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All right, can we get this sorted out. What, specifically, does anyone propose changing about the wording of this section (the one titled WP:AT#Deciding on an article title). Apart from re-adding the clarification that was confirmed in a discussion above, that recognizability should be stated as applying to people who are "familiar with (but not expert in) the topic". Are there any other proposals about this or any other of the wording?-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:28, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Trying to rewrite the section so as to be more accurately and informatively descriptive of the process, I came up with this totally reworded version:
This way we say more about how the criteria are actually applied, without appearing to define a closed set of criteria (or to lay anything down in stone). Any thoughts?-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:07, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski, thank you for this thoughtful start at a revised approach to naming criteria. It's a lot to think about; let's hope we have a chance to proceed deliberatively, and see if it can be tuned up to something we can all accept. A few reactions:
Thanks again. Dicklyon ( talk) 16:38, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
You (and other recent arrivals at this page) seem to be particularly concerned with one aspect of article titling - it seems you would like to add descriptors "for recognizability" in certain cases where they are not currently used because they are not needed for disambiguation - perhaps you could phrase some kind of proposal in this matter (since I think it would certainly represent a change to current practice), and we could have a separate discussion about that? -- Kotniski ( talk) 11:19, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
"When a name is to be used as an article title, the main criterion is the "common name" principle, described in the following section." I thought the whole point for calling this policy "Article titles" (I was in favour of a rename for this policy but never expressed a preference for this name!), was to move away from stating the title was a name. This sentence seems to be self defeating for those who agreed to the move, as it places the emphasis back on the article title being the name of the subject.
"In many such cases the name is accompanied by an additional descriptor (disambiguator), often in parentheses, to specify it more precisely (examples)." This sentence does not work as it does not explain the conditions for which an "additional descriptor" is acceptable. This clause "recognizability, naturalness, appropriate register, conformance to reliable sources, conciseness, precision, consistency, neutrality," lumps in even more than we have at the moment. what is "appropriate register"? What does "conformance to reliable sources" mean and how does it differ from "recognizability"? What does "consistency" mean and does neutrality mean that "Boston Massacre" is out? It is not for names, but for descriptive titles that neutrality is important, something not mentioned in the sentence "When a descriptive title is used for an article,..." . -- PBS ( talk)
[Moved to new section: #Naming criteria section again below.]-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
If I were a wiki-god, this is how I'd simpify the basics of our titling policy.
Wikipedia Article Titles - Naming Criteria
Article titles are subject to WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:RS policies, guidelines, specific topic naming conventions and elements of WP:MOS. Article titles reflect what reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject by. Although all WP article titles are unique, there are always potential alternative titles for any given article and the following title criteria collectively, along with consensus discussion when necessary should guide the selection of article titles. {{Policy shortcut|WP:CRITERIA|WP:NAMINGCRITERIA}}
# A WP article title should be precise as practical based on use in reliable sources
end of proposed policy
Discussion This drastically simplfies our titling policy, puts the focus of the policy on the titles, not predictions or prognostications about how millions of readers are going to deal with a specific title. It puts the burden of title selection on use in reliable english language sources. You'll note the section heading change to eliminate Deciding an article title which actually describes a process, not a policy., and changes it to a policy statement. It eliminates the need for the Babel of how-to essays that follow, most of which should be turned into essays and removed from the policy page. It is clearly supported by current practices of WP:COMMONNAME, WP:DISAMBIGUATION, WP:MOSCAPS, WP:ENGVAR, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, WP:RETAIN, WP:REDIRECTS, et. al. It would be a blessing at WP:RM where title disputes could be rationally discussed based on clear criteria and not the emotional crap that editors bring to the discussion because they see the world differently than another editor. Much of the procedural information on the policy page could stay, but eliminating all the conflicting how-to guidance would be a significant improvement. A policy page should clearly state what is the Policy, not because our policy is actually so unclear and inconsistent we have to write a lot of how-to essays to explain it. I would challenge anyone to point our how the above proposal (conceptually) would adversely impact the 3.9 million articles we already have on WP and adversely impact the creation of the next 2-3 million articles in the coming years. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:47, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
In Wikipedia, there are no perfect titles, only titles that meet our naming criteria. Mike Cline, December 31st, 2011, Bozeman, Montana
(2) I like some of the things in Kotniski's proposal, but it skirts around the issue in a few critical ways. It could be tightened up and bullets and inline headers used for user-friendliness.
(3) Mike's proposal will cause a lot of interpretation problems: what is "practical"? What if RSs are in conflict, either between themselves (common) or with WP's in-house style?
(4) I've got to say that examples are critical in conveying the title guideline. We could do worse than to workshop some examples ourselves, on this talk page, to get a sense of where the boundaries should lie. Tony (talk) 13:20, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
You’ll all note that I made a slight modification to my ideal criteria above. I have been encouraged by all the comments so far. As far as the adjusted criteria goes, you’ll see I whacked Precision and replaced it with what we really want (actually must have)—unambiguous titles. If it is ambiguity that we must avoid, then let’s be clear about it and not camouflage it with a word like Precision.
I don’t disagree with Kotniski or Tony who worry about interpreting a simplified policy, but whatever interpretation is needed, it should be separate from the actual policy. We already do a reasonable job of interpreting the basics of our titling policy, but have confused that interpretation (which should be in the form of guidelines, MOS and essays) with the actual policy. What we continually failed to recognize as we’ve tweaked this policy in the past is that every WP article title has a context all its own. That context is made up of the article’s content, its broad subject area, whether the article is from a traditionally contentious subject area, the quality and quantity of reliable sources on the topics, and whether the article is really about a subject where English isn’t the primary language, et. al. It is impossible to address all the complexities associated with a specific title context with comprehensive how-to guidance. When we try and label such guidance as policy, it fails miserably when the context changes.
It would be a novel approach, but an interesting one to combine both policy statements and guideline statements (all clearly delineated on the same page) under the title WP:Article Titles.
It might look something like this:
This page and section documents an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.
This section documents English Wikipedia article title guidelines. These are generally accepted standards that editors should attempt to follow in applying the policy above, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.
If for the sake of discussion, that we’d agreed to put aside concerns about How would we go about interpreting and applying the simplified policy above?, how could we evaluate the potential for this simplified policy? Right now, there are ~3.9 million article titles within the English Wikipedia. If each and every one of those titles met the proposed criteria would anyone be disappointed. In other words if title #1 through title#3,900,000 was as concise as practical, was unambiguous as practical, was consistent with related titles and faithfully represented the content of the article using common English as demonstrated by reliable sources; would anyone be disappointed? I would sincerely like to hear from any editor who would be disappointed or unhappy if article titles met these criteria, regardless of how that was accomplished and why they feel that way. On the other hand, if no one would be disappointed or unhappy, then we are not quibbling about the proposed policy, only struggling with the methodology and words needed to interpret and apply it in the most common of titling contexts. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 20:52, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
This issue frankly crosses so many style guides and policies that I've brought it up here (even though it concerns multiple issues of the manuals of style).
In the past several months, I have dealt with extreme opposition to proposed moves for articles on individual people. Per WP:MOSCAPS, names of individual people appear to be exempt from capitalization rules so long as the person's name is written in all lower case letters ( WP:MOSCAPS#Mixed or non-capitalization), but names that are parsed in all capital letters are apparently forbidden under this style guide (because all-caps are only for acronyms), as well as WP:MOSTM. At some point in one discussion I've had on this page or on another (or perhaps in setting up the exception for k.d. lang at MOSCAPS), it was stated that individuals' names are not subject to MOSTM because they are not trademarks. I've brought this up before at WT:MOSCAPS but that discussion has never resolved
And time and time, again, I have been told that WP:COMMONNAME automatically excludes the use of any names preferred by the subject (if we are dealing with individuals), and someone wrote up WP:OFFICIALNAME to cover that. Why should the English Wikipedia not use a name (or name form in the means of stylization) because of our own internal policies and guidelines? I understand that the Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam issue exists, but bringing that up just starts a slippery slope fallacy. If we allow titles such as will.i.am and k.d. lang, then there is no reason that MISIA or Ke$ha should be invalid article titles.— Ryulong ( 竜龙) 09:58, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
P.S. But I might take that back. I see that The New York Times spells it “Ke$ha”. Nonetheless, our article on her, “Kesha” looks very encyclopedic. I would say that it is not about “double-standards” but is all about not straying from encyclopedic practices and turning Wikipedia into a billboard for entertainers without a compelling and very good reason to do otherwise. So long as “invented new ones” is used within the intended scope and not taken to extremes, that sounds like a good guideline to me. In the real world, things are seldom black & white; shades of gray must be dealt with. Greg L ( talk) 01:16, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
P.P.S. And I see that The New York Times spells it “K.D. Lang”. So I am utterly mystified why our article is titled “ k.d. lang”. Now I can see what others mean by “double standard.” I can only assume that a bat-shit-crazy, rabid following on that article established a local consensus in violation of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. I wouldn’t touch an RM on that article with a ten-foot pole; my writing style comes across as “The Man” and I’d be blocked for twelve years for something like ending a sentence with a preposition. (disclaimer) Greg L ( talk) 01:23, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia’s articles on these artists are biographies and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia—not an agent, promoter, or MTV. Wikipedia looks best when it observes most-encyclopedic literary practices and that is undermined when some articles use non-traditional “see me” vanity/stage capitalization. Is anyone here suggesting that Wikipedia is somehow obligated to use the stage/vanity spelling “k.d. lang” for the biography on her but there is no need to do so for “ Misia, who prefers the stage/vanity spelling “MISIA”? Ryulong is quite right: they should clearly be treated the same. But I disagree with his perceived remedy: start using even more stylized stage names. In short…
Encyclopedic biographies should generally not use vanity or stage-name stylization and capitalization. My preference would be to do an RM and make it “ Kathryn Dawn Lang” and all else redirects (K.D. Lang, k.d. lang, etc.). The first sentence would say just what it currently says: Kathryn Dawn Lang, OC (born November 2, 1961), known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter…
I see no sensible reason why Kathryn the entertainer gets to have a biography title using her stage name but Misia does not. Note that this would have to be an entirely separate issue from performers widely known by nothing other than a normally-capitalized stage name, such as Rock Hudson. Still more shades of gray (*sigh*). But I would say that Misia, Kesha, and Rock Hudson are correct, k.d. lang is not. I can simply not discern any logic that would justifiably treat Misia different from ol’ Kathryn. Furthermore, my position has the virtue of suggesting only one of the four articles mentioned here are fouled up. Now…
I’m done here for the day. WT:Article titles is still disfunctional for trying to get anything done because so many editors lose an RM or RfC somewhere and come here to change the rules of the game so they can get their way across the wiki‑land. Just trying to get an editor to fess-up and explain what his or her proposed wording means in real life… as a practical matter, is like pulling teeth. Above, I had one or two editors say they didn’t know what the difference was between two proposed guidelines; they were reverting each other out of shear habit. Well, I’m going to start making sure editors have to lay their cards on the table and rexplain precisely what they are driving at with real-world examples. For some, that would force them to reveal their hidden agendas. So shoot me for saying what I think is true; that’s what’s going on here—by the boat load. Greg L ( talk) 02:45, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
This is exactly why we have WP:Ignore all rules. Our style guidelines are just that... guides to good writing and style. They are not "Laws" that must be adhered to in every single situation. Remember that there are going to be exceptions to every rule. We should follow the excellent advice laid out in our style guidelines most of the time... but we also must accept that there are going to be times when what is said in a MOS simply does not fit the situation. I also draw your attention to one of my favorite essays - Wikipedia:The rules are principles. Blueboar ( talk) 15:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
See this book and this book. Note that a name, if it signifies an individual, can be registered as a trademark; and a name used in trade or services is a trademark (or service mark) whether it is registered or not. If it's too ambiguous enough, or not famous enough to signify an individual, then it can't be registered. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
The guidelines should say something like "In the case of the names of individual people, the correct spelling and pronunciation is whatever s/he says it is". That's all. It's simple, and it's true. Like it or not (geez I hate the name "Key$ha"), that's the way it is. Chrisrus ( talk) 06:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Our standard on this, for Ke$ha and k.d.lang alike is The most common name for a subject, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural. The last time a move discusiion on k.d.lang came up, the edtiors were convinced that k.d.lang was prevalent - and it is certainly more common than many funny spellings. If you want to change either of them, the simplest way is not to conduct a "war" between the opposing points of view here; go argue the facts on the talk page. JCScaliger ( talk) 01:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Everyone happy with Extended Access Control? Just what our readers make of it in a category list is beyond me. Tony (talk) 10:25, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
P.S. I hereby decree that all instances of “WT:AT” and “WP:TM” shall be “Wt:At” and “Wp:Tm”. (*sound of Greg clapping dust off his hands*)
Greg L (
talk)
21:16, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
I'd downcase it. Several scholarly articles and books do so, indicating that the caps are not necessary. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:02, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
Colleagues, please note this new thread at MOSCAPS concerning proper nouns, proper names, and other matters relating to an amendment of the lead of that guideline. Your contributions to discussion would be appreciated. Tony (talk) 14:04, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
I was doing some work on the UK internet directory Scoot and discovered that I couldn't move it to correspond with the rebrand from scoot.com to Scoot which occured several years ago. This usage is a trademarked brand name. The Scoot article is about the Singapore Airline subsidiary Scoot Pty Ltd. And then there's English language usage. How should this be handled ? -- John ( Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 21:45, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
A new version of my proposal above - with bullet points and a few minor changes.
Comments welcome. For previous discussion see #Possible wording (quite major change) above.-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
I was asked some time ago by Jfgslo to bring this kind of thing up if it ever occured again here, ie someone trying to use WP:MOS-JA to trump WT:TITLE, specifically WP:COMMONNAME. Currently at Talk:Bishōjo game#Request move JRBrown is attempting to imo do just that inspite evidence that the term is used by a variety of sources with different spelling. Rather than argue for the other potential alternate spelling that is also commonly used, bishoujo, he is trying to keep the status quo because scholarly sources, and only because scholarly sources, do not have a clear usage. His other argument is that vecause neither bishoujo nor bishojo can be shown to be the dominant one we must use the clearly (when all RSes are taken into account) the least common one, ie the current title in direct defiance to WP:COMMONNAME.∞ 陣 内 Jinnai 17:50, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
Ou is very rarely used except in glossing. Common English usage is either o or oh. But I've only seen oh at the ends of words & personal names. — kwami ( talk) 05:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
This is a little off-topic for article titles, but then, we don’t have to pretend that Wikipedia is a place where everyone is obliged to behave as if the rod up Wikipedia’s butt has a rod up its butt.
I thought this article in The Washington Post: “Mitt Romney’s misfire on the national anthem” was interesting. It seems The Washington Post is holding Mitt Romney’s feet to the fire for goofing up some historical facts and suggests Mitt Romney’s source may well have been Wikipedia. Romney has been stumping with this tidbit:
“ | We are the only people on the earth that put our hand over our heart during the playing of the national anthem. It was FDR who asked us to do that, in honor of the blood that was being shed by our sons and daughters in far-off places. | ” |
The article explains that many other countries salute their flag with a hand over the heart. And then it goes on to mention yet another goof in Mitt’s quote with the suggestion that Wikipedia—which had it wrong—might have been the source for Mitt’s goof. Here is an excerpt from the 927-word article in The Washington Post:
Ellis credits the inclusion of the “Lincoln salute” to the lobbying work of Gridley Adams, then head of the United States Flag Foundation. Adams was especially upset that the original version of the law said the U.S. flag always needed to be on a staff or hung flat against a wall — which had hurt flag sales. (Adams had promoted a flag that could be hung on a hook.) Ellis suggests Adams “seriously misled” Congress about whether the Lincoln salute had even been discussed at a 1924 flag conference that helped determine much of the flag code.
Roosevelt’s role, if any, appears to have been minimal, notwithstanding a Wikipedia entry that, without citing a source, says he was responsible for the shift. (Roosevelt, after all, also had signed the first piece of legislation, which mandated the Bellamy salute with the pledge.)
The error was fixed ( ∆ edit, here) by an I.P.
I don’t know which looks worse for Wikipedia: having hundreds of poor souls waltzing into a computer store saying “I’m looking for a computer with at least 512 mebibytes of RAM,” or Mitt putting shoe leather in mouth on camera. Greg L ( talk) 22:45, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Maybe I'm missing something. We're back to edit warring over the interminable discussion above, but the reasons given refer back to the original & apparently inconclusive poll. Has there been a mediated discussion somewhere that has been closed in favor of one wording or the other?
If there's an uninvolved admin out there who feels the issue has been settled, please select the appropriate version and unprotect if you like. — kwami ( talk) 04:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Based on their edits, Kotniski and JCScaliger were done waiting. This is ridiculous. Noetica edited the article three times today reverting each time from V1 to V2, including reverting two different editors, in a matter of hours today:
So your objection is your perception of the motivation of the person who first tried to restore the wording, and not substantive to the wording itself. Thank you for clarifying that your argument is baseless and not substantive. Yes, that's a problem.
For at least most of us, the discussion was serious from the moment it started at #Clarification of recognizability lost. Why do you discount the expressions of those who participated and favored V1 over V2 -- Born2cycle, Kotniski, EdChem, PBS, Kai445, Powers, WhatamIdoing, JCScaligera, Enric Naval -- as not serious? Just because you didn't take the discussion seriously (and you apparently didn't) doesn't mean we didn't. Did we do or say anything to support your position that we weren't serious? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
If you think Noetica, Onconfucious, Ohms_law, Tony1, Blueboar all said anything substantive against V1 or in favor of V2, you're going to have to spell it out, because I don't see it. You're the only one who mentioned the word "narrow" in that RFC discussion, and no one said "wordy", so I don't know what you're talking about.
At least we agree no one said the status quo (V2) is great. A few like Blueboar aren't so crazy about V1 either, but the nine I listed did favor V1, and nobody favors V2.
I'm sure there is more to discuss, there always is, but in the mean time we have established consensus favoring V1 over V2. So why the reverting? Why the disruption? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 08:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
To Dick: (after ec) If you look at the RfC above (i.e. where people actually addressed the issue), you'll see overwhelming support for the version that you rather misleadingly attribute to B2C, and virtually none for the one that the page has again been protected under (that you rather misleadingly describe as the "status quo" version). This whole thing, though the issue itself is quite trivial, makes a mockery of the idea that Wikipedia policy represents consensus - it's clear that all that matters is who's most prepared to edit-war and who's best friends with (or best able to pull the wool over the eyes of) an admin.-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
"We don't want to enable the argument that says that that extra recognizability is of no value when it extends to people outside of those who are familiar with the subject". Nobody I know wants to say it's of "no value"; certainly I don't. That's a straw man argument.
But you're living in an alternate universe if you think "extra recognizability ... when it extends to people outside of those who are familiar with the subject" has ever been a factor in deciding titles in WP (except maybe in a few isolated cases now and then). Any 20 clicks on SPECIAL:RANDOM will produce probably at least 10 examples of articles with titles for which additional descriptive words would make the titles recognizable to more people outside of those already familiar with that article subject, yet we don't have that extra description in those titles (unless it's also needed for disambiguation, meaning disambiguation from other uses within WP). That's proof that we don't title our articles for people unfamiliar with the subject to be able to recognize them from just the title.
Now, we know you want to change that, but you don't have anything close to consensus support for such a change. You don't even have anything coherent for what exactly you're proposing. In the mean time, you, Tony and Noetica keep filibustering to prevent us from fixing the written policy on recognizability to match actual practice. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:19, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
However, V2 would favor "Bill Clinton (U.S. president)" over "Bill Clinton" - because that would make the title recognizable ("Oh, Bill Clinton the president") to those who, like a certain 11 year old I know, might not be familiar with who this person is. And that's why we need to restore V1, because we're not moving Bill Clinton to Bill Clinton (U.S. president). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:08, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
I mean, the current title, Peace, Love & Truth, is fine per V1, because it is recognizable to anyone who is familiar with that album. But to anyone who is not familiar with that album (including me until a few minutes ago), "Peace, Love & Truth" is totally unrecognizable, but at least we would recognize Peace, Love & Truth (album) as being an album. By the way, per V2, Peace, Love & Truth (Lennon-Ono compilation album) would be even better. That's the problem with V2 - it's totally open-ended - the more recognizable the title, to anyone, the better.
V1 might not be perfect, but at least it's not inaccurate with respect to most titles on WP like V2 is. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:47, 14 January 2012 (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?
For someone familiar with the album, they will recognize an article titled Peace, Love & Truth must be about that album, but someone who is not familiar with the album will not (I, for example, had no clue, and had to read the lead of the article to find out what it was about). However, that someone who is not familiar with the album will recognize that an article titled Peace, Love & Truth (Lennon-Ono compilation album) is about a Lennon-Ono compilation album named Peace, Love & Truth. Therefore, Peace, Love & Truth (Lennon-Ono compilation album) is recognizable even to those unfamiliar with the album, but Peace, Love & Truth is not nearly as recognizable, because it's recognizable only to those who are already familiar with the album (which fully satisfies V1, but the longer and more descriptive title satisfies V2 much better).
Because that article is at Peace, Love & Truth and not at Peace, Love & Truth (Lennon-Ono compilation album), V1 is a much more accurate reflection of the role recognizability plays in titling our articles than is V2. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:50, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Would the typical Wikipedia user find the candidate title a recognizable name for, or description of the topic?
I would propose in the lede:
Hoping to make this itself a more readable lede. Collect ( talk) 15:20, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
TL;DR, I'm afraid. But my first instinct is to say that both are too vague and open to interpretation (we need to negotiate examples for the poor editors so they can get the gist of where the boundaries lie). 1 relies on the definition of familiarity and expertise, which mean different things to different people in different topics and areas. Version 2 avoids these definitional problems and merely shifts the vagueness to another level (the more general).
Version 1 also suffers from a category problem: it conceives of article-title specificity solely in terms of familiarity and expertise at the expense of the ability of anyone, expert or non-expert, to identify a topic without being misled. It skirts around this problem of how the principle of primary title produces highly unsatisfactory results in some cases (although not all cases).
So this interminable arguing over which version should stand is beside the point: we need to think more deeply about the issue. Tony (talk) 04:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
• Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic? This is to say, titles should contain parenthetical or comma-delimited disambiguation only when needed to avoid confusion with like-titled subjects assuming the reader has some facility with the subject matter. For instance, it would properly be Bill Clinton and not Bill Clinton (U.S. President) and it should *properly* be Collins Street and not Collins Street, Melbourne. Both the preceding titles are sufficiently clear inasmuch as they 1) assume the reader has a pre-existing intention to learn more on that particular subject, and 2) the subject matter can reasonably be considered as referring to a ‘particular one or ones’ assuming that topics must be sufficiently notable to merit inclusion in an encyclopedia. In accordance with this principle, it should be Gone with the Wind (film) to distinguish it from Gone with the Wind (musical).
One of the benefits of closing a lot of RM discussions is that you begin to see trends in the application and interpretation of policies and guidelines across many articles. In the case of our English language, common name policy, it is not so much the policy that is misinterpreted or misapplied, it is the actual determination of What is the common name at any given point in time? that gives us the most trouble. We provide some guidance on how to use Google to determine the common name, but based on the wildly divergent results editors say they get in any given discussion, that guidance isn’t serving us well. Pile on all the other biased logic and rationalizations that editors bring to RM discussions and determining the English language common name for any given subject can be very tedious, and essentially unproductive. Unproductive I say, because it is consuming valuable editor time that could be much better applied to the improvement and creation of content. So, as we move from 3.9 million articles to ~5-10 million articles in the next 10 years, I asked myself how could we improve the application and interpretation of our common name policy? To think about that, I made three assumptions:
If we accepted these assumptions, how could we improve the process?
These aren’t easy questions, but we must begin to find a way to make our titling process more efficient and productive. Maybe these ideas can help. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:19, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
Of these assumptions,
I think that to make any progress here, we need to take a few steps backwards and agree upon fundamental principles upon which WP:AT can be based. I propose that we need to rally around (develop a consensus in support of) the below fundamental principles that contributing editors would ask themselves when choosing an article name:
I’ve seen over and over and over that editors here tend to make proposals in the abstract that would sound swell in the Roman Senate but which tend to induce suspicion in other editors who fear sneaking agendas to POV push. It’s my intention to flesh out any of the above five items with example titles chosen to show what is proscribed and prescribed (or discouraged and encouraged for those who don’t fear coming across as wikilawyering); precisely as I did two sections above. For instance, the interaction and meaning of three of the above points could be expanded later in WP:AT with specific examples like this:
Points #1, #2, and #3 above in combination mean that we best serve the interests of our readership by titling the article Rock Hudson rather than Roy Harold Scherer, Jr..
But first, I propose we see what other items might be added to the above; see which ones are uncontroversial; and which ones are worthy of Turkish-prison butt-stabbings, ANIs, and ArbCom tongue amputations.
