Wikipedia talk:Article titles

WP:PRECISION On tropical cyclone names

Should the word "Cyclone" or "Typhoon" be removed from article titles? For example, Typhoon Haiyan is commonly called as such without the word "Typhoon" as in "Haiyan was the perfect storm". I'm not bringing hurricanes into the mix here, as their names are derived from names that are frequently used in English; I don't think an English speaker names their kid "Xangsane". –HTD 12:06, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Generally, a name is not considered precise if it is ambiguous. Haiyan, for example, is a disambiguation page, which also includes several place names. It would be difficult to show that a fleeting typhoon is the primary topic of that name, over several for more permanent geographic locations. bd2412 T 12:57, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Well sure "Haiyan" can stay where it is, but how about storms such as "Typhoon Xangsane"? Would they be moved to Xangsane? (which is a red link!) –HTD 13:17, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

This is where the goal of Consistency comes into play... Since most of our articles on storms do need to be disambiguated with "Tropical storm", "Hurricane", "Cyclone", "Typhoon", etc... our readers will expect to find the disambiguation... even for the few storms that might not need it. We disambiguate anyway... for the sake of consistency. Blueboar (talk) 13:25, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Most typhoons have names that are ambiguous to other topics, and would naturally include "Typhoon" in the title just as a disambiguator. I think that the few that are unique names should still be named consistently with those that include that term. Note, I have redirected Xangsane to Typhoon Xangsane. bd2412 T 13:27, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

I dunno if "most" typhoon names are unambiguous as long as Wikipedia is concerned. Yes, they're named after something/some idea but that thing/idea isn't always in Wikipedia. Such as Xangsane or Ketsana. –HTD

Exactly. (Okay, this discussion was a ruse to bring up this topic; I'm totally on your side lol.) Consistency is the ignored stepsister amongst the five. People have focused too much on WP:PRECISION and WP:CONCISE to the detriment of the other three. –HTD 13:30, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

The reason consistency is the poor stepsister is that it is the one criteria that has the most exceptions. Yes, in broad scope, we want a degree of consistency... except we don't want mindless consistency. When consistency does not make sense, given the specific topic/subject under discussion, we are free to give it less weight (or even discard it completely). That said... in the case of storms, I think consistency is helpful. In that case, it isn't mindless. Blueboar (talk) 13:45, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

I'd agree, and I'd add one more reason: there are a few classes of articles where we can invoke this criterion. It involves articles which have to be named on some sort of a pattern. For example, sports teams (<Place name> <nickname>) or places (<town name>, <state name>) or football clubs (<Place name> F.C.) or popes (Pope <Papal name>). The question is, if an article qualifies to this criterion, do we apply to everyone or do we have exceptions (defeating the purpose of the criterion). –HTD 18:21, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that the classes of articles you have mentioned are all rigidly consistent. Sports teams (I assume you mean NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB): I think the place name is an intrinsic part of the team's name and not because it's consistent. For place names, almost all countries use the <place name> format and only uses the <place name>, <state/region name> format when necessary for disambiguation. Football clubs: Inter Milan, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Borussia Dortmund, D.C. United, Chivas USA. I agree that pope articles are rigidly consistent (discounting Saint Peter which is a really special exception). —seav (talk) 16:22, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

LOL at "almost all" countries. This is how we've referred to places for ages. Via addresses. To deny this is like saying the Earth is flat. As for sports names: yes, it's North American pro sports names, excluding sports teams elsewhere. It's like <given name> <surname> for most Western names. I dunno if it's "intrinsic", but again, that's the way they've been called since it became popular to call sports teams that way. For football teams, I'm referring to British teams. It's always ends in "F.C." except for places where rugby is popular, where it becomes "A.F.C.". So yes, it's consistent, for the "almost all" part. There could be an outlier but you could count the instances with your right hand. –HTD 17:20, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I thought we were talking about article titles and not addresses, yes? So looking at article titles, almost all countries' articles on places use the <place name> format. So, no: rigid consistency is not prioritized in titling articles on places here in the English Wikipedia. However, consistency with local guidelines is indeed usually applied. For example, if disambiguation is needed, then the disambiguators must be consistent. —seav (talk) 16:57, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

It gets even more confusing. Three examples:

• The Typhoon Haiyan article describes the deadliest Pacific Typhoon on record. The article's lead sentence has info on other designations for this tropical cyclone (and see the lead paragraph there for info on alternative and disambiguating terms). This article is linked from a disambiguation page titled Haiyan and is currently targeted by redirect pages titled Hurricane Haiyan, Super Typhoon Haiyan, Super Typhoon Yolanda, Super typhoon Haiyan, Super-typhoon Haiyan, Supertyphoon Haiyan, Tropical Storm Haiyan, Typhoon Haiyan (2013), Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), Typhoon Yolanda, Typhoon Yolanda (2013), Typhoon haiyan, and Typhoon haiyan (2013). The disambiguation page titled Haiyan contains disambiguations between three tropical cyclone articles: Tropical Storm Haiyan (2007), and Typhoon Haiyan (2013). The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) does not use official international names for tropical cyclones, and designated this one Typhoon Yolanda, and there was another tropical cyclone with that name in 1992 (See Tropical Storm Yolanda (1992)).
• The Typhoon Rammasun (2014) article describes a recent typhoon (July 10-20, 2014). It is currently targeted by two redirects, Tropical Storm Rammasun (2014) and Typhoon Glenda (2014), The Typhoon Rammasun article is a disambiguation page, listing entries for Typhoon Rammasun (2002), Typhoon Rammasun (2008), Typhoon Rammasun (2014), and Typhoon Rammasun (2014). PAGASA gave this typhoon the name "Glenda". The Typhoon Glenda article is a redirect to a disambiguation page titled Tropical Storm Glenda, which disambiguates between (using wikilinks from that article) 1963's Hurricane Glenda, 1965's Tropical Storm Glenda, 1969's Hurricane Glenda, 1973's Tropical Storm Glenda, and 1977's Tropical Storm Glenda, and notes that The name Glenda has also been used to name three tropical cyclones in the Philippines by PAGASA in the Western Pacific: 2006's Typhoon Kaemi, 2010's Typhoon Kompasu, 2014's and that the name Glenda has also been used for two tropical cyclones in the southwest Pacific: 1967's Cyclone Glenda and 2006's Cyclone Glenda.
• The Hurricane Katrina article is currently targeted by redirects from 12L.KATRINA, 12L.Katrina, 2005 Florida-Louisiana-Mississippi hurricane, 2005 Hurricane Katrina, 2005 Katrina, H katrina, Huricaine Katrina, Huricane Katrina, Hurrican Katrina, Hurricane Katarina, Hurricane Katrina (2005), Hurricane Katrina (contents), Hurricane Katrina (lists), Hurricane Katrina 2005, Hurricane Katrina and technology, Hurricane Katrina disaster, Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, Hurricane Kutrina, Hurricane katina, Hurricane katrina, Hurricane «Katrina», Hurricanekatrina, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Katrina (hurricane), Katrina 2005, Katrina Hurricane, Katrina Storm, Storm Katrina, Tropical Depression Twelve (2005), Tropical Storm Katrina (2005), and Typhoon Katrina.

Also see the List of hurricanes article.

Also, and probably most relevant to this discussion, I see that Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones has a style guide and an article guideline on naming articles. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:56, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Redirects are fine and cute, but only the actual title is in discussion, which is always in "Cyclone/Hurricane/Typhoon <name>". For cyclone names that are not derived from English (and probably French and Spanish), the article can be ***safely*** moved to the <cyclone name> as they are almost always redlinks.

As for article guideline, of course anyone could challenge that as what has been happening recently. –HTD 12:30, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

What's wrong with ambiguous or imprecise titles? What's the problem?

If not for the technical limitation that no two articles can have the exact same title, what's the harm in having an ambiguous or imprecise title? For example, other than the technical limitation, why couldn't the titles of the element, planet and myth that share the name "Mercury" all have the title Mercury? It strikes me that if not for the technical limitation and thus the need for disambiguation, and the articles about topics which don't have names and thus must have descriptive titles, almost all titles would be unrecognizable , ambiguous, and imprecise to most readers. Would that be a problem?

More to the point, whenever there is no other article with a given name (like the albums with date range names discussed above), what is the harm in using that name for the article title even when it is ambiguous or imprecise due to other uses in English, but none that have articles on Wikipedia? What is the benefit in using a more descriptive title? That is, how exactly is a user confused or harmed in any way by such a title? How do they not get to the article they're seeking, or how do they get to the wrong article, or how are they confused once they get there, because of such a title? How exactly do they benefit from making the title more descriptive? I just don't see what the problem is.

--В²C ☎ 15:55, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

The principle of least surprise? Although the problem may be self-correcting in the long term, in some cases, the most common usage of the title may not have an article, while an obscure usage does. There may even be cases in which the most common usage of the title may not meet WP:N, while a less common one does. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:24, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

So people are surprised to find an article about an album named "1978-1990" at 1978–1990? And even so, this surprise is harmful or disruptive in what way? --В²C ☎ 17:29, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

You know full well the answer. But some of the answers are WP:BLP issues when you link to a real article at an ambiguous name. Some place names in England seem to have 10 or so different uses? How are we suppose to know as readers if we are at the wrong one? In an encyclopedia, accuracy is important. Being ambiguous or imprecise is not helpful. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:18, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

• Ambiguous or imprecise titling means that readers can't have confidence that article titles are meaningful. The question is so absurd, unless perhaps you are used to him asking inane questions, that I think the solution is to ban him from titling policy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:21, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

If I understand the question correctly… you’re asking how having identically named articles about different subjects would be a bad thing for users? I think that’d be self-evident. How would it not be a bad thing? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:18, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Or wait, is this question just here to make a WP:POINT about a discussion above? Reductio ad absurdum? In that case it seems like this should be a subsection of that section. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:33, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

It's not self-evident how identically named articles would be a bad thing for users. Please elaborate. Brittanica does it apparently with no issues.

