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Use of obscure and/or not strictly COMMONNAME examples of COMMONNAME

@Johnbod: The reason I didn't take it to talk first was because I assumed my restoring the status quo pending someone opening a talk page discussion would be uncontroversial.

Do you have any concrete arguments against my reasoning? Do you really think Diocletian is a "common" name? It's a name I've seen used in a lot of scholarly literature on the topic, but at the same time I'd say if I asked any of my four siblings or my parents over Christmas dinner if they had ever heard of him, I might get 1/6 saying they had, and that's only because my father is almost as big a history buff as I am. Similarly, while J.K. Rowling actually is a household name, we use that pen name as our article title for the same reason we use Fujiwara no Teika -- someone who is/was known professionally by a pseudonym (of sorts) is called by that pseudonym regardless of whether it is commonly known/used among our readers.

Moreover, the lead of the page says It describes a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus. -- unless you can point to me where consensus was found that COMMONNAME applies to relatively obscure topics that don't have a "common" name but are conventionally called by a particular name in English-language reliable sources, the examples that were unilaterally added last April need to stay out.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not seeing many arguments in your reasoning frankly. Yes, I certainly think Diocletian is a WP:COMMONNAME, & you are entirely misreading the policy if you think only names likely to turn up in domestic conversation count as "common". I'd guess my sibling count would be 5+/7 - I may do an e-poll to test. That's recognising him as a Roman emperor, not knowing anything much about him. So why do your true statements about JK Rowling mean she should be removed as an example? I'm confused, but let's see what others think. Johnbod (talk) 16:12, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
I agree with Johnbod. Common name doesn't mean that everyone refers to the article subject by that name. Rather, that the majority of reliable sources use that name. For niche topics, those sources may be from a niche area and few outside the field may have heard of either the common or the actual name. In this respect, Diocletian is actually an excellent example for inclusion. --regentspark (comment) 16:27, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

For clarity:

Generally, I'd like to bring to mind that a few years ago there were extensive talks to reduce the number of examples in the list of "common name" examples of the policy – with few changes resulting from these talks: meaning, changes to the list of examples is a minefield, careful treading advised! For the people names, the shorter the list the better, so that editors actually take a look at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) ASAP, instead of deriving "policy" rules from some random examples, which they then propose as superseding the actual rules at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) (believe me, this has happened often). --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:19, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

  • All of you, please leave me alone. I think my interpretation is correct, and the longstanding status quo of this page supports my interpretation. Many, many other Wikipedians share this interpretation (why it is, and always has been, Man'yōshū and not Manyoshu). But I don't care enough to talk about it at this time. So please just drop it already. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:12, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, as long as I am not made the focus of this discussion as was being done until I posted the above (even after this edit), I don't mind continuing to participate in discussion -- I find it rather odd that discussion continued at all (it seems like my edit, which was immediately reverted and never restored, is now being used as an excuse to push through further controversial changes), but that's another matter. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:52, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Bono

Above I suggested to replace the Bono example:

  • Bono (not: Paul Hewson)

by either

or

The first of these two alternatives is probably more recognisable, but might suggest that there is a preference for "married name" or against "native spelling" – neither is always the case; the second illustrates that the common name ("... Mahler") supersedes the subject's personal preference ("... Mahler-Werfel"), so that's the one I prefer.

Is there enough support for such change? Alternatively,

  • Bono could just be dropped;
  • Other replacements could be proposed.

I'd proceed with the ...Mahler replacement in a few days, unless something else is suggested, with more support. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:28, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

We have 4 examples in each of the sections, which seems about right. Btw, of the sections "Scientific and technical topics" seems the weakest, but I suppose it is no use asking Wikipedians to focus on this, rather than their favorite topic of person names. I don't much like Alma - our article begins: "Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel (born Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler)" - too many possibilities, & perhaps just confusing. How do you lose a middle name btw? Curie is ok. Johnbod (talk) 16:17, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
Alma: "... she took the name Alma Mahler-Werfel" is further down in the article. "Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel ...", as in the Wikipedia article's lead sentence, does not exist, and is likely WP:OR (she divorced Gropius before the Werfel episode, so "Gropius" and "Werfel" can never be together in her name) – but true, as it is, this does not really make a straightforward example.
Middle names in article titles: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Middle names and initials. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:40, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
@Johnbod: How do you lose a middle name btw? Move to Japan, get bloody sick of people insisting that your middle name be included on all forms -- oftentimes after the fact, thus requiring that they be rewritten and resubmitted, usually on weekdays during business hours -- and then eventually just legally change your name to avoid the hassle. ;-) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:23, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Before making any such change, there should be an RFC to establish a clearer and broader community consensus regarding whether this policy is meant to primarily cover "household names" (mostly pop culture and political subjects in English-speaking countries) that are almost always referred to by one name and almost never referred to by the other. The changes made unilaterally last year, in my opinion, made the list worse; replacing a pop star with one legal and technically correct name that almost no one knows and one widely-known stage name with either of the above (one a relatively obscure -- at least from a "mainstream" Anglophone perspective -- composer and the other a scientist who is relatively well-known but hardly a household name, neither good or even remotely acceptable examples of "common name vs. official name") would carry these changes further, and should not be made without a clear and broad community consensus that the pre-2019 list of examples was a gross misinterpretation of policy (and that Man'yōshū should be moved to Manyoshu).
I would not, however, oppose removing Hewson and restoring Richard Starkey as an example instead. Actually, I would support that change.
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:48, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
Page views in the past 30 days:
So I suppose the Curie example would be preferable from a "recognisability" perspective.
For clarity, also J. K. Rowling (207,122 page views in the last month) seems to outdo both male "pseudonym" contestants above from a "recognisability" perspective.
Diocletian (41,277 page views in the last month), does less well from that perspective. As far as I'm concerned that example could be replaced by e.g. Nero (174,459 page views). --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:38, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
Given that the father of modern physics only has 267,105, I can't help but feel that Curie figure might be inflated -- perhaps by schoolchildren doing project's for International Women's Month? If we look at the figures from July last year (when both articles were linked from the main page for exactly one day) Starr had 324,762 while Curie had 170,947; the following month Starr had 225,903 visitors while Curie only 157,646. The figures for other months were closer, with Curie winning some and Starr winning others; over the course of 2019 Starr was viewed 2,508,403 times vs. 2,459,443 for Curie, so I'm not going to argue that they don't have a comparable level of name recognition, but Curie seems to benefit from sudden bursts of public interest due to various anniversaries. I'm not going to bother trying to figure out why about 5% of the page's annual visitors swamped there on April 3, but it's probably similar to why 15% of this page's annual views occurred on a single day -- a bunch of members of the unwashed masses who had either never heard of her or only vaguely recognized the name saw her referenced on some pop culture news website or the like, and came to Wikipedia to figure out who she was. This doesn't prove she is better-known -- it rather proves she is more obscure, at least among a "general" readership.
Let me be clear, I am not saying this state of affairs is a good thing. (You may recall a case not so long ago where I bemoaned that an apparently sizable portion of Wikipedia's editors insisted that an article on Japanese philology and religious history should grant undue weight to the views of an NPR host apparently because said source is in English and has a more "mainstream" appeal among our readership.) I hate that movie stars and popular musicians have greater name recognition among our readership than scientists -- but that is simply how things are.
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:20, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for comparing over a somewhat longer period of time. Bottom line seems to be "I'm not going to argue that [Starr and Curie] don't have a comparable level of name recognition" – meaning that either of them is better than the current Bono example from a recognisability point of view. Also, since their recognisability is "comparable" I'd still prefer Curie over Starr for the stated reasons:
  • Starr and Rowling illustrate the same principle (chosen pseudonym) – two examples illustrating the same principle are redundant, and there is no reason to remove the Rowling example.
  • Gender parity in the examples: 2 female / 2 male seems preferable over 3 male / 1 female
The analysis "why" Starr and Curie would be of different recognisability while the numbers say otherwise seems, to put it mildly, irrelevant, if not dispensable out of hand for being too speculative. Even if the speculation would be correct: school children more likely to understand the Curie example (while they encountered it at school) and not Starr (which they didn't encounter at school) seems an advantage. These examples can do more good if they're clear for young newbie editors, than if they're clear for an older audience that more likely doesn't need the examples to understand the principle. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:16, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Scientific and technical topics

Per Johnbod's suggestion above, how about replacing the first three,

by:

? I'd keep the cavia, works fine as an example afaics. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:13, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

  • Support both, though not necessarily for the (unspecified) reasons. "Caffeine" is a bloody terrible example since plenty of scientific literature can probably be found that use it as shorthand for "1,3,7-Trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione" anyway, and "fuchsia" is technically wrong (it's a scientific name that is also used in common parlance, while "lady's ear drops" is actually one of its common names) and it botanical articles appear to be an exception, since the vast majority of such articles actually do use the scientific name as the article title rather than choosing between multiple imprecise common names potentially each favoured by a different group of readers. The proposed examples do not have these problems. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:23, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Done --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:16, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

  • Support all these suggestions, and thanks to Francis Schonken for implementing it. Spanish flu is a good example because it was recently confirmed by consensus and represents the latest example.  — Amakuru (talk) 07:14, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Support all three. Caffeine looks like a nerd joke. Down Syndrome annoys me because it’s an annunciation derived error of Down’s Syndrome. The third one is not remotely familiar. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:27, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Only partial support, specifically for the aspirin–caffeine replacement. The Down syndrome example would be good to retain (we do in fact have medical and other technical editors who keep trying to move things to obtuse names to be "more correct" according to their own insular training). Meanwhile, the Spanish flu case is a poor example to introduce, because (rather obviously) we do in fact often use titles in forms like "1918 influenza pandemic" when there could be any doubt; cf. the article on the current pandemic). Next, we don't have any evidence that "compression-ignition engine" is something people would be inclined to use in place of "Diesel engine"; it's not even faintly common and is found only in technical contexts. The Fuchsia example is a sort/type of case that is good to retain, and is easily replaceable with something else. The most obvious example that comes to mind for me is "Smilodon (not sabre-toothed cat or saber-tooth tiger)", which has the extra bonus of accounting for BrEng vs. AmEng habits, and it also appeals to our younger-set reader/editors who tend to be inordinately interested in ancient megafauna). That is in fact a scientific name that has slowly become common in everyday English (with unofficial vernacular names that only vary a little from each other), while Fuchsia is both a long-running vernacular name (among many regional and well-documented ones that widely diverge) and a genus epithet. So, they aren't quite parallel cases.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:24, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
    • I agree the aspirin for caffeine swap is particularly strong. The chemical name of caffeine is not a plausible title for caffeine, but acetylsalicylic acid is (it’s even in the default autocorrection list). I agree that Smilodon is a very good example, as a better title than the common uninformed guess. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:11, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
    • Imho "Down syndrome" is not the most ideal example, for several reasons: (1) it is difficult to prove that "Down syndrome" is more common than "Down's syndrome" ([1]); (2) there's that other, no longer PC, term which for over a century (the syndrome was first defined in 1862), i.e. until around 1970, was more common than "Down's syndrome", and until around 1980 more common than "Down syndrome" ([2]). The first of these objections relates to the fact that the common name principle is usually fairly useless w.r.t. spelling variants (e.g. of the ENGVAR type), and that a "common name" example should not suggest the contrary. The second of these objections relates to the fact that the common name has no built-in PC correction (that is a principle different from the common name principle), and the example should not suggest the contrary. Further, regarding the "medical example": note that both "Aspirin" and "Spanish flu" are in the medical realm, and drive the point home w.r.t. medical terms.
    I think one example from the combined fauna and flora realms (including ancient megafauna) suffices. Comparing the current candidates ("Guinea pig", "Fuchsia", "Smilodon"), I think the "Guinea pig" still is most illustrative in covering bases, and drives the point home. And, as per the previous point, the Smilodon example is less suitable in somehow suggesting that COMMONNAME is a usual way out for ENGVAR issues.
    Re. "Diesel engine": I sought for the best example I could find in the technical/engineering realm (the former list, despite having "technical" in the list header, did not have a single example from that realm). I'm open for better proposals, but the example is better than having none from that realm. And it is a clear example: common term is far more used than technical term, thus common name is chosen. I like the clarity of the example (as opposed to "Down syndrome"/"Down's syndrome" which is rather fuzzy as to whether it really illustrates the COMMONNAME principle, see above).
    For the same reason, i.e. clear illustration of the COMMONNAME principle, I think "Spanish flu" is an excellent example: it was recently, i.e. after COVID-19 outbreak, confirmed as a WP:COMMONNAME instance (see explicit reference to COMMONNAME in RfC closure), in a broadly attended RfC. If it illustrates anything w.r.t. COVID-19 related article title choices, then it is that the common name principle works fairly well for names that have been around for some time, but not for neologisms and/or recent events: for these, inevitably, the fifth of the WP:CRITERIA, i.e. consistency defined by naming conventions guidelines, will obviously often take the upper hand. I have no clue whether "2019–20 coronavirus pandemic" is a stable article title – in a few years its common name may be "2019–21 coronavirus pandemic" or whatever name not really even in the picture today: WP:NOTCRYSTALBALL, and WP:COMMONNAME can not be used as a substitute for a CRYSTALBALL. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:22, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose I strongly disagree with the inclusion of "Spanish Flu" as it is an example of WP:COMMONNAME on ideological rather than objective criteria. Even though it was confirmed by consensus, people arguing about the inclusion of "Spanish" seemingly overlooked that the page is about an event in time. As the page is currently titled it actually encourages misinformation by inferring that there is a strain of flu called the "Spanish flu", despite that strain actually being A/H1N1, sometimes referred to as "swine flu". Even if the consensus demanded "Spanish flu" to be in the title, it should be "Spanish flu pandemic" or "1918 Spanish flu pandemic" and Spanish flu should redirect to either "Influenza A virus subtype H1N1" or "Swine influenza" as "Swine flu" does. As is, it violates the criteria of precision and consistency, and arguably conciseness and should not be included in the list for those reasons. Nebes (talk) 06:21, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose the Spanish flu example for the same reason that Nebes gave. It's imprecise, since it does not clearly distinguish between the event and organism causing it. This is a regular problem with disease-causing organisms, and we should not encourage more muddle and confusion. The header at Coronavirus disease 2019 rightly notes the need to distinguish between the disease, the organism and a particular outbreak of the disease. "Common usage" is not acceptable when it produces imprecision. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:26, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Time to ditch DIFFCAPS?

So, DIFFCAPS has existed in one form or another for about as long as this page has, with red meat v Red Meat being the canonical example. This only happened because Red Meat's target demographic was wildly overrepresented on Wikipedia during the early days; indeed, the webcomic got moved to an unambiguous title not that long ago.

After a series of very contentious move requests about ten years ago that supported the use of minor details besides just capitalization, I rewrote the section and created the shortcuts WP:DIFFCAPS, WP:SMALLDETAILS, etc. (See pages like Talk:MAVEN for a synopsis of our changing consensus over the years.) Obviously, I am not the creator or decider of Wikipedia's rules, policies, procedures, guidelines, or practices; I just summarized what everyone had been doing, and through consensus it stayed.

I've become convinced that DIFFCAPS is now doing more harm to our project than good. We have tons of silly disputes about things like a capital letter here or an umlaut there and it seems that our readers are most likely done a disservice. Ten years ago, it seemed more reasonable to assume that someone searching Wikipedia knew enough to not capitalize common nouns, and knew how to spell albums with slightly alternate spellings. Now, I'm not so sure that's right any more, even if it was at one point {{fake dubious}}.

The problem is exacerbated because from the start, DIFFCAPS was never a bright-line rule. For instance, Stockholm syndrome is correctly spelled with syndrome. But if a mediocre punk rock band decided to call themselves "Stockholm Syndrome" and they barely managed to chart high enough to survive a deletion discussion, we would still not allow them to be at Stockholm Syndrome and would put them at Stockholm Syndrome (punk rock band). If, however, they became the most successful punk rock band in the world, inspiring numerous books, documentaries, etc., we probably would allow them to be at Stockholm Syndrome. Even if they reinvented music forever, we probably wouldn't move the article about the actual syndrome. But then imagine that our punk rockers discovered a cure for cancer, became the largest employer in seventeen countries, founded a base on Mars, and created the first perpetual motion device... at that point, we would probably say "okay, who's really looking for the syndrome itself" and move Stockholm syndrome to Stockholm syndrome (psychology) or something like that. In other words, DIFFCAPS is subjectively employed, by design, which just leads to endless discussions about minutia.

We have three cases happening right now that rely on DIFFCAPS in some way, and I have noticed many editors saying "diffcaps is decreasing, we aren't relying on diffcaps much any more".

I'm putting this up for discussion here: should we A) ditch DIFFCAPS altogether? (Friendly Fire becomes Friendly fire (disambiguation) and the like) B) Edit the section to say how DIFFCAPS is declining in popularity and is frequently overruled?

Or C) Do nothing?

