Talk:Avatar (film)

Change of redirect

Per WP:PT, three factors to help determie a primary topic are incoming wikilinks, article traffic stats, and google searches.

• Inc wikilinks: 2009, 2004

• Traffic stats (Jan 2010): 2009, 2004

• Google search: 2009, 2004

All three indicate that the 2009 film dwarfs the 2004 film, which is why I changed the redirect to the 2009 film and added a hatnote to that article that should've been there anyways.

In the spirit of WP:Principle of least astonishment, I feel that the argument that popularity doesn't indicate a primary topic is simply wrong. Being "encyclopedic" shouldn't need to stop us from making it easy for users to find what they are looking for. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz 21:05, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

The Astonish principle has to do with writing articles and not redirects. The simple fact is that an encyclopedia should not formed to match the popularity of more recent or critically acclaimed works. "Avatar (film)" could refer to any film title Avatar and rather deciding for the reader which article they meant to go to, they are direct to a disambiguation page where they decide. That is the most natural redirect. Plus, it is highly unlikely that some one will type in "Avatar (film)" if they are looking for the 2009 film; they will more likely type in "Avatar" which has a proper hat. BOVINEBOY2008 :) 21:13, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

This was already discussed at length, and it was nearly unanimous consensus to not rename and redirect. Trusilver 21:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

The discussion mentioned was a proposal to move the 2009 article here, which would have violated film article naming conventions. Several people supported the move before they realized it violated such conventions, at which time they changed their vote.

As others have noted, and as all three factors of WP:PT show, 98% of readers are looking for the 2009 film. The purpose of Wikipedia is not to imitate a printed encyclopedia. Up until this point, three different editors have preferred the redirect to the 2009 film, while Bovine is the only one in this page's edit history that prefers the dab page, and you have changed it back to this form 4 times. There is no concrete policy that truly supports his actions; I based mine on WP:PT. However, I will not edit this redirect again and leave it to others to come to a consensus on the issue.

Yes, "Avatar (film)" could refer to any film title Avatar, but a meaningful hat has been added to the 2009 film article for those few who are looking for another film. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz 21:33, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

As has been gone over before, exceedingly few people are going to put in Avatar (film). They are going to put in Avatar and follow the hat to the movie's article. The ones who rely on the autocomplete to push them in the right direction will be able to clearly see the link for Avatar (2009 film). This makes the entire conversation kind of meaningless. But setting that aside for a moment, Nearly all the people who look up Avatar are then following the link to the movie. Does this mean that we should have Avatar link to the movie? Of course not. This increase in traffic is transitory, and temporary increases in traffic should not affect anything. One more thing to keep in mind is that the highest grossing movie of all time is Titanic (1997 film) and Titanic (film) does NOT link there. Trusilver 23:03, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Your premise is incorrect, unless you are claimimg 65,000+ per month is "exceedingly few". Station1 (talk) 01:08, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

The stats indicate that if the only ambiguous uses of "avatar" were the 2009 film or the 2004 film, that the 2009 film would be primary for "avatar". However, since there is another, different, primary meaning for "avatar", all other articles that would have the title "avatar" need to have a disambiguating phrase attached. The current arrangement of "(2009 film)" and "(2004 film)" accomplishes that. WP:PT has nothing to say on the placement of additional disambiguating phrases. The Jan 2010 traffic for "Avatar (film)" is 15.7K, but since it's an incomplete disambiguation, it's very hard to determine what the primary usage of it is -- the traffic to the individual films is most likely not coming through this page. I would leave this as the incomplete dab redirect and leave the films at the unambiguous titles specified by their project. -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:46, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I, too, consider it obvious that Avatar (film) should redirect to the 2009 film. It did not even occur to me that this would be controversial, when I "corrected" the redirect yesterday (using a different IP address in 64.231.*) without first looking at the edit history. Here Trusilver says we should keep in mind that Titanic (film) does not redirect to the 1997 film; I consider that that is simply another obvious error that should be corrected.

I've said my 2¢ worth and will now bow out and let someone else actually make the changes when consensus on them is achieved. --64.231.232.224 (talk) 05:20, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I have 2¢ more to add to that. In all honesty, in my case, the reason I want Avatar (film) to redirect to Avatar (2009 film) is because when I myself was searching Wikipedia for the article on the 2009 film, I had no idea that any other film of the same name existed (nor did I care that other such films existed). Knowing that the concept of Avatar, at least in the sense of Avatar (computing), would probably have taken up the article entitled "Avatar", I did the logical thing, and typed "Avatar (film)" into the search box (actually into the Google Chrome omnibox, configured to search Wikipedia, so no WP auto-suggest), and was disappointed to see it not pointing directly to the article that I wanted.

The reason that several different editors have changed the redirect is probably the same as mine: I expected it to do one thing and it did another, so I changed it to act as I thought most people would expect. Since it's not really a big deal though, I got tired of arguing the point and being reverted, as will most—if not all—editors who fall into the same trap. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz 19:55, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

It isn't a trap. The article title "Avatar (film)" is ambiguous and although a grand majority of readers will be looking for the 2010 film, the logicial redirect is to a disambiguation page, because again, the article title is ambiguous. BOVINEBOY2008 :) 20:06, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Pardon my own ambiguity: by "trap" I was referring to the temptation to change this page to redirect to the 2009 film article without reviewing the history or talk page first. I was not calling the Avatar (disambiguation) page a trap, just an obnoxious extra click. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz 20:25, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, misread. BOVINEBOY2008 :) 20:35, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

WTF?

OK I can accept that searching for 'Avatar' will take you to a disambig page but I searched for 'Avatar (film)' for crissakes! OK there are 2 previous films with the same name but one doesn't even have an article page and the other I have never heard of. This doesn't necessitate a drawn out wiki vote (where the dictatorial admins will manipulate as always) or some geek to come along and show off some Google search stats or wiki page stats - all that needs doing is what anybody with half a brain would have done - move the page!--Xania ^talk 22:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

It is an improper disambiguation, no matter how popular one of the films is. BOVINEBOY2008 :) 00:12, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I think most people, in fact, would be looking for this instead of this when they search "Avatar". I agree with Xania. —C Teng^(talk) 02:40, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I did a search for Avatar (film) searching for The Last Airbender, since that makes more sense. 67.185.61.188 (talk) 23:30, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Update: Looking at this edit by Kailash29792 and this and this edit by JE98 and Wbm1058, respectively, where to redirect this page is still being disputed. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:40, 14 September 2017 (UTC)