![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 30 | ← | Archive 34 | Archive 35 | Archive 36 | Archive 37 | Archive 38 | → | Archive 40 |
There is an ArbCom ruling on the title of the article for Ireland, the republic that occupies the majority of the island of Ireland. But there is no such thing for other similar countries, such as the Republic of Macedonia, the Republic of China (known commonly as Taiwan), the People's Republic of China, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Should the titles of these articles be hardcoded in the Manual of Style (or any other official policy)? A discussion had been kicked off at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Titles of a few countries. 61.18.170.243 ( talk) 08:46, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
The Precision criterion is currently worded as follows:
Note that it links to the WP:PRECISION section which starts out with the following statement:
Note that this clarifies what "unambiguously" means: to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name.
Note also that the first sentence of WP:D defines disambiguation in terms of usage within Wikipedia:
Now, anyone can follow this chain of statements to ascertain the intended meaning, but if you just look at the precision criterion in isolation, it could be misleading. In particular, one could interpret it to mean unambiguously with respect to all usage in English, not just within the context of WP titles.
Because of the potential misunderstanding/misinterpretation of the current wording, I suggest that we tighten up the wording about precision to be consistent with the accepted definition of disambiguation within WP.
I propose the criterion be updated to say:
And also the following clarification added at WP:PRECISION:
Thoughts? Comments? Any objections? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Historically, B2C's interpretation of what "precision" is about (the "intended meaning") is far off the mark of what precision has been about over the years. Back in 2002 it was terribly amateurish, but this shows where the idea came from:
Be precise when necessary
Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously-named title as though that title had no other meanings! A reader may have found your article with a search, or accidentally, or in some other way that robs him of the context, so do him a favor and name your articles precisely. If a word or phrase is ambiguous, and your article concerns only one of the meanings of that word or phrase, you should probably--not in all cases, but in many--use something more precise than just that word or phrase. For example, use Apollo program, Nirvana (band), smoking pipe; rather than simply Apollo, Nirvana, Pipe. See disambiguation for more details on that.
By 2008 it was more concise, slightly mangled, but still the same concept (ambiguity as the opposite of precision):
Be precise when necessary
Convention: Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously named title as though that title had no other meanings. If all possible words have multiple meanings, go with the rule of thumb of naming guidelines and use the more popular term.
In early 2009 when Kotniski didn't know what it meant, he changed it, still focusing on real ambiguity: "Avoid giving an article an ambiguous title (unless it is unlikely that the other meanings deserve their own article)." Then in April 2009 he changed it to
Be precise when necessary
Convention: Name an article as precisely as is necessary to indicate accurately its topical scope; avoid over-precision. If there are other articles with the same name, then the title should include a disambiguator in parentheses, unless the article concerns the primary topic for that name. If alternative common names exist for a topic, sometimes a less ambiguous option may be chosen in order to avoid the need for a disambiguator.
It was Pmanderson in June 2009 who added this about technical uniqueness:
Be precise when necessary
Convention: Name an article as precisely as is necessary to indicate accurately its topical scope; avoid over-precision.
All articles must, by the design of Wikipedia, have a unique name. If there are several articles with the same name, it may be that one concerns the primary topic for that name; if so, that one keeps the common name, and the others must be moved. The articles should be linked, to help readers get where they want to go, either to each other or to a disambiguation page, normally called topic or topic (disambiguation). If alternative common names exist for a topic, using them may be the simplest way to disambiguate; if not, add a disambiguator in parentheses. Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) and Wikipedia:Disambiguation.
When the "Deciding an article title" section got made in the turmoil of Sept. 2009, the locked version at the end of the month simply said:
Precise – Be precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.
where that limitation "only as precise as necessary" derived as a toned-down version of Born2cycle's attempt to rewrite "precision" in the negative, to discourage precision instead of encourage it, as:
Precision. Good article titles are only as precise as necessary to indicate the name of the topic unambiguously.
Born2cycle further mangled it here to:
Precise – Article titles that do not simply reflect the name of the topic are more descriptive, but only as precise as necessary to identify the name or subject of the topic unambiguously.
Finally a fluff reduction by Rannpháirtí anaithnid made the ending version quoted above.
There was still also a separate section that said
Be precise when necessary
Further information: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) and Wikipedia:Disambiguation
Articles are named as precisely as is necessary to indicate their scope accurately, while avoiding over-precision. Readers should not have to read into the article to find which of several meanings of the title is the actual subject, but there is no virtue in excess. Wikipedia also has disambiguation pages to help readers find the meaning they want. When (as with Paris), the unmodified term has an overwhelmingly predominant meaning, we use the simple term for that article; see WP:PRIMARYUSAGE.
All articles must, by the design of Wikipedia, have a unique name. If there are several articles with the same name, it may be that one concerns the primary topic for that name; if so, that one keeps the common name, and the others must be disambiguated. It may be that using an alternative common name for a topic is the simplest way to disambiguate; if not, add a disambiguator in parentheses. The articles should be linked, to help readers get where they want to go, either to each other or to a disambiguation page, normally called topic or topic (disambiguation).
The next big change of meaning – Kotniski changed that latter section on Oct. 29 2009 to
Precision
Articles titles usually merely indicate the name of the topic. When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided. For example, it would be inappropriate to name an article "United States Apollo program (1961–1975)" or "Nirvana (Aberdeen, Washington rock band)". Remember that concise titles are generally preferred.
but then on Nov 9. Francis Schonken just pointed it off to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) instead, because he didn't like how Kotniski merged things (I don't totally follow).
going off in a new direction – on 17 Aug 2010, Kotniski replaced the "precision" bullet with this "disambiguation" bullet:
Disambiguation – For technical reasons, no two Wikipedia articles can have the same title.[1] Details on how titles are made unambiguous can be found in the Disambiguation guideline.
badly patched – in the subsequent flurry that ensued (and after a couple of typically ineffectual attempts by PBS to stop the policy thrashing, which was the same thrashing that planted the seeds of our recent month-long trouble), with help from Pmanderson they emerged merged, as
Precision – titles are expected to use names and terms that are precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. For technical reasons, no two Wikipedia articles can have the same title,[1] so ambiguous titles are generally avoided; see further the Precision and disambiguation section below and in the disambiguation guideline.
sorry, I'm not copying all the links and stuff, but this merge is where it came to have two copies of the link to WP:AT#Precision and disambiguation, the "extra baggage" that I removed finally in 2012 the other day.
I don't think there's any point in the history where the concept of "precision" resembled what B2C now says it means (except for a brief transient in Sept. 2009 when he made it say that precision is to be minimized). Even if he's right that "I don't think disambiguation in titles is done for readers at all" (which I don't think he is), that's not an issue that belongs in "precision", just as it was not an issue that belongs in "recognizability". It is an issue peculiar to B2C, it seems, as I read the essay on his user page ( User:Born2cycle#A goal: naming stability at Wikipedia). Dicklyon ( talk) 07:13, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I should note that until this change of a few days ago the wording of the precision criteria at least referred to these two other sections, making it easier for others to connect the dots and make misinterpretation less likely. I don't think returning the "extra baggage" would be an improvement, but what I propose addresses a problem created by this removal. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:13, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
'Precision' has more than just a statistical meaning. That wouldn't apply here anyway, because article titles are not statistics, and in any case that usage of 'precision' contrasts with 'accuracy'. (You can be extremely precise and completely inaccurate: the two are independent of each other. For example, if you shoot a gun at a target several times, and you land your shots in the same place, then you've achieved precision even if you completely missed the target. Likewise, if your shots clustered around the bulls-eye without being in the same place, then you were accurate but not precise.) The common usage of the term, however, is a near synonym with accuracy. As the OED says, 'precision' is "the fact, condition, or quality of being precise; exactness, definiteness, accuracy." Although most of their recent quotations reflect a mathematical use of the term, they have an earlier one (from 1824) which is germane:
Which seems to be basically what we want: enough to be clear, but no more than that. (The question being, enough to be clear in the context of the world, or in the context only of other WP articles.)
And 'precise':
I don't know if this is precisely what was meant by precision, or if another of our terms (explicitness, etc.) would be better. — kwami ( talk) 08:12, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
We should be focusing on what we want out of precision and disambiguation, not the history of where we been. What's the desired outcome, the future. The past is irrelevant. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 17:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
The section WP:PRECISE indeed starts with a hard-to-interpret sentence, which today attracted an editor to insert "not" into it, which left it no better and no worse. I made a change to clarify, and these were both reverted, so I propose it for your consideration here:
Although additional precision is sometimes necessary to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name, or to reduce ambiguity, excess precision should be avoided. ...
This restores a tiny bit of the concept that precision is to prevent ambiguity, a concept that was edited out some time ago, as the history above shows. It doesn't specifically define "excess precision", which is OK I think, and certainly better than defining it such that the only tolerable precision is the minimum needed to avoid name collisions. Comments? Dicklyon ( talk) 23:47, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Although additional precision is sometimes necessary to discriminate among articles with similar titles, excess precision should be avoided. ...
If I understand Mike's point correctly, I think he has a point. Precision and disambiguation are related, but I think they are distinct concepts. I have always though that Precision applied more to creating descriptive titles than it does to disambiguating proper name titles. Or at least it applies to the two types of titles in different ways.
To illustrate: We have an article that is descriptively entitled Christianity and Freemasonry... I have long thought that this was a very imprecise title for that specific article, because it does not really describe what the article is about. A more precise title would be Opposition to Freemasonry by certain specific Christian denominations. (Note: I am sure that there is a more concise wording that would be an even better title for the topic than the one I suggest here... I am making a point, so go with it). Now... Compare how I am using the term Precision in my example to how the term is used in Mike's John L Doe example, and you see how we are not really talking about the same thing... In both cases there is a need for "Precision"... but there is a different type of Precision that is needed. I think it would be helpful if we separate the two types, and in doing so we should probably use two different synomyms for "Precision". Blueboar ( talk) 16:41, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
So here are the two criteria—ambiguity and precision separately defined along the lines of Blueboar’s observations above. Just for consideration of the concept. (dictionary definitions for support only, not part of the criteria statements)
Ambiguity*: [Wikipedia article] titles are unambiguous in the context of the Wikipedia article space. Our disambiguation guidelines and naming conventions favor minimum disambiguation to remove ambiguity when two or more articles titles may have a title with multiple the same meanings.
Precision*: [[Descriptive] Wikipedia] titles are as precise as necessary to indicate accurately the topical scope of the article. Over-precision should be avoided as conciseness is important.
-- Mike Cline ( talk) 18:19, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
The "ambiguity" item proposed here is a bit off where it says "when two or more article titles may have the same meaning". I suppose it means "when two or more articles could take the same title" or something like that? Anyway, it is not possible to not satisfy this criterion, right? So no matter what other criteria are satisfied or violated, this one will be satisfied, for technical reasons.
The "precision" item, on the other hand, is about specifying the article scope clearly (or accurately, or precisely, if you prefer). That's what precision was traditionally about, but it has been whittled away at, with the addtion of "avoid over-precision" in early 2009, to "only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously" later in 2009, to "merely indicate the name of the topic", and back; and now the proposal "only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously with respect to other Wikipedia titles" that explicitly wipes out precision as a consideration, because there's only title "ambiguity" to consider. I prefer to go back to where it means something, like the just proposed "as precise as necessary to indicate accurately the topical scope of the article", for descriptive titles or otherwise; sometimes names are particularly ambiguous, as names of things (esp. creative works) are typically made from words with other meanings. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:31, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I think I am beginning to understand what Mike has been telling us. Precision in itself is an abstract concept and therefore meaningless in practice until we apply it to the measurement of a property, such as Unambiguity. As Blueboar suggests, we can also apply precision to Descriptiveness (which is very similar to, if not basically the same as, Recognizability). I think that the Precision goal is guidance for the process of applying Unambiguity to titles that are assumed to be already Recognizable and Natural - it explains how to (precisely) Disambiguate: by improving Natural, Concise, Consistent Descriptiveness without over-describing. Here's a draft that does not mention precision per se:
Wikipedia article titles have the following characteristics:
- Recognizable – Titles are names or descriptions of the topic that are recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic.
- Natural – Titles are those that readers are likely to look for or search with as well as those that editors naturally use to link from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
Precision – Titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.- Concise – Titles are concise, and not overly long.
- Consistent – Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principles behind the above questions.
- Unambiguous – Titles distinguish the topics of articles with similar titles by adding description (natural recognizability) with minimal effects on conciseness and consistency.
I put Unambiguous last because it is subservient to the other characteristics. Joja lozzo 05:24, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I wonder if we shouldn't have separate criteria for topics with and without names. The criteria might be similar or even the same, but how we prioritize it is different, and maybe we should describe it differently. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:28, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
Blueboar, although the criteria themselves may not need (or even should be) prioritized, I think we should be cautious about saying every title decision is random (my word) – your phrase: because which principle takes priority will be different from one article to the next. I fervently believe that if we are to have a functional titling policy that will guide us as we move from ~3.8M articles to ~-5-10M articles, there indeed must be some prioritization of policy application. The four elements we must apply are: sourcing, common name, ambiguity and style. I think sourcing takes priority over the other three. Common name is the next driver. Where we currently have conflict are with the relationships between common name and style and ambiguity and style. This is where we have to focus our attention. The current set of criteria as drafted work fine with these elements, but it is the relationship between the elements that needs focus. FYI, I think Opposition within Christianity to Freemasonry would be a nice alternative title. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 14:34, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
I do not agree with lowest priority of unambiguity. Just coming from a discussion about the correct title for trivial objects in algebra. The resulting title, "Zero object (algebra)", is less recognizable that any of its inbound redirects, not highly consistent (in the sense mentioned above), and absolutely unnatural. But it is unambiguous and devoid of all misleading connotations, unlike proposals of the previous generation. Though this case was exceptionally complicated. Incnis Mrsi ( talk) 19:04, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
I think this is such a difficult issue to solve because many items in the texts being proposed are hard to pin down in yes–no terms. Among these items are "familiar", "precise", and "necessary". They beg questions such as how familiar, how precise, and necessary in what respect? While WP can get away with binaries in many of its policies and guidelines, wp:title doesn't seem to be one of them. This is why the nitty-gritty lies in providing editors who consult this policy with examples. I know this is something of a mantra of mine, but doesn't anyone agree?
Scoping most titles is uncontroversial, but a small proportion will always require case-by-case decisions or delicate judgements by individual editors/admins. When either is indicated, the criteria, to me, are best regarded as continua to balance against each other, rather than binaries, weighed against each other. In other words, the difficult, borderline, or controversial cases might benefit from considering a number of scaled criteria.
This has been part of the anti-canvassing policy for years, and seems to work well there. I've reproduced the table at canvassing below, and underneath it, a table I derived from it when discussing with Moonriddengirl last year the tangled set of criteria at play when deciding whether text is plagiarised. (We haven't yet taken this forward for broader community comment.) I suppose I'm fishing to see whether anyone here thinks this model might be useful for article title decision-making—adapted, of course, for the purpose.
Table at the top of the canvassing policy page
Scale | Message | Audience | Transparency | ||||
Appropriate | Limited posting | AND | Neutral | AND | Nonpartisan | AND | Open |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ||||
Inappropriate | Mass posting | OR | Biased | OR | Partisan | OR | Secret |
Derivative table for judging possible plagiarism
Length of wording in question | Closeness to the original | Distinctiveness of original wording or meaning | Attribution | |
Less of an issue | Short | Your own wording1 | Not distinctive | Fully attributed |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
More of an issue | Long | Exact wording duplicated | Distinctive | Not directly attributed |
1Excluding "non-creative" text.
Your comments would be welcome. Tony (talk) 11:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Article names should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources. |
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature |
By the way, Kotniski made a relevant comment here in his edit summary: these aren't yes/no criteria you can *satisfy*, they are parameters by which you can compare different titles. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:41, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I just reverted the precision section as amended by Rjanag and Dicklyon to the version of earlier today (see diff here). We'd been doing a good job of not changing substance without consensus (for a couple of weeks, at least). Let's keep the streak going. Dick's additions make explicit the position that reducing potential title ambiguity, even where there is not an existing WP article of the same title, is a goal. This is a change from existing explicit guidance. Let's find out if there's consensus for that (and if I've misrepresented your position, Dick, feel free to restate it). Discuss.... Dohn joe ( talk) 23:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Currently our convention for bilataral relations in "[country 1]endash[country 2] relations", where 1 and 2 are in noun form and in alphabetical order. This is unsatisfactory for several reasons, not least because it contravenes COMMONNAME. If you look up the results in GBooks, you'll find that sometimes the only sources which use these phrases are republications of WP articles. Normally, English uses adjectival forms, although there are exceptions, where the adj. form is not common. And while alphabetical order is an easy way to avoid arguments, it often conflicts with the normal tendency to put the longer name last. Also, in some cases we use almost-full names of countries, but not the actual full names. For the US, for example, we use "United States" rather than "US" or "United States of America". This produces some really awkward titles: Bosnia and Herzegovina–United States relations, for example, or Saudi Arabia–United States relations, or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines–United States relations, when normal English is US–Bosnian, US–Saudi, and US – St Vincent relations. This format has evidently been too much in some cases; rather than People's Republic of China–United States relations, for example, the article is currently at Sino-American relations. In other cases we use the format "Relations between [country 1] and [country 2]", and even when we use the "X–Y relations" format for the title, we often switch to one of the other formats for the lead, because otherwise it would just be too awkward.