I leave this in your capable hands. Red Slash 18:27, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Without being one of those participants in those RMs, but having watched this page for some time now, I've also come to the conclusion that DIFFCAPS's time has passed (at least in its current form). I am not entirely sure removal is the correct way to go as opposed to rewriting the section to say that "small differences are not sufficient to disambiguate" (which is the option between A and B to me). --Izno (talk) 18:45, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
Those RMs would seem to be WP:LOCALCONCENSUS. It could be that editors who find such RMs hold opinions on the topics that cloud their judgment on the applicability of WP:DIFFCAPS in their special case. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS is possibly not being relied upon much any more, though. It seems there are many perennial discussions that come up because some area or other would rather fork from the guidelines or policies (in good faith) and the practice gets entrenched before anyone else notices, and moreso before those who notice feel like going through the RfC process since just applying the broader policies and guidelines (in good faith) tends to generate drama. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
I mean, I see it, but what if the guideline or process is just... kinda… bad? Like, I get what you're saying, but if local consensus after local consensus is questioning DIFFCAPS, maybe DIFFCAPS is the problem. Red Slash 22:51, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
If that's the case, maybe. But typically anecdotal evidence reflects confirmation bias. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:57, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Ditch WP:DIFFCAPS. DIFFCAPS alone is not a justification. Where it is a factor, it comes under SMALLDETAILS. Different capitalisation is just another small detail, and is not more important than other small details. I think this reflects the current evolved consensus. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:11, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
    I don't think SMALLDETAILS should be kept either TBH. A period or an exclamation point or... just aren't sufficient IMO. --Izno (talk) 01:45, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
    One thing at a time, but SMALLDETAILS, that ALLCAPSONEWORD, does not mandate that a terminal period is sufficient disambiguation. I think it is well agreed that it doesn’t. However, small details *can* be sufficient. The boundary line is unclear, particularly at a terminal exclamation like Airplane!. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Ditch. Always was an awful way to disambiguate. -- Necrothesp (talk) 00:50, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Ditch, toss it overboard with an inflatable raft and an inflatable paddle. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:58, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Status quo. We had a well attended RfC on this just over a year ago. The result was to keep the guideline to support case-by-case determinations. And as far as anecdotal evidence, I have seen several RMs since the close of the RfC that cited DIFFCAPS positively. Dohn joe (talk) 03:14, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • The best solution is for productive editors to studiously avoid endless discussions about minutia and edge cases, and instead to concentrate on actually improving the encyclopedia. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 03:26, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Ditch per the very well-written nom. The results of numerous RM discussions, including the iconic Red Meat example, are not just local consensus, they reflect an actual change of mood by the community since the early days of the Wiki. And although DIFFCAPS is still sometimes applicable, it is too often misused by people citing it with no other analysis, as if it's a magic formula that overrules all other considerations.  — Amakuru (talk) 07:09, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Status quo. The recent RfC shows there is no consensus to eliminate the policy, and my experience with RMs doesn't show any decline in popularity. Some proposals citing DIFFCAPS get moved, some don't. It depends on individual circumstances of the article, as well as who happens to show up. The example of Stockholm syndrome in this proposal shows how things are supposed to work. Sometimes one topic is primary for both spellings, often they're not. Differing outcomes for different cases is a good thing, not a problem. And there is no evidence that readers are generally confused by having articles about different topics at titles that differ in SMALLDETAILS. Moving Iron Maiden to Iron Maiden (band) for no logical reason would result in a disservice to readers. Station1 (talk) 07:30, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose as stated (i.e. "all or nothing") – the gist of Wikipedia:Article titles#When a spelling variant indicates a distinct topic seems to be that if two article titles look very much like one another, then proper disambiguation techniques should be put in place. That should stay in the policy, because it is an important policy-level principle. If the disambiguation technique of choice rather moves from disambiguation pages and the like to disambiguation via explicitly disambiguated article titles that can be adopted in the policy, but the need for proper disambiguation, even if, strictly, two article titles are not completely identical but only near-identical remains. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:07, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Ditch. The concept was always flawed. We shouldn't expect readers to know how Wikipedia styles its articles. Most readers are familiar with search engines such as Google that don't care how you capitalize your word, and Wikipedia should follow it as it is the most common practice. Also, to those above citing the last RfC, please look again at the actual comments and you'll see that the clear majority was in favor of removing it. A guideline should have the community's acceptance, when it doesn't it leads to endless and pointless RMs. Closing it as "no consensus" was a cowardly way of not dealing with the actual issue. --Gonnym (talk) 08:40, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
    I must come to the defense of the closer of that RfC. I did look at the comments again, and far from being cowardly, the closer did look closely at the comments and, rather than vote-counting (which was close anyway), provided a considered rationale for their close based on the full discussion. There is no current consensus to prohibit ever using small differences in article titles. Station1 (talk) 14:49, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Keep, i.e., status quo, for instances where there is in fact a clear differentiation between terms based solely on capitalization. BD2412 T 15:33, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Ditch. Ditch ditch ditch. We haven't outgrown it, it just was never a good idea. People don't think, write, and search in the manner that the people who instituted this rule seem to think. I mean, I never use caps in Google to refine my searches. I just don't. Should I? Do you? Does Google even differentiate between caps and non-caps words? I don't think it does. Well, it's Google's world, and we just live in it, and people aren't going to switch their mindset for individual websites' search pecaddilos. Herostratus (talk) 01:11, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Ditch. I've thought about this a lot over the years, and the fact of the matter is that our demographic are not grammarians, and the younger our average pool of readers gets the less careful they are (or even understanding of) capitalization. It was a poor titling-distinction criterion to start with, and as time goes on it just gets less and less reliable. Per Francis Schonken's reasoning, though, do keep something that gets this gist across: "if two article titles look very much like one another, then proper disambiguation techniques should be put in place".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:07, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
    Comment – You say "Ditch" but you mean "strengthen the guidance" don't you? Currently, according to the DIFFCAPS guidance, article titles that look like spelling variants, but in fact are not, should be disambiguated as if they were homographs. Ditch that guidance, and such disambiguation is no longer required. Which would be a disservice to the spelling-insensitive demographic, not the other way around. Instead, for the spelling-insensitive demographic, a strengthening of the guidance, for instance by pointing to article-title disambiguation instead of merely boilerplate disambiguation or DAB page disambiguation, as an often more desirable alternative, is what we're heading for if reading the above comments without their opening "Ditch"es. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:38, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
  • I agree SMALLDATAILS might not necessarily be sufficient in some cases but strong oppose forcing both capitalizations to point to the same place like Friendly fire/Friendly Fire. As many people have already said many people aren't worried about capitalization so that tends to mean that they don't bother to capitalize rather than adding excessive capitals!! Red Meat indeed was a bad example which is probably one of the reasons why DIFFCAPS was rejected by so many (I was the one who made the proposal to disambiguate it) because it was felt that it wasn't sufficient which indeed makes sense since the meat got over 71x the views so its likely that even if only 1% of people typed with the capital "M" that we would be inconveniencing most people and that the DAB is the best compromise. With Friendly fire the other meanings get around a third of the views of the military meaning so its likely that those bothering to capitalize the 2nd "F" are not overwhelmingly likely to be looking for the military meaning but those that are are served well by seeing "Friendly fire is the inadvertent firing towards one's own or otherwise friendly forces." so we are still spelling it out as the primary topic without requiring those that bother to capitalize to make 2 clicks. Furthermore its debatable that by PT#2 the capitalized version passes that criteria since its not really an accurate name for it, again spelling it out seems sufficient for this to. As a general rule making the Title Case version a DAB page (or redirecting it to one) makes most sense as a reasonable compromise but generally we should not doubly inconvenience readers who have bothered to capitalize correctly should we? With WP:PLURALPT we do generally point the singular and plural to the same place, that is to say if the singular has a primary topic (like Car) we tend to point the plural form (Cars) to the same place since the vehicle is correctly and commonly known in both the singular and plural but since readers and editors usually use the singular we frequently turn the plural into a DAB (like Walls) (or redirect it to one like Freaks). When however the meaning changes with respect to singular/plural such as Paper/Papers and Orange/Oranges we do then often have them pointing to different places. In any case with respect to DIFFCAPS even without it you could apply both tests for Friendly fire/Friendly Fire and say for PT#1, "some readers might want "Friendly fire" when searching for "Friendly Fire" but unless most readers want the generic term its not primary for the Title Case version (readers bothering to capitalize the 2nd "F") and having the military meaning spelled out is sufficient anyway. For PT#2 "some sources might call the military meaning "Friendly Fire" but unless that's what the Title Case version primarily refers to its not primary for it. There probably are some cases where the generic meaning has such a strong claim that it might be primary for the upper case to but that should be the exception, not the rule, too many people seem to think one or the other meaning should be primary when there's nothing wrong with having a WP:NOPRIMARY situation. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:04, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Keep per Crouch, Swale. I'm going to illustrate with numerical examples. Obviously primary topic is not determined solely by pagecounts, but I'm using it as a proxy for significance, you can reimagine it as a subjective "importance score" if you want. Let's say normally when there are two topics, 2/3 of pageviews are enough to make one of them primary topic. But when they differ in capitalization, we need something more drastic, like perhaps only accepting a primary topic if Red Meat got 95% of pageviews or if Red meat got 99%. (I'm giving them different thresholds because it's much more likely to search in all lowercase out of laziness than to miscapitalize a lowercase term.) Again, these numbers are purely hypothetical and for illustrative purposes only. Anyways, beyond this threshold we can of course ignore WP:DIFFCAPS if one of the options is so thoroughly dominant. But there's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as capitalization is a factor that should be considered, just not the only factor. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:52, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Examples

Example 1

A fairly recent example (I started the related –and necessary according to the WP:SMALLDETAILS policy– disambiguation less than three weeks ago):

That's why this policy-level guidance should stay. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:27, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

A DIFFCAPS example

Differentiation of the article titles only depends on a different capitalisation:

Disambiguation by other techniques than an explicitly disambiguated article title. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:11, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Three redirects

Until this morning

were three redirects, going to three different places (here, here and here respectively) none of the redirect targets particularly suitable to do some other type of disambiguation, so if no disambiguation is possible via mainspace text, where these topics are only mentioned in passing, and a disambiguation page would only disambiguate redirects, at least the similar redirect links should all go to the same place, per WP:SMALLDETAILS (and the principle of least surprise: there is no explanation why they should go to different places – they all refer to the same hymn afaik), I suppose. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Sorted now,

All conform to WP:SMALLDETAILS (I think?) --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:58, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Other DIFFCAPS example

--Francis Schonken (talk) 12:34, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Redundant pointless hatnote verbiage at the WP:CONCISE section.

Sdkb (talk · contribs) has reverted my revert of his addition of

"WP:CONCISE" redirects here. For the essay advising a concise writing style, see WP:TLDR.

at the level 3 heading Wikipedia:Article titles#Conciseness, aka WP:CONCISE.

I see this as clutter. This policy is already problematically long, and clutter makes it worse. I can't image many editors being confused between the essay WP:TLDR and this policy section. Remove this new hatnote. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:46, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

I came to this page because I typed WP:CONCISE, assuming that that would take me to the essay about being concise that I remembered seeing at some point. It took me here instead, and I figured out after a minute that what I was remembering was WP:TLDR, which has the shortcut WP:BECONCISE. I added the hatnote here so that others in the future who do the same will have an easier time navigating to the page they're trying to get to. It seems very plausible to me that there will be others in such a situation. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:50, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
WP:TLDR should not be referred to by BECONCISE. that was the problem. Proliferation of redundant shortcuts (which are not even short) is the problem. Hatnotes in response to prolific shortcuts is just more verbiage. Ironic. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:14, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
What I remembered was reading an essay about conciseness, not the WP:BECONCISE shortcut, so you removing the shortcut listing there as you just did isn't likely to do much. I guessed that WP:CONCISE probably led to the essay about conciseness. Apparently it doesn't, but I think enough others probably go down the same path I did that we need to disambiguate. It's worth noting that WP:BECONCISE is currently ranked the 9th most impactful essay on Wikipedia, so it's a major page, not some random editor's musings. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:07, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Useful hatnote, no reason to remove it. buidhe 00:35, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • The hatnote makes sense to me, and we have evidence of its usefulness. -- Tavix (talk) 01:14, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Remove it. WP:CONCISE has always redirected to the relevant policy on article titles, and as SmokeyJoe rightly says, there's little chance of a Wikipedian who is already knowledgeable enough to type in "WP:" shortcuts being confused as to what it means. Whereas having the hatnote simply adds more gunk for people to read when navigating to that page.  — Amakuru (talk) 01:19, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Y tu mamá también

There's an ongoing discussion at Talk:Y Tu Mamá También#Requested move 3 May 2020 that might be of interest to watchers of this page. El Millo (talk) 18:23, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Titles which are part of an ambiguous series

It has been general practice to disambiguate only when necessary, and otherwise choose a title that best incorporates the naming principles described at WP:CRITERIA. The logical conclusion of this, is that parenthetical disambiguation is not permitted unless the base title contains a disambiguation page, another article (i.e. the primary topic), or a primary redirect to a different page. In particular, the base title is not allowed to be empty or a primary redirect to the aforementioned parenthetically disambiguated title. However, there is a notable exception in WP:MUSICSERIES, which mandates that Haydn's 100th symphony be called Symphony No. 100 (Haydn) even though he was the only composer to have written 100 notable symphonies, and in fact Symphony No. 100 redirects there. The intuition behind this naming convention is that a name like "Symphony No. 100" is inherently ambiguous and should not contain an article on Haydn's work simply by happenstance. This principle may, perhaps, have relevance outside of generically numbered musical works.

Question: What is our view on parenthetically disambiguated titles which are not strictly necessary from a disambiguation point of view, but are part of a numbered series whose meaning is inherently ambiguous? Borrowing from the Koran, should they be: 1) required; 2) recommended; 3) permitted; 4) discouraged; or 5) prohibited? Examples and further explanation to follow. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:17, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

  • Clarification of options:
    1. Required: Universally accepted with almost no exceptions, e.g. including the state name for non-AP U.S. cities under WP:USPLACE.
    2. Recommended: Default option unless a strong case is made against it, e.g. omitting the definite article in university names per WP:THE.
    3. Permitted: Can be taken into consideration as one of many naming principles, e.g. using pageview statistics to determine the primary topic.
    4. Discouraged: Should not be done without compelling evidence in favor, e.g. partial disambiguation on Thriller (album) even though there are other albums called Thriller, because it is so much more important than the others.
    5. Prohibited: Essentially never allowed, e.g. redirecting New York to New York (disambiguation) (the disambiguation page should simply reside at the base title).
  • Background: This issue came to my attention from Talk:H.R. 40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act#Requested move 16 April 2020, where it is suggested that a U.S. proposed legislation be moved to simply H.R. 40 as the most significant bill by that name. However, it was pointed out (including by me) that such a title would be ambiguous, as H.R. numbers reset every two years, not to mention the various state legislatures with H.R. numbers. I noticed that there were similar bills titled H.R. 2189 (113th Congress), H.R. 3174 (113th Congress), etc. Let's assume for the sake of argument that this bill is the primary topic for "H.R. 40", just like "Symphony No. 100". Without considering the specifics of this particular bill (e.g. any potential WP:COMMONNAME titles that omit the H.R. number), should we nonetheless prefer "H.R. 40 (116th Congress)" as the title, and make "H.R. 40" a primary redirect to it? (Again, this is just an illustrative example, go to the RM if you want to !vote on this specific case.) King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:17, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Recommended. If there is no COMMONNAME, and the title would be otherwise generic (such as in both the Symphony No. 100 and H.R. 40 examples), I believe the parenthetical disambiguation should be used unless there is a clear reason not to, because in the majority of cases it won't be clear from the title alone what the primary topic is. —⁠烏⁠Γ (kaw) │ 03:50, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Leave it to topic-specific naming conventions, which should define recommended schemes to handle such numbered series. For example, at WP:TVSEASON we say "A consistent naming scheme should be used for all season articles of a TV show". While that NC can't define specifics for individual shows, we at least have the principle that all seasons for a show (and seasons within a franchise of shows like Big Brother) should all follow the same pattern. The "required" option here is too inflexible, and anything more relaxed than "recommended" is ad hoc or opposes basic WP:CRITERIA. -- Netoholic @ 04:00, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose set-up of this RfC, which omits to refer to the full set of WP:CRITERIA, which also includes (as fifth criterion):

    Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, in the box above [on the WP:AT page].

    This is a classic attempt to get some of the WP:CRITERIA get an upper hand over some of the other WP:CRITERIA, and wouldn't work in the long run (not even in the short run). --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:21, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
    Apologies; I assumed that consistency was so obvious/implied that I forgot to mention it. I've replaced the reference to WP:CONCISE/WP:PRECISE with a general link to WP:CRITERIA. Do you wish to offer your opinion on the matter now? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:11, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
    You write, in the opening statement,

    The logical conclusion of this, ...

    ... while what follows after that is in no way a "logical conclusion" of WP:CRITERIA (it only is if one omits at least one of the criteria). So, your "cosmetic" tweak to the opening statement did not alter its fundamentally flawed set–up. No need to alter my !vote in any way. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:22, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
    I don't understand what exactly you're opposed to. —⁠烏⁠Γ (kaw) │ 09:12, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
    I "Oppose [the] set-up of this RfC" – I don't very well see what is unclear about that? It is recommended that RfCs are well-prepared: this one likely wasn't. It steers for making the AT policy (which is already long and complex, but has clear principles summarized in WP:CRITERIA) more bloated than it needs to be. The RfC fails to list more obvious choices, like "don't weaken WP:CRITERIA", which is an option I might have chosen if it would have been available (but it isn't in the current set-up). --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:20, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
    This RfC cannot possibly weaken WP:CRITERIA. Consistent with any particular view of WP:CRITERIA, one and only one of the five choices can be correct by process of elimination. I am not necessarily looking to make it "more bloated" - in fact there is no proposal to make any specific change to policies or guidelines at the moment. I am merely soliciting opinions on a matter where I think the community's input would be valuable, and then we can decide what to do from there. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:42, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
    This page is for improving the AT policy, not for answering whatever question an editor may have via RfC. Your question can be answered (and already has been) without needing an RfC format. So I removed the RfC tag, and struck the RfC reference in the section title. Again, RfCs should be well-prepared, which this one wasn't. --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:39, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
    As you can see, there are many different opinions on this matter. For example, JHunterJ's interpretation of consistency is completely different from yours. We need to come up with some global guidance so that we're not fighting battles in the trenches of RM one by one. I am not merely asking a clarifying question; if the answers point towards action, then I will make a proposal towards implementing it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:13, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
    I didn't "interpret" consistency – I quoted the policy on it, which I'll do again:

    Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, in the box above [on the WP:AT page].

