Talk:Willapa

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived 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: not moved. I am closing two move discussions together: Willapa people and Willapa. This is because the proposed move of Willapa people to Willapa would be possible only if the dab page at Willapa were moved to Willapa (disambiguation), and the move of the dab page would make no sense unless the article at Willapa people was moved. This closing statement is being posted to both discussions, which were made by the same nominator and should really have been made as one joint proposal.
The procedural flaw could justify a procedural close, but I don't think that is necessary. The issue in both cases is whether the article currently at Willapa people is the primary topic for the term "Willapa". That is the nominator's proposition, but the nomination offered no evidence to support that, and invoked the essay WP:UNDAB. That essay reflects one view of policy, but it is neither a policy nor a guideline.
The nominator's assertion of primary topic was explicitly countered by the evidence of User:In ictu oculi, whose Google Books search shows a geographical usage as primary. That evidence was uncontested.
In the discussion on the dab page, the nominator posted page view statistics as evidence that the people are the primary topic. Those stats showed a ratio of 3:2 page views, with the people as the more widely viewed than the river. However the stats did not include the page views for the other topics listed on the dab page (Willapa Electric Company, Willapa Bay or Willapa Hills). If that evidence had been presented it could only have reduced the apparent prominence of the people as a topic. We don't know whether it would have shown the people to be a minority of all page views, but since the evidence was demonstrably incomplete it cannot be taken as supporting the nominator's view.
The third argument in favour of renaming was an assertion that the word people should be removed per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes). It is unclear whether that guideline reflects community consensus, since it was significantly edited by the nominator during the course of these discussion. In any case, both the current version of that guideline and the version created in 2012 both note that several variants of usage are acceptable depending on common usage, the guideline does not resolve the question either way.
So in the absence of any policy-based reason to move, the consensus is weighed as not moved. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:08, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

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Willapa → Willapa (disambiguation) – this title was created as dab page on Sep 7 2010 by Babbage. Current title at "Willapa people" created by myself on Nov 24 2009. cf. Talk:Willapa people#Requested move and please discuss there. Skookum1 (talk) 07:18, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

• Support as per the policy Wikipedia:Article titles#Use commonly recognizable names and the guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes). There is no need to redo any guideline as it already supports the un-disabiguated title.
• Oppose. No proof that there is a primary topic especially with a dab page at the main namespace. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:43, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
• Support. All of the geographic terms are narrowly confined to the region inhabited by the people, indicating that they reference the preexisting tribe. bd2412 T 14:48, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
• Support – the only possible contender for "Willapa" is Willapa River, which is not actually ambiguous, being a river. Furthermore, it gets less traffic:

Willapa people has been viewed 148 times in 201403.

Willapa River has been viewed 95 times in 201403.

The only other entry that even deserves to be on the dab page, per WP:PTM, is the improperly listed ship, General Miles. I am going to clean up the page per MOS:DAB. ENeville (talk) 18:48, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• • updating those now that March 2014 is over:
    • Willapa people has been viewed 183 times in total that month
    • "Willapa River" has been viewed 118 times
    • "Willapa" was viewed 65 times - there is no way to trace, not that I know of though there may be that I don't know of, what people went to from the dab page, but the chances that it is at least proportionately or greater the people article that people were looking for are underscored by the comparative results for people/river above.
  • i.e. 37 more views for the ethnographic article, 23 more for the river article, which as you note is not ambiguous; similar problems with claims of PRIMARYTOPIC were why Haida people is now a rare exception to all those other RMs that have been closed sans people where the people are clear and away the PRIMARYTOPIC.Skookum1 (talk) 01:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
• Support Per nom. --►Cekli829 19:59, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

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.