I am hopeful that with this approach, we can have an amicable working relationship. Greg L ( talk) 03:58, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
There is no magic formula for determining the best article title. This is because every article is unique. When it comes to adding a parenthetical disambiguation, There are some situations where such disambiguation is clearly necessary and helpful - I think we are all agreed that in those situations we should disambiguate... and of course there are situations when disambiguation is neither necessary nor helpful - I think we are all in agreement that in such situations we should not disambiguate... however, there are also situations when disambiguation may not be necessary, but would be helpful - in such situations we actually have a choice as to whether to add it or not. Some times the answer will be "Yes, disambiguate", but at other times the answer will be "No, don't disambiguate". How do we determine which is which... we discuss it and try to form a consensus. Forming a consensus is often a very messy process... consensus building often involves working our way past disagreement. It involves heated debate and even outright argument. That's OK. It's how the system works. Blueboar ( talk) 14:43, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
There is no information nowhere. At least I couldn't found.
-- 98.199.22.63 ( talk) 02:37, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
This should be addressed at Wikipedia:Policy on the length of article titles that are exceedingly long or which are contrivances intended to attract untoward attention to themselves or are self-referential in nature so as to humorously make a point. Greg L ( talk) 22:59, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, the previous RFC expired without ever being closed [10], and several related discussions since then started up and died out without anything getting resolved. How to move forward?
In this RFC/poll I propose we consider four main options regarding what to do, if anything, about the recognizability wording under WP:CRITERIA. I'm also asking for clarification about what everyone thinks on several related issues discussed recently on this page. I've tried to frame it all so everyone feels this is a fair and reasonable approach, without biasing towards any particular outcome, except that which has consensus support.
There are really two issues to consider:
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 (current): Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
Q1: Please select which one of the following actions you believe would be best for WP:
- A) Adopt the shorter recognizability wording of V2 - this is accurate.
- B) Adopt the longer recognizability wording of V1 - this is accurate.
- C) Adopt the shorter wording of V2 because V2 is more accurate and/or better than V1, but continue discussing because V2 is not fully satisfactory.
- D) Adopt the longer wording of V1 because V1 is more accurate and/or better than V2, but continue discussing because V1 is not fully satisfactory.
Q2: Please also select which of the following two statements you agree with more:
- a) To help readers identify topics from just looking at titles, the recognizability wording should be be enhanced/nuanced/expanded somehow to allow for adding precision in one form or another to the titles of topics that have names, perhaps especially for those names/titles that look like "ordinary phrases" (for lack of a better term), even when the title in question is not ambiguous (has no other uses on WP).
- b) The recognizability wording should remain consistent with no unnecessary precision, even for topics with names that look like "ordinary phrases". When the name of the topic is not ambiguous (has no other uses on WP), the title should be just that name.
Q3: Finally, especially if you answered C or D above, please also add any/all of the following as appropriate.
- c) We should give Kotniski's "major change" proposal more consideration.
- d) We should give Mike Cline's holistic approach proposal more consideration.
- e) We should give Mike Cline's proposal to abandon naturalness and recognizability more consideration.
Please indicate your opinions in the #Poll Responses section just below - explaining your reasoning is not required but would probably be helpful. Also, let's try to keep discussion separate, in the #Discussion section below. Thank you! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:25, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Please use this section only to indicate your answers to the poll questions, Q1, Q2 and Q3.
So, isn't what you're suggesting not "just" looking at this whole page "in terms of precision and ease of comprehensibility by the poor editors at large", but looking at how we guide folks to name our articles in practically every related aspect on WP, as well as actually changing the titles of perhaps the majority of our articles? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:03, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Guys, based on what you've written here, I would expect Kotniski's poll response to be something like:
And Tony's something like this:
Based on Dick's replies below (and of course what he has written before), I would expect his poll response to be similar to Tony's, and Blueboar I'm not sure at all, but I think he's leaning a bit more for C than D, with emphasis on the need to change it to something better (answering "a" to Q2). The point is at best we can only guess what each other's positions are - this poll is designed to make it more clear for each other, so we can see where we are and if we have consensus on anything. But you need to respond to the poll for this to be helpful. It's just an idea. Obviously if no one wants to do it, it's not going to help. Thanks. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:38, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Could it be a surprise to many that the abovementioned rfc was never closed? The discussion was heated, circuitous, and was not helped by one or more participants' walls of text and endless wikilawyering. Also, what admin would want to get involved in this topic area knowing full well the angst caused to one of their well-respected fellow admins that incidentally caused him to burn out and bow out of WP for good? -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:56, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
On Q3, yes, we need to follow up on discussing other approaches before voting on the polarized approach. It seemed clear before that for such discussion to proceed, we would need to see a significant backing off of Born2cycle's ownership issues on this page. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
But the thing that seems to be concerning those who refuse to accept the result of the previous discussion (if one can sift out the occasional statement of substance from what they've written) is not related to the issue of choosing names at all - it's about the issue of disambiguation - there seems to be a view (though no-one who supports it seems willing to articulate it clearly) that we should add "redundant" disambiguation in some cases where we currently don't. This seems to be the issue addressed by B2C's second question. If I'm right that this is the elephant in the room, then let's concentrate on getting that issue sorted out.-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
More importantly, if someone can simply move such a title to the undisambiguated title as non-controversial, the basis for such a move should be documented. If it's not, then it's more likely to be controversial. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:15, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Which wording is a change has been one of the chief questions at issue since the RFC. Begging this question will only inflame the controversy further; I have therefore supplied neutral wording. JCScaliger ( talk) 20:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Kotniski, a couple of things I'd like to request. First, stop appealing to a "previous RFC" that you know full well was subverted and remained completely unresolved. We're trying to get to a framework for discussion (and this re-opening of the same polarizing question by Born2cycle is not helping). Second, please review for us the context of what you were thinking when you penned the phrase that you so like. Did it have something to do with disambiguation, as you seem to be suggesting above? What problem was it addressing? Or when did it come to be seen as having some bearing on disambiguation? What discussions, if any, were associated with that notion? Dicklyon ( talk) 22:17, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Born2cycle, here are the number of posts by editors here on this page as of this writing:
Well, if one wanted to be “Number one”, you’ve got it… in pure edit count, anyway. If you truly posses great facility to use facts, logic and reason to explain something to people who apparently just can't get it, ( ∆ edit for this claim, here), perhaps you might lighten up on keyboard pounding (there is no requirement that others admire your writings as much as you apparently do) and allow your logic to persuade instead of making everyone have to scroll further. There’s clear evidence here that if you were to back off with your edit counts, probably a full half of everyone else’s edits would disappear since a lot of us here find ourselves compelled to respond to your saying the same thing over and over in a vain effort to merely stem the tide of all your keyboard pounding. Greg L ( talk) 01:09, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
FWIW, I prefer "to readers familiar...". It assumes readers have a flying clue what they are reading up on rather than pandering to the MTV crowd with the attention span of a lab rat on meth. It should be “ Boutros Boutros-Ghali”, not “ Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egyptian dude)”. Reading the above, I can’t tell who wants what and would need an NSA supercomputer running an artificial intelligence algorithm to go through it all. But if what I’m advocating happens to also be what B2C wants, ♬♩I win. ♬♩ :-)) Greg L ( talk) 23:13, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Kotniski is so frustrated by what I refer to as Status quo stonewalling demonstrated here that he's announced he's taking a long break away from WP. I, for one, hope he changes his mind. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:31, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
As to the RfC, see #RFC_on_Recognizability_guideline_wording, which was started while there was an ongoing discussion in the previous section (another stonewalling tactic), so you should read that too. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:02, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Long-time listener, first-time caller.... I've stalked this debate for well over a month now without weighing in. In short, I support both the "to readers familiar..." language and the reasoning behind it as expressed by so many on this page. As for the process, uff, what a mess. Sometimes I wish that WP were edited anonymously.... Dohn joe ( talk) 00:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Kwami's claim has been that he can't see consensus in favor of either "faction" (his word) here, but he has repeatedly refused to engage in discussions with Kotniski or me about that finding. My argument has been to list all those who favored the wording, and assert that none opposed it with any substantive argument. A reasonable response to that would be to dispute those on my list, or to dispute the assertion by finding a substantive argument made in opposition to the change and listing those who support it. But he never did anything beyond repeating his claim that there was "no consensus". Very disappointing. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:22, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Why are some music artists listed with their nicknames, while others are listed with their real name? What is the standard naming? See Ivan Shopov and Federico Ágreda, versus Gridlok and Deadmau5, for example. I propose Shopov and Agreda to be moved to their nicknames. Also, Xample could be moved to Loadstar (group) to include his partner Lomax. They're more notable together than alone. Gravitoweak ( talk) 12:43, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Hi all, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Amphibians_and_Reptiles#Article_naming_guidelines_redux. Please read carefully between options one and two. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 20:59, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Yesterday when I mistakenly thought things had settled down, I made the following edit changing:
to this:
The point was to clarify that the meaning of ambiguous here is relative to other uses in Wikipedia, as clearly stated at WP:D: "ambiguous—when it refers to more than one topic covered by Wikipedia articles."
However, this edit was reverted. I'm discussing this already with the editor that reverted that edit at User_talk:Ohconfucius#WP:TITLE_revert, but I'm curious what others think about this.
Actually, I'm now realizing that even B is misleading since it ignores use of ambiguous names on articles about primary topics (e.g., Paris), which of course is very common. So maybe it should say this:
What do you think? A? B? C? Or ??? Thanks! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:26, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, of course edits of text being discussed in an RFC should not be allowed. But the text I edited was not being discussed.
The text being discussed (not part of an RFC, by the way - there was one started about it last month, but it has expired) is the familiarity phrase in the Recognizability clause under WP:CRITERIA. The text at issue in this section is part of WP:COMMONNAME, and doesn't have anything to do with the familiarity phrase of Recognizability that has been at issue since Dec 21.
So, do you have an objection to the COMMONNAME edit itself? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:34, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
B2C I think you need to read the previous section on this issue ( Wikipedia talk:Article_titles/Archive 34#Ambiguous or inaccurate) as it highlights several additional misunderstandings about what this sentence can be understood to mean. -- PBS ( talk) 03:57, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I've had this happen several times that people ignore this policy and cite the guidelines of WP:NC(UE), WP:MOS-JA and WP:NC(VG) (the latter of which spells out it is subordinate to this policy in the lead) as trumping concerns, specifically of WP:COMMONNAME when usually 2 names are common, but neither one can be clearly shown to have a "consensus" among RSes and a 3rd choice is chosen by default mostly because of macron use in MOS-JA stating that since neither one can be shown to be the "most common", we can't use either one.∞ 陣 内 Jinnai 18:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
The WP:RM list presents daily surprises: one live RM is Indigenous inhabitant. At least one editor, AjaxSmack, opposes the move to a less misleading title for our readers—I take it s/he is basing the argument on this occupation-zone mentality of primary topic. We are seeing more and more objection to the extreme cases of vague and misleading titles this unfortunate principle has been spawning; not only this, many people wonder why it's first-come first-served to allocate a (privileged) unmarked title, which too often turns out to be orders of magnitude less notable or well-known among English-speakers than other topics of the same name.
Ironically, some editors are attempting to both (i) change the rules to allow more capitalisation in titles, and (ii) retain the unconstrained primary topic principle. This is causing huge problems; take, for example, articles that beckon the reader as a generic topic but turn out to be on a proprietary product or service, or vice versa, seem to have a foot in both camps, and the angle of the text (often not just the opening) has to be recast before we can decide whether the title should be in title or sentence case (Dicklyon has kindly put in the hard yards in this respect for a number of articles in which there's dissonance between the case of the title and the theme of the article).
At the very least, the notion of primary topic needs to be tempered in certain situations (not that this list below would have fixed the ludicrous Indigenous inhabitants, but it would be a start):
Tony (talk) 11:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Of course we could leave the issue open to subjective judgement on a case-by-case basis, but to what end, and what cost? In theory, we could just delete all the naming policies and guidelines, and name all articles based on case-by-case consensus of whatever everyone who happens to be participating thinks is best. But we recognize the chaos and consernation and never-ending dispute that would cause, so instead of we agree on rules policies and conventions by which we decide titles. That doesn't mean everything about titles is pre-ordained; much is still left to case-by-case subjective judgment. But, in general, we try to cut down on that where it's reasonably possible. And that's why the community decided to use a narrow interpretation of "ambiguity" in deciding when titles needed to be adjusted for ambiguity.
The determination of whether there are any other uses on WP of a given name is objective. So basing decisions on this specific question cuts down on a lot of disagreement and consternation. In contrast, determining "ambiguity" based on whether there are any other uses of the name on or outside of WP, past, present or future, is way more subjective, and, I suggest, much less clear than whether a given piece of material is "pornography".
Deciding titles like that would without question lead to many more arguments, and for what? So that titles could be more descriptive? Do users even look at titles enough for that matter at all, much less enough to justify the greater cost? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:54, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
P.S. Although inter-editor conflict is seldom fun, this is what makes Wikipedia so terribly valuable in my life and interesting: learning. As an American, I had no flying clue as recently as a month ago what “Collins Street” meant. People often ask, “How the hell do you know that ?!?” If I say “If you edit on Wikipedia, you learn a lot,” my wife—if she is present—rolls her eyes in that “what a waste of time”-manner. So I just shrug my shoulders now.
Greg L (
talk)
17:17, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
At the moment, we have multiple discussions going on at the same time... all relating in one way or another to the issue of ambiguity and disambiguation. There are so many proposals and changes being discussed simultaneously that I no longer can keep track of what is being proposed. It is all getting muddled together in my mind, to the point where I am experiencing "proposal overload"... and when that happens my instinctive reaction is to shut down and oppose everything, no matter what it is. I think others are experiencing the same. Can someone summarize the various issues and proposals?
On that note... I am curious as to why the topic of ambiguity and disambiguation is suddenly such a hot topic. Was there a particular incident or move decision that sparked this flurry of proposals off? There seems to be a common thread of concern about ambiguity running through all of the proposed changes... so I think there is a macro-issue for us to discuss here. But, every time I think I have identified exactly what that macro-issue might actually be, we get sidetracked by narrower sub-issues and the macro-issue gets lost in all the noise. So... is there a macro-issue? Blueboar ( talk) 17:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I know of only two active proposals... Greg's poll which is winding down, and #Clarifying ambiguity about the WP:COMMONNAME edit I made the other day which got reverted.
I believe the reason that ambiguity/disambiguation is so active lately is because of a certain small number of editors that has been very active in trying to get both policy/guidelines and specific titles changes in favor of adding more description than necessary to disambiguate from other uses to our titles.
Several of us have repeatedly tried to pin them down to make a specific coherent proposal explaining what exactly they would like to see, but I have yet to see one. Kotniski was so exasperated by their behavior that he has taken an indefinite break because of them. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:12, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Above, I used adding more description than necessary to disambiguate from other uses. But that is kind of unwieldy. Probably unnecessary disambiguation is best. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:57, 26 January 2012 (UTC) struck out error -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:30, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Mike, I don't understand how we can best serve readers with respect to naming our articles so that they can get to the ones they are seeking as quickly and efficiently as reasonably possible, without "guessing" at least to some extent about what they're thinking (though I wouldn't call looking at ghits, page view counts and other evidence as "guessing"). Help us understand what you're saying in practical terms by way of example. The word "Obama" is ambiguous (see Obama (disambiguation). Do you believe that Obama should continue to redirect to Barack Obama as it currently does, or that the dab page should be moved to Obama, or what? Why? Thanks! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:12, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
WP:NCROY uses pre-emptive disambiguation . Is this a neutral term? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:34, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
Mike Cline you wrote above "naturalness ... serve[s] no useful or meaningful purpose when it comes to WP titles...." We use naturalness so that we have the name Tony Blair rather than Blair, Tony etc (See my posting above on 23:12, 30 December 2011 for more details). -- PBS ( talk) 03:57, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Mike you write when talking about naturalness "(that meets the obscurely worded recognizability criteria)", yet further up the page you wrote "I firmly believe that ... recognizability serve[s] no useful or meaningful purpose when it comes to WP titles". -- PBS ( talk) 22:29, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
A comment appropriate for the users talk page |
---|
>== Some advise to B2C == Born2cycle, I’ve directed the attention of some of my wikifriends in the past to this, and I’ll share it now with you so that you might learn about how to achieve your ends in life. It is as follows:
A philosophy I hold dearly I suggest you think about how that philosophy applies to how you endeavor to achieve what you think is “right” here on this talk page. Greg L ( talk) 22:03, 26 January 2012 (UTC) |
This matter, now it is almost resolved, has become an ArbCom case; since I have, unavoidably, quoted some language here, editors may wish to consult Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Article_titles.2FMOS, even if they have no interest in sanctions. JCScaliger ( talk) 00:41, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I would like to see capitalization of articles "officially" changed for beauty & simplification. Let's capitalize every word of an article title, no matter what part of speech it is. This makes it easy to go directly to a subject without being redirected, or failing to find the subject at all.
It is utterly abhorrent to my eye to see miniscule leading letters in what is supposed to be an "Article Title!", especially when that word is a conjunction or preposition.
I know the current rules point to "The Chicago Manual Of Style" (WHICH USES ALL CAPS IN ITS OWN TITLE) and/or "A Dictionary Of Modern English Usage". But I don't care about them, they aren't authoritative to me, I did not grant them consent to rule my wiki, did you? I never even heard of those 2 books until a bot uncapitalized the word "Pit" in Conversation pit, which I recently created as "Conversation Pit". Trying to correct that ugliness led me here. Even if we choose to follow these manuals generally, let's ignore their awful rules on titles. Wikipedia is made for viewing on machine, not print, and leading caps for every word is much easier to read in any medium, but especially the screen. Shouldn't wikipedia have its own style manual that serves us & our needs anyway? Isn't the wikipedia supposed to be written in American, not English? We still have homonyms & irregular verbs in our language for crying out loud, so why should we use musty old print style guides anyway, when our language has not even been formalized yet?
Does anyone else agree (about caps for each word in an article title)? Can we get consensus? Does my plea need to go someplace else? Ace Frahm ( talk) 22:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
{{ edit protected}} This article refers to Swimming as a gerund title, but since 2009 that has been a disambiguation page. That makes it an awkward example of a good gerund title. Request changing the reference to Swimming to Human swimming, until someone identifies a better example of a gerund title. – Pnm ( talk) 21:41, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
{{ edit protected}} The community’s views as gauged by #Poll, above show a clear and consistent desire for the changes denoted in Ver. 1. ArbCom (noted above) is looking into editor behavior that made it difficult for a month to discern the community consensus (“long-term disruptive editing” according to the petitioner, Admin SarekOfVulcan). And as Arb Casliber wrote, “We'd review conduct.” ArbCom won’t be looking at whether the community consensus should be second guessed so there seems to be nothing standing in the way of honoring the community’s wishes in this regard. Greg L ( talk) 05:26, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
And we could consider a fourth option. And a twentieth. Note however, that the rules of the poll (the very first first “A” one in fact) specifically allowed editors to participate in the poll with a comment that they thought there should be some other option than just the two provided; it asked only that they not introduce other options to consider into the poll so as to not complicate matters. There was a notable absence in that poll of those who were apparently in the minority. Human nature being what it is, it is reasonable to suspect that these editors stayed away rather than go on record that they were part of an extreme minority responsible for the month-long deadlock via tactics like digging in their heels to frustrate progress.
Despite the open invitation to participants to mention that there should be other options considered and that the provided options insufficiently captured the nucleus of the dispute, only one editor, SarekOfVulcan, expressed anything other than complete support for the basic principle embodied by Option #1 when he wrote while I'm not sure I agree with all the changes on that page, if we're just going with the above choices. The rest were rather clear that they agreed with the essential meaning and objective of the text in Option #1. A fair reading of the totality of the comments there would lead a reasonable person to conclude that the community strongly embraces the principle embodied in Option #1. And remember, WP:Consensus is defined not merely by mere nose count, but by considering the common message and voice of the accompanying reasoning.
I mention this not to further advocate for getting the community consensus implemented before ArbCom concludes its proceedings looking into the editor conduct that frustrated progress here for so long (see my below response to Mike Cline), but to instead articulate that it frankly seems unseemly to suggest that a clear-as-glass consensus on what the community wants should be obfuscated by suggestions that since other options (the possibilities are astronomical) could theoretically have been considered, that somehow means those options should first be discussed before honoring the clearly-stated community consensus.
I’m sorry if you felt all along that there should be another option, but the community’s wishes are clearly not in alignment with yours. And I’m sorry if you might feel put off by my disagreeing with you, but I thought I would respond to what I think is *bad* speech with *better* speech and state that I have a healthy respect on Wikipedia for honoring community consensus since embracing that principle cuts down on wikilawyering , stonewalling, and tendentiousness—not to say that you exhibited any such things.
But if you had read the rules, and understood them, you should have jumped at the opportunity to participate in the poll, and had your voice heard to possibly influence others—even if your comment was to opine that there should be a third option considered. I feel that you forfeited your right to complain about the poll and its outcome after declining your opportunity to participate.
And by “complain,” that includes cleverly suggesting with a rhetorical question that maybe a third option (yours, perhaps?) could be considered instead of honoring an exceedingly clear and lopsided community consensus. Greg L ( talk) 21:25, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
It's not that simple folks. In this particular case Kotniski made a change on August 17, 2010 without discussion, but which had consensus support (as has been verified at #Poll: as well as in the commentary from December), while the change made in May 2011 did have a discussion, but was never-the-less not supported by consensus once it was brought to their attention. I believe that's because the goal of the change in May was simplification of the wording, and no one noticed that the result was a significant change in meaning.
Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. BRD works when followed, but that includes the D part. If there is a real objection to a change, then go ahead and revert it, but then discuss it (presuming the bold editor seeks discussion/explanation of the edit and revert). I mean, if the reverter can't come up with a substantive reason to object to the change, while the bold editor can explain why the change is supported by consensus, why should it not be accepted? And that's what happened here last month. My edit was accompanied by a simultaneous explanation (as recommended by BRD), but those reverting refused to engage in substantive discussion about it. All they did was disruptively wave the "there must be discussion first" flag, without actually discussing. This point is fully explicated at User:Born2cycle/Status quo stonewalling. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:51, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Let’s talk about this philosophy you lectured to us about: I have always found it difficult to believe (and accept) that a handful of editors that agree on a position, reflects Community consensus when the community of active editors is ~136,000. Uhm… please accept it. To help you do so, I encourage you to read up on our exceedingly pithy Five Pillars, which is equivalent to Wikipedia’s Constitution, and WP:Consensus. You won’t find anything suggesting that a notable and high-visibility poll participated by a wide range of experienced editors that resulted in a 17:0 tally where there was uncanny commonality of opinion can’t reflect a community consensus because there are approximately 136,000 editors active on Wikipedia. Actually, given that there are a total of 47,742,261 registered users, your theory would suggest that it is impossible to ever discern a community consensus.
Please do advise when you find a policy page regarding how a consensus is arrived at on Wikipedia that backs up your novel views on the concept. You might also direct our attention to any policy page on Wikipedia suggesting that ArbCom’s proper response to disruptive editing would be to lock down a guideline page for an entire year. Since the odds of that last suggestion actually occurring is a number so close to zero that not even God can tell the difference, I don’t really need to belabor the point. Greg L ( talk) 19:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Mike Cline remarks that this page doesn't have the stability of traffic laws. No more it does; that's because it's not legislation; it's an effort to reach a consensus description of actual policy, which is what editors actually do when they think about it.
According to
the policy guideline page: "When a track is not strictly a
song (in other words a composition without lyrics, or an instrumental that is not a cover of a song), disambiguation should be done using "(composition)" or "(instrumental)"." This is a request for an admin to complete the move of
Tequila (song) to Tequila (instrumental).
Hearfourmewesique (
talk)
20:07, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
There are two parallel discussions of this topic, at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (music)#Songs and Instrumentals (now closed for new discussion, but containing a number of pertinent posts not otherwise duplicated) and at Talk:Tequila (song)#Requested move. Please post any further comments at the "Tequila (song)" talkpage rather than here. Thanks. Milkunderwood ( talk) 03:57, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Of all the Babel in our WP:Title policy, it seems to me that Commonname is the most desirable, and unequivocal element of the policy. In my view, it is actually the underpinning of two of the listed criteria—naturalness and recognizability. Those so called title criteria are merely rationale for commonname and should be thought about as such. In essence, the common name aspect of our title policy could be stated concisely in these two statements:
Then when someone asked Why?, the answers might reasonably be all the babel we now associate with naturalness and recognizability. All that rationale is actually irrelevant if someone already accepts the policy as being Common Name. All that babel could merely be relegated to an essay for anyone who wants to know the rationale behind common name. I suspect there is overwhelming and wide community consensus that Commonname is the dominate and preferred title policy for WP, so why don’t we just be clear about it?
After common name we still have to deal with ambiguity, conciseness, neutrality and style, but that’s a different discussion. But in the larger scheme of WP, commonname is the dominate WP policy on titles. Once a common name is agreed upon, the questions of ambiguity, conciseness and style are much easier to answer. The challenge for us then is how best to interpret and apply that concisely stated policy in a reasonably consistent manner. Here are some thoughts about that:
There may be other scenarios, but these are the most encountered. Also, I think each demands slightly different thinking to get to the correct common name.
The above ideas comes from the realization that the WP editor corps is growing with editors from or with cultural connections to non-English speaking countries, who speak and read English and desire to contribute to English WP on subjects originating in their native countries. Currently, I don’t think our Common Name methodology recognizes and accommodates this well enough. In the aftermath of a contentious RM, an editor wrote this (sanitized because the specific case is irrelevant): The common name in the English language is the [XXXXXXXX], it is referred to almost exclusively in [Country Y] as the [YYYYYYYYYY]. When you see the name [YYYYYYYYY] in the [English language] literature, if you care to look closer almost always the reference work will be a History of Y. [conclusion, those sources shouldn’t count because they weren’t reflecting an English speaking countries view of the subject] What I took away from that was that this editor either misunderstood , or didn’t accept common name as being derived from coverage in English language sources, not English language sources from English speaking countries.