Although I wouldn't advocate following it blindly, a generally good example of usage is the US Dept. of State site here: click on the country, then click on the "Background Notes" link near the top (not every country has one), then scroll down to "U.S. Relations", and they have titles like "U.S.-BOSNIAN RELATIONS". (They don't use our punctuation conventions, but that's a minor point.) I give the US govt site, because the articles dealing with the US are probably the largest fraction of awkward names. Or just search GBooks.
At least "Relations between Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the United States" would be natural English, even if a bit formal. (You might argue that the two "and"s makes that ambiguous, but that is equivalent to the argument for spacing around the en dash, and those have all been removed from the article titles.) And while my examples all involved the US, the problem is not restricted to it: Germany–Japan relations, for example, rather than German–Japanese relations. (I moved that one, but it might get moved back.) The latter phrase has 400 non-WP hits on GBooks, the former has 1 (or 3, if you count listings in an index). Is this s.t. we should address? — kwami ( talk) 04:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
I would recommend Xese–Yese relations (or Xian–Yian relations) when those are natural, and Relations between X and Y when they are not. Phrases like Sino-American relations I also find acceptable, though I understand wanting a degree of consistency, so that's a case we'd want to discuss explicitly: Sino-American, Chinese–American, or US–Chinese ? Checking every one in GBooks for frequency could be a nightmare (esp. as some are so infrequent as to make a search statistically meaningless), so agreeing on a default pattern is IMO a good idea.
Phrasal country names need specific instruction, and are often idiosyncratic. It looks like the two Chinas are now agreed to be China and Taiwan in such cases, so that seems to be settled. The US and UK should be addressed: US and UK, or British and American ? (Or one of each?) EU or European Union or European? Saudi or Saudi Arabian? The two Koreas? Can we sum this up as "use a one-word name where possible" (maybe with specific exceptions)?
There is a natural tendency to put the shorter name first. Lengths being approx. equal, I suspect there may be a tendency to put an anglophone country first; here we have a possible conflict between 'world view' and 'common name'. Except when using affixed forms: then the anglophone country tends to be second, as in Sino-American. — kwami ( talk) 22:34, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I suggest that anyone interested in the titling of articles should take a look at User talk:Alan Liefting. Liefting has recently taken it upon himself to make a large series of page moves peremptorily without warning or discussion, based solely on his own interpretation of "redundancy". Several editors have reverted his moves, which he has promptly re-reverted.
It appears that he is now undertaking a similar "clean-up" of categories. Milkunderwood ( talk) 22:53, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I've been involved in some pretty ridiculous discussions, and I doubt anything will ever beat eight years of obstinate resisting to the obviously inevitable Yoghurt → Yogurt move, but the discussion (using that term loosely) that has been going on here for the last month (Since Dec 21) might deserve second place. It has been so absurd that I've been inspired to write an essay about the kind of tactics used here to blockade a rather straight-forward change that should not even have been controversial. If anyone wants to review it, I would appreciate it! Here it is:
Thanks, B2C
At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Yoga#Article Titles Of Asanas, I've noted the our articles on asanas have a few naming schemes which are not the same across the board. Could I get some feedback/comment/advice/help to the best convention of titling for our asanas?
List of asanas and ‹The
template
Cat is being
considered for merging.›
Category:Asana‹The
template
Cat is being
considered for merging.›
Category:Asanas lists our
asanas. I am not sure if there may bet other asana articles not listed on these pages.
Curb Chain (
talk)
08:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
See Talk:Republic of China#Requested Move (February 2012), a proposal to move Republic of China to Taiwan. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Sometimes you come across like you just want to disagree with anything I say. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
That said, this particular case is somewhat unusual in that there are some scope issues, because ROC refers specifically to the government, while "Taiwan" refers to both the government and the geographical place (and there is some debate about whether it includes the surrounding islands). But this talk page is not the place to get into those details. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 05:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
Some here might be interested in this proposal to move Tom Brown's Schooldays to Tom Brown's School Days. What if the present title is the way the book is most commonly referred to and the proposed title is that of the first edition? — JerryFriedman (Talk) 14:26, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
A bunch of open proposals and discussions got archived for unactivity. I'd like to revise one...
It has been observed that the section WP:PRECISE starts with a hard-to-interpret sentence, which recently attracted an editor to insert "not" into it, which left it no better and no worse. I propose this replacement for your consideration here:
Although additional precision is sometimes necessary when a potential title has multiple uses, or to reduce ambiguity, excess precision should be avoided. ...
As I said before, this restores a tiny bit of the concept that precision is to prevent ambiguity, a concept that was edited out some time ago, as the history (see archive) shows. It doesn't specifically define "excess precision", which is OK I think, and certainly better than defining it such that the only tolerable precision is the minimum needed to avoid name collisions. Comments? Dicklyon ( talk) 06:51, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided. Be precise, but only as precise as necessary.
I won't deny that the wording could be improved - I'm sure it could. But this proposal seeks to change the meaning to allow for unnecessary precision. I don't agree with it, and I don't believe there is much support for such a change, much less consensus support. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:37, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Given the contention that has arisen over this in the past, I would admonish both Dicklyon and Born2Cycle not to weigh in on this any further. Both views are clear, although opposed. Leave room for others to weigh in and decide. This is neither the
Harvard Debating Society where points are awarded for good arguments nor is it an election where the most votes win. In the interest of continuing the harmony we've experienced on this talk page for the last few weeks, I would encourage both editors to allow (silently) others to speak, --
Mike Cline (
talk)
02:02, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Precision is not a goal for determining a title. It is a means to achieve an Unambiguity goal. I propose replacing the Precision "goal"
Precision – Titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.
with an Unambiguous goal, something like:
Unambiguous – Titles distinguish between articles with similar titles by making them more recognizable without unnecessarily impacting other goals (see below).
(Currently the goals are nouns: Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Concisness, Consistency. I prefer adjectives. They are simple and descriptive: Recognizable, Natural, Unambiguous, Concise, Consistent.) Joja lozzo 02:43, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
* Support. Yes, if you look objectively at how our articles are actually titled, it's obvious that precision is really not something we try to achieve, but avoiding ambiguity definitely is. Good call. --
Born2cycle (
talk) 04:42, 14 March 2012 (UTC) Persuaded to change. --
Born2cycle (
talk)
23:15, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Big_Bang_Theory in violation of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28television%29#Episodic_television
Will there be a Pan-Wikipedia Television Naming Convention cleanup, or at the very least, full, self-consistency — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.94.204.129 ( talk) 04:38, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis/Tennis names#RfC: Can a wikiproject require no-diacritics names, based on an organisation's rule or commonness in English press?. This has also been raised at
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#See Talk:Sasa Tuksar. —
SMcCandlish
Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ
Contrib. 18:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC) —
SMcCandlish
Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ
Contrib.
18:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Your comments on Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(events)#Year_in_the_title will be appreciated. - Animeshkulkarni ( talk) 09:57, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
An issue has come up in regards to whether India is an English speaking country, and what bearing this has on article titles. It seems to me there isn't a thorough grasp on policy in the discussion, so it would benefit from some more informed opinions. The discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (films)#Titles of Indian film articles. Betty Logan ( talk) 07:13, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Yikes! A warning template at the top of a policy page? What an unfriendly way to welcome editors! A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 20:56, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
I recommend that you boldly move it, and see if anyone balks. There's no sensible reason for the stop sign on a page that editors are supposed to refer to. Same on WP:MOS. Dicklyon ( talk) 22:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
In light of the continuing discussion at Talk:Fort Worth where people have various different feelings and interpretations about what our naming practices are or should be, I'm reminded that many of us had agreed that having this page be called "policy" is a bad idea. What do people think about relabeling it as a guideline? Dicklyon ( talk) 19:08, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
It seems to me that the current title "policy" is a big mixed bag, with little or nothing at the same level as WP:V, WP:NPOV, and such policies. What is it that policy requires? It's clear why people who are in control of it want to keep it as policy, so they can claim it trumps other guidelines, but that seems to cause more trouble than solutions. It would seem more logical to work on the guidelines when there are differences of opinion, and either iron them out or leave some flexibility. The constant attempts to apply title policy as rigid prescription, ignoring what would work best for readers, isn't really helping anything. The USPLACE guideline, or example, seems to me like a good idea idea, but some say that we should ignore it because TITLE policy requires us to move Hatboro, Pennsylvania to just Hatboro. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:33, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
At Talk:Discrimination based on skin color#Requested move, there is some disagreement over whether the "ambiguity" referred to in the "nutshell" summary of WP:AT means "ambiguity" in general, or specifically ambiguity limited to the space of Wikipedia article titles. That is, if the (made-up) word "killbar" had a number of meanings in English, but only one of those meanings has (or is likely to have) a Wikipedia article, is "killbar" an ambiguous title for purposes of this policy? Powers T 13:06, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
If people are interpreting it differently based on what's written on this page, then it needs to be corrected/clarified on this page. It makes no sense to work with two different definitions of "ambiguous" when deciding titles. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:07, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
As to Discrimination based on skin color - that discussion belongs on that talk page. The only aspect of it relevant here is the discussion about "ambiguous" means, particularly in the nutshell. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
However, one of the man who is opposing that proposal has opposed based on "Colorism" being "ambiguous" - and Powers has correctly challenged that particular reasoning. That side discussion, which is essentially irrelevant to the main dispute there, is what is relevant here and to the edits that I made.
The idea that these changes were made by me to score points there is ridiculous, considering I'm opposed [4] to that move. Why can't we discuss these edits objectively without regard to that particular dispute? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
( edit conflict)I am reverting recent changes that were not discussed first. It is inappropriate to modify a guidance or policy page in the midst of dispute that refers to it. Please rein in the impulse to adjust policy to resolve conflicts. Our recent Arbcom process taught us that changes to guidance and policy need special care and clear consensus. I think this sets a inappropriate precedent. Joja lozzo 16:43, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
As to (1), in my explanation of my edits above, I quoted longstanding clarifications about the meaning of "ambiguous" from WP:D and WP:AT (specifically, WP:PRECISION). Do you believe consensus support for those meanings is in question? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
The nutshell description on this page is currently:
The summary description of the "precision" criterion under WP:CRITERIA is:
WP:COMMONNAME currently states:
The use of "ambiguous" in these statements is, well, ambiguous. Taken in isolation, they can be interpreted in the narrow sense, with respect to being ambiguous with other Wikipedia titles, or in the broad sense, with respect to all other uses in English. However, whenever the term's meaning is clarified in policy and guidelines, it is clear that it is intended to be interpreted in the narrow sense. The opening statement of WP:D is:
Also, WP:PRECISION states:
One might think that having the meaning/scope clarified in those places is sufficient, but we have evidence that because "ambiguous" is used ambiguously in the places cited above, it is argued that it should be interpreted in the broad sense [5].
I therefore propose we clarify the meaning of the term in the above places to be consistent with WP:D and WP:PRECISION. Specifically, these changes are proposed.
Please indicate whether you support or oppose these changes, and explain why. If your opposition has nothing to do with substance but only with timing because this issue was brought to our attention during the just-cited dispute, please indicate whether you would support or oppose the changes a week ago, or, say, a month from now, and why. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Policy should be clear enough so that reasonable people all interpret it the same way. If they don't, that in and of itself suggests the policy needs to be improved. Policy should be written and improved to discourage WP:JDLI rationalizations, not enable them. Leaving wording open and ambiguous to interpretation enables JDLI rationalizations. Is that what you support? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:04, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
This constant push to neuter "precision" and "recognizability" in favor of "conciseness" is tiring. We should be going the other way, and seeking to have titles that provide more value to the reader, rather than just trying to avoid namespace collisions. Dicklyon ( talk) 22:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Ohms Law, no one is suggesting that "policy should be rigid" (let's not conflate clarity with rigidity). Dicklyon, no one is arguing that "precision" and "recognizability" should be neutered in favor of "conciseness". Why don't people address what is actually being proposed rather than what they imagine to be occurring in their minds? I tried to use very specific wording and justification in my proposal. Is it not clear? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
If you believe limiting precision to namespace collisions neuters precision, well, then, precision is already neutered by your interpretation - and, so, this proposed change won't neuter precision any more than a veterinarian can neuter a castrated male dog. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:07, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
The same principle applies with laws in the real world, by the way. Authoritarian police love ambiguity in the law, because the more open it is to interpretation, the more free they are to use it however they want in whatever situation they want. That's why in the real world I'm an advocate for clarity in the law, and in WP for clarity in policy/guidelines. The more we all agree about what policy is, the less debate, and bludgeoning, there will be. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:09, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
There has been an effort, of which I was part, to bring consistency in terminology across WP:AT and WP:D. This proposal is in that vein, to be sure. But what you're saying is completely different - you're challenging the meaning of "ambiguous" in the places where it is already clarified to mean namespace collision. If there is consensus support for that challenge, then I too will support it, but this reminds me of your challenge to my change to the recognizability wording, even after Greg L's poll showed it had unanimous support (see Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/Archive_35#Poll:). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:40, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, I understand what you're saying in theory, but honestly don't see it in practice. I mean, if titles are supposed to be unambiguous in the broad/general sense, then I suggest all of the following actual current article titles are problematic: Paris (city or god?), Wine (beverage, color, software, film?) , Cold (temperature? virus?), Prehistoric Women (anthropological issue? film?), I Didn't Know You Cared (song? film? book?), 1670 Broadway (what?), She's Got You (song? film? book?), Amadeus (play? film?), Doctor Zhivago (book? film?).
That's just a list off the top of my head and with a little help from SPECIAL:RANDOM. The point is that titles that are ambiguous in the broad sense are the norm on WP - I don't see any evidence whatsoever that the community tries to make titles unambiguous in the broad sense, only in the narrow sense, specifically to avoid article title namespace collisions with other uses, taking into account the concept of primary topic and other WP:D considerations. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 03:47, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
BTW, the "considerable disagreement" about Doctor Zhivago is an example of "considerable disagreement" caused by lack of clarity in our policy and guidelines regarding title decisions. In this case the problem is caused by the ambiguity in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, because usage indicates one article (the film) while long-term significance indicates another (the book). Not only does WP:PRIMARYTOPIC suggest using two criteria, each of which indicates a different topic, but it also does not give guidance on how to resolve conflicting situations like this. This is why I advocate a clear/simple definition of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC based entirely on usage, and not at all on long-term significance, but consensus is definitely not with me on that one.
One can argue reader benefit based on either usage or long-term significance, but is choosing either title that much more beneficial to readers than the other? I suggest not. So we have disagreement, debate and consternation... to what end? Is there even an end? On the other hand, if we always only went by usage, then there would be much less (if any) disagreement and debate about such titles, and the readers would be no worse off. This is why I see only an upside to bringing in more clarity to titling policy and guidelines. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:37, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
As I believe is re-explained to you every time we have one of these discussions, it is not always possible to find a title that perfectly meets every single criteria. Nixon redirects to Richard Nixon, but the article resides at his full name, i.e., at the article title that cannot be confused with Nixon (film) or Nixon (album) or Nixon (surname) or any of the other items listed at Nixon (disambiguation).
The conventional "<first name> <last name>" pattern for names is the reason we chose to put the article at Richard Nixon rather than at Nixon (president). It is not the primary reason why we gave the article a non-ambiguous title in the first place. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:26, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
While it's certainly not atypical of me to use hyperbole to make a point, I assure you I'm not doing so here. Thank you for clarifying you're not advocating less clarity, but I don't understand why you think my proposal does not add clarity. Without the edits, it's not clear whether to interpret "unambiguous"/ambiguous in the narrow/namescope or broad sense; with the edits it's clear it's to be interpreted in the narrow/namescope sense. Isn't that more clarity?
