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Train stations article naming proposal

(Originally appeared as subsection #Train stations & subway stations and precision - an alternative proposal to section #Train stations & subway stations and precision above.)

Leave your comments below if you want. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 23:40, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem with a) is that it can create useless titles for readers. So say you are looking for the Las Vegas station. We know that stations are usually named after the place they are in or near. So everyone knows where Las Vegas is, right? So while that may produce a name may be unique, it is not clear which station that is. Clearly Amtrak provides some service to Las Vegas, Nevada since it has an assigned code of LVS and you can book travel on their web site from there, albeit by bus. So Amtrak provides service to two Las Vegas stations. I'm not opposed to working something out and your proposal is a start. The question is really how to write a guideline that helps readers and does not create issues like line providing service. I'll also add that the US is more likely then many countries to have issues like this since there are many places names that are used over and over. One could argue the the simplest convention could be:
Station Name or Station Name station reserving Station name station (disambiguation) for when we have multiple stations that with the same name. Of course the disambiguation in the US should be (City, State) to match up with the other conventions.
But then that's just my opinion at this point in the discussion. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:13, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm late to the discussion, but how about starting here, and then expanding. NYCS is probably the most complicated transit system, so how about starting with more simple examples. Most stations are named after a location, so having Station Name station will prevent most ambiguity. If multiple stations have the same name, I would first disambiguate by location. So in the Las Vegas example, the Amtrak train station should be called Las Vegas station (New Mexico). Because there are multiple locations that may be referred to as Las Vegas station, Las Vegas station would be a disambiguation page also containing links to Las Vegas Union Pacific Station and even Las Vegas Air Force Station. If there are multiple stations with the same name in the same city, then add the system/company name as the disambiguating term. If both stations are part of the same system/company, then use the line name as the disambiguating term. This order of disambiguation should prevent most confusion regarding anticipated article locations, and it would leave the NYCS with Station Name station and Station Name station (line) for stations with the same name. How about we start to work on an actual draft? Should Wikipedia:Naming conventions (stations) be used (and then discussion on progression could be on that talk page)? --Scott Alter (talk) 19:04, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Isn't a subway a subterranean pedestrian thoroughfare under a road? If so why use such a name as part of a dab extension for a tube station? -- PBS (talk) 23:01, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
'Subway' can have multiple meanings; in the US it means a metro system. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 14:06, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I posted the following comment to the article page linked at the start of the parent discussion but I think it is worth repeating it here:

A problem that discussing disambiguation and article areas with which familiar is that it tends to distort ones view of the subject in general and so does not necessarily lead to supporting the best solution. I think it may be helpful for the people in this debate to read Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 34#hopelessly vague title. There are several other section on the issue of pre-emptive disambiguation in that archive, but I have highlighted that one because I think that the comments around churches is a good approximation to the problems around stations. Notice that St. Botolph's Church has still not been created and is an example of why pre-emptive disambiguation is frowned upon as often the dab page is ignored. While red base names are not a problem for searches, it is a problem for disambiguation bots as they check links against disambiguation pages! If I put some text into a page and it includes a red link to a station I assume that no article has been written about the station not that there are half a dozen about different stations one of which may be the one I want! I assume the same with links to biography articles, because the usual way is to write an article and then move it if later if a disambiguation is needed, or a hat note is added if the name is the primary one.

-- PBS (talk) 23:06, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I support the opinion of DanTD. The current naming rules are intended for single articles describing isolated entities. When talking about complex systems, such as railroads or subways, we need something more flexible. A reader reading an article about a subway station is expected to feel he is in a series of articles. A different question is whether the use of parentheses is adequate enough for this task or we need to find another means. Vcohen (talk) 07:45, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

The question is really "is the exceptional use of parentheses needed for this task?", not if they're adequate. There are several projects that have articles in series (political office holders, albums released by an artist, London Underground stations) that illustrate that preemptive disambiguation is not necessary. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:50, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Please, please, please! Don't call it disambiguation, because it is totally misleading. Let's distinguish between form and content. The content is a kind of addition to the title that gives feeling of being in a system of articles by using a more extensive variant of the subject's name. If using parentheses makes you think it's disambiguation, then we have to find another form for it. Vcohen (talk) 12:10, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
It's not totally misleading. To the Wikipedia project, adding a parenthetical to a title (where the common name does not have a parenthetical) is a disambiguating qualifier (or artificial disambiguation). Where the title is expanded or uses a variant for reasons other than disambiguation (like Boise, Idaho instead of Boise), then the expansion does not use parentheses. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:55, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
So, we need another form. What about Parkside Avenue, BMT Brighton Line? However, I believe it isn't the only possible option and there will be other suggestions. Comma is more appropriate for postal addresses, not subway stations. Vcohen (talk) 13:18, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
OT, I still see a lot of neighborhoods in cities that have parentheses instead of commas. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 15:23, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Why not the simpler (WP:CONCISE) Parkside Avenue station? Vegaswikian (talk) 19:37, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Because 1 and 2. Vcohen (talk) 20:33, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Which fail concise. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:39, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
On one hand. Vcohen (talk) 17:09, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
What about the issue of accuracy? Has anybody considered that? All I see is a knee-jerk hatred of the use of parentheses ---------User:DanTD (talk) 04:53, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Another solution might be to change the definition of disambiguation and permit parentheses for other goals. Vcohen (talk) 17:09, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't think we should, or can change the definition of disambiguation, but I do agree with permitting parentheses for other goals. This is something we should be more flexible about. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 13:52, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
London uses both Station Name tube station and Station Name station as part of its naming conventions. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 14:00, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I support any option that does not rely on parentheses for anything other than disambiguating between ambiguous Wikipedia articles. I have no preference among those options. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:50, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Consistency is one thing... mindless conformity is another. I would suggest that trying for conformity between all subway/metro/tube/rail stations is a mistake. A disambiguation form that works for the Paris Metro may not work for the London Underground, and what works for the London underground may not work for the NYC Subway. Each has unique issues to deal with. We also need to accept that a disambiguation form that works for one station in a given system may not work for some other station in same system (especially one as complex as NYC). Go with what works. Blueboar (talk) 19:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Support a consistent naming convention for the project, if it 1) explicitly allows for exceptions, 2) makes the project's articles in some way better, and 3) explicitly requires redirects to the simple name, and 4) does not break other things in WP.
Mindless conformity? That's a loaded phrase and inappropriate, especially since it wouldn't be true. Mindless conformity means either consistency without any reason, or consistency without reasonable elbow room.
Also, subtle hints apparently don't cut it here, so I'm going to be explicit: following the guidelines mindlessly is also a foolish consistency, especially when one insists on rules that don't exist. The whole point of WP:IAR is that we should not be overly zealous with the guidelines, yet here we have those who will argue that we must in fact do so, and that we must even follow a guideline that does not exist (but might be inferred), which is that parentheses can only mean disambiguation. Dovid (talk) 04:12, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
If the parentheses are not a part of the real (common or official) name of the subject, then yes, they can only mean disambiguation. To take an example listed above: there are apparently no reliable sources that use the form Sutphin Boulevard (IND Queens Boulevard Line). So this can only properly be described as disambiguation. Now, because we have at least two Sutphin Boulevard stations with an article, some (perhaps this) disambiguation is necessary in this case. But that doesn't mean that e.g. Briarwood – Van Wyck Boulevard (IND Queens Boulevard Line) needs the disambiguation as well. Briarwood – Van Wyck Boulevard would work just as well, and is the name used on e.g. [1] (I suppose this counts as a reliable source here). Fram (talk) 07:21, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Exactly. Dovid, no one's following the guidelines mindlessly. We're trying to follow the guidelines mindfully. The "whole point" of WP:IAR is that we don't let the rules keep us from improving the encyclopedia; that doesn't mean that we ignore rules when a local consensus has been formed but no improvement to the encyclopedia is generated by that local consensus. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:55, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
MTA is not a reliable source when it comes to stations. On the website, on maps, and on station platforms, the names are all different. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 14:58, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
OK. Any suggestions for better sources? Fram (talk) 15:08, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't know, so let's keep them. Simpler names like 23rd Street (New York City Subway) are easily agreed on. More complex names, like 61st Street – Woodside (IRT Flushing Line), are not (it can also be Woodside – 61st Street, 61st Street, or Woodside, not to mention the hyphens/endashes problem that the MTA has (sometimes hyphens are there, sometimes they use slashes or parentheses, and sometimes punctuation is nonexistent)). Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 20:01, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
I say we should keep the system as is. Fram says that renaming Briarwood – Van Wyck Boulevard (IND Queens Boulevard Line) as Briarwood – Van Wyck Boulevard works well. I say it makes the article look like it's for a non-notable street. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 05:03, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
What about halfway in-between: Briarwood – Van Wyck Boulevard subway station? (It’s certainly clearer and less cumbersome than Briarwood – Van Wyck Boulevard (IND Queens Boulevard Line) or Briarwood – Van Wyck Boulevard (New York City Subway). Useddenim (talk) 11:41, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
I have no problem with adding station to article names, and subway station (or metro station in other countries) to subway stations. It is rather common for stations to be called XX station, so commonname is applicable here. Fram (talk) 14:22, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
It might seem okay, but what you have to remember is that not every city's subway system is organized in the same way, let alone every country's subway system, hence the current standard despite how cumbersome it may appear to you. The same goes for every other railroad. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 13:45, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Actually, the convention seems to be (at least in Britain and Europe) XXX railway station for mainline stations, YYY tube/metro/commuter system/subway for urban systems, and ZZZ station for interchanges. Useddenim (talk) 22:25, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
By the way, both the Budapest Metro and Paris Métro don't use the convention you mentioned above. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 19:10, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity, Epicgenius, did you check the number of stations already named 23rd Street (New York City Subway)? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:04, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I did. That's why I don't want to rename many of the articles' titles. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 19:10, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

A simpler proposal

There are two broad issues here:

  1. Most subway/metro/tube stations are named after the geographical area (street, neighborhood, etc.) they serve. Thus, there is a need to disambiguate the station from the geographical area.
  2. In some cases there are multiple stations that have the same street/neighborhood name. These need additional disambiguation.

Now for some thoughts on these two broad issues...To my mind, the un-disambiguated NAME (Foo) should be reserved for the article on the geographical area (street/neighborhood/etc.) while the article on the station should be disambiguated by creating a descriptive title. We want that descriptive title to be precise and to have some degree of consistency... so I would suggest: Foo, NYC Subway station... Foo, London Underground station... Foo, Paris Metro station.
If additional disambiguation is needed, then we turn to parenthetical disambiguation. However, at this point lot depends on the specifics of why we needed additional disambiguation. And that means that the text of the parenthetical may not be able to be consistent between articles. Blueboar (talk) 14:24, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: "NYC Subway station" is, while pretty straightforward, too ambiguous. (Or is it?) Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 19:13, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
@Epicgenius: I'm far from expert on the NYC system, but that is irrelevant as my comments are about the naming convention not the implementation of it. The point is that you choose a simple, logical name that naturally disambiguates subway stations from things that are not subway stations. Only when that is ambiguous do you disambiguate. For example adjacent stations in London are Edgware Road tube station (Bakerloo line) and Marylebone tube station. Thryduulf (talk) 19:42, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: More often than not, they are ambiguous, as lines in the NYC subway are, on the most part, parallel and close together. (For example, see the IRT Jerome Avenue Line and the IND Concourse Line, which are literally two blocks apart and whose stations share names.) Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 19:44, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
The system doesn’t even have to be part of the name if local naming conventions are followed: for example, Temple tube station (London) is already disambiguated from Temple (Paris Métro) (which would be Temple métro station under this proposal). Useddenim (talk) 18:32, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
@Useddenim: It should be Temple (Paris Métro) because the word "temple" means many things (and as you said above, the London Underground already uses the name).
No, Temple métro station naturally disambiguates it from the generic temple article and Temple tube station (which is likewise naturally disambiguated). Thryduulf (talk) 19:42, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Do people know that the District and Circle underground lines serve the station from the title? More importantly, do people know that the District and Circle lines are LUL services from the title? Tangentially, do S Stock and the like, which run on these lines, belong to the LUL? NYC Subway articles answer all of these questions. London Underground does not answer any of the preceding. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 20:02, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
If they want to know the answers to those questions people read the articles! Why on earth would we have an article called Kings Cross St. Pancras London Underground Circle, Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan, Northern and Victoria lines, 1973, 1995, 2009, C and S stock trains station or Bank-Monument London Underground Central, Circle, District, Northern and Waterloo and City lines 1992, 1995, C, D and S stock trains and Docklands Light Railway B90, B92, B2K and B07 trains station? The vast majority of people looking for the articles wont know or care about all that. Thryduulf (talk) 20:38, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
No, I did not mean it that way. For example, for the rolling stock, I mean R160 (New York City Subway car) instead of R160; R1 (New York City Subway car) instead of R1, etc. They are not included in the stations' titles, so that's why I said 'tangentially'. As for subway stations... well, if you see above, you know what NYC subway stations' naming format looks like. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 20:47, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I think most people could go for a guideline along the lines of "articles on train stations should usually be titled xxx Station. If disambiguation is needed to distinguish from other articles on stations of the same name, the name of the system or line should be added in parentheses". There's no reason to avoid the word "station" if it's typically used, or to add "preemptive disambiguation" when there are no ambiguous articles to confuse it with.--Cúchullain t/c 19:47, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Isn't that the very point that people are arguing against? Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 15:30, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
No, that's the very point people are arguing for. The only reason against it appears to be some ill-considered coding in some templates. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:38, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Some people are against that point, but I think most on both sides agree that "xxx Station" is acceptable, and that further disambiguation should be avoided unless there are actually other articles of that title.--Cúchullain t/c 16:04, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
No one wants all the station layout links to be expanded to 'XXX Station'. 'XXX' is fine. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 18:35, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, what I meant was, "xxx Station" is preferable to "xxx (System Name)" when there are no other articles named "xxx", "xxx Station", etc.--Cúchullain t/c 18:40, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Oh, so it does work. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 02:03, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't follow. Of course the title works.--Cúchullain t/c 15:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Actually, what I mean is that the next stop links work. It's just harder to make next-stop links without the piped-links trick. (For example: [[Station Name (Line Name)|]] automatically becomes [[Station Name (Line Name)|Station Name]], but [[Station Name station|]] does not automatically become [[Station Name station|Station Name]]. Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 20:00, 3 November 2013 (UTC)C)

Question

Long story short I need to create an article title that lists both the pseudonym (Eric Morse) and real name (William Pattison) of a barely-known author. Is Eric Morse AKA William Pattison William Pattison AKA Eric Morse OK regarding title format?

(the long story if you want it is at the bottom of the talk page at Eric Morse

Thanks!

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:09, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Why? A very poor article already exists for Eric Morse. Secondarywaltz (talk) 22:29, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Eric Morse should probably get deleted, but I don't know that genre well enough to judge that with confidence. So I just want to move it to William Pattison AKA Eric Morse so that I can turn Eric Morse into a disambig page that will go to both this person and Eric W. Morse. But their real name (William Pattison) is already the title of an article on somebody else so I can't use that for a title. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:36, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
We normally don't put AKAs in article titles. For the article title, we choose whichever name is more commonly used by sources. Then, we note the AKA in big bold print in the first sentence of the article, so readers know who we are talking about. Not sure which would be the title in your case, but the first sentence would look something like:
  • William Patison (also known as Eric Morse) is a... ").
or
  • Eric Morse is the pseudonym of William Patison, who....:
Then, to help those who might search the AKA name that was not chosen as the title, we can create a redirect page under that name, pointing to the one chosen. (by Blueboar)
The background is that I am unable to title that article "William Pattison" and am trying to have it not titled "Eric Morse". So neither of those two ideas / norms works for me. So I guess I'm asking.......if the "AKA" is just a bit unusual, maybe I'll do it anyway. And if it's a pretty bad or very unusual idea, then I won't do it, and I'll have to go back to the drawing board. Thanks. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:05, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
        • I'd just rename to William Pattison (author), since there doesn't seem to be a lot of sourcing. We don't do AKAs for pseudonyms though, and I don't think this is a reason to make an exception. Googling seems to suggest they normally refer to the author as William Pattison first (then add aka Eric Morse) - but William Pattison seems the main way he is referred to.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 01:14, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone! Sounds like a plan. North8000 (talk) 01:17, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Apostrophe

WP:TSC says "... apostrophe ' (e.g. Anthony d'Offay), which should, however, be used sparingly (e.g. Shia instead of Shi'a)".

Is there a more specific guideline about when one should or should not use the apostrophe - in particular should one use it if it is part of an official name. The particular article I am interested in is All Saints College, Perth. The College's name has an apostrophe, so I presume that so should the article title. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:06, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I think your reading is correct. If there is an official or most-commonly-used name, we follow it. It would only be used "sparingly" if there are equally valid rationales for doing it both ways. Dovid (talk) 02:10, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Argentina television stations

While I've been giving a bunch of Argentina-related articles cleanup, I've been running into a very confusing situation with the names of Argentina television stations.

Some locations make sense, particularly for the big five Buenos Aires stations: América 2 (which should be moved to América TV over a redirect), TV Pública Digital (Argentina) (not sure if that one needs a parenthetical), Canal 9 (Argentina), Telefe and El Trece. Where it gets muddy is when you go to Argentina's interior.

Aside from two articles, LW 83 TV and Canal 8 de Tucumán, all the remaining article titles are formatted like Channel 10 – Córdoba with channel number and position. In es.wiki, where there are more of these articles, they're all formatted as Canal 10 (Córdoba).

It's a naming scheme that's clunky, probably doesn't meet the Manual of Style, etc. So what sort of naming should these articles have: call sign (which may be odd considering the vast majority of stations no longer use it regularly), the current English format, or the current Spanish format? There aren't many English sources here. Raymie (t • c) 20:38, 11 November 2013 (UTC) (crossposted to WikiProject Television Stations)

Use of definite article in naming Universities

A user, User:14.198.220.253, has suggested removing the long-standing guideline "When in doubt, do not use the definite article for universities." on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name). They have so far provided minimal explanation of why. Additional viewpoints on the talk page would be appreciated 63.251.123.2 (talk) 22:22, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Trains are going places

I'm glad to see that the trains discussion above has become more cooperative, productive, and civil. In the spirit of this, can we close the enormous discussion, archive it with a reference (due to its size), and create a new section called "Proposals for rail station naming?" The summary to the old discussion can state that this discussion is closed, and each contributor can state their main position briefly, and perhaps their willingness to participate in working out the propsosal. Dovid (talk) 13:57, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it should probably be moved to its proper location at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (stations). Useddenim (talk) 11:18, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Actually given the ongoing issue with the naming of these, a broader forum is probably just fine. Moving the discussion actually limits participation to only rail experts since they are likely the only editors watch listing that page. In the end, what seems clear is that there may not be a consensus to support the current naming guideline. I think what may be the fallout if something is agreed to, it is that there may need to be a country specific statement for titling or disambiguation which ever is appropriate based on the broader agreement. So if we go with Foo station for the US, 'station' could become 'railway station' somewhere else. Same if we went with Foo (station). Vegaswikian (talk) 23:30, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
A relevant move proposal has just started: Talk:Parkside Avenue (BMT Brighton Line)#Requested move. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Exception to using English for Chinese surnames

Within the posts at Talk:Li_(surname)#RFC_regarding_multiple_Chinese_surnames_transliterated_to_the_same_surname_in_English is a proposal and some support for using Chinese characters in article titles to disambiguate between different Chinese surnames that transliterate to the same word (Li in this case). Please provide input there.--Wikimedes (talk) 06:39, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Naming conflict: Australia national association football team

There are discussion(s) going about changing the name of the Australia national association football team to Australia men's national association football team. We are seeking outside input. Any contributions are much appreciated. Thank you. Hmlarson (talk) 01:16, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)

Two editors have had a disagreement involving hot revert war and a cold war on the talk page over the retention or deletion of a sentence. I have structured a simple survey on whether to delete the sentence or keep it. See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)#When in doubt, do not use the definite article for universities) more opinions might help to end the dispute with a clear consensus, if you are a regular here please look it over and express an opinion. -- PBS (talk) 12:42, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Another local consensus contrary to precision

The UK parliament project has a naming convention contrary to WP:PRECISION. I've raised the issue with them at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies#Local consensus on naming conventions contradicts the broader consensus on article titles. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:58, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Capitalisation in the middle of a title name?

There seems to be an inconsistency in the way articles about brands should be treated:

  • Giffgaff has a capital letter applied at the beginning, even though the brand itself stylises itself as giffgaff. There was a debate on the talk page and the essence of the argument was that wikipedia shouldn't reflect branding and refer to the name of the company as a proper noun.
  • PistonHeads has been renamed to capitalise a middle letter because that is the preferred branding format from pistonheads. It was previously called Pistonheads.

What is the preferred approach: Should wikipedia reflect the wishes of the underlying brand, or should it apply its own convention in articles? ChrisUK (talk) 08:45, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

We don't necessarily follow the capitalization that a brand uses for itself (which we could consider the "Official name")... we follow source usage. So, the first thing to do is see whether a significant majority of sources present the name in a particular way... if so, use that... if not (ie the sources are mixed in how they present the name) then we have more flexibility. It then becomes a matter of editorial consensus... a judgement call... taking into consideration and balancing several factors, including a) how the company stylizes the name, b) standard rules of English Grammar, c) the guidance presented in our Manual of Style guideline, and even d) what the editors working on the article think looks best.
In the case of giffgaff vs Giffgaff... be aware that, for technical reasons, Every title on Wikipedia have to start with a capital letter (the program does not work without it). There is a way to make it appear on the page with a lower case first letter... but you have to add some special coding to make that happen. Blueboar (talk) 14:04, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Is exceptional treatment of alternative names within WP:USRD allowed?

I wish to include alternative names for certain state routes within some articles in the U.S. Roads WikiProject, where the alternative names are regularly used by reliably sourced major news outlets. I do not propose changing article titles or subsequent prose throughout, but making a single mention of each alternative name, either in the lead or elsewhere. Although use of the route name format is fairly widespread, I only propose including an alternative name in an affected article when I also include a specific citation to a reliable source.

However, I am getting pushback from other editors, who claim a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS against the inclusion of such alternative route names.

