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Is it considered acceptable to use Unicode superscripts and subscripts in article titles, like in C² Centauri? Or would they be considered special characters, and thus avoided in article titles?-- 十 八 20:55, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm beginning to regret that I ever added bullet points for naming criteria to this page. They were not intended to be rules that people have to follow, and I think it's becoming abundantly clear that they're not a very accurate description of how we title articles. Therefore, they're broken, as policy. A strict reading of WP:CRITERIA does not enjoy consensus support. The discussion that I've just closed at Talk:Climatic Research Unit email controversy#Requested Move makes that quite apparent.
So what should we do with this page? Burn it for warmth? Rewrite it to accurately describe (never prescribe) how we actually make titling decisions? Base everything on hit-counts at Google books? Stop reading policy pages, because they represent legalistic cancer that should be ignored?
I like 3 of those 4 ideas. :) - GTBacchus( talk) 18:48, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
You might notice that I haven't thrown any babies, nor any water, anywhere. However, I think that bullet point criteria are waaaay too likely to be taken as rules, and frankly B2c, you're the strongest evidence of that claim. I'm worried that you're on a crusade to make this policy into a set of deterministic rules, and I think that is destructive. I don't think there's any lack of good faith; I just don't think you understand the role of policy here.
As for what to actually do, I'm really stumped. I don't want to do over at Talk:China what I did at Talk:Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, because I think that gives the wrong idea about how these things should go. I've just been asked to attempt some kind of closure there, and I'm scratching my head over it. I'm not going to remove the criteria from this policy anytime soon, but I am going to think about how to improve the situation.
I don't like the way you've been using the criteria, B2c; I think it's harmful. Are you reading consensus from observations, or are you pushing for something that you think ought to be?
I also don't buy the argument that following sources is automatically neutral, and I don't think the community buys that argument. I could be wrong about any or all of this. I don't know the answers, and I'm suspicious of anyone who says they do. - GTBacchus( talk) 20:44, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
When I first added a list of criteria to the top of this page, I was trying to describe what people actually do in naming discussions. They don't pull up a list of 5 criteria and start making check-marks, and I hope they don't start. - GTBacchus( talk) 23:45, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
For non-controversial titling questions, nobody even consults this page, because the answer is generally obvious. The policy is really here to provide some guidance on difficult disputes, and I think we're not doing that too well.
I really don't know what the solution is; I just do my best following community consensus in closing move requests. I don't think there's consensus to approach each titling question with the criteria in hand, expecting them to lead us to the right title. That is, unfortunately in my view, what a couple of people seem to be pushing for. It might be worth a broadly advertized RfC.
I'm doing a lot of thinking about this. - GTBacchus( talk) 20:44, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't know why you linked LOCALCONSENSUS there. When I say policies aren't prescriptive, a more appropriate link is WP:IAR - GTBacchus( talk) 23:41, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
"Broken as policy" was unduly strong wording, no doubt. I'm just tired of seeing some junk I wrote down one day elevated to "Principal naming criteria" and quoted left and right. It's obvious to me that we don't decide titles by consulting that list. - GTBacchus( talk) 23:37, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Presenting the criteria as questions is better than presenting them as rules, but I most prefer presenting them as descriptions of what generally happens. I won't fight about it, though. - GTBacchus( talk) 15:18, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
(unindenting) Since we seem to have broad agreement on this change, I've implemented it. Jakew ( talk) 14:26, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
I think we should name and document this malady. I'm coming here directly from the second disputed close in as many months at Talk:Crêpe. That page is highly educational for anyone wishing to understand how to apply COMMONNAME.
In particular, it's very easy to make a pair of Google searches, write down two numbers, and come to a conclusion. Those numbers are, however, very often misleading. If searches are analyzed as they were by User:Noetica in that discussion, the results are much more illuminating... but it requires significantly more work.
Actually clicking through to the last page of results, to get an actual count rather than an estimate, is a basic technique. A more advanced - but often enlightening - technique involves looking at the sources themselves via page previews in Google Books or at Amazon. This will reveal to the curious reader that some sources are not in fact about the correct topic, and possibly other surprises, such as the fact that Google often gets it wrong, especially when it comes to reporting on the presence or absence of diacritical marks.
Comments? - GTBacchus( talk) 14:59, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Search engines are problematic unless their verdict is overwhelming; modified letters have the additional difficulties that some search engines will not distinguish between the original and modified forms, and others fail to recognize the modified letter because of optical character recognition errors.
- Google hits are generally considered unreliable for testing whether one term is more common than another, but can suggest that no single term is predominant in English. If there are fewer than 700 hits, the actual count (gotten by paging to the final page of hits) may be accurate for Google's particular corpus of English, but whether this represents all English usage is less certain. If there are more than 700 estimated hits, the number gotten by going to the last page will be wrong; Google only loads a limited number of hits, no matter how many there are. Counts over 1000 are usually estimates, and may be seriously wrong. [n 1] If several competing versions of a name have roughly equal numbers (say 603 for one variant and 430 for another), there may well be divided usage. When in doubt, search results should also be evaluated with more weighting given to verifiable reliable sources than to less reliable sources (such as comments in forums, mailing lists and the like). Do consult reliable works of general reference in English.
- Note
I agree some qualification is needed. Raw search result data can very easily be misinterpreted. Google is most useful when the difference is very pronounced. But it should not be entirely discounted. In particular, Google analytic tools such as http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/ and http://www.google.com/trends can help to inform a discussion, although these shouldn't be viewed as definitive any more than raw hit counts. older ≠ wiser 01:08, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
There is a very good reason we should go with the practice of authoritative sources rather than our own estimates of general usage: we are not lexicographers, we are (essentially) anonymous internet users. They, on the other hand, have experts, stylebooks, consultants and exposure to public criticism. Having COMMONNAME as an overemphasised policy unfortunately makes us vulnerable to the pushing of original (and often very amateurish) research. The truth is, if authoritative sources don't agree in more or less even measure, we typically find criteria other than COMMONNAME for making a choice - such as NPOV, WORLDWIDE, ENGVAR and so on. "Whichever is more common" is a criterion, but it tends not to be the primary one when it's a close call. (And as people point out above, Googlehits can't be trusted to finesse beyond the bleeding obvious.)
I would rather the ambitions people had for the policy were reduced to pointing out that we make choices like Caffeine (not 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione) and for some individuals we make choices such as Hulk Hogan (not Terry Gene Bollea), and occasionally Bill Clinton rather than William Jefferson Clinton even though the latter is probably recognised and is the formal title. Beyond that I don't believe the community puts such an active stress on COMMONNAME (rather than NPOV), except when some users find this particular policy page useful in the middle of a dispute. I get worried by talk of using commonname as a basis of "simplifying" naming disputes through "metrics". It's legislating, not reflecting considered practice. VsevolodKrolikov ( talk) 12:45, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
I do realize that looking at RM discussions for evidence introduces some kind of selection bias, because at RM, we only see the tiny minority of articles that (a) have a title that someone wants to change, and (b) where the move is blocked by a history existing at the proposed target. Most articles never see such a discussion. - GTBacchus( talk) 18:33, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
The problem with clicking through to the last page is that Google (including Google Books) will never show more than 1000 results, even if there are millions. (Searching on never itself, and clicking through, results in 382 hits, although Google's searchbot hasn't gotten out of the titles with Never in them.) If we understood the search algorithm better, it would be a useful control on duplicate hits; it's an accurate control on rare search phrases. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
The section WP:POVTITLE has been invoked in several current and recent disputes, and is undergoing discussion above. Is it appropriate policy? Has it been misapplied? Does it conflict with NPOV? Or support NPOV? Does its history suggest that more discussion is needed before treating it as policy? Should it be clarified? strengthened? weakened? Dicklyon ( talk) 22:50, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Let’s say, for instance, that the next Lorena Bobbitt-like incident involves her attorney hiding evidence. The whole incident might be widely known for a summer—and capture the public’s imagination during that time—as “Wienergate”; an encyclopedia ought to consider what name things would be remembered as years later, after the “schtick” moniker has worn off.
In fact, that last sentence (An encyclopedia ought to consider what name things would be remembered as years later, after the “schtick” moniker has worn off) isn’t bad. Maybe someone can put some lipstick on that pig and pass it off as a prom date (candidate for addition to the guideline). Greg L ( talk) 00:02, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
WP:RECENT can apply, but it should not be an excuse to not use the only common name used by reliable sources to refer to the topic, in favor of an invented/contrived one. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:56, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Source quality arises all the time in move discussions, and I find the suggestion that it does not to be very strange. Should I start a list? Obviously the quality of sources matters, and some are more reliable than others. - GTBacchus( talk) 23:24, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
The problem is that we usually mostly categorise the mainstream press as " reliable sources" although we know their shortcomings – they are owned by a phone-hacker (I jest, but only a little), don't always get their facts right, aren't objective, and almost all drop diacritics (but I digress). Thus seeking to apply that notion of "reliability" to change article titles is so fraught with NPOV issues. For me, as often seen at the NPOV/N, the issue should be the extent to which these can be relied upon to fulfil our objectives; the popular press must seem like the "great unwashed", and ought to be kept at arm's length. When editors attempt to move articles to obviously 'POV' titles claiming a numerically superior popular sources are in support, we must tread carefully. I don't believe that the current wording was meant to be lawyered in the way we are currently witnessing, but I wouldn't want articles necessarily to be moved to euphemistic names, such that "Tiananmen Massacre", as it is almost universally known, ending up at " Tiananmen Square protests of 1989". Nor do I wish to disturb other articles where the event or incident is known by no other name (viz Boston Tea Party, or Nanking Massacre) -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 03:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
It does not mesh particularly well with NPOV. The closest justification for it is WP:NPOV#Naming, but that is substantially more nuanced. While this policy (erroneously, in my opinion) justifies itself by asserting that neutrality and opinions asserted by >50% of the sources are one and the same, NPOV describes things as a trade-off between neutrality and clarity ("While neutral terms are generally preferable, this must be balanced against clarity"), implying that editors must judge whether there is a sufficient boost in clarity to justify the loss of neutrality. Moreover, it says that popular but non-neutral names "may" (as opposed to must) be used, and that "The best name to use for something may depend on the context in which it is mentioned; it may be appropriate to mention alternative names and the controversies over their use, particularly when the thing in question is the main topic being discussed."
It also clashes with WP:RNEUTRAL, which says: "The subject matter of articles may be represented by some sources outside Wikipedia in non-neutral terms. Such terms are generally avoided in Wikipedia article titles, per the words to avoid guidelines and the general neutral point of view policy. For instance the non-neutral expression "Attorneygate" is used to redirect to the neutrally titled Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy. The article in question has never used that title, but the redirect was created to provide an alternative means of reaching it because a number of press reports use the term."
One of the problems, to my mind, is that POVTITLE is often interpreted to mean that the most frequently used name must always be used. I think that it should be rewritten to indicate that it is valid to do so, but commonality is but one of several factors to consider, and editors must use their judgement. Other factors include: what is the quality of the sources that are being considered? What is the relative prominence and neutrality of all candidate titles (if there's basically only one common name, which isn't neutral, then the choice may be more obvious than if there are two common names, one neutral but less frequently used, the other non-neutral but more commonly used)? Have sources themselves have addressed the neutrality of names? How does the choice of name affect clarity? How do redirects and discussion of alternative names affect the outcome of the choice? Jakew ( talk) 09:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
The whole point of moving this page to "Article title" was to make it clear the the title is not a name. The Article title should be the name that most people will search on even if in the opinion of some people it is biased. Who judges whether a name is biased? Who judges when a name move from current to historical? If we have reliable sources that make those judgements for us wonderful, but it not then whether a "name" is biased or non historical is a matter of opinion and as such divisive for the project. Whether the majority of sources use the name " climategate" is quantifiable and not so open to editorial points of view as to whether it is biased. In my opinion this is like the judgement of whether Lech Wałęsa is "correct" or an "eyesore", and is not something we can agree upon, but editors in good faith can agree on whether reliable sources in English usually use Lech Wałęsa or Lech Walensa. Equally we can agree whether a name (biased or not) is the most common usage in reliable English language sources. Better to use a metric that brings a speedy resolution to naming disputes (and integrates with the content policies) than non quantifiable method that leads to disputes based on the opinions of a small number of Wikiepdia editors. -- PBS ( talk) 12:03, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Comment I would agree with PBS above on this one-it’s really about what the sources say. Too often we use words in our policies and guidelines whose real meanings are inconsistent with the intent they are trying to convey. Three of those words come to mind out of WP:POVTITLE and WP:NPOV#NAMING (from dictionary.com)
Indeed we should strive to make our article titles as neutral as practical and use words that don’t blatantly favor one POV over another or infer a bias that is not fully supported by sources. All sources display some bias and some POV. Neutrality (especially our NPOV policy) can only be approximated based on what the sources say. The Marias Massacre or Baker Massacre was indeed a massacre by the very definition of the term: massacre. It is an unbiased and neutral title because the preponderance of sources calls the event by those names. There is no controversy. There certainly is POV, a POV that most all sources agree that the event was indeed a massacre. Having read POVTITLE and NPOV Naming, I find no issues with them as long as they emphasize that we use article titles that are consistent with the spirit and verbiage of the preponderance of reliable sources. (along with the other naming criteria) I think it says that now.-- Mike Cline ( talk) 15:55, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
In the end, the NPOV title is the title that is used by (high-quality) reliable sources, even if that title includes what some individuals believe are "biased" or "disparaging" terms. We want non-judgmental terms when editors are making up the name, but we can, do, and should choose "biased" and "disparaging" terms whenever good sources agree on that. So: Boston Massacre is the NPOV/neutral title, even though "massacre" is biased; Teapot Dome scandal is the NPOV/neutral title, even though "scandal" is disparaging; and so forth. To name a controversial article that Dicklyon has been involved in, Homosexual transsexual is indisputably the NPOV/neutral title, even though nearly all sources, regardless of POV, agree that the term is highly offensive to many of the people it labels. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 16:42, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
I interpret the remarks above as general support for the concept of POVTITLE, but a desire to move toward a more nuanced and less absolute interpretation, perhaps rewriting it to be more in alignment with careful statements at WP:NPOV#Naming. Anyone disagree? Dicklyon ( talk) 17:54, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
If we could quantify WP "goodness" in some kind of units - I'd say that in the vast majority of cases the most common name is clearly better. In some cases another name might be better, but, if so, not by much. What we're talking about is whether the encyclopedia is improved by debating the issue in all those cases, and in the marginal ones where the more common name is slightly better (but close enough to debate). I'd really like to see a good argument for how the encyclopedia is improved by all that time and effort (multiplied countless times indefinitely). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
According to your interpretation of NPOV and reasoning we should move Gringo to Foreigner, Redneck to Uneducated poor farmer, and Spic to redirect to [{Latino]]. It makes no sense. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:45, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
The reason I started the RFC was to see if Born2cycle's interpretation had much support among other editors. My impression is that it does not. My summary was intended to draw out more clarity about that. So instead of more dead-horse beating by him, are there others who take a similar position? Or should we just move forward on writing a more moderated version, and consider his move toward a more strict version closed? Dicklyon ( talk) 14:28, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
I think some people are conflating the following two issues, thinking an answer of "yes" to the first means the answer to the second is also "yes":
For example, above, Cody7777777 ( talk · contribs) says, "the current text [of WP:POVTITLE] seems to be claiming that common names are always neutral, ", which is the basis for the claim that "the current text can indeed contradict NPOV, at least in some cases. ". I don't see anything in the text that means or even implies that. In fact, the text contains a number of statements that are clearly premised on the idea that common names often are not neutral (though using them is still fully in compliance with WP:NPOV):
I don't believe the text, or anyone here discussing it, is claiming that common names necessarily do not violate WP:NPOV because the names are neutral. Using them does not violate NPOV not because the names neutral (which they're not or we wouldn't be talking about not using them), but because editors are being neutral when deciding to use them, and in fact are in compliance with NPOV because by selecting the name most commonly used in relevant reliable sources they are "representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views..." In fact, choosing any other name would be not "representing fairly and proportionately all significant views as far as possible", because using the most common name would be going further towards doing that.
In short, we're talking about cases where the most common name is not neutral. "In such cases, the commonality of the name overrides our desire to avoid passing judgment." That is, per WP:NPOV the commonality of the name overrides our desire to use some other name that is more "neutral". Well, it overrides that desire in most of us. Others seem to have some difficulty with this subduing that desire. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 14:37, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, it all comes down to the question of whether using non-neutral common names as titles violates NPOV, and that is a matter of opinion. And since that is the matter of opinion at issue, you can't say giving NPOV the considerable weight it deserves as a pillar favors one side more than the other. Both sides are fully compliant and consistent with NPOV given their respective answers to this key question.
So we need to discuss on why and how using non-neutral common names as titles does or does not violate NPOV, because that's where the disagreement lies. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:34, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
The current text of the "Non-neutral but common names" reads:
My first attempt to rewrite this to be consistent with WP:NPOV#Naming is as follows:
(All changes are shown in red.)
These are just my initial thoughts, and I'd be surprised if they're right the first time. I've taken some of the new language straight from NPOV, as it seems least likely to conflict that way. So ... comments? Jakew ( talk) 16:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
I presume we also agree that it's not true that we never use such terms as titles. So, the issue is about where to the draw line between using some non-neutral terms (with respect to subject) as titles, and not others. Now, the only fair and neutral way I can fathom to draw that line which is in accordance with WP:NPOV is by looking at commonality of usage in sources. Can you suggest another fair and neutral method? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:40, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
A more nuanced definition of neutral title is: a title that is selected from a neutral point of view.
With that in mind the proposed text is incorrect in saying that "non-neutral titles are sometimes acceptable", as they aren't. What is acceptable is the use of non-neutral words as titles and as part of titles when that reflects common usage in reliable sources. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:40, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
The revision seems to be overly watered down in favor of wiki-revisionism. Wording like Non-neutral titles are sometimes acceptable....Wikipedia may follow the sources (my underlining for emphasis) seems to overly endorse political correctness (“being non-judgmenetal… man!”) despite common usage. If a significant majority of most-reliable English-language reliable sources all refer to something by a given name, Wikipedia should *generally* abide as such. Notable exceptions would be trendy names that A) seem unlikely to be remembered years later after the hubbub has died down; or B) names that are so colloquial that they detract from the encyclopedic nature. Whatever we come up with, it should anticipate what readers will type and what readers will expect to be taken to.
For instance, if I type “Boston Massacre" into the search field, I expect to be taken to an article by that name without 16-year-old all-volunteer wikipedians trying to Change The World©™® by coming up with something less emotionally charged against the Brits. By the same token, if I type “ Octomom” into the search field (which is what she is known by today as well as five years from now), I expect to be redirected to “ Nadya Suleman”—even though 90% of readers can’t remember her name and how to spell it but can all remember “Octomom.”
I think the best guideline would have unique examples (like “Octomom”) and would directly address the principles each touches upon. So I call for everyone here to put in the below section, examples of article names that teach to this issue. I’ll start it off with six. After we have a list of names of article titles and redirects, then let’s see a thoughtful guideline that sweeps it all up nicely. Greg L ( talk) 00:07, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I propose we all leave examples of interesting and/or unique article titles and their redirects here that we think speak to crafting a new guideline. Feel free to post examples that you agree with, as well as article titles you think are a mistake. We can discuss the implications. After that, maybe someone can craft a better guideline. In the below list, I agree with five of the six examples. On the one I disagree with, I don’t have strong feelings about, but still think it would have been best had it been titled as it is most commonly known. Greg L ( talk) 00:07, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
This is an open-forum section; additions welcome below the line.
Thinking about the above, I propose the following:
When a significant majority of English-language reliable sources refer to the topic or subject of an article by a given name, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (Examples include Boston Massacre, Rape of Belgium, and Teapot Dome scandal). In such cases, the commonality of the name overrides concerns that Wikipedia might seem as siding with one side of an issue.
Notable examples where Wikipedia eschews the common name include the following:
Article titles should anticipate what readers will type as a first guess and balance that with what readers expect to be taken to. Thus, typing “ Octomom” properly redirects to Nadya Suleman. Typing “ Boston Massacre” and “ Patriot (American Revolution)” do not redirect whereas both “ Pro-Choice” and “ Pro-Life” redirect to more neutral titles.
I consider the above to be part of my own post (verboten for others to edit) but also to be a live sandbox that I might update after seeing comments from others. Those who want to suggest something other than above should create their own green‑div. Greg L ( talk) 00:40, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
When a significant majority of English-language reliable sources refer to the subject of an article by a given name, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (e.g. Rape of Belgium). In such cases, the ubiquity of the name and/or how the name of an event has effectively or functionally become a proper noun (e.g. Boston Massacre) generally overrides concerns that Wikipedia might appear as endorsing one side of an issue.
Other factors warranting adoption of an otherwise seemingly non‑neutral title is if the subject is a proper noun (e.g. Defense of Marriage Act, National Right to Life Committee and NARAL Pro-Choice America), where the topic is highly historical in nature or has long been known by that name ( Teapot Dome scandal), and if the subject would be essentially unrecognizable under another name (typing “ Whazzup” redirects to the very similar Whassup?).
Notable circumstances under which Wikipedia often eschews a common name include the following:
Article titles and their redirects should anticipate what readers will type as a first guess and balance that with what readers expect to be taken to. Thus, typing “ Octomom” properly redirects to Nadya Suleman, in keeping with exception #2, above.
OK. Then…
When the subject of an article is referred mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (e.g. Boston Massacre, Rape of Belgium, and Teapot Dome scandal). In such cases, the ubiquity of the name and/or the fact that the name of an event has effectively or functionally become a proper noun generally overrides concerns that Wikipedia might appear as endorsing one side of an issue.
Notable circumstances under which Wikipedia often eschews a common name include the following:
Article titles should anticipate what readers will type as a first guess and balance that with what readers expect to be taken to. Thus, typing “ Octomom” properly redirects to Nadya Suleman, which is in keeping with point #2, above. Typing “ Antennagate” redirects the reader to a particular section of iPhone 4, which is in keeping with points #1 and #2, above. Typing “ Boston Massacre” and “ Patriot (American Revolution)” do not redirect, which is in keeping with the general principle, as is typing “ 9-11 hijackers”, which redirects to the more aptly named Hijackers in the September 11 attacks. However, both “ Pro‑choice” and “ Pro‑life” redirect to more neutral titles, in keeping with point #3, above.
I tried to take as much from what each of you wrote and incorporate it all here. That ended up trimming it down to something much closer to my original proposal.
Note that I left …functionally become a proper noun generally overrides concerns… (my italicizing for emphasis). I get my 2¢ in here too. If a signficiant majority of English-language reliable sources refer to something by a given name to such an extent that the name is ubiquitous and/or has effectively or functionally become a proper noun, then mere all-volunteer wikipedians generally have no business trying to change the world—no matter how well intentioned they might be (*sound of audience gasp*). If Wikipedia can have an article on “ Fuck”, (not withstanding that our readership has a large proportion of primary school children), we obviously expect readers to be sufficiently sophisticated to understand that we’re not taking sides when they type “9-11 hijacker” and are taken to an article containing the word “hijackers”.
