Talk:Swiss

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Redirect proposal[edit]

Disambiguation pages are for a list of article that might share the same name, not a listing of related articles. So Swiss should redirect to Switzerland, and this dab should be moved to Swiss (disambiguation).

My thoughts on this is the related to section should be entirely removed and move the relevant DAB options to be with the rest of the article, I Support Swiss being redirected to Switzerland as this article has all the "related to" topics necessary at the bottom Thaagenson 15:54, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Done.--Commander Keane 15:42, 18 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Repeated same process-Gwguffey (talk) 19:51, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Removals and reasons[edit]

Red-links[edit]

Please add these back when articles are present or anticipated:

No-links[edit]

  • Swiss Pairs or Teams events in the card game bridge (top two play each other, etc.)

External-only links[edit]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Not moved. Ruslik_Zero 11:19, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Swiss (disambiguation) → Swiss — Nobody searching for "Swiss" would want to be redirected to Switzerland. Somebody searching for "Swiss" would almost certainly be looking for Swiss people or a non-existant Swiss language. Swiss should be a disambiguation page. McLerristarr / Mclay1 04:50, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support per nom. English, French, German, Spanish and Italian are all dab pages. PC78 (talk) 11:57, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. There is an article Germans about the German people and Italians and Spaniards are redirects to Italian people and Spanish people, so a redirect to Swiss people could be considered. Cjc13 (talk) 13:42, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. English, French, German, Spanish and Italian are international languages and are obviously dab pages. That's not the case for Swiss and other such as Mexican, Belgian and Argentinian. mgeo talk 20:14, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I think there are enough important meanings of "Swiss" for which the country is not the immediate article that a disambiguation page is appropriate. Note also that the pages you mention above (English, French, German, Spanish and Italian) are all themselves disambiguation pages, with links to both the language and the people.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Unlike the examples given, there is no Swiss language. Cjc13 (talk) 12:01, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • [Oppose see below]. In 2008 another editor wrote at Talk:Swiss, "While working on disambiging the links to this page, there were only a tiny fraction of the 1000+ links to the word 'Swiss' that were not intended for 'Switzerland'...". There are still over 1500 links to Swiss and a move would point them all to a dab page unless they are cleaned up. If only a tiny fraction are not meant to point to Switzerland, it's an indication most editors think that's where "Swiss" will or should point. Anyone not expecting Switzerland can get to Swiss (disambiguation) with one click on the hatnote (but it might be a good idea to add Swiss people to that redirect hatnote). Station1 (talk) 21:14, 9 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    The fact that numbers of links are incorrectly made should not be a deciding factor in determining moves, it should be done on the basis of the policies. There are plenty of ways to correct such things speedily, and indeed I may do so anyway irrespective of the move outcome. Your point about people's intentions is a valid one, however; see below for a further question on this. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 06:28, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question - it looks from a cursory glance that most of the "Swiss" links Station1 mentions above are about people. To take a random example, Thomas Erastus (September 7, 1524 – December 31, 1583) was a Swiss physician and theologian best known for a posthumously published work in which he argued that the sins of Christians should be punished by the state, and not by the church withholding the sacraments." The question is, should that "Swiss" link point to Swiss people or to Switzerland? Interestingly, the other "Swiss" link in this article, that of the infobox, points to the disambiguated Swiss (people), which is a redirect to Swiss people.  — Amakuru (talk) 06:25, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    First, I completely agree that incorrect incoming links should not be a factor in determining page moves. The question is whether those links, and how many of them, are correct. It's a legitimate question whether a wikilinked "Swiss" should point to Switzerland or to Swiss people when referring to a person, and I'm not sure of the answer. (It is interesting to note, however, that Swiss people says "Swiss are not usually considered to form a single ethnic group".) And I admit that I was taking the word of the editor who said only a tiny fraction of links were not intended for Switzerland, so I don't know if he thought "Swiss" in relation to people should point to Switzerland, or if things have changed since early 2008. In any event, looking at the first dozen non-list articles under What Links Here for Swiss, I see several where "Swiss" does refer to people, but several others where it doesn't (Abortion, Guinea, Homeopathy, Stop motion, Transport in Switzerland). So while it is always reasonable for Swiss to redirect to Switzerland, even for people, it is not always reasonable for Swiss to redirect to Swiss people. If all 1500+ current links were cleaned up I would be far less opposed to a move, but all links should point to some article, not to a dab page. Station1 (talk) 08:25, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, well I will make the changes to the multiple articles in the next few days and then we can see where we're at.
Unless anyone objects, I will apply the following rules:
  • Links to "Swiss" which relate to people (such as Thomas Erastus) will be piped to [[Swiss people|Swiss]].
  • Other national links (such as those in the articles which Station1 mentions) will be piped to [[Switzerland|Swiss]].
  • Any other miscellaneous ones, for example "he flew to Geneva with Swiss airlines" will be dealt with on a case by case basis.
Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 11:30, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the links can just be deleted. It isn't necessary to link "Swiss" every time it's used. Most people would be aware what Swiss means. McLerristarr / Mclay1 12:19, 12 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I caution against doing this. I think the Swiss people article is an unlikely desired destination from almost any context, even when clicking on "Swiss" when it refers to a person. The reader doing that is probably going to be less surprised to find himself at the article on the country than at the article on the people. No offense to the editors of it, but there just isn't much interest in that article. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:02, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Sorry this is so long, but I went back and forth as I worked through this.

