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Good articleSubtropical Storm Alpha (1972) has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Good topic starSubtropical Storm Alpha (1972) is part of the Off-season Atlantic hurricanes series, a good topic. This is identified as among the best series of articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do so.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 6, 2010Good article nomineeListed
April 5, 2011Good topic candidatePromoted
Current status: Good article

Requested move 4 June 2018

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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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: closing Talk:Subtropical Storm Andrea (2007), Talk:Subtropical Storm Alpha (1972), and Talk:Subtropical Storm Nicole (2004) as a group; there is no consensus to move these pages to titles without years appended at this time. In the future, when the issues at hand are the same, please propose moving groups of articles using a multimove request. Dekimasuよ! 01:01, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Subtropical Storm Alpha (1972) → Subtropical Storm Alpha – Per the discussion on Talk:Subtropical Storm Alberto, this page should be moved as well, because there is only one subtropical storm named "Alpha". B dash (talk) 06:44, 4 June 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Andrewa (talk) 15:54, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that people should ignore the WPTC Conventions since they have served us well over the years - it has only been recently that people have started talking about having titles at the most common name, primary topic etc and I for one am sick of having my watchlist flooded with requested moves.Jason Rees (talk) 21:48, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I find the slate of RM's very annoying myself but finding them annoying is a poor argument (granted one I sometimes use myself) compared to policy. This is the only "Subtropical Storm Alpha" so there's no need for the year. YE Pacific Hurricane 03:10, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Subtropical, tropical, hurricane, typhoon, cyclone, depression, the regional variation and inexpert use is massive, it is most unreasonable to assert that Subtropical Storm Alpha will be commonly recognized and distinguished from Tropical Storm Alpha in the absence of any context. Wikipedia titles come without context. And "alpha", how many things are called "alpha"? Alpha is more of a generic non-name like John Doe, given to everything this is, or someone would like to be, the first. These storms are arguably not even notable, due to a lack of secondary sources discussing them not from the immediate time of the occurrence, ie not sufficiently removed. In the extremely rare case of a new source in later years discussing the storm, the year is always used to introduce it, and indeed, given that storms move and change intensity, the date is most important information. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:00, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Necessary per WP:PRECISION. Claims that the year is critical for recognizability are claims that the year should be part of the unqualified title, not that a disambiguating qualifier should be kept where there is no Wikipedia ambiguity and is contrary to the project's naming conventions: "If a name was used only once, no year is needed (e.g. Hurricane Rina or Typhoon Zeb)." Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones. The consensus within the cyclone project and within Wikipedia is to not use the qualifier where no qualifier is needed. If the year is critical for recognizability, first get consensus within the cyclone project for the new naming style that puts the year in the unparenthesized title, then move this to whatever format that is (e.g., "1972 Subtropical Storm Alpha"). -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:22, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Critical, because without the year in the title, the title will be so easily misrecognized, noting the generic “alpha” name, and widespread confusion on the classification of storms, noting that they sometime change from day to day as the storm intensifies. On prefixing event articles with the year, User:Andrewa led a discussion on that directly, somewhere, where was that? Cons I think we’re that while the year is good in titles, it is often desirable to be able to use the pipe trick, which requires the year to have been suffixed behind a comma or parenthesis. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:58, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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I first closed this as not moved, before seeing the two other similar discussions at Talk:Subtropical Storm Nicole (2004)#Requested move 4 June 2018 and Talk:Subtropical Storm Andrea (2007)#Requested move 4 June 2018.

All three refer to the discussion at Talk:Subtropical Storm Alberto#Requested move 27 May 2018, but that closed without consensus. IMO we need a naming convention to deal with such cases. At the very least, centralise discussion here on these three. Andrewa (talk) 16:01, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The tropical cyclone wikiproject has a naming convention, which gives Atlantic hurricanes etc the year unless they are retired. This policy has served us well over the years. However, this convention has been challenged over the last few months time and time again through various requested moves, to the point where it is now getting disruptive and annoying.Jason Rees (talk) 16:57, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones#Naming (I assume that's what you mean, a link would be good if not) has no status as a naming convention as far as I can see, and (at the risk of instruction creep) that may be part of the problem.
Support that clause at least, and if we can get consensus on that, it should become part of the formal naming conventions IMO. Andrewa (talk) 23:17, 11 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest that if a named system remains subtropical, that the year should be removed, as it really is not needed for recognizability, considering that these systems are the only subtropical cyclones with their assigned name. Cooper 23:43, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest that that implies an expectation well beyond “familiarity” with storm naming and past storms’ names. Not that the context of a Wikipedia title is context free. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:56, 14 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It depends what you want to disambiguate.

