Talk:William and Helen Ziegler House

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To comma or not to comma[edit]

I am aware that a fairly recent RfC established that Wikistyle does not use a comma before "Jr." or "Sr.", and for that reason (I presume) this article was moved to a title without the comma. However, the fact that the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission uses the comma in their designation report, means that the comma is part of the official name of this landmarked property, which thus overrides Wikistyle. If the title of the article had not been the official name, but some common name (for instance "Ziegler, Jr. House"), then moving it to remove the comma would be justified, as Wikistyle should prevail in that circumstance, however, there is no common name for this subject, and since the title of the article is the official name, the orthography of the official title should be preserved. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:34, 5 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 9 August 2017[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved, redirect created - the arguments for the move, notwithstanding the comma, are not policy-based and attempt to right great wrongs. There is a case however for a technical move re the comma but consensus is unclear on that issue. This RM attempted to change two things: the inclusion of different names and the exclusion of a comma. If the nominator wishes to open a new RM for the comma-based argument, I have no objection. I have however created a redirect from the suggested new title to the current title as it is a plausible search term. DrStrauss talk 14:04, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]


William and Helen Martin Murphy Ziegler, Jr. House → William and Helen Ziegler Jr. House – Names of houses need not ape the style of their official nomination or registration documents (which also uses all caps on most of the name parts in this case). This house seems to be commonly named without the extra names in there, and the comma usage varies from no commas (in the New York Times), to two commas (in the Guide to NYC Landmarks, which also has the one-comma version in the index, just like the AIA Guide to New York City). The funky unbalanced comma in the official doc is exactly the kind of common grammatical error that led all grammar and style guides to propose dropping the unnecessary comma in the first place, and if we start to copy such nonsense we're doomed to never get to grammatically sensible titles. Better to just use wikipedia style, and good grammar, and commonname, and get it right. Dicklyon (talk) 04:56, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment – actually, it should be the William Ziegler Jr and Helen Ziegler House. Or something that doesn't slight the women so much. But are we liberal enough to fix this, or do we need to be conservative about such things? Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – "Helen Martin Murphy" is out-and-out sexism. I can't imagine outside sources all persist with that kind of public insult to half the population. So I think I'm finding myself agreeing with Dicklyon's commented suggestion. The dot in the "Jr" makes it go bumpety-bump, which is why so many outside sources have dispensed with that road-hump. Removing it accords with our house style. Tony (talk) 06:41, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose move - It's not our place to correct the myriad problems of the world. The title it is at is the title given to it by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission per their designation report, we have no right to override their judgment and unilaterally declare "No, this is the proper name of the house." We're an encyclopedia, not a social action program. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:46, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is a common habit for usage to shorten long frequently-used names. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:53, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Removing a comma isn't "shortening", it's forcing Wikistyle onto an official name. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:36, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • BMK: it's all over google in shortened form. This is not an illustration of your theory about correcting myriad problems of the world. The world has got there before us. Tony (talk) 07:41, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Google has a lot of stuff on it, but only one institution has the authority to provide the official name of a New York City landmark, and that's the NYCLPC.
    Let ne be clear, if we have an article on Arthur Ziegler, Jr. I would have absolutley no problem with it being titled "Arthur Ziegler Jr" in order to conform to Wikistyle, but this is different, it's the official name of a landmarked property as made by the landmarking authority. We must honor that. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:36, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Let's also be clear that all other landmarks with "Jr. House" and "Sr. House" omit the comma. This is the first-ever objection to using our style in such titles. Similarly, we don't copy the all-caps from the official docs, and we set the dashes as en dashes, not hyphens. No need for a singular exception at this point. Dicklyon (talk) 15:22, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Let's be clear as well that I am not aware of those, and have no idea what their official names are as created by the landmarking authority. If their official names have no comma, that's fine, but if they do, they should be changed to follow the official name. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:02, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Akin to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington D.C., which is named after a real person, as well as discussion about a few ships and other odds and ends. I sympathize with Beyond My Ken, and would like to see Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia, follow official and real names of things and people. Doing less seems to be doing a disservice to historical correctness. But as of now the decisions here have been in favor of changing official names of real people by removing the comma, and it seems an across the board enforced guideline. I commented an oppose once on the King Memorial when someone tried to change it back to the correct comma form, using as my reasoning that King's name on Wikipedia has been altered and so the page name reflects our policy of consistency within a page. This case is similar, as the male half of this Ziegler marriage has his name listed in the infobox without the comma. The page without a comma could be read by the uninformed as referring to five people (including a mysterious son or pet named "Junior") as it now reflects the outdated way of referring to a wife, and so wives name are destined to be changed here as well. I'd personally keep it with the comma, but that's more WP:ILIKEIT than following the decisions already made. Unless we want to open up the comma wars again on the real-person front - although the ammunition is wet and the opposing forces are now gathered on the high hill - this page is destined to go comma free as well. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:29, 11 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I have no interest, personally, in reopening the "comma wars", one of the lowlights of Wikistyle controversy, but I see no particular problem with maintaining the current status quo regarding people's names, but also maintaining officially established names for things related to them. After all, the comma in names is merely a matter of social convention, not a matter of officially-established policy of any kind, and we are well within our bounds to establish our own conventions to deal with them. When it comes to related names which are actually officially established by a valid constituting authority, that's quite different. Beyond My Ken (talk) 14:46, 11 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Just on the basis of logic, you could drop the cap from Wikistyle, and the hyphen from officially-established. Our style guide accords with this advice. We have indeed established "our own conventions" to deal with the comma: we remove it. Tony (talk) 00:28, 12 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
There is, of course, little if any logic involved in this subject, only conventions (which include guidelines - and I'm sure it's not necessary to remind you that the dropping of the comma is a non-mandatory guideline, and not a policy). My point, in case you missed it, is that Wikistyle should not override official names. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:04, 12 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Many ordinary folk might wonder about just what you've decided "official" means. Tony (talk) 03:10, 12 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In this instance, when the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designates a property as being a landmark, it is the institution which creates the official name of the designated property. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:36, 12 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Followup discussion[edit]

