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RfC Naming convention for sports stadia

There has been significant discussion regarding whether stadia should be addressed as geographic locations or proper names, with some thrown in on if it should be <city> <stadium name>. A main argument in favour of geographic locations is that the stadia would be referred to as that in its mailing address. In favour of proper names is that WP:NCPLACE implies that the site has a (permanent) population (which stadia generally do not have) and does not reference buildings. There is also different interpretations as to if WP:AT's WP:QUALIFIER criteria are a preferentially ordered list or whether the material listed there is ordered by happenstance. The WP:QUALIFIER confusion would most likely be best solved by its own RfC to clarify the intent of that listing as both are valid interpretations and ambiguity is present. With that said and in respect to this specific discussion, there does, however, appear to be a consensus in favour of parenetical disambiguation in article titles, albeit a slim one. I would encourage a further RfC regarding WP:QUALIFIER's ambiguity on if it is an ordered list or just a happenstance series of points to consider. With that cleared up, a further RfC here would most likely clear things up further. --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:50, 3 April 2021 (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.

Following on from a proposed page move at Talk:Olympic Stadium (Amsterdam)#Requested move 10 December 2020, I am seeking to include a specific naming convention for articles on sports stadia. Apart from WP:CHURCH, which is an essay rather than a formal policy, there aren't any specific naming conventions for buildings and structures and I had understood that WP:NCPLACE applied to sports stadia in that: Generic parenthetical disambiguating tags as used for most Wikipedia articles are used only occasionally for geographic names. As buildings and structures are located in named places rather than instances of the named place, I believe that this convention should also apply to sports stadia whereby the primary disambiguator should be the city or town they are located unless there is a more suitable disambiguator, for example Wembley Stadium and Wembley Stadium (1923). I would like to know other editors opinions on avoiding the use of parenthetical disambiguating tags for sports stadia as well as the most appropriate project page for including a new naming convention for sports stadia as I am unsure whether WP:NCPLACE is the correct place to include a new naming convention for sports stadia as a result of the requested move discussion above. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 23:38, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

