Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 51

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Disambiguation when unnecessary violates WP:CONCISE.

I'm considering inserting the following into the policy. Does anyone have any thoughts before I RfC it?

A concise article title is as brief as possible while still being comprehensive with regard to satisfying the other naming criteria (recognizability, naturalness, consistency and precision) ~~in as few characters as possible~~. Therefore, disambiguation, whether parenthetical or natural, should only be introduced when the subject of the article is not the primary topic for its name. Introducing disambiguation ~~when unnecessary violates WP:CONCISE~~ necessarily goes against our desire to use concise titles; therefore, disambiguation should only be added where there is no primary topic. For example, "Crazy in Love" is the name of a popular 2003 song by an artist called Beyoncé. ~~there was once a very popular song recorded by Beyoncé and called "Crazy in Love"~~. There are many things called "Crazy in Love", so the article was originally placed at Crazy in Love (Beyoncé song). A discussion took place and a consensus determined that the Beyoncé song held primary topic based on our primary topic criteria. As the song was decided to have primary topic for "Crazy in Love", keeping "(Beyoncé song)" in the title would be a violation of our naming criterion for conciseness. Therefore the article was moved to "Crazy in Love".^[1]

Italics indicate new text. Strikethroughs indicate text I took away after the discussion below. But you're probably smart enough to figure that last one out.

--Red Slash 20:21, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that this is a reasonable statement of the policy. bd2412 T 20:35, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
I disagree, per Bothell. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:51, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
- Interesting point, SarekOfVulcan. Is there a way of making it clearer that WP:USPLACE is unaffected by this? Dohn joe correctly notes that a huge part of the reason for USPLACE is that many people consider Bothell, Washington to actually be the common name, so this proposed addition changes nothing on that front. Red Slash 05:27, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
  - That is certainly not the only reason for USPLACE. Another is that "Bothell, Washington" is about 500000000x more informative and recognizable of a title than just "Bothell" which could be anything. Conciseness isn't the only criterion. AgnosticAphid talk 14:46, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
I think I agree with the parenthetical disambiguation part. The comma convention at WP:USPLACE does confuse things for natural disambiguation. (Of course, there are many who support USPLACE because it's not "disambiguation" at all, but part of the COMMONNAME.) I also think that any example should be much more, um, concise, as in simply: "For example, Crazy in Love, not Crazy in Love (Beyoncé song)." Dohn joe (talk) 20:57, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

It reads as "self perpetuating rule". On the first "should", the question "why" is begging. What is the benefit to the project or to readers?

The sentence renders disambiguation subservient to "WP:CONCISE". Why is disambinguation unimportant? Why is WP:CONCISE overridingly important?

"unnecessary" is a very weak word, it is very easy to allege something unnessary, very demanding to prove something necessary. Many good things are not "necessary".

It implies that a subject has a "primary topic for its name". This is not necessarily true. Further, "primary topic" is not necessarily synonymous with "WP:PRIMARYTOPIC", the later being poorly defined wikipedia jargon.

From a narrow perspective, jargon and abbreviation can often be seen to satisfy WP:CONCISE and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, but from a wider perspective this jargon and abbreviation is imprecise and poorly recognizable to non-modern, non-US readers. The sentence seems to render more precise titles, if looking like natural disambiguation, as undesirable. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:28, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe, I have taken your valid criticism into account and have rewritten the first paragraph. I'd appreciate your thoughts. Red Slash 05:27, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I disagree with the proposed addition, and agree that it begs the question. If there were a song titled “Crazy” which was the primary topic among Wikipedia articles, disambiguation would still be appropriate. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:08, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Do you think, then, that Irreplaceable should be disambiguated? If so, how? bd2412 T 05:15, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Absolutely. Irreplaceable (song) would do. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:20, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Good point, IP. As this addition would disallow that title, I think I have to oppose it more strongly. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 09:34, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
- No, that's absurd. Imagine how popular that song would have to be to usurp primary topic from insanity. I imagine a song where every morning and every night, roaming aliens would blare this song out across every corner of the galaxy, scaring children, terrifying women, and making grown men cry. It would take something like this to give a song named "Crazy" primary topic at Crazy, and I assure you that in that case, the article would be best left at Crazy. Red Slash 05:27, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
  You’re still operating under the assumption (the begged question) that disambiguation (and precision in general?) is only ever “necessary” where WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is not met. I do not hold to that assumption. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:07, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
  The point is that primarytopic for a common word or phrase when applied to some other topic is a very high bar to meet - but if it is met, then it is met, and the reasons underlying primarytopic mean that it is more helpful for our readers and editors - and thus better for the encyclopedia - for the base name to be at the primarytopic article. Dohn joe (talk) 15:04, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
  
  This is not really begging the question, because I am not asserting that my proposed addition is true. I am about to be asking for community support or rejection of this principle. I do not stand here and assert before you that these two paragraphs definitely have community support today. I think they do, but we'll see what the community thinks. Is there any ambiguity (lol) in this proposed addition as it stands? Do you suggest any refinements before the RfC? Red Slash 18:11, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
I also disagree with this addition. Among other things, the phrase "in as few characters as possible" illustrates the ongoing misunderstanding of the meaning of "concise". Omnedon (talk) 15:11, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Omnedon, I've rewritten the first sentence, using a dictionary to define "concise" [1] - what are your thoughts? Red Slash 18:11, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I also disagree... Omnedon is correct that conciseness does not equate to "in as few characters as possible". I will also add that precision is not limited to situations where there might be ambiguity. Our policy is to try to reach a balance between all of the five basic criteria... but exactly what that proper balance will be is a determination that has to be made on an article by article basis. No two subject/topics will have the same balance. Where the balance point is isn't something we can (or should) try to settle at the policy level. Sometimes conciseness will need to give way to precision... and at other times precision will need to give way to conciseness. Blueboar (talk) 15:38, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar, I've reworded it as per the dictionary definition of wikt:concise. I definitely don't want to elevate the conciseness criterion above the other criteria!! Please suggest a way of rewording it to where balance is emphasized. I mean this sincerely! Red Slash 18:11, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I vote for the repeal of "primary topic". If there is more than one thing that could have a name, then all of them are ambiguous and should be disambiguated. --Khajidha (talk) 16:57, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

There are many things named "Paris" (see Paris (disambiguation); should we move Paris to Paris, France? I'm not asking a rhetorical question, here, Khajidha. Red Slash 18:11, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes. --Khajidha (talk) 18:30, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you think we should move Barack Obama to Barack Obama (president) to avoid confusion with his father, who has the same name? Should we move France to France (country) to avoid confusion with other similarly named things? Will you volunteer to fix the tens of thousands of links that would be broken in carrying out such a move? bd2412 T 18:43, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

“Will you volunteer to fix …” That’s not how Wikipedia works, and the assumption of laziness is never a valid excuse for opposing a change in practice. I would oppose a repeal for different reasons, but that’s another discussion. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 19:32, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think both of those should be moved. I don't know how to make this clearer: If there is more than 1 thing with the same name, then NONE of them should be undisambiguated. Full stop. I would be happy to work on the changes, but feel no need to make all of them myself. --Khajidha (talk) 19:49, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

A couple months back I looked through several thousand incoming links to Turkey (didn't get through every page of them), looking for article titles where wild turkey was clearly intended (i.e., articles about state parks and other protected areas in North America). I fixed several dozen of these links (but there surely are many more lurking in articles with less obvious titles). The article on turkey (bird) (i.e. the genus Meleagris) is minimal and pretty useless, but there are decent articles at domesticated turkey and wild turkey. NONE of the incoming links to "turkey (bird)" actually intend the genus (those that do intend the genus link to the redirect Meleagris) rather than the wild or domesticated forms of Meleagris gallopavo. I also recently went through all the incoming links to possum, looking for articles about North American topics (where the article intended by "possum" is Virginia opossum). It may be best to have the article about the country at Turkey, but it will continue to accumulate some ambiguous links. Plantdrew (talk) 19:44, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

You make a compelling argument. I’m of the opinion that common nouns (save for obscure ones) should always be treated as the primary topic over proper nouns (e.g., Turkey should be about the turkey and not about Turkey), so I’d be in favor of a change to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC rather than its removal. But we’ve gotten way off topic here. Move this thread to WT:D? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 20:01, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that reading Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 34#hopelessly vague title may help. Article titles are not just there for readers they are also there for editors "Naturalness – ... and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles." In the section I mentioned there was an example given of St Botolph's Church which at the start of the conversation did not exist. Consequently if someone wrote an article and linked to the article St Botolph's Church before 17 December 2011‎ it would have come up as a red link, given the rules for not creating pre-emptive disambiguation an editor would not expect that any other St Botolph's Church existed alghugh they did with as comma disambiguation. This means that even if you know that the subject you are writing about is not the primary topic (eg many biographies) if no other article exists with that name, then one is duty bound to place it at the name without disambiguation. If I do that, I sometimes create a redirect at the title to which I know it will eventually be move, and link to that redirect, as a help to the the person who move the page I have created and turn the title into a dab when more articles with the same title are created. The proposed wording "disambiguation should only be added where there is no primary topic" can be misunderstood to encourage pre-emptive disambiguation and cause the sort of problem I have highlighted with the dab page missing as was the case with St Botolph's Church. -- PBS (talk) 18:01, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Alternatively (and arguably, preferably), create the article at the unambiguous name, and create a redirect at the plain name. I haven’t seen anything in policy against reasonable preemptive disambiguation of this sort. But the problem of redlinks due to missing redirects seems more a matter for WP:R than this page. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 19:51, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

WP:MALPLACED. We don't redirect Ray of Light to Ray of Light (album) first because the longer title is not necessary to identify the subject, and second because we don't want to create the impression that Ray of Light is occupied by something else which requires a disambiguator. bd2412 T 20:29, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I meant, if the term is ambiguous. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 20:41, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

We also don't redirect Barack Obama to Barack Obama (president) to avoid confusion with his father, who has the same name. bd2412 T 20:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Not ambiguous in that sense. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:42, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

However, we do redirect William Pitt the Elder to William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (which is not as concise) to avoid confusion with William Pitt the Younger (note: the completely un-disambiguated title William Pitt is a dab page). Blueboar (talk) 23:51, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I believe those titles follow the naming convention for nobles, and are not at all about avoiding confusion. bd2412 T 19:05, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Point of clarification

I'm not really asking if you agree or disagree with the premise; I'm asking for feedback before I turn that into an RfC (whereupon I will be asking if you agree or disagree), and so further refinement would be helpful. If you have suggestions to the prompt, please, that would be extremely helpful. Red Slash 18:11, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, it's not really binary but trinary IMO. You have situations where:

One topic is clearly, slam-dunk hands-down open-and-shut the primary topic and other uses of the term are distinctly peripheral.
One topic is, we've agreed, the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, but it's not hands-down. Maybe some people disagreed that it should be the primary topic, but even if not, there are other topics that are also somewhat important.
There's no primary topic; there's no article with just the unadorned name of the thing; instead, that page is a disambig page.

IMO parenthetical disambiguation should be used for all pages under cases 2 and 3. Of course, the problem with this is that it creates another point to argue over -- not just "is it the primary topic" but then also "is it the hands-down overwhelming primary topic". So dunno if that's a good idea, and more to the point, I don't know how you'd phrase that to push it through as a proper rule... Herostratus (talk) 18:52, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Given that the disambiguation page is usually not the page readers are looking for, it becomes a question of what proportion of readers we want to send to the wrong page. bd2412 T 19:01, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I notice you’ve edited the first paragraph since my comments. Better, but it still conflates disambiguation and precision, as if the one is the only legitimate reason for the other. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 19:40, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Ok, Red Slash, if you're just looking for wording, opinions, please fix 'there was once a very popular song recorded by Beyoncé and called "Crazy in Love"'. :-) Something like 'in 20xx, Beyonce recorded a song called "Crazy in Love"' would be much better, imho. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:36, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Done. Thanks!

Red Slash 20:18, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't M-185 (Michigan highway) as atWP:PRECISION be a better example? --Richhoncho (talk) 19:24, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

There are weird rules for U.S. placenames and highways where for inexplicable-to-me reasons, we pre-emptively disambiguate. But there was no consensus on that article's talk for that particular title, whereas there was a clear consensus for Crazy in Love. Red Slash 20:18, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I am not able to comment on the guidelines for US placenames and highways - I can only assume there is good reason and I have no wish to change their guidelines, although your proposal here does. So the question I have next is, if, in the unlikely event that you succeed with your proposal, what do you intend to do with those projects who have already decided that "unnecessary disambiguation" is a GOOD thing and no "violation" has occurred? --Richhoncho (talk) 21:24, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Presumably, this addition would override those WP:LOCALCONSENSUSes, and those contradictions would have to be addressed and pages renamed. But I disagree with this proposal’s notion that “unnecessary” disambiguation is a Bad Thing. —174.141.182.82 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 01:25, 21 February 2015 (UTC) Huh, used the wrong number of tildes. Whoops.

What exactly is this large amount of text supposed to add to this policy? It seems to me at the moment that it is instruction creep and that adding it complicates the policy unnecessarily. I am open to persuasion but is it not simpler to follow the logic of the current description on naming a topic: if a topic title does not exist, do not pre-emptively disambiguate the title. If the title already exists then either create the new article with a disambiguation extension and then discuss on the ordinal article's talk page arrangements thorough a hat note or a disambiguation page how to inform readers of the new page. Otherwise discuss on the current talk page of the article that already exists if it ought to be moved to make way for a disambiguation page, or a new primary topic, if the article you intend to create is about a more significant topic than the current topic under that title. -- PBS (talk) 18:42, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

What it's supposed to add to this policy, PBS, would be to stop several of the arguments found in that move request here, like the first oppose, saying that taking away "(Beyoncé song)" would somehow wind up "frustrating Beyonce fans who are looking for (Beyonce song)". Or take the current move discussion at Talk:Shape of My Heart (Backstreet Boys song), with this quote: "The fact is that there are three songs with the same title and the Backstreet Boys song loses NOTHING, that's right NOTHING (IMO) by having the name of the group mentioned in the title." Both of these suggestions (to me!) fly smack-dab in the face of WP:CONCISE and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Do they? This RfC should lead to a clear answer on that. Red Slash 20:18, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Crazy_in_Love#Requested_move_17_December_2014

What do you think is in the proposed wording that alters the reading/understanding of Wikipedia:Article titles#Disambiguation? -- PBS (talk) 10:55, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

If I may: WP:NATURAL and WP:D both discuss when disambiguation is required. The proposed proposal discusses when disambiguation is to be banned, which (unless I missed it) neither page currently does. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 11:53, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

No – sorry for bursting the bubble, this is not something that should go to RfC, whatever way it is formulated:
1. All five criteria of WP:NC need to be weighed in, depending on circumstances, when it is not possible to satisfy them all for a 100% in some instances. WP:CONCISE is only one of these five principles that need to be taken into the consideration in such cases, not the one that trumps all. No need to start an RfC for people having difficulty to grasp such key concept of the AT policy.
2. There are well-established examples, and consensus processes, that deliberately deviate from the principle now proposed for RfC. If you want to overtrow such consensuses do it one by one, not by changing a general principle, where most of the people coming to the RfC could be unaware of the ramifications:
  - Symphony No. 104 (Haydn), not Symphony No. 104 – guideline conforming to WP:AT, no change or RfC needed
  - String Quartets, Op. 76 (Haydn), not String Quartets, Op. 76 – guideline conforming to WP:AT, no change or RfC needed
  - Redundant (Schubert) disambiguator, for compositions that are the primary topic when the D number is mentioned in the article title, was confirmed by multiple broad consensus discussions (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Archive 54#Schubert Sonata Articles Renamed, Talk:Wiegenlied, D 498 (Schubert)#Requested moves, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (music)#Discussion of proposals) - no need to rehash these.
  - Date ranges: RfC – guideline update

I don't say you can't do the RfC, if you like your own flavour of a WP:SNOW experience, but please try to avoid wasting other volunteers time. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:01, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Newest version: your thoughts?

As mentioned above, a good article title is recognizable, natural, precise, and consistent with other articles. We also strive to make it concise. Therefore, articles titles should be no longer than required to satisfy the other criteria. For example, Moscow, not Moscow (Russia); Abigail, not Abigail (biblical figure); Bellingham, Washington, not Bellingham, Washington (city); "Crazy in Love", not Crazy in Love (Beyoncé song); USB, not Universal Serial Bus; United States, not United States of America; Shaan (singer), not Shaan (Indian playback singer); Norwegians, not People of Norway.
Of course, conciseness must sometimes be sacrificed to meet the other criteria:

Recognizable: United States Air Force, not USAF;

Natural: Chicken sandwich not Chckn sndwch;

Consistent: String Quartets, Op. 76 (Haydn), not String Quartets, Op. 76;

Precise: Apple Inc., not Apple.
In general, however, article titles should be as concise as possible while still respecting these other criteria.

Tagging Francis Schonken, PBS, Richhoncho, SarekOfVulcan, BD2412, Herostratus, Blueboar, Plantdrew, Khajidha, Omnedon, Dohn joe... sorry if I missed anyone else, it was not my intent! --Red Slash 18:28, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Argh, no, leave USB out. USA isn't a good example either... I think we're going the wrong direction here. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:36, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Is “Chckn sndwch” really a good example? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 21:07, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and Crazy in Love should not be in quotes; you’re talking about the article title (no quotes), not the song itself. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 21:08, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Question: With all of the different proposals, I have now become totally confused as to what we are trying to achieve here. So let me go back to the beginning: What's wrong with the current language? Blueboar (talk) 21:32, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
- What's "wrong" is that, currently, people are arguing that Crazy in Love (Beyoncé song) is somehow actually a better title than the unadorned Crazy in Love. Policy currently does not explicitly disavow that. Red Slash 04:45, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
  - But the second *is* better, better for recognizability, better for reading from a list of search results and being confident that you are choosing precisely the result you want. The case in question was strongly contested. The titling minimalists won that battle, OK, but now you want to legislate the result, cherry picking the won battles as the examples to follow? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:50, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
    - Crazy in Love is better for recognizability, better for reading from a list of search results and being confident that you are choosing precisely the result you want. Recognizability is important. However, Crazy in Love (Beyoncé song) is better for minimizing the number of people who have to click through a disambig page to get to the article they want. If you have Crazy in Love (Beyoncé song) then Crazy in Love is going to be a disambig page, and some non-zero number of people who want to see Crazy in Love (Beyoncé song) are going to land there first. (They downside is that some non-zero number of people who don't want the Bey song are going to land there and have to click again, maybe twice (to disambig and then the article they want) using the hatnote.)

I can see the merits of the Crazy in Love camp since "Crazy in Love" is not a slam-dunk obvious-to-90%-of-people reference to Bey's song. However, leaving it open like that means endless arguing. I always thought that we already had a rule that parenthetical disambiguation should be used only when technically required, and if we don't, we probably should, since it would obviate a lot of discussion. I'm usually all for letting editors do what they like, but here, I see to many avenues for arguments to leave it up in the air. Herostratus (talk) 12:11, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Mostly an agreeable comment Herostratus, except for the first sentence that I read as nonsense. You argue that, for someone looking for the Beyoncé song "Crazy in Love", they are *more* likely to recognize "Crazy in Love" as the title of what they want, and less likely to recognize "Crazy in Love (Beyoncé song)"? The first fails the Precise criteria, it contains insufficient information to uniquely identify the topic from other topics, there must be some doubt to some readers. The second, is precise, can you explain how inclusion of the artist name makes the article title less recognizable??

Can someone please remind why Crazy in Love must not be a redirect to Crazy in Love (Beyoncé song)? I don't see the problem.

If parenthetical is the problem, there is Crazy in Love, Beyoncé song, Crazy in Love, by Beyoncé, Beyoncé's Crazy in Love, etc. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:14, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

So this is an attempt to change policy in order to achieve a desired title at one specific article? That is a really bad idea. Doing so inevitably backfires and causes problems at lots of other articles. This policy intentionally does not favor one of the criteria over the others, it says to balance them. The balance point will be different from one article to the next... because each article title is a unique determination, with unique factors to consider. As far as this policy goes, both Crazy in Love and Crazy in Love (Beyoncé song) are perfectly acceptable titles.

I know it is frustrating to those who think in terms of "the rules"... but very often (in debates like this) the determination of which title is considered "better" (and thus used) comes down to asking which has editorial preference (the rules say both are OK... but I like X better than Y, so let's go with X). The determination should not be mandated by policy... it should be made by discussion of the pros and cons of all options (either on the article talk page, or at an RM discussion if a wider consensus is needed). So... I am Opposed to the proposed edit. We need to maintain flexibility, to give editors maximum choice in how they title their articles. Blueboar (talk) 14:15, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that the current page already supports primary topics and I do not think that either of the proposed additions would have helped clarify the policy given the views people expressed in the "Crazy in Love" move debate. However while we are about it, I would like to bring up a problem with Google searches and the naming policy. It occurs around the term "Treaty of Paris". An unusual hat-note was added to all (most?) the articles under the dab page Treaty of Paris because the dab page Treaty of Paris does not show up in the first first page of a Google search. One of the things that influenced people, about the title to use for the primary meaning, for "Crazy in Love" was views which may be appropriate for subjects where the access to different pages is largely from the same population/group, but often the audience for different pages with similar names may well vary. One obvious example is sports and nationality. So deciding on primary topic just counting page views may be appropriate in some cases and not in others because there are other factors to take into account. -- PBS (talk) 14:48, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

RE "Treaty of Paris". Google has probably automagically recognized that people searching "Treaty of Paris" do not want that page (I believe that google call tell how long people stay at the returned page), and has probably internally tagged it as a page with a misleading title. The bad page would be better recognizable as a dab page, by humans and machines, if it were at Treaty of Paris (disambiguation) or Treaties of Paris. Note that it is the top ghit for the search query "treaties of paris". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:26, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

WP:USSTATION contradicts this policy

See: WT:USSTATION#This guideline contradicts policy. --В²C ☎ 17:45, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

It's not really a contradiction. It's more a question of how much weight to give the various provisions of the policy. Blueboar (talk) 19:03, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to John D. Rockefeller Jr.

