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Peddler has far more content and duplicates much of the the content of Hawker, and includes the statement "A peddler, in British English pedlar, also known as a canvasser, chapman, cheapjack, hawker,[...]" Ethanpet113 (talk) 05:45, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Merge or no merge?
I do not think that a merge is a good idea. Historically and legally, peddlers and hawkers are quite different. Whereas, peddlers travel from door to door, usually on foot, selling things, hawkers normally travel with the aid of some type of vehicle (e.g. horse and cart) and may set up pitches in heavily populated areas where they call out goods for sale.
In certain jurisdictions, these distinctions are enshrined in law, and the authorities can force peddlers to move on whenever they try to sell goods on a street corner or other static location. If the articles for Peddler and Hawker are similar, it is because they are poorly conceptualized, poorly written or lack focus. Rather than merge, a preferable solution would be to refine the focus in each of these articles so that they deal with the specific issues relevant to each type of street vendor.
Ill-judged mergers can lead to all manner of consequential problems. Such problems can be seen in the Costermonger article, which I believe, in the distant past was merged with street vendors. However, costermonger is a uniquely British concept that describes street sellers primarily in London. Obviously, street vendor is a more generic term. In spite of that an editor is now insisting that the costermonger article be globalized because he believes that he has seen the term used in a Russian context. Requests for him to produce evidence of a Russian context have fallen on deaf ears, and the globalize tag remains on article that cannot and should not be globalized. We would not have to confront these types of issues if a more general article on street vendors was available.
175.32.56.121 (talk) 03:18, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
