Talk:New York

Requested move 7 July 2017

• New York (disambiguation) → New York
• New York → New York (state)

– An August 2016 RfC has concluded that the State of New York cannot be the primary topic for the term "New York", due to the prominence of New York City being often called "New York", and to a lesser extent due to the existence of numerous other topics titled "New York", including songs, books, films, ships, sports teams, the New York metropolitan area, New York County, the historical Province of New York and a bunch of eponymous cities.

Consequently, the existing disambiguation page must be moved to the base title "New York", and the state article requires a qualifier to distinguish it from the city and other uses of the term. A July 2016 discussion on preferred qualifiers has shown overwhelming support for New York (state) vs New York State or State of New York as a destination title. The change will ease navigation and search for readers, and will bring consistency with similar cases such as Washington (state) vs Washington, D.C. and Georgia (U.S. state) vs Georgia (country).  — Amakuru (talk) 11:36, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Arguments and evidence in favor of the proposed move

New York State is not the primary topic for the term "New York"

Ever since the early days of Wikipedia, it has been repeatedly discussed whether New York State or New York City were dominant enough to claim the primary topic status for the term "New York". An August 2016 RfC concluded with an overwhelming majority that the state is definitely not a primary topic in the sense of Wikipedia guidelines, neither in terms of popularity nor in terms of long-term significance. Consequently, the current situation with the "New York" title pointing to the state article is untenable with regard to our WP:AT policy on article titles.

New York City cannot be considered primary topic either

While New York City receives roughly twice the traffic of New York State [1] – adding the visits for "New York" and "New York (state)" which are currently synonyms – we cannot conclude either that it is much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined, to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term, as would be required to become primary topic under our WP:PTOPIC guideline. New York City and New York State are the top two dominant topics for the term "New York", and they are accordingly given top billing in the dab page.

Internal links to New York are ambiguous

Over 10+ years, the encyclopedia had accumulated hundreds of thousands of ambiguous or incorrect links to the ambiguous "New York" title. Since last summer, a gigantic collective effort has been underway to correct the wrong links and vindicate the right ones; this involved a combination of manual labour, bot programming and editorial discussions. The situation is not solved, and requires constant maintenance and patrolling (hat tip to bd2412 who has volunteered to maintain things, but this is unsustainable).

When New York becomes a dab page, editors linking there will be warned and offered a choice between the potential meanings, and bots will assist in maintenance automatically, as they do for every ambiguous title in the project. Disambiguation of internal links has already helped people find directly the page they want to read instead of first going through the New York state page, which is quite bulky.

Clarify search results and educate readers

Sample search results for New York by typing "new y…" in the search box on the English Wikipedia.
We can't readily find the State of New York because it's just called "New York"; it would be clearer to see "New York (state)" among the other listed items.

A reader looking for New York State does not see it clearly appear when typing "new y…" in the Wikipedia search box, because the state article is the only item that does not have a full "New York something" title. Foreign readers may also wrongly infer from this list that "New York City" and "New York" are just two names for the same article, if they are unaware that there is a U.S. state called New York – therefore the new title contributes to the educational goal of Wikipedia.

Results and page previews from external search engines will also be clearer with "New York (state)" appearing alongside "New York City"; see for example a search on Google.

Arguments and evidence against the proposed move

New York is the official name of the state

Indeed it is, and this is why the proposed title is "New York (state)", not "New York State" or "State of New York" (see prior discussion). Besides, Wikipedia does not necessarily follow WP:OFFICIAL names, and even the state's official site – http://www.ny.gov/ – takes care to show a prominent "NEW YORK STATE" logo on every page, surely to avoid confusion with New York City. The mention of "city" or "state" in each article title is healthy for both city and state.

The move would harm the New York state article

It has been suggested in the 2016 discussion that this change would harm the visibility of the New York state article and reduce its page views; this has not been confirmed by experience when the move was performed in July 2016. Since then, the traffic to the state and city pages has been relatively stable when we add visits to the "New York" title with visits via the "New York (state)" redirect put in place to correct internal links.[2]

Traffic may indeed decrease a little after the move, but the only traffic the state page will "lose" is traffic that was meant for the city page or another one among the dab entries. With regard to visibility, a clear "New York (state)" title in the search box will indeed make the state article more visible to casual readers.

New York State contains New York City

It has been argued that New York should have primacy over New York City as a higher-level jurisdiction. However, this consideration does not help readers, and the encyclopedia has several cases which go both ways. For example, Lagos (city) is primary topic against Lagos State although Lagos State is a higher-level jurisdiction; same for São Paulo vs São Paulo (state) in English, although we have the opposite situation in Portuguese, with the state considered primary pt:São Paulo vs pt:São Paulo (cidade).

Status quo is no problem

Some editors have argued that the long-standing status quo has proven stable and therefore should not be changed: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The reality is that:

• The status quo actually creates many problems: wrong links, surprise effect, loading of a large page, hatnote invisible on mobile app, search box unclear, etc.
• Arguing that several prior discussions have upheld the status quo is misleading: most of those discussions had identified substantive issues, and the change was not enforced because there was no sufficient consensus or because there were too many possibilities to choose from.
• We are facing an absurd historical situation – dating from 2001 – of a non-primary topic occupying the subject name. "Old habits die hard: occupy New York!"

This proposal makes a reasonable case that consensus can change; improvement to the encyclopedia should not be blocked by status quo stonewalling.

Title choice for the state article

WP:ATDAB suggests a number of ways to qualify the title of the state article. The best choice is a matter of opinion. This proposal suggests New York (state) for five reasons:

1. retains the state's common name per WP:COMMONNAME, qualified as necessary
2. consistency with Washington (state), Chihuahua (state), Rio de Janeiro (state) and many others
3. clarity: New York (state) appears to be the most concise unambiguous title
4. technical convenience: New York (state) is an existing redirect and is already used for most links to the state article
5. strong consensus in a prior discussion about the preferred title in case the New York article is moved

Survey on the proposed move

Please indicate your Support or Oppose opinion with a brief rationale. Longer arguments should go to the #Discussion of the proposed move section below.

• Comment - I launched this move request following extensive discussions with numerous editors at Talk:New York/Proposed move. The main author of the above nomination text was not me, but User:JFG, so I am the nominator because I pushed the final launch button. I am in full support of the above rationale, however. If possible, I would like to request that this RM be closed by an uninvolved administrator rather than a page mover or non-admin, due to the contentious nature of this request and the history of RMs on this topic. Thanks!  — Amakuru (talk) 11:45, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

  I have notified the following WikiProjects: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New York · Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New York City · Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States · Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation · Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography. If anyone can think of other groups or projects that may be interested in this, please consider notifying them so we get as wide a response as possible.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:01, 7 July 2017 (UTC) – Notified Talk:New York City on your behalf; hope you don't mind my impersonating you, it's for a good cause.

  Notified all users of the previous RM request who haven't yet participated in this discussion. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:24, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

  If it's easily to hand as I suspect it is, Od Mishehu, a list of those notified is a good idea IMO, just to counter any suggestion of canvassing. I suggest at Talk:New York (disambiguation)/Meta#Heads ups unless it's very short. Andrewa (talk) 02:48, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

  The list of users can be found here. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 02:55, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Support

Please indicate support in this section, with a brief statement explaining your position. Please take care not to break the numbering of the section. Extended discussion, including responses to opinions noted here, should occur in the "discussion" section below. Editors may move improperly placed materials to that section, with an appropriate subhead.

1. Support based on evidence and rationale given in the nom. It's pretty clear that there is no overwhelming primary topic for the undisambiguated name, so pointing it to the disambiguation page is the most logical target. Meanwhile, the article on the state needs disambiguation, and the "(state)" form is a) consistent with other similar cases and b) has a technical advantage regarding piping of links. oknazevad (talk) 12:23, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
2. Support. All I would add to the above at this point are two observations: first, to note that for nearly a year now, I have been fixing incoming links to "New York" pursuant to the consensus in discussion at Talk:New York#Proposed action to resolve incorrect incoming links, consistently finding that 20-30% of new links being made clearly intend the city (with about 1% of new links being made intending something else entirely, most commonly the magazine). Second, a person born in "New York City" in 1665 could have lived there until he was 108, without ever being in the state of New York, because although the city existed during that period, the state did not - which crops up as an issue from time to time with links referencing New York prior to the American Revolution. bd2412 T 12:33, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   There was a Province of New York, though. It was created and named as such in 1664, the same time the city was renamed. epicgenius (talk) 16:44, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   Indeed, and sometimes links are made that specifically intend the Province, not the state. bd2412 T 17:36, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

3. Support per nom. For the reader typing in New York, the disambiguation page provides the best destination, consistent with the several policies quoted and with other ambiguous titles in Wikipedia. It's good that editors are constantly mending links, but much better for everyone if they don't need to. Certes (talk) 12:54, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
4. Support per nom. To be frank, I'd also support the city being the primary topic, but I think this is the best solution as both are significant topics in their own right. --Bermicourt (talk) 12:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
5. Support per the reasons given in the nomination. The only reasons I can think of why people are against are because it is a change to the current state, and that it may make it inconsistencies with other states and cities. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 13:04, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
6. Support per nom and the preceding comments. User:BD2412 identifies a common problem when there's no clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC - bad links are created and no-one notices, which is bad both for the encyclopaedia and for its readers. As a similar example, Vinyl was recently converted from a redirect to Vinyl group into a DAB page. The change was unquestionably correct. It broke over 700 links - of which only about 50 related to the original target. Narky Blert (talk) 13:48, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
7. Support. The question right now is not whether New York City is primary topic, but that New York State clearly is not. From a global perspective, New York Metropolitan Area may also have a claim, and serves at least as a spoiler for the New York City article which is currently scoped to the five boroughs. But the question here is just whether this RM will improve Wikipedia, and it clearly will, both with respect to reader experience and also with respect to compliance to policies and guidelines... which is not unexpected and just as well, as these policies and guidelines represent wide community consensus on the best way to produce good reader experience. Andrewa (talk) 13:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
8. Support. For all the reasons stated in nom, but especially the reduction in creation of new links to "New York" that are not disambiguated by editors. Loopy30 (talk) 15:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
9. Support. Community consensus has waited a long time for these page renames. Both the Wikipedia:Article titles#Disambiguation policy and the Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Is there a primary topic? guideline, together with the August 2016 Request for Comment all show beyond any shadow of doubt that the consensus of the community is to make these page moves. There have been no strong policy/guideline-based reasons given to keep these pages at their present titles in any previous discussion.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  16:15, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
10. Support, since any new links to New York are already being disambiguated. This would just make it easier to distinguish these links. I still think NY State is the primary topic, though. Like Mexico vs. Mexico City or Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma City, but disambiguation will help even more than the status quo. epicgenius (talk) 16:33, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
11. Support. I'm persuaded by the excellent rationale, and I'd like to thank the nominators for taking the time to draft it. Mackensen (talk) 17:15, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
12. Support. The term "New York" is unquestionably ambiguous. Even the state government website disambiguates to clarify which is meant. older ≠ wiser 17:17, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
13. Support It is standard practice that when a term is ambiguous, we create a disambiguation page. "New York" is clearly so. Not a fan of "New York (state)" instead of "New York State" per WP:NATURALDIS, but it's still better than the current setup. – Train2104 (t • c) 22:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

