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New move proposal: Sega Genesis and Mega Drive

User:Jinnai mentioned above that WP:AND and WP:TITLEFORMAT would allow the title "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" as a good compromise between both "Mega Drive" and "Sega Genesis", which mutually exclude each other. So I figured it was worth a new discussion. Here are the rationale points:

• According to WP:AND, subjects in which there are two or more things that cannot be reasonably split into their own articles, yet also have separate (and distinctly notable) names, can properly be joined into a compound title, as is the case with Pokémon Blue and Red.
• The ordering with Genesis first complies with the policy's provision that, when there is no clear winner for WP:COMMONNAME, the names should be ordered alphabetically. This is not meant to express or imply that Genesis is somehow more notable or important than Mega Drive - the two should be considered in equal standing per the policy.
• This compound name would satisfy the issues raised in the earlier discussion with respect to WP:TITLEFORMAT that caused us to rename the article from "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis" to "Mega Drive".
• This name would also bypass many of the "popularity contest" issues that came up in the previous move discussion, as now both consoles are equally represented in the title.

I'd like to stress that this is a new and separate proposal from the one above, which proposed we flip from "Mega Drive" to "Sega Genesis". I'd like to encourage people to treat this as such and to keep the discussion cool, concise and civil. Thank you. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 02:54, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support: I have some misgivings about the title implying either that the topic is about two disparate products with only a peripheral connection, or that it's about a single product whose name exactly matches the compound title. WP:AGF dictates that I should trust the majority of our readers to be able to tell the difference, or at least to be able to figure it out once they start reading the article text (where this is spelled out in the first paragraph), so this shouldn't be much of an issue. I think this is a good compromise between the two exclusive names, and it should satisfy all of the policy issues we've been discussing. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 02:54, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

We can show the distinctness, when we start adding things like marketing campaigns to the article. - X201 (talk) 08:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support I proposed this compromise.∞陣内Jinnai 02:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
• Support: I can get behind this too as a reasonable solution.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 03:18, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
• Support: Doesn't look as neat as Mega Drive/Sega Genesis but it's virtually the same thing, so that's good. "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" it is.--SexyKick 05:50, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
• I don't want to sound like a stick in the mud, and unfortunately I'm going to have to reference the previous Move discussion - But believe me, I'm raising this point to hopefully put the move issues to bed once and for all. I think the name order is wrong. Throughout the previous move discussion Sega Genesis has been the proposed name, why ignore the 'S' in Sega now and categorise it as "G" for Genesis? Above, SexyKick expressed a preference for the console order to be Mega Drive - Genesis. So whilst I support the spirit of your proposal Kiefer, I can't yet get behind the proposed name. I would like to propose Mega Drive and Sega Genesis as an alternative. - X201 (talk) 08:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify I have no real preference between Mega Drive and Sega Genesis or Sega Genesis and Mega Drive I was just using the same Mega Drive/Sega Genesis name I had proposed way back when, the / is just neater than the and. So I'm 100% neutral between the two "and" names.--SexyKick 08:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Mostly the same here, only raising it because I just want there to be a fair choice. The sooner the name issue is put to bed once and for all, the better. - X201 (talk) 08:17, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

We could just go with Genesis and Mega Drive - the original reason for using "Sega Genesis" was that it was a reasonable alternative to having to disambiguate the name from other things also called Genesis (band, biblical chapter, etc.). But when combined with "Mega Drive", it's not actually as important since the Mega Drive itself serves as disambiguation. Does that sound reasonable? If we decide to stick with Sega in the name, then I think it would be reasonable to see it as grouping the two names under the company name, like "Sega [Genesis, Mega Drive]", which would logically break out to "Sega Genesis and Sega Mega Drive". This is technically correct since "Sega" is not actually part of either console's name, but is typically prepended in common use. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 15:56, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I never saw Sega as part-and-parsel with "Sega Genesis" and not also meaning "Sega Mega Drive". If it's going to cause people like X201 to elawyer that somehow Mega Drive comes first because of naming order, I'd rather have it removed entirely so as to remove that potential.∞陣内Jinnai 17:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that Jinnai. Thought I'd made my reason for raising it clear - to get the issue solved, unequivocally, once-and-for-all. Not sure why you let loose with the personal attack. - X201 (talk) 18:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

It should be "Sega Genesis" and "Mega Drive" whichever order we choose to go with. (I don't consider calling someone a wiki lawyer to be a personal attack btw, I've heard it about myself from others and never felt attacked).--SexyKick 20:11, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Back on topic: The console's name in the US is just "Genesis", not "Sega Genesis". Most people, including gaming magazines and such, tended to call it "Sega Genesis" for two reasons: (1) It flowed well in context with the console's competition with Nintendo, and (2) because of other things also called Genesis (like the rock band, which still enjoyed popularity at the same time). It's sort of an informal disambiguation, but unlike the SNES, Sega never actually attached its company name directly to the name of the console. (It did with the Sega CD, but not the Genesis.) So either we use the informal disambiguation in the title to mean "Sega [Genesis and Mega Drive]", or we should eliminate "Sega" from the title entirely since the meaning is clear with both consoles in the name. I think X201's point was that if we were considering "Sega Genesis" to be the proper name of the console, we should consider it as starting with an S and thus coming alphabetically AFTER "Mega Drive". — KieferSkunk (talk) — 20:19, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I can see both Jin's alphanumeric/importance weight argument, and X201's alphabetical argument. If it was up to me, I'd go with alphanumeric. However, I really don't care. Getting both titles of the console in the article name is the way to go, and arguing over their order is a bit sad to me.--SexyKick 20:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree - that was out of line, Jinnai. X201 had a good point, which I tried to address. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 20:12, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I said that because that's honestly what it appeared to me at the time, ie trying to twist an informal name "Sega Genesis" to somehow put "Mega Drive" first. The reason being is specififically that I saw it as an attempt to undermine a seemingly neutral title by only attacking "Sega" to the former.∞陣内Jinnai 20:45, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify. I'm fully behind the compound name. I just want us to get it "right" first time (whichever form the "right" name takes). This article has had more than its fair share of huge talk page discussions and battles. Now we have consensus on a compound name I just want a stable name that we can all get behind. Then we can get back to improving the article up to FA, although, SexyKick, to do that, the Marketing section needs some work, it doesn't mention Cyber Razor Cut once ;-) - X201 (talk) 21:53, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that link is already in the article under To Be This Good Takes Ages. I could add a second line specifically mentioning the Cyber Razor Cut.--SexyKick 22:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Just ribbing you SK. You've done more for this article than anyone, and anyone who doubts that can look at the stats. - X201 (talk) 07:57, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Aw. Thanks for saying that, but I think the people who started the article and put in all the major information are the ones who did the most for the article. I had a feeling you might be ribbing me once I realized the video was in the article, but now I'm confused on if you want me to add a line about the Cyber Razor Cut or not. ; )--SexyKick 08:19, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• comment Policywise this can be supported as a descriptive name, mooting the objection to "Sega" being included: the article title ceases to be WP:COMMONNAME and becomes adescriptive name, so including "Sega" becomes part of the description. Using "Genesis and Mega Drive" without the "Sega" is incomplete as a descriptive title. I am neutral towards the proposal in the sense that I won't oppose (unlike any proposal that is to change "Mega Drive" to "Genesis" as per the RfC), but wanted to put this out there.--Cerejota (talk) 20:52, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
• Support: I think the compromise is unnecessary from a policy standpoint, but seeing as this issue is as heated as it is and that it comes up over time, perhaps this is the only way we can put this to rest forever. I prefer the name "Genesis and Mega Drive" (seeing as the term Sega is not part of the name of the Genesis and was used only to distinguish it from other terms - something not needed when paired with the mega drive), but "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" is ok (it being understood that the "Sega" applies to both the Genesis and the Mega Drive).LedRush (talk) 02:31, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
• Comment: As it turns out, I can't find anything that definitively backs up my earlier comment that the North American name is just "Genesis" and not "Sega Genesis" - most of our official sources use the latter name and only shorten it to "Genesis" afterwards, just like they tend to shorten the full name of NES to the acronym after its first use. Even Nintendo's Virtual Console service, which offers Genesis games in North America, uses the title "Sega Genesis". So it appears I may be wrong about, or at least not able to verify, the claim about the Genesis name. That said, I still think "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" will flow better and doesn't necessarily imply any importance or other issues, and the implied distribution of "Sega" to "Mega Drive" should still fit. This issue would probably more directly effect the article content than the title. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 16:13, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Consensus tracking

(Please continue the discussion in the section above - I'm just putting this here to track what the current consensus appears to be.)

I'll give this another day to allow opinions to come in and settle, but so far it appears we have a much stronger consensus to move to some form of the compound name, and "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" appears to be the most popular option. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 21:16, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

As of now (see sig), there have been no firm arguments against using the compound name with "and". I noted that I was unable to find any official sources that definitively declare the North American name as just "Genesis" and not "Sega Genesis", while there are far more sources that use the latter name. But this shouldn't affect the title. It seems all of the parties still participating in the conversation support this idea - I'll go ahead and do the move per WP:BRD, understanding that another editor can revert it if there's a strong objection or policy violation we didn't anticipate. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 16:16, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Move happened too fast

There was a prior move proposal that failed with "no consensus" around 17 Sept. At the same time, an RfC was opened. RfCs are supposed to last for 30 days, per WP:RFC. After only a few days of the RfC, a second move proposal (somewhat similar to the first failed move) was made on 20 Sept. The second move did not use the RM process. Request for Moves (WP:RM) are supposed to go for 7 days, but often last longer, and are typically closed by an uninvolved admin. In this article, the second move was performed only 1 or 2 days after the second move was suggested. Many uninvolved editors may yet see the RfC notice and come here and contribute input. Finally, the move itself was approved and performed by the (involved) editor that proposed the second move, which is inappropriate. I'd suggest that the move be undone, and a formal WP:RM be initiated, and be publicized in some forums, and go for 7 days, then be closed by an uninvolved editor. --Noleander (talk) 16:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. I thought we were allowed to use WP:BRD when it appeared we had reached consensus. For the record, the second move proposal was not that similar to the first - we were discussing a compound name as opposed to switch from one popular name to the other, and the nature of the title change was substantially different. If you really feel we need to revert, I'll do the revert, but this is likely to be quite painful.

For the record, I did not propose either of the move requests. User:Jinnai proposed the first one and suggested the second one, which I formalized. I was simply trying to help facilitate the discussion and expressed my own opinions on both moves. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 16:46, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the move is a good move, I'm not saying its not. Im just saying that WP has a lot of drama, and we all should work together to slow down and follow processes, and solicit as much input as possible. If the re-name is a good thing, Im sure it will be approved by a full 7-day RM. Hasty moves like this make it look like someone is trying to slip something by on the sly. Make an RM, and publicize it on the WP Games project, wait 7 days, then do the move. --Noleander (talk) 16:54, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

All right, I'll move everything back to "Mega Drive" and undo all the FUR updates I just made on all the non-free images, but at this point I'm going to have to ask someone else to deal with the rest of the bureaucracy. I'm honestly tired of dealing with this article in general - it has been a source of WAY too much drama and it is taking up WAY too much of my time, and it's not worth the stress it's causing me. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 17:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Kiefer, you've done a brilliant job of shepherding and controlling this discussion. I'm certain that the discussion is now past the hurling of brick-bats, stats, counter-stats, etc. and has arrived at a good solid name. If you can, please see it though to the end. When it comes to the actual move, give me notice of when, and I'll sort out the Redirects, FURs etc.- X201 (talk) 17:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

After I botched it up by incorrectly moving the talk page into the main article's title, I went and manually moved everything so that we still have all our history intact. If another admin could fix any remaining issues, that would be awesome. I'll post the WP:RM, but I intend to take a back seat from here - like I said, this really has taken too much of my time as it is. Thanks X201 for your kind words and offer to help - good luck. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 17:23, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Requested move (September 21, 2011)

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was moved. The consensus below seems quite clear and sometimes it is better to go with something that works and just move on!--regentspark (comment) 14:29, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Mega Drive → Sega Genesis and Mega Drive – After reaching no consensus to move to "Genesis", another proposal to use a compound name ("Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" was the most popular) was made and achieved quick consensus among most of the original editors. However, it has been requested that we have a formal discussion and stick with the WP:RM process. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 17:30, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support - Unequivocally! - X201 (talk) 17:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
• Again, Support.∞陣内Jinnai 18:18, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
• Support - Per my comments aboveLedRush (talk) 18:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support Sega Genesis/Mega Drive I guess wouldn't work. Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) wouldn't look as good. Hmm... Sega Genesis (also known as Mega Drive) would be too long. So Sega Genesis and Mega Drive work fine I suppose, as long as Sega Genesis is first, since it sold far more by that name than the other, and also G comes before M so alphabetical order rules. Dream Focus 18:26, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• Again, just for history's sake, this article was once titled "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis", which we decided violated WP:TITLEFORMAT. The current proposal is the best compromise we've been able to agree on that achieves the same goal and doesn't give undue weight to either console name. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 18:34, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support - Glad to put the issue to rest.--SexyKick 21:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
• Support - The new name works a lot better than any of the previous incarnations, plus it makes everyone happy. Best of both worlds. Wolftengu (talk) 22:34, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose; just pick a name and stick with it. Powers ^T 00:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• Why do you think we're requesting the move? — KieferSkunk (talk) — 01:48, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
  • To avoid having to pick one or the other. Powers ^T 01:54, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• That is *exactly* why we're proposing this move. We DID pick one, and people keep fighting over it. This is so far the best compromise anyone's proposed that gives equal weight to two equally-notable and inherently connected topics. I just don't understand why you're so quick to oppose it when you apparently haven't read the discussion above. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 03:20, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Sometimes the cure is worse than the illness. In this case, it produces a confusing and unwieldy title that I find unacceptable. I don't care which of the two titles is chosen, but everyone here just needs to accept whichever choice is made. Powers ^T 12:19, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• I guess I don't see how it's any more unwieldy or confusing than, say, Pokemon Blue and Red. But we'll see where the rest of the discussion goes. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 17:02, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Red are two separate products; the article is about both products, but they are separate. This article describes a single product, so a conjuctive title is misleading to the reader. Powers ^T 17:13, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• Due to the differences in the way they're marketed in their respective regions, and their independent notability in each region, Mega Drive and Sega Genesis are effectively two separate products. The names describe the same base console, yes, but the Genesis in particular has its own independent notability beyond that of the Mega Drive (for reasons I explained in the earlier discussion). Additionally, both the number of Google hits (scholar and otherwise) and the best sales figures we have available put both names at approximately equal status (close enough that there is no clear winner). That has led to numerous very long, heated and painful debates on which name we should use - many people were profoundly unhappy with the choice to use Mega Drive based on it being the original name for the console, but we couldn't reach consensus to switch to Genesis since that would make the article "US-centric". So, you can get a sense of the stalemate. By using a compound name, we address these issues in a way that gives equal weight to both names. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 18:07, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes, I'm aware of the broad strokes of the history. That doesn't change the fact that the proposed name is both awkward and misleading. Powers ^T 19:53, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

It is "one product" but with two names, each with their own history and proponents. Which name should be used? Genesis? Mega Drive? How about "Fourth-generation 16-bit Cartridge-based Sega Console"? Wolftengu (talk) 22:09, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

As I said, I don't care which one is chosen. Powers ^T 22:32, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

We've been through either-or already, along with "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis", which were either inappropriate (the single names) or complicated and definitely awkward (the slash-separated dual names). If you have a idea, feel free to suggest it; empty dismissals are unproductive. Wolftengu (talk) 00:30, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

My "idea" is to just pick one and use it, as I said. I'm sorry some people can't handle that, but that's not my problem. There are ways to enforce title stability if necessary. The fact that local editors don't care to take those measures doesn't make the proposed title any more suitable. Powers ^T 00:45, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

So where were you during the Sega Genesis proposal?--SexyKick 01:21, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Probably time to let it go. LtPowers is entitled to his opinion, as we all are. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 01:43, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I remind SexyKick that I am not omnipresent, and I don't lose the right to comment on a current proposal merely because I missed prior ones. Powers ^T 11:25, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I certainly did not mean to imply that you lost your right to comment here. I was just curious as to your thoughts on Mega Drive vs. Sega Genesis, as if you had some useful insight into helping that out, then you'd have an argument against our new proposal for this compound name. Trying to help you help your argument. Yes?--SexyKick 10:52, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

If I had to pick one, I'd stick with the international name, but there are good arguments on both sides. Powers ^T 14:05, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

