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What should determine titles? Policy like WP:CRITERIA and WP:DIFFCAPS?
Or opinions about which title better "communicates what the article is about" or "is more helpful" to readers?
Weigh in here: Talk:All_the_Best!#Requested_moves.
-- В²C ☎ 05:41, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
What should determine titles? Policy like WP:CRITERIA and WP:DIFFCAPS? Or opinions ..
I revived Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) which contains some good answers relevant to this discussion, & which I think was turned into a redirect too quickly... by Born2cycle -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 10:46, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I placed this heading Is an explanation mark a sufficient for disambiguation above the section headings
and made them sub-headings. However for reasons unclear to me user:In ictu oculi removed the heading (see [1]. Nevertheless it seems to me that the two sections are related, so I have reformatted it here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PBS ( talk • contribs)
I have combined the two sections (now in bold above) into one as the debate at Talk:All the Best!#Requested moves while involving more than one title revolves around whether All the Best! differs sufficiently from All the Best not to need parenthetical disambiguation eg All the Best! (Paul McCartney album). -- PBS ( talk) 07:12, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I'm not aware that there has been any substantive discussion regarding the title of any of these [ Them!, I Want to Live!, That Darn Cat!, Berserk!, Oliver!, Burn!, Airplane!, That Thing You Do!, Moulin Rouge!, and Mamma Mia! ]. As such, any "consensus" is at best passive in that either nobody noticed or nobody care enough to bother. Consensus can change. older ≠ wiser
I think that WP:CRITERIA is ambiguous on whether punctuation is a sufficient for disambiguation. So I suggest that specific guidance should be added to this policy to give clear guidance on this. To that end I suggest that an RfC is held here on this talk page and advertised widely . I will read the arguments presented in such an RfC to make up my mind as I am one of those older ≠ wiser mentions as somebody who has not cared enough to bother to form an opinion.
To that end I will not initiate an RfC, (too much work) but would appreciate it if someone who cares enough about the issue would do so. -- PBS ( talk) 07:12, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Note that Airplane! is mentioned explicitly as an example in WP:DIFFCAPS:
Many such differences involve capitalization, separation or non-separation of components, or pluralization: (...) Airplane! and Airplane (...). While each name in such a pair may already be precise and apt, a reader who enters one term might in fact be looking for the other, so use appropriate disambiguation techniques, such as hatnotes or disambiguation pages to help readers find the article they want. Special care should be taken for names translated from other languages and even more so for transliterated titles; there is often no standardized format for the English name of the subject, so minor details are often not enough to disambiguate in such cases.
As for expanding the WT:AT policy page I see no need for that. As is the WP:PRECISION section on that page (with multiple subsections) lacks focus, and further, already gives too much detail for policy level imho. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 10:46, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I saw the existence of this discussion (since I have Wikipedia:Article titles on my watchlist), and thought those participating in this discussion could either look into a bit of a troubling redirect I ran across ( Boom!!) that I put up for nomination at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 July 1#Boom!!. When I found this redirect, I also found the existence of two separate disambiguation pages Boom and Boom!, which seems to correlate with this discussion. Feel free to either provide some insight into this, or use this as an example for this discussion in section(s) above. Steel1943 ( talk) 19:04, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I propose to revert Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) from a redirect to this version
As shown above this guideline can help in getting a grip on page name variations.
BTW, couldn't find any past discussion that turned this from guideline in redirect, does anyone know where to find? -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 20:25, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Well, okay, I understand, but I put those examples there because that's the way policy works. We have had discussions about Friendly Fire - there's nothing really important that uses that capitalization, so consensus led to a redirect. We have had discussions about MAVEN, but we have kept the articles separate because reliable sources distinguish between the formats and each one is at least on the same order of magnitude of notability. What to do in a DIFFCAPS situation? It depends on how notable each claimant is. If you don't spell it out in a policy page, confusion and discord happen eventually. If you spell it out, all it takes is to say at Talk:Airplane!#RM "Oppose as per WP:DIFFCAPS" and you stop an unproductive discussion. Red Slash 00:25, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
I don’t think this is addressed in policy… if an ambiguously named subject has an unambiguous name that has fallen out of use, which option in WP:NATURAL should we generally go with: the unambiguous name that is not in current use, or the ambiguous name with parenthetical disambiguation? — 174.141.182.82 ( talk) 03:30, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
It helps to look at how we define the terms we use... Naturalness is defined (in this policy) as: The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. I find the last part of this definition to be the most helpful... in most cases, if a topic or subject is notable enough for an article, it/he/she will be mentioned in other related articles (an Olympic gold medalist for example, might be mentioned in the articles on the various Olympic games he/she competed in)... so to determine what is natural, we can look to see how the topic or subject is referred to in those other articles. That will give us an idea of what variation on the name is natural. So... to see whether "Macintosh" is more natural than "Mac" (or vice verse)... look at the various articles that discuss this brand of computer and see what version they use. (side note... in that example, I think there may be a need to add further, parenthetical, disambiguation... whichever way we went. Both choices can refer to multiple topics). Blueboar ( talk) 16:39, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Earlier today, LTPowers
expanded the initials paragraph of the Title Format section by adding...
I actually agree with this, since it is nothing more than a restatement of COMMONNAME... except... there are (relatively rare) situations where the need for disambiguation calls for using something other than the COMMONNAME form of initials - Let us suppose that there were two people who were both commonly referred to as John Q. Public (one full named "John Qwerty Public" and the other "John Quincy Public")... We might use their full names as a logical form of disambiguation, despite the fact that sources usually simply use the initial. I tried to add something about this, but was reverted. No problem... but let's discuss. Blueboar ( talk) 22:34, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
At WT:NCP the discussion eventually went to a new section WT:NCP#More on using full middle names as disambiguation. What I wrote there regarding the guideline I repeat here for the policy:
Instead of the imaginary examples "John Qwerty Public" and "John Quincy Public" as proposed above we have the real John Steuart Wilson and John Sullivan Wilson. Editor discretion chose not to disambiguate by middle name expansion but instead has their articles at John S. Wilson (music critic) and John S. Wilson (economist) respecitvely. Which is fine by me.
Seems to me there is no need to repair anything here, a.k.a. a solution in search of a problem. I oppose to adding anything (additional rules, examples or suggestions) regarding initials and/or full middle names for disambiguation purposes to the policy, per K.I.S.S. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 15:43, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Please participate in the discussion at MOS:JAPAN. Curly Turkey ⚞ ¡gobble!⚟ 21:19, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
In an effort to split an article, I am faced with the problem of which of the two articles after the split should be given the old well-known article title, where both of the new subjects could claim to have COMMONNAME and PRIMARY TOPIC arguments for the title depending on the demography group the reader and/or the editor belong, and would like to invite comments from wider editor-base on how to handle this article naming issue. Yiba ( talk | contribs) 07:00, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
The case is Porsche, where the name is predominantly a brand of cars and the car maker, Porsche AG, for one demography group who are not interested in investments; and is predominantly the name of the parent company, Porsche SE, which controls many car makers such as Bentley, Bugatti, Audi, Volkswagen, Ducati, Lamborghini and Porsche for the other demography group who are more likely kept abreast of developments in economy and capital markets. The latter view considers the name on the stock of the parent company traded on public exchanges, and its roles in the German and world economy, to have significance reaching a wider Wikipedia reader base, but the other (mostly younger) group tend to place a higher significance on the brand of cars and its manufacturer because it is the way the name "Porsche" is used by the group (as well as by reliable publications catering to car afficionados).
With the well known skew in Wikipedia editor demography towards young males in mind, and assuming the two views each having reliable sources on the respective usage, how should we handle the question of which article (on the parent company Porsche SE, or the car manufacturing subsidiary Porsche AG) to be given the representative "Porsche" as the title?
Currently, the article is not split between the parent and the subsidiary, but there is a general consensus that a split into two articles would be preferable if this and other problems can be resolved.
(The problem is more complicated in this example than on most car companies because Porsche AG no longer is a direct subsidiary of Porsche SE, but has become a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, to which Porsche SE is the majority owner. Further, Porsche SE was born by renaming the old Porsche AG, and then the car manufacturing operation was spun off to form the new Porsche AG, so the parent holding company is the legal successor of the Porsche history in the past (which might give the primary topic status to the parent on the basis of long-term significance). In many countries, the parent company does not have a local presence due to the limited availability of EDR and GDR outside of London, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and New York stock exchanges, so the subsidiary is left in the country to be the only bearer of the name Porsche, except in international or foreign context. The parent currently has non-car-making subsidiaries that are likely to attract not insignificant number of Wiki readers on the products (e.g. sunglasses, bags, etc.) and services (e.g. technology consulting) outside of the new Porsche AG, who are likely to look up 'Porsche' on Wikipedia.)
This seems to be a COMMONNAME issue, not in the sense that subject X is called A or B, but in the sense that the name A is normally used to mean subject X or Y depending on what country, culture, or demography you belong within the English speaking population. The word 'Porsche' normally means different things to a stock broker or a coupon clipper in London, and for a student in Sydney.
In a way, this is because the culture and the common knowledge are not shared by the countries, generations and demography groups using the same English language. The difference cannot be resolved by the best efforts in consensus building, because the different views are valid for each group and a consensus cannot merge or unify the groups, and an amicable middle ground cannot be found because the assignment of 'Porsche' title cannot be split or weighted between the two articles. I would suspect similar issues exist between male and female, the rich and the poor, well-educated and not-so-well-educated, and between other demography groups. As none of these demography groups cannot be ignored as the Wikipedia reader base, this is not a target audience issue. May be the question of "When COMMONNAME varies according to the subject domain categorization (i.e. stand point of the Wikiproject for each domain)" should be added to this issue for those subjects and article titles that belong in two or more subject domains (e.g. Companies and Automobiles for the 'Porsche' example), and so I consider this issue to have a very wide scope, which might have caused many controversies in the past.
As the problem has two legitimate points of view, I would normally apply WP:NPOV and the principle of "Wikipedia tries to describe the dispute, not engage in it.", but a creation of problem/issue description page would not solve the problem, and the concept of due weight cannot be applied because [[Porsche]] can't direct to Porsche SE article XX% of the time, and direct to Porsche AG article YY% of the time, which might be technically possible with a Round-robin DNS style mechanism for the searches and name resolutions within Wikipedia.