And that's not all I'm asking. I'm also asking more generally about the need for titles to be descriptive - I'm questioning the value of descriptive titles (unless the description is to disambiguate when disambiguation is necessary for technical reasons). --В²C ☎ 20:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe (talk · contribs), do you not have confidence that article titles in the online Brittanica are meaningful? They use ambiguous and imprecise titling. See below. --В²C ☎ 20:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

The question is serious. Principle of least surprise and some rare vague BLP issues is all you've got? You guys are so sure it's a problem, but you can't explain why. Brittanica does not have the technical limitation, so they just use the natural common names of topics, even if they're ambiguous with other uses, with apparently no ill effects. For example, they use the title Mercury for their articles about the planet[1], the god[2], and even the (relatively obscure) plant[3]. Is that a problem? How so? If it's not a problem there, why would it be a problem here? Why do we ever use anything other than the plain common name of a title, besides disambiguation required to resolve the technical limitation? --В²C ☎ 17:46, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

If you investigate more closely, you’ll find that, in its page titles and its search results [4], Britannica uses the same parenthetical disambiguation that we do. This is because of an inescapable technical limitation not of the server-side technology, but of language. Wikipedia could hide the disambiguation as Britannica does, but how would that be a benefit?
Also, yes, I do think said hiding is a problem there; I think Wikipedia handles ambiguous titles much more transparently and intuitively. If you’re looking for the planet and you somehow come across the article for the element instead, WP has a hatnote pointing to the DAB page. Britannica has no such nicety that I can find, and that seems to be a usability problem with their site. Would you happen to know how they handle it in print? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 21:52, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

TL;DR: Ambiguous and imprecise titles are a problem because ambiguity and imprecision are bad. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 21:58, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean Brittanica's page titles. When I got to each of the Mercury pages, the titles are all just Mercury. As to search results, our search results show the leads from each article, so finding the desired Mercury, for example, is not a problem, even if you don't look at the titles at all. [5].

Context matters. Ambiguity and imprecision are generally bad, but when you're looking at one given article, it has only one title, and it doesn't matter what it is - you're at the one article anyway. What is much more important, is that the title reflects how that topic is commonly referring in English; not give some especially clear description of the topic; that's what the lead is for.

So I still don't see how it's a problem to have a title like, say Desideratum or All the Best!, since that is how these topics are commonly referred in English sources. If you don't know what they are, click on them and you'll find out. --В²C ☎ 22:48, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

“I don't know what you mean Brittanica's page titles.”—Look at your title bar, the name of your browser window while the article’s page is open. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:56, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

В²C is being disingenuous. The reason Brittanica doesn't disambiguate the article title page is because the article name does not completely form the URL. In line with paper indexes and WP it does identify clearly the subject matter in its indexing in a manner very similar to WP's disambiguation. This particular debate started with B2C asking, "what's the harm in having an ambiguous or imprecise title?" to which there are two responses, one, Vegaswikian has already given the answer, the second is another question, "what's the harm in having an unambiguous or precise titles?" Or more commonly, should we use titles that are ambiguous or unambiguous? Precise or Imprecise? Taken to such a basic question (which B2C raised first) there can only be one preferred answer, unless we are determined to build the world's first lottery encyclopedia. The solution to B2C's points are at technical, not hanging around the talk pages of policies and guidelines and opposing every RM accordingly. --Richhoncho (talk) 00:04, 12 July 2014 (UTC) _{Amended and added to --Richhoncho (talk) 08:14, 12 July 2014 (UTC)}

Ah, well, the page title is the "title" within the html. Some browsers, including Chrome, don't even display that. That's more of a technical artifact, isn't it?

In theory we could make the title of the page, which is displayed to the user, different from the final component of the URL. In fact, for titles that have certain special treatments, like Italics, they're already decoupled to some extent. That way the "URL title" would have to be unique and disambiguated, but the "display title" (if you will), would not have to be. But the real question remains: what reason is there, besides the technical one, to disambiguate titles at all? Richhoncho, like the others, dismisses the question, without answering it. And the answer to User:Vegaswikian's questions ("Some place names in England seem to have 10 or so different uses? How are we suppose to know as readers if we are at the wrong one? ") is simple: read the lead. But in those cases we actually have multiple uses each with an article on WP. The main impact of this question is not in those cases, which would not be affected (they must be disambiguated for technical reasons), but in those cases where we don't have to disambiguate for technical reasons, because the ambiguity, or lack of precision, has nothing to do with others uses with articles on WP. --В²C ☎ 14:42, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

“But the real question remains: what reason is there, besides the technical one, to disambiguate titles at all?”—I thought that when a question has been answered, it no longer “remained”. I’m one of those who’s answered it, in my last post above. But here’s the TL;DR answer: To benefit the users. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 18:17, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

“Some browsers, including Chrome, don't even display that.”—Yes it does. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 18:41, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi 174. Yes, his questions have been answered many times, but he is not listening. It's quite obvious where Britannica and WP are different, but both have the same problem to the same conundrum. Get the reader to the correct site as quickly as possible. The way WP works is that some subjects have to be disambiguated irrespective of any opinion of any editor. It's as simple as that. Having accepted that disambiguation can be necessary in WP, then why oppose when it helps? If Mercury needs to be ambiguated, then why not date ranges to make it helpful to readers. If the choice is between precise and imprecise, surely no editor at WP is advocating imprecise? Same for ambiguous or unambiguous. If B2C feels as strongly as he does he should be pestering the tech dept - not involved in trench fighting around every RM and related guideline or policy. Once the technical problems are overcome, some may even change sides. --Richhoncho (talk) 18:43, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

• This section was inartfully posed. Of course, in the abstract, ambiguity and imprecision should be avoided if possible. But there is no such thing as a 100% unambiguous or precise title anyway. The question is where do we draw the line of acceptable ambiguity and imprecision, and what kinds of ambiguity and imprecision are we even talking about? And the real question should indeed always be: how do our titling decisions affect the readers? Dohn joe (talk) 18:38, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I see now that Chrome displays the html title in the tab of the page - I always have so many tabs that each tab is so small that I don't see it. But good website design generally does not depend on readers necessarily seeing the value of the html title tag. Brittanica is quite useful without seeing that - and is no more useful if you can see that. Like I said, it's just a technical artifact. Insignificant.

User:Richhonchos statements and questions demonstrate that he does not understand the question I'm asking, and explains why he thinks it has been answered. Perhaps I can shed some light on this by addressing his statements and answering his questions.

Rich says both Britannica and WP have "the same problem [did he mean solution?] to the same conundrum. Get the reader to the correct site as quickly as possible. " True that, but that has nothing to do with this issue. For example whether the album is at the more ambiguous and less precise Desideratum or it redirects to the less ambiguous and more precise Desideratum (album) does not affect how quickly any reader gets to the correct article. That point is not at issue here. Irrelevant.

Rich asks: "Having accepted that disambiguation can be necessary in WP, then why oppose when it helps?" No one is opposing when it helps; the issue is whether it helps, and, if so, how exactly it helps? Again, Desideratum (album) is more precise and less ambiguous than Desideratum, but does it help? I don't see it. How does it help? Same with 98 Degrees. We could move 98 Degrees to the more precise and less ambiguous 98 Degrees (band), but would that help? How? And, of course, there is 1978-1990 vs. 1978-1990 (album). Again clearly the latter is less ambiguous and more precise - but is it more helpful? How? In what context? What exactly is a reader doing such that he is helped more by the more descriptive title? I just don't see it.

Rich also asks: "If Mercury needs to be ambiguated, then why not date ranges to make it helpful to readers?" The answer is that Mercury is disambiguated because we can't have more than one title at Mercury. But that doesn't mean when you click on Mercury to go to the article about the planet that it's helpful to have that planet disambiguator in the title. So if it's not helpful to have Mercury disambiguated, why would it be helpful to have the date ranges disambiguated?

Finally Rich asks, if the choice is between precise and imprecise, surely no editor at WP is advocating imprecise? Editors prefer more ambiguous and less precise titles all the time. See Talk: Desideratum#Requested move for an example that went unanimously against the more ambiguous and less precise proposed title. In fact, for almost every article on WP, there is probably a less ambiguous and more precise title, certainly a more descriptive and arguably more "helpful" title, but we have chosen the less descriptive one in every single case. Like Dohn joe says, it's all about where we draw the line. One clear place to draw the line is where disambiguation is necessary for technical reasons. If disambiguation is not necessary for technical reasons, what is the reason to disambiguate? Saying it's more helpful does not make it so. How, exactly, is it more helpful? That's what nobody has explained, much less how else to draw that line, and where, exactly. --В²C ☎ 21:12, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

You appear to be the only editor advocating imprecise and ambiguous titles. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:21, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

I tried to post a reply to this, but apparently the automated filters have realized this thread is unconstructive. Edit: Managed it. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 22:16, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

User:Vegaswikian, I'm far from the only one. It's the default position of the community. In one of countless examples, the less precise and more ambiguous title was favored unanimously at Talk: Desideratum#Requested move . And if you want another example, go no further than Paris, which would clearly be more precise and less ambiguous at Paris, France. Dare I mention Las Vegas? See also: Talk:Marjah#Requested moves, Talk:Results#Requested_move, Talk:Love?#Requested move (2), etc., etc. etc. Time and time again, the community favors more ambiguous and less precise titles, particularly when the proposed disambiguation is not necessary for technical reasons. --В²C ☎ 23:49, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Default, right. You may not be the only one, but you are the loud one. Invoking Paris, an obvious case of a title with a well-accepted primary meaning, is not going to save your silly insistence on ambiguity. And Desideratum is not a precedent-setting case, since it's one that a number of us would obviously have supported disambiguation of if we had seen it. And you might recall that Las Vegas was a long-fought case, since the city and strip, which are disjoint, tend to contend for primary. Dicklyon (talk) 01:43, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Ditto. Born2cycle I have to say that comment ranks with the "I'm Wikipedia's fireman" comment earlier. While filibustering may have managed to get some RM titles that go beyond User-unfriendly into the realm of being embarrassing, the decision to place an unsourced "ambient" album stub over Google Book uses in that case really just proves the point of the editors who contribute to article space. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:29, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Nevertheless, by the time he wrote his Desideratum, Wesley had thought long and hard about the nature of electricity. He provided his readers an extensive justification for thinking of electricity as the elixir of life that God provided ...