There was just a move of a number of articles removing the comma and making "John D. Rockefeller, Jr." to John D. Rockefeller Jr. Does anyone know where the discussion took place? The majority of the incoming links are to ", Jr." as are the ancillary articles such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library. See John D. Rockefeller, Jr. at the Encyclopedia Britannica and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. at the Rockefeller family archive It appears that at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#Comma after "Jr.", "Sr.", etc.? seven people !voted on a major style change with a 5 to 2 split. Now the comma is being removed en masse. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:57, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

It looks like you found the right place already, as you noted (i.e., Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#Comma after "Jr.", "Sr.", etc.? and the immediately following section Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#RfC: Comma or no comma before Jr. and Sr.). The discussion seems to be continuing there – and that looks like the right place for it. —BarrelProof (talk) 20:32, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately that isn't the only place the discussion is happening. This issue is now being discussed in multiple venues... at individual article talk pages as well on as multiple policy/guideline pages. Wikilawyers love this, as it means that no matter what your view on the question of whether to put commas before Jr. and Sr. might be, you will probably be able to find a page where the consensus supports your view. Sad, really. I suggest a common centralized discussion where everyone can contribute. Blueboar (talk) 20:52, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Where else in the policy/guideline talk space is it being discussed? —BarrelProof (talk) 21:33, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Besides this discussion here... It is currently being extensively discussed at both WT:Manual of Style/Biographies and at the main WT:Manual of Style page. I am pleased to see that WT:Naming conventions (people) contains a note pointing to the discussion at MOS/Bio, but people have refrained from commenting on it (a good step towards a unified discussion). Then there are the various RM discussions (which sort of fall between the cracks as far as their policy status goes ... policy is often written based on the results of RMs, but the results themselves are not policy.) Blueboar (talk) 02:01, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Need help with selecting title

I'm not sure what title is fit for the topic covered by this and other articles[2][3][4]; i-fast and c-fast and ccd (complete cure device) were among the names used for those devices/techniques. thank you.--Morta zaqa (talk) 00:08, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I would say it is probably premature to have an article devoted to the device. While there has been some initial press coverage, the fact that there is no set name for the device indicates that it may not be notable enough for its own article (yet). I would recommend starting off with a paragraph/section mentioning it (and the divided reviews of it) in a related article, perhaps: Management of HIV/AIDS. (and in that paragraph/section, you can mention that it has several names). As more information becomes available, and the section grows, we can then split the section off into its own article (and hopefully, by then, the scientific community will have settled on one single name for it). Blueboar (talk) 12:14, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Input requested

Please see: Talk:Cypress Hills massacre#RfC: Article title. Viriditas (talk) 03:24, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

~~This should probably go to WP:RM~~. <never mind... I sent it to RM myself> I have also posted a notice at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters. Blueboar (talk) 13:28, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

RfC: putting more emphasis on description in WP:CONCISE and across WP:AT

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The proposal did not achieve consensus. --GRuban (talk) 15:02, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Previous related discussions:

please add discussions I have missed Greg Kaye 16:34, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

The explanation of WP:CONCISE is currently: "The goal of conciseness is to balance brevity with sufficient information to identify the topic to a person familiar with the subject area". Why is "familiar with the subject" mentioned? Surely people may mostly benefit to research a topic if they are unfamiliar with the subject.

As one set of examples: in Category:Mesopotamian gods there are the disambiguated articles: Amurru (god) Ashur (god) Erra (god) Gaga (god) Gerra (god) Hani (god) Kulla (god) Kus (god) Lahar (god) Ma (deity) Ma (Sumeria) Neti (mythology) Shara (god) Sin (mythology) Tammuz (deity) Tutu (Mesopotamian god) Wer (god) Anzû (mythology)

In comparison Britannica presents:

Ashur Mesopotamian deity - Ashur, in Mesopotamian religion, city god of Ashur and national god of Assyria. ...

While we present Mercury (mythology), Britannica presents:

Mercury Roman god - Mercury, Latin Mercurius, in Roman religion, god of merchandise and merchants, commonly identified with the Greek Hermes, fleet-footed messenger of the gods. ...

From what I have seen Britannica presentation typically gives wider information in its subtitles than we give in disambiguation.

Propose that we present a greater emphasis on provision of description in titles.

I also think that WP:PRECISION is written to suggest the provision of minimal information rather than the provision of content that will be usefully informative for readers across the our whole cohort of readership.

Greg Kaye 08:15, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Very good point, Greg. I've never understood why familiarity was used in this way. I believe the "familiarty" phrase should be removed. Tony (talk) 08:25, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

TY. I think that more information such as to say whether someone is, say, defined as a ".. (comedy actress/actor)" or a ".. (pornographic actress/actor)" [although, arguably, ".. (adult entertainer)" might better suit the later case] or as a ".. (sumo wrestler)" or a ".. (professional wrestler)" with the later case not being involved in forms of competitive sport which are described as Wrestling. In these cases comedy, pornography, sumo and pro-wrestling can be considered as artforms in their own rights. Greg Kaye 10:29, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Agree. Britannica titles are read with their subtitles. I would delete not just "familiar" but all of "to a person familiar with the subject area". A title should identify the topic. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:38, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

See Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize.

There is yards of text in the archives for the reasons for this particular wording [and I assume that those participating in this conversation to date have read them -- so this is of course just a warning for those who have not]. I would strongly oppose any changes to the wording of Recognizability and without that the arguments for changing WP:CONCISE one way or another evaporates, as its implementation has to complement that of "recognizability". -- PBS (talk) 12:28, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I honestly think that the general presentation of criteria, particularly in relation to disambiguation, leads our article titles to be relatively impoverished of descriptive content.

The stated "characteristics" of a "good Wikipedia title", as has oft been mentioned, are:

Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize.
Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
Precision – The title is sufficiently precise to unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.
Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.
Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) in the box of Topic-specific conventions on article titles.

However, while the titles may in many cases be good, I do not thing that, in every case, they are as great as they could be and, particularly in comparison to the Wikipedia titles and subtitles that I have seen, they can be relatively poor in specific content. "Precision" has connotations of efficiency and, as if to back this up, the Mother Theresa example is mentioned before Leeds North West (UK Parliament constituency).

"Conciseness" presents: "The title is no longer than necessary ..." There is nothing here about richness or generosity of description so as to offer added value in helping the reader understand the content of a topic.

As far as the content at WP:CONCISE is concerned I see nothing wrong with saying:

Conciseness

The goal of conciseness is to balance brevity with the provision of information to help readers identify a topic.

The having of a primary goal of "Recognisability" also seems quite miserly to me. Someone close to me goes to art classes. Suppose that person showed me a sketch and asked what I thought of it and suppose I said, "well its recognisable". Presuming that the picture was meant to be recognisable my comments would go down much less than well. Less is not always more and I think that we have gone too far down the path of prioritising "brevity" Greg Kaye 16:32, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Do you really want to rehash the arguments that are already in the archives and he reason why it was decided to keep "someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in". If not then please read the archives, because I would rather no have to go through it yet again. -- PBS (talk) 16:46, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

There is a problem with wanting to make titles informative to the lay person. Take, for example, Egil Krogh. That title means absolutely nothing to the vast majority of people. In fact, it is unlikely that most people will ever look this article up at all. So what is it? A place name? A syndrome? In fact, it's the name of a person, and specifically of a lawyer who worked for the Nixon administration and went to jail for certain things that went on there. The title could be more informative - Egil Krogh (lawyer), Egil Krogh (Nixon administration official), etc., but that would really be of no value to anyone who has enough of a basis of information to want to look the topic up in the first place. bd2412 T 17:23, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

BD2412 I was more thinking along the lines of content that might more readily lead to Abyss being defined as a professional wrestler, Aja being defined as a pornographic actress and Ashur being defined as a Mesopotamian god. I think that in such situations the additional information provides valuable clarity at very little cost. Greg Kaye 18:26, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Are there people who know enough to know that there is a wrestler named "Abyss" at all, but don't know that he is a "professional" wrestler? I would say the same with respect to the other two items. bd2412 T 18:31, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

BD2412. Going back to your example of Egil Krogh, I agree, there is no need to add additional qualifiers/descriptions/information to the title when there is only one Egil Krogh. But let us suppose another Egil Krogh becomes notable? We have, according to some editors, three or four choices (which will be debated endlessly until somebody gets fed up). What should happen in the event of two Egil Krogh's at WP? That is the real question, which if we can answer in advance, will make WP much more stable. --Richhoncho (talk) 19:51, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

That's actually a pretty easy question to answer, especially in the abstract. If there comes another notable Egil Krogh, we will ask ourselves: "Is one of these two Egil Kroghs the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "Egil Krogh"?" If yes, then Egil Krogh 1 will be at Egil Krogh, and Egil Krogh 2 will be at Egil Krogh (occupation or other appropriate disambiguator). If no, then Egil Krogh will be a disambiguation page, and both Kroghs will be disambiguated. Dohn joe (talk) 02:12, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Dohn joe it is often at the "..(appropriate disambiguator)" stage that I think we fall short in comparison to Britannica. Our concern is all to often to distil the most measly yet "concise" disambiguation that can be whittled down from all the various possible content. In comparison to other ways in which we might work I think that we are often the poorer for it. We often fail at precision in regard to those many disambiguations that are not nearly as WP:PRECISE as they easily could be. Greg Kaye 20:32, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I actually think we get the balance of the various WP:AT criteria right 99% of the time. I don't think that "(Romanian playwright)" is substantially better or more helpful than "(playwright)". In any event, I was just trying to respond to Richhoncho's scenario, which I was trying to show was pretty commonplace around here. Dohn joe (talk) 21:16, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I would respectfully oppose and instead work the other way--if there is a primary topic, that subject's article should be located at the base name. Someone who types in turkey expecting a bird will be educated that there is a more significant "Turkey" in the world, and still be a mere one click away from the article they want. Red Slash 01:09, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

If you put "Turkey" into a search engine you get mostly get the country (with the Wikipedia article on the country near the top of the results). Google is smart enough on it's own to figure out what the most significant Turkey in the world is. But Wikipedia isn't smart enough (without further intervention) to figure out the appropriate link targets for: "Birds present in the area include robins, cardinals and turkeys". Robin and cardinal go to dab pages. Turkey goes to the country. Are cardinals a kind of bird, or officials in the Catholic church? Declaring that the country of Turkey is the PRIMARYTOPIC, or that cardinals are priests ensures that some readers are going to get sent to the wrong Wikipedia article from internal Wikipedia links. External search engines can sort out ambiguity (i.e. lower precision in Wikipedia article titles) better than Wikipedia can itself (without invoking more precise but less concise title).Plantdrew (talk) 05:36, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, those mistakes in linking happen. It's absolutely the principal downside of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. The plus, of course, is that readers and editors can type "turkey" into the search bar, the URL bar, or a wikilink and get to the article they most likely want right away. But I would not want to discount the negatives. On the whole, I think that Turkey is natural and appropriate given the disparity between the topics' primacy (and I live thousands of miles away from Turkey in the heart of turkey country), and I would note that turkeys does get you to the page you want. Red Slash 21:28, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Red Slash I quite agree that if there is a clear primary topic and as long as the title affords helpful description then this is the way to go. As you know one of the most common classes of topics to have items appear in WP:RM is songs. An example of a song from Category:The Beatles songs is Michelle (song) which may be argued to pass Wikipedia's minimum standard of "Recognizability". However I would argue that a title such as Michelle (Beatles song) gives better quality of description. In its current state I think that WP:AT discourages fuller descriptions such as this and this, I think, is shown by the large number of RMs that, for some reason, want to cut an artist's name from a title. The impression I have gained is that esteem is somehow given if a song can be presented as, for instance, ".. (song)" rather than ".. (Michael Jackson song)" Greg Kaye 09:45, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Greg, I know that there is a sense of esteem given to a primary topic, which is why people get so motivated to defend primacy of "their" topics; see move requests at Limerick, Plymouth, Birmingham, Perth, and yes, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Portland. I accept that this is a perfectly understandable (if not entirely logical) perspective, but as far as partial disambiguation, I don't get it. Thriller (Michael Jackson song) would be totally appropriate. (Then again, there are IAR circumstances for partial disambiguation; Birmingham, USA is an extremely useful redirect, even though there are multiple American Birminghams.) Red Slash 21:28, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Support reverting B2C's undiscussed unilateral change of April 3 2014 (this diff). His edit summary claimed "Use wording more consistent with what WP:CRITERIA says to be less ambiguous in meaning" but this is bullshit; I'm sorry I missed it at the time. He's trying to push further toward putting no value on actual information in titles, to make them shorter, as he always has. Dicklyon (talk) 06:43, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
I would oppose the revert because as he say the wording is more consistent with Recognizability in WP:CRITERIA. The wording Dicklyon proposes reverting to: "way the average person searching for it will recognize" opens up to obvious questions: "searching" by what method? What is an "average person"? -- PBS (talk) 10:43, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Comment Some Wikipedia disambiguations are downright nonsensical. For instance the article Indian (motorcycle) begins, "Indian is an American brand of motorcycles" and should, in any sensible world, have a title such as Indian (motorcycle brand), Indian (motorcycle company) or even Indian (motorcycles). As it is I think that the AT rules can permit the unnecessary amputation of key or otherwise useful information. GregKaye 07:19, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
GregKaye article titles are not the issue, much more relevant is the content of the first sentence. See for example a Google search on "Cromwell"
- Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 – 3 September 1658) was an English military and political leader and later Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, ...
- Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, KG was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540.
No matter what was added as a more descriptive description to the title, it is the first sentence that contains the detail for someone less than familiar with the subject. That is unless we were to start making titles a long as the first sentence.
Compare that with a Google Search on [Cromwell tank]
- "Tank, Cruiser, Mk VIII, Cromwell (A27M), and the related Centaur (A27L) tank, were one of the most successful series of cruiser tanks fielded by Britain in the ..."
Unless one is familiar with what the term "Cromwell tank" means the lead sentence does not help tell if that is a relevant article. Just adding a dab extension "Cromwell tank (British, Second World War)" leads us to ask per dab are the other British and foreign tanks with the same name? I think GregKaye, as is discussed in detail in the archives your proposal would encourage people to want to expand article titles to include details which properly should appear in the first sentence. If I am copying a biography from the DNB and it mentions "Cromwell" I know from the dates of the biography that the DNB author assumed the person reading his/her biography is familiar enough with the subject to know the names of Tomas and Oliver Cromwell and the Century they were prominent (Hence recognisability). I would not expect the DNB author to mean Oliver Cromwell (died 1655) unless they made that obvious. On the talk page of the article Oliver Cromwell (died 1655) I have suggested that the dab should be changed because the DOD is close to the of Oliver Cromwell the regicide who died in 1658 -- eg to (Royalist) or to "of Hinchingbrooke". One suggestion with tongue-in-cheek was "Oliver Cromwell (not the one you are probably looking for)" to which I suggested we could dab both of them "Oliver Cromwell (Royalist)" and "Oliver Cromwell (non-Royalist)". The point I am making here (and has been made many times in the archives) is that "someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in" has served Wikipedia well and I see no advantage in changing it. -- PBS (talk) 10:43, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Takings PBS's point of 12:28, 24 March 2015, I suggest changing

The goal of conciseness is to balance brevity with sufficient information to identify the topic to a person familiar with the subject area

to

The goal of conciseness is to balance brevity with recognizability

More concise. Less repetition with "familiar", more repetition of "recognizability". I find the definition for recognizability good, but somehow the repetition of the same words for the expansion section on conciseness doesn't work quite right. On "brevity": There has been a lot of confusion about brief and concise not being the same thing. Setting out brevity as a factor to weigh against recognizability for conciseness clearly establishes that brevity is not conciseness. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:32, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

It's important to leave the "to a person familiar with the subject area" clarification in there precisely because so many don't understand it, as this discussion demonstrates. Making titles recognizable to the public in general is not a goal, and should not be. That is the role of the lead. The title is a step a unique identifier for the topic, a step or two above a randomly chosen string, making the subject recognizable from the title alone to those familiar with the subject. That's all. Trying to make it more is opening Pandora's Box. --В²C ☎ 19:48, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
В²C what exactly does "familiar with the subject area" actually mean anyway? It seems phenomenally vague to me. However, in POV wrangles that I have seen at WP:RM, many of the problems are raised at the point of disambiguation. Perhaps there would be a way to annex this issue in some way from general AT issues and perhaps consider it as something akin to "ST" (sub-title). At present content at WP:NCDAB reads:

"... Parenthetical disambiguation. A disambiguating word or phrase can be added in parentheses. ...".

Perhaps this could read as something like:

"... Parenthetical disambiguation. A descriptive word or phrase can be added in parentheses so as to provide disambiguation. ..."

As per all the examples that I have given, a guideline wording such as this would, I think, facilitate the kind of value added as I think is evident in various usages of Britannica subtitles. I appreciate that this is the wrong place to be proposing this but was interested to see what other editors thought. Greg Kaye 20:16, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree "familiar with the subject area" is vague; it used to say "familiar with the subject", which is far better. What it meant was that someone familiar with the subject of the article should be able to recognize the subject from the title. The point is that Square matrix is recognizable to those familiar with linear algebra, and does not need to be described further in the title. But it's clearer to say that it's recognizable to anyone familiar with square matrices. The main point is that we do not strive to make this subject recognizable from the title to someone who is unfamiliar with square matrices or linear algebra.

The only time we add descriptive information to a title is when it's necessary for disambiguation, which is the process of determining titles for topics that share the same name. --В²C ☎ 20:46, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

В²C Reducing to "familiar with the subject" would permit even less descriptive titles. Even in the case of obscure stubs, a "balance (of) brevity with sufficient information to identify the topic to a person familiar with the subject" might be very brief indeed. Why do we only cater for people who have familiarity with a subject/subject area? Greg Kaye 07:41, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

In the specific and very narrow context of deciding titles, we only cater to those with familiarity with the given subject to have a clear standard, and because it really doesn't matter. It's critical to understand that titles could be computer-generated random strings and WP would still work effectively. Allowing for more titles more descriptive than needed to meet the familiarity standard opens Pandora's box, manifested here in an ever-growing RM backlog. If the standard is not familiarity with the subject, what is it, and how do we decide if a given title is sufficiently descriptive, or whether it should be even more descriptive? John Wayne, or John Wayne (actor)? Why not John Wayne, academy-award winning actor born in Winterset, Iowa in 1907? Seriously, why not?. If you don't want to limit titles at familiarity (or need for disambiguity), then how do you define the standard? --В²C ☎ 16:55, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

В²C Do you honestly think that this would be a likely result of a text such as: "The goal of conciseness is to balance brevity with recognizability" or are you just being argumentative. I do not think that absurd extrapolations are helpful to this discussion. Greg Kaye 01:03, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't think B2C's example is an absurd extrapolation. In retrospect it would have been better if the last extension of the article had been a computer generated sequential number as used in many projects (for example http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6765 and http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/1), and then used redirects to the number. However that was not the system that was introduced at the start of the project and Wikipedia works with user created strings of characters and this policy to overlay some control. GregKaye, If this policy was to be relaxed to allow longer strings, what makes you think that B2Cs last extrapolation is absurd? Let us use as an example the article titles Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, both famous for their deeds 40+ years apart. Do you think these names with their standard dab extensions (their titles) would change and if they did why would editors not include a large part of the first sentence for both men. How exactly would editors agree where to stop adding details to the article title? -- PBS (talk) 11:28, 27 March 2015 (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.

We use both title case and sentence case in our titles, and TITLEFORMAT should say so

NOTE: This was moved from Wikipedia talk:List of shortcuts where it was started by me by mistake (I have no idea how I did that) --В²C ☎ 17:40, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

On October 26, 2014 the following unqualified sentence was added to WP:TITLEFORMAT, without discussion[5]:

Titles are written in sentence case.

This is plainly false, and I reworded it accordingly yesterday to this[[6]]:

Titles use either title case or sentence case depending on most common usage in reliable sources.

I justified this change in my edit summary as follows:

Correct misleading statement added on 10/26/2014. Titles don't always use sentence case. Often they use title case. Depends on usage in reliable sources.

This was reverted by Herostratus yesterday[7] with the following explanation:

"Well thats a big change. Prove your case first please -- reverted per WP:BRD, take it to talk."

Big change? Yeah, it's a big change in what it says, not in what we do. Do I really need to find examples of titles using title case to prove that we don't always use sentence case? Whatever. Here we go, thanks to one minute with SPECIAL:RANDOM:

The statement that "Titles are written in sentence case" is plainly inaccurate in terms of reflecting actual titles and title decision making on Wikipedia. The sentence I added is plainly accurate in those same terms. The policy should not be misleading, and it currently is. --В²C ☎ 16:11, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Well but all those are proper nouns. So they're in sentence case, e.g. in a sentence we would say "...he then became involved in Operation Crooked Code as a trainee..." and so forth. I hope you're not suggesting that not titling an article Tim blanchard indicates the our MOS is to use title case.

Of course in English capitalization is fraught. You can say "He went down the East River Road..." (if that's the name of the road) or "He went down the East River road..." (if it doesn't have a name, or you don't know it, or don't care to name but just want to describe it (maybe it's named Hawthorne Road but you'd rather describe where it is)) or whatever. And this carries over to titles too. So we have House at 196 Main Street (not "At"). We could have titled it Hiram Eaton House instead, which is the proper name of the house so we would not use "Hiram Eaton house". But it if we didn't have a proper name or address to work with we might well have titled it "Hiram Eaton's house" since that's a description and not a proper name. We would not title an article "Hiram Eaton's House" or any such thing.

As to someone just inserting "Titles are written in sentence case" with no discussion on October 26, 2014, I would say:

I don't recommend any substantive changes to rules pages w/o prior discussion so I deplore this.
But it pretty much just describes what everyone knows, which is probably why it went unnoticed.
At any rate IMO unchallenged since October 26, 2014 is way too late for WP:BRD to be in play, so fair or not the ball is in your court to get consensus to have it removed. Herostratus (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

But Herostratus, it says "Titles are written in sentence case"; it doesn't say "Titles are written in sentence case, except for proper nouns." What about Seattle General Strike, for example? Someone on that talk page is arguing that this title should be changed to Seattle general strike because TITLEFORMAT says "Titles are written in sentence case". But then you get into the debate about whether the name of that particular strike is a proper noun. And how do we decide? By looking at usage in reliable sources, right? Well, there ya go, which is why I changed it to say, "... depending on most common usage in reliable sources." --В²C ☎ 19:55, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Agree with "Titles are written in sentence case." Sentence case essentially means "as would be written in a sentence." So if something would be uppercase in a sentence, it's uppercase in the WP article title, and vice-versa. As at sentence case itself: "only the first word is capitalised, except for proper nouns and other words which are generally capitalised by a more specific rule." Where something is found in both upper- and lowercase in sources, then we discuss (as with many recent proper name RMs). Sometimes sentence case and title case will look identical - as with the examples given above by B2C. But that does not mean we are actually using title case for those articles - it just means that, in those cases, sentence case looks like title case. As for the procedural point, I think BRD probably still applies, but in any event do agree with the addition. Dohn joe (talk) 20:22, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I dunno... if you stretch WP:BRD back six months, where are gonna draw the line? As to the rest, right... I think what we have here is matter of semantics. I think that Born2cycle and everyone else would agree that if an article begins "The Seattle General Strike of 1903 was..." then the article should be title Seattle General Strike, and if it begins "The Seattle general strike of 1903 was..." then the article should be title Seattle general strike. Right? I think we all agree on that. And if they don't match, then we use whatever means -- reliable sources, !vote, argument, trial by combat, whatever -- to make them match, whether by changing the case in the text or in the title. Right? My objection is that saying "Sometimes we use title case" is confusing. My personal opinion is that saying "we use sentence case" is pretty clear, but I guess its not. So I think the solution is not just add "or sometimes we use title case" but rather a more detailed explanation of what "sentence case" means -- "write a title just as you would write the words in a sentence, except for titles the first word is always capitalized" or some more elegant way of saying that. Herostratus (talk) 20:40, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Given that we seem to have a lot of editors who misunderstand what "sentence case" actually means... who don't understand that proper names are written with capital letters even in sentence case... I think B2C has a point. We do need to find a better way to word this. Perhaps something along the lines of: "Article Titles are written in sentence case (but note: In sentence case, proper names are always written with the first letter of each part of the name capitalized)." Blueboar (talk) 09:04, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree entirely that what "sentence case" means needs to be explained (sigh...), since many editors regularly mis-understand it. However, referring to "proper names" is unhelpful, as lengthy previous discussions, often acrimonious, have shown. There's no clear grammatical definition of "proper name" in English (there are at least two different kinds, those which don't allow articles, like "Peter" or "New York", and those that require them, like "the White House"). Capitalization is a convention which differs by country (less capitalization usually in the US than in the UK, for example), and by date (the trend is for less capitalization). I think that all you can really say is something like "In sentence case, capital letters are used for the first word and then only for other words normally capitalized in running text in sources considered appropriate models for the English Wikipedia." Peter coxhead (talk) 11:05, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Agree with "Titles are written in sentence case.", including the following explanation, i.e.

Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text.

If that is not clear enough, it could be changed to something like

Titles are written in sentence case. In other words, the title is written as it would be at the beginning of a sentence, i.e. the first word is capitalized by default, and other words are not capitalized unless they would be capitalized in running text.

--Boson (talk) 13:48, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Descriptive vs Proper Name

This policy notes the distinction between using "Name Titles" (titles that are simply the topic's name) and "Descriptive Titles". I am thinking that this distinction could be used to clarify the "sentence case" confusion If we state "Descriptive titles are written in sentence case" we prevent that confusion. Yes, some of us know that a Name is written with capital letters in sentence case... but it is clear that many editors don't understand that - they erroneously think we are saying that only the first letter of the first word should be captialized ... even in a name. By simply adding the word "Descriptive" to "Titles are written in sentence case" we prevent that misunderstanding. Blueboar (talk) 14:33, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

This is not a good division; many things can be considered "names" but not "proper names", and this just invites people to start capitalizing anything that they can argue is not "descriptive". And where have you seen this confusion you assert, that some editors think we mean that proper names should be downcased? I've not seen that. Can you point to a recent case? Dicklyon (talk) 16:13, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Dicklyon. Adding "Descriptive" implies that we do not use sentence case for "Name titles" when we clearly do. I also have not seen this widespread confusion; most editors seem to catch on to the convention pretty readily. If we need to add anything, it should be a short definition of "sentence case" as was suggested above. Dohn joe (talk) 19:36, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

OK... perhaps my idea of separating "Descriptive" titles from "Name" titles won't work... but that still leaves the root problem that B2C identified unresolved. The simple fact is that we DO write most names in title case... regardless of whether the name is a "proper name" or not. This issue comes up at RM all the time ... to give an example, when it was suggested that we move Pullman Strike to Pullman strike, the move was resoundingly opposed. I can give a lot of other examples. This is actually something that Dicklyon has repeatedly complained about at MOS, and while I sympathize with his complaint - the reality is that our editors still prefer to write names in title case. You can argue that this is "wrong"... but they do it never the less. And when you try to "correct" them, it causes resentment and disruption. Our job as policy wonks is to describe what our fellow editors actually do... it is not our job to proscribe what we think our editors should do instead. Blueboar (talk) 22:49, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
I think you're still somewhat conflating two separate issues. The one issue is that WP uses sentence case, for all titles. Sometimes, when a topic is uppercased in running text, sentence case looks like title case and vice versa. The second issue is that some topics are not uniformly uppercased in sources. This is the Pullman strike question. The question in those and similar RMs is not, "Should we use sentence or title case for this topic?" Instead, the question is, "Is this topic uppercased in running text in reliable sources to the extent that WP should as well?" If the consensus for a given topic is yes, we use uppercase; if the answer is no, we use lowercase. But in either case we are using sentence case in the title. Dohn joe (talk) 22:58, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

I understand that, and you understand that... but I am not sure that the average editor will understands it. More importantly, it isn't something they actually do. Blueboar (talk) 23:07, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar, you completely mischaracterize that Pullman Strike situation; the RM closer noted that "There is no clear consensus for these proposed moves", which is a long way from "the move was resoundingly opposed". In fact, there is generally moderate support for moving titles to conform with the suggestions of the MOS, and a moderate number of apparent MOS haters such as B2C and yourself who oppose such fixes even when both the MOS and the usage is better sources (books) both point clearly in the direction of lowercase. I don't understand why that is, but there's plenty of evidence of that pattern, like at the recent Civil Rights Movement RM discussion, where the specialist lovers of the topic area add to the MOS haters and preserve title case when consistency with WP style would be to use lowercase. It's pretty bizarre really. Note that most editors, especially new ones, are completely naive to this distinction, and will be default make new article titles in title case; that's why we routinely need to move the ones that are not proper names to comply with the advice of the MOS. Dicklyon (talk) 16:00, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

OK, first... I am not "an MOS hater". In fact, I think the MOS is quite good. Second... I have no problem moving articles that inadvertently are written in title case. That said... What I do have a problem with is editors going on "anti-capitalization crusades", mass moving articles that may well have intentionally been put in title case... especially when the only real reason for the move is "they don't conform to MOS". There may be a reason why an article title does not conform to MOS, and the crusaders need to be less strident, and much more willing to make exceptions to the MOS. Blueboar (talk) 00:09, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I wrote "apparent MOS haters" because that's how it looks sometimes. And I suppose I'm the "crusader" you refer to. I do try to move things toward compliance with the MOS, and I'm not often seeing anything like good reasons not to fix articles that someone has intentionally capitalized without a good reason. Perhaps you can point out some? Dicklyon (talk) 03:10, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Suggest "Titles are written in ordinary sentence case. Within sentence case, proper names and composition titles are capitalized". Yes, this is overlapping, redundant, etc. Boson above is technically correct, but policy is not a technical exposée or exemplar, correct when deconstructed, but low level explanation meant to communicate basic ideas to newcomers. Some editors mistake policy as a place to have high level oblique debates among policy experts, they forget the intended audience. "Sentence case" can be confusing to non grammaticians, but "ordinary sentence case" is hard to misunderstand. Proper names are capitalised, and we can leave it to proper name to explain the very complex nuances. "Composition titles" are proper names, but I think a great many mainspace contributors know a composition title when they see it, and will find "proper name" used for composition titles confusing. Explaining simple things simply may tend to sucking eggs, but simple explanations that are easy to understand are reassuring, and reassurance is good for the intended audience. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:34, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

My concern is about titles that are not technically "proper names"... but where there is consensus to capitalize anyway. This may be because the average editor does not really know (or care) what the difference between a proper name and other forms of names is (to many editors... a name is a name is a name, and "names" should always be capitalized). What really has me concerned is that the number of RM requests that center on relatively petty capitalization questions has gone up dramatically in the last six months or so. There seems to be a "de-capitalization" crusade going on (which ends up causing a countering "re-capitalization" crusade) and it's getting to the point of being Pointy and disruptive. It's causing all sorts of debates and distrust between editors who focus on subject matter, and those who focus on style/grammar concerns. I am worried that WP:AT is simply adding fuel on to that slow burning fire. Blueboar (talk) 12:33, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Titles that are not technically "proper names" can be capitalised because they are proper names regardless of invented technical rules. English is as it is used, and usage changes. This policy, and the MOS, should steer clear of trying to define a proper name. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:44, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

About the only recent example of that I can think of us was Cuban Missile Crisis, though I still don't see why or how that consensus to capitalize a non-proper-name came about. Dicklyon (talk) 03:11, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

It came from "Cuban Missile Crisis" having become a proper name. It's much like how the "American Civil War" took a few decades to become accepted as a proper name. A problem with insisting on MOS compliance is that it suppresses the changing nature of the language. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:41, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

But the evidence shows that it's still mostly lowercase in sources; see Talk:Cuban_Missile_Crisis#More_recent_book_data. So asserting that it has become a proper name is just nonsense. Dicklyon (talk) 05:54, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

It would seem that your evidence failed to convince other participants. My reading of the discussion is that other participants, including myself, decided the name is a proper name despite your evidence as presented. That's WP:Consensus, it's a bit funny like that, surely you realize that the community failed to agree with you, and decided to treat the name as a capital name. "many editors think of items like the Cuban Missile Crisis as proper nouns", someone said. Anyway, my point here is that it remains correct that titles are in sentence case, with proper names, and composition titles, being capitalized in sentence case. The trouble with deciding whether something is a proper name is not the fault to be laid at the feet of this policy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:00, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

If I may add for the record, the 'more recent book data' about the Cuban Missile Crisis that Dicklyon mentions, when looked at individually as I did in the same section, shows that the books were mainly reprints of old textbooks, which I know (from familiarity with textbook publishing) are not gone over sentence by sentence when republished. I may add that I was reverted when linking 'Cuban Missile Crisis' on the proper noun page (which has a link to 'Cuban missile crisis') with an edit summary by Dicklyon asking me to 'stand down', so I didn't retry that for sake of not edit-warring, but I will politely ask him here to link both forms of the missile crisis on that page, for fairness and consistency. EDIT: I see that the link was made on the proper noun page earlier today, and I will add a link to the lower-case as well for consistency of the page. Randy Kryn 12:42 24 March, 2015 (UTC)

I disagree with the notion that anything we do here possibly “suppresses the changing nature of the language.” Anyone who accepts Wikipedia as an arbiter of the English language is a dummy. The language will be what it will be, regardless of how long we wait to catch up. And naturally, as a tertiary source, Wikipedia does wait to catch up. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 08:00, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Okay, we do use sentence case, but only in descriptive titles. Other titles use proper names of the topics; that's not really sentence case.

After the discussion above about sentence/title case, Blueboar made this clarification to "clarify the situation" by changing:

Use lowercase, except for proper names: Titles are written in sentence case

to:

Use lowercase, except for proper names: Descriptive titles are written in sentence case

I agree, but Dicklyon reverted, on the following grounds: "That just brings up a new loophole for arguments by people who prefer title case."[8]

I found Dicklyon's reasoning to be dubious at best, and restored Blueboar's change, with the following explanation: "It's not a loophole. It's a fact that we use sentence case for descriptive titles; not for titles which reflect the proper name of the subject" [9]

But Dicklyon reverted again[10], now claiming that "discussion does not support this change; see talk". Umm, it was that discussion that prompted to make Blueboar to make the change! I too see nothing in the discussion that does not support this change. Seems like a good compromise to me, reflecting consensus there. When a topic has a name, we use its proper name as the title, not sentence case. It's only in descriptive titles that the sentence vs title case issues is relevant.

What do others think? --В²C ☎ 19:34, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I think you should take another look at the discussion. The gist: Sentence case includes words and phrases that are capitalized. As an example, the following sentence is in sentence case: "The United States of America sent many soldiers to fight in World War II." Note the use of uppercase within that sentence. This is because sentence case asks us to use uppercase when we normally would in a sentence.

Applying this to titles, using sentence case means that we use uppercase in titles when we normally would in a sentence. This is as true for United States of America as it is for List of sovereign states. Just because something is uppercased doesn't mean it's not also in sentence case. As I said above, sometimes sentence case and title case look identical, as in World War II.

Right now, WP uses sentence case for both proper name titles and descriptive titles. No need to muddy the guidance by implying that we don't use sentence case for proper names when in fact we do. The confusion comes when certain phrases are not uniformly uppercased in sources (e.g., Watts Riots vs. Watts riots). When this is the case, we use our editorial judgment and consensus to decide whether the uppercase them in the title. But either way, we are using sentence case. Dohn joe (talk) 19:54, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

The point is that Watts Riots is a name title, and and Watts riots is a descriptive title. The decision should be about whether to use the name of the topic, or a descriptive title, based on how the topic is most commonly referenced in reliable sources. It is only with descriptive titles like Watts riots that we need to clarify that we use sentence case. For name titles like Watts Riots it doesn't matter, since sentence case and title case is the same. --В²C ☎ 20:35, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

The problem, though, is that if you specify "sentence case" for descriptive titles, you imply "not sentence case" for name titles, when in fact both kinds use sentence case. As above, an explanation that sentence case covers both name and descriptive titles might be okay, but can't just say it applies to one category of titles. Dohn joe (talk) 21:10, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Dohn joe, how or why is it a problem to imply we don't use sentence case in titles that are not descriptive? John Wayne, for example, is John Wayne in sentence case and title case. It might be pedagogically inaccurate to say we use sentence case only in descriptive titles, but it makes no practical difference in titles that are not descriptive.

If we don't say that, then we have a real practical problem: it looks like we prefer descriptive titles (using sentence case) to name titles in situations like Watts riots vs. Watts Riots, when we should have no preference at all, but rather should look exclusively at usage in reliable sources. --В²C ☎ 23:15, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Trying to think outside the box here... What if we invent some Wiki-Jargon? ... something like: "Names appearing in article titles (or used as an article title) should be written in Name Case but, otherwise, titles are written in Sentence case." Would that help clarify? Blueboar (talk) 21:17, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

The way it's written right now, where it just says "Use lowercase, except for proper names" is just fine, as are the first two sentences "Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text." All of these things are correct: as dohn joe said, the concept of sentence case includes capitalizing proper nouns, as the wikipedia article itself specifies. Adding in a qualifier like "only use sentence case for descriptive titles!" is just going to lead to unnecessary confusion – people will fight about whether a particular title is in fact descriptive (what about 'watts riots'? saying 'it depends if it's capitalized' is a tautology, not an answer). And after all, it really doesn't matter whether it's a descriptive title, what matters is whether reliable sources consider it a proper noun. In the latter case, sentence case decrees capitalization; in the former, it doesn't. That's what this page currently says. AgnosticAphid talk 21:37, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
- Follow-up: I wouldn't be opposed to changing the second full sentence to read "The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they are proper nouns." or something similar. AgnosticAphid talk 21:42, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

OK I think everyone agrees that a proper name appearing in (or as) an article title should be capitalized as such. And as long as that is clear, I am content to let others nit-pick the language. Of course, that still leaves open the issue that we frequently don't agree on... determining whether <insert Name here> qualifies as being a Proper Name or not. Blueboar (talk) 21:52, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely. And resolving the question should defer to sourceable nuance located in mainspace at proper name. Writing Project Space rules to clean up the messy language is inward looking, and barrier-creating for newcomers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:30, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

You're all ignoring or missing the point. There are cases that come up all the time where we have to choose between using a proper name or descriptive title for a given topic. By saying that we use sentence case, or saying that only the first letter is capitalized except if its a proper noun, we are implying that the descriptive title be preferred when available in such cases. Instead, we should make it clear that usage in reliable sources should make the determination. How do we say that most clearly and concisely? --В²C ☎ 23:20, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

We already say it pretty clearly: "Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject." We only use descriptive titles if there is no commonly used name. Dohn joe (talk) 23:40, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

If we're not more clear than that, then certain lower case adherents will continue to use the "sentence case" argument to advocate for lower case descriptive titles over proper noun names in cases where the choice is between those two. For example (keep in mind the context there is "Seattle general strike" vs. "Seattle General Strike"). --В²C ☎ 01:00, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

A logical flaw is that Wikipedia's preference for sentence case implies a preference to deny recognition of proper names as proper names. ╠╣uw's !vote that you diff carries an unstated necessary assumption that the name is not a proper name. I suggest participants in such discussions should address whether the name is a proper name, as a more important point than that non-proper names are uncapitalised as per this policy. My point is that the issue at hand in these contentious cases is not at the foot of this policy. The wording changes being discussed I see as being insubstantial. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:33, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Insubstantial? They come up all the time, in both directions! We need help, somewhere, being clear that the focus on such discussions should be about whether the name in question is proper noun or descriptive, and the main determining factors for such questions needs to be usage in reliable sources. --В²C ☎ 01:46, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

It's the wrong question. "is proper noun or descriptive". A proper name can be descriptive. A descriptive name can become proper. "American Civil War" for example. The proper question is: "It is a proper name or not a proper name". Proper names are capitalised. Otherwise, not. I see a major source of confusion for the majority non-titling aficionados coming from composition titles, because composition titles, which may or may not be descriptive, are not recognized by many as proper names, and yet are capitalised, albeit partially if there are little unimportant words included. That's why I suggest highlighting both proper names (linking to proper name) and composition titles (linking to MOSCT), and dropping reference to "descriptive" as unhelpful. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:19, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Semantic nonsense. Of course you can define descriptive such that a proper name can be descriptive, but that's not helpful. We have titles that not the names of the subjects, usually because the subject has no name, and we need to be able to refer to them. Many people use the term "descriptive titles" to do so. If you don't like that, fine, but then come up with an alternative term. Don't redefine descriptive from how others are using it and then say their statements using your definition are wrong. --В²C ☎ 17:08, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Not semantic but an actual problem with writing policy in wiki-jargon instead of real meanings. Members of the intended audience will read "descriptive title" according to real world meanings, not this wikijargon meaning which apparently means "not a proper name". It is not a question of a definition being wrong, but of the same words having multiple possible interpretations. The existing text could be clarified, but adding "descriptive" doesn't do it, and but first, the problem has not been demonstrated. The alleged problem is instead at the feet of the definition of "proper name". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:32, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

B2C: To be clear, the diff you cite has nothing to do with being a "lower case adherent". I simply noted that it's Wikipedia policy to format our titles in a way that corresponds to the format used by reliable sources in running text (i.e., sentence case)... and as others have already explained, that may mean that we use either lower or upper case text. ╠╣uw [talk] 12:25, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. --В²C ☎ 17:08, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Comment - only a few events meet the definition of a "proper name" (eg the Great Depression, the Russian Revolution, the Cuban Missile Crisis, American Civil War). I don't think the Watts riots or Seattle General Strike, while important events, have become proper names. In fact, when I looked at the Seattle one I first assumed there was some business/infrastructure called "Seattle General" that people were striking from.... The mass majority of event articles should not be capitalized beyond the first word or location. —Мандичка^YO 😜 09:45, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

The definition of a "proper name" is simply, "a name used for an individual person, place, or organization, spelled with initial capital letters". Whether a given event meets that definition is of course subjective, and the way we decide such matters on WP is by usage in reliable sources. All opinions about whether a given use meets the definition should be backed up by references to such usage. --В²C ☎ 17:51, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

a title for template:naming conventions

What is the best title would be best to place on Template:naming conventions which appears to the top left of the project page. The title is currently:

Topic-specific conventions
on article titles

I made a reverted edit of this to:

Topic-specific article title
naming conventions

with my edit summary of: preserving the common presentation of "naming conventions"

My thinking here is that the commonly used wording "naming convention(s)" should best be used here as this would likely be the wording that editors would scan the document for. All of the relevant project pages are found in Category:Wikipedia naming conventions.

Other possibilities inclusive or the common designation might include:

Naming convention
project pages

Greg Kaye 08:03, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Caution... there is a distinction between a subject's name and an article's title. They are not necessarily the same thing. We intentionally downplay the word "name" here on this Policy page (as much as we can). This page focuses less on the question of "What is the subject's name?" and more on the (more neutral) question of "What is an appropriate title for the article". While it is appropriate to point editors to the various project naming conventions, this page is not really about names, nor are the naming conventions really about article titles. We leave the issue of "names" to the projects. Blueboar (talk) 13:41, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
- That's not quite correct, Blueboar.
  First of all, for most of our articles the title is some name of the subject. That's certainly the case for almost all articles about people, locations, books, films, plants, animals, etc. Of course, if disambiguation is required then often the name is augmented for the purpose of disambiguation, though we prefer and usually use natural disambiguation (an alternate name) when possible. So, this page really is mostly about names; it's just not only about names.
  Secondly, we do not leave the issue of "names" to the projects. The WP:NAMING CRITERIA on this page is largely about, well, choosing names. Also, many articles are not in a category with a project page. The project specific naming convention pages determine titles to the same extent this page does, just to more specificity, especially to clarify how relevant articles are to be disambiguated when necessary.
  Finally, when we renamed this page from NC (naming conventions) to AT (Article Titles) we could have renamed all the project specific NC pages, but that was not deemed as important. But really there is no reason not to change (say) Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television) to Wikipedia:Article titles (television), except it would be a huge effort, and a mess, either leaving or fixing all the existing links. It's just not worth the trouble, but it would not be incorrect to do it. --В²C ☎ 01:26, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

"we could have renamed all the project specific NC pages, but that was not deemed as important" It was not "that it was not deemed important", but because prior to the rename many editors were confused as to what was policy and what was guidance. Having distinct names for the policy page and the guidelines made it much easier to make that distinction. -- PBS (talk) 11:00, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Oh, that's right. The rename here was to more clearly distinguish between policy and mere guidelines; it was not because there was something inherently wrong or misleading with calling this "naming conventions". --В²C ☎ 16:08, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Let's not rewrite history. Look back through the archives for the discussion on the change (which, as I remember, I initiated). The issue we were trying to resolve at the time was constant disruptive debates over what was the "correct" name to call the subjects of articles (a very emotional, and frequently POV issue) ... and we wanted to move the policy beyond those debates. We did this by re-focusing the policy towards "what is the most appropriate title for the article" and away from "what is the correct name of the subject".

Yes... we do use the name of the subject for many of our titles (indeed, the majority of them)... but that is because so often the most appropriate title happens to be the subject's name. However, that is not always the case, and by focusing the policy on the concept of "most appropriate title for the article" instead of the concept of "most correct name of the subject", we made that distinction clearer.

It really didn't have anything to do with trying to differentiate policy and guideline pages. That may have been a side effect of the change, but it wasn't part of the calculation when we discussed the change. Blueboar (talk) 16:40, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

It may not for you, but while I was neutral on the new title (so did not support or oppose it), I was in favour of making it different from the guidelines and had propose a move in 2008 for that reason (see Archive 11 § Requested move) -- PBS (talk) 15:22, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

In light of comments by Blueboar and PBS can I suggest

Topic-specific
naming conventions
for article titles
or:
Project-specific
naming conventions
for article titles

Other possibilities might include:
Category specific
naming conventions
for article titles

They are not "..conventions on (the topic of) article titles" but "..conventions for (the choosing of appropriate) article titles". I think that it is important that the commonly used phrase "naming conventions" be included. Maybe this is my ineptitude but previously, after finding Category:Wikipedia naming conventions, I scanned WP:AT looking for reference and failed to see the content staring me in the face.

I am also unsure as to whether all the contents of Category:Wikipedia naming conventions are strictly "Project specific". Badly, IMO, titled (lol) naming conventions start with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Armenian). Armenian what? (but my rants about absurd reductions, IMO, of article titles, as generated by, IMO, misapplications of WP:CONCISE, are best left to other threads). Anyway, the "(X-/X ) specific" naming conventions apply to broad spheres such as Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events) to more restrictive spheres such as the poster issue presented in, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies). (Apparently: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK stations) does not cover radio. When titles on "X specific naming conventions" don't specify their topics, ....). Greg Kaye 09:06, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Refocus - It often helps to approach a complex issue from the other direction. Let's define the issue we are trying to resolve... and then discuss the best way to resolve it. So, what is the issue? Blueboar (talk) 13:14, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

My single thought is that the common name used in regard to the topic is "naming conventions". I don't really care how but I think that this wording in this form should appear in the large text of the title. That's all. I tried to change the text in this way but was reverted. The discussion has become very involved over, I think, a really simple proposal. I am grateful to Blueboar for asking the question as, without interventions like this, I can see why people opt to edit war. Greg Kaye 21:24, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Propose changing Naturalness to Distinction and Natural disambiguation to Unpunctuated disambiguation

There is nothing intrinsically natural about the issue that, in Wikipedia circles, is called "natural disambiguation". In fact there is, I think, a strong argument to say that the opposite is true.

The text in the guideline WP:UCRN presents: "Wikipedia prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources) as such names will be the most recognizable and the most natural."

However, the text at the so called "Natural disambiguation" indicates: "If it exists, choose an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title."