I've reread Tony1's comment and your reply to it. I don't see how that addresses whether the proposal adds or reduces clarity in the policy. It's also a lot of general statements that sound good in theory, but I don't see how to apply them in actual policy wording. The devil, as always, is in the specific details. And until you try to actually say what those details are, you're not really discussing anything practical about the policy. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Tony, your proposal Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/Archive_36#Proposal:_clarifying_PRECISION before did get some support. And B2C's previous attempt to get rid of "precision" by reducing it to nothing but avoidance of namespace collisions didn't (see the section before yours in the archive: Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/Archive_36#Proposal:_clarifying_PRECISION); toward the end of that discussion were some good ideas about restoring "precision" without the word "ambiguity" in it, which is one way to remove the interpretation question that B2C is worried about. But we'd have to decide what we want "precision" to be about. There was some support for the idea that the traditional (2009-ish) interpretation of "precision" is still needed, in addition to the "unambiguity" provision, though they overlap a lot. Dicklyon ( talk) 22:58, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
But unless and until you recognize that is our role, as long as you think our job is to make policy rather than reflect policy, we're going to have a very difficult time agreeing on much of anything. Perhaps that's the core of our disconnect? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:04, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
In general, very little if anything changes top-down. Traditionally, the debate on these talk pages has always centered around what is actual practice, not so much what actual practice should e, though there is always a little of that too. That's why I say it's mostly (not entirely) bottom-up. My observations and conclusions about how change occurs on WP, and the inherent chicken-egg problem associated with it, are summarized in my FAQ, so I won't repeat it here. See User:Born2cycle/FAQ#Shouldn.27t_you_get_the_policy.2Fguideline_changed.2C_rather_than_try_to_subvert_it_one_article_at_a_time.3F. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Beyond that, my main personal broad goal is to persuade a consensus of the community to agree on consistent rules to reduce the amount of dispute and discord involved with title decision-making. Of course what's best for the reader is of prime importance, but in most cases the difference to the reader between the choices being considered is irrelevant. Does it really matter to the reader if it's San Francisco or San Francisco, California? If it's Airplane, Aeroplane or Fixed-wing aircraft? If it's South Shore Line (NICTD) or South Shore Line? To illustrate with analogy, we use a power saw to get it down to choices that are acceptable to readers, then we get out a file, then coarse sandpaper and finally extra fine sand paper to get it down to the best choice based on our naming criteria and what reduces conflict and discord about titles. It's not a choice between what's best for the reader or what's best for the editors. They're compatible, not conflicting, goals. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:20, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Table at the top of the canvassing policy page
Scale | Message | Audience | Transparency | ||||
Appropriate | Limited posting | AND | Neutral | AND | Nonpartisan | AND | Open |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ||||
Inappropriate | Mass posting | OR | Biased | OR | Partisan | OR | Secret |
Derivative table for judging possible plagiarism
Length of wording in question | Closeness to the original | Distinctiveness of original wording or meaning | Attribution | |
Less of an issue | Short | Your own wording1 | Not distinctive | Fully attributed |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
More of an issue | Long | Exact wording duplicated | Distinctive | Not directly attributed |
1Excluding "non-creative" text.
I haven't thought properly about how this frame could be adapted to the current policy needs, and whether it would work. Tony (talk) 02:36, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Here's a way to present WP:CRITERIA with this type of table.
Recognizability | Naturalness | Precision | Conciseness | Consistency | |
Better title | Recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic | Reflects what readers and editors are likely to expect. Conveys what the subject is actually called in English | Precise, but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article without conflict other titles | Concise; not overly long | Follows pattern used by similar articles |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
Problematic title | Not recognizable to someone familiar with the article topic | Does not convey what the title is actually called in English | Overly precise | Overly long | Does not follow pattern used in titles of similar articles |
Not sure what value, if any, this might have. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:53, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
On the recognizability wording, Greg L's poll confirmed that the wording I originally tried to restore, and you reverted, but was eventually restored, was favored unanimously by the seventeen members of the community who participated in that poll. Yet you still refer to it as "mangled".
The same thing about precision - it's not that I view it as a negative attribute - that's how the community views it. If you don't believe the "only as precise as necessary" wording in the table, which reflects wording from policy, is an accurate statement of community opinion, then propose a specific change to the wording to reflect what you think community opinion is, and see if you can get consensus support for it. That's how the current wording got to where it is.
It would really help if you stopped looking at this from the perspective of your opinion or whatever you believe my opinion is, and started looking at what the community does and says in practice. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:20, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
If there are alternatives which are almost equally popular, how to select one to be the main title of the article? For example, two names refer to the same dish. Thanks. Mặt trời đỏ ( talk) 19:20, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
Mặt trời đỏ ( talk) 11:58, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
There is an interesting case at Talk:The_Troll_Hunter#Requested_move. The problem here is that there are four different variants of the English title in use, and all of them seem to be reasonably widespread: "The Troll Hunter", "Troll Hunter", "TrollHunter", "Trollhunter". Google searches are inconclusive because if you exclude one search term from the search, you lose a load of results that list alternative titles etc. The sources in the article use a mix so it's not a straightforward case. Betty Logan ( talk) 00:05, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
I think we're not going to get much further until we agree on the reasons for titles. Currently the introduction to this page suggests two: "The title serves to give an indication of what the article is about, and to distinguish it from other articles." B2C says, above: "The notion that the purpose of the title is to pretty much say what the topic is has been repeatedly rejected over the years, and I would be very surprised if it had consensus support today." I find that hard to believe and am interested in to xis explanation. What are all functions that titles offer? Joja lozzo 19:34, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Of course a title serves "to give an indication of what the article is about" - that's very different from "the purpose of the title is to pretty much say what the topic is".
For example, 4706 Dennisreuter (found using SPECIAL:RANDOM) gives an indication of what the article is about, to someone who is familiar with that asteroid, but it doesn't say what the topic is. The lead does that: a main-belt asteroid discovered on February 16, 1988....
If the title gave more than an indication of what the article is about, and pretty much said what the topic was, then the title of that article would be more descriptive, and would be something like 4706 Dennisreuter, asteroid discovered in 1988.
But we only use such descriptive titles that "pretty much say what the topic is" when the topic does not have a name commonly used in sources, or sometimes as a byproduct when additional descriptive precision is needed in the title for disambiguation. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:05, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion:
I keep thinking of the White Knight's poem ... [7]
Seems to cover much of the "title" problem AFAICT. Collect ( talk) 21:44, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
At least you admit "there's a largish contingent pushing for minimality and conciseness, too". I suggest largish is a gross understatement given the dearth of articles that are titled inconsistently with this. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:07, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
The Bath discussion was about whether to follow the Cork (city) example or that of other cities in Somerset - it had nothing to do with one being more ambiguous or less precise than the other, if I recall correctly. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:51, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
I asked this ages ago. Is the title primarily for search optimisation (so the reader can pick the right article from a list of options when no other text is visible), or is the title part of the descriptive text of the article. If it is primarily for search optimisation, then WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is less than helpful (there's a huge long piece in the archives of this page about Steppenwolf as a search term, that already covered this). Elen of the Roads ( talk) 00:31, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
I also don't think the title was ever supposed to be part of the descriptive text of the article, except for those articles about topics that don't have names, like List of hotels in Manila.
To expand a bit on what David Levy said above, because we have titles that are descriptive because they require disambiguation, and titles about topics without names that require descriptive titles, people can get the wrong impression that titles are supposed to be descriptive. But in reality, they're just supposed to reflect the tag (for lack of a better term) that is most commonly used to refer to the article's topic in reliable sources. It's just sometimes we're required to use descriptive titles - but I don't think that has ever been a goal of titles. Using the most commonly used name of a topic as its article's title, whenever reasonably possible, aids searches (because articles are where they are expected to be). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:07, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Are we ready to agree on a list of title purposes? Is the following inclusive? Are there wording improvements?
Joja lozzo 04:34, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Well, to be fair, I think they imagine that these differences sometimes matter more than I believe they do. My point in favoring less ambiguity here is that ultimately when it comes down to questions like whether there is sufficient precision in a title, that it doesn't matter (either title is just as good for the reader), and, so, the more decisive our guidance is, the less debate there is about something that ultimately doesn't matter, which is a good thing. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:49, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
IMO, there are two basic purposes of a title. First, it should allow the reader to pick out the article he is looking for. That is to say, when the title appears in a list, such as a list of Google results, it should give the reader a cue that this is the article he is looking for. Secondly, the article title should tell the reader what the name of the topic is, what it commonly called in real-world English-language usage. I think it is safe to assume that the name of a subject in its most common form is more recognizable than a descriptive followed by a little "Wiki invented here" parenthetical disambiguator. But for those editors who refuse to believe this, we can run an experiment. Let's pick out a group of articles, change the titles back and forth between the two formats, and compare page views. " Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven)" was moved to "Moonlight Sonata" and back, so there is already a test case: "Moonlight Sonata" vs "Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven)". (Name-only titling beats explanatory titling by 14 percent, at least in this case.) Kauffner ( talk) 04:49, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
In addition, David Levy gave an answer today. Did you read all that? If so, why are you asking? If not, please stop asking and read them, then take up your disagreement with each one of them.
David also asked you two related questions. Will you answer or evade them? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:58, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
I think the main point of concern here is what "familiar" means, or perhaps more importantly, what people will interpret it to mean when quoting it to justify a move or edit war. I think we need to be clear that "familiar" shouldn't mean you already know what's in the article, or are familiar with the literature the article is based on. If your doctor gives you a diagnosis, and you come to WP to read up on it, you're familiar with the topic in an sense, but may know almost nothing about it. People look things up because they're ignorant, and IMO we need to target a likely level of familiar ignorance.
To accommodate that concern, I think when we say the name most commonly used in RS's, we shouldn't mean just the professional material that editors of the article read, but also introductory material: what is a beginning student of (chem/polisci/philosophy/etc) familiar with, when first exposed to the topic? (That's often when people come here.) What is someone peripherally connected with the topic in a non-professional capacity familiar with? If it's commonly known among those who really don't have a clue, if it's been in the news or entered, misunderstood, into popular culture, which name would ring a bell? And which dab would be needed to say, "no, not *that* X, dummy, this one." The most commonly used name will generally be the one used in trade journals, because they're the places it will be talked about the most. But their target audience is the experts in the field, not the general interested public, which is our target audience.
Sometimes I read a WP article on s.t. I already know a lot about for the sheer joy of reading a well-crafted article. But usually I look s.t. up because I'm ignorant about it, only familiar enough with it to know I need to look it up.
Would "Communicate a sense of the article's topic to someone interested in it" capture that balance, knowing enough to know you need to look it up, but not familiar enough to understand the professional lit, at least not before reading the WP article? — kwami ( talk) 05:57, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
The clause in full is: "recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic." I think the "though not necessarily expert in" parenthetical caveat really helps convey that it doesn't mean usage in professional material. And remember, not only are introductory books considered reliable sources, but so are newspapers and magazines that use layman language.
I don't think "to someone interested in it" conveys the same meaning. Someone could be interested in something, yet have no idea what it is called, so the title would not be recognizable to them. Nor do we try to make our titles recognizable to a person like that. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:23, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Joja asked "Are we ready to agree on a list of title purposes?" If the proposed list has to include the most controversial clause in recent history, imported from "recognizability" wording into what you should be a clean-slate list of purposes, then the answer might need to be "no". Dicklyon ( talk) 15:20, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Much of the latest discussion seems recursive. There seems to be a simple unwillingness from B2C to understand what others have clearly identified as a problem. There is the recycled retort that there is no problem that needs fixing. Above, current policy is employed recursively to defend against any changes in said policy. The continuing defence seems to be "what's wrong with having a concise title when there are no other identically-named articles?" The B2C challenge only proves that many articles follow the way B2C prefers articles to be named. It doesn't disprove that it can be a problem for the prospective reader to identify the topic of interest to him/her when looking at the title which is the product of a questionable algorithm. Whilst one editor is contributing 60% of the wordcount, most of the editors presently assembled (and representing the 40% wordcount) don't see article titles as a binary function; they don't want article titles to be stripped down to just the provebial engine and four wheels; they may not need Recaro leather seats, but ther would certainly welcome a nice chassis. In policy terms, they just want greater facility to identify one topic from other similarly-named topics. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 17:44, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia article titles [should] and do perform only two roles:
My first observation about this discussion is that we will continue to “tilt at windmills” if we continue to try and describe anything about titles using some element of the user experience to do so. Utterly impossible and meaningless. At last count, there were ~2.7 billion internet users on a daily basis. WP historically is visited by ~13-14% of global internet users on a daily basis. Do the math (14% of 2.7 billion) = ~378 million users every day. Trying to describe a title in terms of how 378 million users ought to behave relative to the title is pure fantasy.
My second role above emphasizes this and puts the burden on the title. I favor the word “contents” over topic because a great many of our 3.9 million articles cover multiple topics or topics that can be interpreted multiple ways. On the other hand “Content” is “Content”. In my view, if a title Faithfully reflects the contents of the article then it is fulfilling its role for WP. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 18:41, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Two comments:
Anyway, the rules are crafted sensibly and IAR is invoked rarely. Per the rules, not per IAR, and all appropriately, Kleenex, Band-Aid and Adhesive bandage are all separate articles, and Tissues is a redirect to a dab page at Tissue. I don't know why WhatamIdoing thinks these are examples of pandering to the LCD; none of them are.
What actual and serious problem are you guys trying to address? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:42, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Ohconfucious wrote above:
It's not what I prefer that matters, but what the community prefers. But, yes, the B2C challenge only proves that, but that is all it is supposed to prove!
The B2C challenge (use SPECIAL:RANDOM repeatedly to obtain a sample of titles from which common practice can be discerned) is designed to refute the assertion that descriptive information in parentheses added to the names of topics in titles for reasons other than disambiguating from other uses is the way "it has usually been done" [8].
If you want to concede that that is not the way it has usually been done, but contend that it should be the way it is done, that's a different argument, and one to which the B2C challenge is of course irrelevant. Ohconfucious also says:
I understand very well what the problem is. I just disagree on its magnitude (I don't think it matters much at all), and, more importantly, don't think there is a solution that doesn't create much bigger problems than the one it's trying to solve. I haven't even seen a specific solution proposed, much less one proposed that would not be seriously problematic. This is the same issue raised by the questions that David Levy asked of Dicklyon (search for "David Levy" on this page), and which I've raised in the past every time I pointed out that the "devil is in the details" (search for "devil" in the archives), which remain unanswered. That's why we keep going in circles... the proponents of more descriptive titles keep ignoring this issue, no matter how many times it is raised, by how many different people. Yet we're the ones accused of not understanding and recursively defending against changes in policy.
Speaking of changes in policy, I explain how I believe policy change occurs at WP, and why, in my FAQ. Please see User:Born2cycle/FAQ#Change_guideline_first. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:52, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Previously I proposed three purposes: Communicating the topic, matching search terms and distinguishing between articles. I think matching likely search terms could be assigned entirely to redirects if direct hits are not a high priority (which is fine with me). Then we can collapse to two encyclopedic purposes: 1) to give an indication of what the article is about and 2) distinguish the article from others. If we think it's clear (I'm not sure it is) that communicating what an article is about implicitly includes what it is not about then we only need the first of these. (I do not consider technical issues with name collisions and URLs to be encyclopedic.) Joja lozzo 20:28, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
Are people happy with this title? Grand Council. Tony (talk) 06:53, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Inspired by B2C's table above, I see that a table with descriptions of both better and problematic goal satisfaction has the potential to offer editors more information than just the description of title characteristics for each of the goals as we have it now. The "problematic" row presents an opportunity to present an enhanced perspective on the "better" description. This is a common approach with examples in the MOS. As primarily an exercise and demonstration but also a strawman proposal, I have composed the table below with an extra "Unambiguous" column, adjective goals instead of noun goals, major liberties with B2C's "better" row, and an attempt to go beyond pure dichotomies in the "problematic" row:
Recognizable | Natural | Unambiguous | Precise | Concise | Consistent | |
Better title | Recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic | The most common English name of the topic (without colliding with another title), reflecting what readers and editors are likely to expect | Clearly distinguishes the topic from that of other articles | Satisfies other goals without unnecessarily narrowing its scope | Uses as few words as possible | Follows patterns used by similar articles |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
Problematic title | Identifies the topic only for experts | Unusual or very specialized name for the topic | Has more than one common, natural interpretation | Improper focus, defines topic too narrowly or too broadly | Too wordy, hard to comprehend at a glance | Diverges from standard patterns |
I welcome feedback but would even more like to see how others to would express the goals in this "quality spectra" table format. Joja lozzo 00:57, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Comments. Nice work by both B2C and Joja. Already I feel I can come to a better understanding by looking at these tables. A few queries:
Recognizable | Natural | Unambiguous | Generous | Concise | Consistent | |
Better title | Recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic | The most common English name of the topic (without colliding with another title), reflecting what readers and editors are likely to expect | Clearly distinguishes the topic from that of other articles | Offers a liberal topical scope | Minimizes wording | Follows patterns in similar article titles |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
Problematic title | Identifies the topic only for experts | Unusual or very specialized name for the topic | Has more than one common, natural interpretation | Overly restrictive and narrow | Can be shortened without impacting other goals | Diverges from patterns in similar article titles |
I think that unambiguous and generous capture some of the intent of precise, but not all. See the old quotes. The title should be clear and unambiguous about what the topic is; that can usually be done in a way that's not narrow or restrictive (is generous), and is not about whether there are other articles with similar names (unambiguous in that sense). We tend to do this naturally, but sometimes the conciseness hammer removes the clues to the topic and leaves the title ambiguous (see typical PRIMARYTOPIC RM arguments, where some want to use an ambiguous name on an article and some don't, like current ones: Talk:Waterdeep (city)#Requested move or Talk:Whisky Galore (novel)#Requested move 2 or Talk:The Rats (novel)#Requested move). We've never pinned down what it means to be "not over precise" or "no more precise than necessary", but to me what's "necessary" is to define the topic. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:29, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
For example, the notion that the purpose of the title is to define the topic has been repeatedly rejected over the years, and I would be very surprised if it had consensus support today. Traditionally, the article lead defines the topic, not the title. Think of a dictionary definition, which has an entry (the word being defined) and the definition. In WP articles, the title is like the entry, and the lead is like the definition.