This is an essential point about titling which you, and equally Dohn joe, just don't get. Our user-demographic generates enormous amounts of fluff so for pretty much any word in the English language there'll be a manga or Christian Death metal rapper or an episode of a soap squatting on the base space. If you actually contributed to the encyclopedia by creating/editing articles some of that balance could be addressed. Instead of which we appear to be seeing a return to similar behavior as caused your recently expired topic ban; and also, if I may say so, dominating guidelines and policies for other editors to work by, when you don't contribute to article space yourself, is what, what is the adjective I'm looking for? It is what it looks like. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:29, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Let me tackle these one at a time:

• Good web design absolutely does mandate meaningful page titles.
• I stated earlier my belief that Britannica’s approach introduces usability issues (ambiguous article titles) that Wikipedia avoids.
  • That’s not your point anyway. So shall we drop the Britannica thread?
• To the example you introduce here: It’s only meaningful if that album is the primary topic of that title. If it’s not, and if the reader was looking for an article about some other use of the term, or even some other album by that name, he would potentially waste time visiting the irrelevant article first before realizing it wasn’t the one he wanted. This is the benefit of unambiguous titles.
  • I would argue that the term “1978–1990” has no primary topic.
• I thought I discussed this earlier, but: Primarily, “Mercury” is disambiguated because there are multiple things known by that word. It’s not due to technical limitation of the software, not because we can’t have same-titled articles. It’s due to a limitation of language; if we could and did have multiple articles by the same name, that would be needlessly confusing for users.
• It may be worth your while to review WP:PRECISE. If you find that bit of policy problematic, I suggest starting a discussion to change it.

—174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:43, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

I keep promising myself I won't get involved in pointless and pointy discussions. Britannica is mildly relevant insomuch as the article titles can be ambiguous - however the search function is not. Something that's not possible in WP at the moment. Do we want to consider a technical solution?

The answer to the million dollar question, (according to some!), "What's wrong with ambiguous or imprecise titles?" is that you send readers in the wrong direction and makes the encyclopedia unusable. Of course, if somebody is not adding to article space, but hanging round the guidelines and RMs it would not concern them!

Somebody asks above "Where do we draw the line?" There are no lines to be drawn, there are guidelines that should be used with common sense and no matter how much we like or dislike a specific guideline, there will always be exceptions. The problem is people that don't consider each item separately. There is a lot of harm in that. --Richhoncho (talk) 08:13, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

In ictu oculi, I agree. To briefly answer the question asked in the heading: the problem with an ambiguous title is that it's ambiguous, and the problem with an imprecise title is that it's imprecise. Precision is one of the titling criteria, and this question sets it aside. But also, I do get tired of being told how things work by someone whose contributions are mostly in discussions, many of which become difficult largely because of the way in which he participates, and only 14% of whose contributions are in the main space, compared to 84% in my own case and 60% for IIO. Discussion are important, of course. But so is editing and improving the encyclopedia. To return to the question: ambiguous or imprecise titles harm rather than help the encyclopedia. Omnedon (talk) 14:45, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

I assume you also discount the views of SmokeyJoe (4% mainspace contribs) and Blueboar (23% mainspace contribs). What about Francis Schonken (38% mainspace contribs)? Or are they alright because they agree with your position? What about me (46% mainspace contribs)? Dohn joe (talk) 16:37, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Who said anything about discounting positions because of this? I'm saying that B2C's primary activity here seems to relate to telling other editors how things should work, and he has a long history of doing it in an unpleasant and difficult manner -- and many of us are tired of it. It's not about whether he is right or wrong -- though in this case, the very question is diametrically opposed to the precision criterion. Omnedon (talk) 16:50, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Okay - my bad. It just seemed to me that you were using the mainspace % as a reason in itself to discount a user's position. If it's a personality issue, then there's no need to bring in the contrib % argument. Dohn joe (talk) 18:33, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

As it happens I did not bring it up. In fact, though, I do think it can have relevance. Not, however, as a standalone statistic, any more than the sheer quantity of edits has meaning regarding, for example, the quality of those edits. Omnedon (talk) 20:42, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

I think the issue with B2C is that the other editors aren't recently off a ANI topic ban, the context of which was not unrelated to only having 14% contributions in the main space.　Ｉ'm surprised to see SmokeyJoe, an editor who talks sense, has only (4% mainspace contribs), but again no one is finding SmokeyJoes' contributions bludgeoning. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:21, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

User:Dicklyon, please consider my statements in the context in which I made them. User:Vegaswikian claimed I was the only editor "advocating imprecise and ambiguous titles". So I gave Paris as one of several counter-examples. Nobody can deny that Paris is less precise and more ambiguous than Paris, France. It's true that it's an "obvious case of a title with a well-accepted primary meaning", but it's still less precise and more ambiguous than Paris, France. My point stands. Desideratum is of course not a precedent setting case. However, it still counters Vegaswikian's claim that I'm the only one "advocating imprecise and ambiguous titles", which is why I mentioned it. Discussions with false claims are not helpful, and obfuscate the real issues being discussed. That being said, Desideratum is far from an unusual case - WP:NOTADICT is commonly used to counter claims that a given name should not be used undisambiguated because it's ambiguous with a dictionary use of the word, even though we don't have an article for that word on WP. And I don't insist on ambiguity. I insist on undisambiguated WP:COMMONNAME when disambiguation is unnecessary. --20:27, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Again I’ll point to WP:PRECISE: article titles should be precise enough. “Paris” is precise enough because, though there are many other Parises, one is indisputably the primary topic. Going back to the example that started this all, “1978–1990” has no fewer than three other possible uses on Wikipedia, and it does not clearly have a primary topic. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 22:31, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting Paris should be disambiguated. I'm just pointing out it is inherently ambiguous. In fact, the title of every primary topic is ambiguous, by definition. Now, the city in France happens to be very well known, but that's not why it's the primary topic. It's the primary topic because of it's popularity relative to all other uses of that name. That is, an obscure name can be primary too, as long as the other uses are much more obscure (sufficiently less likely to be sought to make the least obscure primary among them). So, it seems silly to not disambiguate a title because it's "ambiguous" with other uses that are so unlikely to be sought we don't even have articles for them.

There is no evidence those other uses are ever referenced as 1978-1990 in reliable sources, much less that they are commonly referred to with that name. Nobody would ever suggest that 1978-1990 be the title for any of those other uses. However, 1978-1990 is unquestionably the common name for the album, and thus the album is the primary topic. Aren't all the other alleged "uses" actually partial title matches and so should not even be listed on the dab page? And if you end up with a dab page with only one topic listed - doesn't that kind of make it the primary topic? --В²C ☎ 00:28, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

• OK... First, let's look at the sources... according to the discography on the band's website, the "official" name of album appears to be "The Go-Betweens: 1978-1990". More importantly, this title also seems to be the COMMONNAME for the album (Looking at other sources, a significant majority of seem to refer to it using that same title. I don't find a lot of sources that refer to it as just "1978-1990").

Having done that preliminary examination, let's examine which title will be best - in terms of achieving our five basic criteria:

• Recognizability - Since the "official" title is "The Go-Betweens: 1978-1990", and that title is also the COMMONNAME, that title would be far more recognizable than just the date range string "1990-1978".
• Naturalness - Since the COMMONNAME is "The Go-Betweens: 1978-1990", that title would also be more natural than just the date range string.
• Precision - this is where disambiguation comes into play. Since there are other albums that could be searched for using the date range string (as well as the, admittedly unlikely, possibility that someone might use the date range string in hopes of finding a summary of historical events), we would need disambiguation if we use just the date range string. If we use the COMMONNAME title, however, we don't need to disambiguate at all (the disambiguation is built into the title). Therefor, the title "The Go-Betweens: 1978-1990" seems to be the most precise.
• Conciseness: While the date string "1978-1990" is shorter than "The Go-Betweens: 1978-1990", I don't think it is more concise. Concise is not the same as "shorter". In other words, I don't think conciseness is an issue here.
• Consistency: At the moment, we don't have a consistency issue... I will get back to this later.

Balancing all these together (as the policy tells us to do) it seems clear that the title "The Go-Betweens: 1978-1990" best achieves the most number of criteria. I would therefor say that the fuller title should be preferred over just the date string.

Now to get back to consistency... the same examination can be made with all the other albums that use date range strings in their titles (and where Wikipedia might use just the date range string as the title of its article on the album). And in the majority of cases, we will get similar results. A title with more than just the date range string alone will be preferred. We can therefor re-examine the few possible exceptions with an eye towards consistency... and say that consistency indicates not using just the date range string. Blueboar (talk) 14:34, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Just for the record, we don't actually get similar results. For each of the date range albums, I had done a Google Books search for the title, and the band-free title outdid the band-less title by a healthy margin each time, generally around 3 to 1 - including for the Go-Betweens, which was 11:5, or 69%. Feel free to check out the talkpages and follow my links to verify. That pushes recognizability and naturalness back into the date range camp, and should tilt the WP:AT analysis as well. Dohn joe (talk) 15:49, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

User:Blueboar, your otherwise solid analysis unfortunately fails because the key premise about the official name is incorrect. The album name is 1978 to 1990 on their discography. On individual album pages, they precede all album names with the band name for all of their albums. Thus 16 Lovers Lane is titled The Go-Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane on that albums page, but that's no reason for us to move 16 Lovers Lane to The Go-Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane. At most what we have is an argument to use 1978 to 1990 as the title, except we need support in non-primary reliable sources for that, and I don't think it exists. The album cover uses the hyphen, not the word "to", between the dates. I suspect the web page designer just used artistic license with the use of "to" there. --В²C ☎ 17:40, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) approach

I had a look today whether Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) could bring some relief in this continuing story.