  • Use parentheses—personally I don't like comma formatting outside of populated places. Since these are buildings, I'd stick to parenthetical disambiguation. As for what goes in the parentheses, that depends. Cities or years are both appropriate in different situations. Imzadi 1979 → 00:12, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Use English. Amsterdam Olympic Stadium. Or Amsterdam olympic stadium (leave it to the MOS-ers to explain which). Avoid parentheses for natural English. Dates, years, go in parentheses. Try to reserve commas for addresses, like town, city, region, country and places in parentheses for natural geography topics. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:39, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Use parentheses per Imzadi1979. Indeed, he says exactly what I think. Commas should be reserved for geographic locations such as towns and neighborhoods, not buildings. Whether the parenthetical is a city or a date is dependent on why disambiguation is needed. In the case of Olympic Stadium (Amsterdam), it's to distinguish that it's the building named "Olympic Stadium" in Amsterdam, as opposed to other same-named stadiums in other cities, like Montreal, where as the date in Wembley Stadium (1923) is there to disambiguate the historic building from its same-named successor; the same convention is used for other stadiums such as Yankee Stadium (1923). Similar conventions do exist for other types of buildings, most notably rail stations, where through naming conventions that use parentheses already exist, largely because of some common names such as Union Station. oknazevad (talk) 20:36, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
    The problem is, there is no consistency when it comes to buildings and structures. Other common building names such as King's Theatre or Royal Hotel mostly are not disambiguated using parenthesis. In general English, you would either say Amsterdam Olympic Stadium or Olympic Stadium, Amsterdam as the building's address. I feel the former would be an appropriate solution for the majority of sports stadia with common names like National Stadium or Olympic Stadium and is indeed already used eg- Estadio Nacional del Perú but some stadia such as Central Park, Cowdenbeath would require the latter. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 21:00, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Avoid parentheses. Plain English generally works (either prefixed or comma separated), so let's use it whenever possible. And per WP:ATDAB, parentheses are for "...when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title", which is not the case here. wjematherplease leave a message... 12:51, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Avoid parentheses - comma looks best and makes the most sense. GiantSnowman 21:39, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Use parenthesis The comma format only makes sense for "places", not individual structures. That we have cases like King's Theatre is something that should be fixed because none of those are places. NCPLACES certainly doesn't apply to individual buildings. --Masem (t) 22:05, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment. I shall repeat what I said in the RM discussion: "For buildings and structures, there are no set rules. For Commonwealth countries (except Canada) we generally use comma disambiguation. For North America we use parenthetical disambiguation. For other countries we have no conventions and usually go by whatever has been most commonly used for that country. The type of building is irrelevant and we do not impose consistency in this way." Personally, I prefer comma disambiguation, but we have a longstanding convention of using parenthetical disambiguation for North America. But I most certainly oppose parenthetical disambiguation across the board. To my mind, comma disambiguation is far more natural and is more likely to be seen in standard written English. We would write "the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam" or "the Olympic Stadium, Amsterdam", but certainly not "the Olympic Stadium (Amsterdam)". -- Necrothesp (talk) 22:38, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Use parentheses - For structures I always thought it best not to use a comma. Parenths do the job. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:23, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
  • No comma - Either "Olympic Stadion Amsterdam" (logo, like often is done for teams "Ajax Amsterdam", "PSV Eindhoven", "AZ Alkmaar", for none of these teams the name of the town belongs to the name as is) or "Olympic Stadion (Amsterdam)" --Sb008 (talk) 03:45, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • A good reason to use parentheses is that a comma might suggest the place-name is part of the stadium name. And yes, do translate into English, unless there's a very good reason not to. Tony (talk) 07:27, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Avoid parentheses in general, although there are times where it'll need using. I'm not sure a hard rule is going to work here - we need to use whatever makes sense in the context of the article. The Olympic Stadium example is very different to a more local ground. Blue Square Thing (talk) 10:48, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment I am not a fan either of a comma in a title. Do people really type the comma into google when searching for a venue? Also from what I see, isn't putting the Amsterdam in brackets kinda violates COMMONNAME? Govvy (talk) 11:29, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Agree... although nearly every article about towns has one. --NaBUru38 (talk) 12:11, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Avoid parentheses when using location disambiguation / prefer commas, but parentheses are acceptable for disambiguation other than by location. "Stadium, Place" should generally work and be the most common form of disambiguation when required, and locations should follow usual NCPLACE guidelines of using a comma. For the opposers, parentheses are fine if there are two stadiums with separate articles in the same general area, hence things like Yankee Stadium (1923) vs. Yankee Stadium. But those cases are unusual; city / area is by far the most common and useful way to disambiguate. SnowFire (talk) 07:05, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Depends on the case, but default to parentheses as usual. Per WP:COMMONNAME, if a particular stadium is most commonly known in English-language sources (other, I suppose, than local publications that have no need to ever disambiguate) as something like "Foobar Stadium Bazquuxville", then use that as the article title. If it is most commonly known as "Foobar Stadium, Bazquuxville", then use that. Otherwise, our default disambiguation pattern for all topics is "Foobar Stadium (Bazquuxville)", and there is no rationale to make a "magical exception" for this topic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:05, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
    As Wjemather pointed out above, parentheses are for "...when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title" so this would not be a "magical exception". Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 10:51, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
    You don't appear who have understood what I wrote. I just laid out the cases in which one or the other solution leads to an optimal article title – when the sources indicate to us that this is so. The provision you quote is not an excuse for "a title I think is more optimal because it better agrees with my aesthetic sensibilities". Yet that is basically what a lot of the argument on this page boils down to. Our WP:AT policy is firmly grounded in treatment of the name[s] of the subject in independent reliable sources, and this must not be forgotten or skirted.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:50, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Use parentheses Per WP:COMMONNAME. --Enos733 (talk) 23:17, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Use parentheses and avoid commas The article title should be clear what the name is and comma disambiguation often suggests there's more to the name than there actually is. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:41, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Use parentheses. Buildings and structures are not "places" in the WP:NPLACE WP:NCPLACE sense. Comma separated disambiguation should be reserved for actual geographical places that are located within a parent entity (such as cities and towns in states and provinces) whereas buildings and structure should default to parentethical per WP:QUALIFIER. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:05, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Use parentheses inline with standard Wikipedia naming conventions. The only exceptions would be if: 1. the location name can be demonstrated to be part of the common name or 2. the stadium also names its local neighbourhood, which might covered in the article as well. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 19:54, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment. As I have pointed out above, parenthese are not "standard Wikipedia naming conventions" and any opinion above that says to use them because they are should be pretty much discounted as it flies against the evidence and against common usage both on and off Wikipedia. They are standard for buildings and structures in North America; they are not and never have been for buildings and structures elsewhere, especially not in the Commonwealth, where comma disambiguation has always been the standard on Wikipedia (e.g. Category:Church of England church buildings in Kent, Category:Grade II listed banks, Category:Secondary schools in Auckland, for just three examples). There is absolutely no reason why we should default to North American naming conventions when titling articles about buildings and structures elsewhere in the world. Implying that all these thousands of articles should be renamed to conform to some non-existent naming convention is utterly ludicrous. -- Necrothesp (talk) 23:23, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
    • My understanding of reading the above discussion is even in the Commonwealth, the comma format is not common, this is just an approrach that some on WP had chosen in naming these articles back before we established more rigorous naming standards. Unless it can be shown that the comma format is a common means outside of WP to designate different buildings in different areas, we should actually be normalizing those comma forms to the parenthesis version as well, unless the comma version is known to be the common name for the building. --Masem (t) 23:40, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
    • I disagree. As Necrothesp says, the comma format is the established consensus for naming building and structure articles in the Commonwealth and conforms to a number of Wiki policies including WP:ATDAB and WP:USEENGLISH. If you read any newspaper, any building address is given as Kings Theatre, Kilmarnock or Olympic Stadium, Amsterdam. WP:COMMONNAME is neither an argument for or against either style of disambiguation as the common name of the subject matter is the bit before the disambiguation. Personally, I think both forms of disambiguation should be held to the same standards during a discussion so if the comma format needs to be proven to be "a common means outside of WP to designate different buildings in different areas" then paranthetical disambiguation should as well. Perhaps a regionalised approach similar to some of the country-specific guidance within WP:NCPLACE would be a more appropriate solution. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 19:49, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
      • Parens was a format WP had to adopt to deal with the technical issue that no page may have the same name as another and thus creating the need to disambiguate.
      • But on "the comma format is the established consensus for naming building and structure articles in the Commonwealth", if this were a true format used by style guides for Commonwealth papers, that would be one thing, but that's not what I see. As a test, I took all the Commonwealth entries in King's Theater and searched on their quoted names at Google news:
        • "King's Theatre, Edinburgh" more commonly came back as "King's Theatre Edinburgh" (no comma) and did not see any comma-based hits. "King's Theatre Edinburgh" would be the proper name.
        • "King's Theatre, Fremantle" didn't bring anything due to its name change, but only hits in general dated back to 1911 and nothing more modern
        • "King's Theatre, Glasgow" gives both hits on the comma form and "King's Theatre Glasgow". Theatre itself seems to prefer the comma-less version. [1].
        • "King's Theatre, Melbourne" (no longer operating) gives no hits on the comma form, but enough on the ""King's Theatre Melbourne"
        • "Kings Theatre, Southsea" again has no comma its but several for "Kings Theatre Southsea" or "Kings Theatre at Southsea"
        • "Kings Theatre, Kilmarnock" has been not named that for too long to have usable hits.
      • The only time the comma form comes up that I see from a quick scan is when the city name is followed further by the region/country as part of a full address, which I'm not then considering part of its full name. If anything, based on searching, the more common approach in the commonwealth for buildings/venues with a frequently-shared name is "<name> <city>" without a comma, which would be perfectly fine for disambiguation purposes as long as that's a reliable sourced name. But the comma format is an exception, not a rule. If this is a rule as per a style guide, that would be helpful to see. --Masem (t) 20:31, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
        • The reason I brought this forward was that WP:CHURCH is the only policy/guideline/essay/style guide/rule for naming articles on buildings and structures and it is not a formally adopted policy. As a result, per WP:CONSENSUS, the comma style has become the established consensus in the Commonwealth and parenthetical in North America as Any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus. I had hoped to standardise and create a formal policy for sports stadia but there is clearly enough difference of opinion that I don't think we could have a one size fits all policy. I would, however, have no objection to removing the comma for the King's Theatres in Glasgow and Edinburgh as that is clearly the common name. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 21:50, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
        • @Masem: Are you seriously alleging that the standard way to write this in any country would be "King's Theatre ([City])", rather than "King's Theatre, [City]"? Is that really how you write an address? Sorry, but that is not how things are done in the real world. And neither is it the way things are done on Wikipedia. Except for some bizarre reason for North American articles. Just look at any category for buildings, especially in the Commonwealth. The vast majority of those that require disambiguation will be comma disambiguated. Only a minority will be parenthetical, and those will likely be moved by any experienced editor who spots them. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:45, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
          • I'm saying actually for some of these, they should be named "King's Theatre [City]" (no paran AND no comma as in "King's Theatre Glasglow") based on the common use I saw outside WP. --Masem (t) 14:29, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
            • That's merely stylistic. Theatres often use this style. It doesn't translate to mean all buildings use this style. Selecting one name in a category that often uses a particular style and then claiming that this represents standard procedure across the board is hardly scientific. I ask again, if writing an address normally, would you write "King's Theatre (Anytown)" or would you write "King's Theatre, Anytown"? Because I think you'll find that almost everyone would use the latter. So I really don't know where this parentheses nonsense comes from. It's certainly not natural in any country. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:39, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
              • If you are writing an address, that's one thing, as you would then obviously use commas, and immediately follow the city name with the country name "King's Theatre, Glasgow, Scotland". But the titles (sans parenthesis) should be representative of how we would normally address things in prose, and we aren't using postal address formats in prose. Instead, that's where "King's Theatre Glasgow" or even "King's Theatre in Glasgow" would be more common from the searches I saw in terms of referring to the theatre in running prose. --Masem (t) 14:55, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
                • No. The title sans disambiguation should be representative of how we would normally address things in prose. Parenthetical disambiguation is not the only form of disambiguation and, as I've said before, the same standard should be applied to both comma-separated disambiguation and parenthetical disambiguation when establishing which is the preferred method as in a discussion like this. Your default position is "we do it this way" and it's clear that we don't. We have two styles which, for different reasons, have become the established consensus for different parts of the world so, whether I like it or not, we currently do it both ways. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 17:20, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Multiple people, eg User:Finnusertop, User:SMcCandlish, User:Patar_knight, allude to a standard default to parenthesize. Wikipedia has a peculiar affection for parenthetical titling, but policy, WP:Article titles#Disambiguation, specifies a preferred order of
1. Natural disambiguation
2. Comma-separated disambiguation
3. Parenthetical disambiguation
4. Descriptive title
5. Combinations of the above
1 = Amsterdam Olympic Stadium N.B. well used
2 = Olympic Stadium, Amsterdam
3 = Olympic Stadium (Amsterdam)
Why are you asserting a default that is contrary to policy? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:24, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
Buildings are not places, which is when the comma-separated format would come into play. --Masem (t) 14:29, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
This 'buildings are not places' malarkey is a load of nonsense. Football stadia are the places that football games happen. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 17:08, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
Absolutely. Of course buildings are places. There is no earthly reason why we should treat them any differently from towns and villages. Once again, we don't treat them any differently when we write their addresses in the real world, so why do they magically transform into something else on Wikipedia? -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:26, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
I have never interpreted that this is the strictly preferred order, and there is no the wording that suggests that; instead, it points to weighing of the WP:CRITERIA. WP:NATURAL is indeed generally preferred and often quoted in move discussions, but its primacy comes from "naturalness" criterion rather than directly from the list you quoted. No such user (talk) 14:30, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
Buildings are not "places" in the same sense that cities are, and this is why we do not generally apply the "Foo, Bar, Baz" comma pattern to them, but parenthetical disambiguation. And see my other comment higher up. These policy provisions are to be interpreted in light of reliable-source treatment. I.e., "natural" doesn't mean "most natural to me, in my personal, subjective opinion", but "natural, because it's what sources usually do, i.e. it is the English usage everyone expects". I don't see a clear showing that sources usually write "Foobar Stadium, Bazquuxville" or "Bazquuxville Foobar Stadium". Rather, they tend to just write "Foobar Stadium", and make the geographical context clearer some other way (by establishing it sooner in the material, by adding "in Bazquuxville", etc. This is very different from, say, the US city/town naming convention which is almost universally "Municipalityname, Statename". There's not a corresponding near-total consistency in RS about how to write stadium names, so allegedly "natural" style ("Bazquuxville Foobar Stadium") and comma style ("Foobar Stadium, Bazquuxville") are neither overwhelmingly well-attested. Just the name by itself without a directly attached disambiguation does seem to be very, very common, so we would use parenthetical. Contrast this with, say, animal breeds, in which "Siamese cat" and "Danish Landrace pig" (natural disambiguation) are the most common disambiguation pattern; they are not referred to in comma style as "cat, Siamese" or "pig, Danish Landrace" except in lists of a certain kind, nor are they referred to just by themselves as "Siamese" or "Danish Landrace" except in a specialized context already exclusively limited to cats or swine, respectively. (And yes, they are obviously ambiguous: Danish landrace, Siamese.) If it turns out that in a particular case, e.g. "Amsterdam Olympic Stadium", that this is the most common name in English, then use that, per COMMONNAME. Also, some of these things may actually be formally named something like "King's Theatre Edinburgh"; in such a case, use that, the same way we would with a university campus (and these vary by whether they use a comma, a dash, a word like "at", or nothing; it doesn't matter much that sources are not 100% consistent on any of them, they're all close enough that we might as well use the actual proper name).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:07, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
"Amsterdam Olympic Stadium", that this is the most common name in English, then use that, per COMMONNAME. What's with the additional word "most". "Amsterdam Olympic Stadium" is a commonly recognizable name of the topic. That is sufficient for it to be considered, and being natural English, and matching enumerated option #1, should be considered "default". The *most* COMMONNAME is not suitable due to it being ambiguous. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:39, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
Natural disambiguation works well for certain topics and terribly for others. This, and most other proper names, are the latter case. French people might work just fine (better than French (people)), but Francis Bacon (artist) is better than Artist Francis Bacon. The problem is aggrevated when the entire title has the appearance of title caps, and Amsterdam Olympic Stadium is like that, too. This is neither the real proper name of the stadium nor its common name.
Comma-separated works well for places names and many editors, yours truly included, maintain that buildings are not places in the WP:NCPLACE sense. Sure, everything physical exists somewhere, but place names mean actual geographical locations (like populated places) and NCPLACE does not devote a single word to buildings. The NCPLACE formula is to comma-separate different levels of administrative divisions (such as City, State) and buildings are neither an administrative division nor comfortably in a hierarchical relation to one. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:24, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
User:Finnusertop. Thanks for your reply. I think we are in agreement on nearly everything. I agree on the commas.
You haven't defended the main thing I nitpicked: "should default to parentethical per WP:QUALIFIER. – Finnusertop (talk · contribs) 19:05, 6 January 2021 (UTC)" WP:QUALIFIER says no such thing, and is readily inferred to default to natural over comma over parenthetical.
Something that might yet be resolved is your position that for most proper names, natural disambiguation works terribly. Does it? I think that requires a closer look for a statement to apply generally. Maybe it does.
Japan National Stadium is "officially named National Stadium". Is "Japan National Stadium" "terrible? I don't think so. It, like "Amsterdam Olympic Stadium" is well used. They are well used as proper names in reliable sources. Perhaps this keeps your statement from being incorrect. Is it that "Amsterdam Olympic Stadium" would be a terrible, like would be "Netherlands Olympic Stadium", but "Amsterdam Olympic Stadium" is justified as a proper name commonly used is reliable sources. Do we all agree that a thing can have multiple proper names? For Stadium Australia, in the lede I count six proper names.
Looking at the National Stadium (Tokyo, 1958). Reference 1 names it "Tokyo's National Stadium" Would that be acceptable as not implying a proper name not based on use in reliable sources? Would Amsterdam's Olympic Stadium be preferable to Amsterdam's Olympic Stadium. I think both are acceptable per WP:QUALIFIER#1", but that the decision needs to separately look at usage in reliable sources. I think "Tokyo's National Stadium" is acceptable, and Amsterdam's Olympic Stadium is not acceptable. I think a principle that is well supported but not yet clearly written is that "Wikipedia should not use a natural disambiguation (WP:QUALIFIER#1) for a title if that phrase is never used in reliable sources". Invented titles need to rely on WP:QUALIFIER#4-5, which requires discounting of all possible natural, comma and parenthetical disambiguations. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:40, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
@SmokeyJoe: What I meant by "default to parenthetical" is that, even if we go with your view that the methods in WP:QUALIFIER are sorted by preference (which some editors above disagreed about), by eliminating the first two options, parentheticals is the one to be used ("Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title").
We seem to agree about commas, but not natural disambiguators. Now, as in Wikipedia, it is difficult to say what a title like "Amsterdam Olympic Stadium" is trying to grammatically convey when used by sources. Yes, I concede that it could be a proper name in sources (though again, it's neither the official proper name nor is it the most common name), and that things can have multiple proper names. But it could also be just "Olympic Stadium" and the word "Amsterdam" defining it. Not an adjective per se (cf. "the new Olympic Stadium"), but working a lot like that (there has got to be a term for this, alas 'm not a linguist). Something like "Tokyo's National Stadium" certainly strikes to me as that. Again, this construct obscures what part of the title is the proper name, and I think it's the main reason why natural disambiguators are bad for proper names. Parentheses on the other hand are explicit about this. I can guarantee that source will most often refer to the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam as simply "the stadium" or "it". These are, of course, not proper names, and no one would consider these to be the title. The point is, we have to look at what the various names are grammatically doing in order to find the proper name, then distill the common name, and finally disambiguate in a way that honors the common name and does not introduce further ambiguity. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:18, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
User:Finnusertop, OK, I nitpick that your use of "default" is poor word choice, but I'm good with your intended meaning. I do believe that a list 1, 2, 3... implied a preference order, but the existence of #2 necessarily implies that the default order is routine subject to rejection. Further, if a matter is raised on a policy talk page, it is to be expected that default preferences are not obviously working for this matter.
In the end of my postings, I think I came to agree with you about natural disambigators. I think "Amerstam Olympic Stadium", but let's change it to Netherlands Olympic Stadium, fails as an acceptable natural disambiguator. How it might be considered acceptable is as a proper name used in quality sources.
I think "Amsterdam Olympic Stadium" is sufficiently used as a propername to beat the parenthetical option. I think a longer proper name, even if not *official* or the *most* common, should be an option for choice of title. Others, reliable publishers, have already used it introductorially (introductions matter, not shortenings, abbreviations, or "it"), and if it's used in quality sources, that's sufficient for it to be an option.
I disagree, to nitpick again, that we have to "honor the common name". We have no obligation to honor, and the concept of a singular common name is flawed, a topic can have multiple common names, and the multiple common names can meet the COMMONNAME fine text. A simplistic approach frequently returns an ambiguous or specialist term as "the most common name".
Taking Category:Olympic stadiums, the "A" section (I am confused as to why these are "A" but anyway...)
* Olympisch Stadion (Antwerp) "Antwerp Olympisch Stadion", used, yes. "Antwerp Olympic Stadium", used, yes.
* Koševo City Stadium "Koševo Olympic Stadium", used, yes.
* Panathenaic Stadium is the ancient, excavated and refurbished historical stadium, it is special.
* Olympic Stadium (Athens) "Athens Olympic Stadium", used, yes, and is not the above.
* Centennial Olympic Stadium "Atlanta Olympic Stadium", used, yes.
* Stadium Australia "Sydney Olympic Stadium", used, yes.
On these results so far, I suggest that City Olympic Stadium is consistently a well-enough used proper name and COMMONNAME that it should be adopted as the standard name for modern Olympic stadia. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:21, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
I agree that natural disambiguation should be used as the primary disambiguation where possible for the reasons laid out by SmokeyJoe. I think this should also be the case for Central Stadium and National Stadium as well, although it would probably need to be decided on a case-by-case basis whether City National Stadium or Country National Stadium should be used. For example, Barbados National Stadium and Beijing National Stadium. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 13:30, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
@SmokeyJoe: I think we've come to understand each other's position better through this discussion. You (and other editors like Stevie fae Scotland) place emphasis on natural disambiguation, which is the first item in WP:QUALIFIER. Me, and others, emphasize the clarity inherent in parenthetical disambiguation appended to the most common name used by sources ("the name that is most commonly used" WP:COMMONNAME, my emphasis). Both are legitimate positions and are to be judged against other criteria in WP:AT, common sense, and ultimately consensus (which is why we're having this discussion). But I feel like the discussion has begun to go in circles. We both know what the other side prefers and why. Let anyone interested in this participate and let the closer to decide what the consensus view is. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 13:46, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
No circles, no oscillations. I feel that we have confirmed mutual understanding, and thank you for your patient answers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:49, 21 January 2021 (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.

