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Archives by topic: Common names 1, 2, 3 Naming conflict 1, 2 Precision and accuracy

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In looking at various of these articles, the names used follow the two forms in the heading of this section. I find it hard to believe that the common name for these apparently randomly uses these two forms. I think that part of the problem may be the policy of WP:NRHP prefers to use the name on the nomination form no matter how appropriate that may be. It results in building articles having names like Whitney & Company for a building since that is apparently listed on the nomination form that way but per our policy should probably be listed as Whitney & Company building since the article is about the building and not the company. This guideline also produces article names like U.S. Post Office (Saratoga Springs, New York) and United States Post Office (Canandaigua, New York). Both of these should probably use one form or the other. So do we choose one or let the nomination form be the decider of our names? If we elect to use the current setup, should we allow these to be sorted by article name which produces odd results or should we use a default sort and force them all to sort as United States? Vegaswikian (talk) 06:04, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There was an RfC about this not very long ago, but I don't remember the link offhand. I believe the general consensus was that U.S. in this context is always an abbreviation for United States, and can be changed. I've done that once or twice as I've come across them but haven't gone out of my way looking for them. Station1 (talk) 06:36, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The RFC discussion was at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Naming conventions for United States federal buildings. The Congressionally designated legal names of many of these buildings can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject United States courts and judges/United States Congressional naming legislation. After that discussion I changed a number of them to spell out the name, and it seems that they were changed right back, so I've moved on to other things. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:19, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I have been changing some back. Besides the unencyclopedic look that this generates, it also messes up default category sorting. So mixed names are bad on two fronts. Add to that the naming for courthouses and customhouses and this random use of U.S. is the odd man out. And as noted in other places, the listing material for NRHP does not follow any standard and should not be used for the source on any names. It produces article titles like Albers Brothers Milling Company about a listed building and not about the company. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:24, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I agree and I think we should have a policy in place to this effect. "United States" should by default be spelled out where it appears in the name of a building. bd2412 T 20:15, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is already policy: "Avoid abbreviations: Abbreviations and acronyms are generally avoided unless the subject is almost exclusively known by its abbreviation (e.g. NATO and Laser)" (WP:Abbreviation). - Station1 (talk) 04:20, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any need for further discussion or RFCs on this point. We know that we have a small percentage of articles that do not perfectly reflect the community's desires, e.g., that contain inappropriate abbreviations. What we need now is a WP:BOLD editor to just go fix them, with a suitable edit summary/reason for move. I'd bet that 90% of the moves from "U.S." to "United States" would be uncontested, especially if they're accompanied by a suitable explanation. If a handful of editors require further education, then WP:RM can handle it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:58, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know they have been all changed. The only change remaining is all of the links in U.S. Post Office. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:08, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

These are all that I can find:

Cheers! bd2412 T 13:48, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all, I'd like to request some outside input at WT:VG regarding naming of articles, and the possible precedent implications of a recent article move. It boils down to whether the article title "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" (both names referring to the same thing, article previously at just "Mega Drive") is OK or not, and specifically whether WP:AND allows this. The discussion is here. Thanks, Miremare 00:56, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The "and" is untenable, even before we get to the inclusion of two alternative names. Tony (talk) 02:41, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The difficulty here is that the two protagonist groups favoring Sega Genesis and Mega Drive fought a long and bloody war over this and came up with Sega Genesis and Mega Drive as a consensus-driven compromise. There is therefore consensus on the article talk page for a title that seems to be a clear-cut violation of WP:TITLE. When User:Miremare attempts to do something about this, both sides in the original debate unite in wanting to stick with their hard-won compromise title. It's very difficult to tell them to go back to re-open that long and bitter debate. What's worse is that nobody outside of that circle of editors gives a damn whether they choose Sega Genesis or Mega Drive since the product in question was known by both names. It would be helpful if some experts on article naming would step into the debate and...

1. impress upon the editors the inappropriateness of their compromise solution.
2. offer reasoned guidance as to which of the two contentious names should be chosen.

IMHO, flipping a coin would be a great solution! SteveBaker (talk) 14:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Local concensus can't override community concensus. The name is clearly inappropriate. However, the article was last moved on September 30, 2011[1] so I assume this was the result of a recent discussion. It might be better to wait a few months before revisiting the issue. We don't have deadlines and the sky won't fall if one of our articles has a terrible name. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:30, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It sets a precedent for confusing names, too. There are a huge number of products that are released with different names in different regions. If this naming stands, people are going to point to it as an easy compromise every time a name dispute occurs. Pretty soon we'll have "Gasoline and Petrol" as though it were some sort of mixture of two fuels, and who knows what they'd do with the first Harry Potter book!

I've never edited the article so far as I can remember, so it's really nothing to me personally, but I'd prefer to see it fixed before people working on other articles get the idea that this name change was a good idea and a successful conflict resolution technique. APL (talk) 17:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

APL: That's a good point. Can one of the senior (i.e. experienced) editors of this policy give us some advice on how to proceed? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:48, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have no specific knowledge about this topic - did not look at the article and don't know what this is about, so this is totally general and objective advice: Collect data on how commonly each name is used in published English reliable sources and go with the name that is most commonly used. If it's a wash, and there is no consensus favoring either name, then go with the name first used for the title of this article. But the current title with the "and" has to go. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:07, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. While we should try to follow the rules most of the time we can ignore them if they are getting in the way of improving the encyclopedia. Now, I'm sure many people would say "picking either name will improve the encyclopedia", but in this particular case more good may be done by allowing the editors to stick with there consensus name. That way we get more happy editors contributing to the article, which will improve the encyclopedia.

Obviously, some people will see this as the start of a slippery slope, but really we just have to look at each case on its merits. Slippery-slope arguments lead to more rules and more bureaucracy.

Yaris678 (talk) 18:36, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What we have here is a classic case of WP:ENGVAR... the same thing was given two different names in different parts of the English speaking world. I would agree that the title should either be Sega Mega Drive or Sega Genesis (with whichever name is not used for the article title linked as a redirect, and prominently listed as an alternative name in the opening sentence). The question is, which should be used for the title?

The first thing to look at is whether WP:COMMONNAME applies... is one name used significantly more than the other in sources (and yes, I am aware that "significantly" is open to interpretation... that is intentional...it allows us to consider all sides of the issue). The really important thing here is to think of readers... is the average reader more likely to search for the article using "Genesis" or "Mega Drive"? We will get both... but as long as a reader can quickly understand that a) the system has two names and b) we are using one of those two names... they will not be surprised if they find themselves redirected. Blueboar (talk) 18:42, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Coming up with a name just to appease the editors involved with the article who can't agree is rarely the approach taken, for good reason: it does not improve the encyclopedia. In such a case you do need to seek broader input. I'm disappointed the closing admin closed when and how he did. A much better action would have been to make it an RFC and seek broader input, as was started here.

I think the case can be made that this was prematurely closed even though it was open for a week, because mostly only editors involved with the article, and not many experienced with naming conventions, were involved, as is made evident by the sparsity of most of the comments. I suggest that a new proposal be made to move the article to either of the two names. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the problem here - as I understand it - is that the local consensus of the editors of the article have settled on this title as a compromise. Read the post above. I'll excerpt from it:

The only way to change local consensus is to get as much of the community involved as possible. I'm thinking we should create an RfC, posting a notice on the Village Pump, etc. Assuming we want to do this, where should we have the rename discussion? Here? The article's talk page? Village Pump? Jimbo's talk page? :) A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:14, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So how many places are you going to try and ask to get this overturned Miremare? This is what, at least the third different group you've asked? As for the discussion at hand, WP:COMMONNAME cannot apply because its vague wording makes it possible to look at sources in such a way that anyone can clearly purport that one is more than the other. Also since this was a merged article, with a unique naming history determining the first will be just as contentious. Sega Genesis was the first article created long before the article Mega Drive. Later those were merged and the initial naming Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis was chosen. The current title is the one closest that this page allows. Only after then was Mega Drive chosen as a biterly contested move location and as said the data from commonname cannot clearly indicate it was the correct one and it certainly wasn't the first.∞陣内Jinnai 19:37, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that it's a merge that got edit warred over is not really a "unique naming history". Merges happen all the time. Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System were once separate articles. So were The Golden Compass and Northern Lights (novel). They managed to get through it OK without awkwardly implying that the two products were part of a matched set or a bundle or something. APL (talk) 23:06, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not familar with Northern Lights novel, but the former ultimately was the NES because of WP:ENGLISH. Here Genesis and Mega Drive are both English and inspite claims to it ENGVAR doesn't really apply since its not a clear US vs. the World argument Miremare tries to neatly package it as. Anyway neither of that shows that it wasn't the first. The first was the Mega Drive/Genesis combination title.∞陣内Jinnai 23:29, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, as the articles mention, "Golden Compass" is the American title of "Northern Lights" which is British. The article certainly isn't titled "The Golden Compass and The Northern Lights". APL (talk) 05:36, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. I understand. However things are much more complicated with Genesis/Mega Drive than a simple name change for 1 region stating with Genesis was the original English name.∞陣内Jinnai 14:05, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've proposed that the article be moved to Genesis (Sega Mega Drive). I believe this title meets all requirements and addresses all objections. See: Talk:Sega_Genesis_and_Mega_Drive#Requested_move. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:50, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Colleagues, the time has come to re-examine certain principles that were adopted years ago when we were small, young, and innocent. WP continues to amass articles; we are approaching four million—one for every hundred native speakers! Each of these articles needs a fitting title, and the phenomenon of "information convergence" bears down on the project ever more obviously. I believe we need to be more flexible, to enhance specificity in titles. On top of this, we have widespread abuse of capitalisation, tending away from the generic to the titular (the French mock us with murmurings like: "English-speakers are really just Germans masquerading as human beings"). Sometimes these axes interact, and I think more detail should now be built into the policy so editors have better guidance as they attempt to follow the larger goal of serving readers' actual needs.

Here are three ongoing examples, with the generality of the titles rather than their capitalisation at issue:

• Central Provident Fund
• Financial Management Standard, which PB Shearer helpfully reverted back from my Financial Management Standard (Queensland); and
• French Quarter

Tony (talk) 04:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Over-capitalization continues to be an issue, too. My lastest RM is at Talk:Kerckhoffs's Principle. And an example of the failure to respect specificity, or "precision" as we call it, is at Talk:Calculator#Why isn't this article titled electronic calculator? and subsequent sections; it seems that more emphasis on the "precision" part of WP:TITLE#Deciding on an article title, as Tony is suggesting, would help here. Dicklyon (talk) 05:06, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Help? Only if you see an actual problem here that needs solving. Our article titles need only be unique, not fully qualified, as they are primarily technical measures. Overprecision is a problem we've fortunately avoided to date. Overprecise titles are harder to link and harder to find, except where they are aided by consistency (as with U.S. place names). Powers ^T 11:31, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion at Talk:French Quarter is marked by failure to distinguish between French Quarter, a proper name which occurs in three or four cities, and French quarter, a common noun with adjective, which may exist in any city divided into ethnic quarters (especially in Western Europe or the French colonial Empire). The others appear to have much the same problem.

Looking at the archives of this page, there appears to be a consistent avoidance of over-precision; we do not want a certain island country at United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; after United Kingdom, additional precision offers no value to compensate us for the length and awkwardness. JCScaliger (talk) 19:21, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion at Talk:French Quarter is marked by failure to have any firm grasp of what a proper name is, or to appreciate the fluid and complex nature of that concept. Please tell us what you mean when you speak of "proper names" here, JCScaliger. Do you say that the second word in "the French [Q/q]uarter" is a common noun, or a proper noun? Answer first for the case of New Orleans, and then for the cases of Tianjin and Shanghai. Do you say that "the Queen" is a proper name? Always? Sometimes? Is the second word in this case a common noun, or a proper noun? If we are going to make policy about titles of articles, we had better gain a more secure sense of all this – or at least recognise that the grammatical terminology is not carved in stone. Erratic assignment to such categories as "proper name" should not be decisive in settling RMs.

When you have explained yourself on that front, we might look at your straw-man argument concerning "over-precision". Some of us would like to know: how can it be "over-precise" to inform readers at a glance that an article about a French quarter is specifically about the one in New Orleans? We know it can do some good so to help readers, in this case at least. How can it do any harm, to anyone?

Noetica^Tea? 23:48, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It can do harm because most people who search for or link to "French Quarter" want the New Orleans neighborhood (from among the articles currently on WP). As LtPowers noted, by making it a disambiguation page instead, searchers must click through a page where they don't want to be, and editors are more likely to inadvertently link to a dab page, if they do not notice they must instead type out the more cumbersome piped link. Station1 (talk) 00:41, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Station1, Tony answers this below. I agree with him, and the point is important enough to amplify. Type as far as "French qua" in the search field, and see the prompts:

French Quarter
French Quarter (Charleston, South Carolina)
French Quarter (disambiguation)
French Quarter Mardi Gras costumes
French Quarter (San Francisco)

How on earth does that help, if someone is after a district of New Orleans (or indeed any of the other bearers of the name, for which there is so far no article)? This would be helpful:

French Quarter
French Quarter (Charleston, South Carolina)
French Quarter Mardi Gras costumes
French Quarter (New Orleans)
French Quarter (San Francisco)

Why think that New Orleans specialists, or insiders, are any more able to assess the comparative currency of the term "French Quarter" inside and outside New Orleans? So what if they assume that theirs is primary? The prompts lacking the qualifier "New Orleans" help neither them nor anyone else.