    The fundamental issue here is whether the adjective reference to the country is the primary topic for "Swiss". WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is defined as the topic which is "much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined – to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that term in the Search box".

    Looking at the dab page, the only real competition is Swiss people, everything else is fairly obscure, or someone is unlikely to enter "Swiss" to look for it (like for "Swiss franc"). Now, how likely is someone to be looking for the people article when entering "Swiss"? No way to know for sure, but we can get an idea of how likely it is overall by looking at page view stats. 5,881 last month for Swiss people, while, get this, Switzerland got 644,777, that's more by over two orders of magnitude. Meanwhile, Swiss got 12,682 views. What that indicates is that even if most people are getting to Swiss people via entering "Swiss" in the Search box, that's still not accounting for very many of the people that enter "Swiss". Given that the Swiss people article has such low traffic, and assuming most people looking for the Swiss franc (which got over 40,000 views) are not just entering "Swiss", and no other article on the dab page comes close to matching the popularity of Switzerland, I have to say that the adjective reference to the country appears to be much more likely to be the primary topic for "Swiss" than not.

    So, it seems to me that our readers will continue to be best served if the redirect from Swiss to Switzerland is retained, and the dab page remains at Swiss (disambiguation). --Born2cycle (talk) 06:43, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    You have failed to take into account Swiss International Air Lines, which garnered 15,639 views during September. Any of those could have come through the "Swiss" link.
    Also, your argument that Switzerland has 644,777 viewings is somewhat irrelevant - of course it gets a lot because it is a country article, but the fact remains that someone wishing to know about Switzerland is highly unlikely to type "Swiss" into the box. I just don't see it.  — Amakuru (talk) 07:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree. Nobody would type in "Swiss" if they were looking for Switzerland. The hits a page gets are not just from people searching, they are also from following links. McLerristarr / Mclay1 11:05, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Note that according to Wikipedia:Article titles, adjective and verb forms can redirect to articles titled with the corresponding noun. mgeo talk 14:54, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • And yet they would type in "Swiss" when looking for Swiss International Air Lines? Maybe "Swiss Air", but just "Swiss"? Really? It's clear that few people ever just type in "Swiss" (given the low page view count). I didn't mean to imply that the high number of views of the country was significant in and of itself in terms of showing how often people try to get there searching for "Swiss"; my point is that they're all unlikely destinations for people searching for "Swiss", but given the country's much higher view counts, even if the correlation between page view counts and "likelihood of being looked for with 'Swiss'" is significantly lower (but more than zero, which surely it is) than for other entries (for which the correlation might be higher but almost certainly not even close to over 10 times higher, like the view count is for the country relative to the others) on the dab page, the country is still going to be primary for "Swiss".