Giving the representative [[Porsche]] title to one or the other of the two subjects may violate the principle of WP:NPOV either way, because it gives the benefit of being easier found in a search to one article at the undue expense of the other, despite both subjects having a valid COMMONNAME/PRIMARYTOPIC argument for the article title with supporting and not insignificant population with their own view point. If, only if, WP:NPOV(as a non-negotiable policy) must be adhered to no matter what cost, then the Round-robin mechanism idea that directs [[Porsche]] to one or the other of the articles with a pre-set probability ratio (e.g. 50:50, 80:20, etc.) may gain some validity with a small but fundamental alteration to the way this online encyclopaedia functions (of course with a hatnote on the result page to call attention to, and a direct link to, the other article).
In deciding "Subject X is called A or B", search engine test is sometimes used. However, this would not result in fair outcomes in this "Name A means X or Y" example, because the usage that equates 'Porsche' with the parent company is under the natural requirement on securities, economics, and business publications to qualify the name more carefully (adding 'SE' after 'Porsche' to avoid confusion) than on car magazines, so is naturally penalized in the statistics "How often the word 'Porsche' is meant for the parent, and for the subsidiary". This is a systemic bias in the test. Moreover, the patterns cannot be established for sufficiently long period because the parent was renamed and the subsidiary was established only recently in 2007.
Giving the [[Porsche]] title to a disambiguation page is another, a bit messy, solution I came up so far, but this solution may trigger waves of protests from Wikiprojects with established and conflicting conventions to such a practice (e.g. Wikiproject:Companies and Wikiproject:Automobiles in opposing directions, may be). In this case, the Precision criterion in WP:NAMINGCRITERIA may be used not to give the 'Porsche' title to either of the two articles, against which the Projects might use the Consistency criterion, or primary topic, as the basis for opposing the action.
I would like to receive comments and especially different ideas from those editors who, preferably, do not belong in the Companies, Automobiles, Brands, Germany, or other related WikiProjects to the example. Similar cases in the past and the ways they were resolved would be of interest if the solution seems reasonable. Those comments pushing for one of the two views in the example without grasping the underlying issue are NOT invited. Yiba ( talk | contribs) 07:09, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
I think this is a non-issue. There are really only three scenarios:
In the case of Porsche, the general readership know about the car Porsche and the hypothetical expert group who deal in share in the companies probably own one(!) and so the least surprise for most readers would be to place the car brand at Porsche as the primary meaning, and a hatenote for the more specialised meanings.
There is a more difficult problem which is the use of marketing names which adopts other names and then popularise them (for example the Google Chrome browser). Judging when usage of a name has changed to mean something else can be tricky, both with the adoption of a new meaning and with a term possibly reverting to its old meaning or to anther new meaning. -- PBS ( talk) 12:33, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
I personally won't take this as an NPOV issue, but rather the simple issue of: to a reasonable English speaker, what is the primary meaning of the term Porsche? To me, it is Porsche the car marque, rather than any particular corporation that at any point manufactures it. For example, when people say, "a Porsche factory," how likely would people mean:
I would say the likelihood decreases in the above order, and the likelihood (1) would be much larger than (2). -- Samuel di Curtisi di Salvadori 20:38, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
I decided to test the theory that women would be less likely to identify "Porsche" as the kind of car by doing a Google Books search for recent books by authors with distinctly female names (or with female-sounding names whose sex could be confirmed by further searching). Most examples that I found fit the following pattern:
I also saw two instances where female authors referenced characters named "Porsche" and one where a female author had written on the company, Porsche, acquiring other companies. However, it is clear that the substantial majority of female authors referring to "Porsche" are aware of (and writing about) the car. bd2412 T 18:51, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
I would appreciate more opinions and comments on the underlying issue side of this discussion. WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC have not addressed the fact "who you are" is a big part of what COMMONNAME and PRIMARYTOPIC arguments depend. Old English-speaking ladies in India, or retirees in Florida, may be a large part of en.wiki readership, yet their view points may have been ignored partly because their version of common sense is described more on dusty paper than on digital media so that search engine test would naturally place less weight. Some WikiProjects may have been unduly penalized in article naming when their view point is more mature than what the generally young Wiki editor demography considers to be the norm. Am I better off using no examples to get the concern understood? Yiba ( talk | contribs) 17:15, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
That said, the current layout is confusing. I agree with others that the brand/marque is the primary topic for Porsche, and, so, an article about the brand should be at Porsche. It should be an article about the cars known as Porsche. -- В²C ☎ 00:45, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
There is an RFC on WP:PPAP's naming conventions, which stipulate that official names should be used over common names, at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Political_parties_and_politicians_in_Canada#RFC_on_official_names_versus_common_names that you may be interested in commenting on. TDL ( talk) 01:03, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
Summary:
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:29, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
Original long version:
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There's a lot of ground to cover with regard to this issue. I'll try to break this into succinct paragraphs, since the total length is significant. Part of what's going on in various disputes with regard to how to name domestic breed articles is pure confirmation bias. An article title in the form Breedname species only sounds weird to someone to whom the Breedname string only and always refers to the kind of creature in species. Meanwhile, to everyone else in the world it's perfectly normal to append species so we all know WTF is being talked/written about. :-) Meanwhile, if one specialist in the topic of insert-species-here asks another specialist in the same topic, they'll immediately agree with each other, as if engaging in a ritual of mutual grooming, that the species part is not part of the name even for WP purposes. This is two lions agreeing together that the antelope is for dinner and calling this an consensus against which the antelope is just being a tendentious filibusterer. Since no one but me in the debate to date seems to be into cats, let's use them as an example so no one gets territorial about what I'm saying here. To a cat breeder, or a subscriber to Cat Fancy magazine, or some other form of "cat person", the cat breed named "Himalayan" is formally named simply the Himalayan, and only Himalayan. Most if not all registries and breeder associations will call this breed "Himalayan" or "the Himalayan" (or one of its alternate names like "the Himalayan Persian"), without "cat" appended. Well of course they don't append "cat", since they already know they're talking about cats when they're talking amongst themselves and writing for their own members! They only time they would, in their usual context, is when the phrase itself is so ambiguous even they can't stand it, as in the case of the Norwegian Forest cat, Norwegian forest cat or Norwegian Forest Cat, depending on how you like to capitalize (a debate I suggest we not re-open right now; let's focus on one thing at a time, here). Here the WP:Specialist style fallacy will come into play with dyed-in-the-fur cat people [theoretically – I haven't seen any of them actually do it] demanding that the "true name", the "real name", whatever, is "Himalayan", that the article should be at that title, and that if it isn't the "primary topic" for that title it should be disambiguated with an awkward parenthetical as Himalayan (cat). The problem with this is that this idea is not supported by non-specialist sources, which invariably disambiguate by appending the species, thus Himalayan cat. Even specialists don't actually avoid the species name all the time, only when inside the "cat people" context. Thus, many breed orgnizations (across all sorts of domestic animals) do in fact include the species name, because at least some of their organizers realized that people not already familiar with what the org is about will be confused by a name that doesn't include it. "Not already familar" is what we presume about our readers, BTW. Some orgs still drop it the species, but this is more true of small and local groups than national and international ones, almost across the board. E.g. we have the Atlantic Himalayan Club, which begs the question "Himalayan what?" to everyone but is own members, and the Seattle Persian and Himalayan Rescue (which sounds like mountaineering SAR performed half a world away somehow), but the national/international Persian and Himalayan Cat Rescue (PHCR), the Himalayan Cat Club [of Australia] [3] [4], and so on. Plenty of the local ones do it, too: Himalayan Cat Fanciers (of Concord, New Hampshire) [5]. Meanwhile, pet/veterinarian/agricultural sites routinely add the species name: "Himalayan Cat | Cat Breeds" at Petfinder [6], "Himalayan Cat Adoption - Search & Adopt a Himalayan Cat" at AdoptAPet [7], "Himalayan Cat Breed Information, Pictures, Characteristics" at CatTime.com [8], "Himalayan Cat Breeders: Fanciers Breeder Referral List" at BreedList.com [9], and on and on. The same sort of results abound, regardless of the species, and regardless of the type of name (e.g. geographical adjective as in this case, or geographical noun, human surname-based, descriptive, etc.). The only generally categorical exception is when the breed name includes a synonym of the species name, or some other redundancy. E.g. it would usually not be expected to write/say " Dachshund dog", because -hund is the combining form of the word that means "dog" in German. Similarly the Ocicat breed would almost never be called the "Ocicat cat". [Various wild subspecies, and domestic landraces and generic types, none of which are breeds, are treated this way because their names are unitary and essentially include the concept of the species within them, e.g. dingo, boar, burro and pony, not "dingo dog", "boar pig", "burro donkey" or "pony horse". Few if any domestic breeds are treated this way.] Every marginally fluent English speaker knows to append the species any time one feels it's necessary for disambiguation or clarity; we all do this, all the time. When asked what pets she has, someone with a little menagerie will readily say something like "I have a Sokoke cat, a Barbet dog and Hungarian Warmblood horse" (unless hoping someone will ask for clarification, to keep the conversation going or whatever). The exact degree to which the appending happens varies primarily by probable familiarity of the breed to the intended audience, not to the writer/speaker. And this is a crucial point: Our presumption at WP is that no breed is familiar to any given reader. We presume this lack of familiarity about all topics in our naming and writing here. [If this doesn't seem reasonable, consider how many people know English around the world and use en.wp, and ask yourself if you're really certain that very common breeds in your country actually are common in ever single other country, and you have statistical facts to prove this. :-] Keep in mind also that more breeds are created every year, while very few go extinct, an increasing number of them are named for breeds of other animal due to appearance similarities, and virtually no one on the planet knows the same of every breed of every kind of domesticated animal. Next, WP:AT instructs us repeatedly to use natural disambiguation rather than parenthetical when we can. The most common name within specialist literature is one thing, but the most common name in writing when a breed name will not be understood immediately to be a breed name and of what, is to disambiguate by adding the species, e.g. "Himalayan cat". Even a breeder would do this in a situation that called for it, e.g. when talking about cats to dog people, or when talking about Himalayan cats in a context in which someone might think Himalayan people were meant, e.g. a conversation about Buddhists or Asia. Finally (for this short summary of the issue - I haven't gotten into proofs with n-grams, etc.), WP:OFFICIALNAME is especially important in this context. It really doesn't matter if the official name of a breed doesn't include "cat" (or "dog" or "horse" or "duck" or whatever) in the internal documentation of breeder and fancier organizations; we still need to use whatever name best suits all of the naming criteria and resolves their tensions with the reader, not the editor, most in mind. In the course of doing that we notice clearly that WP:COMMONNAME has precedence over OFFICIALNAME and many other concerns. As with all policies and guidelines the analysis of this naming procedure is also tempered by WP:COMMONSENSE. In closing, simply doing what we all normally do in the course of using English, and what a plain reading of WP:AT, WP:DAB, etc. tell us to do, without trying to shove contorted interpretations into it, yields a very clear answer to how to disambigate breed names here, that is totally independent of any topical/wikiproject-specific arguments or positioning (which have and might continue to lead to completely different handling of such articles titles depending on species and what project claims scope and wants to make up its own rules). Using natural disambiguation, which is the most common name (per COMMONNAME) outside of specialist-to-specialist jargonistic usage in insider publications, is a clear KISS principle matter, and also satisfies the principle of least astonishment. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:05, 15 July 2014 (UTC) |
I'm a firm believer in establishing local consensus on individual actual articles before changing policy based on local consensus (see User:Born2cycle/FAQ#Shouldn't you get the policy/guideline changed, rather than try to subvert it one article at a time?), hence this Mustang horse → Mustang (horse) RM at Talk:Mustang_horse#Requested_move_-_July_2014. -- В²C ☎
This is just a really, really dumb policy. After all, this is supposed to be an encyclopaedia... - theWOLFchild 22:43, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
It's important to remember that WP:COMMONNAME really sets forth a methodology, not a goal in itself. The goal is to have a title that is Recognizable, Natural, Precise, Concise and Consistent. The most commonly used name (if there is one) is almost always going to be the one that best achieves these five basic goals. It is also important to remember that the most commonly used name might well be the "official" name. Blueboar ( talk) 21:13, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
Should the word "Cyclone" or "Typhoon" be removed from article titles? For example, Typhoon Haiyan is commonly called as such without the word "Typhoon" as in "Haiyan was the perfect storm". I'm not bringing hurricanes into the mix here, as their names are derived from names that are frequently used in English; I don't think an English speaker names their kid "Xangsane". – H T D 12:06, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
If not for the technical limitation that no two articles can have the exact same title, what's the harm in having an ambiguous or imprecise title? For example, other than the technical limitation, why couldn't the titles of the element, planet and myth that share the name "Mercury" all have the title Mercury? It strikes me that if not for the technical limitation and thus the need for disambiguation, and the articles about topics which don't have names and thus must have descriptive titles, almost all titles would be unrecognizable , ambiguous, and imprecise to most readers. Would that be a problem?