Noetica^Tea? 22:41, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree that the dropdown menu mitigates the issue to some extent. But the dropdown menu does not help anyone who simply types "French Quarter" in the search box and hits Enter, fully expecting to get to the article about the French Quarter (or, more specifically, the French Quarter expected by a majority). It also wouldn't help anyone looking for an article on the French Quarter who didn't know in advance that it's in New Orleans (though I suspect they are few in this example, that could make a difference in other cases). There are costs and benefits either way. but I think the concept of a primary topic is more useful than not. Station1 (talk) 00:17, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I've never heard so much fizz: you type "French Quarter" into the search box and it will give you a choice of all articles starting with that, and further down, of all occurrences of the item within articles. Tony (talk) 04:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm generally fine with the titles as they are (with the exception of Southwest Museum of the American Indian, which should just be Southwest Museum). Noetica's arguments seem to violate both WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and add the headache of making article titles longer than they need to be. Noetica has also advocated using topics that don't have articles (some of which probably never will, as they fail GNG) in determing primary topic, which is a quite dubious argument. KEEP SHORTER TITLES. Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 15:33, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Four answers, Purple:

1. You do not explain how my arguments (which ones?) "violate WP:COMMONNAME". The text there makes various provisions, and lays out a range of factors for nuanced consideration; and it links to other principles that are also a matter of balance.
2. You do not explain how my arguments "violate WP:PRIMARYTOPIC". From that guideline: "Although a word, name or phrase may refer to more than one topic, it is sometimes the case that one of these topics is the primary topic." Crass argumentation at RMs assumes as an axiom that there is a primary topic. A distortion of the guideline. Even if a primary topic can be established, this would be just one factor among many – in meeting the needs of real people, really looking for real information.
3. How is the addition of, say, nine letters to a title any sort of a "headache"? It is done only once, and does not automatically make a title longer than it "needs to be". How long or short does a title "need to be", to be most useful to readers?
4. You misrepresent me concerning topics that don't have articles. I have never connected that with the matter of primary topics. Again, there is not always a primary topic at all. The assumption that there is, and that it trumps everything else, is pernicious. It's time to readjust priorities.

Noetica^Tea? 22:41, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nit picks aside, WP:PRECISE clearly states: "When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided." I see no reason above or elsewhere to deviate from this clear principle.

If "deviating from principle" can cause "headaches", and it arguably does, then adding nine letters to a title is indeed a "headache", by definition. And we're not talking about some silly contrived principle here - this is one of the most influential principles consistently followed in almost all titles in Wikipedia. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:02, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some additional points: The WP Search field with "drop down hints" is not the only way to search WP. While in that context using a base name rather than a clearly qualified name for a primary topic when there are other uses makes sense, that has always been true to some extent in WP (say in lists of titles that belong in a category), and, yet, we still choose to put primary topics at the base name. Besides, for the search situation, if that's really a concern, there is nothing that prevents the creation of French Quarter (New Orleans) as a redirect to French Quarter. In fact, I just created it accordingly.

I don't who or what you think is making the assumption that there is always a primary topic, clearly that's not true as is made quite evident by the number of dab pages located at base names. Unless you're arguing that the French quarter of New Orleans is not the primary topic for French Quarter, by suggesting that that article be at French Quarter (New Orleans) you are advocating something contrary to what WP:PRIMARYTOPIC states. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:15, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

How is it contrary to what WP:PRIMARYTOPIC says? It says "If a primary topic exists, then that term should be the title of the article on that topic (or should redirect to an article on that topic that uses a different, more appropriate title)." So if the primary topic of "French Quarter" is the one in New Orleans, then it's perfectly OK to have that redirect to "French Quarter (New Orleans)", which by other criteria, such as precision, is indeed a more appropriate title. A redirect hatnote could then be used for those minority of readers who were looking for other or more general French quarter info. Dicklyon (talk) 23:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with everything Born2Cycle and Dicklyon said. You're making this too hard when a host of WP policies say "keep titles as short and simple as possible". Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 23:33, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't see how you can agree with both of us! And I don't see that the guidelines say that. Dicklyon (talk) 01:28, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dicklyon - gotta give you that one! Okay, so while [[Topicname]] redirecting to [[Topicname (additional precision)]] is not a violation of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, it is a violation of WP:PRECISE, since [[Topicname (additional precision)]] clearly includes unnecessary additional precision that [[Topicname]] obviously does not. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:48, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You read WP:PRECISE rather differently than I do. It seems OK with the disambiguating information. Dicklyon (talk) 01:28, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:PRECISE is OK with the disambiguating information for additional precision, when it's necessary (when it's not over-precision).

Are you saying it only discourages over-precision through the use of natural disambiguation, but not for parenthetic disambiguation? --Born2cycle (talk) 21:23, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

B2C, earlier you dismissed clearly enunciated points concerning policy provisions as "nit picks" (see above). You have had a big part in wording those provisions. There is growing reason to suspect that you pursue an agenda counter to the aims of the Project, though I cannot see why you would want to do that. Of course we try to assume good faith; but when we find you seeking tight and narrow adherence to those recently reworded provisions in RMs, or in justifying ad hoc moves, the default assumption is shaken. If the interests of readers are neglected in favour of the "letter of the law" (recent "law", in this case; formed with little evidence of genuine consensus), this is a cause for concern. When we find you rushing to get changes to WP:MOS after your strenuous efforts concerning Iodised salt (!) came to nothing, suspicions are strengthened. They are also strengthened when we observe your routine hounding of admin GTBacchus, impugning his competence whenever things don't go your way.

A review of those shakily founded provisions, to which you make specious appeal, seems to be in order. This strange insistence on the shortest possible titles at all costs, on whatever legalistic pretext can be mustered, is unhealthy. It does not help readers; and when people start dismissing that as a consideration, we ought to be even more concerned. I look forward to a broad, slow, careful, consultative review – by well-adertised RFC, without preconceptions or prejudice. I look forward to taking part in such a process, rather than in frenetic bouts of reform that bypass due process and work to the benefit of no one, and to the Project's detriment.

Noetica^Tea? 05:19, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are so many errors and misconceptions in this post that it would take multiple paragraphs to correct and explain, so I won't. I will say this: as far as I know, the main aspect of policy that is relevant here - making titles concise and not overly precise - has been in titling policy and guidelines in one form or another much longer than I've been involved, and I've had little if anything to do with wording and rewording the related language. More importantly, this underlying principle is routinely referenced by countless editors in RM discussions, and the only reason I am an advocate of it is because it is strongly supported by consensus. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:42, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

B2C one reason for setting up [[Topicname]] redirecting to [[Topicname (additional precision)]] (or similar) is to help people sort out redirects. One example was the Boer War usually an editor (or the author of a third party source) means the Second Boer War but not always. For correct adjustment of incoming links it helps editors to have such a construct and there is no overhead for the reader as they go strait to the article anyway. When I originally split the Wikipedia article on the "Boer War" into two (first and second) and at the time trying to sort out which war a particular biography was referring to was not always easy. I had to leave perhaps 10% of the links pointing at the original article name as I could not tell which Boer War was being referred to (most often it would have been the second but not always). If I had kept the Second Boer War at its common name "Boer War" and only then those 10% of links would have been impossible to tell from those that correctly went to the subject. -- PBS (talk) 22:07, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a good argument that neither Boer War is the primary topic for "Boer War" - in fact I see that Boer War redirects to Boer Wars, which is effectively a dab page/article. This is all consistent with all policies and guidelines, so far as I can tell, albeit having a dab page/article like that is somewhat unusual, but not out of line. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:40, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:PRIMARYUSAGE discusses the difference between primary as overwhelmingly more common (in which sense the second Boer War may well be primary) and primary as most important use of the term (in which sense there probably isn't). A valid distinction and worth considering; the reason not to copy it here is the possibility of abuse: "Our sense of Foobar Province is obviously more important than yours, so we are primary usage." JCScaliger (talk) 21:15, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In many cases the issue comes down to a lack of decisiveness about what the actual content of the article is. In the case of Calculator (versus "Electronic calculator"), the question is a simple one: Does this article contain information about earlier pre-electronic calculators? It turns out that it does not. Instead, it has an "other uses" tag pointing to Mechanical calculator and leaves the reader in the messy position of having no place to go to read about calculators in general - for example, what is the history of the calculator? What should be happening here is that there ought to be a parent article that talks about calculators in general - everything from counting stones through abacus to mechanical and then electronic calculators - with a "main article" tag pointing to the present article, which would then be appropriately named electronic calculator. The issue here isn't about the name - it's about the content and structure of the articles in the general area of automatic calculation. A similar issue is discernable in French Quarter where an article about French quarters in general should be linking to a number of articles about very french quarters in specific towns with titles like "French Quarter (New Orleans)". When the content is a mess, the selection of a title is inevitably difficult. Firstly one has to be clear about the scope of the article - then the title should be more obvious. SteveBaker (talk) 14:25, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"That given the massive expansion in en.WP articles over the past few years, clarity for readers (i.e., the level of specificity in article titles) needs to assume a greater role in our decision-making, and the notion of primary topic needs to be re-examined in this light."

The zealous application of these recent inventions is damaging the project. What we now see is walls put up against editors who are trying to clean up clusters of related articles and in some cases single articles, which are titled so vaguely that they are misleading. Please think of the context from which people visit our articles—google searches, category lists, wikilinks that are often unpiped, and often from a non-American and even a non-English-language background, without the cultural knowledge that has been assumed in the current hard-line attitudes to clear article titling.

There seems to be an obsession with keeping article titles stubby over all other considerations. We have marshes of related article titles with inconsistent levels of detail and specification, and the awkward notion of primary topic, which often justifies banging a square peg into a round hole at the expense of related topics—whether existing WP articles or those that are very likely to be created in the future. Primary topic very often leads inadvertently to POV—the privileging of one topic over its siblings present and yet to be born. Further, it confuses editors WRT the generic–titular up- and down-casing of titles, and the much harder-to-fix uncertainty as to whether a topic is generic or titular. (Take the classic example of pressurized mating adaptor, which inadvertently claims by implication that it's NASA-invented and -owned; this is not at all the case, but the lead needs to be clear about this, and still isn't. It's POV, and I'd be offended if I were the original inventor.

Look at this shambolic marsh:

• Intern Architect Program (ah, we find that's in Canada when we visit)
• Examination for Architects in Canada (clear enough)
• National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (takes a while to let us know that's US-based—might be ok in the Polish WP, but hey, there are at least seven ancestral native-English-speaking countries, containing more than 100 jurisdictions. Like en.WP, this kind of vagueness is not OK in the Arabic and Spanish WPs, which cover a heap of countries.)
• Architect Registration Examination (guessing game: click to learn where)
• Unlike this one, which is kinder to the reader California Architect License Exam
• And this one: Examination for Architects in Canada
• Oh, back to the unhelpful and possibly irritating: Architects Registration Board (mystery tour)
• But better: Architecture school in the United States
• Architecture Studies Library: it turns out to be somewhere within the University of Nevada: if capitalisation were consistent, at least the readers would know it's not about such specialist libraries in general, but of course, capitalisation has been allowed to run rampant, compounding the vagueness thrust upon us.

Votes on the motion

• Support the motion as proposer. Tony (talk) 06:58, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Support the motion. I welcome this initiative, and look forward to similar moves to reform a dysfunctional process. Noetica^Tea? 22:00, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Capitalization is not POV; it is the standard method of distinguishing between common nouns and proper nouns. "Primary topic" is not novel; it is in this version of WP:Disambiguation, from 2002, and there are earlier forms; the only change has been clarification of the language. JCScaliger (talk) 20:38, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. There are a great number of topics for which encyclopedia users would share a reasonable expectation of what would sit at that name. There is no perfect system of naming articles, but I see no reason to upend what we've come up with. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:55, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. This seems like a grab bag of miscellaneous gripes. I agree with the comments of BD2412. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bkonrad (talk • contribs)
• Oppose Throws the baby out with the bath water. I think the motion reflects legitimate concerns for us to discuss, but it goes too far to simply say we have no confidence in these policy concepts. Blueboar (talk) 15:11, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree, except I'm curious about one thing. What are the "legitimate concerns" that this motion reflects? That article topic and scope cannot be determined from many titles? Is this news? Is this a problem? Why is this even a concern? Since when has conveying article topic and scope ever been a requirement for titles, especially for articles of topics with clear and obvious unique natural names? Why should it be one now? The only point worth discussing I see here is to explain these are apparently legitimate concerns are actually based up on unrealistic and impractical expectations regarding how descriptive titles are supposed to be. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:22, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • There may be legitimate concerns behind the pejoratives; if these comments are recast, we may yet see what they are. I don't see them now either. JCScaliger (talk) 03:02, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Agree with others in opposition and will add: a minority does pop up and now then that seems to believe that since some titles are very clear and specific about what the article's topic is, that we should strive for all titles to be that clear and specific about their topics. I suggest that titles that do happen to clearly convey what their topics are are a fluke, not the norm, and that the primary purpose of titles about topics that have names is to convey what that name is. It is the purpose of each article's lead to be clear and specific about the article's topic and scope.

  Articles about topics that don't have names, and so must have descriptive titles often invented by WP editors (but hopefully by following a convention), are treated somewhat differently. Also, articles about topics with names that require disambiguation also tend to be somewhat more descriptive about their topics. Let's not be confused by titles that must be descriptive in deciding how to title articles about topics with clear and obvious names that don't require additional precision/description for disambiguation. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:15, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose; it is in no way the role of the article title to provide full context for every subject under its remit. That is the role of the lead sentence in the article. The title need only be as unambiguous and as natural as possible given our technical constraints. Powers ^T 20:36, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, somewhat. They're close to OK, but sometimes I agree that having a primary topic isn't enough to conclude that more precision wouldn't be a good thing. Like French Quarter, which would make so much more sense as French Quarter (New Orleans); same with some of Tony's other examples that are meaningless generic-sounding terms where a clue would be really useful. Dicklyon (talk) 03:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per Konrad and BD, mostly. The upshot of this is longer article titles that are unweildy. The editor's proposal is too vague, and anyway I like PRIMARYTOPIC as is. Furthermore, "articles likely to be created in the future?" Absolutely not, no way, no how. That's CRYSTAL if it ever was. We can't base article titles based on the assumption that another article will come along years from now. Deal with it once the article is actually created and passes GNG muster Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 03:34, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose to blanket rules. There is a good bunch of proper names that sound generic, but that have no generic meaning when lowercased. For example, we have Internet Protocol which sounds generic, but there is no such thing as an "internet protocol", there are only "network protocols". I don't see how changing the name to Internet Protocol (protocol) could help the reader. Special cases can be sorted out in RMs. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments and discussion on the motion

Taking the first one in the list "Intern Architect Program" do you have any evidence of another Intern Architect Program run by another country? I know that you recently moved Financial Management Standard to Financial Management Standard (Queensland) (that I reverted and which was discussed at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Article specificity and Talk:Financial Management Standard. If such a change was to be made then what you are talking about is among other things pre-emptive disambiguation which has always been found upon. However I know in the past I have created pre-emptive disambiguation pages because I really could not be bothered with sorting out the inevitable mess I knew would arise, and I know others who feel similarly. However I suspect that if we tolerate it in policy then we will end up with almost ever page being pre-emptive disambiguated is that a path we really want to go down? IE all British legislation will be moved from "name year" to "name year (state)"? At the moment as far as I know the only guideline where we do this pre-emptively is in WP:MILMOS for units like 1st Division but that advise is largely historic now as most such articles already exist for multiple counties. -- PBS (talk) 10:58, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PBS (and others too), I have no idea who that anonymous editor was, moving my "support" vote and leaving a deceptive edit summary. Someone in New Zealand, it seems. (I'm in Australia.) Weird. But anyway, how about keeping this readable and orderly? I have refactored so that any voting on the motion is clearly visible in one place. We can work together and have a reasonable and respectful discussion. I do not expect serious and focused points to be summarily set aside as nit picks. I hope we will all avoid provocations and ill will here. Noetica^Tea? 04:21, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This would appear to be more of the same misunderstanding as French Quarter above; much the same discussion, with the same confusion between a proper noun and a common noun, took place at Talk:Halley's Comet#Requested move. JCScaliger (talk) 20:38, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For another example, Architecture Studies Library is a proper name; the one at UNLV is the only one I can find. We may want an article on architecture library, as a general concept; but if so, we should write one; this is not it. The hypothetical architecture library would discuss what architecture libraries are, in general terms, and give a list of them; it is difficult to imagine most of the article on the UNLV example finding space there. (Nor the corresponding material on other individual libraries: the number of carrels or the names of the special collections, for example, would not fit.)