    In what way is it better? Who is helped by this? Nobody gets anywhere faster. Srnec (talk) 00:32, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

    A few billion people with slow or expensive data connections will indeed get there faster, by loading a 5-kilobyte dab page and reading its first two lines, rather than waiting for a 2.3-megabyte state page with images. They may even miss the light-grey hatnote, which is displayed after 3 or 4 screenfuls of the lead section when using Wikipedia's mobile app. See Talk:New York/July 2016 move request#Mobile app users can't see hatnotes. — JFG ^talk 01:36, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

    We should not decide page titles based on flawed app design. The hatnote appears at the top on the mobile version. And as Station1 has shown below, it is not as if most users get to the city article by using Wikipedia's search function. Certainly we are not talking about billions of people here. Srnec (talk) 01:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

    We should decide page titles based on all available data, all the facts, and of course on the consensus of the Wikipedia community, particularly the article titles policy and most particularly WP:ATDIS, which is a strong community consensus that supports these page renames.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  02:54, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

    This RM cannot solve the readers' current problem by changing the app, but it can solve it by moving the DAB. (And not convinced that the app design is flawed in any case... the results are not good but there may be constraints on the design which we have not considered. In my experience it's a sound principle of software support to fix the problem you understand, and the problems you don't understand often then just go away as a result.) Andrewa (talk) 14:09, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

    If there's a software problem, it affects tens or hundreds of thousands of articles, not just this one. Changing this one article for the next ten years in order to benefit a small proportion of the 3% of readers who land on New York by mistake is not an effective way of dealing with the alleged problem. Station1 (talk) 07:32, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

    Agree that if there's a software problem that affects tens or hundreds of thousands of articles it should be fixed. But we're not going to fix it here, while we can fix the "alleged" problem (or rather, the several related problems) described in the rationale above, and should do so. Should it be "alleged" software problem? Andrewa (talk) 07:43, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

14. Support for changing the title of the page "New York" to "New York (state)". The arguments make perfect sense to me. However, I am not in favor of changing the title of "New York (disambiguation)" to "New York". The disambiguation page should specifically state "disambiguation". "New York" should redirect to "New York (disambiguation)". Box99Tube (talk) 17:23, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

    @Box99Tube:, per WP:MALPLACED, a "Foo" title can not redirect to a "Foo (disambiguation)" title, because too many elements of our system are set up to recognize and report erroneous links made to disambiguation pages at the base page name. bd2412 T 18:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

    Ah, okay. I didn't expect my preference to happen, but now at least I know it's impossible. Thanks. Box99Tube (talk) 19:27, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

    You are not the only one to think it's a good idea, see #Standard DAB disambiguator below. Andrewa (talk) 07:25, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

15. Support. Both the city and state are widely popular and enduring topics, and neither is a clear primary topic. As a side note, please don't compare this with Oklahoma City. The city is never known as simply Oklahoma, and the two titles have their own primary topic status, without any title conflict. kennethaw88 • talk 18:46, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
16. Support. For article-naming consistency. WCCasey (talk) 22:57, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
17. Support. New York (state) should be the page name, similar to Washington (state). I oppose any future redirect from New York to New York City. Power~enwiki (talk) 01:46, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
18. Support New York state is not the primary topic, New York City has a much stronger claim to being PrimaryTopic for "New York". Much stronger.
    I strongly disagree with JFG's assertion "New York City cannot be considered primary topic either", but nevertheless the proposed move is a good thing to do right now. Supporting NYC as the PT is not a good reason to oppose this move. Evidence of the dominance of "New York" to mean the city to a wide audience will become available with the DAB page being placed temporarily at the base name "New York". Current data is confused due to "New York" being a valid target for the state. I agree with the utility of the DAB page being at the base name, for functionality of the search box suggestions, and for the relative small size and high utility of the DAB page for readers who are mis-searching.
    The status quo is definitely a problem, something that I didn't find clear last time.
    I have little preference for NYS at New York State, or New York state or State of New York or New York (state), but am satisfied with the argument that the last is best consistent with similar topics.
    As per Box99Tube, I would prefer to have New York redirect to the DAB page at "New York (disambiguation)", bugger "WP:MALPLACED", fix the system elements that arguably lock in place the silly practice that DAB pages must go to the base name when there is no PrimaryTopic. DAB pages are not real articles, and there are more reader-oriented advantages to having DAB pages suffixed "(disambiguation}". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:08, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

    I think that suggestion has a lot going for it, see #Standard DAB disambiguator below. Andrewa (talk) 07:13, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

19. Support I think this is an excellent suggestion to clear up any confusion that someone might have when searching for the term "New York". Cthomas3 (talk) 07:19, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
20. Support: To avoid confusion between the two names, and after the move dab it. KGirlTrucker81 ^{huh? what I've been doing} 13:47, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
21. Support Regardless of the title of the articles on either the state or the city, New York should be a dab because it is highly ambiguous. MB 22:21, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
22. Support - Neither New York City nor New York State can claim to be the primary topic, and turning New York into a dab page is the best course of action so readers can be directed to either the city or state without giving one primary status over the other. Dough4872 02:58, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
23. Strong support per the arguments of download size and of incoming links mentioned above. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
24. Support Makes sense. Overall I still think readers will easily find what they're looking for no matter which route we go, and even with this one you're going to have people linking to the wrong page. It's true linking a disambiguation page is more likely to get fixed, though :) I truly wish good luck to all who intend on fixing those backlinks! It amazes me how much time and energy everyone is putting into these move discussions. I can only imagine how much we could improve New York-related content with the same amount of effort... — MusikAnimal ^talk 04:14, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
25. Support. As Washington and Georgia are ambiguous in practice, taking a worldwide view, so too is New York (albeit not in many individuals' minds). The herculean task of disambiguation of links to New York has demonstrated this, as far too many were linking to the wrong target. The search-box drop-down top two suggestions will be New York City and New York (state) which will make it obvious which is which, hopefully allowing many, if not most readers to avoid actually landing on the disambiguation page at the base title. I think, when the dust settles the page views profile for New York will be very similar to these. Yes, hundreds of views of the dabs, but that's unavoidable – and still modest in relation to the two main topics' thousands. Currently there's only one link to Washington and two to Georgia, so the problem seems to be managed well with those. – wbm1058 (talk) 04:32, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
26. Support. New York State is simply not the primary topic. NYC has 3-4 times as many page views as NYS. If we do implement the change suggested here, it would then be interesting to track what percentage of people who land on the DAB page choose NYC (if this is possible to track). If this percentage is above some threshold -- 50%? 60%? 75? -- we should consider making New York City the main page for New York, with a dab notice at the top. But that would be a separate issue to take up at a later time. Clean Copy^talk 10:54, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
27. Support per nom. I'm not normally a fan of dab pages, but the arguments put forth on the previous RM (and summarized above) swayed me that this is probably the best solution in the long run, as the title is genuinely ambiguous (the city being the primary topic coming close). I think that it has been amply demonstrated that the state is not the primary topic, and that the current setup creates issues both for readers and for editors. No such user (talk) 11:42, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
28. Support Having a dab page for such an ambiguous term is the most logical thing to do.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 14:48, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
29. Support per my many arguments the last time around. If anything, New York (the city!) is the primary topic, not New York State. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 15:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
30. Support moving the article about New York State away from New York, strongly oppose the proposed title New York (state) – New York State isn't the primary topic of New York. This argument has been satisfactorily dealt with in this discussion and in the prior discussions that I've participated, and so I feel not strong compulsion to repeat it here. However, the proposed title is a nonsensical abomination. We favour WP:NATURAL disambiguation to parenthetical disambiguation, and there is a form of natural disambiguation that is perhaps the most common way to refer to this entity: New York State. Now, some people have said they oppose this because it is not 'official', but nor is New York City official; that's just 'New York' as well. When people talk about this state, they say 'New York State', not 'New York bracket state bracket'. There is no reason to add in unnecessary brackets and forgo the most common usage, which is 'New York State'. This is, of course, used by the relevant state government itself, so any further arguing about the 'officialness' of this name is an absolute waste of time, regardless of whether it appears in the state charter or not. I'm shocked by the density of this proposal. How would the reader be helped by having to type an extra two characters into the search bar? See WP:CONCISE. RGloucester — ☎ 15:42, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

    Personally, I happen to prefer the natural dab as well but that was opposed by most participants in last years's survey. By suggesting "New York (state)", we are following consensus; no prejudice against a followup move request from that title to "New York State" or "State of New York". Regarding the search engine, parentheses make no difference, so there is no inconvenience to readers on this front. — JFG ^talk 16:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

    @RGloucester: New York State only works because there is no university by that name. Compare with Georgia State and Washington State. Using the parenthetical keeps the naming convention for ambiguous state names consistent with Georgia and Washington. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:30, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

31. Support. When there is (or may be) confusion, a DAB page is the best destination. When there is confusion, a qualified name (the shortest possible qualification) aka " (state)", is the quickest 'prefiguration' in the search list. As a previous resident of New York (the city), I am of course highly incensed that the city link is not the most obvious to y'all. Yet, I support this proposal. It is the most useful outcome. Why would anyone object, other than misplaced impulses? (see mine for example) Shenme (talk) 18:47, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
32. Support the change as proposed, primarily because it will fix the problems described with respect to people arriving to the wrong page, and of editors having to review every new link created to the base name, even those intended to target the state.
    The people saying that "there is no problem with the current situation" have not provided alternatives nor solutions to these problems, which would continue to exist if the current situation is maintained. The proposed move has the property of being an elegant solution to both problems: most of the time, the link will be repaired by the editor writing it (either when noting the redirect or when being notified by the "you've created a link to a DAB page" bot), without needing the supervision of a second editor; or in case this supervision is needed, it will be easier for editors to find out which new links are in need of repair. And if some links are not repaired in a timely way, at least the readers following the link will be provided with a fallback -the DAB page- that allows them to recover from the error and be shown a navigation page that drives them to their desired target article - i.e. putting the reader in charge of fulfilling their own needs, rather than arbitrarily sending them to the article that by chance happens to have been longer in Wikipedia.
    The Oppose votes are basically of two forms, neither of which provides a thorough and solid argument; and frankly, they are not very convincing, being full of logic holes. The first form is something like New York is the name of the state, and New York City is the name of the city, so there's no need to disambiguate. This argument ignores the fact that "New York" is also very commonly used as the name of the city. We have the DAB policy establishing that, when a name is used for two different topics and neither is overwhelmingly more prominent than the other, a disambiguation page should be regarded as the best possible solution for readers to find their way to their intended target; this policy recognizes that placing a non-primary topic under an ambiguous name is making readers a disservice, even in cases like this when either article is also known by other non-ambiguous names.
    The second argument goes There has never been a consensus against the current situation, so it's impossible to find a consensus to move. This circular argument is directly against WP:Consensus can change, which states that a rough consensus of solid arguments supported by policy is enough to overcome a local consensus, no matter how long it lasted. This half-argument also ignores that the previous results did not end in a consensus to keep the current status quo, but in a lack of consensus either way (primarily by the difficulty of having a discussion based on detached reasoning and policy-based arguments, and the easiness by which the discussions were derailed into emotional wrecks of crossed accusations and side-tracked topics).
    There are also some concerns regarding the convenience and/or style of the request move, either for being too soon after previous discussion (it has been almost a year after the previous RfC about the primary topic, and more than a year from the previous Move Request), or even for how people are participating in the current discussion, with more or less emphasis and time devoted to it. Those could at worst be the basis for an ANI investigation on the behavior of editors who carelessly tried to beat a dead horse, but they shouldn't derail a good-faith attempt at discussion by editors willing to revisit the status quo, again per WP:CCC.
    There is a third Oppose argument regarding the consistency of this situation similarly named topics that point to the larger entity (state or country) when it shares the name with its constituent city; but it's easy to disprove such claimed consistency by pointing to numerous examples of topics where either the city is primary over the eponym state, or where a disambiguation page holds the base name.
    There are some legit concerns regarding some aspects of the move request - namely the name to be used for the article on the State using natural or parenthetical disambiguation; or whether the City article should be regarded as the primary topic instead. Those are reasonable doubts regarding the specifics of this proposed move. And the people who worked to draft the text of the move request agreed that a successful move should not prevent them from being revisited; so, a success in this request should be interpreted with no prejudice to reopen those concerns in further RfC discussions. However, in the absence of a strong emerging consensus on those topics in the current discussion, I'd recommend using the exact terms proposed in the current request - in order to gain a much needed improvement to Wikipedia over the current status, and letting the details be sorted out at a later step. Diego (talk) 22:17, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

