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Archive 1Archive 2

Article title

Or, "Why is the name of this article so dang long?" This article was originally a long-ish section of Monopoly (game), that I forked off for further expansion, and to keep the size of the main article down. In doing so, I tried to follow article naming per WP:TITLE, specifically: "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." Because even the main game article itself is Monopoly (game) (due to the existence of economic monopolies), I felt from the moment I forked off the article that "History of Monopoly" would be asking for trouble as it's too ambiguous. --JohnDBuell 11:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The title Monopoly (game) is used because the engine doesn't disambiguate capitals in the beginning of a title and because the boardgame is not the primary meaning of the term. It's not ambiguous since there is nothing else that could be refered to as "Monopoly". The history of economic monopolies would be something like History of monpolies or even history of economic monopolies. Naming such an article "history of monopoly" would just be non-standard English. Either way, the capital letter is enough of disambiguator and there isn't even anything to disambiguate it from. The current title looks like the title of an essay, not an encyclopedic article.
Peter Isotalo 12:15, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately though, I could see someone accusing us of "parking trademarks" in article space. See Talk:Accelerated Math#Page title for an example of what I mean. I would think that putting some disambiguation notes at History of monopoly (or -ies) with proper links might be the best way to satisfy this. --JohnDBuell 21:01, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree that the capital letter is enough of a disambiguator. Lots of titles capitalize the main words whether they are proper nouns or not. a title on the history of war is very often written as History of War. I can also picture someone titling an article History of monopoly just the same as History of war or History of money. It may not be "correct" English, but lots of things aren't and are still used. - Taxman Talk 15:06, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Discussion of article title

I have recently begun an RFC on this. I would like a consensus to be formed under one of the following proposals. Please vote Support ONLY under one of the following, with your reasons. Thanks for your input! --JohnDBuell 14:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Keep the current title

Change title to "History of Monopoly"

I feel I should state my reasons of opposition to this. It's mostly an issue of ambiguity. There are those that find this the most simple title, but not specifying that the Parker Brothers board game is the subject I feel is asking for trouble (see above). Further, I have found in my research that authors on the subject of the game tend to use "monopoly" when writing about the "folk game" pre-Darrow and pre-Parker Brothers, and "Monopoly" when writing about the game Darrow produced and sold to PB. One could argue for splitting the current article in half on these grounds, but I feel a single comprehensive history article is still the best. For the record, PB/Hasbro officially treat the word in all caps as their trademark, though I'm not sure its use would be appropriate on Wikipedia. --JohnDBuell 14:45, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Support this change, per Peter's comments in the section above. Using "History of monopoly" to refer to economic monopolies would be ungrammatical and illogical, as he explains. "History of Monopoly" is unambiguous. As for the folk games, none of them were actually named "monopoly" with an initial lowercase letter. But they form part of the history of Monopoly, the PB-trademarked game, which is the subject of this article. Andrew Levine 16:51, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

While I appreciate your opinion, I do want to state for the record that while no games were published under the name "Monopoly" until Darrow began publication, it is recorded that home-made versions of the game were called such things as "Antitrust" (Scott Nearing's name for the game), "Auction Monopoly" and "Monopoly." --JohnDBuell 20:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Change title to "History of Monopoly (game)"

  • Support. Quoting WP:DAB:

    2. A disambiguating word or phrase can be added in parentheses. The word or phrase in parentheses should be:

  • the generic class that includes the topic (for example, Mercury (element), Seal (mammal)); or
  • the subject or context to which the topic applies (for example, Union (set theory), Inflation (economics)).

Since Monopoly has also been recreated as a computer game, "board game" is not a good choice. siafu 15:52, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Change title to "History of Monopoly (board game)"

Change title to ...

If you have another suggestion, please add it here.

Monopoly - History of the board game --Caligvla 16:21, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Article and Related Articles: a Compromise (?)

Right now, the articles History of Monopoly, History of monopoly and History of the board game Monopoly are related thus:

  1. History of the board game Monopoly is about the development of the board game Monopoly.
  2. History of Monopoly redirects to History of the board game Monopoly.
  3. History of monopoly is a disambig page, which links to articles about monopoly (the business practice) and Monopoly (the game).

I suggest this setup:

  1. History of the board game Monopoly remains about the development of the board game Monopoly. At the top of it is {{Otheruses4|the board game|the business practice|History of monopoly}}. This yields
    This page is about the board game. For the business practice, see History of monopoly.
  2. History of Monopoly redirects to History of monopoly.
  3. History of monopoly will be a developed article about the history of monopoly, the business practice. Monopoly#Historical examples of alleged de facto monopolies doesn't cut it because it's not chronological, or really even helpful. At the top would be {{Otheruses4|the business practice|the board game|History of monopoly}}, and this would yield
    This page is about the business practice. For the board game, see History of the board game Monopoly.

That sounds relatively fine to me. Finally, kids, don't name your board games after an economic practice. Ever heard of Risk? That's a dangerous one in my book. :) Would you support or oppose? -Gracenotes T § 19:11, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually I was thinking of another one just this morning, but I was going to give the RFC a bit more time before suggesting it. I got to thinking that if I ever translated this article for submission on the German Wikipedia, the appropriate name would be "Geschichte des Monopoly-Spiels", which translates back to "History of the Monopoly game". Any takers for that one? --JohnDBuell 19:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea. The "the Monopoly game" phrase does not seem to refer to Parker Brother's Monopoly. The game you're writing the article upon is not called "the Monopoly game" (as in "the Blame game"): it's simply called "Monopoly." What you can do instead is place the word "game" in front of Monopoly, to have it basically modify Monopoly, so you get "History of the game Monopoly." You know, that's pretty clear, but I have an idea. Why don't we be even more specific and say "History of the board game Monopoly"? That would be a lovely title...
???? <-> Gracenotes T § 02:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
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