  1. The year (1972)
  2. The name (vs 2005 storm)
  3. The storm type (subtropical vs tropical)

There was an extensive move discussion on Talk:Tropical Storm Alpha (2005), so the year was kept there, as it should be kept here. I vote no move. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 00:59, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That convo was 13 years ago, when retired storms only had their name dropped when lately the trend ever since the consensus in 2011 has been to drop the year if it was only used once. This is the only "Subtropical Storm Alpha" so I see no reason to disambiguate. YE Pacific Hurricane 17:57, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
True. Seeing as the storm type disambiguates fine, and having slept on it, I support dropping the year. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 19:43, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"We need a naming convention". We have them. Policy: WP:PRECISION (which would override any project's WP:LOCALCONSENSUS anyway, but happily in this case is agreed with by) project guidelines: "If a name was used only once, no year is needed (e.g. Hurricane Rina or Typhoon Zeb)." Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones. This is an easy close as move based on policy and guidelines. The claims above that only retired Atlantic hurricanes don't take the year skipped part of the guidelines. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:22, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
True. But this seems to be a perennial area of discussion, and as you say it's only happily that the guidelines agree with policy, which would override any project's WP:LOCALCONSENSUS anyway. That's the underlying problem... this detailed guideline has no status. Andrewa (talk) 20:21, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think so. I think they happily agree now because the earlier perennial discussion illustrated the discrepancy, and so it was addressed by bringing the guideline, which has some status, in line with the policy, which has more status, and ended the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. (It's certainly possibly that the guidelines might have a clarity obstacle if it's still being misread as not in line with the policy, though.) -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:26, 18 June 2018 (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.

Requested move 17 October 2018

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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 section.

The result of the move request was: moved. There is consensus for the move proposal. (closed by non-admin page mover) QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 06:08, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