More to the point, whenever there is no other article with a given name (like the albums with date range names discussed above), what is the harm in using that name for the article title even when it is ambiguous or imprecise due to other uses in English, but none that have articles on Wikipedia? What is the benefit in using a more descriptive title? That is, how exactly is a user confused or harmed in any way by such a title? How do they not get to the article they're seeking, or how do they get to the wrong article, or how are they confused once they get there, because of such a title? How exactly do they benefit from making the title more descriptive? I just don't see what the problem is.
-- В²C ☎ 15:55, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
It's not self-evident how identically named articles would be a bad thing for users. Please elaborate. Brittanica does it apparently with no issues.
And that's not all I'm asking. I'm also asking more generally about the need for titles to be descriptive - I'm questioning the value of descriptive titles (unless the description is to disambiguate when disambiguation is necessary for technical reasons). -- В²C ☎ 20:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe ( talk · contribs), do you not have confidence that article titles in the online Brittanica are meaningful? They use ambiguous and imprecise titling. See below. -- В²C ☎ 20:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
The question is serious. Principle of least surprise and some rare vague BLP issues is all you've got? You guys are so sure it's a problem, but you can't explain why. Brittanica does not have the technical limitation, so they just use the natural common names of topics, even if they're ambiguous with other uses, with apparently no ill effects. For example, they use the title Mercury for their articles about the planet [14], the god [15], and even the (relatively obscure) plant [16]. Is that a problem? How so? If it's not a problem there, why would it be a problem here? Why do we ever use anything other than the plain common name of a title, besides disambiguation required to resolve the technical limitation? -- В²C ☎ 17:46, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
Context matters. Ambiguity and imprecision are generally bad, but when you're looking at one given article, it has only one title, and it doesn't matter what it is - you're at the one article anyway. What is much more important, is that the title reflects how that topic is commonly referring in English; not give some especially clear description of the topic; that's what the lead is for.
So I still don't see how it's a problem to have a title like, say Desideratum or All the Best!, since that is how these topics are commonly referred in English sources. If you don't know what they are, click on them and you'll find out. -- В²C ☎ 22:48, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
“I don't know what you mean Brittanica's page titles.”—Look at your title bar, the name of your browser window while the article’s page is open. — 174.141.182.82 ( talk) 23:56, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
Ah, well, the page title is the "title" within the html. Some browsers, including Chrome, don't even display that. That's more of a technical artifact, isn't it?
In theory we could make the title of the page, which is displayed to the user, different from the final component of the URL. In fact, for titles that have certain special treatments, like Italics, they're already decoupled to some extent. That way the "URL title" would have to be unique and disambiguated, but the "display title" (if you will), would not have to be. But the real question remains: what reason is there, besides the technical one, to disambiguate titles at all? Richhoncho, like the others, dismisses the question, without answering it. And the answer to User:Vegaswikian's questions ("Some place names in England seem to have 10 or so different uses? How are we suppose to know as readers if we are at the wrong one? ") is simple: read the lead. But in those cases we actually have multiple uses each with an article on WP. The main impact of this question is not in those cases, which would not be affected (they must be disambiguated for technical reasons), but in those cases where we don't have to disambiguate for technical reasons, because the ambiguity, or lack of precision, has nothing to do with others uses with articles on WP. -- В²C ☎ 14:42, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
“But the real question remains: what reason is there, besides the technical one, to disambiguate titles at all?”—I thought that when a question has been answered, it no longer “remained”. I’m one of those who’s answered it, in my last post above. But here’s the TL;DR answer: To benefit the users. — 174.141.182.82 ( talk) 18:17, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
“Some browsers, including Chrome, don't even display that.”— Yes it does. — 174.141.182.82 ( talk) 18:41, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
Okay, I see now that Chrome displays the html title in the tab of the page - I always have so many tabs that each tab is so small that I don't see it. But good website design generally does not depend on readers necessarily seeing the value of the html title tag. Brittanica is quite useful without seeing that - and is no more useful if you can see that. Like I said, it's just a technical artifact. Insignificant.
User:Richhonchos statements and questions demonstrate that he does not understand the question I'm asking, and explains why he thinks it has been answered. Perhaps I can shed some light on this by addressing his statements and answering his questions.
Rich says both Britannica and WP have "the same problem [did he mean solution?] to the same conundrum. Get the reader to the correct site as quickly as possible. " True that, but that has nothing to do with this issue. For example whether the album is at the more ambiguous and less precise Desideratum or it redirects to the less ambiguous and more precise Desideratum (album) does not affect how quickly any reader gets to the correct article. That point is not at issue here. Irrelevant.
Rich asks: "Having accepted that disambiguation can be necessary in WP, then why oppose when it helps?" No one is opposing when it helps; the issue is whether it helps, and, if so, how exactly it helps? Again, Desideratum (album) is more precise and less ambiguous than Desideratum, but does it help? I don't see it. How does it help? Same with 98 Degrees. We could move 98 Degrees to the more precise and less ambiguous 98 Degrees (band), but would that help? How? And, of course, there is 1978-1990 vs. 1978-1990 (album). Again clearly the latter is less ambiguous and more precise - but is it more helpful? How? In what context? What exactly is a reader doing such that he is helped more by the more descriptive title? I just don't see it.
Rich also asks: "If Mercury needs to be ambiguated, then why not date ranges to make it helpful to readers?" The answer is that Mercury is disambiguated because we can't have more than one title at Mercury. But that doesn't mean when you click on Mercury to go to the article about the planet that it's helpful to have that planet disambiguator in the title. So if it's not helpful to have Mercury disambiguated, why would it be helpful to have the date ranges disambiguated?
Finally Rich asks, if the choice is between precise and imprecise, surely no editor at WP is advocating imprecise? Editors prefer more ambiguous and less precise titles all the time. See Talk: Desideratum#Requested move for an example that went unanimously against the more ambiguous and less precise proposed title. In fact, for almost every article on WP, there is probably a less ambiguous and more precise title, certainly a more descriptive and arguably more "helpful" title, but we have chosen the less descriptive one in every single case. Like Dohn joe says, it's all about where we draw the line. One clear place to draw the line is where disambiguation is necessary for technical reasons. If disambiguation is not necessary for technical reasons, what is the reason to disambiguate? Saying it's more helpful does not make it so. How, exactly, is it more helpful? That's what nobody has explained, much less how else to draw that line, and where, exactly. -- В²C ☎ 21:12, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
Nevertheless, by the time he wrote his Desideratum, Wesley had thought long and hard about the nature of electricity. He provided his readers an extensive justification for thinking of electricity as the elixir of life that God provided ...