What I found there:

• single numbers as page names: up to four digits several decades in the future content of such pages should be regarding a year, otherwise (some of the examples from that guideline page):
  • 36 (film), not 36 (the year Pontius Pilate was called back to Rome)
  • 4711 (brand) for the Eau de Cologne (this example apparently became obsolete, I updated the NCNUM guideline accordingly)
• Decades: expressed as year ranges (e.g. 1800–1809) they redirect to pages such as 1800s (decade)

Apart from the ranges that are articles on albums (as discussed above) I found these:

• 14-18 - an article on a film
• 1914-1918 - redirect to World War I
• 17:28 - an article on a boys band

I'd like to add a new section to the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) guideline, probably just after the section regarding Articles on other standard time periods:

---

==Article titles consisting exclusively of numbers and separators==

Article titles consisting exclusively of both arabic numerals and separators (like hyphens) are discouraged for content pages. They should be either redirects or disambiguation pages, for example:

• 1914-1918 redirects to World War I.
• 1/2 is a disambiguation page

---

14-18 could be made a disambiguation page, with for example links to the film, e.g. renamed to 14-18 (film), and the WWI page.

Alternatively, make 14-18 a redirect to the WWI page, and on that page a hat-note, which either links to 14-18 (film) or to 14-18 (disambiguation). --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:59, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Your thoughts about this proposal?

• Sounds OK. Sounds good for being concistent. Waiting to hear of problems. Confusion with years should be strongly avoided. Beyond the 21st century shouldn't be an issue. Fictional future years should be unambiguously disambiguated as fiction. An encyclopedia, and definitely Wikipedia, should be treated as an historiological work, and within that context, time periods are prominent. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:40, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose A solution desperately seeking a problem. --В²C ☎ 17:48, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. Unnecessary disambiguation at its finest. This seems like an attempt to circumvent the normal RM process, where there isn't much consensus for all these pedantic RMs. Calidum ^{Talk To Me} 19:03, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
• I'd like to thank Francis for making this proposal - it's a good concrete step, and hopefully gets us away from what was becoming an unproductive series of discussions. That said, I think it could use some work. One main difference is that we already have the year and decade articles, but do not, and likely will not, have the 100,000s of potential date range articles covering every potential date range.

  First, I would have no problem with guidance to the effect that a date range can have a wp:primarytopic. If a date range is so greatly identified with a particular event or topic, so as to be synonymous (or nearly) with that event or topic, then we can treat the date range as an alternate name for the topic. Thus 1914-1918 could redirect to World War I. Non-notable date ranges would not redirect anywhere. Thus 1962–1967 would remain a redlink, since none of the events that occurred in that timeframe are known in RSs by that range.

  Second, when an otherwise non-notable date range is the wp:commonname of an actual subject, we can use that date range as the article title or redirect to a subheading. Thus, since 1983-1991 is not particularly associated with any historical event, we can be free to use it for the album article where it currently is. This largely holds up the status quo, while making it explicit and adding the ability to redirect notable date ranges to their respective topics. Dohn joe (talk) 19:48, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

  • I Support this variation of the proposal and would emphasize that considerable use of a date range to refer to a given topic in RS is required to make that date range be a redirect to that topic on WP. --В²C ☎ 20:23, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
• Question: How would this apply to titles like 17:28 or 1978–1990? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 22:25, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
  • 17:28 → 17:28 (boy band)
  • 1978–1990 → The Go-Betweens 1978–1990 or 1978–1990 (Go-Betweens album) depending on where current RM (Talk:1978–1990#Requested move) goes. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:41, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Francis, thank you for these comments. I've added a jpg to 14-18 to help mobile readers. I think the issue with The Go-Betweens 1978–1990 is slightly different from a film because the subject of 14-18 is not Jean Aurel 14-18. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:38, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Re. "I think the issue with The Go-Betweens 1978–1990 is slightly different from a film because the subject of 14-18 is not Jean Aurel 14-18" — where do you see the distinction? And more importantly: even if there is such a valid distinction, how would that be relevant to this proposal? --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:09, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata got this right

See how Wikidata handles "Mercury":

• Mercury (planet)
• mercury (chemical element)
• Mercury (Roman god)

I actually thought of a similar idea for Wikipedia several years back but I never expressed it since it would be a drastic change that would likely get shot down quickly. Anyway, by removing the technical limitation on articles having the same title and putting the disambiguator into a subtitle/short description field, as Wikidata has done, we would not have these countless debates on which topic is primary or what is the best disambiguator or if unnecessary disambiguation is more important than rigid consistency. —seav (talk) 16:36, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Ridiculous idea, to title by database code, and to hide the topic. System friendly maybe, but very user unfriendly. Titles should reflect and identify the thing they title. Where different topics can be titled ambiguously with respect to each other, editors should consider how to best distinguish the topics from each other in their titles. Editor discussion of titles of their articles, considering ambiguity, is a good thing. Yes, it is good that books have ISBNs. No, books should not be titled by their ISBNs. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:33, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Not titling, just using a URL that’s independent of the title. But I agree that there is value in using uniquely identifiable titles like Mercury (planet), rather than having six different articles about six different things all with the same title. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 03:00, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Yuck... I don't think Wikidata got that right at all... it is extremely difficult to use. Imagine you were someone searching for information about the Roman God, Mercury... you go to Wikidata and type "Mercury" into the search box... first, there is no drop down box listing likely pages, you are forced to go to a "hit" page that lists every article that uses the word "Mercury" in its title ... you then have to scroll through several pages of unrelated articles before you can find the page you are looking for.

Compare that to our system... same scenario... you type "Mercury" into the search box, and immediately get a drop down box listing potential hits - which (as it happens) lists Mercury (mythology) near the top. If that is not enough, there is a hit for the unadorned title "Mercury" - which goes to a dab page where you can find the article you are looking for very quickly. No, I think our system is not only quicker, but much easier and more efficient to use. Blueboar (talk) 12:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Weird; I do get the dropdown, the third entry in which is:

Mercury
Ancient Roman mythological god of tr…

But I agree that WP’s titles are more user-friendly. Not forcing the user to read extra irrelevant text is a good thing. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 17:03, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

• Wikidata's format works for machines, and that's it. For a project aimed at people, it would be a horrible way to do things. Resolute 18:44, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
• I actually liked having the title of any article free from parenthetical disambiguation but it shows up in search and making wikilinks. –HTD 12:26, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

  À la Britannica online? Personally, I prefer the current Wikipedia ways, making sure the reader knows which article he’s reading. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 18:57, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

  Perhaps, or maybe even make the disambiguator a "subheader" immediately below the article title. –HTD 16:38, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  Basically, similar to how Wikidata does it: it places the description (or disambiguator) as a subtitle. —seav (talk) 16:59, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

  Not exactly. Instead of "first planet closest to the Sun in the Solar System", use "(planet)" and that can't be changed with a simple edit. And it seems every Wikidata data has this "subheader". I'm only wanted it to work only for disambiguation. –HTD 20:31, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

wp:commonname

This is just a really, really dumb policy. After all, this is supposed to be an encyclopaedia... - ^theWOLFchild 22:43, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

The policy is good. It is the shortcut that is unfortunate. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:45, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree. The policy "Use commonly recognizable names" makes sense. The notion that it trumps everything else, or that only "the most common" is OK, causes a lot of trouble. Dicklyon (talk) 01:58, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

@Thewolfchild: It’s a good policy. Sometimes it’s applied dumbly. But if you’d like to share your specific concerns with it, that would be helpful here. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:23, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Basically, I think every article here should have it's proper/official name as the title. If it is known by another names(s), (short-form, nick-name, some variant, etc.), then that should be mentioned in the opening paragraph and there should be a re-direct(s) created for it. It's more professional, respectful, accurate and in some cases, respectful. What is the argument here - that people will search for the 'most common' name in use? Fine, that's what re-directs are for - if you're looking for it, you'll find it. Some of the articles here have stupid nicknames that might not even be accurate, but because one guy found a source, and four more people backed him up, as opposed to the three people (at the time) who want the official name... then it stays. And the project looks silly and amateurish. It's a stupid policy.- ^theWOLFchild 08:17, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Actually it is a good policy which is sometimes applied in a silly and amateurish way. To give you an example William Jefferson Clinton -v- Bill Clinton. One is his "official name" and the other his common name. In a case like that common name makes perfect sense. If you have an example where you think it has been applied wrong, let us know. --Richhoncho (talk) 08:51, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

We often do use official names for article titles, and incidentally the official name is often a common name for the subject. In the case I believe you’re concerned with, the disagreement is over what the official name actually is: the one used in print, or the one portrayed in a logo. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 09:02, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

"Often" is not always. And I'm not here because of just one case. I've seen several articles with the same problem, and have been involved in naming disputes before... all because of this stupid policy. - ^theWOLFchild 06:00, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I see your point, but that ship has sailed. For better or for worse, for article titles, when there is a conflict, Wikipedia favors the name most commonly used in reliable sources over the "official name" of a topic. Is that encyclopedic? That's a valid question, though not necessarily relevant. Wikipedia is not a traditional encyclopedia and is therefore not always "encyclopedic" in terms of how things are managed here. --В²C ☎

"That ship has sailed"? Why? ...because the article titles are carved in stone? I'm aware WP favours this - that's why I'm complaining about it. - ^theWOLFchild 06:00, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

It's important to remember that WP:COMMONNAME really sets forth a methodology, not a goal in itself. The goal is to have a title that is Recognizable, Natural, Precise, Concise and Consistent. The most commonly used name (if there is one) is almost always going to be the one that best achieves these five basic goals. It is also important to remember that the most commonly used name might well be the "official" name. Blueboar (talk) 21:13, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

A "methodology"? What does that have to do with this? A subject can have multiple names, all in common use, that are "Recognizable, Natural, Precise, Concise and Consistent". That's why we have redirects and descriptive intros, known as leads. The official, proper name is just that - I don't see how we can justify labeling it anything else. - ^theWOLFchild 06:08, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I've come across a few articles where this policy has been applied in a silly way, and because too many people here can't use logic and/or think for themselves, foolishly believe that these "policies" are cast forever in stone and therefore, no changes can be made... ever.