This gets a bit confusing because we do have titles about topics that don't have names, and so in those cases we sometimes use descriptive titles which can look like definitions (e.g., List of video games cancelled for Xbox 360 console). But we shouldn't let these exceptions cause us to believe that all or even most titles should be descriptive definitions of the topic. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
When I first started editing, I consulted these pages for a specific question and found them to be totally useless. Ordinary users do not have time to cogitate on thousands of pages of confusingly written specious jargon before putting finger to keyboard.
There is no point in rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. We need to take a step back, and decide first what is worthy of discussion. Neotarf ( talk) 10:34, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
"Any third_rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain air of real insight to make things simple again." -- E.F. Schumacher
"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" -- Mark Twain
For better or for worse, bold edits and specific proposals that have consensus support is how policy is far from perfectly governed on WP, and probably always will be, or it would be a very different kind of project.
Whining about problems that are not discussed in the context of a proposal to solve those problems, hopefully without creating new ones, is rarely helpful or productive, and often bordering on disruption. That's not to say that problems without a specific proposed solution should never be discussed - it's possible that someone else will propose a good solution to a clearly specified problem - but in my experience most discussions that do that, like Mike Cline's Taking a holistic approach to Wikipedia title policy – Is it an idea whose time has come?, rarely go anywhere productive. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:27, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
The 3rd bullet, about consensus, I don't fully understand. But "rarely been overwhelming support for any one proposal" seems central to it, and yet we did have overwhelming (indeed unanimous) support for the change to the recognizability wording recently, despite all the controversy and even an Arbcom case that stemmed from it. And that's not that unusual. Over the last few years there has been consensus regarding the idea that policy is suppose to mostly reflect actual behavior, and most edits have been done in concert with that. Most edits, the vast majority, to this page, over the years, nobody objected to at the time they were made, nor later.
I really don't understand the predilection for open-endedness in titling policy and guidelines, at least I don't see how that benefits the encyclopedia. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:01, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't know where you get the idea that Greg L's poll was "an emergency measure imposed by an administrator to stop an edit war", but Greg L is not an administrator, as far as I know. Perhaps you know otherwise. I believe Greg is just another experienced editor who wanted to get clarity regarding where consensus (sorry, but that is what he was trying to ascertain) might be on the central question at issue. The result of that poll supported the position I held since I first re-added that wording in mid-December. Anyway, I brought it up only because you said, "there has rarely been overwhelming support for any one proposal." I don't know what you mean by Tony's sunlight paradigm (I searched for "sunlight" on this page and in its archives to no avail), but if that poll didn't demonstrate overwhelming support for that proposal, then there is no such thing.
The only thing you said about "argumentum ad populum" is: "Ignoring for the moment the 'argumentum ad populum' dimension of that, which is not compatible with WP consensus policy", I'm not sure how you expect me to respond. I guess your point is that they're not compatible. Well, yes, argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy in debates about factual matters. But in title decision making, we're not trying to establish whether certain proposition are true or not, in which case holding polls would indeed by inappropriate. We're trying to establish what community opinion is, for which polling is quite appropriate.
What you mean by "the insistence that consensus (or the manufactured appearance of consensus) will remain etched in stone for all time" I have no idea, but I will say if that's what you think I'm doing, I'm not being very clear, or you're not paying very good attention, or both. But I suggest your lack of quoting the words of mine that caused you to believe that's what I meant is telling. I mean, if I believed that, why would I spend so time and energy trying to persuade others through discussion in order to build consensus? WP:CONSENSUSCANCHANGE, thankfully!
Upon review before Save page, it struck me perhaps you're under the impression that I'm saying those who favor more description in titles should not be arguing this because it's against consensus and consensus won't change. If that's not your impression, then please ignore the rest of this. But if that's your impression, then there has been a misunderstanding, I assure you. First, I'm arguing that policy should not change to say something that does not reflect consensus, or reflects consensus less than current wording. First you change consensus, then you change policy. I also am a big believer in changing consensus/policy bottom up - first you persuade others one minor proposal at a time, via WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, and then you establish a pattern which you can use to argue for a change in policy. What you can't do is say WP would be better with whatever, so let's just add this and delete that from policy.
But there is also the WP:IDHT consideration. At some point, when you've been shown that your position is clearly contrary to consensus, at least for now, you might back off a little.
But in this case, again, the real problem is the lack of a real position - what exactly would people like to change? What are the answers to David Levy's questions, etc.? If we had a real proposal, and these questions were answered, then we'd have something real to consider. Hope this helps. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:22, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
If criticism is needed, discuss editors' actions, but avoid accusing others of harmful motives without clear evidence.
In these cases admonishing someone to "assume good faith" is in fact assuming that they are not assuming good faith - the admonisher is ironically violating the very principle he or she is purporting to uphold, and is being uncivil.
Be careful about citing this principle too aggressively. Just as one can incorrectly judge that another is acting in bad faith, so too can one mistakenly conclude that bad faith is being assumed, and exhortations to "Assume Good Faith" can themselves reflect negative assumptions about others if a perceived assumption of bad faith was not clear-cut.
If another editor objects to refactoring then the changes should be reverted.
The RM at Talk:Inverter (logic gate)#Requested move smacks of bad faith. People who know nothing of the subject are wanting to move this already-disambiguated topic to NOT gate, a name less familiar (even to people familiar with it), probably so that they can then try again to put Power inverter at Inverter by claiming there's no longer any ambiguity. At least, I'm unable to find any other theory for why they piled on from the other RM ( Talk:Power inverter#Requested move). Is this kosher? Dicklyon ( talk) 23:48, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Let's suppose that there is a country with the long-form name "Republic of Smell." Further suppose that there are various nations named Smell, and that the Republic is neither the largest nor best-known of these. As you can imagine, the people of this nation found the name to be dissatisfying. So the foreign ministry decided to encourage the use of the form "Republic of Smell (Pleasant)". Can a ministry chose a disambiguator, or must these be chosen by a Wiki specialist properly credentialed in such matters? For a real world example, see here. Kauffner ( talk) 10:06, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
WP:PRECISION is currently defined as what Dicklyon calls a "negative attribute"; this is the first sentence:
What about rewording like this:
Better? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:56, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
So does this mean that "Vehicle registration tax" (it's actually the Irish one) is sufficiently precise? I'm not sure this is sufficiently reader-focused if it lets through vague titles like that one. Tony (talk) 04:30, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
This is why I'm asking for an example of a title that reasonably meets the other criteria for a given article, but, in your view, needs to be more precise. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
The concept of Precision and WP article titles is a case where we continue to use the wrong word to describe what we really want. I’ve said this before and as far as I can tell, the definition of precision in the English language hasn’t changed. Precision is primarily a mathematic construct that derives from Accuracy.
Yet, we continue to try and define precision as something it isn’t to fit into WP titling policy. Why? Anyone that sees the words—precise, precision etc. isn’t going to understand them any different from how they are defined in the real world regardless of how many times we’ve tried to craft a new meaning on this page.
We are really trying to convey a sense of How much ambiguity should we tolerate in a title? (one perspective) or How complete should our disambiguation be for any given title? (another perspective). Why can’t we just say that? Precision implies (actually requires some baseline of accuracy) and accuracy is something we don’t demand in our titles, since Commonname is the driving source of titles. So why do we continue to use a word that we can’t explain and drives editors to strive for accuracy in titles when that’s not what we really want. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 19:14, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
We keep discussing Precision with "proper name" titles in mind... but what about descriptive titles? I think Precision is a very valid goal in determining acceptable descriptive titles. For example, we recently changed " Christianity and Freemasonry" to " Opposition to Freemasonry within Christianity" because the second title more precisely described what the article is actually about.
On a related note... Can anyone think of a time a descriptive title needed disambiguation?... perhaps this is where we can draw a distinction between the two concepts. Disambiguation (and how much is needed) relates to Proper Name titles, while Precision (and how much is needed) relates to descriptive titles. Just a thought. Blueboar ( talk) 20:21, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Titles of articles about topics with names should simply be that name if the name does not conflict with other uses on WP or the topic is primary for that name, or it should be the name disambiguated. Articles about topics without names should be descriptive.
Much unnecessary conflict and confusion arises when we try to add descriptive information to titles of articles about topics with names when that descriptive information is not needed for disambiguation from other uses on WP. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
This whole proposal is flawed because of misguided notions of what constitutes somethings "name", because of misguided beliefs that "most common" is clearly defined and determinable, and because it is just bad-faith failure to accept the fact that Serge's repeated proposals along these lines do not have a consensus in support of them and are unlikely to achieve it. User:Gene Nygaard 05:30, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
In the light of Talk:Trollhunter#Requested move and WT:RM#Strange move closure?, I would invite you to improve consensus in Talk:Trollhunter#Move back to Trolljegeren? Feel free. -- George Ho ( talk) 19:54, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
I want to know what the consensus is for having slashes in article titles in terms of the spacing between words. I personally, don't think it is necessary. For example, Wilshire/Western (Los Angeles Metro station) redirects to Wilshire / Western (Los Angeles Metro station). I don't think the spaces should be present. Same goes for 7th St/Metro Center (Los Angeles Metro station), which redirects to 7th Street / Metro Center (Los Angeles Metro station). The difference of course is that "Wilshire" and "Western" are single words joined by a slash, while "7th Street" and "Metro Center" are two words. Should this make a difference? I also don't think so. Especially since the transit agency itself does not use spaces between the slashes. [9] I want to get some feedback here before I revert all the page moves to remove the spaces. – Dream out loud ( talk) 19:57, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
The LA Times does not use spaces around the slash [10]; I still see no good reason for us to do it. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:59, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
The question up for discussion is simply this:
"Should Wikipedia Manual of Style (MOS) rules be applied to article titles which: A) Are an exact transcription of the name of a person, place or thing; and B) Do not match the Wikipedia MOS?"
I suggest it might be helpful to have a shortcut, e.g. WP:MATCHING, that links to consistency between articles in this MOS page, just as WP:CONSISTENCY links to consistency within articles. In ictu oculi ( talk) 14:00, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#non-admin suggestion - RfC on change to BLP policy to insert the wording:
BLP names diacritics guideline proposal
The names of living persons should be representedaccurately,according to their nationality, with diacritics if Latin alphabet names, even when the majority of popular English language sources, for example sports sources, do not use diacritics.
I think this is a bad proposal, because its advice that would be inserted into another policy and it contradicts the advise given in this policy which is to base the names of articles on usage in reliable English language sources. I have some other specific objections to the wording, which I have expressed at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#non-admin suggestion - RfC on change to BLP policy and rather than discuss it here I would urge people to read the section at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons and express an opinions there in the hope of building a consensus. -- PBS ( talk) 14:48, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
Is there anyone who has an objection to a shortcut WP:MATCHTITLE to Consistency – Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles."? Or indeed anyone who thinks a shortcut to Consistency – Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles." would be helpful in some cases? In ictu oculi ( talk) 07:42, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
7. Oppose. The proposal actualy say that the général rule "common English spelling" should be replaced with the "native spelling". Is this an English Wikipedia or an international one? I vote use the English language. Philip Baird Shearer 10:30, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Is there anyone there who hasn't got a issue with European names and is willing to consider a shortcut to "Consistency – Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles." on its own merits? This is actually WP:Article titles guideline, yes? Thanks. In ictu oculi ( talk) 08:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
MakeSense64 ( talk) 11:10, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
The proposal made above has inspired me to think about how we present consistency as a goal. I think consistency is a goal... but... only in situations where it supports the other goals. It should not be a goal in situations that conflict with the other goals.
To give examples... take the case of our flora articles... here we have the issue that plants (and to a lesser extent animals) have both non-scientific names and scientific names. The non-scientific names vary from place to place (a plant might be called "Spikey Persimmon" in one local, "Pink Julip" in another and "Witch's hat" in a third). More importantly, the non-scientific name used for a particular plant in one local can be used for a completely different plant in another local (thus, the name "Yuckberry" may refer to two different plants). Thus, using the non-scientific name as an article title causes a problem with the goals of recognizability and disambiguation. However, this is not the case if we use Scientific names... the Scientific name of a plant is the same in all locations, without any overlap. The scientific name is recognizable everywhere, without conflict. Thus in the Flora articles we call for consistency (ie consistently using scientific names) because doing so actually supports the goals of recognizability and disambiguation.
However, in other topic areas, trying for consistency can actually conflict with the other goals. For example, We could call for consistency in the article titles for living people (perhaps mandating full names - "Jonathan Jones Doe" instead of "John Doe"). However, doing so would create a conflict with the goal of recognizability ("Bill Clinton" is more recognizable than "William Jefferson Clinton"). In such cases we almost always depreciate the goal of consistency in favor of recognizability.
To restate: Consistency is a goal, when it supports the other goals... but not when it conflicts with the others. Perhaps we need to make this clearer in the policy? Blueboar ( talk) 13:11, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
It looks like Consistency is already covered in this brief section
WP:MOSAT, with naming conventions for flora as given example. It states that it should only be used if there are "clear benefits" outweighing the use of common names. This suggests to me that the "consistency" criterium gets invoked only when there is an existing naming convention that pertains to the article.
Is it fair to say that the naming criteria appear in approximate order of importance? So "recognizability" and "naturalness" are most important, followed by "precision" and "conciseness". "Consistency" is least important and only used when there is a relevant naming convention. If that is the case, then I think we better reorder the sections to follow the same sequence. So "Common names" and "Neutrality in article titles" come first because they are connected mainly to "recognizability" and "naturalness". The "Precision and disambiguation" and "English-language title" sections should come next, as they relate to the "precision" and "conciseness" criteria. The "Explicit conventions" section would then be next. Would be more logical and comprehensive imo. MakeSense64 ( talk) 07:41, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
And I couldn't agree more with what MakeSense says above:
If you are supposed to "weigh" five factors and there is no clear instruction whatsoever how to weigh them, then you can produce any outcomes by just changing the weighings. Then you can as well have no policy.
Since my comments elsewhere have been invoked here, I thought I'd weigh-in. Consistency is not a vague thing. When a locus of anything is viewed collectively, there is either consistency among the members or there is not. Agreed, that the degree of consistency is always up for debate, but at some point the relationship between members becomes inconsistent. Consistency is clearly defined by these words: steadfast adherence to the same principles, course, form, etc.: There is consistency in his pattern of behavior. or agreement, harmony, or compatibility, especially correspondence or uniformity among the parts of a complex thing: consistency of colors throughout the house. I don't think this discussion is as much about weighting the different titling criteria, but instead is about reaching the best balance among the criteria for any given title. If one foreign name uses diacritics and other does not when both are within the same locus of members, those titles are inconsistent in form. If we want consistency to be one of our title criteria, then we should seek to craft guidelines and naming conventions that provide for consistency and not allow inconsistency. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 17:22, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
Picking up on what Mike Cline said : "If we are willing to allow inconsistency on a regular basis, it shouldn't be a criteria." I think that makes sense. But, using "consistency" as the main criterium is also not as easy as it sounds. Because most articles belong to more than one "membership group". A given article can easily fall within the scope of 3 or more different Wikiprojects, and all the naming conventions (or naming guidance) they have put together will not necessarily point in the same direction. Deciding on an article title will then become a "voting contest".
Personally, I would do away with the "consistency" criterium and just state that: "naming conventions may apply". Not all our naming conventions are equal. We have "rigid" naming conventions and more "fluid" ones. Some are more like policies and enforced before anything else is considered (e.g. we would not consider any article title in Cyrillic), while others naming conventions are weighed as one factor among many others (so these conventions will by definition not be used consistently). Sometimes our naming conventions have inconsistency baked in. Take our naming conventions for Ireland-related articles
WP:MOS-IE, neither English nor Irish names are used consistently, so this convention is consistently inconsistent.
My first suggestion to simplify the naming criteria would be to merge "recognizability" with "naturalness" and just call it "commonness". We are not writing wp articles about something if it is not mentioned in sources, so whatever our sources are writing about, they must be giving it a name. The most commonly used name or word will almost always be the most recognizable and natural term.
My second suggestion would be to merge "precise" with "concise", because we also clearly use them as a connected pair. We can often be more precise by using a longer name or description, but a shorter title is more practical. So we look for an optimum between two vectors that point in opposite directions.