As it is the text at "Use commonly recognizable names" equates "most commonly used" with "most recognizable and ... most natural" while the text of the dubiously named: "Natural disambiguation" instructs with regard to the choice of: "... an alternative name ... not as commonly (used) as the preferred-but-ambiguous title." What we are honestly talking about here is "Unpuctuated disambiguation" and not "Natural disambiguation".

This follows an earlier text that has no content related to thing to do related to an exclusion of punctuation but which is presented as: "Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English." I see no meaningful difference here to the content that had only just presented "Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize."

The content in the section of text at Wikipedia:Article titles#Disambiguation which is rhetorically marked with shortcuts (with the exception of WP:COMMADIS) that are contrary to the meaning of the actual text (namely WP:NATURAL, WP:NATURALDIS and WP:NATDAB) and this section of text is actually about the generation of titles that are distinct from other titles.

The first option permits Unpunctuated disambiguation in a way that may require the use of a less commonly used form of words which may, in some cases, be less natural.

The second option permits: Comma-separated disambiguation which is used to clarify such issues as place name or title as in: Windsor, Berkshire and Diana, Princess of Wales with these options typically facilitating the use of most commonly used and most natural names.

The third option permits: Parenthetical disambiguation which is used to clarify topic with a presentation, within parenthesis, of the type of thing or type of topic that is considered to categorise the topic. Again this typically facilitates the use of most commonly used and most natural name of the topic but in a context of explanatory description being provided in parenthesis.

What all three options do is provide routes by which Wikipedia titles can be written in suitably distinct forms with a suitable level of disambiguation one from another.

I suggest, while currently we have repetitious content regarding the first two items at WP:CRITERIA, that we change the second item so as to explain a disambiguation related concept that I provisionally propose be titled Distinction. As content in the text is presented in a sequence as presented in the section title: Wikipedia:Article titles#Precision and disambiguation, and for reasons of my own perceived importance of the issues (in relation to this being an encyclopedia), I also suggest that the content of WP:CRITERIA be reordered in the sequence: Recognizability, Precision, Distinction, Conciseness and Consistency. In this case the text could be written in a form such as:

Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
Precision – The title is sufficiently precise to unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.
Distinction – The title is sufficiently distinct to facilitate suitable disambiguation from other titles while retaining precision.
Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.
Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as Topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, listed in the box above.

I have incorporated the "Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English." text that had finished the description of "Naturalness" and tagged it onto "Recognizability" and have suggested a provisional text for "Distinction".

Please, if at any point in this text, I have used a word or phrase that doesn't meet your approval, please try to look beyond any of my potential linguistic failings so as to consider the actual content of the proposal. If there are any points of guidance that you would like to help me with please also consider use of my talk page.

Greg Kaye 10:26, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose – this has been explained multiple times. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Francis Schonken Where? How? Why? There is blatant contradiction in policy and misrepresentation of content. The core of the encyclopedia is tainted with inaccuracy. Greg Kaye 18:14, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose "Distinction" seems to me to be essentially the same as "Precision". Other than to reinforce the proposer's preference for parenthetical disambiguation, I can't see what the proposal achieves. The existing text at WP:AT may need a few tweaks, but not a major overhaul. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:03, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Oppose, as the whole idea is highly confusing. Unpunctuated disambiguation, as in, not using any punctuation marks? Would "John Jeffrey Smith" be preferred over "John J. Smith" because the latter has a period? bd2412 T 19:44, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Oppose. The real world meaning of "natural" underlies the intention. Deviations from the real world meaning should be kepts in check, not abandonment of natural. Titles should be natural. If anything is glaringly wrong with the five criteria, it is precision, which lacks a non-circularly definition. The word "precise" should not occur in the definition of precision. As this is a top level policy page, a landing page for newcomers, the definition, at least in brief, should be entirely here, not cited from elsewhere. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:02, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Precision. Definition of

Old:

Precision – The title is sufficiently precise to unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.

New:

Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. See #Precision and disambiguation below.

Thanks Herostratus. I was just meaning to copy edit to remove the circularity in definition. Don't use "precise" to define precision, linking to a section that assumes an understanding of "precision". Removing the circularity reveals a "sufficiently unambiguously" double-adverb on "identify". The softness of sufficiently sort of negates the unambiguity of unambiguously, and in any case reads weird. One or both adverbs need to be removed or replaced. If "unambiguously" is to stay, "sufficiently" doesn't work. "Unambiguously" is unfortunately a related word to the nuanced wiki-term "disambiguate". I think "unambiguously" is a tad too strong. Some ambiguity is tolerated for some readers without too much grief. I do suggest that by dropping the word "unambiguously" the definition retains its meaning perfectly well. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:19, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Why then have M-185 (Michigan highway)? Why not settle for M-185?

I think that the issue of identification has to be given prominence over the mere technicalities of disambiguation. We are first and foremost an encyclopedia and an information provider. In favour of information we have "identifies". In favour of cataloguing and administration we have "unambiguously", "distinguishes", and "from other subjects". A more honest heading for this might be "Providing minimal information – ..." In comparison to Wikipedia, Britannica has a full and rich titling system and, I think that in our focus on brevity and dissection, we can forget our purpose in provision of information. Why settle for "sufficiently precise"? Why not aim for a level of precision befitting an encyclopedia ~~not a catalogue~~. Catalogues often give full description.

We should be about specifying content. Greg Kaye 10:05, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose in reference to a content on "precision" we now also lose the word "precise".

Greg Kaye 10:05, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

But it is illogical to use "precise" to define "precision". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:03, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Suggest small change

Precision – The title identifies the article's subject in a form that unambiguously distinguishes it from other subjects. See #Precision and disambiguation below.

This is based on the interpretation that we should be focused more on addition than division. As Peter coxhead mentioned, policy is about balance and I think that the proposed text better presents the two sides or the issue in the form "... identifies ... distinguishes ... Precision ... disambiguation ..." Greg Kaye 10:29, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

But precision is not about form. Form contributes to naturalness, maybe recognizability, but not precision. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:03, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

OK

Precision – The title identifies the article's subject so as to unambiguously distinguish it from other subjects. See #Precision and disambiguation below.

TY, you made a good point. Greg Kaye 07:25, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposed change in the Parenthetical disambiguation text

At the moment this reads:

Parenthetical disambiguation: If natural disambiguation is not possible, add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name

I suggest that this an read:

Parenthetical disambiguation: If an application of natural disambiguation will significantly remove the title from a [[WP:UCRN|commonly recognisable name]], add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name.

Wikipedia is full of titles that are removed from commonly recognisable forms of name and this is done in the name of WP:NATURAL. This is not natural.

Greg Kaye 19:16, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I think that goes a bit far, and would propose:

Parenthetical disambiguation: If natural disambiguation is not possible, or will make the name [[WP:UCRN|unrecognisable]], add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name.

Cheers! bd2412 T 19:35, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Not "unrecognizable". Recognizability is a continuum. Unrecognizable, to anyone, is an extremity. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:39, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree with SmokeyJoe. BD2412, do you not think that our focus should be to make titles as recognisable as practically possible? Greg Kaye 16:12, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

"As recognisable as practically possible" sounds like another extreme. Just short of the impractically possible. Well-recognizable to readers already passingly familiar with the topic, is more balanced. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:30, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I think that we should provide all manner of recognizable redirects. This goes back to the Arnold Schwarzenegger versus Arnold Schwarzenegger (American politician, actor, and athlete) question in the other discussion. For those purposes the title at the top of the page can be as concise as we want because the fact that the reader is seeing that title means that they have already found the page. bd2412 T 16:30, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

BD2412 as you should remember, that was not the question. However, in the discussion at WP:DISAM I am pleased to have made reference to the Britannica listing and titling of Arnold Schwarzenegger (American politician, actor, and athlete) as an example that another way of working is by provision of information. Another Britannica content presented related to "Queen (British rock group)". In contrast we impose (in the text of WP:AT we impose: "... For example, it would be inappropriate to title an article "Queen (rock band)", as Queen (band) is precise enough to distinguish the rock band from other uses of the term "Queen"." In effect we WP:ASSERT that the practice of Britannica is inappropriate. Quality of information, however, is a different issue to the, I think, Wikipedia fixation issue of disambiguation. Even on this it seems to me that we are failing. Greg Kaye 16:53, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

No, "if ... not possible" suffises. No reason to single out one of many principles why it would not be possible. Solution in search of a problem. Is there any example where the current wording would lead to "wrong" page names? This is dishing up the same non-issue (more wiggle space for unneeded parentical disambiguators) for the umptieth time if you ask me. Also "unrecognizable" has the problem pointed out by SmokeyJoe. --Francis Schonken (talk) 23:47, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Oppose If the most obvious title is already in use, why is "Natural title (something)" any more recognizable than some other variation on "Natural title"? Who searches for titles with parenthesized disambiguators? Sometimes they're necessary, but they should be a last resort. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:57, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Peter coxhead for the simple reason that we are renaming subjects. We move from names that are used and adopt names that aren't. Greg Kaye 16:05, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I have never understood why is there such opposition to parenthetical disambiguation. When "Recognizable and Natural name" is ambiguous - it frequently makes sense to disambiguate as "Recognizable and Natural name (something)". Such titles allow the reader to better search for the topic. Blueboar (talk) 15:07, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

@Blueboar: I'm certainly not arguing for no use of parenthetical disambiguation, but rather that no change to the existing wording is needed. If the proposed alternative to "Recognizable and natural name" is "Unusual and unnatural name", then parenthesized disambiguation is obviously better. If the proposed alternative includes all the words in the "Recognizable and natural name" with some more to disambiguate, then it is usually be better. Each case needs to be decided on its merits by consensus. Thus I prefer Persian cat to Persian (cat) since those for whom "Persian" immediately means a breed of cat rather than anything else are more likely to search for "Persian cat" than "Persian (cat)". Peter coxhead (talk) 15:25, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, Sure, the best title is often a matter of editorial preference. The thing to remember is that while you may prefer Persian cat over Persian (cat)... someone else may prefer it the other way. Personally, I don't see as it makes much difference one way or the other. Both seem to me to be equally natural, and equally searchable.

What I am more concerned about are attempts to turn personal preference ("I like parenthetical disambiguation" or "I don't like parenthetical disambiguation") into policy preference ("Wikipedia prefers parenthetical disambiguation" or "Wikipedia frowns on parenthetical disambiguation"). That's simply instruction creep. The Policy is (and should remain) that either form of disambiguation is fine, and that the determination of which to use is made on a case by case basis (by consensus). no more... no less. The policy should give editors the flexibility to choose whichever form of disambiguation they think best given the topic of the article. Blueboar (talk) 16:38, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be helpful to provide some specific examples of the kind of titles at issue. I believe GregKaye is talking about titles like John Derek Smith (which he has proposed to move to John Smith (molecular biologist)) and Graeme C.A. Wood (which he has proposed to move to Graeme Wood (journalist)), on the grounds that their middle names/initials, while serving to differ the title from other names, are obscure. In the latter case I have supported the move because "Graeme C.A. Wood" is so infrequently used that it seems unlikely that anyone would look for the subject under that name. That is a case where natural disambiguation is technically possible, but the resulting name is, for general purposes, unrecognizable. I'm sure there is some ground that can be reached between "will significantly remove" and "unrecognizable", but the current language would tend to require that we use natural disambiguation even where the the result, though technically correct, would indeed be unrecognizable. bd2412 T 16:00, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

What happens if you actually put "Graeme Wood" into the search box? Answer: you go to an article with a hatnote saying "For the Canadian journalist, see Graeme C.A. Wood." Why would it be better to have a hatnote saying "For the the Canadian journalist, see Graeme Wood (journalist)"? "Graeme C.A. Wood" and "Graeme Wood (journalist)" are equally unlikely to be entered into the search box. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:18, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

TY BD2412 I really should try to remember examples. Another example of an article currently dragged to WP:RM is Heinz (company) which is proposed to be named "Heinz Company". The company, at least up until a time when the name changes in line with its merger with Kraft, is "Heinz". Any student that wrote an essay presenting, from Wikipedia reference, that the name of the organisation was "Heinz Company" might be marked down for sloppiness and inaccuracy. If the student was then asked about the mistake, s/he might say that s/he got the information from Wikipedia. The truth would be that we had supplied inaccurate information. Sure "Heinz Company" is recognisable but this does not lessen inaccuracy of content. Minimum standards are not good enough. We have to get things right. Greg Kaye 16:30, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

In many cases... there is no "right" or "wrong"... As far as Policy goes... Both John Derek Smith and John Smith (molecular biologist)) are acceptable titles. Both Graeme C.A. Wood and Graeme Wood (journalist)) are acceptable titles. It's simply a matter of seeing if there is a consensus of individual editors' preferences. Blueboar (talk) 16:46, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar the Graeme C.A. Wood issue came to my attention after I had referenced a number of "Graham Wood" articles as well as his personal website and then, after checking content on Wikipedia, failed to recognise content on "Graham Wood". I then wrote to another editor saying "I appreciate your distillation of Graham Wood's arguments but I do not think that the comments of a lone political scientist from [[The Atlantic]] (who is not individually of sufficient note to have his own Wikipedia article) and has no credentials in Islamic studies should be given such high profile in comments on ...". Perhaps I should not blame Wikipedia for my failings. However I know that I would not have failed had "Graeme Wood" been presented in accordance with his commonly recognised name: "Graeme Wood". I don't agree that "Graeme C.A. Wood" is acceptable and would not agree with an idea that we should settle for acceptable. Greg Kaye 17:28, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Note that I am not arguing that Graeme C.A. Wood is better (or worse) than Graeme Wood (journalist) (I don't know enough about the topic to judge). What I am saying is that the decision isn't something we can mandate in policy. The reason it isn't is that, even if Graeme Wood (journalist) is the best title for that article... the exact opposite outcome may be better for some other article.

When it comes to writing policy on disambiguation, we need to be intentionally flexible ... deferring as many of the decisions to the article level. So, you can debate which is the best form of disambiguation for the Wood article all you want. As far as Policy goes, both titles are equally acceptable. Whether one is better than the other is subject specific and thus not something we can set in policy.

If you think the title of any specific should change... discuss the pros and cons with other editors, and see if you can gain consensus to change the title. If so... go ahead and change it. It's OK to change the title of an article if there is consensus to do so. There is no need to change the policy to do this. Disambiguation isn't a one-size-fits-all sort of thing. Blueboar (talk) 20:21, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar current "guidelines" are in no way flexible and has added suggestion. The shortcuts are: "WP:NATURAL", "WP:NATURALDIS", "WP:COMMADIS" and "WP:NATDAB" with no mention of parenthesis. Then the content dictates:

Parenthetical disambiguation: If natural disambiguation is not possible, add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name

The only condition offered is "If natural disambiguation is not possible. In the practice of many Wikipedia naturalists, in the case of "Graeme Wood", this will result in a disambiguation as "Graeme C.A. Wood". It happens a lot. Please do some research on personal name titles with middle names. Honestly I doubt that it will take long to find a misnamed article.

I see nothing natural here if the result can be reduced recognisability and think that it would be beneficial if recognisability was a core issue in the parenthesis text. I have suggested:

Parenthetical disambiguation: If an application of natural disambiguation will significantly remove the title from a commonly recognisable name, add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name.

WP:PARENTHESIS (currently a red link) could also be added to the shortcuts. Greg Kaye 00:56, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Meh... a lot of our guidelines are rife with silly instruction creep, and could definitely use some cleaning. The important thing is that our Policy is more flexible than what the guidelines indicate. For one thing... the policy understands that there are exceptions to almost every generalized "rule". Blueboar (talk) 02:28, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar While your "meh" indicates that you are not interested and, while I agree with the view of "silly instruction", I don't fully agree with a holding to a view "that our Policy is more flexible than what the guidelines indicate". If the intention of policy is to allow flexibility why not word guideline in a way that facilitates that flexibility or is, at least, supportive of other policies? A fundamental titling policy is that Wikipedia use uses recognisable names (which I think should be extended to describe recognisable titles) and, in regard to names we fairly use common use in respected sources as a major reference.

All I have done is to propose a text that adds a direct support for WP:UCRN so as to provide a connection from WP:NATURAL / WP:PARENTHESIS. I also think that a good example will be set in development of the encyclopaedia if we can develop coherent guideline contents that don't work against each other. At present I have seen no objection to the suggested text. Greg Kaye 07:45, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

A fundamental titling policy is that Wikipedia uses recognisable names – no, the fundamental titling policy is that editors reach consensus based on five principles, which need to be balanced against one another. Precision and consistency matter too. If the proposed change was really intended to clarify that editors need to reach a consensus on article titles based on careful consideration of the whole of AT, then I would support it. But it reads as yet another attempt to prioritize recognizability above the others, which I can't support. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:18, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Yup, it's a balancing act... although I would say that (as a very broad generalization) Recognizability is usually given a bit more weight in one-on-one comparisons with any of the other five. However, the goal is to achieve as many of the five as possible. As the policy states... it may be necessary to down-play any of the five in order to better achieve more of the others. And that means we can (and do) sometimes down-play Recognizability. Sure... we don't do it all that often... but we certainly have done so. Blueboar (talk) 13:18, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Peter coxhead I quite agree with you: "the fundamental titling policy is that editors reach consensus based on five principles, which need to be balanced against one another" and this fits perfectly with what I said: "A fundamental titling policy is that Wikipedia uses recognisable names." At present at WP:RM we have now to field a thread on Robert Smith (philanthropist) → Robert Hilton Smith even though he is not, to any extent related to recognisability, known by his full name. Editors are working hard to guard from addition of unencyclopaedic content and all I ask, please give us some help. The policy shortcuts put great emphasis on natural and then indicates that parenthesis should only be used if parenthesis is impossible. There is a startling lack of balance here. In effect one way of working is prescribed. We are dictated to that one option should be used if at all possible. Its extreme wording. It isn't balanced. Greg Kaye 22:18, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

No, you don't agree with me since you again use the word "fundamental" in A fundamental titling policy is that Wikipedia uses recognisable names. I know from experience that such language misleads editors into over-prioritizing recognizability. Recognizability is important, but so are the other four prinples, particularly precision and consistency. None are, by themselves, "fundamental". Peter coxhead (talk) 08:37, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Just to quibble... I would say all five (including Recognizability) are "fundamental". Whether one is more important than the others is a question that can only be answered on an article by article basis. That's why we have the RM process... to discuss exactly this sort of question on an article by article basis. Blueboar (talk) 11:50, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Have to agree with Peter coxhead here. The use of the word "fundamental" typically is associated with a dogged approach to something, with neglect of other factors, and belongs on some list of WP:Words to avoid. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:55, 6 April 2015 (UTC) Hah! That link was bluelinked, and even includes reference to "fundamental" or its variations. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:57, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

In choosing titles we are always weighing our choices against other article titles about which we are concerned vis-a-vis differentiation and possible confusion. Each instance calls for appropriate measures to guide the reader to their intended article. I prefer language in our guidelines that allows for the unanticipated. I think the wording presently in place suggests the aims of deciding between "natural disambiguation" and disambiguation by means of parentheses. We don't have to nail down every detail in such guidelines because we can't anticipate every situation that may arise. The language in place suffices to articulate our aims and the tools available to us to help the reader. Editors that understand the requirements of a well-chosen title as well as the importance of redirects will take it from there. We have to trust in the good sense of editors in situations that can vary widely. Bus stop (talk) 12:29, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Hear, hear. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:59, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Peter coxhead please don't tell me what I do or don't agree with. In regular discussions at WP:RM a great many policies are, in one way or another, envoked in relation to titling, far more than just 5. I am honestly trying to find common ground with you and communicate. I consistently ping you in, I hope, demonstration of a genuine desire to communicate. Within all the policies that are used to in discussion of article titles there is nothing incorrect in what I said.

(My text in some more context was. "If the intention of policy is to allow flexibility why not word guideline in a way that facilitates that flexibility or is, at least, supportive of other policies? A fundamental titling policy is that Wikipedia use uses recognisable names (which I think should be extended to describe recognisable titles) and, in regard to names we fairly use common use in respected sources as a major reference." In line with this there is nothing wrong in what you said, "the fundamental titling policy is that editors reach consensus based on five principles, which need to be balanced against one another").

However, if we are going to be pedantic, I would argue that the fundamental titling policy is found in the second sentence of WP:AT which states the apparent intention that "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles." It really should be as simple as that. There are two issues presented here and yet, within a considerable amount of time that I have spent at WP:RM, it seems to me that editors can disregard the former issue while in more single minded pursuit of the latter. Please can we italicise (or perhaps embolden) the "and" so as to read: "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles."

Of all the many Wikipedia policies that may affect titling yes there are five mentioned at WP:CRITERIA and, in sequence, they are: Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness and Consistency. Tell me if this is wrong but some time ago in discussion when I was arguing a case on titling partly on the basis on the issue of consistency, I was told that consistency was the least prioritised of the five and that above mentioned issues had more precedence.

In regard to the five I honestly think that the presentation of Naturalness at WP:CRITERIA and the content of WP:NATURAL further down the text is really messed up. At WP:CRITERIA the text reads: "Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English." Forgive me if I am wrong but this seems to me to be pretty much a rewording of the previous text, "Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize." Neither of these seem to me to have much relation to the text at WP:NATURAL. Please also note that the section of text with the shortcut WP:NATURAL comes after the section WP:PRECISE. Despite the content describing,"Naturalness" as supposedly relating to "The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for" making use of "Such titles (that) usually convey what the subject is actually called in English" the actual text of WP:NATURAL basically says that editors can use a title that is: "... not as commonly" used "as the preferred-but-ambiguous title". Why? For what purpose? Admittedly, there may be reasons why this might be done but, in most cases, isn't it better that we just "call a spade a spade". Up until recently the text regarding parenthesis read so as to indicate that so called "natural disambiguation" should be used (over and above parenthesis based clarification) if (at all) possible and this, I think, is nuts. Why permit a culture of second best?

I have just noticed an edit to the text by :Francis Schonken (with edit summary: : WP:BOLD, inspired by current discussion at WT:AT#Propose change in Parenthetical disambiguation text). The part of the edit that relates to the specific text in question now reads (but starting with a #hash):

Parenthetical disambiguation, i.e. adding a disambiguating term in parentheses after the ambiguous name: Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title.

As far as I am concerned this is a vast improvement. We have to aim for the optimum. We can't settle or sometimes aim for second best.

Ping also: Blueboar, Bus stop, SmokeyJoe to give notification of Francis' change. Greg Kaye 18:17, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

@GregKaye: no offence was intended; please read my statement No, you don't agree with me as "I don't agree with you", at least so long as you use the word "fundamental". Peter coxhead (talk) 18:48, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Peter coxhead All I am doing is stating the case that we have accurate core article titles that are, as best as reasonably possible, recognisable. No I didn't even go that far. I hope that there is no core disagreement here. A foundational titling policy is that Wikipedia uses recognisable names. Same base meaning, different word Greg Kaye 19:09, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Please try to use simple words as far as possible. Read WP:Words to avoid. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:45, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe while not wanting to derail this thread further I would like to add comment and recognition to I think one of your fair comments in a similarly themed thread at WT:Disambiguation. One editor had asserted to say, "that our disambiguation pages be as concisely written as possible" and you, I think, fairly said, "Disagree with "as concisely written as possible". Sounds like fanaticism." In the context I think this was fair and, remarkably, the editor seemed to me to agree. However I think that there is still a a world of difference between, say, labelling an editor as, for instance, a dogmatist on some issue and describing the top mentioned policy issue at WP:AT as "A fundamental titling policy". Recognisability is: a fundamental titling policy. Having my own freedom of speech to express myself with civil words should be one of my Fundamental rights in cordial Wikipedia discussion as per the 100+ articles beginning with "Fundamental ..".