Perfect example: House, M.D. - at least, that's what it should be called. But, someone changed it to simply "House". The show's proper title is "House, M.D." But some sources, whether referring to the character, or just lazily dropping the "M.D.", have used just "House", so some people here think that wp:commonname" dictates that must be the article title. (apparently wp:naturalids and wp:commonsense don't apply). Where's the methodology? - ^theWOLFchild 07:24, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

@Thewolfchild: No disrespect, but I think you’re missing the point of WP:COMMONNAME. It doesn’t mean that we blindly choose the most popular name. It means that the name we choose should be one that is actually used. Assuming you’re right about the show’s official title: If no one actually uses that official name when referring to it, then neither should we. That is, the question wasn’t whether “House, M.D.” was a real name; it was whether anyone actually calls it that. If your arguments had included examples of reputable sources that used the “M.D.,” if you’d shown that the name was in use, I wager you would have been much more successful. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 03:23, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm not "missing the point" - it's that very point that I disagree with. This is an encyclopedia. It should use proper/official names. I don't give a rat's ass if people "hardly ever use it" or not, nor do I care if they more commonly use an alternative name, whether it's a bastardization, short form, nick-name or anything else. The article title should be the proper name. If the article subject is more commonly known by something else, well... that's what redirects and leads are for. - ^theWOLFchild 05:55, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Wolf - We respect the fact that you disagree with COMMONNAME, but don't expect the policy to change any time soon. There is a very strong consensus behind COMMONNAME. Please (grudgingly, if necessary) accept the fact that Wikipedia consensus has decided to favor a more commonly used "unofficial" name over a less common (and therefor less recognizable and natural) "Official" name. Blueboar (talk) 11:41, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

"...don't expect the policy to change any time soon." - I don't. I know why this has been done. I just don't agree with it, nor do I see the need for it. It makes WP look amateurish. What's next... re-name New York City "The Big Apple"? I bet I can find plenty of sources that call it that. But there's no need. We have re-directs for that, (along with any other nick-names). Just as we can denote it in the lead (or anywhere appropriate in the article). Sometimes "consensus" amounts to nothing more than a popularity contest among a very small group of people at one random moment along an article's timeline. Consensus isn't always the answer. 10 years ago, WP needed all the volunteer it could get to build something. Well, now it's built, we need to be more professional to maintain it. wp:commonname isn't professional, it's just momentarily popular. - ^theWOLFchild 00:36, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a project governed by community consensus. That is its nature as an “encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” In short, barring exceptional cases like legal issues, consensus is always the answer on Wikipedia (and it’s important to remember that consensus can change). It sounds like what you want is for a dedicated professional editorial team to take control… and as I understand it, such a team is free to fork Wikipedia’s content and do exactly that, so long as they adhere to the CC and GFDL licenses. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 04:03, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

• 1) Tell me something I don't already know. 2) Doesn't mean it's always the right answer. 3) "Sounds like"? 4) I'm pretty sure I said "we". 5) Then & Now. - ^theWOLFchild 01:17, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Re: What's next... re-name New York City "The Big Apple"? No, of course not... While there are a goodly number of sources that refer to that city by its nickname ("The Big Apple"), an overwhelming majority of sources call it "New York City". Thus "New York City" is the COMMONNAME, and what we should use. By the way... the Official name of that city is actually "The City of New York". Blueboar (talk) 00:11, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Which means the article should be titled; "The City of New York", with redirects for "New York City", "NYC", "The Big Apple", etc. By attacking the example, you've skipped the point. - ^theWOLFchild 01:17, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Speaking of the "point", I see this has become "pointless". Big surprise... - ^theWOLFchild 01:17, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Quotation marks in article titles using <q> tag

Now that the <q>...</q> tag is whitelisted, it is possible to add quotes around any text anywhere without having to change the content. This includes the article title, see here for an example. The MOS does not (yet) handle this situation, but it states that Use italics when italics would be used in running text. Should we have a similar rule for applying quotes? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 12:36, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

• I’d say yes. But I wonder, why use <q>...</q> in the displaytitle instead of quotation marks directly? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 17:05, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

• Because DISPLAYTITLE: does not allow changing the text, so adding regular quotes does not work. Using <q>...</q>, the quotes are added by the browser, so the content is not actually changed. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:25, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

• Finally! Yes. This is a great idea.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:08, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

• Interesting... I just tested the technique of using <q>...</q> tags with {{DISPLAYTITLE:}} in this article, and it worked! So, does this mean that the title of every article about a song, short story, etc., will need to be updated this way, in order to maintain stylistic consistency? That's an awful lot of articles; is it worth the trouble? Perhaps the process could be automated with a bot. One way to identify song articles, of course, would be to look for title "(disambiguators)" containing "song"; another would be to key on Category tags within each article. — Jaydiem (talk) 00:30, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• Is this really a good idea? I used two browsers to copy the article title and each includes the quotes (Firefox gave straight quotes and IE gave curlies). Looking at the page, I have no way of knowing what the title of the article is (although I can infer its title from the browser's address bar—assuming I haven't arrived at the page from a redirect). It's one thing to use a trick to show the title in italics, but it's quite another to change the title—that means we get to fight about the title of the page, and the display title, and the title used in the text (why curly quotes in the display title but straight quotes in the article?). Many editors are used to the beautiful simplicity of the fact that the title shown on the page is the title of the page. Many are also used to "use straight quotes"—is the turmoil from introducing doubt on both those worthwhile? Johnuniq (talk) 01:06, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• That's a good question. Perhaps we might compare this to the careful use of en dashes and em dashes in article titles. I don't know if that was done from Wikipedia's inception, but in any case, there is some similarity in that en- and em dashes are distinct characters from hyphens, which means complications for URLs, and the necessity of redirects. But that's been handled so well that I think we all take it for granted. I don't see "fight[ing] about . . . the display title" as a big problem; it should be pretty uncontentious whether or not something is a song title (or other type of name that the Manual of Style says belongs in quote marks). As for the appearance of quote marks added by <q>...</q> tags, maybe it's possible for a user preference to be set up to allow users to choose whether they display as straight or curly? — Jaydiem (talk) 01:46, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• The type of quotes is easily controlled by CSS. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 07:00, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• The quotes displayed with the <q> tag are unhighlightable, and thus can't be copied and pasted. Is this a good thing? Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 03:45, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• @Curly Turkey: I just tried this, and had no problem partially highlighting text rendered between <q>...</q> tags, whether in an article title or the body text. For testing purposes: Here's a sentence enclosed in <q>...</q> tags. Do you still find that you can't highlight any part of it? — Jaydiem (talk) 05:36, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
  • The text is highlightable, but the quotemarks themselves are not. Is this the desired behaviour? Wouldn't this be a terrible thing to happen in the body of the text? For example, My favourite Beefheart track is My Human Gets me Blues, from Trout Mask Replica. If I copy-&-pasted this, I'd lose the quote marks, and the sky would fall. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 06:06, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
    • Never mind—the quotemarks don't appear to get highlighted, but when the text is actually pasted the quotemarks appear (and become straight-up-and-down quotemarks). Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 06:08, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
      • Apparently there's more to it. The history of Deep Breath (Doctor Who) (ugh! I had to manually delete the quotes to make that link!) includes this diff with "the quotes are not copied" in the edit summary. In my comment above I mentioned that one browser I tried copies the quotes as straight, while another copies them as curly, and Edokter is apparently using a browser that does not copy them. Johnuniq (talk) 06:48, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
        • I use Chrome. I don't consider "copy-pastability" to be that important, there are so many elements and templates that do not allow copying that it should not be the defining factor. If removing two quote marks is all the only downside, we gain a lot in terms of aesthetics. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 07:00, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
          • Yikes! I can't agree with that—I do an awful lot of copy-pasting when editing, both at WP and at work. Not being able to copy-paste the title of an article you're trying to link to is a particularly grievous problem, I would think. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 07:59, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
          • People are used to copying the page title. Many would be stunned to see that a copied title gave a red link (because they did not know they had to remove certain characters). Johnuniq (talk) 11:07, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
            • Redirects can help here (and are allowed) so you would never copy an invalid link. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 09:12, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
              • That would mean a lot of redirects - which I don't really think is a good idea. It would almost be easier just to move all the articles to titles which include the quotes. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 14:12, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

• I just realized (another reason) why this is a bad idea. How would this work for articles whose titles already contain quotes? For instance, the David Bowie song “‘Heroes’” on the same-named album. Would that be rendered as "Heroes" (David Bowie song)? {{DISPLAYTITLE}} doesn’t let you change double marks to single, which would be necessary here. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:40, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
  • That is a special case, where the quotes are part of the title. In this case, I think the song is misnamed; it should be 'Heroes' (single quotes), which currently redirects to the album: "Heroes". Scrap that... someone decided to invent a special rule to enclose title that contain quotes in additional quotes. That is quite redundant. Title with quotes don't need additional quotes. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 08:38, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
    • That is how quotation marks work… it’s a rule of standard written English, no more or less invented than all the rest. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 13:20, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
• Since it displays curly quotes, it's a bad idea so long as MOS:QUOTEMARKS says that curly quote marks are not recommended. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:43, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
  • That's just the default. As I said above; easily changed with CSS. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 15:16, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Sure, but this shouldn't be necessary. The default should be the recommended style. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:34, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

It will be, when the CSS is put in Common.css. For now, I'm just polling if this has potential of becoming acceptable practice before I put it in. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 17:20, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Toward a standard for disambiguating titles of articles on domestic animal breeds

Anyone who turns this into a capitalization argument will be WP:TROUTed.