Stability RFC

See Wikipedia talk:Stable version to revert to#RFC for a RFC involving TITLECHANGES. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:10, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

I've added a footnote since the RFC was deactivated over a month ago, tweaks to the note may be beneficial. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:01, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

"Human" example

I reverted this edit that added [[Human]] (not: ''Homo sapiens'') as an example and requested that the editor get consensus to use that as a precedent-setting example here first. The editor is currently involved in a discussion for the name of Dragon Man (archaic human) and it appeared to me that they added the human example to the policy to strengthen their argument against changing the Dragon Man title to Homo longi. Schazjmd (talk) 15:33, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Naming conventions at WP:SHIPS

Good morning,

At WP:SHIPS, I attempted to raise discussion on the possible deprecation of the WP:SHIPS naming guidelines here due to article titles no longer following the guidelines. However, I have received one response and little discussion, so I am asking here for advice on what to do next. Thank you for your responses. Llammakey (talk) 11:19, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Comma-disambiguation when it’s not natural?

At WP:QUALIFIER comma-disambiguation is separated from natural disambiguation which suggests it can be appropriate to use comma disambiguation when it’s not natural. I don’t believe that’s the intent, nor the practice, and I propose making this clear. Otherwise Cork (city) would be at Cork, County Cork. We don’t use the latter because it’s unnatural… generally not found in reliable source usage.

We can indent comma-disambiguation to be under natural disambiguation, implying it’s a particular kind of natural disambiguation. We can also add clarification, like this:

  1. Natural disambiguation: …
    Comma-separated disambiguation. With place names, if the disambiguating term is a higher-level administrative division and is a form of natural disambiguation, it is often separated using a comma instead of parentheses, as in Windsor, Berkshire…

Thoughts? —В²C ☎ 16:41, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Streets

plz see Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names)#Disambiguation_of_street_names_by_city Lembit Staan (talk) 20:35, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

August 16 2021 changes

An editor, Antoine Legrand, made these changes: [4].

They're just wording changes, but I rolled them back on the grounds of 1) this is a policy page so we want to be super careful about making changes just on somebody's say-so, and 2) it was fine before. I don't think the extra words are needed. It's a matter of taste and opinion, kind of, so if anyone disagrees make your case here. Herostratus (talk) 19:23, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

I find the changes to be beneficial as they provide a little bit more context about what each linked page is about. Quite frankly, they were worded pretty poorly before but I never noticed. -- Calidum 19:50, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
I view a "See also" section in a policy or guideline to have equivalent weight as an essay, and thus it is not subject to consensus requirements. I think Antoine Legrand's changes are a net positive. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:59, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

OK. Well, first of all, WP:BRD doesn't work like that. It may not be a great idea to give new editors the impression that it does. Let's not edit war over this, that would be really silly. Second, I can't overly worry if people want to get angry over being reverted. It's not uncommon for new editors (as Antoine Legrand is) to get reverted as they learn the ropes. Happened to me. If a new editor gets angry if people don't consider all of their early edits to be improvements... that's not a good start.

Third of all, no, I'm not a huge fan of making changes to policy pages unless it's really necessary. These aren't. If editors think that they are really necessary, it's worth hashing out I think. Editors messing with policy pages on their own dime is just too risky to justify any upside if there even is one. That's for my part; you can disagree if you like. Granted, these are pretty much just wording changes, so it'd be OK to let it go -- if they were improvements. But they're not. "Enh, whatever" doesn't apply near as much to policy pages as it might to other pages.

So, as a general principle, policy pages should be concise. They're important, they are read a lot, they have a lot to say, they are discussed and argued over a lot, and anything which makes that harder, such as unnecessary extra verbiage, isn't wanted.

So, let's see... Changing "Wikipedia:Category names, guideline" to "Wikipedia:Category names, a list of guidelines concerning naming conventions for categories"... that's just extra verbiage. We don't need to tell the reader that Wikipedia:Category names]] is about naming conventions for categories, or that it contains many suggestions rather than just one. It's extra work to read thru the extra stuff.

"Wikipedia:In versus of, a supplement on prepositions" is sufficient I would think. "Wikipedia:in versus of, proper use of in and of (or some alternatives, as from and on)"... how far do we want to go here? If the reader is interested enough to access the page, she will soon find that it has a whole lot material, including that, besides in and of (which is the main point of the page, which I guess is why it has that title), there is from and on and maybe you should avoid prepositions in some cases and so on. How much of all this do we need to include in the link? I'm asking. (FWIW Changing "Wikipedia:In versus of to "Wikipedia:in versus of may not be improvement either, since Wikipedia pages don't start with lowercase letters. It's probably OK, it was OK before, it's just roiling the text for the sake of it.)

