Wikipedia talk:Article titles

Delete naturalness

Of the 5 criteria, recognizability is mentioned 3 times, precision 12, concision 8, consistency, 7, naturalness only once, in the criteria list. Each has a section except naturalness. There are references to 'natural', but they are tied-up with recognizability, or another criteria. Recognizability is the dominant criteria through common name; it's a minority of cases where the other criteria come into play, right? I can't think of one example where 'naturalness' becomes the decisive criteria, superceding recognizability i.e. where having only the 4 other criteria would ever create a problem. i can't think of where a recognizable name is unnatural. Recognizability seems to make naturalness redundant. If so, then good to delete to simplify, Tom B (talk) 23:12, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

@Tpbradbury: one case where "naturalness" is often invoked is avoiding the need for parenthetical disambiguation. For example, the orchid genus Calypso cannot be at Calypso, which is a disambiguation page. It could be at Calypso (plant), but as the genus has only one species, Calypso bulbosa, this is considered to be a more natural title for the article. Monospecific genera needing disambiguation are regularly at the sole species. See WP:MONOTYPICFLORA and WP:MONOTYPICFAUNA. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:56, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Peter coxhead, thank you, that's natural disambiguation? Which is in the precision section. This is my point, discussion around naturalness always ends up falling under one of the other criteria. Calypso bulbosa is a precise title. There is no article on the genus so no title needed, but if there were it might be the precise: Calypso (genus). There is no natural or naturalness section on the policy page, unlike all the other criteria. What is concise? Keeping things short. What is natural? We can still keep all discussion of natural, and simply delete naturalness from the top section, as it is never used by itself or is ever the decisive criteria, thanks again, Tom B (talk) 10:36, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

@Tpbradbury: "natural disambiguation" might be in the precision section, but it's not precision. There's nothing more precise about Calypso bulbosa than Calypso (plant). (By the way, "Calypso (genus)" isn't used because of consistency; there are many cases of animal and plant genera having the same name, so for consistency and hence predictability we use an disambiguator based on the type of organism involved.) The material needs some reorganization, so that the 5 criteria are discussed more precisely. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:28, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

thank you, yes we should take it out of the precision section then! where should we move it to? Bulbosa is more precise, about one species, than 'plant'? You talk consistency: again, we immediately fall into discussing a different criteria because naturalness is so vague, Tom B (talk) 13:18, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Oppose deleting naturalness. Naturalness is so obviously important, and so easily understood, that it does not require lots of word, and does not attract controversy. Not everything recognisable is natural, not by a long way. SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

if it's so important why is there is no section on it? and if so easily understood why are multiple editors saying they don't understand it? can you give one example where it is the decisive criteria overriding recognizability? Tom B (talk) 09:12, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

The fact that our criteria overlap (and reinforce each other) is not a problem. They are all still things that we should consider when deciding on an article title. It may be rare for “naturalness” to outweigh the others, but we should still take it into consideration. Blueboar (talk) 12:49, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

thank you, overlap is a problem per wp:avoid instruction creep, which suggests I explain my opposition. I oppose this one criteria, as there appears to be no situation where it is needed. Decisions on titles can be more easily solved by editors using their best judgment, to apply the other 4 criteria. If naturalness rarely outweighed the others I would keep it and have a section explaining it. But there is no example where that is case? In the Calypso example Peter helpfully provided, that is more easily solved with just the other criteria, we don't need 'naturalness' which has no section defining it. Would deleting it affect any decision, apart from speeding them up? It looks like a consensus is building that the policy page needs tightening-up at the very least! thanks again, Tom B (talk) 13:38, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the moves page, there might be about 1,400 move discussions annually. If we assume simplifying would save only 1 minute on average, as it rarely gets brought up, except as a distraction, that would save 24hrs, or 3 days editing. More conservatively, let's say it takes 5 minutes on 5% of moves i.e. 70 moves, that still saves 6 hours, or a days editing. A small change but worth it! Tom B (talk) 13:55, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