Summary:

• In real-world sources, there are no domestic animal breed names that are not disambiguated by appending the species name when disambiguation is needed.
• Specialist publications devoted to particular kinds of domestic animals virtually never disambiguate the names at all, because they don't need to within their content (e.g. in a sheep journal, "Costwold" always refers to a breed of sheep).
• As a result, specialist publications cannot help us determine how to disambiguate here; at best they only tell use what the "official name" is (and even then, only if they're published by breed registries).
• Parenthetical disambiguation is already used for individual animals (e.g. racehorses, TV dogs, etc.).
• There thus doesn't seem to be an policy-based or common-sense reason to depart from using natural disambiguation (Caldes rabbit), instead of parenthetical (Caldes (rabbit)), for breed names.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:29, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Original long version:

There's a lot of ground to cover with regard to this issue. I'll try to break this into succinct paragraphs, since the total length is significant. Part of what's going on in various disputes with regard to how to name domestic breed articles is pure confirmation bias. An article title in the form Breedname species only sounds weird to someone to whom the Breedname string only and always refers to the kind of creature in species. Meanwhile, to everyone else in the world it's perfectly normal to append species so we all know WTF is being talked/written about.  :-) Meanwhile, if one specialist in the topic of insert-species-here asks another specialist in the same topic, they'll immediately agree with each other, as if engaging in a ritual of mutual grooming, that the species part is not part of the name even for WP purposes. This is two lions agreeing together that the antelope is for dinner and calling this an consensus against which the antelope is just being a tendentious filibusterer. Since no one but me in the debate to date seems to be into cats, let's use them as an example so no one gets territorial about what I'm saying here. To a cat breeder, or a subscriber to Cat Fancy magazine, or some other form of "cat person", the cat breed named "Himalayan" is formally named simply the Himalayan, and only Himalayan. Most if not all registries and breeder associations will call this breed "Himalayan" or "the Himalayan" (or one of its alternate names like "the Himalayan Persian"), without "cat" appended. Well of course they don't append "cat", since they already know they're talking about cats when they're talking amongst themselves and writing for their own members! They only time they would, in their usual context, is when the phrase itself is so ambiguous even they can't stand it, as in the case of the Norwegian Forest cat, Norwegian forest cat or Norwegian Forest Cat, depending on how you like to capitalize (a debate I suggest we not re-open right now; let's focus on one thing at a time, here). Here the WP:Specialist style fallacy will come into play with dyed-in-the-fur cat people [theoretically – I haven't seen any of them actually do it] demanding that the "true name", the "real name", whatever, is "Himalayan", that the article should be at that title, and that if it isn't the "primary topic" for that title it should be disambiguated with an awkward parenthetical as Himalayan (cat). The problem with this is that this idea is not supported by non-specialist sources, which invariably disambiguate by appending the species, thus Himalayan cat. Even specialists don't actually avoid the species name all the time, only when inside the "cat people" context. Thus, many breed orgnizations (across all sorts of domestic animals) do in fact include the species name, because at least some of their organizers realized that people not already familiar with what the org is about will be confused by a name that doesn't include it. "Not already familar" is what we presume about our readers, BTW. Some orgs still drop it the species, but this is more true of small and local groups than national and international ones, almost across the board. E.g. we have the Atlantic Himalayan Club, which begs the question "Himalayan what?" to everyone but is own members, and the Seattle Persian and Himalayan Rescue (which sounds like mountaineering SAR performed half a world away somehow), but the national/international Persian and Himalayan Cat Rescue (PHCR), the Himalayan Cat Club [of Australia][6][7], and so on. Plenty of the local ones do it, too: Himalayan Cat Fanciers (of Concord, New Hampshire)[8]. Meanwhile, pet/veterinarian/agricultural sites routinely add the species name: "Himalayan Cat | Cat Breeds" at Petfinder[9], "Himalayan Cat Adoption - Search & Adopt a Himalayan Cat" at AdoptAPet[10], "Himalayan Cat Breed Information, Pictures, Characteristics" at CatTime.com[11], "Himalayan Cat Breeders: Fanciers Breeder Referral List" at BreedList.com[12], and on and on. The same sort of results abound, regardless of the species, and regardless of the type of name (e.g. geographical adjective as in this case, or geographical noun, human surname-based, descriptive, etc.). The only generally categorical exception is when the breed name includes a synonym of the species name, or some other redundancy. E.g. it would usually not be expected to write/say "Dachshund dog", because -hund is the combining form of the word that means "dog" in German. Similarly the Ocicat breed would almost never be called the "Ocicat cat". [Various wild subspecies, and domestic landraces and generic types, none of which are breeds, are treated this way because their names are unitary and essentially include the concept of the species within them, e.g. dingo, boar, burro and pony, not "dingo dog", "boar pig", "burro donkey" or "pony horse". Few if any domestic breeds are treated this way.] Every marginally fluent English speaker knows to append the species any time one feels it's necessary for disambiguation or clarity; we all do this, all the time. When asked what pets she has, someone with a little menagerie will readily say something like "I have a Sokoke cat, a Barbet dog and Hungarian Warmblood horse" (unless hoping someone will ask for clarification, to keep the conversation going or whatever). The exact degree to which the appending happens varies primarily by probable familiarity of the breed to the intended audience, not to the writer/speaker. And this is a crucial point: Our presumption at WP is that no breed is familiar to any given reader. We presume this lack of familiarity about all topics in our naming and writing here. [If this doesn't seem reasonable, consider how many people know English around the world and use en.wp, and ask yourself if you're really certain that very common breeds in your country actually are common in ever single other country, and you have statistical facts to prove this. :-] Keep in mind also that more breeds are created every year, while very few go extinct, an increasing number of them are named for breeds of other animal due to appearance similarities, and virtually no one on the planet knows the same of every breed of every kind of domesticated animal. Next, WP:AT instructs us repeatedly to use natural disambiguation rather than parenthetical when we can. The most common name within specialist literature is one thing, but the most common name in writing when a breed name will not be understood immediately to be a breed name and of what, is to disambiguate by adding the species, e.g. "Himalayan cat". Even a breeder would do this in a situation that called for it, e.g. when talking about cats to dog people, or when talking about Himalayan cats in a context in which someone might think Himalayan people were meant, e.g. a conversation about Buddhists or Asia. Finally (for this short summary of the issue - I haven't gotten into proofs with n-grams, etc.), WP:OFFICIALNAME is especially important in this context. It really doesn't matter if the official name of a breed doesn't include "cat" (or "dog" or "horse" or "duck" or whatever) in the internal documentation of breeder and fancier organizations; we still need to use whatever name best suits all of the naming criteria and resolves their tensions with the reader, not the editor, most in mind. In the course of doing that we notice clearly that WP:COMMONNAME has precedence over OFFICIALNAME and many other concerns. As with all policies and guidelines the analysis of this naming procedure is also tempered by WP:COMMONSENSE. In closing, simply doing what we all normally do in the course of using English, and what a plain reading of WP:AT, WP:DAB, etc. tell us to do, without trying to shove contorted interpretations into it, yields a very clear answer to how to disambigate breed names here, that is totally independent of any topical/wikiproject-specific arguments or positioning (which have and might continue to lead to completely different handling of such articles titles depending on species and what project claims scope and wants to make up its own rules). Using natural disambiguation, which is the most common name (per COMMONNAME) outside of specialist-to-specialist jargonistic usage in insider publications, is a clear KISS principle matter, and also satisfies the principle of least astonishment.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:05, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Comment I agree with SMcCandlish that it seems more natural to disambiguate a breed name by adding the English name of the species without parentheses. So "Persian cat" seems more natural to me than "Persian (cat)" or "Alsatian dog" than "Alsatian (dog)". On the other hand, I'm not sure that it matters much; a lot of passion gets expended on article titles, and a lot of time wasted arguing about them, both of which seem pointless to me. Provided that there are redirects from the other forms, and that the name ignoring styling is both common and precise, does it really matter which style is used in the title? Yes, it's tidier to have them all the same, but Wikipedia is never going to be as tidy as a paper encyclopedia organized by an editorial committee, so if there's any significant opposition, I take the view that this isn't worth bothering with. But nevertheless, SMcCandlish is surely right that the form without parentheses is more natural. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:39, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

There's a wall of text here and I would recommend that you detail out exactly what you agree and disagree with. Dreadstar ☥ 08:23, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure if Dreadstar's comment was general or addressed to me. If the latter, then I agree that if we were starting from the beginning and choosing between with or without parentheses around the species name in order to disambiguate a breed, I would choose without parentheses, as it's seems more natural to me – to that extent I agree with SMcCandlish. However, I'm not convinced that there's a need for a new rule (i.e. more instruction creep), if the choice is controversial. So I await further discussion before !voting on changing WP:AT. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:57, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

In the context of cats, such as in a cat magazine, of course the word "cat" is going to be minimised, and "Persian cat" will become "Persian". The alternative is that "cat" is reused a thousand times within the one magazine, tedious to all but the most autistic cat lover. Recognizability, as determined by prevalence sources, should consider the best sources most highly, and the best sources are independent. The best sources to look for evidence of broad audience recognizability are sources that do not assume a context of familiarity with the topic.