How say ye all? Greg L ( talk) 17:53, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
As for your suggestion (But, in cases where more neutral alternative common names are possible, these can also be used instead), I am not at all supportive of encouraging wikipedian-crafted, more-neutral alternatives just because they are *possible*—not in the clear context where a given topic is referred mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources (my emphasis). This proposal pretty much endorses existing practices on Wikipedia (that is, it doesn’t try to make waves, so to speak), and adheres pretty closely to the general principle of “follow the RSs unless there are good encyclopedic reasons not to.”
This whole thread and its sub-threads have become lengthy enough that each editors’ views are pretty clear now. Compromise text is not easy; let’s see how the others feel now and see if we have a general consensus on this amalgam of compromise wording. Greg L ( talk) 19:04, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't think this has changed much, but if the examples are useful, good. As a matter of wording: names do not become proper nouns; they are proper nouns. As originally worded, also, this could be read to support use of Octomom as a title; it's a proper noun, now. The problem with Octomom is that it's not ubiquitous, and may be expected to fade with time. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:16, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
As for your observation that The central point was not that the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" were selfcreated slogans per se. The main point was that it could be proven with reliable sources that these terms are viewed as partisan and unneutral, and that they as a result of that are avoided by high quality sources. Let’s compare that to the current text now, which declares the following to be inherently non-neutral and worthy of not using in a title: Persuasive names and slogans crafted by partisans on still-active, contentious advocacy issues. They are essentially the same thing. One big difference pertains to cause & effect. You see, persuasive names and slogans crafted by partisans on still-active, contentious advocacy issues are inherently like shit: off of it comes stink. Your point is amounts to saying “avoid the stink, which comes from the shit.” The existing wording says “avoid the shit, from which comes stink.” Same diff. Cause & effect.
The more significant difference in your point is over what must be “proven” by RSs about something being biased. That works for long-established issues but breaks down when new articles are being created on new issues. It’s about time we had wording that cut to the chase and said, in effect, “Was the title crafted by partisans who are on dueling sides of an advocacy issue? If ‘yes,’ then think again about naming a Wikipedia article after it.” In short, it expects a healthy dose of WP:COMMONSENSE (*sound of audience gasp*) to be applied without having to wait around for an RS to say “These dorks are biased.” If the RSs come around on a new issue and state as much, that will just validate that Wikipedia was right to have avoided naming an article after it in the first place.
A (very) serious weakness of your argument lies in the last clause of your argument: …and that they as a result of that are avoided by high quality sources. Uhm… Note Encyclopedia Britannica’s article “Pro-life movement”. The New York Times too ( here). The EB is unquestionably a reliable source that is not avoiding naming an article after the (obviously biased) slogan. I happen to agree with the E.B. since I find it absurd to think that anyone would believe that the E.B. is endorsing the views of the pro‑life or pro‑choice movements because they have articles by those names; that’s absurd. I was, however, trying to craft better language that reflects current practices on Wikipedia and doesn’t try to change those practices. In my opinion, there is far too much political correctness run amok on Wikipedia by naive youngsters out to change the world and make it a better place—you know, hold hands on a hill and sing about Coca-Cola ( YouTube video), but that sort of thing seems to make wikipedians happy.
Nevertheless, I did my best to help craft, without passion or prejudice, consensus text that didn’t try to change how things work around here. Greg L ( talk) 00:31, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
If it were up to me, we’d lose #3 in its entirety. Instead, what’s there actually withstands scrutiny rather than crumble under the false pretense that the titles we avoid are avoided by high quality sources. As I provided above, there’s more RSs than you can shake a stick at that use the term (and the E.B. has an article by the name “Pro-life movement”). That’s clearly not the reason Wikipedia avoids such titles so please stop asking us to pay no attention to that illogic behind the curtain. Greg L ( talk) 01:02, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
"Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words", Rape is usually a neutral word. Massacre fits the bill better. -- PBS ( talk) 01:20, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
Greg, I think I'm missing your point about the Britannica and NYT. The Britannica link you gave goes to what looks like a redirect to "abortion (pregnancy)"; there's no article at "pro-life movement", or none that I can see anyway. And the NYT article you link talks about the "anti-abortion movement", and uses "pro-life" in the article only in quotes to say how people identify. The fact that the headline writers used it shouldn't be over-interpreted; they work by different rules, to sell stuff by catchy headlines. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:48, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
Does that jibe with other people's observations? - GTBacchus( talk) 16:31, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Alright, here is my suggested version:
When the subject of an article is referred mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (e.g. Boston Massacre, Rape of Belgium, and Teapot Dome scandal). In such cases, the ubiquity of the name and/or the fact that the name of an event has effectively or functionally become a proper noun generally overrides concerns that Wikipedia might appear as endorsing one side of an issue.
When a subject has multiple common names, questions about their neutrality may be taken into account when choosing between them. Claims about terms being viewed as unneutral should generally be backed by references to reliable sources expressing the same opinion.
The language needs work, but this is essentially how I think we could comprehensively define how WP:NPOV should be interpreted when it comes to naming of articles. TheFreeloader ( talk) 17:27, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Dicklyon what do you see as the significant difference between WP:POVTITLE and WP:NPOV#Naming? -- PBS ( talk) 06:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I am not sure that the copying of the WP:NPOV#Naming section over to WP:AT was a good idea for the reasons Blueboar has mentioned -- When we copy stuff from one policy to another over time they get out of sync in subtle ways which then get exposed when a dispute arises and cause disputes on article talk pages and on the policy pages (like this one to become longer than they would if there was only one section in one policy). Perhaps the answer is to replace the bulk of WP:POVTITLE with a brief couple of sentence directing the reader to WP:NPOV#Naming and then change the redirect WP:POVTITLE to point to WP:NPOV#Naming.-- PBS ( talk) 06:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
When did WP:COMMONNAME come to be such a big and powerful provision, apparently written to supersede the other considerations? Consider where it was at the beginning of September, 2009, when it was just one provision parallel to the others, called "Use common names of persons and things" that just gave this sensible advice:
That month of Sept. 2009 was the "inflationary period", driven by high-temperature gases largely from Born2cycle and Pmanderson. It stretched in and out with lots of pushback, to finish the month with a much bigger section, but still much smaller than today's, called "Use Common Names", incorporating Born2cycle's usual call for "normally titled using the most common", saying: [3]
This includes PMA's favorite follow the sources language.
Born2cycle inserted "most commonly used" in multiple other provisions as well, but some of them didn't survive.
It seems clear that there was little consensus; all this inflation was hard fought; lots on the talk page, but no clear consensus (as noted on 20 Sept 2009), and no apparent attempt to assess opinions. And today, Born2cycle is relying on policy he wrote into here, on multiple fronts, to disempower editors from exercising editorial judgement, turning control over to people who make claims about how common different names are in sources, for example as was done at Talk:Crepe#Crepe.
Maybe it's time for a process to figure out what a consensus version of COMMONNAME would look like? Dicklyon ( talk) 06:01, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I started closing move requests in September 2006, and the first time I closed one where someone cites COMMONNAME (using that shortcut) appears to be here, in December of that year, but it didn't carry the day. Same here. Then at the end of December is the first time I moved a page per COMMONNAME, here. That was followed by this and this. Here it failed, here it succeeded, and here it was mentioned. Another success, and another. That gets us to the end of January 2007, so in those first 5 months, I closed 284 moves, where COMMONNAME was directly cited 10 times, "winning" about half the time. I know this is statistically meaningless, but I do like Memory Lane.
I think COMMONNAME is popular because it's simple to understand and apply, and it gives us the "right answer" a high percentage of the time. What do I mean by the "right answer"? I mean a title that sticks, and isn't reversed in the next move request a few months later. It doesn't do this all the time, however. I think it would be accurate to say that we very often give consensus support to titles that are consistent with COMMONNAME, but in contentious cases, all bets are off, and the community does what it does, which is to weigh the individual case on merits in long and complicated discussions.
I consider these to be a sign of good health for the project, and don't want to make them algorithmic and cut down the length and verbiage. We learn a lot in those discussions, and not all of what we learn needs to be stated in policy.
Anyway, those are my late-night thoughts on the matter. I guess I'll sleep on it, and see you gentlemen tomorrow. :) - GTBacchus( talk) 07:06, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
In response to the original question, I'm not seeing how COMMONNAME has become "more powerful" as a result of the changes made to this page - I would say it's been given less emphasis, not more, since it is now acknowledged that commonness of name is just one of a number of criteria that we use to determine titles, not the one overriding one that must be followed unless some other written convention gives explicit permission to deviate from it. On the other hand, I think the common name principle has always been and remains one of the most often used criteria in practice - and perhaps is slowly becoming even more so (we no longer have that once-standard monstrosity " Victoria of the United Kingdom", for example).-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:00, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
(Unindenting) Just a thought: there's clearly debate over the relative importance of neutrality and frequency of use, but it's also clear that they do matter, at least sometimes. So would it be worth adding bullet points for both of these to the "Deciding on an article title" section (with appropriate caveats)? The effect of this would be to make commonness one of several principles — I think that's consistent with practice, do others agree? Jakew ( talk) 09:39, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Which is better for an article title: "Death of" or "Murder of"? There has been an edit/move war at Murder of Keith Blakelock. The argument for 'Murder' relies on it being the common name, while proponents of 'Death' cite NPOV and it being a more encyclopaedic title. Is there a possibility of 'one size fits all' for this or do we think it best to be a per article basis? violet/riga [talk] 12:02, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
The title will be dependent on the article content. if the article is about a murder case and the background to the case and a murder trial etc. then it should be Murder of e.g. Murder of Sarah Payne or Murder of Danielle Jones. This is also where the subject of the article is only notable through being murdered. Death of is where the subject is already notable and the circumstances surrounding their death are also noteworthy but are not murder such as Death of Michael Jackson or Death of John Lennon. Both subjects are notable and the deaths are also notable due to the subjects and the reasons behind the death are also discussed and there is no focus on criminal aspects.-- Lucy-marie ( talk) 19:44, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
In any event the word "murder" should never be used on WP unless a competent legal authority (court, coroner, etc.) has declared it to be so. Conversely refusing to use "murder" when it is clearly relevant could be inapropriate euphemism. I'm not so sure that notablility only for being murdered or if the victim is already notable for other reasons is a relevant criterion for deciding the use of the word "murder". (Would for example John Lennon's death be more deserving of being called a murder than the death of an otherwise non-notable bank teller killed during a notable robbery?) Roger ( talk) 07:27, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
Case-by-case is how we should always approach any content issues. Any bright-line prohibition is basically begging WP:IAR. I agree with Blueboar that what makes the Blakelock case interesting is the circumstances that surround it beyond the actual action (which is what makes it also be an article on itself, otherwise it would be part of the article of the riot in which he was killed. I disagree on his interpretation of legal proceedings, in overturning the conviction, the whole process, including the finding of murder is overturned. Furthermore, the controversy around the accused is a big political issue (according to the RS). I basically had little idea of this until I became involved on 2011 England riots and I renamed and article now under AfD, and people raised WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS arguments and I started exploring the articles and found a bunch of mostly British articles with "murder" in the title. It seems there is a media sensationalism around violent deaths in the British press, and even usually reliable sources go apeshit with any violent death. Perhaps we in the US are so jaded that a "murder" can be called a death or killing until there is a guilty verdict, but the reality is that when I went into the articles, some where indeed using "Murder" in the title in an appropriate fashion from my perspective, but some weren't. So I boldly went in, because WP:BRD is nice. My arguments are there, where they belong, the article talk, where they should be discussed.
In general terms, in this discussion what I see is a misunderstanding of what "common" and what "npov" means in the context of titles. The way I see it, the gist of WP:POVTITLE is that we have to make a balance between the need for neutrality and the need for commonality, giving more weight than we do to commonality in the article text itself, but not ignoring NPOV.
It is clear to me that some of the suggested edits to the policy seek to change this call for a nuanced and balanced consideration, into a bright-line allowing of POV titles. I do not believe the community would be comfortable pushing NPOV aside in such a fashion. One thing is in some cases err on the side of commonality because current consensus supports it, another is to diminish WP:CCC and WP:NPOV with a bright-line allow. WP:AT allows for descriptive titles, so using a name like "climategate" is not mandated or even necessarily preferred - it simply wouldn't a policy violation to do it. Most (but not all) of the people that push hard for POV titles are usually people that agree with the POV the title would support, and we need to adjust for that bias (the anti-POV bias is offset by genuine . If on top of that pre-existing bias, we adopt bright-line commonality, there wouldbe hundreds of thousands of articles that would be renamed, everything from Caesium to Automobile, not to mention politico-religious controversial articles. As you see, the petty differences of POV pushers have been wisely chosen to be stopped by not having bright-line policies on anything but BLP and behavior issues. We should continue to do so. I take NPOV over commonality in all but historical matters that are not of contemporary relevance, even if there are contemporary debates around that. Hence we shouldn't have articles titled "pro-choice" or "pro-life" or "climategate" or "murder of contemporary controversial figure for which no one has been found conclusively guilty", but we can have articles for "Peterloo massacre" or some such. -- Cerejota ( talk) 04:35, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Changed "discussion of" to "policy on" at WP:COMMONNAME, as this is not a discussion essay and wikilawyers love to pick on these things to try an "win" an argument. Changed the intro of the WP:POVTITLE's list of common reasons not use a common name to explain these are neutrality reasons, because neutrality is not the only reason not use a common name - there are others in the policy.
Both of these are hopefully non-controversial changes as they do not change the meaning, just use more precise language.-- Cerejota ( talk) 19:31, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
I no longer see the argument, which Blueboar repeats above, that what almost everybody uses to describe a subject is neutral; to impose "neutrality" on it is to substitute our judgment for that of the sources. Is this disputed, or is this absence collateral damage? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:05, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes neutrality and commonness are not the same, not per policy nor per the English language. Over at "CRU email controversy" I made a rather long dissertation of that that I should have made here, but you can read above further elaboration. Also, can we stop using Boston Massacre as an example in discussion (in the text for now I am okay with it)? There very specific reasons that event came to be known as such in historiography, and some of them are precisely related to the reasons Wikipedia has an WP:NPOV, one of the reasons was that the winning side of the American Revolutionary War was the USA, and in the 19th century, history was always written by the winners. In the 20th century this began to change, and the concept of a Neutral Point of View emerged - a concept that is still controversial in academia, criticized by relativists (who argue one can never have a neutral point of view so why even try to pretended one does) and absolutists (Who argue there are no sides to a question, just truth and falsehood) alike. However, modern controversies as subjected to more varied sourcing, to less groupthink, and in the case of wikipedia, the WP:NPOV policy. Lets say that "Boston Massacre" got grandfathered into existence. It doesn't mean it is a good example for the naming of new articles about current or recent events. That is unwittingly attacking NPOV by accepting the criteria for naming events that existed long before NPOV as a concept existed. This is an NPOV, collaborative free encyclopedia on the internet, not some old-timey Almanack written by partisans in a nation-creating war.-- Cerejota ( talk) 23:44, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
The name
The first contradicts WP:CRYSTALBALL, this is not a paper based encyclopaedia so the name can be changed when the common name changes and besides trendy slogans and monikers can stick. At what point in the future "years later" does a name stop being a trendy name?
The second one is a weasel reason, for using descriptive names when there is a common name with justification other than "I don't like it". There may be cases when WP:IAR is appropriate, but we should not be crafting this policy in such a way that people can use bullet point such as this one to wriggle out of basing the name that used in reliable sources.
The example given in the third one is confusing because it is mixed up with National varieties of English it is worded in American dialect "contentious advocacy issues" (and uses a specific American example which means little to people outside America as the names mentioned are not usually used for abortion and so a better reason for choosing another name is "Fixed-wing aircraft".
-- PBS ( talk) 21:00, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh it passes COMMONNAME. The question if it is worth pushing NPOV aside, something POVTITLE allows but doesn't require. These two cannot be separated, as some try to do. They are Ying and Yang...-- Cerejota ( talk) 06:51, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Point by point:
I am seeing a tendency in your questions to try an find examples that disprove policy. Don't. At best, any exception is a case-by-case valuation by those editors of WP:IAR, at worse, those articles are an un-addressed violation of policy that should be addressed by interested editors. Policy cannot be disproven by usage, usage should be according to policy - albeit usage is often why policy develops. Please concentrate on the actual principles of the policy, rather than actual implementation, which are actually unrelated. Specially when speaking about relatively recent changes to policy, for which one can expect a large number of grandfathering to happen, such discussion is not productive and can be seen as disruptive.-- Cerejota ( talk) 21:39, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
In a conversation over determining whether one title or another is the common name, I happen to think of Google Trends. The case being discussed was Calcutta vs. Kolkata. The Google Trends comparison is here:
I think this can be a nifty way to determine common names (of course among other things, including common sense). What do others think and is it worth adding to this article (or to Wikipedia:Search engine test)? --RA ( talk) 20:31, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
There's been a move request at Talk:Chief Mechanical Engineer to downcase the title of that article, per WP:Job titles (part of the title policy), and the MoS section on the same point. The move request was notified at the UK Railways WikiProject (at variance with the generality of the article title, this article was intended to be specifically about chief mechanical engineers in British-related railway companies). At that stage, this was expressed in the one-line lead followed by a huge number of unreferenced examples of holders of such positions mostly in the 19th century. In trying to fathom the theme of the article, I failed to see that the title should have been more specific as well as downcased: the job title is used generically (still is) and the scope is restricted at the same time (not US-related, not chief mechanical engineers in power stations or on ferries or in aeronautics or factories).
Now, the railways editors really care about the notion of chief mechanical engineers—in good faith, like the wider phenomenon of corporate and professional upping of importance via capitalisation—but where will it all end? They descended on the RM and !voted en masse against downcasing.
Because I pointed out the shambles the article was in, an editor has kindly worked on it, adding references and expanding the information. But the theme is still scoped in relatively narrow terms, and in the main text it's not, for example, Joshua Smithers, Chief Mechanical Engineer, Northampton Railway Company.
I do think we need a centralised approach to this. Almost the entire category of transport occupations is in lower case, as are just about all other occupation categories. Why must this one stick out? And is it hogging the name-space of the generic article that probably should/will be created on chief mechanical engineers? (There are quite a lot of chief this and chief that articles, surprisingly.)
Your advice and comments at the RM would be appreciated—maybe I'm confused now. I'm leaving the same notice at WT:MOS. Another editor has recently come in and downcased throughout the article main text, I see, to negative reaction by at least one editor on the talk page.
Thanks. Tony (talk) 16:06, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Trying to decide on a title for a list-type article to replace Sputnik program. It seems there was no Sputnik "program" as such, just a series of launched objects, the first of which were called Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2 and Sputnik 3, followed by others which were officially named differently, but were called Sputnik 4 etc. in Western circles. Please join in at Talk:Sputnik program#Name of replacement article. -- Kotniski ( talk) 15:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Could I get people's advice on this issue, a move request I've made to downcase an item that was upcased, apparently just because the abbreviation is upcased. The latter goes against MoS and the rulings of major external style guides, even though it's done as a habit by some in the telecom industry (or should I write the Telecom industry?). But it's not the downcasing I'm asking advice about—that seems obvious, except for the opinion of one editor who seems to want to upcase just about everything, and inconsistently in many instances; no, it's whether "Asymetrical digital subscriber line" should be rendered just as "ADSL" in the actual article title, rather than just a redirect. The possibility has been raised by User:LtPowers. I'm cautious about using the abbreviation only in the title, although I concede that it's much more recognisable by the public than the expanded version. Tony (talk) 02:40, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Articles about military titles with more than one word, such as Lieutenant Colonel, Major General, Wing Commander, etc. (its a long list!), do not follow the general rules outlined in this article and should have a specific exception mentioned so we can avoid confusion in the future. Can we add a section to this article for military titles to reflect the current consensus for capitalizing all the words in the title? See this Talk:Able_Seaman_(rank)#Requested_move discussion for a recent example; more comprehensively Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Archive_68#Rank_articles:_capitalization_of_title here. Thank you! Kirk ( talk) 01:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Giving it some thought, maybe what is need is a discussion on creating and raising to guideline the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military ranks). I am raising this at MILHIST.-- Cerejota ( talk) 17:32, 16 September 2011 (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.
I changed this statement:
If the subject of an article is the primary topic (or only topic) for its common title, as reflected in reliable sources, then the article can take that title without modification.
to this:
If the subject of an article is the primary (or only) topic to which a name refers, then that name can be the title of that article without modification.
This was reverted by User:Cerejota on the grounds that it "might be more concise, but also says something different".
Okay, it might say something slightly different (a bit more), but doesn't it accurately reflect reality? I mean, does anyone challenge the veracity of the revised/concise (second above) statement in terms of how articles are actually titled?
Also, I suggest the original (current, first above) wording is misleading. That is, an article may use a name for its title if the article's subject is the primary use even if the name is not the topic's "common title , (as reflected in reliable sources)". Almost any article for which natural disambiguation is used to give it a unique title has a title for which the primary topic is the article's topic, but the title is not the topic's "common title" (the "common title" is not available which is why natural disambiguation is used). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:01, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Anyway, to address your concern, how about this?
If the subject of an article is the primary (or only) topic to which a recognized name (as reflected in reliable sources) refers, then that name can be the title of that article without modification.
- A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
- A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.
If the subject of an article is the primary (or only) topic to which a term refers, then that term can be the title of that article without modification.
If the subject of an article is the primary (or only) topic to which a term refers, then that term can be the title of that article without modification, provided it follows all other applicable title policies.
No additional modification should be added to an article's title if the subject of that article is the primary (or only) topic to which that title refers.
There is an RfC at Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy#Request_for_Comment_regarding_Name.2FTitle that is dealing with issues regarding WP:Article titles and WP:NPOV#Naming, specifically common names versus descriptive titles and how WP:NPOV applies in a non-neutral common name situation. All editors, especially disinterested ones, are welcome. Moogwrench ( talk) 22:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Originally I erred by considering the issue to be related to the emails and work of certain researchers specifically, and I have shown that this certainly is an enduring issue in the public eye, regardless whether there are formal proceedings. While I still stand by my original view that this is all "still alive", as I write here I realize that disqualifier #3 deals with a "contentious advocacy issue". Upon reflection, I believe that is the issue Global warming in all its glory, and not just some sliced and diced subset. There's no need to rename the article in the inherently biased way some partisans would like to see. Note especially that the earliest champion of this phrase has spoken thus
If you want to know the truth about Climategate, definitely don’t use Wikipedia. “Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy”, is its preferred, mealy-mouthed euphemism to describe the greatest scientific scandal of the modern age. Not that you’d ever guess it was a scandal from the accompanying article. It reads more like a damage-limitation press release put out by concerned friends and sympathisers of the lying, cheating, data-rigging scientists.
[[ partisan James Delingpole source].
Since this comes up over and over and over, it should come as no surprise that [ article title restriction has been proposed].