It's not horrible to tell the reader that "in versus on" also talks about other things. It's just extra words. Helpful? I don't think so. A big deal? Not really, so why are you all edit warring over this? Let's leave the question open for a while, and see what other folks think. Or if an RfC is order, fine, start one.

On principle as well as on the merits (as I see them), I've reverted to the page to the original state. Please read WP:BRD carefully. Some later edits will have also been lost, but that's what happens when edit wars heat up. Let's not do that. Make your case instead on the merits, please. Herostratus (talk) 21:49, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. We shouldn't be making constant minor tweaks to policy pages, although each is probably harmless in itself, they can add up to significant changes to tone or implication, without the community consenting to that. If there are changes which need to be made for some reason, then put them here with clear reasons why. Otherwise, leave well alone and work on improving the encyclopedia. I also think the changes under discussion do not in particular improve this page. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 22:00, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Sorry, disagreed; I would completely agree if we were talking about the text of the policy: it must be as stable as possible. But to edit war over the "See also" section? That's simply ridiculous. If you were to be consistent, then I tell you, the item "Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Article titles, guideline on styling of titles" is 2x redundant, while several others are unclear. I would understand if you were trying to make an order with "See also", to make it uniform to your tastes, but what you did was just plain ridiculous petty random nitpicking. It this respect I do respect the work of WPDAB people: when they see someone screws up a disambig page, they not only revert or fix the new problem, they fix the whole disambig page which popped up in their watchlist.
I disagree that the edits your reverted were bad, but I am not going to waste my time on that. You probably have lots of spare time to write walls of text to defend trivialities which are up to your taste, but I don't. Lembit Staan (talk) 23:23, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

"I've reverted to the page to the original state. Please read WP:BRD carefully The other editor didnt revert you, i.e., there was no edit war (against which BRD is). Somebody else did, after answering to you in talk page. Lembit Staan (talk) 23:23, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Correct. Furthermore, the edit history of this and all other policy pages are replete with examples of minor tweaks making small obvious improvements without associated discussion and overt establishment of consensus support. It would be new Draconian policy to allow reverting such edits simply because they’re undiscussed.
Also, after reverting, Herostratus challenged anyone who disagreed to make their case. Calidum and King of Hearts did so. I agreed and Lembit Staan seconded. Including original editor Antoine Legrand that was a strong 5:1 consensus disagreeing with Herostratus when I reverted their revert. Since then Amakuru chimed in agreeing with Herostratus, but that’s still 5:2.
So, even if anyone still disagrees with the edits in question in this section, consensus favors their incorporation in this policy. The page should be edited to reflect this consensus. —В²C ☎ 08:00, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
Policy changes are not decided on the hoof, by whichever WP:LOCALCONSENSUS people happen to show up to a small discussion like this. You need to start an RfC and make the full case for it, if you think this change is so important.  — Amakuru (talk) 08:03, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
Let’s not conflate edits to policy pages with changes to policy. Some policy page edits are policy changes, but most aren’t. There is no basis in policy or practice to require an RFC for even every actual policy change, much less for every edit tweak to a policy page. This project page, for example, has had 4,112 edits of which 585 were reverts. I doubt there have been a dozen RFCs for it, let alone hundreds, or the thousands you seem to think are required for the thousands of unreverted edits here. More to the point, tweaks such as those being discussed here have never been subject to an RFC. If you think they should be, then I suggest you start an RFC for that major policy change… —В²C ☎ 12:47, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
  • I support these changes, both in terms of the object-level question (I think they're an overall improvement), and the meta-level question (i.e. I don't think policy pages should be subject to such a stringent standard of consensus as is being suggested here by Herostratus and Amkaru). As King of Hearts and others have said, editing the "See also" section of a policy is very different from changing the body of the policy itself. And it's not like the edit was crafted to push a certain POV about policy intepretation; it would be a very different matter if someone made an edit to add a link to their own essay about how all titles should be in full caps or whatever. WP:NOTBURO seems like a relevant consideration here. Insisting on formal discussions for even housekeeping changes like this is just going to take up a lot of editor time that could be better spent writing an encyclopedia. Colin M (talk) 18:22, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
Well, I mean basically, policy pages should not be changed at all, really, except when there's a general consensus to change some aspect of the policy materially or make some other improvement. Why on earth would you want that. They have existed for many years and ought to be pretty settled by now. If there's a certain phasing that you don't like, but we've gotten by with it OK for fifteen years, maybe leave it be. It's just really easy to accidentally make subtle changes of emphasis or meaning when adjusting wording.
Going into an article or most non-article pages and wanting to mess around with the wording a bit, fine. If there's a minor encrusting of verbosity, it's not worth worrying about. Policy pages, no. If there are wording issues, awkward phrasings and so forth, that ought to be handled by a general discussion. Herostratus (talk) 09:06, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
In my opinion, regarding policy pages there are three types of changes:
  1. Substantive changes to policy text: Must go through widely advertised RfC.
  2. Rewording of policy text: Must have talk page consensus.
  3. Minor fixes to spelling/grammar/formatting of policy text, or changes to non-policy text (e.g. "See also" section, addition of shortcuts, etc.): Subject to standard WP:BRD.
King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:42, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
I very strongly disagree with this. I think it's misleading to talk about the danger of causing "subtle changes of emphasis or meaning when adjusting wording", since the edits we're talking about here were to the "See also" section, not the wording of any policy proper. There are enough people watching these pages that if someone does make an edit with this effect, it can be easily flagged. But no-one has claimed that the edits under discussion here have this problem. Colin M (talk) 17:12, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
  • English is spoken all over the world, but for non-native English readers: "a supplement on prepositions" is not so easy to understand because it is more of a concept than simple and clear to understand words. Antoine Legrand (talk) 14:24, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
  • It looks like the discussion here has petered off. It seems to me we have rough consensus in favour of the changes. @Herostratus and Amakuru:, would either of you object to my reinstating the changes? If so, perhaps we could request formal closure of the discussion by an uninvolved party? Colin M (talk) 19:39, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
No, that would be fine by me, thanks. Herostratus (talk) 22:37, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
I've only gone as far as restoring the August 16 edits, since they were the subject of discussion here. I see that Antoine made another series of edits between August 19th and 20th which were also reverted. They're not changes I would have been inclined to revert if I came across them, but I'm not going to de-revert them since they weren't specifically discussed here (and they involve one minor change to the wording of actual policy, rather than just hatnotes and endmatter) and I'd rather not rock the boat. If someone wants to be bolder than I'm willing to be, be my guest. Colin M (talk) 23:22, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

contributor=editor=Wikipedian - need clarification

Extended content

Following my reverted contribution I start a discussion to reach consensus at a single centralized location: Wikipedia_talk:Project_namespace#contributor=editor=Wikipedian — Antoine Legrand (talk) 19:20, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Moved to where it belongs: Wikipedia talk:Wikipedians#contributor=editor=Wikipedian. Lembit Staan (talk) 21:51, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Conciseness vs. concision

This page used to use the term "conciseness" for one of the 5 WP:CRITERIA. Keith-264 changed it in one place (a section heading) to "concision". I changed it back, and Born2cycle reverted, so maybe now we should discuss.

I have a mild preference for the status quo, because I understand "conciseness" to be the more common/standard nominalization (per wikt:concision).

Either way, as I said in my edit summary, if we are switching to "concision", we should replace throughout the page. Right now the term "conciseness" still appears 6 times in this page, including 2 broken section links. Colin M (talk) 15:13, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Keith-264’s reasoning: Concision is more concise than conciseness. Regarding common/standard nominalization I don’t think that’s relevant since we have a more specific definition we work with here on WP, as we do with many other terms. I certainly agree all links and redirects need to be fixed and that’s in progress. —В²C ☎ 15:21, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 Done. --В²C ☎ 15:40, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
BTW, in main space, Conciseness redirects to Concision... so there's that too... --В²C ☎ 15:41, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
If we're going to play that game, Brevity is even conciser! Colin M (talk) 15:44, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Wiktionary's view here does not seem to match modern usage. On Google Trends, concision just edges out conciseness. Google Ngram shows conciseness at a huge lead in the past but just barely ahead in modern times. Concision beats out conciseness on Google News. At this point, both seem fine and neither seems rare. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:52, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Hello everyone, I changed the word to concision because it's shorter and as a being English tend to deprecate -ness as a suffix; perhaps it's different in AmEng? Concision isn't a synonym of brevity, which means 'short'; it means using the fewest words necessary, which isn't necessarily brief. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 16:04, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
If you flip the Google Trends query from "United States" to "Worldwide", conciseness becomes the overall winner. Also, concision has multiple senses, whereas conciseness has only the one. Though I do agree that based on your data Wiktionary's "(somewhat rare)" label is not accurate. Colin M (talk) 16:19, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Good point. I think the Ngram is worldwide; again, conciseness over concision but nothing radical. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 17:16, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Islamic terrorism

Oh, my. I never thought I'd have to take this to the Talk page, but my deletion of a sentence regarding "Islamic terrorism" was reverted here. We certainly don't need to equate Islam with terrorism, nor do we really need the (scurrilous) example we are using. I propose that the sentence simply be deleted as unnecessary at best and scurrilous at worst. Kindly comment, and be prepared to suggest some other wording that is not hateful to one religious group or another. Thank you. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 21:35, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

I’m not sure I understand. Are you objecting to the article on Islamic terrorism? If so, this is not the right place. If not, why object to an example referring to it? Or are you objecting to something else? —В²C ☎ 07:16, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Product names and fictional characters section

Because of the popularity of product names and fictional characters over the second millenium, I added a section for product names and fictional characters, as there are now lots of different product names and fictional characters. Naming them to conform with the "common name" guideline is only more and more important. For instance, the game Bloons TD 6 is almost always referred as "Bloons TD 6" in most media and by person to person, and not "Bloons Tower Defense 6" as the other Bloons TD series games had been referred to. Same with Fall Guys as not "Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout". Hence why it's so important to provide examples for product names, and also the same for fictional characters for similar reasons. Other examples provided do not provide enough of a reasoning like the people names or scientific stuff, because those topics about product names and fictional characters just aren't within the appropriate contexts that naming conventions for those matter. Dealing with product names are not the same as those for dealing with the names of people or animals. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 01:53, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Derogatory but common names

What should the article's name be when it is about a person that is commonly known by a derogatory (yet not necessarily vulgar) nickname given by their enemy? By WP:NPOVNAME, it seems that the non-neutral name should be used, however derogatory and most likely disapproved by target it is.