I agree with all of  SMcCandlish's points. However, I don't see the question or proposed action. Does someone want to retitle Himalayan cat? Is there a battle elsewhere trying to depose WP:NATURAL? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:04, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't proposing an action (certainly not modifying AT itself), just opening a discussion on whether this interpretation of AT seems to be correct. Yes, some do want to retitle Himalayan cat and all similar articles on all breeds to names like Himalayan (cat). Others want to do this for all breed articles of a specific species, just "because". Many dog breeds are parenthetical names, for example, and were moved back to them after being moved to natural disambiguation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:04, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

• To be honest, both formats seem equally acceptable to me. Both can be supported by policy, and so the debate becomes a narrow wikilayerish one that really centers on the question of which criteria each of us thinks is "more important" than the others. To cut through the BS, let me ask a more basic question... is there really a need for a standard format for these titles? What is wrong with one article being at "X cat" and another at "Y (cat)"? ... especially since we can easily create a redirect pages for whichever title isn't chosen. Blueboar (talk) 12:18, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

@Blueboar: I agree that provided redirects are created, inconsistency isn't a real problem (it just offends some editors' preference for tidiness/standardization). However, the reality is that redirects aren't always created when they should be, so I guess there's a weak argument for consistency of title style/format being helpful to readers. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:57, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Peter, f an appropriate redirect does not yet exist... create it. Problem solved. Blueboar (talk) 01:31, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• How does one search for all "Y (cat)"s? I was only able to find Trim (cat). I don't see any in Category:Cat breeds. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:49, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Apparently a number of them were in fact recently moved away from the "(cat)" pattern, in early June, some of them by SMcCandlish himself and some by Sphilbrick. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:47, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Right. Same with goats, sheep, dogs, etc. The dog ones were moved back to parenthetical disambiguation, and some have suggested doing this with the others, on the basis that the moves were "controversial", but no one seems able to articulate a reason for them to be named parenthetically other than "our wikiproject likes it that way". I'm trying to see if all eyes on WT:AT can actually come up with any. So far it's not looking like it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:04, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Blueboard, we have policies and guidelines for predictable article naming for various reasons that the community finds compelling enough to bother with. This isn't a debate about whether those reasons are good enough, it's a discussion about how to implement them with regard to breeds. I and a few others had moved the parenthetically disambiguated stragglers among the breed articles to natural disambiguation (many were already natural-DABed), and these moves were declared by some editors (mostly from the dogs project) to be "controversial". Yet, here I'm seeing resistance to the idea of even discussing the matter, so is there a real controversy? Anyway, there are actual reasons to favor one over the other; a parenthetically disambiguated name would indicate that the name is always and invariably used, even in mainstream, non-specialist sources in contexts where they need to disambiguate, without the species name attached. This is true of several wild subspecies, e.g. peccary, javelina, dingo, etc., but so far I cannot find a single case of any breed of any kind of domestic animal where this is the case, except as noted above where the name itself would make this redundant because it already includes a word for the species. As Montanabw points out below, a parenthetical may also indicate an individual animal. So that's already two reasons to not use parenthetical disambiguation for breed names. Both formats aren't actually supported by policy. There is no breed name that is not naturally disambiguated, when disambiguated is needed, in independent reliable sources. This mistake being made here is the assumption that sources entirely about [insert species here, e.g. dogs] can tell us anything about how to disambiguate dog names; they can't because they never disambiguate them at all; "Akita" never refers, in a dog magazine or book, to anything but a dog breed.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:04, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

• I think this stick needs to drop; see no need for an overall bright line rule across multiple animal breeds. What is going on here in part is that some animal breeds use natural disambiguation (Siamese cat) and others use parenthetical disambiguation (Siamese (cat) ) Usually it is a project-wide consensus (yes, the dreaded "LOCALCONSENSUS") but arrived at for good reason based on the unique circumstances surrounding each animal. For example, WikiProject poultry is not going to need to deal with thousands upon thousands of articles about individually-named chickens! But is is an issue for companion and working animals - in the project I work on most, WikiProject Equine, we have thousands of articles on individually named animals (mostly race horses) as well as several hundred breeds. Parenthetical disambiguation works well for the individually named animals, such as Salerno (horse), which needs to be distinguished from the breed, whose article is titled Salerno horse. We also have Hackney horse and Hackney pony. Conversely, at wikiproject dogs, they made precisely the opposite decision as they encountered the very awkward situation of Billy (dog), and individual animal, AND Billy (dog breed), which to use parenthetical dab made more sense than Billy dog, which even I must admit resembles Billy goat more than a breed name. They are currently having a debate about if it's German Shepherd or German Shepherd Dog (with a couple wags arguing for Alsatian). While I might put in my two cents for the value of natural disambiguation, I see the wisdom of letting the projects work out their own naming scheme within the broader guidelines of the MOS - of both methods are acceptable broadly, no need to impose needlessly rigid rules. Montanabw^(talk) 17:29, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

  Agreed. If disambiguation is not necessary for technical reasons (no other uses of that title have articles on WP), then don't disambiguate. If disambiguation is required, then follow sources. If sources use natural disambiguation, then so do we. If they don't, then we use parenthetical disambiguation. Simple. Clear. Helpful. --В²C ☎ 19:30, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

  B2c, the problem there is that no sources ever use parenthetical disambiguation; it's a Wikipedia invention. All sources use natural dismabiguation when they have to disambiguate. See my original post and SmokeyJoe's response. The entire issue is that breed names are almost never disambiguated in breeder-oriented publications, because in a dog magazine you already know they're talking about dogs, so they're not going to insert "dog" 1000 times in the same magazine, after all the breed names. No disambiguation is needed in those publications. Meanwhile, all non-specialist publications like newspapers, will disambiguate naturally; it's just how English works. Despite this, some editors (mostly in a couple of wikiprojects, imagine that) have decided amongst themselves to use parenthetical disambiguation with some but not all breed names, for no clear reason.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:04, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

  Sources rarely use parenthetic disambiguation for any subjects - there is nothing unique about that in this case. But many topics are naturally disambiguated in sources. Maybe all of these topics are; I don't know. But I presume there are breed names that normally don't need to be disambiguated in sources, but do need it here. Say Mustang (horse). Holy cow (no pun intended), that article is at Mustang horse. This is a perfect example of what's wrong with that convention. That article needs to be moved! --В²C ☎ 00:29, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

  Except a) some sources do actually use "mustang horse(s)", and mustangs are not a breed anyway, but a wild population like boars and dingos, so they're unrelated to the discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:52, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

  Montanabw, no stick is beating anything here. An ANI case in which you participated recently closed with the conclusion that moving these articles around without discussion can't continue; resolving this thus necessitates that discussion happen. Objecting to the discussion taking place isn't helpful. At any rate, the examples you provide are actually a clear reason, site-wide, to not use parenthetical disambiguation for breeds, the lone odd case of Billy (dog) vs. Billy dog vs. Billy (dog breed) notwithstanding. That breed name is going to be awkward no matter what is done with it. And the dogs project did not disambiguate the way you say they did. There is no individual "Billy (dog)" article; they put the breed name at "Billy (dog)", and when it was moved to "Billy dog", they moved it back; "Billy (dog breed)" is a redlink. Regardless, one case to work around can't reasonably thwart the adoption of a general standard that works for 1000 or so other articles.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:04, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

• Question: has anyone notified the relevant WikiProjects of this discussion? Those would probably include, at the very least, Cats, Dogs, Rodents, Horses, Poultry, Farm, and of course Birds. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:46, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

• In progress. I ran out of time yesterday. Some of domestics of which there are breeds don't have their own projects, just WP:WikiProject Agriculture/Livestock task force. WP:BIRDS isn't relevant; they cover wild species, not breeds, which are covered by WP:POULTRY. Done. NB: There is no WikiProject Farm.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:18, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Try these:

1. Wikipedia:FARM
2. Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/Domestic pigeon task force

Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:58, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

1. Already notified at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Agriculture/Livestock task force
2. Inactive for two years, and should be part of the poultry project, but I notified it anyway. Aren't you capable of using the edit button, too? Heh. It would have taken about as long to post multiple times here about projects needing notices as to simply go give them notices.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:52, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

• Comment Just been notified of this by a post on WikiProject Poultry. I personally don't really care about which is used. I don't intend to waste my energy on debating it, because I think either works provided the other is a redirect to it. I intend to spend my energies on improving articles; we don't need a lovely, standardised Wiki with no content. Not that it really matters, SMcC edited all poultry articles to his preference about two weeks ago (and managed to stuff up several breeds in the progress, which the project has got to get around to untangling). JTdale ^Talk 11:23, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
• Contra Please, let it be a Hamburg (chicken). I am so tired of discussiuns like

Q: What is the name of the breed?

Aa) "Hamburg",

Ab) "Hamburg chicken" or

Ac) "Hamburg Chicken".

All versions are possible. Hamburg (chicken) fits all options and is better for interwikilinks: [[Hamburg (chicken)|]] --> Hamburg. There are really better things to do than moving articles headlessly around. Most exisiting articels are outdated stubs.

