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Over the past several months there has been contentious debate over aspects of WP:Article Titles policy. That contentiousness has led to efforts to improve the overall effectiveness of the policy and associated processes. An RFC entitled: Wikipedia talk:Article titles/RFC-Article title decision practice has been initiated to assess the communities’ understanding of our title decision making policy. As a project that has created or influenced subject specific naming conventions, participants in this project are encouraged to review and participate in the RFC.-- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Could someone point to the consensus that led to this guideline being developed? Hack ( talk) 00:33, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Gender and national sports teams for a proposal about naming conventions for sports teams. -- Super Nintendo Chalmers ( talk) 16:02, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
As mentioned above this guideline was the work of a single editor and didn't come to be through consensus. I don't really understand why it strays from WP:NAME in that the it doesn't account for Naturalness and Conciseness, giving undue weight in my eyes to Precision and Consistency. Clear examples would be the naming conventions for football (aka soccer) and basketball clubs where FC and BC or other variations are added, hence lengthening the title and differing from what users would normally search for (eg. everybody would look for Manchester United rather than Manchester United F.C.). Of course I understand that the precision because a lot of those clubs use a town name with the suffix like Valencia CF amongst many others and that it is needed to differentiate club names from common terms as in Saracens F.C. and with others to differentiate between different sections of a multi-sports clubs (like Real Madrid Baloncesto). That said I don't understand why we don't just use the name that the media and the public in general use to refer the club, ie Virtus Pallacanestro Bologna should be Virtus Bologna (Pallacanestro means basketball) as is the case in most cricket clubs (of course not the English counties as they share the name with county), rugby clubs in the southern hemisphere and all entities in North America (albeit they often don't have Basketball Club or Football Club in their names unless to differentiate from a city). Its already possible to find a number of clubs ( Gazélec Ajaccio, a number or German football clubs such as Eintracht Frankfurt or Borussia Mönchengladbach, a number of Spanish football clubs such as Real Betis and Atlético Madrid etc) that don't follow the specific naming convention, I don't see why that can't be standardised when possible. The caveat I would insert would concern clubs where the media often refer to the club using the city where they are based when that is not in the club's name (such as Sporting Clube de Portugal being called Sporting Lisbon), that gives examples like Stade Français Paris (football) though few would call the club anything but Stade Français. Hope I've been clear enough, it's not a massive change to make as quite a few clubs would keep the suffix for practical reasons but would make more sense that arbitrary guidelines. -- ArmstrongJulian ( talk) 11:00, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
There is a naming convention that F.C. or A.F.C. (as the case may be) is included with dots (full-stops) in at least some article titles for football teams. The discussion about a requested move for one such article at Talk:A.F.C. Bournemouth#Requested move 27 July 2018 refers to that convention. The convention is not yet described in these Naming conventions (sports teams). Could someone who knows the convention and where it is applied please document it here? For instance, does the convention apply only to clubs in Britain or to clubs outside Britain as well? Does it apply to association football club articles only, or also to rugby union and rugby league club articles? Does the convention apply for other varieties of football as well? (If so, which?). Thank you. -- Frans Fowler ( talk) 09:10, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
As far as i know some "recent" vote move change F.C. Porto to FC Porto despite Portuguese club's WP:article titles had long (since circa 2007) convention of dots. For UK clubs certainly WP:ENGVAR problem, which dot should be kept unless both official name of the club on their website, on Companies House and in common name are without dot, such as AFC Wimbledon. As per WP:ENGVAR, abbreviation of in UK English have dots, so Manchester United Football Club (the name shown in their official website) should have dots. For clubs outside US, UK, AUS, India (and other primarly English speaking countries), it should form a new consensus on whatever dot should be kept, but it seem Retaining the existing variety of WP:ENGVAR may applies. Matthew_hk t c 11:16, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm unimpressed by this proposed distinction between for example A.F.C. which stands for something and AFC which supposedly doesn't. Wikipedia has made similar distinctions in other places admittedly, but does it make sense here, and most important, does it assist the general reader? I think that AFC and A.F.C. are in practice used interchangeably, that AFC did stand for something in the past and in this sense still does (where do we draw the line?) and that insisting on some correct usage here is unhelpful. Rather, we are free to make our own style decision and should. That's why we have topic specific naming conventions. Andrewa ( talk) 21:33, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