My third suggestion is to drop the "consistency" criterium and replace it with "naming conventions may apply". So we can get a flowchart that show us what to do. E.g.:
Comments welcome. MakeSense64 ( talk) 17:31, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 30 | ← | Archive 34 | Archive 35 | Archive 36 | Archive 37 | Archive 38 | → | Archive 40 |
There is an ArbCom ruling on the title of the article for Ireland, the republic that occupies the majority of the island of Ireland. But there is no such thing for other similar countries, such as the Republic of Macedonia, the Republic of China (known commonly as Taiwan), the People's Republic of China, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Should the titles of these articles be hardcoded in the Manual of Style (or any other official policy)? A discussion had been kicked off at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Titles of a few countries. 61.18.170.243 ( talk) 08:46, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
The Precision criterion is currently worded as follows:
Note that it links to the WP:PRECISION section which starts out with the following statement:
Note that this clarifies what "unambiguously" means: to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name.
Note also that the first sentence of WP:D defines disambiguation in terms of usage within Wikipedia:
Now, anyone can follow this chain of statements to ascertain the intended meaning, but if you just look at the precision criterion in isolation, it could be misleading. In particular, one could interpret it to mean unambiguously with respect to all usage in English, not just within the context of WP titles.
Because of the potential misunderstanding/misinterpretation of the current wording, I suggest that we tighten up the wording about precision to be consistent with the accepted definition of disambiguation within WP.
I propose the criterion be updated to say:
And also the following clarification added at WP:PRECISION:
Thoughts? Comments? Any objections? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Historically, B2C's interpretation of what "precision" is about (the "intended meaning") is far off the mark of what precision has been about over the years. Back in 2002 it was terribly amateurish, but this shows where the idea came from:
Be precise when necessary
Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously-named title as though that title had no other meanings! A reader may have found your article with a search, or accidentally, or in some other way that robs him of the context, so do him a favor and name your articles precisely. If a word or phrase is ambiguous, and your article concerns only one of the meanings of that word or phrase, you should probably--not in all cases, but in many--use something more precise than just that word or phrase. For example, use Apollo program, Nirvana (band), smoking pipe; rather than simply Apollo, Nirvana, Pipe. See disambiguation for more details on that.
By 2008 it was more concise, slightly mangled, but still the same concept (ambiguity as the opposite of precision):
Be precise when necessary
Convention: Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously named title as though that title had no other meanings. If all possible words have multiple meanings, go with the rule of thumb of naming guidelines and use the more popular term.
In early 2009 when Kotniski didn't know what it meant, he changed it, still focusing on real ambiguity: "Avoid giving an article an ambiguous title (unless it is unlikely that the other meanings deserve their own article)." Then in April 2009 he changed it to
Be precise when necessary
Convention: Name an article as precisely as is necessary to indicate accurately its topical scope; avoid over-precision. If there are other articles with the same name, then the title should include a disambiguator in parentheses, unless the article concerns the primary topic for that name. If alternative common names exist for a topic, sometimes a less ambiguous option may be chosen in order to avoid the need for a disambiguator.
It was Pmanderson in June 2009 who added this about technical uniqueness:
Be precise when necessary
Convention: Name an article as precisely as is necessary to indicate accurately its topical scope; avoid over-precision.
All articles must, by the design of Wikipedia, have a unique name. If there are several articles with the same name, it may be that one concerns the primary topic for that name; if so, that one keeps the common name, and the others must be moved. The articles should be linked, to help readers get where they want to go, either to each other or to a disambiguation page, normally called topic or topic (disambiguation). If alternative common names exist for a topic, using them may be the simplest way to disambiguate; if not, add a disambiguator in parentheses. Rationale and specifics: See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) and Wikipedia:Disambiguation.
When the "Deciding an article title" section got made in the turmoil of Sept. 2009, the locked version at the end of the month simply said:
Precise – Be precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.
where that limitation "only as precise as necessary" derived as a toned-down version of Born2cycle's attempt to rewrite "precision" in the negative, to discourage precision instead of encourage it, as:
Precision. Good article titles are only as precise as necessary to indicate the name of the topic unambiguously.
Born2cycle further mangled it here to:
Precise – Article titles that do not simply reflect the name of the topic are more descriptive, but only as precise as necessary to identify the name or subject of the topic unambiguously.
Finally a fluff reduction by Rannpháirtí anaithnid made the ending version quoted above.
There was still also a separate section that said
Be precise when necessary
Further information: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) and Wikipedia:Disambiguation
Articles are named as precisely as is necessary to indicate their scope accurately, while avoiding over-precision. Readers should not have to read into the article to find which of several meanings of the title is the actual subject, but there is no virtue in excess. Wikipedia also has disambiguation pages to help readers find the meaning they want. When (as with Paris), the unmodified term has an overwhelmingly predominant meaning, we use the simple term for that article; see WP:PRIMARYUSAGE.
All articles must, by the design of Wikipedia, have a unique name. If there are several articles with the same name, it may be that one concerns the primary topic for that name; if so, that one keeps the common name, and the others must be disambiguated. It may be that using an alternative common name for a topic is the simplest way to disambiguate; if not, add a disambiguator in parentheses. The articles should be linked, to help readers get where they want to go, either to each other or to a disambiguation page, normally called topic or topic (disambiguation).
The next big change of meaning – Kotniski changed that latter section on Oct. 29 2009 to
Precision
Articles titles usually merely indicate the name of the topic. When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided. For example, it would be inappropriate to name an article "United States Apollo program (1961–1975)" or "Nirvana (Aberdeen, Washington rock band)". Remember that concise titles are generally preferred.
but then on Nov 9. Francis Schonken just pointed it off to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) instead, because he didn't like how Kotniski merged things (I don't totally follow).
going off in a new direction – on 17 Aug 2010, Kotniski replaced the "precision" bullet with this "disambiguation" bullet:
Disambiguation – For technical reasons, no two Wikipedia articles can have the same title.[1] Details on how titles are made unambiguous can be found in the Disambiguation guideline.
badly patched – in the subsequent flurry that ensued (and after a couple of typically ineffectual attempts by PBS to stop the policy thrashing, which was the same thrashing that planted the seeds of our recent month-long trouble), with help from Pmanderson they emerged merged, as
Precision – titles are expected to use names and terms that are precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. For technical reasons, no two Wikipedia articles can have the same title,[1] so ambiguous titles are generally avoided; see further the Precision and disambiguation section below and in the disambiguation guideline.
sorry, I'm not copying all the links and stuff, but this merge is where it came to have two copies of the link to WP:AT#Precision and disambiguation, the "extra baggage" that I removed finally in 2012 the other day.
I don't think there's any point in the history where the concept of "precision" resembled what B2C now says it means (except for a brief transient in Sept. 2009 when he made it say that precision is to be minimized). Even if he's right that "I don't think disambiguation in titles is done for readers at all" (which I don't think he is), that's not an issue that belongs in "precision", just as it was not an issue that belongs in "recognizability". It is an issue peculiar to B2C, it seems, as I read the essay on his user page ( User:Born2cycle#A goal: naming stability at Wikipedia). Dicklyon ( talk) 07:13, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I should note that until this change of a few days ago the wording of the precision criteria at least referred to these two other sections, making it easier for others to connect the dots and make misinterpretation less likely. I don't think returning the "extra baggage" would be an improvement, but what I propose addresses a problem created by this removal. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:13, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
'Precision' has more than just a statistical meaning. That wouldn't apply here anyway, because article titles are not statistics, and in any case that usage of 'precision' contrasts with 'accuracy'. (You can be extremely precise and completely inaccurate: the two are independent of each other. For example, if you shoot a gun at a target several times, and you land your shots in the same place, then you've achieved precision even if you completely missed the target. Likewise, if your shots clustered around the bulls-eye without being in the same place, then you were accurate but not precise.) The common usage of the term, however, is a near synonym with accuracy. As the OED says, 'precision' is "the fact, condition, or quality of being precise; exactness, definiteness, accuracy." Although most of their recent quotations reflect a mathematical use of the term, they have an earlier one (from 1824) which is germane:
Which seems to be basically what we want: enough to be clear, but no more than that. (The question being, enough to be clear in the context of the world, or in the context only of other WP articles.)
And 'precise':
I don't know if this is precisely what was meant by precision, or if another of our terms (explicitness, etc.) would be better. — kwami ( talk) 08:12, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
We should be focusing on what we want out of precision and disambiguation, not the history of where we been. What's the desired outcome, the future. The past is irrelevant. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 17:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
The section WP:PRECISE indeed starts with a hard-to-interpret sentence, which today attracted an editor to insert "not" into it, which left it no better and no worse. I made a change to clarify, and these were both reverted, so I propose it for your consideration here:
Although additional precision is sometimes necessary to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name, or to reduce ambiguity, excess precision should be avoided. ...
This restores a tiny bit of the concept that precision is to prevent ambiguity, a concept that was edited out some time ago, as the history above shows. It doesn't specifically define "excess precision", which is OK I think, and certainly better than defining it such that the only tolerable precision is the minimum needed to avoid name collisions. Comments? Dicklyon ( talk) 23:47, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Although additional precision is sometimes necessary to discriminate among articles with similar titles, excess precision should be avoided. ...
If I understand Mike's point correctly, I think he has a point. Precision and disambiguation are related, but I think they are distinct concepts. I have always though that Precision applied more to creating descriptive titles than it does to disambiguating proper name titles. Or at least it applies to the two types of titles in different ways.
To illustrate: We have an article that is descriptively entitled Christianity and Freemasonry... I have long thought that this was a very imprecise title for that specific article, because it does not really describe what the article is about. A more precise title would be Opposition to Freemasonry by certain specific Christian denominations. (Note: I am sure that there is a more concise wording that would be an even better title for the topic than the one I suggest here... I am making a point, so go with it). Now... Compare how I am using the term Precision in my example to how the term is used in Mike's John L Doe example, and you see how we are not really talking about the same thing... In both cases there is a need for "Precision"... but there is a different type of Precision that is needed. I think it would be helpful if we separate the two types, and in doing so we should probably use two different synomyms for "Precision". Blueboar ( talk) 16:41, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
So here are the two criteria—ambiguity and precision separately defined along the lines of Blueboar’s observations above. Just for consideration of the concept. (dictionary definitions for support only, not part of the criteria statements)
Ambiguity*: [Wikipedia article] titles are unambiguous in the context of the Wikipedia article space. Our disambiguation guidelines and naming conventions favor minimum disambiguation to remove ambiguity when two or more articles titles may have a title with multiple the same meanings.
Precision*: [[Descriptive] Wikipedia] titles are as precise as necessary to indicate accurately the topical scope of the article. Over-precision should be avoided as conciseness is important.
-- Mike Cline ( talk) 18:19, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
The "ambiguity" item proposed here is a bit off where it says "when two or more article titles may have the same meaning". I suppose it means "when two or more articles could take the same title" or something like that? Anyway, it is not possible to not satisfy this criterion, right? So no matter what other criteria are satisfied or violated, this one will be satisfied, for technical reasons.
The "precision" item, on the other hand, is about specifying the article scope clearly (or accurately, or precisely, if you prefer). That's what precision was traditionally about, but it has been whittled away at, with the addtion of "avoid over-precision" in early 2009, to "only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously" later in 2009, to "merely indicate the name of the topic", and back; and now the proposal "only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously with respect to other Wikipedia titles" that explicitly wipes out precision as a consideration, because there's only title "ambiguity" to consider. I prefer to go back to where it means something, like the just proposed "as precise as necessary to indicate accurately the topical scope of the article", for descriptive titles or otherwise; sometimes names are particularly ambiguous, as names of things (esp. creative works) are typically made from words with other meanings. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:31, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I think I am beginning to understand what Mike has been telling us. Precision in itself is an abstract concept and therefore meaningless in practice until we apply it to the measurement of a property, such as Unambiguity. As Blueboar suggests, we can also apply precision to Descriptiveness (which is very similar to, if not basically the same as, Recognizability). I think that the Precision goal is guidance for the process of applying Unambiguity to titles that are assumed to be already Recognizable and Natural - it explains how to (precisely) Disambiguate: by improving Natural, Concise, Consistent Descriptiveness without over-describing. Here's a draft that does not mention precision per se:
Wikipedia article titles have the following characteristics:
- Recognizable – Titles are names or descriptions of the topic that are recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic.
- Natural – Titles are those that readers are likely to look for or search with as well as those that editors naturally use to link from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
Precision – Titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.- Concise – Titles are concise, and not overly long.
- Consistent – Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principles behind the above questions.
- Unambiguous – Titles distinguish the topics of articles with similar titles by adding description (natural recognizability) with minimal effects on conciseness and consistency.
I put Unambiguous last because it is subservient to the other characteristics. Joja lozzo 05:24, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I wonder if we shouldn't have separate criteria for topics with and without names. The criteria might be similar or even the same, but how we prioritize it is different, and maybe we should describe it differently. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:28, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
Blueboar, although the criteria themselves may not need (or even should be) prioritized, I think we should be cautious about saying every title decision is random (my word) – your phrase: because which principle takes priority will be different from one article to the next. I fervently believe that if we are to have a functional titling policy that will guide us as we move from ~3.8M articles to ~-5-10M articles, there indeed must be some prioritization of policy application. The four elements we must apply are: sourcing, common name, ambiguity and style. I think sourcing takes priority over the other three. Common name is the next driver. Where we currently have conflict are with the relationships between common name and style and ambiguity and style. This is where we have to focus our attention. The current set of criteria as drafted work fine with these elements, but it is the relationship between the elements that needs focus. FYI, I think Opposition within Christianity to Freemasonry would be a nice alternative title. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 14:34, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
I do not agree with lowest priority of unambiguity. Just coming from a discussion about the correct title for trivial objects in algebra. The resulting title, "Zero object (algebra)", is less recognizable that any of its inbound redirects, not highly consistent (in the sense mentioned above), and absolutely unnatural. But it is unambiguous and devoid of all misleading connotations, unlike proposals of the previous generation. Though this case was exceptionally complicated. Incnis Mrsi ( talk) 19:04, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
I think this is such a difficult issue to solve because many items in the texts being proposed are hard to pin down in yes–no terms. Among these items are "familiar", "precise", and "necessary". They beg questions such as how familiar, how precise, and necessary in what respect? While WP can get away with binaries in many of its policies and guidelines, wp:title doesn't seem to be one of them. This is why the nitty-gritty lies in providing editors who consult this policy with examples. I know this is something of a mantra of mine, but doesn't anyone agree?
Scoping most titles is uncontroversial, but a small proportion will always require case-by-case decisions or delicate judgements by individual editors/admins. When either is indicated, the criteria, to me, are best regarded as continua to balance against each other, rather than binaries, weighed against each other. In other words, the difficult, borderline, or controversial cases might benefit from considering a number of scaled criteria.
This has been part of the anti-canvassing policy for years, and seems to work well there. I've reproduced the table at canvassing below, and underneath it, a table I derived from it when discussing with Moonriddengirl last year the tangled set of criteria at play when deciding whether text is plagiarised. (We haven't yet taken this forward for broader community comment.) I suppose I'm fishing to see whether anyone here thinks this model might be useful for article title decision-making—adapted, of course, for the purpose.
Table at the top of the canvassing policy page
Scale | Message | Audience | Transparency | ||||
Appropriate | Limited posting | AND | Neutral | AND | Nonpartisan | AND | Open |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ||||
Inappropriate | Mass posting | OR | Biased | OR | Partisan | OR | Secret |
Derivative table for judging possible plagiarism
Length of wording in question | Closeness to the original | Distinctiveness of original wording or meaning | Attribution | |
Less of an issue | Short | Your own wording1 | Not distinctive | Fully attributed |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
More of an issue | Long | Exact wording duplicated | Distinctive | Not directly attributed |
1Excluding "non-creative" text.
Your comments would be welcome. Tony (talk) 11:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Article names should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources. |
![]() | This page in a nutshell: Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature |
By the way, Kotniski made a relevant comment here in his edit summary: these aren't yes/no criteria you can *satisfy*, they are parameters by which you can compare different titles. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:41, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I just reverted the precision section as amended by Rjanag and Dicklyon to the version of earlier today (see diff here). We'd been doing a good job of not changing substance without consensus (for a couple of weeks, at least). Let's keep the streak going. Dick's additions make explicit the position that reducing potential title ambiguity, even where there is not an existing WP article of the same title, is a goal. This is a change from existing explicit guidance. Let's find out if there's consensus for that (and if I've misrepresented your position, Dick, feel free to restate it). Discuss.... Dohn joe ( talk) 23:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Currently our convention for bilataral relations in "[country 1]endash[country 2] relations", where 1 and 2 are in noun form and in alphabetical order. This is unsatisfactory for several reasons, not least because it contravenes COMMONNAME. If you look up the results in GBooks, you'll find that sometimes the only sources which use these phrases are republications of WP articles. Normally, English uses adjectival forms, although there are exceptions, where the adj. form is not common. And while alphabetical order is an easy way to avoid arguments, it often conflicts with the normal tendency to put the longer name last. Also, in some cases we use almost-full names of countries, but not the actual full names. For the US, for example, we use "United States" rather than "US" or "United States of America". This produces some really awkward titles: Bosnia and Herzegovina–United States relations, for example, or Saudi Arabia–United States relations, or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines–United States relations, when normal English is US–Bosnian, US–Saudi, and US – St Vincent relations. This format has evidently been too much in some cases; rather than People's Republic of China–United States relations, for example, the article is currently at Sino-American relations. In other cases we use the format "Relations between [country 1] and [country 2]", and even when we use the "X–Y relations" format for the title, we often switch to one of the other formats for the lead, because otherwise it would just be too awkward.