By the way: American Game chicken is ridiculous and poorly wrong. If you don't like American Game (chicken) use American Game Fowl. Same goes with Sebright chicken. If you don't like Sebright (chicken), use Sebright Bantam! But be warned: non english native speakers do not know "Fowl" and "Bantams", but they do know "chicken"! So, non native speekers may have an idea what a American Game (chicken) may be, but never with American Game Fowl or a Sebright Bantam. --PigeonIP (talk) 14:42, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

You're aware that the original article title was American Game, right? Regardless what the ideal title would be, that was the worst possible choice. The article is at American Game fowl presently. Given your that redirects work, why wouldn't we use "fowl"? What evidence is there that only native English speakers use it? Is there a provision in AT to rename articles to the names most likely to be recognized by non-native speakers? Are you proposing to move all the articles that already are at "... fowl" names? There are quite a few, and there were before I moved any poultry articles. Why would whether something is an old stub have anything to do with how we name it? Finally, the capitalization issue (not the topic of this discussion will surely eventually sort out; it simply won't be true that "Hamburg Chicken" (or "Hamburg Fowl"), "Hamburg chicken" (or "Hamburg fowl") and "Hamburg" will all be equally acceptable as article titles. We already know that "Hamburg" by itself isn't and would have to be disambiguated. And even fans of capitalizing the breed names (Hamburg would be anyway because it's a proper name) don't capitalize the species/type term that follows it except in cases where is always used (American Quarter Horse, not American Quarter horse, because no one says "American Quarter", which sounds like coinage). So, again, there doesn't seem to be a cogent argument here for anything but "Hamburg chicken", other than perhaps "Hamburg fowl", which for purposes of this discussion is the same sort (i.e. it's not "Hamburg (fowl)").  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:52, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Dear SMcCandlish, you moved it without thinking/revision from American Game (chicken) to American Game chicken [13]. As you did with a lot more poltry and pigeon breeds, as I saw on wikidata.

There is nothing wrong with the existing "fowls" or "bantams", like Old English Pheasant Fowl, because these are official given names of the breeds (with references [14] [15]). Because of that (official given name) your move and "typo" to Old English Pheasant fowl was wrong, as well.

I do have a very big problem with the next rename-troll on Commons because of the naming guidelines there. That is where non native-english-speakers have to work with this mess (CatScan) and can't handle it. Thank you very much, for the following amount of file-categorisation-work there.

Your work would be most welcome, if there really was a problem and you would take a minutes to google the proper name. But you do mindlessly jump into action to create not used names that others have to correct... Only with a lot of WP:AGF I do not think of plain Wikipedia:Vandalism#Page-move vandalism ... --PigeonIP (talk) 19:25, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Oh, and befor you start the pigeon vs. Pigeon discussion: as you can see in the List of Fancy Pigeon Breeds, there are breeds with "Pigeon", like the Mulhouse Pigeon, the Saar Pigeon or the Ice Pigeon. With article-names like Jacobin (pigeon) it is clear to everyone, that "pigeon" is not part of the name of the breed. And if you had asked me befor you moved Archangel (pigeon) to Archangel pigeon, I would have asked you to move to Gimple, because this is the more general name of the breeds (as you also could have read in the article). --PigeonIP (talk) 19:56, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Mustang RM notification

I'm a firm believer in establishing local consensus on individual actual articles before changing policy based on local consensus (see User:Born2cycle/FAQ#Shouldn't you get the policy/guideline changed, rather than try to subvert it one article at a time?), hence this Mustang horse → Mustang (horse) RM at Talk:Mustang_horse#Requested_move_-_July_2014. --В²C ☎

• I don't think the above discussion speaks to this example. This example concerns an alleged contrived natural disambiguation, thus not a natural disambiguation. If no one says "That's a mustang horse over there", it is contrived. If it is natural to say "That's a Persian cat over there", then "Persian cat" is a natural disambiguation. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:49, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Furthermore (with reference to the larger topic here, not just that RM), mustangs, like boars, dingoes, etc., are not a breed but a wild or feral population. While a species is not commonly appended after such names, it is sometimes and specifically to disambiguate, in real-world sources.[16] Note that the "mustang horse[s]" usage shot up rapidly after the WWII introduction of a fighter plane by the same name. Regardless, this has no impact on the larger question of Clydesdale horse vs. Clydesdale (horse). B2c seem unclear on the purpose of this discussion, which is not "changing policy based on local consensus", but avoiding any further WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy problems of trying to set a "rule" an individual article at a time, by instead properly applying a general one evenly. PS: As Montanabw already noted, the format "Mustang (horse)" is used by WP:EQUINE as an explicit convention for naming articles on individual notable animals like racehorses, and so conflicts with B2c's suggestion to rename.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:14, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

LOCALCONSENSUS means that a group of editors can't over-ride an agreed policy. Is always choosing "X species" rather than "X (species)" an agreed policy? If not, then LOCALCONSENSUS is irrelevant. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:12, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

That's a novel interpretation. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS doesn't actually say that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:17, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

On the contrary, that's exactly what it says. Read it again. There's nothing wrong with groups of editors reaching a local consensus; it's the essence of Wikipedia. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS is crystal clear that its objection is to this consensus seeking to override a "community consensus on a wider scale" (which it seems to me has to be a policy or guideline, otherwise how would we know there was such a consensus?) or a "generally accepted policy or guideline". I repeat my question: is there a policy or guideline which says always choose "X species" rather than "X (species)"? Peter coxhead (talk) 18:33, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, in either case, the RM is over there. Let me say here that there is no difference in saying "that's a Persian cat" or that's a Mustang horse". I might as easily say, "that cat is a Persian." But a comment here is that the Mustang is not a dingo - The dingo is a distinct subspecies of dog, the Mustang is merely a type of domestic horse (E. ferus caballus, not E. ferus ferus) many of which have been captured, tamed, trained are are now being bred in captivity. So without getting into complicated political discussions (as opposed to biology where we have NO controversies! /snark), some bands clearly are "breeds" and others contain genetic markers clearly showing near-pure descent from breeds, and some are the descendants of the stud horse Local Rancher turned out with some captured Indian ponies, so it's nigh on impossible to really say if the Mustang is precisely a breed, a crossbreed, a landrace or what; save that it has unique characteristics that derive in part from its environment, but also in part from whose local horses got stolen/turned loose/deliberately introduced to various herds. For convenience on wiki, we use "breed", as it clearly isn't a subspecies. With horses, it's a minefield to get into the question of landrace issues, particularly in the western United States, where even with pedigreed bloodstock, today some people still turn a stallion loose with a herd of mares and hope to see a bunch of little cow ponies in the spring. Montanabw^(talk) 23:17, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

My understanding is that SMcCandlish raised the issue here to discover what the community view was on having a general rule in the MOS that titles like "Mustang (horse)" when used for disambiguation would be at least deprecated if not forbidden. So it's not just a matter of a specific RM, and the issue of whether to decide such matters by local consensus or by a MOS rule is a real one. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:13, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Peter do you mean the WP:MOS or the AT Policy and its naming conventions? -- PBS (talk) 14:53, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

• Just want to note that someone at the RM has made an alternative proposal that would make the whole Mustang horse vs. Mustang (horse) debate irrelevant - the proposal is that the horse type be considered the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and that it be moved to the non-disambiguated title Mustang... and the dab page be moved to Mustang (disambiguation). Works for me. Blueboar (talk) 12:02, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

RFC on official names versus common names

There is an RFC on WP:PPAP's naming conventions, which stipulate that official names should be used over common names, at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Political_parties_and_politicians_in_Canada#RFC_on_official_names_versus_common_names that you may be interested in commenting on. TDL (talk) 01:03, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

What is the standing of an official name if a common name hasn't been proven?

If no data has been provided at any time to support an existing, even stable title (basically decided to be the common name by someone's personal experience or whim), and the official name is somewhat commonly used (because it's been the official name for a long time), wouldn't the official name at least be a default choice until a more common name is proven? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 01:32, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

First, in many cases the most commonly used name (ie the COMMONNAME) actually is the official name... because sources often use the official names. I don't know if that is the case with the article you are talking about.

That said... I would answer your question with "No" ... not because I have anything against official names, but because there is no such thing as a "default" when it comes to choosing the best title. Every title involves a unique balancing of the various criteria laid out in the policy. Our goal is to reach a consensus as to what the best title is.

So... If there are multiple names, and no single one stands out as being used more often than the other(s), then none of the choices is more recognizable than the others (ie there is no single COMMONNAME). When this occurs, we have to look to the other criteria (Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, and Consistency) to determine the best title. I would say that the "official" name is likely to be the most precise (but again, there are exceptions to every generalization)... but that does not mean it is necessarily the best choice for the title... even if it is the most precise, it may not be the most natural, concise, or consistent.

The best title will be the one that comes closest to achieving all of these criteria at the same time. That might be the "official" name... but it may be some other name instead. Each article title will involve a unique examination of the choices with respect to our criteria. Blueboar (talk) 18:08, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Blueboar, when I read your response it seems more like a can of worms rather than a possibly more fair, objective manner to provide a name. COMMONNAME according to whom? This can easily turn into a the tyranny of the majority. For example, Myanmar has been Myanmar for multiple decades. The problem is that some nations and individuals are so against the military government that to this day they use Burma. The majority use Burma and the result is that we have a name Burma as the name here on Wiki. A second example, is the rather long name when used at the beginning of a sentence, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints". If we talk to Evangelicals the name is Church of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church, or just simply the cult. In a world where small groups or entities are always a distinct minority, your criteria easily leads to the tyranny of the majority.

Then we have examples such as the Catholic Church. Several years ago this was changed from "Roman Catholic Church" to just "Catholic Church" must to the dismay of many individuals we believed they belonged to the catholic church, but not the Roman Catholic Church.

It is always been my thinking that extra weight should be given to what the groups or entities want to call themselves. It is just too easy and I don't see a downside. Some names are offensive to some groups and they should be avoided completely. It is like a group of us asking what your name is and you say Blueboar and from then on we just call you Blue because, well because it is easier, more concise, and common.

It would be helpful to at least give some credence to what the entity itself would prefer to be called. --^StormRider 04:34, 28 July 2014 (UTC)