I really believe that if we could begin simplifying WP:Title along these lines, we could eliminate a lot of misunderstanding and contentiousness that occurs in RMs. If we can do it with Common Name (a title policy that has wide community consensus), then it will make simplifying and clarifying the remaining issues—ambiguity, conciseness, neutrality and style—much easier. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 18:45, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Actually, thinking about this more... I can identify some black and white "rules"... they include:
With these "rules" laid out, I would then set out a "GUIDANCE" section that would contain the bulk of the current page, and point to the various project specific conventions. Blueboar ( talk) 21:27, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Considering it's a Wikipedia policy, WP:COMMONNAME is surprisingly imprecise. The WP article Common name is only about taxa or organisms in contrast to scientific names — WP:COMMONNAME's reference is much wider.
The nearest the policy gets to a definition is to say: "The most common name for a subject, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources . . . [however] . . . ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject . . . are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources."
This is not over helpful, so most editors will turn to the examples. These are of completely different types:
So according to the policy, common names include initials and nicknames, stage names and traditional names, short official names, non-binomial and non-chemical names, and English (rather than foreign language) names.
Of course we have many, many article titles that don't conform to this policy. For example, the norm for biographies is to use a short form of the official name, not the nickname, except in special cases. Using initials is rare. Stage names are sometimes used, sometimes not etc etc.
IMO the policy needs to be completely rewritten. The new version should give a basic and robust definition of 'common name', and explain the different types and make recommendations about how they should be used.
I'd be grateful for opinions about the general problems of this policy as it now stands. It would be interesting to know what level of inertia/resistance there is to overhauling it! (Specific proposals can come later if there is a consensus for change.) Thank you for reading this. -- Klein zach 01:20, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Written down or not, the predominate principle governing the titling of the vast majority of WP articles is to use the name most commonly used in reliable sources to refer to the article's topic. There are exceptions, of course, but they primarily come into play only when this main principle cannot apply for some reason. That's what WP:COMMONNAME is supposed to convey. The rest of WP:TITLE (and WP:D, plus the individual specific naming convention guidelines like WP:NC-TV), is for the exceptions. At least that's how I see it. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:28, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree in general but would say it slightly differently: "We use titles to identify the name most commonly used to refer the respective article topic, and to distinguish one topic from another, without necessarily giving any indication of the meaning."
While the title should be recognized as a reference to the article topic by someone familiar with the topic, for the uninitiated, it is the purpose of the article lead, not the article title, to identify the topic of the article.
An excellent list of reasons for doing it this way, from over a dozen different experienced editors, is available in the poll just above. If you disagree, please address each of those arguments/points in favor of doing it this way. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
When I started this discussion, I hoped it wouldn't go in this direction. We can all take our favourite positions on this side of the fence or the other. It's easy to repeat the arguments. The problem is that there is no 'fence' — no properly drafted policy for anyone to reference, either for or against. This is why we need a rigorous process focused on drafting rather than arguing.-- Klein zach 01:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I propose dividing the present text (unchanged) into sub-sections. Would that be acceptable to everybody? -- Klein zach 01:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I was surprised to see an editor say, in a move request response: "To the best of my knowledge, article names don't have to describe the subject accurately."
It's true that "accuracy" is not specifically listed as a criterion here. But it seems obvious to me that inaccurate titles would be inappropriate. Sometimes, a loss of accuracy may be necessary to achieve other goals (like conciseness or recognizability), but surely having accurate titles is something toward which we should strive?
-- Powers T 19:04, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Accuracy is not mentioned as a question; but it is mentioned: 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.
It is not mentioned more strongly, as I see it, for two reasons:
I thought that since a number of editors who have normally shied away from WT:AT (Disfunction Junction) have recently joined in to voice their opinion, now is the time to strike while the iron is hot.
Since bad habits have developed that subvert the collegial atmosphere, I’ll establish some ground rules that everyone must abide by in order to participate in this poll. If someone objects to the rules for participating in this poll and chooses to not be bound by them, they are welcome to start their own poll.
The question is simple:
1) Do you support This version of the WP:AT, which bears this edit summary: 23:56, 23 January 2012 JCScaliger (talk | contribs) (40,869 bytes) (Resatore text to Dec 21, before Noetica's continual revert war for a non-consensus text. Boldness requires novel texts and discussion.)
…which seems to be centered around this key bit of text:
• Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#1 (to someone familiar)”; or
2) Do you support This version of WP:AT, which bears this edit summary: 00:01, 24 January 2012 Kwamikagami (talk | contribs) (40,913 bytes) (Undid revision 472889901 by JCScaliger (talk) Get someone to resolve this rather than edit warring)
…which seems to be centered around this key bit of text:
• Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#2 (not necessarily familiar)”.
The ground rules:
A) This is an up or down !vote; you are free to voice that you think the issue should be something else, but your vote may not further complicate matters by introducing a third (and fourth and fifth) option via such votes as • Comment This isn’t the real issue. The text we should *really* be discussing (because I like it a great deal) is…. If you participate here, it is to merely vote for one of the above options. If you find that to be a less-than-satisfactory question, please don’t respond to it.
B) You may have a total of 300 words, excluding your autosignature, in the “Poll” section. You may blow it all on your !vote, or you may spread your words around to directly respond to other editors’ !votes in the polling section. Discussion and debate belongs in the following subsections.
C) I will moderate the closure. That doesn’t mean I will “decide” anything; “consensus”, as clearly and fairly established at WP:Consensus rules all. It means only that towards the end of this, I might motion that the poll be considered indeterminate, or that it ought to be snowballed, or to opine that an 80% quorum of those who have previously weighed in makes a consensus clear, or… whatever. But there will be no jumping the gun by the regular partisans.
D) If anyone who has previously weighed in with an opinion on this exact issue is contacted to let them know about this poll, everyone who has done so must be contacted; no cherry-picking, which in this case would be canvassing.
E) I may add new ground rules within the common sense framework of trying to accomplish a poll without disruption to adapt to new circumstances, stonewalling, tendentiousness, wikilawyering, and all-around exhibiting a non-collegial interaction with others.
Greg L (
talk)
19:37, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
We already support exceptions in specific areas with specific naming guidelines like WP:NC:CITY, and occasional special-case exceptions with WP:IAR, but to endorse regularly adding additional precision to titles of articles because their names are not recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, or because they might appear to be ambiguous with uses outside of WP, opens an enormous quagmire that would make deciding titles even more contentious than it already is.
With #2, in cases where we agree on common name and primary topic and the title is therefore straightforward, there could still be contention on the issues of whether additional precision is needed to be make the title more recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, and, if so, what exactly that additional precision should be. To what end? It's simply not worth it. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:51, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
The result was that there is overwhelming community consensus in support of this version of the WP:AT, which bears this edit summary: 23:56, 23 January 2012 JCScaliger (talk | contribs) (40,869 bytes) (Resatore text to Dec 21, before Noetica's continual revert war for a non-consensus text. Boldness requires novel texts and discussion.)
A reading of the comments reveals a very like-minded community reasoning as regards keeping article titles streamlined with minimal parenthetical or comma-separated disambiguation. The details of the basic principle should no‑doubt be expanded upon and illustrated with example proscribed and prescribed titles. Editors who have been active in these debates over the last month now understand—for the most part, anyway—the core issue, but new editors coming to WP:AT for guidance when creating a new article could benefit with some “show me” examples of what the verbiage means.
Editors active in this area should be mindful to study the reasoning given by the various respondents to this poll and endeavor to work collaboratively towards the spirit of the common view.
How to move forward from here?
I motion as follows:
Those who would like to second the motion may do so here. Greg L ( talk) 20:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
A similar situation now exists regarding what should be even less controversial at WP:COMMONNAME (see #Clarifying ambiguity). I don't want admins locking pages; I want them to recognize disruptive status quo stonewalling for what it is, and act accordingly.
Take out #2, or, better yet, replace it with a request that admins do what I just asked, and I'll second. Thanks. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:44, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Note that in #2, I asked the administrator to “strongly consider”; I rather suspect the administrator has mostly made up his or her mind whichever way to go already. Hissy fits about other editors’ behavior are unlikely to impress an administrator that a collegial collaborative writing environment is at hand. You might best take your huge *win* and not agitate so vigorously. Your current demands are rather like the prisoner in his jail cell strumming his drinking cup along the bars of his cell at midnight, shouting “Unlock the door! I won’t get into fights if butt-heads aren’t mean to me!” : it’s not a convincing message in its totality.
If I were you, I’d intently read “ Some advise to B2C,” below. Greg L ( talk) 22:05, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I support #2, but I don't agree with #1, because this poll's limited polarizing viewpoint has not yet allowed us to have the discussion to find the version best supported by the community.
Dicklyon (
talk)
00:16, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I can't support this yet, because I have no idea how it should be interpreted. Can someone tell me what familiarity is in relation to Latin Quarter? Tony (talk) 03:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
To one familiar with the Latin Quarter of Copenhagen, Latin Quarter might be enough, I suppose. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:18, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
It would appear that this is the crux of the problem. If familiarity is not defined, then we could have endless edit wars over the appropriate level of familiarity. Take large cell tumour, for example. In introductory medical texts, they hyphenate. For the general public, it would be best to hyphenate as well. Otherwise, it sounds like it's a large tomour. (Which would you rather have, a large cell tumor or a small cell tumor ?) However, the phrase is almost always left unhyphenated in medical journals. I don't think dab'ing would cover this, because large tumor is not a topic. I can see the AT wording proposed here being used to insist that the unhyphenated form be used, because that's what those "familiar" with the topic use, despite the inevitable confusion that will cause among those whose only familiarity with the disease is that a friend or loved one has it. — kwami ( talk) 04:19, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Can we please drop the metaphors of fighting for territory and of covert action; Dicklyon's edit above seems to be the first use of one of these, but "subvert/subversion" have been used three times now, and are beginning to creep into the common discussion. We are not conducting a war; if Dicklyon and Noetica are, they should seriously consider a unilateral suspension of hostilities. We are all supposed to be on the side of a better and clearer encyclopedia; that's policy.
These three allies are the only people I know who use this vocabulary regularly. I do not care for such a subculture. Please stop.
I do not know that Born2Cycle "cheated"; if he did, this is not the venue to discuss it - any more than it is the venue to discuss Noetica's career of exact reversions. This is not about power; really it isn't. It's about the encyclopedia. I do know that I disagree with the bloviated titles that were the protocatarctical cause of this poll; I do know that I support the language of familiarity (although, once this discussion is over, I would still support making it into a separate section). Many do likewise. JCScaliger ( talk) 20:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. Thank you to Eraserhead1 for pointing out WP:BATTLEGROUND, which I was not familiar with, but which does describe the situation. I used the territory metaphor to try to get B2C to understand how he comes across, but I'm sure it was a waste of bytes. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:11, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Editors, could I seek advice on these two google searches, in which not even the displayed opening of the lead under the hit-title helps to define the topic. These are just from an idle, random search:
Tony (talk) 08:11, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Well? Talk already! What are you waiting for? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:26, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
If a title is recognizable to someone familar with a subject then it must be unrecognizable to someone who is unfamilar with the subject. So given the fact that we have 3.9M articles and (who really knows) an average reader might be familar with 5000 subjects, then from that readers perspective, we have slightly less than 3.9M unrecognizable titles. This word recognizability to which we are assigning responsibility to millions of readers who we purport, speculate, conjecture, guess (or whatever other completely unsupportable with empirical evidence) verb we can use are going to react to any given title is the height of absurdity. You all can't even explain it to yourselves and yet you think 1000s of editors will immediately understand what you mean. Whatever wording follows this non-word recognizability will be meaningless in the larger WP community and be the source of endless, non-productive debate. It would be incredibly simpler if we just assigned a simple responsibility to the title itself: A WP title should faithfully represent the content of the article. When I was working in Europe in the 1980s, I would ask Germans that I met and worked with the following question: Have you ever seen the United States?, a great many would answer Yes, we have, my wife and I have been to Miami several times. They were no more familar with the U.S. than an illiterate worker in the Far East. We have got to stop trying to deduce how millions of readers are going to react to a title, and put the responsibility on the actual title itself--Title vs Content, title vs ambiguity, title vs MOS, etc. Funny stuff above. Off the grid for a while in the real-world of readers who must be familar with something. I'll ask a few if they've ever seen an unrecognizable WP title- you know those big bold, black letters at the top of every article. They are hard to recognize sometimes when I just wake up and haven't had that first cup of coffee. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 10:56, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Note that before 11 May 2011, ( ∆ edit, here), the key passage used to read as follows:
* Recognizability – 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. One important aspect of this is the use of names most frequently used by English-language reliable sources to refer to the subject.
Elaboration like this may certainly be added later. Furthermore, we are free (and I welcome doing so) to add examples (or more examples) of prescribed and proscribed example titles into later, explanatory sections of WP:AT—like It is United States, not United States (North-American country).
However, now is not the time to work on such details. The purpose of the above poll is to establish what the community consensus is on the core issue and move on from there. Things are moving along splendidly; the community clearly welcomes the opportunity to put this one to bed and do so without fuss.
Along with the basic principle in bold that each poll response begins with, is the accompanying reasoning and views of that editor. Many of us tend to admire our own reasoning expressed in our poll responses, but we must respect and understand the reasoning of all the others in the poll in order that clarification, elaboration, and prescribed/proscribed examples can later be added. Greg L ( talk) 13:14, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
So, if there is a problem, then you're the only one who sees it, and you're going to have to explain it in a way that the rest of us can understand. Or, as Denzel put it (at 4:40-4:50), "Explain this to me like I'm a 2-year-old because there's an element to this thing that I just can't get through my thick head." And if you can't explain it to us like we're 2-year-olds, well, that's telling too. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:36, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
But, as I first wrote at the start of this thread, we can add examples later. The community seems to be happy as a clam with getting the basic principle established after a month of gridlock. And we can actually read the !vote comments here to better understand the community’s thoughts before endeavoring to elaborate on the basic principle and to add example titles. Greg L ( talk) 20:51, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
In the same spirit that
this question about the 'Common names policy' was publicized, I would like to request informed opinions on the
appropriateness of
WP:MUSICSERIES on the
music naming conventions page. Thank you,
MistyMorn (
talk)
00:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Original wording of request was: In the same spirit that this question about the 'Common names policy' was publicized, I would like to request informed opinions on the appropriateness or otherwise of WP:MUSICSERIES? I feel that this new classical music titling guideline, which strongly prioritizes 'consistency and (more arguably) 'precision', was pushed through on the basis of local consensus without allowing time and space for consensus in the broader Wikipedia community. I have raised my concerns on the music naming conventions page, and really would be more than happy to withdraw from the fray if the discussion there is expanded to take in a wider range of informed 'consumer' feedback. Thank you
WP:NCM had sections on common names and on disambiguated names all along. Don't these two sections cover everything? This new section throws away our usual naming criteria of common name, naturalness, and recognizability and substitutes an indexing system. As far as organizing CDs goes, we could create a "Classical Music by Number" article or category. This article can be used as a model. Kauffner ( talk) 05:06, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
In my opinion, typing “Moonlight Sonata” into the search field and being taken to Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven) is a satisfactory balance of the test criteria I consider germane to determining proper titles, which are as follows:
I’m not seeing a problem with
Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven) since it is a redirect from a common name wherein the redirect is encyclopedic, adheres to standard music convention, and in this particular instance, astonishes no one.
Greg L (
talk)
17:02, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
P.S. JCScaliger’s Is this still about
Moonlight Sonata? is a valid and crucial question that highlights a chronic problem around here. Whether or not this particular case is about “Moonlight Sonata”, it is still true that far too often, editors talk in the
wholesome-sounding abstract and no one can figure out what they’re driving at and what their real objective is. We all end up talking cross‑purpose, completely waste our time, and outsiders who aren’t up to speed on the minute-by-minute blow-by-blow between disputants have no flying idea what the real nugget of the issue is about. This being evasive and abstruse deprives us of greater community input and makes it nearly impossible to discern a consensus. Man up and explain what you’re really trying to accomplish with some specific examples, please.
Greg L (
talk)
17:16, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
I fully agree that when establishing a set of guidelines, it's important to take the time to consider examples and possible issues arising. I've invited comment on a series of examples that I think are broadly similar to Eine Kleine to help explore how the recent changes to WP:MUSICSERIES function in slightly different contexts. The named Vaughan Williams symphonies may be relatively uncontroversial. Apart from one possible exception, they don't really touch on the controversy regarding cases—of which Moonlight is just one—where the common name is also a nickname. MistyMorn ( talk) 13:09, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
By the way, while I don’t know diddly about music notation, I do know my Beethoven Symphony No. 6. For decades, my favorite part has been the 1st Movement- Allegro Ma Non Troppo and I am especially fond of the part roughly 1:22 from the end of the movement; I think it is pure genius.
FYI, I also tried Pastoral (symphony) and Pastoral symphony, since the parenthetical form for adding specificity is an exceedingly common wiki-convention. But that didn’t work either. Having it be “ Pastoral Symphony” seemed a bit out of the blue (no parenthesis). It’s easy to add more redirects.
The issue I think we are arguing about here is what is the best primary title to use for this song. And towards that end, my main message point is that WP:Article titles would best convey the fundamental principles covering article titles and should let the specialists in any field apply those principles as they see fit. I propose fundamental principles:
The music specialists (and the physics specialists and the computer programming experts, etc.) would simply take these general principles and apply them as they see fit in their specialty. Greg L ( talk) 19:42, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Oh, gosh - this the fourth parallel discussion of this topic that I've now found so far. See
Are there more I haven't found yet? Milkunderwood ( talk) 22:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Our previous discussions (starting with Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 34#Clarification of recognizability lost) and polls ( Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 34#RFC on Recognizability guideline wording, WT:AT#Recognizability wording Poll/RFC, and WT:AT#Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus) left us with insufficient information about what people really intend with respect to the venerable recognizability provision in TITLE. Now that things have quieted down, I'd like to try this alternative framing, so that the people who supported the "familar with" wording, and others, can clarify whether they intended by that to support what Born2cycle and Kotniski seem to be trying to change the recognizability provision into; or not. I expect some will support option 1 here, and some will not, which will give us more information.
Some history of the evolution of recognizability can be found at User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?; feel free to follow up and find more history if it matters to you.
The choices:
These texts are intended to be suggestive of intent for what recognizability should mean, not proposals for final wording.
1) Something like this bit of text, intended to explicitly represent what I think Kotniski and Born2cycle were trying to get at in restricting recognizability to people familiar with the topic:
• Recognizability – A title is judged to be recognizable if it is the most commonly used term for a topic in reliable sources; recognizability of a title to readers who are not already familiar with the topic is not a goal, and should not be used as an argument in favor of a title.
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#1 (Post-Modern)”; or
2) Something like this bit of text, copied from
this May 2008 version of the policy, and approximately representing what was stable since 2002, representing the alternative idea that we do try to make titles recognizable to a large number of people, as a top-level consideration that must be balanced with other considerations such as conciseness:
• Recognizability – Article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity.
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#2 (Vintage)”.
3) Prefer a compromise somewhere in between these two texts; supporters of this option support the idea of discussion to find wording for a good middle road, not particularly close to either of the two extremes proposed above. Feel free to use your 300 words to elaborate. If there's an intermediate old version that you particularly like, this would be a good place to quote it or link it.
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#3 (Compromise)”.
4) None of the above, or something completely different, such as not having a recognizability provision. Please use some of your 300 words to elaborate.
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#4 (Something different)”.
The ground rules:
A) It's a poll, not a vote. It's informational, not binding on anything. Leave positive support comments only please; you are free to support up to two options (subject to the same total comment length limit), and to voice other concerns without limit in the discussion section below the poll, but your comments may not further complicate matters by introducing additional options into the poll structure once it starts. If one of your votes is a "second choice", label it as such. If you participate here, it is to support one or two of the above options. If you find that to be a less-than-satisfactory question, please don’t respond to it. If you feel you really must support three of the options, get over it (if you register support for 3 or all 4 items, I'll remove one or all and let you know).
B) You may have a total of 300 words, excluding your autosignature, in the “Recognizability poll” section, on your own statements only. Responses to the statements of others will be removed. Discussion and debate belongs in the following discussion subsection.
C) I will moderate the closure. That doesn’t mean I will “decide” anything. I intend to keep it open long enough, to collect enough information, that others can use it to get a sense of what the feelings are here. Everyone should feel free to cite and interpret poll results.
D) Please feel free to canvass for outside opinions, but if you do so then mention in the discussion section who you have invited, so we can have an idea how wide the invitation list is.
E) I may add new ground rules within the common sense framework of trying to accomplish a poll without disruption to adapt to new circumstances.
My thanks to Greg L for his poll framework, rules, etc., which I have cobbled here. Dicklyon ( talk) 00:13, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Please leave these stubs here. Copy one or two and add your positive comments and signature.
(see the section above for descriptions of the numbered choices)
• Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?
-- PBS ( talk) 00:59, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
*This "poll" is disingenuous and disruptive. Born2cycle and Kotniski were perfectly clear about tbeir first preference: the language that stood before an accidental edit late May and the ongoing disruptions by Dicklyon and his friends: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic? PBS expressly supported this at the last poll. It is not here; certainly the garbled #1, with its prejudicial label, has very little relationship to it.
JCScaliger (
talk)
21:44, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Response to SMcCandlish:
Several people who responded to Greg's poll haven't been heard from in this one. If nobody objects, I'll invite them: Eraserhead1, Dohn Joe, SarekOfVulcan, Enric Naval, Certes, Kleinzach, CBM, Binksternet, WhatamIdoing, Franamax, MistyMorn. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:13, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
In response to 05:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC) post: That is fine, Dicklyon, if you are curious about something. Often, such edification can be accomplished by leaving a post on individuals’ talk pages. However, polls under circumstances like this, where…
…Too many people perceive that your effort to discern nuances of the community’s views by seeing what happens when “things are sliced differently” is neither helpful nor—as you say—“useful”. In short, a significant number of editors who are experienced in this issue have opined that this poll amounts to WP:REHASH, which is tendentious editing. Thus, in my opinion, it is time to accede to those concerns; I see no point to persisting at this.
I invite other editors to opine whether or not they share my views on this matter. Greg L ( talk) 16:19, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Given the latest trend of this poll after the community finally understood that “Other” encompassed the consensus view from the previous poll, and in light of the strong sentiment in the community that this poll violates WP:REHASH, it is time to WP:SNOWBALL this. I’m doing this to spare the community further disruption.
As the sponsor of the previous poll, this closure could itself seem *pointy*. Nonetheless, I don’t mind being WP:BOLD when it seems amply clear that there is exceedingly little enthusiasm for even having this poll, let alone persisting with it.
If any other editor feels this closure is unwarranted and continuing with it benefits Wikipedia, please feel free to revert me.
I must say that now that B2C has backed off, your persistence at flogging this dead horse notwithstanding that a handful of editors have now opined that this is not helpful is starting to make User:Born2cycle appear darn reasonable—even if he is loquacious beyond all comprehension.
I think I’m going to butt out of this now and see if anyone else in the community has a better way of dealing with your insistence on rehashing a settled issue. Greg L ( talk) 20:17, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
We simply can not permit further stonewalling via tactics such as avoiding high-profile efforts at consensus building and then have you claim that those who hid in the shadows actually had really really really good arguments that could only be heard during the poll if you had kneeled, fervently wished for nice sounding words, and let their silent words resonate with your spirit. Such tactics can not be rewarded with arguments that still more discussion needs to occur until either A) the holdouts get their way, or B) the heat death of the universe puts an end to this.
The above 17:0 poll (which enjoyed significant “outside” attendance) was not only terribly lopsided, but there was consistent and thoughtful commonality to the reasoning accompanying each vote. Moreover, the latest poll reveals nothing new. This is not complex and the proper response to put an end to the disfunction here is clear. That is to honor the consensus view and then get down to the business of discussing how to expand upon that consensus view (or modify it since consensus can change). Greg L ( talk) 19:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Hey, I haven't followed the long discussion on this topic, so just a quick question. If there already is a consensus for changing the wording of the criterion to "recognizable to someone familiar with the topic, although not necessarily an expert" then how come it has not been changed yet? What is holding this back? Office action, arbitration decision? TheFreeloader ( talk) 18:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Dicklyon’s clever attempt to recast the very nature of the question by slicing and dicing the issue so the previous poll’s consensus view was slapped with a diminutive “Other” option in hopes no one would notice its absence and it might be trampled like the gladiator during the chariot race in Ben Hur clearly was not a successful strategy and didn’t go at all well. So…
No, we should certainly not engage in still more debate on this issue before implementing the wording the community clearly prefers. To do otherwise would just reward tendentiousness and stonewalling. Even this God-foresaken venue will once again have to start abiding by the letter and spirit of WP:Consensus. Greg L ( talk) 00:06, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
This wasn’t my first rodeo on Wikipedia; I know how to conduct a poll. I foresaw that someone might try to claim that they couldn’t participate because the poll was an up-or-down vote on two options. So I made sure it stated right in the first rule that everyone was free to opine that the options were too limited and it should be something else. My poll was crafted to focus like a laser on consensus building, cut through the crap, pull the rug from under tendentiousness, foster a sense that outsiders could finally weigh in and be heard without being drowned out, and expose those arguments that were weak. The current holdouts forfeited because of lack of merit to their position.