    The one "problem" here is merely a problem for editors and should be resolved "behind the scenes". This solution therefore fails. Links that are incorrect (i.e., do not point to the correct/intended target) are simply editorial mistakes. Common mistakes indeed. It is hardly only New York that is affected. But they are still mistakes by editors and changing page titles is a terrible way of getting editors to make less mistakes. Especially, when we are talking about a move that will inconvenience thousands more readers than will be inconvenienced by clicking on one of the dozen or so new bad links created daily. The other "problem" is equally chimeric. If the "wrong page" is simply one the reader wasn't looking for, this move will assure that any reader using our own search function will end up at the wrong page and not merely those looking for the city, since nobody is looking for a dab page. The NY situation is akin to a TWODABS situation. Srnec (talk) 00:33, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

    The problem of following an inner link and arriving at the wrong article is very real for readers, not just editors. But every reader that lands in the disambiguation page will be served the information they need - an index to their desired article, perfectly laid out. This is better than a hat note in tiny type, hidden beneath the big title and page photos in a several-hundreds-of-kilobytes long page.

    And this only applies to readers following links. The experience of those using the search function will be improved, as now it will clearly present its results as either New York state and New York City, removing any trace of the current ambiguity that could bring them to the wrong page.

    And now that you bring WP:TWODABS to the table, please note that it only recommends using hatnotes instead of a DAB page when one of the articles is a primary topic. When there is no primary topic, TWODABS still says "where no topic is primary, the disambiguation page is placed at the base name." Diego (talk) 05:08, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

33. Support. While I think New York City is the primary topic for New York, I'm not going to make perfect the enemy of good here. It is obvious that the state is not the primary topic. It would also be possible to run an experiment where any items on the DAB page have a special redirect to track uses of that link (e.g. New York (city disambiguation redirect), New York (state disambiguation redirect), etc.). The damage to readers arriving at the incorrect page is mitigated by this change. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 01:23, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
34. Support. From a global perspective, New York is the city. In most of the U.S., "I'm going to New York this weekend" means the city. Page traffic for the city is much higher and a lot of the "New York" traffic is looking for the city (see this previous move discussion for details). In addition, readers seeking the article on the state by using Wikipedia's search suggestions or another search engine are not given a result option including the word "state" (see, e.g., this screenshot), something very helpful for such an ambiguous topic. The harm of the current situation is that a) readers are not getting where they want and b) a lot of wikilinks are misdirected. Normally, I wouldn't care about b) so much, but on this scale, it's an important issue too. If the page is moved, I also endorse User:Patar knight's proposal (immediately above) for tracking of reader traffic from that page. —  AjaxSmack  02:12, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

    Only roughly 3% of the "New York" traffic is looking for the city (see below). Station1 (talk) 02:41, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

    Unlikely. The initial cleanup of incoming links uncovered over 20,000 links to "New York" intended for the city. Continuing efforts since then have consistently yielded 20-33+% intended for the city, and an additional 1% intended for the various other meanings of the term. If up to one in three people writing about the city type "New York" alone, it seems implausible that people merely reading about it would be more specific. bd2412 T 03:40, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

    Relatively few readers get to articles through wikilinks, especially to well-known topics like New York. Fuller explanation at "WP:AT discussion" below. Station1 (talk) 04:14, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

    I strongly doubt the assertion that relatively few readers get to articles through wikilinks. We don't have readily visible stats of the provenance of readers for each page view; this information could be inferred from the HTTP referer headers but I don't know if Wikimedia stores and aggregates them anywhere. According to my totally subjective gut feeling, most page views probably come from 1) Wikipedia search engine 2) external search engines 3) internal links 4) links from external sites 5) direct URL input. It would be very illuminating to have some concrete measurements on the provenance of readers. My hunch about dominance of the Wikipedia search engine stems from weekly stats recorded at WP:5000: the Wikipedia home page gets a massive 110 million page views, out of a total 370 million for the 5000 most visited articles. If wholly one third of Wikipedia traffic hits the home page first, it is very likely that a good chunk of the second third derives from the reader typing a search on said front page. Then #2 would be Google and friends, which often give Wikipedia articles top billing in their search results, and they are the default destination when searching for something on a mobile device. I place internal links as source #3 because people tend to follow up on a subject from within Wikipedia more often than from an external site other than a search engine. Finally direct URL input is a thing of 20th century geeks only… — JFG ^talk 08:35, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

    Looking at current stats for New York (state) (only resulting of internal links) vs New York (views from anywhere else), it looks like internal links may even be the #1 source of page views for the New York state article. — JFG ^talk 09:07, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

    You are correct. I was relying on meta:Research:Improving link coverage but it was pointed out below that I was mistaken on that point, at least in this case. Station1 (talk) 09:17, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Oppose

Please indicate opposition in this section, with a brief statement explaining your position. Please take care not to break the numbering of the section. Extended discussion, including responses to opinions noted here, should occur in the "discussion" section below. Editors may move improperly placed materials to that section, with an appropriate subhead.

1. Oppose. (a) New York covers the entire history of New York, including the 150+ years before it became a state in 1776, so proposed title is less accurate.

   (b) Proposed title is less natural, less concise, and less consistent than current title (policy at WP:AT).

   (c) No one wants to land on a dab page. Only roughly 2.5% of readers landing on New York actually want New York City (based on 2010 hatnote experiment). Making New York a dab page does not benefit them (they have to click through either way), while inconveniencing those who really do want New York. Station1 (talk) 15:37, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   @Station1: Would you care to share a link to this 2010 hatnote experiment? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 15:53, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   Please see last few paragraphs of next to last section of Talk:New York/Archive 4. - Station1 (talk) 16:10, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   @Station1: 2010 is too distant in the past. Can you find similar data with 2016?? Georgia guy (talk) 17:34, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   Unfortunately, no. The experiment would have to be re-run. There's no reason to expect the results would be grossly different, though. Station1 (talk) 17:47, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   One of the arguments made in the previous discussion was that moving the disambiguation page to the base title would be a good way to assess how popular is each article nowadays (without the distortion introduced by having one of them at the base name), giving us real recent data of readers' expectations.

   And if I remember correctly, during the previous move discussion there was a brief period while the disambiguation page was placed at New York; and it showed a large percentage of readers searching for the city, not the state. Could someone find those statistics and post them at the Discuss section below? Diego (talk) 18:13, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   (edit conflict) There's no question that New York City gets significantly more pageviews than New York. Those numbers are easily obtainable[3]. The question is how the current set-up distorts those numbers and the answer is it raises New York's pageviews by a small percentage. Further discussion below. Station1 (talk) 18:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   I've started a couple of subsections below for these discussions. Certes (talk) 18:37, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   • (Discussion previously below this point moved to "WP:AT" subsection under Discussion. bd2412 T 21:18, 7 July 2017 (UTC))
2. Oppose - This is a solution looking for a problem. This is nothing wrong with the status quo. which serves our readers well. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:48, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   There is plenty wrong with the status quo! The status quo actually creates many problems: wrong links, surprise effect, loading of a large page, hatnote invisible on mobile app, search box unclear, etc. All this has been explained in the above proposal rationale. Please take the blinders off your race horse.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  20:14, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   If you're attempting to get me to reconsider my opinion, insulting me is unlikely to achieve your goal, nor is treating me as if I'm a simpleton who can't properly evaluate a proposal. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   I know you are no simpleton, believe me. I have a good, healthy respect for you, BMK, please believe that also. That's why I thought it better to insult your horse.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  23:07, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   @Beyond My Ken: In the 2010 debate, you supported exactly what is being proposed now, writing: *Support - "New York" should be a dab page, the state should be "New York (U.S. state)" and the city should be "New York City" Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC).[4] Why do you now think status quo is better? — JFG ^talk 22:13, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   Now, you see, that's a good way to get someone to reconsider! Very good question, JFG, one I'll have to ponder a bit. Thanks for bringing my previous opinion to my attention. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   Further discussion moved to #Should New York City be primary instead? below.

3. Oppose per BMK. We also have a very clear policy based reason to not disambiguate: New York City has the wonderful natural disambiguator of City. The State is the primary topic here, just as Quebec, Mexico, and Oklahoma are. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:18, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   Just want to point out my change of opinion (if not change of !vote) above. Also, the reason that Quebec, Oklahoma, and Mexico are not good parallels to New York is that Quebec City, Oklahoma City, and Mexico City simply do not have the same world status that New York City does. (Of them, Mexico City comes closest, but I don't believe I've ever heard the city referred to as just "Mexico" in the way that New York City is very frequently referred to as "New York".) Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   Beyond My Ken, thanks for the reply. I've struck my per. I think Quebec is analogous because it is referred to solely by that name. I'd agree with you on no other similarly patterned city having the world status of NYC, but I still think there is a case from consistency here. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:27, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

   Further discussion moved to #Consistency or lack thereof below.