Thanks for your attention. Now you get to decide whether to apply the spirit of the law, or start slicing and dicing. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 16:00, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
"I think there's a pretty strong case to be made for "Climategate" as the name for the article, as it is clearly the most common name in the press for this. I think it fairly obvious why people don't want it called that - but that call is not up to Wikipedia. We must call it what it is called, and what it is called, is climategate. (This is not a decree, but my point is that it is pretty obvious that - contrary to the wild claims of coverup and so on - we do have a well-sourced article that is comprehensive and informative and fair... but with a pretty silly title that no one uses. The scandal here is clearly not the "hacking incident" - about which virtually nothing is known. The scandal is the content of the emails, which has proven to be deeply embarrassing (whether fairly or unfairly) to certain people.) The result of the silly title is that there is traction (unfairly) for claims that Wikipedia is suppressing something.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)" (emphasis mine)
- User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_55#egregious_abuse_of_Wikipedia_in_nearly_all_climate_change_BLPs ( diff)
::: (B) Implying that wiki uses consensus only so long it agrees with Jimbo's views (no disrespect to anyone intended, but sounds like we need a
WP:GODSAYS shortcut to a policy about that form of anti-consensus argument)
WP:JIMBOSAID-- Cerejota ( talk) 17:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks C, I didn't realize there were so MANY essays about Jimbo-said. Moog, whaddya say we respect everyone's time and focus on the core question:
Should a name that some press uses, and some press says some critics use, and some press doesn't use at all, for a still-active contentious matter of advocacy..... a name that was crafted by partisans.... a name that is not essential for discussing the topic..... a name that already redirects to the existing article.... should that name become the very name of the article despite the 3rd disqualifier in WP:POVTITLE?
Moogwrench says YES by implying Jimbo's quote justifies ignoring disqualifier #3 in WP:POVTITLE, and that failing he argues that the end of formal proceedings (though not actually ended) means we are no longer discussing a matter of "still-active contentious advocacy". Perhaps we should stop beating people with tangents and red herrings and give them a chance to speak? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 18:07, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
It seems to me that this may need to be removed or a compromise needs to be made. It seems that people believe we should use common names for everything instead of proper names. Eg. Sailor Moon has a main article that is of it's common name so should all the pages do that? I don't think so. And here's why. If you look at the Harry Potter series it doesn't use the common Harry Potter names for the books or movies. Eg. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has a common name of Harry Potter 7 (and also it has the abbreviated name of Deathly Hallows) due to people who may not know that Deathly Hallows is the seventh book in the series. Does Harry Potter use the common names? No it doesn't but people seem to want to run to this cause I suggested we move the List of Sailor Moon chapters to it's proper name of List of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon chapters which is it's Japanese name. The English name is inappropriate as it is an abbreviation of the Japanese name that was chosen when the anime was dubbed. You're probably wondering my point. My point is this: this whole common names thing seems to be a pick and chose thing and personally I think it only makes problems for all of us and probably should be changed or have exceptions made. For example if there's a main article that uses the common name as Sailor Moon does then the rest of the off articles need to go by their proper names instead of the common name. JamesAlan1986 * talk 11:16, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
In the case of Sailor Moon that is more along the lines a common used name for the franchise instead of the actual products themselves. All sources do it even if the evidence in front of them points out differently. The best example is the manga it's commonly called Sailor Moon Vol. 1 but the product itself is under a separate name. I think for all cases and purposes the only articles that should go by common name are the main articles and not the "off articles". It's also noted under "Treatment of alternate names" that we are suppose to put proper names in the article but the List of Sailor Moon chapters doesn't. JamesAlan1986 * talk 14:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Did I do the right thing by moving Financial Management Standard to Financial Management Standard (Queensland)? I'm finding a lot of articles with very generic titles that turn out to be non-generic and specific. Tony (talk) 01:37, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
PS, and why do we have Institute of Directors (where? Ah, the UK) and Chartered Secretaries (Hong Kong)? It's a mess, and I believe we need to develop better advice for editors. Tony (talk) 02:04, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
Current dablink:
"Multiple shortcuts redirect here; you may be looking for What is an article?, Manual of Style (Article layout), Username policy, Manual of Style (biographies), Manual of Style (titles), Wikipedia is Not Censored, WikiProject North Carolina, Article message boxes, Amnesia test, or Attribution."
Do we need "WikiProject North Carolina", "Amnesia test", "Wikipedia is Not Censored" here? Facts707 ( talk) 12:18, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
I support restoring WP:NC to be a redirect to this page rather remain as a dab page. There is no precedent for WP:NC redirecting to anything but this page, so there can be no expectation for it go anywhere else. Like others have noted, all we accomplish by leaving it as dab is break countless links that use WP:NC to point to this page. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:56, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
I've reverted WP:NC to point back to Wikipedia:Article titles. There is no consensus here that it should be a dab page. Powers T 14:13, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
While there's a clear consensus against mucking with shortcuts like WP:NC, I see no support for keeping weird things in the hatnote, so I'm deleting them.
There is an RFC discussion going on about a specific page and the primary topic. Over the past two years, I have been disambiguating the inbound links to the dab page currently at the main name space as a result of a previous move request. In that two year period less then 5% of the inbound links have been for the page suggested for moving to the main name space. The page hit count does show different results since the proposed page was at the top of the dab page for a while and our helpful dab team replaced a ton, several thousand, of incoming links with the wrong page. So my question is, can 5% of the new inbound links over two years constitute the primary use? If it can, then this policy needs a major rewrite. I'll leave the page name out of the discussion for right now, but I'm sure that anyone interested can figure it out. Vegaswikian ( talk) 17:34, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
It's like saying "San Francisco" should be a dab page because when people say "San Francisco" the could mean the entire bay area, and the bay area has a stronger claim to be the primary topic for San Francisco. That's absurd, of course, but so is the argument that the strip is the primary topic for "Las Vegas". -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:11, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
My view is that by common usage both the Golden Nugget and the Bellagio are in the place to which people most commonly refer when they say or write "Las Vegas", and, so that place is the primary use of "Las Vegas". I also claim that the topic of the article at Las Vegas, Nevada, if it were expanded to include a section on the strip (and a link to the complete article), along with a note stating that technically the Strip is not within the city proper, would be about that primary topic place. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:37, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
When you say the city is less then 5% of the incoming links to the dab page, what you mean is that the city proper is less than 5%... I'm dubious about it being quite that low, but I won't dispute that, because it's irrelevant to my argument. My point -- which I made above with the example of Caesars Palace which you ignored -- is that the city proper plus the adjacent strip is almost all of the incoming links... that's why that topic -- the city proper plus the adjacent strip -- is the primary use.
I mean, what you're arguing is that the Las Vegas Convention Center is not in the place commonly referred to as "Las Vegas". That's just absurd. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 03:08, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
You know, "San Diego" is sometimes used to refer to the entire San Diego County, just like "San Francisco" is sometimes used to refer to the entire bay area. Similarly, "Las Vegas" is sometimes used to refer to the entire valley, and sometimes it's used to refer to the city proper, but, as the links to the dab page show, usually they are used to refer to the city plus the strip. Usage of "Las Vegas" to mean the entire valley is much less common. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:34, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
The word is "than",not "then". Roger ( talk) 08:31, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
This example needs to be replaced: "Diacritics: canon vs. cañon". Cañon is not an article title, and I seem to recall that we have years and years of precedent against ever having page names that are only distinguished by diacritics, because non-expert users cannot search for or even type them. Indeed, the non-diacritic version of an article title should always redirect to the diacritic version or be a disambiguation page that links to it. Or vice versa - sometimes we prefer the non-diacritic version as the actual article title, per WP:COMMONNAME. I'm thus removing this junk. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 15:18, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Nice to see all the changes to the page this quarter, but it's probably more than I have time to digest. Anyone want to list the changes at WP:Update/1/Content_policy_changes,_2011? - Dank ( push to talk) 02:51, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
In looking at various of these articles, the names used follow the two forms in the heading of this section. I find it hard to believe that the common name for these apparently randomly uses these two forms. I think that part of the problem may be the policy of WP:NRHP prefers to use the name on the nomination form no matter how appropriate that may be. It results in building articles having names like Whitney & Company for a building since that is apparently listed on the nomination form that way but per our policy should probably be listed as Whitney & Company building since the article is about the building and not the company. This guideline also produces article names like U.S. Post Office (Saratoga Springs, New York) and United States Post Office (Canandaigua, New York). Both of these should probably use one form or the other. So do we choose one or let the nomination form be the decider of our names? If we elect to use the current setup, should we allow these to be sorted by article name which produces odd results or should we use a default sort and force them all to sort as United States? Vegaswikian ( talk) 06:04, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
These are all that I can find:
Cheers! bd2412 T 13:48, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
Colleagues, the time has come to re-examine certain principles that were adopted years ago when we were small, young, and innocent. WP continues to amass articles; we are approaching four million—one for every hundred native speakers! Each of these articles needs a fitting title, and the phenomenon of "information convergence" bears down on the project ever more obviously. I believe we need to be more flexible, to enhance specificity in titles. On top of this, we have widespread abuse of capitalisation, tending away from the generic to the titular (the French mock us with murmurings like: "English-speakers are really just Germans masquerading as human beings"). Sometimes these axes interact, and I think more detail should now be built into the policy so editors have better guidance as they attempt to follow the larger goal of serving readers' actual needs.
Here are three ongoing examples, with the generality of the titles rather than their capitalisation at issue:
Tony (talk) 04:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
French Quarter
French Quarter (Charleston, South Carolina)
French Quarter (disambiguation)
French Quarter Mardi Gras costumes
French Quarter (San Francisco)
French Quarter
French Quarter (Charleston, South Carolina)
French Quarter Mardi Gras costumes
French Quarter (New Orleans)
French Quarter (San Francisco)
If "deviating from principle" can cause "headaches", and it arguably does, then adding nine letters to a title is indeed a "headache", by definition. And we're not talking about some silly contrived principle here - this is one of the most influential principles consistently followed in almost all titles in Wikipedia. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:02, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
I don't who or what you think is making the assumption that there is always a primary topic, clearly that's not true as is made quite evident by the number of dab pages located at base names. Unless you're arguing that the French quarter of New Orleans is not the primary topic for French Quarter, by suggesting that that article be at French Quarter (New Orleans) you are advocating something contrary to what WP:PRIMARYTOPIC states. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:15, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Are you saying it only discourages over-precision through the use of natural disambiguation, but not for parenthetic disambiguation? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:23, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
B2C, earlier you dismissed clearly enunciated points concerning policy provisions as "nit picks" (see above). You have had a big part in wording those provisions. There is growing reason to suspect that you pursue an agenda counter to the aims of the Project, though I cannot see why you would want to do that. Of course we try to assume good faith; but when we find you seeking tight and narrow adherence to those recently reworded provisions in RMs, or in justifying ad hoc moves, the default assumption is shaken. If the interests of readers are neglected in favour of the "letter of the law" (recent "law", in this case; formed with little evidence of genuine consensus), this is a cause for concern. When we find you rushing to get changes to WP:MOS after your strenuous efforts concerning Iodised salt (!) came to nothing, suspicions are strengthened. They are also strengthened when we observe your routine hounding of admin GTBacchus, impugning his competence whenever things don't go your way.
A review of those shakily founded provisions, to which you make specious appeal, seems to be in order. This strange insistence on the shortest possible titles at all costs, on whatever legalistic pretext can be mustered, is unhealthy. It does not help readers; and when people start dismissing that as a consideration, we ought to be even more concerned. I look forward to a broad, slow, careful, consultative review – by well-adertised RFC, without preconceptions or prejudice. I look forward to taking part in such a process, rather than in frenetic bouts of reform that bypass due process and work to the benefit of no one, and to the Project's detriment.
Noetica Tea? 05:19, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
B2C one reason for setting up [[Topicname]] redirecting to [[Topicname (additional precision)]] (or similar) is to help people sort out redirects. One example was the Boer War usually an editor (or the author of a third party source) means the Second Boer War but not always. For correct adjustment of incoming links it helps editors to have such a construct and there is no overhead for the reader as they go strait to the article anyway. When I originally split the Wikipedia article on the "Boer War" into two (first and second) and at the time trying to sort out which war a particular biography was referring to was not always easy. I had to leave perhaps 10% of the links pointing at the original article name as I could not tell which Boer War was being referred to (most often it would have been the second but not always). If I had kept the Second Boer War at its common name "Boer War" and only then those 10% of links would have been impossible to tell from those that correctly went to the subject. -- PBS ( talk) 22:07, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Hello all, I'd like to request some outside input at WT:VG regarding naming of articles, and the possible precedent implications of a recent article move. It boils down to whether the article title " Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" (both names referring to the same thing, article previously at just "Mega Drive") is OK or not, and specifically whether WP:AND allows this. The discussion is here. Thanks, Miremare 00:56, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. While we should try to follow the rules most of the time we can ignore them if they are getting in the way of improving the encyclopedia. Now, I'm sure many people would say "picking either name will improve the encyclopedia", but in this particular case more good may be done by allowing the editors to stick with there consensus name. That way we get more happy editors contributing to the article, which will improve the encyclopedia.
Obviously, some people will see this as the start of a slippery slope, but really we just have to look at each case on its merits. Slippery-slope arguments lead to more rules and more bureaucracy.
Yaris678 ( talk) 18:36, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
I think the case can be made that this was prematurely closed even though it was open for a week, because mostly only editors involved with the article, and not many experienced with naming conventions, were involved, as is made evident by the sparsity of most of the comments. I suggest that a new proposal be made to move the article to either of the two names. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, the problem here - as I understand it - is that the local consensus of the editors of the article have settled on this title as a compromise. Read the post above. I'll excerpt from it:
“ | The difficulty here is that the two protagonist groups favoring Sega Genesis and Mega Drive fought a long and bloody war over this and came up with Sega Genesis and Mega Drive as a consensus-driven compromise. There is therefore consensus on the article talk page for a title that seems to be a clear-cut violation of WP:TITLE. When User:Miremare attempts to do something about this, both sides in the original debate unite in wanting to stick with their hard-won compromise title. It's very difficult to tell them to go back to re-open that long and bitter debate. | ” |
The only way to change local consensus is to get as much of the community involved as possible. I'm thinking we should create an RfC, posting a notice on the Village Pump, etc. Assuming we want to do this, where should we have the rename discussion? Here? The article's talk page? Village Pump? Jimbo's talk page? :) A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 19:14, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
I've proposed that the article be moved to Genesis (Sega Mega Drive). I believe this title meets all requirements and addresses all objections. See: Talk:Sega_Genesis_and_Mega_Drive#Requested_move. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:50, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
It has always seemed to me that we have little problem renaming articles when the name of their subject can be verified to have changed. Whether it's Kate Middleton to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, or del.icio.us to Delicious (website), it seems pretty routine. But I'm getting incredible pushback from an editor at Talk:VELOCITY Broadcasting#Requested move. Am I way off base here? Powers T 00:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
"That given the massive expansion in en.WP articles over the past few years, clarity for readers (i.e., the level of specificity in article titles) needs to assume a greater role in our decision-making, and the notion of primary topic needs to be re-examined in this light."
The zealous application of these recent inventions is damaging the project. What we now see is walls put up against editors who are trying to clean up clusters of related articles and in some cases single articles, which are titled so vaguely that they are misleading. Please think of the context from which people visit our articles—google searches, category lists, wikilinks that are often unpiped, and often from a non-American and even a non-English-language background, without the cultural knowledge that has been assumed in the current hard-line attitudes to clear article titling.
There seems to be an obsession with keeping article titles stubby over all other considerations. We have marshes of related article titles with inconsistent levels of detail and specification, and the awkward notion of primary topic, which often justifies banging a square peg into a round hole at the expense of related topics—whether existing WP articles or those that are very likely to be created in the future. Primary topic very often leads inadvertently to POV—the privileging of one topic over its siblings present and yet to be born. Further, it confuses editors WRT the generic–titular up- and down-casing of titles, and the much harder-to-fix uncertainty as to whether a topic is generic or titular. (Take the classic example of pressurized mating adaptor, which inadvertently claims by implication that it's NASA-invented and -owned; this is not at all the case, but the lead needs to be clear about this, and still isn't. It's POV, and I'd be offended if I were the original inventor.
Look at this shambolic marsh:
Articles about topics that don't have names, and so must have descriptive titles often invented by WP editors (but hopefully by following a convention), are treated somewhat differently. Also, articles about topics with names that require disambiguation also tend to be somewhat more descriptive about their topics. Let's not be confused by titles that must be descriptive in deciding how to title articles about topics with clear and obvious names that don't require additional precision/description for disambiguation. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:15, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
Taking the first one in the list " Intern Architect Program" do you have any evidence of another Intern Architect Program run by another country? I know that you recently moved Financial Management Standard to Financial Management Standard (Queensland) (that I reverted and which was discussed at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Article specificity and Talk:Financial Management Standard. If such a change was to be made then what you are talking about is among other things pre-emptive disambiguation which has always been found upon. However I know in the past I have created pre-emptive disambiguation pages because I really could not be bothered with sorting out the inevitable mess I knew would arise, and I know others who feel similarly. However I suspect that if we tolerate it in policy then we will end up with almost ever page being pre-emptive disambiguated is that a path we really want to go down? IE all British legislation will be moved from "name year" to "name year (state)"? At the moment as far as I know the only guideline where we do this pre-emptively is in WP:MILMOS for units like 1st Division but that advise is largely historic now as most such articles already exist for multiple counties. -- PBS ( talk) 10:58, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
This would appear to be more of the same misunderstanding as French Quarter above; much the same discussion, with the same confusion between a proper noun and a common noun, took place at Talk:Halley's Comet#Requested move. JCScaliger ( talk) 20:38, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
The discussion at Talk:French Quarter is marked by failure to have any firm grasp of what a proper name is, or to appreciate the fluid and complex nature of that concept. Please tell us what you mean when you speak of "proper names" here, JCScaliger. Do you say that the second word in "the French [Q/q]uarter" is a common noun, or a proper noun? Answer first for the case of New Orleans, and then for the cases of Tianjin and Shanghai. Do you say that "the Queen" is a proper name? Always? Sometimes? Is the second word in this case a common noun, or a proper noun? If we are going to make policy about titles of articles, we had better gain a more secure sense of all this – or at least recognise that the grammatical terminology is not carved in stone. Erratic assignment to such categories as "proper name" should not be decisive in settling RMs.
That while some titles do have descriptive titles that clearly convey article topic and sometimes even scope, many articles, especially articles about topics that have clear and obvious unique names, have titles that concisely convey only the name of the topic, and don't describe the scope or even topic at all. In most of these cases, as long as the name of the topic is accurately conveyed, that's not a concern. Though titles are sometimes descriptive due to being about topics that don't have names, or because of needing to add additional precision to the title for the purpose of disambiguation, in general describing article topic and scope is not the purpose of titles; that is the purpose of the article lead.
Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic? [Regrettably, actual mention of readers has been removed from this. Why? By whom? After what discussion toward consensus? Still, recognition by readers must be what is intended.]
Naturalness – What title(s) are readers most likely to look for in order to find the article? Which title(s) will editors most naturally use to link from other articles? Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English. [Can it be denied that the needs of readers here outweigh those of editors?]
Precision – How precise is the title under discussion? Consensus titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. [... To identify the topic of the article to whom, if not anglophone readers all over the world? Diverse readers with their own local mix of knowledge and uncertainty, and their own divergent expectations.]
Conciseness – Is the title concise or is it overly long? [What criterion for excessive length could be salient if not the needs of those reading the title?]
Consistency – Does the proposed title follow the same pattern as those of similar articles? [... With consistency primarily for whose benefit, do we think?]
Can't we simply put aside past agreements and find common ground? That's what this motion is supposed to be. That, and a clarification about an important point, I believe. A point for which I was sure there was wide consensus support (which not all of my views enjoy, I know). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
"That given the massive expansion in en.WP articles over the past few years, clarity for readers (i.e., the level of specificity in article titles) needs to assume a greater role in our decision-making, and the notion of primary topic needs to be re-examined in this light."
Common ground for us should be the principles for which we have broad consensus agreement. That's what forms the basis of my arguments, including this proposal. If your common ground is something else (like from whatever is the spring for the idea that "[the level of specificity in article titles] needs to assume a greater role"), then I don't see how agreement is possible. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
That said, thinking about these issues by staging debates on this page is misguided. On this page, we should be talking about what we've observed of consensus in the field. That's all we need to talk about here: What's commonly held, what's still muddy, and how can we most efficiently write that down, in a way that gives the least possible grist to the lawyers' mill? I would be so delighted to talk about specific RM decisions, but people want to argue about abstract concepts instead. Wikipedia is neither a legislative body, nor a debating society, and I'm concerned that we're encouraging both of these destructive wrong aims.
We need to encourage people to read guidelines less, have more contempt for guideline pages, and listen to consensus more. We need to encourage people to debate less, and listen more. We need to encourage people to care less about the precise wording of guidelines, and listen to specific consensus decisions about specific questions. Abstraction to general principles can come later, or not at all. It's not clear how much it really helps the project. - GTBacchus( talk) 20:42, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Can someone tell me why this policy doesn't provide sufficient explanation, preferably with quite a few examples of too specific and too general, to avoid this kind of horror?
Tony (talk) 10:35, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
The article should simply be deleted, as there's no notable topic there. Or an article on devolvement in finance might be useful, but pretending it has something to do with India in paritcular is lame. Dicklyon ( talk) 17:35, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
There is a discussion about the use of scare quotes in article titles here, please participate. Roger ( talk) 13:27, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
As a slight spin off from a blocking policy discussion I made the point that "significant majority" isn't clear enough and is too easy to bend as being anywhere between ~50 and ~95%. I think we should give an approximate numeric figure for clarity as to what "significant majority" means. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 19:22, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
Type of consensus | Percent | Comments |
---|---|---|
Majority | 51% | not normally used |
Consensus | 70-80% | |
Override | 75-80% | When overriding a previous consensus poll |
Strong Consensus | 75-85% | |
Note: Editor opinions are not votes so the consensus is determined by the closing administrator based on the strength of offered facts, policies and guidelines. |
as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources...
as evidenced through usage in at least about two-thirds of English-language reliable sources...
I oppose any such attempt at artificial numerical precision. It ignores the quality or relevance of sources, and assumes too much concerning the precision of Googlebook searches and the like. Too many provisions in policy and guidelines are being read legalistically and literally, without considering the overall good. We need to look again at that, and get our bearings. We should not add more opportunities for descent into increasingly unhelpful detail. The needs of readers are ignored too often, in mechanical application of rules.
Noetica Tea? 23:00, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
On the plus-side when the rules can be applied mechanically, that means there is no need for spending time and resources arguing about whether this or that point is more important, and editors can focus on more important tasks. The encyclopedia would be improved with more "mechanical application of rules", not less! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:19, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
For example, consider the RM discussion over at The Bubble Boy. Noetica opposes the move based on a complicated utility argument, while Powers and I oppose per the simple and mechanical application of primary topic.
Now, imagine if everyone had to argue in terms of utility in every RM discussion. It would be a nightmare.
Good rules are consistently based on fundamental principles that get us quickly and efficiently to the "right" outcome without mess or fuss. That's a good thing. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:26, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
I can defend my position with countless examples. But first, I will point out that the easy cases are precisely those cases for which existing mechanistic rules, whether they are explicitly stated or understood via common sense, apply.
Now, here are some examples.
This is why it's so frustrating to see efforts at making more rules more mechanistic obstructed by the argument that this stuff is not supposed to be mechanistic. Sure we've made (say) 70% of the cases easy by having mechanistic rules for them, but God Forbid let's not try to improve that to be 80% or even 75%. We need to decide all of these individually "by consensus".