    If it's unclear to you (which it apparently is because of your "The logical conclusion of this, ..." where there is no such logical conclusion the way you describe it), and you ask me to clarify I'll do my best to oblige. A messy opening statement based on wrong assumptions is, in itself, however not a question for clarification: thus far I've been addressing some wrong assumptions underlying your RfC question. It's a bit difficult to answer a question based on wrong assumptions: get these out of the way, and I think you'll start to realise this is much ado about nothing. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:59, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
    Suggestion: see Talk:Wiegenlied, D 498 (Schubert)#Requested moves: all article titles in that confirmed multi-page move request have a, for disambiguation purposes, redundant "(Schubert)" at the end of the article title. If you want to get rid of "(Haydn)"s, or those redundant "(Schubert)"s, in article titles where these aren't needed for disambiguation purposes, you'd have to do a similar multi-page move request on such pages. Or try to get Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven) moved (back) to Moonlight Sonata, to get rid of an avoidable "(Beethoven)". In the unlikely event that such RMs wouldn't fail, the WP:MUSICSERIES guidance will be updated (at least by choosing other examples, or more fundamentally by changing its principles, if several RMs have consistently illustrated the current principle is no longer effective). The current RfC is however not likely to change guidance that to all extents and purposes seems to be working very well in mainspace. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:27, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
    I don't want to get rid of redundant identifiers for music articles; how did you get that impression? Instead I'm suggesting that it may be wise for other areas, such as numbered legislation, to follow the lead of what WP:MUSICSERIES is doing. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:54, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
    Nor the place (WT:AT), nor the format (RfC) are very suitable to lead to a useful result there. I suggest a few RMs where you think it might make sense in that subject area; and/or find a WikiProject that might support the idea; and/or start or update a relevant naming conventions guideline, and try to find consensus for the new guidance. But this, meaning the RfC you initiated, is clearly not working. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:09, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
    WP:DROPTHESTICK. You've made your point. I, and presumably King of Hearts, disagree. —⁠烏⁠Γ (kaw) │ 08:04, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Prohibited option 5, WP:PRECISION, WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, etc. There is no conflict with the consistency part of WP:CRITERIA, since we're talking about a disambiguating qualifier. If the Haydn part of the title is needed even without ambiguity, then it shouldn't be in parentheses and should be formed naturally in the title (also part of the WP:CRITERIA). The pursuit of "consistency" of parentheticals has been rejected by the community (most recently as far as I know with the NYC subway station articles). Consistency is maintained (and so no conflict) by consistently titling the articles correctly, and only when ambiguity occurs consistently using the disambiguating qualifiers. We most definitely should not leave this to the topic-specific naming conventions, because essays do not get to violate policies as a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, which led to the whole bird-naming cold war. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:10, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
    The community hasn't rejected consistency of parentheticals; the NYC subway RfC is simply one precedent, just as the discussion which led to the adoption of WP:MUSICSERIES is another precedent. In any case, I don't think these two situations are quite the same, as a numbered series which could exist for a large category of entities (e.g. composers, congressional sessions, U.S. states) is far more ambiguous than subway station names. There are other reasons besides consistency, like WP:PRECISE, for this change as well: "titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article". The subject-specific guidelines are not essays and are not WP:LOCALCONSENSUS so long as they have been adopted through a widely advertised RfC. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:23, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
    Consistency of required parentheticals is fine and useful. Consistency of applying parentheticals to all titles in a set where some titles require them is foolish. If "Symphony No. 100" is not a good title all by itself, then it should be "Haydn's Symphony No. 100" or similar per WP:CRITERIA (naturalness, conciseness, commonness, recognizability, etc., etc.). That might mean moving a bunch of other articles, but if that's the improvement, then those moves improve the encyclopedia. Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (music)/Archive 2#Compositions (classical music) is a guideline, while Wikipedia:Article titles is a policy. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:10, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
    Again, subject-area guidelines are a specific interpretation of policy, which we defer to instead of coming up with new interpretations on the fly that not everyone will agree with (see Francis Schonken and SmokeyJoe). Policies override guidelines, yes, but only if a consensus agrees that they are in conflict; otherwise, a guideline that unambiguously requires a certain action overrides some people's belief that a policy requires a different action. If anyone believed that WP:MUSICSERIES would violate policy, they should have objected when they had the opportunity to do so, when it was advertised here; it has now become part of policy. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:27, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
    Re. "[WP:MUSICSERIES] has now become part of policy" – I strongly disagree with that nonsensical interpretation. --Francis Schonken (talk) 02:40, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
    Everyone thinks their interpretation of policy is so obvious and the only correct one. As this discussion has shown so far, no one knows what they're talking about. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:08, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
    At the risk of stating the obvious: a policy is "a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow"; a guideline is a "generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply" (quoted from {{policy}} and {{subcat guideline}} respectively). Example: Eine kleine Nachtmusik is an *exception* to the WP:MUSICSERIES guideline, but it *conforms* to the WP:CRITERIA policy. The RM that decided on the name is at Talk:Eine kleine Nachtmusik#Requested move. --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:24, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
    You're being pedantic here. The distinction between policies and guidelines has never been clear, and what matters far more is the level of community consensus behind each rule. WP:USPLACE is merely a guideline, but it has been more rigidly followed than the vast majority of policies because people are willing to enforce it with almost no exceptions. The way I see it, policies tend to be more constitutional and broad than guidelines. OK, perhaps I didn't literally mean that MUSICSERIES became part of policy; what I meant was that JHunterJ's assertion that it contradicts policy is false because community consensus determines whether something is consistent with policy, not the opinion of one person. So it has become part of the body of rules and norms that help expand on policy and elucidate how policy applies to a particular area as agreed on in a past community discussion. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:57, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
    It's not pedantry. Policy is in policy; things not in policy are not in policy. Editors who favor a particular guideline's interpretation (right or wrong) of policy prefer to treat them as policy, but they still aren't, until they become policy. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:15, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
  • I think this is best left to individual topic areas, if editors in some field think this is the best way of doing it then we should let them. In the case of the Haydn symphony it would be very odd to refer to that piece as just "Symphony No. 100" without mentioning Haydn somewhere, unless the context made it obvious that you were talking about him. The disambiguation is therefore part of the most common usage. I'm sure there are similar examples in other topics. Hut 8.5 18:22, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Discouraged, but permitted -- this is best left to individual topic areas. I ran into this in military unit naming (e.g. similar to 33rd Battalion (Australia)), and I think it makes perfect sense. Blanket prohibition would potentially have many unintended consequences. Renata (talk) 19:46, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
    Those consequences would be intended, IMO. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:10, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Meh... why are we having this discussion at this particular time? Is there any problem which needs solving? If not, then I'd suggest we just leave things the way they always have been. Which I suppose means "permitted". There is no rule against having parentheticals on unambiguous titles if the circumstances merit it.  — Amakuru (talk) 01:22, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Well the editor is trying to figure out if a given article should be title "Symphony No. 100 (Haydn)" or "Symphony No. 100", and she realizes that if she uses the name required by our (often enough petifogging) rules she'll have to use the less desirable title (just "Symphony No. 100"), and of she doesn't someone will come along and "fix" it anyway, so she's perhaps hoping for a general exception to be adopted that'll let her use the better title. I think. Herostratus (talk) 02:41, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Permitted at least, I guess. Certainly "Symphony No. 100 (Haydn)" is preferable to just "Symphony No. 100" since it, after all, describes the entity a whole lot better. "Symphony No. 100" pretty much leaves you all at sea unless you're a music professor or whatever; there's hella symphonies with hella numbers and we don't expect our readers to have them all memorized, nor to have to start reading the articles to figure put if it's what they want or not. Right? So just put in whatever rule allows that sort of thing when necessary. "Serve the reader" is the goal here. Herostratus (talk) 02:41, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
    Haydn's Symphony No. 100 would be better and policy-conforming. How did you get to Symphony No. 100 if you weren't seeking the Haydn piece? -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:10, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
  • I am not a fan of the forced disambiguation (per WP:CONCISE). (I have similar issue with PLACE conventions.) There are many topics where you do not know at first glance what the article is about; we do not require titles to tell you everything there is to know, only that they distinguish themselves adequately from other titles to scope the article to an atomic topic (and sometimes not necessarily even that per DABCONCEPT). I do believe there is reasonable consensus for conventions to standardize what the text of a parenthetical disambiguaion is, but that is not the case discussed here. --Izno (talk) 12:54, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
"we do not require titles to tell you everything there is to know..." Well but why the heck not? Is it a good thing, that we don't? Should we hold that up as a virtue?
Of course, I don't mean that titles should tell you everything about the subject. That's what articles are for. However, we ought to require titles to identify what the article is about, within the scope of what a title for an encyclopedia article could reasonably be expected to do or be. Right? Am I wrong here?
Obviously we don't want the title to be "Symphony No. 100, which was written by Josef Hadyn in 1793 (or 1794), when he was living in London, and is in standard four movement form scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum and strings". Right? That would be silly. It's good to have a rule that prevents that! But that's not the issue here. The issue is between (and this is the just the example we're using) "Symphony No. 100" and "Symphony No. 100 (Haydn)". So lets see... Compared to "Symphony No. 100", "Symphony No. 100 (Haydn)"...
  • Is longer, but it's not a lot longer. It's one word longer.
  • In return for adding that one single word, provides a great deal of useful information, both to people accessing the article, and people seeing the title on a search results list. Let's take me for an example. I'm a schlub, literate but not highly educated, don't know much about classical music, but I recognize the name Haydn and can vaguely place him in general context. That seem like a common enough archetype? OK. So, "Symphony No. 100" tells me almost nothing. It tells me it's a symphony. In order to find out if it was written in 1815 or 1915 or 2015 or anything else I have to start reading the article. Adding the single word "Haydn" tells me much more! I can instantly say "Oh, don't want that one, I'm looking for 20th century American classical music" or conversely "Yes! 18th century classical music is exactly what I'm trying to learn about!".
  • It's a reasonable title. If you came across a title like "Symphony No. 100 (Haydn)" in say Britannica, you wouldn't dash the volume to the floor while shouting "What the hell kind of title is that!? What sort of ridiculous publication is this!?". It's perfectly normal and unexceptionable, if you consider the real world and don't overly naval-gaze on our little world here. If our history had gone differently, we could be following a rubric that you should often add a parenthesized word or to titles, if it's judged a useful net benefit, rather than only when strictly required by our (somewhat arcane) rules. That'd be fine, in fact I'd be in favor of that. That ship has sailed I guess, but we don't have to make an iron core virtue of what is, after all, a random historical accident. We can make exceptions you know.
So, let's do some math, try to squeeze out something a little more than "I think such-and-such rule ought to have exceptions/Well I don't". So, I figure that including "(Haydn)" in the title will cost every reader about .33 person-seconds per access, which comes to two person-hours a year. Not including "(Haydn)" will cost some readers about 5 person-seconds; whether that comes to more than two person-hours a year, we can't know. But, probably IMO. Details below. Herostratus (talk) 19:03, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Assumptions and calculations used for above estimates
So... it surely takes longer to read "Symphony No. 100 (Haydn)" than just "Symphony No. 100". let's say it takes... 1/3 of a second longer (that's a guess). The article is accessed about 35 times a day, so that's about 12 person-seconds a day added. 12 x 364.25 = 4380 seconds, which is about an hour and and quarter. So, 1:15 added, yearly, to the burden placed on our readers. Since some people are reading it on a list and never actually access the article and so aren't included in that 35-reader count, let's add them in and bump that all the way to... 2 person-hours, let's say.
However... However, if you have to open the article and start delving into it to figure what it's about, you have to read the whole first half of the first sentence ("The Symphony No. 100 in G major, Hoboken I/100, is the eighth of the twelve London symphonies written by Joseph Haydn") to figure out who wrote it, so that you can place it in context and decide if you want to read it or not. Let's say that takes... I dunno, four seconds. (If you just took the 1/3 second we allocated for reading and understanding the world "Haydn" by the ~20 words in that passage, It'd be 7 seconds. I'm just spitballing here, but it's somewhere in that ballpark I think.) Sometimes people will have to actually fetch the article from the server (if they're just seeing the title on a search results list or something), so let's make it... five seconds average.
(In spending that five seconds, you're getting a lot of information you probably don't need for your purpose at the moment, which is determining if you want to even read the article, such as the key signature and Hoboken number, by the way.)
Anyway. 2 hours divided by 5 seconds is 1440. If 1440 users per year are wasting five seconds by having to delve into the article and read the first part of the first sentence and then determining that it's not an article they want to read, the two title choices are a wash (mathematically). We've got 12,748 readers a year (364.25 x 35)... 1440 is what, 9% of that? So... if 90% of our readers are able, with just "Symphony No. 100", to quickly and correctly determine if they want to read the article or not, but 10% require the extra word "(Haydn)" to quickly and correctly determine if they want to read the article or not, without having to open the article... then "Symphony No. 100 (Haydn)" would be the better title, it says here. Is it 90/10? I don't know... neither do you. We just have to make our best judgement based on our the knowledge, experience, and intuition that we've been granted in life so far. My guess is that "Symphony No. 100 (Haydn)" is better. Herostratus (talk) 18:54, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
  • I dispute the premise "It has been long-standing policy to disambiguate only when necessary". That is not policy, but an obsession by a few. Policy is that both Recognizability and Consistency are part of the balance.
For Recognizability, look at actual titling in sources. Eg "Symphony No.100 in G major, Hob.I:100 (Haydn, Joseph)"
for Consistency, look at the category. eg: Category:Symphonies by Joseph Haydn
--SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:46, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
An RfC that begins with a false assertion should be speedy closed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:48, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
@SmokeyJoe: I don't think the overall setup of my RfC is flawed; I begin with a premise, and then challenge the premise a few sentences later, establishing the purpose of this RfC. Perhaps it could have been worded a little better though. I have changed "long-standing policy" to "general practice" to soften the absolute nature of the statement (which was not my intention) and reflect the fact that we avoid unnecessary disambiguation in a vast majority of cases, but nonetheless do so when prudent. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:19, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
I see you're still "not taking no for an answer". I can only repeat a recommendation given to me above: WP:DROPTHESTICK. You've made your point. I, and presumably [more than one other experienced editor], disagree. --Francis Schonken (talk) 02:40, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm not making a point here; I'm genuinely trying to make this RfC better. If you dislike the whole premise so much, why are you still participating? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:12, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Because I agree with SmokeyJoe that "An RfC that begins with a false assertion should be speedy closed" – until it is, I'm free to voice my opinion on the proceedings. @King of Hearts: please follow WP:REDACT when modifying a talk page contribution which has already been replied to. You've now modified the opening statement at least twice ([3] [4]) without keeping to that guidance (and yes, I see no reason for an exception to that guideline in this case). --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:39, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I do have a reason: readability. People don't want to be greeted with an opening statement littered with crossouts. I'm not making material changes to the question asked anyways, just correcting some explanatory material, so I highly doubt anyone who !voted so far would have !voted differently if they saw the current statement. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:57, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Anyways, if you feel like it should be speedy closed then make a request on WP:ANI. Otherwise I would like to hear your opinion on the actual question instead of constant complaints about the setup. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
ANI? Why ANI? You didn't exactly follow WP:RFC and WP:TPG, but afaics none of that amounts anywhere near to the kind of disruption for which an excursion to WP:ANI would be indicated, especially as I see nothing that isn't done in good faith. Requests to end a RfC are done at WP:ANRFC, not at WP:ANI, but since the RfC's initiator insists on keeping this discussion open in the RfC format (which is your prerogative as much as it mine to oppose it), I don't see what use an ANRFC listing would have at this point. For clarity: I'm not opposed to having this discussion, and taking as much time for it as necessary, just the RfC format doesn't fit it.
Re. "... I would like to hear your opinion on the actual question ..." – which I gave above, but you didn't like my answer. In short my opinion on the actual question is "none of these five options". If this were an RfC preparation (as recommended by WP:RFC) I'd help you in reframing the question for a meaningful RfC, but more modifications to an opening statement of a live RfC which already attracted answers would only worsen the situation. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:14, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
I agree with Francis. Tony (talk) 08:02, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I mean, what are you people going on about here? The RfC opens with

It has been general practice to disambiguate only when necessary, and otherwise choose a title that best incorporates the naming principles described at WP:CRITERIA

But I mean, this is not only true, but self-evidently true? Right?

I've been here 15 years and very very rarely seen exceptions -- parens used just for to add more info or for the fun of it or what have you. And if found by you-know-who or one his fellow believers, will be vigorously contested, and many will hold that it's illegal. Probably beccause it is illegal: while WP:AT doesn't flat out say "you cannot use a parenthesized word or phrase just to add useful info, if it's not strictly required for disambiguation", it implies it strongly enough that it might as well say that. Only if you play rules lawyer and ignore the clear thrust of what's being said could you hold otherwise. For instance (at WP:PARENDIS) it says (emphasis added):

It is not always possible to use the exact title that may be desired for an article, as that title may have other meanings, and therefore may have been already used for other articles. According to the above-mentioned precision criterion, when a more detailed title is necessary to distinguish an article topic from another, use only as much additional detail as necessary. For example, it would be redundant to title an article "Queen (rock band)", as Queen (band) is precise enough to distinguish the rock band from other uses of the term "Queen".

It doesn't say "If there's only article with titled with a given term, then the title alone is precise enough to distinguish the subject from other articles", or "when and only when a more detailed title is necessary..." but come on people.

Given the above rule, suppose as a thought experiment that there was only one meaning for Queen -- a female monarch. No band named Queen, no Queen playing card, nothing else. Would a title of "Queen (monarch)" be OK? You're just adding "(monarch)" to provide a little extra info. Do you think the rule is intended to allow this? Would people accept this? Of course not. Don't be silly.

(BTW and FWIW, WP:MUSICSERIES doesn't even contradict this. It flat says not to use the parens "when the composition type has only been used in a series by one composer, which makes the composer disambiguator redundant, e.g. [[Hungarian Rhapsody No. 19]")

The RfC is acceptable from a truth and lack-of-bias standpoint -- not perfect, but acceptable, and so stop with the "poisoning the well" nonsense. I would have done it differently and asked different questions maybe, but I didn't write it.

It's a reasonable question to ask, since if nothing is done you-know-who (or someone of that ideology) might come alone eventually and do a series of technical moves to the most-concise version, since after all they'd just be following the rule. It's reasonable to ask, particularly given the local consensus at Talk:H.R. 40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act. Rules are supposed to follow common practice, and since common practice in this case is to allow parens that are not strictly required -- well, it's a recipe for conflict to have the rule and practice in disagreement. One or the other should be changed. Herostratus (talk) 23:28, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Ohhhh, I see. Well, I guess it depends on if it was changed early enough. Herostratus (talk) 00:06, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
In my opinion, this is just a survey to see where the community is at, so there is no "well" to poison as the substance of what people say matters far more than what option they !vote for. Nowhere does WP:RFC require an actual, concrete proposal, where small details in the proposed language would matter. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:36, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Returning to substance: I agree with the current treatment of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 19. IMO the right way to think about it is: If another composer/legislature/etc. (henceforth referred to as "author") produces notable works with the same numbered naming scheme, then we should use extra parenthetical disambiguation even if no actual notable work by a different author exists; if the numbering scheme is unique to a particular author, then don't disambiguate. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:43, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
If this is just a survey to see where people are at, then great. I would like to comment. However, it began with a policy land grab statement, and to respond agreeably would be to appear to support that statement. An RfC seeking to change/entrench policy should begin with a concrete statement, and that is how I read the original opening. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:09, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
On the substance of the bold Question, I believe that the community position is that parenthetical disambigation is "discouraged", despite a common affection for it. The Wikipedians who like the words "unnecessary disambiguation" are pushing an agenda of minimalist titling, and in general it is damaging to the readability of titles. Many good things are unnecessary. The answer is to balance the five criteria, each one of them. More information in titles is usually supported by RECOGNIZABILITY and CONSISTENCY. Four to six word descriptions tend to be more recognizable than shorter titles. At four to six words, "concise" starts to become an issue, although it depends on the words. If more "technical" disambigation is justified for recognizability or consistency, then the preference order is NATURAL, COMMA, PARENTHETICAL. This is sufficient discouragement of the parenthetical. I think the policy as written is good, with some few who try to overinterpret selected sections. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:18, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
@King of Hearts: this is not the place where to rewrite the WP:MUSICSERIES guidance: this entire RfC is too compromised for that (the contradiction between "just asking a question" and "am designing guidance" has still not been solved). So I don't care how you'd like to think about the Hungarian Rhapsodies (which appears to be a misrepresentation of the WP:MUSICSERIES guidance anyhow). If you want to know how WP:MUSICSERIES works, then ask, and we'll try to explain what would be unclear in its phrasing. But please stop designing guidance under the guise of "I am just asking a question". It's quite clear you don't understand how current guidance works, which places you in a bad position for preparing guideline updates. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:26, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
I never was intending to make changes to the WP:MUSICSERIES guideline; I think at this point we're just talking past each other because I am genuinely shocked by how you are interpreting my words, and I'm sure you feel the same way sometimes. My goal here is simple: I think MUSICSERIES is doing something more or less reasonable, and I would like to propose something similar for other areas especially legislation, but more generally if possible. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:10, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
As said, multiple times, this is not the way how to go about that. If you want to do something in the topic area of legislation, then you should get people who are editing in that area involved and/or look at what way RMs in that area generally go. Instead, you placed an invitation for this RfC at the talk page of the MUSICSERIES guidance, which means you intend this RfC as being entitled to change that guidance. Further, you're continuously misrepresenting that guidance, won't listen if someone else tells you that you don't have a clear picture of that guidance, nor of how the interaction between the AT policy and particular naming conventions guidance actually works. Anyhow, it is very unlikely that transposing the MUSICSERIES guidance to any other area, including legislation, would actually work. I've written quite some naming conventions (at least two of the ones I initiated from scratch many years ago are still active naming conventions), and can tell you one thing: they all work quite differently. One thing I can tell you also is that they mostly started from actual practice, as decided in RMs, and other than that try to give a good balance of all WP:CRITERIA requirements, adapted to topic area, and try to resolve recurring issues via consensus (so that recurring discussions on similar issues are no longer necessary). --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:37, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
I posted on the talk page of MUSICSERIES because I value the input of those who helped develop that guideline. Again, as I've said above, everyone interprets naming/disambiguation policies and guidelines differently and thinks that anyone who doesn't agree with them is wrong. Now, I was involved with a change to WP:NCTV that came about from actual practice (namely, the guideline previously mandated that the episode "Winterfell" be titled Winterfell (Game of Thrones), which was clearly ridiculous as Winterfell itself was a primary redirect to the Game of Thrones location). Fortunately, the RM got a lot of participation and conclusively debunked the existing wording. But most of the time we're not that lucky, and RMs get fewer than 10 participants. Often there's a certain group of people who predictably !vote a certain way on one particular issue, and a different group of people who predictably !vote the other way. The RM result is not determined by merit but simply due to chance, either from who happens to show up (if the closer is more conservative and defaults to vote-counting) or from who the closer is (if they fall in one of the two camps and simply believe that the other camp's arguments are against policy). So resolving it via a central discussion has always served me well than trying to piece things together case by case. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:03, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

When writing NC guidance it helps to step down from the "fortunately" vs "unfortunately" thinking when talking about RMs. I know that that isn't always evident, but too much of an "according to me the RM should have ended this or that way" kind of thinking really doesn't help. That's why all throughout this discussion I felt you were steering for something, and not just asking a question for which you were prepared to actually take the answers you got for what they were. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:16, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

I was merely making a comment about the participation levels. If the result had ended in the other way with strong support from many people, I would have said "well, that's silly" and dropped the stick and done something else. The worst is when an RM ends up with a totally random result because of insufficient participation. I am steering for something, but far more important to me is the consistent application of our policies and guidelines. If this RfC ends up with a significant, well-reasoned majority favoring a different interpretation, then I will adjust my views to align with and defend the newly discovered community consensus. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 13:20, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Discouraged. Ah, the foggy notion of "inherently ambiguous" rears its ugly head again. Ambiguity, in the context of WP naming conventions, means that there is more than one article that could have that title. Inherent ambiguity is an oxymoron; ambiguity exists between two options. What is being argued here is recognizability. If we decide someone should be able to tell who wrote Symphony 100 from the title for improved recognizability, why shouldn't you also be able to tell who wrote La gazza ladra from the title? Or that it is an opera, as opposed to a book or a ship? As for consistency, I don't think that principle should extend to including unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation, or else every title would have parenthetical disambiguation, because surely at least one title of just about any given set needs it.--Trystan (talk) 15:16, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Permitted at very least. Let me first state that we have two issues entangled here: if we discuss disambiguation, are we limited to only parenthetical, or do we also include natural? I understand, and to an extent share, the resistance towards parenthetical disambiguation. As Trystan said, however, it becomes the issue of precision and recognizability, but then I disagree with their arguments and endorse those of Herostratus and King of Hearts: I think that "inherent ambiguity" is a thing, and that we serve our readings much better by including a bit of extra information in the title that would help them locate the article they are after, i.e. give some extra recognizability. Once the reader is at the desired article, its title matters much less than when it is presented in a context-free environment such as search bar, list of search results or a wide-ranging category. I have advocated for similar approach (erring towards the side of wordiness) on pages about generic-sounding government agencies and ministries, military units, and like. I don't think I could ever be persuaded that bare Symphony No. 100 is somehow better title of an encyclopedia article than any of Symphony No. 100 (Haydn), Haydn's Symphony No. 100 or Symphony No. 100 by Joseph Haydn.
    That being said, I long for the day when our software platform will allow for non-unique titles, like Wikidata does, and separate the reader-facing title from the editor-facing article's unique identifier. I think that we would have much less of those navel-gazing and ultimately unproductive "primary topic" and "disambiguation" discussions. No such user (talk) 12:55, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Parenthetical vs "of Country" disambiguation in courts