As the person who initiated this discussion and the move request at A.F.C. Bournemouth, I hope it's okay if I comment and express a preference here. But first, I must say I had no idea this would generate two such interesting discussions (or, indeed, much discussion at all!). And secondly, I'd like to mention and thank User:SimonMayer, who seems to have been a very hard-working editor and who may have done much back in 2004 to establish the practice of including F.C. or A.F.C. (with dots) in the names of football-club articles. The question now seems to be: Do we (a) Document SimonMayer's practice by amending the naming convention, or (b) Move F.C. and A.F.C. articles to FC and AFC and document the preference for FC and AFC in the naming convention, or (c) Leave everything as it is, or (d) Choose names for articles case by case? In theory, option (d) would enable editors to comply with the current documented convention by choosing article names that reflect each team's official name. On the other hand, it might lead to protracted discussion about the name of each individual article because consensus on the official name is not easy to reach (Bournemouth being a case in point). I don't much like (c) because we would be left with a formal naming convention but possibly many noncompliant article names. Option (a) would leave a documented naming convention with a documented exception carved out of it; Number 57 has suggested a way the exception might be worded. To me, option (b) looks the most elegant, and it has the advantage that article names would not look old-fashioned (as A.F.C. Bournemouth does). I wouldn't recommend drawing a distinction between letter clusters that either do or don't stand for something, again because consensus may be elusive. - Frans Fowler ( talk) 02:29, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
References
Propose implementing new language for article titles of relocated North American sports teams, which would limit the use of "History of" article titles as being too precise. --
Bison X (
talk)
13:47, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
Proposed new language for article titles of relocated North American teams:
When a franchise relocates to a new metropolitan area, the old city's article will either:
- If there is sufficient content, the article will remain at the old city and team name and a new article will be created at the new city and team name.
- If there is insufficient content to justify a stand-alone article, then
- a redirect to the section of the "History of [new city and team name]," mentioning the former city/team name, or
- if there is no "History of..." article for the franchise, then a redirect to a section of the newly moved article mentioning the former city/team name.
Currently, relocated teams have the old team article do one of five things: 1) retain the old city and team name, 2) redirect to an article titled "History of [old city/name]," 3) redirect to an article titled "History of [new city/name]," 4) redirect to a history section of the new team's name, or 5) redirect to the new team's article (no section linked).
From what I can tell, once a team's page became unwieldy in the mid to late 2000s, the history was split off to a new article, using (for example) "History of the Los Angeles Dodgers" as the article title. "Brooklyn Dodgers" would have been created in the early days as a redirect to "Los Angeles Dodgers," and then later redirected to "History of the Los Angeles Dodgers." When the Brooklyn redirect was turned into a stand-alone article, that is when some discussions (I don't have specific links) decided that since it was part of the "History of" the Dodgers, so the article title should retain "History of" — hence the existence of "History of the Brooklyn Dodgers."
However, if there is a "History of the Brooklyn Dodgers" article, if would logically follow it was a
child article of "Brooklyn Dodgers," which it is not. In this instance, the "History of" article is the
parent article rather than the child article. I believe this not only is confusing to the reader, but violates
WP:PRECISE, which states Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that. For instance, Saint Teresa of Calcutta is too precise, as Mother Teresa is precise enough to indicate exactly the same topic.
The argument here is: "History of the Brooklyn Dodgers" is too precise, as "Brooklyn Dodgers" is precise enough to indicate exactly the same topic. (Assuming both articles do not exist.)