It's that objection (in so many words) that I can't understand. Am I missing something? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 03:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
But here's the difference. In traffic there are real important issues at stake. I mean, people are trying to get somewhere. People could get killed. Fines have to be paid. Time has to be taken getting the ticket, going to court, traffic school, etc.
But that's not the case here. I mean, mostly we're talking about which of two (sometimes more) candidate terms should be the title of a Wikipedia article. There's nothing really that important at stake here, is there? So if we have a simplistic threshold-based rule that indicates some title other than some other title... so what? Why is it important that - for the purpose of choosing article titles - we have this nuanced approached to make sure we get it "right" (as if there is a "right")?
What seems to me to be at stake is WP editor time. If the candidates for a given article are, say X, Y (foo) or Z, and the simplistic threshold-based mechanistic rule indicates X, what benefit is there to spend hours (sometimes week, months or even years) arguing about whether one of the other two might be better? The cost of doing that is clear, but the benefit is not. Not to me.
Now, I can hear you laughing out loud from here, because I, personally, have spend countless hours arguing about this stuff. But if you look at my history, I think I'm pretty consistent about not arguing that some candidate is better than the other for some nebulous reasons, but because the mechanistic rules (policy, guidelines, conventions), as I can best understand them (and they are imperfect beasts), indicates one rather than another. And the other thing I try to do, is improve the rules so that they are less ambiguous, to get that percentage of articles for whom the titles can be determined simplistically/mechanically without prolonged discussion to be higher rather than lower. So what I try to do is get the titles better in line with the rules, and the rules better in line with the titles, so that we have a better/lighter/more precise/more effective title-deciding process.
In short, I understand the aversion to deterministic rules and their oppressiveness in general, especially in real life, or even with respect to all kinds of issues related to article content, but specifically with respect to picking titles for articles? Why is it so important to have freedom to finesse (if you will) in this particular context? Why not come up with simplistic/mechanistic, even Draconian, rules with respect to the relatively unimportant task of deciding titles? Who are what would be harmed, and how, presuming the titles that are indicated by such rules are within the reasonable range, if you know what I mean? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 05:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
I think that a large part of the success of Wikipedia is due precisely to the fundamental principle that Wikipedia does not have firm rules. Although this may make some Wikipedia processes such as AfD or RM seem like Calvinball to those who prefer the certainty of rules-based thinking, I'd argue that the long, often-repetitious discussions that you dismiss as unproductive are actually very near the heart of what makes Wikipedia successful. It is participatory engagement in defining what principles are important in a given context and how such principles can be applied.
Besides, the issues that result in lengthy discussions are rarely something that can be determined by a simplistic threshold-based mechanistic rule, or at least not by any rule that would enjoy wide support among the participants in such discussions. I'm sure you think otherwise, but that I guess that is at the core of our disagreement. I'd frame the issue as a matter of rules versus principles. The U.S. Internal Revenue Code is an example of what happens when rules-based thinking takes precedence over the thoughtful application of principles.
For an interesting perspective on how rules can produce unwanted results in a context outside Wikipedia, consider these opinions on accounting rules [6] and [7]. From personal experience, the U.S. FDA "rules" regarding the validation of software can sometimes produce a culture where the goal of software testing shifts away from ensuring that software functions as needed to support critical operations towards doing the minimum amount of testing that will pass muster with auditors. That is, I think rules-based thinking encourages a mindset in which the objective becomes legalistic parsing of the rules rather than honest engagement with principles (or complying with the letter of the law without consideration of the spirit). I've also just discovered this interesting essay on the topic. There are relevant perspectives from education theory as well. Consider this essay. I especially like this quote from Kenneth Burke:
Wikipedia is exactly such an ongoing discussion in which individual participants come and go. I think we should encourage engagement in the discussion and I can't help but feel that reducing actions to mechanistic rules short-circuits that engagement.Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. The Philosophy of Literary Form 110-111.
I suppose a part of what I see as the issue is terminology. While I don't think that you see your "rules" as having the force of law, I think that casting them in the framework of mechanistic rules has an effect similar to giving students a textbook with all the received knowledge pre-digested for them, rather than having them engage with the issues and understand what principles apply and how they should be prioritized in specific contexts. older ≠ wiser 15:38, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Another analogy is the rules of solitaire. You are free to follow the rules, or not. But if they're good rules, following the rules will be more satisfying. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 15:51, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Given that this approach accounts for cases where the rules do not produce a selection ("if it doesn't indicate anything for a given situation, or ..."), how do you conclude that it assumes "rules can be created which consistently satisfy ..."? The goal is to improve the rules so that they do produce a good result consistent with our principles in more and more cases over time, but never is it assumed that they will ever be perfect in that regard. Just better next year than this year, hopefully. In other words, we try to continually improve the rules so that there are fewer and fewer cases where there are questions and issues that need to be resolved via debate and discussion.
I've put a lot of thought and effort into this approach, and it's frustrating to see you object to it on grounds which are based on such enormous misconceptions about what, it seems to me, it clearly says. I apologize if I was not clear and that's why you misunderstood. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:02, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
There are really two phases in the title decision process. The first phase is the objective application of the relevant rules, a process which ideally suggests exactly one title. The second phase is the subjective evaluation of what was indicated by the first phase. If the first phase indicates exactly one particular title and there are no objections, great. However, if it doesn't indicate anything for a given situation, or gives multiple candidates, then not only do we have make the decision subjectively, ideally it's an opportunity to improve the relevant rules too. In that sense phase 2 itself has two phases, 2a and 2b: 2a evaluates the output of phase 1, either approving the outcome or coming up with another one. 2b is only needed when the outcome of phase 1 is not approved in 2a; it's rule evaluation/improvement.
Ideally, the second phase is just a formality and 2b is never needed. In reality, phase 1 does not always work out so perfectly and 2b is an opportunity to review and improve our rules. But as our rules are improved and honed like this, we should be getting a higher and higher number of cases where phase 2 does not find a problem with phase 1, and the percentage of title decisions that can be made mechanically approaches 100%. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Blueboar, I agree in general that reaching a consensus will result in fewer debates later - but that does not really address what we're talking about here. A system with more deterministic rules is going to produce titles on which there is more consensus more often at the outset than a system with less deterministic rules. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:47, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
"In so many cases there is not a single obviously correct title." But in the vast majority of those cases there is not a single obviously correct title because people like you object to honing the rules so that there is a single obviously correct title, for at least most of these cases. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy!
I ask again, how in your opinion would the quality of Wikipedia even be affected, much less improved, by doing something other than just randomly choosing either the existing or proposed title in most cases brought to RM? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:45, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
But in the vast majority of those cases there is not a single obviously correct title because people like you object to honing the rules so that there is a single obviously correct title, for at least most of these cases That is so ridiculously false and even insulting that I'm not even sure where to begin.
From the sound of it, we might as well autogenerate random unique sequences of characters for article titles rather then let human tendencies to have different perspectives on things get in the way. older ≠ wiser 21:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Surely you understand that there are many ways to establish rules for deterministically choosing meaningful and reasonable titles for many more articles than we currently do; and that resorting to random unique strings is not required at all (though of course that is the extreme most simplistic way to establish titles deterministically).
But please clarify. Are you saying it's impossible to select meaningful and reasonable titles with deterministic rules, therefore we shouldn't even try? Or are you saying we don't want to do that even if it's possible, because vague non-deterministic rules with conflicts worked out in discussion and debate is preferable? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:04, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Anyway, so, is it your doubt that "mechanistic rules can be formulated that will definitively resolve such cases" that is at the root of your objection to even trying to formulate and adopt such rules? What if you were shown a set of rules that did exactly that? Or at least did a much better job than our policy etc. currently does in terms of percentage cases for which titles are deterministically selected by the rules? Would you still object to adopting them? If so, why? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:41, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Okay, that helps. Now I know you're not against deterministic rules even if they're possible.
So, let's get to the heart of the matter. Would you agree that it's possible for one set of rules to deterministically select a title for a given percentage of all articles, requiring discussion for the remainder, and that there is almost certainly a revision of those rules that would increase that percentage, and reduce the size of the remainder that requires discussion? If so, would you also agree that such a revision would be desirable, and, conversely, that a revision to the rules that decreased the percentage of articles whose titles could be selected deterministically, and which increased the remainder that required discussion, would be less desirable? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
I would have thought that an objective application of rules and guidelines would be a pretty good approach, and I pretty much thought that was how I worked. But so often I found myself in conflict with Born2cycle, who claimed to be doing similarly, that I realized that the application of rules is in fact always subjective. And his attempts (and mine) to rewrite the rules to better support his (or my) opinion by "clarifying" what we think the rules mean, or to change the weight of different inputs to the decision process, make it clear that a mechanical process is not likely to work, unless the mechanics includes rewriting the rules as you go. Do the outcomes of these discussions make WP better? In many cases, not, or only a little, not commensurate with the effort invovled. So I try to just comment on the ones that involve matters of principle that help us make WP better and more consistent, or to put up a line of defense against those trying to move WP style in a direction that I think is worse (e.g. Enric Naval, the great capitalizer). Dicklyon ( talk) 21:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Consider our ongoing disagreement about titles being descriptive vs. concise. The reason I favor concise is precisely because that's a relatively deterministic rule. On the other hand, "descriptive" is most certainly not - once you accept that titles should be descriptive, that opens up a whole can of worms. How descriptive is sufficiently descriptive? If adding one more word clearly makes it more descriptive, must we add it? What about another word? And another? Where is the line?
But maybe I'm missing something. Propose a change to the rules that makes descriptive titles more acceptable, but also is more deterministic than the current situation (e.g., "precisely, but only as precise as necessary... titles should be concise"), and I will support it. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:37, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Seva, that's a good idea to come up with a formula of some kind. And I've started on such a project in the past. See User:Born2cycle/how2title and User:Born2cycle/Titles. These are not production-ready, but give you an idea of what I'm thinking about. I've abandoned how2title, but need to incorporate some of that into Titles, which is just getting started.
But that's kind of an extreme/ideal approach, and my discussions above were not really related to that. What I'm trying to discuss here is the general idea that more determinism in our "rules" (uses loosely as in IAR) regarding titles is desirable, and more ambiguity is less desirable; and that changes to policy and guidelines should take that into account. That is, we should ask ourselves the following about each change... Does this change make deciding titles more or less deterministic?.. Because more deterministic is better. More deterministic rules are better because that means less gray area and fewer seemingly endless disagreements and discussions about titles which often are about decisions that do not affect the quality of the encyclopedia (and hence are a waste of time). Let's make our rules more deterministic so less time is wasted on disagreeing and discussing issues that do not affect the quality of the encyclopedia, so more time can be spent on improving the encyclopedia.
You say "Sometimes it's hard to tell if B2C favours certain outcomes not because they're better, but because they're easier to model". Yes, that's because I often equate (within reason) "easier to model" with "better". That's because I believe in the vast majority of RM discussions there is no "better" as far as the encyclopedia quality is concerned. What is better, is having definitive rules that flip a coin for us so that we don't have to waste time deciding which of two equally good options is "better". Of course, some choices really are "better" than others, but in those cases our rules should already select the better title, and, if they don't, that's a sign they need to be updated.
And what I mean by "within reason" can be best explained by example. Either of the rules "always use UK English spelling" or "always use US English spelling" would be easier to model than ENGVAR, but it's unreasonable, given our goal of using and reflecting all varieties of English. But that doesn't mean we don't have rules - it means we must have more nuanced rules. Adding nuance to the rules does not preclude retaining determinism in the rules, if an effort is made to do so.
What I'm really trying to do here is persuade my colleagues here that it's worth putting in the effort to make our rules work like the learning/improving oracle I described above, and thus approaching title decisions in the two-phase approach also described above. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:36, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, if more deterministic rules would help settle titles for all but these most controversial issues, would it be worth it then?
And what about dividing this page into two parts (maybe still on the same page, maybe not), where the top part is principles, and the bottom part is rules? Then we would have rules, and they could be continually improved by using the above 2-phase method until they settled all but the most controversial titles, and even some of those. How about that? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:10, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
The guidance here recommends Google Books and Google News for providing info for deciding commonname issues. But I think there's a bias with Google News that hasn't been taken into account.
Press agencies syndicate their content, so that a piece written by staff can end up being published on multiple news sites.
A hundred articles produced by the New York Times, the Guardian and and Sydney Morning Herald gets you a hundred returns on Google News. But a hundred articles produced by AP, AFP and Reuters could get you thousands of returns. So, lets say the first three prefer "tomayto" and the second three prefer "tomahto". Google news would tell you that "tomahato" wins by many hundred percent. But that's not a real reflection of the reality that the sources are split fairly evenly. It's actually a wildly unreliable place to look, at least in cases where house style is likely to be an issue.
My proposal is that News should not be recommended in the guidance, just Books.
-- FormerIP ( talk) 00:02, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
Does combining two names of a topic with "and" create a description of that topic? That question is being discussed here. -- Born2cycle ( talk)
The lead of this page states:
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. It need not be the name of the subject; many article titles are descriptions of the subject.
This has been interpreted to mean that articles about subjects that have names "need not be the name of the subject [and can be] descriptions of the subject".
Does anyone know of any examples of articles with titles that are not the name of the topic, but a description, about a topic that does have a name?
Unless those situations are not as extremely rare (if they exist at all) as I believe they are, I propose we change this wording to something like:
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. Titles are usually but not always the name of the subject; articles about topics that have ambiguous names require natural or parenthetic disambiguation, and articles about subjects without names are usually descriptions of the subject.
-- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
As to proposing a change during a discussion, I'm just asking for clarity on what is consensus on this issue in general. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
But, if consensus insists on having this exception, I would propose that all names be assumed to not be inappropriate to use for reasons of propriety, unless there were reliable sources that said otherwise. If the issue of whether it is inappropriate is itself controversial in the sources, then go with the preponderance of what current respectable news sources are doing, as determined by consensus. There is no way to avoid a few leaves in the tree that depend on judgment as determined by consensus, but the goal is to winnow the tree such that visiting those leaves is rare.
But for now, we could easily accommodate it with this wording:
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. Titles are usually but not always the name of the subject; articles about topics that have ambiguous names require natural or parenthetic disambiguation, articles about subjects without names are usually descriptions of the subject, and when the name is not used for the title for reasons of propriety, a descriptive title may be chosen instead.
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. Titles are usually but not always the name of the subject; articles about topics that have ambiguous names require natural or parenthetic disambiguation, articles about subjects without names are usually descriptions of the subject, and when there is no name available for reasons of propriety, a descriptive title may be chosen instead.
As to the impropriety wording, how about...
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. Titles are usually but not always the name of the subject; articles about topics that have ambiguous names require natural or parenthetic disambiguation, articles about subjects without names are usually descriptions of the subject, and when there is no name available for POV reasons, a descriptive title may be chosen instead.
I'm of the opinion that any changes to the page from discussions here may need a separate discussion, with exact wording, announcing the intent to make the change when there is a consensus. As it is now, I suspect that many editors are too busy doing real work to participate here reading the discussions every hour and commenting multiple times. If it needs a discussion, the proposal probably needs consensus for the wording change. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:16, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
I only see the phrase "two-thirds" once on this page, introduced on Oct. 19, and roundly opposed. How could someone get the impression that it won consensus? Dicklyon ( talk) 02:13, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
I also absolutely oppose the introduction of this two thirds idea or anything like it. It would create all kinds of problems, largely to do (yet again) with the use of googlehits. The reason why Climategate had problems as a title was to do with how the term was used (often in scarequotes, often explicitly described as a term used by the skeptic/denialist camp, and in other mentions the term itself was being protested). The problem with using google hits and "pro-life" was that this picked up on direct quotations of anti-abortion activists in publications which themselves explicitly avoided the term in their manuals of style as POV. It also treats reliable status as a binary condition - all reliable sources count for one, with none seen as more reliable or authoritative than another (small town newspaper counts for as much as WSJ and NYT, which in turn count for as much as authoritative academic publications, for example) - and that's quite apart from google news and scholar not effectively representing the sum of "reliable sources".
In fact, it's a good example of how these kinds of formulas fail to reproduce community decision-making outcomes. People are a lot smarter than the very basic arithmetic presented here, and we would lose a whole lot of intelligence as an organisation if we brought in rules like this. If there is an algorithm that reproduces current outcomes in disputed cases, or helps us reach such outcomes faster, fine. This isn't it.
The other obvious problem would be the POV wikilawyers, who would try out all kinds of permutations of searches in search of the one that produces the magical number. They would then bang on and on about it until unsuspecting editors passing by might think (possibly in the spirit of finding compromise) they have a valid point.
As a note - I wouldn't make an edit based on a sense of "winning an argument". You need to achieve consensus, which is something different. It's a bit like our policy of "verifiability, not truth". VsevolodKrolikov ( talk) 08:38, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
Here's an example: Disputed term A gets 30 thousand hits. Term B gets 20,000. Terms C, D and E get 17,000 each in our magical RS search engine. I've been in disputes where these numbers would be used to demonstrate that A has two thirds usage in reliable sources - because it's two-thirds more than the next most common title.
A is, of course, disputed in real life. Let's say of all the sources using term A, a third of them use it either to quote someone using the term (but they avoid using it themselves) or to critique the use of it as a biased term. Do we count that as a "use" of term A, or as evidence that term A is non-neutral? A wikilawyer just repeats the 2/3A, 1/3B mantra again and again. S/he might add for good measure: "maybe they're critical of term A, but they're still using it. Term A obviously recognisable". If you mention term C, they'll add up A and B and say "only a small minority use that term". It's bad stats, as it's possible that over half of all sources use C. We don't know how big our overall sample is - just that A gets the most hits.
What if eight of the top ten encyclopedias and eight of the top ten major broadsheets avoid term A for MoS reasons, but three hundred local newspapers picked up by google use it? Do we dismiss these former sources as "elitist" or having a "liberal POV" and as such undeserving of greater weight than the local rag for a town of 50,000? I've had that thrown back when presenting evidence of usage.
I've come across all of these tactics, and in such situations, pursuing a simple numbers rule decreases, rather than increases the quality of decision making.
We should look for the best quality reliable sources first, and not only for their actual usage, but also for their commentary on usage. This is better than doing bad stats on bad samples. You say "you can easily group sources a bit - by looking at Google scholar and specific news websites - and that argument is going to carry more weight than a straight Google hit analysis", but your edit to policy didn't say anything like this. A fundamental problem is that we can't operate a 66.67% rule and differentiate between the quality of reliable sources. VsevolodKrolikov ( talk) 10:56, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
Its clear one of the issues we both agree on with the abortion debate was the lack of a proper statistical analysis of all the possible terms - this is hardly going to be less likely to happen with a specific numeric target. If there was a specific numeric target to reach you could do that analysis including all the possible titles and walk away from the debate - if the closing admin then didn't take that into account you could quite reasonably ask them why they didn't and expect them to reconsider their closure in relation to it. Having a proper statistical analysis of the different sources would have made the discussion far more satisfactory. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 20:40, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
In the current/ongoing/protracted naming debate over at Sega Genesis and Mega Drive, the latest proposal to break the editorial logjam between the two most logical titles is to use the titles Sega Genesis and Mega Drive in alternation - moving the article back and forth between these two titles every year!!
I can't begin to say how dumb this is - but I'm exhausted by the argument - I'd appreciate some vociferous responses to this suggestion. SteveBaker ( talk) 17:08, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi folks - proposer of the title revolution here. I'm not a video game person whatsoever; I've simply been following the titling discussion with interest, and occasionally popping in with a dispute resolution suggestion. My first attempt was a neutral descriptive (amended when my first descriptive title proved unpopular with the video game insiders). Next, I was supportive of a request for an arbitration panel to choose among the various titles. When these proposals went nowhere, I suggested the rotating title. You can see my proposal here, but essentially the rationale is that when you have two titles that equally satisfy the naming criteria, but no consensus to pick either, a rotation ensures that the title will always be satisfactory. As for whom we serve - the readers - they will not notice or care which one you pick. As PMA noted above, neither will they notice the switch, any more than they notice any of the other hundreds (thousands?) of title changes we make every year. And if this does indeed settle the issue, then we have happy editors who can get back to improving article content instead of wasting energy on titling disputes. I know it's weird, but I think it deserves serious consideration in this case. Ask yourselves: isn't having Sega Genesis this year, and Mega Drive next year better than having Sega Genesis and Mega Drive every year? Dohn joe ( talk) 16:47, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
You know, when I saw the heading on this, my first though was that someone was suggesting we animate the title so it would "revolve" (ie spin). But that would be silly - a half-revolution per year cycle would be far to slow! Blueboar ( talk) 22:41, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
I am not at the present making a proposal here I may later. This is to obtain opinion and valid reasoning. First up I will acknowledge that I am a taxonomist and hence a scientist, hence I probably have a bias against common names because of the scientific innacuaracy they introduce into an artical, I acknowledge that up front.
I feel that WP would be better served and do better justice to international conventions on naming of species, if the scientific name of a species was the title of the page, with all common names known set up as redirects. My reasons for this are as follows:
These are my views, as this is the policy page I would like to see the reasons for not using scientific names, not the "because its policy" I see everywhere. I get that its currently policy and I abide by it, I am wondering if the policy is a good one, with respect to species of animals, plants etc. I am not referring to other uses of common names here.
Thank you, Faendalimas talk 20:10, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
About Talk:Sega_Genesis_and_Mega_Drive#Requested_move_.28November_2011.29 A user argued "Even if every single Indian would identify the system, in English, as "Megadrive", it still has no direct bearing on this naming. WP:Commonname is about sources, not the consumers themselves." For users unaware, "Sega Genesis" is the title used in North America, while "Megadrive" is used in English-speaking countries everywhere else. The geographic distribution influences what sources use. "Megadrive" is also the original Japanese name of the console. The pro Genesis users argue that Genesis clearly appears in more sources than Megadrive, so, despite the geographic distribution, Commonname clearly prefers "Genesis." Do you agree with his assessment? WhisperToMe ( talk) 04:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I would just like to add that the opposite arguments have also been made (before the India argument came about) by the people who wanted the commonwealth name. The people who wanted the name that existed in the commonwealth countries argued that because the US population was disproportionately large it would lead to a disproportionate amount of scholarly work and reliable sources on the subject, so that even though the name "Sega Genesis" appears far more in reliable sources, that amount should be discounted (or ignored) and the name used in the most countries should be the commonname. I've always contended that the current policy is completely fair and neutral...just look to the prevalence of the english language reliable sources. If there is a significant majority for one name and that name otherwise doesn't have problems under the general naming criteria, you're golden. LedRush ( talk) 18:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
This isn't really the place to rehash the exact same debate currently ongoing on the Sega Genesis and Mega Drive talk page. Specific article aside, pre-internet sources aside, User:WhisperToMe seems to think I need to be taken to task for my assertion that sources, not population numbers should decide the issue. APL ( talk) 20:13, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
In cases like this it is best to revert to the last stable name and failing agreement on that the name used in the first version after the article was not longer a stub. That is the method that has worked for lots of articles eg gasoline and tram (to name on from either side of the pond).-- PBS ( talk) 08:57, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 30 | Archive 31 | Archive 32 | Archive 33 | Archive 34 | Archive 35 | → | Archive 40 |
Is it considered acceptable to use Unicode superscripts and subscripts in article titles, like in C² Centauri? Or would they be considered special characters, and thus avoided in article titles?-- 十 八 20:55, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm beginning to regret that I ever added bullet points for naming criteria to this page. They were not intended to be rules that people have to follow, and I think it's becoming abundantly clear that they're not a very accurate description of how we title articles. Therefore, they're broken, as policy. A strict reading of WP:CRITERIA does not enjoy consensus support. The discussion that I've just closed at Talk:Climatic Research Unit email controversy#Requested Move makes that quite apparent.