Trying to now torpedo the current consensus by stating that certain people somehow didn’t have an opportunity to participate is nothing but sour grapes. In the military, it’s called “So sad – too bad.” On Wikipedia it’s called “wililawyering” which is disruptive and mustn’t be rewarded. Greg L ( talk) 00:49, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
As an outlyer who thinks this battle over the wording of a dysfunctional criteria is an utter waste of time because both versions are essentially meaningless and useless as policy, I am struggling to find a rationale for supporting one side or the other. It might be useful Greg and Dicklyon to explain why WP will go to hell if one or the other side in this debate doesn't get their way? Its like two children fighting over an ice cream cone in the heat the summer. If they fight long enough, the ice cream melts and nobody wins. Well IMHO, nobody wins in this scenario because the Ice Cream has already melted. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 01:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Hmm, that list does look quite dubious, looks to me like you are grasping at straws there. But more important, I really think it is quite objectionable if the main reason you have for not wanting this to go through is that Born2Cycle happens to support it. Arguments based on who else happens to support something must come very deep down on Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement. I think it is bad wikiquette to hold grudges like that, and I think it is POINTy to hold the whole community hostage because of a personal vendetta like that. TheFreeloader ( talk) 02:24, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
OK... I have stated that I would prefer a third option. Here is a suggestion:
This is by no means a final proposal. Think of it as an initial draft of the direction I think we should head. Please comment. Blueboar ( talk) 03:28, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
When one evaluates titling decisions and especially contested titling decisions in our RM process, it is very rare to find Recognizability or Naturalness invoked as a policy reason for a title change. So following the mantra that many of us subscribe to, that policy should follow and document practice wherever possible, I decided to think about this differently. What are the major choices we’ve made as a community relative to article titles, and what were the alternatives to those choices that we’ve essentially rejected through policy statements and practice. If we could agree on that, we might be able to agree on the most functional policy wording to convey that practice to the rest of the community. So the following list displays in my view the choices we’ve made and the alternatives we had. It is organized by priority. In other words, think of it as a policy ladder where a previous choice has precedence over and informs the following choices. I have bold faced the choices I think the community has made. I’ve intentionally left out neutrality as it requires some special thinking which can be addressed later.
So there is only one question that I seek an answer from the rest of the community. Does this list accurately reflect the choices we’ve made as a community and community practice regarding titles?-- Mike Cline ( talk) 17:29, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
I think I see why we are having difficulty agreeing on language here. I think we have a disagreement over the basic purpose of the policy. I have been focused on this from the point of view of giving instruction that applies to initial article creation - "How to come up with the best title when you are creating an article". Others are looking at it from the point of view of RM - "How to settle disputes when titles are challenged". Realistically we need a bit of both, but this difference is impacting the "tone" and word choices we are using. Blueboar ( talk) 19:45, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
This page was locked to prevent a content dispute becoming disruptive, and since then there has been discussion.
I'm not convinced this discussion has resolved. We had a totally worthy poll, in which a number of people voted for option one, and a similar number of people said that the problem was something else. Particularly in light of the discussion that has just started above, I think they are probably right. There are two areas where guidance is needed:-
The answer to 1 can be of the form "a name you think people/most people/people who might be looking/English speaking people/people familiar with the topic will recognize", because it's down to the article creator.
The answer to 2 has to create the basis for a community discussion, and since "because I think so" seldom creates much light in these discussions, would probably be better based on something that might be evidenceable eg "use in reliable sources/search engines/government publications/what it says on the tin"
Having said all that, and recognising that
... or indeed any other variation in these words, is only really saying to the article creator "do you think this is recognizable..."
So however it's worded, that criterion will pretty much always only guarantee you get the word the article creator uses for it, and it is the rest of the criteria that control whether he uses that first response.
So...is there actually any point in arguing about which set of wording is used. "What's that wet stuff off the coast of Normandy?" "C'est La Manche." Is that "a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?" "Oui." Of course it is - if the someone is a Frenchman. It's the rest of the criteria that determine that the article is English Channel, and there is a redirect from La Manche.
With this in mind, if I unlock this article and GregL makes his change, will the rest of you instantly revert him. Or will you continue the sensible discussion to disambiguate "what to call your article" from "what criteria to use when there are disputes as to article titles". Elen of the Roads ( talk) 13:42, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Note the *reasoning* in the above “this, that, or neither” poll. Most of the 17 editors there, many of whom had previously avoided this page because it wasn’t friendly and functional, exercised care to accompany their !vote with thoughtful reasoning. According to Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus-building by soliciting outside opinions : Responses indicating individual explanations of positions using Wikipedia policies and guidelines are given the highest weight when discerning a consensus. That page also says this:
In determining consensus, consider the quality of the arguments, the history of how they came about, the objections of those who disagree, and existing documentation in the project namespace. The quality of an argument is more important than whether it represents a minority or a majority view. The arguments "I just don't like it" and "I just like it" usually carry no weight whatsoever.
All that was stated within 24 hours of my edit and explanation, and no substantive reasons opposing the change were presented then (or since), which was back on December 20, 2011. That alone should have been more than enough to establish that we had consensus support for the change. But here we are almost two months later and still talking about whether it should be implemented. That fact that a few editors can employ status quo stonewalling techniques to hold a page hostage like this, for so long, contrary to consensus clearly established and re-established, is one of the reasons people leave Wikipedia [25]. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:42, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I have real life that puts food on the table and creates a financial mechanism to prevent my wife’s Visa-card balance from increasing to one Googolplex. I don’t watchlist pages and have limited time to come to WP:Article titles to see if it is unlocked or not. So it doesn’t have to be me who makes the change. Anyone may make the required edit after the unlock. It is this version of the WP:AT, dated 23:56, 23 January 2012.
From thereon, we clearly need to have genuine discussion and Five pillars‑compliant consensus building as the guideline page is further improved.
Moreover, I would greatly appreciate it if editors here didn’t call this “Greg L’s change” or “Greg L’s edit.” If anything, I would prefer it be called “the GEBDSEPCKJOCBWFM edit,” after the 16 non‑PMAnderson‑sock editors who took care to offer insightful reasoning for why they unanimously support #1 (to someone familiar). Greg L ( talk) 02:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Sometimes words like stonewalling and hostage have to be used to help others understand that that is what is going on. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I realize that B2C doesn't consider my articulated objections to be "substantive"; fortunately, my main objection—that he inserted it during an argument to further his position that recognizability to peope not already familiar with the topic is of no weight in naming considerations—has been been considerably reduced by the unanimous rejection of that interpretation by those who responded to my poll. Procedurally, it still sucks that we couldn't just reset his policy change made during an argument that it affects, then discuss and go on from there. But at least we did get some discussion of alternative approaches started. And Greg, if we name your change for those of us who "unanimously" opposed it, the acronym will be a little shorter and easier to remember. Or we just call it what it is, the Kotniski/B2C version, as facilitated by Greg L. Dicklyon ( talk) 03:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Further, after I brought the discussion to his attention [26], Ohm's Law (who had made the May 2011 edit) clearly indicated he too did not realize the significance, and verified that the goal of the edit was "simplifying what was being said" [27], not changing what was said. Again, since they changed the meaning of what was said without realizing it, that's inadvertent. And this directly supported what I surmised in my original comment: "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. ".
Much consternation would have been avoided had you read and addressed what I originally explained regarding the Dec 21 restoration of the Kotniski wording. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
But beyond that, in this case, one editor after another who did comment on the change substantively, in the first 24 hours and every week since then, favored it, and most explained why in some detail.
By the way, your poll rejected no interpretion - it showed a preference for one wording over another. Since the other wording - the one you claim is rejected - is not contradicted by the preferred wording, there is no evidence that it was rejected as an interpretation. In fact, since it's consistent with the preferred wording, there is evidence that it's supporting (not as wording for the policy, but as correct interpretation of what happens). Not to mention that the words used by many participating in the discussions since Dec 21, including Greg's poll, indicated preference for the Kotniski wording because of agreement with the interpretation you claim was rejected in your poll. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
The page is now unlocked to registered editors. The minor change in wording that has been discussed to death can be made, and I will regard a reversion as edit warring. Other changes must be discussed first. Damage to the project is caused by edit warring on policy pages, not by having policy locked to a version that might perhaps be worded slightly better.
Constructive discussion is not achieved by polarisation, and - even if article titles doesn't end up under discretionary sanctions - if I see further aggressive, polarising, personalized debating, I will not hesitate to impose blocks and start proposing topic bans. There is no reason not to discuss calmly and agree next steps - no-one has family history going back to World War I on this topic. And remember, the encyclopaedia would work just as well if the articles had no titles just IDs, so to a great extent all this argument is irrelevant. -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 10:11, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I am glad to see some movement here. The use of present tense is important when articulating goals. It has a proven track record in political, government, military, business and a myriad of social/cultural endeavors. The distinction between “Acceptable” and “Good” is more substantive and ultimately has to be a determination by a much wider WP community. I am going to introduce (probably at my peril) some thinking that I’d like everyone in this discussion to at least consider. Policy drives process that consumes energy and generates results. Regardless of endeavor or enterprise, it is the results that matter. But results always consume energy to achieve. In the case of WP, the results that matter are more content, more quality content, more editors and a much wider scope, geographically and culturally of content and participation. [28] A WP title decision as a result is just one small piece that contributes to the larger body of results. Where I think we fail as editors and “policy leaders” in trying to achieve those results, is a failure to take into count the “cost” of doing so. WP as a 100% volunteer enterprise has a unique income statement and balance sheet if you will. Our revenue is the time (hours) volunteers donate to the enterprise. Our expenses are exactly equal and immediate. We can’t bank any of our revenue because it is spent immediately. For every volunteer hour donated, that volunteer hour is immediately consumed by the enterprise. There is no profit or loss on our income statement. From a balance sheet perspective, it’s the equity line that’s important. Equity in our results terms means-- more content, more quality content, more editors and a much wider scope, geographically and culturally of content and participation. Our goal, as is the goal of every enterprise to some extent is to grow the equity on the balance sheet with the least amount of wasted energy or expense.
So how does that thinking impact WP:Title. There are three equations here. 1. How important is a WP article title to achieving the overall enterprise results we want? And 2. How much energy are we willing to spend to achieve the results we want? And 3. Are there ways in which we can reduce valuable volunteer energy expended on title decisions and free it up to more directly impact enterprise results? This is why I personally think “Acceptable” is a better alternative that “Good”, but that's a more detailed evaluation yet to come. To close, if anyone would like to take a few minutes to read this: Stay out of the Balkans, it’s a little essay that discusses these ideas a bit more metaphorically. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:11, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Done -- Mike Cline ( talk) 20:16, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
However, if I understand you correctly, 3 -- Are there ways in which we can reduce valuable volunteer energy expended on title decisions and free it up to more directly impact enterprise results? -- is what I was addressing in something I wrote at the ARBCOM event, here. In particular: " In order to avoid everyone wanting whatever they want and nobody ever being able to agree, we choose to have policies, guidelines and conventions to introduce determinism into our title decision process. In general, in terms of reducing disputes and debates, more determinism in our title-determining rules is better than less determinism." Do you agree with that? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Observations on titling process from two RMs-I was working through some RMs this morning and stumbled on two (and closed two) that are a bit illustrative of the points I was trying to make in these two discussions at WP:AT [29] and [30] . The first RM [31] walked us through a logical sequence of policy based evidence. What would have made this even more useful would have been subsequent evidence or at least acknowledgement of ambiguity and style issues. (Apparently there weren’t any in this RM). The second RM move was about ambiguity. No one actually addressed what reliable English Language sources said the common name was. Had they done so, it would have been evident that Orientale Province was a common English language name for this subject. As the closer, I did this review but it would have been much better in the RM process had the nominator and participants done so. When I closed this with a move to Orientale Province, I actually had a style question in my head--Should this really be Orientale province to comply with our WP style? I didn’t pursue it, but had it been addressed in sequence by the nom, the overall discussion would have been more effective for WP in the long run. The substance of these two RMs is inconsequential, it was the process that intrigues me. I am asking you to consider these two random examples from this standpoint. If we can begin to think about the whole titling process—new titles or title changes in a holistic way, then the words we use to articulate, explain and implement policy will be much easier to craft and should result in clearer, more concise, and effective policy and guidelines. Let me know what you think.
— Mike Cline ( talk) 14:47, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Should article titles exclude "LLC" from the end (eg, Marquette Rail, LLC vs Marquette Rail? C628 ( talk) 02:16, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
The legal status suffix of a company (such as Inc., plc, LLC, and those in other languages such as GmbH, AG, and S.A.) is not normally included in the article title (for example, Microsoft Corporation, Nestlé S.A., Aflac Incorporated, and Deutsche Post AG). When disambiguation is needed, the legal status, an appended "(company)", or other suffix can be used to disambiguate (for example, Oracle Corporation, Borders Group, Be Inc., and Illumina (company)).
Now that we have a productive discussion going on wording details, it would be good to have a shared understanding of how to interpret the change that Born2cycle got put into the "recognizability" provision, following Kotniski's earlier change (as described in User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?#Aug. 2010 – planting the seeds of dissent)
My poll #Poll to plan for future discussion on Recognizability found zero support for the proposed extreme interpretation of the Kotniski/B2C wording as "recognizability of a title to readers who are not already familiar with the topic is not a goal, and should not be used as an argument in favor of a title." So I noted that "my main objection has been been considerably reduced by the unanimous rejection of that interpretation by those who responded to my poll."
However, in his victory speech, Born2cycle alleges that
... your poll rejected no interpretion ... In fact, since it's consistent with the preferred wording, there is evidence that it's supporting (not as wording for the policy, but as correct interpretation of what happens). Not to mention that the words used by many participating in the discussions since Dec 21, including Greg's poll, indicated preference for the Kotniski wording because of agreement with the interpretation you claim was rejected in your poll.
I believe he may be partly right that some do support his interpretation, but they just didn't want to support that alternative in my poll. My poll, in attempting to get an assessment of who stands where on the issue, came up wanting; perhaps my additional interpretational phrase "A title is judged to be recognizable if it is the most commonly used term for a topic in reliable sources" was too distracting or was what some rejected. So maybe we can just go more directly and ask, who supports, and who rejects, B2C's interpretation of the Kotniski/B2C recognizability wording that was recently inserted into policy after the page was unlocked? Feel free to answer or discuss in any way you please, or to ignore if you think the wording speaks for itself and need not have a shared interpretation associated with it. Dicklyon ( talk) 22:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
I am very pleased with the discussions above that we are actually developing some productive consensus around some key points of contention. We have a long way to go but are headed in the right direction. Many of the regulars here and on other policy/guideline talk pages have always claimed that policy/guidelines should document and follow practice, not necessarily dictate it. To that end, I think an important step in our journey to better WP titling policy, is to actually assess what the wider community believes the practice is. To that end, I have drafted an RFC as a subpage of this one: RFC-Article title decision practice. Its purpose is not to derail or stifle the discussions above, but instead add some additional data that we can use as we improve this policy on WP titles. It is not yet a live RFC, but my intent is to make it live within the next 24 hours. Additionally I intend to advertise it at Centralized Discussions, all projects that have naming conventions, MOS talk pages, RM and New Page Patrol talk pages. I hope it generates a lot of response from a wide range of editors. In the short term however, I would appreciate anyone participating here to provide any feedback that might improve the RFC wording. Thanks -- Mike Cline ( talk) 19:13, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Similar tests based on RANDOM could be devised for other questions. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Interesting stuff, but I want to know what the general editor corps thinks our title decision policy is. There are 136,000 active editors that aren't bots or special randoms. Bots and Special Random don't create new articles or participate in RM discussions, and even if they did, I don't really care what their opinion might be. Can a bot have an opinion? -- Mike Cline ( talk) 23:55, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
I strongly recommend we slow down here and get the current language in better shape before we take anything to the wider community. The goals are a mess right now. If everyone here agrees to go with Born2Cycle's proposal above, I'd like to see that instituted and then take this RfC live. Otherwise I think we'll have a lot of distracting nitpicking about grammar and such rather than the discussion we are looking for. Joja lozzo 00:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Since you ask for only one response, don't you need a fourth response which would combine the second and third, i.e. that "Some (but not all) of the highlighted choices above faithfully reflect the title decision practice of WP and there are one or more important title decision practices missing"? Joja lozzo 02:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not going to be able to say much because of my RL work stress-out at the moment. But in relation to this edit, could I make a few points?
Sorry if I'm being daft in not understanding a few points. Tony (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I appreciate everyone’s input above and am confident the RFC will generate the results I want (and I think results that we will find useful moving forward). Many of the comments above are typical when we think tactically instead of strategically. That’s OK because it’s normal. A couple of the comments impressed me in different ways.
Again, thanks for the input. Perfect is the enemy of good. The RFC may not be structured perfectly, but it should provide us some interesting viewpoints. It will go live later this morning. I look forward to everyone’s input. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Is there a reason that the Recognizability goal has "candidate title" but the others do not? I think it would be better without "candidate".
Generally I think the goals would be best described using parallel terminology/construction. The context is: "A good article title will have the following characteristics:". For the subjects we have "The candidate title", "The title", "Consensus titles", "A good title", "A good title". For the verbs we have "will be", "will be" "usually use", "will be", "will follow". I propose we use "A good title" and future tense for all five goals:
Joja lozzo 04:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
I'd also like to copyedit the Naturalness goal to read: "A good title will be the one that readers are most likely to look for to finduse to search for the article." Any objections?
Joja
lozzo
04:09, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, all this is irrelevant in this discussion because it's what it currently says and Joja is not proposing changing it. However, if we were considering a change, we might think about conveying that in disambiguated titles the naturalness criterion/goal applies only to the undisambiguated name portion. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:02, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
I too oppose introduction of "the one", or any other language that implies that only one title for each subject can be a "good title". Hesperian 06:24, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
A couple of thoughts from someone teaches Strategic thinking and execution out in the world where we get paid to get people aligned around successful execution of well articulated goals. When you articulate a Goal, you should never use future tense, because then the goal is never achieved, its always in the future. Abandon the wills and replace with is or equvilent present tense. Goals should always be stated in present tense form, so that individuals can visualize success. Second, "a good title" implies "best title" or the goodest title and leads to endless discussions as to which alternatives is better. In fact, it gives license to create alternatives on a whim that someone thinks is better than the current title. Replace "good title" with acceptable title. If the statements read: An acceptable WP title is ... then editors can immediately visualize what characteristics a title should have to be "Acceptable". -- Mike Cline ( talk) 14:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
I think the opposite is true. The more general and less specific the criteria are, then the more room for (costly) pointless debate we have. If the criteria is more specific and less ambiguous, then there is less to debate about.
For example, say we are deciding between two titles A and B. We agree both are acceptable, but only A is "good". If the criterion says "good", then we have nothing to debate - we just go with A. But if the criterion says "acceptable", it gives us no guidance on whether to go with A or B. How do we decide? A costly debate...
So if I am understanding you correctly, we agree on the goal - make title decision-making less costly; but we disagree on whether making the criteria less specific (merely "acceptable" rather than "good") helps or hinders achieving that goal. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:56, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
But you're saying something quite different (thought not necessarily opposite) - you're saying that there may be any number of "acceptable" titles for a given article, and as long as the current title is one of those acceptable titles, and there is no good reason to move it from using that title (e.g., it's the only acceptable title for some other article), then we should leave it as is. I'll have to think about that. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:57, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
No. Acceptable is a binary concept: an on-off switch. A title is acceptable or it is not, with no middle ground. It is not our intent here to say that a title that lacks any one of these properties is unacceptable.
Goodness is a continuum. The degree of goodness of a title is determined by the extent to which the title has the properties outlined above. This is what we want: guidance on how to compare titles and decide which is better.
Hesperian 02:06, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
As can be seen from the discussion above the use of acceptable or good as adjectives describing a title are problematic because of the wide range of interpretation they engender. So the following is the same language without the “acceptable” or “good” qualifier. If we can agree on the language without the qualifier, then once we agree on the overall principles involved with the difference between “Good titles” versus “Acceptable titles” we can decide whether or not the qualifiers are really needed, or can those principles be dealt with differently in another part of this policy.
-- Mike Cline ( talk) 17:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
I wish to test for consensus. Are there any objections to going with Born2Cycle's proposal, not as final wording but a minimal-change clean up? Joja lozzo 03:59, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Done Joja lozzo 18:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Forgive me if I am making everyone repeat themselves, but I am still unclear as to why we are restricting article titles to those that are recognizable to "those familiar with the topic". I am not challenging the statement or saying that we should change it... but I would like to better understand the intent behind the restriction. Blueboar ( talk) 16:57, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
That's why we have The Running Man and not The Running Man (book) or The Running Man (Stephen King novel) or The Running Man (Stephen King science fiction novel) or The Running Man (1982 Stephen King science fiction novel first published under the pseudonym Richard Backman), etc., etc. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:32, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Because of disambiguation requirements, some of our articles, like Paris, Texas (film), do end up with titles that are recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, and that might give some the impression that we do that purposefully, but we don't. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:42, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
The Kotniski caveat which Blueboar is asking about simply made this explicit to prevent anyone from believing that we strive to make our titles recognizable to anyone other than those who are familiar, and to prevent anyone from arguing for unnecessary precision in titles on the basis of recognizability. For example, without the Kotniski explicit caveat, one might argue that a given title is "too vague" and so needs more precision to be more recognizable [37]. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I've acknowledged repeatedly, including just above, that many titles are recognizable to more people than are familiar with the topic. I've never argued such broad recognizability in a title is a bad thing. I've only argued that it is a common side effect of disambiguation, not a goal in and of itself.
As to policy intent, policy intent is largely about reflecting accepted practice. We can "reverse engineer" what actual practice is by looking at how articles are named, and I suggest looking at random ones only to be objective (in particular to avoid cherry picking). Of course this only works if you look at sufficient numbers (a few dozen).
I've never said that we should look at articles (randomly or otherwise) to ascertain policy intent. I've said that we should look at articles to ascertain actual practice, in order to help determine what policy should say.
Put another way, how many articles can you find with titles that make them recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, and are not so because of additional descriptive information added to the title for the purpose of disambiguation? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
That's why "we are restricting article titles to those that are recognizable to "those familiar with the topic"" (though titles that needs to be disambiguated from other actual uses in WP may inadvertently end up being more recognizable). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
A better example would be The Control of Nature, which I recognize as one of my favorites, and which doesn't have a corresponding film or anything like that. Dicklyon ( talk) 19:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Dick, the recognizability criterion is no more "hobbled" by the Kotniski caveat (to those familiar) than the precision criterion is "hobbled" by the "no more precise than than necessary to disambiguate from other uses in Wikipedia" caveat. In both cases it's about clarification not hobbling.
We all recognize that we are supposed to balance all of this criteria when deciding a title, but it provides better guidance on how to do that with such clarification than without. Otherwise, in a situation in which we're trying to decide between titles A and B, where criterion #1 favors A and criterion #2 favors B, those favoring A will simply cite #1 and those favoring B will cite #2 and we just have a pissing match. Isn't that what we're trying to avoid? Why not add clarification which is consistent with actual practice where appropriate?
Now, some clarification is obviously implied and doesn't need to be stated. We could clarify conciseness by saying "not so concise as to make the title obscure", but everyone knows that. I can't even imagine anyone seriously arguing for a title so concise that it is obscure. But we know people will argue for making titles more descriptive to make them more recognizable, even when the current title is already recognizable to people familiar with the topic. You keep saying there is no reason to "hobble" recognizabilty by "tying it the parethetical/disambiguation issue ", but the very situation that prompted me to notice that the Kotniski caveat was removed shows that we need this clarification in there. And consensus is quite clear on this point, so your insistence to the contrary is what is tiring here. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:58, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Well you guys do all seem to be getting on much better. Can I pose a question. When you're talking here about being recognizable, are you all specifically referring to the situation where I search for Steppenwolf, and Acmesearch serves me articles about the Herman Hesse book, the band, the Hawkwind track ("my eyes are convex lenses of ebony, embedded in amber"), the theatre company that Gary Sinise co-founded, the film, the jazz album, etc, and I'm trying to work out which one I want. Or the situation where I'm using the Wikipedia search engine. I ask this because if I use Google/Bing/Yahoo, I get (in sequence) the wikipedia article on the band, the wikipedia article on the novel, the band website, the theatre company website, the band on YouTube (Google only), the film on IMDB, and the band on Last FM. If I search on Wikipedia I get taken to the disambiguation page (incidentally, someone needs to fix most of the articles which hatnote to Steppenwolf (disambiguation) which is a redirect).
