. Truth is, a more nuanced, explanatory policy is required to avoid these most unsatisfactory effects.
Jenks, the "slippery slope": yes, I understand your concerns, and I too have done thought-experiments that have shown the dangers of title-bloat. So what I'm asking is that we get together and work out real examples of where the boundaries lie so we can develop guidance that allows these "National Tax Agency" tragedies to be fixed where this can be done with minimal extra characters, but so that for the overwhelming majority of cases the policy still insists on the discipline that produces brevity, succinctness. Tony (talk) 14:29, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
At the top of this section Tony wrote, " I arrived there from a category list. ". Per Bkonrad's explanation (excellent, BTW) this issue doesn't matter, except for the one context of category lists. But let's look at these; this particular article belongs to four cats.
I concede that for the specific context of certain category lists (general categories; specific categories provide the necessary context themselves), having more descriptive titles would be helpful. But that's the only upside there is to this, and its very limited - the main downside I see is that it would complicate our already all too contentious title decision process by adding another consideration into the mix that would apply to any topic with a unique name that is not widely recognizable to the public in general... something like... make the title sufficiently descriptive so that people unfamiliar with the topic can get a reasonable idea of what the topic is from just the title. The complications are:
Further, as Bkonrad notes, there is strong consensus in the community against adding such information even for cases where #2 is not an issue because there is a convention for what the descriptive information should be (e.g., for TV episode names it is the TV series name in parentheses).
Kotniski's and Kauffner's argument for this particular case aside (special case translated names and treat them as descriptive; "Japan" is part of the name used in RS to refer to this topic, which is not an argument to add descriptive information, but to better reflect usage the most common name used in RS), I think #2 adds a lot of burden to the process for little benefit. Further, a point I keep repeating but is never addressed, there is a benefit to the reader when we disambiguate only when necessary - and that is that we inherently convey information about how the name is used in RS. That is, if we always disambiguated government agency names with the name of the country, then, for example, readers would not have an inkling of whether "Internal Revenue Service" is a name unique to the U.S. agency, or whether it's commonly used in other nations. Under the current system because it's at Internal Revenue Service, and not at Internal Revenue Service (United States), that tells us something about usage of the name "Internal Revenue Service" in RS that we would not convey if we systematically predisambiguated names that were not ambiguous with other uses.
In short, we all get where you're coming from, but what you're advocating is a solution to a little problem (improve usefulness of certain general category lists); a solution that creates problems bigger than the little one it's addressing. So, unless Tony, Noetica, et. all can come up with new arguments, I'm with PBS. Enough already.
-- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Would it help if we made an article on Spain's "Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria" and called it National Tax Agency (Spain), as it's often translated? Dicklyon ( talk) 00:53, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Please convince us that you understand what you are suggesting by being clear on what exactly you're seeking; please answer these questions as completely as possible. Thanks. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
And, yes, adding additional place information to a title is predisambiguation if the article could be at the plain base name, by definition.
The inclination to want to make a title more descriptive is understandable, and certainly achieves local consensus support in some cases, but I see no broad community support for the practice in general. It has even fallen out of favor to some extent in some categories of articles, like WP:NCROY, which arguably once was the bastion epitome of predisambiguation. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:53, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
FYI... Since it was raised, I have created a dab page for St Botolph's Church. Blueboar ( talk) 16:02, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
This is just one example that happened to be raised in this discussion, but there are undoubtedly a plethora of them. Any proposal that encourages more predisambiguation just exacerbates this problem. Let's not make matters worse. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:02, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Ultimately, this is just a matter of semantics... how does what we call it create a problem at all, much less create "a larger problem" than the redlink one PBS and I have described? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:02, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Above, it is being argued (in essence) that a title like Crime Patrol, since it is not universally known, does not meet the "recognizability" criteria, and, so, should have more precision (or predisambiguation) in order to be more recognizable to readers and editors unfamiliar with the topic.
The recognizability criteria question is currently stated as:
Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
However, a few months ago, and for many years, it said this:
an ideal title will confirm, to readers who are familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic, that the article is indeed about that topic.
This fundamental change was made in May of this year [6], with edit summary "Changed Recognizability point based on discussion on the talk page".
The change was discussed by 3 or 4 editors on this page, now archived here. However, I don't see the question of "recognizable to whom?" being addressed there. It appears they did not understand they were changing the meaning of the criterion by implying it needs to be broadly recognizable to meet the criterion, rather than simply be recognizable to those familiar with the topic, which is a huge change. The long-standing original wording emphasized that titles don't need to be "universally recognized" to meet the criteria, but only have to be recognizable to those familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic. I see nothing in that discussion to indicate that the change in meaning by the removal of this qualification was intentional, and, so, I think we need to re-insert them.
So, I've essentially restored the original wording and meaning to be this:
Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?
-- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I didn't change something back just because I missed the discussion when it was happening. I changed it back because the discussion that I missed did not explain why it was removed.
And, by the way, Tony you were part of the discussion that lead to that change: Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/Archive_32#Recognizability. In fact, you supported wording similar to what I just restored. You suggested, "an ideal title will confirm that the article is indeed about that topic to readers who are familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic." Notice how that too still included the "readers who are familiar with" clarification. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:35, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
B2C, my impression corresponds with Dicklyon's: "Perhaps, like some of your previous attempts to rewrite guidelines, the main objection is that it's motivated by an ongoing dispute in which you have a dog. That dispute might be a good motivator for a discussion, but maybe not for just letting you have your way." Again and again we observe you unsatisfied with some perfectly normal process or decision, and then scurrying to get policy or guidelines changed to shore up your position for a renewed attack. You're pretty quick on your feet, and a smooth talker; so people may not notice at first. But you won't always get away with it. Sometimes you'll get lucky when you approach an admin for a reversal or a review. The current RM at Talk:Catholic Memorial School (West Roxbury, Massachusetts) was first relisted, and stayed open for more than two weeks before admin Mike Cline closed it: no consensus to move, and the current title does no harm. You had not taken part in the discussion, so you asked the closing admin to revert the close (!). Amazingly (or not knowing your history of such self-oriented requests), he did just that. You then suggested that the votes of three editors you see as consistently arguing against your position at RMs be "discounted" (!!).
The pattern is becoming clear. You are not really in favour of following policy or guidelines, or of consensus. You are in favour of policy and guidelines following Born2cycle. You have not followed the established procedures when you sought to close RMs as a non-admin. You have not accepted the judge's verdict after due discussion. You have not respected all consensually settled provisions for titles. It is one thing to favour a selection of provisions and suppress others; but another to leap to change when you feel an urge for change, so that every provision bears your stamp.
Some editors have by slow forbearance earned the respect of their colleagues, for their even-handed work toward development of guidelines and policy through collegial discussion. You are not among them. The way to achieve such trust is to be trustworthy. People are right to react defensively against changes you make without due discussion. You have tried too many tricks in the past. I am an optimist about human nature and the possibility of change, so I don't rule out reform in your case. But I think "the community" (whose support you continually and loudly assume on the most spurious grounds) does not yet see that in you.
I will support the wording for recognisability as it now stands, until I see considered, slow discussion for a change that will work in the interests of readers better than the present wording.
This is not improperly ad hominem (unlike your specific mention of me and two other experienced and knowledgeable editors as to be "discounted"); it is prudence in the face of real danger to core policy.
Noetica Tea? 08:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Stumped regarding how to proceed constructively, I have requested administrator review and assistance, here: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Uninvolved_admin_-_please_take_a_look. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 08:34, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
The bit about "recognizable to people familiar with the subject", I think, was lost accidentally at one point and ought to be restored. We don't expect titles to be recognizable to people who have no familiarity with the subject at all (most articles on Wikipedia are about things that most of us have never heard of; we don't generally worry that the titles we choose are consequently unrecognizable to large swathes of the population).-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
On the substantive issue (and noting that I couldn't be less interested in the background dispute), it is ridiculous to suggest that titles need to be recognisable to those totally unfamiliar with the subject. To give an example, the esomeprazole article is so-named because it is the pharmaceutical name for the compound; it is the recognised name, as would be expected by those with medical or pharmaceutical training. The article isn't at Nexium (the trade name, like a lay-person might expect), nor at (S)-5-methoxy-2-[(4-methoxy-3,5-dimethylpyridin-2-yl)methylsulfinyl]-3H-benzoimidazole (the IUPAC name, like a chemist (not a pharmacist) might expect). It certainly isn't at "drug for treating heartburn", an arguably "recognisable ... description of the topic" for a passer-by with no familiarity with the area. As another example, my FA article on rhodocene... I have no doubt that lay people would not recognise the name, nor be able to describe the topic, but I am sure that the article title is appropriate because it would be recognisable to anyone familair enough with chemistry to know about the topic. Please, a suggestion... restore the sensible clause regarding topic familiarity and then find something to do that is more worthy of your time. EdChem ( talk) 10:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Just throwing in my opinion here, as the discussion would appear to be looking for substantive points about the actual point in question. I agree that we should generally be concerned about recognisability for those with some familiarity with the subject, as the proposed change suggests. On the other hand, I also agree that some title could do with "pre-disambiguation", if for no other reason than that they will appear in category pages that do not provide enough context for anyone to have any idea what they're referring to. From a point of view of user-friendliness, it would seem sensible to think about the degree of confusion such category listings will produce. For example, the pharmaceutical names are rather unlikely to appear in a category (other than meta stuff) that would lead to insufficient context, but taxes, legal instruments, national organisations... they could possibly do with contextualisation. Now, an idea technical fix would be to add a meta field to articles that would appear next to the title link on category pages, but that not being an option right now, contextualisation of the title should be considered on a case-by-case basis. It should be unusual, but not forbidden or presumed so strongly against as some seem to want. Of course, where a particular item is well known in the English-speaking world, that would not be expected to need such contextualisation (such as the FBI, say). This, I feel, strikes a balance between the principles that we have already outlined, and a basic principle of user-friendly presentation. SamBC( talk) 17:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Speaking of details, do you object to returning the original words about recognizability to the policy as proposed here? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:28, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
The original wording is clearly superior; it's a shame that was removed without full discussion of the implications. Powers T 19:03, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
We need to have a thoughtful discussion of the wording of the title guideline at Wikipedia:AT#Deciding_on_an_article_title concerning recognizability. It was changed last May in this diff (at which the old and new versions can be compared) after this brief discussion, and now there are suggestions to change it back, or perhaps change it to something different (it was subsequently rephrased as the current question form "Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?" so that's also an option). This RFC is a subsection of a section about it, but reading and responding to that argument may be counter productive, so let's have a focused discussion here instead. Please say which version you prefer, and why, or suggest something better. The "Compromise" discussion below may also be relevant. Let us proceed at a moderated pace; be not quick to counter, so we can see where we stand and collect some ideas. Dicklyon ( talk) 21:48, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Version 1/original (adapted from May 2011 wording): Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?
Version 2/current: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
Version 3/mix: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic, to someone familiar with the subject area?
I don't see why these are special cases. Check for usage of "Crime Patrol" in reliable sources. If it is used to refer to both generic and specific topic, then the phrase is ambiguous. If there is a strong bias towards a particular topic, then the phrase has a primary use. Follow standard procedures: deploy disambiguation pages, hatnotes and redirects as required. There is nothing here that isn't handled neatly by the broader policy, so why introduce wording that treats it as a special case?
Hesperian
01:03, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
As if it wasn't obvious before, it should certainly be clear now to even the most obstinate supporter of unnecessary disambiguation that Version 1/Original has consensus support, and Version 2/Current does not, as it always has. There is no justification whatsoever for continuing to have the policy reflect Version 2 rather than Version 1. Does anyone (besides perhaps Noetica, Dicklyon or Tony1) disagree with this assessment? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:07, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
I know of no support for the "familiar with the subject area" interpretation in actual usage; as Kotniski explains, it's not what is meant by recognizability in WP. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:22, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
It is remarkable that an effort to resolve this issue has been hijacked for partisan purposes in such a flagrant way. At an RFC we ask the community to comment in slow, orderly, and respectful fashion. We work together to structure the discussion to tease out all issues; we wait to see whether our "opponents" (or rather, colleagues) have points to make that did not occur to us. We do not flood the attempt to achieve this with selected comments from an earlier discussion.
I will not participate in such a mockery of an RFC. I thank Dicklyon for starting it. Carry on with it, or finish it, whoever wants to. I have more productive things to get on with.
An RFC like this can have no respect from the community, and any "consensus" purported to arise from it will be worthless. Expect more orderly initiatives later. ArbCom had to supervise many weeks of action to get WP:DASH sorted out. In that case, the content was endorsed by the community, and some useful clarifications were added. No one wants all that fuss here; but the way to avoid it still seems to elude certain editors. I seriously doubt that the community accepts the provision that we have been concerned with here, along with its neighbours. Probably not more than a couple of dozen very active editors, who invoke them in pursuit of a very particular agenda. Still, that's just my considered opinion.
Threats to take editors to WP:AN/I (see edit summaries) do nothing toward respect and cooperation. Let's do without those in future.
Noetica Tea? 02:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I have registered my complaint at AN/I, and asked for feedback. I don't see how it can be possible to recover from this toxic mess. So whatever; if people want to take it back to some old wording instead of trying to work out an improvement, I'll stay out the way (whether due to a block or otherwise). Dicklyon ( talk) 03:56, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I baulk at this title: Financial Instruments and Exchange Law (it's a Hong Kong law, actually), and Professional Evaluation and Certification Board (New York, actually).
In the thread above, the term recognisable is being bandied about as though it's easy to define. Why do I get the feeling this is on purpose, to make article titles as unrecognisable as editors please. There are several reasons we need to spell out some instances where locations can be included in titles:
I suggest that some exceptions be included—for example, when a financial instrument, organisation, or (workforce) position could refer to multiple topics, it's permissible to add the name of the location in parentheses after the wording, in short form where possible (HK, NY, US, UK, etc.). Tony (talk) 10:09, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
As far as how "Verified Audit Circulation" identifies its title unambiguously... it does that because there is no other topic in WP to which that name refers. This is explained in detail at WP:PRECISION, including this statement: "when a topic's most commonly used name, as reflected in reliable sources, is ambiguous (can refer to more than one topic covered in Wikipedia), and the topic is not primary, that name cannot be used and so must be disambiguated." Here you see "ambiguous" is clearly defined in terms of other topics covered in Wikipedia. It is in that sense that unambiguously is intended to be interpreted in "identify the topic of the article unambiguously". -- Born2cycle ( talk) 10:52, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Oh deary me. Please refer to my comment of a couple of minutes ago in the section above - the general sense of it fits here as well. SamBC( talk) 17:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I also don't see the distinction to which you refer in practical terms. Can you (or someone) provide an example of a title what would be recognizable to someone familiar with the topic, but not to someone "with a basic knowledge of the subject field", or vice versa? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Specifically, how do we express and convey this in this policy without creating a situation in which article title discussions are even more contentious than they already are? How do we determine whether a given name is sufficiently likely to be used as a search string to warrant this special treatment? How do we decide what exactly that special treatment should be in each case? And, perhaps most importantly, how does this really change anything?
In the current situation, someone searching with "audit circulation" -- the first ghit, by the way, at least for me, is the website of Verified Audit Circulation - verifiedaudit.com -- might come upon our article at Verified Audit Circulation. They will realize it is not their article seconds later after reading the lead.
Now, how would the situation change if we followed one of your suggestions, say by moving the article to Verified Audit Circulation Corp? Well, the same user would end up at the same article, with a slightly different title. They will realize it is not their article a few seconds later after reading the title and/or the lead. I'm sorry, but I really don't see a big difference here. In fact, at least in the current case they are likely to realize that WP has no other article named Verified Audit Circulation, but in the suggested situation, being at Verified Audit Circulation Corp is likely to wrongly suggest to them that there is another article named Verified Audit Circulation. So at best, it's a wash, and it's likely to make matters worse. Please explain how this would be an improvement. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:27, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
You say "the current way" "potentially leads the searcher/reader to fall on the wrong article more often than not". Please explain how changing the name of the article currently at Verified Audit Circulation to Verified Audit Circulation Corp would even affect the likelihood of users searching with, say, "audit circulation", reaching this article, much less make it less likely. If you believe the same article, when moved to Verified Audit Circulation Corp, will be less likely to show up in the "audit circulation" search results simply because of the title change, then you don't understand how google searches work. First, Verified Audit Circulation will remain a redirect to the article. More importantly, google will "learn" where the new article has been moved. Remember, it's reporting results largely based on article content, not the article title... we can move the article to Red fairies in Volkswagens, and google will still find it. I think you're assuming the title in general, and even a minor change in the title, affects search results much more than it actually does.
You say, "a Gsearch for 'Verified Audit Circulation Corp' doesn't show the WP article". Right. So what? Who is going to be searching with that string? What does that show?
You also say, " whereas the WP article for the company shows up when searching for 'audit circulation'." Right. Again, and why do you think that will change if the article is moved to Verified Audit Circulation Corp? People will still be searching with "audit circulation", and the article now at Verified Audit Circulation Corp will be just as good of match, and will show up the same spot (all other factors held equal) in the search results.
What am I missing? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:35, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Like I've said four times now (search for "devil" on this page), the devil is in the details. How do we express and convey this in this policy without creating a situation in which article title discussions are even more contentious than they already are? How do we decide whether a given name is "generic sounding", or not? How do we decide how to disambiguate it if there are no other uses to disambiguate from? That is, Cork (city), for example, is disambiguated with "city" because it is the only use of "cork" in Wikipedia that is a city... but we need to have other articles to know that. If there were other cities named Cork, the "city" would not be an appropriate disambiguator (unless it was the primary use relative to the other cities). If there were no other uses at all of "Cork", then it could just be at Cork. Our whole system of deciding how to disambiguate is based on looking at other uses in Wikipedia; so how do we decide how to disambiguate when there are no other uses?