This proposal wouldn't be here if we could reasonably pick one.∞陣内Jinnai 03:55, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support: brilliant sidestepping of the issue, and concordant with guidelines too! Sceptre ^(talk) 18:28, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
• oppose as unnecessary and an unnecessarily confusing title. Cliff (talk) 05:00, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
• Support Genesis should be in the title--YifferFox (talk) 06:37, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NPOV#Naming: "Although multiple terms may be in common usage, a single name should be chosen as the article title ... Article titles which combine alternative names are discouraged." We should choose one name and it has been chosen. Until new consensus to use another alternative name (Sega Genesis) is establised, we should stick to the current name. --Kusunose 09:44, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Key word there is "discouraged", not banned. There is plenty of history to show that either name by itself would cause issues. This requested move has managed to get a lot of support from some of the most ardent supporters on both sides. The Mega Drive and Genesis were marketed as 2 different products.∞陣内Jinnai 13:54, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose I see where you're coming from, but this title would give the false impression that Genesis and Mega Drive are two distinct products. One title should be chosen and the other one made a redirect, rather than mashing two of them together. Quietbritishjim (talk) 10:33, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
  • See above. They were essentially marketed as 2 different products.∞陣内Jinnai 13:54, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
• Support I'm tempted to oppose since it should just be called Genesis. At least this gets Genesis in the name.--BeastSystem (talk) 16:47, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose no better than Mega Drive/Genesis, whatever the intricacies of naming policy. And the name ordering does seem unfortunately like letting Genesis through via the back door. Miremare 17:07, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I can't help that Genesis goes first. That is considered standard practice. Authors, FE are listed alphabetically unless one of them has clearly done more than the other. There has to be a way to resolve naming order otherwise its just chaos.∞陣内Jinnai 13:58, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
  • The way I see it, we either accept a name like this under WP:IAR as a compromise, or we continue to bicker about whether it's "Mega Drive" or "Sega Genesis" like we have been for years. Because it seems you'll never get a substantial number of editors to agree on one or the other. Sounds like the US government, really. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 15:57, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
  • And the arguments against using this have been that it is either confusing or non-compliant with common name. I don't agree that the title is confusing (it seems crystal clear to me and the first sentence of the article makes it even more so). Common name clearly provides for this type of name. While I believe that Common Name points to the Genesis as the title name, we haven't gotten consensus around that point. There is no other policy related argument against the name, so we're left with an imperfect solution that is better than the other two imperfect (or unacceptable) solutions.LedRush (talk) 16:13, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
    • Indeed this also falls under WP:NDESC, The proposal is essentially a neutral descriptive name as it is a composite of 2 names and WP:AND. In essence, COMMONNAME is not the whole of our title naming policy.∞陣内Jinnai 17:15, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
      • One more point: As I recall, the main reason (though not the only one) why "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis" violated policy was not so much because it was a compound name, but more specifically because of the forward-slash. Both for technical reasons (page hierarchy) and for visual reasons, it would be difficult to tell the difference between that page as named, and a case where "Sega Genesis" is a subpage of "Sega Mega Drive" - the visual aspect of it may make an un-savvy reader think that "Sega Genesis" is a subpage of the larger "Mega Drive" topic. By using a name in the form "X AND Y", we solve that problem. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 18:14, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
        • I'm aware that there were technical reasons for moving from "Mega Drive/Genesis", but even if there weren't that wouldn't make it a good title, and the same applies here. As some have said above, we should use one title and stick with it, which is what we have been doing for the last six years, with several move requests and RFCs failing to reach a consensus otherwise. Using "and" implies two separate subjects covered together in keeping with WP:AND and all the examples given there (Acronym and initialism; Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9; Promotion and relegation; and Balkline and straight rail) none of these are different names for the same subjects but multiple subjects covered for editorial reasons in one article. WP:AND is specifically for "closely related or complementary concepts" as it says, whereas Mega Drive and Genesis are the same thing. I'm pretty sure there's no part of naming policy that advises using multiple synonymous names in the same title. If there were we'd have ended up with Aeroplane and airplane instead of Fixed-wing aircraft, and Corn and maize instead of Maize, and any number of other naming dispute examples I'm sure we could all think of. Thankfully, that's never been how it worked.
        • I also dispute that it's a "discriptive title" - it's a couple of names that don't in themselves give the reader any clue what the article is about - there's nothing descriptive about that. The example given in WP:NDESC is Population of Canada by year, which is perfectly descriptive. A descriptive title in this case would be "Sega 16-bit games console" or something like that. Miremare 21:37, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
          • This is not a Yogurt and Yoghurt type proposal. There are minor, but key hardware differences. There is also disctint marketing, reception and impact of each to the point they could be treated as seperate products. Aeroplane and airplane are just dialect differences. Corn and mazie is the same thing. When someone talks about "Corn" or "Maize" they are talking about the same thing. When someone talks about "Mega Drive" or "Genesis" that's not always the case.∞陣内Jinnai 21:46, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
            • Aeroplane and airplane are just dialect differences, but Mega Drive and Genesis are just regional differences. I don't know what particular minor hardware differences you're referring to, but hardware differences are absolutely rife within the console's many and various iterations anyway whether they are branded Mega Drive or Genesis, none of which has any bearing on the end product. I don't believe there's any more of a distinct marketing and reception than any product released all over the world - any differences there are can be covered in the article, but that certainly doesn't necessitate a change in article title. Miremare 23:22, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
          • Luckily we have a 9 to 5 consensus, so there's no point to arguing so much other than to fill the page up. You put in your oppose, and it's noted.--SexyKick 02:16, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
            • • Indeed, it can be covered in one article which is why, aside from some congressional stuff with the Genesis, no one is talking about splitting this. Renaming it does not dillute its coverage. It also makes it celar that they are similar and also denotes that someone who talks about Genesis or Mega Drive isn't always talking about the same thing.∞陣内Jinnai 02:17, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
                • SexyKick, you might like to look up what consensus means. Jinnai: I know nobody's talking about splitting the article, because Mega Drive and Genesis are the same thing, which is exactly the point. The fact remains that policy does not support this move as claimed. Miremare 07:45, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
                  • con·sen·sus [kuhn-sen-suhs] - noun, plural -sus·es.
                  • 1. majority of opinion: The consensus of the group was that they should meet twice a month.
                  • 9 to 5 is a majority, right? Sorry if this sounds like a jerk thing to say, that is not my intention. I'm sure it's no less of a jerk thing to tell me to look it up.--SexyKick 08:43, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
                  • The term is used on Wikipedia to mean more than a majority, but less at the same time. These things are not a vote, meaning that arguments are weighed more numbers, though numbers do count. Regardless, we have not only a majority, but a substantial majority at that. Furthermore, we don't have issues in the oppose category that amount to anything more than "we don't need it", despite the overwhelming evidence that this is an issue that isn't going away. I would say this is a pretty clear consensus, but I guess it also depends on how much the people who oppose this are willing to dig their heels in. Meaning, do they oppose this but they will accept the outcome, or do they oppose this and will be as disruptive as possible until they get their way?LedRush (talk) 13:34, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
                    • "we don't have issues in the oppose category that amount to anything more than "we don't need it"". Yes we do - the policies/guidelines cited as supporting the move (WP:AND, WP:NDESC, etc), actually don't support it, as detailed above. Three "supporting" editors have replied to this, none of whom have provided evidence to the contrary. Miremare 18:38, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

It's been more than a week, so it can be moved now.--SexyKick 14:11, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

• Request closure delay: this proposal was made with the justification of certain policies supporting it, but this doesn't stand up to scrutiny - neither WP:AND or WP:NDESC support the use of more than one name for a single subject as explained above. Certain editors seem rather eager to ignore this recently highlighted fact and push the move through immediately without having to respond. The "support" side should be obliged to counter this rather than sweep it under the rug. Miremare 18:38, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

That's your opinion, one not shared that much. Go check any of the Pokemon main series video game titles and you'll find those using similar conventions. Clearly there is support for such usage with policy and guidelines out there.∞陣内Jinnai 18:56, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Good point on the Pokemon Jinnai. Plus re-reading WP:AND as well as WP:NDESC shows me Acronym and initialism (which are the exact same thing) and there is clearly no need to invent a new descriptive title for this article past what has been proposed. Thank you for bringing these to our attention Miremare, now that we've reviewed them and found the proposed title to be in line with policy (as Scepter acknowledged as well) we have consensus, policy, and the proper amount of time has passed, so we may continue with the move unless I'm wrong. Not to mention three of us have responded to you before you made that comment about "certain editors" ignoring you.--SexyKick 19:12, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

1) It's not my opinion, it's what the policy says. No opinions necessary. Either it says something (as claimed) or it doesn't say it. And it just doesn't say it. 2) Acronyms and initialisms aren't the same thing - read the article. Pokemon Blue and Red aren't the same thing - they are two separate products covered together, which is entirely consistent with WP:AND. There is no policy support for using multiple names for a single subject in article titles. If there were, half the articles on WP would do so to settle naming disputes and we'd end up with an encyclopedia full of horrible article titles. And yes, three responded, none of whom addressed it. Miremare 22:21, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Pokemon Red and Blue are truly the same game with a different name. Just as there are different stories to tell about the Sega Genesis and Mega Drive. Did the Sega Genesis have Sega Meganet? No. Did the Mega Drive have the Sega Channel? No. Did the Mega Drive have a commercial telling people that Genesis Does What Nintendon't? Certainly not. WP:AND says nothing about why this article can't be called the proposed title.--SexyKick 22:51, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

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

I've taken care of all the redirects, and have pointed them to the new location. - X201 (talk) 14:56, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

What about the links in the other Sega consoles' articles? Should we be changing the successor of the SMS to the [Sega Genesis and Mega Drive]? (I am talking about in the info boxes, not the article space, though questions arise there as well).LedRush (talk) 15:00, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

No need (applies to all uses) the redirects that I've fixed will work just the same as they always have. Links to Sega Genesis in one article and links to Mega Drive in another will all correctly link to this article. Its not as straight forward as running an Autowiki session on it, and changing all occurrences of Mega Drive or Genesis or Sega Genesis etc to the new article name. Context needs to be assessed as well. Doing it this way allows for the use of Sega Genesis as a stand-alone link, and Mega Drive as a stand alone, link. There are times when just one name would be needed e.g. a game that was only available in a certain region. - X201 (talk) 15:09, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Additional - See what you mean about The Master System through. Will fix that manually. - X201 (talk) 15:12, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I took your solution and added it to the Saturn article.LedRush (talk) 15:24, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Post-move discussion

How are we going to refer to the console in other articles from now on? I can see several variants in use that we should harmonise:

• "Genesis/Mega Drive"
• "Mega Drive/Genesis"
• "Mega Drive (Genesis)"
• "Genesis (Mega Drive)"

I would personally order the consoles in order of first release, but for games such as Sonic where they were released on the same day, alphabetically. Thoughts? Sceptre ^(talk) 19:42, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive for the games released on the same day IMHO.--SexyKick 20:19, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Which would be what I would do. Of course, if there are overriding nationality concerns, it should be the other way around (such as a hypothetical Japanese property that got released in the US one day earlier). Sceptre ^(talk) 22:35, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I think in most cases, the name we use in other articles will depend on the context. For example, whenever you're talking about a game specifically released in the US, it would be appropriate to just use "Genesis". Etc. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 03:33, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. ENGVAR is a good general guide, but each instance will depend on the context.LedRush (talk) 06:07, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

According to WP:ENGVAR, articles can use either British (and Commonwealth) English or US English (i.e. colour vs color, tyre vs tire), but should use one consistently rather than a mix. Unless the article is about a particular region, whichever was used first is used from then on. For instance we have Orange (colour) rather than Orange (color) (a redirect) (perhaps the editors here would prefer Orange (color and colour) :-P ). I think Genesis counts as US English and Mega Drive as British English, so either one or the other should be used depend on what variant is already in use for the article. Quietbritishjim (talk) 12:14, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

There's other considerations for ENGVAR beyond just "Whatever's first" if its not region specific, notably WP:CONSENSUS for change can trump the MOS as its policy, but there needs to be a reason beyond "WP:IDONTLIKEIT. I do agree that any article on exclusively Mega Drive and exclusive Genesis releases should use British and American English respectively.∞陣内Jinnai 14:17, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Certainly in the cases of the games and other items, the obvious solution would be to go by the country of origin. So Sonic games would use Mega Drive where Mortal Kombat would use Genesis. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 16:17, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:VG has a rule that we go via the developer's nationality. That has worked well as a good way of deciding the issue. - X201 (talk) 20:05, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

The developer is Japan in many cases. Japan has no English dialect because their language is Japanese, not English.∞陣内Jinnai 05:45, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

The games are developed all over the world. For the Japanese games we just choose and appropriate version of English. - X201 (talk) 17:41, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

FAQ change

I may be jumping the gun on this, although I'm certain that the RM will be a whitewash for the Support candidate. I have added to the the FAQ (my edits are currently commented out) created by Cerejota. I'm proposing the following additions to the original (new parts in bold)

Q: Why is the article at "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" rather than "Sega Genesis" or "Mega Drive" ?

A: The exact name of this article has been a source of controversy since the project's inception. The article was created as "Sega Genesis" (as an US-centric article) in 2001 and as "Mega Drive" in 2005, and merged into an article titled "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis" in the same year. The article was moved to "Sega Mega Drive" in 2006, after a discussion found that the previous title did not comply with Wikipedia guidelines regarding how titles are formatted, and elected to use "Mega Drive" as it was the system's global name. The title has since been a subject of sporadic debate since that move. Due to the inertial nature of Wikipedia guidelines on variations of English, and the lack of an overwhelmingly common name that transcends cultural boundaries, editors have been historically resistant to change. After a long discussion in 2011 a consensus was reached on the compound name of Sega Genesis and Mega Drive. The compound name was arrived upon after consultation of WP:AND and WP:TITLEFORMAT.

Any opinions? - X201 (talk) 18:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I still think I'd prefer a different phrase than "editors have been historically resistant to change." It makes the process seem combative, which in its purest form it shouldn't be. Here's my alternative:

• "This decision [to use "Mega Drive"] established a consensus, and while there have been numerous debates since that time, no new evidence had been presented to change this decision. However, after consulting the policies WP:AND and WP:TITLEFORMAT, a new consensus was reached on using the compound name "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" (or whatever we decide on) to give equal weight to both console names."

— KieferSkunk (talk) — 19:56, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Kiefer, while your summary may be technically accurate, it leads the reader to conclusions unsupported by the facts regarding the evidence upon which the consensus has not changed. However, I agree that the old language should be improved upon. I would replace the phrase "editors have been historically resistant to change." I suggest the following:

• "there had been no consensus to change this decision.

I would also replace the final two sentences of the current proposal to your final sentence, with the addition of when the new consensus was reached.

• "However, after consulting the policies WP:AND and WP:TITLEFORMAT in 2011, a new consensus was reached on using the compound name "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" (or whatever we decide on) to give equal weight to both console names."

I feel my suggestion is both more accurate and neutral.LedRush (talk) 22:08, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what's inaccurate about establishing the original consensus or that new evidence had failed to change consensus, but your version is fine. When in doubt, K.I.S.S.. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 22:23, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

As I said, I think the old was technically accurate, but implied something lacking in the evidence which I doubt everyone here would agree upon. Therefore, KISSing makes everyone happy.LedRush (talk) 22:28, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be wise to wait until the article is actually moved. There could very well be more people opposing the current move request in the next few days which would obviously make the proposal moot. If however a consensus is established to use the new title and the article is moved the changes to the FAQ should be a no brainer so I think it makes sense to wait in this case.--70.24.211.105 (talk) 03:25, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see the harm in getting this worked out ahead of time. If we fail to reach consensus on this, the FAQ won't apply and we'll just revert any changes to it. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 17:03, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Version 1.1

Have combined Keifer's and LedRush's suggestions into the following. (New parts in bold as before):

Q: Why is the article at "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" rather than "Sega Genesis" or "Mega Drive" ?

A: The exact name of this article has been a source of controversy since the project's inception. The article was created as "Sega Genesis" (as an US-centric article) in 2001 and as "Mega Drive" in 2005, and merged into an article titled "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis" in the same year. The article was moved to "Sega Mega Drive" in 2006, after a discussion found that the previous title did not comply with Wikipedia guidelines regarding how titles are formatted, and elected to use "Mega Drive" as it was the system's global name. This decision [to use "Mega Drive"] established a consensus, and while there have been numerous debates since that time, no subsequent rename proposal achieved consensus. However, after consulting the policies WP:AND and WP:TITLEFORMAT in 2011, a new consensus was reached on using the compound name "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" to give equal weight to both console names."

Looks good to me - we'll want to clean it up, of course. :) — KieferSkunk (talk) — 17:03, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Some minor changes to make it more gramatically sound. I reduced the number of long sentances, changed tense in the new section and basically made it clear of the (likely) new consensus as the statement about "Mega Drive" made it seem like it still would have consensus.

The exact name of this article has been a source of controversy since the project's inception. The article was created as "Sega Genesis" (a US-centric article) in 2001 and as "Mega Drive" (a non-US article) in 2005. They merged into an article titled "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis" the same year. The article was moved to "Sega Mega Drive" in 2006, after a discussion found that the previous title did not comply with Wikipedia guidelines regarding how titles are formatted, and elected to use "Mega Drive" as it was the system's global name. This decision to use "Mega Drive" established a consensus, and while there had been numerous debates since, no subsequent rename proposal achieved consensus until 2011. After consulting the policies WP:AND and WP:TITLEFORMAT in 2011, a new consensus was reached on using the compound name "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" to give equal weight to both console names."∞陣内Jinnai 17:56, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Looks good. I should have mentioned this before, but I would object to the idea that the "Mega Drive" is either the international name or a global name. Last I looked, the US and Canada are part of the globe and not one country (despite many jokes to the contrary). I would imagine that we should say that the Genesis was an article focused on the North American console while the Mega Drive article focused on the console in Europe and Japan. My full proposal below:

The exact name of this article has been a source of controversy since the project's inception. The article was created as "Sega Genesis" (an article focused on the console in North America) in 2001 and as "Mega Drive" (an article focused on the console in Japan and Europe) in 2005. They merged into an article titled "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis" the same year. In 2006, the editors reached consensus to move the article to "Sega Mega Drive" after a discussion found that the previous title did not comply with Wikipedia guidelines regarding how titles are formatted, and elected to use "Mega Drive" as it was name used in more countries/geographic regions. While there had been numerous debates since, no subsequent rename proposal achieved consensus until 2011. After consulting the policies WP:AND and WP:TITLEFORMAT in 2011, a new consensus was reached on using the compound name "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" to give equal weight to both console names."LedRush (talk) 21:10, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Only thing being that it isn't quite true. The old Sega Genesis article states "The Sega Genesis was a 16-bit console released by Sega 1988 (Japan)", so it was created much like that proposal on the Video Games talk page, just using the common name as the name for the world. NES for Japan, etc.--SexyKick 23:48, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I didn't even look to the old article. It seems like even on this, the anti-US bias creeps in to all arguments.LedRush (talk) 23:50, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Version 1.2

Q: Why is the article at "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" rather than "Sega Genesis" or "Mega Drive" ?

The exact name of this article has been a source of controversy since the project's inception. The article was created as "Sega Genesis" (an article focused on the console in North America) in 2001 and as "Mega Drive" (an article focused on the console in Japan and Europe) in 2005. They merged into an article titled "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis" the same year. In 2006, the editors reached consensus to move the article to "Sega Mega Drive" after a discussion found that the previous title did not comply with Wikipedia guidelines regarding how titles are formatted, and elected to use "Mega Drive" as it was both the console's name at its initial launch and the name used in more countries/geographic regions. While there have been numerous debates since, no subsequent rename proposal achieved consensus until 2011. After consulting the policies WP:AND and WP:TITLEFORMAT in 2011, a new consensus was reached on using the compound name "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" to give equal weight to both console names."