The act of ascribing a nickname that is unwanted is arguably a violation of one's personal rights, but might still be commonplace and left unattended, especially when the subject is deceased. Using that nickname as the title of their article per WP:NPOVNAME (and not just in the body as a noteworthy fact), Wikipedia would be perpetrating the violation and a form of psychological violence in some extreme cases.

I propose to discuss an improvement of the policy in this regard. My suggestion is to introduce a new first subsection to WP:NPOVTITLE called Derogatory but common names, and write the following in it:

Derogatory nicknames, however common, cannot be used as the title of an article about an individual, unless the individual explicitly endorses the nickname. In such cases, the next most common name is used instead. For example, if Alexander the Great was commonly referred to as Alexander the Weak without his approval, his article would be titled Alexander III of Macedon.

--— manual signature: comment added by ThoAppelsin (talk • contribs) 18:10, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Could you give some examples of articles where this would be relevant? Colin M (talk) 19:23, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
Mary Mallon (aka Typhoid Mary) was at her given name from 2002 until 2010, and has been back at her given name since 2016. Plantdrew (talk) 04:30, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
Amr ibn Hishām (aka. Abu Jahl, lit. 'Father of Ignorance') is commonly known by his derogatory nickname, and the Catalan, German, French, Kurdish, Uzbek, Turkish versions (among others) are titled with this derogatory nickname. — manual signature: comment added by ThoAppelsin (talk • contribs) 21:38, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Deaf baseball pitcher William Ellsworth Hoy (not even a redirect!), commonly known as Dummy Hoy. I happened to remember this one, but searching around in baseball archives is likely to find more. Little effort was needed to find Nig Cuppy, which then led me to a bunch more, at Nig (nickname). Mathglot (talk) 21:59, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
It's worth noting that "Hoy himself often corrected individuals who addressed him as William, and referred to himself as Dummy" per Dummy Hoy#Personal life (second sentence), thereby is claimed to endorse the nickname, although we may not be able to confirm this one. — manual signature: comment added by ThoAppelsin (talk • contribs) 22:21, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
It’s not for us to decide. Reliable sources do the deciding for us. We reflect their decisions. When it’s the most common name used by RS, then it’s acceptable in RS, so then it’s acceptable on WP. —В²C ☎ 07:01, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
Actively (because the default and common is negative according to the reliable sources) taking the neutral position would make Wikipedia appear to be taking a positive position. However, the reliable sources using a derogatory nickname to refer to a person primarily, should perhaps bring the said sources' reliability into question, since a resource with hints of adversarial position hardly fits together with the Neural Point of View policy. — manual signature: comment added by ThoAppelsin (talk • contribs) 09:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
If yhe person's dead, she probably doesn't care what you call her anymore, so just do what seems best (which means following sources basically). HOWEVER... if the nickname is derogatory to a class of persons. particularly a protected class, then you might have to think this thru.
Typhoid Mary is fine, because "non-symptomatic contagious disease carriers who keep working in kitchens anyway" is not a protected class, and it's a very small class, so we needn't overly worry about it. On the other hand, at John Pershing we have "General of the Armies John Joseph Pershing GCB (September 13, 1860 – July 15, 1948), nicknamed "Black Jack", was a senior United States Army officer...". Except he wasn't called Black Jack, he was called Nigger Jack (also Black Jack, atho how much of the latter was bowlderization by writers I don't know); That's not a title, but suppose it was his common name -- would we have an article titled "Nigger Jack Pershing"? Hmmm. Pershing's past caring, and even suppose he liked the nickame, so what. It's offensive to the reader. How much that matters is a matter of opinion. It would depend on how overwhelmingly the person was known by that name. In his case "John Pershing" is the most common name anyway, so moot.
So... Dummy is offensive to the class of people who can't speak, I guess. It doesn't matter what Hoy himself thought or wanted or felt prudent to be accommodating about. So on that basis it's reasonable to use William Hoy as the article. I wouldn't, because Dummy Hoy is overwhelmingly known only by that name. Midget Wolgast etc, I don't know. I do see that Roscoe Arbuckle is the article title, even tho "Fatty Arbuckle" is probably his more common name. But Roscoe was used some I think, and since we want to lean away from insulting, degrading, or annoying any class of our readers if it's reasonably possible, I approve of that. It's OK to lean toward using a less-used name in cases like that. Herostratus (talk) 19:40, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Advice on article names?

Is there a noticeboard or other forum to advise on article names? If yes, could it somehow be linked to the article here?--Pgallert (talk) 08:23, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I also have a specific question, if anyone wants to comment: Should User:Pgallert/John Walters become John Robert Walters where the middle name is hardly known, or better John Walters (lawyer), or maybe John Walters (ombudsman)? --Pgallert (talk) 08:23, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
@Pgallert: There's WP:Requested moves, but it is basically noticeboard for structured discussions about individual articles' titles. For general advice, I guess this talk page is as good as any.
Policy section with apt shortcut WP:MIDDLENAME advises that Adding given names, or their abbreviations, merely for disambiguation purposes (if that format of the name is not commonly used to refer to the person) is not advised. so that probably rules out "John Robert Walters". As for the choice of disambiguator, WP:NCDAB suggests that If there are several possible choices for parenthetical disambiguation, use the same disambiguating phrase already commonly used for other topics within the same class and context, if any. Otherwise, choose whichever is simpler. That seems to suggest "lawyer" but, having seen that he served as ombudsman for 17+ years, "ombudsman" might be a better choice, since J. Reed Walters was also an attorney. No such user (talk) 09:29, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks you @No such user: for the substantive response.--Pgallert (talk) 11:18, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
On the existing ombudspeople there's no consistent disambiguation practice, but nobody is titled (ombudsman). So I guess I'll make it John Walters (lawyer), and once further disambig is needed, John Walters (Namibian lawyer). Thanks again, Pgallert (talk) 11:25, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
Sounds like a solution. Agree with Pgallert. Tony (talk) 11:52, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
Actually, there are several (it takes some advanced search "in title" to find them):
...so, it's a reasonable disambiguator if that's what the person is best known for. (But I'll also note that all of the above are very common names, so perhaps some unusual choices had to be made). No such user (talk) 14:00, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to add country to all monarch titles

Proposal to add country to all monarch titles whether the name of the monarch requires disambiguation by country, or not:

Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(royalty_and_nobility)#RFC:_Regnal_names

—В²C ☎ 00:27, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

New essay - Wikipedia:Assassination

I feel like Wikipedia:Assassination should be mentioned somewhere in here. Last week, there was heavy debates on whether a politician being murder is "murder" or "assassination" in the article title. Reliable sources used murder instead of assassination, so Wikipedia also used murder, despite Wikipedia's definition of assassination saying "The murder of prominent or important person, such as...politicians." The essay talks about how what term RS use is the term Wikipedia uses, despite common definitions. After reading this guidelines, I believe it should be added somewhere, but I have no idea where is best to add this. Elijahandskip (talk) 01:14, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Facebook name change

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Meta, Inc. § Name change. Following Facebook's name change, some article title folks may want to share thoughts there. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:08, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Title case in other namespaces

At Wikipedia talk:Principle of Some Astonishment#Requested move 30 October 2021 it is being claimed that an essay can use title case rather than sententious case. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:41, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

En dashes vs. hyphens in articles about wars

MOS:ENBETWEEN says to use an en dash instead of a hyphen when referring to wars with two opposing sides in its name. However, I noticed that a lot of articles about wars use the hyphen instead in their titles and leads, and when I say a lot, I mean a lot. To name a few: Russo-Ukrainian War, First Sino-Japanese War, Franco-Visigothic Wars, Anglo-Scottish Wars, Greco-Persian Wars, Italo-Ethiopian War of 1887–1889, Anglo-Nepalese War, ... This is clearly a wide-ranging problem, but I fear that finding and changing every one of those article titles would be extremely tedious. So, what should we do about this? InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:43, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Using "(murderer)" as disambiguator in BLP titles

Is it ok to use "(murderer)" for disambiguating the article title about a living person, assuming this person received a conviction for murder? For example, Eric Smith (murderer). I understand that WP:DEATHS recommends titles like "Murder of..." for an event. But still I wonder if there might be a better disambiguator in such cases.VR talk 19:17, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

If the disambiguator accurately identifies what the subject is notable for, uniquely from other uses of that name, it’s the right one. —В²C ☎ 19:44, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
Yes. If they were convicted of murder and that's primarily what they're notable for. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:28, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Need help/suggestions for a better title

Hello, title experts! I was wondering if any of you might have a suggestion for how to retitle the article St. Louis gun-toting controversy. A discussion has been started here. Thanks for any input. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:08, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

@MelanieN: There seems to be consensus that at that discussion that it needs a better title. You can open an RM to ? and then 'title experts' will see it at WP:RMC. Havelock Jones (talk) 10:39, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Titles of shootings under discussion at Talk:Kenosha unrest shooting

The discussion of whether to use "Kyle Rittenhouse shootings" in a title, underway at Talk:Kenosha_unrest_shooting#Requested_move_23_November_2021, may be of interest here.