From my reading of the Wikipedia:Article titles policy, the inclusion of reliably-sourced and regularly-used alternative names is encouraged by WP; and from my reading of the Wikipedia:Consensus policy, "participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope."

Would I be correct in including alternative names as described above or has WP:USRD been granted some exception to overall WP policy? Thanks. --Chaswmsday (talk) 20:34, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I think there is a severe lack of good faith in the above statement, which mischaracterizes the situation. It is my opinion that:
  • This policy page deals mostly with what to call a specific page, and
  • Where there are possible alternate names, it suggests, but does not require their inclusion in the lead per MOS:LEADALT.
That section of the MOS defers to consensus on the specific talk page, and the discussion on the appropriate article talk page has not resulted in a consensus to make any change. Imzadi 1979 → 20:51, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for forum shopping. --Rschen7754 20:56, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
If it's a significant alternative title, then, yes, it should be in the lead...unless there are at least three significant alternative titles and those titles are better mentioned in a separate section lower in the article; the WP:Alternative title policy is clear about that. Based on what Floydian has stated, however, the aforementioned case does not appear to be a significant alternative title case. Flyer22 (talk) 21:46, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
In most cases, that's exactly the problem. Especially on long haul routes, there can be literally dozens of alternate titles, as each state, county, city, and even neighborhood can have a preferred local name. Compounding the problem is that many local names (be they official or colloquialisms) tend to be ambiguous and not usable for Wikipedia titles. The example I used at the above referenced talk page is the colloquialism used in Southern California to refer to roads as "the", as in "The 5", "The 101" etc. Just looking at those two examples, The 5 is currently a disambiguation page, with a significant number of items on the disambiguation page are links to lists or other disambiguation pages. So to try to use "The 5" for what is officially Interstate 5 (California), or The 101 for what is officially U.S. Route 101 (California) is problematic. In those two cases, both of those highways extend to other regions where different official and unofficial nicknames are used. As I stated in the talk page, although the general practice in Wikipedia is to use common names for article titles, this fails epically with road articles (and I'd say transportation articles in general). I support the general premise, if a highway has one or two very commonly used common names, sure bold them as alternate titles. For a significant number of highways, there's too many alternate titles for that to be practical.Dave (talk) 21:59, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
In general, the WP:Alternative title policy is not a problem. Like I stressed above, it uses the word significant; that is the keyword with regard to putting alternative titles in the lead or lower in the article. I'm not sure that routes have a lot of significant alternative names. If they do, we have to employ WP:Common sense and not mention them all; we should note that the route has many significant alternative names, and give examples of a few. Flyer22 (talk) 22:27, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
There is very little practical difference between Ohio State Route 844, Ohio 844, SR 844, etc. These are not significant differences. There is no need to display all of these alternative names in the lead of an article or change the titles of articles to reflect this. Those alternative names should redirect to Ohio State Route 844 if they do not do so already.  VC  22:40, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Of the above, "SR 844" is a mere abbreviation of "State Route 844" and "Ohio 844" and "OH 844" are just colloquial abbreviations for "State Route 844". This is a tempest in a teacup. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:09, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Agreed, in this specific case, the argument is over a "less common" abbreviation in a case where there are a half dozen ways of abbreviating the official title. Hardly even worth arguing about. I was attempting to make the discussion more useful to the larger community by talking about the general case. Glad to see this one isn't headed for WP:LAME. =-) Dave (talk) 19:02, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

IMHO, and as you no doubt know, it's quite bad form, @Imzadi1979, to accuse an editor of bad faith, significantly, when I believe that I've raised legitimate points about policies and those policies' relationships to other guidance, and those points are being debated. As you correctly state, the policy page does deal mostly with what to call a specific page. Yet it additionally deals with how to treat alternative names within an article. IMO, you are being disingenuous when you gloss over the plain meaning of the phrase "(they) should be mentioned". While not a "must" (which would impossibly place the onus for inclusion of all such names on everyone who edits every single article), it also does not say "may". "Should" represents the preferred, default position, not 50-50, not leave it out if you just don't feel like it. IMO, you are also being disingenuous a) in claiming that an inclusive policy can be overridden by a more restrictive guideline, and b) in claiming that the very specific "deferral" by the policy to the guideline at issue, namely, when to split alternate names into their own section, somehow becomes a total deferral to that guideline in all cases. I might also suspect that you, and certain other editors, may "have it out for me" due to unpleasant interactions we had earlier this year on another USRD-related difference of opinion, but I've tried to stick to policy and editing arguments.

To the matter at hand. I was somewhat discouraged that of those who have opined in this thread, all editors save one seem to be frequent contributors to road-related articles. I was hoping more disinterested, outside views would be represented. To that point, I will specifically address @Flyer22's policy-related concerns:

When I first started editing these articles, for consistency with related articles, I included a route number abbreviation format that those other articles used. When some of my edits were reverted, with the editors pointing out that no one actually used that abbreviation and there was no WP:RS support for it, I removed that abbreviation format from each new article I edited, as I also could find no sources to support them. The format now in question, "Ohio X", I found in a number of existing articles, including those where the abbreviation had been removed. WP's "Silence and consensus" essay holds that silence implies consensus. With that presumption, I proceeded to add "Ohio X" while editing additional relevant articles. When the silence was broken, and an "Ohio X" removed, I found and added a reliable source, and restored the text. At that time, I did not have other reliable sources at hand, as I rarely see what appear to be non-controversial passages of prose multiply cited.

Please be aware that "Ohio X" has only been reverted from about three articles so far. The "test case", Ohio State Route 844, is a short freeway spur, which although it has an important destination, is probably fairly obscure even within its immediate metropolitan area. Even so, the newspaper in question didn't just use the "Ohio 844" term once, it has used it consistently since 1994 (when it received that number). It is also used by another regional newspaper, by the region's top-ranked TV and radio stations, by so-called roadgeeks in their guides and blogs, by a nearby university and by a fairly distant high school in giving directions on their website. From these more public uses, one can infer that the general public either uses or is at least familiar with the alternate name. In addition, the newspapers in Ohio's two largest metropolitan areas, The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and The Cincinnati Enquirer also both use the "Ohio X" format consistently. And I haven't even looked at other media in the state. So if a simple, limited to the Internet, Google search on a relatively little-known route reveals this many uses of an alternative name, wouldn't that be significant enough to meet whatever the threshold is for a reliably-sourced inclusion? Again, with no thought of changing the article name or the generally-used prose, just a sourced mention, with context, and a redirect or disambiguation as called for by the policy. Sorry I've been so wordy. Thanks. --Chaswmsday (talk) 22:23, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

How is "Ohio X" not just an abbreviation of "Ohio State Route X" though (given, of course, that the official term is "State Route X", and "Ohio" is disambiguation)? This is the underlying question that your post fails to answer. A related issue here that you may not be aware of is that all of the naming conventions and such were established in 2006 as a result of a dispute that resulted in a case before the Arbitration Committee, so most of road editors are simply unwilling to debate the matter further, having either said their piece back then, or have seen how awful the fighting over this can get and don't want to reopen old wounds. Were I in your position I would ask myself if whatever benefit there is to adding this naming convention to the article is really worth the effort you're having to put in to accomplish it. I suspect that it is not. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 23:41, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
I just did a quick search at USRD and USSH archives and couldn't find that debate. Could you please point me there so I can respond with more insight? Thanks. --Chaswmsday (talk) 00:23, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
See WP:SRNC and WP:SRNC/ACCT. Imzadi 1979 → 00:49, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Naming convention for places in the Philippines

There is an ongoing discussion about naming conventions for article titles of places in the Philippines. Please see Wikipedia talk:Tambayan Philippines#Naming of places. There are varying interpretations regarding the 5 criteria for article titles (recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness, and consistency) and I would like to get a view of people who are familiar with the WP:AT policy on the discussion. To give a short summary, the status quo is that the comma convention, by default, is used for municipalities but not cities. I am proposing to move to the <placename> only format for all when no disambiguation is needed. --seav (talk) 04:19, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

CONCISE

Hello, we are having a discussion on what the scope of CONCISE is, see Talk:Suzukake no Ki no Michi de "Kimi no Hohoemi o Yume ni Miru" to Itte Shimattara Bokutachi no Kankei wa Dō Kawatte Shimau no ka, Bokunari ni Nan-nichi ka Kangaeta Ue de no Yaya Kihazukashii Ketsuron no Yō na Mono -- 76.65.128.112 (talk) 23:37, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Recognizability and settlements

One of the five criteria is currently given as: "Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject will recognize." A discussion about Bothell, Washington has once again raised a point relating to this. The problem is that relatively few people know of Bothell. It is the requirement that "someone familiar with" the topic will find the title recognizable that is problematic here. At least for articles about relatively obscure settlements, this requirement pares the "familiar" group down to a very small percentage of readers, thus making the title unrecognizable to a very large percentage of readers. The current title of "Bothell, Washington" makes the article easily recognizable as a settlement. As it is currently stated, I feel that this description of the recognizability criterion is problematic in these cases. Thoughts? Omnedon (talk) 01:57, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I also think that "familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject" should not apply to cities and towns - where in many cases the only people who are sufficiently "familiar with" the subject to recognize it are those who live near by. Not many people will recognize names like "Sleepy Eye" or "Cayucos" - whereas "Sleepy Eye, Minnesota" or "Cayucos, California" are instantly recognizable. --MelanieN (talk) 02:12, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I am moderately familiar with the geography, populations, and towns and cities of Washington State. This does not mean that I could draw a an accurate map, or list the cities in order of population. I am no expert on the cities. I did not recognize Bothell, but I do recognize Bothell, Washington. It may be better moved to Bothell, Seattle. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:14, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
MelanieN/Omnedon: I also agree that the criterion is problematic when applied to settlements. If we accept that only an extremely small sliver of Wikipedia's readership is likely to recognize the title "Sleepy Eye" as a settlement in Minnesota (rather than an opthalmic disorder, say), then it's fair to say that such a title caters to a very specialized subset of readers — and per WP:CRITERIA, "the choice of article title should put the interests of ... a general audience before those of specialists." The City, State convention better serves the interests of that general audience.
SmokeyJoe: Thanks, that's interesting to have a view from someone acquainted with the state. As for using "Seattle": if Bothell is actually a neighborhood of Seattle rather than a city in its own right, then I think that'd be appropriate and would fit with how we handle other neighborhoods; if it's a city, though, then the current form seems more appropriate to me. ╠╣uw [talk] 15:06, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Bothell is a city, I used to live there. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:18, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes, Bothell is a city in its own right, distinct from Seattle, but very close. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:30, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
  • This, apparently, represents typical knowledge of the US geography by non-US English speakers. Seeing how most Anglophones (who are the primary audience of the English Wikipedia) live outside the US, I dare say this map fairly accurately represents the US geographic knowledge of most our readers (and adjusting for non-Anglophones with English as their second or third language, the situation is probably even more dire than that). In that light, I'm not at all convinced that "Whatever, Washington" would be more recognizable than simply "Whatever" to most readers. The latter variant, on the other hand, is more concise and in line with how the populated places in the rest of the world are treated. So, to address the original inquiry, no, I don't believe that "Bothell, Washington" makes the article easily recognizable as a settlement. If making it more easily recognized as a settlement is a goal (which I don't believe it should be), then name it "Bothell, United States" (and then work on adding a requirement to include the country name for all settlements).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 8, 2014; 14:34 (UTC)
  • [2] is funny, but I think it is an Americanism how Hawaii is placed in Mexico. I'm guessing it is geographical revisionism to ensure that Hawaii is in America (see Talk:America).

    I disagree that "Bothell , United States" would be better, because US states should be familiar to anyone considering an interest in US cities, and because there is significant City name ambiguity across different states. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:39, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

  • I don't quite agree that settlements are to be given a special consideration with respect to the recognizability criteria. There are plenty of other subject areas where the name of an article in that area won't be recognizable to a large percentage of English speakers. To give a recent example, the title of the new article 2014 AA, is unrecognizable as the name of a near-Earth asteroid to most people. In addition, it's not the job of the article title to inform readers that Bothell is a settlement or that 2014 AA was an asteroid. That's the purpose of the WP:LEAD section. --seav (talk) 15:59, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm not suggesting special treatment. I'm suggesting a change in phrasing. In the case of settlements, few readers will be familiar with a specific obscure place; but many readers will be familiar with the general United States convention for place naming. That allows the subject of the article to be obvious to a much larger number of readers. There may be other subject areas where the same would apply. Omnedon (talk) 17:13, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
I am reluctant to change the language on Recognizability, just to better fit this one topic area. While I can understand that it might not be perfect when it comes to obscure place names... the language works extremely well in almost every other topic area. We word our policy pages to fit the typical article, not specific articles or groups of articles. If there is a need to explain the nuances as to how to apply the policy to a specific topic area ... the place to do so is in subsidiary guidelines and essays. In this case, we have various Naming Conventions (such as WP:USPLACE) to explain the nuances of how to apply the WP:AT policy in specific situations. Blueboar (talk) 18:15, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
I can understand your reluctance. The problem is that this phrasing is one reason being put forward for abandonment of WP:USPLACE. The argument says that anyone familiar with, say, "Bothell" as a place in Washington will understand what the article is about from that title. But that is going to be a tiny percentage of our readers. It has come up again and again in challenges to WP:USPLACE, where people are unwilling to acknowledge that some areas may require different treatment than others. That's why I raised the question here, to try and discuss one of the core issues instead of the symptom. Omnedon (talk) 18:23, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
What about a slight change in focus from "subject" to "subject area"? For example, the current phrasing requires a reader to be familiar with "Dimethylamine" in order to find that title recognizable. Surely it is more reasonable to expect familiarity with chemistry in general, which would allow a reader to recognize that this article is about a chemical. Likewise, the current phrasing requires a reader to be familiar with the place named "Sleepy Eye" in order to recognize that title, and that would be a very small number of readers; whereas a general familiarity with United States place names would allow a much broader audience to recognize the slightly longer title "Sleepy Eye, Minnesota". Omnedon (talk) 18:44, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Great suggestion! I think a change to "subject area" rather than "subject" makes good sense, and actually applies far more generally than just to settlement titles. For example, hardly anyone is familiar with Acanthorutilus maeandricus, but it is used as a title here because anyone familiar with biology in general will recognize it as a species name. People may never have heard of Paromomycin, but someone who has a general familiarity with pharmaceuticals will recognize that it is an antibiotic. In this case, the names with the state included are recognizable to anyone who has a general familiarity with American place names, while the name without the state may be unrecognizable to most people. --MelanieN (talk) 18:58, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Agreed, that seems like an excellent refinement: very simple, yet doing much to improve the criterion. In considering "Sleepy Eye", it would seem incongruous to think that a WP criterion would call for the corresponding article to be titled in a way that's likely only recognizable to the people of one small Minnesota town, rather than in "the interests of a general audience" (as our naming policy also requires) – many of whom might easily mistake it for some kind of ocular disorder. I think addressing the "subject area" in the criterion could help us avoid such oddities. ╠╣uw [talk] 19:44, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
What would you think about making this into a formal proposal - that the recognizability criterion be changed from "familiar with the subject" to "familiar with the subject area"? IMO this would be an improvement in the guideline but would not be asking for any exception or special treatment for settlements or anything else. In fact it may very well be what the framers of the sentence meant to say all along - that they didn't mean familiarity with each and every specific article subject, but rather familiarity with the general field or area. --MelanieN (talk) 21:08, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea. Omnedon (talk) 21:21, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't presume to know what the framers of the original recognizability criteria had in mind, but just making recognizability specific to the topic of the article itself leaves very little (debatable) room for interpretation which helps to stabilize article titles. If we relax the criterion to the "subject area", you invite debates regarding which subject area an article in under. For the Paromomycin example, is the subject area obviously pharmacy? Why not medicine? Or chemicals? For the 2014 AA example. is the subject area astronomy? Or the solar system? Or asteroids? But even someone familiar with astronomy or the solar system (he or she may know that Pluto is no longer a planet) may not recognize that the article is about an asteroid which would require the title to be somewhere like 2014 AA (asteroid). But if someone is familiar with asteroids, he might already recognize the title (unless his familiarity is only limited to what asteroids are in general) and the article title is already correct as it is. —seav (talk) 22:46, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
  • There are many reasons why WP:USPLACE says what it does... We have to remember that Recognizability is only one factor in titling an article... we also have to consider Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, and Consistency. In the US, the names of towns so frequently repeated between one state and another, that a significant majority of town articles have to be disambiguated (a function of Precision and Conciseness). The shear number of disambiguated titles sets up an expectation by the reader that all articles on US towns will be presented in the same disambiguated format (ie Consistent). Yes, a few major cities are so recognizable without any disambiguation (New York City, for example) that consistency is out weighed by Recognizability and Naturalness... but those are exceptions to the generalized rule.
So, the question isn't which potential title (Bothell, Washington or just Bothell) is more recognizable than the other... the question is whether "Bothell" (without the expected disambiguation) is recognizable enough for us to make it an exception to the general rule. I don't think it is. When we balance Recognizability against Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness and most of all Consistency ... "Bothell, Washington" should be favored. Blueboar (talk) 16:18, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Another factor to consider is that U.S. cities/towns/villages have no legal existence except as administrative subdivisions of their state. Bothell exists only as a subdivision of Washington, not as a subdivision of the United States. --Orlady (talk) 20:17, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, and Consistency are not gospel. Someone made them up. However, I happen to agree with them, and with their order, as an order of importance. Recognizability is not just one factor to consider, it is the first. Conciseness belongs after precision. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:46, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
No, it's not a fork. It's a broader issue. Omnedon (talk) 20:18, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

"What the article is about" clarification

Problem

The second sentence is currently ambiguously stated and can be misinterpreted. It states:

The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles.

Taken out of context, "what the article is about" can be taken to mean a wide open description of, well, "what the article is about". In reality, (see next Observations section), the requirement is usually met by simply conveying the name of the topic, because, to anyone familiar with the topic, the name alone tells them what it is about.

Also, the intended meaning is currently clarified in the second paragraph:

The title may simply be the name (or a name) of the subject of the article, or it may be a description of the topic.

Observations about relevant actual practice

Any objective review of WP titles (e.g., click a few dozen times on SPECIAL:RANDOM to get a random sample) immediately confirms that almost all titles fall into one of the following categories:

  1. Articles about topics that have names
    • Articles about topics that have one obvious name that is unique or for which this topic is primary
      • The title conveys the name for the topic
    • Articles about topics that have one obvious name that requires disambiguation
      • The title conveys the name, and other brief information that is in there for disambiguation
    • Articles about topics that have multiple names
      • The title conveys a name for the topic which is unique, or for which this topic is the primary use
      • The titles conveys the name, and other brief information that is in there for disambiguation
  2. Articles about topics that don't have names
    • Title is a brief description of the topic


Proposed changes

This problem can be easily remedied with some slight wording changes which accurately reflect actual practice. These changes do not change policy; they merely clarify what the policy and practice already is, making the wording less likely to be misinterpreted.

  1. Change 1st paragraph, second sentence
    Current wording:
    The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles.
    Proposed wording:
    The title indicates what the article is about (by conveying the name for named topics, or with a brief description for topics without names), and distinguishes it from other articles.
    Justification:
    This change merely clarifies what the 2nd paragraph already says, and reflects actual practice, per the observations noted above, making this wording less likely to be interpreted much more broadly than what it is intended to convey. The linking of the second phrase, "distinguishes it from other articles", to WP:D, also simply clarifies that that phrase refers to our process of disambiguation.
  2. Change 2nd paragraph, 1st paragraph
    Current wording:
    The title may simply be the name (or a name) of the subject of the article, or it may be a description of the topic.
    Proposed wording:
    For topics with names, the title is usually simply the name (or a name) of the subject of the article. The title may also be a name with additional brief information if the name requires disambiguation, or a description of the topic if the topic has no name.
    Justification:
    Here again we clarify and better reflect actual policy and practice mainly for the purpose of eliminating grounds for disagreement and unproductive debate. The current wording may be interpreted to mean that the title of an article about a topic with a name may be a description. However, in practice, this is almost never the case. The name of any topic about a person, place or thing that has a name is almost always a name for that topic, or that name, disambiguated as necessary. The rare exceptions, where a descriptive title is used for a named topic, if any, presumably have good reason to do that, and can be handled with WP:IAR.

Thoughts? Comments? --B2C 00:17, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

While it's certainly good to consider needed refinements to WP's guidance, I generally oppose the creep of lengthier and more detailed verbiage into policies unless there's a clear need for it, and in the places you cite I don't see a compelling justification — and do see some issues with your proposed alternatives. A few specific points of concern:
You say that the policy's second sentence — the one which says the title indicates "what the article is about" — could be taken out of context to mean the title indicates "what the article is about." I'm not sure I understand this point: that the title indicates what the article is about seems appropriate (and that readers would construe the sentence to mean what it says does not seem wrong.) You express concern that the current sentence would be interpreted broadly, but I'm also not sure that concern is warranted: the policy can be (and is) elaborated upon in subsequent paragraphs or sections, and it's important for the lede to be kept trim and streamlined.
The current verbiage in the second paragraph reads well: it notes (as you do) that the title may be the name, a name, or a description. Your text, however, materially changes the meaning of the passage to limit the use of a description to cases where "the topic has no name". Though indeed titles frequently are names, I'm not sure it's justified to formally subordinate descriptive titles — for one thing, such prioritization might troublesomely beg the question of what is a name and what is a description. This very policy already asserts that a Wikipedia article title may not be the actual name of the subject, but may instead be how reliable sources commonly identify it. If RS routinely describe a subject in a way that varies from what one might consider the subject's name, then I could see discussions veering into the subjective area of determining under the letter of the policy whether the identification used in RS is "a name" or merely "a description", the latter seemingly being deprecated if someone can show that the subject has any other name. That's complicated and IMO unlikely to "eliminate grounds for disagreement and unproductive debate." Retaining the established verbiage seems preferable. ╠╣uw [talk] 16:00, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
Let's look at some titles chosen with SPECIAL:RANDOM. I choose them with RANDOM to demonstrate how prevalent such titles are (they are not cherry-picked edge cases chosen to make a point): Kaiserslautern, Jaf Bar-e Simin, Gilda Cobb-Hunter, Trick of the Light, Libertarianism without inequality. Now, do these titles tell you what the respective articles "are about"? It depends on how you interpret "what the article is about", doesn't it? If you accept the name alone, no matter how obscure, as telling you "what the article is about" (e.g., the article is about "Kaiserslautern"), then it's fine. But if you reject that view, and contend that an obscure meaningless (to you) name tells you practically nothing about what the article is about, then these titles don't really do what you think WP:AT says they should do. The problem with that view is that it rejects the majority of our titles - and so it clearly is not the intended meaning at WP:AT. So my main thrust here is to clarify that part of WP:AT, so that the interpretation of "what the article is about" that does not accept obscure names as meeting that standard is not assumed. Does that make sense? And I've seen on more than a few occasions people, presumably in good faith, take that "what the article is about" statement out of context to argue for a more descriptive title than "just" the name of the topic.