There's currently what seems to be a great deal of nonconformity of the way we name courts that exist across different countries. For instance, we have:

This is a mess. Per WP:PARENDIS, I think we should standardise these to the form "Court (country)", rather than this slightly higgledy-piggledy cluster of different naming strategies. It doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense, at least to my mind, to skip to DESCRIPDIS when PARENDIS will do perfectly well. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 13:32, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

  • Supreme Court of the United States is the full name of the highest court in the US and should be used instead of Supreme Court (United States) per WP:NATURALDIS. This may appear to be messy, but each case should be handled on its own merits. A few of these may be wrongly disambiguated, but not all of them are. Iffy★Chat -- 13:37, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
    @Iffy: I was thinking about including a point about SCOTUS being a NATURALDIS, which I recognise and is fair enough. However, for so many of these, that's not the case. I actually came across this problem when writing Supreme Electoral Court (El Salvador), and then noticed that Supreme Electoral Court of Costa Rica exists using a DESCRIPDIS rather than a PARENDIS - which set me off down this whole rabbit hole of annoyance. I think we at least need to make sure that, where there isn't a clear NATURALDIS (which as far as I'm aware none of the other examples I've given are), the articles are moved to fit PARENDIS - but I wanted to check that there was consensus to do this. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 13:45, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
    The best way to deal with these would be to open individual WP:RM discussions for those that you believe are wrongly disambiguated and to form consensus that way. Iffy★Chat -- 14:28, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
    If it was a small number of them that had this issue, I would agree. I'm really not convinced it is, though. I've just manually gone through List of supreme courts by country and found 32 of the 195 UN-recognised Supreme Courts - almost 20% - fit the criteria of a) not having their native name include the country name, b) not having their references include any obvious reference that includes the country name, and c) their official website not using the country name. I'm explicitly not saying I did the kind of diligence to actually move these articles, and the list below is almost certainly both incomplete and, in some cases, incorrect, but the below articles are just the Supreme Courts alone which I think might conceivably warrant a move to a PARENDIS.
The list of Supreme Courts I think might qualify
  1. Supreme Court of Argentina
  2. Supreme Administrative Court of Austria
  3. Supreme Court of Bhutan
  4. Supreme Court of Cassation of Bulgaria
  5. Supreme Administrative Court of Bulgaria
  6. Supreme Court of Cameroon
  7. Supreme Court of Chad
  8. Supreme Court of Chile
  9. Constitutional Court of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
  10. Supreme Court of El Salvador
  11. Supreme Court of Finland
  12. Supreme Court of Justice of Guatemala
  13. Supreme Court of Haiti
  14. Supreme Court of Israel
  15. Supreme Court of Kenya
  16. Supreme Court of Kyrgyzstan
  17. People's Supreme Court of Laos
  18. Supreme Court of the Marshall Islands
  19. Supreme Court of Myanmar (known as the Supreme Court of the Union)
  20. Supreme Court of New Zealand
  21. Supreme Court of North Korea (states "officially the Central Court" in the lead, NK News calls it "North Korean Supreme Court", everywhere else I can see uses Central Court)
  22. Supreme Court of Palau (known as the Palau Supreme Court)
  23. Constitutional Court of Peru
  24. Supreme Court of Peru
  25. Supreme Court of São Tomé and Príncipe
  26. Supreme Court of South Korea (known as the Supreme Court of Korea (geopolitical concerns make me think this should be bracketed anyway))
  27. Supreme Constitutional Court of Syria
  28. Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland
  29. Supreme Court of Sweden
  30. Federal Supreme Court of the United Arab Emirates
  31. Supreme Court of Uruguay
  32. Supreme Court of Zimbabwe
  • Again, I'm absolutely not suggesting these all actually ought to be moved, at least not without significant further research, but I'm merely trying to demonstrate the scale of the problem. If even half of these entries needed moving, that suggests a very large impact when considering non-Supreme Courts as well. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 16:14, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
    If there is a formal name of any of these that amounts to "Supreme Court of Foo", then we should definitely use that in favor of parenthetical disambiguation like "Supreme Court (Foo)". It is worth nothing that some jurisdictions (e.g. New York) have a "Supreme Court" that is not their Supreme court, which is called something else. BD2412 T 15:23, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
    The lede of Supreme Court (Hong Kong) says "The Supreme Court of Hong Kong (Chinese: 香港最高法院) was the..." so, I think, if there is a verifiable source for that being the official translation of the name, the article could just be moved to that title. I'm not sure how many of these parenthetically titled articles have the same deal going on, but it seems to me like most of them probably would. { } 04:27, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
    There is also what used to be called the "Supreme Court of Judicature" (1883-1981) and the "Supreme Court of England and Wales" (1981-2005), and is now called the "Senior Courts of England and Wales" (from 2005) (see Courts of England and Wales#Senior Courts of England and Wales). From 1883 to 1999, its procedures were governed by the Rules of the Supreme Court. Despite the names, it was not the court of final appeal, and was entirely separate from the "Judicial Committee of the House of Lords" (aka "House of Lords" or "Law Lords") (1883-2005), which has been replaced by the "Supreme Court" (from 2005) (our article title is Supreme Court of the United Kingdom). This warns against a one-size-fits-all approach. Narky Blert (talk) 07:20, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
    Right. My reply to the original question right off is "Nah. It's fine". You're always going to have stuff like this. It's the nature of how the Wikipedia is made. Every rule we decline to create is a win, cos it's one less thing for editors to get "wrong" and be "corrected", and do you like that? I don't. Is it confusing the readers? Doubt it. If it's not a problem for the reader, I wouldn't worry about it. I get that some people like things neat and standardized, and that's fine and there's nothing wrong with being like that, but it's kind of pulling against the nature of how pages are organically created, which should be done if there's the result is really jarring, or confusing, or distracting, but I don't think any of these apply here. Herostratus (talk) 18:04, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Official title v commonname for television episodes

There is a clear consensus that WP:COMMONNAME should not be amended to allow television episodes to default to official titles.

Cunard (talk) 22:50, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The Television Wikiproject have a strong consensus to default to official titles rather than common names per this discussion: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Television#Episode_title_discussion. The RfC was notified here among other venues, so the assumption is that the matter has broad consensus. As such, if it is agreed that there is a broad consensus, it would be appropriate to make some form of amendment to the policy to indicate that WP:COMMONNAME does not apply to television programmes. I am not advocating one way or another, but setting this up so there is some clarity on the issue and prevent conflict between community policy and WikiProject practise.

The question is: Should WP:COMMONNAME be amended to allow television episodes to default to official titles? SilkTork (talk) 14:55, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

  • No because there is already an exception to the WP:COMMONNAME policy, it's called WP:IAR (see Sarah Jane Brown for an example of COMMONNAME being IAR'd outside of the TV area). As most TV shows will have the common name be the same as the official name, I don't see any need to change the policy here. Iffy★Chat -- 15:50, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
    I think Sarah Jane Brown would be an example of the sort of long running contentious debate this RfC is aiming to avoid. ;-) SilkTork (talk) 18:26, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
    It isn't possible to avoid such debates when complicated cases arise (either complicated in an of themselves, or – as in this case – complicated in their interaction with various WP policies and guidelines. That's just how it will be any time there is any system of nomenclature for anything. It doesn't mean the system is broken, it simply means it is in fact a system.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:04, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment – I think this RfC is based on a misunderstanding. The AT policy is summarized in WP:CRITERIA. WP:COMMONNAME, at best, relates to three of the five criteria, that is #1 Recognizability, #2 Naturalness, and #4 Conciseness. #3, Precision is mostly not helped very much by a common name. And #5, Consistency, is the domain of particular naming conventions guidance. Sometimes this "consistency" deriving from particular guidance wins over the common name (e.g. Moonlight Sonata → Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven) per the guidance at WP:MUSICSERIES). This does not require an update of the WP:AT policy page. Sometimes the particular guidance isn't followed, e.g. Sarah Jane Brown, incompatible with WP:MIDDLENAME: no problem, while the "guideline"-level guidance allows exceptions more easily than policy. And insomuch as policy allows very occasional exceptions, it does not need to be rewritten for one outlier. It seems very unlikely that this guidance for television episodes would jump from WikiProject guidance (which, according to the WP:CONLEVEL policy is more or less of the same level as essays) to policy-level guidance. What would be useful, however, is to test whether the WikiProject guidance could be promoted to naming convention, i.e. guideline-level guidance. If the consensus is broad enough, it could probably be appended to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television)#Episode and character articles. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:13, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose, for the reasons explained in my "Comment" above: this is not a suitable level of detail for a policy page. Take to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television) to see whether this could be adopted in that guideline. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:13, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
I think I may have set this up with the wrong question. The reason we have guidelines and policies is to guide us to toward a uniform approach which avoids conflicts and endless discussions. If there is a dispute on how to proceed, we look to guidelines and policies. If a guideline and policy conflict, then the policy takes precedence because it has the wider consensus. See WP:POLCON. The RfC I linked has a consensus that official names are prioritised over common names, while policy says the opposite. If there is a dispute about this, then one side will quote local consensus and one side will quote policy. Depending on the situation, how many people support one side or the other, and the interpretation of anyone closing the discussion, we could see conclusions wavering one way and the other for years, similar to the Sarah Jane Brown situation. The solution to Sarah Jane Brown does not follow policy, and so it continuously gets challenged. Either a solution to Sarah Jane Brown is found that meets policy or policy is amended to incorporate situations like Sarah Jane Brown, or that dispute will continue for years to come. It only appears to get paused when a moratorium is placed on opening another move request. Saying no it can't be incorporated in policy, but yes it can be incorporated in guidelines is not a solution, and not what we try to work toward - see WP:ADVICEFORK. SilkTork (talk) 10:16, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Re. "The reason we have guidelines and policies is to guide us to toward a uniform approach..." – wrong, and I've stopped reading from there on: slapping on more misunderstandings in your reply doesn't help. Guidelines and policies also exist to explain multiple equally valid approaches, which is quite different from the sometimes quite popular demand for a uniform approach in every case. Wikipedia doesn't work that way: it has multiple freedoms, and doesn't regulate where no regulation is opportune. In this case, the policy says that there are five equally valid major considerations for how to name an article. "Consistency" is as valid as "Recognisability" (etc., for the other three CRITERIA).
Further, the claim to "Consistency" on official title for TV episodes is, at this point, still very weak. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television#RfC: Should episode article titles default to the broadcaster's official title? had very low attendance, was never officially closed (the attempted tendentious pseudo-closures at WP:ANRFC#RfCs rather damaged than strengthened the solidity of the RfC outcome), only pertains to the acceptance of essay-level guidance, and contains currently unassessed, but potentially valid, arguments by opposers. This should never have been brought here before uninvolved closure of the essay-level RfC, and a solid consensus reached in a subsequent discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television). --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:56, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure I misunderstand, so much as I'm not explaining myself clearly. For clarity, I am NOT arguing for TV episodes to use official titles rather than common names (nor am I arguing against it). That's not why I set this up. The discussion was on Requests for Closure - [5] so I looked into it. What I am looking to do is bring closure to the issue one way or the other. The discussion has a strong consensus of agreement that television titles should use official titles rather than common names, but as that is against policy, the RfC cannot be closed that way because - as I link above, and will link again here as you say you have not read the above - if a guideline and policy conflict, then the policy takes precedence because it has the wider consensus per WP:POLCON, and we do not create guidelines that conflict with policy per WP:ADVICEFORK. The folks at that discussion appear to feel that despite WP:POLCON and WP:ADVICEFORK that they have consensus to ignore WP:Commonname because the RfC was notified at this venue. I have set up this RfC to establish if they have that consensus or not. The answers that are saying - take this to Naming conventions (television) or allow IAR are not giving the matter the appropriate closure. I think it is because I set up the wrong question. What question do you feel I should be asking? SilkTork (talk) 11:18, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
The major virtue when an RfC is listed at ANRFC is mostly "patience" I think: trying to precipitate it only highlights that the issue is far from solved. Piling on another RfC before the earlier one is formally closed is usually counterproductive in a consensus-seeking process (that's experience speaking). --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:43, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment Francis Schonken. Sorry for delay answering. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Television#Episode_title_discussion had been archived after the clear consensus in the discussion that the WikiProject should use official names rather than common names. Because the discussion had not been formally closed, yet was running counter to policy, there was a request that it be looked at. Views expressed at ANRFC is that the situation was awkward because it was running against policy, and there was a suggestion that it be brought here to the policy page that was being impacted. I unarchived the discussion and mentioned the concerns, and suggested that the discussion be raised here. Nobody at the WikiProject appeared to wish to do that. One participant felt that as the matter had been advertised here, that implied they had the broad consensus to carry the suggestion into action. Maybe they have. Maybe they haven't. This RFC is to get a definitive answer to that question. And if the answer is yes, they do have consensus, then that should be recorded here in the policy otherwise we have a conflict per WP:POLCON, in which this policy will take precedence over the WikiProject's local consensus. Essentially, unless the WikiProject can get consensus here to adjust the policy, then their RFC needs to be formally closed as a rejected proposal. At the moment this RfC is not returning the right answer because I asked the wrong question, so I'm not sure that there can be closure on this either way. SilkTork (talk) 13:24, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
You could simply have closed the RfC (which was overdue anyhow) since you seem to have had no prior involvement with it: that would likely have saved some editor time. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:44, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
Update – Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television#RfC: Should episode article titles default to the broadcaster's official title? has been closed on "No consensus to overturn current policy" – imho this makes the set-up of this WT:AT RfC (which should never have been initiated for the reasons it was initiated, see closure report of the Wikiproject RfC) moot. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:22, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What if... ??

Alright. This is just an essay that I was moved to write by thinking some more about a point I made in the #RfC: Titles which are part of an ambiguous series thread above. This's an expansion on that, and there's no action item really, and you can skip it altogether. It's just woolgathering really, altho there's a vague bit of rabble-rousing at the end.

Anyway... you know, there's no reason for us not to have longer titles. There's no reason for us not have parenthesized elucidation for most of our articles. (Well there are reasons, but they're kind of weak.) It's just something that was decided, kind of at random, at the beginning of the project. It wasn't a terrible decision, but it's probably not best either.

I mean, one (pretty common) way to access an an article is by picking from a search results list, either Google's or ours, where the article title is what you see.

So we have articles like... The Lambs. Bkorn. Christmas Bullet. What the heck are these??? These are terrible titles for encyclopedia articles, objectively. They tell you nothing, do they. If they come in a search result or whatever, what good are they. Not much. If I had to guess, I'd suppose The Lambs is a band, Bkorn is town in Norway, and Christmas Bullet is... I have no idea. In fact, they're a club, a record producer, and an airplane.

The Lambs (club). Bkorn (record producer). Christmas Bullet (airplane). How hard would it have been to title the articles like this. Something actually useful to the, you know, reader.

Is Azaborane a town in Kirghizstan? Campo Lameiro an Argentine footballer? Urban Rescue an inner city humanitarian organization? Gurla Mandhata an Indian singer? Trambaix a drug for joint inflammation? Lehavim an ancient Israeli tribe? Luitel a Ceylonese flowering plant? Who can tell? But anyway, they're not. So, what if in our early days we'd put forth a manual of style such that these articles were instead titled Azaborane (chemical), Campo Lameiro, Spain, Urban Rescue (band), Gurla Mandhata (mountain), Trambaix (tram system), Lehavim, Israel and Luitel (surname)?

Would people be running around screaming? Would such a ludicrous rubric have ensured that the Wikipedia never have attracted enough editors and donors to get off the ground? Would we be the laughing stock of the internet, to have titles like that? Would we be inundated by angry telegrams from confused and annoyed readers? Would public drunkenness in America be spiraling out of control? Would a meteor the size of Heligoland be plummeting toward the Earth at a speed of 20/kms at this very moment?

Of course not. Relax. None of those things would be happening. In fact, this other rubric would feel as natural as the air, we being entirely used to it, and people wouldn't much consider that there'd be any other way to do it. And proposals to cut back article titles -- to move (the pretty clear) Landmine Marathon (band) to (the opaque if not actively misleading) Landmine Marathon and so forth -- would be seen as idiosyncratic, fringe, and silly.

OK?

And not even just that. On the other end, you have articles here such as New York City Fire Museum and H. C. Recktenwald Prize in Economics. 1855 in literature. List of tallest buildings in India. Heavy Love (Man Overboard album). And so forth. These are titles that do tell the reader a lot more about what the article is about than the above examples. This is just a function of what they're about (there's really no way to usefully shorten titles like 1995 All-Ireland Senior Camogie Championship) or because we are forced (kicking and screaming, some of us, I guess) to add elucidating information simply because it's not possible to have multiple articles with the same title.

So... how is it correct, or helpful to the reader, to have some titles that tell the reader what the article is, you know, about, and some that don't, according to random circumstance? Should there have been a rule, in the early days, to the effect of

Care should be taken that at least one-third of articles should have titles that clearly, quickly, and succinctly describe at first glance the general topic of the article, while at least one-third have titles composed of seemingly random words that do no such thing. Random chance shall be the primary deciding factor for deciding which type of title an article shall have.

Well of course not. That'd be a silly rule. Right? But the result is as if we did have such a silly rule and looking thru 100 random article titles you'd be forgiven for inferring that we do. How is that a good look? It's not a good look. So why do we put up with it.

Traditioooooon, Tradition! Fine for your Shtetl maybe. Not so much for one of the world's top websites in the middle of the 21st century.

Anyway, though... it is what it is, and for various reasons there's nothing that can change it, so for good or ill we'll have to let it go. For now. Doesn't mean I or other like-minded people have to keep quiet about it though.

We can at least acknowledge that we got here basically by random chance, and thus that we can at least nudge toward common sense at the margins. If there's a dispute, we can object to arguments that amount to WP:TRADITION and instead demand real arguments. let's make as many exceptions to this suboptimal rule as we can and escape the dead hand of the past at the margins at least. And keep propagandizing meanwhile. Herostratus (talk) 01:02, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

  • Lots of words. I didn’t read them all. I think I agree. Wikipedia titles tend to be shorter than optimum. WP:Concise is good, but concise does not mean “shorter is better”, no more than “brevity is wit”. For optimum, I think the question is how many words does the eye and mind take in and process in a glance. My personal research in this is that the answer is more then two words / ten characters, and less then one full line in title font, which is ~42 characters. The subjective measure is WP:Recognizability. Unfortunately, some title minimalists overread CONCISE to the exclusion of all else. The only nitpick I immediately had on reading is that Natural and Comma are preferable of parenthetical. I would retitle Christmas Bullet as Christmas Strutless Biplane. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:51, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
There is a superficial flaw in COMMONNAME that may be read as the cause of the problem. The flaw is that COMMONNAME tests tend to count name uses, almost blindly. Doing this, the count picks up repeated use by in-context microsources, as opposed to broad-readership introductory use. The in-context microsources tend to the use of jargon, which we know is undesirable. A good example is a book on cats, which will tend to drop the string “cat” at every instance if possible, including in breed names, because it is not considered good writing style to include extreme repetition of anything. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:57, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Giving an idea about what an article is about is what Wikipedia:Short descriptions are for. (Once they all become local rather than on Wikidata we can reinstate them in desktop search results, and they appear on mobile search results already.) Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:33, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
    • Haha. Never saw Wikipedia:Short description before. It looks obviously to me to be filling the hole created by inadequate titling. ~40 characters? That is not a description. That is a composition title. Maybe some are confused by fiction, where publishers like cutsie titles. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:15, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Erroneous names

Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask this question, as it doesn't concern the title of an article per se. If you can think of a better place to ask, I'm all ears.

There's a disagreement over at Beastie Boys about how to explain the fact that the band is sometimes referred to as "Beastie Boys" and otherwise "the Beastie Boys". This question is fairly common on Wikipedia articles about bands (see also Pixies/the Pixies and Smashing Pumpkins/the Smashing Pumpkins).

However, NJZombie has provided a source in which the band members explicitly say that "the Beastie Boys" is wrong, and so has added "often erroneously referred to as the Beastie Boys" to the lead sentence.