– After the RM discussion on Subtropical Storm Alberto, many WPTC users think that "Subtropical Storm" is different from "Tropical Storm", given that this is the only storm name that is at subtropical storm status, I'm here to propose the move again, since the last RM was no consensus. B dash (talk) 07:12, 17 October 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. bd2412 T 02:55, 31 October 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Steel1943 (talk) 02:04, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • The WikiProject tropical cyclones is not a cabal, nor a cult, but a collection of editors hellbent on telling the truth to the world, to the best of our typing and researching skills, about every (sub)tropical cyclone we have come across. We may (not) be a cabal/cult, but the fellow editors in this project are some of the closest friends I have, who I have known for years, and we've all helped each other, with moral support and humor. You should join :) ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 00:31, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ah, WP:WPTC. I did try WP:TC. WikiProjects are great. Community and friends are great. I want to caution, beware of a little problem of familiarity and comfort with people sharing an interest, that being lapses into jargon, jargon is a barrier to newcomers. This article is not within the wikiproject, but is exposed at the highest level to first time readers. I also like humour, but don’t think to look to hurricanes for it. 😁. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:51, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Quite true, but if someone is taking the trouble of typing "Subtropical Storm Alpha", then they clearly meant to put the "sub" there, which can only mean this specific storm. The others were tropical storms, a subtle but important difference, in terms of title ambiguity. Given that Subtropical Storm Alpha already redirects here, I believe a page move would still be more than accessible to all users. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 00:54, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:PRIMARYREDIRECTs cause few problems, and so the threshold for creating them is quite low. PRIMARYREDIRECTs are not a sufficient reason to reduce the recognisability of the actual article title. The article title can appear in many places, lists, categories, urls, hover text, and the year is very helpful for recognisability in places where context is lacking. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:56, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - thinking about it more, and looking at the other Alpha articles, I don't think it would be helpful to move this article. The 1973 storm is pronounced the exact same way, and was also a subtropical storm. Readers would be better served if Subtropical Storm Alpha redirected to Tropical Storm Alpha. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 01:28, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    That works too. And possibly Subtropical Storm Alpha and Subtropical Storm Alfa could both redirect to Tropical Storm Alpha. As long as "name" doesn't redirect to "name (year)". -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:14, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 12:18, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Hold on because we are running a slippery slope. When I first started editing 10 years ago, we only included the year if a name was retired. Hurricane Karl (2010)'s RM back in 2010 changed that somewhat, and we started dropping the year in cases of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and started dropping the year in titles in cases the name was only used once. About a year or two ago, we started dropping the year if a storm was the only "Hurricane X" or "Typhoon X", even if it was uased elsewhere at a different intensity, and as a result, Typhoon Faith and Hurricane Faith, for example, both do not include the year in their respective title because it's the only hurricane and typhoon named Faith. Based on this standard, this should be moved to Subtropical Storm Alpha. Why the change in heart? There's no direct ambiguity in dropping the year, because this is the only subtropical storm named Alpha. YE Pacific Hurricane 16:00, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not a slippery slope. Alfa and Alpha are "close enough" to be possibly confused. Either solution (storms at the base names with {{distinguish}} hatnotes, or SIA reached from the base names) is workable and won't propel us off a cliff. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:13, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Partial support: Seems that "Alpha" may be confusing with "Alfa", I would tend to oppose the first one, but supporting the move of other two articles. --158.182.178.168 (talk) 03:32, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose the versions without a year should all redirect to the Tropical Storm X disambiguation pages for these names, the way that Hurricane X pages do. power~enwiki (π, ν) 22:17, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    But not all of the Hurricane X pages do. Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Sandy, etc. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:31, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Same as Tropical Storm X, e.g. Tropical Storm Tammy. --B dash (talk) 13:16, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per WP:PRECISE (the current title is overly precise), WP:SMALLDETAILS (the distinction of Alpha vs Alfa is fine), and WP:CONCISE. Of course each of the three Alpha/Alfa storm articles should have hatnotes to the other two. --В²C ☎ 19:36, 26 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first of the references that would load (! so many references are broken !) that is a quality source (not a directory source, not a primary (1972) source) is: https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/tropical/rain/alpha1972.html This document titles the topic as "Subtropical Storm Alpha - May 23-29, 1972". It includes the year! The year is part of the RECOGNIZABLE COMMONNAME. It (the year) is not over-precise. Agree with "May 23-29" being over-precise. A good title is not an over-shortened title that requires article hatnoting. Hatnotes are strong indicators of poor, imprecise titles, they acknowledge that some will come to the page not wanting this page. Hatnotes are ugly consumers of article prime real estate. The current title is not so long that the title wraps to a new line, removing the year will only generate title space white space, thus removing the year advantages nothing. (and Alpha/Alfa is a very small SMALLDETAIL, quite debatable as sufficient, cf sulphur,sulfur, Philippines/Filippines, "ph" and "f" are interchangeable to many readers.) --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:28, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    If the year is part of the recognizable common name, then it shouldn't be in parentheses. No issue with that solution either. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:18, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Possibly true. I’ve never really got worked up about comma versus parenthesis, considering it to be a style thing. The real world rarely does parentheses, and Wikipedia loves to do parentheses, this difference is not ideal, but I don’t think it causes problems for readers. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:45, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    That source I picked out, it uses a dash, or hyphen, whatever. I think comma vs dash vs parenthesis is just styling, when read aloud, it is usually read the same in all cases. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:48, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia doesn't love parentheses; parentheses are used for disambiguating phrases (unless they're part of the title of a work) as "artificial disambiguation" (the least preferred type). That's style or technical limitation or whatever. But if the common name doesn't use parentheses and no disambiguation is needed, then the Wikipedia title doesn't have parentheses (and "X" doesn't redirect to "X (Y)". -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:19, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia does love the parenthesis. See Acer (company), just moved from the COMMONNAME, Acer inc. If the proposal here was to move to “, 1972”, I would support that, but it is not the proposal. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:57, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    A non-admin move that wasn't proposed. But at least it isn't "Acer" redirecting to "Acer (company)", which would be a problem. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:16, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I think you overstate the problem of X redirecting to X (Y), if Y is part of the name. Non ideal, awkward, ok, but the solution is not stripping the “Y”, if Y is part of the recognisable COMMONNAME. There are a lot of Wikipedia titles with parentheses that could be changed to comma. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:59, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    If unparenthesized Y is part of the common name, then it shouldn't be parenthesized on Wikipedia. I do not think that there are a lot of them that have ", 1970" (or some other year) as part of their common name though. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:44, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Are you seeking to distinguish between “the commonname” (singular) and a name commonly recognised in reliable sources (multiple)? Many events need the year, most benefit significantly from the year, in terms of recognizability and preventing misrecongition. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:40, 2 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Me? No, I'm happy to leave the decision of what the appropriate natural title for this topic is to the tropical storms project, whether it might be 1972 Subtropical Storm Alpha or Subtropical Storm Alpha or Subtropical Storm Alpha, 1972. If the common name (singular) has a year, then put it in the title (but not in parentheses unless the common name also has parentheses). Articles about events will include the year in the lede, which is where it belongs, just like articles about people don't put their birth year in the title, and articles about companies don't put the years of their founding in the title, and articles about albums or films don't put their release years in the title, because that information is not part of the title. The lede does not need to be repeated in the title, even though that would have the same benefit of recognizability and misrecognition-prevention. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:13, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    For events, I saw discussion on prefixed year versus comma suffixed year. I think that is just style. Word order is important in English, but not always, and not in this case. I think the suffixed year has advantages in title autocompletion in the Go Box. The title does not repeat a lede, the title precedes the lede, and the title frequently stands alone from the lede, and so must stand alone from the lede. There is significant cost to making readers download the article to get the lede to understand the title. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:20, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    And yet articles about people don't put their birth year in the title, and articles about companies don't put the years of their founding in the title, and articles about albums or films don't put their release years in the title, because that information is not part of the title, despite the significant cost to the reader of supposedly having to download those articles before they can understand those titles. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:17, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Those cases could be argued, but the case for events is stronger. Storms, accidents, etc, random brief dramatic events, when they are talked about it is normal to mention the year upfront. In the case of this storm, sources from more than 12 months after, they always begin their introduction with the year. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:34, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    And if it's normal, it should be in the normal title. It isn't normal to parenthesize the year when they are talked about, and the sources don't parenthesize it either. Which has been my point: title the article per WP:COMMONNAME, and if (and only if) that title is ambiguous, then disambiguate it. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:52, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    It is normal practice for Wikipedia to jump to parenthesizing when nominally preferred options are available, as has happened here, even if you and I don't support that. That the title is ambiguous was my original point. "subtropical" and "storm" and "ph"/"f" are ambiguous, and stringing ambiguous terms together makes for jargon at the expense of recognizability. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:58, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    If the Subtropical Storm Alpha is ambiguous and there's no primary topic, then Subtropical Storm Alpha doesn't redirect to Subtropical Storm Alpha (1972) because the base name is the disambiguation page. If Subtropical Storm Alpha is ambiguous and there is a primary topic, then Subtropical Storm Alpha doesn't redirect to Subtropical Storm Alpha (1972) because the primary topic article is at the base name. That's my original and ongoing point. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:26, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    PRIMARYREDIRECTs do little to no harm, and so the threshold for them is below that for a title decision. PRIMARYREDIRECTs only exist for page-landers at that title. Actual titles are much more important. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:41, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Yep, primary redirects to better titles are useful. Redirecting from a title to the same title with a qualifier is not a primary redirect; it's an error, because the better title would not have the parentheses. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:56, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. This is simply a case of unnecessary disambiguation since the base titles already redirect here. Hatnotes can be employed for similar topics. -- Tavix (talk) 15:37, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Unnecessary hatnotes are a scourge. Their existence implies an imprecise misrecognizable title, and they don’t appear for some, device dependent, and they mess the top of the article uselessly for most. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:23, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - given that the base names already redirect to these titles, this should not even be controversial. WP:CONCISE and WP:PRECISE tell us that much and there are no other subtropical storms with these exact names. (Subtropical Storm Alpha vs Subtropical Storm Alfa is a clear case of where WP:SMALLDETAILS is applicable and that serves us well, in contrast to the Red Meat fiasco).  — Amakuru (talk) 00:39, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Per WP:PRECISE as the unqualified titles already redirect here, this is otherwise WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. See User:Born2cycle/Unnecessary disambiguation, there is no obvious amount of qualification that could be added to titles, so we can rely on being able to agree to having no qualification. See this comment for a similar example. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:53, 13 November 2018 (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.