I hope that more can be done in regard to issues that I have mentioned and, for instance, the perceived disjoint between the presentation of naturalness and the content of WP:NATURAL.

I think that if the policy page were to use the word "fundamental", it would confuse issues more than help them. I can see what you mean, but I don't agree with using the word. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:17, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

My proposal is simply to say:

Parenthetical disambiguation: If an application of natural disambiguation will significantly remove the title from a [[WP:UCRN|commonly recognisable name]], add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name.

This refrains from presenting an if "at all possible type of view" of non comma based and non parenthesis based topic disambiguation/clarification. Greg Kaye 09:54, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Common name for electronic sports players (gamers)

There has been a recent shift toward moving professional esports players name to their "gamer tag". I believe this to be both inefficient and improper. A guideline needs to be established so that all esports players should be listed under common birth name for two primary reasons:

Players can change their gamer tags
Players may choose inappropriate tags or name which they may regret.

The second issue is same names for esports players should be label (electronic sports player) instead of (professional gamer) as the latter can refer to gambling as well. Valoem ^talk ^contrib 20:30, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't see a need for a new guideline (here at least), but I've been watching the same page moves, and I'm not sure how I feel about them. --Izno (talk) 21:12, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

@Izno: So your saying gamers should default to alias not birth name? There is no guideline for gamers right now so I am not sure what your saying here. Valoem ^talk ^contrib 21:20, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

You're looking for WP:COMMONNAME. "Although official, scientific, birth, original, or trademarked names are often used for article titles, the term or name most typically used in reliable sources is generally preferred." (emphasis mine). The only question that needs to be asked to determine the title of Esports BLPs is "what are they most commonly called in reliable sources?". ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 22:17, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

They go by both it is an even split a guideline should default to one. Valoem ^talk ^contrib 05:26, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

When they're equally recognizable, use either one, or look at other WP:CRITERIA. No need for a special gamer convention. Dicklyon (talk) 05:45, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree, I don't see anything that would make esport players different enough to make a separate criteria necessary.--67.68.161.242 (talk) 21:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

The reason why we have Manuel of Style is to prevent edit warring nothing should go "either way" one set style or format needs to take precedence. For example right now these articles, Fatal1ty, Kevin Nanney, Adam Lindgren, Hungrybox are all under their gamer tags. I believe gamers should be under birth common name. If it can go either way, I should just move it, which is why we need to establish precedence. Valoem ^talk ^contrib 04:53, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm in support of using real names for players. In addition to being (more) robust to changes in adopted alias, there has been a gradual shift in esports coverage to refer to real names except during the actual casting of events. Axem Titanium (talk) 20:25, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm the editor that's been making the page moves in question, and the rationale I'm following is WP:COMMONNAME, specifically the phrase "the term or name most typically used in reliable sources". Pulling up a random news article about LoL [11] it seems like what journalists often do is they will introduce a player with (first) "nickname" (last), and in the rest of the article only use the nickname to refer to the player. I'm inclined to say that because of this the common name would be the player tag. Does anybody know what South Korean media does with respect to player tags vs. real names? It might be helpful to know this seeing as eSports is more mainstream there.--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 23:35, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Because electronic sport is still young in development, the precedence is still hazy. South Korean media does in fact use birth name. I am seeing sources for SSBM players using both. Though a player maybe more well known by their tags, general written sources seems to be moving towards real names. Gamer tag can constantly change, real birth name is both more professional and cleaner. Valoem ^talk ^contrib 23:46, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think concerns such as professionalism and the fact that a person may regret their name are relevant to Wikipedia titles; it's supposed to reflect reality, even if you don't like exactly as it is. Besides, if a player wanted to become more professional, they could just start entering tournaments using their real names. On another node, in the uncommon event that a player their handle during the career, the WP page can just be changed to accommodate this. Maybe esports player titles should be just decided on a case by case basis.--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 22:43, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Prisencolinensinainciusol I don't think we should evaluate on a case by case basis. We should establish a precedence going forward so that a universal guideline is established. When we look at sports athletes real name is preferred. In terms of Smash players all sources says "Real name" also known by alias. We should switch this it defines the legitmacy of esports. Valoem ^talk ^contrib 04:17, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

As I mentioned in User talk:Prisencolinensinainciusol#Official Names → Nickname, I disagree with using the game tag, too. But I don't think that guideline is necessary, yet. Thanks. --Idh0854 (talk) 11:51, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Copy-edit Naturalness

The Naturalness criterion definition is a bit awkward, ironically. I think it needs a copy-edit. The meaning and intent is fine. The reference to what unknown people are likely to do is a bit too far into clairvoyance, and is not the heart of the matter. What is used in other articles, and in good sources, is more the point, and most useful to editors creating articles on new, possibly obscure, subjects.

Old text:

Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.

Proposed:

Naturalness – The title is in a form as used and wiki-linked in other articles, and corresponds to what the subject is called in reputable English language sources.

Why "reputable" not "reliable"? Because in looking for usage, it is the existence of usage being sought. "Is it reliable that in source X the usage is Y" is not so interesting. More interesting is "Is source X a reputable source"? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:20, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe is it possible that a term other than "Naturalness" ''(presented in bold in the project page text) can be used or that this criterion be scraped altogether? I think that the current form works, in effect, as promotion for "Natural disambiguation" which is just one of three options. Up to now I really didn't see any point to this at all and just saw naturalness as a reiteration of recognisability in advocacy for natural disambiguation. Your definition is greatly helpful in regard to an understanding of the topic which seems to me to be about Link friendliness. However I think that, compared to the the criteria value of aiming for of recognisable, precise, concise and consistently presented content, a desire to change encyclopedic titles so as to fit into weblink format is of little, no or even negative value. Greg Kaye 09:33, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

The thing is... nine times out of ten, the most Natural title will also be the most Recognizable title. Blueboar (talk) 11:31, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar how do you define naturalness? Greg Kaye 17:43, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I define Naturalness the way it is defined in this policy... "The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English." Blueboar (talk) 18:39, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Exactly. And the "naturally use to link to" bit is important. No one creates a plain (i.e. unpiped) link to a title with parenthetical disambiguation, but they can and do if a sufficiently natural disambiguation can be found. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:00, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

The problem with "readers are likely to look or search for" is that it is not definition but supposition in every case. That doesn't mean it is not important. Maybe it should go in a second sentence, following the definition. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:08, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

OPPOSE – WP:NATURALNESS is one of the most important WP:AT criteria, and this change destroys it. I believe that the proposer is mixing up WP:NATURALNESS with WP:NATURAL. The two are not the same. RGloucester — ☎ 20:59, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

If that is right, then it is hopeless confusing. Policy needs to be readable at face value. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:10, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I think it is not right. The two are slightly different consequences in different circumstances of the same concept. Natural titling. Natural disambiguation. I propose that the boxed shortcut advertisement "WP:NATURAL" should be removed, and replaced at the top with "WP:NATDAB". Per Wikipedia:Shortcut#Link_boxes, one of the others should go too, I suggest removing "WP:NATURALDIS" as long and redundant to NATDAB. Note that removing excessive shortcut advertisements from linkboxes does not mean deletion of any redirect, or anything anywhere turning red. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:26, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

It is right. WP:NATURALNESS is an AT criteria that refers to using titles that are natural to the reader. In other words, it prefers the like of "car" to "automobile", as "car" is the more natural way one might talk about such a vehicle. As another example, it is more likely that a user will search for "United Kingdom" than "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", &c., &c. WP:NATURAL is not an AT criteria. It is guidance about disambiguation. That is to say, there are two entities called "United Kingdom". There is the historical United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the current United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In both cases, "United Kingdom" is likely the designation that has the most WP:NATURALNESS. However, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC specifies that we should choose one as a primary topic. We've chosen the modern entity, for obvious reasons. Having done so, we've had to decide how to disambiguate the other "United Kingdom". There are two possible ways. One is United Kingdom (1801–1922), and another is United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This is where WP:NATURAL comes into play. Given the choice between parenthetical and WP:NATURAL disambiguation, the policy says that natural disambiguation is preferred, even though the parenthetical is shorter. As such, we've chosen the longer but more natural "UKGBI". I strongly oppose changing the shortcuts, as doing so would result in a total mess in discussions across the encylopaedia, confusing people left and right. RGloucester — ☎ 21:45, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Your view reads to me as peculiar, but not to the point of being "wrong". However, you are wrong about removal of the excess shortcut advertisements from the policy pages causing mess. The past uses of WP:NATURAL links will be completely unchanged, the shortcut will remain and still work. It seems as if you and many think that for a redirect to work there needs to be bold blue occurrence of the shortcut in the link box. I think you confuse WP:ANCHOR with advertised shortcuts in the link box. The advertised shortcuts encourage future use, and have no benefit to past use, unless maybe you are thinking that the jargon needs continual re-emphasis, which if true is a reason in itself to do away with it. Jargon hurts accessibility. Would you mind re-reading Wikipedia:Shortcut#Link_boxes? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:23, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I have always thought the SCs in this case were queer, but I do not think that changing them now would help. I see that such a change in the usual terminology used in RMs and the like will only cause confusion. "WP:NATURAL" is the most common way to refer to that piece of the policy. RGloucester — ☎ 23:29, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

RGloucester the examples that you give are irrelevant, because, as has been mentioned before, "Naturalness" covers much the same if not exactly the same ground as the previously mentioned "Recognisability".

Consider the Ngrams for "car" and "automobile" and for

"United Kingdom" and "United Kingdom of Great Britain .."

There is nothing that you have mentioned that isn't covered by "Recognisability".

Then we can take a closer look at the "Naturalness" text. The first bit of this text says: "The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for...". This is nothing more than the flip side of "Recognisability". Commonly recognised names will get used.

The last bit of the text says "Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English." This is just another mention of the recognisability content but not in its expected place.

Why not just present "Recognisability" and move on? The only unique piece of the content is that "The title is one ... that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles". This is the one unique part of the text and the only part that makes use reference to nature.

And what does this text say? The content of the text marked as naturalness is saying that the form that links may take in other articles may change the form that the title of an article may take at the top of the main page. Why, to any extent, compromise the presentation of an article title for the sake of links? Why?

The text at "Use commonly recognizable names" clearly equates "most commonly used" with "most recognizable and ... most natural".

In potential contrast to recocognisability the text at "Naturalness" suggests that "The title is one ... that editors would ... (want to) use to link to the article from other articles". How much change from a title that might have otherwise been chosen more purely on the grounds of recognisability would there be here??? Please, let's see some examples. I'd like to see any evidence that this content is of any value what-so-ever.

Problems get worse when we consider the dubiously named: "Natural disambiguation". This instructs with regard to making the choice of: "... an alternative name ... not as commonly (used) as the preferred-but-ambiguous title.". It directs editors to use not as commonly used (and thus not as commonly recognised) titles. This, again, is unnatural.

I honestly cannot see any value in this text, dressed up, as it is, as "Naturalness". As mentioned I also see a problem in that its presence (largely as "Recognisability but under a different title) essentially acts as a promotion to advocate the so called "Natural disambiguation" which, I hope that I have shown, may not be natural at all.

Please explain what value you see in the content with the questionable title "Naturalness"

Greg Kaye 07:12, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose change I recognise the names in s:DNB such as s:DNB:Abbot, Maurice but that is not the natural order which is Maurice Abbot. In the early days Wikipedia could have followed the lead of many encyclopaedias and led with surname followed by a comma and then given names, but chose to use the natural ordering because it works better with links between articles, and also it matches simple searches (something that was more important 15 years ago than now -- although still useful when looking for a precise string). -- PBS (talk) 10:15, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

PBS, I take everything you write very seriously. This time I have too much trouble understanding. Is you oppose addressing the Proposed versus the Old text? Do you read the proposed text as discouraging natural order? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:53, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

You flatter me as most say they have difficulty following my missing letters and bad punctuation. But back the the issue: The format used in many tertiary (History of Parliament, Britannica etc) and some primary sources (eg a telephone books) all of them "reputable English language sources", use surname, given names, for biographies, so I think version two does not convey the same meaning as version one. The second version hangs by a thread to natural order by arguing that the first usage on a page ought to be a full name, but in both secondary sources and for most of a Wikipedia page, surname is more likely to be used without first names. I think that the first versions make it clear what is mean by naturalness in Wikipedia article titles. -- PBS (talk) 14:04, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

PBS Thank you for your comment and I think that you have gone some way in addressing the topic of the query that I posed to RGloucester , namely: "Please explain what value you see in the content with the questionable title "Naturalness""

However, even in light of content presented I still view that it is a criteria of lesser importance - certainly having less importance than the criteria: WP:Precision.

The way I read it is that, following recognisability, we have three criteria related to style (Naturalness, Consistency and Conciseness) and one (Precision) related to content.

I have already mentioned the RM proposal for Heinz (company) → Heinz Company. Theoretically this move could have gone through on according to the current prioritisation of criteria. "Heinz Company" is certainly recognisable as the company "Heinz". The title "Heinz Company" is also neatly and "naturally" presented. Then there comes the comparatively small matter that the name is not precise. Sure the name is not precise. Sure the company is not actually called "Heinz Company" but, as far as an editor following this sequence of prioritisation may be concerned, what does it matter? The title "Heinz Company" is written is written according to the natural (to borrow a word used later on this page) formula promoted by Wikipedia and a precision of the content is not presented as being as important.

In regard to biography related issue of presenting first names first, this is covered in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) and, in the vast majority of cases, by WP:UCRN / Recognisability. As mentioned, I also do not see that a preferred format of links within other articles should dictate or influence a style of presentation of an actual content of an article title. Again this, to me, is placing style before content.

As a personal example I had considered making use of a User name that presented my last name prior to my initials as, for some reason, I thought that there was something humorous in presenting KayeGB. Surely, if another person had done that then the only thing surely that would have any relevance would be the Recognisability of the name. There surely should be no other issue. Greg Kaye 09:03, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Singular vs. plural

The page says for WP:SINGULAR

Article titles are generally singular in form, e.g. Horse, not Horses.

Exceptions include nouns that are always in a plural form in English (e.g. scissors or trousers)

and the names of classes of objects (e.g. Arabic numerals or Bantu languages).

The first line and the third line contradict each other: Horse is a class - the class of all horses. Lingufil (talk) 22:22, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

However, the article at Horse is not about the class of all horses, it's about a subspecies, and begins The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. The English name of a taxon is not a good example of a singular rather than a plural title, I think. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:19, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

The intro reads: "The horse (Equus ferus caballus)" - and the page is about the class of all "Equus ferus caballus". "Horse" here is used to refer to "Equus ferus caballus". That means the page is about all horses in the sense of the word Horse in the article intro. Bear is singular too, so is Car. Both are classes of objects. Lingufil (talk) 15:09, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Propose prioritising consistency over conciseness

If there was a choice between making a title more consistent with the format of other titles or making the title more concise, I think, for the sake of the navigability of the encyclopedia, consistency should win. The adoption of consensus agreed conventions should be regarded as more important than a potentially detrimental chopping down of text.

The result of a change would be:

...
Precision –...
Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as Topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, listed in the box above.
Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects.

When there may be situations in which useful explanatory information may possibly be given, I do not see the point of emphasising conciseness

The criteria known as "Naturalness" has been presented as related to adapting article titles so that they can fit the format of weblinks. While I personally think that this approach is destructive in regard to a provision of information, I think that the working towards consistency in the formats in which titles are presented will, in many cases, be advantageous. Greg Kaye 10:57, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose... You seem to want an formulaic approach to determining the best title. That doesn't work. The ideal is that we achieve all five goals with the same title. When this is not possible, we should strive to achieve as many of the five goals as possible. It should never come down to a dualistic choice between consistency and conciseness... because you also have to think about how best achieve the other three goals. So... if you are considering two potential titles, one more concise and one more consistent... ask "which of these two will be the most Recognizable, Natural and Precise"? That's the sort of thought process we have to do through. Blueboar (talk) 11:59, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar What formulaic approach? Please reply directly and justify comments. I don't know how much time you spend fielding requests at WP:RM but there are regularly situations where regularly situations in which titles within which erroneous English or non common contents are issues. Two recent examples of the first problem are Kurmanji Kurdish and Korean American and my questions are: "Kurmanji Kurdish what?" "Korean American what?" No one else has titles like this. It is particular to Wikipedia that our, I think, obsession with brevity produces a shamefully illiterate output. Then, there are the many biographic articles whose titles are written inclusive of middle names, even if they may never have (for instance) published under a full name or were rarely if ever described by their middle name during their life time. In other media I think that it is possible that they may only have been given a secondary reference to their middle name in an obituary but, when reference may take work to uncover, this may be good enough for the disambiguators. Anything to get away from parenthesis. I see no reason for you to make your interpretation of me being formulaic and ask you to please strike your comment. Greg Kaye 18:58, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar Your expression that "The ideal is that we achieve all five goals with the same title" is very formulaic. Greg Kaye 10:32, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Let's consider the implications of this. We have an article titled Confessions on a Dance Floor, which is the only thing in the encyclopedia by that name. However, it happens to be an album, by Madonna. Some other Madonna albums are not the only thing by that name, and must be qualified by the disambiguator, "(album)", such as MDNA (album). Since we can't move that album to an undisambuiguated "MDNA", to be consistent, we would then need to move Confessions on a Dance Floor to Confessions on a Dance Floor (album). But wait, there's more! Not all Madonna albums are the only album by that name. For example, there is Music (Madonna album). Since we can't move that title to "Music" or to "Music (album)", to be consistent, we would then need to move Confessions on a Dance Floor to Confessions on a Dance Floor (Madonna album). But wait, there's more! "Madonna" itself is an ambiguous term. The article on the creator of these albums is actually titled Madonna (entertainer). The corresponding category is even Category:Madonna (entertainer) albums. Therefore, to be completely consistent, we would need to move Confessions on a Dance Floor to Confessions on a Dance Floor (Madonna (entertainer) album), and would similarly need to move MDNA (album) to MDNA (Madonna (entertainer) album), Ray of Light to Ray of Light (Madonna (entertainer) album), and Pre-Madonna to Pre-Madonna (Madonna (entertainer) album). Therefore, oppose. bd2412 T 13:30, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Yup. OK... the example BD gives us is a bit far fetched, but it illustrates a valid point never the less. Consistency is helpful and even desirable... but (like any of the goals) it can be taken to unhelpful extremes. For every example where we would all agree that we should favor consistency, we can come up with examples where we probably would agree that we shouldn't. Finding the best title for an article is more an art than a science. Blueboar (talk) 18:56, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

They are not so much far fetch as ludicrous. PLEASE remember that we have two more fundamental/foundational policies immediately presented in WP:AT in the form of Recognisability and Precision. Clearly editors would not generate any thing like of bd2412's scaremongering creations. Editors here have rightly said time and again that all policies need to work together in suitable balance gain beneficial results. Why is it that even when a slight change is mentioned, it is met with absurdity? We have content in Wikipedia that fails basic standards of English and which present rarely used presentations mainly, I believe, because the main thing we are trained to do is to pare content down in a pursuit of brevity.

So much for trying to present something positively. What I should have simply say is that our regular focus on conciseness should, I think, be reigned back. I did not say that consistency should be our one and only policy. I am not presenting a formula. Greg Kaye 19:39, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

These are not ludicrous at all. They are the only way that we could make these titles entirely consistent, if we made consistency the paramount concern. Of course, we don't because we also look to make titles concise, and in these cases, obviously conciseness trumps an unnecessary consistency. bd2412 T 19:50, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

They are slightly ludicrous. Request dropping consensus finding badwords such as "fundamental", "trumps" and "unnecessary". None of this is fundamental. No criteria trumps any other. Nearly nothing is truly necessary. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:33, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Greg, whilst I have a lot of sympathy for the reason you are proposing what you do, I find myself also in agreement with those that are opposing your propositions. I would be happy with "A good Wikipedia article title has the five following characteristics" to be made bold and underlined, together, hopefully, with the word, "all" inserted before the word "five." Of course we still wouldn't be able to make editors understand that all five should be read in conjunction. --Richhoncho (talk) 20:00, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Richhoncho I would appreciate it if you can also take a look at some of the content on naturalness some of which has been added recently. My argument here is that the contents of naturalness and conciseness are largely pointless and may, on occasion actually work against the purpose of an encyclopedia. Most organisations, when they are developing a service such as the provision of information, focus on issues such as user friendliness. Coming into the sphere of written information, words that could be used are readability, intelligibility and perhaps concepts like digestibility may even get mention and all these may be used in addition to important Wikipedia terminologies such as Recognisability, Precision and Consistency. Concepts such as brevity may get passing mention but this type of consideration is most often reserved for sections of the information community that develop emergency and other signage. Greg Kaye 07:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Greg, At a recent RM an editor wrote, "Benefit to readers is irrelevant in title decisions, as no title benefits readers more than any other title. The title of this article could be a meaningless computer generated random string and it would be of no less benefit to readers than the current or proposed title - because they are all of equal benefit: zero" A further editor makes a case above not to have the artists' name against their work. In the real world we would say, ...."Madonna's Confessions on the Dance Floor" but Confessions on the Dance Floor (Madonna album) is banned by the must-be-concise warriors. The guidelines, as they are, are not bad, it's some editors that have elevated one guideline above all others irrespective of any other guideline, policy, opinion etc etc. That's the problem that needs sorting, and the incessant moving of articles and RMs to prove a point. What's wrong with title stability? Which is why, for my money, Confessions... can and should stay where it is at the moment. Cheers. --Richhoncho (talk) 11:24, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree that concision has been overweighted against consistency. Especially with place names. Less so biography titles. Disagree with bd2412 if he is arguing that the slippery slope argument is reason to place concision over consistency. The two should be considered balancing each other. His suggestion that more weight to consistency would mean multiple disambiguators and even nested disambiguation is nonsense because Wikipedia titles do not consistently do that. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:16, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
- The reason Wikipedia titles do not consistently do that is that we use the WP:SHORTFORM where possible. bd2412 T 22:10, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
  - That is incorrectly put. The essay Wikipedia:Consistency_in_article_titles#Use_shorter_forms_for_unambiguous_subtopic_names aka WP:SHORTFORM describes practice, and makes no rationale let alone is the basis for the practice. Wikipedia does it because of widespread support for WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Or because editors value concise titles highly for common topics. If consistency were more emphasized, there would be no case based on consistency to move to multiply disambiguated titles. Especially where violating both NATURAL and CONCISE. "We use the the WP:SHORTFORM where possible" is an overstatement. Some influential editors, whether through persuasion or their own high edit rate, have widely imposed SHORTFORM, where PRIMARYTOPIC is met, but not "where possible". Extending the practice to "where possible", the ambition of titling minimalists, is not the status quo. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:14, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Oppose. This seems to be an end run around several recent RMs where pages where moved to (or kept at) shorter titles per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. See Talk:Shape of My Heart, for example. Calidum ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 21:40, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe I would be interested to hear of examples regarding place names where this has been a problem. I will disagree with you and say that it is also a problem with Biography. I recently had a problem when I failed to find the article Graeme Wood (journalist) which I don't think would have happened if it hadn't been named Graeme C.A. Wood in contradiction to WP:UCRN but with supposed support from concise. Other article moves currently are Mary Luana Williams → Mary Williams (social activist), John Gibson Smith → John G. Smith (poet) and John Lucian Smith → John L. Smith (U.S. Marines Corps pilot). (Please don't get take, as seems customary on this page, the wrong idea from this last title. My last RM was to request the moves of three ".. (application)" titles to ".. (app)" destinations). However, even though clear evidence had been presented to show that the use of Lucian was not supported, as I had presented US as a debatable infringement of the inconsistently applied ENGVAR policy, instead of debating the reaction was simply to oppose. Then the option was proposed to use ".. (a-vi-a-tor)" as a disambiguator even though ".. pi-lot)" had already been mentioned and was a lot more WP:PRECISE than aviator which also covers things like ballooning. Similarly ".. (fly-ing ace)" was not proposed which may be another sign that editors had not bothered to check categories. I agree with Calidum that this request does come in the midst of ongoing requests.