Although I wouldn't advocate following it blindly, a generally good example of usage is the US Dept. of State site here: click on the country, then click on the "Background Notes" link near the top (not every country has one), then scroll down to "U.S. Relations", and they have titles like "U.S.-BOSNIAN RELATIONS". (They don't use our punctuation conventions, but that's a minor point.) I give the US govt site, because the articles dealing with the US are probably the largest fraction of awkward names. Or just search GBooks.
At least "Relations between Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the United States" would be natural English, even if a bit formal. (You might argue that the two "and"s makes that ambiguous, but that is equivalent to the argument for spacing around the en dash, and those have all been removed from the article titles.) And while my examples all involved the US, the problem is not restricted to it: Germany–Japan relations, for example, rather than German–Japanese relations. (I moved that one, but it might get moved back.) The latter phrase has 400 non-WP hits on GBooks, the former has 1 (or 3, if you count listings in an index). Is this s.t. we should address? — kwami ( talk) 04:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
I would recommend Xese–Yese relations (or Xian–Yian relations) when those are natural, and Relations between X and Y when they are not. Phrases like Sino-American relations I also find acceptable, though I understand wanting a degree of consistency, so that's a case we'd want to discuss explicitly: Sino-American, Chinese–American, or US–Chinese ? Checking every one in GBooks for frequency could be a nightmare (esp. as some are so infrequent as to make a search statistically meaningless), so agreeing on a default pattern is IMO a good idea.
Phrasal country names need specific instruction, and are often idiosyncratic. It looks like the two Chinas are now agreed to be China and Taiwan in such cases, so that seems to be settled. The US and UK should be addressed: US and UK, or British and American ? (Or one of each?) EU or European Union or European? Saudi or Saudi Arabian? The two Koreas? Can we sum this up as "use a one-word name where possible" (maybe with specific exceptions)?
There is a natural tendency to put the shorter name first. Lengths being approx. equal, I suspect there may be a tendency to put an anglophone country first; here we have a possible conflict between 'world view' and 'common name'. Except when using affixed forms: then the anglophone country tends to be second, as in Sino-American. — kwami ( talk) 22:34, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I suggest that anyone interested in the titling of articles should take a look at User talk:Alan Liefting. Liefting has recently taken it upon himself to make a large series of page moves peremptorily without warning or discussion, based solely on his own interpretation of "redundancy". Several editors have reverted his moves, which he has promptly re-reverted.
It appears that he is now undertaking a similar "clean-up" of categories. Milkunderwood ( talk) 22:53, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I've been involved in some pretty ridiculous discussions, and I doubt anything will ever beat eight years of obstinate resisting to the obviously inevitable Yoghurt → Yogurt move, but the discussion (using that term loosely) that has been going on here for the last month (Since Dec 21) might deserve second place. It has been so absurd that I've been inspired to write an essay about the kind of tactics used here to blockade a rather straight-forward change that should not even have been controversial. If anyone wants to review it, I would appreciate it! Here it is:
Thanks, B2C
At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Yoga#Article Titles Of Asanas, I've noted the our articles on asanas have a few naming schemes which are not the same across the board. Could I get some feedback/comment/advice/help to the best convention of titling for our asanas?
List of asanas and ‹The
template
Cat is being
considered for merging.›
Category:Asana‹The
template
Cat is being
considered for merging.›
Category:Asanas lists our
asanas. I am not sure if there may bet other asana articles not listed on these pages.
Curb Chain (
talk)
08:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
See Talk:Republic of China#Requested Move (February 2012), a proposal to move Republic of China to Taiwan. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Sometimes you come across like you just want to disagree with anything I say. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
That said, this particular case is somewhat unusual in that there are some scope issues, because ROC refers specifically to the government, while "Taiwan" refers to both the government and the geographical place (and there is some debate about whether it includes the surrounding islands). But this talk page is not the place to get into those details. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 05:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
Some here might be interested in this proposal to move Tom Brown's Schooldays to Tom Brown's School Days. What if the present title is the way the book is most commonly referred to and the proposed title is that of the first edition? — JerryFriedman (Talk) 14:26, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
A bunch of open proposals and discussions got archived for unactivity. I'd like to revise one...
It has been observed that the section WP:PRECISE starts with a hard-to-interpret sentence, which recently attracted an editor to insert "not" into it, which left it no better and no worse. I propose this replacement for your consideration here:
Although additional precision is sometimes necessary when a potential title has multiple uses, or to reduce ambiguity, excess precision should be avoided. ...
As I said before, this restores a tiny bit of the concept that precision is to prevent ambiguity, a concept that was edited out some time ago, as the history (see archive) shows. It doesn't specifically define "excess precision", which is OK I think, and certainly better than defining it such that the only tolerable precision is the minimum needed to avoid name collisions. Comments? Dicklyon ( talk) 06:51, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided. Be precise, but only as precise as necessary.
I won't deny that the wording could be improved - I'm sure it could. But this proposal seeks to change the meaning to allow for unnecessary precision. I don't agree with it, and I don't believe there is much support for such a change, much less consensus support. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:37, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Given the contention that has arisen over this in the past, I would admonish both Dicklyon and Born2Cycle not to weigh in on this any further. Both views are clear, although opposed. Leave room for others to weigh in and decide. This is neither the
Harvard Debating Society where points are awarded for good arguments nor is it an election where the most votes win. In the interest of continuing the harmony we've experienced on this talk page for the last few weeks, I would encourage both editors to allow (silently) others to speak, --
Mike Cline (
talk)
02:02, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Precision is not a goal for determining a title. It is a means to achieve an Unambiguity goal. I propose replacing the Precision "goal"
Precision – Titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.
with an Unambiguous goal, something like:
Unambiguous – Titles distinguish between articles with similar titles by making them more recognizable without unnecessarily impacting other goals (see below).
(Currently the goals are nouns: Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Concisness, Consistency. I prefer adjectives. They are simple and descriptive: Recognizable, Natural, Unambiguous, Concise, Consistent.) Joja lozzo 02:43, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
* Support. Yes, if you look objectively at how our articles are actually titled, it's obvious that precision is really not something we try to achieve, but avoiding ambiguity definitely is. Good call. --
Born2cycle (
talk) 04:42, 14 March 2012 (UTC) Persuaded to change. --
Born2cycle (
talk)
23:15, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Big_Bang_Theory in violation of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28television%29#Episodic_television
Will there be a Pan-Wikipedia Television Naming Convention cleanup, or at the very least, full, self-consistency — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.94.204.129 ( talk) 04:38, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis/Tennis names#RfC: Can a wikiproject require no-diacritics names, based on an organisation's rule or commonness in English press?. This has also been raised at
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#See Talk:Sasa Tuksar. —
SMcCandlish
Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ
Contrib. 18:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC) —
SMcCandlish
Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ
Contrib.
18:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Your comments on Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(events)#Year_in_the_title will be appreciated. - Animeshkulkarni ( talk) 09:57, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
An issue has come up in regards to whether India is an English speaking country, and what bearing this has on article titles. It seems to me there isn't a thorough grasp on policy in the discussion, so it would benefit from some more informed opinions. The discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (films)#Titles of Indian film articles. Betty Logan ( talk) 07:13, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Yikes! A warning template at the top of a policy page? What an unfriendly way to welcome editors! A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 20:56, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
I recommend that you boldly move it, and see if anyone balks. There's no sensible reason for the stop sign on a page that editors are supposed to refer to. Same on WP:MOS. Dicklyon ( talk) 22:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
In light of the continuing discussion at Talk:Fort Worth where people have various different feelings and interpretations about what our naming practices are or should be, I'm reminded that many of us had agreed that having this page be called "policy" is a bad idea. What do people think about relabeling it as a guideline? Dicklyon ( talk) 19:08, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
It seems to me that the current title "policy" is a big mixed bag, with little or nothing at the same level as WP:V, WP:NPOV, and such policies. What is it that policy requires? It's clear why people who are in control of it want to keep it as policy, so they can claim it trumps other guidelines, but that seems to cause more trouble than solutions. It would seem more logical to work on the guidelines when there are differences of opinion, and either iron them out or leave some flexibility. The constant attempts to apply title policy as rigid prescription, ignoring what would work best for readers, isn't really helping anything. The USPLACE guideline, or example, seems to me like a good idea idea, but some say that we should ignore it because TITLE policy requires us to move Hatboro, Pennsylvania to just Hatboro. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:33, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
At Talk:Discrimination based on skin color#Requested move, there is some disagreement over whether the "ambiguity" referred to in the "nutshell" summary of WP:AT means "ambiguity" in general, or specifically ambiguity limited to the space of Wikipedia article titles. That is, if the (made-up) word "killbar" had a number of meanings in English, but only one of those meanings has (or is likely to have) a Wikipedia article, is "killbar" an ambiguous title for purposes of this policy? Powers T 13:06, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
If people are interpreting it differently based on what's written on this page, then it needs to be corrected/clarified on this page. It makes no sense to work with two different definitions of "ambiguous" when deciding titles. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:07, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
As to Discrimination based on skin color - that discussion belongs on that talk page. The only aspect of it relevant here is the discussion about "ambiguous" means, particularly in the nutshell. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
However, one of the man who is opposing that proposal has opposed based on "Colorism" being "ambiguous" - and Powers has correctly challenged that particular reasoning. That side discussion, which is essentially irrelevant to the main dispute there, is what is relevant here and to the edits that I made.
The idea that these changes were made by me to score points there is ridiculous, considering I'm opposed [4] to that move. Why can't we discuss these edits objectively without regard to that particular dispute? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:15, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
( edit conflict)I am reverting recent changes that were not discussed first. It is inappropriate to modify a guidance or policy page in the midst of dispute that refers to it. Please rein in the impulse to adjust policy to resolve conflicts. Our recent Arbcom process taught us that changes to guidance and policy need special care and clear consensus. I think this sets a inappropriate precedent. Joja lozzo 16:43, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
As to (1), in my explanation of my edits above, I quoted longstanding clarifications about the meaning of "ambiguous" from WP:D and WP:AT (specifically, WP:PRECISION). Do you believe consensus support for those meanings is in question? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
The nutshell description on this page is currently:
The summary description of the "precision" criterion under WP:CRITERIA is:
WP:COMMONNAME currently states:
The use of "ambiguous" in these statements is, well, ambiguous. Taken in isolation, they can be interpreted in the narrow sense, with respect to being ambiguous with other Wikipedia titles, or in the broad sense, with respect to all other uses in English. However, whenever the term's meaning is clarified in policy and guidelines, it is clear that it is intended to be interpreted in the narrow sense. The opening statement of WP:D is:
Also, WP:PRECISION states:
One might think that having the meaning/scope clarified in those places is sufficient, but we have evidence that because "ambiguous" is used ambiguously in the places cited above, it is argued that it should be interpreted in the broad sense [5].
I therefore propose we clarify the meaning of the term in the above places to be consistent with WP:D and WP:PRECISION. Specifically, these changes are proposed.
Please indicate whether you support or oppose these changes, and explain why. If your opposition has nothing to do with substance but only with timing because this issue was brought to our attention during the just-cited dispute, please indicate whether you would support or oppose the changes a week ago, or, say, a month from now, and why. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Policy should be clear enough so that reasonable people all interpret it the same way. If they don't, that in and of itself suggests the policy needs to be improved. Policy should be written and improved to discourage WP:JDLI rationalizations, not enable them. Leaving wording open and ambiguous to interpretation enables JDLI rationalizations. Is that what you support? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:04, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
This constant push to neuter "precision" and "recognizability" in favor of "conciseness" is tiring. We should be going the other way, and seeking to have titles that provide more value to the reader, rather than just trying to avoid namespace collisions. Dicklyon ( talk) 22:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Ohms Law, no one is suggesting that "policy should be rigid" (let's not conflate clarity with rigidity). Dicklyon, no one is arguing that "precision" and "recognizability" should be neutered in favor of "conciseness". Why don't people address what is actually being proposed rather than what they imagine to be occurring in their minds? I tried to use very specific wording and justification in my proposal. Is it not clear? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
If you believe limiting precision to namespace collisions neuters precision, well, then, precision is already neutered by your interpretation - and, so, this proposed change won't neuter precision any more than a veterinarian can neuter a castrated male dog. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:07, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
The same principle applies with laws in the real world, by the way. Authoritarian police love ambiguity in the law, because the more open it is to interpretation, the more free they are to use it however they want in whatever situation they want. That's why in the real world I'm an advocate for clarity in the law, and in WP for clarity in policy/guidelines. The more we all agree about what policy is, the less debate, and bludgeoning, there will be. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:09, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
There has been an effort, of which I was part, to bring consistency in terminology across WP:AT and WP:D. This proposal is in that vein, to be sure. But what you're saying is completely different - you're challenging the meaning of "ambiguous" in the places where it is already clarified to mean namespace collision. If there is consensus support for that challenge, then I too will support it, but this reminds me of your challenge to my change to the recognizability wording, even after Greg L's poll showed it had unanimous support (see Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/Archive_35#Poll:). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:40, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, I understand what you're saying in theory, but honestly don't see it in practice. I mean, if titles are supposed to be unambiguous in the broad/general sense, then I suggest all of the following actual current article titles are problematic: Paris (city or god?), Wine (beverage, color, software, film?) , Cold (temperature? virus?), Prehistoric Women (anthropological issue? film?), I Didn't Know You Cared (song? film? book?), 1670 Broadway (what?), She's Got You (song? film? book?), Amadeus (play? film?), Doctor Zhivago (book? film?).
That's just a list off the top of my head and with a little help from SPECIAL:RANDOM. The point is that titles that are ambiguous in the broad sense are the norm on WP - I don't see any evidence whatsoever that the community tries to make titles unambiguous in the broad sense, only in the narrow sense, specifically to avoid article title namespace collisions with other uses, taking into account the concept of primary topic and other WP:D considerations. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 03:47, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
BTW, the "considerable disagreement" about Doctor Zhivago is an example of "considerable disagreement" caused by lack of clarity in our policy and guidelines regarding title decisions. In this case the problem is caused by the ambiguity in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, because usage indicates one article (the film) while long-term significance indicates another (the book). Not only does WP:PRIMARYTOPIC suggest using two criteria, each of which indicates a different topic, but it also does not give guidance on how to resolve conflicting situations like this. This is why I advocate a clear/simple definition of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC based entirely on usage, and not at all on long-term significance, but consensus is definitely not with me on that one.
One can argue reader benefit based on either usage or long-term significance, but is choosing either title that much more beneficial to readers than the other? I suggest not. So we have disagreement, debate and consternation... to what end? Is there even an end? On the other hand, if we always only went by usage, then there would be much less (if any) disagreement and debate about such titles, and the readers would be no worse off. This is why I see only an upside to bringing in more clarity to titling policy and guidelines. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:37, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
As I believe is re-explained to you every time we have one of these discussions, it is not always possible to find a title that perfectly meets every single criteria. Nixon redirects to Richard Nixon, but the article resides at his full name, i.e., at the article title that cannot be confused with Nixon (film) or Nixon (album) or Nixon (surname) or any of the other items listed at Nixon (disambiguation).
The conventional "<first name> <last name>" pattern for names is the reason we chose to put the article at Richard Nixon rather than at Nixon (president). It is not the primary reason why we gave the article a non-ambiguous title in the first place. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:26, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
While it's certainly not atypical of me to use hyperbole to make a point, I assure you I'm not doing so here. Thank you for clarifying you're not advocating less clarity, but I don't understand why you think my proposal does not add clarity. Without the edits, it's not clear whether to interpret "unambiguous"/ambiguous in the narrow/namescope or broad sense; with the edits it's clear it's to be interpreted in the narrow/namescope sense. Isn't that more clarity?