The general WP:AT question implicated there is whether shootings, bombings, or other (single) cases of lethal force applied by one person with several casualties (hence not normally describable as "shooting of [person]") can be named after the killer. This seems like something where there is already uniformity in how it is done that could be codified at AT. Sesquivalent (talk) 02:13, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

No need for an explicit rule. Follow the usage in reliable sources. -- PBS (talk) 21:26, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
A lot of WP:AT could be removed under that principle. Where there is a practice that sources and Wikipedia have converged on, pointing it out as a custom (if not a rule) is just writing down another bit of the accumulated community experience when someone notices it has crystallized. Sesquivalent (talk) 18:34, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

SMALLDETAILS and Baa Baaa Black Sheep

There is a move discussion involving WP:SMALLDETAILS ongoing at Talk:Baa Baaa Black Sheep (Baa Baaa Black Sheep vs. Baa, Baa, Black Sheep) if you're interested. —  AjaxSmack  19:49, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Clarity on dual qualifier titles

I've seen some near intractable situations created by the ambiguity of dual-qualifier titles.

Sometimes they clearly and only use the two qualifiers to narrow the topic. I.E Bulgarian folk musicians

Other times it can be ambiguous. For example, Nobel Prize winning athletes which could be:

  1. Coverage of that subset of athletes = coverage of that subset of Nobel prize winners
  2. An article about the possible cause-effect relationship between the two (in either direction)
  3. Or, both of the above, although combining them makes the wp:notability question really messy

IMO it would help things if either:

  • The title clarified which of the above that it is
  • Create some encouraged standardized place for a note (which can only be changed by a substantial consensus) to clarify that. Possibly an invisible note right after the title.

This would not only help guide / clarify for article development, but also clarify for wp:GNG purposes starting with NPP patrol and also at AFD's. For example, #1 might just require finding coverage of athletes who won Nobel prizes. #2 would require finding suitable coverage of study of the possible cause-effect relationship between the two.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:27, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:AT is not and ought not to become perscriptive in the way the WP:MOS is. I presume that when you write "dual-qualifier titles" you are concerned with descriptive titles, othewise we follow usage in "independent, reliable English-language sources". However this can also be a problem with some articles based on foreign sources eg Recovered Territories probably obvious to a Polish editor, but probably not to an English speaking monoglot.
"This would not only help guide / clarify for article development" article titles are for readers not editors. So if an editor thinks a name change would benefit an articles development, then they can either be bold and move the article to a new title or initiate an RM.
There are so many combinations that depending on context could be read as ambiguous, but might not necessarily be obvious. For example are "British imigrant families", families that have emegrated to Britain or from Britain? The initial intuitive view would probably vary between someone resident in Britain or resident in Australia). I think it is better if this is handled on a case by case basis, because depending on the reader's world view many article titles could seem obvious at first sight until they read the article and realise that it can be viewed differently. — PBS (talk) 14:15, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks. The solution would probably only be 1/3 here anyway. I was not thinking about being prescriptive, but merely providing a framework. Using my above example, if the editors decided on #2 above, (specifically the theory/study of how athleticism may foster Nobel prize winning) how would that be recorded or renamed? Clarity in the title would require a longer awkward-sounding title:The possible effect of athleticism on winning Nobel prizes And then of course, the wp:notability determination would have something to be based on. Probably the most common situation that I have in mind (although not within the section heading) it when an article is in essence about a term which is also a "lens" or view of "xxx" ... is that article also about "xxx"? For example, Political correctness or Anchor babies. I hate to complicate things by using a real world example (one that my above example was an analogy of) but one I recently stumbled into is Mass killings under communist regimes where 12 years later they still don't know what the article is about and is up for it's 4th AFD, the current AFD apparently setting the record for the largest ever in Wikipedia. Looks like it will be kept and their only solution to their dilemma will be to decide what the article is about and record their decision, but Wikipedia gives no guidance on a process for either. The only Wikipedia system for doing that seems to be to have sufficient clarity in the title which only a long awkward title would do. Of course for each situation an editor can make an ad hoc one up (invisible comments, a disambig note, and FAQ on the talk page)North8000 (talk) 14:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Standardization of U.S. Supreme Court case law lists

The Category "Category:Lists of United States Supreme Court opinions by topic" contains 13 members, most of which do not seem to adhere to any naming conventions. Eleven of them begin with "List of United States Supreme Court" but, after that, they vary as follows:

  • "cases involving x" (five uses)
  • "x case law" (four uses)
  • "opinions involving x" (one use)
  • "decisions on x" (one use)

Some kind of standard needs to be applied here. I think the current most popular phrasing, "List of United States Supreme Court cases involving x," seems like it would be appropriate. I can't see any reason to depart from the most popular convention. --Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 04:04, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

    • I think we do need separate "cases involving x" and "x case law" as there are things like "patent case law" and the other IP ones, while things like the First Amendment make sense as "cases involving the First Amendment". The other two can be renamed to be "cases involving X". --Masem (t) 04:44, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
      • I don't see how "cases involving copyright," "cases involving patent law," or "cases involving trademark/trademark law" are anything other than completely appropriate, let alone unpalatable to the point that we "need" separate naming conventions. --Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 05:31, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

En dashes vs. hyphens in articles about wars

MOS:ENBETWEEN says to use an en dash instead of a hyphen when referring to wars with two opposing sides in its name. However, I noticed that a lot of articles about wars use the hyphen instead in their titles and leads, and when I say a lot, I mean a lot. To name a few: Russo-Ukrainian War, First Sino-Japanese War, Franco-Visigothic Wars, Anglo-Scottish Wars, Greco-Persian Wars, Italo-Ethiopian War of 1887–1889, Anglo-Nepalese War, ... This is clearly a wide-ranging problem, but I fear that finding and changing every one of those article titles would be extremely tedious. So, what should we do about this? InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:43, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I just restored this section that was archived, since nobody answered. Note that "Russo" and "Sino" are what's known as "combining forms". If these were Russia–Ukraine War and China–Japan War we'd use the en dash. But MOS:DUALNATIONALITIES says "Franco- is a combining form, not an independent word, so use a hyphen". So please don't do anything about those you listed which are all combining forms that take a hyphen. Dicklyon (talk) 06:29, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
@InfiniteNexus: – see response above. Dicklyon (talk) 06:33, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Thank you for enlightening me! InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:35, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Where to ask when the common name is difficult to determine

Is there a venue to ask questions about how articles should be titled? At Talk:Graffito of Esmet-Akhom there's uncertainty about what the common name actually is (not a dispute, just a case where both the editors discussing the issue are unsure). A. Parrot (talk) 18:56, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

The article talk page is probably the best place (or, if there are few watchers, a related wikiproject), since the people in the best position to weigh in will be those who are familiar with the subject area, and who have access to and understanding of the RS on the subject. From my reading of that talk page, it sounds like Ichthyovenator may be on to something with their suggestion that there is no commonname for the subject, in which case WP:NDESC would be the relevant route to follow. Colin M (talk) 19:17, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Use of primary sources to justify a name change

An interesting point has been raised at Wikipedia talk:Official names#Name changes.

I have always believed that following a name change, a corporate rebranding for example, we required evidence that reliable secondary sources had adopted the new name before moving the article.

But a good case has been made that this is contrary to policy, and that adoption of the new name by primary sources is sufficient under WP:NAMECHANGES.

This flies in the face of commonsense as far as I can see, so perhaps the policy needs clarification? Or is it being misinterpreted? How exactly?

Other views? Andrewa (talk) 10:48, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

There's a difference between the official/legal name of something/someone, and the name that is most commonly used to refer to it/them. We use the latter for article titles. Paul August ☎ 21:36, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Exactly. But to what extent do we consider the name that is most commonly used to refer to it/them in primary sources? That's the question. Andrewa (talk) 10:36, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
  • I was hoping somebody else would weigh in here, but since that hasn't happened, and since we agree something needs clarification, I'll reply here. I don't think there's a problem with WP:NAMECHANGES. Immediately after a corporate rebranding, it won't be possible to say that RSs routinely use the new name. On the other hand, if after some time, there is consistent use by primary sources and there's just no coverage by secondary sources, then de facto the common name has changed and we should follow suit. If secondary sources do continue to the use the old name, then we give them preference in accordance with our general policy.
I think we can bit a bogged down on what is actually a simple point. A thing's common name is what people commonly call it. We like to put our articles at that name, because that's where we expect users to look for them. According with our general practice, we establish what something is commonly called by looking at usage in RSs (rather than, say, relying on our own usage, which may not be representative). Usually if something changes its name, usage follows the change, but sometimes it doesn't, e.g. if the old name was particularly iconic or the new name is cumbersome. So we have a policy which tells us, in effect, to wait and see. The policy isn't establishing some higher bar for changing an article's name than for naming a new article.
The RM at Magic Springs and Crystal Falls is a good example of a reasonably common situation, where something fairly obscure changes its name and usage by seconardy sources is hard to establish. The name changed 5 years ago. Since then, there has been ample and consistent usage in primary sources of the new name. Unsurprisingly, the amusement park isn't generating steady third party coverage, and it doesn't appear that usage either way can be shown by seconary sources. While we can't be completely sure what people down in Arkansas are actually calling it (I would guess Magic Springs, both before and after the name change), the ubiquitous primary coverage strongly suggests the new name is established by now. A user who, say, is invited to the park and wants to find out about it, is going to look for it under its current name. If we were creating a new article, I don't think anyone would advocate for putting it at the old name. Havelock Jones (talk) 10:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
Disagree with several points here, but thank you for contributing. I was also hoping to get third party input! Andrewa (talk) 00:26, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm basically with Havelock Jones here. While having secondary sources that affirm the name change is desirable, those may not be readily available. For many obscure organizations and companies, we have articles created years or even decades ago, often based on a handful of then-actual sources. As Havelock Jones points out, if something relatively obscure goes on to change its name, it is highly unlikely that people (and whichever secondary sources may eventually get to them) will persist calling it by the old name. I do not think it is fair to disregard primary sources (typically, the organization website and social network accounts) and to deny the requested move just because the proposer did not supply enough evidence in form of secondary sources. Just use common sense. No such user (talk) 10:13, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