How RS refers to a topic is a name of the topic. With very few exceptions, the only titles that are not names, but descriptions, are titles of topics that are not referenced by RS at all. They are titles contrived by WP editors, like List of districts of India. That is the practice, and de-facto policy, though it is not currently clearly reflected in written policy at WP:AT. This change would correct that. --B2C 19:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

  • I don't think the proposed changes are an improvement. They add verbiage (some of it repetitious), but they really don't help in understanding titles, and by making the sentences unnecessarily complicated they may actually make it harder. They add nothing to what is already in the article; it is not a "problem" to say "the title indicates what the article is about." Also, the link to "disambiguation" from the phrase "distinguish it from other articles" seems inappropriate; the two things are not necessarily the same. (Disambiguation is "the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous"). --MelanieN (talk) 21:25, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
  • (1) Oppose. "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles" should be interpreted more broadly that B2C wishes, specifically, in terms of maximizing Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, and Consistency. B2C's suggested wording, borrowing words from "Precision", elevating them above Recognizability, is the wrong way to go. While Precision is important, it is more important that a title is recognizable than minimally precise. More generally, it is a bad idea to convolute the lede with things better explained in the first section.
(2) Oppose, as I don't see what it adds, and it weakens accessibility of policy through mixing content from policy sections and the WP:D guideline into the lede, making the lede harder to parse. Policy lede sections should not be verbose, but should contextualize the policy as written in the sections following. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:58, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I oppose the second change because, at least if obscure place names are any indication, some topics could use a brief descriptive phrase even if they technically don't require disambiguating. Plus, I doubt that the proposer would be happy if IAR was trotted out as a reason not to adhere to this sentence in a USPLACE discussion. AgnosticAphid talk 04:06, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
    • Obscure place names are not an indication of this. US city names, and only US city names, are. They are a bizarre and pointless exception to a rule followed by the title of every other articles on WP. This is the essence of the main objection to USPLACE. --B2C 05:50, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
B2C: That you still stridently assert that the convention is pointless, despite the many reasonable points that have been clearly articulated and repeatedly raised and explored in countless discussions, is unfortunate... but alas, not unexpected. ╠╣uw [talk] 13:16, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I have to quibble with B2C's basic premiss that:
...almost all titles fall into one of the following categories:
  1. Articles about topics that have names,
  2. Articles about topics that don't have names.
I think this misstates the the relationship between title and topic. I think a more accurate description would be:
  1. Articles that use a name of the topic as their titles
  2. Article that use a description of the topic as their titles
I also quibble with his assertion that the title "coveys the name" of the topic... that is NOT the intent. The title is not the "name of the topic". We often use names to convey what the topic is, but we don't use names to convey what the topic's name is. In fact, we changed the title of this policy (from WP:Naming Conventions to WP:Article Titles) precisely to get away from the idea that an article title "conveys the name" of the topic. Blueboar (talk) 14:06, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Italicising small poem names and WP:NCBOOKS

I started a conversation regarding our policy on poem titles--NCBOOKS says to italicise poem titles, the major style guides say quotation marks, the reliable sources cited at these articles don't italicise, and almost none of the poem articles on Wikipedia comply with NCBOOKs. So what gives? Join the conversation at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Italicising small poem names and WP:NCBOOKS.--ColonelHenry (talk) 14:27, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Yet another conflict between our MOS and the standard stylization of sources? Oh joy! Blueboar (talk) 15:08, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
The MOS seems in line with the above: MOS:QUOTEMARKS#Names and titles. Think it's WP:NCBOOKS at fault. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:15, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
Robsinden - many thanks for the quotemarks page. couldn't find that yesterday.--ColonelHenry (talk) 16:14, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

When there is no common name in English - my proposal

Hi! My proposal is the following (not sure where exactly to put it):

If there is no common name in English for the subject of the article, it should be placed at the official English-language name, if it exists. If here is no official English-language name, consensus should decide an appropriate name from a native language (transliterated if necessary)."

The discussion prompting this is Talk:Franco-Vietnamese_Hospital#Requested_move, though there are a few others (such as discussions of villages in Kosovo not notable enough to be commonly referenced in English-language reliable sources, but notable enough to have an article--should they be named in Serbian or in Albanian?). Red Slash 17:52, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but I have to oppose anything that appeals to an "official" name as a handed-down solution, because it will either provide no answer or it will result in an arbitrary decision in favour of one side of a political dispute. In the case of villages in Kosovo, for example, its not really going to provide an answer, because what the official English language name is probably varies according to whether you think Pristina or Belgrade has the right to decide that, or else one side will win by default because its official name can be sourced. It would seem more sensible and fairer to consider a range of factors, including sources where available, the ethnicity of the inhabitants of a particular village, any salient historical facts etc and completely ignore the question of what's official. Formerip (talk) 18:26, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Third Paragraph of WP:COMMONNAME

The 3rd paragraph of WP:COMMONNAME seems to be a non-sequitur... What it says isn't necessarily wrong, but I think it is out of context when placed in that section... most of the paragraph has nothing to do with the concept of determining the COMMONNAME and using it as a title. The paragraph also seems redundant... most of the points it makes are (in my opinion) better made in other sections of the policy. Would anyone object if I took it out? Blueboar (talk) 16:22, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

For discussion / clarification purposes, is this the paragraph you are talking about? --MelanieN (talk) 20:17, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

"Editors should also consider the criteria outlined above. Ambiguous[4] or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Neutrality is also considered; our policy on neutral titles, and what neutrality in titles is, follows in the next section. Article titles should be neither vulgar nor pedantic. When there are multiple names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others."

Indeed that opening sentence reveals a bit of a disconnect, suggesting that commonname is something other than a strategy in support of recognizability. It could be fixed by putting "other" before "criteria"; or something more explicit like "Editors should also consider the other criteria above, not just 'recognizability'. ..." The rest seems OK, pointing out some bounds on the commonname concept. Dicklyon (talk) 21:21, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes, that is the paragraph I was talking about... and it seems OK when you look at it on its own... but please read it in context with the the surrounding paragraphs. It seems out of place (like someone copied it from some place else and simply randomly pasted it into the section). If people don't want to take it out... can we at least discuss moving it elsewhere, or rewriting it? It is really jarring as it currently is. Blueboar (talk) 23:05, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
OK... since no one has objected outright, I have moved the paragraph down in the section a bit (without any other changes). See this diff. Moving it eliminated the sense of non-sequitur. I also think the move makes sense structurally ... first we tell readers what the COMMONNAME is, and give some examples... and then we note the limitations of and exceptions to applying COMMONNAME.
That said... I also thing that moving it down in the section highlights how repetitive the language of the paragraph is. Any suggestion on how to address that issue? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blueboar (talk • contribs) 16:43, 16 January 2014‎
Please be specific with what you think is the "repetitive the language of the paragraph" by showing what it is that is being repeated. -- PBS (talk) 07:49, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
Well... let's start with the first sentence... and read the paragraph that is now immediately above it ... do we really need to tell editors to "consider the other criteria" twice - in two back to back sentences? Blueboar (talk) 15:38, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
But that repetition exists because you moved the paragraph. If you had not then the repetition would be in the previous sentence! Changing the sentence you have highlighted is now is a copy edit issue to do with the move. But leaving that aside is there anything else in the paragraph that is repeated elsewhere? -- PBS (talk) 18:47, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
The repetition is still in the section... it was just more blindingly obvious after I made the move. The next bit (about avoiding ambiguous titles) is also repetitive (in this case, we have an entire SECTION about avoiding ambiguous titles... should that section include a pointer back to COMMONNAME?) Blueboar (talk) 21:26, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
If you're trying to bury the instruction to consider the other criteria, not just recognizability, then this is a good way to do it: first, move it to later; second, remove it because it's redundant, leaving only one weaker statement. I'd go the other way, and make it more clear, by demoting the commonname section to be a subsection of the criteria section, and repeating the admonition to consider the criteria several times more, to try to reduce the extent to which editors use commoname as if it trumps everything else. Anyway, I reverted. Dicklyon (talk) 19:01, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Dicklyon, I am not trying to "bury" anything. I have no hidden agendas here. I am simply trying to make the COMMONNAME section as a whole flow more naturally. To that end:
  1. Placed were it was (and now, once again, is) the paragraph struck me as being a jarring non-sequitor. It does not fit with the other paragraphs that surround it.
  2. No matter where we place it... it repeats things that are explicitly stated elsewhere (and which, in my opinion, are stated better elsewhere). I see no need for this repetition.
My concern has nothing to do with the specific points of the paragraph ... my concern is the readability of the section as a whole. Blueboar (talk) 19:35, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Blueboar, I share Dicklyon's concern. You must consider not just the internal logic of the page but the history of editors using WP:COMMONNAME as if it were the only principle in WP:AT, and not accepting that the five principles need to be balanced against one another. So I think it is important that COMMONNAME has a prominent statement to the effect that the other principles need to be considered – I agree that the wording and placement of the paragraph you moved weren't ideal, but they were better than nothing. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:42, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Peter... I also think it is important that COMMONNAME has a prominent statement to the effect that the other principles need to be considered... oh, wait... we already have one... so prominent that we set it apart by giving it its own stand alone paragraph that reads:
  • When there is no single obvious term that is obviously the most frequently used for the topic, as used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering the criteria listed above.
Isn't that enough? Do we really need to say "consider the criteria listed above" twice in the same section? Blueboar (talk) 21:15, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Two points. First, yes, maybe it ought to be enough, but I've been in sufficient fractious arguments about article titles to know that repetition of this point and its early placement in the section is desirable. Second, the wording you quote is a source of problems in itself. There can be a single term most frequently used for a topic which is not suitable as the article title. For example, the overwhelmingly most commonly used term for Turdus migratorius is "robin", but this fails the precision principle in an international encyclopedia. COMMONNAME is still wrongly privileged above the other principles. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:28, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Another attempt

I made another attempt at solving the flowing by reunited some of the info from paragraphs 2 and 4 and reducing the redundancy there and other places. It was indeed a mess. I hope this is received favorably. Dicklyon (talk) 23:37, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

The only reason I'm not sure about your attempt is because, for example, WP:MED prefers the scientific name for article titles; see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Article titles. The Heart attack example is a good example in that regard. I've been meaning to link to or mention something about the WP:MEDMOS guideline on Wikipedia:Article titles. I also know that some other Wikipedia fields, such as articles about flowers or birds, go by the scientific name (though maybe not always). Flyer22 (talk) 23:51, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't think my change did anything to change what commonname says about that. It just moved it a bit. And WP:MED is an odd local consensus anyway, is it not? The horrible lead sentence "Myocardial infarction (from Latin: Infarctus myocardii, MI) or acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is the medical term for an event commonly known as a heart attack." is the kind of the thing that COMMONNAME was intended to prevent, I think. Dicklyon (talk) 00:22, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Your change removed an explicit mention that "official, scientific, birth, original, or trademarked names are often used for article titles." It does not show an exception with regard to the "common name is preferred" aspect. As for "WP:MED [being] an odd local consensus," you could ask there why they go by the scientific name -- meaning the name most commonly used in recent, high-quality, English-language medical sources, rather than a lay term (unscientific or slang name) or a historical eponym that has been superseded." Or I could ask them to weigh in here about that. See if it's time to throw out that "local consensus" and state that all medical articles must or should use the lay term (unscientific or slang name), or even a historical eponym that has been superseded. As for the current lead of the Myocardial infarction article, I have also thought of that first sentence as horrible. I was not talking about leads, however, and naming that article Heart attack is not what would make that lead any less horrible. And, from what I can see, WP:Common name was not intended to prevent horrible lead-in sentences. Flyer22 (talk) 00:47, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Ah, I see your point. I reworded to put back the positive statement. See if that's better. As for Heart attack, I do think calling it that would naturally lead to a less horrible lead sentence. And nobody is proposing anything like "state that all medical articles must or should use the lay term..." which would be equally against normal titling guidelines. Dicklyon (talk) 02:27, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes, that's better. Thanks. Should we use the word generally before the word prefers for "prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources" text? Or do you feel that that's sufficiently taken care of by the word necessarily? Flyer22 (talk) 02:54, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm neutral on that. Generally, or usually, or leave it as is. It's a preference to weigh against other preferences. Dicklyon (talk) 03:05, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I have reverted the changes that Dicklyon made and here are my reasons:

  • Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title

changed to

  • Although a subject's official, scientific, birth, or original name is often used

I think this puts a different emphasis on the whole section and inverts the idea The "subject's official, scientific, birth, or original name" are only used if they are the most common names.

I think that the edition of

  • including other encyclpedias and

bloats a sentence which is making the point about the sources in the article, lots of other types of reliable sources are also used, but that is not the emphasis of this clause.

  • removal of the footnote Ambiguous

I am not sure why it was removed, in the past there has been a misunderstanding of what was meant by ambiguous which the footnote clarifies. I think removing it just reintroduces the confusion.

I would remove the paragraph that starts

  • Although official, scientific, birth, original, or trademarked names are often ...

I would keep the paragraph that starts

  • When there is no single obvious term that is obviously..

I would keep

  • not a crystal ball,

but removed the sentence in that paragraph that starts "However, common..." as this is something that Wikipedia editors never have ;-)

I think that there is an argument to be made for a paragraph that recognisably includes common two proxies for the common name that can be helpful are:

  • usage in the sources used as references for the article.
  • usage in other encyclopaedias

and that Ambiguous or inaccurate names as determined in reliable sources, may be avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources.

-- PBS (talk) 17:56, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Light or Lighthouse?

It seems that the sailors and lighthouse fans have a local consensus to prefer official nautical terms like "Light" to common names that use "Lighthouse". Since they've sent out a call at this RM for all the lighthouse project people to pile on, it seems that it would be appropriate to also get a broader cross-section of people who care about title issues, hence this note. See Talk:Bodie Island Light#Requested move you care about what COMMONNAME means in practice. Dicklyon (talk) 06:51, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

I'll save comments on the specific question of Bodie Island for the RM... as to the broad, generalized question of whether such buildings should be called "Light"s or "Lighthouse"s... both/either are acceptable. First, we need to ask some fundamental questions:
  • Is the choice between two NAMEs for the structure (ie are "Xplace Light" and "Xplace Lighthouse" names for the structure)?
  • Is the choice between two DESCRIPTIONS of the structure (ie are "Xplace Light" and "Xplace Lighthouse" descriptions of the structure)?
  • Or is the choice between a NAME and a DESCRIPTION (is one a name and the other a description)?
If the first, then we should apply COMMONNAME to determine which to use in any specific case. If one of the latter two, we have more flexibility. It comes down to weighing and balancing all five of the WP:AT criteria. I would probably give extra weight to Naturalness (what is used in other articles that mention it) and Consistency (do a significant number of articles on such structures consistently use one term or the other?) Blueboar (talk) 13:35, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Article name in lower case for hertz, pascal etc.?

See my latest change from Hertz to hertz. Feel free to revert. Note it's named after Hertz that is upper case (in his article). The SI-units Hz (hertz) and Pa (pascal) are upper case and the MOS tells you to do that of course. Sometimes however people to not abbreviate and use hertz. But I've also seen Hertz. Using the lower case template might help people not do the wrong thing. I'm not saying we need to add a rule in the MOS (should we?), but at least the lower case template is not forbidden and even what it was made for? comp.arch (talk) 11:50, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I overlooked [[3]], and reverted. All agree to this? comp.arch (talk) 11:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
  • The SI units named after people, such as hertz & pascal, are used lowercase, yes, but that does not override the rule that the first word of a sentence, or title, is capitalized. Though I must admit not being familiar with sentences beginning with words like "hertz". "Hertz, as in 'the A/C current oscillates with a frequency of 60 hertz', is the SI unit named after Hertz" --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:12, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
I took a look at what Encyclopedia Britannica does: [4], and they use lower case. Even at the start of the first sentence. Maybe we should. The "lower case title template" is meant for things like iPod and eBay for the name of the page itself, because of technical restrictions. Maybe I should revert my revert? Note it also involved the Infobox. comp.arch (talk) 14:25, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
While it is interesting to see what Encyclopedia Britannica does, we don't base our titles on what one single source does (or even what a couple of sources do). We base them on what a significant majority of all reliable sources do. So... we would have to look at a lot of other sources. Now, if a significant majority of all reliable sources routinely present "hertz" with lower case h... even at the start of a sentence or in a title... then there is a valid argument that we should do so as well... per "COMMONNAME". (It would be a valid exception to the the norm indicated by our MOS.) Otherwise, no. Blueboar (talk) 16:22, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Article titles for common nouns in Wikipedia are capitalized, period. See Chicken, Water, Wavelength. This includes names of units of measurement. See Metre, Mile, Gallon, Degree (temperature), Kilowatt hour. bd2412 T 17:27, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

  • I don't think there is actually an explicit policy on this exact question – I looked all over the place, like at WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS and MOS:TITLE – but I think there are two things supporting using an uppercase letter. First, there is a technical restriction to lowercase first letters, albeit not an insurmountable one. Second, MOS:CAPS does advise that "The initial letter in a sentence is capitalized" which suggests that the initial letter of a title is also always capitalized even if it doesn't say that. I'm not sure what to say about the fact that Britannica uses lowercase; dictionaries do, too. AgnosticAphid talk 19:00, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
The EB reference : "hertz, unit of frequency." This is not a sentence, but a dictionary-style definition. It's not an example of how the word is used in normal prose. 202.81.249.205 (talk) 13:24, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
Amen to the comment by 2412.
Regardless of the etymology (that is, the origin or history) of a common noun, that word properly gets an uppercase initial letter when it appears in the title of a literary work (an article, book, or other work) -- as long as we use the title case (rather than the sentence case for a title).
There's nothing new, different, unsettled, questionable, weird, esoteric, or surprising about that rule or principle.
That's basic grade-school grammar.
We all are supposed to have learned it in the third or fourth grade.
Let's just use it and remember it – without fretting over it or quibbling about it.
What useful purpose do we seek to serve by trying to invent a new set of grammar rules in addition to (or instead of ) the settled, accepted, and established ones?
Best wishes to all,
Doc – DocRushing (talk) 19:11, 16 January 2014 (UTC).

Special disambiguation rules for titles of articles about churches?

I'd like comments on the topic of a heated discussion that recently erupted on my talk page, a couple of other users' talk pages, and one article talk page.

Another user has started agitating against the use of parenthetical place names (e.g., St. John the Baptist Church (Manhattan) or St. Michael's Catholic Church (Cedar Hill, Tennessee)) in the titles of articles about churches with otherwise ambiguous names. The user points out that many articles about churches (including article titles she created) currently do not follow the "parenthetical disambiguation" convention outlined in this policy, but instead set the location apart from the title with a comma (e.g., St John's Minster, Preston and Church of Our Saviour, Singapore). The user has informed me that "This is the way that it is done, across the world" and cites an unidentified guideline that I can't find (I thought it might be in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names), but I can't find the quoted text there, and of course that convention isn't intended to apply to local churches) as mandating the use of commas instead of parentheses for all entities (such as churches) that have addresses.

I believe that this other user is misinterpreting WP:Article titles and related naming conventions. It appears to me that some churches (particularly in the UK) are commonly known by names in the form "St John's Minster, Preston", so the comma is entirely appropriate for those article titles. However, this does not justify eliminating parentheticals for disambiguation of article titles for churches (like the U.S. examples I cited) that aren't commonly known by a "name-comma-place" sort of name. Further, it is likely that there are some church articles currently named with a comma "convention" (because of users who believe that all churches are named after the fashion of UK churches) that should have parenthetical disambiguation in keeping with WP:Article titles.