Google returns the disambiguation page at the bottom of page 2. Yahoo and Bing don't return it at all. I say this because if someone was trying to find out what the hell a Macanese pataca was, the Wikipedia article is top of the list on all the search engines, and if he puts it into the Wikipedia search, it'll take him straight to the article. I submit therefore that the problem might be better focussed on search optimisation than on whether once you get to the article you recognise what it says in the heading. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 23:38, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Submitted for consideration:
Hesperian 00:16, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
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All right, can we get this sorted out. What, specifically, does anyone propose changing about the wording of this section (the one titled WP:AT#Deciding on an article title). Apart from re-adding the clarification that was confirmed in a discussion above, that recognizability should be stated as applying to people who are "familiar with (but not expert in) the topic". Are there any other proposals about this or any other of the wording?-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:28, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Trying to rewrite the section so as to be more accurately and informatively descriptive of the process, I came up with this totally reworded version:
This way we say more about how the criteria are actually applied, without appearing to define a closed set of criteria (or to lay anything down in stone). Any thoughts?-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:07, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski, thank you for this thoughtful start at a revised approach to naming criteria. It's a lot to think about; let's hope we have a chance to proceed deliberatively, and see if it can be tuned up to something we can all accept. A few reactions:
Thanks again. Dicklyon ( talk) 16:38, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
You (and other recent arrivals at this page) seem to be particularly concerned with one aspect of article titling - it seems you would like to add descriptors "for recognizability" in certain cases where they are not currently used because they are not needed for disambiguation - perhaps you could phrase some kind of proposal in this matter (since I think it would certainly represent a change to current practice), and we could have a separate discussion about that? -- Kotniski ( talk) 11:19, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
"When a name is to be used as an article title, the main criterion is the "common name" principle, described in the following section." I thought the whole point for calling this policy "Article titles" (I was in favour of a rename for this policy but never expressed a preference for this name!), was to move away from stating the title was a name. This sentence seems to be self defeating for those who agreed to the move, as it places the emphasis back on the article title being the name of the subject.
"In many such cases the name is accompanied by an additional descriptor (disambiguator), often in parentheses, to specify it more precisely (examples)." This sentence does not work as it does not explain the conditions for which an "additional descriptor" is acceptable. This clause "recognizability, naturalness, appropriate register, conformance to reliable sources, conciseness, precision, consistency, neutrality," lumps in even more than we have at the moment. what is "appropriate register"? What does "conformance to reliable sources" mean and how does it differ from "recognizability"? What does "consistency" mean and does neutrality mean that "Boston Massacre" is out? It is not for names, but for descriptive titles that neutrality is important, something not mentioned in the sentence "When a descriptive title is used for an article,..." . -- PBS ( talk)
[Moved to new section: #Naming criteria section again below.]-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
If I were a wiki-god, this is how I'd simpify the basics of our titling policy.
Wikipedia Article Titles - Naming Criteria
Article titles are subject to WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:RS policies, guidelines, specific topic naming conventions and elements of WP:MOS. Article titles reflect what reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject by. Although all WP article titles are unique, there are always potential alternative titles for any given article and the following title criteria collectively, along with consensus discussion when necessary should guide the selection of article titles. {{Policy shortcut|WP:CRITERIA|WP:NAMINGCRITERIA}}
# A WP article title should be precise as practical based on use in reliable sources
end of proposed policy
Discussion This drastically simplfies our titling policy, puts the focus of the policy on the titles, not predictions or prognostications about how millions of readers are going to deal with a specific title. It puts the burden of title selection on use in reliable english language sources. You'll note the section heading change to eliminate Deciding an article title which actually describes a process, not a policy., and changes it to a policy statement. It eliminates the need for the Babel of how-to essays that follow, most of which should be turned into essays and removed from the policy page. It is clearly supported by current practices of WP:COMMONNAME, WP:DISAMBIGUATION, WP:MOSCAPS, WP:ENGVAR, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, WP:RETAIN, WP:REDIRECTS, et. al. It would be a blessing at WP:RM where title disputes could be rationally discussed based on clear criteria and not the emotional crap that editors bring to the discussion because they see the world differently than another editor. Much of the procedural information on the policy page could stay, but eliminating all the conflicting how-to guidance would be a significant improvement. A policy page should clearly state what is the Policy, not because our policy is actually so unclear and inconsistent we have to write a lot of how-to essays to explain it. I would challenge anyone to point our how the above proposal (conceptually) would adversely impact the 3.9 million articles we already have on WP and adversely impact the creation of the next 2-3 million articles in the coming years. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:47, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
In Wikipedia, there are no perfect titles, only titles that meet our naming criteria. Mike Cline, December 31st, 2011, Bozeman, Montana
(2) I like some of the things in Kotniski's proposal, but it skirts around the issue in a few critical ways. It could be tightened up and bullets and inline headers used for user-friendliness.
(3) Mike's proposal will cause a lot of interpretation problems: what is "practical"? What if RSs are in conflict, either between themselves (common) or with WP's in-house style?
(4) I've got to say that examples are critical in conveying the title guideline. We could do worse than to workshop some examples ourselves, on this talk page, to get a sense of where the boundaries should lie. Tony (talk) 13:20, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
You’ll all note that I made a slight modification to my ideal criteria above. I have been encouraged by all the comments so far. As far as the adjusted criteria goes, you’ll see I whacked Precision and replaced it with what we really want (actually must have)—unambiguous titles. If it is ambiguity that we must avoid, then let’s be clear about it and not camouflage it with a word like Precision.
I don’t disagree with Kotniski or Tony who worry about interpreting a simplified policy, but whatever interpretation is needed, it should be separate from the actual policy. We already do a reasonable job of interpreting the basics of our titling policy, but have confused that interpretation (which should be in the form of guidelines, MOS and essays) with the actual policy. What we continually failed to recognize as we’ve tweaked this policy in the past is that every WP article title has a context all its own. That context is made up of the article’s content, its broad subject area, whether the article is from a traditionally contentious subject area, the quality and quantity of reliable sources on the topics, and whether the article is really about a subject where English isn’t the primary language, et. al. It is impossible to address all the complexities associated with a specific title context with comprehensive how-to guidance. When we try and label such guidance as policy, it fails miserably when the context changes.
It would be a novel approach, but an interesting one to combine both policy statements and guideline statements (all clearly delineated on the same page) under the title WP:Article Titles.
It might look something like this:
This page and section documents an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.
This section documents English Wikipedia article title guidelines. These are generally accepted standards that editors should attempt to follow in applying the policy above, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply.
If for the sake of discussion, that we’d agreed to put aside concerns about How would we go about interpreting and applying the simplified policy above?, how could we evaluate the potential for this simplified policy? Right now, there are ~3.9 million article titles within the English Wikipedia. If each and every one of those titles met the proposed criteria would anyone be disappointed. In other words if title #1 through title#3,900,000 was as concise as practical, was unambiguous as practical, was consistent with related titles and faithfully represented the content of the article using common English as demonstrated by reliable sources; would anyone be disappointed? I would sincerely like to hear from any editor who would be disappointed or unhappy if article titles met these criteria, regardless of how that was accomplished and why they feel that way. On the other hand, if no one would be disappointed or unhappy, then we are not quibbling about the proposed policy, only struggling with the methodology and words needed to interpret and apply it in the most common of titling contexts. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 20:52, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
This issue frankly crosses so many style guides and policies that I've brought it up here (even though it concerns multiple issues of the manuals of style).
In the past several months, I have dealt with extreme opposition to proposed moves for articles on individual people. Per WP:MOSCAPS, names of individual people appear to be exempt from capitalization rules so long as the person's name is written in all lower case letters ( WP:MOSCAPS#Mixed or non-capitalization), but names that are parsed in all capital letters are apparently forbidden under this style guide (because all-caps are only for acronyms), as well as WP:MOSTM. At some point in one discussion I've had on this page or on another (or perhaps in setting up the exception for k.d. lang at MOSCAPS), it was stated that individuals' names are not subject to MOSTM because they are not trademarks. I've brought this up before at WT:MOSCAPS but that discussion has never resolved
And time and time, again, I have been told that WP:COMMONNAME automatically excludes the use of any names preferred by the subject (if we are dealing with individuals), and someone wrote up WP:OFFICIALNAME to cover that. Why should the English Wikipedia not use a name (or name form in the means of stylization) because of our own internal policies and guidelines? I understand that the Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam issue exists, but bringing that up just starts a slippery slope fallacy. If we allow titles such as will.i.am and k.d. lang, then there is no reason that MISIA or Ke$ha should be invalid article titles.— Ryulong ( 竜龙) 09:58, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
P.S. But I might take that back. I see that The New York Times spells it “Ke$ha”. Nonetheless, our article on her, “Kesha” looks very encyclopedic. I would say that it is not about “double-standards” but is all about not straying from encyclopedic practices and turning Wikipedia into a billboard for entertainers without a compelling and very good reason to do otherwise. So long as “invented new ones” is used within the intended scope and not taken to extremes, that sounds like a good guideline to me. In the real world, things are seldom black & white; shades of gray must be dealt with. Greg L ( talk) 01:16, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
P.P.S. And I see that The New York Times spells it “K.D. Lang”. So I am utterly mystified why our article is titled “ k.d. lang”. Now I can see what others mean by “double standard.” I can only assume that a bat-shit-crazy, rabid following on that article established a local consensus in violation of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. I wouldn’t touch an RM on that article with a ten-foot pole; my writing style comes across as “The Man” and I’d be blocked for twelve years for something like ending a sentence with a preposition. (disclaimer) Greg L ( talk) 01:23, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia’s articles on these artists are biographies and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia—not an agent, promoter, or MTV. Wikipedia looks best when it observes most-encyclopedic literary practices and that is undermined when some articles use non-traditional “see me” vanity/stage capitalization. Is anyone here suggesting that Wikipedia is somehow obligated to use the stage/vanity spelling “k.d. lang” for the biography on her but there is no need to do so for “ Misia, who prefers the stage/vanity spelling “MISIA”? Ryulong is quite right: they should clearly be treated the same. But I disagree with his perceived remedy: start using even more stylized stage names. In short…
Encyclopedic biographies should generally not use vanity or stage-name stylization and capitalization. My preference would be to do an RM and make it “ Kathryn Dawn Lang” and all else redirects (K.D. Lang, k.d. lang, etc.). The first sentence would say just what it currently says: Kathryn Dawn Lang, OC (born November 2, 1961), known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter…
I see no sensible reason why Kathryn the entertainer gets to have a biography title using her stage name but Misia does not. Note that this would have to be an entirely separate issue from performers widely known by nothing other than a normally-capitalized stage name, such as Rock Hudson. Still more shades of gray (*sigh*). But I would say that Misia, Kesha, and Rock Hudson are correct, k.d. lang is not. I can simply not discern any logic that would justifiably treat Misia different from ol’ Kathryn. Furthermore, my position has the virtue of suggesting only one of the four articles mentioned here are fouled up. Now…
I’m done here for the day. WT:Article titles is still disfunctional for trying to get anything done because so many editors lose an RM or RfC somewhere and come here to change the rules of the game so they can get their way across the wiki‑land. Just trying to get an editor to fess-up and explain what his or her proposed wording means in real life… as a practical matter, is like pulling teeth. Above, I had one or two editors say they didn’t know what the difference was between two proposed guidelines; they were reverting each other out of shear habit. Well, I’m going to start making sure editors have to lay their cards on the table and rexplain precisely what they are driving at with real-world examples. For some, that would force them to reveal their hidden agendas. So shoot me for saying what I think is true; that’s what’s going on here—by the boat load. Greg L ( talk) 02:45, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
This is exactly why we have WP:Ignore all rules. Our style guidelines are just that... guides to good writing and style. They are not "Laws" that must be adhered to in every single situation. Remember that there are going to be exceptions to every rule. We should follow the excellent advice laid out in our style guidelines most of the time... but we also must accept that there are going to be times when what is said in a MOS simply does not fit the situation. I also draw your attention to one of my favorite essays - Wikipedia:The rules are principles. Blueboar ( talk) 15:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
See this book and this book. Note that a name, if it signifies an individual, can be registered as a trademark; and a name used in trade or services is a trademark (or service mark) whether it is registered or not. If it's too ambiguous enough, or not famous enough to signify an individual, then it can't be registered. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
The guidelines should say something like "In the case of the names of individual people, the correct spelling and pronunciation is whatever s/he says it is". That's all. It's simple, and it's true. Like it or not (geez I hate the name "Key$ha"), that's the way it is. Chrisrus ( talk) 06:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Our standard on this, for Ke$ha and k.d.lang alike is The most common name for a subject, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural. The last time a move discusiion on k.d.lang came up, the edtiors were convinced that k.d.lang was prevalent - and it is certainly more common than many funny spellings. If you want to change either of them, the simplest way is not to conduct a "war" between the opposing points of view here; go argue the facts on the talk page. JCScaliger ( talk) 01:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Everyone happy with Extended Access Control? Just what our readers make of it in a category list is beyond me. Tony (talk) 10:25, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
P.S. I hereby decree that all instances of “WT:AT” and “WP:TM” shall be “Wt:At” and “Wp:Tm”. (*sound of Greg clapping dust off his hands*)
Greg L (
talk)
21:16, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
I'd downcase it. Several scholarly articles and books do so, indicating that the caps are not necessary. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:02, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
Colleagues, please note this new thread at MOSCAPS concerning proper nouns, proper names, and other matters relating to an amendment of the lead of that guideline. Your contributions to discussion would be appreciated. Tony (talk) 14:04, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
I was doing some work on the UK internet directory Scoot and discovered that I couldn't move it to correspond with the rebrand from scoot.com to Scoot which occured several years ago. This usage is a trademarked brand name. The Scoot article is about the Singapore Airline subsidiary Scoot Pty Ltd. And then there's English language usage. How should this be handled ? -- John ( Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 21:45, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
A new version of my proposal above - with bullet points and a few minor changes.
Comments welcome. For previous discussion see #Possible wording (quite major change) above.-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
I was asked some time ago by Jfgslo to bring this kind of thing up if it ever occured again here, ie someone trying to use WP:MOS-JA to trump WT:TITLE, specifically WP:COMMONNAME. Currently at Talk:Bishōjo game#Request move JRBrown is attempting to imo do just that inspite evidence that the term is used by a variety of sources with different spelling. Rather than argue for the other potential alternate spelling that is also commonly used, bishoujo, he is trying to keep the status quo because scholarly sources, and only because scholarly sources, do not have a clear usage. His other argument is that vecause neither bishoujo nor bishojo can be shown to be the dominant one we must use the clearly (when all RSes are taken into account) the least common one, ie the current title in direct defiance to WP:COMMONNAME.∞ 陣 内 Jinnai 17:50, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
Ou is very rarely used except in glossing. Common English usage is either o or oh. But I've only seen oh at the ends of words & personal names. — kwami ( talk) 05:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
This is a little off-topic for article titles, but then, we don’t have to pretend that Wikipedia is a place where everyone is obliged to behave as if the rod up Wikipedia’s butt has a rod up its butt.
I thought this article in The Washington Post: “Mitt Romney’s misfire on the national anthem” was interesting. It seems The Washington Post is holding Mitt Romney’s feet to the fire for goofing up some historical facts and suggests Mitt Romney’s source may well have been Wikipedia. Romney has been stumping with this tidbit:
“ | We are the only people on the earth that put our hand over our heart during the playing of the national anthem. It was FDR who asked us to do that, in honor of the blood that was being shed by our sons and daughters in far-off places. | ” |
The article explains that many other countries salute their flag with a hand over the heart. And then it goes on to mention yet another goof in Mitt’s quote with the suggestion that Wikipedia—which had it wrong—might have been the source for Mitt’s goof. Here is an excerpt from the 927-word article in The Washington Post:
Ellis credits the inclusion of the “Lincoln salute” to the lobbying work of Gridley Adams, then head of the United States Flag Foundation. Adams was especially upset that the original version of the law said the U.S. flag always needed to be on a staff or hung flat against a wall — which had hurt flag sales. (Adams had promoted a flag that could be hung on a hook.) Ellis suggests Adams “seriously misled” Congress about whether the Lincoln salute had even been discussed at a 1924 flag conference that helped determine much of the flag code.
Roosevelt’s role, if any, appears to have been minimal, notwithstanding a Wikipedia entry that, without citing a source, says he was responsible for the shift. (Roosevelt, after all, also had signed the first piece of legislation, which mandated the Bellamy salute with the pledge.)
The error was fixed ( ∆ edit, here) by an I.P.
I don’t know which looks worse for Wikipedia: having hundreds of poor souls waltzing into a computer store saying “I’m looking for a computer with at least 512 mebibytes of RAM,” or Mitt putting shoe leather in mouth on camera. Greg L ( talk) 22:45, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Maybe I'm missing something. We're back to edit warring over the interminable discussion above, but the reasons given refer back to the original & apparently inconclusive poll. Has there been a mediated discussion somewhere that has been closed in favor of one wording or the other?
If there's an uninvolved admin out there who feels the issue has been settled, please select the appropriate version and unprotect if you like. — kwami ( talk) 04:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Based on their edits, Kotniski and JCScaliger were done waiting. This is ridiculous. Noetica edited the article three times today reverting each time from V1 to V2, including reverting two different editors, in a matter of hours today:
So your objection is your perception of the motivation of the person who first tried to restore the wording, and not substantive to the wording itself. Thank you for clarifying that your argument is baseless and not substantive. Yes, that's a problem.
For at least most of us, the discussion was serious from the moment it started at #Clarification of recognizability lost. Why do you discount the expressions of those who participated and favored V1 over V2 -- Born2cycle, Kotniski, EdChem, PBS, Kai445, Powers, WhatamIdoing, JCScaligera, Enric Naval -- as not serious? Just because you didn't take the discussion seriously (and you apparently didn't) doesn't mean we didn't. Did we do or say anything to support your position that we weren't serious? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
If you think Noetica, Onconfucious, Ohms_law, Tony1, Blueboar all said anything substantive against V1 or in favor of V2, you're going to have to spell it out, because I don't see it. You're the only one who mentioned the word "narrow" in that RFC discussion, and no one said "wordy", so I don't know what you're talking about.
At least we agree no one said the status quo (V2) is great. A few like Blueboar aren't so crazy about V1 either, but the nine I listed did favor V1, and nobody favors V2.
I'm sure there is more to discuss, there always is, but in the mean time we have established consensus favoring V1 over V2. So why the reverting? Why the disruption? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 08:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
To Dick: (after ec) If you look at the RfC above (i.e. where people actually addressed the issue), you'll see overwhelming support for the version that you rather misleadingly attribute to B2C, and virtually none for the one that the page has again been protected under (that you rather misleadingly describe as the "status quo" version). This whole thing, though the issue itself is quite trivial, makes a mockery of the idea that Wikipedia policy represents consensus - it's clear that all that matters is who's most prepared to edit-war and who's best friends with (or best able to pull the wool over the eyes of) an admin.-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
"We don't want to enable the argument that says that that extra recognizability is of no value when it extends to people outside of those who are familiar with the subject". Nobody I know wants to say it's of "no value"; certainly I don't. That's a straw man argument.
But you're living in an alternate universe if you think "extra recognizability ... when it extends to people outside of those who are familiar with the subject" has ever been a factor in deciding titles in WP (except maybe in a few isolated cases now and then). Any 20 clicks on SPECIAL:RANDOM will produce probably at least 10 examples of articles with titles for which additional descriptive words would make the titles recognizable to more people outside of those already familiar with that article subject, yet we don't have that extra description in those titles (unless it's also needed for disambiguation, meaning disambiguation from other uses within WP). That's proof that we don't title our articles for people unfamiliar with the subject to be able to recognize them from just the title.
Now, we know you want to change that, but you don't have anything close to consensus support for such a change. You don't even have anything coherent for what exactly you're proposing. In the mean time, you, Tony and Noetica keep filibustering to prevent us from fixing the written policy on recognizability to match actual practice. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:19, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
However, V2 would favor "Bill Clinton (U.S. president)" over "Bill Clinton" - because that would make the title recognizable ("Oh, Bill Clinton the president") to those who, like a certain 11 year old I know, might not be familiar with who this person is. And that's why we need to restore V1, because we're not moving Bill Clinton to Bill Clinton (U.S. president). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:08, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
I mean, the current title, Peace, Love & Truth, is fine per V1, because it is recognizable to anyone who is familiar with that album. But to anyone who is not familiar with that album (including me until a few minutes ago), "Peace, Love & Truth" is totally unrecognizable, but at least we would recognize Peace, Love & Truth (album) as being an album. By the way, per V2, Peace, Love & Truth (Lennon-Ono compilation album) would be even better. That's the problem with V2 - it's totally open-ended - the more recognizable the title, to anyone, the better.
V1 might not be perfect, but at least it's not inaccurate with respect to most titles on WP like V2 is. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:47, 14 January 2012 (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?
For someone familiar with the album, they will recognize an article titled Peace, Love & Truth must be about that album, but someone who is not familiar with the album will not (I, for example, had no clue, and had to read the lead of the article to find out what it was about). However, that someone who is not familiar with the album will recognize that an article titled Peace, Love & Truth (Lennon-Ono compilation album) is about a Lennon-Ono compilation album named Peace, Love & Truth. Therefore, Peace, Love & Truth (Lennon-Ono compilation album) is recognizable even to those unfamiliar with the album, but Peace, Love & Truth is not nearly as recognizable, because it's recognizable only to those who are already familiar with the album (which fully satisfies V1, but the longer and more descriptive title satisfies V2 much better).
Because that article is at Peace, Love & Truth and not at Peace, Love & Truth (Lennon-Ono compilation album), V1 is a much more accurate reflection of the role recognizability plays in titling our articles than is V2. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:50, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Would the typical Wikipedia user find the candidate title a recognizable name for, or description of the topic?
I would propose in the lede:
Hoping to make this itself a more readable lede. Collect ( talk) 15:20, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
TL;DR, I'm afraid. But my first instinct is to say that both are too vague and open to interpretation (we need to negotiate examples for the poor editors so they can get the gist of where the boundaries lie). 1 relies on the definition of familiarity and expertise, which mean different things to different people in different topics and areas. Version 2 avoids these definitional problems and merely shifts the vagueness to another level (the more general).
Version 1 also suffers from a category problem: it conceives of article-title specificity solely in terms of familiarity and expertise at the expense of the ability of anyone, expert or non-expert, to identify a topic without being misled. It skirts around this problem of how the principle of primary title produces highly unsatisfactory results in some cases (although not all cases).
So this interminable arguing over which version should stand is beside the point: we need to think more deeply about the issue. Tony (talk) 04:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
• Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic? This is to say, titles should contain parenthetical or comma-delimited disambiguation only when needed to avoid confusion with like-titled subjects assuming the reader has some facility with the subject matter. For instance, it would properly be Bill Clinton and not Bill Clinton (U.S. President) and it should *properly* be Collins Street and not Collins Street, Melbourne. Both the preceding titles are sufficiently clear inasmuch as they 1) assume the reader has a pre-existing intention to learn more on that particular subject, and 2) the subject matter can reasonably be considered as referring to a ‘particular one or ones’ assuming that topics must be sufficiently notable to merit inclusion in an encyclopedia. In accordance with this principle, it should be Gone with the Wind (film) to distinguish it from Gone with the Wind (musical).
One of the benefits of closing a lot of RM discussions is that you begin to see trends in the application and interpretation of policies and guidelines across many articles. In the case of our English language, common name policy, it is not so much the policy that is misinterpreted or misapplied, it is the actual determination of What is the common name at any given point in time? that gives us the most trouble. We provide some guidance on how to use Google to determine the common name, but based on the wildly divergent results editors say they get in any given discussion, that guidance isn’t serving us well. Pile on all the other biased logic and rationalizations that editors bring to RM discussions and determining the English language common name for any given subject can be very tedious, and essentially unproductive. Unproductive I say, because it is consuming valuable editor time that could be much better applied to the improvement and creation of content. So, as we move from 3.9 million articles to ~5-10 million articles in the next 10 years, I asked myself how could we improve the application and interpretation of our common name policy? To think about that, I made three assumptions:
If we accepted these assumptions, how could we improve the process?
These aren’t easy questions, but we must begin to find a way to make our titling process more efficient and productive. Maybe these ideas can help. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:19, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
Of these assumptions,
I think that to make any progress here, we need to take a few steps backwards and agree upon fundamental principles upon which WP:AT can be based. I propose that we need to rally around (develop a consensus in support of) the below fundamental principles that contributing editors would ask themselves when choosing an article name:
I’ve seen over and over and over that editors here tend to make proposals in the abstract that would sound swell in the Roman Senate but which tend to induce suspicion in other editors who fear sneaking agendas to POV push. It’s my intention to flesh out any of the above five items with example titles chosen to show what is proscribed and prescribed (or discouraged and encouraged for those who don’t fear coming across as wikilawyering); precisely as I did two sections above. For instance, the interaction and meaning of three of the above points could be expanded later in WP:AT with specific examples like this:
Points #1, #2, and #3 above in combination mean that we best serve the interests of our readership by titling the article Rock Hudson rather than Roy Harold Scherer, Jr..
But first, I propose we see what other items might be added to the above; see which ones are uncontroversial; and which ones are worthy of Turkish-prison butt-stabbings, ANIs, and ArbCom tongue amputations.
I am hopeful that with this approach, we can have an amicable working relationship. Greg L ( talk) 03:58, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
There is no magic formula for determining the best article title. This is because every article is unique. When it comes to adding a parenthetical disambiguation, There are some situations where such disambiguation is clearly necessary and helpful - I think we are all agreed that in those situations we should disambiguate... and of course there are situations when disambiguation is neither necessary nor helpful - I think we are all in agreement that in such situations we should not disambiguate... however, there are also situations when disambiguation may not be necessary, but would be helpful - in such situations we actually have a choice as to whether to add it or not. Some times the answer will be "Yes, disambiguate", but at other times the answer will be "No, don't disambiguate". How do we determine which is which... we discuss it and try to form a consensus. Forming a consensus is often a very messy process... consensus building often involves working our way past disagreement. It involves heated debate and even outright argument. That's OK. It's how the system works. Blueboar ( talk) 14:43, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
There is no information nowhere. At least I couldn't found.