User:Dicklyon, please consider my statements in the context in which I made them. User:Vegaswikian claimed I was the only editor "advocating imprecise and ambiguous titles". So I gave Paris as one of several counter-examples. Nobody can deny that Paris is less precise and more ambiguous than Paris, France. It's true that it's an "obvious case of a title with a well-accepted primary meaning", but it's still less precise and more ambiguous than Paris, France. My point stands. Desideratum is of course not a precedent setting case. However, it still counters Vegaswikian's claim that I'm the only one "advocating imprecise and ambiguous titles", which is why I mentioned it. Discussions with false claims are not helpful, and obfuscate the real issues being discussed. That being said, Desideratum is far from an unusual case - WP:NOTADICT is commonly used to counter claims that a given name should not be used undisambiguated because it's ambiguous with a dictionary use of the word, even though we don't have an article for that word on WP. And I don't insist on ambiguity. I insist on undisambiguated WP:COMMONNAME when disambiguation is unnecessary. --20:27, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
There is no evidence those other uses are ever referenced as 1978-1990 in reliable sources, much less that they are commonly referred to with that name. Nobody would ever suggest that 1978-1990 be the title for any of those other uses. However, 1978-1990 is unquestionably the common name for the album, and thus the album is the primary topic. Aren't all the other alleged "uses" actually partial title matches and so should not even be listed on the dab page? And if you end up with a dab page with only one topic listed - doesn't that kind of make it the primary topic? -- В²C ☎ 00:28, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
User:Blueboar, your otherwise solid analysis unfortunately fails because the key premise about the official name is incorrect. The album name is 1978 to 1990 on their discography. On individual album pages, they precede all album names with the band name for all of their albums. Thus 16 Lovers Lane is titled The Go-Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane on that albums page, but that's no reason for us to move 16 Lovers Lane to The Go-Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane. At most what we have is an argument to use 1978 to 1990 as the title, except we need support in non-primary reliable sources for that, and I don't think it exists. The album cover uses the hyphen, not the word "to", between the dates. I suspect the web page designer just used artistic license with the use of "to" there. -- В²C ☎ 17:40, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
I had a look today whether Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) could bring some relief in this continuing story.
What I found there:
Apart from the ranges that are articles on albums (as discussed above) I found these:
I'd like to add a new section to the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) guideline, probably just after the section regarding Articles on other standard time periods:
14-18 could be made a disambiguation page, with for example links to the film, e.g. renamed to 14-18 (film), and the WWI page.
Alternatively, make 14-18 a redirect to the WWI page, and on that page a hat-note, which either links to 14-18 (film) or to 14-18 (disambiguation). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 10:59, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
First, I would have no problem with guidance to the effect that a date range can have a wp:primarytopic. If a date range is so greatly identified with a particular event or topic, so as to be synonymous (or nearly) with that event or topic, then we can treat the date range as an alternate name for the topic. Thus 1914-1918 could redirect to World War I. Non-notable date ranges would not redirect anywhere. Thus 1962–1967 would remain a redlink, since none of the events that occurred in that timeframe are known in RSs by that range.
Second, when an otherwise non-notable date range is the wp:commonname of an actual subject, we can use that date range as the article title or redirect to a subheading. Thus, since 1983-1991 is not particularly associated with any historical event, we can be free to use it for the album article where it currently is. This largely holds up the status quo, while making it explicit and adding the ability to redirect notable date ranges to their respective topics. Dohn joe ( talk) 19:48, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
See how Wikidata handles "Mercury":
I actually thought of a similar idea for Wikipedia several years back but I never expressed it since it would be a drastic change that would likely get shot down quickly. Anyway, by removing the technical limitation on articles having the same title and putting the disambiguator into a subtitle/short description field, as Wikidata has done, we would not have these countless debates on which topic is primary or what is the best disambiguator or if unnecessary disambiguation is more important than rigid consistency. — seav ( talk) 16:36, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
But I agree that WP’s titles are more user-friendly. Not forcing the user to read extra irrelevant text is a good thing. — 174.141.182.82 ( talk) 17:03, 23 July 2014 (UTC)Mercury
Ancient Roman mythological god of tr…
A couple of people have stated that since the C in "Layer Cake" is sometimes capitalized on menus, Layer Cake should be a redirect to Layer cake. But I suggest we should not do that unless we think people are likely to search for the cake by capitalizing the C. What do you think?
-- В²C ☎ 00:19, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
If no data has been provided at any time to support an existing, even stable title (basically decided to be the common name by someone's personal experience or whim), and the official name is somewhat commonly used (because it's been the official name for a long time), wouldn't the official name at least be a default choice until a more common name is proven? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 01:32, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
WP:TSC says
* Characters resembling quotes or accent marks (avoid them): The characters ʻ ʾ ʿ ᾿ ῾ ‘ ’ “ ” c, and also combining diacritical marks with a "space" character, should generally not be used in page titles. A common exception is the apostrophe ' (e.g. Anthony d'Offay), which should, however, be used sparingly (e.g. Shia instead of Shi'a). See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (punctuation).
Now, I have to repeat the question from /Archive 20#Avoid accent-/quote-like characters: Why? That debate from 2009 ended without a clear answer or outcome. The guideline just lumps together a number of glyphs, based solely on visual similarity, and is desperately out of sync with our current practice, good typography practice, and common names. It also refers to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (punctuation) but it is in apparent conflict with it. Let me first dissect this broad and barely related collection:
However:
* Use straight apostrophes (') and quotation marks ("). Variations such as typographic quotation marks (“...”), typographic apostrophes (’), "low-high" quotation marks („...“), guillemets («...»), grave and acute accents or backticks (`...´) should be avoided in titles, just as in article text. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (punctuation).
No such user ( talk) 10:29, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
No, the reason is to have, for instance, "Brokeback Mountain" (as it should be according to MOS) at Brokeback Mountain (short story). Part of the reason is that all the quotemarks would look silly in Category:Short stories and related (sub)categories. Similar, "Summertime" → Summertime (song), listed in Category:Songs-related (sub)categories. etc... I think " "Heroes"" is about the only exception to that while yes, the actual title apparently includes quotation marks. Further, if quotation marks are not (or almost never) used in actual page titles, they should not be replaced by less common glyphs that an average user would not type in the search box (as an escape to the actual policy that is to avoid quotation marks). Avoiding an unwanted scare quotes effect (for instance for quoted sentences that are page titles, e.g. "veni, vidi, vici" → veni, vidi, vici) is another reason to generally discourage quotes in page titles.
Re. "the ... example should be removed and left to other guidelines such as WP:COMMONNAME to sort it out" - this is the talk page of the COMMONNAME policy: that example is sorted out by that guideline (in fact: policy). For transliterations, generally, even if some transliteration systems present an abundance of additional marks there is a general preference for the simpler transliteration systems. There has been considerable discussion over which is the most ideal transliteration system for several languages, e.g. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Arabic and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic) ... both pages "proposals" for as long as I know for lack consensus. So there's no possibility yet for these languages to defer to a romanisation guideline (in other words, indeed yes, keep the instructions on this page) — for some other foreign script languages like Chinese there is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese) which could be deferred to for page titles. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 14:55, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
See also recently archived discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 47#Quotation marks in article titles using <q> tag -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 15:37, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
People familiar with how WP:DIFFPUNCT, WP:NATURAL (and any other applicable policy) should apply in deciding between Janet. and Janet (album) are requested to participate here:
Thanks, -- В²C ☎ 17:30, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Often users choose military propaganda names as titles for articles about military conflicts, as was the case with Operation Protective Edge for the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict. It would be helpful if we had a section here making clear that this is explicitly not wanted: Propaganda names are usually chosen to let the own military appear heroic, and they are often euphemist, such as " Operation Iraqi Freedom" for the 2003 Iraq War.-- Galant Khan ( talk) 23:53, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Those familiar with how we name articles (and why) on species only identified in the fossil record may be interested in this discussion: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds#English name vs. Scientific name, — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:23, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
the vernacular ("common") name, with "common" in scare-quotes, and maybe not even use that word at all in either of the NC pages, just to avoid any hint of confusion with COMMONNAME. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:56, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
The language in the footnote is clear, but who reads the footnote? Bring the footnote into the main text. Previous discussions 5 years ago ( Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (common names)/Archive 3#Hesperian paragraph) concerned a more verbose and controversial version of the text explaining the difference between a vernacular name and a commonly used name. User:PBS ultimately developed a more succinct version of the proposed text and put it as a footnote in this diff, which is has survived largely unchanged. Get the footnote (or similar language) into the main text where people will actually see it. "King tyrant lizard" is an English "common" (vernacular) name, but not the commonly used name for Tyrannosaurus rex. Plantdrew ( talk) 02:36, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
To understand where the text is now one has to understand that there used to be a naming convention (common name) that Kotniski turned into a redirect in October 2009. So the redirects such as COMMONNAME and UCN used to redirect to the naming convention. The use of "common name" came about because before the use of reliable sources this policy really did advise using the common name (and no one raised the issue that it was confusing). I would support SmokeyJoe's suggestion the removal of advertising "COMMONNAME" as a link in the section, but would suggest a replacement one such as FREQUENTLYUSEDNAME, unfortunately FUN is taken, so a shorter name for a redirect is needed such as FRQNTNAME, but perhaps some one can suggest a better short name. Or how about WP:COMMONUSAGE and WP:CU? -- PBS ( talk) 07:58, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
I do not think it necessary to place the text of the footnote into the main body for three reasons. One only has to read it once to understand it (after that it is clutter). It is a minority issue which only affects discussions of a few scientific disciplines (for example neither historians or physicists need to know about this issue -- let alone those who write articles about Muppets). The advantage of a footnote is that it is easy to link to the specific sentence (as I did here) if it is needed in an external conversation. -- PBS ( talk) 07:40, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Talk:Wolverine (character)#Page move back discussion, again concerning whether the page in question should be named Wolverine (character) or Wolverine (comics). This has long been a contentious issue—the page has been moved back and forth several times, and has had several discussions at both Talk:Wolverine (character) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (comics). The outcome will likely have repercussions throughout WikiProject Comics, especially in light of the result of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Comics#RfC: Proposed rewording for instructions for disambiguation.
There are also concerns regarding WP:CANVASSing for the discussion. Curly Turkey ⚞ ¡gobble!⚟ 02:23, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sports teams) purports to be a guideline but shows no history of a consensus. Could someone explain where the consensus for this came from and why it seems to be running counter to the Wikipedia:Article titles policy? Hack ( talk) 00:37, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
See proposals & discussion thereof at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (music)#Compositions (classical music) -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 13:54, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi there, there are two band articles that have very similar names, these bands are:
While the two bands are very different in both style and origin their article titles have a mere "!" to differentiate the two, noticing this I moved the articles to these titles; Attack Attack! (American band) and Attack! Attack! (Welsh band) however has since been reverted by User:Sock who believes that the simple "!" is enough to distinguish between the two articles, while I disagree I would appreciate some third opinions to gain a clear consensus whether they should be moved or not, thank you for your time and hope you can contribute to this discussion here. SilentDan ( talk) 01:38, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
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Archive 40 | ← | Archive 45 | Archive 46 | Archive 47 | Archive 48 | Archive 49 | Archive 50 |
What should determine titles? Policy like WP:CRITERIA and WP:DIFFCAPS?