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NBA affected articles if imposed, requiring page moves
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NHL affected articles if imposed, requiring page moves
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The four Wiki Projects, as well as the talk page of each of the affected articles, will be notified of this discussion shortly. Rgrds. -- Bison X ( talk) 13:47, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
{{
rfc}}
tag to the next timestamp) is much too long for
Legobot (
talk ·
contribs) to handle, and so it is not being shown correctly at
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Society, sports, and culture. The RfC may also not be publicised through
WP:FRS until a shorter statement is provided. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk)
21:16, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
{{
rfc}}
, and follow it with a valid timestamp. As advised at
WP:RFCST. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk)
21:49, 27 February 2022 (UTC)8****wikipedia is hard Rgrds. -- Bison X ( talk) 22:00, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
If the consensus is clear, any editor—even one involved in the discussion—may close the discussion., so even though I started the RfC, if the close is challenged then it can be taken to WP:AN (per Wikipedia:Closing discussions#Challenging a closing). That way either this will stick, or it will get a lot more eyes. Or, anyone driving by feel free to close this, involved or not. Rgrds. -- Bison X ( talk) 20:06, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that.This would apply to disambiguating an article, as well. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sportspeople) outlines how sports teams could also be dab'd. For instance, the first layer of disambiguating a team with the same same name would be by sport; if there are two or more teams with the same name in the same sport, they would be disambiguated by league; if there are two or more teams in the same league, they would be disambiguated by years of operation. However, this might need to be settled by each WikiProject, or on individual articles via a WP:RM. I do agree "(football)" is incorrect, as per WP:NCGRIDIRON "(American football)" is preferred. Just starting the ball rolling. Rgrds. -- Bison X ( talk) 21:40, 7 March 2022 (UTC)Re-doing ping @ UCO2009bluejay:-- Bison X ( talk) 21:47, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
Regarding the second and third paragraphs for the section "North American sports teams": currently, these paragraphs describe how team names are reused across different leagues, but don't provide any guidance. Personally I don't feel the second paragraph is needed, since there is no effect on the article naming convention. The third paragraph could theoretically provide guidance for any new situation should it arise, but perhaps it can be dispensed with as well and the situation discussed as needed if it occurs. I think that may be more time-effective than spending a lot of time discussing possible hypothetical situations. What does everyone think? isaacl ( talk) 00:04, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
This project page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||
|
Over the past several months there has been contentious debate over aspects of WP:Article Titles policy. That contentiousness has led to efforts to improve the overall effectiveness of the policy and associated processes. An RFC entitled: Wikipedia talk:Article titles/RFC-Article title decision practice has been initiated to assess the communities’ understanding of our title decision making policy. As a project that has created or influenced subject specific naming conventions, participants in this project are encouraged to review and participate in the RFC.-- Mike Cline ( talk) 16:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Could someone point to the consensus that led to this guideline being developed? Hack ( talk) 00:33, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Gender and national sports teams for a proposal about naming conventions for sports teams. -- Super Nintendo Chalmers ( talk) 16:02, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
As mentioned above this guideline was the work of a single editor and didn't come to be through consensus. I don't really understand why it strays from WP:NAME in that the it doesn't account for Naturalness and Conciseness, giving undue weight in my eyes to Precision and Consistency. Clear examples would be the naming conventions for football (aka soccer) and basketball clubs where FC and BC or other variations are added, hence lengthening the title and differing from what users would normally search for (eg. everybody would look for Manchester United rather than Manchester United F.C.). Of course I understand that the precision because a lot of those clubs use a town name with the suffix like Valencia CF amongst many others and that it is needed to differentiate club names from common terms as in Saracens F.C. and with others to differentiate between different sections of a multi-sports clubs (like Real Madrid Baloncesto). That said I don't understand why we don't just use the name that the media and the public in general use to refer the club, ie Virtus Pallacanestro Bologna should be Virtus Bologna (Pallacanestro means basketball) as is the case in most cricket clubs (of course not the English counties as they share the name with county), rugby clubs in the southern hemisphere and all entities in North America (albeit they often don't have Basketball Club or Football Club in their names unless to differentiate from a city). Its already possible to find a number of clubs ( Gazélec Ajaccio, a number or German football clubs such as Eintracht Frankfurt or Borussia Mönchengladbach, a number of Spanish football clubs such as Real Betis and Atlético Madrid etc) that don't follow the specific naming convention, I don't see why that can't be standardised when possible. The caveat I would insert would concern clubs where the media often refer to the club using the city where they are based when that is not in the club's name (such as Sporting Clube de Portugal being called Sporting Lisbon), that gives examples like Stade Français Paris (football) though few would call the club anything but Stade Français. Hope I've been clear enough, it's not a massive change to make as quite a few clubs would keep the suffix for practical reasons but would make more sense that arbitrary guidelines. -- ArmstrongJulian ( talk) 11:00, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