Have mostly used LedRush's version, but have added bit about Mega Drive being the name used at its initial launch, as that was also an equal part of the reason for using Mega Drive as the article name, not just the fact that the name was used in more regions. - X201 (talk) 08:25, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I can go along with this too, except for the part where it tells you the regions the old articles focused on, because that just wasn't the case.--SexyKick 13:05, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Version 1.3

Q: Why is the article at "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" rather than "Sega Genesis" or "Mega Drive" ?

The exact name of this article has been a source of controversy since the project's inception. The article was created as "Sega Genesis" in 2001 and as "Mega Drive" in 2005. They merged into an article titled "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis" the same year. In 2006, the editors reached consensus to move the article to "Sega Mega Drive" after a discussion found that the previous title did not comply with Wikipedia guidelines regarding how titles are formatted, and elected to use "Mega Drive" as it was both the console's name at its initial launch and the name used in more countries/geographic regions. While there have been numerous debates since, no subsequent rename proposal achieved consensus until 2011. After consulting the policies WP:AND and WP:TITLEFORMAT in 2011, a new consensus was reached on using the compound name "Sega Genesis and Mega Drive" to give equal weight to both console names."

Altered version as per Sexykick's comment. - X201 (talk) 14:58, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Looks fine.∞陣内Jinnai 15:01, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

ExcellentLedRush (talk) 15:10, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

This is not an answer to the question asked. WP:AND is about having an article about two distinct topics that when combined make a natural integrated topic. Here we have two names for the same topic. The way this is treated is we use the most common name for the article title, and the other is made into a redirect to the article.

There is nothing in WP:TITLEFORMAT that supports this title. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Naming question

Hi folks. I'm new to this debate. In going through the recent move request, it seemed that a lot of people who were in favor of the new title argued that you couldn't pick one over the other because there were enough differences between Genesis and Mega Drive that they weren't the same product. In that case, I have to ask....why not just split the article in two? If they are truly different products, then why are they living in the same article space? Dohn joe (talk) 22:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the point is that they are substantially similar, but not identical. The reason behind the name change was complexd, but is summarized in the FAQ.LedRush (talk) 22:22, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Requested move (September 1, 2011)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:24, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Mega Drive → Sega Genesis – Relisting. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:03, 10 September 2011 (UTC)There has been some discussion after finding out numbers that would move this to Sega Genesis or Genesis (video game system) at WT:VG#(Super) Famicom or (Super) Nintendo Entertainment System.

Even though its not technically the correct name as the Genesis is a specific version, more sources, including more reliable sources such asacademic and media sources refer to it as the Genesis or Sega Genesis for the entire series. There is also side arguments made that it was originally released under that title, but the main point is that it violates WP:COMMONNAME. National variety of English shouldn't come into play here as this was originally a Japanese, not European system.陣内_Jinnai 19:56, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

If by numbers you're referring to the Google hits you posted there, it's been done before, and there's a good reason we don't use Google hits to prove anything - they're not reliable or consistent. To prove it, I'll raise you a Sega Genesis 11.1 million hits vs Sega Mega Drive 11.3 million hits. "Sega Megadrive" (contraction) yields another 3.8 million. Despite that I wouldn't use it to claim MD to be the "common" name... The fact is there isn't one common name - Genesis and Mega Drive are both used, but Mega Drive has the distinction of being both the original name, and the name used everywhere in the world (English speaking and otherwise) excepting one region. Miremare 20:58, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I was referring to google scholar hits and the RS search engine at WP:Anime and much less to the generic hits and news hits. There was also consensus agreed to by the larger community at WP:VG who seemed to think that it was legit. However, I still realize the move would be controversial. Ultimately though Consensus can change.陣内_Jinnai 21:03, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Restricting search results to Google Scholar can't provide you with a common name, certainly not when there are only 1000 hits total or 600 odd hits difference. Also, looking at results in other categories, Google Shopping gives a massive difference in favour of Mega Drive (>5000), and Google News results in exactly equal hits. Usage is what we're looking for to find a common name so these are just as relevant. There has to be more than just roughly equal numbers to this move or we're nowhere different than any of the previous discussions on this. Miremare 21:24, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I think there is some discrepancy here since when I use Google, I get different result numbers. Also, using quotes makes a gigantically huge difference, narrowing down the search to about 9 million "Sega Genesis" vs. 3.5 million "Sega Mega Drive". Shopping gives me 25,000 results for Sega Genesis, and 18,000 for Sega Mega Drive (no quotes). Also, here's a list of the reasons I've gathered from previous discussions of this same topic.

1. The Sega Genesis was the most successful brand of the Mega Drive, with sales accounting for over 55% of the consoles sold bearing the name "Sega Genesis".
2. There are more native English speaking people in North America than everywhere else in the world combined.
3. Genesis name is used on GameFAQs, GameSpot, GameRankings and other CNET websites, as well as MobyGames, Ebay, and Amazon.com. These are sites a user new to the subject would go to, and are considered valid resources for Wikipedia articles within context. (as Sega Genesis was the name which most controversy was sparked under)
4. To date, no equal importance third-party websites shown using the Mega Drive name as a primary have been presented in this discussion.
5. Sega continues to use Genesis branding for North America releases. See Sega Genesis Collection.
6. Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), by far the most English references used in the article use the name "Sega Genesis" or simply "Genesis".
7. People new to the subject are more common for English speakers to encounter it as "Sega Genesis" due to the primary hubs used for information on video games for said group.
8. Sega Genesis name is much more common to produce results in search engines over Mega Drive, and Sega Genesis turns up more google search results than Sega Mega Drive.
9. Sega Genesis was the brand that was first presented to English speaking consumers.
10. Original name doesn't matter - only common name.

That being said, here are three reasons why the Mega Drive article is not called the "Sega Genesis" article.

1. The product was intended to be called Mega Drive in America, but a trademark dispute prevented it.
2. The product is originally named Mega Drive in Japan.
3. Apart from North American countries, the product was released in all other countries as Mega Drive.--SexyKick 23:44, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Only that last 2 points are the argument for Mega Drive. There is also that there are still a substantial (albeit lesser) number of hits for Mega Drive. However, by and large the consensus is Gensesis > Mega Drive. North America, specifically the US and to a lesser extent Canada, are have been historically the major force in English video games since their inception (whatever date you want to put that at, it is disputed). While Japan may have taken center stage, the US/Canada market has still been the primary English-language market and has therefore been the trend setter for any English-language naming with very few exceptions; this is not one of those exceptions.陣内_Jinnai 00:03, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with SexyKick and Jinnai...WP policy seems pretty clear that CommonName favors the Sega Genesis. That common sense does too is a huge bonus. I also want to echo the comments about the google hits. Unless I distort my results by not using any quotation marks on a 3 word term, "Sega Genesis" and combos thereof gets between 2 and 12 times the hits as "Sega Mega Drive" and combos thereof on ordinary google.LedRush (talk) 00:14, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

In reply to those above, particularly Sexykick:

Quotes and "distorting": Of course using quotes like that lessens the numbers because not everyone is going to prepend the name "Sega" on to the front. Look at the title of this very article for a start, or even your own use of the name "Mega Drive" in this discussion. By only allowing results that use the strict term "Sega Mega Drive" you remove a massive number of hits that are still about the Mega Drive - quotes distort results, not a lack of quotes. Not using quotes gives both search terms an even footing - how many hits that include "sega", "mega" and "drive" aren't going to be about the console, and likewise with "sega" and "genesis"? In fact, hits with just "sega" and "genesis" are logically more likely to include non-related results as there's one fewer word required. Anyway, on to the numbered points:

1. Well, I'm not going to get into another sales figures debate, I think you know my stance on that.

2. This isn't relevant. We don't write an encyclopedia for "native" English speakers, but for English speakers in general. It's often stated that there are more English speakers in China and India alone than in the rest of the world combined, etc.

3. Of course they do, those are all US websites, so they would.

4. This is stretching point three out into TWO points. :P There are plenty of reliable videogaming websites and print publications that use "Mega Drive", so to say you haven't seen any is to say you haven't looked. That they are not US-based doesn't make them of unequal "importance".

5. Just as it continues to use the Mega Drive branding everywhere else. It's called Mega Drive Collection outside of North America.

6. We could swap those sources out for ones that use Mega Drive if you'd like? :) If Mega Drive wasn't also an "English" name, you'd have a point, but it is.

7. I would think that was untrue unless you equate "English speakers" with "North Americans". But neither you or I could prove it either way so it's not worth considering.

8. Google is probably redirecting the search to your local version resulting in results more relevant to where you live, so what you see isn't necessarily what I see. One of the reasons Google is not something we should be using other than to judge the terms roughly equal. Another reason not to trust Google is this: Why would altering the order to mega drive sega result in 44 million hits? Twice as many as genesis sega. Let's just forget Google hits as an argument for either side, because it's utterly useless. The only reason I brought them up was to demonstrate this.

9. Debatable, for the same "English speakers" reasons as above.

10. Of course. But the Mega Drive/Genesis doesn't have a single common name, it has two.

2.1. Doesn't really have any effect on the article.

2.2. Yes, along with MD being the original name under which it was released, combined with the following you hit the nail on the head...

2.3. ...THE reason for sticking with Mega Drive. Everything else is either circumstantial nitpicking, trivial, or downright national egocentrism when compared to this show-stopping fact.

LedRush: Well, one man's common sense is another man's nonsense. How does WP policy clearly point to Genesis? If you're talking about WP:COMMONNAME, then it doesn't clearly point to either. Miremare 16:33, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Commonname clearly points to using Genesis. As I stated above, the hits are disproportionately in favor of that term.LedRush (talk) 16:55, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

But it doesn't say that at all. Didn't you see the bit where I cited 44 million hits for Mega Drive? Even if WP:COMMONNAME did say "run a Google search and the biggest number wins", which it doesn't, 44m would seem to be the biggest number. Miremare 18:18, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I can get tons of more hits by keeping things out of quotes. I mean that can include statements like "Sega had a mega hit. Unfortunatly, my Saturn's drivewent bad last week so I can't get it." - all of those words appear in it, yet it isn't saying its a Sega Mega Drive. While there are many false positives with quotes, the number is far less because there are far fewer things that can use "Sega Mega Drive" in a statement to mean something else. Redundant catagories and redundant news/review links is about the only kind of false-positives I can think of.陣内_Jinnai 18:53, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Oppose as per Miremare's comments. Google results are skewed due to the proliferation of the North American market, but that doesn't detract from the fact that Genesis was a second-choice name simply because Mega Drive wasn't available to them. I would also suggest that (in this case) the argument that "North America, specifically the US and to a lesser extent Canada, are have been historically the major force in English video games since their inception" is flawed, because if it were true, then the Mega Drive would have been the Genesis in the UK and the rest of Europe - which it wasn't. a_man_alone (talk) 06:09, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

If it were not relevant, why would you see most naming conventions follow the North American trend when talked about on a more global scale from none of those countries that had it released in it, period.陣内_Jinnai 17:50, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Support Most (near all) of the sources used for the article refer to the console as the Sega Genesis. Also, using Google.co.uk only lowers Genesis numbers, it doesn't raise Mega Drive numbers. Common name is the common name, and sales numbers dictate it was the common variation sold no less.--SexyKick 11:26, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Oppose - As mentioned in the numerous discussions before, it's known as the Mega Drive in most English language countries. Irrelevant things such as sales figures don't change that fact.--TheHande (talk) 15:27, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

While true that the term Mega Drive used in most english speaking counties (I guess about 4 countries to 2), the vast majority of native english speakers use the term Genesis. Please see WP:Commonname.LedRush (talk) 16:55, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

You're pulling figures out of the air. Six English speaking countries worldwide? Take a look at List of countries where English is an official language. And that's just where it's an official language. Again, we don't write an encyclopedia for "native" English speakers, but for ALL English speakers. This and your "support" post below are speculation and exaggeration. Miremare 18:18, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but your replies on the google number demonstrate that you are deliberately skewing the results, as I've shown above. And the link to the list of countries where English is the official language is laughable. Have you been to India, Pakistan or Nigeria? I have, and the people in those countries (outside of the service industry for foreigners) don't speak English. If we're going to compare things, let's do it on an apples to apples basis, and with some attempt at fairness.LedRush (talk) 19:30, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Support Almost all of the sources used for the article refer to the console as the Sega Genesis. The vast majority of the google results point to this name. The majority of the people who bought the console use this name. The vast majority of English speakers use this name. WP:Commonname is pretty explicit on this point.LedRush (talk) 16:55, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Here is a neutral search result. I used India, a country whose native language is English so there is a high proportion of English-speaking populace and the system was never released there.

• India 39 200 - "Sega Genesis"
• India 12 900 - "Sega Mega Drive"

As one can clearly see, even in India, "Sega Genesis" is more commonly used 3:1 to "Sega Mega Drive".陣内_Jinnai 17:50, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

That's not neutral at all, Jinnai. That is skewing everything against the name "Genesis" and still seeing that it is much more widely used.LedRush (talk) 19:30, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Then you must have a weird sense of "neutral". I chose a country that did not have the system used, has English as its national language, and did a search result limiting it to only sites from said country. I did this because of concerns that somehow using the US to show that Genesis is more widely used is somehow skewed (I don't believe that, but in an attempt to find a country which did not have a pre-disposed bias toward one naming scheme, I used India.

My results show that "Sega Genesis" is still more used in India than "Sega Mega Drive" even when we take out what it was released under in any given country. Could there be a more "neutral" way? Probably, but that's at least an attempt to show that it doesn't matter where you come from, Genesis > Mega Drive.陣内_Jinnai 20:10, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes. I agree. But my point was that using India, which uses British English (when it uses English at all) is not neutral. It may be more "neutral" than other places, but it definitely has a bias in favor of the term "mega drive". But your results prove that despite this bias, Genesis is still more widely used. Really, unless there is heavy manipulation done, there is no way to present evidence that allows us to conclude that the Genesis is not the common name.LedRush (talk) 20:14, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

What would be gained by changing the article name? - X201 (talk) 09:12, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

• Comment I don't particularly care either way on this, but I think both sides are skewing Google results to their interests (surprise!). If someone says "Mega Drive" outside the US, it's obvious they mean the console, so it's often used without qualification. If you say "Genesis" without qualification, even in the US, obviously people will think you mean the bible book (or the band, it seems). So the fair comparison is:
  • Sega Genesis (no quotes) about 10 million hits
  • "Mega Drive" (quotes needed) about 10 million hits

In other words, a draw. The difference given was insignificant compared to the error that number usually has. I suspect the reason for this is that Google has figured out that these are the same thing and returned essentially the same results for both. So can those proposing the move please find a better argument e.g. what were the sales figures of the consoles with the different names? If no one knows, I'll change my vote to oppose (currently abstain). Quietbritishjim (talk) 10:00, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

http://www.fifa.com/womensworldcup/news/newsid=1473358/index.html This is in the first page of results for "Mega Drive". Which is why the next section shows that (Sega "Mega Drive") is the way to go when comparing to Sega Genesis with no quotes.--SexyKick 13:31, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support I never even heard of Mega Drive until wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by YifferFox (talk • contribs) 23:55, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

• Apart from claims revolving around COMMONNAME, I see very little discussion about how a move will be of benefit to Wikipedia users. This article already has more alternate name redirects than any other article I know of, so navigation can't be the reason. Factual inaccuracy can't be the problem, as the opening paragraph explains the console names, complete with both names in bold to re-assure readers arriving at the article via a redirect that they reading the correct article. Reading the pre-discussion at WT:VG it seems like the move is a first step step in a larger effort to unify the usage of the name so that almost all occurrences of "Mega Drive" across WP are replaced with "Sega Genesis". If so, that would be wrong and a needless exercise. If something were wrong with the article name there would be many occurrences on the Help desk/Village Pump/Reference Desk etc of people asking where the article is or why don't we have one, or that the name is wrong. And a move would have bee proposed on that basis before now if that were the problem. No one has put forward a reason why the move will be a major benefit for Wikipedia users. Until someone does I have to say Oppose. - X201 (talk) 08:02, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Apart from following Wikipedia policy? Why is following WP policy good in itself? The policy is there for a reason. Well, disregarding that tacit admission that support is the correct WP policy, the move is better as it is the name that most users of Wikipedia use. It is the name that most scholarly sources use. It is the name that most system users used. That's a lot of reasons, in my book.LedRush (talk) 02:10, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support I've been knee deep in this argument before, and the reasoning for moving it seems far more sound than keeping it at Mega Drive. To take it a step further, for those pointing to google results '"Mega Drive"+Sega' gives 6,880,000 search results currently, while "Sega Genesis" gives 8,990,000. 'Sega+Genesis' in turn gives over 10 million, but that may be unreliable for reasons that searching for Sega Mega Drive without quotes can be.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 12:19, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support name change. Most English sources call it the Sega Genesis. Most of the places this system was sold, among English speakers, was in America by far, so that's how most people who have had one know it. Wikipedia common name policy is quite clear. Dream Focus 11:49, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Would it be possible for somebody to present an argument for moving (or even keeping,) the page without using the word "Google" please? My head hurts. Thank you. a_man_alone (talk) 12:40, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh for keeping (my bad) there's three reasons listed above for that too...--SexyKick 14:27, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes indeed, and good reasons they are too. The only thing the Google arguments seem to be proving is that there are three types of lies. a_man_alone (talk) 15:14, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Thankfully there are real reasons as well, apart from google...which I agree is the reason discussed a bit much. Someone said the fact Sega Genesis was the brand introduced to English natives first could be debated. Yet that's all that they said.--SexyKick 15:43, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, apart from Commonname, following wikipedia policy, have an encyclopedia designed to help the users, and the several other reasons listed above, I guess I can't think of one good reason to support the move. Oh wait, did I just name a bunch of reasons? So far, we've got almost nothing to justify the current name, and an overflow of reasons to move.LedRush (talk) 14:44, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, apart from MireMare's rebuttal of course. And the fact that "the overflow of reasons" are predominantly statistical Google results, which curiously seem to favour whichever angle the poster desires. And your own sarcastic arguments are open to interpretation - we are using the commonname of "Mega Drive", and hence following Wikipedia policy. This will help enyclopedia users by presenting them with the originally intended name of a games console which had to be called something different in a single country out of 196 on the planet. The fact that the country in question also hosts Wikipedia and so often considers it to own content, ("This is the American Wiki",) added to this is notoriety when it comes to naming conventions ("Harry Potter and the Sorcerers stone" all add up as well. a_man_alone (talk) 15:10, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