4. Oppose. I do not think this will improve reader experience. I would prefer swapping the city for the state as primary topic to making a dab page primary. Our dab pages are ugly and often filled with articles that only a tiny proportion of users are looking for. This dab page will be among the worst for that, crowded with items when almost all its visitors are looking for one of two. The hatnote does the work much better and nobody (readers) loses. The problems with bad links are internal ones that should be fixed out of sight. Srnec (talk) 18:40, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

   Probably won't change your mind, Srnec, and yet I'm willing to try: Yes, this will improve reader experience. As an avid reader of Wikipedia myself, I can tell you that I'd much rather land on a useful, relatively short dab page than to land on a long, slow loading page that turns out to be the wrong page. The NYC page might very well be the primary topic, and that would be a useful discussion for a future Rfc or even RM. For now, all we know is that there is a strong community consensus that the state page is not the primary topic, so the policy's community consensus at WP:ATDIS supports titling the dab page with the raw NY title. The NY dab page does have several links, and all of them should be to the many notable things that may also be referred to as just "New York". Yet take note that the two articles that are most wanted by readers are right there at the top of the dab page. So it takes much less time to find what you want on the 5,190-byte dab page than it does on the 167,607-byte state page. I just noticed that the state page is 32.3 times as long as the dab page. Also, the problems with the bad links are definitely internal ones; however, thus far the only way to fix them is to monitor them almost daily. These page moves will fix those internal problems, so unless you have a better solution, then please support these page moves!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  20:44, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

5. Oppose. Why is this under discussion? The reams of July 2016 discussion appear clear enough that the (endorsed!) conclusion was "no consensus for move". That was a year ago, and a much less frequented discussion the next month says there is no primary topic? Note that I didn't participate in either, and that I find the larger discussion's endorsement of the status quo much more palatable than the smaller, follow-up pretense for this double jeopardy. With no new evidence/rationale since last year's discussion, I don't see what there is to discuss. I don't think our naming precedent should be set by new links to New York backtraced and tallied to the authors' intentions. "New York" in sources can be contextual, but when something is from "New York", it more often refers to the larger locale—the same as Luxembourg and Luxembourg City. The state, by its common name, is the primary topic for "New York". Further, on reader experience, if we are concerned about visitors to New York who indeed seek New York City, the hatnote atop the state article performs the same function as moving the dab to the primary topic (with the added benefit of the state page being far more informative on the main uses of "New York" than a cluttered dab page). So while it's only my opinion that I see no material benefit from this proposal, the undertones of crusade in this proposal are incontrovertible. It's misleading to have this discussion on this talk page rather than the other more populated page (like every prior discussion...), so we miss out on its (collapsed) FAQ and the nine previous move discussions it mentions. It's time to make that FAQ crystal clear, add a prominent {{Round in circles}} like the one at Talk:Sega Genesis, and "stop changing it".  czar 05:46, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

   This is under discussion, czar, because it would be better to discuss it rather than just to go ahead and do the right thing and rename the pages sans discussion. So here we are, discussing it. It's okay for you to see this as some sort of pipe dream on the part of supporters – that is certainly a valid opinion; however, it's also okay to propose these page moves as little as six months after a "no consensus" decision, and this proposal waited a year. Are you unaware of those facts? Our naming precedent should be set by the facts, all the facts, and the fact that thousands and thousands of links were malplaced and therefore misled readers is an important fact among several other facts as depicted in the proposal rationale above. Whether the state or the city is the primary topic has been debated at length – these page moves have the very real potential to settle that argument. This talk page was chosen over the NY talk page so that all participating editors will not have to deal with the many other discussions that appear there. The notice left there by the bot suffices to let involved editors know about this proposal, doesn't it? Yes, it is most definitely time to stop going 'round in circles and finally, after sixteen years, finally do the right thing. Please help by being part of the solution.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  06:52, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

   The "right thing" has already been done. No, I don't think it's useful to relitigate a well-attended discussion without new evidence/rationale—not in a year, not in ten. No, I don't find the proposal compelling. czar 06:57, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

   If the previous RM had been closed as "don't move" then I could agree with Czar. However, it was never closed in the usual way, and what passed for closure had the panel split between "move" and "no consensus". No one saw a consensus for keeping the status quo. In these circumstances, I believe it is fair to revisit the matter a year later. Certes (talk) 08:38, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

   Czar, there is new evidence. There is the August 2016 RfC which found that New York State is not the primary topic. This information was not available to the closers of the second 2016 RM, two of whom were clearly in doubt as to this (the third found consensus to move but was outvoted it seems). Andrewa (talk) 09:36, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

   Sorry, but it smells like sour grapes to this outsider. The August "discussion" didn't have anywhere near the circulation as the behemoth July move discussion, and I had already expressed my views of its flaws in my original post above. It has no "new" information but instead attempts to circumvent the validity of the "no consensus" July close through a smaller, proxy discussion (indeed, look at how it was started). "No consensus" isn't something that needs to be fixed—it's a valid expression of will. I'm not surprised that the same editors in opposition to the current setup have continued to make opportunities to revisit the same discussion, the same way that I'm not surprised at the incorrigible tenaciousness of each oppose-pester thread on any divided discussion, the same arguments recurring endlessly, but that means it's up to the rest of us non-page-watching, occasional RfC participants to reiterate how the treatment is worse than the cure and reaffirm our less-imperfect-than-maligned status quo. I don't see anything further to discuss, but if need be, please split to a specific topical discussion below. czar 14:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

   See #Opinions etc below. Andrewa (talk) 14:50, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

   User:Czar said, "when something is from "New York", it more often refers to the larger locale"

   Not in UK it doesn't. In my 67 years of personal experience, in UK an unqualified "New York" invariably means the city. New York, New York looks distinctly weird to British eyes unless you know something about U.S. place-naming conventions. (NB I have voted "support" - setting my insular prejudices to one side, I most certainly do not think that the city is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.) Narky Blert (talk) 20:39, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

6. Oppose a biased poll. I'll elaborate on my position on the title when I actually have time, but I'd like to note that this vote is far biased by only presenting one viewpoint and bashing the other. I thought Wikipedians knew about objective and fair voting/consensus? Also, the first lines have inaccuracies, the votes mostly ended with no consensus/status quo. I highly object to such a slanted vote. Imagine if the US ballot sheets slandered Clinton and glorified Trump for all voters... ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 12:38, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

   I also oppose this on the very well-reasoned grounds Alanscottwalker describes below. I'll likewise strongly condemn the WP:Bludgeoning of every oppose vote here by the supporters, who have been barely touched in their votes. ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 20:09, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

   Further discussion about process moved to Talk:New York (disambiguation)/Meta#Biased poll.

7. Oppose: Joining the other opposes, New York is not ambiguous it is broad, and the New York article subject is broad, encompassing, as it does New York City, and the History of New York, including Province of New York, and things connected to it, like the New York Metropolitan Area. The proposal mistates that it is about "higher level jurisdiction", it is not, it is about the encyclopedic breadth of the article. This is consistent with the other articles where we have title X City and X: Quebec City, Quebec; Mexico City, Mexico; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Panama City, Panama; Kuwait City, Kuwait, etc. If any equivocation remains, it is also consistent, and resolved by WP:TWODAB.

   

   US States - New York is there, upper right

   It is further consistent with all the other US states (it is called New York) - there are only two states where the convention is not followed Washington (state) and Georgia (US state) but in those subjects the other subject Washington DC and Georgia (country) are not part of the subject whereas, New York City is discussed as part of the subject throughout the subject of New York, as it must be. It is further consistent with Republic of Ireland and Ireland, in the same manner.

   We are not to give regard to the prejudices (policy says we do not pick titles based on what people think of first) and mistakes of people, we are to follow sources:

   • According to Oxford, the cardinal usage of New York is the state.[5]
   • The Encyclopedia Britannica has a bold title New York for the state and New York City, similar to ours.
   • The largest travel reference work publisher in the English language, Fodor's, has New York, the state, at "New York" [6], and New York City at "New York City" [7].
   • I love New York is the state song of New York, and the basis for its ad campaign [8] whereas the city's ad campaign is NYC go. [9], etc.

   Moreover it is illogical to claim that people don't understand a common map of the United States (see right) or that common phrases like Buffalo, New York or Long Island, New York[10] make no sense, which is what the proposal assumes -- according to the proposal's rationale we are forced to pretend we don't understand that things like New York's Niagara Falls [11] are not in New York City. Whereas, the fact is, things like Buffalo are in New York, as is New York City.

   It is also illogical to claim that page views force the decision. The readers who found New York City, found it at New York City which further means that there is no reason for disambiguation as under disambiguation title policy (AT), disambiguation only need arise when a title has "been already used for other articles." These articles have basically been in proper place since the founding of Wikipedia, thus there is no consensus to move. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:38, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

   The only part of your informative opinion that addresses community consensus is your quote from the AT policy. That is a fine quote, because it shows that "New York", which has been used for many, many other articles (see this dab page for several non-partial-title matches, and the link near the bottom to all pages that begin with "New York" for a lot more partial-title matches – all those pages are evidence that "New York" has been used for many other articles), absolutely must be disambiguated. A little further down on that policy page it states, "If the topic is not primary, the ambiguous name cannot be used and so must be disambiguated." So if we truly follow the spirit and intent of the AT policy, and the community consensus that created and maintained it, then we should agree that "New York" is an ambiguous title that must be somehow qualified to set it apart from all other things "New York".  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  19:31, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

   Obviously New York has appropriately been used for the broad subject New York, at its current place, for basically forever, as it covers the broad subject, yes we have qualified songs and the like - that says nothing about the broad topic -- New York, suits the broad topic, according to the consensus way we title, as New York City suits its topic. And no, that is not alone where I address consensus considerations, so you are wrong there, too, but, really, there is no need for you to WP:Bludgeon the opposes. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:00, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

8. Oppose. I agree with the editor who said that this is a solution looking for a problem. I am unconvinced what tangible benefits occur. Mpen320 (talk) 11:01, 10 July 2017 (CT)

   If that is the case, then why did I have to make this edit just minutes ago? bd2412 T 18:34, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

   You had to do that so that there is no problem. As long as you don't stop, the rest of us are happy. (Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.) Clean Copy^talk 03:31, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

   @BD2412: You do realize that no matter which way this goes there will still be editors who don't pay attention, don't preview, and don't bother checking their work. You're still going to have to clean up after them. Box99Tube (talk) 19:23, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

   If the links are disambiguation links, then a) the person leaving the edit will get an automated talk page notice informing them of the error; b) the edit will show up on all of the various disambiguation project tools tracking generation of disambiguation links; and c) disambiguation tools like the dabsolver and the AWB disambiguation will recognize and offer solutions for the error. bd2412 T 19:27, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

9. Partial Oppose. I support moving New York to New York (state), but oppose moving New York (disambiguation) there and support leaving a redirect to New York similar to what is done in the case of WP:TWODAB. In this case neither New York or New York City are clearly the primary topic for New York but the other topics for New York are nowhere near close to primariness. While this does not exactly meet TWODAB it is still a good comparison. Given the number of links to "city, New York" and from what I recall the New York correction process finding 2 to 1 of the links intending to be the state it seems like better service to the readers is done by having the links automatically go to the state until they can be fixed to either New York (state) or New York City. Having one of the articles between New York City and New York directly at the base name New York will reduce the number of clicks for readers to get the right page to be under 2, while a disambiguation page would ensure that the average would be closer to two. New York City is a slightly better natural disambiguation then New York State or the State of New York, check out the ngrams below to see examples. Further while there is no policy that larger geographic places should be primary to places with the same name ( the previous discussion did have a tangent that argued against that approach by attempting to generalize that to a guideline ), it is still a strong argument. Remember that the typical differences between the strength of policies vs. local consensus is based on the amount of input. Given the number of commenters in this and previous discussions WP:LOCALCON needs to be consider carefully when weighing arguments against existing policy. That said I still support moving New York to New York (state) as there is a not insignificant number links that linked to the wrong article and it makes the search boxes slightly better for readers. PaleAqua (talk) 00:05, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

   @PaleAqua: Just to clarify: would you make New York a redirect, and what page would be its destination? Certes (talk) 11:11, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

