Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (government and legislation)

Proposed change to election/referendum naming format

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Y Consensus in favor.∯WBG^converse 08:49, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

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I'd like to propose amending our naming format for elections/referendums to move the year to the front of the title; so, for example, French presidential election, 2017 would be 2017 French presidential election. I think this has several advantages:

1. It brings election articles in line with the vast majority of other articles with years in the title
2. It allows the article titles to be used in prose, as the current format cannot be used (one could say "the 2017 German federal election resulted in a hung parliament")
3. It would make certain election articles titles more logical (for instance United States Senate election in Florida, 2018 would become 2018 United States Senate election in Florida
4. It would make the titles of related articles more logical (for instance Fundraising in the United States presidential election, 2016 would become Fundraising in the 2016 United States presidential election)
5. It would automatically sort elections by year in categories

I mentioned this a year ago at WP:E&R and a valid point was raised that currently you can start searching "French presidential election" and you get the whole list. This is an advantage, but as far as I can see, the only one. A way to keep this benefit is to still create redirects from these titles.

This will involve moving many thousands of articles (I will notify as many relevant WPs as I can find), so I propose that if this passes, a bot run is set up to do it. Cheers, Number 57 20:41, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support. Although we've always done it this way, this proposal really does make a lot of sense. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:55, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support though I'll point out that this would eliminate the somewhat convenient option to use a pipe trick to lop off the year in running text. Ibadibam (talk) 04:08, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Elections should be primarily categorised by location rather than the year. The Australian federal election in 2013 is more similar to the Australian federal election in 2016 than the German federal election in 2013. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:26, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I'm saying that searching "French presidential election" and then getting the list is a very big advantage to the current format. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:09, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

As I noted above, this can be solved by having redirects. Cheers, Number 57 11:08, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Would redirect actually be the entries that appear in the preliminary search results? I am very sceptical of that, it does not appear to be the case. Onetwothreeip (talk) 11:13, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes. Start typing 2017 French presidential election, and you'll see that it shows up even though it's only a redirect. Number 57 11:15, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support since it does read more naturally that way and is consistent with other temporal articles, though I am a bit tepid since it's been this way for so long. There are a handful of articles that have multiple years or months also in the title, which isn't a barrier to change but one thing to consider. I'm not sure how piping the links would be any different though. Reywas92^Talk 05:28, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support WP:NC: passes naturalness, precision, conciseness and consistency. Passes recognizability, but not as good as the other four characteristics (most elections are just called "Fooian <whatever> election" on the approach to it, then is appended by the year later on). The current convention feels as if the title is a disambiguation, which, again, can be true if you emphasize a currently ongoing election in some cases, but resolves itself in time. Howard the Duck (talk) 08:09, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
• Comment Support I guess the proposed format could, in general, adhere better to WP:NAMINGCRITERIA, and specifically to WP:NCE (in fact, I don't know why the naming conventions on elections are in NCGAL rather than in NCE when they are treated as events elsewhere (i.e. this)). However, I am concerned as to what should be the format for years with a plurality of elections (February 1974 United Kingdom general election and October 1974 United Kingdom general election would feel awkward as article titles, for example). Impru20^talk 15:16, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
  • I think it would be as you suggest. I guess these examples possibly appear awkward as we're not used to seeing titles like that. However, that would be how the elections would usually be referred to, and the articles themselves already start with that exact wording format (plus it matches the related articles February 1974 Dissolution Honours and October 1974 Dissolution Honours. Number 57 18:57, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
    • Ok then, in such a case I think there is no reason why I should not support this. Moving to full support. Impru20^talk 12:01, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
• Strong support (Summoned by bot) Long overdue. I've been thinking about why it wasn't like this before. — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  04:42, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support Not sure that this title format is quite as nice aesthetically, but it's definitely an improvement in naturalness, which is one of the relevant criteria. There's a marginal improvement in concision, and it adds something to syntactic consistency with "Next ____ general election" articles. Ralbegen (talk) 11:53, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose The election is the main topic of the article, not the year. Hence I feel it makes sense to use the year as a point of differentiation after the title of the actual event.Kiwichris (talk) 06:09, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Should the articles then be phrased Election for {Office} of {Location}, {year}, so that the word "election" is first? Ibadibam (talk) 22:06, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support, as the more logical format. I've created accidental redlinks and links to redirects quite often while writing, because the current format is counter-intuitive. Vanamonde (talk) 14:57, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Sources that put the name first are usually those from the country involved, and everyone will understand whivh 1974 election is being discussed. That's not the case in WP. DGG ( talk ) 05:28, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
• Strongly Oppose Putting the date first in any title, of anything, makes no sense. I have never seen an article in any medium that put the date first. Why not? Because it makes no sense. Peter K Burian (talk) 13:28, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
  • @Peter K Burian: It's standard Wikipedia practice. Have you not noticed that almost all our titles with dates in have the year at the start? 2018 FIFA World Cup, 2018–19 Premier League, 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, 2017 Las Vegas shooting, 2013 Egyptian coup d'état etc etc. Number 57 16:30, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Of course, the date is often essential but not as the first "word" of a title. This is the norm and it makes sense: Canadian federal election, 2015 Peter K Burian (talk) 23:28, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

But it's not the norm, as has been demonstrated above and below by Impru20 (However, your citing of the Canadian election example makes me wonder whether you have misunderstood the purpose of the discussion – the proposal is to move all election articles, not just one I mentioned, so the Canadian one would be moved too. The current title of that specific example is therefore irrelevant in the context of this discussion as all election titles are currently at that type of naming format). Number 57 15:10, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

It is more than practice, actually. It is an actual Wikipedia naming convention. Impru20^talk 18:22, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support - it'll reduce the amount of piping around links to the articles. Cabayi (talk) 09:55, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support - I came to this debate somewhat neutral. However I've read through these votes and have realised that it would make more sense to be "Year Event" than "Event Year". I get that people might want to search for a specific event by name, but the year being at the front would direct them to their search a bit quicker than it being at the end. As above, also, there are already sporting and cultural events which have the year at the front so we'd be putting things in line with that too. doktorb _words^deeds 16:41, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
• (Summoned by bot) Support — Would reduce the amount piping (per Cabayi and seems more natural and better to me.
  Regards, SshibumXZ (talk · contribs). 15:04, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
• Mostly oppose, except to your point 4, which I do think would be better. Otherwise I prefer the current convention. Nevermore27 (talk) 18:38, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Disambiguation form and capitalization

The issues raised in Talk:Dan Sullivan (American senator)#Requested move 8 September 2018 may be of interest.    Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 02:17, 12 September 2018 (UTC)