Well, something needs to be done with this. The present name is reader-confusing. There is/was no such person as "Helen Martin Murphy Ziegler Jr." (with or without a comma). WP doesn't care what the "official" name is on some piece of state paperwork, per WP:OFFICIALNAME. The comma gets dropped regardless, per MOS:JR, but what the title should be otherwise is primarily a matter of what the majority of independent reliable sources are doing. I really doubt it's "William and Helen Martin Murphy Ziegler, Jr. House".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:59, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it's a mouthful, but your argument that "There is/was no such person as "Helen Martin Murphy Ziegler Jr." (with or without a comma)" is rather silly. When names are written library style, "Carl Sagan" becomes "Sagan, Carl", and there is/was never a person by the name "Sagan, Carl." What you're looking at is the concatenation of two names together by a bureaucratic entity using an officially approved style guide to wind up with a camel where we are used to seeing horses. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:25, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Not an analogous comparison, so I'm not sure why you'd make it. At any rate the "official" argument, even aside from WP:OFFICIALNAME meaning it has no weight here, doesn't really work in this kind of context anyway. By very definition, everything designated a historical place or building is already named and well-known. The designation as historical doesn't name it or set a name for it, it just officially annotates something as "historical" according to a particular body. E.g., if Prince's Paisley Park were designated historic by the US National Registry, but they called it the Prince Mansion in their designation, its name would remain Paisley Park, and we'd still call it that (unless the majority of RS started actually calling it the Prince Mansion). It's not the "historic" designation paperwork that determines what a historic place's name is. The designated place and the actual place do not always have a 1:1 correspondence, either. E.g. the Chaco Canyon National Monument was smaller than the totality of Chaco Canyon as a geographical feature, but larger than the Chaco Canyon archaeological site (which is what the national monument designation was about). The modern Chaco Culture National Historical Park is larger still, but also smaller than the entire canyon (for which is it no longer directly named, referring instead to the ethno-archaeological label Chaco or Chacoan culture).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:23, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
As for reliable sources (all punctuation and typography as published):
  • "WILLIAM and HELEN MARTIN MURPHY ZIEGLER, Jr. HOUSE – NYCLPC designation Report
  • "The Levins Institute (SUNY) formerly William and Helen Ziegler, Jr., House" – White, Norval; Willensky, Elliot; Leadon, Fran (2010). AIA Guide to New York City (5th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 321. ISBN 978-0-19538-386-7.
  • "William and Helen Ziegler, Jr., House" – New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission; Dolkart, Andrew S.; Postal, Matthew A. (2009). Postal, Matthew A. (ed.). Guide to New York City Landmarks (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. p. 121. ISBN 978-0-470-28963-1.
  • "NEIL D. LEVIN GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND COMMERCE/SUNY, FORMERLY WILLIAM AND HELEN MARTIN MURPHY ZIEGLER JR. HOUSE" – Diamonstein-Spielvogel, Barbaralee (2011). The Landmarks of New York (5th ed.). Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. p. 577. ISBN 978-1-4384-3769-9.
There's a mixed bag for you. We could go with "Levin Institute Building" and avoid the comma and weird name problem altogether, at least in the title. (It's "Levin", incidentally, not "Levins" as in AIA. See here.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:25, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That could work, though it would be Levin Institute building, a descriptive title; the "building" in that isn't part of a proper name. We could also go with concision, and use a shorted form of the long name; this would seem to be sufficient disambiguation: William and Helen Ziegler House (the "House" is part of the proper name as given in various forms). It's common for us to compress long-winded names to something more manageable, especially if it can be found in sources. Thus California not The State of California (and Levin Institute, for that matter). We apparently should include Helen if we're going with a Ziegler name, and even if there were a reason not to, we'd be stuck with a problem if we didn't, as even "William Ziegler House (New York City)" would be ambiguous, since there's another one, putting us back into "Jr." territory and conflicts about its orthography. (That said, I note, perhaps too pointedly, that the independent sources tend to reject the senseless government house style of not using a comma after a ", Jr." construction.)