   Yes I support leaving it a redirect to New York (state) after moving this page. While not exactly matching the conditions of twodab I believe that have New York redirect to either the state or city is better than the disambiguation page as it is extremely more likely that a reader visiting this page is interested in at least one of the two articles compared to any other possibility. PaleAqua (talk) 14:39, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

10. Oppose proposed move per Station1 and Paine Ellsworth Alanscottwalker —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:14, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

    Anomalocaris, Paine is Support #9. Do you mean to refer to a particular post? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:46, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

    Sorry, I meant Alanscottwalker. —Anomalocaris (talk) 01:02, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

11. Oppose This proposal has the obvious disadvantage of sending an enormous number of readers to a disambiguation that very few of them to want to go to. I am hard pressed to see what the upside is. The city is at New York City because that is its name. The state is at New York because that is its name. The disambiguation guidelines are intended to resolved conflicts when two article require the same namespace. That's not the situation here. Whiff of greatness (talk) 06:40, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

    From WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT: The title of the primary topic article may be different from the ambiguous term. [...] The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary. Disambiguation concerns itself with ambiguous terms, not directly with article titles. The core question at DAB is does the term refer to more than one subject covered by Wikipedia? Diego (talk) 08:10, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

    @Whiff of greatness: Re "I am hard pressed to see what the upside is" - there is a whole section at the top of this request detailing what the upsides are. Presumably you don't agree with them, but I'd be interested to know specifically why that is, because they seem like convincing upsides to me. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 09:33, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

    Disagree it's a disambiguation that very few of them to want to go to (my emphasis), no reader wants to end up at a DAB, this or any other. But they are still acceptable when a term is sufficiently ambiguous (in Brittanica every ambiguous term points to an automated DAB). Andrewa (talk) 23:37, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

    As others have pointed out, Oxford, Britannica, Fodor's and others have corresponding entries that give the name of the state as simply "New York." Let me add Columbia Encyclopedia to this list. You will search in vain for a published source that gives the name as "New York (state)". Because Wikimedia software does not allow two titles with the same name, Wikipedians have devised the kludgy workaround of adding a trailing parenthetical. This proposal misunderstands the guidelines and deifies a software glitch. Whiff of greatness (talk) 05:40, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

12. Oppose Disambig, Support New York City - Well I opposed in the last RFC and I oppose here - Move this back to New York City and all our worries will be resolved, FWIW I do agree with the slow internet/huge page side of things however lets be honest here NYC is by far the primarytopic, If editors aren't looking for NYC then they'd get taken to a disambiguation by the hatnote. –Davey2010^Talk 13:07, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

    I agree with your detail, but I think the proposal is decidedly a step in the right direction. It gets NYState off the basename, and once that is done, future mislinking will reveal whether or not the average editor thinks NYC is the primary topic. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:26, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

    One support !voter observed above, While I think New York City is the primary topic for New York, I'm not going to make perfect the enemy of good here. You don't find that a good argument? Andrewa (talk) 23:46, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Neutral

Please indicate neutrality in this section, with a brief statement explaining your position. Please take care not to break the numbering of the section. Extended discussion, including responses to opinions noted here, should occur in the "discussion" section below. Editors may move improperly placed materials to that section, with an appropriate subhead.

1. Neutral. Both opponents and supporters have made many valid points on both sides of the argument. The status quo has served readers well for the past 15 years, but maybe, just maybe, disambiguation could hold its merits. Castncoot (talk) 04:39, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
2. Neutral Why not a disambig page including both? Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, I'm new to the discussion here. South Nashua (talk) 23:22, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

   That is basically what the proposed move would result in. Readers following a link to "New York" would be taken to a disambiguation page with the city and state listed at the top, and other meanings below that. bd2412 T 23:51, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

   The proposed new destination for New York is this talk page's parent: the disambiguation page currently called New York (disambiguation). Certes (talk) 08:34, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Discussion of the proposed move

Original note about the meta page
Comment - I've created Talk:New York (disambiguation)/Meta, a sub-page for ongoing off-topic discussions that don't directly address the merits for or against the move. I request all editors that if a discussion goes on a tangent you continue it there, and keep this discussion centered around the move request itself. Diego (talk) 12:10, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

2010 hatnote experiment

An experiment documented near the end of Talk:New York/Archive 4#Perplexed counted clicks on the hatnote at the top of New York which links to New York City. During the only day when the experiment ran for the full 24 hours, New York had 13,586 views, New York City 22,750 and the hatnote link just 473.

We don't know how many of the state's 13,586 views came as a result of a search for the term New York and how many from a wikilink or external link deliberately targeted at the state. We also don't know how many readers beyond those 473 wanted the city but failed to click the hatnote for some reason, especially on the mobile site where hatnotes are less prominent.

Passing this RM would allow a similar experiment on links from the dab page which could provide more useful information. Certes (talk) 18:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

The experiment actually ran two full days, 12 and 13 Nov. It's not really relevant where the views came from, the experiment was to show how many people were on the wrong page. It's true some people mistakenly on New York might not have clicked on the hatnote for some reason, but it's safe to assume they were an even smaller number than those who did click (and I'm not sure the mobile site even existed in 2010). It's also true some people might have clicked the hatnote just to get to NYC even though they were on the right page.

It's not necessary to pass this RM to conduct a similar experiment. That could be done whether or not this RM passes. Station1 (talk) 18:56, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

This experement has problems to being applied now: Firstly, the number of readers who followed internal links is probably significant; they would now be sent to a redirect, not to the article directly as they would have in 2010, and of we move the page, they will be unaffected. Secondly, the experiment was only for 2 days, and perhaps a longer one would have shown different results; and in the nearly 7 years since uit was done, readers' preferentces may have cahnged. And finally, many users may have navigated to the city's article by some means other than following the hatnote link - especially since the hatnote is less visible in the mobile view, and since the infobox has a link to the city's article. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:32, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Addressing those concerns in order: First, the number of readers who follow(ed) internal links is actually very insignificant; if anything, now that the wikilinks have been corrected, the number of readers winding up on New York today by mistake would be even lower than in 2010. Second, it's true that a longer experiment would be desirable for a more exact result, but if you're only trying to find out if the percentage is large, medium or small, the sample size was large enough for that. Readers' preferences have changed somewhat in 7 years; a larger percentage now want New York City, which might raise the result by a percentage point or two. The final point was addressed above: some users who really didn't want to be on New York might have navigated to the city by a link other than the hatnote, but it seems unlikely huge numbers would, and I'm not sure the mobile app was widely used, if it existed, in 2010. Conversely, some people might have clicked the hatnote just to get to the city without first being on what they considered the wrong article. Bottom line is that 3% is a fuzzy number, an exact number is impossible, but it is possible to determine with a reasonable degree of confidence that the percentage of readers landing on New York by mistake is a small number, whether it is 1% or 8%. And if anyone believes the experiment is too old or too short, it's easy to re-run. Station1 (talk) 06:10, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

now that the wikilinks have been corrected, the number of readers winding up on New York today by mistake would be even lower than in 2010. You do realize that part of your argument is dependent on one (1) editor having fixed all of those links project-wide, right? If we maintain the current names, as soon as this unreasonable burden of work stops happening, that situation would degrade really fast. Diego (talk) 06:53, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I do realize that one editor fixed all those links, which is highly commendable, but the argument in no way depends on that. You left out the first part of my sentence in your quote. The proportion of readers mistakenly landing on New York was very small before any of those links were fixed, and will remain small whether or not links are fixed in the future. People just don't use wikilinks to familiar topics much. Station1 (talk) 07:34, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

the number of readers who follow(ed) internal links is actually very insignificant What!? This is a pretty outlandish assertion. Page view stats [12] show a pronounced decline in views of New York as the wikiklinks have been corrected. Indicates the number of readers who followed internal links is not at all insignificant. older ≠ wiser 08:11, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

That's an excellent point. The stats do show that a majority of views of New York now come through the New York (state) redirect. Thanks for pointing that out; I've altered my mistaken comments above. Station1 (talk) 08:44, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm trying it again. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:53, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

2016 page move experiment

A further experiment is recorded at Talk:New York/July 2016 move request#Readership statistics while New York was moved to New York (state). Note that the linked graph shows sixty days up to today. Change the date range to something like 6/1/2016 - 8/1/2016 to make it relevant to the text. Certes (talk) 18:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

New York covers the entire history of New York

New York covers the entire history of New York, including the 150+ years before it became a state in 1776, so proposed title is less accurate. Not really, the topic of the current New York article is the State. We could rescope the New York article to a BCA and then create a new article on the state, but it's far less trouble and causes less disruption to the article history to do this move and convert the DAB if that is the intention. Andrewa (talk) 20:48, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

New York is already a broad-concept article, covering its entire history (including its pre-statehood history) and entire territory (including NYC). That's another reason its title should retain the broadest possible meaning. Station1 (talk) 21:17, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

A broad-concept article is about a general topic, and the state of New York article is specifically about the state, its history, its contents, everything that is known and can be included in an article that is so much longer than any broad-concept article. Writing a broad-concept article and titling it with the bare "New York" name was discussed in the 2016 requested move, but nobody seemed to like the idea. I seem to remember one editor stating that the state article had served well as an "impromptu" broad-concept article, but that was soundly rebutted. Broad-concept articles are general and concise, and the state article is neither.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  23:38, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

But it's not currently "the state of New York article" "specifically about the state". It's the "New York" article, primarily about the state, certainly, but covering aspects that are not about the "state" per se. The change would move the topic of "New York" from its best possible title (New York) to a less accurate title. Station1 (talk) 06:38, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

The title change would not be more nor less accurate, because the title would not change. The title of the article would still be "New York". The only difference is that the ambiguous "New York" would have a qualifier, (state), that eliminates its ambiguity.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  07:09, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

New York (state) is less accurate than New York because the article covers New York's pre-statehood history and aspects of New York City. Station1 (talk) 07:42, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Accuracy does not change, because both the history and the city are integral parts and aspects of the state. The state of New York, just like the state of all of us, is an outcome of our histories and of our distinct parts. Where would you be without your heart? Where would you be if you had made a different choice many years ago and your personal history were different? Where would the state of New York be without its heart, the City? and its history of Classic Distinction?  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  09:41, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Proposed title is less natural, less concise, and less consistent than current title (policy at WP:AT)

Reply: That is not the spirit or intention of WP:AT. I suppose it could be similarly argued that any disambiguator makes the title less natural, less concise. Andrewa (talk) 20:43, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, any parenthetical disambiguator is less natural and less concise. That's why they should be used only when necessary. In this case it's not necessary. Station1 (talk) 20:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

It is necessary because the current title is ambiguous and so cannot be used for the article on the state. This clear policy is of course supported by the practical considerations... as one would hope. The guidelines are normally correct, and surely the onus of proof is on those who wish an exception to continue to be made. Andrewa (talk) 21:32, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