The google results are not dispositive, but are pretty clear evidence. I haven't seen any rebuttal of the google results (other to throw them all out contrary to Commonname) and your invocation of commonname I suspect is trolling. If not, please give reasons for your beliefs, seeing as the policy itself tells us to look at how reliable sources use the term and directs us to google scholar and google books (which have been eschewed by the "keep" people here). Also, try to tone down your rampant anti-Americanism: when you demonstrate to people that you hold wildly irrational views on one subject, they are less likely to agree with you on other subjects.LedRush (talk) 15:28, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

But you're forgetting that all Wikipedia policies are overruled by Common Sense. The common sense in this case is that in EVERY country around the World where it was released, bar two, the console was known as Mega Drive. Every territory, and yet because those two countries (USA & Canada) have higher internet usage statistics, especially in the years when the console was still fresh in people's memory, its considered a valid basis for it to be moved. The Google results are unreliable due to various things like population size of North America, the early adoption and high uptake of the internet in those countries and the small fact that they haven't been checked for quality. - X201 (talk) 15:37, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I would say that common sense would weight the number of the users of Wikipedia and the number of people which used the name more than the number of countries that used the name (whatever that means). Seeing as we aren't going to agree on that common sense unless you change your position, let's just follow WP policy, shall we?LedRush (talk) 15:42, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Stated less flippantly, I believe that the name used in certain distribution territories is evidence, but it is not dispositive. The other evidence on usage (by users, consoles, and RS) outweighs this, to me. That WP policy supports that view seals the deal, for me.LedRush (talk) 15:49, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

The point is, that we don't blindly follow policy when following the policy would be to the detriment of the Encyclopaedia. Common sense is not using skewed data that has an inherent systemic bias to it. - X201 (talk) 15:53, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

The point is, that there is no common sense argument for "mega drive" that I've read other than "more countries use it" and "more non-native English speakers use it". I believe that is clearly trumped by arguments for the Genesis which are listed in a couple of places here, but which include "more native English speakers use it", "more units of it exist", "More RSs use it", "more people on the internet use it" and "more users of the encyclopedia are likely to use it". Also, please stop saying that other people are using skewed data without telling us why you think it's skewed. I conducted searches which I believed were fair and posted the results below. No one has contradicted the number or methodology. Jinnai tried to do the same for India, which he chose because of complaints like yours. Those yielded similar results. I have explained clearly why I think the searches should be done in a certain manner. If you think this is wrong, please discuss the points so we can get to the best result for the article.LedRush (talk) 15:06, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Please point out my "rampant anti-americanism", and I will counter with "blinkered patriotism". I don't see any "wildly irrational views on one subject" - unless you are referring to my recent insistence of wp:engvar over at Chuggington that is. I am simply pointing out that there are a considerable number of editors - not neccessarily those involved in this discussion - who consider the American Way Of Life to be the only way of life. a_man_alone (talk) 15:56, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Unless you are making accusations of certain editors in this discussion, your view in that regard has no business here. That you make the accusation without proof or evidence (you seem to acknowledge that this may not be the issue for the editors involved here) is indicative of anti-americanism and irrationality. It additionally undermines your own opinion on the matter.LedRush (talk) 16:00, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh please. I'm not the only one making unsourced comments here, especially ones that help their own argument. If you wish to continue, and point out my anti-americanism, which I'm sure you do, please feel free to use my talk page. I will restate my comment that "Genesis" is a blip name that only came about due to an error, and although it may take a considerable percentage of the name of the console, due to the country in which it happened, it was never intended to be called that. Worldwide naming intentions for the console were, and are, something different - in this case I actually believe that common name is not necesarily the correct way to go, as common name may indeed point to "Genesis" over "Mega Drive" - but that is based on flawed data. I'm struggling to think of a valid comparison, but would probably go with something like Jumbo jet which is used far more often in colloquial terms than "Wide bodied aircraft" - yet there would be no common sense in suggesting that the page is renamed. Yes, yes, I know. a_man_alone (talk) 16:24, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I did not complain about you making unsourced comments (my comments have been well sourced, thank you), I complain about you making unfounded accusations which are off-topic. At least you are almost getting back to the topic at hand now while conceding that WP policy "may" be against you on this. Of course, your "flawed data" argument is an unsourced comment (which is ok, even if unhelpful here) and gets the important issues wrong. I am more interested in getting WP policy right and accurately indicating the usage of the terms.LedRush (talk) 16:32, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

^"Almost"?

Come on guys, you're all great editors. A Man Alone is free to re-read the reasons listed above to see move or keep, and not involve google.

Move (with the Google reason, and another potentially duplicated reason removed)

1. The Sega Genesis was the most successful brand of the Mega Drive, with sales accounting for over 55% of the consoles sold bearing the name "Sega Genesis". (over 22-23 million vs 17 million)
2. There are more native English speaking people in North America than everywhere else in the world combined. (this is the English wikipedia NOT THE AMERICAN WIKIPEDIA)
3. Genesis name is used on GameFAQs, GameSpot, GameRankings and other CNET websites, as well as MobyGames, Ebay, and Amazon.com. These are sites a user new to the subject would go to, and are considered valid resources for Wikipedia articles within context. (as Sega Genesis was the name which most controversy was sparked under)
4. Sega continues to use Genesis branding for North America releases. See Sega Genesis Collection.
5. Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), by far the most English references used in the article use the name "Sega Genesis" or simply "Genesis".
6. People new to the subject are more common for English speakers to encounter it as "Sega Genesis" due to the primary hubs used for information on video games for said group.
7. Sega Genesis was the brand that was first presented to English speaking consumers.
8. Original name doesn't matter - only common name.

Keep

1. The product was intended to be called Mega Drive in America, but a trademark dispute prevented it.
2. The product is originally named Mega Drive in Japan.
3. Apart from North American countries, the product was released in all other countries as Mega Drive.

I think we should actually worry about posting the move notice on the other potential articles rather than worry about ambiguously debating, unless we have something important to add. The reasons are listed, and no one has been able to present good debates against the reasons for either move, or keep.--SexyKick 16:28, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Not aimed at you SexyKick, I know you're just putting forward a range of points. I'm just putting forward an alternative view of them.

1. Given how long the discussion on sales numbers was, the one fact it generated was that we don't have reliable sales numbers for it, especially outside of North America.
2. Saying people don't count because English is not their native language is wrong. Just the fact that they use English is the point, not wether its their native tongue.
3. American websites using the American version of the name. All of the UK magazines dedicated to the console/Sega called it the Mega Drive as, no doubt did the ones in other countries.
4. Sega continues to use Mega drive branding for World releases. See Sega Mega Drive Collection.
5. Because, as editors, we are drawn to the easier option of adding weblinks as references and only resorting to magazines and books if that fails. As I mentioned above, there is a systemic bias because of North American internet usage/access.
6. Not sure what you're saying here. People will encounter it, because most of the major websites are North American?
7. Not really, because import Mega Drives were around long before the Genesis launched.
8. Original name does matter when Commonname is in danger of going against common sense.

- X201 (talk) 08:26, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Do we have to worry about all the other articles? If a move doesn't happen, then nothing needs to be changed. If a move does go ahead then initially all other pages (and links) will be covered by redirects, and most will be mopped up by roving editors - as most of us here have some kind of interest in Sega, Megadrive/Genesis and presumably contemporary 16-bit consoles as well, the instances will probably be noted and changed by us who are aware of the new naming convention. Or do I misunderstand, and you're suggesting that smilarly named pages are also renamed? The only one I can initially think of would be the Sega Multi-Mega, which was known as the Sega CD-X in America. a_man_alone (talk) 17:07, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

See the discussion below.--SexyKick 03:33, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose My opposition is based on the fact that I am simply not convinced that Genesis is the common name. The global term is clearly Mega Drive, and comparing the current title ("Mega Drive") with the proposed "Sega Genesis" on Google produces comparable results. The last time I checked, our policies make no mention of naming articles based on the common name in America. And the last time I checked, in the absence of a conclusive case for a move, we should stick with the status quo. —WFC— 18:24, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
  • If for some inexplicable reason this page is moved, please have another go at calling it soccer. Those discussions rarely fail to entertain. —WFC— 18:24, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

What are these comparable google results of which you speak? (try adding "sega" to your mega drive search for comparaple results) There is a section below which shows that normal google results skew heavily towards the Genesis. Other google results produce the same results. If we (as we should according to Common Name) look at the RSs, they overwhelmingly skew towards the name Genesis. If we look at google scholar and google books (as suggested under common name) we see even more discrepency in favor of Genesis than if we just used normal google. People can argue that common name is more likely to produce an outcome of consistent with American english because of the market for the device and the prominence of N. American english-language gaming journalism and scholarship as compared to the rest of world, but you can't argue that common name doesn't favor the term "Genesis". Also, try to shelf your anti-American biases and limit your responses to the discussion at hand and try and address the actual points brought up by other editors in good faith.LedRush (talk) 18:46, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Antagonising people who don't agree with you before attempting to take a moral high ground often works on this site, so hats off to you for trying. But if you'll excuse me for paraphrasing, how about you shelf your "pro-American biases", limit your responses to the matter at hand, and assume good faith on my part?

The question is not whether we are pro or anti-America (for the record I deny being particularly anti-America). The question is whether either "Sega Genesis" or "Mega Drive" can be shown to be the common name. My judgement is a case has not conclusively been made for either title. In such an instance, Wikipedia policy is that we should maintain the status quo, and common sense suggests that we go for the more international phrase where applicable.

In response to your reference to the arguments that others have made, I cannot see an argument above that has not been adequately refuted or countered. —WFC— 19:40, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if you could cease your personal attacks and focus on the relevant discussion. If you don't want people to ask you to contain your biases, please don't make assumptions and accusations that provincialism is the unstated motive behind other editors' arguments. In the part of your response which you didn't make more personal attacks, you have failed to respond to any of my substantive points. I will repeat them here in the hopes that you will begin to engage in the types of discussion which should occur on wikipedia: "What are these comparable google results of which you speak? (try adding "sega" to your mega drive search for comparaple results) There is a section below which shows that normal google results skew heavily towards the Genesis. Other google results produce the same results. If we (as we should according to Common Name) look at the RSs, they overwhelmingly skew towards the name Genesis. If we look at google scholar and google books (as suggested under common name) we see even more discrepency in favor of Genesis than if we just used normal google. People can argue that common name is more likely to produce an outcome of consistent with American english because of the market for the device and the prominence of N. American english-language gaming journalism and scholarship as compared to the rest of world, but you can't argue that common name doesn't favor the term "Genesis"."LedRush (talk) 20:16, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose: This is, what, the third time I've personally seen this debated? At one point, this article's title was "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis" because people couldn't agree which of the names was the more common. The consensus that was formed in that discussion was to name it "Sega Mega Drive" (and later just "Mega Drive", since "Sega" is not actually part of the console's name), mainly because we didn't have sufficient sources to show that "Genesis" was the end-all-be-all of common names for this console. In situations like that, the preference is to use the console's original name, which was clearly "Mega Drive" in Japan and all non-North-American countries. So far, I haven't seen a convincing argument to change that consensus - as has been argued vehemently, you cannot rely on Google search results because they are easily skewed and biased toward the North American audience, and so far all the bickering in this thread about these results has seen both sides skewing the results to their advantage - the epitome of an unreliable source if you ask me. :P — KieferSkunk (talk) — 20:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose in case it wasn't obvious. :P I've been away for a few days so I'm not going to join in where I left off, but will summarise the reasons here. Google hits are a terrible, terrible reason to rename an article, though it is interesting how those in favour of this method continue to argue about what method of counting is best, despite the explicit evidence that Google's hit system is, to put it mildly, incredibly unreliable, erratic and pliable. I don't see how there is any question about this. The "sources call it Genesis" argument doesn't hold water either - not all sources call it Genesis by a long shot, and North America generates sources proportionate to its population. If that was the way things worked, this "sources" argument could be used to "Americanize" the vast majority of Wikipedia. And that's just it; I don't think there's a pro-move argument here that doesn't boil down to North American bias at the expense of the worldwide pov we are here to present. Mega Drive is the worldwide, as well as original, name of the machine and there are no strong national ties to justify moving to a name used in a single region. Miremare 00:28, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Let's try and discuss what appear to be your actual points (note, these are not actual quotes, but my interpretation of your main points. If I am misinterpreting your point, please let me know):

1. "Google is not reliable" - Google can be manipulated, but it can be used as evidence. I've laid out pretty clear arguments about how to conduct apples to apples comparisons. Regardless, we don't need to beat this dead horse. When a fair google search is conducted, it is obvious that the Genesis is more widely used. However, this helps the discussion and forwards the argument in only a very minor way.

2. "Not all RSs call it the Genesis by a long shot." Of course not all RSs call it the Genesis. But they clearly favor the term Genesis. Please check the sources used in the article, in addition to google scholar and google books, which are explicitly referred to in Common Name.

3. "Common name does not apply to situations where there is a dispute between N. American English and British English". I don't see a basis for this opinion at all in the policy. The policy cannot be read in a manner which automatically and systematically discounts all policy guidelines when the name in question is different in one major region than others. As clearly argued below, a policy based on artificial political constructs over actual people is neither what the policy contemplates nor beneficial to the goal of Wikipedia. I invite you to read the common name reminder subsection below or just go to the policy itself.LedRush (talk) 00:59, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

1. It can be used as evidence that both terms are widely used, that's all. You laid out the apples-for-apples comparisons that work for you, and I laid out apples-for-apples ones that don't work for you (to make a point against Google hits, not as an attempt to win this particular argument).

2 & 3. You've misinterpreted what I was saying, which was about the origin of the majority of sources and their subsequent potential influence on Wikipedia if we went by your proposal everywhere, rather than mere ENGVAR issues. I certainly wasn't saying the article shouldn't be written in US English. The point is, worldwide point of view. Miremare 02:14, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

ENGVAR has no place here. As shown, its not a British vs. US because India, which uses British English uses primarily Sega Genesis. Neither term is part of the language subset to an extent that ENGVAR would come into play.陣内_Jinnai 02:58, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

1. No one has given any criticism of my methodology. Do you have any you'd like to forward?

2. It seems like you are conceding that the majority of RSs use the term Genesis. Is that so?

3. I don't understand your comment. ENGVAR would also favor the term Genesis, if it were correct to apply here, right? I understand that you're saying that when the majority of sources are from one geographic region, we need to discount that region for the purpose of determining Common Name. If not, please make your point more plainly because I still don't understand. Also, as I've explained above and below, any interpretation of Common Name which discounts the number of RSs from a geographic region does not have any basis in the Common Name policy. From where do we allow ourselves to interpret the policy in a way that makes us break down RSs by geographic region and then count ones from certain regions less based on this breakdown? That seems against obtaining a worldwide POV, in my mind. We should be concerned with what is best for the greatest number of users, not the greatest number of arbitrarily drawn lines drawn on a map.LedRush (talk) 03:39, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

2. What I think Miremare is saying is that the references used are also liable to systemic bias. A North American editor that knows it as Genesis, will add references that call it the Genesis. Which then puts the article in the position where if the referencing has been done by users who favour one form of the name, we end up with an unintentional form of ballot stuffing. - X201 (talk) 08:27, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. Actually, that would just play into my notion of North America being the trend-setting for naming in the video game medium.陣内_Jinnai 13:55, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I understand the point and I tried to convey that idea in both my summary of his view and my response to it. If I did so poorly, my bad. My point was that I don't see a reading of "common name" which allows for this type of geographic (or cultural or otherwise) separation of RSs into different categories to discount areas (or groups or otherwise) that produce more RSs than other areas. In fact, I believe that in looking for a world POV, WP explicitly would not do this as we are interested in only what RSs say about a subject. By taking geography, cultural identity, regionalism (or otherwise) out of the mix and just looking at the objective criteria, we can be assured that the most used name by most RSs is used and avoid contentious disagreements like this. If a certain country (geographic area, culture, etc.) produces more RSs about a topic, it makes sense that those sources are used more.

In fact, I don't know that any of Wikipedia's policies (like UNDUE) discount a region (culture, group, etc) just because they have more RSs on the issue. For example, I edit the Murder of Meredith Kercher article. The vast majority of articles come from England and America, with a couple from Italy (remember, we look to english language RSs). In the beginning of the trial, the British press leaned heavily towards a conviction of two of the defendents, while the US press looked toward the innocence of the subjects. The British view was not discounted merely because they produce a much higher percentage of tabloid press coverage on the issue than the US does. Similarly, the Australian view was not addressed simply because they didn't produce many RSs on the issue at all. UNDUE was decided based on the RSs themselves, not their country of origin. I believe that is how wikipedia and its policies are supposed to work, and I believe that's how it should work here. If you, or others, disagree, I would like more than just an opinion on why it should be the way you want it. I would like someone to point me to some policies which actually favor that point of view.LedRush (talk) 16:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Nobody is saying any sources should be discounted because of where they come from. This is all straying away from the subject of the discussion and the reasons why the page should not move. Also not impressed by you and Jinnai jumping on my mention of ENGVAR in order to strawman me, despite the fact that I only mentioned it to explicitly point out that it was in no way part of what I was saying. Jinnai's comment above also pretty much confirms my suspicions about the attitude of much of the "Genesis" side of this argument. Anyway, I didn't intend to get into another long exchange. You're not convincing me, and I'm not convincing you, so let's leave it at that. Miremare 00:10, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I didn't intend to strawman you. And seeing as I paid almost no weight to the ENGVAR discussion and Jinnai also seems to agree with you that it doesn't apply here, I am not sure why you are so upset over that brief part of the discussion.