Finally, and most importantly, what problem is solved by introducing all these complications? How is Wikipedia improved if we start predisambiguating titles of articles about topics with generic names?
Now, what typically happens in these discussions when they get down to these nitty-gritty questions is... the discussion ends. Over and over, and we never get anywhere. That's the point.
With regard to Peter Jones and Paul Smith, there are over a dozen other uses of each in WP, and we've decided that among them there is no primary topic. That's a separate issue, one that we're accustomed to handling. The issue we're talking about is disambiguating something even when there are no other uses in WP. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:32, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
Colleagues, it seems useful to gather here a few imponderables that might have a bearing on our discussion above. I approach these from a position of ignorance. Please add to this list, anyone, article titles that might help us to sort out what to do.
"A Unit Investment Trust (UIT) is a US investment company offering a fixed (unmanaged) portfolio of securities having a definite life."
Ah, but read on, way past the opening text that would appear in a google search entry: if you missed the opening "A", you'd fail to understand that it's actually a type of investment company. I'd rather have the "class of ..." or "type of ..." up-front at the opening; this is part of a larger problem that occurs when articles are not themed clearly as generic or titular, and it brushes up against the practices of naming titles. So I suppose it should be downcased per MOSCAPS, although I've had to mount an RM to have it moved (sigh). Chaotic casing and unclear openings are not helping the recognisability issue one bit. Another little issue is that the UK equivalent is called Unit trust, as it notes at the top in tiny print. I find this rather unhelpful to the readers.
Dohn Joe, I trust you will not launch in and change the first one while this issue is being discussed (as you've done previously when I've raised examples here). Tony (talk) 10:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Tony, how many times will you bring up the same point, and elicit the same explanations, like Bkonrad has taken the time and energy to do, again, here, which you will not address, only to bring it up again and again and again? Enough!. If you just repeatedly raise the same issue and don't engage in constructive dialog, you're just being tendentious and disruptive, by definition. See WP:TE. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Having been following WP titling policy for several years and more recently actively participating in the RM process, I am convinced that our titling policy is much too complex to be applied effectively. I don’t think the complexity is intentional, but comes as a result of our failure to take a holistic view of titling policy while making a whole myriad of incremental changes to a variety of policy, guidelines and MOS related to titling. Add on top of that is the litany of advice from WikiProjects laying out naming conventions for particular categories of articles and we have a proverbial Tower of Babel when trying to apply all this to any given article title. Think about it. We have WP:NAMINGCRITERIA—Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness and Consistency. On top of that we can invoke WP:COMMONNAMES, WP:POVTITLE, WP:PRECISION, WP:DAB, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, WP:MOSCAPS, WP:DIACRITICS, WP:EN and WP:ENGVAR. (I suspect I missed a few and intentionally didn’t list all the project level naming conventions). All these can and do trump each other when applied to individual articles. Imagine a new editor trying to avoid running afoul of all these conflicting rules.
There are several truths associated with WP article titles—every title has to be unique (all 3.9 million of them), every title probably has a logical alternative, and for every title, there is probably at least one editor who vehemently disagrees with it and has a better alternative. For some reason, editors become emotionally attached to their favorite alternative titles and the selective rationale for them. That emotion leads to a lot of unnecessary incivility and contentiousness over article titles. Over the next ten years, the probability that WP will have 6 million + articles is high. That’s 2 million new titles and millions more alternatives. There’s another truth associated with Wikipedia article titles and the things editors say about them is that it is pure fantasy to think that any editor can proclaim how millions of readers are going to behave if a title isn’t precisely the way they believe it should be. Everytime I read readers are going to do this or readers are going to do that in a move discussion, I cringe at the lunacy of such statements. Readers don’t visit WP for titles, they visit WP for content and our titling policy doesn’t recognize that. Yet, we continue to debate (and expend valuable volunteer energy) the silliest title changes when that energy would be much better spent improving content.
Here’s a little metaphor to explain my point a bit more graphically. Imagine we had an article entitled Dog Shit and in reality, from a content perspective, it is metaphorically a pile of crap—no sources, bad lead, bad prose, bad formatting, etc. Someone thinks there’s a better title for the Dog Shit article—alternatives (Dog shit (MOSCAPS)), (Dog feces (Precision)), (Dog poop (POVTitle)), (Dog crap (Commonname)), and my favorite (Hundekot (because the crap was taken by a German Sheppard)). We could select anyone of the alternative titles (although Hundekot would be a stretch), but in the end, the article’s content would still be a pile of crap (metaphorically at least) because an article title (no matter what it is doesn’t make up for bad content).
If anyone has got this far and wants to invoke WP:TLDR, don’t. Sometimes you just have to listen first, before evaluating an idea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mike Cline ( talk • contribs)
I believe we need to accomplish two things relative to article titles. One, we need to drastically simplify WP:Titles and the associated guidelines and MOS. And when I say simplify, I mean a reduction of at least 2/3rds of the collective Babel it contains now. Two, we need to change the focus of titling discussions (including our formal processes) in a way that not only stabilizes titles, but makes titling an afterthought when compare to the imperative of creating and maintaining good content in WP. I have an idea as to how we might do this, but I want to point out how we might simplify our naming policy. Currently our five naming criteria—Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, Consistency could be reasonably reduced to three, eliminating two that are nearly impossible to define let alone interpret and implement.
So how do we go about simplifying our titling policy and associated guidelines and MOS without disrupting the encyclopedia? It won’t be easy, but if we take an objective look at it, it would be possible. I’d like to see a couple of things happen.
In my view, the key ideas here are simplification and content taking priority over titles. We can’t do that without taking a reasoned, systematic, holistic look at this. Sustaining and incrementally modifying the current state of Babel that is our titling policy will not bode well for us as we generate the next 2-3 million articles. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 17:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
In a sense I agree that "consistency" is most important, but there are two ways "consistency" is commonly interpreted, which I refer to as the narrow and broad sense of "consistency". The narrow way is the interpretation intended in the listed criteria on this policy page - for articles to be named consistently with other similar articles. This is why it's often not given high priority, because doing so often conflicts with other criteria and is often considered less important ( New York City, not New York City, New York, Catherine the Great, not Catherine II, etc.). The broad interpretation of consistency is that all titles should be consistent with the broad naming principles of Wikipedia - this makes titling more predictable and less contentious.
Recognizability and naturalness are really just attempts to explain the underlying reasons for using common names - and using common names is a fundamental guiding principle in the vast, vast majority of our articles' titles.
In addition to consolidating and simplifying this policy and all the related guidelines, I think the main missing piece is a method for how to prioritize, or at least weigh against each other, the various "rules" when there are conflicts. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:53, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't think consistency is the most important, but it's important. And just because naturalness and precision are hard to define doesn't mean we'd be better off to ignore them. I pretty much agree with the comments on recognizability and conciseness, but it's less clear where that should take us in re-expressing the guidelines. I think the problems we get into are about trying to find narrow interpretations of these points, or to apply one over another, rather than be open to what's a better title for a particular article. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:34, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
As with many discussions, it is possible to wander off into abstraction where debate can circle about until everyone despairs over any advance. Maybe it would be helpful to identify a particular example, or a class of examples, where some problem has arisen and discuss that to see whether any general principles come out of it.
For example, we presently have Coriolis effect as the title of an article with a redirect from Coriolis force. In terms of Google searches, the latter is the more common terminology: is a Google search a definitive selection criterion?
From a different stance, Coriolis force is a force, not an effect, technically speaking, so maybe the more precise usage is a criterion?
We also have Coriolis effect (perception). In this field there is no ambiguity: Coriolis effect is always used, never Coriolis force, and in fact, the Coriolis effect has nothing to do with the Coriolis force of physics, and it is related to rotation in a completely different way. (It's related to the construction of the inner ear.) So in the case of these competing definitions, do we take the unambiguous usage as paramount over an ambiguous usage?
Is the solution to use Coriolis force for the physical force, and a disambiguation page for Coriolis effect subdivided into Coriolis effect (perception) and Coriolis effect (physics)? Is the solution in this instance amenable to generalization?
Any thoughts? Brews ohare ( talk) 18:29, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
Editors, please comment after this post, not within it. Noetica Tea? 23:44, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
I have been looking through the archives. I see a great deal of discussion of the fundamental questions and principles (or of what preceded them) in late 2009. But I see no agreement on the wording that has now been put in place for recognisability. I find no endorsement of that by the community, or even any well-notified attempt at wide consultation. It is possible that I have missed something that should stand out as obvious in those reams of dialogue. I hope someone will point it out for us. So far it seems that the present wording was invented by Kotniski in this edit of 18 August 2010, and not addressed specifically in the ensuing discussion (though some called for a closer consideration, and caution in supplanting long-established wording: see this archived discussion). [Amended after Dicklyon's new information, above.–N]
It is interesting that Kotniski has supported Born2cycle's reversion to an earlier version. It is, as it turns out, Kotniski's version. Kotniski's edit summary: "let's not get silly about this - this is the wording that (a) is longer established, and (b) is the one the majority clearly support". Majority support? Hmm. Let's not get silly about this, indeed. [Added after Dicklyon's new information, above.–N]
The wording Born2cycle has now removed was discussed by five editors (not "two or three"), in a section specifically dedicated to it, from 20 to 22 May 2011. See Recognizability, in Archive 32. The result of the discussion was a reversion (in this edit) to the core of the provision, without any complex qualification:
Recognizability – article titles should be the most recognizable description of the topic.
That text was soon simplified (see ), with a reference to the discussion I have just linked:
Recognizability – article titles are expected to be a recognizable name or description of the topic.
This developed into the question form that has stood until supplanted in recent days:
Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
The participants in that open and well-labelled discussion:
In the months that followed there was extraordinary action, involving attempts to present relevant portions of the page by transclusion from another page (by Born2cycle, with heavy resistance from others), and the linking of an essay by Born2cycle (also resisted, and not currently implemented).
Born2cycle has placed transclusion features (against objections) that persist in the present version of the page. One regrettable side-effect of an earlier attempt: when we consult certain earlier drafts of the page ( this one for 15 July 2011, for example) we are misled. The current text concerning recognisability (and adjacent provisions) is displayed in that dated draft, not the text that was in place at the time.
It is plain to me, at least. The evidence suggests a bad case of WP:OWNERSHIP. It is extremely difficult to plot the development of the page because of those unilateral shifts, and what might be regarded as smokescreens and distortions of history. Equally, it is perilous to claim that there is consensus for any historical version under such conditions of documentation.
The extended chaotic discussions above this section are cause for concern. There was a unilateral restoration of a provision claimed as "consensual" and in place "for years" (though see my critique), countering a later discussed changed that stood for seven months. There were appeals to WP:AN and to WP:ANI, where Born2cycle was counselled to go back to the page and wait for discussion; and another admin proposed that he absent himself for a week from this page. He did not even acknowledge those suggestions (though he had sought advice); he pressed on with a campaign for his wording here, and diverted attention at WP:ANI to those who opposed the speed and belligerence with which he pursued that course. Some editors have endorsed the restoration; but the discussion has been laughably shallow and narrow; and an impartially presented RFC has been hijacked, against the possibility of broad consultation and quiet consideration.
As I write, Born2cycle's last edit of the page (soon after the WP:ANI section had been archived) restored his favoured text and removed the "under discussion" tag. Almost simultaneously, though, he continued the discussion with a reply to Dicklyon, and an invitation for Dicklyon to continue the discussion: "Please quote what specifically you're talking about."
Now, this is not a page for discussing user conduct. But it has been impossible in recent times to separate such conduct from content development, such is the domination of one editor here. I do not call for sanctions or penalties; I just want the history of these core policy provisions to be clearer. If anyone can add clarifying facts, or fill in missing episodes, that would be useful too.
What to do next? I can only speak for myself. I have not addressed content in the recent discussions, because conditions were plainly against calm deliberation. I have pointed that out consistently. That is how things remain. I propose that we put this issue aside to be dealt with later.
A core, contested provision on the page has no demonstrated consensus. It cannot be claimed as representing a status quo in future discussions.
–Noetica Tea? 23:44, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
As to what to do next, like I say, I don't see any problem (except for the fact that a few editors have suddenly and coincidentally arrived at this page to make a fuss about it) with the particular "recognizability clause" (it's only descriptive, anyway - "consensus has generally formed around the following questions"), but we might take advantage of this sudden surge of interest in this page to make a new, more comprehensible draft of the policy - I'm sure we can describe the process by which we arrive at article titles in a more simple manner than this page does at the moment.-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
"You know, we just had an RFC on this very point. A substantial majority preferred the present wording; nobody who didn't come in to complain about this was convinced."
"I noticed both of you attempting to impose 'rules of order.' Both of you seem to have been making them up; ..."
You are editing a page that documents an English Wikipedia policy. While you may be bold in making minor changes to this page, consider discussing any substantive changes first on the page's talk page.
"Born2Cycle at least appears to have been adjusting mainly his own contribution, ..."
Thanks for the technical advice, Art. I have put a more appropriate tag in place. No one will deny the need for consensus in that crucial section, I hope.
Noetica Tea? 00:40, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
The choice of article titles should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists.
In reference to the July discussion about templating ( selective transclusion, really) - all the concerns were addressed and all the issues were resolved; and that's why the changes were accepted. The new methods developed were documented at WP:SELECTIVETRANSCLUSION. There again is a great example of how WP should work (well, some collaboration would have been appreciated, but at least others clearly explained their objections so I could address them, and that certainly helped achieve a robust, general and minimally intrusive solution), and yet it's referenced above as if it was a bad thing.
As to the supposed contradiction between the current recognizability wording and the later wording about serving general readers over specialists, there is no contradiction. That's why the recognizabilty wording clarifies, "but not necessarily expert in". We try to make our titles recognizable to general readers who are familiar with the topic - not just to specialists or experts in the field. But no, we do not try to make titles of topics recognizable to general readers who are totally unfamiliar with the topic at issue. As has been noted time and time again, that would mean almost all of our titles would be more descriptive than they are. Since they aren't that descriptive, clearly that's not supported by consensus.
Finally, I'm sick and tired of being accused of violating WP:REFACTOR. Nobody provided a single diff at the AN/I to back up this absurd claim - I suggest this is because there aren't any. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 08:30, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
Noetica, I'm addressing all that I realize is worth addressing. If I miss anything, let me know.
Your objection to the selective transclusion, as I understand it, is a) new (never heard it before) and b) hilarious. The whole point of it is to be able to quote a section of a policy page like this one in a way that is automatically updated every time the main page changes so that editors don't have to make the same change twice.
As to the 5 editors who supposedly supported the change to the wording, what they supported was a simplification of the wording without changing the meaning. If you look at what they discussed, there was obviously no recognition that taking that out changed the meaning. All have been notified. None have said anything about their views being misrepresented.
Anything else? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:01, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
As to what you just quoted here, I'm sincerely hoping for Noetica to contribute something substantive to the discussion. A concrete explanation of an objection to the current wording. A concrete proposal. Something! Is expressing such hope arrogance? Sorry! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:15, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
This is one of the tougher pages for me to do for the quarterly update; I'll just give the quarterly diff, and if anyone wants to break it down, great. - Dank ( push to talk) 03:37, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
This section represents a more reasonable way to proceed. Thanks to Tony for starting it, though I have renamed it – for the archives, and so that everyone can see what we're talking about. I have also restored and updated the "disputed" template at the relevant section of the project page (removed by JCScaliger), and taken out the old "discussion" template that applied to only one provision among several that are intertwined and therefore up for joint treatment here.
I am impressed by Mike Cline's more comprehensive approach. I liked what he initiated a few sections back, on taking a holistic approach. I feared then that the talkpage was too disorderly for anything useful to be transacted. I hope that's beginning to change now.
It would be best if we agree to deliberate calmly and respectfully, without distortions of any facts. I remain concerned about certain unanswered questions in discussion before this new section. The present wording does not represent calm, collegial discussion over recognisability. That last took place from 20 to 22 May 2011, without haste, abuse, misrepresentation, shouting down, or referrals to WP:ANI. The wording has been altered since then without due process.
If that is left plainly recorded and undisturbed, and the template is left in place on the page, I am happy for us to move forward. All of this should go to a well-designed, disciplined, and impartial RFC process when the time is right. And that must be advertised very widely to the community, if we are to make any lasting progress.
Noetica Tea? 21:05, 28 December 2011 (UTC)0
I'm still not really clear what anyone is proposing or what justification there is for having a "disputed" tag hanging over the whole of a well-established policy section (I hope when emotions subside over the next few days everyone will realize that it's quite inappropriate - "under discussion" might be more suitable). But anyway, can we have some reasonably concrete proposals for change? And it would help to know whether the proposals are intended to change current practice or only to document it better. (Personally I think listing five "criteria" and simply saying that we "weigh them up" doesn't give full information about the way we do things. We actually apply the particular criteria in quite specific ways - we almost always want "a" common name (though not necessarily the commonest) if there is one; we almost always add disambiguators if needed but not for unambiguous terms or primary topics. There are also other, perhaps equally important criteria, that people have identified but are not listed, such as encyclopedic register and neutrality. And there are things missing from the whole policy because of past wiki-politicking, like the fact that titles normally conform to Wikipedia's MoS over things like punctuation. So we could do much better at describing currently accepted practice. And - but we should treat this as a separate issue - there may be good reason to make some changes to currently accepted practice, for example over when we should add parenthetical disambiguators, but that should be done with a properly formulated proposal, if someone would like to make one.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:42, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
This section alone is now over 36 hours old, has, about 15 comments, and still there is nothing stated with clarity regarding what is disputed in policy, or what is proposed, or anything like that. Same with all of the blather above it. There is no dispute. There is not even a discussion. There is nothing to discuss! Unless something substantive is offered soon (say within 24 hours), the dispute/under-discussion tags must go. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:17, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Second, I restored that wording eight days ago, and during those eight days there were a few where I didn't check in at all. And, yet, there is nothing here. No dispute. No discussion. Nothing substantive at all; just several variations of WP:JDLI, like the one you just posted. If you have something to dispute and discuss, please do so. This is what I asked for when Tony first reverted the restoration of the original wording. None of you who supposedly object have even addressed my initial explanation for restoring that wording. It's unbelievable, really.