Or opinions about which title better "communicates what the article is about" or "is more helpful" to readers?
Weigh in here: Talk:All_the_Best!#Requested_moves.
-- В²C ☎ 05:41, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
What should determine titles? Policy like WP:CRITERIA and WP:DIFFCAPS? Or opinions ..
I revived Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) which contains some good answers relevant to this discussion, & which I think was turned into a redirect too quickly... by Born2cycle -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 10:46, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I placed this heading Is an explanation mark a sufficient for disambiguation above the section headings
and made them sub-headings. However for reasons unclear to me user:In ictu oculi removed the heading (see [1]. Nevertheless it seems to me that the two sections are related, so I have reformatted it here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PBS ( talk • contribs)
I have combined the two sections (now in bold above) into one as the debate at Talk:All the Best!#Requested moves while involving more than one title revolves around whether All the Best! differs sufficiently from All the Best not to need parenthetical disambiguation eg All the Best! (Paul McCartney album). -- PBS ( talk) 07:12, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I'm not aware that there has been any substantive discussion regarding the title of any of these [ Them!, I Want to Live!, That Darn Cat!, Berserk!, Oliver!, Burn!, Airplane!, That Thing You Do!, Moulin Rouge!, and Mamma Mia! ]. As such, any "consensus" is at best passive in that either nobody noticed or nobody care enough to bother. Consensus can change. older ≠ wiser
I think that WP:CRITERIA is ambiguous on whether punctuation is a sufficient for disambiguation. So I suggest that specific guidance should be added to this policy to give clear guidance on this. To that end I suggest that an RfC is held here on this talk page and advertised widely . I will read the arguments presented in such an RfC to make up my mind as I am one of those older ≠ wiser mentions as somebody who has not cared enough to bother to form an opinion.
To that end I will not initiate an RfC, (too much work) but would appreciate it if someone who cares enough about the issue would do so. -- PBS ( talk) 07:12, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Note that Airplane! is mentioned explicitly as an example in WP:DIFFCAPS:
Many such differences involve capitalization, separation or non-separation of components, or pluralization: (...) Airplane! and Airplane (...). While each name in such a pair may already be precise and apt, a reader who enters one term might in fact be looking for the other, so use appropriate disambiguation techniques, such as hatnotes or disambiguation pages to help readers find the article they want. Special care should be taken for names translated from other languages and even more so for transliterated titles; there is often no standardized format for the English name of the subject, so minor details are often not enough to disambiguate in such cases.
As for expanding the WT:AT policy page I see no need for that. As is the WP:PRECISION section on that page (with multiple subsections) lacks focus, and further, already gives too much detail for policy level imho. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 10:46, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I saw the existence of this discussion (since I have Wikipedia:Article titles on my watchlist), and thought those participating in this discussion could either look into a bit of a troubling redirect I ran across ( Boom!!) that I put up for nomination at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 July 1#Boom!!. When I found this redirect, I also found the existence of two separate disambiguation pages Boom and Boom!, which seems to correlate with this discussion. Feel free to either provide some insight into this, or use this as an example for this discussion in section(s) above. Steel1943 ( talk) 19:04, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
I propose to revert Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) from a redirect to this version
As shown above this guideline can help in getting a grip on page name variations.
BTW, couldn't find any past discussion that turned this from guideline in redirect, does anyone know where to find? -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 20:25, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
Well, okay, I understand, but I put those examples there because that's the way policy works. We have had discussions about Friendly Fire - there's nothing really important that uses that capitalization, so consensus led to a redirect. We have had discussions about MAVEN, but we have kept the articles separate because reliable sources distinguish between the formats and each one is at least on the same order of magnitude of notability. What to do in a DIFFCAPS situation? It depends on how notable each claimant is. If you don't spell it out in a policy page, confusion and discord happen eventually. If you spell it out, all it takes is to say at Talk:Airplane!#RM "Oppose as per WP:DIFFCAPS" and you stop an unproductive discussion. Red Slash 00:25, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
I don’t think this is addressed in policy… if an ambiguously named subject has an unambiguous name that has fallen out of use, which option in WP:NATURAL should we generally go with: the unambiguous name that is not in current use, or the ambiguous name with parenthetical disambiguation? — 174.141.182.82 ( talk) 03:30, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
It helps to look at how we define the terms we use... Naturalness is defined (in this policy) as: The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. I find the last part of this definition to be the most helpful... in most cases, if a topic or subject is notable enough for an article, it/he/she will be mentioned in other related articles (an Olympic gold medalist for example, might be mentioned in the articles on the various Olympic games he/she competed in)... so to determine what is natural, we can look to see how the topic or subject is referred to in those other articles. That will give us an idea of what variation on the name is natural. So... to see whether "Macintosh" is more natural than "Mac" (or vice verse)... look at the various articles that discuss this brand of computer and see what version they use. (side note... in that example, I think there may be a need to add further, parenthetical, disambiguation... whichever way we went. Both choices can refer to multiple topics). Blueboar ( talk) 16:39, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Earlier today, LTPowers
expanded the initials paragraph of the Title Format section by adding...
I actually agree with this, since it is nothing more than a restatement of COMMONNAME... except... there are (relatively rare) situations where the need for disambiguation calls for using something other than the COMMONNAME form of initials - Let us suppose that there were two people who were both commonly referred to as John Q. Public (one full named "John Qwerty Public" and the other "John Quincy Public")... We might use their full names as a logical form of disambiguation, despite the fact that sources usually simply use the initial. I tried to add something about this, but was reverted. No problem... but let's discuss. Blueboar ( talk) 22:34, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
At WT:NCP the discussion eventually went to a new section WT:NCP#More on using full middle names as disambiguation. What I wrote there regarding the guideline I repeat here for the policy:
Instead of the imaginary examples "John Qwerty Public" and "John Quincy Public" as proposed above we have the real John Steuart Wilson and John Sullivan Wilson. Editor discretion chose not to disambiguate by middle name expansion but instead has their articles at John S. Wilson (music critic) and John S. Wilson (economist) respecitvely. Which is fine by me.
Seems to me there is no need to repair anything here, a.k.a. a solution in search of a problem. I oppose to adding anything (additional rules, examples or suggestions) regarding initials and/or full middle names for disambiguation purposes to the policy, per K.I.S.S. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 15:43, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Please participate in the discussion at MOS:JAPAN. Curly Turkey ⚞ ¡gobble!⚟ 21:19, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
In an effort to split an article, I am faced with the problem of which of the two articles after the split should be given the old well-known article title, where both of the new subjects could claim to have COMMONNAME and PRIMARY TOPIC arguments for the title depending on the demography group the reader and/or the editor belong, and would like to invite comments from wider editor-base on how to handle this article naming issue. Yiba ( talk | contribs) 07:00, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
The case is Porsche, where the name is predominantly a brand of cars and the car maker, Porsche AG, for one demography group who are not interested in investments; and is predominantly the name of the parent company, Porsche SE, which controls many car makers such as Bentley, Bugatti, Audi, Volkswagen, Ducati, Lamborghini and Porsche for the other demography group who are more likely kept abreast of developments in economy and capital markets. The latter view considers the name on the stock of the parent company traded on public exchanges, and its roles in the German and world economy, to have significance reaching a wider Wikipedia reader base, but the other (mostly younger) group tend to place a higher significance on the brand of cars and its manufacturer because it is the way the name "Porsche" is used by the group (as well as by reliable publications catering to car afficionados).
With the well known skew in Wikipedia editor demography towards young males in mind, and assuming the two views each having reliable sources on the respective usage, how should we handle the question of which article (on the parent company Porsche SE, or the car manufacturing subsidiary Porsche AG) to be given the representative "Porsche" as the title?
Currently, the article is not split between the parent and the subsidiary, but there is a general consensus that a split into two articles would be preferable if this and other problems can be resolved.
(The problem is more complicated in this example than on most car companies because Porsche AG no longer is a direct subsidiary of Porsche SE, but has become a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, to which Porsche SE is the majority owner. Further, Porsche SE was born by renaming the old Porsche AG, and then the car manufacturing operation was spun off to form the new Porsche AG, so the parent holding company is the legal successor of the Porsche history in the past (which might give the primary topic status to the parent on the basis of long-term significance). In many countries, the parent company does not have a local presence due to the limited availability of EDR and GDR outside of London, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and New York stock exchanges, so the subsidiary is left in the country to be the only bearer of the name Porsche, except in international or foreign context. The parent currently has non-car-making subsidiaries that are likely to attract not insignificant number of Wiki readers on the products (e.g. sunglasses, bags, etc.) and services (e.g. technology consulting) outside of the new Porsche AG, who are likely to look up 'Porsche' on Wikipedia.)
This seems to be a COMMONNAME issue, not in the sense that subject X is called A or B, but in the sense that the name A is normally used to mean subject X or Y depending on what country, culture, or demography you belong within the English speaking population. The word 'Porsche' normally means different things to a stock broker or a coupon clipper in London, and for a student in Sydney.
In a way, this is because the culture and the common knowledge are not shared by the countries, generations and demography groups using the same English language. The difference cannot be resolved by the best efforts in consensus building, because the different views are valid for each group and a consensus cannot merge or unify the groups, and an amicable middle ground cannot be found because the assignment of 'Porsche' title cannot be split or weighted between the two articles. I would suspect similar issues exist between male and female, the rich and the poor, well-educated and not-so-well-educated, and between other demography groups. As none of these demography groups cannot be ignored as the Wikipedia reader base, this is not a target audience issue. May be the question of "When COMMONNAME varies according to the subject domain categorization (i.e. stand point of the Wikiproject for each domain)" should be added to this issue for those subjects and article titles that belong in two or more subject domains (e.g. Companies and Automobiles for the 'Porsche' example), and so I consider this issue to have a very wide scope, which might have caused many controversies in the past.
As the problem has two legitimate points of view, I would normally apply WP:NPOV and the principle of "Wikipedia tries to describe the dispute, not engage in it.", but a creation of problem/issue description page would not solve the problem, and the concept of due weight cannot be applied because [[Porsche]] can't direct to Porsche SE article XX% of the time, and direct to Porsche AG article YY% of the time, which might be technically possible with a Round-robin DNS style mechanism for the searches and name resolutions within Wikipedia.