Thoughts and comments? --Orlady (talk) 05:15, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm the "other" user. As I've repeatedly told Amandajm, this appears to be a WP:ENGVAR issue: we routinely disambiguate buildings of all sorts with (Cityname, Statename), and Commonwealth users — e.g. English places such as Preston, and former colonies such as Singapore — routinely disambiguate churches with , Placename. Note that Amandajm always uses "St" for "Saint": the standard format for UK usage, but very rare here in the USA. Orlady and I have been given repeated comments, without any factual backing whatsoever, such as this one, in which the parenthetical convention is deemed to be as ridiculous as "State Capitol (Texas)" instead of "Texas State Capitol". Comments like this one demonstrate Amanda's problem: she's constantly assuming that a church here or there in the USA is "the church of a place", which although true for Church of England parish churches (which are found virtually everywhere in England), is patently not true for churches in the USA, where the absence of an established church and the multiplicity of denominations means that single-faith areas, while extant, are extremely rare and nowhere near worth being treated as a theoretical basis for our naming conventions. Ditto her comments about the abbeys and chapels: "chapels" in the USA are generally college buildings, cemetery funeral venues, etc., and abbeys are practically nonexistent under that name. All of this demonstrates Amanda's perspective: she's trying to impose UK/Commonwealth naming conventions on the USA, and that's as absurd as trying to get the properly named St Michael's Church, Pennington moved to a US format of St. Michael's Episcopal Church (Pennington, Cumbria). I've tried to remind her to drop the stick, but she won't give up and won't listen. Nyttend (talk) 05:33, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Input is solicited at this discussion which deals with article titles of popular songs. —Psychonaut (talk) 20:28, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

RFC

There is an RFC which may be of interest to editors here Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Trademarks#RFC_to_resolve_conflict_between_MOS:TM.2C_MOS:CT_WP:TITLETM_WP:RS_WP:COMMONNAME Gaijin42 (talk) 16:05, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Revert

User:SmokeyJoe reverted Born2cycle's addition of Beyoncé. Born2cycle put it straight back. Seems to me User:SmokeyJoe's revert and reason is reasonable. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:26, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Obviously, the proposed addition should be discussed and a consensus developed if it is to be restored. The fact that a move discussion resulted in a particular outcome hardly means that this merits automatic inclusion on the policy page. bd2412 T 01:39, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree with SmokeyJoe that Beyoncé is a poor example. There might be clear consensus for that title now, but the entertainer in question was billed as Beyoncé Knowles earlier in her career.
If we want to include a famous mononymous entertainer whose name does't require parenthetical disambiguation, I suggest the following:

  • Bono (not: Paul Hewson)

If it's important to use an example in which the person's mononym is part of his/her birth name, here's an alternative:

—David Levy 02:13/02:21, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree, Liberace would be a great example that probably nobody would argue with, while Beyoncé is perhaps a bit controversial still. Dicklyon (talk) 02:35, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I think we can use both (Bono and Liberace, that is). There's really not a limit to the number of examples that can be provided. In fact, we could set up an entire page just for examples of "this, not that" titles for guidance across a wide range of common naming disputes. bd2412 T 04:39, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't think it matters what mononymous person's title we use as an example, but I think it would be helpful to have one listed. While we generally use the Firstname Lastname format, that's because that's what RS use for most people. When RS usually use one name to refer to the person, so do we. It's just not that common, of course. I thought Beyoncé in particular was a good one since the support for that title was about as close to unanimous as RM discussions ever get. But I'm fine with Bono or Liberace too. --B2C 05:54, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Done. While I was at it, I organized the examples by type. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:48, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
The sorting is good. It would be more helpful if the examples were better explained. Policy pages are supposed to be accessible to newcomers, easily understood on first pass. You shouldn't need to know any of the history to understand the point of the examples. A supplement page containing typical, never-disputed titles illustrating well-agreed title preferences is a good idea. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:42, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
"Never-disputed" is not necessarily a useful limitation. Sometimes disputes allow us to work out policy improvements. bd2412 T 22:46, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
That's true, but in this instance, the intent is to provide clear-cut examples. A naming dispute often reflects a situation in which the decision was less than obvious.
Of course, that isn't always the case. (Someone actually did propose that FIFA be moved to the two alternative names mentioned, but this received no support.)
My objection to the Beyoncé example was not that the article's title was disputed in the past, but that the singer is also well known as Beyoncé Knowles. In the context of a dedicated discussion, it's easy to understand that she's better known as Beyoncé nowadays, but someone viewing the list in isolation would see two common names for a person and might not recognize the relatively subtle distinction. Conversely, because Bono and Liberace are well known only by those monikers, anyone familiar with them should understand why we use them as the articles' titles. —David Levy 23:09, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I'll immediately backpeddle to "never reasonably disputed", but if an example was once reasonably disputed, then there must be some complexity or something to the example, and newcomers should be able to read through the examples with ease. They should not have to have any appreciation of complexities or backstories. Yes, disputes can help thrash out problems, but this doesn't mean the case in dispute should go upfront on the policy page. If understanding a past dispute is necessary to understand a policy, the dispute will need a better presentation than as a dot point example. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:22, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Proposed naming convention (UK Parliament constituencies)

Advertising the proposed Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies) here, as specified in Wikipedia:Article titles#Proposed naming conventions and guidelines PamD 14:01, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

What to do when there is not enough English-language sources

This was possibly discussed in some of the archives, and I apologize for not having the time to read it all so I'm asking it here. Article in question is House of Gundulić. The topic is primarily notable due to non-English sources. Search in Google Books yields 7:3 in favor of House of Gundulić vs House of Gondola. Google scholar gives only a single result with a dual name House of Gondola/Gundulić. Individual sources for the members of the House according to User:Silvio1973 (and which I haven't checked in detail but they seem valid at a glance) give precedence to Gondola Those in favor of the name Gundulić are Croatians, while those in favor of Gondola are Italians, so there is nationalist note to the naming conflict. I suggested the use of dual name but such naming scheme seems to be discouraged. What is the policy for such cases? Is the single digit number of hits 7 vs. 3 considered sufficient evidence to conclude what constitutes a common name in English? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:54, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Interesting case... COMMONNAME is not just a matter of counting the sources and going with the one that gets the most hits... We really need a significant majority of sources (from a fairly large pool of sources) to call a given name the COMMONNAME. It is also important to examine the quality level of the sources. After a cursory glance at the Google Books hits it strikes me that the ones supporting "House of Gondola" seem to be of higher quality than those supporting "House of Gundulić". They also seem to be different types of sources (history sources for the first, and guidebook sources for the second.) That difference in purpose sets up something of an apples and oranges comparison.
My gut reaction (based on my initial look at the sources - which could change if I am presented with more details)... neither name is really common enough to be deemed the COMMONNAME, but the quality examination leans towards "Gondola"... so I would go with that. Blueboar (talk) 23:18, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

What is the real conciseness criterion?

The definition of conciseness at the top of the policy page is "The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects." On the other hand, the WP:CONCISE section says: "The basic goal of conciseness is balancing brevity with sufficient information to identify the topic in a way the average person searching for it will recognize." While both talk about length, the first one is about distinguishing the topic from others while the second is about recognizing the topic. The second definition actually seems to subsume the recognizability criterion. Which of these definitions is correct since using both may lead to different article titles? —seav (talk) 14:30, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

One definition of the word "concise" is "giving a lot of information clearly and in a few words; brief but comprehensive." There are many variations but the theme is the same. Basically, "concise" is not the same as "as short as possible", but in discussions on Wikipedia, the two often seem to be used interchangeably -- incorrectly, in my view. Omnedon (talk) 14:36, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
That's one definition of the dictionary term "concise". But what I'm asking is when considering the conciseness criterion, do we favor distinguish-ness or recognizability? To give an (done-to-death) example, using the first definition, you can make the argument that the Washington city should be at Bothell since it's not longer than necessary to identify the article's subject (the city is named Bothell) and distinguish it from other subjects (there's no other notable topic named "Bothell"). On the other hand, you can use the second definition to argue that the city should be at Bothell, Washington since it makes it so that "the average person searching for it will recognize". —seav (talk) 15:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't agree that the first definition necessarily leads to "Bothell" as opposed to "Bothell, Washington". To me, the latter is necessary to identify the subject. The former does not identify the subject. However, it may be that these two sentences do need some re-alignment. In my view, a concise title is both short and descriptive. So then it's a matter of finding that balance point, which may vary from one subject area to another. Omnedon (talk) 15:22, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
I think it is both, and they are related. Yes, conciseness would prefer Bothell over Bothell, Washington; but remember that conciseness does not exist in a vacuum. It is one of five balanced criteria, another one of which is consistency. Because the project has generally chosen to present lesser-known towns in the United States in the form of "City, State" (in part because so many U.S. city names are ambiguous), the addition of the state name is a reasonable deviation from conciseness. It's not like the title is Bothell, King and Snohomish Counties, State of Washington, United States, which would obviously be excessively long. Also, there are other places that have names that would be close enough to confuse with this name, if not for the additional information (Bothel, in Germany). bd2412 T 15:40, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
I agree with much of what you say here. The only part I would question is the assertion, often made, that conciseness would prefer Bothell over Bothell, Washington. I realize this is in dispute, but my own view is that it actually favors the latter, not the former. Since the various definitions of concise all, in one way or another, talk about both brevity and comprehensiveness, or saying much in few words, "Bothell" is not concise -- merely brief. It communicates next to nothing. Add a single extra element -- the state -- and then it becomes, to my mind, concise. Go further and then it is no longer concise. Brevity is at one end of a scale, let's say the left end. Conciseness is somewhat to the right of that -- but one can easily go too far to the right. Bothell is probably the shortest title one could have for that subject; but it's not concise, and that's the word used in the criterion. Omnedon (talk) 13:43, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
By that interpretation of concise, Bothel should be moved to Bothel, Germany. But we don't view concision like that. --B2C 07:31, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Bothel, which is not precise, would be better at Bothel, Rotenburg. There it would be precise, far more recognizable, and consistent, with Bothel, Cumbria, for example. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:03, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
B2C, please stop saying "we" when you mean yourself. The definition of "concise" is what it is. Omnedon (talk) 13:17, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Certainly Bothel should be a disambig page, since most uses of the that term in books refer to Bothell, Washington, and there are several other places named Bothel. We should fix. I'm unsure whether Germany or Rotenburg is the best disambiguator; opinions? Dicklyon (talk) 03:06, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I went for Bothel, Rotenburg on the basis that it reads like a suburb of satelite settlement of Rotenburg, in the district of Rotenburg. Google Earth images indicate that Bothel is separate from Rotenburg, with farmland in between, but on a national map it is unresolved from Rotenburg. I think ", Rotenburg" would be slightly better than ", Germany", with both acceptable, but it should be people with local knowledge who get the strongest say. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:57, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I moved it to Bothel, Lower Saxony for consistency with others in its category, and made a disambig page; and fixed many links. Many of the links to Bothel I fixed to the intended target of Bothel, Cumbria. This is the kind of error that inappropriate primarynames cause and that disambigs prevent. Dicklyon (talk) 08:04, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

We have to remember that the goal is to choose titles that will best meet as many of the titling criteria as possible. So... It isn't just a matter of determining whether "Bothell" is more concise than Bothell, Washington (both are acceptably concise in my judgement)... it's a matter of deciding which of these two acceptably concise titles best meets the other four criteria. We have to look at all five criteria at the same time. Blueboar (talk) 13:49, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

I would not agree that the two examples are equally concise. But certainly it is true that all five criteria are important and are all considered together. Omnedon (talk) 13:58, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
I didn't say they were equally concise... I said they were both acceptably concise. Blueboar (talk) 17:46, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
True enough. I stand corrected. However, I still disagree -- "Bothell" communicates almost nothing by itself, so it is merely short, not concise. Omnedon (talk) 17:51, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
I would say that conciseness favors the shortest and least wordy alternative, but is balanced against meeting the other four criteria. In some cases, a longer title is necessary to permit recognition of the topic by the average reader, but conciseness is not so much about recognizability, it is about having the most concise title that still allows the same level of recognizability. This is the reason for which we have recently moved Jenna-Louise Coleman to Jenna Coleman, Nancy Landon Kassebaum to Nancy Kassebaum (subject was as well known without her maiden name as she was with it, and there is no other "Nancy Kassebaum" requiring disambiguation), and Giles Sutherland Rich to Giles Rich (subject was commonly referenced without the matronymic, and no other "Giles Rich" required disambiguation). bd2412 T 14:54, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
No, "concise" does not equal "shortest". Even entirely within the context of conciseness, the shortest title may not be the most concise. Omnedon (talk) 15:26, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
It may not be limited to that, but brevity is certainly an element of conciseness, and helpful to the reader as well. An idea that can be fit into a shorter package can be communicated more quickly. bd2412 T 16:16, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, brevity is an element of conciseness. But not the only element. Omnedon (talk) 16:55, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
I remember this discussion from the Hilary Clinton debate... I still don't understand how your definition of conciseness applied there.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:48, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't recall the Hilary Clinton debate, but a typical definition of "concise" is "giving a lot of information clearly and in a few words; brief but comprehensive." It certainly does not mean as short as possible. It implies finding a sweet spot in tradeoff of length and informativeness. Dicklyon (talk) 02:52, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Hillary Rodham Clinton significantly involved unusual facts, such as most of the most reputable sources introducing her with all three names (this doesn't happen for Bill), and that there was previously a notable Hillary Rodham independent of Clinton, still evident in quality sources.

Whatever the applied definition of concise, maximizing one criterion to the exclusions of other concerns will inevitably lead to absurdities. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:54, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Hillary Rodham Clinton involved unusual procedural issues, and at this point the Rodham would not survive under current policy and more recent evidence for common usage alone (as well as previously undiscussed usage by the subject herself, for example, at 0:28 here). However, the circumstances of the previous discussion make it wholly untenable to raise the issue again (at least, not without first conducting a long and exhaustive and coordinated examination of all available evidence, as was done for the last Chelsea Manning move discussion). In short, that question is not up for grabs in this discussion. Obviously, conciseness cuts against using some well-known maiden names (Nancy Davis Reagan, Elizabeth Hanford Dole) because they do nothing to identify the subject any more than "and Providence Plantations" does for Rhode Island, while others remain indispensable (Coretta Scott King, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Babe Didrikson Zaharias). bd2412 T 04:35, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Nancy Davis Reagan would be recognizable to a non-American fan of old Hollywood movies (these people exist), looking for Nancy Davis#1 (Nancy_Davis_Reagan#Acting_career), as named in the original material, and they may not recognize Nancy Reagan. Far fewer non-Americans than Americans are aware that the Reagans were Hollywood actors. So, there is a small but non zero cost to the total readership, a cost biased to non-Americans, in using the brief, non-formal name. On the other side, what is the cost of using the title "Nancy_Davis_Reagan"? On no computer or reasonable device does this title do any worse than fill some whitespace at the top of the page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:56, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
It is just as easy to speculate that people born within the last forty years or so would not recognize the "Davis" at all, and would be confused into assuming that the use of "Davis" in the name indicated that the article was about a different person altogether. It is, after all, not at all uncommon for Wikipedia to use middle names as natural disambiguators. Frankly, however, I don't believe for one second that there is a single person on Earth who would not more readily recognize "Nancy Reagan" than "Nancy Davis Reagan", but you're welcome to present some proof beyond the mere guess that "a non-American fan of old Hollywood movies" would do so. bd2412 T 22:21, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't ask you to believe unusual things without evidence, but to consider that it is conceivable that the dropping of "Davis" could conceivably make recognition of the title less intuitive for someone. You think someone could think that "Nancy Davis Reagan" is not "Nancy Reagan" because the real Nancy Reagan would not use "Davis", or might at least be confused. Yes, that's plausible. So "Davis" is more likely to hurt than help recognition, and the argument is not simply that brevity is good. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:42, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
@Omnedon, brevity is the most important element of conciceness. The original language that still resides under the main summation of the five criteria states that conciseness means that the title is "no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects". The expansion of the internal section on conciseness was only ever meant to give more content to this concise explanation. bd2412 T 18:52, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Based on what? Look at the definition of the word. How is brevity given any more weight than comprehensiveness? Omnedon (talk) 19:16, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Based on the exact language of the provision ("no longer than necessary") when it was initially adopted by the community. bd2412 T 20:25, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
But that ignores the proper usage of the word "concise". That's the whole point. Omnedon (talk) 20:53, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Then perhaps the name of the criteria should be changed from "conciseness" to "brevity"; whatever it is called, the community clearly conveyed the determination that titles should be "no longer than necessary" for purposes of identification/disambiguation. bd2412 T 20:58, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
That's the core of the issue. I don't believe that "no longer than necessary" equates to "shortest" in terms of titling. I think concise is the right word to use here. It's just that there's an issue of interpretation, where people view "concise" as being the same as "shortest", and "no longer than necessary" as being the same as "shortest". In neither case is this true. Omnedon (talk) 21:17, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
bd2412, Or perhaps it shouldn't. Perhaps "concise" should be reworded, prefixed with "With all being equal ...", declaring it subservient to the other criteria, or at least the preceding three criteria?

"The community clearly conveyed the determination that titles should be "no longer than necessary""? Really? Where is the evidence? I suggested "the community" was a set of self-selected self-style titling experts. Agreed, long, wordy titles are undesirable. However, I doubt that the community chose to mandate minimalist titles at the expense of the other listed criteria.

There has been an obsession with brevity, even to the point of putting a topic at an ambiguously imprecise title. Brevity often conflicts with recognizability. Everyone agrees that recognizability is good, that it is bad to have readers mistakenly go to the wrong topic. Brief titles make it harder to select the right topic from a results of a search query. So brevity can impose a cost. What is the cost, to readers, of a concise but not brief title? Assume it is brief enough to not cause the title to occupy more than one line. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:35, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I think that virtually everyone agrees that Rhode Island is better than State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, despite the longer title being the one that appears on official documents (although Rhode Island is still better than the ambiguous RI); and that Borat (soundtrack) is a more reasonable title than Stereophonic Musical Listenings That Have Been Origin in Moving Film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan"; and that despite being sworn into the Senate as Elizabeth Hanford Dole, the better title for this subject is the shorter Elizabeth Dole (although perhaps that is better still than the even shorter Liddy Dole). bd2412 T 22:33, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Nevertheless? Nothing following is at odds. However, I would describes your examples as cases where superfluous words are dropped, and not as simply brevity for the sake of brevity. Rhode Island, a large article, has very little content on plantations. These are clear cases of eliminating unimportant words. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:30, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Rhode Island has very little content about any island either; that is merely part of the name. I would suggest that is probably such a common practice to drop excess words that the most concise name for a subject quickly becomes both the most common and the most recognizable name for that subject. For that reason, it will likely be very difficult to find a subject for which the common name is at odds with the most concise name. bd2412 T 18:17, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
Actually, here is a good conciseness case: Talk:Your Kaiser Dealer Presents Kaiser-Frazer "Adventures in Mystery" Starring Betty Furness in "Byline"#Requested move. bd2412 T 05:47, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Diacritics in titles

Hello! I am interested if the following policy is outdated or not: The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged; when deciding between versions of a word which differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language (including other encyclopedias and reference works). The policy on using common names and on foreign names does not prohibit the use of modified letters, if they are used in the common name as verified by reliable sources. (WP:DIACRITICS).

I'd like to know if the above text is or not "outdated content in a guideline no article follows", as an editor suggests at Talk:Sámuel_Mikoviny. More exactly, if a name without diacritics is more frequently used in reliable sources than the name with diacritics, the name should or should not contain diacritics? 86.126.34.194 (talk) 12:07, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Note here also. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:30, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I think the current policy still reflects consensus. The use/non-use of diacritics remains something that the community is split on (with some editors advocating that we should always use them, others advocating that we should never use them, and the rest of us somewhere in the middle).
When you get to specific names it does seem that we generally do end up following reliable sources (especially those on the high end of reliability given the topic area). Most editors agree that when a significant majority of reliable sources use them, there is a stronger argument that we should do so as well; and when a significant majority don't use them, there is a stronger argument that we should not use them either. However, we are not completely consistent in this, because other factors come into play. In other words... this is one of those things that policy can't really address with a firm "always/never" statement... the best we can do is say "It depends." Blueboar (talk) 14:16, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
More accurately, I would say the current policy reflects the lack of consensus. One of the more common arguments in these cases is that many reliable sources drop diacritics out of laziness or due to technical limitations, and we should not be propagating such errors. this is an old debate though. Resolute 14:28, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
User:Resolute and User:Blueboar, I invite both of you to expreess your opinion on the particular case of Sámuel Mikoviny (there is an ongoing discussion on a request of move at Talk:Sámuel_Mikoviny). The discussion is straitened for fully neutral commentators (we have so far mostly Hungarian editors - the same nationality with Sámuel Mikoviny, and editors that have a history of conflicts with Hungarian editors) 82.79.215.3 (talk) 14:52, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I would say it is outdated content. I disagree with Resolute that sources not having diacritics are mostly due to technical limitations or laziness. I believe most drop them because it's simply the way things are done in English. But that's really no matter. In the case of people, unless it can be shown by sourcing that a particular person specifically does not use diacritics in their spelling in English, then we are banned by consensus from ever mentioning that most sources use a non-diacritic version. That's what it should probably be changed to since that's the way it works here now. It would make it easier if it was in black and white right up front in the guideline instead of the grey that exists now but is not practiced. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:56, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Tweak to recognizability criterion

Uninvolved admin Dpmuk (talk · contribs) wrote:

Uninvolved admin comment - I read that discussion as a consensus to make the change as it appears to me that the support argument is both stronger and larger numerically. Dpmuk (talk) 18:00, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Cunard (talk) 10:48, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The recognizability criterion is currently described thusly: "The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject will recognize." I propose that we say "subject area will recognize" rather than "subject will recognize". When the subject of an article is obscure, very few people may be familiar with the specific subject of the article; but many may be familiar enough with the general subject area. Omnedon (talk) 15:32, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

  • I completely support this proposal. bd2412 T 15:41, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Support Good suggestion. In effect this is already the criterion. For example a title like Physoderma leproides is accepted, even though almost nobody would be familiar with the subject (a type of fungus), because anyone familiar with the general field of biology will recognize that is is a species name. --MelanieN (talk) 16:00, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    • In certain specialty fields like plants it's true that the taxonomy is such that people familiar with the area will recognize particular topics as being in that area from their names, even though they are not familiar with the particular subject. So what you provide here is a cherry-picked example of a title that would not be affected by this change. It's in the minority of all our titles, however. Perusing titles with SPECIAL:RANDOM suggests this proposal would indicate changes to the vast majority of our titles. --B2C 18:52, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    • My question: recognized as what? Take note that the criterion says (removing the parenthetical phrase) is: "The title is a name or description of the subject that someone [...] will recognize." Does "will recognize" refer to the subject or the title? And how much recognition is needed? Does the Biology-familiar reader only have to recognize that the title refers to some sort of organism (in which case the current title is enough)? Or does he have to recognize it as a member of the Fungi kingdom, in which case, the current title may not be enough? (How can we tell if it's enough?) By leaving the criterion in its current state, we avoid such debatable questions for practically all articles. —seav (talk) 20:17, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Support. A simple refinement that better conveys the intent (and normal use) of the criterion. ╠╣uw [talk] 16:11, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    • No, it totally changes the intent and normal use of the criterion, and would result in indicating a change to the vast majority of our current titles. --B2C 18:48, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    A couple of additional points:

    The tweaked wording doesn't necessitate that any titles need to change — the recognizability criterion (like the other four) is simply a goal, not a rule. As always, the choice of how to weight and apply the criteria is up to editors, so there's no reason that established titles would need to change if the community doesn't feel it's warranted. Suggestions that most articles will somehow have to be retitled are unfounded, and seem rooted in the idea that titles are (or should be) determined by a rigid and mechanistic application of rules, rather than through consensus-building and community agreement on conventions.