If a company is so obscure that there no cover in secondary sources then is it notable enough to warrent an article? Any commersial company traded on a stock exchange will generate news coverage. The UK, and I assume almost any other modern first world contry, publishes lists companies with directors, turnover etc in the public domain, which can be used to verify a change in name of a limited liability company, charity etc.
I agree that the wording in WP:NAMECHANGES read as a stand alone section was not as clear as it could have been, and so I have clarified it. It is actually a subsection of the link to the section at the end of the paragraph "as described above in "Use commonly recognizable names.", and when read in context, "reliable sources" in the whole section actually means "independent, reliable English-language sources". To read it any other way would introduce the ambiguity, so I have made the implicit explicit (diff). — PBS (talk) 21:21, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
I disagree with the change. Linking WP:SOURCES borders on instruction creep, and "English-language" is uncalled for. Many foreign organizations are notable, but with little to none English-language coverage. If it's a Spanish or Indonesian or Russian organization, those sources will be the first to catch up with the name change and are equally acceptable. No such user (talk) 21:44, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
See (this diff).
Your concerns about notable foreign people, organisations, and objects is covered in a seperate section of the policy Foreign names and Anglicization and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).
The "Name changes" is a subsection of Use commonly recognizable names and until relativly recently was a sententence in the main section and it has fairly recently been broken out into a more detailed subsection. I simply copied and pasted the link from the main section into the sub section so that there is no contradiction between the two sections (which can happen if the subsection is read in isolation via the link "WP:NAMECHANGES"). So your objection is not valid unless you think that the main section ought to be changed to match the wording in the sub section, because it is clear from what you say that you think that the current wording in the main part of WP:UCRN is wrong. — PBS (talk) 13:30, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
PBS' point is valid: you can't object to the clarifying edit PBS made without also objecting to the main part of WP:UCRN. If you want to discuss that, then we need to have a separate discussion. --В²C ☎ 16:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Actually, I do (sort of) object to that as well. In many cases of foreign subjects, there are no reliable English-language sources that cover the topic. Even if there are few (see the current quibble at Talk:Kiev Day and Night RM) they may fail to establish a pattern, so foreign-language sources must be analyzed. Of course, when there is sufficient English coverage it should pull much more weight than the foreign sources, but the guidance fails to go into such subtleties. I'm not saying we should remove "English language" entirely, but it does come with a caveat. No such user (talk) 09:21, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Another instance

See this RM !vote. I'm not so much interested in the outcome of this RM (I don't think it improves Wikipedia much either way) as in the rationale of this !vote.

It seems to me that this rationale is quite wrong. But it also seems to me that current guidelines are not sufficiently clear on this point.

Pinging User:Born2cycle, User:PBS, [[User:No such user, User:Havelock Jones, User:Paul August. Thank you for your input above.

(Have I missed anyone?)

I have two questions.

(1) Does anyone think that the rationale given by this !vote is valid?

(2) For those who agree with me that this rationale is not valid, is this clear in current policy and guidelines? Where?

As an RM regular, I would appreciate clarity on this, and I doubt that I am the only one. Andrewa (talk) 17:02, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I think the rationale is not valid per the requirement in WP:NAMECHANGES that "reliable sources written after the change is announced routinely use the new name". The objection is not to Twitter per se (per WP:TWITTER), but that a single tweet cannot establish routine usage. Havelock Jones (talk) 18:50, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Even if the person themselves did use the new name repeatedly on Twitter, would that establish common usage? I don't think so. But perhaps WP:TWITTER needs clarification on that too. Andrewa (talk) 01:56, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
It's simply a case of searching for more evidence. The subject has apparently changed his homepage to https://www.riverbutcher.com/, and his Facebook page to "River"; the tweet has been noted by Yahoo Life. However, the current article title is gender-neutral RB Butcher, so that might as well be the best compromise until we get more sources to work with. No such user (talk) 09:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Agree it's a case of needing more evidence. But it's also a matter of persuading the IP that this is the case. Andrewa (talk) 11:38, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Dash in sporting event titles

How do we interpret titles like Racquetball at the 2009 World Games – women's singles and 2017 FIL European Luge Championships – Women's singles and 1969 New South Wales Open – Women's Singles. Sometimes we see lowercase after the dash, as I would expect, but more often we see caps; even multiple capped words in the case of tennis. Is this like a subtitle? Is there any guideline relevant to it? MOS:SENTENCECAPS says not to cap after a dash, but that seems more about a sentence dash than whatever this is. Is there anything in Title or MOS about this kind of dashed title? Dicklyon (talk) 05:04, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm no kind of an expert at this, but isn't the rule to use parens for for disambiguation except for places? Since "Racquetball at the 2009 World Games" needs disambiguation, wouldn't the go-to title be "Racquetball at the 2009 World Games (women's singles)"? Just asking. Herostratus (talk) 02:05, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
That might be better. I doubt that the projects think of this as disambiguation though. More like sub-categorization. If it were up to me, I'd say just merge the men's and women's doubles and singles into the main article, but I'm pretty sure that idea would be DOA. Dicklyon (talk) 03:05, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
In the sense of being a WP article title, this is probably a sub-title. If we were talking about the title of a work (ie book or similar) we would be applying title case and therefore capping after the dash. However, as this is not, we apply sentence case to the title. While some might apply capping after a colon or dash (and some not), WP clarifies this at MOS:SENTENCECAPS. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 00:07, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

While it's most common in sporting events, we also see thousands of other two-part titles with spaced en dash separation, such as (with my comments):

The fact that so many of these are unsourced stubs suggests that they might be fixed when someone works on them. But others are clearly part of some intentional pattern, or at least are not unsourced and not stubs. I know the Milhist folks like to have "proper names" for battles, even if they have to synthesize some actions and make up names for them. And the many categories of sporting events and entertainment awards sometimes get done this way, but I still don't see how to interpret those in terms of our title and capitalization policies and guidelines. Like why is the "subtitle" of an event after the dash ever capped, and why sometimes in title case, when clearly not a proper name. It seems like the Milhist case, where they want to treat the made up compound as a proper name. Can we stop doing that? Dicklyon (talk) 00:18, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I've tracked many of these (about 20,000) to User:DASHBot, which from 2009 to 2013 blindly moved titles from spaced hyphens to spaced en dashes; in many cases, unspaced en dash would have been the right thing to do, and I've just fixed a dozen or so of those, but there are thousands to go. Many of the others just mapped funny hyphen-separated two-part titles to funny dash-separated two-part titles of the sort I'm inquiring about. What a mess. Dicklyon (talk) 02:49, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

At WT:WikiProject Tennis#More discussion about dashes in sporting event titles I'm seeing pretty much a "tennis is special" argument about why they cap things like "Women's Doubles" when sources do not. Not to do with en dashes, but clearly contrary to MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 06:34, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Come on really? I'm seeing simply a different perspective because I gave you a heap of sources that spell it out Men's Singles. I'm not sure why you would say otherwise and mislead. It appears it's not so much "tennis is special" as much as "you don't like it." Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:46, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
Your sources were only about heading contexts, not sentences, which is what we go by, per WP:NCCAPS ("...unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence.") and MOS:CAPS ("...only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia"). Dicklyon (talk) 07:11, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Maybe these dashed constructs should just be avoided, so we don't have to work the capitalization issue? Could do French Open women's doubles, for example, as is done in books. Dicklyon (talk) 01:49, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Or "French Open Men's Singles" as is done in sources. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:05, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
That capping is relatively uncommon, at least in books, and news. Dicklyon (talk) 17:26, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
But not per the events in question or official sources. And there are plenty of sources that use the full name as a proper name. Consensus simply chose one. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:39, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
If we went by official names, it would be Roland-Garros, not French Open. And their site uses lowercase for men's singles and such; e.g. this page. Similarly, usopen.org says "US Open men's singles". Anyway, sources are mixed as we've all agreed, so MOS:CAPS says don't cap. Dicklyon (talk) 22:24, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
I didn't say official names, I said the official sources spelling. It is non uncommon to use Men's Singles. You said as used in books but I have books that do otherwise. If we go by ngram books we'd also spell their names Petra Kvitova and Marin Cilic because that's what is overwhelmingly used by almost every source, but those spelling versions are actually banned on Wikipedia. You keep making it sound like this is against our guideline MOS and it is not. It doesn't say if some sources used lower case that we must use lower case. You are making a mountain out of a molehill. There is nothing wrong with how it's done now. Could it be different, sure... but it is not wrong now. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:30, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
Ah, sorry, I misunderstood. Still not sure what you mean by "official sources" though. I know there are sources, including books, that use caps. That's why I said "sources are mixed as we've all agreed". And it is wrong as it's capped now in WP, per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS guidance, since these are not proper names, not usually capped in sentence context in sources. I'm not trying to make a big deal out of it, just some routine fixing. Dicklyon (talk) 04:42, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

RfC: changes to WP:COMMONNAME to accommodate individual's preferred name after court-ordered name change, marriage or divorce

Wikipedia:Common Name is an officially policy regarding how (English) Wikipedia should title articles about subjects. There has been contention over the years about how the Wikipedia community should title individuals and whether their preferences should have any influence on its naming. As of right now, a person's preference is not a factor and the only factor what whether reliable sources refers to the individual. High profile debates regarding individuals name have included Hillary Clinton (formerly titled Hillary Rodham Clinton]]). This discussion is particularly pertaining to when an individual legally changes their name via court order, marriage or divorce. Should we allow an exception or create a new policy/guideline that titles articles based on the personal preference of the person and take in account life events such as legal name changes? The reason I would like to bring this up is because there does not seem to be much consistency about this, probably because WP:COMMONNAME is decided on a base by base case. Currently, there is contention regarding Kanye West and whether the page should reflect his new legal name of Ye (here). This page has not been moved but it has been under discussion. This is comparable to other recent high profile name changes: Hailey Baldwin to Hailey Bieber, Melinda Gates to Melinda French Gates, MacKenzie Bezos to MacKenzie Scott, Facebook, Inc. to Meta Platforms, and other discussions in the past such as Caitlyn Jenner and Chelsea Manning. Some pages have been moved quicker than others, i.e. when it involves transgender individuals. Relevant topics related to this RfC are WP:NAMECHANGES, MOS:AT, MOS:BOLDLEAD, WP:SPNC, WP:NCP and MOS:DEADNAME. Any other editors who wanted to add any more relevant information and comments can below. Me opening this discussion should not be interpreted as support or opposition to any proposed changes. cookie monster 755 00:10, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