In short, if you've got something, spit it out already. If not, quit the blather and remove the tag. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Please remember that we entitle our articles for the convenience of our readers... We want to choose titles that will be recognizable to people searching for an article on a particular topic. Such readers may or may not be knowledgeable in the topic, but they will have a goal in mind. They will enter a name, or a descriptive phrase into the search box... and we want them to be able to quickly look at the results and say "ah, yes, there is the article on the topic I was searching for". Thus, the name or description we choose as a title should be the one that is most likely to be searched for by our readers. That is what is meant by "Recognizability".
As with just about any randomly selected dozen titles, we can see that most titles are not recognizable to those who are not familiar with the topics. For those that look like names of people, we don't know if they're actually names of people or names of books or characters or what, much less whether they're actors, writers, or baseball players if they are people. In this particular list I presume Siege of Valenciennes (1793) is some kind of battle, Laurel Mountain (West Virginia) is a mountain in West Virginia, New Anshan Railway Station is a railway station in a city called New Anshan (but I have no idea where that is), and Meld (Star Trek: Voyager) is an episode of Voyager. But these are obviously exceptions, as I can't even guess about the others with much reason.
And, again, what exactly are we proposing? That titles like That Kind of Woman (because it's "generic sounding") be treated with additional precision to make them more recognizable to even those of us who are unfamiliar with it? So, in this case (I looked it up - it's a film), all films should be disambiguated with at least (film), if not (year film)? After all, the vast majority of film titles are "generic sounding" and are not recognizable as films to most people.
In any case, the current/original wording does reflect how we currently name articles, and have always named articles, and this is so obvious that nobody has even disputed the policy saying so since it was first said, until 8 days ago. And, no, when the wording in question was removed, along with some other wording, back in May, it was not disputed. That was just an effort to simplify the wording that went too far, and changed the meaning inadvertently when those words were removed. None of the editors involved in the May over-simplification has objected to restoring the wording.
But, now that you mention it, I have not seen a justification for the wording that we had between May and 8 days ago - the wording apparently favored by at least Noetica and Tony (not sure about Dicklyon or anyone else). But they won't be definitive about even that. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:04, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Is this browbeating? Sorry. I call 'em as I see 'em, and I still see nothing here. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:10, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
At Talk:Nitrogen group#Requested move, we have a proposal to move to Pnictogen. I suspect the latter term is recognizable to people familiar with the topic; but it's not to me, and probably not to millions of others who vaguely recognize "Nitrogen group" from chemistry class. Is that all the recognizability we want? Dicklyon ( talk) 05:19, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
If you seriously examine the five criteria we now have—recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness and consistency—one finds that only three of those can actually describe the characteristic of a title.
If you examine what we really want from Naturalness and Recognizability (not a word), I think we could sum it up with something like this: A WP title should faithfully represent the content of the article using common English as demonstrated by reliable sources. The key word here is Represent which has a number of meanings [10], the most telling of which is: To present clearly to the mind. By abandoning the ill-conceived, but well intentioned—Naturalness and Recognizability—with Represent we would be describing the characteristic of a WP title that we want and not the behavior it is supposed to elicit. It would significantly simplify the policy and its resulting processes. WP:COMMONNAME, WP:ENGVAR and all the other Babel would flow nicely from this. Combined with the meaningful criteria--conciseness, precision and consistency, adjudacating a title would be much simpler.
FYI-this is not intended as a verbatim suggestion to replace specific wording but a conceptual argument that says Naturalness and Recognizability are a poor choice of words for what we are really attempting to say. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
You also dismiss "recognizability" even though one of the definitions you provide - "To know or identify from past experience or knowledge" - is exactly what is meant. People familiar with the topic should be able to identify the topic from the title from past knowledge. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Occurring as a matter of course and without debate; inevitable.
° Ken was a natural choice for coach
"Bill Clinton" is more natural than "William Jefferson Clinton" because its use occurs much more often as a matter of course when people are talking and writing about him. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Part of the reason we have these words is to do with word ordering in titles (naturalness). For example we could describe places by State, region, sub-region ....
United Kingdom, London, Southwark, Borough, or a more common example is surname, given names (as is done in many encyclopaedias and other reference works and is used in Wikipedia categories). There is no reason why we should not use Clinton, Bill or Clinton, William Jefferson other than naturalness. While to some in a bureaucratic organisation like a military logistics system "clothing, coat, great, male" may seem natural, in none bureaucratic text one would usually write "a man's
greatcoat is ...", and that is the whole point of the sentence "Which title(s) will editors most naturally use to link from other articles?", and from that it follows that whether we use "William Jefferson Clinton" or "Bill Clinton" is a further refinement of that principle, as the natural name to use in a reference work such as this will depend on which is the most frequently in what we call secondary sources. We could change the article titling system radically and start to introduce systems such as surname first, or go one step further and use that of the online ONDB and use a unique number .
doi:
10.1093/ref:odnb/94837. {{
cite book}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(
help)) but we have chosen to use our own method
James Callaghan based on naturalness. I think if at the start of the project articles had been placed under a unique number with text redirect to that number, then lots of the disputes over article titles would have been avoided, and I would be pleasantly surprised if we were ever to go over to that method. --
PBS (
talk)
23:12, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Given the discussion above, and the apparent withdrawal by Born2cycle of any claim that his and Kotniski's version ever had consensus, or even a discussion, prior to this one, it seems justifiable that Noetica has again restored the version that was stable for months after it arose from a discussion here. Yet Born2cycle put it back again and threatened to take him to AN/I again. I had earlier explained to him on his talk page that his owership issues here are disruptive, but he fails to see that.
I fully respect those who prefer the version that he is warring about; I still think we'll find a mutually agreeable compromise in here somewhere. But let's converge first, not go back to a never-discussed version by force of editing warring. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:56, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
The change in May, however, apparently missed everyone's scrutiny, because when it was brought to everyone's attention, everyone who looked at it (9 out of 9) agreed V1 was better. No one who looked at it argued that V2 was better.
There is absolutely no basis whatsoever for restoring the V2 wording at this time, and, unfortunately, I see no recourse but to file an AN/I, unless Noetica restores the V1 wording himself. I've explained this in more detail at Noetica's talk page. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
And now Born2cycle has made an explicit threat, with short deadline, to take Noetica to AN/I again, on User talk:Noetica#WP:TITLE. Is this any way to try to find consensus? For his claim of consensus he relies on the RFC that was abandoned after he hijacked it by speaking for many others. Dicklyon ( talk) 07:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
When Noetica edits policy so blatantly contrary to consensus, I see no recourse besides AN/I, but I'm open to suggestions. Got any? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:30, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, the issue is deciding which of the following should be used in the guideline:
Version 1: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?
Version 2: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
Can someone offer up two pairs of article-title examples that could exemplify how the above differences could affect things? For instance, would one permit “ Octomom” whereas Version 1 would require “ Nadya Suleman” ?
The trouble with trying to establish a consensus on Wikipedia is it can often be difficult for others to jump in because the core of the dispute is often cloaked behind abstruse wiki‑slogans (“Well… WP:Unicorn tears anoints and washes my position with goodliness”) when the real reason is at least one of the editors—often both—have a pattern of pushing a particular agenda and there is suspicion that the other editor will use a seeming innocuous change in a written guideline to revisit a long-dead issue.
In short, will someone please explain what this is really about? Greg L ( talk) 17:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
P.S. As I am rather expert on words like “fuckwad” (having authored “
"Fuck” is not necessarily uncivil”), I believe your use here would fall under the “descriptive” classification as well as its generic use as an intensive. I think I’d like to use that as an example on my essay. May I?
Greg L (
talk)
18:10, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
P.P.S. BTW, I note that Dicklyon’s response indicates that he doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace Enric’s sentiments as to what the core issue here is really about. It would be splendid if Born2cycle could weigh in.
Greg L (
talk)
18:14, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Quoting you: As to the substantive details between the versions, I'm not sure I know, either. I thought that might be the case. Now…
This is directed to you, B2C. WP:Consensus can change and consensus is not defined by who can be the most tendentious while editwarring with four-word edit summaries. Consensus is established here on this talk page. Moreover, if you resort to {dispute], {biased}, { I didn’t get my WAAAAAY}-tags, slapped up at the top of articles after loosing to consensus as small as a 2:1 margin here, a poll can be conducted as to whether the tag is warranted and whether the issue is resolved (which is to say, whether a consensus had truly been achieved the first time around) and then the tag goes. Someone please alert me on my talk page the next time there is editwarring or editing against consensus here. Greg L ( talk) 18:40, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
P.S. I won’t be able to weigh in with a !vote in any RfC or poll here because no one has been able to explain what the underlying issues are really about. I suspect B2C has been doing the ol’ stunt of reverting editors because 10 neurons and 30 synapses in his brain are now wired for knee-jerk, reflexive reverting of certain editors without comprehension of the issue nor desire to discuss. I’ll leave the substantive discussion and !voting to editors who actually discuss things and have a flying clue what is going on here.
Finally, Enric’s 17:43 post, above, wasn’t at all helpful and I have a hard time believing he didn’t know full well what he was going when he wrote that ( WP:BAIT). Moreover, he wasted Dick’s and my time this morning. I apparently value my time this morning more than he values his. That sort of stunt here won’t be tolerated. Greg L ( talk) 18:50, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
You start by saying you had to dig the two quotes from a user's talk page. Why didn't you just look at the section where all this started on this talk page, here: #Clarification_of_recognizability_lost. If you don't look at that, you're missing some important context. Also, reading the section that follows that, #RFC on Recognizability guideline wording, is important to understand what happened here, starting over a week ago.
I agree that "consensus is not defined by who can be the most tendentious while editwarring with four-word edit summaries." Do you think I was editwarring with four-word edit summaries? Where? When? Last night I reverted Noetica twice, each time linking to one or two sections with long explanations. Did you read those? I also created a section below that explained how and why the original Kotniski wording had consensus support, but originally via consensus-by-editing, and recently via consensus-through-discussion. Did you read it? Here it is: #Consensus support for "recognizable to someone familiar" wording is established
In a paragraph directed at me, you state, "if you resort to {dispute], {biased}, {I didn’t get my WAAAAAY}-tags, ..." You seem to believe I have been adding tags like that. I haven't added any tags of any sort. Are you aware of that? If so, why did you say this to me?
You also refer to "loosing to consensus as small as a 2:1 margin here". I don't know what you are referring to, but in the discussion about V1 vs V2 which you can see at #RFC on Recognizability guideline wording, the margin was 9:0, since 9 editors favored V1, and gave reasons/arguments for it, and no one gave an argument favoring V2. That was 9 days ago, and still no one has presented an argument favoring V2. If I'm wrong about that, please, quote even one coherent statement supporting the use of V2 over V1 that has been stated on this talk page, and that has not been addressed and refuted.
Instead, there has been nothing here but filibustering by three editors who seem to favor V2, but cannot articulate a coherent argument that supports their position, much less one that anyone finds persuasive.
You say you want to be alerted "the next time there is editwarring or editing against consensus here." Well, last night I removed the tag because there was no consensus for it, and no substantive discussion about that section in over a week. No one had even stated a coherent objection to the V1 wording. Again, if I'm wrong, please quote it. I'm dying to know what it is. Was that editwarring or editing against consensus? How? Then Noetica replaced the consensus-supported V1 wording with the V2 wording in this edit. That seems clearly to be editing against consensus. No? How is it not editing against consensus, since consensus favoring V1 is clearly established, and nothing has even been presenting favoring V2, much less something showing consensus support for V2.
Since it was editing against consensus, I reverted it, restoring the V1 wording, and not with a 4-word explanation, but with a link to the section where discussion revealed it was V1 that had consensus support. Is this editing or editwarring against consensus? How so?
Never-the-less, Noetica reverted this again, with a #Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles#Fresh_debate:_recognisability_and_related_questions reference to a discussion section where he says the section "is disputed", but which says nothing substantive favoring V2 over V1, much less shows that V1 does not have consensus support, or that V2 does. That sure seems like editwarring against consensus to me. No?
So I restored the consensus-supported V1 wording again, this time after writing a full explanation on Noetica's talk page and linking to that, as well as providing a link to this section.
I don't understand why the V1 wording has not been restored. What's the point of developing and showing consensus if it is ignored?
Does that explain what this is really about? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:25, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Since those who favor V2 cannot or will not even articulate an argument in favor of their position, all we can do is speculate, but as far as I can tell they just are looking for as much leeway in policy as they can get to allow them to move articles to titles that are more descriptive. I really don't think there is much else going on. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:56, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Dick, let's review the facts, shall we?
Yes, B2C, I saw #Clarification_of_recognizability_lost. And it still as unobvious as ever what the distinction is meant to accomplish. I note your own WTF there when you wrote However, I don't see the question of "recognizable to whom?" being addressed there. It appears they did not understand they were changing the meaning of the criterion by implying it needs to be broadly recognizable to meet the criterion, rather than simply be recognizable to those familiar with the topic, which is a huge change.
It would be exceedingly helpful if editors proposed guideline text that made it perfectly clear what the meaning is of the guideline via examples (*sound of audience gasp*). Note my very own effort on this regarding linking ( here at MOS:Linking), which was a jihad effort on both sides, with plenty of wiki‑suicide bombings, ArbCom tongue removals, and ample Turkish butt-stabbings. Yet, when I crafted a proposed guideline that was unambiguous and clear as glass as to its scope and applicability, peace fell upon the land and editors no longer feared their crops would wither, livestock die, and midwives weep. I suggest the same here. The clear-as-glass guideline is as follows:
Month-and-day articles ( February 24 and 10 July) should not be linked unless their content is germane (relevant and appropriate) to the subject. Such links should share an important connection with that subject other than that the events occurred on the same date. For example, editors should not link the date (or year) in a sentence such as (from Sydney Opera House): "The Sydney Opera House was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007", because little, if any, of the contents of either June 28 or 2007 are germane to either UNESCO, a World Heritage Site, or the Sydney Opera House.
References to commemorative days ( Saint Patrick's Day) are treated as for any other link. Intrinsically chronological articles ( 1789, January, and 1940s) may themselves contain linked chronological items.
I suggest others try to be as equally clear by using language that begins with wording like “For example…” Greg L ( talk) 23:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
While we're on parenthetical disambiguators, this may be a good time to re-raise an idea that has had some support in the past - make the parenthetical bit of the title display in smaller type, so that it looks more like a "subtitle". That way we go some way towards having our cake and eating it - we get concise "titles", while the heading as a whole provides the precision and (perhaps) consistency. (For another possible advantage of this approach, see my last comment at WT:Disambiguation#Disambiguation of two topics.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
Should all official names of settlement be mentioned in Infobox part official name and in leade. Also, which percentage of community is considered sufficient to add a minority language in leade, and which in name section where language is not official (Specifically, 50% is enough?). This will be useful in specific discussion, but be also sure to specify it in the rules in article (about that we have great debate).-- MirkoS18 ( talk) 01:28, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
This case may be of interest to some of you here. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 03:06, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
The "recognizable to someone familiar" wording that clarifies that we strive for our titles to be recognizable to those who are familiar with the topic in question, was added by Kotniski on August 17, 2010 with this edit.
Kotniski was clearly editing in good faith, and seeking review, as is revealed by the edit summary, "an alternative formulation for your perusal and possible reversion ("easy to find" and "precise" seem not to have any meaning not covered by the other crietria". This method of building consensus is more commonly used than Reaching consensus through discussion, and is known as Reaching consensus through editing. Within hours of that edit, Knepflerle ( talk · contribs) made another edit to the same section [28], signalling acceptance of Kotniski's change. A few minutes later Hesperian also made edit, and also left Kotniski's wording largely intact [29]. Then, PBS reverted the whole thing [30], but Knep insisted [31], another revert from PBS [32], and then another restore by Kotniski [33]. The next day PMA also made an edit, also signalling acceptance [34]. A few days later, on the 24th, another editor made changes to that section, without changing the wording [35]. In short, a number of editors clearly looked at this wording and accepted it. That establishes consensus, even though there was no discussion about it.
In theory, a similar argument could be made about the recognizability simplification edit in May 2011, except when the ramifications of the oversimplification was pointed out a week ago, consensus clearly favored restoring the previous wording (nine different editors explained why that wording was better; no one argued in favor of the simpler wording).