I can see a move to delete the article, or to merge it with an article on UNLV, or on its library system; I would probably support some of them. But decapitalizing the title and leaving it alone merely gives a misleading title (the reader will not find any general information on architecture studies libraries in the article) to a doubtfully useful article. JCScaliger (talk) 21:28, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

JCScaliger:

Again you write concerning proper names, and seem to assume that the concept is simple and understood. But I repeat what I put to you in the section preceding this one:

The discussion at Talk:French Quarter is marked by failure to have any firm grasp of what a proper name is, or to appreciate the fluid and complex nature of that concept. Please tell us what you mean when you speak of "proper names" here, JCScaliger. Do you say that the second word in "the French [Q/q]uarter" is a common noun, or a proper noun? Answer first for the case of New Orleans, and then for the cases of Tianjin and Shanghai. Do you say that "the Queen" is a proper name? Always? Sometimes? Is the second word in this case a common noun, or a proper noun? If we are going to make policy about titles of articles, we had better gain a more secure sense of all this – or at least recognise that the grammatical terminology is not carved in stone. Erratic assignment to such categories as "proper name" should not be decisive in settling RMs.

I am again waiting for answers; and I now add this question: how, if at all, do you distinguish the terms proper noun and proper name? None of this is tangential; it is central to the difficulties addressed in the present section, and the last. We are supposed not merely to issue statements here, but to discuss. Let's work for a shared understanding of our central terms.

Noetica^Tea? 22:56, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All of this post is tangential; this is a talk page, not a seminar in linguistic philosophy.

Whether "French Quarter" is a single noun, or a noun modified by an adjective, or both, makes no substantive difference to how it is spelled; all else is arguing whether the rules of chess should say "rook" or "castle" instead of playing it. (All three are defensible, if arbitrary, choices; I speak of it as adjective+noun, following the typography; that's clearest. Likewise, to call a name which may consist of more than one word a proper name instead of a proper noun is a convenient choice; arguments about whether a "noun" can have internal spaces should be filed next to discussions of angels and pins.)

Those, if any, who are genuinely ignorant of the difference between a common and a proper noun should consult a grammar, or an encyclopedia. There are plenty of them; I understand that an unreliable one is being written collaboratively on line, not far from here. JCScaliger (talk) 00:10, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The grammars disagree among themselves; the best are far more circumspect about such expressions. I wanted to know how you are using that technical term. I asked direct and relevant questions. You made those questions relevant, by treating some univocal notion of "proper name" as a touchstone for deciding practical issues – here and in RMs. But when challenged to say what you mean, you first fall silent and now claim that the matter is not relevant. If there are simply "convenient choices" to make, please make them and inform us of your decisions. Current grammars, as I say, disagree. If you know better than they do, please share that knowledge so we can get on with a well-founded discussion in which our own words, at least, are understood. If we do not do that, we speak in circles about "proper names" and expressions deserving capitalisation.

Noetica^Tea? 00:25, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This has now ascended from a meta-discussion to a meta-meta-discussion, combined with unsourced claims about unspecified "best" grammars.

Does anybody besides Noetica have trouble with the distinction between a common and a proper noun? As Wittgenstein showed repeatedly, no distinction will survive analysis indefinitely; but we are writing practical advice for harried editors, not (again) conducting the sort of philosophy from which he wished to cure us. JCScaliger (talk) 00:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A misleading question, JCS. Compare this one: "Is any number besides three an even number?" I do not have trouble with the distinction; rather, I recognise its complexity and fluidity. On current evidence, you are the one exposed as having trouble. I simply asked what you meant by a term that you introduced, through my concrete examples. You were unable or unwilling to give adequate concrete answers. Wittgenstein will not come to your aid if you chose evasion over direct engagement. Just don't pretend the matter is easy, if you can't easily answer what then must be easy questions. Noetica^Tea? 02:11, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Architecture school in the United States: this is an article about architecture schools in the United States, not about some institution with the name Architecture School in the United States. The string school is a common noun, therefore; and we are consistent and clear in leaving the s uncapped; we might be more natural if we considered an exception to our habit of titles in the singular. JCScaliger (talk) 00:42, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Architect Registration Examination, as it is given in the United States. If there are Architect Registration Examinations elsewhere, we should either disambiguate, or expand the article to include them. If not, it's not a problem; anybody wanting to find out about something of that name does want to know about the American test. But this is a question of fact; I don't see how fiddling with the capitalization resolves it. JCScaliger (talk) 00:55, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • It appears to be some sort of grievance that the titles of these articles don't say what English-speaking country they pertain to. Why should they? Canberra doesn't; London doesn't; Springfield, Illinois does only by implication. Why are these articles different? JCScaliger (talk) 01:05, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The appropriate level of specificity needs to be explained in greater detail in the policy, not wham-bammed like a hammer on any attempts at reasonable clarity for titles that are currently ludicrously general and bely the actual topic. Major cities, fine. "Architect Registration Examination", not fine, unless it's generic (and downcased accordingly). The policy needs to present examples of what is too specific and what is not specific enough, rather than this one-size-fits-all approach that does our readers a huge disservice and diminishes everyone's ability to navigate about this huge site. 13:23, 10 October 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tony1 (talk • contribs)
      • In my Oppose comment on the proposal above, I referred to those who believe "that we should strive for all titles to be [as] clear and specific about their topics [as are the titles of some articles that happen to have titles that are clear and specific about their topics due to being descriptive because the topic has no name, or due to additional descriptive precision added to the title because it required disambiguation]." This (unsigned?) comment is an example of that kind of belief. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:26, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • I see a question of fact (are there other Architect Registration Examinations than those covered in that article? If so, that should indeed be dealt with - on that talk page, not here; we cover both ambiguous names and lack of global coverage already), and a declaration of taste. If Tony1 has grounds for that declaration other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT, he has not conveyed them. If enough people share the dislike to move the article and one of them can explain what it is they dislike, WP:AT should reflect that; if Tony1 can explain it himself, he may convince others to agree. In the meantime, tastes differ. JCScaliger (talk) 18:13, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, whether a title is specific enough should be determined by individual talk page discussions; that's why this policy presents questions (which suggest goals), and not examples. Whether a given example answers a given question adequately is something on which opinions have changed from time to time. Setting an example which is subject to these tides is merely to import controversies here instead of resolving them; setting a benchmark so obvious as to be beyond change will only affect those articles which have a simple and obvious title - and don't come here. JCScaliger (talk) 18:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of ongoing move discussions where this issue is relevant

• Talk:David_Hartman_(TV_personality)#Requested_moves --Born2cycle (talk) 21:57, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Talk:Napoleonic_code#New_request_to_move. JCScaliger (talk) 16:52, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Talk:French Penal Code of 1791. Only one section. JCScaliger (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That while some titles do have descriptive titles that clearly convey article topic and sometimes even scope, many articles, especially articles about topics that have clear and obvious unique names, have titles that concisely convey only the name of the topic, and don't describe the scope or even topic at all. In most of these cases, as long as the name of the topic is accurately conveyed, that's not a concern. Though titles are sometimes descriptive due to being about topics that don't have names, or because of needing to add additional precision to the title for the purpose of disambiguation, in general describing article topic and scope is not the purpose of titles; that is the purpose of the article lead.

Votes on the motion

• Support. As nom. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:32, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Support but postpone indefinitely. These seem to be widely supported, but we are not a debating society. JCScaliger (talk) 02:59, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose – while I think that WP:AT is mostly fine, I constantly take issue with Born2cycle's interpretation of it, so it apparently could use some tuning, and I certainly don't want to see him given reason to think that we all agree with his interpretations. For example, where WP:PRECISE says "that term can be the title", some interpret it as "that term must be the title". And where WP:PRIMARYTOPIC says "If a primary topic exists, then that term should be the title of the article on that topic (or should redirect to an article on that topic that uses a different, more appropriate title)", some interpret it as "If a primary topic exists, then that term must be the title of the article on that topic." These could use some clarification. Dicklyon (talk) 03:07, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • That would be unfortunate. Rereading the motion in that light, however, does not show any such interpretations. This is, however, one reason we are not a legislature, and not governed by "motions." JCScaliger (talk) 03:11, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • If the motion is really only about topics that have "clear and obvious unique names", why are we bothering to discuss it? I do agree that there's no disagreement on things that we all agree on, if that's what you want. Dicklyon (talk) 03:16, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • The motion speaks for itself. Not sure why you're bringing in your misconceptions about these other things that are not part of the motion, but I suppose that speaks for itself too. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:58, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The "motion" includes several things the policy now says; including the comment that topics for which there are clear and obvious titles should use them (the vast majority); but it does not discuss only them. JCScaliger (talk) 01:28, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Support: If I oppose the no confidence, I must support the confidence, mustn't I? PRIMARYTOPIC is perfectly fine with me, needs to be used even more IMO, especially when there are three articles or less Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 03:36, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. The motion is barely coherent. Its heading points one way, and its details appear to make a mélange of assertions that are not well signalled in that heading. Of course I support WP:TITLE; but under sectional political pressure it has developed flaws. The wording of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC looks helpful and orderly at first glance, but we see from its abuse at RMs that it needs reform. I think we need to elevate consideration of readers' needs as a guiding principle. The evidence is that people lose sight of this at RMs, and they cite WP:TITLE even as they unwittingly compromise the utility of article titles. Noetica^Tea? 01:29, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • By "utility of article titles" are you referring to how well titles describe the topic and scope of the corresponding article, or something else? --Born2cycle (talk) 15:37, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

By "utility of article titles" I mean, in the end, usefulness to readers. There is no more important consideration. See how that consideration is reflected in the five principal criteria near the start of WP:TITLE (some formatting and text omitted; underlining and bracketed comments added):

Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic? [Regrettably, actual mention of readers has been removed from this. Why? By whom? After what discussion toward consensus? Still, recognition by readers must be what is intended.]
Naturalness – What title(s) are readers most likely to look for in order to find the article? Which title(s) will editors most naturally use to link from other articles? Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English. [Can it be denied that the needs of readers here outweigh those of editors?]
Precision – How precise is the title under discussion? Consensus titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. [... To identify the topic of the article to whom, if not anglophone readers all over the world? Diverse readers with their own local mix of knowledge and uncertainty, and their own divergent expectations.]
Conciseness – Is the title concise or is it overly long? [What criterion for excessive length could be salient if not the needs of those reading the title?]
Consistency – Does the proposed title follow the same pattern as those of similar articles? [... With consistency primarily for whose benefit, do we think?]

Utility of titles is their usability by readers. That is clearly paramount – or it surely ought to be. Recent legalistic development of provisions in WP:TITLE seems to have encouraged a legalistic frame of mind at RMs. We see titles favoured that serve narrow principles rather than the overall objection of serving readers' needs. I hope this can be changed.