-- 98.199.22.63 ( talk) 02:37, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
This should be addressed at Wikipedia:Policy on the length of article titles that are exceedingly long or which are contrivances intended to attract untoward attention to themselves or are self-referential in nature so as to humorously make a point. Greg L ( talk) 22:59, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, the previous RFC expired without ever being closed [10], and several related discussions since then started up and died out without anything getting resolved. How to move forward?
In this RFC/poll I propose we consider four main options regarding what to do, if anything, about the recognizability wording under WP:CRITERIA. I'm also asking for clarification about what everyone thinks on several related issues discussed recently on this page. I've tried to frame it all so everyone feels this is a fair and reasonable approach, without biasing towards any particular outcome, except that which has consensus support.
There are really two issues to consider:
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 (current): Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
Q1: Please select which one of the following actions you believe would be best for WP:
- A) Adopt the shorter recognizability wording of V2 - this is accurate.
- B) Adopt the longer recognizability wording of V1 - this is accurate.
- C) Adopt the shorter wording of V2 because V2 is more accurate and/or better than V1, but continue discussing because V2 is not fully satisfactory.
- D) Adopt the longer wording of V1 because V1 is more accurate and/or better than V2, but continue discussing because V1 is not fully satisfactory.
Q2: Please also select which of the following two statements you agree with more:
- a) To help readers identify topics from just looking at titles, the recognizability wording should be be enhanced/nuanced/expanded somehow to allow for adding precision in one form or another to the titles of topics that have names, perhaps especially for those names/titles that look like "ordinary phrases" (for lack of a better term), even when the title in question is not ambiguous (has no other uses on WP).
- b) The recognizability wording should remain consistent with no unnecessary precision, even for topics with names that look like "ordinary phrases". When the name of the topic is not ambiguous (has no other uses on WP), the title should be just that name.
Q3: Finally, especially if you answered C or D above, please also add any/all of the following as appropriate.
- c) We should give Kotniski's "major change" proposal more consideration.
- d) We should give Mike Cline's holistic approach proposal more consideration.
- e) We should give Mike Cline's proposal to abandon naturalness and recognizability more consideration.
Please indicate your opinions in the #Poll Responses section just below - explaining your reasoning is not required but would probably be helpful. Also, let's try to keep discussion separate, in the #Discussion section below. Thank you! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:25, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Please use this section only to indicate your answers to the poll questions, Q1, Q2 and Q3.
So, isn't what you're suggesting not "just" looking at this whole page "in terms of precision and ease of comprehensibility by the poor editors at large", but looking at how we guide folks to name our articles in practically every related aspect on WP, as well as actually changing the titles of perhaps the majority of our articles? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:03, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Guys, based on what you've written here, I would expect Kotniski's poll response to be something like:
And Tony's something like this:
Based on Dick's replies below (and of course what he has written before), I would expect his poll response to be similar to Tony's, and Blueboar I'm not sure at all, but I think he's leaning a bit more for C than D, with emphasis on the need to change it to something better (answering "a" to Q2). The point is at best we can only guess what each other's positions are - this poll is designed to make it more clear for each other, so we can see where we are and if we have consensus on anything. But you need to respond to the poll for this to be helpful. It's just an idea. Obviously if no one wants to do it, it's not going to help. Thanks. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:38, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Could it be a surprise to many that the abovementioned rfc was never closed? The discussion was heated, circuitous, and was not helped by one or more participants' walls of text and endless wikilawyering. Also, what admin would want to get involved in this topic area knowing full well the angst caused to one of their well-respected fellow admins that incidentally caused him to burn out and bow out of WP for good? -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 01:56, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
On Q3, yes, we need to follow up on discussing other approaches before voting on the polarized approach. It seemed clear before that for such discussion to proceed, we would need to see a significant backing off of Born2cycle's ownership issues on this page. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
But the thing that seems to be concerning those who refuse to accept the result of the previous discussion (if one can sift out the occasional statement of substance from what they've written) is not related to the issue of choosing names at all - it's about the issue of disambiguation - there seems to be a view (though no-one who supports it seems willing to articulate it clearly) that we should add "redundant" disambiguation in some cases where we currently don't. This seems to be the issue addressed by B2C's second question. If I'm right that this is the elephant in the room, then let's concentrate on getting that issue sorted out.-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
More importantly, if someone can simply move such a title to the undisambiguated title as non-controversial, the basis for such a move should be documented. If it's not, then it's more likely to be controversial. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:15, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Which wording is a change has been one of the chief questions at issue since the RFC. Begging this question will only inflame the controversy further; I have therefore supplied neutral wording. JCScaliger ( talk) 20:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Kotniski, a couple of things I'd like to request. First, stop appealing to a "previous RFC" that you know full well was subverted and remained completely unresolved. We're trying to get to a framework for discussion (and this re-opening of the same polarizing question by Born2cycle is not helping). Second, please review for us the context of what you were thinking when you penned the phrase that you so like. Did it have something to do with disambiguation, as you seem to be suggesting above? What problem was it addressing? Or when did it come to be seen as having some bearing on disambiguation? What discussions, if any, were associated with that notion? Dicklyon ( talk) 22:17, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
Born2cycle, here are the number of posts by editors here on this page as of this writing:
Well, if one wanted to be “Number one”, you’ve got it… in pure edit count, anyway. If you truly posses great facility to use facts, logic and reason to explain something to people who apparently just can't get it, ( ∆ edit for this claim, here), perhaps you might lighten up on keyboard pounding (there is no requirement that others admire your writings as much as you apparently do) and allow your logic to persuade instead of making everyone have to scroll further. There’s clear evidence here that if you were to back off with your edit counts, probably a full half of everyone else’s edits would disappear since a lot of us here find ourselves compelled to respond to your saying the same thing over and over in a vain effort to merely stem the tide of all your keyboard pounding. Greg L ( talk) 01:09, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
FWIW, I prefer "to readers familiar...". It assumes readers have a flying clue what they are reading up on rather than pandering to the MTV crowd with the attention span of a lab rat on meth. It should be “ Boutros Boutros-Ghali”, not “ Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egyptian dude)”. Reading the above, I can’t tell who wants what and would need an NSA supercomputer running an artificial intelligence algorithm to go through it all. But if what I’m advocating happens to also be what B2C wants, ♬♩I win. ♬♩ :-)) Greg L ( talk) 23:13, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Kotniski is so frustrated by what I refer to as Status quo stonewalling demonstrated here that he's announced he's taking a long break away from WP. I, for one, hope he changes his mind. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:31, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
As to the RfC, see #RFC_on_Recognizability_guideline_wording, which was started while there was an ongoing discussion in the previous section (another stonewalling tactic), so you should read that too. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:02, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Long-time listener, first-time caller.... I've stalked this debate for well over a month now without weighing in. In short, I support both the "to readers familiar..." language and the reasoning behind it as expressed by so many on this page. As for the process, uff, what a mess. Sometimes I wish that WP were edited anonymously.... Dohn joe ( talk) 00:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Kwami's claim has been that he can't see consensus in favor of either "faction" (his word) here, but he has repeatedly refused to engage in discussions with Kotniski or me about that finding. My argument has been to list all those who favored the wording, and assert that none opposed it with any substantive argument. A reasonable response to that would be to dispute those on my list, or to dispute the assertion by finding a substantive argument made in opposition to the change and listing those who support it. But he never did anything beyond repeating his claim that there was "no consensus". Very disappointing. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:22, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Why are some music artists listed with their nicknames, while others are listed with their real name? What is the standard naming? See Ivan Shopov and Federico Ágreda, versus Gridlok and Deadmau5, for example. I propose Shopov and Agreda to be moved to their nicknames. Also, Xample could be moved to Loadstar (group) to include his partner Lomax. They're more notable together than alone. Gravitoweak ( talk) 12:43, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Hi all, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Amphibians_and_Reptiles#Article_naming_guidelines_redux. Please read carefully between options one and two. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 20:59, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Yesterday when I mistakenly thought things had settled down, I made the following edit changing:
to this:
The point was to clarify that the meaning of ambiguous here is relative to other uses in Wikipedia, as clearly stated at WP:D: "ambiguous—when it refers to more than one topic covered by Wikipedia articles."
However, this edit was reverted. I'm discussing this already with the editor that reverted that edit at User_talk:Ohconfucius#WP:TITLE_revert, but I'm curious what others think about this.
Actually, I'm now realizing that even B is misleading since it ignores use of ambiguous names on articles about primary topics (e.g., Paris), which of course is very common. So maybe it should say this:
What do you think? A? B? C? Or ??? Thanks! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:26, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, of course edits of text being discussed in an RFC should not be allowed. But the text I edited was not being discussed.
The text being discussed (not part of an RFC, by the way - there was one started about it last month, but it has expired) is the familiarity phrase in the Recognizability clause under WP:CRITERIA. The text at issue in this section is part of WP:COMMONNAME, and doesn't have anything to do with the familiarity phrase of Recognizability that has been at issue since Dec 21.
So, do you have an objection to the COMMONNAME edit itself? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:34, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
B2C I think you need to read the previous section on this issue ( Wikipedia talk:Article_titles/Archive 34#Ambiguous or inaccurate) as it highlights several additional misunderstandings about what this sentence can be understood to mean. -- PBS ( talk) 03:57, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I've had this happen several times that people ignore this policy and cite the guidelines of WP:NC(UE), WP:MOS-JA and WP:NC(VG) (the latter of which spells out it is subordinate to this policy in the lead) as trumping concerns, specifically of WP:COMMONNAME when usually 2 names are common, but neither one can be clearly shown to have a "consensus" among RSes and a 3rd choice is chosen by default mostly because of macron use in MOS-JA stating that since neither one can be shown to be the "most common", we can't use either one.∞ 陣 内 Jinnai 18:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
The WP:RM list presents daily surprises: one live RM is Indigenous inhabitant. At least one editor, AjaxSmack, opposes the move to a less misleading title for our readers—I take it s/he is basing the argument on this occupation-zone mentality of primary topic. We are seeing more and more objection to the extreme cases of vague and misleading titles this unfortunate principle has been spawning; not only this, many people wonder why it's first-come first-served to allocate a (privileged) unmarked title, which too often turns out to be orders of magnitude less notable or well-known among English-speakers than other topics of the same name.
Ironically, some editors are attempting to both (i) change the rules to allow more capitalisation in titles, and (ii) retain the unconstrained primary topic principle. This is causing huge problems; take, for example, articles that beckon the reader as a generic topic but turn out to be on a proprietary product or service, or vice versa, seem to have a foot in both camps, and the angle of the text (often not just the opening) has to be recast before we can decide whether the title should be in title or sentence case (Dicklyon has kindly put in the hard yards in this respect for a number of articles in which there's dissonance between the case of the title and the theme of the article).
At the very least, the notion of primary topic needs to be tempered in certain situations (not that this list below would have fixed the ludicrous Indigenous inhabitants, but it would be a start):
Tony (talk) 11:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Of course we could leave the issue open to subjective judgement on a case-by-case basis, but to what end, and what cost? In theory, we could just delete all the naming policies and guidelines, and name all articles based on case-by-case consensus of whatever everyone who happens to be participating thinks is best. But we recognize the chaos and consernation and never-ending dispute that would cause, so instead of we agree on rules policies and conventions by which we decide titles. That doesn't mean everything about titles is pre-ordained; much is still left to case-by-case subjective judgment. But, in general, we try to cut down on that where it's reasonably possible. And that's why the community decided to use a narrow interpretation of "ambiguity" in deciding when titles needed to be adjusted for ambiguity.
The determination of whether there are any other uses on WP of a given name is objective. So basing decisions on this specific question cuts down on a lot of disagreement and consternation. In contrast, determining "ambiguity" based on whether there are any other uses of the name on or outside of WP, past, present or future, is way more subjective, and, I suggest, much less clear than whether a given piece of material is "pornography".
Deciding titles like that would without question lead to many more arguments, and for what? So that titles could be more descriptive? Do users even look at titles enough for that matter at all, much less enough to justify the greater cost? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:54, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
P.S. Although inter-editor conflict is seldom fun, this is what makes Wikipedia so terribly valuable in my life and interesting: learning. As an American, I had no flying clue as recently as a month ago what “Collins Street” meant. People often ask, “How the hell do you know that ?!?” If I say “If you edit on Wikipedia, you learn a lot,” my wife—if she is present—rolls her eyes in that “what a waste of time”-manner. So I just shrug my shoulders now.
Greg L (
talk)
17:17, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
At the moment, we have multiple discussions going on at the same time... all relating in one way or another to the issue of ambiguity and disambiguation. There are so many proposals and changes being discussed simultaneously that I no longer can keep track of what is being proposed. It is all getting muddled together in my mind, to the point where I am experiencing "proposal overload"... and when that happens my instinctive reaction is to shut down and oppose everything, no matter what it is. I think others are experiencing the same. Can someone summarize the various issues and proposals?
On that note... I am curious as to why the topic of ambiguity and disambiguation is suddenly such a hot topic. Was there a particular incident or move decision that sparked this flurry of proposals off? There seems to be a common thread of concern about ambiguity running through all of the proposed changes... so I think there is a macro-issue for us to discuss here. But, every time I think I have identified exactly what that macro-issue might actually be, we get sidetracked by narrower sub-issues and the macro-issue gets lost in all the noise. So... is there a macro-issue? Blueboar ( talk) 17:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I know of only two active proposals... Greg's poll which is winding down, and #Clarifying ambiguity about the WP:COMMONNAME edit I made the other day which got reverted.
I believe the reason that ambiguity/disambiguation is so active lately is because of a certain small number of editors that has been very active in trying to get both policy/guidelines and specific titles changes in favor of adding more description than necessary to disambiguate from other uses to our titles.
Several of us have repeatedly tried to pin them down to make a specific coherent proposal explaining what exactly they would like to see, but I have yet to see one. Kotniski was so exasperated by their behavior that he has taken an indefinite break because of them. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:12, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Above, I used adding more description than necessary to disambiguate from other uses. But that is kind of unwieldy. Probably unnecessary disambiguation is best. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:57, 26 January 2012 (UTC) struck out error -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:30, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Mike, I don't understand how we can best serve readers with respect to naming our articles so that they can get to the ones they are seeking as quickly and efficiently as reasonably possible, without "guessing" at least to some extent about what they're thinking (though I wouldn't call looking at ghits, page view counts and other evidence as "guessing"). Help us understand what you're saying in practical terms by way of example. The word "Obama" is ambiguous (see Obama (disambiguation). Do you believe that Obama should continue to redirect to Barack Obama as it currently does, or that the dab page should be moved to Obama, or what? Why? Thanks! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:12, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
WP:NCROY uses pre-emptive disambiguation . Is this a neutral term? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:34, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
Mike Cline you wrote above "naturalness ... serve[s] no useful or meaningful purpose when it comes to WP titles...." We use naturalness so that we have the name Tony Blair rather than Blair, Tony etc (See my posting above on 23:12, 30 December 2011 for more details). -- PBS ( talk) 03:57, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Mike you write when talking about naturalness "(that meets the obscurely worded recognizability criteria)", yet further up the page you wrote "I firmly believe that ... recognizability serve[s] no useful or meaningful purpose when it comes to WP titles". -- PBS ( talk) 22:29, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
A comment appropriate for the users talk page |
---|
>== Some advise to B2C == Born2cycle, I’ve directed the attention of some of my wikifriends in the past to this, and I’ll share it now with you so that you might learn about how to achieve your ends in life. It is as follows:
A philosophy I hold dearly I suggest you think about how that philosophy applies to how you endeavor to achieve what you think is “right” here on this talk page. Greg L ( talk) 22:03, 26 January 2012 (UTC) |
This matter, now it is almost resolved, has become an ArbCom case; since I have, unavoidably, quoted some language here, editors may wish to consult Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Article_titles.2FMOS, even if they have no interest in sanctions. JCScaliger ( talk) 00:41, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I would like to see capitalization of articles "officially" changed for beauty & simplification. Let's capitalize every word of an article title, no matter what part of speech it is. This makes it easy to go directly to a subject without being redirected, or failing to find the subject at all.
It is utterly abhorrent to my eye to see miniscule leading letters in what is supposed to be an "Article Title!", especially when that word is a conjunction or preposition.
I know the current rules point to "The Chicago Manual Of Style" (WHICH USES ALL CAPS IN ITS OWN TITLE) and/or "A Dictionary Of Modern English Usage". But I don't care about them, they aren't authoritative to me, I did not grant them consent to rule my wiki, did you? I never even heard of those 2 books until a bot uncapitalized the word "Pit" in Conversation pit, which I recently created as "Conversation Pit". Trying to correct that ugliness led me here. Even if we choose to follow these manuals generally, let's ignore their awful rules on titles. Wikipedia is made for viewing on machine, not print, and leading caps for every word is much easier to read in any medium, but especially the screen. Shouldn't wikipedia have its own style manual that serves us & our needs anyway? Isn't the wikipedia supposed to be written in American, not English? We still have homonyms & irregular verbs in our language for crying out loud, so why should we use musty old print style guides anyway, when our language has not even been formalized yet?
Does anyone else agree (about caps for each word in an article title)? Can we get consensus? Does my plea need to go someplace else? Ace Frahm ( talk) 22:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
{{ edit protected}} This article refers to Swimming as a gerund title, but since 2009 that has been a disambiguation page. That makes it an awkward example of a good gerund title. Request changing the reference to Swimming to Human swimming, until someone identifies a better example of a gerund title. – Pnm ( talk) 21:41, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
{{ edit protected}} The community’s views as gauged by #Poll, above show a clear and consistent desire for the changes denoted in Ver. 1. ArbCom (noted above) is looking into editor behavior that made it difficult for a month to discern the community consensus (“long-term disruptive editing” according to the petitioner, Admin SarekOfVulcan). And as Arb Casliber wrote, “We'd review conduct.” ArbCom won’t be looking at whether the community consensus should be second guessed so there seems to be nothing standing in the way of honoring the community’s wishes in this regard. Greg L ( talk) 05:26, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
And we could consider a fourth option. And a twentieth. Note however, that the rules of the poll (the very first first “A” one in fact) specifically allowed editors to participate in the poll with a comment that they thought there should be some other option than just the two provided; it asked only that they not introduce other options to consider into the poll so as to not complicate matters. There was a notable absence in that poll of those who were apparently in the minority. Human nature being what it is, it is reasonable to suspect that these editors stayed away rather than go on record that they were part of an extreme minority responsible for the month-long deadlock via tactics like digging in their heels to frustrate progress.
Despite the open invitation to participants to mention that there should be other options considered and that the provided options insufficiently captured the nucleus of the dispute, only one editor, SarekOfVulcan, expressed anything other than complete support for the basic principle embodied by Option #1 when he wrote while I'm not sure I agree with all the changes on that page, if we're just going with the above choices. The rest were rather clear that they agreed with the essential meaning and objective of the text in Option #1. A fair reading of the totality of the comments there would lead a reasonable person to conclude that the community strongly embraces the principle embodied in Option #1. And remember, WP:Consensus is defined not merely by mere nose count, but by considering the common message and voice of the accompanying reasoning.
I mention this not to further advocate for getting the community consensus implemented before ArbCom concludes its proceedings looking into the editor conduct that frustrated progress here for so long (see my below response to Mike Cline), but to instead articulate that it frankly seems unseemly to suggest that a clear-as-glass consensus on what the community wants should be obfuscated by suggestions that since other options (the possibilities are astronomical) could theoretically have been considered, that somehow means those options should first be discussed before honoring the clearly-stated community consensus.
I’m sorry if you felt all along that there should be another option, but the community’s wishes are clearly not in alignment with yours. And I’m sorry if you might feel put off by my disagreeing with you, but I thought I would respond to what I think is *bad* speech with *better* speech and state that I have a healthy respect on Wikipedia for honoring community consensus since embracing that principle cuts down on wikilawyering , stonewalling, and tendentiousness—not to say that you exhibited any such things.
But if you had read the rules, and understood them, you should have jumped at the opportunity to participate in the poll, and had your voice heard to possibly influence others—even if your comment was to opine that there should be a third option considered. I feel that you forfeited your right to complain about the poll and its outcome after declining your opportunity to participate.
And by “complain,” that includes cleverly suggesting with a rhetorical question that maybe a third option (yours, perhaps?) could be considered instead of honoring an exceedingly clear and lopsided community consensus. Greg L ( talk) 21:25, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
It's not that simple folks. In this particular case Kotniski made a change on August 17, 2010 without discussion, but which had consensus support (as has been verified at #Poll: as well as in the commentary from December), while the change made in May 2011 did have a discussion, but was never-the-less not supported by consensus once it was brought to their attention. I believe that's because the goal of the change in May was simplification of the wording, and no one noticed that the result was a significant change in meaning.
Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. BRD works when followed, but that includes the D part. If there is a real objection to a change, then go ahead and revert it, but then discuss it (presuming the bold editor seeks discussion/explanation of the edit and revert). I mean, if the reverter can't come up with a substantive reason to object to the change, while the bold editor can explain why the change is supported by consensus, why should it not be accepted? And that's what happened here last month. My edit was accompanied by a simultaneous explanation (as recommended by BRD), but those reverting refused to engage in substantive discussion about it. All they did was disruptively wave the "there must be discussion first" flag, without actually discussing. This point is fully explicated at User:Born2cycle/Status quo stonewalling. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:51, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Let’s talk about this philosophy you lectured to us about: I have always found it difficult to believe (and accept) that a handful of editors that agree on a position, reflects Community consensus when the community of active editors is ~136,000. Uhm… please accept it. To help you do so, I encourage you to read up on our exceedingly pithy Five Pillars, which is equivalent to Wikipedia’s Constitution, and WP:Consensus. You won’t find anything suggesting that a notable and high-visibility poll participated by a wide range of experienced editors that resulted in a 17:0 tally where there was uncanny commonality of opinion can’t reflect a community consensus because there are approximately 136,000 editors active on Wikipedia. Actually, given that there are a total of 47,742,261 registered users, your theory would suggest that it is impossible to ever discern a community consensus.
Please do advise when you find a policy page regarding how a consensus is arrived at on Wikipedia that backs up your novel views on the concept. You might also direct our attention to any policy page on Wikipedia suggesting that ArbCom’s proper response to disruptive editing would be to lock down a guideline page for an entire year. Since the odds of that last suggestion actually occurring is a number so close to zero that not even God can tell the difference, I don’t really need to belabor the point. Greg L ( talk) 19:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Mike Cline remarks that this page doesn't have the stability of traffic laws. No more it does; that's because it's not legislation; it's an effort to reach a consensus description of actual policy, which is what editors actually do when they think about it.
According to
the policy guideline page: "When a track is not strictly a
song (in other words a composition without lyrics, or an instrumental that is not a cover of a song), disambiguation should be done using "(composition)" or "(instrumental)"." This is a request for an admin to complete the move of
Tequila (song) to Tequila (instrumental).
Hearfourmewesique (
talk)
20:07, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
There are two parallel discussions of this topic, at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (music)#Songs and Instrumentals (now closed for new discussion, but containing a number of pertinent posts not otherwise duplicated) and at Talk:Tequila (song)#Requested move. Please post any further comments at the "Tequila (song)" talkpage rather than here. Thanks. Milkunderwood ( talk) 03:57, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Of all the Babel in our WP:Title policy, it seems to me that Commonname is the most desirable, and unequivocal element of the policy. In my view, it is actually the underpinning of two of the listed criteria—naturalness and recognizability. Those so called title criteria are merely rationale for commonname and should be thought about as such. In essence, the common name aspect of our title policy could be stated concisely in these two statements:
Then when someone asked Why?, the answers might reasonably be all the babel we now associate with naturalness and recognizability. All that rationale is actually irrelevant if someone already accepts the policy as being Common Name. All that babel could merely be relegated to an essay for anyone who wants to know the rationale behind common name. I suspect there is overwhelming and wide community consensus that Commonname is the dominate and preferred title policy for WP, so why don’t we just be clear about it?
After common name we still have to deal with ambiguity, conciseness, neutrality and style, but that’s a different discussion. But in the larger scheme of WP, commonname is the dominate WP policy on titles. Once a common name is agreed upon, the questions of ambiguity, conciseness and style are much easier to answer. The challenge for us then is how best to interpret and apply that concisely stated policy in a reasonably consistent manner. Here are some thoughts about that:
There may be other scenarios, but these are the most encountered. Also, I think each demands slightly different thinking to get to the correct common name.
The above ideas comes from the realization that the WP editor corps is growing with editors from or with cultural connections to non-English speaking countries, who speak and read English and desire to contribute to English WP on subjects originating in their native countries. Currently, I don’t think our Common Name methodology recognizes and accommodates this well enough. In the aftermath of a contentious RM, an editor wrote this (sanitized because the specific case is irrelevant): The common name in the English language is the [XXXXXXXX], it is referred to almost exclusively in [Country Y] as the [YYYYYYYYYY]. When you see the name [YYYYYYYYY] in the [English language] literature, if you care to look closer almost always the reference work will be a History of Y. [conclusion, those sources shouldn’t count because they weren’t reflecting an English speaking countries view of the subject] What I took away from that was that this editor either misunderstood , or didn’t accept common name as being derived from coverage in English language sources, not English language sources from English speaking countries.