According to the Levin Institute itself, the present name of this building is the SUNY Global Center [1], another viable article title for us. This is probably a place where WP:COMMONNAME is going to fail us (and it is not one of the actual WP:CRITERIA; the most common name is simply the default to test for compliance with them all). This place has had multiple names for different reasons and contexts, and the current one has been a bit of a moving target, as have a lot of things that postdate the 9/11 attacks.

I'm almost tempted to suggest a merge, since Levin Institute is a potential deletion target, having no claim of notability and no independent sources, and has remained a micro-stub for some time (I worked it over a little to resolve the written-like-an-obit problem). But, these really do seem like distinct topics. The site was a notable building before being used for the institute.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:23, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

More sources:

  • "William and Helen Ziegler House" – [2]
  • "1927 Ziegler Mansion" – [3]
  • "Residence of William Ziegler, Jr." [4]

In general, the "Jr." modifying a man's name seems nonsensical after his wife's name, but you can see why they do it, there being no other good place to put such a suffix. I'd prefer some other title, but if people don't want to do that, let's at least fix the comma, which is what the previous RM started out to be before I got distracted by what a silly title it is anyway. No other historical property article (that I can find) includes such a comma. Dicklyon (talk) 03:44, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing: I got my brand new Chicago Manual of Style today, 17th edition. They're unequivocal about getting rid of that comma (in some previous edition, I don't recall which, they suggested following the desires of the subject; they don't do that any more). Dicklyon (talk) 03:49, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Of your three sources, the first is good, of course, the second is a blog, albeit a blog with a reputation for accuracy, and the thirs is a blog I've never heard of before. Still, of the options they offer, I like "William and Helen Ziegler House" the best as straightforward and uncomplicated. While leaving out the "Jr." would be a problem if we were trying to disambiguate between William Ziegler and his son, unless WZ Sr.'s wife's name was "Helen" as well, "William and Helen Ziegler House" would seem to be sufficient. I think that's the same suggestion SMcCandlish made above, so perhaps if we can all three agree on this, we could put this to rest? Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:11, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
To note: The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage calls for no comma as well. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:11, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon: See my request below, and my comment two above this. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:16, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"William and Helen Ziegler House" works for me. It also seems unlikely to me that many readers are ever actually going to look for the string "William and Helen Martin Murphy Ziegler, Jr. House", in any of the various ways to punctuate that; it's sufficient that they exist as redirects.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:00, 26 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 24 August 2017[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Withdrawn by proposer in light of consensus for a move to William and Helen Ziegler House instead. Dicklyon (talk) 14:25, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]


William and Helen Martin Murphy Ziegler, Jr. House → William and Helen Martin Murphy Ziegler Jr. House – Without prejudice against the other ideas being discussed, and following the suggestion in the close of the previous RM, let's just fix the comma styling for now. Every other historic house name has been fixed, without objection, to conform with the recommendations of WP:JR, and this one is a strange-looking outlier. See discussion in above sections. Dicklyon (talk) 03:59, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Can we hold off on this, since I think we may have a consensus above? I think it's best to solve the problem so there's no reference to the comma disagreement at all. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:13, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OK, if you mean William and Helen Ziegler House, and nobody objects soon, let's just revert this RM and move it. Dicklyon (talk) 04:32, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly what I mean, and I agree with your suggested action. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:44, 24 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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