"Continue to be made". Why should the onus be on those who want the longstanding status quo? Doesn't the fact of its existence and longstanding show that, at the very least, there is consensus that the cited policy does not apply here and never did? The onus is on those who need to show that after all these years strictly applying the primary topic policy will improve the encyclopedia. Srnec (talk) 01:47, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I think you're right in this case, that the onus is on all of us who want to improve this encyclopedia, not just on those who oppose this proposal. The status quo has not served Wikipedia well. There were thousands and thousands of malplaced links, links editors made to "New York" but they should have gone to the city article or some other "New York" – thousands and thousands of malplaced links over the last sixteen years or so. This is not even close to what can be called acceptable, especially when the malplaced links continue to be made. At least after this proposal passes consensus muster, DPL bot will notify users to fix their malplaced links so they won't have to be fixed by bd2412, as is happening right now, usually everyday. And those of us with dab scripts (mine turns links to dab pages the color orange) will find it easy to fix malplaced links that don't get fixed otherwise. There is no excuse to let this situation continue the way it is when it can be so easily fixed by these page renames!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  02:20, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

All those malplaced links would have been equally malplaced under the current proposed setup and equally inconvenienced readers. I do not believe a change like this should happen in order to make it easier on editors to fix mistakes. What's more, making the city primary would also fix the problem. How does a dab page fix anything? It just makes one task easier for editors. That's not putting readers first. Srnec (talk) 03:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

All those malplaced links actually were malplaced under the current setup! The current setup is what caused the problem and continues to do so. And this is not a case of "Hey, let's make it easier on editors." All those malplaced links meant that READERS who wanted to read about the city or the sports team clicked on "New York" and landed on the wrong article, the article about the state! And if bd2412 weren't still fixing malplaced New York links on an almost daily basis, READERS would still be landing on the state page instead of on the article they really want to read! What's more, making the city the PT at this point would only make the problem worse. bd2412 has found that of the 15–20 new links to "New York" checked each day, about 2/3 (10–13) are meant for the state article and about 1/3 (5–7) are meant for the city (a small few of that 1/3 are meant for other things "New York"). So at this point in time, if NYC is made the PT, instead of having to fix 5–7 malplaced links everyday, twice that many would need to be fixed, because 2/3 of the links would take readers to the city article when they actually wanted to read about the state. The only thing that fixes this for the readers is to title the dab page with the bare NY title. Then DPL bot will take over the task of notifying editors who make a "New York" dab link to fix it.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  05:29, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I meant that all those links that bd2412 fixed would have been in need of fixing under the proposed setup. You only argue that they would be easier to fix, which is true, although not by much. I just think it is irrelevant. Note that in the scenario as you outline it, the same amount of work by editors needs to be done, it's just that DPL bot will also be doing work in order to spread that work around. If two thirds of all new links to New York are going to the right place, that suggests that our current setup is correct even for editors. Srnec (talk) 15:03, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind explaining a little more, Srnec, because I cannot fathom anyone thinking that 2/3 okay is as good as 3/3 okay. You're saying that the 1/3 that needs to be fixed on a daily basis manually by editor(s) rather than finding a way to fix that situation is "correct"? How the heck do you figure???  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  16:38, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

We should not change the readers' experience—should not alter how Wikipedia presents—simply to make life easier for editors. Yes, those links are a problem for readers, but they are a problem created by editors making mistakes. What's more, they would still be a problem for readers under the proposed change. They would be still be incorrect links, only this time pointing to a dab page. In other words, the editorial mistakes are still being made, but only now they can be more easily identified and fixed—at the expense of the reader, who now has to go through a dab page to get anywhere. As I said, no improvement. Srnec (talk) 19:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Except that this change will make such editorial errors more obvious. older ≠ wiser 19:08, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

See also #WP:AT discussion below. Andrewa (talk) 21:36, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I think this is a good place to note that a change of page names from "New York" to "New York (state)" is not actually a title change. The state article will still be titled "New York" – the sole difference is that it will be disambiguated by the "(state)" qualifier. The title doesn't change, just the ambiguity, which is eliminated.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  02:48, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Of course it's a title change. It changes the article's title from New York, the name of the topic, to New York (state), a less concise, less natural, less consistent and less accurate title, for the sake of unnecessary title disambiguation. Station1 (talk) 06:48, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

No, the qualifier is never actually a part of the title of an article. The title remains the same. It will still be "New York".  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  09:32, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

The first paragraph of WP:AT: "An article title is the large heading displayed above the article's content and the basis for the article's page name and URL. The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles." Station1 (talk) 11:16, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, because you have just shown to us all why the qualifier is needed. The present title of the state page does not unambiguously indicate what the article is about, nor does it distinguish it from other articles. That quote is not just from a policy, it represents the policy-strong consensus of the Wikipedia community.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  12:46, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

No trouble found

This is a solution looking for a problem. This is nothing wrong with the status quo. which serves our readers well: This !vote should simply be discarded in terms of wp:closing as offering no valid rationale. Both practicality and policy support the move. Andrewa (talk) 20:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

"Serving our readers well" sounds like the best possible rationale to me. Station1 (talk) 21:21, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes... if the claim had any basis, it would be a good argument. Andrewa (talk) 22:25, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Andrewa: Please do not go into tangents about which opinions should be valid or discarded: this is the prerogative of the eventual closer of the discussion. This particular "nothing wrong" objection is addressed in the move rationale, it should be sufficient to point this out and ask for a refutation of said rationale. — JFG ^talk 22:19, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Good point. Apologies. That bit struck out. Andrewa (talk) 22:25, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:AT discussion

The following was moved from below Station1's !vote in the Oppose section. bd2412 T 21:19, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

It is worthy to note that the policy you cite, WP:AT, has a section about disambiguation that shows that the community consensus represented by the "Article titles" policy fully supports these page renames. "No one wants to land on a dab page." All it takes is one reader to disprove this statement. I am an avid reader of Wikipedia, and I would prefer to land on a dab page rather than the wrong page!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  20:07, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Do you really want to land on a dab page, or would you rather land on the correct article? The proposed move would force some people who land on the correct page for them (New York) to wind up on a dab page instead, with no countervailing benefit to those landing on the incorrect article. Station1 (talk) 20:34, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Do you really want to land on a dab page, or would you rather land on the correct article? I would greatly prefer landing on a dab page rather than a ~167,000 byte or ~323,000 byte (not counting images and transclusions) WRONG article. older ≠ wiser 20:43, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I understand you would rather land on a dab page than the wrong article, but the move would force some people to land on the dab page rather than the right article. Why are they less important? Station1 (talk) 20:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Interesting perspective; however please think again about that. Because what you're saying is that it's okay to make a significant number of readers land on a 167,000+ byte wrong page, but it's not okay to make another significant number of readers land on the dab page that will get them to the page they seek with just one click.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  21:10, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Neither number is significant, relatively. Please see below. Station1 (talk) 21:42, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, of course readers would rather land on the correct article over a dab page. The problem here has been a problem with a lot of article titles on Wikipedia: they were all too ambiguous and might apply to other things, so there were a significant number of readers who would land on the wrong page. That is so easily fixed by following the community consensuses at WP:ATDIS and WP:PTOPIC. An ambiguous title like "New York", which can refer to so many different things, really should be the title of the dab page.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  20:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

We agree on the theory but not how it applies to this article. You say "the problem here..." is that there are "a significant number of readers who would land on the wrong page." I say 3% is not significant when we consider the downside of people who really want New York being forced to a dab page. Station1 (talk) 21:07, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Glad we can agree. Don't know what you mean by "3%" when it has already been established that the city article gets about twice as many page views as the state?  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  21:14, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

3% is the very approximate number of people who land on New York who really want to be on New York City instead. Station1 (talk) 21:42, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Forgive me, but that's incredible. What that means is that of the twice as many readers who view the city article, fully 97% landed on that city page without first having to view the state page. Since in view of the fact that about 2/3 of the links that editors make to "New York" are actually meant for the state article, and about 1/3 of those links are malplaced and must be fixed, because their context reveals that they were meant to link to the city article, perhaps you would show where that 3% figure comes from? How was it derived?  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  22:36, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Incredible but true! Yes, 97% of readers of New York City get there without first viewing New York, and that won't change whatever the outcome of this proposal. That's one reason why this move is so unimportant. It will only adversely affect viewers of New York, while helping no viewers of New York City. The methodology is explained in the "2010 hatnote experiment" section above. The large majority of readers get to the right article through search engines and other external links. A smaller number[Some people] get to articles from the search box and its dropdown menu. Those people, who want the city, would have to type "New York" and enter before the dropdown menu appears in order to wind up on the wrong article. Wikilinks to New York but that intended NYC might be the least likely method to get to the wrong page. Just as I know what London, Paris, and even Melbourne are without clicking on a wikilink, relatively few people will click on a link to New York because they already know what NYC is.[might not be accurate] New York City is probably one of the most WP:OVERLINKED places on WP. Station1 (talk) 23:52, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

And this is all based on a 2-day experiment that was made 7 years ago? Don't change, we love you as you are.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  00:09, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Do you have some reason to believe the results would be significantly different if a longer experiment were done today? Double, triple, or even quadruple the results if you like. The point still holds. Station1 (talk) 00:29, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I do find it intriguing. While I have no reason to believe the results would be different, there is also no reason to believe they might not be significantly more than 3%. Seven years is a significant period of time, and two days hardly seems long enough to yield conclusive results.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  01:02, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

If you're saying the results might be 4, 5, or 6%, yes, that's possible. They might also be 1 or 2%. But 25 or 30%, no. Station1 (talk) 06:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I believe the results may be significantly different if we conducted a different experiment, to count clicks from the dab page New York to the state and city pages. Certes (talk) 01:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

We already know roughly 3 times as many readers want New York City as New York, so I'm not sure what further data that would provide. Station1 (talk) 06:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Side note: I've been fixing incoming links to New York for nearly a year now. Over the course of that time, I have fixed over 20,000 links clearly intended to point to the city. bd2412 T 21:15, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

That is truly commendable, but editors should never take precedence over readers, in my opinion. Station1 (talk) 06:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Those links aren't being fixed to benefit editors, they are being fixed to benefit readers. It slays me that you don't get that.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  09:27, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

No need for nastiness. Of course bd2412's work is for the benefit of readers. I was sincere in my commendation, fwiw. What I was referring to was your repeated assertion that the move will make it easier for editors to fix links in the future, and I don't think making editors' work easier at the expense of readers can ever justify a move. Station1 (talk) 09:51, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Agree that making editors' work easier at the expense of readers does not justify a move. Nobody is suggesting that it does. Andrewa (talk) 10:14, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

It's the third of the four "Arguments and evidence in favor of the proposed move" and mentioned in more than one Support !vote, as well as by Paine Ellsworth above and below and bd2412, briefly, below. Station1 (talk) 10:46, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

It's mentioned because it is one factor among several weighty factors that have been submitted to support this proposal. And if this proposal succeeds, the readers will benefit by not landing on the state when they wanted the city or a sports team. The fact is that these page moves will mean that readers will be so benefitted while at the same time their benefits will be automatic rather than overseen and manually ensured by editors. To repeat, nobody has ever suggested that the work of editors should be made easier at the expense of readers – indeed the suggestion is to benefit readers without the need for EXTRA work by editors. Do you think it's right that an editor must almost daily check and fix those links when it would be so simple to eliminate that just by moving a couple of pages?  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  12:19, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

@Station1: I for one really want to land on a dab page when I don't know what may exist. I happened to know that there is a state called New York besides this city but I didn't know there was a state called São Paulo besides that city. A dab page educates me in 1/10th of a second, whereas a content page which has a 50/50 chance of not being what I want is disappointing at best, misleading at worst. If I read Wikipedia on a recycled 5-year-old phone over my metered, pay-by-the-kilobyte-with-a-scratch-card Internet access in upstate Lagos, I really really do want to load a 5k dab page rather than a 2.3-megabyte article about New York state (that's how much it weighs including pictures). Think of the 5 billion people who do not have the luxury of a fast or cheap data connection: we must do our best to help all readers. — JFG ^talk 22:36, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Respectfully, I believe you're in the minority on that score. Otherwise, it would be our policy to always have dab pages, not just when they are necessary. Station1 (talk) 06:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

See also #Proposed title is less natural, less concise, and less consistent than current title (policy at WP:AT) above. Andrewa (talk) 21:37, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Consistency or lack thereof

Discussion ensuing from the Oppose !vote of TonyBallioni

(Reminder) Oppose per BMK. We also have a very clear policy based reason to not disambiguate: New York City has the wonderful natural disambiguator of City. The State is the primary topic here, just as Quebec, Mexico, and Oklahoma are. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:18, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

We have a particularly recent consensus establishing that the state is not the primary topic for this title, as explained first thing in the nomination. The WP:Disambiguation requires not only that other articles have a different title, but that they are much less likely to be named with the ambiguous name; and "New York" is quite often used to refer to the city.