Noetica^Tea? 07:11, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure we all agree that usability by readers is of paramount importance, and that making our titles concise is part of how we do that. The difference seems to be regarding the trade-off in utility between longer/more-descriptive titles and shorter/more-concise titles that are sufficiently precise to be unique. It's wrong to characterize those of us who favor titles that are only as precise as necessary as not giving usability by readers as much importance as those who favor more descriptive titles. Rather, we challenge the notion that a more descriptive title necessarily increases usability for readers. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:00, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on the motion

• Comment This and this were an interesting case in point. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:40, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment—Look at this idiocy: Recovery Plan, which I've moved. It refers to "Endangered Species Recovery Plan", pursuant to a 1973 Act of the US Congress. Or what about this one, which I haven't moved: Single-unit. Tony (talk) 10:10, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Single-unit doesn't even have a discussion page; it's hardly evidence that our titling policies are flawed, since the title of the article has never been discussed. I've moved it to a better title anyway. Powers ^T 12:15, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I'm concerned that this may be part of a move to automate title choices (ie take editorial judgement out as much as possible and decide by things like googlehits), which the proposer is known to think is a good idea. For example, the motion does not mention the issue of POV titles which do not pass POVTITLE (and which may therefore necessitate switching to a descriptive title) - the proposer has in the recent past expressed the view that commonality defines neutrality such that the most common found name in a hit count is by definition the most neutral (and all objections on NPOV grounds are automatically invalid). As examples, I found the Plymouth discussion quite disturbing. I'm surprised some people thought a make of car would, in an encyclopedia, take precedence over the historically important city. The Anne Hathaway discussion too: primary topic is not simply a matter of numbers; we can't be switching around based on what's fashionable one year or the next. Encyclopedic aspirations aside, I would like to see mention made of the role to be played by editorial judgement and consensus where matters are not (and never will be) cut and dried.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 10:38, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Though I disagree with Krol in examples (I think Plymouth should be a disam; largely because of the American city and colony more than the car), I agree with him in abstract. The upshot of this is titles that are too long and may violate POV. Take for example, the move of Missouri Executive Order 44 from Extermination order. The first thing you should notice about those titles is that they're completely different. The reason I fought for this move was not only because "extermination order" is vague, but also because MXO44 didn't exactly lead to a mass extermination, and therefore violated POV

I think we may even be barking up the wrong tree altogether. Most of the problems we have with titles come from people who don't understand article conventions creating or moving titles. I think our energy would be better served getting page patrollers to pay attention to titles in addition to Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 15:10, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Krol, primary topic has changed significantly, particularly with respect to taking historical importance into account, since the Plymouth and Hathaway discussions. Anyway, what does this have to do with the motion? --Born2cycle (talk) 17:06, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

B2C, it's all about how this motion will be used in future arguments (why have this motion when there's the no confidence motion going on at the same time? What's the substantive difference?). Certain elements in WP:article title have in recent times been subject to some (in my opinion unsuitably) strong readings by certain editors (and not just you), in particular with regard to a general notion that popularity of a term basically outweighs anything else. Primary topic is clearly one of those elements open to that, as is the converse principle of commonname. I would be more comfortable if the motion emphasised that Article Title forms a suitable guide to decision-making. As it stands I've seen text like that in the motion interpreted as a hard statement of rules, and I'm concerned it might be cited like that in the future. (What is not mentioned also matters, as we saw with WP:Criteria, where any principle not listed was argued by some thereby not to matter, even if elsewhere in the text other principles were clearly listed as important.) I would also feel more comfortable if the reference to descriptive titles was that they can be applied where topics have no suitable (or appropriate) name, not just no name. If these were in, I'd support. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 07:04, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - Simple fact... choosing the most appropriate title for an article is ultimately a matter of consensus (the policy even says so). Consensus is often a messy process. People frequently disagree (sometimes vehemently). The only way to get past disagreements is through discussion. When forming a consensus, we should take policy and guidelines into consideration... but (and this is important) the end result of a consensus discussion might well be to favor one aspect of policy one over the others (and which aspect gets favored can and will be inconsistent from one situation to another). Indeed the consensus might even be to ignore certain aspects all together. This is why WP:AT intentionally does not present a set of rules to be followed in every case... it instead lays out broad principles... things that we should to take into consideration when reaching a consensus. The policy does this very well (which is why I have confidence in it). It only fails if you try to make it into something it was never intended to be... a set of rules. Blueboar (talk) 15:19, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with you, but this motion does not even broach the issue of whether the policy is rules or not. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:06, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. This is why I get the feeling that many people are disagreeable - they disagree for the sake of disagreeing. Look at some of the oppose commentary above. So typical. Do they disagree with the substance of what is proposed? No, they look at who made the motion (yours truly), and then decide to disagree because of who proposed it (and what that implies in their minds), not with the substance of what is proposed. The tell-tale signs are that the comments are about the proposer rather than about the words of the motion.

  Can't we simply put aside past agreements and find common ground? That's what this motion is supposed to be. That, and a clarification about an important point, I believe. A point for which I was sure there was wide consensus support (which not all of my views enjoy, I know). --Born2cycle (talk) 17:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

B2C, I looked at the form and content of the motion you put, and found it badly written, with no clear intention, and no obvious focus on the needs of readers. Compare the preceding well-worded motion that you thrust to the background (though it was still under discussion):

"That given the massive expansion in en.WP articles over the past few years, clarity for readers (i.e., the level of specificity in article titles) needs to assume a greater role in our decision-making, and the notion of primary topic needs to be re-examined in this light."

I could therefore not support your motion. I did think, even as I composed my comment when I opposed, "how typical"! Just as you have thought and written, against those you oppose. Common ground would be great. But it takes concessions on all sides: and at the very least a readiness to answer bona fide questions in full. I don't see enough people doing that. It also takes usually accepting appointed judges' decisions, even if we don't like them. Only rarely is it worthwhile to make a fuss. Put the hard work into finding common ground, yes. That is the best base from which to drain the swamp of ignorance and unclarity. Better, at least, than the growing obsession with legalistic provisions that can be neatly applied without regard for the actual purpose of Wikipedia – provisions currently modulated at RMs more effectively by sectional and local interests than by any frank appeal to the global reach and purpose of the Project. Noetica^Tea? 07:39, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finding common ground and agreeing to compromise are two completely different strategies for dealing with disagreement. I'm all for the former, but the latter is what paves the road to Hell.

Common ground for us should be the principles for which we have broad consensus agreement. That's what forms the basis of my arguments, including this proposal. If your common ground is something else (like from whatever is the spring for the idea that "[the level of specificity in article titles] needs to assume a greater role"), then I don't see how agreement is possible. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your definitions. I like it when people provide those. I had worked with different ones, but I can be flexible. The discussion has become far too vexed and noisome for any good resolution just now. I look forward eventually to a resounding and universal endorsement of this idea: "Titles should be chosen for the greatest usefulness to readers." The rest is detail; and the provisions of title policy need to be monitored so they keep serving that overall goal. That's my push. Perhaps we are all now clearer about some of the issues. How about dropping the discussion, and revisiting the issues when we've all digested what's been said this time? More words will not nourish understanding, if they pass through without slow consideration. Noetica^Tea? 23:06, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Huh? - What's with all these legalistic machinations? Motion of confidence? Is this Wikipedia, or Robert's Rules of Order? Why are we letting lawyers run roughshod over our project? For people without lawyerly inclinations, there is no problem with the rules. The only problems are when people try to turn them into fodder for lawyering. Stop lawyering. Stop with the "motions". Write an encyclopedia. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:40, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

GTBacchus, your annoyance is understandable. Myself, I would not have introduced such motions here. But I certainly understood Tony's one, and I support it as raising a serious concern that I share with him. There are genuine problems with provisions on this policy page. You must be aware how they are interpreted at RMs, and when deciding how to close RMs you have to interpret them also. The issues belong squarely on this talkpage. I don't think they are well treated in current discussions here, or in recent weeks. The standard of debate is pretty poor. I think we need more focus and more frank answering of genuine questions, for a start. What can be done to achieve that? It takes insight, patience, and respect on all sides. B2C, JCScaliger, you, me – we can all be accused of not meeting those stringent demands. Let's all try harder. Uncompromising confrontation is no solution; nor is just leaving the room muttering about the ones who have stayed. Noetica^Tea? 22:53, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Noetica, I appreciate your conciliatory words, and I take them to heart. I think you understand that it is my carefully considered opinion that the whole language of "motions" and other such legalistic notions are antithetical and destructive to Wikipedia. It's important to think about how we interpret our titling guidelines.

That said, thinking about these issues by staging debates on this page is misguided. On this page, we should be talking about what we've observed of consensus in the field. That's all we need to talk about here: What's commonly held, what's still muddy, and how can we most efficiently write that down, in a way that gives the least possible grist to the lawyers' mill? I would be so delighted to talk about specific RM decisions, but people want to argue about abstract concepts instead. Wikipedia is neither a legislative body, nor a debating society, and I'm concerned that we're encouraging both of these destructive wrong aims.

We need to encourage people to read guidelines less, have more contempt for guideline pages, and listen to consensus more. We need to encourage people to debate less, and listen more. We need to encourage people to care less about the precise wording of guidelines, and listen to specific consensus decisions about specific questions. Abstraction to general principles can come later, or not at all. It's not clear how much it really helps the project. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:42, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:AND states:

Sometimes two or more closely related or complementary concepts are most sensibly covered by a single article. Where possible, use a title covering all cases: for example, Endianness covers the concepts "big-endian" and "little-endian". Where no reasonable overarching title is available, it is permissible to construct an article title using "and", as in Acronym and initialism; Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9; Promotion and relegation; and Balkline and straight rail.

This wording has been used to justify using two names for the same subject in one title: Sega Genesis and Mega Drive ("Sega Genesis" and "Mega Drive" are two names that Sega used to refer to essentially the same product because it couldn't use "Mega Drive" in N. America due to copyright issues). This seems to me to obviously not be a case of "two ... closely related or complementary concepts"..., yet this wording was used to rationalize this title. See also a current discussion about that particular title: Talk:Sega_Genesis_and_Mega_Drive#Requested_move.

I don't know of any other article that constructs its title from two names like this based on WP:AND. Does anyone else?

Anyone agree or disagree this title is based on a misunderstanding of WP:AND? If agree, any suggestions on how to change the wording to be more clear about this? Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:26, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They are not quite the same. They are very similar, but not the same as Yoghurt and Yogurt.∞陣内Jinnai 04:28, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that particular title is misunderstanding of policy so much as it is a dispute resolution compromise. While we generally try to follow policies and guidelines, they are not absolute, if there is a good reason to ignore them, and consensus to do so in a particular case, then we ignore them. Changing the wording of the policy isn't going to undo an application of WP:IAR. Monty₈₄₅ 04:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, except the justification for this title is not based on WP:IAR. Just above Jinnai is still hanging on to the idea that the two are "not the same" (and therefore WP:AND applies). This is an untenable position. The lead of the article itself clearly says so, "The Mega Drive (メガドライブ Mega Doraibu?) or Sega Mega Drive is a fourth-generation video game console... The console was released in North America in 1989 under the name Genesis and commonly referred to as Sega Genesis". If that's not describing two names referring to the same concept, as opposed to two distinct (but closely related) concepts, I don't know what is.

Further, WP:IAR is supposed to apply if there is a good reason. An inability for a dozen or so editors to pick one name out of two is not a good reason to "ignore all rules" and combine both in the title. It's a good reason to try harder. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Who cares whether the justification is based on IAR, as stated by Jinnai or anyone else? The point is, can it work? If there were some clear marginal benefit to "trying harder", then I'd be behind that, too. In this case, there is not. You seem to be arguing that we need to keep the fight going until someone wins by attrition, because that's preferable to a compromise that allows us to move on now, instead of six months down the road. That's very, very misguided. The best solution is the one that allows us to return to editing the soonest.

If you can end this dispute by deciding the current name it fine, and letting it drop, that makes you a hero. If you decide you're going to hold stability hostage to your idea of how hard we need to work on titling questions (hint: No we don't), then you're not a hero. What we need to "try harder" to do is to find a way to stop caring about the details of titling policy, and write an encyclopedia.

Demanding that others "try harder" when they're not being paid, and when you're not helping facilitate the goal you insist that they reach, is rude as hell. Cut it out, already. -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cut what out? The point is to find a stable title; the current title obviously is not. I'm not the one who initially brought the issue to this page. I wasn't even the first who agreed it was a problem. I saw an existing problem, and made a proposal on how to resolve it, a proposal that prompted further discussion and, possibly, even a better solution now. I'm not looking to be a hero. I'm just trying to help. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:13, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We DID decide on a final title. It was no longer an issue. You decided to come and throw a wrench into the situation, reopening the wounds all over again, for no real specific reason outside of apparent noncompliance with title guidelines. Your obsessiveness with article naming regardless of actual functionality is keeping us from improving that article. You're not helping, you're the one causing the problem here. Wolftengu (talk) 23:31, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that wp:AND doesn't support doing this. IAR might, but AND doesn't, and I think this is not a good solution. Feels like splitting the baby to me. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 05:32, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Got something better, Solomon? Something that will fly? -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:53, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is this flying? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:57, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Early to say. There are about 3 people pitching a fit. If they can be convinced to walk away from the dead horse, then maybe it will. Nobody's given it a chance yet, you see. Do you think it should get a chance? -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is the perfect case for WP:AND. It's two marques of the same machine, both of equal weight overall. You can't just pick one or the other. This is a neutral combination of the two. It's not promoting one name over the other, outside of sorting the names alphabetically. Wolftengu (talk) 17:39, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:AND applies when we have "two or more closely related or complementary concepts". "Two marques of the same machine" are NOT "two or more closely related or complementary concepts". Otherwise we would have Volkswagen Golf and Rabbit. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:57, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, you found a hair you can split, so you're going to lawyer over it to the death? How about giving the compromise title a chance for a few months? Why not? When's the deadline? -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Must I repeat myself? Really? I suggest I've said enough. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:08, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Really? So you're done caviling over titling rules, and you're going to let it drop, and go work on article content? Awesome! -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just how exactly are they NOT complementary? Do you even understand the longstanding problem we've had with that article? This isn't a matter of the editors just not getting it or something. Neither name can just be picked over the other, and the other combination "solutions" like "Sega Genesis (Mega Drive)" or some permutation of that style just preserves the source of the drama. I've already explained this whole thing to you ad nauseum on the article's talk page. The horse isn't just dead, it's been cycled through Saṃsāra a few times and ground into sausage. Wolftengu (talk) 18:15, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To be complementary concepts they have to be distinct concepts. The lead and content of the article indicates that each of the two names refers to the same concept, not to two distinct concepts. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And why should we care? -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:42, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

After all this, you're still conveniently ignoring the basic issues with the article in order to push your agenda. I'm done here, this is a waste of time. Wolftengu (talk) 18:46, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

GTB, I presume someone who thinks it's important and relevant to point out that two concepts are complementary would care that they're not actually two concepts, practically speaking. I wouldn't expect you, personally, to care.

Wolf, I'm not ignoring anything. I suggested the title I suggested as a result of that understanding, combined with my understanding of consensus -- a reflected in policy and guidelines -- about article titles. Now others are making even better suggestions. It's all good. Yeah, my big evil "agenda" of striving for better consistency and predictability in article titles. How terrible! --Born2cycle (talk) 22:23, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, re your responding to his question. Regarding your agenda, there's nothing "evil" about it. If it causes more heat than light, though, that's a major factor to consider, which changes everything. If you're not considering how much heat versus light is generated, then you're proceeding irresponsibly.

As far as I know, the project has not been hurting for lack of consistency and predictability in article titles. We've actually been doing fine, following our usual well-supported practice of generally ignoring rules, and keeping red tape to an absolute minimum. We didn't need a lawyer to come in, decide this aspect of the project needs an overhaul, and then start carrying that out, without any apparent regard for the amount of disruption involved.

Invoking a superstitious concept such as "evil" seems extremely prejudicial and unnecessary. I'm only trying to talk about this world. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:35, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I did find another example of this kind of title: Hellmann's and Best Foods. As far as I can tell, it was created that way in 2005 and has never been moved.

As always, I'm motivated by both getting our policy and guidelines better in line with consensus, or getting our titles better in line with consensus as reflected in our policy and guidelines.