Giving the representative [[Porsche]] title to one or the other of the two subjects may violate the principle of WP:NPOV either way, because it gives the benefit of being easier found in a search to one article at the undue expense of the other, despite both subjects having a valid COMMONNAME/PRIMARYTOPIC argument for the article title with supporting and not insignificant population with their own view point. If, only if, WP:NPOV(as a non-negotiable policy) must be adhered to no matter what cost, then the Round-robin mechanism idea that directs [[Porsche]] to one or the other of the articles with a pre-set probability ratio (e.g. 50:50, 80:20, etc.) may gain some validity with a small but fundamental alteration to the way this online encyclopaedia functions (of course with a hatnote on the result page to call attention to, and a direct link to, the other article).
In deciding "Subject X is called A or B", search engine test is sometimes used. However, this would not result in fair outcomes in this "Name A means X or Y" example, because the usage that equates 'Porsche' with the parent company is under the natural requirement on securities, economics, and business publications to qualify the name more carefully (adding 'SE' after 'Porsche' to avoid confusion) than on car magazines, so is naturally penalized in the statistics "How often the word 'Porsche' is meant for the parent, and for the subsidiary". This is a systemic bias in the test. Moreover, the patterns cannot be established for sufficiently long period because the parent was renamed and the subsidiary was established only recently in 2007.
Giving the [[Porsche]] title to a disambiguation page is another, a bit messy, solution I came up so far, but this solution may trigger waves of protests from Wikiprojects with established and conflicting conventions to such a practice (e.g. Wikiproject:Companies and Wikiproject:Automobiles in opposing directions, may be). In this case, the Precision criterion in WP:NAMINGCRITERIA may be used not to give the 'Porsche' title to either of the two articles, against which the Projects might use the Consistency criterion, or primary topic, as the basis for opposing the action.
I would like to receive comments and especially different ideas from those editors who, preferably, do not belong in the Companies, Automobiles, Brands, Germany, or other related WikiProjects to the example. Similar cases in the past and the ways they were resolved would be of interest if the solution seems reasonable. Those comments pushing for one of the two views in the example without grasping the underlying issue are NOT invited. Yiba ( talk | contribs) 07:09, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
I think this is a non-issue. There are really only three scenarios:
In the case of Porsche, the general readership know about the car Porsche and the hypothetical expert group who deal in share in the companies probably own one(!) and so the least surprise for most readers would be to place the car brand at Porsche as the primary meaning, and a hatenote for the more specialised meanings.
There is a more difficult problem which is the use of marketing names which adopts other names and then popularise them (for example the Google Chrome browser). Judging when usage of a name has changed to mean something else can be tricky, both with the adoption of a new meaning and with a term possibly reverting to its old meaning or to anther new meaning. -- PBS ( talk) 12:33, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
I personally won't take this as an NPOV issue, but rather the simple issue of: to a reasonable English speaker, what is the primary meaning of the term Porsche? To me, it is Porsche the car marque, rather than any particular corporation that at any point manufactures it. For example, when people say, "a Porsche factory," how likely would people mean:
I would say the likelihood decreases in the above order, and the likelihood (1) would be much larger than (2). -- Samuel di Curtisi di Salvadori 20:38, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
I decided to test the theory that women would be less likely to identify "Porsche" as the kind of car by doing a Google Books search for recent books by authors with distinctly female names (or with female-sounding names whose sex could be confirmed by further searching). Most examples that I found fit the following pattern:
I also saw two instances where female authors referenced characters named "Porsche" and one where a female author had written on the company, Porsche, acquiring other companies. However, it is clear that the substantial majority of female authors referring to "Porsche" are aware of (and writing about) the car. bd2412 T 18:51, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
I would appreciate more opinions and comments on the underlying issue side of this discussion. WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC have not addressed the fact "who you are" is a big part of what COMMONNAME and PRIMARYTOPIC arguments depend. Old English-speaking ladies in India, or retirees in Florida, may be a large part of en.wiki readership, yet their view points may have been ignored partly because their version of common sense is described more on dusty paper than on digital media so that search engine test would naturally place less weight. Some WikiProjects may have been unduly penalized in article naming when their view point is more mature than what the generally young Wiki editor demography considers to be the norm. Am I better off using no examples to get the concern understood? Yiba ( talk | contribs) 17:15, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
That said, the current layout is confusing. I agree with others that the brand/marque is the primary topic for Porsche, and, so, an article about the brand should be at Porsche. It should be an article about the cars known as Porsche. -- В²C ☎ 00:45, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
There is an RFC on WP:PPAP's naming conventions, which stipulate that official names should be used over common names, at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Political_parties_and_politicians_in_Canada#RFC_on_official_names_versus_common_names that you may be interested in commenting on. TDL ( talk) 01:03, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
Summary:
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:29, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
Original long version:
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There's a lot of ground to cover with regard to this issue. I'll try to break this into succinct paragraphs, since the total length is significant. Part of what's going on in various disputes with regard to how to name domestic breed articles is pure confirmation bias. An article title in the form Breedname species only sounds weird to someone to whom the Breedname string only and always refers to the kind of creature in species. Meanwhile, to everyone else in the world it's perfectly normal to append species so we all know WTF is being talked/written about. :-) Meanwhile, if one specialist in the topic of insert-species-here asks another specialist in the same topic, they'll immediately agree with each other, as if engaging in a ritual of mutual grooming, that the species part is not part of the name even for WP purposes. This is two lions agreeing together that the antelope is for dinner and calling this an consensus against which the antelope is just being a tendentious filibusterer. Since no one but me in the debate to date seems to be into cats, let's use them as an example so no one gets territorial about what I'm saying here. To a cat breeder, or a subscriber to Cat Fancy magazine, or some other form of "cat person", the cat breed named "Himalayan" is formally named simply the Himalayan, and only Himalayan. Most if not all registries and breeder associations will call this breed "Himalayan" or "the Himalayan" (or one of its alternate names like "the Himalayan Persian"), without "cat" appended. Well of course they don't append "cat", since they already know they're talking about cats when they're talking amongst themselves and writing for their own members! They only time they would, in their usual context, is when the phrase itself is so ambiguous even they can't stand it, as in the case of the Norwegian Forest cat, Norwegian forest cat or Norwegian Forest Cat, depending on how you like to capitalize (a debate I suggest we not re-open right now; let's focus on one thing at a time, here). Here the WP:Specialist style fallacy will come into play with dyed-in-the-fur cat people [theoretically – I haven't seen any of them actually do it] demanding that the "true name", the "real name", whatever, is "Himalayan", that the article should be at that title, and that if it isn't the "primary topic" for that title it should be disambiguated with an awkward parenthetical as Himalayan (cat). The problem with this is that this idea is not supported by non-specialist sources, which invariably disambiguate by appending the species, thus Himalayan cat. Even specialists don't actually avoid the species name all the time, only when inside the "cat people" context. Thus, many breed orgnizations (across all sorts of domestic animals) do in fact include the species name, because at least some of their organizers realized that people not already familiar with what the org is about will be confused by a name that doesn't include it. "Not already familar" is what we presume about our readers, BTW. Some orgs still drop it the species, but this is more true of small and local groups than national and international ones, almost across the board. E.g. we have the Atlantic Himalayan Club, which begs the question "Himalayan what?" to everyone but is own members, and the Seattle Persian and Himalayan Rescue (which sounds like mountaineering SAR performed half a world away somehow), but the national/international Persian and Himalayan Cat Rescue (PHCR), the Himalayan Cat Club [of Australia] [3] [4], and so on. Plenty of the local ones do it, too: Himalayan Cat Fanciers (of Concord, New Hampshire) [5]. Meanwhile, pet/veterinarian/agricultural sites routinely add the species name: "Himalayan Cat | Cat Breeds" at Petfinder [6], "Himalayan Cat Adoption - Search & Adopt a Himalayan Cat" at AdoptAPet [7], "Himalayan Cat Breed Information, Pictures, Characteristics" at CatTime.com [8], "Himalayan Cat Breeders: Fanciers Breeder Referral List" at BreedList.com [9], and on and on. The same sort of results abound, regardless of the species, and regardless of the type of name (e.g. geographical adjective as in this case, or geographical noun, human surname-based, descriptive, etc.). The only generally categorical exception is when the breed name includes a synonym of the species name, or some other redundancy. E.g. it would usually not be expected to write/say " Dachshund dog", because -hund is the combining form of the word that means "dog" in German. Similarly the Ocicat breed would almost never be called the "Ocicat cat". [Various wild subspecies, and domestic landraces and generic types, none of which are breeds, are treated this way because their names are unitary and essentially include the concept of the species within them, e.g. dingo, boar, burro and pony, not "dingo dog", "boar pig", "burro donkey" or "pony horse". Few if any domestic breeds are treated this way.] Every marginally fluent English speaker knows to append the species any time one feels it's necessary for disambiguation or clarity; we all do this, all the time. When asked what pets she has, someone with a little menagerie will readily say something like "I have a Sokoke cat, a Barbet dog and Hungarian Warmblood horse" (unless hoping someone will ask for clarification, to keep the conversation going or whatever). The exact degree to which the appending happens varies primarily by probable familiarity of the breed to the intended audience, not to the writer/speaker. And this is a crucial point: Our presumption at WP is that no breed is familiar to any given reader. We presume this lack of familiarity about all topics in our naming and writing here. [If this doesn't seem reasonable, consider how many people know English around the world and use en.wp, and ask yourself if you're really certain that very common breeds in your country actually are common in ever single other country, and you have statistical facts to prove this. :-] Keep in mind also that more breeds are created every year, while very few go extinct, an increasing number of them are named for breeds of other animal due to appearance similarities, and virtually no one on the planet knows the same of every breed of every kind of domesticated animal. Next, WP:AT instructs us repeatedly to use natural disambiguation rather than parenthetical when we can. The most common name within specialist literature is one thing, but the most common name in writing when a breed name will not be understood immediately to be a breed name and of what, is to disambiguate by adding the species, e.g. "Himalayan cat". Even a breeder would do this in a situation that called for it, e.g. when talking about cats to dog people, or when talking about Himalayan cats in a context in which someone might think Himalayan people were meant, e.g. a conversation about Buddhists or Asia. Finally (for this short summary of the issue - I haven't gotten into proofs with n-grams, etc.), WP:OFFICIALNAME is especially important in this context. It really doesn't matter if the official name of a breed doesn't include "cat" (or "dog" or "horse" or "duck" or whatever) in the internal documentation of breeder and fancier organizations; we still need to use whatever name best suits all of the naming criteria and resolves their tensions with the reader, not the editor, most in mind. In the course of doing that we notice clearly that WP:COMMONNAME has precedence over OFFICIALNAME and many other concerns. As with all policies and guidelines the analysis of this naming procedure is also tempered by WP:COMMONSENSE. In closing, simply doing what we all normally do in the course of using English, and what a plain reading of WP:AT, WP:DAB, etc. tell us to do, without trying to shove contorted interpretations into it, yields a very clear answer to how to disambigate breed names here, that is totally independent of any topical/wikiproject-specific arguments or positioning (which have and might continue to lead to completely different handling of such articles titles depending on species and what project claims scope and wants to make up its own rules). Using natural disambiguation, which is the most common name (per COMMONNAME) outside of specialist-to-specialist jargonistic usage in insider publications, is a clear KISS principle matter, and also satisfies the principle of least astonishment. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:05, 15 July 2014 (UTC) |
I'm a firm believer in establishing local consensus on individual actual articles before changing policy based on local consensus (see User:Born2cycle/FAQ#Shouldn't you get the policy/guideline changed, rather than try to subvert it one article at a time?), hence this Mustang horse → Mustang (horse) RM at Talk:Mustang_horse#Requested_move_-_July_2014. -- В²C ☎
This is just a really, really dumb policy. After all, this is supposed to be an encyclopaedia... - theWOLFchild 22:43, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
It's important to remember that WP:COMMONNAME really sets forth a methodology, not a goal in itself. The goal is to have a title that is Recognizable, Natural, Precise, Concise and Consistent. The most commonly used name (if there is one) is almost always going to be the one that best achieves these five basic goals. It is also important to remember that the most commonly used name might well be the "official" name. Blueboar ( talk) 21:13, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
Should the word "Cyclone" or "Typhoon" be removed from article titles? For example, Typhoon Haiyan is commonly called as such without the word "Typhoon" as in "Haiyan was the perfect storm". I'm not bringing hurricanes into the mix here, as their names are derived from names that are frequently used in English; I don't think an English speaker names their kid "Xangsane". – H T D 12:06, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
If not for the technical limitation that no two articles can have the exact same title, what's the harm in having an ambiguous or imprecise title? For example, other than the technical limitation, why couldn't the titles of the element, planet and myth that share the name "Mercury" all have the title Mercury? It strikes me that if not for the technical limitation and thus the need for disambiguation, and the articles about topics which don't have names and thus must have descriptive titles, almost all titles would be unrecognizable , ambiguous, and imprecise to most readers. Would that be a problem?