WP:Consensus can change in this respect of course, but this would require that roughly all the strong arguments in this discussion favored seeing the state as the primary topic; given how recently we dediced the opposite, it doesn't seem likely. Diego (talk) 18:06, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

We also have a very clear policy based reason to not disambiguate:

Yet you fail to cite that "policy"! Please point us to that policy that you say is a reason to not disambiguate.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  20:18, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

As observed by others, this !vote is simply based on an untruth. Andrewa (talk) 21:01, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Please see WP:NATURAL for one policy based reason: New York City is naturally disambiguated. WP:CONSISTENCY would have us keep the highest jurisdiction at the primary topic title (see the examples above). TonyBallioni (talk) 21:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:NATURAL has nothing to do with these page moves. Yes "City" is a natural disambiguator; however, "New York" has no disambiguation, natural or otherwise. If the proposed move were to "New York State" (which is not the actual name of the state) or to the "State of New York", that would be covered by WP:NATURAL. This proposed move is covered by WP:PARENDIS and WP:ATDIS.

WP:CONSISTENCY? That doesn't seem to say anything at all about keeping the highest jurisdiction at the primary topic title. And even if it did, a 2016 RfC has already shown strong community consensus that the state is not the primary topic. The argument for "highest jurisdiction" is explained and rebutted above.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  23:02, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I doubt we will agree on this, but responding to clarify for the closer and anyone else who wishes to read: CONSISTENCY would apply because we consistently keep the higher jurisdiction without disambiguation when there is a city with the same name. Foo would be the state/province/country and Foo City the city. I've linked to several examples above and I think this pattern is best and I don't see a convincing reason to change it from the stable title when the hat note seems to be working fine. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:23, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: Your premise is wrong: as pointed out in the nomination rationale, we have Lagos (city) primary vs Lagos State, São Paulo (city) primary vs São Paulo (state), Moscow (city) primary to Moscow Oblast and Zürich (city) primary to Zürich (canton). In the opposite arrangement, we have indeed Mexico (country) primary to Mexico City, Québec (province) primary to Québec (ville) and Oklahoma (state) primary to Oklahoma City, although I doubt that anybody who says "I live in Oklahoma" ever means the city. The most mind-boggling case I ever encountered is Luxembourg (country) which is primary to Luxembourg City (most often called simply Luxembourg), which itself belongs to Luxembourg (canton) embedded in Luxembourg District, all of those not to be confused with the neighboring Luxembourg province of Belgium. You're welcome. There is no overarching consistency; each case must be evaluated separately. — JFG ^talk 01:14, 8 July 2017 (UTC) French speakers tend to disambiguate Luxembourg with a case of verbal WP:SMALLDETAILS: Je vais au Luxembourg = I'm going to the country, vs. Je vais à Luxembourg = I'm going to the city. Nobody ever goes to Belgian Luxembourg . Aren't languages swell? — JFG ^talk 01:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

By the way, in this case, Luxembourg the country seems very clearly to be the primary topic for the term. If we merely look at recent page views, it got 214,613 visits in the last 30 days, while the runner up is Luxembourg city with 23,265. Diego (talk) 10:18, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Luxembourg as a country is the primary topic and holds the plain title. In deference to the city's prominent status among other meanings, the hatnote mentions both Luxembourg City and Luxembourg (disambiguation). This is similar to the current New York hatnote, which would be fine and dandy if New York State were the primary topic. — JFG ^talk 13:18, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

You're probably right about us agreeing. All I'm asking is that you please consider agreeing with the community consensuses described in the nomination rationale above. That's all I'm asking.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  02:34, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't know about Québec (ville) and Oklahoma City, but Mexico City is not typically referred to as simply 'Mexico', except in cases where it is clear that you're talking about cities and not countries; otherwise, it is usually referred to as Mexico DF or simply 'DF'. So it isn't a case supporting the argument of consistency, as it's not in the same situation as 'New York'. Diego (talk) 09:48, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I confess I'm confused by the above, TonyBallioni... You are still of the opinion that New York State is the primary topic of New York I understand. And that's fine. But we have now had an RfC that decided that it's not. We should not ignore that, surely? The discussion here can and should assume that the state is not the primary topic. Andrewa (talk) 14:22, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Calling Oklahoma City "Oklahoma" would be akin to calling Indianapolis "Indiana". No one ever does it. The (redundant) full name is "City of Oklahoma City". pʰeːnuːmuː →‎ pʰiːnyːmyː → ‎ɸinimi → ‎fiɲimi 16:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

• In answer to the above bludgeoning, I'll simply say: yes we should ignore that consensus because it was wrong. This is now a community wide RM that has been posted at WP:CENT. We are free to ignore any local consensus we want to form a new one. Consensus can change after all and the attacking of anyone who disagrees with the RfC here is to be honest the worst I've seen in any discussion on Wikipedia.I am in complete agreement with Czar below. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:32, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you for explaining that, although I think your accusation of bludgeoning is uncalled-for. I am seriously trying to understand your argument. The question of local consensus is a vexed one and cuts both ways. For my part, I also feel we should ignore much of the previous discussion because it is wrong... but obviously not the same bits you do! It doesn't make it go away. Andrewa (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

• Andrewa, yes, I appreciate your good faith here and I've crossed paths with you enough times that I know what you are up to :). I do think the general treatment of opposes here as a whole would qualify as bludgeoning (we are seeing longer comment threads than we do for troll !votes at RfA), and that was what I was intending to point out. As to your question and JFG's response (which was great, btw). I do think that having places where city is a part of the common name is distinct from places like Moscow that are not Moscow City, and where it still appears to me that we follow the practice of keeping the higher level of government as the de facto primary topic at least in terms of page names and I think that makes a lot of sense. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:10, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

It's sometimes a hard line to draw. Let us all try to keep comments on behaviour where they belong. We are seeing long discussions, but little if any rantstyle as yet, in my opinion... unlike last time.

The HLJC was of course discussed at length last time. So little support that I'd call a consensus against. Not you? Andrewa (talk) 17:16, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I think New York specific proposals which do not appear to generate any form of consensus when widely posted are not as strong arguments as looking at what we do with analogous topics, where it looks to me that we have a consistent practice of letting city serve as a natural disambiguator if it is in common use to the higher jurisdiction which is the simple name. In terms of behavior: look at the opposes compared to the supports. Virtually everyone of them has a lengthy reply along with a subheading down here. That discourages dialogue because people don't want to feel like they need to defend every letter they type from nitpicking. I don't mind engaging in constructive dialogue, but simply saying you're ignoring past consensus when it has been decided to reopen the entire can of worms almost a year later is not engaging in actual discourse around the proposal. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:26, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Agree that "simply saying you're ignoring past consensus" is not constructive. I'm sure such arguments will be ignored, as they should be. Andrewa (talk) 06:43, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Should New York City be primary instead?

Discussion ensuing from the Oppose !vote of Beyond My Ken

(Reminder) Oppose - This is a solution looking for a problem. This is nothing wrong with the status quo. which serves our readers well. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:48, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: In the 2010 debate, you supported exactly what is being proposed now, writing: *Support - "New York" should be a dab page, the state should be "New York (U.S. state)" and the city should be "New York City" Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC).[13] Why do you now think status quo is better? — JFG ^talk 22:13, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

My thanks again to JFG for bringing the disparity in my opinions to my attention. I've now had a good hard think about it, and I believe that I was incorrect both in 2010 and now. Let me explain.

I've had decades of experience working in 6 7 countries outside the United States and 26 states outside of New York, and I am completely convinced -- based also on extensive instances in the reading I've done -- that in the vast majority of cases, when someone says "New York", they are referring to New York City, and not to New York State. I'd venture to say that outside of the U.S., the very existence of New York State is known to only a a relatively small segment of the population. If I say to a French person "I live in New York", they will take away that I live in the city -- if I want to convey that I live elsewhere in the state, I would need to say "I live outside of New York City", or "I live in upstate New York", or "I live in Buffalo, in New York State" or something of that sort. If I don't specify, the city is presumed. This is the case I've found in my reading as well -- unless the subject under discussion is clearly the state, any mention of "New York" almost always means the city.

Now, one could say that I'm biased, because I've lived in New York City for 40 years, but, on the other hand, I've lived in New York State my entire 62 years, so I think that balances out. I have almost entirely no horse in this race. (OK, that's not completely true -- the idea of New York City splitting off from the state to become the 51st U.S. state intrigues me, as I believe the city has suffered economically, socially and politically from not having complete Home Rule, and the state legislature, which is controlled by upstate politicians, is more concerned with the less than half of the state's population who live outside the city then they are with the more than half that lives in the city.) However, I've tried to put that aside and simply think about what I've heard and experienced and read, and it's abundantly clear to me: the primary topic of "New York" should be the city. That, of course, means that I continue to oppose the proposed move, but for somewhat different reasons.

Is my "evidence" WP:OR? Of course it is, but I'm not writing an article, I'm giving you the reasoning behind my opinion. You can disagree with me about "New York" being the proper primary topic, of course, but if you disagree that to the wider world "New York" means New York City -- well, not to put too fine a point on it, you'd be wrong. That's not hubris, that's 40+ years of experience.