My suspicion is that, as hundreds or thousands of sources use "the Beastie Boys" (not to mention, uh, their own song lyrics), it's not really Wikipedia's place to pass judgement on what's "erroneous". I also am not really convinced that the band’s statement matters as much as one might think, because Wikipedia goes with what most sources use. My preference would be to neutrally explain that the band is referred both with and without the definite article and explain the band member’s preference in a footnote.

But I could be wrong. Do we do this - point out when names are wrong? Is there a relevant policy I've missed? Popcornfud (talk) 12:18, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. The FSF wrote most of the code in GNU/Linux, but they don't get to decide which name is "correct" on Wikipedia. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:47, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Seems to be missing the point – Wikipedia uses the "correct" name Beastie Boys, and afaics Popcornfud is not asking to change that. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:50, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
Well, this is not the right place for the issue: this page is for improving and/or clarifying the WP:AT policy. Your question is not about Wikipedia policy, and insomuch as it maybe is, then certainly not this policy, which is only about article titles (not content of articles).
On the ground of the matter, yes, Wikipedia article content sometimes indicates that a name is incorrect, e.g.:
  • Lead sentence of Joseph Merrick article: "Joseph Carey Merrick (5 August 1862 – 11 April 1890), often erroneously called John Merrick, was ..."
  • Lead sentence of Project Azorian article "Project Azorian (erroneously called "Jennifer" ...) ..."
Whether something like that should be in the lead paragraph of the Beastie Boys article is not something to sort out on this page: it may be a WP:NPOV issue, in which case the issue should rather be brought up at WP:NPOVN; it might be a WP:BLP issue (as the group members indicate they find the "erroneous" name rather insulting), then it should be brought up at WP:BLPN; it might be that the source that states how the group members feel about this is not entirely trustworthy, in which case it should be brought up at WP:RSN. So, enough places to choose from, but not this page, that is, if you want to avoid further off-topic comments, by people not seeing directly that this question is not about article titling. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:50, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
  • It's grammatically rather awkward in English to have a plural name like Beastie Boys for a group, which invites use of "the", but then not use it (as opposed to names like Santana, Cream etc where this is not a problem) . Since this is a very common usage (which I would use myself), I would cut the rather POV erroneously, but register the group's view in a note to the lead, and also lower in the text. Johnbod (talk) 23:17, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I would suggest that if the common, most recognized name differs from the way that the person/group would have really liked the name to be known as but far too late/downstream to fix, and/or a case where it would be impractical (eg Prince), just footnote this. What we did for Untitled Goose Game (which by the admission of its creators, technically is a game that has no name but that name had to be used to submit it and it stuck) addresses the point but without being obnoxious about it as the examples above do. --Masem (t) 23:35, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the input everyone. @Francis Schonken: sorry for asking in the wrong place, I couldn't find anywhere obvious to put this. Popcornfud (talk) 15:22, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Rhode Island is the more concise.

The example in WP:CONCISE says that Rhode Island is the most concise. That isn't true, "RI" would probably be the most concise, and the example is merely more concise than Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. With my mighty blue pencil I shall substitute "more" for "most". 94.21.219.127 (talk) 05:45, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Let alone that "to fully identify" is a split infinitive. Tut-machine on overdrive... :) 94.21.219.127 (talk) 05:47, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
If "fully" here means "unambiguously", then the existing statement is true: Rhode Island is the most concise title that unambiguously identifies the subject, since "RI" is ambiguous. However, we probably don't want to repeat the word "unambiguous" in the same sentence. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:55, 23 May 2020 (UTC)


No more use of capitalization as a form of disambiguation

As per our discussions a couple months ago, I updated the DIFFCAPS section to read as follows: [6]

I was reverted for not having consensus.

Does this meet with your approval?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Red Slash (talk • contribs) 21:32, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

  • No. At the very least, the edit lacks clarity. This talk section lacks clarity. At a minimum, the edit must link to the archive mentioned. Ideally, you would provide a two-column table showing the old text and the new text.
I support movement on updating DIFFCAPS to better reflect consensus. I think discussions have shown that DIFFCAPS policy documentation details did not reflect consensus. However, I have to support User:Francis Schonken's revert. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:26, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  • The last discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 58#Time to ditch DIFFCAPS? – In that discussion I illustrated with a few examples that DIFFCAP article titles exist, without apparent problems, in mainspace. So, there's no consensus that this wouldn't be a solution in search of a problem. No policy text was proposed, and even less agreed upon, explaining what should be done with these examples if they would be experienced as problematic.
More importantly, as I said during the previous discussion, the core of the current WP:SMALLDETAILS guidance is to apply disambiguation techniques where, strictly speaking, these would not be necessary. Apparently a few editors !voting to "ditch" the current guidance meant it needed to be strengthened. That disparity was not resolved, and that's why an explicit text needs to be agreed upon before this part of the policy can be modified by either ditching or strengthening it.
In other words, there's no consensus on anything, and the last person who should be interpreting the consensus (or lack thereof) at the end of the previous discussion is probably the editor initiating that discussion, which set off on the wrong foot (i.e., confusing "ditching" with "strengthening"). --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:50, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Yeah. I think I agree with all of those words.
I still think a sufficient improvement is to simply remove WP:DIFFCAPS from the WP:Linkbox. While the policy section words can still be improved, on careful reading I can't point to anything "wrong". The problem is with big bright blue ALLCAPS words that sometimes has the effect of reducing editor thinking to single word phrases. "DIFFCAPS is policy for sufficient disambiguation" is what some people takeaway from a non-reading of the section. Better to leave the policy section emblazoned solely with WP:SMALLDETAILS, which includes without overemphasizing DIFFCAPS, and DIFFPUNCT (DIFFPUNCT being similar, but less commonly a debated issue). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:17, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Relevant RfC on tiebreaker when naming foreign entities

You may be interested in the following discussion: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)#RfC: Tiebreaker for native vs. translated name. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:30, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

The Fishing Museum or Fishing Museum

After reading Chimney Museum I moved The Fishing M to Fisning M. But tben I see The Jam Museum... Any rules? Shall my move be reverted? - Altenmann >talk 06:50, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

It seems to me that common practice on Wikipedia is not to include "The" at the beginning of the title of a museum article, as most museums do not capitalize "the" even in when their name appears in running text per WP:The. Mysterymanblue (talk) 17:38, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

"Death of person" titling

Page watchers may be interested in a discussion about the title for articles for the death of a person. It's at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves § "Shooting of" or "Killing of". Izno (talk) 01:31, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Titleling of the History of Articles

I recently proposed a move at Talk:History_of_Bangladesh_after_independence#Requested_move_7_June_2020, but the consensus seems to be against it. It hasn't been closed at the time of writing this. I would like to seek community input on articles that talk about the history of a time period like History of the Republic of India where the official name is used. Maybe we could title articles similar to History of the United States (2008–present). I would like to address these things in this RFC to see what is the best title for titling the articles. Interstellarity (talk) 00:12, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

  • I think article titles "[[History of XXX after [event]]]" is an obscuring title phrase. It demands too much pre-knowledge of the reader. I think titles such as "[[XXX [event] (yyyy-yyyy)]]" is much more reader friendly. "XXX [event]" will require adjusting for grammar. The parenthetical might be "25th century BC", or "1939-45" or "since 2008", for example. "History of" is in-concise, every article should be assumed to be a history of the topic. Years are very helpful for recognition. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:33, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I would oppose a general rule here. I'm usually all for WP:CONSISTENCY, but geopolitics is such a dicey topic that we can't avoid inconsistency. Ireland, China, Georgia, Macedonia, etc., you name it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:54, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Use of "the" in titles about ethnic groups

(Note: This RfC was retroactively added after initial comments by Mysterymanblue and and King of Hearts.)

Should WP:DEFINITE include guidance that "the" should not be used in article titles when the word immediately precedes the name of certain ethnic groups? Mysterymanblue (talk) 03:33, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  • Comment: I noticed that there is a split in many articles regarding the use of "the" before the name of an ethnic group. For example:
(Interestingly, some of these articles use "the" in the article tite but proceed to not use "the" throughout the article.)
Sometimes, it is appropriate to use the definite article before the name of an ethnic group. This is particularly true when referring to groups of people that no longer exist, such as the Huns or the Franks, or possibly when discussing military groups ("A vehement complaint was lodged by the Mexicans to Lorencez who took the effrontery as a plan to assail his forces." from Battle of Puebla). When a mass noun is being used (the French, the English), it is almost always preferable to use the definite article. When the group name is qualified in some way, "the" may sometimes be acceptable ("Some of the Puerto Ricans who served in World War I continued in the military..." from Puerto Ricans in World War I).
I think that by WP:DEFINITE and WP:CONCISE, the use of "the" in certain cases should certainly be dropped from article titles because it simply is not necessary to convey the topic of the article; if anything, the use of the definite article in many cases is clunky. For now, we can disregard the "political correctness" argument that using the definite article to refer to ethnic groups in certain cases is "othering" and a social wrong. While I personally think this argument is compelling, the true test of whether referring to these group with "the" is acceptable can simply be determined by looking at the wider media:
The search methodology I used is not perfect, but I think that it goes to show the relative infrequency of using the definite article in describing many ethnic groups. I welcome others to try to get a more accurate reading of how (not) widespread "the" is in the English-speaking reliable media. Based on what I see, WP:COMMONNAME indicates that most articles using "the" to refer to an ethnic group should probably be renamed to drop that usage.
I am seeking guidance through this page to gauge consensus on the matter because this naming issue affects a large number of articles. Mysterymanblue (talk) 20:59, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I agree that for a single ethnic group, all articles of the form "History of (ethnic group) in X" should have a consistent usage of "the". It does seem more idiomatic to exclude the "the" for most ethnic groups and to include it for the Jews, but I can't point to a logical rationale for doing so. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:29, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment - I can't think of a clear concise rule for this besides following the prevailing usage in reliable sources. I think in the first examples given by Mysterymanblue, "the" should clearly be dropped. At least to my ear, something like "History of the Chinese Americans in Los Angeles" implies that Chinese Americans in Los Angeles are a homogeneous group with a single history, while this is clearly not the case, and overall just feels clunky. However, "History of the Chinese People" (referring to the ancient history and origin of the people group) seems entirely idiomatic and neutral, while "History of the Chinese" does feel as if it falls afoul of the "othering" consideration and is again clunky, at least in modern usage. Arathald (talk) 21:00, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguators in category names

Page watchers may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion § RFC on including disambiguators in category names. Izno (talk) 15:08, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at WT:MOSBIO regarding WP:UKNATIONALS

There's a discussion at WT:MOSBIO regarding turning an essay, WP:UKNATIONALS, into a MOS guideline. Input appreciated at: WT:MOSBIO#WP:UKNATIONALS. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:43, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Should "Correctness" be added to the 5 criteria?

When I look at the 5 criteria for an article title, I see nothing about correctness or accuracy. Should that be added? I am particularly looking at cases where a person or entity does an official name change; two examples I have in mind are The Chicks (which some editors are saying should stay with their old name Dixie Chicks); and Cat Stevens, when Yusuf Islam is more accurate, more respectful to Yusuf himself, and is used by the more careful sources. Surely an encyclopedia should strive to be accurate, even in cases where many or even most sources are not. Adpete (talk) 03:40, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Correctness is discussed in the next section: "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." I would support elevating it to be a sixth criterion. However, I don't think "correctness" really applies to either of the examples you mentioned, as those both use correct but old names. Currency is a trickier criterion to integrate with the others, particularly recognizability. I don't know what we would say that isn't already covered in WP:NAMECHANGES. Though I have certainly found that there is more resistance to some types of name changes than others.--Trystan (talk) 04:28, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
Yes but in both those cases, the old title is less correct. If correctness was one of the official criteria, it would give a better balance (IMHO). Adpete (talk) 05:30, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
Short answer: No. Long answer: if reliable sources start referring to the subject by the new name - not just in the context of "so and so just announced a name change" but actually using the new name to refer to the subject as a noteworthy entity under the new name, then that can become the appropriate name. The criterion for the article title is not "what do they call themselves right now", it's "how would a casual reader refer to the subject". A name change is for the lede of the article, not the title, just like with the native name of a foreign institution that is known in reliable sources by its English translation. VanIsaacWScont 05:01, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
That is my point: I am proposing that the criteria change. I know what the current rules are; and I think they are flawed. A correctness criterion would help avoid names which are... well, incorrect. Adpete (talk) 05:30, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
Then no. The encyclopedia is for readers, not the correctness police. VanIsaacWScont 16:33, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
"All articles must strive for verifiable accuracy" -- WP:5PILLARS. Adpete (talk) 05:30, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
  • No. “Correctness” is subjective, subjective to perspective. Wikipedia should follow the sources, reliable sources, quality sources. Wikipedians should debate which sources are best, and follow them. Wikipedians should not debate what is “correct”. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:34, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
Of course I meant correctness as given by the WP:RS. Adpete (talk) 06:00, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
“Correctness” is not a word mentioned at WP:RS. Introducing this term here would hurt clarity, not help. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:52, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
"Accuracy" would be a better choice of word then. Adpete (talk) 12:44, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
I mean, you're talking about the legal, official name as being the correct one, I gather. But I mean who cares what some lawyers or politicians decided to name something? The John Hancock Tower in Boston is legally named "200 Clarendon Street" (the John Hancock Insurance Company made the owners change it when they moved, or something). But nobody calls it that. They call it the John Hancock Tower (or the Hancock Tower, or just the Hancock). If you make a date with a girl to meet at 200 Clarendon, she'll be waiting for you in Instanbul. So why use a name that nobody uses or recognizes just because some lawyers from the John Hancock Insurance Company and the owners of the building made some decision based on branding rights and legal pettifoggery?
That, anyway, appears to be the majority view here, and by a good margin. Your point is not unreasonable. We could indeed decide to name things this way. Maybe that would even be better (providing the proper redirects are in place). It would reduce arguments, for one thing, and there's nothing inherently wrong or bad in doing it that way. But it would be some very heavy lifting indeed to make that happen, so I'd let it go. You haven't changed my mind, for one. "It's correct" doesn't do much for me. The type of argument that appeals to me is "this change would be better for the reader, because [cogent and persuasive points]". Until and unless you can demonstrate that it'd be a net improvement for the readers to have "Cat Stevens" renamed to "Yusuf" etc., you're dead in the water. Herostratus (talk) 14:45, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
I think you are misunderstanding me. I am not advocating official names over popular names; I am advocating accurate names over inaccurate ones (per WP:5PILLARS). Renaming the "Cat Stevens" article would help the reader to understand that Cat Stevens is no longer Yusuf Islam's name, and is not an accurate way to refer to him. (Similarly Dixie Chicks, Bruce Jenner, 2019-nCoV epidemic, etc). I am also not saying this should be a hard and fast rule, but that accuracy should at least be in the criteria. At the moment it is not. Adpete (talk) 05:30, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
"Cat Stevens" is still Yusuf Islam's name in the hearts and minds and countless fans and consumers of his work. There is nothing 'inaccurate' about it. There is no reason prescribe greater importance to the legal act of changing a name than to collective knowledge of his activities under the name "Cat Stevens". RGloucester — ☎ 20:38, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
I think correctness is already in the policy, as part of precision. And where it is not, it is often a violation of WP:COMMONNAME and should not be part of policy. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:10, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
I wish that was the case, but as stated at the moment, precision only refers to unambiguity. Perhaps accuracy could be incorporated into that guideline (e.g. something like "Precision – The title accurately and unambiguously identifies..."). As I mentioned above, accuracy is part of one of the pillars of WP, so I am not advocating a core change to WP; I am just (in my opinion) addressing an imbalance in the Article Titles section. Adpete (talk) 05:30, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
I strongly agree, correctness should be a criterion. I find it absurd that an encyclopedia uses a popualrity contest as its main criterion for naming the articles. Apparently page clicks are more important than presenting the correct information. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 20:21, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
  • If correctness (or 'accuracy) is interpreted as it inevitably will be, it shall mean we must refer to Rome as Roma, &c. Correctness is a nonsense when it comes to naming, because what is correct depends upon one's viewpoint. What matters is the language actually used by people to refer to things, as is evident in the usage of the collective body of reliable sources, and as is enshrined in the common name criteria, rather than what some elite grouping of essentialists determines is 'correct' or 'accurate'. RGloucester — ☎ 20:35, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
It is not elite grouping, it is people and organizations themselves that set the correct names for them. It is disrespectful and amateurish for an encyclopedia to completely ignore that. And Rome refers to iteslf as Rome in English (Roma is Italian) : https://www.rome.net/ https://www.rome.info/ https://www.romeinformation.it/en/ etc. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 21:53, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
No. Doesn't make any sense: Cat Stevens and Dixie Chicks are correct names. This appears to be an attempt to circumvent WP:OFFICIALNAMES. DrKay (talk) 22:05, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
No. It is a subjective idea, and to the extent anything objective could be distilled from it, it's already covered by WP:PRECISE. If something is technically a misnomer, that will be addressed in the article body.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:38, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Talk:Bonnie Blue Flag#Requested move 17 July 2020

It involves WP:CONSISTENT (and, consequently, MOS:ARTCON).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Gráinne Ní Mháille RM and move review involves COMMONNAME

Move review: Wikipedia:Move_review/Log/2020_July#Gráinne_Ní_Mháille

Links:

Gráinne Ní Mháille (talk|edit|history|logs|links|archive|watch) (RM) (Discussion with closer)

—-В²C ☎ 19:16, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Google Ngram syntax instructions

Hi there! I've seen this a few times but haven't really picked up on it, but it looks like when we're considering using hyphens in article names, Google Ngram requires special notation to search when using the hyphen otherwise the hyphen acts as an operator. For example, searching well-being on Google Ngram searches for "well" that doesn't reference to '"being", whereas well - being searches for "well-being". Since this is a really important thing to consider, is there anyway to include this in this article or on a WP:NGRAMS page etc? ItsPugle (talk) 10:52, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Move request discussion: Title for the Suicide of Kurt Cobain article

Opinions are needed on the following: Talk:Suicide of Kurt Cobain/Archive 1#Requested move 27 July 2020. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 02:45, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

ICloud leaks of celebrity photos title

Opinions are needed at Talk:ICloud leaks of celebrity photos#Requested move 25 July 2020. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 04:04, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Ennis Del Mar move discussion. Which spelling to go with?

We have a move discussion going on at Talk:Ennis Del Mar#Requested move 29 August 2020. It's a primary source vs. secondary source case about the spelling of the character's name. More opinions are needed. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 08:37, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Shooting of Greg Gunn § Requested move 3 September 2020

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Shooting of Greg Gunn § Requested move 3 September 2020. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 19:04, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Killing of Lizzie O'Neill § Requested move 4 September 2020

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Killing of Lizzie O'Neill § Requested move 4 September 2020. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 19:04, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Kiev/Kyev

Major COMMONNAME debate at huge RM open since July. See Talk:Kiev to weigh in. —-В²C ☎ 15:44, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Scientific and technical topics

Actually, the example "Aspirin (not: acetylsalicylic acid)" is not a very good one, as it depends of the country. In the UK and the US the term "Aspirin" became a synonym for the substance, a generic term. In other countries like Canada and many others, where Bayer could keep its brand name, Aspirin is "only" the Bayer brand for medicine containing acetylsalicylic acid and the legal branch of Bayer takes care that there is a distinction between the brand and the substance, else they would loose their brand name if it became a generic term. Therefore, this example should be removed, as indeed there is the chance that both words describe different things. Pharmaceutical articles are difficult in general, as there is a general rule, that there is only one article for the active ingredient but no other articles about trade names; these should only redirect to the pharmaceutical name. --Gunnar (talk) 20:33, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Titanic (1997 film) move discussion

Opinions are needed on the following: Talk:Titanic (1997 film)#Requested move 12 September 2020. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 22:13, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

RFC Template?

Should this template(Template:Wikipedia Naming Convention changes) be mentioned here?Manabimasu (talk) 19:20, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Manabimasu, was there any discussion prior to you starting this RfC? It appears that you created the template last year, and it doesn't seem to be all that widely used, and its language isn't very clear. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish here. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:16, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Spelling of Kyiv

There’s a broad conversation about using different spellings of Kyiv in article titles in certain subjects, at talk:Kyiv#Related articles. This may affect some guidelines. —Michael Z. 20:21, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

SMALLDETAILS and plurals

What does the "Plural forms may in certain instances also be used to naturally distinguish articles" mean? In most cases (like Cars and Cats) the singular and plural form lead to the same article, in many cases (like Walls and Ravens) the plural form goes to a DAB even though the singular has a primary topic. In a few cases (such as Windows and Friends) the plural form goes somewhere else. In many cases also a plural form is (relatively) unambiguous (such as Oranges and Rocks) that it points to a specific topic even though the singular goes to a DAB page.

