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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Aberlour House (building) → Aberlour House – This article is about Aberlour House, a building dating from 1858, which is Category A listed, and has been described by significant figures in Scottish architecture (such as Charles McKean) as William Robertson's masterpiece. It was, from 1947 until 2005, used as a school; that school has since been absorbed into Gordonstoun as its junior school, and Aberlour House was sold (it's now the head office for Walkers Shortbread). As described here, Gordonstoun continues to use the name Aberlour House to refer to its accommodation block for junior boarders, but this is an entirely different building and they are just maintaining the connection for tradition's sake. Our article Aberlour House (school), which is about the school, previously existed at this title - I think that, due to the building's age and long-term significance, and the fact that the school took its name from the building rather than the other way around, this subject ought to be the PRIMARYNAME at this title. For full disclosure, I BOLDLY renamed the school article myself already and created a disambiguation page at the primary title; given that it had been at this title for a long time, I realise that I probably ought to have made a move request in the first place, and so I ask that that my move of that page be considered as part of this request. GirthSummit (blether)18:58, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Both articles have had similar numbers of page views (48 for the building and 33 for the school) since their creation under these names on 25 August 2019, three days ago. There is no evidence that either is WP:PTOPIC. The DAB page Aberlour House has historically averaged 8 views/day, but there is no telling which topic readers who arrived at that page before 25 August were looking for. Narky Blert (talk) 08:56, 28 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comments Narky Blert. I am a newcomer to move requests, so please forgive me if what I'm about to say is a bit naive. Have you looked a bit further back in time with regards to the page view numbers? The building article is new, and both have a connection to another article I wrote recently in collaboration with a number of editors (Margaret Macpherson Grant). I would not be surprised of both numbers (the building and the school) were inflated by the number of people involved in writing and reviewing them, fixing redirects after the move, etc. Also, my argument about PRIMARYTOPIC is not based on page view numbers, it's based on which has the longer-standing and longer-lasting claim to significance. Is it the building itself, or is it the residential block, which was named after a school, which was named after the building. Cheers GirthSummit (blether)21:14, 28 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Girth Summit: My apologies for being slow in getting back to you. What follows is my general opinion, and does not relate to this RM.
The guidelines about WP:PTOPIC (that one main one, and bits scattered in other parts of WP:MOS which are not all fully consistent with it) give the impression of having been written in the early days of WP, and are now effectively set in stone. IMO their general tendency is to overstress the desirability of having a PTOPIC. The advantage of a PTOPIC is that the majority of readers can get to where they want in one click and the minority in two or three, rather than everybody having to make two (which is the case with a DAB page). There are, however, a couple of disadvantages. One (which I know is not your intention here) is that some editors try to get a PTOPIC declared as some sort of popularity contest. This tends to happen with fans of some musician or other who might be forgotten in a year's time. That disadvantage isn't much of a problem, it's self-correcting in the long term. The other is more serious.
Many editors do not check their links. There's a useful bot, User:DPL bot, which checks daily for new incoming links to DAB pages, which are errors under WP:INTDAB. There are typically 500-600 of them. (That's DAB pages, not total links – I've seen individual DAB pages with over 2,000 incoming links which needed repairing after a move.) WikiGnomes work behind the scenes to point those links to the correct places. However, the only good way of checking links to actual articles involves eyeballs – that is, looking into every entry in 'What links here'. That is pretty tedious on pages with many incoming links, and relies on an editor both coming across the problem and taking the time to look into it. That means that PTOPICs inevitably collect links-in which are to the wrong article, which are unhelpful or misleading to readers, and which damage the project. As the worst type of example, Esplanade and Salt Lake City look like clear PTOPICs; but in articles about India, especially West Bengal, links-in will almost without exception be intended for Esplanade, Kolkata and Salt Lake City, Kolkata respectively.
That is why I'm reluctant to !vote for a PTOPIC except in the very clearest of cases.
(RMs where there are two possible PTOPICs can get very heated. I was a minor participant in the New York Wars, during and after which one editor I know fixed 65,000 bad links (that is not a typo).)
Thanks for the explanation Narky Blert - I take your point, and appreciate the time it must have taken to write all that! FWIW, I still feel that this is a case where I think the building ought to be the primary topic. Today, there are two buildings called Aberlour House - one is a historically significant listed building by one of Scotland's leading 19th Century architects; the other is a dormitory, which took its name from a school (which no longer uses the name), which was itself named after the original building. I'd argue that the historic building, currently the HQ for a internationally famous company, is an obvious PTOPIC; from there we can (and do) link to the article about the school in the relevant section. With regards to the links, I'd be happy to undertake to review all of the pages in 'what links here', review which article they ought to point at, and to make the necessary adjustments. As for the potential of new links going to the wrong article in the future, I don't imagine that either of these articles will attract many new links in the years to come. If others think that is a concern however, then it will not be the end of the world if we retain the status quo with the disambig page. Cheers GirthSummit (blether)20:11, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Given the confusion and shared history between the quite separate institutions, and the fact that readers may be looking for either one, a dab page will cause least confusion. — Amakuru (talk) 14:58, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