So what should we do with this page? Burn it for warmth? Rewrite it to accurately describe (never prescribe) how we actually make titling decisions? Base everything on hit-counts at Google books? Stop reading policy pages, because they represent legalistic cancer that should be ignored?
I like 3 of those 4 ideas. :) - GTBacchus( talk) 18:48, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
You might notice that I haven't thrown any babies, nor any water, anywhere. However, I think that bullet point criteria are waaaay too likely to be taken as rules, and frankly B2c, you're the strongest evidence of that claim. I'm worried that you're on a crusade to make this policy into a set of deterministic rules, and I think that is destructive. I don't think there's any lack of good faith; I just don't think you understand the role of policy here.
As for what to actually do, I'm really stumped. I don't want to do over at Talk:China what I did at Talk:Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, because I think that gives the wrong idea about how these things should go. I've just been asked to attempt some kind of closure there, and I'm scratching my head over it. I'm not going to remove the criteria from this policy anytime soon, but I am going to think about how to improve the situation.
I don't like the way you've been using the criteria, B2c; I think it's harmful. Are you reading consensus from observations, or are you pushing for something that you think ought to be?
I also don't buy the argument that following sources is automatically neutral, and I don't think the community buys that argument. I could be wrong about any or all of this. I don't know the answers, and I'm suspicious of anyone who says they do. - GTBacchus( talk) 20:44, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
When I first added a list of criteria to the top of this page, I was trying to describe what people actually do in naming discussions. They don't pull up a list of 5 criteria and start making check-marks, and I hope they don't start. - GTBacchus( talk) 23:45, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
For non-controversial titling questions, nobody even consults this page, because the answer is generally obvious. The policy is really here to provide some guidance on difficult disputes, and I think we're not doing that too well.
I really don't know what the solution is; I just do my best following community consensus in closing move requests. I don't think there's consensus to approach each titling question with the criteria in hand, expecting them to lead us to the right title. That is, unfortunately in my view, what a couple of people seem to be pushing for. It might be worth a broadly advertized RfC.
I'm doing a lot of thinking about this. - GTBacchus( talk) 20:44, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't know why you linked LOCALCONSENSUS there. When I say policies aren't prescriptive, a more appropriate link is WP:IAR - GTBacchus( talk) 23:41, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
"Broken as policy" was unduly strong wording, no doubt. I'm just tired of seeing some junk I wrote down one day elevated to "Principal naming criteria" and quoted left and right. It's obvious to me that we don't decide titles by consulting that list. - GTBacchus( talk) 23:37, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Presenting the criteria as questions is better than presenting them as rules, but I most prefer presenting them as descriptions of what generally happens. I won't fight about it, though. - GTBacchus( talk) 15:18, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
(unindenting) Since we seem to have broad agreement on this change, I've implemented it. Jakew ( talk) 14:26, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
I think we should name and document this malady. I'm coming here directly from the second disputed close in as many months at Talk:Crêpe. That page is highly educational for anyone wishing to understand how to apply COMMONNAME.
In particular, it's very easy to make a pair of Google searches, write down two numbers, and come to a conclusion. Those numbers are, however, very often misleading. If searches are analyzed as they were by User:Noetica in that discussion, the results are much more illuminating... but it requires significantly more work.
Actually clicking through to the last page of results, to get an actual count rather than an estimate, is a basic technique. A more advanced - but often enlightening - technique involves looking at the sources themselves via page previews in Google Books or at Amazon. This will reveal to the curious reader that some sources are not in fact about the correct topic, and possibly other surprises, such as the fact that Google often gets it wrong, especially when it comes to reporting on the presence or absence of diacritical marks.
Comments? - GTBacchus( talk) 14:59, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
- Search engines are problematic unless their verdict is overwhelming; modified letters have the additional difficulties that some search engines will not distinguish between the original and modified forms, and others fail to recognize the modified letter because of optical character recognition errors.
- Google hits are generally considered unreliable for testing whether one term is more common than another, but can suggest that no single term is predominant in English. If there are fewer than 700 hits, the actual count (gotten by paging to the final page of hits) may be accurate for Google's particular corpus of English, but whether this represents all English usage is less certain. If there are more than 700 estimated hits, the number gotten by going to the last page will be wrong; Google only loads a limited number of hits, no matter how many there are. Counts over 1000 are usually estimates, and may be seriously wrong. [n 1] If several competing versions of a name have roughly equal numbers (say 603 for one variant and 430 for another), there may well be divided usage. When in doubt, search results should also be evaluated with more weighting given to verifiable reliable sources than to less reliable sources (such as comments in forums, mailing lists and the like). Do consult reliable works of general reference in English.
- Note
I agree some qualification is needed. Raw search result data can very easily be misinterpreted. Google is most useful when the difference is very pronounced. But it should not be entirely discounted. In particular, Google analytic tools such as http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/ and http://www.google.com/trends can help to inform a discussion, although these shouldn't be viewed as definitive any more than raw hit counts. older ≠ wiser 01:08, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
There is a very good reason we should go with the practice of authoritative sources rather than our own estimates of general usage: we are not lexicographers, we are (essentially) anonymous internet users. They, on the other hand, have experts, stylebooks, consultants and exposure to public criticism. Having COMMONNAME as an overemphasised policy unfortunately makes us vulnerable to the pushing of original (and often very amateurish) research. The truth is, if authoritative sources don't agree in more or less even measure, we typically find criteria other than COMMONNAME for making a choice - such as NPOV, WORLDWIDE, ENGVAR and so on. "Whichever is more common" is a criterion, but it tends not to be the primary one when it's a close call. (And as people point out above, Googlehits can't be trusted to finesse beyond the bleeding obvious.)
I would rather the ambitions people had for the policy were reduced to pointing out that we make choices like Caffeine (not 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione) and for some individuals we make choices such as Hulk Hogan (not Terry Gene Bollea), and occasionally Bill Clinton rather than William Jefferson Clinton even though the latter is probably recognised and is the formal title. Beyond that I don't believe the community puts such an active stress on COMMONNAME (rather than NPOV), except when some users find this particular policy page useful in the middle of a dispute. I get worried by talk of using commonname as a basis of "simplifying" naming disputes through "metrics". It's legislating, not reflecting considered practice. VsevolodKrolikov ( talk) 12:45, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
I do realize that looking at RM discussions for evidence introduces some kind of selection bias, because at RM, we only see the tiny minority of articles that (a) have a title that someone wants to change, and (b) where the move is blocked by a history existing at the proposed target. Most articles never see such a discussion. - GTBacchus( talk) 18:33, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
The problem with clicking through to the last page is that Google (including Google Books) will never show more than 1000 results, even if there are millions. (Searching on never itself, and clicking through, results in 382 hits, although Google's searchbot hasn't gotten out of the titles with Never in them.) If we understood the search algorithm better, it would be a useful control on duplicate hits; it's an accurate control on rare search phrases. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
The section WP:POVTITLE has been invoked in several current and recent disputes, and is undergoing discussion above. Is it appropriate policy? Has it been misapplied? Does it conflict with NPOV? Or support NPOV? Does its history suggest that more discussion is needed before treating it as policy? Should it be clarified? strengthened? weakened? Dicklyon ( talk) 22:50, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Let’s say, for instance, that the next Lorena Bobbitt-like incident involves her attorney hiding evidence. The whole incident might be widely known for a summer—and capture the public’s imagination during that time—as “Wienergate”; an encyclopedia ought to consider what name things would be remembered as years later, after the “schtick” moniker has worn off.
In fact, that last sentence (An encyclopedia ought to consider what name things would be remembered as years later, after the “schtick” moniker has worn off) isn’t bad. Maybe someone can put some lipstick on that pig and pass it off as a prom date (candidate for addition to the guideline). Greg L ( talk) 00:02, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
WP:RECENT can apply, but it should not be an excuse to not use the only common name used by reliable sources to refer to the topic, in favor of an invented/contrived one. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 02:56, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Source quality arises all the time in move discussions, and I find the suggestion that it does not to be very strange. Should I start a list? Obviously the quality of sources matters, and some are more reliable than others. - GTBacchus( talk) 23:24, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
The problem is that we usually mostly categorise the mainstream press as " reliable sources" although we know their shortcomings – they are owned by a phone-hacker (I jest, but only a little), don't always get their facts right, aren't objective, and almost all drop diacritics (but I digress). Thus seeking to apply that notion of "reliability" to change article titles is so fraught with NPOV issues. For me, as often seen at the NPOV/N, the issue should be the extent to which these can be relied upon to fulfil our objectives; the popular press must seem like the "great unwashed", and ought to be kept at arm's length. When editors attempt to move articles to obviously 'POV' titles claiming a numerically superior popular sources are in support, we must tread carefully. I don't believe that the current wording was meant to be lawyered in the way we are currently witnessing, but I wouldn't want articles necessarily to be moved to euphemistic names, such that "Tiananmen Massacre", as it is almost universally known, ending up at " Tiananmen Square protests of 1989". Nor do I wish to disturb other articles where the event or incident is known by no other name (viz Boston Tea Party, or Nanking Massacre) -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 03:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
It does not mesh particularly well with NPOV. The closest justification for it is WP:NPOV#Naming, but that is substantially more nuanced. While this policy (erroneously, in my opinion) justifies itself by asserting that neutrality and opinions asserted by >50% of the sources are one and the same, NPOV describes things as a trade-off between neutrality and clarity ("While neutral terms are generally preferable, this must be balanced against clarity"), implying that editors must judge whether there is a sufficient boost in clarity to justify the loss of neutrality. Moreover, it says that popular but non-neutral names "may" (as opposed to must) be used, and that "The best name to use for something may depend on the context in which it is mentioned; it may be appropriate to mention alternative names and the controversies over their use, particularly when the thing in question is the main topic being discussed."
It also clashes with WP:RNEUTRAL, which says: "The subject matter of articles may be represented by some sources outside Wikipedia in non-neutral terms. Such terms are generally avoided in Wikipedia article titles, per the words to avoid guidelines and the general neutral point of view policy. For instance the non-neutral expression "Attorneygate" is used to redirect to the neutrally titled Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy. The article in question has never used that title, but the redirect was created to provide an alternative means of reaching it because a number of press reports use the term."
One of the problems, to my mind, is that POVTITLE is often interpreted to mean that the most frequently used name must always be used. I think that it should be rewritten to indicate that it is valid to do so, but commonality is but one of several factors to consider, and editors must use their judgement. Other factors include: what is the quality of the sources that are being considered? What is the relative prominence and neutrality of all candidate titles (if there's basically only one common name, which isn't neutral, then the choice may be more obvious than if there are two common names, one neutral but less frequently used, the other non-neutral but more commonly used)? Have sources themselves have addressed the neutrality of names? How does the choice of name affect clarity? How do redirects and discussion of alternative names affect the outcome of the choice? Jakew ( talk) 09:13, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
The whole point of moving this page to "Article title" was to make it clear the the title is not a name. The Article title should be the name that most people will search on even if in the opinion of some people it is biased. Who judges whether a name is biased? Who judges when a name move from current to historical? If we have reliable sources that make those judgements for us wonderful, but it not then whether a "name" is biased or non historical is a matter of opinion and as such divisive for the project. Whether the majority of sources use the name " climategate" is quantifiable and not so open to editorial points of view as to whether it is biased. In my opinion this is like the judgement of whether Lech Wałęsa is "correct" or an "eyesore", and is not something we can agree upon, but editors in good faith can agree on whether reliable sources in English usually use Lech Wałęsa or Lech Walensa. Equally we can agree whether a name (biased or not) is the most common usage in reliable English language sources. Better to use a metric that brings a speedy resolution to naming disputes (and integrates with the content policies) than non quantifiable method that leads to disputes based on the opinions of a small number of Wikiepdia editors. -- PBS ( talk) 12:03, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Comment I would agree with PBS above on this one-it’s really about what the sources say. Too often we use words in our policies and guidelines whose real meanings are inconsistent with the intent they are trying to convey. Three of those words come to mind out of WP:POVTITLE and WP:NPOV#NAMING (from dictionary.com)
Indeed we should strive to make our article titles as neutral as practical and use words that don’t blatantly favor one POV over another or infer a bias that is not fully supported by sources. All sources display some bias and some POV. Neutrality (especially our NPOV policy) can only be approximated based on what the sources say. The Marias Massacre or Baker Massacre was indeed a massacre by the very definition of the term: massacre. It is an unbiased and neutral title because the preponderance of sources calls the event by those names. There is no controversy. There certainly is POV, a POV that most all sources agree that the event was indeed a massacre. Having read POVTITLE and NPOV Naming, I find no issues with them as long as they emphasize that we use article titles that are consistent with the spirit and verbiage of the preponderance of reliable sources. (along with the other naming criteria) I think it says that now.-- Mike Cline ( talk) 15:55, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
In the end, the NPOV title is the title that is used by (high-quality) reliable sources, even if that title includes what some individuals believe are "biased" or "disparaging" terms. We want non-judgmental terms when editors are making up the name, but we can, do, and should choose "biased" and "disparaging" terms whenever good sources agree on that. So: Boston Massacre is the NPOV/neutral title, even though "massacre" is biased; Teapot Dome scandal is the NPOV/neutral title, even though "scandal" is disparaging; and so forth. To name a controversial article that Dicklyon has been involved in, Homosexual transsexual is indisputably the NPOV/neutral title, even though nearly all sources, regardless of POV, agree that the term is highly offensive to many of the people it labels. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 16:42, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
I interpret the remarks above as general support for the concept of POVTITLE, but a desire to move toward a more nuanced and less absolute interpretation, perhaps rewriting it to be more in alignment with careful statements at WP:NPOV#Naming. Anyone disagree? Dicklyon ( talk) 17:54, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
If we could quantify WP "goodness" in some kind of units - I'd say that in the vast majority of cases the most common name is clearly better. In some cases another name might be better, but, if so, not by much. What we're talking about is whether the encyclopedia is improved by debating the issue in all those cases, and in the marginal ones where the more common name is slightly better (but close enough to debate). I'd really like to see a good argument for how the encyclopedia is improved by all that time and effort (multiplied countless times indefinitely). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
According to your interpretation of NPOV and reasoning we should move Gringo to Foreigner, Redneck to Uneducated poor farmer, and Spic to redirect to [{Latino]]. It makes no sense. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 04:45, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
The reason I started the RFC was to see if Born2cycle's interpretation had much support among other editors. My impression is that it does not. My summary was intended to draw out more clarity about that. So instead of more dead-horse beating by him, are there others who take a similar position? Or should we just move forward on writing a more moderated version, and consider his move toward a more strict version closed? Dicklyon ( talk) 14:28, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
I think some people are conflating the following two issues, thinking an answer of "yes" to the first means the answer to the second is also "yes":
For example, above, Cody7777777 ( talk · contribs) says, "the current text [of WP:POVTITLE] seems to be claiming that common names are always neutral, ", which is the basis for the claim that "the current text can indeed contradict NPOV, at least in some cases. ". I don't see anything in the text that means or even implies that. In fact, the text contains a number of statements that are clearly premised on the idea that common names often are not neutral (though using them is still fully in compliance with WP:NPOV):
I don't believe the text, or anyone here discussing it, is claiming that common names necessarily do not violate WP:NPOV because the names are neutral. Using them does not violate NPOV not because the names neutral (which they're not or we wouldn't be talking about not using them), but because editors are being neutral when deciding to use them, and in fact are in compliance with NPOV because by selecting the name most commonly used in relevant reliable sources they are "representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views..." In fact, choosing any other name would be not "representing fairly and proportionately all significant views as far as possible", because using the most common name would be going further towards doing that.
In short, we're talking about cases where the most common name is not neutral. "In such cases, the commonality of the name overrides our desire to avoid passing judgment." That is, per WP:NPOV the commonality of the name overrides our desire to use some other name that is more "neutral". Well, it overrides that desire in most of us. Others seem to have some difficulty with this subduing that desire. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 14:37, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, it all comes down to the question of whether using non-neutral common names as titles violates NPOV, and that is a matter of opinion. And since that is the matter of opinion at issue, you can't say giving NPOV the considerable weight it deserves as a pillar favors one side more than the other. Both sides are fully compliant and consistent with NPOV given their respective answers to this key question.
So we need to discuss on why and how using non-neutral common names as titles does or does not violate NPOV, because that's where the disagreement lies. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:34, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
The current text of the "Non-neutral but common names" reads:
My first attempt to rewrite this to be consistent with WP:NPOV#Naming is as follows:
(All changes are shown in red.)
These are just my initial thoughts, and I'd be surprised if they're right the first time. I've taken some of the new language straight from NPOV, as it seems least likely to conflict that way. So ... comments? Jakew ( talk) 16:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
I presume we also agree that it's not true that we never use such terms as titles. So, the issue is about where to the draw line between using some non-neutral terms (with respect to subject) as titles, and not others. Now, the only fair and neutral way I can fathom to draw that line which is in accordance with WP:NPOV is by looking at commonality of usage in sources. Can you suggest another fair and neutral method? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 18:40, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
A more nuanced definition of neutral title is: a title that is selected from a neutral point of view.
With that in mind the proposed text is incorrect in saying that "non-neutral titles are sometimes acceptable", as they aren't. What is acceptable is the use of non-neutral words as titles and as part of titles when that reflects common usage in reliable sources. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:40, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
The revision seems to be overly watered down in favor of wiki-revisionism. Wording like Non-neutral titles are sometimes acceptable....Wikipedia may follow the sources (my underlining for emphasis) seems to overly endorse political correctness (“being non-judgmenetal… man!”) despite common usage. If a significant majority of most-reliable English-language reliable sources all refer to something by a given name, Wikipedia should *generally* abide as such. Notable exceptions would be trendy names that A) seem unlikely to be remembered years later after the hubbub has died down; or B) names that are so colloquial that they detract from the encyclopedic nature. Whatever we come up with, it should anticipate what readers will type and what readers will expect to be taken to.
For instance, if I type “Boston Massacre" into the search field, I expect to be taken to an article by that name without 16-year-old all-volunteer wikipedians trying to Change The World©™® by coming up with something less emotionally charged against the Brits. By the same token, if I type “ Octomom” into the search field (which is what she is known by today as well as five years from now), I expect to be redirected to “ Nadya Suleman”—even though 90% of readers can’t remember her name and how to spell it but can all remember “Octomom.”
I think the best guideline would have unique examples (like “Octomom”) and would directly address the principles each touches upon. So I call for everyone here to put in the below section, examples of article names that teach to this issue. I’ll start it off with six. After we have a list of names of article titles and redirects, then let’s see a thoughtful guideline that sweeps it all up nicely. Greg L ( talk) 00:07, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I propose we all leave examples of interesting and/or unique article titles and their redirects here that we think speak to crafting a new guideline. Feel free to post examples that you agree with, as well as article titles you think are a mistake. We can discuss the implications. After that, maybe someone can craft a better guideline. In the below list, I agree with five of the six examples. On the one I disagree with, I don’t have strong feelings about, but still think it would have been best had it been titled as it is most commonly known. Greg L ( talk) 00:07, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
This is an open-forum section; additions welcome below the line.
Thinking about the above, I propose the following:
When a significant majority of English-language reliable sources refer to the topic or subject of an article by a given name, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (Examples include Boston Massacre, Rape of Belgium, and Teapot Dome scandal). In such cases, the commonality of the name overrides concerns that Wikipedia might seem as siding with one side of an issue.
Notable examples where Wikipedia eschews the common name include the following:
Article titles should anticipate what readers will type as a first guess and balance that with what readers expect to be taken to. Thus, typing “ Octomom” properly redirects to Nadya Suleman. Typing “ Boston Massacre” and “ Patriot (American Revolution)” do not redirect whereas both “ Pro-Choice” and “ Pro-Life” redirect to more neutral titles.
I consider the above to be part of my own post (verboten for others to edit) but also to be a live sandbox that I might update after seeing comments from others. Those who want to suggest something other than above should create their own green‑div. Greg L ( talk) 00:40, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
When a significant majority of English-language reliable sources refer to the subject of an article by a given name, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (e.g. Rape of Belgium). In such cases, the ubiquity of the name and/or how the name of an event has effectively or functionally become a proper noun (e.g. Boston Massacre) generally overrides concerns that Wikipedia might appear as endorsing one side of an issue.
Other factors warranting adoption of an otherwise seemingly non‑neutral title is if the subject is a proper noun (e.g. Defense of Marriage Act, National Right to Life Committee and NARAL Pro-Choice America), where the topic is highly historical in nature or has long been known by that name ( Teapot Dome scandal), and if the subject would be essentially unrecognizable under another name (typing “ Whazzup” redirects to the very similar Whassup?).
Notable circumstances under which Wikipedia often eschews a common name include the following:
Article titles and their redirects should anticipate what readers will type as a first guess and balance that with what readers expect to be taken to. Thus, typing “ Octomom” properly redirects to Nadya Suleman, in keeping with exception #2, above.
OK. Then…
When the subject of an article is referred mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (e.g. Boston Massacre, Rape of Belgium, and Teapot Dome scandal). In such cases, the ubiquity of the name and/or the fact that the name of an event has effectively or functionally become a proper noun generally overrides concerns that Wikipedia might appear as endorsing one side of an issue.
Notable circumstances under which Wikipedia often eschews a common name include the following:
Article titles should anticipate what readers will type as a first guess and balance that with what readers expect to be taken to. Thus, typing “ Octomom” properly redirects to Nadya Suleman, which is in keeping with point #2, above. Typing “ Antennagate” redirects the reader to a particular section of iPhone 4, which is in keeping with points #1 and #2, above. Typing “ Boston Massacre” and “ Patriot (American Revolution)” do not redirect, which is in keeping with the general principle, as is typing “ 9-11 hijackers”, which redirects to the more aptly named Hijackers in the September 11 attacks. However, both “ Pro‑choice” and “ Pro‑life” redirect to more neutral titles, in keeping with point #3, above.
I tried to take as much from what each of you wrote and incorporate it all here. That ended up trimming it down to something much closer to my original proposal.
Note that I left …functionally become a proper noun generally overrides concerns… (my italicizing for emphasis). I get my 2¢ in here too. If a signficiant majority of English-language reliable sources refer to something by a given name to such an extent that the name is ubiquitous and/or has effectively or functionally become a proper noun, then mere all-volunteer wikipedians generally have no business trying to change the world—no matter how well intentioned they might be (*sound of audience gasp*). If Wikipedia can have an article on “ Fuck”, (not withstanding that our readership has a large proportion of primary school children), we obviously expect readers to be sufficiently sophisticated to understand that we’re not taking sides when they type “9-11 hijacker” and are taken to an article containing the word “hijackers”.