I for one cannot see the problem with John L. Smith (U.S. Marines Corps pilot). I am quite happy to shorten disambiguation in cases where it will increase clarity but this title is precise with nothing unintelligible in the content. Whatever the decision regarding this or other title, I don't think that we should push concise for the sake of concise.

The big problem for me is to work out how we can have developed contents like "Mary Luana Williams", "John Gibson Smith" and "John Lucian Smith" in the first place.

Can someone please explain why we have concise? Is it for technical reasons or something else? Greg Kaye 09:14, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Please also see Wikipedia:List of Johns whose Britannica article titles contain broad description. This content that I recently developed I hope will demonstrate the extent to which another encyclopedia may apply description in its titling. Greg Kaye 09:19, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg, you ask why we have concise as one of our goals? The rational is explained in the policy (see the Rhode Island example), but to put it in other words... we want titles that are concise in order to not have titles that are overly long and complex. To give an extreme example.. we have an article entitled: Supreme Council, Scottish Rite (Southern Jurisdiction, USA)... at first glance this does not appear to be an example of a concise title - until you look at the alternative. If we used the "official" name of the subject, the title would be: The Supreme Council (Mother Council of the World) of the Inspectors General Knights Commander of the House of the Temple of Solomon of the Thirty-third Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America. See what I mean? Blueboar (talk) 12:26, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg, what in your view are the shortcomings of the current system? (That is a neutral question—I find the naming system to be a complex problem.) The "primary name" principle, whatever it was called, was just appalling as an imposed "system". Tony (talk) 12:44, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar, TONY, One problem is that we aim for concise titles rather than titles with optimal length in regard to a range of criteria. This is compounded, I think, with a fixation on disambiguation (the removal of ambiguity) rather than the provision of description. Blueboar, no I do not see what you mean. As far as I am concerned WP:UCRN takes and as far, as I understand, has always taken precedence over WP:OFFICIAL. A change or removal of emphasis on WP:CONCISE (even if it were not to be replaced by a guideline, say, on optimal title length) would not leave us in a vacuum. In an earlier paragraph you assertively told me, "You seem to want an formulaic approach to determining the best title." The formulaic thing is WP:CONCISE as it consistently regards the relevance of "brevity" in regard to a provision of "sufficient information". A title should be both short enough and long enough to achieve an optimal result and, in some cases, I think that a provision of some non specified level of "sufficient information" may not, in some cases, be sufficient to achieve an optimal result. The only issues that I think are relevant are precision in relation to subject content and a combination of recognisability, readability and digestibility. To a limited extent I think that consistency of title format may help in some circumstances. An encouragement of brevity from sufficiency of information does not help. Contrary to the views of the lengthily named Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, less is not always more. Greg Kaye 12:22, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

In the examples that I give (the Rhode Island example and the Scottish Rite example)... both of the potential titles are actually Official Names for the subjects... so WP:OFFICIAL is not an issue. Nor is there ambiguity involved with either example. It's simply a case of which potential title is more concise. What you seem to be complaining about is the fact that some editors misunderstand the goal of concisesness... taking it to extremes. When choosing between Graeme Wood (journalist) and Graeme C.A. Wood the goal of Conciseness isn't really a factor... as both titles are reasonably concise. I would also say that both are equally precise. That means that we have to look at the other three goals to determine which is the best title. Is one significantly more recognizable? Is one significantly more natural? Are there topic conventions that would make consistency a factor? Asking questions like these is how we balance the various goals. The answer to those questions are subject specific, however, and they won't give us the same result in every case. In article X, recognizably will be the determining factor... in article Y, however, naturalness will be the determining factor... etc. We can not make broad statements about which goal is more important than the others... all we can do is say that ALL are important... the ideal is a title that will achieve all five at the same time... but, since that is not always possible the best title will be the one that achieves as many of the five goals as we can. We have to weigh the choices in light of the specific topic, and reach a consensus." The outcome is never pre-determined. Blueboar (talk) 14:24, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar By coincidence in regard to the examples given, both forms, Graeme Wood (journalist) and Graeme C.A. Wood, both happen to be of a reasonably concise length. In another situation though the example could quite easily have been someone like: Graham Brown (footballer, born 1950), Graham Cooper (Australian rules footballer), Graham Edwards (Zimbabwean cricketer) or Graham Webb (Australian broadcaster). As much as problems with WP:NATURAL may have caused problems in the Graeme Wood situation, if a longer parenthetic topic clarification had been used, then concise would have added to the problem. he is barely known as "Graeme C.A. Wood".

The titles Clover (application), Flook (application) and Tinder (application) are already concise but I think that I have recently proposed their move to Clover (app), Flook (app) and Tinder (app) for all the right reasons. However a reason given to support the move is the seemingly ubiquitous WP:CONCISE. My argument in a situation like this is that the only relevant issue should be accuracy of content and it really doesn't help that concise, certainly with its current wording, is on the agenda at all. A meaningfully short title should be suitably short and a meaningfully long title should be suitably long. A one approach fits all formula in regard to length is not helpful.

Towards the other end of article title length, another RM that I have proposed recently, I'm involved in a lot of RMs, has resulted in Crow (Australian Aboriginal mythology) → Crow (Australian Aboriginal culture hero). Surprisingly to me, the same editor that suggested to me Crow (culture hero) has objected to the later suggested title - why? because, apparently, it "is too long". I had already pointed out that "... cult-ure her-o" has the same number of syllables as "... myth-o-lo-gy" but things like that apparently don't matter. Not particularly in this case but impressions that I have seen in similar cases, it really seems to me that in the Wikipedia "cult" (my interpretation and I am aware of the W2W article content connection) of the concise, if length is perceived to exceed just slightly beyond some perceived limit, then an equivalence to an interpretation of blasphemy is taken.

Surely, IF a title might be appropriately long, would it not make sense for all policies to give a unified approach to allow this to happen?

Greg Kaye 21:34, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, many do have the misconception that conciseness is determined by counting characters or syllables. It isn't. The goal of conciseness is to balance brevity with sufficient information to identify the topic to a person familiar with the subject area. Titles like Graham Brown (footballer, born 1950), Graham Cooper (Australian rules footballer), Graham Edwards (Zimbabwean cricketer) or Graham Webb (Australian broadcaster) are all reasonably concise. Conciseness does not necessarily mean "shortest" (or even "short"). Also, adding a parenthetical disambiguation does not make a title non-concise.

As for Clover (application) --> Clover (app), I don't see how WP:CONCISE is an issue (it shouldn't be). BOTH titles are fine under WP:CONCISE. Indeed, I would say that it really comes down to the question of whether the term "app" is more Natural and Recognizable than "application". Blueboar (talk) 01:46, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar Again I do not understand why we give indication of a level of information sufficient to identify the subject in relation to brevity rather than giving an indication of a level of information to optimally identity the subject within an appropriate balance of brevity and quality of description.

From the examples presented above there would be editors who might prefer a move Graham Brown (footballer, born 1950) → Graham Frederick Brown or, if they could get away with it, Graham Fred Brown or Graham F. Brown. Honestly this kind of thing happens and all I am asking for is a bit of clarification in guidelines to help set things straight.

In the Clover (application) → Clover (app) example, you "..don't see how WP:CONCISE is an issue", I "..don't see how WP:CONCISE is an issue" and I am sure that in many cases other editors here "..don't see how WP:CONCISE is an issue". The fact is that some editors do and the sad fact is that they do so with a full justification from the written content. Take a look. Scan various RMs and you will see the issue being raised time and time again and, as far as I can see, this is not surprising. First the guideline presents a minimum standard of "sufficient information" and, even in this context, it talks of balancing this with brevity.

As mentioned "M-185" can be regarded as providing "sufficient information" to provide, for instance, a forensic level of "identification" of the subject and, in contradiction to other policy, a presentation as M-185 (Michigan highway) might be considered completely unnecessary.

Please take some time in WP:RM. Please. Editors inappropriately apply WP:CONCISE and yet this is done with a full justification of its written content. It is nonsense and I am asking please can something change. Greg Kaye 09:49, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg, your proposal seems to be another example of aiming for the best being the enemy of the good. AT is far from perfect, but it's the best compromise that has been achieved to date. Attempting to spell out one or more parts of AT in greater detail is going the wrong way, in my view. The right approach is to emphasise even more strongly that in deciding on titles, editors need to consider and balance the principles set out in AT, interpreted broadly. Trying to tighten up what is prescribed just leads to endless unproductive wikilawyering, of which we have far too much already. The more detailed the prescription, the more people bicker over minute details. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:12, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Peter coxhead Please reread my content. The last thing that I am doing is, "Trying to tighten up what is prescribed". Greg Kaye 10:27, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Again WP:CONCISE is mentioned as a major point in a planed RM for Hillary Rodham Clinton → Hillary Clinton. In this case I think UCRN will probably carry but again conciseness has to be IRRELEVANT. All that matters is encyclopaedic content. Greg Kaye 11:12, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg, I know that this isn't your intention, but I fear this would be the effect. Putting consistency, with its explicit linking to topic-specific naming conventions, many of which are themselves very detailed, above conciseness, has the effect of increasing prescription, regardless of the intention. A high regard for consistency is fine in a publication with a single editorial committee which doesn't keep changing its style guide; it's a recipe for endless disputes here, where naming conventions are fought over by WikiProjects (as an example, review the many debates over the capitalization of bird English names), guidelines change (same example), and decisions are made by consensus among changing groups of editors (see the changes of title in the history of Airplane).

All that matters is encyclopaedic content. Absolutely. So why are you bothered about article titling? Why does it matter whether the article is called Hillary Rodham Clinton or Hillary Clinton, so long as the opening sentence(s) clearly identify the topic and the content is good? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:28, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

I suppose that what I am not understanding is why WP:CONCISE comes up at all when choosing between Graham Brown (footballer, born 1950) or Graham Frederick Brown or Graham Fred Brown or Graham F. Brown. All of these potential titles are perfectly fine under WP:CONCISE. Blueboar (talk) 11:58, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Consistency is the least important of the bullet points in the section "Deciding on an article title". Often when consistency is used to argue against usage in reliable sources. This is particularly a problem when articles were named a certain way years ago and then in the name of "consistency" editors argue against usage in reliable sources so that the names in the group can remain consistent, as closing admins often vote count opinions this can result in articles remaining at a title which is not supported by usage in reliable sources because of "no conensus for move". While it may be beneficial to have certain titles consistent with similar ones, it can also cause problems other than using names that are not consistent with the usage in reliable sources, one such problem is when an article falls into two or more groups which have different consistent forms. -- PBS (talk) 16:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

IMO, I think consistency only really comes into play when disambiguation is necessary, in particular in the choice of parenthetical (or in some cases comma-separated or other appended) disambiguating phrases. That is, consistency rarely matters in choosing between "Foo" and "Bar" where both terms are alternate names for a subject. It only really matters where there is a large class of similar topics and especially where many of the topics are ambiguous. Consistency then matters in deciding whether the manner of disambiguation should be treated similarly across the class (and in some cases to the extent of pre-emptive disambiguation). older ≠ wiser 18:31, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose, bcause WP:CONCISE is a good thing. It's policy for a reason, and the reason is that article titles distract from the text. A short, non-WP:ASTONISHing title will get readers' eyes and attention on the actual article text as quickly as possible. It's why I also contribute regularly to reducing the length of hatnotes on WP, because those also keep readers away from the content they want. Graham Brown would be the best title, and if that's not at all possible (WP:PRIMARYTOPIC being a thing), the disambiguator chosen should be the shortest possible that still makes sense, relates to the article's topic, reflects reliable sources in some way (e.g., not Madonna (entertainer) if we don't have sources establishing her as an entertainer) and is (in almost all cases) unique. (I do favor WP:PDAB, which along with (entertainer) is one of my few areas of out-and-out agreement with In ictu oculi and company on this subject.) Graham F. Brown, if attested at all in sources, would be preferred. Barring that, IDK, whatever is most concise. Red Slash 18:53, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
I would like to suggest that "naturalness" should be interpreted in a conversational manner. If a person was talking with a friend and decided to make a sudden change of topic and ask the friend's thoughts on the subject (be it a person, place, or concept), how would they phrase the "say, what are your thoughts on __________?" In ambiguous cases, it is necessary to provide more specificity, so you might say "what are your thoughts on John Smith, the painter?" (which, in our titles, translates to "John Smith (painter)". bd2412 T 17:38, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Request : Appropriate talk page for questions on a specific article's name

Can other editors please inform or make suggestions about which is the most appropriate talk page to raise questions about the name of a specific article. I would like to canvass others before possibly making a move request. Thanks, Anglicanus (talk) 12:49, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

The article's talk page. -- PBS (talk) 15:28, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Obviously I am already aware of discussing such things on article talk pages. But this is not what I am wanting at present. I am wanting to be able to discuss and clarify some general principles of article names with other editors and am hoping there is a particular place on Wikipedia which is best for doing so. Anglicanus (talk) 15:45, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

I suppose the place to discuss general principles in the abstract would be right here on this talk page... however, holding such a discussion would be (to some extent) a matter of pointless navel gazing. I say this because every article title is unique, and so any general principles we might come up with in the discussion will have lots and lots of exceptions. To be practical, we would need to discuss the general principles as they apply to a specific topic/subject. Blueboar (talk) 18:14, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this is the place to "discuss and clarify some general principles of article names with other editors". Doing so without reference to particular problems would be pointless though, as Blueboar points out, since the general principles have been beat to death here for many years already. Dicklyon (talk) 18:39, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Circularity - WP-article title to book - book as justification for WP-article title

There is a move request at Talk:ISO basic Latin alphabet. I would like to know which rules can be applied there.

Names in standards/Common name : "Basic Latin" is a proper name in the Unicode/ISO standard
Names in some books, that have been published after establishment of the Wikipedia title - is that a source to use? Circularity:
1. Wikipedia creates an article title about something that is not Wikipedia-internal (i.e. where it is not authoritative)
2. the Wikipedia article title is taken as official terminology by some external person
3. the person uses the term in a book,
4. book is published
5. Wikipedia uses the term that occurs somewhere in the book as justification for the Wikipedia article title

Is circularity allowed in reasoning?

Does circularity trump other sources? Lingufil (talk) 16:44, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

In matters of terminology (rather than facts) I don't think we should attempt to distinguish between sources that were published before wp and sources that may have been influenced by wp. If a reliable source uses a specific term then we can use it in wp - regardless of whether the RS may have been influenced by wp (or anything else for that matter). DexDor^(talk) 19:55, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Agreed, and it's not like there's proof of that influence anyway. Even if there were, I'm not sure it would matter. WP exists in the real world (in a big way – it's among the top 10 most used websites in the world, and is often the #1 search result for things that are searched for in Google, etc.). It thus necessarily exerts an influence on language usage, including the acceptedness of the names of some things, and there isn't anything we can do about that. If there were some odd case of gaming the system, in which a PoV-laden term was used in a WP article, and an editor thereof who was in off-WP life a professional writer then used the term in ostensibly-reliable print so he could basically come back here and cite himself as an external source, in the face of opposition to the article title from other editors, well, that's a crazy bridge we can cross if we ever come to it. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 01:40, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Changing Aston Science Park article title

Resolved

– Request directed to proper forum.

I'm currently working at Innovation Birmingham Campus, part of Birmingham Science Park Aston. The article for the latter however, is titled as Aston Science Park. I've been asked to change it to the current name of the park but am struggling to do so as I am new to Wikipedia. Any help would be most welcome.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Owskiedoodle (talk • contribs) 09:37, 13 April 2015‎

Please follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Requested moves. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:11, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposed change to "Naturalness"

Stale

– This thread has been effectively mooted by #Minor tweak to end pointless confusion between WP:NATURALNESS and WP:NATURALDIS.

Proposed text:

Naturalness – The title has content that readers are likely to look or search for and which editors would naturally use in [[Hyperlink|links]] to the article from other articles. Such content will be consistent with commonly used descriptions of the subject in English.
Naturalness – The title is written with wording that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English. change made - Greg Kaye 06:33, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
Naturalness – Wording within the title is of a form that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English. change made - Greg Kaye 12:24, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Current text:

Naturalness – The title ~~is one~~ that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.

In an above text Blueboar asked the, I think, insightful question: "can a title like John Smith (Ohio Senator) be considered "Natural"?"

My answer would be that to consider "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" as a title with "Naturalness" according to our definition would be a real stretch.

In support of this view I presented a readily apparent example link: "[[John Smith (Ohio Senator)|Senator John Smith]]"

I also presented trend results achieved, to indicate "senator John McCain" to be a relatively used search term while, for whatever reason, "John McCain senator" did not get onto the scale.

Search results also indicate that, in books:

"Ohio Senator John Smith" got "About 64 results"

"John Smith Senator of Ohio" got "8 results" and

"John Smith Ohio Senator" got "1 result"

In effect, according to the current Wikipedia definition, "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" was shown to have the least naturalness of any form of title content words that got results and, according to current Wikipedia guideline text, should not be regarded as a "good title" which is, to my mind, nonsense. "John Smith" is the name of the subject and we give fair clarification of the actual identity of this "John Smith" by referencing him as an "Ohio Senator"

In many cases there may be more than one form of words that may potentially equally ".. convey what the subject is actually called in English". A suggested replacement text might indicate "... content (which) will be consistent with commonly used descriptions of the subject in English". "...usually convey what..." is not as strong as "...will be consistent..."

I also think that it is also worth commenting that, in isolation, "Ohio Senator" can certainly also be considered to be a content with Naturalness as is clearly demonstrated by these Ngrams.

While I think that the above proposal will constitute an improvement in the text, I still do not consider naturalness to be as important an issue as precision. The primary concern should be what the subject is. Methodologies of presenting the subject should then be considered in this context. Greg Kaye 07:35, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. There is no need to change our wording on Naturalness. The way I look at it, the natural title (per the current language of Naturalness) would be the non-disambiguated "John Smith"... which does convey what the subject is actually called in English.

The problem is that we can't use that natural title - due to its ambiguity. So... with Naturalness unachievable, we need to choose a title that will best achieve the other four goals. IE of all the forms of disambiguation available to us, which will best achieve the goals of Recognizability, Precision, Conciseness and Consistency. Blueboar (talk) 11:57, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose – The wording is excellent as it is. RGloucester — ☎ 13:21, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
Oppose The dab extension is not part of naturalness. In the example given the name is "John Smith", all of the rest is disambiguation is it is for John Smith (banneret) and Sir John Smith, 1st Baronet. -- PBS (talk) 15:32, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar I agree in what you say in that, "the natural title (per the current language of Naturalness) would be the non-disambiguated "John Smith"". In my thinking, this is why I wanted to talk of the content of the title and not of the title itself. I agree also that this part of the title presents what the subject is actually called in English.

As I have previously argued, at this point it would certainly be inappropriate to attempt to retain natural disambiguation by say evoking reference of a middle name (such has been the case with "John Gibson Smith" and "John Lucian Smith") merely to achieve "natural disambiguation" if he was/is not commonly known with reference to that middle name.

However, as you say Naturalness is then unachievable if we are make a goal of precision at least by means of parenthesis based disambiguation. In effect, by choosing the parenthesis route to achieve precision, we fall short of the achievement of naturalness by two of its three parameters. "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" may be a navigable title but, as far as either search terms or formats of text that might be used in links are concerned, the full title falls short of Naturalness. This is only retained by the "John Smith" portion of the title.

PBS I think that if anything my text suggestion would help clarify that "The dab extension is not part of naturalness". The DAB extension is part of the WP:Article title. It is the other content of the title that retains "Naturalness". Greg Kaye 15:49, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

You miss my point... once there is a need to disambiguate, Naturalness is given significantly less weight compared to the other four goals. However, that ONLY occurs when there is a need to disambiguate. When there is not a need to disambiguate, Naturalness is actually near the top in terms of weight.

I think you may be directing your efforts at the wrong section of the policy. Since your issue seems to center on disambiguation issues, and specifically with WP:NATURAL (and the confusion it causes with the broader goal of "Naturalness"), perhaps a more fruitful discussion would be whether there is a better term than "Natural disambiguation". Blueboar (talk) 16:46, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar, while I apologise that some of my attempts with this text have had their own flaws I still see a problem in that the text regarding naturalness does not, as far as I can see, make itself sufficiently distinct from WP:NATURAL.

The text at WP:NATURALNESS is inaccurate in stating: "The title is one that ... editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles"

This does not stand up in practice.

Links to: "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" include: "[[John Smith (Ohio Senator)|Senator John Smith]]".

Links to "Windsor, Berkshire" include: "[[Windsor, Berkshire|Windsor]]".

I think that a more accurate text could, with minor addition, be written as:

Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and with wording that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.

The main issue that I have tried to present is that, following the second sentence of WP:AT, the issues of the issue of description (and precision) in titles gets comparatively disregarded.

Greg Kaye 07:10, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose What does "The title has content ..." even mean? Dicklyon (talk) 17:18, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Fair comment but it forms an explanation of guidelines that is not internally erroneous. Greg Kaye 05:39, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

And what does "it forms an explanation of guidelines that is not internally erroneous" mean? What language are you attempting to write here? Dicklyon (talk) 05:50, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Dicklyon Please note the internal contradiction.

We present a policy/guideline content that states, "The title is one ... that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles"

We then present another content that permits a title in a form of "John Smith (Ohio Senator)".

Very simply this is not a "title ... that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles".

I am trying to write in clear, non contradictory English.

A content such as: "Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles..." literally does not work.

A alternate content such as: ~~"Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and with wording editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles..."~~

"Naturalness – The title is ~~one~~ is written with wording that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles..." does.

In relation to searches the existing wording rejects titles such as Hillary Rodham Clinton (in favour of Hillary Clinton) out of hand. Please consider the search trend evidence. A title such as, "Hillary Rodham Clinton" is barely searched for. A wording such as 'Hillary ... Clinton" is.