Now, those are the relevant facts that I'm aware of, and they seem to clearly indicate that consensus supports the "recognizable ... to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic" wording over the "plain" recognizable wording, but maybe I'm missing something. Am I? If so, what? If not, I hereby refute the argument that this wording has no consensus support, which, frankly, I'm sick and tired of fielding (this argument was made in the first sentence of #More revert warring just above). But at least now I have something to refer to if it's ever presented again. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 08:28, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
@ all, I've reverted the contested point to the Dec. 12 wording, before the current edit war. Please work out the wording on this talk page, rather than in the edit summaries. That's getting disruptive. Given the number of people who edit this article, protection isn't really an option, which means I'm left with blocking people. — kwami ( talk) 08:52, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
How can anything be resolved with such obstinacy? If they refuse or are unable to engage in substantive discussion, what is there to discuss? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 09:10, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
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Archive 30 | ← | Archive 32 | Archive 33 | Archive 34 | Archive 35 | Archive 36 | → | Archive 40 |
WP:AND states:
Sometimes two or more closely related or complementary concepts are most sensibly covered by a single article. Where possible, use a title covering all cases: for example, Endianness covers the concepts "big-endian" and "little-endian". Where no reasonable overarching title is available, it is permissible to construct an article title using "and", as in Acronym and initialism; Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9; Promotion and relegation; and Balkline and straight rail.
This wording has been used to justify using two names for the same subject in one title: Sega Genesis and Mega Drive ("Sega Genesis" and "Mega Drive" are two names that Sega used to refer to essentially the same product because it couldn't use "Mega Drive" in N. America due to copyright issues). This seems to me to obviously not be a case of "two ... closely related or complementary concepts"..., yet this wording was used to rationalize this title. See also a current discussion about that particular title: Talk:Sega_Genesis_and_Mega_Drive#Requested_move.
I don't know of any other article that constructs its title from two names like this based on WP:AND. Does anyone else?
Anyone agree or disagree this title is based on a misunderstanding of WP:AND? If agree, any suggestions on how to change the wording to be more clear about this? Thanks. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:26, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Further, WP:IAR is supposed to apply if there is a good reason. An inability for a dozen or so editors to pick one name out of two is not a good reason to "ignore all rules" and combine both in the title. It's a good reason to try harder. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
If you can end this dispute by deciding the current name it fine, and letting it drop, that makes you a hero. If you decide you're going to hold stability hostage to your idea of how hard we need to work on titling questions (hint: No we don't), then you're not a hero. What we need to "try harder" to do is to find a way to stop caring about the details of titling policy, and write an encyclopedia.
Demanding that others "try harder" when they're not being paid, and when you're not helping facilitate the goal you insist that they reach, is rude as hell. Cut it out, already. - GTBacchus( talk) 17:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Wolf, I'm not ignoring anything. I suggested the title I suggested as a result of that understanding, combined with my understanding of consensus -- a reflected in policy and guidelines -- about article titles. Now others are making even better suggestions. It's all good. Yeah, my big evil "agenda" of striving for better consistency and predictability in article titles. How terrible! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:23, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
As far as I know, the project has not been hurting for lack of consistency and predictability in article titles. We've actually been doing fine, following our usual well-supported practice of generally ignoring rules, and keeping red tape to an absolute minimum. We didn't need a lawyer to come in, decide this aspect of the project needs an overhaul, and then start carrying that out, without any apparent regard for the amount of disruption involved.
Invoking a superstitious concept such as "evil" seems extremely prejudicial and unnecessary. I'm only trying to talk about this world. - GTBacchus( talk) 19:35, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
I did find another example of this kind of title: Hellmann's and Best Foods. As far as I can tell, it was created that way in 2005 and has never been moved.
As always, I'm motivated by both getting our policy and guidelines better in line with consensus, or getting our titles better in line with consensus as reflected in our policy and guidelines.
In this case I see a conflict, and the solution can be achieved with either titles changes or with policy/guideline changes. I'm open to either. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:08, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Simply getting the guidelines and the titles to line up is not a worthwhile end in itself. The product is no suffering, so there is no problem to fix. The community has never made it clear that we want entirely consistent titles, guidelines and policies. In fact, if the cost of obtaining those is tens of thousands of words of debates, then it's abso-darn-lutely not worth it.
When did you carry out this cost-benefit analysis, and decide that your goal is worth all the static that you're generating? Can you unpack that reasoning for us, please? - GTBacchus( talk) 19:26, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
We are getting off track... this isn't really the appropriate venue to determine what the best title for a specific article is... there is an ongoing Move request RFC for that. The question we should be discussing here is whether the issues being discussed at that Move request indicate a need to change this policy in any way? I don't think they do, but perhaps I am missing something. Blueboar ( talk) 00:44, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
What is not clear, at least to some, apparently, is that this only applies to cases where the two names each individually refer to a distinct concept. "Big-endian" refers to something different from "Little-endian"; "acronyms" are not "initialisms".
One area, perhaps the only area, where this is unclear is when a company markets the same product under two or more distinct names. This is why I suggest we choose one of the statements above. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:32, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Do we really need to list and count all the individuals who have already objected to the current title, and summarize their reasons?
Oy. Lost focus again! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:20, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
As said, give this a few months instead of bringing a challenge after hugely debated naming dispute that was resolved. If no one bring up a non-policy issue that has reasonable merit why then it should be fine.(No one from either side, those who oppose the current name or those who support it should do so either as they would be trying to push a point with a likely biased agenda. If made it can be debated on the merits outside policy.∞ 陣 内 Jinnai 02:41, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm a little late to this party, but I wanted to weigh in a bit: I originally helped formalize the proposal for applying WP:AND to the Mega Drive/Genesis article (and am kinda regretting it now because of all the controversy it seems to have created). The reasoning, which at the time it seemed everyone could at least live with if not agree to, was that the compound name gave equal weight to both machines and at least implied that they were about the same overall topic. I acknowledged a risk that it could confuse a non-savvy reader by making them think the article was about a single object whose title was "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive", but the initial discussion seemed to dismiss that possibility. I'm a bit dismayed that the discussion has spiraled so far out of control since then, but at least it points to disagreement on what the proper application of this policy should be.
IMO, a compound name like this should be allowed to give equal weight to situations like this. We've already hashed the comparison and contrast issue to death, so I won't bother repeating it here, but as has been pointed out, there isn't really a clear winner for either name. Sufficient arguments on both sides to support or rebuke both names. But since people can't agree on the compromise EITHER, and other generic names (like "Sega 16-bit Console" and "Sega fourth-general console") have been rejected, I think this does say that the policy could use clarification - if nothing else, more specific examples of article titles where people DO agree that it applies.
I would go so far as to say that the outcome of the current round of discussions should be reflected in an explanatory comment related to this policy, since it is a significant factor. If we decide to ultimately reject the compound name, I think this policy should have a note on that specific debate so that we can avoid having similar fiascos in other articles. — KieferSkunk ( talk) — 20:38, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
From an outsiders' perspective, the truly horrible thing about this protracted and often bloody argument is that the outcome (between Sega Genesis and Mega Drive) is utterly irrelevant. Nobody outside of the protagonists in the debate gives a damn which it is...honestly...nobody. The overriding concern for the encyclopedia is not which name wins or why - but that whichever name wins does so sufficiently conclusively that nobody in the future will be able to start another massive debate about it again. The many outsiders who entered the fray (I'm one of them) really wanted the silly "compromise" titles to 'go away' more than to choose a particular title from the two obvious ones. The problem is entirely that the original editors of the article became so entrenched in their positions (and many of them still are) that they'll accept absolutely any title - including the most horrible ones - so long as the other name isn't the title. Quite ridiculous behavior.
Even now that it is overwhelmingly likely that Sega Genesis will win, we have editors who are trying to insist that we place "Mega Drive" in the lede sentence of the article ahead of "Sega Genesis"! The intransigence over these trivial matters is quite incredible.
Lessons I have learned from this fiasco:
SteveBaker ( talk) 21:43, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
Have you read WP:Lame?
To address your point about "Forward slashes are not forbidden in article titles" It has long been agreed that this is not the way to go because then all that happens is people move the squabble on to which name should come first. Take for example the dispute over Liancourt Rocks there was months of dispute over whether Dokdo should come first because it comes first in the alphabet or Takeshima should come first as the name is Japanese and Japan comes before Korea in the alphabet.
In this case there would be that argument coupled to precisely the same arguments you have been having about sources.
To repeat what I said before: In cases like this it is best to revert to the last stable name and failing agreement on that use the name used in the first version after the article was not longer a stub. That is the method that has worked for lots of articles eg gasoline and tram (to name on from either side of the pond). -- PBS ( talk) 05:31, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure if you're being serious or not, but obviously, I've provided much evidence and proof of my position. It has been attacked on various grounds, but it has still been presented. My point is that I don't recall anyone providing any evidence that the name "Mega Drive" exists more frequently in English-language reliable sources than "Genesis". Perhaps you're being hung up on semantics, but my point is this: I've provided a ton of evidence regarding the "Sega Genesis", and while people have criticized the policy and the methods, I have not seen anyone provide evidence that the opposite is true. LedRush ( talk) 15:36, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
How do we? (or indeed, do we bother to?) account for the historic advantage that certain countries have as regards use of the Internet and the amassed cache of data they have produced. i.e. North America had earlier and wider access to the net, along with large usage, i.e percentage wise they produce more content. Australia (Just to pick a random developed nation with a low-ish population) had later access to the net, lower uptake and a small population and so produce less content. So if a wiki debate arises concerning a term/name/something used by those two nations Australia will be at a disadvantage when it comes to pure numbers. Even if the Australia term is the "correct" one, common sense could be bettered by someone saying look at the numbers. Any system must account for this potential for systemic bias. - X201 ( talk) 21:50, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
A new proposal for ethnic groups naming conventions can be found here: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#New proposal for "Articles on peoples (ethnicities and tribes)". - Uyvsdi ( talk) 19:31, 13 November 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi
In regards to the "China"/"People's Republic of China" dispute, a group of administrators merged the articles on "Chinese civilization" and the "People's Republic of China" together at "China" The administrators argue that they are following Wikipedia:Article_titles#Non-neutral_but_common_names since "China" has been used to refer to both the civilization and the current PRC government on the Mainland I argue that it is advancing the POV that the People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government of China, and that "Non-neutral_but_common_names" does not apply since the words "Taiwan" and "China" are being used in a partisan manner, and that this is still a contentious political issue. Please see: Talk:China#the_article_was_merged.2C_not_moved.21 WhisperToMe ( talk) 00:42, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
This sentence "However, both "Pro‑choice" and "Pro‑life" redirect to more neutral titles, in keeping with point #3, above." is not a good example because it is essentially an American POV problem, and the phrases mean something else in other National varieties of English. I suggest we delete them and replace them and if someone wants such an example replace them with something else that does not carry such nationalistic baggage. -- PBS ( talk) 02:37, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
Please consider weighing in on discussion at Wikipedia Talk:Naming_conventions_(clergy)#Mass_moving_of_articles_on_Syriac_bishops. Seemingly without discussion, User:Karnan on Nov 19 and 20 massively moved large numbers of Wikipedia pages - perhaps 50 - to new titles. He is adding "Mar", which means "Bishop", to the titles of Syro-Malabar Bishops. -- Presearch ( talk) 00:51, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
I think it would be a big help and clarification to incorporate the principle of least astonishment in this policy. (And that article needs to be expanded because the principle applies to much more than user interface design, software design, and ergonomics.) -- Espoo ( talk) 21:44, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. The most common name for a subject is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural; one should also ask the
questions outlined above; ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Neutrality is also considered; our policy on neutral titles, and what neutrality in titles is, follows in the next section. When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others.
Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. The most common name for a subject is often used as a title because it is recognizable, natural and upholds the
principle of least astonishment, i.e., when a majority of people are familiar with a certain topic by a particular name, and thus are likely to search Wikipedia for the topic by that name, they should not be astonished when they find the topic existing here under an unfamiliar name. However, one should also ask the
questions outlined above; ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Neutrality is also considered; our policy on neutral titles, and what neutrality in titles is, follows in the next section. When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others.
... –when a majority of people are familiar with a certain topic by a particular name, and thus are likely to search Wikipedia for the topic by that name, they should not be astonished when they find the topic existing here under an unfamiliar name ...
Besides the point made above about common search terms often not being professional or encyclopedic sounding, there's also the problem that the concept of astonishment is so culturally specific that I worry that enshrining it as policy would lead to more POV warring. I think Brits might not like the result: Since they tend to be familiar w American expressions, but not vice versa, 'least astonishment' would suggest titling everything in American English. The concept of astonishment is already covered w current criteria like CommonName, and that's probably sufficient. — kwami ( talk) 23:27, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
Editors (especially any with expertise in intellectual property law, or corporate law) may wish to contribute at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks. The issue of extending the coverage of the page to trade names as well as trademarks may not be as simple or automatic as some assume.
Noetica Tea? 22:07, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm not really all full on 100% positive, but shouldn't these three pages be titled in English?:
It seems to confirm so at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books) (Which I should have began this discussion, but that talk page is not watched very often, and the last thread was begun in August, and did not get a single reply, so I decided to start the discussion here, in hopes of getting a broader opinion base), and at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). I don't know the translation or I may have just done it myself. I could look it up, but am too afraid of stepping on toes or pissing someone off (Which never happens in our little land of Wikipedia).-- JOJ Hutton 00:02, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Even less English is Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya. I have a requested move for this one, which is active. (No one has voted so far. Be the first.) Another example of a non-English title is Praha hlavní nádraží. Kauffner ( talk) 02:36, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Talk:Libingan ng mga Bayani#Rename comes to mind. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:56, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
I don't know if there are verifiable English names,I don't speak whatever language that is. All I know is that its not English.-- JOJ Hutton 12:34, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Specifically, I just closed a discussion at Talk:Kodak#Moving_back_to_"Eastman_Kodak" as "no consensus" because editors couldn't agree on this point: business articles discussing the company generally start in the first sentence with "Eastman Kodak", but then through the body of the article shorten this to "Kodak". Some editors argue that this means "Kodak" is the common name for the company; other editors argue that using "Kodak" in the body of the article is just convenience, analogous to using "Obama" in the body of an article which started by referring to "Barack Obama". Which is correct? Edit: I'm looking more for answers regarding the general case of when our reliable sources use two different names like this; if you answer only regarding Kodak, it's not as helpful.-- Aervanath ( talk) 17:43, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
Obama -"Barack Obama"
shows thousands of sources that never use his first name at all.
WhatamIdoing (
talk)
19:52, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
All editors are reminded that voting closes for ACE2011 in just over a day's time (Saturday 10 December at 23:59 UTC). To avoid last-minute technical logjams, editors are asked to vote at least an hour before the close, that is, by:
For the election coordinators. Tony (talk) 14:06, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Which naming principle should take precedence, #1 avoiding ambiguous or inaccurate names, or #2 using the common name as found in reliable sources? The recent, highly controversial move of the People's Republic of China to "China" relies upon the latter. Related to such are other articles Hirohito and Ireland. Ngchen ( talk) 03:56, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
It might help to point out that "ambiguity" isn't normally considered a weakness of an article title provided that the subject of the article is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the title. We don't mind titling an article Michael Jackson even though there are many other people, some fairly notable, with that name. Similarly we don't mind titling an article China even though there are other entities that are or have been referred to as China. Nearly all WP articles on modern countries are titled using the common short form of the country's name, and it was highly egregious to do differently for that one (for no apparent reason except something to do with Taiwan that has no influence on the English-speaking world's actual usage of the term "China").-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:35, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Could someone add Wikipedia:Naming conventions (cuisines) to the list of naming conventions? -- Jeremy ( blah blah • I did it!) 05:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
A guideline proposes using English in titles: Wikipedia:Article_titles#English-language_titles. I've been having a problem with Japanese articles. Most recently with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fumi-e. A closed discussion, incidentally. Quick! Before looking, what is Fumi-e? If you had to look first, it is not in general use in English.
Three problems here. Two are similar. Both English and Japanese are "language sponges" trying to adopt new words from other languages, quite contrary to the norm. The third is that Japanese are much closer in time to their feudal period than European cultures. They believe them totally unique, though there are English words quite capable of describing them. The other day, I tried to introduce "liege lord" to a Japanese-Anglophone editor. He found, instead, a band with that name, perhaps not realizing it was named after a common English-related feudal expression.
I lost the Fumi-e argument after one day of allowing editors to contribute. Several were editors on the article itself and hardly neutral. Right now we have hundreds, if not thousands of non-place articles with Japanese words that have not entered English and for which there is an English equivalent. I'm looking for support here (not votes. Too late for that! :). Student7 ( talk) 13:51, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Related discussion on using qualifiers when not needed: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New York City Public Transportation#Using qualifiers when no ambiguity exists -- JHunterJ ( talk) 13:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
PMA when you made this change on 22 August 2011 I think you made an inadvertent change in meaning, or at least it can be read that way.
Before there was as sentence:
The ideal title for an article will also satisfy the questions outlined above; ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Hidden comment BETTER EXAMPLE NEEDED For example, tsunami is preferred over the arguably more typical, but less accurate tidal wave.
It is clear from this sentence that ambiguous or inaccurate is referring to the bullet points in questions outlined above. But then it was a stand alone sentence at the bottom of the section. Now it is in the first paragraph:
Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. The most common name for a subject is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural; one should also ask questions outlined above; ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. For a discussion of neutrality in titles, see below. When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others.
The problem is that by extracting the phrase "ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources". Which after all comes after a semicolon, it can be used to support the "correct" name and ignore the common name. See this posting in an RFC at Use English. Now I happen to know that this is taking part of a sentence out of context, but I suggest that we either move the sentence back down the section, or we rephrase it to make it clear that we are talking about Precision and Conciseness -- PBS ( talk) 22:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
The second version has two semicolons without having parallellism. There seems a clear solution, which also may address the problem which brought me here (this
move discussion, in which the nominator quotes consistency as though it were the whole of the policy); break after "questions outlined above".
None of the questions decide article titles by themselves; in particular, ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are sometimes avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources.