How say ye all? Greg L ( talk) 17:53, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
As for your suggestion (But, in cases where more neutral alternative common names are possible, these can also be used instead), I am not at all supportive of encouraging wikipedian-crafted, more-neutral alternatives just because they are *possible*—not in the clear context where a given topic is referred mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources (my emphasis). This proposal pretty much endorses existing practices on Wikipedia (that is, it doesn’t try to make waves, so to speak), and adheres pretty closely to the general principle of “follow the RSs unless there are good encyclopedic reasons not to.”
This whole thread and its sub-threads have become lengthy enough that each editors’ views are pretty clear now. Compromise text is not easy; let’s see how the others feel now and see if we have a general consensus on this amalgam of compromise wording. Greg L ( talk) 19:04, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't think this has changed much, but if the examples are useful, good. As a matter of wording: names do not become proper nouns; they are proper nouns. As originally worded, also, this could be read to support use of Octomom as a title; it's a proper noun, now. The problem with Octomom is that it's not ubiquitous, and may be expected to fade with time. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:16, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
As for your observation that The central point was not that the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" were selfcreated slogans per se. The main point was that it could be proven with reliable sources that these terms are viewed as partisan and unneutral, and that they as a result of that are avoided by high quality sources. Let’s compare that to the current text now, which declares the following to be inherently non-neutral and worthy of not using in a title: Persuasive names and slogans crafted by partisans on still-active, contentious advocacy issues. They are essentially the same thing. One big difference pertains to cause & effect. You see, persuasive names and slogans crafted by partisans on still-active, contentious advocacy issues are inherently like shit: off of it comes stink. Your point is amounts to saying “avoid the stink, which comes from the shit.” The existing wording says “avoid the shit, from which comes stink.” Same diff. Cause & effect.
The more significant difference in your point is over what must be “proven” by RSs about something being biased. That works for long-established issues but breaks down when new articles are being created on new issues. It’s about time we had wording that cut to the chase and said, in effect, “Was the title crafted by partisans who are on dueling sides of an advocacy issue? If ‘yes,’ then think again about naming a Wikipedia article after it.” In short, it expects a healthy dose of WP:COMMONSENSE (*sound of audience gasp*) to be applied without having to wait around for an RS to say “These dorks are biased.” If the RSs come around on a new issue and state as much, that will just validate that Wikipedia was right to have avoided naming an article after it in the first place.
A (very) serious weakness of your argument lies in the last clause of your argument: …and that they as a result of that are avoided by high quality sources. Uhm… Note Encyclopedia Britannica’s article “Pro-life movement”. The New York Times too ( here). The EB is unquestionably a reliable source that is not avoiding naming an article after the (obviously biased) slogan. I happen to agree with the E.B. since I find it absurd to think that anyone would believe that the E.B. is endorsing the views of the pro‑life or pro‑choice movements because they have articles by those names; that’s absurd. I was, however, trying to craft better language that reflects current practices on Wikipedia and doesn’t try to change those practices. In my opinion, there is far too much political correctness run amok on Wikipedia by naive youngsters out to change the world and make it a better place—you know, hold hands on a hill and sing about Coca-Cola ( YouTube video), but that sort of thing seems to make wikipedians happy.
Nevertheless, I did my best to help craft, without passion or prejudice, consensus text that didn’t try to change how things work around here. Greg L ( talk) 00:31, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
If it were up to me, we’d lose #3 in its entirety. Instead, what’s there actually withstands scrutiny rather than crumble under the false pretense that the titles we avoid are avoided by high quality sources. As I provided above, there’s more RSs than you can shake a stick at that use the term (and the E.B. has an article by the name “Pro-life movement”). That’s clearly not the reason Wikipedia avoids such titles so please stop asking us to pay no attention to that illogic behind the curtain. Greg L ( talk) 01:02, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
"Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words", Rape is usually a neutral word. Massacre fits the bill better. -- PBS ( talk) 01:20, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
Greg, I think I'm missing your point about the Britannica and NYT. The Britannica link you gave goes to what looks like a redirect to "abortion (pregnancy)"; there's no article at "pro-life movement", or none that I can see anyway. And the NYT article you link talks about the "anti-abortion movement", and uses "pro-life" in the article only in quotes to say how people identify. The fact that the headline writers used it shouldn't be over-interpreted; they work by different rules, to sell stuff by catchy headlines. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:48, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
Does that jibe with other people's observations? - GTBacchus( talk) 16:31, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Alright, here is my suggested version:
When the subject of an article is referred mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title (subject to the other naming criteria). Sometimes that common name will include non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (e.g. Boston Massacre, Rape of Belgium, and Teapot Dome scandal). In such cases, the ubiquity of the name and/or the fact that the name of an event has effectively or functionally become a proper noun generally overrides concerns that Wikipedia might appear as endorsing one side of an issue.
When a subject has multiple common names, questions about their neutrality may be taken into account when choosing between them. Claims about terms being viewed as unneutral should generally be backed by references to reliable sources expressing the same opinion.
The language needs work, but this is essentially how I think we could comprehensively define how WP:NPOV should be interpreted when it comes to naming of articles. TheFreeloader ( talk) 17:27, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Dicklyon what do you see as the significant difference between WP:POVTITLE and WP:NPOV#Naming? -- PBS ( talk) 06:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I am not sure that the copying of the WP:NPOV#Naming section over to WP:AT was a good idea for the reasons Blueboar has mentioned -- When we copy stuff from one policy to another over time they get out of sync in subtle ways which then get exposed when a dispute arises and cause disputes on article talk pages and on the policy pages (like this one to become longer than they would if there was only one section in one policy). Perhaps the answer is to replace the bulk of WP:POVTITLE with a brief couple of sentence directing the reader to WP:NPOV#Naming and then change the redirect WP:POVTITLE to point to WP:NPOV#Naming.-- PBS ( talk) 06:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
When did WP:COMMONNAME come to be such a big and powerful provision, apparently written to supersede the other considerations? Consider where it was at the beginning of September, 2009, when it was just one provision parallel to the others, called "Use common names of persons and things" that just gave this sensible advice:
That month of Sept. 2009 was the "inflationary period", driven by high-temperature gases largely from Born2cycle and Pmanderson. It stretched in and out with lots of pushback, to finish the month with a much bigger section, but still much smaller than today's, called "Use Common Names", incorporating Born2cycle's usual call for "normally titled using the most common", saying: [3]
This includes PMA's favorite follow the sources language.
Born2cycle inserted "most commonly used" in multiple other provisions as well, but some of them didn't survive.
It seems clear that there was little consensus; all this inflation was hard fought; lots on the talk page, but no clear consensus (as noted on 20 Sept 2009), and no apparent attempt to assess opinions. And today, Born2cycle is relying on policy he wrote into here, on multiple fronts, to disempower editors from exercising editorial judgement, turning control over to people who make claims about how common different names are in sources, for example as was done at Talk:Crepe#Crepe.
Maybe it's time for a process to figure out what a consensus version of COMMONNAME would look like? Dicklyon ( talk) 06:01, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I started closing move requests in September 2006, and the first time I closed one where someone cites COMMONNAME (using that shortcut) appears to be here, in December of that year, but it didn't carry the day. Same here. Then at the end of December is the first time I moved a page per COMMONNAME, here. That was followed by this and this. Here it failed, here it succeeded, and here it was mentioned. Another success, and another. That gets us to the end of January 2007, so in those first 5 months, I closed 284 moves, where COMMONNAME was directly cited 10 times, "winning" about half the time. I know this is statistically meaningless, but I do like Memory Lane.
I think COMMONNAME is popular because it's simple to understand and apply, and it gives us the "right answer" a high percentage of the time. What do I mean by the "right answer"? I mean a title that sticks, and isn't reversed in the next move request a few months later. It doesn't do this all the time, however. I think it would be accurate to say that we very often give consensus support to titles that are consistent with COMMONNAME, but in contentious cases, all bets are off, and the community does what it does, which is to weigh the individual case on merits in long and complicated discussions.
I consider these to be a sign of good health for the project, and don't want to make them algorithmic and cut down the length and verbiage. We learn a lot in those discussions, and not all of what we learn needs to be stated in policy.
Anyway, those are my late-night thoughts on the matter. I guess I'll sleep on it, and see you gentlemen tomorrow. :) - GTBacchus( talk) 07:06, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
In response to the original question, I'm not seeing how COMMONNAME has become "more powerful" as a result of the changes made to this page - I would say it's been given less emphasis, not more, since it is now acknowledged that commonness of name is just one of a number of criteria that we use to determine titles, not the one overriding one that must be followed unless some other written convention gives explicit permission to deviate from it. On the other hand, I think the common name principle has always been and remains one of the most often used criteria in practice - and perhaps is slowly becoming even more so (we no longer have that once-standard monstrosity " Victoria of the United Kingdom", for example).-- Kotniski ( talk) 08:00, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
(Unindenting) Just a thought: there's clearly debate over the relative importance of neutrality and frequency of use, but it's also clear that they do matter, at least sometimes. So would it be worth adding bullet points for both of these to the "Deciding on an article title" section (with appropriate caveats)? The effect of this would be to make commonness one of several principles — I think that's consistent with practice, do others agree? Jakew ( talk) 09:39, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Which is better for an article title: "Death of" or "Murder of"? There has been an edit/move war at Murder of Keith Blakelock. The argument for 'Murder' relies on it being the common name, while proponents of 'Death' cite NPOV and it being a more encyclopaedic title. Is there a possibility of 'one size fits all' for this or do we think it best to be a per article basis? violet/riga [talk] 12:02, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
The title will be dependent on the article content. if the article is about a murder case and the background to the case and a murder trial etc. then it should be Murder of e.g. Murder of Sarah Payne or Murder of Danielle Jones. This is also where the subject of the article is only notable through being murdered. Death of is where the subject is already notable and the circumstances surrounding their death are also noteworthy but are not murder such as Death of Michael Jackson or Death of John Lennon. Both subjects are notable and the deaths are also notable due to the subjects and the reasons behind the death are also discussed and there is no focus on criminal aspects.-- Lucy-marie ( talk) 19:44, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
In any event the word "murder" should never be used on WP unless a competent legal authority (court, coroner, etc.) has declared it to be so. Conversely refusing to use "murder" when it is clearly relevant could be inapropriate euphemism. I'm not so sure that notablility only for being murdered or if the victim is already notable for other reasons is a relevant criterion for deciding the use of the word "murder". (Would for example John Lennon's death be more deserving of being called a murder than the death of an otherwise non-notable bank teller killed during a notable robbery?) Roger ( talk) 07:27, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
Case-by-case is how we should always approach any content issues. Any bright-line prohibition is basically begging WP:IAR. I agree with Blueboar that what makes the Blakelock case interesting is the circumstances that surround it beyond the actual action (which is what makes it also be an article on itself, otherwise it would be part of the article of the riot in which he was killed. I disagree on his interpretation of legal proceedings, in overturning the conviction, the whole process, including the finding of murder is overturned. Furthermore, the controversy around the accused is a big political issue (according to the RS). I basically had little idea of this until I became involved on 2011 England riots and I renamed and article now under AfD, and people raised WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS arguments and I started exploring the articles and found a bunch of mostly British articles with "murder" in the title. It seems there is a media sensationalism around violent deaths in the British press, and even usually reliable sources go apeshit with any violent death. Perhaps we in the US are so jaded that a "murder" can be called a death or killing until there is a guilty verdict, but the reality is that when I went into the articles, some where indeed using "Murder" in the title in an appropriate fashion from my perspective, but some weren't. So I boldly went in, because WP:BRD is nice. My arguments are there, where they belong, the article talk, where they should be discussed.
In general terms, in this discussion what I see is a misunderstanding of what "common" and what "npov" means in the context of titles. The way I see it, the gist of WP:POVTITLE is that we have to make a balance between the need for neutrality and the need for commonality, giving more weight than we do to commonality in the article text itself, but not ignoring NPOV.
It is clear to me that some of the suggested edits to the policy seek to change this call for a nuanced and balanced consideration, into a bright-line allowing of POV titles. I do not believe the community would be comfortable pushing NPOV aside in such a fashion. One thing is in some cases err on the side of commonality because current consensus supports it, another is to diminish WP:CCC and WP:NPOV with a bright-line allow. WP:AT allows for descriptive titles, so using a name like "climategate" is not mandated or even necessarily preferred - it simply wouldn't a policy violation to do it. Most (but not all) of the people that push hard for POV titles are usually people that agree with the POV the title would support, and we need to adjust for that bias (the anti-POV bias is offset by genuine . If on top of that pre-existing bias, we adopt bright-line commonality, there wouldbe hundreds of thousands of articles that would be renamed, everything from Caesium to Automobile, not to mention politico-religious controversial articles. As you see, the petty differences of POV pushers have been wisely chosen to be stopped by not having bright-line policies on anything but BLP and behavior issues. We should continue to do so. I take NPOV over commonality in all but historical matters that are not of contemporary relevance, even if there are contemporary debates around that. Hence we shouldn't have articles titled "pro-choice" or "pro-life" or "climategate" or "murder of contemporary controversial figure for which no one has been found conclusively guilty", but we can have articles for "Peterloo massacre" or some such. -- Cerejota ( talk) 04:35, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Changed "discussion of" to "policy on" at WP:COMMONNAME, as this is not a discussion essay and wikilawyers love to pick on these things to try an "win" an argument. Changed the intro of the WP:POVTITLE's list of common reasons not use a common name to explain these are neutrality reasons, because neutrality is not the only reason not use a common name - there are others in the policy.
Both of these are hopefully non-controversial changes as they do not change the meaning, just use more precise language.-- Cerejota ( talk) 19:31, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
I no longer see the argument, which Blueboar repeats above, that what almost everybody uses to describe a subject is neutral; to impose "neutrality" on it is to substitute our judgment for that of the sources. Is this disputed, or is this absence collateral damage? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:05, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes neutrality and commonness are not the same, not per policy nor per the English language. Over at "CRU email controversy" I made a rather long dissertation of that that I should have made here, but you can read above further elaboration. Also, can we stop using Boston Massacre as an example in discussion (in the text for now I am okay with it)? There very specific reasons that event came to be known as such in historiography, and some of them are precisely related to the reasons Wikipedia has an WP:NPOV, one of the reasons was that the winning side of the American Revolutionary War was the USA, and in the 19th century, history was always written by the winners. In the 20th century this began to change, and the concept of a Neutral Point of View emerged - a concept that is still controversial in academia, criticized by relativists (who argue one can never have a neutral point of view so why even try to pretended one does) and absolutists (Who argue there are no sides to a question, just truth and falsehood) alike. However, modern controversies as subjected to more varied sourcing, to less groupthink, and in the case of wikipedia, the WP:NPOV policy. Lets say that "Boston Massacre" got grandfathered into existence. It doesn't mean it is a good example for the naming of new articles about current or recent events. That is unwittingly attacking NPOV by accepting the criteria for naming events that existed long before NPOV as a concept existed. This is an NPOV, collaborative free encyclopedia on the internet, not some old-timey Almanack written by partisans in a nation-creating war.-- Cerejota ( talk) 23:44, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
The name
The first contradicts WP:CRYSTALBALL, this is not a paper based encyclopaedia so the name can be changed when the common name changes and besides trendy slogans and monikers can stick. At what point in the future "years later" does a name stop being a trendy name?
The second one is a weasel reason, for using descriptive names when there is a common name with justification other than "I don't like it". There may be cases when WP:IAR is appropriate, but we should not be crafting this policy in such a way that people can use bullet point such as this one to wriggle out of basing the name that used in reliable sources.
The example given in the third one is confusing because it is mixed up with National varieties of English it is worded in American dialect "contentious advocacy issues" (and uses a specific American example which means little to people outside America as the names mentioned are not usually used for abortion and so a better reason for choosing another name is "Fixed-wing aircraft".
-- PBS ( talk) 21:00, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh it passes COMMONNAME. The question if it is worth pushing NPOV aside, something POVTITLE allows but doesn't require. These two cannot be separated, as some try to do. They are Ying and Yang...-- Cerejota ( talk) 06:51, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Point by point:
I am seeing a tendency in your questions to try an find examples that disprove policy. Don't. At best, any exception is a case-by-case valuation by those editors of WP:IAR, at worse, those articles are an un-addressed violation of policy that should be addressed by interested editors. Policy cannot be disproven by usage, usage should be according to policy - albeit usage is often why policy develops. Please concentrate on the actual principles of the policy, rather than actual implementation, which are actually unrelated. Specially when speaking about relatively recent changes to policy, for which one can expect a large number of grandfathering to happen, such discussion is not productive and can be seen as disruptive.-- Cerejota ( talk) 21:39, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
In a conversation over determining whether one title or another is the common name, I happen to think of Google Trends. The case being discussed was Calcutta vs. Kolkata. The Google Trends comparison is here:
I think this can be a nifty way to determine common names (of course among other things, including common sense). What do others think and is it worth adding to this article (or to Wikipedia:Search engine test)? --RA ( talk) 20:31, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
There's been a move request at Talk:Chief Mechanical Engineer to downcase the title of that article, per WP:Job titles (part of the title policy), and the MoS section on the same point. The move request was notified at the UK Railways WikiProject (at variance with the generality of the article title, this article was intended to be specifically about chief mechanical engineers in British-related railway companies). At that stage, this was expressed in the one-line lead followed by a huge number of unreferenced examples of holders of such positions mostly in the 19th century. In trying to fathom the theme of the article, I failed to see that the title should have been more specific as well as downcased: the job title is used generically (still is) and the scope is restricted at the same time (not US-related, not chief mechanical engineers in power stations or on ferries or in aeronautics or factories).
Now, the railways editors really care about the notion of chief mechanical engineers—in good faith, like the wider phenomenon of corporate and professional upping of importance via capitalisation—but where will it all end? They descended on the RM and !voted en masse against downcasing.
Because I pointed out the shambles the article was in, an editor has kindly worked on it, adding references and expanding the information. But the theme is still scoped in relatively narrow terms, and in the main text it's not, for example, Joshua Smithers, Chief Mechanical Engineer, Northampton Railway Company.
I do think we need a centralised approach to this. Almost the entire category of transport occupations is in lower case, as are just about all other occupation categories. Why must this one stick out? And is it hogging the name-space of the generic article that probably should/will be created on chief mechanical engineers? (There are quite a lot of chief this and chief that articles, surprisingly.)
Your advice and comments at the RM would be appreciated—maybe I'm confused now. I'm leaving the same notice at WT:MOS. Another editor has recently come in and downcased throughout the article main text, I see, to negative reaction by at least one editor on the talk page.
Thanks. Tony (talk) 16:06, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Trying to decide on a title for a list-type article to replace Sputnik program. It seems there was no Sputnik "program" as such, just a series of launched objects, the first of which were called Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2 and Sputnik 3, followed by others which were officially named differently, but were called Sputnik 4 etc. in Western circles. Please join in at Talk:Sputnik program#Name of replacement article. -- Kotniski ( talk) 15:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Could I get people's advice on this issue, a move request I've made to downcase an item that was upcased, apparently just because the abbreviation is upcased. The latter goes against MoS and the rulings of major external style guides, even though it's done as a habit by some in the telecom industry (or should I write the Telecom industry?). But it's not the downcasing I'm asking advice about—that seems obvious, except for the opinion of one editor who seems to want to upcase just about everything, and inconsistently in many instances; no, it's whether "Asymetrical digital subscriber line" should be rendered just as "ADSL" in the actual article title, rather than just a redirect. The possibility has been raised by User:LtPowers. I'm cautious about using the abbreviation only in the title, although I concede that it's much more recognisable by the public than the expanded version. Tony (talk) 02:40, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Articles about military titles with more than one word, such as Lieutenant Colonel, Major General, Wing Commander, etc. (its a long list!), do not follow the general rules outlined in this article and should have a specific exception mentioned so we can avoid confusion in the future. Can we add a section to this article for military titles to reflect the current consensus for capitalizing all the words in the title? See this Talk:Able_Seaman_(rank)#Requested_move discussion for a recent example; more comprehensively Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Archive_68#Rank_articles:_capitalization_of_title here. Thank you! Kirk ( talk) 01:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Giving it some thought, maybe what is need is a discussion on creating and raising to guideline the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military ranks). I am raising this at MILHIST.-- Cerejota ( talk) 17:32, 16 September 2011 (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.
I changed this statement:
If the subject of an article is the primary topic (or only topic) for its common title, as reflected in reliable sources, then the article can take that title without modification.
to this:
If the subject of an article is the primary (or only) topic to which a name refers, then that name can be the title of that article without modification.
This was reverted by User:Cerejota on the grounds that it "might be more concise, but also says something different".
Okay, it might say something slightly different (a bit more), but doesn't it accurately reflect reality? I mean, does anyone challenge the veracity of the revised/concise (second above) statement in terms of how articles are actually titled?
Also, I suggest the original (current, first above) wording is misleading. That is, an article may use a name for its title if the article's subject is the primary use even if the name is not the topic's "common title , (as reflected in reliable sources)". Almost any article for which natural disambiguation is used to give it a unique title has a title for which the primary topic is the article's topic, but the title is not the topic's "common title" (the "common title" is not available which is why natural disambiguation is used). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:01, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Anyway, to address your concern, how about this?
If the subject of an article is the primary (or only) topic to which a recognized name (as reflected in reliable sources) refers, then that name can be the title of that article without modification.
- A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
- A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.
If the subject of an article is the primary (or only) topic to which a term refers, then that term can be the title of that article without modification.
If the subject of an article is the primary (or only) topic to which a term refers, then that term can be the title of that article without modification, provided it follows all other applicable title policies.
No additional modification should be added to an article's title if the subject of that article is the primary (or only) topic to which that title refers.
There is an RfC at Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy#Request_for_Comment_regarding_Name.2FTitle that is dealing with issues regarding WP:Article titles and WP:NPOV#Naming, specifically common names versus descriptive titles and how WP:NPOV applies in a non-neutral common name situation. All editors, especially disinterested ones, are welcome. Moogwrench ( talk) 22:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Originally I erred by considering the issue to be related to the emails and work of certain researchers specifically, and I have shown that this certainly is an enduring issue in the public eye, regardless whether there are formal proceedings. While I still stand by my original view that this is all "still alive", as I write here I realize that disqualifier #3 deals with a "contentious advocacy issue". Upon reflection, I believe that is the issue Global warming in all its glory, and not just some sliced and diced subset. There's no need to rename the article in the inherently biased way some partisans would like to see. Note especially that the earliest champion of this phrase has spoken thus
If you want to know the truth about Climategate, definitely don’t use Wikipedia. “Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy”, is its preferred, mealy-mouthed euphemism to describe the greatest scientific scandal of the modern age. Not that you’d ever guess it was a scandal from the accompanying article. It reads more like a damage-limitation press release put out by concerned friends and sympathisers of the lying, cheating, data-rigging scientists.
[[ partisan James Delingpole source].
Since this comes up over and over and over, it should come as no surprise that [ article title restriction has been proposed].