In this case I see a conflict, and the solution can be achieved with either titles changes or with policy/guideline changes. I'm open to either. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:08, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why not leave it alone because it's not causing any problems? Being motivated by "getting out policy and guidelines better in line with consensus, or getting our titles better in line with consensus as reflected in policy and guidelines" is great, if you can do it in a manner that causes less disruption than leaving things the heck alone. I don't see that happening, and I don't see anyone else saying we've got a problem that needs addressing.

Simply getting the guidelines and the titles to line up is not a worthwhile end in itself. The product is no suffering, so there is no problem to fix. The community has never made it clear that we want entirely consistent titles, guidelines and policies. In fact, if the cost of obtaining those is tens of thousands of words of debates, then it's abso-darn-lutely not worth it.

When did you carry out this cost-benefit analysis, and decide that your goal is worth all the static that you're generating? Can you unpack that reasoning for us, please? -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:26, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An alternative ... one that has no problem with WP:AND ... use the word "or" instead. Thus the title would be Sega Genesis or Mega Drive. (I actually think this would be more accurate... the console was either called "Genesis" or called "Mega Drive"... depending on where you lived... but at no time or place was it known by both names at the same time.)Blueboar (talk) 20:40, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That one I could see as a reasonable alternative. How well it will go over at the article's talk page, I don't know.∞陣内Jinnai 23:39, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If this is not to take the compromise title, it seems to me this is a good place to extend the idea in MOS:RETAIN by analogy; a pox on everyone's houses; whichever came first wins, and the other redirects. In this case, Sega Genesis was created on December 1, 2001 and so would be the title. Let the article content describe the use of both names.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:49, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion did resolve the issue for both sides though. RETAIN is only if discussion could not.∞陣内Jinnai 00:06, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thus the first part of my sentence, before the comma. Since we are here and there discussing the title, after the "resolution", there is at least a glimmer that the past tense of resolve, may not be so resolute.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:16, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The title indicated by MOS:RETAIN is consistent with policy, guidelines and conventions, and thus known to be supported by consensus at large. The title that "resolved" the issue for both sides is not, and thus there are many strong arguments for moving it. If the article is moved back to Sega Genesis per MOS:RETAIN, there is no reasonable argument for moving it again. That might be the only stable solution. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:17, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ahem... "thus known to be supported by consensus at large". That's a bold and highly dubious claim. RETAIN was not written with Sega Genesis in mind, and it's not at all clear what a broad consensus says we should do in that particular case. A question like this calls for very deliberate motion, always with an ear pressed close to the ground. We know nothing - we have to read the community. It takes time. Give it time, and let the guideline catch up when we're certain. It might be a year; that's fine. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:04, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Refocus

We are getting off track... this isn't really the appropriate venue to determine what the best title for a specific article is... there is an ongoing Move request RFC for that. The question we should be discussing here is whether the issues being discussed at that Move request indicate a need to change this policy in any way? I don't think they do, but perhaps I am missing something. Blueboar (talk) 00:44, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the focus should be on how the wording can be changed here. I think WP:AND would be helpful in such cases if it made one of the following clarifying statements, or something similar.

1. When a company has marketed a product under two different names and no reason can be agreed upon by consensus to choose one or the other for the title of the article about that topic, it can be acceptable to combine both names in the title, as in Sega Genesis and Mega Drive and Hellmann's and Best Foods.
2. When a company has marketed a product under two different names and no other reason can be found to choose one or the other for the title of the article about that topic, instead of combining both names in the title, apply the WP:RETAIN principle and use the product name which was first used as an article title in Wikipedia.
3. When a company has marketed a product under two different names and no other reason can be found to choose one or the other for the title of the article about that topic, instead of combining both names in the title, choose the product name for the title which is first in alphabetical order.

--Born2cycle (talk) 16:04, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing that I would suggest changing is something to clarify what WP:AND is actually trying to say to prevent any potential misunderstanding. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:13, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's clear that WP:AND applies to cases where there are two distinct concepts that are related in a way that can be combined into one meta-concept, as is exemplified by Endianness, which, if there wasn't a good combo-name like that for this meta-concept, could be titled Big-endian and little-endian. This is demonstrated by Acronym and initialism. I don't think there is any dispute about that.

What is not clear, at least to some, apparently, is that this only applies to cases where the two names each individually refer to a distinct concept. "Big-endian" refers to something different from "Little-endian"; "acronyms" are not "initialisms".

One area, perhaps the only area, where this is unclear is when a company markets the same product under two or more distinct names. This is why I suggest we choose one of the statements above. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:32, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, I'm not crazy about any of the above statements. We shouldn't use Sega Genesis and Mega Drive as an example because it's too unstable. Another move request was started a couple days ago. Who knows what it will be called next week? Hellmann's and Best Foods isn't a good example either because it's a start class article and no one is working on it. In fact, there were only 17 edits on it all year. No meaningful concensus can be derived on what the community is actually doing and expects from articles that are unstable or no one is working on. We should be looking at articles which are stable and have lots of editors working on them, preferably ones that have FA (or at least GA) status. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:15, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the main reason that Sega Genesis and Mega Drive is unstable is because there is no consensus-supported-convention reflected in policy that supports it. I mean, we can't say we won't change policy to support it because it's not supported in policy, which is essentially what we're saying if we object solely on the grounds of it being unstable. Got a better reason? --Born2cycle (talk) 18:33, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not clear that's the main reason. There's a simple experiment to determine the truth of this assertion, but we haven't attempted it. It involves giving it a chance, for six months, and seeing whether any objections arise for any reasons other than policy-centric ones. I suggest trying it. If it works, then we might have something to document in policy. Trying to get practice and guideline to line up today, when these things take time (six months is nothing) to read properly, is inappropriate. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:02, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Policy is supposed to reflect reasons supported by broad consensus. Of course policy is an imperfect approximation of the actual reasons, but I don't see how you clearly separate policy-centric reasons from those that aren't policy-centric. I mean, for almost every "policy-centric reason", like, "WP:AT calls for concise titles", or "The combo-name violates WP:COMMONNAME", there are non-policy-centric reasons, like, "our titles should not be unnecessarily long" and "that compound name is not commonly used in reliable sources, but X is".

Do we really need to list and count all the individuals who have already objected to the current title, and summarize their reasons?

Oy. Lost focus again! --Born2cycle (talk) 21:20, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I object to the use of COMMONNAME as a bludgeon to decide which name of a controversial set should be used. I would prefer WP:COMMONSENSE being the overriding principle; in the console discussion, using only one of the names would piss off either American or European editors, so bending policy a bit to find stability is not just acceptable, it's encouraged. Sceptre ^(talk) 20:53, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

IAR requires a good reason to ignore the rules. I wouldn't think appeasing a small group of editors - not to mention the much larger group that is pissed off by the unconventional compromise choice - constitutes a good reason. Got any other reason to IAR in this case? --Born2cycle (talk) 21:30, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article titling policy is not scripture ordained from heaven and burnt into every article. It, like every other policy (apart from NPOV, V and NFCC) are written and designed that the improvement of the encyclopedia should override all concerns. Look at the talk page: weeks were wasted arguing about the name when the article when it could've been improved; indeed, after settling the name issue (relatively quickly), they quickly started talking about improving the article. And really, who's annoyed about this title change apart from policy wonks? Sceptre ^(talk) 00:18, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

First, even if was only "policy wonks" that were annoyed, there are many more of them than there the total number of editors who are annoyed by either Mega Drive or Sega Genesis. Second, it's not just "policy wonks", but "consistency valuers" - people who value Wikipedia being consistent and not confusing to readers and other editors. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:40, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Consistency for the sake of consistency has never been and never will be a good argument. Policy, with very few exceptions (AT not being one of them) is driven from the ground up. If you feel it violates AND fine, but it wasn't clearly stated there. I read it and so it others here and no one seemed to care except for Miremare who's been on record of opposing any name but Mega Drive (his preogrative, but it should be taken note). From there only those who watch AT cared about this, non of whom, except for Miremare seem to care a lick about the article beyond "conforming to the policy at it currently stands", even when the policy can and has been determined by a group of independant editors to allow such a title (or at least not disallow it).

As said, give this a few months instead of bringing a challenge after hugely debated naming dispute that was resolved. If no one bring up a non-policy issue that has reasonable merit why then it should be fine.(No one from either side, those who oppose the current name or those who support it should do so either as they would be trying to push a point with a likely biased agenda. If made it can be debated on the merits outside policy.∞陣内Jinnai 02:41, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Consistency is a naming criterion supported by broad consensus. That doesn't mean it's the most important criterion, but nobody has indicated any other criteria that warrants using an inconsistent title here. And using two names in a compound contrived title is not just inconsistent, it's highly unusual. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:42, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, criteria is the plural of criterion. Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Fixed. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:23, 17 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Recognizability. It's obvious that using either Genesis or Mega Drive causes recognizability issues. Using a term like Sega 16-bit console also fails that. Using both in the name solves that issue and does so with complete neutrality. The other would be Precision. However, pretty much every title (except the alternate 4th-generation console proposed on the talk page) would pass that, including the current one as it is still precisely what the article is about. As for consistancy arguments, IMO they don't apply here. Every article you've brought up has a valid reason why its like it is, mostly because the name originates in an English country or there is a clear case for one being more well-known on multiple benchmarks. When talking about video games consoles specifically the only ones with a rebranding would fall under WP:ENGLISH, notably the NES and SNES. If any criterion Sega Genesis and Mega Drive has an issue with its naturalness. However, I'd say that crietion can be waved considering that lack of any clear indication that Mega Drive or Genesis is the "most common" and that both editors and readers have disputed whichever name was used in the past.∞陣内Jinnai 06:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just weighing in here. The current policy appears to support the current naming clearly, since the Megadrive and Genesis are closely related(the same hardware and game library) although not the same(different shell cases, different adverting, different names, different pop culture references, etc). Since the article seeks to cover both the Genesis and Megadrive, and since an all inclusive title to the effect of "4th Generation Sega Console" cannot be reasonably formed, a compound title including both Genesis and Megadrive seems the best option, and supported by the current policy wording.AerobicFox (talk) 03:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"And" seems fine per AerobicFox, however if the two names were for the identical thing, then, while there are various rules for "primacy", it would seem "or" would be a valid solution, with all the necessary redirects of course. Rich Farmbrough, 20:53, 23 October 2011 (UTC).[reply]

The problem with allowing "and" to be applied with two names for the same (or almost the same) object are many - worst of which is that there are some objects with a dozen or more common names. The Agaricus bisporus mushroom would thus be titled Agaricus bisporus and common mushroom and button mushroom and white mushroom and table mushroom and champignon mushroom and crimini mushroom and Swiss brown mushroom and Roman brown mushroom and Italian brown and Italian mushroom and cultivated mushroom and Portobello mushroom! There are hundreds of articles about cars where the car was badge-engineered for different markets with different names, sold under license to other car companies, etc - resulting in some cars having a half dozen names. There are books and movies that were retitled in different markets. Using "and" or "or" or any other way of placing all of the applicable names into the article title would be absolute ungodly chaos! So option (1) above does not seem tenable. We do indeed need some cast-iron rule to arbitrate which common name is used - be it coin-toss, alphabetical, WP:RETAIN or whatever...but "and" or "or" are not tenable options. Personally, the "WP:RETAIN" approach seems best in order to avoid thousands of articles needing to be renamed as a result of this clarification. SteveBaker (talk) 15:35, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone tell me why this policy doesn't provide sufficient explanation, preferably with quite a few examples of too specific and too general, to avoid this kind of horror?

Devolvement

Tony (talk) 10:35, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In what way is Devolvement a "horror"? And how would you suggest we fix it? Blueboar (talk) 13:24, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm assuming Tony is horrified because it is so vague; you'd have no idea what it is by looking at the title. There seems to be some debate about whether identifying something by the title alone is even a goal. To answer Tony, I would say that the subject of that article is not the primary topic of the term, since it is not more important/common/whatever than all other uses of the term combined. It should probably redirect to delegation? I don't know. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:19, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any other uses for "devolvement" in WP, so, not only is it the primary topic for "devolvement" (regardless of what its title is, Devolvement would redirect to it), it's the only topic for "devolvement". Now, whether there is a title that better answers our primary criteria questions is a separate issue, but that discussion is for Talk:Devolvement. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:31, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"I don't see any other uses for "devolvement" in WP"—delegation. That subject is the PT for the term devolvement, I think. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:10, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article should simply be deleted, as there's no notable topic there. Or an article on devolvement in finance might be useful, but pretending it has something to do with India in paritcular is lame. Dicklyon (talk) 17:35, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Like --Born2cycle (talk) 17:53, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It may well be uniquely Indian jargon. Most other dialects would find devolution. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:58, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It has always seemed to me that we have little problem renaming articles when the name of their subject can be verified to have changed. Whether it's Kate Middleton to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, or del.icio.us to Delicious (website), it seems pretty routine. But I'm getting incredible pushback from an editor at Talk:VELOCITY Broadcasting#Requested move. Am I way off base here? Powers ^T 00:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a mistake to think of these cases are coupled just because they have something in common. There's no rush, and the proposal in question, to a title with the same all-caps problems, is objected to by many. You should probably start a new RM without the all-caps, and see if it gets supported. Dicklyon (talk) 02:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a discussion about the use of scare quotes in article titles here, please participate. Roger (talk) 13:27, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As a slight spin off from a blocking policy discussion I made the point that "significant majority" isn't clear enough and is too easy to bend as being anywhere between ~50 and ~95%. I think we should give an approximate numeric figure for clarity as to what "significant majority" means. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:22, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My proposal for that figure is ~80%, but I'm perfectly happy to go for something else - a line in the sand is much more important than what the value is. The idea of this is to avoid doctoral thesis length discussions - like the one that was had on abortion naming, because this policy wasn't clear enough. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:30, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it this needs to be a bit ambiguous as it depends on the situation. In particular I think it depends on the strength of the claims that a certain term is non-neutral. If only very weak evidence can be found for a term being considered non-neutral, I think 80% is way too high a requirement. On the other hand, if there is good evidence (like in the abortion case) that a certain terms are considered unneutral, a 70 or 80% requirement would seem be reasonable.TheFreeloader (talk) 19:46, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can definitely live with (~70-80%) being the addition - that would still have been enough to avoid some of the discussion at abortion - as ~65% was as high as was attained there for pro-life.

