Talk:Rivercourse, Alberta

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Requested move[edit]

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

The result of the move request was: Moved, considering both the fact the article had been at Rivercourse, Alberta for a long time (thus this is simply reversal of a non-uncontroversial action), and it is credible to believe a user searching for "rivercourse" is more likely to be searching for information on about a "river's course" than about the Albertan city. I however do not see particularly strong consensus about where to retarget the title Rivercourse; I will default to River but recommend further discussion about a potential conversion to an article or retarget to Watercourse or somewhere else. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 03:35, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Rivercourse → Rivercourse, Alberta – I believe that this tiny community is not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of "rivercourse", "rivercourse" should redirect to river. 117Avenue (talk) 07:29, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note, this RM is a revert of an undiscussed move.

Support per nom. Hwy43 (talk) 13:42, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support well spotted. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:55, 14 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Google Books results one word "rivercourse" excluding with space -"river course" 3750 uses after taking out "Alberta". In ictu oculi (talk) 04:16, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I'm not convinced anyone would look for river at rivercourse. Red Slash 02:23, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- No, someone may be looking for information on the topography of rivers, by searching for an article titled "River course" or "Rivercourse". Currently no article exists. The articles to most likely to fulfill this request are River, Watercourse, and Hydrology, unless you can think of a better one. 117Avenue (talk) 03:49, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'd bet that most people looking for this city search for Rivercourse. (We may be talking about, like, four people a month, but still.) I would bet that fewer than four people a month look for watercourse by typing in rivercourse (which isn't even a word!)... and even less so river. Regardless, this talk page's sum of page views probably now exceeds the article's, so this is probably the end of my comments here! Red Slash
    - It should be noted that until 9 May 2014‎ this article was at Rivercourse, Alberta, so view counts may not tell you what you think. 117Avenue (talk) 02:12, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:117Avenue given that this article was stable 2009 till a few days ago you could have reverted the move at WP:RM uncontroversial moves per WP:BRD

User:Red Slash can you please present a Google Book search for "rivercourse" to check that? Thanks. Also please remember WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.

A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
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 this settlement in Alberta pass either of these tests? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:07, 17 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It would appear so, because I've never heard the course of a river being referred to as "rivercourse". There were some clearly false positives listed at Google Books, some results for the town, and some "true positive" results for the course of a river. Inconclusive to my eyes. Which agrees with the data that until the recent page move, this redirect was (by grok) getting fewer than one click a day. Red Slash 00:46, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To quote 117Avenue, who said "I guess I'm arguing that a misspelling is more of a primary topic than a small Canadian rural community with a population too small to count", I guess I'm arguing that a small Canadian rural community with a population too small to count is more of a primary topic than a misspelling. Red Slash 00:48, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@In ictu oculi: I did revert the move, see the page's history and the discussions here and here. I am still waiting for CambridgeBayWeather and Skeezix1000 to join this discussion. 117Avenue (talk) 03:47, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not bothered either way. Just a point but I think this was one of the pages that didn't exist until I moved the hamlet here. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 03:59, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Strong support clearly should be the watercourse of a river. -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 07:14, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Red Slash and WP:NATURAL. "Rivercourse" is not a natural search term for "river" (or any of the other suggested redirects). It does not appear as an English word in either Merriam-Webster or Oxford (which has only "river-course" or "river course", but no "rivercourse"). Dohn joe (talk) 17:36, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- I guess I'm arguing that a misspelling is more of a primary topic than a small Canadian rural community with a population too small to count. 117Avenue (talk) 02:12, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  We could always add a hatnote containing a special redirect to "watercourse" and track its usage. Dohn joe (talk) 15:19, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Superfluous disambiguation per Red Slash, {{fixit}} with a {{distinguish}} hatnote: [1] per Dohn joe. ^walk victor falk^talk 02:33, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Victor falk: except that what Dohn Joe says is incorrect. The 3,750 uses of rivercourse as an unspaced word shows the word is not a "misspelling" but a common variant, and the primary topic. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:53, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, depends of your opinion of compoundwording. I may err on the safe side, to overcompensate the influence of the Germanic languages I know. So to me it's not a misspelling, though it definitely is in the opinion of some. Nevertheless, "rivercourse" struck me as an odd construction for the English language. The question is if it is enough to make it a primary topic. Against the 4000 Gbook hits, one could pit 70000 Ghits for the string [rivercourse alberta -"river course" -wikipedia]. That makes them roughly equal, if one assigns a 20:1 factor to books over web hits. Not convinced that is enough for it to be "much more likely" as defined per wp:primarytopic. Considering that a "rivercourse" is a sub-type of watercourse and would be a redirect anyway to that (very {{stub}}by) article, I feel we would be inconvenient to "rivercourse (Alberta)" readers without offering anything of real value to the "rivercourse (watercourse)" people. ^walk victor falk^talk 08:27, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why would one use plain Google for one word and Google Books for the other? Whatever comparison was made plain Google will always be more than Google Books. But like-for-like rivercourse (river) is more than Rivercourse (Alberta). Why should we be moving the less common meaning over the more common meaning? It doesn't make sense. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:01, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's 700 gbookshits for "rivercourse alberta", but I can't think of a search string that will limit general ghits to rivercourse as a fluvial term. The difference would be enough (if it was of the same magnitude for ghits as for gbookshits).... But on further reflection I suddenly realise I have based my opposition on the current state of the ~~article~~ stub, not on the potential of a fully-fledged watercourse article, that would encyclopedically cover what a "rivercourse" is (a river plus its immediate geological environment if I gather things correctly). I apologise for that oversight and hereby change my !ballot to Support. ^walk victor falk^talk 14:36, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support, as per nom and previous discussion. Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:37, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support reversing undiscussed move that was, in hind sight, controversial. This is not what most readers would expect to be here. The discussion above proves that the word is used for much more then the town. This is another case of naming conventions creating unneeded discussions. rivercourse should be a redirect to watercourse. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:17, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- What possible naming convention caused this discussion? It was a redlink, some user moved the page here, people thought "hey, I never thought of doing it before, but we should make rivercourse a redirect to a river-related article", some people disagreed, that's it. I'm accepting the fact that the consensus will go the other way but I can't possibly criticize anyone or anything in this discussion. Red Slash 03:25, 24 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Red Slash: the MOS that removes the disambiguation from Canadian places is WP:CANSTYLE#Places. 117Avenue (talk) 02:55, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.