    Also: WP:AT advises editors to keep the interests of a general audience in mind when choosing a title. To title an article such that it's recognizable only to the tiny sliver of the readership who are familiar with that one very particular instance of a thing does not IMHO meet that spirit terribly well; titling an article such that it's recognizable to those familiar with the subject area better meets it. ╠╣uw [talk] 20:43, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

    Please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying the "tweak" will necessitate changes to any titles. I'm saying it puts into question the vast majority of our current titles that are now totally stable and for which there is no policy-based basis for changing them. Maybe that's what you want. But I, for one, seek to make our titles more stable, not less stable. And this little tweak would destabilize our titles like no other change to AT I've ever seen proposed, except for the effort to remove the "to someone familiar with" clause in recognizability a couple of years ago, which would have had the same destabilizing effect, as everyone at that time recognized, thankfully[5]. --B2C 21:08, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    Nothing stable has to change. Again, titles and titling conventions are set by the community, who weigh and consider all the criteria and relevant factors when determining what's most appropriate. If the community sees reasons why a certain title or convention is appropriate — reasons like naturalness, consistency, etc. — that's perfectly fine, and the proposed tweak does nothing to change that. (And if there are no other reasons for a title being where it is other than that it's recognizable only to a minute and very specialized sliver of the readership... well, then it may not be inappropriate to revisit that since it's contrary to the clear guidance that Wikipedia titles be chosen with a broad audience in mind... but again, it's up to the community.) ╠╣uw [talk] 16:53, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
    Of course nothing stable has to change. However, the bulk of our titles that are currently stable because of no allowance in the current criteria for another title will no longer be stable because with this "tweak" they will become reasonably challenge-able. Worse, if they change, they will remain unstable because they will be just as vulnerable to being moved back (and forth, ad finitum).

    It won't be up to "the community", as "the community" will now be ambiguous on the issue, so it will be up to the whims of those who happen to participate to decide what "the area" is, and whether the title is sufficiently recognizable to them, or whether it needs to be more recognizable or more concise, and there is nothing to prevent someone else from raising the issue again a month or year later, and for those who happen to participate then to reach a different decision. Multiply this by thousands of articles that are now at stable/unquestionable titles, and you should be able to appreciate the problem. --B2C 22:53, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

    No, the community who decides titles would be the same as it is today: involved editors. In what way would this adjustment change who gets to participate in debates on Wikipedia titles? How would it make titling no longer up to the community? I'm afraid your slippery-slope objections are becoming increasingly far-fetched and difficult to follow... ╠╣uw [talk] 13:27, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Maybe Support – I'd like to see some discussion of examples first of how this might change the consideration of some title alternatives; maybe based on some recent RM where recognizability's narrow expression has been used in support of a rather unrecognizable title. I agree that this needs to be fixed, but I'm unclear on whether this will do it. Dicklyon (talk) 16:47, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    I think the Bothell, Washington example in the section above is exactly the kind of thing the proposal is getting at. A person who is generally familiar with U.S. geography is still unlikely to have heard of Bothell, even though people who live in and around that city undoubtedly know it just by that name. Having the name at Bothell, Washington provides context for the person familiar with the subject area, but not necessarily the specific subject. bd2412 T 17:28, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    Similarly: A person generally familiar with Canadian geography is still unlikely to have heard of Kapuskasing, even though people who live in and around that city undoubtedly know it just by that name. Having the name at Kapuskasing, Ontario provides context for the person familiar with the subject area, but not necessarily the specific subject.

    However, the current location of that article is Kapuskasing. If this proposal is about getting at Bothell, Washington being the right answer, then it's also about having to move Kapuskasing to Kapuskasing, Ontario, and countless other examples like that. --B2C 20:42, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

    Remember that the criterion is a goal, not a rule, and is only one of several. There's no reason any title or titling convention has to change if there are other reasons why it shouldn't, like consistency, naturalness, etc. The community decides, as always. ╠╣uw [talk] 21:10, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    I tried looking at some recent RMs and I first thing I saw is this: "Ponta Delgada (Azores)" to "Ponta Delgada". The proposed change to the criterion I think would not support this move. —seav (talk) 20:45, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
Based on B2C's 5 random examples, which anyone would recognize at as a person name, a railroad, a company name, a composition title, and an unknown, it looks to me like the number of articles for which this would likely provoke a renaming discussion is not so big as to be scary. If it provokes a discussion as to whether "unnecessary disambiguation" would be good in a title like "Jalanan (film)", I think we can stand such a discussion; most likely we'll decide to leave it. But in cases where natural disambiguation is easily available, me might be more likely to choose it (like we did for V-2 rocket even though it's primarytopic for V-2). The reason I hesitate is that it's not clear the "subject area" is the fix that we'd need to get more support from recognizability in a case like V-2 rocket. I would argue that recognizability is a worthwhile property, even outside of those people already familiar with the subject area. As the TITLE nutshell said for 8 years: This page in a nutshell: Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature. I think it's a shame that recognizability got reduced to being nearly irrelevant, and ambiguity got to be perfectly acceptable, through the campaign of one editor in the pursuit of "naming stability". Dicklyon (talk) 22:02, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose. This opens Pandora's box. For example, it would support the argument that all films, should be suffixed with (film). After all, someone "familiar with the 'subject area' of films" who has not seen The Graduate is likely to not recognize The Graduate as a film, but surely would recognize The Graduate (film) as such. This change would subject title changes to myriads of articles. How many? Let's see, with SPECIAL:RANDOM.
  1. Andy Whiteford, a Scottish footballer. Well, anyone familiar with Scottish football might not recognize him as a Scottish footballer, but they would recognize Andy Whiteford (Scottish footballer). Shall I go on?
  2. Nepal Government Railway (NGR), Nepal's first railway. Not sure. Next...
  3. Lark Technologies, a consumer electronics company founded in 2010. Better make that one more descriptive with something like Lark Technologies (consumer electronics company) so people familiar with (but not necessarily experts in) the area of consumer electronics will recognize it.
  4. Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures. Surely an expert in the area of Soviet slapstick comedy films would recognize this film from its title alone, but someone merely familiar with the area might need some help. Per this proposal the title should be moved to Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (film) or even Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (Soviet comedy film).
  5. Jalanan. Another film! This time an Indonesian documentary. LOL! Who would know? Better move it!
Regardless, at least 4 out 5 titles randomly chosen should arguably be moved if this change is adopted. Do we really want to expose 80% of our articles to title changes? In any case, we really need broad exposure to this seemingly modest proposal with huge widespread potential effect before it is adopted. --B2C 18:45, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment I see that (as usual) B2C intends to not just lay out his case, but also start individual arguments with each and every person who has commented. I'm not going to play that game; I've seen way too many of these discussions spin off into repetitious, unreadable TL;DR verbiage. My argument stands; B2C's slippery-slope argument stands; now let's let some other people chime in without fear of being challenged and swamped by repetitious argument. --MelanieN (talk) 19:00, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    • Your example gave me pause, and when I realized why it was a special cherry-picked case I thought it was important to point it out. Regardless, I would like to know if you disagree with my reasoning either there or where I laid out my Oppose case, and why. In particular, do you not think that this proposed policy change would support the arguments for title changes I gave in each of the five randomly chosen examples? --B2C 19:28, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    MelanieN: Agreed: allowing other editors to venture their opinions – without being drowned out or shouted down – would certainly be welcome. ╠╣uw [talk] 19:51, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Sipport. I think B2C is entirely wrong in every one of the examples he gives. Not one of them would need to be moved based on this tweak. older ≠ wiser 19:37, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    • I completely agree. I think it is safe to say, for example, that people who are reasonably familiar with "film" as a field would be likely to know a critically acclaimed film like The Graduate. Of course, it begs the question, what is "the field" - for an Indonesian documentary, it would be Indonesian documentaries, or at least Indonesian films. bd2412 T 20:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
      • As Seav notes below, begging the question of what "the field" is, is in and of itself a problem introduced by this change. But point taken on The Graduate. How about Juliet of the Spirits, For Love of Ivy, 5th Ave Girl, or Above the Rim? --B2C 20:19, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
        • As I note in the section above, all of these things are factors to be weighed in determining the best title for a page. With respect to the films named above, recognizability to those familiar with "the field" would also be balanced against both conciseness (which would weigh against a disambiguator for a unique title) and common name. bd2412 T 21:12, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
          • We already have plenty of dispute caused by arguments that say "concise" does not favor shorter titles. This change will only enbolden that view, making more and more titles subject to the whims of those participating rather than consistently applied guidelines. There is also the argument that Common Name (description) is still using the common name - just in a form that makes the topic more recognizable from the title. Agree or not, these arguments become more valid and relevant with this tweak. --B2C 01:12, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
            • Conciseness favors the shorter title to convey the subject. If two titles are equally good at identifying the subject, then the shorter one is preferred. bd2412 T 19:08, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't presume to know what the framers of the original recognizability criteria had in mind, but just making recognizability specific to the topic of the article itself leaves very little (debatable) room for interpretation which helps to stabilize article titles. If we relax the criterion to the "subject area", you invite debates regarding which subject area an article in under. Let's have 2014 AA as an example. This is an article about an asteroid that hit the earth on January 2, 2014. This title is completely unrecognizable to most people. If we modify the criterion to "subject area", what is the exact subject area? Is the subject area astronomy? Or the solar system? Or asteroids? But even someone familiar with astronomy or the solar system (he may know that Pluto is no longer a considered a planet) may not recognize that the article is about an asteroid which would require the title to be somewhere like 2014 AA (asteroid). Now let's say the chosen subject area is asteroids. We would still have debates on whether someone familiar with asteroids (he knows they're not planets and that the largest one used to be Ceres, until it was upgraded to a dwarf planet) would know this naming convention. Some people characterize B2C's argument as a slippery-slope, but his is a valid concern regarding the stability of article titles. —seav (talk) 19:58, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    • Indeed, Pandora's box has multiple lids. --B2C 20:14, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    • You can get a feel for the framers' intent by reviewing User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?#The early years, 2002–2008. And from there follow B2C's relentness years of working to marginalize the value of recognizability, to get to where the only acceptable title is the shortest possible title, so that editors are left without anything to discuss. Dicklyon (talk) 21:44, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
      • "... so that editors are left without anything to discuss." Maybe you like endless debates, but I think that reducing the amount of contentious discussions would be a good thing. It frees up time and effort to do other things to improve Wikipedia. —seav (talk) 00:51, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
        • That is a completely inadequate justification by itself. Simpler doesn't always mean better. Why not just change the article titles rule to be, "always title the article according to the first google result that isn't wikipedia"? Boom! No debates about article titles.... But that's not what we really want... AgnosticAphid talk 00:57, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
          • I agree that simpler (less discussions) is not necessarily better, but the corollary is that making it less simple (more discussions) is not necessarily better either, and I don't agree that this proposal is better. Your Google example is a strawman: Google results change and this would lead to titles being changed every now and then. Besides, the first result changes with whatever search string you use and deciding what search string to use will be another whole debate in itself, something that we would like to avoid if possible. —seav (talk) 01:06, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
            • To put things in perspective, I think it really helps to realize that the actual titles of WP articles could be random meaningless gibberish strings, with all possible names redirecting to those random titles as appropriate, and the encyclopedia would work almost as well as it does today. So all this hand-wringing about particular titles can only achieve a very marginal benefit at best.

              This may sound odd coming from someone who devotes so much time and energy to titles, but my motivation is moving us towards more title stabilization, so we all spend less time on titles, and any effort I put into arguing for this or that particular title for a given article is always ultimately driven by my recognizing that the process is a feedback loop - title choices are driven by guidelines which in turn reflect what title choices are made. For example, WP:OTHERSTUFF notwithstanding, exceptions (cough, WP:USPLACE) justify other exceptions (cough, WP:MOSPHIL) and thus increase title instability.

              Others seem to really enjoy the process of debating the merits of this or that title, and seem to favor relatively ambiguous guidelines that give them the flexibility to argue whatever happens to be their preference. Having all these title debates seems pointless at best, and ultimately disruptive. --B2C 01:48, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

  • Support I think that the current recognizability criterion is so narrow as to be essentially meaningless. If you consider the idea of "recognizability" in the abstract, it doesn't really seem like making something recognizable to maybe 0.5% of readers actually promotes what would ordinarily be thought of as "recognizability." But that's what our current criterion does: it says, "make it recognizable to people who already know what it is, even if it's extremely obscure." Of course, if the rule were that the title is supposed to be recognizable to even people with no knowledge of the article's subject area, then it's true that we would end up with a lot of disambiguation that is unnecessary and unhelpful to most readers of the actual article. But that's not what this suggestion is. Yes, there would be some inevitable line drawing problems, and yes we would have to figure out some way of identifying the relevant "subject area," but in my estimation many wikipedia policies are like that. Plus, I don't think that it's much of an argument to say "leave it the way it is because it's easy to administer" when the "way it is" essentially reads the recognizability criteria out of existence. Wikipedia would be much easier to administer if there were no policies at all, but that doesn't mean it would be better. AgnosticAphid talk 21:37, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    • Recognizability is perhaps a poor choice in name for this criterion. The idea at the time was to identify the underpinnings of WP:COMMONNAME. The whole idea was to use the name that people who are familiar with the topic use and recognize as that topic. It's not at all about making the topic recognizable to someone unfamiliar with the topic (though familiar with the ambiguous "topic area"). That was never a goal of titles, and it makes no sense to make it one now.

      Yes, other policies are ambiguous and provide confusing guidance, but WP:OTHERSTUFF is no excuse to make this policy more ambiguous and less helpful in terms of deciding titles. Weakening the criteria-based reasons to exclude certain titles does not help us decide which title to use, it just gives us more options subject to WP:JDLI opinions and ultimately the whims of whoever happens to be participating in any particular title decision.

      The ultimate goal we should be striving for is to have more situations in which no matter which handful of editors are involved, the same title decision would be made. We move in that direction by making our title selection criteria less vague and more precise, not the opposite, like this proposal would do. --B2C 22:05, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Did I miss something in my history? My impression was that recognizability was stable for many years before the "commonname" concept was brought in. I know you tried hard to replace recognizability by commonname, but I don't see what you could be referring to by "The idea at the time was to identify the underpinnings of WP:COMMONNAME" unless by "at the time" you mean the time when you were trying to stamp our recognizability as a criterion. Dicklyon (talk) 22:19, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes, you missed something. The concept of common name goes back at least to 2002, originally limited to names of persons("Use common names of persons") [6]. The concept of recognizability was not explicitly mentioned then at all, in any fashion. The reasoning expressed there is pretty laughable by today's standards (e.g., "to maximize the likelihood of being listed in other search engines"). Anyway, the commonname concept was brought in before recognizability.

I don't remember who was primarily involved in bringing in the explicit listing of the criteria (including recognizability), but I suspect it was Kotniski and PBS. As I recall, based on talk page discussions, the reason to do that was to explain why we favored common names, etc. --B2C 01:07, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

No, you don't seem to have looked at the history. Dicklyon (talk) 06:07, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose because of the example given by MelanieN. The whole point of this is to use name for a generalist over a specialist. Someone who is familiar with a field is by definition a specialist. For example I got the in in joke "Hello world" sent by Space probe Rosetta. The problem with this suggested change is that it brings in a real problem of deciding what "area" means. -- PBS (talk) 22:10, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Support. If you're familiar with the subject area and that clues you in to an unrecognized title, that's close enough. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 01:23, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Support. Entirely sensible. B2C's conflations end up entirely wrong. PBS's objection is worthy of consideration, to make sure the concern doesn't eventuate. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:28, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Support. Not just because B2C opposes it, but because it makes sense. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:09, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Support—Arthur Rubin's sentiments are spot-on. Tony (talk) 06:22, 1 February 2014 (UTC) PS Could someone fix it? ""The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject will recognize." Perhaps: "The title is a name or description recognizable to someone who is familiar with the subject though not an expert."? Tony (talk) 06:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose unless and until someone can convince me that the difference between "subject" and "subject area" can be clearly defined so that the revised wording is not the source of endless disputes as per B2C's examples. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:32, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
There have been frequent disputes about this criterion's application with the current wording. This suggested change might or might not decrease that. That is not the reason for suggesting this change. The intent is simply to bring the criterion better in line with actual practice, and with what I feel was always the intent of the criterion, as MelanieN has suggested. Many articles on Wikipedia are about obscure subjects. That's one of the great things about Wikipedia: we can have an article without the need to consider the relative size of the audience. As long as the subject is notable, it doesn't matter if 10 or 1,000 or 100,000 people are already familiar with it. The current wording requires familiarity with the subject, but the number of people familiar with some subjects may be very small indeed. Broadening the wording to say "subject area" makes recognizability much more likely to apply in such cases, yet does not negatively impact those subjects with which a great many people are familiar. Omnedon (talk) 13:32, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Ok, so give me some actual examples of when the revised wording would have the effect you claim, making clear the difference between the "subject" and the "subject area" in these specific cases. B2C has shown how the revised wording could be used in an unhelpful way. So provide clear examples of how it could be helpful. Be realistic about the ferocity of some disputes about article titles. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:44, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Actually, nothing B2C has said to this point has shown how the revised wording could be used in an unhelpful way. older ≠ wiser 14:02, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Peter, the problem is, what is considered helpful to one editor might be considered unhelpful by another. —seav (talk) 16:50, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
True, but that cuts both ways. A reader living in Springfield, Illinois might find it more helpful for the article on their city to be titled "Springfield", since it is the one with which they are most familiar, and there is no doubt that this would be the most recognizable title to a person from that city. However, it would cease to be the most recognizable title for the reader who has a general knowledge of U.S. geography, and knows that there are many places called Springfield. bd2412 T 19:08, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Omnedon (talk · contribs), the concerns about increasing disputes with this "tweak" is not about the intent but with the unanticipated consequences of the proposal. That said, I strongly disagree with your characterization of what was always the intent of the recognizability criterion. It was always meant to be limited to the scope of those who are familiar with the specific topic, and this specific point was unanimously supported in a poll that garnered much wider attention than this one has so far. The purpose of the recognizability criterion is to reflect in the title the name that is used by those who are familiar with the topic; not to make the topic recognizable from the title to others. Some editors favor expanding the scope of this criterion to allow for making topics recognizable from their titles to anyone and everyone, no matter how unfamiliar they are. The effect of this tweak would expand the scope in that direction. It introduces fodder for increased dispute in two separate ways:
  1. By expanding the scope to those who are familiar with the "subject area", not necessarily the specific subject, it opens the field of possible titles to choose from. Any time we give editors more choices, we are giving them more to discuss, debate, and argue about. This is especially true for the countless articles where right now the current title is clearly the best choice consistent with the criteria, but where this tweak will put that into question. Worse, since we're giving them less guidance on what title to select, we're destabilizing countless titles. I've given a number of examples; here is another one: Malavoi. That's the name of a Martinican band. This is what people familiar with the band call it, and how they would recognize it. Currently, this is a very stable title. There is no argument based on WP:CRITERIA or anything else to change it. However, with this tweak, anyone will suddenly be able to put that into question. They might reasonably argue that someone familiar with the subject area of bands from Martinique might not be familiar this particular band, and so would recognize Malavoi. However, if we moved the article to Martinican band Malavoi, it would be recognizable to them (and, as a bonus, recognizable even to people not necessarily familiar with this subject area at all. So there would be debate, and there would be reasonable arguments on both sides, probably decided not for any good reason, but by the whims of whoever happens to be participating. So not matter what is "decide" it is subject to go the other way when it's brought up again a month or a year later. There are literally thousands and thousands of titles like this: stable today; but would be unstable with this tweak.
  2. The whole question of what is the relevant "subject area" can now be grist for debate for every title. For Malavoi is it "Martinican bands"? Caribbean bands? French Antillean bands? World beat bands? Zouk? Who decides? How? On what basis?
The amount of consternation this tweak will cause is huge. The benefit it brings is nil. --B2C 21:15, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Ultimately, oppose. The article on "foobar" should be located where someone who is somewhat familiar with foobar would expect it. After reading the discussion, though, I think some of the fears of the other opposers are a little bit unfounded, assuming it's written down somewhere that throwing unnecessary disambiguation into article titles is a terrible idea. Is that written down anywhere? We need to write that down somewhere. Red Slash 01:05, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm not clear on how you imagine this change would get in the way of your desire that "The article on "foobar" should be located where someone who is somewhat familiar with foobar would expect it." Do you have an example in mind? Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
The name Bigfoot is immediately recognizable to someone who knows who/what Bigfoot is. But if you're only familiar with the subject area and not familiar with the subject, would we need the title Alleged large ape-like creature roaming the mountains of the Pacific Northwest? Or even Pacific Northwest. Man, there are a lot of countries that have a northwestern region that borders the Pacific. If I'm familiar with the subject area of geography and unfamiliar with the actual Pacific Northwest... I don't know. I'm not absolutely hard-core opposing ... I'd like to see a more concrete explanation of what this would mean. Red Slash 05:54, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm having a hard time envisioning an alternative title that someone familiar with the subject area would recognize for Bigfoot. Maybe Sasquatch? Probably not, but thanks for making me think about it. Dicklyon (talk) 06:46, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't buy Bigfoot as an example. That is the sort of thing that is general knowledge. The average person who is not an expert in any field will know of Bigfoot. That average person may not have heard of the Cherufe or the Shug Monkey, but the average cryptozoologist of humanoid forms is far more likely to know these names. bd2412 T 15:19, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, people outside of the US might not be familiar with Bigfoot. And your examples are moot. Any cryptozoologist of humanoid forms who knows these names is familiar with (though not necessarily an expert on) these topics. --B2C 22:12, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Then the examples aren't "moot", they show that the titles are appropriate for recognition by someone who is familiar with the field. bd2412 T 22:17, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Assuming that there is agreement that "the field" in this case is "cryptozoology of humanoid forms". --B2C 23:01, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
    • You said, assuming it's written down somewhere that throwing unnecessary disambiguation into article titles is a terrible idea. It's written down as an essay: WP:UNDAB. There's controversy over including the meat of that essay into the WP:DAB policy page. So yes, the fears are not unfounded because people don't give an essay that much weight in debates. —seav (talk) 05:03, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Indeed that's B2C's recent rewrite of an old essay, incorporating exactly the problem we're talking about here to justify his strict interpretation of the concept of "unnecessary disambiguation". Obviously, concensus guidelines like WP:USPLACE are what he is trying to do away with, and obviously the community does not support that direction, and probably does not refer to the more recognizable names like Bothell, Washington as instances of "unnecessary disambiguation" or of something that's a terrible idea. Dicklyon (talk) 06:39, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
B2C may have recently reorganized it to read better, but the basic idea is still the same. And I happen to agree with that idea since about 6 years ago. —seav (talk) 08:06, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
It's OK that some agree with it, before or after his rewrite that coupled it to the recognizability issue, etc., but it never had wide community support. Dicklyon (talk) 14:00, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
The concept underlying the WP:UNDAB essay has long had wide community support. WP:USPLACE is generally seen either as an exception per WP:IAR for good reason, or not an exception at all, based on the view that city, state is not a disambiguation, but is commonly used in reliable sources in the US as "the name" of the city. Perhaps this should be explained in the essay? --B2C 21:35, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
A good idea. But also it is probably worth mentioning the repercussions that altering the WP:USPLACE would have on many town names in the other English speaking countries where names are not usually disambiguated by the equivalent of "city, state" which impacts on "naturalness" for town names in those other areas. -- PBS (talk) 14:08, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Note: This proposal having gone two weeks without further comment, I have requested closure. Cheers! bd2412 T 23:42, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above 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.

