Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/UsuallyNonviolentBot 3

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was

Withdrawn by operator.

UsuallyNonviolentBot 3

Operator: Jc86035 (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 08:45, Sunday, December 3, 2017 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s):

Source code available: movepages.py (standard pywikibot)

Function overview: Rename articles to format "Line number (system)" and similar formats

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains#RfC: Railway line disambiguation

Edit period(s): One-time run

Estimated number of pages affected: about 400

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): No

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: Pinging RfC participants: Useddenim, Anomalocaris, oknazevad, SMcCandlish, Sb2001, The Bushranger and Dicklyon. Jc86035 (talk) 08:46, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The bot will be renaming most of the below articles.

List

I have not included rail lines which use comma disambiguation but are disambiguated by place rather than by system, since those may be considered correct unless decided otherwise by the ongoing RfC on comma disambiguation.

There are some ambiguities not addressed by the line disambiguation RfC:

Should U-Bahn and S-Bahn lines be named like "U1 (Berlin)" or "U1 (Berlin U-Bahn)"? Should the ZVV (Zürich) lines be named the same way?
Should lines currently disambiguated by city be disambiguated by system?
Should lines currently disambiguated by country be disambiguated by system?
Should numbered lines where only one article exists for lines named that number (e.g. Line 23, Shanghai Metro) be named just "Line 23" and similar?
Should the Île-de-France tramway lines be named like "Line 11 Express", "Line 11 (Île-de-France tramway)", "Line 11 Express (Île-de-France tramway)", "Line T11 Express", or…?
Should Paris Métro Line 14 (1937–76) be named "Line 14 (Paris Métro, 1937–1976)", "Line 14 (Paris Métro 1937–1976)", "Line 14 (1937–1976)", "Line 14 (1937–1976, Paris Métro)", or…?

Discussion

It's unclear to me why we're renaming these things in this way; the "Paris Métro line 10" style is much clearer, even if its a descriptive name rather than a proper name (it's a proper name followed by a line designation that railfans also want to call a proper name but which few other people would agree is one, any more than aisle 3 at my local grocery store is "Aisle 3" and a proper-noun phrase. The clerks who work that aisle probably think of it that way in their little microcosm, but the rest of the world does not). Maybe there is no perfect way to name these things, but parenthetic gibberish like this is pretty much the worst. Maybe I should have been more emphatic about that at the RfC, the close of which completely ignored the fact that the preference for crap like "Line 10 (Paris Métro)" is a WP:ILIKEIT demand that directly conflicts with WP:ATDAB policy. Closers are not supposed to count votes and defy policy, they're supposed to discount comments that ignore policy and give more weight to those that make better policy arguments.

Assuming I'm going to be ignored again as I was in the RfC, here's my pair of copper coins in regard to the bot's reasonably planned implementation of the RfC's unreasonably planned mess-making, in the order of the original questions above:

Shorter disambiguation when possible is the rule (don't over-disambiguate).
Same answer, as above, when applicable. When it comes to a choice between DAB by system or by city,, the RfC said to use system. In retrospect, it would be preferable that if the line is entirely within the city, use the city, since more readers will know they line they want is in a particular city that will be able to correctly ID what transit system it technically belongs to. I would "vote" for that option now, but I'm not sure we want to diverge from the RfC, even if it makes obvious sense to do so, because too many people pitch a fit over train-related naming [and really, really need to give it a rest]. Regardless: In a case where there are two lines in the same city with the same name but in different transit systems, or two lines in the same system but in different cities, then and only then use a long, multi-part disambiguation.
Ditto, but substitute "country" for "city" in all of the above.
Yes, per #1 above. However, this is not likely to affect names that simple. Lots of cities have a "line 23". To avoid stupid results like an article really named just Line 23 [which actually redirects to Widescreen signalling, LOL] when we know there are other transit lines by this name and we just don't have articles on them yet, then pre-emptively disambig by city or system so we don't have to rename it later. This is consistent with the RfC results, which valued [perhaps overvalued] consistency as the no. 1 priority. Regardless, when the name is actually unique (e.g. "AZ1 Trans-Arizona Rocket Rail" or something), then there is no need for disambiguation of any kind.
What's special about Île-de-France? Going down these in order, "Line 11 Express" is unlikely to actually be unique (see #3, above). The second and third examples are unnecessary over-disambiguation unless Île-de-France also has a non-tramway Line 11 or Line 11 Express, respectively. The fourth example looks like a made-up name. But if the actual designation really is T11, we'd not be using just 11 as in the previous examples in that series. Finally, it's unlikely that "Line 11 Express" is a different line than "Line 11", in any transit system; it's just an express version of it during certain hours, making fewer stops, for longer-distance commuters. If we actually had separate articles on them they should be merged. It would be comparable to forking a notable-restaurant article "Juanita's Vegan Bistro" to "Juanita's Vegan Bistro Saturdays" just to cover their busy Saturday buffet and limited menu. We have article sections for a reason.
"Line 14 (Paris Métro, 1937–1976)" would seem to be most consistent with other paterns; we need this level of disambiguation for some sports figures, etc., and commas are used between the disambiguators for clarity.

No matter what is done, I think the results are going to be so awful we'll be revisiting this again within a year and will eventually use sensible descriptive names like "Paris Métro line 10". Especially since most of these are just translations of designations in other languages to begin with. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 09:25, 3 December 2017 (UTC); updated for question #6: 15:08, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SMcCandlish: Thanks for your comments. Note that adding "Subway" or "Metro" and other similar "unnecessary" disambiguators is often helpful for the reader rather than only useful for disambiguation (e.g. "Yellow (Coldplay song)"; "My Little Pony: The Movie (2017 film)"). Consistency also helps; in the latter example "Movie" could technically be used as natural disambiguation (omitting "film") but there would only be three articles where that could be done.

The "Paris Métro line 10" style might not work as well for named lines, and it would be inconsistent and weird to do this style of disambiguation only for numbered/lettered lines in a system and use parenthetical disambiguation for the other lines. It's also not explicitly a disambiguator and adding it for consistency as a prefix to named lines (ignoring the Chinese metro lines, where this is unnecessarily done already to some degree) would raise the question of whether every railway line should have this sort of disambiguator (e.g. "National Rail East Coast Main Line"). Finally, sources might not usually mention the operator in front of the line name wherever it's used, so adding it where it's not actually supposed to be part of the name might be a violation of whatever guideline was cited in the comma disambiguation RfC about making up naming styles. Jc86035 (talk) 11:41, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Misanalysis. Yellow (Coldplay song) and My Little Pony: The Movie (2017 film) are at those titles not to be "extra helpful" but because and only because Yellow (song) and My Little Pony: The Movie (film) are themselves ambiguous and require additional disambiguation. If they were not, they would be at those (and exactly those) shorter titles. As to your second point, the obvious solution would be to stop using parenthetical disambiguation for non-numbered lines that needed disambiguation; this would be more consistent with WP:ATDAB policy, which instructs us to prefer natural disambiguation, tells us to try comma-separated DAB next, and relegates parenthetic to last place (other than made-up descriptive titles, which we only use for things that don't have real names, mostly various events like floods and murders). Re: '[It] would raise the question of whether every railway line should have this sort of disambiguator (e.g. "National Rail East Coast Main Line")' – And ... so what? It's perfectly fine to raise such a question. Last point: We don't care, because we have redirects.