Using plural forms to distinguish doesn't seem that likely since all countable nouns are title matches for their plural forms and therefore a different topic would need to satisfy PRIMARYTOPIC rather than SMALLDETAILS and a plural form that is primary (but not its equivalent singular) can't usually be given the plural title in that Oranges redirects to Orange (fruit).

Should we give an example such as Good (not countable) and Goods (not really at all spoken of in the singular) or Glass (uncountable) and Glasses (Plurale tantum)? Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:50, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Titles of articles on the Provinces of Nepal

Your input is sought at the multi-page move discussion currently underway at Talk:Bagmati Pradesh#Requested move 7 October 2020. Regards! Usedtobecool ☎️ 04:57, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

MOS:GENDERID being used in place of WP:Article titles and for category arguments

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#MOS:GENDERID being used in place of WP:Article titles and for category arguments. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 20:45, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Rhode Island example soon to be obsolete

Just a heads-up: please watch for certification of the Rhode Island referendum, after which the Rhode Island example in the "Conciseness" section will cease to be true. A simple verb change ("is" to "used to be") would fix it, but I don't know if we want to keep a deprecated example in a policy page. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 06:14, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Article title and focus

I would like to invite you to comment on the following issue:

Talk:Michael Fagan (intruder)#Article focus

Cheers, CapnZapp (talk) 16:17, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Naming convention for a closed university?

Kansas City University is about a university that closed in 1933. Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences recently changed its name to "Kansas City University." What is the best/correct way to handle the renaming of these articles? ElKevbo (talk) 01:46, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what the rules say but you could re-name the older university as Kansas City University (1896-1933) MilborneOne (talk) 15:18, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Disagree. As the defunct one was located in Kansas City, Kansas and the renaming one is located in Kansas City, Missouri it seems far more logical to disambiguate by the state in which the university is located (rename either the article on the former one to a name including the state, or the article on the newer one, or both – in the last case Kansas City University would likely become a disambiguation page). Anyhow, there should probably be a WP:RM to decide on these matters. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:50, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
This assumes a single physical central campus, quite a thing of the past. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. I've tabled this until someone can provide solid evidence that Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences has actually changed its name or at least convinced a significant number of sources to refer to it by its new preferred name. Right now it looks like they're trying to rebrand themselves without going through a legal name change so we need to wait to see if their attempts are successful. ElKevbo (talk) 03:33, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Disambiguate by (YYYY-YYYY). This very concisely gives a lot of information, now closed, when closed, and the date range is very probably very helpful is recognition and avoiding misrecognition. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:39, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Question

Does our policy on article titles also apply to pages that are not articles? I notice that many pages such as WP:COI are in sentence case, but the Main Page is capitalized. How should we treat those titles? Interstellarity (talk) 13:26, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

  • Comment: The Main Page is in title case because that’s how the software makes it by default. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 14:09, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment: From Wikipedia:Article titles: "This page explains in detail the considerations, or naming conventions, on which choices of article titles are based. This page does not detail titling for pages in other namespaces, such as categories." Main Page is technically in mainspace but this policy certainly doesn't say it should be in sentence case. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:48, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
  • The exact string WP:COI is in capitals because it is an acronym, which would be capitalized in this policy regardless. Perhaps the most interesting non-main space/acronym use is Manual of Style, but those pages have had at least one declined move request to the lowercase I think (which I can't find). (From memory, some editors consider that a work so it doesn't matter whether it is capitalized. I am not sure I subscribe to that view.) --Izno (talk) 15:00, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
    @Izno: Actually, what I meant to say is the title Wikipedia:Conflict of interest which is not Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest. It seems like sentence case of used most of time except on certain pages. Interstellarity (talk) 15:38, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment: I do see some inconsistency in title case vs. sentence case for project page titles, and it'd be nice to see that standardized to make it easier to remember links. That said, I do feel this is a low-reward, high-effort initiative, both because there are editors on either side ready to get more invested than warranted, and because moves of important project pages can have unexpected technical hurdles. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:22, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment – I've always wondered about the inconsistencies in WikiProject capitalization. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 01:57, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment − like Sdkb, I don't really have a horse in this race, but from memory, Wikipedia namespace articles seem to be pretty consistently in title case (except for the Main Page and other weird quirks that are mandated by software). But it seems like an attempt to pin it down for a guideline would result in a lot of people getting mad online. jp×g 11:13, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
    Wikiprojects are almost always an exception despite not being mandated by software, no? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 03:50, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
    WikiProjects are a relic from the period of exponential growth of Wikipedia (See Growth of Wikipedia and WP:GROWTH)), which was approximately 2003-2007. WikiProjects spontaneously arose with editors coordinating with new editors or help be organised in adding new articles. Now, most are relics of the past, with a some exceptions that remain strong. Mandated by software? No. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:00, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
    @SmokeyJoe: Given that they're a relic of Wikipedia's early years, should we, in your view, change their capitalization to conform to our standards for other pages? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 05:09, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
    Your question implies a hierarchical authoritarian view on how things are done. If the standards are a good idea, won’t the WikiProject members already be in agreement? If not, why not? What about inactive WikiProject? What is the advantage of the action? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:22, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
    Surely you're not suggesting that any application of WP:CONLEVEL – like, to use one example, the use of the article title policy – is "hierarchical" or "authoritarian".
    If the standards are a good idea, won’t the WikiProject members already be in agreement? Why would we choose to do that for one WikiProject but not another? Are there, in your view, cases where it would be desirable in the case of one WikiProject but not another? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 05:34, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
    Titling policies and guidelines apply to mainspace. If they were to be extended to cover small editor group activities, essays, and userspace, that would be "hierarchical" and “authoritarian", if the rules were applied without involving the stakeholders. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:14, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
  • The question seems to assume that there are rules that are applied. Many think this, but it is not true, and should not be true. Instead, policies document what we have agreed is a good idea. Generally, if something is a good idea for articles, it could be a good idea for documentation pages too. WP:THE, for example, is a good idea, for the reasons given on that page, and these reasons apply generally and not just to articles. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:03, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
  • I would agree that Main Page would be better off avoiding the extra caps. For pages not in main space, it matters little. Dicklyon (talk) 05:16, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

TfD of Template:old move and Template:old moves

FYI, Template:Old move (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and Template:Old moves (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated at Templates for Discussion. -- 65.92.246.246 (talk) 04:44, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Shooting or Death or Killing or Murder?

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Support came from those who felt that the results offered by the flow chart reflected the outcomes of current move discussions and from a desire to see guidance offered for those who are creating new articles. Opposition to this proposal tended to be based on a belief that this proposal was too prescriptive, from a disagreement over the design of the flow chart, or both. There was broad affirmation, by both those favoring and opposing this proposal, for the use of common names as article titles, though the feeling that this proposal did not emphasize or make clear the primacy of common names was a common criticism among those who took issue with the design proposed.
While is not the level of support that is necessary to create a guideline (officially a no consensus outcome), there is enough of a consensus to create an explanatory supplement to the Article title policy using the revised flow chart as a basis. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:38, 14 December 2020 (UTC) Edit: I was asked to state explicitly that there was consensus to include the flow chart at any explanatory supplement that was created. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:23, 16 December 2020 (UTC)


Original
Revised version per comments below

Should the above flowchart be adopted as a guideline for determining the default titles for articles about a notable death? --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:48, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Responses, shootings flowchart (yes/no/other)

  • Yes. This, like any guideline on en.wiki, is not intended as a prescriptive rule. Just a general framework from which there will be exceptions based on consensus. The flowchart also includes a footnote about WP:COMMONNAME, for cases such as Death of Adolf Hilter. I support this as the proposer per my comments in the many discussion about this subject linked in the discussion section below. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:48, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes, but with a clear "generally" caveat. It's a reasonable guideline that should hopefully reduce the number of move discussions that take place. It's not ironclad, though—for instance, as I pointed out in the previous discussion, many natural death articles may be better served by a title like Drowning of [name] than Death of [name]. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:59, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
  • No. Some observations.
  • If "homicide" means "criminal taking of someone's life", then a determination of whether a death was a homicide is tantamount to an affirmative answer to "was there a murder conviction", so they should be one decision point, not two that are separated by two others.
  • If "homicide" means "death caused by another person", then medical malpractice, deaths from risky medical procedures even when the risks were known and accepted by the patient, and accidental shootings fall under both "accidental death" and "homicide".
  • I see no need to go beyond "killing". "Killing" suffices with or without a murder conviction, and covers manslaughter convictions as well. In the case of an article created before a conviction, I see no reason to rename it after a conviction when the existing name is still fitting.
Largoplazo (talk) 21:13, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
"Homicide" is a determination by a coroner, a coroner's jury, medical examiner, or other such authority. We routinely move pages from "Death" to "Murder". --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 21:51, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
No, not ready. Too simple. I oppose not allowing “execution” for criminal executions. I oppose “murder” for qualified “murder”, such as second and third degree murders. These can be technicalities. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:00, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe, in what situation, besides COMMONNAME, would we call a "criminal execution" an "Execution of ..."? I have no reply for "second and third degree murders" --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 22:04, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
Eg the Romanov family. Execution of the Romanov family. They were executed, it was not legally sanctioned. “Besides COMMONNAME” is not ok, if it means discarding most inconsistencies. The flowchart should harmonise with COMMONNAME results. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:20, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe, "Execution of the Romanov family" is the COMMONNAME. The flowchart is meant to resolve the countless cases in which COMMONNAME has failed to render a result. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 22:31, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
Understood, however, if the flowchart does not produce the same results as COMMONNAME, for cases where there is good COMMONNAME evidence, then the flowchart fails. If there is insufficient sourcing to talk COMMONNAME, then there is insufficient suitable sourcing to make fine detail decisions as to whether it was a legally determined murder, or whether the execution was legally sanctioned, and whether the legal system was legitimate. No, the more I look, the more I think the flowchart is wrong. It invites primary source sleuthing for poorly sourced cases. I think that maybe "Killing of ..." should be the default, where the person died, unless there is COMMONNAME evidence for something else. COMMONNAME evidence does not include court documented findings, or scholarly legal papers on the legitimacy of a revolutionary regime. The flowchart has to be an harmonious generalization of COMMONNAME cases. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:27, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
I think you have not grasped the issue this is trying to solve. Take for example the Killing of Greg Gunn, which was titled a "shooting" until very recently. Sources variously describe it as a "shooting", "killing", "death", "fatal shooting", or "murder". We can argue in circles about which is the COMMONNAME. The fact that it is a "homicide" was determined by a medical examiner and reported by secondary sources. The perpetrator was charged with murder and manslaughter, and convicted for manslaughter. No amount of analysis (Google sleuthing) of RS will lead to a conclusion on the COMMONNAME (it is too soon for Ngrams). Some sources go too far and call it a murder and some sources don't go far enough and even avoid calling it a killing because the perpetrator is a police officer, even though by any definition of the word "manslaughter" is a "killing" (undeniable) and "homicide" is also a "killing", while some Wikipedia editors have even argued against that. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 02:16, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
Still no, having read all subsequent comments. The flowchart encourages the use of loaded "suicide", "execution" or "murder" in cases where sources can't justify it. It is assumed that there is no COMMONNAME evidence, which means there are not secondary sources describing the death. It is calling for primary source sleuthing. This is the wrong way to go. Instead, in the absence of sourced topic labelling, Wikipedia should be conservative, not provocative. If "suicide", "execution" or "murder" cannot be sourced from reliable secondary sources that introduce the topic with these words, then they should NOT be used unqualified in big text in the title.
In the absence of source=based COMMONNAME justification for specific modes of death ...
Use "Death of" by default, where the topic is the death of someone.
Use "Killing of" be default if the death was unambiguously caused by one or more others.
Do NOT write into Wikipedia policy assumptions about how or who determines what killing is a murder, or what death is a suicide. In the absence of sources, be generic. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:58, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
  • This flowchart is confusing, and this amount of prescription is unnecessary. Natureium (talk) 22:47, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support fully as proposed Is a comprehensive, well-designed, neutral and clear guideline. It is easy to follow, logical and not inconsistent with other policies, with clear guidance to defer to COMMONNAME where it exists. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:54, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Good enough I have nits to pick, but in general I think this aligns well with how we title articles. If there's a murder conviction, we call it a murder conviction. If it's a suicide, we call it a suicide. If it's a non-fatal assault of some kind, we describe the act as best as possible (e.g., shooting, stabbing, etc). If it's a generic death we just call it a death. I think "legally mandated" as a precondition for "Execution" is too rigid per SmokeyJoe, but I'm not convinced it's a serious enough problem to prevent adopting what seems to be common sense guidance for a topic area in which we've had significant number of disputes. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:44, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes - True, to follow international flowchart standards, the questions should be in diamonds and the answers should be on the lines instead of inside a shape, so it looks like File:LampFlowchart.svg. But that's super easy to adjust. The flowchart provides an easy to follow guide for the titling of articles in the absence of a common name (anyone who thinks it's confusing should please elaborate on what they find confusing so we can make it less confusing). When I created Killing of Rayshard Brooks, I wasn't sure what to call it (shooting of? death of?), and there was nothing really to guide me; when I created it the day after the shooting, it was too soon to determine a common name. I picked a title and of course it went to RM (just like Killing of George Floyd and all these articles go to an immediate RM after creation), and in the RM nobody had any policy to back up any of their arguments, and even weeks after creation, there was no clear common name. This flowchart fixes that: it provides a default guide for article titling in the absence of a common name. Sure, it doesn't cover every single possible permutation (drowning, extrajudicial execution, etc. etc.), but it breaks it down into several discrete, objective categories, that basically follows the consensus that already exists (e.g., non-fatal shooting = "shooting of", fatal shooting = "killing of"). Improvements can and should be made, but let's not make the perfect the enemy of the good. As Wug says, this is good enough, and it will be very helpful to bring order to the chaos that currently exists when it comes to the titling of these types of articles (see #Table of RMs). This flowchart should be adopted as the "default" for article titling, and then if anyone thinks a particular article should deviate from the flowchart (e.g. because of its common name), that can be handled with a bold move or an RM. Lev!vich 03:28, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
  • The issue with creating a default and tacking an exception onto the end is that the default carries a lot of weight. Move the bottom part about common name up to the top, as the first branch in the flow chart rather than a "by the way" at the end. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:48, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    That is indeed nitpicking to the extreme. It's highlighted in a bright colour in a big box! It's the default because it applies in most cases. You can pick out a few infamous examples that have a COMMONNAME, but you forget that the majority of articles on deaths (ie the ones you couldn't name without running a search) we have do not have a clear COMMONNAME. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:58, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    That is indeed nitpicking to the extreme - No, it's not. If the idea is to replace judgment with a flow chart, the flow chart needs to be spot on, because people will use it as a shortcut to deliberation. And FWIW I didn't mean put the box at the top; I meant make it a branch in the flow chart. FWIW. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:07, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    Ah, I see now. Does User:Coffeeandcrumbs/sandbox#alternate resolve your concern? As an aside, I don't think formatting differences are reasons to not support a guidance being enacted. Like all guidance, stylistic differences can always be sorted out. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:09, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
    [just looking at the top -- haven't checked to see if this diverges from what's above otherwise] - yes that's basically what I mean. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 02:30, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment I have created a revised version per the comments about format and wording. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 12:29, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP. We already have a reasonable general guideline: WP:COMMONNAME. The proposed flowchart seems too prescriptive, contrary to WP:NOTLAW, and may be buggy. For example, consider the first question "Is the person dead?". Everyone dies eventually and so the question will not work well in retrospect. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:24, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    Other than for Schrödinger's cat, "Is the person dead?" is a pretty easy yes/no question to answer. Lev!vich 16:51, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    I recently looked into the case of Konrad Steffen which came up at ITN. Our article still says that he drowned but I found that he actually disappeared. No body was found – they only found a hole and so supposed that he fell down a crevasse. Whether he died from trauma, hypothermia, shock or whatever is not known. We have lots of cases of missing people which are commonly titled "Disappearance of..." They are often controversial – cases like Lord Lucan and Madeleine McCann – and it may be quite uncertain whether they are dead or not.
    This flowchart just seems to be designed around a narrow type of AP issue like George Floyd. But when you get beyond the Americentrism, there are lots of other possibilities. The natural tendency will then be for the flowchart to be expanded and so get ever more complex, controversial and creepy.
    Anyway, back to that first box. Let's consider a case of extrajudicial killing that I literally looked at last year – the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Consider that pretty easy question "Is the person dead?". Who is "the person" supposed to be? Wyatt Earp, Billy Clanton or any of the many other people involved? It's not so simple, is it?
    Andrew🐉(talk) 09:45, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
    This flowchart just seems to be designed around a narrow type of AP issue like George Floyd ... Yes this flowchart is specifically for "Death of" articles. It might seem like a narrow issue but as the #Table of RMs shows, this narrow issue results in frequent RMs. The point of the flowchart is to give us a guideline so we don't have to have an RM for every such article. So the flowchart would not even apply to articles like Shootout at the OK Corral or an article about someone's disappearance (or any article with a common name). Lev!vich 16:24, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support provides helpful, common-sense guidance for the cases where common name doesn't yield a clear answer. (t · c) buidhe 00:08, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Useful / support I honestly think this provides some very useful guidance as to how articles should be titled, and this is a very common topic of discussion. Putting it in the guideline standardises the titling of many articles. As stated above it provides guidance but there will be times when there needs to be discussion about specific titles, I don't see that as a problem with including this. If anything this just raises the bar slightly and helps standardise this issue for many articles but leaves some leeway for when a more specific title is required.--Tom (LT) (talk) 03:01, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support as a general rule of thumb, though I also think we should consider adding an additional criterion for murder vs. assassination. Kurtis (talk) 06:28, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
    Any notable assassination will have a COMMONNAME. The purpose of this guide is not to replace COMMONNAME, it's to prescribe guidance where one doesn't really exist. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:05, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
    Perfect. I can definitely support that. Kurtis (talk) 06:56, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes to the alternative version. It is an excellent starting point, easy to follow and future versions can be tweaked as necessary. It seems to follow how these articles eventually get named and should help to reduce the time spent arguing over requested moves. AIRcorn (talk) 22:26, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Very Strong "No" – this is clearly going to cause more trouble than it will ever resolve (a.k.a. WP:INSTRUCTION CREEP). For the difficult cases there's no help in this, and for the simple cases, nothing needs to be added to current guidance. I object to the assumption that "COMMON NAME" trumps all, as it is in the current proposal. The general article titling policy requirements are based on five WP:CRITERIA, and these five criteria can not be reduced to "COMMON NAME" (believe me, it has been tried before, time and again causing more discussion and discord than such a simplification could ever achieve to reduce). WP:RM is the way to go for the difficult cases, not this proposed scheme. If you think it could be helpful, put it on an essay page, but never in the WP:AT policy. If after a few years, the scheme (or, more likely: an improved version of it) proves beneficial, then maybe a guideline (e.g. appended to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events)), but for policy this is clear and unambiguous WP:CREEP. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:19, 10 October 2020 (UTC) Updated after Paty case (see #Table of RMs below) which amply illustrates how counterproductive the OP's proposal is (yes, indeed, also its updated version). --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:28, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, with the caveat that special cases ("Assassination of"; "Execution of") override the chart. BD2412 T 16:47, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support revised flowchart. This isn't creep; this is settling a debate we've had repeatedly over the years. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:20, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support in principle I have not given a great deal of thought to whether this is the best potential flowchart, but it seems broadly reasonable. I disagree that this is WP:CREEP and support finding some sort of uniform way to determine titling of articles like this. Calliopejen1 (talk) 22:42, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support As with all rules, this need not be utterly binding. But having a guiding chart would be very helpful, as the nicely curated list below suggests. There have been many nasty naming discussions as of late over this very issue, this should hopefully make future incidents less disruptive. After someone is killed, especially when its high profile, there tends to be multiple move discussions, which is very disruptive. That needs to stop. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 03:29, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Not as current. It's close, and I appreciate the prominent disclaimer for COMMONNNAME, but the "was there a murder conviction y/n" would invite more endless RMs for cases that were very clearly murders but there was technically no conviction (because the case is hundreds of years old, because the murderer also died in the incident, because the murderer was discovered conclusively but too late after they died / fled the jurisdiction, etc.). Additionally, there are cases like felony murder where there very well might be a "murder", but the killing was committed by someone other than the person convicted of murder. That one just needs to be a text box that says "Use your judgment, check COMMONNAME, don't use 'murder' without solid, non-tabloidy sources backing this, especially if there is no conviction." SnowFire (talk) 06:45, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
    • I agree about “murder”. Unqualified murder is unqualified murder, which does not include second degree murder. Keep in mind that this is for cases with no COMMONNAME evidence, which means no quality sources introducing the topic. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:36, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose: Hidden in the proposed flowchart are several substantial changes of Wikipedia typical convention. One of the issues is that nearly all articles about non-murder fatal shootings are currently at titles that start with "Shooting of", which the flowchart would say should be moved to "Killing of". The proposer has been an advocate of such changes recently, and it is important to notice that this is an advocated significant change of typical convention, not just a documenting of ordinary typical practice. Per several dictionary definitions discussed in recent RMs, the title "Killing of" would tend to imply deliberation and intention in a way that is not broadly appropriate. Another issue is that there are many articles that currently use "Murder of" that this would say should be moved to "Killing of" (e.g., Murder of Seth Rich). I tend to be somewhat conservative about labelling deaths as murder, but it tends to be important to note that there is a distinction between the colloquial definition of murder and the legal one. The flowchart is generally too prescriptive. Also, in some of the relevant articles and RM discussions, there have been particular aspects relevant to the topic that I believe any such flowchart would tend to treat in too simplistic a manner. I don't see a big problem in current typical practices that needs changing, but this is proposing a rather big change. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:06, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I'd prefer to see all deaths named "Death of X", unless most RS have chosen a different name, e.g. Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Where the RS have clearly and overwhelmingly chosen a certain name, we should follow suit, but otherwise "Death of" is the most straightforward. SarahSV (talk) 05:24, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. Can be implemented with a nice overlay of common sense, and will straightforwardly get rid of a whole lot of unproductive argument. --Yair rand (talk) 09:41, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support as a guide and as the default subject to local consensus otherwise. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:34, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support as this is an issue of Wikipedia's unintentional but systemic racism. We need to recognize that, completely unintentionally, we're not treating deaths of people of color the same as we treat white people. We need to fix this. —valereee (talk) 02:05, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose A flow chart is not the way to explain meanings of English words. It suggests more precision than is really reflected. And anyway it is rather poorly formatted. −Woodstone (talk) 16:00, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
    The purpose of the flowchart is not to explain meanings of English words, but to provide guidance about how articles about deaths should be titled when there isn't a clear common name. Lev!vich 18:22, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support, in principle, although there will always be exceptions when someone runs into someone else's knife ten times. Sceptre (talk) 18:18, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support as someone who's been rigorously only using "murder of ..." in article titles in cases where there has been a conviction for that offense. I still would prefer to use "X homicide" in cases where there hasn't been a conviction, much less an arrest, but the bigger battle here was over limiting "Murder of ..." to cases with actual convictions, which is totally in keeping with not only the current Associated Press style guidelines but several of our own key policies—BLP, OR, CRYSTAL, and NPOV—and that looks like it is now more settled than it was even three years ago (I also do understand that "homicide" in that context does sound distinctly American to British readers, although the National Statistics Office and CPS already recognize that use). Daniel Case (talk) 03:59, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Just use the common name. If reliable sources call it a shooting then its a shooting. If reliable sources call it a killing then call it a killing. If reliable sources call it murder then its murder etc. FOARP (talk) 13:03, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
    FOARP, what do we do when RS almost equally call the event a "shooting", a "fatal shooting", a "death", and a "killing"? --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 14:58, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
This actually doesn't happen though. You never get that kind of absolute balance with all four terms in perfect equipoise - sources always tend to favour certain formulations over others and it is the job of the editors to try to determine what that is. This is an excuse not to try to actually identify the WP:COMMONNAME but instead follow a flow-chart because its easier for people to pull stuff out of their ear-holes than to do the actual job of research. There's also a serious issue of the Wiki name shaping the name that is used in other sources, meaning that the name that is used on here (before reliable sources can decide how to refer to it) becomes the name that reliable sources use as it is the one that is surfaced by e.g., Google. It also labours under a false understanding of the range of potential convictions for homicide (to name some: manslaughter, infanticide) instead assuming murder is the only possible outcome of a conviction. FOARP (talk) 15:26, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support as guideline (conditional on there being an amendment for "Shooting of" if the death was caused by a firearm) -- there will obviously be many exceptions to this (and it's always possible that an "Assassination of" or "Lynching of" or "Defenestration of" etc will be the COMMONNAME), but those would be a controversy anyway -- this isn't generating drama -- and it seems to me like it would cover most cases. jp×g 01:07, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose: I'm generally very wary about changing our conventions, and the flowchart above has too many for me to support. Rather than trot out arguments already made, the ones by BarrelProof and Francis Schonken are the best (in my opinion). — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 16:01, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose per BarrelProof's and Francis Schonken's reasoning. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 07:22, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose. While in theory it's appealing to have a "go-to" flow-chart for consistency, in practice I think it's likely each article will still need to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Case in point: Shooting of Justine Damond, where there was a (third-degree) murder conviction, but the pertinent RfC ended with no consensus to change the title to Murder – mainly for legal/technical reasons. Muzilon (talk) 07:39, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Support - Even though the flow chart is not perfect, it is a good guideline to follow, and can be revised as needed. --Jax 0677 (talk) 13:34, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
  • No. The intent is good but it is too simplistic as there are many scenarios it doesn't even start to consider. It might work for the few very high profile "death of" articles the author(s) are intending it to be applied to but it will be applied far wider than that. It will definitely fail for situations/jurisdictions without a clear homicide/natural causes dichotomy. It will fail where the verdict is disputed (e.g. if a regime declares the death of a protester against that regime to be the result of natural causes but the opposition say it was homicide?). It will fail where the answer to the "is this person dead?" question is unclear or disputed. Additionally, the COMMONNAME question should be part of a flow chart not separate from it. All these possibilities (and others I've not thought of) mean any flow chart is probably going to be either too simple or too complicated. Thryduulf (talk) 15:42, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes. This is helpful for editors who may be creating articles immediately after an event. These is little reason to not have a guideline for future articles. The COMMONNAME note solves most of my concerns relating to this. I don't think that WP:CREEP applies here because this is just a guideline. I would however, oppose renaming existing articles en masse. Gsquaredxc (talk) 22:23, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Neutral - knowing the difference requires basic comprehension and copy editing skills; i.e., WP:CIR. Atsme 💬 📧 10:52, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Support (Prefer revised version) - The "Further discussion" and "Table of RMs" sections show that there have been some problems with regards to articles where the COMMONNAME is not clear. Given that the proposal is limited to those articles without a COMMONNAME, I believe that some of the concerns above are misplaced. The concern I do somewhat agree with is with Andrew Davidson's above in that there are also situations with missing people. I believe that the flowchart could be revised or updated to include situations like that, but for now I feel like the flowchart does help right now when there are situations where the COMMONNAME is not clear. --Super Goku V (talk) 03:26, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose I like the elegant simplicity of the flowchart. However, SmokeyJoe's argument vis a vis WP:COMMONNAME convinced me that this may be too prescriptive. Chetsford (talk) 05:04, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
    It already has a big box at the top (in the revised version) about COMMONNAME.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:15, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
    Are you unaware of people having a tendency to skip wordy fine text even if in a big pink box, and jump to the simple bold words at the end? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:14, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
    This doesn't really have an "end", in a top-down-reading sense; it's mostly sideways back-and-forth reading. In the revised version, it would be pretty hard to miss.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:29, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. This would prevent a lot of recurrent, tedious strife about the same questions over and over again, which is what policies and guidelines are mostly here for.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:14, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
  • I read the supports has desiring a simple answer to a simple question. However, the the offered flowcharts are too complicated, going into questions that assume a dearth of suitable sources, and necessarily require primary source sleuthing, contravening WP:V, WP:PSTS, and WP:BLP in any case where Wikipedia will then be implying that a third person named in the article is a murderer. I propose a much simpler flowchart,below. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:09, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
Start with suitable sources, if you have them, use COMMONNAME, if you don't, don't get creative with primary source sleuthing. "Murder", "execution" and "suicide" are much too loaded, and too sensitive, to use without a basis in quality sources. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:09, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
This version isn't going to work. If there were not multiple, reliable, secondary sources, WP wouldn't cover it at all. I think what you're trying to get at is whether those sources fairly consistently use a single term (a WP:COMMONNAME). That's a very different question from whether sources on the topic exist at all, which is what your revised flowchart is asking.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:12, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
That goes exactly to what’s wrong with CoffeeandCrumbs’s flowchart. The starting premise is that there are insufficient secondary sources that speak directly to the topic. Then, instead of noticing that the topic is not a justifiable stand alone article, it goes into detail that amount to editor OR or primary source sleuthing. The bulk of the detail in his flowchart is invalid. At its weakest, COMMONNAME calls for a name used in any good source. Assuming COMMONNAME failure means that no reliable source names the topic. For BLPs, that’s obviously unacceptable. For the recently deceased, ascribing sensitive claims, in the title, like “murder” and “execution”, that’s so extremely likely to be a BLP violation to the accused, and ascribing “suicide”, in the title, without reliable secondary sources, in some ways that’s even worse. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:36, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Further discussion (shootings)