Given neutrality is non-negotiable you are unlikely to win the point with the current rules if its less than ~70% in favour anyway. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:50, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Significant is not just about numbers... quality of sources factors into a significant majority just as much as quantity. Best to leave this intentionally undefined. Blueboar (talk) 20:06, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this, and if we give a specific number, it might also give the incorrect impression that usage can be exactly measured with something like Google search results.TheFreeloader (talk) 20:21, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So how do we propose to solve the matter of doctoral thesis length discussions over this stuff - and/or dispair from editors who can't be bothered to write a doctoral thesis to win the point?

I would have thought the issue of "just doing a Google" is more than covered by the bit saying "English-language reliable sources" - claiming editors will start ignoring that more if a (rough) range is given seems like a strawman argument to me. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:28, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do we have a 'standardized' table anywhere with common terms so that we don't have to keep inventing definitions? Something like:

Not sure if doing something like this is good or bad, but it may allow using a 'standard' term without defining it everyplace it is used. Also if this does seem like a good idea, can we implement it here or does it need a wider forum for discussion? Probably moving to a sub page and and RFC if that is what we need. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest changing the wording from:

as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources...

to:

as evidenced through usage in at least about two-thirds of English-language reliable sources...

That's more specific without being too specific. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:57, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds good. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:59, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I oppose any such attempt at artificial numerical precision. It ignores the quality or relevance of sources, and assumes too much concerning the precision of Googlebook searches and the like. Too many provisions in policy and guidelines are being read legalistically and literally, without considering the overall good. We need to look again at that, and get our bearings. We should not add more opportunities for descent into increasingly unhelpful detail. The needs of readers are ignored too often, in mechanical application of rules.

Noetica^Tea? 23:00, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand this aversion to a "mechanical application of rules". I mean, if the rule suggests a bad result, we always have IAR. And the need to use IAR more than very rarely suggests a bad rule. But if a rule can be followed mechanically and rarely if ever creates a situation that requires IAR, what's the problem?

On the plus-side when the rules can be applied mechanically, that means there is no need for spending time and resources arguing about whether this or that point is more important, and editors can focus on more important tasks. The encyclopedia would be improved with more "mechanical application of rules", not less! --Born2cycle (talk) 23:19, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree with Noetica here. I think the premise of rule-bound editing promotes an environment in which the rules become more important than the content. older ≠ wiser 00:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For me, the aversion stems from the fact that this policy isn't intended to be a set of firm "rules". It is instead a statement of broad principles. I see the policy as consisting of a number of "considerations"... things that should be taken into account during the admittedly wishy-washy process of consensus building that determines how we choose the best title for an article.

Say, for example, we do a google search and find 100 sources... they are split 70/30 in favor of a particular usage... we take that into consideration. It might or might not be what determines the article's title. However, we should also look at the quality of those sources. If the 30 are all high quality sources and the 70 are all unreliable personal websites, we need to take this into consideration as well. It might or might not be the determining factor. There is no formulaic approach here. And sometimes the only way to find the best title is to spend a long time arguing the pros and cons of each title and how each relates to the considerations layed out in the policy... until we reach a consensus. Blueboar (talk) 00:20, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Bkonrad, I don't see how, especially in this context of titles, which isn't about content by definition (unless you mean something other than "article content" by "content"). Good rules just provide a consistent and predictable way to make consistent and good decisions for our readers. Again, rules that don't do that can be quickly identified by the fact that we found ourselves invoking IAR to get around them. But even there, the solution is to fix the rule so that IAR is not needed, not to make all the rules more vague and less useful.

For example, consider the RM discussion over at The Bubble Boy. Noetica opposes the move based on a complicated utility argument, while Powers and I oppose per the simple and mechanical application of primary topic.

Now, imagine if everyone had to argue in terms of utility in every RM discussion. It would be a nightmare.

Good rules are consistently based on fundamental principles that get us quickly and efficiently to the "right" outcome without mess or fuss. That's a good thing. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:26, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

B2C, your argument is premised on the rather dubious assumption that it is possible to reduce the activities of creating and maintaining Wikipedia to mechanistic rules. That is an article of faith I cannot buy into. Human knowledge is messy and complex. And Wikipedia, as an attempt to present a partially refined distillation of such knowledge, is also necessarily messy and complex. You assume that there are "right" outcomes, but in many cases, especially those that involve divergent positions, there is no predetermined correct outcome. Uncontroversial issues, for the most part, are resolved currently without significant mess or fuss. Difficult issues will continue to be difficult regardless of any mechanistic rules you might want to conjure. older ≠ wiser 01:08, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

First, we're talking here, WP:AT, exclusively about deciding titles, a relatively clear and simple part of writing an encyclopedia (as compared to deciding what goes into article content, how to organize it, etc.). Second, I know we can reduce much of that title-decision process to mechanistic rules. I'd say probably well over half the articles here could be easily titled correctly (the same as they are currently named) by a computer program. As you know, many articles were so titled (U.S. cities, for example). And of course there is the First Last convention for people. Disambiguation is a separate matter, but even there it's often mechanistic too. So the issue is not is it mechanistic or not, but how mechanistic is it, and, can we make it more mechanistic, and, if we could, would that improve the encyclopedia. I think it would simply because it would mean less time/resources on title decision and therefore more time/focus on content, if nothing else. See new sub-section below for more details on what I mean. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:29, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The illusion that article titles can be reduced to rules, and the inference that such rules can and should be broadly applied with minimal human intervention, is I think a very bad thing. I'll repeat again, those actions that are not controversial already take place with minimal mess or fuss. Difficult issues will continue to be difficult regardless of any mechanistic rules you might want to conjure. If it is possible to provide better guidance without the illusion of mechanistic rules, I'm fine with that. IMO, such guidance is better framed as general principles and resources that describe current practices and that are flexible enough to be applied very broadly, even if the results are not always cleanly deterministic, rather than algorithmic formula that give a misleading aura of certainty. older ≠ wiser 01:46, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to agree that there are easy cases and difficult cases. The difference is that you seem to be believe the difficult cases are destined to be difficult cases no matter what, while I believe many of them can be easy cases too, with improved rules.

I can defend my position with countless examples. But first, I will point out that the easy cases are precisely those cases for which existing mechanistic rules, whether they are explicitly stated or understood via common sense, apply.

Now, here are some examples.

• City names. For most countries just use the city name if it's unique or the primary use of that name. If it requires disambiguation, see the country-specific convention for disambiguation. For certain countries (on a known list - therefore mechanistic) use a specific naming convention even if the name is unique or primary.
• ENGVAR We have a mechanistic rule for deciding what to do in cases where different varieties of English spell the name differently: go with the first established variety.
• TV episodes Use the name of the episode if no disambiguation is required. If disambiguation is required, add the name of the series with parenthetic disambiguation.
• People. Use First Last unless: the person is most commonly known by some other name, or disambiguation is required. If disambiguation is required, use parenthetic disambiguation with the commonly known distinguishing characteristic of the person (usually their occupation).

My point is that the easy cases are easy precisely because we have clear mechanistic rules that apply in those cases. It follows then that the difficult cases are difficult because we don't have clear mechanistic rules that apply in those cases, and, if we did, they would be easy cases too. That doesn't mean that we could or should come up with mechanistic rules for every single titling case in WP. I suspect the law of diminishing returns begins to apply at some point. However, in general, if we try to make our rules more mechanistic and apply in more cases, where we can, I'm sure we will succeed in reducing the pile of difficult cases by a significant degree.

This is why it's so frustrating to see efforts at making more rules more mechanistic obstructed by the argument that this stuff is not supposed to be mechanistic. Sure we've made (say) 70% of the cases easy by having mechanistic rules for them, but God Forbid let's not try to improve that to be 80% or even 75%. We need to decide all of these individually "by consensus".

It's that objection (in so many words) that I can't understand. Am I missing something? --Born2cycle (talk) 03:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A large part of why I object to promoting the illusion of mechanistic rules is that such formulaic rules too easily become weapons to suppress minority opinions. I think guidance framed as formulaic algorithms tends to shut down meaningful dialog and encourages legalistic hair-splitting. Where there is clear guidance to be formulated, based on current best practices, then by all means we should try to articulate that guidance as helpfully as possible. But I think that guidance is best framed as general principles supplemented with examples rather than simplistic thresholds, as the proposal presented in this section seemed to. older ≠ wiser 03:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, this helps. I understand that you and many others object to... shall we say, "rules for the sake of rules"? Rules that make us lose sight of what's really important? If that's what you're getting at, is it similar to the objection one might have to being ticketed for going 67 mph in a 65 mph zone? In that case, the important issue is to not be going so fast as to constitute a hazard, but since "so fast as to be a hazard" is a very subjective and difficult-to-measure-and-enforce standard, we come up with the more precise "max 65 mph" (a simplistic threshold). However, if that rule is rigidly enforced, then it becomes more about the rules than the reason for having those rules. Something like that?

But here's the difference. In traffic there are real important issues at stake. I mean, people are trying to get somewhere. People could get killed. Fines have to be paid. Time has to be taken getting the ticket, going to court, traffic school, etc.

But that's not the case here. I mean, mostly we're talking about which of two (sometimes more) candidate terms should be the title of a Wikipedia article. There's nothing really that important at stake here, is there? So if we have a simplistic threshold-based rule that indicates some title other than some other title... so what? Why is it important that - for the purpose of choosing article titles - we have this nuanced approached to make sure we get it "right" (as if there is a "right")?

What seems to me to be at stake is WP editor time. If the candidates for a given article are, say X, Y (foo) or Z, and the simplistic threshold-based mechanistic rule indicates X, what benefit is there to spend hours (sometimes week, months or even years) arguing about whether one of the other two might be better? The cost of doing that is clear, but the benefit is not. Not to me.

Now, I can hear you laughing out loud from here, because I, personally, have spend countless hours arguing about this stuff. But if you look at my history, I think I'm pretty consistent about not arguing that some candidate is better than the other for some nebulous reasons, but because the mechanistic rules (policy, guidelines, conventions), as I can best understand them (and they are imperfect beasts), indicates one rather than another. And the other thing I try to do, is improve the rules so that they are less ambiguous, to get that percentage of articles for whom the titles can be determined simplistically/mechanically without prolonged discussion to be higher rather than lower. So what I try to do is get the titles better in line with the rules, and the rules better in line with the titles, so that we have a better/lighter/more precise/more effective title-deciding process.

In short, I understand the aversion to deterministic rules and their oppressiveness in general, especially in real life, or even with respect to all kinds of issues related to article content, but specifically with respect to picking titles for articles? Why is it so important to have freedom to finesse (if you will) in this particular context? Why not come up with simplistic/mechanistic, even Draconian, rules with respect to the relatively unimportant task of deciding titles? Who are what would be harmed, and how, presuming the titles that are indicated by such rules are within the reasonable range, if you know what I mean? --Born2cycle (talk) 05:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, the speeding analogy mostly misses the point. In general, and especially in a dynamic culture with a very fluid constituency such as Wikipedia, I think reduction of action to formulaic rules produces undesirable effects. While you personally might be committed to using continual improvement processes to revise rules as needed, that is relatively uncommon. People are, I'd suggest, more inclined to see rules as received knowledge that places constraints on activities rather than internalizing through participation what the principles are and how they can be applied in a specific situation.

I think that a large part of the success of Wikipedia is due precisely to the fundamental principle that Wikipedia does not have firm rules. Although this may make some Wikipedia processes such as AfD or RM seem like Calvinball to those who prefer the certainty of rules-based thinking, I'd argue that the long, often-repetitious discussions that you dismiss as unproductive are actually very near the heart of what makes Wikipedia successful. It is participatory engagement in defining what principles are important in a given context and how such principles can be applied.

Besides, the issues that result in lengthy discussions are rarely something that can be determined by a simplistic threshold-based mechanistic rule, or at least not by any rule that would enjoy wide support among the participants in such discussions. I'm sure you think otherwise, but that I guess that is at the core of our disagreement. I'd frame the issue as a matter of rules versus principles. The U.S. Internal Revenue Code is an example of what happens when rules-based thinking takes precedence over the thoughtful application of principles.

For an interesting perspective on how rules can produce unwanted results in a context outside Wikipedia, consider these opinions on accounting rules [2] and [3]. From personal experience, the U.S. FDA "rules" regarding the validation of software can sometimes produce a culture where the goal of software testing shifts away from ensuring that software functions as needed to support critical operations towards doing the minimum amount of testing that will pass muster with auditors. That is, I think rules-based thinking encourages a mindset in which the objective becomes legalistic parsing of the rules rather than honest engagement with principles (or complying with the letter of the law without consideration of the spirit). I've also just discovered this interesting essay on the topic. There are relevant perspectives from education theory as well. Consider this essay. I especially like this quote from Kenneth Burke:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. The Philosophy of Literary Form 110-111.

Wikipedia is exactly such an ongoing discussion in which individual participants come and go. I think we should encourage engagement in the discussion and I can't help but feel that reducing actions to mechanistic rules short-circuits that engagement.

I suppose a part of what I see as the issue is terminology. While I don't think that you see your "rules" as having the force of law, I think that casting them in the framework of mechanistic rules has an effect similar to giving students a textbook with all the received knowledge pre-digested for them, rather than having them engage with the issues and understand what principles apply and how they should be prioritized in specific contexts. older ≠ wiser 15:38, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Again, please read the section below. I'm quite clear about the rule-following part being the initial and only hopefully but not necessarily the final step in the naming process. I think of the policy and guidelines and conventions as an oracle which we consult, and then decide if we go with that or not. But, if we decide not, then we explain to the oracle why his answer was inadequate, as best as we can, so that he hopefully can give us the appropriate answer the next time.