Anyway, this is all moot. I'm not trying to actually re-litigate the RfC, or I would just open another RfC – on the perfectly valid grounds that the close was faulty, because it blatantly ignored policy (not guidelines or WP:PROJPAGES but actual policy) in favor of vote-counting a bunch of WP:ILIKEIT nonsense. I'm actually perfectly content to let the RfC play out as-decided, which is why I answered your five questions. I'm content with that because I believe the ensuing mess will serve as an object lesson; reasoning with specialized-style fallacy thinkers rarely has much effect; what they want has to be proven to be a debacle, then the community overrides it and things go more sensibly with little patience for "do it the way [insert your fandom here] does it off-wiki".
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 11:59, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What I meant was that it would probably be fine to title those articles "Yellow (Coldplay)" etc. but we don't. WP:ILIKEIT doesn't entirely apply there since the RfC was advertised on VPP for the latter half of its duration and editors who were not part of the WikiProject commented (and some of the MOS sort of has to be based on ILIKEIT anyway, particularly where official style guides disagree; e.g. WP:MOSDASH). Jc86035 (talk) 12:21, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SMcCandlish: By the way, could you comment on the sixth point, which I added later? Thanks, Jc86035 (talk) 14:13, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. PS: We don't use "Yellow (Coldplay)" because it doesn't make much sense in natural-ish language; "Yellow" is not a Coldplay, it's a song. WP isn't 100% strict on this; we do have some very poor disambiguators ("John Smith (baseball)", which implies a sporting goods brand, not a baseball player), but they are rare outliers that only exist because of (surprise!) entrenched wikiproject tendentiousness. I don't disagree that the VPP venue was the correct one, but we don't get good turnout on micro-topical things like this due to lack of general-audience interest in specialized trivia.

Wiki-sociological digression: I don't know of a solution to this problem, given the shrinking editorial pool and its shrinking patience with minutiae, other than to be stricter about just following the policies, instead of patiently entertaining constant special pleading demands along the "my topic is magically different" exceptionalism lines. They don't actually qualify under WP:IAR, so we need them to stop. If we don't collectively, as a community, take steps put these antics to bed, the end result (in 5 years? 10?) is simply going to be chaos: there'll be too few editors with too little time to prevent combative, insular camps of one-topic editors from WP:OWNing vast categories of articles and forking them off in all directions away from any kind of centralized Wikipedia conventions. At this point in the organizational lifecycle, WP can either become more of an institution with systems and ways of doing things, or it can continue to dysfunctionally pretend it's still in "visionary, wild-and-wooly founders who say fuck all rules" mode. Organizations that refuse to let go of the nostalgia of their formational period to become more codified just end up going through a lot of pain, inefficiency, and even threat to long-term survival until they allow the transition to happen. I could write a book about this, but others already have and it wouldn't be a profitable use of my time given the work involved in writing one.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 15:08, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Um, looking at the above, I'm very confused. SMcCandlish...you're saying the RfC was faulty and the closure was ILIKEIT...when the closure was unanimous and those unanimous votes included yours. Or am I missing something at 6 in the morning? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 11:10, 9 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, as a BAG member, I must assess whether there's actual consensus here. The relevant policy is WP:ATDAB with corresponding guideline at WP:NCDAB, both of which say natural disambiguation should be used before parenthetical disambiguation. Can you comment on why I shouldn't interpret the RfC with only eight editors as a local consensus to disregard this guideline? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:41, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- I'll second that. Needs wider discussion. on a Village pump to be sure there really is consensus for this mass page move. Anomie ⚔ 16:54, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  @Anomie and BU Rob13: For what it's worth, the disambiguation RfC was advertised on WP:VPP from 11 to 26 November, all participants were in favour of standardizing the disambiguation to use the same format, and many people coming from the village pump commented on the UK station disambiguation RfC on the same page (which I also advertised for the same duration) but not on this RfC. I don't know exactly how WP:ATDAB applies here but it does suggest avoiding combining different disambiguation styles, which is in line with the RfC result to only use parenthetical disambiguation. If you want to open another RfC to confirm the consensus (or redo the RfC) then by all means do so, though I'm not sure if there would be a meaningful increase in participation; when I asked last year if we needed to standardize these titles I was told not to bother with it. Jc86035 (talk) 05:40, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn by operator. I probably don't have the time to work through all of the details right now and it would probably be better to do a lot of these manually after separate RMs. Jc86035 (talk) 10:50, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.