More to the point, whenever there is no other article with a given name (like the albums with date range names discussed above), what is the harm in using that name for the article title even when it is ambiguous or imprecise due to other uses in English, but none that have articles on Wikipedia? What is the benefit in using a more descriptive title? That is, how exactly is a user confused or harmed in any way by such a title? How do they not get to the article they're seeking, or how do they get to the wrong article, or how are they confused once they get there, because of such a title? How exactly do they benefit from making the title more descriptive? I just don't see what the problem is.
-- В²C ☎ 15:55, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
It's not self-evident how identically named articles would be a bad thing for users. Please elaborate. Brittanica does it apparently with no issues.
And that's not all I'm asking. I'm also asking more generally about the need for titles to be descriptive - I'm questioning the value of descriptive titles (unless the description is to disambiguate when disambiguation is necessary for technical reasons). -- В²C ☎ 20:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe ( talk · contribs), do you not have confidence that article titles in the online Brittanica are meaningful? They use ambiguous and imprecise titling. See below. -- В²C ☎ 20:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
The question is serious. Principle of least surprise and some rare vague BLP issues is all you've got? You guys are so sure it's a problem, but you can't explain why. Brittanica does not have the technical limitation, so they just use the natural common names of topics, even if they're ambiguous with other uses, with apparently no ill effects. For example, they use the title Mercury for their articles about the planet [14], the god [15], and even the (relatively obscure) plant [16]. Is that a problem? How so? If it's not a problem there, why would it be a problem here? Why do we ever use anything other than the plain common name of a title, besides disambiguation required to resolve the technical limitation? -- В²C ☎ 17:46, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
Context matters. Ambiguity and imprecision are generally bad, but when you're looking at one given article, it has only one title, and it doesn't matter what it is - you're at the one article anyway. What is much more important, is that the title reflects how that topic is commonly referring in English; not give some especially clear description of the topic; that's what the lead is for.
So I still don't see how it's a problem to have a title like, say Desideratum or All the Best!, since that is how these topics are commonly referred in English sources. If you don't know what they are, click on them and you'll find out. -- В²C ☎ 22:48, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
“I don't know what you mean Brittanica's page titles.”—Look at your title bar, the name of your browser window while the article’s page is open. — 174.141.182.82 ( talk) 23:56, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
Ah, well, the page title is the "title" within the html. Some browsers, including Chrome, don't even display that. That's more of a technical artifact, isn't it?
In theory we could make the title of the page, which is displayed to the user, different from the final component of the URL. In fact, for titles that have certain special treatments, like Italics, they're already decoupled to some extent. That way the "URL title" would have to be unique and disambiguated, but the "display title" (if you will), would not have to be. But the real question remains: what reason is there, besides the technical one, to disambiguate titles at all? Richhoncho, like the others, dismisses the question, without answering it. And the answer to User:Vegaswikian's questions ("Some place names in England seem to have 10 or so different uses? How are we suppose to know as readers if we are at the wrong one? ") is simple: read the lead. But in those cases we actually have multiple uses each with an article on WP. The main impact of this question is not in those cases, which would not be affected (they must be disambiguated for technical reasons), but in those cases where we don't have to disambiguate for technical reasons, because the ambiguity, or lack of precision, has nothing to do with others uses with articles on WP. -- В²C ☎ 14:42, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
“But the real question remains: what reason is there, besides the technical one, to disambiguate titles at all?”—I thought that when a question has been answered, it no longer “remained”. I’m one of those who’s answered it, in my last post above. But here’s the TL;DR answer: To benefit the users. — 174.141.182.82 ( talk) 18:17, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
“Some browsers, including Chrome, don't even display that.”— Yes it does. — 174.141.182.82 ( talk) 18:41, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
Okay, I see now that Chrome displays the html title in the tab of the page - I always have so many tabs that each tab is so small that I don't see it. But good website design generally does not depend on readers necessarily seeing the value of the html title tag. Brittanica is quite useful without seeing that - and is no more useful if you can see that. Like I said, it's just a technical artifact. Insignificant.
User:Richhonchos statements and questions demonstrate that he does not understand the question I'm asking, and explains why he thinks it has been answered. Perhaps I can shed some light on this by addressing his statements and answering his questions.
Rich says both Britannica and WP have "the same problem [did he mean solution?] to the same conundrum. Get the reader to the correct site as quickly as possible. " True that, but that has nothing to do with this issue. For example whether the album is at the more ambiguous and less precise Desideratum or it redirects to the less ambiguous and more precise Desideratum (album) does not affect how quickly any reader gets to the correct article. That point is not at issue here. Irrelevant.
Rich asks: "Having accepted that disambiguation can be necessary in WP, then why oppose when it helps?" No one is opposing when it helps; the issue is whether it helps, and, if so, how exactly it helps? Again, Desideratum (album) is more precise and less ambiguous than Desideratum, but does it help? I don't see it. How does it help? Same with 98 Degrees. We could move 98 Degrees to the more precise and less ambiguous 98 Degrees (band), but would that help? How? And, of course, there is 1978-1990 vs. 1978-1990 (album). Again clearly the latter is less ambiguous and more precise - but is it more helpful? How? In what context? What exactly is a reader doing such that he is helped more by the more descriptive title? I just don't see it.
Rich also asks: "If Mercury needs to be ambiguated, then why not date ranges to make it helpful to readers?" The answer is that Mercury is disambiguated because we can't have more than one title at Mercury. But that doesn't mean when you click on Mercury to go to the article about the planet that it's helpful to have that planet disambiguator in the title. So if it's not helpful to have Mercury disambiguated, why would it be helpful to have the date ranges disambiguated?
Finally Rich asks, if the choice is between precise and imprecise, surely no editor at WP is advocating imprecise? Editors prefer more ambiguous and less precise titles all the time. See Talk: Desideratum#Requested move for an example that went unanimously against the more ambiguous and less precise proposed title. In fact, for almost every article on WP, there is probably a less ambiguous and more precise title, certainly a more descriptive and arguably more "helpful" title, but we have chosen the less descriptive one in every single case. Like Dohn joe says, it's all about where we draw the line. One clear place to draw the line is where disambiguation is necessary for technical reasons. If disambiguation is not necessary for technical reasons, what is the reason to disambiguate? Saying it's more helpful does not make it so. How, exactly, is it more helpful? That's what nobody has explained, much less how else to draw that line, and where, exactly. -- В²C ☎ 21:12, 12 July 2014 (UTC)
Nevertheless, by the time he wrote his Desideratum, Wesley had thought long and hard about the nature of electricity. He provided his readers an extensive justification for thinking of electricity as the elixir of life that God provided ...
