User:Born2cycle

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Welcome!

Questions? See my FAQ.


A goal: naming stability at Wikipedia

Decisions about what the titles of our articles should be is an area that some editors try to avoid, but is a big interest of mine at Wikipedia (we all have our roles). In particular, my main interest is to bring stability to the area of article naming. What I mean by naming stability is that the number of articles moved per day, and especially the number brought for discussion to WP:RM, is reduced to a trickle compared to the torrent that it is today.

Having this interest in article titles means, as my edit history clearly shows, that I am heavily involved in article naming discussions, with respect to policy and guidelines as well as individual article naming discussions. I have been criticized numerous times for spending too much time and energy posting comments and not enough editing content, and my defense has always been that we all contribute in different ways, and 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, and titles chosen to adhere to those rules as much as reasonably possible. This is because actual practice sets precedent on Wikipedia, and influences how the rules are written and how related decisions are made. So every title that is inconsistent with the rules can influence other titles to be inconsistent, and the effect can ultimately snowball. This is why it's important to "fix" inconsistencies with the rules. Ironically, making progress towards the goal of title stability includes moving articles that have been stable at their titles for a very long time.

The role of title criteria on stability

Because I seek stability in naming, I am a strong proponent of having all article titles in Wikipedia each adhere to the naming criteria listed in policy at WP:TITLE -- Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision ("only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously"), Conciseness, and Consistency -- as much as is practicable.

In the countless arguments I have encountered in page move discussions, one stands out as particularly compelling. In the WP:RM discussion about whether to move Victoria of the United Kingdom to "Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom — Or even better, Queen Victoria", DrKiernan argued in terms of how each of the alternatives being considered, including the status quo, adhere to the naming criteria[1]: Template:Quotation I was the one who closed that proposal, and, persuaded by DrKiernan's argument, found in favor of Queen Victoria.

I believe maximizing adherence to this criteria, as demonstrated by DrKiernan's analysis, promotes stability because the reasons someone may reasonably have to move an article are minimized and usually eliminated once an article is at the title that meets that criteria as much as it reasonably can. Time and time again I have seen years of disputes over titles be resolved once the article in question is moved to the title that best meets that criteria. For example, when my Queen Victoria decision was protested primarily on the procedural grounds that it was closed by a non-admin (several non-admins knowledgeable about naming policy and guidelines try to help out with the backlog when it gets big), the subsequent proposal to move it from Queen Victoria to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom failed.

This is why I am also an advocate of having specific naming guidelines provide guidance only when the primary guidance at WP:TITLE falls short of clearly indicating a name, usually in order to indicate how an article should be disambiguated if disambiguation is required so that similar articles are disambiguated similarly. For categories of articles for which a single natural and most common name is not obvious, like for U.S. highways, specific guidelines are also helpful. But when a title is clearly indicated for a given article by the criteria at WP:TITLE alone, then specific naming guidelines should have no application. I find that most naming disputes (not including those centered on which topic, among several, if any, is the primary topic) are ultimately caused by more specific naming guidelines (or sometimes undocumented conventions) indicating a title that is different from the one indicated by the criteria at WP:TITLE (most often the specific guideline or convention indicates one title, even though a natural and more concise name is available).

As straight-forward as this reasoning may seem, many do not agree with me. Most who disagree with me seem to find appealing the idea of having every article in a particular area named in the same way. They point out that readers are unaffected (thanks to redirects), and these consistent naming conventions make it easier for editors working on those articles to create links to the articles. For example, here is a classic discussion from 2006 about whether all Lost TV series episodes should be disambiguated with either (Lost) or "(Lost episode)". The idea of not disambiguating those not needing disambiguation is not even initially considered, though later in the discussion the idea is introduced, and through much debate and consternation all documented in the archives of WT:NC-TV, and which eventually went to Arbcom, reason eventually prevailed with the guideline for TV episode names that states: "For an article created about a single episode, add the series name in parentheses Template:Highlight/core". TV episode names have been stable ever since. Same with the guideline (at least what is in essence regarding disambiguating only when necessary). If you look at the guideline history, you will see dozens of edits in 2006, but once this was resolved, relative stability. This is also reflected in the stability of the names of the articles that fall within this domain. I see this pattern over and over again for all sorts of articles.