I really believe that if we could begin simplifying WP:Title along these lines, we could eliminate a lot of misunderstanding and contentiousness that occurs in RMs. If we can do it with Common Name (a title policy that has wide community consensus), then it will make simplifying and clarifying the remaining issues—ambiguity, conciseness, neutrality and style—much easier. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 18:45, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Actually, thinking about this more... I can identify some black and white "rules"... they include:
With these "rules" laid out, I would then set out a "GUIDANCE" section that would contain the bulk of the current page, and point to the various project specific conventions. Blueboar ( talk) 21:27, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Considering it's a Wikipedia policy, WP:COMMONNAME is surprisingly imprecise. The WP article Common name is only about taxa or organisms in contrast to scientific names — WP:COMMONNAME's reference is much wider.
The nearest the policy gets to a definition is to say: "The most common name for a subject, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources . . . [however] . . . ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject . . . are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources."
This is not over helpful, so most editors will turn to the examples. These are of completely different types:
So according to the policy, common names include initials and nicknames, stage names and traditional names, short official names, non-binomial and non-chemical names, and English (rather than foreign language) names.
Of course we have many, many article titles that don't conform to this policy. For example, the norm for biographies is to use a short form of the official name, not the nickname, except in special cases. Using initials is rare. Stage names are sometimes used, sometimes not etc etc.
IMO the policy needs to be completely rewritten. The new version should give a basic and robust definition of 'common name', and explain the different types and make recommendations about how they should be used.
I'd be grateful for opinions about the general problems of this policy as it now stands. It would be interesting to know what level of inertia/resistance there is to overhauling it! (Specific proposals can come later if there is a consensus for change.) Thank you for reading this. -- Klein zach 01:20, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Written down or not, the predominate principle governing the titling of the vast majority of WP articles is to use the name most commonly used in reliable sources to refer to the article's topic. There are exceptions, of course, but they primarily come into play only when this main principle cannot apply for some reason. That's what WP:COMMONNAME is supposed to convey. The rest of WP:TITLE (and WP:D, plus the individual specific naming convention guidelines like WP:NC-TV), is for the exceptions. At least that's how I see it. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:28, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree in general but would say it slightly differently: "We use titles to identify the name most commonly used to refer the respective article topic, and to distinguish one topic from another, without necessarily giving any indication of the meaning."
While the title should be recognized as a reference to the article topic by someone familiar with the topic, for the uninitiated, it is the purpose of the article lead, not the article title, to identify the topic of the article.
An excellent list of reasons for doing it this way, from over a dozen different experienced editors, is available in the poll just above. If you disagree, please address each of those arguments/points in favor of doing it this way. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
When I started this discussion, I hoped it wouldn't go in this direction. We can all take our favourite positions on this side of the fence or the other. It's easy to repeat the arguments. The problem is that there is no 'fence' — no properly drafted policy for anyone to reference, either for or against. This is why we need a rigorous process focused on drafting rather than arguing.-- Klein zach 01:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I propose dividing the present text (unchanged) into sub-sections. Would that be acceptable to everybody? -- Klein zach 01:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I was surprised to see an editor say, in a move request response: "To the best of my knowledge, article names don't have to describe the subject accurately."
It's true that "accuracy" is not specifically listed as a criterion here. But it seems obvious to me that inaccurate titles would be inappropriate. Sometimes, a loss of accuracy may be necessary to achieve other goals (like conciseness or recognizability), but surely having accurate titles is something toward which we should strive?
-- Powers T 19:04, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Accuracy is not mentioned as a question; but it is mentioned: 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.
It is not mentioned more strongly, as I see it, for two reasons:
I thought that since a number of editors who have normally shied away from WT:AT (Disfunction Junction) have recently joined in to voice their opinion, now is the time to strike while the iron is hot.
Since bad habits have developed that subvert the collegial atmosphere, I’ll establish some ground rules that everyone must abide by in order to participate in this poll. If someone objects to the rules for participating in this poll and chooses to not be bound by them, they are welcome to start their own poll.
The question is simple:
1) Do you support This version of the WP:AT, which bears this edit summary: 23:56, 23 January 2012 JCScaliger (talk | contribs) (40,869 bytes) (Resatore text to Dec 21, before Noetica's continual revert war for a non-consensus text. Boldness requires novel texts and discussion.)
…which seems to be centered around this key bit of text:
• Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#1 (to someone familiar)”; or
2) Do you support This version of WP:AT, which bears this edit summary: 00:01, 24 January 2012 Kwamikagami (talk | contribs) (40,913 bytes) (Undid revision 472889901 by JCScaliger (talk) Get someone to resolve this rather than edit warring)
…which seems to be centered around this key bit of text:
• Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#2 (not necessarily familiar)”.
The ground rules:
A) This is an up or down !vote; you are free to voice that you think the issue should be something else, but your vote may not further complicate matters by introducing a third (and fourth and fifth) option via such votes as • Comment This isn’t the real issue. The text we should *really* be discussing (because I like it a great deal) is…. If you participate here, it is to merely vote for one of the above options. If you find that to be a less-than-satisfactory question, please don’t respond to it.
B) You may have a total of 300 words, excluding your autosignature, in the “Poll” section. You may blow it all on your !vote, or you may spread your words around to directly respond to other editors’ !votes in the polling section. Discussion and debate belongs in the following subsections.
C) I will moderate the closure. That doesn’t mean I will “decide” anything; “consensus”, as clearly and fairly established at WP:Consensus rules all. It means only that towards the end of this, I might motion that the poll be considered indeterminate, or that it ought to be snowballed, or to opine that an 80% quorum of those who have previously weighed in makes a consensus clear, or… whatever. But there will be no jumping the gun by the regular partisans.
D) If anyone who has previously weighed in with an opinion on this exact issue is contacted to let them know about this poll, everyone who has done so must be contacted; no cherry-picking, which in this case would be canvassing.
E) I may add new ground rules within the common sense framework of trying to accomplish a poll without disruption to adapt to new circumstances, stonewalling, tendentiousness, wikilawyering, and all-around exhibiting a non-collegial interaction with others.
Greg L (
talk)
19:37, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
We already support exceptions in specific areas with specific naming guidelines like WP:NC:CITY, and occasional special-case exceptions with WP:IAR, but to endorse regularly adding additional precision to titles of articles because their names are not recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, or because they might appear to be ambiguous with uses outside of WP, opens an enormous quagmire that would make deciding titles even more contentious than it already is.
With #2, in cases where we agree on common name and primary topic and the title is therefore straightforward, there could still be contention on the issues of whether additional precision is needed to be make the title more recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, and, if so, what exactly that additional precision should be. To what end? It's simply not worth it. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:51, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
The result was that there is overwhelming community consensus in support of this version of the WP:AT, which bears this edit summary: 23:56, 23 January 2012 JCScaliger (talk | contribs) (40,869 bytes) (Resatore text to Dec 21, before Noetica's continual revert war for a non-consensus text. Boldness requires novel texts and discussion.)
A reading of the comments reveals a very like-minded community reasoning as regards keeping article titles streamlined with minimal parenthetical or comma-separated disambiguation. The details of the basic principle should no‑doubt be expanded upon and illustrated with example proscribed and prescribed titles. Editors who have been active in these debates over the last month now understand—for the most part, anyway—the core issue, but new editors coming to WP:AT for guidance when creating a new article could benefit with some “show me” examples of what the verbiage means.
Editors active in this area should be mindful to study the reasoning given by the various respondents to this poll and endeavor to work collaboratively towards the spirit of the common view.
How to move forward from here?
I motion as follows:
Those who would like to second the motion may do so here. Greg L ( talk) 20:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
A similar situation now exists regarding what should be even less controversial at WP:COMMONNAME (see #Clarifying ambiguity). I don't want admins locking pages; I want them to recognize disruptive status quo stonewalling for what it is, and act accordingly.
Take out #2, or, better yet, replace it with a request that admins do what I just asked, and I'll second. Thanks. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:44, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Note that in #2, I asked the administrator to “strongly consider”; I rather suspect the administrator has mostly made up his or her mind whichever way to go already. Hissy fits about other editors’ behavior are unlikely to impress an administrator that a collegial collaborative writing environment is at hand. You might best take your huge *win* and not agitate so vigorously. Your current demands are rather like the prisoner in his jail cell strumming his drinking cup along the bars of his cell at midnight, shouting “Unlock the door! I won’t get into fights if butt-heads aren’t mean to me!” : it’s not a convincing message in its totality.
If I were you, I’d intently read “ Some advise to B2C,” below. Greg L ( talk) 22:05, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I support #2, but I don't agree with #1, because this poll's limited polarizing viewpoint has not yet allowed us to have the discussion to find the version best supported by the community.
Dicklyon (
talk)
00:16, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I can't support this yet, because I have no idea how it should be interpreted. Can someone tell me what familiarity is in relation to Latin Quarter? Tony (talk) 03:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
To one familiar with the Latin Quarter of Copenhagen, Latin Quarter might be enough, I suppose. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:18, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
It would appear that this is the crux of the problem. If familiarity is not defined, then we could have endless edit wars over the appropriate level of familiarity. Take large cell tumour, for example. In introductory medical texts, they hyphenate. For the general public, it would be best to hyphenate as well. Otherwise, it sounds like it's a large tomour. (Which would you rather have, a large cell tumor or a small cell tumor ?) However, the phrase is almost always left unhyphenated in medical journals. I don't think dab'ing would cover this, because large tumor is not a topic. I can see the AT wording proposed here being used to insist that the unhyphenated form be used, because that's what those "familiar" with the topic use, despite the inevitable confusion that will cause among those whose only familiarity with the disease is that a friend or loved one has it. — kwami ( talk) 04:19, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Can we please drop the metaphors of fighting for territory and of covert action; Dicklyon's edit above seems to be the first use of one of these, but "subvert/subversion" have been used three times now, and are beginning to creep into the common discussion. We are not conducting a war; if Dicklyon and Noetica are, they should seriously consider a unilateral suspension of hostilities. We are all supposed to be on the side of a better and clearer encyclopedia; that's policy.
These three allies are the only people I know who use this vocabulary regularly. I do not care for such a subculture. Please stop.
I do not know that Born2Cycle "cheated"; if he did, this is not the venue to discuss it - any more than it is the venue to discuss Noetica's career of exact reversions. This is not about power; really it isn't. It's about the encyclopedia. I do know that I disagree with the bloviated titles that were the protocatarctical cause of this poll; I do know that I support the language of familiarity (although, once this discussion is over, I would still support making it into a separate section). Many do likewise. JCScaliger ( talk) 20:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. Thank you to Eraserhead1 for pointing out WP:BATTLEGROUND, which I was not familiar with, but which does describe the situation. I used the territory metaphor to try to get B2C to understand how he comes across, but I'm sure it was a waste of bytes. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:11, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Editors, could I seek advice on these two google searches, in which not even the displayed opening of the lead under the hit-title helps to define the topic. These are just from an idle, random search:
Tony (talk) 08:11, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Well? Talk already! What are you waiting for? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:26, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
If a title is recognizable to someone familar with a subject then it must be unrecognizable to someone who is unfamilar with the subject. So given the fact that we have 3.9M articles and (who really knows) an average reader might be familar with 5000 subjects, then from that readers perspective, we have slightly less than 3.9M unrecognizable titles. This word recognizability to which we are assigning responsibility to millions of readers who we purport, speculate, conjecture, guess (or whatever other completely unsupportable with empirical evidence) verb we can use are going to react to any given title is the height of absurdity. You all can't even explain it to yourselves and yet you think 1000s of editors will immediately understand what you mean. Whatever wording follows this non-word recognizability will be meaningless in the larger WP community and be the source of endless, non-productive debate. It would be incredibly simpler if we just assigned a simple responsibility to the title itself: A WP title should faithfully represent the content of the article. When I was working in Europe in the 1980s, I would ask Germans that I met and worked with the following question: Have you ever seen the United States?, a great many would answer Yes, we have, my wife and I have been to Miami several times. They were no more familar with the U.S. than an illiterate worker in the Far East. We have got to stop trying to deduce how millions of readers are going to react to a title, and put the responsibility on the actual title itself--Title vs Content, title vs ambiguity, title vs MOS, etc. Funny stuff above. Off the grid for a while in the real-world of readers who must be familar with something. I'll ask a few if they've ever seen an unrecognizable WP title- you know those big bold, black letters at the top of every article. They are hard to recognize sometimes when I just wake up and haven't had that first cup of coffee. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 10:56, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Note that before 11 May 2011, ( ∆ edit, here), the key passage used to read as follows:
* Recognizability – 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. One important aspect of this is the use of names most frequently used by English-language reliable sources to refer to the subject.
Elaboration like this may certainly be added later. Furthermore, we are free (and I welcome doing so) to add examples (or more examples) of prescribed and proscribed example titles into later, explanatory sections of WP:AT—like It is United States, not United States (North-American country).
However, now is not the time to work on such details. The purpose of the above poll is to establish what the community consensus is on the core issue and move on from there. Things are moving along splendidly; the community clearly welcomes the opportunity to put this one to bed and do so without fuss.
Along with the basic principle in bold that each poll response begins with, is the accompanying reasoning and views of that editor. Many of us tend to admire our own reasoning expressed in our poll responses, but we must respect and understand the reasoning of all the others in the poll in order that clarification, elaboration, and prescribed/proscribed examples can later be added. Greg L ( talk) 13:14, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
So, if there is a problem, then you're the only one who sees it, and you're going to have to explain it in a way that the rest of us can understand. Or, as Denzel put it (at 4:40-4:50), "Explain this to me like I'm a 2-year-old because there's an element to this thing that I just can't get through my thick head." And if you can't explain it to us like we're 2-year-olds, well, that's telling too. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:36, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
But, as I first wrote at the start of this thread, we can add examples later. The community seems to be happy as a clam with getting the basic principle established after a month of gridlock. And we can actually read the !vote comments here to better understand the community’s thoughts before endeavoring to elaborate on the basic principle and to add example titles. Greg L ( talk) 20:51, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
In the same spirit that
this question about the 'Common names policy' was publicized, I would like to request informed opinions on the
appropriateness of
WP:MUSICSERIES on the
music naming conventions page. Thank you,
MistyMorn (
talk)
00:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Original wording of request was: In the same spirit that this question about the 'Common names policy' was publicized, I would like to request informed opinions on the appropriateness or otherwise of WP:MUSICSERIES? I feel that this new classical music titling guideline, which strongly prioritizes 'consistency and (more arguably) 'precision', was pushed through on the basis of local consensus without allowing time and space for consensus in the broader Wikipedia community. I have raised my concerns on the music naming conventions page, and really would be more than happy to withdraw from the fray if the discussion there is expanded to take in a wider range of informed 'consumer' feedback. Thank you
WP:NCM had sections on common names and on disambiguated names all along. Don't these two sections cover everything? This new section throws away our usual naming criteria of common name, naturalness, and recognizability and substitutes an indexing system. As far as organizing CDs goes, we could create a "Classical Music by Number" article or category. This article can be used as a model. Kauffner ( talk) 05:06, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
In my opinion, typing “Moonlight Sonata” into the search field and being taken to Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven) is a satisfactory balance of the test criteria I consider germane to determining proper titles, which are as follows:
I’m not seeing a problem with
Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven) since it is a redirect from a common name wherein the redirect is encyclopedic, adheres to standard music convention, and in this particular instance, astonishes no one.
Greg L (
talk)
17:02, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
P.S. JCScaliger’s Is this still about
Moonlight Sonata? is a valid and crucial question that highlights a chronic problem around here. Whether or not this particular case is about “Moonlight Sonata”, it is still true that far too often, editors talk in the
wholesome-sounding abstract and no one can figure out what they’re driving at and what their real objective is. We all end up talking cross‑purpose, completely waste our time, and outsiders who aren’t up to speed on the minute-by-minute blow-by-blow between disputants have no flying idea what the real nugget of the issue is about. This being evasive and abstruse deprives us of greater community input and makes it nearly impossible to discern a consensus. Man up and explain what you’re really trying to accomplish with some specific examples, please.
Greg L (
talk)
17:16, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
I fully agree that when establishing a set of guidelines, it's important to take the time to consider examples and possible issues arising. I've invited comment on a series of examples that I think are broadly similar to Eine Kleine to help explore how the recent changes to WP:MUSICSERIES function in slightly different contexts. The named Vaughan Williams symphonies may be relatively uncontroversial. Apart from one possible exception, they don't really touch on the controversy regarding cases—of which Moonlight is just one—where the common name is also a nickname. MistyMorn ( talk) 13:09, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
By the way, while I don’t know diddly about music notation, I do know my Beethoven Symphony No. 6. For decades, my favorite part has been the 1st Movement- Allegro Ma Non Troppo and I am especially fond of the part roughly 1:22 from the end of the movement; I think it is pure genius.
FYI, I also tried Pastoral (symphony) and Pastoral symphony, since the parenthetical form for adding specificity is an exceedingly common wiki-convention. But that didn’t work either. Having it be “ Pastoral Symphony” seemed a bit out of the blue (no parenthesis). It’s easy to add more redirects.
The issue I think we are arguing about here is what is the best primary title to use for this song. And towards that end, my main message point is that WP:Article titles would best convey the fundamental principles covering article titles and should let the specialists in any field apply those principles as they see fit. I propose fundamental principles:
The music specialists (and the physics specialists and the computer programming experts, etc.) would simply take these general principles and apply them as they see fit in their specialty. Greg L ( talk) 19:42, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Oh, gosh - this the fourth parallel discussion of this topic that I've now found so far. See
Are there more I haven't found yet? Milkunderwood ( talk) 22:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Our previous discussions (starting with Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 34#Clarification of recognizability lost) and polls ( Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 34#RFC on Recognizability guideline wording, WT:AT#Recognizability wording Poll/RFC, and WT:AT#Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus) left us with insufficient information about what people really intend with respect to the venerable recognizability provision in TITLE. Now that things have quieted down, I'd like to try this alternative framing, so that the people who supported the "familar with" wording, and others, can clarify whether they intended by that to support what Born2cycle and Kotniski seem to be trying to change the recognizability provision into; or not. I expect some will support option 1 here, and some will not, which will give us more information.
Some history of the evolution of recognizability can be found at User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?; feel free to follow up and find more history if it matters to you.
The choices:
These texts are intended to be suggestive of intent for what recognizability should mean, not proposals for final wording.
1) Something like this bit of text, intended to explicitly represent what I think Kotniski and Born2cycle were trying to get at in restricting recognizability to people familiar with the topic:
• Recognizability – A title is judged to be recognizable if it is the most commonly used term for a topic in reliable sources; recognizability of a title to readers who are not already familiar with the topic is not a goal, and should not be used as an argument in favor of a title.
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#1 (Post-Modern)”; or
2) Something like this bit of text, copied from
this May 2008 version of the policy, and approximately representing what was stable since 2002, representing the alternative idea that we do try to make titles recognizable to a large number of people, as a top-level consideration that must be balanced with other considerations such as conciseness:
• Recognizability – Article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity.
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#2 (Vintage)”.
3) Prefer a compromise somewhere in between these two texts; supporters of this option support the idea of discussion to find wording for a good middle road, not particularly close to either of the two extremes proposed above. Feel free to use your 300 words to elaborate. If there's an intermediate old version that you particularly like, this would be a good place to quote it or link it.
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#3 (Compromise)”.
4) None of the above, or something completely different, such as not having a recognizability provision. Please use some of your 300 words to elaborate.
…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#4 (Something different)”.
The ground rules:
A) It's a poll, not a vote. It's informational, not binding on anything. Leave positive support comments only please; you are free to support up to two options (subject to the same total comment length limit), and to voice other concerns without limit in the discussion section below the poll, but your comments may not further complicate matters by introducing additional options into the poll structure once it starts. If one of your votes is a "second choice", label it as such. If you participate here, it is to support one or two of the above options. If you find that to be a less-than-satisfactory question, please don’t respond to it. If you feel you really must support three of the options, get over it (if you register support for 3 or all 4 items, I'll remove one or all and let you know).
B) You may have a total of 300 words, excluding your autosignature, in the “Recognizability poll” section, on your own statements only. Responses to the statements of others will be removed. Discussion and debate belongs in the following discussion subsection.
C) I will moderate the closure. That doesn’t mean I will “decide” anything. I intend to keep it open long enough, to collect enough information, that others can use it to get a sense of what the feelings are here. Everyone should feel free to cite and interpret poll results.
D) Please feel free to canvass for outside opinions, but if you do so then mention in the discussion section who you have invited, so we can have an idea how wide the invitation list is.
E) I may add new ground rules within the common sense framework of trying to accomplish a poll without disruption to adapt to new circumstances.
My thanks to Greg L for his poll framework, rules, etc., which I have cobbled here. Dicklyon ( talk) 00:13, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Please leave these stubs here. Copy one or two and add your positive comments and signature.
(see the section above for descriptions of the numbered choices)
• Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?
-- PBS ( talk) 00:59, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
*This "poll" is disingenuous and disruptive. Born2cycle and Kotniski were perfectly clear about tbeir first preference: the language that stood before an accidental edit late May and the ongoing disruptions by Dicklyon and his friends: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic? PBS expressly supported this at the last poll. It is not here; certainly the garbled #1, with its prejudicial label, has very little relationship to it.
JCScaliger (
talk)
21:44, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Response to SMcCandlish:
Several people who responded to Greg's poll haven't been heard from in this one. If nobody objects, I'll invite them: Eraserhead1, Dohn Joe, SarekOfVulcan, Enric Naval, Certes, Kleinzach, CBM, Binksternet, WhatamIdoing, Franamax, MistyMorn. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:13, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
In response to 05:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC) post: That is fine, Dicklyon, if you are curious about something. Often, such edification can be accomplished by leaving a post on individuals’ talk pages. However, polls under circumstances like this, where…
…Too many people perceive that your effort to discern nuances of the community’s views by seeing what happens when “things are sliced differently” is neither helpful nor—as you say—“useful”. In short, a significant number of editors who are experienced in this issue have opined that this poll amounts to WP:REHASH, which is tendentious editing. Thus, in my opinion, it is time to accede to those concerns; I see no point to persisting at this.
I invite other editors to opine whether or not they share my views on this matter. Greg L ( talk) 16:19, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Given the latest trend of this poll after the community finally understood that “Other” encompassed the consensus view from the previous poll, and in light of the strong sentiment in the community that this poll violates WP:REHASH, it is time to WP:SNOWBALL this. I’m doing this to spare the community further disruption.
As the sponsor of the previous poll, this closure could itself seem *pointy*. Nonetheless, I don’t mind being WP:BOLD when it seems amply clear that there is exceedingly little enthusiasm for even having this poll, let alone persisting with it.
If any other editor feels this closure is unwarranted and continuing with it benefits Wikipedia, please feel free to revert me.
I must say that now that B2C has backed off, your persistence at flogging this dead horse notwithstanding that a handful of editors have now opined that this is not helpful is starting to make User:Born2cycle appear darn reasonable—even if he is loquacious beyond all comprehension.
I think I’m going to butt out of this now and see if anyone else in the community has a better way of dealing with your insistence on rehashing a settled issue. Greg L ( talk) 20:17, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
We simply can not permit further stonewalling via tactics such as avoiding high-profile efforts at consensus building and then have you claim that those who hid in the shadows actually had really really really good arguments that could only be heard during the poll if you had kneeled, fervently wished for nice sounding words, and let their silent words resonate with your spirit. Such tactics can not be rewarded with arguments that still more discussion needs to occur until either A) the holdouts get their way, or B) the heat death of the universe puts an end to this.
The above 17:0 poll (which enjoyed significant “outside” attendance) was not only terribly lopsided, but there was consistent and thoughtful commonality to the reasoning accompanying each vote. Moreover, the latest poll reveals nothing new. This is not complex and the proper response to put an end to the disfunction here is clear. That is to honor the consensus view and then get down to the business of discussing how to expand upon that consensus view (or modify it since consensus can change). Greg L ( talk) 19:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Hey, I haven't followed the long discussion on this topic, so just a quick question. If there already is a consensus for changing the wording of the criterion to "recognizable to someone familiar with the topic, although not necessarily an expert" then how come it has not been changed yet? What is holding this back? Office action, arbitration decision? TheFreeloader ( talk) 18:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Dicklyon’s clever attempt to recast the very nature of the question by slicing and dicing the issue so the previous poll’s consensus view was slapped with a diminutive “Other” option in hopes no one would notice its absence and it might be trampled like the gladiator during the chariot race in Ben Hur clearly was not a successful strategy and didn’t go at all well. So…
No, we should certainly not engage in still more debate on this issue before implementing the wording the community clearly prefers. To do otherwise would just reward tendentiousness and stonewalling. Even this God-foresaken venue will once again have to start abiding by the letter and spirit of WP:Consensus. Greg L ( talk) 00:06, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
This wasn’t my first rodeo on Wikipedia; I know how to conduct a poll. I foresaw that someone might try to claim that they couldn’t participate because the poll was an up-or-down vote on two options. So I made sure it stated right in the first rule that everyone was free to opine that the options were too limited and it should be something else. My poll was crafted to focus like a laser on consensus building, cut through the crap, pull the rug from under tendentiousness, foster a sense that outsiders could finally weigh in and be heard without being drowned out, and expose those arguments that were weak. The current holdouts forfeited because of lack of merit to their position.
