User:Yiba/sandbox/commonname

When COMMONNAME depends on country, culture, or demography

In an effort to split an article, I am faced with the problem of which of the two articles after the split should be given the old well-known article title, where both of the new subjects could claim to have COMMONNAME and PRIMARY TOPIC arguments for the title depending on the demography group the reader and/or the editor belong, and would like to invite comments from wider editor-base on how to handle this article naming issue.

Example

The case is Porsche, where the name is predominantly a brand of cars and the car maker, Porsche AG, for one demography group who are not interested in investments; and is predominantly the name of the parent company, Porsche SE, which controls many car makers such as Bentley, Bugatti, Audi, Volkswagen, Ducati, Lamborghini and Porsche for the other demography group who are more likely kept abreast of developments in economy and capital markets. The latter view considers the name on the stock of the parent company traded on public exchanges, and its roles in the German and world economy, to have significance reaching a wider Wikipedia reader base, but the other (mostly younger) group tend to place a higher significance on the brand of cars and its manufacturer because it is the way the name "Porsche" is used by the group (as well as by reliable publications catering to car afficionados).

Problem

With the well known skew in Wikipedia editor demography towards young males in mind, and assuming the two views each having reliable sources on the respective usage, how should we handle the question of which article (on the parent company Porsche SE, or the car manufacturing subsidiary Porsche AG) to be given the representative "Porsche" as the title?

Currently, the article is not split between the parent and the subsidiary, but there is a general consensus that a split into two articles would be preferable if this and other problems can be resolved.

(The problem is more complicated in this example than on most car companies because Porsche AG no longer is a direct subsidiary of Porsche SE, but has become a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, to which Porsche SE is the majority owner. Further, Porsche SE was born by renaming the old Porsche AG, and then the car manufacturing operation was spun off to form the new Porsche AG, so the parent holding company is the legal successor of the Porsche history in the past (which might give the primary topic status to the parent on the basis of long-term significance). In many countries, the parent company does not have a local presence due to the limited availability of EDR and GDR outside of London, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and New York stock exchanges, so the subsidiary is left in the country to be the only bearer of the name Porsche, except in international or foreign context. The parent currently has non-car-making subsidiaries that are likely to attract not insignificant number of Wiki readers on the products (e.g. sunglasses, bags, etc.) and services (e.g. technology consulting) outside of the new Porsche AG, who are likely to look up 'Porsche' on Wikipedia.)

Issue

This seems to be a COMMONNAME issue, not in the sense that subject X is called A or B, but in the sense that the name A is normally used to mean subject X or Y depending on what country, culture, or demography you belong within the English speaking population. The word 'Porsche' normally means different things to a stock broker or a coupon clipper in London, and for a student in Sydney.

In a way, this is because the culture and the common knowledge are not shared by the countries, generations and demography groups using the same English language. The difference cannot be resolved by the best efforts in consensus building, because the different views are valid for each group and a consensus cannot merge or unify the groups, and an amicable middle ground cannot be found because the assignment of 'Porsche' title cannot be split or weighted between the two articles. I would suspect similar issues exist between male and female, the rich and the poor, well-educated and not-so-well-educated, and between other demography groups. As none of these demography groups cannot be ignored as the Wikipedia reader base, this is not a target audience issue.

May be the question of "When COMMONNAME varies according to the subject domain categorization (i.e. stand point of the Wikiproject for each domain)" should be added to this issue for those subjects and article titles that belong in two or more subject domains (e.g. Companies and Automobiles for the 'Porsche' example), and so I consider this issue to have a very wide scope, which might have caused many controversies in the past.

As the problem has two legitimate points of view, I would normally apply WP:NPOV and the principle of "Wikipedia tries to describe the dispute, not engage in it.", but a creation of problem/issue description page would not solve the problem, and the concept of due weight cannot be applied because [[Porsche]] can't direct to Porsche SE article XX% of the time, and direct to Porsche AG article YY% of the time, which might be technically possible with a Round-robin DNS style mechanism for the searches and name resolutions within Wikipedia.

Solutions

Giving the representative [[Porsche]] title to one or the other of the two subjects may violate the principle of WP:NPOV either way, because it gives the benefit of being easier found in a search to one article at the undue expense of the other, despite both subjects having a valid COMMONNAME/PRIMARYTOPIC argument for the article title with supporting and not insignificant population with their own view point. If, only if, WP:NPOV(as a non-negotiable policy) must be adhered to no matter what cost, then the Round-robin mechanism idea that directs [[Porsche]] to one or the other of the articles with a pre-set probability ratio (e.g. 50:50, 80:20, etc.) may gain some validity with a small but fundamental alteration to the way this online encyclopaedia functions (of course with a hatnote on the result page to call attention to, and a direct link to, the other article).

In deciding "Subject X is called A or B", search engine test is sometimes used. However, this would not result in fair outcomes in this "Name A means X or Y" example, because the usage that equates 'Porsche' with the parent company is under the natural requirement on securities, economics, and business publications to qualify the name more carefully (adding 'SE' after 'Porsche' to avoid confusion) than on car magazines, so is naturally penalized in the statistics "How often the word 'Porsche' is meant for the parent, and for the subsidiary". This is a systemic bias in the test. Moreover, the patterns cannot be established for sufficiently long period because the parent was renamed and the subsidiary was established only recently in 2007.

Giving the [[Porsche]] title to a disambiguation page is another, a bit messy, solution I came up so far, but this solution may trigger waves of protests from Wikiprojects with established and conflicting conventions to such a practice (e.g. Wikiproject:Companies and Wikiproject:Automobiles in opposing directions, may be). In this case, the Precision criterion in WP:NAMINGCRITERIA may be used not to give the 'Porsche' title to either of the two articles, against which the Projects might use the Consistency criterion, or primary topic, as the basis for opposing the action.

I would like to receive comments and especially different ideas from those editors who, preferably, do not belong in the Companies, Automobiles, Brands, Germany, or other related WikiProjects to the example. Similar cases in the past and the ways they were resolved would be of interest if the solution seems reasonable. Those comments pushing for one of the two views in the example without grasping the underlying issue are NOT invited.

---