All the evidence I am aware of supports the position that maximal adherence to WP:TITLE criteria is ultimately the only path to true naming stability at Wikipedia. From U.S. cities on the AP list to city names in Canada, Australia, Philippines, etc., to names of TV series, TV episodes, movies, films, military bases, company names, car models, actors, sports figures, etc., etc., the natural law of Wikipedia is clear: if naming stability is sought, disambiguate only when necessary; otherwise, use the plain natural concise name of the subject. I know of no reason for this natural law of Wikipedia to not apply to any article in Wikipedia, except possibly articles about plants where a strong case has been in made for using scientific names over common English names. If the topic has a clear, natural and concise unambiguous most common name (which plants usually do not have, and that is the basis of the argument to use scientific names there, except for the rare plants which do have names that meet this critieria), if the title is that name then it will be stable; if the title is some other name than it will not be stable.

Please do not misunderstand. My call for following this "natural law" is not contrary to other policy and guidelines, such as Wikipedia:Article_titles#Explicit_conventions, which refers to guidelines that sometimes "recommend the use of titles that are not strictly the common name". It should be noted that this guideline also cautions against doing so, which I essentially implicitly recognizing the very "natural law" I'm referring to here. The guideline goes on to say, "this practice of using specialized names is often controversial, and should not be adopted unless it produces clear benefits outweighing the use of common names". Basically it's saying if you have good reason, then go ahead, per WP:IAR. But, in general, it's not recommended to go "against the grain". This part of the naming policy is perfectly consistent with the natural law to which I refer.

But resistance to accept this remains strong at the start of 2011, particularly by those who prioritize the value of naming all articles within some group similarly over using the natural and most concise name for those articles to which it is available. The names of articles in those few categories of articles where that thinking still prevails, such as names of royalty (WP:NCROY) and names of U.S. cities that are not on the AP list (WP:PLACES#United States), therefore remain unstable and rife with conflict.

I welcome comments, questions, suggestions and relevant evidence about this to be shared on my talk page.

  • I like your idea of having clear and simple guidelines, to avoid endless and needless move warring. You are probably aware of the endless fights over diacritics in titles. You may find the RfC here of interest. Best regards. LittleBen (talk) 16:08, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Some favorites

Policies

Essays on Wikipedia Behavior

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Polls/RFCs

Favorite Quotations

General

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-- Blaise Pascal

Good advice for me

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--User:Cynwolfe [3]

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--A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:24, 18 January 2012 (UTC) [4]

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--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)[5]

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--Nobody Ent 03:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC) [6]

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--GTBacchus(talk) 16:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC) [7]

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--GTBacchus(talk) 16:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC) [8]

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--Elen of the Roads (talk) 14:20, 22 January 2012 (UTC) [9]

Titles (US cities)

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Mattinbgn (talk) [10]

Titles (general)

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GTBacchus(talk) 19:18, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

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TheFreeloader (talk) 19:09, 12 January 2011
  • Oppose reverting the move, per WP:TITLE/WP:PRECISION. U.S. cities don't need special naming conventions not found anywhere else in the world, the AP Style guide isn't Wikipedia policy, and that section of the guideline in any event is just the view of a very small number of editors, without wide consensus. Jayjg (talk) 20:50, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Your comment makes no sense. Of course, US cities have the naming convention of US cities (which is City, State) because US cities are not found anywhere else in the world. Alanscottwalker (talk) 04:14, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
On the contrary; there is nothing inherent in the nature of U.S. place names that makes them require unnecessary disambiguation using state names. Many other countries have states or similar political sub-divisions (e.g. provinces, territories), yet we do not demand this WP:PRECISION violation for them. Roughfort, a village of 200 people, apparently doesn't need disambiguation because it's outside the U.S., but Ann Arbor, a uniquely named city of 113,000 people does, because it's inside the U.S.? It's just Gahlai, not Gahlai, Uttar Pradesh, but the uniquely named cities of Yonkers, New York (pop. 202,000) and Schenectady, New York (pop. 62,000) must disambiguated by state? That makes no sense. Jayjg (talk) 04:41, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