I've reread Tony1's comment and your reply to it. I don't see how that addresses whether the proposal adds or reduces clarity in the policy. It's also a lot of general statements that sound good in theory, but I don't see how to apply them in actual policy wording. The devil, as always, is in the specific details. And until you try to actually say what those details are, you're not really discussing anything practical about the policy. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Tony, your proposal Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/Archive_36#Proposal:_clarifying_PRECISION before did get some support. And B2C's previous attempt to get rid of "precision" by reducing it to nothing but avoidance of namespace collisions didn't (see the section before yours in the archive: Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/Archive_36#Proposal:_clarifying_PRECISION); toward the end of that discussion were some good ideas about restoring "precision" without the word "ambiguity" in it, which is one way to remove the interpretation question that B2C is worried about. But we'd have to decide what we want "precision" to be about. There was some support for the idea that the traditional (2009-ish) interpretation of "precision" is still needed, in addition to the "unambiguity" provision, though they overlap a lot. Dicklyon ( talk) 22:58, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
But unless and until you recognize that is our role, as long as you think our job is to make policy rather than reflect policy, we're going to have a very difficult time agreeing on much of anything. Perhaps that's the core of our disconnect? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:04, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
In general, very little if anything changes top-down. Traditionally, the debate on these talk pages has always centered around what is actual practice, not so much what actual practice should e, though there is always a little of that too. That's why I say it's mostly (not entirely) bottom-up. My observations and conclusions about how change occurs on WP, and the inherent chicken-egg problem associated with it, are summarized in my FAQ, so I won't repeat it here. See User:Born2cycle/FAQ#Shouldn.27t_you_get_the_policy.2Fguideline_changed.2C_rather_than_try_to_subvert_it_one_article_at_a_time.3F. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Beyond that, my main personal broad goal is to persuade a consensus of the community to agree on consistent rules to reduce the amount of dispute and discord involved with title decision-making. Of course what's best for the reader is of prime importance, but in most cases the difference to the reader between the choices being considered is irrelevant. Does it really matter to the reader if it's San Francisco or San Francisco, California? If it's Airplane, Aeroplane or Fixed-wing aircraft? If it's South Shore Line (NICTD) or South Shore Line? To illustrate with analogy, we use a power saw to get it down to choices that are acceptable to readers, then we get out a file, then coarse sandpaper and finally extra fine sand paper to get it down to the best choice based on our naming criteria and what reduces conflict and discord about titles. It's not a choice between what's best for the reader or what's best for the editors. They're compatible, not conflicting, goals. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:20, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Table at the top of the canvassing policy page
Scale | Message | Audience | Transparency | ||||
Appropriate | Limited posting | AND | Neutral | AND | Nonpartisan | AND | Open |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ||||
Inappropriate | Mass posting | OR | Biased | OR | Partisan | OR | Secret |
Derivative table for judging possible plagiarism
Length of wording in question | Closeness to the original | Distinctiveness of original wording or meaning | Attribution | |
Less of an issue | Short | Your own wording1 | Not distinctive | Fully attributed |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
More of an issue | Long | Exact wording duplicated | Distinctive | Not directly attributed |
1Excluding "non-creative" text.
I haven't thought properly about how this frame could be adapted to the current policy needs, and whether it would work. Tony (talk) 02:36, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Here's a way to present WP:CRITERIA with this type of table.
Recognizability | Naturalness | Precision | Conciseness | Consistency | |
Better title | Recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic | Reflects what readers and editors are likely to expect. Conveys what the subject is actually called in English | Precise, but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article without conflict other titles | Concise; not overly long | Follows pattern used by similar articles |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
Problematic title | Not recognizable to someone familiar with the article topic | Does not convey what the title is actually called in English | Overly precise | Overly long | Does not follow pattern used in titles of similar articles |
Not sure what value, if any, this might have. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:53, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
On the recognizability wording, Greg L's poll confirmed that the wording I originally tried to restore, and you reverted, but was eventually restored, was favored unanimously by the seventeen members of the community who participated in that poll. Yet you still refer to it as "mangled".
The same thing about precision - it's not that I view it as a negative attribute - that's how the community views it. If you don't believe the "only as precise as necessary" wording in the table, which reflects wording from policy, is an accurate statement of community opinion, then propose a specific change to the wording to reflect what you think community opinion is, and see if you can get consensus support for it. That's how the current wording got to where it is.
It would really help if you stopped looking at this from the perspective of your opinion or whatever you believe my opinion is, and started looking at what the community does and says in practice. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:20, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
If there are alternatives which are almost equally popular, how to select one to be the main title of the article? For example, two names refer to the same dish. Thanks. Mặt trời đỏ ( talk) 19:20, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
Mặt trời đỏ ( talk) 11:58, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
There is an interesting case at Talk:The_Troll_Hunter#Requested_move. The problem here is that there are four different variants of the English title in use, and all of them seem to be reasonably widespread: "The Troll Hunter", "Troll Hunter", "TrollHunter", "Trollhunter". Google searches are inconclusive because if you exclude one search term from the search, you lose a load of results that list alternative titles etc. The sources in the article use a mix so it's not a straightforward case. Betty Logan ( talk) 00:05, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
I think we're not going to get much further until we agree on the reasons for titles. Currently the introduction to this page suggests two: "The title serves to give an indication of what the article is about, and to distinguish it from other articles." B2C says, above: "The notion that the purpose of the title is to pretty much say what the topic is has been repeatedly rejected over the years, and I would be very surprised if it had consensus support today." I find that hard to believe and am interested in to xis explanation. What are all functions that titles offer? Joja lozzo 19:34, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Of course a title serves "to give an indication of what the article is about" - that's very different from "the purpose of the title is to pretty much say what the topic is".
For example, 4706 Dennisreuter (found using SPECIAL:RANDOM) gives an indication of what the article is about, to someone who is familiar with that asteroid, but it doesn't say what the topic is. The lead does that: a main-belt asteroid discovered on February 16, 1988....
If the title gave more than an indication of what the article is about, and pretty much said what the topic was, then the title of that article would be more descriptive, and would be something like 4706 Dennisreuter, asteroid discovered in 1988.
But we only use such descriptive titles that "pretty much say what the topic is" when the topic does not have a name commonly used in sources, or sometimes as a byproduct when additional descriptive precision is needed in the title for disambiguation. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:05, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Suggestion:
I keep thinking of the White Knight's poem ... [7]
Seems to cover much of the "title" problem AFAICT. Collect ( talk) 21:44, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
At least you admit "there's a largish contingent pushing for minimality and conciseness, too". I suggest largish is a gross understatement given the dearth of articles that are titled inconsistently with this. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:07, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
The Bath discussion was about whether to follow the Cork (city) example or that of other cities in Somerset - it had nothing to do with one being more ambiguous or less precise than the other, if I recall correctly. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:51, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
I asked this ages ago. Is the title primarily for search optimisation (so the reader can pick the right article from a list of options when no other text is visible), or is the title part of the descriptive text of the article. If it is primarily for search optimisation, then WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is less than helpful (there's a huge long piece in the archives of this page about Steppenwolf as a search term, that already covered this). Elen of the Roads ( talk) 00:31, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
I also don't think the title was ever supposed to be part of the descriptive text of the article, except for those articles about topics that don't have names, like List of hotels in Manila.
To expand a bit on what David Levy said above, because we have titles that are descriptive because they require disambiguation, and titles about topics without names that require descriptive titles, people can get the wrong impression that titles are supposed to be descriptive. But in reality, they're just supposed to reflect the tag (for lack of a better term) that is most commonly used to refer to the article's topic in reliable sources. It's just sometimes we're required to use descriptive titles - but I don't think that has ever been a goal of titles. Using the most commonly used name of a topic as its article's title, whenever reasonably possible, aids searches (because articles are where they are expected to be). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:07, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Are we ready to agree on a list of title purposes? Is the following inclusive? Are there wording improvements?
Joja lozzo 04:34, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Well, to be fair, I think they imagine that these differences sometimes matter more than I believe they do. My point in favoring less ambiguity here is that ultimately when it comes down to questions like whether there is sufficient precision in a title, that it doesn't matter (either title is just as good for the reader), and, so, the more decisive our guidance is, the less debate there is about something that ultimately doesn't matter, which is a good thing. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:49, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
IMO, there are two basic purposes of a title. First, it should allow the reader to pick out the article he is looking for. That is to say, when the title appears in a list, such as a list of Google results, it should give the reader a cue that this is the article he is looking for. Secondly, the article title should tell the reader what the name of the topic is, what it commonly called in real-world English-language usage. I think it is safe to assume that the name of a subject in its most common form is more recognizable than a descriptive followed by a little "Wiki invented here" parenthetical disambiguator. But for those editors who refuse to believe this, we can run an experiment. Let's pick out a group of articles, change the titles back and forth between the two formats, and compare page views. " Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven)" was moved to "Moonlight Sonata" and back, so there is already a test case: "Moonlight Sonata" vs "Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven)". (Name-only titling beats explanatory titling by 14 percent, at least in this case.) Kauffner ( talk) 04:49, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
In addition, David Levy gave an answer today. Did you read all that? If so, why are you asking? If not, please stop asking and read them, then take up your disagreement with each one of them.
David also asked you two related questions. Will you answer or evade them? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:58, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
I think the main point of concern here is what "familiar" means, or perhaps more importantly, what people will interpret it to mean when quoting it to justify a move or edit war. I think we need to be clear that "familiar" shouldn't mean you already know what's in the article, or are familiar with the literature the article is based on. If your doctor gives you a diagnosis, and you come to WP to read up on it, you're familiar with the topic in an sense, but may know almost nothing about it. People look things up because they're ignorant, and IMO we need to target a likely level of familiar ignorance.
To accommodate that concern, I think when we say the name most commonly used in RS's, we shouldn't mean just the professional material that editors of the article read, but also introductory material: what is a beginning student of (chem/polisci/philosophy/etc) familiar with, when first exposed to the topic? (That's often when people come here.) What is someone peripherally connected with the topic in a non-professional capacity familiar with? If it's commonly known among those who really don't have a clue, if it's been in the news or entered, misunderstood, into popular culture, which name would ring a bell? And which dab would be needed to say, "no, not *that* X, dummy, this one." The most commonly used name will generally be the one used in trade journals, because they're the places it will be talked about the most. But their target audience is the experts in the field, not the general interested public, which is our target audience.
Sometimes I read a WP article on s.t. I already know a lot about for the sheer joy of reading a well-crafted article. But usually I look s.t. up because I'm ignorant about it, only familiar enough with it to know I need to look it up.
Would "Communicate a sense of the article's topic to someone interested in it" capture that balance, knowing enough to know you need to look it up, but not familiar enough to understand the professional lit, at least not before reading the WP article? — kwami ( talk) 05:57, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
The clause in full is: "recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic." I think the "though not necessarily expert in" parenthetical caveat really helps convey that it doesn't mean usage in professional material. And remember, not only are introductory books considered reliable sources, but so are newspapers and magazines that use layman language.
I don't think "to someone interested in it" conveys the same meaning. Someone could be interested in something, yet have no idea what it is called, so the title would not be recognizable to them. Nor do we try to make our titles recognizable to a person like that. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:23, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Joja asked "Are we ready to agree on a list of title purposes?" If the proposed list has to include the most controversial clause in recent history, imported from "recognizability" wording into what you should be a clean-slate list of purposes, then the answer might need to be "no". Dicklyon ( talk) 15:20, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Much of the latest discussion seems recursive. There seems to be a simple unwillingness from B2C to understand what others have clearly identified as a problem. There is the recycled retort that there is no problem that needs fixing. Above, current policy is employed recursively to defend against any changes in said policy. The continuing defence seems to be "what's wrong with having a concise title when there are no other identically-named articles?" The B2C challenge only proves that many articles follow the way B2C prefers articles to be named. It doesn't disprove that it can be a problem for the prospective reader to identify the topic of interest to him/her when looking at the title which is the product of a questionable algorithm. Whilst one editor is contributing 60% of the wordcount, most of the editors presently assembled (and representing the 40% wordcount) don't see article titles as a binary function; they don't want article titles to be stripped down to just the provebial engine and four wheels; they may not need Recaro leather seats, but ther would certainly welcome a nice chassis. In policy terms, they just want greater facility to identify one topic from other similarly-named topics. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 17:44, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia article titles [should] and do perform only two roles:
My first observation about this discussion is that we will continue to “tilt at windmills” if we continue to try and describe anything about titles using some element of the user experience to do so. Utterly impossible and meaningless. At last count, there were ~2.7 billion internet users on a daily basis. WP historically is visited by ~13-14% of global internet users on a daily basis. Do the math (14% of 2.7 billion) = ~378 million users every day. Trying to describe a title in terms of how 378 million users ought to behave relative to the title is pure fantasy.
My second role above emphasizes this and puts the burden on the title. I favor the word “contents” over topic because a great many of our 3.9 million articles cover multiple topics or topics that can be interpreted multiple ways. On the other hand “Content” is “Content”. In my view, if a title Faithfully reflects the contents of the article then it is fulfilling its role for WP. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 18:41, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Two comments:
Anyway, the rules are crafted sensibly and IAR is invoked rarely. Per the rules, not per IAR, and all appropriately, Kleenex, Band-Aid and Adhesive bandage are all separate articles, and Tissues is a redirect to a dab page at Tissue. I don't know why WhatamIdoing thinks these are examples of pandering to the LCD; none of them are.
What actual and serious problem are you guys trying to address? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:42, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Ohconfucious wrote above:
It's not what I prefer that matters, but what the community prefers. But, yes, the B2C challenge only proves that, but that is all it is supposed to prove!
The B2C challenge (use SPECIAL:RANDOM repeatedly to obtain a sample of titles from which common practice can be discerned) is designed to refute the assertion that descriptive information in parentheses added to the names of topics in titles for reasons other than disambiguating from other uses is the way "it has usually been done" [8].
If you want to concede that that is not the way it has usually been done, but contend that it should be the way it is done, that's a different argument, and one to which the B2C challenge is of course irrelevant. Ohconfucious also says:
I understand very well what the problem is. I just disagree on its magnitude (I don't think it matters much at all), and, more importantly, don't think there is a solution that doesn't create much bigger problems than the one it's trying to solve. I haven't even seen a specific solution proposed, much less one proposed that would not be seriously problematic. This is the same issue raised by the questions that David Levy asked of Dicklyon (search for "David Levy" on this page), and which I've raised in the past every time I pointed out that the "devil is in the details" (search for "devil" in the archives), which remain unanswered. That's why we keep going in circles... the proponents of more descriptive titles keep ignoring this issue, no matter how many times it is raised, by how many different people. Yet we're the ones accused of not understanding and recursively defending against changes in policy.
Speaking of changes in policy, I explain how I believe policy change occurs at WP, and why, in my FAQ. Please see User:Born2cycle/FAQ#Change_guideline_first. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:52, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Previously I proposed three purposes: Communicating the topic, matching search terms and distinguishing between articles. I think matching likely search terms could be assigned entirely to redirects if direct hits are not a high priority (which is fine with me). Then we can collapse to two encyclopedic purposes: 1) to give an indication of what the article is about and 2) distinguish the article from others. If we think it's clear (I'm not sure it is) that communicating what an article is about implicitly includes what it is not about then we only need the first of these. (I do not consider technical issues with name collisions and URLs to be encyclopedic.) Joja lozzo 20:28, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
Are people happy with this title? Grand Council. Tony (talk) 06:53, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Inspired by B2C's table above, I see that a table with descriptions of both better and problematic goal satisfaction has the potential to offer editors more information than just the description of title characteristics for each of the goals as we have it now. The "problematic" row presents an opportunity to present an enhanced perspective on the "better" description. This is a common approach with examples in the MOS. As primarily an exercise and demonstration but also a strawman proposal, I have composed the table below with an extra "Unambiguous" column, adjective goals instead of noun goals, major liberties with B2C's "better" row, and an attempt to go beyond pure dichotomies in the "problematic" row:
Recognizable | Natural | Unambiguous | Precise | Concise | Consistent | |
Better title | Recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic | The most common English name of the topic (without colliding with another title), reflecting what readers and editors are likely to expect | Clearly distinguishes the topic from that of other articles | Satisfies other goals without unnecessarily narrowing its scope | Uses as few words as possible | Follows patterns used by similar articles |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
Problematic title | Identifies the topic only for experts | Unusual or very specialized name for the topic | Has more than one common, natural interpretation | Improper focus, defines topic too narrowly or too broadly | Too wordy, hard to comprehend at a glance | Diverges from standard patterns |
I welcome feedback but would even more like to see how others to would express the goals in this "quality spectra" table format. Joja lozzo 00:57, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Comments. Nice work by both B2C and Joja. Already I feel I can come to a better understanding by looking at these tables. A few queries:
Recognizable | Natural | Unambiguous | Generous | Concise | Consistent | |
Better title | Recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic | The most common English name of the topic (without colliding with another title), reflecting what readers and editors are likely to expect | Clearly distinguishes the topic from that of other articles | Offers a liberal topical scope | Minimizes wording | Follows patterns in similar article titles |
↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | |
Problematic title | Identifies the topic only for experts | Unusual or very specialized name for the topic | Has more than one common, natural interpretation | Overly restrictive and narrow | Can be shortened without impacting other goals | Diverges from patterns in similar article titles |
I think that unambiguous and generous capture some of the intent of precise, but not all. See the old quotes. The title should be clear and unambiguous about what the topic is; that can usually be done in a way that's not narrow or restrictive (is generous), and is not about whether there are other articles with similar names (unambiguous in that sense). We tend to do this naturally, but sometimes the conciseness hammer removes the clues to the topic and leaves the title ambiguous (see typical PRIMARYTOPIC RM arguments, where some want to use an ambiguous name on an article and some don't, like current ones: Talk:Waterdeep (city)#Requested move or Talk:Whisky Galore (novel)#Requested move 2 or Talk:The Rats (novel)#Requested move). We've never pinned down what it means to be "not over precise" or "no more precise than necessary", but to me what's "necessary" is to define the topic. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:29, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
For example, the notion that the purpose of the title is to define the topic has been repeatedly rejected over the years, and I would be very surprised if it had consensus support today. Traditionally, the article lead defines the topic, not the title. Think of a dictionary definition, which has an entry (the word being defined) and the definition. In WP articles, the title is like the entry, and the lead is like the definition.