Thanks for your attention. Now you get to decide whether to apply the spirit of the law, or start slicing and dicing. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 16:00, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
"I think there's a pretty strong case to be made for "Climategate" as the name for the article, as it is clearly the most common name in the press for this. I think it fairly obvious why people don't want it called that - but that call is not up to Wikipedia. We must call it what it is called, and what it is called, is climategate. (This is not a decree, but my point is that it is pretty obvious that - contrary to the wild claims of coverup and so on - we do have a well-sourced article that is comprehensive and informative and fair... but with a pretty silly title that no one uses. The scandal here is clearly not the "hacking incident" - about which virtually nothing is known. The scandal is the content of the emails, which has proven to be deeply embarrassing (whether fairly or unfairly) to certain people.) The result of the silly title is that there is traction (unfairly) for claims that Wikipedia is suppressing something.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 03:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)" (emphasis mine)
- User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_55#egregious_abuse_of_Wikipedia_in_nearly_all_climate_change_BLPs ( diff)
::: (B) Implying that wiki uses consensus only so long it agrees with Jimbo's views (no disrespect to anyone intended, but sounds like we need a
WP:GODSAYS shortcut to a policy about that form of anti-consensus argument)
WP:JIMBOSAID-- Cerejota ( talk) 17:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks C, I didn't realize there were so MANY essays about Jimbo-said. Moog, whaddya say we respect everyone's time and focus on the core question:
Should a name that some press uses, and some press says some critics use, and some press doesn't use at all, for a still-active contentious matter of advocacy..... a name that was crafted by partisans.... a name that is not essential for discussing the topic..... a name that already redirects to the existing article.... should that name become the very name of the article despite the 3rd disqualifier in WP:POVTITLE?
Moogwrench says YES by implying Jimbo's quote justifies ignoring disqualifier #3 in WP:POVTITLE, and that failing he argues that the end of formal proceedings (though not actually ended) means we are no longer discussing a matter of "still-active contentious advocacy". Perhaps we should stop beating people with tangents and red herrings and give them a chance to speak? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 18:07, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
It seems to me that this may need to be removed or a compromise needs to be made. It seems that people believe we should use common names for everything instead of proper names. Eg. Sailor Moon has a main article that is of it's common name so should all the pages do that? I don't think so. And here's why. If you look at the Harry Potter series it doesn't use the common Harry Potter names for the books or movies. Eg. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has a common name of Harry Potter 7 (and also it has the abbreviated name of Deathly Hallows) due to people who may not know that Deathly Hallows is the seventh book in the series. Does Harry Potter use the common names? No it doesn't but people seem to want to run to this cause I suggested we move the List of Sailor Moon chapters to it's proper name of List of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon chapters which is it's Japanese name. The English name is inappropriate as it is an abbreviation of the Japanese name that was chosen when the anime was dubbed. You're probably wondering my point. My point is this: this whole common names thing seems to be a pick and chose thing and personally I think it only makes problems for all of us and probably should be changed or have exceptions made. For example if there's a main article that uses the common name as Sailor Moon does then the rest of the off articles need to go by their proper names instead of the common name. JamesAlan1986 * talk 11:16, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
In the case of Sailor Moon that is more along the lines a common used name for the franchise instead of the actual products themselves. All sources do it even if the evidence in front of them points out differently. The best example is the manga it's commonly called Sailor Moon Vol. 1 but the product itself is under a separate name. I think for all cases and purposes the only articles that should go by common name are the main articles and not the "off articles". It's also noted under "Treatment of alternate names" that we are suppose to put proper names in the article but the List of Sailor Moon chapters doesn't. JamesAlan1986 * talk 14:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Did I do the right thing by moving Financial Management Standard to Financial Management Standard (Queensland)? I'm finding a lot of articles with very generic titles that turn out to be non-generic and specific. Tony (talk) 01:37, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
PS, and why do we have Institute of Directors (where? Ah, the UK) and Chartered Secretaries (Hong Kong)? It's a mess, and I believe we need to develop better advice for editors. Tony (talk) 02:04, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
Current dablink:
"Multiple shortcuts redirect here; you may be looking for What is an article?, Manual of Style (Article layout), Username policy, Manual of Style (biographies), Manual of Style (titles), Wikipedia is Not Censored, WikiProject North Carolina, Article message boxes, Amnesia test, or Attribution."
Do we need "WikiProject North Carolina", "Amnesia test", "Wikipedia is Not Censored" here? Facts707 ( talk) 12:18, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
I support restoring WP:NC to be a redirect to this page rather remain as a dab page. There is no precedent for WP:NC redirecting to anything but this page, so there can be no expectation for it go anywhere else. Like others have noted, all we accomplish by leaving it as dab is break countless links that use WP:NC to point to this page. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:56, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
I've reverted WP:NC to point back to Wikipedia:Article titles. There is no consensus here that it should be a dab page. Powers T 14:13, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
While there's a clear consensus against mucking with shortcuts like WP:NC, I see no support for keeping weird things in the hatnote, so I'm deleting them.
There is an RFC discussion going on about a specific page and the primary topic. Over the past two years, I have been disambiguating the inbound links to the dab page currently at the main name space as a result of a previous move request. In that two year period less then 5% of the inbound links have been for the page suggested for moving to the main name space. The page hit count does show different results since the proposed page was at the top of the dab page for a while and our helpful dab team replaced a ton, several thousand, of incoming links with the wrong page. So my question is, can 5% of the new inbound links over two years constitute the primary use? If it can, then this policy needs a major rewrite. I'll leave the page name out of the discussion for right now, but I'm sure that anyone interested can figure it out. Vegaswikian ( talk) 17:34, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
It's like saying "San Francisco" should be a dab page because when people say "San Francisco" the could mean the entire bay area, and the bay area has a stronger claim to be the primary topic for San Francisco. That's absurd, of course, but so is the argument that the strip is the primary topic for "Las Vegas". -- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:11, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
My view is that by common usage both the Golden Nugget and the Bellagio are in the place to which people most commonly refer when they say or write "Las Vegas", and, so that place is the primary use of "Las Vegas". I also claim that the topic of the article at Las Vegas, Nevada, if it were expanded to include a section on the strip (and a link to the complete article), along with a note stating that technically the Strip is not within the city proper, would be about that primary topic place. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:37, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
When you say the city is less then 5% of the incoming links to the dab page, what you mean is that the city proper is less than 5%... I'm dubious about it being quite that low, but I won't dispute that, because it's irrelevant to my argument. My point -- which I made above with the example of Caesars Palace which you ignored -- is that the city proper plus the adjacent strip is almost all of the incoming links... that's why that topic -- the city proper plus the adjacent strip -- is the primary use.
I mean, what you're arguing is that the Las Vegas Convention Center is not in the place commonly referred to as "Las Vegas". That's just absurd. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 03:08, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
You know, "San Diego" is sometimes used to refer to the entire San Diego County, just like "San Francisco" is sometimes used to refer to the entire bay area. Similarly, "Las Vegas" is sometimes used to refer to the entire valley, and sometimes it's used to refer to the city proper, but, as the links to the dab page show, usually they are used to refer to the city plus the strip. Usage of "Las Vegas" to mean the entire valley is much less common. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 06:34, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
The word is "than",not "then". Roger ( talk) 08:31, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
This example needs to be replaced: "Diacritics: canon vs. cañon". Cañon is not an article title, and I seem to recall that we have years and years of precedent against ever having page names that are only distinguished by diacritics, because non-expert users cannot search for or even type them. Indeed, the non-diacritic version of an article title should always redirect to the diacritic version or be a disambiguation page that links to it. Or vice versa - sometimes we prefer the non-diacritic version as the actual article title, per WP:COMMONNAME. I'm thus removing this junk. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 15:18, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Nice to see all the changes to the page this quarter, but it's probably more than I have time to digest. Anyone want to list the changes at WP:Update/1/Content_policy_changes,_2011? - Dank ( push to talk) 02:51, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
In looking at various of these articles, the names used follow the two forms in the heading of this section. I find it hard to believe that the common name for these apparently randomly uses these two forms. I think that part of the problem may be the policy of WP:NRHP prefers to use the name on the nomination form no matter how appropriate that may be. It results in building articles having names like Whitney & Company for a building since that is apparently listed on the nomination form that way but per our policy should probably be listed as Whitney & Company building since the article is about the building and not the company. This guideline also produces article names like U.S. Post Office (Saratoga Springs, New York) and United States Post Office (Canandaigua, New York). Both of these should probably use one form or the other. So do we choose one or let the nomination form be the decider of our names? If we elect to use the current setup, should we allow these to be sorted by article name which produces odd results or should we use a default sort and force them all to sort as United States? Vegaswikian ( talk) 06:04, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
These are all that I can find:
Cheers! bd2412 T 13:48, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
Colleagues, the time has come to re-examine certain principles that were adopted years ago when we were small, young, and innocent. WP continues to amass articles; we are approaching four million—one for every hundred native speakers! Each of these articles needs a fitting title, and the phenomenon of "information convergence" bears down on the project ever more obviously. I believe we need to be more flexible, to enhance specificity in titles. On top of this, we have widespread abuse of capitalisation, tending away from the generic to the titular (the French mock us with murmurings like: "English-speakers are really just Germans masquerading as human beings"). Sometimes these axes interact, and I think more detail should now be built into the policy so editors have better guidance as they attempt to follow the larger goal of serving readers' actual needs.
Here are three ongoing examples, with the generality of the titles rather than their capitalisation at issue:
Tony (talk) 04:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
French Quarter
French Quarter (Charleston, South Carolina)
French Quarter (disambiguation)
French Quarter Mardi Gras costumes
French Quarter (San Francisco)
French Quarter
French Quarter (Charleston, South Carolina)
French Quarter Mardi Gras costumes
French Quarter (New Orleans)
French Quarter (San Francisco)
If "deviating from principle" can cause "headaches", and it arguably does, then adding nine letters to a title is indeed a "headache", by definition. And we're not talking about some silly contrived principle here - this is one of the most influential principles consistently followed in almost all titles in Wikipedia. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:02, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
I don't who or what you think is making the assumption that there is always a primary topic, clearly that's not true as is made quite evident by the number of dab pages located at base names. Unless you're arguing that the French quarter of New Orleans is not the primary topic for French Quarter, by suggesting that that article be at French Quarter (New Orleans) you are advocating something contrary to what WP:PRIMARYTOPIC states. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:15, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Are you saying it only discourages over-precision through the use of natural disambiguation, but not for parenthetic disambiguation? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:23, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
B2C, earlier you dismissed clearly enunciated points concerning policy provisions as "nit picks" (see above). You have had a big part in wording those provisions. There is growing reason to suspect that you pursue an agenda counter to the aims of the Project, though I cannot see why you would want to do that. Of course we try to assume good faith; but when we find you seeking tight and narrow adherence to those recently reworded provisions in RMs, or in justifying ad hoc moves, the default assumption is shaken. If the interests of readers are neglected in favour of the "letter of the law" (recent "law", in this case; formed with little evidence of genuine consensus), this is a cause for concern. When we find you rushing to get changes to WP:MOS after your strenuous efforts concerning Iodised salt (!) came to nothing, suspicions are strengthened. They are also strengthened when we observe your routine hounding of admin GTBacchus, impugning his competence whenever things don't go your way.
A review of those shakily founded provisions, to which you make specious appeal, seems to be in order. This strange insistence on the shortest possible titles at all costs, on whatever legalistic pretext can be mustered, is unhealthy. It does not help readers; and when people start dismissing that as a consideration, we ought to be even more concerned. I look forward to a broad, slow, careful, consultative review – by well-adertised RFC, without preconceptions or prejudice. I look forward to taking part in such a process, rather than in frenetic bouts of reform that bypass due process and work to the benefit of no one, and to the Project's detriment.
Noetica Tea? 05:19, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
B2C one reason for setting up [[Topicname]] redirecting to [[Topicname (additional precision)]] (or similar) is to help people sort out redirects. One example was the Boer War usually an editor (or the author of a third party source) means the Second Boer War but not always. For correct adjustment of incoming links it helps editors to have such a construct and there is no overhead for the reader as they go strait to the article anyway. When I originally split the Wikipedia article on the "Boer War" into two (first and second) and at the time trying to sort out which war a particular biography was referring to was not always easy. I had to leave perhaps 10% of the links pointing at the original article name as I could not tell which Boer War was being referred to (most often it would have been the second but not always). If I had kept the Second Boer War at its common name "Boer War" and only then those 10% of links would have been impossible to tell from those that correctly went to the subject. -- PBS ( talk) 22:07, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Hello all, I'd like to request some outside input at WT:VG regarding naming of articles, and the possible precedent implications of a recent article move. It boils down to whether the article title " Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" (both names referring to the same thing, article previously at just "Mega Drive") is OK or not, and specifically whether WP:AND allows this. The discussion is here. Thanks, Miremare 00:56, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. While we should try to follow the rules most of the time we can ignore them if they are getting in the way of improving the encyclopedia. Now, I'm sure many people would say "picking either name will improve the encyclopedia", but in this particular case more good may be done by allowing the editors to stick with there consensus name. That way we get more happy editors contributing to the article, which will improve the encyclopedia.
Obviously, some people will see this as the start of a slippery slope, but really we just have to look at each case on its merits. Slippery-slope arguments lead to more rules and more bureaucracy.
Yaris678 ( talk) 18:36, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
I think the case can be made that this was prematurely closed even though it was open for a week, because mostly only editors involved with the article, and not many experienced with naming conventions, were involved, as is made evident by the sparsity of most of the comments. I suggest that a new proposal be made to move the article to either of the two names. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, the problem here - as I understand it - is that the local consensus of the editors of the article have settled on this title as a compromise. Read the post above. I'll excerpt from it:
“ | The difficulty here is that the two protagonist groups favoring Sega Genesis and Mega Drive fought a long and bloody war over this and came up with Sega Genesis and Mega Drive as a consensus-driven compromise. There is therefore consensus on the article talk page for a title that seems to be a clear-cut violation of WP:TITLE. When User:Miremare attempts to do something about this, both sides in the original debate unite in wanting to stick with their hard-won compromise title. It's very difficult to tell them to go back to re-open that long and bitter debate. | ” |
The only way to change local consensus is to get as much of the community involved as possible. I'm thinking we should create an RfC, posting a notice on the Village Pump, etc. Assuming we want to do this, where should we have the rename discussion? Here? The article's talk page? Village Pump? Jimbo's talk page? :) A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 19:14, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
I've proposed that the article be moved to Genesis (Sega Mega Drive). I believe this title meets all requirements and addresses all objections. See: Talk:Sega_Genesis_and_Mega_Drive#Requested_move. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:50, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
It has always seemed to me that we have little problem renaming articles when the name of their subject can be verified to have changed. Whether it's Kate Middleton to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, or del.icio.us to Delicious (website), it seems pretty routine. But I'm getting incredible pushback from an editor at Talk:VELOCITY Broadcasting#Requested move. Am I way off base here? Powers T 00:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
"That given the massive expansion in en.WP articles over the past few years, clarity for readers (i.e., the level of specificity in article titles) needs to assume a greater role in our decision-making, and the notion of primary topic needs to be re-examined in this light."
The zealous application of these recent inventions is damaging the project. What we now see is walls put up against editors who are trying to clean up clusters of related articles and in some cases single articles, which are titled so vaguely that they are misleading. Please think of the context from which people visit our articles—google searches, category lists, wikilinks that are often unpiped, and often from a non-American and even a non-English-language background, without the cultural knowledge that has been assumed in the current hard-line attitudes to clear article titling.
There seems to be an obsession with keeping article titles stubby over all other considerations. We have marshes of related article titles with inconsistent levels of detail and specification, and the awkward notion of primary topic, which often justifies banging a square peg into a round hole at the expense of related topics—whether existing WP articles or those that are very likely to be created in the future. Primary topic very often leads inadvertently to POV—the privileging of one topic over its siblings present and yet to be born. Further, it confuses editors WRT the generic–titular up- and down-casing of titles, and the much harder-to-fix uncertainty as to whether a topic is generic or titular. (Take the classic example of pressurized mating adaptor, which inadvertently claims by implication that it's NASA-invented and -owned; this is not at all the case, but the lead needs to be clear about this, and still isn't. It's POV, and I'd be offended if I were the original inventor.
Look at this shambolic marsh:
Articles about topics that don't have names, and so must have descriptive titles often invented by WP editors (but hopefully by following a convention), are treated somewhat differently. Also, articles about topics with names that require disambiguation also tend to be somewhat more descriptive about their topics. Let's not be confused by titles that must be descriptive in deciding how to title articles about topics with clear and obvious names that don't require additional precision/description for disambiguation. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:15, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
Taking the first one in the list " Intern Architect Program" do you have any evidence of another Intern Architect Program run by another country? I know that you recently moved Financial Management Standard to Financial Management Standard (Queensland) (that I reverted and which was discussed at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Article specificity and Talk:Financial Management Standard. If such a change was to be made then what you are talking about is among other things pre-emptive disambiguation which has always been found upon. However I know in the past I have created pre-emptive disambiguation pages because I really could not be bothered with sorting out the inevitable mess I knew would arise, and I know others who feel similarly. However I suspect that if we tolerate it in policy then we will end up with almost ever page being pre-emptive disambiguated is that a path we really want to go down? IE all British legislation will be moved from "name year" to "name year (state)"? At the moment as far as I know the only guideline where we do this pre-emptively is in WP:MILMOS for units like 1st Division but that advise is largely historic now as most such articles already exist for multiple counties. -- PBS ( talk) 10:58, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
This would appear to be more of the same misunderstanding as French Quarter above; much the same discussion, with the same confusion between a proper noun and a common noun, took place at Talk:Halley's Comet#Requested move. JCScaliger ( talk) 20:38, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
The discussion at Talk:French Quarter is marked by failure to have any firm grasp of what a proper name is, or to appreciate the fluid and complex nature of that concept. Please tell us what you mean when you speak of "proper names" here, JCScaliger. Do you say that the second word in "the French [Q/q]uarter" is a common noun, or a proper noun? Answer first for the case of New Orleans, and then for the cases of Tianjin and Shanghai. Do you say that "the Queen" is a proper name? Always? Sometimes? Is the second word in this case a common noun, or a proper noun? If we are going to make policy about titles of articles, we had better gain a more secure sense of all this – or at least recognise that the grammatical terminology is not carved in stone. Erratic assignment to such categories as "proper name" should not be decisive in settling RMs.
That while some titles do have descriptive titles that clearly convey article topic and sometimes even scope, many articles, especially articles about topics that have clear and obvious unique names, have titles that concisely convey only the name of the topic, and don't describe the scope or even topic at all. In most of these cases, as long as the name of the topic is accurately conveyed, that's not a concern. Though titles are sometimes descriptive due to being about topics that don't have names, or because of needing to add additional precision to the title for the purpose of disambiguation, in general describing article topic and scope is not the purpose of titles; that is the purpose of the article lead.
Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic? [Regrettably, actual mention of readers has been removed from this. Why? By whom? After what discussion toward consensus? Still, recognition by readers must be what is intended.]
Naturalness – What title(s) are readers most likely to look for in order to find the article? Which title(s) will editors most naturally use to link from other articles? Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English. [Can it be denied that the needs of readers here outweigh those of editors?]
Precision – How precise is the title under discussion? Consensus titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. [... To identify the topic of the article to whom, if not anglophone readers all over the world? Diverse readers with their own local mix of knowledge and uncertainty, and their own divergent expectations.]
Conciseness – Is the title concise or is it overly long? [What criterion for excessive length could be salient if not the needs of those reading the title?]
Consistency – Does the proposed title follow the same pattern as those of similar articles? [... With consistency primarily for whose benefit, do we think?]
Can't we simply put aside past agreements and find common ground? That's what this motion is supposed to be. That, and a clarification about an important point, I believe. A point for which I was sure there was wide consensus support (which not all of my views enjoy, I know). -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
"That given the massive expansion in en.WP articles over the past few years, clarity for readers (i.e., the level of specificity in article titles) needs to assume a greater role in our decision-making, and the notion of primary topic needs to be re-examined in this light."
Common ground for us should be the principles for which we have broad consensus agreement. That's what forms the basis of my arguments, including this proposal. If your common ground is something else (like from whatever is the spring for the idea that "[the level of specificity in article titles] needs to assume a greater role"), then I don't see how agreement is possible. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
That said, thinking about these issues by staging debates on this page is misguided. On this page, we should be talking about what we've observed of consensus in the field. That's all we need to talk about here: What's commonly held, what's still muddy, and how can we most efficiently write that down, in a way that gives the least possible grist to the lawyers' mill? I would be so delighted to talk about specific RM decisions, but people want to argue about abstract concepts instead. Wikipedia is neither a legislative body, nor a debating society, and I'm concerned that we're encouraging both of these destructive wrong aims.
We need to encourage people to read guidelines less, have more contempt for guideline pages, and listen to consensus more. We need to encourage people to debate less, and listen more. We need to encourage people to care less about the precise wording of guidelines, and listen to specific consensus decisions about specific questions. Abstraction to general principles can come later, or not at all. It's not clear how much it really helps the project. - GTBacchus( talk) 20:42, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Can someone tell me why this policy doesn't provide sufficient explanation, preferably with quite a few examples of too specific and too general, to avoid this kind of horror?
Tony (talk) 10:35, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
The article should simply be deleted, as there's no notable topic there. Or an article on devolvement in finance might be useful, but pretending it has something to do with India in paritcular is lame. Dicklyon ( talk) 17:35, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
There is a discussion about the use of scare quotes in article titles here, please participate. Roger ( talk) 13:27, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
As a slight spin off from a blocking policy discussion I made the point that "significant majority" isn't clear enough and is too easy to bend as being anywhere between ~50 and ~95%. I think we should give an approximate numeric figure for clarity as to what "significant majority" means. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 19:22, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
Type of consensus | Percent | Comments |
---|---|---|
Majority | 51% | not normally used |
Consensus | 70-80% | |
Override | 75-80% | When overriding a previous consensus poll |
Strong Consensus | 75-85% | |
Note: Editor opinions are not votes so the consensus is determined by the closing administrator based on the strength of offered facts, policies and guidelines. |
as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources...
as evidenced through usage in at least about two-thirds of English-language reliable sources...
I oppose any such attempt at artificial numerical precision. It ignores the quality or relevance of sources, and assumes too much concerning the precision of Googlebook searches and the like. Too many provisions in policy and guidelines are being read legalistically and literally, without considering the overall good. We need to look again at that, and get our bearings. We should not add more opportunities for descent into increasingly unhelpful detail. The needs of readers are ignored too often, in mechanical application of rules.
Noetica Tea? 23:00, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
On the plus-side when the rules can be applied mechanically, that means there is no need for spending time and resources arguing about whether this or that point is more important, and editors can focus on more important tasks. The encyclopedia would be improved with more "mechanical application of rules", not less! -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:19, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
For example, consider the RM discussion over at The Bubble Boy. Noetica opposes the move based on a complicated utility argument, while Powers and I oppose per the simple and mechanical application of primary topic.
Now, imagine if everyone had to argue in terms of utility in every RM discussion. It would be a nightmare.
Good rules are consistently based on fundamental principles that get us quickly and efficiently to the "right" outcome without mess or fuss. That's a good thing. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:26, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
I can defend my position with countless examples. But first, I will point out that the easy cases are precisely those cases for which existing mechanistic rules, whether they are explicitly stated or understood via common sense, apply.
Now, here are some examples.
This is why it's so frustrating to see efforts at making more rules more mechanistic obstructed by the argument that this stuff is not supposed to be mechanistic. Sure we've made (say) 70% of the cases easy by having mechanistic rules for them, but God Forbid let's not try to improve that to be 80% or even 75%. We need to decide all of these individually "by consensus".