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john k (talk) 15:56, 7 January 2011 (UTC) [11]

In response to: "Rather than an endless cycle of RM discussions about PRIMARYTOPIC, the neutral and common convention in this subject area provides stability for article names. That saves editors from wasting time discuss the primariness or otherwise of one topic after another, and fixing the resulting links.".Template:Pb

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john k (talk) 13:48, 6 January 2011 (UTC) [12]

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—Synchronism (talk) 02:23, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[13]

In response to: "Why does concision take precedence over commonality?" Template:QuotationTemplate:Pb

--JinJian (talk) 15:33, 5 January 2011 (UTC) [14]

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--User:Kotniski [15]

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--Vegaswikian (talk) 01:34, 29 October 2010 (UTC) [16]

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--BDD (talk) 21:31, 24 June 2013 (UTC) [17]

Consensus

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--WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 13 January 2012 (UTC) [18]

Other

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--S. Rich [19]

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--Script error: No such module "user". 23:48, 9 December 2011 [21]

Some least favorites

Bad policy Edits

The beginning of the end for naming consistency within Wikipedia arguably occurred with this edit to the common names guideline on June 4, 2006. This perhaps seemingly innocuous change made the exception the rule, and consistency (with general naming conventions) the exception. What it allowed is the creation of specific naming guidelines that are specific to any group of articles to not use the most common name for the topic of each article as the title of that article, but whatever name is specified is by that particular naming guideline.

Prior to September 22, 2008, WP:AT had the following wording about the situation in which there are two topics for a term but neither is considered the primary topic: "a disambiguation page may be used; an alternative is to set up a redirect from the term to one of the topics, and use disambiguation links only." But on September 22, 2008, the "alternative" was removed, without explanation (nor discussion so far as I can tell), in this edit.

Bad RM decisions

  • Yogurt RM #3Template:PbThere were six bad RM decisions in the history of Yogurt, but the worst one, closed by Script error: No such module "user"., had to be RM #3 which, based on a no consensus result reversed the move to Yogurt result of RM #2 in which closer Script error: No such module "user". determined community consensus favored the move by properly evaluating the arguments in terms of how well they were based in policy (which is what closers are supposed to do). Had the result of RM #2 not been reversed by Tariq's dubious finding and decision in RM #2, that saga would have been resolved five years earlier.
  • Gangsta. → Gangsta (manga)Gangsta (manga) The closer, Kwamikagami, claimed "WP guidelines and multiple precedents" in this terrible non-admin close clearly contrary to consensus, but it was later easily overturned on review[22], and a subsequent RM[23] also showed there was no consensus to change the title from Gangsta.. However, eventually it was moved to Gangsta (manga) (no period).
  • Hillary Rodham Clinton → Hillary Clinton at Talk:Hillary_Clinton/Archive_19#Requested_move_7. This no consensus finding has to be one of the worst RM decisions in the history of WP, and was thankfully eventually corrected. The problem wasn't that the closing panel (Adjwilley, TParis, BrownHairedGirl) went against the 70% majority favoring the move, but that they underweighed the significance of CONCISE as a tie-breaker in a situation where indeed COMMONNAME was well argued to be a wash, using a poor excuse to do so: giving HRC more COMMONNAME weight because of supposedly more usage in "scholarly secondary works", even though even fewer opposers mentioned that than supporters mentioned CONCISE which they discounted because of how few supporters mentioned it. Also a good example of where they should have applied the Yogurt Principle, since it could have been easily seen that once it was moved to HC (as it has been since), there would be no good reason to move it back to HRC (as there isn't now).
  • Film industry in Georgia → Film industry in Georgia (U.S. state)Template:PbThere is no article about the film industry in the country of Georgia. There is nothing to disambiguate. The new title absurdly suggests there is a U.S. stated named Film industry in Georgia. Ridiculous.