Greg Kaye 20:35, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg, I can't really take your non-parallel construct seriously. A sentence of the form "The title is one that ... and that ..." makes structural sense. Your proposal to change to "The title is one that ... and with ..." is much less parallel, and therefore harder for a reader to interpret. Please try again with well-formed English so we can see what you're getting at. Dicklyon (talk) 14:29, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. I don't think there is an overwhelming need to change the current wording. I'm also not sure what exactly the intended effect of the change is. Calidum T|C 14:47, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Calidum There would be benefit in changing the wording which I have hopefully clarified above. As is repeated below: people do not search on terms such as "Hillary Rodham Clinton" or "John Smith Ohio Senator" and they regularly do not use texts in these title texts in links. They search on and link with wording from within these contents. "WP:NATURALNESS" is supposed to be distinct from "WP:NATURAL" but, at present, their contents are pretty well identical. Greg Kaye 06:42, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose—The new wording is problematic, introducing vagueness and redundancy. Tony (talk) 14:49, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

TONY The text I presented reduces vagueness in that it removes an inaccurately applied assertion. My clarification may be applied more consistently in the form: "Naturalness – The title is ~~one~~ is written with wording that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles..."? I don't think that there has ever been a problem with the "look for" statement. However, people do not search on terms such as "Hillary Rodham Clinton" or "John Smith Ohio Senator" and they regularly do not use texts in these title texts in links. At present "WP:NATURALNESS" is just a repeat wording of "WP:NATURAL" which I know is not the intention. Greg Kaye 06:33, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. The title is written with wording - yuk. DexDor^(talk) 06:43, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
Suggest:

Naturalness – Wording within the title is of a form that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles will usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.

Yet another example that I think may give an indication that some editors may not see that parts of titles can have Naturalness was in a recent RM for John Green (producer) → John Robert Green. As far as I could see the subject is not generally called "John Robert Green" and I think it would be far better to present wording within the title as having naturalness rather than falsely presenting that naturalness must apply to the complete title (as one) for the title to reach the standard of "A good title". Greg Kaye 12:47, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg, you are still focusing purely on cases where the most natural name is ambiguous, and thus where we need to disambiguate. Naturalness often gets put to one side (or at least is given a lot less weight) once there is a need to disambiguate (because the title that best achieves the goal of naturalness - the non-disambiguated name can not be used). In such cases, the goal Precision can be given more weight than the goal of Naturalness.

We might be more willing to consider that there is a need to edit the definition of Naturalness if you could come up with an example of a non-disambiguated title where that definition is problematic. Blueboar (talk) 13:07, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar Hillary Clinton. To illustrate the extent of the issues here is a section of the proposed text from Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request#Move request.

Naturalness "Hillary Clinton" is a name which fits with the WP:NATURALNESS description of a "title ... that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles." This is clearly shown in extreme results from a "Hillary Clinton" : "Hillary Rodham Clinton" Google trends search.

About 2300 main pages link to the redirect page "Hillary Clinton" which can be judged to overlap significantly with the

About 2800 main pages that directly and/or indirectly link to "Hillary Rodham Clinton". This number should be noted to be inclusive of pages that include/also include redirects from namespaces such as Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Hillary R. Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and will also be inclusive of pages that include widely used templates ¹²³⁴ which are amongst pages that use redirects such as "[[Hillary Rodham Clinton|Hillary Clinton]]" and "[[Hillary Rodham Clinton|Clinton]]"

Most problem examples though relate to ambiguous titles which are have been most regularly encountered in my work at WP:RM. Portions of text may be stretched so as to shoe horn descriptions into a, quote, "Natural disambiguation" or something like parenthesis will be added. Greg Kaye 18:36, 18 April 2015 (UTC) Greg Kaye 18:36, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg... I don't mean to sound like I am dismissing your efforts to find an example ... but there is a current move request at the Hillary Rodham Clinton article that cites Naturalness as a rational for the move (along with other criteria). Can you come up with another example that isn't the subject of a current debate? Blueboar (talk) 22:38, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

There is no current move request at Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton and I am not yet sure whether the draft proposal, substantially written by me, will be submitted. I have no idea why you are stipulating a requirement for examples from unambiguous titles. The simple fact that there is a problem as related to the greatly expansive sphere of Wikipedia's ambiguously titled articles should be enough. Greg Kaye 07:22, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

My apologies... you are correct on the HRC article's current status... the article has been the subject of multiple move requests in the past, but currently it isn't... instead we have an RFC about whether to have yet another move request. Of course it is never a good idea to change policy in the middle of a debate that hinges on it... doing so opens us up to accusations of changing the policy in order to win the debate. Blueboar (talk) 13:28, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar I was the editor that proposed Hillary Rodham Clinton → Hillary Clinton and, if anything, the change in the text of Naturalness lessens that case. There is nothing tendentious here. Its just that the current WP:PG content here is irrational and, as is illustrated in this and other examples, Naturalness cannot be applied to the whole title. Greg Kaye 08:36, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Faulty logic: "can a title like John Smith (Ohio Senator) be considered "Natural"?" – "My answer would be that to consider "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" as a title with "Naturalness" according to our definition would be a real stretch." – We've covered this many times before, but here we go again. WP:NATURAL applies to the base title only. An extended title like this consists of a base title, and an disambiguation. They're severable, and the disambiguators frequently change in response to one RM or another without any involvement from WP:NATURAL concerns. I must have seen this come up several dozen times here and in RMs over the years, but for some reason this doesn't seem to stick in everone's memory. Thus I must oppose the proposal. It's a radical, sweeping alteration, that would upend over decade of our standard operating procedure. Also: Revert The title that readers are likely to look or search for back to The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for. The change was neither grammatical (forming a sentence fragment, not a sentence) nor rational. In innumerable cases, there is no "the" title that readers are likely to look for. We could say "The title is the one that readers are most likely to look or search for", the grammatical way to say what I think the edit was getting at, but this is basically nonsense, since we have no way to statistically sample this to determine the answer to that question. We're often simply making an educated guess that the title we're considering best is likely to be toward the top end of the most-looked-for alternatives. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 01:54, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
PS: Reading a topic or two higher up where the same editor proposing this has had it patiently explained to him twice how he's confusing the naturalness criterion with natural disambiguation, when the two are not related in any way, I'm completely mystified that this later proposal perpetuates the same obvious error. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:41, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
Follow-up: I've raised the issue on that editor's talk page, and attempted to resolve the confusion (to the extent there really is any), with a simple clarification, as detailed at #Minor tweak to end pointless confusion between WP:NATURALNESS and WP:NATURALDIS, below. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 18:04, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request

Greetings! A proposal has been made at Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request‎ to change the title of the article, Hillary Rodham Clinton to Hillary Clinton. This notification is provided because this is of interest to this project. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Remove citation to non-authoritative RM?

Should we change:

Example: "#2 comma-separated" + "#3 parenthical": Wiegenlied, D 498 (Schubert) (see Talk:Wiegenlied, D 498 (Schubert)#Requested moves)

to:

Example: "#2 comma-separated" + "#3 parenthical": Wiegenlied, D 498 (Schubert)

?

The WP:RM discussion being cited was attended by almost no one, and is not authoritative anyway. WP:AT policy does not rely upon RM "precedents", especially very weak ones like that. Consensus is decided here based on what makes the most sense for our readers and editors, and there appear to be no extant objections to this form of disambiguation being used in cases where consensus determines it to be the best choice, so a defensive "citation" of this sort doesn't serve any purpose anyway. Most examples used on this page probably have a RM record on their talk pages, and anyone who cares about such an example can go look; we don't need to explicitly point them there, especially in such a redundant way. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 17:42, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

the message being that at least a WP:RM is needed for such convoluted disambiguation. BTW, attendance was high, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Archive 54#Schubert Sonata Articles Renamed, if needed I'll link to that one too. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:51, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Totally missed the point. Wikipedia policy is not determined by a system of precedent, and WP:AT policy in particular is not determined by RM decisions; the opposite is the case. It's highly irregular and inappropriate to cite some discussion that happened to go your way as "proof" for why the policy gives this particular case as an example. We use that example because there's consensus at WT:AT that it is actually an exemplar of what we want to illustrate at that section. Also, the assertion that an RM is needed to arrive at a disambiguation like that simply isn't true. RM is WP:Requested_moves, i.e. from one title to another. There is no reason that the current title could not have been arrived at by the person who created the article; it's simply coincidence that it didn't happen. But thank you for clarifying that the intent of your insertion of this pseudo-citation is to change article titles policy in such a major way as to require WP:RM to arrive at a title. That gives us a very clear reason to delete that insertion. Not sure this really needs to be addressed, but attendance at a different, albeit related, discussion at WT:CLASSICAL does not contradict my observation that the RM at Talk:Wiegenlied, D 498 (Schubert)#Requested moves, the one being cited, was very thinly attended. If have a party at my house and only 5 people show up, and you have a party at your house some other time, with 98 people, we can't say that my party had a lot of people at it based on the numbers at your party, even if they were both the same kind of theme party, and some people went to both. Basic logic, Francis. (And no, we don't need you to add another link to another WP:LOCALCONSENSUS; the point of this RfC is to remove the one you've already put there, because this is not how we write policy pages. I belatedly observe you're proposing to add yet a third one, in the thread above this. Enough already.) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 01:47, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for changes and/or additions to shortcuts in WP:AT#Disambiguation

Its no biggie but I thought it might be helpful to:

propose a move of the policy shortcuts: WP:NATURAL, WP:NATURALDIS and WP:NATDAB to the section of text that reads:

Shortcuts

"Natural disambiguation: If it exists, choose an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title. Do not, however, use obscure or made-up names...."

Then, with or without the above, I would also like to:

Propose a move of the shortcut: WP:COMMADIS to the text that presents:

Shortcuts

"{{anchor|Wikipedia:COMMADIS|Wikipedia:COMMADAB}}Comma-separated disambiguation. With place names, if the disambiguating term is a higher-level administrative division, it is often separated using a comma instead of parentheses, as in Windsor, Berkshire (see Geographic names). Comma-separated disambiguation is sometimes also used in other contexts (e.g., Diana, Princess of Wales; see Names of royals and nobles). However, titles such as Tony Blair and Battle of Waterloo are preferred over alternatives such as "Blair, Anthony Charles Lynton" and "Waterloo, Battle of", in which a comma is used to change the natural ordering of the words."

I think that the displayed COMMADIS shortcut ref which, isn't policy/ guidance content, is best placed next to the text it links to.

However Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:COMMADIS shows that, at present, this shortcut has relatively little use (12 links) in comparison to results from: Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:NATURAL (~600 links), Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:NATURALDIS (~150-200 links) and Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:NATDAB (10 links}

Propose the creation of a shortcut: ~~WP:PARENTHETICAL~~ so as to link to a text:

Shortcuts

"{{anchor|Wikipedia:PARENDIS|Wikipedia:PARENDAB}}Parenthetical disambiguation, i.e. adding a disambiguating term in parentheses after the ambiguous name: Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title."

~~I think that editors may more naturally refer to the "use of WP:PARENTHETICAL disambiguation" than to refer to the "use of disambiguation with WP:PARENTHESIS".~~

Propose the creation of a shortcut: ~~WP:DESCRIPT~~ so as to link to a text:

Shortcuts

"{{anchor|Wikipedia:DESCRIPTDIS|Wikipedia:DESCRIPTDAB}} Descriptive name: where there is no acceptable set name for a topic, such that a title of our own conception is necessary, more latitude is allowed to form descriptive and unique titles."

Propose the creation of a shortcut: ~~WP:COMBINDIS~~ so as to link to a text:

Shortcuts

"{{anchor|Wikipedia:COMBODIS|Wikipedia:COMBODAB}}Combinations of the above: exceptional, in most cases to be avoided per WP:CONCISE"

Greg Kaye 06:51, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Edited as per suggestions by SMcCandlish below. Greg Kaye 21:47, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

I support the gist of this idea, but we should be consistent, and use "somethingDIS" and "somethingDAB" shortcuts for all of these, not mix-and-match with different styles. Also, the conventional short form in English of "combination" is "combo"; "combin" doesn't mean anything to anyone. Next, {{anchor|Wikipedia:COMMADIS}} doesn't make any sense, because no one is going to link to [[Wikipedia:Article titles#Wikipedia:COMMADIS]] Anyway, I would support something like consistently having NATURALDIS/NATURALDAB, COMMADIS/COMMADAB, PARENDIS/PARENDAB, COMBODIS/COMBODAB, DESCRIPTDIS/DESCRIPTDAB. I would use these morphemes because they'll be memorable and intuitive ("paren"/"parens" is the common writing and copyediting abbreviation of "parenthesis"/"parentheses", and "descript-" is the combining form of "describe"). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 16:35, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Alternative proposal

I would take us in the other direction from what Greg proposes... and propose that we delete as many of these shortcuts as possible. The problem with creating shortcuts is that they can focus the reader on just one small sub-section of the policy (in this case, each outlining just one form of disambiguation) and the reader really needs to read the entire section.
When you focus the reader on just one sub-section (just one form of disambiguation) to the exclusion of the other options, the reader comes away with the idea that these are "rules" rather than options... it's important that editors read the entire section on disambiguation, and understand that these are options.

I would also suggest amending the text, to get rid of the confusing term "Natural Disambiguation". Doing this will prevent confusion with "Naturalness". I'm not wedded to any specific term, but suggest "Disambiguation by using alternative names" as a possibility. Blueboar (talk) 15:30, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar I thought that this might go one way or another. At the other extreme we could strip down to just presenting WP:NATURAL and either leave it at the top of the page or placing it on the same level as the policy to which it relates. To me it makes no sense to have WP:COMMADIS in the policy shortcut box as it is not a policy. I think, by this option, it is enough to state WP:NATURAL to be policy. To present three versions of the shortcut, when other options don't even get a mention, is overkill - but, again, this is no biggie. Greg Kaye 16:18, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

You're mix-and-matching multiple, unrelated proposals, Blueboar.
1. Oppose removing these sorts of shortcuts. Consensus has consistently been moving toward including more of them, across all policies and guidelines. This is because they are very useful for directing editors to the exact location of the rule/guidance in question, and this is important because our ruleset continues to grow in complexity over time as new disputes arise and codifiable resolutions to them are arrived at. Without them, a comment like "see WP:AT" is largely meaningless and unhelpful in a name [or whatever] debate, because no one is going to re-read a policy of this length to find what it is someone else is trying to cite as authoritative for their position in the debate. The problem that some individuals misuse these shortcut to try to focus inappropriate, out-of-context attention on one particular segment of a policy page is a user behavior problem, not a problem with our policies and guidelines, nor with our shortcut system. Direct, familiar analogy: The fact that some Christians quote biblical scripture out of context is a misleading way doesn't mean the problem is in the Bible or any edition's index and headings, but rather is indicative of an individual fool or manipulator, who is to be individually disproven with a more cogent argument.
2. Oppose for now changing the name and wording of "natural disambiguation". WP:NATURALNESS has already been clarified so that it can no longer reasonably be confused in any way with WP:NATURALDIS. This change is less than one day old; give it a chance. If anyone is still confusing them 3 or 6 months from now, then let's revisit the issue. And "natural disambiguation" isn't automatically the problematic half of the equation; it's just as reasonable to rename "naturalness", (e.g. to "intuitiveness").
  As to the specific proposal here, "disambiguation by using alternative names" is tumid (we could drop "using" with no loss of meaning, and even shorten "alternative" to "alternate", or use "disambiguation by rewording", etc.). Worse, it's overly vague, and the phrase could easily apply to all forms of disambiguation. Worst, it misses the key point: The English-language naturalness in particular of naturally disambiguated titles is why they're preferable to parenthetic disambiguations. (Though not necessarily other kinds, e.g. comma-separated, in particular types of cases where those are in common usage; as I noted one thread higher up, comma-separated disambiguation is really just a variant of natural disambiguation, used when typical real-world usage is actually punctuated that way.) I realize you said "I'm not wedded to any specific term". My own suggestion of "intuitive" could be applied here, rather than to "naturalness", and I'm sure someone can come up with something else, too. The core concern is that we care about the natural-language quality, in English, of the title in all cases aside from tacked-on parenthetical disambiguators like "(author)" or "(river)", and the policy now makes this clearer than it did before.
  Nevertheless, one important point we cannot incidentally drop or muddle, but that some are very keen to undo or weaken, is the fact that the policy does clearly favor natural over parenthetic disambiguation. If we edit incautiously here just to "over-resolve" the former NATURALNESS vs NATURALDIS confusion (which frankly was only in the minds of a very small number of editors, approaching the singular), we'll create an unbelievable mess. It'll end up flooding WP:RM with a tsunami of WP:POINTy and tendentious mass renames launched by numerous parties, on no other basis than "Our time has come! AT doesn't prefer natural over parenthetic disambiguation any more! TO WAR!" This would be an even worse result than would normally happen upon a poorly-thought-out change to policy, because RM is not actually centralized discussion, it's just a centralized index of discussions, which would rage across the talk pages of thousands of articles, probably for years. Some similar discussion, just last year, sank to surprisingly nasty depths, and we have a responsibility to prevent that kind of editwarrior entrenchment from recurring in magnified form, especially as just some unintended side effect. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 16:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
  PS: The very fact that I was edit-conflicted while posting this, by someone dredging up, one thread higher up, the very RM flamefest I'm referring to but which was resolved half a year ago, is concrete evidence that the chaos I predict would commence immediately upon such a change. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 16:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

As a clarification... I was not suggesting that we have no shortcuts at all. Just that we should not have separate shortcuts for each paragraph (each method of disambiguation)... I have no problem having one single shortcut (perhaps "DAB METHODS"), placed at the top of the section. Thus, editors can still be pointed to the relevant information in the policy... but when they are, they will read the entire section, and see all the choices available. Blueboar (talk) 11:21, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

I understand that. But it's frequently been of value to refer very specifically to WP:NATURALDIS, and GregKaye makes the argument that it would also be useful to be able to refer by shortcut to the other disambiguation methods. The section is short, and laid out as a numbered list. Everyone who comes here via any means will automatically see the entire section, unless they'e using a cell phone browser, which is nearly impossible to edit or do any serious reading in anyway (i.e., we don't care and cannot change how we write policy pages and use shortcuts to account for a weird case like that). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:24, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish I am curious about what you say, "the fact that the policy does clearly favor natural over parenthetic disambiguation." The text directs, "Natural disambiguation: If it exists, choose an alternative name ..." I interpreted this to be policy while the other options were exactly that. How do you read this? I have only placed Natural related shortcuts in a policy shortcut box.

As a side point I object to your comment on "former NATURALNESS vs NATURALDIS confusion". For reasons that I have mentioned I think the Naturalness text has been less than coherent. Now it just has different problems specifically in relation to articles like Sarah Jane Brown, ISIL, and a large other content.

Back on this topic another section that could do with similar attention is WP:AT#Article title format. I'd suggest that shortcuts be placed in separate boxes in line with relevant content there as well. There are a number of texts there that could have shortcuts added.

Greg Kaye 22:15, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand what you're asking me in the first part. The fact that is says that if a natural disambiguation exists, then use it, is clearly the policy favoring natural disambiguation over other disambiguation options. There is no confusion on this point. Your second point: Meh. We've argued at enough length, I really just don't care any more. Object to this wording or that all you like, I'm not going to be drawn into another time-wasting argument that amounts to public perpetuation of a personality conflict. The problems that remain in this section are already being addressed in another thread (thanks for bringing it up cogently; I've given it it's own subheading). Article title format: If that section needs work, that needs to be a separate discussion. Policy shortcuts: At least some of your edits were reverted (with an actual rationale), and there's already a thread open about changing/adding shortcuts (the parent topic of this subtopic), so that seems to be the place to resolve that. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:21, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Propose presenting content before style in WP:CRITERIA

With ~~deletions~~ and additions shown, I propose use of text such as:

Deciding on an article title

Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. There is often more than one appropriate title for an article. In that case, editors choose the best title by consensus based on the considerations that this page explains.

~~A good~~ An optimal Wikipedia article title will have the characteristics:

Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize, and
Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. See #Precision and disambiguation below;

and many will also have the characteristics:

Naturalness – The title ~~is one~~ has a form that readers are likely to look or search for and ~~that~~ which editors would naturally use ~~to link~~ in [[Hyperlink|links]] to the article from other articles;
Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects, and
Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as Topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, listed in the box above.

I also removed the text "Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English" from "Naturalness". Recognisable titles also "convey what the subject is actually called in English" but, as demonstrated below and elsewhere, an application of naturalness may result in titles that do not "convey what the subject is actually (or at least most commonly) called in English".

In regard to Consistency:
- Bkonrad has expressed the view that: "... consistency only really comes into play when disambiguation is necessary, in particular in the choice of parenthetical (or in some cases comma-separated or other appended) disambiguating phrases. That is, consistency rarely matters in choosing between "Foo" and "Bar" where both terms are alternate names for a subject..."
- PBS cites: ".. a problem when articles were named a certain way years ago and then in the name of "consistency" editors argue against usage in reliable sources so that the names in the group can remain consistent, as closing admins often vote count opinions this can result in articles remaining at a title which is not supported by usage in reliable sources because of "no conensus for move".
- BD2412 provides examples which, despite being judged as "far fetched"/"slightly ludicrous", demonstrate how an unfettered interpretation of "Consistency" could produce extreme results;

In regard to Conciseness less is not necessarily always more. M-185 (Michigan highway) gives more than M-185. Similar to Shu (Egyptian god), Tutu (Egyptian god) and Tutu (Mesopotamian god) would both give more than Tutu (god) regardless of disambiguation. add: Similarly I have just proposed: Daily Star (United Kingdom) → Daily Star (UK tabloid) and The Sun (United Kingdom) → The Sun (UK tabloid). Why just disambiguate when you can also inform.

The wording of Conciseness here would also very clearly favour such moves as Hillary Rodham Clinton → Hillary Clinton but surely such a move should not be affected by the "criteria" for a "good Wikipedia article title".

"See also my recently created: Wikipedia:List of Johns whose Britannica article titles contain broad description. While I don't want to suggest that we necessarily go this far I think it is worth noting that a provision of more full forms of description can be appropriate in some circumstances. Titles should have optimum length with regard to both readability and provision of description.

In regard to Naturalness, while I am sure that there are other examples that may also be of note, I have presented recent examples such as Heinz (company) → Heinz Company that violate precision and the actual name of the subject. There is also the problem regarding this criteria inadvertently acting to WP:ADVOCATE for the use of Natural disambiguation. We can also note that the issue, in biographic articles of presenting first names first is also mentioned in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people). Also as mentioned, titles such as Mary Luana Williams, John Gibson Smith and John Lucian Smith are all "natural" in that they follow the prescription of "Natural disambiguation" and yet titles such as Mary Williams (social activist), John G. Smith (poet), John L. Smith (U.S. Marines Corps pilot) are more WP:PRECISE as they use commonly recognisable names. Wikilink stylisations should have little bearing on article titles.

On the basis of the above I don't agree with Blueboar in the view that "The ideal is that we achieve all five goals with the same title."

Instead I think that we should achieve all the goals that are appropriate, in each instance, for the achievement of the optimum title for each subject. The important thing is that readers (perhaps regardless or familiarity) are best able to recognise and identify the subject. Other issues may or may not have relevance.

I don't argue in the statement that "A good Wikipedia article title has the five following characteristics:" However I think that an optimum title may, on occasion, drop some of them. While not objecting to the use of the word good, why settle for good? Greg Kaye 10:24, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Side comment, interpolated: I note that it's still at Heinz (company), surely because "Heinz Company" is an outright falsification, a fake proper name. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:30, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg... you keep referring to an "optimum title"... I am not sure I understand what you mean by that term. Please define what an "optimum title" is, and how it might be different from "best title" or "most appropriate title" or any other term we might use. Blueboar (talk) 12:19, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar I am making reference to Project page wording in the content:

Parenthetical disambiguation, i.e. adding a disambiguating term in parentheses after the ambiguous name: Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title.