      Further, I have my reservations about changing all the links from Swiss to Swiss people in the context of references to people. If, for example, an article refers to a "Swiss banker", and the reader decides to click on "Swiss", is he more likely looking for the country or the people article? Again, considering that we have no way knowing and adding to that the much, much higher page view counts for the country, I think we have to give country the nod. There is just not that much interest in the people article. --Born2cycle (talk) 15:10, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

      Indeed, it is a common issue when trying to choose the correct disambiguation target "John Smith is a Swiss banker". The truth is actually, I think, that it should not be linked at all: WP:LINK#What generally should not be linked commands us to:

      Unless they are particularly relevant to the topic of the article, avoid linking terms whose meaning can be understood by most readers of the English Wikipedia, including plain English words, the names of major geographic features and locations, religions, languages, common professions, common units of measurement,[3] and dates

      No doubt the word "Swiss" falls into this category - everyone knows what it means, and any article link adds little to the reader's understanding of John Smith, nor is it particuarly likely to pique their curiosity for further reading. I'll just have to reserve judgement on whether people type "Swiss" for Swiss Air. It is the top Google hit for "Swiss" though, for what that's worth (not much). Anyway.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:15, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that what Swiss should link to is controversial, that is why I requested the move making Swiss the disambiguation page. It seems the most neutral option. McLerristarr / Mclay1 01:40, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - unlikely that someone typing in or linking to "Swiss" rather than "Switzerland" is aiming for the article on Switzerland - more likely to be Swiss people (in fact, I would have expected Swiss to redirect straight there, since there is no major alternative meaning like a Swiss language).--Kotniski (talk) 06:01, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Requested move 12 May 2020[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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Cleanup required. (closed by non-admin page mover) feminist | wear a mask, protect everyone 15:10, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Swiss (disambiguation) → Swiss – Looking at the history of the redirect Swiss, you can see its target has oscillated between Switzerland, Swiss people and Swiss International Airlines, and there have been several suggestions (like in the 2010 RM above) for moving the dab page to the primary title. Disambiguating should be the obvious choice when people can't agree on the target of a redirect. And as far as I can see there's no primary topic for the term – it's unlikely that readers looking for the country will search for "Swiss" rather than "Switzerland", and the readers who do search for "Swiss" are likely to be looking for things that are Swiss, like the people or the airline. – Uanfala (talk) 12:39, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Pings to editors who have debated the topic or edited the redirect in the last ten years: Mclay1, PC78, Cjc13, MadGeographer, Jafeluv, Amakuru, Station1, Born2cycle, Kotniski, JJMC89, MilanKovacevic, SrpskiAnonimac, Tomchen1989, LoDeBo, JaGa, Champion, Anthony Appleyard, Wbm1058. Noting that the redirect has over 1,200 incoming links from articles. – Uanfala (talk) 12:43, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. It seems unlikely that someone typing "Swiss" would be looking for the country Switzerland. And although it maybe appropriate for wikilinks to point there if someone writes "Roger Federer is a [[Swiss]] tennis player" or something, there will also be other cases where something else is intended and it will be useful for the disambiguation WikiProject to handle those cases.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:02, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I hear "1,200 incoming links" and I think what a pain-in-the-butt make-work task it would be to try to "disambiguate" them. I think I have a good idea where a lot of these links are coming from – biographies – and randomly checking one, Jacques Piccard, I see in the infobox: Nationality: Swiss. Is that a WP:OVERLINK? I mean, who the hell doesn't know that "Swiss" means Switzerland? Is the reader who came to the page to learn about the oceanographer more likely to want to know more about the country, or its people, when they decide to go off on a tangent and click that link to a topic that's only extremely remotely relevant to the oceanographer. Hell if I know; hell if I care. Hmm, "American". Well, I guess it can be done. I'm inclined to leave well enough alone, as nothing is broken here. But, if this moves, then that breaks things and I hope that someone else is willing to step up and make the necessary fixes. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:19, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - When we refer to demonyms, they are normally disambiguation pages because they can refer to something about the country or the country's people. For example, American. I also suggest that Canadian (disambiguation) be moved to Canadian which is a redirect to Canadians. Interstellarity (talk) 13:25, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 13:45, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support for the same reason as South African, given the the language isn't primary for English presumably mainly because of the people I don't think the country its self is here. The cheese though a PTM and the more obscure topics like the US places seem to also support the idea that its safest to disambiguate. There is a Languages of Switzerland article though. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:53, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose unless and until all 1200+ incoming wikilinks are cleaned up first. Someone was going to do that 10 years ago, but I don't know how much was accomplished since then. It's not fair to push off that unnecessary task to others and not right to make readers who click on wikilinks wind up on the dab page in the meantime. As it is, I suspect the large majority of links do intend Switzerland, and even those that would better point to Swiss people are not actually "wrong" to point to Switzerland. Other than the airline, there really are no other significant targets for Swiss. Switzerland gets over 12,000 hits/day while the redirect gets about 70 hits/day and despite the hatnote on Switzerland the dab page gets only about 15 hits/day, indicating no significant problem with the current setup.[1] "Swiss people" could be added directly to the hatnote if desired. (I should also point out that Swiss has consistently redirected to Switzerland since 2004, with the exception of only a few months total over that period; it has not been unstable.) Station1 (talk) 19:35, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @Station1: I would be willing to clean up those links if this RM passes. Interstellarity (talk) 20:20, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    OK. If you're agreeing to clean up all the links either before or within a couple of days after a move, my position changes to neutral. If there are no incoming wikilinks, it will be relatively unimportant if the redirect becomes a dab page. Station1 (talk) 20:30, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @Station1: I have requested AutoWikiBrowser rights to help me with this task. It might be a while before I do this depending on when my request is granted or not granted. Interstellarity (talk) 20:55, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also going through the links, and in several places using AWB you have actually changed the displayed text from "Swiss" to "Switzerland" while retaining the link to Swiss, i.e. replaced with [[Swiss|Switzerland]] instead of [[Switzerland|Swiss]]. I've reversed the pipe or, more often, replaced with [[Swiss people|Swiss]] which perhaps you had intended. 94.21.252.238 (talk) 20:35, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • The comment that the country has been the stable target since 2004 prompted me to re-examine the history of the redirect. I really can't say it's been stable – the target has been changed 24 times since 2002, but yeah, the country has been the target for most of this time: 5475 days vs. 827 days as a dab page vs. 76 days pointing to the airline vs. 1 day targeting the people (with 155 days in 2016 where the history is not visible).
History of the page Swiss
Date of edit Target Days spent
12-May-2020 Swiss people 0
29-Apr-2017 Switzerland 1109
1-Mar-2017 Switzerland 59
27-Sep-2016 History not visible 155
3-Feb-2016 Switzerland 237
2-Feb-2016 Airline 1
10-Jan-2016 Switzerland 23
2-Jan-2016 Airline 8
23-Nov-2015 Switzerland 40
23-Nov-2015 Airline 0
22-Jun-2015 Switzerland 154
11-Nov-2013 Switzerland 588
5-Sep-2013 Airline 67
5-Sep-2013 Airline 0
5-Sep-2013 Airline 0
2-Aug-2010 Switzerland 1130
2-Aug-2010 Swiss people 0
31-Mar-2009 Switzerland 489
30-Mar-2009 Dab page 1
30-Mar-2009 Dab page 0
5-Jan-2008 Switzerland 450
5-Jan-2008 Dab page 0
5-Jan-2008 Dab page 0
5-Jan-2008 Dab page 0
4-Jan-2008 Dab page 1
4-Jan-2008 Dab page 0
26-Dec-2007 Dab page 9
20-Dec-2007 Dab page 6
4-Dec-2007 Dab page 16
2-Dec-2007 Dab page 2
2-Dec-2007 Switzerland 0
1-Dec-2007 Dab page 1
1-Dec-2007 Dab page 0
1-Dec-2007 Dab page 0
18-Nov-2005 Switzerland 743
22-Sep-2005 Dab page 57
18-Feb-2005 Dab page 216
8-Jun-2004 Switzerland 255
31-May-2004 Switzerland 8
31-May-2004 Switzerland 0
27-Dec-2003 Dab page 156
14-Dec-2003 Dab page 13
14-Dec-2003 Dab page 0
14-Jun-2003 Dab page 183
10-Apr-2003 Dab page 65
30-Dec-2002 Dab page 101
23-Jun-2002 Switzerland 190