True naming consistency

*'''Support''' - For true consistency across Wikipedia, [[WP:TITLE|the principal criteria]] that applies to all articles with respect to title determination should not be trumped by a desire for consistency with similar articles. Consistency with similar articles should only apply when [[WP:D|disambiguation]] is required and the principal criteria that applies to all articles does not clearly indicate what title to use. That is not the case here because [[WP:COMMONNAME]], [[WP:PRIMARYTOPIC]] and [[WP:PRECISION|"only as precise as necessary"]] clearly indicate XXXXXXXXXXX. Since disambiguation is not needed, consistency with similar articles is not applicable. --~~~~

Great RM decisions

Reading consensus based on strength of arguments rather than counting !votes

  • Yoghurt → Yogurt
    • In this second of eight RMs regarding this title, the closer, Script error: No such module "user". actually analyzed the reasons given, and discarded irrelevant !votes. In so doing, he determined consensus was in favor of the proposed move, despite a lack of majority of participants favoring the move. Unfortunately, after being barraged with complaints, he relented and allowed for another (#3) RM discussion. That one resulted in "no consensus" from counting !votes and that closer decided to restore the title prior to the previous RM, back to Yoghurt. Had Mets501's finding of consensus held, the debate over that title would have been resolved five years sooner than it ultimately was.
  • Yom Yerushalayim → Jerusalem Day by User:Fuhghettaboutit: Talk:Jerusalem_Day#Requested_move
    This one sentence summarizes how the closer justified overriding the "consensus" (simply read) of the participants by reading WP:CONSENSUS through weighing of arguments on well they were based on policy and guidelines:
    The nays outweigh the yays in number but the arguments in support are based in guideline and those relied on in opposition are in large part outside of guideline; were debunked and yet repeated without change; are based in classic examples of fallacious arguments we even have pages here describing (often in the context of deletion arguments); and most critically, pertinent evidence was provided which was never met by any counter evidence.
  • Cork → Cork (city) (after many "no consensus" decisions)
    This is a great example of a compromise accepting parenthetic disambiguation that nobody was very thrilled about. But it too has withstood the test of time.
  • Mark Jackson (basketball) → Mark Jackson by JHunterJ: Talk:Mark_Jackson#Requested_move_15_May_2019
    • I think the closer was generous: "while the !VOTES are evenly split, the supports' policy-and-guidelines-based reasons tip the balance.". He clarified further at the move review:
      the opposers citing guidelines were in the minority, and the guidelines cited by the opposers did not support the claims (that is, the criterion about long-term significance was being used in a logical fallacy: "A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term." does not equate to "A topic cannot be primary for a term unless it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.". There was no WP:SUPERVOTE, just an assessment of the consensus in the discussion and in the guidelines cited (per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS)
    • And I expanded on that:
      No one opposed the nom's claim that the subject in question was getting 90% of the pageviews (one support said it was more like 85%). The opposes argued long-term significance (of what???) or just blatant JDLI ("Mark who?"). I too never heard of this (or any) Mark Jackson, but let's be clear, 85-90% of the people searching with "Mark Johnson" are looking for this one particular article, and the opposition thinks policy supports leaving the dab page there? Preposterous. The oppose votes were given too much weight as I would have dismissed them entirely for being utterly devoid of policy basis. Mentioning long-term significance in a discussion where long-term significance has no relevance is not policy basis. The opposers should all be trouted, as well as anyone not endorsing this close should be.
  • Cameron Smith (rugby league, born 1983) → Cameron Smith by Steven Crossin: Talk:Cameron_Smith#Requested_move_30_May_2019
  • David III of Tao → David III Multi-page-move at Talk:David_III_of_Tao#Requested_move_9_February_2024 where all but (the main) one were moved.
    What stands out in this decision is that the closer, Compassionate727, really looked at how strong the arguments were based on policy. They even used the terms "weighty" and "not weighty" to distinguished strong from weak arguments.

Decisions based on SMALLDETAILS

No consensus decisions related to deciding primary topic

Other

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  • Script error: No such module "user". + two others [28]

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Community persistence pays

All these articles were at titles where they were controversial but the moves were stubbornly opposed usually by just enough defenders to thwart achievement of clear local consensus multiple times, sometimes for years. In each case eventually community consensus prevailed, and they are all now uncontroversial at their stable titles.