This was a text that was produced in response to a previous issue that I raised. I have no preference in regard to exact wording in relation to this current proposal and presented "I propose use of text such as: ...".

However I think that the current wording is too formulaic in that it seems to present as virtuous Hyperlink driven formatting, formatting that weighs towards brevity from sufficiency information and consistently applied methods of formatting when not all of these issues will give best/optimal results in all circumstances. Greg Kaye 12:45, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

OK... but I still don't understand what the intent of the proposed change is. I think that it has something to do with countering the arguments of those who dislike parenthetical disambiguation. Am I correct in thinking this? Is this the intent? Blueboar (talk) 13:26, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

The intent is to stop the guidelines from being (or being taken as being) unnecessarily prescriptive on issues which potentially may get in the way or the production of a best possible result. The whole thing does not need to be complicated. For me the whole topic is (or should be) summarised in the second sentence of the project page "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles." Its all about effective description in the context of effective disambiguation. Effective description at its best uses familiar terms with precision. Wikipedia has made the choice to favour disambiguation within its titles as opposed to disambiguation in parenthesis or subtitles as is the case with Britannica, or disambiguation within text or with super or subscript numbers as in many dictionaries and glossaries of terms. Fair enough but its still all about, to use different words, explanation and topic clarification. The rest is detail.

However I think that the problem of "This page in a nutshell" is I think presented in that text: "Article titles should be recognizable, concise, natural, precise, and consistent." Quality of description is not even on the agenda.

PLEASE, PLEASE, now I have said that can editors refrain from presenting some absurd and preposterously long scaremongering example article title in bold or redlinked type. By now such a response will be considered in bad faith. No genii is being let out of a bottle. All I am saying is that the primary function of a title is description and that Wikipedia editors shouldn't have such strict direction as to how that description is delivered.

I would also appreciate it if editors could take a look at dictionary definitions of concise which describe a notably different thing from what we present. Greg Kaye 15:16, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Once again, there is a conflation of WP:NATURALNESS and WP:NATURAL. Someone that does not understand the present policy cannot propose to change it. RGloucester — ☎ 15:18, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

RGloucester do you not view that both the WP:CRITERIA: "Naturalness" and the disambiguation method: Natural disambiguation both relate to issues of presentation. What I have suggested is that, if possible, a different name be given to naturalness because it seems to me that adds to the rhetorically presented shortcuts: "WP:NATURAL", "WP:NATURALDIS",.. and "WP:NATDAB" to act as WP:SOAPBOX for the format of "Natural disambiguation". RGloucester, please consider addressing the argument as presented rather than the editor presenting. Twice I have asked you "Please explain what value you see in the content with the questionable title "Naturalness"". On this occasion please consider answering. Greg Kaye 17:27, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

What an odd question. Article titles should feel natural to the reader. In other words, we call "Rome" as such, rather than as "Roma", as the title "Rome" is more natural to the English-speaking reader. Likewise, we use Kiev instead of Kyiv. The naturalness criterion ensures that we use titles that the reader will known and understand. It ensures that jargon common in specialised sources does not predominate over what is usual to the average Anglophone reader. The name "naturalness" is not ideal. If I were to choose, I would rename the "naturalness" criterion as "natural", and change the shortcut. Natural disambiguation is a separate issue. As an example, "New York City" is natural in terms of disambiguation, but not the most natural in terms how an average English speaker refers to the city. He will usually simply call it "New York". However, at this point, with the shortcuts and names so entrenched, I do not see it wise to unsettle the system, which would result in mass confusion. RGloucester — ☎ 17:53, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

When I speak or write about NYC, I almost always include the "City". But what would I know? I'm 3000 miles west of there. Dicklyon (talk) 17:57, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

As a Briton, I know it as "New York". As a Briton working in America, in New England, I hear it as "New York", and sometimes as "the City". I don't think I ever hear it called "New York City". The city seems to have taken the primary topic status, as it is usually the state that gets disambiguated, i.e. "New York state". RGloucester — ☎ 18:14, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

On the proposal, I agree with RGloucester that it's confused and confusing, like many of Greg's opinions on titles. Dicklyon (talk) 17:57, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Dicklyon, if you are going to damn ideas of mine as confused and confusing, please be specific. Since I #Proposed change in the Parenthetical disambiguation text this has resulted in a change from a text that read "Parenthetical disambiguation: If natural disambiguation is not possible, add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name" to a text that reads: "Parenthetical disambiguation, i.e. adding a disambiguating term in parentheses after the ambiguous name: Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title." Please note that none of this is done with tendentious intent. It has been quite convenient for me to have a strong line presented at WP:NATURAL when opposing RMs related to "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant otherwise known as "ISIS", "ISIL", "Daesh", "Islamic State group" etc. and "Islamic State". Please don't disparage my sincere efforts to make improvements in the format of the encyclopedia. If there is anything that I say that you disagree with then please let me know. If I have said anything that comes across to you as confusing then please say and I will attempt to clarify. 87.115.47.210 (talk) 08:22, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Several thoughts at this point...

1: If the problem is with the guidelines, then I would suggest the solution is to try to fix the guidelines not the policy.

2: I agree with RGloucester in saying that the WP:CRITERIA goal of "Naturalness" is not the same as the concept of "Natural disambiguation". However, I agree with Greg when he notes that there may be some confusion over terms... since both contain the word "natural". As a solution, I would try to come up with a new term for the narrower concept of "Natural disambiguation" (really a form of precision) rather than attempt to redefine or omit the broader concept of "Naturalness".

3: RE Greg's comment that Wikipedia has made the choice to favour disambiguation within its titles as opposed to disambiguation in parenthesis or subtitles as is the case with Britannica - Um... No... Wikipedia has not made that choice. It does not favor one form of disambiguation over the others. It intentionally allows for whichever form of disambiguation is deemed most appropriate for that specific topic. This will mean that in one article title, parenthetical disambiguation will end up being preferred... while in another different article title, "Natural" disambiguation will end up being preferred. The POLICY however, favors neither, and intentionally devolves the choice to the article level. Blueboar (talk) 18:12, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

RGloucester , The titles that you mention are all centrally covered in Recognisability / WP:UCRN, WP:OFFICIAL and the WP:AT opening statement "The title ... distinguishes it from other articles." If "Roma" was the most commonly recognisable designation for the capital city of Italy then we would use that. As far as wikilinks (as mentioned in naturalness) are concerned there are plenty of pages that use the redirect Kyiv and I would not be surprised if there were other pages that used piping such as [[Rome|Roma]] or [[Kiev|Kyiv]]. The policy is contradictory. The example of New York City, if anything, is an example of where Naturalness proves to be redundant. See: The Saint in New York (film), Englishman In New York with singer "Sting", "walking down Fifth Avenue"; Chet Baker in New York with an album cover image with skyscrapers in the background; An Englishman in New York with "Godley & Creme" beginning: "Demented New York athletes staggering round the block". In these cases reference is (naturally) made to the city but without city. Surely the main argument for the title New York City is a mixture of WP:UCRN, that "The title ... distinguishes it from other articles." and WP:OFFICIAL as demonstrated here in cases in which the description "City of New York" is not used. In this case naturalness is primarily a reasonably well supported let out to aid disambiguation. Certainly this does not cover "Naturalness" as "The title ... that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles".

Can you think of any cases that require Naturalness that are not otherwise covered by other policies? Although not necessarily a suggestion, do you think that Naturalness would permit a title such as New York (U.S. state)?

As shown there are many cases in which a rigid application of consistency and our interpretation of conciseness may, if anything, lead to a less than optimal title. Greg Kaye 07:18, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar

Thank you

1: I quite agree in fixing the guidelines.

2: I also agree that there are differences between the WP:CRITERIA goal of "Naturalness" and the titling method presented as "Natural disambiguation" and thank you for your recognition of confusions raised due to the similarity of names.

3. The wording and presentation of the guideline, as far as I can see, clearly favours the titling presentation option: "Natural disambiguation". As mentioned, "Naturalness" is presented as a "CRITERIA" and as a "characteristic." of "A good Wikipedia article title" and the rhetorically presented shortcuts: "WP:NATURAL", "WP:NATURALDIS",.. and "WP:NATDAB" are WP:SOAPBOXed at Wikipedia:Article titles#Disambiguation.

In contents linked from WP:RM editors regularly justify arguments for the use of Natural disambiguation "as per WP:NATURAL" as if this was policy. Greg Kaye 07:50, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the wikilawers amongst us often cite guidelines as if they were inflexible policy. It's how they try to "win" debates. Blueboar (talk) 12:33, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

I hate to break this to you both, but WP:NATURAL (WP:NATURALDIS) is policy, as part of the WP:AT page. It is not a guideline. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:46, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Question for all: can a title like John Smith (Ohio Senator) be considered "Natural"? I think it might be. Blueboar (talk) 12:33, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

It may satisfy WP:NATURALNESS, but it is not WP:NATURAL disambiguation. WP:NATURAL has nothing to do with the title itself, only the way that title is disambiguated from other things of the same name. RGloucester — ☎ 13:17, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

When working through references from a search on: Special:WhatLinksHere/John Smith (Ohio Senator) I immediately found the link: [[John Smith (Ohio Senator)|Senator John Smith]] and I think that presentation with "Senator John Smith" would fit titling with "Naturalness". Google trends was unable to give statistics related to this example. I will present some search data when I can. Greg Kaye 16:22, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
@Blueboar, @RGloucester as mentioned I have had trouble getting results in google trends.

In trend results achieved, "senator John McCain" got high results getting up to 100 of the units used.

"John McCain senator" got no results.

I conducted other google trend searches for Presidents "Andrew Jackson" "Andrew Johnson" who I chose as i thought that people might add the term president to searches on their relatively commonly used forms of name.

In trend results achieved "President Andrew Jackson" and "President Andrew Johnson" both scored highly as search terms used.

The search terms "Andrew Jackson president" and "Andrew Johnson president" did not get any results at all. Why? Because they are unnatural. People do not speak in the language of Yoda.

In this light I think that we have to reconsider our position on "Naturalness". In current conception it is defined as: "The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English."

When set to the standard of this definition the title "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" fails abysmally on all counts.

We have to start by being coherent in the content of our guidelines and by not placing these guidelines in irrational sequences. People aren't likely to use either John Smith or John Smith Ohio Senator when searching for the content that we have entitled: John Smith (Ohio Senator). Greg Kaye 18:12, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Strongly oppose: These criteria have existed in a careful balance for years, and served us well in that balance. Demoting more than half of them to optional would lead to utter chaos in article titling, and enable a flood of idiosyncratic "cleansings" by tendentious, lone-wolf opponents of one or another of the naturalness, conciseness and/or consistency policies as applied to their pet articles. TD has already been awash in tooth-gnashing of this sort for years; the last thing we need to do is multiply that by a factor of 10. No thanks.
Yes, there is no connection between the naturalness criterion (of the base title), and natural disambiguation; they're two separate uses of the same root word. It would not hurt to clarify this. I think we're stuck with "natural disambiguation", but "naturalness" is an clumsy word for the concept, and we could probably replace it, e.g. with "intuitiveness".
I also find myself uncommonly agreeing with RGloucester, twice no less: "Someone that does not understand the present policy cannot propose to change it", and that does appear to be what's going on here. And yes, the city of New York is clearly the primary topic for that name, and in real-life English the state is usually the one disambiguated.
Finally, this is not even close to accurate: consistency only really comes into play when disambiguation is necessary. Any experience at all in WP:RM discussions will disabuse anyone of this notion. One of the most common rationales for a page move is consistency with the titles of related articles. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:38, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Neutrality and precision can trump all

I think that the current RM discussion regarding "2014–15 Yemeni coup d'état → ..." gives strong demonstration of this point.

Greg Kaye 13:22, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

One example that goes your way doesn't prove a general, sweeping statement like that. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:39, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Is the "Using minor details to naturally disambiguate articles" section detrimental?

From the policy page:

Using minor details to naturally disambiguate articles

Shortcuts
WP:DIFFCAPS
WP:DIFFPUNCT
WP:SMALLDETAILS

Titles of distinct articles may differ only in small details. Many such differences involve capitalization, punctuation, accentuation, or pluralization: MAVEN and Maven; Airplane and Airplane!; Sea-Monkeys and SeaMonkey; The World Is Yours and The Wörld Is Yours. While each name in such a pair may already be precise and apt, a reader who enters one term might in fact be looking for the other, so appropriate hatnotes with links to the other article(s) and disambiguation pages are strongly advised. Special care should be taken for names translated from other languages and even more so for transliterated titles; there is often no standardized format for the English name of the subject, so minor details are often not enough to disambiguate in such cases.
This form of disambiguation may not be sufficient if one article is far more significant on an encyclopedic level or far more likely to be searched for than the other. For instance, an album entitled JESUS would probably have its article located at JESUS (album), with JESUS continuing to be a redirect to Jesus. If the album or other possible uses were deemed by editors to be reasonably likely search results for "JESUS", consensus among editors would determine whether or not JESUS would be the location for the album article, a redirect to Jesus, a disambiguation page, or a redirect to the existing disambiguation page Jesus (disambiguation).
Plural forms may in certain instances also be used to naturally distinguish articles; see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals)#Primary topic for details.

When was this lot added and can someone link to the RFC where it was okayed? In ictu oculi (talk) 06:04, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

That's a good question. I always interpreted "may differ only in small details" as a statement of sometimes practice, not that it's a good idea. No idea where it came from, but you can probably check. Dicklyon (talk) 06:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

It changed wording a bit here in 2011, so check there for words to search back on. Dicklyon (talk) 06:21, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

That and the immediately previous edit by SMcCandlish were briefly discussed here. Keep looking back... Dicklyon (talk) 06:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, of course, it was part of the great Oct 2009 "merge tryout" by Kotniski here, referencing WT:NC#Merge tryout, which is now at Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/Archive_19#Merge_tryout. This makes it very hard to figure out. Kotniski and others did a ton of thrashing of all aspects of TITLE that fall, from which we will likely not recover. Dicklyon (talk) 06:38, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Another potential and related contradiction (though with topic not specifically being covered in WP:AT) is found between: Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(plurals)#Exceptions which says:
- Articles on people groups. Canadians, French people and Koreans in Japan are all acceptable titles. Titles like Spaniard should be recast in the plural, i.e., Spanish people. If a plural title without the word "people" is available, it is almost invariably chosen; e.g., Bangladeshis is consistently preferred to Bangladeshi people.

and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes) which permits "African American" despite the presence in Wikipedia of 20 articles starting: "African American and ..", "African Americans at .." or "African Americans in ..". Related issues are currently being discussed in the current RM Korean American → Korean Americans. Greg Kaye 09:28, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

User:Dicklyon I'm looking at Talk:Bon-Bon (short story) where the new WP:SMALLDETAILS is being cited as "policy". Whose policy? In ictu oculi (talk) 14:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

It's part of WP:AT, which is policy. If you don't like how it reads, you can propose an RfC to change or clarify the parts you disagree with. Dohn joe (talk) 14:19, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

That's just B2C. He's a minimalist, favoring concise above everything else, and eschewing disambiguation where small differences can be used instead. There's not much support for this approach, and the fact that it is mentioned on a policy page just gives him a hammer to likes to use to advance his position over others. There's nothing in the statement "may differ in small details" that supports his claims that this is preferred, or the only way to be "supported by policy". Dicklyon (talk) 15:09, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

This confusion probably comes from the fact that natural disambiguation is quite explicitly favoredm by the clear wording of the policy, over other forms of disambiguation, and B2C (among others) is somehow mistaking arguments based on this fact for a blustery hyperbolic argument, which is not. They then try to emulate what the think the technique is, by saying with actual hyperbolic bluster that their own preferred detail in AT is favored by policy when it is not. It's a mistake. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:52, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Once again... this policy is all about balancing options, not imposing fixed "rules". Sometimes a small difference is enough to disambiguate two similar titles... and at other times it isn't. What we do here in this policy is present the options available (and the rational behind those options... we present the things to think about when determining what the best title for the topic might be. We don't say: "in X situation always do this"... because sometimes the best solution is to not do "this". Instead we say "in X situation we often do this, but there are other options... which option is considered best is determined at the article level, by balancing multiple factors that are unique to the subject/topic." Ultimately the only firm "Rules" in WP:AT are that article titles must be unique, and that they are chosen by consensus. The entire point of this policy is to give editors flexibility to choose whatever title they think is best. We don't try to settle every debate over titles... instead we guide the debates, by presenting the things editors should discuss during the debates. Blueboar (talk) 17:33, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Exactly; +1 to Blueboar. But B2C sees it differently, constantly trying to algorithmetize the choice of title such that discussion becomes irrelevant; he calls it "naming stability" (see User:Born2cycle#A goal: naming stability at Wikipedia, which says "...my chosen primary area of interest, focus and expertise, at least for now, is stabilizing article titles. / I am convinced that true title stability ultimately comes from having rules that are clear and unambiguous as reasonably possible..."). When a title is as short as possible, by his reasoning, it's stable, since it can't be made any shorter and no other criterion is as important as conciseness, which he takes to mean shortness. Within this world view, any option that takes more characters rather than distinguishing by case or punctuation is "not supported by policy". Don't fall for it. Dicklyon (talk) 18:11, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Why is B2C disproportionately involved in setting title policy at all when he doesn't edit Wikipedia and when RFCs have removed his essays? In ictu oculi (talk) 09:14, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Damned good question. I generally find myself opposing virtually every suggestion he makes here, at MOS, at RM, etc. Not because it's him proposing them, but because they simply don't make sense. Although principally intended to address vandals and trolls, WP:DENY comes to mind. I'm in favor of largely ignoring these "remaking WP in my own idiom by re-re-re-proposing the same changes until I win" system-gaming attempts. Enough is enough. This has been going on for years. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:07, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Comment: I agree with the gist of the section, but the extended JESUS example is a bunch of pointless blather and should be deleted. I.e., truncate from "For instance, an album entitled..." onward, and change that tumid and hyperbolic piped link "far more significant on an encyclopedic level or far more likely to be searched for" to simply "primary topic". — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:07, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Are there any objections to this change? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:54, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation, precision and conciseness

On the basis of #Proposal to restructure and response, I have re ordered project page content to

5 Disambiguation, precision and conciseness

5.1 Disambiguation

5.1.1 Using minor details to naturally disambiguate articles

5.2 Precision

5.2.1 Descriptive names

5.3 Conciseness

The inclusion of "conciseness" in the title was not discussed and neither were the potential implications of placing of placing "Precision" beneath the content on "Using minor details to naturally disambiguate articles"

The rationale was to adopt a clean break between the "Descriptive name" (now "Descriptive names") content from the Disambiguation content into which the explanation for "Descriptive name" was originally placed.

Greg Kaye 09:43, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm wondering whether a title other than "descriptive names" might be used as this is ambiguous. We might as well call it "names" or "titles" and, ironically, a more descriptive disambiguation would seem to be required. I created a shortcut for this as WP:DESCRIPTIVE but this seems to me to strongly advocate the use of this form of title presentation. Greg Kaye 10:04, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

This was premature. The discussion was opened only hours ago, and this is a major policy page. I haven't reverted it, but I expect that someone else will. Honestly, I'm also very skeptical that substantive changes have not been made along with simply reordering the material and perhaps (as also discussed) using some more appropriate examples. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 10:33, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
Update: Now that I've read it in detail, I have raise (in the proposal thread about it above) three substantive objections to this big change as it is presently worded and structured. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 13:47, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Please will everyone stop rapidly changing the project page. There have been a ridiculous number of changes in the last few days; it's almost impossible to keep up with them. I see no evidence that the changes were carried out in a sensible fashion for such an important policy page, i.e. after proposing the change here, allowing time for discussion, and gaining consensus. I've attempted to restore the earlier version without losing some minor improvements, but it might have been better to go back to the 17 April version. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:53, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't have a huge objection to going back all the way to the 17 April version, but it would necessitate rehashing some stuff, because it will reintroduce the confusion between WP:NATURALNESS and WP:NATURALDAB that was resolved. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 13:47, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Musical symbols in page titles

Do pages such as B♭ (musical note) violate section 8.1 on the use of symbols in page titles? Tayste (edits) 03:35, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

A tangential issue: why the space between B and the flat-sign? Pretty awful. Tony (talk) 14:50, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

That’s just the font. There is no space; the flat’s just displaying as a full-width character, I believe. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 19:08, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

B♭. How it is written! --Richhoncho (talk) 15:52, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

First, I would not use the term violate in reference to that section of the policy (saying "avoid" implies that more exceptions exist than if we said "don't"). Second, the "flat" symbol is reasonably standard and common when writing about music, so I don't think that symbol is what the policy is really talking about. Finally, all that said, I would suggest that the best solution would be to avoid the issue entirely... by merging all articles on individual musical notes into an article on musical notation or something. Blueboar (talk) 15:59, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Agree with Blueboar. The current discussion relates to: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Forbidden characters where it only goes as far as to state that: "Due to clashes with wikitext and HTML syntax, the following characters can never be used in page titles (nor are they supported by DISPLAYTITLE): # < > [ ] | { } For articles about these characters, see number sign, less-than sign, greater-than sign, bracket (covers several characters), vertical bar." There is no specific problem with the musical notations for sharp (♯) and flat (♭).

As far as "Naturalness" is concerned, the titles from A♭ (musical note) and right round to G♯ (musical note) all contain content that readers may look for and which editors may use as links with use of links being demonstrated in Template:Semitones displayed as follows:

The titles do not have content that potential readers may readily search for.

This, however, is made redundant by the creation of navigation pages such as A-flat and G-sharp. Greg Kaye 07:37, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

To expand upon my comments above... Given that these articles on various musical notes are very short ... and are unlikely to grow... I would suggest merging them into the article on the Chromatic Scale. Each individual note could be given a section of that article (sections which could be linked to in other articles). Blueboar (talk) 13:18, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

What benefits, if any, would there be in removing the B♭ (musical note) type articles? I would suggest that contributors to these articles perhaps be pinged to canvass views or a discussion thread on such a proposal be placed on a relevant page or Wikiproject. There is a lot of technical information involved which goes beyond my knowledge of typography and some such. Greg Kaye 07:28, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

"I would suggest that contributors to these articles perhaps be pinged to canvass views or a discussion thread on such a proposal be placed on a relevant page or Wikiproject." – Raising the matter here is the nominator's 3rd venue in this matter after Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music theory#Consistency in page titles re -flat vs ♭ and -sharp vs ♯ and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music#Consistency in page titles re -flat vs ♭ and -sharp vs ♯. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:59, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks all for your comments. The symbols are much more than "reasonably standard and common" - they are near universal in writing about music. I would oppose the suggestion of merging all the individual notes into a single article; there are too many wikilinks to them that would be broken or at least obfuscated by this. I don't think the symbols in titles (with appropriate redirects and disambiguations) hinder searches at all. Tayste (edits) 22:06, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree: Merge and redirect. This is pretty much exactly the same issue as having 10 different micro-articles for minor characters in a TV show. As to the symbol question, I don't think it necessarily transgresses the policy. But it's probably a poor idea. Cf. Eth which is at that title, not at Ð or ð. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 01:33, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

You are not agreeing with Tayste just above who said "I would oppose the suggestion of merging all the individual notes into a single article". I stick to my view that this would be something for the relevant Wikiproject to work through. Although their may be benefits of change, I see no major problem with the current set up. Greg Kaye 16:40, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

[1] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Crazy_in_Love#Requested_move_17_December_2014

[1]