It's that objection (in so many words) that I can't understand. Am I missing something? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 03:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
But here's the difference. In traffic there are real important issues at stake. I mean, people are trying to get somewhere. People could get killed. Fines have to be paid. Time has to be taken getting the ticket, going to court, traffic school, etc.
But that's not the case here. I mean, mostly we're talking about which of two (sometimes more) candidate terms should be the title of a Wikipedia article. There's nothing really that important at stake here, is there? So if we have a simplistic threshold-based rule that indicates some title other than some other title... so what? Why is it important that - for the purpose of choosing article titles - we have this nuanced approached to make sure we get it "right" (as if there is a "right")?
What seems to me to be at stake is WP editor time. If the candidates for a given article are, say X, Y (foo) or Z, and the simplistic threshold-based mechanistic rule indicates X, what benefit is there to spend hours (sometimes week, months or even years) arguing about whether one of the other two might be better? The cost of doing that is clear, but the benefit is not. Not to me.
Now, I can hear you laughing out loud from here, because I, personally, have spend countless hours arguing about this stuff. But if you look at my history, I think I'm pretty consistent about not arguing that some candidate is better than the other for some nebulous reasons, but because the mechanistic rules (policy, guidelines, conventions), as I can best understand them (and they are imperfect beasts), indicates one rather than another. And the other thing I try to do, is improve the rules so that they are less ambiguous, to get that percentage of articles for whom the titles can be determined simplistically/mechanically without prolonged discussion to be higher rather than lower. So what I try to do is get the titles better in line with the rules, and the rules better in line with the titles, so that we have a better/lighter/more precise/more effective title-deciding process.
In short, I understand the aversion to deterministic rules and their oppressiveness in general, especially in real life, or even with respect to all kinds of issues related to article content, but specifically with respect to picking titles for articles? Why is it so important to have freedom to finesse (if you will) in this particular context? Why not come up with simplistic/mechanistic, even Draconian, rules with respect to the relatively unimportant task of deciding titles? Who are what would be harmed, and how, presuming the titles that are indicated by such rules are within the reasonable range, if you know what I mean? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 05:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
I think that a large part of the success of Wikipedia is due precisely to the fundamental principle that Wikipedia does not have firm rules. Although this may make some Wikipedia processes such as AfD or RM seem like Calvinball to those who prefer the certainty of rules-based thinking, I'd argue that the long, often-repetitious discussions that you dismiss as unproductive are actually very near the heart of what makes Wikipedia successful. It is participatory engagement in defining what principles are important in a given context and how such principles can be applied.
Besides, the issues that result in lengthy discussions are rarely something that can be determined by a simplistic threshold-based mechanistic rule, or at least not by any rule that would enjoy wide support among the participants in such discussions. I'm sure you think otherwise, but that I guess that is at the core of our disagreement. I'd frame the issue as a matter of rules versus principles. The U.S. Internal Revenue Code is an example of what happens when rules-based thinking takes precedence over the thoughtful application of principles.
For an interesting perspective on how rules can produce unwanted results in a context outside Wikipedia, consider these opinions on accounting rules [6] and [7]. From personal experience, the U.S. FDA "rules" regarding the validation of software can sometimes produce a culture where the goal of software testing shifts away from ensuring that software functions as needed to support critical operations towards doing the minimum amount of testing that will pass muster with auditors. That is, I think rules-based thinking encourages a mindset in which the objective becomes legalistic parsing of the rules rather than honest engagement with principles (or complying with the letter of the law without consideration of the spirit). I've also just discovered this interesting essay on the topic. There are relevant perspectives from education theory as well. Consider this essay. I especially like this quote from Kenneth Burke:
Wikipedia is exactly such an ongoing discussion in which individual participants come and go. I think we should encourage engagement in the discussion and I can't help but feel that reducing actions to mechanistic rules short-circuits that engagement.Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. The Philosophy of Literary Form 110-111.
I suppose a part of what I see as the issue is terminology. While I don't think that you see your "rules" as having the force of law, I think that casting them in the framework of mechanistic rules has an effect similar to giving students a textbook with all the received knowledge pre-digested for them, rather than having them engage with the issues and understand what principles apply and how they should be prioritized in specific contexts. older ≠ wiser 15:38, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Another analogy is the rules of solitaire. You are free to follow the rules, or not. But if they're good rules, following the rules will be more satisfying. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 15:51, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Given that this approach accounts for cases where the rules do not produce a selection ("if it doesn't indicate anything for a given situation, or ..."), how do you conclude that it assumes "rules can be created which consistently satisfy ..."? The goal is to improve the rules so that they do produce a good result consistent with our principles in more and more cases over time, but never is it assumed that they will ever be perfect in that regard. Just better next year than this year, hopefully. In other words, we try to continually improve the rules so that there are fewer and fewer cases where there are questions and issues that need to be resolved via debate and discussion.
I've put a lot of thought and effort into this approach, and it's frustrating to see you object to it on grounds which are based on such enormous misconceptions about what, it seems to me, it clearly says. I apologize if I was not clear and that's why you misunderstood. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:02, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
There are really two phases in the title decision process. The first phase is the objective application of the relevant rules, a process which ideally suggests exactly one title. The second phase is the subjective evaluation of what was indicated by the first phase. If the first phase indicates exactly one particular title and there are no objections, great. However, if it doesn't indicate anything for a given situation, or gives multiple candidates, then not only do we have make the decision subjectively, ideally it's an opportunity to improve the relevant rules too. In that sense phase 2 itself has two phases, 2a and 2b: 2a evaluates the output of phase 1, either approving the outcome or coming up with another one. 2b is only needed when the outcome of phase 1 is not approved in 2a; it's rule evaluation/improvement.
Ideally, the second phase is just a formality and 2b is never needed. In reality, phase 1 does not always work out so perfectly and 2b is an opportunity to review and improve our rules. But as our rules are improved and honed like this, we should be getting a higher and higher number of cases where phase 2 does not find a problem with phase 1, and the percentage of title decisions that can be made mechanically approaches 100%. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 00:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Blueboar, I agree in general that reaching a consensus will result in fewer debates later - but that does not really address what we're talking about here. A system with more deterministic rules is going to produce titles on which there is more consensus more often at the outset than a system with less deterministic rules. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 17:47, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
"In so many cases there is not a single obviously correct title." But in the vast majority of those cases there is not a single obviously correct title because people like you object to honing the rules so that there is a single obviously correct title, for at least most of these cases. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy!
I ask again, how in your opinion would the quality of Wikipedia even be affected, much less improved, by doing something other than just randomly choosing either the existing or proposed title in most cases brought to RM? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 19:45, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
But in the vast majority of those cases there is not a single obviously correct title because people like you object to honing the rules so that there is a single obviously correct title, for at least most of these cases That is so ridiculously false and even insulting that I'm not even sure where to begin.
From the sound of it, we might as well autogenerate random unique sequences of characters for article titles rather then let human tendencies to have different perspectives on things get in the way. older ≠ wiser 21:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Surely you understand that there are many ways to establish rules for deterministically choosing meaningful and reasonable titles for many more articles than we currently do; and that resorting to random unique strings is not required at all (though of course that is the extreme most simplistic way to establish titles deterministically).
But please clarify. Are you saying it's impossible to select meaningful and reasonable titles with deterministic rules, therefore we shouldn't even try? Or are you saying we don't want to do that even if it's possible, because vague non-deterministic rules with conflicts worked out in discussion and debate is preferable? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:04, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Anyway, so, is it your doubt that "mechanistic rules can be formulated that will definitively resolve such cases" that is at the root of your objection to even trying to formulate and adopt such rules? What if you were shown a set of rules that did exactly that? Or at least did a much better job than our policy etc. currently does in terms of percentage cases for which titles are deterministically selected by the rules? Would you still object to adopting them? If so, why? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:41, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Okay, that helps. Now I know you're not against deterministic rules even if they're possible.
So, let's get to the heart of the matter. Would you agree that it's possible for one set of rules to deterministically select a title for a given percentage of all articles, requiring discussion for the remainder, and that there is almost certainly a revision of those rules that would increase that percentage, and reduce the size of the remainder that requires discussion? If so, would you also agree that such a revision would be desirable, and, conversely, that a revision to the rules that decreased the percentage of articles whose titles could be selected deterministically, and which increased the remainder that required discussion, would be less desirable? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
I would have thought that an objective application of rules and guidelines would be a pretty good approach, and I pretty much thought that was how I worked. But so often I found myself in conflict with Born2cycle, who claimed to be doing similarly, that I realized that the application of rules is in fact always subjective. And his attempts (and mine) to rewrite the rules to better support his (or my) opinion by "clarifying" what we think the rules mean, or to change the weight of different inputs to the decision process, make it clear that a mechanical process is not likely to work, unless the mechanics includes rewriting the rules as you go. Do the outcomes of these discussions make WP better? In many cases, not, or only a little, not commensurate with the effort invovled. So I try to just comment on the ones that involve matters of principle that help us make WP better and more consistent, or to put up a line of defense against those trying to move WP style in a direction that I think is worse (e.g. Enric Naval, the great capitalizer). Dicklyon ( talk) 21:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Consider our ongoing disagreement about titles being descriptive vs. concise. The reason I favor concise is precisely because that's a relatively deterministic rule. On the other hand, "descriptive" is most certainly not - once you accept that titles should be descriptive, that opens up a whole can of worms. How descriptive is sufficiently descriptive? If adding one more word clearly makes it more descriptive, must we add it? What about another word? And another? Where is the line?
But maybe I'm missing something. Propose a change to the rules that makes descriptive titles more acceptable, but also is more deterministic than the current situation (e.g., "precisely, but only as precise as necessary... titles should be concise"), and I will support it. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 21:37, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Seva, that's a good idea to come up with a formula of some kind. And I've started on such a project in the past. See User:Born2cycle/how2title and User:Born2cycle/Titles. These are not production-ready, but give you an idea of what I'm thinking about. I've abandoned how2title, but need to incorporate some of that into Titles, which is just getting started.
But that's kind of an extreme/ideal approach, and my discussions above were not really related to that. What I'm trying to discuss here is the general idea that more determinism in our "rules" (uses loosely as in IAR) regarding titles is desirable, and more ambiguity is less desirable; and that changes to policy and guidelines should take that into account. That is, we should ask ourselves the following about each change... Does this change make deciding titles more or less deterministic?.. Because more deterministic is better. More deterministic rules are better because that means less gray area and fewer seemingly endless disagreements and discussions about titles which often are about decisions that do not affect the quality of the encyclopedia (and hence are a waste of time). Let's make our rules more deterministic so less time is wasted on disagreeing and discussing issues that do not affect the quality of the encyclopedia, so more time can be spent on improving the encyclopedia.
You say "Sometimes it's hard to tell if B2C favours certain outcomes not because they're better, but because they're easier to model". Yes, that's because I often equate (within reason) "easier to model" with "better". That's because I believe in the vast majority of RM discussions there is no "better" as far as the encyclopedia quality is concerned. What is better, is having definitive rules that flip a coin for us so that we don't have to waste time deciding which of two equally good options is "better". Of course, some choices really are "better" than others, but in those cases our rules should already select the better title, and, if they don't, that's a sign they need to be updated.
And what I mean by "within reason" can be best explained by example. Either of the rules "always use UK English spelling" or "always use US English spelling" would be easier to model than ENGVAR, but it's unreasonable, given our goal of using and reflecting all varieties of English. But that doesn't mean we don't have rules - it means we must have more nuanced rules. Adding nuance to the rules does not preclude retaining determinism in the rules, if an effort is made to do so.
What I'm really trying to do here is persuade my colleagues here that it's worth putting in the effort to make our rules work like the learning/improving oracle I described above, and thus approaching title decisions in the two-phase approach also described above. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 16:36, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, if more deterministic rules would help settle titles for all but these most controversial issues, would it be worth it then?
And what about dividing this page into two parts (maybe still on the same page, maybe not), where the top part is principles, and the bottom part is rules? Then we would have rules, and they could be continually improved by using the above 2-phase method until they settled all but the most controversial titles, and even some of those. How about that? -- Born2cycle ( talk) 22:10, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
The guidance here recommends Google Books and Google News for providing info for deciding commonname issues. But I think there's a bias with Google News that hasn't been taken into account.
Press agencies syndicate their content, so that a piece written by staff can end up being published on multiple news sites.
A hundred articles produced by the New York Times, the Guardian and and Sydney Morning Herald gets you a hundred returns on Google News. But a hundred articles produced by AP, AFP and Reuters could get you thousands of returns. So, lets say the first three prefer "tomayto" and the second three prefer "tomahto". Google news would tell you that "tomahato" wins by many hundred percent. But that's not a real reflection of the reality that the sources are split fairly evenly. It's actually a wildly unreliable place to look, at least in cases where house style is likely to be an issue.
My proposal is that News should not be recommended in the guidance, just Books.
-- FormerIP ( talk) 00:02, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
Does combining two names of a topic with "and" create a description of that topic? That question is being discussed here. -- Born2cycle ( talk)
The lead of this page states:
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. It need not be the name of the subject; many article titles are descriptions of the subject.
This has been interpreted to mean that articles about subjects that have names "need not be the name of the subject [and can be] descriptions of the subject".
Does anyone know of any examples of articles with titles that are not the name of the topic, but a description, about a topic that does have a name?
Unless those situations are not as extremely rare (if they exist at all) as I believe they are, I propose we change this wording to something like:
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. Titles are usually but not always the name of the subject; articles about topics that have ambiguous names require natural or parenthetic disambiguation, and articles about subjects without names are usually descriptions of the subject.
-- Born2cycle ( talk) 20:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
As to proposing a change during a discussion, I'm just asking for clarity on what is consensus on this issue in general. -- Born2cycle ( talk) 23:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
But, if consensus insists on having this exception, I would propose that all names be assumed to not be inappropriate to use for reasons of propriety, unless there were reliable sources that said otherwise. If the issue of whether it is inappropriate is itself controversial in the sources, then go with the preponderance of what current respectable news sources are doing, as determined by consensus. There is no way to avoid a few leaves in the tree that depend on judgment as determined by consensus, but the goal is to winnow the tree such that visiting those leaves is rare.
But for now, we could easily accommodate it with this wording:
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. Titles are usually but not always the name of the subject; articles about topics that have ambiguous names require natural or parenthetic disambiguation, articles about subjects without names are usually descriptions of the subject, and when the name is not used for the title for reasons of propriety, a descriptive title may be chosen instead.
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. Titles are usually but not always the name of the subject; articles about topics that have ambiguous names require natural or parenthetic disambiguation, articles about subjects without names are usually descriptions of the subject, and when there is no name available for reasons of propriety, a descriptive title may be chosen instead.
As to the impropriety wording, how about...
An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. Titles are usually but not always the name of the subject; articles about topics that have ambiguous names require natural or parenthetic disambiguation, articles about subjects without names are usually descriptions of the subject, and when there is no name available for POV reasons, a descriptive title may be chosen instead.
I'm of the opinion that any changes to the page from discussions here may need a separate discussion, with exact wording, announcing the intent to make the change when there is a consensus. As it is now, I suspect that many editors are too busy doing real work to participate here reading the discussions every hour and commenting multiple times. If it needs a discussion, the proposal probably needs consensus for the wording change. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:16, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
I only see the phrase "two-thirds" once on this page, introduced on Oct. 19, and roundly opposed. How could someone get the impression that it won consensus? Dicklyon ( talk) 02:13, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
I also absolutely oppose the introduction of this two thirds idea or anything like it. It would create all kinds of problems, largely to do (yet again) with the use of googlehits. The reason why Climategate had problems as a title was to do with how the term was used (often in scarequotes, often explicitly described as a term used by the skeptic/denialist camp, and in other mentions the term itself was being protested). The problem with using google hits and "pro-life" was that this picked up on direct quotations of anti-abortion activists in publications which themselves explicitly avoided the term in their manuals of style as POV. It also treats reliable status as a binary condition - all reliable sources count for one, with none seen as more reliable or authoritative than another (small town newspaper counts for as much as WSJ and NYT, which in turn count for as much as authoritative academic publications, for example) - and that's quite apart from google news and scholar not effectively representing the sum of "reliable sources".
In fact, it's a good example of how these kinds of formulas fail to reproduce community decision-making outcomes. People are a lot smarter than the very basic arithmetic presented here, and we would lose a whole lot of intelligence as an organisation if we brought in rules like this. If there is an algorithm that reproduces current outcomes in disputed cases, or helps us reach such outcomes faster, fine. This isn't it.
The other obvious problem would be the POV wikilawyers, who would try out all kinds of permutations of searches in search of the one that produces the magical number. They would then bang on and on about it until unsuspecting editors passing by might think (possibly in the spirit of finding compromise) they have a valid point.
As a note - I wouldn't make an edit based on a sense of "winning an argument". You need to achieve consensus, which is something different. It's a bit like our policy of "verifiability, not truth". VsevolodKrolikov ( talk) 08:38, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
Here's an example: Disputed term A gets 30 thousand hits. Term B gets 20,000. Terms C, D and E get 17,000 each in our magical RS search engine. I've been in disputes where these numbers would be used to demonstrate that A has two thirds usage in reliable sources - because it's two-thirds more than the next most common title.
A is, of course, disputed in real life. Let's say of all the sources using term A, a third of them use it either to quote someone using the term (but they avoid using it themselves) or to critique the use of it as a biased term. Do we count that as a "use" of term A, or as evidence that term A is non-neutral? A wikilawyer just repeats the 2/3A, 1/3B mantra again and again. S/he might add for good measure: "maybe they're critical of term A, but they're still using it. Term A obviously recognisable". If you mention term C, they'll add up A and B and say "only a small minority use that term". It's bad stats, as it's possible that over half of all sources use C. We don't know how big our overall sample is - just that A gets the most hits.
What if eight of the top ten encyclopedias and eight of the top ten major broadsheets avoid term A for MoS reasons, but three hundred local newspapers picked up by google use it? Do we dismiss these former sources as "elitist" or having a "liberal POV" and as such undeserving of greater weight than the local rag for a town of 50,000? I've had that thrown back when presenting evidence of usage.
I've come across all of these tactics, and in such situations, pursuing a simple numbers rule decreases, rather than increases the quality of decision making.
We should look for the best quality reliable sources first, and not only for their actual usage, but also for their commentary on usage. This is better than doing bad stats on bad samples. You say "you can easily group sources a bit - by looking at Google scholar and specific news websites - and that argument is going to carry more weight than a straight Google hit analysis", but your edit to policy didn't say anything like this. A fundamental problem is that we can't operate a 66.67% rule and differentiate between the quality of reliable sources. VsevolodKrolikov ( talk) 10:56, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
Its clear one of the issues we both agree on with the abortion debate was the lack of a proper statistical analysis of all the possible terms - this is hardly going to be less likely to happen with a specific numeric target. If there was a specific numeric target to reach you could do that analysis including all the possible titles and walk away from the debate - if the closing admin then didn't take that into account you could quite reasonably ask them why they didn't and expect them to reconsider their closure in relation to it. Having a proper statistical analysis of the different sources would have made the discussion far more satisfactory. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 20:40, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
In the current/ongoing/protracted naming debate over at Sega Genesis and Mega Drive, the latest proposal to break the editorial logjam between the two most logical titles is to use the titles Sega Genesis and Mega Drive in alternation - moving the article back and forth between these two titles every year!!
I can't begin to say how dumb this is - but I'm exhausted by the argument - I'd appreciate some vociferous responses to this suggestion. SteveBaker ( talk) 17:08, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi folks - proposer of the title revolution here. I'm not a video game person whatsoever; I've simply been following the titling discussion with interest, and occasionally popping in with a dispute resolution suggestion. My first attempt was a neutral descriptive (amended when my first descriptive title proved unpopular with the video game insiders). Next, I was supportive of a request for an arbitration panel to choose among the various titles. When these proposals went nowhere, I suggested the rotating title. You can see my proposal here, but essentially the rationale is that when you have two titles that equally satisfy the naming criteria, but no consensus to pick either, a rotation ensures that the title will always be satisfactory. As for whom we serve - the readers - they will not notice or care which one you pick. As PMA noted above, neither will they notice the switch, any more than they notice any of the other hundreds (thousands?) of title changes we make every year. And if this does indeed settle the issue, then we have happy editors who can get back to improving article content instead of wasting energy on titling disputes. I know it's weird, but I think it deserves serious consideration in this case. Ask yourselves: isn't having Sega Genesis this year, and Mega Drive next year better than having Sega Genesis and Mega Drive every year? Dohn joe ( talk) 16:47, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
You know, when I saw the heading on this, my first though was that someone was suggesting we animate the title so it would "revolve" (ie spin). But that would be silly - a half-revolution per year cycle would be far to slow! Blueboar ( talk) 22:41, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
I am not at the present making a proposal here I may later. This is to obtain opinion and valid reasoning. First up I will acknowledge that I am a taxonomist and hence a scientist, hence I probably have a bias against common names because of the scientific innacuaracy they introduce into an artical, I acknowledge that up front.
I feel that WP would be better served and do better justice to international conventions on naming of species, if the scientific name of a species was the title of the page, with all common names known set up as redirects. My reasons for this are as follows:
These are my views, as this is the policy page I would like to see the reasons for not using scientific names, not the "because its policy" I see everywhere. I get that its currently policy and I abide by it, I am wondering if the policy is a good one, with respect to species of animals, plants etc. I am not referring to other uses of common names here.
Thank you, Faendalimas talk 20:10, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
About Talk:Sega_Genesis_and_Mega_Drive#Requested_move_.28November_2011.29 A user argued "Even if every single Indian would identify the system, in English, as "Megadrive", it still has no direct bearing on this naming. WP:Commonname is about sources, not the consumers themselves." For users unaware, "Sega Genesis" is the title used in North America, while "Megadrive" is used in English-speaking countries everywhere else. The geographic distribution influences what sources use. "Megadrive" is also the original Japanese name of the console. The pro Genesis users argue that Genesis clearly appears in more sources than Megadrive, so, despite the geographic distribution, Commonname clearly prefers "Genesis." Do you agree with his assessment? WhisperToMe ( talk) 04:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I would just like to add that the opposite arguments have also been made (before the India argument came about) by the people who wanted the commonwealth name. The people who wanted the name that existed in the commonwealth countries argued that because the US population was disproportionately large it would lead to a disproportionate amount of scholarly work and reliable sources on the subject, so that even though the name "Sega Genesis" appears far more in reliable sources, that amount should be discounted (or ignored) and the name used in the most countries should be the commonname. I've always contended that the current policy is completely fair and neutral...just look to the prevalence of the english language reliable sources. If there is a significant majority for one name and that name otherwise doesn't have problems under the general naming criteria, you're golden. LedRush ( talk) 18:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
This isn't really the place to rehash the exact same debate currently ongoing on the Sega Genesis and Mega Drive talk page. Specific article aside, pre-internet sources aside, User:WhisperToMe seems to think I need to be taken to task for my assertion that sources, not population numbers should decide the issue. APL ( talk) 20:13, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
In cases like this it is best to revert to the last stable name and failing agreement on that the name used in the first version after the article was not longer a stub. That is the method that has worked for lots of articles eg gasoline and tram (to name on from either side of the pond).-- PBS ( talk) 08:57, 7 November 2011 (UTC)