Move it back

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What a disaster. Move it back to the way it was pre-2018. I like to saw logs! (talk) 20:11, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

An editor WP:BOLDly moved it to Subtropical Storm Alpha (1972) and changed the leftover redirect at Subtropical Storm Alpha to point to a disambiguation page, Tropical Storm Alpha, which now lists 4 storms: SS Alpha (1972), SS Alfa (1975), TS Alpha (2005), and the currently active storm, SS Alpha (2020). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 20:50, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Rename Article

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This article needs to be renamed. NHC seasonal tracks has it as “Alfa” not “Alpha”. And the NATO phoenetic alphabet that was in use also uses Alfa. Juliett as well instead of Juliet. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tracks/tracks-at-1972.pngOWGNicholas (talk) 06:37, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article does not need to be renamed per WP:Common Name since the system seems to have been named Alpha by NHC, rather than Alfa, which seems to be used like a typo.Jason Rees (talk) 11:33, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was named Alpha as per the NHC’s seasonal tracks as i linked above. The NATO phoenetic alphabet, in use since 1956, uses Alfa instead of Alpha. Thats where the subtropical storm names come from. Also 1973 they use Alfa as well.OWGNicholas (talk) 13:04, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@OWGNicholas: The NHC modern-day seasonal track map or any other sources does not supersede WP:Common Name, the advisories from the time and the majority of sources which use Alpha.Jason Rees (talk) 18:23, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are just as many that refer to it by the proper name of Alfa, including the seasonal report from the NHC: https://journals.ametsoc.org/downloadpdf/view/journals/mwre/101/4/1520-0493_1973_101_0323_ahso_2_3_co_2.pdf
It would be more appropriate to use BOTH in the title actually. Since it appears that they used the correct name Alfa in some instances and used the incorrect form in others. Guess thats what happens in a pre-internet age though. But Alfa was the correct version, hence why 1973’s storm used that. Seems like they realized what happened and made sure to not make that mistake again. OWGNicholas (talk) 21:48, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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