It may help to explore the archives to see why “Naturalness” was added to the criteria in the first place. A quick scan shows extensive discussion around August of 2010 (archive 29)… but there may be earlier discussions of the concept before we decided on calling it “Naturalness”. Blueboar (talk) 16:29, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

good idea. i see you've been involved in discussions @Blueboar and @Peter coxhead for years! it got added on 19 Aug 2010 replacing 'common usage' [1]. There don't appear to be earlier discussions.

from the start everyone has found 'naturalness' confusing, even the person who inserted it! Examples:""Naturalness" (Yuck!)" "Naturalness and commonality also are fuzzy and tend to change". "I don't get this naturalness thing either - can you give an example of a title which is "natural" in a sense that isn't just a synthesis of common, recognizable and consistent?". Reponse from the person who inserted it, "Naturalness is largely the countervailing force to consistency and precision. But if I come up with a clear example, I'll let you know." But no example. "Why did "common usage" become "naturalness"? It's really not helpful to replace something that is discoverable and quantifiable like how is something named in things that one can read and cite (i.e. "common usage") with something that lacks a definition, i.e. "naturalness", about which people can argue but without a framework to discuss, characterize or quantify "naturalness" among alternative article titles. Could the advocates of "naturalness" speak to why it is an improvement over "common usage"?" There was no clear response. There was a long discussion in 2015, with several examples in which naturalness is never the decisive criteria: [2]: "if a title is in fact the common name (in English) of the subject, then it already automatically meets the naturalness criterion, by definition. It would actually be safe to entirely remove the clause."

I agree: naturalness is just duplicating recognisability and should be deleted. there can't be an example where a recognizable name is unnatural. "Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize. Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English." They're the same thing, in fact the end bit of naturalness is identical to recognizability. No one has come up with an example where they ever differ? I'm not proposing to remove any reference to 'natural', simply to remove the duplicate criteria from the top or just merge them: "The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, though not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize. One that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English", Tom B (talk) 22:43, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the main difference is that “COMMONNAME” (ie “Recognizability”) is determined by what sources use, while “Naturalness” is determined by what is used in the running text of other Wikipedia articles (avoiding the need for piped links). Blueboar (talk) 23:40, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the case of descriptive titles helps to highlight the difference between recognizability and naturalness: because descriptive titles are used in cases where there isn't a standardized name for a topic, COMMONNAME (and thus recognizability) becomes essentially inapplicable. However, it's still essential to craft a natural title to help readers reach their destination.

Based on this, I think we can articulate the general distinction between these criteria. Recognizability mainly targets the question of "if the reader sees the title, will they know what the article is about?" By contrast, naturalness targets the similar (but not identical) question of "if the reader is searching for information on a topic, what terms might they look for?" As an example, let's consider the descriptive title of Sennacherib's campaign in the Levant; why do we use this instead of, say, Sennacherib's campaign of 701 BC? They're comparably precise, the year-based title is slightly more concise, and both would likely be recognizable to someone familiar with... the subject area. This is where naturalness comes into play: the location of the campaign is more salient than its year, and accordingly, it seems safe to predict that readers searching for this topic will look for a title that distinguishes the campaign by location. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 03:10, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

thank you, particularly for an example and attempt to define naturalness. To you the location is more salient and maybe readers familiar in the area. I notice you use the word salient, rather than natural or naturalness, perhaps salient would be better? Also, "look for", is recognizability. We either need to merge, delete, rename, or improve the definition so it's distinct from recognizability, with its own section. No one's come up with an example yet where deleting would make things worse. in the above example, recognizability alone solves the whole thing, Tom B (talk) 09:32, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