So, my !vote remains "Oppose". Do I think there's going to be a groundswell of support to make New York City the primary topic? No, I don't. Am I going to yell and pout and scream if this RM passes? No, of course not. (And I would suggest that some of the proponents of the move might like to take a step back and chill a bit -- this is not an earth-shattering issue, and hardly worth losing your cool over.) Can I live with the status quo, sure, I can live with anything -- except my ex-wife. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:39, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

I know you probably don't want to hear from the horse insulter again, but here's the thing. Those of us who actually think that NYC might be the PT would like to see this request pass the consensus muster. If the raw NY title is placed on the dab page, then after a few months we think we'll have a much better handle on whether or not NYC is the PT. And if it is, then more baby steps can be taken to make things "right" as concerns these articles. Hope you'll forgive any perceived bad-boy stuff on my part, because sincerely, none was meant.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  00:03, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

No forgiveness necessary, it's water under the bridge

That's an interesting way of going about things and, given the way the RM is going, you might have the chance to try it. However, I've noted that when an RM or RfC is passed, people generally don't want to revisit the subject again even after a number of months. Why didn't folks just go about it in a straight-forward manner? I think there's all sorts of real-world data that could be brought to the table showing that the city should be the primary topic. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:15, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Those of us who participated in the pre-move discussion agonized over whether or not to include NYC as the primary topic in this new RM. Through lots of discussion, I think we all eventually agreed to take "baby steps", since just the idea of any page move that takes the NY bare title away from the state article appears to be too unsettling for some. And some of us just didn't see a lot of community support for NYC as the PT. We also agreed to try this proposal to title the dab page with the bare title and then try to accumulate data that might incontrovertably show either that NYC is definitely the PT, or not the PT. I don't think any of us want this RM to be the very last step; however, many of us agree that it should be an important first step to make things right.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  00:33, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Another reason has to do with the malplaced links. Presently, bd2412 is checking new links to NY and fixing those that were meant for NYC. bd2412 has found that about 2/3 of the new links are meant for the state, and about 1/3 are meant for the city. So if presently we either rename NYC to NY or redirect the NY title to the city article, all we will do is to compound the malplaced links challenge, in fact it would be twice as bad. So when this RM proposal is accepted, then we will have time to educate editors, so when and if the time comes to consider NYC as the PT, the malplaced links challenge would no longer exist.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  00:55, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

It's unclear whether the city is the PT. We would be better informed after a period with New York as a dab, because we could see where readers go from that page. I see the proposal here as a less drastic step than making New York a primary redirect to NYC but I would welcome a further RM on that step after a suitable period. Certes (talk) 01:11, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Likewise. I was until recently convinced that the primary topic was NYC. Now I'm not so sure. But I am convinced that whether or not that is the case, this move as proposed will improve Wikipedia and so should go ahead. There are several reasons for not proposing the other move, to make the destination of New York the article on the city, at this point in time. One is that globally, New York doesn't mean the state, but neither does it mean just the five boroughs. Metlife Stadium is in New York so far as many of us are concerned. Another is that from a practical point of view, this move seems to give writers and those who clean up after them the most immediate help, and they seem to need it! And yet another is that even if it is later decided that the city is the primary topic, this move followed by a further RM to decide that gives a good route to that result. Andrewa (talk) 08:02, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: Thanks for your detailed rationale. In last year's debate, we have indeed collected many snippets of anecdotal evidence which tend to corroborate your own lifetime experience: New Yorkers usually call their state "New York", other Americans have varying habits depending on their personal circumstances, and the rest of the world sees "New York" as the skyscraper city, barely knowing the state even exists. As Wikipedia addresses a worldwide audience, we must take all points of view into account, and strive to educate the sizable fraction of readers who are unaware of New York as a state. The proposed move delivers on these two goals: the dab page addresses the intractable ambiguity of the name without making assumptions about where each reader comes from, while the search box improvement makes readers aware of a "New York" thing that is a state, distinct from the famous city. — JFG ^talk 02:16, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

For a chuckle, I refer you to the eternal words of Herostratus in response to Pharos when discussing naming habits in the 2016 debate:

Well fish are not good references of what is wet, and I actually doubt you. You are saying that if a resident of Manhattan says "I'm just sick of New York, I don't want to live in New York anymore" or whatever, that his hearers will understand that he means the the state and will reply "What, so like move to Kansas?" rather than "What, you want to move to like New Rochelle?" Even if this is true, nobody else talks like that. If you tell your neighbor in Kansas "We're taking a vacation to New York next month" they are a lot more likely to say "Oh, jealous, I want to see the Statue of Liberty!" rather than "Oooh, are you gonna visit the Rochester Museum and Science Center?". Right? Herostratus (talk) 03:14, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Personal experiences and feelings on New York are aggregated in the collective footprints of web wanderers lost in hypertext, and fortunately we can measure this dispassionately. Visitor stats of the English Wikipeida articles show a consistent 2:1 ratio for the city vs the state, all other meanings being way below their level. Google Trends paints a similar picture when we compare search trends for "New York City" vs "New York" + "state": the city attracts about twice as many searches as the state. However, that is not enough to declare the city primary topic; our guidelines state that the primary topic must be much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined, to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term (emphasis mine).

With years of experience at move requests, I have never seen a 2:1 ratio of reader interest be enough justification by itself for grabbing the primary topic crown. Quite the opposite: such a small ratio strongly points to a "this term has no primary topic" situation, so let's disambiguate it. Were the ratio 10:1, the primary topic would be obvious, at 5:1 it could be discussed, at 2:1 the numeric argument is far from sufficient, and we should examine the second criterion of WP:PTOPIC, viz. a topic enjoying substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term. It has been demonstrated that New York City does not trump New York state or province in this respect either.

For an extreme case of page view ratio, check out Talk:Fingering (music)#Requested move 30 October 2015, where even a crushing ratio of 107'000 to 7'000 views per day failed to grant primary topic status to Fingering (sexual act): the ambiguous term was disambiguated, and this situation was upheld in a further move request six months later. See also Andrewa's excellent essay The Problem With Page Views. — JFG ^talk 03:01, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

The question of whether NYC is the primary topic remains open. The question of whether NYS is the primary topic has been decided and we should move on. Based on that and practical considerations, this proposed move will improve Wikipedia. Andrewa (talk) 14:30, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it perhaps remains open to those who have no experience or understanding of the way the phrase is used in the real world. To those who do, there is no doubt as to what the reality is. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:37, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

You may be correct, but that's still just an opinion and one that is not shared by a clear majority of editors.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  09:22, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Sources on what people use "New York" for

I am not terribly interested in the outcome of this discussion, but do we have evidence (in the form of sources) about how the city and the state are usually named and what "New York" is typically used for? Most the !votes - and apparently many of those in the big 2016 move request - appear to depend heavily on personal opinion which is going to vary from person to person as well as not being terribly representative. Chapter and verse of WP:AT are Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject and Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources) as such names will usually best fit the criteria listed above and of course WP:NOR. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:04, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

The fact that it varies from person to person across wide swaths of people suggests that the term is ambiguous, doesn't it? bd2412 T 23:03, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

When I did some digging through ngrams and other searches earlier, I found a very slight preference in the sources I checked for disambiguating New York City compared to disambiguations for the state. But that not disambiguating appeared to be the most common, but it's hard to tell if the uses without disambiguation where of the form "City, New York" which should be quite common. Doing automatic searches and being able to tell the exact meaning of New York in context is very hard. See this search for an example Google Books Ngram Viewer. PaleAqua (talk) 02:06, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Some other interesting ngrams are what word most commonly follows New York and proceeds New York. Finally another useful one is this relative one showing the percentage of New York City and New York State as well as "_NOUN_ New York" which should match "City, New York" but also gets other stuff compared to the total number of uses of New York. PaleAqua (talk) 02:26, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Amount of downloaded content

One important question, in my opinion: How much unwanted content do users who load the wrong page need to download before they can go to the correct page?

• to download the article about the state, they must download 2.16 MB of data (the article and its images)
• to load the disambiguation page, 408 KB.

This would mean that if fewer than 80% of viewers want the article on the state, we're wasting more of their bandwidth than we would be if we placed the dab page at New York, even if you add in the fact that many of the readers will need to load the state's article afterweards. The difference would be much higher if you assume that ther browsers will keep caches of any downloaded files, and use them for the next page they load - which would reduce both by 322KB, making the ratio much higher. (Note - the sizes stated above are as of May 6th, the current nubers would almost certainly be similar, although not necessarily identical.) עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I have always agreed with this line of reasoning with respect to DAB pages, even if it isn't actually encoded in policy. I never understood the argument of "but no one wants to read the disambiguation", as if we had to be ashamed of our disambiguation pages. DABs are merely navigational aids of curated content, usually much better than a raw search result from an automated search engine.

Apart that sometimes editors do want to read the disambiguation page (to see what topics Wikipedia covers with respect to some term), being presented with a listing of contents is useful and not surprising - certainly better than being presented with a full wrong article, with only a little hard-to-read clarification that the article might not be what one was looking for. Diego (talk) 15:28, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Off-topic threads

Opinions etc

Meta thread moved to Meta page. — JFG talk 10:53, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Facts and feelings

Meta thread moved to Meta page. — JFG talk 10:53, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Former discussions

Meta thread moved to Meta page. — JFG talk 10:53, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Listed in the "Centralized discussion"

The RM discussion is listed in the Template:Centralized discussion. Is this acceptable? Pinging Beyond My Ken who listed this. --George Ho (talk) 06:39, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Unproductive back-and-forth. Editors agree to disagree.
The following discussion has been closed by JFG. Please do not modify it.
It's not terribly logical IMO, but it's not obvious what damage it will do. As canvassing it's at worst borderline if that. It does violate Wikipedia:Centralized discussion and specifically WP:CENTNOT in that this is a topic specific discussion. And it might be seen as a form of forum shopping. Andrewa (talk) 06:59, 9 July 2017 (UTC) Don't be ridiculous, listing a discussion which potentially concerns a large number of editors at "Centralized discussions" can never be considered "canvassing". I suggest you read WP:CANVASS and learn a thing or two. Your understanding of Wikipedia processes and procedures would appear to need some brushing up. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:35, 9 July 2017 (UTC) It's not so "ridiculous" when two experienced editors question it. In this case, I would have to agree with you, though, that it's not a bad thing any more than neutrally informing project members on their project talk pages is a bad thing.  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  08:57, 9 July 2017 (UTC) Sorry, but no matter who questions it, experienced editor or newbie, listing at CD cannot be considered to be canvassing. If anyone believe otherwise, I suggest they report me at AN/I and see what happens. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:00, 9 July 2017 (UTC) Agree that it would be ridiculous to take it to ANI as canvassing... just to reiterate, it is at worst borderline if that. It does appear to violate WP:CENTNOT and could be seen as forum shopping, but it doesn't do any significant damage IMO. Suggest we move on. Andrewa (talk) 09:24, 9 July 2017 (UTC) No, there is nothing remotely "borderline" about it, which you would know if you actually understood what WP:CANVASS says. It violates nothing, and is perfectly legitimate. It doesn't require your largesse, it's within policy. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:30, 9 July 2017 (UTC) Disagree. Let's move on. Andrewa (talk) 09:54, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Standard DAB disambiguator

Meta thread moved to Meta page. — JFG talk 12:44, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe makes an interesting suggestion above regarding DAB names, one which was also previously suggested implicitly by Box99Tube. I don't think this RM is the place to decide this, but that rather we need to go with the current policy and practice for now. But it has merit IMO. Suggest we take it up in an appropriate forum after this RM closes. Andrewa (talk) 07:27, 9 July 2017 (UTC) Well, I already asked SJ about it on the Meta page.  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  07:35, 9 July 2017 (UTC) Excellent, I missed that. See Talk:New York (disambiguation)/Meta#To Foo or not to Foo for his comments, which make some more very good points IMO. Andrewa (talk) 07:48, 9 July 2017 (UTC)