If you are not saying that we should discount the number of RSs coming from a particular region of the world when discussing Common Name, I don't think I understand at all what you are saying. Above, you said that "The "sources call it Genesis" argument doesn't hold water either ... North America generates sources proportionate to its population. If that was the way things worked, this "sources" argument could be used to "Americanize" the vast majority of Wikipedia." Are you not talking about weighing N. American sources less for the purposes of Common Name due to the N. American sources producing more RSs than other english language media in other languages? If not, we are in perfect agreement. Let's use the name used by the majority of RSs, per Common Name, and call it a day.LedRush (talk) 02:01, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I disagree re strawman. Jinnai's whole reply to me, a curt statement of why ENGVAR arguments have no place here, and your comment "ENGVAR would also favor the term Genesis, if it were correct to apply here, right?" imply that I was arguing based on ENGVAR, which I was not, and did not wish to bring into this in any way. Anyway, regarding origin of sources, as an example take a look at how many hits (I'm aware of the irony of this) yahoo.com gets for "wars of the roses" originating from the US (916,000) compared to those originating from the UK (122,000) (Yahoo used as it's easy to search pages by country). This is how arguing that force of sheer numbers should decide this matter, or others, could be used to "Americanize" pretty much any article, even ones which have direct cultural and historical ties to another English-speaking country. I'm sure there are plenty of people here who would be quite happy with that kind of thing, but I'm afraid I'm not one of them. Again I'm not arguing about ENGVAR here, but systemic bias towards the US. One obvious example in the article at the moment is ref 71, an American preview of Pier Solar, a European game, which makes no mention of the console's European name, using Genesis instead throughout. Miremare 21:04, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you disagree with me regarding the strawman discussion. I told you that I didn't intend to strawman you? Are you saying that I did intend to and that my assertion of my own intent is incorrect?

Also, your point regarding "War of the Roses" is well-taken, but your example is not a good one: the popular American book and American Movie I'm sure weight these search results. Seeing as Common Name looks to RSs, those hits (for the book/movie) would not be referring to the correct subject matter and wouldn't be counted.

However, the real point, for me, seems to me that you simply don't like Common Name. You think it is an unfair policy and so, despite its outcome, you don't want to implement it. Others (perhaps Sceptre) have voiced a similar opinion, but you seem to go farther. I simply cannot see in the policy itself an accounting for your notion of bias. I have explained repeatedly why I think that this geographic-centric way to look at the subject is anti-world-pov and against the interests of WP, but we still haven't been able to engage each other on the actual substantive points of the policy as it is written and interpreted.LedRush (talk) 22:19, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Strawman: I thought that for the reasons I gave. People don't need to start telling me how something I mentioned has no place in this argument if I didn't suggest it did. If you didn't intend to that's fine, and maybe you were reacting to Jinnai's comment as much as mine, it's just how it came across to me.

Wars of the Roses: I'm glad you take the point regarding this, though I would also point out that the search was specifically for "wars of the roses" as opposed to "war of the roses" which is the title of the film. But even if you go to the extreme of restricting results to .edu and .ac.uk domains respectively (both educational/academic domains) results are still imbalanced to the tune of 21,200 to 6,200 in favour of US-based sites. But anyway, it's the general point rather than specific examples that I'm trying to make.

Common name: It's not that I "don't like" it, it's simply that the console has two common names and I don't see Genesis as being any more "common" than Mega Drive, and certainly not dominantly common to justify moving to a name used in only one region. Your statement "I have explained repeatedly why I think that this geographic-centric way to look at the subject is anti-world-pov and against the interests of WP" seems to me to agree with this. Miremare 00:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Please show me where in the policy that it says we should break down results by geographic region.LedRush (talk) 01:12, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Support If more people owned this system as Genesis, and more news articles ets. refer to it as Genesis then the article could be called Genesis.--BeastSystem (talk) 22:55, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose: Before I begin, a comment: this is one of the messy problems with sources: people care more about the quantity of sources than an actual understanding of the sources. There have been occasions where sources have been used blind because they matched a search term (and I think one occasion went to ArbCom; I forget). WP:COMMONNAME's reliance on sources has been used as a bludgeon rather than a tool.

  Now, without taking into account the American systemic bias, it's clear from the discussion that while the majority of sources do indeed use "Genesis", and "Genesis" does win out on a Google Search, it isn't a clear majority, hence there is no clear preferred variation. In the case, the existing variation should be used. Sceptre ^(talk) 00:38, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, what is a clear majority? We have as little a 3.4 - 5.4 million difference in google hits (depending), and a 5-6 million difference in consoles sold (Sega Genesis sold about 5-6 million more than Mega Drive)--SexyKick 05:03, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

In terms of percentage? You're talking high 60s, low 70s, at the least. As you've pointed out, 58% of the consoles were sold as the Sega Genesis, which, while obviously more than the Mega Drive, isn't that much more that we can definitively say that the correct name is the Genesis. Just for the record: if the article was at Sega Genesis, I'd likewise oppose the move on the same grounds. Sceptre ^(talk) 10:49, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

SexyKick, Google hits are meaningless, and there's a majority for Mega Drive in any case, so please stop acting as if Google hits somehow support your argument because they don't. In terms of a percentage of sales, we have no idea unless we have complete Mega Drive sales figures. All we have is a bunch of sources added up to come to some numbers. Are these complete? I don't believe that even you claimed they were complete. The only complete ones there are the Genesis sales figures. And how have you even come to the 3.4 million "other" sales? It looks suspiciously like you've added up what you get from various sources, then subtracted that from a total from a different source. Please don't try to win this argument by citing your own original research. The fact remains that no reliable source agrees with what you've put into the article and as such its inclusion alone is bad enough, it should certainly not be used to justify renaming the article. Miremare 21:04, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Google hits are not the most important factor in determining the outcome of Common Name, but please see the policy, which does allow for it to be used as information. Of course, because Common Name is primarily interested in RSs, it is better to use google scholar or google books, as has been pointed out to you on several occassions. Also, your google search for either "sega" or "mega" or "drive" is a bit silly. I've asked you several times that if you want to make these arguments, please engage on the topic of what the best methodology for such a search is. Ignoring the request and throwing out results like you have above are not helpful to the conversation.LedRush (talk) 22:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Of course it can be used for information, but the information can only be that both names are very widely used. Other than that it tells us nothing. And once again, the link above is to illustrate why Google hits are pointless and irrelevant, which is something I have tried to explain more times than I can remember, to not much avail. But no, searching for pages that contain those three words is not silly at all, not in the slightest. But anyway, once again, I am not trying to engage in finding the best methodology for Google hits, just trying to encourage people to stop trying to use them. Miremare 00:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think using deliberately bad data collection methods to mistakenly conclude that a certain data collection tool is faulty helps anyone in these discussions.LedRush (talk) 01:12, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

(Outdent)That's just the point, it's not deliberately bad, it's a perfectly reasonable search term. What else would you expect pages featuring all three words "mega", "drive", and "sega" be about? But even narrowing it down by using quotes... The fairest way I can think of, even going to far as to leave quotes out of Genesis altogether which if anything makes it rather over-fair, gives me these results:

• sega "mega drive" -"megadrive" -wikipedia: 10.2m[1]
• sega "megadrive" -"mega drive" -wikipedia: 3.28m[2]
• "sega genesis" -wikipedia: 9.4m[3]
• sega genesis -wikipedia: 9.6m[4]

The first two take into account the two variant spellings of Mega Drive, each one specifically excluding hits with the other spelling to prevent duplicates, along with pages mentioning Wikipedia. That leaves 13.49m total for "Mega Drive"/"Megadrive" with "Sega" also being in the page, against a highest total of 9.6m for "Genesis" with "Sega" also being in the page. So even if you pit the unquoted "Genesis" one against the quoted "Mega Drive" one which also excludes the variant spelling, Mega Drive still gets more hits. The two MD searches of course exclude any hits that include both variants. So either MD gets more hits, or Google is wrong and the point is moot. However you paint it, there's no argument for naming the article Genesis based on Google hits. Miremare 21:54, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, there is an argument for naming the article Genesis based on google hits, and I've made it below. This is exactly the type of language you say that you hate, but that you constantly engage in.

Your tone aside, it does seem we are at least getting to a point of discussing methodology. I must confess, I don't know how yours works. Below, I set out very easy search data comparing searches for 'Sega "Mega Drive"' and '"Sega Mega Drive"' against 'Sega Genesis' and '"Sega Genesis"' (for each, the name of the company and the name of the console separately and in quotes)(we can't do a search for 'Sega Mega Drive' as we get a huge number of false positives, as proven above - "Sega had another mega hit with their racing game Outrun for the Genesis, in which players have to drive..." - and that example is all in one sentence...when you think about all the other junk on a page, you see that the false positives make the number unusable). With this comparison, the Genesis gets vastly more hits no matter how you cut it (please see section "Fair google comparison below"). That makes me interested to see how your numbers are different. You seem to be trying to take out certain search results with your "-wikipedia" and "-megadrive" searches. However, by doing that for 'Sega "mega drive"', you've actually increased the hits by almost 4 million by adding those "-megadrive" search sections. Because in this case the Wikipedia article contains both names, we shouldn't need to subtract for Wikipedia (and seeing as the title of the article is "Mega Drive" not subtracting it should help the mega drive, not hurt it. Until I understand why subtracting results would increase the hits from 6.8 million to 10.4 million, I'm going to believe my clear, easily usable, and seemingly fair results below.

Finally, Common Name allows us to factor in google results as information, but asks us to concentrate on RSs, and therefore use google scholar and google books. When I've done those searches, the numbers become even more overwhelming for the Genesis. Of course, we still need to work out the best methodology for the search.LedRush (talk) 14:51, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Interestingly it has the same effect for "Sega Genesis" and Sega Genesis as well, netting nearly 12 million results. This is sound reasoning to stick to the fair google results section that LedRush provided us with.--SexyKick 18:02, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Common Name Reminder

It seems that a lot of people are discounting WP:Common Name when making their vote to oppose the move - either explicitly by saying other policies are more important (like common sense) or implicitly, by ignoring the arguments made by other editors and merely stating that google is evil and that the world uses a different name than N. America. Both positions contain valid points...we should value common sense and we should value how dominant a used name is. (Note: As you might guess from my opinions above, I believe that the common sense argument favors the term Genesis, and that number of countries using the term is far less important than the number of RSs and the number of people using the term...countries don't visit Wikipedia or publish articles, after all).

I thought it might be helpful to remind people of the actual terms of Common Name. Whether or not the determination that common name favors one name over another is dispositive of how we should vote is not central to my reason for posting. However, this should focus the discussion and hopefully prevent people from merely saying "the only argument is google", which is clearly not the case.

Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This includes usage in the sources used as references for the article.

The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms, whether the official name, the scientific name, the birth name, the original name or the trademarked name.

LedRush (talk) 20:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Just to correct your opening lines: It's not a case of saying one policy is preferable to another policy, it isn't a policy v policy issue. As I stated above, Common Sense is above all policies. - X201 (talk) 08:01, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Noted that "common sense" is technically a principle and not a policy. Also, common sense dictates that you use "common sense" as a "policy" argument only when people agree as to what the "common sense" answer is. Here, people seem pretty evenly split on what makes common sense. I've argued above that everything that makes the Genesis the necessary name under "Common name" also makes it the clear common sense answer (use in RSs, use by native English speakers, dominance of google results; majority of customers who use the name; expectations of WP users, etc.).

Furthermore, common sense should be used to make sure that the principle of a rule is followed, instead of the literal wording of the rule. That is obviously not the case here as people are not arguing not about semantics, but how different criteria effect the determination of the policy. Also, the principle explicitly states Citing concrete policies and guidelines is likely to be more effective than simply citing "common sense".LedRush (talk) 14:38, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Thing is though, there are two common names here - there is the American common name, and the worldwide common name. We are all discussing which is the correct one, the problem being compounded by the fact that there is no massive disparity between the two. The American contender takes up a huge percentage in the common name stakes, but there is still no getting round the fact that it only refers to the common name in a single country. The rest of the world takes the second name, which geographically, covers a much larger audience, and hence many people here think it qualifies as the generic common name, under your own argument of "...common sense should be used to make sure that the principle of a rule is followed, instead of the literal wording of the rule..." As I pointed out before, it's the same kind of argument why Jumbo Jet will never be known globally as a "wide-bodied aircraft", even though that's what it is, and the latter term is more accurate. a_man_alone (talk) 15:51, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't read the policy regarding common name to ask you to (1) divide usage into geographic areas; (2) see how common name were to apply if it applied just to such geographic areas; and (3) use the common name that applies to the most geographic areas. In fact, that would not follow common sense as I see it because we are interested in users (people, not counties) and reliable sources (media outlets, not geographic areas). Could you please let me know why you think this is the best way to analyze the policy?

Note 1: as an aside, we should almost never be concerned with countries/geographic areas but focus on the entire scope of users. To bring the point into perspective. If the top 46 most populous countries in the world comprise 95% of the world's population, and 150 least populous countries comprise 5% of the population, it doesn't make sense to me to make arguments that the vast majority of countries use a term and that should be the common name, even though 95% of the world's actual people (and, let's pretend further, RSs) use another term.

Note 2: Canadians don't like to be called part of one country with Americans.LedRush (talk) 16:35, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Note 2: Interesting point - a quick google (arg! curses!) search for "Canadian Sega Megadrive" and "Canadian Sega Genesis" shows that the Canadian release seemed to be a mishmash of both Genesis and Megadrive branding. There are several instances of people on forums and such like claiming to have an ultra rare Genesis version of Sonic (or similar) which is labelled up as being Megadrive, only for them to be shot down by somebody else saying "It's Canadian." that's a can of worms we should avoid for now I think.

However, no, I won't go any further into this, because you (just as I am) are quite unwilling to entertain an opposing viewpoint. My vote is oppose, and no consensus to change. No matter how tempting to reply, I'm done here. Feel free to get in the last word, free in the knowledge that I won't respond. a_man_alone (talk) 17:15, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I would have preferred that you actually address my points rather than me getting the last word. Oh well. At least we know that this is not a vote and reasons and analysis are weighed. Also, I am perfectly willing to entertain opposing view points. However, I would like to see proof and reasons, not mere declaratory statements.LedRush (talk) 17:41, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

It's not a vote count, its the arguments that matter. So far there are only 2 arguments for keeping it the same: it was released in more countries as the Mega Drive and its the original name. Evidence is clear that the majority of sources, even outside North America, use the term Genesis over Mega Drive.陣内_Jinnai 19:14, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

COMMONNAME is not a bludgeon, it's a tool. There seems to be this opinion, not just on this page, that X being a marginally more common name than Y means that an article at Y should be moved to X. That's not what it means it all. It means that if, in common parlance, that the subject is referred to as "X" many more times than "Y". People do not say "the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" 42% of the time. People do not say "Clive Lewis" or "John Tolkein" 42% of the time. Et cetera. Sceptre ^(talk) 23:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I think you are misreading COMMONNAME, which asks us to look at how the names are used in English language reliable sources. Also, the articles are "Rhode Island", "JRR Tolkien" and "CS Lewis", and the RSs all cite them as such. Not sure what the point of that list was. Also, people say the Genesis in common parlance far more than the Mega Drive simply because the units sold in most places outside of the North America are not in English speaking countries.LedRush (talk) 00:13, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. The vast majority of sources call those subjects "Rhode Island", "C.S. Lewis", or "J.R.R. Tolkein". COMMONNAME was written with those articles in mind, not articles where less than 60% of sources/people use one name and the rest another name. Sceptre ^(talk) 15:01, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Other articles

Can I ask the people who want the article moved. If you are successful and the article is moved to Sega Genesis, will you follow-up with requests to move other articles that contain Mega Drive in the title - or have North American names that are different to the rest of the World? Because if so, it would be wrong to have a discussion here and then use it as a lever to influence other move discussions. If this debate is actually about a number of articles then it deserves to be taking place across those articles concurrently. Alternatively, it would be better if such a far reaching discussion took place at WT:VG. - X201 (talk) 15:17, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

If renaming other articles is planned, then I support a move to WT:VG, as potentially that would involve Mega-CD, and three lists of games.--SexyKick 15:30, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on this, but I think the usual procedure in this sort of situation is to have the discussion on the main article page (which is being done here), and make sure all the relevant other pages have move notices that point to it i.e. {{movenotice|Sega-CD|Talk:Mega Drive#Requested Move}} (on both the article and talk pages). Perhaps a mention on WT:VG would be sensible too, but I don't think that the discussion should actually be held there. Quietbritishjim (talk) 18:54, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Probably should notify all the other pages. I will say that just because this page may change doesn't mean the others will have to, but there would have to be a good reason for them not to be such as if its a particular system that was only released outside the US. In any event, the majority would likely change and probably should be notified.陣内_Jinnai 16:07, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, the only one I ponder over is List of Japanese Sega Mega Drive games. The ones that make sense to change are Mega-CD, List of Sega Mega Drive games, List of Sega Mega-CD games and Sega Multi-Mega as well. X201 probably knows if there's anymore than that, like accessories or some such thing.--SexyKick 16:28, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Variations of the Sega Mega Drive is another one. As I mentioned above, this article has the most redirects I've seen on any article, I'd be amazed if someone couldn't find the article regardless of what they typed in so they need to be checked. As for other peripherals I think they all (apart from the Mega CD) escaped the alternate name problem and had the same name worldwide. The main articles to look for are the List of... Mega Drive/Mega CD Games. Will post here if I remember any more.- X201 (talk) 08:45, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

A fair google hits comparison

For the Entire Web:

• Sega "Mega Drive" - 6.9 million [5]

Sega Genesis - 10.3 million [6] (on a fair comparison, the Genesis has substantially more hits)

• "Sega Mega Drive" - 3.5 million [7]

"Sega Genesis" - 8.95 million [8] (again, with apples to apples the Genesis crushes the mega drive)

If we limit this to google news or google scholar, the results become even more skewed for the Genesis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LedRush (talk • contribs) 20:51, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Relisting

I'm relisting this discussion at Wikipedia:Requested moves to run for another week. It's reached the backlog there, but I can see that people are still making points. I do this with some reservations, because I'm not certain any new points are being made, and I don't want to encourage a circular and unending debate.