This gets a bit confusing because we do have titles about topics that don't have names, and so in those cases we sometimes use descriptive titles which can look like definitions (e.g., List of video games cancelled for Xbox 360 console). But we shouldn't let these exceptions cause us to believe that all or even most titles should be descriptive definitions of the topic. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
When I first started editing, I consulted these pages for a specific question and found them to be totally useless. Ordinary users do not have time to cogitate on thousands of pages of confusingly written specious jargon before putting finger to keyboard.
There is no point in rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. We need to take a step back, and decide first what is worthy of discussion. Neotarf ( talk) 10:34, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
"Any third_rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain air of real insight to make things simple again." -- E.F. Schumacher
"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" -- Mark Twain
For better or for worse, bold edits and specific proposals that have consensus support is how policy is far from perfectly governed on WP, and probably always will be, or it would be a very different kind of project.
Whining about problems that are not discussed in the context of a proposal to solve those problems, hopefully without creating new ones, is rarely helpful or productive, and often bordering on disruption. That's not to say that problems without a specific proposed solution should never be discussed - it's possible that someone else will propose a good solution to a clearly specified problem - but in my experience most discussions that do that, like Mike Cline's Taking a holistic approach to Wikipedia title policy – Is it an idea whose time has come?, rarely go anywhere productive. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:27, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
The 3rd bullet, about consensus, I don't fully understand. But "rarely been overwhelming support for any one proposal" seems central to it, and yet we did have overwhelming (indeed unanimous) support for the change to the recognizability wording recently, despite all the controversy and even an Arbcom case that stemmed from it. And that's not that unusual. Over the last few years there has been consensus regarding the idea that policy is suppose to mostly reflect actual behavior, and most edits have been done in concert with that. Most edits, the vast majority, to this page, over the years, nobody objected to at the time they were made, nor later.
I really don't understand the predilection for open-endedness in titling policy and guidelines, at least I don't see how that benefits the encyclopedia. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:01, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't know where you get the idea that Greg L's poll was "an emergency measure imposed by an administrator to stop an edit war", but Greg L is not an administrator, as far as I know. Perhaps you know otherwise. I believe Greg is just another experienced editor who wanted to get clarity regarding where consensus (sorry, but that is what he was trying to ascertain) might be on the central question at issue. The result of that poll supported the position I held since I first re-added that wording in mid-December. Anyway, I brought it up only because you said, "there has rarely been overwhelming support for any one proposal." I don't know what you mean by Tony's sunlight paradigm (I searched for "sunlight" on this page and in its archives to no avail), but if that poll didn't demonstrate overwhelming support for that proposal, then there is no such thing.
The only thing you said about "argumentum ad populum" is: "Ignoring for the moment the 'argumentum ad populum' dimension of that, which is not compatible with WP consensus policy", I'm not sure how you expect me to respond. I guess your point is that they're not compatible. Well, yes, argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy in debates about factual matters. But in title decision making, we're not trying to establish whether certain proposition are true or not, in which case holding polls would indeed by inappropriate. We're trying to establish what community opinion is, for which polling is quite appropriate.
What you mean by "the insistence that consensus (or the manufactured appearance of consensus) will remain etched in stone for all time" I have no idea, but I will say if that's what you think I'm doing, I'm not being very clear, or you're not paying very good attention, or both. But I suggest your lack of quoting the words of mine that caused you to believe that's what I meant is telling. I mean, if I believed that, why would I spend so time and energy trying to persuade others through discussion in order to build consensus? WP:CONSENSUSCANCHANGE, thankfully!
Upon review before Save page, it struck me perhaps you're under the impression that I'm saying those who favor more description in titles should not be arguing this because it's against consensus and consensus won't change. If that's not your impression, then please ignore the rest of this. But if that's your impression, then there has been a misunderstanding, I assure you. First, I'm arguing that policy should not change to say something that does not reflect consensus, or reflects consensus less than current wording. First you change consensus, then you change policy. I also am a big believer in changing consensus/policy bottom up - first you persuade others one minor proposal at a time, via WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, and then you establish a pattern which you can use to argue for a change in policy. What you can't do is say WP would be better with whatever, so let's just add this and delete that from policy.
But there is also the WP:IDHT consideration. At some point, when you've been shown that your position is clearly contrary to consensus, at least for now, you might back off a little.
But in this case, again, the real problem is the lack of a real position - what exactly would people like to change? What are the answers to David Levy's questions, etc.? If we had a real proposal, and these questions were answered, then we'd have something real to consider. Hope this helps. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 01:22, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
If criticism is needed, discuss editors' actions, but avoid accusing others of harmful motives without clear evidence.
In these cases admonishing someone to "assume good faith" is in fact assuming that they are not assuming good faith - the admonisher is ironically violating the very principle he or she is purporting to uphold, and is being uncivil.
Be careful about citing this principle too aggressively. Just as one can incorrectly judge that another is acting in bad faith, so too can one mistakenly conclude that bad faith is being assumed, and exhortations to "Assume Good Faith" can themselves reflect negative assumptions about others if a perceived assumption of bad faith was not clear-cut.
If another editor objects to refactoring then the changes should be reverted.
The RM at Talk:Inverter (logic gate)#Requested move smacks of bad faith. People who know nothing of the subject are wanting to move this already-disambiguated topic to NOT gate, a name less familiar (even to people familiar with it), probably so that they can then try again to put Power inverter at Inverter by claiming there's no longer any ambiguity. At least, I'm unable to find any other theory for why they piled on from the other RM ( Talk:Power inverter#Requested move). Is this kosher? Dicklyon ( talk) 23:48, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Let's suppose that there is a country with the long-form name "Republic of Smell." Further suppose that there are various nations named Smell, and that the Republic is neither the largest nor best-known of these. As you can imagine, the people of this nation found the name to be dissatisfying. So the foreign ministry decided to encourage the use of the form "Republic of Smell (Pleasant)". Can a ministry chose a disambiguator, or must these be chosen by a Wiki specialist properly credentialed in such matters? For a real world example, see here. Kauffner ( talk) 10:06, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
WP:PRECISION is currently defined as what Dicklyon calls a "negative attribute"; this is the first sentence:
What about rewording like this:
Better? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 07:56, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
So does this mean that "Vehicle registration tax" (it's actually the Irish one) is sufficiently precise? I'm not sure this is sufficiently reader-focused if it lets through vague titles like that one. Tony (talk) 04:30, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
This is why I'm asking for an example of a title that reasonably meets the other criteria for a given article, but, in your view, needs to be more precise. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
The concept of Precision and WP article titles is a case where we continue to use the wrong word to describe what we really want. I’ve said this before and as far as I can tell, the definition of precision in the English language hasn’t changed. Precision is primarily a mathematic construct that derives from Accuracy.
Yet, we continue to try and define precision as something it isn’t to fit into WP titling policy. Why? Anyone that sees the words—precise, precision etc. isn’t going to understand them any different from how they are defined in the real world regardless of how many times we’ve tried to craft a new meaning on this page.
We are really trying to convey a sense of How much ambiguity should we tolerate in a title? (one perspective) or How complete should our disambiguation be for any given title? (another perspective). Why can’t we just say that? Precision implies (actually requires some baseline of accuracy) and accuracy is something we don’t demand in our titles, since Commonname is the driving source of titles. So why do we continue to use a word that we can’t explain and drives editors to strive for accuracy in titles when that’s not what we really want. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 19:14, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
We keep discussing Precision with "proper name" titles in mind... but what about descriptive titles? I think Precision is a very valid goal in determining acceptable descriptive titles. For example, we recently changed " Christianity and Freemasonry" to " Opposition to Freemasonry within Christianity" because the second title more precisely described what the article is actually about.
On a related note... Can anyone think of a time a descriptive title needed disambiguation?... perhaps this is where we can draw a distinction between the two concepts. Disambiguation (and how much is needed) relates to Proper Name titles, while Precision (and how much is needed) relates to descriptive titles. Just a thought. Blueboar ( talk) 20:21, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Titles of articles about topics with names should simply be that name if the name does not conflict with other uses on WP or the topic is primary for that name, or it should be the name disambiguated. Articles about topics without names should be descriptive.
Much unnecessary conflict and confusion arises when we try to add descriptive information to titles of articles about topics with names when that descriptive information is not needed for disambiguation from other uses on WP. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:18, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
This whole proposal is flawed because of misguided notions of what constitutes somethings "name", because of misguided beliefs that "most common" is clearly defined and determinable, and because it is just bad-faith failure to accept the fact that Serge's repeated proposals along these lines do not have a consensus in support of them and are unlikely to achieve it. User:Gene Nygaard 05:30, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
In the light of Talk:Trollhunter#Requested move and WT:RM#Strange move closure?, I would invite you to improve consensus in Talk:Trollhunter#Move back to Trolljegeren? Feel free. -- George Ho ( talk) 19:54, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
I want to know what the consensus is for having slashes in article titles in terms of the spacing between words. I personally, don't think it is necessary. For example, Wilshire/Western (Los Angeles Metro station) redirects to Wilshire / Western (Los Angeles Metro station). I don't think the spaces should be present. Same goes for 7th St/Metro Center (Los Angeles Metro station), which redirects to 7th Street / Metro Center (Los Angeles Metro station). The difference of course is that "Wilshire" and "Western" are single words joined by a slash, while "7th Street" and "Metro Center" are two words. Should this make a difference? I also don't think so. Especially since the transit agency itself does not use spaces between the slashes. [9] I want to get some feedback here before I revert all the page moves to remove the spaces. – Dream out loud ( talk) 19:57, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
The LA Times does not use spaces around the slash [10]; I still see no good reason for us to do it. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:59, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
The question up for discussion is simply this:
"Should Wikipedia Manual of Style (MOS) rules be applied to article titles which: A) Are an exact transcription of the name of a person, place or thing; and B) Do not match the Wikipedia MOS?"
I suggest it might be helpful to have a shortcut, e.g. WP:MATCHING, that links to consistency between articles in this MOS page, just as WP:CONSISTENCY links to consistency within articles. In ictu oculi ( talk) 14:00, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#non-admin suggestion - RfC on change to BLP policy to insert the wording:
BLP names diacritics guideline proposal
The names of living persons should be representedaccurately,according to their nationality, with diacritics if Latin alphabet names, even when the majority of popular English language sources, for example sports sources, do not use diacritics.
I think this is a bad proposal, because its advice that would be inserted into another policy and it contradicts the advise given in this policy which is to base the names of articles on usage in reliable English language sources. I have some other specific objections to the wording, which I have expressed at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#non-admin suggestion - RfC on change to BLP policy and rather than discuss it here I would urge people to read the section at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons and express an opinions there in the hope of building a consensus. -- PBS ( talk) 14:48, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
Is there anyone who has an objection to a shortcut WP:MATCHTITLE to Consistency – Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles."? Or indeed anyone who thinks a shortcut to Consistency – Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles." would be helpful in some cases? In ictu oculi ( talk) 07:42, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
7. Oppose. The proposal actualy say that the général rule "common English spelling" should be replaced with the "native spelling". Is this an English Wikipedia or an international one? I vote use the English language. Philip Baird Shearer 10:30, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Is there anyone there who hasn't got a issue with European names and is willing to consider a shortcut to "Consistency – Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles." on its own merits? This is actually WP:Article titles guideline, yes? Thanks. In ictu oculi ( talk) 08:57, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
MakeSense64 ( talk) 11:10, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
The proposal made above has inspired me to think about how we present consistency as a goal. I think consistency is a goal... but... only in situations where it supports the other goals. It should not be a goal in situations that conflict with the other goals.
To give examples... take the case of our flora articles... here we have the issue that plants (and to a lesser extent animals) have both non-scientific names and scientific names. The non-scientific names vary from place to place (a plant might be called "Spikey Persimmon" in one local, "Pink Julip" in another and "Witch's hat" in a third). More importantly, the non-scientific name used for a particular plant in one local can be used for a completely different plant in another local (thus, the name "Yuckberry" may refer to two different plants). Thus, using the non-scientific name as an article title causes a problem with the goals of recognizability and disambiguation. However, this is not the case if we use Scientific names... the Scientific name of a plant is the same in all locations, without any overlap. The scientific name is recognizable everywhere, without conflict. Thus in the Flora articles we call for consistency (ie consistently using scientific names) because doing so actually supports the goals of recognizability and disambiguation.
However, in other topic areas, trying for consistency can actually conflict with the other goals. For example, We could call for consistency in the article titles for living people (perhaps mandating full names - "Jonathan Jones Doe" instead of "John Doe"). However, doing so would create a conflict with the goal of recognizability ("Bill Clinton" is more recognizable than "William Jefferson Clinton"). In such cases we almost always depreciate the goal of consistency in favor of recognizability.
To restate: Consistency is a goal, when it supports the other goals... but not when it conflicts with the others. Perhaps we need to make this clearer in the policy? Blueboar ( talk) 13:11, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
It looks like Consistency is already covered in this brief section
WP:MOSAT, with naming conventions for flora as given example. It states that it should only be used if there are "clear benefits" outweighing the use of common names. This suggests to me that the "consistency" criterium gets invoked only when there is an existing naming convention that pertains to the article.
Is it fair to say that the naming criteria appear in approximate order of importance? So "recognizability" and "naturalness" are most important, followed by "precision" and "conciseness". "Consistency" is least important and only used when there is a relevant naming convention. If that is the case, then I think we better reorder the sections to follow the same sequence. So "Common names" and "Neutrality in article titles" come first because they are connected mainly to "recognizability" and "naturalness". The "Precision and disambiguation" and "English-language title" sections should come next, as they relate to the "precision" and "conciseness" criteria. The "Explicit conventions" section would then be next. Would be more logical and comprehensive imo. MakeSense64 ( talk) 07:41, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
And I couldn't agree more with what MakeSense says above:
If you are supposed to "weigh" five factors and there is no clear instruction whatsoever how to weigh them, then you can produce any outcomes by just changing the weighings. Then you can as well have no policy.
Since my comments elsewhere have been invoked here, I thought I'd weigh-in. Consistency is not a vague thing. When a locus of anything is viewed collectively, there is either consistency among the members or there is not. Agreed, that the degree of consistency is always up for debate, but at some point the relationship between members becomes inconsistent. Consistency is clearly defined by these words: steadfast adherence to the same principles, course, form, etc.: There is consistency in his pattern of behavior. or agreement, harmony, or compatibility, especially correspondence or uniformity among the parts of a complex thing: consistency of colors throughout the house. I don't think this discussion is as much about weighting the different titling criteria, but instead is about reaching the best balance among the criteria for any given title. If one foreign name uses diacritics and other does not when both are within the same locus of members, those titles are inconsistent in form. If we want consistency to be one of our title criteria, then we should seek to craft guidelines and naming conventions that provide for consistency and not allow inconsistency. -- Mike Cline ( talk) 17:22, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
Picking up on what Mike Cline said : "If we are willing to allow inconsistency on a regular basis, it shouldn't be a criteria." I think that makes sense. But, using "consistency" as the main criterium is also not as easy as it sounds. Because most articles belong to more than one "membership group". A given article can easily fall within the scope of 3 or more different Wikiprojects, and all the naming conventions (or naming guidance) they have put together will not necessarily point in the same direction. Deciding on an article title will then become a "voting contest".
Personally, I would do away with the "consistency" criterium and just state that: "naming conventions may apply". Not all our naming conventions are equal. We have "rigid" naming conventions and more "fluid" ones. Some are more like policies and enforced before anything else is considered (e.g. we would not consider any article title in Cyrillic), while others naming conventions are weighed as one factor among many others (so these conventions will by definition not be used consistently). Sometimes our naming conventions have inconsistency baked in. Take our naming conventions for Ireland-related articles
WP:MOS-IE, neither English nor Irish names are used consistently, so this convention is consistently inconsistent.
My first suggestion to simplify the naming criteria would be to merge "recognizability" with "naturalness" and just call it "commonness". We are not writing wp articles about something if it is not mentioned in sources, so whatever our sources are writing about, they must be giving it a name. The most commonly used name or word will almost always be the most recognizable and natural term.
My second suggestion would be to merge "precise" with "concise", because we also clearly use them as a connected pair. We can often be more precise by using a longer name or description, but a shorter title is more practical. So we look for an optimum between two vectors that point in opposite directions.
My third suggestion is to drop the "consistency" criterium and replace it with "naming conventions may apply". So we can get a flowchart that show us what to do. E.g.:
Comments welcome. MakeSense64 ( talk) 17:31, 10 May 2012 (UTC)