JCScaliger ( talk) 04:35, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
- We decide on the common name through the frequency of use in reliable sources. Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. A common name for a subject is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural, but the consideration should also be given to the other questions outlined above in the section " deciding on an article title".
Seems to me the problems of phrasing perhaps arise because we still haven't completely got away from stating things as "if...then...else..." conditions or would-be algorithms, rather than acknowledging that there are simply various factors that may be taken into account when deciding on titles (probably more than the five bolded ones we list in the opening section), and that these are weighted and balanced in any given case to provide what we hope to be a satisfactory answer.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:02, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Born2Cycle you reverted out the inclusion of this paragraph
We decide on the common name through the frequency of use in reliable sources. When there are several common names for a subject, it is perfectly reasonable to select as an article title the name that best fits the other criteria in this policy. If the name of a person, group, object, or other article topic changes then more weight should be given to name used in reliable sources published after the name change than in those before the change.
With the comment
Revert. Strongly disagree there is consensus support for this change, certainly not mine. The MOST common name is given preference, and policy should continue to reflect that. Please discuss first such a radical change.
As you can see it has been discussed. What exactly is it in the wording I introduced that with which you disagree, or perceive there to be a problem? -- PBS ( talk) 08:56, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
@Septentrionalis PMAnderson: Your editing restrictions (detailed at Wikipedia:Editing restrictions#Placed by the Wikipedia community) are quite clear. You are Topic banned from WP:MOS and discussions anywhere on the project concerning the Manual of Style or technical aspects of the use of the English language anywhere on the project, including his own talkpage, for a period of one year. So what is your rationale for weighing in here notwithstanding that? Is there a tacit understanding with someone in power that you can weigh in on these types of discussions if you can behave yourself? Or are you seeing how thin the ice is by simply walking out on it with your arms outstretched? I personally find my own views on wikimatters are typically extremely well aligned with yours; more so than most other editors on these types of pages. But there will be precious little slack cut for you if you revert to your old ways. Please explain your presence here. Greg L ( talk) 02:22, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
As was amply demonstrated at Talk:Yogurt, PMA’s inflammatory manner of contributing would result in flamewars. Only after someone pointed out there at Talk:Yogurt that PMA wasn’t even supposed to be weighing in there did one editor write what amounted to “Oh… well if I had known that in the first place, I wouldn’t have taken the bait.” Ergo, since few editors new to discussions start from the very top and catch every post, it is appropriate and helpful to remind both PMA and the community that he isn’t supposed to be here anyway—as I just did, and rightly so.
There is probably no single ideal way to get PMA to comply with his editing restriction and it is obvious he is intent on testing the limits and wants to push them back. Given that he knew he was treading on thin ice at Talk:Yogurt and still managed to tick off some editors, I personally see no point to just pretending he has no editing restriction, ignoring that he is being provocative in places he is not supposed to be, not letting others know that they needn’t take the bait, letting him slowly devolve into his old habits, and finally letting a shoe drop at at ANI. ANIs are ugly and an utter waste of the community’s time if they can be avoided with a polite but direct reminder that it is not too much to ask that an editor abide by an abundantly clear and unambiguous editing restriction.
But, thank you PBS, for reminding me that it would be helpful to provide a fuller accounting here of just why it is so hard to reign in PMA. Perhaps you might try your hand at reminding him of his editing restrictions on his talk page; maybe you will have better luck. Happy editing. Greg L ( talk) 04:05, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Born, the fact is that we don't always use "the MOST common name", especially if "the MOST common name" is used by less than half the sources (which happens not infrequently when more than two alternative names exist), but my bigger concern is that you seem to be engaging in sloppy reversions. Do you actually have something against the idea that "If the name of a person, group, object, or other article topic changes then more weight should be given to name used in reliable sources published after the name change than in those before the change", or was this just a mindless reversion of a good change, that you're now going to correct? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 03:32, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Example: Say A is more natural, more recognizable, more concise and just as consistent with similar titles as B, but B is more concise. Even though A is favored by 3 of the 5 criteria, and a wash on a 4th, this statement suggests that choosing B is "perfectly reasonable" because, ignoring the common name criteria, B is favor by one of the remaining 3 criteria, and so is A. I don't think that reflects actual practice. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 05:43, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
Now, if there are multiple common names and none is clearly the most common, then, sure, we use other factors (i.e., consistency, concision and precision) to decide. But if one name is clearly the most common, then usually it's favored, and it's not "perfectly reasonable" to pick one of the other common names because it best fits the other criteria of the policy. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
But in the vast majority of cases we don't have such a controversy about most common. My concern with the proposed wording is that it would seem to discourage using the most common name in situations where there is no controversy about that, like in the David Owen example I just gave above, but other factors (like consistency) indicate another title. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I think that WhatamIdoing's changes put in most of what I was saying anyway. But it only touched one third of it. The other two were the addition of:
and the second issue was what to do about the sentence "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." because in at least one occurrence of a guideline discussion this has been used to justify using the "correct" spelling, eg a persons name in their passport as opposed to the name used in reliable secondary sources. (See this posting in an RFC at Use English). If reliable sources meant documents as opposed to for example experts then changing the phrase "used by reliable sources" to "used in reliable sources" would bring clarity to the sentence, but would that be acceptable as the reliable source could be an expert publishing in what what would otherwise be an unreliable source. -- PBS ( talk) 06:09, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Catholic Memorial School redirects to Catholic Memorial School (West Roxbury, Massachusetts). A move request failed, even though similar moves have been treated as completely non-controversial in the past. If this were a case where "Catholic Memorial School" was ambiguous, the failure of the move would be understandable. But that was not what was argued -- and in fact, the base name continues to be a redirect, not a disambiguation page. Rather, the argument was that the parenthetical provided necessary context.
We have absolutely no tradition of using parenthetical phrases for anything other than creating a unique page title. If we are going to start using them to provide context to the casual reader, we must update our policy documentation accordingly. Alternatively, if we are not going to start using them in that way, we need to re-inforce that determination and make it much more clear, as it apparently is not currently.
-- Powers T 01:28, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Ah, so B2C was recalling my comments at Talk:Crime_Patrol_(TV_series)#Requested move, which had nothing to do with "retaining unnecessary disambiguation in titles", but was a "primarytopic" discussion. I admit that I have been generally opposed to a number of claims of "primarytopic" where some decent disambiguation makes more sense. As for who re-opened it, it was B2C who asked for it to be re-opened, after it had already been relisted to get a wider sampling of community consensus. It seems odd to be accusing those who participated for the low participation. As for outrageous, I think it's to be expected that sometimes the particular article decisions may seem to be not well aligned with the articulation of general principles; that not's really outrageous, just means that there's still work to be done to reflect the consensus practices in the guidelines. It's not always going to be easy. In the disambiguation question, the issue of what's "unnecessary" may be tricky, possibly depending on whether one considers the universe of existing WP titles, or the universe of topics that readers are likely to be interested in, for example. What's "unnecessary" to one may be "useful" or "crucial" to another. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
This argument of yours is similar in principal to what you said at Talk:Catholic_Memorial_School_(West_Roxbury,_Massachusetts)#Requested_move: "Unnecessary deletion of useful disambiguation." That's inverting what WP:PRECISION says, which is to avoid unnecessary precision, where "necessary" means necessary for disambiguation from other uses. It doesn't say to avoid deletion of precision that is not necessary for disambiguation; it implies the exact opposite of what you're arguing. And it has nothing to do with any other meanings of "necessary" or "unnecessary" as you try to imply it is when you say above, "What's 'unnecessary' to one may be 'useful' or 'crucial' to another.". I will also note that back on December 6th, LtPowers ( talk · contribs) grouped you along with Noetica and Tony as "the opponents of this process [to remove unnecessary disambiguation]" [2], so I'm neither the first nor the only one who has noticed.
You're free to argue anything you want, of course, but to me this is an example of arguing a fringe position, directly opposed to policy and consensus-supported practice, that you and a few others support. And if you keep doing it without persuading anyone beyond your group of 3-5 editors pushing this POV, at some point that becomes disruptive. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:01, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I baulk at this title: Financial Instruments and Exchange Law (it's a Hong Kong law, actually), and Professional Evaluation and Certification Board (New York, actually).
In the thread above, the term recognisable is being bandied about as though it's easy to define. Why do I get the feeling this is on purpose, to make article titles as unrecognisable as editors please. There are several reasons we need to spell out some instances where locations can be included in titles:
I suggest that some exceptions be included—for example, when a financial instrument, organisation, or (workforce) position could refer to multiple topics, it's permissible to add the name of the location in parentheses after the wording, in short form where possible (HK, NY, US, UK, etc.). Tony (talk) 10:09, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
As far as how "Verified Audit Circulation" identifies its title unambiguously... it does that because there is no other topic in WP to which that name refers. This is explained in detail at WP:PRECISION, including this statement: "when a topic's most commonly used name, as reflected in reliable sources, is ambiguous (can refer to more than one topic covered in Wikipedia), and the topic is not primary, that name cannot be used and so must be disambiguated." Here you see "ambiguous" is clearly defined in terms of other topics covered in Wikipedia. It is in that sense that unambiguously is intended to be interpreted in "identify the topic of the article unambiguously". -- Born2cycle ( talk) 10:52, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Oh deary me. Please refer to my comment of a couple of minutes ago in the section above - the general sense of it fits here as well. SamBC( talk) 17:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I also don't see the distinction to which you refer in practical terms. Can you (or someone) provide an example of a title what would be recognizable to someone familiar with the topic, but not to someone "with a basic knowledge of the subject field", or vice versa? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Specifically, how do we express and convey this in this policy without creating a situation in which article title discussions are even more contentious than they already are? How do we determine whether a given name is sufficiently likely to be used as a search string to warrant this special treatment? How do we decide what exactly that special treatment should be in each case? And, perhaps most importantly, how does this really change anything?
In the current situation, someone searching with "audit circulation" -- the first ghit, by the way, at least for me, is the website of Verified Audit Circulation - verifiedaudit.com -- might come upon our article at Verified Audit Circulation. They will realize it is not their article seconds later after reading the lead.
Now, how would the situation change if we followed one of your suggestions, say by moving the article to Verified Audit Circulation Corp? Well, the same user would end up at the same article, with a slightly different title. They will realize it is not their article a few seconds later after reading the title and/or the lead. I'm sorry, but I really don't see a big difference here. In fact, at least in the current case they are likely to realize that WP has no other article named Verified Audit Circulation, but in the suggested situation, being at Verified Audit Circulation Corp is likely to wrongly suggest to them that there is another article named Verified Audit Circulation. So at best, it's a wash, and it's likely to make matters worse. Please explain how this would be an improvement. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:27, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
You say "the current way" "potentially leads the searcher/reader to fall on the wrong article more often than not". Please explain how changing the name of the article currently at Verified Audit Circulation to Verified Audit Circulation Corp would even affect the likelihood of users searching with, say, "audit circulation", reaching this article, much less make it less likely. If you believe the same article, when moved to Verified Audit Circulation Corp, will be less likely to show up in the "audit circulation" search results simply because of the title change, then you don't understand how google searches work. First, Verified Audit Circulation will remain a redirect to the article. More importantly, google will "learn" where the new article has been moved. Remember, it's reporting results largely based on article content, not the article title... we can move the article to Red fairies in Volkswagens, and google will still find it. I think you're assuming the title in general, and even a minor change in the title, affects search results much more than it actually does.
You say, "a Gsearch for 'Verified Audit Circulation Corp' doesn't show the WP article". Right. So what? Who is going to be searching with that string? What does that show?
You also say, " whereas the WP article for the company shows up when searching for 'audit circulation'." Right. Again, and why do you think that will change if the article is moved to Verified Audit Circulation Corp? People will still be searching with "audit circulation", and the article now at Verified Audit Circulation Corp will be just as good of match, and will show up the same spot (all other factors held equal) in the search results.
What am I missing? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:35, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Like I've said four times now (search for "devil" on this page), the devil is in the details. How do we express and convey this in this policy without creating a situation in which article title discussions are even more contentious than they already are? How do we decide whether a given name is "generic sounding", or not? How do we decide how to disambiguate it if there are no other uses to disambiguate from? That is, Cork (city), for example, is disambiguated with "city" because it is the only use of "cork" in Wikipedia that is a city... but we need to have other articles to know that. If there were other cities named Cork, the "city" would not be an appropriate disambiguator (unless it was the primary use relative to the other cities). If there were no other uses at all of "Cork", then it could just be at Cork. Our whole system of deciding how to disambiguate is based on looking at other uses in Wikipedia; so how do we decide how to disambiguate when there are no other uses?
Finally, and most importantly, what problem is solved by introducing all these complications? How is Wikipedia improved if we start predisambiguating titles of articles about topics with generic names?
Now, what typically happens in these discussions when they get down to these nitty-gritty questions is... the discussion ends. Over and over, and we never get anywhere. That's the point.
With regard to Peter Jones and Paul Smith, there are over a dozen other uses of each in WP, and we've decided that among them there is no primary topic. That's a separate issue, one that we're accustomed to handling. The issue we're talking about is disambiguating something even when there are no other uses in WP. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:32, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
Colleagues, it seems useful to gather here a few imponderables that might have a bearing on our discussion above. I approach these from a position of ignorance. Please add to this list, anyone, article titles that might help us to sort out what to do.
"A Unit Investment Trust (UIT) is a US investment company offering a fixed (unmanaged) portfolio of securities having a definite life."
Ah, but read on, way past the opening text that would appear in a google search entry: if you missed the opening "A", you'd fail to understand that it's actually a type of investment company. I'd rather have the "class of ..." or "type of ..." up-front at the opening; this is part of a larger problem that occurs when articles are not themed clearly as generic or titular, and it brushes up against the practices of naming titles. So I suppose it should be downcased per MOSCAPS, although I've had to mount an RM to have it moved (sigh). Chaotic casing and unclear openings are not helping the recognisability issue one bit. Another little issue is that the UK equivalent is called Unit trust, as it notes at the top in tiny print. I find this rather unhelpful to the readers.
Dohn Joe, I trust you will not launch in and change the first one while this issue is being discussed (as you've done previously when I've raised examples here). Tony (talk) 10:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Tony, how many times will you bring up the same point, and elicit the same explanations, like Bkonrad has taken the time and energy to do, again, here, which you will not address, only to bring it up again and again and again? Enough!. If you just repeatedly raise the same issue and don't engage in constructive dialog, you're just being tendentious and disruptive, by definition. See WP:TE. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Of late, I've been involved in a few page move discussions (most notably for USB, which is currently at DRN) related to WP:ACRONYMTITLE. In my opinion, the present wording is overly strong and doesn't reflect the general consensus on titles (particularly WP:COMMONNAME). Suggested rewording of the section in WP:NAME:
- Avoid ambiguous abbreviations
- Abbreviations and acronyms are often ambiguous and thus should be avoided unless the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject (e.g. NATO, laser, USB). The abbreviation UK, for United Kingdom, is acceptable for use in disambiguation. It is also unnecessary to include an acronym in addition to the name in a title. For more details, see WP:ACRONYMTITLE.
And the corresponding line in WP:ACRONYMTITLE:
An acronym or initialism should be used in a page name if the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject (e.g. NATO, laser, USB). In order to determine the prominence of the abbreviation over the full name, consider checking how the subject is referred to in popular media such as newspapers, magazines, and other publications.
Thoughts? As it stands, the wording plainly doesn't reflect the way moves are being closed, as the community seems to prefer WP:COMMONNAME to override the "avoid" stance unless there's genuine cause for confusion. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) ( talk) 12:58, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone know of a case where the proposed wording would indicate a different title from the current wording? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:41, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Coming late, I know, but I just studied the USB thing and this proposal that came out of it. I basically like the proposal, saying to mostly avoid acronyms except really good cases, as opposed to the old way that said to use good ones. But I would object to putting USB into that list; it would be much better to use examples that don't carry the baggage of controversy. I'm a bit confused by the comments of TechnoSymbiosis, who says he agrees with SMcCandlish, but appears to want more acronyms, not fewer; and by SMcCandlish's comments, who seems to think this change will encourage acronyms, when it seems more intended to discourage them. Am I reading things wrong? Dicklyon ( talk) 04:47, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Can anyone give one good reason that National Tax Agency is not National Tax Agency (country name)? The title is a translation into English, too. This is where previous practices relying on "primary topic" are becoming ludicrous. I arrived there from a category list. Tony (talk) 02:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I should also add that if the article was at National Tax Agency (Japan) it would wrongly imply that there are other topics in WP whose name is "National Tax Agency", and this one is not the primary topic. That would be misleading. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 05:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
While I generally dislike redundant disambiguation, I find it more of a good thing in cases like this, where the "name" on its own is really just a generic description. (It's not really "the" national tax agency, it's just "a" national tax agency which happens to be the only one that Wikipedia currently titles with those exact words.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:49, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Noetica's comments.
Kotniski, some good points.
B2C, it's not just that the way it's been set up, this uniqueness trumps clarity thing. In fact, it's worse than that: it's that uniqueness as a WP article title, as a topic that is treated in a WP article, trumps clarity and utility, both in WP categ. lists and more importantly on google search displays. For example, there can be scores of vehicle motor taxes, but the one WP means is that in Ireland. Very irritating to have to travel to the article to learn this. And the response from these realms: "Oh ... but it's the only article we have on vehicle motor tax, so finders keepers." I don't buy it. Truth is, a more nuanced, explanatory policy is required to avoid these most unsatisfactory effects.