The above list of previous discussions is not yet exhaustive. Please feel free to add to it (with your signature). --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:48, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

I struck out the George Floyd, Eric Garner, and Jonny Gammage entries in the list above, since the heading of this section says it is a discussion about shootings. None of those were shootings. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:16, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Other RM discussions:

—BarrelProof (talk) 00:52, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I considered many locations for starting this discussion. I concluded this was the best place since this page has a good number of watchers and is a relevant policy page. For wider advertisement per WP:APPNOTE, notices have been placed at WP:CENT, at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), at WP:BLPN, at WT:Naming conventions (events), at WT:Naming conventions (people), and WT:RM. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:48, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

  • I am thinking to create a new draft flow chart.
    I think that "Death of" followed by "Killing of" should be prominant as the defaults where there is a lack of evidence in secondary sources.
    "Suicide", "Execution" and "Murder" should probably be reserved for compelling source-based COMMONNAME evidence.
    Where the subject is not dead, the topic should be treated differently, as a WP:EVENT. If the subject is not dead, the facts of the story are likely to continue, and this is quite a different situation. Take non-dead subjects out of the flowchart.
    --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:14, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    The inclusion of the "death" gate is important because a large part of the issue is that killings of African Americans are often titled "Shooting of ..." This is an issue that has plagued many pages and the reason the issue first came to my attention. See Shooting of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams who were each shot at least 23 times but the article before it came to my attention barely mentioned the fact that they died. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 01:59, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Perhaps it would be better to address the elephant in the room, which is that WP:BLP1E is now effectively a dead letter and all these articles should just be at the name of the victim or perpetrator. But this is the wrong place for such a discussion. Tevildo (talk) 00:04, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Very good-looking flowchart! How should the flowchart be interpreted regarding killings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? There are two special circumstances that come up frequently enough. First, combatants v. non-combatants. An Israeli soldier entered a Palestinian refugee camp and a Palestinian dropped a stone at his head so he died. The Palestinian will stand trial in Israel and will either be convicted of murder or manslaughter. The second circumstance are Palestinian attackers that are themselves killed by Israeli security forces before standing trial. ImTheIP (talk) 11:32, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
  • It is probably not necessary to include what I would presume branches for "Is the person notable?" and "Is their death covered in so much detail as to mandate a separate article?" facet? Those could be added but that may muddy the waters. --Masem (t) 19:33, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
    I think it's better to not get into the "should we have a page" questions at all only because this is WP:AT and AT shouldn't address what are really issues of WP:N. (In no small part because AT is a policy and N is a guideline.) However, I think Masem's substantive point is solid, which is that N (or somewhere) could use some guidance about when to create these pages at all. (Maybe even an NDEATH.) Alternatively, and perhaps preferably, "NDEATH" should be handled as an aspect of WP:BLP policy, because it's really about WP:BDP. I would welcome some expansion of BDP that addresses Masem's example questions and similar questions. Lev!vich 19:38, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Technicalities and nitpickery

  • This should really specify that the person is dead of something specific, perhaps? If somebody's shot, they survive, then die of cancer 50 years later, and then we discuss the shooting on Wikipedia, we shouldn't change the thing just because they're now dead. (Yes, nobody would actually think that the policy means that, but still...) --Yair rand (talk) 22:55, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
    Yair rand, in the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the death of James Brady 33 years later was ruled a homicide from the gunshot wound he received during the incident. If that case had been independent and a standalon article. It would have been titled the Killing of James Brady. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 23:43, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
    "Ruled"? Buy who, with what authority? By a medical examiner, not a court. I thought for murder, the victim needed to die within thirty days. But you said "homicide". Homicide is a broad term, people can think it is well defined, but it is a pseudo-technical synonym to "killing". As with my comments above, this has gone over the edge into WP:NOR violating primary source sleuthing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:35, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    The flowchart is based on a determination of "homicide" by a medical examiner which is often reported in secondary sources such as newpapers. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 01:53, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    "Determination determination of "homicide" by a medical examiner" sounds like primary source sleuthing, which is not allowed under WP:NOR. "which is often reported in secondary sources such as newpapers"? Either the term is used in secondary sources, or it is not. If it is, COMMONNAME applies. If it is not, it is primary source sleuthing. Newspaper reports, the ones that repeat the facts, without comment or analysis of the facts as supplied, are primary sources (historiographically speaking), mere repetition does not turn a primary source into a secondary source. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:49, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
  • "legally mandated execution"? What if the execution was legally authorized, but somebody had some discretion, and so was not "mandated"? I believe that this is very common. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:38, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    "mandated" may be a bad choice of word. Removing it may be an option: simply saying a "legal execution". --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 01:54, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
    I think the term I was looking for was "capital punishment" or "judicial execution". --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 02:27, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Table of RMs

Date fatal weapon link from to !voters outcome
2018-10-16 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Yoshihiro Hattori#Requested move 16 October 2018 Death Shooting 6 Yes
2019-05-03 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Justine Damond#Requested move 3 May 2019 Shooting Murder 7 No
2019-10-19 fatal gun Talk:Murder of Renisha McBride#Requested move 19 October 2019 Shooting Murder 4 Yes
2019-11-23 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Terence Crutcher#Requested move 23 November 2019 Shooting ? 4 No
2019-11-24 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Patrick Harmon#Requested move 24 November 2019 Killing Shooting 2 Yes
2019-12-13 fatal gun Talk:Murder of Laquan McDonald#Request for comment on the title of this article Murder Shooting 14 No
2020-01-03 fatal knife Talk:Killing of Tessa Majors#Requested move 3 January 2020 Murder Death 30 No
2020-06-02 fatal knife Talk:Killing of Tessa Majors#Requested move 2 June 2020 Murder Killing 25 Yes
2020-01-08 fatal gun Talk:Killing of Osama bin Laden#Requested move 8 January 2020 Death Killing 17 No
2020-09-06 fatal gun Talk:Killing of Osama bin Laden#Requested move 6 September 2020 Death Killing 11 Yes
2020-05-12 fatal gun Talk:Killing of Ahmaud Arbery/Archive 5#Requested move 12 May 2020 Shooting Killing 34 No
2020-06-21 fatal gun Talk:Killing of Ahmaud Arbery/Archive 8#Requested move 21 June 2020 Shooting Killing 16 Yes
2020-05-14 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Atatiana Jefferson#Requested move 14 May 2020 (multiple) Killing Shooting 10 Yes
2020-05-23 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Breonna Taylor/Archive 1#Requested move 23 May 2020 (multiple) Death Shooting 7 Yes
2020-10-27 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Breonna Taylor#Requested move 27 October 2020 Shooting Killing 8 No
2020-05-27 fatal physical pressure Talk:Killing of George Floyd/Archive 1#Requested move 27 May 2020 Death Killing 230ish Yes
2020-06-02 fatal physical pressure Talk:Killing of Eric Garner/Archive 2#Requested move 2 June 2020 Death Killing 31 Yes
2020-06-02 fatal physical pressure Talk:Killing of Jonny Gammage#Requested move 2 June 2020 Death Killing 10 No
2020-09-13 fatal physical pressure Talk:Killing of Jonny Gammage#Requested move 13 September 2020 Death Killing 7 Yes
2020-06-02 fatal gun Talk:Murder of Seth Rich/Archive 13#Requested move 2 June 2020 Murder Death 10 No
2020-06-03 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of David McAtee#3 June 2020 Shooting Killing 10 No
2020-06-03 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of James Scurlock#3 June 2020 Shooting Killing 6 No
2020-06-06 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Oscar Grant#6 June 2020 Shooting Killing 5 No
2020-06-06 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Kathryn Johnston#6 June 2020 Shooting Killing 5 No
2020-06-04 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Sammy Yatim#Requested move 4 June 2020 (multiple) Death Shooting 4 Yes
2020-06-14 fatal gun Talk:Killing of Rayshard Brooks/Archive 1#Requested move 14 June 2020 Killing Shooting 41 No
2020-06-18 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Roni Levi#Requested move 18 June 2020 (multiple) Death Shooting 3 Yes
2020-06-26 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Benno Ohnesorg#Requested move 26 June 2020 Death Shooting 3 Yes
2020-06-26 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Chaiyaphum Pasae#Requested move 26 June 2020 Death Shooting 4 Yes
2020-07-02 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan#Requested move 2 July 2020 Death Shooting 9 Yes
2020-07-03 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of James Ashley#Requested move 3 July 2020 (multiple) Death Shooting 5 Yes
2020-07-27 fatal gun Talk:Suicide of Kurt Cobain/Archive 1#Requested move 27 July 2020 Suicide Death 35ish No
2020-08-19 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Walter Scott#Requested move 19 August 2020 Shooting Murder 7 No
2020-09-03 fatal gun Talk:Killing of Greg Gunn#Requested move 3 September 2020 Shooting Killing 17 Yes
2020-09-04 fatal gun Talk:Killing of Lizzie O'Neill#Requested move 4 September 2020 (multiple) Killing Shooting 8 No
2020-09-26 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams#Requested move 26 September 2020 Shooting Killing 6 No
2020-09-26 fatal gun Talk:Killing of Muhammad al-Durrah#Requested move 2 October 2020 Incident Killing 7 Yes
2020-10-09 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr.#Requested move 9 October 2020 Shooting Killing 4 Yes
2020-10-16 fatal knife Talk:Murder of Samuel Paty#Requested move 22 October 2020 Murder Killing 17 No
2020-10-27 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Alvin Cole#Requested move 27 October 2020 Shooting Killing 5 Yes
2020-10-27 fatal gun Talk:Shooting of Dijon Kizzee#Requested move 27 October 2020 Shooting Killing 4 Yes