There is a naming convention that F.C. or A.F.C. (as the case may be) is included with dots (full-stops) in at least some article titles for football teams. The discussion about a requested move for one such article at Talk:A.F.C. Bournemouth#Requested move 27 July 2018 refers to that convention. The convention is not yet described in these Naming conventions (sports teams). Could someone who knows the convention and where it is applied please document it here? For instance, does the convention apply only to clubs in Britain or to clubs outside Britain as well? Does it apply to association football club articles only, or also to rugby union and rugby league club articles? Does the convention apply for other varieties of football as well? (If so, which?). Thank you. -- Frans Fowler ( talk) 09:10, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
As far as i know some "recent" vote move change F.C. Porto to FC Porto despite Portuguese club's WP:article titles had long (since circa 2007) convention of dots. For UK clubs certainly WP:ENGVAR problem, which dot should be kept unless both official name of the club on their website, on Companies House and in common name are without dot, such as AFC Wimbledon. As per WP:ENGVAR, abbreviation of in UK English have dots, so Manchester United Football Club (the name shown in their official website) should have dots. For clubs outside US, UK, AUS, India (and other primarly English speaking countries), it should form a new consensus on whatever dot should be kept, but it seem Retaining the existing variety of WP:ENGVAR may applies. Matthew_hk t c 11:16, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm unimpressed by this proposed distinction between for example A.F.C. which stands for something and AFC which supposedly doesn't. Wikipedia has made similar distinctions in other places admittedly, but does it make sense here, and most important, does it assist the general reader? I think that AFC and A.F.C. are in practice used interchangeably, that AFC did stand for something in the past and in this sense still does (where do we draw the line?) and that insisting on some correct usage here is unhelpful. Rather, we are free to make our own style decision and should. That's why we have topic specific naming conventions. Andrewa ( talk) 21:33, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
As the person who initiated this discussion and the move request at A.F.C. Bournemouth, I hope it's okay if I comment and express a preference here. But first, I must say I had no idea this would generate two such interesting discussions (or, indeed, much discussion at all!). And secondly, I'd like to mention and thank User:SimonMayer, who seems to have been a very hard-working editor and who may have done much back in 2004 to establish the practice of including F.C. or A.F.C. (with dots) in the names of football-club articles. The question now seems to be: Do we (a) Document SimonMayer's practice by amending the naming convention, or (b) Move F.C. and A.F.C. articles to FC and AFC and document the preference for FC and AFC in the naming convention, or (c) Leave everything as it is, or (d) Choose names for articles case by case? In theory, option (d) would enable editors to comply with the current documented convention by choosing article names that reflect each team's official name. On the other hand, it might lead to protracted discussion about the name of each individual article because consensus on the official name is not easy to reach (Bournemouth being a case in point). I don't much like (c) because we would be left with a formal naming convention but possibly many noncompliant article names. Option (a) would leave a documented naming convention with a documented exception carved out of it; Number 57 has suggested a way the exception might be worded. To me, option (b) looks the most elegant, and it has the advantage that article names would not look old-fashioned (as A.F.C. Bournemouth does). I wouldn't recommend drawing a distinction between letter clusters that either do or don't stand for something, again because consensus may be elusive. - Frans Fowler ( talk) 02:29, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
References
Propose implementing new language for article titles of relocated North American sports teams, which would limit the use of "History of" article titles as being too precise. --
Bison X (
talk)
13:47, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
Proposed new language for article titles of relocated North American teams:
When a franchise relocates to a new metropolitan area, the old city's article will either:
- If there is sufficient content, the article will remain at the old city and team name and a new article will be created at the new city and team name.
- If there is insufficient content to justify a stand-alone article, then
- a redirect to the section of the "History of [new city and team name]," mentioning the former city/team name, or
- if there is no "History of..." article for the franchise, then a redirect to a section of the newly moved article mentioning the former city/team name.