Another analogy is the rules of solitaire. You are free to follow the rules, or not. But if they're good rules, following the rules will be more satisfying. --Born2cycle (talk) 15:51, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have read the section below and it does nothing to assuage my concerns. It appears to prioritize rules over principles and is based on a dubious assumption that there is a correct title which can be determined by the application of rules and the further dubious assumption that rules can be created which consistently satisfy all the varied constituencies of Wikipedia editors across the diverse contexts of articles. older ≠ wiser 16:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand how you could read it to mean any of that that. First, given that the outcome of the rules is evaluated in phase 2a to verify the choice made by the rules is consistent with our principles, and rejected if it's not ("2a evaluates the output of phase 1, either approving the outcome or coming up with another one"), how do you read it to mean that it prioritizes rules over principles? Of course, the whole point is to have rules that are based on the principles. The difference between a good rule and a bad rule is that the good rule produces results consistent with the principles, while the bad rule produces results that violate the principles. But that's how we identify the bad, or broken, rules, so that we know they need fixing. Hence the two-phase approach, and, in particular, phase 2b, the rule-fixing part. That's the whole point. To say that this prioritizes rules over principles completely misses the main idea!

Given that this approach accounts for cases where the rules do not produce a selection ("if it doesn't indicate anything for a given situation, or ..."), how do you conclude that it assumes "rules can be created which consistently satisfy ..."? The goal is to improve the rules so that they do produce a good result consistent with our principles in more and more cases over time, but never is it assumed that they will ever be perfect in that regard. Just better next year than this year, hopefully. In other words, we try to continually improve the rules so that there are fewer and fewer cases where there are questions and issues that need to be resolved via debate and discussion.

I've put a lot of thought and effort into this approach, and it's frustrating to see you object to it on grounds which are based on such enormous misconceptions about what, it seems to me, it clearly says. I apologize if I was not clear and that's why you misunderstood. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:02, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Exactly, Blueboar. Often, the existence of a significant minority alternative is what's important, not the majority percentage. This request if a bad idea. Not that I'm in favor of spending a long time arguing, but that trying to work with percentages will make that worse, not better. Take a look at Born2cycle's history that led me to refer to him as Born2count; flaky counting approaches have led to lots of long hassles, and I'd rather see that stop. Maybe the moniker was unfair; his affinity for "mechanical" may indeed be more related to "cycle"; who knows? Dicklyon (talk) 00:30, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Blueboar, good example, which would be relevant if our principle or rule was simply, "go with the most number of hits according to google". But that's not what we say. Instead, we talk about predominant usage in reliable sources, etc. So a rule that says look at raw google results without regard to the quality of the sources would be a bad rule looking for an improvement. But a rule that is properly worded does not make bad suggestions like that. The measure of the "goodness" of a rule is the ratio of how often it indicates the right title vs the wrong title, assuming a context in which it applies. As that ratio approaches infinity, we have a rule that we can depend on mechanically, but the dependence should never be blind. There is always IAR, there is always the opportunity to tweak and improve. In fact, the whole point of improving the rules is based on the assumption that it's possible to follow them mechanically. Otherwise, why bother? --Born2cycle (talk) 00:33, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We may not say "go with the most number of hits according to google" but have a look at the current debate at Talk:Burma#Requested move: Burma --> Myanmar, to see such a method being put forward. -- PBS (talk) 15:14, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing wrong with examining the number of google hits. The number of google hits is one of several tests we can use to help us determine how common a particular name is ... but it isn't the only method of doing so, and it does have limitations. Also, commonality, while important, is not the only consideration we must take into account. Choosing the most appropriate title for an article almost always involves finding a balance between the various principles and considerations that are laid out in this policy. Each article title is unique, and so determining where that balance lies will be a bit different from one article to the next. Sometimes striking a balance will be easy... and sometimes it will be very difficult. Blueboar (talk) 16:15, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The two phases of the title decision process

There are really two phases in the title decision process. The first phase is the objective application of the relevant rules, a process which ideally suggests exactly one title. The second phase is the subjective evaluation of what was indicated by the first phase. If the first phase indicates exactly one particular title and there are no objections, great. However, if it doesn't indicate anything for a given situation, or gives multiple candidates, then not only do we have make the decision subjectively, ideally it's an opportunity to improve the relevant rules too. In that sense phase 2 itself has two phases, 2a and 2b: 2a evaluates the output of phase 1, either approving the outcome or coming up with another one. 2b is only needed when the outcome of phase 1 is not approved in 2a; it's rule evaluation/improvement.

Ideally, the second phase is just a formality and 2b is never needed. In reality, phase 1 does not always work out so perfectly and 2b is an opportunity to review and improve our rules. But as our rules are improved and honed like this, we should be getting a higher and higher number of cases where phase 2 does not find a problem with phase 1, and the percentage of title decisions that can be made mechanically approaches 100%. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Or... we can accept that there are no firm "rules" for people to apply ... instead we have a set of "broad principles" that we should consider and weigh against each other... and which will help us reach a consensus as to what the most appropriate title for a specific article is. In which case the process is much more fluid... examine all the possible titles and see which principles indicate which titles. Weigh these principles against each other, taking into account the unique circumstances of the article. Finally, reach a consensus as to the best title for the article. Blueboar (talk) 16:15, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's the other -- currently more popular -- approach. But why - and again we're talking only about deciding titles here -- do you believe that it is better? How is the encyclopedia improved by a system that requires people to discuss and debate issues that are ultimately unimportant, when we could have a system that, in many more cases than occurs currently, gives us a definitive answer without all that time-consuming pointless back-and-forth? --Born2cycle (talk) 16:41, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

While you might dismiss some issues as "ultimately unimportant", the fact that such issues produce such lively and prolonged discussions indicate that not everyone shares your opinion. older ≠ wiser 16:52, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I think it better because it gives us the flexibility to take into consideration unique circumstances. I think it better because I believe that the issues being debated are important (otherwise people would not debate them) and all that time-consuming back and fourth isn't pointless (in fact, I think it a rather important part of the process, as in the long run, reaching a consensus will result in fewer debates later). Blueboar (talk) 16:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All failing to have firm rules does is result in doctoral thesis length discussions on article moves, as we suffered this year with Abortion and China to name two examples. This is obviously bad as either you waste huge amounts of editors time or people give up. The latter meant we had China, a WP:VITAL article, at the clearly wrong title for the first 10 years of the projects existence, which is just embarrassing.

The only level to which people are ever going to class reliable sources (to give "flexibility" any point at all) is to class sources into academic sources and non-academic sources. To give a sample argument on source quality beyond that prove to me that the Economist is a better source than The Times - its obvious, but you aren't going to be able to prove it. In support of this being tedious in the aforementioned "China" move discussion (which overall was at least a doctoral thesis in length) none of the pro Taiwan guys even bothered to criticise Xinhua (beyond being a Chinese source) in terms of source quality .

While changing the rule might cause in some rare instance to not be able to have the correct title (which I cannot think of a single real world example - as if its not controversial no-one will care to argue against moving anyhow) the current position de-facto leads to the inability to change the status quo except in the most obvious of cases. It effectively de-facto sticks a percentage of 90% (and probably ~60% against not moving an article) in front of the significant majority statement in terms of what you are able to do - which definitely isn't the intention of the text from this discussion. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:39, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Guys, regardless of what we imagine about what others think... do you think it's relevant to the quality of Wikipedia whether it's Yogurt or Yoghurt? Chicago or Chicago, Illinois? Toyota Prius or Prius? Bill Clinton or William Jefferson Clinton? Those are off the top of my head. Here are some from WP:RM: Immanuel Christian School or Immanuel Christian School (Winnipeg, Manitoba)? Adapted Physical Education or Adapted physical education? Cannibals – Welcome to the Jungle or Welcome to the Jungle (2007 film)? How is the quality of Wikipedia even affected, much less improved, by doing something other than just randomly choosing either one in each of these and countless other similar cases?Not that I'm suggesting randomly choosing - I'm just trying to understand how you think WP is improved by these choices. I mean, how would WP be harmed by having a rule that said something like this... if consensus cannot decide which of two titles is best, go with the one that is first alphabetically?

Blueboar, I agree in general that reaching a consensus will result in fewer debates later - but that does not really address what we're talking about here. A system with more deterministic rules is going to produce titles on which there is more consensus more often at the outset than a system with less deterministic rules. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:47, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Conversely, how do discussions of such moves detract from the quality of Wikipedia? If you think that the title an article has is unimportant, you are under no obligation to pay any attention to these discussions. Your examples from RM also fail to support your argument because, for example, the request to move Cannibals – Welcome to the Jungle to Welcome to the Jungle (2007 film) may well be because there is a redirect with an edit history at the title. Some admin editors might be bold and just move the page, other editors have to use the RM process, perhaps because they are not an admin or perhaps because they genuinely wanted other opinions on the matter to establish that it is not a maverick unilateral move. In so many cases there is not a single obviously correct title. Even China is far from being obvious (although I agree with the result in that). Similarly, the abortion-related title would also be very poorly served by imposing a top-down authoritarian regime in titling articles (which is what B2C's proposal sounds like to my reading). The only people "wasting their time"are those who choose to participate in the discussions. If you don't think the title of an article is important, then there are many other ways you can spend your time on Wikipedia. I can appreciate that you might feel this is an inefficient way of doing things, but I'd argue that it is very much a part of why Wikipedia is as successful as it is. older ≠ wiser 18:27, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So its "far from obvious" to pick the name for the People's Republic of China used by 95%+ of English language sources to refer to it. The only legitimate reason not to use "China" would be if we used the official name to refer to every other country - but we don't do that we use the common name. This is a dispute the rest of the world figured out in the 1970's.

With regards to abortion having a top down solution sounds perfect. That's essentially what's been asked of Arbcom in the ongoing case (wasting yet more time obviously) about the topic. Having a top down solution would prevent people from being able to argue it backwards and forwards at a micro level which is what leads to doctoral thesis length discussions.

WIth regards to choosing to discuss these things that is true, but we shouldn't be using the clearly wrong title for articles because people "can't be bothered" to argue the case because it just turns into a slow moving mudfest. That isn't healthy and doesn't deliver good results. If you have a top down rule - even if it leads to going the wrong way on your favourite article (not that any examples have been provided) - everyone can agree that its at least fair. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(after ec) This is not the place and I've no interest in revisiting the discussion on China. Whatever your opinion, the extensive and contentious discussion speaks for itself regarding the non-obviousness of the title. Sometimes an arbcom ruling is the only recourse for resolution. But that is a last resort and I vehemently disagree that Wikipedia should institute practices to make top-down rulings more prevalent. What might be a "clearly wrong title" to you, is not so obvious to others. If you care about the title of an article, then engage in discussions. If you think discussions about choosing an article title are a waste of time, there are plenty of other things you could be doing. I also disagree that such discussions are unhealthy. They are what Wikipedia is. These only become unhealthy when participants become uncivil. I don't understand your last sentence. older ≠ wiser 21:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you go on the street or down the pub and talk to people about China, no-one is going to have any issue figuring out which country (the People's Republic of China) you are discussing and if you use "People's Republic of China" they are going to think you are very odd. You are quite right that it has been controversial on wikipedia, however it is not controversial off wikipedia.

With regards to a top-down rule being "fair" it means you are going to treat all articles in a class in a consistent way - and I think most people can live with that.

Forcing discussions to be doctoral thesis length in order to resolve things is not healthy. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 06:03, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bkonrad, it would be helpful if you answered my question in addition to asking yours: Conversely, how do discussions of such moves detract from the quality of Wikipedia? I'll go ahead and answer yours never-the-less. All the time spent arguing about titles is not spent on improving the quality of WP, that's how it detracts from the quality of WP.

"In so many cases there is not a single obviously correct title." But in the vast majority of those cases there is not a single obviously correct title because people like you object to honing the rules so that there is a single obviously correct title, for at least most of these cases. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy!

I ask again, how in your opinion would the quality of Wikipedia even be affected, much less improved, by doing something other than just randomly choosing either the existing or proposed title in most cases brought to RM? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:45, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(after ec) I purposely did not answer because I felt the question was irrelevant as the converse is equally as meaningless. The titles of articles matter to some people and so far as people care about what articles are titled that affects the quality of the encyclopedia. No one is forcing anyone to spend time arguing about titles. If you think it is a waste of time, then there are plenty of other ways you can improve the encyclopedia. But you do expend inordinate amount of effort on article titles, so you must think titles matter.

But in the vast majority of those cases there is not a single obviously correct title because people like you object to honing the rules so that there is a single obviously correct title, for at least most of these cases That is so ridiculously false and even insulting that I'm not even sure where to begin.

From the sound of it, we might as well autogenerate random unique sequences of characters for article titles rather then let human tendencies to have different perspectives on things get in the way. older ≠ wiser 21:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

First you say it's "ridiculously false and even insulting" to say that you object to honing the rules so that there is a single obviously correct title, for at least most cases, and then you proceed to object to exactly that, with a straw man argument about auto-generated random unique sequences of characters.

Surely you understand that there are many ways to establish rules for deterministically choosing meaningful and reasonable titles for many more articles than we currently do; and that resorting to random unique strings is not required at all (though of course that is the extreme most simplistic way to establish titles deterministically).

But please clarify. Are you saying it's impossible to select meaningful and reasonable titles with deterministic rules, therefore we shouldn't even try? Or are you saying we don't want to do that even if it's possible, because vague non-deterministic rules with conflicts worked out in discussion and debate is preferable? --Born2cycle (talk) 22:04, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The reason that there might not be a single correct title for many articles has nothing whatsoever to do with honing the rules or any objections I might have to your dubious propositions. We do have guidance that helps select article titles in most uncontroversial cases. I do think the guidance can be improved and is constantly being refined. But even in relatively uncontroversial cases, it is not always obvious what the best title is and I very much doubt that mechanistic rules can be formulated that will definitively resolve such cases. And BTW, that wasn't a straw man. It was pure sarcasm. older ≠ wiser 22:22, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well then, I will reword. First you say it's "ridiculously false and even insulting" to say that you object to honing the rules so that there is a single obviously correct title, for at least most cases, and then you proceed to object to exactly that, with an argument dripping in sarcasm.

Anyway, so, is it your doubt that "mechanistic rules can be formulated that will definitively resolve such cases" that is at the root of your objection to even trying to formulate and adopt such rules? What if you were shown a set of rules that did exactly that? Or at least did a much better job than our policy etc. currently does in terms of percentage cases for which titles are deterministically selected by the rules? Would you still object to adopting them? If so, why? --Born2cycle (talk) 22:41, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your re-wording does not help. What I object to is the notion that there is a single correct title for every article and that such a title can be defined with a set of rules which are broadly acceptable. If you can come up with such a system and prove me wrong, that's just wonderful. But until then, don't expect me to jump on your bandwagon. older ≠ wiser 23:24, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, that helps. Now I know you're not against deterministic rules even if they're possible.