IPA symbols in pagenames

See talk:ǃKaras Region where we are discussing whether to use IPA symbols in the page title, and whether the IPA symbol "ǃ" can be replaced by the ASCII character "!" -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 05:35, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

What does "consistency" really mean?

Many people seem to think that the consistency criterion says that article titles should have the same format. USPLACE is a notable example in which all cities, towns, counties, and other places ought to have the state name added using the comma convention (except for some major cities like New York City, Chicaco, Los Angeles and others cited from the AP stylebook).

The problem is, consistency does not really mean "the same". Here are relevant definitions of "consistency":

  • steadfast adherence to the same principles, course, form, etc. —Random House Dictionary
  • agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole; correspondence; specifically: ability to be asserted together without contradiction —Merriam-Webster Dictionary
  • consistent behaviour or treatment; the quality of achieving a level of performance which does not vary greatly in quality over time —Oxford English Dictionary

Let's say we have a principle: "don't disambiguate unnecessarily" which can be inferred from the precision and conciseness criteria. If we follow this principle all the time, this practice can be considered consistent because you "adhere to the same principle", there is "correspondence" and article titles would not have any "contradiction" with each other, and there is "consistent treatment".

While nobody is debating against the notion that the USPLACE comma convention certainly makes titles consistent with each other, my argument is that following the principle of avoiding unnecessary disambiguation, especially since it is already applied in most of the rest of Wikipedia, is still a form of consistency. So, even though the following three U2 songs don't have the same format, they are still consistent because they do not contradict the policy and guidelines and they adhere to the same principle (don't disambiguate unnecessarily):

What I think the consistency criterion really want to avoid are article titles that do not appear to have any rhyme or reason such as having film article with titles like "Independence Day (1996 film)", "Armageddon (1998)", and "Deep Impact (movie)". —seav (talk) 23:43, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

One could argue that WP:AT and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in some ways suggest some places where we do not wish to have consistency in article naming. Clearly WP:USPLACE establishes a consistent naming which also happens to the names of random city articles in other countries. It can also be argued that if consistency was considered more often, we could avoid many of the move discussions over primary topic. I guess the question here is one of balance. I think consistency is more important then many other editors. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:33, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
I think that consistency is undervalued, and brevity overvalued. Consistency is important because readers can quickly learn Wikipedia's titling style. Title brevity is not important for readers for any reason I have ever heard. Non-concise usually means containing redundancy, unimportant information, or words not conveying information. Here, concision is taken to an extreme better called "brevity". Recently, I have noticed some editors such as Seav attempting to claim "consistency" through creation of an unnatural definition of consistency. As an example, Parramatta and North Parramatta, New South Wales lack consistency in titling style, and any attempt to define them as consistent is to create an unnatural definition. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:24, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
The Australian places you gave as an example are inconsistent, not because one has the state name and the other doesn't, but because one of them contradicts WP:NCGN#Australia. I've moved North Parramatta, New South Wales → North Parramatta in order to follow the guideline: "the name of a city or town may be used alone if the place is the primary or only topic for that name". Now they're consistent.

I would really like to know why you think I am creating an unnatural definition of consistency. I've cited dictionary definitions of "consistency" and my arguments are consistent with those definitions. How are they unnatural? —seav (talk) 14:10, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

  • So now you've started moving suburbs to according to this imaginary fiction that consistency can coexistist with "no unnecessary disambiguation". SO now you have adjoining suburbs, North Parramatta & Dundas, New South Wales, with inconsistent titling styles. Now that mere suburbs are part of your UDAB naming scheme, required disambiguation will mean the following the rule is the exception. Rules that aren't usual, and convoluted wikipedia-definitions, hurt project accessibility to newcomers (readers & editors), and are therefore bad for the project. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:25, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Seav: Consistency simply means being consistent, but the difference is in where you choose to be consistent:
  1. Consistent in your application of a rule or principle, or
  2. Consistent in your results
The two can sometimes be very different. To take one example:
  • If we title US settlements according to strict minimum disambiguation, that's a consistent application of a principle. However, the result is inconsistent in its pattern, with a class of many thousands of similar articles divided roughly in half between titles with state and titles without it.
  • If we title them in such a way that state is always appended, that's a departure from the principal of strict minimum disambiguation, but is a highly consistent result that follows a single predictable pattern.
WP:AT's consistency criterion says that a title should be consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles, so it's good to give some weight to the latter. IMHO, consistency of form and pattern tends to better serve the needs of the average reader than does consistency in how we apply a specific principal, in part because the reader is unlikely know or care about the nuances of our titling policies (and it's for the reader that we're meant to choose titles). ╠╣uw [talk] 11:28, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, you have a good point. What I want to clarify next is the meaning the word "pattern" in the consistency criterion definition. Some people think this means "format" such that if one title has a comma disambiguation and another does not, then they are inconsistent. But pattern can also mean, in Wikipedia article title context, a "naming convention". And I will argue that this is the intended meaning especially when you consider the second sentence in the consistency criterion definition: Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) in the box of Topic-specific conventions on article titles. Thus if a particular naming convention says that article titles should be disambiguated only if necessary, then even if one has a parenthetical, natural, or comma disambiguator while another does not (because there's no need to disambiguate) then they are consistent with the naming convention (i.e., pattern).
If we assume that "pattern" means "format", then that implies that most of Wikipedia is inconsistent (such as those three U2 songs that I have given as an example) which further implies that either (1) the consistency criterion is not really a criterion, or (2) consistency is not prioritized in practice. But if we assume that "pattern" means "naming convention", then that means that Wikipedia is more or less consistent in titling its articles. I think the latter scenario is a much better interpretation of the status quo, don't you think? —seav (talk) 19:17, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
Brevity seems to be trending toward being less valued, and the more severe form of consistency seems to be gaining value. There's the discussion of the proposed Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies) to append "(UK Parliamentary constituency)" even when there is no ambiguity; a similar issue with some editors appending "language" to languages that don't appear to be ambiguous; and a similar issue with train station articles appending (<name of rail system>) for certain rail systems (making the set of train station articles as a whole inconsistent, since some append "station" or "rail station" instead, and some use the qualifiers only when there's ambiguity). There is some effort at User talk:Mackensen/Naming conventions (US stations) to bring consistency to part of that set, but if the other trend is is indeed the new consensus, the WP:PRECISION language needs to be changed so that editors unfamiliar with the various topic projects' naming conventions don't run afoul of those projects' members, some of whom have stopped assuming good faith after having to go through the arguments so often. I think we do still need to ensure that, in cases where qualifiers are used when no ambiguity exists, the unadorned title still goes somewhere. Too often Base name did not exist when Base name (UK Parliamentary constituency), [[Base name (<rail system>)]], or Base name language did. For my part, though, I agree with Seav -- the parenthetical qualifiers are not needed for consistency between titles with ambiguity and titles without ambiguity. If the qualifiers are needed because the titles need the additional text, they shouldn't be in parentheses. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:10, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Agree that parenthetical disambiguation is the least desirable form. However, it seems popular for biographies? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:39, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
It's only popular on biography articles that would otherwise have ambiguous titles. Biography articles for people whose names are unambiguous (so far, on Wikipedia) do not use parenthetical qualifiers. When ambiguity exists, I have no problem with parenthetical qualification. When ambiguity doesn't exist, there is no reason (IMO) for parenthetical qualification. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:31, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Biography titling, unlike place names, seems to be severely unsuitable for consistent titling schemes.
Other encyclopedias have used middle initials, middle names, and titles, to disambiguate people. Wikipedia seems to abhor that (titles, middle names not commonly used), and prefers nicknames, and where that fails, parenthetical disambiguation that seems nonapplicable to the "not commonly used" principle. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:34, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
In my experience, the vast majority of biography articles on Wikipedia are titled as human named should be: First name and last name, with no disambiguator, no middle name, no middle initial, no maiden name. We tend to include such things for unambiguous names only where the subject is far and away best known under that usage (B. F. Skinner, Coretta Scott King, Lee Harvey Oswald). My understanding is that where there is ambiguity, the reason we prefer parenthetical disambiguators to middle names and the like is that readers are more likely to know what field a person is in than to know their middle name. Suppose you're looking for Paul Simon, the Senator - who would know to look for Paul Martin Simon? bd2412 T 14:59, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
We are generally consistent without making a big deal about it, and indeed without even thinking about it. For example, historically, many encyclopedias have titled biographies by last-name-first (e.g., Adams, John, Lincoln, Abraham, Roosevelt, Theodore). If someone were to begin entering new biographies with last-name-first titles, they would quickly be corrected, and probably not by citation to WP:CONSISTENCY, but by an editor merely saying, "that's not how we do things here". Of course, "how we do things" is generally consistent.
One disambiguation-related area where I think consistency is important, however (and not always observed), is primary topics and subtopics. If a subject has been deemed a primary topic of a title, then all subtopics referring to that subject should use the same referent. For example, China is a primary topic, but for a time titles like Military of China were disambiguation pages listing the respective militaries of China and Taiwan. This was changed, based on what was basically a consistency argument, so that all instances of something titled "Foo of China" now refers to "Foo of China". The same can be said, even more obviously, of a title like Geography of Florida. There are many places called Florida, but one primary Florida, and therefore one primary subject for every "Foo of Florida". bd2412 T 13:57, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
Maybe. I could see the lists Moons of Jupiter, Temples of Jupiter, and Restaurants in Jupiter intending different Jupiters without the need to qualify each of latter two from the planet (the primary topic of "Jupiter"), although the last might still need to identify which terrestrial place "Jupiter" is meant. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:04, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
My concern is not so much carrying disambiguation downstream (even where it is unnecessary), but carrying determinations of primacy downstream. That said, Temples of Jupiter might still refer to temples of the city, rather than the deity, and Restaurants in Jupiter might as easily refer to restaurants in Jupiter, Florida or Jupiter, Romania. It would absurd, however, to title the list of moons Moons of Jupiter (planet), so long as the planet is the primary topic of Jupiter, and more absurd still to make the base page name, Moons of Jupiter, a disambiguation page (perhaps on the grounds that Earth's Moon is the "moon of" Jupiter, Florida and Jupiter, Romania). bd2412 T 15:37, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
"We are generally consistent without making a big deal about it...". This reflects the disconnect between actual policy and written policy, which leads to the "Is policy descriptive or prescriptive of practice" conundrum. Consistency is very naturally and deeply understood without needing to read up Wikipedia policy, and so no one puts much effort into writing the consistency rules. On the other hand, people with ideological styling barrows put a lot of effort into rules, and then when they seem to have stuck on the policy page, being waving the policy stick. Or they make widespread changed per some small consensus on a WikiProject talk page, then point to their status quo. Point: Consistency is expected by readers and new editors, but given little weight in policy, while ultracoonciseness/brevity/UDAB are not naturally expected, but some have invested considerable effort into pushing for it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:42, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

My edit is correct.

Hello, I recently edited James Lafferty's personal life section about his relationship with Eve Hewson, the couple have not broken up at all! There is no evidence or articles confirming any kind of breakup. If you look at their social media accounts they are clearly still an item. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cryingforlaughs (talk • contribs) 22:44, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

A good case for conciseness.

The current proposal at Talk:The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 – Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie – Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa#Requested move to move The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 – Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie – Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa to Barkley 2 is, I think, a good example of a situation where WP:CONCISE should come into play. The "official" title is excessively long (as a joke by the product's creator, no doubt), and a much shorter alternative is in wide enough use to be legitimately considered as a title. This is exactly the kind of situation where we should go with the shorter version for conciseness. bd2412 T 16:53, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Spaces in consecutive initials.

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#RFC: Does the guideline for consecutive initials WP:INITS contradict WP:ENGVAR? may be of interest. --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:03, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

RfC: Does COMMONNAME apply to grammatical forms?

Does, or should, WP:COMMONNAME apply to differing grammatical forms, such as plural vs singular? Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:28, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Survey

Discussion

Tweak to recognizability criterion

  • 00:10, 1 April 2014‎ BD2412 (→‎Deciding on an article title: provision amended per clear consensus in support at Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 45#Tweak to recognizability criterion)
  • 22:42, 2 April 2014‎ PBS (Undid revision 602189563 by BD2412 AFAICT it was 70/30 which is not a clear consensus. If my figures are wrong then please summarise on the talk page on how you came to the conclusion of a clear consensus)

From my talk page:

I disagree with your assessment of consensus. Although there is no strictly defined numerical ratio, outside of RfAs and RfBs, anything over 2/3 is frequently considered to suffice to show consensus. In this case, there was actually 70.5% support for the change, which should be more than enough. bd2412 T 23:21, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Well I don't think it was a clear consensus, but as we were both parties to the debate it would probably be better if the decision on whether it was a "clear consensus" to change a policy page is decided by editors not involved in the debate. -- PBS (talk) 23:49, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
In that case, perhaps we should revive the discussion itself, and see if we can get some broader participation. bd2412 T 23:53, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
It seemed pretty clear to me that there's a consensus that the wording had been too narrowed, and something needed to be done. You could reopen that, but it might be better to just ask a few who didn't participate to review and say if it looks like a consensus. Or just revert PBS, since you have consensus to do so. Dicklyon (talk) 02:06, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
Dicklyon you too were involved in the debate and expressed an opinion in favour of the change. As you know (but BD2412 may not) this page is under an arbcom ruling which explicitly mentions that "A higher standard for participation and consensus exists for changes to policies and guideline" (Arbitration: Article titles ...), so suggesting that in your opinion "there's a consensus" and "Or just revert PBS, since you have consensus to do so" is at best reckless and could be seen as provocative.
BD2412 I do not think that reopening the debate would be helpful, instead how about putting in a request at third opinion (so reducing selection bias) asking for someone to decide if the now archived section "Tweak to recognizability criterion" generated a consensus for this change as defined in the arbcom ruling? -- PBS (talk) 10:24, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
I've asked for an uninvolved admin to give us a hand here so things don't spiral into uselessness. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 10:54, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
Uninvolved admin comment - I read that discussion as a consensus to make the change as it appears to me that the support argument is both stronger and larger numerically. Dpmuk (talk) 18:00, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
So be it. I have reverted my revert of 22:42, 2 April 2014‎ -- PBS (talk) 18:08, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Alterations to the text on 17 March 2014

@Neil P. Quinn I have reverted many of the changes you made recently because I do not think that "no substantive changes" is an accurate summary and that those changes I have reverted were substantive changes

In the Nutshell

  • removal of "Article titles should be recognizable to readers" -- I think that is useful in the nutshell
  • change of "consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources" to "consistent with reliable English-language sources." I think that former wording is more precise and less likely to be misunderstood.

In the Body of the text

  • change of "An article title" to "article's title" people discuss article title as a noun and it is the title of this policy. It is usual for all of it to be in bold.
  • change of "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles" to " It indicates what the article is about and how it differs from other articles." "distinguish" does not necessarily mean "how it differs", it can simply be a dab extension to differentiate the title not to describe a difference.
  • change of "This page explains in detail the considerations, or naming conventions, on which choices of article title are based." to "This page summarizes the naming conventions that guide title choices." This page is not a summary of the naming conventions it is the policy page of the naming conventions. Indeed it used to be called "Naming conventions" until moved.
  • change of "For information on procedures to change an article title, see Wikipedia:Moving a page, and Wikipedia:Requested moves." to "If necessary, an article's title can be changed by a page move (or, more precisely, a rename). Moves which might be controversial are discussed on the article's talk page; current discussions and instructions for proposing a move are found at Wikipedia:Requested moves." -- This paragraph may or may not be to terse, but I think that stating "(or, more precisely, a rename)" is a retrograde step --on a dos system files are renamed on UNIX they are moved (mv). As the process tab at the top of a page is labelled "Move" and the procedure is called "Requested Moves" where do you get the idea that it is more precisely, a rename? One of the reasons for moving this page to "Article titles" was to get away from the idea that pages have names as that is a bone of contention when people get het up about a "correct name" for an article?

-- PBS (talk) 12:41, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

PBS, thanks for explaining your reasoning in detail! It makes it very easy to have a productive conversation. Let me respond point by point.

  1. Substantive changes. Sorry, I didn't mean to be misleading in my summary; for me, "substantive changes" only change how the policy is expressed, without changing the actual effect of the policy. The points you've brought up are definitely worthy of discussion, but I don't think any of them change the interpretation of the policy one way or the other.
  2. "Article titles should be recognizable to readers". I didn't actually remove this. I swapped the order of "unambiguous" and "recognizable to readers", just because I thought it sounded better, but it's not very important to me.
  3. "consistent with reliable English-language sources". I don't think "usage in" really makes it any clearer, and I generally say the shorter the better, but I see this as a pretty unimportant decision. I'm fine with leaving it.
  4. Bolding. I mainly wanted to change "an article title is the...heading displayed above each article's contents" to "an article's title is the...heading displayed above its contents"—a much nicer phrasing in my opinion. I'm glad you thought that was worth keeping as well, but it needs the possessive article's so the possessive its can clearly link back to it. How about making it "an article's title is the..."? I realize this is slightly different from the title, but in my experience that isn't a big issue.
  5. "It indicates what the article is about and how it differs from other articles." I thought this was a nicer phrasing because of the parallel between the "what" and the "how", but it's a copyedit—I don't see a significant difference between "differ" and "distinguish" other than word order. How about "It indicates what the article is about and how it can be distinguished from other articles"?
  6. "This page summarizes the naming conventions". My point was that this page is just the tip of the huge iceberg of naming conventions, but if you're saying that this page is policy while the rest are only guidelines, that's fair. How about "this page explains the major naming conventions that guide title choices"?
  7. (or, more precisely, a rename). Take a look at the "Move vs. rename" section on the page move guide. In the database itself, a page move causes the article's name to be changed, not the whole article to move to a different position. No reason it can't still be called a move, but I thought that might be an interesting aside for some. What if I move this to a footnote and explain the bit about the database? Also, I think people can just as easily argue about a title as about a name!

—Neil 17:13, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

2) my mistake. I no longer either for or against that change.
3) I think it can do. There is a difference of an official title being using in the title of a reliable source and the description used within the text hence the removal of "used in" is a substantive change.
4) I disagree I think that in the context of Wikipedia discussions "Article title" is used as proper noun.
5) "differ" and "distinguish", we add dab extensions to names to make them unique because otherwise there is no difference in the article title. Take for example Pliny the Younger "the Younger" is added to distinguish the subject of the article article from the subject of the article Pliny the Elder but the title does not describe "what the article is about and how it differs from other articles." it describes the subject (sort of -- names are not really a description of the subject but a name) and "the younger" is not how the content of the article differs from other articles. To exaggerate to make the point: if what you wrote was taken literally one would incorporate the description on a dab page into the title.
6) I think you have highlighted a problem for people new to the page (who obviously will not know its history and hence take naming conventions to mean its additional guidelines. One possible replacement wording would be "This policy page explains the principles on which choices of article title are based. It principles are further enhanced and explained by guidelines known as naming conventions. This policy must be interpreted in conjunction with other policies, particularly the three core content policies:..." Not my use of "must" and no bold for naming conventions. But I think before such a major change to the lead was made, it would be necessary to hold an RfC over point 6.
7) I think the aside is confusing, given the debate on this talk page about "article title" v. "article name" and the technical aspects are not relevant to this policy page. It is like the ISO seven layer model for networking, unless one is a hardware engineer one does not care about the physical layer and unless one is a software engineer one does not care about packet retransmission etc. If people did there would be no need for a marketing metaphor such as "the cloud".
-- PBS (talk) 11:31, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

PBS, sorry for the delay in responding. I'm fine with leaving the page as is (with one exception in point seven) but I did want to lay down my thoughts.

  1. I think the distinction between a term's use in source titles and in source text is artificial. Both are relevant to title discussions.
  2. I completely agree that "article title" is a single, coherent term, but I think readers would effortlessly equate "article title" and "an article's title", so we should feel free to pick the one that produces the best text.
  3. I really think drawing a strong line between differ and distinguishing is hair-splitting. Compare two questions: "How does this Pliny differ from that Pliny?" and "How do you distinguish this Pliny from that Pliny?". There are many any possible answers to both (for example, "this Pliny was born in 23 AD, and that one was born in 67 AD"), but the answer chosen for the title, because of its prominence in sources, is "This Pliny is the Elder, and that Pliny is the Younger." That model fits reality perfectly no matter the word chosen.
  4. Thank for the explanation. I still don't quite understand why an RfC would be required, but I can see that there's a lot of history involved there.
  5. I agree that it's not essential and unnecessarily technical for the main text, but I feel like it's a perfect candidate for a footnote. I'm going to make that change, and if you think it's unjustifiable we can do this again.

—Neil 15:10, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton. ongoing move request relevant to this titling policy. Input welcome there. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:58, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Time to soften WP:PRECISION?