Jenks, the "slippery slope": yes, I understand your concerns, and I too have done thought-experiments that have shown the dangers of title-bloat. So what I'm asking is that we get together and work out real examples of where the boundaries lie so we can develop guidance that allows these "National Tax Agency" tragedies to be fixed where this can be done with minimal extra characters, but so that for the overwhelming majority of cases the policy still insists on the discipline that produces brevity, succinctness. Tony (talk) 14:29, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
At the top of this section Tony wrote, " I arrived there from a category list. ". Per Bkonrad's explanation (excellent, BTW) this issue doesn't matter, except for the one context of category lists. But let's look at these; this particular article belongs to four cats.
I concede that for the specific context of certain category lists (general categories; specific categories provide the necessary context themselves), having more descriptive titles would be helpful. But that's the only upside there is to this, and its very limited - the main downside I see is that it would complicate our already all too contentious title decision process by adding another consideration into the mix that would apply to any topic with a unique name that is not widely recognizable to the public in general... something like... make the title sufficiently descriptive so that people unfamiliar with the topic can get a reasonable idea of what the topic is from just the title. The complications are:
Further, as Bkonrad notes, there is strong consensus in the community against adding such information even for cases where #2 is not an issue because there is a convention for what the descriptive information should be (e.g., for TV episode names it is the TV series name in parentheses).
Kotniski's and Kauffner's argument for this particular case aside (special case translated names and treat them as descriptive; "Japan" is part of the name used in RS to refer to this topic, which is not an argument to add descriptive information, but to better reflect usage the most common name used in RS), I think #2 adds a lot of burden to the process for little benefit. Further, a point I keep repeating but is never addressed, there is a benefit to the reader when we disambiguate only when necessary - and that is that we inherently convey information about how the name is used in RS. That is, if we always disambiguated government agency names with the name of the country, then, for example, readers would not have an inkling of whether "Internal Revenue Service" is a name unique to the U.S. agency, or whether it's commonly used in other nations. Under the current system because it's at Internal Revenue Service, and not at Internal Revenue Service (United States), that tells us something about usage of the name "Internal Revenue Service" in RS that we would not convey if we systematically predisambiguated names that were not ambiguous with other uses.
In short, we all get where you're coming from, but what you're advocating is a solution to a little problem (improve usefulness of certain general category lists); a solution that creates problems bigger than the little one it's addressing. So, unless Tony, Noetica, et. all can come up with new arguments, I'm with PBS. Enough already.
-- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Would it help if we made an article on Spain's "Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria" and called it National Tax Agency (Spain), as it's often translated? Dicklyon ( talk) 00:53, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Please convince us that you understand what you are suggesting by being clear on what exactly you're seeking; please answer these questions as completely as possible. Thanks. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
And, yes, adding additional place information to a title is predisambiguation if the article could be at the plain base name, by definition.
The inclination to want to make a title more descriptive is understandable, and certainly achieves local consensus support in some cases, but I see no broad community support for the practice in general. It has even fallen out of favor to some extent in some categories of articles, like WP:NCROY, which arguably once was the bastion epitome of predisambiguation. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:53, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
FYI... Since it was raised, I have created a dab page for St Botolph's Church. Blueboar ( talk) 16:02, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
This is just one example that happened to be raised in this discussion, but there are undoubtedly a plethora of them. Any proposal that encourages more predisambiguation just exacerbates this problem. Let's not make matters worse. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:02, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Ultimately, this is just a matter of semantics... how does what we call it create a problem at all, much less create "a larger problem" than the redlink one PBS and I have described? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:02, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Above, it is being argued (in essence) that a title like Crime Patrol, since it is not universally known, does not meet the "recognizability" criteria, and, so, should have more precision (or predisambiguation) in order to be more recognizable to readers and editors unfamiliar with the topic.
The recognizability criteria question is currently stated as:
Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
However, a few months ago, and for many years, it said this:
an ideal title will confirm, to readers who are familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic, that the article is indeed about that topic.
This fundamental change was made in May of this year [6], with edit summary "Changed Recognizability point based on discussion on the talk page".
The change was discussed by 3 or 4 editors on this page, now archived here. However, I don't see the question of "recognizable to whom?" being addressed there. It appears they did not understand they were changing the meaning of the criterion by implying it needs to be broadly recognizable to meet the criterion, rather than simply be recognizable to those familiar with the topic, which is a huge change. The long-standing original wording emphasized that titles don't need to be "universally recognized" to meet the criteria, but only have to be recognizable to those familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic. I see nothing in that discussion to indicate that the change in meaning by the removal of this qualification was intentional, and, so, I think we need to re-insert them.
So, I've essentially restored the original wording and meaning to be this:
Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?
-- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I didn't change something back just because I missed the discussion when it was happening. I changed it back because the discussion that I missed did not explain why it was removed.
And, by the way, Tony you were part of the discussion that lead to that change: Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/Archive_32#Recognizability. In fact, you supported wording similar to what I just restored. You suggested, "an ideal title will confirm that the article is indeed about that topic to readers who are familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic." Notice how that too still included the "readers who are familiar with" clarification. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:35, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
B2C, my impression corresponds with Dicklyon's: "Perhaps, like some of your previous attempts to rewrite guidelines, the main objection is that it's motivated by an ongoing dispute in which you have a dog. That dispute might be a good motivator for a discussion, but maybe not for just letting you have your way." Again and again we observe you unsatisfied with some perfectly normal process or decision, and then scurrying to get policy or guidelines changed to shore up your position for a renewed attack. You're pretty quick on your feet, and a smooth talker; so people may not notice at first. But you won't always get away with it. Sometimes you'll get lucky when you approach an admin for a reversal or a review. The current RM at Talk:Catholic Memorial School (West Roxbury, Massachusetts) was first relisted, and stayed open for more than two weeks before admin Mike Cline closed it: no consensus to move, and the current title does no harm. You had not taken part in the discussion, so you asked the closing admin to revert the close (!). Amazingly (or not knowing your history of such self-oriented requests), he did just that. You then suggested that the votes of three editors you see as consistently arguing against your position at RMs be "discounted" (!!).
The pattern is becoming clear. You are not really in favour of following policy or guidelines, or of consensus. You are in favour of policy and guidelines following Born2cycle. You have not followed the established procedures when you sought to close RMs as a non-admin. You have not accepted the judge's verdict after due discussion. You have not respected all consensually settled provisions for titles. It is one thing to favour a selection of provisions and suppress others; but another to leap to change when you feel an urge for change, so that every provision bears your stamp.
Some editors have by slow forbearance earned the respect of their colleagues, for their even-handed work toward development of guidelines and policy through collegial discussion. You are not among them. The way to achieve such trust is to be trustworthy. People are right to react defensively against changes you make without due discussion. You have tried too many tricks in the past. I am an optimist about human nature and the possibility of change, so I don't rule out reform in your case. But I think "the community" (whose support you continually and loudly assume on the most spurious grounds) does not yet see that in you.
I will support the wording for recognisability as it now stands, until I see considered, slow discussion for a change that will work in the interests of readers better than the present wording.
This is not improperly ad hominem (unlike your specific mention of me and two other experienced and knowledgeable editors as to be "discounted"); it is prudence in the face of real danger to core policy.
Noetica Tea? 08:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Stumped regarding how to proceed constructively, I have requested administrator review and assistance, here: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Uninvolved_admin_-_please_take_a_look. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 08:34, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
The bit about "recognizable to people familiar with the subject", I think, was lost accidentally at one point and ought to be restored. We don't expect titles to be recognizable to people who have no familiarity with the subject at all (most articles on Wikipedia are about things that most of us have never heard of; we don't generally worry that the titles we choose are consequently unrecognizable to large swathes of the population).-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
On the substantive issue (and noting that I couldn't be less interested in the background dispute), it is ridiculous to suggest that titles need to be recognisable to those totally unfamiliar with the subject. To give an example, the esomeprazole article is so-named because it is the pharmaceutical name for the compound; it is the recognised name, as would be expected by those with medical or pharmaceutical training. The article isn't at Nexium (the trade name, like a lay-person might expect), nor at (S)-5-methoxy-2-[(4-methoxy-3,5-dimethylpyridin-2-yl)methylsulfinyl]-3H-benzoimidazole (the IUPAC name, like a chemist (not a pharmacist) might expect). It certainly isn't at "drug for treating heartburn", an arguably "recognisable ... description of the topic" for a passer-by with no familiarity with the area. As another example, my FA article on rhodocene... I have no doubt that lay people would not recognise the name, nor be able to describe the topic, but I am sure that the article title is appropriate because it would be recognisable to anyone familair enough with chemistry to know about the topic. Please, a suggestion... restore the sensible clause regarding topic familiarity and then find something to do that is more worthy of your time. EdChem ( talk) 10:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Just throwing in my opinion here, as the discussion would appear to be looking for substantive points about the actual point in question. I agree that we should generally be concerned about recognisability for those with some familiarity with the subject, as the proposed change suggests. On the other hand, I also agree that some title could do with "pre-disambiguation", if for no other reason than that they will appear in category pages that do not provide enough context for anyone to have any idea what they're referring to. From a point of view of user-friendliness, it would seem sensible to think about the degree of confusion such category listings will produce. For example, the pharmaceutical names are rather unlikely to appear in a category (other than meta stuff) that would lead to insufficient context, but taxes, legal instruments, national organisations... they could possibly do with contextualisation. Now, an idea technical fix would be to add a meta field to articles that would appear next to the title link on category pages, but that not being an option right now, contextualisation of the title should be considered on a case-by-case basis. It should be unusual, but not forbidden or presumed so strongly against as some seem to want. Of course, where a particular item is well known in the English-speaking world, that would not be expected to need such contextualisation (such as the FBI, say). This, I feel, strikes a balance between the principles that we have already outlined, and a basic principle of user-friendly presentation. SamBC( talk) 17:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Speaking of details, do you object to returning the original words about recognizability to the policy as proposed here? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:28, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
The original wording is clearly superior; it's a shame that was removed without full discussion of the implications. Powers T 19:03, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
We need to have a thoughtful discussion of the wording of the title guideline at Wikipedia:AT#Deciding_on_an_article_title concerning recognizability. It was changed last May in this diff (at which the old and new versions can be compared) after this brief discussion, and now there are suggestions to change it back, or perhaps change it to something different (it was subsequently rephrased as the current question form "Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?" so that's also an option). This RFC is a subsection of a section about it, but reading and responding to that argument may be counter productive, so let's have a focused discussion here instead. Please say which version you prefer, and why, or suggest something better. The "Compromise" discussion below may also be relevant. Let us proceed at a moderated pace; be not quick to counter, so we can see where we stand and collect some ideas. Dicklyon ( talk) 21:48, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Version 1/original (adapted from May 2011 wording): Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?
Version 2/current: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
Version 3/mix: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic, to someone familiar with the subject area?
I don't see why these are special cases. Check for usage of "Crime Patrol" in reliable sources. If it is used to refer to both generic and specific topic, then the phrase is ambiguous. If there is a strong bias towards a particular topic, then the phrase has a primary use. Follow standard procedures: deploy disambiguation pages, hatnotes and redirects as required. There is nothing here that isn't handled neatly by the broader policy, so why introduce wording that treats it as a special case?
Hesperian
01:03, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
As if it wasn't obvious before, it should certainly be clear now to even the most obstinate supporter of unnecessary disambiguation that Version 1/Original has consensus support, and Version 2/Current does not, as it always has. There is no justification whatsoever for continuing to have the policy reflect Version 2 rather than Version 1. Does anyone (besides perhaps Noetica, Dicklyon or Tony1) disagree with this assessment? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:07, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
I know of no support for the "familiar with the subject area" interpretation in actual usage; as Kotniski explains, it's not what is meant by recognizability in WP. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:22, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
It is remarkable that an effort to resolve this issue has been hijacked for partisan purposes in such a flagrant way. At an RFC we ask the community to comment in slow, orderly, and respectful fashion. We work together to structure the discussion to tease out all issues; we wait to see whether our "opponents" (or rather, colleagues) have points to make that did not occur to us. We do not flood the attempt to achieve this with selected comments from an earlier discussion.
I will not participate in such a mockery of an RFC. I thank Dicklyon for starting it. Carry on with it, or finish it, whoever wants to. I have more productive things to get on with.
An RFC like this can have no respect from the community, and any "consensus" purported to arise from it will be worthless. Expect more orderly initiatives later. ArbCom had to supervise many weeks of action to get WP:DASH sorted out. In that case, the content was endorsed by the community, and some useful clarifications were added. No one wants all that fuss here; but the way to avoid it still seems to elude certain editors. I seriously doubt that the community accepts the provision that we have been concerned with here, along with its neighbours. Probably not more than a couple of dozen very active editors, who invoke them in pursuit of a very particular agenda. Still, that's just my considered opinion.
Threats to take editors to WP:AN/I (see edit summaries) do nothing toward respect and cooperation. Let's do without those in future.
Noetica Tea? 02:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I have registered my complaint at AN/I, and asked for feedback. I don't see how it can be possible to recover from this toxic mess. So whatever; if people want to take it back to some old wording instead of trying to work out an improvement, I'll stay out the way (whether due to a block or otherwise). Dicklyon ( talk) 03:56, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I baulk at this title: Financial Instruments and Exchange Law (it's a Hong Kong law, actually), and Professional Evaluation and Certification Board (New York, actually).
In the thread above, the term recognisable is being bandied about as though it's easy to define. Why do I get the feeling this is on purpose, to make article titles as unrecognisable as editors please. There are several reasons we need to spell out some instances where locations can be included in titles:
I suggest that some exceptions be included—for example, when a financial instrument, organisation, or (workforce) position could refer to multiple topics, it's permissible to add the name of the location in parentheses after the wording, in short form where possible (HK, NY, US, UK, etc.). Tony (talk) 10:09, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
As far as how "Verified Audit Circulation" identifies its title unambiguously... it does that because there is no other topic in WP to which that name refers. This is explained in detail at WP:PRECISION, including this statement: "when a topic's most commonly used name, as reflected in reliable sources, is ambiguous (can refer to more than one topic covered in Wikipedia), and the topic is not primary, that name cannot be used and so must be disambiguated." Here you see "ambiguous" is clearly defined in terms of other topics covered in Wikipedia. It is in that sense that unambiguously is intended to be interpreted in "identify the topic of the article unambiguously". -- Born2cycle ( talk) 10:52, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Oh deary me. Please refer to my comment of a couple of minutes ago in the section above - the general sense of it fits here as well. SamBC( talk) 17:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I also don't see the distinction to which you refer in practical terms. Can you (or someone) provide an example of a title what would be recognizable to someone familiar with the topic, but not to someone "with a basic knowledge of the subject field", or vice versa? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Specifically, how do we express and convey this in this policy without creating a situation in which article title discussions are even more contentious than they already are? How do we determine whether a given name is sufficiently likely to be used as a search string to warrant this special treatment? How do we decide what exactly that special treatment should be in each case? And, perhaps most importantly, how does this really change anything?
In the current situation, someone searching with "audit circulation" -- the first ghit, by the way, at least for me, is the website of Verified Audit Circulation - verifiedaudit.com -- might come upon our article at Verified Audit Circulation. They will realize it is not their article seconds later after reading the lead.
Now, how would the situation change if we followed one of your suggestions, say by moving the article to Verified Audit Circulation Corp? Well, the same user would end up at the same article, with a slightly different title. They will realize it is not their article a few seconds later after reading the title and/or the lead. I'm sorry, but I really don't see a big difference here. In fact, at least in the current case they are likely to realize that WP has no other article named Verified Audit Circulation, but in the suggested situation, being at Verified Audit Circulation Corp is likely to wrongly suggest to them that there is another article named Verified Audit Circulation. So at best, it's a wash, and it's likely to make matters worse. Please explain how this would be an improvement. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:27, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
You say "the current way" "potentially leads the searcher/reader to fall on the wrong article more often than not". Please explain how changing the name of the article currently at Verified Audit Circulation to Verified Audit Circulation Corp would even affect the likelihood of users searching with, say, "audit circulation", reaching this article, much less make it less likely. If you believe the same article, when moved to Verified Audit Circulation Corp, will be less likely to show up in the "audit circulation" search results simply because of the title change, then you don't understand how google searches work. First, Verified Audit Circulation will remain a redirect to the article. More importantly, google will "learn" where the new article has been moved. Remember, it's reporting results largely based on article content, not the article title... we can move the article to Red fairies in Volkswagens, and google will still find it. I think you're assuming the title in general, and even a minor change in the title, affects search results much more than it actually does.
You say, "a Gsearch for 'Verified Audit Circulation Corp' doesn't show the WP article". Right. So what? Who is going to be searching with that string? What does that show?
You also say, " whereas the WP article for the company shows up when searching for 'audit circulation'." Right. Again, and why do you think that will change if the article is moved to Verified Audit Circulation Corp? People will still be searching with "audit circulation", and the article now at Verified Audit Circulation Corp will be just as good of match, and will show up the same spot (all other factors held equal) in the search results.
What am I missing? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:35, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Like I've said four times now (search for "devil" on this page), the devil is in the details. How do we express and convey this in this policy without creating a situation in which article title discussions are even more contentious than they already are? How do we decide whether a given name is "generic sounding", or not? How do we decide how to disambiguate it if there are no other uses to disambiguate from? That is, Cork (city), for example, is disambiguated with "city" because it is the only use of "cork" in Wikipedia that is a city... but we need to have other articles to know that. If there were other cities named Cork, the "city" would not be an appropriate disambiguator (unless it was the primary use relative to the other cities). If there were no other uses at all of "Cork", then it could just be at Cork. Our whole system of deciding how to disambiguate is based on looking at other uses in Wikipedia; so how do we decide how to disambiguate when there are no other uses?
Finally, and most importantly, what problem is solved by introducing all these complications? How is Wikipedia improved if we start predisambiguating titles of articles about topics with generic names?