Trying to now torpedo the current consensus by stating that certain people somehow didn’t have an opportunity to participate is nothing but sour grapes. In the military, it’s called “So sad – too bad.” On Wikipedia it’s called “wililawyering” which is disruptive and mustn’t be rewarded. Greg L ( talk) 00:49, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
As an outlyer who thinks this battle over the wording of a dysfunctional criteria is an utter waste of time because both versions are essentially meaningless and useless as policy, I am struggling to find a rationale for supporting one side or the other. It might be useful Greg and Dicklyon to explain why WP will go to hell if one or the other side in this debate doesn't get their way? Its like two children fighting over an ice cream cone in the heat the summer. If they fight long enough, the ice cream melts and nobody wins. Well IMHO, nobody wins in this scenario because the Ice Cream has already melted. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 01:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Hmm, that list does look quite dubious, looks to me like you are grasping at straws there. But more important, I really think it is quite objectionable if the main reason you have for not wanting this to go through is that Born2Cycle happens to support it. Arguments based on who else happens to support something must come very deep down on Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement. I think it is bad wikiquette to hold grudges like that, and I think it is POINTy to hold the whole community hostage because of a personal vendetta like that. TheFreeloader ( talk) 02:24, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
OK... I have stated that I would prefer a third option. Here is a suggestion:
This is by no means a final proposal. Think of it as an initial draft of the direction I think we should head. Please comment. Blueboar ( talk) 03:28, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
When one evaluates titling decisions and especially contested titling decisions in our RM process, it is very rare to find Recognizability or Naturalness invoked as a policy reason for a title change. So following the mantra that many of us subscribe to, that policy should follow and document practice wherever possible, I decided to think about this differently. What are the major choices we’ve made as a community relative to article titles, and what were the alternatives to those choices that we’ve essentially rejected through policy statements and practice. If we could agree on that, we might be able to agree on the most functional policy wording to convey that practice to the rest of the community. So the following list displays in my view the choices we’ve made and the alternatives we had. It is organized by priority. In other words, think of it as a policy ladder where a previous choice has precedence over and informs the following choices. I have bold faced the choices I think the community has made. I’ve intentionally left out neutrality as it requires some special thinking which can be addressed later.
So there is only one question that I seek an answer from the rest of the community. Does this list accurately reflect the choices we’ve made as a community and community practice regarding titles?-- Mike Cline ( talk) 17:29, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
I think I see why we are having difficulty agreeing on language here. I think we have a disagreement over the basic purpose of the policy. I have been focused on this from the point of view of giving instruction that applies to initial article creation - "How to come up with the best title when you are creating an article". Others are looking at it from the point of view of RM - "How to settle disputes when titles are challenged". Realistically we need a bit of both, but this difference is impacting the "tone" and word choices we are using. Blueboar ( talk) 19:45, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
This page was locked to prevent a content dispute becoming disruptive, and since then there has been discussion.
I'm not convinced this discussion has resolved. We had a totally worthy poll, in which a number of people voted for option one, and a similar number of people said that the problem was something else. Particularly in light of the discussion that has just started above, I think they are probably right. There are two areas where guidance is needed:-
The answer to 1 can be of the form "a name you think people/most people/people who might be looking/English speaking people/people familiar with the topic will recognize", because it's down to the article creator.
The answer to 2 has to create the basis for a community discussion, and since "because I think so" seldom creates much light in these discussions, would probably be better based on something that might be evidenceable eg "use in reliable sources/search engines/government publications/what it says on the tin"
Having said all that, and recognising that
... or indeed any other variation in these words, is only really saying to the article creator "do you think this is recognizable..."
So however it's worded, that criterion will pretty much always only guarantee you get the word the article creator uses for it, and it is the rest of the criteria that control whether he uses that first response.
So...is there actually any point in arguing about which set of wording is used. "What's that wet stuff off the coast of Normandy?" "C'est La Manche." Is that "a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?" "Oui." Of course it is - if the someone is a Frenchman. It's the rest of the criteria that determine that the article is English Channel, and there is a redirect from La Manche.
With this in mind, if I unlock this article and GregL makes his change, will the rest of you instantly revert him. Or will you continue the sensible discussion to disambiguate "what to call your article" from "what criteria to use when there are disputes as to article titles". Elen of the Roads ( talk) 13:42, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Note the *reasoning* in the above “this, that, or neither” poll. Most of the 17 editors there, many of whom had previously avoided this page because it wasn’t friendly and functional, exercised care to accompany their !vote with thoughtful reasoning. According to Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus-building by soliciting outside opinions : Responses indicating individual explanations of positions using Wikipedia policies and guidelines are given the highest weight when discerning a consensus. That page also says this:
In determining consensus, consider the quality of the arguments, the history of how they came about, the objections of those who disagree, and existing documentation in the project namespace. The quality of an argument is more important than whether it represents a minority or a majority view. The arguments "I just don't like it" and "I just like it" usually carry no weight whatsoever.
All that was stated within 24 hours of my edit and explanation, and no substantive reasons opposing the change were presented then (or since), which was back on December 20, 2011. That alone should have been more than enough to establish that we had consensus support for the change. But here we are almost two months later and still talking about whether it should be implemented. That fact that a few editors can employ status quo stonewalling techniques to hold a page hostage like this, for so long, contrary to consensus clearly established and re-established, is one of the reasons people leave Wikipedia [25]. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:42, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I have real life that puts food on the table and creates a financial mechanism to prevent my wife’s Visa-card balance from increasing to one Googolplex. I don’t watchlist pages and have limited time to come to WP:Article titles to see if it is unlocked or not. So it doesn’t have to be me who makes the change. Anyone may make the required edit after the unlock. It is this version of the WP:AT, dated 23:56, 23 January 2012.
From thereon, we clearly need to have genuine discussion and Five pillars‑compliant consensus building as the guideline page is further improved.
Moreover, I would greatly appreciate it if editors here didn’t call this “Greg L’s change” or “Greg L’s edit.” If anything, I would prefer it be called “the GEBDSEPCKJOCBWFM edit,” after the 16 non‑PMAnderson‑sock editors who took care to offer insightful reasoning for why they unanimously support #1 (to someone familiar). Greg L ( talk) 02:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Sometimes words like stonewalling and hostage have to be used to help others understand that that is what is going on. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I realize that B2C doesn't consider my articulated objections to be "substantive"; fortunately, my main objection—that he inserted it during an argument to further his position that recognizability to peope not already familiar with the topic is of no weight in naming considerations—has been been considerably reduced by the unanimous rejection of that interpretation by those who responded to my poll. Procedurally, it still sucks that we couldn't just reset his policy change made during an argument that it affects, then discuss and go on from there. But at least we did get some discussion of alternative approaches started. And Greg, if we name your change for those of us who "unanimously" opposed it, the acronym will be a little shorter and easier to remember. Or we just call it what it is, the Kotniski/B2C version, as facilitated by Greg L. Dicklyon ( talk) 03:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Further, after I brought the discussion to his attention [26], Ohm's Law (who had made the May 2011 edit) clearly indicated he too did not realize the significance, and verified that the goal of the edit was "simplifying what was being said" [27], not changing what was said. Again, since they changed the meaning of what was said without realizing it, that's inadvertent. And this directly supported what I surmised in my original comment: "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. ".
Much consternation would have been avoided had you read and addressed what I originally explained regarding the Dec 21 restoration of the Kotniski wording. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
But beyond that, in this case, one editor after another who did comment on the change substantively, in the first 24 hours and every week since then, favored it, and most explained why in some detail.
By the way, your poll rejected no interpretion - it showed a preference for one wording over another. Since the other wording - the one you claim is rejected - is not contradicted by the preferred wording, there is no evidence that it was rejected as an interpretation. In fact, since it's consistent with the preferred wording, there is evidence that it's supporting (not as wording for the policy, but as correct interpretation of what happens). Not to mention that the words used by many participating in the discussions since Dec 21, including Greg's poll, indicated preference for the Kotniski wording because of agreement with the interpretation you claim was rejected in your poll. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
The page is now unlocked to registered editors. The minor change in wording that has been discussed to death can be made, and I will regard a reversion as edit warring. Other changes must be discussed first. Damage to the project is caused by edit warring on policy pages, not by having policy locked to a version that might perhaps be worded slightly better.
Constructive discussion is not achieved by polarisation, and - even if article titles doesn't end up under discretionary sanctions - if I see further aggressive, polarising, personalized debating, I will not hesitate to impose blocks and start proposing topic bans. There is no reason not to discuss calmly and agree next steps - no-one has family history going back to World War I on this topic. And remember, the encyclopaedia would work just as well if the articles had no titles just IDs, so to a great extent all this argument is irrelevant. -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 10:11, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I am glad to see some movement here. The use of present tense is important when articulating goals. It has a proven track record in political, government, military, business and a myriad of social/cultural endeavors. The distinction between “Acceptable” and “Good” is more substantive and ultimately has to be a determination by a much wider WP community. I am going to introduce (probably at my peril) some thinking that I’d like everyone in this discussion to at least consider. Policy drives process that consumes energy and generates results. Regardless of endeavor or enterprise, it is the results that matter. But results always consume energy to achieve. In the case of WP, the results that matter are more content, more quality content, more editors and a much wider scope, geographically and culturally of content and participation. [28] A WP title decision as a result is just one small piece that contributes to the larger body of results. Where I think we fail as editors and “policy leaders” in trying to achieve those results, is a failure to take into count the “cost” of doing so. WP as a 100% volunteer enterprise has a unique income statement and balance sheet if you will. Our revenue is the time (hours) volunteers donate to the enterprise. Our expenses are exactly equal and immediate. We can’t bank any of our revenue because it is spent immediately. For every volunteer hour donated, that volunteer hour is immediately consumed by the enterprise. There is no profit or loss on our income statement. From a balance sheet perspective, it’s the equity line that’s important. Equity in our results terms means-- more content, more quality content, more editors and a much wider scope, geographically and culturally of content and participation. Our goal, as is the goal of every enterprise to some extent is to grow the equity on the balance sheet with the least amount of wasted energy or expense.
So how does that thinking impact WP:Title. There are three equations here. 1. How important is a WP article title to achieving the overall enterprise results we want? And 2. How much energy are we willing to spend to achieve the results we want? And 3. Are there ways in which we can reduce valuable volunteer energy expended on title decisions and free it up to more directly impact enterprise results? This is why I personally think “Acceptable” is a better alternative that “Good”, but that's a more detailed evaluation yet to come. To close, if anyone would like to take a few minutes to read this: Stay out of the Balkans, it’s a little essay that discusses these ideas a bit more metaphorically. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:11, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Done -- Mike Cline ( talk) 20:16, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
However, if I understand you correctly, 3 -- Are there ways in which we can reduce valuable volunteer energy expended on title decisions and free it up to more directly impact enterprise results? -- is what I was addressing in something I wrote at the ARBCOM event, here. In particular: " In order to avoid everyone wanting whatever they want and nobody ever being able to agree, we choose to have policies, guidelines and conventions to introduce determinism into our title decision process. In general, in terms of reducing disputes and debates, more determinism in our title-determining rules is better than less determinism." Do you agree with that? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Observations on titling process from two RMs-I was working through some RMs this morning and stumbled on two (and closed two) that are a bit illustrative of the points I was trying to make in these two discussions at WP:AT [29] and [30] . The first RM [31] walked us through a logical sequence of policy based evidence. What would have made this even more useful would have been subsequent evidence or at least acknowledgement of ambiguity and style issues. (Apparently there weren’t any in this RM). The second RM move was about ambiguity. No one actually addressed what reliable English Language sources said the common name was. Had they done so, it would have been evident that Orientale Province was a common English language name for this subject. As the closer, I did this review but it would have been much better in the RM process had the nominator and participants done so. When I closed this with a move to Orientale Province, I actually had a style question in my head--Should this really be Orientale province to comply with our WP style? I didn’t pursue it, but had it been addressed in sequence by the nom, the overall discussion would have been more effective for WP in the long run. The substance of these two RMs is inconsequential, it was the process that intrigues me. I am asking you to consider these two random examples from this standpoint. If we can begin to think about the whole titling process—new titles or title changes in a holistic way, then the words we use to articulate, explain and implement policy will be much easier to craft and should result in clearer, more concise, and effective policy and guidelines. Let me know what you think.
— Mike Cline ( talk) 14:47, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Should article titles exclude "LLC" from the end (eg, Marquette Rail, LLC vs Marquette Rail? C628 ( talk) 02:16, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
The legal status suffix of a company (such as Inc., plc, LLC, and those in other languages such as GmbH, AG, and S.A.) is not normally included in the article title (for example, Microsoft Corporation, Nestlé S.A., Aflac Incorporated, and Deutsche Post AG). When disambiguation is needed, the legal status, an appended "(company)", or other suffix can be used to disambiguate (for example, Oracle Corporation, Borders Group, Be Inc., and Illumina (company)).
Now that we have a productive discussion going on wording details, it would be good to have a shared understanding of how to interpret the change that Born2cycle got put into the "recognizability" provision, following Kotniski's earlier change (as described in User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?#Aug. 2010 – planting the seeds of dissent)
My poll #Poll to plan for future discussion on Recognizability found zero support for the proposed extreme interpretation of the Kotniski/B2C wording as "recognizability of a title to readers who are not already familiar with the topic is not a goal, and should not be used as an argument in favor of a title." So I noted that "my main objection has been been considerably reduced by the unanimous rejection of that interpretation by those who responded to my poll."
However, in his victory speech, Born2cycle alleges that
... your poll rejected no interpretion ... In fact, since it's consistent with the preferred wording, there is evidence that it's supporting (not as wording for the policy, but as correct interpretation of what happens). Not to mention that the words used by many participating in the discussions since Dec 21, including Greg's poll, indicated preference for the Kotniski wording because of agreement with the interpretation you claim was rejected in your poll.
I believe he may be partly right that some do support his interpretation, but they just didn't want to support that alternative in my poll. My poll, in attempting to get an assessment of who stands where on the issue, came up wanting; perhaps my additional interpretational phrase "A title is judged to be recognizable if it is the most commonly used term for a topic in reliable sources" was too distracting or was what some rejected. So maybe we can just go more directly and ask, who supports, and who rejects, B2C's interpretation of the Kotniski/B2C recognizability wording that was recently inserted into policy after the page was unlocked? Feel free to answer or discuss in any way you please, or to ignore if you think the wording speaks for itself and need not have a shared interpretation associated with it. Dicklyon ( talk) 22:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
I am very pleased with the discussions above that we are actually developing some productive consensus around some key points of contention. We have a long way to go but are headed in the right direction. Many of the regulars here and on other policy/guideline talk pages have always claimed that policy/guidelines should document and follow practice, not necessarily dictate it. To that end, I think an important step in our journey to better WP titling policy, is to actually assess what the wider community believes the practice is. To that end, I have drafted an RFC as a subpage of this one: RFC-Article title decision practice. Its purpose is not to derail or stifle the discussions above, but instead add some additional data that we can use as we improve this policy on WP titles. It is not yet a live RFC, but my intent is to make it live within the next 24 hours. Additionally I intend to advertise it at Centralized Discussions, all projects that have naming conventions, MOS talk pages, RM and New Page Patrol talk pages. I hope it generates a lot of response from a wide range of editors. In the short term however, I would appreciate anyone participating here to provide any feedback that might improve the RFC wording. Thanks -- Mike Cline ( talk) 19:13, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Similar tests based on RANDOM could be devised for other questions. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Interesting stuff, but I want to know what the general editor corps thinks our title decision policy is. There are 136,000 active editors that aren't bots or special randoms. Bots and Special Random don't create new articles or participate in RM discussions, and even if they did, I don't really care what their opinion might be. Can a bot have an opinion? -- Mike Cline ( talk) 23:55, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
I strongly recommend we slow down here and get the current language in better shape before we take anything to the wider community. The goals are a mess right now. If everyone here agrees to go with Born2Cycle's proposal above, I'd like to see that instituted and then take this RfC live. Otherwise I think we'll have a lot of distracting nitpicking about grammar and such rather than the discussion we are looking for. Joja lozzo 00:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Since you ask for only one response, don't you need a fourth response which would combine the second and third, i.e. that "Some (but not all) of the highlighted choices above faithfully reflect the title decision practice of WP and there are one or more important title decision practices missing"? Joja lozzo 02:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not going to be able to say much because of my RL work stress-out at the moment. But in relation to this edit, could I make a few points?
Sorry if I'm being daft in not understanding a few points. Tony (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I appreciate everyone’s input above and am confident the RFC will generate the results I want (and I think results that we will find useful moving forward). Many of the comments above are typical when we think tactically instead of strategically. That’s OK because it’s normal. A couple of the comments impressed me in different ways.
Again, thanks for the input. Perfect is the enemy of good. The RFC may not be structured perfectly, but it should provide us some interesting viewpoints. It will go live later this morning. I look forward to everyone’s input. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Is there a reason that the Recognizability goal has "candidate title" but the others do not? I think it would be better without "candidate".
Generally I think the goals would be best described using parallel terminology/construction. The context is: "A good article title will have the following characteristics:". For the subjects we have "The candidate title", "The title", "Consensus titles", "A good title", "A good title". For the verbs we have "will be", "will be" "usually use", "will be", "will follow". I propose we use "A good title" and future tense for all five goals:
Joja lozzo 04:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
I'd also like to copyedit the Naturalness goal to read: "A good title will be the one that readers are most likely to look for to finduse to search for the article." Any objections?
Joja
lozzo
04:09, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, all this is irrelevant in this discussion because it's what it currently says and Joja is not proposing changing it. However, if we were considering a change, we might think about conveying that in disambiguated titles the naturalness criterion/goal applies only to the undisambiguated name portion. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:02, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
I too oppose introduction of "the one", or any other language that implies that only one title for each subject can be a "good title". Hesperian 06:24, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
A couple of thoughts from someone teaches Strategic thinking and execution out in the world where we get paid to get people aligned around successful execution of well articulated goals. When you articulate a Goal, you should never use future tense, because then the goal is never achieved, its always in the future. Abandon the wills and replace with is or equvilent present tense. Goals should always be stated in present tense form, so that individuals can visualize success. Second, "a good title" implies "best title" or the goodest title and leads to endless discussions as to which alternatives is better. In fact, it gives license to create alternatives on a whim that someone thinks is better than the current title. Replace "good title" with acceptable title. If the statements read: An acceptable WP title is ... then editors can immediately visualize what characteristics a title should have to be "Acceptable". -- Mike Cline ( talk) 14:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
I think the opposite is true. The more general and less specific the criteria are, then the more room for (costly) pointless debate we have. If the criteria is more specific and less ambiguous, then there is less to debate about.
For example, say we are deciding between two titles A and B. We agree both are acceptable, but only A is "good". If the criterion says "good", then we have nothing to debate - we just go with A. But if the criterion says "acceptable", it gives us no guidance on whether to go with A or B. How do we decide? A costly debate...
So if I am understanding you correctly, we agree on the goal - make title decision-making less costly; but we disagree on whether making the criteria less specific (merely "acceptable" rather than "good") helps or hinders achieving that goal. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:56, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
But you're saying something quite different (thought not necessarily opposite) - you're saying that there may be any number of "acceptable" titles for a given article, and as long as the current title is one of those acceptable titles, and there is no good reason to move it from using that title (e.g., it's the only acceptable title for some other article), then we should leave it as is. I'll have to think about that. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:57, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
No. Acceptable is a binary concept: an on-off switch. A title is acceptable or it is not, with no middle ground. It is not our intent here to say that a title that lacks any one of these properties is unacceptable.
Goodness is a continuum. The degree of goodness of a title is determined by the extent to which the title has the properties outlined above. This is what we want: guidance on how to compare titles and decide which is better.
Hesperian 02:06, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
As can be seen from the discussion above the use of acceptable or good as adjectives describing a title are problematic because of the wide range of interpretation they engender. So the following is the same language without the “acceptable” or “good” qualifier. If we can agree on the language without the qualifier, then once we agree on the overall principles involved with the difference between “Good titles” versus “Acceptable titles” we can decide whether or not the qualifiers are really needed, or can those principles be dealt with differently in another part of this policy.
-- Mike Cline ( talk) 17:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
I wish to test for consensus. Are there any objections to going with Born2Cycle's proposal, not as final wording but a minimal-change clean up? Joja lozzo 03:59, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Done Joja lozzo 18:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Forgive me if I am making everyone repeat themselves, but I am still unclear as to why we are restricting article titles to those that are recognizable to "those familiar with the topic". I am not challenging the statement or saying that we should change it... but I would like to better understand the intent behind the restriction. Blueboar ( talk) 16:57, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
That's why we have The Running Man and not The Running Man (book) or The Running Man (Stephen King novel) or The Running Man (Stephen King science fiction novel) or The Running Man (1982 Stephen King science fiction novel first published under the pseudonym Richard Backman), etc., etc. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:32, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Because of disambiguation requirements, some of our articles, like Paris, Texas (film), do end up with titles that are recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, and that might give some the impression that we do that purposefully, but we don't. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:42, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
The Kotniski caveat which Blueboar is asking about simply made this explicit to prevent anyone from believing that we strive to make our titles recognizable to anyone other than those who are familiar, and to prevent anyone from arguing for unnecessary precision in titles on the basis of recognizability. For example, without the Kotniski explicit caveat, one might argue that a given title is "too vague" and so needs more precision to be more recognizable [37]. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
I've acknowledged repeatedly, including just above, that many titles are recognizable to more people than are familiar with the topic. I've never argued such broad recognizability in a title is a bad thing. I've only argued that it is a common side effect of disambiguation, not a goal in and of itself.
As to policy intent, policy intent is largely about reflecting accepted practice. We can "reverse engineer" what actual practice is by looking at how articles are named, and I suggest looking at random ones only to be objective (in particular to avoid cherry picking). Of course this only works if you look at sufficient numbers (a few dozen).
I've never said that we should look at articles (randomly or otherwise) to ascertain policy intent. I've said that we should look at articles to ascertain actual practice, in order to help determine what policy should say.
Put another way, how many articles can you find with titles that make them recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, and are not so because of additional descriptive information added to the title for the purpose of disambiguation? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
That's why "we are restricting article titles to those that are recognizable to "those familiar with the topic"" (though titles that needs to be disambiguated from other actual uses in WP may inadvertently end up being more recognizable). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
A better example would be The Control of Nature, which I recognize as one of my favorites, and which doesn't have a corresponding film or anything like that. Dicklyon ( talk) 19:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Dick, the recognizability criterion is no more "hobbled" by the Kotniski caveat (to those familiar) than the precision criterion is "hobbled" by the "no more precise than than necessary to disambiguate from other uses in Wikipedia" caveat. In both cases it's about clarification not hobbling.
We all recognize that we are supposed to balance all of this criteria when deciding a title, but it provides better guidance on how to do that with such clarification than without. Otherwise, in a situation in which we're trying to decide between titles A and B, where criterion #1 favors A and criterion #2 favors B, those favoring A will simply cite #1 and those favoring B will cite #2 and we just have a pissing match. Isn't that what we're trying to avoid? Why not add clarification which is consistent with actual practice where appropriate?
Now, some clarification is obviously implied and doesn't need to be stated. We could clarify conciseness by saying "not so concise as to make the title obscure", but everyone knows that. I can't even imagine anyone seriously arguing for a title so concise that it is obscure. But we know people will argue for making titles more descriptive to make them more recognizable, even when the current title is already recognizable to people familiar with the topic. You keep saying there is no reason to "hobble" recognizabilty by "tying it the parethetical/disambiguation issue ", but the very situation that prompted me to notice that the Kotniski caveat was removed shows that we need this clarification in there. And consensus is quite clear on this point, so your insistence to the contrary is what is tiring here. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:58, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Well you guys do all seem to be getting on much better. Can I pose a question. When you're talking here about being recognizable, are you all specifically referring to the situation where I search for Steppenwolf, and Acmesearch serves me articles about the Herman Hesse book, the band, the Hawkwind track ("my eyes are convex lenses of ebony, embedded in amber"), the theatre company that Gary Sinise co-founded, the film, the jazz album, etc, and I'm trying to work out which one I want. Or the situation where I'm using the Wikipedia search engine. I ask this because if I use Google/Bing/Yahoo, I get (in sequence) the wikipedia article on the band, the wikipedia article on the novel, the band website, the theatre company website, the band on YouTube (Google only), the film on IMDB, and the band on Last FM. If I search on Wikipedia I get taken to the disambiguation page (incidentally, someone needs to fix most of the articles which hatnote to Steppenwolf (disambiguation) which is a redirect).
Google returns the disambiguation page at the bottom of page 2. Yahoo and Bing don't return it at all. I say this because if someone was trying to find out what the hell a Macanese pataca was, the Wikipedia article is top of the list on all the search engines, and if he puts it into the Wikipedia search, it'll take him straight to the article. I submit therefore that the problem might be better focussed on search optimisation than on whether once you get to the article you recognise what it says in the heading. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 23:38, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Submitted for consideration:
Hesperian 00:16, 17 February 2012 (UTC)