Given the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies) (and the previous ones regarding train/subway stations), is it time to soften WP:PRECISION to align with current practice? Something like

Usually, Titles should be at least precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that. For instance, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta is might be too precise, as but Mother Teresa is precise enough to indicate exactly the same topic. On the other hand, Horowitz would not be precise enough to identify unambiguously the famous classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz.
Exceptions to the precision criterion, validated by consensus, may sometimes result from the application of some Other naming criteria may specify more precision. Most of these exceptions are described in specific Wikipedia guidelines, such as Primary topic, Geographic names, or Names of royals and nobles. For instance:
  • Bothell is precise enough to be unambiguous, but not as commonly used and easily recognizable as the preferred and more precise title Bothell, Washington (see Geographic names, and the naturalness and recognizability criteria).
  • Energy is not precise enough to unambiguously indicate the physical quantity (see Energy (disambiguation)). However, it is preferred over "Energy (physics)", as it is more concise, and precise enough to be understood by most people (see Primary topic, and the conciseness and recognizability criteria).
  • <Add examples for parliamentary constituencies, train stations, and other projects that have opted for parenthetical qualifiers in cases where there is no ambiguity>

And also change the disambiguation section from a numbered ranking of ways to disambiguate to an unordered bullet list, with

  • Parenthetical disambiguation: If natural disambiguation is not possible, add a disambiguating qualifying term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name.

? -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:26, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I disagree with the last bit. I think that we should aim for natural disambiguation over parenthetical, as it is more likely to coincide with natural search terms. If there are many John Smiths, but only one John Quincy Smith, and the name is reported as such with some reasonable frequency, then we should use that over John Smith (Ohio politician born 1824) or the like. bd2412 T 14:06, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Except that that's not what we're doing generally. Leeds (UK Parliament constituency) is preferred over Leeds UK Parliament constituency. See the linked discussion above. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:47, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Is Leeds UK Parliament constituency the formal/official name of the constituency? If not, then it is something we've made up to describe it, and it should be in the parenthetical to avoid appearing as something official. bd2412 T 15:16, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
The title doesn't need to be the WP:OFFICIALNAME or formal name. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:11, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
I agree, but if we use a title like Leeds UK Parliament constituency, readers are more likely to assume (incorrectly) that we are using it because it is the formal name of the jurisdiction. bd2412 T 18:14, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
In this case the common name will be "MP for Leeds" not "MP for Leeds UK Parliament constituency" so placing the "UK Parliament constituency" in brackets as is done with many dab extensions allows the pipe trick to work. In some cases such as place names we use a comma as a dab extensions but that is because it is not unusual to write "Stourton, Staffordshire" in flowing text if needed to differentiate it from all the other Stourtons. Stourton (Staffordshire) is not a construct one is likely to see in flowing text. Like wise if "UK Parliament constituency" or "UK parliamentary constituency" was commonly used then Leeds, UK parliamentary constituency would be appropriate extension, but it is not a common format, so the bracket solution is what is commonly used for such dab extensions in Wikipedia. I do not see that the question is about the format of the dab extension it is if a dab extension is pertinent to this debate. What is pertinent is should a dab extension be used for those case where to do so is a breach of PRECISION. This leads (sic) on to the sub issue of: do we use less or more precise wording within the dab extension. For example some constituency names may exist in other countries, or the name may be used for elections to other bodies (such as councils or the European parliament), so for example if Leads needs "UK" in the dab to distinguish it from another similar constituency else where, but if Manchester does not, should the Manchester format be "Manchester (Parliamentary constituency)"? The problem here is that we rapidly loose the ability for editors to easily guess what the name is when writing articles (and so cut down on false red links), guessing what the correct name is was one of the reasons why the "Precision" rule was adopted in the first place. -- PBS (talk) 08:44, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
  • The issue here is (once again) is the intersection between Precision and Consistency.
I think everyone agrees that some constituencies have ambiguous names, and that these require parenthetical disambiguation added to the title. I think everyone also agrees that some constituencies have unique names that don't require parenthetical disambiguation.
But that isn't the end of the discussion... We also have to ask: Do enough constituencies require disambiguation that they significantly outweigh the ones that don't require disambiguation.... if so, the principle of Consistency comes into play. Consistency can mean it becomes beneficial for all the titles in the topic area to take a disambiguated format, even when disambiguation isn't actually required. Blueboar (talk) 16:06, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
  • On further consideration, I also oppose removing the phrase, "but no more precise than that". Titles generally should not have superfluous content that makes them more precise than necessary to identify the subject unless some other consideration applies, like local consensus for a specific project, or the overwhelming common usage of the less concise variation. bd2412 T 16:14, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
    We need something to indicate that projects can set whatever standard they want without it being treated as a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS contrary to this one; that the expectation is that whatever naming convention a project formulates is the naming convention for those articles, and so there is no expectation that the articles are no more precise than necessary. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:11, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
  • "Precise" is poorly defined on this page, because it refers to itself. The definition is circular. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 16:55, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm... good point... I think we are using the word "Precise" to mean "Unambiguous" (which makes me wonder if "Unambiguous" wouldn't be a less confusing and contentious word to use). Blueboar (talk) 17:38, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, though, articles are not required to have unambiguous titles. Apple, Mouse, and George Washington are all ambiguous (there are many meanings other than the primary), but since each of these is the primary topic of the title, we use the most "precise" (and "concise") title for the term, which is the unadorned name itself. bd2412 T 18:01, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Well, Strictly speaking, article titles are not required to be precise either. Preciseness is a goal... not an inflexible rule. That's true of all of the five titling principles. Our goal is to come up with a clear and unique tiltle that identifies what the article is about. To do this we examine all the options with all five principles in mind. How much weight we give any one principle will change, given the specifics of the topic. Sometimes we give precision a lot of weight... sometimes we give it less weight. Blueboar (talk) 23:23, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Here is what I would propose as an alternative:

Usually, Titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no should avoid being more precise than that unless additional precision is necessary to accurately identify the subject to the average reader. For instance, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta is too precise, as Mother Teresa is precise enough to indicate exactly the same topic. On the other hand, Horowitz would not be precise enough to identify unambiguously the famous classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz.
Exceptions to the precision criterion, validated by consensus, may sometimes result from the application of some Other naming criteria developed by consensus may specify more precision. Most of these exceptions are described in specific Wikipedia guidelines, such as Primary topic, Geographic names, or Names of royals and nobles. For instance:
  • Bothell is precise enough to be unambiguous, but not as commonly used and easily recognizable as the preferred and more precise title Bothell, Washington (see Geographic names, and the naturalness and recognizability criteria).
  • Energy is not precise enough to unambiguously indicate the physical quantity (see Energy (disambiguation)). However, it is preferred over "Energy (physics)", as it is more concise, and precise enough to be understood by most people (see Primary topic, and the conciseness and recognizability criteria).
  • <Add examples for parliamentary constituencies, train stations, and other projects that have opted for parenthetical qualifiers in cases where there is no ambiguity>

Cheers! bd2412 T 18:11, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

WP:PRECISE does not need to be amended to accommodate the titles of UK Parliament constituencies. I think what happened is that the project members decided to prioritize the consistency criterion over precision and conciseness. I don't agree with their decision, but modifying the general naming criteria to accommodate local conventions should not be taken lightly. —seav (talk) 23:53, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with seav use in such cases has to be justified against WP:PRECISE and as with WP:USPLACE there is no reason to change the policy on this. -- PBS (talk) 08:13, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
I'm not proposing it lightly. I'm proposing it to address an actual problem with the guidelines: they no longer reflect the way Wikipedia works. Topic projects don't need to convince the broader community before implementing naming conventions contrary to WP:PRECISION; unnecessary drama ensues when non-project members then retitle articles in the project according to the guidelines (which don't reflect the broader consensus any more). The approach is no longer on the project to convince the broader non-project community to use different naming conventions; the non-project editors have to convince the project not too (which doesn't happen and so shouldn't be needed). See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies); no justification against WP:PRECISE is given, but rather no justification of WP:PRECISE against the current local consensus has been accepted. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:16, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
Isn't it enough to say that local consensus can generate project-specific guidelines that deviate from this principle, and just list all of the exceptions here? There can't be that many of them. bd2412 T 13:50, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
We'd need to call it something other than a local consensus. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS is something projects aren't supposed to form; naming conventions different from WP:PRECISION seem to be OK. And yes, we could list them, although I don't know how to make sure we've listed them all. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:20, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
We already know the big ones, and can add others as they come up. It is probably for the best to have a single list, whether here or elsewhere, noting all project-specific naming conventions. That would make it much easier to check whether a particular title was correctly consistent with other titles in the same field. bd2412 T 16:31, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
And ships is another one. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships/Archive 40#Ship disambiguation. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:58, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
"Topic projects don't need to convince the broader community before implementing naming conventions contrary to WP:PRECISION" While anyone can implement anything, there is no reason why that should not be tested against a broader consensus. Contrary to what you you seem to have taken away from these discussion JHunterJ. I think that the move over the last few years has to reduce the difference between the naming conventions (guidelines) and this policy page. This was a direct result of introducing the concept that common name to mean common name in reliable sources rather than the common name in all sources into this policy. Prior to that some naming conventions used rules to emulate the use in reliable sources so that the common name was not used, the trouble with this rule based example was that it led to inflexibility and some results that were clearly not following usage in reliable sources. The point about the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies) is not imposing one solution, but it is suggesting that one should not automatically move pages just because they do not seem to fit with one editor's ideas about what the article title ought to be. This cuts both ways and those taking part in a RM can decide on balance whether an article name should or should not have an certain type of dab extension. Many of the rules on Wikipeida are not mechanisticly simple to follow because they are a political compromise between competing views, and this area is one example of that. What you now seem to want to do is put in place a rule that says "Topic projects don't need to convince the broader community" which is I think clearly not what most would agree is correct, and putting into words will tend to solidify what is a fluid understanding based on compromise which at the margins can result in different decisions on different days. So rather than these naming conventions "no longer reflect[ing] the way Wikipedia works" that is what they do. Wikipeidia editors edit in a social system and while the broad concepts are agree upon one can have no end of fun/anxiety trying to get the devil out of the detail (and detailing the details tends to produce more devils not fewer). -- PBS (talk) 15:24, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Just to throw in my most common WP policy concerns, there is indeed no reason why topical naming conventions should not be tested against a larger consensus. Unless they've been through a WP:PROPOSAL process or otherwise been formally "elevated" they are not WP:GUIDELINES, much less WP:POLICY. There's a common and terribly mistaken belief that because NC pages are interpretations of and supplements to AT policy that they are part of it by extension, but most of them are in fact WP:ESSAYS, in particular wikiproject advice pages. One of the actual, site-wide guidelines these NC pages most commonly conflict with is WP:MOS and its subpages. Some editors are under the delusion that MOS does not apply to article title, but there's not basis for this view, especially given that AT in various places explicitly defers to the MOS, and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy makes its crystal clear that project cannot make up their own consensus against MOS or other actual guidelines and policies.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:14, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
Agreed, but see comments like this one in UK parliamentary constituencies discussion. Probably the discussion needs to be held in a better venue, but there is a lot of resistance to WP:LOCALCONSENSUS' placement of the burden on the group seeking the exception; they invariably respond with "but why not?" when asked "why this exception?" -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:57, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird article name (capitalisation)

There were move discussion on Talk:Crowned crane#Requested move about the capitalisation of the title of four articles related to birds species. The rationale is that there is no reason why bird names should be capitalised (guidance WP:BIRDS) while Wikipedia recommends that all species names should not be written with capitals (official guidelines WP:TITLE, WP:FAUNA, WP:CONLEVEL and WP:NCCAPS).

It was followed by a request for comments on the same subject, Talk:Crowned crane#Request for comments. The move discussion was closed (and the pages moved) on 26 March 2014, see Talk:Crowned crane#Requested move for details. There is now an ongoing follow-up discussion on Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2014 March.

Mama meta modal (talk) 06:12, 1 April 2014 (UTC).

Move review

There were move discussion on Talk:Crowned crane#Requested move about the capitalisation of the title of four articles related to birds species. The rationale is that there is no reason why bird names should be capitalised (guidance WP:BIRDS) while Wikipedia recommends that all species names should not be written with capitals (official guidelines WP:TITLE, WP:FAUNA, WP:CONLEVEL and WP:NCCAPS).

It was followed by a request for comments on the same subject, Talk:Crowned crane#Request for comments. The move discussion was closed (and the pages moved) on 26 March 2014, see Talk:Crowned crane#Requested move for details. There is now an ongoing follow-up discussion on Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2014 March.

Mama meta modal (talk) 19:08, 3 April 2014 (UTC).

See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Second proposal. Mama meta modal (talk) 06:24, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I see that WP:FAUNA was not contradicted by WP:BIRDS at the start of last month, but a substantial edit was made by user:Shyamal at 08:34 12 March 2014 less than an hour after Synamal opposed a move in an RM that in which the proposal had included Fauna as a reason for moving. In my opinion the changes Shyamal made did nothing to contradict Synamal's POV and I think complemented it. -- PBS (talk) 15:49, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Could you point out the contradiction between WP:BIRDS and WP:FAUNA introduced by my edits please. Shyamal (talk) 16:07, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
You changed the wording

Some wikiprojects have arrived at a local consensus to always capitalise the common names of bird species (and subspecies) in ornithology articles, and to permit but not require upper-casing of species of dragonflies, and of moths and butterflies in articles on Odonata and Lepidoptera, respectively.

to

The de facto naming convention for the common names of birds (following the International Ornithologists' Union) uses capitalisation on species pages and ornithology related articles, and similar conventions are followed, though not strictly, in the vernacular names of dragonflies, moths and butterflies in articles on Odonata and Lepidoptera, respectively.

Which was a significant change, with no prior consultation on the talk page, while a requested move of an article was in progress in which memebers of the debate were using that naming convention for advise. WP:BIRDS is not a naming convention and as such BIRDS should be altered to reflect the naming convention not vice versa, unless a discussion is held on the naming convention talk page, it is advertised here on the policy talk p age, and a consensus to change the wording is agreed on the talk page of that naming convention. -- PBS (talk) 19:08, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
You don't seem to have answered the question. Andrewa (talk) 00:48, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
I am sorry I assumed that the difference answered the question for anyone who was involved in the RM. Given that you made about half the edit in the last 50 edit in March 2014 to Talk:Crowned crane, I can only conclude that your comment is a rhetorical one. The answer lies in the edit and the comment that went with the edit "cp eds - here there is indeed local consensus to follow the IOC list - even if there are reservations" and the change, particularly in the context of the RM discussion. The change removed the observation that the exception to the general rule was "a local consensus to always capitalise the common names" to wording that implies that there is general consensus for an exception to the general rule.-- PBS (talk) 10:46, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
There is no such consensus for any such alleged exception. MOS:LIFE is quite clear that this is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS dispute brought about by a few editors, not an MOS-endorsed variance. Whether the people at one project who are not tired of arguing about it (as most members of that project are) have agreed on IOC amongst themselves for WP:COMMONNAME purposes (and that might be a good idea) does not magically mean Wikipedia has decided IOC is also the best source of style when it comes to animal species names in the encyclopedia, which is a farcical idea. MOS has had a clear consensus against that idea since 2012, across all animal and plant species.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  01:26, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
NB: This consensus came about in direct response to attempts to link to WP:BIRDS#Naming in particular as if it were an authoritative guideline[7], and to declare a consensus, that did not exist, in favor of capitalization (previously, MOS said there was no consensus either way.[8]) This attempt at a fait accompli backfired totally; that elevation of bird capitalization to guideline level was soundly rejected at MOS, by scrapping it in favor of what we have today, which has been there pretty much word-for-word, since April 2012.[9] Meanwhile articles have moved more, not less, into compliance with it. There are virtually no hold-outs left other than some scattered plant article, lots of bird articles, and a some flying insect ones. Not because someone went around and changed them all, over strenuous objections in many cases (as happened with bird articles) but because the entire community of editors has been changing them, and writing them properly to begin with.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  09:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • This was too radical a change to have been made without discussion. It's rather unfortunate that it's muddying the discussion of the crowned crane RM. --BDD (talk) 19:55, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
    • Agree that discussion would be good, but this edit seems quite in line with WP:BRD, and the criticisms of it so far don't seem to have any substance. Let's have the discussion. Did the edit change the meaning of the page in any way that is problematic? Andrewa (talk) 00:48, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
I hardly saw it as radical. If a new user wanted to create a fresh article on a (hypothetical) newly designated species, they would need to know whether to use capitals or not rather than to learn about WP specific jargon like "LOCALCONSENSUS"... in fact that link leads to nowhere useful. The change is of course open to discussion. Shyamal (talk) 02:10, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
It radically and quite politically changed the meaning of the page. No amount of repeated attempts to POV-push that page and other guidelines into contradicting MOS is going to magically change consensus at MOS against capitalizing the common names of species (hint: the naming conventions defer to MOS on style, including in this case). It's called tendentiousness and forum shopping, and it has to stop.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  01:17, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Given that they are clearly controversial and undiscussed, and are pushing a POV for which there is no consensus (they directly contradict MOS:LIFE), I've mostly reverted Shyamal's overly bold changes to the vernacular names material. I also partially reverted and partially manually corrected other attempts in a different section to push IOC names and style as an MOS-recognized "standard".[10]  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  01:08, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
This is a policy with its own guidelines (naming conventions) and the policy is based on following usage in reliable sources rather than imposing rules as tends to happen in the MOS guidelines. So it is better that this discussion focuses on what is in the policy and whether the advise in the guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) contradicts or complements that policy rather than what may or may not be in the MOS. -- PBS (talk) 08:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
You seem to be unaware of about 50 miles of previous discussions. WP:AT, like everything else here relating to encyclopedia content, defers to WP:MOS on style matters. WP:AT looks to reliable sources to decide what the name of something is for WP purposes (e.g. a combination of WP:COMMONNAME and other concerns); AT has nothing at all to say about how to style that name, including capitalization, etc. Even if there were some kind of conflict between AT and MOS (there is not), that would have nothing at all to do with wording at WP:NCFAUNA. It is a guideline, and while it intends principally to address concerns that are largely AT matters is not part of AT and is not a policy. BTW, did you know that NCFLORA and NCFAUNA were formerly seriously considered for renaming to WP:Manual of Style/plant taxa, etc.? The idea that the NC guidelines are in no way related to MOS and "descend" somehow from AT is blatantly false (many of them predate AT). I've personally had to remove enormous amounts of content-related, non-article-titles material from them because they were principally written as MOS supplements! They date back to when AT was the WP:Naming conventions guideline [later policy], itself an application of WP:RS and WP:MOS to article titles. Those with insufficient institutional memory on these pages are unlikely to fully understand how they interrelate. That said, far worse could happen than stripping NCFAUNA and NCFLORA of all material that doesn't derive directly from WP:AT, which would necessitate the abandonment of all style-related material at both pages, and more clearly deferring to MOS for that stuff. Really, that would actually be an ideal outcome.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  09:27, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Speaking of previous discussions - I am lost and unable to find where the consensus was firmed for lower case for animals in general - can you please link it here as I am sure you've logged it. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:44, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
See below (short version: Wasn't in one place at one time, but piecemeal, until MOS became really clear on it in April 2012).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  11:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
SMcCandlish you wrote They date back to when AT was the WP:Naming conventions guideline". The policy was the WP:Naming conventions policy when it was move; and as far a I can recall -- without trawling through the history of the policy again -- it was never a guideline. -- PBS (talk) 21:52, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
There is a trawl here here so it was once a policy and a guideline, but it has been a policy since October 2004. It came into existence in November 2001 when it started with "This page is a list of general policies on how to name pages ...". WP:NCFAUNA was created in 2003 WP:NCFLORA is a relative youngster (started September 2006‎)]. The MOS in comparison was started in October 2001 as a few section headers. The first real advise on style was added in August 2002 -- PBS (talk) 22:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Right. It was labelled with {{policy}} here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  11:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
SMcCandlish you also wrote I've personally had to remove enormous amounts of content-related, non-article-titles material from them good for you I am all in favour of keeping the two semi-detached. Perhaps you would like to remove the AT related stuff from the MOS as well. Eg: "The guidance contained elsewhere in the MoS, particularly in the section below on punctuation, applies to all parts of an article, including the title". -- PBS (talk) 22:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Why on earth would we do that? MoS's scope does include article titles, to the extent and only to the extent that style is involved. You're fixating on a false dichotomy of two different levels here. The idea is "AT is a policy, so MOS can just go screw itself, and MOS is about article content below the title only while AT is about the title only, and never the twain shall meet". But none of that is real. AT covers the decision-making process by which we arrive at an article title, and this does not include how it it styled. AT explicitly defers to MOS on style matters, all through it, sometimes with hatnotes, sometimes not. The NC pages do likewise (and they are guidelines that descend as much from MOS as AT - many of them predate AT's creation, even under its original name; they are not AT sub-policies, and people really need to understand that). MOS no where in itself or external to itself is barred from applying to titles. It does not conflict with AT on titles, because it is only about style, nothing else. AT is about the interplay of reliable sources, commonness of names, officialness of names, and other factuality concerns, never style. Some editors would like it to subsume style matters, but this is an absurd, unworkable idea and has been shot down again and again and again, because it would immediately result in thousands, maybe tens of thousands of articles having prose and leads that drastically differ from their article titles, leading to inane amounts of confusion and to mass editor and reader rebellion. AT is a policy, with application to name determination processes to which is pertains. But its scope is limited. There is thus no "AT trumps MOS because it's a policy" nonsense to engage in. AT doesn't conflict with MOS. If you think it does, you're misreading one, the other, or both. The MOS material you quote is there by consensus, not because some idiot added it and no one noticed. It's there for well-thought-out reasons.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  11:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
@PBS: - when I started editing biology articles, there was a mix of upper and lower case, with upper case predominating. There was a discussion which resulted in wholesale conversions to lower case (apart from birds). That's what I am looking for...there are so many places to look though. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:57, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Problem is it happened more than once in more than one place. The overall debate over this stuff is amazingly sprawling. I'm barely getting started tracking it, at User:SMcCandlish/Capitalization of organism names, which is missing about half the birds archives, and the vast majority of debates on article talk pages (RMs), and MRs, and a lot of pump threads, and most of the AT/NC threads. One example of the complexity is that some WP:BIRDS editors back in the day were actively promoting the capitalization as a standard on WP. During this period, before WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy and all the wikiproject-related WP:OWN cases at WP:RFARB, wikiprojects were actually being told by WP:NCFAUNA that they did have the authority to makeup and impose their own rules. Most of them were then (as now) small and "staffed" largely by enthusiasts and hobbyists, not biological academics. Many of them bought into into this caps stuff, with the predictably controversial result of common names like Cougar being capitalized. All sorts of projects, including WP:MAMMALS and a bunch of its subprojects, fell in line. Only later, it was pointed out that there's actually a real-world nomeclatural standard to never use such capitalization for mammals! The insistence on doing so as "right" and "correct" by people in various mammal-related debate are howlingly laughable in retrospect. You'd think all that mammal capitalization would have just been reverted. It wasn't. Years later we're still cleaning up after it. Some projects like WP:CETACEANS cleaned up fast, some never bought in to begin with, others have been moribund so people like me have been slowly cleaning them up in spurts, a few were even actively resistant (mostly some editors of bovines equine, ovid, canine and feline articles, having a hard time distinquishing between vernacular names of species, and names of formal, often trademarked, domestic breeds).