So, let's get to the heart of the matter. Would you agree that it's possible for one set of rules to deterministically select a title for a given percentage of all articles, requiring discussion for the remainder, and that there is almost certainly a revision of those rules that would increase that percentage, and reduce the size of the remainder that requires discussion? If so, would you also agree that such a revision would be desirable, and, conversely, that a revision to the rules that decreased the percentage of articles whose titles could be selected deterministically, and which increased the remainder that required discussion, would be less desirable? --Born2cycle (talk) 23:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would have thought that an objective application of rules and guidelines would be a pretty good approach, and I pretty much thought that was how I worked. But so often I found myself in conflict with Born2cycle, who claimed to be doing similarly, that I realized that the application of rules is in fact always subjective. And his attempts (and mine) to rewrite the rules to better support his (or my) opinion by "clarifying" what we think the rules mean, or to change the weight of different inputs to the decision process, make it clear that a mechanical process is not likely to work, unless the mechanics includes rewriting the rules as you go. Do the outcomes of these discussions make WP better? In many cases, not, or only a little, not commensurate with the effort invovled. So I try to just comment on the ones that involve matters of principle that help us make WP better and more consistent, or to put up a line of defense against those trying to move WP style in a direction that I think is worse (e.g. Enric Naval, the great capitalizer). Dicklyon (talk) 21:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But the clearer and more prescribed the rules are the less subjective that discussions are. Currently there is no move discussion which I'm involved in - this change which I have suggested is simply to increase clarity based on previous discussions which have taken far more time and effort than they should. To be honest its also true that this policy is fairly clear - and that helps a lot - but obviously we can do a better job. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:13, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dick, I want nothing but to make the rules more deterministic. Show me a proposal that makes the rules more deterministic (that's reasonable enough for you to genuinely support it), and I'll show you a proposal that I'll join you in supporting. Yes, ambiguous rules can be mis-interpreted, and that can lead to conflict. But let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater - just because some rules are ambiguous and unclear doesn't mean rules can't be unambiguous and clear.

Consider our ongoing disagreement about titles being descriptive vs. concise. The reason I favor concise is precisely because that's a relatively deterministic rule. On the other hand, "descriptive" is most certainly not - once you accept that titles should be descriptive, that opens up a whole can of worms. How descriptive is sufficiently descriptive? If adding one more word clearly makes it more descriptive, must we add it? What about another word? And another? Where is the line?

But maybe I'm missing something. Propose a change to the rules that makes descriptive titles more acceptable, but also is more deterministic than the current situation (e.g., "precisely, but only as precise as necessary... titles should be concise"), and I will support it. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:37, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

B2C, why don't you come up with a formula of some kind, and apply it at titling discussions. If the result that that formula predicts is the one chosen following discussion in the clear majority of disputed cases, then you can bring it to the policy page as evidence of a formula that expresses what the community considers best practice. If it doesn't, hone it. You're doing things round the wrong way by trying to change policy first. By trying to change policy first, you'll simply meet opposition from a lot of editors (like me) who do not believe that introducing a formula for greater determinism in the way you want will be able to handle the subtleties and complexities of disputed cases. I've said this before, but people rely on policy in disputes, not when an issue is uncontroversial. At the moment, I keep seeing your approach being rejected quite a bit, which suggests the formula isn't working yet.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:15, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well obviously policy is only relied upon when the matter is controversial. But if the policy is clear then people are far less likely to disagree with you and it won't just be your analysis. This allows you to pick winnable battles and to reduce the length of discussion when you are discussing something.

Fixing the policy in abstract is far less likely to be controversial than fixing it during a dispute. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 06:27, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly don't mean that B2C should try change policy in a dispute - I've criticised him for doing that in the past. What I mean is road-test a more deterministic policy formulation over the next month or so, posting predictions before the dispute is finished, to see if that more deterministic policy has successfully captured what we actually decide in disputes. It would help to separate out two issues that have been thoroughly mixed up: streamlining how we make decisions, and what B2C would like those decisions to be. Sometimes it's hard to tell if B2C favours certain outcomes not because they're better, but because they're easier to model.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:58, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is the sort of determinism that B2C or Eraserhead1 are advocating. I suspect they would prefer a mechanistic decision tree process that would result in exactly one title that would by fiat become the "correct" title regardless of what any discussion among editors might select as the title. older ≠ wiser 13:02, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Seva, that's a good idea to come up with a formula of some kind. And I've started on such a project in the past. See User:Born2cycle/how2title and User:Born2cycle/Titles. These are not production-ready, but give you an idea of what I'm thinking about. I've abandoned how2title, but need to incorporate some of that into Titles, which is just getting started.

But that's kind of an extreme/ideal approach, and my discussions above were not really related to that. What I'm trying to discuss here is the general idea that more determinism in our "rules" (uses loosely as in IAR) regarding titles is desirable, and more ambiguity is less desirable; and that changes to policy and guidelines should take that into account. That is, we should ask ourselves the following about each change... Does this change make deciding titles more or less deterministic?.. Because more deterministic is better. More deterministic rules are better because that means less gray area and fewer seemingly endless disagreements and discussions about titles which often are about decisions that do not affect the quality of the encyclopedia (and hence are a waste of time). Let's make our rules more deterministic so less time is wasted on disagreeing and discussing issues that do not affect the quality of the encyclopedia, so more time can be spent on improving the encyclopedia.

You say "Sometimes it's hard to tell if B2C favours certain outcomes not because they're better, but because they're easier to model". Yes, that's because I often equate (within reason) "easier to model" with "better". That's because I believe in the vast majority of RM discussions there is no "better" as far as the encyclopedia quality is concerned. What is better, is having definitive rules that flip a coin for us so that we don't have to waste time deciding which of two equally good options is "better". Of course, some choices really are "better" than others, but in those cases our rules should already select the better title, and, if they don't, that's a sign they need to be updated.

And what I mean by "within reason" can be best explained by example. Either of the rules "always use UK English spelling" or "always use US English spelling" would be easier to model than ENGVAR, but it's unreasonable, given our goal of using and reflecting all varieties of English. But that doesn't mean we don't have rules - it means we must have more nuanced rules. Adding nuance to the rules does not preclude retaining determinism in the rules, if an effort is made to do so.

What I'm really trying to do here is persuade my colleagues here that it's worth putting in the effort to make our rules work like the learning/improving oracle I described above, and thus approaching title decisions in the two-phase approach also described above. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:36, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, it isn't worth it. We don't have an oracle; we don't even have rules. While they remain real-world controversies, we are unlikely to settle the titles on any such issue as Abortion or China; the only conceivable way is for more editors to care about Wikipedia titling than care about fetuses or about the Taiwan Straits.

Frankly, I think this even less likely than that the outside world will settle either issue so conclusively that the vanquished party will give up using Wikipedia to make its case. Since the advocates of Charles James Stewart are still trying to use WP as a trumpet, a quarter-millennium after Culloden, I do not foresee that either. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:30, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand you correctly, you're saying it isn't worth it not because you believe it's impossible to create more deterministic rules, but because you think it's unlikely that more deterministic rules will settle the titles on the most controversial issues (like abortion or China). Yes?

Well, if more deterministic rules would help settle titles for all but these most controversial issues, would it be worth it then?

And what about dividing this page into two parts (maybe still on the same page, maybe not), where the top part is principles, and the bottom part is rules? Then we would have rules, and they could be continually improved by using the above 2-phase method until they settled all but the most controversial titles, and even some of those. How about that? --Born2cycle (talk) 22:10, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, that is a separate issue; I do believe it to be impractical to create more deterministic rules which do the encyclopedia any good. That, at base, is the proposal for an algorithm which will successfully predict taste and judgment; there aren't any. That will happen some time after there are algorithmic natural-language translators which work. Since the judgment we require includes the questions which sources are current, which sources are reliable, and which sources are talking about the subject of the article, we will, shortly after that, be able to turn over article-writing to the algorithms.

Furthermore, our present conditions imply that any rules we come up with must apply to any subject on which the encyclopedia could conceivably have an article, and be applicable by hand by a group of hobbyists. That ain't happening, ever.

It would be relatively easy to come up with a set of deterministic rules which don't work; several editors have already come up with amateur beds of Procrustes which they are compelling the encyclopedia to fit on one or another matter. We don't need another. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:17, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

B2C, you mention abortion as a controversial issue which obviously wouldn't be handled by an algorithm of the sort you intend. Yet in the titling debate over pro-life/pro-choice, you specifically tried to apply Commonname even though the sheer number of editors present was a clear sign that this was a difficult case. What has changed in the interim that has led you to recognise that there are cases that need to be dealt with "by hand", as it were, and what are your criteria for identifying them?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 15:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are we really arguing that giving a rough percentage (I like 2/3) for what "significant majority" means will make the policy worse? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 15:36, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No. But I believe it would make the policy worse:

• The percentage should vary from article to article: very common topics would have lower percentage thresholds than very rare ones.
• Partly for this reason, we disagree on the percentage; I would prefer 80%, but I may be thinking of a different class of topics.
• in practice, writing 2/3 in will produce desperate arguments on whether the "true" figure is 65% or 68%; we have enough nonsense about pluralities now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:04, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• And currently we cannot decide if it means 60% or 95%. Disagreeing over 65 or 68% would be a tiny issue compared to that. Even if the topic is rare it still needs to have a title and setting the number too low isn't going to make a big difference. An editor can claim that they think it means 60% or 95% and unless you can show they have double standards theres nothing you can do about it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:21, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The reason the China thing was finally sorted out sensibly was because in the scale of things - thanks to the hard work of Born2Cycle and others - we did actually get the right result due to the article titles policy being fairly good - but if it was even clearer there would have been less effort to get there. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 16:03, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Finally sorted out? That was one move request. Wait six months, and there will be another. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:04, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On what possible justification? The whole "its not NPOV" argument was completely discredited and there's nothing to go in its place. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:21, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please supply a link to the discussion. But do you really imagine the contending arguments over the Taiwan Straits have never been discredited before? They were bogus to start with; which didn't prevent them being made. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:33, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Even if we assume you are correct - having a continued discussion (or one every 6 months) about the same topic, whatever it is, is hardly an argument in favour of less deterministic rules rather than more deterministic rules - if you have more deterministic rules - even in controversial topics which they might not fully address will probably address them more clearly and mean that continued long discussions can be avoided. Obviously with deterministic rules you still have a borderline (although a smaller one) but if there are less cases that fall into that camp - maybe abortion would be one - can be sorted out at Arbcom or by fiat/vote if needed. A good current example of a borderline case is Ireland, where there are good arguments for it being the country and for "all Ireland" aka the island. If we improve the rules less cases will fall into this middle ground camp which is better for the project as a whole. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:25, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The guidance here recommends Google Books and Google News for providing info for deciding commonname issues. But I think there's a bias with Google News that hasn't been taken into account.

Press agencies syndicate their content, so that a piece written by staff can end up being published on multiple news sites.

A hundred articles produced by the New York Times, the Guardian and and Sydney Morning Herald gets you a hundred returns on Google News. But a hundred articles produced by AP, AFP and Reuters could get you thousands of returns. So, lets say the first three prefer "tomayto" and the second three prefer "tomahto". Google news would tell you that "tomahato" wins by many hundred percent. But that's not a real reflection of the reality that the sources are split fairly evenly. It's actually a wildly unreliable place to look, at least in cases where house style is likely to be an issue.

My proposal is that News should not be recommended in the guidance, just Books.

--FormerIP (talk) 00:02, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is why you must always go beyond just the raw hit count and actually look at the results of a Google News search (or the results of a regular old Google searche). Looking the results of a Google News search can give you an indication of common usage. Blueboar (talk) 00:14, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, in the real example that prompted me to post this, we are talking about millions of results. So how do I go about that? --FormerIP (talk) 00:25, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not easily. :>) Probably the best way is to take a representative sampling (say the first ten pages of the search result) and see how many of the hits are repeats of the same article printed in multiple papers and how many are unique. It won't give you an exact indication... but it will give an indication. Figuring out the most common name is rarely an exact science. Remember that the goal isn't to come up with the correct title, but to come up with a consensus as to the most appropriate title.

That said (and to play devil's advocate)... the concept that underlies WP:COMMONNAME is the concept of Recognizably - what terms and usages will the most number of English-speakers (our readers) recognize and think of when referring to the topic of the article. If an agency (AP, Reuters, etc.) reporter uses "X", and that report is picked up and repeated in lots and lots of papers, then lots and lots of people will read that report and be influenced by it. There will probably be more readers who come to recognize the usage "X" than there are readers who recognize the usage "Y". (or to put it another way... While "Y" may used by more individual reporters, "X" is read by more people). This leads to the valid argument that we should ignore the fact of repetition, and go with raw hit counts. Despite the fact that many of the hits are repetitions, the raw hit count actually gives us a clearer picture of what more people will recognize.

That said... there is a valid counter-argument to this (one that shows how complicated the issue can become and why we can't make firm rules about all of this)... The New York Times has a far larger circulation than say the Albany Times-Union or the Plattsburg Press-Republican. In fact, the NYT has a far larger circulation than the Times-Union and the Press-Republican put together. Now... Let us say that both the Times-Union and the Press-Republican pick up and print an AP report that uses "X"... but the NYT report uses "Y"... even though a Google News search will give us a hit count of 2-1 in favor of "X", more people will have been exposed to (and thus come to recognize) "Y".

So... Hit counts are useful, they can tell us something... but they don't tell us everything. Hit counts should be looked at and factored into the discussion... but we still need to look beyond the raw hit counts. We need to examine a) how many news reports use a term, b) which news reports use the term, and c) which papers picked up the report and repeated it. As I said at the beginning... not easy. Blueboar (talk) 15:25, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be inclined to keep Google News - as news sites are an important part of establishing usage. If there are a number of obviously high profile sources (e.g. the BBC) that have an opposing view then they can be stated individually if needed - I would expect most of the time people would be happy with raw hit counts anyway for most discussions.

Unless you can deterministically show what a high importance reliable source is we should avoid making detailed criteria based on it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:21, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Does combining two names of a topic with "and" create a description of that topic? That question is being discussed here. --Born2cycle (talk)

And I'm utterly perplexed about why you want to keep talking about this. Dicklyon (talk) 17:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]