Please feel free to add to and correct the table. Lev!vich 02:48, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Nice table. I changed "unarmed" to "N/A", since the police were armed. I also added Talk:Muhammad al-Durrah incident#Requested move 2 October 2020 and two RMs for Talk:Killing of Tessa Majors (for which the number of participants are just rough estimates). —BarrelProof (talk) 04:15, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, BarrelProof. I neglected to mention that all of my participant counts are also estimates or rough counts; just to give a sense of scale. Lev!vich 04:36, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
I added a few more, and still have a few more I plan to add later. Please note that some of these were multi-article RMs, and the table doesn't capture that. Within the multi-article RMs, there may have been some variety of different name types. —BarrelProof (talk) 04:56, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
I think that's OK (the bundled multis) because it's a Table of RMs (requested moves, i.e. discussions), and not a table of pages that were/were not moved (which would be much longer and include unopposed bold moves, articles that were never moved because they were created at the consensus title, and so forth). Each row represents one discussion reaching (or not) consensus. Also, just my preference, but I think 2018 is too old to be helpful in late 2020. We have a reasonable shot at compiling a complete list for 2019-2020. Lev!vich 05:06, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
Although the Hattori discussion of 2018 is a bit old, it was mentioned as precedent in several of the recent RMs. —BarrelProof (talk) 08:35, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
After second thoughts, I changed the "N/A" to "physical pressure". — BarrelProof (talk) 15:37, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
  • added a very recent one (yesterday); a renaming has been proposed (without reaction thus far), but no formal RM yet. The current name does not conform to the flowchart proposal above (assuming that there are still too few sources to speak of a "common name"). I don't think the flowchart would be helpful here either. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:27, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
    The flowchart would say that article should be at "Killing of Samuel Paty", and would save us from having an RM about it at least until a contrary commonname emerged (which, with this case, it very likely will). What's the problem? Lev!vich 16:31, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
    Re. "... would save us from having an RM about it ..." – would smile at this if it weren't so sad. As said: there is no RM. Making the flowchart a rule would more likely trigger one, rather than "save us from having" one. FYI, shortly after the two preceding comments, the page was moved to "Killing of ..." (16:32), being moved back to "Murder of ..." a few minutes later (16:39). I'd concentrate on improving the article's content, instead of trying to get a flowchart approved that, at least in this case, would be rather counterproductive. In general, no actual advantages of the flowchart have been demonstrated thus far: the whole defence of it rests on wishful thinking that it may make things easier (I'm rather convinced it would have the opposite effect). Hence my proposal to start by making it an essay, and if that really proves useful (likely with some amendments to the idea before that would be even possible), then, in the future, try to move it up to guideline. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:00, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
In many cases, such as the murder of Samuel Paty, it's clearly murder but prosecuting the killer is impossible due to him dying. We shouldn't be prevented from defining it as murder in the title, categories or body of the article simply because of a lack of a conviction. Of course cases in which the (suspected) killer is awaiting trial or has been convicted of a lesser crime such as manslaughter in relation to the killing it shouldn't be classed as murder, but there's no doubt in this case. Reliable, mainstream sources define it as murder. Jim Michael (talk) 11:46, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
This is exactly the situation that this flowchart is made for. If RSes call this killing "murder", then it will have a common name, and we should use that common name for the article title ("Murder of..."). However, if not, we as Wikipedia editors cannot declare, based on our own WP:OR, that a killing is "clearly" a murder, and title the article "Murder of...". It violates our core content principles, plus it's contrary to the definition of murder. That's why it's Murder of Seth Rich (not moved after RM, because common name), but Murder of Tessa Majors was moved to Killing of Tessa Majors (no common name, no conviction) (links to both in the table). Lev!vich 17:08, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
The Majors' case is substantially different in that defendants are awaiting trial for murder, which is an important reason to use killing in that title rather than murder. Jim Michael (talk) 18:30, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
What's the difference? The cases are the same. In the Majors case, the defendants may be acquitted of murder; it's possible, we don't know for certain. In the Paty case, if the defendant were still alive, he, too, might have been acquitted of murder; it's possible, we don't know for certain (and there are other defendants who may be convicted or acquitted of various crimes). We can't say for certain how either of those cases would go. Thus, we can't call either one "murder", which is defined as an illegal killing. We can't say a killing was "illegal" based on editors' OR; we need either the legal authorities to determine legality (flowchart), or RSes to determine legality (common name). But we can't call it "murder" because Levivich or Jim Michael think a beheading is obviously murder; that is OR, and it's not good enough for the encyclopedia. Lev!vich 18:36, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Does the President of France describing it as a murder not qualify it as such? Jim Michael (talk) 18:44, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
No! Definitely not. The Pres of France doesn't have legal authority to decide murder under the laws of France (that's for courts); and the Pres of France isn't even a reliable source. If the courts said it was murder, that would qualify; if all the newspapers referred to it as murder (which I predict they will), that would qualify. Lev!vich 18:47, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
Some mainstream media sources in France & other countries have described it as a murder. Jim Michael (talk) 18:51, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
And the flowchart gets us to the right place: if "murder" is the common name for this killing, then the flowchart says use "murder". In the absence of that, the flowchart suggest using "killing", which avoids violating WP:OR. The flowchart is particularly useful when creating the article, because it guides editors about what title to use (in the absence of a common name, which, for these types of articles, is usually the case upon creation). That's why the flowchart reduces the likelihood of an RM, especially an RM with no consensus. It suggests what to do when there isn't a common name, and what to do when there is. Lev!vich 18:56, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
The flowchart is incompatible with the outcome in this case. I'm very strongly rejecting the idea that the flowchart might somehow become active guidance: it causes more trouble than it resolves. For article titling guidance there's a very clear principle: follow the outcome of regularly conducted RMs that show a broad consensus (which was the case here). Article titling guidance that follows the preferences of a few editors against such broad consensuses has little chance of survival, and is better done away with immediately. So, changing my suggestion above that "essay" might be an acceptable level to introduce the flowchart: it is too unhelpful even for that. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:22, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Added another one (first suicide-related one) — again an example where the flowchart would have been counterproductive (and anyway would not lead to the same result as a fairly well-attended RM) → imho, time to call a spade a spade: this is a no-good proposal. Further, I think that in the table above a vital element is missing: could somebody please check how many of these RMs result in what the proposed flowchart would have? I don't think there's much good in having this table if it isn't intended as a reality check on the proposal. Further, I saw the OP proposing argumentation, in at least a few RMs, that is incompatible with the flowchart they proposed in this RfC:
    • In the Paty case, arguing "common name" (questionable enough only a few days after the event), but that's not where it gets really contradictory: instead of going for the common name (as defined by AT policy) they didn't like that common name (or at least wouldn't consider it), but just argued that amongst two less common names, the somewhat more common of the two should be chosen. In other words, not following the flowchart at all, which, after determining whether "common name" applies, does not return to that option after determining it doesn't. So illustrating that the flowchart would be of little help for streamlining such RM discussions.
    • In the Cole discussion proposing to go away from what is consistent with the flowchart, for some ill-defined "consistency" (which is clearly another kind of consistency than the consistency the flowchart is aiming at).
All in all, I've come to think that the major flaw of this proposal is that it didn't assess RM outcomes as a starting point, but started from some ideology about what should be – an ideology that is as impractical as it is incompatible with what editors want (meaning: as expressed in RMs). --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:57, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
You're completely missing the point of this proposal. It's not to streamline RMs. You also seem to be missing that the table shows you whether or not those RMs match the proposed flowchart outcome. (That's what the "fatal" and "weapon" columns are for.) You also seem to be missing that the whole purpose for this proposal is because there is not enough consistency in RMs (although there is a general trend, and that trend matches the flowchart). To suggest that this proposal didn't assess RM outcomes reveals that you must be unaware of the many months of prior discussion that led to this proposal being made. The notion that this started with an outcome in mind and worked backwards is almost insulting to the amount of effort C&C has put in to trying to build consensus and bring order to chaos. You're basically criticizing the proposal because it doesn't do something other than what it is being proposed. If you're looking for something to streamline RMs, you won't find it in this flowchart. If you're looking for guidance outside of RMs (e.g., when there is no clear single common name, when an article is being created), then this flowchart will help. Lev!vich 02:42, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
Two other things: When you added Suicide of Kurt Cobain, you also rearranged the order of the rows; please don't. The order is the way it is for a reason: multiple RMs of the same article are grouped together. The purpose of this is to show that where an RM had an outcome that did not follow the table, a subsequent RM usually (always?) had an outcome that did follow the flowchart (e.g. Osama bin Laden, Tessa Majors). If you want to sort the list chronologically, just click on the "date" header and it'll autosort that way. As to your addition of Kurt Cobain: (1) that was decided on common name, so it's "pink box" part of the flowchart and would not follow the rest of the flowchart anyway, and (2) actually, the outcome did follow the flowchart: the flowchart would say name it "suicide", and that is what the article is named, and the proposal to move it to "death" failed. So the one you added supports the flowchart, not contradicts it. I don't mean to be disrespectful or to insult you, but I genuinely believe you genuinely do not understand this proposal and its purpose. Lev!vich 02:55, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Title and scope

Related to two long-term disputes, I'd like to ask a question, and then (if there's a clear answer) maybe update this policy to standardize our approach a little more. This only applies to a small (maybe tiny) number of subjects, because most are obvious. Here's the question:

When you are going to start an article, should you first:

  1. pick the title, and then write an article that matches whatever your title indicates, or
  2. figure out what the subject is, and then pick a title that matches your chosen subject?

I believe the second option is the best practice, but some other editors believe that the title controls the content, rather than the content determining the title. As an example, Ketogenic diet was created in 2004, before the current "keto diet" fad. The subject, as defined in the first revision, is "a treatment for Epilepsy that relies on inducing a state of ketosis" (i.e., the original, century-old subject that's called 'ketogenic diet'). But for some years, we've had people try to cram anything and everything about unrelated high-fat diets into that article, because they think that anything matching the title belongs in the article. We might eventually decide to rename this particular article just to avoid this problem, but it's made me wonder whether I'm right that the correct process is to pick your subject first, and your title second. It is certainly implied by this policy – you can't pick a title "based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject" if you don't know what the subject is first – but it's not stated anywhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:38, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

  • You've made it absolutely clear that whatever answer is given to your question, it would not make the slightest bit of difference in the case of your example, because title and content were a match at the time the article originated, that is before the "fad". So the question is whether the egg should be first, or the chicken should be first. Surely, a bunch of Wikipedia editors should be able to fill dozens of talk page archives, and then some, discussing such topic. Which still does not indicate whether it is worth while discussing. In some cases the title exists before the page content, like when one starts to create a page after clicking a redlink, and in other cases someone is, for example, writing an article in their sandbox, and decides afterwards under what title to publish it in mainspace. Both approaches are as valid as the other. No WP:RULECRUFT needed that would try to make one method more valid than the other. If title and content no longer match, there is a wide variety of possibilities, including merging, splitting, renaming, or, for example, in the example you mention, a possible solution might be: trimming until WP:MEDRS is strictly adhered to. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:08, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
    I must have been confusing; I'm sorry. I've no objection to renaming that article. If renaming that page to Ketogenic diet (epilepsy treatment) stops editors from thinking that the subject of the page is Inuit cuisine or Low-carbohydrate diet or Ketosis or any of the other related and unrelated subjects that sometimes go by the same name, then I've no objection (and I have suggested that in the past).
    What I want to know is whether editors generally hold that you start with the subject and choose a title for it, or if they start with a title and write an article to match. You've given redlinks as an example of the former. In that situation, you have the title plus some context, since the redlink appears in a sentence or a list, which would help you figure out which "Bob Smith" the redlink was talking about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:14, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
Seems like a multi-tier WP:IDHT problem:
  1. I replied "You've made it absolutely clear ...", to which you reply "I must have been confusing ..." – No, you weren't confusing, you were absolutely clear → IDHT #1
  2. More importantly, you took part in the discussion now archived at Talk:Ketogenic diet/Archive 5#Requested move 22 January 2019, where the responses were clear why an article title referring to "epilepsy" was turned down. AFAICS, you are totally deaf to the argumentation given there. → IDHT #2
  3. As explained, your proposal w.r.t. article titling guidance would make no difference whatsoever for the example you claim illustrating the problem. Why continue as if it does? → IDHT #3
--Francis Schonken (talk) 07:20, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
I feel the binary choice is a bit of a false dichotomy. I suspect many editors choose a subject and title simultaneously, as they strive to devise a concise description of the subject that can be used as a title. Additionally, as an article's content starts to expand, I think many will seek to restructure the article into separate topics as deemed appropriate. This might mean renaming the current article to align with its new scope, or keeping it, depending on what agreement is reached on restructuring. isaacl (talk) 21:54, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
I think you're right, @Isaacl, that we won't necessarily start with a single approach and then keep it the same forever. Some years ago, I restructured the entire series of candy-related articles. After a series of discussions on multiple pages, we ended up with this chain, moving from the most general food category to the specific item represented by the 🍭 emoji:
  • Confectionery
    • Sugar confectionery (section in above article; includes candy/sweets, chewing gum, chocolate, ice cream)
      • Candy (includes sugar candy, chewing gum, chocolate)
        • Sugar candy (multiple categories of candy, all of which are ≥75% sugar by weight)
          • Hard candy (single category of candy that is ~100% sugar by weight)
This means that a lollipop is one type of hard candy; hard candy is one of several types of sugar candy; sugar candy is one of several types of candy; candy is one of a few types of sugar confectionery; sugar confectionery is one of two types of confectionery. The series makes an orderly and logical progression from sweet stuff in general down to one very specific type of sweet stuff, moving from 'it's probably sweet' to 'sugar is one of the principal ingredients' on down the list until you arrive, by stages, at something that has a specific level of sugar (~100%), a specific texture (hard), and a specific format (on a stick).
Every title and definition was taken from high-quality sources, and the articles note some of the regional differences, but all of this is in American English, and over the last decade or so, a few British English speakers have occasionally lodged complaints not with the titles, but with the contents of the articles. These tend to take the form of "Chocolate is confectionery, not candy" or "Marshmallows are not a sugar candy because the first definition in the OED says that candy is crystallized, and they don't look crystallized to me".
If you tried to write a similar list in British English, it would probably look like this:
  • Confectionery (identical)
    • Sugar confectionery (identical)
      • Sweets (I think this term doesn't include dark chocolate or chewing gum – so it's smaller than what we write about in Candy – but it seems to include things like Maltesers (55% sugar by weight), so it's broader than what we write about in Sugar candy.)
So you can see the difficulty for the British reader: You want to know more about candy, and you get dumped into an article that talks about chocolate and chewing gum, which is not what you're after. You shrug and search for sugar candy, thinking that surely the Americans will get this term right, and you find an article talking about Caramel and Nougat, while in your country, that term only means the hard, crunchy stuff. And then you conclude that the article contents are wrong, because you know what sugar candy is: it says right there in your 1996 OED that sugar candy is "sugar crystallized by repeated boiling and slow evaporation", showing that the dictionary writers need both a chemistry class (that rock-hard lollipop technically has an amorphous, non-crystallized chemical structure) and a cooking class (neither repeated boiling nor slow evaporation is necessary), immediately before they say that candy is the American English word for that broad category of things that you grew up calling sweets.
These less-experienced editors (and I suspect, many, if not most, readers) are taking the title as absolutely dispositive, and the article subject as optional. They want the article contents to be changed to match their understanding of the title – to have Candy blanked and replaced with half of the sentences currently in Sugar candy, to have chocolate removed from both of these articles and shoved into Confectionery, etc. They're not exactly wrong; it's just that they want the title to be controlling, and the article content forced to match their idea of what the title means (in this example, in their ENGVAR, but in other cases ENGVAR is irrelevant). I don't think that's a good plan, but I also don't see anything written down that tells them that it's a bad idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:21, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, that's a tricky situation where the broad topic areas have different names in different geographical areas. There isn't really a great solution beyond acknowledging that the article is written based on one area's vocabulary. Perhaps the candy article (to take one example) should include a parenthetical qualifier after the first word, "candy", in addition to the qualifiers currently present after the terms from other areas. (A case might be made for having a parenthetical disambiguator in the title, but I feel that could only be settled on an individual article basis.) As per typical article format, the first sentence provides the appropriate context for the article subject. Though it would be orderly for each page with the entire series to cover rough subsets of each other, it's not strictly necessary. isaacl (talk) 05:56, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
I agree, @Isaacl. I see two possibilities for clarifying the advice we give to editors. It won't solve all the problems, but it might help a little bit, eventually. They are:
  • The title should conform to the ENGVAR of the article, following the rules in ENGVAR to decide how the article's contents should be written. If the title and the contents do not match, then the contents should not be changed to match the ENGVAR of the title.
    • For example, Coeliac disease is written in BrEng and therefore correctly uses the British spelling in its title. If it was written in AmEng, we would make them match by moving the article (quick and easy) rather than changing the ENGVAR to match the title (long and complicated, because more than the spelling of a single word is involved).
    • This would go in WP:TITLEVAR, probably before the fizzy/soft drink example.
  • If the title and the intended subject of an existing article do not match, the title should be changed. Identifying the primary subject of the article normally requires a discussion, because the current contents of the article may not represent the intended subject of the article.
    • For example, if the current title of an article is the name of a business's founder and editors form a consensus that the primary subject of the article is the business rather than the founder, then the article title should be changed to match the subject ("Frank Founder" gets moved to "Frank's Foundry, Inc."), rather than changing the subject and article contents to match the current title.
    • Identifying the primary subject of the article normally requires a discussion, because it is not always obvious whether an article that currently describes, e.g., a social problem in a single country, is meant to be about the single country's problem (so the title could be narrowed to "This Problem in Ruritania") or if it's meant to be about the social problem in general (so the title should be kept at "This Problem" and the contents need to be expanded to cover other countries, too).
    • I haven't looked at WP:AT to see whether there's an obvious place to put this advice.
What do you think I've missed? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Slash in article title

(Sorry if this is not the best place for asking this question)

Can article titles have slashes in them like New England/Acadian forests. Or is it best to move it to New England-Acadian forests?VR talk 21:21, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Francis Schonken and WhatamIdoing, thanks for the feedback.VR talk 14:47, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

"COMMONNAME" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect COMMONNAME. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 23#COMMONNAME until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 12:56, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Fractions in article titles

So for articles with fractions in the title, like Ranma ½ and Spin-½, based on Wikipedia:Article titles#Special characters and MOS:FRAC, I would expect these to be titled Ranma 1/2 and Spin-1/2. Should articles like these be moved, or should an exception be noted on those pages? -- Beland (talk) 02:00, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

  • I think composition titles get away with stuff like that.
    Spin-½? Should be Half-integer spin, which redirects to Fermion. Spin-½ has content including "Spin-1/2 objects are all fermions (a fact explained by the spin–statistics theorem) ...". This is a content fork; merge and redirect Spin-½ to Fermion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:48, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
    It's unclear to me a merge is warranted there, but there are lots of other examples of article titles that are not the names of works, like Proposition 2½ and Bentley 4½ Litre. There are examples of both types of article that use ASCII fractions instead of Unicode fractions, like 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ⋯ and 1/2 Prince. -- Beland (talk) 01:44, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
    OK. I'd say, avoid fractions in favour or words, where reasonable. If fractions are overwhelmingly used in sources, then I am happy with Number Forms#Unicode Number Forms where the glyph works on my browser, namely the set: ¼ ½ ¾ ⅓ ⅔ ⅕ ⅖ ⅗ ⅘ ⅙ ⅚ ⅛ ⅜ ⅝ ⅞. I note that 1/16 is not on that list, and so I might like to move 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ⋯ to Absolutely converging geometric series. I note that the title is but an example of the topic covered. I would want to avoid template tricks in titles. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:27, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
    Would that mean that the title and the body of the article would use different forms? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 07:50, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
    That would be unfortunate. The title should match the lede. I would argue that the title "1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ⋯" does not match the lede, the lede explains that the topic is "a geometric series that converges absolutely". The title is merely a prominent example. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:05, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
    The series described by that article's title is not merely a prominent example of "a geometric series that converges absolutely" - it is the series that is the subject of that article. --В²C ☎ 14:35, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Use the equivalent of {{frac}} – In order to conform with MOS:FRAC, I would suggest that rather than using, e.g., "Ranma 1/2", we use "Ranma 1⁄2" (the equivalent of Ranma 1&frasl;2) along with a display title to show "Ranma 1⁄2" ({{DISPLAYTITLE:Ranma <sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>2</sub>}}). 207.161.86.162 (talk) 05:41, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
    Hmm, I don't like the idea of using a non-ASCII character in a title when there's a very similar ASCII one. -- Beland (talk) 01:32, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
    What would be the issue with a non-ASCII character in your view?
    And if we were to use the titles in your initial proposal, wouldn't that necessarily mean that we would be using one character to represent the term in the article title and another character (or set of characters) to represent the term in the body of the same article? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 05:17, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
    The fraction slash looks like an ASCII "/", so that's what people will type when searching a page or site, but they won't match up. Non-ASCII characters are less likely to work properly if copy-and-pasted somewhere else. (For example, the fraction slash generates a "malformed expression" error in my calculator program.) I didn't realize {{frac}} uses a non-ASCII character, but that seems like a bad idea in general and also because the other examples in MOS:FRAC use the ASCII "/". If consistency is important, we could switch to using "1/2" throughout the body of an article renamed as Ranma 1/2. -- Beland (talk) 08:34, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Relevant discussion at MOS:LAW

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Legal#Mixed naming conventions, which concerns the MOS guidance for the class of articles about "law by jurisdiction" (X law, Legal status of X, Legal status of X, Laws regarding X, etc.). — Goszei (talk) 22:23, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

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