There's no "sea change" pro or con, to be found when capitalization flowed and ebbed; it's always been piecemeal. WP:ANIMALS never came to a consensus pro or con on the matter; see its old draft "guideline" to let every sub-project do whatever the hell it wanted, as late as 2011. The edit summaries there are often hilarious, e.g. "sharks maybe fish but they are different. If it was all that simple we would only have a mammals line and be done with it!)". Prescient, really, since in April 2012, MOS came to the conclusion to have one standard and be done with it, other than observing a localconsensus holdout at one project. Even at WP:MAMMALS it's hard to find a clear-cut decision-making process; it was mostly decided, willy-nilly, by subprojects until MOS more clearly settled on one standard.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  11:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Similar changes at WP:NCCAPS

The same sorts of controversial, wikipolitical (whether intentionally or not) and undiscussed changes were made at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) by the same editor, Shyamal (talk · contribs). I've [partially reverted, partially modified them], as with those made at WP:NCFAUNA (see above) and for the same reasons. In this case, the changes were in some ways far worse than the fauna ones, especially pushing the many, many times debunked nonsense position that common names of species are proper names. Virtually no one in the world buys that argument, not even inveterate capitalizers of birds and such. Second it makes a special-pleading case for dog breeds, of all things (as if dogs are magically different from all other domestic animals), and then wrongly likens the capitalization of breeds (by some but not all sources and some but not all editors) to the capitalization (by some but not all, again) of bird species common names. But the rationales for these two cases of capitalization are radically different. At any rate there is no clear consensus that breed names are capitalized here (and believe it or not I'm actually sympathetic to the idea, because some of the rationales are more compelling than for species). Even if there were, it it something that would be added to MOS (and is already in the draft MOS update on organisms), not to some random NC subguideline page. A fourth problem is that most of what isn't unacceptable in this change is redundant with NCCAPS. A fifth is that much of it is also in conflict with WP:MOS with is a much better established guideline, and to which AT and the NC pages defer on style matters anyway. Other faults of it are the same those of Shyamal's edits to NCFAUNA, like pushing the IOC as an official WP standard against consensus against this notion, etc. And, as if that's not enough, the wording is tumid and confused (lots of "just as in", and "have been argued as being" contorted verbiage). So, emphatically no, that edit has nothing like consensus at all.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  13:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. It does not seem to me like you or others on this page are looking for any kind of participation here. Shyamal (talk) 16:28, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
I see at least 7 editors so far participating in this discussion (i.e. the entire thread, not this sub-thread, of course), so I'm not sure what you mean.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼  11:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Participation where you dismiss anything the other party says as "nonsense" can hardly be considered as meaningful. There are hundreds of nuanced ideas on both sides, most of them sensible which ought to be given consideration. To me, at least the pro-caps side recognizes that the practice is fairly restricted even outside of Wikipedia. You on the other hand seem to think of all practices outside of Wikipedia other than rather different genres such as dictionaries and some very generic (and hardly comprehensive on any topic) tertiary sources like the EB as being "nonsensical". There are nuanced views on whether biological species are unique entities or not, that can be argued with reliable sources for either side. There are nuanced views on whether breeds (developed by artificial selection) are comparable to species (evolved through natural selection), and that too can be argued with reliable sources. If you wanted to prioritize collaboration on articles by a diverse group of editors on a very diverse range of topics (without subject editors) you need to have an open-ended policy. Book and journal publishers have an editor and regardless of the format in which papers are submitted, they are subject to house rules that are imposed. That is not the case here. When I used de facto I did mean that this was the state of entries in Wikipedia, and indeed "de facto" means that. It is not "approved", "enforced" or such like as you have claimed. If you have a technological solution to enforce the kind of consistency you seek, then that would be something that we can all consider participating in. If you want to impose rules on ephemeral editors by making a guideline into some kind of policy that every editor is going to have to look up before doing anything here, what you have is a neurotic quest. You do know that there are numerous exceptions to rules in English, that the language evolves (remember that there was no such thing as lower case at one point of time, no such things as italics and bold being talked about until very recent times) and that we are supposed to be forward looking community. If you just want to wave away the contributions of participants as non-sensical, then I believe you may well be on the way to success. Shyamal (talk) 05:09, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
The "dismissals" are also considered and sensible. Just because someone else dismisses opinions that you find nuanced does not mean that they didn't consider them, and SMcCandlish and others have been considering this for a long time. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:01, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

New discussion

An important discussion started on Talk:Crowned crane and Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2014 March#Black crowned crane now moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#A new proposal regarding bird article names.

Mama meta modal (talk) 20:56, 9 April 2014 (UTC).

Guidance on balancing precision and ambiguity, when a regional abbreviation is only culturally known in limited regions?

(Note - article titles given are invented for discussion and illustration purposes only)

This query has come up recently in an article, but I'm seeking a range of wider views and if possible consensus here, on the general point raised, rather than help on any specific article title.

The problem

A lot of organizations have long names and are therefore commonly known by an acronym in the region they are active. The full name can be quite long, and while we might use the full name for the main article, other articles concerning the organization get unwieldy if they aren't somehow abbreviated. But sometimes an abbreviation just doesn't help a reader either, and creates more problems than it solves.

In many cases, organization names are long, the organization obscure in the wider English-speaking world, the acronym almost unknown outside its own region, and the choice seems to be a title that's understandable but too long for eyes to easily read (full name used) or else incomprehensible and meaningless to most English speakers but short (acronym used).

It can be a bit hard to see how others outside ones own cultural region may have issues, so I've taken some random organizations from round the world, hopefully anyone can relate to some of these and understand the concern raised.

  • (Although "CFO" itself isn't that well known an acronym either, globally speaking....)

So here are some examples, made up of course, to illustrate the issue. Which titles should we prefer, and what guidance should we offer.....

Sorry for being wordy. I have tried to give people from all regions a chance to consider the issue and comment, and it might be easier if a body is not from one's own region. Comments appreciated how such unwieldy topics should balance precision, ambiguity, and easy comprehension by English readers. FT2 (Talk | email) 23:52, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

In order to answer the question, we need to ask a few preliminary ones. The first question I would ask is whether we really need to have a separate article on each of these controversies... it may be that the topic would be better presented as a section of the article on the relevant agency (for example: the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration article could have a section entitled "2009 Controversy") The issue of how to entitle an article on the controversy becomes moot. Another option would be to see if there were other controversies involving these agencies... and combine them into a single article entitled appropriately (for example: Controversies concerning the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration)
If we do need a separate article for a specific controversy, we then the next question I would ask relates to the principle of Recognizably... since you do have a point about the titles being long, I would ask is "is there a relatively common acronym for the agency". If so go ahead and use it... if not, then go with the longer full title. (one caution... Don't make up your own acronym. If sources don't use an acronym, neither should we.) Blueboar (talk) 12:57, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Clarification of "good reason" at WP:TITLECHANGES

WP:TITLECHANGES states:

Changing one controversial title to another is strongly discouraged. If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed.

I thought it would be improved if "good reason" was clarified, so I added[11] the following footnote:

A good reason to move a title is to improve compliance with title policy.

This was reverted[12], with the following edit summary:

It isn't wrong, but I saying it will simply will encourage wiki-lawyering.

I'm puzzled by this, as the purpose of the clarification is to discourage wiki-lawyering. In particular, the point is to discourage wikilawyering manifested as invocation of this clause to rationalize opposition to a proposed title change for not having a "good" reason to change, even when the reason given is based in policy. Right now, anyone can wikilawyer this clause by asserting that any reason is not "good", even if the reason is based in policy, because "good" is not defined. If "good" is defined as "based in policy", then they have to argue that the reason is not good because it's not based in policy, which they can't do if the reason is based in policy.

I don't see how it could lead to more wikilawyering, but if that's the concern, why not leave it in and see what happens? If it does somehow lead to more wikilawyering, then we can remove it. --B2C 22:31, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

  • Oppose the addition. Good policy is not self-referential. B2C is trying to write into policy that it is policy that policy is a reason to enforce policy. He ignores the role of common-sense and the principle that policy is prescriptive, not descriptive, that policy may be inaccurate, misleading or out of step. The fundamental reason for doing anything is to improve the encyclopedia, for readers, and everything else is subservient to that. B2C is here for a peculiar MMORPG-style kooky quest unconnected to the quality of the product, and these superficially innocuous policy edits need suspicious review. Enforcing odd but logical interpretations of policy without a connection to the net improvement is something that should be shunned. B2C appears to be continuing to wheedle into policy things that he can later use to help assert that policy is supreme for the sake of policy. I propose that B2C be banned from directly editing policy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:52, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Exactly what SmokeyJoe said. B2C's "A good reason to move a title is to improve compliance with title policy" would later morph to or be interpreted as "The only good reason to move a title is to improve compliance with title policy." Make him stop. Dicklyon (talk) 00:56, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
    • Indeed. What good reason can there to be to move a title that is not to improve compliance with title policy? And if there is ever such a situation, that would justify WP:IAR as well as a policy update. --B2C 01:08, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
Well, there might be title changes that would improve recognizability or precision, but you have succeeded in redefining those on the policy page to be not valued. Many editors do still value them as good reasons for a title choice, even though you have written out of policy. That's the unfortunate state that we don't want you building bulwarks around. Dicklyon (talk) 03:40, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
      • Indeed. You have such a blinkered, skewed view of the role of policy, and misunderstanding of consensus, that your policy edits are a menace to the project. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:14, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
        • You're responding to my comment without answering the question. Nice dodge. And with respect to the policy edit in question, the person who reverted said "it isn't wrong". It isn't wrong, yet it's a menace to the project? Please explain. --B2C 01:17, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
    • SmokeyJoe, it's not self-referential. The policy referenced in the clarification I added to WP:TITLECHANGES is obviously not referring to WP:TITLECHANGES itself. That is, I'm not suggesting that WP:TITLECHANGES should say a "good reason to change a title is WP:TITLECHANGES". That would be self-referential. But to be absolutely clear, we could have it say, "A good reason to change a title is to bring into better compliance with title selection criteria.

      How is adding this clarification ignoring "the role of common-sense and the principle that policy is prescriptive, not descriptive"? How is adding this clarification ignoring the fact that "policy may be inaccurate, misleading or out of step"? Again, we have WP:IAR, not to mention this process of editing policy, because of that.

      Everything I do is about improving the encyclopedia for the reader, indirectly if not directly, and your insinuations to the contrary are not appreciated. Just because we may disagree on how best to benefit the reader does not mean that is not my goal. I believe higher compliance with less ambiguous title policy ultimately improves the reader experience, if nothing else because it reduces title conflicts and discussions and gives editors more time to spend improving content. See User:Born2cycle/FAQ#How do readers benefit from avoiding unnecessary disambiguation or more descriptive titles?. --B2C 01:56, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

      • That section, like most of your userpage, subpage, and essays, is so basically misguided that it is a stretch of credulity to accept that you really believe it. You are a WP:Concise fundamentalist because you think readers need to know whether the information they've sought has an ambiguous title? But don't worry about a title being precise, or recognizable to many, or about quality sources? How long has it been since you read. WP:5P. You really need to spend some time reading Wikipedia:The rules are principles. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:18, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I also oppose this addition. Policies and guidelines exist to document generally sensible practices, so defining "good reason" in this manner is circular at best. At worst, it encourages lawyering by users more interested in abiding by the letter of a rule than in improving the project. If an article title dispute can be resolved via harmless rule-bending, opposition based solely on the fact that it doesn't "improve compliance with title policy" is unhelpful. —David Levy 02:16, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I too oppose this addition. It's the thin end of the wedge. "Good reason" doesn't need to be closely defined -- indeed, it should not be closely defined. Omnedon (talk) 03:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose B2C is well known for his insistence that the ONLY way to discuss titles is by constant reference, chapter and verse, to the five criteria listed in this article: Recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness, and consistency. (In fact his "policy based arguments" usually come down to conciseness, conciseness, conciseness, conciseness, and conciseness.) These five criteria are important, but they are not the be-all, end-all, sit-down-and-shut-up answer to every titling discussion, as B2C wants them to be - and as he is hoping to make them via this addition. For that matter, the nutshell here, "Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources," is also policy but is far more open to interpretation. There must be room for interpretation, common sense, sensitivity, and yes, consensus, in making titling discussions. --MelanieN (talk) 04:49, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
P.S. IMO it was inappropriate to make this change without discussing it first. This violated the guideline at the top of the edit page: "You are editing a page that documents an English Wikipedia policy. While you may be bold in making minor changes to this page, consider discussing any substantive changes first on the page's talk page." This was not a minor change; it was a substantive change, intended to strengthen your position in move discussions, and should not have been made without consensus. --MelanieN (talk) 05:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Space before parenthetical disambiguation

The policy doesn't mention that a space should exist before a parenthetical disambiguation (e.g., "Queen (rock band)" vs "Queen(rock band)". Anybody aware if some policy or guideline somewhere does say that? We should mention this if not. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:07, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

MOS:B&P says "An opening bracket should be preceded by a space, except in unusual cases".
—Wavelength (talk) 16:37, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
Good point. There's solid support for the space then. I still think it would be more convenient for editors if we add in mention of the space here rather than burdening them with having to read and find a ton of other style policy. Jason Quinn (talk) 21:05, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
Also, see the policy: "so we instead use parenthetical disambiguation: Mercury (element), Mercury (mythology), and Mercury (planet)." And no example of the incorrect versions "Mercury(element), Mercury(mythology), and Mercury(planet)". -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:45, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
Extrapolating rules from a list of examples is imprecise and error prone. So the existing examples do not negate the need for clarification. Jason Quinn (talk) 21:05, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
The existing examples do not negate the need for clarification here, because no clarification is needed. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:06, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
This is nothing to do with titles; it is basic punctuation. I don't why we find editors unaware of basic punctuation sometimes, but the solution is not to add more info in WP:TITLE. We'd also need to explain that commas need a space before, but not after; and that quotation marks come in matching pairs; and all sorts of other stuff that's best treated elsewhere (like in elementary school when learning to read and write, one might hope). Dicklyon (talk) 21:23, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
Instruction creep... There is no need for this policy to make a rule against every conceivable punctuation and grammar error that could occur in a title. If a title contains a spacing error, just quietly correct the error (use the "move page" button at the top of the page). It is unlikely that any one will object (or even notice)... but if they do, just spend a few minutes calmly explaining why you corrected the title. If they still object, take it to WP:RM and let the community decide. Blueboar (talk) 21:46, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree it's WP:CREEP. However, Dicklyon (talk · contribs), commas need a space after the comma, not before! If commas need a space before ,it would look like this! --B2C 22:35, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Right, what he said. My fingers got confused. Dicklyon (talk) 00:52, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
That argument has some merit, Blueboar. Jason Quinn (talk) 02:25, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Does WP:ENGVAR apply to disambiguators?

Is a rename of Vampire (car) to Vampire (automobile) a good rename?

Vampire is a jet-engined dragster, not a production car. It is thoroughly English, in both its history and its popular knowledge (having been involved in a famous accident involving a popular TV UK presenter).

There is a long-running issue in car projects, as to how far "automobile" should be enforced on non-US car articles, in titles and in body text. It's not a common term in the UK (whilst "car" is well-known in the US) and even after working in the European car industry for years, I still don't know what it means (cars are automobiles, but are light trucks? - WP seems unable to clarify that one consistently).

This is one of a batch of renames done recently for "(Consistency in disambiguations)". Is "consistency" here a valid reason? It goes against ENGVAR and COMMONNAME, and what virtue does it convey? Certainly MediaWiki cares nothing for the "hobgoblin of small minds", as the wiki software for categories, disambigs etc. works by explicitly stated memberships, not by inferring site structure from parsing text strings in article names. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:09, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

("Consistency" isn't the hobgoblin; "a foolish consistency" is.) This project page doesn't address the selection of qualifiers (or parenthetical disambiguating terms), but WP:NCDAB says "If there are several possible choices for parenthetical disambiguation, use the same disambiguating phrase already commonly used for other topics within the same class and context, if any." -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:08, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
What is "context"? In the same batch of renames Waxwing (Rocket motor) was renamed to Waxwing (rocket engine) to be consistent with other rocket engines. However Waxwing is a solid fuel rocket and the clear convention within rocketry is that liquid fuel propulsion uses engines, the simpler solid fuel rockets are motors. The context there is not "rocket propulsion", it is "rocket engines" and "rocket motors" and the subject context should retain that clear distinction.
In this case we have an ENGVAR issue. Even if we might choose new disambiguators with an eye to consistency, is consistency alone sufficient to justify a rename? Is consistency enough to outweigh ENGVAR and COMMONNAME (It's a bit OSE, but I really dislike "automobile". "Car" has easy recognition in the US whereas "automobile" is distinctly archaic in the UK). Andy Dingley (talk) 13:19, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I know nothing of the subject, but Jet car doesn't make a single reference to "automobile", so is Vampire (automobile) even technically correct, let alone an WP:ENGVAR issue? Could it be the case that maybe the moving editor was a little indiscriminate with these moves? --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:30, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing the Waxwing. I realised afterwards that solid rockets might use "motor" instead of "engine", and was going to come back to that. As for "Car" vs. "Automobile", Car redirects to Automobile, which was my basis for changing from the colloquial "car" to the formal (and, one might argue, more encyclopedic) "automobile", seeing as "Automobile" was already in use for other dabs. In Car vs Auto I'm fine either way if the diktat is to switch to 'Car', however my personal preference would be for the less colloquial and more encyclopedic "automobile". - The Bushranger One ping only 20:12, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
I've always thought that automobiles are just a type of car. As a car is something that carries passengers or freight and not necessarily self mobile. For example consider railroad cars such as a box-car. Granted the distinction is not really that important most of the time. PaleAqua (talk) 20:26, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
Although in American English car has been used more widely than in British English in the 20th century, with words like "streetcar" (tram) and freightcar (freight wagon), car in this context is an abbreviation of "motor car" and according to the OED is "Now the usual sense" (of the use of car). In British English although it is less common there are people who use the other word in place of car as in "'Ullo John! Gotta New Motor?", of course in East End of London "motor" becomes "motah" (or sometimes haddoc). -- PBS (talk) 00:17, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Have you considered looking for third options that don't involve ENGVAR at all?... something like Vampire (dragster) might work. Blueboar (talk) 13:03, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

The point is trying to reduce the number of disambiguations and make them consistent, instead of creating new ones. - The Bushranger One ping only 21:09, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Does WP:ENGVAR apply to disambiguators? Yes it applies to the name (this policy) and the text in articles (the MOS). Automobile is not common in British English car is. In British English automobile is so uncommon that the British spelling checker I am using in Firfox thinks it is a spelling mistake. It was more common in Britain when the RAC (1897) and AA (1905) were founded, but it has long since gone the way of omnibus and is archaic. "In Car vs Auto I'm fine either way" who other than Germans call a car an "auto" (a term that has been in common use in Germany for decades and which I have always assumed is a shortening of "automobile"). -- PBS (talk) 00:17, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Use of commas in article titles

The RM at Talk:John Gielgud, roles and awards#Requested move may be of interest. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:59, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Please refer to an RfC at Category talk:Filmographies#Naming of articles about an actor's roles and awards. —sroc 💬 14:34, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Use of book subtitles in article titles

There's a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (books)#WP:SUBTITLE vs. WP:NATURAL that may be of interest. older ≠ wiser 10:55, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Regarding Common Names

What if the most common name for something is not the name listed in reliable sources? For example, Cannabis should be renamed to something like "Green", "Weed", or something like that because whether people want to argue about it or not, it's a simple fact that anyone who has been anywhere around the drug counter-culture will tell you that the number of times their friends talk about "Marijuana" is hardly ever and "Cannabis" is even less used in speech. The ONLY reason those are there is because of proper English. It's just like caffeine being called by its official name, or other similar scenarios. This needs to be included in our Common Name guidelines.... მაLiphradicusEpicusთე 20:58, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

That's why common name is defined in terms of most common usage in reliable sources. It's not about the most common name used in slang. --B2C 16:45, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
That's not why. It is because Wikipedia is about collecting information from the most reliable sources. These other concerns are secondary to the importance of reliable sources. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:21, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't recall you being part of the addition of the reference to following usage in RS to common name, but I was there. The reasoning you give here was never mentioned, if I recall correctly. PBS (talk · contribs) can elaborate - it was his initiative to get that change into Common Name. --B2C 20:17, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
If this policy was written without reference to the principles of the project, that is to the shame of all involved. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:29, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

New essay: WP:Concision razor, please review

I've written an essay regarding WP:AT (specifically WP:CONCISE) called WP:Concision razor. Comments/thoughts/evaluation at Wikipedia talk:Concision razor, or direct edits/improvements to the essay itself, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! --B2C 16:33, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

You invite comments/thoughts/evaluation, but in response to discussion there you said "Essays are not supposed to reflect community consensus. In this case I believe this essay does reflect community consensus (notwithstanding a vocal minority that strongly objects), but that's besides the point. If you disagree, write your own essay." Since that is your attitude, I don't understand why you asked for (much less "greatly appreciated") community input. --MelanieN (talk) 17:02, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
The opinions expressed in an essay do not need to convey community consensus. That doesn't mean there isn't room for corrections, suggestions for improvements, etc., from others. That's what I seek. --B2C 18:00, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
  • With prompting, the essay now better reflects the opinion nature of its essense. However, it is far from reasonable to tag it as a policy supplement. As advice, it contracts policy, WP:TITLECHANGES. Opinions are allowed to contract policy, but advice is not. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:29, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
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