User:Dicklyon, please consider my statements in the context in which I made them. User:Vegaswikian claimed I was the only editor "advocating imprecise and ambiguous titles". So I gave Paris as one of several counter-examples. Nobody can deny that Paris is less precise and more ambiguous than Paris, France. It's true that it's an "obvious case of a title with a well-accepted primary meaning", but it's still less precise and more ambiguous than Paris, France. My point stands. Desideratum is of course not a precedent setting case. However, it still counters Vegaswikian's claim that I'm the only one "advocating imprecise and ambiguous titles", which is why I mentioned it. Discussions with false claims are not helpful, and obfuscate the real issues being discussed. That being said, Desideratum is far from an unusual case - WP:NOTADICT is commonly used to counter claims that a given name should not be used undisambiguated because it's ambiguous with a dictionary use of the word, even though we don't have an article for that word on WP. And I don't insist on ambiguity. I insist on undisambiguated WP:COMMONNAME when disambiguation is unnecessary. --20:27, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
There is no evidence those other uses are ever referenced as 1978-1990 in reliable sources, much less that they are commonly referred to with that name. Nobody would ever suggest that 1978-1990 be the title for any of those other uses. However, 1978-1990 is unquestionably the common name for the album, and thus the album is the primary topic. Aren't all the other alleged "uses" actually partial title matches and so should not even be listed on the dab page? And if you end up with a dab page with only one topic listed - doesn't that kind of make it the primary topic? -- В²C ☎ 00:28, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
User:Blueboar, your otherwise solid analysis unfortunately fails because the key premise about the official name is incorrect. The album name is 1978 to 1990 on their discography. On individual album pages, they precede all album names with the band name for all of their albums. Thus 16 Lovers Lane is titled The Go-Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane on that albums page, but that's no reason for us to move 16 Lovers Lane to The Go-Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane. At most what we have is an argument to use 1978 to 1990 as the title, except we need support in non-primary reliable sources for that, and I don't think it exists. The album cover uses the hyphen, not the word "to", between the dates. I suspect the web page designer just used artistic license with the use of "to" there. -- В²C ☎ 17:40, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
I had a look today whether Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) could bring some relief in this continuing story.
What I found there:
Apart from the ranges that are articles on albums (as discussed above) I found these:
I'd like to add a new section to the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) guideline, probably just after the section regarding Articles on other standard time periods:
14-18 could be made a disambiguation page, with for example links to the film, e.g. renamed to 14-18 (film), and the WWI page.
Alternatively, make 14-18 a redirect to the WWI page, and on that page a hat-note, which either links to 14-18 (film) or to 14-18 (disambiguation). -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 10:59, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
First, I would have no problem with guidance to the effect that a date range can have a wp:primarytopic. If a date range is so greatly identified with a particular event or topic, so as to be synonymous (or nearly) with that event or topic, then we can treat the date range as an alternate name for the topic. Thus 1914-1918 could redirect to World War I. Non-notable date ranges would not redirect anywhere. Thus 1962–1967 would remain a redlink, since none of the events that occurred in that timeframe are known in RSs by that range.
Second, when an otherwise non-notable date range is the wp:commonname of an actual subject, we can use that date range as the article title or redirect to a subheading. Thus, since 1983-1991 is not particularly associated with any historical event, we can be free to use it for the album article where it currently is. This largely holds up the status quo, while making it explicit and adding the ability to redirect notable date ranges to their respective topics. Dohn joe ( talk) 19:48, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
See how Wikidata handles "Mercury":
I actually thought of a similar idea for Wikipedia several years back but I never expressed it since it would be a drastic change that would likely get shot down quickly. Anyway, by removing the technical limitation on articles having the same title and putting the disambiguator into a subtitle/short description field, as Wikidata has done, we would not have these countless debates on which topic is primary or what is the best disambiguator or if unnecessary disambiguation is more important than rigid consistency. — seav ( talk) 16:36, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
But I agree that WP’s titles are more user-friendly. Not forcing the user to read extra irrelevant text is a good thing. — 174.141.182.82 ( talk) 17:03, 23 July 2014 (UTC)Mercury
Ancient Roman mythological god of tr…
A couple of people have stated that since the C in "Layer Cake" is sometimes capitalized on menus, Layer Cake should be a redirect to Layer cake. But I suggest we should not do that unless we think people are likely to search for the cake by capitalizing the C. What do you think?
-- В²C ☎ 00:19, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
If no data has been provided at any time to support an existing, even stable title (basically decided to be the common name by someone's personal experience or whim), and the official name is somewhat commonly used (because it's been the official name for a long time), wouldn't the official name at least be a default choice until a more common name is proven? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 01:32, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
WP:TSC says
* Characters resembling quotes or accent marks (avoid them): The characters ʻ ʾ ʿ ᾿ ῾ ‘ ’ “ ” c, and also combining diacritical marks with a "space" character, should generally not be used in page titles. A common exception is the apostrophe ' (e.g. Anthony d'Offay), which should, however, be used sparingly (e.g. Shia instead of Shi'a). See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (punctuation).
Now, I have to repeat the question from /Archive 20#Avoid accent-/quote-like characters: Why? That debate from 2009 ended without a clear answer or outcome. The guideline just lumps together a number of glyphs, based solely on visual similarity, and is desperately out of sync with our current practice, good typography practice, and common names. It also refers to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (punctuation) but it is in apparent conflict with it. Let me first dissect this broad and barely related collection:
However:
* Use straight apostrophes (') and quotation marks ("). Variations such as typographic quotation marks (“...”), typographic apostrophes (’), "low-high" quotation marks („...“), guillemets («...»), grave and acute accents or backticks (`...´) should be avoided in titles, just as in article text. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (punctuation).
No such user ( talk) 10:29, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
No, the reason is to have, for instance, "Brokeback Mountain" (as it should be according to MOS) at Brokeback Mountain (short story). Part of the reason is that all the quotemarks would look silly in Category:Short stories and related (sub)categories. Similar, "Summertime" → Summertime (song), listed in Category:Songs-related (sub)categories. etc... I think " "Heroes"" is about the only exception to that while yes, the actual title apparently includes quotation marks. Further, if quotation marks are not (or almost never) used in actual page titles, they should not be replaced by less common glyphs that an average user would not type in the search box (as an escape to the actual policy that is to avoid quotation marks). Avoiding an unwanted scare quotes effect (for instance for quoted sentences that are page titles, e.g. "veni, vidi, vici" → veni, vidi, vici) is another reason to generally discourage quotes in page titles.
Re. "the ... example should be removed and left to other guidelines such as WP:COMMONNAME to sort it out" - this is the talk page of the COMMONNAME policy: that example is sorted out by that guideline (in fact: policy). For transliterations, generally, even if some transliteration systems present an abundance of additional marks there is a general preference for the simpler transliteration systems. There has been considerable discussion over which is the most ideal transliteration system for several languages, e.g. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Arabic and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic) ... both pages "proposals" for as long as I know for lack consensus. So there's no possibility yet for these languages to defer to a romanisation guideline (in other words, indeed yes, keep the instructions on this page) — for some other foreign script languages like Chinese there is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese) which could be deferred to for page titles. -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 14:55, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
See also recently archived discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 47#Quotation marks in article titles using <q> tag -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 15:37, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
People familiar with how WP:DIFFPUNCT, WP:NATURAL (and any other applicable policy) should apply in deciding between Janet. and Janet (album) are requested to participate here:
Thanks, -- В²C ☎ 17:30, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
Often users choose military propaganda names as titles for articles about military conflicts, as was the case with Operation Protective Edge for the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict. It would be helpful if we had a section here making clear that this is explicitly not wanted: Propaganda names are usually chosen to let the own military appear heroic, and they are often euphemist, such as " Operation Iraqi Freedom" for the 2003 Iraq War.-- Galant Khan ( talk) 23:53, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
Those familiar with how we name articles (and why) on species only identified in the fossil record may be interested in this discussion: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds#English name vs. Scientific name, — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:23, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
the vernacular ("common") name, with "common" in scare-quotes, and maybe not even use that word at all in either of the NC pages, just to avoid any hint of confusion with COMMONNAME. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:56, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
The language in the footnote is clear, but who reads the footnote? Bring the footnote into the main text. Previous discussions 5 years ago ( Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (common names)/Archive 3#Hesperian paragraph) concerned a more verbose and controversial version of the text explaining the difference between a vernacular name and a commonly used name. User:PBS ultimately developed a more succinct version of the proposed text and put it as a footnote in this diff, which is has survived largely unchanged. Get the footnote (or similar language) into the main text where people will actually see it. "King tyrant lizard" is an English "common" (vernacular) name, but not the commonly used name for Tyrannosaurus rex. Plantdrew ( talk) 02:36, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
To understand where the text is now one has to understand that there used to be a naming convention (common name) that Kotniski turned into a redirect in October 2009. So the redirects such as COMMONNAME and UCN used to redirect to the naming convention. The use of "common name" came about because before the use of reliable sources this policy really did advise using the common name (and no one raised the issue that it was confusing). I would support SmokeyJoe's suggestion the removal of advertising "COMMONNAME" as a link in the section, but would suggest a replacement one such as FREQUENTLYUSEDNAME, unfortunately FUN is taken, so a shorter name for a redirect is needed such as FRQNTNAME, but perhaps some one can suggest a better short name. Or how about WP:COMMONUSAGE and WP:CU? -- PBS ( talk) 07:58, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
I do not think it necessary to place the text of the footnote into the main body for three reasons. One only has to read it once to understand it (after that it is clutter). It is a minority issue which only affects discussions of a few scientific disciplines (for example neither historians or physicists need to know about this issue -- let alone those who write articles about Muppets). The advantage of a footnote is that it is easy to link to the specific sentence (as I did here) if it is needed in an external conversation. -- PBS ( talk) 07:40, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Talk:Wolverine (character)#Page move back discussion, again concerning whether the page in question should be named Wolverine (character) or Wolverine (comics). This has long been a contentious issue—the page has been moved back and forth several times, and has had several discussions at both Talk:Wolverine (character) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (comics). The outcome will likely have repercussions throughout WikiProject Comics, especially in light of the result of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Comics#RfC: Proposed rewording for instructions for disambiguation.
There are also concerns regarding WP:CANVASSing for the discussion. Curly Turkey ⚞ ¡gobble!⚟ 02:23, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sports teams) purports to be a guideline but shows no history of a consensus. Could someone explain where the consensus for this came from and why it seems to be running counter to the Wikipedia:Article titles policy? Hack ( talk) 00:37, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
See proposals & discussion thereof at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (music)#Compositions (classical music) -- Francis Schonken ( talk) 13:54, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi there, there are two band articles that have very similar names, these bands are:
While the two bands are very different in both style and origin their article titles have a mere "!" to differentiate the two, noticing this I moved the articles to these titles; Attack Attack! (American band) and Attack! Attack! (Welsh band) however has since been reverted by User:Sock who believes that the simple "!" is enough to distinguish between the two articles, while I disagree I would appreciate some third opinions to gain a clear consensus whether they should be moved or not, thank you for your time and hope you can contribute to this discussion here. SilentDan ( talk) 01:38, 28 August 2014 (UTC)