  • Comment my personal opinion is that the sources should be our guide unless there is a very good reason (for example dead naming, which we know is a very sensitive issue for those concerned). In most cases, it's unlikely that (a) sources would differ that much from subjects' personal preferences and (b) that subjects would mind too much even if they did. For example, I was watching a children's reading hour during the lockdown which included a passage by Meryl Steep. But she had put herself up on the video call as Meryl Gummer, using the surname of her husband. Perhaps that's her legal name, perhaps it isn't. But clearly there's no way that using that name would be correct for us, given the overwhelming usage of Meryl Streep. Of course, if sources are split then you have to make a decision, and subjects' personal preferences then weigh much more heavily. But that's pretty much the case anyway, we don't need a change in policy to do that...  — Amakuru (talk) 00:29, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment - It always annoys me, when the RM route is bypassed & unilateral page moves are done, in the name of WP:COMMONNAME. GoodDay (talk) 00:32, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose any special credence given to “court ordered” or “legal name” as this crosses the line into primary source sleuthing. Instead, rely on reputable secondary sources, and expect them to recognise court orders or legal name, or don’t mention court orders or legal names. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:04, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Current policy is not broken it does not need to be fixed. - Nick Thorne talk 01:49, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Existing policy is OK and would normally allow for this.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 06:45, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I'm with the users above. We have sourcing policies and guidelines which specify significant coverage in reliable secondary sources independent of the subject. We have formal processes for page moves at a local level. I see no reason to change any of these existing !rules for this special case. I'm sensitive to issues related to deadnaming, but there's something like attempting to "right great wrongs" here. BusterD (talk) 06:59, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Works OK now. Who cares what some judge says. Who cares about what the subject says. Some consideration should be given to BLP on the margins. If the sources are fairly close and the name is a pejorative (Fatty Arbuckle say) that the subject doesn't like, OK. Otherwise, usually no. (Deadnaming is an exception, that's special issue and can be treated differently.) Herostratus (talk) 14:12, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support Common name is inconsistent and arbitrary and can easily be trumped by other policy such as name changes. Showiecz (talk) 14:17, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Agree with User:Showiecz that common name is inconsistent and arbitrary - however, I think it should be "trumpable" by any sensible rationale and it's hard to see how the proposed change is going to help. Deb (talk) 16:04, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose WP:NAMECHANGES is already a part of the WP:COMMONMANE policy, if reliable sources take a person's change of name seriously, then we will follow. If they don't, then these sources are accountable (via their editorial policies) to the subject directly. We shouldn't be trying to second-guess how reliable sources respond to every personal preference that can be expressed. Iffy★Chat -- 17:34, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • @CookieMonster755: what is your brief and neutral statement? At over 2,100 bytes, the statement above (from the {{rfc}} tag to the next timestamp) is too long for Legobot (talk · contribs) to handle, and so it is not being shown correctly at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines. The RfC may also not be publicised through WP:FRS until a shorter statement is provided. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:44, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
    @CookieMonster755: Are you going to fix this, or am I going to pull the whole RfC? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:11, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
    @CookieMonster755: I've pulled the RfC tag, because it's blocking other, correctly formed, RfCs from being listed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:38, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I think WP:NAMECHANGES is adequate as written, but I do wonder if in practice it is followed enough. -- Calidum 21:11, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. If it ain't broke... -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:29, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose There are times where this is appropriate, and times when it is not. It's best to not be prescriptive and allow sourcing to figure out which way we should take it (eg the media still widely calling Kayne West "Kayne West", a strong sign we should not be moving it just because he got a court name change). --Masem (t) 13:34, 3 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Support. I think it's somewhat ridiculous that we can't make case by case exceptions at the very least. Ye has been outspoken about West being a slave name for him (noted in the leaked songs Last Name [literally an entire song about it] and Chakras [Kanye gave up the West / Kanye to Yeezy / Maybe just Ye / Fuck a slave name] and him saying "West is my slave name" at a 2013 NYC listening party for his album) and I think that if transgender people are able to change their names to better reflect themselves and make themselves more comfortable, those who are publicly noted about their new legal name being spiritually important to them should be accommodated. GREENPROCYON (talk) 18:07, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The guideline is just fine as it is. TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 12:40, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose I think case by case basis is how it should be done. in my opinion, Kanye West is still wp:commonname, but Mackenzie Scott is was a WP:SIGCOV topic, and should have been changed. Signed, I Am Chaos (talk) 06:43, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose @User:CookieMonster755 most of the guidence you list above is from the style guideline, not the WP:article title policy and its subsiduary naming conventions (guide lines). The policy is quite clear "follow the sources Luke". In November 2011 wording was agreed to cover this issue, by giving more weight to the name used in reliable sources published after a name change, and it has been in the AT policy since then in one form or another. It is consistent with WP:COMMONNAME and in practice give useful guidence in this area. The odd exception are best dealt with case by case. — PBS (talk) 18:54, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
  • It can certainly be taken into account just like what companies prefer to be called but what independent sources do should probably still be most important especially given that they are quite likely to use the subject's preferred name if the subject makes that clear. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:04, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment, clearly there is no consensus for change here and all I have to add is to point out the broader principle which transcends all decision-making on WP: we follow the lead of reliable sources wherever possible, rather than decide based on our own criteria, and how to title articles about notable people certainly falls under that umbrella (unless there is a disambiguation issue in which case we still rely as much as possible on reliable sources in deciding what the disambiguator should be). --В²C ☎ 16:55, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Chinese characters in title

I came across Qui Con Me (Ni De Se Cai 你的色彩), it's gotta be wrong, right? Abductive (reasoning) 03:39, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I moved it to Qui Con Me. - Station1 (talk) 04:02, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Archive page unreadable because of unclosed strikethrough code.

This edit has deleted a closing strikethrough code. The edit has been archived to Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 49. The consequence is to render a large part of the archive page essentially unreadable. I am replacing the code at the archive page and leaving this edit id as a comment for explanation. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:08, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

this edit refers. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:10, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

redirect WP:CONSISTENT

I am just taking part in a discussion where WP:CONSISTENT was brought forward as an argument and as I clicked on it I was surprised that to were I was led to, WP:CONSISTENT was not mentioned like WP:CRITERIA as a shortcut how to get to the section. Wouldn't it be helpful if WP:CONSISTENT and WP:CRITERIA be both mentioned as redirects in the section they lead to as redirects? At least for me it was confusing that WP:CONSISTENT wasn't mentioned, as I thought the editor misspelled. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 10:55, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I have added it as there was no opposition. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 23:43, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Iran/Persia naming question

Does anyone know of a consensus convention around these terms? There has been a lot of moving recently, e.g. at WP:CFR/S. Dicklyon (talk) 01:38, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I think that would require knowing what the specific question is. There are many Iran/Persia things at that link. Of course, for things related to a current country, it is clear cut. North8000 (talk) 01:45, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
I questioned a speedy and got this: User talk:Dicklyon#Persians. More about ancient times than the current country. Comments? Dicklyon (talk) 05:50, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
Iranian is a modern nationality. Persian is an ethnicity. And Persians take being Persian very seriously and with a lot of pride. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:04, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
And apparently Iranians do, too. Dicklyon (talk) 06:16, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
User:Rathfelder is proposing to rename historical topic categorisations to the modern nation name. Iran derives from Aryan, the land of the Aryans. Aryan is a broader group than Persian, and seems to be more of a cultural grouping than primarily ethnicity. I would defer to the native language naming conventions. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:20, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
My concern is about consistency. I know nothing about the history of Iran, but it doesnt make sense to have Category:13th-century Persian poets as a subcategory of Category:13th-century Iranian people with no explanation. I have been following the advice of User:HistoryofIran.Rathfelder (talk) 10:08, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
User:Rathfelder, categories should follow parent articles. The parent article would appear to be Lists of Persian poets. If titles need changing, you should WP:RM the parent articles first. That way, you’ll attract interested editors. 13th-century Iranian people seems anachronistic to me. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:28, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
That seems to be based on language. But even that is in Category:Lists of Iranian people by occupation. We need to try to seperate language from location.Rathfelder (talk) 10:32, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
Iranian is not a modern nationality. The name has been in usage politically at least since 224. Persians are part of the larger Iranian ethnic group, which includes various other groups. Modern WP:RS routinely uses 'Iran(ian)' to refer to pre-1925 Iran as well, so there's nothing anachronistic at all. --HistoryofIran (talk) 11:57, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
OK, but still, the category renames should follow articles. Fix the article titles first. Is Persian poets wrong, or is that different because poets are groups by language not nationality? Consistency and other titling issues should be fixed first in articles, where more editors are involved. SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:42, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Bottom line, such category moves are not suitable candidates for WP:CFR/S. Establish consensus via RM discussions first, then cats can easily follow their main articles. Dicklyon (talk) 17:16, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

There are several relevant articles in play here. The question may well be which do we regard as the best anchors for the categorisation. Category:Persian people is not a nationality category. Category:Iranian people is. Which should be the parent of Category:Iranian people by century and occupation? if it is then the subcategories should follow - speedily. That is not to say there might not be some language related Persian subcategories. Rathfelder (talk) 17:49, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
Yes, all good questions. But this is not the place to have that discussion. I just wanted to know whether it had been done already, as the speedy requests implied. Dicklyon (talk) 23:42, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion: add search box to the "See also" section

It could look something like this:

It would allow searching for text in any pages starting with prefix "Wikipedia:Naming conventions". —⁠andrybak (talk) 22:25, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

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