I'll just comment on two points that the discussion has raised. A few people have noted that considerations about native versus non-native English speakers are meaningless, because Wikipedia is written for all speakers and readers of English, worldwide. This is completely correct.

Secondly, there is some mention of following policy because it's policy, and therefore should be followed. I dispute the validity of this argument in a Wikipedia context, per the fifth pillar at WP:5P. If a rule doesn't make sense in a particular context, then it doesn't apply to that context. Any argument regarding COMMONNAME should really address the reasons behind that policy. The reason behind COMMONNAME is what we usually call the "principle of least astonishment", and it ends precisely where ENGVAR begins.

I'm also curious as to why exactly this isn't an ENGVAR issue. Is it because of the Google-India searches above? If so, then I would ask those opposing the move the following question: How is arguing that there is a systematic bias due to the American provenance of sources different from arguing ENGVAR? I hope that question makes sense. I'm now following this discussion with interest, and I can't say I'm persuaded either way yet. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:03, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm willing to reconsider my POV that we should stick with Mega Drive - it is true that the majority of English-written sources about this console refer to the Genesis. Perhaps that's an American bias, but it is also what we happen to be using. It's a good point, IMO. Just the same, the original reason for sticking with Mega Drive was that it was the name more widely used around the world, at least if you tabulate it by region. But in this case, we may have a sufficient ground for using Genesis as the common name. ... incidentally, it would also be more consistent with the "American" naming convention used for Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and TurboGrafx-16, all of which have different names in Japan, but not necessarily in other regions. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 06:21, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Expanding on my earlier thought regarding other consoles with similar naming issues: Our article on TurboGrafx-16 is named for the North American and European version of the console, rather than "PC Engine" in Japan, even though sales figures show that the PC Engine was many times more successful in Japan than the TG-16 was in its other regions. By all accounts, "PC Engine" should be the better-known name for that console, and that would be consistent with the argument we're making for Mega Drive here. What say others? — KieferSkunk (talk) — 04:39, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I always thought the article should have been called PC Engine. It achieved the most notability in Japan, and seemed non-existent in the rest of the world.--SexyKick 04:52, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Same here, although most of the games I know from it are visual novels not released outside of Japan anyway.陣内_Jinnai 18:53, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that before, in the three other cases, that the sales information had not yet been uncovered, so it had not been revealed that the Sega Genesis variant outsold the Mega Drive variant. Even without counting Sega Genesis 3/Sega Genesis CDX/etc.

Which is why it only writes 55% of the consoles sold were Sega Genesis, it's actually potentially up to 58%. I don't even know if this plays into common name, but it's new information compared to the last time this was brought up.--SexyKick 10:48, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Even 58% isn't what I'd call an "overwhelming" margin. It still translates to roughly half Genesis, half Mega Drive. If it were more like 70/30, then it would be a pretty clear victory.

Another thing that's not clear: Is the fact that the majority of the currently-cited sources are using "Genesis" only because we're including information from American sources? Are there similar, equivalent sources from other regions still written in English that use Mega Drive but otherwise cover the same topics? I'm not saying we have to go "balance" the sources, but being aware of the spread would help us to determine how "biased" we are vs. how "biased" the entire industry is. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 04:31, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

That is sort of what is was getting at when I raised "systemic bias" regarding websites. North American usage of the net has always been ahead of and higher than, anywhere else in the World. So there will be more websites generated by that area. The Google hits fail to mention print media that was printed at the time of the console's life. European countries have always had a wider spread of games magazines than North America, with the additional fact that magazine readership per head of population is higher in Europe than North America - any mentions of Mega Drive or Genesis in those print based sources is not being brought to the discussion. - X201 (talk) 18:12, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I've never seen any Mega Drive related sources like Skill Reactor's page, and Sega16's interviews are all naturally Sega Genesis name based...Sega Genesis was the name under which most of the infamy was publicized under at the time. The console was really a dud in Japan, while the Sega Genesis was getting blown up in America thanks to Sonic and Mortal Kombat...and that whole thing with the congressional hearings etc. all plays a part in why there's more sources for Sega Genesis related material than Mega Drive material. There was just much more controversy to write about with the Sega Genesis.--SexyKick 04:58, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

But that's just basing it on websites. There's a vast array of European, print based magazines that could be used as sources. But they aren't because they're not web based. If I had the time I could probably go through my collections and replace all of the Genesis ones with Mega Drives ones, but that would just be an exercise in futility. We know that the only thing that's different about the consoles is the name, and its what everyone has strived to achieve between us with the article. We haven't bickered over the ENGVAR version, we left it as is as part of a compromise, when we came up with a clear opening paragraph that addresses the "principle of least astonishment": appropriate use of Mega Drive or Genesis in the correct places in the article, both names being the only highlighted text in the opening paragraph and both logos displayed in the Infobox. - X201 (talk) 18:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right.--SexyKick 18:51, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

SexyKick: The issues of the congressional hearings, game violence, etc., are inherently about the USA and have their own independent notability beyond the console itself. And ultimately, since they are so notable in their own right, they really deserve their own specific space, perhaps even another full article, rather than having a lot of discourse in the article about the console itself. We should, of course, mention it here, since it's both very significant and part of what made the console so successful, but I think if there's too much emphasis on those issues, it will detract from the overall quality of the article. And it's not, IMO, a good argument for setting Genesis as the common name. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 22:39, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I just don't think it's clear cut enough to be obvious, and therefore necessitate the change. Genesis has the majority - I've never denied or doubted that - but it's just not a big enough majority to truly count as (the only) common name. If this were a government, we'd be recounting, or forming alliances with another console to (excuse the pun) console-idate our position... a_man_alone (talk) 07:19, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Well the sales are roughly 60%. That's not quite 2/3 majority, but its damn well close. There is also the 4th release which was released without the term Mega Drive as simply "Sega Firecore" in NA. There is also a renaming for Korea. Those sales should be taken out from the Mega Drive side and with that I'd bet there would be close to a 2/3 majority.

There is also the fact that we're talking about releases over multiple countries everywhere (except some variations in naming for Korea) and it still could not achieve 50% of the marketshare worldwide shows that outside the US it wasn't as popular and therefore its a good reason to go with the US naming.陣内_Jinnai 18:42, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

It gets harder to reach percentages further from 50%. If we assume that 21.6 million sold as the Genesis and 15.7 million as the Mega Drive (I know, this is incredibly simplistic), the Mega Drive would only need to sell another 6 million to reach parity. However, the Genesis would need to sell ten million more to be double the Mega Drive's position. This is despite 58% appearing to be in the middle of 50% and 66%. (For the same reason, most elections between two parties rarely end up outside 60-40). Or, put another way, for every four Genesises sold, three Mega Drives were sold. If you look at it in terms of fractions, it doesn't look that clear-cut. Sceptre ^(talk) 20:42, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Sega has never released sales figures for the console. What you're going on there are a conglomeration of multiple sources, and the only "complete" sales that are supposedly revealed by that are those of the Genesis. "Mega Drive" sales are taken from here, there, and everywhere and are not necessarily complete. The whole thing is, to put it kindly, an "estimate". We have no way of knowing what percentages of Gen/MD were sold. All indications are that they were pretty equal, even those worldwide sales figures published by most reliable sources, which I know aren't particularly popular around here due to being smaller than what we can come up with ourselves, support this, with those even being slightly in Mega Drive's favour.

Regarding comments above about sources, some of the Sega 16 ones (a reprint of a Retro Gamer article springs to mind though I forget which one it is and none of those links are working any more) do use the name Mega Drive, and the Skill Reactor source uses Mega Drive throughout. In fact, quickly scanning through some of the other sources used on the article, most seem to at least mention both names. Miremare 21:04, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Good points Miremare. Sceptre, that just sounds like a humble way to admit that Sega Genesis is the common name, but who cares?--SexyKick 23:29, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

"All indications are that they were pretty equal, even those worldwide sales figures published by most reliable sources, which I know aren't particularly popular around here due to being smaller than what we can come up with ourselves, support this, with those even being slightly in Mega Drive's favour." I'm not sure what you mean by this. The sales figures we have point to a significant majority of "Genesises" being sold. Also, since we knox that there were at least 20 million Genesises sold in the US alone [9], any inflation of the other numbers are helpful to the "mega drive" name, not the Genesis one. Furthermore, if we take the "official" numbers most often quoted (29 million), we know that at least 67% of the consoles sold were sold under the Genesis name. That is a monster, monster majority.LedRush (talk) 22:30, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Some general points/observations. I have not seen anyone argue that we should follow the policy of Common Name simply because it's policy. While it is a good goal in itself to follow policy (for consistency), if there is a good reason not to follow the policy, per Common Sense we shouldn't follow it. But when the policy is as clear as it is in this case, I would think that the burden of proof of not following the policy would to be coming up with good reasons not to follow it. So far, at best, the reasons are basically that there isn't enough of a reason to follow that policy. I reject this point of view.

It also seems that most people here accept that Common Name favors the term "Genesis", but that the policy is flawed or that it doesn't favor the term strongly enough for them. I have addressed both concerns in great depth above, and won't rehash that now. However, I will say that there are stong reasons outside of Common Name to use the term Genesis - among them that most systems (up to more than 70%) of the consoles were sold under this name. Even if we take the largest total sales figures (rejected as OR outside of many editors on this page) we're looking at 55-58%. Most users would expect to see this name, most RSs use this name, most native English speakers use this name, the console was first launched in an English speaking country under this name and this name has been the most enduring over the years. Some of these reasons are debatable, while others are not. But please don't believe that anyone here is advocating following the written letter of the policy and not the heart of it (or arguing to follow policy for sake of it alone).LedRush (talk) 22:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

1. Regarding quoted section and common name in general: I meant is that that we don't have complete sales figures for "Mega Drive" branded consoles. Inflation of numbers... Well. I don't know whether they're inflated or not, nobody does except Sega, but going by the sources we're using at present: The "numbers most often quoted" - Genesis sales did not account for anywhere near 70% of total, and I'm not sure how you're arriving at that figure unless you are combining the lowest worldwide total with the highest Genesis-only total, which can't be done. The numbers most often quoted don't say 20 million of those were in NA - they say 14 million were with 29-30m total. So whether it's 29m worldwide with 14m in NA, or 40.8m worldwide with 20.3m in NA, it's still slightly less than half Genesis. Weren't you one of those who argued in favour of this whole sales figures thing? You can perhaps see one of the reasons I don't like it now. Miremare 00:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I got to the number by taking the first source for the US numbers (NYTimes at over 20 million) and the most often used total (29). Other sources seem to say over 16 million for the US and 28-30 total. So, the most often used was the total. Sorry for the confusion. I have no idea what number is "most often used" for the US.LedRush (talk) 01:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

29 million did go with 14 million US (the fact that made 29 million so debunked). 40.8 million goes with 23.8 million Sega Genesis sales. There's no less than half about that. Anyway, I agree with there being two common names of the system, however Sega Genesis is clearly the more common of the two.--SexyKick 04:22, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the constant stating of sales figures. We haven't got the full figures. You can't calculate an accurate reliable percentage unless you have the whole. Unlike now, where Microsoft and Sony publish sales figures on dedicated web pages, Sega have never released the global figures. Sega of North America have released some figures, but Sega Japan and Sega Europe (which covered Europe, the Middle East and Australia/NZ) have been quiet when it comes to divulging sales figures. Which is why we're left with the hotch-potch of sales figures that we have at the bottom of the article, and each time I look at those, I still worry about WP:SYNTH. - X201 (talk) 08:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

But it does seem that there is general agreement that the console sold more under the name Genesis than the name Mega Drive. The issue seems to be how much more. Of course, this is just one of the "common sense" rationales for using the name Genesis, which is otherwise mandated by Common Name.LedRush (talk) 15:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

General agreement? Where? You seem to be the only one saying that. We don't have full sales figures therefore its impossible to say which name sold the most. So the "common sense" thing to do, would be to not add undue weight to the "It sold more" argument. - X201 (talk) 17:41, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

LedRush: Constantly stating that using Genesis is "common sense", and that there's a "general agreement" when there isn't doesn't make it so. And your post above about 70% of sales being in North America is quite preposterous. You continue to fundamentally misunderstand what constitutes synthesis of sources - you can't just pick whatever contradictory numbers you like best and claim it as fact. It would be just as (in)credible to use the same sources to claim 40m worldwide with only 14m of those being in NA. I would have hoped, being one of the most vocal proponents for steamrollering this forum-level OR sales data into what's meant to be an encyclopedia, you would know a little more about the sources and how they can be used than you apparently do. I think it's probably time for a proper RFC on the sales data.

SexyKick: Whether the exact numbers are depending on if you count such things as the Nomad, there is still no complete "Mega Drive" sales data provided, and who's to say that Mega Drive sales in the rest of the world suddenly stopped while the Genesis was still selling in NA? It's not a reasonable assumption to make. Genesis is not "clearly" the more common of the two at all. If 70% of sales were in NA you might have a point, but they weren't so there's no "clearly" about this issue either way. Miremare 18:07, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Miremare, I am not sure if you are continually mistating my opinions because you think it is tactically advantageous to divert attention from the actual discussion, if you are acting in bad faith, or if you simply cannot understand my English. I am not sure which is the best for me to believe, but I will try and answer your post as if you made it in good faith. I have consistently stated my "common sense" reasoning for the use of the term Genesis in response to a line of argument made by several here that although Common Name support the use of the term on its face, either the spirit of the policy or the fundamental pillar of "Common Sense" dictates that we use the term Mega Drive. I have not said that others do not have "common sense" and I have explicitly conceded that there are "common sense" arguments for the term Mega Drive as well, but I simply find the "common sense" arguments for the Genesis to be more compelling.

Regarding the concept of general agreement on sales number, when I look over the comments, it seems that almost everyone agrees that Genesis sold more and that true disagreement was in how much more. By making this statement, it seems that you and X201 disagree. That's fine, though I don't know on what basis you disagree (other than incomplete info). Sexy, Jinnai, Kiefer, Sceptre and A-man-alone (people on both sides of the greater issue) seem to have conceded this point, which is why I thought there was general agreement. If there isn't, fine. Try and politely point that out.

I don't know why you're attacking me on synthesis. After you pointed out why my numbers were wrong, I let you know how I found them and conceded that I didn't have a good basis for knowing what a majority of sources said about the US figures. So I admit imperfect knowledge on that subject and tacitly concede that the 70% number was misguided, and you go on a vitriolic rampage against me? Please, please try and address the arguments that people actually make and try to engage in intelligent, honest and open discourse.LedRush (talk) 18:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

To be honest it just winds me up when people constantly and unjustifiably refer to their own opinions as "clearly" the right ones, that they're the "common sense" answer, and that there's somehow a "general agreement", despite all evidence to the contrary. Nothing about this is clear other than that there are two common names. There is no "common sense" magic fix that can't be countered with something equally, or more, "common sense", and there is not "general agreement" for Genesis. If the above was all the case we wouldn't be still having this wretched discussion. I'm not saying it's just you because it isn't, the discussion/s here are practically brimming over with such dismissive language, funnily enough all from the same "side". It's plain disrespectful to those participating on the other side and the arguments they're making, and that's why it pisses me off.

Regarding the supposed agreement: KieferSkunk, Sceptre, and a_man_alone were all responding in good faith to sales claims of various degrees of uncitability by more than one editor on the Genesis "side". Presumably all three had better things to do than fact-check for other people and took those inaccurate claims at face value, yet still none changed their minds as a result, so where's the agreement?

Synthesis: you did explain how you got the number, but you didn't concede that it was wrong, and indeed went on to proclaim an "agreement" that Genesis sales were higher, with the only issue apparently being by how much. And it wouldn't be the first time that horrible examples of original research have been presented here as sales-figure fact. Finally, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect you to know about the sources supporting the stuff you were so keen to get into the article in the first place, and which were discussed at length and in detail, or indeed to expect you to have read the section on sales figures in the article itself which, for all its faults, does make it clear which sources it uses for which figures. Miremare 20:44, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I still think that you are not focosing on the issues, and I believe that you are getting people's opinions on the issues wrong. First, as I've stated above, the "common sense" argument is a policy (actually a rpinciple) argument brought up by the people who want the term Mega Drive, who generally concede that the Genesis is the common name, but who think that the principle of common sense is above the policy of Common Name, and they believe common sense dictates the use of Mega Drive. Other references to "common sense" have been in reaction to that argument made by people on that side of the argument. Your assertions that the genesis side is the only one making these claims in demonstrably false. In this case, the Mega Drive is, if not the only side, the primary motivator of this line of reasoning.

I don't agree with your assertions of who thinks the sales numbers of the Genesis are more than the Mega Drive. Perhaps rather than making ad hominem attacks and sidelining discussion by misreprepresening others' views, we could just ask for confirmation. But when people say things like "Genesis has the majority - I've never denied or doubted that" (a-man-alone), I thought it was safe to say that they believed what they wrote.