Currently, relocated teams have the old team article do one of five things: 1) retain the old city and team name, 2) redirect to an article titled "History of [old city/name]," 3) redirect to an article titled "History of [new city/name]," 4) redirect to a history section of the new team's name, or 5) redirect to the new team's article (no section linked).
From what I can tell, once a team's page became unwieldy in the mid to late 2000s, the history was split off to a new article, using (for example) "History of the Los Angeles Dodgers" as the article title. "Brooklyn Dodgers" would have been created in the early days as a redirect to "Los Angeles Dodgers," and then later redirected to "History of the Los Angeles Dodgers." When the Brooklyn redirect was turned into a stand-alone article, that is when some discussions (I don't have specific links) decided that since it was part of the "History of" the Dodgers, so the article title should retain "History of" — hence the existence of "History of the Brooklyn Dodgers."
However, if there is a "History of the Brooklyn Dodgers" article, if would logically follow it was a
child article of "Brooklyn Dodgers," which it is not. In this instance, the "History of" article is the
parent article rather than the child article. I believe this not only is confusing to the reader, but violates
WP:PRECISE, which states Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that. For instance, Saint Teresa of Calcutta is too precise, as Mother Teresa is precise enough to indicate exactly the same topic.
The argument here is: "History of the Brooklyn Dodgers" is too precise, as "Brooklyn Dodgers" is precise enough to indicate exactly the same topic. (Assuming both articles do not exist.)
MLB affected articles if imposed, requiring page moves
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MLB articles in compliance with proposed change
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NFL affected articles if imposed, requiring page moves
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NFL articles in compliance with proposed change
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NBA affected articles if imposed, requiring page moves
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NBA articles in compliance with proposed change
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NHL affected articles if imposed, requiring page moves
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NHL articles in compliance with proposed change
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The four Wiki Projects, as well as the talk page of each of the affected articles, will be notified of this discussion shortly. Rgrds. -- Bison X ( talk) 13:47, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
{{
rfc}}
tag to the next timestamp) is much too long for
Legobot (
talk ·
contribs) to handle, and so it is not being shown correctly at
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Society, sports, and culture. The RfC may also not be publicised through
WP:FRS until a shorter statement is provided. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk)
21:16, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
{{
rfc}}
, and follow it with a valid timestamp. As advised at
WP:RFCST. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk)
21:49, 27 February 2022 (UTC)8****wikipedia is hard Rgrds. -- Bison X ( talk) 22:00, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
If the consensus is clear, any editor—even one involved in the discussion—may close the discussion., so even though I started the RfC, if the close is challenged then it can be taken to WP:AN (per Wikipedia:Closing discussions#Challenging a closing). That way either this will stick, or it will get a lot more eyes. Or, anyone driving by feel free to close this, involved or not. Rgrds. -- Bison X ( talk) 20:06, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that.This would apply to disambiguating an article, as well. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sportspeople) outlines how sports teams could also be dab'd. For instance, the first layer of disambiguating a team with the same same name would be by sport; if there are two or more teams with the same name in the same sport, they would be disambiguated by league; if there are two or more teams in the same league, they would be disambiguated by years of operation. However, this might need to be settled by each WikiProject, or on individual articles via a WP:RM. I do agree "(football)" is incorrect, as per WP:NCGRIDIRON "(American football)" is preferred. Just starting the ball rolling. Rgrds. -- Bison X ( talk) 21:40, 7 March 2022 (UTC)Re-doing ping @ UCO2009bluejay:-- Bison X ( talk) 21:47, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
Regarding the second and third paragraphs for the section "North American sports teams": currently, these paragraphs describe how team names are reused across different leagues, but don't provide any guidance. Personally I don't feel the second paragraph is needed, since there is no effect on the article naming convention. The third paragraph could theoretically provide guidance for any new situation should it arise, but perhaps it can be dispensed with as well and the situation discussed as needed if it occurs. I think that may be more time-effective than spending a lot of time discussing possible hypothetical situations. What does everyone think? isaacl ( talk) 00:04, 11 June 2023 (UTC)