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User:Born2cycle/primaryoronly

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The WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for a given term applies only to terms that have at least two uses. The concept is especially relevant in title decision-making. Perhaps the quintessential example is Paris; despite having multiple articles on WP with topics named "Paris", editors have determined the primary use of "Paris" is the city in Paris, and so the article about that topic has the title Paris. So we say that the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of "Paris" is the city in Paris, and so it's title can be Paris. But what about the Austrian city of Kitzbuhel? Isn't it the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of "Kitzbuhel"? Technically, we can't say that, because there is no other use for Kitzbuhel on WP; it's not ambiguous. It is in fact the only topic of "Kitzbuhel".

Since it can be useful to refer to the concept of a topic that is either the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for a given term, or its only topic, the term PRIMARYORONLYTOPIC is hereby defined to mean that. More precisely:

Definition: The WP:PRIMARYORONLYTOPIC for a term is a Wikipedia article topic which meets either one of the following criteria:

  1. It is the only topic with an article on Wikipedia to which that term refers.
  2. It meets the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC criteria for that term.

Examples

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  • The city in France named Paris, the topic of the article at Paris, is the WP:PRIMARYORONLYTOPIC for the term Paris because it is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of the term Paris.
  • The talk show celebrity named Oprah Winfrey, the topic of the article at Oprah Winfrey, is the WP:PRIMARYORONLYTOPIC for the term Oprah Winfrey because that topic is the only one with an article on Wikipedia to which the term Oprah Winfrey refers.
  • If a title has a WP:PRIMARYORONLYTOPIC that title is likely to be the chosen title of the article about that topic, unless the topic has another name which is used more commonly in reliable sources to refer to it.