|}

As for the pageviews – 15 a day for the dab page vs. 70 for the redirect Swiss – that would indicate a primary topic if there weren't any incoming links. But there are quite a few of them, so it's not at all clear what proportion of traffic comes from these links. We can't know, but my experience so far has been that if the dab page receives more than 1/10th of the traffic, then RMs arguing for the absence of a primary topic have usually been successful. – Uanfala (talk) 21:09, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with your comment that it's unlikely anyone searching for Switzerland would search for Swiss, and since there are 1200+ incoming links and only 70 hits per day, I think it's likely that most of those hits are coming from links. That's why, if those links are cleaned up, I think those 70 hits will drop very significantly, and it will then be relatively unimportant whether Swiss is a redirect or a dab page. I think some editors will still link to Swiss expecting it to be a redirect, but those can be corrected fairly easily as they occur. Station1 (talk) 22:37, 12 May 2020 (UTC)}}[reply]
  • Leaning support, in keeping with our common treatment of national adjectives. I would also be willing to assist with link cleanup. BD2412 T 21:26, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note: I fixed about 250 links that clearly should have been pointing to Swiss people, so it's under 950 now. BD2412 T 03:00, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Since some should be [[Switzerland|Swiss]] and others should be [[Swiss people|Swiss]], it seems it would be better to change Swiss to be a disambiguation page and then use tools (e.g. AWB, WPCleaner, Dab solver) to fix the links, instead of trying to fix the links and then make it a disambig page. GoingBatty (talk) 23:22, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The reasoning for is solid, and the sole counterargument against is "it's going to be a lot of work", which is not a valid reason not to do it. Paradoctor (talk) 00:25, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per my reasoning in the previous move request. M.Clay1 (talk) 07:38, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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.

Format[edit]

ZH8000, if you're wondering why people continue making that edit, the reason is that the "established" version simply followed the format for a dab page with a primary topic (see MOS:DABPRIMARY). If there's no primary topic, then the format is almost always changed to the standard, where there's no single entry singled out at the top. I don't believe there's much of a difference either way, but the format with each of the two entries - for the country and the people - on individual bulleted lines seems a bit clearer. – Uanfala (talk) 12:45, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@ZH8000: I agree with Uanfala. I would recommend changing it back. Interstellarity (talk) 15:09, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Uanfala: Well, I see. I thought that "adjectival form" is more generally valid and the linguistically correct term than just rewriting it. "Something of, from or relating to" is not exactly the same. But that's my academic attitude, I suppose. -- ZH8000 (talk) 17:53, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Besides, if we use "adjectival form" then "Swiss may also refer to: Swiss people" becomes obsolete. -- ZH8000 (talk) 17:55, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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