Now, what typically happens in these discussions when they get down to these nitty-gritty questions is... the discussion ends. Over and over, and we never get anywhere. That's the point.
With regard to Peter Jones and Paul Smith, there are over a dozen other uses of each in WP, and we've decided that among them there is no primary topic. That's a separate issue, one that we're accustomed to handling. The issue we're talking about is disambiguating something even when there are no other uses in WP. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:32, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
Colleagues, it seems useful to gather here a few imponderables that might have a bearing on our discussion above. I approach these from a position of ignorance. Please add to this list, anyone, article titles that might help us to sort out what to do.
"A Unit Investment Trust (UIT) is a US investment company offering a fixed (unmanaged) portfolio of securities having a definite life."
Ah, but read on, way past the opening text that would appear in a google search entry: if you missed the opening "A", you'd fail to understand that it's actually a type of investment company. I'd rather have the "class of ..." or "type of ..." up-front at the opening; this is part of a larger problem that occurs when articles are not themed clearly as generic or titular, and it brushes up against the practices of naming titles. So I suppose it should be downcased per MOSCAPS, although I've had to mount an RM to have it moved (sigh). Chaotic casing and unclear openings are not helping the recognisability issue one bit. Another little issue is that the UK equivalent is called Unit trust, as it notes at the top in tiny print. I find this rather unhelpful to the readers.
Dohn Joe, I trust you will not launch in and change the first one while this issue is being discussed (as you've done previously when I've raised examples here). Tony (talk) 10:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Tony, how many times will you bring up the same point, and elicit the same explanations, like Bkonrad has taken the time and energy to do, again, here, which you will not address, only to bring it up again and again and again? Enough!. If you just repeatedly raise the same issue and don't engage in constructive dialog, you're just being tendentious and disruptive, by definition. See WP:TE. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
Having been following WP titling policy for several years and more recently actively participating in the RM process, I am convinced that our titling policy is much too complex to be applied effectively. I don’t think the complexity is intentional, but comes as a result of our failure to take a holistic view of titling policy while making a whole myriad of incremental changes to a variety of policy, guidelines and MOS related to titling. Add on top of that is the litany of advice from WikiProjects laying out naming conventions for particular categories of articles and we have a proverbial Tower of Babel when trying to apply all this to any given article title. Think about it. We have WP:NAMINGCRITERIA—Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness and Consistency. On top of that we can invoke WP:COMMONNAMES, WP:POVTITLE, WP:PRECISION, WP:DAB, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, WP:MOSCAPS, WP:DIACRITICS, WP:EN and WP:ENGVAR. (I suspect I missed a few and intentionally didn’t list all the project level naming conventions). All these can and do trump each other when applied to individual articles. Imagine a new editor trying to avoid running afoul of all these conflicting rules.
There are several truths associated with WP article titles—every title has to be unique (all 3.9 million of them), every title probably has a logical alternative, and for every title, there is probably at least one editor who vehemently disagrees with it and has a better alternative. For some reason, editors become emotionally attached to their favorite alternative titles and the selective rationale for them. That emotion leads to a lot of unnecessary incivility and contentiousness over article titles. Over the next ten years, the probability that WP will have 6 million + articles is high. That’s 2 million new titles and millions more alternatives. There’s another truth associated with Wikipedia article titles and the things editors say about them is that it is pure fantasy to think that any editor can proclaim how millions of readers are going to behave if a title isn’t precisely the way they believe it should be. Everytime I read readers are going to do this or readers are going to do that in a move discussion, I cringe at the lunacy of such statements. Readers don’t visit WP for titles, they visit WP for content and our titling policy doesn’t recognize that. Yet, we continue to debate (and expend valuable volunteer energy) the silliest title changes when that energy would be much better spent improving content.
Here’s a little metaphor to explain my point a bit more graphically. Imagine we had an article entitled Dog Shit and in reality, from a content perspective, it is metaphorically a pile of crap—no sources, bad lead, bad prose, bad formatting, etc. Someone thinks there’s a better title for the Dog Shit article—alternatives (Dog shit (MOSCAPS)), (Dog feces (Precision)), (Dog poop (POVTitle)), (Dog crap (Commonname)), and my favorite (Hundekot (because the crap was taken by a German Sheppard)). We could select anyone of the alternative titles (although Hundekot would be a stretch), but in the end, the article’s content would still be a pile of crap (metaphorically at least) because an article title (no matter what it is doesn’t make up for bad content).
If anyone has got this far and wants to invoke WP:TLDR, don’t. Sometimes you just have to listen first, before evaluating an idea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mike Cline ( talk • contribs)
I believe we need to accomplish two things relative to article titles. One, we need to drastically simplify WP:Titles and the associated guidelines and MOS. And when I say simplify, I mean a reduction of at least 2/3rds of the collective Babel it contains now. Two, we need to change the focus of titling discussions (including our formal processes) in a way that not only stabilizes titles, but makes titling an afterthought when compare to the imperative of creating and maintaining good content in WP. I have an idea as to how we might do this, but I want to point out how we might simplify our naming policy. Currently our five naming criteria—Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, Consistency could be reasonably reduced to three, eliminating two that are nearly impossible to define let alone interpret and implement.
So how do we go about simplifying our titling policy and associated guidelines and MOS without disrupting the encyclopedia? It won’t be easy, but if we take an objective look at it, it would be possible. I’d like to see a couple of things happen.
In my view, the key ideas here are simplification and content taking priority over titles. We can’t do that without taking a reasoned, systematic, holistic look at this. Sustaining and incrementally modifying the current state of Babel that is our titling policy will not bode well for us as we generate the next 2-3 million articles. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 17:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
In a sense I agree that "consistency" is most important, but there are two ways "consistency" is commonly interpreted, which I refer to as the narrow and broad sense of "consistency". The narrow way is the interpretation intended in the listed criteria on this policy page - for articles to be named consistently with other similar articles. This is why it's often not given high priority, because doing so often conflicts with other criteria and is often considered less important ( New York City, not New York City, New York, Catherine the Great, not Catherine II, etc.). The broad interpretation of consistency is that all titles should be consistent with the broad naming principles of Wikipedia - this makes titling more predictable and less contentious.
Recognizability and naturalness are really just attempts to explain the underlying reasons for using common names - and using common names is a fundamental guiding principle in the vast, vast majority of our articles' titles.
In addition to consolidating and simplifying this policy and all the related guidelines, I think the main missing piece is a method for how to prioritize, or at least weigh against each other, the various "rules" when there are conflicts. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:53, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't think consistency is the most important, but it's important. And just because naturalness and precision are hard to define doesn't mean we'd be better off to ignore them. I pretty much agree with the comments on recognizability and conciseness, but it's less clear where that should take us in re-expressing the guidelines. I think the problems we get into are about trying to find narrow interpretations of these points, or to apply one over another, rather than be open to what's a better title for a particular article. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:34, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
As with many discussions, it is possible to wander off into abstraction where debate can circle about until everyone despairs over any advance. Maybe it would be helpful to identify a particular example, or a class of examples, where some problem has arisen and discuss that to see whether any general principles come out of it.
For example, we presently have Coriolis effect as the title of an article with a redirect from Coriolis force. In terms of Google searches, the latter is the more common terminology: is a Google search a definitive selection criterion?
From a different stance, Coriolis force is a force, not an effect, technically speaking, so maybe the more precise usage is a criterion?
We also have Coriolis effect (perception). In this field there is no ambiguity: Coriolis effect is always used, never Coriolis force, and in fact, the Coriolis effect has nothing to do with the Coriolis force of physics, and it is related to rotation in a completely different way. (It's related to the construction of the inner ear.) So in the case of these competing definitions, do we take the unambiguous usage as paramount over an ambiguous usage?
Is the solution to use Coriolis force for the physical force, and a disambiguation page for Coriolis effect subdivided into Coriolis effect (perception) and Coriolis effect (physics)? Is the solution in this instance amenable to generalization?
Any thoughts? Brews ohare ( talk) 18:29, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
Editors, please comment after this post, not within it. Noetica Tea? 23:44, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
I have been looking through the archives. I see a great deal of discussion of the fundamental questions and principles (or of what preceded them) in late 2009. But I see no agreement on the wording that has now been put in place for recognisability. I find no endorsement of that by the community, or even any well-notified attempt at wide consultation. It is possible that I have missed something that should stand out as obvious in those reams of dialogue. I hope someone will point it out for us. So far it seems that the present wording was invented by Kotniski in this edit of 18 August 2010, and not addressed specifically in the ensuing discussion (though some called for a closer consideration, and caution in supplanting long-established wording: see this archived discussion). [Amended after Dicklyon's new information, above.–N]
It is interesting that Kotniski has supported Born2cycle's reversion to an earlier version. It is, as it turns out, Kotniski's version. Kotniski's edit summary: "let's not get silly about this - this is the wording that (a) is longer established, and (b) is the one the majority clearly support". Majority support? Hmm. Let's not get silly about this, indeed. [Added after Dicklyon's new information, above.–N]
The wording Born2cycle has now removed was discussed by five editors (not "two or three"), in a section specifically dedicated to it, from 20 to 22 May 2011. See Recognizability, in Archive 32. The result of the discussion was a reversion (in this edit) to the core of the provision, without any complex qualification:
Recognizability – article titles should be the most recognizable description of the topic.
That text was soon simplified (see ), with a reference to the discussion I have just linked:
Recognizability – article titles are expected to be a recognizable name or description of the topic.
This developed into the question form that has stood until supplanted in recent days:
Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
The participants in that open and well-labelled discussion:
In the months that followed there was extraordinary action, involving attempts to present relevant portions of the page by transclusion from another page (by Born2cycle, with heavy resistance from others), and the linking of an essay by Born2cycle (also resisted, and not currently implemented).
Born2cycle has placed transclusion features (against objections) that persist in the present version of the page. One regrettable side-effect of an earlier attempt: when we consult certain earlier drafts of the page ( this one for 15 July 2011, for example) we are misled. The current text concerning recognisability (and adjacent provisions) is displayed in that dated draft, not the text that was in place at the time.
It is plain to me, at least. The evidence suggests a bad case of WP:OWNERSHIP. It is extremely difficult to plot the development of the page because of those unilateral shifts, and what might be regarded as smokescreens and distortions of history. Equally, it is perilous to claim that there is consensus for any historical version under such conditions of documentation.
The extended chaotic discussions above this section are cause for concern. There was a unilateral restoration of a provision claimed as "consensual" and in place "for years" (though see my critique), countering a later discussed changed that stood for seven months. There were appeals to WP:AN and to WP:ANI, where Born2cycle was counselled to go back to the page and wait for discussion; and another admin proposed that he absent himself for a week from this page. He did not even acknowledge those suggestions (though he had sought advice); he pressed on with a campaign for his wording here, and diverted attention at WP:ANI to those who opposed the speed and belligerence with which he pursued that course. Some editors have endorsed the restoration; but the discussion has been laughably shallow and narrow; and an impartially presented RFC has been hijacked, against the possibility of broad consultation and quiet consideration.
As I write, Born2cycle's last edit of the page (soon after the WP:ANI section had been archived) restored his favoured text and removed the "under discussion" tag. Almost simultaneously, though, he continued the discussion with a reply to Dicklyon, and an invitation for Dicklyon to continue the discussion: "Please quote what specifically you're talking about."
Now, this is not a page for discussing user conduct. But it has been impossible in recent times to separate such conduct from content development, such is the domination of one editor here. I do not call for sanctions or penalties; I just want the history of these core policy provisions to be clearer. If anyone can add clarifying facts, or fill in missing episodes, that would be useful too.
What to do next? I can only speak for myself. I have not addressed content in the recent discussions, because conditions were plainly against calm deliberation. I have pointed that out consistently. That is how things remain. I propose that we put this issue aside to be dealt with later.
A core, contested provision on the page has no demonstrated consensus. It cannot be claimed as representing a status quo in future discussions.
–Noetica Tea? 23:44, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
As to what to do next, like I say, I don't see any problem (except for the fact that a few editors have suddenly and coincidentally arrived at this page to make a fuss about it) with the particular "recognizability clause" (it's only descriptive, anyway - "consensus has generally formed around the following questions"), but we might take advantage of this sudden surge of interest in this page to make a new, more comprehensible draft of the policy - I'm sure we can describe the process by which we arrive at article titles in a more simple manner than this page does at the moment.-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
"You know, we just had an RFC on this very point. A substantial majority preferred the present wording; nobody who didn't come in to complain about this was convinced."
"I noticed both of you attempting to impose 'rules of order.' Both of you seem to have been making them up; ..."
You are editing a page that documents an English Wikipedia policy. While you may be bold in making minor changes to this page, consider discussing any substantive changes first on the page's talk page.
"Born2Cycle at least appears to have been adjusting mainly his own contribution, ..."
Thanks for the technical advice, Art. I have put a more appropriate tag in place. No one will deny the need for consensus in that crucial section, I hope.
Noetica Tea? 00:40, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
The choice of article titles should put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists.
In reference to the July discussion about templating ( selective transclusion, really) - all the concerns were addressed and all the issues were resolved; and that's why the changes were accepted. The new methods developed were documented at WP:SELECTIVETRANSCLUSION. There again is a great example of how WP should work (well, some collaboration would have been appreciated, but at least others clearly explained their objections so I could address them, and that certainly helped achieve a robust, general and minimally intrusive solution), and yet it's referenced above as if it was a bad thing.
As to the supposed contradiction between the current recognizability wording and the later wording about serving general readers over specialists, there is no contradiction. That's why the recognizabilty wording clarifies, "but not necessarily expert in". We try to make our titles recognizable to general readers who are familiar with the topic - not just to specialists or experts in the field. But no, we do not try to make titles of topics recognizable to general readers who are totally unfamiliar with the topic at issue. As has been noted time and time again, that would mean almost all of our titles would be more descriptive than they are. Since they aren't that descriptive, clearly that's not supported by consensus.
Finally, I'm sick and tired of being accused of violating WP:REFACTOR. Nobody provided a single diff at the AN/I to back up this absurd claim - I suggest this is because there aren't any. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 08:30, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
Noetica, I'm addressing all that I realize is worth addressing. If I miss anything, let me know.
Your objection to the selective transclusion, as I understand it, is a) new (never heard it before) and b) hilarious. The whole point of it is to be able to quote a section of a policy page like this one in a way that is automatically updated every time the main page changes so that editors don't have to make the same change twice.
As to the 5 editors who supposedly supported the change to the wording, what they supported was a simplification of the wording without changing the meaning. If you look at what they discussed, there was obviously no recognition that taking that out changed the meaning. All have been notified. None have said anything about their views being misrepresented.
Anything else? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:01, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
As to what you just quoted here, I'm sincerely hoping for Noetica to contribute something substantive to the discussion. A concrete explanation of an objection to the current wording. A concrete proposal. Something! Is expressing such hope arrogance? Sorry! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:15, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
This is one of the tougher pages for me to do for the quarterly update; I'll just give the quarterly diff, and if anyone wants to break it down, great. - Dank ( push to talk) 03:37, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
This section represents a more reasonable way to proceed. Thanks to Tony for starting it, though I have renamed it – for the archives, and so that everyone can see what we're talking about. I have also restored and updated the "disputed" template at the relevant section of the project page (removed by JCScaliger), and taken out the old "discussion" template that applied to only one provision among several that are intertwined and therefore up for joint treatment here.
I am impressed by Mike Cline's more comprehensive approach. I liked what he initiated a few sections back, on taking a holistic approach. I feared then that the talkpage was too disorderly for anything useful to be transacted. I hope that's beginning to change now.
It would be best if we agree to deliberate calmly and respectfully, without distortions of any facts. I remain concerned about certain unanswered questions in discussion before this new section. The present wording does not represent calm, collegial discussion over recognisability. That last took place from 20 to 22 May 2011, without haste, abuse, misrepresentation, shouting down, or referrals to WP:ANI. The wording has been altered since then without due process.
If that is left plainly recorded and undisturbed, and the template is left in place on the page, I am happy for us to move forward. All of this should go to a well-designed, disciplined, and impartial RFC process when the time is right. And that must be advertised very widely to the community, if we are to make any lasting progress.
Noetica Tea? 21:05, 28 December 2011 (UTC)0
I'm still not really clear what anyone is proposing or what justification there is for having a "disputed" tag hanging over the whole of a well-established policy section (I hope when emotions subside over the next few days everyone will realize that it's quite inappropriate - "under discussion" might be more suitable). But anyway, can we have some reasonably concrete proposals for change? And it would help to know whether the proposals are intended to change current practice or only to document it better. (Personally I think listing five "criteria" and simply saying that we "weigh them up" doesn't give full information about the way we do things. We actually apply the particular criteria in quite specific ways - we almost always want "a" common name (though not necessarily the commonest) if there is one; we almost always add disambiguators if needed but not for unambiguous terms or primary topics. There are also other, perhaps equally important criteria, that people have identified but are not listed, such as encyclopedic register and neutrality. And there are things missing from the whole policy because of past wiki-politicking, like the fact that titles normally conform to Wikipedia's MoS over things like punctuation. So we could do much better at describing currently accepted practice. And - but we should treat this as a separate issue - there may be good reason to make some changes to currently accepted practice, for example over when we should add parenthetical disambiguators, but that should be done with a properly formulated proposal, if someone would like to make one.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:42, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
This section alone is now over 36 hours old, has, about 15 comments, and still there is nothing stated with clarity regarding what is disputed in policy, or what is proposed, or anything like that. Same with all of the blather above it. There is no dispute. There is not even a discussion. There is nothing to discuss! Unless something substantive is offered soon (say within 24 hours), the dispute/under-discussion tags must go. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:17, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Second, I restored that wording eight days ago, and during those eight days there were a few where I didn't check in at all. And, yet, there is nothing here. No dispute. No discussion. Nothing substantive at all; just several variations of WP:JDLI, like the one you just posted. If you have something to dispute and discuss, please do so. This is what I asked for when Tony first reverted the restoration of the original wording. None of you who supposedly object have even addressed my initial explanation for restoring that wording. It's unbelievable, really.