Hopefully some day...

  • Sarah Jane Brown → ??? (Sarah Jane Brown is not used by RS to refer to this person)
    • NOTE: 12-month moratorium on RMs ends on 1/29/2018.
  • Beetroot → Beet

Current violations of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC (topics treated as primary that are not primary):

Current violations of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC (topics not treated as primary that are primary):


ENGVAR (Variety of English is disputed, cannot be resolved, and does not match original variety)

Examples of naming consistency

Below is a list of examples of pairs of titles from similar articles, each of which is consistent with general naming principles, but doesn't appear to be named consistently with the other. Note that these are not cherry-picked exceptions, but were mostly found by simply clicking on SPECIAL:RANDOM a few times, and exemplify the status quo.Template:Pb What this illustrates is that it is normal for titles of similar articles to not follow the same format, and that when the titles of two similar articles don't follow the same format (typically, one is disambiguated while the other is not), that doesn't mean something is wrong that needs to be fixed.

In each case, the reason for the apparent inconsistency is the same:

Because in Wikipedia we strive for titles to be consistent with disambiguate only when necessary.

Articles I've started

Essays I've written

Is Bothell, Washington more concise than Bothell?

While there are a variety of arguments made for why titles of US city articles in the form of City, State should be favored over City, a rather unusual one is that concise should be interpreted such that, for example, "Bothell, Washington" is more comprehensive and thus more concise than "Bothell", because the longer one more comprehensively describes what the article is about and comprehensiveness is a key aspect of conciseness. Per the same reasoning, Hillary Rodham Clinton is more comprehensive and more concise than Hillary Clinton, and Ebro River is more comprehensive and more concise than Ebro, and so each of these longer title variants should be favored as well.

By the way, the argument against this view is that comprehensiveness in the context of title determination is not measured in terms of how well the article topic is described, but in how well it is identified. Most articles have a title that is merely the most common name used to refer to that topic; that title does not describe the article content, it merely identifies it. From that perspective, Bothell, Hillary Clinton and Ebro are just as comprehensive as are Bothell, Washington, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ebro River, because they identify the respective article topic just as comprehensively. However, since the shorter titles are shorter, they are also more concise, as brevity is the other aspect of conciseness. That is, if two titles identify a topic just as comprehensively, but one is shorter, then that one is more concise.

Now, if a topic does not have a name, then we are required to use a so-called descriptive title. Similar considerations are made when a name is ambiguous and requires disambiguation. For those types of titles we go beyond mere identification and delve into the realm of describing the topic in the title to some extent, but even there we are limited by policy and guidelines, including WP:PRECISE, which says titles are only precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that. Bothell, due to its uniqueness, unambiguously defines the topical scope of the article just as well as does Bothell, Washington.

Primary Topic

Over the years I've wrestled with how primary topic is often misunderstood to mean "the most important topic" rather than "the most likely to be sought". This week I've noticed a similar misunderstanding associated with Time's Person of the Year. I've seen a trend in conservative social media promoting Gary Sinise as a more appropriate Person of the Year[34] than the targeted journalists Time has selected. It strikes me that these people misunderstand that the criteria for Person of the Year much like many on WP misunderstand the criteria for Primary Topic. The Person of the Year recognizes subjects that have "done the most to influence the events of the year". Gary Sinise, no matter how much GOOD he has done, does not even come close to meeting that. People forget that even Hitler and Saddam Hussein were Persons of the Year (Man of the Year for Hitler), because, for better or for worse, they influenced events in those years. It has nothing to do with whether they did any GOOD at all.

Anyway, I continue to believe we would improve WP by restoring primary topic to its clear original meaning which was entirely about likelihood to be sought, and no explicit consideration for "historical significance" (to the extent that historical significance needs to factor into deciding primary topic, it's inherent in likelihood of being sought).

Confusion

Misc

Link to Jamal_Khashoggi article before his disappearance: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jamal_Khashoggi&oldid=854111142

Links

Markup signature

This is a signature I used for a few days. I like the rendered look, but the source is unwieldy:

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