Talk:William Drayton Armstrong

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:William L. Armstrong which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 22:00, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 1 December 2017

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: moved as proposed. (closed by page mover) Bradv 04:45, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

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William Armstrong (Queensland politician) → William Drayton Armstrong – There is a good WP:NATURALDIS case to be made for this William Armstrong, because many historical and scholarly sources use his full name. Examples:

• Census of Queensland, 1886 that lists Armstrong as a tax collector.
• Editions of the Blue Book of Queensland from 1898, 1901, and 1907 (a directory of the Queensland Legislative Assembly at the time; see: blue book)
• Official Record of Debates, Volume 77 of the 1897 Queensland Legislative Assembly uses his full name twice, in p. 728 (quoting another member of the legislature addressing him) and in the index.
• Our First Half-Century, 1909 by the Queensland government [1]
• Record of 1912 Queensland Parliamentary Debates

In contrast, I find few similar sources that omit his middle name, except thist more recent Queensland Parliament history page. Arbor to SJ (talk) 16:44, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

• Support. No objections here. I think often the WP:COMMONNAME is the full name for politicians active pre-1900. The Drover's Wife (talk) 19:52, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose awaiting further sources. Not objecting in principle, but almost none of those sources are useful in discovering the common name here. I mean, the census? Everyone has their full name in the census, that's how the census works! The rest of them are all formal documents that would be legally required to list his full name (including the parliamentary debates, where it comes up in nominating him for formal positions like the Speakership). The Drover's Wife is quite right that the full name is quite commonly the common name before 1900 (and sometimes after), but if that is the case here, then there will be Trove newspaper sources and some modern ones too to back that up. Ironically, the only source actually cited here that is of any use determining common name is the one supporting "William Armstrong". Frickeg (talk) 22:12, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Response: OK, speaking of newspapers, in a search done using the National Library of Australia historical newspaper database:

• Darling Downs Gazette July 11, 1911 uses his full name. [2]
• The Capricornian July 6, 1912 uses his full name. [3]
• Telegraph (Brisbane) October 9, 1912 ditto. [4] Arbor to SJ (talk) 00:31, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

• Weak Support. OK, so the third one is, again, official (newspaper reprinting of Hansard debate), but the first two are the sort of thing we're looking for. But as Kerry says below, this whole thing is a bit of a storm in a teacup and it really could go either way. This is a case where modern practice is often (but not always) to refer to politicians of this period as Firstname Lastname, but as Kerry says at the time it would have been either Full Name or First-Initial. Second-Initial. Lastname (and some modern sources still go with this). For most of these people, of course, there won't be much discussion in modern sources anyway. This has never been satisfactorily addressed and I suspect it never will be, as most people (including me) don't care enough to bother. So consider this an "I guess" very weak support, and a highlighting of the fact that COMMONNAME really doesn't work very well in every circumstance. Frickeg (talk) 01:49, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

• Comment. I can't understand the excitement over the naming of this apparently long-forgotten politician. When we look at our guidelines in WP:COMMONNAME, I see guidance only in relation to currently discussed topics Bill Clinton, Bono etc and no guidelines in dealing with not-currently discussed topics like this chap. Or to put it another way, in the present day, he has no common name because we don't talk about him at all. Historical documents about him appear fall into two categories: documents that would usually list his full name and newspaper reports, which at that time would normally refer to him as "W.D. Armstrong" (see this Trove search) just as they would for anyone with two or more given names. So, I think our historical documents don't tell us anything much about his common name. Therefore, the name we assign to this Wikipedia article will probably become his common name (should anyone apart from ourselves ever want to talk about him). Given that we have many William Armstrong's on Wikipedia, I personally don't mind either William Drayton Armstrong or William Armstrong (Queensland policitian), as both appear to be unique at this time and therefore adequate for disambiguation purposes. I suggest we toss a coin, pick one and make the other a redirect. I don't think it really matters. Personally I like the Drayton version because there is a significance to his middle name (he was born in Drayton, which is a very historically significant place in Queensland, although ultimately became overtaken by Toowoomba). Kerry (talk) 00:13, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
  • I discovered this long-forgotten politician in William Armstrong, when I requested to retitle the page about a recently deceased US Senator (successfully) from William L. Armstrong to Bill Armstrong (American politician). Arbor to SJ (talk) 00:31, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Reply: This article from the 3 June 1936 Courier-Mail has "W.D." in the headline and "William Drayton..." in the article. Same in this obituary in Telegraph (Brisbane). Arbor to SJ (talk) 19:17, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
    • Since nobody is currently disagreeing, let's just rename it and move on. I hope William Drayton Armstrong appreciates our debate has massively increased his daily page views. He may be gone but, at least for a few days, not forgotten! :-) Kerry (talk) 21:22, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
• Support. I note that this simply reverses a recent undiscussed move 14:14, 29 November 2017‎ Necrothesp (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (72 bytes) (+72)‎ . . (Necrothesp moved page William Drayton Armstrong to William Armstrong (Queensland politician) over redirect: official sources usually give full names) which was obviously but in hindsight controversial. Andrewa (talk) 03:19, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

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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.