You get all angry about disrespecting the other side, and then you make the statement that "Nothing about this is clear other than that there are two common names". This despite the fact that I have argued comprehensively that there are not two common names. There is nothing in Common Name which leads me to believe that you can divide results by regions (and despite repeatedly asking for proof to the contrary, no one has provided any). And again, I remind you "In determining which of several alternative names is most frequently used, it is useful to observe the usage of major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies and scientific journals. A search engine may help to collect this data; when using a search engine, restrict the results to pages written in English, and exclude the word "Wikipedia". When using Google, generally a search of Google Books and News Archive should be defaulted to before a web search, as they concentrate reliable sources (exclude works from Books, LLC when searching Google Books.[4])" and "The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms, whether the official name, the scientific name, the birth name, the original name or the trademarked name. ".LedRush (talk) 21:16, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

You haven't argued comprehensively that there are not two common names, because there simply are two, whether you like it or not. You may have the opinion that the worldwide name of the console is somehow not a common name, but that does not make it a fact, and your "done and dusted" attitude on that is exactly the kind of thing I referred to above - you've decided it's not a common name, therefore case closed. This is exactly what happened in the sales figures OR discussions. Those in favour of it (the same people arguing for Genesis here) decided among themselves that they liked it, and objections were dismissed with "already answered many times", "this has already been settled", and just plain pretending the other people weren't there. If you honestly believe that Mega Drive is not a common name, then we have no common ground to build on in this discussion anyway. I think it's a bizarre contention but it's one you're entitled to. Miremare 23:06, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I love that you are basically the living embodiment of all you complain about. You said that you don't like people dismissing others' arguments and acting like unsettled issues are settled and that it pissed you off, but you dismiss my argument regarding the policy of common name. You won't even acknowledge that I've made the arguments! But it doesn't matter what opinion I have on that, because you have ordained it to be true. You won't even justify your answer with reasons or arguments, just the demonstrably false statement that the mega drive is the worldwide name (something everyone here knows is false, as we wouldn't be having this conversation if there weren't multiple names). Furthermore, I've been willing to acknowledge that others make good points. I've apologized when I've made mistakes. I've tried to respond directly to others' points. You will do none of these things (case in point: you accuse me specifically and the Genesis supporters in general of making a claim regarding common sense, even though I've explicitly told you that I was making no such argument and you can easily read on this page that x201 and a-man-alone were making the argument about the common sense principle - so you've gotten the nature of the discussion wrong and which side argues what...any apologies or acknowledgment of your mistakes? Of course not! Let's change the subject and attack!

Which brings me to my next point: I am now pretty sure that you insult others, misrepresent their views, and sidetrack discussions for a tactical reason: if you won't address the issues, we can never get to a resolution. Why else would you ignore my points on common name, misrepresent my opinions, and force the conversations down meaningless tangents as people try and get you back on track? It's brilliant, even though it's disruptive and makes the enyclopedia a worse place. You say that I've decided that the Mega Drive is not a common name and I've said the case is closed. Of course, that's not at all what I've said. I stated my belief and my reasons for it, and invited others to justify their position on the matter. Instead, you've decided to attack other people and distort others' views. And the icing on top is that you won't discuss it because you've already decided what the answer is! How can you reason with someone who does just what he hates most in the sentence right after the one describing what he hates? You can't, that's how! Bravo! You've put on a virtuoso performance.LedRush (talk) 00:59, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

LedRush and Miremare: All right, you two, keep it civil and keep it cool. Step back and cool off, please. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 01:07, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Miremare: In LedRush's defense, his comment on "general agreement" seems in line with what I've seen in this conversation - there appear, to me at least, to be more people in this debate who say that Sega sold more units in North America than in all other regions combined, and that is consistent with all of the unofficial sales figures I've seen presented. I would be willing to say there's a consensus on that particular point. However, we have not agreed that that makes "Genesis" the proper common name, and we haven't agreed on the margin. The most sensible argument along those lines I've seen thus far is that we don't have any truly reliable figures, so trying to base the outcome of this argument on them is foolhardy. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 01:04, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Kiefer, I don't want to base the outcome of common name solely on the sales figures, but that must factor into the equation. Surely the margin of difference and the unofficial nature of the information argue to weigh this less than we otherwise would, but I don't see how we can simply ignore it when determining the best name for the article or Common Name.LedRush (talk) 01:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

And I completely agree. They should definitely be a factor. I've just been seeing so much emphasis placed on these figures that they seem to take precedence over so many other arguably more important things, and that's what I'm pointing out. Heck, I weighed in on that part of the discussion myself, saying that 58% isn't what I'd call an overwhelming majority. The only thing I've actually seen in this whole debate that strongly supports Genesis as the common name is the high proportion of sources we've deemed reliable that use that name instead of Mega Drive - it's a strong and compelling argument, but as you said, other factors such as sales figures should also play a role. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 01:25, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe I've ever indicated that one thing should be a dispositive factor in this conversation. In fact, I believe I've said the opposite. I think the reason that we are seeing so much talk around this is that Common Name first points us to RSs (which favor the name Genesis). After that, Common Name directs us to think about more general questions of naming, which are basically more pointed questions about the "common sense" arguments above. High on this list of relevant info is how widely the name is used, and sales data helps bring this into focus.

Of course, this brings the question into sharper focus, when the major criteria of common name point to the use of a term, and the fuzzier questions seem more split on the issue, (and Engvar would also seem to favor one name), why is there so much push-back on the issue? If there was a clear case for the name "Mega Drive" for the fuzzy, "common sense" arguments, I can understand (if not agree) with downplaying the policy regarding Common Name. But there isn't. So shouldn't this conversation be focused on the correct interpretation of Common Name instead of the fuzzier concepts?LedRush (talk) 03:05, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with you that the reliable sources favour the Genesis. As I said above, no account of print based sources as been taken account of. I'm currently in the process of tidying up Category:Video game magazines, a quick look at it shows Sega magazines from the UK alone outnumbering magazines from North America. They are reliable sources that use Mega Drive. Reliable sources aren't just Google hits, print based sources carry just as much weight. - X201 (talk) 08:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Your point is well taken. However, I would like to see some accounting of how often these magazines were produced, what their respective qualities were, what their circulation was, and what types of articles they wrote on the console that would be useful for an article like this. If all the UK ones had circulations of a few thousand and were rags with little reporting, while the US ones had circulations in the millions and had pulitzer prize winning articles/journalists, the answer would be obvious. (Of course, the world is not that simple and my example is exagerated in the extreme - but you get my point.) In the absence of such data, I am willing to provisionally concede that there are probably more magazine RSs for the Mega Drive, but I would not give much weight to such information until we could drill down and see how many of these magazines are, in fact, RSs and how many are used as such. Unfortunately, google books and google scholar help approximate this information for other print sources, but not with magazines like this. Books are also print media, and google books seems to get as many as 8 times as many hits for the Sega Genesis than the Sega Mega Drive.LedRush (talk) 13:41, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

They would all pass the test (and some already have) at WP:VG/RS. They were published by the likes of Future, EMAP, etc and are used as reliable sources. The hits for Google books has no bearing on the magazines, and also with Google Books we need to drill down into them to assess their quality. They could be thrown together, sub-standard, freebies, from a small company above a shop in Main-Street, USA, or they may be highly regarded, multi-award winning documents by a Professor of video games at Oxford University. But then, my example is also exaggerated, but you can see that just because its a book, doesn't grant it instant reliability either. We also need to check the Google Books results for quality. - X201 (talk) 16:07, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. My point was that even with an edge to Magazine-based RSs for the name Mega Drive, we could still have more print-based media RSs (books and magazines and scholarly articles (don't know if the last counts as "print")) that point to the Genesis as the name. Because Common name directs us to Google Books and Google Scholar and used RSs, and because those three factors weigh so heavily for the name Genesis, any possible (but unproven) advantage for the name Mega Drive in magazines seems unlikely (to me) to change the calculus under the "common name" policy.LedRush (talk) 16:16, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Of course, this brings the question into sharper focus, when the major criteria of common name point to the use of a term, and the fuzzier questions seem more split on the issue, (and Engvar would also seem to favor one name), why is there so much push-back on the issue? If there was a clear case for the name "Mega Drive" for the fuzzy, "common sense" arguments, I can understand (if not agree) with downplaying the policy regarding Common Name. But there isn't. So shouldn't this conversation be focused on the correct interpretation of Common Name instead of the fuzzier concepts?LedRush (talk) 03:05, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Never said it was you specifically who focused solely on sales numbers. I'm saying this for everyone involved - the conversation has tended to focus on that and on Google results, at times exclusively of other factors, and people are rat-holing on these things, causing the kinds of heated arguments I'm trying to help defuse.

Now, back on topic: What you see here is a lack of consensus. The previous consensus established Mega Drive as the proper common name because, despite unofficial sales figures and reference weighting, there was no clear indicator for Genesis to be considered better-known than Mega Drive. As I pointed out, at one point the article was titled with both names, so when everyone decided that was a bad article name, the decision was to go with the name used in more parts of the world rather than the name that happened to sell more units. That established a consensus, and there was at least one more discussion after that about whether we should change it to Genesis. That initiative died relatively quickly and with little discussion.

In general, when you have an established history like that and there's little that's changed in the real world to alter the facts upon which the consensus was based, it can be pretty difficult to change consensus. And at some point, if you keep on pushing and pushing and arguing the same points over and over again, it takes on the form of disruptive editing or pushing an agenda. It becomes increasingly difficult to assume good faith in those cases. This is why, from my point of view, tempers are starting to flare as they are - frankly, it's rather exhausting. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 04:50, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Tempers would not flare if people could address others' points without misrepresenting them. Your talk of previous consensus leaves out any discussion of Common Name. Seeing as that is the most important policy dealing with this issue (at least in my opinion; no one has brought up another, more on point policy other than the principle of "common sense"), it is odd. Why do only certain editors continually steer conversations away from this policy? Also, stating that consensus is the consensus without a corresponding discussion of the reasons behind how and why a decision should be made is not helpful. If there is good reason for weighting other considerations more than common name, or for interpreting common name differently than discussed above, let's hear them.LedRush (talk) 05:01, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd say that there is some slight consensus that Mega Drive isn't the best. It's only really Miremare that has continually argued against every attempt to change it. I agree its not overwhelming (else we'd not have this huge wall of text), but the body of evidence does favor Genesis over Mega Drive.陣内_Jinnai 15:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

To disagree with someone's comments and to point out why is not automatically to "misrepresent" them, though that's certainly an easy defence to make, as is accusing people of steering the discussion away from the central issue when you hear things you don't like. You are focused solely on WP:COMMONNAME with superficial concessions to "common sense" which in effect make zero difference to your position. I thought we already talked about that way above when we were discussing systemic bias. IMO the fact that MD is used worldwide and Genesis is restricted to a single region is the clincher between two common names. The fact that a lot of sources (especially the ones people have chosen to use in this article) use Genesis is secondary to that, and many use both anyway. The secondary concern of sales figures simply can't be used to show which sold more because the only complete and comparable sales figures show that less than half sold were Genesis. And finally, I reject being the "living embodiment" of what I was complaining about. If you read the comment I made, it was this point you mention that I was complaining about. It is not contentious or unusual to claim that the worldwide name of the console is a common name for it, because this is just a self-evident fact. To claim that it isn't is contentious, not to mention ridiculous. You seem to consider the definition of the term "common name" to refer only to the letter of WP:COMMONNAME's definition of it and that there is no possibility of there being more than one, which might be a better area to apply that common sense to. That is why in your words I "dismissed" that particular argument, even though it was exactly that argument I was referring to. And Jinnai, while it's flattering you seem to only be reading my comments, I suggest you read what other people have said too, as I am certainly not the only one opposed to use of Genesis. Miremare 15:40, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I will try and ignore your attempts to further steer us away from substantive topics and try to focus on the heart of your arguments. While I concede that the "mega drive", the "sega mega drive", the "genesis", the "sega genesis" and "sega" were all names commonly used to describe this console, I would like to focus on the best way to interpret the wikipdedia policy, "common name". I have asked this in a few different ways but haven't gotten responses (as far as I can tell). Could you please walk me through how you are interpreting the WP policy on "common name"?LedRush (talk) 23:23, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Why debate this with him? He put in his oppose, so we can let it be.--SexyKick 23:26, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

One reason is so that if both sides can understand how the other reasons, it could focus our discussions and allow for compromise, or at least better understanding. Failing that, it allows others reading the page (or if someone closes a request to move) to see what arguments are presented. If they see that one side has made cogent arguments responsive to the other side, they may be persuaded by the reasoning.LedRush (talk) 23:36, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

One way to look at it would be to note that those that use both to see how they do so. FE, if they mention both names but prefer one in most of their text.陣内_Jinnai 03:02, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

LedRush: I'm not trying to steer us away from anything, there is more than one thing to be said here and I'm not saying anything that isn't directly relevant to our discussion. Regarding common name, if you follow it the way you're proposing we follow it, then you would probably be right. But if you were to ask me if I thought that part of a policy that directs us by default to what US sources say in the event of a dispuite of this kind (as the majority of sources for any English language subject with international or worldwide relevance will be from the US in the vast majority of cases) was compatible with Wikipedia's core policy of neutrality, I would certainly not agree. And Google scholar... well, it's just Google hits in a tweed jacket, it doesn't really change a whole lot in real terms, all it really achieves is excluding not just the chaff, but 99% of decent sources from the results too, on both sides. How many of our current citations appear in Google Scholar? Anyway, I mentioned this systemic bias to you further above with the example of The Wars of the Roses, a pivotal time in UK history that gets many times more results, both "regular" and "scholarly" from sites in the US than it does from sites in the UK. You could turn practically any article "American" by using this argument if that was how it worked. Do you think that's right or in line with Wikipedia's aims, spirit, or policy? Note that I'm asking about your stance on this in general, rather than that example in particular. In short, I do not believe that the large number of sources output by the US should automatically mean North American dominance of what is meant to be a worldwide encyclopedia, with the worldwide common name being barged aside in favour of the common name in North America. Especially given that in this case there are no national ties to that country, that the only complete sales data we have indicates fewer sales under that name, that the MD brand continued to sell elsewhere after the Genesis was no longer a going concern for Sega in NA (European sales figures cited stop at 1996, but as late as 1998 it was still the best-selling console in Europe as a whole according to the consoledatabase source, a year after Sega had relinquished the Genesis reins to Majesco in NA), and the original and worldwide name is what this article has had in its title from its very beginning in 2006. It seems there's only really such a massive discussion this time because so many more "pro-Genesis" editors have appeared since the last time this was brought up. I'd be interested to know how many, if any, are from outside of North America, because the reasons for staying or moving haven't changed since then, or the time before, or the time before that. It's just a case of larger numbers on that side this time. So there you are, my opinion on the console's common name/s and why one should have precedence over the other. Sorry for the length (for those still reading!), but I'm trying to be as comprehensive as possible in explaining why I fundamentally disagree with, not just this particular point, but its implications in a more general sense, as well as the brushing-under-the-rug of certain things like 1996 European sales figures and 2002 North American ones being directly compared to prove something that they can't. Miremare 21:54, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for this reply. It seems to me that you are arguing that the policy on "common name" has built into it a concept that we need to discount RSs from certain geographic sources that may or not be over-represented in RSs. That is obviously not stated in the policy, which is pretty clear on its face. So you seem to be arguing that the core principle of neutrality forces us to do this. I find this argument unpersuasive for several reasons. First, it seems unlikely that a policy would be written to not be neutral on its face. Second, it seems less neutral to discount certain RSs simply because of their location. Third, I do not believe that my interpretation of the policy (the literal reading of common name) would have any of the consequences you mention. For just about any dispute between British English and American English, we would go to ENGVAR. ENGVAR doesn't seem right on point here, though, as many places where English is spoken never had an official release of the console, many places where it was released as the mega drive don't speak english at all. So what we are left with is what RSs say about the console. In this case the answer seems to be that most RSs call the console the Genesis. Fourth, your argument about systematic bias seems to me to be more of an argument that it is unfair that countries with larger populations are represented proportionate to their size. Said another way, you would like to institute a systematic bias to inflate the results of countries which produce fewer english language RSs and over-represent them. Outside of being extremely impractical (how do we divide regions, countries, etc.?, how do we decide if they are over or under represented?, etc.) it is decidely not neutral. Netrality is looking beyond artificial constructs and seeing the core data without bias. At the end of the day, worldwide, we simply have more english language RSs that point to the Genesis than the Mega Drive.LedRush (talk) 15:08, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh for the love of God! I shudder to imagine the total word count of Miremare's contributions to this talk page. I would like to assume good faith, but frankly the intention is clear: by arguing relentlessly, hope that everyone else gives up and lets him get his way. And clearly it's working: just look at the count of people contributing to the discussion now compared to the number at the beginning.

I don't think this railroading of the argument can be allowed to continue. It's reduced to "it seems on several counts that the majority call this console 'Genesis'" vs "but maybe it's about 50/50, and you can't quite prove otherwise" (and similarly to whether there is consensus on the issue). Well, that is a terrible argument, and it doesn't deserve any more discussion than that. Can we please just move the article, and if there's proof later that it was wrong (which we all know won't happen) then it can easily be moved back.

For the record: I am British (note the user name), and spent a lot of time (too much!) playing the Mega Drive when I was growing up. For me "Mega Drive" was the only name, and it always will be. But that doesn't stop me from looking at this objectively. Quietbritishjim (talk) 23:04, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

You don't need to imagine my total wordcount, it's 33,673 bytes in 15 edits (not technically words, I admit), which is the second highest of anyone in this discussion, so hooray for me. But more importantly, how long has being British been an automatic pass to win arguments without really saying anything?! Wish I'd known about that earlier, could have saved myself all those bytes. :) But seriously, if you don't want to read people talking about things, talk pages aren't the best places to hang out. I was responding to a request from LedRush for clarification on my position on the common names issue. You are not under any obligation to read it if you don't want to. Miremare 00:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

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

Time for an outside opinion

While I don't agree with his method, I do agree with Quitebritishjim that this argument has gone on for so long as to have stalled. I'm asking for a 3rd opinion from someone outside this discussion to weigh in. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 02:30, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi there, this dispute was listed at Requests for Third Opinion. Unfortunately, WP:3 is intended for disputes in which only 2 editors are involved in the initial discussion. I suggest going to Request for Comment to get more input. Thanks, Mildly Mad^T_C 14:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Trying this again via RFC:

• Should this article's name continue to be "Mega Drive", or be changed to "Sega Genesis" or "Genesis (game console)"? Please review the above discussion in #Requested move. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 19:22, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

responses to rfc

• Forgive me the wordiness, but this is clearly an issue with lots of grey. I have never edited this article, but I am a contributor to WP:AT policy, and very much in tune with the policy, both the spirit and the letter. I will say this discussion does hit a lot of the issues the policy addresses. There is also a lot of I will call misinterpretation of policy, or application of the letter and not the spirit. The spirit of AT policy is summed up by "common, neutral, titles are preffered, but all titles are subject to discussion and consensus". In other words, AT cannot be used to say "this title is illegal" - except for titles which are impossible or technically limited, such as special characters, lower case first characters etc. We should never ignore AT, however: all discussions must follow AT rules and consideration. For example, if a title is not neutral, it should have been after careful consideration was given to neutral alternatives. If a title is not a common name, careful consideration should be given as to why not a common name is chosen. I see some of that in this discussion, but some of it seems like dogmatic understanding, rather than a careful examination. That said, I read through the comments in the RM, and to me it seems Mega Drive is the better option:

• WP:COMMONNAME suggest both are a common name, with both giving google search returns in the millions of hits for "sega genesis" and "sega mega drive". It is true there are significantly more hits for "Sega Genesis", however, when the difference is between two choices with millions of hits each, commonality is not an issue that can elucidate the question: both are common names. However, as the article text itself says, this was an incidental choice due to rights issues. Had those issues not existed, this would have only been named "Mega Drive". That enough makes it the "proper name" and the name the manufacturer wanted for it and used in most markets of the world.