"what is used in the running text of other Wikipedia articles", that's consistency! Tom B (talk) 09:35, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Not quite. Consistency says that we should consider entitling articles on similar topics in a similar way… so, for example, if there was a question on how to entitle a bio article about a British peer, we would examine how other articles on British peers were entitled. This, however, might be different from how we refer to a specific peer in running text (which would be the “natural” title). We would have to weigh the consistent title against the natural one. Blueboar (talk) 14:08, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

thank you, we would weigh the consistent, natural and recognizable ones, and then go with the recognizable one, as Commonname is dominant. there is a natural disambiguation sub-section in the precision section, so, again, it sounds like you're talking about precision? The policy currently says the natural "title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English", how is that different from recognizability please? Can someone come up with one example where natural/ness trumps recognizability? Tom B (talk) 14:42, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Question

Q related to this bit from WP:POVNAME: An article title with non-neutral terms cannot simply be a name commonly used in the past; it must be the common name in current use.. (italics in source; not mine.) Do the italics here imply "the title should be a standout common name"? 104.232.119.107 (talk) 06:14, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I think your reading is essentially correct, yes. To my eye, the main thrust of the italics is to convey that - if there are multiple titles in common usage - the more neutral title should be preferred unless the non-neutral name is clearly more common than the other options. (The passage also draws a distinction between current usage and older usage, but I don't think that directly relates to the meaning of the italics.) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 13:32, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I feel like the italics are a little subtle; I copy+pasted them over to a different discussion and I didn't notice that the italics didn't show up, meaning that this subtext was almost missed.

I think that nuance could be made more explicit. Taking a go at it: "An article title with non-neutral terms cannot simply be a name commonly used in the past, it must clearly be the most common name in current use". 104.232.119.107 (talk) 17:35, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Naming convention for "subarticles" of histories, with time spans in parentheses

In a requested move discussion that was just closed, it was concluded that there is a well-established and widely used naming convention for "subarticles" that cover particular time spans within a larger history topic, using names like History of Foo (1753–1892), with the time span identified inside of parentheses similar to a disambiguation term. This is not about a "Foo" that existed only between 1753 and 1892 that needs to be distinguished from other Foos that existed during other periods of time, but rather about the period of the history of Foo from 1753 to 1892. The time spans look like disambiguation terms, but that's not what they are – instead, they are a fundamental part of the identification of the topic. This is not about a topic called "History of Foo", it is a timespan-based subset of the entire history of Foo. Examples include History of the United States (1776–1789), History of Poland (1918–1939), History of Canada (1960–1981), History of France (1900–present), History of Russia (1894–1917), History of Germany (1945–1990), and History of the People's Republic of China (1989–2002). The RM discussion can be found at Talk:History of the United States (1776–1789)#Requested move 16 June 2024. The suggestion to rename these to remove the parentheses, as in History of Foo from 1753 to 1892, was rejected. There is a substantial number of articles that use this convention, but I am not aware of anywhere that documents it as an accepted article naming convention on Wikipedia. Should this convention be described somewhere in WP:AT or in some other naming convention description? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:01, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

This proposal seems sensible to me - maybe Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) would be a good place to include such guidance? ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 13:38, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps in WP:NCDURATION? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:52, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

See this diff, inserting "Articles that cover an interval of the history of a longer-duration topic are often entitled as their main overall topic suffixed with a parenthesized indication of the time period, such as History of Canada (1960–1981) and List of One Piece episodes (seasons 15–present)." —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:04, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Possessive vs preposition

Are we cool with both of these title patterns?

• Welfare's effect on poverty
• Effects of alcohol on memory

The latter sounds more encyclopedic to me, but I'm reluctant to move the first page based on vibes alone. Jruderman (talk) 22:21, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Use of italics for translations of religious texts

Per WP:ITALICTITLE: Italics are not used for major religious works (the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud). Does this exception apply to translations of said works? Currently, the titles for translations of the Bible do not seem to be consistently italicized. Here is a sample of the titles of some translations, and at the end I include some translations of religious texts other than the Bible for additional reference:

Title	Italicized?	Notes
American Standard Version	N
King James Version	N
New International Version	N
Amplified Bible	Y
The Bible: An American Translation	Y
Beck's American Translation	N
Bible in Basic English	Y
Ferrar Fenton Bible	N	Official name "The Holy Bible in Modern English" is italicized in lead.
God's Word Translation	Y
The Hebrew Bible (Alter)	Y
International Standard Version	Y
Jerusalem Bible	Y
Lamsa Bible	N	Italicized in lead.
The Living Bible	N	A paraphrase, not a translation of the Bible.
The Living Torah and Nach	N	Individually, "The Living Torah" and "The Living Nach" are italicized in lead.
Matthew Bible	N	Italicized in lead.
The Message (Bible)	Y	A paraphrase, not a translation of the Bible.
Taverner's Bible	N	Official name "The Most Sacred Bible whiche is the holy scripture, conteyning the old and new testament, translated into English, and newly recognized with great diligence after most faythful exemplars by Rychard Taverner" is italicized in lead.
Statenvertaling	Y	Bible translation into Dutch.
NBV21	N	Bible translation into Dutch. I must say that I did create this article myself, but I have not received any comment on not italicizing the title.
Vulgate	N	Bible translation into Latin.
Luther Bible	N	Bible translation into German.
Targum	N	Bible translation into Aramaic.
The Koran Interpreted	Y	Quran translation
The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary	Y	Quran translation
The Study Quran	Y	Quran translation
The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition	Y	Talmud translation; Only "Steinsaltz Edition" is italicized in lead.
Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is	Y	Gita translation
God Talks with Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita	Y	Gita translation

―Howard • 🌽³³ 21:05, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, I don't know of any existing policy that directly addresses this question, but my instinct would be to adopt the following approach: if the title is the title of a specific work (e.g. for Bible in Basic English), it should be italicized. If the title is instead a descriptive title that simply indicates the edition of the text (e.g. King James Version, Ferrar Fenton Bible) or its historical context (e.g. Vulgate, Luther Bible), my instinct would be not to italicize it. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 13:39, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

If there is no policy for this, then it might be prudent to begin an RFC. But for now, let us assume your description. What is meant by specific work, edition of the text, and historical context? As far as I am aware, the King James-, Fenton-, Vulgate-, and Luther Bibles are the names for specific works. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 16:38, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion, a translation should only be italicized if the work is referred to with a lowercase "the" if not at the beginning of a sentence. For example, when the King James Version is mentioned in the middle of a sentence, then it is written "the King James Version", so then "King James Version" is not italicized. However, when The Study Quran is mentioned in a sentence, then it is written "The Study Quran", so then "The Study Quran" is italicized. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 16:49, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Another way to frame what I mean might be, "if the title was the one under which the work was published, that title should be italicized." To use the King James Version as an example: according to its article, the KJV was published under the title THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Teſtament, AND THE NEW: Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed, by his Maiesties ſpeciall Cõmandement. The "King James Version" isn't the official title of the work, but a moniker assigned to it after the fact, and for that reason I don't believe it should be italicized. (For a similar case from another field, consider the Beatles' White Album: the article uses italics when stating the album's official title, The Beatles, but it doesn't italicize the "White Album" nickname.) This distinction - official titles used by a work's creators/publishers vs. unofficial descriptors that emerge from later scholarship or the general public - is what I would consider to be the main determining factor for whether a given title should be italicized.

Your suggestion about the capitalization vs. lowercasing of a preceding "the" is also a useful indicator, in my opinion, but I would argue that it's a side effect of the underlying official/unofficial distinction rather than a fully separate factor. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 19:17, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for elaborating. It appears to me that this is a clear guideline, but still I will need to edit many article titles so that it is applied consistently, which may incite further discussions. I must note that for albums it does not appear to be clear either, considering that for all self-titled Weezer albums, their respective monikers are italicized in the lead but not in the title.

―Howard • 🌽³³ 19:31, 8 July 2024 (UTC)