In short, if you've got something, spit it out already. If not, quit the blather and remove the tag. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Please remember that we entitle our articles for the convenience of our readers... We want to choose titles that will be recognizable to people searching for an article on a particular topic. Such readers may or may not be knowledgeable in the topic, but they will have a goal in mind. They will enter a name, or a descriptive phrase into the search box... and we want them to be able to quickly look at the results and say "ah, yes, there is the article on the topic I was searching for". Thus, the name or description we choose as a title should be the one that is most likely to be searched for by our readers. That is what is meant by "Recognizability".
As with just about any randomly selected dozen titles, we can see that most titles are not recognizable to those who are not familiar with the topics. For those that look like names of people, we don't know if they're actually names of people or names of books or characters or what, much less whether they're actors, writers, or baseball players if they are people. In this particular list I presume Siege of Valenciennes (1793) is some kind of battle, Laurel Mountain (West Virginia) is a mountain in West Virginia, New Anshan Railway Station is a railway station in a city called New Anshan (but I have no idea where that is), and Meld (Star Trek: Voyager) is an episode of Voyager. But these are obviously exceptions, as I can't even guess about the others with much reason.
And, again, what exactly are we proposing? That titles like That Kind of Woman (because it's "generic sounding") be treated with additional precision to make them more recognizable to even those of us who are unfamiliar with it? So, in this case (I looked it up - it's a film), all films should be disambiguated with at least (film), if not (year film)? After all, the vast majority of film titles are "generic sounding" and are not recognizable as films to most people.
In any case, the current/original wording does reflect how we currently name articles, and have always named articles, and this is so obvious that nobody has even disputed the policy saying so since it was first said, until 8 days ago. And, no, when the wording in question was removed, along with some other wording, back in May, it was not disputed. That was just an effort to simplify the wording that went too far, and changed the meaning inadvertently when those words were removed. None of the editors involved in the May over-simplification has objected to restoring the wording.
But, now that you mention it, I have not seen a justification for the wording that we had between May and 8 days ago - the wording apparently favored by at least Noetica and Tony (not sure about Dicklyon or anyone else). But they won't be definitive about even that. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:04, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Is this browbeating? Sorry. I call 'em as I see 'em, and I still see nothing here. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:10, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
At Talk:Nitrogen group#Requested move, we have a proposal to move to Pnictogen. I suspect the latter term is recognizable to people familiar with the topic; but it's not to me, and probably not to millions of others who vaguely recognize "Nitrogen group" from chemistry class. Is that all the recognizability we want? Dicklyon ( talk) 05:19, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
If you seriously examine the five criteria we now have—recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness and consistency—one finds that only three of those can actually describe the characteristic of a title.
If you examine what we really want from Naturalness and Recognizability (not a word), I think we could sum it up with something like this: A WP title should faithfully represent the content of the article using common English as demonstrated by reliable sources. The key word here is Represent which has a number of meanings [10], the most telling of which is: To present clearly to the mind. By abandoning the ill-conceived, but well intentioned—Naturalness and Recognizability—with Represent we would be describing the characteristic of a WP title that we want and not the behavior it is supposed to elicit. It would significantly simplify the policy and its resulting processes. WP:COMMONNAME, WP:ENGVAR and all the other Babel would flow nicely from this. Combined with the meaningful criteria--conciseness, precision and consistency, adjudacating a title would be much simpler.
FYI-this is not intended as a verbatim suggestion to replace specific wording but a conceptual argument that says Naturalness and Recognizability are a poor choice of words for what we are really attempting to say. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
You also dismiss "recognizability" even though one of the definitions you provide - "To know or identify from past experience or knowledge" - is exactly what is meant. People familiar with the topic should be able to identify the topic from the title from past knowledge. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Occurring as a matter of course and without debate; inevitable.
° Ken was a natural choice for coach
"Bill Clinton" is more natural than "William Jefferson Clinton" because its use occurs much more often as a matter of course when people are talking and writing about him. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Part of the reason we have these words is to do with word ordering in titles (naturalness). For example we could describe places by State, region, sub-region ....
United Kingdom, London, Southwark, Borough, or a more common example is surname, given names (as is done in many encyclopaedias and other reference works and is used in Wikipedia categories). There is no reason why we should not use Clinton, Bill or Clinton, William Jefferson other than naturalness. While to some in a bureaucratic organisation like a military logistics system "clothing, coat, great, male" may seem natural, in none bureaucratic text one would usually write "a man's
greatcoat is ...", and that is the whole point of the sentence "Which title(s) will editors most naturally use to link from other articles?", and from that it follows that whether we use "William Jefferson Clinton" or "Bill Clinton" is a further refinement of that principle, as the natural name to use in a reference work such as this will depend on which is the most frequently in what we call secondary sources. We could change the article titling system radically and start to introduce systems such as surname first, or go one step further and use that of the online ONDB and use a unique number .
doi:
10.1093/ref:odnb/94837. {{
cite book}}
: Missing or empty |title=
(
help)) but we have chosen to use our own method
James Callaghan based on naturalness. I think if at the start of the project articles had been placed under a unique number with text redirect to that number, then lots of the disputes over article titles would have been avoided, and I would be pleasantly surprised if we were ever to go over to that method. --
PBS (
talk)
23:12, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Given the discussion above, and the apparent withdrawal by Born2cycle of any claim that his and Kotniski's version ever had consensus, or even a discussion, prior to this one, it seems justifiable that Noetica has again restored the version that was stable for months after it arose from a discussion here. Yet Born2cycle put it back again and threatened to take him to AN/I again. I had earlier explained to him on his talk page that his owership issues here are disruptive, but he fails to see that.
I fully respect those who prefer the version that he is warring about; I still think we'll find a mutually agreeable compromise in here somewhere. But let's converge first, not go back to a never-discussed version by force of editing warring. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:56, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
The change in May, however, apparently missed everyone's scrutiny, because when it was brought to everyone's attention, everyone who looked at it (9 out of 9) agreed V1 was better. No one who looked at it argued that V2 was better.
There is absolutely no basis whatsoever for restoring the V2 wording at this time, and, unfortunately, I see no recourse but to file an AN/I, unless Noetica restores the V1 wording himself. I've explained this in more detail at Noetica's talk page. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
And now Born2cycle has made an explicit threat, with short deadline, to take Noetica to AN/I again, on User talk:Noetica#WP:TITLE. Is this any way to try to find consensus? For his claim of consensus he relies on the RFC that was abandoned after he hijacked it by speaking for many others. Dicklyon ( talk) 07:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
When Noetica edits policy so blatantly contrary to consensus, I see no recourse besides AN/I, but I'm open to suggestions. Got any? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:30, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, the issue is deciding which of the following should be used in the guideline:
Version 1: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?
Version 2: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
Can someone offer up two pairs of article-title examples that could exemplify how the above differences could affect things? For instance, would one permit “ Octomom” whereas Version 1 would require “ Nadya Suleman” ?
The trouble with trying to establish a consensus on Wikipedia is it can often be difficult for others to jump in because the core of the dispute is often cloaked behind abstruse wiki‑slogans (“Well… WP:Unicorn tears anoints and washes my position with goodliness”) when the real reason is at least one of the editors—often both—have a pattern of pushing a particular agenda and there is suspicion that the other editor will use a seeming innocuous change in a written guideline to revisit a long-dead issue.
In short, will someone please explain what this is really about? Greg L ( talk) 17:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
P.S. As I am rather expert on words like “fuckwad” (having authored “
"Fuck” is not necessarily uncivil”), I believe your use here would fall under the “descriptive” classification as well as its generic use as an intensive. I think I’d like to use that as an example on my essay. May I?
Greg L (
talk)
18:10, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
P.P.S. BTW, I note that Dicklyon’s response indicates that he doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace Enric’s sentiments as to what the core issue here is really about. It would be splendid if Born2cycle could weigh in.
Greg L (
talk)
18:14, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Quoting you: As to the substantive details between the versions, I'm not sure I know, either. I thought that might be the case. Now…
This is directed to you, B2C. WP:Consensus can change and consensus is not defined by who can be the most tendentious while editwarring with four-word edit summaries. Consensus is established here on this talk page. Moreover, if you resort to {dispute], {biased}, { I didn’t get my WAAAAAY}-tags, slapped up at the top of articles after loosing to consensus as small as a 2:1 margin here, a poll can be conducted as to whether the tag is warranted and whether the issue is resolved (which is to say, whether a consensus had truly been achieved the first time around) and then the tag goes. Someone please alert me on my talk page the next time there is editwarring or editing against consensus here. Greg L ( talk) 18:40, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
P.S. I won’t be able to weigh in with a !vote in any RfC or poll here because no one has been able to explain what the underlying issues are really about. I suspect B2C has been doing the ol’ stunt of reverting editors because 10 neurons and 30 synapses in his brain are now wired for knee-jerk, reflexive reverting of certain editors without comprehension of the issue nor desire to discuss. I’ll leave the substantive discussion and !voting to editors who actually discuss things and have a flying clue what is going on here.
Finally, Enric’s 17:43 post, above, wasn’t at all helpful and I have a hard time believing he didn’t know full well what he was going when he wrote that ( WP:BAIT). Moreover, he wasted Dick’s and my time this morning. I apparently value my time this morning more than he values his. That sort of stunt here won’t be tolerated. Greg L ( talk) 18:50, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
You start by saying you had to dig the two quotes from a user's talk page. Why didn't you just look at the section where all this started on this talk page, here: #Clarification_of_recognizability_lost. If you don't look at that, you're missing some important context. Also, reading the section that follows that, #RFC on Recognizability guideline wording, is important to understand what happened here, starting over a week ago.
I agree that "consensus is not defined by who can be the most tendentious while editwarring with four-word edit summaries." Do you think I was editwarring with four-word edit summaries? Where? When? Last night I reverted Noetica twice, each time linking to one or two sections with long explanations. Did you read those? I also created a section below that explained how and why the original Kotniski wording had consensus support, but originally via consensus-by-editing, and recently via consensus-through-discussion. Did you read it? Here it is: #Consensus support for "recognizable to someone familiar" wording is established
In a paragraph directed at me, you state, "if you resort to {dispute], {biased}, {I didn’t get my WAAAAAY}-tags, ..." You seem to believe I have been adding tags like that. I haven't added any tags of any sort. Are you aware of that? If so, why did you say this to me?
You also refer to "loosing to consensus as small as a 2:1 margin here". I don't know what you are referring to, but in the discussion about V1 vs V2 which you can see at #RFC on Recognizability guideline wording, the margin was 9:0, since 9 editors favored V1, and gave reasons/arguments for it, and no one gave an argument favoring V2. That was 9 days ago, and still no one has presented an argument favoring V2. If I'm wrong about that, please, quote even one coherent statement supporting the use of V2 over V1 that has been stated on this talk page, and that has not been addressed and refuted.
Instead, there has been nothing here but filibustering by three editors who seem to favor V2, but cannot articulate a coherent argument that supports their position, much less one that anyone finds persuasive.
You say you want to be alerted "the next time there is editwarring or editing against consensus here." Well, last night I removed the tag because there was no consensus for it, and no substantive discussion about that section in over a week. No one had even stated a coherent objection to the V1 wording. Again, if I'm wrong, please quote it. I'm dying to know what it is. Was that editwarring or editing against consensus? How? Then Noetica replaced the consensus-supported V1 wording with the V2 wording in this edit. That seems clearly to be editing against consensus. No? How is it not editing against consensus, since consensus favoring V1 is clearly established, and nothing has even been presenting favoring V2, much less something showing consensus support for V2.
Since it was editing against consensus, I reverted it, restoring the V1 wording, and not with a 4-word explanation, but with a link to the section where discussion revealed it was V1 that had consensus support. Is this editing or editwarring against consensus? How so?
Never-the-less, Noetica reverted this again, with a #Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles#Fresh_debate:_recognisability_and_related_questions reference to a discussion section where he says the section "is disputed", but which says nothing substantive favoring V2 over V1, much less shows that V1 does not have consensus support, or that V2 does. That sure seems like editwarring against consensus to me. No?
So I restored the consensus-supported V1 wording again, this time after writing a full explanation on Noetica's talk page and linking to that, as well as providing a link to this section.
I don't understand why the V1 wording has not been restored. What's the point of developing and showing consensus if it is ignored?
Does that explain what this is really about? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:25, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Since those who favor V2 cannot or will not even articulate an argument in favor of their position, all we can do is speculate, but as far as I can tell they just are looking for as much leeway in policy as they can get to allow them to move articles to titles that are more descriptive. I really don't think there is much else going on. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:56, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Dick, let's review the facts, shall we?
Yes, B2C, I saw #Clarification_of_recognizability_lost. And it still as unobvious as ever what the distinction is meant to accomplish. I note your own WTF there when you wrote However, I don't see the question of "recognizable to whom?" being addressed there. It appears they did not understand they were changing the meaning of the criterion by implying it needs to be broadly recognizable to meet the criterion, rather than simply be recognizable to those familiar with the topic, which is a huge change.
It would be exceedingly helpful if editors proposed guideline text that made it perfectly clear what the meaning is of the guideline via examples (*sound of audience gasp*). Note my very own effort on this regarding linking ( here at MOS:Linking), which was a jihad effort on both sides, with plenty of wiki‑suicide bombings, ArbCom tongue removals, and ample Turkish butt-stabbings. Yet, when I crafted a proposed guideline that was unambiguous and clear as glass as to its scope and applicability, peace fell upon the land and editors no longer feared their crops would wither, livestock die, and midwives weep. I suggest the same here. The clear-as-glass guideline is as follows:
Month-and-day articles ( February 24 and 10 July) should not be linked unless their content is germane (relevant and appropriate) to the subject. Such links should share an important connection with that subject other than that the events occurred on the same date. For example, editors should not link the date (or year) in a sentence such as (from Sydney Opera House): "The Sydney Opera House was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007", because little, if any, of the contents of either June 28 or 2007 are germane to either UNESCO, a World Heritage Site, or the Sydney Opera House.
References to commemorative days ( Saint Patrick's Day) are treated as for any other link. Intrinsically chronological articles ( 1789, January, and 1940s) may themselves contain linked chronological items.
I suggest others try to be as equally clear by using language that begins with wording like “For example…” Greg L ( talk) 23:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
While we're on parenthetical disambiguators, this may be a good time to re-raise an idea that has had some support in the past - make the parenthetical bit of the title display in smaller type, so that it looks more like a "subtitle". That way we go some way towards having our cake and eating it - we get concise "titles", while the heading as a whole provides the precision and (perhaps) consistency. (For another possible advantage of this approach, see my last comment at WT:Disambiguation#Disambiguation of two topics.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
Should all official names of settlement be mentioned in Infobox part official name and in leade. Also, which percentage of community is considered sufficient to add a minority language in leade, and which in name section where language is not official (Specifically, 50% is enough?). This will be useful in specific discussion, but be also sure to specify it in the rules in article (about that we have great debate).-- MirkoS18 ( talk) 01:28, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
This case may be of interest to some of you here. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 03:06, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
The "recognizable to someone familiar" wording that clarifies that we strive for our titles to be recognizable to those who are familiar with the topic in question, was added by Kotniski on August 17, 2010 with this edit.
Kotniski was clearly editing in good faith, and seeking review, as is revealed by the edit summary, "an alternative formulation for your perusal and possible reversion ("easy to find" and "precise" seem not to have any meaning not covered by the other crietria". This method of building consensus is more commonly used than Reaching consensus through discussion, and is known as Reaching consensus through editing. Within hours of that edit, Knepflerle ( talk · contribs) made another edit to the same section [28], signalling acceptance of Kotniski's change. A few minutes later Hesperian also made edit, and also left Kotniski's wording largely intact [29]. Then, PBS reverted the whole thing [30], but Knep insisted [31], another revert from PBS [32], and then another restore by Kotniski [33]. The next day PMA also made an edit, also signalling acceptance [34]. A few days later, on the 24th, another editor made changes to that section, without changing the wording [35]. In short, a number of editors clearly looked at this wording and accepted it. That establishes consensus, even though there was no discussion about it.
In theory, a similar argument could be made about the recognizability simplification edit in May 2011, except when the ramifications of the oversimplification was pointed out a week ago, consensus clearly favored restoring the previous wording (nine different editors explained why that wording was better; no one argued in favor of the simpler wording).
Now, those are the relevant facts that I'm aware of, and they seem to clearly indicate that consensus supports the "recognizable ... to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic" wording over the "plain" recognizable wording, but maybe I'm missing something. Am I? If so, what? If not, I hereby refute the argument that this wording has no consensus support, which, frankly, I'm sick and tired of fielding (this argument was made in the first sentence of #More revert warring just above). But at least now I have something to refer to if it's ever presented again. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 08:28, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
@ all, I've reverted the contested point to the Dec. 12 wording, before the current edit war. Please work out the wording on this talk page, rather than in the edit summaries. That's getting disruptive. Given the number of people who edit this article, protection isn't really an option, which means I'm left with blocking people. — kwami ( talk) 08:52, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
How can anything be resolved with such obstinacy? If they refuse or are unable to engage in substantive discussion, what is there to discuss? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 09:10, 31 December 2011 (UTC)