  WP:BIAS issues - I see no bias issues in the title change as long as the article itself retains the text as it is. However, I could see these issues creeping in if the article title change, taking a more narrow view of the subject. This is an important consideration, and a promise of vigilance is unfortunately not sustained by practice.

  Precedents: the cases of the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System are different because Family Computer and Super Famicom were used in a limited market that is not generally an English language one. "Sega Genesis" is the inverse situation, it was used in every market except North America - making "Mega Drive" the most common usage world-wide, even in English speaking markets. The information in the article supports this view.

  The other alternative is to split Mega Drive and Sega Genesis into separate articles. However, the systems are not sufficiently different (in particular, software compatability is of importance), to justify doing this, and it would be a WP:POVFORK.

I hope this outside perspective is of help. --Cerejota (talk) 20:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• Cerejota, thank you for commenting here. Seeing as we have never agreed on an issue, I am saddened to report that we retain that perfect history. I don't want to retread everything above here, but do want to point out two things: 1. Common Name has us look to the usage of the term in English language reliable sources - all of which overwhelmingly favor the term the Genesis (google should be used less (per policy) - the google hits favor the Genesis less strongly than Google Books, Google Scholar and other RSs); 2. You state that the term "Mega Drive" is the most common worldwide. This is not true. More consoles were sold which say "Genesis" on them than "Mega Drive". We have largely come to a consensus here on that point.LedRush (talk) 21:29, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• On your second point, if that's the consensus we have here, then I'm in sharp disagreement. As I've said multiple times, the current unofficial sales figures lead to a 58% majority of raw sales under the Genesis brand, which is not overwhelming by any stretch. And when you look at the number of regions that use each name, far more of them use the name Mega Drive. I believe the only consensus we have on this particular branch of the topic is that the raw sales numbers call out a relatively slim majority for Genesis worldwide, but I thought it was also clear that these figures were unofficial and unreliable. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 22:24, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

You say you are in sharp disagreement, but then you write things that agree with me :) So you know, I just said that we have largely come to consensus that "more" consoles (not overwhelmingly, simply more) were sold as the Genesis. You seem to concede that point at least in regards to the "unofficial" sales figures. Everyone except Miremare seems to agree with the point generally. On this very point above, you said "there appear, to me at least, to be more people in this debate who say that Sega sold more units in North America than in all other regions combined, and that is consistent with all of the unofficial sales figures I've seen presented. I would be willing to say there's a consensus on that particular point." Why the change of heart? LedRush (talk) 22:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Okay, let me rephrase slightly: I agree that the numbers support more physical units of Genesis than of Mega Drive. However, I'm drawing a very sharp line between "yes, we agree on the numbers" and the logical leap that some people have been making that those numbers support "Genesis is the more common console". — KieferSkunk (talk) — 22:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I realize my point may still not be very clear, so here's one more crack at it: There is definitely a consensus that Genesis sold more units than Mega Drive. Even without concrete numbers, our sources do support this - the console was more successful in North America under the Genesis name than the rest of the world combined using the Mega Drive name. If we didn't have a consensus on this particular point, major sections of the article content would be in question, which to my knowledge they're not. HOWEVER: Even with this in place, I keep using the term "overwhelming majority" to draw the line when we're talking about concrete quantities, which seem to be the basis for most of the arguments on both sides of the name-change debate. The way I see it, both console names are common - if the split were more like 70-30, then we'd have a case for Mega Drive being uncommon, and we'd have a clear winner. My point is that in the absence of such a majority, we have to fall back to other factors that are apparently more subjective, and I bring up the statement of "More successful in North America than the rest of the world combined" as a genuine question: Is this verifiable fact alone a good enough fact to make a decision in this debate? My personal belief is that it has merit, but raw sales figures, no matter how official, aren't enough in this case because the margin is so narrow. When you look at the number of regions in which the console was released under the Mega Drive name, it would still seem that more of the world knows it as Mega Drive than as Genesis. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 22:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

So, are you saying that you agree that there the unofficial sales numbers say that there are more consoles sold as the Genesis than the Mega Drive, but you think those numbers are wrong and you believe (for some outside reason) that there are actually more Mega Drives out there? I'm not trying to be a buster, I just don't understand your point.LedRush (talk) 22:55, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm not calling the numbers into question. I'm debating their significance. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 22:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Got it. I actually agree with everything in your last post. I would only add that I have not seen one person saying the sales figures are dispositive evidence for concluding that the article should be entitled "Sega Genesis" (and several people have explicitly said so) Most people also point to the overwhelming majority of english language RSs which use the term (per Common Name) and some panoply of other info (first english language launch, vast majority of english language users, other WP pillars/principles etc.) Of course, that doesn't mean people have to agree, but we should accurately reflect the other parties' positions.LedRush (talk) 23:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• @Cerejota: Thank you for your response. As just a little background, this article was at one point titled "Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis" (including both names) mainly because of the ambiguity in which one was the more common. We decided this was a bad title, and at the time decided to go with "Sega Mega Drive" (and later just "Mega Drive" since "Sega" isn't part of the console's name). The rationale was that there was no clear winner in either search results or sales figures, so we went with the name that was both its original name and the one used in the majority of regions around the world. There was one more recent name-change discussion (not including the removal of "Sega" from the title) that ended with no change to consensus, and then there's this discussion. IMO, nothing has really changed to give "Genesis" a clear win since the previous discussions. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 22:32, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea who you are, LedRush, so you will have to refresh my memory. I read all the threads and archives before giving my opinion. I think there is a serious misunderstanding of the spirit and letter of WP:COMMONNAME here: common name is not about google hits, it is about a general commoness, both names are common names under that definition. So the tie breaker, for me, is the manufacturer's preferred name: a precedent in technology is "Mac" and "Macintosh", we call them Macintosh, even if Mac is the most common name - yes Mac can be used for other things, but even MacOS is called MacOS, not Macintosh OS - Apple recognized it was a losing fight and now their computers are "Macs", and have been so since the first iMac, yet we still call them "Macintosh". Also, the change of the split name is not only that it is bad, it is explicitly disallowed: articles must have a single title.

Lastly it defeats the entire purpose of an RfC if you jump in the third parties the way you guys are doing. Let others speak, respond later. We can read what you already said, no need to re-hash it. --Cerejota (talk) 00:50, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough, I initially only wanted to correct purely factual mistakes (concerning mega drive being the most common name world wide). For example, no one on this page has suggested that CommonName would be determined by google hits...per the policy we should look to english language reliable sources first, then to other general factors. This has been made explicit several times.LedRush (talk) 01:59, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Then why did you put up a comparison of ghits up in the discussion? --Cerejota (talk) 02:15, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

• Mega drive - This is a tough call. I'm from the US, and I know it as the "Sega Genesis", but after reading the RM discussion above, and reading the article, it is clear that a more universal name is "mega drive". WP should strive to avoid being US-centric. Although this is the English WP, other English-speaking places (and lots of sources within the US) use the term "Mega drive", and that is the more global and more original and more essential name. (from uninvolved editor:) --Noleander (talk) 21:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Because it is one piece of evidence in a greater tapestry (common name says we can use it, but suggests we weight it less than other evidence and try to control for accuracy). I've explicitly said this a couple of times, so I'm surprised if you read the history of this discussion and somehow you didn't notice that.LedRush (talk) 03:34, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Thanks for coming in. I will say that COMMONNANE though does not care about copyright or trademark rights. Regardless of history, if it becomes the common name, that's what's used. For example, even though the Dragon Quest series is now in use around the world for the Japanese RPG, the first game is still known as Dragon Warrior. This is the case even though there are some sources that will call the game Dragon Quest today because a lot of people have grown up with the title Dragon Warrior. Even with later games have been re-released under the DQ title, such as Dragon Warrior IV being re-released under the title Dragon Quest IV and even though ourside the US it wasn't known by Dragon Warrior, it has only recently been released anywhere except Japan and NA so that even if more countries know the series as Dragon Quest, the history of the game makes Dragon Warrior the common title. Copyright and trademark changes to names are interesting and should be noted for why a name is used, but at the end of the day they do not matter. What matters is what is commonly used.

I will also have to agree with LeRush; the "Mega Drive" console is not the most common console seen. It is the Genesis. More consoles sold, even if they are heavily favored in one area still means it is the most common console worldwide from this Sega console line.陣内_Jinnai 22:03, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

@Noleander: Thanks for you're interest. I will note that its not clear that it is the "universal name" though. If it were countries that did not have the system released under it should be calling it "Sega Mega Drive" or "Mega Drive", but they don't as shown with the case in India. That is in spite India using British English and Britian being a nation where the Mega Drive was released. It's true it was released more places as the Mega Drive, but that hardly constitutes "universal".陣内_Jinnai 22:10, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

That is another excellent point. People set up a false dichotamy of the N. America versus every country in the world. There are many countries in the world in which the console was not launched. And seeing as we should be talking about English-language launches, it would seem that this is more of 2 countries vs. a handful of counties, not the US against the world. And as Jinnai points out, even picking neutral counties where the console wasn't launched brings back more hits for the Genesis.LedRush (talk) 22:41, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it seems to be a true dichotomy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck6hE2uCrPY

The Mega Drive was marketed in India. The ad may not state the name, but that means we can see which title name it was released in.

WhisperToMe (talk) 20:04, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you get the point. Are you arguing that the console was launched in every country in the world? That is obviously not true. Therefore, it's a false dichotomy to say N. America vs. the rest of the world. On a different note, if the console was launched in India under the name "Mega Drive", yet the name Genesis is still more common there, you're arguing against your larger point. How can you make the argument that the Mega Drive is the common name when common name criteria would point towards the Genesis even in countries that launched the machine as the mega drive.LedRush (talk) 20:46, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I get the point, and the YouTube is the rebuttal to it. While the Mega Drive was not released in every country, it was released in India. So somebody tried to say "Oh, "Genesis" is used in India too" and that does not appear to be the case. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:17, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

The point was that it is a false dichotomy to say it's N. America vs. the World. You have stated that the dichotomy is real. However, you also seem to admit that the console was not launched in every country throughout the world, which proves my point about the false dichotomy. If it wasn't launched in every country in the world, this is not a case of a N. America name vs. the name used everywhere else in the world. It is instead a case of the name used in N. America vs. the name used in other countries in which the console was launched. There's a big difference.

Regarding India, you are arguing against your position. Common name contemplates the use of google, and the use of google in other countries to get more perspective (though the guidelines dp affirm that such results are to be used with caution). Seeing the name "Genesis" appears more than the "Mega Drive" in a country which may have launched the console as the Mega Drive undercuts your argument about the Mega Drive being the common name. Is this a slam dunk against your position? No, of course not. But it is one more piece of evidence against your position.LedRush (talk) 22:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

"Regarding India, you are arguing against your position." - I am arguing for it. What proof is there that Indian sources prefer "Genesis?" I don't see any. And why would they? India is a PAL country. The "Genesis" version is an NTSC machine.

"Common name contemplates the use of google," - Not Google web search. You would use Google News and/or books to get reliable sources, then filter it manually to remove Wikipedia mirror results. But even then I factor in "discrimination by country" and say that Google News/Books alone is not sufficient, especially because, as another user points out, many sources from the US/Canada talk about controversies regarding the games rather than the console itself, so you have to factor out those sources too. Then it becomes a lot of work, so it's very hard for one to even prove that "COMMONNAME favors Genesis"

"Seeing the name "Genesis" appears more than the "Mega Drive" in a country which may have launched the console as the Mega Drive undercuts your argument about the Mega Drive being the common name." - Even though it technically arrived in the US first, it's not as important as the fact that Japan is the country of origin. For instance a Yu-Gi-Oh! series (Capsule Monster) was released in Ireland first, but that doesn't mean Ireland is the most important country related to it.

WhisperToMe (talk) 04:33, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, it seems like you've moved on from claiming that the term mega drive is used in every country in the world, even ones that didn't launch the title. That's progress. Unfortunately, you still read into commonname a bizarre need to discount reliable sources by country of origin based on population size and internet usage rates. This argument is highly flawed and has no basis in any policy whatsoever. That it directly conflicts with Wikipedia guidelines and core principles should let you know that you are on the wrong path with this position.LedRush (talk) 11:23, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

"Unfortunately, you still read into commonname a bizarre need to discount reliable sources by country of origin based on population size and internet usage rates." - Unfortunately it is not bizarre. A country that is not first world will not have as high newspaper circulation rates. Other people pointed out the "Genesis game controversy" point as well. And while EN does not strive to be as "neutral" as the Spanish Wikipedia, articles are to be written for a worldwide audience. Keeping reliable sources in context does not "discount" them at all. Population size must be taken into account. Development must be taken into account as well. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:45, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

A Google search does not contain the the data in which to claim "more common" usage. Its a massive leap to go from the ebay listings and mirrored US articles, that crop up in those India searches, to claim that it is indicative of India as a whole. Google searches are the worst data in this whole debate, even worse than the ropey sales figures. - X201 (talk) 20:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

No, you put a false dichotomy in saying that there cannot be more than one common name. The reality is both names are common, both get millions of google hits. At that level, one is not more common than the other, they are equally common. All that OR and SYNTH you are doing is unnecessary, the tie-breaker is the manufacturer's preferred name. It is not humanly possible to support or oppose your position when we are talking about a source analysis of millions for either name. Since quality analysis is impossible, we cannot make a quality-based choice. It is about common sense and stopping trying to win and wikilawyer an argument: we have a tie breaker, lets use it.--Cerejota (talk) 00:57, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

And this is the reason we always disagree. You say we shouldn't count on google hits but you repeatedly do. You say you've read CommonName but you've yet to address how it examines information (hint - english language reliable resources. You accuse others of wikilawyering while you invent a false tie-breaking in an attempt to wikilawyer. I made a simple point that people keep on talking about "world wide" info without acknowledging (1) N. America is part of the world and should be included in worldwide numbers; and (2) the console was not released in every country in the world, so attempts to set up "world vs. N. America" doesn't make sense. BTW: from the policy we know "The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms, whether the official name, the scientific name, the birth name, the original name or the trademarked name." The policy is a clear guide to choosing the best "common name", even if several are commonly used. How do I know this? It explicitly says it! Furthermore: "When there is no single obvious term that is obviously the most frequently used for the topic, as used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering the questions indicated above." So, we are supposed to choose one based on the majority (not vast majority, just a majority) of reliable english language sources. There is general consensus that this favors the term Genesis. Even if this were a close issue, and it isn't, we would go to the questions of recognizability, naturaleness, precision, conciseness and consistency. (your invented tie breaker doesn't show up). I would argue that the Genesis is the most recognizable (most units sold, most used in RSs, most google hits) and consistency (with other video game article and the ENGVAR of the article) and that both terms are equally natural, precise and concise. If you decide to respond, I hope you respond to my actual arguments.LedRush (talk) 03:30, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

LedRush, I'm afraid you're stepping over the line now. We clearly do not have consensus on this issue, and continuing to argue the same points is just going to get you labeled as a disruptive editor. Please, if you need to keep arguing your points, would you take it to the individual talk pages of the people you're at odds with? It's time to move on. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 05:18, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't feel I'm at odds with any editors, but there are factual issues here which can be verified, and when people make arguments on false information, I think it is important to correct that. Opinions can differ on how to interpret policy, but if the interpretation is based on demonstrably false information, the opinion isn't helpful. Interestingly, I took my issue with you to your talk page, and you've decided to attack me publicly here.LedRush (talk) 14:17, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

While we may not have a complete consensus, I believe the facts speak for themselves. When we look at RSes worldwide, including print sources, Genesis > Mega Drive by an overwhelming majority. While the general populace might not use the sources only slightly more, WP cares more about what RSes use and in that case COMMONNAME is clear here: Genesis wins hands down.陣内_Jinnai 19:01, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The sources are too massive too conclusively say so - there are literally millions for either. This is not a "hands down" issue, it is an issue of editorial judgement, no matter what name is chosen. I think the best choice is "Mega Drive" because all other things being equal, this was the manufacturer's preferred name. Claiming RS support one or the other, in the context of the enormous torrent of data to shuffle through (not to mention this console was popular in the dawn of the internet, with many sources not web available) is an exercise of futility. When the RS cannot be used to tie-break, we use other criteria. Put in another way, both Sega Mega Drive and Sega Genesis are the name of this topic, per RS, and determining which one is more common is problematic, so we are left with consensus. This is the last I am going to say on the matter, as I can here per RfC, and have no interest on the topic per se, just the policy as it applies, and policy supports both titles. Make a choice and stick with it seems to be the best course, and Mega Drive has the unique quality that it is the name Sega wanted.--Cerejota (talk) 23:51, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I might also just add real quick (and I promise this is the last point I'll make on this discussion - I've been trying to help bring it to a close for a while) that several of the reasons most of our sources favor Genesis over Mega Drive have to do with the several US-specific controversies that the Genesis was a main player in - namely, the Mortal Kombat gore issue, the advertising war with Nintendo, and the more general issue over video game violence that came to a head during the Genesis's run. These topics by themselves are particularly noteworthy, possibly to the point of deserving their own article. If we were to split those topics into their own article, the number of sources remaining that deal more generally with the hardware, development and lifespan of the console would surely reflect a more worldwide view of the console. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 01:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

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